Ran had an interesting relationship with food, in the same way that cats have an interesting relationship with grooming. Deeply important, often on his mind, and only something he was comfortable receiving from others when he was in a very specific mood. He’d wondered why that was, sometimes, and why he did enjoy cooking for others. Sure, he felt ‘useful’ cooking for others, but there was more to it than that. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and now more than ever it was bugging him. 

It was bugging him because he was making breakfast for Amelia and Rachel without having intended to. He’d gotten out of bed, noticed that Amelia’s jacket was still on the coat rack, and almost automatically, he’d walked to the store to get some more supplies to make sure he’d have enough breakfast to make for the three of them. He’d even brought the receipt home despite having zero intention of asking either of them to chip in. 

It was like the part of his brain that did the moving around and the feeding himself and so on had decided that it was cooking for three people, while the actual conscious mind, the one that sings ‘Ra-Ra-Rasputin’ while you’re trying to fall asleep, tried to figure out why. Why, it asked, like a driver asking his car where it was going, are we taking care of them? They have not, it said, indicated a desire to have breakfast made to us, and, might I add, we are still sore from what they said last night. 

Pancakes, the other part of his brain had said, and that had been that. There was now a stack of pancakes in front of him, a pot of coffee brewing, and he had no idea where he’d even managed to get fresh strawberries. 

“Thanks again, Ran,” Rachel said. He could hear the smile in her voice, and fought not to turn around. He knew having her smile at him would make him uncomfortable, and he didn’t really like thinking about why that was. “These are amazing. It’s like eating little clouds.”

“Of course,” he said, and flipped the pancake. “It’s my pleasure.”

“Still,” Amelia said, “you’re much too sweet. Especially after having to see me in that state last night.” It had been on his mind, of course, but he didn’t really hold it against her. 

“Nothing to apologize for,” he said and turned around with his best fake smile. “What was up, anyway? If that’s something you want to talk about.” He put the fresh stack of pancakes on the table, next to the already half-empty bowl of strawberries. Rachel, it seemed, was ravenous. She usually was after Amelia came by, and again, Ran didn’t want to think about why that was. 

“Dysphoria,” Amelia said, like that was supposed to explain everything. He took a plate of his own and sat down at the table too. Rachel was already dividing the fluffy stack between the three of them. 

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Ran said as he poured some — not too much, not too little — syrup. He was very particular about the pancake-to-syrup ratio. 

“Dysphoria,” she said. “It’s… hard to put into words, really. Imagine something about the world being just a little bit off, but enough for it to really bother you, like a splinter in one of your socks, but not at the bottom. Like, it’s not always there, but sometimes you move just like that and suddenly it stabs really hard, and you can’t ignore it. It’s always there, you can’t get rid of it, and it’s just…”

“Sounds like it really sucks,” Ran said in between chewing. “I’m really sorry. Is it a mental health thing or…” 

“It’s a trans thing,” Amelia said, with a little laugh. “The mental health bit comes in when it’s really hard to get access to medical treatment or affirmative legal shit.” Rachel reached across and rubbed Amelia’s arm, earning her a grateful little smile. “Point is, yesterday was a big stab, and it fucked me up for a bit.”

“Is that how you knew?” Ran asked. “You know, that you were trans.”

“Not really,” Amelia said, resting her chin on her hand and waving in the air with her fork. “I was pretty much just kind of fine for most of my life. Like the splinter was there, but I knew how to ignore it, you know? Like, ‘something isn’t right here’ was kind of in the back of my head, and I spent like, most of my teens trying to figure out what was wrong with the world. Fell into activism, and then into the right kind of activism, before I eventually figured it out.” She seemed proud. Wistful, almost. “The world’s fucked, yeah, but the splinter was mine. Honestly, euphoria is what really hatched my egg.”

“H— Your what?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Amelia said with a grin. “Point is that wanting things to be different about myself is what finally caused my breakthrough. The thought of getting to be someone else, getting to be a woman…” She leaned on her hand and stared happily ahead of herself. “Yeaahhhh, that did it.”

“And what a woman you ended up being,” Rachel said, with an eyebrow wiggle and a lip bite Ran did his best to ignore entirely. Besides, he was kind of interested in hearing more. There was something he was still a bit hung up on. 

“So wait,” he said, carving up an innocent, defenseless pancake, “you said you didn’t feel bad before, but you did after you realized you were trans? Dysphoria, right? That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“It’s a little complicated,” Amelia said, “but dysphoria — or, y’know, gender dysphoria — is about that incongruence between your identity and your body. I spent a lot of time dissociating, stuck in my head, overthinking every little thing, and that allowed me to not really ‘feel’ that incongruence a lot of the time.”

Stuck in her own head? That did sound like it would suck. Sure, Ran could relate in some sense, but he got the feeling he had his feet solidly on the ground, even if he did have his head in the clouds sometimes. That might have had something to do with his parents who, being fairly dorky, had raised him on a steady diet of fantasy novels and arthouse film, and he wondered if that kind of philosophical approach to the world around him had affected him in some way. 

