A Bet to Lose

[Jacqueline]

Richard woke up from a pleasant smear of dreams with the light gently illuminating his room. Practically all his worries, most of which originated from his mother, had been consigned to the realm of never-would. He didn't have to worry about hiding his sissy side from his mother anymore, as she never would try to hurt him for it. He didn't have to worry about his mother doing something extraordinarily regrettable to Zoe anymore; she never would. Horrific things might be happening to other kids around the world for insane and stupid reasons, but nothing of that kind would ever happen to him, and he was thirteen years old and his sphere of real caring was mostly limited to himself and his friends, all of whom, he was sure, were protected by the same never-would shielding that he was. (He abruptly realized that he didn't know too much about Caroline's living situation, but the girl was astute and seventeen years old, worked in her father's shop, and had veterans for co-workers. There were plausible ways that she could get hurt, but the odds were low and she didn't have anything hanging over her head, except maybe car parts.)

No, his greatest worry was what would happen in their next CAH game. Leslie had won, as predicted, simply because she had a better handle on her friends' senses of humor than he did, and it had been an enormous laugh riot when both Leslie and Richard had played similarly transgressive responses to 'What gives me uncontrollable gas?'

Well, okay, he had one real worry: Susie's father. But Susie had given Richard a clear command to follow her lead in that respect, which was quite a bit better than not knowing what to do. He hoped she wouldn't inadvertently tell him to do the wrong thing, but she was the expert on this and he was not.

He showered, brushed, braided his hair into pigtails, and put on a simple, light yellow dress with a bit of lace around the collar and sleeves, and he happily went barefoot to have breakfast (real waffles!) with his mother and sister, neither of whom were in a good a mood as he was.

"It's nothing, Mom," he overheard Zoe say.

Heather sighed a bit. "Zoe, please don't go back on our deal by lying to me. It certainly isn't nothing. If you don't want to tell me, then just say so."

"Fine, I'll tell you. You don't understand me and you really don't understand Ricky," she said, gesturing to the boy who had just happily hopped down the stairs wearing his pretty yellow dress. "I don't understand you either, you're my mom and I have no idea what you're thinking. The only thing I'm sure of is that we only have this deal because something worse would happen if we didn't."

"That's why I'd like to spend more time with you," Heather replied, trying not to get angry at the spite in her daughter's voice and suspecting that hormones were involved. "Because I want to understand you, and I hope you can understand me, too." Zoe looked nonplussed. "I'm taking a half day today and I'll be back before 1. We'll have plenty of time. I'd also like to spend some time with you tomorrow as well." Zoe still looked apprehensive, and Heather sighed. "Zoe, is there anything I can do to heal this rift between us?" She'd already apologized for the big one.

"Would you get mad if we moved that vanity to Ricky's room?" Zoe asked. "I never use it."

"I suppose not," Heather said, a bit defeated.

"Then let's just start with that," Zoe replied, trying to make herself calm down. Her mother had already gotten some things and was on her way to getting the rest of them. "He's the one who actually wants to be pretty." Richard, smiling in tacit admission, gave his mother and sister a little curtsy.

"Well, he's doing a good job," Heather said, taking a closer look at his braided pigtails. She hadn't done that yesterday and was curious. "Zoe, did you teach him how to braid his hair?"

"Yup, that was me," Zoe said. It was the first time she'd smiled all morning.

Heather, on seeing that smile, let herself relax. They weren't normal teenagers, but they were still teenagers, and she could seize neither her daughter's true forgiveness nor her trust. "All right, then. I really should get in early because there's things I need to make sure are done before I leave early today. Just keep doing the chores and taking care of yourselves. I'll see you soon."

"Bye, Mom," Zoe said, trying to actually give her mother the connection she wanted. It was better than the alternative. There would be no third chances, though.

"Bye, Mom!" Richard added, waving.

Zoe sighed as her mother left. "I know, I know, not a monster, just stupid." Zoe finished her food and waited until her little brother had finished his. "It's that thing you said yesterday," she admitted. "That whole 'Oh, if I do this shit to her, she'll be a better person for it.'" She refrained from calling her mother a bitch.

"I don't think she believes that anymore," Richard replied. He could have explained further, about the sorts of people who were, for various reasons, fervently dead-set on the idea that abuse was help, but the conversation would have gone places he really didn't want to go and he would be inadvertently making comparisons to his own mother that he had no plans on making. From his perspective, Heather and Zoe were both normal people with normal people problems.

