430: Throwing Curves

In Which Steff Gets Things Off Her Chest

I found Steff in what might have been the last place I thought to look for her, which made it a good thing that I went there first… she was waiting right outside my room, sitting against the door with a big white fluffy blanket wrapped around her body like a cloak. This made it hard to judge the effects of the transformation at a glance… the only thing I could tell was that she looked kind of wan, but that was more than likely a temporary effect of the strain she’d been through.

Her hair was messier than I was used to seeing it… she usually had it secured with a couple of clips, but today it was wild and free and kind of frizzy.

She watched me with a thin smile as I approached.

“Hey, you,” she said when I got close. Her voice sounded slightly rusty.

“Hey,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

“Sure, apart from the obvious,” Steff said.

“Which would be?”

“Oh… the thing with the imperials,” she said. “I guess I should have specified, since you’re not up on everything else.”

“Case in point: what’s everything else?” I asked. She laughed… a little weakly, but it was a good sound. Hearing it, I let out a metaphorical breath I had been notionally holding inside my head. Steff was okay. Just seeing her hadn’t been enough to convince me of that. Hearing her laugh just about did it.

“Well, for one thing, my clothes don’t fit so well,” Steff said. “I can’t fit into any of my jeans.”

“You don’t wear a lot of jeans to begin with,” I said.

“No,” Steff said. “And some of my flowy skirts are pretty forgiving, more so than my tight-ass miniskirts. Dee wasn’t kidding about hips. I mean, they’re not wide enough to sail a galleon through or anything but they’re more than I’m used to allowing for. And walking is… weird. You wouldn’t expect much to change there, but my whole balance is shifted.”

“Any other problems?” I asked. Those were definitely adjustments but I had a feeling it was just the tip of the iceberg of what Steff was dealing with. Maybe it was good for her to focus on the practical things like getting around and getting dressed, but my concern for her lingered… and when she reacted to the question by going stiff and still, I knew I was right to be concerned.

“Well…” she said.

I didn’t want to press her too hard, so I waited for her to finish the thought, then waited a bit longer when she didn’t.

“Steff, you know you can talk to me,” I said.

“Well, I know you love me,” she said. “And I can be pretty nuts about you… but I don’t know if I can talk to anybody about this. It’s not… I think I lack the vocabulary.”

I looked around the empty hallway.

“Listen, do you want to go inside?” I said holding up my keys.

“Um, okay,” Steff said, kind of sliding to the side and then getting up with a good deal less grace than I was used to seeing from her as she struggled to keep her blanket in place around her.

“Are you… you are dressed under there?” I asked as I got the door open and slipped inside, holding it open for her.

“Yeah, sort of,” Steff said, sliding past me into the room. “My top’s kind of… turned into a belly shirt. I might be able to rock that look later, but… I want to do it on purpose. And I need to get a chance to get used to it all.”

“Steff, are you okay with it all? Really?” I asked.

“I’m getting there,” Steff said. “I’m as okay as I have to be, right now. It’s just…”

“What?”

“You didn’t go to bed a girl and wake up a couple of days later a woman,” Steff said. “You got to grow into puberty gradually.”

“Parts of it,” I said. “My curves, yeah, they came along so slowly and subtly that some people still haven’t noticed them. Other parts kind of… took me by surprise. Some things you do get all at once. Well, you probably won’t.”

“Yeah, um, I guess not,” Steff said. “As long as we’re talking about changes: my boobs and hips aren’t the only things that got bigger.”

“Do you want to show me?” I said. “Not that in particular,” I added quickly. “Though… I mean… I don’t have a… I’d like to see that, too, if you’re ready.”

She shook her head.

“I’m not,” she said. “Not yet.”

“Steff, you know I’m going to love you just the same no matter what, right?” I said.

“I know better than that,” she said. “You’re going to love me even more… I know you were okay with me before, Mack, but I’ve got a good idea what your type is, physically. I’m more like that now. If I’m confident in anybody’s reactions, apart from Viktor, it’s you and Amy… her because she doesn’t care and you because you like boobies. And cock.”

“Then… why?”

“Like I said, I’m not ready for anybody to see me,” Steff said. “When you see… it all, I want things to be right. I want to be used to it, ready to be touched… everything’s so new right now, it’s all very sensitive. And I want to be… framed correctly, I guess. Not wearing the blouse I could squeeze into and a hippy skirt. That’s why I was here, actually.”

“I don’t think I’ve got anything that would fit you,” I said. “Some of my jeans are kind of tight on me as it is.”

“I was actually looking for Two,” Steff said. “Her or Crazy McFoxGirl.”

“Sooni?” I said. “Why?”

“To get some stuff altered or remade to fit,” Steff said. “She could do that, right?”

