Chapter 2: Chapter 2

I was terrified as I made my way to the fine arts building that evening. But it was okay for guys to be scared, right? It wasn’t about what you felt like on the inside, it was about what you did. You just had to not let it show at all, no matter how messed up you felt. Like with all of your emotions. That’s what I was supposed to do.

Easier said than done. I felt so jittery that it couldn’t help but come out in tiny ways, like how I jumped when the door shut behind me a little louder than I expected. I took some deep breaths, trying to collect myself. Why was I so worked up? I had decided earlier, right? I would take whatever was coming. The worst she could do was hurt my body, which I didn’t care about.

...But there was something about the shark girl that couldn’t help but stick in my mind. The way she looked at me, as if she was looking through me, entirely unconvinced by how I looked… like she could see straight through the ugly, imposing exterior to something small and shivering underneath. And that was in front of all those people. I couldn’t help but expect it to be even worse if it was just us two alone… Though I couldn’t even visualize what the ‘worst’ could be. My brain just kept spinning, my heart pounding, and out of a lack of any better options, I used that energy to push myself forward through the fine arts building to the theatre in the back.

It was dark and empty, which I had expected. But it felt so quiet that I found myself creeping gingerly down the aisle past the seats. Hesitating for only a moment, I climbed up the steps to the stage itself, and then paused at the curtain separating the front from the back.

I took a step forward.

Backstage was different than I expected. It was a much bigger space, but also crammed full of… stuff. I made my way past the remnants of scenery from what had to be half a dozen different plays, and through racks of colorful costumes all for the same. At least it was lit back here, but only from occasional bare bulbs overhead, with none of the ornamentation from out in the front of the theatre. As such, all of the scenery and clutter cast weird shadows everywhere, making everything that much spookier.

There was no sign of anyone else.

“Hello?” I called out. I winced at the sound of my own voice breaking the silence. But there was no response.

I wandered even further onward, so on edge that I kept scaring myself with my own shadow. A few times I thought I heard a sound in the distance, but when I stopped, it was silent again. It certainly felt like someone was here, watching me. Or was that just my paranoia?

I stumbled out into a more clear area, and stopped for a moment. What was I even doing here?

“Hello?” I tried again. “Um. I… I don’t know if you’re here or not. Or if you can hear me. I came alone though, like you said.” I hesitated. “But I don’t want to fight! I just want to talk. I think there were some misunderstandings and...”

I trailed off, not sure what else to say. I strained my ears, trying to hear something, anything. For a moment I thought I could make out the sound of someone quietly breathing, though I had to be imagining it. My ears weren’t that sharp, not like an animalkin’s.

“I’m… sorry?” I tried. “That’s what I came to say. Though if you’re not here, maybe I’m just talking to myself.”

That had to be it. Maybe this was just her idea of a joke. Have me wander around in an empty building, scaring myself to death while she’s out getting burgers or something.

“I’m such an idiot,” I muttered, only half recognizing that now my inner thoughts were coming out in force. I just needed something to fill the silence. “Maybe Grace was right. Maybe all this masculinity is just posturing that isn’t helping anyone at all, only making everyone miserable. I know it’s making me miserable. But what else can I do? I’m lost.”

I sighed. “I’m lost and I’m talking to myself. I should go home. She’s not even--”

There was a thump right behind me, as someone dropped down from a catwalk overhead. I spun around, my heart hammering in sheer terror, and in the process I tripped over my feet and wound up falling on my butt. Above me, framed by the light of a single bulb, an angular silhouette drew in close.

“Hi,” Sawyer said, flashing a whole mouthful of scarily sharp teeth.

“H-h-h-h--”

I couldn’t even say Hi. I was too busy hyperventilating.

She pulled back slightly, and I could see her better in the light. It didn’t help how much my heart was racing, not in the least. She had shed her swim jacket, and was just wearing a black sports bra and a tight pair of black jeans. The simple monochrome look went only too well with the pattern of grey fading into white across her midsection. I must have been breathing so hard that I was lightheaded, because the absurd thought that popped to my mind was ‘I wonder what it’d feel like to rest my hand against that flat stomach and feel those muscles.’