"Yeah, you're probably right. Let's go move that vanity." It was not particularly heavy and there was readily available space in Richard's room. One of them could have done it; two made it easy. "Actually, there's some other stuff you might like." She was out of clothes that might fit him, but there were toys she'd never played with. She fished an old box out of her closet, a Barbie playhouse with plenty of accessories. According to the faded sticker, the original price had been nearly eighty dollars (for cheap molded plastic!) but Heather had bought it at a yard sale for five. That was five dollars too many, as Zoe had barely even opened it once.

Richard was certain that there was stuff missing out of the box, it was probably like that when Mom had bought it, but he realized he didn't care. "This is way too boring," he said.

"You don't play with dolls?" Zoe asked with a smile. Despite having quite a few stuffed animals, and even having gone through a brief pony phase, Zoe had never particularly cared for Barbie either.

"I actually kind of do," Richard admitted, "but they're all on my computer." One of Richard's first forays into torrenting was The Sims 4, and he'd pirated, hacked, modded, and cheated the heck out of it. It and Skyrim were what had led him down the winding path of deeper computer knowledge.

"Can I see?" Zoe asked, very politely. She was expecting him to say no. There were things on her computer (including her own Sim family) that she would never show him, Leslie, or anyone else. Crushes, extremely childish ideas, half-finished fanfics of things she didn't care about anymore, sources of utter embarrassment that were very particular to her. Her private diary was not kept in a little pink book with a lock on it; it was backed up to the cloud and encrypted with AES-256.

She was surprised, then, when he said "Okay" and started running the game. "I haven't played this in a really long time," he explained as it loaded, and he was surprised when he saw the date on his last save file. Cripes, seriously? 2018? He hadn't touched this since he was eleven? He remembered everything, though, and he went back to his characters as if it had been yesterday.

[Jacqueline]

"Why are there six kids?" Zoe asked.

"Because the maximum household size is eight," Richard replied, looking at the characters he'd made. Sextuplets, they were, children who would never grow older, each of them with color-coded clothes (red through purple) and perfect, identical traits along with a mother and father who had extremely high-paying jobs and maxed abilities. None of them were based on anyone he knew or any media he'd watched; he'd simply thought up names based on the colors they wore. He clicked on each of them, showing them off to Zoe, and he remembered why he'd stopped playing: he'd done everything he wanted to do. With cheats and mods, he'd maxed out all their skills and their friendships, made it so that they never had to pee and barely had to sleep and had school one day a week, and then he'd gotten bored.

"They're all happy and with a lot of friends," Zoe noticed. "Are they all girls?"

"No," Richard admitted. It was half and half. They were all wearing modded pretty dresses, but the modder had never made the dresses girls-only.

"This is the sweetest thing," Zoe said, smiling. Richard had been a lot more innocent back when he'd played this. "You'd like to be one of them, wouldn't you?" He just quietly nodded. "You might not have five close siblings, but you do have one big sister." She began to gently massage his shoulders, slipping easily into the caregiver role. No wonder Susie had fallen in love with him so quickly. She'd seen him, not his shields, when she'd first met him.

The Sim family was having a party in the middle of town when Zoe's phone and Richard's computer started blooping.

[10:03 AM] Caroline: well it looks like i cant do much for dad either
[10:04 AM] Caroline: no work, no pool, under the weather with aunt flo

"What does that mean?" Richard asked, confused. It sounded like a euphemism, but did she really have an Aunt Flo...?

"It means she's having her period," Zoe said carefully. Richard could have whacked himself. Of course! Caroline had serious premenstrual syndrome three days ago.

[10:05 AM] Richard: It's not like there's any sharks in the pool, so I don't know what you'd be worried about.
[10:06 AM] Leslie: Sharks?
[10:07 AM] Caroline: ricky you get tell exactly one period joke in your life and that was it, dont do another one ever again unless you get into standup
[10:07 AM] Zoe: You all see what I have to live with?
[10:08 AM] Leslie: OH MY GOD THAT WAS A PERIOD JOKE
[10:08 AM] Zoe: Yeah, this is my brother. Now imagine growing up with him.
[10:08 AM] Susie: You better be careful with period jokes, Ricky. They tend to splash back on you.
[10:09 AM] Leslie: LMAO SUSIE YOU'RE EVEN WORSE!
[10:09 AM] Caroline: were you not listening when i told you they deserve each other?

