Eurydice waved Dee over. She burned a few nanomek muttering in ultrasound, too fast and high pitched for Dee to hear. "He's faking it, you know. His obliviousness, I mean. He always knows exactly what I want, even before I want it, and he teases and teases until I can't take any more." Dee ambled forward, his expression puzzled. "Get ready for the hardest foreplay of your lives, girls," Eurydice added.

CeeCee snorted back a laugh, then answered Eurydice by broadcasting on the same wavelength. "If it's an act, he deserves an Oscar. I know he's the love of your life, Eurydice, but when it comes to women Dee doesn't have the sense God gave a lemon." The brunette rocked in Dee's arms, a muzzy smile stealing over her face as her body settled against his. "Look, the Easy girl is wide awake and having a ball with your boyfriend and he hasn't even noticed."

"Sure he has. You don't know him like I do," Eurydice broadcast before calling out in an audible frequency. "Dee, put the Easy down, please." Dee ground to a halt halfway across the road, seemed to notice the damsel draped over him for the first time. He looked about, shrugged and turned back, loping across the street in his signature jaguar strut.

"And now he's making me watch him walk," Eurydice broadcast an ultrasonic sing-song.

"Why 'make'," Unyx wondered aloud. "Why would he even want to make you...Oh." CeeCee, Eurydice, and Raspberry, their surface tension dewing with liquid goosebumps, ogled Dee's backside as he closed in on a low, even concrete slab. "Why is everyone so obsessed with ass? First Nyx with Ursula's ass, now you all with Dee's ass. Although I admit that girl in Starbucks with the great...Oh." Dee bent over the slab. Unyx's eye-mask widened as her voice grew choppy and small. "okay — impressive." Dee stretched to lay the brunette out on the slab. "most — impressive."

Dee nudged the brunette into a comfortable position, unheeding how she trembled and squirmed at his touch. Eurydice narrowed her eyes. "Now he's showing me his kudzu in action, trying to make me jealous." Her core achieved a steady simmer.

Raspberry edged away from the radiant green girl. "Good thing it's not working, huh?"

"I still don't buy it," CeeCee insisted, but Eurydice could hear the amber woman panting. "He can't be doing it on purpose. He just can't." Dee steamrolled toward them. "No one's that…devious."

Dee flipped the hair away from his eyes, cocking his head to the side. "What's going on, guys? CeeCee? You okay?" CeeCee only nodded. Dee tapped a toe on the remaining bottle. Water spilt over the black lip print on the bottle's mouth. "Hey, is anyone going to drink that?"

Eurydice mopped her forehead. "I—I don't think so. Why?"

Dee reached for the bottle but Raspberry snatched it up and slugged some down in the blink of an eye. "Sorry," she gasped, wiping her lip with the back of her hand. "Needed one last sip. Here ya go, stud muffin. Thirsty?"

"No problem." Dee took the bottle from her. "Thanks. I'm not thirsty, just itchy. Like beach sand in the crack of your ass, but a hundred times worse."

"Dee, listen." Eurydice rose up to her knees, fidgeting.

"Just a second, honey," Dee said, and upended the bottle over his forehead. He let water pour out in three long, lazy glug noises before righting the bottle. The clear liquid ran through his hair and down his face. Soon the neck of his white muscle shirt was soaked.

Eurydice stared as the tee shirt material stuck translucent to the toned contours of Dee's pectorals and his small chocolate brown nipples. Eurydice's legs softened and merged into a single, curvy wedge. Water droplets falling from Dee's hair dribbled onto her face. "Uh, D—Dee?"

"Oh, shit, sorry." Dee took a step back, rivulets encircling his head like a melting crown. He peeled off his shirt with his free hand, and said with an inscrutable smile, "Didn't mean to get you wet."

Dee turned and stalked away, pouring a few glugs of water down his back till it glistened. CeeCee drew herself up, swearing, "That son of a b—" but Dee bent over to pull off his sweat pants and her lips glued themselves together. She broadcast in a burbling, babbling ultrasound: "He is. He really, really is. Please, Eurydice, let me fuck the inscrutability off that man's face. Please."

Dee stood across the road, and poured more water into his hair. "That should be me," Eurydice sighed. Dee poured water over his arms. Eurydice caressed her throat, touched the upper swell of her breast. "That should be me." Dee emptied the last of the water on his legs and rubbed himself down, his muscular back bunching and flexing with each twist and stroke. "That really should be me," Eurydice groaned, her shaky hands liquefied into nectarous waves coursing down her tummy and into her sopping sex.

Raspberry coughed. "Well, tough shit, Sherlock." She slapped her hand onto the pavement. The water pooling at Dee's feet rippled, zigzagging across and streaming into Raspberry's splayed fingers in an army of clear, wriggling pollywogs. "That was me."

"that — last — drink — you — spat — nanomek?" Unyx accused.

"Spit? Me? Never." The last of the pollywogs leaped into her jellied fingers. "But I couldn't help a little backwash, now, could I...I..." The re-remembrances hit her and she toppled backward. "Oh fuck, he's everywhere and so solid and strong and, oh, shit, I'm cumming, I'm cumming!" She writhed in a violet puddle on the road, the fabric of Yves shirt the only thing holding her together. "I could die, I could die now and it'd feel so good I wouldn't fucking care, I could die—"

"Good." Eurydice crept toward Raspberry on all fours, green with envy, lust, and a gallons of melting Jell-O. "Because I am gunna kill you."

