Atticus and Otto hadn't been doing a roleplay that day, and thank god for that. They were just visiting a bookstore near the local college and Otto caught the hiccups. These things happened, and Atticus did their best not to hover too obviously near Otto, who had found and was getting absorbed in books about whaling or pirates or some similar nautical-hyperfixation-scratching material. Atticus had come here planning to aimlessly browse, but it took them a while to get the willpower to move to a different aisle, and even then, they found themself listening for their husband's hiccups rather than actually absorbing anything about the books they were ostensibly looking at.

If they hadn't been so busy trying (and apparently failing) to look casual while their husband was hiccuping nearby, Atticus probably would have felt the eyes that were on them. Instead, they only realized they were being watched when they were actually accosted. "Hey." 

When Atticus looked up, they saw that there was a skinny black girl nearby, casually dressed and her hands in her pockets. She looked like the right age to be one of the college students, though the reading glasses dangling from a chain around her neck confused matters. It wasn't surprising for Atticus to have to look up at someone, but she was definitely taller than average, about halfway between their height and Otto's. Atticus wasn't certain of her gender at first, and not just for the obvious reason of trying to avoid making assumptions, but because her hair was nearly buzzed, and her clothes were fairly androgynous. Most noticeable to them, though, was the fact that she seemed to be glaring down, eyebrows lowered and lips twisted into a frown.

Apparently she either noticed however Atticus reacted to that or was accustomed to scaring people, because she pointed at herself after giving them a wave. "Don't worry, I'm not upset. My face just looks like this. I'm Olivia Elizabeth Jones. Is it okay if I ask you some weird questions?"

Atticus blinked, then turned more fully to face her, wishing that their brain weren't still half-occupied by trying to hear their husband's hiccups nearby. "Well, you've already asked at least one of those, so go ahead, I suppose. Is this for some study or an assignment?"

Olivia shook her head. "No. I just noticed you and think you might be relevant to my best friend."

"'Relevant'?"

She looked away, and it occurred to Atticus that, even though she had seemed at first to be glaring at them, she never actually made eye contact at any point. "Maybe 'similar' would be a better word. So, you're queer, right? I am too. She/her by the way."

"Uh...yes. Yeah." Atticus was still floundering a bit with this interaction. "Atticus, they/them." They held out their hand, but ended up letting it fall back to their side when Olivia didn't seem to notice them do so.

"Nice to meet you," she said, and her flat voice gave Atticus no hint as to whether or not she was being sincere. She was currently standing on her toes, looking over the tops of some of the bookshelves in the direction of Otto. After a moment, she fell back to her heels and focused on an area to Atticus' left. "Is the big guy with the hiccups your partner?"

Atticus hoped to god that hearing the word wasn't making them blush, because they couldn't imagine having to explain that to this stranger. "Yeah, he is. That's Otto, my husband."

Olivia nodded, her expression still not changing. "I thought so, yeah. Not the husband part, just the partner part." She paused and tapped her chin. "Hm. If you're anything like Susanna—oh, Susanna's my friend, by the way. Ah, fuck it, I'll just ask." Atticus wasn't offended, but it did surprise them slightly to hear her curse so casually while talking to a stranger. "But please don't run off and hide in a bathroom."

"What? Why would I—"

"You like it when he gets the hiccups, right? Your husband." Atticus felt their jaw hanging open. Olivia shrugged in front of them. "There's no wrong answer. Including 'fuck off', that's definitely an option. But if you say 'no', I probably won't believe you."

After a moment, Atticus whirled around, seeing that there was nobody else in the aisle with them and nobody obviously in listening distance. It took a few false starts for them to respond, though. "Why...do you ask?"

"Because you're a queer person who's an actual for-real adult and probably knows your shit more than someone my age does, and my best friend is queer and has a hiccup fetish and a lot of big feelings about it. When I noticed you, I wondered if maybe talking to you could be helpful for her."

Atticus wasn't sure what response they expected, but it wasn't that. After a moment, they glanced in the direction of their hiccuping husband, then turned back to Olivia. "I'll get back to you on that?"

She nodded. "I'll be in the squishy chairs over that way. I hope you tell me if it's a definite no, though. I hate getting ghosted." And then she walked off without another word.

