Seb woke halfway nestled into Anna’s arms, the sun pouring through heavy blinds, his head pounding. His bladder ached.

Too much drinking. The room smelled of it, of alcohol and perfume, and it was doing no favors for that pulsing in his brain. His eyes were half glued shut, and he tried to remember if he’d peeled away the mascara before he’d let himself fall into bed.

Yes. Lucy had made sure of that. Lucy had wiped the makeup from his face and sent him to the bathroom with cleanser and moisturizer and instructions on how to properly wash his face, how to make sure he was actually taking care of his skin, and by the time he’d returned, ready to report, Lucy and Margot had already dipped into sleep.

There was another soft, pulsing ache in his bladder.

God.

He forced himself up, peeling away Anna’s hand from his belly, and tried to blink away the sleep in his eyes. Bathroom. He needed the bathroom, and he needed it desperately, and that meant, despite the cold floor on his feet, he’d have to change back into the jeans and t-shirt.

The hangover had not worn away his awareness of the too-short shorts. Far too short for a boy, far too short for Seb to flounce into the hall in, not even in the early hours of a Saturday. The whole campus could be hungover, or even still drunk, but it only took one boy to be in the same predicament as him, one boy who was halfway awake, stumbling to the toilet, to ruin everything.

Okay, well, probably not the exact same predicament as Seb.

He stripped in the corner, making sure that he kept his back turned to the girls, even as Lucy snored loudly, and then slipped back into the jeans and t-shirt. Anna’s flip flops on his feet, his heels only hanging slightly, and he was off, leaving the lock halfway out of the door-jam to prevent it from closing entirely behind him.

The hallway was quiet. Seb was grateful for that. His head was still spinning, running circles and circles, and he was too tired to talk to a stranger. Too tired to look someone in the eye and introduce himself.

The bathroom, too, was empty, and Seb let out a heavy breath. He wanted a shower. The costume changes and the progressive filling of his body with alcohol had left him sweaty and tired, and sleeping in the twin bed had done him no favors on either front; Anna was a restless furnace. But he didn’t have a towel, and he didn’t have any change of clothes, so he’d just have to dip back to the dorm before brunch.

Brunch, with it’s eggs and it’s bacon and it’s copious coffee, was a new kind of test this morning, and Seb could already feel a swelling anxiety about it. Seb would be at brunch. Seb would be at brunch, with the girls, and he would have to interact with all of them. Not Viola, not a version of him with portions of femininity ladled over the top, but Seb. Straight Seb. Old Seb, the one who had arrived on campus, and the one who would need to stay.

Seb peed quickly, then washed his hands, letting cold water run between his fingers for almost a minute before turning off the sink and drying them.

Back to the dorm, and the hall was empty still, and Seb mentally made a note to consider early morning showers for his shaves. The one before, the first one, had taken him ages, and it hadn’t helped his anxiety that he had done it in the middle of the afternoon. The shower stalls didn’t even have doors; meager curtains, a pair of them, neither of which locked, because they were curtains, and Seb had found himself in the panicky situation of imagining some boy questioning why it was taking so long and pulling the curtain to reveal him, a pink razor halfway down his ankle.

He had been thinking late night would be best for showers, but maybe, given the proclivities of campus, it was smarter to aim for, like, 6:30 or something.

He’d workshop it.

No one had woken up in his ten minute absence, which Seb was grateful for. Even last night, even when he’d had to go to the bathroom and remove all of the bits of her from his body, it had felt temporary. Rather than removing the dress of a woman, it had felt like temporarily donning the dress of a man, just so he could pee. But this was different. The girls waking up for the full transformation, the full return of Sebastian Collins, seeing him return to the world, even if he was going to see them in three hours anyway, was unsettling. He didn’t want them to remember that he had just lounged in bell bottoms on Margot’s shoulder, his voice high. He didn’t want them to put Seb and Viola together.

He scribbled a note and left it on Anna’s desk, promising that, this time, he really would make it to brunch, and then slipped on his own shoes, unbolted the lock, and started the walk back across campus to his dorm.

South Carolina was almost bearable in the mornings. No people, baring a few students who had probably had nice, refreshing, quiet sleeps and were now out for jogs on the quad, and the birds were chirping, and there was a nice, temperate breeze.

He tried not think too much.

* * * * *

The week was torturous. He shaved every day. He went for long walks around campus, to the places where people wouldn’t see him, where they wouldn’t be, and he whispered words in her voice. He said her name, and he took the kinds of steps that he’d seen the girls take, just far enough on the edge of campus that no one might be watching, no one might see him glide across the stone walkways, his shoulders back and his head high, all of it in perfect alignment with his back. He kept her put away for one, whole, torturous week, and only let her out in the smallest, furthermost flung places and times.

He’d gone to the pond that Annabelle Bridges had suggested. The people watching was dismal, but it was quieter than most of campus. On the far end of the pond, which looped away from campus, into an empty patch of trees, trees that felt real and natural and far less manicured than the campus, he had never seen a soul. Just him.

He went three times in the week.

The shaving was a bitch. Communal bathrooms were a real nightmare at the best of times, when you weren’t secretly toting around a razor and cream, a razor that had taken on a rather feminine quality, bright pink. It was more effective on his legs than the one he used on his face. The odds that he could stroll in and stroll out, the razor and the cream and a little bottle of ‘proper’ conditioner, which Anna had given him, without being noticed by one of the other twenty boys on the floor was minuscule. So low. Too many boys, not enough bathrooms.

He’d ended up showering late at night. People were still awake, and they were often brushing their teeth, but they were also often drunk and pretty out of it. If Seb timed it right, he could slip under the radar, and the boys in the hall would be far, far too worried about trying to get back to their dorms without face-planting and much less worried about the boy who had just ducked into one of the shower stalls.

The first time he had done it, it had taken fucking ages. His whole body was covered in hair, just about every bit of it, and scraping it away took at least an hour. Now, though, by, Jesus, going on double digits, it went faster. The hair was short, if it was there at all (although Seb was careful not to neglect those areas; the greatest crime that could befall Viola would be a remnant of his masculinity, and hair snuck up on you, at least according to Lucy), and that meant it all took him about twenty minutes. And then, he scurried back to his room, tucked himself into bed, and hoped that no one had yet discovered his grand secret.

Smooth legs.

But Sebastian couldn’t deny the merits of them. Even outside the room, where Seb existed, where that particular version of himself roamed, he could admit that smooth legs were wonderful. They felt good on his sheets, and they felt good under his jeans, and they were going to look good in something tonight. They would look like something worthwhile.

Because it was Friday, and after a long week, a long week of staying away from the room where femininity was allowed to roam unimpeded, it was time to go back. Another pregame, another night where he could be Viola. Where Viola could return. And, okay, the girls were actually planning on going to a party tonight, but Margot had promised to sleep over after, and that Viola could spend as much time as she wanted in the room without them. So he’d go over, become her, and then spend at least sixteen hours being her.

He just needed to get to the end of the day.

