Elliot couldn’t stop looking. She’d never known a lot of other queer people. Growing up closeted carried a sense of safety, but also isolation. Sure, there was a tendency for kids like her to find each other anyway, but even there she’d never had a lot of luck. She certainly never had someone come out to her. But now that she had, it was like… like watching a movie that’s exactly the same with a different actor. Someone who had slowly become central to her life was now, suddenly, cast in a wildly different light.

Kira was a girl. It just made sense. Elliot had never been a particularly visual person when it came to attraction. Sure, she sighed ‘Girls’ wistfully when watching women’s sports, for example, but to her, it had always been about the energy. The vibes. Kira had a softness, not necessarily in the way she spoke or the way she held herself, but in who she was. 

And now Elliot could see it, and she couldn’t stop looking. Of course Kira was a girl. And now a terrible, horrible, no good thing was happening. The little kernel, the seed that had made her question her sexuality, blossomed and exploded in her chest, like a grenade of endorphins and butterflies. It was all she could do not to bite her lip and make it all the more obvious. Kira was sitting only a foot away from her, flanked on the other side by Jonas, who caught Elliot’s eye. 

“I think,” Jonas said, gracefully pretending not to notice Elliot’s furious blushing, “I’m gonna give… I’m gonna take a walk.” He smiled that awkward not-quite smile that pulled back the corners of his mouth without actually reaching eye level. Kira squeezed her hands between her knees and looked up at him. 

“O-okay,” she said. “I just… I’ll talk to you later, okay?” She sounded dejected, and luckily Jonas seemed to pick up on it, putting a hand on her back. 

“We will. Promise. I just need some fresh air. This isn’t about you coming out, okay. You know how much -- how much I care about you, Kira.” He seemed to be struggling. “I just need a moment,” he said. “And I’ll give you two some space.” He looked between Elliot and Kira and then made for the door, like he was trying to escape. Kira raised a hand, probably to stop him, but changed her mind. 

“Are you okay?” Elliot asked. Kira turned to her and nodded. 

“Yeah. I’m just worried about him, y’know? What if he’s secretly got issues with me being like this?” She seemed to be teetering on the edge of breaking down, and Elliot did not know how to prevent that. But she did know nonsense when she heard it. 

“Bullshit,” Elliot said. Kira blinked. “Jonas thinks the world of you.” Kira nodded, but it was clear she didn’t really believe her. “Come on,” Elliot said, standing up. “I need to clear my head too and I think you do too.” Another nod from the newly-girled girl. 

Malena, who was talking to some other students, saw them and peeled off from the little group. “You guys heading out?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” Kira said. “Just gonna go for a walk.” She seemed like she didn’t know what to do with her hands and Elliot’s immediate urge to take one and hold it was a hard one to squash down. “Stuff to think about.”

“Alright, well,” Malena said, looking at them both, “you kids be safe. There’s monsters out there.” She’d said it in a comedically dramatic tone, but the light in the room nonetheless curved to light her from below for a second. She smiled a toothy smile. “But for real, they don’t like people being out past sundown.”

“Gotcha,” Elliot said, only now realizing the sun had set since the meeting had started. “Promise we’ll be safe.” Then Malena nodded at her. 

“Step aside with me for a second?” Elliot looked at Kira, and then at Malena, following her just a few feet away, already nervous. Malena intimidated her, in that wistfully-sighing-’girls’ kind of way. “Look,” Malena said, “be careful and gentle with her,” the taller girl said, “but be honest with yourself as well. She’s going through a lot right now, but that doesn’t mean you should try to disappear yourself, okay?”

Elliot frowned. “What are you… I don’t know what you mean.”

Malena dramatically rolled her eyes, and then smiled again. “I swear, you guys are… anyway, what I mean is that I think that, if you feel a certain way, you should consider talking about it with her too.” Elliot immediately flushed red. 