After a long moment, Atticus shook their head, then speedwalked back to the aisle Otto was reading in. As cute as their husband was when he was hyperfixating on something (and also hiccuping, but that was a separate issue), Atticus needed a second set of eyes right now, so they tugged on Otto's elbow, grabbing his attention. "Otto. Look over there. Do you see the girl in that chair?"

Otto stared down at Atticus, then looked over their head. The chair that Olivia had flopped into was visible from this angle (albeit barely), and she seemed to notice the two of them looking and gave a quick wave. "Y–hnk! yes?"

"Well, that confirms that she's not some sort of anxiety-induced hallucination at least," Atticus sighed. "Otto, I just had one of the weirdest conversations of my life."

Otto's eyebrows arched as a hiccup knocked his head back. "Given–nnk! who you're ma–hurk! married to and frien–hnk! friends with, tha–huk! that's saying somethin–ngk! What d–huck'l! did she say?"

"She..." After a moment of glancing around, Atticus spoke quietly. "She asked me if I liked it when you get the hiccups."

Otto's eyes widened and he took a quick glance back at her before turning back to Atticus. "Really? hmpk! Out of nowhere?"

"Entirely out of nowhere! Am I that obvious?"

"I don't th-hnk! think so. No-hok! N-not right now hup! at least." Otto didn't sound particularly sure, though. And Atticus wasn't confident that he even could be. He wasn't exactly an objective observer. "Wh-huk! What did you s-nkt!-s-say?"

"Well, I asked why she wanted to know and she..." Atticus motioned for Otto to lean in closer and stood up on their toes to whisper into his ear. "She said she had a friend who has a hiccup fetish? And 'big feelings' about it? And that talking to me could be helpful for her?"

"...oh. Hk'lp!"

"Right." Atticus lowered back down and rubbed the bridge of their nose. "So...I don't suppose you have any idea how to respond to this, do you?" After a long moment, Otto shrugged and shook his head. "Didn't think so." Atticus took a few deep breaths, then turned to Otto. "Let me get some sugar and salt, okay? Whatever I'm going to do about this, I'm definitely going to need your help with it." Otto nodded and followed along with Atticus as they moved towards the café area.

Once Otto was cured, the two of them approached the squishy chairs, and the young woman looked up from where she was sitting cross-legged in one of them, reading glasses balanced on her nose and a book with a dragon on the cover in her lap. "Hi again. Have you decided how you're going to respond? Telling me to fuck off is still on the table." Her eyes flicked up to Otto and she nodded at him before looking away. "I'm Olivia Elizabeth Jones, she/her." Otto jerked back slightly without a hiccup, and the coincidence of her name abruptly occurred to Atticus, something they couldn't believe they'd missed. Apparently this woman didn't miss it, though, as her head tilted slightly before she continued. "Some people call me 'Liv' though. You can do that if you want."

"Uh...Otto, he/him." Otto said after a moment. "Atticus told me that you asked them about your friend?"

"Yeah, Susanna. Where do I start with her?" Olivia completely closed her book and put it up on a table, taking off her glasses and staring up at the ceiling. "She's queer, she's my best friend, and she's into the same thing you are. Don't worry, nobody's around and listening, but I won't get specific here in case you don't want me to. And she's got a whole stupid complex about it. She's gotten better since she started dating Maya, and I think Kiran'll help too—oh, those are her girlfriends, long story—but I know she still gets all up in her head about it. And I just saw you and noticed you watching your husband and thought 'oh, you're like her and you've been alive for way longer, so maybe you could talk to her or something?'" She shrugged, rocking back and forth on her tailbone. "I dunno. If not, no big deal."

After a beat or two, Otto sat down in a nearby chair, pulling another over and gesturing for Atticus to join him. "Alright," he said, "let's start over from the beginning and try again. I'm Otto, he/him, and I'm a watchmaker. This is my spouse Atticus, they/them. They're a writer. And you are..."

Olivia hummed and nodded. "Olivia E. Jones. She/her. I'm a sophomore at the college nearby, and I'm majoring in undecided." Atticus couldn't quite conceal a small snort. "I'm autistic, and I like to people watch to learn the secrets of the neurotypicals. Over the years I've gotten really good at it, so I notice a lot of things most people don't. I also know that my best friend has a thing about hiccups, so when I saw someone had them, I was thinking about her, so I was already primed to notice if someone was acting similar to how she would. I also remembered that I saw you two come in together, so I knew that Atticus wasn't just being creepy. You didn't look like you were being creepy, but I also specifically knew you weren't."

