When he first arrives up at Cal Tech, Spencer is thirteen and awkward; the latter is nothing new, but here it feels different. Maybe it's California. Something about the air here isn't like Nevada — when he comes home to his dorm (a single room; he didn't think claiming that the nature of his genius required being alone would work), he doesn't need to worry about his mother. If she's having an episode, he's none the wiser. He writes her letters every day; she never sends any back. It's easier to breathe without her here. Sometimes, Spencer worries — what if she didn't eat today? What if she's having an episode and no one's checking in on her? What if he's doing too much homework and can't call her? What if she needs to hear his voice and she can't because he's up to his eyes in William James? — but, overwhelmingly, he settles in quite nicely.

Every few days, Spencer has to meet with his faculty adviser, Dr. Clements, and Ms. Mestre from the Dean of Students' office. It's nothing about him, they say; it's just a precaution that's in place because he's so young. A thirteen-year-old prodigy at Cal Tech is a wonderful thing… and, yes, it's true that he's a genius, but because he's so young and his parents are so often unavailable, they just need to make sure that he's adjusting. They use words like that to describe the process of fitting in, but Spencer doesn't fit in with anyone he's met here. Professors don't mind him, but they leave at the end of the day. Most days, he manages to convince Clements and Mestre that everything's fine. He smiles the way he always has, nods, tells them lies about his social life, when really he scarcely talks to anyone when he doesn't need to do so, let alone risk them figuring out what's wrong with him. When he can't manage to seem unfazed, he just says it's his mother. What it is sounds stupid, especially to him.

Buying new clothes for school hadn't occurred to him — but Spencer knows it should have, now he knows this with a painfully accurate awareness. There's nothing to be done, at this point. All of his shirts are too snug for his liking anymore. He hasn't even filled them out that much. There's nothing that anyone might see and be interested in at all, let alone like. He just doesn't like the way they fit anymore. He needs new pants — they're all too short, but that isn't what bothers him. What bothers him shouldn't even be an issue, because it isn't new. Besides that, no other boys have trouble like this. His new graduating class lacks the jocks he went to high school with, the muscle-bound football players who'd torment him the way they had, but everyone here still seems comfortable with his or her body, with their primary and secondary sex characteristics, and with the implications of their forms. There are a few girls, who don't eat enough, and one who takes forever brushing her teeth after every meal Spencer sees her at. There's a guy in his general chemistry class who's rather heavy, who moves as awkwardly as Spencer does, trying to hide his bulbous shape.

Spencer's different. This, he should be used to, it's defined him since he can remember. But even this is different from the difference to which he's grown accustomed. It should be simple, but it isn't.

Male — XY, more aggressive, less likely to ask for directions, more restrained in displaying emotions, especially when said displays may be seen as 'weak.' More visual/spatial aptitude, more proficiency with the sciences. Beyond the aggression, Spencer sees himself in this description: he doesn't like his emotions being visible; he doesn't like to ask for help; he speaks math as a second language. On the other hand, though, Female — XX, softer, fairer, more emotionally aware and sensitive, called inferior by some, but by others regarded as possessors of a quiet sort of strength. Women lead the household when the men are gone, they teach the children and see to it that everyone's basic needs are met. They live longer, but break down more often. More suicide attempts are white females, but men succeed more often because men cut to the chase and go for guns.

Theoretically, there aren't any differences, beyond the anatomy, that matter. They're basically the same, or so says feminist logic — men and women are equal. They should get paid the same wages, they should be able to hold the same jobs. Men run away — Dad did, anyway, and they're more likely to succeed when they try to kill themselves. Dad couldn't handle Mom anymore, or her illness, so he left instead of try. Women, by contrast, go crazy and destroy their children — Niobe bragged and got her children shot; Clytemnestra killed her household when she killed her husband; Medea knifed her children for revenge; and Mom succumbed to schizophrenia (really, Spencer could have turned out much worse). Women lie, like Alexa Lisbon, who lured Spencer to certain torment; men make people suffer, like the football team who stripped him and tied him up.

There's nothing to be done, Spencer thinks. He's male, unfortunately. But he doesn't want to be either. Why should he have to choose between Achilles and Briseis when neither of them feels right? He doesn't want to be both — Hermaphroditos could be free to keep that feature. But Spencer still knows that something isn't right about how he feels. Would he could, he'd be Tiresias, with the ability to change as he sees fit. He can't, though. Mythological figures are stuck in the books he read as a kid. He can't, and so he shouldn't waste his time considering all of the what ifs.

When he leaves the window in his room open just right, on the windy nights where autumn fights spring for dominance, Spencer gets a little gust that's all his own. It doesn't rustle his papers, because he learns quickly how to keep everything controlled. Every time it hits, he shivers. First, he remembers that afternoon on the football field — he remembers the tears coming down his face as the players jostled him between them; he remembers their rough hands forcing the harsh fabric into his skin, how they stripped his clothes and the wind blew cold and wet, like these nights; he remembers how the damp grass rubbed his bare feet, how the dirt seemed to slip beneath them, and how he tried to struggle when they tried to tie him up; he remembers how the thin rope from a tetherball rubbed his wrists until they were red and his skin exposed.

