What the hell was that?! How did I fuck up a simple one night stand? This was going to throw a wrench into my whole process. Okay, let's take things nice and slow, evaluate what I did, how things went, and then find out why it went so damn wrong. Okay, so, like usual, undercover I developed a bit of a crush on a guy or girl or five. But, naturally, I’m not sticking around for long, so I always need to make sure not to develop feelings, thus the one night stands. If someone is nice, they get a nice night of sex with a willing partner they find hot. I have a fun evening and by morning I’m happy to move on from my passing crush. Simple, albeit probably unhealthy, but too embarrassing for me to mention to my therapist.
In this instance, my crush is definitely Joe. Anxious, funny and frankly, adorable. Exactly the kind of guy I sometimes fancy, and lovely enough that he definitely deserved a fun night of good sex. Cue in Sandra, a body I had working at Krax, reform her in the bathroom, slightly tweak her butt because, uh, hmm. Why did I do that? Joe hadn’t mentioned liking butts, and it was hard to imagine it was gonna make much difference to his evening. Hmm, I mustn’t have been thinking clearly due to the alcohol. Anyway, enter Sandra. In the interest of seducing Joe, I played her as confident and forward. I need this crush over as soon as possible and waiting weeks for Joe to make a move just wasn’t going to cut it.
This, of course, goes swimmingly. Last night wasn’t my first rodeo, or my first time playing a confident woman hitting on shy cute guys. Touch his arm, smile and laugh, all of which are easy with someone as cute as him. Then, when he didn’t immediately realise I was flirting I escalated a little, more forward, more overt and once he clicked with what was happening and got over himself, he got right on board. So until at least the end of the taxi ride, everything went according to plan. He was even a good kisser!
Okay, so things started going off the rails when we got to his place. Which narrowed the list down to the few things that changed when we arrived: the fact that we were in his home, I’d taken my clothes off, he’d taken his off or that I’d tried to have sex with him. Gonna scrap the first one straight away; his place seemed fine, a little simple but comfy and clean, no way that was the issue. Next, me taking my clothes off. Hmm, he certainly seemed attracted to me in the bar and I’d made Sandra with an objectively very attractive body, so I couldn’t imagine he didn’t like what he saw. Ooh, unless he was gay? But then, I’d asked if he liked guys and got nothing, and he’d kissed me as Sandra awfully eagerly. Okay, a maybe on the gay front. It could also be that Sandra was too hot and intimidating? Probably not, Sandra was hot and intimidating all evening, and the fact he asked me to leave meant he wasn't too intimidated by me.
Next option, him taking his clothes off. I guess it was possible that he was self-conscious about his body? He was pretty self-critical in the bar. But then, no guy likes their body that much; I certainly didn’t, and yet guys everywhere have and are keen for sex regardless of their bodies. It’s hard to believe that a little anxiety was going to get between a guy and a hot woman throwing herself at him. But that just left my trying to have sex with him, which if he was straight shouldn’t be an issue. Unless it would have been his first time or something and uh, huh, that could be it! On the one hand, maybe that’d just make him eager, but on the other, he could be the type to have expectations about it being special somehow? Definitely a possibility.
Or, the final possibility: I was missing something obvious. I’m not oblivious to the fact that I have a pretty different experience of the world to most people and it’s possible that that means I could be totally missing something a normal person would spot straight away. Which, god damn it, means I need to know more. Is he gay, a virgin, or was I missing something? The only way to know for sure was to get closer to him still and press him for info. It was a risk, though; proximity might worsen my crush, strengthen my feelings, but distance from someone I was worried about would probably be worse still. Ugh, why couldn’t he just fuck me and let me move on, like everyone else. Stupid cutie with a dumb smile, having a meltdown and making me feel things for him. It’s just inconsiderate!
Over the next fortnight, my efforts to get to know him went well, my search for answers less so. We started by hanging out with drinks after work, which transitioned to drinks at a bar followed by videogames at his, and then transitioned further into just meeting up for drinks and videogames at his, without the pretence of either of us being people who enjoyed noisy public bars. And during those meetings I learnt a lot, but nothing definitive. He definitely didn’t believe he was gay, but that could be repression? It certainly took me a while to realise I also thought some boys were okay. He actually was a virgin! Which had me excited, until he followed up by adding that he was fully in favour of casual sex and would rather like some. He even said he regretted blowing it with me, but was too embarrassed to follow up on my advice to call her back. I did my best not to show my disappointment, which was easy, given how quickly I started getting confused about why I was disappointed in the first place.
Regardless, it was my final theory, that I was completely missing something, where I really broke new ground because one evening, while hanging out with Joe, he baffled me utterly.
“I was gonna speak to my mum today, and I got about as far as clicking her contact, when I realised I had nothing to say. Well, nothing I wanted to say… to her. I usually tell her everything, but it’s personal stuff and I don’t know if she’d be of any help really, so what would be the point? Is that bad?” Oh boy, that was a sentence and a half, and I was supposed to respond too? What personal things? Who shares personal stuff with their parents and why? Parents, largely, are for giving birth to you and then for distancing yourself from when they don’t support your choices. I mean god damn, I can’t help it that I can only make girl bodies! And I don’t care about the ethics or improperness or the why of that, not when I can help people. Okay, the latter is probably not the right thing to say.
“I, uh, can’t really help you on parental relationships, given the near total absence of mine. But uh, what personal stuff?”
Nervously, he began. “Have you ever wondered, y’know, about being a girl?” Wait, why would he ask me that? There’s no way he could know, right? I had to play this cool, make it very clear that there was no possible way I could be Sandra.
