A Taste of Everyday -- Chapter 16

Disclaimer:  The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Zane, etc.), and everything else that has to do with the show belong to their respective owners, not to me.  No money is being made off of this fic.  I only own the original characters (Rena/X5-120, etc.).

Notes:  Takes place alongside chapter 40 of "Together."

I hate heat.  I absolutely loathe being in heat.  There aren’t enough words in any language known to mankind to describe how much I can’t stand being in heat.  I was going crazy and to make things even worse, Wisconsin seemed to be experiencing something of a heat wave for early September and the central air conditioning that I was so thrilled about when I found this apartment months ago isn’t working.  How freaking wonderful is that?

I decided to try doing push-ups.  Sometimes exercise takes the edge off of it for a little while.  I guess it’s the whole physical activity thing.  It’s not the physical activity that I want to be doing…push-ups, Rena!  Do the push-ups!  Better do at least five hundred.  One-armed.

“…four hundred ninety-eight…four hundred ninety-nine…five hundred,” I said to myself a few minutes later when I finally finished my set.  I sat down on the living room floor and shook my head.  I was sweating, but I knew that it wasn’t from the exercise.  That didn’t help as much as it sometimes does.  I looked at the clock.  All I have to do is go for about another twelve hours and then I’m done until the beginning of December.  Please let me last that long!

I wiped some of the sweat off of my forehead and groaned in frustration.  “That’s it.  I’m getting the hell out of this apartment where it might actually be cooler.”  There was an alley a few blocks from my apartment where I could lay low for a few minutes until I felt calm enough to return to my apartment.  I got up and grabbed my keys and left the apartment and headed for the alley.

“That’s much better,” I said to myself as I sat down on top of a trash can in the shadows.  I stretched my arms and legs out a little.  “Yep, much…”  Suddenly, I felt my temperature rise just a little bit.  What the fuck?  This never happened before, not even when I saw a guy when I’ve been in heat.  It confused the hell out of me.  I faintly heard voices, one male and one female.  Bored and trying to get my mind off of my heat, I listened in.

“…do have a point,” the female voice said.  It sounded vaguely familiar.

“What do you think of this one so far?” the male voice asked.

“It’s not bad.  It’s not as big as Seattle and I don’t have to be worrying about sector passes and do I have one and crap like that.  That’s a plus right there.”

“Very true.  I—“

“Jeff?  What’s going on?”

“I smell—“  The male voice suddenly stopped and I heard somebody running in my direction and suddenly a guy in his late teens stopped in front of the alley and stared at me.  He was probably five or six years younger than me, but holy shit he was hot!  He was a little shorter than me, probably about an inch or so short of six feet, but he had a good build that I just wanted to do nasty things with.  “Hey there, sexy.” Oooh, his voice was really sexy up close!

“Get here right now,” I ordered.

“Oh hell yes,” he said.  He blurred to me, but I didn’t question how he was able to do that as he pulled my face towards his and kissed me hard, but oh so good!  I grabbed a hold of his shirt and he started to reach down with one hand for my shirt, brushing my ticklish spot on that side and I giggled.  He started to reach underneath my shirt for my chest with his other hand while still kissing me and fumbling with my shirt trying to get it off one handed, and let me tell you I was absolutely in heaven, when I felt him suddenly yanked off of me.  I saw a blond girl punch him pretty hard.

“Unless you feel like knocking up an X5, get the hell out of here right now!” she snapped.  It was the girl that I’d heard talking with him before.  How the hell did she know that I was an X5 and who or what was she and who and what was that boy?

“What the hell—“ the guy started to say.  He looked at me and his eyes widened.  “Shit!”  He bolted out of the alley.  Okay, what gives with that?

I turned to the girl.  “How did you know that I was an X5?”

“I’ve met your twin before,” she said.  “You must be 120.”

“I prefer to be called Rena,” I said.  Okay, things were starting to make some kind of sense.  She must be one of the X-series that got out of Manticore and I guess the guy was too.  That explained a lot about him and my reaction to him.  She and the guy both looked just a little bit too young to be X5s so I guess they were X6s.  “Have we met before?”

“X6-405.  I prefer to be called Becky,” she said.

Oh, this was Zack’s friend, the girl who’d kicked my ass years ago in Wyoming.  No wonder her voice--and face, for that matter--sounded familiar.  There was still something kind of Zack-ish about her.  They did look kind of alike, actually.  Weird.

