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Hey everyone. Here's a new story in a new series. I guess I'm back. 

But before anything else, I wanted to let you know a few things up front: 

1) I wrote this purely for the fun of it. So it may well please me and no one else. 

2) As part of that fun, this is basically a romance novella with some sexy bits. Since the sexy bits happen to be my desperation kink, and some of you are familiar with my work, omo.org is still the best site for it, but if you wanted a lot of hot hot omo action... eh, this may be a disappointment. There are, count 'em, three pee scenes so far. Peeing is a recurring undercurrent, but the love story comes first. (What can I say? The pandemic got me lonely...) 

3) This is looooooooooooooo *sips water* ooooooooong. 26,000 words... and counting. 

4) I haven't abandoned my other storyline with Zephyr and all, but this is the main project I'm working on for omo right now. Frankly I feel a lot more at home writing about awkward-but-cute hetero love stories than I feel writing about a possibly-unscrupulously-polyamorous lesbian harem. I'm just weird that way, I guess. 

5) There are two more stories drafted after this one, but I don't know how often I'll be able to post in the near future. So while I would usually spin this tale out over a couple weeks, you're getting it all at once! 

 

So with all those disclaimers out of the way... meet Bree. I hope you like her, despite everything. 

 

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Okay, Bree thought as she zipped up her sleeping bag, so this is happening.

Who knew something as innocent as a quick pee break in the woods could start something like this? Though really, it hadn’t been so innocent. Shorts down around my knees… how good a look did he really get?

Definitely not good enough! And I want to get a good look at him… I’ve wanted to look at him since that very first day…

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“Hello, Camp Bristow Counselors!”

Bree looked around as the orientation began. As she’d guessed, most of the other counselors looked around her age (she’d turned twenty just the month before). They were all gathered for a week of intense preparation before the first campers arrived. Camp Bristow was famous for its outdoor recreation program: camping and hiking in the mountains of New Mexico. Each two-week cycle of students would get a crash course on outdoor skills, team-building, leadership, outdoor survival, rock climbing, wilderness medicine—you name it. Bree, born and raised in Wisconsin, had loved the mountains ever since she’d first seen them as a small child on vacation, and she’d come back as often as she could. She’d even done a five-day hike along part of the Continental Divide Trail after she’d graduated from high school. But now she had a chance to spend a whole summer in the mountains. She couldn’t wait.

The woman leading orientation kept talking. “For those who don’t know me, I’m Julia Bristow, camp director, and yes, my father did start this camp many years ago. It can get a little confusing if people use my last name, so just call me Julia. I want to get one thing straight right away: this is not a ‘my turf, my rules’ situation. This camp wouldn’t be about self-reliance and leadership if y’all just did what I told you to do! But since the camp literally has my family’s name on it, I am ultimately responsible. This means if I put my camp director’s hat on—” she mimed putting on a hat, which was funny because she was already wearing one “—then my decision is final. It has to be. Unless that happens, you create this camp. You are, far more than I, in charge. And you are the ones who have the joy and responsibility of teaching these kids about life in the backcountry.”

Julia looked around, seemingly fixing everyone in the group with her glance. “One more thing and then I’m going to hand it over to your Lead Counselors, and that’s about safety. This is an outdoor education camp, with wilderness backpacking hikes! If you’re going to go rock climbing, the safest thing to do is to never leave the ground—but that defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? We encourage our campers to push themselves, to be brave. That means, however, that you the counselors need to be watchful every moment you’re with campers. Kids are going to fall. It’s your job to make sure they can get back up again. This means you might stand between life and death for them: you need to be at your most professional and your most responsible. We’ve never lost a kid at Camp Bristow and I don’t intend for this year to be the first.”

Julia smiled. “All right, that’s all the heavy stuff you need to hear from me. Here are Lead Counselors Brock and Madison to get you started!”

Two young people, only just a little older than Bree, came forward. The young woman spoke first. “Hi everyone! I am so so so excited to be back for another year at Camp Bristow. Looking around I see a lot of new faces. Rather than have us stand up here and tell the old hands things they already know, and have new people just sit and get, we’re going to break you up into small groups—yes, already—and partner new people with old hands. If you have been a Camp Bristow counselor before, please form a big circle” (and here she gestured so broadly she nearly fell over) “partner up with someone you remember, and raise your hands. New folks! As soon as they’ve gotten that done, find a group. There are about forty of us, and we are looking for ten groups of four.”

