Corrupting Power
patreon
Quaranteam - Chapter 28
🕑 Added 2021-09-21 00:08:08 +0000 UTCChapter 28
As Phil had promised, things moved incredibly quickly from there. The next morning, Andy got a call from Xander, informing Andy that Xander was being relocated to New Eden, and that he would see him in just a few short days. He also told Andy that he'd heard Andy had lined up some kind of welcoming present for him, and that he hoped he'd enjoy unwrapping it. It was clear that Xander didn't actually know what was waiting for him, but Phil had already sent word that Brooke, Piper's friend, had accepted the offer for her to be paired up with Xander, all without Xander's knowledge. It would make for a hell of a surprise when Xander showed up. Andy intended to make sure he was there to greet his friend upon his arrival, and it was nice to help his best friend out.
Andy was quickly learning how to trade in on favors, so having Xander owe him a few was bound to pay off sooner or later, even if he wasn't sure quite how. But it also just felt good improving his friend's life.
Later that day, Andy also found out which of his offers had been accepted and which had been rejected. He was surprised to find that he'd been rejected not twice, but three times, which Niko teased him not to take personally.
The first to decline his offer to join the family was Dr. Morgan Fitch, Katie's friend and ex-girlfriend. Dr. Fitch had said in the video message she'd sent back that she appreciated Katie thinking of her, but that living in a house with one of her exes simply did not appeal to her, and that she had sworn off men regardless.
Katie seemed more bothered by it than Andy did, but Andy assured her that if Dr. Fitch had been having reservations about it, it was best for her to decide that now than after she was locked in, to which Katie reluctantly agreed.
The second to pass was Larissa Cotton, which came as no real surprise to Andy. As it turned out, Larissa had in fact gotten married years ago, and she and her husband were doing well in lockdown. The complaint she'd had to Sarah about not having gotten laid recently months ago had stemmed from an accident that Larissa's husband had endured, which left him temporarily impotent, but which he had thankfully recovered from since then. She also mentioned that she didn't always think to put on her wedding ring, so she admitted she might not have been wearing it the last time she'd video chatted with Sarah, so she could see where the misconceptions might have sprung from. Larissa also offered Andy her sincerest congratulations on his partnership with Sarah (as well as all the others) and insisted he call her up some time so that they could gossip as only colleagues could. Finally, she promised to be more thankful if he would give her another first edit pass in the future.
His final rejection of the day came from Hannah's former cheerleading instructor Tabitha Jefferson. She had also declined to take the Rook family up on their offer, not because she wasn't intrigued by the idea, but because in the past two weeks, she had relocated up to Portland, where she had moved in with her former lovers Dom and Mike. With her mother no longer around, Tabby had simply decided California no longer held any sway over her, and she reached out to her previous partners, who had welcomed her back with open arms. The two men had been living in virtual isolation, and had taken their quarantine deathly serious, so they'd both remained completely uninfected. Tabby also sent along a message just for Hannah, encouraging her to make the most of her new situation, and giving her a contact number so they could remain friends moving forward.
Hannah had been a little saddened at first, but after hearing that the reason was that Tabby was now reunited with her throuple and extremely happy once more, she brightened immensely and skipped out of the room to go and call Tabby so the two could catch up.
There had also been one more call for the day, a complication that only intrigued Andy even further.
Late in the afternoon, Phil called to inform Andy that the women who had accepted (which included Jade) would be arriving in a few waves, with those who were already local being delivered to his house tomorrow, and those who lived further out coming in one or two more separate waves. But that hadn't been why Phil had been calling.
The videoscreen suddenly split into two, with Phil on the left, and the still achingly beautiful Fiona on the right.
“Hey Andy,” she said, that sly, lazy smile he was all too familiar with on her face, the smile he knew could hold a thousand different meanings in its subtext.
“Hey Fi.” He stopped there, because for once in his life, Andy was at a complete loss for words.
“So, about this offer of yours,” she said, trailing off a little. She didn't just look good; she looked fucking great. Despite the fact that it had been fifteen years since they'd been a couple, she had shrugged off the signs of aging far better than he had, only a few scant wrinkles around her distractingly deep green eyes, the shade of newly clipped summer grass. Her brown hair still had reddish highlights in it, as it had when they'd been dating what felt like lifetimes ago. It currently hung down to her shoulders, like it might have been a bob when the pandemic started and she'd just let it grow out. She'd grown up in Georgia, and while she'd lost almost all of that southern accent, Andy could still hear very faint hints of it, just around the edges, like she'd never quite been able to shake it fully. It was certainly less prominent than it was back in college. “I have a couple of questions, and that'll determine my answer, if that's alright.”
“Yeah, sure, go ahead.”
“Hi Fiona!” Niko chimed in, poking her head into the camera's view, giving an enthusiastic wave. “I'm one of Andy's partners, well, one of his fiances, actually, so you can ask me anything as well.”
Andy wasn't sure, but he felt like he saw Fi try and stifle a slight smile, but whether that was at Niko's interjection or Andy's blushing in response to it, he couldn't tell.
Fiona didn't choose to acknowledge Niko's comment, and instead focused intently on Andy. “Alright, first, why haven't you reached out to me before now Andy?”
He sighed and shrugged, a sheepish smile on his face. “I wasn't sure what to say, or even how to start, Fi. When you sent me that friend request a couple of years back, I assumed there was something you wanted to talk to me about, so I accepted it, and then... nothing.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I wanted you to make the first move?”
“You know me pretty well, Fi, or at least you did,” he laughed, arching one of his bushy blonde eyebrows at her. “Did you honestly think I'd come to that conclusion on my own?”
She openly smiled that time, nodding. “Alright, you've got me there. I suppose that's fair. Second, why didn't you ask me to come with you when you moved out to California, all those years ago when we graduated from college together?”
“I did ask, Fi. You know I did.”
She scowled at him, shaking her head a little. “You gave it one half-assed try at best, Andrew,” she said, the use of his full name definitely feeling like it was meant to belittle him a bit, or at the very least scold him. “You asked just the one time, I said no, and you never brought it up again, which isn't like you at all. Why didn't you really try and convince me to come out west with you?”
He bit his bottom lip for half a second, but decided too much had gone unspoken between him and Fiona for too long now, so he came to the conclusion that he should just be upfront and direct. “Because I was afraid I would've gotten you to say yes.” She started to speak, frustration plain on her face, Andy could see, so he raised a hand to silence her for a moment longer and continued. “And that would've made me the happiest man in the world, Fi, I promise you, it really and truly would have. But I knew that it would come with dire consequences you couldn't see yet, things that I could. I knew, I mean really knew, that if you moved out to California with me, it would've been preventing you from chasing your dreams, the ones you'd had since you were a little girl. I would've always been worried that you resented me for keeping you from that life, even just a little bit. It probably would've eventually led to us breaking up over it, and you wouldn't have known why, and I wouldn't have been able to fix it, no matter how hard I tried. You wanted so desperately to work in the White House; I didn't want to give you any excuse at all not to go chasing after that dream. I felt like you were trying to use me as an excuse not to go and do the thing you really wanted.”