Yves' migraine fissured his thinking. "I'm sorry, Tomoe. What did you say?"

Tomoe held out the two pills again. "Little. Yellow. Different. Come on, it's a perfect straight line."

"Tomoe, look." Yves felt the mad desire to drill a hole in his skull; anything to relieve the pressure-pain. He forgot what he was going to say.

SB sauntered up, her usually tight one-piece dress flowing lose past her knees. "Hey, T, Yves. Wow, Yves, you look like shit."

Yves tried to smile, grateful for the rescue, but only affected a grimace. "Well, I feel like shit." He managed to put two thoughts together. "So at least there's symmetry." His knees began to buckle.

SB steadied him, her grip strong and cool on Yves' bare forearm. "Yves, you've got to take a break. You're dead on your feet." He lost what she said next to the miasma of migraine. SB thumb slipped under the strap of his tan, sleeveless tee shirt, massaged a pressure point in hollow of his collar bone. The pain and fatigue faded enough for him to focus. "...Ride me, Yves."

He found his balance. "What?"

"Welcome back," SB smirked. Her grip slid down his arm and she placed her hand in his, careful to avoid the gauze bandage on the pad of his thumb. "I said, 'Take a ride with me, Yves.' Back to SRU. There's something there that I want to give you." Tomoe coughed. SB glared. "What now?" Tomoe unsnapped the top of her purse and pulled out an unlabeled, glass mason jar filled with strawberry-red jam. SB's expression softened. "You knew? Of course you knew. And you're okay with it?"

Tomoe held out the mason jar. "Are you kidding? I've been watching this bit for weeks." SB took the jar with her free hand and Tomoe added, "Give the knight his sword. After all, you haven't had this good a candidate in forever, seems like."

"I have no idea what you to are talking about." Yves shook his head. "This must be what Dee feels like all the time."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Tomoe said, pointing.

On the other side of the overpass, Dee had removed his shirt and doused himself in water. "Nothing Dee does surprises me any more," Yves said. "Not after the skank-bot gangbang. The world works different for him, that's all." Dee stripped down to his underwear. "I just need to figure out the rules."

SB took a step back and tugged. "C'mon, Yves. You don't want to be here for what's about to happen next."

Unyx and the three meliae were watching Dee's impromptu flash dance. Yves saw the air around them shimmer with heat. "Uh, yeah, I can always work out the rules later. Or from a minimum safe distance."

SB smiled and tugged again, and this time Yves followed her. "See ya 'round, T," she said.

"I thought she said she, uh, wanted to watch?" Yves asked, wondering, What the Hell have I gotten myself into? ["…it's not my fault…you were the one who decided to drop by and try and cheer me up…"] At least I can't blame Dee this time. ["…we're so lucky Dee chose you…"] Or can I?

"She's watching," SB assured him, leading him around the slabs of concrete. "She was watching, she always will be watching. She's T, and I'm her cheeseburger."

"I'm just going to pretend I understood that," said Yves, "and not say anything."

"Good plan."

Tomoe watched SB drag a bemused Yves down the road. Tomoe had watched SB with Yves a few dozen times before and will watch them again a few million more times in the future. These were some of her favorite moments, after all, and she experienced them as often as she could. "Well," she said, snapping her purse shut, "what now?"

The brunette stirred on the level concrete slab, a copper-and-silk clad offering on an altar to some Pulp Fiction carnal god.

"Oh, right." Tomoe traipsed through the minefield of broken masonry, wary of breaking off a shoe heel. She brushed off the top of the slab and sat by the brunette's head. "Oh, hey!" Tomoe said, making the brunette wince and blink. "Jo Echo, right?"

"How did…Do I know you?" The brunette sounded hoarse and parched.

"Nah." Tomoe shrugged one shoulder. "I've watched you before." The brunette, Jo, furrowed her brow. Tomoe thought fast. "Seen you play volleyball, I mean. You've got a great, uh, serve?"

Jo closed her eyes, groaning. "Whatever."

"What do you remember? How are you feeling?"

"Little," Jo said, shading her eyes. "Terrible. I keep trying to sleep, but my heart is pounding, my head is pounding, but worst of all my..." She blushed, mumbling, "Sore. Really sore. What did I do last night? Who did I do?" Her blush burned fire-engine red. "And why do I want to do it all over again? Christ, why am I telling this to you? Listen, lady, you got any aspirin?"

Tomoe shook her head. "No aspirin, sorry. You're sleepy, you said?" Jo gave Tomoe a curt nod, grating her scalp on the concrete. Tomoe popped open her purse, fished about, and presented Jo with a SRU-label trial size pill bottle. "I've got some Endymizine, though. Just one pill and you'll sleep so good you'll never want to wake up." She shook the bottle, making it rattle. "Two pills and...Oh, you want some? For you? Five dollar." Tomoe's dark eyes glittered above an inscrutable smile.

"Um." Jo patted down her coppery one-piece dress. "This thing doesn't have any pockets. I don't have any money."

Tomoe stared. She dropped the SRU bottle back into her purse. A blue and white plastic bottle clicked onto the concrete beside Jo's ear. "Here. Have some Advil." She stood stiff. "Free of charge."

Jo propped her self up. "But…"

"Forget it!" Tomoe threw her hands in the air as she marched away, not looking back. "You ruined it."