Being Samantha Masters
an homage-sequel to Being Christina Chase

Chapter 3: Detransition, Maybe?

In the end, Rowan had to get behind Sammy, put her hands on his shoulders, and gently push him into the dining room.

His uncles were seated at the dining room table, both of them engrossed in books. Gideon looked up first, blinked at Sammy’s appearance, and then pasted on a smile that at least seemed genuine. When Henry did not look up, Gideon reached over and whacked his upper arm. He shot Gideon a shocked look, and then followed his gaze to Sammy. His eyebrows drifted upwards.

“Dads,” Rowan said, coming around Sammy and dropping her hand to his waist, “I’d like you to meet Samantha. Your niece. She/her pronouns, if you please.”

They’d agreed in whispers that Rowan would make the introductions, so all Sammy had to do was half-lift one hand, wave awkwardly, and say, “Hi.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you properly, Samantha,” Gideon said, smile bright. “You look lovely.”

Henry looked from Sammy to his cousin. “Rowan, did you trans your cousin within the first hour of his—her, apologies—her visit?”

“I did no such thing, she came prepared,” she responded, and gave Sammy the tiniest little shove towards his seat, where a place setting was waiting. She circled the table to her own place.

“Prepared?” Henry echoed.

Gideon rolled his eyes. “Those aren’t Rowan’s clothes, babe.”

“Were you wearing that under the hoodie?” Henry asked, mystified.

“No,” Sammy answered, and pasted on a hesitant smile. “I, uh, I’m not out of the closet. At home. But I…” What the hell, he thought, might as well commit. “I thought I could try things out here. If that’s… okay?”

Henry nodded decisively. “Of course it’s okay.”

Gideon, seated around the table corner from Sammy, put a gentle hand over his. “Samantha, you said you’re not out at home. So, just to be clear, and so we don’t make a mess of things: do your parents know?”

“Oh, no,” Sammy said, shaking his head. “So please don’t—”

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Gideon said with an encouraging smile and shake of his head. “And just to make things perfectly explicit, I’m also transgender. I came out as a trans man… gosh…twenty…six years ago, now?”

Sammy looked from Gideon to Henry, who shrugged. “Don’t worry about me, I’m used to being the only cis at the table.”

“Cis?” Sammy echoed, uncomprehending.

“Opposite of trans,” Rowan supplied quickly, and then told her dads, “There aren’t a lot of resources available for young queers in… damn, whatever town you grew up in, Sammy, I forget the name.”

“Oak Grove,” he supplied with a weak smile. “And by not a lot, it’s really, uh, none.”

Henry looked from Rowan to Sammy. “So ‘Sammy’ is still okay?” he asked hesitantly. “I’m terrible at switching names, just ask these two.”

“The cis are going to tell you that a lot,” Rowan stage-whispered, hand comically raised to her lips. “Just smile and nod.”

Sammy smiled and nodded as instructed. “So um. Not to change the subject, but. What’s for dinner?” He was desperate for the conversation to be about anything other than him, his new fake gender, and the stream of lies he was now telling everybody.

“Oh!” Gideon yelped, and bounced to his feet. “We’ve got a curry, a big pile of naan, rice… it’s all in the warming oven.” He kicked Henry’s chair and said, with curious emphasis. “I could use a hand getting it all out onto the table.”

Henry’s look of confusion passed quickly. He set his forgotten book on the table and followed his husband into the kitchen.

“See?” Rowan grinned across the table at Sammy. “That went well.”

Sammy nodded. It had, and now he felt kind of weird and hollow. It had been too easy; they believed his lie without, as Rowan had said, the bat of an eye. Sammy felt terrible, and groped for a way to change the subject. “One question.”

“Shoot.”

“What’s a curry?”

Rowan looked at him blankly and then giggled. “Oh wow, Country Mouse. We’re just getting started with you, aren’t we?”

—

Curry, it turned out, was sort of a spicy stew. And naan was just lumpy pizza crust with garlic on top. By what Sammy suspected was the mutual agreement of his hosts, dinner conversation stayed away from his purported gender and instead focused on the City, Columbia, and everyone’s studies.

