They stared at each other.

Allie’s face was flushed, her teeth clenched, lips pulled back, eyes shining with tears yet glaring all the same. It was a look caught in the midpoint between rage and… fear? Anguish? Something along those lines.

Allan’s mouth opened and closed silently, like a fish gasping for air after being violently plucked out of the water by an eldritch horror in a camo vest and floppy brown hat.

She needs… to be… what?

Before Allan’s synapses could reestablish a connection to his mouth, there was a sound from the bedroom door.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Allan turned. Kat was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, some color having returned to her weakly smirking face.

“No, it’s…” Allie started, then sighed. “It’s nothing.”

“Did I hear that right? You want to be in my body again, Allie?” Kat chuckled. “Sorry, no can do, I’m not switching for a goddamn while, this migraine would fuckin’ end me if we don’t wait for it to cool down… and I don’t want to be Allan again, that’s for fucking sure. These puppies feel right at home here.” She reached up and pawed at her borrowed chest. “Not as big, but diet Pepsi does the job if Max is out of stock.”

Allan expected another indignant outburst from Allie, but she surprised him with a short, derisive laugh instead. “I guess someone might as well enjoy them.”

Kat’s hands paused their perusal. “Hey, c’mon, that takes all the fun out of it!” she pouted. “What happened to Little Miss Hands Off The Goods from earlier?”

“I don’t fucking care anymore, that’s what.”

“Oooo… kay?” Kat dropped her hands, a perplexed look coming over her. “Was there another swap out here while I was tryna stop blowing chunks, or…?” She gingerly sat down on the pillow Allie had allowed to fall to the floor.

“…Me?”

Allan’s mouth was finally capable of speech once again.

“You want to… be me?” He demonstrated towards Allie’s current body, gesturing across its entire length. “I mean… have you seen me??”

“Yes, genius. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been you. Multiple times, even.”

“And you still… what? How?!” Allan’s brain was fried.

How the fuck could anyone want to be me?!?

“Hold up, slow down… You want to be Allan? Not me?” Kat’s face scrunched up even further in confusion. “You want to be a guy? Not just a guyish girl? That doesn’t feel… alien to you?”

“Dude, that body is what feels alien to me. I’ve been living in it for twentyish years and for some fucking reason, the short time I’ve been in Allan’s body has made me feel more at home than any moment I’ve ever experienced as myself.”

“What the fuck…” Kat slowly leaned back and laid herself on the floor, not caring about the uncomfortable hardwood. “What the shit does that even mean?”

Allie might have been about to respond, but before she could, there was a knock at the front door. Without so much as waiting for an answer, it opened.

“Hey everyone,” Jessica said as she stepped inside. “Look who’s back!”

Fer waved from behind her. “Back again!”

The three near the futon exchanged confused looks.

“Jessica invited me over to help resolve a situation, I hope you don’t mind?”

“Not at all, Fer, you’re always welcome here,” Allan replied.

Fer gave him an odd look. “Er, thanks, Kat…” To Allie: “Is it okay if Allie and I use your bedroom for a chat? The situation is rather… private, as it were.”

“Wait, hold up, what situation?” Kat gingerly came to a seated position once more.

“The one you were talking about with Jessica, Allie…?” Fer cocked his head to the side, puzzled. “She thought I might have some valuable input to help things make sense…”

At this, Jessica stifled a laugh. “Right, he doesn’t know… I can’t believe I left that out. It’s so unlike me.” She paused. “Then again, he might not have believed me had I mentioned it to him.”

“Mentioned what?” Fer now shot that same look of confusion at Jessica instead. “I don’t understand, am I not here to help Allie?”

“You are, but…” Allie pointed at herself. “I’m Allie.”

Fer blinked a few times, then his expression softened. “Oh, I see… I’m sorry, when Jessica said that ‘Allie’ was having a problem, I thought she meant your sister. I must have misunderstood her…” He let out a breath, letting tension he had apparently been holding fall away. “So you’re already out to the other three?”

