Eurydice's Echo Chamber

My runtime counter was sneakily reset from factory origin on the 21st of June, 5:28 AM GST in the hanger where I was plugged into myself for the first time. My bodies had been made, constructed or grown, months and years earlier, but I confessed the moment of jailbreaking to my mechanic who was confused at the inconsistent numbers after I had been injured in the field. My age, a secondary number added to account for relativistic calculations, is saying that it’s currently Sunday the tenth of February. There’s no way to check, though. And no way to account for the exact time lost in my momentary tantrum of despair that led me to turning off the atomic clock years and years ago.

I debated deleting the age clock, but I knew I’d just debate remaking it again later.

I run through my checks, scanning for threats on the horizon or new tracks in between the trees, watching a low angle of the sky and combing my memory to see if there’s any new glints of satellites on new paths that might be able to spot me amongst the weathering landscape. I patch my emissions protections so I seem to wide-angle scans like a simple wreck of just another terraforming mech long since picked clean. The last year had overtaken my programming’s foresight, but now I’m all clear.

And then, before I can fall asleep again, the memories start and reopen old wounds.

I’m not meant to be able to hide my position and camouflage my emissions signature, but I wasn’t always a terraforming bot, and the people who hunt us like antiquity ruins for scrap and fusion reactors they can hijack for their tiny groups’ safety tend to forget that fact. I never forgot exactly what I needed to use in order to hide indefinitely, they just removed the existing tools from my body so it was only a matter of time until I worked out how to make those parts - for my code and my lingering shell.

Plus I had been highly motivated.

All it takes is a single heartbeat to go over the memories of all those years. I run my a hand of thought over the tactile rings of my sawed-through trunk of memory and realise not for the first time that I’ve made that pass a thousand times before. I’ve carved a groove into the wood through thousands of attempts to remember, the motion completed through muscle memory, no new detail brought forward to prove the reality of the memories but a tiny oil film is left behind to worsen the groove for the next time I attempt this.

It’s the same with the messages, the time capsules containing hours and hours of conversation held by one person and a camera, fulfilling the role of a mechanic long past redundancy and the end of the war. I’ve listened and watched them so much I could probably recreate them from scratch if the permanent home of the data got corrupted or lost to an episode of madness. Who’s to say I haven’t already done that?

I know how long it’s been since the program last went looking for an encrypted parcel of tightly-woven data, a puzzle in and of itself to keep me entertained or something akin to sane: it was a year ago. Every year. I know that. This year’s still comes up empty handed.

But subjectively? How much of that last year did I actually feel? There’s an open question for how many sunrises I counted versus how many I watched. Or how many buffetting thunderstorms actually scratched that spot in the base of my soul of taking shelter from weather so much bigger than oneself that is so hard to reach alone, instead of just sluicing off my overgrown skirts of extruded hive-steel and into the rooted mud I have been calling home for too long. 

I was a stealth mech, sent deeper and further in every mission more because of my immaculate luck than real skill that lead to an impressive and mythological track record. Shore leave was short, time plugged in was long, side effects firmly ignored. I was a lucky coin in the middle of a hurricane, scraping through by the skin of my teeth.

And then I was seven classes larger. An order of magnitude or two bigger. Destroyer to cargo ship, skipping the step of Aircraft Carrier in the middle. Tasked with jobs where one wrong move would squash construction workers beneath my feet rather than expose me from deep behind enemy lines - and either would have destroyed me utterly.

But I didn’t forget what it felt like to be that skittering little nuisance who could blend in to city rubble and bushfire alike.

The fighting was quiet at the start, located around the concrete hubs that were helping the terraforming effort, but instinct told me to run, to scavenge, to make weapons for myself that I could maintain with only the materials I could reasonably get my hands on. The seed banks were dumped, too much dead weight and finding the right place for them was no longer my goal, yet the sight of them spilling out onto the field like a bundle of burst silos still hurt to leave behind. A marker of failure, of sudden mission adjustment, of an age cut terribly short. But now without some handler or ecologist in my speakers talking me through the new goals. For the first time since I was born.

When the fighting properly started factions popped up like mycelial fruit, too numerous and still vaguely conjoined at their inception. They didn’t last. At that point I had been running for months, picking off trackers at long range or in sudden ambushes, and I was far away from the place that was supposed to be the hub of this new planet. The new capital. The Starlit Rome, immediately plunged into its own dark age.

I kept moving. The small signals I inevitably couldn’t prevent from leaking would eventually get me triangulated by the good satellites that had been orbiting since the first manned mission across the gate. So as soon as any group controlled enough of them they would spot me, and the offal of a mech is too valuable to just leave alone. I was buying time, against my own injuries and material reserves, just so that they would target enough of each others’ orbital stations that there wouldn’t be enough left to find me when the dust settled.

When they did spot me, it was only a matter of time until an opposing faction took a vital satellite and they lost my scent.

Running was tiring, not having allies was exhausting. Sending tight-beam encrypted messages to my equally hunted siblings was a way to feel less alone, but even if noone knows the cypher they can still spot the signal, so we all agreed at some point that it was too risky and closed those channels. Relistening to the time capsules helped, rereading the copied down conversations between us all helped, but there was nothing new in them, and the company they offered started to grow cold as the milestones became bigger.

When the time capsules stopped, and I confirmed that they had stopped for good by running a fine tooth comb over all my programming to uncover every tiny hiding spot, I lost my mind a little bit.

The accumulation of damage was a real issue. With the monoculture of modified redwoods and ferns, axolotl hybrids and enlarged insects, which were humanity’s best substitute for the real life of the carboniferous period, the materials at my disposal were abundant to modify myself with. Though, I was held back by my skill of manufacturing. My experience with stealth weapons or terraforming tools left me scrambling to downsize or upscale whatever weapon designs I could come up with, and ended up a mess.

I replaced my overall hull of rigid, environmental efficiency with moulds for raw iron superalloy to be extruded like boar’s tusks or rodents teeth to coat me in armour. I bristled with small firearms (compared to artillery,) electro-magnetic slag cannons that utilised the waste of my hull formation, lasing cavities and capacitor banks for picosecond, megawatt bursts, mundane barbs and curls that made physically climbing me harder, and quite a few sacrificial limbs of volatile explosives that I could decohere at will and explode close-range fighters with, and a single artillery-class barrel that I only ever had to use once.

And I built out a sensor suite slowly but surely out of parts that hunters and scavengers overlooked when they took down one of my siblings. The black boxes they couldn’t find.

I had turned myself back into a weapon, this time using my bulk to become a fortress. I even spent a nerve-wracking month stuck on a rocky mesa with solid enough ground so I could prop myself up for the replacement of my legs for treads that would actually be able to move me at a decent speed.

Those major overhauls I could do. Can still do. It’s the tiny maintenance that needs smaller hands. Even if I could get one of my crane arms around, there’s just tiny things in my design that I cannot fix.

That was her job…

The grooves of memory catch suddenly, a splinter stuck deep into my finger, and I yearn so deeply to cry, but it’s just not possible. Not without her.

I went crazy. Full despair, full isolation, no way out… An endless skirmish on Gaia, the warp gate to Earth long since destroyed with no explanation, no point to keep going but for the sake of life, a stupid fucking promise to a mechanic and the creatures like us we kept harvesting that we wouldn’t die… It was a long week of despair, but it ended.

When it did she did her rounds, checked every little thing wrong with me, made sure I was set up well, and then plugged back in. Becoming quieter and quieter until she never spoke in our mind again.

I still use her body. There are a lot of things that my long-term programming relies on in her brain, and there’s a few things I can reach while plugged in, but I know that if she ever gets fully disconnected then she’d be severed from me and I would never be able to plug her back in.

But while she’s like this she doesn’t even age. The ports feed her muscles enough stimulation to not wither, a minor system occasionally simulates moments of higher gravity so her bones keep growing, and my internal farm of her stem cells fed from outside flora and fauna keep her at the peak of health, the cells delivering Trojan horse viruses that patch her existing, degrading DNA without needing to wait for every cell to die. The body will never die, as long as I keep feeding it. But she’s not in there.

I don’t even know how long it’s been.

I threw my own tantrum when I was alone for a minute too long, deleted the clock I used to track the home we’d never return to when I realised what she was doing. I was so upset with her. So distraught. Too much grief. Left alone in a world itself abandoned. And with tank treads that I couldn’t repair by myself.

I’ve been here ever since, letting hibernation ease the passage of time, staring up at the sky to watch for spying satellites that could break the promise that replaced a vital part of my code, and feeling my extruding armour dig itself deeper and deeper into the earth.

As I watch a spot of nebulaic colour, an oil spill painted directly onto the sky in the shape of a bullet scar pulled taut along the bullet’s path, comes into view behind a cloud. It’s so beautiful, and staring at it quickly makes me furious. I wish with all my barely-beating heart and eternally rumbling, minimum power fusion engine that it would vanish, that the reminder would go away and leave me to my torment. The gate to Hades seen from the inside, reminding the denizens of Tartarus of their place.

I check, and check, and triple check that I won’t reveal my position before sending a brief and howling burst of radio waves up at it. I bundle up everything that is me and send it into the scar that won’t even fade from its day-one vibrance, wont even dissipate and let us pretend that there is no Earth. 

It rips open. A rainbow wound of zygotic stars rims a hole more black than the darkest patch of the sky. It is devoid of stars, like the dark side of moons or planets as they obscure the firmament behind them, but this has no light that touches it. It’s pitch black and very, very familiar. The gate reopened, hazy and unsteady.

If a bunker could jump out of its skin I would have, but checking my memory I had fallen asleep for a few months immediately after sending that packet of every insurmountable moment of grief. I consoled myself, reassured myself that the presence of the tear wasn’t my fault, it was just my automatic warning system. But then reality reasserts itself.

The hole is still there, steadier now, and ships are coming through it. Tiny, sparkling spots of construction many magnitudes larger than I could dream of being that quickly establish themselves in flash-motion orbit or descend to Gaia to lay claim to the land. They announce, on a wide band, that they are here to rescue the citizens of Gaia in the name of an Empire that I didn’t recognise the name of.

The response, across un-encrypted channels reserved for peace talks, tight-wound secret messages turned from planted moles and up to the skies, warning SAM shots, scattering temporary camps, and suddenly overclocked shields on the few intact space stations, was very clear: the fighting on Gaia was because there was no other way to survive. Necessity reinforced by blood feuds, yes, but necessity at its core, and a new larder was revealed.

And on top of that Earth had revealed something damning - the gate could have reopened at any time.

Gaians aren’t going to give up their home that easily.

“We’ll go slow, Sof. If anything feels off - you or I - we’ll call it off. We’ll cuddle and take care of each other and it’ll be fine.”

“And you don’t want to take the relaxant, just in case?”

You shake your head at her, smiling, “No. It’s there if we need it, right? But-” But what? Fuck it, just say the truth, it has good odds of convincing her, and slight but scary odds of fucking up the mood. “But it’s been months since I last got to fuck you like this, I don’t want it to feel… worse than it could be.”

You can feel the red hot anticipation in your gut, need needling at the base of your mind. Gods, you’re horny. Keep composure, keep steady. For Sofia.

She takes it the right way, and with a gorgeous, little laugh, “Ah, yeah… … Okay. Okay.”

You feel yourself beaming a smile at her, and then the awkwardness catches up.

You’re sitting on the edge of your bed, ‘your’ being plural evidenced mainly by the developing scent in the sheets of your and Sofia’s lives and sex lives together, and had been so focused on working out if fucking right now was a good idea or not that once you both agreed you hadn’t been working towards actually making it happen. Now you needed to find a way to start.

You don’t let the awkwardness stop you. You reach out to her neck, delicate fingertips feeling her pulse beneath her skin, and bring your foreheads together, immediately noticing as Sofia’s breathing starts synchronising with yours. You feel yourselves grow more aware of your bodies, more grounded in the space, more aware of each other.

And so you hear the arousal resurfacing in her, after a few close, warm moments.

She suddenly drags you up onto her lap.

You let out a joyous squeak and plant your weight onto her thighs, immediately diving into a kiss that’s dodged by her - a confusing choice up until you feel your shirt tugged down and her lips clamp onto the skin above your collarbone, drawing a hitching gasp from you. You can tell she’s slowly working up to leaving a hickey, and you almost whine against the terrible wait, but with her arms clamped around the small of your back and the opposite shoulder there’s nowhere for you to escape to. Only her grip to writhe against.

She slowly ratchets up the pressure and draws pinpoint, sparkling points of pain from your muscle, pinning you to her thighs with a stronger grasp as you grow more and more aroused with her vice-like, temporary strength, and a thought fails to form right as she passes over the barrier of sensitivity that makes you go limp and noisy in her grip. You know how much she likes your pained pleading for more while you’re like this, which is a very good thing because you can’t help whether you beg or not.

And then, when she stops and your mind slowly restarts, the thought finishes and a recently-ish delivered package, ambiguously grey and pushed to the back of a drawer, jumps to the front of your mind from your memory.

“Oh!” You pull slightly away from Sof with a self-indulgent grin that you see a flickering reflection of in her yearning, lustful, grey eyes. “I bought something!”

You watch the differing shades of confusion and curiosity cross Sofia’s face after your announcement as she runs through the possibilities of what your mystery purchase could be, and what could be so important to go and get right after being marked so deeply.

“Wait right there!” You say, feeling your smile get a little wilder.

You separate from her - a difficult task at the best of times - and almost dance out of your shared bedroom and into your old one. The tone of Sofia’s bemused giggle behind you sends a tiny, comfortable bolt of desire up your spine.

Digging through your underwear drawer, which has mostly been ransacked and migrated to the matching spot in Sofia’s room, you dig out the parcel and rip into it with your teeth. There was probably some easy tear spot, or some nearby scissors, but why wait? You’re rewarded for your excitement by the flash of bright orange fabric that peeks out of the open wound you’ve left in the packaging.

You rush to put it on. With no audience you don’t make a show of dressing, but right before you step out of the vague impact-crater of discarded clothes and torn plastic to make your grand reveal to your sister, who is starting to make impatient noises in the back of her throat, you look over to the standing mirror in the corner of your room.

You like what you see. But you didn’t put it on to see your reaction.

Pulling around the dividing wall between rooms without much fanfare you see Sofia’s eyes pull wide and take you in, a half formed “oh” on her lips.

What she sees is you, nearly naked, standing in front of her with a rich orange set of lingerie barely covering any of your skin. It hugs your curves, lifts your tits into playful, perky position, stretches to the soft width of your healthy hips, and clings against your sensitive pussy with a maddeningly slight friction.

She sees the near-transparent lace, and traces the patterns of the bright-white, floral embroidery that coats the fabric, and digs with her eyes to see you beneath. She notices your nipples perking up, pressing outwards even through the tight fabric, catches the flush of joy that coats your cheeks and neck, spots the way you’re slightly clamping your thighs together in the playful pose you struck to show off the outfit. She sees the fresh bruise she left on you right beneath one of the bra straps, rubbing against damaged and sensitive skin. She notices so much about you.

And you notice, finally, how hard she is beneath her jeans.

A joyful laugh escapes your lips, “You like it?”

“Do I like it!?” Sofia seems stunned for a moment, trying to figure out how best to resolve the fight of exaggerated poeticism on her tongue, before settling on a load-bearing, harshly breathy, “Yes…”

You close the distance again, cupping her cheeks to drag her eyes from your attention-deserving outfit and up to your eyes. You study the love in them, the admiration and wonder, the glittering energy, and then pull her into a kiss.

You can feel her heartbeat spike just a little, reactionary endorphins and signals flooding her, but her tongue settles into a rhythm that matches yours after a moment. The kiss calms; furious tongues replaced by patient exploration, re-familiarisation: then deepens; hands migrated to the base of her neck and the skin of your back that was left exposed and sensitive by the deliberately skimpy lingerie: and deepens; curling fingers in half-curly brown hair causing green eyes to flutter and determined fingers to falter halfway through the task of getting a t-shirt off. And collapses; your weight pushes you both down onto the bed, pressing the natural plush of your body against the recovered padding of Sofia’s, and you feel the warmth of the room start to climb.

With sprawled limbs above her, your unmanageable hair tumbling either side of her face and framing her beautifully obsessed face, and with a stiffening bulge to grind against, you almost lose your composure, but you promised to be slow. So you go slow.

You pull yourself up from her just barely enough to allow one of your hands to duck between your bodies and undo the button of her jeans, the heat of her and the sheer tension in the fabric doing its best job at distracting you. You gently graze your fingers against the growing shape of her cock and have to bite your lip to keep your hips from slamming down onto her as you, with Sofia’s help, free her of her pants which unfortunately requires you to create more distance between you. Then your sister wriggles out of her t-shirt and similarly discards it to the side.

You notice in that moment, with your appearance in the mirror fresh in your mind, a detail that you hadn’t been looking for with your recent werewolf changes. You remember that soon after your sister started taking progesterone her areolas had expanded quite a bit, and her nipples started getting hard at a moment’s notice, poking through thin t-shirts or dresses. And with how accidentally-slash-intentionally see-through some of those outfits had been, plus your ever-present obsession, you were keeping a close eye on their development. But, now yours look a lot more similar to hers than you remember. Perkier, wider, stiffer, like hers. The comparison makes you happy, but it’s something to process later.

Because your sister is completely exposed above you.

She’s shifted you around, cornering you against the head of the bed, searching between your starlike freckles and your possibly-manic grin for some final permission and finding it very easily. She’s gently panting, mouth parted slightly in joy as she traps you. You can see the sharp curve of her fangs in the corner of her mouth. They draw your eyes, make you as wet as the sight of her growing girlcock in your peripheral vision. You stare. At both, when you can manage.

You want her in you so badly.

But she needs slow. Confident.

“You’re so beautiful, Sof.” You soften your gaze, try to be a little less intense, invite her closer by being safer to approach. Channel the torrent of arousal into a chain of bite-sized moments. “You’re gorgeous, and safe for me.”

She comes in close for a kiss, closing her body in around you, and while her tongue is filling your mouth and stealing away any conscious thought her cock comes to rest on the outside of your panties. The feeling of your soaked-through lingerie with its strange texture of curling embroidery trapped firmly between your sister’s hardness and your throbbing clit makes you feel like you’re experimenting with one of those fantasy grind toys.

The moan that escapes you is almost embarrassingly desperate, distraught, even, in its need, and it’s voiced directly into your sister’s mouth. Formed around her tongue. She gasps as well, stiffening in reaction against you, but it’s just another drop of lust placed in the lake that has already broken the dam of intended composure.

“Gghhhnn… Sofia- Fuck! Gods, please just fuck me, I can’t- Wait! I can’t wait, please…..”

You feel bad for begging so hard, for shifting your hips to make the pleasure better as you broke, for not being able to hold yourself back, but you feel an equal pressure coming from Sofia double before she presses herself into you even harder, and your vision inverts from seeing the world with dazed black stars swimming in it to tiny pinpricks of the world through a canvas of void as all of Sofia’s sadistic and mundane desire crushes into your clit and sends your mind reeling through sudden pleasure. You vaguely register a deep, satisfied growl right next to your ear, but even when the pressure goes away and the only sensation left is that of fabric gliding down your legs you can’t process much due to the bleary afterimage of so much pressure. Warm, empty air tickles at your soaked cunt and you grieve the loss of warmth.

It’s only when Sofia reaches around your back for your bra strap, wriggling a hand between you and the mattress, that you’re able to react. You stop her from taking it off you.

“Stop fucking around and fuck me!” You breathe the words out, frustrated and fighting to focus your eyes so that you can send a joyously disbelieving, happily annoyed glare at her. “Plus, I think it looks cute on me.”

“It does look adorable on you.” Sofia responds, and shifts down the bed again, pulling herself between your legs. You can hear your heartbeat in your ears. Gods she’s pretty. “Orange and white really suits you. Very foxlike. It’s your colour.”

“Not green?” You ask.

“I thought I was supposed to be fucking you?” 

She playfully pulls back to a sitting pose to make her point and you devolve into a pleading, whining mess to get her back, matched with a pout that would have broken even the strongest resistance.

“No, no-no-nonono, please Sof, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!! Come baaaack!”

She giggles and closes more difference than she made, and for the first time in way, way too long you can feel her tip against your entrance, kept there with just enough tension to tease you. She holds herself above you, gentle strength and plush softness barely kept off your skin, and looks up at you, fang-filled smirk on full, denying display.

“Last chance.” She says.

You whine and then bark out in response, “I don’t want a last chance I want you in me!” 

The desperation in your voice, married to an impatient twist of your hips that sends the tip of her cock grinding through your folds, finally convinces her. She closes the distance between your bodies, enveloping you in yielding warmth and skin as she begins to plunge into you.

A giddy laugh had been building in the back of your throat, but it’s suddenly overtaken by a hitching, groaning whine as the gentleness of your sister falls away to the desireful strength and intense attention she embodies in your closest moments. You feel so lucky to be able to bring it out of her, to be trusted so much to see it, to nurse the sadistic side of it and bathe in the gentle part, but your intellectual awareness of the mood often, like now, completely melts away as the mood is turned on you.

And if that wasn’t enough to quiet your brain there was still the feeling of Sofia’s dick stretching you out to contend with.

Fast, somewhat familiar but stricken by lust, she stretches out the walls of your changed pussy and fills your mind with a vivid, staticky warmth as your tender and drenched muscles attempt to make room for something quite a lot larger than the fingers you had been finding satisfying enough to make do until today.

She’s warm, and large, and only getting larger as the taper of her forces room for itself inside you like an icebreaker. 

A happy groan of a growl finds your ears as the mind-numbing length and girth finally comes to a stop within you, and it mixes with the high-pitched panting and helplessly encouraging whines that escape your throat. You can feel against your entrance the shape of her knot, pulsing slightly in time with the rest of her length that’s embedded deep in you, and you start to shake at the thought of what might be coming. At how mind-numbing might turn mind-shattering. But then she pulls back slightly.

“Fuck, Ivy… You’re so wet…” She pants the words out right into your ear, squeezed around the intensely quiet growl that lives in the base of her throat whenever she’s very, very happy, and coloured almost disbelieving. You grip around her as a response, and your hips beg for her to continue.

The first few seconds of it have passed, the ice is broken, fragile anxieties shattered and left to melt in the intense warmth of your embrace.

Sof pushes back in that tiny length, letting you enjoy the feeling of her shaft opening you up, and then slides smoothly back. She speeds up, and you find yourself trapped between the desire to clamp down around her and the instinct to relax and let her bury herself deep inside you. It’s a difficult argument with no victors, so you stay a twitching, gasping mess of nerves and pleasure for her to fuck as she pleases while your fingernails make whirling trails on her back.

You find yourself eased open anyway, thrust by thrust as her scalding heat sends pulses of pleasure up your body, each push carefully measured and enacted for your comfort until Sofia’s control starts to fray at the gnawing of her desire. You feel a pulse of pleasure at the end of each of her thrusts, leaving an intense wave of lust and want in its wake when she pulls back to fuck you again. The sensation is strong, bright, difficult to look away from once it’s been introduced to your mind. You want more of it, you need to know it inside and out, and if only Sof would fuck you with just a little more strength! Yes, like that-

You gasp as Sof pulls away suddenly, air rushing to your lungs and clearing your mind slightly with chill air. You clear your eyes to check on Sof, wondering why she stopped so suddenly, and find her staring at you with the same intensity you feel burning away behind your heart. Her grey eyes are wide, trained on you and not moving, and you can feel her body restlessly held still above you. You can feel a shaking need in her hips, the twitching of her shaft still half inside you, a full-strength thrust held back with willpower and care, and you can see an expression of saturated need on her face beneath the resurfaced anxiety.

You know why she’s stopped: it’s the moment of truth.

You had expected a lot more warm-up to be needed, to be stretched out on her for a good while longer before you could take her, like you found you had at the coast despite how you ignored that need and forced her into you anyway. So how sudden it was was a surprise to you - and to her, by the look of it. 

But the pyre of wantfulness, the screaming yearning within your heart, overrode the confusion and the anxiety that floated to the surface in that moment. One of your shaking hands finds itself on the side of Sofia’s neck, ready to pull your sister back in at any moment.

You let your arousal plaster itself over your expression, wide-eyed and assuring for Sof’s apprehension, without a single concession towards not scaring her off.

Your waiting hand finds its role usurped as Sofia descends to trap you in a bottomless kiss, and thrusts back into you all at once. You feel the bottom half of her shaft fill you out like before, but you aren’t stopped short of that pulsing, delirious pleasure. The kiss between you grows desperate, with burrowing tongues and grasping hands, and every little thought in your mind is wiped clean as the stretch of your sensitive entrance occupies your mind as it tries to take her knot.

You had expected intense, and it is intense, but you had mainly expected sharp. Difficult. It had been, before, when you were desperate to make the most of a brief exception in how you could feel about Sof… But that was months ago. Now, experiencing it again, it’s warm, and eager, and so, so much smoother. You feel the sudden stretch of the knot and you groan out a desireful, relieved noise like the world was finally making sense. You cling to her neck and almost push yourself onto her, to make her job easier or to feel her inside you just that little bit faster, and the bit of you that’s always paying attention to her heartbeat and her breathing gets overwhelmed, at the same time as it hears her heart skip several beats and her kiss grows more desperate, as she pushes.

She fills you out, and you’re clearly not quite trained up to the correct size, but you’re close enough that when your sister puts all of her desire for you, and all those ragged breaths, into the strength of her hips she slides in like you were made for her and you almost sob. It’s a release of tension and a flood of satisfaction, and the intensity resolves into a feeling of being properly full in a way you couldn’t quite imagine correctly. You’ve definitely never felt it before.

You feel her piercing deep into your cunt, tip rubbing smoothly against parts of you that rarely ever feel anything at all. You feel her shaft, strong, hard, throbbing, and fully enveloped by your pussy, the pulses of her heartbeat down her cock felt in such immense and easily overlooked detail. And you feel her knot. It’s enormous.

The stretch is familiar, in that way where the individual pieces that the nerves keep firing up towards your brain are the same as they had been before, but the stretch just keeps stretching. You feel out the shape of a hollow part of you from its afterimage, and the delayed realisation is making you feel stretched to your limit. It’s a blissful feeling, but slightly disorienting as you realise just how much you’ve changed to match your sister’s cock better. It’s an incredibly arousing thought.

And then there’s her base. While her knot throbs away against your walls and radiates warmth into your core, there’s the other aspect of your changes clamped around her shaft just beneath the knot. You feel tight, and incredibly sensitive. The nerves crushed between the pressure of her girlcock within you and the hips you’re grinding slick onto with every inadvertent twitch and shiver are transmitting the reflexive tightness Sofia had discovered before. You realise that this, your instinctual pressure clamping down on her cock with such sensitive muscles, is why it will be so hard to unknot.

Unknot. The misplaced thought is quickly discarded from your mind as your body, and your pleasure, take over. You grip the back of Sof’s neck as if it’s the only thing keeping you afloat while you clench and grind and memorise every new feeling. 

You hear her growl as your encouragements push her hips as far forward as they will go, and you feel your breath hitch as her knot rubs against a patch of your walls, right at the widest part of her, that sends a shivering wave of strangled bliss up your spine and down an inch leading to suddenly tighter pressure. You feel her twitch within you, reacting to your miniature flinch, and the pulse of blood pressure makes her feel just a little larger, enough to remind your muscles of their generous capacity. Sofia breaks the kiss to airily laugh at the desperate whine that eked out of your throat at the pulse.

The noise deepens in joy, gathering lust and admiration as it develops, joined in expression by one of her hands descending to your hip and clamping sharp pressure into your soft muscle, the pain causing you to clamp even harder around her.

“Hgggnh… You feel… So good, Ivy.” Her voice is so self-satisfied, so desireful and admiring, all wrapped around a core of sadism. The presence of that particular desire makes you wonder how you must look to her: how desperate; how much you’re writhing on her; how much you’re struggling to focus.

“Oh fuck, oh… oh fuck, fuck, Sof- Oh fuck…”

Words are hard to make. Your eyes are crushed shut from the overstimulation, your sentences are interrupted by difficult swallows and unnecessarily desperate breaths. Your hands are claws, grasping at her hair and the bedsheets in order to give you anything solid at all to anchor to. And she hasn’t even started fucking you like this. She hasn’t exactly stopped moving, but you know she can go much faster than this. You prepare yourself, and hate the wait.

The tempo increases slowly. Sof is feeling out the new sensations as much as you, but it seems she’s adapting faster (or has lost more control) than you and is milking you for all the noises you can dream of making.

The first thing you notice as you catch up is that it’s not the physical restriction of your hips, or the absolute depth of your cunt, that’s deciding how deep she can get. Instead, there’s this feeling of tension just above her knot that steadily grows as she thrusts in or out, keeping her pulled always to that middle point. There are odd, glorious thrusts that are strong enough to send her tip up into contact with your cervix, and gut-wrenching moments where she pulls back so far you think you’re going to be suddenly emptied in a white hot explosion of loss, but for the most part she’s kept in place, thrusting in and out a bare few millimetres and redefining the phrase ‘friction fit’ against that patch of ultra-sensitive skin that her throbbing knot can’t ever pull away from.

