This is How We Change the World Ch. 01

"Huh," Sebastian said. "Well, I... sure, I was overthinking something. But that doesn't change anything, does it? I want to pass, but then I want people to still know, so that I don't have to explain it to them, like from the beginning to every new person I meet... so..."

He petered out. Everyone murmured affirmatively again. Benjamin waited to see if Sebastian wanted to continue, but when it became apparent he didn't, Benjamin turned to Lyric.

"So, Lyric, what did you have to say today?"

Lyric drew a deep breath. She glanced at the others, quickly, and turned the flimsy disposable cup over and over in her hands. "So, I was in a pharmacy yesterday, or the day before that, maybe." She let out a nervous giggle when she noticed she had paused to try to remember which day it was, when it didn't make any difference to her story. "Anyway, I had to get my hormones, and... like this pharmacist, he... he was all smiley at first, but then when he saw my prescription, it was... it was this small change. Very subtle. He definitely wasn't impolite, but he... it was... there was a change."

Everyone murmured again. And then Rose piped up, "You don't have anything to worry about. You totally pass!"

Everyone murmured affirmatively again. Lyric raised her eyes from her cup. She had wanted to talk about how passing was such a constant thing, how it wasn't something you could ever be done with, but somehow she couldn't quite get it out. Benjamin looked at her questioningly, and annoyed by her own sheepishness she blurted out, "It's not about that! I know I pass, but it's just... it's just... I don't know. Sometimes it feels like I'm just waiting for someone to have their Kim Davis moment at my expense. Refuse to serve me, stand up to the trannies, and make a name for themselves by fucking up my day."

She sank back into the couch sullenly. Benjamin asked if she wanted to continue, while also giving her the stink eye for her use of the T word, but she just waved no. Next up was Rose, who launched into a long and enthusiastic pondering about something that was very difficult to follow. Lyric stared into the brownish liquid in her cup and thought, I don't want to just pass. I don't want it to be important if I pass. I want to be accepted whether I pass or not.

***

"Hey... Lyric."

Lyric paused, near the door, as she was pulling her jacket off the hanger, and looked back over her shoulder.

"It is Lyric, right?"

Lyric nodded, making eye contact with Rose. A second staring told her that Sebastian and another girl, someone who Lyric had never been in the small group with but whom she recognized, were both standing right behind her. "Yeah. Hi."

"Hi. Cool. Just making sure. Some people use pseudonyms. Um... I'm Rose. You know Sebastian. I don't know if you know Mars?"

"Or... Marcia," the blonde girl said. "It's whatever."

Lyric gave her a little half wave.

Rose said, excited, "We usually go out for a drink or something after group."

Lyric reflexively glanced at the clock on the wall, and something in her expression must have read as a negative.

"Not long," Rose said, even more hurriedly and taking a half step forward. "Just, like, a comedown. Sometimes group can be really intense, and—"

"Sometimes?" Sebastian added.

"And," Rose said, meaningfully, with a glare over her shoulder, "you know, I love group but sometimes it's a little stiff, and we're a little more relaxed—"

"But it's still really safe," Mars said.

Lyric blinked, stifling most of a smile. "Wait, am I being invited to sit with the cool kids?"

"See?" Sebastian said, dispassionately, as he started toward the door. "I told you she'd get it."

***

21 Dec 2022

Lyric experienced one of the great whiplash moments of her life on a late December evening.

The store was all made up, decorated in reds and greens. The owner had strung LEDs here and there, offering a delightful wash of colors. Their specialty peppermint and pumpkin flavors were selling so much that they might as well have been the only things on the menu. The street lights outside had a bit of festivity here and there as well, and it was working. It was all working. Customer after customer was coming in with a smile where normally there was no expression on a good day. At least, not until they got their caffeine fix.

It was dark and late. Lyric was near the end of her shift. It had been a long day, but not overly taxing. Nothing at her job was overly taxing. There were no heavy objects for her to lift. The hardest part was the mental part. On top of the stress of being around so many people while she was trying to pass, some of the drinks they sold were quite complex. A group ordering four complex drinks, each with a slight customization like extra whip or soy milk, quickly adds up in a way that makes focus complicated to maintain.

Lyric was damn good at her job. Maybe not the best, but she applied herself and she worked hard. She didn't make a lot of mistakes, which meant that by the end of a shift she was usually pretty fried.

