Living with Dupli-Kate

Kate sinks onto the arm of your couch like her strings have been cut.

For a while she doesn't say anything. She just sits there with her elbows on her knees and her face half hidden behind one gloved hand, and her shoulders start to shake in small, quiet jerks. She isn't sobbing. She's crying the way people cry when they've gotten very good at not making noise about it, the way you do when the walls are thin and there's always someone listening for weakness. You stay on your end of the couch and pretend to be extremely interested in the carpet.

Outside, a bus sighs at a stop somewhere down the block. A pigeon complains on the window ledge. The refrigerator hums.

"It's so quiet," Kate says at last, her voice thick. She wipes her nose with the back of her glove and looks around like she's checking for the catch. "Where I'm from, there's always something. Sirens. Explosions. Some guy yelling about the end of the world. I can't remember the last time I heard a fridge."

"It's a pretty good fridge," you say. "It only sounds like it's dying."

That earns you a wet, startled huff of air through her nose. She studies you for a second, her dark eyes still red at the rims, and tilts her head.

"Okay, I have to ask." She gestures vaguely at the whole room, at you, at the dead plant, at the universe. "The whole multiverse. Every hero, every villain, every girl, every princess. And you picked me?" She narrows her eyes. "What, was Eve busy?"

"Honestly?" says a smug voice from the kitchen. "I expected him to pick Atom Eve."

Kate whips around so fast her bob swings out. "Who said that?"

"The refrigerator," you sigh.

"I'm behind the refrigerator," the voice corrects. "Don't mind me. I'm just making sure the portal seals properly. It gets glitchy near older appliances." There's a pause. "Most clients go for the popular ones, you know. The ones with the big fanbases and the big personalities. Like Eve. I had a bet running with myself. You cost me four hundred years of bragging rights."

"I was kidding about Eve," Kate mutters. "Mostly."

You roll your eyes, but you keep your gaze on her. "I didn't want popular. I wanted you. Out of every girl across the multiverse, you're the one I wanted. Kate Cha. Not Atom Eve. Not anyone else."

She stares at you. Whatever she expected you to say, it clearly wasn't that.

Then she laughs. It starts as a small, disbelieving thing and then grows into something real, a short, bright burst that echoes off your dingy walls and makes the pigeon outside take flight. She laughs until she has to press the back of her wrist against her mouth, and then she looks around your cramped apartment again, at the sagging bookshelf and the crooked blinds, and says, "You know what? It's not on fire. That already puts it ahead of my last three apartments."

"High praise."

"I'm serious. One of them had a Flaxan portal open in the bathroom."

You grin. She almost grins back. Then her expression slips, and a stubborn, hopeful, slightly desperate look crosses her face. She shuts her eyes. Her jaw tightens, her fingers curl, and you can feel her reaching for something deep inside her, a muscle she's used so many times she doesn't have to think about it.

Nothing happens.

She tries again, harder. Her knuckles whiten. A vein pulses at her temple. Still nothing. No ripple, no shimmer, no second Kate stepping out of the first with a sarcastic remark ready.

"She can't," says the voice behind the fridge, sounding almost kind for a moment. "Not here. We closed the unlimited waifu loophole a long time ago. One girl, one body, one life. If I let her multiply, you'd end up with an apartment full of Kates, and I'd end up in front of a very angry genie tribunal."

Kate opens her eyes. She looks at her own empty hands. "Right," she says quietly. "Right."

You lean forward, forearms on your knees, and keep your voice gentle. "You're a normal human here, Kate. I know that sucks. But there's no one to fight. No supervillains. No Viltrumite invasion waiting around the corner. Nobody here is going to ask you to die for them. The worst thing that can happen to you is a bad Wi-Fi signal."

"That's actually a threat I can handle," she mutters.

You hesitate, because the next thought has been circling your head since the genie's speech this morning, and it comes out before you can stop it. "I keep thinking you must feel like a comic book character who got pulled out of the page and dropped into real life. And then I remember the genie said I'm a character in someone else's story too. Somewhere there are people reading about me, and they think I'm just a guy in a story and they're real, but they're actually characters in another story, and so on and so on." You rub your face. "It's turtles all the way down. No one can figure out which universe is more real, yours or mine or theirs, and I've decided there's no point trying. It'll melt your brain."