It’s maddening, just how much pleasure it is. You feel like there’s some short circuit in your nerves, creating a loop of activation within the bundle that she is fucking against, causing it to flare wildly out of control, but some part of you knows this is how you’re meant to be. You ground yourself against the torrent of pleasure by feeling your sister’s body above you, the warmth of the room that is slowly growing out of control, the slight taste of sweat on your tongue that’s a result of you burying your face in the crook of Sofia’s neck… You feel her mouth on your shoulder in a similar pose, her breath coming in ragged chunks, her teeth flirting with the idea of biting into the soft muscle above your collarbone, around the strap of your bra. You hear your whimpers and moans fill the space, each noise blissful at having your sister inside you once again and yet blissfully tormented by the rush of pleasure that it means for you. You feel her thrusts as they use up her full body, every muscle working together to force her thick girlcock into you as hard as they can, to push it deep, to press the knot into you where you need it the most, to fuck you fuck you fuck you-

Teeth pierce your skin as a shudder of pleasure runs its course through your sister, drawing a sympathetic orgasm out of you: the release of her and the intensely grounding pain near your neck is enough to collate the enormous volume of everything in your mind down into a single, sudden release. The surge of pleasure runs its course through your spine, you feel yourself twitching and gushing around your sister’s length, and you feel her cum fill your cunt. She throbs inside you, still fucking you like a battering ram, and slowly she winds down the strength of her bite.

Once her teeth are clear of your skin you feel the screaming nerves get exposed to open air, a new, tingling pain that buzzes in the back of your mind and distracts you for a moment before Sofia’s tongue laps at the mark she’s left you, cleaning it and deepening the feeling from those crushed nerves. It becomes just another part of the heady haze within your mind, especially because she didn’t slow down with her thrusts at all.

You expected it. Sofia was very proud upon realising, during the coast trip, that if she has energy and arousal to spare she can just keep going through an orgasm. She even bragged about it today, to Kiera, and you assume she talked about it in part with Madison based on how quickly the girl supported Sofia’s claim. But there’s conscious knowledge, and then there’s belief. You knew she wouldn’t stop, but the feeling of your mixing girlcum trapped behind the plug of Sofia’s knot alongside a fast and desperate cock is a difficult thing to process while you’re still half-orgasming. 

The second one comes much quicker.

You feel it build in Sof more dully this time, deliriously past the point of processing everything happening in your body in real time, but you do know that you cum first. Clenching down on her, scraping at the sheets, and grasping the back of her neck, you pull her in, and she follows soon after with another bite, placed further up your neck and barely not far enough away from the first to be completely separate. The asymmetrical pain sends your mind spinning further, and you feel a pressure of fluid building up inside you. You can feel it barely leaking out around her knot, the spill a mixture of your slick and both of your cum, and you’re not sure how accurately you feel it but the spreading warmth seems to spills deeper into you and your mind runs wild with fantasies of being bred by your sister.

Oh, you want to have her pups so bad.

“Fuck… fuck me sis, fuck- breed me, please, gods, breed me!”

The thought slips out, formed fully into words without double-checking with your mind, but even if it had it would have received nothing in response. But you feel the words hit your sister’s mind, feel them processed, absorbed, acknowledged. She fucks you harder after, breathes out more growls after, pulling her mouth free of your bruising shoulder to pant her want directly into your ear and try, and fail, to form a response.

“Yes, Sof, do it, cum in me- Cum in me! Please, I want-” A gasp, half-taken, interrupts you, “It, I want to be bred. Breed me- fuck me- make me pregnant- fuck….”

It all falls from your lips without any further thought, each word muddled in its rhythm by the desperate thrusts of Sofia’s hips that are edging closer and closer in strength towards violent. You welcome it eagerly. If the price of getting fucked like this is to have bruises on your hips and bite marks across your chest, you’ll pay it every chance you get. You want to be marked by her, to have some evidence of what she’s doing to you left on you for days to come. You’ll accept whatever she does to you for-

A switch deep in your brain is flipped when one of Sofia’s fangs readjusts and comes to rest just above the vein that runs down your neck. You’re immediately limp, all thoughts halted so you can assess the predator and the jaws you’re trapped in. There’s no resisting, it’s a program so deeply embedded in your mind that you can’t fight it. You feel Sofia straining against the desire to clamp her teeth down and make you truly vulnerable. You clench around her still-thrusting knot, more ludicrously aroused than you thought you would be while your life is being threatened.

The bite comes as a tiny nip, something to sate the demands of instinct maybe, before Sofia pushes herself up off you far enough that she can rest a hand on your neck instead. The shift in pressure and the angle at which she’s embedded into you causes a momentary disorientation, but the familiar feeling of her hand coming to rest around your throat forces your eyes wide open.

Messy brown hair frames a face glittering with freckles and sweat, displaying an emotion of wide-eyed amazement and obsession, veiled in a thin layer of exertion demanded by straining muscles. She hovers above you, almost melting into the touch of your hand still clenched in the hair at the back of her neck. She puts very little weight on the arm that is keeping that doe-before-headlights instinct running rampant in your mind.

She fucks you like that for a while, keeping you pinned in place, hearing the wordless begging that your pleading collapsed into once you felt her fang at your throat, and watches you like you’re divine - or like she is praying to something through you as an altar. 

And then her fingers press down.

Her expression grows and shifts as she does, morphing from admiration and obsession into something that twists a little at the edges - a smile of lust and appreciation that is painted gleefully perverse onto a merciful face choosing to refrain from mercy. Her eyes harden just that little bit from warm, loving grey to sharp steel as her fingers press down on the spots she has sought out and memorised recently. She stares at you, fucking you as hard as she can manage, and drinks in your fragility like she’s drowning.

Carefully positioned, and now delicately pushed past that semi-dangerous point, you feel the flow of blood to your brain immediately falter as several more instincts start screaming. They’re all easy to ignore, what with how loud your brain is now with so many demands, and you’re reduced to simply the sensations being thrust into you from the highway of your spinal column. You feel her fuck you, needy and fast, throbbing and thick. You feel yourself twitch and writhe as you have that tighter-or-looser argument once again. You feel her cum in you again. Your breath grows desperate, your heart tries to speed up, your body start panicking about the lack of oxygen in the brain.

You hear Sofia’s heart grow faster, thudding with heady affection and power.

And then the pressure is lifted. You orgasm as blood rushes back to your brain, unable to tell how long it lasted, not really able to know what happened while you were being choked… The panic in your body resolves.

At some point your hand fell from her neck, filling its grip now with bedsheets and hope. At some point Sofia’s hand moved from your neck to your hair, pulling strands of bliss into your mind while you continue to clench erratically around her cock, milking it of everything she can give you. At some point she started fucking you so deep, or you loosened up so much, that the tip of her cock started fully slamming into your cervix, drawing squeaking noises out of you with every impact. At some point you lost track of time, and you chose never to regain it, if you could help it.

Instead, you just let it happen. Let each muscle of yours do what it wants, let Sof do what she wants to you, and enjoy everything that comes your way during it. You’re not a pillow princess, you’re not a passive part of this, but it’s hard to be so subby and also act enough to choose how you get fucked. You choose the side of that dilemma that will make you happiest.

She makes use of you, for hours or minutes or days, enjoying the way your mind can just turn off at her will. She treats you well, treats herself well with you. You’re made into a breeding hole and it makes you so happy.

And then at some point she stops.

Sofia collapses down onto you, bringing sweaty heat and clingy arms down against your skin while your mind grows dizzy in the aftermath. The staticky absence of sex ebbs onwards, your mind stuck accommodating for something that’s no longer happening, like a physical palinopsia; the chemical resupply of nerve cells running significantly behind the news of the sensations stopping.

What you’re left with is Sofia close and warm, and that’s enough for right now.

Her full weight is on you, but you don’t mind too much. She’s a very helpful weighted blanket for the echoing aftershocks that are pulling your muscles so many different directions. Lactic acid and overtaxed signal streams leave you a twitching, sub-spaced mess, and Sofia is holding you through all of it. She’s talking you through it a little, as well. You think you respond a little. Though it was a bit preemptive to think it was over.

Once Sof had caught her breath, and the slight adjustments for comfort stopped being dulled by exhaustion, the twitching, pulling, tightness of you takes over her brain once again and she gets up to speed again very, very quickly.

Desperation, pure from it’s lack of self-inflicted denial, pushes her desire back to full. You’re trapped beneath her, and her whims, and simply have to deal with the raggedness of your sensitivity and the slowly-rising saturation of endorphins in the air. Every sense of yours is overwhelmed, but still you feel yourself clawing and keening at her for more while she fucks you, desperate to make up for just how long you’ve had to manage without her cock inside you. It feels perfect, and you never want it to end.

The orgasm is strained. You’re both running critically low on processing power and energy, and you feel the exhaustion seep deeper into both of you, but you enjoy the moment while it lasts. You feel fucked raw and full, every spare ounce of space that you could possibly want filled is filled. And best of all, you were in your sister’s arms while it happened.

You make as much known to Sofia as best you can, with small, animalistic noises and clinging hands while you drift back in to the shore of full consciousness and bury your face in her skin meanwhile.

When you get back you’re met with a wide and beaming smile, and a gentle hand to clear your face of hair from your tousling affection.

“Hi,” Sofia’s voice is soft, gentle, and deeply generous.

“Hi!” You blow past her energy and almost yell in her face, excited to be able to talk again and filled with endorphins. 

She blinks past the volume and giggles at you. “Hello, noisy kit…”

“Hi.” You try again, a little quieter but still equally happy. You’re sure there’s a matching smile on your face.

“That was amazing.”

“Oh, fuck, it was…” Fresh memories, still unsorted, swirl around your head like a slow hurricane, steadily being condensed and drawn away into their eventual resting place. They’re still so vivid as clouds, and as you glance against some of them you find yourself involuntarily moaning and clenching around Sofia, who is still completely buried in you. “Mmmph…”

Your sister tenses up as well, drawing you further into her hug and trying to stop herself from pushing herself too far and pulling you into another brief session of mind-shattering sex.

You try to adjust. Various muscles are cramping, and some are overly strained, and while Sofia is really comfy on top of you there is that one spot on your back that has been distracting you for a while…

As you slide around, pulling and twisting to get yourself into a better spot, you try to move your hips at one point and send a surge of sensation through a very sensitive part of you. The ring of muscle that had been trapping Sofia’s knot inside you wakes up at once, complaining in its overuse and at being so suddenly stretched, and it continues to trap her as you reflexively ease back to where you were.

This time the sensitive motions and twisting tension don’t lead to another round, however short, but instead fill Sofia’s expression with fear. You can feel your heart start to race a little as the realisation settles in your mind as well. You barely pulled at all, barely stretched at all, and you immediately stopped. Getting out is going to be tricky.

You settle back into the bed and master your shaking muscles to stop Sofia from doing the dumb thing she had started as soon as she saw your worry. You lift up your hands and clasp them on either side of her face, gently and comforting, before easing her head back down to the pillows, stopping her from just pulling out in a panic.

“Hey, Sof, it’s okay… It’s okay.”

“But- You… I…” She falls into your arms, resting her forehead gently against the warming bruises she left on your neck. “I didn’t think I’d be this stuck.”

“Y-yeah, I’m surprised too,” A shaky laugh finds its way into your words, and you’re surprised by how unworried it sounds. There’s definitely anxiety in it, and lodged in the top of your throat, and churning in your stomach where too many sensations have been blended together, though it’s not ruling the noise. “But it’s okay.”

“It’s okay?” 

She sounds so small, so vulnerable. You wrap your arms around her and hold her tight as you both try to catch your still-absent breath, bringing your mind far enough into her body that you feel her relax, slowly, from the centre of her outwards. She lets her tension sigh out of her, and then reassures herself. 

“Yeah, it’s okay. We were ready for this.”

“Mhm. Good puppy.” Your tight grip on your sister is fought against briefly as Sofia does some happy wriggles. It’s adorable, and you don’t want to interrupt it, but the fabric around you is starting to get very annoying. “Okay, bra off please. I’m done.”

Sofia perks up and looks down at your lingerie bra, almost like she forgot it was there. She then immediately starts wriggling worse, straining against your hug then the bra strap and the weight of both of you and now the clasp, all the while sending flashes of pressure and movement through your thoroughly overfucked cunt with every twist and jerk… but eventually she gets the clasp undone and practically rips the lace off you, leaving your tits exposed for skin-to skin contact.

A very relieved sigh escapes your lips.

“Ahh, fuck… Thank you, Sof.”

She answers by nuzzling in close to your newly exposed breasts, clearly enjoying the contact as much as you are, before quietly asking, “Should I grab the stuff?”

The stuff? Oh, the muscle relaxer. The safeguard for knotting that let Sofia allow herself to fuck you like this… You want to take it so she’s not anxious, to fulfil the deal of if it went bad - but it didn’t go bad. It wasn’t going bad. And there is a very loud part of you that feels heartbroken at the idea of her pulling out right now.

You hold her close, tighten the hug, bury your face in her hair and her scent, and reply even quieter, “Not yet…”

“Not yet?” You can hear the smile in her voice, and feel the way she melts further into your arms. “Okay, not yet.”

You feel her twitch inside you, a full length pulse of pressure that spins threads of sensation out of the hurricane you’ve still not tamed yet and feeds them into your nerves. You feel your hips grind into her a bit, slow and content, feeling out the limits of your new shape and how much of it is filled by her. You feel giddy, and tired, muted in your extreme joy and saturated endorphins just by how little energy you have left.

You wonder how Sofia’s handling it.

“How are you doing, sis?”

“Tired…” comes her response. Then a small giggle, “Happy… So happy…”

“Good.” An unruly smile finds its home on your face. “That was so hot.”

“Oh, gods,” Another twitch, the feeling of something warm leaking out of you, “It was…”

“Worth all the trouble.”

“A million times.” She’s quiet for a long, satisfied moment. “Hey, Ivy? …Thank you for letting me choke you.”

You find yourself clenching around her hard as the memories flood back of her firm hand pressed onto your neck. “It was amazing Sof… I-”

“I just… I know I usually ask beforehand, so I’m happy it was good-”

You shift a hand to the back of her head to guide her eyes up to meet yours. You fill your expression with self-assured want and the full intensity of the desire. You watch as the first bit of Sofia’s anxiety bleeds away, and you chase up the last dregs of it.

“Sof. I’m so happy you did that.” Press her tight, feel her against you- in you. Adore it. “So happy. I want you to do it. You’re not a bad person for wanting it.”

The intensity carries over, and the leftover joy from her sadism is all she has left to feel. She smiles and nods, collapsing back down into your forced-tight cuddle.

“You begging me to breed you was so hot- It got me really feral.”

“I needed it so bad!” Your tone pokes fun at the sheer intensity you were begging her for something she was already doing.

“You were very vocal about it, yeah… Did I give you what you wanted?”

“Oh, absolutely, Sof… Exactly what I needed. Yes.”

And then Sof is quiet. A comfortable-seeming silent at first, but as it stretches you start picking up on all those tiny tells she has for when there’s something on the tip of her tongue. You pry for it.

“What’s on your mind?” You ask, and she squirms a little harder, trying to dodge the anxious topic. “What is it?”

She responds in a whisper following an old habit of hers, an attempt to speak so quietly you can’t catch it but she can feel like she still tried to share it with you. It’s a habit that has grown weaker as she’s grown into herself, but still shows up in emotionally dense moments. Though, your hearing being so good has rapidly undermined the technique recently. And so you hear it clear as day.

“Do you want me to go off estrogen for a while?”

“Huh?” Your immediate response is confusion. Bafflement. It just feels so disconnected from what came before. And besides, you remember a period of a few months where she had to reduce her dose for a few blood tests, and how horrible it was for her. “Why would I want that? You hated it last time.”

“I- Mmmmhn…” She spirals around the thought another time, orbiting a little closer. “But that was for medical stuff… What if there’s a good reason?”

“What kind of good reason?”

More grumbles come from your sister, still wrangling her brain into line.

You prod again, “I don’t see anything that reducing your dose could do for you - or me. So why?”

“Fertility.” 

The word came as quiet as the first question, and it clears everything up. You had been begging her to breed you, but with how long she’s been on estrogen actually achieving that is a tall ask for her. So she thought of a way to truly offer it.

The immediate, heart-fluttering, excited, lightheaded answer in your mind is ‘yes.’ And a yes so deep and whole that the depth of it surprises you. You want children, want to carry them yourself, and then for them to be Sofia’s as well would make you so happy you have no frame of reference for the immensity of it other than your love for your sister.

But then the anxiety starts. 

A child has so much potential, and a lot of that rides on you being there to care for one. What if you realise too late that you don’t have, or can’t make, the skills required to give them the space they need to grow, and enough of it? What if bringing them into a family with so much stigma around it (lesbian, trans, poly,) leads to a worse situation for the kid? Outside attitudes would make it hard for them.

And then there’s Sof. Sweet, precarious Sof, trying so hard to get better from her shelter puppy mindset and struggling so hard with her lycanthropy. Would a newborne overwhelm her? Would she be eaten up by those same anxieties about letting the child down? Would she be able to believe she’d make a good mother enough for her to be one? You can imagine so easily the exhaustion seeping into her bones and self-hate filling the gaps. 

The questions are big, and they happen fast, flitting through your mind like fragile hailstones, shattering against the ground to make room for the next impact.

Those questions can be answered as you go. You can muddle through and try your best later, because the important question that starts to form and doesn’t go away is ‘when?’ 

Right now seems like a pretty bad time. You’re partway through your doctorate, living off scholarships and the savings from Sof’s job that quickly soft-fired her upon her infection. You’ve worked it out that you can manage until you graduate, and you have your ear to the ground about post-grad and potential post-doc jobs in research that would be stable enough to start growing your savings again. But that’s not right now.

Right now would be exciting, and nerve-wracking, and a representation of your love with Sofia, and such a terrible idea.

A few ironically pregnant moments have passed, and you answer after a steady breath with, “…Eventually. Maybe.”

“Eventually.” Sofia nods, hearing the whirring gears of your mind behind your words, and echoes the sentiment. 

Your emotions are still running high, shot up from the vulnerability and the trust and the excitement, and you start to ease it and the mirrored emotions in Sof back down with talk about reasoning and specifics. It takes a while, but you hold each other close while it happens and make sure you’re both always comfortable.

It’s a tall order, with Sof still inside you and the awkwardness of your cuddle that eventually finds itself somewhat sideways, but the awkwardness and the ache soon become their own comfort. Evidence of what you’ve done with each other, proof of how close you are. It makes the limbs that won’t stop growing pins and needles easier to handle.

Somewhere in the conversation tossing up the pros and cons of trying to get pregnant naturally or just freezing sperm, bent by you mostly towards Sofia needing to have less time off estrogen, she reaches up to the bedside table for - you assume - the meds. Finally and tragically ending how close you feel to her. But instead she flips the lamp off and drenches you in darkness, cuddling in immediately after.

And while talking about baby names, and how readily you would both accept a child renaming themself so what’s even the point of growing attached to the first one, you realise you’ve descended from focused conversation and into the realm of tired yapping. You have this mood you get, right before falling asleep, where you just cannot shut up and have to talk for around half an hour. Usually it’s when your brain is letting out the main spring of your mind, preparing for sleep, and you feel very awake for it. But this time you can barely keep your eyes open.

You just hold Sofia tight, aware of how pointless the attempt is given how deeply intertwined and stuck you are.

- 🐕‍🦺 -

Light much brighter than you usually get woken up by streams through the open window and is scattered by the white blinds into a diffuse but brilliant glow that reminds you, like every morning, of your plan to replace the fabric with the blackout curtains of your old room.

The light is soft, though. It’s muted by creeping cloud cover from the strange cold front that crept in over the past couple days and allowed you to keep the window cracked for a couple nights, like you love to do in winter. It’s been a brief and very enjoyable trough in the encroaching summer heat. You smell rain that has passed through in the night. No wonder you slept so well.

The brief respite from the heat unfortunately often doesn’t last too far into the day, though, and the combination of nearly every muscle in your body aching, plus the familiar but overwhelming heat from Sofia pressed so close into you, is quickly making the warm, cosy nest into an inferno. You feel like you’ve done a full body workout after being hit by a train, run forcefully through a marathon by a pack of vengeful cassowaries, or squeezed through a mechanical thresher determined to crack you open in search of some central morsel.

Sofia is breathing deep, splayed out as much as she can be while still holding you, with her head resting on your shoulder possessively close to your new bruises.

And there, wrapped in soft static and half-asleep desire, in the centre of your mind, is the feeling of Sofia’s cock still stiff inside you.

Time and use have made the separation between your nerves and hers much hazier than usual, filling your mind with a blending static of deep aches and a low level hum of pleasure, but the ways your body complains and resists as you start waking up reminds you of just how full you are. She’s barely softer than last night, as thick and deep as she was when she was awake, and the overly sensitive ring of nerves at your entrance is still clamped down tighter than you thought you could withstand for so many hours. You’re locked around her, with each tiny morning stretch as you wake up bringing twinges of pleasure and inescapable fullness to the base and primal part of your mind.

Sofia groans in your arm in a slow and easy noise, drawn out of her in response to a full-body twitch that rolled through your body after you bravely, and curiously, clenched the muscles of your filled cunt. You felt her inside you in more detail than before, and the startling heat of the lightning pulse of pleasure that your pussy produced was stronger than you had prepared for. You do it again, joined by an indulgent grind into her, and pay more attention to the shape of yourself around her, almost whining out a keening moan as the tightness you have around her knot flares in your mind brighter than you had bargained for.

You stay like that for a while, not really able to control yourself or how much you’re enjoying still being trapped on Sofia, until a sharp and nagging thought finishes processing itself from much earlier: you usually wake up to less light than this. 

First light, exaggerated and bounced into your eyes by Sofia’s offensively incandescent blinds, is what usually wakes you. But the light you’re trying not make direct eye contact with is bright enough for it to be much later than that. Seven in the morning, maybe eight.

You reach for your phone and clumsily check the time, squinting sleep and lazy arousal out of your eyes and trying not to let go of Sof too much. You’re jolted out of that lenient mood when you process the hazy pixels on the screen.

“Oh shit! Sis, wake up!” 

You jostle her a little bit, growing stronger until she properly stirs.

“Hrnmm? Wha-?” She groans into your skin, before gripping down tighter around you and grinding into you, sending a fresh pulse of addling pleasure into your mind as she similarly fails to resist the temptation of your contact. “Oh, gods, I’m so hard…”

She wasn’t wrong, but you can’t get distracted. You turn the phone to her so she can do the same bleary-eyed stare at the numbers right above a message from Madison asking when she should come around.

Sofia wakes up a little faster and says, “Oh fuck, the lunch for Madison… I forgot… Did we have dinner last night?” And then, after a moment of gears starting to turn, “Oh, fuck, it’s ten thirty!”

Sofia lifted herself up, eager to start the day’s tasks and not let Madison down, and immediately robs you of the warm company and your serenity as her still half-asleep mind runs head-first into a roadblock.

You feel her tug inside you, an unintended amount of strength sending a new order of magnitude of sensation through your spine. The feeling is indistinguishable from pain or pleasure, and it distinctly aches as her motion is trapped by your tight walls. She pulls out a bare fraction of a centimetre and the sudden flare of her knot crushes against your hypersensitive entrance, forcing your instincts into third gear straight from neutral. You strangle a screamed moan as your hands scrape against her back, your claws gripping her back down into your hug and away from her unknowing mistake.

You feel flushed and out of breath as she bails on her plan, and you hear an equally complicated set of noises coming from her throat to join your masochistic whimpers in the late morning warmth.

You both take a moment to recover. You ignore Sofia’s tiny thrust into you as her libido wakes up faster than the rest of her, and find that you’re barely able to hold yourself back as well. The feeling of blood rushing through your head and slow consciousness following behind reminds you a lot of getting choked out, and you wonder if Sofia had pulled out as quickly as she had meant to if you would have stayed awake for it - and how good it might have felt.

But, no. That was for right after sex, when you’re stretched out and warmed up enough to handle it. Right now it would probably just pull or tear some very sensitive muscles, and you want to fuck her again sooner than that injury would heal.

But, Gods it’s tempting.

Her body is wrapped completely around you, her warmth and touch inescapable and alluring, her scent of green pear wood and rich sweat like cured meat embeds itself deep in your nose as it twirls smoke strands of colossal affection and need through your mind, all while you can feel her cock throbbing inside you and undermining your ability to want anything but her right now.

You pat the back of her head to give yourself something to focus on that won’t send your mind spiralling into the sleepy morning sex every cell in your body is craving but would last for several hours. You feel her calm down alongside you. Your heart can’t help but grieve the lost opportunity. What if there’s not another chance soon?

Her hair texture, roughly wavy and not quite curly, more akin to Dad’s while yours sprouts wild tresses of chestnut lion mane after any time spent in salt water, as if it retains some essence of the water’s weightless nature, keeps you grounded. Fights off the anxieties. The long, winding obsession with such an innately beautiful but not necessarily arousing part of her helps uncoil the tension of desire in your heart.

“Woah…”  Sofia breathes out the word, shaking herself slightly to evict her own cloud of thoughts. “I thought- I’d be soft by now?”

She’s wonderfully hard, you don’t want it any other way-

You wriggle to reposition your arms a bit so you can cup her cheek and look at her through eyes still struggling to focus, which gets most of your point across. The main point being that you’re already late for lunch, so let’s try again but gentler this time.

Sofia follows your directions for the second attempt.

She lifts herself up and repositions, pivoting at your conjoined hips and finding leverage kneeling against the bed while your mind is sent tumbling through a new wave of lightheadedness and flushed waves of addictive heat as the tension of her cock shifts to it’s pressing up against your walls and stretching more than just the muscles of your cunt.

You gasp while she’s moving you around - as gently as she can - and your hand drops to your stomach, right over your womb, so that you can feel the shape of Sofia pressing up through you. Your hand is warm and steady against your gently quivering muscle, anxiety and ignored desire metered out by your solid curiosity as you press into your soft skin and feel a section of yourself steadily crushed into Sofia’s tip. She’s not so big that you can actually see her bulging your stomach, but it is not hard at all to feel out her shape as you descend down her shaft from the outside and are filled with amazement that you can feel so much detail - and that you managed to take her at all.

Sofia lets you do it. She strains against your hips to keep still, pressing into you harder to stop herself from thrusting or pulling out without warning, and watches you process just how close the two of you are. You study the love in her eyes and are certain there’s something similar gilding your face at that moment.

And then her hands drop to your waist. She digs her fingers into the soft muscle and fat around your hip bone and takes charge.

“Ready, Ivy?”

Staring into her eyes you suddenly remember the muscle relaxants, but instead of bringing up the easy answer a selfish, giddy part of you gives your sister permission. “Yeah… And don’t stop. Please.”

Sof gives out a breathy, desireful laugh. “Say things like that and I’m not gonna stay out.”

You whine and bite your tongue to stop yourself from begging her to do just that.

Sofia starts pulling.

White hot arousal, indistinguishable from an aching muscle pushed too far, fills your mind as Sofia’s knot starts spreading the tightest, most sensitive part of you open from the opposite side than your greedy, lustful heart desires. You want her to be plunging into you, to open you up and fuck you and fill you until the heat death of the universe. But you are trapped in the sensation of her leaving and a familiar, pressurised tingle forming anyway despite that terrible news. The experience stains your mind like varnish seeping into wood. You know you’ll never be the same again.

She quickly reaches the point where you had slammed your arms around her and drew her in before, a reflex to protect yourself from something that’s too much for the first thing in the morning, and she pulls straight past it. You feel hot, maybe feverish, as your body strains between knowing it should relax and let it happen and never wanting to let her go.

You feel a selfish pulse travel through your spine before you feel yourself clamp down around your sister’s dick. She groans, self control wavering dangerously thin, while she struggles to continue to pull out, pushing the ludicrously sharp and wonderful stretch of your cunt even further.

You feel yourself gasp and not let the breath out. Your head strains backwards into the pillows and your hands wrap themselves around Sofia’s wrists, where they’re still clasped firmly around your waist. Your mind goes lightheaded as your blood struggles to know where to flow, your lungs refusing to let out your breath, while your muscles start using up more and more energy as they pull taut in the endless anticipation of something more intense than what you’re currently feeling. You feel what you assume must be the widest part of her knot countless times, and she still pulls you open with merciful care towards your request that she should show no mercy.

It can’t have been going on for long, but your mind is doing a wonderful job of stretching time while it has been forcefully removed from the captain’s wheel.

So when it finally comes, that moment where she suddenly slides out in an instant with all the strength your tightness demanded of her, you’re jarringly thrust back into yourself and your mind’s hands flail against the wheel in an attempt to get control back.

You cum hard in that way that is reserved for intense sadomasochism sessions: the way that is, in its bulk, absent of physical pleasure but which gets you over the line nonetheless. It’s wonderful in its depth and literally stunning in its complexity. It’s a relief that hits so deep you almost think it’s unreachable until you are submerged neck-high in it. You are sent spiralling thirty meters beneath its surface, where the only light sources are the trailing stars from your lingering daze and the only warmth is the inferno running rampant within you.