“I guess so,” I said. I considered that she’d managed to fabricate a nice dress that fit me perfectly. “Yeah,” I amended. “Definitely. She’s actually pretty good with clothes. Two could possibly do it, too… she could definitely do minor alterations, but I don’t know about the kind of wholesale alterations you’d need.”

“Yeah, I figured one or the other… if they were here,” Steff said. “I shouldn’t be surprised that Two didn’t skip classes.”

“I didn’t skip, exactly,” I said. “My first lecture… he kind of let us go early, because of…”

“Yeah,” Steff said. Her eyes flicked downward.

“Steff?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Two… she said…”

“I can guess what she said,” Steff said. “I know she told the imperials. I don’t blame her, obviously.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’ve been talking about it,” she said. “With Teddi… my healer. Oh, she’s probably going to give up on me quickly when she sees what I’ve done now.”

“Steff, are you regretting it?”

“It wouldn’t matter if I did,” Steff said. “It’s not like there’s a reversal potion out there. That would probably be considered blasphemy to Dee’s people, and no other race even has the concept. I didn’t think this kind of transformation was even possible until she explained it. I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure I believed it until it started.”

“Is that why you took it?” I asked. “You weren’t trying to call a bluff or something, were you?”

“No,” Steff said, shaking her head. “No, honestly… the thought that it might have been fake, some expression of obscure subterranean humor or something helped me to take it, yeah. If I couldn’t have told myself ‘oh, it probably won’t do anything anyway‘ and ‘the effects are bound to wear off, but maybe it’ll be fun while it lasts‘ I probably would have chickened out. That doesn’t mean I believed that stuff… it was just another exciting round in Lies Steff Tells Herself.”

“If I actually know I’m lying to myself, it’s not going to make much difference,” I said.

“That’s why it’s lucky for you that you’re not all that self-aware,” Steff said. She stuck out her tongue. “I knew I was fooling myself, Mack. I knew it was going to work exactly like Dee said or else she wouldn’t have said it. Well, I didn’t know it was a dick enhancer… I figured if it did anything it would reduce it. But Dee kept telling me the potion wasn’t about femininity or womanhood, per se… things really do get more complicated down there, no pun intended.”

“I really hope that you’re happy with the results, but I still can’t believe Dee gave that to you without knowing exactly what it would do,” I said. “I mean, no harm done and all’s well that ends well, but…”

“But you’re disappointed because the one you think of as responsible gets to mess up and skate by without consequences like the rest of us do?” Steff said.

“When you put it that way…” I said.

“Mack, I know everybody’s kind of pissed at Dee… or they were before something much huger happened… but honestly, if she wanted me to I would kiss her,” Steff said. “And not just as a brief and obvious prelude to fucking her silly. Which incidentally I’ve wanted to do since I saw her… at first because it seemed really transgressive, and then because I kind of hated her, but after I got to know her a little…”

I didn’t say anything as she rambled, although how much she wanted to have sex with Dee didn’t really seem to be here or there… I was actually hoping she would get back to Leda, and the bombshell that Two had dropped, but I didn’t want to dig.

It didn’t seem like she was acting like someone who’d been raped, but I didn’t really know what that would be like. I also didn’t know how someone would act who’d woken up in a drastically altered body after being kept in a telepathically induced slumber and then found out that she’s the unofficial favorite scapegoat-in-waiting for the murder of her rapist who happened to die while she was out of it.

“…I guess I’m getting kind of far afield of the point, whatever that was,” she concluded.

“Which is?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she said.

“Do you want to talk about Leda?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said. “I bet if I talked to my oathgiver, he’d tell me that I shouldn’t. Not right now. I mean, it shouldn’t be hard for me to get rid of this bullshit charge… not a literal charge, not yet… but anyway that’s not why.”

“Have you talked about it with anyone else?”

“You mean my mental healer?” Steff said. “No. Just Two.”

“Why her?”

Steff shrugged.

“I didn’t have a deep, well-thought-out reason,” she said. “She just… seemed like the right person to talk to.”

“Because she wouldn’t tell anyone else?”

“That wasn’t why,” Steff said. “It was more… look, you’ve been through some shit. I don’t want to minimize that. But…”

“But I’ve never been raped,” I said.

“And neither has Amy, and you know very fucking well that Dee hasn’t been,” she said. “Two… I didn’t know for sure, when I went to her, that she had been. But it seemed like a safe bet. She’s been about as vulnerable as a person can be, short of full-body paralysis… and the law does nothing to protect her. It sounds gross to say it, but there was no way… well, I was right.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding.

“And the thing is, I figured, if somebody ever brought it to the law’s attention, it’d probably be called consensual,” Steff said. “Because she did what she was told, right?”

“I don’t really know the relevant law,” I said. “I’d hope it would have some kind of discretion or nuance involved. But it would be hard to convince a tribunal, I’m sure.”

“Yeah,” Steff said. She shrugged and let the blanket slip from her shoulders.

