Alter: Olivia

Local Network World: 0098

Dates: 08/07/2025 - 09/07/2025

Compartmentalisation

Olivia noticed Kade was limping on her left leg almost the moment they were through the Rift. They had emerged in the middle of what Olivia immediately identified as queen Street Mall: a busy, open-air pedestrian thoroughfare in the heart of Brisbane City, full of stores and pubs and restaurants. It was as busy as she would have expected mid-morning on a Sunday, and Olivia suddenly felt intensely agoraphobic. She found herself flinching involuntarily as people brushed by them, happy and oblivious, chatting and carrying bags of shopping.

“I need to get the fuck out of here before I have a panic attack, Liv,” Kade leaned in close, murmuring in her ear. As she pulled back, Olivia could see her eyes darting frenetically around. She was clearly completely overwhelmed.

“You and me both.” Olivia reassured her, hooking an arm around her waist and pulling her close to try and help take some pressure off her left leg. “I got you. Come on, lean on me. That’s good…let’s get moving.” Olivia led the way up the mall and out onto the sidewalk. Trying to mentally pick out the easiest way to somewhere quieter, she guided them to the right: away from the shops and towards where she knew the buildings would all be office towers with just the occasional bar or coffee place.

“Is this…” Kade paused before continuing: “Did I get them killed?” She asked. Her voice cracked a little at the end.

“We gave them a choice. You did everything you could.”

“I was so sure I could…” Kade inhaled sharply. “I was so sure I could fix it.”

“Every single Alter I know has either tried to stop Seven and failed, or…well…died in the attempt. You can’t put what happened to them on yourself. If you hadn’t tried, you’d have hated yourself for it. We both know that. If you hadn’t tried, they would’ve stayed and they’d be dead anyway.”

“Liv…”

“Do what we do, Kade. Break it off and bury it. Focus on moments. Don’t give yourself time to get lost in it. It’s too fucking big, it’ll eat you alive. Neither of us can afford it.” Olivia sighed. “But I feel it, too. Just so you know…you’re not alone in this.”

“How do you…go back to normal after that?”

“Tell you what,” Olivia gave her waist a quick squeeze. “You work that part out and you let me know, yeah?” They continued walking until they found a small, empty park. It was one of those typical Brisbane ‘Green Areas’, with a bewilderingly oversized Moreton Bay Fig tree casting wide swathes of shade over some sturdy benches and small cobbled paths, stones pushed up unevenly from beneath by roots. Kade collapsed onto the first bench they came to, before sitting up and bending over to pull up the left leg of her slacks, wincing in pain as she inspected the swollen red and purple bruising around her ankle and calf.

“Shit.” Kade muttered, carefully prodding at the bruising.

“When did that happen?”

“Back at the service station.”

“How have you been getting around on that this whole time?”

“I dunno…adrenaline I guess? We had bigger problems.” Olivia sat down next to her. She lifted her arm and sniffed.

“I need just…all the fucking showers. I feel disgusting.” Kade leaned over to sniff at her.

“You’re not wrong. Also, fuck you for making me boy-mode.”

“I think you mean ‘thank you, Olivia - my saviour, my hero, my goddess - for saving my motherfucking life’?”

“It can be both.”

“Yeah, fair enough. I can live with that.”

“God. I feel like I’m still there. This doesn’t feel real. We’re just…out here in the open, surrounded by people, after weeks of…that…” Kade trailed off, leaning forward, elbows on her knees, holding her head in her hands.

“Yeah. I know.” Olivia placed a hand softly on Kade’s back, gently rubbing her through her hoodie.

“How do you get past…” Kade trailed off. Olivia finished for her:

“Knowing they could all have that in them? Never being quite sure how thick or how sturdy the bars are, keeping you safe from it?” Olivia glanced at Kade, who nodded. “You don’t. At least…I don’t think so. Over time, you just…get really good at spotting a wobbly bar, I guess. Learn to give them a wide berth.”

“Reassuring…”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting here. I’m just you.”

“I guess.” Kade murmured, her stare into the middle distance deepening. “Just like them. And now they’re dead. Alice, and Faith, and…so many people, just normal fucking people…”

“I know.”

“I’m gonna kill her, Liv. First chance I get, Seven’s fucking dead…”

“Right there with you.”

“How are you so…calm? We just saw Faith…and then before that…fuck, I just feel so exhausted I want to pass out, but also like I have all this voltage continuously going through my body. I feel like I’m on handfuls of adderall and haven’t slept in a fucking week.” Kade looked up at Olivia, who raised an eyebrow, giving her a sympathetic smile.

“I’m not calm. Like I said: you’re not alone in this. I’ve been where you are now for…awhile. First thing I did after it happened on Anna’s World was run away to England for a month, completely on a whim, because I could absolutely not deal with that thing you’re currently feeling. Nor would I ever expect you to. Just know that what you’re interpreting as ‘calm’ is a…very specific and very practiced kind of ‘broken’.”

“Can I run away to England for a month?”

“Sure, do you have the holiday leave for it? Money for flights?”

“Oh.” Kade glanced over at her. “We’re…probably both fired, right? Maybe also missing persons, at this point?” Olivia laughed.

“Oh. Shit. Yeah, we must be. I hadn’t even thought about that in all of the…” she trailed off, clenching and unclenching her jaw: “…’excitement’.”

“No, you’re all good.” A third voice joined them. Olivia’s head snapped around, momentarily panicked before seeing Kira standing behind them. She tried to will her nervous system to retreat a little, but her heart was pounding manically in her chest; she could hear it thumping in her ears.

“Jesus, Kira.” Kira seemed oblivious.

“Sage and I handled all of that for you.”

“Handled all of what?”

“Your jobs aren’t rocket science. We pretended you both had pneumonia, faked some medical certificates, wasted a shitload of your sick leave working out what you do for work, and we’ve been covering for you. I…genuinely forgot how much I hated having an actual job.”

“What? Why?”

“Because we knew you were alive, but stuck. We couldn’t get to where you were so we figured we’d…y’know…hope for the best and make sure you had lives to come back to. It better not have been a vacation, cause…we were all pretty worried.” They paused as Kade turned to look at them as well. “Okay, so not a vacation. You both look like complete shit.” Olivia and Kade nodded in unison, well aware of how they looked. “What happened?”

Olivia let Kade take the lead in explaining the situation: covering Alice and Faith, the progression from arrival through to departure, and the failed attempts at manipulating Seven’s Rifts. When she was done, Kira just stood there, shaking their head.

“So what now?” Olivia asked Kira.

“I’ve got no idea.” they admitted. “A lot of new information, more dead Alters, but…it kind of changes nothing and changes everything all at once.”

