by Rachel Gold
“Oh, yeah, do you want the first or second?”
“First,” Nico said. “I smell like an ox.”
“No you don’t.”
I tried to slip an arm around Nico’s waist, but yo danced away. “Seriously, I do.”
We got back to my room and Nico showered. I paced. I knew what I wanted, but I wasn’t sure that I had the guts to do it. When I got out of my shower, Nico was sitting in my bed reading on yos tablet, like earlier in the day. I liked seeing Nico there.
I’d thrown on a clean T-shirt and shorts, with nothing underneath, and I climbed into the bed next to Nico. The two of us barely fit. I kissed the side of Nico’s neck, up to where yos wet curls dampened the tip of my nose. Nico reached across me to put the tablet on the nightstand and then we were kissing hard, Nico on top, me pulling yo down against me.
When Nico rolled to the side I pulled off my shirt and dropped it by the bed. Nico did the same. I said, “Wait,” and got up to turn off the overhead light.
Nico pushed up onto one elbow. “Tucker, should we talk about things more first?”
I’d been talking things to death with therapy. Wasn’t it enough to admit I needed help and to get it? Did I have to keep being the broken one?
“I don’t particularly want to,” I said.
“But, how do you picture this going?”
I got back into the bed. Nico wrapped yos arms around me and kissed up my cheek to the corner of my eye. I traced a finger down Nico’s collarbone and felt yo shudder.
“Smoothly,” I said.
“That’s only in movies. Let’s try something, okay?”
I remembered grabbing Nico’s wrist in the hotel, the flash of alarm in yos eyes. I thought about what Ella had said, what I knew about Nico’s life, all the opinions about yos body, all the weight Nico operated under.
If I panicked again, it would be hard for Nico not to take some of that personally. Maybe Nico was as scared as I was. Maybe this wasn’t Nico trying to fix broken me. Maybe it was a circuit—wires running from me to Nico and back again—that could carry fear or safety like a current.
Nico was trying to make our circuit feel safe.
Could that be true for Ella too? Maybe people weren’t trying to fix me out of pity, but because we were all wired up together. When I was in better shape, good energy came through me to them.
“Yeah,” I said with real enthusiasm. Now I was curious about what Nico wanted to try instead of insulted. “What it is?”
Nico grinned, the tension around yos eyes melting away. Better energy in the circuit.
Yo said, “I’m going to ask you three questions that sound random.”
“Go for it.”
“Do you like lima beans?”
I stuck out my tongue. “Yucky.”
“Good. Do you want to do go to Sandusky?” Nico asked.
“Maybe, if it’s with you?”
Nico kissed me. I felt the upturned, smiling shape of yos mouth in the kiss.
“Are you a feminist?” yo asked.
“Fuck yes!”
“Perfect,” Nico said. “How did that feel when you said that?”
“What do you mean?”
“In your body, how did you feel?
“Warm,” I said. “And like my chest was expanding fast.”
“And the other answers?’
“Lima beans was a gross feeling in my gut,” I said. “And Sandusky, nothing really.”
“That warm, fast, expansive feeling is what ‘yes’ feels like to you—an enthusiastic yes. Lima beans is what ‘no’ feels like and Sandusky isn’t a strong no, but it’s a pause, okay? If you’re not feeling the ‘fuck yes I’m a feminist’ feeling with me, I want you to press pause. And pause or stop if you get the gross-yuck feeling or anxiety, fear, panic, any of that. We don’t have to do a hard stop, but pause and see where we’re at. Will you do that?”
All the energy going through me was warm, glowing, happy. Nico wasn’t trying to fix me. Yo was making sure our connections were good, no loose wires, no short circuits.
I smiled. “God, Nico, how do you know this stuff?”
“I read books. Where did your therapist tell you stop?”
“At five.”
It didn’t suck to say that out loud now. I heard it as information, not a confession of how screwed up I was. I pressed closer to Nico.
“If we get to five, or above that, tell me ‘five’ and we’ll figure it out,” yo said.
