“I really wish you’d called ahead, I would’ve shaved,” Amelia said. Ran looked at her, not understanding what she meant. She shook her head. “Nevermind. How are you feeling?” she asked as she handed him his cup of tea. He took it, blew at the steaming cup, and then tentatively burned his tongue. “It’s hot,” Amelia added.

“Thanks.” Amelia sat down in the recliner opposite from Ran, cradling her own mug. He appreciated that she was giving him time, and he was taking it, sipping his tea a little more carefully this time. “And I don’t know. Confused, mostly.” He looked at her. He could trust Amelia, right? He was here, after all. And she’d given him tea and a blanket. “Scared.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Amelia said. “Rachel is… she’s great. But she is cis.” Ran nodded. He remembered that being something that was brought up in class.

“Cis is… not transgender, right?” he asked. Amelia nodded. 

“Yeah. She doesn’t know not to…” Amelia sighed. “I should have warned her. After last time… I didn’t know how far along you were after last time, honestly.” 

“Wait… what do you mean? After last time? How far along at what? She’s cis? Wh—” Amelia looked at him over the rim of her cup, frowning a little. 

“You’re not… You don’t… oh, honey.” She put her cup down, pulled up her legs and wrapped her arms around them. “She told me some of what happened, but I gotta hear what happened from you, if you don’t mind.”

Ran nodded, but he didn’t know where to start. What to even say. “She was… she wanted to try out some outfits for a… date with you,” he started, tentatively. As he told her the events, few as they were, Amelia simply listened, occasionally adding a little ‘m-hmm’ but nothing more concrete than that. “And that’s when I freaked out and left,” he concluded. 

“Well, that’s the bits I know. So what else? What was going through your head? I still don’t know why you freaked out.” Amelia pursed her lips. “I can make an educated guess, but I’d rather hear your reasoning before I… poke any holes.”

“Poke any… okay,” Ran said, squeezing his eyes shut. “She asked me to put myself in your place, I guess, so that I could give better feedback, right?” 

“M-hmm. A bit blunt, but I get why she would. And that’s what cracked your… shell?”

“It sure as hell cracked something,” Ran said. “I couldn’t stop imagining what that meant, you know? Because I think I’d rather be the person I imagined than… me, in that scenario.”

“You’d rather be me?” Amelia asked, raising an eyebrow. Ran shook his head. 

“No, no. It’s more like… I uh… based that character off of you? Like, as a template?”

Amelia chuckled. “Usually I charge people before I let them use me as a model,” she said, “but I think just this once I’ll let it slide.” She took another sip of her tea. “So… you wanted — want to be someone who dates Rachel.” She said it so matter-of-factly it took Ran aback a bit, but he still nodded. 

“Doesn’t that bother you?” he asked. Amelia looked at him for a moment but shrugged.

“Not really. Who she dates is up to her,” she said. “Did you ever talk to her about that?” 

“No,” Ran said, sticking out his tongue in mock disgust. “She’s gay, that would have been so incredibly unwanted and inappropriate.” 

“Because she’s gay.” Amelia raised her eyebrow, and Ran nodded again. “Okay, so let me see if I’ve got this right. And, please, do interrupt me or tell me if I’m wrong.” She downed her mug and curled up in the recliner. “You want to be the person who dates Rachel. But you also respect that she’s gay, and you don’t really want to date her as yourself either, anyway.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Ran sighed. 

“So are you… envious of me?” she asked. Her face was neutral, relaxed. Not threatening, or upset, or angry with him. Just… curious. Ran had to take a moment to collect his thoughts, and they were coalescing quite quickly. Amelia, he felt, was the woman Rachel seemed to have genuine feelings for. That’s something he wanted. 

“I think so, yeah,” he said. “I wish I was in your place, I think.”

“But not as yourself,” Amelia clarified, then inhaled slowly. “Well, we’ll have to unpack the... possessiveness thing at some point. But right now you’ve got bigger things to worry about.” She stood up. “Wait here a moment.” She walked out of the room, leaving Ran to stew in his thoughts and his tea. 

He sipped it softly, not sure what he was even doing here. He’d had the feeling that Amelia could help him somehow, but he didn’t want to be scolded or, god forbid, be a burden on her. Just as he finished his cup, Amelia walked back into the room with a small plate.

“Here,” she said, and put them in front of him. “Cookie. It’ll make you feel better.” Ran stared at the plate. They were clearly homemade. Store-bought cookies just didn’t have the same beautiful ugliness. 

“I couldn’t,” he said quietly. Amelia looked at him, then at the cookies, and then back at him. She took a cookie and thrust it into his hands. 

“You could. And you will, because this is the first time I’ve ever had my chocolate chip cookies not come out of the oven looking like charcoal,” she said, and sat down, munching on a cookie of her own. “And besides, it’s late. You need to eat something.”

“Fine,” Ran said as he nibbled on the cookie. It was… pretty good, all things considered. He didn’t bake quite as much as he wanted to, but he liked to think he knew what he was doing. Amelia, by contrast, had made up for inexperience with enthusiasm. It showed. Cookies made with love just hit different. 