And that would be easy. Super easy. All he had to do was spend the entire day with David Oliver, pretending that he hadn’t just accidentally come to one of the biggest discoveries of his life, and it hadn’t involved the star quarterback of the football team.

God, Margot was right; he was such a cliché.

Film first, and Seb found a seat at the back of the overlarge hall. This was a proper lecture, not like Theater, and there were at least a hundred students. Seb sat in the back of this one because, well, the professor didn’t call on anyone here, and it meant it was easiest to squeeze out of his seat and head to the bathroom if he needed it.

Five minutes early, as always. Five minutes early was responsible, and Seb was a responsible… boy, and even if it was just a gen-ed, there was no reason to put his scholarship in jeopardy. Come early, take notes, leave, easy-peasy.

And then, still four minutes before class, David Oliver started picking his way down the row. Seb did his best not to start. David Oliver wasn’t supposed to be early.

David Oliver looked good.

Oh, he was wearing the same this he always wore, a t-shirt that sat flat against his chest, cutting sleeves on his arms, and a pair of well worn jeans. In essence, it was the same thing that Seb was wearing, a t-shirt and jeans. But Seb didn’t look like that. His shirt didn’t sit like that, and the hair on his head didn’t fall with perfect carelessness, and the hair on his chest didn’t poke out his shirt like that. Okay, so Seb didn’t have hair on his chest anymore, but it hadn’t done that when he did. And David was smiling, and he had said something to Seb, and Seb’s mouth was very, very dry.

“Hey,” said David. “I want some credit.” He was sitting now, and Seb blinked. Oops.

“Yes,” Seb agreed, not knowing what he was agreeing to.

“It’s not every day that I’m in a class early,” said David. Oh. Oh, yes, no that was true. Very good.

“You’re very responsible,” said Seb, nodding, turning his head to face the front of the lecture hall. How the fuck had that happened? When Margot had done the little thought experiment, that had been one thing, but living it in real life, living him in real life was like a flash-bang pounding against his skull. He’s just a guy he’s just a guy he’s just a regular, regular looking guy.

“How was your week?” asked David. For the briefest moment, Seb almost replied ‘torturous’, which would have engendered a bit of concern and more than a few questions, but he managed to wrangle his brain back to something rational.

“Good,” said Seb. Then, imagining that he might need to add a little more to that statement, he supplied, “I’ve been cooped up in my dorm studying mostly.” Which, okay, that wasn’t entirely a lie, but it was no more than normal.

“Big week for the chemistry department?” asked David. Seb bobbed his head back and forth.

“Mmhmm,” he said. “Not crazy, I’ve just been behind on some things and I’m trying to catch up.” David had dipped into his backpack and was now, currently, rummaging around for the correct color notebook. And, as he did so, Seb just realized that he found it adorable that this grown ass, six foot five man color coded his notebooks, and Seb was suddenly desperate to know if the colors had meaning. That he took handwritten notes and Seb could not email him anything to catch him up was now, unfortunately, charming.

Motherfucker.

He was going to need to kill Margot.

Or swift kicks. He was going to get pretty good at that.

“Totally,” said David.

“How was your week?” asked Seb. David smiled, pulling out a deep red notebook. Adorable.

He was going to need to kick his own shin.

“Busy,” said David. “Spring game is coming up, and they’re installing a new offense, and everything’s just… a bit of a nightmare at practice. Like, we’re having to learn all these new plays. And the receivers are all younger, and I can’t just teach them, because I don’t really know them yet. And we’ve got to show the boosters everything at the spring game, and coach is all freaked out, and…” He trailed off and grinned at Seb. Seb blinked.

“What?” he asked.

“No one has ever looked more bored than you do right now,” he said. Seb blushed. Unfortunately, even David Oliver couldn’t make him give a damn about football.

“Sorry,” he said. “I… I’m sorry.” But David shook his head, still smiling.

“No, no,” he said. “You don’t like football.”

“It’s not bad,” offered Seb. David knew that Seb didn’t like football, and Seb knew he knew that, he just always felt like he should be coy about it. It was David’s whole life, and Seb couldn’t give a damn. They talked about it, briefly, every week, and Seb had to do his best not to twirl off into his own head every time, just waiting for David to find his way back to books or movies or that new album coming out by their favorite band or something.

“It’s cool,” said David. “Hey, what’s the beginning of class like?” And that made Seb giggle, and they spent the next three minutes, the three minutes before class started, talking about the film they were supposed to watch half of, the first half, and whether they would bother to finish the rest of it later.

* * * * *

By the time lunch came, Seb’s insides were so twisted around that he didn’t think he’d be able to eat much of anything.

Seb had crushes before. There were the crushes in middle school, all of them on girls, and all of them sort of chaste. They were pretty, and they had their hair done into nice braids, and they had been kind and chatty and funny. And there had been the high school crushes, too, and the pattern had remained broadly the same, except even more chaste. High School Seb hadn’t even called them crushes. It had really only been College Seb, who hadn’t wanted to be left out of conversations about girls and love and everything, who had adopted them as crushes.

This was not that. More than being about a boy, which was it’s own can of worms that Seb was dealing with, although it really had to get in line, Seb was having to catch himself from staring at David. It was inconvenient. It was inconvenient that the way his fingers wrapped around a pencil made Seb’s stomach churn, inconvenient that his shoulders were so broad it made Seb lightheaded, inconvenient that Seb could smell him now. God, dear god. He could smell him, and Margot had mentioned it, and he hadn’t really considered it, but… god.

And he was supposed to eat with this boy!

And he was supposed to do a line read with this boy!

Seb did not have a very big lunch.

David, though, pointing out that he’d practiced the night before, and he’d have practice tonight as well, after their theater class, had piled his plate high with two servings of today’s lunch offering -roast, along with potatoes and rolls, which Seb considered to be both far too heavy as a lunch offering and not accommodating of people who liked balance in their meals- and was already hoovering it down.

Well, at least one of them had an appetite.

Made sense, though. David wasn’t here imagining Seb in varying scenarios that extended well beyond the bounds of ‘friendship’.

God, get a grip.

“Okay,” said David, settling back in his chair, a mountain of food remaining in front of him, but a far cry from where he started. “Lines.” Seb nodded. They were, of course, supposed to study. Class.

“Right,” said Seb.

“We’re still thinking I’m Benedick?” asked David. And Seb nodded again. It didn’t matter. Honest to god, it did not matter, and it seemed hilarious now that it had ever seemed like it might. Except, of course, that the two characters confessed their love to one another in a scene, but Seb was pretty sure it wouldn’t matter which character’s voice came out of David’s mouth for that one. The confessions went both ways.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, no, that’s fine.” They were just line reads, and if he couldn’t be normal about doing the line reads of a woman in Shakespeare, he was never going to make it. Besides, men played women back then, didn’t they? That was something that happened. It was a classic method. It was the classic method. Men played women, because, well… okay, he wasn’t actually sure why the men in England played women back then, and he made a mental note to ask Lucy later, but right now he was going to do it because there was no one else to do it. Two boys. Someone had to be Beatrice.

And it didn’t matter anyway.

It wasn’t like he was crossdressing or something crazy like that.