“Sorry we don’t have more for you.” Kade got to her feet, hobbling around to where Kira stood, wrapping them up in a firm hug.

“I know what you’ve just been through. No apologies, okay? I need you both to let me know if you need anything. Don’t be…well…us. I don’t want to lose anyone else.”

“Y’know what I think we might need?” Olivia got up too, walking around to join Kade’s hug. “A couple of days to recover.”

“I guess Sage and I can handle that for you.” Kira paused, sniffing hesitantly: “Also, wow, please get off of me, you both smell so fucking terrible,” Kade and Olivia rapidly disentangled themselves from Kira.

“Sorry. After a few days of not being able to shower you kind of forget about it.” Kade offered apologetically.

“No, it’s fine,” Kira rolled their eyes, reaching into the pocket of their jeans to pull out a handful of loose cards. “You’ve still got your license on you?” Olivia patted her pocket to check before nodding. “Good. So take this:” they passed Olivia a credit card. Olivia saw her own name on it, looking questioningly at Kira, who shrugged. “You know how this works. It’s your world, so we use your identity.”

“Yeah, I get that part. Less so the…using-it-to-take-out-credit-cards bit.”

“It’s fine. I have a system.”

“I feel like you need to explain how this ‘system’ works at some point. Like…you don’t have a job, you always have money…”

“Would you like for me to explain how it works, or would you like to take advantage of it and let me worry about the logistics?” Kira held up the card between their middle and index fingers, wiggling it in Olivia’s face.

“Just reassure me that I’m not going to have to worry about paying anything back?” Kira chuckled.

“You’ve known me long enough to know that I’ve got you covered. Now go book some stupidly expensive hotel room for a couple of nights. Whatever you want. Just…” Kira paused. Olivia recognised the look they all got when they wanted to word something very specifically and were trying to choose the exact right words. “Be okay. Okay?”

“Oh, you know me.” Olivia shrugged. “I’m always okay.” She was always saying that. Occasionally she almost bought it.

Trauma

After Kira left, Olivia had done the mental calculus on which hotels overlooking the river she would never typically consider as options. She had triangulated a compromise between what would be the nicest one that simultaneously required the least amount of additional walking. Kade struggled with the journey, but over the course of about fifteen minutes, with Olivia doubling as a crutch, had managed to hobble her way there. The people at reception had definitely been skeptical about their ability to pay, given their dishevelled state, but Olivia’s license matching her credit card had, thankfully, been enough to get them up to a - frankly obscene - penthouse apartment. They had, of course, photocopied both the license and credit card and put a full hold payment on the latter for two nights. Olivia hadn’t blamed them. Once they were settled, she’d left Kade to watch comfort TV and raid the generously stocked minibar while she went out.

First she had gone to buy clothes for both of them, before stopping by a Mecca and a Woolworths to get some makeup, razors and so on. It was partially as a matter of practicality, but also an apology to Kade. Not that Olivia felt she had any reason to apologise, of course...but she still wanted to, for some reason. On the way back she had picked up some Chinese food from one of the nicer places offering takeout on Queen Street, assuming that she and Kade probably had compatible tastebuds, and stopped by a bottle shop for vodka - probably more than they needed - and some things to mix it with.

“Hi honey, I’m home!” Olivia called out as she struggled through the door lugging what felt like her body weight in bags.

“Hey,” Kade raised an eyebrow as she looked over from the TV. “What’d you get?”

“Everything, I guess.” Olivia shrugged as she finished dumping the bags near the kitchenette. She reached down for the bag with Kade’s clothes in it, tossing it across the room. Kade awkwardly managed to catch it mid-flight.

“For me?” Olivia nodded. Kade’s eyes widened as she pulled out the clothes, grinning stupidly.

“I figured since you liked that one outfit so much and had to leave it back on…the other world, I’d just upgrade it for you. Get an actual nice version of it and start weaning you off that fast-fashion bullshit before you get too hooked.”

“It wasn’t fast-fashion…” Kade frowned.

“Yeah it fucking was, I looked at those labels.” Olivia chuckled. “I also got you some comfy stuff for pyjamas, so…maybe go take a shower and get changed? I’ll take one when you’re done.” Olivia walked over to her, dumping a few additional things into her bag: cleanser, moisturiser and foundation, a blush stick and some eyeliner, shaving gel, a razor and some lipgloss.

“Thank you. Really, thank you.” Olivia shook her head.

“You heard Kira. It’s all free, so we may as well stock up on some stuff.” Olivia deflected awkwardly.

Yeah. Nothing to do with wanting you to have the option of making yourself look femme after I force-masced you every day for weeks. Nothing at all.

“Are we allowed to uh…keep the credit card?” Kade asked. Olivia smiled, shaking her head.

“This is a gift. Think of it as…I dunno, ‘hazard pay’. I don’t know exactly what Kira does to make these kinds of things happen, but I do know they do it…sparingly.”

“Pity.”

“Mmhmm. Anyway, I got us Chinese food and vodka for when you’re done showering. So like…hurry the fuck up maybe so we can eat and get drunk. I feel like we really need both of those things right now.” Kade nodded emphatically, getting to her feet before wobbling - almost falling - then carefully rebalancing herself on her sore leg before limping her way to the bathroom with her bag of clothes. Olivia started putting the containers of Chinese food on the bench-top, ready to be served. She put the mixers in the fridge and the vodka in the freezer. She then slowly sat down on the couch with an exaggerated sigh, slumping forward and holding her head in her hands.

She couldn’t get the memory of finding Alice’s body - and her encounter with Seven - out of her head. Olivia remembered going back up in the lift to the apartment, leaving Faith and Kade in the car. The plan they’d discussed in the car on the way back had been to get out of the inner city area, to give Kade a little more time and get to some more distant weak points where there might be a chance of a different outcome. She could recall running over the steps in her mind: Tell Alice; they’d throw some essentials in suitcases and bags; they’d get back to the car and start driving. She remembered bursting in to the apartment, and taking seconds that seemed to stretch out far longer to register what she was seeing: Alice lying there on the floor with Seven standing over her.

“Hey Olivia.” Seven had smiled at her. “Jesus, of all the bad luck…you and Kade randomly finding this world at exactly the wrong time? Suboptimal.”

“What did you do?” Olivia whispered.

“I’ll assume that’s rhetorical.”

“What the fuck?!”

“She was working with - "

“ - Who gives a shit?”

“Me. I give a shit.” Seven had told her, matter-of-factly. Olivia had lunged forward. Seven had held out her hand. Olivia’s knees had given out, a sudden combination of pressure and sharp, hot pain burning its way from the back of her brain towards the front. She’d fallen, curled and foetal and gripping either side of her head tightly. Her entire body shook involuntarily, wracked with pain radiating out from her head and through her nervous system.

