"So how did you know?" Tommy's voice cut the calm reverie of Jason's deep-tissue massage. He mumbled against the terry-covered table as the masseur worked his muscular shoulders.
"What?" Tommy turned his head and looked over at his friend laying on an identical massage table next to him. "Spit out your towel, and tell me how you knew I was unhappy with Kim's wedding craze."
Jason huffed through the cloth, then turned his head towards Jason.
"I said, there was no missing it, because it was more what you didn't say. You didn't say a word. Usually, when you're that excited about something, you brim over at the mouth. Geez.
Back on Xerya, it was 'Kim this…' and 'Light and Shadow that…' and 'Boy, we tanked Sov'ran and I almost killed Billy…' over there. We couldn't get you to shut up. But for the last three months of Kim's running us all ragged, you said only two things. Diddly, and squat. Suddenly, I stick up for you, you're happy again, and now I can't shut you up. Damn, Oliver. Let a guy relax, huh?"
Tommy got quiet. "Really, Jase? You know me well enough to… of course you know me that well. I just thought I was hiding it better than that. I mean, it was what Kim wanted, and so I didn't say anything to anyone. I hardly even saw anyone, so…. Um…. You really could tell?"
Jason looked at Tommy with a kind, almost indulging smile. Then he said, "Of course not. You think I'm a sensitive wuss? Aji told me. Apparently, you were so upset you were practically broadcasting on FM."
Jason made much of turning his face back down into the terrycloth, but not before Tommy saw the grin that threatened to crack his features. Muffled chuckles burst from Jason's table. "At least I saved you from a gray pinstripe tuxedo with tails and spats." The masseurs looked up from their pummeling of Jason & Tommy's backs, and shared a wry grin. A poorly repressed laugh emanated from above Tommy's head as his own serviceman lost it. Tommy blushed maroon.
"Yeah, well, at least Kim left you alive. For a minute there, I didn't think she was going to. She can be rather, well, um…." Tommy paused, unsure as to how he should speak of his wife to be.
Another muffled reply came from the terrycloth again. "Bridezilla?"
The masseurs lost it, cracking up loudly along with Jason, who turned on the table and sat up to face his rather livid friend.
"Yeah, well. At least she's mine," Tommy said quietly. "She'll settle down once we're hitched."
The three other men's laughter burst out even harder at this.
Ten pink toes emerged from a lather of foam and wiggled at Aji. Looking past them at the doe brown eyes behind them at the other end of the tub. Those eyes were anything but settled – they were twinkling with mischief.
"Come on, Aj. You gotta try this," Kim crooned out over the mound of bubbles that covered her diminutive form. "You have to acquire your expensive tastes before you get married. You won't get the chance to if you wait until after."
"I'm going to have Tommy so trained that he sends me off to the spa at least once a week, and I'll have him so wrapped around my finger that he won't even notice when the bill arrives." Kim smiled again and wiggled her toes at the thought, crooking her pinky for emphasis.
Aji smirked at the thought, but did not capitulate. "Kim, I've rarely had other than field showers and plunges into freezing lakes in the mountains where we hid the base. I don't know about all this stuff you want to use on me…." She held up a packet of expensive spa product, glancing at the label dubiously. Exfoliate and polish, it said. Aji imagined something akin to the molting of a grat'lest paired with the polish one would use on an assault rifle.
"Which is exactly why you must. Jason's never seen you like this. I mean, you're gorgeous and all, you know… but he's never seen you, well, done up right."
"I feel stupid."
"You'll glow."
"I doubt it."
"Trust me."
Glowering look.
"I promise. I bet I can even make you look good in yellow."
"Why you little…!"
Splat.
Giggles from Kim, a face full of foam bubbles for Aji.
"YE-AIIIIII-AHHHH!!!!" (Unbridled cry most commonly associated with the outset of the ethrull's final melee.)
SPLASH!
( A short time later…..)
Twenty pink toes emerged from two tubs filled with foam and wiggled in a row, spaced ten and ten. Aji sighed luxuriously and stretched from within the spa tub next to Kim's. A strident voice interrupted her in the midst pf her appreciative wallowing in suds.
"So tell me why you didn't tell me."
Aji sat up a bit and looked over the edge of her tub. Kim's brown eyes could just be seen above the enamel of her own – but they were aimed at her with an intense gaze. Kim continued on.
"No, first, tell me how you knew Tommy was unhappy – then we can get to the why you didn't tell me part."
Aji sighed again, this time with a bit of exasperation. "Kim, I know it hurt you the way you found out. And I am truly sorry for that. In answer to your second question, Tommy wanted more than anything for you to be happy, and was willing to do anything to maintain that happiness. I did not feel it was right to act against that. You were happy so happy planning and shopping…."
"But you hated every minute of it, too, didn't you?"
"I did. But I also want your happiness. It means more to me than you know. Please believe me."
Kim sloshed upward a few inches to rest her chin on the cool enamel. "I believe you. I can hear it in your voice. But how in hell did you know Tommy was that unhappy? I didn't even know."
"Promise not to get upset?"
"Uh huh."
"Honestly, Kim."
"Oh, all right already! I won't get mad."
