Daniel sat at the living room table. The game box was on the computer desk, having been metaphorically shelved away until they got this out of the way. Sure, they’d had a talk about this after he’d come home out of breath, but Eliza had helped him understand that this was a ‘video game’, and that it was likely just fiction. And her news had been, for obvious reasons, a lot more pressing. Not that they weren’t going to get to it in time, but the fact that they weren’t alone, that there were others like them out there, that they’d be able to get help with the desire to step out of their skin every day… it was too much, too important not to focus on. And when Eliza had quickly explained it to Daniel, the atmosphere in the house had changed drastically. The sense of teeth-gritted resignation had given way to hope, and they could both sense it. 

Shortly after, Daniel had talked about it with Jenny, who had been more than understanding. In fact, she’d burst out laughing. She’d thought that Daniel had long known what was going on, but she was supportive of his coming out, and Pat, although he didn’t know what to make of it, had only nodded approvingly, then offered help, and then finally wrapped Daniel in a spine-shattering hug. 

After that, Jenny had brought the two of them into contact with her boyfriend’s doctor, and it had just been a matter of making an appointment. The two of them had been welcome to both come in at the same time, and they’d been asked a few pointed questions by someone who was underpaid, overworked and exactly the right amount of open-minded. He’d given them both some forms and asked them to carefully read them and then get back to him. Throughout the whole process, Daniel had expected someone to jump out from under the desk, going ‘ah-Hah!’ and accuse them of being from another world or something like that, but no such shenanigans transpired. 

It had all kind of gone by in a blur. Daniel had gotten a few days off. Eliza had not. Eliza existed in a separate world now where people used words like “hustle” and “quotas” unironically, where water-coolers were not props for background comedy but an excuse to step away from a desk while pretending to enjoy the aforementioned hustle. But she seemed to be doing quite well in that environment, even if Daniel could tell there was no small degree of stress that came with that kind of competitive attitude. 

So now he was at the dinner table, looking at what might have been the most intimidating piece of paper he’d ever been confronted with, including that time he’d been asked to sell his soul to a wayfarer demon to save the life of one of his companions (a long and mostly boring story that had him quickly travel to hell to retrieve it again later). The piece of paper in question did not ask him or Eliza for their souls, nor did it promise eternal riches for an IOU TBD at a later date. Instead, it asked a few questions that seemed so simple on the surface. The one he was currently looking at was for Eliza, which was why the door to the kitchen was wide open. She was currently trying out something new involving scallops while he pored over the document. 

“Uh…” he said, then cleared his throat and tried again, a little louder. “Eliza,” he said over his shoulder. There came an acknowledging noise from the kitchen, letting him know she was listening. “First question…” he licked his lips. This document didn’t waste any time getting to the point. “I -- and then a little line for you to sign your name on -- identify as having a female-dash-feminine and-dash-or a gender non-conforming gender identity and wish to be treated with estrogen.” That was a sentence and a half, and he looked over his shoulder, wondering if he should repeat the last sentence. Eliza’s head poked out from the corner with a confused frown. 

“What, just like that?” she asked. 

“It sure looks like it,” Daniel said. “There are more questions, of course, and a laundry list of side effects. But yes, this is the first question.”

“Hells,” Eliza said with a soft whistle. “That’s a lot more forthcoming than I’d expected. Well, obviously the answer is yes.” Daniel nodded and entered her initials there. She’d just have to sign at the bottom herself. The next question was more or less similar, but sounded a little scarier, about how the long-term effects hadn’t been properly studied yet. Bit by bit, he relayed the information to Eliza, who occasionally popped out of the kitchen to look at something or other, leaning over his shoulder to read the page. 

Despite the gravity of what they were going over, Daniel was still aware of how close her face was to his when she did, and he wondered if it was because her attention was divided between the consent form and the cooking that she wasn’t. Not that he minded, not really. After she’d come up to him the other day and she’d explained the gravity of those words, they’d hugged it out. Like a dam broken, the unspoken implication that they’d duke it out once they were in their own world had been driven so far into the background so as to not be visible anymore. 

That didn’t mean he was entirely comfortable. She was very close, after all, and whenever she got like this, focused, her eyes fixed, pursing her lips slightly, he couldn’t help but ignore the face of the person whose body she’d been wearing and see the queen underneath. He wondered if she saw that person too, whenever she looked in the mirror. He hoped she did. 

There is a world, very far removed from this one -- and you should hope it stays that way -- where there is a parasitic creature that feeds on mild discomfort. It is invisible and can’t be touched and lives on your shoulder. There, it whispers uncomfortable things in your ear. It can be a flaw or imperfection on your own face you hadn’t noticed until you absent mindedly looked at your reflection in a car window, or how much your aunt actually looks like that famous actor and you can’t un-see it. These creatures are wholly unpleasant and can only be driven out by self-control, positive thinking and, ironically, throwing salt over one’s shoulder. The problem, of course, is that on Earth, no such creature exists, and that intrusive thoughts can't be simply banished by throwing a handful of salt in some parasite’s eyes. Intrusive thoughts, on Earth, intrude from within. 