Bree had the moment of panic that she always did. She’d never really fit in at school, and so she’d never had an automatic group to go with. She wandered around a little, but groups already seemed to be forming up…

“Hey! Do you need a group?”

She turned to see who was talking to her—and as soon as she did, she turned around to see if he’d actually been talking to someone else.

“Yup, I meant you,” he said with a grin. He was short and sandy-haired.

“Um, yeah,” she said.

“Come and join us!” he said, and held out a hand. “I’m Tam.”

“Uh, that’s an interesting—I mean, hi, I’m Bree.” OMG, girl, how awkward can you get?

He kept grinning and holding out his hand. “Yeah, it’s an interesting name. But I bet you get that all the time yourself. You gonna leave me hanging here or what?”

“Oh, sorry!” she said as she finally shook.

“Come and have a seat,” he said.

She’d been sitting a long time, first on the plane, then on the ride up from the airport. She lay down on her belly next to him. And as soon as she did, she became acutely aware that she’d essentially just presented him with her butt. And that she was… kinda fine with that.

Okay, so this is happening…

She felt a flash of self-consciousness washing over her. A lot of it was centered on that butt of hers, of course, such as it was. She tugged the hem of her shirt further down (not that it did much for covering her ass). But there was plenty of intense negative self-awareness to go around. Item One: Hair (dark, cut short of her shoulders in readiness for New Mexico summer heat). Item Two: Face (chubby in the cheeks). Item Three: Glasses (thick, dorky in the extreme). Item Four: Boobs (not big enough to match the rest of her). Item Five: Height (6’1, and all-but-dateless in high school because of it).

In comparison, Tam was getting cuter by the minute: enchanting sea-green eyes, a little bit of crooked, devil-may-care-ness to his grin, and a wiry look to his body that made her think he could probably lift her off her feet, despite being nearly a foot shorter. To sum up: out of her league. But she didn’t mind that he was in her group…

Tam took charge. “So the way we always start things here at Camp Bristow is with some getting-to-know-you stuff, and we usually do that with a few name games. We’ll get to those in a second but first we need a chance to hear everybody’s name, so I’d like to go around real quick—easy because there are only four of us—and do names, hometown, how long you’ve been at Camp Bristow, and… hmm. I need a gimmick. Uh… what color your underwear is.” He blushed a little. “Don’t use that one with the kids, by the way…”

“What do we say if we’re not wearing any?” Bree asked. Her butt flashed through her mind again, and Tam’s sightline to it. “I mean, I am, but…”

“So that’s another good reason to not use it with the kids,” Tam said, mock-seriously. “Anyway. I’ll start. My name’s Tam, I’m from Boston, I’ve been at Camp Bristow for two summers before this and two days before today. Got here early to help set up.” He turned to Bree, then laughed at himself. “Oh, right. Forgot my own gimmick. Plaid.”

“Uh, I’m Bree… I’m from Waunakee, Wisconsin, just outside Madison… I’ve been at Camp Bristow for about forty-five minutes… and… red.” She blushed even deeper.

After the other counselors had gone around and answered, Tam did a little explaining about the logistics of the camp. “Each of us will have six or seven campers with us pretty much all the time, split by gender. Each cabin has two groups in it, so that’s two counselors and a bunch of kids. We call that a cabin team. During the day, though, we reorganize the groups so there’s one group of boys and one of girls—same numbers but now mixed. That’s a trail team. We stay in those teams pretty much all the time. There are always two of us so we can snatch a bathroom break if we need one, that kind of thing, but otherwise you’re with the kids pretty much 24/7.”

“Is it just those groups the whole time? We never work with other groups?” Bree asked.

“Good question. The teams pretty much stay the same, but we’ll have plenty of chances to work with other groups, too. And when we’re in the backcountry on the overnight hikes, obviously we won’t go back to our cabin teams, we’ll stay on the trail teams.”

After a few more logistics, Tam explained the fun parts. “The big finish is the three-day hike, of course. Two overnights. But we work up to that: the first week we do a hike every day, alternating short and long. Games and lessons afterwards on the short-hike days. Then our first overnight, then a rest day, and finally the three-day. Then the kids go home and we have Saturday night off. New kids come in the next day and we start all over.”

“That’s a lot of hike,” the other new counselor said.