Kate blinks at you. "Okay. That's a lot of turtles."

"Sorry. I've been thinking about it since the genie appeared."

"Don't apologize." She says it with a tired, crooked smile, and you realize she's already decided something about you, and it isn't a bad something.

Her fingers drift up to the circled number on her chest, the little mark that used to tell the world which version of her was which. She rubs it with her thumb, and her expression softens into something quiet and a little sad.

"I need to get out of this thing," she says. "It doesn't feel right anymore."

"I can find you something. Sweats, a hoodie. They'll be huge on you, but they're clean." You think about it. "Mostly."

"Mostly," she repeats flatly.

"Strong mostly."

She disappears into the bathroom with an armful of your oldest, softest clothes and comes out ten minutes later swimming in a gray hoodie that hangs to her thighs, the sleeves swallowing her hands. Her hair is tucked behind her ears. The plum-and-white suit is folded in her arms like a flag at a funeral, and she sets it carefully on the end of the couch before dropping down beside it. The hoodie smells like laundry detergent and, faintly, like you. She notices you noticing and raises one eyebrow.

"Don't make it weird."

"I'm not making it weird."

"You're making it a little weird."

"A tiny amount of weird."

"Good."

That's when the voice behind the refrigerator clears its throat, and the genie floats out into the open at last, trailing glittering smoke, his sash twinkling, his arms folded behind his back like he's about to give a motivational speech.

"Now that everyone's emotionally stable, I should mention a few terms I forgot."

"Oh, great," Kate says. "Fine print."

"Nothing scary." He waves a lazy hand. "One. Kate cannot return to her world. Ever. The portal's one way, and no, I don't have a spare."

Kate's jaw tightens, but she nods. She'd already guessed.

"Two. Her old world will be fine. Probably." He tilts a hand back and forth. "She wasn't a main character. She wasn't Invincible, or Omni-Man, or Atom Eve. Her absence won't ripple the timeline too much. The big beats will play out the way they were always going to."

"Gee, thanks," Kate mutters. "I always wanted to hear I wasn't important."

"You're important here," you say before you can stop yourself.

Her gaze flicks to you. The genie coughs pointedly and keeps going.

"Three. Getting her a legal identity is easy. Fake name, fake birth certificate, fake work history, fully convincing, I've got a guy. The money, however, is on you." He eyes you with open amusement. "I'm not handing out a bottomless bank account. You'll have to support her until she's on her feet."

"I'm not rich," you admit. "But I can support one more person. If we eat a lot of rice."

"I love rice," says Kate.

"Four, and this is the important one." He leans in, voice dropping into that car salesman purr. "No refunds. No exchanges. No returns. The warranty is for life."

"Noted," you say.

He gives you both a long, smug, knowing look, like he's seen exactly how this ends and plans to say I told you so in about a decade. Then he winks, snaps his fingers, and vanishes in a puff of glittering smoke that smells faintly of cinnamon, leaving behind a single sparkle that drifts down and dies on your carpet.

You and Kate stare at the empty space for a moment.

"Well," she says. "That was a lot."

You pull up the memory of the show and the comics in the quiet that follows, because you can't help yourself.

If you're reading the timeline right, the genie must have yanked her out around the time she faked her own death in Season 2, but before she and the Immortal reunited. Which means that in her world, the story will carry on as though she died there. Her friends will grieve. Her brother will go looking for someone to blame. The Viltrum War will play out the way it always did, in blood and thunder, and Kate Cha, who never got to be a major player, won't be missed by the plot even if she's missed by people.

You decide not to tell her all of that tonight. She's carried enough for one day.

The strange thing is how easily she settles in.

You expected culture shock, some kind of wide-eyed stumbling around, a hero in a hoodie asking how the new world works. But her world and yours are both modern versions of America, same fast food, same streaming services, same smartphones with cracked screens and too many apps. Within an hour she's figured out your phone, and by evening she's ordered food on your delivery app and, to your horror, rated the driver.

"Four stars," she says, tapping the screen. "He didn't make eye contact."

"That's Raju. He never makes eye contact."

"Then he gets four stars."

