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littleaxebad · 3 years ago

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Where We Parted (Part 2)

Yes, this is the hill I have chosen to die on...

I apologies for the delay - it was a lot harder to write Clarice’s part than Merwin's (and not just because of the length - we all know Merwin only has marbles rolling around in his skull).

I may do a part three, with a happy “wish fulfilment” ending, but for the time being here is Part Two of Where We Met (a Clarice x Merwin “What If?”).

(Please, if you spot any mistakes, let me know. I am very bad with spelling, and I am still finding and fixing mistakes in Part 1...) (and thank you so much to @kolchekyourweapons for everything she pointed out too...)

[Part two is long, so remember to hydrate before you start.]

They step off the helo and there is a soldier waiting for them - Clarice surveys him from afar and judges him a Twink before she’s even heard his voice. She’s always liked Twinks - they’re a lot of fun. He salutes Eric smartly. Clarice catches up in time to see Eric hand the soldier a sheet of paper. She already knows what’s on it. “You should read this.” Eric’s voice is pretty level, but Clarice knows exactly what’s bubbling just below the surface. Puppy dog is nervous. As the soldier reads Clarice chews her gum with her mouth open and quips “didn’t you hear? There’s a new King in the castle.” “Looks that way,” is the response. Withdrawn - unlikely his current CO is going to like this. Clarice puts her case down, unnecessarily, but if they’re all standing around making chit-chat there’s no point in holding it. Damn thing is heavy. “And you are?” Apparently that caught his attention. “This is my assistant, Clarice Stokes.” Eric answers before Clarice has a chance to and she’s forced to correct him, yet again. “Doctor Clarice Stokes.” “Kolchek. First Lieutenant Kolchek.” Russian? Doesn’t look it. “Well, the briefing room?” Eric asks stiffly. Jason nods and, somewhat reluctantly, walks off. Eric follows him and Clarice brings up the rear.

They’re led on a tour through Camp Slayer, where the air reeks of gun powder, trash and testosterone. “You’ll have to excuse the noise and disorder. We’re just getting the base set up,” - Kolchek stops walking so they can look around, and Clarice immediately looks up - this place has been bombarded to shit. “Blows my mind. Only a few weeks ago, Saddam was living it up in here, chowing down on candy bars while some poor bastard clipped his toenails!” Kolchek laughs at his own banter, incredibly unconvincingly. Clarice, responds with a sarcastic “nice image.” “Huh.” A noise of agreement suggests he is unable to tell that she’s being facetious. “If only he could see the state of this place now. Makes me smile.” This guy should have stayed in acting school, but it looks like Eric is buying it. Or he’s just as bullshit patriotic as everyone else here and Clarice never realised it. Kolchek walks off again and they follow, Clarice ahead of Eric this time. “We’ve got the CIA. We got the Army, the Marines, DIA, the Air Force: hey, everyone’s invited!” They round a corner as Kolchek keeps talking to them like he’s selling them property. “Everyone wants a piece of history! God Bless America.” Kolchek does a 180 to make sure they’re keeping up. As they round another corner, Clarice can hear music playing. She sees him before he sees her - ugly green muscle shirt and pants making him look drained and grey. She’s pretty fucking well versed in every inch of his olive-coloured skin. Army fatigues don’t make anyone look good. And he’s shaved his head again - that’s pretty cute.

They approach as Nate is finishing a rep, two weights on the side of the barbell (only two?), and he sits up, looking sideways at them. “I see you, old man. Keep busting out those reps.” Kolchek sounds easy around him, they must be on pretty good terms, but Nate’s never mentioned the Southern string-bean before. “Come join me. Maybe I’ll teach you a thing or two.” His voice is flat, and it sounds challenging, but there’s an easiness to it that suggests he’d be happy to bench alone. “Later. We have company.” “Yeah? Maybe Missy here would like to watch me get my sweat on, huh?” Nate readjusts his position and moves back, turning to better face them. “Wanna spot me little lady?” He smiles, and Clarice has to fight her own reaction. Fortunately no one is actually looking at her and she manages to force her lips into a tight line. They’ve almost broken gym equipment before and this stuff looks old and busted as hell. “I can see you just fine from here, thanks.” It sounds appropriately offended. “Ignore Corporal Merwin, he lacks social skills.” “I guess every unit has its resident jackass” says Eric as they walk away. Clarice follows, but not before looking over her shoulder to wink. They’d talked about what they could do and where when she found out she was flying out. Options were limited, but they were used to working with constraints. And restraints.

Further along they meet another soldier, casually dressed and looking like a twelve year old in his camo bucket hat. “Sergeant Kay” and Kolchek fist bump, before their tour guide introduces his BFF. “This is Lieutenant Colonel King. Just taking him down to the briefing room.” “Yeah, gotta go get prepped,” Kay shrugs, but his attitude is way off. He looks like he’s looking for a fight - or somewhere to cry. “I’ll see you in there, Marine,” Eric waves in greeting, but Kay only looks at Jason before walking past and away. Yeah, something is definitely wrong here… interesting. “So what’s his malfunction?” Eric jerks his hand to indicate Kay’s retreating back. “Nick ain’t been himself lately. We got caught up in a shooting a few weeks back. Civilian ate a bullet, Nick took it hard.” “Is he combat ready?” “He’s a big boy, Sir, he’s ready.” Kolckek turns on his heel walks off. Clarice follows him and Eric walks in last place - he’s not good with people who don’t like him. He’s a bit socially fragile like that.

“Damn Joey, they got you sitting behind a desk? You want me to make a call?” They walk into a dim room, where another twelve year old is sitting on a folding chair behind a card table. So this is little brother Joey? “Nah, I’m all good. People who sit behind desks don’t tend to catch so many bullets, you know?” Joey smiles good-naturedly and points to Eric - “this must be the one and only satellite guy.” Eric gives a small laugh - “the one and only satellite guy? I’m Eric King - Lieutenant Colonel Eric King.” The kid called Joey fidgets in embarrassment, straightening himself up in his chair. “Give the Colonel full site access” says Kolchek, like he’s totally used to the kid being nervous. Joey stands, muttering fuck under his breath, and hands Eric a key card, but he salutes with a sharp Sir afterwards. Kolchek makes to walk off, but he suddenly turns around and, waving the letter about kicking Mrs King off her throne, says “I’m telling you, when the Queen Bitch finds out about this she’s gunna flip her shit.” “That’s my wife you’re talking about” Eric bites back. They’ve been separated for a year, but piles of emotional and stressful bullshit happening have made Eric a little desperate. Clarice had tried to intervene several times, but all her work went down the shitter about a week before they were scheduled to fly out. “I had no idea, I’m sorry.” This is definitely not a good sign, but she’s not surprised. Still… “Nice work hotshot.” Clarice just likes to add insult to injury sometimes.

They walk into the briefing room, which is very large, and very damaged. Jason catches up with Eric: “Sir, I’m so sorry, Rachel never said she was married,” Clarice walks past them and away - her pockets overflowing with information at this point - and starts setting up. Eric joins her, briefly, opening his case, but then he wanders off, leaving her with the Twink. “Right, let’s get you set up.” He looks completely at sea. “I hope the bandwidth can cope with the data.” “I’ll leave the tech stuff to you.” “And I’ll leave the heavy lifting to you.” “We got a deal, Lady.” Kolchek is speaking to her, but he isn’t looking at her anymore. People have started coming in, sitting on the sidelines. No one they met on the way in though, just more soldiers in the same gear with essentially the same haircuts and faces. “What is this place anyway” Clarice pushes some playful inflection into her voice, “looks like an old ballroom.” “That’s exactly what it is. I guess Saddam liked to get down on the dance floor.” “Do you think if his dance partner stepped on his foot, it’d be an instant ‘off with her head’?” “Hahaha.” There’s that weird forced laughter again, its honestly fucking creepy. “It wouldn’t surprise me.” Clarice speaks quietly, but not so quietly she can’t be heard, “maybe when we’re done I’ll let you spin me around a little.” She has to say something. He’s not looking at her and its weirding her out. Jason replies in a seemingly regular tone but he sounds a little scared; “as long as you don’t step on my foot.” Eric’s computer beeps and he walks back over to it, thankfully putting an end to the conversation.

Kolchek suddenly moves away from Clarice and she looks up - Rachel has entered the room. Clarice unconsciously stands straighter and watches Rachel cross the floor and stride up to Eric. “Colonel King,” she says. It’s hard to read the inflection in her voice. “Mrs. King.” Eric’s response is, stupidly, clipped. “Eric this is my team, and if you wanna brief them, you clear it with me first.” “I should have warned you I was moving the briefing forward - that’s on me. But things escalated, I had to move fast.” Rachel looks like she’s not buying it. Clarice can see why people call her the Queen Bitch, even as a term of endearment. “I have a duty to my team to stay ahead of the curve.” “I understand Rachel, but CENTCOM has given their orders.” “Orders?” Rachel’s emotions become obvious in that moment - she’s exuding negativity like a toxic cloud. “I’m now commanding office - I didn’t mean for you to find out like this, truly. I’m sorry Rache.” “Somehow I doubt that very much.” Clarice knows Eric doesn’t mean anything by this - he didn’t even want to take over her team, just lead the operation. Caelus is his baby, and it’s a little bit Clarice’s too. Kolchek intervenes here to confirm the situation, and Clarice looks up in time to see Rachel take the offered letter. Things can’t get dicey so early into the mission, it’s already fucking awkward enough, so Clarice chooses this moment to say “I’m gunna need access to your network.” She’s pretty sure Kolchek would have kept trying to defuse the situation but people are more easily redirected if you simply give them something else to focus on. “I’ll patch you through. Name?” “Dr. Stokes. You can call me Clarice.” She tries to come off as friendly, or friendly enough. As soon as she turns back to the computer Eric says “Dr. Stokes, please prepare the presentation.” “You found something?” Asks Rachel, but Eric saves his answer until everyone is in the room.

Clarice stands off to the slide, alone during the presentation, Kolchek about a metre away, then Joey, then Nate. But she can still see him. He’s leaning against a card table with Joey. He nods at her but she just pops her gum in response. Make him sweat a little. Eric is standing in front of the projection screen like a school teacher, and he’s still wearing his sunglasses - inside. A picture of the structure Caelus picked up is displayed behind him. “The fuck is that? Modern art or something?” Merwin starts the presentation, probably without meaning to. Sometimes his mouth just has a mind of its own. “This is footage from the highly classified Caelus program.” “That supposed to mean something to me?” The basic premise does mean something to him, he just doesn’t know it by that name. Merwin does not look at Eric as he asks, looks at the ground instead, like not all the words he wants to say are coming out. “It’s a thermal satellite system that I personally pioneered.” “Ohhh, well I’m impressed,” he looks up, “please, pioneer away.” “You behave like this in all your briefings, Corporal?” Kolchek intervenes, like he’s the teams tired father, “boys are just eager to catch a break sir. No harm meant.”

Clarice isn’t thrilled with how well the presentation goes. She’s married to a soldier, but that doesn’t mean she agrees with what they’re doing. She listens to them talk about air support and it honestly seems like a terrible idea. They’ll have enough guns as it is. “Nah, too many birds could bring them down on us. We move fast-in, fast-out.” Nate has a point but there’s also a joke there. Joey catches it too: “that’s pretty much what your momma said to me.” So the kid is good. “Hey careful, boy! If I didn’t pull out so fast, I could’ve been your ‘papi’!” They high five. Clarice tries very hard not to laugh. She’s heard so many of these daft jokes and for some reason they’re still funny. “Alright, that’s enough, Merwin. Sir, what’s your call?” Eric puts his foot down on the air support, pissing off both Kolchek and Rachel. As Eric tries to round off the briefing, Joey says “a lot of shit can go down in 24 hours” and Nate tells him to quit being a bitch. “Clarice, help me set up the equipment.” Apparently Eric left his manners back in America. “I’m on it.”

Clarice is between her computer and Eric when Rachel comes over. The bandwidth is honestly fucking terrible so she doesn’t need to stand over it at all times. “I’m going to download the latest satellite data.” She tells Eric, as a way of moving back out of the area, though honestly she’d rather watch paint dry than this. “You can have some alone time with him.” She adds. “Thank you. Clarice,” Rachel says with clenched teeth and squinted eyes, like it is physically paining her to not punch the physicist.

Clarice is watching the loading bar fill up when Nate leans against the table next to her. They don’t make eye contact, and are at least 30 centimetres apart. “Doc,” he starts. “Marine,” she answers. There’s a beat of silence. “Miss me?” Nate’s dropped his voice real low, and Clarice feels it creep up her spine. The corners of her mouth twitch up. “Hmm,” she contemplates, “might have done. Seem to remember you were pretty good in bed. It’s been a while though. Might need a refresher.” Nate slides closer to her, dropping his voice even lower, “soon as we get back from the mission, I’m gunna eat you out until you’re dripping for me, and then I’mma fuck you til you can’t walk straight.” Clarice can feel the tips of her ears burning, and she has to press her thighs together to stop the buzzing sensation, but she can’t stop the smile that’s starting to spread out, “is that a promise?” But before Nate can answer, Kolchek calls out from across the room, “let the good doctor work, Corporal!” Asshole. Nate pushes himself off the table, walking behind Clarice as he wanders off. She presses her ass back into the wandering hand briefly, under the pretext of bending closer to the computer. God, she’s fucking missed him so damn much.

Her thoughts are wandering when Eric almost yells “how much longer for that download, Clarice, I need it ASAP!” “Is five minutes ASAP enough for you?” What is he, eight years old, “downloading data now.” “Good. Let me check the satellite maps.” “Not the greatest bandwidth.” “We work with what we’ve have.” When the download in finally completed, the computer beeps warningly, and Clarice closes it with a snap, “download’s complete.” “Let’s get to the helos.”

Clarice crosses over to the helicopters with Eric - she’s been in three of these fucking things today, the noise and vibration of them make her deeply uncomfortable. She’s seated behind the front seats when Joey takes a seat next to her. Nate is last on board, sitting between Eric and the door. Kolchek is talking some militant nonsense into his radio while Joey crosses himself. “Hey Merwin. What’s your momma and the Bermuda Triangle have in common?” They’ve been in the air all of ten minutes and this shit is already starting, loud enough to be heard over the engine. “Why don’t you fucking enlighten me?” Joey grins cheekily, "they both swallow Marines.” Oh my god. “That’s pretty good, boy. Hey look, your momma’s so nasty, I called her for phone sex and now I have a fucking ear infection.” “Well damn, how long you been sitting on that one.” “Oh yeah, you like that? I got a shit ton more of those bad boys lined up.” “Yeah, that’s what your momma said.” Actually, the kid’s really not that bad - he’s certainly got Nate’s number, Clarice thinks. She’s trying not to look like she’s paying attention though. Rachel verbally bitchslaps her way into the conversation, “you two wanna cut the bullshit and focus on the mission?” “Hey! Only one place I let a woman boss me around like that, alright? And that’s between the sheets.” Clarice pointedly looks at the spot over Kolchek’s seat like it’s fucking high end art or something. “I’m surprised your mom lets women into your bedroom. Don’t want her getting jealous now.” Joey exclaims “damn Rachel!” “Hey! The fuck y’all laughing at?” Clarice has to physically restrain her mouth from spiting out an ugly bark. Damn indeed; she didn’t think the Queen Bitch had it in her. Maybe Rachel isn’t so bad after all.

Clarice overhears Kolchek and Kay say Semper Fi to each other, and fist bump - Nate’s explained a bunch of the superstitions and in-jokes and history of the Marine Corps, but he’s never mentioned anything about them speaking Latin. Confused, she asks “Semper Fi? What’s that, some kinda boys’ scout thing?” Joey answers pretty diplomatically that “it’s a marine thing. It means always loyal.” “So what, it’s supposed to be lucky?” It doesn’t sound fucking lucky - sounds like a way to get yourself killed. “Marines have a boat load of superstitions.” Joey confesses. What the fuck does that have to do with being loyal, Clarice wonders. Out loud she says “hit me with one,” even though she’s pretty sure she’s heard them all. “They say to never look back when you’re disembarking the helo. Otherwise you curse the whole team.” “That’s gotta be about the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” Probably the stupidest thing she’s heard again, but how the fuck does checking your ass is OK curse your team? “Yeah well, maybe, but as I see it, why take the chance?” “Eyes forward at all times,” interjects Merwin, “you look backwards in a war zone, it’s no wonder you get your ass shot off!” ‘Babe that still doesn’t make sense’ Clarice gives him a look she hopes will convey her opinion. She respects the hell out of Nate but the boy-scout shit goes over her head. Suddenly a red light goes off on the ceiling of the helo and Kolchek launches into a weird pep talk he probably borrowed from a movie. But then Nate says “Amen to that, brother - OORAH!” And they all start yelling OORAH and Clarice wishes her brain would just switch off.

The helo lands and the Marines jump out, gas masks on, then it takes off again and circles. Rachel has taken Kay’s seat in the cockpit and is speaking Arabic over the loudspeaker while her soldiers converge on what literally just looks like a mess of huts. After maybe five minutes, a plume of yellow smoke goes up, and the helo descends again.

Clarice follows Rachel, Eric and Jason over to what is very clearly not a silo. If it is, it must be damn well hidden because there is nothing out here to suggest a large underground structure is being guarded by these clay-brick buildings - no trucks, no mess of tread tracks, no lookouts with their faces in the dirt. Clarice can feel apprehension rising in her gut - not only is this not what they were looking for, but something here feels very, very wrong.

“That went smoothly,” Merwin observes, coming out of a hut and into the light. “You think?” Bites back Rachel, and she sounds like Clarice feels. “Got this place locked down tighter than a virgins-” “Do not finish that sentence, Corporal.” God, thank you Rachel. Nate puts his hands up in mock surrender, quickly glancing at Clarice. She glares at him. He drops his hands, wrapping his fingers around his rifle, his posture admitting defeat. “Are they ready for questioning?” “Yeah, just don’t ask them any tough physics questions.” Kolchek orders Nate and Kay to keep watch, and then the three superiors enter the hut. Clarice approaches them, feeling uncharacteristically uncertain. “I dunno about you guys but something doesn’t feel right about this place.” She rolls her shoulders, trying to ease the tension. “Oh yeah?” Nate gives her a lopsided grin, “is that this, uh, women’s intuition I keep hearing about?” Oh - you mean that thing you totally believe in? “Yeah, you wanna find out what happens when you piss it off?” Clarice turns on her heel and stalks off. He’ll come after her anyway, she just needs a minute.

The scenery is, weirdly, kind of beautiful. Hazy and barren and wild. Clarice gets her five minutes of peace before a shadow falls on her. “Not the time, Nate,” she can’t muster up the energy to be mad, though. She feels almost heartbroken. All that effort for nothing. “Not the place either,” he says, standing next to her and staring off at the middle distance. “You still going to keep your promise?” Clarice asks - not for nothing, exactly, since she’s missed this idiot like crazy. “I ever let you down before?” Clarice allows herself to lean onto his shoulder briefly, then asks “when’s your next lot of leave?” “Not for another few months - why - you only here for a sleepover?” “Something like that.” They stay silent for a while - wrong place, wrong field of work, wrong field of work to fucking fall in love in. But her life has been pretty interesting - she’s just not acclimatising well to this failure. It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that this is a farm. No godforsaken weapons, and she’ll be whipped away from Nate before she can imprint his touch on her skin again. “I’m gunna go talk to the boss, see if we can cut the crap. There’s nothing here.” Clarice hums, “this was a lot of work, Nate, a fucking lot of work. And it got us dick.” “I know babe. I’m sorry. Live and learn.” He brushes against her shoulder but the touch is gone too soon.