"Okay, is that some kind of dragon detective novel that you're reading?" Atticus asked. "Because that would make this entire thing make slightly more sense."

Olivia looked at the book as if she hadn't seen it before. "No, but now I kind of wish it was. It's dragon erotica. It's not bad. I've definitely read worse dragon erotica."

After a long moment, Atticus pressed a palm to their face and started laughing. "Hang on, hang on," they forced out between snickers, "what exactly makes it good dragon erotica?"

She shrugged. "I really like the characters so far. The dynamic between the two love interests is fun, and they aren't dicking around with a bunch of will-they-won't-they bullshit. The plot's basically an excuse, but I think that works better for me personally than when the writer gets so distracted by the plot and worldbuilding that they never get to the sex. That happened once with a pirate book. It spent like a whole chapter talking about the ship's rigging, and not in a BDSM way. Actually, you were looking at books about ships, right?" She glanced at Otto. "You might like that one."

"Were..." Otto paused. "Were the descriptions of the rigging accurate?" 

Olivia pursed her lips. "I dunno. Gimme a minute, I can go find it and we can see." She got up and jogged off into the bookstore, leaving Otto and Atticus behind. The book she came back with, however, wound up starting a multi-hour conversation between the three of them about the physics of sailing vessels, how necessary realism was in fiction, and the decline of paintings of shirtless men on romance novel covers. By the time that Otto and Atticus left, Olivia had requested their contact information so she could learn more about ships from Otto and, in her words, "gain the ability to care about Moby Dick."

Once they were in their car, Otto turned to face Atticus. "I can see why you said that was the weirdest conversation in your life now."

"Is this how kids today behave? Do I need to get a cane and start shaking it at them?"

Otto snorted. "Not just yet, Atty. You don't get to be old before I get there." He sighed. "But really, how are you feeling about all that?"

Atticus tapped their foot against the car's floor, crossing their arms thoughtfully. "I feel like she made some very big assumptions about how well I have my shit together. And the degree to which I don't have a complex about my kinks."

"Have you ever met anyone else like you?"

Atticus shook their head. "No. I haven't."

Otto pursed his lips. "Would you want to?" Atticus groaned loudly and covered their face. "...would you have wanted to when you were her age?"

After a long moment, Atticus sighed. "Yes. Yes, I would have. I'm going to have to have an even more awkward conversation to be a good person, aren't I?"

"No. You're already a good person." Atticus rolled their eyes, but didn't object any further. Otto slowly pulled the car out of park and started to drive out of the lot. "...but I do think you might have the chance to do something that could be helpful for someone. And I think it has the potential to help you, too."

Atticus sighed. "Fine. Just promise me that you'll never walk up to someone and start a conversation like that."

Otto laughed. "Of course not. I'll be too busy talking about ship rigging. And not in a BDSM way." Atticus let out a laugh too, and they watched out the car window as the surreal bookstore encounter faded in the rearview mirror.

-------------

"YOU DID FUCKING WHAT, OLIVIA?!"

"Asked the queer person who's also into hiccups if they wanted to talk to you."

My eye was twitching. I could feel my eye twitching. I could feel my brain twitching. And goddamn Maya cackling from my bed behind me wasn't helping. "What unholy fucking demon possessed you to do that!?"

"The unholy demon of caring about your mental and sexual wellbeing." Olivia couldn't even be bothered to look guilty while she was lying on her bed reading fucking Moby Dick for some reason. "They're both cool. I still hate this book, but Otto's gotten me closer to actually liking it."

"The big guy isn't the one I'm fucking concerned about!" I ripped my pillow out from under Maya's elbows so that I could scream into it, and behind me I could hear her faceplant into my bed. It didn't stop her laughing. Because of course it fucking didn't. "Look, what if the little guy's a fed?"

"A five-foot-nothing nonbinary fed with a hiccup fetish?"

"How are you so sure, though?"

Olivia rolled her eyes. "Because I know you. And because you're not getting set up by middle-aged men and enbies who are trying to arrest people with harmless kinks for no reason. I promise that you will literally never get sent to jail for liking hiccups, Susanna."