“Yup,” Tam replied. “By the way, we also do some build-up on where we hike. The first one, we’re all together, the whole camp. Next couple are up to you and your other trail team counselor. By the end of the day hikes we have the kids do more of the decision-making and orienteering. Likewise the first overnight hike is pre-planned by us, but on the three-day, the kids get to decide where we’re going, and they’re supposed to get us there and safely home again.”

Bree was getting more and more excited. This was going to be so much fun.

“What we’ll be doing in the next few days is pretty similar. We’ll get the new folks trained as counselors, of course, but we’ll also be exploring the area and getting into shape. That way we can make some informed decisions about where we might go, and also we’ll have a conditioning advantage over the kids. Pretty important that they’re exhausted the first couple days and we aren’t.”

Bree laughed, and Tam flashed her a grin. “Yeah, you get it.”

More logistics, more training, more name-games and gimmicks. A little training role-play. A few icebreakers. Standard camp fare.

For literal standard camp fare, they headed to the dining hall for their first dinner. Although Tam and Bree hadn’t always been in the same icebreaker groups together (the idea was to mix it up and get to know all forty counselors), Bree found herself walking next to him.

“So Tam,” she said. “Where’d you get a name like that?”

“I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours,” he said.

The thought passed through her head: If you show me yours I’ll show you mine...

“Uh, it’s not really a story. It’s just my initials: B.R.E.”

“Okay, so why don’t you go by your first name?”

“Do I look like a Bettina?”

He laughed. “No. Not at all.”

“I tried for years. But no amount of makeup and hairdos could make up for my height—I started growing young. I’m just too tall to be a Bettina. Or even a Tina.”

“You’re just exactly the right height to be a Bree, though,” he pointed out.

“Darn straight. This is a much better style for me, anyway,” she said, gesturing to her fit-for-the-trail boots, shorts, and top.

“And I’m guessing your middle name was out somehow…”

“I don’t look like a Richardson, either.”

“Hah!”

“Your turn.”

“Well, I was on the wrestling team for a couple years in high school. Obviously I was at the lower end of the weight classes and my coach called me ‘Bantam’ for ‘bantamweight.’ Then that got shortened down.”

“Ah, I see. So you’re a wrestler?” Naturally she’d tried dating basketball players, which hadn’t generally gone well. The ones who were tall enough hadn’t worked out; they were assholes, or they were entitled, or they preferred girls Tam’s height. And so, despairing, she’d given up on finding a man, as if nobody under six foot could even qualify. Why on earth hadn’t she looked down now and again? Tam might give her a crick in the neck, looking at him, but it was worth it.

“Not hardly, not anymore. Turns out I liked the sport but I didn’t love the eating disorder my coach was giving me.” He picked up a tray as they got into the dining-hall line. “I quit. Smartest thing I ever did in high school. Kept the nickname, though.”

Bree blinked. “Whoa.”

“Sorry if that got a little heavy.”

She swallowed. “Um. A little, yeah. But—I’ve been there.”

He nodded. “How are you doing with that?”

“Better, now. Not perfect, but better.”

“Me too.” He held up a hand. “High-five.”

She slapped it. “It helps if I’m getting a lot of exercise. And if I’m out in nature.”

“You’re in the right place.”

“Oh, I know.”

They ate together, facing each other across a table. Their tablemates drifted in and out of the conversation but they two of them stayed pretty focused on each other.

The trainings the next two days separated them, and Bree was careful not to eat every meal with Tam. But she allowed herself one meal a day. And, a couple times, he came and sat with her, so it wasn’t her fault those times, was it?

By the time they came down a mountain together, talking and laughing the whole way, she knew she was head-over-heels for him, and she had no idea what to do. Could you date co-workers at Camp Bristow? It didn’t seem smart, even if it was allowed. And besides, they lived really far away from each other. It would be seven weeks together—already six and a half, really, and then they’d never see each other again.

Heck, after this first training week they’d barely see each other anyway. And she’d be up to her armpits in twelve-year-old girls. Too busy for anything to happen. She tried to put all her hopes out of her mind. She couldn’t stay away from him, though, and every time they hiked together or hung out, she fell a little bit further. Honestly, it would be a relief when the campers arrived and take her mind off of Tam.

Then the Friday night before campers arrived, Tam sat down across from her and pushed her a photocopied list toward her plate.

“What’s this?”