Aji drew in a deep breath, in readiness for her next confession. "Tommy and I still have a residual mental bond. I don't know why. The Watcher said that all of our powers were supposed to disappear once Sov'ran was defeated. They only existed in response to the threat Sov'ran posed – so the only thing I can think of is that there may be some threat remaining."
She looked over at Kim's stunned face. "But I didn't want to say anything about it to you – or to Jason. Neither did Tommy. We just wanted to be, well, happy and at peace for a while. We don't know what is out there, or why we can still link in this way. But we just wanted to be – well, normal for once. All I've known in my whole life is war. Tommy has faced losing you more times than he cares to. We just wanted to be, well, happy." Aji gave a wry smile. "Going along with your plans for the wedding seemed to be a good distraction, and might hold off our involvement for years, it seemed. But we wanted a relative peace in life, and if that meant you were going to make us miserable, then so be it."
"Wow. I don't know what to say, Aji. Except, well, maybe thank you in a freakish sort of way. There's no way of knowing why you and he are still linked without being Light and Shadow?"
"I'm afraid not, Kim."
"And you were afraid to find out?"
"Yes. I'm sorry."
Kim huffed out a breath. "Well I'm not. I've had enough of interstellar war to last me two lifetimes. I just want to settle down and be with Tommy, maybe someday have kids. But, listen Aj - you know what you mean to me, right?"
Aji smiled a true smile this time. "I think so, Kimberly."
"And you know what I will do to you if you ever pull any crap like this again on me, right?"
Aji grinned. "Uh huh."
"Has Jason figured it out yet?"
"Sort of. I told him about the feelings I overheard from Tommy, hoping he would help Tom deal with things. But I didn't say anything about my suspicions of a threat. I didn't want to upset him – and I figured he wouldn't probe too deeply yet – at least until he thought about it for a few months. He's not always that observant unless he's really focused on something. I found it wasn't too hard to, well, distract him."
Kim eased back into her suds and paused a moment to look up at the ceiling, then back across to Aji. She took a deep breath before speaking. "Okay then. We will deal with whatever is going on out in the greater universe in due time. But until then, we are damn well getting married – and I am willing to bet that I can make you look so good that Jason will swallow his tongue over you."
"You're on!"
Jason and Tommy eased their way down the steps of the casino lobby, feeling refreshed and relaxed from their afternoon of pampering. In slick new suits (from the "reception hall rental fund") they smoothly strolled into the room, knowing they looked good. Their creases were sharp, their lines were smooth. They noticed the attention they were getting. They more particularly noticed the female attention they were getting.
Then they noticed a knot of men standing near the lobby entrance, and bits of red and chestnut glimmering occasionally between the shifting shoulders of those men.
With a wary glance at each other, Jason and Tommy made their way towards the circle to unearth their brides, intending to thrash the hell out of anyone who got in the way. As they reached the outer circle, it parted. Tommy grinned. Jason gasped.
"Well it's about time! We were going to leave you both and marry these guys. Or at least they were going to try very hard to persuade us." Kim grinned up at her Tommy, her long hair swaying seductively around her shoulders. She was dressed in a short, tight dress of silver lame that crossed up and over one shoulder, leaving the other bare of all but Chanel no.5. Her tiny feet, deadly when flying through the air at a foe, were clad in delicate silver heels, strappy and laced up her legs to the knees. She was a knockout.
But, Tommy thought, that was to be expected. He glanced over at Jason, who still had yet to move. Or recover.
He looked over at Aji, and admittedly, he could see why. Even without their diminished but residual ability to sense the other's emotions, Tommy would have been able to tell how pleased Aji was with the results of the "experiment" Kim had proposed. Although he had known it was coming (Jason hadn't), Tommy was still dazzled by what he saw. He looked at Kim and winked. She wiggled with the pleasure of her success. She called out to Jason:
"You see, Jason? Not all girly-type preparations are bad."
Jason spoke his first words in several minutes. "Uh, um… damn."
Aji looked that good.
Her short, red hair, normally clean and finger-brushed in a rakish antithesis of style, suddenly was anything but. It was polished bronze, and swept coyly across her forehead to tuck behind one ear. The back and sides stood out in a wispy parody of their normal spiky state, and looked so soft that Jason's fingers trembled with the desire to plunge his hands into it. Her eyes glinted at the corners with gold, her lips were a deep, lustrous red-gold bow. Her trim, muscular body was clad in a shimmering dress and sandals that matched Kim's in style and shape, but was a deep burnished gold that set off the highlights in her hair. The only other difference was that Aji was taller than Kim. Much taller.
Jason almost choked over her legs.
A bronze-gold and silver armband encircled each woman's upper right arm, and their left hands each held a ring of a matching metal, fabulously topped with a giant diamond ("reception, food and liquor budget").
Their skin glowed with health and vigor. Their eyes were alight, and their smiles each vied to trump the other in joy and delight. They knew that the boys looked good too. But Aji and Kim knew that they had won.
They looked that good.
Jason still hadn't moved.
Aji and Kim looked at each other with glee.
Kim looked at Jason, then at her watch pulled discreetly from her purse, and finally up at Aji.
Aji opened her evening bag with a grin and blatantly passed Kim a hundred dollar bill.