“Uh…huh…” She’d grunted as the pain subsided, gasping.

“I’m not here for you, Liv. You can go. Or stay, I really don’t care.”

“Why are you like this? Why…” Olivia had paused, then coughed, tasting blood in her mouth…trying to get her words out: “Why are you doing this?”

“Because It’s all a lie, Liv. Everything you think matters…doesn’t. I’m defending myself from a bunch of assholes trying to use these fake versions of me against me. Like I said the last time we caught up, I’d rather not do this, but they’re going to keep playing with me, so I’m going to keep taking their toys away.”

“Because there’s a way to hurt you?”

“You really don’t get it, do you? Helios don’t want to hurt me. They want to weaponise me.” Seven paused, head lilting to the side…a small smile forming on her face. “Y’know I can read you, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your power. I can do it too. All that drinking…the things you said to Kade - brutal, by the way: no wonder why you’ve got a total of one friend in the whole entire world - and the things she said to you? I know you can’t stop wondering if you had the right response; if maybe it helped her? I’ll save you some anxiety. It didn’t. All she’s been through and - what - you think you’re an example of life getting better? Please.” Seven laughed, shaking her head. “Y’know, speaking of things that’re front-of-mind for you, I can see what your first day in the Multiverse was like, too. So full of hope and wonder and mystery. Sounds fun. God, Anna was so pretty, wasn’t she? What girls like us wouldn’t give, am I right?”

“D-don’t - " Olivia felt her chest tighten, a lesser buzz of pain - like prickling needles - rush across what felt somehow like the surface of her brain. She couldn’t get the words out.

“ - D-don’t w-what, L-Liv? Don’t talk about her? Worried about hearing something that’d change the way you remember her?” Seven shrugged. “Suit yourself. Would you like to know what my first day in the multiverse was like?” Seven’s voice had dropped to a harsh stage-whisper as she’d knelt down in front of Olivia, reaching out to cup her chin, their eyes locking together. “Unlike the rest of you, I was at ground zero when the Siege of Edenglassie happened. I was right there at the eye of the storm, and my first memory after that big flash of light was running. Being hunted. Chased down like a fucking animal through the streets of Eden City. All those corpses; all that destruction…no idea how to use my powers…just lashing out, fucking desperately trying to survive. And I did. I was more than they bargained for.”

“Wish…th-they’d…” Olivia attempted. She registered Seven’s smile wryly twist as the words were choked away.

“No, no.” Seven shook her head. “Learn to let someone else have a turn.”

“Wh - " Olivia coughed.

“ - Yeah. Yeah, I know it’s hard for you, Liv. Anyway: after…I tried to go back to my life, such as it was. I tried to not be…this. I thought they’d leave me alone. I thought they’d learned. Then one day…it all came crashing down. I got hurt. And then I fucked up. I fucked up badly. The thing I’ve done on this world? The first time I did it, it was my world and it wasn’t deliberate. While I was trying to stop it; to put it back together, they came back. First they came at me through Annabelle, and then they came at me themselves, and I…Liv, I’d just had enough.” Seven had laughed bitterly. “I just…I was done. Done with getting hurt, done with the Local Network, done with all these shadows and echoes of a world I’d lost, done with all of you, mocking me with your perfect, oblivious little lives. And the thing is, even though you’re just…copies, I can feel you all, like little pieces of me…drifting around the place. I’d rather not hurt you. Truly. I know you know what it’s like Liv, feeling them go. It’s like stars blinking out in the night sky of your fucking soul, isn’t it? But I can’t trust the Alters enough to do anything other than what I’m doing. Any of you could be working with them. Except…you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You. I guess you could say you have a special place in my heart. Because Helios would never reach out to you, Liv. You don’t play well with others. You’re a self-involved, pretentious, hypocritical mess. You’re the one who put the cis version of herself on a pedestal, who thinks of herself as being above all the rest of them. You’re the one who holds everyone at arms length and then criticises them for not being closer with you. You’re a fraud. A liability. You think you’re the main character in this, but…well…” Seven leered at her: “What is it you’re always saying? You’re just this girl, y’know? And you’re not to be trusted. Not like Kade, or Exodus, or Kira. Not like Anna, or Kier, or Lee. Not like Maya. Not like Alice or Faith. Not like a hundred others that I know about but you don’t. I mean…why else would your own girlfriend keep what she knew from you?” Seven had leaned forward, pressing her lips against Olivia’s forehead, before melting away into the ether, leaving her alone in the room with Alice’s corpse. That was when Kade and Faith had appeared in the doorway. That was when Olivia had made the decision that they were going to give up and run.

In the present, Olivia shivered, as if trying to shake off the memory, and got to her feet. She could feel a lump rising in her throat and, less on impulse than force of habit, had made the extremely mature and very cool decision to kill it with vodka. She found the cupboard with the glasses - fancy crystal tumblers, because why the fuck not with how much this place cost per night? - and went about the process of getting some ice from the fridge’s built in ice machine. Olivia free-poured a couple of shots worth of vodka into the tumbler and topped it off with orange juice, taking a sip and wincing, feeling a flush of warmth spread through her body. She wondered, for a moment, what it would be like to drink just because she enjoyed it, as opposed there always being at least some element of self-medication. It wasn’t something she could even really imagine: for her, the primary appeal of alcohol had always been that it made her thoughts, for at least a little while, slightly less overwhelmingly fucking loud. That it let her stomp down those memories that had been scratching away in the back of her brain since she was a teenager - more adding to the pile by the day, it seemed - desperately trying to be acknowledged.

“Hey, can I have one?” Kade asked, emerging from the bathroom. Olivia nodded. She couldn’t help but smile in spite of herself: Kade was glowing. She had taken the time to shave and put on her version of a full face of makeup (Olivia made a mental note to show her some things at a later point), as well as her new outfit. It really was just the same thing but nicer: a jean-skirt, a black tank top and an oversized green and black flannel over-shirt. This version of the outfit fit better. The tank top and skirt worked together to round Kade’s hips a little, pulling in at the right places and giving her a slightly more defined waist. Olivia thought back to her own early transition days: the way she’d treated outfits like the songs she liked, that she listened to on repeat until she found a new one to obsess over. She suspected Kade was a bit the same. Looking down, she could see the bruising - beginning to yellow at the margins - around Kade’s left ankle and calf. It couldn’t have been easy to walk with a bounce and a busted up leg, but Kade managed to do so as she made her way over to Olivia.

“No pyjamas?” Olivia asked, trying to force down her memories of Seven in Alice’s world.