Focus.

“Great,” said David, and he took out a pair of printed sheets. Seb raised an eyebrow, and David shrugged. “I like having physical things.”

“I know,” said Seb. “I just didn’t realize that applied to things you printed from the internet. I thought you preferred to forgo all modern technology.” David rolled his eyes.

“I’m not a Luddite,” he said, pushing a sheet across to Seb. “This is the Beatrice one.”

“No, sure,” said Seb, nodding. “Of course.”

“You know I watch movies and T.V. and everything,” said David, sitting back in his chair. “I’m a twenty first century man. All caught up with the times.”

“Wow, movies?”

“Would you just read?”

“I just figured, you know, if some dead guy didn’t write it down five hundred years ago, you weren’t interested.” David raised an eyebrow and grinned. Seb’s stomach turned.

“Are you going to call me a nerd every time we hang out now?” he asked.

“Probably not every time,” said Seb. David laughed.

“Okay, so you don’t want me to talk about Shakespeare, and you don’t want me to talk about football, and you’re going to make fun of me if I mention anything that involves,” he held up a hand, “TV,” he ticked down a finger, “movies,” another, “or the internet,” and a third. “You’re not leaving us with much room for conversation here, Sebastian.” Seb bit a lip.

“Sorry,” he said. Then he swallowed and shook his head. “I actually do like it when you talk about Shakespeare. I, uh, I think it’s nice.” David grinned and turned back to the page.

“Well, good news on that front,” he said.

 

The line reads went fine. Not great, if Seb was honest, and that was still entirely on him, mostly because he was continuing to keep his voice at monotone levels not heard since Hal 9000, but it was fine. B grade work. Maybe B-.

And then, after David had, somehow, managed to polish off the remaining portions on his plate, a level of consumption that must have made him supremely unpopular with the dining hall staff, they started the trek over to the Watkins Building and Annabelle Bridges’ class.

It was nice, really, to get to walk over with David. He almost always had obligations between classes, and he was always showing up late, so the only time Seb really got to talk to him was after class. And, sure, those sometimes stretched to the point where the professor would have to cough and gesture for them to ‘please get out now’, but it was pleasant to walk with David. They could talk without a time frame.

“Terrible that you have to be here,” said Seb. David was confined to campus for the upcoming Spring Break. Everyone else, including Seb, who had long been promised to come to Lucy’s beach house on the coast, would be emptying out of campus. Just David and the football team and, Seb supposed, any students too lonely to go away.

“Yeah,” said David. “But no classes is still no classes. Like, I’m not free, but I’m almost a normal person next week.” Seb smiled.

“It’s nice to be a normal person,” he said.
“I’ve heard,” said David. At that moment, a girl hustling by them gawked at David, and Seb giggled.

“Oh, you're so normal though,” he said.

“Shut up,” said David, grinning at him. “Listen, if I could swap places with you, just be a regular person for a while. You know, hang out with people.”

“Am I not a person? Are we not hanging out?”

“Hang out with people and be completely anonymous,” said David. “You know, just be treated like a regular guy. I would make that trade every day of the week.” Seb took a heavy breath and shrugged.

“It’s not worth it?” he asked. It had always felt like the kind of trade off anyone would make. Fame, attention, but David was going to be a millionaire. He was going to be a millionaire, and he was going to be more famous than anyone Seb had ever met.

Of course, Seb’s other most famous interaction was a fleeting conversation with the former mayor of Calabash, Argyle Stevens, which barely counted.

“Tough to say,” said David, shrugging. “I get free school, and I probably am going to make enough money playing football to retire at, like, thirty five, but,” he grinned, “all these girls keep coming up to me and asking for my autograph.” Seb rolled his eyes.

“You know, I almost had sympathy,” he said.

“Yes,” said David.

“And then, you went and ruined it.” David grinned over at him. 

“It will be nice to be one of the only people on campus,” said David. “No class, and strangers staring at me like I’m some sort of attraction.” Seb averted his eyes.

“Well, that’s good,” he said.

“Where are you off to?” asked David. Seb, his eyes still straight forward, right on the sidewalk in front of them, took a breath.

“Going to a friend’s beach house,” he said. David snorted, and Seb looked at him. “What?”

“You’re doing the thing,” said David. Seb frowned. “The thing where you pretend I don’t know your friends.”

“I could have other friends invite me to their beach house,” said Seb. David grinned.

“Lucy’s or Anna’s?” Seb held his head high and looked forward again.

“Anna doesn’t have a beach house,” he said, keeping his voice prim in the way Lucy would have liked it, although not quite as high, and David laughed. Seb smiled at him. “I have a quota of one rich friend per semester.”

“What are we going to do when I make it to the NFL?” asked David. “I’ll be plenty rich, and I don’t want to be replaced.” Seb bit his tongue.

“I’ll save a spot for you that semester,” he said. “Cross my heart.”

* * * * *

Seb would have been nervous about the bits of reciting lines that involved standing in front of a crowd of people and trying to remember, perfectly, exactly what those words were, while also imbuing them with meaning, but there really wasn’t enough space in his brain. He needed this to end. He needed the day portion of this Friday, the one that had him crunched, for a third time in six hours, unreasonably close to David in a cheap plastic seat, and he needed it to end now.

“Please don’t stress over this.” Annabelle Bridges was doing something akin to a TedTalk loop at the front of the class, walking forward and backward in slow circles. She’d forgone the pantsuit for a more Garland State appropriate blouse and fitted jeans. “We’re just trying to get your feet wet on this one. More than getting the intonation right, I want you to be able to stand in front of the class and not have a panic attack.”

Great. Awesome. Thanks for assigning this and stressing me out, Annabelle.

Seb should have eaten lunch. He was getting cranky.

Annabelle settled in the front row of the class rather than behind her desk, a better vantage point, Seb supposed, and she started slowly ticking down the names of the pairs.

Students filtered to the front of the class, each running through about half a dozen variations of the same scenes. There were repeats, a lot of them really, including at least three other Beatrice’s, all of whom were actually women.

Small potatoes. Honest to god, small potatoes. He was more concerned about Benedick.

“Okay,” said Annabelle, as a pair of girls finished their rendition of their scenes. “Great, thank you very much. Well done. And… David and Sebastian.” David nudged Seb, which Seb took as an attempt to be supportive, and Seb got to his feet. David had been supremely good at his line reads, because of course he had been. Shakespeare and being the center of attention; David was in his element.

Sebastian, in practice, had been just as poor as he had been in the library. Worse, maybe. In the library, he hadn’t felt all shaky when he got to the romantic bits.

But he was just trying to get through this. He was just trying to get over the hump and into Friday Evening, end Friday Day, and this was the last hurdle. Seb would accept a C. And David, because he was David, would forgive him for completely butchering the lines.

They took their places at the front of the class, and David started.

The first scene was easy. David batted lines to Seb, who returned volley. Beatrice, in truth, was a fun character to play. She was quick on her feet, playful, and loved to badger the romantic lead on the other side. Well, okay, apparently the play wasn’t about Beatrice and Benedick, not really, but whatever.

