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“Baby,” Toff says, both hands firm on Mike’s shoulders. “Baby, listen, you can say no to this. It’s not too late to say no to this.”
Cat narrows her eyes at him. “I thought you liked Will and Mack? Isn’t this guy a friend of theirs?”
“I didn’t say I liked them,” Toff corrects her. “I said they were the little brothers I never wanted and that I’d kill for them. But like is a strong strong strong word and Misa is my baby.”
“I’m Cat’s baby,” Mike explains. “I’m actually not your baby.”
Toff puts an injured hand over his heart and staggers back, distraught, going to his knees. Stella makes a delighted face and leaps at his chest. “What? Why would you say this heart breaking thing to me? I thought I got you in the marriage!”
“He’s not a joint asset,” Cat says smugly. She steps into Mike and hugs him hard around the waist. “Right baby?”
“Baby is a really awkward nickname now that I am significantly taller than you,” Mike observes, and kisses the top of her head.
“My quality if life would be severely impacted without him,” Toff says. “He’s a shared marital asset!”
“Nooooooooooooooo,” Cat says. “He’s my baby.”
“I don’t want to be an asset,” Mike says, and hugs Cat’s shoulders. “I’m Cat’s baby.”
“How hard is it to adopt an adult?” Toff wonders aloud, standing up with Stella in his arms. “I’ll just file the paperwork and not tell either of you.”
“I don’t think you can stealth adopt an adult,” Mike tells him. “I think that’s frowned upon.”
Toff frowns at that but he just stands there and scrutinizes Mike’s outfit. “I mean it though, you don’t have to go. I’ll cancel for you!”
“I’m not cancelling twenty minutes beforehand,” Mike says, aghast. “It’s one blind date, how bad is it gonna be?”
“I don’t think it’s going to be bad,” Toff temporizes. “He just started in comms and he seems. Really creative?”
“Why does your organization need someone creative for comms?” Mike wonders, and Toff looks shifty. “What do you guys actually do?”
“We optimize synergies for maximization to reduce dissonance,” Toff says. “Here’s my keys, have fun. Sorry in advance for the Stella t shirt he’ll be wearing.”
“This guy couldn’t pick him up?” Cat says disapprovingly as Mike steps out.
“I wanted him to have his own wheels,” Toff says defensively. “Also, I don’t want the Dickens to know where we live.”
“You’re sending our child on a blind date with someone named the Dickens?!”
Mike parks at the end of the parking lot furthest from the park and meanders in, adjusting his ballcap and arriving at the trail head at 5:30 pm exactly, which is satisfying. Basically like an early arrival, for him. There’s a guy sitting there already, on the ground, stretching out to tap out a beat on his shoes, not big exactly but not lanky. Powerful looking, Mike would say, if he was likely to say anything. The guy is wearing a pair of lightly bedazzled sunglasses and a rhinestoned t shirt with, as promised, Stella screen sprinted on it, life sized. He looks up, grins and scrambles to his feet, brushing himself off.
“Mike?” he asks, pushing his sunglasses up and putting a hand out to shake. He’s got a good handshake to go with his good build, warm and comforting, and weirdly wild blue eyes to go with his dark hair and sharp smile. “I’m Sam, hey. Great to meet you.”
“Sam, hey,” Mike says. “Toff actually keeps calling you the Dickens.” That gets him a sharp grin and Mike realizes he should probably release the hand in his.
“I’ll answer to anything you call me,” Sam says confidently. “They used to call me Dick, back when I played hockey.”
“But was it accurate?” Mike asks, and gets another slice of a grin. “Toff likes calling me Misa, that guy’s played a little too much hockey in his time.”
“I keep saying we should join a beer league,” Sam says, and scoops up his back pack. “Team building experience. Let’s meander?”
“Good word. How long is this trail?” Misa asks, eying the back pack. “Do I need bear spray or something?”
“Nah, I brought us, you know, some beverages, a little this and that,” Sam says. “They say it’s better to be prepared, right?”