She finds your stash of instant noodles under the sink and nods with the deep respect of a woman reuniting with an old friend. "Oh, you've got the good ones." She tears a packet open with her teeth. "My dad used to make these for us when we were little. With an egg and a slice of American cheese. Before he got sick." She shrugs, like it doesn't matter, and doesn't quite pull it off. "If you tell anyone I said cheese, I'll deny it."

"Cheese in noodles?"

"Cheese in everything, dude. It's the American dream." She points her chopsticks at you. "Don't judge my childhood."

You give her the bed. She protests, and you insist, and she says, "You're sure?" in a tone that suggests she's trying not to look relieved, and you say, "I'm a couch guy," which is a lie, but you tell it well. She thanks you with a small, serious nod that feels bigger than the word.

The house rules come together over the next few days, mostly in practice. She gets her own drawer in the dresser, emptied out and lined with an old T-shirt. She gets a toothbrush, bright green because it was the only one left at the store. You cut her a spare key, and when you hand it to her, she turns it over in her palm and looks at it for a long time, like it's something she's never held before.

"You're just giving me a key," she says. "To your place."

"It's your place too."

She doesn't answer, but she slips the key into the pocket of your hoodie and keeps her hand on it.

One night, a few days in, you find her out on the little balcony, leaning on the railing in the dark. The city hums below, a distant honking, a flicker of television blue in somebody's window. She doesn't turn when you step out.

"You can't sleep either?" you ask.

"I've never been good at it. Too many nightmares." She lifts a shoulder. "Not the monster kind. The other kind. The kind where I remember."

You wait. You've learned that with Kate, waiting works better than asking.

"I died so many times," she says after a while. "People think it doesn't hurt because there's another me. It still hurts. You just don't get to stay dead long enough to rest. Every time, a piece of me is the one who stayed behind, the one who was torn up or blown apart or crushed, and I remember all of it." Her voice stays steady, but her fingers are white on the rail. "After my dad got sick, the government took me and my brother in and trained us to fight. I got so tired. I faked my own death, you know. I knew how it would hurt everyone. Paul. The team. Even the Immortal, who loved me more than I deserved. I couldn't keep dying for people who treated me like a spare part. I needed to be alone for a bit."

"That's not selfish," you say softly.

"It felt selfish." She finally looks at you, eyes shining in the dark. "I used to visit my dad all the time, hoping he'd be better. He never was. And now I can't even do that." She swallows. "Paul's going to think I'm dead. He'll do something stupid. He always does. I just hope he's okay. I hope he's doing well, even if he's a pain in the ass."

You don't say anything clever. You just lean on the rail beside her, close enough to share warmth but far enough to give her space.

"I want one thing," she says. "I've always wanted one thing. A normal life. A job. A bed. A schedule. Someone to ask how my day went and not need to hear about the end of the world."

"That," you say, "I can do."

She leans her head, ever so slightly, against your shoulder, and the two of you watch the city's lights shiver until the cold sends you both inside.

She doesn't become a freeloader. She's the kind of person who can't stand it.

A week in, she gets a job as a cashier at a small neighborhood store two blocks away, the kind with flickering lights and a bell over the door and a manager who doesn't ask questions as long as the paperwork looks real. The genie's fake identity holds up beautifully. Kate's new name is on her name tag in neat block letters, and she wears the store's faded apron like it's armor.

It isn't high paying, but it asks no questions, and it fits the fake papers perfectly. It also turns out her reflexes are wasted on supervillains and perfectly suited for retail. She scans groceries so fast the barcode reader barely beeps before the next item is in her hand. She bags like she's defusing a bomb. Within a week the regulars know her by name, and within two they've begun to request her line. There's a grumpy old man who tips in butterscotch candies. There's a mother with three toddlers who swears Kate is the only person who has ever made her kids stop screaming. There's a teenager who tries to shoplift a candy bar, and Kate catches his wrist so smoothly he doesn't realize it until she's already smiling at him and saying, "Put it back, and I'll pretend I didn't see."

"I love it," she tells you one night, kicking off her sneakers, face flushed from the walk home. "It's quiet. It's safe. Nobody dies. Do you know how nice it is to deal with a customer who just wants a refund on a bruised avocado? That's the most dramatic thing that happens all day, and I love it."