Henry was both a lecturing professor and a practicing doctor, although the latter somehow didn’t mean he had an office and patients who came to him with their common colds. He did clinical trials and developed drug treatments, mostly focused in muscle development and pain management.

Gideon was a gender studies professor, which was a subject Sammy hadn’t been aware even existed. Apparently it was all about how sex and gender affected how people interacted with each other and greater society. He was an adjunct professor most places, which meant he scrambled to filled in holes in class schedules for the tenured professors who had secure places at their schools. He was writing a book about detransitioners, which he intoned so gravely that Sammy decided not to ask who or what that was.

Rowan was in her second year at Columbia undergrad, well on her way towards completing her pre-med degree (“technically, it’s a biochem degree, but really it’s just pre-med.”). After undergrad, she’d attend one of the many medical schools in the city, after which she hoped to become an endocrinologist.

“Do you have any idea what you’d like to study?” Gideon asked, and suddenly all eyes were on Sammy.

He swallowed. They were all so intent on their academic pursuits, and he had nothing outside of a vague desire to use college as an excuse to move out of Oak Grove. “Um. Not really?” he stammered. “I mean, I’m… mostly here to even see what’s… possible?”

“What are your interests?” Henry asked, in a way that he probably thought sounded casual but instead came across the table as dismissive and judgemental.

Sammy tore off a piece of naan. “Uh. Getting out of Oak Grove?” he answered cheekily, and then stuffed his face with flatbread.

Gideon and Rowan chuckled, but Henry laughed. Guffawed. And then it got away from him and he ended up pounding the table and shakily pouring half a glass of water down his throat. When he finally recovered, eyes still streaming, he looked across the table and said, “Honey, I completely understand.”

“It can’t be easy living there,” Gideon sympathized. “Especially in the closet. I’ve only been once—decades ago, now—and it was… I think the polite word is ‘quaint?’”

“Oh my god, you actually got to visit?” Rowan gasped. “How did I not know this?”

“Oh, I don’t know if I’d call it a visit,” Gideon chuckled. “We drove in, we had dinner, we had planned to stay the night… but we drove out after dessert. Found a nice little B&B called the Fairmont a few miles out of town.”

“Clairmont,” both Henry and Sammy corrected, and shared a smile. Sammy added, “And that’s technically still in Oak Grove.”

Gideon shrugged. “I can never tell where little towns begin and end. Anyway, it was… not a populous place.” He looked to Sammy. “Are there any other transgender people in town? Are we the first you’ve met face-to-face?”

“Um, no, actually,” Sammy answered, and frowned down at his plate. “Or maybe. I… don’t know. A couple years back, one of the girls on the basketball team, uh, came out. Wanted everybody to call her Mitch.”

“Wanted everybody to call him Mitch?” Rowan gently suggested.

But Sammy shook his head. “Uh, no. I’ve…got it right. Because. Well. They had a big school presentation about it, and the teachers told us that we had to use he and him for, uh, her. And then there was a PTA meeting, apparently? I didn’t go to that. Mom did. And it was all anybody talked about for, like, weeks. But then Barbara—that is, the girl who wanted to be called Mitch—she took it all back, and asked everybody to call her, well, her. And she. And Barbara.” He shrugged. “So I don’t know if that counts.”

“She detransitioned,” Gideon sighed, sitting back in his seat. “Poor thing.”

“I, uh, don’t know actually that word?” Sammy admitted with a shaky don’t-hate-me smile.

“So transition—specifically gender transition—is the process of moving from living as one gender to living as another,” Gideon explained, falling easily into lecturing mode. “It can encapsulate all sorts of stuff: names and pronouns, hormone therapy, bureaucracy paperwork, surgeries, you name it. And all that can be… very stressful, as you well know. And sometimes…” Here his cadence faltered, and suddenly he looked like he was telling a child their pet rabbit had been run over in the street. “Sometimes people transition back, to their original gender presentation. Undo all the changes they made as best they can, and go back to living as their assigned gender. That’s detransition.”

Sammy scowled. “So they were… wrong about it? About who they are?”