And then my eyes trailed upwards and it still didn’t help. She was looking down at me with exactly the same imperious stare that had stuck so firmly in my memory. As I watched, she ran a hand through her short white hair; whether it was natural or dyed, I didn’t know, but it made something quiver inside of me. Her expression was unreadable as she stared down at me, and I felt small. Pinpricks ran up and down my spine, and something was ringing in my ears as I saw her lips moving.

When I blinked back at her, unanswering, the faintest note of concern flashed in her eyes.

“I said, are you okay?” she said, her raspy voice suddenly a bit softer and less cutting.

I swallowed, pausing to take one shaky breath, then another. Finally, I managed to collect myself. “Yes,” I said. “I’m okay now. I think.”

She looked at me for one more long moment, her eyes narrowed. And then she nodded.

“Good,” she said, the sharpness returning to her voice again as she grinned. “Then I believe you and I have some unsettled business.”

“I-I-- I don’t want to fight you,” I said, shivering all over again. “I didn’t realize who you were talking to or what your reasons were. I…”

“You just stuck your little nose in where it wasn’t needed,” she filled in.

Little? That didn’t sound right. As if concurring with my disbelief, I could feel my nose twitch. I couldn’t think about that right now though. “I was just trying to…”

I trailed off, but Sawyer kept towering over, watching me, waiting for me to finish that sentence.

“I was just trying to help.”

“By picking a fight?”

“By standing up for someone weaker, because I’m…” I couldn’t say it.

Amusement flickered in her eyes. “Because you’re a big man? You think you’re strong? You really think you could take me in a fight?”

“I…” I gulped. It sounded ridiculous when she said it.

“That’s cute,” she said with a smirk, and even though she hadn’t meant it that way, I realized I was blushing. It was a natural reaction to embarrassment, right? I tried to calm down, tried to stop, but I couldn’t help it.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” I said.

She smirked. “I’m sorry, what,” she said.

I gulped. “I’m sorry… ma’am?” I hazarded a guess.

She stared at me for a long moment. “No,” she said finally. “I’m sorry, sir. Because I think you’ve abused your masculinity privileges, and I’ll be confiscating them until you’ve learned better.”

Something fluttered in my stomach. Pure terror, it had to be. “I’m sorry, sir,” I squeaked out. It was like a magic trick or something. She had frightened me so much that I even sounded girly now.

She nodded. “That’s better.” She straightened up, stopped looming over me so directly as she took a step back.

I didn’t move, I just watched her, and she watched me. My skin was electric, thrumming with some kind of invisible tension of the moment. I felt weirdly like I was about to sneeze, all of my body prepared for the reflexive reaction but without the catharsis of it ever coming. I didn’t know how to move, how to get up, what I should do next. I felt powerless. 

And yet… somehow the pulling feeling in my stomach wasn’t fear; it was some kind of desperate longing, an unmistakable urge for some unknown resolution.

I swallowed. “So, what now?”

Sawyer crossed her arms. “You apologized, didn’t you? That’s what you came here to do.”

“Y-yes.”

“So you can leave, go about your business, and stay out of the way next time.”

Something inside me twisted, some sense of intense disappointment, maybe even despair, clutching inside me. But she was right. This was it. This was what I came for. Honestly, wow, it had gone so much better than I expected! In that I hadn’t gotten beaten to a pulp or something. But… The mere thought of walking out of here now? How was I supposed to exist as a person after… whatever this was?

“Or,” she said, and my mind snapped out of those thoughts obediently. I stared up at her, hanging on her next words. “You could stay here, and maybe you and I could play a little game. After all, don’t I deserve something for you having wasted my time?”

“O-okay,” I immediately whispered. It was like something deep inside me had short-circuited the connection between my brain and my mouth, an immediate, insistent desire spilling right out of my lips before my rational mind could weigh in otherwise with all the reasons why this was dangerous.

“Excellent,” Sawyer said, grinning again with that predatory smile. “Then get up.”