I tried not to gawk… it would have been absolutely the wrong time to check out her new body… but there it was. I could see why she was self-conscious about her presentation. The waist of her skirt really was kind of stretched thin. Her peasant blouse was all stretched out in front, and it hung down from her newly enlarged breasts like a weird tent. Her chest was… well, not nymph-huge. Bigger than mine. Bigger than Dee’s. Her human side had definitely had its say in what the potion did.

Her nipples were also erect, clearly visible beneath the fabric. Of course Steff wouldn’t have any bras that could contain her new form… the ones she’d used to give herself modest bumps before were far too small.

They weren’t the only thing that was sticking out, either.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, a little disinterestedly. “I can’t seem to get that to lie down. Dee says she’s sure that’ll settle down in time, but she doesn’t sound sure.”

“You were talking about Two?” I prompted.

“I was talking about me, really,” Steff said. She sat down on the floor, arranging the blanket around her to cover her legs and lap. “I didn’t tell anyone else because… it seemed so… I’d already gone through the whole ‘it’s not really rape’ thing before, with guys. Putting a girl in the picture…”

“Yeah, I can’t see that going over well,” I said.

“And it’s not like I didn’t want to have sex with her,” she said.

“It’s not?” I repeated, surprised… I was trying to be supportive, but it seemed like I was misunderstanding something.

“I was horny,” she said. “I’d just made an offer to Dee, who’d turned me down, and then Leda was there… I was, well, hopeful, you know?”

I nodded.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“I… I wasn’t ready,” she said. “She didn’t care. She’s… she was… stronger than she looked, especially in her legs. Well, I guess maybe her legs did look strong. She was a dancer, you know.”

“I always thought she moved like one,” I said.

“She seemed so sad,” Steff said. “The fact that I think that… that’s another reason it probably wouldn’t seem like rape to most people, but she’s probably not the first sad rapist the world has ever seen. Was probably not. Aw, fuck,” she said, and she started crying.

“Steff…” I said. The next two words were it’s okay, but it very clearly wasn’t.

“I know, I know,” she said. “I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

That seemed like such a weird thing to say… it really seemed like she had her pick of any number of reasons she could be crying. I didn’t know what to say and she didn’t seem to be in the right space for hugging… I wasn’t going to make the first move to touch her when she wasn’t fully comfortable with her new body. So, I just let her cry… it made me feel like the worst friend ever but I didn’t have anything else to do for her.

It might sound cold, but it was interesting to see her gently sobbing… it made it clear that her chest wasn’t prosthetic, wasn’t just something attached to her, but was a part of her, living and breathing and vital and real.

Gradually the crying subsided, though her chest continued to heave for a bit, jerking oddly when she had the odd hiccup. Then she was quiet and still, though not completely… her chest continued to rise and fall in a way that I couldn’t stop noticing, once I’d seen.

“You… you know what the weirdest thing is?” she asked me.

“What?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine what it would be, in particular… I couldn’t see how the whole thing wasn’t weird to her.

“Breathing,” she said.

“You didn’t do a lot of that before?” I said, though I had a pretty good idea what she was talking about.

“It wasn’t so… visually distinct,” she said. “I watched myself in the mirror for like an hour when I first woke up. I thought I was breathing really deep or really hard or something… I thought, most girls’ chests don’t do this. But then when I got out and about today I started noticing that yes, they do. I just never noticed until I saw it in myself.”

“So much for those keen elven eyes,” I said.

“Hey, my eyes aren’t permanently set to chest level,” Steff said. “Anyway, this pretty much settles it… I’m never going to be able to go back to my dad’s people, even if I wanted to.”

“Yeah, surface elves are not a big fan of curves,” I said.

“Well, yeah,” Steff said. “But also the breathing thing. I already got a little shit for that, but now that it’s so ridiculously obvious it’ll be a million times worse.”

“Seriously?” I said. “I know elves are kind of… still… but they do breathe.”

“Most do,” Steff said. “They don’t have to, though, and it’s… well, it’s considered kind of vulgar. Almost everybody does it but you don’t talk about it or draw attention to it.”

I stared at her, waiting for the punchline. I could actually kind of see the second part of it, the idea that it was vulgar and done discreetly. Elves could be fastidious and they did seem to have much more control over their bodies. But the idea that breathing was optional for them… after a few seconds passed and it seemed that Steff wasn’t pulling my leg, I wondered if somebody had been pulling hers.

“What do you mean, ‘they don’t have to’?” I asked. It seemed like a slightly better, more considered response than my first impulse, which would have been to say Steff, elves do so have to breathe.

“Just that,” Steff said. “They don’t have to. Most of them do, like I said. Especially the more modern ones, ones born in the past three millennia or so. Breathing makes them more… mortalish, I suppose. Have you ever seen one of the really old elves who’s all big and ethereal, sort of diffuse-looking?”