“Assignments for trail teams.”

“They’re posted already?”

“Not yet. But I know the right people and I got the inside scoop. A whole half-hour early!” He looked so mock-proud of his non-accomplishment she had to giggle. Then she looked for his name. She should have looked for hers, of course, but she wanted to know…

Her stomach did a flip-flop.

TRAIL TEAM 5: Tam Quantrell and Bree Emert

She squealed. “We’re together!”

“That we are. Ready to do some planning?”

“You bet! … Your last name is Quantrell?”

“Yup!”

“That’s an awesome name. Way better than Emert.”

“Never thought to go around measuring names,” he said, eyebrow raised. “If you don’t like it we can just stick to our first names. But I kinda thought it sounded like a buddy-cop show title. ‘Emert and Quantrell.’ It’s got a rhythm to it.”

“Oooh, you’re right. Who are we chasing in this cop movie?”

“Hadn’t gotten that far. And honestly I’m too much of a rebel to be a good cop.”

“Are there any good cops in cop movies?” She let her voice drop into movie-trailer-voiceover mode. “I thought they were all mavericks, breaking all the rules, playing fast and loose with the law.”

“A department made up of nothing but mavericks seems a bit like a contradiction. If everyone’s a maverick, then isn’t maverick-ness sort of the official policy? Breaking all the rules would be—the rule. Though that would explain a few things…” He scrunched up his face. “Maverick-itude? Mavericity?”

“All right, Mr. Quantrell,” she said, thinking gosh that sounds sexy, “What do we need to plan out?”

 

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See what I mean? That's a long-ass chapter without any sexy bits. But I hope it's still entertaining. 

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She didn’t feel the lump in her throat until later that night, back in her girls-only cabin. Part of her couldn’t believe her luck that out of all the twenty-plus veteran counselors, she’d been paired with Tam. The rest of her realized she was going to be with him all day out on the trail. Watching him climb mountains. Hearing his voice. Looking into his eyes. Wanting to run her hands all over his compact body. Wanting him to climb her mountains…

She almost reached for herself, right there in the cabin with another counselor in bed not far away, but not yet asleep. She got herself under control instead. She wasn’t going to let herself be miserable for the next two weeks because she had to look but not touch.

The lump in her throat eased, but it didn’t go away.

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So the next few days they were busy, incredibly so, but they were busy alongside each other. She caught herself daydreaming way too often as they ran through their plans and routines, and squelched the dreams ruthlessly. However much she wanted to just jump him and drag him out into the woods and cover him in kisses and then… well, do other things… however much she wanted that, she couldn’t. For a list of reasons as long as her arm (and she had quite the wingspan):

  • Co-workers don’t do that
  • Good girls do that
  • GGG girls do do that, but only after asking for consent first, and she just... couldn’t
  • She was trying to shed the Good Girl and become the GGG GF, but she wasn’t  there yet    
  • It couldn’t last, even if he liked her back    
  • He couldn’t possibly like her back
  • I mean, the height difference alone
  • and the glasses
  • Can’t get distracted
  • Too late; going over this list in her head for the fourth time today, she’d missed the last few things he’d said

The last night before the campers arrived, when she headed down to the restroom building to brush her teeth and do her bedtime pee, Tam swam into her mind. That is, she imagined him swimming up to her (where was she? what was she wearing? a bikini? OMG that’s too daring no he’d totally be into it OMG that sounds even worse), surfacing shirtless, his abs sparkling almost as much as the sunlight on the water, little droplets like diamonds flying, slicking back his wet hair…

Between that and her evening pee waiting to be let out, she was so turned on.

She’d discovered years ago that holding her pee felt pretty good. A sexy kind of good. (Sexual, not "sexy", I'm not fourteen. Anymore.) Not oh-god-I’m-cumming good, but mmmm-that’s-nice good. Enough to get her thinking sexy—um, erotic—no, that sounds wrong too… um, hot thoughts. So since she had to pee a bit, and she was thinking of Tam, there it was. And she hadn’t gotten herself off all week. No time or space to do it, not when she was sharing a cabin with another counselor. Could she maybe do something very very quietly?

If she didn’t, when would she? Tomorrow night her cabin would be crowded with adolescent girls and she’d have to keep one ear open even in her sleep.

She swung toward the woods, a half-formed thought of getting out into the darkness… she squelched that thought, too, and headed determinedly to the bathroom.