“I wouldn't have resented you, Andy,” she sighed. “I wanted you to talk me out of it. I did. I really, really did. DC has been nothing but a decade and a half of frustration and disappointment.”
“Sure, but you only know that now, Fi. You couldn't have known that back then. There's no way you could've know that then. You needed to see it through for yourself, to have the experiences needed to make that decision. And if you really wanted me to talk you out of it, you should've said something back then. If you thought you were hinting at it, you were far too subtle for me to pick up on it. I'm not a mind reader. Wasn't then, and I'm still not now. I can't just guess that you're looking for me to help sway you one way or another.”
Fiona looked like she wanted to object further, but then nodded once more, as if coming to grips with all of that in her head, like a million puzzle pieces were suddenly falling into place, and she could see the entire picture for the first time. “Okay then. I have one more thing, though. A condition. I have a condition for me coming to join your household. Well, two conditions, actually.”
“Sure,” Andy said, “fire away.”
“The first is that you have to actually marry me. I know you said in your message said that you're marrying some of your partners and not others, but I absolutely insist I be one of the people that you do marry, if we're going to do this. You know that I'm Catholic. I also know you're an atheist, and that's fine, but my religion still means something to me, and you've always respected that, so I need you to respect that now. Because I'm going to want to get pregnant, if we do go through with this, so I have to be married before that happens. We lived together for two years, so you know we're both compatible in sharing a home and a bed together. So that's the first thing. Are you okay with that?”
Andy smiled a little bit shyly. “More than okay, but I think you knew that already, as long as you're still alright with me not going into church every week with you. I imagine you're going to have a harder time convincing the Catholic church that polygamy's okay, though.”
“Are you kidding?” she snorted. “When word gets out how many American men are dead, they're going to be desperate to get every good Catholic boy and girl out there to be doing as much being fruitful and multiplying as they can get.”
Niko began to quietly hum Monty Python's “Every Sperm Is Sacred” until Andy swatted her on the thigh and she stopped, although her grin had only widened.
“Hey, it's your religion, not mine,” he said to Fi. “If they're cool with it, so am I. What's the other thing?”
“The other thing is that you need to agree to something, one specific thing, not knowing what it is or anything about it.”
He blinked in confusion. “Er, what?” This was uncharacteristic for Fiona, being deliberately vague, and Andy wondered what was behind it.
“I have another condition but you need to agree to it without knowing anything about it. You just have to trust me and either agree to it, or I'll have to pass.”
Andy paused and considered for a moment, perhaps even a moment longer than Fiona had expected him to. He could give Fiona an almost complete blank check, almost, but he decided he needed to clarify one thing. “Assure me that this condition that I can't know anything about won't harm or injure anyone. Since arriving here in New Eden, I've learned first hand that people can be capable of some truly terrible things, and while I don't think that you are, Fi, I just want to make sure I'm not getting anyone else hurt because of this. I couldn't live with myself if it was.”
“The only thing that might be injured is your pride, that's all,” she said, a playful smirk resting on her face. “I might bust your balls a bit for ditching me, but I'm not going to do anything you'd always regret over the long term. So what's it gonna be, Chuckles?” The fact that she still remembered her old nickname for him told him everything he needed to know. Of course he was in. He was all in.
“Fine, you got yourself a deal, Peaches,” he replied, using his old nickname for her, which made her smile widen a little more on the other end of the video call.
“Great,” she said. “I'll start packing and we'll see you in a few days. Later skater.” She tapped the button and ended her portion of the call, leaving just him and Phil on the line.
Phil had been quietly watching the entire conversation with a bemused look on his face, like he was supposed to be doing or saying something, but couldn't tear himself away from the drama. “You're an idiot, you know that, right?” he said, rolling his eyes a little at Andy's naivety. “Based on just a few minutes worth of watching you two talk, I don't think either of you ever fell out of love with the other.”
“As much a surprise to me as it was to you, Phil,” Andy chuckled. “It's been a long time.”
“You did hear what she said though, right Andy?” Niko said to him, poking him lightly.
“Wait. What did I miss?”
“She said we'll see you in a few days,” Niko giggled. “I somehow don't think she was talking about the royal we.”
“Ah hell. Well, I did agree to anything, so we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.”
“Pretty sure that's not how that line goes,” Phil joked. “Anyway, I'll be by tomorrow to drop off your locals. Jade, Tala and Whitney are on their way here to the base, and will get their injections tonight so they'll be ready to meet you tomorrow. You know what they're like when they're newly injected, so be prepared to take care of them for their initial imprinting within a few days. Also, you can tell Taylor her friend Natalie will be in New Eden tomorrow as well, just over at my house.”
“Decided you just couldn't pass her up, huh? I thought you were going to ship her over to Eric.”
“Audrey's always wanted to take pole dancing lessons, so I figured why not have an in-house teacher?”
“Having an overly flexible eager teenage stripper in your bed is just a bonus, huh?”
Phil's grin spread from ear to ear. “Oh, sure, sure. I mean, I'll learn to live with it, I guess. If I have to.” He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. “We all make sacrifices. Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“You got it, man. Stay safe.”
“You know it, brother.”
“So that's the girl who took your virginity, huh? Your first true love? She didn't look at all like I expected her to look like, Andy,” Niko said to him, as he stood up from the couch, stretching his arms over his head.
“What did you expect her to look like?”
“I dunno, but under possible things this mythical mysterious ex of yours might look like, I don't think I ever considered 'a lot like a young Gina Davis' to be anywhere in the vicinity.”
Andy smirked a little bit. He'd heard the comparison more than a couple of times back when they were dating, what felt like a lifetime ago. “I take it that she meets with your approval then?”
“Hell, she called you Chuckles. For that alone, the woman immediately earned a place in my heart. I'm sure there's a story behind that.”
“There is,” Andy said, not elaborating further.
“You gonna tell me what it is?”
“I am not,” he said, smugly. “You can dig it out of Fiona yourself when she arrives.” He rolled his eyes with anticipated dread. “She probably still even has the photo, knowing her...”
“Did you keep up on her coverage of politics after you two split up?”
He shrugged. His emotional state after they'd split from one another had been messy at best, and his mind had been a whirlwind of emotions. “I mean, I'd see her name on a byline from time to time, but I didn't go out of my way to find her work. After we'd split up, I figured she wouldn't ever want to talk to me again. Ending a relationship sometimes does mean things to a person, and despite the fact that I thought we broke up pretty gracefully, one day about fourteen years ago, we ended a phone conversation and she said she'd call me in a week, and she never called again.”
“And you didn't call her?”
“After about a month, sure. But by then, her phone number had been disconnected, as she'd apparently moved, so I figured it was a none too subtle way of telling me to fuck off.”
“Or a test to see if she still mattered enough to you for you to track her down.”
“God,” Andy groaned. “Maybe. Probably? Maybe. Fuck, I don't know. But that's a shitty thing to do to a guy, especially one who's always dealt with low self-esteem. It's like I told you, like I've told each and every one of you who've decided to stick out your lives with me – sometimes you're just going to have to come right out and say what it is that's on your mind, because if you're expecting me to guess it, I'm probably gonna make a few giant mistakes here and there.”
