Tuesday, December 15
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We lay in my bed, the covers a jumbled pile on the floor. My breaths lined up with Bee’s chest pressed against my back; I’d given up on ever being the big spoon and instead just enjoyed the afterglow as Bee’s hands played with my tummy. The smell of sweat and green apples hung in the air.
“Hey,” Bee said. She kissed the back of my neck, and I shivered. “Morning, babe.”
Damn, had it been a fun way to wake up.
I struggled out of her grasp enough to roll over and stare at her blue eyes, curly hair, and shoulders as she breathed just as heavily as I was. “Good morning. I should get dressed.” But I didn’t move, and she pulled me back into her grasp like an octopus. There wasn’t much I could do but let it happen, and it’s not like I wanted to get up, anyway.
“Okay, I’ll stay just a bit longer.”
“Good,” Bee said, moving her hands to rub my shoulders as I melted into the bed. We’ll have plenty of time for that essay later, and who knows when 3V1L will make a move, but right now, you’re all mine!”
“Sure am, honey,” I grinned stupidly. My whole body felt like putty, like she was molding clay with her hands, and when I tried to return the favor, she laughed and pushed my hand away. “What?”
“Babe, you’re not great at giving massages,” Bee said. “You don’t push hard enough in the right places.”
She pushed against my shoulder, and I gasped as it popped. “Holy shit.”
“Yep. So how about you let me do my thing? You already did enough.” She rolled onto her knees to get a better angle, and I turned my head to stare up at her. Her muscles rippled under her skin as she stretched. I shivered again; I had a feeling in the back of my head that wouldn’t go away, and even though most of me had melted, I couldn’t help but worry.
“What?” She paused, looking down at my back, and her fingers started moving across it until she found the knotted place to the right of my spine. “Keep your head straight. It’ll be easier to push on you that way and get things into the right spot. Now relax, babe. Let me do my thing.”
“Nothing. Just…” I gasped as she pushed on my shoulder again, this time driving knuckles deep into it and grunting from the effort. The sound made me snort, and I quickly kept talking as quickly as I could piece thoughts together. “I don’t know, some funny feeling.”
“Something I’m doing? Or something I did?” Her hands danced across the knot in my back. It loosened, and I melted even more than I already had.
I shook my head and talked into the pillow. “No, you were amazing. It’s…I’m not sure. Forget it. I already have.”
“Liar,” Bee said. She stopped for a moment, and I made a whining sound. “Fine, if it’s really nothing, we’ll let it go.”
Her hands kept their dance up for another minute…two minutes…until I’d lost track of time and didn’t even notice when they stopped. I’d melted into her again, listening to her breath tickle my ear, and everything felt right with her arms around me again.
So why wouldn’t that feeling leave?
----------------------------------------
It took almost two hours to get partially dressed, and Bee still wasn’t wearing anything but a bathrobe she refused to tie shut, but we’d finally started to work on our Team Compositions essay. Because everyone in the class was partnered with at least one classmate, Doctor Mays had let us work on a single essay together as long as we were okay with sharing the grade.
So, Bee sat at my laptop, typing dutifully away as I cooked breakfast in my underwear and a T-shirt. The apartment’s thermometer was a little low, but both of us were still too glowed up from morning sex to care, and I wanted to make breakfast for Bee myself. I could have transformed into Ramsey Fieri, but honestly, it was bacon and eggs, pancake mix, and orange juice—even I couldn’t screw that up.
“So, heard anything from Vigilant Vow or Honeycomb?” Bee asked, leaning over the cushions.
I stirred the eggs; they’d become soft, pale yellow, and at this point, I just had to keep them from burning, and they’d be fantastic. “No, not yet. Do you think they’re dating?”
“Obviously. That seems to be what happens when two supers work together,” Bee grinned.
I rolled my eyes and went back to the eggs and bacon. She was right. I’d ended up in relationships with the first two supers who’d given me the time of day, and she’d landed on her first. “It’s got to do with being able to be honest. The secret identity is a big secret, and sharing it’s really intimate or something, so it’s logical that you’d trust another super with it and not an unpowered one.”
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“Yeah, sure. Or supers are just hot.”
“Uh-huh. That definitely helps, believe me, but my ex was—“
“A dweeb? I am aware.” Bee rolled her shoulders, shrugging the robe off one, and returned to typing away on my keyboard. As she clacked away on our introduction, I shoveled the eggs onto two plates, added the bacon, and flipped a pair of pancakes onto each of them. But the funny feeling was back—or maybe it hadn’t left—and as I called Bee over and she dug in with an appreciative sound, I thought maybe I’d placed it.
“Would you still love me if I was unpowered?”
Bee snorted. “That’s what you’ve been weird about all morning? You’re worried about that? I mean, really? Yeah, if you were unpowered, I’d still love you. You might even know about Fursona. But we’d probably have to hang out at my place because you’d probably be living in Ash Hall or Cottonwood’s lower floors. They don’t give places like this to Extras, and they definitely don’t let them keep them for over a year. So, that might be a dealbreaker. It’s so nice here, and I…haven’t been keeping up with my cleaning.”