Gideon heaved another sigh. “Not usually. Most of the time, it’s just the… pressure and the stress of transition, and especially the people in their lives not accepting them as their professed gender. It can get to you. It’s a lot. So they go back to a presentation that everyone in their lives can accept, and which has fewer external stresses bearing down on them.”

“That’s… sad,” Sammy said, trying to sympathize. Gideon plainly cared a great deal about the subject, so much that he was writing a whole book about it. But Sammy saw a glimmer of hope for himself in the sad story. Carefully, he said, “You said… usually. Most detransitioners weren’t wrong, they were just overwhelmed by, like, the world. But some of them… they were wrong?”

Gideon searched Sammy’s face for a long moment. “Statistically speaking, when you talk about this many people, there’s always going to be exceptions. So we don’t say, for instance, that all detransitioners were forced to by societal pressures. It’s not one hundred percent. There’s always outliers.”

“Outliers?”

Gideon waved a hand. “Sorry, statistics jargon. There’s always an exception. Those exceptions, in statistics, are called outliers.” When Sammy nodded, he elaborated: “Whenever you look at anything sociologically, there’s always somebody doing something unexpected.” He shrugged. “People make weird mistakes or make poor decisions for the wrong reasons all the time. And that applies to gender, too.”

“So—”

“So yes, every once in a while, somebody detransitions because they were wrong.” Gideon couldn’t help adding: “But the vast, vast majority aren’t. It’s hard to track, statistically, but it appears that most detransitioners actually retransition later in life, when circumstances are more favourable.”

Sammy grinned, and then realized that he maybe shouldn’t be. “That’s, uh, great that they… finally get their chance,” he stammered, all the while thinking: this. This was his way out.

Sammy could dress up and call himself Samantha tonight. Heck, he could do it all weekend, since he didn’t have any other clothes. And then he could go home to Oak Grove, back to his boring old life and comfortable old wardrobe. When he came back to go to school, he could just say: he detransitioned. He was one of those outliers, doing something unexpected. He wasn’t going to retransition, he had just been trying things out and he decided he didn’t like it after all.

And nobody had to ever know the truth.

—

Sammy was riding the subway to go clubbing in the City, just like he’d always dreamed. True, he was not dressed like he usually was in those dreams, but he told himself that was a minor detail. His cool, hot cousin was going to get him in, there would be dancing, and drinking, and maybe even drugs? He was almost vibrating with excitement.

Rowan examined him from across the subway with a slight smirk. “How you doing over there, Country Mouse?”

Sammy dropped his hands onto his knees and willfully ignored the feel of fishnet stockings under his palms. “I’m really excited,” he admitted, jostling along as the subway’s movements. “We don’t have anything like this back home.”

“Like the subway?”

He rolled his eyes. “Like clubs. Like… anything fun to do at night.”

“Like being yourself,” she grinned back. “You sure you’re okay with the outfit? We can still go back and change.”

“I’m fine,” Sammy insisted with a shake of his head. After dinner Rowan had dragged him back upstairs, scrubbed off the “respectable” makeup she’d put on an hour earlier, directed him to shave (borrowing shaving supplies from Henry, because Sammy hadn’t packed any even in the bag he’d lost on the bus), and then dressed him up like a doll.

She’d put him in the (very fiddly) fishnet stockings, a disturbingly short pleated skirt, and one of Rowan’s old tops hiding in the back of her closet. It was sleeveless and tight, with a high neck that obscured Sammy’s borrowed tits, and its cream colour complemented the purple skirt (so Rowan said). The shoes were the hardest to manage, since Sammy’s sneakers were obviously unacceptable, and Rowan’s feet were a size larger than his. But the depths of her closet disgorged some old strappy sandals that could be strapped tighter than she’d ever worn them, and that would do.

She’d kept his hair in the cute little sweep he’d worn for dinner and then gave him a “full face,” which was so many different creams and colours and steps that he’d lost track. By the time she was finished, he literally didn’t recognize himself. His face was clear of all the little spots and acne that he was accustomed to. His eyes looked huge, framed by pencil-thin arched eyebrows, a soft gradient of colour over his lids, and bright blush on his cheeks. His eyelashes were enormous, like a cartoon character. At least five different cosmetics had turned his lips into a shining, blood-red flower.

