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Look, How Was I Supposed to Know It Was a Euphemism? [Magnus Chase]
Title: Look, How Was I Supposed to Know It Was a Euphemism?
Fandom: Magnus Chase
Characters/Ship: Magnus Chase / Alex Fierro, Magnus & Blitzen & Hearth, Magnus & Sam & Alex, Background Blitzen/Hearth, Background Sam/Amir
Word count: Chapter 1 / ?, ~2.5k words
Summary: AU. There are still gods and demigods, but in the absence of the threat of Ragnarok, everyone's living a chill human life in Midgard. The chill human life of Magnus involves being a kindergarten teacher by day and an exhausted healer for his more heroic friends by night. And then, he meets Alex.
I love camping.
The serious kind of camping.
I mean, yeah, I like setting up a tent in my uncle's background and making s'mores over an illegal campfire, sure, but when I say "camping," I don't mean that weekend trip into a well-manicured campground with public toilets and showers, lounging on a lawn chair next to a luxury RV. That can be fun, too, don't get me wrong, but when I think of camping, it's just me and my survival kit, the only human around for miles and miles, acres and acres. That's the kind of camping I love.
My cousin Blitzen, he says it's because after spending all day every day surrounded by tiny balls of chaos, I need to escape from all signs of humanity, and… well, he's not completely wrong. Don't get me wrong, I love my job—teaching kids is really rewarding, and I know it sounds as though I'm mouthing along with the company byline at gunpoint, but it really is. And no, I know you’re thinking it, so I’m just going to stop you there—it isn’t because I’m basically a grown-up kid myself. There's just something about seeing their joy in discovery that makes me feel it, too. So yeah, I love my job, but I also need breaks from it, and an important part of those breaks are my camping trips.
But I'm pretty sure that I'd need to go camping even without that. I just… I need time to be.
Today, I'm being in the middle of a vast, uncharted forest—technically, it belongs to someone, but I can tell that no one's been out this far in years, if not longer—enjoying the unseasonably warm spring day. It's just me, my sleeping bag, my backpack, and the hissing of the unidentified creature that's about to eat me.
…So when I said "enjoying," I really meant "existing in a state of unprecedented terror." Sue me.
I'm currently crouched on a middle branch of a tree, clutching my sleeping bag, because when I hightailed it up the tree, I grabbed the nearest thing to take up with me, and I only realized it was the sleeping bag and not my backpack when I got up here. So here I am, and down there below me, that's where my tools are. You know, where the threatening hissing is coming from.
I take another nervous peek down, trying to get a better look at my mortal enemy. I can't see much, really. The sun is at the wrong angle to shine through the canopy, so everything's dim and tree-coloured.
Though, that does give me an idea. You can't see anything because it's too dark? No problem! That is one of the few problems that my limited magical abilities can solve! I can heal—okay, yeah, that's pretty cool, if I do say so myself—and I can glow.
I close my eyes and focus on the sunlight that I know is shining out of sight, and I let it fill me and leak out.
I hear a yowl as I open my eyes again, and I see a tail disappearing into the brush at the other side of my makeshift campground clearing.
"Oh, sorry," I say, letting my glow dim again. "I didn't mean to scare you." Then I blink. "Wait, yes I did! I definitely meant to scare you away so that you won't eat me! Ha! Take that!"
The victory feels empty, though. I don't know how far away the creature ran, so maybe it's still not safe to come down. And I really hadn't meant to scare it. I feel kind of bad now. What if it's so scared that it doesn't look where it's going, and it gets hurt?
What if it's cold? What if it didn't want to eat me at all, and it just wanted to make friends?
"Are you for real?"
I jump, and I nearly fall out of my tree. When I've got my balance back, I look down cautiously.
There's a girl under my tree. She's very colorful, to the point that it's kind of shocking that I didn't notice her earlier. Her hair is a deep green, and it provides a sharp contrast to the brown of her skin and eyes, and the pink of her cheeks and lips. And that’s not even taking into account the neon green and pink argyle sweater dress she was wearing, with matching bright accessories.
I grip my sleeping bag more tightly. This girl is gorgeous, and in my experience of past embarrassing crushes, people I’m attracted to are always very dangerous to me personally—or at least, their Valkyrie fiancees are.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m Magnus. Nice to meet you.”
Yes, my social skills are en par with my 3 and half foot tall students. Yes, I still answer the phone with, “Hello, this is Magnus speaking. May I have your name?”
