16. Claude

SIXTEEN

Claude

“ T hese muffins are so fucking good.”

I hadn’t even known mint chocolate muffins were a thing, but they apparently were. Arlene had looked at me so funny that first day she’d mentioned one of her flavor combinations, I didn’t dare to question them again. At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter.

My stomach was happy, so I was happy to let Arlene run around the kitchen talking about things that were supposedly obvious but really were anything but.

“The mint tea makes all the difference.”

“Wait, what?”

I frowned. I thought it would just be chocolate and mint extract and food coloring. Not the healthiest, but I wasn’t one to complain about that stuff. Since when could muffins have tea in them?

Oops.

Arlene was doing that face again, but I bet if I texted Ben, he’d be shocked, too. No sane person expected tea in their muffins. I would not be convinced otherwise.

“I do an extra strong mint tea, with about 30 bags, reduce it, and I add it to the batter of the muffins,” Arlene explained. At least she wasn’t teasing about it. She tried to every now and then, and it just didn’t work. We had a system here. I teased, and she blushed. The system worked. “I actually discovered it because I’d run out of mint extract one day, but there was plenty of mint tea in one of the cabinets for some reason? I think Dylan was trying to do some kind of cleansing diet or something. He went through a phase. Anyway, I experimented, and it turns out that they taste much better this way.”

I could not compare, but these muffins tasted amazing, so I accepted it as truth and kept enjoying the treat.

Arlene’s roommate came back down from his room as I was wiping the breadcrumbs into one of the napkins she’d procured earlier. It reminded me I needed napkins for my place. Maybe I could get some reusable ones. I’d have to look into it.

“Hey, Dylan.” I nodded in greeting. “I’m not sharing.”

“Yes, you are.” Arlene shook her head.

I winked.

I wasn’t sure I’d won him over completely after just hanging out with him a couple of times on his way out of the place they shared. He smiled at me and stopped to give me what I guessed he thought of as a playful shove, though. It was progress.

Rome wasn’t built in one day, and all that.

“Whatever.”

Dylan rolled his eyes, but he sat down to eat one of the muffins. I guessed he wasn’t in a hurry to leave this time.

He moaned around the first bite he took, too. It reminded me of Ben. Gosh, both of them could be so over the top—Dylan when he was in the right mood; Ben, all of the fucking time.

“Did you see the new Zelda game that’s coming out tomorrow?” Dylan asked.

For a second, I thought he was asking Arlene, which piqued my interest—we’d talked hobbies, and she’d said nothing about gaming.

Oh, but I had. I guessed Arlene had told him.

“Yeah, I preordered it ages ago.” I nodded. I’d been watching every early review I could find, too. The ones that weren’t made by incels, at least. So many incels in gaming spaces. “Are you getting it, too?”

“Duh. I’ve been playing the last one non-stop this week to prepare.”

So that launched us into a talk I wasn’t really expecting to have with the most ambivalent person toward me I’d ever encountered.

I wasn’t complaining, but it was something I noticed. How could I not?

Arlene seemed way too pleased with herself from the counter. She was pretending to clean up the area of the kitchen where she’d dropped a bunch of flour—and unfairly blamed me for it—but I saw through her. She’d orchestrated this.

I mean, I couldn’t be upset by it. We didn’t talk much about him, but it was getting annoying—knowing that there was someone close to Arlene who had decided I was not good enough, or whatever it was. I didn’t think delving into figuring out why it was exactly that they’d decided to make me the enemy would help.

It was much better for everyone to just go with the flow and accept this Zelda-shaped olive branch—Master Sword?

I never had anyone to talk about it, anyway, so it would be cool if I befriended Dylan.

Arlene had mentioned something about a shitty boyfriend, too. I had a few things to say about it, and I couldn’t until we were close enough to not make it weird.

I breathed out when Dylan eventually left, though. I really had nothing against him—not even when he was fully stuck into the “we don’t like Claude” club—but I’d come here on a mission.

Arlene had wanted to meet yesterday and spend the entire weekend together, but I’d had plans. By plans, I meant I spent all afternoon drinking way too many lemonades with Gay while she helped me through… stuff. I’d postponed it long enough, but I’d needed someone who actually knew what it was like to set my head on straight.

She was more than happy to do it. Probably way happier than she should’ve been, too.

It was a good thing that it wasn’t our first time talking, or I wasn’t sure I would’ve been too thrilled for a repeat.

The point was, she’d helped me come up with a plan of action, but that plan of action involved Arlene and I having the place for ourselves.

“Hey, let me go to the bathroom real quick, and I’ll meet you in your room.”

Arlene watched me for a second, her pupils dilated. She tried to hide the way my words affected her, but it was no use. We both knew it, but it didn’t stop her from leaning back against the counter as if she could play the unaffected role easily.