The circuit transmitted both energy and information. I said what I was really thinking and feeling, “Now I’m a little scared, distracted about this five thing, I don’t even know where to start.”
Nico pushed me down onto the bed, slowly, watching with yos steady brown-green eyes. I wrapped my hands around Nico’s shoulders. The muscles felt good, dense, and imbued with the magic of Nico’s dancing. Nico leaned half on top of me and kissed down the side of my neck.
I gasped. “Okay, good start.”
Nico made it down to my breasts and peered up at me. “Yes?”
“Oh, yes.”
A while later, Nico tugged at my shorts. “Yes?”
My breath caught. I wanted it but I was afraid, but less than five. Nico waited, watching my face, paused like a video recording of that moment, smiling, completely focused on me. It was okay to say yes now because if it got bad I could pause us again. And Nico had said “pause” not “stop” so it didn’t mean my choices were only go full steam ahead or stop everything.
I nodded but Nico shook yos head and asked, “Yes?”
If I thought about wires and circuits, the words were there behind my lips, not locked down in my chest.
“Yes,” I said.
I helped Nico pull my shorts down and over my legs. Nico’s fingers explored. I rocked my head back and stopped thinking for a long time, until I felt one finger slip between my inner lips.
I grabbed Nico’s wrist, but not as hard as the last time.
“Wait. Five.”
Nico pulled slightly away, putting yos other hand on top of mine. Not to take my hand off yos wrist, but comforting, my hand pressed between skin and skin.
“Do you want to say no?” Nico asked.
I had the word in my mouth, a burning in my throat and eyes. I pushed the word out, whispered, “No.”
Nico rested next to me, extending an arm so I could curl into yos side.
“See, it’s okay to say no.”
“No,” I said, louder, and then I couldn’t stop saying it, tears rising in my eyes, my mouth repeating, “No, no, no.”
“I’ve got you,” Nico said while I cried.
When I’d settled into a wet mess, Nico asked, “Do you want to go get dinner?”
“No,” I said and started laughing because that was the only word I’d said in a while. “I don’t want to get out of bed with you. Are you starving?”
“I’m okay, but you…”
“Nico. Fuck.”
“I need more words than that. You want to keep going?” Nico asked.
“Yes, but how?”
“What worked with Quin?”
“When I, you know, did her.”
Nico peered into my face and sighed. “Starbuck…Let’s try that. But you promise never to say that you ‘did’ me or anyone else ever again.”
“Scout’s honor.”
“I am not into Boy Scout roleplay,” Nico said with a wink and kissed me.
We kissed and writhed against each other. I felt the hardness in the front of Nico’s boxers but Nico was angling away from me to keep me from feeling all of it. And I thought: screw that.
I ran a hand down Nico’s belly to the waistband of the boxers and said, “Should I make you say yes every step of the way?” I moved my fingers a fraction of an inch.
Nico groaned and covered my hand with yos palm. “I’m a blanket yes,” yo said. “Are you going to freak out?”
“Only if you don’t let me in your boxers.”
We went back to
kissing. I held Nico close, slid my hand into yos boxer briefs. I felt the soft and hard length against my palm, in my fingers. Under that lips, thick and wet, familiar, and a cleft between them that it was too soon to explore.
I roamed back up, felt the length, the textures. Tried to discern what kinds of touch Nico liked best. It wasn’t like: omg I’m touching a dick. I was touching Nico, who was pressing into my hand, groaning, yos head thrown back on the pillows. I was touching Nico the way I’d wanted to since winter.
All that build up, the fear, the identity questions, and this wasn’t strange at all. Soft and hard and wet, different shapes than I was used to, but everyone was different from everyone else. Learning what someone liked was part of the fun.
I kissed Nico’s neck and collarbone. Pulling far enough away to look at Nico, I saw the worry and desire in yos eyes.
“Take off your damn boxers,” I said.
Laughing, Nico pulled them off and threw them over the foot of the bed.