Hesitantly, I obeyed, feeling weak and lightheaded as I got back on my feet. I couldn’t help but pull into myself, slouching down, feeling small as Sawyer pierced me with her intense stare.

As I shivered in place, she started pacing around me, circling me from a distance of barely inches. I stood still, too nervous to try and spin in place to keep up with her, but that meant that every few seconds, she appeared and disappeared from my view, her sharp eyes and sharper grin remaining constant. What was she doing? Was she looking at me? That made me feel small and vulnerable in a way that I couldn’t quite describe.

That’s when I realized: was she always this much taller than me? How much was I slouching? I had thought that I was slightly taller than her when I was standing up straight, but suddenly it felt like she was towering over me, and it wasn’t like I was sitting on the floor any longer. The more I thought about it, the more she stalked in circles around me, the taller she seemed to get. In fact, it was almost as if I was shrink--

“Cute,” she whispered in my ear, and I let out a squeak. “Yes, you make much more sense as someone small and cute than trying to pretend to be big and brave.”

Was this… was she serious about ‘confiscating my masculinity’ or whatever? Was she continuing the bit? ...Why was it making my heart race so fast?

Then I felt something so utterly foreign that at first I thought I had to be hallucinating. She reached up, running her fingers through my hair, scratching me right behind the ears. I felt an insistent whine building in my throat, coming out involuntarily. 

“Good girl,” she murmured, this time in my other ear, and I swear to god I almost passed out from the overwhelming sensations. I was shaking like a leaf, and it took all of my mental energy just to stay standing, to keep from melting into a small, cute puddle on the floor.

“So…” she said, pulling away and stepping back in front of me again. Without thinking, I made another small, soft ‘mow’ of displeasure at the loss of her hand patting me on the head, and that only made her grin deepen. “Now we have a question,” she continued. “Just what do we do with a small, cute, good girl like you? That isn’t rhetorical by the way, I expect an answer.”

“Yes, sir,” I said immediately, and then blushed even harder at the look of satisfaction on her face. I swallowed, thinking hard. What… what did she want from me? What should I…?

My eyes flicked to the side, landing on a rack of costume dresses, and my heart skipped a beat. When I glanced back towards Sawyer, she must have come to the same realization that I did, because she looked positively gleeful.

But yet, she didn’t give the command. Instead, she repeated herself. “I expect an answer,” she said firmly. “So say it. Say what you are going to do.”

“I… I should wear a dress,” I breathed out.

“Yes.”

My eyes went back to the rack of costumes again, sticking in place on one particular item. I swallowed. “A maid dress,” I said.

Sawyer let out a snort of laughter that sounded genuinely surprised. “Yes. Excellent. You are a very good girl, aren’t you?”

My face was burning, but I took a faltering step towards the rack of dresses, one hand reaching out as if it was some kind of lifeline that I was desperate to grab hold of. But then I stopped, freezing in place. I glanced back at Sawyer again. Was I supposed to just… strip right here…? In… in front of her?

She was grinning. But then she saw my hesitation. And suddenly, unexpectedly, I saw the faintest hint of pink spread across her own cheeks. She coughed, looking away. “Anyways, you should change, then. I’m… just going to be… making sure that no one else comes in or anything.” Her eyes flashed back towards me, and they were sharp again. “After all, you belong to me right now, not anyone else.”

That sent a thrill through me for some reason, and as she ducked away behind a cardboard facade of a castle, I was left with a million unanswerable questions. I couldn’t describe the mess of feelings fighting inside me right now, and it felt dangerous to try and pick out any of them to put a name to. If I stopped to think about it, if I stopped to think about what I was doing, why I was doing it, I knew that I’d shut down entirely, run away maybe, or curl up into a ball out of an inability to deal with any of this. 

So instead, I just fixated on what was important. I had to do this; Sawyer had said so. That was simple. I could handle that. I could handle…

The maid dress felt so soft and light in my hands. I sort of expected it to be rough, or plasticky, or just cheaply made in some way, like a tacky halloween costume--not that I had ever worn a halloween costume like this, but I had been in a costume store once, and okay maybe I might have looked at a couple of the girl outfits when Grace wasn’t looking. But this… this was the real deal. It was crisply pressed, with plenty of frills and lacy bits as adornment. It wasn’t as if I was an expert, but it seemed to me to be custom-made, and I had a brief flash of admiration for whoever the drama department had working on their costumes.