They’d also already “pre-gamed,” which meant drinking before heading out. The two of them had demolished a small, curved bottle of vodka on the walk between the neighbourhood convenience store (“it’s called a bodega, not a convenience store!”) and the subway station. So Sammy was already very relaxed, which probably accounted for a significant chunk of him not caring much about what he was wearing.

Besides, what did he care if he didn’t look like himself? In fact it was probably all for the best, because this way, when he came back “post detransition,” nobody would recognize him.

“Oh shit, I almost forgot,” Rowan said, digging into her tiny little handbag. She produced a colorful little plastic container which she pried open to reveal a handful of tiny little pills. She quickly slipped one out and popped it into her mouth.

Sammy tried and failed not to stare, and his cousin spotted him.

“Fuck, did you not take yours tonight?” she said, and held out the pill container. “You want one of mine?”

“What is it?” Sammy asked, hoping and fearing what the answer might be. When you went clubbing, you took ecstasy, right?

“It’s just E,” Rowan explained casually. “If yours are buried in your bag back at my dads’ and we’ll be out late… it’s probably better to just pop one of these instead.”

Sammy chose not to explain that he did not come to the City with his own stash of party drugs. “Sure, thanks,” he said, and carefully removed one of the tiny little pills. A memory surfaced and he placed it on the tip of his tongue like he’d seen in a movie once.

Rowan giggled and shook her head. “No, no, underneath your tongue. Like thiaaaauuuugggghhhhh.” She opened her mouth and lifted her tongue, revealing the quickly-dissolving pill underneath.

With a little lingual gymnastics, Sammy shifted the pill to under his tongue, instead, and gave his cousin the thumbs up. He imagined describing his trip to one of his classmates back home: they went out clubbing in the City, no big deal, pre-gamed to the far side of tipsy first and then took some ecstasy before they got going. Man, this night could not get any better.

It was a short and rather chilly walk from the subway station to the club, which was some sort of taco bar during the day, but at night they opened up the downstairs. There was no line at the entrance, which Sammy found vaguely disappointing—they couldn’t be picked to skip to the front of the line, but would they have, anyway? He looked girlish, sure, but he hardly looked, you know, hot.

There was, however, a bouncer standing before the thumping door at the bottom of the stairs. He saw the two of them coming and gestured for IDs. Rowan brandished her fake ID, shamelessly holding it up to her cleavage as she leaned forward to say into the bouncer’s ear: “This is my cousin Samantha! From out of town! She lost her ID.”

The bouncer looked Sammy over critically, and from the expression on his face, without being much impressed. But he looked sidelong at Rowan, shrugged, and let them in.

On the other side of the door, Sammy crashed into his cousin, giggling. “I can’t believe that worked! Oh my god!” he cried, because on the other side of the door, the basement opened up into a tableau that staggered anything he’d ever imagined.

There were stalactites on the ceiling. The walls rippled with rocky texture, melting seamlessly into the ceiling and floors. Tiny fissures in the rock glowed with pink light. There was a bar and there were a handful of tables, and then the dance floor, filled with people grinding and gyrating. Orange chandeliers competed with swirling purple lights from the distant stage.

Rowan watched him as he stared, and then laughed. “Yeah, I picked right for your first time,” she declared, and pulled him forward. “Let’s daaaaance!”

Sammy had planned on explaining that he didn’t actually know how to dance, that he’d just sit on the sidelines and watch, but his cousin didn’t even give him the chance. She plunged the both of them into the press of bodies bumping and grinding away. They jostled their way through, with Sammy accidentally making contact with more people than he’d intentionally touched in the past two months. It smelled like sweat and exhale and a dozen different perfumes and colognes.

Rowan found a pocket of space big enough for one and a half bodies and the two of them took up residence, bouncing along to the beat. Sammy roughly mimicked Rowan’s movements, hesitantly throwing his hands in the air and waving them like he just didn’t care. And eventually, he realized, he kind of didn’t. It was fun moving his body along with the music, along with all the other people on the dance floor.