The second scene was much the same as the first; David and Seb rallied a set of lines back and forth. And, despite everything, Seb found that he was pretty good at delivering the lines with proper gusto. Maybe it was that there was an audience, and that he could watch them, and he could play off them, and that, really, Seb liked to badger David anyway, but it wasn’t as scary to deliver the line ‘A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours’ in front of the class as he had assumed it would be.

The result was that, by the time they’d arrived at the third scene, the scene, Seb had entirely forgotten to be nervous.

And then David started.

‘Soft and fair, friar – Which is Beatrice?

And Seb had to swallow his voice, had to render it masculine, because he had a distinct memory of the last word on this page. No page in his hand, but he remembered where this scene ended, where it finished, what the stage direction begged Beatrice and Benedick to do.

‘I answer to that name. What is your will?’

Seb had done his best to hold it down, and he had succeeded, succeeded in keeping it low and flat and devoid. And David peered into hos eyes.

‘Do you not love me?’

Swallow. Harder.

‘Why no, no more than reason.’

David stepped forward to deliver his line, and Seb begged his stomach to sit still, trying to keep himself at bay, trying to keep everything at bay.

‘Why then, your uncle and the Prince and Claudio have been deceived. They swore you did.’

‘Do you not love me?’  Seb held himself, held himself perfectly still, and David stepped forward again.

‘Troth, no, no more than reason.’

‘Why then, my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula are much deceived, for they did swear you did.

‘They swore that you were almost sick for me.’

‘They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.’

‘Tis no such matter. Then you do not love me?’

‘No, truly, but in friendly recompense.’

Then, a pause. Seb looked to Annabelle, who had delivered the intervening lines previously. The play featured a short break, when it’s revealed that Beatrice and Benedick already love one another, and that they have confessed to as much in letters that the other has not yet seen. And previously, Annabelle had launched into the lines and the stage direction without prompting. But she was sitting with the most curious look on her face, watching the two boys.

Seb realized he was breathing unnecessarily hard. But David was only a foot and a half away, and, well, who could blame him?

“With the final lines,” started Annabelle, and Seb was keenly aware that she was about to provide stage direction. On their line reads. Which she hadn’t done for anyone else. “Really try and dig into the feeling that you have just discovered that a love you thought was unrequited is, in fact, mutual. And that, after all of this, even through some playfulness, your hearts are finally free to be together.” Anna looked back down at her sheet. “See if you can find something like that to dig into, really try and make it personal.”

Seb was pretty sure she was smiling at the paper.

Seb looked back to David, who was looking curiously at Annabelle, and then, back to him. David shrugged, gave Seb half a grin, and started again.

‘A miracle! Here’s our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee, but by this light I take thee for pity.’

Seb closed his eyes and dug into himself, tried to imagine a world in which his love, a love inevitably unrequited, was paid off, and delivered the line with as much as he could.

‘I would not deny you, but by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.’

‘Peace! I will stop your mouth.’

And, scene.

Sort of.

There was that little bit of stage direction, the one where Dav-Benedick kisses Beatrice, but Seb was doing a very good job of forgetting that. It was just a line read. He could forget it.

It wasn’t on his mind at all.

* * * * *

Seb went back to his dorm after class. He’d go to the room later, but he was going to sneak in a quick shower and shave before headed over. Plus, it might be nice to have a cold, cold shower. David Oliver had looked him dead in the eye, in front of a group of thirty people, and had said the line ‘Come, I will have thee’. Among other lines.

Tough to remember the other lines, though.

So a shower, even though it was the middle of a Friday afternoon. Seb’s roommate was in class, which worked great, so Seb packed up his shower caddy, making sure to cover the pink razor with his towel, wearing a long pair of sweats to hide the already existing hairlessness of his body, and went into the men’s bathroom.

After his shower, which was a quick one, since Seb could barely stand the cold and had already gone over his entire body the night before, he returned to his room, pleased to find it still empty, and swapped into his jeans and hoodie. Baggy enough to disguise his figure, enough fabric to prevent any kind of smooth-skin exposure. He was a little worried about what he was going to do in the South Carolina heat, but, by that time, the bloodletting might have accomplished what it needed to and he might be well on his way to regrowing his leg hair.

Then, he grabbed his backpack, his wallet, with fake ID reading ‘Sebatian’ Collins, and started out towards the liquor store.

He was thinking something different today. Okay, flavored vodka wasn’t evil, but there had to be other things out there. There had to be better things out there. There had to be, frankly, things that didn’t make him feel like he might keel over from some sort of chemical exposure after drinking more than a shot of it. At the very least, he was aiming for something that didn’t smell like it would catch fire if he held a match to it.

The liquor store at the edge of campus, Royal Beverage, never looked at fakes closely, which worked for Seb. That picture was blurry, but the boy over the counter was certainly not twenty one. No one had ever mistaken him for being anything other than eighteen, at best an even nineteen, and he was pretty sure that, unless things changed very quickly, very brutally, it’d stay that way.

He quick-stepped there, hoping to beat the after class crowd that made their way in on Friday nights. Royal was just a five minute walk from his place, and he did beat most of the people he was worried about, meaning no line trailing out the door onto the cracking sidewalk. He slipped in the front door, bell ringing behind him, and nodded to the man behind the counter. Thank god. Same guy as the other times he’d come.

And then he started passing down the aisles. Wine, probably at least a bottle. He checked through the whites, looking to see if there was something under ten dollars, then settled on an oversized bottle of red. The label didn’t even specify the kind of red, even though Seb was pretty sure that it had to have one. Reds weren’t just reds.

Then he started down the liquor aisle. He could, he supposed, go with something brown, but he’d never drank brown liquor before, and was certain he’d never seen any of the girls drink anything that didn’t come crystal clear. No whiskey. No boy drinks. He combed down to the clear liquors. Tequila was an option, but he didn’t feel particularly keen on drinking it straight, and he wasn’t sure what you mixed it with. Coke? There was clear rum. He didn’t know if that was any different from Captain Morgan rum, but it looked pretty much-

“Hey!” Seb jumped. Down the aisle, a very tall, very built man with cropped hair was staring at him. Seb blinked. He was pretty sure he had no idea who that was. Athlete build, but there was only one athlete that Seb knew, and Seb was damn certain not to mistake David Oliver for anyone else.

“Uh,” he said. “Hi.” The man walked down the aisle, and Seb calmed himself. There was a smile on his face, a little one, but a smile all the same. And it wasn’t the, like, scary kind of smile, the one that preceded police action on some sort of masculine infringement, but a regular one.

“You’re Seb, right?” Seb nodded. He had heard that voice before. And now that he was closer, there was a…

“Cam,” said Seb. Cam nodded and smiled.

“One and the same,” he said. “I figured that, given how much you hang around Margot, we’d meet eventually.” Seb wondered under what context Cam had been shown a picture of him. There weren’t a lot of photos of Seb out there, and there were even fewer with him and all the girls. Maybe one from the beginning of the semester, out in the park on the west side of campus, when Lucy had insisted that they do something other than drink and eat for a change. Seb was pretty sure it was the only walk they’d ever been on.