Suddenly, out of absolutely fucking nowhere, something takes out one of the helos - it crashes to the ground, in a screaming explosion of metal. Clarice instinctively ducks behind what is left of a wall and covers her head. Words just fall out of her mouth and she isn’t even aware she’s saying them - “Fuck! Shit! Fucking fuck!” - as the bullets spray over her head. She gets as low down as she possibly can, right up against the wall. There’s only the noise of gunfire and death - what the fuck went wrong? Was this the right place after all? Another one of the helos crash-lands explosively.

And then the ground begins to shake…

What the fuck is this? Bombs? An earthquake? Clarice gets to her feet in time to see Nate running over to her, but he doesn’t make it: the ground disappearing beneath them and swallowing them whole. Clarice hits dirt with a whump, the air momentarily knocked out of her lungs, the world spinning behind her tightly closed eyes. This cannot be fucking happening!

A vicious screaming rips her from her daze - someone is in agony above her. Clarice rises unsteadily to her feet, but the fog is chased away when she looks up. Nate is wrapped in barbed wire, blood seeping out through every patch of clothing, running down his face and he is begging her for freedom. Clarice’s mind clears in a hail of desperate worry. She reaches up to try and steady him, to try and untangle the wire, but everything she does seems to hurt him more, and he screams louder. “Jesus, I’m trying. Will you stop squirming around!” Clarice can’t keep the emotion out of her voice. She knows she needs to be the strong one here but his pain is bleeding into her, pulling useless tears from her eyes. From the darkness, Kolchek and Kay (Heaven sent) emerge, and she wastes no time mincing words. “It’s bad! He’s bleeding out, we have to cut him down right now!” They are still in soldier mode, efficient and ready, but they’re scared - especially Kay. “Hold tight buddy, we got you.” Kolchek sounds reassuring, but he has to rein in Kay, whose mind is clearly drifting: “Nick, I need you here.” Clarice can’t just back off and let them work, so she helps Kay support Nate as best she can, but her arms are shaking. “Cut the wires,” Nick orders, and Kolchek suddenly has a combat knife that looks way too sharp; hacking away at the deadly bindings. Nate just keeps screaming as they work but the fall to the ground silences him. Clarice is on her knees in a heartbeat. “Oh, he’s fucked, he’s so fucked” is Kolchek’s bullshit diagnosis. “You don’t think I can hear you?” Nate’s voice sounds so strained. “You’re gunna pull through, brother, suck it up.” But Kay is barking orders again, overriding Kolchek’s pisspoor attempt to calm: “there’s morphine in my pack, grab it !” He leans in close to Nate to say “we’re gunna pump you up, OK?” Pump him up? And then what - fucking carry him? “Fuck,” is all Nate manages to get out - he’s going to fucking die down here! Clarice can feel herself getting hysterical, yelling at them to “hurry the hell up” but Nick just says “we got this, you keep lookout.” There is something in his voice that infects Clarice, some undercurrent of fear. “Lookout?” She has to know, “lookout for what?” But she doesn’t get an answer, and after looking around and seeing nothing, she discards the request and makes to walk back to Nate - but then something grabs her, and her world goes dark.

When Clarice opens her eyes, she’s staring up at a distant cavern roof, laying next to a sheer rock wall. Her body aches and her stomach is turning. The light from her headlamp casts a pretty feeble glow into the open space above her. She sits up, stiffly, jolting something inside of her that sends a shooting pain up her side - broken ribs? But the pain subsides after a moment. She shrugs off her backpack and looks around. It’s very much the same - more rock, more darkness, a half cave with a ledge just outside the entrance. She gets to very shaky feet and steadies herself as the world spins. Then she walks out of the cave and takes a look over the edge. There’s water below… no, not water - blood. A slippery slope littered with bones leads down towards it. Above her, and somewhere to her left, she hears screeching. Whatever took her, there’s more than one of them. Staring into the pit below her, jarring memories rise to the surface of her mind: Nate! “Fuck.” The word slips out, where is he? Is he OK? Without much caution, Clarice makes a slippery decent into the liquid, and starts walking. More screeching now, and splashing - fuck what is happening? She reaches a rock overhanging that is barely supported by another pillar of rock. It wouldn’t take much strength to knock the whole thing over. Ducking under, she continues through a tunnel and comes to an abrupt halt.

It’s Rachel, clambering over a bit of rock or wood, splashing into the blood and being pursued by… Holy Mother of Fuck - was that what took her? The thing looks like a nightmare within a nightmare, and she’s shocked into a trance until Rachel physically bumps into her. She whips around. It’s pretty fucking clear all semblance of safety is gone, so Clarice just tells her to run. But Rachel seems just as shocked to see another human and doesn’t move. The nightmare screams, and Clarice throws out her left arm in desperation: Now! Go! Jarred into action, Rachel runs past her, and Clarice backs up, watching the approaching demon. She feels the presence of the rock arch and, yelling with the effort, she knocks the supporting rock out of place. As suspected the whole thing goes crashing down, separating them from the demon and raining down smaller rocks into the blood. Once the room stops shaking, it’s suddenly deathly quiet, but they still don’t speak as Clarice guides Rachel back to the incline she slid down. “We have to hurry. It’s not safe here.” Clarice warns, kind of uselessly. Using the flesh and bones, they both climb back up.

Clarice reaches the top and looks around, then watches Rachel pull herself up. “I didn’t know that you could…” starts Rachel, unsure. “Fight? Yeah, me either.” Although she didn’t exactly fight, she definitely saved both of them. “What was that thing?” As if Clarice knows the fucking answer to that question. “I don’t know.” She says, “but whatever it is, it’s not alone.” Rachel looks around at the exact same boring walls Clarice has already seen and asks “where have you been?” Clarice feels her skin crawl. Honestly, she has no goddamned clue. One minute she’s watching Nate bleed out, and the next minute she’s here, in the seventh circle of hell. But she can’t say that, so instead she just says “one of those things got its dirty hands on me, dragged me down here. Left me for dead.” Or at least she presumes. There is a good chance it’s going to come back and eat her. Might even be the same one that chased Rachel. Maybe it’s got a thing for women. “Fuck!” Is Rachel’s incredibly eloquent response. “Fuck doesn’t even start to cover it.” Clarice snaps back, maybe harsher than she should’ve. Rachel clearly hasn’t been having a better time than her. But anger is rising in her mind. She’s just standing here, swapping chit-chat, when Nate’s God-only-knows-where bleeding out. “I’m lucky to have gotten away.” Is she for real? “You’re talking to a scientist. There’s no such thing as luck. You should be thankful I was there to help you.” Again, her tone is so much more forceful than it should be, maybe she should just tell Rachel the truth. “I’m really grateful. Thank you.” “Semper Fi,” Clarice has no idea why she says that, “we gotta find a way outta this hole.” “So, this is where you’ve been hiding out? Do you have any weapons?” Clarice walks a little lap to see if there was anything she missed when she woke up and to avoid biting back that, no, the team’s scientist did not come armed. However as Clarice completes her lap, she sees that Rachel is rifling around in her backpack, and there is defiantly shit in there she doesn’t want Nate’s ex-CO to see. “Uh, do you mind?” “Just need some batteries for this damn light.” Clarice jerks her head and half shrugs aggressively, but Rachel is paying her no mind. “You could just ask. That ever cross your mind?” She points to her head for emphasis. Again, Rachel does not respond, and instead she just keeps searching, so Clarice turns away. She doesn’t want to be looking when Rachel comes across the condoms or the very discreetly hidden racy underwear she’d wrapped in a pair of very ugly gym shorts on a whim. When she turns back she notices that Rachel is badly cut. She approaches, pulling a bandage out of her vest pocket. She’s not a doctor of medicine, but still… “Looks painful.” Clarice observes, and her voice is softer. “Yeah,” Rachel grips her upper arm, her headlamp finally fixed, “it is.” “Think you can keep still?” Clarice doesn’t wait for an answer, she simply starts binding Rachel’s wound. Rachel nods stiffly, pained, but says “I’m glad you’re here.” Clarice’s temper has flittered out like a blown candle. She’s so fucking tired and Rachel doesn’t deserve her bite. “Yeah, well. I guess I’m a little glad too.” She’d rather not have left Camp Slayer at all, would rather none of them did. Would rather be in a shitty little motel, wine drunk and naked with Nate. But she’s here, and Rachel isn’t the worst company in the world.

Clarice shoulders her backpack as Rachel looks up at the wall next to them. “I saw those same symbols in the shepherd huts.” “Those people must have been in the valley a long time.” Clarice wants to say something else, but suddenly the pain is back in her side, stabbing into her lung, and she jerks, folding at the middle, coughing so violently it forces her a few steps back. Rachel looks suspicious, but says nothing. What can she say - did you catch a cold? More likely she caught some sort of fucking infection. “There’s a way up, there’s no way we’re making it,” Clarice points skyward, “look at it, it’s barely climbable.” “We can make it together.” Clarice hangs her head, then turns to looks at Rachel under the brim of her cap, “how did I know you were going to say that?” Rachel approaches her, looking weirdly determined: “I met Eric at climbing class. I can get us out of here.” God no wonder their marriage didn’t work out. They both look up, and then start climbing, staying close, Rachel encouraging and supporting Clarice when she needs it. It hurts, more than it should, but it’s not as hard as it looked from the ground. When Clarice knocks a stone loose she tries not to listen to it landing somewhere below, and when they reach the top, Rachel helps her up over the lip. Clarice grunts with the effort, then stands bent double. “You OK?” “Yeah, just need a minute.” The effort of everything is really starting to get to her. “A minute isn’t gunna kill us.” Ha! “Until it does.” Clarice forces herself to unbend, with her hands on her knees, supporting the weight of her ridiculously heavy head. “God, y-you look terrible.” Rachel stutters - Clarice knows she’s sweating profusely, she can feel it cascading down her, and it feels fucking awful. Sticky and slick and cold. Clarice looks up enough to see Rachel’s face when she retorts “gee, thanks Rachel. You ever think about going into motivational speaking?” She forces herself upright, but even upright she’s still hunching. “Seriously though. Are you OK?” “That’s gotta be about the dumbest question I have ever been asked.” Rachel, with her hands on hips, looks up at the next wall. "Giving me the silent treatment, huh?” “What do you want me to say?” “I don’t know,” Clarice gives a half shrug and thinks I want you to tell me that Nate’s alive, that I’m going to be OK, and that we’re getting out of this shit-hole. “Something to get our minds off this place.” “OK. So why did you become a physicist? I mean, you don’t…” “I don’t look the type?” “Well you don’t.” “Oh, should I be wearing nerd clothes?” Rachel squints at the sarcasm, “that’s not what I meant. You just don’t strike me as one.” “Science was the furthest thing from what everybody thought I’d do. Something just for me.” Sadness starts to overtake her, this is reminding her of too many things that hurt. “I know a little something about that.” Rachel’s eyes flick down, like there is some memory that bubbles to the surface for her too. “You do?” Clarice hears her own voice coming out very low. Suck it up, woman, she chastises herself. Rachel apparently has the same thought as the next sentence out of her mouth is laced with authority. “It’s not easy being Queen Bitch. You think I got where I am with a soft word and a warm smile?” Rachel walks over to the next rock wall, and Clarice follows her slowly. “And here’s me thinking you Langley types grew up on Easy Street.” Rachel scoffs: “Easy Street? I had to graft to get here. You think it bothers me what people call me? I wear that shit like a badge of fucking honour. They have no idea the shit-hill I’ve climbed to get to where I am right now.” “Yeah. And where is that, exactly?” Clarice already knows the answer. Rachel bites her lip, considering, “looks like another shit-hill if I’m truly honestly with myself.” Clarice laughs but it comes out as more of a wheeze.

“You and I… we’re not so different. We’re both doing what needed to be done in order to get to where we wanted to be. No shame in that.” “No shame-” Clarice begins to agree, but she’s interrupted by more violent coughing, forcing her to bend double, but her hands slip from her knees as her body jerks up and down, insides gurgling alarmingly as pain explodes in her chest. She momentarily loses control of her right arm and it jerks straight out and bends back, as she grunts and gasps in agony, before falling to her knees. Clarice can sense Rachel standing over her as she writhes on the ground, clutching her chest as something moves within her, pained sounds ripping free from her mouth. She holds her head as she gasps for air - as a screeching, screaming ringing starts up in her ears, and something moves in her neck like large wriggling veins trying to constrict her throat. Rachel jumps back as Clarice steadies herself with both hands on the floor and tries to cough up whatever it is that’s inside of her. “Clarice? What did that thing do to you?” She has to get back to Nate - she cannot fucking die down here - she has a life! “Please… Please don’t leave me down here alone.” Clarice can hear herself begging; crying. She tries to scream but it’s strangled - she’s scared, so scared. Rachel approaches her, “it’s OK… I’m here.” Holding her stomach, propped up with her other forearm against dirt, Clarice looks up at Rachel. “Promise that you’ll stay with me…” It’s barely a whisper - a prayer. “I won’t leave you. I promise! But you have to tell me: What did that thing to do you?” Clarice doesn’t answer, she doesn’t even have an answer; she’s struggling to remember, head touching the ground - why is her head so heavy? "There’s medication up there. It may help you. But we need to move, now!” Rachel takes over, pulling Clarice to her feet, forcing her towards the rock face. They don’t make it very far this time, before Clarice has to drop back down. “Rope,” she wheezes, “I have rope. Nate gave it to me as a fucking joke.” Rachel takes it gratefully, and doesn’t push the point.

They make it to the top, by some fucking miracle, and Rachel helps her up. Clarice grunts as she’s pulled over the lip, staggering to her feet, and they look out across a gaping hole. “We’re on the wrong side of the chasm. We’ll never make it.” Despair is flooding her brain as pain infiltrates every part of her body. She’s suddenly gripping her stomach, bent double again, coughing. The pain and effort bring her to her knees and then her cap hits the dirt. Rachel is at her side, a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t quit on me now!” Rachel grabs the rope and loops it, throwing it up and over to the other side of the gap. “We’ll have to swing over.” “That rope won’t hold.” Rachel puts all her weight on it and pulls - it holds, but no relief fills Clarice’s chest - there’s no room. “Wait!” She can feel herself sweating, almost leaking; her face feels bruised and beaten and she’s hotter than she’s ever felt in her life. “Do you really believe those medicines will help me?” Rachel shakes her head, as if dispelling the thought. “Keep it together, Clarice. We’re almost there.” “You didn’t answer my question.” “Way I see it, it’s your only hope. We can do this.” Now, where has she heard that before? Rachel goes over first, looking back at Clarice to ensure the Doctor is watching before she makes the jump. She swings easily to the other side. Clarice approaches the edge, coughs and straightens rapidly, and they stare at each other, before Rachel throws back the rope. Clarice hesitates, wondering what would betray her first: Rachel or her body, then she crosses, dropping the rope as she hits the other side. Falling to her knees at Rachel’s feet, Clarice starts coughing again. She can feel her throat filling with something, something alive… “You OK?” Rachel asks as her body convulses. Clarice looks up at her, sees that Rachel’s eyes are soft and concerned, and says “that answer your question?” But there’s no fire left in her. Rachel nods, “we need to get you to the temple.” She rises and Clarice follows.

They walk in silence. It’s fucking magical, or divine providence, or psychic how Rachel seems to knows where to go. Suddenly there’s gunfire up ahead of them, and at least gunfire means humans. Unless the demons have learnt how to fire rifles. They traverse a precarious ledge, coming out into an area with tables and boxes and old human items, but they don’t have time to stop and stare. Somewhere in the distance, a light is shot out, the spattering of gunfire creating showers of sparks - and the air is full of screams.

“Push forward into the temple!” That’s Kolchek’s voice. Rachel gets her arm under Clarice’s shoulder, and starts dragging her, running towards the commotion. “Put your shoulder into it!” Kolchek again. “Hurry!” That’s Eric. “I don’t see the Iraqis…” Kay? “If they’ve got any sense they’ll stay back - shit’s about to get real in here!” Rachel drags Clarice up a flight of stairs towards a sliver of light. The gap in the door is only about one human wide at this point, and Rachel yells out WAIT! Kay’s face appears in the crack of the closing door. “Rachel?!” He sounds ridiculously surprised. Clarice hears Eric mimic the name with even more confusion in his voice. Rachel drags Clarice through the doorway and places her down. Kolchek leans in, squatting next to Clarice while Rachel catches her breath. “You’re alive?” Kay again. “Have any doubt, Marine?” Oh, for God’s sake. Jason hefts himself up and pushes the door closed alone, grunting with the effort of adding a thick plank of wood to bar it, then he goes back to check on Clarice, putting his hand on her shoulder. “I saw those things take you…!” Yeah, and I saw you administering shitty medical aid to my husband, Clarice thinks, but she can’t get words out right now. “Where’s Eric?” Rachel’s voice is so clear cut. It’s not over emotional, and a perfect picture forms in Clarice’s mind. Guess neither of us really took the other into our confidence, huh. “Rache! I held on as long as I could, but… the rope… It snapped. I-I didn’t cut it, I wouldn’t.” Oh for fucks sake, it it really the time for this? Eric sounds so pathetic. Pain jerks through Clarice’s body but she doesn’t have the strength to respond. She’s trying to lift her head to look around. Why hasn’t Nate come over to her? Eric’s voice cuts through her musings as he comes out with “you’ve been fucking him, haven’t you?” And then suddenly they’re all fighting. “Always loyal? What bullshit.” Oh, shut up Eric! Something snaps in Clarice at the same time utter agony explodes across her body - a scream tears itself out of her and Jason jerks up and away, stumbling to put room between them. “The fuck is happening to her?” He sounds terrified - like he knows exactly what the fuck is happening to her. “She’s infected.” Rachel is no-nonsense, still the good guy. “She’s turning into one of those things! Why’d you bring her here?” One of those things? The demons? No! She can’t! There is screaming and ringing in Clarice’s ears, she’s burning all over and the pain is almost blinding her, but she looks up at the group in front of her, squinting against the pain, reaching through the fog and haze and she doesn’t see him - he’s not there! “Where’s Nate?” It’s barely a fucking whisper. "She needs our help!” “She’s beyond help! She shouldn’t be here!” “Where’s Nate?” ”Agreed! We gotta…!” “Wait! She’s one of us!” “Step aside Rachel.” “It’s too late, Rachel, she can’t be saved.” “You can’t possibly know that!” “Where is Nate!?” Why can’t they hear her? “You heard the man. Now step aside." Rachel is begging now, “Jason, please. Don’t do it.” Clarice starts screaming again, covering her mouth as she feels like something is rising up from inside her, blood is coming out from between her teeth and everyone jerks back. They’re all staring at her now. “WHERE IS NATHAN?!” The silence only brings more pain, as Kolchek… as Jason cannot look at her. “He didn’t… he didn’t make it.” The scream that bursts forth from Clarice is not one of agony but of heartbreak - of a loss she cannot possibly recover from. There is nothing… there is nothing. She looks up at Jason once more, and he understands. Rachel screams out NO, but Jason orders someone to hold her, and Eric steps forward to restrain… a struggling friend. “Let go of me!” Clarice looks right into Jason’s eyes and he looks back, “I’m sorry Rachel,” she whispers, and he shoots her in the head. The last thing she hears is Rachel’s desperate scream.