Thanks, babe,” I snarked. The place had been cleaner before Bee moved in full-time, but I’d at least gotten her to keep her laundry in a single pile and put her dirty dishes in the washer every so often. Hanging out at the Outback Stake-Out House or in her room—which I still hadn’t seen—might’ve been a dealbreaker for me.
When I told her that, she laughed and drowned her poor pancakes in syrup. “Yeah, yeah. It’s a mess, and I’ll have to get it cleaned up so I can host parties every once in a while—if you call having Cam and Su-Bin over for games a party. They’re not really the liveliest. Do we know anyone else?”
“You said you had friends after the window incident last year,” I said. Then I set my fork down. “Wait. You said regular students don’t get places like this. Su-Bin’s been here, and she knows I’m not rich enough to afford it myself. Do you think she suspects…?”
“Nah. We were friends before your whole drama with her, and she probably just thinks it’s a bureaucratic oversight or something. Those happen all the time, honestly. There was one guy who lived in the dorms three years ago, even though he’d graduated. I think your secret’s safe with the school.”
“Okay.” Bee kept eating as I stared at her. “You’re sure you’d still love me if I was—“
“Is this like the worm question?” Bee asked. “You need to stop. If I was gonna ditch you, I’d have done it last year. You could retire, and as long as you let me keep superheroing around, I wouldn’t mind one bit.”
“Thanks again,” I said, this time more seriously. But as I played with my food, the weird feeling didn’t lift. If anything, it pressed in more and more.
Bee noticed. She put down her fork, popped a last bite of bacon into her mouth, and stood up. “Annie. Couch. Now.”
“Come on. Finish your food first. This isn’t going anywhere.”
“No. I can’t eat when you’re moping across the table. It’s unsettling. Couch. Now.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me off to the couch, where I waited until she sat down. The moment she did, I flopped down, resting my head on her lap while she played with my hair.
“Okay. This isn’t really about me, Su-Bin, or Vigilant Vow. That’s not why you’re moping. So what’s up?”
I let her fiddle with my hair for a while until she cleared her throat impatiently. “Okay, it’s the same problem, but in reverse. When we, uh…”
“Had sex?”
I blushed. “Yeah. When we were in bed this morning, I felt like Anika for a while. No one cared about my superpowers or what I did with them. You didn’t ask me to be Copy Cat or anything weird like that, and I didn’t need to run around as Understudy. We got to be Bee and Annie, and it felt really nice. But then, when we stopped, and you started pushing on my shoulder…it’s tight because when I tackled Sister Sly, I landed badly. Everything I’m doing is Magical Girl Understudy, not Anika DuPont.
“I don’t think Power War Three is helping, either. It feels like the things I did freshman year to be normal, like going to Ilneat talks and the job fair or stuff like that? That’s all work now. If we’re not in an Episode, we’re on Patrol or studying for the degree program. It’s a lot to manage,” I finished.
“And Doctor Ayers’ resources aren’t helping, huh?” Bianca asked. When I nodded, she closed her eyes. “Okay. How about this? We’ve got a week of finals and the big finish against 3V1L, then the semester and the season are both over. Let’s finish strong. Afterward, we’ll find three or four clubs we want to be involved with. No superhero stuff during break, or during club time. We try to make friends who don’t even like heroes but aren’t APPEAL fanatics. That way, you can be Annie, I can be Bianca, and we can see what being a normal college kid feels like. Deal?”
I nodded. Bee’s leg felt warm against my neck. “Deal. Just one week. We can do one week.”
“Yep. One week.”
My phone buzzed. I ignored it because it was on the kitchen table across the room. Instead, I let Bee keep messing with my hair, shivering sometimes when she rubbed against the spot on my neck below my ear. Whatever was on it, it’d be more stuff to do as Understudy—more fights to win, more people to save—and I really, really needed to be Annie for a little longer.
Then something exploded outside. “I guess we should check on that, huh?” Bee said in a voice filled with fake lightness.
“Yeah.” I got up and grabbed my phone. It wasn’t a text, but it was an email from TU.
Subject: EMERGENCY: Power War Possible Campus Incursion
To All Students
A joint assault by several major-league villains is currently underway near Tokyexico University. Doctors Mays, Jackson, Tennyson, and Mindstorm are responding. Due to the interruption, all finals are postponed until further notice.
All unpowered students and superpowered students mid-minor and below:
- Stay indoors.
- Avoid contact with active superheroes
- Do not engage McHammer, Lord Destructo, or any of their subordinates
- Do not attempt to attend classes until further notice
All mid-minor and higher superpowered students:
- Be on alert
- Hold your current position and wait for instructions from the Council of Heroes or Tokyexico University Administration
Thank you for your cooperation,
Helen Barber
Vice-President of Student Services
Tokyexico University
I sighed. “Guess there’s one more thing to deal with?”
“Yep,” Bianca said, heading for the Green Room. “Time to suit up.”