“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. I opened my mouth again to say more, to say that I mainly just thought my body wasn’t all that attractive, but then I closed it again. Because maybe dysphoria did play a small part. Maybe it always had and I just didn’t know. Which felt...I don’t know. Embarrassing. But maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe it was okay. “I don’t know,” I repeated.

She nodded. Brought her hands and her eyes back up to my face. Her hair knots were ever so slightly akimbo now, her cheeks flushed, eyes soft.

“Well. I think you’re gorgeous, Sam Bell,” she whispered, and something inside me felt like it cracked. A touch of pain, but more openness left in its wake.

“I’m ready,” she said after a steady minute of me staring at her, once again not knowing what to say. “God, Sam.” She touched my hair. “I am so ready for you to fuck me.”

And so I did. It was like I was barely conscious for the putting on of the condom, for the rearranging of limbs, but when I slid into her, still so slick and tight and present, I was aware of everything. How incredible it felt. The way Lily’s mouth dropped open, the way her eyes almost closed but didn’t, keeping a hazy watch on me the whole time as I thrust into her, how it made me feel like a god. Or a goddess. Or some ephemeral genderless being full of heat and light. How the thickness of her thighs caged around me made me feel so fucking safe and close to her. How our skin felt, sliding against each other, the softness and friction of it.

“Sam,” she said, when I could feel she was close, when I was starting to lose my own grip on things, “Talk to me.”

The words fell out of me, nonsensical and ridiculous, and I realized as my own orgasm started to claw its ways into my toes that I wasn’t even sure who I was talking to, her or me or both of us at once, that we were both beautiful and hot and good, and the cry she made when she came, her eyes finally squeezing shut, was the best sound I had ever fucking heard. It sent me tumbling over the edge seconds later. It felt endless, this tight spiral of bliss, like our bodies were infinity, like we were born to feel only this.

But of course, we weren’t infinity; we were mortal little aliens, and I collapsed onto my elbows as I came down, breathing heavily into Lily’s collarbone.

“Fuck,” I said.