—

They’re standing on front of Treasure Island, watching the pirate show, holding clear plastic cups of alcoholic pink lemonade. Nate has one arm around her, his hand up the back of her shirt. Clarice is holding the strap of her satchel, filled with precious shitty souvenirs. They’re tipsy, but not drunk. The lights and sounds of the Vegas Strip have been their whole world for a week so far, and they have another week to go. Fire is launched up into the sky, and Clarice leans in closer to Nate, pressing her forehead and nose against his cheek. “Let’s get married.” “Oh?” “Yeah - right here - in Vegas.” “In one of those little Chapels?” “At the Graceland, with an Elvis Priest.” Nate puts his drink on the cement pillar in front of them, and turns to wrap both of his arms around her waist. She leans in so that his sweet breath is ghosting her face. “Is that OK?” “Yeah - I’ll hide Merwin - I don’t have a middle name.” Nate grins, “neither do I.” “I don’t want a ring either… maybe a tattoo. Two roses intertwined - maybe like the rose from A Matter of Life and Death.” “But make it goth.” Clarice laughs against his lips. “I’m gunna get a ring. Confuse the fuck outta of the guys back on base.” They kiss, blind to the tourists around them, blind to the fireworks, blind to everything but the other.

Til death do us part.

[Note: There is always life after the death of a loved one. You’re strong anyway - but for the sake of angst...]

#House of Ashes #Clarice Stokes #Nathan Merwin #Dr Stokes #Corporal Merwin #HoA #fanfiction #rarepair #AU #Clarice x Merwin #Merwin x Clarice #The Dark Pictures #the dark pictures anthology #the dark pictures house of ashes

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smallcrystals · 3 years ago

Note

TRANS MAN TIMBER PLSSSSS I NEED THIS SERATONIN

AND SERATONIN YOU WILL GET

so for some context for this headcanon: timber is afab, his family is from south asian descent, and his parents died when he was around ten

and this is LONG so buckle up !!!

timber was brought up knowing the general idea of a boy and a girl but he didn't really understand why he had to stick to one if he didn't feel like it. his parents tended to avoid the topic of gender and sexuality as a whole so he didn't have much to go by. he confined his thoughts of feeling more like a guy with gloriosa and she made sure he didn't face any queer discrimination from anyone to keep him safe

after their parents died, timber was kind of free to consume more diverse content since he had no one else to tell him not to, so he was pretty accepting of being gay and trans at a young age, reading books he asked gloriosa to get for him

he had to grow up fast so he ended up reading a lot of young adult at 12-13 (since there was more likely gonna be gay/trans ppl in those compared to books for his age)

despite not having a lot of trans rep, he had the internet due to his homeschooling. he was able to research a lot more abt being trans so he'd be more educated and helpful towards them (he sometimes brushed off the feeling of relating too hard to trans men, thinking he was just a really hardcore tomboy)

he realised he found himself attracted to girls and had various crushes but bc of the fact he felt like a boy, he mixed that up with attraction to boys (which he always 'had' since he thought he was a cishet girl at one point). but he still found boys cute and wanted to kiss them so :]

timber liked helping out at the camp a lot with wood and stuff since their dad at the time was the only "man" in the house. his dad didn't think anything of it and was just glad someone could help him out for once, so that continued on after they passed

timber preferred keeping his hair short since it got annoying bc of the curls. he kept it shoulder length until after his parents passed, then he asked gloriosa to cut it even shorter to the hairstyle he has now. my boy cried when he looked at himself in the mirror

it was around 14 where he realised he may be a boy and not a girl when his body started developing. he never got any bottom dysphoria so periods were never a massive thing for him (he just found them annoying) but he didn't like having boobs 😭

gloriosa managed to get T for him as a surprise one day and timber. like. SOBBED

she helps him take it when necessary until he got the hang of it himself and it just very helpful :(

timber noticed how much stronger he was getting after a few weeks on T and he got so excited. he was already strong beforehand so man just got stronger

he binds until he can get surgery which he gets at 18 (so yes in loe he is binding :>)

but it's actually rlly annoying bc man develops double d cups and is like . WHEN CAN I GET RID OF THESE THEY SUCK so he ends up only binding during camp sessions and doesn't when there aren't any campers at everfree

present day timber when someone comments rudely abt why he got top surgery and not bottom: LISTEN I JUST DIDN'T WANT FEMALE DOUBLE D BOOBS ON MY BODY IS THAT SO BAD???

he realised he liked people regardless of gender so he ids as pan! he's never really found a label for himself until he realised he's trans (he's known pre-loe)

he comes out to twilight after she tells him she's bi, so he comes out as pan and trans (a lot more nervous abt the trans bit but she's completely supportive abt it!!)

twilight gladfully reminds timber to take his hormones bc man forgets sometimes 😔 makes a timetable and everything and timber is just..... head in hands

this is my friend maisa's hc but i had to put it in here bc it's so cute:

timber is. so funny when ppl ask him invasive questions like it's none of your business !!!!

"whoa dude youre stronger than me and i'm the real man here" "oh what if i break your real man nose and kick you in the real man nuts then what"

timber gets top surgery done and it goes well!! since he's got a lot of muscle, he wanted his chest to fit that and it looks great in his opinion, he's very happy !!!

timber still likes wearing skirts occasionally and he pulls them off so well. he and flash went skirt shopping once

he lets rarity put make up on him at a time and he occasionally decks up

ppl ask him why he still wears feminine stuff and short answer is "i look better in it than you :)" but rlly, it doesn't give him dysphoria! timber doesn't personally associate his sex with his gender and doesn't feel like he needs to present the way society expects him too. he just does what he does to feel comfortable and doesn't give a shit what anyone else thinks!

timber goes to rarity to get some of his ethnic clothes styled in a little more feminine way (backless salwar for example) and just gets super giddy when he wears it

mehndi (henna) is typically for girls so he wore it as a child during eid and stuff but he didn't stop as he transitioned and always goes to gloriosa to get it done bc she does it really nicely

gloriosa tells him whenever he feels down that she's very proud of him and how far he's come and she'll always be there for him no matter what :(

timber's T ends up messing w his period so sometimes it does come, sometimes it doesn't and it's absolute hell. it used to be regular before but then. 😔 he doesn't get that bad of cramps anymore tho 😎

timber shaves! being south asian, he was bound to get a lot of body hair anyway but being on T just made it. Worse. he shaves frequently and just prefers it that way for himself!

even after timbertwi break up, twi still keeps reminding him to take his T. they're still very close friends!

flash walks in to timber taking his T one day and gets concerned bc he doesn't know so he's like . "timbie what r u doing....." and timber isn't comfortable yet telling him so he says he knows what he's doing and he's not comfortable telling flash yet. flash respects him and leaves the room until timber's done

timber ends up telling him sometime soon (like a few weeks) n flash is like "OHHH you were taking your testosterone, i'm so dumb", timber says "never stopped being dumb" and flash tackles timber

timber's pretty confident in himself after a while. that's where his ego shit comes from, he tries to hype himself up despite not beliveing it or having doubts but he does eventually and he's rlly proud of himself :}

I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABT HEIGHT but timber gained tall genes from his family so he was already pretty tall before he started taking T!! he's taller than flash and he teases amab flash all the time for it hehe

and that's all so far !!! hope you got the seretonin you wanted!!

#timber spruce #equestria girls #transgender #rasa speaks #gloriosa daisy #sci twi #flash sentry

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lilnasxvevo · 3 years ago

Text

Testosterone update, approximately 7 month anniversary:

I’ve seen other people at 7 months who look like they’ve been on T a lot longer than I have, and I can’t help but feel a little disappointed by that.

Here have been my experiences in what has changed:

-My voice. I’ve gained several notes at the bottom of my singing range, and singing above middle C or so has because distinctly uncomfortable for the time being.

-Facial hair. I shaved 9 days ago because I went to stay with friends for a few days and didn’t want to be unkempt, and that hasn’t grown back yet very much, but it is thicker and darker by fits and starts.

-Body hair…sort of. It hasn’t been universal. Lower legs and tummy for sure, no changes on my upper legs or arms or anything like that.

-EDIT: Forgot to mention acne. Face acne has been harder than usual to keep under control and for the first time in my life I have back and shoulder acne that refuses to be tamed.

-Libido. After I’d been on T a month or two I experienced a huge spike in libido that lasted 1 or 2 months, and when I increased my dose later I experienced another spike for a week or so. It’s since leveled out again but it’s higher than it was pre-T which is great because probably due to the meds I’m on, I had kind of forgotten what it was like to have a libido. Turns out it’s fun!

-Bottom growth, not gonna go into too much detail there, you’re welcome.

-Muscle tone, maybe? I’m not exactly working out on purpose but I do lift heavy objects sometimes just being a person in the world who has chores etc and I feel like it’s a little easier already to build and keep muscle.

-I’m surprised how ho-hum injecting myself weekly has become. Sometimes I hesitate for a second before I jab myself with the needle but it doesn’t hurt most weeks and after you do it a few times you realize what an easy process it is, even if it still takes me like 6-7 minutes start to finish.

-Confidence!

What hasn’t changed, or hasn’t changed as much as I had hoped it would:

-Like I said, most body hair hasn’t changed.

-Facial hair changes are indistinguishable unless you are standing pretty close to me IRL. I know at least some of you must think my repeated insistence that my facial hair has changed is wishful thinking, but it just doesn’t show up on my phone camera.

-No change in skin texture that I can tell.

-Waiting on that fabled fat redistribution, tbh. My hips are probably my #1 most dysphoria-causing body part and I would like some of the fat from those fuckers to put itself somewhere else please.

-My voice has dropped but I still get read as female over the phone.

-I still get read as female by hmmm approx 100% of strangers in person.

-No, I do not have more of a temper than I did pre-T. As far as I can tell, that is largely a myth.

If you have any questions, feel free to send an ask or DM, because I fucking love answering questions and I’m very nice.

#t journey #testosterone #trans man

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iclaimedtobethebetterbard · 4 years ago

Text

it was always you (falling for me) - chapter 2

Fandom: Sanders Sides Characters: All the sides Rating: Teen & up (for swearing) Relationships: Prinxiety, Moceit, and QPR Intrulogical (eventually this will develop into Intrulosleep!) Warnings: Language; Remus being Remus; Shakespeare fans will probably hate my interpretation(s) of the plays I reference here, if the English major friend I showed this to is anything to go by, and I’m very sorry about that 😂 Word Count: 9042

Read on AO3!

My writing masterpost

start - previous - here - next - masterpost

Summary: In a world where you and your soulmate swap dreams once a month, seven young adults enter the same college as freshmen. Each of them is wondering when they’ll find their soulmate and what that will mean for them.

Notes: Secret Santa gift for sanders-sides-fics!

Chapter 2

Roman had a problem. A person-shaped problem. Specifically, a problem shaped like his brother’s excessively pretty roommate, who seemed to take pleasure exclusively in needling Roman every chance they got.

Roman groaned, burying his face in one of the pillows on his bed.

“Hm?” his roommate, Patton, said sympathetically.

“I swear Virgil has, like, an agenda against soulmates, or something,” Roman said, rolling over and staring despairingly at the ceiling.

“Now, kiddo, I’m sure that’s not true.”

Roman lifted his head to look at Patton. “Aren’t I older than you?”

“Only by a few months,” Patton said serenely. “Spiritually, you’re my kiddo.”

“Pat, that makes no sense.”

Patton blinked up at him with a too-innocent face. “If it feels dad to you, just don’t think about it any father.”

“Oh my god.”

Patton giggled, a noise of pure delight, then circled back to Roman’s original topic. “What makes you think he’s got something against soulmates?”

“Uh, the way ze rails against them at every opportunity, for a start?” Roman sat up. “We have argued five times in the last two weeks about soulmates, and only three of them were even about Shakespeare like usual!”

“Haven’t you only known Virgil for, like, three weeks?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the point.” Roman climbed down the ladder to the ground. “Also, I feel like that makes it worse?”

“Hmm, maybe.” Patton seemed amused. “You talk about them a lot, you know?”

“He’s so annoying!” Roman said defensively. “Ze gets this stupid smirk like ze knows something I don’t and he doesn’t even seem to care about constructing sound arguments half the time!” He put his laptop into his backpack.

“Going somewhere?” Patton asked.

“Yeah, Virgil and Remus invited me over to their dorm to study.”

“Oh,” Patton said, a funny sort of look on his face like he was trying not to laugh.

“What?” Roman asked.

“Nothing, nothing.” Patton waved him away, still smiling to himself. “Have fun studying with Virgil.”

“I will,” Roman said brightly, heading out the door.

***

“I want to go get ice cream,” Remus announced suddenly, hopping to his feet. “Who’s coming with?” It was late, almost midnight, and Roman was sitting on the floor in what had been a nice triangle with Remus and Virgil until Remus had stood. The three of them had been alternately working on homework and arguing about Disney characters.

“Sure,” Virgil said with a shrug, tugging their hoodie up onto their shoulders—they’d been wearing it dangling off their body, with only their wrists in the sleeves holding it on. “Let me fix my eyeliner first, though.”

Remus nodded distractedly, looking around the room and turning in a circle.

“Whatcha looking for?” Roman inquired, getting to his feet as well.

“My wallet,” Remus said, gaze still roving around. “I don’t know where I—”

“By your chapstick,” Roman said.

“Ah!” Remus dove under his desk, scrabbled on the floor, and emerged with his wallet clutched triumphantly in one hand and his chapstick in the other. “Thank you.”

“How the fuck did you know that?” Virgil asked, turning away from the mirror hung on the door with their eyeliner in their hand. They’d reapplied it to one eye, in a perfect, pointed wing; the other eye still had the only slightly less perfect, barely faded wing they’d been wearing this whole time. It matched their black lipstick and the carefully blended eyeshadow on their upper eyelids.

“He put it down there when he was telling the story about trying to collect dried gum off the street,” Roman explained. “And the chapstick was already there right next to it. So that’s how I remembered.”

Remus nodded. “I would have gotten there in a minute, probably,” he agreed.

“I still don’t understand how the fuck you knew that, but good for y’all, I guess,” Virgil said, turning back to the mirror.

“ADHD solidarity,” Roman explained.

Remus made finger guns at him, nodding. “ADHD solidarity,” he agreed.

Virgil paused halfway through drawing the other wing on. “Oh, that makes sense.” They picked up the line again, their hand perfectly steady, drawing it out to a fine point. “I thought you said you were autistic?” they added after a moment, their face holding perfectly still as they filled in the eyeliner with a practiced hand; their monolid eyelids allowed them to draw the wings of their eyeliner wide and dramatic.

“Yeah, I’m both. There are high rates of comorbidity, and also they’re both genetic, so neurodivergence runs in families,” Roman explained, the sentence rolling out of his mouth without him stumbling over the words once or having to think about it at all. “Did you know about ten percent of the population is probably ADHD?” he went on eagerly. “It’s super underdiagnosed. Especially because of race and gender biases in doctors who diagnose it, and the misconception that it’s only something children have. I only got diagnosed because Remus did when we were little, and we’re twins, so then they tested me too. Even though we aren’t identical. It’s super frequent for identical twins to both have ADHD if one of them has it, though.” Roman bounced on the balls of his feet, tapping the tip of his finger against his thumb. “I wish we were identical, I think it’d be so funny. Like, impersonating each other, and things. We could make such good video skits.”

“We make fantastic video skits already,” Remus protested.

“Okay, fair. But you know what I mean. And we could switch places for a day and see who noticed. All the stuff twins do in stories. Twins are always identical in stories, it’s so annoying, I wish there were more stories with fraternal twins.” Roman paused for a second, his mind hovering for an instant between a not-fully-realized train of thought about the gender politics of twin representation in stories and the question of what animals were most likely to have twins. He chose, almost before he was aware there was a choice, the animals question, his emotions nudging him away from the energy talking about gender representation would take up. “Do you think kittens dream?” he asked, only a second or two after he’d stopped talking in the first place.

“Yeah, probably,” Remus responded without missing a beat, likely following his train of thought. “Better question, do other animals have soulbonds, and how do they know if so?”

“Maybe it’s a scent thing,” Roman said thoughtfully.

“Ooh, like with glands or some shit?” Remus looked thoughtful. “That could make sense. I wonder—I bet there’s answers on the internet. I’m going to look this up later. Are you coming, too, by the way? To get ice cream?”

Roman thought it over. “Sure,” he agreed.

“I’m ready,” Virgil announced, capping their eyeliner and setting it down on hir desk. “Also, I got whiplash about five times just listening to that conversation.”

“Good, my chaos is overtaking another victim and soon I shall rule the world. Let’s go!” Remus led the other two out the door and started walking towards the end of campus.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Roman inquired, shoving his hands into the pockets of his red letterman jacket to keep them warm.

“There’s an ice cream shop that’s open till one in the morning about ten minutes away walking,” Remus said over his shoulder. “Logan and I found it the first weekend here.”

“You two went in search of sweets without me?” Roman put a hand to his heart. “I’m hurt,” he declared in his most dramatic voice.

“Oh, shut up, we would have gotten around to telling you about it eventually. I mean, I’m telling you right now, so.” Remus shrugged. “Virge, aren’t you cold?”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty, so it’s worth it,” Virgil said, tossing their head so the long hair on the top of their undercut swished. They were wearing a distressed band tee and a black skater skirt over fishnet leggings and a pair of doc martens. It was quite chilly out, and even though they were wearing a hoodie too, Roman understood why Remus had been concerned.

“You are very pretty,” Roman told them seriously. Even aside from their clearly carefully chosen outfit, this was true. Their eyes were round and curious and a captivating shade of dark brown. Even with the boost from the platform of the shoes they were wearing, they were tiny. Roman was sure they couldn’t be more than 5’2” without the boots. The hair on top of their undercut was very long, almost down to their waist, contrasting with the closely-shaved back and sides of their head. About six inches on the ends of their hair were dyed purple. Their makeup, of course, was flawless, as was their golden-brown skin, which was just a little bit darker than Roman’s. He made a mental note to ask them about their skincare routine sometime; no matter how much care he treated his skin with, the acne on his cheeks refused to go away. It was his least favorite side effect of taking testosterone. “But you can be pretty and warm at the same time, if you want. I hate being cold. But I respect your decision to be pretty and cold if you want to,” he added quickly.

Virgil let out a slightly nervous laugh, rubbing the back of their neck. “Thanks, I think.” Their eyes widened as they looked past him. “Oh, my god, Remus, shut up!”