“Out to us…?” Kat queried. At this, Fer blanched.

“Huh? Out as a…” He looked back at Allie, perplexed now. “You just called yourself… so I made the assumption…” He seemed like he wanted to say more, but thought better of it and took out his phone instead, rapidly tapping on his screen. Allan’s buzzed in response, so he grabbed it from where it was laying on the coffee table.

“Wait, Katherine, don’t! That’s not meant for you!” Fer practically lunged over the couch to grab Allan’s phone away from him, then threw it into Allie’s lap. “This is something for… for…” Fer was clearly struggling with how to address Allie, but in the end, he gave up and just pointed at her.

Allie and Allan shared a look. She shrugged, unlocked Allan’s phone with his fingerprint, and looked at the secretive text message.

Then she burst out into a cackle. “Oh man, you think… No, dude, no, that’s not…” Unable to stop herself from laughing, she just passed Allan’s phone back to him, screen unlocked to the conversation with Fer.

[3:45 PM] Fer: I’m so sorry! I thought you were already out to them as a trans girl

[3:45 PM] Fer: Because you called yourself Allie

[3:45 PM] Fer: Did I accidentally out you? Fuck

[3:46 PM] Fer: I’m so fucking sorry mate

Seeing this, Allan finally got what was so funny about the misunderstanding and started giggling, which soon turned into a full-on laughing fit as well. He passed the phone to Kat, who started laughing along with them.

“Can someone please explain to me what the bloody hell is going on around here?!” Fer exclaimed. Allan had never seen the guy so worked up before. He tried to calm himself down, but still had a case of the giggles through which he made a valiant attempt to speak.

“Fer, we… oh man, hehehe… dude, take a seat, you are not going to believe this.”

* * *

“You’re right. I don’t believe it.”

The three swapmates and Jessica were sitting on the futon, slightly cramped, with Fer not having taken a seat, instead pacing around in the space between the coffee table and TVs, arms crossed.

Jessica sighed. “I don’t exactly blame you. The concept is ludicrous.” She shrugged her shoulders. “However, we’ve run the tests. I can confirm that these three are currently in each other’s bodies.”

“Allan and Kat I get, but you, Jessica?” Fer looked at Jessica, disbelief plainly visible on his face. “How did they manage to rope you into this nonsense?”

“I had to come to the conclusion on my own. If they told me directly, I wouldn’t have believed it either.”

Fer gave her a look, then clicked his tongue. “All right then. Prove it.” He pointed at Allie. “If you’re for real, put me in Allan’s body.”

“That’s not how it works though…” Allie began. “You’d have to make a connection with all three of us at once, causing us all to swap around with each other, and that’s just going to fuck up the math for how to get everyone back to normal.”

“And I’m not fucking going through one more goddamn swap than I need to,” Kat groaned. She was laying down on the yoga mat, a pillow over her head.

“Plus, why my body specifically?” Allan piped up. Fer looked at him with an expression he’d only ever seen on exhausted parents humoring their children one last time before they stop playing around and start dealing out reality checks.

“Well, ‘Allan’,” he said, heavily punctuating his name with air quotes of obvious disbelief. “Personally, I don’t quite fancy the idea of being in a girl’s body.”

“You don’t…?” Allan murmured under his breath.

But wouldn’t all guys want to be…? At least once, just to see?

“Tell you what.” Fer cracked his knuckles. “I’ll play along for now. You three are supposedly mixed up, right? How’s about I tell Allie a secret, and when she gets back to ‘her body’-” at this, Fer had to stifle a snort- “If she can tell the group what I said correctly, then maybe I could believe this utter bollocks.”

“I swear to Jesus H Goddamn Tapdancing Christ, if I end up back in Allan’s body and we have to swap again, I’m going to have a motherfucking conniption,” Kat complained, pressing the pillow tightly to her face.