Niko giggled a little, nodding. “We women can be needlessly cruel from time to time, but you have to realize, we don't even know we're doing it sometimes. It's just something we've been indoctrinated into making second nature. At least you can see that it might have been a mistake now, though.”
“Yep. And then she went and complicated things further by adding me and Xander on Facebook as friends a couple of years ago, which we both accepted. But neither of us felt comfortable messaging her first, and she never messaged us either, so it's just been one long detente.”
Niko shook her head in mock disappointment at him. “You can definitely be an idiot some times, you know that, Chuckles?”
“Hey hey hey,” he tsked. “You can't call me that until after you get the story out of Fiona.”
“You should've reached out to her, Andy,” Niko said with a sigh. “It sounds like that's what she very much wanted from you.”
“Should've, would've, could've. We're here now, so I'll just have to live and learn. And when Fiona gets here, I'll give her the 'speak your mind speech I gave to you, so we're all on the same starting point.”
The house had mostly kept itself busy today by the girls getting all their things moved in, as well as adding some décor to the house that wasn't purely Andy's. Sure, the publicity posters for all of his novels were still hanging on the walls, but now they'd been joined by movie posters for both Sarah and Emma's movies, framed photographs that Asha had taken before leaving London, framed posters from Sheridan's Cirque Du Soleil shows, a couple of framed articles detailing Piper's rise in the volleyball community, a framed sand painting done by Niko's mother and a few original paintings that Aisling had done as a break from her more commercial work. It helped make the place feel less like his house and more like their house. He would encourage all the girls to make sure they left some kind of a mark on the house as they arrived. He didn't want any of them to feel lesser that the girls who'd arrived first.
Emily and Sarah had also converted one bedroom into a makeshift studio for them to use, lining the walls with sound-dampening foam, setting up cameras and microphones, so the room could be used for them to record lines for voice overs, or to film video auditions. There was even a large green curtain backdrop that could be pulled over so they could do low level CGI work in a very desperate pinch. While there was a desk for them to record at and a couch to relax in, they purposefully didn't put a bed in the room. Both of them insisted they were never going to be sleeping anywhere in the house other than the master bedroom, acknowledging that from time to time, Andy would be sleeping one-on-one with some of the more traditional women he would be partnered up with, but that he would do it in their rooms, or set aside one bedroom for the more private play sessions. It wasn't like he was running out of bedrooms any time soon.
Hannah had set up a bedroom for herself, but had deliberately chosen the smallest bedroom available, as she said she wanted to have at least a little of the dorm room experience. She also made it quite clear to Andy that she would only be sleeping in it about half of the time, and the rest of the time would be in the master bedroom.. She also told him that whenever it was safe for her to be on Stanford's campus for classes, she wanted to spend her first year in the dorms, so she could make friends and establish relationships with her classmates, but that she would come home once a week, to make sure she got her medicine, as she so jokingly called it.
After some conversation, Andy had just about talked Asha into joining Hannah at Stanford. In an ideal world, Andy hoped the two might be roommates in the dorm, giving them each a leg up without tying them to someone they couldn't stand for a whole year. Andy had gotten lucky in that Xander had been his roommate for all of college, but he'd met more than enough shitheads in the dorm rooms around theirs during the two years they'd lived on campus that he knew the entire process was a crap shoot. Asha had also decided to have her own bedroom in the house, because as much as she liked being in Andy's orbit, she also admitted that she definitely felt their age difference from time to time. Asha and Hannah were getting along great, thankfully, and so if Asha ever felt like she was getting overwhelmed, she immediately went to Hannah, and things were better in a flash.
And, after two weeks of trying to subtly discern it from her, Andy eventually just asked Taylor what she did for a living, and Taylor informed Andy that she'd been a phlebotomist before moving into the Rook household, and once she was done with her time in the penalty box, she would go back to it. It was the first step she had taken towards eventually becoming an anesthetist, which was her long term goal. She'd met Lauren when the Aussie had needed someone to come in and blood test a few of the 49ers she was training.
Taylor insisted that if Andy ever wanted her to stay in his bed for a night, she would without reservation, but that otherwise, she would be sleeping in the same bed with Lauren, who had set up her own bedroom now, so as to not wake Andy when she left early in the morning for practice.
Piper and Sheridan had also set up their own bedrooms, for similar reasons. Piper insisted her workout routine begin at the butt crack of dawn, and she also had a tendency to go to bed almost immediately after dinner, and Sheridan had started joining her in those hours, although the two women had very different work out routines in the morning. Andy had never been awake for any of them, but both of the women had filmed themselves working out, so he could see what they were up to in the wretched early hours.
Aisling, Niko, Emily and Sarah had flatly refused to sleep away from Andy, although the order they laid against one another in the bed at night varied quite regularly. At various points over the last few days, he'd woken up in the night to find Emily quietly making out with each of the other three.
He was a little surprised that Emily and Sarah didn't want another bedroom for times when the two of them wanted to fool around with just each other. He'd asked them about it, but Sarah had just teased him and insisted that when they did, he should be nearby in case he wanted to watch or join in.
The craziest part of the day, however, was when Emily came to track him down in his office just before dinner with a rather baffling request. He'd spent most of the day writing, knowing that tomorrow there would be new women joining the household, and that he'd likely get very little work done on that day. He felt like he was very close to considering the draft for what he was now calling “The Doppleganger's Identity,” the next book in the Druid Gunslinger series, ready for his first pass readers to take a look at, and hoped to wrap it up today. It would certainly stop Sarah from asking him yet again when she could read it, since she had insisted she get a spot on that esteemed small council. He kept the door to his office open most of the time, but Emily insisted on knocking before entering the room anyway. “Andrew, love, I know you're writing right now, but might I bother you for just a skosh?” she said, smiling at him in that disarmingly charming English way of hers.
“It's never a bother, Em,” he said, closing up his laptop. “You know, you're the only one of my partners I'm okay with calling me 'Andrew?' Anyone else does it, and I know I'm in trouble, but you somehow make me not hate the sound of my full name. C'mon in. Sit down, talk to me.”
The blonde Englishwoman sashayed into the room before lifting one of his legs so she could sit down on the footstool in front of his writing chair. She was wearing a billowy floral print dress that hung down past her knees, loose fitting but still draped enticingly well. Andy wondered if maybe it was tailor made for her, but before he could think to ask, she launched into the reason she'd come to see him. “My agent received a rather odd request today, and I wanted to come and talk to you about it before I answered it. If you're not comfortable with it, I would completely understand that, but I personally think that it would be an excellent thing for us to do, so I hoped we might talk a bit about it before you came to any decision, and perhaps I could bring you around to my way of thinking.”
Andy set his laptop on the coffee table to the side of his writing chair and shifted to sit up a little bit. “Who's the request from, and what is it that you think I might be uncomfortable with?”