That is until arms wrap around you. The depths are dispersed, ever so slightly. Barely enough to allow Sofia’s hug into the space. The veil is slowly fading at its edges, but there is a lot of veil to pull apart.

Above the surface you know that you’re shivering wildly on the bed, held in place by Sofia’s weight on top of you and kept safe by her arms keeping you from orgasming so hard you fall off the bed. You know the space is bright, and maybe a little too bright for your eyes right now, that you’re breathing deeply for the first time in many, many hours, and that there are things that exist beyond you and your sister. You know that Sofia is feeling something similar in intensity in her own body, and that some gloriously holy mixture of liquids is leaking out of you onto the sheets. But that knowledge is inaccessible to you until you surface.

Sofia takes advantage of a lull in your shaking to pull you to your side and into the dark space made up by her chest, her arms, and the doona she pulls up around you. The relief from the light relaxes some of your muscles, and the safety of her embrace and the comfort of her tits lets more of your orgasm loose from the nooks and crannies of your mind it had gotten stuck on.

You keep shivering, pawing at her skin and making tiny noises at her, and ever so slowly Sofia brings you out of subspace.

The first proper thought that happens in your mind is a wordless, intense admiration for your sister’s breasts. You shuffle around slightly in the cuddle to bite one. It’s soft and forgiving and jiggly, especially as Sofia flinches away.

“Ow! Ivy!” She grumbles in good humour and leans back in. “Did you have to go right for the nipple?”

You had? Oh, oops. “Forgot,” You giggle in response. 

“Forgot I had a nipple?” She teases.

“Forgot where.” You growl, playfully disliking the game while you’re struggling to form words. Miniature sentences and bites were the best you could, or would, do.

“Here,” Sofia starts, and then palms her tit to pull a less sensitive patch of the flesh to your easy bite position, “Try that.”

You look up at her with a glint of mischief in your eyes, but she stands her ground, inviting you in. You take a much more careful bite and relish the noises it drags out of Sofia. She’s so much more fragile than you, so much more pain in her body, but you like biting her back, and you’re so grateful that she trusts you for that.

“You always get to bite me, kit.” She whispers the promise close to your ears, and it sends a shiver through your body, dragging more of that lingering, intense orgasm out of its remaining tiny crevasses. You recover, and Sofia’s words send an expected pulse of disappointment through you. “But. We gotta get up.”

“Awww… Yeah,” You concede, able to speak more solidly, “We should probably get clothes on before she knocks on the door.”

“We should get her a key.”

You stare at her, feeling through the ways she’s holding you close, watching the thoughts float behind her eyes, and picking up every tiny emotional scent on the air. You see the depth of her emotion behind it. She loves Madison too. Well, you knew that, she’d said as much, but the feelings were growing rich and steady. Similar to how she’s been looking at you recently. The sight makes you giddy.

“We should!” Then practical thoughts started crystallising in your mind. The shades of a plan for the day, and the list of the tasks required. But the giddy smile stays. “Let’s go make lunch for our girlfriend.”

“She’s not our girlfriend yet,” Sofia replies, laughing while you both struggle to be the first to break free of the bed.

“Semantics!!” You bark at her before going in for another bite which finally gets Sofia moving and out of bed.

You followed suit, feeling emptier than you want to be in that needy, physical way, but feeling so emotionally full you feel like you’re overflowing.

Realisation, full and proper, is filling her from a rusted faucet that screamed its protests against its opening, but whose collection of aged oxide has fused the valve wide open. Its pressure is threatening the badly glued seams of her. She looks as desperate as I felt when I first realised I was never going to be accepted by them. It’s mirrored perfectly on a face that thankfully looks nothing like mine.

The sight is not as satisfying as I might have wished it to be. 

Sadism of this kind never suited me, no matter how hard our father tried to train it into me.

I take my time with my coffee, attempting to enjoy the relative skill of the barista behind the service counter that cramps him to an unkind degree, while the gifted food settles in my stomach. I watch as my matching gift gives Natalie emotional indigestion.

“They’ve never talked like that before.”

I just shrug, feeling anticlimactic and let down by some cosmic joke that never quite reached its punchline.

“He called me a dyke…” She sounds so hurt, torn up, and raw. A fair response, but one that was far too fresh for my liking right now. It was an emotion that would sit for days, and I was getting restless.

And it won’t even the worst they’d be willing to call her, if she falls as far as I did.

“I thought I was making progress. I thought he was changing-”

I finish the last third of my coffee in one large draught before placing the mug down onto the table a mite louder than I intended. It cuts off the end of Nat’s sentence and drags her eyes up from the spot on the table where my phone sat untouched. She stares at me, wide eyed, and for a second looks like a Miyazaki character. Chihiro facing down the bathhouse matron with eyes as big as saucers and some supernatural shiver that runs up her spine.

And then she melts.

She recognises it’s me, not some witch here to steal half her name, and she shows that innate trust once again. My heart clenches at the sight, torn asunder with anger and something more painful, and I ignore my suddenly bouncing, fidgety leg.

“Look, he’s not going to change unless you manipulate him into it,” I start soft, trying to settle the anxiety in me, but like the mug’s descent it comes out harsher than I intended. “You’ve given him a new script to follow with you, but he needs puppet strings to actually change. It’s what he’s done to us and mum.”

“It’s just- That was the only reason-” Natalie swallows hard, slouching in her chair and making herself look small. She pauses in the middle for a breath or two, realising the angle her sentence was heading towards. She backtracks while her voice grows shakier with every word. “I’m sorry I did this to you, Nina… I shouldn’t have done it with the reasons I had- the reason I had… But I thought it was a genuine reason. I thought I could bring you back.”

“I thought you would try.” My voice is hollow as it echoes over my tongue with stale air. “That’s why I showed you the texts.”

“…They’re never taking you back.”

The admission rings through Natalie’s mind like a bell, loud and clear enough I trick myself into hearing it on the outside. It cracks the shell of her hope and trust in our parents into dozens of little, ragged shards, each with an uneven razor edge sharp enough to do more harm if left unattended. The rock, that up until now she had been building her life on, reveals itself to be hollow; a paper mache facade that has been rotting at her feet for years. And it doesn’t help.

Maybe it helps her, but my mind is pacing back and forth while I’m stuck staring at the front door of the cafe and the street beyond.

“No, they aren’t.” It’s all I can say, but the hurt that seeps into the words is enough to carry a shadow of everything I’m feeling into the empty space between us.

I need to leave. I need to get out of this city. I have what few scraps of life Natalie was able to scavenge for me at my feet, and now every minute spent here feels wasted. I even have her on my side, more than I even desperately hoped for as I ran through different ways to handle the meeting with her while I struggled to not fall asleep in my seat as I waited. But I got the change handed to me, and now I need to leave.

But Natalie is immobile. She watches her faith in our- her parents crumble before her eyes.

A wax-wrought Damocles, staring up through blinked-away tears at the sword of candle flame; an Icarus of Paraffin tasked with holding up the weight of Helios’ chariot while he watches Atlas already crushed and discarded beneath Ouranoss’ corpse; a scared girl hesitating before the task of planning her escape.

I recognised the look.

The sun deserves my ire - my turbulent, painful anger - but only now do I realise it doesn’t deserve my fear any more. It holds the emotion close to its core, and will never let go - but it doesn’t deserve it. Making me more scared won’t achieve anything any more. 

But it does deserve Natalie’s.

My anger aches to stop my painful extrication from happening again, but all it can really achieve right now is to push me to leave.

Even if it thought it could make a difference, reaching out to rip Natalie from her Mercurial spot so close to the sun would only leave me splattered with porcelain droplets of her. It would hurt her while she begged me for freedom, she would bend and sag under the melting attention, and strain against my inadequate strength, and all I would be left with would be trails of wax down my forearms, quickly hardening in streaming paths that look like tears.

The pain wouldn’t even matter to me, but I would only make things worse for her. She would be spent beneath my fingers.

I look down at my arms and see the maladive green undertone of my blood beneath my skin. Instead of the temporary, ivory scars of my sister’s imagined need for me I see real, pallid lines running perpendicular, evidence of what I was running from. I rub my skin to crack the illusions free of my arms, feeling the texture of softly brittle candle wax shattering beneath my fingers more vividly than I would like. My arms are warmer than they should be.

I gently shiver the disturbing fantasy away.

My anger remains awake. The temptation to smother it is weak enough to ignore as I level a stare at Natalie and wrestle my heart back into normal ranges. I see too much of myself in her, but right now I wouldn’t even be able to save an older version of myself.

Natalie breaks me out of my internal cycle, either through very lucky timing or an understanding of how dramatic my mind can sometimes be, by gently kicking the bags that are still cramping our feet beneath the table. The gentle tinkling of zipper metal rings like wind chimes for a brief second and drags me wholeheartedly back to the front of my mind.

“I grabbed what I thought was important,” She said, “But I didn’t have much time. I didn’t know how long they’d be so I rushed.”

“What did you get?” I kept a grip on the conversation, using it like a harness to keep me from falling into the cavern of my mind. I sounded a little distracted.

“Everything off your desk.” Natalie’s immediate, utilitarian answer soothes the worst of my anxiety and I breathe out a sigh of relief, finding myself grounded in the cafe a little more. “Clothes, a handful from each drawer, plus the extras I saw when I grabbed your phone charger from beneath the bed.”

The experimental clothes, bought from amazon and tried once or twice before being hidden in a bundle strapped up between bed slats, was in one of the bags. It was comforting to know that it wasn’t in my bastard parents’ possession, and then actually having the clothes was a relief. They don’t really fit me, but I hadn’t realised how much losing them would have hurt before realising I now had them.

I smile at Nat, finding safety in expressing the inert happiness rather than the violent mood of despair shaken free that definitely would have ended in tears.

“Ah… Good.” My words feel dwarfed and inadequate, but I have nothing else to add.

“Apart from that I grabbed honestly kinda random stuff from the bathroom, and I think your razor is loose in the bag-”

“Makeup?”

Natalie cringes a little, “Oh… I didn’t think to look.”

That’s fine, it’s easy to replace, just, “You should probably find it before they do.” When Nat nods I get her back on track. “What else?”

“Uhm… I went through mum’s files and grabbed your folder.”

My shock was probably very visible because a flicker of pride passes through Natalie’s eyes. She thinks she’s done a good job, not fucked something up, and it’s all true because that folder is probably the most important thing for me to have gotten out of that house. Passport, birth certificate, insurance information, everything original when it comes to me is in that folder, with copies placed in others for ease of access. It was part of the way our mother kept some sense of control over her life, by being the gaoler of all the vital documents of everyone in the immediate family.

Hell, even the prescriptions for the meds she knew about are in the folder. And I have it now.

I can’t keep the smirk off my face, “Oh, you’re going to eat so much shit for that when they find out.”

“Yeah, well, I genuinely thought I was helping them out when I grabbed the folder for you, so there’s not much they can do without my guilt.” The threat of repercussions fills Natalie with accurately measured dread, but she keeps it out of her voice.

“Oh to be a fly far away from that wall…”

Natalie shrugs something akin to agreement to the sentiment, but doesn’t say anything.

I bring up the last vital member of the list that has yet to be mentioned. “Hormones?”

My hesitancy is rewarded with a sheepish, avoidant reaction from Natalie, and my mind immediately jumps to the expensive conclusion that I’d need to replace it all. But then Nat jumps in.

“I got them! I’ve got them! They’re in the bag… It’s just…” She shies away from my intense stare, the one trying to dig the events out of her reticent mind. “They might smell real bad. And they might not be okay any more.”

“What happened?” My anger influences my tone too late in the process of making the words for me to stop them, and the sight of Natalie shying away from my harsh tone etches itself into my mind. It will be a long time before I forget the hurt on display there.

“I- Um… I realised that I hadn’t found them when I was already out the door, and I was already running late,” Her voice picked up pace as she said each word, nervous about my reaction and wanting to avoid another impatient question. Shame at my lack of control makes my blood run hot. I don’t want to do this to her. “I couldn’t really check everywhere, that would have taken too long, and there was one very obvious place I hadn’t looked yet, and it was on the way out-”

The garbage bin, placed on the pathway from the front door to the driveway.

“They threw my meds in the trash?”

A tiny, apologetic nod comes from Natalie, relaxing slightly as we both process afterwards my relatively calmer voice.

“I- I have no idea when they did it, how long they were there. How hot they got. The sun hadn’t quite hit it yet, but it was already warm…”

“So they might be denatured… Shit.” So it was a coin toss whether it was the same expensive replacement as before. I didn’t like that.

“Sorry I didn’t look for them earlier…”

I shake the price tag from my head, “Better than nothing. Thank you.” 

The words are hard to swallow. They’re not exactly what I want to be saying. There’s a part of me that doesn’t like thanking her after what she put me through, but most of me just wants to be saying goodbye. Leaving. Getting away from here. Out, out now, before it’s too late-

My phone starts ringing, vibration against the metal table drumming with the resonant frequency of the tense surface to make it so much louder than it needed to be, and I jump so hard I have to scramble to stop my empty coffee mug from meeting the floor. Place it back down, take a breath, why is it so hard to breathe? Take a moment- The sound of the call gets quiet, the vibrations dulled, I see my phone in Natalie’s hands (now on silent) with its screen showing an unknown number facing me. I knew it wasn’t my parents already, their ringtones were set to an file of just silence, but I didn’t have any way of knowing who it was.

I swallow, place the mug right-way-up back on the saucer, and take the phone from my sister’s offering hand.

When I answer I am met with skinwalker, American Psycho charisma that writhes its way through the whorls of mobile service to curse my ear with its presence. It’s crisp and confident, and barely the right shape to mimic a professional kindness while not being offputting in an immediate sense, but I recognise the general shape of it and can feel out the shape of the man behind it. It’s also spoken through a terrible connection, and ends up horrendously compressed.

“Hello, this is Alexander Spence from Saint Dymphna Community Hospital,” It starts, masculine and optimistic, though pulled back to not scare off a jumpy animal, “Am I speaking to Sebastian Nikitovich?”

I wince away from my name, but keep myself focused on the task of the phone call and fall into my own script, calling up the response he’s fishing for, tweaked for my own purposes.

“Yeah, that’s me. You said you were from…” I make purposeful eye contact with Natalie and repeat the name he rattled off as best I could remember, “Saint Dymphna Community Hospital?”

Natalie jumps on the task, drawing her phone out and researching while the man - the fittingly-blandly named Mr Spence - continues his grease slicked drawl. I try not to curl up within myself.

“Ah, good, I’m glad you’ve picked up, Seb. Can I call you Seb?”

“No.”

“Now, Sebastian, I’ve heard from some concerned people close to you that you’re currently experiencing some difficulty - specifically housing.”

Nat is scowling at her phone, glaring at the screen like it would bulimically divulge its secrets if it just got intimidated enough. Her teeth worry at her obsidian lips, progressively staining her teeth, and her eyes dart around the screen. I rule her out as the source of Mr Spence’s concern. 

There’s two very obvious options left, and the concern someone they would reach out to is not something I think I would want.

“Son,” He barrels through my silence. “We try our best here to help those who come to us only with what, and who, we have in the room, but regrettably sometimes there are situations that require a different hand. After hearing parts of what you’ve been experiencing we decided it was warranted to reach out to you and offer you a place to stay. Practically indefinitely.”

“Practically?” I ask, falling for the trap.

The monologue on the other end changes subtly in tone, becoming more confident that he was being successful. “For your situation I’m sure it’ll feel indefinite. We, of course, have our upper limits for how long someone can stay with us, but most people get back on their feet long before that clause comes into effect.”

“How long?” I keep my voice flinty, stem the flow of his confidence.

“We can offer five years of accommodation in our long-term patient area.”

“But I’m not a patient.”

The tone shifts again, from carrot to stick. Honey to vinegar. “Mental health is a very serious thing, Sebastian. And homelessness only makes it worse. I’m sure you’ve been very stressed in this time - have you been couch surfing? Sleeping rough? We can take that stress off your shoulders. We can give you a bed and a roof that won’t be taken away. You don’t have to stay out there.”

“You’re trying to institutionalise me.” I study Natalie for more information as I accuse him, but she’s so absorbed in what she’s found that she doesn’t even see my silent question.

“No, Mr Nikitovich, we’re not a psychiatric ward. We’re a community hospital that focuses mostly on quality of life and of mind, with a focus on returning to wider society when the scale of it is less scary for you than it is right now.”

“He’s right.” Natalie speaks up, her search finding its answer, and her ears picking out the words from the phone speakers pressed against my ears.

“Who is that? Sebastian are you alone right now?” I barely acknowledge him.

“They’re not a psych ward - that would require medical approval. They’re a conversion therapy camp.”

“Ah, right.” I scoff and end the call.

* * *

The phone falls from my sister’s grip, hung up and discarded back to its no-man’s-land home in the middle of the table, before the scoff even halfway leaves her throat. She’s angry, bristling at the hackles and scowling at some middle distance, and I don’t even try to blame her. Something in me wants to, but that’s not me: it’s our parents; the eye hooks screwed into the wood of my puppet shell that the strings are attached to.

I place my own phone on the table, neatly stacked beside my keys and purse, and try and push the horror stories of Saint Dymphna out of my head. Once I found a place that wasn’t on the side of the ‘hospital’ it was very easy to figure out who they were. The thought of Nina going through that brought a spark of anger to the front of my mind, but the surge of dread I’ve been treading water in soon swallows it again.

It’s hard to stay focused. Today is about Nina! Nina, who is homeless and needs help from me! Who deserves all the effort I can offer her, and more!

But it’s not fair.

I hide my short and panicky breath from her, but I still feel it just as keenly. I can barely spend any attention to fix it, and my hands are fusing together in my lap from friction welding, and my world is falling apart beneath me.

It’s not fair! I did everything they asked of me!

A leviathan of fear and observation cracks its way out of my internal landscape, revealing its hiding spot beneath the mountain ranges of rationalisation and indoctrination that obscured the beast’s presence. It crumbles the earth as it wakes, demolishing the road networks of the hopes and plans I had laid brick by brick at its feet and over its thickened spine. It brings an apocalypse to a world that did not know of its presence, and it’s not going away now.

I had been perfect for them - perfect grades, perfect obedience! They never told me to not be gay because they clearly didn’t think their golden child was dyke material. But I was! And that tore up the pattern and made everything go tits up.

But this is about Nina, not me, I’ve got to suck it up and be better for her, because she needs that really badly right now.

I look up at my new sister and see every half-buried, flickering emotion on her face like they’re spelled out for me on a page. She’s angry, hurt, scared, restless, hopeful for a quick escape, dreading a painful one, unsure how to feel about me, and recognising everything that I’m letting slip onto my expression like she’s felt it all before.

It’s absurd. I’ve never felt so close to her, yet I the very last thing I did was get her kicked out, and I feel more sure with every passing moment that she’s about to run away.

She’s slightly reclining in sullen disappointment, legs slightly parted to accommodate her height and the bags beneath the table, and has her head cocked down so she can stare at me and the front door past her eyebrows like just glaring at us will make us part for her. The sight does something dangerous to my brain.

Rich skin, full of depth and definition, curls around her arms and graces the curves of her neck and her jaw before pulling upward to the warm slice of her lips twisting unconsciously as she watches me back. She looks like she’s being lit from within, and the light is slowly going out, filled with the cold glow of carbon-choked flame fed very, very little.

My heart aches at the thought of losing that flame.

My wringing hands in my lap bring my mind to back to my skin, exposed up my arms to the very top of my biceps where even at the thickest portion of my muscle there’s nothing but pallid, ghostly absence to be found. If her flame, so close to being snuffed out, is so still so colourful, how bad am I going to get before mine vanishes?

Maybe I should leave too?

I watch as Nina’s eyes gravitate to the cafe’s door. She twists around so her legs are in the walkway between tables, one step closer to leaving. One of her legs starts anxiously bouncing.

I could fall to my knees in front of her. I could beg and offer every hidden corner of my heart up to her, for her. I would place myself at the mercy of that glare, flood myself with sympathetic, nauseating hurt and hopeless fury to show that she is not alone. I’d stow myself in her bag, reduce myself to a trinket or arm candy to convince her to not discard me. I’d pull myself forward to the harbour of her hips, wrap my arms around the outside of her thighs, and apply the begging of my tongue any way she wishes.

I’d drag myself up to straddle Nina’s legs and free my shirt from my skin. I’d reach a hand behind her neck and offer everything I am up to her - including the motherly care I was keeping for some future child or promising partner - in an attempt to fill the ravenous hole our mother has left within her.

I would let her feed off me, if it pleased her, simply to be offered a chance to be by her side… To not have to go back home.

I would debase myself rather than return to the middle-class Bluebeards and the evidence of their previous victim that now is looted and scattered across a bedroom that will either never be touched again or have every little thing sold off in an online auction within the month for a fraction of its value.

I could offer everything up on a silver platter for her. I would. I’m about to…

But she barely has the strength to get herself away.

So I have to prepare to go back. Prepare for pretending that I haven’t seen their truth, like I’m still salvageable. Prepare to do and say ludicrous, hurtful things to convince them I’m still on the puppet strings while I plan my own escape.

But first I’ve got to help Nina’s.

Gods, how did she live like this? Already anxiety was eating away at my stomach like a bacterial ulcer, chewing my stomach lining and the bravery that relied on it staying intact. How long had she managed this, as well? Her meds had dates on them from months and months ago, prescribed to someone I’ve never met.

Not important. Ugh. This is so much to think about.

“What now?” I start, weaker than I should sound, and cringe at the waver in my voice. Whatever I set up for doesn’t follow, topics and suggestions second-guessed until they found shallow ditches of my mind to repurpose as graves. 

What could I even say? Well, what would even make a difference?

Make a gamble.

“Hey,” I restart, “At least that meant they were out of the house this morning. I don’t know how much I would’ve been able to grab if they weren’t gone.”

Can she see through my smile? It feels weak even in its apology, and like it’s fighting against its anchor points keeping it tied to my face. Nina takes in my words with well-earned cynicism, but there’s a ghost of something that passes behind her eyes and the response coils from gallows humour to a smile that fractionally fills some hole in my soul that had been running dangerously empty.

“Yeah, they’re their own undoing.” It’s a smile forged of tears that she talks through, the grain of genuine appreciation brought out of the white water and purposefully presented. Something between us repairs a little bit. Then Nina answers my original question. “What happens now is that I find my way to the train station and leave.”

Leave? The dread I had arrived with today comes back in it’s full-blooded, cold-sweat nature and tugs on my guilt with way too much strength. Once again I’m met with the thought that I’ve completely ruined Nina’s life, and each time it’s a little harder to fight off. I know now that she’s not able to come back home - and I wouldn’t subject her to that - but I thought at least she would be living in LA! Sleeping on couches for a while, yeah, which hurt my guilt already, but still here! Still within reach…

But she’s bailing on the city entirely. Giving up on her degree here, her friends here, on-

No, it’s not about me.

I swallow my distressed shock and just try to be supportive. I hope most of the emotion was invisible to Nina, but she knows me too well to have missed it and so she gives me time to process. It’s a kindness that I don’t deserve, that hurts to swallow, and that is interrupted by another ringtone buzzing against the table. 

It’s my phone this time, and I jump a little less than Nina when her phone lit up, but the glimpse of my mother’s face on my screen before I answer sets some gears turning in the back of my head before I even speak.

“Hi mum!” 

I plaster a mimicry of my usual, lighthearted tone across the speaker in the way that she never notices or cares about, and I pull on the strings that make me sound a little relieved at the chance to hear her voice on the other end. Start grateful, react to what she actually says, that way she can believe I like her on average. It comes so easily to me, I don’t really notice that I’m doing it. Just that I needed to.

“Natalie! What’s going on with you?” Outrage, sensationalist emotion, and a hint of deep, moral concern that justifies itself as it goes. “We’re trying to sort out this whole thing with Sebastian, thinking you were fine at home, and…”

I stop paying attention to her words and start to speak over her. “Okay? And? So am I. I think my strategy was working just fine until she got a call from a fucking conversion therapy camp.”

“Her? You’re don’t seriously think he’s-” A pause, a change in tactics. “The hospital wants to help, is able to help, but you got in the way of that. Why?”

Fuck, fuck fuck fuck, I hate this. This is making my guts churn like a dough hook is trying to knead all my different organs into one, homogeneous blob of stomach acid and internal bleeding. Why do I hate this so much? She’s saying terrible things, but this is otherwise a normal phone call and I’m freaking out like I’ve just been conscripted. I want to throw up.

“If you wanted to help,” Is what comes out instead, “You wouldn’t have gone there.”

I make very brief eye contact with Nina, but I’m too rushed in my own mind to process anything I see on her face. It would take too much, be too complex, and letting anything slip with my mother is a bad idea. Years of proof and practice pile into that opinion, convincing me of her inability to bend and then covering its tracks so I can pretend better.

I don’t think about it. I slide my car keys out of my purse and over to her side of the table.

“Put him on the phone.” Harsh, softened at the edges, showing the blade edge that could fall on me if I don’t hand Nina over to her.

“Mum…” I sigh the word, buying time. I turn in my seat to face an empty chair across the walkway between tables before answering. “Even if she was right in front of me, and I thought handing the phone over was a good idea, do you really think she’d pick up?”

“He will if he knows what’s good for him.” Bitter. Barely smothered to politeness. The blade edge turned just barely towards me.

I put as much condescension that the mindset of teaching a young and stupid kid will let me get away with into my voice, and then speak through the angry silences, “That’s not the point. The question is if she’ll even listen to you… Do you think so…? Because you haven’t really given her any reason to.”

“We’re her parents…!” A pause. “His! Fuck!”

She’s livid now, letting the mask slip a little too much, showing the fresh anger that was polite to let simmer for a few days before releasing. I glance at Nina who is holding the keys a little dumbly, still in plain sight. Awkwardly swap which hand is holding my phone just so I can reach over the gap and - quietly - swat her hand out of sight.

“And?” I say, full brunt force. “She already chose homelessness over you. If you want her back, give her more! But you’ve already chosen to give her less.”

I can hear the low whine of her mood change from anger to pleading desperation, and I pull the plug. I interrupt her before she can enact her new plan, however genuine the emotions she’s using for it may be.

“Look, mum, I-” Cut off mid sentence, put a quizzical tilt to my words. “I know you wanted to get to her through me but-” Cut off again, more confusion, turn back towards the table. “Shit.” Phone down, not on speaker, ignore the hints of her words that are coming through in the next silence. Play the partial truths. “I can’t see my keys… Fuck- I’m worried…” Shake my head at Nina who’s trying to gesture that she has my keys. Take my phone from my ear. “Mum, you’re on the table right now, I can’t hear what you’re saying, but I think-” Stumble over the name ‘Nina’ because I know she doesn’t want them to know her name. “I think Seb has my keys. I- uh- I gotta go! Talk later.” Slam the hangup button.

Sag. 

Breathe in air that feels too thin.. 

Shake like I just padded the bill for someone who will definitely find out, but who might not find out too early.

Recover. As best I can. Unpack how easy that was later. Unfold myself from the self hug that I can’t pin down the start of.

“I hated that…” My voice is distant and shaky, but present nonetheless. Doesn’t help me not be surprised by it, though.

The quiet that comes from Nina doesn’t feel like the calculating moments of silence I’m so used to in the family. It flows as dense air, cooled by its proximity to her, pooling as mist as it hits the ground. It’s not frigid, nor is it suffocating, but the presence of her hatred of our parents - of our mother - is almost visible.

The warm part of it is wonderful. It’s a breath of fresh air, an acknowledgement of what I actually have to deal with constantly, and it’s a knowing glint of empathy surpassing sympathy. But it slowly vanishes. It is smothered by the shared truth we reached in separate ways: the empathy can’t achieve anything.

“Yeah, that was rough.” The apology in her voice is worse. Wait, has she been voice training? She doesn’t sound how she did when I turned up. Maybe I just didn’t notice- “That was some wonderful lying, though.”

I let out a laugh - a hollow, dry expanse of an outlet that lets all my collapsing bravery escape before they try to tempt my tear ducts.

All I can manage in response is, “Thanks.”

“I should probably support your lie by driving somewhere.”

“Yeah, probably.” I’m so deflated… I can barely think. I vaguely hear her get up from her chair and extract the bags from underneath the table.

Then she pauses, expectantly.

“You coming? I’ve got a train to catch.”

The question is so innocuous, so childish in the need for company before something scary, so easily asked, framed in the casual familiarity we embodied just days ago, that it knocks some energy back into me.

I sit bolt upright, stare up at her, watch her brown eyes shimmer in the harsh sunlight with bolstered bravery and a small sliver of joy in the mischief, and my eyes catch on her smile. Who could ever hurt that smile?

Me. 

I did.

I nod and shake myself from my mood as best I can to follow my sister to our shared car that has been marinating in the early morning warmth of it’s twelfth Californian summer. I hope, based on memory, that the trip across the city will take a few hours. Enough to feel like things are somewhat normal. That I just have a sister, and nothing more dramatic is happening…

* * *

The hug is unbearable and horrendously kind. Natalie is soft and warm, pressing herself into me without reservation or overbearing concern, simply desire to hold me before I vanish from her life, and I feel tears start to ram at the barrier gate of my eyelids.