“Romance really is dead these days.”

I snorted. It was a good thing she hadn’t timed that delivery while I was drinking. “You really like to make things harder for yourself.”

I had no plans to make anything harder for her—not today, at least—but she didn’t need to know it. And hearing those words had her gasping and spluttering, which was always fun to accomplish.

“That is so unfair! I’ve done nothing.”

“Sure you haven’t.” I blew her a kiss before I pushed my ass off the stool. “Just meet me in your room, okay? I swear I won’t be mean.”

I really wouldn’t be. Today was more about me—in a convoluted way—than it was about her, but I needed a second to myself before I could set everything in motion. I didn’t think I could be faulted too much for it.

“You always say that,” I heard her grumble.

I still heard her footsteps up the stairs, though, so I didn’t worry too much. Maybe we could talk about her newfound inner brat some other day. Or later today, if I didn’t end up as emotionally exhausted as I feared I would. Preparing for all scenarios was important. Gay had drilled that into me.

Well, I already knew as much, but she had a way with words. It had to be the civil rights lawyer in her. I was low-key scared for her subs, not that Cin looked like someone who would struggle to push back.

I found Arlene in the room as I’d asked her. She was wearing the same big sweatshirt she’d had on when she greeted me by the door and was just lounging against the headboard of her bed. That worked with me, so I just sat cross legged beside her. As uncomfortable as it usually made me, it was important that they saw me this one time.

“Is everything okay?” Arlene sat up, a frown settling between her brows. “You look like you’re about to be sick.”

Fuck.

Okay, so I didn’t have my best game face on. I shook my head, trying to shake the nerves out as well.

“No, I’m fine.” My fingers found hers. She’d gotten a manicure a couple of days ago after going in circles about it for way too long. It had reached the point where I was about to send her the money for it. Who knew financial advisors could be so stingy and anxious about their finances? “I’ve just been thinking about things, and since I can’t post them online anymore, I figured you were the next best thing.”

Arlene rolled her eyes. The thing was, when she rolled her eyes, she did it in a way that read as… fond. It made me warm inside. She followed it up with a soft chuckle.

“You can be such an idiot.”

“Hey!” I gasped. “You’re supposed to be the nice one here.”

“And you’re avoiding the subject you brought up to begin with,” Arlene pointed out.

Sometimes I hated that she could be as observant as I was. It was an awful trait to share with someone. Did not recommend.

“Okay, okay.” I pretended to huff, but there was no heat to it. “In short, I want you to see me.”

The phrasing made Arlene frown. I hadn’t expected anything less. “I… don’t see you?”

“I mean, you do.” She saw more than most people who hadn’t been in my life for years now, and more than she would say out loud.

I knew that much. It didn’t deter me the way it should have.

Actions spoke louder than words, though, so instead of talking myself in circles like I knew I could do when I didn’t feel in complete control, I sprang into action.

Arlene stood still as I grabbed my oversized button-up and pulled it over my head. It draped over the floor—I might’ve yanked it with more force than necessary—but I didn’t care. I could ask Arlene to let me run a quick load of laundry later, or I could borrow some of her clothes. It worked either way.

Anyway.

I supposed she was waiting for me to say something, but I wanted to get the clothes out of the way first—before I lost all courage to do it. I’d hate myself so hard if that happened.

My heart sped up as I kneeled there, in front of her, completely exposed. It wasn’t like it usually was, though. I didn’t feel sick, or the urge to hide and cover up and keep my body away from anyone’s eyes.

It helped that Arlene kept her gaze on me for the most part. She wasn’t making it weird or going into that headspace where lust was the only thing that existed.

“You haven’t seen this part of me.”

Arlene’s throat bobbed. “You know I don’t care about that.”

“I know.” I nodded. We wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it with every fiber of my heart. “But I think it’s really important for me to do this.”

“Okay,” she agreed, “I understand.”

They were words that meant nothing, but they meant everything at the same time. I pulled up some much-needed air before I continued.

“This goes back to the cursed video we don’t talk about.”

“Please tell me you’re not going to start singing the Encanto song.” Arlene blurted out before she caught herself, heat pooling up her cheeks. “I mean, you can if it’s part of your process or something, but…”

I scoffed. “Do you have anything to say about my singing voice, gorgeous?”

I’d never claimed to be a singer. I’d never attempted to be one, either. I was the first one to admit taking me to a karaoke bar was the worst thing you could do. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy teasing her about it, though.

All was fair in love and war or whatever.

“No.” She gulped. “Please continue.”

I grinned. The short-lived banter had given me what I’d needed—the breathing room to forget what I was doing, or what state I was in.

