For Love of Reliability

A/N: I have two quick notes: First, the Ebola virus is pretty much confined to Africa. (It’s a virus that is passed from animals to humans, and then from humans to other humans.) Usually when there is an outbreak elsewhere, it’s a developed country with the knowledge and resources to contain it. There has never been an outbreak in Cambodia; however, if there were, it is possible it would be like this.

Second, the shear nature of this story necessitates the addition of original characters; I’m sorry. Their involvement will be as minimal as possible, but I have to introduce them this chapter.

Also: To my faithful reviewers from Something Missing, BlueVixen2071, SassieLassie11988, AnimeBabesGoneWildWithMe, SkittleSama, Chrono, and Dark Alchemist: thanks for your continuing vocal encouragement and readership. I would like to thank my new reviewers as well—Reisu, Cha-cha-cha, ChEzA, CANDY PeRvErSiOn, and JuLiA. This chapter is for all you guys.


Chapter One: Sleeping Arrangements

Tachikawa Mimi was not the sort of person to second-guess herself. Though she hated to admit it, at this moment, she was coming close. She was on a dirty, rickety bus traveling south from Phnom Penh to Kampot. The flight over had seemed so harmless, so normal, so clean. She flew all the time, and while her mind knew she was doing something irrational and unsafe, her gut hadn’t registered that till she had boarded this double-decker with forty-seven other volunteers who wouldn’t shut up with how serious this epidemic was, how they were willing to sacrifice themselves for others, blah, blah, and blah. Everyone around her sat with gravity, resignation, and moral superiority. They were here to save lives because they cared about the world, the people in it, and what was happening to them. Mimi was here to get her ex-boyfriend back because . . . she missed him. She had never felt so out of place in her life. She didn’t belong here and she was beginning to get scared.

She had been so angry at Jyou for leaving, been worried he’d get sick and die. Cambodia was in the grips of a disease for which there was no cure. If contracted, the only way to treat Ebola was to try to stabilize the patient—their blood pressure, temperature, pH levels, and so on. All this did was help the body fight; the death-toll this pestilence had caused was in the thousands. With Jyou’s clumsy bad luck and skittish nature, Mimi had convinced herself he was sure to catch it and die. With the danger for Jyou so very real to her, it was amazing and idiotic that it hadn’t occurred to her that it was hazardous for her as well. She hadn’t even thought of getting sick and dying before she got on this damn bus and now it was all she could think about.

Of course, Mimi would not be working directly with the patients, so the danger for her was not as great; she had no proper medical training and they wouldn’t let her. She would be in the kitchens of the makeshift hospital, preparing the food for the sick. It was something she could do, and it was a volunteer slot which was open and in the same building as Jyou.

Jyou. She felt a dull ache in her chest at the thought of him. She was ashamed of how much she missed him—humiliated even, but it wasn’t something that seemed to be within her control. And there were traces of him all over—the moment that broke her, made her call the service to find out what shots she would need, was finding one of Jyou’s long hairs on her pillow. Every time she put him out of her mind, he intruded into her reality without warning. It drove her crazy—obviously; she was on a bus in Cambodia, wasn’t she?

“Do you mind if I sit here?” she heard a voice ask.

She looked up to see a young man a few years older than she, wearing a t-shirt and faded jeans. He had a half-burned cigarette in his hand and a bag slung over his shoulder.

Mimi shook her head and he sat.

He introduced himself, “I’m Yusuke.”

“Mimi.”

“Sorry,” he said, “the guy I was sitting next to before got a little cozy with a girl who’d just broke up with her boyfriend across the aisle. She took my seat, and I didn’t have the guts to sit next to the guy who’d just been dumped.”

Mimi gave a weak smile. “Well, this is a long bus ride.”

“Tell me about it,” Yusuke groaned. “We still have another six hours. I’m going to run out of cigarettes—I’m down to my last pack.”

Looking from the smoldering stick between his fingers to the candy stash she could see in his open bag, she said, “You’re not a med student, are you?”

He laughed. “No, no, God no. I’m . . . well, as my ex-boyfriend put it, I’m ‘an aimless idealist, who cares about causes only as long as they’re hip and convince people I’m a good person.’”

“Ouch,” said Mimi. “That’s harsh.”

Yusuke shrugged, offering her a piece of licorice. “Well, he was pretty pissed when I told him I’d signed up for this. In fact, he all-out dumped me over it. The bitch of it was, I had to admit he was partially right—which made me pissed. I guess going through with this stupid idea out of spite wasn’t the best revenge, but it’s a little late to turn back.”

Mimi froze, a bite of licorice in her mouth. She’d dumped Jyou when she found out he’d volunteered to come down here. She’d said awful things to him, called him names even. She’d belittled and rejected him. Suddenly, she felt the oddest urge to puke; this person had just become an icon, a sickly reminder of what she had to apologize for.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She swallowed the candy half-chewed. “Yusuke, my boyfriend, Jyou, came down here almost two weeks ago. I dumped him when he told me he was leaving.”

