Amaranthine

Cait would probably appreciate the social benefits of being a superhero a lot more if there had ever been a club sex appeal and a dazzling smile couldn’t get her into. That said, it was nice not to have to flirt with the bouncer at all, The Councilwoman flashed her ID and not only did they skip the line, a host ushered them personally to a booth on the VIP balcony.

The walk gave Cait a chance to get a feel for the place, and as a former club kid herself, she had to admit she was impressed. She doubted all the blue neon lights were actual Powerlines, but the place was lit up like a Cyberpunk game, and its denizens didn’t disappoint.

A central dance floor pulsed in time with the music, lights that Cait suspected required Altered involvement keeping pace with the beat. They danced in between the dancers themselves, sometimes playfully mirroring someone really into in the groove.

Pillars of that same light pierced the floor in strategic places throughout the main floor, and as they passed one, Cait realized the music in the club actually spilled out of them, forming a wash of rhythm it’d be reeeaaaal easy to lose yourself in.

Dancing wasn’t their destination though, not yet, and the group was led up a staircase that at first seemed like it was made of light, but upon the first step revealed itself to be cleverly lit glass. At the top, a quieter, much more exclusive vibe awaited them. They slid into a comfortable, half-circle booth overlooking the dancefloor, put in drink orders with a waitress that tipped the ‘cool’ scale even next to Kennedy, and settled in.

Or Cait and Qi did. Lira didn’t even wait for their drinks to arrive before whisking Fiona and Kennedy down to the dancefloor.

The dragon raised an eyebrow in proposition, talons fingering the hem of Cait’s miniskirt, but Cait demurred. She once more moved that claw up to around her shoulders, relaxing back into Qi and the plush cushions of the booth.

“Not yet,” she explained, looking backwards, up into Qi’s face. “Kinda nice to have you alone, and in a place the social contract stops us from getting too distracted.”

Qi’s talons played with the strip of Cait’s tan skin exposed between her shirt and her top, clearly considering whether or not the social contract applied to superheroes, but with visible effort, she relented.

“So, we were just hitting on something before we got here,” Cait continued, capitalizing on Qi’s self control. “That whole Alpha Dragon thing you do. No criticism, there are times it super does it for me, but… is it you?”

Qi frowned down at her, and, yeah, Cait felt a little bad. Qi had also just taken down an arm of an apocalypse cult, she deserved some R&R, but this had to be addressed.

“Cait…. I mean, your best friend is a tentacle monster that seems to be a mouth for an angry god. You understand this isn’t gonna be a simple answer, right?” Qi asked, to a nod from Cait. Then she tried something she rarely did; shutting the fuck up. After a moment, Qi sighed a puff of resigned smoke and continued.

“So, more and more, it is me,” Qi admitted. “But I’m less in control of it than I’d like to be.”

Her talons were playing with Cait’s clothes again, but with the way her eyes unfocused and her throat choked up, Cait thought that was a soothing measure, not flirting.

“That night, at the Guillotine with you and Lira, and after… Cait I’d never experienced anything like that. I wanted more, part of me just more of you, but most of me more of all of it. The sex, the friends, the fun, all with people I couldn’t hurt—”

“-and Lira,” Cait interjected, getting a laugh out of Qi, and stopping her from falling too far into herself.

“-and Lira,” Qi agreed, “but, Cait, do you realize how intimidating you are?”

The suggestion seemed ludicrous on the surface. In stature alone, Qi was maybe the most intimidating figure at AEGIS, besides maybe Claudio. But like the bull, maybe sometimes the biggest bodies held the softest souls.

“You’re all so beautiful, like, I get that I’m hot, but I went from a fucking virgin to being with three girls so stunning that I sometimes wonder if I went to sleep that night and the rest has all just been a dream. And more than that, each of you is so confident, so effortlessly welcoming. I mean, even if we weren’t sleeping together all that would throw me for a loop, I just-“

She took a breath, steadying herself for a moment, before the river of words once more burst through whatever dam she was building.

“Cait, I wasn’t enough. The girl I was couldn’t handle it. I’m not like B-Man, there aren’t two people in me, but the Dragon has always been there, part of me. I just… I let it out. So I could be more like you.”

Cait hissed, the words hurting even when nothing else could.

“It started that first night, obviously, that was waaaay beyond my control, but afterwards… well, it was just easier to let that part of me take the reins. Pride, confidence, it all comes easy like that. Then the fights, Cait, god, the fights. The sex was one thing, but I was a fucking street level hero. A few coonbeasts here or there, maybe a low level Altered gangster. Now I’m in melees doling out casualties in the hundreds! I can’t do that Cait! But the Dragon can. Draconic can.”

A tear evaporated to mist before it even reached her jawline.

“I just started pulling back less and less of it, after the battles. And you guys stuck around, so it had to be working. The sex didn’t stop. The fights kept coming, Kennedy warmed up to me, I got to be with you….”

Cait rose turning to wrap herself around Qi’s immense shoulders. She just held her tight, Qi’s talons holding her back while the girl sniffled into her shoulder. After a few minutes, Cait pulled back, cupping Qi’s chin and raising her to meet her own.

“Wanna know the way you were the most like me?” Cait asked. Qi looked confused, but that was better than sad, and nodded.

“You held all that in waaaaay too long,” Cait laughed, and Qi chuckled too, just a bit.

“Maybe,” Qi huffed, still huddled into Cait, “but you guys never have problems, I mean I was the only one who got upset about Willow, I don’t have history like Kennedy and Lira, I’m not your fucking soulbound mate or whatever is going on with you and Kennedy, I had to make things easy or you’d all leave.”