“I’ve been thinking about that, actually, and trying to pay attention to how we’ve been swapping,” Allan mentioned. “I have a couple theories on how we might be able to control the order. One, Allie and I are like positive and negative ends of a battery, and our minds will always flow in that direction. Two, things move in the order that we touch each other. Three…” He shrugged. “It’s random?”

“Interesting…” Jessica started writing something down in her notebook, studious as ever. “So long as it’s not random, it seems like one swap with hands held in the right order should revert everyone. But…” She started clicking her pen rapidly. “Are you all sure about this? I’m still worried about the stability of the process, considering how your time spent unconscious has been rising with each swap…”

“We’re going to have to go back sooner or later,” Allan replied. “May as well.”

So it goes.

Fer led Allie away to a corner of the room and whispered in her ear. Her eyes widened, looking him up and down. Fer lifted his finger to his lips, then they came back to the group.

Sounds like a juicy secret… wonder what?

Allan couldn’t linger on that thought for long, though, as Kat made her own thoughts known.

“Y’all, if we have to do this now, can I just stay here on the floor? We’re gonna pass the fuck out anyway…” she moaned, raising her arms up like a baby wanting to be carried. Allie and Allan looked at each other and shrugged, then sat down on the floor to either side of Kat. Jessica grabbed the pillow from Kat’s face, eliciting another complaint from the floor-ridden girl, then took the other pillow off the futon, placing them both behind the sitting semi-twins.

“Good call,” Allan commented, rubbing the spot on his head where he’d hit the floor in the last swap.

Jessica popped open her notebook, engaging her clicky pen once more. “I’m ready to take observations. Fer, can I ask you to get out a stopwatch?”

“Uhh… sure?” Fer did nothing to hide his confusion, but took his phone out anyway.

Jessica appeared calm on the surface, but her inner anxieties were making themselves known through rapid pen clicking. “Connect Allan to Allie first, Allie to Kat second, then finish the cycle.”

Allan grabbed Allie’s hand in his own. “Ready on one!”

Allie held onto Kat. “Ready on two.” She sighed.

“Christ, you lot are really trying to sell this…” Fer grumbled.

“Allan-Allie-Kat-Allan round-robin swap in three…” Jessica began to count down.

Allan reached out towards Kat.

“Two…”

He looked at Allie. She was looking down at Kat, her mouth slightly downturned.

If she’s a trans man… And we’re putting her back in her body…

“One…!”

Allie looked up to meet Allan. Her brow furrowed.

“Go!”

As soon as he heard the word, his hand connected with Kat’s-

 

 

…

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

Tapioca…

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

Voices.

Distant, echoey, unintelligible voices.

“-can’t!”

One of them wandered slightly into focus.

“It’s been four minutes! They could be dead!”

The other now.

“They’re still breathing, they have pulses, they’re not dead! They’re just… in between bodies!”

Who?

“Jessica! Get ahold of yourself! We need to call 911!”

Jessica…

“What the hell would we even tell them, Fernando? That our three friends all happened to become comatose and possibly brain-dead at the same time?”

Fer?

“Or just that they all passed out from unknown causes! We don’t need to know what exactly is wrong with them to know that they need medical attention!”

They…

Am I they?

I’m…

…

Allan?

Thoughts came slowly, as if being winched out from the bottom of an ocean of quicksand.

I’m… Allan… Cardona.

…

Maybe?

With this semi-solid grasp on one piece of biographical information, Allan was suddenly snapped back into corporeal reality.

The first thing he did in it was burp.

“Allan?!” Fer’s voice cried out.

His shoulders were grabbed and shaken roughly.

“Allan, mate, can you hear me?”

The world spun.

With some effort, Allan was able to eke out a raspy “stop”.

“Holy…” The shaking subsided, as did the immediacy of the pain in Allan’s stomach. “Allan, I thought I might have lost you!” The pain in Fer’s voice, however, was more than clear.