"That's a very low bar for drama."

"I used to get thrown through buildings, dude. A customer yelling at me about coupons is, like, a vacation." She flops onto the couch, grinning. "Retail still beats being a superhero any day."

The weeks pass in small things.

She leaves notes on the fridge in her slanted handwriting. Out of milk. Not my fault. Your socks are on the floor again. Judging you. Left you the last dumpling. You're welcome. You learn her coffee order, a stupidly specific oat milk latte with extra foam, and she pretends not to notice when you start making it in the morning. You cook for her, badly, and then, to your complete surprise, she cooks for you, a lopsided but delicious fried rice with a fried egg on top. When you ask where she learned, she says, "Don't make it a thing," and eats the last scoop off your plate.

One Sunday afternoon she decides you need to learn to defend yourself. "Just the basics," she says, rolling up her sleeves. "In case a pigeon attacks."

"A pigeon doesn't attack."

"You've seen the one on your window."

You last about six seconds. She sweeps your leg so smoothly you don't feel it happen. The next thing you know you're flat on your back on the carpet, staring at the ceiling, with Kate standing over you with her hands on her hips.

"Wow," she deadpans. "Truly terrifying. Someone call the Guardians of the Globe."

You start laughing, and she tries to hold a straight face and fails, and she ends up sitting cross-legged on the floor beside you with tears of mirth in her eyes, her hair catching brown highlights at the edges in the afternoon light. You look at her and think, with a startling clarity, that your apartment has never felt this bright.

The storm hits on a Thursday night, one of those heavy downpours that rattles the windows and knocks out the power across half the block. The apartment goes dark. You find candles, and the two of you sit on the floor with your backs against the couch, a battered deck of cards between you, listening to the rain hammer the roof.

"Do you ever think about them?" you ask eventually. "Rex? The Immortal?"

Kate shuffles the deck slowly. "Sometimes."

"You don't have to talk about it."

"No, it's fine." She rests the cards on her knee. "It's just kind of embarrassing. Rex told me he and Eve were over. He never was. And the Immortal..." She shakes her head, a dry, crooked smile on her lips. "He'd been with, like, a million women over the centuries. Hundreds of years of practice. I was just the latest one. Nobody ever chose me first, you know? I was always somebody's second choice."

The candle flame shivers. You look at her for a long moment and put the thought into words as carefully as you can.

"You never have to be anyone's second choice here," you say. "I picked you first. Out of everyone. That's the whole point."

She doesn't say anything. She just looks at you, and her eyes glisten, and for a moment you think she might say something heavy. Instead she reaches over, takes your hand, and holds it until the rain finally softens.

A few weeks later, it's Kate who asks you out.

"I'm taking you somewhere," she announces, planting herself in front of you with her arms crossed. "On my terms. You don't get a say."

"Okay."

"Good answer."

The night market is a riot of color and noise, strings of yellow bulbs, smoking grills, vendors shouting prices, the smell of fried dough and charcoal and sweet syrup. Kate drags you from stall to stall, buying skewers and bubble tea and a fried dessert you can't pronounce, and for the first time you see her completely at ease, laughing with her mouth full, wiping sauce off her chin with her sleeve. Then she hauls you to a theater to see the latest Marvel superhero movie, and you spend two hours watching a CGI battle that feels like slop, with a villain whose motivation changes every ten minutes.

"This is insulting," Kate whispers halfway through. "The cape physics are insulting."

"I thought you'd like it. You know, as a professional."

"I was a professional. That's why it hurts."

The walk home is quiet and warm. Somewhere between the second and third streetlight, she slips her fingers into yours, and neither of you says anything about it. You stop at your door. You fumble with your keys. She puts her hand over yours, steadies it, and looks up at you with that sideways half-smile that has never once failed to wreck you.

"I chose you," she says. "Just so we're clear."

Then she kisses you, soft at first, and then not soft at all, and the kiss does not stop at the door.

The first night is slow.

It starts with kissing, the deep, unhurried kind, her hands in your hair, your tongue tasting the sweetness of bubble tea on hers, tongues wrestling and exchanging saliva, eager and lustful, the two of you stumbling backward into the apartment with the door still swinging behind you. She pins you against the wall for a moment, rising on her toes to deepen the kiss, and you slide your hands down her back, over the warm curve of her, pulling her against you until she can feel exactly what she's doing to you. She gasps against your mouth, and swallows the sound with another kiss.