It was easy to continue when I wasn’t hyper-aware of the air brushing against my skin.

“There are many things I did wrong when I posted that video,” I started. I’d already said that, but it bore repeating. “I was getting to a point where I felt stuck, and… stagnant. I wasn’t growing. Everyone just saw me as Ben’s sidekick, I was getting less and less offers from companies to place their products…”

I sighed, running a hand through my hair.

“I’m not trying to excuse it, because I should’ve one hundred percent known better, but back then, I was just burned out, and hyper-focused on numbers, and going viral, and… Yeah.”

“That makes sense.”

I supposed it did. My therapist had insisted for the longest time on me having more grace for myself or something along those lines. Needless to say, I was still working on it.

“I shouldn’t have used a clickbait title. I shouldn’t have kept up the clickbait shit for the first five minutes of that video.” I’d counted it, back then. “I grabbed the community that had supported me from the start, and I threw their support under the bus, regardless of what my intention had been. There’s no excuse for it.

“The content, though… After those five minutes, it was all true. It was the most honest thing I’d ever posted online. Hell, not even Ben knew a thing about it. He learned about it when he watched the video live along with everyone else.”

Arlene grimaced. “You did sound sincere, once you sat down.”

I nodded. I remembered walking all over the house when I was recording it, trying to find the perfect angle, the perfect rhythm to keep people engaged.

“I’m still asexual. Maybe gray-sexual, if we’re super technical about it, but I stopped worrying about that exact distinction a while ago.”

“Right.”

“But, figuring out I was not sex-repulsed? That was… the biggest mindfuck I’d gone through in… forever.” I snorted, aware the irony was lost on anyone but me. “No, seriously, figuring out I was non-binary was easier than that shit. I’d proudly bought a million ace flags and screamed it in everyone’s face from the second I hit puberty. No hesitation. In a way, I was asexual first and non-binary second.”

I didn’t want to have to digress into the way gender and sexual orientation would always be linked in my head. I’d had to do it with way more people than I dared to count. Thankfully, though, Arlene seemed to be aware of that line of thought, or she just didn’t care, or she somehow understood what I was saying. Whatever it was, I’d take it.

“I ignored it for so long. I mean, I was an educator on all things non-binary and ace. It felt embarrassing to admit, even to myself, that I’d missed the fact that I had so much gender dysphoria it was blocking everything else.” I snorted. “Still working through that with my therapist.”

“Sounds really tough.” Of course, Arlene ignored my attempt to make a joke.

Classic.

So unfair, too.

“Anyway.” I cleared my throat. “So you clocked how I was on T?”

It was low-dose, but she’d mentioned something one day after she’d watched me inject myself. She’d noticed my voice was lower, and my jaw a bit more angular, that first day we met.

“Yeah?”

“I started taking it back in LA,” I said. “And the longer I was on it, the more I realized… Shit, sex might not be so bad after all. I caught myself looking at people, and yeah, I know T can affect your libido especially when you start, but…”

Arlene brought her knees up to her chest, resting her face there. “It felt like more than good ol’ libido?”

“Yeah.” I chuckled. “I mean, for all I know, it’s all a result of being on T, truthfully, but the fact is… The easier I found it to look at myself in the mirror, the easier I found it to look at other people. But more than that, I started being actually interested in sex.”

Arlene hummed. It was for the best that she was choosing to not let me just talk with no input whatsoever. I could do it, but I could feel the discomfort creeping in the longer I went without any kind of interruption.

“I think I relate to that,” she said. “Well, maybe not in the same way, but before I came to terms with being a woman, the idea of being in a relationship just icked me out.”

Huh. No, I supposed it wasn’t quite the same, but it still took more of that weight off my shoulders.

“Yeah, so… It was kind of a dark era.” I sighed. “And, again, it doesn’t mean that I’m the most interested or sex-driven person out there, even when it seems like I’m fucking you all the time, but… It’s a part of me I had to discover and figure out and kind of accept, too.”

Arlene nodded. She leaned forward—not to touch me, but to be closer. I didn’t mind it. Gay’s words resonated in my head: it was important that Domms were vulnerable too, and it was important that Arlene understood every part of me. Moreover, it was important that I didn’t walk around with all this weight on my shoulders or all the unanswered questions and imagined scenarios that were only hindering what we were building.

“It’s what you meant when we talked about labels, isn’t it?”

My eyes widened. Yes, I’d noted she could be as observant as I was, but I still hadn’t expected her to remember or make the connection.

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “I’d built my entire identity around being ace, and yucking at people when they talked about anything sex, and it was hard to… let go of it. Well, some of it. I still call out Ben when he tries to tell me stuff.”