She had maybe thirty minutes to go, ten o'clock, when Maddy walked in. Lyric waved briefly, and turned her attention back to the mixer in her hand... and then a few seconds later, she looked back. Maddy looked like a ghost.

"Heeeey," she said, as Maddy drifted by.

Maddy didn't respond, merely trudged on. The urge was certainly there to follow her and ask, but there were customers. They'd been work friends for as long as Lyric had worked there, but in the last month or so, Lyric had successfully gotten Maddy to talk for as much as ten minutes at a time. She herself could, with the right prompt, talk for hours about the things she was passionate (read: obsessive) about, but struggled to carry a conversation with most people. Not so with Maddy.

Maddy came out a few minutes later, and a closer inspection did not make her look any less unhealthy.

"Hey, Maddy, are you—"

"Next," Maddy said, sailing right past her to the counter.

Lyric bit her lip and went back to what she was doing, but she kept Maddy in the corner of her eye. Maddy looked bad. Her eyes were sunken and glassy, and her hands were shaking. She'd tried to mask the first two with makeup, but Lyric knew enough to see under it.

Lyric was watching carefully enough that she was able to step over, in the blink of an eye, and catch a carton of cream just as it started to tip over off the counter.

"Oh fuck," Maddy murmured, moving in slow motion after it.

"I got it," Lyric said, setting the carton back on the counter and scurrying around to the edge of the counter for some paper towels to sop up the little bit that had spilled. "I got it. Keep going. I've got this."

Maddy watched her clean, hands twitching, and reluctantly went back to work crafting a hazelnut latte. After quickly wiping up most of it, Lyric darted into the back room to grab a couple of the sanitary wipes, and made it back out in front just in time to see Maddy, fingers trembling, drop the latte she'd just finished, ceramic mug and all. It shattered against the floor with a piercing sound that had every head in the place turning toward them.

Maddy seemed frozen in place. It didn't seem like she'd reacted at all.

"Okay," Lyric said. "Oooo, it looks like that got all over you. Let's... okay... let's just..." She reached out and took Maddy's hand, and Maddy followed when she pulled without hardly any resistance. "Yeah. Okay. Let's..." She turned to the startled customer, and said, "Ma'am, I'll be right back. I'll get your latte going. I'm so sorry. It'll be just a minute."

"I'm sorry," Maddy muttered, as they made their way through the back room to the little locker area with the bench seat where they all stored their personal effects. "I'm sorry."

"Just sit here, okay? It's alright. I'm gonna go get Eric, and take care of the people, and I'll be right back."

Maddy was just staring down at her hands, and made a kind of affirmative Mmmmm sound.

"Eric," she said, as she poked her head into the office. "Eric, I need you out front real quick."

"Just a minute," he said, without looking up.

"No," Lyric said, more forcefully. "Had a little spill. There's a line. Can you help me clear it out?"

Eric looked at her. "You dropped something?"

"Yeah," she said, without blinking. "Can you help?"

"Is Maddy here yet?"

"Not yet."

This time, he got up, and he followed her out into the front, and between her, Eric, and Allen, the other evening shift guy, they worked the crowd with practiced ease.

"Is she going to be alright?" the lady who had originally ordered the hazelnut latte asked.

"I'm fine," Lyric said, jumping in. "I'm fine. Everything's fine."

The woman seemed confused by this, but between Lyric's wink and the brownie nestled on her saucer that she hadn't ordered, the woman just nodded and went off to find a comfortable place to sit.

As soon as she was clear to, Lyric darted into the back. Maddy was still sitting in the same spot. It looked like she hadn't moved at all. Lyric squatted demurely in front of her, one knee gently touching the floor with the other one kind of crossed in front of her.

"Hey," she said, gently resting the tips of her fingers on Maddy's knee. "Are you..."

Maddy's eyes said that she wasn't. She reacted very slowly to Lyric, and shook her head. "I'm sorry. I... I'll be okay. I just need to get an espresso, and I'll be fine."

This did not pass the sniff test, but Lyric's disbelief did not seem to phase Maddy.

"Shoulda... gotten here earlier."

"Maddy," Lyric said, trying to position her head directly in front of Maddy to catch her direct gaze. "Are you on something? You don't seem like yourself."

"No, I... I just... I didn't sleep."