She pulls the hoodie over her head and tosses it aside, and the rest of her clothes follow, piece by piece, dropped along the hallway like a breadcrumb trail to the bedroom. And then you're staring at her, because the woman in front of you has a breathtaking body, strong shoulders and a lean, lovely frame and a scar or two that tell a story, perfect breasts with stiffening brown nipples, a breathtakingly perfect pussy between her legs, already glistening, and you forget how to breathe.

"You're staring," she murmurs.

"I'm... yes. I'm staring."

She tilts her head, studying your flushed face, and her expression gentles. "Hey. Is this your first time?"

You nearly choke. "Is it that obvious?"

"A little." She smiles, not mocking, just warm. "It's okay. I've got you. I'll guide you. Just breathe."

And she does. She guides you through it like she guided you through everything else, patiently, with a little laughter, and with more tenderness than you ever imagined she could have. The candles gutter. The rain starts up again outside. She stretches out on your bed and draws you down to her, all warm skin and steady hands, and when she finally wraps her fingers around you and strokes, slow and deliberate, you have to grit your teeth just to keep it together. "Breathe," she whispers again, amused, and guides your hand between her legs, showing you the pace she likes, circling, pressing, until her breath goes ragged and her hips lift into your palm. You lose your virginity to Kate Cha, she guides your cock inside her, and you feel her tight, wet pussy wrap around your hard, throbbing cock as you penetrate her, inch by inch, in your small, cluttered bedroom, in the amber glow of a half-burned candle. Your cock fits perfectly inside Kate's pussy, like they were made to be together, and she exhales a shuddering little moan when you're finally seated deep, holding still while you both adjust. You begin thrusting, slow at first, then deeper, like you had always meant to, her voice encouraging you with soft moans of pleasure, her pussy walls clenching around your cock, eager to milk you, her nails digging light crescents into your shoulders as she whispers, "There. Just like that. Don't stop." You come inside her, buried to the hilt, her legs locked around your waist, and the experience is far more overwhelming than anything you could have dreamed, her name leaving your mouth like a prayer while she holds you through every last pulse of it, and the last thing you remember before the night folds over you is the sound of her whispering your name.

When you wake in the morning, tangled in the sheets, she's already awake, propped on one elbow, watching you.

"For the record," she says, "I chose you. Not the wish."

The toast is burnt.

You're not sure how it happened. You were just trying to impress her, and the toaster has opinions, and now there are two blackened slices on the plate between you and a smoke alarm threatening to scream. Kate nibbles a corner anyway, still dressed in her underwear, chews thoughtfully, and gives you a slow, satisfied, slightly smug smile that makes your ears go red.

"You know," she says, "I've been thinking about it. Rex? The Immortal?" She sips her coffee. "You're better at sex than both of them. Way better. By a mile."

You choke on your coffee. "You don't have to say that."

"I'm not saying it to be nice." She sets her mug down and leans across the table. "I'll prove it."

She does, before work, in the sunlight spilling over the bed, a second round that leaves you both breathless and nearly late. This time she's the one who takes the lead. Kate on top, her hands braced against your chest, laughing and breathless, finally the one in control of her own pleasure. She sinks down onto you with a long, low sigh, taking you deep, and then finds her rhythm, rolling her hips, setting the pace, her head thrown back, the morning light pouring gold over her bare skin. "There! Right there! Ah!" She says your name, again and again, guiding your cock to hit her most sensitive spot, the tip of your cock kissing that spot with each thrust and making her gasp in pleasure, her breasts bouncing softly with every movement, her breath coming faster and faster until it breaks. When it's over, you both reach orgasm, her crying out as she comes undone above you, her body shuddering around your cock while you spill inside her, and she collapses against you, and for a while neither of you can speak.

"Okay," you manage eventually. "I'm going to need a minute."

"Take two," she says into your collarbone. "I'm not moving."

Later that week, it's your turn.