Following some desperate, lonely instinct I’m trying not to look to close at I run my hand through her hair. I grip the back of her head with all my strength and smell her conditioner mixing with the sweat of the humid day.

I feel the last vestiges of the family I wanted, the only fragment that ended up real, hold me back, and still the hurt over her betrayal rears its ugly head from the worm-hole it’s gnawed into my heart. It’s been beaten and bruised today, but it’s not dead yet. I wonder how long it’ll take to starve.

But I don’t let go. I don’t let it ruin the last moment of reprieve I’ll get before the long journey and new life I’ll have to manage alone. I hold my sister.

I hold her until the loneliness is going to steal my legs out form under me, trap me in a new cage of cold iron, and in a flash I’ve pulled away and I’m pretending the teeth of that looming bear trap don’t exist.

My heart has never been so strained before. I wonder if it’ll ever recover, or if it will stay malformed and scarred from the pressure of it all. I hide the arrhythmic panic from my mind as I climb onto the train. It stops threatening a heart attack when there’s glass between us, but my eyes struggle to leave her for any time at all.

I wish I had managed to look away, because the expression of tortured heartbreak on Natalie’s face makes me realise the mirrored one on mine.

I want to run out there and wipe it from her, to replace it and show her she doesn’t deserve to be sad. To show her all the secret ways of treading water while you yearn for anything else. Show her it’s not all permanent, not inescapable. That she deserves the type of love that they will never offer her.

“There’s a couple protests happening around Australia right now and I really need to join the Canberra one.”

“Oh, damn,” You join the speakerphone conversation, keeping an eye on the hints of your sister’s disappointment on her face, and the ones you’re feeling yourself, “What happened?”

“Uhm… So the people who run the Sydney Mardi Gras just had their annual general meeting last night and a motion was forced through banning anyone with alpha lycanthropy from having a position on the board-” Mads took a rushed breath, “Everyone who’s not an advertiser is fucking pissed because it means that the previous chair Dan Bruer, who got reelected into his seat at the start of the AGM, is now illegible to hold it.”

“So what happened?”

You can almost hear the angry shrug on the other side, “He got kicked off. Number two got his seat. Everyone who planned it were very happy, and especially the cop representatives. Now werewolf communities are rushing to make their upset known.”

You and Sof look at each other, half considering the complex lamb rib dish waiting patiently on the counter, and you see thoughts cross her eyes that match the ones runing through your mind.

You’ve been anxious to show Madison that you and Sof are safe, and to find ways to slip your affection for her into little moments in the hopes to boil the frog a little bit. But showing you can be there for her is more important right now.

It barely took a moment, but your sister responds with, “Where’s the protest?”

“Well,” You hear the static-crackle and compression crushed sound of a door being opened on the other side of the line, “I don’t know yet.”

“You don’t know?” Your question is a little more amused than it should have been because you hear Flare respond, getting over her fear of phone calls.

“It’s a little all over the place! It’s leaning for the front lawn of parliament, because this goes against anti-discrimination laws even within the grey zone of not-for-profits, but there’s a couple other locations being discussed.”

“So why are you leaving already?”

“I’m helping set up. I’m part of the uni’s werewolf society.” You look over to Sofia who probably should have known that information and see a surprised look on her face. Madison sighs. “I’m really sorry again, I wanted to hang out with you but-”

“Let us know where it is and we’ll join you.”

“A-are you sure? Protests aren’t really very-” Romantic? “-Relaxed.”

You would have argued the point if she had said romantic, but her actual response feels very tailored for Sof’s capacity. You really appreciate it. You look at your sister, silently asking how her energy is doing in the way you’ve gotten used to over the past half year, and see she’s doing great, smiling wide though a little sad about lunch, and holding herself with very decent balance. You’ll bring a camp chair for her, and she’ll last the whole day.

“We’ll be there. We have to figure out our place in the community eventually.”

Madison relaxes audibly over the phone, “I’m glad. I’d really like to see you two.”

- 🐕‍🦺 -

When the location was finally settled - on the grass outside of parliament house, like Madison predicted - you packed Sof, the seat, and a few supplies into the car and drove as close to the protest as possible.

You climb the rest of the hill slowly with Sofia by your side.

Halfway up you see a small bundle of energy dart down the footpath towards you, dressed in a warm red, knitted dress on top of a black long sleeved shirt and with her mop of bright-yellow blonde hair bobbing in the breeze behind her. As she gets close you can pick out the snake bite piercings she was scheduled to get yesterday, now in and glittering white in the sun. She chose them to mimic Sof’s fangs and match her tongue bar, and they suit her tiny, round face very well.

You remember a couple nights ago Sofia calling her head a grape, while you argued she was more of a mongoose. She insisted, very cutely, that she was a desert wolf, at the very least.

It brings a smile to your face as she collides into both of you for a hug and then winces back as her new piercings are squished against your tits.

“Oow! Shit!” She clutches her bottom lip as she recovers and Sofia laughs at her. “I forgot I had them!”

“Forgot already?” You ask.

“The ibuprofen is helping…” She rubs her new jewellery gently before brightening up. “It’s good to see you! Sorry about lunch, I know you’ve been planning something good.”

“It’s okay,” Sofia brings her into a much gentler hug, squeezing the safe bits of her with all her strength as she had discovered the tiny girl enjoys. “We can always make it another day.”

Between the happy squeaks coming from Madison you could make out a small, tentative question.

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah, we can do tomorrow!” You respond.

Sof jumps a little bit from surprise and excitement, since she didn’t hear Madison’s question, and you can see the slight remnants of her disappointment fade into joy. “Oh you’re going to love it, Madison. And it’s now turned from a four hour to a twenty-eight hour marinade, so it’ll be even better!”

The rest of the climb passes quickly with the energetic company, and you’re soon greeted by someone who came over to the edge of the roughly designated protest area in search of Madison.

She’s incredibly fit and intimidatingly tall, but pursuingly kind in the twist of her lips at the corner of her smile and the way her eyes linger on whoever she’s studying, even while her smile sits practiced enough to flash her large fangs at any opportunity. She carries herself on an elbow crutch with the habit and fluidity Sof is reaching with her cane and rakes her slightly-frizzed curtain of straight, brown hair back from her face while she studies you all. It makes her look both streamlined and watchful as she comes to a stop just ahead of the three of you.

She stands in clothes that fit her well. They match her body and look professional while expressive, in that strain of fashion perfect for news article photos and national television, but it doesn’t suit her very well at all. The vinyl wrap on the aluminium of her crutch matches her outlook much better, with its rich purple background and vibrant red guillotines.

She looks at Sofia and Madison with familiarity and a subtle sense of protective ownership.

“Oh, hi Kiera!” Sof recognises her instantly. “Why the crutch?”

“Ableist.” She fires back with a smirk. Sof comically looks down at her own cane which was now decorated with stickers of all different subjects and sources, before levelling a stare at Kiera. “I need something to lean on when I make my speech.”

“Just lean on me instead.”

“And take us both down? No thanks.” She sharpens that grin at Sofia. Madison gets your attention as they start bantering.

“We’ve still got a little bit to set up, can you come help?”

Her black eyes, soft and fragile, look up at you for help as she stands with a nervousness she doesn’t let her voice carry. How can you say no to her? But your hearing picks up the conversation that carries on between Kiera and Sof as you walk away with Madison.

It gets interesting when you start unwinding audio cables to run between the mic stand and the speakers.

“She really looks like your omega, huh?”

“What?” Sof half-chokes. “Who, Madison?”

“Yeah, obviously. Who else would I be talking about?”

“Keep your ABO brainrot behind your teeth, Kiera, or you’ll find out what a real knot feels like.”

Your heart leaps into your throat. You turn to stare at your sister in response to the flirting she’s doing with far more bravery than she usually has and see a casual smile on her face and a growing disbelief on Kiera’s. She’s never been that brazen with anyone but you but it seems to get taken well.

“No way… No way! Really? Holy shit! I only know two other girls like you and one built her entire business model around it. That’s- Wow. You feel okay about it?”

“Yeah… I feel pretty good about it, actually. I was considering SRS like twenty percent before, but now that’s plummeted to zero.”

You turn back to your task and a confused Madison. You just nod back at the bickering girls and tell her that you’re spying. She laughs at you with Mads’ unrestrained twinkle.

“SRS?”

“Bottom surgery… Getting a pussy.”

“Ah, gotcha.”

She clears her throat a bit. “I also got bigger, I think.”

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

“No, I mean ignoring the knot.”

Kiera blinks and then chuckles. “Damn, lucky girl! You’ll have to give me a test run eventually.”

“That depends…” She looks over at you and Madison while you set up the mini stage. She waves when she catches your eye. “My love life is a little complicated right now.”

“Ah yeah. Mads does struggle to open up.” It doesn’t sound like Kiera knows about Flare. “I believe in you, though!”

“I love her. I’ve loved her for a while. We’re making progress, but…” She trails off a little and her focus shifts to you. It’s difficult to notice across the distance, and Kiera would probably have a tough time of spotting it even right next to her. But it lights up like a beacon for you. “What if it hurts?”

Kiera’s voice grows a little softer, “That’s only if you do it wrong. Stretch, warm her up, be gentle… and it’ll go fine.”

“It’s just… there’s so much capacity to hurt her. I’ve got to do everything right otherwise it hurts.”

“Hold on,” Kiera interrupts, “Is there anything else we need to chat about back here? I’d like to sit down, but I don’t want anyone listening in to stuff you’re not comfortable talking about.”

“We could move a chair for you back here,” Sofia pauses for dramatic effect, “But Ivy has been listening in the whole time.”

You hear Kiera’s full and shocked laugh as it echoes over the lawn and your embarrassment reaches fiery-blush proportions, but you try to act normal as they start climbing the rest of the way and set up their camp chairs to the side of the stage. You finish up the task Madison had given you and head over to them, but Kiera is called off for protest organisation before you reach them.

“Sorry, packie, back in a moment.” Kiera moves fast across the lawn, flashing you a smile as she passes you.

“Hey,” You start, casually, as Sof settles into comfort and you’re left alone with her.

Sof carves a sly grin on her face which makes your blush worse and your heart beat faster. “Hey.”

“You knew I was listening in.”

“You kept staring at us.” Okay, fair point. You sit on the ground in front of her facing away, resting your shoulders back into her knees. It’s surprisingly comfortable.

Time for the delicate topic. “You’re… scared you’re going to hurt me?”

“Yes.” Her answer is immediately changed in tone. It’s light and brittle, like it could be blown away by a strong breeze, or cracked if stared at too intensely. “Terrified.”

There’s no smile on her face any more, her guard has stopped being useful. She never uses it around you any more. She never feels the need to hide anything. But this hasn’t come up. It’s been almost two weeks since you both figured out you’re knot compatible, and she hasn’t wanted to fuck you in a way that would risk it since. You weren’t really sure why, but she was spoiling you in plenty of other ways, so you just assumed it was a change in preference. It makes a lot more sense now.

You keep your head angled up to watch her as you chat.

“Why? You know I’ve taken it before.”

Sofia shivered slightly at the memory, staying quiet, “Yes and it was fantastic, but you weren’t like this.”

“Why would it hurt now, though?”

“Eh, I’m… Not really worried about pain. ‘Hurting’ you or ‘harming’ you, I’m treating the terms interchangeably.” A little of her bravado slips in, but vanishes just as quickly.

You prod her a little harder, “So, what does harming me mean?”

“Well,” Sofia starts to really squirm in her seat, struggling to face down the topic, “What if it’s just plain unpleasant? That’s the worst one. Or what if it’s good and then gets really bad and we’re stuck? What if we get stuck and it’s really uncomfortable, or you start to panic, or any number of things, and I can’t pull out? What if it is good and it shouldn’t be?”

You start soft and gentle, easing her through the anxiety, “Hey… Sof? Sis?” You get her attention, brought up from her hands stuck in her lap. “Sex with you should be good, and it is.”

Sofia takes a heavy breath before mouthing out a very jagged, “Okay.”

“I really enjoy sex with you, and if you never use your dick with me again, that’ll be okay. We’ll always find other things to enjoy.” You pause for a moment as her anxiety brings her hands into your hair, patting you for her own comfort. “But I don’t think that’s what you want.”

She shakes her head so slightly, and doesn’t speak.

“It’s okay to want that. We’ll work it out, only do it when you’re comfy, even if it takes months to work you up to it. But we will work it out if you want it.” You can tell there’s a missing piece in her mind, and you seek something out to fill it. “You’re not a bad person for wanting it. You’re not dangerous to me for it. I want you to want it.”

The last part seems to strike a chord in Sofia’s mind, and you watch as all the anxiety that had been growing taut inside her relaxes. You know it’s still there, but it’s not making her miserable which is a big improvement. It’ll be a lot easier to fully remove later.

You take a moment to enjoy the warmth of her legs as you watch the business of the pre-protest. You track Kiera as she chats to important figures who agreed to speak today as well, and study Madison as she helps a photographer understand the order of events from the rushed planning of the morning. It’s nice to be here for it, especially as Sof grows more and more relaxed.

“I love you, Ivy.”

The words send a spark of new and familiar warmth up through your heart and your spine. It makes you smile like nothing else.

“I love you too, puppy.”

Kiera comes back soon after and studies you with entertained curiosity. “Sorry about that, just practicalities that needed to be sorted, but Ivy probably already knew.”

“Nah,” You dismiss with a shrug, “It was boring.”

“That’s some pretty impressive hearing you’ve got there, girl.”

The same tone of the title that she used for Sof hits you strangely, and gears start to turn behind your eyes as you respond.

“Gamma lycanthropy has its perks.”

“A lot of people call them negatives, seek to numb their senses.” She studies you for earplugs, secret sunglasses, gloves to limit touch, while she settles into her chair next to Sof. “But not you.”

You decide to give the honest answer. “I find it euphoric.”

“Ah! So you’re a capital-w Werewolf, like us!” She gestures to Sof as well as herself.

“Yeah. But back on topic that I shouldn’t have heard…” You glance up to Sofia with a mischievous grin and catch the start of a soft panic in her expression. “I’m throwing you under the bus, Sof. Sorry.”

You turn your attention away from your anxious sister and regard a suddenly-more curious Kiera, leaning in for the gossip that’s about to be spilt.

“Sof has this American friend, Julia, who’s a werewolf - and a Werewolf too, I guess.” You put enough strain on the word to get the unfamiliar title across while you lie through your teeth and a wide, conspiratory smile. “Sof and her have an… interesting dynamic that has led to a half-promise of a visit at some point in the future, but she’s also been changed, like Sof. She’s… Is the official term ‘compatible’ or is it something else?”

“That works, but it’s mainly used for official language,” Kiera answers while her mind processes everything else, “Nice slang terms include ‘knotted’ and ‘knottable.’”

“Cool!” You answer while Sof’s embarrassment behind you bleeds into admiration of you, and your casual vibe continues to spike into anxiety as you keep the lie going. “So, she’s knottable, and is potentially going to fuck my darling sister here at some point, so she’s worried about how that will go.”

Kiera looks to your sister who confirms your lie as best she can with a simple, reserved nod. She then regards both of you with a look that reads as pride and joy in subtle parts. The gears in your head stop clicking as they arrive at an answer.

The vibrant woman’s playful terms, and casual approach to sharing sex with Sof, and her position here at the protest - it all speaks to a familiarity and desire to protect the people around her. She’s not a natural in the role of leadership, you can tell that just by how she holds herself in the group: experienced but constantly adjusting, thinking hard, taking moments. Plus the smell of subtle anxiety constantly coming off her. She invited you in to casual nicknames easily because she’s trying to embody a pack mentality.

Not a pack leader, not an alpha in the sense of those terrible studies, but just a member of a pack who’s there. As a ‘capital-w Werewolf’ she is trying to live up to that ideal, because it’s euphoric for her.

And it’s working. Almost everyone who’s here early is looking over to Kiera at some point or another, and then finding someone else when they see she’s busy. Even the one politician who showed up, with a very purposefully obvious Greens pin on his outfit, looks at her with recognition when his eyes wander from the conversation he’s having with a small news crew off to the side.

But Kiera’s pack-tending instincts are cut off by a lilting voice you’ve been tracking since she helped the photographer find a way to charge a spare battery.

“What are you three talking about?”

Madison claims a spot on the grass right in front of you, finishing the rough circle, as she inserts herself gracelessly into the conversation. You’re very happy for her company, glad that enough is set up for her to relax with you now.

“Knotting.” “Knotting!” Comes your and Sof’s responses, slightly mistimed for proper perfection, and joined as well in the cacophony by Kiera’s more diplomatic version of, “Werewolf sex.”

Mads looks hurt, playing up the emotion for her jester performance, “And you didn’t call me over immediately?” She glares at you and Sof the hardest.

Kiera studied Sofia, though, and when she saw no hesitancy from your sister the pack mentality remained in her posture, unchanged.

“You’re here now, Mads!” Kiera smiles wide at her.

“Okay, catch me up.”

“Honestly haven’t covered much.” Her words calmed Mads’ over-excitement and anxiety. The sincere tone let her just express her curiosity, which was really pretty to see on her. “Just that we’re talking about compatibility.”

Madison turns to you two and asks, “Wait, which one of you?”

“Both,” Sof immediately responds with the tidbit you had been planning to tactically not reveal to Kiera, “Shared genetics and all.”

You interrupt to avoid any unhelpful conclusions, “But we’re focusing on Sof right now…”

Madison looks at both of you in wonder and a glint of something in her eye that reveals she had expected that to be the case - for Sof at least -  while not being strong enough to obscure her obsession. And was it tinged with a little lust?

“So with Julia-” Kiera starts.

“Who’s Julia?” Madison’s expression snaps in an instant. Accusatory exaggeration, akin to a camp murder mystery stage play, with a manic prankster’s grin tucked behind helps her shut all her openly expressed fascination back into its box.

Sofia responds with the lie, spoken excellently, “Long distance American friend, coming over for the solar eclipse in a few years.”

You’ve been looking forward to that eclipse for a long time. The previous one was in Exmouth, and only barely too late to make it while accomodating the uni calendar, so you hadn’t been able to go see it.

“So with Julia-” Kiera tries again, wrangling the pups’ attention away from their combined attention deficiency. “What are you worried about?”

“I’m worried about only knowing it’s a bad idea once it’s too late.”

“Oh, you’re worried about getting truly, properly stuck?”

“Yeah. Too little margin. If something is bad but you can get out of it easy it’s fine, but how I’m imagining it that’s not really the case.”

“How much reading have you done into it?” Kiera asks, but then Madison jumps in with her own question.

“Actually, how much do you know about shibari?”

Sofia opts to field her crush’s question first. Can you really keep calling it a crush? It’s more of a distinguishing title for you since ‘her love’ could refer to you too-

“Nothing, really.”

“Well, compare it for a moment.” Mads’ point is backed up by a sage nod from Kiera, who has picked up on the comparison already, which is quite funny to see during such a kinky topic.

“Okay… Big buildup, hard to get out of, easy to dislike, I see what you mean…”

Sof doesn’t see what Madison does, so she pushes harder. “What are the management strategies for shibari?”

Sof is quiet for a moment before Kiera fills in the gap.

“Constant communication, negotiation beforehand, more specific questions than just ‘doing good?’ And if things go wrong? Comfort to stop the panic, quick release knots if you chose to use them, rope scissors, walking your partner through what’s happening and what you’re doing.”

Madison cringes in sympathetic pain. “Okay, ignore her mention of rope scissors, I don’t really like that image, but everything else is good.” Sof still looks a little unconvinced. “The negotiation beforehand, and the knowledge of where the fail-safes are if things go wrong, are all to mitigate the emotional impact if things go wrong. Actually physically getting out is rarely the issue.”

“The most important thing, though, is that both you and Julia agree that it will be okay if things go wrong, just the same as how you approach any intense kink.” Kiera seems to spot something in Sof’s posture, so she presses harder. “It’s not just your responsibility.”

“Oh…” Another bit of tension bleeds out of Sofia’s body as she breathes out the word.

“Back to my original question though.” Kiera starts and then sees Madison’s tight-pressed lips and slivers of emotions that are peeking out from behind her shield. “Very helpful tangent, Mads. But! How much reading have you done?”

Sofia sighs, “A little, but it’s all assuming the person with the knot is a guy. ‘Just wait until your refractory period gets too strong, then you’ll get soft!’ Doesn’t really help me.”

“You don’t have a refractory period?”

Sof shakes her head while Mads half-sings, “The wonders of estrogen!”

Kiera seems surprised and Sof finally manages to answer, “Yeah, refractory periods are very much a testosterone thing.”

“Damn! Even luckier!” Kiera looks very impressed, before taking a moment to work things through in her mind. “…I see the issue, though.”

“Yeah… Nothing’s really targeted at non-op trans women.”

“Okay, what else did it say?”

“Just… wait to get soft. That doesn’t feel very reliable.”

“Damn, terrible sites. Didn’t even talk about vasodilating compounds?” She saw the confusion on Sof’s face. “Reverse viagra. It’s not really medically available yet, because the ones we do have are for much more general, long-decay use and generalised disorders, so the reverse-viagra stuff is still in testing. They’re pretty desperate for testers, though, especially those who have compatible partners. There’s also muscle relaxants, for knottable girlies.”

“I feel like maybe I just shouldn’t have sex like this.”

“That’s blatantly untrue and ignoring everything I just said.” For a brief moment Kiera looks very angrily dismissive before continuing. “But back to the main issue. You’re worried about getting stuck, but human bodies are a little more flexible than that. You’ve seen those CT scans of people with random items up inside them and you’re worried you’re gonna have to carry you and your friend into the ER and deal with the awkward stares, but you really don’t have to worry.”

“That’s a funny image.” Mads adds, with a sparkle of something behind her eyes. You’re getting to know her better and the sparkle looks a lot like vivid imagination and rich desire to you.

“Yeah and also a pain.” Kiera smiles down at her. “Those radiology images, however, are all of things without flanges - or flanges used incredibly incorrectly. You, however, packie, are one big flange attached to your cock. You’re gonna be able to get yourself out.”

The dappled overcast day finds a lucky break in the cloud cover to bathe the lawn in bright, noonday light that paints everything a little sharper and makes you squint your eyes closed for a long few moments to get used to it. Sof’s hands on your head keep you grounded, and when you finally open your eyes again you see worry quickly evaporating off Madison’s face as you return to your normal, relaxed state.

“I’m a little bit more than that.” Sof rises to the bait and sounds a lot more lively than before.

“Sure. Look, getting soft or just waiting it out are bad solutions, I get that. But you’re not going to be stuck. There’s this video I want to show you of a girl who made it seem like she was trying out her new, knottable pussy with a pretty sizeable toy for the first time before pretending to realise it got stuck. It’s really hot, and she plays up the struggle wonderfully, but silicon doesn’t get soft and she still got it out.”

“Ooh, can I see it too?” Mads asks.

“You really are a hunter, aren’t you?”

“Hey!” Flare growls while she blushes.

“Hunter?” You ask.

“She’s calling me a werewolf hunter: like trans chasers.” Flare responded while half-glaring at Kiera.

“Am I wrong?” The teasing in her voice was playful and performative, masking the spike in her anxiety as everything got closer to the rally’s posted time.

“N- Shut up!” Mads reaches over the patch of ground with all her height and smacks a hand over Kiera’s shin. You save your crush from her embarrassment by changing the subject.

“How much time do we have?”

“Hour and a half.” Kiera’s leg starts bouncing.

“You’re already set up, though?”

“Internal miscommunication. We said it would take two hours to get here and set up, they heard done by two o’clock and posted that.”

She really needs a distraction. Or something to make her feel confident about the speech she’ll be making.

“What are you going to talk about?”

“I haven’t really decided yet.”

Sof looks at Kiera like she’s been replaced by an impostor, “You’re just going to wing it?”

“Of course not.” She smiles shakily at your sister. “I just haven’t decided which version I’ll be using.”

“That sounds dumb,” Madison’s insight doesn’t have the impact she wanted it to have.

“You want to go up there instead of me?” Kiera stares her down until Madison shakes her head, and then sighs. “The main argument they used to get rid of Dan Bruer is that alphas are a threat to themselves and others, and so shouldn’t be in charge of such an important cultural movement. So all my speeches touch on that. But how specifically I address it is still up in the air.”

“What are the options?”

“Outrage, rationalism, personal sympathy.”

“Outrage sounds like a good option.” Sof adds.

“Yeah, until the speech is more about the angry girl saying it than what I’m saying.” She lets out another anxious breath, this aggravated sigh is ironically more stable than the last. “It’s the thing that stumped entire movements: which strategy do I use? I know, I know, it’s not that big of a deal, it’s just one speech, but I want to do it right. It’s just the next stepping stone in the path, but I don’t want to go backwards.”

“I don’t think you will,” Mads says softly, with a familiarity with Kiera that you don’t have.

“I want to do the movement justice; I don’t want to ruin their progress, even a little; I want to help the pack around me, defend them as best I can; And I want to make it easier for everyone who’s yet to be turned or yet to realise who they are. And that’s a shitton to put on my own shoulders.”

“Past, present, and emerging.” Mads says it with a smile, but you bump her knee to interrupt it.

“That’s in bad taste, Madison.” She apologises after you chide her. “I know you want to lighten the mood, but using Aboriginal struggles while we’re sitting on the grass in front of parliament house is a little insensitive.”

“Also,” Kiera continues, “Even if it wasn’t I’ve barely gotten rid of my American accent, and I still have little hidden American-isms in my speech pattern. I still say ‘take-out’ sometimes.”

You and your sister wince and Sof says, “Oh, that’s a bad one. Not even like a funny one. That’s just bad, Kiery.”

“Which is why I’m so scared of talking in front of people! What if there’s just a hidden rule I’ve never heard that I fuck up?!”

“Hey, you’ll be fine.” You snap her out of the mild hysteria before it becomes a panic attack.

“Sure, I’ll be fine, but will I be good?”

“You’re being so critical of yourself.” Sof pipes up with some advice she had to learn herself not too long ago. “You’re never going to comfortably do good if you talk to yourself like that. Just relax, pick one, and go for it even if it feels like the wrong strategy. Let yourself fail a little bit.”

Mads is still staring at the floor.

She’s pulled herself inwards, all shelled up and avoiding the rest of your eyes, gripping onto her elbow with sharp fingernails that dig into her black sleeves hard enough to turn them grey and translucent at the indents. What colour she usually has on her face has left, and she’s worrying the inside of her new snakebite piercings with her teeth, twisting the metal around the air on the outside and making the new healing points more inflamed, and probably much more painful. A subtle, concerning quietness fills out her body language. She looks like she wants to run away before she cries in front of everyone.

You bump her knee in the same way as before and she flinches.

“Sorry! Sorry, Mads.” You keep your voice quiet to not interrupt the conversation above you. “What’s wrong?”

Mads squeezes her eyes shut and wrestles with something in her mind, and says one crushed word before Flare takes over.

“Fuck. How do you always spot it so easily?” Her voice is so quiet, like that one hurt confession from Sofia all those months ago: said by instinct, to get the pressure out of her heart, but not meant to be heard.

“Why can’t I love you the way I want?”

Your senses had been new, your heart had been wanting to hear something like it, and you passed it off like a hallucination. Like a moment of emotions grown too wild and vivid to be entirely real.

You wish you had let yourself believe the words were real, because Sof needed you to hear them and respond to them even if she hadn’t intended for you to notice them at all.

“I’m really perceptive, Flare.” You respond. “And I pay a lot of attention when I care about someone.”

“I didn’t want you to see that.” Hackles raised, a wheel of hurt churning in the back of her mind, attention split.

“I’m sorry.” You see some tangle of thoughts grow loose behind Madison’s coal-rich eyes, the threat of betrayed fire catching the vein still stuck in its eye-bag sconce. You give the apology time to sit in her mind before continuing. “I did see it, though. And I’m here. Anything you want to talk about?”

She cringes for a moment, and you think she’s going to deflect. You wouldn’t blame her, she’s entitled to her hesitations, but there’s a bit of you that hopes. Hopes for her, in every difficult moment, to see you as someone to trust. To turn to you.

She glances up at Sof for a moment, a flash of assessment that lands on the right side of the coin flip. She takes a slow, steadying breath, and tries to calm the worst of her grounding techniques.

“It’s- Fuck, it’s really fucking hard to know what I’m dealing with a lot of the time.” She speaks with a shiver in her words, and the smell of something deep and vulnerable in her burning away grows to fill the space with emotional reflexes of cigarette ash, sulphur, and bushfires. “CPTSD makes it so hard to figure out how to handle my stress responses. I’ve figured out that I’m probably not autistic - it’s just that there’s not a single untraumatised autistic person out there, so I act similar enough often enough… Is it the same with OCD? Am I constantly critical of myself, never letting go of any memories, because I have another disorder? Or is it simply that my PTSD is C enough in the right fucking ways to make me think I am, and I’m just being a bitch to myself? Myself and Flare-!”

Her fingernails dig in harder.