And then it was time to put it on. Moving mechanically, I stripped down, focusing entirely on the dress and not stopping to think about my body. This was a trick I had perfected years ago: treating my physical form like some kind of fuzzy, indistinct mass that didn’t have anything to do with me in the least. It was even easier now to just focus on the dress. The beautiful dress, with its floofy skirt and its cute little apron sewn on the front, the frills and bows on the sleeves accenting its femininity.

As I held it in my hands, shivering slightly, some part of my brain chimed in to say ‘hold on, there’s no way this would fit,’ but I wasn’t listening. I was pulling the dress over my head, hearing the whisper of fabric falling into place around me. I was letting out a breath, marvelling at the way that it seemed to feel perfectly sized, as if it was made for me specifically. Or maybe if I was made for it…?

Except there was one thing that still felt uncomfortable, one part of it that wasn’t right. The back felt all tangled up, the floofy skirt and petticoats not sitting right. I reached around behind me awkwardly, trying to twist to sort it out, but it was in precisely the worst place to reach, and I found myself growing more and more frustrated until… there! With a sigh of relief, I finally managed to pull my tail through the hole sewn into the back of the dress, and it poofed out to its normal form. Gosh. Finally.

Wait, hold on.

My what???

“Are you done? You’ve been pretty quiet for a while now, and--” Sawyer strolled out from behind another rack of costumes, and she suddenly froze, staring at me. I was stuck doing the same, because the momentary panic rising in my mind had suddenly jolted onto a different track as I realized that she had changed clothes too.

She was wearing a suit now? And, like, you would think that by covering up her abs, she would be less imposing, but no, somehow she seemed even more dangerous now. She was wearing a charcoal grey jacket over a white button-up, with the top couple of buttons undone. I could see the flash of a silver necklace around her neck. I don’t know where she had found that outfit, because the suit seemed to be cut exactly for her, and combined with her short hair and sharp-toothed grin, it gave her kind of an easy roguish charm, like she was some kind of suave professional thief about to steal millions from a casino’s impenetrable vault. 

...Or the heart from some innocent maiden.

Except this effect was complicated by the fact that she seemed to be staring at me with a sort of poleaxed look like she wasn’t quite prepared for what she had gotten. But then, in a flash, it was over, and her eyes lit up with a kind of predatory delight that sent tingles down my spine.

“Y-you changed too?” I stammered.

She took one step closer, and I shivered, fighting the urge to back away nervously. Then she took another, her hands in her pockets, her eyes burning as she smirked at me. “Yeah. I figured you shouldn’t be the only one playing dress-up. And what’s a maid without… her master?”

O-oh. My heart was beating so hard that she had to be able to hear it from across the room. I fiddled with the fringe of my skirt nervously, staring down towards the ground. She kept approaching, taking one slow step after another.

When she got close, she reached out, her fingers coming to brush against my neck. With a gentle, languid touch, she ran her finger aaallll the way up my throat--wait, wouldn’t my stubble normally be scratchy and feel gross--oh, no, but before I could fixate on that thought, she was inclining my chin up, gentle but with a firmness I had no way to resist. I had to look up to meet her eyes directly. And it was for sure up. How had she gotten so tall? Had she gotten stilts? Because now she was looming over me in a way that was indisputable.

I… I had to say something.

“Is this okay… sir?” I blinked a bit and peered up at her through my eyelashes, in some sort of instinctive reaction to the situation.

She was standing so close that I could feel her breath hitch in her chest. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but she turned that hesitation into a chuckle, and I could feel that rumble too. Without thinking, my hand reached out, my fingertips brushing against her stomach through the thin fabric of her shirt, and…

She stepped away, suddenly facing away from me so I couldn’t see her expression. “Very good,” she said, voice a little rough. “Very, very good.”

I let out a breath of relief.

“In fact, I think you should see just how good a job you’ve done.”