And any inhibitions he’d planned to have had probably been taken care of by the drugs and booze. He certainly felt free of them as the music coursed through his body.

He danced alongside Rowan, mostly. Occasionally Rowan moved close to somebody else and they’d dance in close proximity while Sammy watched, half-rejected and half-watchful. But she always came back to him, and mostly they danced together. Eventually somebody sidled in next to Sammy and he got to dance close, himself. It was over before he even got a good look at her, outside of the sparkling green sequins of her tight dress.

The music just kept going. Unlike, say, a playlist, with a start and stop to each song, here all the songs just blended together, and so did the dancing. So Sammy had no idea how long they’d been flailing around on the dance floor when Rowan tugged at his shirt and indicated that she’d like to take a breather. He followed her off the dance floor.

The tables and chairs they’d passed on entry had been only half-filled then. Now they were all claimed, and most of them were thronged. Rowan looked a little disappointed until she shouted, “Oh, Finn!” She grabbed Sammy’s hand and pulled him after her.

Standing by the last table closest to the door was a tall figure in a dazzling sequinned dress, all in rich green. Rowan grinned, recognizing the backside of the girl he’d danced with briefly. Finally he’d get a good look at her. She turned towards Rowan and—

All the gears in Sammy’s brain gummed up all at once.

Lean, toned body; sleek sparkly dress; long brown hair; caramel skin; bright green eyes… and a big bushy beard. The dancer in the green dress was a man?

“Samantha, this Finley,” Rowan was saying. “They and them. Fellow biochem student. Finley, this is Samantha; she’s my cousin from… well, the middle of nowhere. I forget the name of the place.”

Finley smiled, revealing perfect teeth. “I love nowhere!” they exclaimed. “And didn’t we just dance together?”

“I think so,” Sammy admitted uncertainly. “Your dress is… amazing.”

The… not-man grinned wide, but before they could respond to the compliment, Rowan sidled up beside them and cooed, “Finn, can sit at your taaable?”

Finley patted the table surface affectionately. “Mi mesa es su mesa! Actually, you can hold it down while I grab drinks. What can I get you girls?”

“Oh no, it’s so expensive here!” Rowan protested, and crashed into the cushioned seats along the wall.

Finley shrugged and fluffed his beard playfully. “They admit me as a guy, so they expect me to buy a couple drinks. And since I don’t drink, I might as well treat you two.”

“Vodka tonic,” Rowan acquiesced, and then reached forward to snag Sammy’s hand and drag her into the seat beside her. A little quieter, she asked, “You want the same, Sammy, or something different?”

“Same’s fine, I guess?” he answered, taking entirely too much pleasure in being smooshed up against his soft cousin.

Finley pouted, fists on their hips. “You bitches are boring! You sure you don’t want something, you know, colourful and fruity and shit?”

Remembering that he was here to try new things, Sammy tried to sit up a little straighter and ended up toppling forward onto the table. “Actually, yeah,” he reversed himself, and then realized he didn’t even know what he could order, if he wanted. “Um. Surprise me?” he suggested with a slightly manic smile.

Finley leaned over the table to match Sammy’s posture. “Oh, a challenge! Well. Surprising people is my specialty.” And then they strutted off towards the bar. Sammy watched the green-sparkled ass sway and bounce into the crowd.

When he glanced over at Rowan, she was watching him watch Finley. One delicate eyebrow was cocked higher than other. Did he do something wrong? “What?”

She raised both eyebrows high in mock skepticism. “I dunno, there’s throwing yourself at somebody and then there’s, like, literally throwing yourself across a table at them.”

“Oh no, I didn’t—I mean—I slipped,” he said, and tried to demonstrate how his wrists had lost their purchase on the edge of the seat cushion.

“It’s okay, they like girls,” Rowan grinned impishly. “And everybody else, really. And obviously their being genderqueer isn’t a dealbreaker for you.” She giggled. “Your faces were so close there you could have kissed.”

Sammy was brown and this corner of the club was dark, but he could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks and he was certain his whole face was lit up red. He covered his face with his hands. “Please don’t say anything embarrassing,” he begged.