“Are you going to tell me what you like or do I have to do this by feel?” I asked.
“Can we do both?”
Framed by the pillows, naked in my bed, I saw Nico, a person, playful and grinning, still worried, vulnerable, bare, beautiful. I lowered my body over Nico’s, one hand sliding down between us and said, close to yos ear, “Yes, a very enthusiastic yes.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Nico
I got one more weekend with Tucker before finals and the surgery. It wasn’t nearly enough.
I told Dr. Peace what I wanted done. Then it was out of my hands.
Being put under anesthesia felt like being tipped backwards further and further beyond the bed and the floor, until everything disappeared. When I got conscious again, I was dizzy-nauseous. A nurse handed me a bucket because apparently patients hurl all the time after anesthesia. I kept spitting in a disgusting, drooling way. I sipped fizzy, clear pop until I was sure I wasn’t going to puke. Then I gave the nurse the bucket and kept the pop.
Everything from my sternum down hurt like the worst cramps ever and like I’d been kicked by a horse a time or six. Mom and Matt and Hazey and Deena and Yai all crowded into the room as soon as they heard I was up. After twenty minutes, I had to close my eyes and rest. Mom ushered them all out again, saying that they’d be in the waiting room if I needed anything.
I dozed and woke to find Sharani from the Noodle sitting near the foot of my bed, reading. In the tiny hospital chair she looked very tall, quite wild, and every inch the martial arts expert I wanted watching over me post-surgery.
“You doing okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I heard your doctor talking to your mother. The surgery team didn’t do anything you didn’t ask for and everything you wanted went smoothly.”
“Thank you,” I breathed.
I stared at the ceiling, tears of relief leaking out of my eyes. After I wiped them away and focused on Sharani, she said, “Ella made me promise to tell her when you’re up. You want me to get her?”
“Sure,” I told her and dozed again. I liked the idea of Sharani and Ella talking. I thought I could hear them chatting about the cabaret, but I might have dreamed that.
When I came fully awake, Ella sat in the chair where Sharani had been. We put on some bland TV. Mom and the girls cycled in. Mom said she was taking them down to get a late lunch in the cafeteria.
The next time the door opened, I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing. A familiar-looking person stepped into the room wearing suit pants and a vest over a pressed shirt and tie. They wore an official badge I couldn’t quite read. My brain disgorged the words “Tucker” and “cosplay.”
“Hi, Jack,” she said.
She meant Jack Harkness?
“What drugs am I on?” I asked.
She pulled up a chair to the other side of the bed from where Ella sat, took the badge off her vest and handed it to me. I saw the tactical earpiece over her right ear and a thick leather wristband. I focused my bleary eyes on the badge: “Torchwood Institute, Ianto Jones, General Support.”
I peered back at Tucker. Her short, brown hair made sense now. She looked uncomfortable with the shirt buttoned all the way up and the tie—and she looked great. I read the badge again because I couldn’t quite believe it.
“You remembered Torchwood?” I asked.
“We watched those two episodes. And then I went through all of seasons one and two over the last few weeks,” she said. “I’m watching it at night when I miss you.”
I’d have asked her to kiss me except that my mouth tasted like a garbage-burning facility.
“You can take off the tie,” I said. “He sometimes wears an open collar.”
She undid the tie and pulled it off, popped the top button on the collar and relaxed a bit in her chair.
“How are you doing?”
“It hurts, but it’s not awful. The nurses have been great and I have more visitors than the room can hold. I might be able to go home tonight unless I start bleeding from my ears.”
She ducked her head so I was looking at the top of it, the short brown, freshly-dyed hair standing up in clumps.
I turned my face to Ella. She cocked her head toward the door, silently asking if she should go, and I nodded.
“I’m going to go, uh, check on the cat,” she said and left the room.
“There’s a cat?” Tucker asked.
“No, it’s a thing we made up years ago, an excuse to get up and leave.”