But there, sitting on the toilet and finishing her pee (she always took a bit to empty out her bladder), her hand right there… her fingers slipped to the tip of her clit anyway.

Here, in a bathroom stall? I can’t…

In her head, Tam hoisted himself up out of the pool on both arms. His swim trunks were… clingy.

But I want it so bad.

Who was the last person to sit on this toilet? I can’t.

I can’t not

Her finger, while waiting for clearer instructions, kept going. Tam was crossing the tiles toward her. He took her by the waist, leaned in close…

If I keep doing this, can I look him in the eye tomorrow?

She pulled her hand away, with a sigh that was almost a sob.

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(I should have known @Melificentfan would be in here before I even finished posting!)

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The next day, any counselor with a driver’s license was pressed into service driving the camp vans to collect campers at the airport and other pick-up points. Bree, proud possessor of a Wisconsin license for the last eight months, was among these. The vans took some careful handling and she’d gotten trained, but it took a lot of focus to manage the still-unfamiliar vehicle. There was a real risk of rolling them, and that was Julia Bristow’s main terror on the days of arrival and departure—surpassing even the fear of campers flying in solo and getting lost.

Several shuttles later, Bree was too exhausted to do much more than smile wearily at Tam as they ate dinner. He hadn’t had to drive.

“No license?” she asked.

“Too short. I can’t adjust the seat and the wheel enough to reach the pedals.”

“That’s got to be a hassle.”

He shrugged. “I know my limits. I can’t dunk, either.”

“I can’t either. I’ve tried.”

“Do you play?”

“Naw, I’ve never had the coordination for it… but I’ve dated some basketball players.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Height isn’t everything.”

“Sheesh, I could have told you that,” he said. “It’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it.”

The “Good Girl” half of her mind was too tired to shut down the vision that popped into her head at that moment.

“So—dated, past tense?” he asked.

“Mmmhmm.”

“Anyone in the present tense at the moment?”

Something niggled her in the back of her brain, but she couldn’t really think; all she really wanted to do was sleep. Well, fall asleep in Tam’s arms. But definitely just sleep. So she answered automatically. “Nope. Just me right now. S’okay.”

He was about to say something when she yawned enormously. “Srry.”

“You look wiped out.”

“I am. Three trips down to the airport and back. Six hours on the road.”

“You’d better not be this tired out on the trail.”

“Driving ’n hiking’re real diff'rent. ’ll be fine,” she said, slurring defensively.

“That’s true,” he acknowledged.

She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

“You look really different without your glasses on,” he said.

Her hyper-self-awareness jolted awake, and tried to wake up the rest of her too. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, you look… well, I guess I’m not used to it.”

“I’ll put ‘em back on…”

He laughed, cocked his head. “No, leave them off a second. Let me compare—”

Since they were discussing glasses, and since she had a great deal of experience in eye doctor’s offices, she giggled. “Which is better? One, or two?” she asked, putting the thick glasses back on as she said “two.”

“Mmm, can’t decide,” he said. “Let me see it again?”

“One, or two?”

He shrugged. “It’s a toss-up.”

“Well in that case, I’ll put them back on because I can’t really see you without them.”

“No, no, leave them off. How many fingers?”

“I can see that you raised your hand…”

“Ooof. That bad?”

“Another few notches down and I’d be legally blind.”

“Is that gonna be a problem out on the trail?”

“Naw. I’m not gonna be bumping into trees or falling off cliffs without them. At least not in daylight.”

“But if you lose them, or they get scratched…”

“This is actually my hiking pair. My old ones. My good ones I keep in their case in my bag. Ordinarily I’d have my contacts, but out in the backcountry there’s just no way. Too much dirt and grime gets in everything, I can’t keep them clean.”

“Got it.”

Then they had to be quiet, because Julia Bristow got up and welcomed everyone to camp, and then there was a great deal of reorganizing as campers found their counselors, and then Bree had to pull herself together long enough to get to meet her six campers. Even in her weary state she immediately picked up on some trends: Fiona and Madalyn were going to be a handful out on the trail, very much fish out of water, whereas Katelyn and Angie were going to be amazing. Sandy was a goofball and her steady stream of jokes was already getting tiresome. Gina could not keep her mind on the icebreakers.