“Yeah,” said Seb. “Um, how’s it going?” Seb had never considered himself an excellent conversationalist at the best of times, and it didn’t help when he was worried that the wrong sentence might reveal his age. Royal might not really care, but if Cam announced that Seb was a Freshman to the store at large, he might have to start walking all the way to the QuickMart.

“Good,” said Cam, jovially. “Good, yeah. Hey, are you coming with Margot and all them to the party tonight? Pi…” He trailed. “Well, some frat house.” Seb wondered if every football player was completely unaware of the social rules surrounding parties. Did Seb, this Seb, look anything like the kind of person who was allowed into a frat?

But Cam was being nice, and Seb was pleased with that. Okay, it had been two sentences, and boys didn’t reveal themselves in two sentences, but he was at least friendly. Good for Margot!

“Probably not,” said Seb.

“Oh,” said Cam. “Ah, shame.” He paused and glanced at the bottle of wine in Seb’s hand. “Just for you then?” Seb tried to make the quick decision between portraying himself as an alcoholic and flirting with the line of telling Cam his whereabouts. Quick decision.

“Sort of,” he offered. “My roommate.” Seb hadn’t drank with Danny Evans since the first week of college.

“Cool,” said Cam. “Well, hey, listen, it’d be cool to hangout some time. You should come to one of the parties with all of them.” Seb nodded.

“Definitely,” he said. “We’ll make that happen.” We’ll make that happen?

Cam grinned, lifted the bottle of Smirnoff he was holding as a farewell, and trotted off to the counter. And Seb let out a breath.

Okay, so Cam was nice. And Cam wanted him to come to a party, which was… well, that was whatever. It really, really, was fine. He wasn’t going to go, of course, because he couldn’t, and because every description of a frat party sent shivers down his spine, but it was a nice gesture.

He picked out the clear rum, if for no other reason than to hopefully avoid running into another person in the store by lingering too long, waited twenty five seconds for Cam to finish checking out, pretending to be deeply concerned with the ingredients in rum – which had a surprisingly short list; according to his mother, that meant ‘healthy’ – and then hurried to the counter.

The cashier didn’t hassle him, just as he hadn’t the week before, and soon Seb was on his way, hurrying towards the girls’ dorm.

And thank god. The day had dragged, and the week had dragged more, and sitting with David in the hours leading up to Friday night had just made Seb even itchier to be come Viola. He was going to have to get that under control. If every Friday was going to be the night he became her, and every Friday was also the day he shared classes with David, he’d need to figure out how to emotionally handle himself. He was exhausted already, just from thinking about him and then thinking about her, and he hadn’t even become her yet!

But now, on the way, walking quicker and quicker, bottles jostling together in his backpack, making the same, steady clink with each step, he was getting a second wind. He had pretty much been through their entire closets already, so he wasn’t even thinking that there was anything to explore further, any particular kind of new excitement, but that didn’t matter. He’d take the old excitement. Maybe it wouldn’t be quite as good, quite as calming, quite as soothing to the buzzing that had pressed against the back of his brain all week, but even a little bit would be nice. Eighty percent would do. Hell, he’d take twenty.

Really, by the end of last Friday, it hadn’t even really been all that exciting anymore. He’d been enjoying it, sickly, but it was just… well, he had just been Viola, and he never got to be Viola, and he hadn’t even realized that he had wanted to be. And now, now it felt like he just needed a few moments a week to hold onto the balance, and that would do. It would quiet the buzzing, at least.

He covered the ground to the dorm quickly, took the steps two at a time, and then hurried down the hall to their door.

And he knocked. And Lucy opened the door, smiled at him, and beckoned her in.

* * * * *

“So,” said Lucy, grinning at her. Viola was sitting on the edge of her bed, and Lucy was standing. Margot and Anna had sprawled themselves on the floor, watching Lucy pace. None of them was dressed yet, not for the party, all still in the clothes she was sure they had gone to class in. Not sorority chic. Not yet. “I think it would be really annoying for you not to be able to go to the bathroom all night. So, I have a plan! A plan to make you, well, even more passable for just your average college girl while you’re here.” Viola raised an eyebrow at her.

“I’m getting flashbacks,” she said, and Anna giggled. Lucy waved a hand.

“Don’t even bother,” she said, and Viola laughed.

“What are you going to be doing to me?” she asked. Lucy beamed and spun to the closet, swinging open the door so she was partially obscured by it.

“Well,” she started, “the problems were your hair and your lack of boobs.” She leaned out, and Viola knew she was looking for confirmation from her. She nodded. “Right, well, those are actually fixable! I mean, well, okay, not like, permanently fixable, unless you want to start growing your hair out…” She paused and rolled her eyes at herself, and Viola giggled. “Whatever, they’re not, like, things we can just wait around on. We don’t want you to just be waiting until your hair is long enough to go pee, because that could be ages!” She grimaced. “It could be never, if you didn’t get a cute haircut.” Lucy almost looked like she was sad just imagining Viola getting an ugly haircut, and Viola bit back another giggle.

“The point, Lucy,” said Margot. Lucy jumped from her stupor and back to the closet.

“Right!” she said. “Right, but we can give you something to wear.” She lifted from her closet a deep brunette wig, settled on top of a skull sized sphere. Viola blinked. “It’ll go great with your skin color, and it works with your eyebrows.” Lucy frowned. “It’s no blonde, but it was what I could manage to get out of the theater department that I didn’t think they’d miss too much. I mean, god, they have like a million brunette wigs, and like, only two blonde ones!” She frowned. “I thought you’d be cute in a red one, too. They’re so fiery.” She recovered her face. All three girls looked at Viola expectantly.

“Did you carry this out of the theater department on a manikin head?” asked Viola. Lucy waved her hand.

“I’m very subtle,” she said. Viola raised an eyebrow, the memory of Lucy and David still relatively fresh in her mind. It never left, really. Lucy rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’m a good thief. Better?” Viola let out a heavy breath and shook her head.

“This doesn’t solve the other issue,” said Viola. Lucy grinned.

“You think I can steal a wig from the theater department but not fake boobs?” she asked. She settled the wig on the desk, dipped back into the closet, and then darted back out. And, well, yeah… those were boobs. Well, they weren’t actual boobs, but they sure looked like them, just in floating, detached form. “So, like, they did a play a while back where the whole thing was a gender swapped cast.” Lucy shuddered. “I heard it was a nightmare. Anyway, they got these, which, well, they’re actually a lot better than just your average props. They come with this glue, but I figure that you can just stick ‘em into a bra when you go to the bathroom or something.” She grinned. “But, with this and the wig…”

“You’ll look exactly like one of us,” said Anna.

“Minus the blonde hair,” said Lucy, again. “And, look, if they ever get more blonde hair at the theater department and you’re interested in changing up you’re eyebrows, let me know.” Viola stared at the boobs, and she stared at the wig.

She had been pretty without them, even with her sort of shaggy boy hair, but the wig had a sort of softness to it’s shine, and she was struggling to quantify it. And… well, yes, she did think it sounded nice, sort of, to give these a go, but they seemed like massive next steps. Not just clothes, and not just makeup, but… breasts?