Allan slowly wrested his eyes open. The glaring brightness of the ceiling lamp was shadowed by Fer’s head blurrily floating over his, upside down. His necklace was dangling out of his shirt, almost touching Allan’s nose.

Allan groaned. “…Kat? Allie?”

Fer’s blurry head swiveled to look towards Allan’s right. “I think… I think they’re awake too. Thank God.”

“Fer…” a weak voice, presumably Allie’s judging by its distance to him, confirmed. The just-focusing mass of Fer moved out of Allan’s line of sight, at which point he shut his eyes to keep the light overhead from blinding him again.

“Before I forget…” Allie croaked. “I need to tell you the secret.”

After a long pause, Fer sighed.

“Allie… I didn’t tell you any secret. You’re honestly this damn serious about the bit? You all three just pretended to pass out for four minutes and didn’t react at all while you heard me try and call the ambulance?” He whipped around to Jessica. “Is that why you were trying to stop me? Because it was a bit?”

“No, you… you did tell me,” Allie insisted. “I was in Allan’s body when you did, and now I’m back in mine.”

“Sure, sure. Come on then, what is it?” Fer’s voice was seethingly sarcastic.

“…You’re not gonna lean in?”

“I’m fine with you saying it out loud. If you know it. Which you don’t, because this is all-”

“You’re a trans guy.”

…

He is?!

“You are?!” Allan blurted, eyes snapping open.

Fer’s eyes were wide open, darting between the two of them, his jaw dangling. “…No way… he must have messaged you or something… but when…? I was watching…”

“I told you, the data doesn’t lie.” Jessica grabbed Fer’s hand and led him away. “Let me show you my research. It might help you process this.”

* * *

Half an hour later, Allan was still laying on the floor, not wanting to move lest the motion cause his brain to slosh around in its container a bit too much.

That was one part of his justification, anyway.

He’d had a bit of water, courtesy of Fer, but other than that, he had done nothing but browse Reddit on his phone. At some point, Kat had been helped to the bathroom by Jessica, after which she had chosen to lay down on the bed, citing migraine blindness. Yikes.

And Allie?

Allie just laid there beside him, rolled over onto the yoga mat, face down in a pillow. Every once in a while, he heard her make a sniffling sound.

Allan wanted to say he had no idea how she was feeling, but he got the impression that he knew all too well.

Trapped.

“…Fer?”

Allie had rolled her face off the surface of the pillow to speak.

Fer and Jessica were still huddled at the table in the dining room, discussing something in hushed voices, but at the sound of Allie’s call, Fer jumped up to go over to her.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked, his voice still a little wobbly even thirty minutes later.

“I wanna… talk to you about the stuff.”

“The stuff? …Oh, right, the stuff. I clean forgot about all that.” He looked over at Allan, who was  ostensibly trying to keep his attention focused on Reddit, but was having a difficult time of it. “Are you okay talking about it with your brother here, or do you want to go somewhere more private?”

“Nah, Allan’s fine. Might help him out too, now that I think about it.”

Fer pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Sure thing.” He sat at their feet, knees pulled up in a self-embrace. “So, as I apparently told you and not Allan…” He sighed. “Yes, I’m trans. I began taking testosterone at sixth form, once I turned eighteen. Do you remember how young-looking and scrawny I was when we first met in freshman year, Allan?”

He nodded, remembering his shock at finding out that Fer was actually a few months older than him, and yet his voice sounded like he was still going through puberty… which, Allan now realized, he was. Since then, he’d come into his own, not bulking up per se, but definitely getting some definition and trading the ‘scrawny’ descriptor for ‘lithe’.