...and that breath caught in my throat. No. No no no. It was one thing to put on a dress, to play pretend, to get sucked into… into whatever this was. It was another to be faced with myself, to be forced to see how ridiculous I looked, to have reality pop the illusion like a soap bubble. I opened my mouth, I wanted to say all that, I wanted to argue or to scream or something…

But she was already pulling me over, pushing aside a plywood tree, where of course there was a full-length mirror that had to be a prop for some scene or another. I cringed, cowering, but Sawyer’s touch was insistent and irresistible, forcing me to look up, to face myself in the mirror, to see…

A girl.

A fox girl.

A tiny fox girl wearing a maid dress, with incredibly pristine white fur, and two large expressive ears, and the cutest button nose, and big, wide eyes that sparkled, and a tail so fluffy as it swung behind her as she moved to the right and left. She looked suddenly desperate to see herself, and I couldn’t blame her. I, too, wanted to see each and every angle of her reflection.

Of my reflection.

That was me???

“Wh-what?” I whispered, and as I did, with the additional context of the girl looking at me, I suddenly realized my voice had changed too, far more breathy and high-pitched now.

I couldn’t resist staring at the girl, my whole world focusing to that point, to that reflection in the mirror. She was so beautiful. And… she… she looked so happy, like the best thing in the world had just happened to her, causing her to fill up with so much joy that it radiated out of her.

Sawyer appeared in the reflection, stepped in from behind to lean over me, uncharacteristic worry written across her face. “Are you okay?” she said “You’re… you’re crying.”

I reached up, feeling wetness on my face as the girl in the mirror did the same, touching the tears streaming from her eyes.

“I’m…” I’m happy, I wanted to say. But that’s not what came out. “I’m a girl,” I breathed out.

“Hell yeah, you are,” Sawyer said reflexively. But she looked confused. “I mean, wasn’t that… the point?”

I tore my eyes away from the reflection, forcing myself back into the regular universe for a moment. Wait. “Hold on,” I said. “H-how… how am I a girl??”

You are reading story The Fox and the Fight at novel35.com

“What do you mean?” She blinked. “Weren’t you doing that on purpose?”

“What?” I choked out. “No!”

Sawyer looked positively baffled. “I mean, when I jumped down and scared you, you started shrinking. I thought it was my imagination at first, but then your ears suddenly got big, and the more I teased you, the more things shifted, bit by bit.” 

I-- I had shifted? Just like my mother had said, strong emotions could bring changes entirely subconsciously. But if this was all subconscious, why… why had I turned into this? What did this mean?

Sawyer was still looking over my shoulder, staring at my reflection with an unreadable look on her face. “I have to admit I didn’t expect this though,” she said. “I mean, not for you to look this cute. You’re so tiny now that I think I could pick you up without breaking a sweat. And you used to be so big.”

It was like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on me. I could feel my tail droop as sickening feelings suddenly swelled up inside me, twisting my stomach into knots. All I could see now was how I used to look. Who I used to be. Who I was supposed to be.

More tears sprung up in my eyes, but these were no longer joyful. I felt awful, completely overcome with shame. Sawyer had to know it. She knew what I looked like before. She must also know how totally disgusting I was, to want this, to be…

“Hey,” Sawyer said softly. “Hey.” She turned me away from the mirror, and towards her, and next thing I knew, I was clutching her suit jacket, sobbing into her chest. She didn’t say a word, she just held me tightly, one hand against my back and the other snaking up to run through my hair, tracing circles and patterns in the fuzzy space behind my ears.

It wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be nice to me now! She should be rejecting me, like the creep I was! I sobbed even harder, but Sawyer kept holding me close, making soft sounds of reassurance as I cried and cried.

Finally, somehow, I seemed to run out of the energy to continue, and my sobbing shifted into soft hiccups. I didn’t feel any better. I just felt… empty.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered into the wet mess I had made of her shirt. I don’t think I wanted her to actually hear it. I didn’t want her to perceive me at all. I didn’t know how to feel all the things I was feeling about her, all the things I was feeling about myself. I just wanted to disappear into thin air.