“What?” Roman asked, looking over at Remus, who was giving Virgil an evil grin.

“Nothing,” Virgil snapped.

“I didn’t say anything,” Remus said innocently.

“Shut up!” Virgil repeated, flipping the hood of their hoodie up and dragging it over their face.

“What’s going on?” Roman asked, confused, while Remus burst into cackles of laughter.

“Nothing!” Virgil repeated with great emphasis.

Roman let out a sigh of frustration, but Virgil seemed genuinely upset about whatever Remus had done when Roman wasn’t looking, so he dropped it. Maybe Remus would explain later.

Remus did not explain later; however, he did turn around to walk backwards after the silence had stretched on long enough to become awkward. “Is the ocean a soup? Discuss,” he commanded.

“Oh, not this again!” Roman groaned. “No, absolutely not!”

“Yes,” Virgil said, almost as soon as Roman stopped talking.

“No!” Roman stamped his foot. “That makes no sense!”

“It makes lots of sense. Explain how it’s not soup,” Virgil challenged.

The resulting argument lasted them all the way to the ice cream shop and halfway through their treats.

“Aren’t you going to take a side?” Roman demanded of Remus at last.

Remus looked up from his cone. “Oh, no, this is very entertaining for me, I could watch you two bicker all month. Please keep it up.”

“You’re a terrible person,” Roman told him, trying not to laugh.

“I never claimed to be anything else,” Remus said happily.

***

“—and that’s how you do it. It’s really easy, but it’s so fun, I could balance chemical equations for hours,” Remus said, bopping the tip of his dry-erase marker against the giant whiteboard in the library for emphasis. He and Roman and Virgil had all met up here to study; it was a sunny afternoon, and they’d gotten a nice spot by the window. The marker left a little black mark next to the diagram Remus had spent the last ten minutes drawing; he wiped the dot away with his finger. He was wearing a turtleneck with horizontal black-and-white stripes and a pair of faded jeans with paint splatters all over them and huge rips in the front that ran from his mid-thighs almost down to his ankles; he’d finished the outfit off with socks in sandals and a black felt beret. His outfit—vaguely artistic, but mostly just terrible—contrasted comically with the intensely technical pseudo-lecture on chemistry he’d just given.

Roman nodded without looking up. “I remember balancing those was fun,” he agreed. He hadn’t taken a chemistry class in a couple of years now, but Remus was majoring in it, and the best way for Remus to study was to explain it out loud, so he’d gathered Roman and Virgil in the library. They’d even been able to snag one of the coveted whiteboards. Roman was able to focus on his notes better with Remus’s animated talking in the background, and Virgil preferred quiet but was willing to put on his headphones to block out Remus’s noise, so all in all this arrangement worked out well for all three of them.

“Yes!” Remus agreed with a happy wiggle. He picked up his water bottle off the table and took a long sip. “Okay, next I have a bunch of molecules I have to memorize the structures of. Do you need anything first?” He addressed his question to both of them, but Virgil seemed pretty focused—or perhaps his music was loud enough to drown out other noises.

Roman, however, thought the question over. “Yes, actually, can you help me go over my lines for this one scene? It’s not very long.”

“Mmhm.” Remus held out his hands expectantly, and Roman handed him his script. Remus began fiddling with the dog-eared bottom corner of the page it was open to, folding it back and forth.

Roman dug in the pocket of his cargo shorts—he liked cargo shorts, partly for the shape but mostly for the pockets—and handed Remus a star-shaped fidget toy made of sequins that could be flipped back and forth. He’d rather the corner of the script didn’t get torn off by mistake.

“I think I’m off book, I just want to make sure,” he said as Remus accepted the toy and began fidgeting with it.

Remus nodded, scanning the page. “Sounds good. It’s just this one page?”

“Yeah. Ready?”

Remus nodded, and Roman launched into the scene. His character had most of the lines; it was essentially a glorified monologue. Remus interjected the two lines from other characters, using a hilarious nasally voice that made it hard for Roman to stay in character without breaking to laugh, but he successfully made it through the final line before dissolving into snickers.

“You’re word-perfect, kid,” Remus proclaimed as Roman got ahold of himself, handing him back the script.

Roman grinned. “Thank you!”

Remus nodded and took another sip of water before wiping down the whiteboard and launching into a ramble about the molecular structures he had to memorize.

Roman had just about tuned Remus out again and slipped back into the headspace where he could focus on his work when Remus broke off. “Logan!” he exclaimed, sounding delighted.

Roman looked up, and so did Virgil, pulling off hir headphones. Roman followed Remus’s gaze, and there indeed was Logan, his flat top haircut and dark academia outfit unmistakeable. He was stepping out of the stairwell that led down from the floor above, adjusting the strap of the leather messenger bag they used instead of a backpack. Even at this distance, the pins he kept on the bag were visible, neatly affixed in alternating rows on the bag’s buckle straps—a demiboy flag, an aromantic flag, an enamel pin shaped like an open book, and a handful of other pins Logan had collected from the university’s cultural centers during orientation. Roman had a few of that last category on his backpack himself; he knew he and Logan had matching land acknowledgment pins now, but he wasn’t sure if any of the other pins they’d chosen matched.

Remus darted across the wide open floor, weaving his way around a few students. “Logan! Hi!”

Logan looked up, a small smile finding its way onto his face as he saw Remus. He said something—presumably a greeting—but was too far away for Roman to hear, since he was speaking at a normal tone.

Remus seized Logan by the hand and dragged them towards Roman and Virgil. Logan laughed and said something in protest, pushing his square glasses up his wide nose as he followed Remus.

“Remus, I have to go to class,” Logan was insisting as they got close enough for Roman to hear. “Hello, Roman. Virgil.” They adjusted their already-immaculate clothing, the tendons in their thin hands flexing as they smoothed their mustard-brown cable knit sweater vest and tugged on the rolled-up sleeves of their periwinkle button down shirt.

Virgil gave a two-fingered salute. “Sup.”

“Hi Logan,” Roman said happily. “We’re studying!”

“Very nice,” Logan said, raising Remus’s hand—which was still clasping his own—and gently pressing it with their other hand. “I am always glad to see you, Remus, but I can’t stay long.”

“Okay,” Remus said. “I just wanted to say hi.” He gave Logan a quick, tight hug around the ribs before releasing them just as fast as he’d darted in.

Logan smiled again. “Hello, then. I hope your studying is going well?”

He received nods from the group, and gave them his own nod in return.

“You’ve got to go,” Remus reminded him. “You don’t like to be late.”

“True. I’ll see you later, dear.”

Remus nodded. “Wanna hang out tomorrow night?”

Logan considered this. “Maybe. I’m going to the Black Student Union meeting tomorrow evening. So it would have to be after that.”

“Okay, I can do that! I love you!”

Logan smiled. “I love you too, Rem.” They made as if to leave, then paused. “Roman, while I’m thinking of it—are you and Patton still free for lunch tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Roman confirmed. Logan and Patton had two classes together, and so together with Roman they’d formed a tight-knit little friend group very quickly; the three of them tried to make sure to meet up for lunch at least once a week.

“Wonderful. I’ll text our groupchat about it. See you then.” Logan tugged his hand out of Remus’s grip, waved, and set off at a brisk pace back towards the stairs.

***

“I’m telling you, Virgil, Oberon and Titania are a really good example of how soulmates can make it through rough patches!”

“Bullshit. They’re obviously not a metaphor for soulmates, why would the fae even have soulmates? Their story is a cautionary tale,” Virgil said languidly, lying on their back on the floor of their room.

“No!” Roman pounded his fist on the floor. “Why do you always do this?”

“Because it’s funny,” Virgil replied with a snicker.

“But you always bash on soulmates, specifically!” Roman said.

“Yeah, because I think society’s emphasis on soulbonds is dumb.” Virgil shrugged. “Anyway, if you think Oberon and Titania’s relationship is a good example of anything, I have some concerns.”

“No—no, stop! I didn’t mean it like that! They’re fae, like you said. I obviously don’t condone any of the ways they treated each other! I’m just saying that viewing them as a metaphor for soulmates makes a really interesting lens to view the other couples in the play! Right, Logan?” He turned expectantly to Logan.

“Wh—no,” Logan, who was sitting on Remus’s bed and combing their fingers through Remus’s hair, his head in their lap, responded. “You are both, objectively, wrong. Horribly so. Painfully so.”

“Hey! You’re not allowed to tell me I’m wrong about Shakespeare,” Roman countered quickly.

“Why did you ask me for my opinion, then?” Logan asked, rolling their eyes.

“I don’t know,” Roman grumbled.

“Wait, why can’t they talk to you about Shakespeare?” Virgil asked.

“Because they always win!” Roman crossed his arms.

“Oh, and I don’t?” Virgil demanded. “What am I to you, Roman? I thought we had something special here,” they went on playfully. “You make dumb arguments, I make worse ones, and then I win. I thought that meant something to you.” They pouted at him.

“That’s different!” Roman protested, stifling giggles at the mopey puppy dog eyes Virgil was sending him. “You just don’t care what I say. Logan actually refutes my arguments! It’s very humiliating!”

“I only do it because your logic is physically painful to listen to,” Logan said.

Roman crossed his arms and pointedly turned away from Logan, nose in the air. “Anyway. As I was saying. Puck’s role in all of this is really interesting, if you consider the question: are the fae supposed to be able to truly alter soulbonds, or are they only messing with feelings?”

“Dear,” Logan said plaintively, looking down at Remus, his fingers still carding through Remus’s curls.

“Hmm?” Remus responded, not opening his eyes.

“Make them stop,” Logan said beseechingly.

“Sorry fellas, you heard them. Stop torturing Logan, he’s already an English major, so he’s plenty tortured already. Or else I’ll have to dissect your spleens.” Remus wagged a finger in Roman and Virgil’s direction.

“What a terrible fate that would be,” Roman commented, flopping over to lie on the floor beside Virgil.

Seconds later, his phone buzzed; he pulled it out to see a text notification from Virgil.

Virgil: oberon sucks btw

Roman: Oh, it is ON!

Roman grinned as he sent the response, already anticipating the thrill of the argument that was about to ensue. He felt a warm thrill in his chest at Virgil’s answering chuckle—it was good to know Virgil was having fun with this too.

***

“—so I was hanging out with Virgil the other day at the library cafe, and he said The Tempest was dumb because magic solves everything.” Roman was lying on the floor of his dorm, tossing a bouncy ball up in the air and catching it over and over again. Logan was sitting at Roman’s desk, legs up and crossed on the seat of the chair as he worked on readings for an English class, half-listening to Roman’s rambling. “And that since it solved all the problems, it made no sense for Prospero to give it up. Which was completely ignoring all the bad stuff magic had done and the symbolism of him throwing it away!”

“What did Remus have to say about that?” Logan inquired with a small laugh, not looking up from the copy of Frankenstein in his hands.

“What? Oh, nothing. Remus wasn’t there.”

“Oh?” Logan blinked, glancing up from the book.

“Yeah, we were at the library getting Starbucks, we do that on Wednesdays now. Remus was in his history class, I’m pretty sure.”

“I didn’t know you and Virgil hung out together,” Logan said, raising their eyebrows.

“Oh, we don’t, we just get coffee on Wednesdays, it’s different,” Roman said.

Logan stared at him. “...What?”

“Like, we only hang out on our own time to get Starbucks and then argue about Shakespeare. It’s really fun! It’s a great system, honestly. And this way, you don’t yell at me about Shakespeare or text Remus rant essays about what you think I’m getting wrong!”

Logan looked away, a very called-out expression on his face. “You weren’t supposed to see those…”

“Oh, Remus didn’t show me, I just broke into his phone the other day and it was open to your texts,” Roman said reassuringly.

“Why would you break into—” Logan began, not seeming reassured in the slightest.

“I needed to check his calendar to see if he was available to come with me to the grocery store,” Roman explained. “You know we’re really good at guessing each other’s passcodes. He doesn’t mind, we break into each other’s phones all the time.” He paused, assessing Logan’s face, trying to gauge if their expression was upset or not. “I’m sorry I read the texts, though,” he added, just in case it had hurt their feelings. “I only saw the very end of it, it wasn't on purpose or anything. Promise.”

Logan sighed. “I know. It’s alright.” He reached across the space between them to press the back of Roman’s hand.

Roman grinned. “Only you would come up with a whole essay in a text,” he teased. “Dunno what I expected, really.”

“It wasn’t an essay,” Logan said defensively. “Technically speaking.”

“I dunno, it sure looked like if you formatted it with MLA, you could turn it in for a grade.” Roman giggled. “But hey, what do I know?”

Logan opened his mouth to reply, but stopped as the doorknob rattled with the sound of keys.

Patton stepped in. “Hey! If it isn’t some of my favorite people!” he greeted the two of them with a smile. His dark, wavy hair was a little ruffled. Normally he combed it to the side, but Roman remembered it had been windy today, so Roman guessed that was responsible for the irregularity. “How are you doing?” Patton asked the two of them.

“Better now that you’re here,” Roman told him with an answering grin. “How’s your day been?” He’d noticed that Patton really liked being asked how his day had gone.

Sure enough, Patton’s smile spread a little wider. “Pretty good, thanks! I haven’t had too much to do today, which is nice. How are you doing, Logan?” He sat down on the floor beside Roman, sliding his backpack off his shoulders.

Roman immediately sat up and scooted over to lean against Patton—he was an excellent cuddler; he was tall and chubby and he ran warm, and Roman liked cuddles. He tended towards understimulation rather than overstimulation, and hugs were one of his favorite things. Patton was always happy to supply.

“I’m alright, thank you,” Logan said as Patton wrapped an arm around Roman’s shoulders. “A little underslept, but otherwise good.”

“Good, good. You should sleep more. Are you both busy?” Patton asked.

“No,” Roman said, because Patton always had fun ideas.

Logan pursed his lips, glancing down at the book in his hands in consideration. “I can finish this chapter later. Why?”

“Oh, I was just wondering if either of you wanted to play a board game,” Patton said. He and Roman had each brought a couple from their homes, and together they had quite the little collection.

“Yes!” Roman agreed eagerly, breaking away from Patton and crossing to the shelf where they kept the games. “How about Clue?”

“I will decimate you both,” Logan said, deadly serious, adjusting their glasses and scooting to the floor.

“All part of the fun, Specs.” Roman pulled out the box and set it down between them. “Dibs on the red piece!”

***

“—so I told him that was utter bullshit—not in so many words, of course—and listed off the reasons why, and he simply did not seem to recognize how completely nonexistent his logic was, he just kept repeating his original points louder and louder.” Logan punctuated his rant about a classmate with hand gestures as he walked next to Roman on the sidewalk.

“I hate guys like that,” Roman said, making a face.

Logan nodded. “But I got full credit on my discussion post when I typed up my argument and I cannot imagine he got the same, based on his talking points. So.” He shrugged, clearly trying not to look too smug with himself.

“Good job!” Roman told them.

“Thank you.” Logan’s happiness was palpable. “How have—”

“Logan!” Remus’s voice shouted.

Roman looked in the direction of the noise; they were almost an entire block away still from the quad, where they’d agreed to meet Remus, but he seemed to have spotted them. He was sprinting at full speed directly towards them.

“Oh, dear,” Logan said, the exasperation in his voice belied by the grin on their face. They took a step back and braced themself, just in time.

Remus full-on tackled Logan in a hug, colliding into him at full speed. Logan stumbled back a couple of steps, but successfully avoided falling over. “Hello, Remus,” he said composedly, wrapping their arms around Remus and returning the enthusiastic hug. “How are you?”

“Much better now. I missed you,” Remus said into Logan’s shoulder. “Normal people get all weird about it when I tell them cool murder facts. You're much cooler than normal people.”

“It has been twenty-seven hours and about thirty minutes since you last saw me,” Logan informed him. “And thirteen minutes since we last texted.” They rumpled his curls, which fell messily in loose spirals about his face; they were mostly about chin length, although some of them were choppily trimmed shorter than others. Remus was very insistent about cutting his own hair. It was always mildly disastrous, but he insisted he liked it that way. He’d dyed it himself, too; he’d bleached a streak at the very front of his head and dyed it silver about a month before college started, with a surprising amount of success.

“Yeah, and I missed you.” Remus stepped back from the hug as Logan released him. “Also hi Roman, I guess.” He tossed Roman a grin.

“You are a terrible brother sometimes,” Roman informed him. “Hi.”

“Uh, I think you mean all the time,” Remus corrected him. “I’m joking,” he added. “C’mon, I got Starbucks for us! I have extra meal credits!” He seized Logan’s hand and reached invitingly for Roman’s.

Roman let Remus grab his hand, too, and his brother immediately began dragging both Roman and Logan at a slightly breakneck pace down the sidewalk. Several students dove out of their way until he dragged them to a halt by the food truck, bouncing on the balls of his feet and waiting expectantly.

Not even a moment later, the barista placed three cups on the delivery window tray and called out Remus’s name.

“Yes!” Remus pumped his fist, darted over, and picked up two of the cups—Roman recognized Remus and Logan’s go-to coffee orders, a trenta mango-dragonfruit refresher and a grande vanilla sweet cream cold brew with extra ice. Roman picked up the last cup, a warm drink in a grande cup; he sniffed to check what it was even though he knew what Remus usually got him. Steamed apple juice with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top—his favorite as a kid and still one of his favorites now. He wrapped his hands around the warm cup and followed Remus and Logan over to a sunny patch on the lawn.

Remus sprawled out, taking up more space than seemed humanly possible for one person to fill; Logan tucked their legs beneath them as they sat beside Remus and began pulling out a textbook, a dog-eared novel, and a handful of pens and pencils from their messenger bag.

Roman sat so that he completed the triangle between the three of them, his legs crossed so he could lean his cup against them between sips and not worry about knocking it over.

“Thank you for the coffee, Remus,” Logan said, his cup halfway to his lips as he flipped through the worn novel.

Roman nodded in agreement, breathing in the warm cinnamon scent of the apple juice.

“Of course!” Remus said exuberantly, taking a noisy slurp of his drink.

Roman and Logan both winced slightly.

“Could you be a little quieter, there?” Logan asked mildly.

“How dare you.” Remus clutched his heart, leaning back so far Roman was surprised he didn’t lose his balance and fall over.

Logan sighed, reaching over and placing a hand over Remus’s, gripped around the edge of the cup’s lid. “At least please be careful not to splash,” he said, guiding Remus’s hand downwards until the cup came to rest on the ground. “This textbook cost rather a lot and I’d like to sell it back in a decent condition at the end of the term.”

Remus let go of the cup, leaving it to rest where it was, and leaned forward. He took Logan’s face in both of his hands and looked seriously into their eyes. “Hey. You are my best friend in the whole world and you mean everything to me. I love you and I’m so glad we’re soulmates. But I draw the line at stopping my annoying behavior for anything less than a natural disaster.” He released Logan and picked his drink back up. “I promise I won’t spill on your book, though,” he added lightly. “Roman gets no such promises.”

“You wouldn’t dare, you know I hate being sticky—” Roman began heatedly.