But the point was to get it all out in here, wasn’t it? It was to lean in. It was to let all of the heavily, deeply feminine things about her out in this room, lest they escape into the real world, and these were things that definitely qualified. Boobs and long hair and, well, using the women’s restroom, which she was just now realizing was their proposal.

Which felt a little overkill.

“It… it might be a little much, don’t you think?” she said. “I mean, just for me to use the bathroom?” Anna gave her a small smile.

“Well,” she said, “We just thought you might like it. It’s totally optional, and it would make going to the bathroom easier, but, you know…”

“It seemed like it might work for you,” offered Margot. Viola nodded. Less about the bathroom, more about pushing the upper limits of femininity, something they assumed she wanted. Correctly, of course, but, well, shit.

“It’s up to you,” said Anna. “It does seem easier than, you know, having to strip every time you wanted to pee.”

“Do you think it’d be fine for me to use the girls bathroom?” asked Viola. Margot snorted.

“Yes,” she said. Viola chewed on her lip for a second.

“Right,” she said. Viola. Viola… could? Seb couldn’t, that was for sure, but Viola was allowed. Viola, of course, was a girl, not a boy, and, in that case, she had to. But, she really had to be Viola then. “Right, um, okay.” Lucy clapped.

“Amazing!” she said. Then, she frowned. “But drinks first. I mean, I just wanted you to know before you start stripping out of your clothes to go to the bathroom.” Viola grinned.

“Thanks, Luce,” she said. She went to her backpack and started pulling out the alcohol, passing it to Anna, who was closest to the desk. “I saw Cam in the liquor store.”

“Ah,” said Margot, smiling. “Yeah, he texted me. He’s cute, right?” Viola smiled and nodded.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Was he nice?” she asked. “He can be a bit weirdo sometimes around people that he’s nervous around.”

“Yeah,” muttered Anna. “He kept talking about my socks last weekend.” Margot giggled.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No, no,” said Anna, waving a hand. “I like it when people point out that I’m wearing different length socks. Keeps me honest.”

“Sorry,” repeated Margot. “He doesn’t really care.”

“That’s a relief,” said Anna. She uncapped the wine Viola had brought and started pouring into cups. “I was worried that if I paired slightly different ankle socks together tonight I might get scolded again.”

“He just wants you to like him,” said Margot. Anna took a breath and pursed her lips.

“He’s a real winner, darling,” she said, and Lucy laughed.

“Why would he be nervous around me?” asked Viola. Never, in his entire life, had he thought that another guy might be intimidated by him. Margot shrugged and accepted a drink from Anna. Anna motioned to Viola, and Viola took a cup, too.

“We’re friends,” she said. “You know, he just doesn’t want to come across like a complete asshole.” She smiled. “Plus, he knows that you and David are close, and, well…”

“David’s famous,” said Lucy. Viola rolled her eyes.

“They’re friends, too,” she said. They’d come here together. Hilarious to imply that Cam needed Viola to talk him up to David. Okay, well, not Viola, but whatever. They were on the team together! “I mean, they probably spend more time together than we do.”

“Yeah, but David and you are actual friends,” said Margot. She took a sip, stuck out a tongue in disgust, and then took another. “Him and David are just, like, teammates. He’s all worried that he won’t get enough playing time or whatever.”

“That’s so dumb,” said Viola before she could stop herself. Margot raised an eyebrow. “I mean, god, he doesn’t want to be friends with him to be friends with him? It’s all like… networking?” Margot leaned back in her chair and smiled.

“What, taking offense to someone cozying up to your boyfriend?” she asked.

“Oh, shut up,” said Viola, and Lucy giggled.

“It’s not like, networking,” said Margot. “It’s just a bit of both. You know, being well liked is kind of a currency there, I think, and David is the best player on the team. He could make or break guys if he liked them or not. You know, try and get them more reps in practice.” For a second, Viola wanted to say ‘David wouldn’t do that’, but she wasn’t keen on the idea of, again, having to defend the fact that David wasn’t, in fact, the kind of guy to toss players he didn’t like to the side. And, besides, if he liked him enough to go to a party with him, he definitely wasn’t going to just leave Cam out in the cold. He must like him enough for that.

“Cam wasn’t weird,” said Viola, deciding to lean away from conversation about David. Thinking about David, talking about David, still made her insides turn. “Although I did lie and say I was buying stuff to drink with my roommate instead of you guys.”

“Danny Evans?” asked Anna. She made a gagging noise, and Viola clicked her tongue.

“He’s not that bad,” she said.

“Well, I’ll be sure not to mention that you were here when we meetup later,” said Margot. “Not that he’d know if I mentioned Viola.” Viola frowned.

“Low profile,” she reminded Margot. Margot waved a hand.

“I’m just kidding,” she said. “I’m not stupid.”

“Didn’t Danny make fun of you for your jeans being too skinny the first week of school?” asked Anna.

“Skinnies are so out,” said Lucy, nodding.

“I don’t think that was the problem,” said Viola, giggling. Danny hadn’t really made fun of Seb’s jeans. It was more of a… well, it was a tacit disapproval. He had raised an eyebrow, made a short comment, and then never said another word. And Seb had tucked the jeans so far into the bottom of his dresser that he still hadn’t seen them since.

Funny that.

The conversation drifted away from Danny, away from Cam, away from Viola, and Viola was happy for it to. Lucy started trying to figure out what kind of top she was going to wear, and was now flitting through them, holding them up in front of her torso, waiting for the required approving comments, and then tossing them onto her bed. And Margot and Anna had descended into a conversation about one of Margot’s psychology classes. And Viola, well, Viola just sprawled herself out on the bed and closed her eyes.

It wasn’t even about dressing like her right now. She would. It was just… well, it was good not to feel like she needed to police it. Herself. And she never really had, not with the three of them, but it did feel a little different now. She wasn’t policing her masculinity. They weren’t policing it either, and there wasn’t the sweeping undercurrent that she was fighting against. Before, she had worked against it, dug her heels in, even when she knew they didn’t care, even when they were excited by the direction she could go, but now…

Well, now she was just flowing downstream. And it was comfortable.

“Hey,” said Lucy, flopping down next to her on the bed. Viola smiled.

“Hey,” she said. Lucy had gone with a very simple black crop. Lucy nudged her.

“Want to try something on?” she asked. Viola shook her head.

“In a little bit,” she said. Lucy looked a little put out by the answer, so Viola nudged her back. “I will, I promise. I just want a second.”

“Sure, sure,” said Lucy. She recovered her face. “So, how was your scene with David?” Viola gave her a look, and Lucy giggled. “Sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” said Viola. “I mean, I definitely wanted to be spending all day feeling like I was going to throw up right up. It was fun.”

“Oh, that bad?” said Lucy, still giggling a little.

“No,” said Viola. “No, not all day. Just, like, half of it.”

“How unfortunate,” said Lucy.

“Yeah, you seem real putout by this,” said Viola. Lucy opened her mouth, then shut it, and grinned.