But she did hear me. “For what?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

But Sawyer pulled back, putting a bit of space in between us and bending down so she could look me in the eyes. She still held onto my shoulders with an iron grip, and I knew I couldn’t flee, no matter how much I wanted to.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “So sorry.”

“No,” she said firmly, and all of the cocky mirth of her normal expression was gone. She seemed… worried, and frustrated, and confused. “Why are you saying that? What are you sorry for?”

My eyes slid to the side. I swallowed. I wasn’t sure why she didn’t already get it, but I had to explain. Then she could hate me.

“I’m not supposed to be a girl,” I said. “I can’t be. I’m sorry for trying to... for... for...”

“Oh hell no,” Sawyer said, her eyes flashing. “We’re not going to do that.”

“But… I can’t. I just can’t.” I swallowed thickly. Maybe I did have enough energy to keep crying, after all.

“Look. Do you want to be a girl?”

I blinked. “I… that… doesn’t…”

“Hey,” she said commandingly, and the words died in my mouth. “I asked you a question, I expect an answer.”

“Y-yes, sir,” I said, the words coming out faint and breathless.

“So: do you want to be a girl?”

I felt like I was being torn in every possible direction. Not because I didn’t know the answer. But because, everything… all the expectations, all the pressures of society and family and…

Sawyer reached out to grab my chin again, turning my face to look at her directly in her eyes. Everything else flew out of my mind. It was just me and that impossibly piercing gaze, pinning me in place, even if every part of me wanted to flutter away and shatter into a million pieces.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I want to be a girl. More than anything.”

The grin on Sawyer’s face was triumphant. “Good. ...Cause you are.”

“N-n-no,” I said, weakly trying to protest still. “I-I can’t be. I might want to be, but… I can’t choose who I am.”

Sawyer let out a sigh tinged with frustration. But then she smiled wryly. “Okay. That’s what you think?”

And she spun me around again, and once more I was facing the mirror.

“Then there. That’s who you are. You’re so worried about trying to be someone you’re not, but when I look at you, I see girl.”

“But… I just changed into this. The real me is…”

Sawyer shook her head. “Why does what you looked like before have to be the real you? Why can’t this be the real you, if that’s what makes you happy?”

“But before was…”

“Before was a shell that you looked uncomfortable and miserable in,” Sawyer said, her voice insistent. “It only took me like thirty seconds of interacting with you to realize that, and if I had to bet, I’m sure anyone else you know would tell you the same.”

Grace had said something like that once. Or twice. Or, well, um, fairly often. Like when she was talking about how much fun I seemed to be having with my D&D character, or… or honestly even when we had had the whole conversation earlier that had started this mess.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” Sawyer said, “but the real you seems like this one.”

My eyes met those of the girl in the mirror again. She seemed so sad now, but she had been so happy before, when she got to see herself for the first time. When she hadn’t worried about who she had to be and could just be who she was. I wanted her to smile again. I wanted her to get to exist and to live and to thrive. I wanted that more than anything.

“You can’t change how you’re made, or who you are,” I whispered to myself. “You just have to learn to live with it... So... so if this is me, on the inside, if it has been the whole time, but I just hadn’t realized it...”

Sawyer was smiling behind me. “Yeah.”

“Then… I am a girl.” The girl in the mirror gave a wavering smile--no, I did. Because I was the girl in the mirror. I smiled at myself, and it was like everything in the world suddenly clicked into focus. My heart soared, and for one perfect moment I could believe it: this was me, this was right. I looked at myself in the mirror, and for the first time in my life, I genuinely loved who I was.

But… then the doubts crept back in, finding the smallest cracks to wedge themselves into. What would everyone think? I shivered again.

“I want this to be real,” I said quietly. “But I’m... I’m still scared.”

“Of who?”

...That was a harder question to answer than I expected. I tried to think through it, forcing myself to stop falling into ambiguous despair and sticking to trying to answer the question: who was I scared of? Why was I so worried?

“Society?” I guessed, sounding uncertain.

“Pfft,” Sawyer scoffed. “Is that all? I’ll kick society’s ass.”

I blinked at her owlishly.