“It came from the office of the president, if you can believe it. My agent said President Pelosi didn't call personally, but a member of her staff did.” Emily took his large hands in her small ones, holding onto them softly as she kept his gaze focused on her sapphire blue eyes. Clearly whatever they were going to discuss was of great importance. “When the announcement hits next week, they're expecting much of the nation to be in rather dire shock. Such massive casualties means the American way of life going forward is going to have to be something extremely different than what it once was, something radical and new.” She licked her lips, a touch of nervousness Andy wasn't sure he'd seen from the usually confident young woman before. “Something like us. To sort of help assert the new norms in the minds of the general public, they want a handful of celebrities to do talk show appearances, with the hosts who are still alive anyway, and most of them seem to have made it out okay, and talk about their new family units, how polyamory is going to be the lay of the land, and how the laws are immediately being changed so that a single man can have multiple wives, to help repopulate the country after the severe losses.”
Andy laughed a little bit. “If you want to go on television, Em, you certainly don't need my permission. What makes you think I'd be against that?”
She smiled at him kindly, and he realized immediately he'd missed what she'd been specifically asking him. “I don't just want to go on television by myself, Andrew. I want to go on television with you and with Sarah and maybe with a couple of the other girls, Niko in particular. I think it's important that we get out there as a new family unit, on The Daily Show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Late Night With Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, anyone who wants to talk to us, so that we can help put the country a little more at ease that we are going to get through this. Normally, I would be most in favor of shielding all of you from the horror that is the paparazzi, just to keep my personal life simply that – personal. But this is a very strange new world we find ourselves in, Andrew, and we need to help our fellow humans become comfortable with their new reality.”
“You sound pretty committed to the whole idea,” he said, trying to keep his voice as non-committal as possible, but Emily had gotten very good at reading him in the short time they'd been together, so he knew she could tell he wasn't entirely opposed to it, simply gauging how it would all work. The particulars of opening his private life to the entire world seemed a little daunting at first blush, but certainly not insurmountable.
“We wouldn't be the only ones, I think it's important to stress that, love,” she said, squeezing his hands a little bit. “And Sarah and I would also be coming out about our relationship with each other, so you wouldn't have to field a lot of questions if you didn't want to. We could take on the brunt of the questions if that makes it any easier. But I just know many people in this adopted homeland of mine are going to be frightened, and I think the idea to show them the way through would be a step in the right direction.” She leaned her head down and kiss the tops of his hands before looking up at him. “Oh! And you could also use it to promote your books, if that might sweeten the pot a smidge. It might help, having twenty minutes of prime mental real estate for your face and your writing?”
He chuckled, nodding his head. “You know as well as I do that my agent would string me up by my toes if I had a chance to get this much free publicity for my next novel and didn't take it, so how can I say no? I'm not going to hide from journalists. I'll do my fair share. Tell me how all this is going to work.”
She smiled, leaned in and kissed him, soft and tender, but for what felt like a delicious eternity. “We will set up the camera and microphones in Sarah and I's little studio, and then we'll just take an hour or so a day for a few weeks to record segments with whoever asks. The president's office wants us to do a 60 Minutes interview even before the announcement is made, as our sort of grand unveiling. For that, they're actually going to send Katie Couric here with a camera woman to do the interview in a few days. They're likely to want to do that in a larger room, or maybe out on the back deck, by the pool. They're going to do an entire show all about the deaths, the vaccine and the new post-pandemic world we're starting to grow into. The ten-to-twenty minute interview with us will just be part of the larger package. They were hoping to have us for a day on the 14th. They're going to be filming at the base on the 13th and doing interviews with President Pelosi on the 15th. The president's representative seemed to think Niko might be a good link between the two segments, if she was one of the people helping to give the tour of the base, and the vaccination process. I asked Niko about it, and she said she wouldn't mind if you didn't, but that I had to ask you first. The whole episode of the show is going to air immediately after the President's speech on the 20th.”
“Good lord, sounds like they've got all this planned out. I'm surprised I didn't hear from the Office of the President personally.”
Emily offered him another smile, and considered her next words carefully. It wasn't that she worried about bruising his ego, because Andy had never come across that way, but she also didn't want to seem too full of herself. “Love, I've been a very well known movie star for a decade now, so I think they figured out where I was first and went from there. That's no slight against you! I'm just saying that you aren't a household name that millions of people recognize, and, for better or worse, I am. The Dagger Academy movies were everywhere, as were the books. Simon, my costar in the movies, he's still living in England, so he's in an entirely different world than we are here in the States.”
Andy grinned. “Oh, I know, I know. All I'm saying is that it wouldn't hurt for the President to have called me herself, y'know. But that's fine. It's fine.”
“Well, when the paparazzi are struggling to get topless photos of you in Ibiza, then we'll have a conversation about how you aren't being taken seriously as an artist, alright darling?” She giggled a little. “It was fun, teasing them, knowing they so desperately wanted to get images of my tits to sell, and that a bidding war would erupt for the image.”
“They are excellent tits, Em.”
“Bless you, love. But you're never going to convince me they're as nice as, say, Sarah's or Hannah's. And all those tits, theirs and mine, are exclusively the purview of this family now and forever more, so the paparazzo can fuck right off. So, the interview? You'll do it? You'll dance for the media circus with us, for the good of the nation?”
“I'll do almost all of it, sure.”
She tilted her head slightly in confused amusement, that coy smile on her pink lips, as her tender fingers squeezed his thigh. “Almost all of it? Which part of it am I going to have to have to convince you for?”
He rolled his eyes a little, a playful smirk on his lips. “I'll do all the evening shows, magazines, newspapers and website interviews you want me to, but doing Good Morning America might be a hill too far, simply because of how goddamn early I'd have to get up for it.”
“Or we could simply stay up very late and do it before bed,” she said, moving to slide off the footstool so she could climb into his lap. “I'm sure we could find some way to keep you awake and alert that far into the night. Four thirty in the morning our time could give us the opportunity to go on live television with sex hair,” she said, waggling her eyebrows at him lasciviously.
“Oh, and I'm not gonna do Fox News.”
“Christ, love, haven't you heard? They're barely running a skeleton crew over there. Most of their on-air talent died over the last few months, and now that the women are in charge over there, they're losing some of that ridiculous bullshit they used to be spouting.”
Andy chuckled, shaking his head a little bit. “All it took was most of the men dying.”
“It's pretty hard to pretend the plague isn't a real thing when it keeps killing people off left and right, dear,” she said. “The rescheduled Presidential election next month is going to be between Senators Kamala Harris and Susan Collins, two women. That's never happened before in the history of this country. The vast majority of people voting in the election are going to be women. This is all completely unprecedented, so all those women who have felt powerless for so many years, this is their chance to shine. But the old tribal lines are still going to be there, even if the genders of the people leading those parties has changed. Republicans will still be Republicans and Democrats will still be Democrats. But there's too many dead people for everyone to go on pretending like the plague isn't real, or that it's not better to not get a grip on the new reality. One side was already telling their people that the plague wasn't real, so more of their men died than the on the other side. They can't afford to do that any more. So the new Fox News agenda is to go back to simple fiscal conservatism, pro military and pro old school Christianity stances. They're just going to drop all the anti-woman bullshit that they've been poisoning their own wells with for so long.”