“We can find you a guy who isn’t David,” she said. “I mean, okay, he probably won’t look like David, because, well, nobody looks like David.” Viola bit her lip. True. Nobody looked like David. “But he might at least be amenable to dating.”

“I know,” said Viola. Except, of course, that there wasn’t a second David. And she wasn’t looking to replace David with some half measured out man, someone who wasn’t as funny and wasn’t as pretty and didn’t make Viola’s stomach feel like it had been flipped upside down. She didn’t want anyone else right now. “I know.”

“I think you’re probably priced out of most of the football players,” said Lucy. “But there’s definitely some fruitier soccer players.” Viola laughed at that, and Lucy grinned at her. “Someone you can snag.”

“They don’t all have to be athletes,” said Viola. “I actually sort of hate sports.”

“Oh, well, then I have a full theater department of boys,” said Lucy. “I mean, like, all of them are gay I think.” She frowned. “Except Taylor Windell. He’s definitely not gay.” She raised her eyebrows at Viola, and Viola giggled. “Of course, if we get you all dolled up, I’m not sure he’d really be too upset.”

“Very funny,” said Viola. The idea of trying to date a straight boy, one other than the one she was currently falling on her face for, was just about the worst thing she could imagine. It felt remarkably… well, if she was trying not to get caught doing whatever this was, it was pretty much game over on that. A straight boy would probably kill her for this. No, a straight boy would definitely kill her for this, even if he was a theater boy, even if all his friends were gay and women.

God, though, she wasn’t sure she just wanted to date any guy. Really, Lucy could try. Theater major, all of it, but she was pretty sure that it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work. For everything, what she really wanted, what she really needed, was either David Oliver or a return to normalcy. A return to the steadfastly sexless life, desireless life, where everything was easy and calm and nobody asked anything of her. In here, she could joke about David, and that was fine, but out there, her stomach needed to stop turning.

Of course, she was in here right now. And she was with her friends, and it was okay to want him right now. Only right now. Here, with Lucy and Margot and Anna, it was okay.

“I want to look like you all tonight,” she said. “Like, what you’re all going to wear to the party.” And Lucy grinned at her.

“That, we can definitely do.”

* * * * *

Turned out, the boobs worked better with the glue. She tried it with just the bra, but they sat sort of weird, at least according to Lucy, so they decided to try the glue. And with the wig, which also required her to tuck her real hair into a cap, she was feeling, at best, moderately uncomfortable. The hair was longer than she’d ever had before, and she found herself trying to catch strands falling out over her cheek, batting them away with idle fingers. Never mind that, when she looked in the mirror as Lucy affixed it to her scalp, the hair falling by her cheek looked entirely normal. It looked like it belonged. More than that, it looked like it… well, it really looked like Viola. Lucy had happily informed her that it was real hair, and that the theater department only secured the best in wigs.

“After the debacle with the last play, though, I don’t think they’re going to use them all that much. At least not on boys.”

And then there were the boobs. If she had thought that the hair was an adjustment, the boobs were a completely different level. She had expected them to be heavier on her chest, especially after holding them in her hands, but it wasn’t the weight that confused her brain. It was the change in the dimensions to her body. Within five minutes of putting them on, she’d bumped into the closet doors with them twice, a feature that seemed like it would be infinitely more painful if she had genuine pain receptors in the silicone.

Really, though, Viola just felt sticky. So much glue. Too much glue.

And if she hadn’t looked in the mirror, hadn’t decided that, well, she’d come this far and made a mess of herself already, might as well take a look, she’d have pulled them off immediately.

But she did look in the mirror.

The boobs and the wig completed the final twenty percent that she’d missed the first night, and the final fifteen from last weekend. They put her over the edge, and even now, even as she stared straight at herself, as she looked and saw, she could barely believe it. Before, she had struggled. She had. But it had been easy to stand in the mirror and see the bits of herself that were still masculine, the hair and the chest and the rest of it, and not believe that anything had changed. She could look and see the undercurrent of Seb.

But now, he was entirely gone. It was Viola, with that cascading hair, and with breasts and smooth skin and the clothes to match, to match the name and to match the girls. When they stood side by side, Lucy first, then Margot, then Anna, it was impossible to tell the difference. Oh, she had brunette hair, and they’d given her a full halter top to keep any signs of the fictional nature of her boobs under wraps, but she looked like one of them. She looked…

One hundred percent girl.

“See,” said Lucy. “You can definitely use the women’s.” And Viola had to laugh. Because she had entirely forgotten that this was, in fact, just to make her life easier. It was just so that she could use the girls bathroom and not go through the hassle of changing first, so that she could spend a Friday here and pee in peace. That felt so small. That felt like such a massively minor thing to have attempted this all for, and it had been why she had resigned herself to throwing off the glue in a second, but there was no chance of that now.

“This is wild,” she said. Then, “Is guy-me also this feminine?” Anna snorted.

“Not this feminine,” she said.

“You’ve seen all of us without makeup,” said Margot. Viola frowned.

“It’s not like that, is it?” That felt like a bridge too far. Seb needed to still exist, and he needed to be masculine enough to get by, and if he looked like the three of them without makeup, then forget it. The three of them were still pretty without makeup. Oh, it wasn’t the same kind of pretty, but they were still feminine.

“No,” said Anna. She was watching Viola with steady eyes, almost as if she was waiting for some kind of breakdown. Viola gave her a half smile. “I mean, you’re more feminine that a lot of guys, but you still look like a guy.” Lucy nodded.

“You just have a kind of plausible face,” she said. Viola let out a breath.

“A plausible face?”

“Yeah,” said Lucy. “You know, if done up right, it could go either way! Throw a mustache on, and you look plenty like a guy. Throw eyeliner on, and you look plenty like a girl!”

“Gender’s a performance,” offered Margot.

“Thank you psychology,” said Anna. Margot rolled her eyes. “We all know that gender is a performance.”

“How do you know that?” asked Margot. “I mean, who knows! Maybe Viola never heard that! Maybe they’ve managed to cover their ears every time you try and weasel your way into my notes.” Anna stuck out her tongue at Margot, and Margot snorted.

“Everyone knows gender is a performance,” said Anna. She looked to Viola, who shrugged and picked up her drink. Viola, in truth, didn’t really care. “See?” Margot clicked her tongue, and Anna wheeled into her seat.

“Whatever,” said Margot. “All I’m saying is that you can passably perform either, if you want to. Physically, at least.” She paused. “Of course, physical performance-”

“Jesus Christ,” muttered Anna.

“-isn’t the only kind of gender performance.” Margot glared at Anna, and Lucy giggled. “But you’re pretty good at the girl bits of that already.” Then, she added. “And the boy parts, of course.”

“Right,” said Viola. Anna opened her mouth, as if she was going to speak again, but Lucy jumped in.

“Can we take pictures?” she asked. “I mean, like, all four of us?” She grinned at Viola. “We can just do it in the room, and we won’t show anybody or anything, I just… I want pictures!” Viola took a heavy breath.

