by Witt, L. A.
“No problem.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment. A million questions hung in the air. There was so much we needed to discuss, but we were both exhausted. He was still recovering physically. The doctor had told him to take it easy, and upsetting him wouldn’t do any good. Best not to go there just yet. Not until he’d recovered and we’d both gotten some sleep.
Right, Damon. Just keep on rationalizing.
This was certainly nothing new. Alex and I were experts at avoiding conversations about difficult topics. The two of us could pretend a room wasn’t on fire if discussing it was too uncomfortable.
I took a drink, then set the can on a coaster. “I’m kind of curious about what happened. Your folks just invited you over, drugged you, and blindsided you with this implant?”
Nodding, Alex scowled. “They asked me to come over to talk about some things like they always do.” He rolled his eyes. “Because that always goes so well. Definitely should’ve known something was up when their asshole pastor showed up. Anyway, I guess they put something in my drink, and good night, Alex.”
“Who put the implant in?”
Alex shrugged. “The pastor, maybe? I’m not really sure. He thinks he’s a master faith healer, so God knows what else he thinks he can do.”
“Unreal,” I said. “I just can’t believe a parent would force their adult child to get any kind of medical procedure like that.”
“They’ve been after me to get this thing for the last few years. Ever since it’s been available.” He shook his head. “Thank God my sister’s static. She’d have had an implant the day they hit the market.” Alex shuddered.
“Are the implants . . . dangerous?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never taken the time to read up on them. I don’t want one—no shifter I know wants anything to do with them—so it didn’t seem like something I needed to know about.” Just before he took another bite of his sandwich, he added, “Famous last words, right?”
I shivered. “What I really don’t get is how your folks think, regardless of how they feel about you being a shifter, that they can make this decision for you. You’re an adult.”
“They did, didn’t they?”
“Well, yeah, but legally? And, my God, ethically?”
He gave a sniff of sarcastic laughter. “I’m an abomination, Damon. A freak. The law, what I want, all those things are irrelevant.” He took another bite of his sandwich. After a moment, he sighed. “I guess I shouldn’t have put this sort of thing past them. I figured they’d keep twisting my arm, but I never thought they’d take it this far.”
“Why did you even go over there? You said yourself it never goes well.” And God knows I’ve seen the aftermath enough times.
Alex sighed. “What can I say? Hope springs eternal. That, and they’d brought up possibly letting me see my sister. I haven’t seen her in like three years, so . . .” He exhaled and ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t know why I bother there, either. They’ve brainwashed her to hate what I am, so I have little doubt she hates who I am, too.”
Both of us fell silent. I wasn’t hungry, but I finished the sandwich anyway just to give myself something to do besides start the conversation we needed to have. When we’d both finished eating and my Coke was getting toward the bottom of the can, I sat back in the recliner.
“You going to press charges?” I asked quietly.
Alex tapped his finger on the edge of his plate for a moment. Then he met my eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Why not? That has to be assault and battery at the very least.”
He gave a weak, one-shouldered shrug and absently played with the tab on his soda can. “But what would I gain? It’s not like it would get this thing out of my back.”
“Alex, they just forced a life-altering implant on you, not to mention—”
“Yes, I know,” he snapped. Our eyes met—mine wide, his narrow—and I swallowed hard. Then he put up a hand and exhaled. “Sorry. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to bite your head off.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Our eyes briefly met again. Alex dropped his gaze. “I don’t know if I should press charges or not. Like I said, what would I gain?”
“Well, they’d be in jail, for starters.”
He twisted the tab on his Coke can around. “And my sister would, for all intents and purposes, be orphaned.”
“Probably just as well, if they’re as bad as they sound.”
“The thing is, what’s done is done.” He snapped off the tab and dropped it into the can with a clink. “There’s no reconciling with them now, so I’m not worried about severing ties. I don’t care about getting revenge. Even if I was, they’d just consider themselves martyrs.”
“Let them be martyrs, then.”
“And what about Candace? She’d end up in foster care or something.”
“Better than being raised in that house, I would think.”
Alex sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’m torn about it. I know she’s better off miles away from them and their bullshit, but I’m worried about shaking up her entire life like that. The kid’s sixteen. She’s got enough crap to deal with.”
I leaned forward, resisting the urge to reach across the divide and put a reassuring hand on his knee. “Your parents should’ve thought of that before they committed a crime against their other child.”
“True.” He rubbed his forehead. At first I thought it was a frustrated gesture, but then his fingers moved to his temples, and he let out a low groan.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” He grimaced. “Still hurts a little.”
“Why don’t you lie down, then?” I stood and picked up the plates and cans. “I can take care of this stuff. You relax.”
Alex didn’t argue.
When I came back from putting our plates in the sink and the cans in the recycling, he had moved onto his back, resting his head on one hand.
“Better?” I asked.
“Much. And, hey, at least it isn’t nearly as bad as it was before.”