There is no creature that whispers, drawing attention to useless facts and problems, and all you can do with the information it provides is make peace with the idea that it is entirely your own mind dancing around itself. As such, Daniel had to come to terms with the fact that there was no little creature on his shoulder, telling him that Eliza, the Demon Queen, was actually quite beautiful. There was a smaller part of his brain that wondered if she could read minds -- which she couldn’t (anymore) -- and tried not to think about that, or her, or much of anything anymore as he focused on not blushing. 

“Daniel?” Eliza asked, shaking his brain like an Etch-A-Sketch, returning it to factory-default settings. He turned to look at her and she was a lot closer than he’d anticipated and oh god their noses touched and he could feel her breath. Both of them pulled away with a start. Daniel shook his head, trying to make sense of the white noise in his brain. 

“Uh… wh--... sorry… I was… elsewhere.” He looked at her with a faceful of guilt and a headful of empty. After a second Eliza’s face broke into a smile and then a full hearty belly-laugh. 

“Hah! Clearly,” Eliza said, still chuckling. “Anyway, I was just wondering if your form looks anything like this?” She looked over the pages again and Daniel with her. The effects were wildly different, of course, although there were similarities. 

“Yes and no,” he said, a little embarrassed. He’d never talked about bodies outside of a medical context all that often, and certainly not this frankly. “There is… uh… less mention of sex-drive, or… uh… physical reactions.”

“Uh-huh,” Eliza said. “Honestly, I could do without those, it can certainly get…” There was a pause where Daniel made sure to keep staring at the page because he was certain she’d just shot him a glance that would’ve made him a lot more self-conscious than he’d been in a long time. “...distracting,” Eliza finished. Then stood upright and put her hands on her hips with a self-satisfied look on her face that immediately conjured up images of her old form again. “Daniel,” she said, “are you blushing?”

“Kindly go off, Evil Queen,” he mumbled, but couldn’t keep the smile from playing on his own face. Eliza grinned like a cat and turned to the kitchen.

“As you wish, oh Blight of my Life,” she said, and then her eyes grew wide. “Bollocks! The scallops!” She sprinted to the kitchen, leaving Daniel to try and catch his breath. The whole encounter had left him beyond confused, and he was trying to make sense of his heart hammering in his throat and his brain bouncing somewhere around the upper stratosphere. He hadn’t felt this way in decades, and he wondered if it had something to do with his younger body. Eliza was clearly having an effect on him, especially the two of them living in such close proximity to each other. He was supposed to stand up to her. He was the Hero, and she was, still, the Demon Queen, wasn’t she? 

He looked over his own informed consent forms, trying to distract himself. The clinical text helped him calm down and focus on his own immediate future. Most of the changes were things that were incredibly welcome to him, even if they’d used to be inconvenient. He kind of looked forward to shaving again, for one. And while the softness of his skin wasn’t… unpleasant, it didn’t feel like his. He’d rather touch someone else’s skin. Before the invisible creature on his shoulder could offer some suggestions as to people he might like to touch, he quickly flipped the page. 

Just then, Eliza came strutting out of the kitchen, towel still on her shoulder, having salvaged the food that had almost-but-not-quite burned, and presented an appetizing bowl of noodles, scallops and what appeared to be assorted vegetables, as well as a fork. Daniel looked at it for a second, and decided then that he needed to take a degree of control back from the situation. Eliza had been… a lot to handle, in ways he hadn’t expected, and Daniel needed to make it clear to her that she wasn’t the only one with power in their dynamic. 

Carefully, he put the papers to the side and stood up, much to Eliza’s confusion, and he went to the kitchen. He’d been working on something small, and he figured that this situation, right now, was the best time to try and bring it out. After only a moment, he came back into the living room and sat down with his secret weapon at the ready. Eliza glared at him. She knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew she knew, and he knew she didn’t know why he was doing it. That was part two of his plan. But first he needed to act like nothing was the matter, until she brought it up. 

“Daniel?” Eliza asked carefully as he began to eat. It was fantastic, but he wasn’t going to acknowledge that. He ate as if he hadn’t heard her for a moment and then looked up at her with an innocent, questioning glance. 

“Yes?”

“When did you learn to eat with chopsticks?” Eliza asked, clearly annoyed. He knew for a fact she hadn’t figured it out yet, and he wasn’t going to admit that he’d spent several days while she was at work trying to get his hands in just the right position. He did his best to make it look easy. 

“Oh,” he said. “I think I just… sort of picked it up.”

“How?” Eliza asked, poking at her own food while shooting daggers at him. “Why?”

“Well, you know,” Daniel said, chewing his food carefully, making sure to swallow before making very deliberate eye contact. “If I’m going to be eating food like this,” he said, pointing at it, “I felt I had to enjoy it authentically.”

“What do you mean?” Eliza asked. Daniel shrugged, keeping himself from showing too much satisfaction. He could tell he’d gotten under her skin. 

“It’s the only way I could think of to make it better, considering the fact that it’s… well…” He looked at her with an innocent little smile. “Perfect.”

“Oh… I… well…” Eliza stammered through the compliment, and then suddenly seemed to realize what he’d done, breaking into a wide grin. “You bastard,” she giggled, and flung the towel at him.

Elamimax

I swear, writing romantic tension is hard work, because I want them to kiss, and I can't let them!

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