“And all it took was most of their men dying.” Andy rolled his eyes. “Fine. I'll leave it up to you on whether or not you want to do any of the Fox News shit.”
“Oh heavens no,” Emily laughed, shaking her head. “No, you couldn't pay me enough to appear in front of those horrid people. They've been trying to tell me they have the right to regulate my body for decades but that I should keep my mouth shut when it comes to how they spend the money I pay in taxes. At least a few of their remaining hosts have called me horrible things for daring to disagree with them. 'Entertainers should be sit down and be quiet when it comes to politics,' they've said about me for far too long. Fuck that, darling. I'm having none of it.”
“Well, on that we can agree.”
“Now, I do believe I have some convincing to be doing,” she said, licking her lips playfully, as she slid off his lap and down onto her knees before him, pushing his legs apart.
“That's really not necessary, Em,” he said, reaching forward to put a hand on her shoulder, but her delicate fingers moved to grab his wrists, lifting them so that one of his hands was along the back of her neck, and the other was sliding up into that radiant cascade of blonde hair.
“It might not be necessary, Andrew, but that isn't to say I wouldn't enjoy it anyway,” she said, her hands moving to unbutton his jeans, slowly drawing the zipper down. “Because sometimes a girl just needs to get her fix, you know?” She leaned down and kissed part of his exposed stomach. “You wouldn't deny me that, would you, love? Not innocent little me?”
“I don't know that I could deny you anything, Emily,” he chuckled.
She licked her lips, those inescapable blue eyes of hers looking up at him. “That's what I like to hear. Because it's time for me to do something before Sarah does.” She fished out his cock, tucking his balls over his boxers to protect them from accidentally getting caught in the zipper of the jeans, because she wasn't willing to wait long enough to pull his jeans off. “I let her have first go at you, but I'm entitled to have some firsts with you before she gets a chance. That's fair, isn't it?” She leaned down and pressed her pink lips against the head of his cock, covering it in tiny kisses. “I think we can both agree that's only fair.”
“I seem to recall you and Sarah taking turns blowing me at the same time,” he said, tilting his head a little. “I wouldn't say she got there first.”
“She got to fuck you first though, Andrew,” she sighed, stroking his cock tenderly. “And I understand why. She's madly in love with you because of your writing, although she's very much fallen in love with the man behind that writing as well.” Her tongue slipped out and dragged a long trail across the bottom of his dick, from the base up to the tip, teasing the slit with the tip of her tongue for only a split second. “Me, on the other hand, I fell in love with the man first, when I heard all the lengths you'd gone to in protecting the women who'd chosen to hitch their wagons to your train. Niko painted such a wonderful portrait of you, and you haven't failed to live up to that yet.”
“I'm always going to put my family's needs above my own, Em,” he said, shivering as he felt her pursing her lips around the mushroom tip of his circumcised cock for a long moment. “So what is you want to do before Sarah, hm?”
“Oh, bless, Andrew, I would've thought it would've been obvious,” she giggled, blowing air along his cock, teasing his balls with her finely manicured fingernails. “I want you up the serviceman's entrance. I want you in my ass, before Sarah thinks to ask you to do it to her. We've had fingers and small toys up both hers and my asshole before, naturally, but never the real thing, and I'm afraid I simply cannot risk the chance that she get the opportunity to convince you to do it to her before you do it to me. I want to have at least one first of my very own with you before she does, and while I'm a little nervous, I must confess I am also rather excited. First times are always so exhilarating.”
Andy licked his own lips, swallowing a breath of air. “First times can also be quite intense, Em. Even overwhelming.”
“Yes yes yes Andrew, that's why I'm going to ask you if you can remember a color code when you're worked up. I know those kinds of sensations can be... distracting to self control, but you've always struck me as level headed.” Her tongue took a long swirling path around the underside of the head of his cock, and his fingers tightened in her sandy hair a moment, clenching a fistful of it, which evoked a clear quiver of delight from the girl.
“What do you mean a color code?”
“You see, when Sarah and I are adventuring into, shall we say, uncharted sexual waters between the two of us, we use a color code. If one of us says 'green,' then things are wonderful, enjoyable and the other should carry on full steam ahead. If one of us says 'yellow,' then perhaps a bit of caution or easing back is needed. If one of us says 'red,' then a moment's rest is needed, or second thoughts are being had, and it's best to stop, until the other is ready to go again. Like a stoplight. We strike the use of those colors for any other uses when we're on the code.” She looked up at him with those tender azure orbs again, soft and warm, as her fingertips stroked his shaft and juggled his balls. “Would that be alright, Andrew?”
He leaned forward and kissed her again, and this time he found her not only pliant but a touch more eagerly wanton than she'd been moments ago. “Of course, love,” he said to her. “But just be careful and remember you can't use those words for anything else while we're in color code mode.”
She titled her head to the side, a curious expression of amusement on her face. “Oh? Do you anticipate me slipping? I'm quite bright, you know,” she teased, winking at him. “I have a degree in feminist studies from Cambridge and everything.”
He smirked a little bit. “I simply thought you might ask me to paddle your ass red, and then I'd have been more than a little conflicted from the mixed signals.”
She began to giggle fiercely, having even to take one of her hands from his cock up to cover her mouth, as she nodded furiously, her blonde curls falling in front of her face before her hand lifted from lips and pushed it from her eyes. “You're right! You're right you're right you are absolutely right, I most certainly would have done that, said that without even thinking about it, and what a right git I would've looked, while you would've been standing there frozen in fear that you'd gone too far.”
“You think you can keep that in mind, then?”
She nodded once more, this time more slow and deliberate, before she pressed her hands on the tops of her thighs, moving to stand herself up. “I had Nicolette conceal a couple of bottles of lube in nearly every room of the house, in case this particular stripe of lust struck one of us. She seemed to think it was an excellent idea.”
Andy couldn't help but snicker a little bit. “I'm sure she did. She seemed to enjoy the hell out of it when she got her turn at it a couple of days ago.”
Emily giggled again as she reached behind the couch in the corner of his writing studio, her fingers reemerging with a small bottle of lube in them. “I did notice her walking a little funny yesterday, but she wouldn't tell me when I asked her about it. She simply blushed a wonderful shade of crimson and walked away from me. So I take it you gave her the ol' heave ho?”
He tried to keep that ain't-I-a-stinker smile from spreading on his face, but in the end, he just couldn't help it. “She told me she likes to be a bit bratty and put into her place, so I stuffed her panties in her mouth while I had a go at her ass. She seemed to like that quite a bit.” While Emily approached him, he stood up and tugged off his jeans and boxers, not wanting to get any of the lube on them, setting them on his writing chair. For the hell of it, he pulled off his shirt as well. The idea of resembling Donald Duck appalled him.
Emily's eyes widened in amusement and delight, shaking her head frantically. “You didn't! You absolutely didn't! Tell me that you didn't, Andrew!”
