Eventually riding the streetcar as damp as she was proved too miserable for Rosalind. Other passengers on the streetcar were eyeing her judgementally, everyone clearly worried she’d get her street-puddle-water drippings on them. She could feel the disdain in their eyes. As such, not long after the streetcar had slipped into its own dedicated lanes and wider stop spacings for the more suburban neighbourhoods, she got out.

Standing on the platform, unsure what to do with herself, a fact slowly bubbled in the back of Rosalind’s mind. She wasn’t sure what it was, having relatively few facts about Etobicoke in her mind at any one time and even fewer that were useful. But, at last, she made out enough of the shape to realise this was a rare helpful one.

Teddy lived nearby. She wasn’t quite sure where, but pulling out her phone and texting the handsome bouncer would answer that question soon enough. Thankfully the blast of puddle water hadn’t fried her phone (that water resistant phone case she’d bought after losing the last one to a cursed spring had been a good investment) and she was able to actually send the text.

She was also able to see she had thirty seven missed texts from Rachel, and nearly as many from the rest of the band. There were even a couple from Hank. She did not want to deal with that right now, however.

Pacing about on the streetcar platform, shivering in the chill of an early Toronto November (mellowed as it was by climate change) Rosalind did have to admit she was a little impatient for the reply from Teddy. At long last it came (after five false alarms that were mostly from Rachel).

And… it turned out Teddy lived closer to Islington. So Rosalind had to swallow her pride, hop on a bus headed north, and get stared at by an all new set of passengers. A particularly fussy old woman inched away from Rosalind the best she could and the tired pop star let out a groan.

“Yeah, I know. I’m trying to get somewhere with a shower,” she muttered. “But puddles and trucks. What can you do?”

The statement seemed to put the woman and other passengers slightly more at ease. At least now they knew she was merely the victim of bad luck, rather than a potential rogue lover of dirty water or… whatever it was people were worrying about. Who knew what went through the minds of strangers?

Whatever people thought of her, she was glad to get out of the bus when they made it up to Islington. The whipping wind between the various highrise apartments (both old and new) combined with being in their shadows left her shivering, however. She rubbed her arms for a few moments, hoping to warm up, before setting off towards the address Teddy had given her.

It proved to be one of the shorter and older buildings, specifically one that seemed at risk of being devoured by a massive construction sight that wrapped partially around it. Teddy was waiting in the entry area, not quite large enough to count as a lobby.

“You look soaked,” she said, as she let Rosalind in. “How have you not gotten hypothermia out there?”

“I-it’s, like, 13 d-degrees out and sunny. I don’t—don’t think I had much r-risk of hypothermia,” Rosalind replied, though she suspected her confidence sounded foolish with the way she was shivering.

“We’re getting you in a warm shower immediately,” Teddy said, grabbing her hand and leading her up the stairs of the walk up building.

Her strong grip left Rosalind with little desire to argue. They went up a few floors, before reaching Teddy’s apartment. The entryway was a bit crowded, with more shoes and coats than Rosalind had expected.

“My roommate is in bed right now. She works the night shift,” Teddy explained as Rosalind pulled off her shoes.

“You h-have a roommate?” Rosalind asked, now following Teddy towards the bathroom.

The room was small, mostly beige and looked like it had last been redecorated in the 90s by someone with a poor sense of fashion for even that half made up decade. That, or it was done in the 80s by someone who was a truly forward thinking designer. Either was equally plausible.

“Mhm. I couldn’t afford an apartment actually in Toronto on my own… anyway, get those clothes off while I get the shower going,” she said.

Rosalind nodded, pulling her shirt off (despite how cold she felt making that feel foolish) before something struck her. “Um… I can probably manage the shower on my own?”

Teddy paused whatever she was doing to adjust the shower settings and turned her head to reply. “Trust me, this shower is nonsense. I swear it had to be designed by an alien or something. Took me a month to figure it out.”

“I…” Rosalind began, before deciding to accept it.

Showers could be utterly incomprehensible sometimes. Though those were usually the fancier ones where the designers had put more effort into making it look luxurious than it actually making sense.

Instead of arguing, she continued to remove her clothing, until only her underpants were left. Though, still being a bit damp they clung to her enough she wasn’t sure they were leaving her with much privacy.

“There we go,” Teddy finally said, having apparently finished her battle of fussing with the shower’s setting and turning around. “I’ll take you—huh, I thought you’d have kept your bra on.”

Blushing, Rosalind covered her chest. “I… I still forget sometimes that I need to cover these.”