Yusuke raised an eyebrow, studying her more closely than he had before. “And you’re here.”

Mimi nodded. “To get him back.”

He thought for a moment. “So, let me get this straight,” he said. “You dump your boyfriend because he wants to help people, then buy a plane ticket, get shots, enter a quarantine of a hemorrhagic flu, commit to six months of service in a third world country, which has little proper shelter and happens to be coming up on its monsoon season, to get your boyfriend back.”

Mimi blushed. “Well . . . I want him. He’s—I can’t wait six months.”

Yusuke laughed at her. “I think that makes you the stupidest, craziest girl on this bus—including that piece of work who left her boyfriend just because she saw another guy with a tongue ring.”

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“This is not a joke, people. I know I’m repeating myself, I know you know this, but I don’t want my team to be the next to have a slip-up.”

Kido Jyou and his medical team, made up of interns like himself, were listening to their supervisor, Kinjo Kameko, a known virologist and medical investigator. He had read some of her papers a few years previously for a class, never dreaming he would meet the woman someday. Now he almost wished he hadn’t. She was stern and seemingly irrational many times; he had never been pushed further by any other doctor, and there were days he thought he’d collapse. Still, he supposed she meant well, and she did seem to care deeply for the welfare of their team—hence the subject of the day’s lecture

“I know it’s a pain to change gowns, masks, and gloves between every patient. I know at the end of an eighteen-hour day that you’re tired. I don’t care. These are people’s lives we’re dealing with—yours and your teammates, as well; laziness at any time is inexcusable. Takeo just had two volunteers die because some fool conducted a diagnosis without gloves while he was off duty. People, this is a contact virus, for God’s sake. If you don’t have gloves, you don’t touch anybody who might be sick—anybody. I know you all want to help, but you can’t help if you’re sick or dead. I also know that you’d all like to go home eventually. Prove it. No slacking, no negligence, no cutting corners.” She let that sink in. “Get out of here and get some sleep,” she dismissed them.

Jyou rose with his fellow interns and filed out of the room.

Zinan stretched next to Jyou and said, “I thought she’d never stop and I’m starving.”

“She spoke for less than five minutes,” Rai said with a fair amount of contempt. He had little patience for Zinan and saw no point in pretending otherwise. “And you’re more interested in whether or not there were any girls that came in with today’s arrival of volunteers than you are in food.”

“Not just any girls, hot girls,” Zinan corrected.

Jyou looked at Midori, who was ignoring Zinan and Rai, attempting a conversation with Pedar. Pedar was Scandinavian and had been sent to their Japanese speaking division by mistake. Communicating with him was difficult, but he was good at what he did—and somehow, even with the language barrier, he managed to be the biggest flirt in the division.

“Midori,” Jyou got her attention and she smiled at him.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Zinan has something he’d like to ask you.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Zinan turned to her, “you saw them get off the bus, didn’t you? Were there any hot girls?”

Even though no one had told her they had been discussing the newly arrived volunteers, Midori was able to follow Zinan’s question. She considered, “A few, I guess. But don’t get your hopes up; you know most of the girls come with boyfriends.” She laughed, “You know, I saw one idiot with pink hair.”

Jyou almost missed a step in the stairs. Then he realized he was being silly. Mimi was in Japan, probably already dating someone else. But he couldn’t help his immediate association. Mimi had first dyed her hair pink when she was fifteen, then changed it over and over again through the years; it was never the same very long. But she had recently tried the look again and her hair had been pink when he left. Besides, he hadn’t met anyone else his entire life who had pink hair.

“Why would that make her an idiot?” Rai asked.

“Because, whoever she is, she’s going to be stuck here for a long time. By the time she gets access to more dye, her dark roots will be down to her ears. Not really attractive. Besides, what kind of person dyes their hair pink anyway?” Jyou was surprised Midori was being so catty. Normally she was laid-back and pleasant.

Zinan, however, proved he was more perceptive than he seemed. “So she’s really pretty.”

Midori paused, realizing how she had just come off, and was slightly abashed. “Yes,” she said, “she’s very pretty.”

“My ex-girlfriend had pink hair,” Jyou said quietly.

They all looked at him, because he didn’t offer up information about his personal life often.

After an awkward moment, Zinan said, “Maybe it’s her.”

Jyou shook his head. “The only way they’d get her down here is if they offered free designer make-up.”

“That’s funny,” Midori said thoughtfully. “That doesn’t sound like what I would have guessed to be your type.”

They were reaching the last flight of stairs down. “You’re right,” Jyou said, “she wasn’t.”

“What did you see in her?” Midori asked bluntly, though with more curiosity than contempt.