“I surely and truly did, and she loved it. She even made a point to tell me that it was exactly how I should have a go at her moving forward.”
“Well, not this time, but I might like to try something like that at some point in the future,” she said, as she walked over to him, lifting her dress up and over her head, tossing it aside, revealing she was completely naked beneath it. “Mostly because it wouldn't let me speak the color code if need be, but also because I'm simply not wearing any panties today.” She flashed him another saucy wink, as she moved to set up her cell phone to point at the couch. Andy suspected she might be filming it to show to Sarah later, or perhaps just for her own personal edification. “Now let me pour some of this lube on your cock, and you can tell me what position I should be in for my first time at this.”
He shivered a little as she drizzled clear fluid onto his prick, her slender fingers stroking his shaft again, making sure to get every inch of his thick dick slicked up as much as possible. “If you want total control, you could climb on for a ride, but some women think the sensations are just too intense, and tend to seize up, so they prefer to have the man controlling things. If that's more your speed, then you probably want to get on your knees on the couch, laying your arms down on the top of it, your head resting on your arms, or with your arms behind you, so you can grab at your legs, or rub on your clit. Lauren rubbed her pussy her entire first time, saying it helped the nerve endings get all tangled up in one another.”
She licked her lips, that tiny hint of reticence fading away the moment he saw it, as she nodded. “I do think it will all be simply too much for me to keep my head clear, so I think I will try the position on the couch, and you can be in the driver's seat.” She handed him the small bottle of lube. “Make sure you get me slicked up before you go rampaging in, however.”
“You sure you–”
His sentence was interrupted by her grabbing the back of his head, smearing lube on his skull while she pulled him into a feral, almost delirious kiss, her tongue rampaging into his mouth with a carnal frenzy that he didn't normally associate with his more restrained and reserved partner. When she pulled back, she didn't let her face move more than an inch away from his, her blue eyes peering directly into his greens. “I have been a posh prig my entire life, Andrew,” she cooed at him in a sing-song fashion. “Now it's time for you to take that stick out of my prim ass and jam this wicked cock up it instead. If you don't, I may well go mad, and that wouldn't be ideal for either of us, I somehow think. Now let's get to it.”
“As the lady requests,” he said, watching her sashay away from him. She slid one knee up on the couch demurely, followed by the other, bending forward at the waist, leaning down until she was resting on her hands and knees on the plush sofa. God, she was gorgeous, he thought to himself. Almost criminally so. She held pose there as he walked over towards her, but as he got closer, she lowered her shoulders down towards the top of the couch, sliding her hands back behind her, to cup her perky porcelain white ass.
“This is all yours, Andrew,” she moaned. “Virginal. Unspoiled. Unsullied. Uncharted territory.” She shivered and he could see goosebumps run across her skin as the lube started to drizzle down the cleft of her ass, smearing over that rosy pucker. “God, I feel so wanton and exposed like this, ready to be debauched and debased, your eager whore, giddy for you to introduce her to these new delights, to expand her horizons and blow her mind.”
Andy set the bottle on the table next to the couch, then moved to use two of his fingers to smear the clear liquid along her anus, seeing her body twitch and wriggle just a little bit, as he smeared the substance around, pushing his index finger inside of her, hearing her gasp sharply following by a tiny, high pitched yelp, as she clamped down on that digit.
“How are we doing, Em?”
She drew in a long breath that sounded like it took some effort before she exhaled, a slow controlled push of air over her lips, as that sphincter muscle relaxed around his fingertip. “Green! We're green, Andrew. I just... I simply needed a moment to compose myself once more. Your fingers are quick thicker than Sarah's,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“You're going to be getting something much bigger than that in a moment,” he said. “If you still want it, that is. Not too late to change your mind.”
“I have come too far to back out now, Andrew.”
“You haven't cum at all, I don't think,” he teased.
“Shows what you know,” she giggled once more, looking over her shoulder at him to stick her tongue out in his direction. “I definitely came when you pushed your finger in. The pre-fuck jitters, one might think. Like a bloody schoolgirl, I am, right now.”
“Alright then,” he said, as he slipped his fingertip out, her asshole closing up immediately. “Remember, you merely have to say what you want, and I'm going to listen.”
She nodded again, one hand reaching between her legs to rub her fingertips against her pussy, stroking her finely manicured digits against her cunt, as her other hand reached up and over behind her, grabbing one of her asscheeks, pulling it aside, as if to make sure she was open and exposed for him. “Let me feel it, Andrew, but go slow. Just a bit at first.”
Andy nodded, as he moved his hips, settling the tip of his cock against her asshole, which he felt spasm just a little when the mushroom head of his dick made contact with it. He gave her half a second to relax once more, then began to push forward. He leaned his body against hers, feeling some initial resistance, but after a few moments, the head of his cock popped through that ring of muscle, and a guttural, almost primitive moan erupted from her throat, loud and carnal. “FUCK that's big that's so fucking big yellow yellow Andy, yellow...” she rambled, and immediately Andy held perfectly still.
“Too much?” he said, feeling her ass clinging onto the head of his cock with an intense amount of pressure. “Stop? Pull out? Just wait?”
“Don't pull out! Are you fucking crazy?” she said, a borderline delirious laugh cackling from her lips. “I just, I just... just give me a moment, please... you're fucking big, you know that? You and your fat fucking cock feel like you've shoved a telephone pole up my tight young virgin ass, so I'm going to need a god damned moment, thank you very much, but don't you dare fucking slip out, or I will beat you bloody senseless with a cricket bat!”
Andy blushed a little bit, a wry smile on his lips, as he held perfectly still. “In your own time, Em.”
The tiny blonde Brit drew in a long breath, then slowly exhaled it, like she was doing some form of yoga and trying to center her chi. She did it again, and Andrew started to get worried that maybe she simply wasn't ready for this, but just about the time that thought started to roll around in his head, he felt her starting to lean back against him just a little bit.
“Green, Andrew, but...” she said, shifting her body just enough so that she could look back at him, “please, for heaven's sake, take it slowly.”
He nodded to her, and began to lean forward, feeling her body almost being pried apart as his dick worked his way inside of her virginal asshole. Her fingertips were rubbing down firmly on her clit, and while he tried to keep the forward momentum as slow as possible, when he was nearly half-way into her ass, she suddenly pushed back into him, engulfing the rest of his cock in her back door, as a wash of goosebumps rolled across her flesh, starting at the small of her back and blossoming outwards in an instant flare, followed by a hard tremble intermingled with a high-pitched whine that started racing upwards in octaves and volumes until it crested, breaking and dissolving into a frantic, almost demented giggle, as his balls rested against her fingers which hadn't stopped stroking at her pussy.
“You alright, Em?” he asked.