“Okay, okay. Jesus. You two are really conspiring to foil all my chaotic little gremlin dealings today. I’ll order an ice water to spill on you instead, will that make you happy?” Remus snickered.

Roman frowned. “If you must,” he begrudgingly agreed, since this seemed the closest thing to a compromise he was likely to get out of Remus. He suspected it might be a joke anyway, but he wasn’t sure about that and didn’t want to take any chances.

But Remus didn’t return to the food truck, so it seemed likely that it was a joke after all. Instead, he devoted himself to more noisy slurping, crossing his eyes and looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“You’re the tallest one of us,” Roman said after a moment.

“Huh?” Remus looked up at him.

“He has a point, dear,” Logan said, turning a page.

“Like yeah I know I am, but what’s the point?” Remus asked.

“You said we were foiling your chaotic little gremlin dealings,” Roman elaborated. “You’re, like, fucking… six two.”

“And a half,” Remus added. “Emotionally, I am a chaotic creature of spite who’s about three five and can sneeze fire, though.”

“That makes no sense,” Roman protested.

“Does too,” Remus responded, crossing his arms.

“It does,” Logan agreed. “For example, emotionally, I punch that one classmate in the face twice a week, but we can’t always embody what we want to be. And you, Roman—emotionally, you’re very invested in Shakespeare, but in actuality, your interpretations are painfully bad.”

“Hey. You talking about me and Shakespeare is off limits. We’ve discussed this.” Roman waved a warning finger at them.

“I still think that’s unfair and have raised a motion to reject and overturn the ban.”

“Unfortunately for you, the judge and jury are my feelings, and you hurt them, Logan. Shakespeare and I have something special. You need to stop trying to come between us like this.”

Logan glanced up from his book to give Roman a singularly unimpressed look. “You are preposterous.”

Roman beamed at him and made a heart shape with his hands, holding it up like a picture frame to look at Logan through. “But you loooooove me,” he singsonged.

Logan nodded. “This is true.”

“You’re both nerds and Shakespeare isn’t even that good,” Remus put in, a shit-eating grin on his face.

“I’m divorcing you,” Logan said immediately.

“Noooo, come back!” Remus dramatically grasped at the air as if reaching out from afar for Logan.

“Fine.” Logan shrugged. “Then Roman’s disowning you.”

“Hey, that’s my line!”

“He can’t disown me, he’d miss me,” Remus said confidently. “Y’all are stuck with me.” He looked very pleased with himself.

There was silence for a beat, then all three of them burst into laughter.

“I’m really glad we’re all friends,” Remus said happily, leaning back and taking another long sip of his drink.

“Yeah,” Roman agreed.

“I don’t know,” Logan said, holding back a smirk. “Sometimes I think about a world where I don’t have to deal with a pair of himbos every day of my life.” He maintained his faux-serious face for all of the three seconds it took both twins to start pelting him with ripped-up blades of grass, then devolved into helpless laughter again.

***

“Patton, you good? You’ve been kind of spaced out all day.”

“Huh?” Patton looked up, blinking through his round gold-rimmed glasses. “Yeah, I’m okay! Just… boy problems, I guess? Which is… it’s new.” He wrinkled his nose for a second in a face of dissatisfaction before smoothing his face back into a smile.

“Oh? Want to talk about it?” Roman asked eagerly, leaning forward and resting his chin in his hands, interest definitely piqued.

“I don’t know…” Patton glanced away. “It’s complicated. And it’s probably not a big deal.”

“Patton. We are friends. The main purpose of friends is gossiping about crushes.” Roman crossed his arms. “I am offended that you would ever doubt my capacity for talking about boys in a gay way.”

“I don’t think that’s the main purpose of friendship,” Patton said, but his smile looked more genuine.

“Shush, I know that, I’m being dramatic. How about a movie night and you can spill the deets in a cozy setting with popcorn? And Logan?”

“I mean… okay,” Patton relented. “It’s probably not as exciting as you’re hoping for, though, I’m sorry.”

“Nonsense. You are perfect and so is everything you do,” Roman said absently, pulling out his phone and FaceTiming Logan.

“Roman! You’re sweet, but you know you shouldn’t go around passing out compliments that should go to you,” Patton said.

“Oh, stop,” Roman said, grinning wide.

Logan picked up on the second ring. “What do you need, Roman?”

“To see your gorgeous face, nerd. Also we’re having a movie night at me and Pat’s, attendance mandatory. Seven works, right? Pat’s having boy problems.”

Logan stared at Roman with a blank face for several beats. “And… you want me there to help… why?” he deadpanned.

“Shut up, you have a nonromantic boy toy, you’re basically qualified to help.”

“Don’t call Remus that! He’s a person, not a—wait, he’s your brother, Roman, that’s worse, that’s so weird—”

“—Anyway, I can more than handle giving Patton plenty of terrible advice on his love life,” Roman interrupted. “You’re there to tell him everything I say is a terrible idea and let me throw popcorn at you. We can watch Big Hero Six. C’mon, it’ll be fun!”

Logan heaved a sigh. “Fine. But you have to put your dad’s curry powder on the popcorn.”

“What kind of man do you take me for, Logan? Of course we’ll have curry popcorn! See you at seven, love you, bye bye.” Roman blew a kiss and hung up.

After his English class, Roman grabbed a burrito from the dining hall and hurried back to the dorm, making it there at half past six. Patton was already back; he made hot chocolate while Roman microwaved popcorn and tossed it in a bowl with curry powder.

At precisely seven o'clock, there was a knock on the door; Roman let Logan in and the three of them climbed into the nest of pillows and blankets Patton had built on the bottom bunk, pushing aside the bi pride flag and the Puerto Rican flag Patton had hung like curtains around his bunk.

“So,” Roman said eagerly as the movie’s opening bot fight began on the laptop screen, turning to Patton and bouncing (Logan grabbed the popcorn bowl out of Roman’s lap as it jostled), “spill!”

Patton squirmed under the attention, a half-hidden smile ghosting its way onto his face. “I don’t know… what should I talk about?”

“What’s he like?” Roman asked. “How do you know him? Is he cute? Have you got his number?”

“Oh, wow—that’s a lot.” Patton giggled nervously.

“Okay, start with is he cute?”

“He’s really cute,” Patton allowed, biting back another smile. “He’s got all these freckles all over his face and neck and hands, and his eyebrows are really expressive—he gets this really serious face when he’s thinking, and it’s… really pretty.”

“Eyes?” Roman demanded. “How are his eyes?”

“I mean, they’re eyes? They’re this kind of greyish blueish color. I don’t know, I try not to stare, especially when he’s looking, you know?”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Roman relented. “What else? Is he fashionable?”

“I—not really, honestly. He mostly just wears longsleeve tees and jeans. Sometimes beanies. He has these really cute yellow converse that he always wears, though. He, like—oh, gosh, I’m not sure how to describe it. He’s not, like, fashionable like you asked, but he—kind of the way he holds himself makes it seem like he is? He wears his clothes well, I think is maybe the phrase.”

Roman nodded. “Alright. Do you know whether or not he’s queer?”

Patton hesitated. “Um… I’m not sure. I don’t know either way. But he was the only one that laughed at a bi pun I made one time, and he wore a pink shirt and yellow belt with faded jeans one time, which I might be reading way too much into but it sure looked like a sneaky pastel pan flag.”

Roman nodded very seriously, taking mental notes. “All good signs. Anything else? Any stickers on his laptop or water bottle? Pins on his backpack?”

Patton shook his head. “They’re, like, super empty. He doesn’t really do anything that tells people about his personality. His outfits are usually really plain, like I said, and everything. It’s weird, because he’s got such a distinct personality, and he really doesn’t seem like someone who’d leave his stuff unpersonalized. It’s like he’s afraid of something, or something.” Patton was silent for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “But then, he seems kind of nervous around me in general.” He looked away, a worried expression crossing his face.

“Maybe he likes you back?” Roman suggested. “Plenty of people get nervous around their crushes.”

Patton shook his head quickly. “No, I don’t think that’s it. I think I know what the thing worrying him is. I just… don’t know how to talk about it with him.”

“You do realize you’re being super vague here, right?” Roman queried; he couldn’t parse what on earth Patton meant by that, but his curiosity was piqued.

“I know.” Patton bit his lip. “I, um, don’t want to talk about it yet, I think. It’s complicated. I don’t think it would be fair to him to discuss it with others.”

“Oh.” Roman did his best to hide his disappointment. “Okay, that’s fine. How do you know him?”

His attempt to change the subject didn’t seem to ease Patton’s discomfort, based on the way his shoulders drew up even closer to his ears. “...Kind of from a class we’re in together?” he answered after a long pause. “We’re partners on a group project.”

“Sounds like a meet cute to me,” Roman said, searching again for new lines of questioning that would hopefully not be as upsetting for mysterious and unknown reasons. “What do you like about him?”

Patton lit up. “He’s really sweet, actually. It takes some looking to see it, because he’s got a lot of walls up, but you can tell he’s really thoughtful and observant, and he’s really warming up to me, I think—he’s being much nicer to me than most people, and I’m starting to think he really means it and wants to be nice to me just to be nice, not because he feels like he has to.”

“Well, of course he’d be nice to you, you’re like the sweetest person I’ve met in my life,” Roman said, feeling bewildered by this line of reasoning.

“No, I—oh, nevermind. I was worried he wasn’t genuinely being nice for a while, but I’m really starting to think he means it, is my point. Anyway, he’s really smart—he’s so good at like, you know, synthesizing stuff? He’s really good at finding the information we need and paraphrasing it in a way that works really well for our project. I have such a hard time wording things how I want, you know? So it’s awesome that he can do that so well. And he’s good at puns, too! He tries not to laugh, but he scrunches his nose up and gets really red cheeks so you can always tell, it’s really cute. And one time I was trying to explain to our professor he was wrong about something, but I was kind of having trouble getting my point across, the teacher didn’t seem to get it, and he just spoke up and pointed out exactly where the misunderstanding was. It was really nice and reassuring of him. He just seems really protective of people he cares about, you know?”

“He sounds great, Pat!” Roman agreed.

Patton nodded, giving an excited little wiggle.

The brief silence was broken by a quiet crunching noise. Roman looked to his other side to see Logan, eyes fixed on the movie, who had worked their way through a solid third of the popcorn.

“Oh, you fiend!” Roman cried, seizing the popcorn bowl back since he was sitting in the middle.

“What?” Logan defended himself exasperatedly. “You two seemed to be handling that just fine! I like this movie! Neither of you asked for the popcorn back! What did I do?”

“...Okay, technically nothing,” Roman admitted after considering this defense and finding it to be unfortunately solid and covering all of Logan’s bases. God, they knew him too well. “But we are supposed to be doing this as a group.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “Fine. Patton, he’s probably queer. You should ask him out and see what happens. Happy now?”

“Wh—how are you saying that with such confidence?” Roman demanded.

“Which part?”

“That he’s queer. I agree Patton should definitely ask him out at the first opportunity, we just hadn’t gotten to that yet.”

“I mean, I can’t say for sure, but being the only person in a classroom to react to a queer joke is pretty telling.” Logan shrugged. “Any other relevant details?”

Patton shrugged. “I don’t know. Janus—that’s the guy—he doesn’t talk about himself very much—”

“Hold on, Janus?” Logan interrupted. “Lanky white guy? Constantly acts like he’s just swallowed a lemon? Kind of a twink? Looks incredibly uncomfortable in his own skin? Growing his hair out?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Patton admitted. “You could maybe be nicer about him, though.”

“I’m sure I could,” Logan said, seeming unconcerned. “Yeah, I know him. He’s queer, I’m pretty sure he’s compatible with you. No idea if he’d be interested, or frankly what you see in him, but go for it.”

“Wh—how do you know him?” Roman demanded. “I feel left out now!”

“We met at the Aspec—at a pride center identity group. Also he’s Remus’s roommate’s best friend. They’re practically attached at the hip. I’m surprised you haven’t met him yet, with how much you hang out over there lately.”

Virgil had a best friend? A best friend here, at college? That was news. Surprisingly unpleasant news—Roman wasn’t quite sure why. It wasn’t like he disliked Virgil to the point of not wanting them to have friends! Of course not! Frankly, he was glad to hear the tiny emo had a social life. It just kind of stung that this was the first time he was hearing about someone evidently so important to Virgil. And not even from hir own mouth. He’d kind of thought they were closer than that. That he’d have learned basic facts about what and who was important to Virgil by now. Learning otherwise was a remarkably unpleasant experience.

Logan took another handful of popcorn out of the bowl in Roman’s hands, startling Roman out of his thoughts.

“Stop!” he yelped. “I want some, too!”

“You have more if this bag runs out,” Logan pointed out. “I have some extra popcorn in my dorm too. And you’ve been holding out on me with your curry powder.” He popped another handful into his mouth and crossed his arms.

“If you just asked my parents, you could have some of your own! They’d even give you the recipe! Now share with Patton!” Roman leaned himself and the popcorn bowl away from Logan, trying not to laugh.

“I don’t mind,” Patton put in. “It’s very tasty, but I’m not as attached as Logan is.”

“No, you have to take some, he’s been hogging it,” Roman insisted.

“I don’t mind!” Patton insisted. Roman shoved the bowl in his face, and he relented and took a handful.

“Let Logan have some more now,” Patton said, gently pushing the bowl back into Roman’s lap.

“Thank you,” Logan said primly when Roman relented.

“You’re welcome!” Patton said with an easy smile. The smile fell away after a moment, though, and he looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure about asking Janus out, though,” he said hesitantly.

“Why not?” Roman asked. “You really sound interested in him! What have you got to lose?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Patton said, worrying the edge of a blanket between his fingers. “I’m not sure if he’d be comfortable with it. I don’t—I don’t know.” He looked away. “I’ll figure it out, I guess.” He looked back at Roman and Logan, forcing a smile onto his face. “Thank you both for the advice, though. And for listening.”

“Patton—” Roman began, concerned.

Patton shook his head. “Let’s just watch the movie now, okay? Really. Thank you. But I’m good for now. Can I have some more popcorn?”

Logan wordlessly held out the bowl and Roman allowed himself to be mostly distracted by Big Hero Six. He felt better when Patton leaned on his shoulder, a genuine smile on his face as he watched Fred goofing around on the screen. Whatever the issue Patton was dealing with was, at least it didn’t seem big enough to keep bothering him after putting it aside.

***

“So,” Remus said with an evil grin.

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to know,” Roman said. They were both sprawled on Remus’s bed, sharing earbuds as Remus swiped through TikTok.

“It’s nothing!” Remus protested.

Roman gave him a suspicious look. Remus’s face was entirely too innocent.

“I was just wondering when you’re going to get your shit together and do something about your crush on Virgil,” Remus said, the evil grin back.

“My what?” Roman did a double take. “I—I don’t have a crush on Virgil, we barely even get along!”

Remus rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. The tension between you two is so high I’m surprised something hasn’t snapped yet. And you definitely have a crush.”

“I do not!” Roman grabbed Remus’s pillow and threw it in his brother’s face. “We’re barely even friends!”

Remus shoved the pillow aside and rested his chin on top of it, making a skeptical face.

“I mean, are they really pretty? Sure. But that’s not a crush,” Roman insisted.

“Mmhm. Okay. So what makes it not a crush?” Remus pressed.

“I—well—” Roman stammered, flustered by the very question.

“Uh-huh.”

“No!” Roman snapped, voice cracking. “I just—that’s a hard question to answer right off the bat! How do you define a crush? It’s just not, okay?”

“I mean, I define crush as, like…” Remus paused. “Huh. Okay. You have a point, or whatever. I guess… a crush is, like—huh. No. Okay. You’re distracting me. I’m teasing you about your crush that you totally do have, we are not veering off topic.”

“I do not have a crush on Virgil! I just want to be his friend! Okay?”

Remus made a skeptical face. “Sure, whatever you say. I’m still going to tease you about it.”

“Oh, whenever you find that third soulmate, I am getting so much revenge.”

“Eh.” Remus shrugged. “Like, go for it, but I dunno if you’ll have that much time to tease me about it before we get together. You know? Like, think about me and Logan.”

“Logan knew you were soulmates for two and a half years before you got togeth—”

“Yeah, because he’s smart, but I didn’t figure it out until thirty minutes before we got together. Or like. Thirty minutes before we started talking about it. You know this.”

Roman crossed his arms. This was unfortunately a very good point; the day Remus had figured out that Logan was one of his soulmates had been a pretty memorable one even for Roman. Logan and the twins had grown up next door to each other, and had been best friends since elementary school. One Saturday morning near the end of their senior year of high school, Remus had bolted upright in bed while Roman was brushing his teeth, blurted out something nigh incomprehensible, and taken off at a sprint; he’d slammed the front door behind himself on his way out and he hadn’t answered any of Roman’s texts for two hours, only to show up by sprinting back into the house and screaming at the top of his lungs “Logan and I are soulmates!”

This had prompted a lot of confused questioning from Roman. He’d learned that yes, Remus and Logan were definitely soulmates; Logan had figured it out in sophomore year but hadn’t said anything; Remus had only just figured it out; yes, Logan was still aromantic; yes, Remus was still allo; no, neither of them felt like either of these facts was an issue; and Remus was very happy.

“We’re going on, like, a date, but platonic,” Remus had announced to him that day, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I’m really excited, this is so cool! Who’d have thought, right? Logan and me!”

Roman had smiled and tried hard to just be happy for Remus and Logan, and not jealous of them. Particularly about two months later, when they’d made their relationship official and become queerplatonic partners. He was happy for them! He was!

But Remus had never cared that much about finding his soulmates. Roman had. It didn’t feel fair. Remus, who didn’t care, got two soulmates, and one of them was literally his childhood best friend. Roman, who’d been daydreaming about finding his soulmate since he was too little to remember, and had learned just about everything there was to know about how soulbonds worked, seemed to have just the usual one soulmate. His soulbond hadn’t even developed until he was sixteen—admittedly, that was an expected side effect of the puberty blockers he’d been on for a few years before he’d been approved for T, but he was still salty about it. And when his soulbond finally had developed and he’d started tuning into his soulmate’s dreams, they were so creepy! He wasn’t sure he’d had a single souldream so far that wasn’t a nightmare. They ruined his sleep for the night whenever he got one. It was irritating and frustrating and all sorts of bad things; he’d actually cried over it a couple of times, not that anyone but Remus knew.

But as annoying as it was for him, it had to be worse for his poor soulmate—if these nightmares were what was making it through the soulbond, he could only imagine how much worse their nightly sleep must be.

He hoped he’d find them soon. He was ready for a proper romance, thank you very much!

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werevulvi · 4 years ago

Text

I wanted to write a bit about sex segregated spaces, in regards to people who pass as the opposite sex. This is not actually about trans people, as much as it is about the safety, integrity and general rights of male-passing biological women. I am not the only gender non-conforming woman who gets tossed out of female only spaces, based on the false presumption that we’re men. I do not care about validating trans women, or even trans men, for that matter. I care about real life practicality, risks and safety for ALL women, not just those who look conveniently clearly female, which starts with accepting that some women, whether they've medically transitioned or not, pass as male. And none of them should have to feminise themselves to access female only spaces. Whether that be to ensure safety from males, or to just take a leak.