“No pictures,” she said. “No photos.” There shouldn’t be evidence of her. Lucy frowned.

“No one would have to see,” she said. “I mean, come on, are you telling me that you want to go home tonight and not remember that you can look like this? It’d just be the four of us, and no one would know! I mean, God, someone could look at you in a picture and still not realize that you’re Seb.”

Seb.

Seb.

The name came with a shooting pain in her stomach. Not backflips, not turnover, but almost… empty pain. Hollow pain.

Viola swallowed it.

“No pictures,” she repeated, and Lucy clicked her tongue and frowned.

“Really?” she complained. “I mean…”

“No pictures,” supplied Anna, and Viola was grateful to not need to deny Lucy a third time. Rejecting people, not her strong suit. Clearly, given, well…

That pain was still lingering in the pit of her stomach. Not just lingering, but spreading a little, spreading just to where it made her chest tight, just far enough that she could feel the air coming in and out of her body.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” said Viola. She wobbled to her feet. Oh, god, her feet. She’d worn her rattiest shoes over, and they surely didn’t go with this outfit, and-

“It’s fine,” murmured Anna. Viola realized she was staring at her shoes, collected in a tiny pile next to the door. “We all wear our shittiest shoes to frats. No one will bat an eye.” Anna stood. “I need to pee, too.” Viola, for a second, thought about asking Anna to let her go alone. A part of her still felt like she was intruding, and another was still trying to grapple with the now retreating pain, and she wanted a little space for that. But Anna had already stood and was throwing on a pair of slides, and Viola didn’t want to make a big deal of it. It was fine. Everything was fine. She’d go pee, and she’d come back, and everything was… fine.

Anna took her by the hand, intimacy that held Viola’s attention for just a second, and then they were walking out of the door and into the hall.

And it was only once they were in the hall that Viola realized she had broken her rule. Viola was supposed to exist only in the room, only within the confines of Lucy and Anna’s dorm, and they were past the threshold of the doorway, out into a public space, out into somewhere where Viola could be seen, where, theoretically, someone could have seen Seb enter the dorm and Viola exit. If someone was watching, if they were… well, they’d have to be stalking one of the girls to pay that close attention, but it wouldn’t be impossible to put two and two together. And, okay, the girls were right about the wig and the boobs and how Viola, with the right touch of makeup, looked sufficiently different from Seb to avoid too much suspicion. But if someone had been watching, and they were thinking hard enough, and they really, really wanted to figure it out, well…

Viola hadn’t even noticed that they had entered the bathroom. It was sort of a relief, actually, to have been dragged across the threshold and not need to overthink the whole thing. There was enough overthinking going on as it was. She made for a stall, but Anna didn’t let of her hand, pulling her towards the sinks, glancing around the bathroom. Then, after confirming that they were alone, she put a hand on each of Viola’s shoulders.

“What the hell was that?” she asked. Viola, not sure what the hell ‘that’ was, frowned.

“What was what?”

“Somewhere in the middle of that conversation, you got the look of someone who just watched their cat get stabbed,” said Anna. “And I was wondering, well, you know, why?” Viola puffed up her cheeks and blew air.

She didn’t know.

She had an idea, of course.

“I don’t know,” said Viola. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” She paused. “It’s just a lot right now.” Anna raised her eyebrows.

“Did we push too far?” she asked. Viola lowered her head and chewed on her lip. No. Maybe. She didn’t think so, but there was that pain, and that felt like the kind of thing that happened when the answer was yes, except that she didn’t want the answer to be yes so it shouldn’t be yes.

“It’s just a lot,” she repeated.

“We can stop,” said Anna, quietly. “I mean, just go back to the way things were.” She leaned up against the counter. “I mean, I’m having fun, and I know they are, but if you’re not…”

“I am,” said Viola. “I just… it’s a lot happening all very quickly.” Anna nodded.

“Maybe we just… take a step back?” she offered. “You know, less wig and tits, more standard outfits.” She shrugged. “Work back up to it?” And that wasn’t the answer, at least Viola didn’t think so, but things were moving quickly, more quickly than she had expected them to, and maybe the breaks were a good option. Maybe settling herself a little was smart, making sure things didn’t immediately explode, that she didn’t immediately explode, was the right call.

“Yeah,” she said, and she felt the bit of her voice shake. Tired. She was tired. She had been, to this point, so relentlessly pressed that her body hadn’t had a moment to settle. And her voice, straining to hold onto the day, hold onto the girl that she was supposed to be right now, sounded it. “Maybe just a small step back.” Anna squeezed her hand.

“Cool,” she said. Viola took a pair of long, heavy breaths. God, all she’d been doing was thinking about this weekend, thinking about tonight, and now that it was here, well…

Well, she had been having a nice time. She’d been having a really nice time, right up until the last bit there.

“Can I ask you something else?” Anna was still watching her, her eyes gentle, and Viola braced for the question that she had been waiting for someone to ask. Because, well, how could they not? How could anyone not ask the question? Anna had danced around it the other weekend, and, truthfully, Viola hadn’t really wrapped her head around it entirely, and it was why she was insisting on this division, insisting that things, broadly, stayed separate. But Anna had been close. And Anna… Viola didn’t have the answer for Anna right now.

“No,” she said. Anna blinked, then nodded.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine,” said Viola. ‘It’s just, it’s something I’m working out right now. And...”

“You don’t need to work it out with me,” supplied Anna.

“It’s not that you wouldn’t be a great person to work it out with,” said Viola. “Really, I’m sure it’d be helpful, but it’s complicated.” There was so much boiling. There was her and there was him and there was the entire state of South Carolina, the entire country for that matter, and the idea that, maybe, this wasn’t just a game she was playing was exhausting to think about. She liked the game. She liked that things were, by and large, still retractable. “I need time is all.”

“Totally,” said Anna. She smiled at her. “Let’s pee.” Viola nodded, content with the fact that she had time to figure out whatever the hell was going on. It was early enough, and the girls would head off the party later, and she’d have hours and hours to sit and digest. And she thought that Viola might have a better time digesting than Seb had. Seb had barely been able to get through the day, and, yeah, Viola was struggling a bit right now, but still. Viola and a cup of rum and time. That could work.

There was no urgency to any of this. She had ages.

She and Anna took adjacent stalls, Viola peed, and they emerged to wash their hands at the sinks, still unbothered by anyone else in the hall. Anna mentioned something about Viola trying on a different top, which Viola absently agreed to, mostly still trying to manage her way around how she was going to spend the next few hours once the girls left. The top, sure, and the rum, definitely, and probably some kind of movie. She’d ask Lucy for her laptop password and sufficiently feminine recommendation.

And then they left, back out into the long hallway, down towards the dorm. Viola wasn’t looking up for the first fifteen steps. And she wasn’t looking up when Anna squeezed her hand and murmured, through clenched teeth, “Be cool.”

And then she was looking up, up at the length of the hallway, at the silhouette in the doorway, a silhouette that did not belong to Margot or Lucy, not the girls they had left behind in the room, but a different silhouette. A different figure. A more masculine figure.

“Hi, Cam.”