“Alright? Alright? Are you asking if I'm alright now, Andrew?” she hissed, although the tone was giddy and excited. “I am green, super green, all the greens! I am awesome, fucking brilliant. That felt...” she drew in a long breath, “SO fucking good, and I came SO fucking hard.” Her head whipped to look directly at her cellphone camera. “Sares, it's like it builds and builds and builds, and you're getting more and more and more tense and then...” she said, pulling her hips forward, sliding his cock mostly back out of her ass before, “WHAM!” she said as she slammed her ass back onto his dick hilt deep once more, and let out another unearthly moan. “Holy fuck, that feels so good. Your cock just jammed up right my ass, your balls resting right on my cunt.” Her head snapped again to look back at him, and her soft and kind blue eyes had gone more than a little crazy. “Go on then, in for a penny, in for a pound. Pound your little penny. Go on, you dirty wanker. Do it to me! Fuck my ass!”
At this point, he was pretty sure that if he had said 'red,' she would've ignored him and just played on through. The kind of wild lust in her eyes would've been completely unfamiliar to him if he hadn't seen it before, briefly, with both Piper and Sheridan, though those had been chemically induced.
Later in the evening, he'd consider whether maybe she'd tapped into that same mental state that being deprived of his semen developed in women, but in that particular moment, the only thing he could do was to fuck Emily Stevens, film sweetheart of a generation, within an inch of her sanity.
His hips drew back and then thrust forward, a solid grind on his first real pump, which was met by a hard squeeze of her ass around his cock and a burbling, uncorked moan oozing from her lips. He drew back again, but this time his forward thrust was met by the snap of her hips pushing her ass back into him, making her toned asscheeks ripple just a tiny amount.
“Oh fuck, Andrew,” she babbled, “I want more, but I know I'm going to cum soon, and once I start again, it's not going to stop, so I need it, I need you, I love you, I need you to fucking cum inside of my ass, fill it up with that hot spunk for the first time. Mark your territory with your seed! Please Andrew, I'm fucking begging you, let me have it, show my ass you love it, teach me this final thing. Fucking cum in my ass!”
The entire time, she was doing more of the thrusting than he was, although he was trying to keep pace with her. And just towards the end, he knew that he wouldn't be able to stave off the impending orgasm for long, so at her insistence, he let loose a hot jet of jizz right into her ass. The minute he felt the first spurt escape him, it felt as though she clamped down on him in a fist-like grasp, and then he felt a heavy rush of liquid against his balls, her cunt gushing all over them and down the inside of his thighs. The very sensation of it made him splattered a handful more blasts of cum into her ass before he stopped, one of his hands holding onto the back of the couch for dear life, as he felt her fingertips fall away from her pussy as her arm slumped downwards.
He'd gone soft almost right away, but her ass was still trying to milk any last remaining droplets of cum from his cock with gentle squeezes, even as he finally slid out of her. Her body was mostly propped up by her knees, although her face was buried into the couch cushions. He waited a minute or so before he finally said, “You alright, Em?”
She began giggling, slowly moving to roll onto her side, so he could see her face had turned bright red, the color of Sarah or Aisling's hair, and she was clutching one hand to her mouth, trying to contain the infectious laugh that would not be suppressed. “Holy fucking Christ, Andrew, I am so so so embarrassed by that,” she whimpered. “I've, fuck, I've never done that before. I didn't know I could fucking do that... Christ, I'm made such a mess, how awful of me. I'm horrible.”
Andy knelt down alongside the couch, and leaned in to press his lips against hers. She struggled for half a moment, still caught up in her own awkwardness of the moment, before she gave in and simply returned the kiss, which he held for an endlessly long time. “Did you enjoy it?” he said, when he finally gave her a moment to breathe again.
“Fuckin' 'ell, Andrew,” she stumbled, “I think that would've been bloody obvious.”
“Then who the fuck cares about the mess?” He kissed her again, one hand stroking her sweaty hair from her face, the energy cooling down a little, as they both came down from the orgasmic plateaus they'd just been dancing in. “Besides, I'd have thought you'd enjoy the idea of telling Nicolette to come and clean my office without giving her any explanation into why.”
Emily face almost hurt from smiling so much as she nodded. “Thank you for this, Andrew, and for making me feel at home in my own body as it learns new things about itself.” She looked down then looked up at him, almost a touch of fear in her eyes. “I know I've said it before, but it's important to me that you know this, Andrew. I well and truly love you, like no other man I've known before.”
“I love you too, Emily,” he said, making sure he was looking directly into her eyes when he said it, so she would understand there were no reservations. “And I'm very glad you agreed to marry me. You've been not only good for me, you've been good for the whole house.”
“Oh shush, now my heart's all aflutter,” she said, moving to stand up, pausing to wince for a second. “Well, I'll jolly well feel that for the next few days. It's sore and it's still tingling in pleasure. Both, together, at the same time. What an odd delight.”
He laughed, grabbing her dress for her, holding it out. “Go on, get dressed and bring Nicolette in here to see the mess that you've made for her to clean up. I'll bet she's not at all embarrassed, and more than a little jealous.”
“You know, I suspect you might well be correct, Andrew. Brilliant.”
Comments
Corrupting Power
All of this is some good food for thought. There's some elements of this you'll see in chapters coming down the line, but my initial thought was that both parties would, in essence, be doing "dead man's tickets," in which the candidates whose names were already on the tickets remain, but the party either announces before or after who that will actually be a vote for. Things like this have been done in the past, thus leading the joke that John Ashcroft lost to a dead man (which was, essentially, true). It's an excellent point, however, that many of the party's electors are likely to be dead as well, which may complicate things a bunch. It's essentially June/July 2020 when the major candidates die in my timeline, so Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic candidate by default, and I sort of figured that because of the incredibly short time frame, the Republicans would put forth the most mainstream woman they had, in a desperate attempt to get as many people to lean right as they could. I considered Nikki Haley, but figured she would be considered too young to be a serious candidate. Based on historical demographics, if the population suddenly shifted to an 80/20 split of women to men, the Democratic party would likely win elections overwhelmingly. But the current plan is that the vote is simply happening a month late, and that they're following dead man's election rules, so Harris is the Democratic presidential nominee (Biden having died from the plague in August or so) and she'll have announced her VP, and the Republicans will run a surviving woman under Trump's name, being that both he and Pence died from exposure to the plague in the summer. Pelosi's been stated in story as not wanting the position long term, and handling it temporarily as the government attempts to survive what is, in essence, a borderline mass extinction event in the US. I'm still sort of hammering more of this out, but I'll get into better detail for it a handful of chapters down the line, when the 60 Minutes special airs in story, and spells out what the state of the US looks like at that point. Obviously, there's going to be people arguing about the legitimacy of the elections, but 1/6 isn't likely, considering the lightning rod that sparked the event is deceased. The giant mess of a government attempting to survive this kind of chaos is going to be something we see peripherally on and on moving forward.