“I wanted to try on what you bought me. How do I look?” Kade spun, over-using her hurt leg, wincing but recovering quickly with a shallow little dip that looked almost like a curtsy. Olivia made a show of looking her up and down, tilting her head thoughtfully and raising a hand to pinch her chin, feigning deep consideration.

“You look…better. You definitely smell better.” Olivia concluded, grabbing out another glass, ice, vodka and juice. Kade raised an eyebrow as Olivia poured some vodka over the ice.

“More please?”

“You haven’t had a drink in ages. You’re probably dehydrated, malnourished…let’s start slow, shall we?”

“Whatever.” Taking their drinks, they settled down on the couch. Olivia put Buffy on in the background, and after finishing her first drink she left Kade to continue watching as she took a long shower. Once under the faucet, she turned the hot water up as high as she could stand, trying to burn away the physical residue of Alice’s World. Stood there as the water cascaded over her, she wished she could break down and let it out; cry and scream and collapse, even just a little bit. In the back of her mind, on a constant, un-ending loop, played a mental .gif file of Faith’s lip quivering, the bullet, and the life leaving her eyes. It was stored in the same deep, mental archive as that file showing a weight plate sailing through the air towards her. But still…she couldn’t force herself to break down. She was stuck in an emotional holding pattern, stuck reliving those moments on the inside as she calmly continued to function on the outside. Olivia sighed.

Drying herself off and getting into fresh clothes, she rejoined Kade in the lounge area, making them both another drink before plating up some fried rice and sweet-and-sour pork for each of them.

“Hey…” Kade started as Olivia handed her the tumbler and plate, pausing briefly before continuing: “Thanks. Do you think Alice and Faith were…” She trailed off, making a completely unhelpful hand gesture.

“What?”

“Together?” Olivia raised an eyebrow.

“They definitely were, yeah. I had a conversation with them about it.”

“That’s crazy,” Kade breathed, shaking her head and taking a sip of her vodka.

“I mean, it’s not that crazy.”

“No, I mean, I just thought you and Anna were like…an exception?”

“I don’t know what we were.” Olivia shrugged.

“You keep saying that - "

“ - Yeah, cause it’s true - "

“ - But it’s not though. Is it?”

“Oh, what, you can read me now?” Olivia queried mockingly. Kade rolled her eyes, stuffing an oversized spoon of rice and pork into her mouth. “Y’know…something I worked out pretty early on is that having a lot in common with another trans girl? Kind of a red flag. Potentially, at least. Cause it’s easy - so easy - to feel like you’ve found a special connection - something profound and meaningful - when you have all these common interests and experiences; a lot of common vocabulary and observations…but it’s usually just ‘cultural’, I guess you could say. And that goes double for other versions of you. Alters are gonna get so many things about you, on such a granular level, and you never really have to agonise about masking, or presenting a certain way for them. You can actually be your real self and even Alters like Maya are going to understand. Think about that for a second, and stack that against a world that kinda seems to want you dead, filled with people who make very little sense to you and tend to pretty consistently hurt you for fucking up, or saying the wrong things, or just…I dunno, existing? Yeah. Kinda hard not to eventually end up in a situation you didn’t expect and don’t really understand.”

“Especially with your whole ‘Hell is other trans girls’ mantra.” Olivia shook her head.

“It’s not a mantra, it’s a reminder. And yeah, it definitely applies to Alters.”

“I’m starting to see it. It’s funny, I originally sort of figured it was mostly in relation to that whole spiel of yours about getting burned by other trans girls in early transition.”

“No, that doesn’t matter to me. I get hurt all the time. You know how fragile my heart is, you’ve got the same one. They don’t get to be special just because they broke it a little.”

“Yeah. I uh…I get that.” Kade nodded.

“Anyway…the original quote, 'Hell is other people’, it doesn’t mean other people are awful, or dangerous…it’s just that our identities are defined by both being perceived by others and by our concern about what we imagine others’ perceptions of us to be.”

“Yes, Olivia. I read No Exit in uni. I can also be pretentious.” Kade smirked.

“Well I’m glad you got something out of that failed attempt at a Lit Masters…” Olivia replied innocently, taking a sip of her drink.

“I got plenty, thanks. I know Wide Sargasso Sea is better than Jane Eyre, and I know this shit’s an uninspired reading, but do go on…” Kade deadpanned. Olivia smiled despite herself before continuing:

“Well, my personal experience of being queer is that the whole thing kind of…shifted. I remember realising my skin had gotten thicker and, after a bit, I found I cared so much less - and thought so much less - about what people in general thought of me than I used to, with the big exception being other trans women. It’s hard to explain, but, to me, meeting other people like me, they always seemed larger than life. Inspirational. Fascinating. And I was just…me. On a certain level, I think, I never really saw my transness as all that…valid? I always felt like I was meant to have known sooner, or that I should have ended up presenting more feminine, or been more capable of…I guess…doing things to benefit the community. Capable of doing something useful beyond just…staying alive. I felt less than, y’know?”

“Of course I know.” Kade nodded reassuringly.

“In contrast,” Olivia continued: “seeing all these incredible women who were amazing, and powerful, and uncompromising about their identities? To some extent…my ability to feel valid in the trans part of my identity ended up being pretty heavily defined by whether I thought they saw me as valid. I mean, at a certain point you realise that none of us have any idea what the fuck we’re doing, and we’re all fucked up, and we all have our own histories which are all very different. But a lot of the stories you hear trans girls telling while you’re in the early stages of your transition are pretty uh…sanitised for cis consumption, let’s say? That can leave a bit of a scar on your brain. You can end up being pretty critical about how your story diverges from the stories you internalise in your ’trans developmental stage’. Stories where the clarity these girls have gotten about their identities in post has been retroactively applied back through the experiences they’re sharing. These…stories about knowing since they were toddlers, and stealing their mum’s clothes, and having a stash of girl-clothes hidden in their closets, and crying themselves to sleep, explicitly - consciously - wishing they were girls, and seeing ‘her’ in the mirror. If you don’t relate to that certainty, that clarity, that consistency, it can make you feel like your transness is a fraud. Cause there’s always that question that keeps bumping around your brain.”

“The ‘what if I’m wrong’ of it all?” Kade nodded.