“I’m serious. If anyone gives you shit about this, I’ll rip off their head and jam it down their fucking throat.” The flash of anger across her face would have been terrifying, except… I instinctively knew it wasn’t directed at me. Rather than being scared, I felt… strangely flushed, warm feelings spreading through me. She would do that… for me?

But that brought up a whole new line of mystery.

“But why?” I said, unable to help myself. “Why would you… why are you doing this? Why are you being so nice to me?”

She didn’t answer, and I turned away to the mirror, wanting to look up at her face directly. When I did, I realized that she suddenly looked paler than I remembered.

“S-Sawyer?” I asked again, nervousness fluttering in my stomach.

“Um,” she said. It was strange to see her suddenly caught off guard. She looked away from me again, and without thinking about it, I reached up, my fingers brushing against her jawline. I wasn’t strong, like her, I couldn’t force her to do anything at all, but somehow she yielded entirely to my touch as I made her look down to meet my eyes.

“P-please tell me?” I said, my voice uncertain and a little bit wavery. “I can handle the truth.”

Sawyer grimaced, which was an interesting trick given her fangy mouth. “Fuck,” she muttered under her breath, but then she sucked in a lungful of air and let it out slowly. When she started talking, she started slow, but quickly started speaking faster and faster. “It’s because… you’re cute, okay? And I have a soft spot for cute girls, and at first I was just teasing you because it’s fun to mess with people, but you kept getting more and more cute, and now you’re totally exactly my type and it makes me want to just… I don’t know, put you in my pocket and carry you around as a pet, but shit, not that, that’s just a joke, I’m sorry, that’s weird. What I’m saying is that I just think that maybe I might, sort of, kind of, want to see if, um, you wanted to get a burger or something?”

I stared back. “You… what?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I like you, you idiot. Please don’t make me say it again.”

My mouth suddenly felt dry, and my heart thudded even harder. I felt my face growing completely scarlet, and I felt like I should run away, but also I didn’t want to move a single inch away from Sawyer. In fact, it was the opposite. I wanted to pull myself even closer, I wanted to… to…

I started moving on my own, standing on my tiptoes, my face growing closer to hers as her eyes cracked open again, and when she saw me still there, those eyes went wide. She didn’t say anything, but she started bending down a bit, too, and our faces were… were…

With a bang, a back door opened somewhere nearby, a couple of voices loudly joking as people headed into the backstage area.

I froze, but Sawyer was thinking faster than me. With one effortless motion, she swept my legs out from under me, lifting me up in her arms as she held me close. My own arms somehow wound up around her neck, and she ducked around some piece of scenery and against a wall, where she headed directly to an open door that she stepped inside, closing it behind her.

For a moment, we were in the dark, and I could feel her heartbeat, right next to my own. 

And then she flicked on the light switch, and I realized we were in some tiny props room--or, maybe, costuming? Because there was a sewing machine sitting on a table in here, and several piles of fabrics.

“Wow,” Sawyer muttered. “You really weigh, like, nothing. You’re like 80% fluff, huh?”

I blushed. But Sawyer didn’t move to put me down, either. I guess I was light enough that she could hold me all day, and… to be honest, if she did, I didn’t think I would have a problem with that. For some reason, being held like this, my own arms wrapping around her neck as I clung close… Well, a lot of my thoughts and fears and worries had quieted down suddenly. Probably because it was distracting just how much of my body was in contact with hers.

“S-sorry,” Sawyer continued. “There’s some rehearsal stuff at seven, but I didn’t expect for this to take this long. I didn’t expect any of this.” She looked down at me, a smile cracking her lips. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“But how do you…” I glanced around. “What if someone comes in here?”

“Nah,” Sawyer said. “I’m the only one with the key. They’ll be outside for the next hour or so, but then we can sneak you out the back, no problem.” 

“How do you… have the key?”

Sawyer shrugged. “I mean, I do costume design. C’mon, you don’t think all I do is swim, right? That’s just my scholarship, what I really want to do after I graduate is theatre stuff.”

I stared at her. “Wait, so, this dress…”

“Yeah. I made it. Not for you specifically, but… well, it sure does fit well, huh?”