“Well, you don’t need to,” Teddy replied with a shrug and a smile that worsened Rosalind’s blush. “But, anyway. The shower is all yours. The stuff at the front is mine. Feel free to use it. Also, hang your clothes in here to dry at the end. We’re north facing, so they’ll never dry on the balcony.”

“Thank you,” Rosalind said with a small nod, scooching out of the way for Teddy to leave the small bathroom.

Once Teddy had left, she pulled off the last of her underwear and stepped into the shower’s warm embrace. It took a few minutes before she felt any level of warmth return to her core, but, by the time she’d washed herself from head to toe, she felt almost like a warmblooded creature once more. Figuring out how to turn the shower off when she was done with it did prove more complicated than she’d expected, though. It explained just why Teddy had set it up for her. Finally, though, after a few cranks and shoves, the water stopped (though not before she’d been blasted with much too hot and freezing water in short succession).

Stepping out of the shower, she realised she now smelled like Teddy, which was a very good smell. A specific mixture of masculine body washes, of the more in-your-face scent than Rosalind had ever used, but had always rather liked the smell of. Combining that with a base estrogen-influenced body odour and Rosalind kind of found herself wishing she was actually able to date butch lesbians. Assuming they all smelled as nice as Teddy did.

It took a few moments to hang up her clothes, and then she realised a slight dilemma: she needed a towel. Cracking the door open slightly, she was about to call out for Teddy, before remembering her roommate was asleep.

“What the heck do I do now?” she muttered, slowly getting cold thanks to the air from the rest of the apartment.

To her relief, a few moments later Teddy walked over to the hallway, from what Rosalind presumed was the living room. “Everything ok?”

“I, uh… towel?”

Teddy’s eyes flashed with realisation. “Oh! Right! Sorry.”

A quick rummage through a nearby linen closet later and Teddy shoved a towel in her hands. Remembering to protect all over her modesty, Rosalind wrapped it around her chest and was then led to Teddy’s room. There were some clean clothes laid out on the bed. The bedroom was also small and apartment-beige in colour. The double bed took up most of the room, a built-in closet and a small bookshelf being the only other things of note in there. The window was covered over by a curtain, so she wasn’t sure what the view might be like.

Rosalind put the clothes on, amused that they fit her about as poorly as her male sized clothing, then went out to the living area. It proved to be a bit of a combined living-room-dining-room area, with the kitchen barely a separate room either. All of it was smaller than Rosalind’s living room in her condo. It was also quite crowded, with the tv area, couch, coffee table, dining table, and everything the kitchen needed.

“I don’t really have anything fancy or overly healthy to eat,” Teddy said, standing in the small kitchen. “I hope chicken wings and fries sound alright? That’s about all that’s left right now… though I’ve also got some beer in the fridge and vodka.”

“Let me pay for some delivery. I showed up unannounced and imposed on you,” Rosalind replied.

“Ah. If that’s what you prefer, Ro,” Teddy said. “Uh… I don’t know what’s around here that’s up to your standards. I spend all my eating out money on dates, so don’t order in much.”

That news left Rosalind feeling a bit bit bad about having gone out to eat with Teddy and not offered to pay. Which led to her deciding to let Teddy pick the restaurant, despite the chivalrous woman trying to worm out of the offer.

“I’m at least half guy,” Rosalind had muttered, “so you’re not ‘making a cute girl put you first’… not that there should be anything wrong with letting a cute girl treat you as a thanks.”

The being called a ‘cute girl’ by Teddy made her feel a bit odd. The muscular woman knew her situation… she didn’t want to be keeping up any sort of a lie. She was sure she wasn’t feminine enough to count as a proper woman. All she did was sort of look and play the part, but she so firmly lacked any needed experience.

Whatever the case, Teddy relented and decided they should get chicken. It took a little more negotiation for her to accept the slightly fancier choice of Swiss Canton over the cheaper Poultry From Kentucky option. Waiting for the delivery, and still feeling a little cold as she sat on the couch, Rosalind accepted Teddy’s offers of both beer and a blanket. 

“I’ll admit to being curious as to why you’ve come to me,” Teddy said, sitting beside her and opening her own beer. “I’m not complaining. Always happy to see more of you, but… it didn’t seem like you were exactly all that close by when you called me.”

Rosalind let out a sigh. “I don’t really want to get into it…”

“Ok, ok. But, you can understand why I’d be concerned, right?” Teddy asked.

Giving a little nod, Rosalind then took a sip of her beer. Despite being cold, there was still a warming effect to it. Then a concerning thought struck her, and she turned to Teddy.

“Y—you don’t plan to propose to me, do you?” she asked, concern in her voice.

“Prop… wha—pardon?” Teddy replied.