The girl raises her exquisitely shaped green eyebrows at me. “Magnus. Magnus Chase?” she asks.
Oh no. Oh no. Is this girl looking for me? Am I on a list?
When I don’t answer right away, the girl says, “I’m Alex Fierro, pronouns she/her. Samirah’s cousin.”
“Oh.” I relax completely and smile at her brightly, embarrassed. I don’t remember Sam mentioning that her cousin Alex is stunningly beautiful, but to be fair, she probably either didn’t notice or didn’t think it was relevant. “Great!” I come down from the tree clumsily and dump my sleeping bag on the forest floor next to my abandoned backpack. “What brings you all the way out here, Alex?”
Alex Fierro is staring at me. Not in the same nervously admiring way that I’m probably staring at her, obviously. Coming from Alex Fierro, the staring is much more on the end of “Who is this doofus and why is he breathing my air?” I’m used to that kind of staring, so I don’t pay it much mind. “I came here to camp,” she says finally.
“Cool, me too!”
“I came here to camp alone,” she clarifies meaningfully.
“Same!”
We continue staring at each other. I admit, at this point, I’m mostly messing with Alex by playing this oblivious, but I’m also not 100% sure what’s supposed to happen now, so I just keep grinning at Alex, assuming that she’ll issue some kind of commands or something.
We might have stayed there at our scowl-grin stand-off for who knows how long, but some rustling in the bushes surrounding the clearing makes me flinch. Alex snorts when a tiny little chipmunk scurries between us and disappears under a tree root. “How are you supposed to be camping on your own when you’re afraid of chipmunks?” asks Alex.
“Chipmunks are fierce predators,” I advise her sagely.
“Of what, acorns?”
“Sure,” I shrug. “Probably. Anyway, I’ve been camping on my own for years, and I’ve been fine so far.”
Alex Fierro’s expression is offensively doubtful. “Whatever. Anyway, as we’re both camping alone, I’ll see you never, loser.”
“Yeah, fine.” I smile at her, waiting for her to disappear into the woods like a neon forest elf.
She doesn’t move. “That was my nice way of saying, ‘scram,’” she hints.
I feel my grin start to fade. “This is my clearing. I was here first. You’re going to need to go have your alone time somewhere else.”
I tend to be pretty easy-going about most things, so people are always surprised at how territorial I can be. In this case, though, I’m feeling a little surprised myself at the defensiveness and indignation rising in me. There’s nothing special about this clearing. There are probably similar clearings all around that weren’t contested territory with scary green-haired girls. But somehow, for some reason, I suddenly felt very strongly that this clearing was mine, and that no other area in the world would be the same.
Alex Fierro’s eyes narrow. “Here first, were you? Tell you what, beanboy, I’ll fight you for it. What do you say?”
“Uh, no way?” First of all, I am not a violent guy. Secondly, I’m pretty sure Alex Fierro could kick my ass so hard I’d fly through the nine worlds and land on my face right back where I started. So, no thanks. “What’s there to fight over, anyway? Pretty sure I saw a sweet little glen or something closer to the river. I’m sure you’d be much happier there.”
“Alright,” says Alex Fierro, but not in a tone that sounds at all conciliatory. Sure enough, she continues with, “Why don’t we flip a coin? Loser takes the sweet little glen, and the winner sets up shop here?”
“I’ve already set up shop here,” I argue, but I’m nodding despite that. My backpack and sleeping bag aren’t exactly hard to move around—that’s the whole point—and I don’t want to spend my whole relaxing weekend arguing with and perhaps getting beaten up by Sam’s scary cousin.
Alex produces a coin, and I make a point of checking to confirm that it’s a totally normal coin while Alex rolls her eyes at me. Alex flips the coin, and as I call “Heads!” I’m already picking up my stuff in anticipation of defeat, because my luck just doesn’t work like that, except that the coin doesn’t land tails up. It doesn’t land heads up, either. Somehow, the coin is balanced perfectly on its edge in the dirt.
Alex and I stare at it.
Finally, Alex says, “You take the tree, I’ll take the ground, and we won’t speak or interact at all.”
I agree, because I’m frankly a little freaked out. It’s not that weird and improbable things don’t happen around me all the time, but I’ve found that they tend to be harbingers of something more, as though to mark the shift of fate. When I’ve reached some kind of crossroads, where a single decision I make could change my life, random events will start popping up around me, things that should only occur 1 in a million times all start happening all at once. It happened when my mom almost died when I was a teenager, and it happened when I met my cousin Blitzen and his partner Hearth for the first time, and it happened when I met Sam, and it happened when I tripped over a dip in the sidewalk on my university campus and saw a flier for the Early Childhood Education major.