“Ho-ly shit,” they heard Zinan exclaim.

Jyou followed Zinan’s eyes to where the new volunteers were waiting to be shown where they would sleep, all of them standing around talking, bags resting at their feet. Zinan was only looking at one volunteer, though. She was standing there in the most impractical outfit Jyou could imagine: a studded purple halter-top, tight low-rise jeans and high heeled sandals. She had pink hair and perfectly manicured nails. She had his complete attention and utter disbelief.

Rai was the first to comment. “Oh yeah, she’s hot, but she’s also an idiot for sure. Didn’t anyone tell her there’s mud and nasty big bugs and rats everywhere—we’ll see how long those shoes last.”

“What I want to know is, who’s that guy she’s talking to? He is absolutely dreamy,” Midori put in.

“He’s probably her boyfriend,” Rai said dryly. “Tough break, Zinan.”

Jyou couldn’t talk; all he could do was stare and doubt. Then she seemed to feel his eyes, or perhaps it was the power of all their eyes on her, and she turned to look at him. A light flicked on in her eyes and she smiled. She was running toward him before he could blink.

“Jyou!”

Rai stepped out of the way just in time to keep from being knocked aside by a hurtling Mimi. Her arms went around his neck as she knocked him backwards and onto his ass. Her soft body knocked the wind out of him surprisingly well, and pressed him painfully against the concrete steps. Despite all this, he was momentarily elated, and reflexively, in joy, his arms went around her. Then she began to giggle and kiss his neck; he woke up.

With no small force—she had been clinging to him will all her strength—he pushed her from him and disentangled himself from her twining limbs. He stood, holding her at arm’s length. “Mimi? What are you doing here?”

She smiled at him gleefully, “I came to be with you.”

“You came to be with me,” he echoed flatly.

Mimi’s smile faltered momentarily, but she pushed on. “I missed you.”

Her words caused his heart to beat faster, swelling warmly. But he caught himself and said, with all the detachment he could muster, “This may be the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why does everyone keep saying that? I was going crazy not being able to see you, watching the news like a madwoman to hear if something happened to you. I blew off my last final to come here, to be with you while you did something that obviously meant a lot to your sick brain. No, probably not a smart choice, but I was going for ‘grand romantic gesture,’ not ‘curing cancer.’”

“You dumped me, Mimi,” he told her as though she may have forgotten. “The romance pretty much died when you pushed me out your front door in my socks and boxers and shrieked obscenities while you threw my clothes at me.”

She blushed, glancing around at their audience. “That was just a misunderstanding. I was upset—you didn’t give me time to adjust. I never said I wanted to break up.”

“No, you said, ‘Go—I don’t fucking want you anyway.’”

Mimi’s blush of shame now matched her hair. She swallowed, “Jyou, can we talk privately?”

Jyou was tempted. So very, very tempted. But this girl had made his heart into road kill. He thought of her all the time, fantasized that she was beside him every night. But all that was just in theory, a longing in his heart and in his head. Seeing her now, all those feelings were present, but they were accompanied with coldness, and anger. He saw the Mimi he loved, that teased him, that made him happy, the Mimi he’d slid into every night for two weeks; but he also saw the Mimi who’d spat him out in a more humiliating way than he’d ever conceived.

“Sorry, Mimi. There wouldn’t be a point—there’s nothing you could say.”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Even if I told you I was pregnant?”

For a moment, he was stunned. Then he felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach; there was ice in his mouth and his head spun. Dear God, he was going to faint—he hadn’t done that in years.

He swayed on his feet and Mimi smacked his face just hard enough to distract him from his churning gut. “I’m not, Jyou. It was a hypothetical question.”

His nausea faded and her words came in. “That wasn’t funny,” his voice cracked slightly.

“Team!”

Jyou turned at the sound of his supervisor’s voice. She was a few flights up.

“Eat then bed. Now!”

Jyou looked back at the girl in front of him, her eyes were sparking slightly with anger, but he saw hope and hurt in them, too. It twisted his heart, but not enough to make him forget what had happened between them.

He patted her arm. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He got most of the way to the mess hall, then looked back. He stopped short when he saw that she was crying. He had already taken a step toward her—his instincts to comfort, to stop those tears, taking over completely. Then he saw the guy he had seen her with earlier pull her into his arms. He swallowed his jealousy and a freak spike of violent urges, and entered the mess hall.

It was only after he had gotten in line that he noticed that his medical teammates were still with him. Even so, he said nothing to them, and they said nothing to him. It was silent as they sat; perhaps if he hadn’t been so depressed it would have felt awkward to him—it was for them, he could see it in their faces—but he couldn’t muster the awareness it would take to feel that discomfort. Mimi occupied all of his energies, all of his thoughts.