“Not in person,” I said. “But I know what you’re talking about. I thought it was just the results of having thousands of years to amass magical power and glamour.”

“Oh, no, that’s just what a few thousand years of refusing to participate in the basic act of mortal life does to an elven body,” Steff said. “As far as magic goes, any one who’s that sparkly is going to be strictly using faerie magic… elven arcanists are all regular deep breathers. They have to be. Regular magic doesn’t flow for immortals, or however it is that works.”

“I never knew any of this,” I said.

“Most people don’t,” Steff said. “It doesn’t come up in conversation… I mean, like I said, it’s considered dirty, and on top of that elves don’t like talking about the things that make them all freaky and alien to humans. They’d rather be seen as basically pretty pale humans who are arrogant and good at everything, not strange and powerful beings that humans tell campfire stories about. I don’t care how people see elves, but… it’s not something that’s in the front of mind most of the time. Today it’s… well, it’s right there in front of me.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I could tell you noticed,” she said. “That’s why it popped into my head.”

“So… why do elves breathe, if they don’t have to and think it’s gross?” I asked.

“It keeps them… I don’t know, grounded or centered isn’t really the word, at least not without qualification,” Steff said. “It helps keep them in the world. It makes them a little stronger, a little sturdier. More alive… you know, the thing that’s funny to me is that most self-willed undead… spontaneous revenants, ghouls, and even vampires… all wake up breathing, and they keep doing it as long as they have lungs. They don’t have to.”

“I guess I didn’t really notice the ghouls we met breathing,” I said.

“I don’t think it does anything for them. They can have holes going right through their lungs, the things can shrivel up or rot away and they keep going, but they breathe as long as they can,” Steff said. “Shop zombies don’t breathe, of course, but they don’t do anything that they’re not explicitly told to. But the things that were alive and remember what it felt like, even a little bit? They all breathe.”

“That’s interesting,” I said, and under other circumstances I would have meant it emphatically.

“…but you’re distracted by all the drama and my boobs,” Steff said.

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” I said.

She laughed, for real this time.

“I’m going to have to get used to this,” Steff said. “On the one hand, I don’t have to fight for your attention any more, but on the other hand… well, I guess maybe I do. I’m used to you looking at my face more often.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking her in her pale blue eyes. “I’m not being… appropriate.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I did this for me, first, but… it matters to me that you like me.”

“I already liked you before,” I said.

“Yeah, which is why it would suck massively if you didn’t any more,” she said. “I don’t suppose you have Sooni’s schedule mapped out in the secret journal you keep for your secret love?”

“There is no part of that question to which the answer is yes,” I said.

“Darn it,” Steff said.

“I don’t think she’s going to be around much while the investigation’s ongoing,” I said.

“She’s not a suspect, is she?” Steff asked. “Well… orcshit insane, poor impulse control… and then there’s the whole fox-versus-fowl thing…”

“I don’t think she’s under any real scrutiny,” I said. “But her dad’s some kind of big shot, if she has any actual understanding of his social standing and was telling the truth…. given that she can afford to travel to the far side of the globe with three paid companions, I’d say she may not be completely delusional there. She was surrounded by handlers when we got back yesterday, and then they all kind of disappeared.”

“Maybe she got sent home.”

“I really hope not,” I said. “I mean, for the others’ sake… and yours.”

“I’ll pay her a fair price if she can fix my wardrobe,” Steff said. “But if her bushy butt gets deported five minutes after she finishes, I am not going to shed a single tear. I know you’ve got a gigantic earth-shaking clit boner for her…”

“I do not… that,” I said, my face flushing.

“Oh, there’s the Mack I know,” Steff said. “I was starting to think you’d changed, too.”

“I’m trying to be understanding,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s kind of disconcerting,” she said. “Eerie, even.”

“It’s not like I’ve never tried before,” I said.

“No, but you usually end up saying a lot more stupid shit,” she said. “And blushing more… I think I’d miss it if you ever stopped that for good.”

The compliment for such an unexpected thing just made me blush again… or rather more, since this whole line of conversation was making me self-conscious.

“Damn,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“I really wish I was in the mood for sex,” she said. “Because you have pure sexy leaking out your cheeks.”

“‘Leaking’, now there’s a sexy verb,” I said.

Steff yawned.

“Would it… would it be okay if I got into your bed?” she said. “Apparently the fact that I was unconscious for most of the weekend doesn’t actually mean I’m well-rested.”

“Sure, go ahead,” I said. “Would you like me to leave you alone so you can rest?”

“I don’t think I want to be alone,” she said. “Especially not if the alternative is being with you.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ve got some history stuff I could be doing…”

“I mean I don’t want to be alone in bed,” Steff said.

“Oh,” I said. “I… that’s okay, too.”

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