“Exactly that. And, for me at least, I really, really wanted to be wrong. God did I want to be wrong. I mean…who wants to upend their life, risk their friends and family and stability for a fucking pipe-dream…for a goddamned hypothetical solution to some nebulous feeling of wrongness? One that’s gonna consume your life, costs tens of thousands of dollars - at minimum - possibly make you unemployable...and the list goes on. And then you hear all these trans girls layering on this implication of an absolute certainty that you’ve never had? It’s a lot. Me, personally? The certainty only came when I started down that path, and for the first time in my life…something worked. Everything fell into place even as everything fell apart. The wrongness finally started to dissipate and I finally, truly felt like me. But by the time you realise those stories aren’t for us, they’re simplifications and generalisations at least partially for cis people who lack the nuance or attention span to empathise with our actual stories, the damage is done. At least…it was for me. So yeah. Even after all this time, trans girls fuck me up. Because I care what they think of me, and I care about how I think I look to them. I care in a way that I just don’t when it comes to cis people. Obviously I’d love for people in general to think I’m cool and hot and interesting in all the ways I don’t think I am, but I’m not gonna have an existential fucking crisis over it with a cis person the way I might with a trans girl. Hence…hell is other trans girls. It’s an immutable fact of my fucking existence.”

“Is that why you were so…different with Alice?”

“Different how?”

“Come on. You know how. It was like you actually listened to her. Respected her.”

“Maybe.” Olivia sighed. “I dunno, maybe seeing how well she was doing…how happy and certain she was about her transition? I remember feeling like my transition was work, y’know? Something you had to go through to get to where you wanted to be. Not a thing to be celebrated or enjoyed, just…work. Where the goal is to get it done so you’re done. So maybe that was difficult for me.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe not ‘maybe’. I mean…can you blame me? And she was also the first version of us I’d met who seemed like a grown, well adjusted adult, rather than this…broken doll running on Queer Time.”

“Yeah. Right there with you, I guess.”

“Oh really? I am profoundly shaken by this information.”

“Fuck off.”

“Sorry, I just…I pretty much assumed you were having the same reaction to Alice because I see the way you look at me, Kade. I know how much you wish you could be me. How much you care what I think of you.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes.”

“You think that?”

“I do.”

“You’re just me, Liv.”

“You’re gonna sit there with a straight face and tell me you wouldn’t do anything to be able to go back in time and transition when I did? You’re gonna pretend it doesn’t eat you up inside, the way I look exactly like how you wanna look in the mirror? I can read you, idiot.”

“I need another drink.” Kade declared, draining the remainder of her tumbler in a couple of sizeable gulps. Olivia watched her get to her feet and limp towards the kitchen to start putting together a fresh screwdriver.

“Kade…” Olivia paused, turning the tumbler in her hands: “Are we good?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know I’m a lot. I know I can be…”

“Kind of a cunt?”

“Yeah. That.” Olivia frowned, sipping her drink.

“Yeah, it’s just…the ‘Hell is other trans girls’ thing, y’know? If I agree with you on that, which I think I might, how do you think it feels that you think so little of me?”

“I don’t, truly. It’s…fuck, I guess it’s like a seniority thing? I look at you and I see all the awkward, clumsy shit I thought I’d moved past. More than that, I feel it again. You take me back to when I transitioned, and how awkward a time it was. You uh…you make me feel very transgender, when most days - and for a very long time now - I’ve just felt like a girl. It’s more about me than you, and I promise I’m working on it. So…and welcome to the most hypocritical statement I have ever made:” Olivia forewarned with an ironic half-smile. “You really need to stop overthinking things so much.”

“Hmm.” Kade limped her way back to the couch, drink in hand. “The data suggests that’s unlikely.”

“I know. But like…we have bigger problems than my brain being broken. For starters, you and I just watched a world collapse. A world not…particularly dissimilar from this one. We just saw versions of ourselves…better versions of ourselves, I fear…die. We thought we were stuck there until the bitter end. I felt resigned to it, honestly. Those last few days, I felt it: this certainty that we were going to die there. Just like Alice. Just like Faith.”

“Yeah.” Kade breathed. “We have all this power, and it just meant…nothing. We couldn’t even save them, let alone stop what was happening. That entire time, there was nothing we could do. I think that was the worst part, y’know? Feeling like…if there was something we could have done, that would have been something to hold onto, but it just feels like…we should have never been there in the first place. Like they died for no reason. Like we’re alive for no reason.” Olivia stared at Kade with profound bemusement. “What?”

“It’s nothing. Just…I know we’re the same person. Like…academically, I know that. But my brain interprets you as some completely other girl who just happens to look quite a lot like me. It’s like that with all the Alters, really. And then there are moments where it all comes into focus and I’m just like ‘oh, shit, she’s me’.” Kade nodded. “Kind of like…psychological vertigo.”

“Relatable content.”

“But I think…I think we’re probably never going to be completely okay about it, y’know? Like with all our other trauma, it sort of burrows in, waiting to jump out. This fucked up, almost sentient cognitive dissonance that just sits in the back of your brain, contrasting what you went through with how fucking ‘normal’ everything around you seems.”

“Well that’s fucking reassuring.” Kade’s eyes widened comically in tandem with an aggressive exhalation as she raised the tumbler to her lips.

“I mean…is it not? If it’s just like all the other traumatic shit we’ve been through, we’ve managed to live with that and stay functional.” Kade raised an eyebrow and looked down her nose at Olivia: “Okay, relatively functional. It feels like the world ended, but it keeps turning. You’re stuck in place but everyone else is just…walking around, acting like everything’s fine. So you learn to keep going because you don’t have a choice.”

“I mean, there’s always one choice,” Kade shrugged.

“Ugh. Killing yourself isn’t a choice, it’s just…selfish. Getting to this point of caring more about making the pain stop than caring about the pain we’re going to cause people who care about us? Like who the fuck are we to force that on people we claim to love? We’re just this girl, y’know? We’re not in palliative care, we’re not losing our faculties, we’re not locked away with no hope of parole…we’re not depressed, it’s just that our life is depressing. We’re good at suffering. God knows we’ve had the practice. So…we should just keep suffering, and keep trying to find a way out. Do we really think we’re that fucking special that ‘it can get better’ doesn’t apply to us? Please. Wallowing in our own bullshit is a form of privilege.” Olivia took a deep breath and an even deeper swallow of her drink: “At least…that’s what I always tell myself when it gets to be too much.”

Olivia and Kade continued to drink and talk, occasionally stepping out onto the balcony to share a cigarette. Olivia had picked up a pack on a whim when she had stopped by Woolworths, despite having quit years ago. She couldn’t shake this feeling in her gut like, despite having known one another for weeks, it was the first time she had actually, truly met Kade.

After a short while, Olivia headed back towards the kitchen to top up her drink. Kade limped over to join her, picking up a spring roll, dipping it in sweet and sour sauce and biting off the end before placing the remainder back in the pack.

“Y’know, I think you have a drinking problem.” Kade smiled sweetly, meeting Olivia’s eyes as she drained her own tumbler.

“Oh, do you now?” Olivia chuckled.

“Mmhmm.” Kade confirmed brightly, grabbing the bottle from Olivia’s hand once she’d finished pouring, splashing around a triple-shot worth of vodka into her own tumbler before grabbing for the orange juice.