The fact that I choose to keep my beard has almost nothing to do with that I'm male-passing. It may be my strongest "male" feature, but it's hardly the only one. I still pass as male with a clean shaven face, which makes shaving my beloved beard rather pointless, in my opinion. I would realistically need to go through more than just facial hair removal to pass as my own sex again. I'd probably even need facial feminisation surgery, hair transplant, voice feminisation and full body hair removal, at the very least, to even get close to passing as female again. But even then, I'd probably STILL be read as a trans woman, i.e. male. And even IF I did all that... WHY should I have to mutilate myself (a second time) by buying into harmful patriarchal beauty standards, which would worsen my dysphoria and reduce my comfort in my own skin significantly, to be allowed the safety of male-free spaces?

Does that sound feminist to you? Because to me, it's incredibly misogynistic, and strongly counterproductive. To uphold patriarchal gender roles for the safety of women... is the most insanely anti-feminist double standard I can possibly ever think of.

To lay out my argument on this topic, I'm going to use my own experiences as examples a lot. Mostly because I cannot with any conscience speak for anyone else than myself, at least not in such detail and with such harsh judgement. But I'm sure a lot of my experiences are applicable to other masculine women as well.

First off, I still consider myself gender critical, but my allegiance to radical feminism has been waning lately. This is mostly due to that although I agree with the base premise of radfem, I tend to disagree with the proposed solutions to almost all of the issues, because to me they come across as unfounded beliefs (yes, BELIEFS) that "it would just work" without much of any evidence to back up such a claim.

And when it comes to trans people, I've noticed a lot of... shall we say, willful ignorance, going on among many radfems, which does affect opinions on gender abolishion as well as sex segregated spaces to appear rather... intellectually dishonest, to be frank. Although this is not intended as a call out by any means, I merely want for people of all sides of the radfem/gender critical/pro-trans fence to stay critical and keep questioning everything, even one's own beloved ideology. Which I don't see a lot of. Instead I see almost religious defending of radfem as the ultimate/perfect ideology... oh, guess where I've seen that before? I've come to believe that "hivemindedness" is probably part of every possible ideology out there. Even radfem.

So, anyway.

One thing I come across time and time again is the belief (yes, I dare say "belief") that people never pass as the opposite sex, although it's mostly directed at trans people, this very much applies to people who are just gnc as well. Let's not forget that. And this belief seem to often lead to that transitioned/gnc people can just use the space intended for their biological sex, no problem. However, this is not the case. There is a problem. Very many trans people, and some gnc people, pass well enough to at least blend in enough to not raise much of an eyebrow among the opposite sex, and to most definitely stand out as an outsider among people of the same sex. OR they pass barely enough as either sex, and thus stand out as an outsider among both the same sex and the opposite sex, which can cause similar problems with single sex spaces.

There's also the thing that it generally is easier to pass as the opposite sex among complete strangers, compared to people who know you/your background. They tend to read you differently, depending on that.

At least in my experience, complete strangers assume I'm male and don't even as much as raise an eyebrow about how male I come across as. They accept their false assumption at face value. And why wouldn't they? 99,97% of people who "look like me" are biologically men. Then people who know I'm transitioned, but didn't know me pre-transition, tend to see me as a female who looks very convincingly male, whether that makes me a masculine woman, trans man, or any other (female) label in their eyes. They claim to be able to "see" my female nature, yet they somehow had no idea before I told them about my true sex. Then people who know about my history and saw it happen from the time before my transition (now only really my family) never quite succeeded to see me as anything other than a gnc woman. To quote my dad: "You look like a woman who's trying to look like a man." Although I'm sure my mom and sister don't have quite as harsh views about me, lol. They still seem to see me the way they always have, regardless of what name or pronouns they use for me.

This matters, because although people who know I'm transitioned and may even have witnessed my transition from the beginning, struggle to see me as a man (which I respect entirely and I'm VERY careful to not push wanting to be seen/read as anything in particular, but also, people do not want to be rude, especially irl) that does not go for people who have never even seen me before the moment I walk into... say, a public bathroom. To them I cannot possibly be anything other than a man, and it's almost impossible to change their view of me as male once their brains have registered me as such. I need to conjure up pretty fucking compelling evidence to shatter that view they have of me.

This is important, because it means I cannot feasibly use female only spaces, unless someone else (who is also female) vouches for me and explains my situation for me. This is, most likely due to people being more likely to believe an unlikely explanation when it's told by someone else, because maybe I could be lying; and only someone of the same sex as me can accompany/escort me into female only spaces, obviously. But even then, there's a ton of tension around my presentation. An air of distrust, basically. The question that hangs in the air: "Is that a trans woman?" even after they've been given a thorough explanation of my situation. It's uncomfortable for everyone involved. Imagine how it goes then if I'd just show up unannounced, and without someone to vouch for me. I just get booted on sight.

Yes, I can whine about this all day, but that is NOT my point.

My point is that I'm either directly, or implicitly, unwelcome in female only spaces, despite being biologically female, because of my transitioned appearance... despite I'm not even on testosterone anymore since 2 years ago. Sure, most gnc women (whether transitioned or not) don't seem to have turned out quite as passable as me, but clearly, it happens. So let's stop pretending that it doesn't.

So with that in mind, I don't always have access to a gender neutral space. Like for example when I travel with the ferry that goes between my island and the mainland of my country, there is only men's bathrooms and women's bathrooms. No third option. That's a 3 hour boat ride, and with my coffee drinking habit, I will need to pee at some point or another while aboard that ship, alright. And no, peeing in the ocean is not an option, as squatting over the railing would be incredibly dangerous, and most likely not even remotely allowed. Granted, I don't take the ferry often, it's just the most clear example I can think of. Because it's my only means of transportation to/from the mainland, except from flying, which is incredibly expensive, less reliable and obviously an environmental hazard. So when I do have to use that ferry, I'm kinda stuck with my choices.

So then, am I better off going with the men's or women's bathroom? I am much more likely to be left alone to do my business in the men's, so even though that is not the space I want to be in, nor do I think it's "right" for me to be there, sometimes it's even a bit scary, other times even impractical if there's only urinals and no stall, and it's absolutely not validating at all - it's the only bathroom that I can realistically use, without too much trouble. And I don't want trouble. But I also hate having to put my own safety on the backburner for the perceived safety of other women, who are not actually at any higher safety risk when left alone with me.

So, onto the more general, political aspects of this issue:

Women in male only spaces may be less of an issue in regards to safety, at least for the majority of people (men) in that space, especially if the woman in question passes as male. No one gives a fuck, generally. But problem is then that she is at far greater risk than the majority of people (women) would be with a single male, in a female only space. As I think a group of women against one male is generally less risk towards the women, when compared to a group of men against a single female, which can be extremely dangerous for her. Although I've so far never been faced with any sort of violence in a male only space, let's not pretend that my presense in a male only space is somehow LESS dangerous for me, than how dangerous the presense of ONE male in a space with a whole group of women, would be for those women. Statistically and realistically, I'm at a far greater risk than they are, and no, I do not have any more choice in the matter than they do.

Thus, this kinda skewed idea of safety and choice, becomes a question of ethics, I think.

Furthermore, I'm a person of principles, and it wouldn't sit right with me that if males should never under any circumstances be allowed in female spaces, but females could be allowed in male spaces. I refuse to be a hypocrit on purpose! No, if males should never under any circumstances be allowed in female spaces, then females should also never under any circumstances be allowed in male spaces. OR, if females CAN under some special circumstances be allowed into male spaces, then males should be allowed the same in female spaces. Both of these solutions pose serious problems, which I keep seeing being brushed under the carpet a lot, and that annoys me.

But if we go with the first idea, of barring people from using opposite sex spaces altogether, then where the fuck do I pee? Should I utilise my "right" to use female spaces, despite making everyone uncomfortable and feeling threatened by my presense, as well as risking being kicked out and forced to use the equivalent male spaces anyway, which is exactly what that idea is meant to prevent - or should I completely avoid being in places which I know does not have a gender neutral bathroom, such as the ferry? Would that not be discrimination? Which is the most reasonable option here, what is the most practical, what's wrong and what's right? Do I even have a RIGHT to use female bathrooms, and if so, how do I prove it, considering my ID still says I'm male?

Trans men aren't gonna be nearly as willing to use female only spaces, and trans women definitely not eager to use male only spaces. But aside from that validation factor, I have the exact same struggle as trans people do on this particular point. Quite often they do toss and turn at which bloody bathroom to pick, not just out of validation, but because they genuinely struggle to figure out which one is the best option for them practically. Especially if they don't quite pass as either sex, and most and foremost just wanna do their business without unneccesary drama.

Also, to clarify: barring trans people from opposite sex spaces is NOT discrimination, as they never belonged there to begin with - but leaving them with no other option than to pee themselves, is. Which means that I think it's fucked up to barr them from those spaces BEFORE having solved the problem of "if they can't go there, then where?"

Perhaps I'm the only one around here who cares about males' integrity, safety and human rights. But even if so, I should not be the only one to care about gnc females' integrity, safety and rights. Male-passing females, whether transitioned or not, whether bearded or not, are still female, and if we don't want them in female only spaces, and not in male only spaces either; why? Because they "chose" to medically transition and/or dress in men's clothing?

Yeah, well, in most cases of transitioned females, they transitioned because of dysphoria, which no one chooses to have. It's a medical condition. Barring people from spaces they'd otherwise be welcomed into, due to the visual outcome of the treatment of their medical condition... is ableism. Barring a woman from a female only space she belongs in, solely because her unusual physical appearance freaks you out... is ableism. Also, simply being gnc and being viscerally uncomfortable with presenting femininely is also not a choice. And even if it was... shouldn't it be? That's why I cannot roll with that sorta solution. I dunno if it counts as a form of discrimination by definition, but it just smells a lot like it from where I sit. That it's no more right to toss me out of, or give me trouble, in a women's bathroom, than a masculine women who also passes as male but who has not medically transitioned.

That said, however, women's safety DOES matter a lot to me. Hence my reluctance to join their spaces, despite being a woman myself. I guess, what I'd want is complete sex segregation to work in my favour, but I can't promote a rule that would discriminate against me. I'm sorry, I just can't. I desire FUNCTIONAL sex segregated spaces, but realistically they cannot function. Truth is that the only womens spaces I've been allowed into since I began passing as male, are "trans inclusionary" ones that openly allow in trans women, ironically. I care about the safety of other women, and their right to have their own spaces... but not at the expense of my own rights, as a fellow woman. To say otherwise would be a crime against myself. I really wish this could be solved in some way that would work in practice, but honestly I don't think it can anytime soon. Not without some seriously tried and proven, practical and humane methods to check what sex people entering single sex spaces actually are.

That is the reality that people have to face. And personally I'd rather focus on women's rights than trans rights, but as a woman who's medically transitioning, I'd shoot my own foot no matter which one I'd choose. That's quite a dilemma.

So where my opinion stands on this right now, is basically this: I think female only spaces should only be for biological women, but I'm reluctantly okay-ish with males who pass as female utilising female only spaces, and vice versa for females in male only spaces. However, this does not feel ideal at all. It's a compromise. Ideally, I want such spaces to be entirely sex segregated, and for even people who pass as the opposite sex (like myself) to be allowed into spaces of their biological sex. My appeal here is both realistic practicality with the reality that some people really do pass as the opposite sex, as well as the safety, rights and integrity of male-passing women.

#female only spaces #gnc women #yes some trans people pass #but not only trans people pass #radical feminism #gender critical #ok to rb #my opinions and concerns

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sjw-publishings · 4 years ago

Text

Man-aging your time

Foreign Relations

(Asian twist on @dumb-and-jocked story, Corporate Progression)

Edgar Han was never fond of conferences, specially ones he was forced to attend due to pressure from his company. As a college intern, he gave it his all to ensure a good grade and possibly a head-start in his business.

He was wrong.

Working at Wong.Inc, the 21 year old was constantly asked and tasked with menial errands all day, filing papers and serving coffee. Now he was asked to be an usher for a conference meeting with TenHaken Corporation.

Dressed in a black polo and khaki pants, he tapped his dress shoes impatiently, being forced to come far too early and way before any of the other interns showed up. He was pretty lean, sort of lanky as he did not do sports. Long hair was tied to a ponytail, as he kept it maintained and groomed so as to not leave a bad impression.

He wondered if it was because they were aware that he and his boyfriend, two of their interns, were gay. But he seemed to be getting the shorter end of the stick...maybe cause he actually cared about his grades and future career, they ended up treating him harsher?

Nevertheless, he did have a slimmer of hope, maybe if he left a good impression today, he could maybe...

“Aren’t you going to shake hands with me?”

Standing before him was a tall, handsome daddy who was bulked up with muscle, thick biceps straining against his suit, and the most devious looking grin that screamed corporate evil...but....it was so hot.

“S...Sorry Mr TenHaken Sir!”

He extended out his hand, as the Boss of the other company grabbed it and gave it a good shook. Snapping his mind away from his worries...and distracting it with...his strong scent infused with cologne.

And those hands, those warm..., and manly hands.

“So you are one of the few interns that...?”

“Yes...alongside my boyfriend...”

He responded in a daze, entranced by the scent. Yes he may go through several hoops just to impress the higher ups, even at the expense of his relationship with his boyfriend, but he would never reveal their relationship in a workplace setting...especially considering some of the higher ups may be homophobic.

A brief wave of disgust shown in the Boss’s countenance, before he returned to grinning madly as he let go of the shake. Giving a firm pat on the young asian man’s back, he spoke in his richly, deep voice.

“Splendid, you’d be perfect...”

The man sauntered into the conference room, bringing along most of his musky aroma and thick cologne with him...but of course, leaving some behind. The young intern blinked, realising what a poor attempt of a greeting that was, and to the BOSS of the other company too!

What is he going to do?

“Did ya watch the game last night?”

Snapping out of his thoughts, a suburban looking man in a suit asked him the question, sticking out his hand with a dopey looking grin. Almost sporting a similar thickness of the cologne the Boss wore...but more mild...and friendly.

“Uh...maybe I did?”

He grabbed ahold of the other mans hand, giving a firm shake as rehearsed. He may just be an intern, and maybe he fumbled with the greeting with the Boss, but he was going to give it his all with the next few introductions.

The shake, while it was a matter of seconds, seemed to last longer in his mind, as he felt the warm spreading from the thickness of those fatherly palms, and rough wrinkles that had definitely were from the years of prime in his youth.

“What maybe I did? Of course I did!”

Of course I did? He thought, scratching his head with his other hand, which felt oddly warm as well. Mirroring the other, as those palms expanded with a former grip, sun-kissed tan bathing their digits as it spread all over their palms. Crunching the older man’s hands, as the university intern smirked.

“Of course I did!”

“Atta Boy!”

The older father figure looped his arms around him, as he...slightly reluctantly, did the same. The tan had spread down his wrists, past the forearms and to those biceps. Giving a firm masculine boost as testosterone swelled his arms, thickening like he definitely lifted a lot.

He wasn’t into sports much, but he did lift a little...especially after some pestering with Mr Craig, the really nice man from the other company. Tasked to do some stock checking and other stuff before the event, they chatted quite a bit and surprisingly had clique very well.

“So what are ya doing out here shaking hands?”

“Oh I...uh was asked to shake hands?”

“What are ya talking about? That stuff was for the interns!”

Bedgaric blinked, interns? But wasn’t he...no. He moved past that stage a couple of years ago, and thinking back, the company never asked him to go stand at the door and shake hands when he was interning in Wong.Inc.

But he felt like...he needed to do this. Setting a good example for the future interns, and hoping they don’t slack off like his lazy young boyfriend. Straightening his back, not noticing he was now about the same height as Craig.

“Its merely in my good nature...gotta reflect well on the company!”

“And that’s right why we bonded right away!”

The man beamed, feeling at ease with his colleague as they were often paired together to strengthen relationships between both companies. Despite the obvious age and ranking differences, it was clear to the company that he was fit for the job.

As his mentor-figure rubbed against his sore shoulders, his shoulder blades clacked, as it was evident that the dark tan worked its magic there. Working out and making up for those wasted years, the 28 year old definitely made gains as his back rippled against the Polo tee he wore. Strapping muscles that he could recall several men, and girls ogling after him on a daily basis. Though he was into boyfriend Conan, many others were also into him too.

“Anyways...remember that bit? TOUCHDOWN!”

“Ah yeah! Man was that CLOSE!”

Resting his strong muscular arm easily on the other man, he was really into football, though he never made the team when he was younger. Too much of a pansy back then, but Craig really manned him up like the big brother figure he is.

Often watching football during the breaks, and a couple of roughhousing with Craig and a couple of his older friends. They had a blast!

Bendgardict, being the tall and bulky asian man he is, was assigned to be on defence. Recalling the impact the football nearly hitting his core, but his strong goalkeeper-esque hands catching it...definitely something he picked up during his soccer days.

Indeed, he had played soccer a ton, he was a jock after all. Legs thickening to hard trunks, as the hot tan spread with light dusting of hair at every spot. Feet surely sprung forth, as the heavy clunking of those dark polished dress shoes now spotted his attire.

Giving a huge SWING to Craig, broad shoulders rippling beneath his attire, he crossed his arms and smirked. Clutching every football toss to his core, abdominals crunching numbers as pectorals bounced back with even more force, a defender to the core, that’s the man he was.

Standing firm and tall, his polo shirt could barely contain the rippling maturity as the sound of satisfying rips echoed his larger bod. Material shifting to a more presentable cotton, bleached white as sleeves rolled themselves neatly down his arms. Spotting on a white dress shirt with the first few buttons unbuttoned, accenting his frame like the Chad he is.

He had some hesitations displaying himself, but he shook it off, knowing if God gave him a body like this, he should use it to the fullest. God? Must be Craig’s Church influencing him quite a lot, he believed, still new to it though.

“From production manager to executive director...Eugene definitely went bonkers last night...”

“Hah! Serves him right to go against our team!”

The two of them continued chatting about work experiences, the game, and altogether men stuff. Time flew by effortlessly, alongside maturity. The Associate ranking up as they laughed heartily.

It wasn’t long until the asian man surpassed his peer in height, stopping at 6ft 2. He laughed heartily like a big brother, even though he was clearly younger...not by much, 5 years or so.

But he certainly ranked up a lot, after all, he did share similar beliefs to his higher ups and colleagues...those ‘hip’ millennials call them boomers, but their values really resonated within him. Something his...intern would not understand, with all his constant flirting in the office.

Presentability. An upper coating of expensive fabric layered over his dress shirt, as well as replacing that of his pants. Beige with faint magenta straight lines, ironing the wrinkles over his suit pants and jacket combo with a matching pocket square.

He had earned quite a handful sum after all, spending it wisely in investing in stocks and proper attire. Not like those games that millennials waste their money on.

Masculinity. This was done without question, which represented his sunbaked complexion from working out and bonding with other men in the field.

It was also without question that the ridiculous ponytail began slowly retracting upwards, with sides shaved like a real man always would, especially in sports. Combing sideways with neat dabbing of gel, as the hard crusty dusting of aftershave went all over his upper lip and strong jaw.