It happened when I met my dad.
I climb up the tree, this time with both my sleeping bag and my backpack, and I find a spot well-supported by a network of branches that’s high enough that I can feel the sunlight filtering down onto me, but not so high that the branches have started to thin out or anything. I climb into my sleeping bag, I pull out a water bottle, and I rest my head against my backpack, and everything feels… Good.
I climb down a few times to use the uh, facilities and to filter more water from the river, but other than that, I keep to the tree for the rest of my long-weekend stay in Chez Forest. I had intended to hike around a little more, but now that I’ve faced a land dispute, I’m not ready to rescind my claim. I’m also still waiting for the other shoe to drop—like I’m supposed to face some sort of heavenly tribulation, I guess? There’s always been something before, in the aftermath of those weird moments when the random becomes uncommonly common, and I don’t want to leave Alex Fierro to face whatever happens alone.
But no massive wolvish beast bursts from the undergrowth. No columns of smoke and fire rise around us. There are no giants, no sea serpents, and no mysterious quest items.
I roll over and peer down at Alex Fierro. She’s brought out a sketchbook, and she’s drawing something. Not people. Trees, it looks like.
I expected that having her here would make me feel even more on edge, but instead, it’s very peaceful. I’ve always disliked having other people around when I’m doing one of my serious camping retreats. I mean, being alone is the whole point. But somehow, this is still nice.
On Sunday morning, I sigh and climb down the tree, bringing my sleeping bag and backpack down with me. Alex Fierro is packing up, too, though in a much less haphazard way than I did. I give a nod, and then I blink, frowning. Something about Alex is different this morning. We’re both still wearing our same old clothes, which have gotten a little grimey and ripe over the past two days, though Alex somehow still looks more on the side of grungy camper chic, while I just look like a grungy camper. Alex should just look more disheveled, but instead—I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but—
“Hey,” I say, breaking the silence for the first time since Friday afternoon. My throat is a little scratchy. “You’re still… you, right?”
Alex Fierro’s head emerges from the weirdly tidy backpack. “Yes,” said Alex, scowling at me. “I’m Alex Fierro, pronouns he/him.”
Oh. Now that I’m thinking about it, Alex Fierro’s voice sounds a little deeper, too, though it’s definitely coming from the same person. “Cool,” I say, relaxing. When your life looks like mine does, you never know when your colleagues will suddenly disappear, only to be replaced by evil lookalikes. Don’t believe me? I’m telling you, it happens all the time when Loki is the god who takes an interest in you.
I go back to hooking my backpack up to my sleeping bag and swing them both on. Alex finishes at the same time, and without discussing it, we walk together.
Hiking with other people during my alone weekends? Yeah, that’s another thing I don’t usually like. But walking together with Alex Fierro feels a lot like camping together with Alex Fierro. We’re both there, going in the same direction at the same speed, but somehow it still feels like we’re alone together rather than together together. At least, that’s how it feels to me. I sneak a glance over, but Alex Fierro’s expression is completely impenetrable to me. Well, he hasn’t complained or gone off a different way or anything, so I guess he must not mind?
When we reach the edge of the woods where I’d illegally parked my car, I break the silence. “Do you want a ride to wherever you parked?”
Alex Fierro shrugs. “I walked here from the greyhound rest stop,” he says.
That’s… a long way away. But also, “You live in Boston, right? I can drive you back to the city?”
Alex looks at me for a long moment. “Sure.”
Those are the last words we exchange. Alex Fierro takes my phone to enter an address into Google Maps, and then it’s just peaceful silence with an occasional interruption from a mechanical voice.
When I pull up outside of the apartment building where I guess Alex lives, he climbs out without a word, nods at me, and gives me a small smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen Alex smile, and my stomach twists sharply in response. The sun is glowing against his skin, highlighting all sorts of details I didn’t notice before—the dark roots in his green hair, the almost-invisible freckles dotting his cheeks, the fact that one of his eyes is darker than the other. He looks almost too beautiful in that moment to be real.
Then, he’s pushing away from my car and skipping up the stairs to the apartment building, and in a moment, he’s disappeared from sight.
I lean my forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, trying not to think about the fact that Alex Fierro is just as beautiful as a he as he was as a she. It’s not that it’s that shocking, really. A lot of my embarrassing crushes over the years have been on guys. It’s fine, no big deal. There’s definitely nothing different about my stupid and pointless attraction to Alex Fierro.