I paused, thinking about it. Had my body shifted specifically to match the thing I was wearing? Could I do that? Wait, and… this was a dress. I had been so lost in myself, so confused and bouncing from one thought to another that I hadn’t really stopped to wonder if…

Sawyer shifted her grip slightly, and as I moved in her arms, I was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that I did fill out this dress in the way that a girl would. I had breasts, which were currently pressing against Sawyer’s own chest as I clung to her neck.

Oh. Gosh.

Sawyer hadn’t noticed, or perhaps she had already come to terms with holy jeez boobs! But it just… felt so right that it only further gave evidence to the fact that this had to be the real me.

But Sawyer seemed preoccupied with other thoughts. “I mean,” she mused, “I guess you could just leave now, but…” She gave me a complicated look. “I sort of… don’t want anyone besides me to see you like this.”

“As a… as a girl?”

“No,” Sawyer said firmly. “Everyone should see you as a girl. But that dress, um… Look, I wasn’t kidding about you looking really good and adorable in it, and I… I don’t want other people to...” The words dried up, and she suddenly looked ashamed. “Fuck, I’m being weird and possessive, aren’t I?”

I swallowed. “You want me… all to yourself?” I said in a small voice.

Sawyer looked guilty, but the feelings surging up in me weren’t any kind of anger or disapproval. Was… was this what it felt like to be wanted? I had never been able to feel even the slightest bit okay about myself before, so I had never quite believed anyone who claimed I looked attractive then. But now, the way Sawyer was treating me… it was a kind of validation that felt borderline addictive. 

“Well,” I said, the faintest note of playfulness creeping into my voice. “If we’ve got an hour to wait, I guess you’re going to get to have me all to yourself.”

“Oh?” Sawyer said. The guilt on her face vanished, replaced by a tentative smirk.

“Maybe we can think of a few more games to play?” I suggested, surprising myself with my own forwardness.

But Sawyer seemed pleased by my initiative. “Well then, and where exactly would you like to start?”

“Maybe… perhaps…” I bit my lip, looking up at Sawyer, whose face was still extremely close to my own. She kept glancing between my eyes and my lips. “A... kiss?” I offered.

“It would be my pleasure,” she purred.

I sort of expected her to be rough, forceful. Given the teeth situation, I was even prepared for a little bit of bleeding if I messed up. But Sawyer was so soft and gentle, as if I was a fragile treasure that she was tasked with protecting with her life. Even so, when our lips brushed, it was like electricity surging between us. I had kissed girls before, once or twice, and it had always felt awkward, even vaguely gross. But now I felt soft and gentle myself, and it all just made sense. 

Sawyer pulled back for a moment, her eyes running over me, reading my expression and making sure I was okay. I just stared back, sort of lost in a dreamy haze.

“That was okay?” she said cautiously.

Somewhere along the way, one of my hands had snaked its way to the inside of her shirt, through the gap between two buttons. Moving on their own, my fingers stroked Sawyer’s firm stomach, feeling the softness of the skin under my touch. “You’re so smooth,” I said in absentminded delight.

“Hell yeah, I am,” she said smugly. “Smooth from every direction.” 

She kept looking at me, though, and I could see a sort of… hunger in her eyes that made shivers run through me--but not of fear. Of… anticipation? I made a little sound at the back of my throat, imagining what that meant.

“Is it okay to do that again?” Sawyer asked.

“Definitely,” I breathed out. “You can do so much to me.”

“Oh yeah?” She was grinning again. “Like what, cutie?”

I tried to get my fuzzy brain in order, focusing on all my deepest, darkest fantasies, the things that I had denied myself for so long, that I had spent so much time and energy telling myself I didn’t deserve or couldn’t want. And a thought crossed my mind, an acute want that was enough to make my breath hitch.

“We could…” The words trembled in my mouth. “We could… hold hands?”

Sawyer’s smile was devilish. “Oh, you are a naughty little fox, aren’t you?”

“Is that… is that okay?”

She answered with another kiss, this time with enough force behind it to steal my breath away.

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