But eventually Bree had their names straight, and they had at least met each other, and Katelyn was already latching onto Bree, one bigger girl to another, and Angie was stepping up to lead. And then it was time to get them and all their gear down to the cabins, and Flora and Madalyn started whining about bags ten steps down the path. Fiona at least had the “excuse” of three or four too many bags, some with designer labels. Bree sighed and scooped up one of them, and without prompting Katelyn grabbed another, and somehow they managed to get everyone to the cabin before there were any temper tantrums. There they got a chance to meet the other team in their cabin. Finally it was time for washing up and lights out, and already the line in the girls’ bathrooms were getting immense. Bree patiently held it until all her campers had had their turn—all the more patient because of the warm-and-fuzzies it gave her, and then finally got her own turn, and then it was up to the cabin and lights out. But of course the girls were still chattering by the time Bree began to slip off to sleep.

The next day was the whole-camp hike, up the “camp trail” that went to the top of the hill behind the Camp Bristow campus—about four miles round-trip. This shouldn’t have taken all day—in fact Bree and Tam had done it together in about three hours, round trip, a few days before—but with the whole camp going up to the meadow just below the hill’s crest, there were traffic jam issues. These were actually built in to the schedule deliberately, to allow the new kids a chance to rest, and to give the counselors time to run some trailside teambuilding games.

This was the first time that they met up with Tam’s team and got to know them. Xavier impressed everyone with his athleticism, but didn’t impress Bree and Tam near so much with his attitude. Eryck was the most experienced and the most geared-up. Bradley and Ian and Nate were still running together in Bree’s head. Sandy the Silly had met her match in Ricky, a born class clown.

But the funniest moment was not one of Sandy or Ricky’s endless attempts at humor, but when the girls had had a chance to get a good look at Tam for the first time. Gina’s jaw literally dropped, and she started giggling incessantly with Fiona and Madalyn.

Right there with you, honey, Bree thought.

As expected Madalyn and Fiona were useless out on the trail, but Angie and Katelyn again stepped up to help carry packs and help coax them to the meadow at the top. More games were played. Tam insisted that they all drink plenty of water—“This is New Mexico in the summer! Drink more!” —and revealed in passing that he was a Wilderness First Responder. “What’s that?” Madalyn asked.

Oh, just about the hottest thing I’ve heard about him yet, Bree thought, but she instead answered, “He’s got medical training for out in the backcountry. Ambulances can’t come out there, and getting to a doctor means hiking out, so a WFR is trained for wilderness first aid and to see if people need to be evac’d.”

“Can you do that?” Madalyn asked.

“Not as well. I’ve only had the Wilderness First Aid class.”

“What’s the difference?”

Tam had overheard. “Honestly? A lot of practice, more than anything else.”

As the kids chattered, Bree turned to Tam. “Maybe we should do a little demonstration?”

“Oooh, yeah, we could teach them to take vitals and stuff!” Tam said, enthusiastically.

But it was time to move on down the hill before this could be done, and then there were many more teambuilding exercises to do. Xavier was a natural at the ropes course, but the girls looked seriously skeptical until Bree, bigger than all of them, scooted on up and slipped herself through the old tire without even breaking a sweat.

“Impressive,” Tam murmured to her when she got back down.

“I’ve been getting into rock climbing.”

“Oh, nice! I’ve been bouldering a few times.” He looked like he was about to say something else, but then the kids needed some direction.

Then dinner, and then a repetition of the night before in getting everyone bedded down.

The next day they headed out on their first trail-team hike. It wasn’t just them, as another pair of teams took the same route (in case of emergencies), but Bree and Tam’s teams stuck together. As they broke for lunch, Tam announced, “Hey everyone. So we’re really going to be relying on each other in the next two weeks, and one way that might happen is if one of us is injured or sick and needs our help. Now, if anyone gets hurt or feels sick, the first thing to do is ask me for help—as I said yesterday, I’m a Wilderness First Responder, and so I’m trained for emergencies like that. Bree and I thought we could show you a few of the basics of Wilderness First Response. That way you’ll know what I’m doing if there is an emergency, though obviously I hope I never have to use my training on you all. We also thought we could teach you a few basic tricks like finding a pulse and taking vitals. That’s useful in a lot of circumstances, really. Bree, can you be my helper for this?”

“Of course.”

“Can you pretend to be injured or sick?”

“Sure!”

“All right, have a seat and I’ll go through my whole routine.”