It’s not that he was particularly dissatisfied with his own body. It was a good vehicle for his brain to pilot around. He certainly didn’t feel a sense of deep revulsion looking at himself, like he might expect if Amelia’s reaction from the night before had anything to go by. Thinking about it, there were things he’d change, but then again, everybody wants different things about their body. His facial hair had a tendency to creep its way down his neck a bit far, and required him to hold the razor this way and that to properly shave, and some days he’d rather not deal with it at all. And he didn’t even see the point of hair on his shoulders or back, especially since it seemed to stick out randomly in every direction. But that kind of stuff was easily fixed, and he wore almost exclusively long pants for a reason. Other than that, he kept fit, and took a certain degree of pride in his appearance. He tried to be the kind of guy he would find attractive if he was a straight or a bisexual girl. 

But that kind of thing didn’t mean anything. After all, most people felt that way, and he wasn’t even into guys. But maybe that was that self-same latent homophobia again? Was that something he’d been stuck in again? But even then, that didn’t mean he was overly critical of his own appearance. In fact, he was deeply aware — thanks, Dad — of the ways in which advertising had skewed his view of his own body. He’d even taken steps to push back, even though he also knew he wasn’t immune to propaganda, including the kind that would turn someone against their own body. 

But that didn’t mean he hated it or tried to distance himself from it by overthinking things. Overthinking was one of those phrases he never really understood. Who even decided what the correct amount of thinking even was? He always felt like he didn’t spend enough time thinking about things, because mistakes were most often made by people acting too rashly, weren’t they? So spending time in his own head was, objectively speaking, a good and smart thing to do. Not that he did it, of course, but if he spent too much time overthinking things — which he didn’t — it wouldn’t mean anything.

And even if it did, he had no way of knowing what that might mean. He was just another person trying to make his way in the world, and he sure as heck had stuff to worry about. Like the fact that he was having trouble with Amelia and Rachel being together, and that he always felt kind of weird when he saw them, and how hearing them talk about how they weren’t interested in dating him seemed to hurt him more than it should, because he was a guy, and how that seemed to mean that he had an issue with them being gay. 

Which he didn’t want to have, so in a way he had to ‘overthink’ things in order to get to the bottom of things, and stop being a damn bigot. So overthinking was a good thing, in those cases where he did it. It wasn’t like it was a thing he did consciously to get away from anything, and certainly not from his body, which didn’t bother him.

“I can’t say I relate,” Ran said. 

“Okay,” Amelia said, and shrugged, but she shot him a sideways glance he didn’t know how to decipher. Sure, he’d been quiet for a minute, but that didn’t mean he’d proven a point she’d been making, because she hadn’t been making a point. 

“Besides, everyone has issues with their body sometimes,” Ran elaborated.

“Mhm,” Amelia concurred, chewing. 

“And it’s normal for people to get stuck in their own head these days. There’s just so much going on. College, politics, climate change, racial injustice, the growing wealth gap, not to mention dating and so on,” Ran proclaimed. 

“Yeah,” Amelia acquiesced. She was staring intently at her glass of grapefruit juice now, like she was trying to make it levitate just by looking at it. 

“And—”

“Eat your pancakes, Ran,” Rachel said. “They’ll get cold.” Amelia snorted and Ran felt his face get red. She wasn’t wrong. He knew he had a tendency to start talking and not stop, and he hated the idea of being the kind of guy who went on rants and tangents at the drop of a hat. He’d heard girls complain about it, about mansplaining and how annoying that was, and he’d decided to definitely not be One Of Those. 

“Question,” he finally said after a few seconds.

“Shoot,” Amelia said, crossing her arms and smiling. 

“Are you two like, together-together? Just so I know how to like, frame things in my head.” He took a sip of juice and looked at the two of them. Rachel chewed her tongue for a minute, looking thoughtful. 

“It’s complicated,” she finally said. 

“Kinda sorta?” Amelia said at the same time, and then the two of them chuckled, and then the goth got up and started to wash off her plate. “You take this one.”

“The way I see it,” Rachel said, “Amelia is… gosh, do we want to talk about this first? Like, I don’t mind him being here…” She looked at the other girl while pointing at Ran. 

“I don’t either,” Amelia shrugged. 

“Okay! Well, I don’t know. I see Amelia as a — that is, one of my — partners. We’re not exclusive or anything, and I wouldn’t want to be. But like… I’ll be honest, I’ve grown really fond of this one.”

“Aww, babe, the feeling is mutual.” Amelia dried her hands, then walked over to give Rachel a surprisingly chaste kiss on the cheek. “So yeah,” she said, taking Rachel’s hand in her own, “I’m sorry to say you haven’t seen the last of me yet, Ran. I hope that’s not a problem.”

“Not at all,” Ran said, and he wondered why seeing the two of them together, smiling happily at each other, made him want to scream into a pillow. Or a large pancake.

Elamimax

We keep on going! 

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Ela