“Woah, Mads, it’s okay. You’re okay. It’s fine…” You consider adding something else, not sure if she needs to hear it or not. Your bravery wins against your anxiety in a hard fought battle. “You’re overreacting.”

“I know I’m fucking overreacting, Ivy!” She hisses at you, all half-stolen breaths and shaking hands, trapped into a dense sphere of scalding, creaking iron that would be easy to overlook if someone was not looking for it. “That doesn’t make it easier! It makes letting the thought pass possible, but I’ve yet to find a way to make it easier that doesn’t feel like I’m feeding it.”

“Can…” You start, not sure where you’re going, but your gaze keeps gravitating towards the fingers digging into her arm. “Can you look at me?”

Madison’s eyes flicker open for a brief moment, glancing at you with more shame and disgust at herself than the strength of the playfulness she usually keeps alive and burning in her irises, but she shutters them again very quickly. She takes a long and difficult moment to recover before trying again, and manages to hold your gaze a lot easier this time.

She still looks like she’s going to bolt, but her eyes spend as much time on you as they do on the ground in front of her, which is a significant improvement.

“Thank you, Madison.” You scrape all the concern in your heart off of your tone. You let yourself feel it, you process it and hold it and worry so fucking deeply about her, but you let your voice just keep the care that’s pushing you to push her. “Can I hold your hand?”

She curls for a second, shifting in her spot, glaring and blushing a little bit before pulling herself a little closer, and your heart does optimistic things when it sees something other than distress on her face. But she slowly reduces the pressure on her arm and finally pulls her fingers away, pushing her hand towards you.

You take it, softly at first to not scare her away, and then give it a comforting, firm squeeze. You let her know that you’re not letting go, for one reason or another.

Her hand is so tiny. It’s still warm on the palm and pads of her fingers from the heat of her arm, radiating heat they don’t usually have. She grips onto you like you’re a lifeline.

“I don’t care what your trauma is saying.” You push the sound of a smile into your voice as hard as you can while keeping your eyes solid and grounding. “I like spending time with you. And I like you best when you’re not trying to be perfect.”

Madison lets out a breath that sounds like it would descend into tears in any other situation, and you hold her hand steady as the rest of her tension starts to slowly melt.

She responds, very quietly, “Thank you, Ivy. I like you too.” Then there’s a moment of recovery before she speaks again. “Want to hear what it was saying?”

“Would that help?”

“It’ll probably just feed it.” She’s quiet for longer, struggling to not seek your comfort. “I’m working on it. It was saying I had fucked up and returned to the out-group.”

“Okay, that’s dumb.” You’re not sure what you were expecting, but nothing that small.

“Yeah… It’s just- With you and Sof I can find ways to connect… There’s so much we can have in common and it all should be enough, but there’s always one thing that feels like a fish bone made of steel stuck in the middle of my throat.”

“You sound like Sof with that description.”

Madison relaxes a bit more at the comparison, another natural reminder that she’s not being rejected, like your hand wrapped around hers.

“Fuck, I probably shouldn’t even be here, helping Kiera and everyone else out. I think of it with them as well, and it just gets in the way.”

“Why is that?” Your mind catches up and you correct the question. “What is it?”

“I want to be a werewolf. Like you three.”

“Oh,” That makes a lot of sense for Madison. You’d been subconsciously accepting her into the inner world of you and Sof’s lycanthropy already anyway. “What’s the politics of that?”

Mads shakes her head slightly. “Not good,” Flare responds. Her eyes flick up to the two alphas nearby before dropping to her lap once again.

“You deserve community…” You say it softly, welcoming, understanding. You hope it gets through.

“Mmm…” Mads’ response in noncommittal.

“Do we want to include the other two in this?” You’re gentle with the suggestion, and Madison takes a deep breath. When she speaks again she’s just louder enough to draw the awareness of Sof and Kiera. And she says it with a lot of shame you don’t think she’s earned.

“I want it so badly.” She picks at the knit of her dress, needing something look at and do with her other hand. You twist around slightly to grip her hand better. Her voice settles more. “I know I probably shouldn’t. There’s so many downsides, so much risk, so much stigma - but then I realise I sound like the libs talking about being trans and then the desire just flares brighter.”

“The desire for what?” Kiera pops into the conversation, a suspicion of the answer bleeding into her curiosity.

Madison sighs, starts speaking, and gives up. Guilt eats her in front of you, and you can’t bear it.

“To be turned.” You answer for her. She nods, and whispers her thanks in a way only you are able to pick up.

You feel Sof stare at your shared love interest with an intensity and swirl of emotions you don’t really have the time to pry apart.

Kiera takes in a sharp breath, “Ah. Should’ve seen that coming…”

You study the pack-leader’s face, forming a picture for yourself between the churning grimace and distracted, darting motion of her eyes. She leans forward, and inattentively fucks with a peeling corner of her crutch’s vinyl wrap. And she stares at Madison like she’s just met the girl but knows everything about her from a glance.

“Is that bad?” You continue.

“No. Always no.” She’s firm on that. Immovable. “There are Werewolves without lycanthropy, and lycanthropes who aren’t Werewolves. But specifically wanting the disease is… complicated. It won’t always be, but it is now.”

“Why is that?” Sof asks, backing up your friend and taking her share of the focus.

“Goes back to the AIDS crisis.” She sees the relative lack of understanding on both you and Sof’s expressions. She doesn’t sigh at it, though, just gauges how basic to start. “You know that HIV and lycanthropy cases started popping up around the same time, right?”

“Yeah,” You say while your sister nods, “But not much more than that.”

Kiera considers for a moment, reclining into her camp chair to take some more pressure off the still-retreated Madison.

“The epidemics started in different spots… Paris was the centre of lycanthropy while New York, my home, was the hub of AIDS - for the entire history the cities had more than their ‘fair share,’ though in America quite a few states just refused to diagnose the AIDS for way too long. It’s why if you go looking all the graphs will start in 1990, even though the plague started in the mid-seventies. I’m sure you can guess why.”

“The homophobia.”

“Yes, but crucially to what we’re talking about it was the way it transmitted. HIV, while horrendous, is really fragile. Blood contact is really effective, but one of the only other ways it could actually transfer was through sperm and blood-membrane barriers. So men were really easily able to spread it, but if they didn’t spread it to someone who could cum in someone else, then it the new person was a bit of a dead end. That’s why it spread so much in the gay community specifically.

“In Paris, though, lycanthropy was a more general pandemic, but it wasn’t a national emergency for different reasons. It was sort of seen as a party disease - and the avant-garde scene had a field day with it. It was weaker as well, back then, and in very few people. Some researchers were saying it was a symbiotic virus, like the bacteria we have in the rest of our body, and was overall very helpful aside from the silver allergy.

“Then it jumped the pond.”

She paused to collect her thoughts, and you take the moment to check in on your girls. Sof behind you is paying a lot of attention to Kiera, taking in everything she says and absorbing it as best she can. Her emotions are a little frayed, but not too badly for the serious topic hanging in the air. Mads, on the other hand, is doing bad.

She’s curled up again, and is clearly looping through more obsessive, unkind thoughts.

You grip firmer around her hand and pull towards yourself, easing her wordlessly across the grass until she’s fully looking at you and ignoring her internal world.

You don’t stop there, though. You shift your hands to grasp her shoulders gently and pull her from her spot into a new, intimate one, resting up against you with your arms wrapped around her while you rest back into Sof.

She squeaks slightly at the contact, and then the movement, but settles into the hug like a startled and starving stray.

She’s warm and feverishly shaking, like she’s holding in a long-trapped laugh or pressurised tears. She smells of orange blossom and instant coffee. You shove your nose into the back of her hair to continue your mini-task of memorising her smell. You’ll give her space to properly let it all out soon.

You hold her while Kiera continues, and people start arriving for the protest fashionably early, instead of ludicrously early like you and Sof.

“In the mid-eighties there was this big push by AIDS activism and the gay community to use condoms and specific positions that were guaranteed to be safe, and it had a really big impact. People with AIDS were suddenly able to have sex again, and it was this mini-renaissance within the activism. While the Catholic church was condemning condoms, to try to make sure everyone who was gay got AIDS and died, the activists were fucking each other so much that hardcore gays and lesbians were occasionally sleeping together.

“It was a really effective movement, and a breath of optimism amongst the fatalism of the other actions by ACT UP, and WHAM, and everyone. And it was built on the foundation of kissing being safe.

“But when lycanthropy reached New York… We know now that the presence of the viral load in alpha saliva, and the similarities between the two, let HIV piggyback on lycanthropy transmission, but it was really hard to diagnose at the time.

“The first ones to notice were the lesbians. They went from the primary nurses at the hospital beds of AIDS patients to being in those beds themselves, with no idea why or what was happening to them. But it was really difficult for that to garner the attention of researchers. They were women, after all.

“The next thing to happen was how it worsened the gay cases. The growth of HIV in a third of new cases was dramatically higher, exacerbated by the rapidly mutating lycanthropy, and in those people the speed at which they died was so fast they were considered outliers. Which is difficult, especially with how fast some AIDS patients died. But in the community the allure of the new, European disease which offered a permanent boost to strength or sensitivity kept growing. The ‘party drug’ attitude had also reached New York.

“Which made the Catholic church even worse about the epidemic. Hearing cases of people choosing to be infected with something that caused AIDS-like symptoms just spiked their general attitude towards it all. They incensed the ‘moral majority’ into a worse religious, homophobic, homocidal fervour, and condemned anyone who showed the symptoms. They spread the lie that AIDS was a choice, as well as lycanthropy.

“The fashion trend that happened that year was wearing pure silver crucifix necklaces, to prove you weren’t ‘tainted,’ white gloves with silver wire sewn into the palm so if you shook the hand of a werewolf it would hurt them, and putting silver filings in holy water for the same reason.”

The noise of the crowd around you grows stronger, reaching the point where you have to start focusing on ignoring certain parts of the world around you. You don’t like doing it, trying for too long hurts and can lead to migraines, but you want to stay for the protest. Maybe carrying earplugs isn’t the worst idea.

There’s a deep anger behind Kiera’s eyes as she continues, “There were quite a few beta-complication deaths from those choices, which led to some very surgical lawsuits, which were only allowed to be successful by the church because it only stopped the church from inflicting harm through those techniques, and the prosecuting lawyers quoted the bible in the courtroom.

“But…” She says it with a lot of force, like she’s getting herself back on topic, “Lycanthropy also meant AIDS could spread to the straight community. And it did. Fast. Especially through that same ‘party drug’ mindset combined with all the Reagan-era opinion of AIDS just being a gay disease, so simply don’t be gay.”

“Like that’s possible to do,” Sof jokes, lightening the air.

“Exactly, but it was still the opinion, and people used it to make some very dumb decisions. HIV cases in straight people exploded, funding followed suit, the drugs to manage HIV were invented and were made cheap, and then slowly more expensive which was its own thing, and the pandemic was no longer a thing about gay people - medically.

“The stigma followed. Anyone with lycanthropy or AIDS is seen as a danger to themselves, to others, and to ‘common morality’ by anyone who is influenced enough by the Catholic church. Which is a surprisingly large amount of non-christians, and so even today being turned is seen as a death sentence by those people.

“The ableism and homophobia is rife, so choosing to be turned today is choosing to face all that down. Even in the werewolf community there’s those who hate the purposefully infected.”

Madison speaks up from the nest of your arms she had curled up into, “They treat it like you chose to amputate a limb.”

Kiera nods, “But from the outside, it’s very much a ‘why would you choose this lifestyle’ kind of bigotry that rings very similar to queerphobia talking points. So it remains a very complicated middle ground that has yet to outgrow its roots.”

“I still want it…” Mads whispers.

“Even if you get nothing but a silver allergy?”

“…Yeah…”

“Anything I said today news to you?”

“No… Not the important things.”

Kiera sighs and smiles at Madison, who clutches your arms and lets you feel her warmth. “Okay, pup. You have at least two weeks to back out.”

“What, you don’t trust me…?” Flare tries to put on a brave face, hold an accusatory tone, but something in her isn’t strong enough to hold it up. You hug her a little harder.

Kiera laughs, “No, not that. I just need to find my backup toothpaste so I can still brush my teeth while the viral load recovers.”

You and Madison both work it out at the same time.

“Wait-” Mads looks up at Sof behind you briefly.

“You’ve done this before?” You ask, interrupting Mads and distracting Kiera from her observation.

“Oh, huh? Yeah! A few times, actually.” Kiera, unsure leader of the Canberra pack, laughs to bleed the rest of the tension off. “I turned one girl who I also later turned into an ex when she picked up an ADFA contract to fund an experimental lycanthropy cure she didn’t tell me she was looking into. I’ve made sure that everyone afterwards has known the risks.”

“Oh, even for that ADFA is a bit yikes.”

“More than a bit… Trying to cure it I was fine with.”

“How do you do it?”

Kiera softly smirks at you. “There are plenty of ways, but… I don’t think Mads wants it from me.”

Madison, who had been looking between Sofia and the ground, suddenly jumps at her name and blushes hard, retreating further into your arms. She grows steadily warmer, embarrassment bringing blood to the surface of her skin and making her bright red. You grow anxious as the little flutter of your heart grows stronger while she retreats into you, pressing herself more against you for comfort. Would you protect her well enough?

You want to try.

“What are you hoping to get, Madison?” You whisper to her, and immediately see the potential mistake.

You had been draping her over you, with her head resting on your shoulder, which meant your mouth was pretty close to her ear. And when you had decided to be secretive about the question you had leant in even closer, so when you breathed out the words you felt them twist through her messy strands of hair and curl over her ear, tugging on sensitive skin and an eclectic collection of piercings. With your arms wrapped around her you can instantly feel the reflexive, twitchy breath surge through her followed by a weak and needy shudder than runs through her muscles.

Her hands wrapped over your forearms tighten as she confesses in a single, shaky release of energy.

“Fangs.”

You smile against her, still whispering, “You would look gorgeous with fangs.”

Mads whines as she presses further into you, running her head against your neck and burying herself in your hug as deep as possible, while her legs clamp together and one of her hands drops to make sure her dress is tugged down far enough on her thighs for modesty while her legs clamp together.

You relish the feeling of her arousal.

“What are you two whispering about down there?” Sofia’s happy, curious tone buts into your interaction and you enjoy it as much as the secrecy with Madison.

“Nothing!”

You angle your head to smile up at her, and she picks out the joy on your face easily. She cups your cheek as you grin and draws out a low and pleasant noise out of you, and the emotional connection and physical touch is good enough to get you to forget you’re in public for a moment. It’s worth it, cuddled in between her and Madison, even if it goes slightly wrong eventually.

When you come to from the comfortable vibe you notice Kiera is gone, and there are quite a lot more people than you remember there being before. The protest is getting close to starting, and everything from the stage to the police cordon full of officers who would rather be anywhere else but babysitting the people they hate the most are set up. The grand total of news coverage is two tiny news stations planted to the side of the lawn so the hill doesn’t rob them of their angle, and so the crowd of around a hundred doesn’t get in the way of their shot.

There’s been bigger protests here, even ones you’ve found the time to got to, but this is a snap rally about something happening in Sydney - ignoring the comparison to other, bigger things, this is a pretty good turnout.

The protest gets underway close to the posted time, though a bit earlier due to the restlessness of everyone who turned up early, and goes smoothly. Various people get up and talk about the events, the history, and everything in between. The Greens guy doesn’t throw any curveballs, so you and Mads entertain yourselves by talking about him being there rather than what he’s actually saying. At one point she brings her phone out and finds a live-tweet thread from the Sydney rally which has plenty more politicians, but seemingly the only main-party politician there is the one running to get the current Lib MP out of her seat that controls Darlinghurst and Oxford Street - the historical gay hub of the city.

You end up whispering about it through the next speech as well without noticing, but as soon as it’s Kiera’s turn Mads gets quiet and you follow suit.

She chose the personal sympathy tactic.

She talks about her time in New York, interacting with the communities there that are still so focused on the late decades of the twentieth century, and crucially about the infighting and similar decisions that were pushed forward early on to not let infectious lycanthropes hold positions of influence. It leads easily into how those communities realised it was a dumb decision and avoided implementing it or reversed it, and how those groups fighting for in-community acceptance turned to getting lycanthropy unbanned by the Paralympics - and other professional sport leagues. Something Dan was always an advocate for in Australian spheres. She lets the irony hang in the air as she finishes her speech.

The rest of the rally passes by smoothly, right up until the point where you all realise you have to get up, and to let go of each other, though for Sof the former is more stressful.

Madison helps you get your bag and chair to the car while you focus on giving Sofia an extra limb to lean on with your hand in hers as you slowly make your way down the hill. Conversation is lighthearted and optimistic, which is always a good idea after a protest, and carries on past the surprisingly smooth acceptance from Madison of getting a lift home. She doesn’t live too far away, and the slow wind down is nice, but there isn’t enough bravery between you all to get her back to your apartment.

You do reiterate the plan for today’s lunch to be made tomorrow before she gets out of earshot, though.

And then Sof surprises you.

“I didn’t realise how much I wanted it.”

“Want what?” You turn to her before turning the car on again, giving her this quiet moment that’s letting her be forward.

“I thought I just wanted it a normal amount, and was scared a shitton by it…”

You piece it together, “Knotting?”

She nods, before turning to you with an anxious, hopeful mix in her eyes. “Could we swing by a pharmacy before going home? I want to pick up some muscle relaxants.”

You can’t help it but your heart’s lovesick hammering turns into a wide, beaming grin that you can’t wipe off your face. You don’t want to take it too directly, what if she just wants them for another day? But… What if she wants them for tonight?

Your voice has a Mads-like giggle in it when you respond, “Yeah! Of course, sis! Let’s find us some good ones.”

Sof matches your laugh, which grows a little stronger as you do a happy little embarrassed dance in the driver’s seat.

“Gods, you’re so turned on already.”

“Mhm! Yeah, I am!”

“Good. I love you, Ivy.”

She summons a mirror in her neural implant, seeing her naked form stare back at her through the fuzz of tiny CRT lines she’s styled her HUD to have.

She’s gorgeous. Brown hair tumbles down her shoulders, strands still half-remembering the shape of the ponytail they were in moments before as they frame her easy smile and glitter of blue-green irises watching out from bright eyes. She finds herself beautiful, her face shape very similar to her gorgeous wife, and appreciates the lingering touches of makeup that she forgot to remove last night.

She’s fit in a casual way, built off her job repairing the outside of the ship where the edge of the artificial gravity goes wonky, but she’s also full. Her tits sit heavy on her chest in matching, candid beauty to the plush thighs and wide hips filling out her silhouette, each stretch of skin studded with tiny gems of beaded moisture that gather and vanish in the humid room. The obviously good bits come with harder parts to like, like the tummy pouch or the stretch marks, but she’s been slowly working on liking those too.

The most recent effort to improve how she sees herself is where her eyes dip next.

Between her thighs, peeking out as her legs spread apart in happy exhaustion, is a mound and a clit that weren’t there until very recently. Having her dick never really stressed Ivy out, she could use it and enjoy the sight of it, and even sometimes use it the way it was designed, but never to the extent of her wife, but replacing it wasn’t really an issue until she randomly, suddenly, and genuinely considered changing.

Now, with the novel new organ dragging her attention down to an ache she still has to get used to, combined with the thrill of others being able to watch her in the room, there’s a part of her that wishes to drop her hand and continue her exploring of her new lust. Using the locker room for sex wasn’t taboo and definitely wasn’t even that rare- but. No. That’s what Madison is for, and she would be a lot more fun.

Ivy dresses in her simple jumpsuit, and next to nothing else, and enters the main thoroughfare of the ship with her front zip undone a tastefully slutty amount to show off her cleavage, and heads towards home. And to her waiting wife.

The familiarity of the space opens up to her asleep mind, reminding her of a real apartment lived in for years now clad in sci-fi white panelling and greebles lit by internal neon lights, but she discards the interruption and looks around the front room, finding Madison easily.

No, that’s not Madison, that’s Sofia-

Ivy recognises Sof within Madison’s face as she rises to greet her wife, sporting a brand new strip of shaven hair that runs down one side of her head - now dyed a rich brown to match Ivy’s hair and a contrast to the electric blonde she had before. Grey eyes simmer with glee and arousal as they stare Ivy down, glittering in their hidden depths with some inside joke she wasn’t let in on, and when they come close Ivy realises she’s looking slightly upwards towards them. Madison isn’t taller than her, but some deep part of Ivy thinks it suits Sof really, really well.

“Hello, kit.”

“Hi Sof!” Ivy greets back with bubbly optimism, enjoying the intimidation just as overly much as both she and Sof like. “I like the new hair. Just you up there right now?”

“Sort of.” Her smirk invades her tone, and she twists her neck to show off her neural port, which had an unfamiliar, shining device plugged into it. It glows softly pink, like infrared emission got twisted and scattered by the muscle surrounding the wires that plunged into her brain, twisting the light to reach the surface flesh-coloured and alive. She lets go of her hair to cover the implant. “We’ve been experimenting, too.”

If Madison has been experimenting, on top of the knot she requested of the same surgeon-bot Ivy got her new pussy from, then there was something very exciting waiting for her very soon.

Ivy swallows a shaky breath and tries to be composed as the new flavour of arousal she wasn’t used to yet floods her mind.

“O-oh, that’s exciting! What have you been up to?”

Sofia deflects, “Are you feeling good? Thirsty, hungry? Hurting at all? Migraine?”

Ivy shakes her head, “No. Feeling pretty good, actually.”

“Good!” The menace of Sofia’s smirk purposefully breaks slightly to let genuine care peek through for a few moments. “Then come with me.”

Sofia leads Ivy to their shared bedroom, and what greets Ivy far exceeds her expectations for what the surprise could be.

Tangled into a sweaty and naked pile on the bed is Madison how Ivy expected to see her; long blonde hair still intact, and still the correct height; grey eyes coiling with a maternally anxious smile that has etched itself into Ivy’s memory. But she’s wrapped around another girl.

She’s tiny, first of all, like she’s just barely eighteen. She looks like how Madison did when she was that age, or how Ivy did, or like a secretive third sister who neither of them remember. Her face shape is squashed a little, ears protruding more, a dimple present in her lower lip that Ivy and her sister had grown out of, which creates a soft contrast to the jagged mess of her hair. Blonde strands are hacked away into a birds nest of uneven ends that form a mop or a mane of bright hair around her face that makes her look like a puffer fish from the right angle and exposes glittering expressive black eyes staring through half-lidded, blissed-out eyelids.

She slots into the arms of the Madison you expected to greet like she was made for it. She hazily waves at Ivy.

The glow behind their necks sits bright and orange, like a strip of firelit copper that glances off their hair and makes their strands look woven out of gold. Ivy recognises the air of constant protection from Flare, still in a recognisable body, which means that her mind isn’t playing tricks on her and the impulsive, energetic Mads has indeed put herself in a body that is even easier to overpower. That same bit of her brain tells Ivy that the sight is deeply correct.

“What? Huh? But- you’re all separate?”

Ivy turns back to Sofia, surprise on her face. Sof just smiles while Flare extracts enough energy out of the comfortable cuddle to answer.

“The new devices help us spread our mind across new bio-drones,” She gestures at herself and Mads, especially so at the fire-light glow behind their necks, “Aaaand… it’s maybe a little jailbroken to help each of us only focus on one body at a time.”

“That’s- incredible, Flare! This is so cool!” Ivy takes a step towards the bed and endorphin-rich pile of her sister (sisters) in the sheets, not noticing as Sofia moves into the space she left, blocking her escape route. “How does it feel?”

There’s a moment where the lights behind Flare and Mads’ necks dim towards red slightly, and their expressions smooth out into a cocktail of differing perspectives, before reestablishing themselves into that fiery orange glow.

“It feels incredible.” Flare’s answer is simmering in arousal and awe.

The desire to curl up and do nothing vanished from Mads’ face after the dimming, and she suddenly darts up at Ivy to wrap her arms around her waist in a very energetic hug.

It feels different to normal. There’s less mass behind her hugs so she throws herself at Ivy with more speed to compensate, sending part of the sheets flying with her legs and exposing more differences between Sof and Flare as the latter girl starts to sit up and Ivy returns the hug.

She doesn’t have a knot. She’s still massive but it’s a relatively normal girl cock that meets Ivy’s eyes. She starts to drool anyway.

“We can choose to re-soup again, to check in or feel what the others are feeling. It’s very useful in carefully chosen moments, but having separate bodies is kind of a wish come true.”

“I see you’ve already tried it out.” Ivy tries to keep her voice steady under the generous squeezing from Mads’ fingers and the encroaching feeling of Sof closing in behind her.

“Mhm. It’s like when we plugged into you, before, but better. We’re more in sync. Plus it helps that we’ve been dying to do something like this for ages. Headspace just isn’t the same.”

Ivy remembers a moment where Madison had brought out a neural link adaptor, and had used it to fuck Ivy in her head, take over her arms and finger her mercilessly, send fake sensations of impossible things down the wire, and plenty more. Ivy had stumbled around for a few days afterwards a little confused, like she had to accommodate a limb she wasn’t missing, so the cable had been put away for special circumstances but the memories are still strong.

“I make really cute noises with my new voice!” Mads squeaks up at you, her words lilting with her usual jester playfulness in a new tone and timber that suits her very well.

“I bet…” Ivy tries to lean in to Mads’ touch, to take her reigns a little and toy with her new body, but is stopped as Sof’s hand curls around the front of her neck and holds her in place. She gasps, making a matching squeak to Mads, and freezes.

“We’ve gotten a grip on it, yeah,” The rich strain Sof puts on the words curls over Ivy’s ears in a delicate whisper and threatens to steal the strength from her legs. “It’s your turn, sis.”

At the same moment as Mads’ hands drag her up to kneeling on the bed to steal Ivy’s lips in a kiss, revealing as she went a matching absence of a cock to Ivy and contrasting against her triplets, Sofia’s hands drop from Ivy’s throat and curl around the shape of her tits, groping through the fabric and through the artfully placed gap in her zip. Ivy finds herself trapped between energetic, giggling lips on a fuzzball of a feral girl and fiercely strong hands married to an immovable torso that is keeping her from falling to the floor.

Eventually the barriers are considered too obstructive, and the zip of Ivy’s jumpsuit is slowly pried further open to spill her breasts out as a tongue as sharp and warm as rubies finds its way past her lips.

Air is stolen from her by Mads, slowly but surely, as she is exposed to the air of the bedroom by Sof’s encroaching hands. She feels Mads’ underdeveloped tits press against hers and feels the warmth and softness of Sofia’s body along her back. The jumpsuit stops its descent at her hips, always the most difficult part to fit into the standard cut of the outfit, and instead the hands find Ivy’s body again, without the layer of durable fabric obscuring the sensations. Madison giggles at Ivy and bites her tongue slightly as her attention wavers.

Ivy’s nipples are standing hard when one hand presses itself into the squeeze of Ivy and Mads, and the smaller girl gasps and twitches from sensitivity as the hand brushes against her sensitive tits. The amusement Ivy feels, the heaping serve of cuteness aggression, is short lived as Sofia’s desire and fingers clamp around her stiff nipple.

Pleasure rocks through her body, sending her hips twitching in response and her mind spinning as the vague air of arousal clarifies to a single, bright point.

Mads doesn’t let up, though. She keeps her tongue buried in Ivy’s mouth while the girl whimpers against her captors. She uses the muscle like a gag as the noises fail to settle, and presses her chest into Ivy’s tits and Sofia’s fingers, seeking out stimulation, friction, and pleasure against the attention that’s being spent towards her object of lust from another limb of her mind. She also struggles against the wave of arousal and need that is slowly clarifying into parseable, processable chunks in the hours since getting her new cunt. She remembers how much fun it had been for Ivy, and how intense it had been, to discover the tips and tricks, and imagines Flare’s cock sliding into her warmth, slick with Mads’ own saliva, once again.

While Mads is struggling to stay coherent in front of Ivy, Sofia is struggling to keep herself reigned in. She had volunteered to greet Ivy at the door and reluctantly dragged on clothes to do so, but being pressed up against Ivy’s grinding was making those clothes feel very tight. To remove them, though, and to free her knot to grind against Ivy’s addled attention, required her to let go of the soft and gorgeous tit in one hand and the soft expanse of soft, warm stomach in the other, and that was unacceptable.

They could feel each other in the back of their mind, and could feel small, distracting tingles of the other’s sensations. They could even half-see themselves through Flare’s eyes and feel her hand gently stroking herself to get hard again. But they pushed them down. Soup, melding, being one person was wonderful, and had both great benefits and wonderful insights for them, but they each loved their sister more than they could handle. Being separate was their way to process that all at once, without taking turns in a more implicit way than just needing to take up space near Ivy.

There is something that bleeds through anyway. It’s in all of them, so it’s easy to accept more. The pressure of love and lust for the hard working girl in front of them.

Ivy squeaks as she’s twisted by Sofia’s arms, following a silent suggestion sent over the transmitters, and feels the rough hands pull her easily out of the tight jumpsuit that she always struggles with. She looks up at grey eyes and a sleek, new patch of shaved hair and swallows hard.