“I wanted to come here and have a fresh start where nobody knew me as my old self, so I didn’t really come out to anyone until I met Jessica at the GSA and we got to be close friends. I don’t mind any of the six-pack knowing, but it just wasn’t quite relevant or important to bring up.” He shrugged again. “Until now, it seems, because someone thought it would be a swell idea to break a few eggs and make an omelet without considering the feelings of the poor embryos inside.” This part was distinctly pointed away from the pair on the floor, towards the dining room. “You know you’re not supposed to forcibly crack eggs open, Jessica. They need to hatch on their own.”

“I’m… I really am sorry about that, Allie,” Jessica responded meekly, turning the chair to face them. “I’m not good with emotional situations, and I got so caught up in the mystery and my investigation that all concerns for how you might be feeling were completely put out of my mind.”

“For my part, I’m really, really sorry for the awful shit I said,” Allie responded, visibly remorseful. “That shit was dredged up from somewhere dark.”

Jess sighed. “Thank you for the apology, sincerely. I still shouldn’t have confronted you the way I did, though. I’ve learned my lesson. Gosh, you must be feeling so mixed up right now." She dragged her chair over to them, ignoring its squeaks of complaint. “Fer, once again, I am infinitely grateful for your agreeing to come by on such short notice to clean up my mess.”

“Somebody had to.” Fer turned back to the pair on the floor. “Now then. I’m an open book about this, for the most part. Feel free to ask me questions, and I’ll do my best to answer.”

“How do you know? Like, know know?” Allie immediately fired off. “Uh, if you’re… trans, that is.”

Fer sucked air in through his teeth. “Well… if you know, you know.”

“Helpful,” Allie snorted.

“I’m serious. The only way to know is if you feel it strongly enough. And the only valid judge of what ‘enough’ means is yourself.”

Allie groaned. “How do you ever figure out what’s ‘enough’, though? Like… worthy of changing your entire life around ‘enough’?”

“Well, for me…” Fer leaned back, hugging his knees. “I came out socially in year 11, cut my hair and got a binder and all, so for a whole year before I started sixth form, I had people in my life using he/him pronouns and calling me Fernando. I thought they were probably trying to humor me, what with my silly little voice and tiny frame, but it just felt right, so I didn’t stop once I moved up. When I could, it just made sense for me to go all the way and start taking testosterone.” He smiled broadly. “Bloody hell, I still remember my first beard hairs coming in and how absolutely mental it all felt. It was like I was finally able to start seeing myself in the mirror, and not some ugly girl.”

“You actually wanted that?” Allan couldn’t stop himself from blurting out loud. Fer seemed to be taken aback for a second, raising an eyebrow as he looked Allan’s way, but then he chuckled.

“Yes, because I’m a man that likes having facial hair, of course. Do you not want your facial hair?”

“I mean… yes? I have it to hide the shape of my face a bit so I don’t have to look at its edges so much…”

“But do you like it? Or is it simply a way to hide aspects of yourself you don’t like?”

“I… well… the latter, I guess?” Allan made a face. “But you’re saying that you actually like it…?”

“Me too…” Allie mumbled quietly.

Allan stared at her. “Next you’re gonna tell me you don’t want boobs.”

“I don’t.” She cupped near her chest, leaving a layer of air to make sure she didn’t touch them. “These… sacks of shit… could go die in a fucking fire, for all I care.”

“I thought you liked girls though??”

“I like girls, and I like their boobs. A lot. But not on me.” She threw her hands up in the air. “And I guess that’s because I might actually be a fucking trans guy, and I’m just an idiot that didn’t realize this any sooner.”

“But… don’t all guys want boobs?!?”

Fer shot him a look of ‘oh my God this fucking moron’.

Oh.

Ohhhhh.

I want what Allie has. She doesn’t.

Allie wants what I have. I don’t.

Allie is a trans man.

Which means…

Means…

“How do you know it’s not just a fetish?” Allan blurted out again.

Goddamn it, mouth, why must you do this to me?!

Fer wrinkled his brow. “A fetish? To be a man? Why would you think that?”