“That’s too much.”

“I’m so sorry, Olivia, I’ll definitely try to do better next time.” Kade advised sarcastically.

“Good. Noted. Five standard drinks is your limit before becoming a total brat.”

“A brat? Really?” Kade laughed. “Could a brat do this?” She grabbed Olivia’s tumbler and threw back the unmixed vodka, gritting her teeth and cringing. “Okay, that was a mistake.” She croaked out.

“Can you not?” Olivia grabbed back her glass, trying to bite back a smile. Failing to.

“Oh, I saw that,” Kade pointed directly at Olivia. “Hey, maybe that’s where we’ve gone wrong so far. You like me more when I’m annoying. Consider that noted.”

“Maybe I just find annoying girls cute.” Kade raised her left eyebrow into a curious, angular arch as Olivia quietly finished remaking her drink.

“Cute, huh? Cute like a puppy, or cute like…” She trailed off suggestively.

“Careful.” Olivia warned.

“Why?”

“You fucking know why, Kadence.”

“Because I’m your type?”

“Jesus Christ. What are you trying to achieve, here? Like, actually?”

“I dunno. Irritating you is…sort of an end in and of itself. Y’know, like…payback for all the times you were kind of a condescending twat.” Kade replied innocently.

“We’re both drunk. We’ve both been through hell. And now you’re flirting with me. Trust me when I say that this is hazardous terrain for you.”

“Pfft.” Kade ‘pfft’d. “Who says I’m flirting with you?”

“Did you forget I could read you, or…?”

“Oh yeah? What’re you reading, currently?”

“Kadence…”

“Yes, Olivia?” Kade smiled. Olivia rolled her eyes, her lips thinning into a long, straight line as she ran through options in her head. She took a step out from the bench and around, directly facing Kade. Reaching up, she placed a hand on the cupboards above the other girls’ head, leaning into her - forcing Kade back up against the bench-top - their faces now inches apart.

“You should stop.” Olivia said in as close to a ‘serious’ tone as she could manage given the context.

“Or what?” Kade asked, mockingly matching Olivia’s tone with a small grin.

“Or…” Olivia trailed off quietly.

“Come on, Liv…usually I can’t shut you the fuck up.” Kade’s voice was suddenly breathy. Olivia’s eyes drifted down towards her mouth, fixing on the deeply indented crescent moon of that familiar dimple peeking out from beside the left corner of her smiling lips. “Why don’t you just tell me what my options are?” Olivia’s eyes snapped back to Kade’s, locking onto them.

“Fuck, Kade.” She breathed out.

“I mean…play your cards right…” Kade shrugged, maintaining eye contact.

“You’re drunk.”

“Just a little. Just like you.” Kade murmured. Olivia glanced down, watching Kade’s left hand drift onto her hip and rest there. “You said earlier that your brain just interprets me as some girl who happens to look a bit like you. I get that. That makes perfect sense to me. So…”

“So?”

“So you’re stood here, with some random girl acting the way I’m acting. Touching you the way I’m touching you. What’re you gonna do about it?”

“I’m…” Olivia paused for a moment before continuing: “I’m gonna need to hear you say it.” She whispered.

“Say what? That if you’d like to, you can fuck me? That I want you to fuck me? Is that what you need me to say?” Olivia could feel the little hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She let out a small, involuntary laugh. Kade leaned forward. Without thinking, Olivia’s head lolled to the side and her eyes flickered shut. She could feel Kade’s breath on her neck, practically taste the vodka and cigarettes as Kade’s lips grazed her earlobe. She shivered. “So? Do you want to?” Kade whispered.

Equilibrium

The afternoon sun spilled in through the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows in the penthouse apartment. They covered the entire out-facing wall looking out over the Brisbane River, Southbank, and the inner suburbs. Golden and orange, the light bathed the lounge room in a rich, ethereal warmth. Olivia stood nearly dead-centre in front of them, looking out over Brisbane with her arms folded pensively, wearing nothing but black boy shorts, a sports bra, and Kade’s green and black flannel over-shirt. Her hair was a mess. She sighed.

“We have until tomorrow morning. I’m gonna assume you’re okay with leftover Chinese food?” Olivia glanced over her shoulder towards Kade. The other girl was lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, covered head to toe in a matching beige sweatshirt and sweatpants combo. Her hair was also a mess. There was a light coat of dark stubble across her cheeks, chin and upper lip, but Olivia wasn’t about to mention it. “I can’t believe we slept all day.”

“Are we going to talk about it?” Kade asked. To Olivia, it sounded less like a question and more like ‘fuck you’. She sighed. She didn’t have the time or energy for this.

“What’s to talk about?”

“You hate me, and yet…”

“I don’t hate you, Kade. I thought I made that pretty clear last night. I like you. I trust you. I think you’re strong, and you mean well, it’s just that…I don’t particularly respect you. Which isn’t even your fault, it’s just…circumstance.”

“And…yet…” Kade reiterated. Olivia had been hoping she wouldn’t.

“What do you want me to say? Going through what we did on Alice’s World was really fucked up. I needed…something, clearly. You were…well, I was gonna say ‘receptive’, but honestly you were actually kinda pushy. It doesn’t have to be that deep.”

“I’m not saying I didn’t want to. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it. I just…kind of need to talk about it. So can we do that, please?”

“We had sex. That’s…kind of it, no?”

“God, I’m really not like you.”

“Oh really?” Liv snorted.

“Yeah. Fucking really. Just because we have the same face doesn’t mean we have the same exact experiences; the same exact thoughts and feelings on things. I genuinely thought you were opening up, being more real with me, but now we’re just back to you being all dismissive and avoidant. God, it’s so fucking stupid, Liv…you think you’re better than me - wiser than me - because you made this one fucking choice and it went well for you.”

“You think my transition went well?” Olivia laughed. It was a bitter, cold, ironic little laugh. “I’ve got some bad news for you, Kade. The reason my entire personality is built around a patchwork quilt of defence mechanisms is because, when I transitioned, they were all that kept me alive. And now they’re in so deep that they’re load bearing.”

“I’m in the same situation, I just came to it by a different path. So what am I meant to do about that?”

“I don’t fucking know: I don’t know what I did, I just did it. Be yourself out of fucking spite if you have to. Fake it till you make it. Stop being so completely fucking obsessed with external validation.”

“Every person who has ever told me to care less about external validation gets plenty of it. It feels like a rich person telling a homeless person that money isn’t everything. Abundance is privilege, and it lets you devalue the things you have in abundance: it lets you treat them like wants rather than needs.”

“Are…” Olivia paused, an ironic little smile worming its way onto her face: “Are you telling me to check my privilege?”