“Gillette before my brothers and sisters and I escaped,” I recalled.  I squirmed around a little bit.  I felt a little bit cooler since the guy took off, but I was definitely still in heat.

“Being in heat sucks, doesn’t it?” Becky said.

“So much.  It’s been eleven years since my first one and it never gets easier,” I said.  “Thanks for the save.  I can’t believe I almost got it on with an X6.”  That would have been one I’d have had trouble dealing with the next morning!

“Not into younger or shorter guys?” Becky teased me.

Sometimes, I really hate being tall.  I snorted.  “I can’t help it if I’m six-one.  Blame the moron who decided to use what was probably the DNA from some pre-pulse pro basketball star in me.”  I shook my head to try to get my thoughts together and I didn’t have too much luck.  “I gotta take the world’s coldest shower right now.  I just need to be able to get through the rest of today without jumping a guy and I’ll be okay for the next three months.  You know, that X6—“

“His name is Jeff and don’t touch him,” Becky said automatically.

Oh, crap, is the guy her boyfriend?  She’s got to have a crush on him at the very least from the way she spoke.  “Why, is he your boyfriend?”

“For crying out loud, why does everybody think that Jeff’s either my boyfriend or that we like each other as something other than friends?” Becky said.  “I seriously get plenty of that from—back home.”  She even has the same ‘I’m-leaving-a-little-something-out’ look that Zack does.  I knew that there was something that she didn’t want to tell me for whatever reason.  If I was in my right frame of mind, I’d ask, but I decided to let it slide.

“You live in Seattle?” I asked, recalling her conversation with the male X6 before he’d jumped me.  “Why did you stay that close to where the place burnt down?”

“For now, anyway.  I felt like it was as good a place as any to stay at least for that night and I decided to stay there for longer,” Becky said.

“Oh.”

“Are you okay?” Becky asked.

“I think I will be,” I said.  I even felt the urge to give her a little bit of a hard time like I did sometimes with Zack.  I grinned.  “Are you sure that boy Jeff isn’t your boyfriend.”

And there’s the ‘debating-on-whether-or-not-to-kill-Rena’ look!  “I’m sure.”

“I should get back to my apartment and pray to everything holy that my big brother doesn’t decide that today’s the day that he’s going to check up on me,” I said.  He hasn’t spontaneously checked up on my since I was living in Texas, but since Manticore’s down for the count and circumstances have changed a little, you never know.

“That sounds like a plan,” Becky agreed.  “Do you live far from here?”

“No, just two blocks that way.”  I pointed in the direction of my apartment building.  “I’ll be okay getting there.  Thanks again, Becky.”

“No problem.  It was nice meeting you.”  Becky turned and walked out of the alley and back in the direction that she and Jeff had come from.

I sighed and headed back to my apartment.  I got inside and sighed in relief.  Somebody had finally gotten off of their ass and had fixed the central air conditioning and my apartment felt nice and cool.  Well, it would have felt nice and cool if I wasn’t still in heat.

“Rena, you fucking idiot!”  The change in the temperature in my apartment would have made me feel better if it also wasn’t for how fucking annoyed I was with myself.  “You almost had sex with an X6!  Never mind had sex, it would have been more or less mating and nine or however many months later, hello baby!”  I shrieked in frustration.  “But damnit, he was hot!”  I paced around the living room.  “It doesn’t matter if the kid was hot, what matters is that sleeping with him would more likely than not have been the worst thing in the world that could have happened.”  I bit my lip and tried to keep myself from banging my head against the wall.  Have you ever been sexually frustrated before?  I felt like I was either going to climb the walls or put my fist through them.  Take your pick.  “Calm down.  I should do more exercise.  That's a good idea.  It won’t be the exercise that I want to do with that--argh!”  Well, I did bang my head against something, but fortunately it was the couch.  I took a deep breath.  Holy shit, did I need to calm down.

“It could be worse,” I said to myself.  “Thank goodness that--” I stopped suddenly and slapped my forehead, which Tinga used to nag me to stop doing when we were kids.  Of course she reminded me of Zack!  She was his sister, for crying out loud!  I mean, Zack only told you that little fact a week or two or so ago and you forgot about it.  What on Earth happened to that photographic memory that X-series are supposed to have?

“Memory versus hormones.  The winner?” I muttered sarcastically.  I shrugged.  Oh, well.  I walked into the bathroom and turned the water on for a cold shower. 

TBC