“I, uh, what? No.” Wait, that was an obvious lie, everyone had. “I mean, well, yeah, occasionally just a bit? Everyone has.” Smooth.
“Wait, everyone has? I thought… well, I just thought.” Okay, calm down, you’re not a publicly known superhero, Joe has no reason to suspect that either you or Sandra are a hero he’s not even heard of. But why would he ask that, then?
“Why uh, why do you ask?”
“Look, okay, let’s say, hypothetically, you could turn into a woman, live in her body, all that stuff, would you?” Fuck. He knew for sure. How, though? Okay, just play dumb; if he knows, he knows.
“If, hypothetically, I could do that, then what would it change? I’d still be a man, just in a woman’s body. It wouldn’t make me really a woman, so I wouldn’t get to do all the cool girl stuff.” That had him looking crestfallen, somehow. Maybe he’d been hoping I’d just confess that yes, I had powers.
“Okay, so, what if you could be mentally a girl too and be happy with the girl body and comfortable and all that jazz. What then?” What was that question for?! To confuse me and put me off guard? If so, it was working.
“Well, I’m not gonna consent to have how my brain works changed, if that’s what you’re asking.” Which was a genuinely good question; what was he asking?
“Ugh, you’re not getting it. Hypothetically, you can turn into a girl, and find that, when you do, it is comfortable and nice and whatever. Your brain doesn’t need to be adjusted or anything, it’s just fine with it.”
“What? That just sounds like you’re describing a girl in a man’s body, I think? I don’t know, you’ve baffled me with this one.” He really had. Of course being in a girl's body is more comfortable! Girls are soft and comfortable, duh. Of course it would be fun, but presumably, the moment you tried to do, I don’t know, girl stuff, with real girls, you’d be found out and told off or something straight away. Not that I was gonna tell him that; I only knew so much about it because I could, and was at the time, inhabiting a girl’s body too. Trying to explain it would give away for sure that I was Cascade and I had no clue if that was something Joe somehow knew.
“Don’t worry about it, man, you’re probably the wrong person to ask, you’re good.” Well, if ever there was a tacit admission that he’d had a hunch and I’d put him off the trail, this was it. Still, I was more than done with awkward questions for the day.
That evening, for the first time, I found myself appreciating my other coworker. Sure, for whatever reason, she kept showing up to stakeouts, but given that she tended to be quiet and not openly hostile, I wasn’t too fussed over it, and at least there wouldn’t be any awkward baffling questions from her.
“Do you ever make guy bodies?” Oh dear. Twice in one day. What are the odds? Okay, distanced and aloof, she’ll give up quickly. She has no reason to suspect that I’m a man and she, of all people, is not finding out that I’m really a man. Nope. I don’t need this pretentious idiot having anything to lord over me.
“Is this a serious question, and do I have to answer?”
In a tone too serious for idle chit-chat, she replied “Serious, yeah, and I’d genuinely appreciate an answer.”
Ugh, fine, but I would be answering her silly question to the letter. “Nope, never made a guy body, not once.” Technically true, it was one of the few real limits my powers had. “I can make some kinda butch bodies, but not men.” Forming a new body required focus and an intense visualisation process, when I tried, not that I’d tried much, I always stumbled somewhere in that process and the whole thing fell apart. Besides, I knew what guy bodies were like, I didn’t need more.
“Okay, but if you could, would you?”
“No, what? Why would I? I guess maybe for undercover stuff it’d be okay, but I’m yet to find female bodies to be a limiting factor.” And I was definitely not bitter about the fact that every damn evil corporation I infiltrated seemed desperate to hire Matt into technical positions, while funnelling all my female applicants into literally anything else.
“Yeah, that… that makes sense. Related question, and last one, I promise. Do you think guys would want bodies like ours? Y’know, girl ones.” God, I really should introduce her to Joe somehow.
“You mean, do they want to be beautiful superheroes?”
“B-B-Beautiful? You think I’m beautiful?” Well, I guess the proverbial pansexual cat is out of the bag. Still, I didn’t expect my being queer to cause quite so much stammering from her.
“Yes, obviously, you’re objectively very attractive, use a mirror. Get over yourself.”
“I just… right. And uh, no, I meant the uh, girl bit mainly. Do guys want to be female superheroes?” Why was she still so flustered and red? Surely she didn’t think I was hitting on her. I’d literally been blanking the idiot for weeks in the hope she would leave.
“Sure, I presume. If men could be attractive women instead, I presume they would. Sucks to be them, I suppose.” Boy, did it suck to be them. To be a guy denied girlhood sucked, even worse for a guy who knew exactly what being a girl would be like, who got to experience how lovely it would be and was then still denied it. That would be awful.
I looked over and saw her briefly pouting, for whatever reason, before developing the look in her eyes, and the open mouth, of someone about to ask an embarrassing question. Thankfully, I was spared from hearing yet another confused gender-changing hypothetical by a figure emerging from Krax industries. A figure dressed head to toe in black, with purple glowing eyes, and, because even villains didn’t seem to care for practicality, a long purple cape. After weeks of patience, we finally had a villain on the scene.
What? NO! CASCADE IS ALSO AN EGG?? f*ck
It's okay, now they can race! Or mislead each other wildly about what a normal amount of wanting to be a girl is...
@Rewq I want to throw you out of a building (complementary)
@FriendlyPastoralist I just realised who you are also! Darla Darling is really cute!
@Rewq Ty! I love A study on the merits of queer dating apps and being yourself, its one of those stories I just reread when I want something fluffy before bed.
What a train wreck