“So,” Amelia said, “just so we’re clear: you wish you were a lesbian, yeah?” Ran almost choked on his cookie, and Amelia hurried over to pat him on the back as he coughed. 

“I mean, I guess,” he said. “I know that that’s not… fair, right? I guess I just wish I could feel like I was?” 

“God, that’s some nested diplomatic language,” Amelia said. “So, let’s do a hypothetical, then.” She sat down across from Ran again. “You can be a lesbian.” She held up her hand to stop Ran from protesting. “Hypothetically, you’re allowed to be a lesbian.”

“That would mean I would get to b— I’d have to be a woman, right?” Ran asked.

“Yes, honey, you would get to be a woman. Now, this lesbian, does she have a name?”

“Lil— uh, no,” Ran said. He hoped Amelia wouldn’t see him getting red in the face. Judging by the look of skepticism on her face, she’d noticed something. He just didn’t want her to think this was something he’d been thinking about all the time. It wasn’t right, was it? He’d heard the name somewhere, once, and it had lodged itself in his hindbrain without him realizing, or even knowing why.

“Okay, Lilno. It’s an unorthodox name, but we all have to start somewhere, right?” Amelia’s casual dismantling of his attempt at subterfuge made him blush even more. He took another cookie and stared at it for a moment. Amelia seemed to know, somehow, that he was going to be saying more, and she just looked at him patiently.

“Lily,” Ran said, hiding a little deeper into the pillows of the couch. “It’s Lily.”

“Lily,” Amelia said, and a warm smile spread on her face. “That’s a beautiful name for her. Well chosen.” She took another cookie. “So, this Lily, what’s she like?”

“I… she’s… sweet,” Ran said quietly. “She likes cooking. She likes watching television with her friends so she can talk about it with them. She’s happy around other people, and she’s easy to talk to.”

“I like her already,” Amelia said. “And what about Rachel?” What about Rachel? Rachel, the girl who could make him smile when he was feeling bad. Who loved his food and always had something nice to say about it. 

“She loves Rachel. She likes hol— holding hands. Kissing. I — she —” The words were starting to become harder to find. There was, of course, an element of shame. Not wanting to come off as a pervert. But another part of it was just that even imagining something as simple as the touching of lips, a kiss so gentle it was barely felt, it was overwhelming. 

“She’s gay as shit, is what you’re saying,” Amelia said with a grin.

“Yeah.” Ran smiled. That did sound nice. A girl like that, getting to be a girl who loves girls. It wasn’t something he’d ever get to do. Let alone someone named Randall.

“Cool. Okay, now, finally.” She got up and walked over to Ran, and knelt in front of him. She took his hands in hers. “What do you want?”

“What do I… But… that’s not… That doesn’t matter…” Amelia interrupted him by very gently bopping him on the forehead. 

“Of course it matters, you dumbass. Do you want to be that person? Because, and here’s the fucking kicker, that’s how this works.” She looked him deep in the eyes. “Do you think someone came to my house some day and was like ‘Hey, Mr and Mrs not-yet-Amelia, we’re here to trans your son’? Of course not! So, what do you want?”

“I just… I wish I could be… But I’m…” Words were starting to fail him, and his breathing was getting shorter. 

“Okay, different question. Calm down,” she said, and she patted his knee. “You just have to give the answer that you want to give, okay?” 

“Okay,” Ran said. 

“What’s your name?” Amelia asked. Ran blinked. He hadn’t expected that. That one was an easy question. Wasn’t it?

“It’s Ran,” he said automatically. Amelia shot him a smile, then shook her head.

“Really? Is that the answer you want to give me, or is that the factory default? Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s a cute name but like, what, your mom pick it out for you?” She chuckled, and Ran followed along. “Let’s try that again. So not the mask. Not the one that was chosen for you.” She pointed at his face, and gently booped his nose. “What is your name?”

“I…” There was more to this question than what she asked, of course. And the answer was right there. “I’m scared.”

“I know.” Amelia gave a reassuring smile. It didn’t reassure very well. 

“I’m scared that if I say it, it’ll be real, and I won’t be able to go back.”

“Do you want to go back?” Amelia asked. “Because I think it’s already a little late for that, don’t you?” She wasn’t wrong. But even uttering it would speak it into the world, and there was no way Randall was ready for that. Ran felt ready to completely collapse under the weight of it all, of the reality of it. But Amelia was right. It was too late. The nest was well and truly out of sight now, and the ground was getting awful close. 

“Yeah.”

Amelia took the last two cookies from the tray, and offered one. Then she sat on the table and slowly ate it, letting the silence play between the two of them for a bit. Whose benefit was it for? Was it to let Ran just… exist for a moment longer? To take the time to build up to what this had been building up to for a while now? Or just because silence was something they both needed from time to time. 

Finally, Amelia finished her cookie, and took a deep breath. Inevitability was rearing its beautiful head, and what else could either of them do but face it? 

“What’s your name, honey?”

“My name is Lily,” Lily said.