He was nice, but pretty jock-centred in his beliefs. Both in his faith and how a man oughta behave. Big strong and masculine, the provider of the household, man and woman.

Man and woman...?

“Will see ya and the family on church this Sunday!”

“See ya!”

His mouth instinctively responded on autopilot, as his goofy grin waved goodbye to his long time friend, colleague, and church mate. His eyes blinked momentarily in light shock, making way to the bathrooms, and quickly closing behind one of the stalls.

LOCK!

“What...what in tarnation is happening to me? Haha?”

The stresses melted away into a grin, he always had a good natured stress-free persona, even when that gay intern confessed to him when he wasn’t into such things...wait no....

He felt compelled to...what? He barely knew the intern, plus he was more into ladies...in fact, he was sure his buddy Craig mentioned something about a family right? The air conditioning neutralising his heat emitting, he quickly fished for his-

“So warm...so fatherly...”

The middle aged man tugged his breeding tool beneath his pants, letting out soft groans like he was young. Ah the younger days, so simple, when men just liked women...when men just liked women!

Blushing to himself, as he tugged ferociously, letting out loud gasps as he felt his behind tightening with a SPANK. Disciplining away any penetration like his father would if he did not excel in his studies, swelling up to a sweet bubble butt reserved for...his love one.

He was raised in a traditional household after all, strong honour and an expertise in Mandarin Chinese. Which was why he landed his position in the first place.

But of course, he thanked God for everything after coming to know him in his college days. Strictness mixed with Kindness, Honour mixed with a loving father, Mr Benedgadict Kan understood who he was, as the firm but gentle brushes against his package were too much to bear.

“Forgive me...C...C....Cindy!”

He was a faithful man wasn’t he? It feels strange to even think about such ‘millennial’ thoughts! Haha, never understood them. Thankfully his wife Cindy and him raised their children well in the lord! Speaking of her...oh man!

“Cindy...you’re so beautiful!”

Gone were the dates of a gay man, replacing by a marriage lasting over two decades. Time well spent with her, His heart pumped in love with HER! Manhood rose in length and girth at the thought of her luscious hair, and soft lips that just made the man outta him.

Man and woman

THRUST!

She is your wife, and you are her husband.

THRUST!

You are a father.

“Ooooaaaah!”

The forty eight year old asian man gave a huge holler as he let out the remains of his homosexuality in an innocent bliss, slumping back as his eyelids closed without hesitation.

Stains looped around his left ring finger as a good man stays devoted to his wife. His member remained sturdy, hard and manly, but at rest. A golden necklace materialised, symbolising the gift she got him on their anniversary.

His married hand gave a good firm pat on his pouch, instinctively putting back his tool into hiding and zipping his pants up.

Almost as if Benedict Kang never tugged his manhood by himself, only engaging in it when multiplying with his wife. He was a good faithful man after all, his new genetics beamed to reflect that as he slowly opened his beady eyes.

“Oh lordee...Where am I?”

Managing Director Kang was your all around nice boss...dad guy. Ruffling his gelled hair, he laughed as he remembered praying and thanking the lord for his successes in his company and in his life.

Prayer time was always priority. He got results done, and had more than enough time to spend time with his family as well as watch the game. It had cut close sometimes, nearly missing a business proposal due to his son’s football game in school, but he always made it in the Bened-Nick of time.

Speaking of which...

“Oh shucks! What time is it?”

He quickly fished himself up from his mediation pronto, unlocking the door and strolling down towards the door entrance of the conference meeting, he quickly glanced at his ‘IanAs’ watch.

“Just in time! The Conference meeting was about to start!”

Mr Benedict Kang flashed his most genuine grin, stress melting away from the atmosphere as his wholesome presence was made known as he jovially walked in.

“Amen to that!”

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nicostolemybones · 5 years ago

Text

Good day

Happy Birthday! (Nico Birthday Week)

Trans Nico fic

Tw: pain, dysphoria, period mention, unsafe binding

Nico inevitably woke up in pain, although he figured he could bare it today. He'd been told pretty adamantly not to train today, but he didn't want to sit around and do nothing, so once he was awake and ready, he walked slowly to the infirmary. His joints ached badly, but he wouldn't be walking around too much anyway, so it was nothing he couldn't handle for today. He'd decided to spend the day helping Will out- of course, Will would probably refuse if Nico asked, so he was just going to turn up and start helping with the stock rooms- he could sit on the shelves to sort through the boxes and count everything and take note of what they were running low on.

Of course, when Will found him sitting on the shelves counting out bottles of testosterone, he was less than pleased. "What exactly do you think you're doing?"

"Helping," Nico replied, "you're running low on ace bandages and nectar but there's enough ambrosia to last a few months at least. I'm counting out the testiclerone." Will's wheezing laugh alerted Nico that not only had he mispronounced testosterone, but he'd said the word testicle and both boys were too immature to not overreact. Nico facepalmed. "Oh balls," he sighed, then realised he'd basically made the same mistake twice, laughing at himself quietly.

"If you're not going to be mature," Will chastised, but he was definitely being more immature than Nico was with his bright glow from the laughter, "then get out of my stock cupboard."

"Never I've established a nest," Nico protested.

"I ordered you to rest."

"I am resting," Nico argued, "I don't wanna just sit in my cabin when I could be helpful."

"But it's your birthday," Will whined, "you shouldn't be counting out medicines you should be out having fun!"

"It's not my birthday," Nico said slowly, and Will raised his eyebrows.

"Nico, it's the 28th. It's your birthday today."

"...oh," Nico whispered, after a while.

"Did you… dude, did you forget your own birthday?"

"It… it's not important," Nico sighed with a huff, turning his attention back to counting, "it's just a day."

"Is there a reason you don't wanna celebrate?"

"No," Nico shrugged, "not particularly…"

"Then let's go!" Will had grabbed Nico's hand before he could process what was happening, and his best friend was dragging him away.

Will brought him ice cream, which Nico appreciated- he had chocolate, whilst Will had strawberry. Nico was having fun at first, but he started to feel out of place as they shopped for clothes. All the men were so tall, and Nico was terrified to talk should his voice give him away. It had been easy to pass his higher register off as puberty not starting yet, but Will was fifteen too, and his voice had already started breaking. He always had a very clumsy shaving rash, and acne certainly wasn't his best friend, and he was tall. Nico on the other hand was currently battling a heavy period making him feel like he was gonna vomit and the growth of two lumps on his chest he was binding tightly in the hope they wouldn't grow anymore or be noticeable.

Even most of the extra small clothes would be too big for him. Nothing in the adult men's department was going to fit him. He felt like everyone around him knew, like everybody was looking at him wondering what some little girl was doing there. "Will," he said quietly, dysphoria and anxiety spiking through the roof, "I need to get out of here…"

"Ah, shit, sure," Will said, hurrying Nico out of the store. He took him to a small café, ordering himself a milkshake. Nico opted for tea to calm his nerves. His dysphoria was bad, and he knew he'd need the bathroom soon to change pads, and he wasn't binding safely. Will didn't know yet, and Nico really wanted to confide in him. He'd been thinking about coming out to Will for a while now, and it clear Will was concerned about him. Nico felt comfortable around Will. He'd never come out to anyone at camp- Bianca had known, and his dad had figured it out. Of course, Nico was terrified to come out, but he knew Will would accept him.

"Hey, Will?" He began quietly, and the nerves washed over him in overwhelming waves. He almost backed out, but he reminded himself that things would be okay. "I have something I want to tell you."

"Is it that you stole my last cookie? Because you totally stole my last cookie."

"That was Kayla," Nico corrected quickly, and Will was probably about to shout out loud, but Nico quickly hurried out a small "it's serious."

Will instantly leaned forwards, giving a reassuring but concerned smile. He was glowing softly, comfortingly. "I'm here," he said softly, and Nico took a deep shaky breath.

"It's uh… something about me," he said, "something personal."

"It's okay," Will reassured softly, "I'm listening."

Nico didn't really know how to say it. He'd always imagined it would be such a long and personal conversation, but as soon as he mustered up the courage, it was only two words. "I'm trans…"

Will was silent for a while, and Nico began to panic, but Will wouldn't reject him, he highly doubted it. He knew Will was just trying to figure out how to respond out of respect and care. "I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to trust me with that," he said eventually, "is there anything in particular that I do that makes you feel uncomfortable that you need me to stop doing, or- or anything in general to avoid?"

"You haven't made me uncomfortable," Nico said, feeling more able to force the words out, "just uh… no feminine language, and don't draw attention to any feminine things unless it's y'know… period leakage or medical related. And uh… I don't want you to tell anyone at camp, I'm not ready and I don't feel safe enough."

"Of course, dude," Will reassured, "may I ask you something personal?"

"I trust you," Nico replied, and Will smiled softly, a dark amber hue seeping into his glow.

"I noticed we're always running low on ace bandages. Is that…. what you're using to um-"

"Bind," Nico filled in, before nodding.

"Would it be okay if I go buy you a sports bra so you don't have to and you go into the bathroom and put it on and take the bandages off? I know which boy's bathrooms have clean stalls and I'll come with you so you feel less scared. And uh- I know it won't squash you as much as you want, but I'll give you my jacket. Would that help? And when we get back to camp you can borrow my laptop in the infirmary and order a proper binder and measure yourself up properly."

"I'd really appreciate that, like… a lot… just don't get too flustered seeing lots of knickers and please don't get distracted trying bras on over your head. And uh… I don't feel comfortable in public bathrooms anyway, but I can't go into the men's room today, I uh… have bleeding."

"I would not!" Will protested, but his face said otherwise. "Anything I can do to help the dysphoria or hormones?"

"Just continue treating me like any other guy?"

"Of course," Will said softly.

"I don't think I can walk around for very long," Nico added after a comfortable silence, "my pain's getting to me."

"Wanna have a movie marathon in your cabin when we get back? I uh… I also kinda got you a birthday present I've been waiting to give you."

"Yeah," Nico blushed, "sounds great. So uh… you got me a gift?"

"Happy Birthday," Will said softly, handing over a small box. Nico opened it and almost bounced out of his seat- it was the latest mythomagic expansion pack he'd been saving up for.

"Are you serious," Nico grinned, "you got me mythomagic? Will!"

"I thought you might like them," Will said, "I was uh… kinda gonna take you on a date today but I chickened out on asking you properly."

"You wanted to go on a date? With- with me? But- I thought you liked Lou-Ellen?"

"Well yeah, but that was like- a year ago. And I'm not straight, I'm bi. As in girls and guys. Well- not just girls and guys but you get my point. And you're a guy who's um. Who's pretty handsome. So uh. Um. It's… it's totally cool if-"

"Dork," Nico interrupted with a smirk, "took you long enough to ask me."

"So uh- is that a yes?" Nico almost whacked him with a pillow, except he didn't have one. He felt confident and happy for once. It had been a good birthday.

@solangeloweek

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xixxvxx · 4 years ago

Text

one month on testosterone

and merry xmas to anyone who celebrates!

today i’ll post a big old recap of all the changes i’ve seen in the past month. mildly nsfw text and talk of menstruation under the cut.

i’m going to organize the changes i’ve seen into loose groups for easier reading.

changes to skin and hair:

i sweat a LOT, all the time.

my skin is much oilier. i wash, moisturize, and use a mild spot treatment on my face twice a day, but i still usually have 10–30 spots of acne on my face regardless, as well as some on my chest. however, the individual spots are pretty small and don’t stick around for more than a few days so long as i leave them alone.

the hair on my head feels a little thicker and coarser, though the curl pattern doesn’t seem to have changed.

the preexisting facial hair i had before i started HRT is growing much faster. i could get away with shaving once or twice a week before; now my stubble starts to bother me if i go for more than a day or two without shaving.

i’m seeing a few new terminal hairs on my face, shoulders, chest, and belly. it’s hard to tell if the hair on my limbs is changing because i’m already very hairy there.

changes to body and voice:

i think i’ve lost a bit of fat and gained a bit of muscle around my body. my shoulders and pecs look a little broader, whereas my legs and belly look a little leaner/show more muscle definition, and my chest is a little flatter. (i have been doing a lot of body weight strength training at home, so i am sure that’s a major contributor to these changes.)

i have seen big leaps in my strength as i work out. where i might have been exhausted by three sets of a given arm or ab workout routine last month, i can now do five and not find myself sore. i can run faster and for longer than i used to be able to as well.

i am VERY hungry pretty much all the time and i usually have a big appetite to match. i’ll find my stomach growling an hour or two after a meal that would have sated me for half a day pre-T. i eat a lot more!

my voice has dropped. people who i have spoken to infrequently since i started T have told me that it is noticeably deeper. it cracks pretty often (which is really funny to me). i’m losing the very upper part of my register and can’t hit certain high notes that i used to be able to while singing, but on the other hand i can sing songs that used to be too deep for me to sing!

changes to reproductive system:

my menstrual cycle has not ceased—i got my period a week late, which happened to be the day after my fourth shot. it lasted six days, which is as long as it usually lasts, but my PMS and my cramps were interestingly much milder and easier to deal with than they usually are.

my sex drive has remained very high, especially mid-week between shots.

i have seen significant bottom growth. (this is a public account so i’m not gonna post about my junk in that much detail haha, but feel free to message me if you’re trans and you’d like to know more about what that’s like—don’t be shy, it won’t weird me out!)

changes to mood and energy:

my baseline mood is more stable, calm, and confident than it was pre-T, which has been really nice. that’s not to say T has solved all of my problems, but it’s leveled out my emotions in a way that makes them feel a little more manageable, and it’s given me a surprising sense of ease in my day-to-day.

i’m definitely more irritable than i was pre-T. minor complications that i know would have made me anxious or sad pre-T sometimes make me agitated instead now. i want to make the distinction that it is irritability, not rage—it’s very manageable and not problematic. in fact, i think i prefer it—it prompts me to find a way to change what’s bothering me, or speak my mind when something rubs me the wrong way, instead of spiraling into an anxious thought loop about it.

i’ve had trouble sleeping, though i highly doubt this is related to the T, as i have a lot of personal stressors in my life right now, and have experienced insomnia and sleep maintenance issues on and off for my whole life. when i get to sleep, i sleep a lot, but my energy level throughout the day is good.

finally, i’ll leave off with this. based on what the clinicians i was working with told me during my intake and injection training, i didn’t expect to see any major changes in my first month of HRT, and i have been surprised and delighted to find that that is not the case.

the emotional impact of these changes has been something else. when i notice a few short hairs on my belly and realize they must have just come in, or hum along to the radio and feel the new vibration of my voice in my chest, my reaction is nothing short of euphoria. to be painfully earnest for a second it feels like i am watching something grow and bloom—that something being me!

i had a lot of nerves about starting HRT at various points in time before i finally made the leap. while i still can’t predict what the next year has in store for me, i am very glad i chose to do this, because it has felt incredible. so much love to anyone else considering, beginning, or well on their way on this journey <3

#HRT #transgender HRT #transgender testosterone therapy #trans man #transmasculine #text #original #monthly

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frogginess · 4 years ago

Text

Testosterone Update: 4 Months and 1 day (7/25/20)

4 months babey!!! I upped my dose to 50 mg of generic testosterone gel at around 3 months and a half. (More under the cut)

Healthcare related stuff:

Originally, my next appointment was supposed to be on the 17th of June, but, I had called the Planned Parenthood of Greater New York number asking if I could make my appointment virtually because of the pandemic and the person on the phone told me that they don't do it virtually and if I really couldn't make it, instead I could cancel and call to make a new appointment at a later date. HOWEVER, I found this to be very strange because my boyfriend who also started T at the same time I did at Planned Parenthood had his T appointment virtually? I figured *shrug* whatever since the lady told me I can still get my refills even though I canceled and haven't scheduled an appointment.

The next time I called, I decided to call Javier (the patient navigator for trans individuals at PP) asking him to check if they had the right pharmacy on file for a refill (I had recently switched my pharmacy since now I'm back home from university) and he told me that I needed to schedule an appointment to keep getting refills and could do it VIRTUALLY. BOY I SURE DO LOVE ✨CONTRADICTING INFORMATION✨. I told him what the lady told me and he said for trans related stuff it's better to talk to him since the other people don't know as much. So heads up for anyone getting testosterone at PPGNY, call Javier for any trans related healthcare questions or requests!

Anyways, my next appointment that I was originally supposed to have in June is now scheduled for next Wednesday virtually. I will keep updated how that appointment goes. Luckily, I was able to get my next refill when I requested it. Additionally, Even though my prescription is for 25 mg of the generic for Androgel, when I went to pick it up, the pharmacy gave me 50 mg packets of the generic for Testim.

(Side note on my thoughts on the difference between Androgel and Testim: Testim is SO much stickier!!! With Androgel, I would apply it and it would dry within 10 minutes but with Testim, I apply it and it dries so sticky. It's always sticking to my sleeve and I have to sit shirtless for about 15 minutes before putting my shirt on and even then I feel like it still isn't dry.)

Now for the physical T changes:

- Voice dropped a bit! Since increasing my dose to 50 mg I've felt like my voice is at a deeper range than it was before. Not by a lot but enough for it to be noticeable to me. Before when I talked, I would feel the vibration in my throat, however, now I feel it more in my chest. I get occasional strange sore throats but they come and go.

- My face is slowly but surely changing shape.

- (TW: Menstruation) My cycle still hasn't stopped but I feel like shark week is definitely shorter than usual. I'm guessing from here on out it'll continue to decrease until it stops.

- My emotions are all over the place! Since increasing my dose my mental health has taken a turn for the worse. I feel like my depression has worsened as well as my anxiety and depersonalization/derealization. I get upset and frustrated a lot easier and I'm crying more often too.

- The skin on my arms are pretty fucked up from the T gel. I've been experiencing itchiness, redness, burning, and peeling skin from it as well as occasionally bleeding from scratching it. I try to moisturize daily but I guess when I continuously apply T to the damaged skin every day it's having a tough time healing.

- Slightly more chin hair. I have like three tiny chin hairs and when I shave them they grow back pretty quickly. In general, the peach fuzz on my face is growing back a lot faster after I shave.

- Oh my god I SWEAT SO FUCKING MUCH ITS UNBELIEVABLE. I understand that it's hot outside but DAMN I get SO sweaty. >:(

Bonus: Oh and also here’s a meme I made when I was frustrated about PP:

#testosterone update #testosterone #testosterone gel #transgender #trans guy #personal #ness.txt

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maryellencarter · 4 years ago

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Queer asks copied from @corelliaxdreaming :

1. Is your family accepting? -- Hah. No. My bio-family is not accepting at allllll, so I went and got myself an internet family instead.

2. What is your sexuality? -- Weird. The strongest part of my identity is Aromantic. I seem to be pretty much allosexual, maybe bisexual; most of the people I find myself attracted to are men within a fairly specific category (physically fit to muscular, at least as competent as me, kind, and often a bit dorky; I also have a weakness for clever hands and sexy voices), but the women I'm attracted to cover a much broader range of appearances and personalities. I fall pretty much in the category of the one Tumblr post that said something like "Being bisexual means you're attracted to three specific fictional men and all women", even though the attraction to men... feels... more attraction-y? I'm still really struggling to figure that difference out.