"You two really do," Zoe said aloud, and hugged him from behind, feeling like he could not possibly be hugged enough. "We need to wash clothes," she reminded him, and like a good sissy, he put on his heels to do his housework. Then he'd recalled what his princess had told him, and so after all the clothes were washed, he put his boy stuff in the back and in boxes and his pretty girl clothes up front, where they belonged. Zoe rearranged her stuff as well, playing keep-keep-toss with old toys. It was her mother, not her, who had a sense of nostalgia for a lot of it, and Zoe was determined to make it so that everything in her space was something she wanted to be there. (A lot of it was just old crap, some of it with long dead batteries. Richard would never use any of it, not even the Barbie playhouse, so into the dumpster it went.)

They had lunch together, and played some Archon and 2v2 Starcraft, and as the leagues were separated, they were starting from the bottom and so proceeded to completely roll face. ("You guys are getting dunked on by a sissy boy!" Zoe had said aloud once, giggling at the screen, and Richard's laughter didn't affect his basically automatic hand movements.)

Heather would arrive later than she'd hoped, but she warned her children in advance. Richard was tempted to put on his rainbow boy clothes, but that would have been too much, so he dressed up like an ordinary boy again, wearing his swimming trunks in place of shorts and bringing another pair of pants for afterwards. He didn't feel like he was pretending when he wore dresses and heels anymore. Those were his normal, everyday clothes. It was boys' clothes and flat sneakers that were the costume, but he'd worn that costume all his life.

Heather retrieved her own (modest, one-piece) swimsuit, drove them to the pool, and was pleased to see that her daughter's mood had improved. Her own thoughts were a bit of a mess, work had been worse than she'd thought, and they got messier when she realized that her children had memberships to the Y that she didn't even know about. Susie, it was all Susie, she knew. She had the idea that her son could buy pretty much anything he wanted without even asking her, and she was never going to do anything about it. That thought made her feel more adrift than seeing him in a dress.

[Jacqueline]

Richard was halfway to the locker room when he heard the characteristic bloops:

[2:50 PM] Susie: Got here early, in the changing room right now.
[2:50 PM] Susie: Ricky, today, you don't want to take your eyes off me, you have trouble keeping your hands off me, you'll follow me to the ends of the earth.
[2:50 PM] Susie: The first thing you'll say to me is how beautiful I am. :heart:
[2:51 PM] Richard: Got it. I'm here early too. :heart:

They entered the pool area at nearly the same time, and telling her "You look incredibly beautiful today" was the very easiest thing in the world to do, and she put her arms around him and he reciprocated in kind, one around her back and the other on her thigh. "Well, every day. But especially today." She pursed her lips and they shared a quick kiss, Richard rapidly becoming erect, and as their heads moved, Richard caught a glimpse of a somewhat burly man with a harsh face and skin a touch darker than Susie's, treading water in the pool with precise movements.

And he was staring right at them!

Richard's erection shrank as quickly as it grew. Susie noticed his glance and turned, her right arm still around him and his left still around her. "Dad, this is Richard, my boyfriend. Ricky, this is my dad, Majid," she introduced them with a smile.

"Hello, sir," Richard decided on. Better to sound awkward than risk pissing him off.

"Hello, Richard," Majid said, and there were layers to that hello, layers of unspoken challenge that Richard did not entirely grasp. Majid turned to his daughter. "Susie, where is this girl you mentioned?"

"She's coming," Susie said. "We're still early." She tugged on Richard and pulled away. "C'mon, Ricky. Diving board's this way." The board was only about six feet from the water, and she unhesitatingly bounced once and dove in perfectly. Richard had jumped into pools before, felt the stinging shock of hitting water the wrong way, and his usual approach was to hesitantly jump in feet first - but after watching Susie expertly dive in Olympic style, he was far more afraid of looking like a coward than he was of any amount of physical pain. He dove in right after she swam out of the way, his hands in front of his head, trying to imitate her and what he'd seen on television. The dive was far from perfect, and he felt the water catch him in the forehead and strike him on the back a bit, and he spluttered a bit as he surfaced. He felt a tug on his shorts and wondered if they were coming loose from the dive, but instead, it was because Susie was tugging on his shorts, smiling at him and then quickly swimming away to the other side of the pool. Remembering her instructions, he immediately swam after her, furiously kicking as hard as he could.