“Sorry. Sorry. That probably sounds crazy out of context, but… I think Hermaphroditus is… it’s just been weird. But I wanted to make sure you weren’t being affected,” Rosalind said, shaking her head.

“Well, don’t worry. I have some serious complaints about the legal institution of marriage as it currently stands,” Teddy said, downing a bit more of her beer. “Anyway, I think a question that weird tells me how bizarre of a day you’ve had, and… how about we watch something as a distraction?”

“That sounds good, just… nothing entertainment-industry related. I can’t—that’ll be a nightmare,” she mumbled, sinking into the couch to wallow for a bit in misery (while nursing her beer).

“Sports?” Teddy offered, quickly accepting that the face Rosalind made showed it wasn’t her first choice. “Alright. Something properly mindless, then… giant monster movies. They’ve certainly aged better than alien invasion movies, am I right?”

Rosalind’s eyes went wide with a sudden fear, before she turned to Teddy. “Don’t jinx that.”

“… yeah, fair,” the handsome woman said, getting up and fishing through her DVD collection.

A bit of old fashioned love for physical media that Rosalind supported. It was always nice to be able to look at one’s collection, sitting there physically before you. They soon agreed on a more modern monster flick, only getting past the opening sequence before the food delivery showed up. 

Rosalind hopped up to pay, and then the pair dug into their meals as they watched a city be destroyed (with fairly low volume and subtitles on, to avoid waking a slumbering roommate). Towards the end of the movie, when she felt warm once more, and more than a little drunk now that she’d added a bit of vodka to the beer in her stomach, Rosalind found her lips starting to quiver and the need to vent welling up inside of her.

“I might be an idiot,” she mumbled, getting Teddy’s attention.

“Why do you say that?”

“Rachel and Logan… well, ok, well, I told you about the Polish woman and how she wants to marry me, right?” she asked.

Teddy nodded slowly. “I remembered that she was pregnant… I forget if you’d talked about marriage.”

“Mhm. Well, like, I’ve tried offering her everything else. Financial support, friendship, I’d even be down to help look after the kid a bit, but a marriage would fall apart in no time. It’s pointless,” Rosalind said, sinking into the couch again. “But… but, she’s not the only one talking about it now. Rachel and Logan… they both proposed to me. Rachel yesterday. Logan today. They say it’s because of Beata—the Polish woman—making them panic and worry about losing me or whatever, but… but Hermaphroditus is a deity of marriage and flat out said they were going to start trying to ‘fix’ my relationship situation. So, it seems like divine intervention and love magic to me… that makes sense to you, right?”

“Uhh…” Teddy began, before shrugging with her hands to show her lack of certainty. “I don’t have much familiarity with deities or magic. But, I guess it’s plausible?”

“Right. You also don’t know Rachel like I do… she doesn’t have a romantic bone in her body. I’d figured I would be married before she was, and I had no plans of ever tying the knot, so… and Logan’s just swung out of nowhere with the offer,” she said. “But… but what if I’m wrong? What if they are both doing it of their own free will? And I now have to pick between the two most important people in my life as to which to say yes to? I feel like a jerk because there’s no way I could say no to either of them… but I can’t say yes to both, and… and… gah!”

Teddy nodded a few times. “Monogamy sucks sometimes.”

“It leaves me with the horrible position of actually hoping my friends are under magical influence, so that I don’t have to pick between them,” Rosalind muttered, before then chugging the rest of her vodka. “I’ve been drinking too much lately, but… I think my life falling apart like this warrants it. Lemme have a bit more.”

The request proved to give Teddy a slight pause, before she decided to shrug and pour them both another glass.

---

Blinking awake due to the buzzing of her phone alarm, Rosalind rolled and climbed over whoever was beside her in bed. It took a few clumsy attempts to stop the alarm, but, finally, her head was freed of the pain of the unwanted noise.

It was only as she stopped moving, laying against the firm-yet-soft bedmate, that she realised she’d been so affected by it due to being quite hungover. 

Also. She was naked. As was the other person in bed.

Slowly turning, Rosalind saw that the person she was laying on top of was Teddy.

“Oh… oh no,” she mumbled, worry filling her that Teddy would be the next to be affected by marriage-madness magic.

“Can we sleep a little longer?” Teddy mumbled, shifting to pull Rosalind beside her.

“Did… did we…” Rosalind whispered, slightly worried she was jumping to a questionable conclusion.

“Mmmm… pretty sure?” Teddy replied softly. “It’s a little blurry, but it doesn’t surprise me.”

“B—but I’m…”

“A cute sometimes feminine enby?” Teddy mumbled, before kissing Rosalind on the cheek.

“…oh,” Rosalind whispered, realising that maybe she did count as something of a woman.