Bree sat herself down on the ground. Tam kneeled down beside her and said, “Hi there! Looks like you could use a little help.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I’ve had some medical training.” Tam looked at the gathered campers. “So this next part is super-important, maybe the most important step of all.” Back to Bree: “Do I have your consent to examine you?”

Oh, hell yes. She managed, in the nick of time, to cut this down a bit: “Oh, yes.”

“Can you lie back for me?”

I’m starting to regret being his assistant… Except for the part where I’m loving every second…

Tam held up his hands. “All right, everyone, another important tip: spoons, not forks.” He held all his fingers pressed together, not spread out. “Spoons are just more professional.” He spread his fingers and pretended to squeeze something. “Don’t get grabby, because that gets creepy.”

You can grab if you want to!

But Tam kept it utterly professional as he did a quick head-to-toe exam, feeling gently for broken bones. “Okay, it doesn’t feel like you’re bleeding anywhere or you’ve got anything broken. Impressive muscles, but no injuries I can find.”

“That’s because I’ve got a stomach ache,” Bree said.

Tam nodded. “It doesn’t matter, though—in a lot of circumstances I’ll check everything, just to be on the safe side. Stomach ache, huh? So did it hurt when I did this?” He gently pushed in on Bree’s belly.

“Oh, right—ouch!”

He grinned at her forgetfulness. “Okay, maybe appendicitis... But now I’m going to shift from the head-to-toe exam to taking your vitals, which I probably should have done first anyway if you weren’t physically hurt…” He had her sit up again and showed everyone how to check a pulse—“Don’t use your thumb, because it has a pulse of its own”—and breathing rate, level of awareness, and a few other important measures. Then he got the campers checking each other’s pulses and breathing rates.

“Sorry if that was awkward,” Tam said quietly to Bree as they watched the campers checking on each other. “I should have told you what you were getting into first before asking you to be my assistant.”

“Hey, you asked for consent, it’s all good,” she said lightly, all the while thinking, You can examine me any day, cutie…

Tam wrapped up the lesson by explaining that most stomach aches were caused by bad camp hygiene. “So wash your hands! Always always always wash your hands! Soap and water for at least twenty seconds! Even if we’re short on water—it’s that important. But speaking of water…” He took a big drink from his bottle. “This is New Mexico in the summer. Drink water. Drink drink drink. Ninety-five percent of headaches out here are from dehydration. And every year we have at least one person not drink enough and get heatstroke or heat exhaustion. Don’t let that person be you! Drink drink drink!”

Every water bottle was empty when they made it back to camp—and about half the campers made a beeline for the bathrooms as soon as they returned, including most of the girls. One or two of them looked profoundly worried as they hustled off.

“Looks like I’m gonna have to do a how-to-pee-in-the-backcountry lesson,” Bree said.

“Yeah, we got a few city kids here,” Tam said. “We always need to do the dig-a-hole lesson anyway, but most of the time the kids know how to handle Number One, at least.”

So on Hike #3, Bree drew the girls aside and said, “Okay, ladies. You heard Tam yesterday about drinking water. I’m going to tell you right now, if you don’t need to pee at least once out on the trail, you probably haven’t had enough to drink. And, well, none of us are born knowing how to pee in the woods. So let me show you…”

She looked around and saw some revolted looks.

“I’m quite serious,” Bree said. “Your body needs water. And if you drink a lot of water, well, it’s gotta come out again.”

Outside?” said Fiona, as if it was the most disgusting thing in the world.

Bree smiled. “We’re going to be out in the backcountry for days. No bathrooms out there. Unless you plan on holding it for three straight days, it’ll need to happen. Better get used to it now. But it’s scary if you don’t know how to do it…” She ran them through the routine, pantomiming the clothing adjustments rather than actually pulling down her shorts. “I always have toilet paper,” she added, “but I suggest you swipe some rolls from the bathrooms and bring your own.”

Going by the signs—and, later, the squirms—Bree had to set a good example, as she’d guessed she would, conspicuously taking a roll of toilet paper with her as she headed off between the aspen trees. To her relief (of a more emotional kind) Angie and Katelyn again stepped up to help one more time—and then, to Bree’s glad surprise, Madalyn as well. Apparently Fiona got over it. At least she stopped running to the bathroom every time they got back down from the mountains, and she wasn’t keeling over from dehydration either.