“Yeah, I kinda fucking am. Your problem is, you think that being a jaded, pathologically self-sufficient asshole makes you inherently better than people who aren’t, even while you get to look like you want to look, do what you want to do and have people see you how you want to be seen, which is a hell of a lot more than some of us get to have.”

“Bitch, you are less than six…fucking…months into your transition, and…” Olivia grimaced, raising her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. She was getting angry. She could feel it welling up inside her. She took a moment to try to bite it back, to stuff it down…and then decided fuck it, whatever: “You have no idea how much of an open book you are to me, do you? You want to know what your problem is, Kade? You lack imagination. You spent your life agonising over trying to be someone you’re not, and now that’s as far as your conception of who you could be extends. In your brain you have exactly two choices: be the mid cis dude you used to cosplay, or be this random, confused girl who spent her entire life running from herself. A girl who believes that finally accepting that she is one should be the end of the road, who has this obsession with passing so fucking profound she can’t even let herself have that. You’re trapped in this idiotic prison of knowing you’re a woman but not letting yourself feel like you actually are one because of what you’re scared other people see, and that’s not how gender works.

“Like I hate to break it to you, but the options you’re giving yourself are bullshit, Kade. Fuck the binary. Fuck masculinity. Fuck femininity. Fuck rejecting these things; fuck accepting them. Fuck who you could have been but aren’t, and fuck what you see in the fucking mirror. Fuck comparing yourself to other trans girls: they aren’t you. Fuck the people that don’t want to know you: you’re not for everyone and that’s actually fine, no one is. Look at yourself, work out what you want to do and just do it. You and me…we didn’t diverge because of any specific event, we just diverged because I stopped giving a shit. Transitioning ruined my life, but it wasn’t my life. It was a mirage I built over time around some guy who didn’t actually exist. I was so messed up and dissociated and miserable pretending to be this person I never was, that people seemed to want me to be, so - truly, I mean this - fuck the people who didn’t care enough to keep loving me when I decided to stop playing that part. They cared about a mask more than they cared about the person under it, which sort of makes them, at best, incredibly shallow and not worth knowing. I wanted to enjoy being the real me, and I did - and I do - not because my life doesn’t routinely suck beyond what I could have ever imagined, but because it’s mine, Kade. And here you are, not letting yourself enjoy a second of yours because you’re so obsessed with the girls doing ‘better’ than you by your standards. Did it ever occur to you that maybe they don’t have the same criteria for success? That maybe that’s the whole point of queerness: being yourself regardless of how it looks to others? Rejecting normative standards for beauty and success in favour of authenticity, whatever the fuck authenticity is for you?

“Do you know why Seven diverged from us? So far as I can tell, she’s just like you, Kade, but at a certain point, her fucking…self-indulgent wallowing, her rage and hate and righteous indignation that the world didn’t love her like she felt she was owed, she turned that outward on her world instead of inward on herself. She let some…thing from god-knows-where into her world to tear it apart because she felt like everyone deserved to feel the same pain as she had, and now she’s doing the same thing to us and our worlds. The rest of them…they’re all just running towards or away from something, and either way, it’s never anything but a symptom of not being happy with who they are in the present and trying to do something about that. Which is what literally every person in every world is doing. All of us want more, or less, or different than we have. So simply…you’re not unique because you hate yourself, Kade. The only unique thing about your self-loathing is that you’re so pathologically content to sit and wallow in it that it’s eating you alive, and that either ends with you dead, or turning into something like Seven. So snap the fuck out of it, you whiny, self-involved child.”

“Jesus.” Kade murmured quietly. Olivia’s brow furrowed. The frustration was subsiding. Had she gone too far? Contrary to popular belief, Olivia didn’t like hurting people. Her power, functionally, let her pick other Alters apart…and it was something that she didn’t particularly enjoy doing, but that it was difficult not to do at times.

“I’m…sorry. I’m lashing out again. I just…get angry, and I can read all of these thoughts and experiences from you and it just sort of comes out, like - ”

“ - No, it’s fine. You’re not wrong, even if I hate admitting that just because you’re you and you really don’t need more validation. Your head barely fits through an averagely wide doorframe as it is. But still. I’d rather you tell me what you think than just…close up. I hate when people close up.”

“Well, you’re welcome I guess. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.” Olivia shrugged.

“Liv…” Kade said quietly: “The reason I need to talk about what happened last night is that it was the first time since before I started transitioning that I’ve had any kind of sex.”

“I mean…yeah, I kinda figured.”

“Can you just…” Kade inhaled sharply, raising her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose: “Can you give me some fucking space to have a fucking emotion, please?”

“Sorry.” Olivia gestured for her to continue.

“It’s confusing. Everything felt different.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know. I’m not really used to feeling much during sex. Physically, I mean. I usually go...someplace else in my mind, like I’m not entirely there if that makes sense? I go through the motions, try to have the right reactions…but it’s like I’m out of my body, watching it happen. I’m a degree of separation or so away from anything that’s going on. Physically and emotionally I guess.” Olivia nodded.

“And with me you didn’t do that?”

“I’m kind of processing it as we speak? I don’t think I knew quite the extent that I used to do that until…”

“Suddenly you weren’t doing it?”

“Yeah.”

“I do know what you mean. Like I really, really know what you mean. My first time after estrogen was…overwhelming. I remember having this initial reaction of feeling like the person I was with must have been something really special to bring me out of it. And yeah, I maybe got quite a bit more attached than I should have, because connecting in that way had never really felt like connecting before.”

“Are you trying to warn me not to fall for you?” Kade raised an eyebrow. Olivia laughed quietly.

“Not really, like that wasn’t my intent? But also, yeah, don’t do that. We’re two sides of the same dumpster fire, it probably wouldn’t end so well.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about that.” Kade chuckled, nodding.

“But yeah…” Olivia sighed, pointedly moving on: “I always liked the tension leading up to sex, and like…intimacy that wasn’t sex, but actually feeling connected to the person I was having sex with during it was entirely new for me as well.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty much that. I don’t know what to do with this information, though. I don’t really understand what it means, other than that I’m kind of fucked up, sexually. And like…I already extremely knew that?” Kade sighed. “Even beyond that, though, last night also raised more questions than it answered. Like maybe I’m not as much of a top as I thought I was, for starters.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Olivia pursed her lips and shook her head. “No, you’re uh…yeah, you’re definitely not that.”

“Okay, rude.” Kade raised a faux-offended eyebrow, before continuing: “Sorry if this is weird to talk about?” Olivia shook her head, slowly making her way over to the couch, pulling up Kade’s legs and sitting down before dropping them back down in her lap.