He just didn’t understand the concept of TMI. Besides, he was like my annoying little brother. I was glad that he was enjoying his life with Julian, but I didn’t need to picture it so vividly, thank you very much.

“That makes sense.” Arlene chuckled. “I struggle when Dylan goes TMI, too.”

I groaned. “We can never let them meet.”

There was no way in hell that Ben would leave LA unless he was invited to some sort of fancy event somewhere. Still, I was not risking it.

“Agreed.” Arlene grinned, shifting from one ass cheek to another. “Can I ask a question, though? It might be very obvious.”

“Sure.” I ignored the way my heart started picking up speed, or the way my mouth dried up.

This was Arlene. I trusted her.

“So, I understand everything about the viral video, and I appreciate so much that you’re opening up about it and let me… see, I guess? Like, it means a lot to me, and I get how hard talking about it must be.” She took a deep breath. I had to pretend it didn’t skyrocket my already frazzled nerves. It was fine. It would be fine. “But why today? And why… the lack of clothes?”

Right. I hadn’t tackled that part yet.

“Yeah, that’s mostly for my benefit, too. I mean, to be fair, telling you about the whole thing is, to be honest.”

Arlene tilted her head to the side. It wasn’t a gesture she did often, but it was cute when she did. Sue me.

“I was talking with Cin’s Domme the other day.”

Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure that Arlene had met Gay, or knew about Cin’s dynamics. We’d gone to one more munch, but Arlene was happier to stay at home baking, or indulging in my addiction to cheese fries, so I didn’t push her too much.

Should I?

I guessed I had something else to pester Gay with when I ran into her next. It was a good thing she didn’t mind me doing it.

“Okay?”

Right. I’d gotten distracted.

Ugh.

I had to shake it off, somehow. Why was I back to being nervous? I was all over the place, and I didn’t like it. At all. I didn’t know how other people did it, but I couldn’t deal.

“We were talking about how…” I licked my lips. That was not a good way to start. Well, I supposed it could be, but I was struggling here, dammit. “So, I’ve never had the best relationship with my body. I mean, getting top surgery helped, and being on T helps as well. It makes me more comfortable to present as fem and to experiment with clothes and makeup and everything else.”

“Right.”

“And, right now, I’m mostly neutral?” I pursed my lips. Neutral wasn’t quite the right word, but I was at an okay place with it. Yeah, neutral might be accurate. “I’m still not comfortable with touching myself in certain ways, but I mostly see it as a vessel, like… It’s there to keep me together.”

“Yeah.”

“But I guess I realized that… Well, it’s two things, really.” I really hated looking this vulnerable. I’d have to come up with something to do to her later to get us back on track. “One, I think a part of me needed to see that you… respected it? Which, fuck, it sounds awful, but?—”

“Relax.” Arlene smiled as she offered her hand. Goosebumps rose up my arms, but I pushed through the sensation, intertwining my fingers with hers. I’d started to keep track of all the tiny scars around her fingers from cutting herself while in the kitchen. If she ever got tired of dealing with the finance world, she could try working at a bakery or a restaurant or something. Her hands were proof enough of all her experience. “I get it. I’d never touch you without you telling me so, and you don’t have to be comfortable with absolutely every aspect of yourself to be okay or happy.”

I nodded. It wasn’t the first time I noticed, but at times, I felt like Arlene knew more about gender than I did, like I could learn from her.

It didn’t bother me.

If anything, it was another reason I liked her.

“Yeah.” It was true, anyway. “The second reason was, even if I don’t want to be naked during sex a lot, or… during anything else, really… I don’t want to feel like I’m keeping something from you, even if it’s silly, because it was building up in my head to this huge thing, and… Basically, I think that if I let it fester, it would kind of take me back to that place where I wasn’t as neutral or okay with my body, so… Yeah.”

I sat a bit straighter then, my face determined. This was about reclaiming strength, too, about my right to be in my body. Arlene’s face softened, her eyes brimming with adoration.

“Gosh, is it too soon to say I love you?” she blurted out, a hint of pink rising to her cheeks. “Because I kind of do.”

Somehow, I managed to smirk and keep my posture. At the same time, my knees wobbled, all air out of my lungs. “I mean, we’ve been seeing each other for three months now. I’m shocked we’ve lasted this long, if anything.”

Everything else had moved so fast, but the words… It hadn’t felt as important, as urgent, as everything else.

Arlene chuckled, then stopped. “We?”

I grinned. The poor woman stared at me with doe eyes. “I love you, gorgeous.”

I thought she’d go on overdrive, but she just breathed out, that relaxed smile etched on her face. “Can you kiss me, then?”

“On it.” One day, Arlene would realize kissing her was not a hardship at all.

Until then, I was happy to tease her about it.