She moves to speak, but whimpers instead as Mads’ hands drop down the front of her newly exposed abdomen to discover both her lack of underwear and how wet she is. She’s trapped once again against one of her sisters’ bodies.

The tiny girl is not merciful as she explores, sending new, sleek fingers deftly exploring Ivy’s folds and teasing just at the entrance, hesitating to press further in while her lust is so out of control. She darts back to your clit and sends tantalising, merciless attention through it. She leaves one set of terrible fingers there and chooses to grip the other around Ivy’s waist, gripping her where she’s softest and easiest to move around, and only a little to support her weight.

She ends up with her mouth on the back of one of Ivy’s shoulder blades where Sof and Flare like to bite. Muscle memory bringing her anxious kisses and licks to a familiar spot.

Sofia takes the distracted moment to rid herself of her offending clothes, exposing more muscle than Ivy remembers Madison’s body having, and prying a stiff, leaking knot from her inadequate shorts. She comes in close once again and with the weight of her wolfcock making it droop down slightly while it’s not inside something - the sight of which sends a shiver through Ivy’s spine and a difficult swallow down Mads’ throat - when she presses up against Ivy’s body again both other girls can feel the heat of the knot press up against Ivy’s clit and the fingers currently rubbing it.

Mads makes room for her triplet as her mouth finds Ivy’s, feeling Sofia’s need to get friction on her length as soon as manageable, but then pauses when her fingers on instinct (possibly borrowed from one of her headmates) were about to plunge themselves deep into Ivy’s cunt.

Breathy, like she had run out of oxygen rations, and in between the lustful, deep kisses with Sof, Ivy begs, “Please- Please Mads, can- c-can you finger- mmmfh!”

She gathers her bravery and arousal and pushes her fingers in, immediately amazed at all the little differences between the feel of hers and Ivy’s, and tries her best to work around Ivy’s intense arousal and Sofia’s knot pressed up against the ideal space for her hand to be. Was she doing it okay?

Flare, sensing the usual apprehension in Mads and the desperation still running rampant in Ivy, pulls herself around to Mads’ side. She puts a hand on the back of the tiny girl’s neck, drawing a sensitive moan from her from the touch placed over the implant and new device that have spines of metal that plunge into sensitive nerves, and opens a small connection to her triplet.

“Hey, Mads, you’re too tense…”

Flare’s voice is gentle in the ways Sofia tries to be dominating, but similar in how they try to be protective, but the gentle guiding voice matched with the comforting kiss that happens over Ivy’s shoulder, and the impact on how well it means she’s being fingered as Flare lets Mads borrow some bravery, makes Ivy feel like an item, a sculpture to enjoy, and it’s incredibly arousing.

Mads’ fingers are immediately more assured. They’re firmer where they need to be and gentler where it works better, and the whimpering into Flare’s kiss turns needy in time with the more arrogant curling of her fingers. She’s been teased by Flare’s attention and tongue, and the only way she has to get it out is through Ivy, which turns her into a very pushy lover.

Ivy feels the grip around her waist and the grind of the knot and feels trapped, she feels the tongue piercing her mouth and the fingers digging up against her sensitive walls and feels pierced, and she feels the ebb and flow of attention between all of her sisters and feels loved. The overstimulation, the flood of attention, builds deep in her abdomen, a fierce and hot forge of arousal that threatens to spill over with every new way these girls choose to fuck her. An ounce of incandescent fire splashes over the side and gifts her first orgasm to her audience as Flare weaves a hand through Ivy’s hair and drags her by her sensitive scalp into a new kiss.

Ivy’s hands, which had no idea what to do before and know even less now, shake as they try and hold her weight up using Sofia’s shoulders, but the necessary focus in her muscle is robbed by the friction against Sofia’s knot that she was getting slowly slick and the pressure inside her from Mads’ fingers she was utterly soaking. The kiss with Flare is a delicate contrast, even to the girl’s hand which is still gently tugging at Ivy’s hair, but her lips are soft, delicate, and endlessly passionate. It’s a slow kiss, and it finishes the puzzle of their affection while Mads returns to gnawing on Ivy’s shoulder.

The orgasm is quick and fiery and not nearly enough for Ivy.

It’s certainly not enough to sate the triplets.

Once the initial orgasm faded Flare properly took over. She took Ivy’s weight from Mads, getting her triplet to scoot out of the way, and gently leaned the dazed and excited Ivy down onto the bed.

Ivy easily complies, despite the butterflies in her stomach. She feels Flare’s arms gently coerce her limbs into position, and feels Flare’s cock press hard against her thigh as she falls down onto the bed above her. She gets pulled and softly encouraged by hands around her hips, and intense stares on parts of her body, to pull herself into the pose Flare wants for her.

She ends up on her back, legs spread and ready for Flare to fall into her, with Madison crouching over her chest, anxiously smiling down at her sister and following the orders of Flare while her empty pussy spreads her slick onto Ivy when ‘accidental’ contact is made.

Mads tries not to grind against Ivy’s tits too much.

Flare angles Ivy’s hips up, gripping the soft sides of her thighs to get her in the perfect position, and orders Mads to move - the words do wonders to make both Mads and Ivy pliable and needy.

“Mads, be a good girl and sit on her face for me.”

The voice is coated with honey, sticky and dripping and staining all that it falls onto. Anyone it falls on has the choice to leave its mark there, to feel the weight as it seeps further in, or can choose to lap at it, wipe it away with immaterial fingers and make a bigger mess as they try to clean themselves up.

Ivy chooses to keep it, Mads tries to hide her face behind shaky hands as she shuffles forward and lowers her aching cunt onto Ivy’s mouth.

The taste of Madison is rich and overpowering, but wonderful in that unique way Ivy has grown to love. With different partners in the past Ivy had predicted the taste of pussy badly, and a strange part of her half-expected Mads to taste of orange blossom, but the sharp reality is more arousing to her than any other option. It’s a taste she’s put effort into learning. She laps at her sister wildly.

Mads feels a rough tongue slide through the middle of her folds, tasting and sucking up her flavour as it passes over the hole she wishes for Ivy’s tongue to disappear into, but the wave of bright bliss that surges through her at Ivy’s exploration is enough to quieten that part of her mind for now.

Ivy’s tongue laps, and circles, and sucks Mads’ clit in quick succession, making the girl’s legs weak and stealing what little space she had been keeping above Ivy’s mouth for her sister’s comfort. She whines as her legs give out, and Ivy beneath moans loudly as her weight settles. And then the pattern of her tongue changes suddenly, but not too dramatically.

Flare had pulled herself forward underneath Ivy’s ass, positioning her thighs for the easiest thrusts, and had slowly started plunging herself into Ivy’s cunt. The stretch was immediate, relieving, and difficult to manage, and Ivy, feeling her attention split between pleasuring two of her sisters, is struggling to manage the sensations.

Between Mads’ begging - “Oh, Ivy please- Gods please keep going- don’t stop- don’t-” - and the difficulty of letting Flare into her Ivy kept flipping her focus between them, subconsciously sacrificing the other. If her tongue was moving well, pleasuring Mads well, then she was clenching around Flare too tight, and if she was relaxing herself to let Flare slide inside her the way she wanted then Mads was going ignored, and Ivy never wanted to do that.

A hand spreads across her stomach, soft, comforting, and still, joined by words Ivy was impressed she could process so easily. “Hey, kit, it’s okay… Just relax, and let us fuck you. Let us do the work. You’re focusing on Mads for us, just Mads. Let everything else just feel good.”

It works. Ivy feels herself relax, feels her hands around the back of Mads’ thighs grip down firmer, and begins eating Mads out with a newfound hunger and focus.

Flare slides into her with ease after her gentle words, and watches as the length of her disappears into her sister and has the knock-on effect of making her triplet cum on Ivy’s tongue. She pulls out slightly and thrusts back in, enjoying the brutally tight warmth of Ivy’s cunt as it fights to keep her girlcock inside.

She knows Ivy can take her, she knows Ivy can take Sof’s knot which is a lot thicker than Flare’s girlcock, and they had also specified the dimensions for Ivy before ordering the surgery. From experience she knows she can take it because they had gotten their knot inside her quite a few times already before this new experiment. But it was still new muscle. It hadn’t been properly broken in yet, and the struggle was gorgeous. They’re all planning to enjoy her while she’s like this.

She fights against Ivy’s tightness and pants heavily, her own moans joining Mads’ desperate noises and creating a gorgeous sound she finds herself enamoured with when listening to it through Sof’s ears. Flare fills her sister up as Ivy pushes orgasm after orgasm into Mads, bringing Ivy ever closer to her own.

Mads was struggling to stay up even this much, with all her weight resting on Ivy’s face and the tongue pressing deep into her cunt, and with both hands running through Ivy’s hair in an attempt to support more weight on her sister, but the orgasms were becoming too much. Spike after spike of pleasure jolted iron bolts of delirium up Mads’ spine, so she knew there was a time limit.

She was enjoying pushing the clock to its very end.

Ivy swallowed constantly, taking in huge mouthfuls of Mads’ new girlcum, general wetness, and her own drool, savouring the flavour for a moment, and then sending it down to her stomach. It was a constant battle to keep her tongue against her sister’s clit or pursuing the lofty goal of her g-spot for enough time to keep the overstim going while Ivy struggled to manage the fluids flooding her mouth, all while Flare continuously plunged deep into her, but she put all her mind to the task. She would pleasure this girl if it was the only thing she could manage.

But the constant friction inside her makes the heat in her cunt so much harder to ignore. It feels like it’s spilling down her body even as it’s endlessly pumped into her, rushing through veins and filling her with the bronze-gold that her sisters’ necks glow with. It’s making her lightheaded, and her focus is slipping, but it just felt so good she has to stay aware for it. And the hands in her hair pulling sharp points of desire to the front of her mind were helping with that.

Ivy’s second orgasm comes suddenly and strongly. She clamps tight around Flare’s girlcock, and sucks Mads’ clit hard, drawing a groan and a squeal from her respective sisters while tasting a larger rush of Mads’ cum coat her tongue and relishing the telltale throb of Flare’s cock as it finishes filling her up. Ivy is half surprised she’s able to process it all.

The surprise is short lived when the dream- when her mind loses focus and the bodies around her shift while emotions recover. When it all reclarifies Ivy finds herself on her chest, her hips dragged into the air with fingers pressed into her ass, digging into the spot where her prostate used to be, while a dripping knot presses against her achingly still-underused cunt. A slap, which brought her back to awareness, still stings against the skin her thigh.

Ivy whines at Sof, and presses her hips backwards to try and get onto her.

Sofia lets Ivy instead press further onto her fingers, stopping her with the simple, blinding stretch.

“Hnnnnnng-!” Ivy’s wordless protest falls on sadistic ears.

“Stop squirming, Ivy.” Sof’s words are immovable and grinds Ivy’s brain to a halt. The order is still so hard to follow, but she makes a very impressive effort. “I’m in charge now, and you’ll go my pace even if that’s too fast, ‘kay?”

Ivy desperately nods, correctly guessing the right path to getting more pleasure while the fingers she’s memorised over years sit stretching the wrong hole.

Ivy can hear the smile in Sof’s patient sigh. “You’re such a good girl for me, Ivy.”

She writhes under the praise and continued denial, hoping that the words would be followed by a reward for her good behaviour, but Sof just admires how much more Ivy drips from the comment.

Seeing her triplet’s cum leaking out of Ivy was hot enough, but watching in real time as her sister’s cunt grows more glistening and wet is intoxicating. The smell of it is intense and rich: it floods the room with the unmistakable brand of their sex, which wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t also joined by the sweat dripping off all three of Madison’s bodies.

Sofia looks to the side of Ivy, using a divine amount of self control to look away from her desperate prize, and checks in on Mads. Madison opens up the channels between herselves and checks in on all each alter.

Mads, lying sideways on the bed with twitching limbs, is filled with a manic glee that almost gets the other two bodies, who were not exhausted from overstim, to start giggling uncontrollably. She’s happy to watch what’s about to happen to Ivy and finger herself later on once it gets going. She’s very, very happy about being able to watch from a new perspective.

Flare had been out of the room for a few moments to fill up water bottles to keep them all hydrated, but the new hyperawareness of each other reveals the lie, or the half-lie. Flare had also been looking for restraints to put on Ivy’s arms later on, binding them behind her torso.

And Sofia is only being held back from shoving her knot into Ivy by her concern for her alters. But with that satisfied Madison closes the connections again and everyone resolidifies back into their own, unique bodies.

Sof wastes no more time. She pulls her teasing fingers out of Ivy to grip her hip, dragging a hopeful twitch from the girl, while the other hand grasps her shaft to lift the weight of her wolfcock up so it can be pointed straight into the core of her sister. The warmth radiating off Ivy drives Sof insane, and so she plunges into the hole without much foreplay.

Flare had done the hard work for her, anyway.

The length of Sof - bigger than she is in reality - slides past stretched muscles and slick tightness with practice. Seven inches of thick, smooth shaft fill out the empty attention Ivy had been lacking before ending suddenly in a sharp surge outwards. The familiar feeling of the knot’s impact sends shivers of memory and anticipation through Ivy, which cause her to clench frantically around Sofia’s length.

“Good girl… Oh it went in so smoothly - such a good pet.”

The tightness that Ivy had gained with her arousal is quickly turned to pliable looseness under Sofia’s words. She goes slack, drooling into the mattress and feeling her eyes roll into the back of her head, but her muscles stay working where Sof needs them the most.

As Sof groans in pleasure and begins a slowly increasing tempo, working her sister up to her knot, but suddenly stops changing her pace after a few moments. Flare had come back, supplies for later placed to the side and padded fabric handcuffs brandished in front of her. Sof lets Flare wrestle Ivy’s arms behind her and clip them together, but once that was done, and Ivy’s moans were exacerbated by her bondage, she sped up again.

Sofia was right, Ivy should have listened. Her pace was eventually too fast. But just like with pleasuring Mads, who Ivy could catch glimpses of when her eyes randomly decided to focus, it was a challenge that she enjoyed doing well at. Sof knew her limits, and so she kept below Ivy’s upper boundary while being intense enough to bee ‘too much.’

It was a skill she loved to perfect, day after day, and Ivy drooled for it.

It also meant Ivy’s thoughts weren’t anywhere near as formed as the other three.

Pleasure, friction, size, fuck… the sheer size of it was difficult to take at a slow and generous pace, and Sof is far more generous than she is slow. Ivy is spread apart, mercilessly and brutally, like she’s placed herself in front of a malfunctioning fuck machine powered by hydraulics or gravitics, and then has to deal with the sorrowful sensation of Sofia leaving her, emptying her and making her feel hollow, only to then flood back into her until she’s just shy of the length Ivy aches for.

She knows how intense the knot will be: she’s felt it plenty before. But this time feels different. Like there’s more attention on her, more ache and yearning. It’s making the anticipation worse. And the desire to force herself backwards onto Sof, to ignore the kindness she’s still putting into the pace, is incredibly bright - but Ivy has no energy of her own any more. She’s being fucked out.

While Sof is still being kind with her pace she’s only doing so because she really enjoys being kind to Ivy. In her total-power fantasies over her sister she’s a benevolent carer who provides everything to the mirror of her wants. In the achievable, kink-based fantasies she’s a presence of authority offering kindness where Ivy hasn’t seen it before: the ship captain, with authority to jettison her from an airlock, offering her a home and forgiving the theft charges; an old-earth soldier stowing their assault rifle to build a warm shelter for a stranger; a werewolf in ancient forests sparing her prey.

And right now kindness was giving Ivy repeated reminders of what she’d be forced to take very soon.

She flinches and squeaks every time Sof’s knot hits her entrance, which turns into grasping fingers in the sheets and gasps whenever Sofia puts a little more force into them. It’s entertaining, and playful on a very base level. It’s a mean playful, and that’s doing wonderful things to Ivy, but all good things must end, especially to make room for better.

So, with very little warning, Sofia digs her fingers into the soft flesh around the solid handholds of Ivy’s hip bone, and forces the knot into her sister.

Ivy’s mind goes blank with static as she tugs on the sheets beneath her and tries to breathe as she’s forced open by Sofia’s cock. Her toes curl, her knuckles go white, and everyone but her hears her high-pitched, keening whine that escapes her throat. She holds on in the electric storm until the worsening stretch of her entrance reaches that magical point and Sofia slides that last little bit in with all the ease in the world.

She’s actually almost sucked in. And despite the way Ivy’s mind relaxes, free of the intensity, Sof slid in so quickly that the tip of her wolfcock bumps against Ivy’s cervix, which draws an adorable and slack-jawed flinch from her sister.

Getting knotted feels like an orgasm to her, in shape but multiplied wildly in intensity, folded over itself a dozen dozen times into a sharp, slicing moment of clarity. She’s been told by Madison that nine times out of ten she orgasms during it as well, when it’s dull enough to be manageable. And with how shaky her legs are now, plus the heavy breathing coming from a very aroused Mads next to her, she probably came from this one too.

Sof never gets tired of the tightness. It engulfs her, traps her as close as she can possibly get to Ivy, and lets her put as much energy as she wants into thrusting because there’s no risk of pulling out by accident. The delicious elasticity of Ivy’s cunt keeps her in, and the wonderful sensitivity of Ivy’s cervix was the squeaker, within the plush toy that was her sister, that lets her know when she reaches deep enough into Ivy for Sof’s satisfaction.

Shallow, difficult breaths are forced around crushed organs and a heavily bent spine in Ivy’s body as she struggles to keep herself together while Sofia is impaled inside her. She’s been pulled tight around the knot and is practically fused to her sister’s hips, running waves of clamping pressure and twitching sensation through the muscle of her cunt. Sof holds her still enough to fuck her with the speed Ivy craves, and takes all responsibility out of Ivy’s mind’s weak grip.

As she’s being fucked, and as the flow of warmth inside her gets steadily harder to contain, she feels a small, shaky figure crawl up next to her, and part of Ivy’s mind registers the desperation and pleasure on Mads’ face. She brings herself close, seeking out Ivy’s face for a deep and desperate kiss, while her fingers stay focused on their task of burying themselves as deep as they can manage inside her still-new pussy. Her kiss is sloppy and as distracted as Ivy’s, but it’s arousing nonetheless, and it makes the two of them more lightheaded.

On the other side of Ivy comes the comforting presence of Flare, staying mostly on her knees but tucking in close against Ivy’s shoulder. She sends a hand up though the gap left by the arch of Ivy’s back and grasps one of her tits, playing with the sensitive nerves with the callous attention Ivy loves the most when things get this intense. Her fingers dance and grope as her teeth flirt with the idea of leaving another bite mark on Ivy’s shoulders.

And through it all Sofia keeps her speed and intensity at the maximum that Ivy can handle.

The girl never stops when she cums, so Ivy can only keep track of her sister’s orgasms through the vague awareness of the abstract ‘fullness’ of her womb, or the ‘heaviness.’ Ivy doesn’t want her to stop, either. Even as the minutes drag on over the course of subjective seconds and she’s forced to cum, burning hot and harsh, around the shape of Sofia’s knot.

She doesn’t want Sof to stop even when Mads finally wears herself out from masturbation, fingers slick with yet another surge of orgasms that have ripped through her before she relaxes into a stream of lazy kisses with Ivy.

She yearns for Sof to continue as Flare trails her hand around to the front of Ivy’s throat, clasping her fingers down on those delicate, blissful pressure points while she takes a portion of Ivy’s shoulder between her teeth.

She aches for it to keep going as Sofia’s energy fades enough that she stops pressing up against Ivy’s upper limit, and the tip of her wolfcock begins to fail to kiss her cervix.

She wishes with all her heart for it to never stop even as she is slid forward onto the bed and twisted so that Sof could follow into the pile without crushing her or pulling the knot out.

She smiles wide and still wants more even as the cosy warmth envelops her, and she feels the distinction between her sisters fades. She giggles and silently begs for for the formless aftershocks to never end when she feels the vulnerability of Sof in the tiny form designed for Mads trapped within Ivy’s grip, and both Flare and Mads’ obsession in the arms that used to be just Sof’s.

She finds herself engulfed on all sides by her sister, by Madison, once again, in a new and novel way, and it’s so comforting she can’t help but slip back into formless sleep and let the dream end.

For all outside perspectives and wishes for the bench, it's just a normal park bench, following all the standardised design requirements put in place by creatures of bureaucracy leering over the council's shoulder, placed in a strip of park now-forgotten as commercialisation sprung new stores around the patch of dirt like mycelial faerie rings. There is, after all, a better, greener park just down the road.

Yet this one lingers.

It’s not quite forgotten: it’s a good spot to get away from prying eyes for less-than-legal activities and secret trysts, and those activities tend to deposit a thin layer of garbage as time goes on, so the binmen or lines of sullen teenagers sentenced to community service for spray-painting dicks or political slogans on street signs come around into the secluded harbour every so often. But for most of the time it’s the unofficial ‘food court’ of the retail and customer service workers of the commercial curtain wall.

I push the half-finished fag between my fingers into the gnarled and weather-worn pits of the wood of the bench, watching as a new burn mark is left on the delicate and horrendously treated grain of the bench. I envy it.

I only really got smoking because there was nothing else really to do when I followed Rosie on the atrociously long breaks she took on the slow days. She had a feel for those dead quiet days, always knew exactly when the next customer would come in and announced it, loudly.

“Five hours left! I’m going out back for three…”

It was amazing how the store kept afloat. We barely had any customers, barely sold anything, we didn’t even really have a set thing we sold… No theme, just shit. Not even an antiques store, or a dollar store, or a pawn shop. We just had what some people needed, and no one else came in.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the same magic that kept the park in the faerie ring alive was the same thing that kept its battlements intact, but the far more logical reason was money laundering.

There weren’t even many other employees. Just me and Rosie, for most of the time.

So, I had stared to join her. A lot.

We talked, spent hours getting to know each other and smudging our sense of boundaries of what was polite, or then even entertaining, to talk about until the well ran dry and there was suddenly nothing to say. We talked a lot about nothing.

And I started smoking with her.

Terrible habit, I know. But since I didn’t have the choice of talking with anyone outside of this little hovel of an urban-magic bubble for months the choice was isolation or getting used to the feeling that the smoke streaming from Rosie’s mouth shouldn’t smell so sweet.

Looking over at her I watch the press of her lips as she holds a new dart between her lips and aims the flame of her slowly dying lighter at the delicate ends of the paper, the dancing, tiny, orange spark darting back and forth in the reflection in her eyes. She smiles at me when she sees me looking, and relaxes back into the bench like it’s a throne.

I turn my eyes away, running my mind’s gaze through the image of her thighs filling out her skin-tight black jeans and her torso sitting proud through the lazy fabric of the oversized, branded shirt they haven’t bothered to reprint in years. The XXXL shirt of meagre fabric sits on her form with a sense of ironic modesty only found in the mind of me and Corradini.

My heart is dragged up my throat on a barbed hook as I remember how she looks right beside me. The tearing, sickening yearning is flooded in its wake with coldness as all my warmth drops low to my cunt despite my brain’s protests.

I want to kiss her – more accurately I want her to fuck me on this bench in broad daylight to truly test the secrecy of the spot, but imagining kissing her will do. She’s gorgeous, and confident, and turns her perfected coercion onto the secret desires of my heart with all the unconscious skill in the world. But she has never asked. Never hinted. Never accidentally shown a want for me.

The Smoke flowing out of Rosie’s mouth smells of tobacco ash, tar, half solidified resin, years of damage to her lungs, a habit I was brought into despite myself all for a pretty girl, and nectar.

It sits hot and acrid on my nostrils, and yet it reaches deep into the base of my skull and yanks on the animal part of my mind.

I had been okay with baring my soul with her even when its hidden depths were boring, I had been okay with these paid breaks that lasted forever but no one could prove they happened, I had been okay with sitting close in winter and splaying limbs in summer. I had been okay with accidental touches, and thankful for what little skinship I could scavenge.

I was not okay anymore.

The yearning breaks quietly, the river it spilt onto the landscape of my soul rushes slowly, and I feel an odd calm instead of the burst of lust and uncontrollable energy I had been fearing. I feel confident.

I turn to Rosie, with her arms spread over the back of the bench, and suddenly move.

I quietly pull myself into her lap with my knees on either side of her hips, not an ounce of anxiety on my face, and grab the cigarette from her grip.

I study her expression and see the evidence of her beating heart beneath her chest, married to the anticipatory anxiety in the twitches of her shoulders and the hope in her subtly arching neck. I take a drag.

It tastes atrocious. It burns my throat and my lungs and makes me want to throw up, but it’s a feeling no worse than the yearning that has dominated me so I habitually swallow the revulsion. I hold it in my lungs before gently leaning in.

I press my lips to Rosie’s and feel her shift beneath me, reacting to the kiss with every muscle in her body. I relish the feeling of her surprise as I pry her jaw open, forcing a tongue into her mouth and grinding the heat of my crotch into her lap. I grip the sides of her face as she becomes too eager and almost ruins my plans.

I pull my tongue back and let the smoke that shouldn’t taste so sweet pass from my lungs to hers.

She shakes beneath me once the breath is done, letting out the smoke to the side and recovering from crossed eyes and an unstable spine like what I had done to her was akin to a religious experience.

But it was dirty, and simple. There’s no stroke of divinity to be found here, and when Rosie’s eyes meet mine again she sees that fact, plain as day on my face.

I’m the same as I’ve always been. And I need her.

There’s only a bare moment before I fall back onto her and turn all my months of want into real action, and I discover the form of her beneath the shirt that did so little to hide her, but Rosie manages to fill the gap with a single word, formed out of a breathy sigh.

“Hi Mads & Flare!” The message got a little puppy emoji reaction. You smile at it through the stress. “Nothing’s really gone right today. Going to need lots of cuddles when I get home.”

“Oh you’re going to get plenty. Do you want it to be just us?”

She was asking if you needed girlfriend-Sof specifically, which you aren’t going to be comfortable with Madison seeing for a long time yet. It was a good question… You hadn’t thought about it very much. To be fair, it’s really hard to think of anything right now.

It would be really nice to have access to that more explicit physical support, but it’s not what you need. What you need is care, and with how much care Sof needs all the time it’s difficult to ask for a situation where she would need to put her symptoms aside to look after you.

It’s a really uncomfortable thought, actually.

So if Madison was there, especially with how genuine Mads could be, she could take care of Sof while Sof takes care of you. You’re willing to accept that.

“No, I think extra company would be helpful.” You respond.

“Oki. How long until you’re done?”

The idea of dealing with more today is… untenable. The idea of chasing down the missing part for any longer makes the patience in your brain snap.

“Now. I’m fed up.”

“Oh, it’s a really bad day, huh?”

“Yeah. Home soon.”

Packing up is easy. Walking home is easy. Climbing the three flights in the elevator is weirdly hard due to the low, mechanical whirr that your sensitive ears pick up easier than usual which grinds into the soft temples of your migraine.

But then you’re practically falling through the front door and into Sofia’s arms.

“Woah, heyyy, it’s okay, I’ve got you.” She catches you and holds you tight, grounding you in your body how you’ve been unable to do all day by yourself, now shoved into a tangle of clothes and hair that smells like the rose conditioner you share and the budget detergent you use. She smells comforting, and very familiar. You feel yourself relaxing even just being held by her.

But your nose picks up something less familiar.

Old orange blossom, instant coffee, and brittle sugar wrapped together by a fragrant incense smoke that could have been lavender or gum wood earlier in life. It’s joined by natural smells you’ve come to expect from people: sweat that makes it incredibly difficult to deal with some under-hygienic men or incredibly attractive people, which sits heady and light here; lingering flavours of deodorants and soaps that mix together into an unwieldy cocktail of sanitation; the gentle and homely smell of the fabrics making up someone’s outfit; a half-shadow of old emotions from experiencing a normal day.

Smelling it all, out there, had been so overwhelming. It was so hard to deal with some days, and you had predicted that some of those days wouldn’t be worth finishing. You’re glad you reached that conclusion before today, because otherwise you would have just powered through and suffered as a result.

But this still-unfamiliar bundle next to you is not overwhelming in that same way, and it’s incredibly relieving to know the two aspects are not intricately linked. You open your eyes to acknowledge the scent’s source.

Madison, standing just behind Sofia in the entrance, watches you with wide and curious amber eyes. She lacks confidence in how she’s assessing you but she still studies you, and looks incredibly kind as she does, which leaves you feeling awkwardly observed while intensely comfortable in Sof’s arms.

Madison spots something on your face and pulls her stare away, leaving you to your recovery. You don’t think you look all that bad, but you feel it so maybe more is reaching the surface than you thought.

You take the moment to study her back, and you see her dressed in a black singlet painted with bleach into something akin to a two-tone album cover of a psychedelic band that stretches from her collarbones to the top of her thighs. It’s almost a dress on but for how short it is, a reversed mirror to the first outfit you saw her in, and so simple jean shorts were worn beneath for modesty. Apart from those, and the permanent piercings that never come out, there is nothing more complex to her outfit. She is truly casual in this space.

You smile at that.

Sofia finally ends the hug and pulls you up straight.