"This looks worse than one night of bad sleep."

Maddy smiled humorlessly. "It's been weeks. I can't sleep."

"Is it, like, insomnia?"

The older woman shrugged, disaffected, movements like she was under water. "I just can't."

"Okay, you... You can't be here. You can't work like this."

"I'm alright," Maddy said, and she tried to stand, but Lyric used all of one finger to push back and that was enough to keep Maddy down. "I'm alright."

"No. Look. Is it something at home keeping you awake? Noisy neighbors? I've never seen you like this."

"Something at home," Maddy repeated, distantly, eyes drifting slightly to the side. It didn't seem like that was an answer so much as those specific words triggered a flinch in her.

"You live far, though, right?"

Maddy didn't respond. Just kept staring into the corner of the room, lost in thought.

"Uptown, maybe? I think I heard you say that once."

"Mmm."

"And you take the subway, right?"

"Mmm."

Again, Lyric couldn't be sure these were answers. "Alright, stay here."

"Mmm."

She stood up and turned, biting her lip as she made her way to the office. "Hey, Eric."

This time, he looked up straight away, though he looked slightly annoyed at another interruption. "Yes?"

"Maddy just got here, but she looks sick."

As soon as he heard the word sick, Eric leaned back in his chair and groaned.

"She lives far, though. I don't know if she'll make it all the way home like she is, so I'm gonna see if I can take her back to my place."

"And then what do I do tonight?"

"I'll cover her shift," she said, again, without skipping a beat. "I owe her anyway."

Eric narrowed his eyes. "You do?"

"Yeah, she covered one for me a while back." She hadn't, but Eric didn't know that. "I just need, like, thirty minutes, and then I'll stick around until Mitch gets in at seven."

Eric nodded slowly, brows moving as his brain churned. "Is she gonna be okay?"

"I think so. I just need to get her set up, and she can call someone to pick her up. I just want to get her away from the food, so... you know..." Then she made an exaggerated vomiting sound, and Eric seemed only too happy to wave her off. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me," Eric said, as she retreated down the hall. "You're the one pulling a double."

Back in the locker area, Lyric got one of Maddy's arms around her shoulders, and helped her to her feet. "There we go," she said, as she got Maddy to stand on her own for a second. She fished Maddy's jacket out of her locker and got the woman bundled up again. "Alright. I'm gonna take you back to my place, okay? It's close. You need to sleep."

"I don't sleep," Maddy murmured. "I just dream."

"How very Hunter S. Thompson of you." Lyric pulled out her phone, and fired off a quick text canceling an appointment she'd had scheduled for later, and snuck her arms into her own coat. "Alright. Come on. You need six hours in a bed."

"What would I do with six guys in a bed?" Maddy replied, tiredly, smirking in a way that didn't make it to her eyes.

Lyric chuckled, slipped her phone into her purse, and gave Maddy a gentle nudge to get her moving. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go."

***

Lyric was being very fussy about the whole thing, Madalyn thought. Opening doors for her, and kind of corralling her. Yes, she'd thumped into the one wall pretty hard, but once the pain kicked in she'd been a lot more aware. Coddling her after that was almost insulting.

It wasn't. It was sweet, and she was tired, and Lyric was just trying to do something... something for her. Madalyn couldn't remember the word for what it was Lyric was doing, but she knew Lyric was doing whatever it was and that it was for her benefit.

"This is me," Lyric was saying, after what might have been five minutes, thirty minutes, neither, or both. Maddy tilted her head back to look up, to see how tall the building was, and immediately regretted it when she started tipping backwards. Just a little. She didn't need Lyric to catch her. She could catch herself just fine, but it was good that Lyric put a hand to her shoulder and kept her upright anyway.

Good? No, nice. Nice was the word she'd been searching for earlier. It hit her just as she was stepping into the elevator, and she was proud of herself for remembering all on her own. Thinking had been something she was avoiding, as much as possible, which had made her sleeplessness a curious mix of poison and cure. With her brain going constantly and the bed empty around her, Maddy had nothing but time, acres of it, to think, and she'd poured every ounce of effort she possessed into thinking about anything but François and Amy.

She'd started reading, though finishing reading was harder than it should have been. She jumped from book to book so much, without ending hardly any of them, that they were all starting to bleed together. She'd started cleaning more, and their apartment had never smelled so much like a citrus grove, but it was never going to be clean enough, no matter what. She'd tried to fuck the pain away, but cumming didn't give her the release she needed.