Leslie arrived shortly thereafter with her mother, but Richard barely noticed. A few times, he spotted his mom conversing to Majid about whatever, the two of them close together in the pool. ('Small talk,' he hoped. 'Just random bullshit. Please, God, don't let Mom say anything stupid to Majid about anything.') A few minutes later, Heather went off to swim near Zoe and Leslie ('and please don't fuc-k with them either, Mom') while Majid swam with a precise stroke that Richard didn't recognize.

But his beloved princess had given him a very clear order: he was to continue looking at her. And so he did, constantly swimming after her, trying to find a rhythm that wasn't wasting energy. Granted, she was older than him, and a bit taller, but he had the benefit of testosterone - and that very thing was why he was following her. As long as she didn't betray him, a thing she would clearly never do, he was her property, her pet. If she told him to be her baby girl, he would happily do it. If she told him to act like a lovestruck boy (not exactly a difficult bit of acting!) in front of her father, he would happily do it, despite how much his muscles and lungs were starting to hurt. Especially when she took breaks between swimming back and forth, kissing him and holding onto him as furiously as he was swimming after her.

Richard wondered if she knew just what she was doing to him. She would never put him in a chastity device, she had promised, but the combination of close, personal touch on one hand, and exhaustion and her father's presence on the other, was having a similar effect (and, under the circ-umstances, not being able to get a boner was a good thing). He was thirteen years old, he felt like he couldn't wait another five minutes to take her somewhere private, and he had to wait until Wednesday. Still, he didn't want this to end. He was so close to her!

But eventually it did end, all too soon, and of course she gave him a long kiss goodbye, shamelessly and right there in front of everyone, before they all retreated to their locker rooms. There were two males in the whole group, Richard noted as he dripped his way out of the (hastily divided) showers and to the lockers: him and her father. And her father was right behind him.

Abruptly, the man put his arm around Richard, gripping his shoulder tightly, and Richard flinched at the violation of personal space. 'Oh boy, here it comes,' Richard thought. 'He's going to threaten me not to mess with his daughter. I wonder what'll happen if I tell him he's too late?' Susie's plans certainly must have included this. What kind of long game was she playing?

"If you break her heart, I will break your neck," Majid said in his ear instead before swiftly letting go, and Richard visibly relaxed, laughing a bit in obvious relief, inwardly jumping for joy, a great many fears being dispelled at once, Susie's plan suddenly making a lot more sense. For Richard, that didn't even count as a threat - it was effectively a blessing of their relationship!

"I'm never going to do that," Richard promised as he pulled his wet swimming trunks off, dried himself, and put his pants on. Going commando wasn't uncomfortable for him, and having Majid see his junk in the locker room wasn't even on his list of worries. "That's really not going to happen." He didn't think he could even begin to explain. 'Don't you dare suddenly decide that gravity isn't for you and start falling upwards instead!'

Majid dressed very quickly, trunks coming off and pants and shirt going on in smooth motions. "Excellent. We understand each other. Keep her safe." He was out the door before Richard had finished putting his shoes on. Even though his muscles were burning from exertion, he had to refrain from doing a happy dance, although he found himself skipping to the door, as skipping along to Susie's tune was taking him exactly where he wanted to go.

[Jacqueline]

"You look happier than I expected," Heather said on their way to the car. "What did he say to you in there?" Heather had caught the man's serious expression on his way to the locker room.

"He said he wants us to stay together," Richard said joyfully. He almost told his mother and sister exactly how the man had said that but decided that was a bad idea.

"And likely warned you not to cheat on her," Heather replied knowingly. "Richard, I know you like playing games in your relationship with her, but your relationship itself, that's not a game. I know, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But never forget that." Their not-a-performance in front of her father had been demonstrative to Heather as well. She had known that they were doing things in private, but having their mutual devotion shown in public made things very clear.

"Why don't you talk to me about my relationship, Mom?" Zoe asked pointedly. Her mood had improved substantially, Richard noticed; she'd been able to spend an hour with Leslie in the pool, even if the time was occupied by actual physical therapy.