I crossed my arms and glared back at the ground. "Can't promise I won't get smote."

"See, you think you're joking or being glib when you say that, but you're actually not," Olivia said, closing the book around a finger.

"Maybe she can't promise it, but I can." Before I could figure out how to respond, Maya had suddenly flopped onto me from behind, weighing me down with her head and her boobs and everything. "'Cause if god hasn't smited my slutty ass yet, he's got a looooong line of people still ahead before he gets to you. But seriously, Susie Q, what's so scary about it?"

I grumbled and struggled against her grip on me, but this was one of those times she didn't actually let me go. "What's so scary about talking to a fucking stranger about my weird fucking fetish? Are you serious?"

"I mean, yeah. Heard of the internet lately? People do that shit all the time." Maya shrugged above me.

"Well this won't be on the internet, Maya! It'll be in real life!" I huffed.

"She's scared of it for the same reason she's still scared to tell Kiran. She's scared because being scared about it is all she's ever done." Olivia was right, but I gave her the finger anyway. "That's why I wanted this to happen. So you can learn how to be something that isn't terrified about it."

"I just—" After a moment I pulled one of Maya's hands over my mouth and screamed again. "Fuck you, Olivia. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you."

"You'll thank me later." God, I hoped she wasn't right about that.

"You don't gotta be afraid, Susie. We'll be there too. Like, seriously, what's your stupid worst case scenario? That this is some anti-fetish sting operation? You think I wouldn't punch a fed for you?"

I pulled her hand away from my mouth. "You'd punch a fed for someone you met two minutes ago." She shrugged behind me again. After a moment, I sighed and let myself droop in her arms. "Fine. It's done. I'm not gonna make you into a liar and not show up. You might have to fucking tie me up and drag me into the car, though."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Olivia said, opening the book again. "Can you believe this thing has an entire chapter about how white the whale is?"

"Fuck that, read me the bit about the sperm party again," Maya said, and I let her drag me back onto my bed with her while I thought angry thoughts. Olivia was probably right. I probably would thank her for it once it was all said and done. But for now I was going to let myself marinate in impotent rage for the fuck of it.

Susanna Butler

Seen here with her hood uncharacteristically lowered.

Olivia E. Jones

Seen here happy and having a perfectly good time.

Maya Heffernan

Seen here briefly holding still.

Kiran Mandal

Seen here in a moment of relative lack of anxiety.

(The hand in the second one is half of a heart, but I kind of meant for it to represent her hands twisting into weird shapes sometimes when she stims)

And just for funzies...

Here's a height chart I made with this website, using silhouettes in the range of what I think their actual silhouettes would look like.

"Hey, Liv!" I said while we were lying in my bed together. "Now that I know about Susie's cute hiccup thing, can I know the full story behind you and her?"

Liv sat up and pursed her lips for a moment. "I guess you can now, yeah. Well, it started in preschool. I only remember parts of it because we were so young, but the main thing I remember is that it was the first place where a lot of people started getting sick of my hiccups and telling me that. Teachers and other kids. They'd do things like try and make me drink water or hold my breath, even though I told them I knew that nothing worked. They didn't listen to me. And every time a new person tried, they didn't listen to me either. But I could feel that Susanna was watching me. She always was, but she never talked to me, and she never tried to cure me. So eventually I just came up and asked her why she was staring at me, and she yelled 'You're scary!' and ran away. So I guessed that that made sense. I assumed it was a racism thing." It was kind of crazy to me to imagine a four-year-old being able to "assume it was a racism thing".

"But one day we had a substitute teacher who was really really bothered by my hiccups. And she kept trying to cure me, and after water and holding my breath, they got weirder, and she kept touching me and trying to drag me places and I started crying, and then Susanna yelled at her. She yelled about how nothing cures me and said that if she didn't stop trying to, she'd beat the teacher up. So Susanna and I both got sent to the corner. I asked her why she was scared of me, and she said it was because she was scared of the hiccups. When I asked her why she'd never tried to cure me then, she said that just because she was scared of them didn't mean that they shouldn't exist. And then out of nowhere she just yelled 'I'm gonna be brave and face my fears!' After that, we were best friends. She was always around me, especially when I had the hiccups, and if anybody tried to cure me or give me crap about them, she'd yell at them or hit them. Susanna got in trouble a lot.