Fandom: Magnus Chase
Characters/Ship: Magnus Chase / Alex Fierro, Magnus & Blitzen & Hearth, Magnus & Sam & Alex, Background Blitzen/Hearth, Background Sam/Amir
Word count: Chapter 1 / ?, ~2.5k words
Summary: AU. There are still gods and demigods, but in the absence of the threat of Ragnarok, everyone's living a chill human life in Midgard. The chill human life of Magnus involves being a kindergarten teacher by day and an exhausted healer for his more heroic friends by night. And then, he meets Alex.
I love camping.
The serious kind of camping.
I mean, yeah, I like setting up a tent in my uncle's background and making s'mores over an illegal campfire, sure, but when I say "camping," I don't mean that weekend trip into a well-manicured campground with public toilets and showers, lounging on a lawn chair next to a luxury RV. That can be fun, too, don't get me wrong, but when I think of camping, it's just me and my survival kit, the only human around for miles and miles, acres and acres. That's the kind of camping I love.
My cousin Blitzen, he says it's because after spending all day every day surrounded by tiny balls of chaos, I need to escape from all signs of humanity, and… well, he's not completely wrong. Don't get me wrong, I love my job—teaching kids is really rewarding, and I know it sounds as though I'm mouthing along with the company byline at gunpoint, but it really is. And no, I know you’re thinking it, so I’m just going to stop you there—it isn’t because I’m basically a grown-up kid myself. There's just something about seeing their joy in discovery that makes me feel it, too. So yeah, I love my job, but I also need breaks from it, and an important part of those breaks are my camping trips.
But I'm pretty sure that I'd need to go camping even without that. I just… I need time to be.
Today, I'm being in the middle of a vast, uncharted forest—technically, it belongs to someone, but I can tell that no one's been out this far in years, if not longer—enjoying the unseasonably warm spring day. It's just me, my sleeping bag, my backpack, and the hissing of the unidentified creature that's about to eat me.
…So when I said "enjoying," I really meant "existing in a state of unprecedented terror." Sue me.
I'm currently crouched on a middle branch of a tree, clutching my sleeping bag, because when I hightailed it up the tree, I grabbed the nearest thing to take up with me, and I only realized it was the sleeping bag and not my backpack when I got up here. So here I am, and down there below me, that's where my tools are. You know, where the threatening hissing is coming from.
I take another nervous peek down, trying to get a better look at my mortal enemy. I can't see much, really. The sun is at the wrong angle to shine through the canopy, so everything's dim and tree-coloured.
Though, that does give me an idea. You can't see anything because it's too dark? No problem! That is one of the few problems that my limited magical abilities can solve! I can heal—okay, yeah, that's pretty cool, if I do say so myself—and I can glow.
I close my eyes and focus on the sunlight that I know is shining out of sight, and I let it fill me and leak out.
I hear a yowl as I open my eyes again, and I see a tail disappearing into the brush at the other side of my makeshift campground clearing.
"Oh, sorry," I say, letting my glow dim again. "I didn't mean to scare you." Then I blink. "Wait, yes I did! I definitely meant to scare you away so that you won't eat me! Ha! Take that!"
The victory feels empty, though. I don't know how far away the creature ran, so maybe it's still not safe to come down. And I really hadn't meant to scare it. I feel kind of bad now. What if it's so scared that it doesn't look where it's going, and it gets hurt?
What if it's cold? What if it didn't want to eat me at all, and it just wanted to make friends?
"Are you for real?"
I jump, and I nearly fall out of my tree. When I've got my balance back, I look down cautiously.
There's a girl under my tree. She's very colorful, to the point that it's kind of shocking that I didn't notice her earlier. Her hair is a deep green, and it provides a sharp contrast to the brown of her skin and eyes, and the pink of her cheeks and lips. And that’s not even taking into account the neon green and pink argyle sweater dress she was wearing, with matching bright accessories.
I grip my sleeping bag more tightly. This girl is gorgeous, and in my experience of past embarrassing crushes, people I’m attracted to are always very dangerous to me personally—or at least, their Valkyrie fiancees are.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m Magnus. Nice to meet you.”
Yes, my social skills are en par with my 3 and half foot tall students. Yes, I still answer the phone with, “Hello, this is Magnus speaking. May I have your name?”
The girl raises her exquisitely shaped green eyebrows at me. “Magnus. Magnus Chase?” she asks.