“Yeah I read there’s like, seven pieces of essential gear for a hike but hell if I can remember what they are,” Mike says, and follows Sam onto the trail. “At least one of us is prepared?”
Sam is prepared. Sam is also warm and funny and very very sweet in a daffy outgoing way, aggressively gentlemanly. He’s delighted to be on the trail with Mike and has this funny way of baiting him, dropping a line that gets two out of Mike. He lets the quiet moments sit, but they never seem to sit for too long. He gives Mike space to breath and greets the people they pass by, friendly and amused and amusing, chatting with kids and adults alike, gleefully making friends with dogs and unwelcoming seniors and still bringing his attention back to Mike every time.
“Toff said you work with Cat?” he asks, but not like Toff is moaning about Mike at work, more like he’s curious in a polite way. “Logistics?”
“Logistics, retrievals and event planning,” Mike says. “It’s pretty discreet. You know, when rich people want the perfect gift but want to look like they did it all themselves.”
Sam hums over that, interested but not prying. “Bit of travel?”
“We try to keep it to a minimum,” Mike says. “She did longer trips before she got me but she didn’t love it. I keep telling her I could do them but I’m not that into it either I guess. I’d rather be home with them and Stella.”
“God, Stella’s the best,” Sam says. “We got our merchandise guy, Kiefer, to make all these cool shirts, pretty good huh?”
“It’s great,” Mike says, and can hear the fondness in his voice. “It’s a great shirt.”
They loop around the little lake and turn up into the hills beside the river and Mike says, “Look, I have to admit I’m having a good time.”
“Oh you have to?” Sam says happily. “Wild horses drag that out of you?”
“Yeah, don’t worry, I won’t tell Toff or anything,” Mike says. “Like, he didn’t seem that enthusiastic about setting us up or anything.”
“Oh, Will blackmailed him,” Sam says readily. “We threatened to tell Cat about his secret second life as an operative of the Time Cops. He’s actually a field leader, runs a team and everything. Swell little badge, takes great care of us.”
Mike laughs. “I don’t think Cat would be surprised by anything Toff does. He literally come home and tells her everything. Heard you have a special little routine with that guy from HR.”
“Yeah Reavo and I have a little dance we worked up!” Sam says. “You wanna see? You can be Reavo.”
Mike manages to duck away. “No! I’ve already heard about it, I’m good! I’m good!”
“No, come here,” Sam says and pursues him up against the railing, cages him in with a big friendly hand to either side. “Come on, Misa, come here Mikey—“ and Mike kisses him squarely on his sharp laughing mouth.
Sam releases the railing and kisses back, sweetly, puts his impossibly big hands on Mike’s side and back and goes all in on the kiss, like he’s got nothing to lose. It’s a good kiss, all the right pressure and heat and Sam biting at his lower lip just a little before he finally finally slowly pulls back, still grinning. “So is that a gun in your pocket or . . . “
Mike keeps his hand in his hoodie pocket and thumbs the power switch, pushes the barrel harder into Sam’s stomach. “I think we both know what that is.”
The power cells whine and Sam actually keeps smiling, pushes in a little closer. “An anachronism on the first date? I didn’t think you were that kind of girl.”
“Well now you’re really dating yourself,” Mike says. “So, tell me what you know about me and Cat, and tell me why you infiltrated us via Toff, and maybe I’ll kick you back to whatever backwards era you got here from, and I’ll only chronolock you, not kill you.”
“Chronolocking is real?” Sam says, and he does look surprised, but that’s when the moa shows up and the lasers start flaring.
“Are you fucking shitting me,” Mike says, and dives for cover. “You really are Time Cops?”
“Time Agents!” Sam says, and dives over the railing after him and down the bank. “Time Agents, and I think actually, based on this, our branch is getting downsized?”