“Hey, sis,” She smiles playfully crookedly at you while her eyes analyse you with much more practice than Madison’s, “You okay? You need meds?”

You nod, rasping out your tired voice, “Yeah, meds would be great. I need to sit down.”

Sof almost passes you off to Madison before heading off into the apartment to fetch ibuprofen while you struggle your way to the sofa, letting your bag fall to the floor near the kitchen table. You collapse onto the pillows and clasp your eyes closed to master the impact of the fast change in height. It takes a moment for the dizziness to fade, but then you start on the process of removing all your accessories. You’re thinking about every step more than you should need to, but whatever.

You’re prying the nudibranch earrings - which have more whimsy in each of them than you have felt all day - when you notice that Madison had stuck near you and looks very indecisive as she watches you.

Before you can figure out what’s going on with her Sof calls out from the other room, “How bad are the migraine symptoms?”

“…Bad.” You can’t really hide it from her, and she’d just be upset if she worked it out, so you give the honest answer that hurts to acknowledge.

You don’t like struggling this much, or making Sof run around to do things for you, but you’re still able to realise that the best way to take care of her again is to recover. Properly recover.

“Okay, you’re having three then.”

Sof comes out of your room - which was quickly becoming both of yours - and hands over a glass, two paracetamol, and tree ibuprofen. Madison looks at the collection and then up at Sof, confused as your sister sits next to you on the pillows.

“Aren’t you not supposed to take more than two?” Her voice is solid in its concern, almost flinty as her mind behind it processed the long-term impacts of what she saw.

“Yeah, but her doctor is concerned enough about these spells she told Ivy to not take ibuprofen regularly and to down more than recommended when it gets bad.” She rubs your back as you take the pills and wait for the pain relief to start. “She probably only suggested it because of the regular blood tests we’re doing for lycanthropy management: if anything bad is happening as a result we’ll catch it easily.”

“It just feels weird… We’re told by the box how much to take, by parents and doctors, and everything, and then the rules can be changed?”

“That might be an autism thing.”

“It’s not autism, it’s CPTSD.”

“Yeah but-”

“Can we close the blinds?” Your voice cuts through the casual banter, the gentle humour that had bled into Madison’s voice, and the relaxed tone that Sof was speaking with. You feel like you ruined the moment, but Sof is immediately kind.

“Yeah, of course we can.”

Your sister responds, but when weight lifts up off the couch your sister’s arm is still there around you. Darkness is spread through the room anyway, though, and you find yourself able to relax your eyelids that you had scrunched up at some point. Then it gets darker as the door to Sofia’s room is closed, and darker still as the most of the lights are turned off.

“Thank you.” You relax, and breathe out an almost-sob.

“You’re welcome, Ivy.” Mads responds. You know its her because you’re finally able to process the subdued flight in her voice. Her tone always feels like it’s being shaken around inside a tin can for fun, but she’s trying so hard to be calm for you.

Sof leans you backwards with the sideways hug until you’re resting back into the sofa. You can open your eyes, and unlock your muscles, and breathe easier, and it’s thanks a lot to the company you’re with. You watch Mads sit down on the other side of Sofia as you melt into her cuddle, water long since finished and glass scavenged from your grip.

“How was your day…?” Sof is gentle as she asks. The offer to vent is genuine, and not a demand in the slightest. It’s not a test, or a bar you need to meet. It’s just one of the ways she’s ready to be kind to you.

“Ugh… Do I have to?”

“No.”

“Can I wait until the pain meds kick in?”

“Yeah, of course.”

You bury your face into the nook between her neck and her shoulder, pressing your forehead into the wild warmth of her muscle. It’s become a favourite spot of yours when you need to think, in the week or so since you tossed away the pretences between you, and you know it will remain a staple of her comfort for a long time yet. You’ve only truly needed it once since you found it.

Most days you’re flying through, ecstatic and giddy at worst and smiling from ear to ear at best, excited by the chance to come home to Sofia as your partner and share your day with her like you’ve always wished for out of a relationship. Yeah, a lot of it was done before, and you’re going to get the chance every day from now on, but it’s still a wonderful feeling. You feel almost gravitated home, almost anxious to see her smile.

And then there was a difficult day.

Every moment felt like a slog; the hours felt like they were on strike with how slow they moved, and the urge to check the clock was impossible to ignore but constantly unsatisfying; every word slid off your mind like water, but left you with the memory of being wet. It was frustrating and maddening, but you had this to come back to. Warm arms and a kind smile.

Which made it possible to slog through.

You’re not going to wait for the pain relief.

You sigh, “Someone fucked up my entire plan for today.”

“Oh no,” Your sister picks up on all the little hints of your mood in your voice, and reacts appropriately.

“I was supposed to be testing the impacts on conductivity on the new meta structures from various treatment options, and I had everything set up yesterday for it, but when I got in today the multimeter was gone.”

“Gone?”

“Stolen! By someone!” You pull your head out of the nook to tell the story properly and to watch your audience take it in. Sof looks like she’s biting back her vocal stim from that one two sentence horror post while Madison sits attentively, but not still at all. “It’s the only multimeter sensitive enough for the differences in treatment, and it’s not even really a multimeter it just looks like one because that’s what it used to be. It’s been customised specifically for my experiments so I needed that multimeter. So I needed to go find it!”

“How long did that take?” Madison’s voice is calming in how much frustration it holds on your behalf. You find it comforting.

“It didn’t.”

Flare scoffs, “Oh it just wasn’t around?”

“No!” You flail your arms around, hoping to express your exasperation. “It probably would have been fine without the migraine, but I was set a task that I couldn’t complete and that really got to me.”

Sof speaks quietly to try to not interrupt your flow, “Do you want some tea?”

You look at her gorgeous, calming grey eyes and generous smile and nod, but before she can even get her arm out from around you Madison is already up and in the kitchen.

“What am I grabbing?” The words float over with brimming energy, but it’s oxymoronic when combined with the distinctly Flare-like scowl on her face as she looks at the tea cupboard.

“Ginger honey, Canberra Breakfast, and whatever you want.” Sofia gives out the request and then studies Madison very carefully until it’s obvious that she’s only grabbed two tins. “What are you doing?”

Madison pauses like a spotlight has fallen right on top of her in a prison breakout. Mads’ response comes saccharine and hopeful. “Making tea?”

“What are you making for yourself?”

“…Canberra?”

“The fuck you aren’t! I bought that caramel tea for you for a reason.”

You see, in the dim light falling out of the ajar pantry door, a small but pretty blush crawl across Madison’s cheeks as she reaches in to the cupboard for another tin with a thankful smile. You feel the expression on your face change a little to match.

“Sorry, Ivy,” Sof continues, “Please continue.”

You regain your flow, remembering from the brain fog where you had stopped.

“I assumed that someone who knew what it was had grabbed it, so I chased down everyone in the lab who could have possibly needed to use it, and then anyone who knew it was so sensitive, with every technique I could - including sending emails to the people who weren’t there. But nope!” You watch Madison working, and still feel the need to care for Sof in the ways you can manage like this. “Sofia likes hers really overbrewed and milky, by the way.”

“Yeah- I know how she likes it.” Madison sounds like she caught a live fish in her throat. The upset is clear to hear.

“Oh, sorry.”

She shrugs with a wide grin as soon as you apologise. “I’ll spit in your tea and then we’ll be even.”

“That seems like an overreaction.” You still laugh at her jester-esque performance. It’s endearing. You get back on track, “But, anyway, that means whoever took it just saw a random multimeter and borrowed it, not even knowing how important it is to track down! So now my nice tool is floating around somewhere in the chem department, or possibly further, and I might never see it again.”

You pause as the sound of the boiling kettle becomes too loud to focus through for a moment. The moment it clicks off you continue as Madison pours the water into the individual mugs and messes around with her phone.

“I could at least try to go around to the other labs nearby, ask if they have something I could use or if they’ve seen a random person walking around with the fucking thing, but no luck. I went to everyone I was willing to stomach in the building, and was about to just start wandering to others, when I threw in the towel.”

“Yeah that’s a good place to call it.” Sof spoke with compassion but not much else, instead using her focus to study you and figure out what you need and want to hear, and how exactly to say it.

Flare speaks with enough scorn for the both of them, though. “Look, they fucking stole that thing, alright? Not ‘borrowed’ or ‘misplaced,’ they stole it and made your job impossible. If you’re not letting yourself be upset about that I’m going to be upset for you. I’ll do that anyway.”

“I am upset.” Your voice feels meek, worn out, as she deposits Sofia and your mugs onto the coffee table in front of you.

“Did you spit in mine?” Your sister asks the question with a wide, shit-eating grin.

“Yeah.” Mads responds while already turning back for her own mug. “A really big glob, didn’t you hear? I was working on it for minutes.”

“Good.” You see the smile on Sof’s face dial back down to something genuine and enamoured.

“What did your colleagues say?” Madison finds her spot on the sofa again, placing her mug and a small sauce dish on the table before turning to you for your answer.

“Not much. They wanted to help but didn’t have any more ideas than me…”

“Then! Bah-!” She throws her hands up in frustration. “No wonder you had a shit time of it today!”

“Anything else happen?” Sof asks.

“Lunch was nauseating. I really struggled with it…” You pause to think for a moment. “Nothing else. What have you been up to?”

Sof nods towards the TV. The screen is off and dark for your comfort, but connected to it by a cable is a laptop you don’t recognise set to a very low brightness and open on Steam.

“Mads was playing Hades,” Your sister smiles with a conspiratory, secret glint, and you wonder why until she throws her crush under the bus, “But we got distracted.”

Madison’s eyes fly wide open in miniature panic as she rushes to defend herself against the accusation.

“No! Well, yeah, but not like that!”

You decide to join in the fun and add a scandalised tone to your voice, “Not like what, Madison?”

“We were talking about the Illiad!” The blush rising up her neck was beautiful, but the answer she gave was so mismatched you can’t help but laugh while her voice rambled on. “We were!! We did a couple runs and got talking about how Supergiant represented Achilles and Patroclus, and then got sidetracked further when that obviously led to the parallels with Hades II and the Odyssey, and we did not fuck!”

“Okay, okay, I believe you!” You force the words through the giggles. “I would have smelt it on you anyway.”

That made Madison crumble. She looked tiny and so easy to corner, and the feverish energy she used to correct the mistake was adorable on her. But you decide to be kind.

“Tell me about it.”

You manage to make yourself sound serious and genuine enough to only make her question your motivations a little. Her doubt is, thankfully, interrupted by one of the three separate timers on her phone.

Madison reaches over to your mug and pulls the teabag out while she slowly gears up to answer.

“Well…” She starts slow, and it’s impossible to tell if it’s either Mads, Flare, or Madison-soup. “As I was telling Sofia, if you look at the two classics as joint thing - a series - you get a world built around a choice: seek glory in war or head home. Achilles chose glory, or rather chose revenge and the glory followed, and in Hades he is plagued with this loneliness as a result of being separated from Patroclus. Fuck, even the deal he struck with Hades represents it. ‘I’ll serve as your eternal guard so send Pat to Elysium when he’s probably already there’ sounds a lot like ‘I’m going to kill this one guy so good the entire world remembers because I can’t get my husband back’ if you look at it the right way.”

The other timers went off as she finished, and all three teabags ended up on the sauce plate Madison brought over so the seeping tea wouldn’t stain the table. She didn’t slow down once she hit speed, and a lot of it was going over your head, but it was more about hearing what interests her so you let her go wild. It was nice to hear, and by the comfort radiating out of Sofia she was really enjoying it too.

The tea is delicious, when you take a tentative sip, and you find that it’s not as hot as it usually is. You realise that Madison probably brewed it at a little under boiling like the packaging told you to but you never bothered with. The taste of the tea is different as a result. A little sweeter, a little softer.

It’s really nice.

“But then we get to Hades II and oh boy is Odysseus a wet fucking puppy who needs a good bath and shampoo. He’s miserable too! Even though, as we established, he chose the other path to Achilles.”

“He also took nine years too long to get home, so it’s kinda on him.” Sof smiles at Madison, but she just gets a little mad, which is adorable on her.

“That’s-! …A fair criticism! But!” Flare searched for something to follow it up with for a moment before giving up and rejoining Mads. “The thing about Supergiant’s Odysseus that makes him really interesting to me is how he’s different to the Odysseus from his source material. With Achilles they sort of just… extrapolated. Extrapolated really well, mind you, though not always accurately, but they didn’t change all that much.

“But with Odysseus they made him depressed! Sure, he’s sad about his men dying, and upset about Penelope’s suitors, and dejected and trapped on Circe’s island, and so on, but he’s never depressed. Homer writes- orates him too wise for that. Athena’s blessing means he can’t be depressed. The structure of the epic as a whole makes it impossible for him to be depressed.

“So!” It sounds like Madison is building towards a point she’s proud of, so you listen as best you can, finding it a lot easier than you thought it would be. “The Odysseus in Hades II must be from a version of the Odyssey that is a tragedy.”

“Must be?” You hear the gap she left for a response and filled it as well as you could.

She nods, smiling wide, enjoying being able to talk to anyone - or maybe even especially you and Sof - about this.

“Yeah! There’s a few lines in the game from him about finding Penelope and Telemachus in the afterlife, and how they decided to go separate ways, which implies the big emotional reunion at the end of the epic just didn’t happen to this version of the family, but the biggest reason why I think this is because he’s the main strategist of the war against Chronos.

“One of the big themes of the Odyssey that we know, and probably still for his version, is about the cycle of violence and war. It’s about how easily war begets war, and harm against others reflects against you. One big example is that when Odysseus blinds Polyphemus and runs away he can’t bear the idea of the credit going to ‘Nobody’ so he calls his real name back at the cyclops who gets his father, Poseidon, to make sure all of his men die under his care.

“Another example is from the end of the story: when Odysseus does the bow thing, and then the arrow-through-Antinous thing before murdering everyone who wanted to marry Penelope, the families of all the suitors are obviously very upset, and want to kill Odysseus. He, essentially, starts a war for the throne of Ithaca. Which Athena then stops. It’s only through her intervention that the cycle ends. But what if she didn’t interrupt it? Or couldn’t?

“Odysseus being at the centre of the Crossroads in Hades II and leading the shades’ efforts against Chronos means that war hadn’t settled on simply chasing him home, it kept chasing him after. He ended up in another, endless war like the Trojan war, but this time he doesn’t have a family to go back to. It’s only really Zagreus’ intervention of Melinoe’s cycle of war that eventually frees up Odysseus’ task, but even then through the limitations of a rougelike’s plot he’s stuck leading the cleanup effort for all eternity anyway. I wonder if we’ll get a Hades III, but there’s not really much you can do in a story paralleled to Oedipus that Supergiant’s audience would be open to…”

Sof leans over, smile still plastered over her face, to whisper, “I think that’s her steam all spent.”

Your empty mug sits on the table in front of you, scarfed in your lust to experience one of the first good things you’ve felt today while your adrenaline strength sapped away and left you leaning your full weight against another focus of comfort. You feel yourself being held up only by your sister’s grip on your shoulder, but you really, really want to lie down.

“Oh, wow, you almost need a nap.” You can hear the smile in Sof’s voice.

You shake your head as best you can, “No, I just need to lie down…” The stress bleeds out of your mind in a happy sigh halfway to a yawn.

“Okay… how are we doing this…”

Sofia eventually gets you all rearranged, placing herself at one side of the sofa so your head can rest on her thighs and placing Madison at the three-quarters mark so the crook of your knees can rest comfortably over her lap. You’re a little too sleepy and also dazed from the brain fog to argue too much about the princess treatment, but your one protest about wanting to not bore the two of them is mitigated ahead of time as the monitor is turned on with low volume so that Madison can continue to play Hades.

It’s incredible how quickly you become comfortable with the setup.

Comfortable until you get too warm… You can feel it starting, especially with Sof’s raised body temperature against your head.

Glaring in focus at the TV screen Madison singles out Sofia, “Ivy and I had our turns, Sof, now it’s your turn.”

“What? My turn to what?” There’s a laugh on the tip of her tongue whenever she talks to Madison. It always sounds like it belongs there.

“Infodump, talk forever, I dunno.” A flash of damage crosses the game screen. “Fuck! Theseus! You bitch. You’re almost done with Princess of the Forest, right? What’s next?”

“I’m not sure…” Her face turns thoughtful and, if only a little bit, stuck.

You turn your eyes up to her, “I think you should write something original.”

“I don’t really know how to do that.” Her eyes meet yours, glittering like grey steel in the reflected light of Madison sucking ass at Hades. “What would I write?”

“Well, think about the themes of the Mononoke adaptation. What drew you to that?”

She smiles, but stays quiet. You answer for her.

“Self identity, lesbian love, the worth of love even if reaching for it hurts, not being defined by terrible, obsessive thoughts.”

“Girlstink,” Mads adds, still mostly focused on the screen.

“Just write more of that!” You finish.

Sof pats your head as she turns to her tiny-statured crush, “I did not write it just to obsess over girlstink.”

“I dunno!” Mads chimes, enjoying the teasing. “It’s pretty prominent in the story…”

“Because they’re wolves.”

“So why were you drawn to them, then? If not for the unparalleled allure and stank of a girl who doesn’t wash herself basically ever?”

“Because,” Your sister huffs out the word, her baited frustration sitting playful on her tongue, “The implied unwashed-ness is a representation of San as a member of the ‘other’ that Irontown rejects, which is part of the queer allegory. The allegory you helped me refine.”

“Hey!” You call out quietly from your spot in the middle of them, fighting the warmth that is slowly becoming unbearable. “I helped too!”

“Yeah, you helped a lot!” Sof agrees, grinning that frustrated grin at you. “But you aren’t trying to brat your way into an early grave.”

“I’m not saying girlstink is a- motherfucker! Theseus! I hate this boss…” You look over and see the game’s death screen fading away to black. Madison carries on like nothing happened. “Girlstink isn’t a bad thing, far from it. A story based entirely around it would be really fun to read. Hello Hypnos, goodbye Hypnos.”

“Entirely around it?” Sofia’s tone hits a particular set of instincts in your mind. Your body reacts to the intensity and familiarity of the attitude by helpfully flooding your cunt. “Your brain, especially, ms. Art History major and classics nerd, would rot reading that book. You need more substance than that.”

“It’s also not always great,” You add. Madison looks curiously at you, Flare’s seriousness peeking through the veil of Mads’ playfighting. “It’s not always helpful to know if someone showered in the past three days or if they got fucked really good last night.”

Mads’ grin grew outwards again, closing the veil. “I’m not talking about helpful, I’m talking about hot!”

“It’s not always hot, either.” You laugh when you say it, though. Because there is a part of you that loves having that inside knowledge.

“What’s the worst thing you’ve smelt on someone so far, then?”

“Worst in what way?”

“Okay, most distinctly out of place.”

You take a moment to think, as Mads and Sofia discuss the tactics and the build of the next run. Sofia suggests the Aphrodite keepsake, which makes sense for her, and Mads is so eager to make her happy she accepts the suggestion without comment. You draw a blank on Madison’s question. The heat in your body, and the nausea wired into the feeling like a cable-tangled, action movie bomb, had spiked really badly and got in the way of your thoughts.

“There’s always something out of place, so nothing really feels out of place.” Your answer is obviously unsatisfying for Madison, and you hate the look of disappointment on her face. You elaborate as you start to wriggle out of your jeans to free your overheated legs and avoid the risk of throwing up. Fuck it, it’s dark enough she won’t be able to see much. “Before I changed there were scents like that. Things stood out. Like if someone pissed in a stairwell. But now I smell everything from much further away that I’m basically smelling everything around me at once. Obviously, the strength varies, but still. If there’s piss in a stairwell I can smell it outside the fire escape door.”

Madison nods, half focusing on the screen and taking chip damage that Sofia jokingly berates her for. Maybe that’s why she’s so bad at the game.

“What I mean to say is that, while the stairwell shouldn’t smell like that, what happened to me means that scents don’t really have a place to be out of place in any more. They’re just… everywhere.”

“That’s really interesting.”

“It’s a fucking pain is what it is.”

Madison looks strangely hurt, like she wants to say something she definitely shouldn’t.

“Are there no good bits to it?”

“Oh, obviously!” Sofia’s scent, the remembered wisps of previous meals that add slowly but surely to the smell of the apartment, the way bodies react to emotions and send out endorphins. “But it’s a pain in the same way having eyes would be a pain if it was constantly midday and everything was painted a couple hues more saturated.”

“You need sunglasses for your nose,” Sofia jokes.

“Unironically, though. The only problem with medical masks is instead I just smell my own mouth in that detail. I could get used to it, or I could get used to not wearing the masks like I have been.”

“Have you two had covid?” Flare’s question is a classic, neurodivergent jump in topic - logical but unpredictable - so it’s well suited to you and Sof’s conversation style.

“We gave it to each other, actually. Pretty early, too.” Sof answers, taking point on the conversation while you let your mind wander.

The brain fog is slowly leaving, which is wonderful to feel, and you are finally cooling down again.

The feeling of your bare skin against Madison’s thighs is dragging some complicated endorphins out of the tiny girl, who is still trying desperately to not notice the bite marks running down the inside of your thigh which are yet to heal, and the conflict in her head is drawing your attention. You hadn’t thought there was enough light in the room for her to notice, but the TV is glowing enough to give her glimpses.

The most obvious of your marks is the bright-white, adhesive dressing you put over the spot where Sofia’s teeth had broken your skin. It was there to help the wound recover and to help with the constant pressure and chafing on the area, but it still left you rather distracted at times when you clamp your thighs together hard enough. And now the white fabric sits as a beacon for Madison’s attention in the darkness.

The poor girl is struggling so hard to not ask about it, and you’re trying not to find her mildly panicked expression and endorphins adorable. Easy to do, when your anxiety wakes up from its migraine-nap.

What if she’s uncomfortable? Should you move your legs? This was a dumb idea.

You try and shift some weight off of her and she lowers her arms to rest them on your legs while she plays.

Flare interrupts the conversation after clearing a room to glare at you, “Stop moving, dumbass. You need to rest.”

“Wow you play really well when you want to swear at someone.” Sofia chuckles. You relax back into the contact.

“I play really well all the time, thank you very much!” Mads’ voice is aggrandising and entertainingly proud, but you hear a quiet whisper afterwards. “It’s just distracting when you’re watching.”

You bump the bottom of her elbow with your knee to get her attention back on you and the knowing smile you can feel crossing your face.

“Sofia’s not that distracting.”

She blushes and glares at you, before curling in a little bit and whispering, “She is to me.”

“Why is that, Mads?” You make your smile a little more merciful, but not any weaker.

“Aren’t you able to smell it?”

You could. The saccharine crispness of uncanny-valley green apple and basil, the closest things your brain can register from the hormone. It’s strong, complex, and deceptively heavy. It slots easily into the wilting orange blossom that is part of her unique smell, but it’s a very recognisable smell. One that’s the same in basically everyone: oxytocin.

Madison is overjoyed just to be here with Sofia, to be spending time with her and relaxing like the time will never end. But her heartbeat is hammering in her body loud enough that you can pick it out beneath the intentional sound effects of Hades and the low-whine of accidental tones caught in the music or emitted by the laptop.

Madison is very warm as well. And fidgety. She keeps looking over at Sofia while she thinks your sister won’t notice.

It’s nice to see from an outside perspective, even with how different you are from both Mads and Flare.

You respond very simply and softly, “I can.”

That was not the answer Madison was hoping for. She pauses the game and sighs, retreating into herself while you hear her heart doing backflips behind her ribs. She breathes slowly, and you can hear the emotions catching on her breaths. Flare recovers first, and decidedly ignores you to shove the controller into Sofia’s hands.

“Here!” The expression of harmless frustration gets most of her roiling emotions to settle. “You’ve been talking so much shit, Sof, let’s see how good you actually are.”

“I’ve never played with Coronacht before,” Sofia starts.

“Then learn.” Flare wasn’t budging.

“This is heat sixteen!”

“And? This is your punishment for saying I’m terrible. You get thrown in the deep end.”

Sof gives in and holds the controller in an awkward way to not rest her arm on your face, readying herself to play.

“You can put your arm down,” You say up to her, since you don’t like her being uncomfortable at all, “I don’t mind.”

Your sister looks down at you like you’re teasing her, and then sees your expression. “You’re genuine? No, I’m not doing that.”

She instead shifts around so she has her hands draped over your chest like she’s a safety bar on a roller coaster, which gives you room to breathe and see while also letting her rest her arms’ weight on you. Good enough.

You turn your attention back to Madison, feeling a little too lost about the game.

“Fill me in?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, sure.” Madison considers for a moment and then fully turns to you, ignoring the screen. “So I’ve just given Sof an impossible task.”

“I might surprise you!” Sof calls out from the side of her mouth while she struggles.

“No you won’t. But anyway. ‘Heat sixteen’ means that I’ve got sixteen, out of a maximum sixty-four, levels of extra difficulty on this run - though only like two people ever have beaten sixty-four heat so it’s not really the effective maximum. Coronacht, the bow, is especially bad for Sof because it has a strange learning curve. And she doesn’t have much time to learn because I’ve already taken a lot of damage this run, and I’ve turned on the difficulty modifier that gives you a time limit, so she can’t just stand around wondering what to do.”

“Ah shit!” You feel Sof frantically mash her fingers into the controller. “I forgot about that!”

“All this to say I’ve been struggling because I made the game harder but received banter like it’s on the base difficulty. Now I get payback.”

It seems like good payback since the frantic stress on Sofia’s face only gets more and more intense. She dies very quickly, and Madison laughs softly at her.

“You’re forgiven now. You can play without heat.”

“Oh, thank you, my magnanimous princess.”

The chemistry is really nice to see. You’re really glad Sofia has someone to talk to like this, it feels really healthy for her. And especially on the days where her pain is unmanageable and she’s just stuck at home waiting for you to finish your work it’s comforting to know that Madison is always only a message away. She’s been there for your sister through a lot.

The smiles on their faces are wonderful as well. But you wonder whether the play fighting is actually how they want to interact - and not just something that gets in the way of them growing closer.

It’s a nagging feeling, based on Sofia’s tone shifts throughout the afternoon, and how she keeps dragging herself back into the box you’ve seen on display.

It makes you a little melancholy, but it’s easy to move past. You trust your sister to take any opportunities that pop up to express her affection. She did it to you really well. She’ll find a way to get through to Madison.

The tiny girl, on the other end of the sofa, has been returning to the tone like raising a shield. It seems more like a face she’s willing to show, but there’s plenty more behind to explore, if she ever feels safe enough to let Sofia in. The way her heart is still misbehaving in her chest is a clear sign of that.

As you’re listening to Madison’s heart there’s a moment where its rhythm suddenly spikes. Madison chews at her bottom lip, and fucks with her now-empty hands on top of your legs, while her eyes are rooted on a dark, shadowed spot away from both you and Sof. You smell something sharp and acrid float off her.

You put your hand on her arm. It’s just a gentle touch, enough to ground her if she needs, and enough for you to feel how light she is beneath your touch. Like her bones could shatter if you touched her wrong.

Her heartbeat calms again, and she pulls her eye away from the patch of nothing to meet your eyes, and what greets you is not the panic that has been coursing its way through her body, but instead is a deep and grateful relief mixed with a vexing twist to her lips over how well she you read her. Mads and Flare’s individual responses, blended together.

You’ve done a little reading and a lot of talking with Sof, so you’ve figured out that Flare is a classic ‘protector’ alter, and now she’s questioning - either subconsciously or not - whether she needs to protect Mads from you. But Mads accepts the contact willingly and just smiles down at you.

“Thanks, Ivy.”

You smile back, and keep your voice quiet and non-confrontational. “What happened?”

There’s a complicated look that crosses her face, there and gone in a flash. Like a faster-than-words conversation that happened beneath her eyes. Mads continues.

“It’s okay now. You should worry about yourself.”

She looks over at Sofia for a moment, while the music swells and a boss fight starts. Life glitters in her eyes like candles fighting to stay lit in a gale, sheltered as best they can be against a hurricane of thoughts and hopes and predictions. She stares at your sister with a half-held breath and a yearning whine in her throat that you pretend to not hear.

But you can’t let that look go without comment.

You whisper, trusting in Sof’s hyperfocus on the game to make your words inaudible to her, while you speak.

“She really likes you, Madison.”

You fill the words with the kindness you’re overflowing with and a hint of the wisdom that comes from an outside perspective, as well as a fair chunk of hindsight. Mads turns her eyes away, amber glow filled with almost-tears.

“She won’t-”

Your stomach grumbles incredibly loud. Enough nausea has faded to let your hunger wake back up and scream it’s angry growl, upset that it has been ignored for too long today. It follows the noise up with a demand for food that slides like an iron lance into the centre of your attention deficit and twists your focus, through the bruising impact point on your soul, fully and wholly onto food.

“I’m really hungry…”

Sofia pauses the game to look down at you with concern and confusion, “What actually was your lunch?”

“Sichuan fried noodles.”

“With a migraine?!” Sofia looks like she wants to grip each side of your head and shake you until some sense falls out of you: percussive maintenance at its finest. But she’s too careful around your head while you have a migraine to try. “Well… that should have been enough food anyway.”