Oh no. Oh no. Is this girl looking for me? Am I on a list?
When I don’t answer right away, the girl says, “I’m Alex Fierro, pronouns she/her. Samirah’s cousin.”
“Oh.” I relax completely and smile at her brightly, embarrassed. I don’t remember Sam mentioning that her cousin Alex is stunningly beautiful, but to be fair, she probably either didn’t notice or didn’t think it was relevant. “Great!” I come down from the tree clumsily and dump my sleeping bag on the forest floor next to my abandoned backpack. “What brings you all the way out here, Alex?”
Alex Fierro is staring at me. Not in the same nervously admiring way that I’m probably staring at her, obviously. Coming from Alex Fierro, the staring is much more on the end of “Who is this doofus and why is he breathing my air?” I’m used to that kind of staring, so I don’t pay it much mind. “I came here to camp,” she says finally.
“Cool, me too!”
“I came here to camp alone,” she clarifies meaningfully.
“Same!”
We continue staring at each other. I admit, at this point, I’m mostly messing with Alex by playing this oblivious, but I’m also not 100% sure what’s supposed to happen now, so I just keep grinning at Alex, assuming that she’ll issue some kind of commands or something.
We might have stayed there at our scowl-grin stand-off for who knows how long, but some rustling in the bushes surrounding the clearing makes me flinch. Alex snorts when a tiny little chipmunk scurries between us and disappears under a tree root. “How are you supposed to be camping on your own when you’re afraid of chipmunks?” asks Alex.
“Chipmunks are fierce predators,” I advise her sagely.
“Of what, acorns?”
“Sure,” I shrug. “Probably. Anyway, I’ve been camping on my own for years, and I’ve been fine so far.”
Alex Fierro’s expression is offensively doubtful. “Whatever. Anyway, as we’re both camping alone, I’ll see you never, loser.”
“Yeah, fine.” I smile at her, waiting for her to disappear into the woods like a neon forest elf.
She doesn’t move. “That was my nice way of saying, ‘scram,’” she hints.
I feel my grin start to fade. “This is my clearing. I was here first. You’re going to need to go have your alone time somewhere else.”
I tend to be pretty easy-going about most things, so people are always surprised at how territorial I can be. In this case, though, I’m feeling a little surprised myself at the defensiveness and indignation rising in me. There’s nothing special about this clearing. There are probably similar clearings all around that weren’t contested territory with scary green-haired girls. But somehow, for some reason, I suddenly felt very strongly that this clearing was mine, and that no other area in the world would be the same.
Alex Fierro’s eyes narrow. “Here first, were you? Tell you what, beanboy, I’ll fight you for it. What do you say?”
“Uh, no way?” First of all, I am not a violent guy. Secondly, I’m pretty sure Alex Fierro could kick my ass so hard I’d fly through the nine worlds and land on my face right back where I started. So, no thanks. “What’s there to fight over, anyway? Pretty sure I saw a sweet little glen or something closer to the river. I’m sure you’d be much happier there.”
“Alright,” says Alex Fierro, but not in a tone that sounds at all conciliatory. Sure enough, she continues with, “Why don’t we flip a coin? Loser takes the sweet little glen, and the winner sets up shop here?”
“I’ve already set up shop here,” I argue, but I’m nodding despite that. My backpack and sleeping bag aren’t exactly hard to move around—that’s the whole point—and I don’t want to spend my whole relaxing weekend arguing with and perhaps getting beaten up by Sam’s scary cousin.
Alex produces a coin, and I make a point of checking to confirm that it’s a totally normal coin while Alex rolls her eyes at me. Alex flips the coin, and as I call “Heads!” I’m already picking up my stuff in anticipation of defeat, because my luck just doesn’t work like that, except that the coin doesn’t land tails up. It doesn’t land heads up, either. Somehow, the coin is balanced perfectly on its edge in the dirt.
Alex and I stare at it.
Finally, Alex says, “You take the tree, I’ll take the ground, and we won’t speak or interact at all.”
I agree, because I’m frankly a little freaked out. It’s not that weird and improbable things don’t happen around me all the time, but I’ve found that they tend to be harbingers of something more, as though to mark the shift of fate. When I’ve reached some kind of crossroads, where a single decision I make could change my life, random events will start popping up around me, things that should only occur 1 in a million times all start happening all at once. It happened when my mom almost died when I was a teenager, and it happened when I met my cousin Blitzen and his partner Hearth for the first time, and it happened when I met Sam, and it happened when I tripped over a dip in the sidewalk on my university campus and saw a flier for the Early Childhood Education major.
