“I’m sorry, Naomi. I am leaving you for your sister.”

“Did she put you up to this?”

I nodded and sighed. “Yes. I hate to say it… but I am totally stuck on her.”

She glared at me, “You cannot get out of your contract that easily… You are still going to have to do your ads and work with me every day, you know that, right?”

I nodded, “Yes, but you know it wasn’t working out. I am sorry for being so unfaithful, but I cannot handle the strain of being apart from her.”

Naomi growled, “Good, I was getting tired of you anyway. Fine, you can make her miserable instead. And you have a tiny dick.”

I whispered, “Do you think they will buy it?”

She shook her head, kind of half-smiling, “Not even slightly. Too dramatic. I still don’t think we should bother. You know full well that if you go to an art opening or something with her on your arm instead of me, they will make up their own stories that will be far better than anything you and I can come up with.”

I nodded, “Besides, I don’t really have a tiny dick, right?”

Naomi shook her head, “Nope. Upper fifteen percentile, easily.”

I clutched my chest melodramatically. “I am wounded! Struck to the quick!”

She shrugged, “You are a white guy. That put certain upward limits on your potential.”

I shook my head, “That being said, I am actually serious, I want to date your sister. But I need to be absolutely sure that it’s not going to cause friction.”

Caelo was watching both of us, sort of silently giggling.

“If it doesn’t cause friction, I might have to downgrade you from that fifteen percentile.” Naomi said, smirking.

Well, that turned around fairly quickly. “So does this mean my twisted fetishes of scoring with sisters at the same time are eternally damned?”

She shook her head, smiling, “Yes. Besides, I need to clear the way for another interest I have. I met this cute older guy, who’s in the secret service. Now that I don’t have to worry about disintegrating him, the idea of playing mouse to his cat sounds enormously fun.”

“Besides which, we didn’t grow up together, So I don’t think we got that whole sister jealousy thing. She’s not interested in playing the cowl game, so we cannot even really compete...though I do worry that some day she’s going to be tasked with bringing me down. That could be fun, especially if I am single and she has you protecting her.” she waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Shut down. Fantasies. No imagining being the peanut butter in a Reese’s cup.

Caelo signed. “ I told you she wouldn’t mind. Besides, she is actually really into that guy. Only the fear of zapping him kept her away from him. You were a self-confidence umm...thing.”

I nodded to her. It was a little humbling to know I wasn’t god’s gift to the Dupree women. Then again, with my face, I should never have expected it.

“Shoo, Caelo, I need to talk to my mook in private for a minute. No snooping either.”

Caelo nodded, and hopped up from her lounger beside the pool. She was dressed in something that may as well been nothing, I think to intentionally tease me for being such a fuddy-duddy about making sure our… relationship didn’t screw with Naomi. She headed up one of those stairways that lead up to the superstructure bits, where the staterooms were, flashing a barely-clad bottom as she went up whatever it was called, since I still had no idea of the nautical term.

She was wearing what could euphemistically called a bikini, but instead of the tight Lycra I was used to, it was more of a soft, shimmery set of layers of cheesecloth that her dark skin beneath clearly showed through. She had put it on AFTER breakfast, when most of the crew was working, and wrapped a cute towel around it as she headed up the stairs… I think she wore it for me, specifically because she knew I would be thinking about nothing other than ripping it off.

What was that question again? Would I be irritated with knowing she was emotionally manipulating me? That depended entirely on the reward at the end of that manipulation… I was fine with it.

“Serious question. Are you in love with her?” Naomi asked.

“Very hard question. I think I’d need a better definition than the one most people use. Would I spend my life to protect her? Yes. I was actually pretty sure that the rift might kill me, for real, when I went after her. If she decides to marry me someday? Would I spend a lifetime with her? That’s an easy answer, but not a real test. If she doesn’t die of old age, I have no idea what will happen in the future, but spending the next fifty years or so learning about her would be no hardship.”

I shrugged. “But love is… a lot more complicated to answer. I think a better question would be what I would be willing to sacrifice to be with her, and the answer is whatever it takes. But I am not going to pretend that I will always be unselfish, or even that I can be there through thick and thin.”

“We are both Metahumans. My job hasn’t been able to kill me yet, but that doesn’t mean it won’t, especially my NEW job. I cannot even promise that Alchemyst won’t find a way to end my life when he finds out I am opposed to whatever plans he has to freely distribute system upgrades.”

Naomi sighs. “I thought you were a better liar than that. Okay easier question. Would you be willing to raise children with her?”

I nodded, “Yeah, especially since they will be born with the new system. I could finally have children that might outli…”

“Doofus.” she interrupted, “I meant, the whole loyalty thing, cleaving only unto thing, raising children thing, making her happy thing.”

I grinned, “I went without sex for thirty five years. I am pretty sure I could deal with only having access to the sexiest..one of the two sexiest...women on the planet.” I shrugged, “And before you ask, yes, I am utterly sure of what I am in for. I have raised a lot of children.”

“So, bearing in mind I probably know a hell of a lot more about commitment than many, and I believe it’s close enough, is it okay if I go do horrible things with your lovely younger sister that involve punishing her for teasing me with that wannabe onion skin, probably a hot shower, and then blowing a whole lot of that hard-earned swimsuit model money on feeding our faces?”

Naomi looked at me very carefully, and then nodded. “Yes. Just promise me that at some point, you will drop your shields and let her have a good long look.”

I smiled, “I already have.” and neglected to tell her that she had let me have a good long look as well. Nemesis was...interesting. And I finally figured out what those 25 points were for. We had stopped the incursions, but now someone was going to have to deal with some of the fallout, and Lindsay had forced me to agree that I would be one of those someones.

She nodded, and I smiled slightly, pulling out my chair, and without a word followed Caelo up the ladder. She had hungrily promised me a reward for being her knight in shining armor after we shared a little of our emotional states, and I intended to collect. And then we’d have to go eat. A lot.

Being a mid-level mook was certainly looking up.

~fin