“There is that.” As I took my seat again, I said, “Well, better or not, the doc says you’re stuck with me for the next few hours.”
“Can’t promise much conversation.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Even if conversation is exactly what we need right now. “Besides, I think the game’s on.”
“Is it? Crap, it is Sunday, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“What a way to spend the weekend,” he muttered. “Want me to put it on?”
“If you want to watch it.”
“Like you have to ask.”
We both laughed. In the back of my mind, I wondered if Alex’s love of football should have been a clue. Except of course, women liked sports, too, for God’s sake. My Steelers-obsessed mother and Yankees-loving sister could attest to that.
Alex reached for the remote but paused and looked at me. “Thanks again for helping me out. And sticking around.”
“No problem. I wasn’t going to leave you high and dry.”
We held eye contact for a few seconds, letting another opportunity to discuss the situation slip through our fingers. It was Alex who finally broke away, turning his attention back to getting the remote off the coffee table.
“What channel is the game on?” he asked.
“Four, I think.”
He clicked on the TV and changed it to channel four.
The game had just started, so we watched it and let the room keep burning down around us.
My eyes fluttered open. I flinched in anticipation of sharp pain, but it didn’t come. The headache had long since faded to a vague, annoying throb, and besides, the living room was dark.
I smiled to myself, basking in relatively pain-free bliss. I actually felt almost human. Almost.
Without the painkillers in my system, my dreams hadn’t been as weird, but they’d been clearer, more vivid, and the cold sweat dampening the back of my neck made me shiver. I was still exha
usted. What the headache hadn’t taken out of me, two solid days of sporadic, restless sleep had. It was going to take coffee and a miracle to make it through today.
But at least my head didn’t hurt.
I glanced at the DVD player. The glowing turquoise numbers came into focus and announced that it was a little after five in the morning. Damon was out cold on the recliner. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa. How in the hell had we gotten here? After wracking my brain for a minute, I remembered watching bits and pieces of the game with Damon yesterday. I’d drifted off sometime during the second quarter, woke up during the third, fell asleep again, and just barely caught the end of the fourth.
Football. Sunday. Fuck, that meant today was Monday.
I groaned. Monday meant working both of my jobs.
At least my boss at the day job would let me email in sick. That was one of his few redeeming features, and it would let me skirt the issue of calling in with a male voice. If the implant was removed quickly, then I’d just burn some sick and vacation time before waltzing back into work like this whole debacle had never happened. If it took time to get this thing out, then I’d eventually have to go to work as a man. The thought of facing that unpleasant music turned my stomach, and I prayed for the millionth time that the implant came out soon.
Slowly, carefully, I got up off the sofa. I paused to stretch, working a few kinks out of my stiff neck and back before I went into the kitchen to start some much-needed coffee. While it brewed, I slipped off to the bathroom for a quick shower. Hot water and my first cup of coffee slowly tugged me out of the two-day-old haze, and while I sipped my second cup, I tried to make sense of everything.
Until this thing was out of my spine, I had to accept that I was a static male. One gender, one body. No changing from male to female even when my mind changed, which it did frequently. Some shifters only needed to shift once in a while, settling into one gender the majority of the time. There were others who may as well have been static; they had the ability to shift, but neither the desire nor the need to use it.
I was about fifty-fifty. Half the time, I was male in both mind and body. The other half, female. Choosing between the two would have been impossible.
Which was a moot point now, since I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to choose. My skin crawled. A hazy image of restraint and panic flickered through my mind, but I quickly banished it. The memory of what my parents had done was blurry, and I hoped it stayed that way.
Speaking of staying that way . . .
I shuddered. I only wanted to shift because I couldn’t. What happened when I needed to? When my mind was absolutely, one hundred percent female, and I couldn’t get out of this male body? Oh, God . . .
A thought crossed my mind and almost made me drop my cup. The doctor in the ER had said implants given under circumstances such as mine were often black market. How likely was it that the one I’d been given was defective? In the three days or so since this had happened, I’d been so caught up in the pain, I hadn’t actually attempted a shift.
Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but if the surgeon was sheisty enough to perform this procedure in my parents’ living room against my will, there was always the chance he was swindling them, too. Injecting a dummy implant. Maybe one that was badly designed or shoddily constructed. Or in an ineffective place.
There was a possibility, however slim, that I could shift.
I checked to make sure Damon was still asleep. He was, so I ducked back into the kitchen.
I took a deep breath. Closed my eyes. A familiar, cool tingle started at the top of my neck, creeping downward, and my heart pounded. Please, please, please.
“Fuck!” White-hot electricity shot down my spine and through every nerve ending in my body, and I grabbed the counter for balance as my knees buckled beneath me. A shift always started with that tingle, but this was like a power surge. A spike on the grid that threatened to blow out every lightbulb in every house.
Jaw clenched, eyes screwed shut, I held my breath and silently begged the pain to pass.