3. What is your gender identity? -- Sort of genderfluid, sort of genderqueer, sort of maybe agnostically agender? I used to ID really strongly as a trans man, and then after a year or so of being accepted, I found myself turning female. I bounced back and forth for a lot of years but seem to have settled down at a point where it doesn't especially matter to me most of the time. Which is a lot more comfortable than hurtling around to different points on the gender spectrum without warning.

4. Favorite color? -- Blue. Royal blue, mostly. That really deep sky blue you get sometimes during the fall. A bunch of really bright colors.

5. When did you find out your sexuality? -- Oh, it's been a process. For a long time I identified as asexual. It took me years to figure out I was actually romance-repulsed, and more years to figure out I had any attraction to women. I'm still sort of confused by that part. Like I mostly just want to look at them being pretty, but I also definitely want to look at their boobs? Maybe touch some boobs? I'm honestly not sure.

6. What do you wish you could tell your past self? -- Oh lord. Sexuality and gender wise? I'm not sure young me could have been hurried along the process of self discovery. I'd really like to tell her she was being abused and gaslighted and that she needed to take her great-aunt's offer of a free ride and major in geology *before* she broke her health, and maybe also tell her she needed a CPAP machine, but she might just think I was a temptation of the Devil. Also I'm not sure if the CPAP machine was an option before Obamacare. Or the psych meds she needed, either.

7. Have you changed labels since realizing you were queer? -- Oh yeah, all over the place. Asexual, trans, genderqueer, biromantic (for about a week), aromantic allosexual bisexual maybe pansexual... some people apparently even count PCOS as an intersex condition, since I have a lot more beard and chest hair than is normal for perisex women, to the point that I always have to explain to a new doctor that I'm not in fact on testosterone, my body just does that. I've never quite felt right claiming the intersex label, but I've tried on a lot of others. I think my header may still say "queer on every conceivable axis".

8. How was your day? -- Um. I got stuck wandering Cracked.com for most of it. Then I drove up to check out my pulmonologist's office, which doesn't *say* they're closed for the pandemic, so I guess I'll go up again on Thursday and poke them about whether my appointment still exists. Then I went and wandered around a very large very dead mall on that side of town, hatched a bunch of pokeymans, then came home and ate some split pea soup.

9. Do you have any queer friends irl? -- I don't have *any* friends irl, and it's kicking my ass. I have like one or two coworkers I could hypothetically hang out with outside of work if we weren't so all-fired busy. But if we're talking "friends I have seen irl at some point", I'm pretty sure they're all queer. They might also be limited to @tigerkat24 and one other person who doesn't use Tumblr, I'm not sure.

10. What's your favorite hobby? -- Probably knitting. It's soft and squishy and brightly colored, and it can be as brainless or as complex as I could possibly want.

11. Who's the best queer icon in your opinion? -- I honestly don't have an opinion. I've always been too far outside the community to figure out whomst the options were.

12. Which pride flags do you like the most design / color wise? -- Pansexual. I'd probably have a lot more pride merch if I IDed as pan, but it just never feels like it fits quite right.

13. Do you wish you could change any pride flags? -- YES. The aro flag is the exact same colors as the agender flag, just in a different arrangement, and it pisses me off because you can't distinguish aro merch from agender merch unless it's specifically flag shaped / has the stripe arrangement. I liked the yellow/orange/green/black aro flag, I found it much more cheerful, but apparently it was too similar to something Rastafarian. But you can't find alloaro flag merch at *all*, even though it has the green and yellow, which I like.

14. Are you openly out? -- Can't really help it, since I legally changed my name to a distinctively masculine one back in the day, and I do not remotely pass as male. So anybody who both sees or hears me and knows my legal name, knows there's *something* queerish going on. (I go by a gender neutral name these days, but haven't yet been arsed to change it legally because it's an entire hassle and a half.)

15. Are you comfortable with yourself? -- Mneh. I'm not *un*comfortable with my gender and sexuality, particularly. Sometimes I wish I could pass as male, sometimes I wish I could have cute cleavage. Sometimes I tie myself in knots with my feelings about women.

16. Do you experience dysphoria? -- I used to, very strongly. It hasn't been very aggressive lately.

17. Bottom, top, or verse? -- *shrugs* I guess I'd be a switch or "verse" because I'm down for whatever.

18. Are you femme, butch, or neither? -- I swing wildly between wishing to present Extremely Butch in a lumberjack style, which is impractical in the Southwest, or wishing to present Extremely Femme but being unable to do so, and tying myself in knots over the inability. (I can't wear femmey shoes due to my stupid feet, I can't have pierced ears as they get infected and the one pair of nice lightweight handcrafted earrings I paid $50 for is gone with the rest of my shit, I'm too lorge to find any nice dresses or be able to like try on prom dresses and stuff, I have a tendency to break jewelry as I'm extremely rough on my possessions... etc.) In practice my gender presentation is Fat Slob. :P

19. Do you bind? -- Not technically, but I do wear cheap sports bras which tend to flatten rather than lift or shape.

20. Do you shave? -- Only by necessity. I shave my face when I remember, because my beard looks extremely douchey and rather like pubes. Occasionally I shave my cleavage if I'm trying to present femmey. I pretty much never shave anything else unless the hair is getting Smelly.

21. If you could date anyone you wanted, who would it be? -- Um. Good question. The thing is, I am fairly strongly romance-repulsed, but I do want and enjoy queerplatonic relationships, so I would draw a distinction here between "dating" someone and being "in a relationship" with them.

22. Are you in a relationship? -- Yes, in fact.

23. Describe your partner. -- @camshaft22 . Um. She's very much the Hobbie to my Wes. She's very snarky and dies a lot and I love her very much.

24. Have you ever dated anyone of the same gender? -- Given that we're both genderfluid, I would say I'm in a relationship with someone of the same gender, yes.

25. Dated anyone of another gender? -- I've never dated or been in a relationship with anyone else, so I guess the answer is no.

26. Tell me a random fact about yourself! -- I always use this one, but I once lived in four different states (mostly non-contiguous) within a calendar month.

27. Do you own any pride flags / merch? -- No. I used to have a whole-ass collection that I added to every Pride, and then I lost all my damn shit and haven't had the heart to start looking again. Well, I have a rainbow necklace Kat sent me which is pretty nice. Can't wear it till my damn sunburn heals, though. :P

28. Have you ever been to a pride parade? -- Yes, when I lived in Bisbee. They have quite an excellent Pride which draws people from as far off as Denver.

29. Any advice to someone who isn't out or is exploring themselves? -- Take your time. It's okay if things change. You don't have to solve yourself all at once. It's more important to find people who will accept whoever you turn out to be.

30. Pineapple on pizza? -- I've honestly never tried it. Part of me feels like I should, in order to develop an opinion, and part of me feels like I'm just as happy being outside of that particular debate.

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ellie-scribble · 5 years ago

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She’s So High

A Bucky x Reader fic written for @littledarlinhavefaithinme‘s Sebastian Stan Summer Song Writing Challenge. I had the song She’s So High by Tal Bachman

Summary: Bucky like you. Like, really likes you. He thinks the world of you, but he knows he will never be on your level. Until you ask him out.

Warnings: Fluff + angst

Word Count: 2480ish

A/N: i had a little trouble writing this, but i hope it’s okay. i used the song as a sort of baseline for the story, not in it necessarily. my tag list and requests are open. the gif isn’t mine but damn is it ever hot

When you first joined the avengers, Bucky didn’t know what to think. You had been first recruited to SHIELD due to your uncanny ability to sneak into places, hack computers, and overall being a good, well, spy. You were basically Natasha Romanoff without the badass backstory. That was, at least, until you were captured.

During one of your missions, your partner agent was shot, and had to retreat. You, however, kept going with your mission to acquire HYDRA secrets. You were copying the flash drive when a group of men attacked you. They took you down with a single shot of some weird advanced alien tech gun.

That was when the experimenting began.

After about 3 months of being HYDRA’s lab rat, the Avengers finally were able to come and rescued you. Only, you had changed. The experiments that HYDRA had done altered your DNA. You could manipulate light. Any kind of light. Which was pretty cool.

Tony Stark seemed to think so, too, so he requested that you join the team. Well, not so much requested as demanded. But you were stoked, so it didn’t take much persuasion. You got along with most of the team, Steve was kind, Tony was almost a father figure for you, Sam was your pranking buddy, and Nat and Wanda were your source of estrogen in a sea of testosterone. Bucky Barnes, however, was another story.

Ever since you were first introduced to the Avengers, you felt like Bucky was avoiding you. Which sucked, because you happened to have a huge crush on him. Whenever you tried to talk to him, he froze up, and left the room as soon as possible. You thought it was because he hated you, but in reality, it was quite the opposite.

--------

When Bucky first laid eyes on you, he knew he was a goner. He never really believed in love at first sight, but this was definitely a close second. When you walked into the compound, practically glowing, he forgot what he was thinking about before. When you introduced yourself, your voice was more enchanting than any melody he had ever heard, 40’s and today.

You were, quite honestly, perfect. Which was why he had to keep his distance. He couldn’t risk the chance of ruining you.

It always shocked him when you talked to him. Why would someone as good as you talk to the likes of him? HYDRA’s plaything and the Winter Soldier. So, he froze.

Every. Damn. Time. And when he finally unfroze, instead of talking to you, he left.

He only confided in Steve with his dilemma.

“She’s so perfect, Steve. What could I ever give her?” He complained one day. Steve had always listened to what he said, and his response never changed in the four months he’d been asking.

“Just talk to her, Buck. She just wants to spend time with you, but all you ever do is turn her away. She thinks you hate her.”

“Hate her?” Bucky’s eyes grew wide with fear. “How could anyone hate her? She- she’s-”

“Perfect, I know,” Steve said with a roll of his eyes. “Just go for it, Buck.” With that, Steve got up and left Bucky alone in the living room. The TV played in the background, but Bucky wasn’t paying attention. So, when you walked in, he was taken completely off-guard.

--------

Today was the day that you decided to man up and ask Bucky to hang out sometime. When you woke up in the morning, you were originally going to find him right away, but you chickened out and went to the gym instead. After sparring with Nat (losing to Nat) for about an hour, you went to the kitchen to get something to eat. You probably should have just showered in the gym, but the shower in your room was much nicer. When you walked into the kitchen, you saw the one person you had wanted to see sitting in the adjoined living room.

You knew you should have showered.

“Hey,” you started.

--------

When you spoke, Bucky was startled, which shouldn’t have happened, considering his super-hearing, but nevertheless, he sprung up off the couch.

“H-Hi.” Dammit, he thought. He was already losing his composure. To be fair, you were dripping sweat in those damn short shorts and a sports bra, and it was the hottest thing he’d seen in a while. He hated himself for thinking these things, but he couldn’t help it.

You were unbelievably attractive even straight from a workout. If he ever saw you dressed up, he would probably faint on the spot.

--------

You knew he was probably disgusted by your sweatiness, but it was now or never.

“Um, so there’s this new restaurant opening tonight in Brooklyn. I was wondering if you maybe wanna go?” You were so nervous. You were probably shaking like a leaf, and he could definitely hear your heartbeat fluttering. You almost fled the room right then and there, not being able to face it if he said no. Your mind raced, and little did you know that his did, too.

--------

Bucky barely heard the words that were coming out of your mouth. The only reason he knew you were talking to him was because he could see your lips moving and his heart was racing. His heartbeat was deafening in his ears. It was almost as if he was hearing double.

“What?” he croaked. Curse his voice for cracking now. He hated himself for not knowing what you said to him, but his mind was focused on so many other things at the moment. First and foremost why you were talking to him.

“New restaurant in Brooklyn. Opening. You- me go?”

--------

Fuck. You nearly face-palmed at how stupid you got around him. Why was this so difficult?

“Stark said he could get us a table, all we had to do was ask. So, would you want to?”

There. That was better. Now, all he had to do was say yes. You begged whatever god was listening that he would say yes. You had already planned an outfit and gotten your hopes up way to high for them to be shot down.

--------

Was- was she asking me out? No. She couldn’t be. It must be a misunderstanding. She must have asked other people to come, too. Yeah, that sounds right.

“Sure. What time?”

He needed to know how much time he had to mentally prepare for a team dinner. Yes, he saw them almost every day, but a sit-down dinner where all there was to do was talk and eat? No thanks.

“Tonight, around 7. Is that good for you?”

“Yeah. I’ll see you then.”

“Great.”

--------

You were mentally screaming. You had just asked Bucky Barnes out on a date. Successfully. Now all you had to do was get ready, and mentally prepare yourself. You walked back to your room and showered, spotting your dress you had picked out for the evening laid out on your bed.

While showering, you pulled out all the usual pre-date stops. Hair treatment, shaving, face mask, and your rose scented lotion afterwards. You couldn’t help humming to yourself as you rubbed your newly softened legs.

--------

Around 6, Bucky went to Steve to see what he was wearing for the night out. He didn’t want to be too casual, but he also didn’t want to wear a tux when he didn’t have too.

“Hey Steve?” Bucky called through his door.

“Come in.”

Bucky walked in to see Steve in sweatpants sitting on his bed watching TV. He wondered to himself why he wasn’t getting prepared for the night ahead of them. Even if it wasn’t a mission, Steve always got prepared hours beforehand, in case anything went wrong.

“What are you wearing for tonight?” At this question, a look of confusion washed over Steve’s face.

“What’s tonight?”

“Dinner. At that new place in Brooklyn? Y/N asked me to go earlier. The whole team is coming,”

“She didn’t say anything to me,” Steve replied, his brow furrowing in confusion as he did.

Bucky was confused, to say the least. Why hadn’t you invited Steve? He thought you were on good terms. Maybe you just didn’t want to hear about what the dessert would do to your body, or how unhealthy everything was. It still didn’t make sense, though.

“That's weird. She asked me in the kitchen a little while ago. I thought she would’ve asked everyone else by now.”

Steve’s face morphed into a look of realization.

“Buck, did she say she was asking the whole team?”

“Well, no, but I just-”

“Assumed?” Bucky was interrupted by Steve’s question. Well, not so much a question as a statement. Steve knew Bucky better than he knew himself at some times.

“Well, yeah. I mean, why else would she ask me?” Steve made no sense sometimes. Why would you, of all people, ask just him to dinner?

“Bucky,” Steve said, shaking his head, ”She asked you on a date.”

Bucky stood there, shaking his head. It couldn’t be true. There was obviously some sort of misunderstanding. Steve didn’t get it. You were on a whole other level above him. You would never go on a date with him.

“No. She didn’t. I know she didn’t.”

“Maybe you just don’t want it to be a date.” Steve gave Bucky a look that he didn’t know how to take.

“Why would I not want it to be a date? I’ve liked her since she came here,” he replied. He remembered the day very clearly. It was the last day of June, and it was raining outside. He only knew it was raining because Steve forced him to go on a run. After he had showered, he went to the briefing room, where Tony had called a meeting. He said he wanted to introduce the newest member of the team, Y/N. You used to be a SHIELD agent, but after a few developments, thanks to HYDRA, you could literally manipulate light. You must have been doing that when you walked in, because you were glowing. Or, maybe, Bucky just saw you as you were. But to him, you were definitely glowing.

“You tell me.” Steve was not yielding. He just wanted Bucky to acknowledge the fact that even though he wanted to be with you, he was scared. Every good thing he had was taken from him when he was with HYDRA, and he didn't want to lose you, too. He thought that if he kept you at an arm's distance, HYDRA wouldn't use you against him. After saying this, Steve got up and left, leaving Bucky in his room to think.

--------

You were in the kitchen, ready, at 6:30 when Steve walked in. You were huddled over your computer, looking at the menu to decide what you wanted tonight. You liked to do this ahead of time so that when you got there, you didn't have to awkwardly ask for a few more minutes from the waiter.

“Hey,” Steve said. You looked up from reading what was in the Gnocchi Alla Panna. It sounded pretty good from what you were reading, but it was red pasta, and you always spilled when you ate. Plus, this was a new dress and you didn't need to ruin it your first time wearing it.

“Hey. Do you know where Bucky is?”

“Yeah, we were just talking and he has no idea what to wear for tonight. Should I tell him you’re wearing a dress?” Steve raised an eyebrow.

“Oh. Is he really nervous? We could always cancel. Maybe it's best if we don’t-”

“Y/N, stop.” At the sound of Steve’s “captain” voice, you stopped rambling. “Yes Bucky is nervous, but rightfully so. This is his first date since 1945, and- and he really likes you. Don’t tell him I said that.”

As Steve walked out of the room, you pondered what he said. You knew that it had been a while for Bucky, but you hoped you were close enough that it wouldn’t be nerve wracking for him to talk to strangers. It seemed he was even more nervous though, because it was you.

Now that you were thinking about it, Bucky did seem to always be flustered around you. You had always attributed it to Bucky being Bucky, but now? You wondered if it was more.

All these thoughts were floating through your mind when Bucky walked through the doorway of the kitchen. Your breath was suddenly sucked out of your lungs.

Bucky looked good.

You had seen him in a tuxedo before, at the many events that Tony insisted on holding, and he looked nice, but out of place. He looked like he would rather be infiltrating a HYDRA base than wearing a suit at a gala. But now? He had never looked more like Bucky.

He wore a white button-up shirt with black jeans, and of course, his leather jacket. His hair was combed back and his beard had been trimmed. All in all, Bucky looked hot.

--------

Bucky couldn’t even think when he walked into the room.

The light blue dress you wore matched the color of his eyes and he couldn’t help but think it was on purpose. As you turned to greet him, he couldn’t breathe. You were gorgeous. He suddenly forgot all of his dates in the 40’s because you outshone them all in this instant. Perfect didn’t come close to describing you in this instant.

“Hi,” you say with a huge smile on your face.

“Hi,” he replied. His heart fluttered at the simple greeting. He really was enamored with you. After a couple moments of stillness, he realized he should do something. He took your arm in his and steered you towards the elevator, faking all the confidence in the world. In reality, he was unbelievably worried about everything. He was most likely sweating all over, and even someone without super senses could feel his heart speeding away.

But, he was happy. Truly happy. For the first time in a while. Yes, he enjoyed spending time with Steve and Natasha, hell even Sam wasn’t so bad sometimes. But with you, it was different. He could finally be himself. Not the fake old Bucky he pretended to be around Steve. Not the badass soldier he acted as with Natasha. And definitely not the child he became when he was with Sam. But himself. He could be himself around you.

You brought out the best in him. You made the clouds disappear. You turned everything he hated about himself into his best qualities. You made him feel wanted. And, yeah, that scared him, but with you, he was willing to try.

So, he dropped the fake confidence, and became the person you made him into.

The Bucky that you had unknowingly come to love.

--------

a/n if you liked this, please let me know! i love reading the comments and love all feedback, positive and negative. i am also looking for a beta reader if anyone is interested. love you!

taglist

@deep-sea-glitter @irl-valkyrie

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #Bucky Barnes #bucky imagine #LDS4 writing challenge

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