“We just fucked. You’re allowed to talk about it, and I’m sorry if I made you feel like you weren’t. I know I’m a dick. I’m working on it, truly. It’s just…a process.” Olivia sighed.

“I know.”

“Anyway. There are worse things than some cute girl wanting to talk about the sex they just had with you, I guess.”

“‘Some cute girl’?” Kade chuckled. “God, you really are such a fucking narcissist.”

“Like…maybe, but only in the actual, original, Greek mythology sense? I mean, I like data and unfortunately, yeah, the data does kind of seem to be pointing in a certain, quite specific direction at this stage, so it’s hard to argue with that.” Olivia pinched Kade’s calf playfully through her sweatpants, making her flinch a little. “You are cute, y’know. Even if you are - "

“ - A whiny, self-involved child who you don’t respect?”

“Okay, when you say it back it actually sounds really fucking harsh.”

“Yeah. It really, really does.”

“Do you actually want me to respect you, though? It’d make the sex less fun.”

“Oh my god. You say it like we’re ever doing that again.” Kade folded her arms over her chest. Olivia raised an eyebrow, pinching her calf again. Kade flinched, glaring at her: “Okay, first: fuck you, you’re not as hot as you think you are. My self-esteem is so low that I’m a shot and a compliment away from being anyone’s.”

“I don’t recall it taking a compliment.” Olivia noted innocently. Kade just continued to glare at her before going on:

“And second, I need to go shave and get dressed.” Kade hoisted her legs out of Olivia’s reach and got to her feet, staggering on her bad ankle before stabilising.

“Look, I know it’s a lot to process.” Olivia acknowledged as she got to her feet, following Kade towards the bathroom.

“No shit…” Kade deadpanned, glancing in Olivia’s direction but making no move to shut the bathroom door. Olivia leaned against the doorframe, watching as Kade started spreading shaving gel across her cheeks, chin, upper lip. “Do you even have to do this anymore?”

“Not very often. Over a long enough timeframe, laser is pretty effective. Especially for us. The lighter your skin and darker your hair, the better it works. Once you’ve got most of it, you can get some electrolysis to target the leftovers, and then it’s pretty much done. Other than the occasional maintenance session.”

“It must be nice.”

“What, patience?”

“No, being done.”

“I want to argue with that, but…yeah. It actually is. Most days I don’t really think about it a whole lot. But you will get there, Kade. And you’re further along than you think you are.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m doing well. Like…overall. You, in particular, have this way of making me feel like I’m running in place. Like it’s all just pointless. Hell is other trans girls, right?” Kade sighed, beginning the process of shaving.

“Gonna be honest, I never really saw myself being on the other side of my little axiom.” Olivia paused, considering. “Do you regret it?”

“The sex?” Kade paused, glancing back at Olivia to clarify. Olivia nodded. “No. It was uh…useful.”

“Useful?” Olivia raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms over her chest.

“What’s that tone?”

“I dunno, ‘useful’ isn’t exactly a glowing review, is it?”

“What, d’you want me to tell you that you rocked my world? That it was the best I’ve ever had? It was more like…I dunno, like it was my first time actually having sex. It was…confusing, but…instructive. Like I said, it told me some things about myself I didn’t know. And you were…uh…competent.”

“Competent.” Olivia repeated the word back slowly, turning it over in her mouth like a bit of food she suspected might be on the cusp of going bad.

“Jesus. Now who’s obsessed with external validation? I don’t actually know what you’re wanting from me, here, Liv.”

“I…” Olivia paused, considering. “I actually don’t know either.”

“It didn’t matter to you, so why are you expecting it to matter to me?”

“I didn’t say it didn’t matter to me.” Kade finished up shaving, reaching for a towel to brush off the last traces of shaving gel.

“We don’t know each other that well, ultimately, so here’s the thing about me and intimacy…” Kade took a deep breath, placing the towel back on the rack and moving to stand directly in front of Olivia: “I don’t really feel romantic connection, okay? My version of that is…friends. Connecting with people. Sharing and empathising and caring. When I love someone, I’m like a raw nerve, an open book. Deeply vulnerable. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does…when I feel close to someone like that, then a lot of doors suddenly open for me. Most people choose the parameters of connections before they start having them. Like…they decide whether someone is going to be a friend, or a potential partner, or an acquaintance, and then they impose boundaries on the connection based on that. Even if they don’t think they’re doing that, it’s pretty goddamn obvious. Lines can blur, sure, but for me the lines are never not blurry. It’s confusing, simply, because loving people doesn’t really have boundaries for me like it does for other people. Friendship could be anything to me: it could be hanging out, there could be a sexual component, or just deep intimacy, or it could look a whole lot like romance. I’m not even physically attracted to guys, but even then…doors are potentially open. Any boundaries are defined by the connection as it grows and changes, and those connections could always, always change shape over time. Which actually fucking sucks, and puts me in all sorts of deeply uncomfortable situations, because…yet again, it’s something that differentiates me from almost fucking everyone around me. It’s yet another thing where all I need to feel comfortable is for people to tell me where they are with things, or if and how their wants or needs are changing, so that I can understand, but instead I usually just end up burned in yet another firewall of unspoken expectations. I hate it, Olivia. I hate always being…so fucking weird, and off-putting, and broken, and different. But the only option I really have to ‘fit’ better is to lie, and I won’t do that. Not about my gender, not about my neurodivergence, not about this. I spent far too long doing that shit. So yeah. That’s context: I’m not looking to date you, and you don’t need to protect yourself from my feelings. We just connected last night, and it felt good. I looked at you in a different way, and we had a moment, and it went somewhere. And yeah, for the record, it meant something to me. I had a great time.”

“Well I’m - "

“ - Not quite done.” Kade held up a hand to stop her: “Maybe the only thing I hate more than how…apart I am from everyone around me? I hate when people fuck with the boundaries and expectations that they set, that I have tried to cater to, for no fucking reason. For clarity: You don’t get to be haughty and avoidant and hold me at arms length…act like you know better than me, like I’m some silly fucking baby-tran who needs to be protected from her own impulses and urges and then get all insecure and go fishing for fucking compliments about how good you are in bed. You don’t get to act like my friend, talk to me like we’re equals, and then tell me you don’t respect me because of a hard personal choice I struggled with making. You’re not me, and you don’t get to judge me, even if it’s because you relate to me. That’s a ‘you’ problem that you chose to push onto me. And you definitely don’t get to fuck me, then accuse me of acting like a child, then act like a child yourself. You’re all over the place, and you need to get a handle on it. Cause from what I’ve seen, I might be the only version of us that actually likes you and you’re kind of pushing it at this point.” Kade concluded, before slowly, calmly pushing the door between them closed. As the latch clicked, Olivia took a step backwards, sighing.