Coquito for the Soul

She could feel it in the dust covering the loose-fitting garments she had been issued; in the aches of her limbs, the thousand tiny overextensions that would confine any baseline human to bed for a weekend. Every scuff and scrape that had carried her up walls and found handholds from joints, scurried up plinths and leapt from ledge to ledge, all as if she was seven years old again. 
She could feel it now, sitting on the edge of the rooftop, looking over the city with a cheap carton of cheaper food in hand. The hard discomfort of the concrete beneath her, its warmth from the day spent soaking up tropical heat. The lights and motion of the street below.
Truth was, in this small corner of a storied city she'd only been to once before, Harriet McVey was feeling more at home than she had for a long time. 
"God, you're not telling me this is actually meat? Like, really?"
Oh, and he certainly had something to do with that too.
-----
All credit to Owain, he'd not protested much as his erstwhile instructor had practically dragged him to the first available transport, carried him along like a whirlwind from the clean immaculate towers of the Puerto Rican spaceport to the Old City. He'd kept up remarkably well; unfamiliarity and confusion had melted away like morning frost, until he was wide-eyed at every greasy street vendor right beside her. He'd even found his footing on the rooftops remarkably quickly for someone his size, too. 
All of it reminded her of someone, clear as day. She wished it didn't.
"Hey. Hari. Venom One to Gamma fifty-five, please acknowledge." 
That tease, even mumbled through a bite of alcapurria, snapped her out of her trance - and it earned Owain a sharp jab in the arm for his trouble. 
"Oi, none of that." A moment later Hari's stony face gave way to a laugh, an eye-roll at seeing his hands raised in mock innocence. "Lethe, you couldn't get through that any faster, could you?"
A gulp, a swig from a bottle, a belated grin. "Hey, it's good!" The mouth-full, finger-licking reply he gave was completely devoid of manners, etiquette, any kind of propriety. Not that she'd have it any other way. "They're - mmph - they're really, really good!"
Hari could imagine they were. Certainly after a few years of whatever the patient canteen at Fajardo had, and a couple of weeks of ration packs since then. 
"Pace yourself, big guy. I don't want you choking on me." 
Not that she hadn't been just as starved herself. Not of food and drink, mind. But certainly of company.
"Hey, you insisted on stopping everywhere and buying everything."
She'd tagged along with her newly-augmented trainees more than a few times, on a smattering of leave days to cities scattered across the South American continent. Time spent chattering about each other, about competition scores and interpersonal stories and past adventures.
Nothing she'd ever really had anything to offer to.
"You saying you didn't want that box of balacaitos? Or the plantain chips?" 
So every outing was a bland palette, a warmed-over slop with a flavour made for other people that she never quite got the taste of.
"I mean..."
"Thought not." 
Not til now.
"Still, probably tastes better if you give yourself time to breathe in-between." There was the barest hint of a taunt to her voice, a slight sing-song teasing. "Can't believe they never taught you guys in Beta how to eat properly." 
"Hey, all we had there to eat was-"
"-the same ratpacks and fortified slop day-in-day-out. Menus seven through fifteen, right?"
"Only for the first three years." Owain chuckled gently.
"Well, same here. We just had that, Oklier roots, and Gomeberry when out on ex." 
"Gomeberry?"
"Those orange ones, grew in clusters with the purple-specked leaves? Loads of them up north of Curahee, sweetest thing you'll ever eat off of a bush. Sticky as all hell, too."
"You could eat those?"
"Lived off of them for a couple weeks. You're saying none of you ever tried?" Owain shook his head in response. "You sleep through all your recognition classes or something? Look, I was joking about Beta not getting taught properly, but I didn't realise you were thick-"
Now it was Hari's turn to receive a punch to the shoulder, with a laugh accompanying it. 
"You're really something, Hari, you know that?"
A soft laugh. Not the raucous cheers of her trainees testing the boundaries of how fast their augmented bodies could metabolise alcohol, or the roars of laughter over a bawdy, overexaggerated story. Just-
"Any plans on telling me what that something is, boss?"
-just something comforting.
"Not really."
She snorted.
"Skillful. Scary. Gifted." He paused. "Mad." 
"Because I pulled off that jump t-"
"No, because you climb walls and scamper across skylines one-handed, with your other one carrying three days' worth of food."
Another, longer moment passed.
"And yes, because you jumped to haul me out of the fire." 
Hari pulled an arm around the larger Spartan, squeezing him a little closer. 
"Well, you know what?"
She smiled. Up at the warm, orange sunset, then up at him.
"I think I did just fine."
Category:The Weekly