She wanted to feel anything but that, and so she was... this, even if this didn't make a whole lot of sense. That was fine. Neither did she, on four hours of sleep for the past week, and maybe ten the week before that.

And then Lyric was unlocking a door, and Madalyn realized she wasn't in the elevator anymore.

"Uh, actually, can you... um..." Lyric turned and looked nervously down the hall in both directions. "You know what, I was gonna ask you to wait outside for, like, five minutes, but honestly, I don't wanna leave you out here. Could you handle just closing your eyes for a little while so I can clean up a few things?"

Madalyn, miles past the point where she cared to pretend about basically anything, said, "You're cute when you babble," and closed her eyes with a self-satisfied smirk as she stepped across the threshold.

***

22 Dec 2022

Lyric stretched and yawned, peering blearily out of one eye while her waking mind came to grips with the fact that she was sleeping on the couch. When she reached her arm up, it cast a shadow on the carpet in front of her... which meant the kitchen light was on... which meant...

She sat up and twisted, head spinning. "Oh! Hey! You're up!"

Madalyn was cradling a mug in both hands, leaning on the counter. She nodded without saying anything.

"That's good! How did you sleep?"

"Not great," she said, slowly, "but... I slept, so that's good. Whatever you gave me has me a little groggy still."

Lyric laughed nervously as she sat up a little more. "Normally I take, like, a melatonin or a gummy, but I had some Ambien leftover from when I first moved in and couldn't sleep at all. I figured, better go right for the heavy stuff in a serious situation like that." She knew she was babbling, and ran her fingers through her hair. Lifting her arm made her instantly aware that her shirt was touching her chest, her actual chest, loosely, and she had an immediate panic. Her breast form was tucked under the couch, which she hated because she always took good care of them, but Maddy had still been asleep in her room when she'd gotten back from her double shift and she didn't want to wake her. "I'm glad you got some sleep, though!"

Maddy nodded, staring down into the mug, and made a small sound like, "Hmm."

She picked up a throw pillow, and hugged it to her chest to try to distract from the fact that she was shaped very differently than the way Maddy was probably used to seeing her. "Um, I hope you don't mind, but I... I got Carlos to cover your shift tonight. Just in case."

"Hmm."

"I don't... I don't know your finances. If that's something you can't afford to lose, then you can just cover my shift on Thursday or whatever, and I'll... uh... I'll be fine." In her head, Lyric was already mentally preparing herself for the three handjobs or two blowjobs she'd need to give to cover a shift, but she could do that and be done in an hour if she timed it right. "I just... I was worried. About you."

This, finally, got Madalyn to look up, and the look she gave Lyric made Lyric want to take the words back. It was serious and piercing. Not angry, which was good, but intense.

Eventually, Madalyn cleared her throat and said, "I don't remember walking back here at all."

"Oh, don't worry," Lyric said, laughing. "You only bumped into about fifteen people on our way here. That's, like, barely above average for me. You were out of it, but I think you'll only have the one bruise."

Maddy stood up a bit more, brow furrowed, and stretched out her right arm. "Is that where this is from?" she asked, pointing to a dark area on the back of her forearm.

It only, just then, dawned on Lyric that Maddy was wearing one of her shirts. A sad robot t-shirt that had been in her closet. She should have thought ahead and laid something out for her. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Maddy had gone rooting around in her closet, and there were things she didn't want Maddy to see in her closet. "Yeah, you bumped into a door handle. That shirt looks good on you."

Stuuuuupid, she thought, don't draw attention to it!

Maddy just looked down at herself and blushed. "Yeah, sorry. I sweat through my clothes at one point. I haven't slept with clothes on in... I don't even know how long. I just put something on so I wasn't walking around with my tits out."

Lyric snorted, and then tried to cover her mouth in horror, but Maddy was staring at her in smirking amusement.

"You don't need to do that," Maddy said, gesturing with her mug toward the pillow. "It's okay. I know."

Lyric flinched, trying and failing to keep a calm exterior. "Okay."

"Too blunt?"

"No," Lyric said, frowning and relacing her grip. She looked down at herself, at her own natural, small chest, and let the pillow fully settle on her lap. "It's fine."