“I won’t say anything at all,” his cousin grinned, and picked up her handbag. “Because I’m not gonna be here.” Finley returned just as Rowan stood up. She grinned at them and declared, “I’m gonna go pee.” Then his treacherous cousin winked, and not subtly, before flouncing off.

Finley deposited a tall clear drink before the seat opposite Sammy and then placed before him a violently pink drink in large curvy glass, garnished with, of all things, a stick of cotton candy. While Sammy boggled at the neon monstrosity, Finley slid into the seat next to him.

Sammy tried to ignore the heat coming off Finley’s adjacent body. “What even is this?” he asked of the drink.

“I’m not sure,” the genderqueer said, leaning in so they could be heard over the thump and blare of the music. “I asked for the fruitiest, most colourful cocktail they made.”

“This is cotton candy,” Sammy pointed out needlessly.

“Feels appropriate,” Finley replied with a grin. “You seem sweet.”

Sammy’s brain gummed up again. They did not just say that, did they? He was hallucinating. The drugs had kicked in. But nothing else in the club seemed to be distorting into spaghetti or swimming around aimlessly, which is how drugs worked, right? Was he really getting hit on? How was he even supposed to respond to that?

For lack of any better idea, he leaned forward to find the straw decorated with pink spirals down its length and took a sip. The drink tasted like sugar.

“Ro says you’re from out of town,” Finley tried along a different tack. “This your first time in the City?”

Sammy bobbed his head. “Does it show?”

“Little bit,” came the reply, along with a hand waggling like a seesaw. “It can be a lot at first. You’re lucky to have such a great guide to show you around.”

Sammy couldn’t help but smile at that, and nodded. “Rowan’s awesome.”

“Rowan?” Finley yelped, mock-affronted and laughing. “I meant me!”

“So far, all you’ve shown me is how to spike my blood sugar,” Sammy jibed back, and took a long pull off the straw to demonstrate.

Finley put their elbow on the back of the bench and watched with every indication of appreciation. Too late, Sammy remembered that his painted lips made everything he did with them look salacious. He coughed into his drink.

“Careful there!” Finley reached forward to steady the ungainly drink before it toppled, and then to pat Sammy’s back as he regained control of his breath. He actually found the gesture rather soothing, and leaned into Finley’s hand a little.

When his breathing was finally back to normal, he tried going on the offensive. Maybe if he asked questions, Finley couldn’t make passes. “So you’re at Columbia for biochem? Pre-med like Rowan.”

Finley nodded, smiling. “What can I say, I like bodies.”

Sammy cursed himself for making that one too damn easy. “I’m here for Preview Days this weekend,” he said. “Did you do that back when you were looking at schools?”

“I did,” they answered, bobbing their head enthusiastically. “I came in all the way from Nebraska. First trip to the Big City. Toured the campus, sampled some classes, ate at the dining hall, got fucked senseless in club bathroom. After that, I was hooked.”

Going on the offensive clearly wasn’t working. In fact, it was only serving to fluster Sammy even further. Who talked about fucking in the bathroom with people you’d just barely met? Was that City behaviour or was it just Finley?

It was Rowan who came to the rescue, plopping down in what was now her chair, opposite Sammy and Finley, and picking up her vodka tonic. “I’m gonna rest my feet for the length of this drink and then I’m getting back out there,” she declared. “I have a quiz tomorrow and I want to dance myself into a zen state where I’m incapable of overthinking anything.”

His cousin looked across the table and smiled conspiratorially, which is when Sammy realized that Finley’s hand was still comfortably resting between his shoulder blades.

He shot up out of his seat. “Um. I’ve got to. Go.”

“Bathrooms’ over there, by the door,” Rowan supplied helpfully, and Sammy’s feet started moving in the direction she indicated.

“I can show her,” Finley offered, and fell into step alongside him.

Sammy looked back at them, stammering, still backpedaling towards the toilets, “Oh, uh. You don’t have to—”

Finley just winked in response, and kept following.

He could just duck into a bathroom stall and lock it behind himself, Sammy thought desperately. There’s no way Finley would just stand there in the middle of the men’s room… oh wait. Sammy couldn’t go into the men’s room dressed like this. Could Finley follow him into the women’s with a beard? Could Sammy, for that matter, just nonchalantly walk into the women’s?

