"The ergonomics of solo barrel mixing are suboptimal."
I should say no. Every sane instinct screams it. This orc cited me for fertilizer dust. He quarantined my gift plant and counted its aphids like a census taker. He's rigid and infuriating and his stupid glowing tattoos are still doing that heartbeat thing and my pinky is still tingling where he touched it and I am in so much trouble.
"What time?"
His garage is a cathedral of organization.
Pegboard walls with shadow outlines for every tool. A rolling magnetic strip holding wrenches in descending order by millimeter. Shelving units labeled with a label maker that has itsown labeled shelf. The concrete floor is so clean I could eat sushi off it, and the air is filled with motor oil and linseed and the faintest trace of that dark woody musk that keeps hijacking my prefrontal cortex.
Seventeen barrels line the back wall. Massive. Steel-rimmed. Packed tight with grey clay-ite aggregate that looks like compressed moonrock.
Flynn hands me a pair of heavy rubber gloves. They're three sizes too big and flop past my wrists like clown accessories.
"Those are rated for chemical splash protection."
"I'm mixing compost, not enriching uranium."
"Volcanicite powder has a pH of eleven point four. It will strip skin."
I shove my hands into the gloves. They make sad flapping sounds. Flynn's mouth does something—a micro-twitch at one corner that's gone before I can catalog it—and he turns to the first barrel.
He lifts the lid with one hand.
I grab the worm castings. A ten-pound bag, dense and black and smelling exactly like you'd expect a bag of worm excrement to smell. I hoist it to the barrel's rim and rip the top.
"Three point seven pounds per barrel. I've marked the line."
"You pre-measured worm poop."
"Precision is the difference between soil and mud."
I dump the castings in. He plunges a massive steel paddle into the barrel and starts turning the aggregate, shoulders flexing, runes dim now but still faintly visible under the garage's fluorescent tubes. The mixture resists him. Clay-ite is dense, packed, stubborn. His arms strain. Veins surface along his forearms.
"Let me get to the other side."
I grab a second paddle from the pegboard—it's exactly where its shadow outline says it should be—and jam it into theopposite side of the barrel. We push in counter-rotation, and the resistance is immediate, brutal, like stirring concrete with a canoe oar. My shoulders burn within thirty seconds.
"Faster."
"I'm going as fast as?—"
"The microbial cultures activate on aeration. Slow mixing creates anaerobic pockets."
"God, you're bossy."
"I'm accurate."
We fall into rhythm. Push, pull, rotate. The clay-ite breaks apart in chunks, darkening as the castings fold in, and Flynn adds volcanicite powder from a sealed container with hazard diamonds on the label. Grey dust plumes into the air. My gloves flap. His paddle clangs against mine and he grunts, adjusting his angle so our strokes interlock instead of collide.
One barrel.
Two.
By barrel five my arms are screaming and sweat plasters my hair to my temples. Flynn's tee shirt is soaked through, clinging to topography I'm deliberately not cataloging. We haven't spoken in twenty minutes. The only sounds are steel on clay, breathing, and the wet slap of soil turning over.
By barrel nine he reaches across to adjust my grip on the paddle. His hand covers mine entirely. Fingers closing over rubber-gloved knuckles, repositioning my wrist angle, and he holds on for exactly two seconds longer than the correction requires.
By barrel fourteen I'm so exhausted I stumble. His arm catches my waist. Pulls me upright. His palm spreads across my lower back, hot through my overalls, and my spine arches into the contact.
