“Crito? You fucking bet I am.”
“I mean—the other man.”
We locked eyes.
“When I’m done with him,” I said, “there won’t be anything left worth calling a man.”
———
Tamsin and I stood in a gold disc of streetlight at the bus stop, our breath knitting the air into gossamer scarves. Snow fell slowly, heathering our wool coats, and when Tam threw her head back and exhaled, her teeth shone as brightly as the tumbling sky. We were breathless because we’d ditched the cab a block away and run to the stop. Down the street through the haze of powder, the bus headlights burned hot.
“This is it,” I said. “No screwing it up this time.”
Tam raised an eyebrow, those violet lips curved. Snow sugared the lower one and I imagined licking it.
“I promise I won’t pull a gun on you,” she said.
“Likewise.”
“Or knee you in the cock.”
“I’d very much appreciate not reliving that.”
“You know,” she said, “you still owe me a rematch.”
The bus huffed up, shedding steam like an animal laboring in the cold. We waved our wallets at the fare machine and fell in a heap of legs and arms on a side-facing bench. Tamsin laid her head in the crook of my shoulder.
“Got an eye on him?” I said.
“Yeah.” Her knee linked with mine. “Nuzzle into me.”
My heart broke into fluttering pieces, like the stuff sloughing off the windows. I pressed my face into her hair. Warm almond. Her scent drugged me, and despite the consummate fucked-upness of everything, I wanted her. T works no matter how fucked-up you are, how frightened, anxious, unsure. The wildest thing is how a body continues to function no matter how battered its mind. I imagined my mouth on hers again, our limbs tangling. That smooth belly pressing against the hard rack of my abs. It took every iota of restraint to not go too far. Instead I watched snow melt into liquid glass in her hair, and wondered if I could let her touch me the way I wanted to touch her.
“He’s moving.” Her eyes flashed like flicked pennies. She pecked my cheek, hopped out at the next stop with our target. I waited one more, pulled my hood up, and followed.
Snow fell in its haunting way, a million silent impacts per second. Crito was a shadow drifting through the quiet downfall. We tailed him at a distance. He walked head down, unaware. Something I could never do. Tam either. Owning a female body in this world, even temporarily, changed you. You could never go back to that male ease, that ignorance. A female body was a raw nerve. It reacted to everything—it had to, if it wanted to survive.
Crito trotted up the brick steps of a bungalow. Windows glowed creamy gold in the snow-bright darkness.
In the alley behind the house, Tam brushed her gloved hand against my stubble, dusting off frost. She leaned up to breathe into my ear, “You look like an old man.”
It made me shiver. That breath traced my skin as if it were a fingertip.
Cressida, the girl who betrayed Troilus, her lover.
We watched the silhouette move against lit glass.
Our plan: second-floor breach. Tam made a stirrup with her hands and boosted me to the roof. I hauled her up, her body nimble, light. We wedged the window open. The attic bedroom was dark.
Below us he moved, oblivious. I counted footsteps, the creak of things opening and closing.
He’s alone, I mouthed.
My knife blended seamlessly into the darkness. We padded downstairs, two menacing bodies clad all in black. Shadows come to life.
Crito stood peering at the backyard.
At our footsteps in the snow.
I was on him in a heartbeat, my arm snaking around his neck. Hard flex, blade to throat.
“Don’t speak,” I said.
Tamsin switched the lights off.
I sat him on a chair, the knife skimming his Adam’s apple. His eyes were glassy in that way most men’s are, filmed with dull light. You saw it in trans men’s timelines. Ingrid saw it in mine. In the before pics my eyes held something tremulous and soft, a watery uncertainty. In the after pics they were hooded, hard, that animal glaze of confidence. Or uncaring.
It’s not the T, I’d said. It’s what I’ve been through.
You’ve been through T, she said.
“Stay quiet.” I took the knife away.
Tamsin began strapping him to the chair with duct tape.
“You,” Crito said, breathing fast. “You’re the ones who—”
My elbow smashed into the center of his face. Something crackled, wetly.
“Told you to stay quiet,” I said.
When Tam finished with the tape she pulled a hood over his head. He screamed through it, muffled.
“Shut up,” I said calmly, “or I’ll gag you.”
Ragged, heavy breaths.
“Relax, Jay. Don’t hyperventilate.”
His body stilled.