“Wh-- I mean -- I don’t --” 

“You’re really cute when you stammer like that,” Malena said with a truly fiendish grin. Elliot only started blushing more. “If you want to talk with me later too,” the monstrous entity from beyond the void said, “you’ll know where to find me. You’ve got all the time in the world to figure yourself, and Kira, and all of it out.” 

“O-- okay,” Elliot said. “Wait, is this like… an invitation… or…”

“Do you want it to be?” The little smirk on Malena’s face was positively lethal. 

“I -- I --” Elliot stammered, “I need to th-think and there’s Kira and I have to take care of her and t-talk to her and -- and --”

“Goodness, you are precious.” She nudged Elliot’s shoulder back towards the girl in question. “Go. Talk to Kira. You and I can ‘talk’ later if you still want to, Elliot. Kira is more important right now.” 

“You’re… um… I don’t… Okay…” Elliot took a step back towards Malena. “I think I’d like that. Um… I don’t know how to… um…”

“Like I said,” Malena said, “there’s time. And don’t worry, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ll walk you through it when the time comes.” She winked. 

“O-okay,” Elliot said, and then, mumbling quietly, “thank you.” She thought her hair was going to catch fire with how hot her cheeks burned. 

Malena smiled and then nodded at Kira. “Go on now,” she said with a mock southern drawl, “git.” With that, she turned on her heel to rejoin the other group, although she glanced over at Elliot a few more times in a distinctly less in-control and more insecure-teenager kind of way. Elliot pretended not to see it, and rejoined Kira. 

“You two okay?” Kira asked. Elliot nodded, still blushing a bit and then hooked her arm through Kira’s and dragged her to the door. They exited the room in silence. A lit, empty hall in an otherwise-empty school building was a liminal space, and that went doubly so for a building that had transdimensional access ramps built in for the incorporeally challenged. 

The silence was deafening, and Elliot was scared to be the first one to break it, and Kira seemed to be lost in thought, although she did occasionally glance over at Elliot. Every time she did while Elliot had been looking at her, she’d had to quickly look away or risk her already consistently present blush getting worse. Thankfully, the silence broke itself. 

As soon as they opened the door to the campus grounds, they were greeted by the sound of crickets. It filled the air, and gave the evening a distinctly late-summer early-autumn feel. It was nice. It also made Elliot feel a lot less awkward, but she still didn’t know if she was able to just start talking. What would she even say? 

“Would you like to talk?” Elliot asked. That was as good a place to start as any other. If Kira didn’t feel like talking, if she had too much to think about, the whole idea of a conversation was pointless. 

“Yeah,” Kira said, destroying that possibility. “Wanna sit?” she asked, pointing at a bench that overlooked the lake. A few sleeping ducks floated around in the moonlight. It seemed like a wonderful place to sit. Wonderfully romantic, Elliot’s brain helpfully pointed out. They went over and sat down, having to unhook their arms. 

“So…” Elliot said, clasping her hands together awkwardly. That was as far as she got. 

“So…” Kira said. The silence began to creep back in, when she resumed. “You and Malena, huh?” Elliot straightened her back, shook her head, hesitated, and then had to take several breaths before she could properly answer. 

“W-well… I don’t…” She sighed and dropped her head. “I don’t know.”

“Do you like her?” Kira asked, pulling her legs up and sitting cross-legged. This conversation was not going the way Elliot thought it would. She’d been expecting a talk about Kira, about her identity, her transition. About her feelings. 

“I… I mean… she makes me feel like… gosh, I don’t even know. She’s gorgeous and confident and just…” she sighed. “Girls.”

“Yeahhh,” Kira said next to her, and they both smiled. “Girls.”

“But she’s not the only one who makes me feel that way,” Elliot said, and the knot of anxiety in her stomach gently trotted up into her chest. Her heart hammered in her ears, and she hoped Kira couldn’t hear it. She shot a sideways glance at Kira. It was so strange, to admit the feelings that had slowly been building up since they’d met. Kira, for her part, looked baffled. It was hard to read her face in the moonlight. 