Paul Bell
The biggest questions I have about this chapter are how Susan Collins managed to secure her party's nomination in the uninformed residual climate. Even though I would not be likely to vote for them the GOP does have a few women who are more realistic front runners in this deeply partisan climate such as Nikki Haley, Marsha Blackburn, (or if the full primary calendar were still viable after the president's death which I don't think is the case here Joni Ernst). or for a more Darkhorse candidate that fits the zeitgeist likely still to exist in the preannouncement climate in a truncated renomination process someone like Janice McGeachin from Idaho or even Jeanette Núñez from Florida (assuming that it wasn't the Florida governor that they let die) might carry the day. Also if they were not fully banking on a southern strategy which someone like Collins would not do well with, then running against someone like Kamala Harris they might pick Condoleezza Rice as the republican running mate, but with the demographics of the world as skewed as they are lets face it the democrats would win with a healthy margin. Hopefully you had Kamala pick Tammy Duckworth as her VP if only to simplify filling the senate with a same party governor, not to mention it might make an interesting story point if she were to tour New Eden after the election if not after the announcement to try and show the positives of current vaccination efforts and having to confront some of the less personable members of the community and have the type of confrontation that would either reshape their views of the new world where men in governance are at a deep minority, or cause them to launch concentrated efforts to shape the refilling of positions with people who if don't necessarily share their views are malleable enough to prevent the types of civil rights protections that would likely be enacted shortly after pods were more normalized and alternative treatments were more widely available in order to protect the women in these medically forced relationships. More importantly the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is mandated in federal law for constitutional (aka federal) public officials. obviously in the world you have created in the timeline we're looking at not only would presidential candidates be a problem but most states lock in their filed candidates in the spring prior to November elections and have primaries in late summer to narrow down the field. With the death rate as high as projected, and so many incumbents having died off as you have previously stated, it is possible that there is not a living candidate in either party for many congressional and senate races as well as the need for new party leaders. As you described it I don't believe a special election in December would be possible in most states even with heavy federal investment. In order to follow federal law and work with the severely short-staffed and overburdened state elections offices. However I do have a proposed fix for you. Decision for Presidency goes to the House because not enough states are willing to certify the election with only one of the main party vice presidential candidates living. They opt to keep Pelosi in the role of president with the understanding that she would announce her intentions to stand down in early June after the April special election cycle has been certified in each state for a new round of electors which in may sends their votes to congress to be certified. That way you still have a new administration before the start of the fiscal year and you have time to clear up the mess with the empty races in states by using the January special election cycle to run primaries for vacant races/seats or runoffs to clean up others depending on individual state law, and then the April cycle for a clean Presidential race with minimal lawsuits as well as fill the rest of the unfilled congressional seats. (given that 1-6 is unlikely to happen in this world) in aggreging to this compromise it is entirely likely that if the house were to agree to an extended Pelosi presidency that Liz Cheney would be installed as vice president and then likely reelected back to her congressional seat and position in party leadership in April where as Pelosi might decide not to opt to return to her position in the house due to her not wanting to diminish the legacy and the office of her time serving as president.
SP Rupert
Eric's household women in particular would be nice to get an update on since Andy lived with Lily for so long and there was the epic rescue of Jenny. It would likewise be nice to get some background into Philm's partner Audrey other than that she is pregnant. Just some thoughts there. I'm looking forward to learning Andy's new workout routine including ensurance, strength trainign and flexibility. It will be interesting to hear all the women's response to the interview. I have no doubt Ash's opinion will be uniquely hers. That's good to know about Tabby and her men. Hopefully they can stay isolated and uneffected. I suppose that's pretty easy to write in. I'm looking forward to Fi's arival. I just hope it doesn't turn into a teen angst story. I think you've written most of the characters old and mature enough to get past that IMO.
Corrupting Power
Also, Fi's been in the back of my mind as a character for a while, because one of the things that's been both strange and challenging about QT as a story is that everyone is generally so new to each other. There's no back history. Fi and Andy? Oh the history well runs deep there. And Fi is another big personality, that may even clash with some of the other girls from time to time.
Corrupting Power
Xander is being brought in specifically to give Andy another male presence in his life. In an upcoming chapter, I'll delve a little bit more into why we haven't seen Eric and Phil quite as much recently, but it's also important to keep in mind that I stressed early on that Eric and Andy were more roommates than close friends. Phil's conundrum should be pretty easy to guess at, but Eric's may come as a bit of a surprise. Xander, as Andy's oldest friend, is definitely going to bring a rather different perspective to the table. I'd been planning to bring in a male friend for him much earlier in the story originally, but I ended up having so much fun with the plot twists that I just sort of shelved it for later. But Xander will be a Character with a capital C. Andy's diet is pretty strictly managed by the cook, Jenny, but it does seem like the family could use some full-time medical assistance in the reasonably near future. Ash got a LOT of screen time throughout the pitch process chapters, and so I wanted to ease off just a little with her presence here, but the conversation about the media pitch isn't completely done yet, and I'm sure Ash will weigh in before we actually get to the interview. I've been planning for that particular chapter for a while now, and it should be a fun change of pace, two or three chapters down the line. Tabby and her throuple are avoiding the vaccine for the time being, and also staying in very strict quarantine. The vaccine's limited availability in the story has been hinted at being quite the problem, and the actual interview chapter will get a lot more into that.
SP Rupert
I’ve read this Chapter several times now. I tend to scan through for major plot points the first pass then come back for deeper dives in subsequent readings. After the presentations this was a nice chapter to have. It’s actually good to know there is a world beyond the main characters and that not everyone needs to flock to Andy’s family. I do have a question about the Thruple though. How is the vaccine going to work for them? If only one male’s sperm can touch Tabitha then how is that going to work? Can Tabitha be imprinted to two men at the same time? Are they just forgoing the vaccine and waiting for a more normal option? To be clear I liked the fact that Tabitha decided to reunite with her boyfriends. I was thinking it slightly weird to have Hannah and Tabitha in the same family together but stranger things have happened and this is a new world they are living in. But Tabitha seemed happiest with them so that was a touching way to go in the story. With the rejection of Morgan does that mean Andy’s family won’t need a doctor? And what of Andy taking better care of himself? I know he’s getting a lot of sex but he needs to eat healthy and work out to stay healthy IMO. Not to mention the prenatal care now needed by Niko and Aisling. And speaking of Aisling, she has been pretty central to Andy since her delivery to the old townhouse. To not have her mentioned in this chapter while Andy was taking to Phil or as a sounding board for the media tour was a bit weird to me. I know she had been getting a lot of “screen time” in the previous handful of chapters and Niko and Emily are strong characters in their own right but it was just a thought I had. Maybe it stems from thinking of Aisling as a “first wife” even if you’ve never written her like that. Finally I love the addition of Fi. I think it brings a whole new dynamic to Andy as a character. I also think between Emily and Fi that Andy will finally start to get the media and social media exposure I thought Olivia could bring as a social influencer. The “we” was a great tease. Is it a pet or pets? Does she have a child? Is she bringing a girlfriend? I’m excited to find out. Also the phone call with Phil was nice but I would like more guy bonding time between Andy and his friends. I think their group could have a major impact together against the old money crowd currently ruling New Eden. I especially look forward to Xander’s arrival and meeting Brooke. Actually, filing out the characters for Andy’s friend’s partners is always something I enjoy and perhaps look forward to in their own Quaranteam story in the future.