Sammy’s brain was about to overheat when he came upon a bunch of people standing down the length of a short hallway, lined up opposite three doors and a sign proudly proclaiming that all the bathrooms were gender-neutral single occupancy facilities.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Sammy got in line. Finley, unsurprisingly, leaned up against the wall beside him.

The line moved slowly. As each door opened and disgorged a relieved clubgoer, the head of the line ducked in after them. Sammy didn’t even have time to wonder how an amorous couple would slip in together before two men just walked in, hand in hand. Nobody so much as lifted an eyebrow.

There was at least no conversation in the bathroom line, so Sammy had time to calm down and think. Finley had the wrong idea, here. Sammy had no interest in getting fucked in a club bathroom no wait a minute, that actually did sound kind of hot. Of course Sammy wouldn’t have any idea what to do in that situation—his outsider status had kept him completely free of small town romances—but he could fake it, right? Or he’d make a complete ass of himself, in front of Rowan’s friend. And Finley would tell Rowan, and Rowan would laugh. At him.

Sammy dropped his hands to his sides, and a moment later Finley’s hand brushed up against his, one exploratory pinky stroking gently. Before he could consciously decide how to respond, though, he flinched away from the touch.

Finley’s voice was butter smooth and soft in Sammy’s ear. “Am I pushing too hard, Samantha?”

A little tension unwound from his shoulders. “A little, yeah,” he confessed.

The door at the very end of the hallway, back where the line started, opened up; the girl at the front of the line scrambled to claim her rightful place before somebody who hadn’t been waiting as long darted in there.

“Much as it pains me to say it,” Finley murmured, just barely audible over the noise of the club, “we don’t have to fuck in the bathroom. And, to be perfectly explicit, anywhere else.”

Sammy exhaled for what felt like the first time in ten full minutes. Finley’s hand twitched to move away, but Sammy squeezed it tight. “Thank you,” he nearly whispered. “It’s not that I don’t… want to—”

Finley got comfortable on the wall next to Sammy. “It’s exactly that you don’t want to, honey, and that’s okay.”

“Yeah, but it’s not that you’re—”

“Oh hush,” came their quick interruption. “It’s okay if it’s that, too. We like what we like.”

“I don’t know what I like,” Sammy sighed so quietly he wasn’t sure if Finley could even hear him.

A shrug. “It takes time to figure it out.”

Sammy was very near the end of the line, now. “Yeah, but I don’t think I’ve been trying to figure it out, if that makes sense? And I’d… like to. Start. Figuring it out.” Ugh, why was this all so complicated?

A bathroom door opened and the line shrunk by another body. They all shuffled down the hall.

“Finley?”

“Hm?”

“Can you help me? Start figuring it out?”

They took a moment to reply. “How would I do that, Samantha?”

A flush, a squeaking door, shuffling feet. Sammy was the new front of the line. He licked his lips. “Just kiss me?”

Finley didn’t answer other than to smile, gently press Sammy’s right hand against the wall, and pivot around until their free hand slipped along his waist. They pressed their shimmery green body up against his to pull him close. When Sammy’s breath caught at the movement, Finley dove in, lips spreading and tongue spearing and suddenly Sammy was very appreciative of the unyielding wall supporting him from behind.

Sammy’s first kiss.

After a moment of uncertain flailing, his free hand fluttered up to rest on the back of Finley’s neck, gently pulling them closer. The beard was little scratchy. Their lips tasted like spearmint. His hips arched up to press more of his body against Finley’s.

All too soon they broke away, amber eyes watching Sammy’s face. It would have been prolonged eye contact if Sammy could make his own eyes focus. They released his trapped hand and waist. A toilet flushed. “You’re up,” Finley told him with a smirk and backed away down the hall.

One of the bathroom doors opened; Sammy staggered in.

It’s not like he ever had to pee in the first place, so after locking the door, he braced his hands on either side of the sink and stared himself in the eye. That plan immediately went sideways, because he’d forgotten he didn’t look anything like himself. It was like trying to stare down a mask.