“B-but…” Kira said, “you and Malena…”

“I don’t know!” Elliot said, hiding her face in her hands. “It’s all so complicated.” She snuck a look between her fingers. The girl was fidgeting hard. Elliot dropped her hands.

“I -- I know how you feel,” Kira said, mumbling quietly. 

“Yeah, Malena has that effect on people,” Elliot said. “And then you’ve also got Jonas…”

“Wait, I do?!” Kira asked, her head jerking sideways to look at Elliot. “Oh god, I do.” She ran her hands through her hair. “What is my life?” Elliot chuckled. “But… um…" Kira turned and looked Elliot straight in the eyes. “But I wasn’t talking about them.”

“Oh.”

“And like, Malena said there’d be a lot of feelings, and like, that’s not… wrong…”

“There’s a ‘but’ here,” Elliot said. “I can feel it.” Kira just smiled apologetically. 

“Okay, I hope this doesn’t sound weird, but like… there’s been feelings for like… a while now, and like… I didn’t want to say anything because you’re gay and I’m… I thought I wasn’t… so I thought I couldn’t…”

Elliot completely surprised herself by doing something incredibly brave. She reached over and very carefully touched the back of Kira’s hand. Just one, two fingers, briefly brushing against the skin, without looking away from her eyes. “You… you are. A-and you can. If you… want to.”

Kira bit her lip. “Yeah,” she said. “I’d like that. Um… what about Malena?”

Elliot laughed. “I… don’t even know. I’d have to figure that out. If like… if that’s something you’d want to figure out? I don’t even know how that would work…” She rubbed her face. “What about you and Jonas?”

“Um,” Kira said. “Same deal. Does… does that make you uncomfortable?” Elliot thought about that for a second. She thought about the way Kira had looked earlier, small and vulnerable, and Jonas looking like he was ready to take on the world to protect her… if there was any envy there, it was completely overshadowed by how right that looked. 

“No,” Elliot said. “It doesn’t.”

Kira bit her lip again and reached out to Elliot’s still-raised hand. Their fingertips touched, and then, like that’s how things were supposed to be, their fingers interlaced. “This is for real, right?” Kira asked. “This isn’t like… a dream or something? Or something we’re fucking up?”

“I don’t think so,” Elliot said with a hopeful smile. “If it was a dream, I think I’d have kissed you by now.” An alarm siren went off in her head. Had she really just said that?! What could have possibly possessed her to say something so forward, let alone so tacky? 

“Okay,” Kira said. 

“Okay?”

“If -- if you want…”

“Oh!” Elliot felt her breath catch in her throat. And then she just nodded and the two just sat there for what felt like an eternity, looking at each other and not moving. Elliot was, eventually, the one to make the first move, scooting a little closer. They were both breathing quickly, and Elliot caught herself looking at Kira’s mouth. She was going to kiss this girl. This was actually happening. 

Kira moved closer too, and closed her eyes. Elliot knew she hadn’t even started her transformation, and yet, in that moment, she was the most beautiful thing Elliot had ever seen. She closed her eyes, and moved in. 

“Woof.”

Elliot and Kira’s eyes shot open. Their noses were almost touching, and both turned their heads. In front of them sat a very large… Elliot thought it was a dog but, on second glance it was very obviously a wolf. A wolf wearing a football jersey and shorts. 

“Hey Toby,” Kira said. “We were kind of in the middle of --” she managed, and then she was interrupted by the werewolf jumping up at Elliot and aggressively and excitedly licking her face. 

“Hey guys!” Toby said. From behind them, jogging up the gravel path. “I am so sorry!”

“Wait,” Kira said, spinning around. “What? Wait… does that mean…”

Elliot had to put her entire weight into pushing the large canine off her. “McKenzie?!” 

“Ehehehe,” the large dog said.