He barely noticed when Kiyoshi, a young lab analyst, sat with their group. A few minutes into the conversation though, Zinan nudged him.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

“What?”

Kiyoshi cleared if throat and, apparently, repeated himself. “There aren’t enough beds for the new volunteers. Some of them are going to have to sleep on the floor for the next week or so—the basement floor.”

Zinan nodded. “You know what’s down there: snakes, tarantulas, rats. All they can give them is mosquito netting, and you know all the help that would be.”

Jyou looked at the faces around the table.

Midori spoke. “Your lady didn’t get a bed.”

“I saw her heading down with the others who didn’t get them.” Kiyoshi elaborated, “I just mentioned the pink hair and they told me . . . .”

Jyou didn’t hear the rest; he was already on his feet and striding toward the basement doors. Damn it. Why him? Why couldn’t he just be allowed to take a stand for once? He was already going to have to eat his declarations of indifference. Of course, this was all Mimi’s fault. If she wasn’t so damn . . . prissy he could just leave her down there and not worry at all. Sora could handle it—hell, Hikari could if she had to. But Mimi . . . . Damn it, damn it, damn it.

He saw her laying out a blanket, trying to arrange it so that it was long enough that her whole body could fit onto it. She was talking twitchily to the guy from earlier, glancing around her like she was sure bugs were sneaking up behind her.

He stood there a moment before she looked up at him. Their eyes held for a moment, but them he turned. “Come on. You can sleep in my bed,” he said, his mouth dry.

In the scraping noises behind him, he heard her scramble to follow him. He tried not to look at her too much, but he couldn’t help but take her heaviest bag for her on the second flight of stairs up to his room.

On the third flight he turned and asked, “What the hell is in this thing?”

Her cheeks a little pink from knowing what he would think of her answer, she replied, “Mostly shoes.”

“Shoes?”

“And my blow-dryer, so please don’t drop it.”

Jyou looked at her. Was she serious?

“This is it,” he told her, pulling the key from his pocket.

The door had barely closed behind them when she pulled his head down to hers and the taste of her lips flooded his senses. He couldn’t help but bask in it, but then her hand caressed his hardening cock through his pants and he jumped back from her.

“Mimi,” he said, his hands stretched between them to maintain the distance he’d just created, “that isn’t what I brought you up here for.”

“Oh?” she said mockingly, playfully. “Then I guess it’s just a bonus.”

“I’m serious, Mimi.”

She must have heard the sincerity in his voice because her lighthearted demeanor sapped. “Why not?” she asked sedately. “You still want me,” she looked pointedly at his erection.

He had to concede that point—the proof of it was blatantly begging for attention, bulging in his pants. “Yes, I do.” He considered for a moment, and decided to tell the whole truth. “And it’s not just my body that wants you, all of me does. But I’m not going to let you jerk me around again. What happened between us was something I’d wanted for so long, I didn’t question it. I didn’t think of your feelings or motives, and I should have. Then I would have seen that you saw our relationship in a completely different way than I did.”

“Jyou,” she said shocked, “do you think I’d get shots, come all this way, and enter a quarantine for a fling?”

“I’m not saying you don’t care about me, Mimi, because I’m sure you do. We’ve been through too much, especially when we were kids. But you’re an impulsive person—a charming quality under certain circumstances—and I’m sure this was a whim. You’re also more than a little spoiled. You always get what you want, and you seem to want me—for now anyway.”

Mimi looked like he had slapped her in the face. “Jyou, I came to get you back, to be with you.”

He shook his head slowly, sadly. “It’s no good, Mimi. We were a bad fit. If we hadn’t broken up when we did, we would have later. I’m sure you meant well in coming here, but it doesn’t change anything. Unfortunately, you’re stuck here now, so we’ll just have to make the best of things. I’ll sleep on the floor, you can have the bed.”

Mimi’s eyes had filled with tears as he spoke, but he didn’t see them until he looked up from untying his shoes.

She opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by his beeper.

He looked at the code and sighed, tying his shoes once again. “There’s an emergency,” he said. “I have to go.” He paused beside her on his way out, kissing her cheek dangerously close to her mouth (he just couldn’t help himself), and spoke gently. “Get some rest; tomorrow will be a long day. And don’t wait up for me—I may not be back at all tonight.”

He closed the door behind him.

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Mimi sank to Jyou’s bed. She wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. Looking carefully at the situation now she could see it was foolish, but she’d actually thought it would be as easy as showing up. She had underestimated how much she had hurt him. She had taken his feelings for granted, taken him for granted, and that had just come back to bite her in the ass bad. To get him back she was going to have to work, she was going to have to grovel, she was going to have to apologize.

Strangely, though, it was one of his intended insults which comforted her in the end. She curled up under his covers, breathing in his scent. She could do this; she could change his mind. He was right: she did always get what she wanted.