Bree was delighted that Katelyn had blossomed. Her height and strength had been essential in the various rope-course team-building exercises the teams had done, and that had earned her more praise from peers than she’d probably been getting in middle school. Bree knew just how much standing out just by standing up could be terrible at that age, so it was marvelous to see Katelyn’s development.

But Madalyn’s rapid shedding of the stereotypes she’d been carrying around made Bree downright ecstatic. Sure, it was impressive when Xavier could shimmy himself up a rope and toss the target down to the ground, but it was far more heartwarming to see Madalyn sitting on Katelyn’s shoulders, working as one supergirl, to achieve the same ends. The two had bonded so tightly they were inseparable, and the teams had taken to calling them Big Lyn and Little Lyn.

Fiona, left behind by her partner in fish-out-of-water-dom, had gravitated to Gina as the remaining “girly” one, due to Gina’s obviously hormone-fueled flirtations with Bradley. (Bradley seemed either oblivious to her attentions, or baffled as to how to respond.) But Gina was far more at home in the woods, and Fiona was having to abandon her suburban-girl distaste for everything around her if she didn’t want to alienate the only friend she had left.

Ricky’s inappropriate humor was fading as his fears faded away. Sandy’s humor was getting funnier as she honed in on her audience more. Ian was subtly getting Bradley and Xavier to cooperate more.

Bree and Tam observed all this like proud parents, whispering to each other with their heads together as they watched.
 

-----------------------------

(For the record, that's about all you're going to get about the campers peeing/getting desperate. I don't sexualize twelve-year-olds.)

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The night before their first overnight hike, each trail team built fires (to practice), cooked over them, and then sat around. Tam took charge of the fire the first night.

“Oh, you do log cabin, huh?” Bree said to him.

“It’s the only way.”

“Dunno about that. My teepees are pretty darn good.”

“There’s a teepee inside the cabin. You still need the cabin to keep the wind off.”

“Well, you all can start tonight’s fire. I’ll get mine going in the mornings, when it’s harder.”

“Shots fired!” Ricky whooped.

“You gonna take that, Tam?” Xavier said slyly.

Tam just smiled. “One match?”

Bree, who generally used the teepee approach because her log cabins always seemed to collapse, actually had no real confidence in her firestarting skills. She’d just wanted to tease Tam. His rock-solid self-confidence wasn’t helping.    

“One match what?” she said, although she new full well.

Tam lit a single match, held it to the base of the fire he’d built with the boys, and—whoosh!—there was a fire.

Bree shook her head. “I don’t know if I can compete with that,” she confessed.

Tam grinned from ear to ear, and all she could do was glare-grin back, partly mock-serious, partly really pissed. She wanted to wipe that grin off his face. Or kiss it. One or the other.

The fire danger was actually pretty high, it being New Mexico in the summer—as Tam’s constant hydration reminders had drilled into them. So the main work Tam had set the boys to doing was heaping up a big pile of dirt close to hand for smothering the fire afterward. Tam also stationed himself nearby as fire marshal, making sure no sparks got loose. Since Gina was now running the camp cooking remarkably well, Bree decided it was time to shift the ground a little on Tam. She did this by getting the singing started.

Disney songs at first, and old Girl Scout campfire tunes that had been handed down. The girls joined in as the last dinner prep was done. But then, after they were eating, Bree broke out her secret weapon: her guitar. She sang some silly crowd-pleaser songs, but then her mood shifted; she found herself singing some more obscure cuts. And then her fingers picked out a riff she couldn’t quite recall, until the words flowed. And she realized it was “Sideways”:

    These feelings won’t go away
    They’ve been knocking me sideways
    They been knocking me out,
    Every time you come around me
    
    These feelings won’t go away
    They’ve been knocking me sideways
    I keep thinking in a moment that time will take them away
    But these feelings won’t go away
    These feelings won’t go away

    

Bree was too frightened to meet Tam’s eyes, but she couldn’t let go of the song, either. She played it through to the end.

For a moment after she finished, no one said anything. Then Nate—cute skinny Nate, their resident gay kid, rainbow pin on his hiking hat—whispered with tears in his eyes, “Whoa.” That brought out the applause—which Tam led.

After that there were a few more songs (Bradley revealed that he had hidden depths, or perhaps more accurately any depth at all, when he borrowed Bree’s guitar for a tune or two), and then it was time to start bedding down. They had a long day ahead of them.
 

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