Another Baird and Sam moment! Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Sam shivered at the damp wind pushing past her coat collar. She shifted the paper bag in her arms, freeing up one to try and hold it closed as she scurried from the shuttle bus into her apartment building. The countryside had thawed out weeks ago but the northerly winds still hammered into New Jacinto often enough to annoy her. She shivered a little getting into the elevator as the last of the chill was driven off. The heating system was back online, which meant that Baird was back.
She couldn't help feeling a little giddy.
Baird was back all right. He lay sprawled on the couch in grey cotton pants and a wifebeater, bowl of crisps balanced on his stomach precariously. One hand was typing away at the computer setting on the coffee table, the other was busy scratching himself. The only acknowledgement Sam got was a muffled grunt, more than what the man usually gave out. "What time did you come in?" she asked cheerily, setting the bag down on their kitchen counter and pulling out packets and cans.
" Oh, 'bout ten or fifteen minutes after you left this morning, probably," Baird replied, raising his voice to be heard. "The kettle was still warm." Sam piled the cans into the cupboard and grabbed the heavy, paper-wrapped lump in the bottom of the bag, hefting it appreciatively. She went to stand in the living-room doorway, holding the package eagerly in both hands as though it were made of gold.
"You'll never guess what I got us for dinner."
"No, I certainly won't." His eyes never left the computer screen.
"Daaamon, I got us duck! The last duck in the market!" Sam held the package out excitedly, waving it back and forth. "Freshly plucked right in front of me."
Food was Damon Baird's greatest weakness. He looked over at her with questioning eyes as soon as the word 'freshly' left her lips. Sam noticed his eyes leaving the wrapped duck meat and roaming up and down her body, his other main weakness, and a saucy smirk crossed her face.
"This isn't some prank where you say you're cooking duck, but what you really do is take the nastiest mudfish you can find and stick fake feathers in it, right?" Baird grabbed the back of the couch and pulled himself up, catching the crisps bowl before it could escape. "Because if that's what you're playing at…"
"Relax, hun. It's real. I thought we could put something nice on the table when Anya and Marcus come over."
"Aww, but that's tomorrow!" Baird whined, stuffing more crisps into his mouth and pecking away at the keyboard with his free hand. "Uhm mungruh nuhh."
"You've already had your dinner," Sam chided, returning the duck meat to the kitchen counter. She picked up the bi-weekly newsletter sitting on the counter and returned to the living room, flopping down in a ratty foam-filled armchair across from the couch. She didn't buy it because it was a valuable source of information (it was amateurish and usually outdated by the time it went to print) but for that feeling of civility and normalcy it generated. They had heat, they had light, they had a working icechest now, and she could sit down and read terrible word puzzles like a housewife, finally.
She wasn't quite sure when the idea of being 'domesticated' stopped being frightening and started being appealing, but that was another modern development she liked.
"How was work?" she asked, hoping to provoke Damon into something halfway resembling a conversation. He sighed loudly and stretched his neck out; venting about work was one of his favourite subjects.
"Terrible. Stupid. Retarded. You know they are talking about commissioning a second plant over in Marburg? I mean it's not like this one barely runs right for five minutes at a time. They keep whipping out these old pre-war spec sheets and equipment lists and looking at me like I'm somehow not talking out of my ass and get me to 'okay' it." He looked over at Sam and threw his hands up in exasperation. "We're on the same tech level as the first electrical power plants ever built on Sera and they're already talking about turbo-blowers and superheaters, like we're just going to stick them onto a bolted-together garbage burner and…" Baird trailed away and sighed. "Bottom line is, I guess, we should get used to intermittent blackouts for the next while."
"Well, there's some good news in the paper at least," Sam offered. "It says here that Chairman Hammerman is going to sign papers abolishing the Fortification Act next week."
"Oh yeah, great, tons of damaged broads invading the countryside."
"Damon!"
"What?" Baird was feeling the full might of her stink-eye now. "You think those women are going to skip forth and become law-abiding citizens after being caged like animals most of their lives? It's bad enough there's a shitload of ex-cons walking around with COG badges on their shoulders. Dames just make that equation worse."
"One of those ex-cons is your friend, Damon," Sam chided.
"That's totally different. Marcus… he got a bum rap." The blonde man winced. "Marcus committed a crime of ideology. I'm talking about guys that have strangled their way through a half-dozen hookers."
"Fair point. Oooh, look at this! 'Ferian Man Encounters Legendary Mountain Ape?" Sam snorted. "Sounds like quality journalism all right."
"What the hell?"
"Apparently in Feria, there's some legend about giant ape-like beings that roam the mountains and eat people. People see them once they've drank enough of the local wine." Sam giggled into her hand. "What a load of bollocks."
"I dunno, big hairy brute, knuckles draggin' on the ground, carrying men away to their doom… sure they didn't just see you on vacation?"
"You dick!" she laughed in response, weakly throwing a cushion at him. Noticing his attention was once again fixed rigidly on the computer screen, Sam asked him what he was so busy computing.
"Just stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"If you must know, I'm trying to collect all the information in the COG database about the Locust." Baird hunched over defensively, still typing away.
"That's… a little useless at this point in time," Sam said quizzically. "Planning on writing a book, are we?"
"I'm practically an expert on the damn grubs. Somebody's gotta do it." Baird's face darkened. "Actually, I can think of someone who knew a lot more about them than I ever will. You ever wonder if we could've prevented it? If hecould've…"
"All the time, hun." Sam's voice was restrained and even. "Then I remember that Adam Fenix sacrificed himself to save all of us in the end. Your best friend's father died saving the world, Baird. I remember that and I think that answering some questions just causes more pain and problems than it's worth."
"Don't act like I'm trying to take a piss on his statue, Sam."
Sam laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "I wasn't. I'm just asking you, as a favour to me if no-one else: tread lightly. People need a story with heroes in it at a time like this." She glanced at the clock, face lighting up. "Oh, look at the time! Do you think they'd have another load of hot water done by now?"
Baird checked his own watch. "Probably. Go run yourself a bath and if it's not hot enough, I'll come in there and warm it for you. With my farts." Sam snorted and kissed him lightly on the cheek, rising up and heading to the small bathroom. She'd been waiting all day for their allotment of hot water and a warm bath was all she wanted in the whole wide world by now. Baird watched her go, feeling a stirring in his breast at the sight of her lithe figure. He had more than he could've ever hoped for in Sam. He really shouldn't be such a dick, he reasoned, sighing. He should be so lucky as Marcus was, to have parents who could be considered heros instead of his own miserable family. Adam Fenix sacrificed his desire to be remembered as a man of peace alongside his own life. Perhaps it was time for him to let some things go. The past was immutably over. The Locust were all dead. With that last thought, Baird glanced over at the discarded newspaper with a funny feeling.
"… hairy creature which he estimated at eight feet tall…"
"…while pursuing a mountain bison he had shot…"
Bison fur cloak.
"All of them," he said out loud, quietly, but the funny feeling still remained.
I get the feeling that Sera is now facing an energy crisis due to the loss of their number one fuel source. Pity they never really explain Imulsion that well, considering it's of key importance to the plot, but Gears is a game about huge jacked-up dudes slamming into huge jacked-up lizard dudes while yelling and growling so I'm going to give Epic a pass on 'serious plot development'.
Baird probably isn't a real stationary engineer but given the situation post-war, I doubt that matters. :p