And I would’ve, too, in another life.

“Did you know this all started with Lira making a plan to manipulate me into having sex with her and Director Swan while Kennedy rode along?” Cait asked.

“Hah!” Qi barked, a little amused light returning to her eyes, “No, but not exactly a hard sell.”

“True, but I wasn’t exactly sold it. I was the last to know. To be honest, it was never really confirmed, but I’ve always been good with context clues. And Kennedy was not ready for me to fuck her mom, regardless of how horny the thought made Lira,” Cait explained.

“Wait, you really havent? You two seem…”

“Oh, its probably coming,” Cait laughed, “but no, we haven’t. Speaking of haven’t did you know I could barely even touch Kennedy for like a month?”

“I…. Did not.”

“Yep!” Cait said brightly. “Technically, you got into her pants waaaayyyy easier than I did.”

“Jealous?” Qi asked, a flash of the Dragon entering her eyes. Not overwhelming. Just enough.

“Nope!” Cait answered with a grin, to a laugh from Qi. “The point is, honestly, I’d been thinking about how easy it was with them too, but fuck, it hasn’t. Things were just changing so much for me all the time it just seemed that way.”

“Still harder with me though,” Qi whispered.

“Yeah, probably, but I think it’ll be easier once we both know what it is that you want,” Cait countered. Qi looked stunned for a second. It was a look Cait knew well. The look a woman wore when they’d been putting their all into pleasing her, and finally took the time to think about themselves.

Historically, that had always ended with one of them (never Cait) crying and leaving, only to occasionally return for messy, regrettable sex for years after.

Cait, despite the conflicted emotions she’d had on Qi mere hours earlier, realized right the fuck then that she was not going to let that happen with this girl. She wasn’t the first woman who had deserved better. But she was the first Cait would give it to.

So she held Qi’s ruby gaze, waiting, hoping that what Qi wanted was something she could actually do. In her peripheral, she felt one of Qi’s talons move to her own stomach, stroking slowly above her womb.

“My… body only wants one thing,” she said, but didn’t let the Dragon enter her eyes this time. “but I… I was really really happy last night, not the sex, just watching tv while you played with my hair. That’s what I thought a relationship would be like. Could we maybe just do a little more of that? 1 on 1 couple stuff? I’m in for the polycule, I really am, but all the time? It’s… it’s a lot.”

Cait laughed, shaking her head in disbelief.

Can’t be that easy.

“It is, isn’t it?” she agreed with a laugh, “Yeah, Qi, we can make more time with each other. You’re already doing a good job of it yourself with Kennedy. I’d love to give you the full girlfriend experience for as long as you’ll have it.”

Qi pulled her into a kiss, deep, and long, and still somehow soft, despite how far her tongue made it down Cait’s throat. When it was done, Cait leaned back against her breathless. She didn’t expect to see the frown on Qi’s face.

“Can I ask you something?” Qi said.

“Of course.”

“How does that not hurt?” she asked, and Cait followed her eyes down to the dance floor. There was a lot going on down there, but Lira’s fire-orange hair was unmissable. It wasn’t like you could look for her face, locked as it was to Fiona’s. The two women were in a makeout session about as explicit as it could legally get in public, maybe a little more, if Lira’s absent hand was as far up Fiona’s skirt as it looked like.

Next to them, Kennedy danced close with a stranger. Cait imagined a number of people had shot their shot with the smokeshow goth, but the one who had her attention now was of a kind with Kennedy herself; like Cait’s girl, her approach to club wear seemed to be cutting up a band shirt enough that it was slutty, and wearing pants with enough holes to really show off those fishnets.

Unlike Lira and Fiona though, while the dancing was a little flirty, it honestly looked like Kennedy might just be making a friend. Tough to tell from up here, but it looked like the new girl’s shirt bore the logo of a frequent tour mate of Unleash the Archers, who graced Kennedy’s own. They shimmeyed close to each other, but it seemed like it might be so they could gush about Brittney Slayes, not so they could make out.

Cait knew, on some level, that she should feel something other than arousal/pride. She’d started fights with the partners of people who were cheating on them with her, just because she knew she could win. Buuuuut she didn’t. All she could think about was how nice it would feel to be between Lira and Fiona. How nice it was that Kennedy was reaching out, or at least being receptive to, a total stranger. If they started making out too, all the better. That girl was not bad, and Cait was lucky enough to be one of the only girls in the world whose partner couldn’t lie to her about her feelings if things happened on the side.

“Doesn’t make a lot of sense, Qi,” she admitted, shaking her head. “Wouldn’t be this way with anyone else. But it’s the way it is with them. The way I am for them. Gotta say though, I could be a little more possessive of you, if you’d like?”

Qi held her just a little tighter.

“I… think I would actually. Can we pretend you’re just mine, too, sometimes?” she asked. It was adorable. The true vulnerability from the, physically at least, strongest woman Cait had ever known went a long way towards pushing her emotions from ‘like’ to ‘love’. In the moment, Cait almost wished it wouldn’t be pretend. But there was no way she could give up those girls on the floor below. Speaking of….

“Why don’t we start now?” Cait asked, hupping up to her feet and extending a hand to Qi, just as she had months ago. “Lots of dance floor down there, plenty of space, plenty of people we don’t know. I’d love to show you how to feel alone in a crowd.”

Through gleaming sharp teeth, a wonderful woman smiled out. Qi took her hand, and let herself be led to the floor.