“Was it the lasers that tipped you off?” Mike snaps, and sits up to get a shot off at the contraption the unhappy moa is wearing, strapped to its back and visible among the giant bird’s fluffy feathers. When it tries to ignore them, aiming instead for a nice patch of grass to peck at, a red light starts blinking and the moa makes an angry startled noise and whirls back to them. “Why is it always weaponized birds?”
“Has this happened to you a lot?” Sam asks, shuffling in his bag and pulling out the dissembled pieces of what seems to be a long range weapon Mike doesn’t recognize. “You and your mom deal with a lot of weaponized birds usually?”
He’s still talking in his charming, first date voice, and Mike blinks at him. “Yes? I thought everyone knew about the birds? And also, what is that? Aren’t you from the past?”
“Born in 1899, sweetheart,” Sam says, and clips the last piece of his weapon into place. “I’m a quick learner. It’s kind of like a missile thrower, but without the missile or the throw.”
“Okay and you want to give me a hard time about carrying an anachronism,” Mike says. “And also fuck off with that, you’ll kill it. It’s not like the bird wants to hurt us.”
“It’s a twelve foot tall five hundred pound bird firing lasers at us,” Sam says, and now the charm is fraying. “It’s going to hurt us whether it wants to or not! Also, I think my bosses sent it after us and we may have slightly bigger concerns than being dinged for anachronistic weapons.”
“You need to calm down,” Mike told him. “You’re really changing the energy of this date, and I was having a great time.” He took careful aim at the device the bird was wearing, and managed to hit it. The bird made a pleased noise, shook out its feathers and went back to the patch of grass. A laser fired at random into the woods.
“Ohhh, that’s not really better,” Mike said. “Do you have a gate pass with you?”
“Yeah, I really carry a piece of highly restricted technology on a first date,” Sam says. “No, I do not.”
“It’s fine, I can text Cat,” Mike says, and ducks when the moa curiously turns their way. “Actually, maybe this is a call.”
“If Will and Mack aren’t already headed our way, I’m quitting,” Sam says. “Honestly, they sent me out here to investigate you and I have to say, based on that kiss I was ready to quit any way.”
“I thought we established already that you’ve probably been fired.”
“Downsized,” Sam corrects defensively. “I mean, we’ve been hearing about budget cuts.”
“You’re Time Cops,” Mike says. “Can’t you just go— get more money?”
“That’s really not how a budget works,” Sam tells him. “Like, at all. Is that how your time heist business works?”
“It’s retrievals and logistics,” Mike says, debating going over the railing as the moa looks uphill to greener pastures. “And yeah, sometimes.”
After Mack and Will show up, surly about it, and Toff and Cat arrive to a carefully tethered moa tied next to a gate point, shimmering because Sam’s useless coworkers insist on waiting for approval before booting the moa back to its origin point, and none of them want to get close enough to remove the dead control device, and after Cat stares at Mack for a long moment and then spooks the bird through the gate, Mike turns to Sam and says, “I know this was supposed to be more of a half hour walk than like a ten k hike and, you know, a giant bird shooting at us with lasers, but I had a really nice time. Do you want to grab dinner sometime maybe?”
“Are you free right now?” Sam says, grinning at him, filthy, shirt ripped and twigs in his hair.
“You sent our child out on a date with a time cop!” Cat says bitterly to Toff.
“We’re time agents,” Toff says. “And he mostly does comms!”
“I’m field certified,” Sam says, grinning at Mike. “Burritos? I can drive.”
“Sam, you were supposed to be figuring out if he and Cat were planning to kill us,” Mack hisses at him.
“I know, but I had a lot of fun,” Sam says, looking unconcerned. “He’s a good time, and they make them easy on the eyes in the— 23rd century?”
“Oh, you’re close,” Mike says, and Sam reaches out to grab one of the belt loops of his jeans, reeling him in. “Besides, we weren’t trying to kill you, it was your boss.”
“Luckily for you all,” Cat says, eyes still narrowed at Toff, “baby and I have recently decided to expand our operations, and we have some available roles we need to fill. Send over some resumes, boys, and we’ll talk.”