Allan’s face was flushed. “I- I, uh…” he stammered. “Because… because usually when I think about being a girl, it… uhh… it turns me on?”

“Called it!” Allie chortled. “Allan has a ‘being a girl’ fetish.” Allan turned red as a tomato.

Fer glared at her. “Autogynephilia isn’t a real thing. If it was, then nearly all women would have that ‘fetish’. Cis and trans.”

She immediately backed down, face turning the same shade as Allan’s must have been. “Sorry, fuck, ugh, force of habit… I clearly still have some shit to work through.”

“Clearly…” Fer directed his attention back to Allan. “How are you sure that these feelings are related to sex?”

“It just… I think about that kind of stuff, and I feel… desire. Sexual desire. Like…” He winced. “Erections and shit.”

“What kind of stuff do you think about, exactly?”

Allan wanted to crawl into a hole and get eaten by bacteria like the piece of shit he was. Surely that would be more comfortable than this.

“Like, you know… having sex but as a woman!” he cried out.

Fer chuckled. “So you imagine yourself having sex and you get aroused? Shocker.”

“But…” Allan was grasping for straws now. “But it’s specifically about the ‘being a woman’ part… If I imagine myself having sex as a man, it’s not arousing at all.”

“Is it that you’re getting off to the idea of becoming a woman, or that putting yourself in a woman’s role during sex allows you to connect yourself to the act more easily?”

“I… don’t know. I thought it was the first part…”

“Well then, let’s see… If I started using the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’ to refer to you, how would that make you feel?” Fer continued.

Allan gulped. “Weird, I think, because I’m so obviously not.”

Fer clicked his tongue and turned to Jessica. “Look at her, she can’t even keep a straight face.”

Jess looks pretty straight-faced to me though?

…Wait, was that directed at…

Jessica glanced down at Allan. “Yeah, wow, her lip is quivering. I think she might have enjoyed that.”

…me?

They’re looking at me…

in my own body…

and they’re saying ‘she’ and ‘her’???

He’d felt this feeling before.

When he realized he was able to scream just as shrill as a girl on the playground.

When he was mistaken for his mom on the phone before his voice had dropped.

When he did things that others in middle school teased him for and called him ‘gay’, and he learned then and there to suppress those urges.

The feeling he’d come to associate with shame and disgust and perversion after stumbling across certain fetish fiction.

The feeling he got the few times he’d tried to practice a girl voice for voice acting purposes while alone in his dorm room.

The feeling he got when he was asked to reproduce his efforts at a party while decidedly unsober.

The feeling he had trained himself to run away from for a decade and compartmentalize into a shameful back corner of his mind, to be used almost exclusively as mental fodder for jerking off.

And, though it had been slightly relocated and without a heavy blanket of shame on top…

The giddy, comfortable, warm fuzzies he had felt many times over while swapped were decidedly the same core emotion.

It… it wasn’t brain changes.

He knew that. At some level.

But he just… couldn’t admit it to himself.

“That definitely looks like gender euphoria to me, my girl,” Fer said with a knowing grin.

Euphoria.

He’d been running away from… euphoria.

A positive feeling that took over his entire soul when it bubbled up and threatened to leave behind sore facial muscles.

“It’s… not a fetish?” he finally croaked out.

“I literally just used the correct pronouns for you, and you melted,” Fer chuckled. “How on earth could that be sexual?”

“But… but if I really was, then shouldn’t I just know? Like you did?”

“When I came out to some of my friends and asked them to call me Fernando, I didn’t know know. I had a hunch and tested it out, and how I felt afterwards made me sure.” Fer smirked. “Much like what I just tried with you.”

Allan blinked.

There’s something we can test right now.

He looked at Allie, who was already staring at him.

Without saying a word, the two nodded and reached their hands out towards each other.

Fer gasped.

“No, don’t!” Jessica cried out, falling from her chair in an attempt to stop the two from making contact. “You could-”

But it was too late.