When I could open my eyes, I glanced at my reflection in the kitchen window to make sure my back wasn’t really on fire, and I felt like a bit of a jackass—a relieved jackass—when I confirmed that it wasn’t. I leaned against the counter. My knees shook violently, as did my hand when I ran it through my hair.
Note to self: Next time, google this sort of thing before trying it.
My attempt at humor didn’t help much. I gritted my teeth, refusing to acknowledge the lump that rose in my throat. Having the implant was one thing. Knowing for certain, confirming it for myself that I couldn’t shift, was nothing short of devastating. Half of my identity had been severed. Amputated at someone else’s whim. Kept from me by what may as well have been an internal shock collar.
This thing had to come out. Whatever it took, it had to come out.
“You need it, son,” my stepfather Gary had said last year. “So you can live a normal life.”
“By whose definition?” I’d said. “I can’t live a normal life unless I can shift.”
Gary had glared at me. “If you’re shifting, it’s not a normal life. We’ve discussed this, and I’m not going to argue about it anymore.”
“So we’re going to let this subject drop?” I said. “You’re going to let me live—”
“We can get a court order,” my mother said.
“What? I’m an adult.”
“And if the court deems you mentally incompetent,” Gary said with sociopathic calm, “then the decision will be ours to make.”
I’d stared at them, stunned they’d even go there. “This is insane. You would actually try to convince a judge I’m mentally incompetent?”
“If that’s what it takes to get you right with the Lord,” my mother had said, “then yes, it’s what we’ll do.”
Clinging to my coffee cup in the present day, I shuddered at the memory of that conversation and a dozen like it. They’d dropped the subject of a court order three or four months ago. Now I understood why. I thought they’d given up on trying to force it on me. Evidently, said the dull twinges still smoldering along the length of my spine, I was mistaken.
I was lost in thought and halfway through my third or fourth cup of coffee when Damon shuffled into the kitchen.
I forced a smile and injected some nonexistent good spirits into my voice. “Coffee?”
“Please.” He rubbed his eyes. “God, what am I doing awake at this hour?”
“Couldn’t tell you.” I pulled another coffee cup down and poured him some. “But we did crash pretty early, so, it figures that we’re awake now.”
“Hmm, yeah, you’re right.” After he’d had some coffee, he looked at me. “How are you feeling?”
“Human.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
“Are you going to call in to work?”
“Yeah. No way I can go in like this.” I sipped my coffee. “Still going to the bar tonight, though.”
“At . . . the bar? They know?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
He was quiet for a moment, then said into his coffee cup, “Oh.”
“Half the people there are queer, Damon,” I said, trying not to get defensive. “That’s why I work there. So I can be out.”
He lifted his gaze, and I braced myself for a tirade about trusting them over him, but he just said quietly, “You’re supposed to be taking it easy.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Alex, ‘tending bar’ and ‘taking it easy’ are not the same thing.”
I pursed my lips. “Tabby will understand. She’ll let me slack a bit.”
“You really think you should be bartending right now?”
I slammed my coffee cup down. “That club is one of the few places in the world where I can go in as a male or a female and no one cares. Fuck taking it easy, I need that right now.”
Damon set his jaw. Then he let out a breath, but he
didn’t speak.
“I don’t expect you to get it,” I said quietly. “I need to go there. It’s just about the only place where I don’t have to be artificially static to keep people from being disgusted by me.”
“I’m not disgusted by you, Alex.”
“And would you have been if you’d known this in the beginning?”
“I . . . No! Come on. You know me better than that?”
I eyed him. “Is that why you haven’t touched me since you found out?”
Damon looked away.
After a moment of telling silence, I rolled my eyes and growled, “You don’t have to answer that.”
He glared at me. “Hey, this has been a lot to take in. Cut me some slack, all right?”
“Oh, do forgive me,” I snapped. “I’ve got a chip in my back forcing me to lead what the rest of the goddamned world thinks is a normal life, and you think you have a lot to take in?”
He put his hands up. “What do you want me to say? I’m not suggesting this is more difficult for me. Not by any means. But, Jesus Christ, it’s been a bit of a shock, okay?”
“Oh, I can only imagine,” I said with way too much sarcasm.
Softer now, he said, “Did you not trust me?”
“What would you have done?”
“Alex . . .”
“Look me in the eye, Damon. Look at me.” When he did, I gestured at myself and fought to keep my voice steady. “What would you have done if you knew about this when we first got together?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “You didn’t exactly give me the opportunity—”
“Oh, sorry. I should have mentioned that to my folks. ‘You mind holding off on putting this thing in until I’ve had a chance to tell my boyfriend? Thanks.’”
“For crying out loud, Alex.” Damon gestured sharply and rolled his eyes. “You can’t honestly expect me to digest all of this overnight. What do you want me to say? Are you telling me you wouldn’t have been shocked if you’d come by my place the other night and found out I was a shifter? If a woman answered the door when you were expecting me?”
“Look, if you can’t deal with what I am—”