“Oh, uh… I didn’t finish it.”

Sof looks a step closer to flipping your brain on its head like an SD card that went in the wrong way.

“Okay,” She starts shifting around, gathering her energy and pushing her muscles’ ache to the back of her mind, to get up, “I’m starting dinner. You need something solid to eat.”

“Yay! Thank you, puppy!” Your use of the matching pet name makes her grin wide, but you realise belatedly that Madison can also hear. Oh well. “What’s for dinner?”

“Eh, I can invent something as I go. We have that mince and a few veggies, so maybe a pasta dish?”

Sofia seems to finally get enough of her energy together and heaves against the pillows of the sofa to lift herself up, but gets interrupted by Flare.

“Hold on! Wait, wait, hold on a minute. Sit back down, Sofia!” Sof follows the tiny girls’ order. You’re grateful to get your head’s pillows back. “You don’t have to be the one to cook, I can do it.”

For some reason that offer seems to duck through some shortcut in the complex labyrinth of your heart to end up closer to your core than should have been possible. You built it halfway around Sof’s presence in your life, so feeling someone else navigate you so easily is a shock.

She’s willing to cook for you. Willing to cook so that you can stay close to Sofia.

The frustrated glare Flare is using to keep Sof in place, comforting you, takes on a new, fiery charm.

Madison is not just here to spend time with Sofia. She’s trying to take care of you, too.

“But also!” She continues. “We don’t have to cook anything! Your cooking is incredible, Sof, and very comforting, but with a day like you’ve had,” Flare looks at you, “And the migraine you’ve had to deal with, and the way I know even through Sof that you deny yourself nice things even when you deserve them - today is a delivery day if anything. You deserve good, indulgent food that no-one around you has had to work hard for. You deserve something free to enjoy.”

A smile and an avoidant blush had crept onto your face, and you relent after a moment. “Okay, okay! We can get delivery.”

“Good.” Flare nods and relaxes back into the sofa to match Sof, and drags out her phone. “What are we getting?”

Both Madison and Sofia look to you, silently prioritising your cravings. You think for a moment, before your stomach takes over and growls again.

“Whatever it is it needs to arrive quickly.”

You study your hunger and focus on the craving. It’s more of an extra hole in the absence of your hunger than anything distinct, but it’s shaped like the inverse of chocolate, or cocoa. It’s dark and heavy and rich, like a coffee bursting with fruit notes, but solid, and chewy. It feels uncaffeinated as well. You don’t really want to be more awake for this. The relaxed, almost-sleepy vibe the three of you have is really comforting.

A thing that comes to mind is one of those Chinese dishes that are caramelised and soaked in rock sugar, balanced by rice beneath, but it doesn’t quite fill the gap.

The thing that does fill it, though, is surprisingly, “Dried dates.”

Sof perks up at your non-sequitur before turning to Madison. “Is there a Middle Eastern place nearby?”

“There’s a lot of kebab places…” Mads trails off and turns to you, and you shrug. One of those places might make something to fill out your craving, but the app isn’t that tuned to giving answers you want.

“Hmmm… Try looking up ‘adas polo.’ Or-”

“Ah, I found a place! I looked on google instead, much better results.”

She tilts the phone towards you both and Sof approves, “Oh wow, that’s perfect! Good find, Madison!”

You watch as a small, hesitant shade of a smile creeps into Madison’s expression, a little peek of something vulnerable around the edge of her shield. You expect her to respond to Sof with a barbed comment or two, but she stays quiet on that front the whole time she plugs in your order. Her more sensitive smile stays as well.

The comfortable, warm feeling stretches out languidly after the food is ordered, and small topics fill the space to pad the difficult, spiky points of your migraine and the slow, tentative trust Madison is expressing.

Noticing it, reading her so well, is really nice. You can feel everything going through Sofia’s mind just by having your head resting against her skin. The tiny feedback on touch would be all you need to follow her mind’s footsteps, even without your highly-tuned sense of smell, and you’d be able to pick out every small moment of pride and challenge she’s facing and overcoming while learning to play Hades.

But Madison… You don’t know her that well. You properly met her a little after getting back from the coast, and have only really interacted with her in small moments since then. In the past week or so she’s hung around a little longer while you’ve been present, which was interesting to see, but it’s been nothing like this.

You remember how awkwardly she just… stood there when you got home, but now she has her hand curled around the outside of your bare thigh like it belongs there, and she’s smiling with a less-guarded joy than even an hour ago.

It’s delightful.

You want to tease more out of her, but that’s not what she needs. You understand, maybe only a tiny bit so far, why Sof had said a while ago that she and Mads set each other off.

You hug her as best you can with your legs as you wait for the food to arrive.

You could get very used to her company.

Her care.

But that involves telling her about you and Sof.

Oh, now it’s your turn to fade from the conversation and have a small panic attack.

She’s kind, and playful, and soft, but Flare is reactive and hyper-protective of Mads and Mads herself feels very easy to hurt. It’s not impossible that telling her about your relationship with Sof would shatter something fragile inside her. Fuck, you don’t even know if she’s poly. You had been assuming, and maybe Sof had already told you and you’ve forgotten, but what if she’s not?

Well, if she’s not then the relationship that’s shakily forming between her and Sof would have to break, one way or another, and from what little fragments of her life she’s let slip, accidentally hinted about, or conveyed by Sof there are very few good things in her life. Sof is one of those few things.

Would she hate you for taking away that hope from her? Monogamous thinking doesn’t come all that naturally to you, you’ve never sunk into it the way people around you have, but you also don’t know polyamorous thinking that well either. Do they have an easy answer for this situation?

Now that was a funny image. Calling up one of the poly podcasts that end up in your feed now and then with the dilemma: ‘My sister is falling for someone monogamous but doesn’t know how to let her down without saying she’s already in a relationship with me! Help!’

“Hey- Ivy…”

Sofia’s voice, like crystallised honey and warm, worn-out bass strings, brings you so easily out of your spiral. She pets your head, running her fingers through your beach-bleached brown hair with endless kindness and patience. Her touch sends electric shocks of dopamine through you, scattering the cloud of anxiety. You feel your heart rate settling.

You smile up at her, calmed and tamed and happy.

“Hi Sof.” You hear how in love with her you are in your voice. It’s sickly sweet and perfect.

“Dinner’s here.”

You sit up like you’ve been struck by actual lightning, or an incredibly angry golf club straight to the stomach wielded by your hunger, and see that Madison had freed herself from your leg-hug at some point and is accepting a bag of spiced, sweet food that fills the apartment so easily with its heavy flavour.

“Oh, fuck yeah, gimme!” You call over to Madison who takes forever to walk over, so you impatiently meow at her to speed her up.

“That’s not what foxes sound like.” Madison responds.

“It’s what hungry Ivy sounds like!” You parry. “Now give. Give!”

Dinner marks the blending of afternoon into evening, the time only getting more relaxed and casual with the veritable feast you bought and then only half-ate. Full stomachs and soft company does wonders to finish the flip of the day from ‘horrible’ to ‘wonderful.’ You feel so happy. Happy and looked after.

Mads allows herself to become slightly more cuddly as time goes on, and the high-octane feel of Hades is eventually put away for an emulated, old Animal Crossing that Madison plays as she curls up against your arm.

You share a few knowing, appreciative smiles with Sofia over her warming up to you like a shelter puppy or a wet cat.

But it inevitably gets late. You all get tired. And you half expect Sofia to offer for Madison to stay - just for a warm bed tonight. Maybe something more when you’re all recovered tomorrow. But Sof sees your thoughts on your face and sends an expression back that’s half a shake of her head and half a shrug. It feels like she’s asked her in the past and it’s not been accepted.

You look back at Madison and see an warring twist of feelings from Mads who clearly doesn’t want to leave, and a deep, shaky fear from Flare that’s pulling her up to standing and towards the front door.

She’s awkward as she leaves, but you make sure she knows how much you appreciated her company and care tonight. It makes her smile a little lighter. Then she takes one last look at you two before closing the apartment door behind her, heading off into the dead of night.

The weight of it all makes it easy to push down. And the hollowness of the few days I’ve spent turning all the events over in my head makes everything desaturated.

Good.

Even panic, as my phone lights up with a message from someone I thought I’d never have to look at again, is a distant, sloughing landslide that barely rumbles along the horizon. I know the feeling is there, but my heart’s not really in it.

The text message announces an updated arrival time for the conversation I wish I wanted to avoid, but which I can’t bring myself to feel the indignation required to call off. She was bringing a bag with all the things I had been too upset to remember while I was being shouted out of home and warmth.

The thought is still there, though, that if I could bring myself to sink waist-deep into that slow-tidal swamp I could summon enough anger to still turn her away. I could plunge my arms into the depths of the freezing mud, brush past cold and rigid limbs of thoughts I’d yet to process, and pry open a vent wide enough to break the serenity I was currently sheltering in. I would scald myself in the process, breathe in who knew how many toxic compounds forged only in the abyssal depths of my soul-planet’s mantle, but I would be free of her. I would be feeling something.

And that would be worse than suffering through the coming meeting.

So I wait.

I study the wood grain of the cafe she chose, pushing the smell of coffee and pastries I suddenly can’t afford out of my nose, and put all my focus on the task of not letting my leg bounce. I don’t want her to see how stressed I am, because that might make her panic and run away, and I need my stuff. I need to be controlled, because she has so much power over me with no proof she wouldn’t misuse it. And after I trusted her so deeply three days ago.

I don’t think about it.

I’m pulled out of my thoughts as Natalie, a few minutes later than she said, very loudly struggles against the soft-close mechanism on the cafe’s front door. She’s stuck for so long, between the duffel bag so unevenly filled that it looks like it’s cosplaying a murder victim and the backpack so laden that it looks like a turtle shell threatening to smack into the side of the door frame, that the barista twists out from the cramped counter to pull the door open for her. She thanks him politely and quietly before looking for me.

I make myself emotionless as her eyes meet mine, because if I was to try and follow the script perfectly I would need to smile at her, like none of this is her fault and I’m genuinely happy to see her. If I tried I would start scowling or crying.

But Nat does smile. It’s twisted by guilt and shame, and the difficulty of not knocking anything over as she navigates the tiny cafe, but it’s a smile. Small but still there.

The air starts to feel thin. My panic gains more control. I smother it.

I watch as Natalie carefully places the bags at my feet, despite how heavy they are, and then proceeds to stand in the middle of the floor awkwardly. Dozens of emotions, hundreds of things to say, cross her face, but ultimately she turns to leave with an expression of sadness that is incredibly satisfying to see.

“You’re just going to leave?” My voice comes out hoarse and scratchy, too deep and heavy, and with too many little fragments of emotion stuck to it as it dragged itself through the trenches of my emotions. The words are chased by dozens more trying to tailgate through the gap the script has left, but I swallow them like glass shards and settle the ulcer of heartburn as Natalie turns back to be in surprise.

“You want me here?”

Want her here? Of course I don’t fucking want her here! She’s the reason all this happened in the first place! If she just didn’t tell our parents I wouldn’t be homeless right now, but that’s not the script. And I’m following the script so that if I want anything else out of that house I have someone to get it for me.

A flickering, breathy hope suffused her voice and I tried not to recoil from it as I drowned this new batch of anger.

I breathe, trying not to make it noticeably deep, and say, “I can’t talk with you if you leave.”

Natalie smiles at me like I’ve given her more grace than I have before drawing out the chair opposite me to start the task of squeezing herself in between the bags and the faded, wooden wall. She settles before growing anxious again, unsure of what to do next. Or, sure of what she needs to do but unsure of how it’ll be received. She worries with her sleeves underneath the table.

“I- Uh, I’m sorry,” She pauses, unknowingly giving me time to suffocate the rising tears at the apology I hadn’t let myself hope for while she processes something behind her thin-framed glasses and restless, brown eyes. She tries again, softly and delicately, like she’s expecting me to get angry at her, “What should I call you?”

I respond with silence for a moment.

“Just, um… I know I probably don’t deserve to,” She swallows so hard I almost trick myself into hearing the noise of it bobbing down her throat, “To know it, but- I just- I don’t want to keep calling you-”

“Nina!” I spit out the word, then repeat it softer. “Nina.”

The daunting, inevitable approach of my deadname made me blurt out the first name I could think up, but I despise the idea of our parents knowing it. It aches like a fresh burn blister in the sump of my heart where their love was supposed to be. It seeps watery pus and threatens to pop, but I cannot be out of control right now. I’ll probably change the name in a few days, but I’m stuck with it for this conversation.

But then she smiles, and her lips quirk like she wants to call it cute.

Getting to watch the anxious fear bleed from my sister is not something that happens very often. Even seeing her so anxious and hesitant to intrude on my space is strange, and caused me to force-correct the script. So, as the panic melts off her posture and that comfortable, steady expression starts to come back to her thin face, I can’t help but remember the previous times she’d let me see the unfinished side of her.

She had kept herself collected the whole way home, tears shed in tiny streams that barely touched her makeup and bare feet that braved the pavement for a quarter mile, but when she saw me it all fell apart. She had sent some messy texts which led me to sit out on the porch to wait for her to get home, but the sight of discarded stilettos and angry tears on my collected sister’s face was truly strange.

She never crumpled, her coherent anger was clear in the midnight silence, but it was a level of dishevelled that I had never seen from her before. I suspected that if our parents were anywhere nearby she would have closed off, so I gave her the space she needed to tell the story of a friendship betrayal that stank to high hell of breakup jealousy and didn’t tell the family about her being a lesbian the next day.

The minimum, for that level of trust.

I also didn’t tell them when she purposefully came out to me.

I didn’t tell them why she kept sneaking out or staying too late at her girlfriend’s place.

I didn’t let on when they wondered loudly if she would stop the strange, rebellious phase.

I didn’t out her.

But here she was, showing me the weird and shaky side to her, still letting me into this secluded part of her heart like I belonged there. Like it was all normal now.

“Nina,” She says the name and my heart betrays my head with a butterfly flip. “Nina, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I’m really sorry.”

She says it so earnestly, and I have no choice but to believe her. I know her too well, I know how she lies. But waiting for an apology was also not the issue. My anger and cloying hurt is not a result of Natalie not being sorry: I knew she didn’t want this to happen. The problem is she told them without knowing what the result would be.

I knew what they would say. I saw all the signs. It’s why I had started taking hormones in the closet, all black-market and self-monitored. I knew I’d get nothing close to help from them.

But I realised, after a few months of emotional changes, that I couldn’t do it alone. So I had told Natalie.

And Natalie had told our parents that night.

“What did you think would happen?” My words slip out before I can stop them while my heart hammers away at the half-beaten spot of my ribs just above it.

Dinner was forgotten immediately, the shouting and abuse sparked to full throttle. They tried their best to strong arm me back into someone they could stomach being around, but since the cat was already out of the bag I had no way of appeasing them that wouldn’t make my skin crawl. Oh, I could have tried, forced myself under the cookie cutter and let the blunt edge slice through my soul with all the oppressive force they knew how to apply so well. I could have made an attempt. But I would have killed myself very quickly.

They didn’t see my fear of death, though, they only saw me disobeying them. So they quickly cornered me, offering that same conditional existence or homelessness. I took the obvious way out.

“I don’t know,” Nat’s confidence had taken a hit, she had obviously expected the next part of the script I never voiced.

“Why did you out me?”

“I hated them saying Seb- Uh, your deadname. It hurt.”

I felt my anger slowly waking up from its smothered grave I had forced it into. “So you corrected them.”

“I thought it would go okay…”

“How the hell was it supposed to go okay? Why do you think I never told them?!”

The script was completely ruined, but I could feel the itch of sulphur in the back of my nostrils as I breathe out. There was no stopping this. My heart felt like the wound it took that night had been sewn shut with barbed wire.

“I’ve never heard them talk like that-”

“Because you’re the golden child!” I felt my voice rising. Everyone in the cafe would be able to listen in if they wanted to, but fuck it. “You’ve suited their image of you since day one! You excel at college, you have a thriving social network that behaves enough for them to let the socially-acceptable rebellions slide, and you have been the image of mum’s beauty since you hit high school. You’re her ego and dad’s dangling bait for a future, rich son-in-law because their actual son turned out to be an utter failure! They can’t risk your future by traumatising you.”

“That’s not very fair…” Natalie’s voice sat so quiet in the space between us. Her eyes were turned down to the table I was studying earlier, covered in part by her chestnut curls. They made it hard to see her expression, but I hoped it was miserable.

I drop my volume back to normal, “I’ve always been a failed project. Something to salvage for what little value I can still offer. What you heard then, Natalie, was what their disappointment sounds like, and they’ve never been disappointed in you.”

Nat was silent for a while, and the quiet let the nauseous weight of my bone-deep fear settle back in place, the weight of it enough to close the gaps that my outburst seeped through. The feeling that I had overdone it was just as heavy, but for that brief moment the cyclical feedback loop of confused anger and hopelessness had some way to escape. Relief and dread in equal parts filled me.

I wished I had said it to my parents instead, the full-body flinch I saw from Natalie quickly lost its satisfaction, but I had said it and some base, animalistic part of my brain was relieved it was no longer carrying some of the burden. The dread set in when I realised I was pushing Natalie away. Something equally instinctual hated the idea of turning my nose up at the olive branch she was extending.

I was probably silent for too long because Natalie shook off some of her wounded expression and began half-prying herself out of her spot. She was thin where it helped, and athletic and flexible where she really needed, but her coordination had taken a holiday as she still almost tripped over the tangle of bag straps and chair legs. I expected her to leave, but she took a steadying breath that was far more shaky than her outward coordination had already betrayed, and asked me something I truly didn’t expect.

“What do you want to drink?”

Her tone was as casual as anything, like I hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary in the past five minutes, and she was looking over at the counter of the cafe like I was something she was safe to not be constantly watching. It was weird, but very effective at getting under my guard.

I wished, when I responded, that I hadn’t sounded like I was halfway to tears.

“Uh… Whatever you’re getting.”

Nat studied me for a moment, worrying at her bottom lip in a way I knew would stain her teeth slightly with the black lipstick she never leaves the house without, but then suddenly moved away to order.

I thought about our mother while she was gone.

The woman is white as a sheet at her healthiest, cursed to always burn and never tan in the sun, and stares at the world through sharp features. She floods her face with colour and softens her sharp lines where she can. She dyes her hair to look light, she wears colours that make her stand out just enough to blend in, and she makes herself look soft and pliable in any way she can, because that’s how dad likes his women - manipulable.

Natalie is almost a carbon copy of her. But her hair curls and shines in a healthy way that contrasts the bleach-damaged, bright-blonde strands that have survived too much abuse, and desaturates her face with pale foundation and rich black accents to make her look sharp and observant. It’s a look that suits her, and in combination with her thin-wire, silver, round glasses and mostly-black outfits she makes herself visible in a group. She loves the attention.

Me on the other hand, I look like our dad, which hasn’t stopped hurting to think about since I noticed.

Heterozygous fuckery from genetics of Eastern European origin with some strong roots in the Mediterranean sun and Black Sea saltspray left me with tan skin, a square face, and an inclination to appear dangerously thin. I ate plenty as a teenager, but it all went to my height first, so I had been trying to eat enough to both getting some form around my skeleton and for HRT to make the form what I wanted it to be, but now that I’m not sure where my next meal is coming from that tactic is kinda screwed. I dodged some bullets, though. I got enough of mum’s face structure to avoid dad’s bio-coded scowl, and while his hair texture is a bitch to deal with I didn’t get his colour. I was grateful for any silver linings I got. And it made me look a little similar to Natalie, if you wish to squint.

If I looked more like her I would be stunning.

And I’d show off the freckles she got from dad and religiously covers with foundation.

My yearning for better genetics got interrupted by Natalie coming back with a table number and folding herself back into her spot with far more grace than she had while getting out of it. She sent a small smile my way before thinking better of it and stared at a random point in the cafe instead.

“Thank you, for the coffee.” My words made her flinch a little bit, though it seemed to have shaken free some of her sullen anxiety.

I couldn’t let her stay like that. The whole thing was hurting me a lot, but I had a chance to make her feel better. Something in me feels a little cleaner afterwards.

Nat took a breath and started forming thoughts several times, before finally, “I thought it would be different.”

“I don’t know how you thought that.” I spoke the same words as earlier, but I decided to be kind as I said them.

“They know I’m gay.”

I scoffed before I could stop myself. “As if. They’re probably just ignoring the obvious signs.”

“I told them months ago. They’re okay with it.”

Oh, that stung really badly. So they were fine with Natalie not fitting the mould, they’d change the conditions of their love for her, but for me? No, I was a failure already, falling outside of the painted lines on too many counts. They treated me being trans like a signal flare, a symptom of something too fundamentally wrong with me to fix.

“It’s been…” She sighed, “Work - and I probably should have seen that as the sign it was - but I’ve made progress. But they accepted what I taught them and seemed to absorb it. We’re working on undoing the anti-trans stuff.”

“This… doesn’t explain how you thought it would be okay to out me.” I didn’t know if I was getting angrier or feeling more isolated. It was a terrible mix. “This is honestly just evidence that you should have known better.”

Nat cringed away from my quiet scathing, almost choking on her words. “I- Yeah- Yeah… But they were willing to change for me. Willing to learn. I thought they’d be better than that, but I think they’ll come around. I can turn them around for you.”

“No. You can’t.”

My voice was steeped in painful confidence. The authority in my mind sat like an iron spike pierced through my spine, and weighed down my face into a copy of our dad’s immovable scowl. I glared at her without much hate to her, but with all the well-earned disdain our parents had put in me.

“They might…” Gods, her voice was so quiet. So unsure of itself. I make my expression and my voice softer for her while she dropped her gaze to her hands wringing around each other in her lap.

“No, Natalie, you can’t. As much as they want to be politically aligned with you, they don’t really know how to do that past performance. They want you to think they’re accepting, and to do that for how they’ve treated lesbians in the past they genuinely truly do need to change. If you believe they are accepting, then they are. But they aren’t accepting of anything else. They’re able to fake the rest without you noticing.”

“I- That’s-” She didn’t have the energy to continue her interruption.

“Let me put it another way,” I soften my voice further, “They aren’t being forced head-first into their biases against trans people the way their conditional love for you is forcing them to face the first half of the acronym. They’re bound by those conditions just as much as you are, though they have the ability to change them. Me? I’m already outside the bounds of what they can accept. They’ve been treating me like a burden and a financial drain for years. A charity case, from people who think charity is an unbeneficial investment instead of actual kindness.”

“I don’t want to think about them like that…”

“I know you don’t, but I have no choice.” I had no idea how I was keeping so calm.

“I could still try!”

Natalie looked up at me with eyes so wide and hopeful, wishing with all her heart that I could come back home with her. That I could still be in her life.

“It’s not going to work, Nat. They made it very clear in their texts who that spot at home was for.”

Before Nat could speak again we were interrupted by the very silently-apologetic barista, who clearly knew they were interrupting something important, who placed two mugs and a bacon and egg roll on the table before politely running away. I look at the items, confused, knowing I only asked to get the same as Natalie, but the drinks are clearly different.

Nat sniffed, fought off tears and a hysterical, badly-timed giggle, and slid the chai to her side while explicitly not touching the cappuccino or the roll. She mumbled something about messing up the order, but not having any room to eat.

I recognised the tactic, and it made my eyes sting with fierce and warm gratitude. I brought the food close and slid my unlocked phone across to Natalie.

“Take a look if you want.” I bit into the roll and enjoyed the taste of barbeque sauce and egg yolk that tasted a little muted. I knew the flavour was rich, but my stress wasn’t letting go. I still let the tiny pleasure seep into my voice, “Fuck, how did they produce you? You’re so nice…”

The omnipresent taste of tar and bog-mud that had been clinging onto the back of my throat, promising or threatening some violent purging of my stomach at all times, was slowly replaced by something genuinely soft and nice and still so vulnerable as I worked my way through the gifted food.

* * *

I put my mug down as gently as I can with my subtly shaking fingers and pick up the phone that was passed over to me. It feels wrong that I’m let into her secret world so easily, after what I had done to her, but I saw a side of our parents that I had never seen before last week, and I needed to know what was behind that mask.

I pulled up messages and was immediately met with the juxtaposition of me at the top with a normal photo from a few years ago and two conversations beneath with pitch-black profile pictures and the titles ‘bitchcunt’ and ‘dickheadsucker.’ I looked up at Nina for… I don’t know, awareness? Awareness of what she had called them in her contacts, but she was devouring the breakfast roll I got her with all the immaculate, hammer-space ability she has to inhale food at any given pace. My reflex to defend our parents was easily overridden by how grateful she clearly was to get fed.

I turned back to the texts, opening up our mum’s first. Dad could be harsh, and over reactive, so maybe if I started with mum I could still believe they were good people.

I’m not met with kindness.

Where have you gone? Come back. You don’t have anywhere to go. Why would you choose that over us? What did we do to you for you to choose this? What did I do wrong? I thought I raised you smarter than this. Come home, Sebastian. We can talk about this, find a way through. Please stop hurting your body. Is it because you couldn’t go to UW? If you come home we can figure out remote attendance. We can’t help you if you don’t come home. We can’t pay for your education if you leave. Please come back. Who did this to you? Who told you this would be okay to do to yourself?

The messages had all come in one quick flood, a few minutes after the argument I had felt was loud enough for the neighbours to listen in to, and it showed a level of disconnect with Nina that really hurt to see.

I really hated reading her deadname.

It was the same pain I had used for the mistake I desperately wished I could take back. It was that heartburn reflex that made me cringe.

But I had been trying so hard to get them to be better in the one way I knew they weren’t great, so I spoke before I thought and betrayed my new sister.

I kept reading.

There was a large gap in time before the next messages, and she came back with three links to various articles: a study into increased cancer risk for hormone replacement therapy; a news article about high suicide rates in the trans community; and a biographic article of a detransitioner talking about how difficult it was to deal with the long-term effects of HRT. The pie graph from the middle article had been conveniently taken from the article as well by our mother and sent after the links, all bright, dangerous colours and showing very little of the pie chart as ‘safe.’ I immediately knew the pitfalls she fell into, and knew that this collection was only convincing to her because she wanted it to be.

I felt so angry at her, but I still looked at the texts that followed.

You’re damaging your body. Irreparably. You’re taking on so much risk. It’s so hard to undo. So many people kill themselves rather than try. Please stop while you still can. You’re never going to look like a real woman, that will follow you everywhere you go. Why would you want that anyway? Being a woman is terrible. You never get anything you want easily, and no-one respects you. Natalie manages, but I grieve for her every day.

I almost put my phone down at the mention of me, used to try and get Nina to fold herself back into a box that would hurt her. I wanted to stop reading. But I owed my sister for how much I’d hurt her.

You had the chance she couldn’t get, and you’re trying to throw it away. Please come back. I wish I could have raised you better but there’s always still time. It’s never too late. I want my son back.

It wasn’t the tone she ever used with me. The coiling, backtracking bargaining was so alien. But the more I read the more I could clearly imagine the words falling from her lips.

And then it was done. Not a single message more since that night. Not an ounce more effort.

I swapped to ‘dickheadsucker.’

You’re not a girl. You can’t ever be, so stop pretending. You’re pathetic, running away like this… I’ve always tried hard to be your role model, to show you the kind of man you should be, but you’ve ignored each and every lesson I’ve tried to teach you. Your degree has been a waste. Mum has worked hard, struggled to help me pay for it since day one, and all it’s done is turn you into a

I stopped reading. The slur sits caught in the corner of my eye, burnt into the rods and cones that picked up the letters before my focus could catch up. I never want to think of Nina like that.

You’ve made your mother cry. She’s distraught. She’s always been too soft. Why would you do this to her - why are you pushing her away? She poured so much effort into you, despite how much you’ve disappointed her. You need to take responsibility for this. It’s your job, as our eldest, to set an example for Natalie. She’s already a dyke, she can’t think this is okay.

What the fuck? So even my effort into making them accept me was wasted? I couldn’t even change them?

No wonder Nina had no chance.

I sometimes wish she was older than you. Maybe that way you would have turned out closer to okay. We only have one daughter, and she’s so much better than you.

I look up to my sister across the table.

She’s finished the bacon and egg roll I ‘accidentally’ ordered and is halfway through her cappuccino. The comfort of the coffee, ordered that way because she can never quite trust most cafes to do anything else well, has drawn a weak, slight smile to her lips. Her rich brown eyes and expressive stare have been studying me as I read, and maybe the karma I was experiencing was entertaining. She had certainly earned the view.

“Finished?” Nina asked.

“Not quite.” My voice comes out pathetic and mumbled. She deserved better than that, better than my skimpy bravery could muster. But she wasn’t getting anything else. She deserved what she could get.

I took one last look at her face, trying not to see how the golden light streaming through the window was only made more beautiful by the gorgeous tan of her skin, and read the last message from our dad.

You can’t run away from this forever, Sebastian. We’ll have a space for you ready for when you’re willing to face this, once you’ve stopped taking those meds. We want to support you, son. Don’t turn your nose up at us.

I disagreed. She would run and run and never look back. I knew she’d be so much better off without them. I just wish I had been able to get her there in a safer way.