He got kissed! Somebody kissed him, because they wanted to kiss him, and then they kissed him, and kissing, it turned out, was amazing. He waved his hands in front of his face (not rubbing his face because that would smudge everything). Something came bubbling up from deep within him, and suddenly he was giggling madly, and he glanced back in the mirror and—

Oh. That’s what Rowan meant by a full power smile.

Sammy was not one for exaggeration, so he couldn’t, wouldn’t say that he looked like a pretty girl, but… when he was all done up like this and he really and truly smiled, there was certainly something compelling about it. Seeing that smile made him want to smile, and he so he did smile, and then he was looking at himself smile, and it made him want to smile, and it just looped around endlessly.

He couldn’t help it; he giggled some more, laughed, leaned up against the wall, slid down to the floor.

The floor was disgusting, so he immediately stood back up.

Somebody probably needed to actually use the restroom, so he turned towards the door, shaking his head in disbelief. One last glance back at the mirror—still smiling—and he headed out.

There were more people at the table when he returned. More than there were chairs: Rowan was now sitting in the lap of a rather dapper man, and a new girl was perched on top of the bench seats up against the wall, with another girl nestled between her shins. His cousin shot him an incandescent smile. “Hey Sammy, Finley’s friends got here.”

“I’m not your friend, too?” asked the man she was sitting on, teasingly.

Rowan planted a familiar hand on his chest and elaborated, “The people who Finley had planned to meet here, and who they were saving a table for, have arrived. They are also my friends, assuming the definition of friends extends to people who make plans to go clubbing together and leave you out of it.”

“You had dinner with your dads and your out-of-town cousin,” the girl on top protested, and extended one foot to nudge Rowan’s shoulder with her toe.

“You got here at one in the morning, I don’t think that’s a conflict with dinner plans,” Rowan shot back without turning to face the girl, and blessed Sammy with an exasperated grin. “Anyway, this is Vikram. The girls behind me are Agatha and Zoey.”

“Which one’s which?”

Finley shouted, “Agatha’s the top and Zoey’s the bottom,” which caused the whole table to erupt in laughter. Agatha nodded; Zoey leaned further back into her legs. Both looked rather pleased with themselves.

There wasn’t an empty seat for Sammy, so he pointed towards the dancefloor. “So… dancing, I guess?”

Finley shook their head and motioned Sammy closer. “I have good news for you, Samantha. They’ve all agreed to help you with your research.”

“My research?” he repeated, confused.

“Yeah. Your figuring out what you like.” They gestured around the table. “They’re all going to take turns making out with you, so you can, you know, collect empirical data.”

Sammy laughed, thinking it was a joke.

—

“And then Agatha is all… I don’t wanna say anything rude or whatever, but like, she’s so squishy? Like, in the best possible way,” Sammy blathered away to Rowan as they walked along the street towards her dads’ townhouse. It was more than a little chilly, and Sammy skipped along to keep warm without a coat. Rowan had a thin little cardigan, which couldn’t really be keeping her warm, but she walked at a sedate pace, silently smiling and nodding along with Sammy’s excited monologue. The eastern horizon was beginning to glow.

Sammy narrowly avoided tripping right over a fire hydrant. “The way Vik just wrapped me up in his arms, though. That was. That was, uh, cool. I don’t have words for most of these feelings.”

That, at least, got a little laugh out of Rowan. “I’m glad you had a good time.”

“I had the best time,” Sammy responded, grinning so wide he felt like his face was going to split in half. He’d seen his reflection in store windows; his lipstick was a disaster, smeared all over his lips and cheeks and chin, supplemented generously with extra shades of red from Fin and Agatha and Zoey.

Rowan looked up at her old home as it rose before them. “Hey Sammy, do you mind if I crash with you here?” she asked, sounding as exhausted as she looked. “It’s so late it’s early, and I don’t wanna go back to my dorm. I could even do your makeup before you leave for Preview Days?”

“I mean, it’s your house,” he shrugged.

“Yeah, but the question is if you mind sharing,” she clarified. "Remember, in my bedroom, there’s only one bed.”