She studied my face for a long second. Then, slowly, with what looked like physical effort, she slid off my lap and back onto the couch beside me. Not far. Close enough that her knee was still touching my leg.

Her blouse was half-untucked and the third undone button had become a fourth somewhere in the last minute, and the skirt was still hiked to upper-thigh, and she made absolutely no move to fix any of it.

I tried to point it out, "...You know your blouse is open."

"I know."

"Aunt."

She smiled, "What. You’re allowed to look. You’re going to look. Pretending I’m not asking you to look would be insulting to both of us." She reached for her coffee with the calm of a woman recovering her breath. "Talk, sweetheart. I’m listening."

I took a slow steadying breath, "Okay. So, about the gold."

"Mm."

"It didn’t come from a vault on Earth."

She tilted her head, watching me. "Go on."

"I have a system. I don’t know what to call it, exactly. A few days ago I... acquired the ability to travel to another world. A different version of Earth, about a hundred and fifty years in the future, after a civilization-ending event called the Fall. The world is post-apocalyptic. It has zombies. Real ones, not the Hollywood kind. The gold I sold you came from a vault in that world. So did some other things I haven’t shown you yet. I can also bring things from this world to that one, which is how I’m currently feeding a girlfriend and a small shelter on the other side."

I watched her face for the reaction.

Her eyes did widen. Her mouth opened slightly. She took a slow breath. But she didn’t laugh. She didn’t reach for her phone. She didn’t ask me if I’d been drinking. She just sat there, blouse half-open, coffee in one hand, and processed.

"...Show me."

I held out my hand, palm up, and pulled a small bar of gold from inventory and let it appear in my hand, and her expression changed exactly the way I’d expected it to and not at all the way I’d expected it to at the same time.

Her next words came in a whisper, "Lukas."

"Yeah."

"You’ve been carrying around a literal pocket dimension."

"Effectively, yes."

"And you were going to tell me eventually."

I nodded, "I was going to tell you today. I had it on the list."

She closed her eyes for a second, opened them, and looked at me with what was, weirdly, amusement.

"Sweetheart. I run a portion of the city’s underworld. I have personally laundered three nine-figure deals through five jurisdictions in the last fiscal year. I have seen things I am legally not allowed to describe. The fact that my favorite person in the world can hop between worlds is, somehow, not the strangest thing in my life this quarter, just the most interesting."

"...That tracks, honestly."

"Mm."

She took the small gold bar out of my hand, weighed it in her palm, examined the stamp the way Renner had, and handed it back.

"I trust you. I have always trusted you. I am not going to start panicking about this now."

The relief that hit me was physical. I hadn’t realized how much I’d braced for the worst reaction until it didn’t come. ’God, I love this woman. The "love" part is no longer in question.’

I said, "There’s more."

"Of course there is."

"The girlfriend."

She inhaled sharply. Her eyes flicked away from mine for just a second, and then came back, and the composure was back in place, but I could see the edge of something underneath it.

"...Tell me."

"Her name is Zero. She’s the woman I met on the other side. She’s powerful, dangerous, and beautiful, and I love her. I love her a lot. We’ve been together for a few days now."

"A few days." Quiet but not flat either, just...careful.

I nodded, "Aunt. I love her and I’m not going to pretend I don’t. I want to be honest with you about it because if I lie about her now, this whole thing starts on a lie, and I don’t want that for us." I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, watching her face. "But I also love you. I have for a while, in a different way that has been turning into the same way over the last day. And Zero already knows about you. She blessed it before I came home last night."

"She blessed it." She blinked in surprise.

"She told me that not everyone deserves her sugar boy, and that she wants to vet you, but that yes, she’s fine with this." 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Mira processed that for a long moment, then her mouth did a small twitch. "...She called you her sugar boy?"

I was speechless, "That’s what you took from that?"

"I find that very informative, actually. Continue."

"So I’m sitting here, asking you, knowing it’s not a fair thing to ask, knowing I am at this exact moment the kind of scumbag who shows up to a confession with another woman in his pocket. But I want this. I want both. And if you’re willing to put up with a man like that, I’ll love you well, Aunt. I promise. I will give my best to you. To us. Whatever us turns out to be."

She didn’t answer immediately.

She looked down at her coffee. Then at her own knee. Then back at me.

"...I have one condition, sweetheart."

"Name it."

"You will not leave me. Ever. Not for her, not for anyone after her, not for any reason that does not involve you being literally dead. I can share you. I can share you with this Zero, and I can share you with whoever else you bring into your life, because the world I live in is full of men with three families and women with two, and I have stopped finding it strange. But I cannot share the part of you that knows me. That part is mine. You don’t take that from me. Not after I waited years to have you call me back."

She said it without a tremor. The tremor was underneath. I could see it in her hands.

I reached out and took one of those hands, and held it in both of mine, and looked at her properly.

"Aunt. I’m not going anywhere. You have me. Whatever I become, I’m going to become it with you in it. I promise."

"Promise it again."

"I promise."

"Once more, with my name."

"I promise, Mira. I’m not leaving."

She exhaled. The exhale shook a little. Then she nodded, once, decisively, and the composed Mira slid back into place over the cracked Mira like a curtain.

"Good." Brisk. Almost businesslike. "Then yes, sweetheart. Yes. I will be your aunt-girlfriend-sugar-mommy. Whatever the official title is."

"...Aunt-girlfriend-sugar-mommy."

"It rolls off the tongue."

"It does not."

"I’m calling it that."

"Please don’t."

"Mm. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t." She set the coffee down. "Come here."