You get between Kate's legs, eating out her pussy diligently, going down on her until she forgets her own name, until her fingers are knotted in the sheets and she's laughing and swearing and gasping all at once, your tongue working her slowly, lazily, learning every place that makes her hips jump and every place that makes her hold her breath, her thighs trembling on either side of your head, eyes hazy from reaching the peak of her pleasure. When she finally comes, it's with a broken, breathless sound that you will replay in your head for the rest of your life.

Another night you worship her ass with your tongue until she's begging you not to stop, and she returns the favor, ass included, with a grin that says she has no shame at all. For a moment you think about it: Dupli-Kate from Invincible is tonguing your asshole, and this isn't a dream. You reach another intense orgasm while Kate rims your asshole, her hand wrapped around your cock, stroking you in time with her tongue until your mind whites out completely. There is nothing you won't do for each other, and nothing either of you feels the need to explain. When she's finally done shaking from the orgasm of you eating out her pussy, she shoves you onto your back and gives you a blowjob that leaves you speechless. She makes eye contact, caresses your balls, licks the shaft from base to tip, sucks on the tip and kisses it, then takes you deeper, deep throating you while making eye contact the entire time, her throat working around you, her cheeks hollowed, her dark eyes locked on yours with wicked, watering concentration. Your mind blanks from the intensity of your sexual pleasure and release, and you stare at the ceiling, wondering if you might actually have died and somehow ended up in a better world after all. She swallows every last drop, then presses a soft, satisfied kiss to your hip.

Kate crawls up beside you afterward, grinning, a little flushed, having swallowed every drop of your semen, and tells you with total confidence, "You taste better than both Rex and the Immortal."

"That's a relief," you say weakly. "Considering Rex was kind of an asshole, and the Immortal was a geriatric fraud."

She snorts so hard she has to bury her face in the pillow. "Fraudmortal. I'm never going to be able to un-hear that."

"You're welcome."

The weeks blur together into something golden.

The two of you make love several times a day, some mornings before work, some nights after, once in the shower with the water running cold, your hands cupping her breasts as you thrust inside her, the tiles slick and steam-fogged, her moans echoing off the glass until neither of you can stand anymore, once on the kitchen counter in the middle of cooking dinner, half-chopped vegetables forgotten, her ankles crossed behind your back, until you come inside her, pumping her belly full of your thick sperm while she bites your shoulder to keep quiet. Then the couch, which becomes your favorite spot, even though Kate insists the old coffee stain is judging you from underneath. There's a lunch break that turns into a longer lunch break and makes you late for work twice.

Sometimes you fuck Kate in front of the full-length mirror, standing behind her, one hand splayed across her stomach, so she can see exactly who's fucking her. Not Rex. Not the Immortal. You. She watches her own face twist in pleasure, watched her own flushed skin flush harder, watching your cock move in and out of her, and there's something in her expression that is equal parts embarrassment and fascination, an actress forced to watch her own performance from the front row. Her orgasm that way is intense, wrenching, her whole body seizing while she stares at her own ruined reflection, unable to look away even as it shatters her. "It was like watching one of my clones getting fucked," she smiles afterward, breathless and shy about it in a way she never is anywhere else. "Weird. But... good-weird. Don't make it a thing."

You are absolutely making it a thing.

The honeymoon phase is shameless and playful, filled with laughter and tangled limbs and details neither of you could ever bring yourselves to describe out loud.

And in between, there's pizza at midnight, eaten cold from the box. There are movies you never finish, because someone always falls asleep on someone else's shoulder. There's Kate stealing the covers, and you pretending to be annoyed. There are lazy Sundays when she hums along to a song she doesn't know the words to, and you sit at the table and watch her and wonder how you got this lucky.

Every night, you sleep next to Kate, snuggling lovingly, your naked bodies pressed against each other under the covers, her back warm against your chest and your arm curled around her waist. You could not imagine a better life. And the way she smiles in her sleep, safe and content in your arms, you can tell she feels the same way.

It's the story of two people in love, who enjoy each other's bodies and enjoy each other's company and have, inexplicably, never once gotten tired of either.

Living with Dupli-Kate is the happiest you have ever been. And when you catch her looking at you across the kitchen, her eyes crinkling at the corners, a smear of flour on her cheek and no ghosts at all in her gaze, you know that she is happier than she has ever been, too.