I reached across the bed. She took my hand, rubbing her thumb over the back of my knuckles.
“You look amazing,” I told her. “Will you wear that to a convention with me?”
A smirk stole across her lips. “I hear you get a lot of action at conventions.”
“We don’t have to leave the room.”
“And keep the world from seeing our cosplay? You’re joking,” she said. “Hey, I made a better vortex manipulator for Captain Jack.”
She unbuckled the wristband and carefully buckled it onto my left wrist. Then she snapped open the top and pressed a button. A little blue light went on. Another button made a buzzing sound.
“That’s so much better than my old one,” I told her. “You made this?”
“Learned a few things about electronics,” she said, grinning.
I squeezed her hand and wondered if it was too soon to say I love you out loud.
A nurse popped in to check on me. I was getting hungry so she came back with a cup of broth, some crackers and more pop. While I ate, very slowly, Tucker told me about how Johnny and Shen came up with the Ianto Jones costume and helped her get it together.
Then my Dad walked in.
I was not ready for him.
The last times we’d been hanging out together I was doing “son” hardcore. He had all kinds of expectations. The whole “I failed” and “it’s my fault” conversation still rang in my head.
The pressure radiated from him like heat. He was checking me out to make sure I was okay, but I had a shudder of paranoia that he was trying to see if my chest was bandaged, if it was flat now.
He came to the open side of the bed and asked, “How do you feel?”
“Some pain, okay though, it went well.”
“You let them fix you?” he asked.
I closed my eyes.
“Nehal, this has gone on much too long. Tell me you let them make it right.”
After going fishing with him, taking him to see me dance, I knew I wanted him in my life more—but not like this.
Tucker cleared her throat. With a surprising amount of authority, she declared, “Sir, the patient needs to rest. This phase of recovery should be as free of stress as possible. If you’ll go to the waiting room, I’ll tell the Doctor you’re here.”
She said “Doctor” with the right amount of stress, the capital letter, the implication of Doctor Who. I opened my eyes enough to see Dad stare at her like he hadn’t even noticed her in the room until that
moment.
He read the name badge and said, “Torchwood Institute, what is that?”
Tucker took a breath to speak, but I saw the uncertainty in her eyes. I said, “Advanced Studies of Gender Endocrinology.”
“You’re not a doctor,” he said to Tucker.
“Ianto Jones, General Support. I’m a glorified secretary but I work with the Doctor. Now I have some questions I need to go over with Nehal and I think it’s best that we go over those privately.”
He’d stepped back from the bed, but didn’t look convinced. Tucker’s use of my given name made her sound official. But there was the genderqueer feel of Tucker’s whole outfit: the crisp button-down shirt and vest over her big chest.
“Does Mom know you’re here?” I asked him.
“She wasn’t going to tell me you were having surgery, so I don’t see a reason to share information with her,” he said. “When will your doctor be in? Will you give her permission to talk to me?”
Tucker stood by the bed, obviously uncomfortable, even afraid. But she wasn’t moving for anything. When I’d met her last fall she was tough. Now that toughness had cracked away and reformed into a deeper strength that could be flexible or, as now, unmoving.
She’d come here cosplaying Ianto Jones just to make me grin. She was willing to feel weird and out of place to make my world more familiar and safe. If my dad were to scream in her face, I had no doubt she’d lean into it, push him back by force of will.
I could live into the future she was creating.
I might be a kid in my dad’s eyes, but my choice had been enough for my doctor. I didn’t have to know everything to know what was right for me.
And I didn’t have to decide for my dad if he could be in my life or not. I could tell him how it was and let him decide if he’d meet me on equal ground, if he’d respect me as an adult.
“No,” I told him.
“What?” Dark eyebrows drew close, his frown creased his cheeks.
In the past I might have told Tucker to go get Mom or my doctor, but I didn’t need them here. My body shifted inside, like learning a dance move, getting it solid so it became automatic. This new move was speaking from a core of certainty, not feeling I had to manage the worlds of the people around me.