"Because I don't know what to say," Heather admitted. She had asked Willa just a handful of small, uncomfortable questions about it, and Willa's replies had been friendly and informative. They were teenagers, full of rampaging hormones and high emotions. Yes, they really did seem to love each other, and their relationship should be treated as that until contradicted somehow. Yes, Leslie's disability did complicate things, and they were all hoping the treatment would be effective. Trying to interfere with their relationship because her family would not have approved of it was an incredibly, nightmarishly bad idea for oh-so-many reasons, and Heather had already decided not to. It was obvious that Willa was trying to get Heather to come around to her way of thinking, but she was starting to do that anyway. "Oh, I forgot to mention. Susie's father wants to take your group boating on Sunday, so I'll be driving you to the lake as well." She hadn't been there in a long time.

Heather sighed a bit as her children immediately pulled out their phones, but she knew what they were doing, and their group did need to discuss it. "Oh, hey!" her son exclaimed. "Susie's dad is inviting us for sushi!" Heather blinked in surprise and immediately started heading to the restaurant. She knew the place her son was talking about, and it was far, far too expensive for her budget, despite how much her daughter had wanted to go there. It turned out that both of them already had.

It was only until Richard was inside the door that he realized that the last time he'd gone in there, he'd been dressed as a girl, complete with fake breasts. Fortunately, if the waitress or other staff recognized him, they gave no sign whatsoever, and Richard could never be sure if that was out of simple professionalism or if they really didn't remember his face. He tried to make himself calm down. What were they going to do, really? Go 'Hey, weren't you a girl last time you came in here?' right in front of his family and friends? This was an upscale Japanese restaurant, he didn't think anyone working there would do a thing like that. It was a good way to lose a tip if not all their business forever, and struggling restaurants in the middle of a pandemic needed all the business they could get.

Of course, Richard didn't entirely need to hide his excitement, as Susie had positioned herself right next to him. She didn't give him explicit instructions on what to do this time. Her cues were largely physical in nature, feeding him and letting him feed her, constantly happening to rest her hand on his legs and smiling when he did the same.

Majid was watching him, and the rest of them, very closely, even if he did not always look directly at them. The man had not become a powerful mogul by being socially unaware, and he knew considerably more than he let on. He smiled for the camera (Susie was posting pictures in the Discord chat for Caroline's benefit, but Caroline didn't even want to think about eating sushi right then) and learned how much Susie's group valued their absent member; he would have to learn more about Caroline as well, particularly as she had been driving his daughter places. He was very certain that his daughter was engaging in a performance of sorts with her boyfriend, to show him that they were serious with one another. What he did not understand was why the rest of them treated Richard with subtle, unconscious deference, as if he were some sort of hero. The boy had done something for them, he was certain. There was something very particular about him, and Majid was going to find out what.

But a meal was not the time to ask such questions, he decided. A meal was time for his daughter and her chosen boy to engage in courtship rituals. Ah, there - he knew what she wanted, before she wanted it, and the other way around as well. He could not keep the smile off his face, and the rest of them thought he was simply enjoying the delicious food. (He had told the whole group, in an unambiguously firm tone, to get whatever they would like to eat. They chose individual meals rather than a platter, this time.)

Heather's attention was largely on Zoe and Leslie. Zoe did feed the other girl, much as Richard had, but that was almost entirely one-way. Leslie could have fed herself, but her arms were tired, and she liked being fed by her girlfriend. Heather found herself eating deep guilt, and some relief, along with her sushi. She could have, probably would have, gotten in the way of that. What had she been thinking? She looked to Majid, who was sitting next to her with no sexual interest in her at all, and wished that she were young and beautiful again so that he wouldn't be so entirely out of her league.

The plates were completely cleaned and Majid paid for it all, and unlike his daughter he used Benjamins rather than Jacksons, and as they left, Richard and Zoe both independently realized how quickly the tables had turned. Less than a decade ago, their mother would have worried about being able to go to a fancy restaurant with her children, for fear that they'd do something stupid and embarrass her in public, and she had been relieved when they didn't. Instead, they were feeling a bit relieved that she hadn't.

"God almighty, Richard," Heather said as they got into the car, her stomach full of delicious, expensive sushi and similarly expensive mochi ice cream. "You keep her. I don't care what you have to do, you keep her." With effort, Richard kept himself from smirking or chuckling. If she only knew what he was doing already! "And, Zoe? You and Leslie are in love. I'm sorry I couldn't admit that sooner."

"Thanks for getting it, Mom," Zoe said, and Heather understood.

The three of them watched classic anime together that evening, Heather on the couch between her daughter in her loose T-shirt and shorts and her son in his pretty yellow dress, and they were content.