It happened when I met my dad.
I climb up the tree, this time with both my sleeping bag and my backpack, and I find a spot well-supported by a network of branches that’s high enough that I can feel the sunlight filtering down onto me, but not so high that the branches have started to thin out or anything. I climb into my sleeping bag, I pull out a water bottle, and I rest my head against my backpack, and everything feels… Good.
I climb down a few times to use the uh, facilities and to filter more water from the river, but other than that, I keep to the tree for the rest of my long-weekend stay in Chez Forest. I had intended to hike around a little more, but now that I’ve faced a land dispute, I’m not ready to rescind my claim. I’m also still waiting for the other shoe to drop—like I’m supposed to face some sort of heavenly tribulation, I guess? There’s always been something before, in the aftermath of those weird moments when the random becomes uncommonly common, and I don’t want to leave Alex Fierro to face whatever happens alone.
But no massive wolvish beast bursts from the undergrowth. No columns of smoke and fire rise around us. There are no giants, no sea serpents, and no mysterious quest items.
I roll over and peer down at Alex Fierro. She’s brought out a sketchbook, and she’s drawing something. Not people. Trees, it looks like.
I expected that having her here would make me feel even more on edge, but instead, it’s very peaceful. I’ve always disliked having other people around when I’m doing one of my serious camping retreats. I mean, being alone is the whole point. But somehow, this is still nice.
On Sunday morning, I sigh and climb down the tree, bringing my sleeping bag and backpack down with me. Alex Fierro is packing up, too, though in a much less haphazard way than I did. I give a nod, and then I blink, frowning. Something about Alex is different this morning. We’re both still wearing our same old clothes, which have gotten a little grimey and ripe over the past two days, though Alex somehow still looks more on the side of grungy camper chic, while I just look like a grungy camper. Alex should just look more disheveled, but instead—I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but—
“Hey,” I say, breaking the silence for the first time since Friday afternoon. My throat is a little scratchy. “You’re still… you, right?”
Alex Fierro’s head emerges from the weirdly tidy backpack. “Yes,” said Alex, scowling at me. “I’m Alex Fierro, pronouns he/him.”
Oh. Now that I’m thinking about it, Alex Fierro’s voice sounds a little deeper, too, though it’s definitely coming from the same person. “Cool,” I say, relaxing. When your life looks like mine does, you never know when your colleagues will suddenly disappear, only to be replaced by evil lookalikes. Don’t believe me? I’m telling you, it happens all the time when Loki is the god who takes an interest in you.
I go back to hooking my backpack up to my sleeping bag and swing them both on. Alex finishes at the same time, and without discussing it, we walk together.
Hiking with other people during my alone weekends? Yeah, that’s another thing I don’t usually like. But walking together with Alex Fierro feels a lot like camping together with Alex Fierro. We’re both there, going in the same direction at the same speed, but somehow it still feels like we’re alone together rather than together together. At least, that’s how it feels to me. I sneak a glance over, but Alex Fierro’s expression is completely impenetrable to me. Well, he hasn’t complained or gone off a different way or anything, so I guess he must not mind?
When we reach the edge of the woods where I’d illegally parked my car, I break the silence. “Do you want a ride to wherever you parked?”
Alex Fierro shrugs. “I walked here from the greyhound rest stop,” he says.
That’s… a long way away. But also, “You live in Boston, right? I can drive you back to the city?”
Alex looks at me for a long moment. “Sure.”
Those are the last words we exchange. Alex Fierro takes my phone to enter an address into Google Maps, and then it’s just peaceful silence with an occasional interruption from a mechanical voice.
When I pull up outside of the apartment building where I guess Alex lives, he climbs out without a word, nods at me, and gives me a small smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen Alex smile, and my stomach twists sharply in response. The sun is glowing against his skin, highlighting all sorts of details I didn’t notice before—the dark roots in his green hair, the almost-invisible freckles dotting his cheeks, the fact that one of his eyes is darker than the other. He looks almost too beautiful in that moment to be real.
Then, he’s pushing away from my car and skipping up the stairs to the apartment building, and in a moment, he’s disappeared from sight.
I lean my forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, trying not to think about the fact that Alex Fierro is just as beautiful as a he as he was as a she. It’s not that it’s that shocking, really. A lot of my embarrassing crushes over the years have been on guys. It’s fine, no big deal. There’s definitely nothing different about my stupid and pointless attraction to Alex Fierro.