"At the end of that year, my older brother got expelled because he was too autistic for them, so he and I were both sent to public school. That was probably a good thing, and I was happy to go to the same school he was, but I didn't realize Susanna wouldn't be going there too until it was too late. We left the church too, so I couldn't find her through that either. So all through elementary and middle school, I still had the same experiences, but no Susanna to protect me or get angry at people for me. That's part of why I realized being honest was important. Even if a lot of people didn't listen to me when I said that nothing cured me or that I didn't like being touched, some people would listen, and they'd know that I always said that, so I'd have a sort of paper trail. A court record, I guess. That's also why I learned how to get pretty good at muffling my hiccups. I don't like doing that when I don't have to, though, so I usually avoid it these days.

"Then in high school, I saw Susanna again. As soon as I did, I hugged her, because she said I could hug her any time. She was really confused and angry, but when I told her who I was, she remembered me right away. I was confused too because she acted like she didn't want me around, but then I remembered how she'd stared at me and run away from me when we were little, and I figured that she might just be scared of me again. But she'd decided to face her fear then, so she'd probably do it again now. And we had a bunch of classes together anyway, so I was going to spend time with her. I tried to reconnect with her with things I remembered her liking. Some of them worked, like talking to her about computer games. Or video games more broadly. But others didn't work, and I didn't understand why until later. Like, one of her favorite things to do when we were little was to play doctor when I had the hiccups and give me examinations. I never minded that, but when I asked if she'd like to do that again, she nearly exploded. I knew it wasn't really age-appropriate, but that still didn't make any sense to me until I learned about her hiccup fetish.

"Even though she acted differently, she was still the same Susanna Jane Butler I remembered. She'd get between me and anyone who tried to give me shit about my hiccups. Actually, she wouldn't let people give me shit about anything, even when I was the one who was wrong. That's something I still feel like I have to be careful about; not letting her act like I'm always right. Or convince me of that. When I say that I'm always right, I'm mostly being facetious, but there's a part of me that really believes it. And I think there's a part of her that really believes it too.

"She was really serious about catholicism still and got into arguments all the time with people about gay marriage and abortion. She's really embarrassed about that now. I was sort of able to guide her away from that. For the abortion thing, I ended up finding out that restricting access doesn't actually decrease the number of abortions that happen. Since she actually thought it was about wanting people to not kill babies, that made a huge difference to her, and it got her started changing her mind. Gay marriage was harder because there's nothing objective or numbery about that. It was also harder because she's gay, so I think she figured that if it was something about her, that something was probably bad. It's fucked up. Telling her I was bisexual didn't help. It just made her try to convince me to only ever date men and tell me I was lucky I had that option." Olivia frowned. "Susanna can be a real asshole when she gets envious of people."

"Jesus. So she was way fucking worse in high school." Imagining her like that, I knew I would have hated her fucking guts. "Uh, not that I'm not happy you did, but why the fuck did you keep hanging out with her?"

"Because she was still my best friend. I'd never had anyone who was as good a friend as her. And she was still a good friend, even if it wasn't the same as before and even if there was a lot more harder stuff than there used to be. She'd still do things like protect me from people who were mean, share her food with me, give me her sweaters when it was cold, and sing songs for me when I got overloaded. She's always been good at helping me with sensory overload. Part of it is probably that her little sister has some cognitive issues and has meltdowns kind of like mine, but she was good at it in pre-k too, so I think she might also just have always had a knack for it. Susanna's a person who always tries to do what she thinks is right. She tries way too hard a lot of the time, and when she's wrong it's really annoying and stupid, but when she's right and when she's helping people, it makes her someone really really special.

"When I learned about her hiccup thing, I don't remember exactly what set it off. It seemed like nothing to me. Susanna would probably remember it better. But at some point in junior year, Susanna flipped out when I tried to hug her, then ran off and locked herself in a bathroom. That's kind of her default panic response, I think. When I found her, she was crying. She only cried once or twice when we were in pre-k, and I'd never seen her cry in high school, so I knew that something was serious and bad. She said that I shouldn't come near her and that she was bad and evil. I told her that was stupid, and she yelled at me that that was because I didn't know the truth. So I told her that I knew that she was gay and she had a crush on me and that was fine. I was right, but, um..." It was rare for Olivia to use a filler word, and her flat face twisted into a small cringe. "That didn't help. That didn't help at all. So we fought a bunch. She actually had some grievances stored up. She doesn't do that anymore, especially not to me, because that's something I fear a lot. But she'd let small things that she felt were unfair for her to be upset about build up and they burst out. I started crying too, and crying almost always gives me the hiccups, so she came out of the stall she'd been hiding in and tried to run away, but I grabbed her and asked if she wanted me to leave her alone. She didn't say yes or no, she just screamed. And then we both got taken to the principal's office. The principal tried to get me to drink water, and she said 'That never fucking cures her you stupid piece of shit!' So she got suspended. I just got detention.

"I missed her like crazy the whole time she was away. And when she came back, I told her that. She told me that she missed me too, but that I needed to know the truth about her and she'd tell me after school. After school, we climbed to the top of a tree so we could have some privacy. Once we were there, she told me about her hiccup fetish, and she broke down crying, talking about how she'd been using me and doing bad things to me even back when we were little, and by never trying to cure me and letting me hug her while I had the hiccups, she was objectifying me and abusing me and...honestly, at some point I stopped hearing the words. Because she was saying a lot of things, but underneath it was really just 'I'm a bad person and I made you dirty' over and over and over again. So I told her that she wasn't a bad person and that she didn't make me dirty. I told her that I didn't feel like she used me, and I didn't mind if I turned her on. I even kind of liked it now that I knew about it. And I guess after that we were sort of dating.

"It didn't take me very long after that to realize I was aromantic. It was honestly a little frustrating because I knew I wanted to be with her, but I couldn't really give her the thing she wanted. I didn't know a lot about polyamory back then, so I didn't realize we had options, but I knew I couldn't give her what she'd want from a 'girlfriend,' so I told her I couldn't be that. I was really clear that we could still have sex though. It took her a while to understand that. But once we were actually fully having sex, I really liked it, and I've liked doing that with her ever since. So she's not my girlfriend and I'm not hers, but she's still my best friend. And we have sex. A lot."

"...damn." I scratched the back of my head. "I knew you two were kind of married, but that's some soulmate-type shit."

"That's stupid, but I get what you mean." I snorted. "I'm an atheist. Susanna says she is too, but she's really just an uncatholic. That's a really specific kind of thing. And to the extent that she still believes in god, I think she might believe something similar. That we might have some kind of divine connection or something. I don't think that. But I know that I love her, and I've never loved anyone else more than her. And I know that I like spending time with her more than anyone else." She took a slow, deep breath. "I've been learning that she isn't enough though. Not for me. And I'm not enough for her. And that's scary. But learning it is a good thing. Because we shouldn't just have each other. We should have other people. Other people we share, and other people who are just for us. Even if we do spend our whole lives together like I'd like to, I'm so glad that we'll have other people too. Even if I don't know who all of those are yet. So I guess what I'm saying is..." she smiled at me. A real, big, serious Olivia smile. "Thank you for being one of our first people, Maya."

Holy shit, marry me.

"No." 

I froze. "...fuck, did I say that out loud?"

"Yeah." Olivia didn't look particularly bothered, but I knew that didn't necessarily mean she wasn't.

"Shit, sorry." I rubbed my face. "Uh...for what it's worth, I didn't really mean you. I sort of meant...your relationship? That, uh...that's probably not better?"

"I don't understand what you meant, but I know that that's the kind of hyperbole you think and speak in." After an awkward moment, Olivia started talking again. "I'd like clarification on why you said that, though."

"Honestly, I'd like that too." I laughed weakly. She stared at me. Fuck, she could make eye contact hard when she wanted to. "...I'm catching feelings for you two. And when I do, that's scary, because I've kinda steamrolled people with 'em before."

"I won't let you do that to me," Olivia said without even thinking. "That might mean breaking up with you at some point, but I don't see any reason that it would as of now. And Susanna definitely won't let you do that to her."

A laugh forced itself out of me. "Yeah. I think that'd be kinda like trying to steamroll one of those fuckin' cement poles that stick out of the ground at Target. Or something."

"For now, though, I'm having fun with you." Olivia's big, real smile came back. "And I'm so glad to have someone I can talk about Susanna with for real now. So I'm really happy you like her. And I really like that she likes you back."