More than anything else, he remembers being naked in front of all those people. No one even tried to stop it when his clothes came off; they all just stood there, watching. Like a painting in a museum, they scrutinized every inch of him and turned their heads to get a better view. Luckily, it wasn't raining. The chill and the wind and the cruel laughter were all bad enough. Every time a breeze hit him below the waist, he winced, and cried harder, until the well of tears dried up. Remembering what he had down there felt wrong; briefly, he'd wished for rain, just to see if it would clean him off. Being swallowed by the earth would have also been acceptable. Even in California, recalling these things makes him cry.

But, as all things, these phantoms pass. He tightens his fingers on his textbook and the edges press into his fingers, reminding him that they're real. This book is real, and the memories aren't. They happened, and they're dead now, and Spencer cocoons himself in the sweater that he stole from Mom — he curls up and hides in the excess of fabric, and it's a comfort, even though no one's here to see what his body looks like.

~*~

Masturbation. Noun. 1. the stimulation or manipulation of one's own genitals, esp. to orgasm; sexual self-gratification. 2. the stimulation, by manual or other means exclusive of coitus, of another's genitals, esp. to orgasm. Related forms: masturbational, masturbatory.

Spencer has known what masturbation is since he was six. Mom had taken him to the library, one Saturday, because she said that they hadn't spent enough Saturdays together recently. She didn't want him playing with Jeff and Ethan; she wanted him to adventure through books with her, and thrill her with his special mind. He started reading the M-words in the dictionary, and that one caught his interest, for being the only word he didn't immediately grasp. So he found books about it while Mom was distracted with Margery Kemp, and he wasn't entirely put off. None of it just seemed to fit together, and rather than disappoint Mom by looking stupid by not understanding something, he went and read Through the Looking-Glass instead.

In his second year at Cal Tech, Spencer really learns what this word means, and he learns because of Penelope Garcia. She's older, but a year behind him, and confusing is the best word he has for her.

The summer was awful to him: Mom's episodes got worse than he'd ever seen upon his return to Vegas, and on top of that, puberty hit him like a fist in his face. His voice cracked, then got deeper. He got taller. And, worst of all, there were angles coming out of nowhere — he's always been tall for his age, and thin, but now his body had a mind of its own. Some days, he hardly moved, because his limbs hurt so much and when Ethan's mom took them shopping for new clothes, Spencer purposefully hunted down items with looser cuts, sometimes even going the next size up. Any hope he had of never needing to pick a side, select a gender to stick to and stay there, extinguished when his hips started narrowing, compared to his chest and shoulders.

At least it wasn't all that noticeable. Still isn't. The woman at the checkout that day eyed him, and he could guess what she was thinking, because there were probably only two plausible options: A. what on earth was he doing, being so young and buying clothes for himself; or B. hopefully, he was buying the bigger clothes because he hoped to gain weight and fill them out soon enough. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Being skinny opens up a world of potential hurt, in that so many people will usually be bigger than you, and can use your size to their advantage — but, as Spencer notices in the full-length, fitting room mirrors, the less mass that he has on him, the less of a difference he can see. There are fewer secondary sex characteristics this way.

In the cafeteria, he starts taking cues from the girls he's concluded all have some kind of eating disorder. Should it be alarming, how easy he finds it to only grab a salad and spend most of lunchtime picking at it, rather than eating? Probably, but it's not like he hasn't skipped meals before, either because he got caught up working or, when he was younger, because Mom couldn't cook and he wasn't supposed to be in the kitchen by himself.

Some days are harder than others. Ever day, regardless of the effort he puts in, he's hungry to some degree or other, which makes sense. His body's growing, and it's changing, and it needs more nourishment than he necessarily provides. While still getting taller, he loses weight, and the effect is an odd one: all his angles start finding a new emphasis, but without anything extra on his torso, it isn't necessarily masculine or feminine. It looks more the former than the latter, but with his hair and the right clothing, he could pass as either. To his credit, he makes sure to see that he doesn't go too wanting for nutrition. All his meals are well-balanced, except breakfast, which generally consists of Cheerios and heavily-sugared coffee. Besides that, he's read medical books before. He knows what will happen to him if he doesn't eat enough — he knows that the empty, gnawing feeling of hunger will progress to pain, suffering, organ systems failing. And so he doesn't eat too little. He simply doesn't eat a lot… which is exactly why Penelope Garcia picks him out.

One day in late September, they bump into each other in the dining hall lunch line. Spencer smiles and apologizes; she smiles and says it's nothing. She's everything he isn't: confident and bold enough to wear loud prints and bright colors; proud of her body and the different things that define her as a woman — two of which are shoved out right under Spencer's nose. Whenever they get close, his stomach twists uncomfortably and he feels bad for looking at them, he knows that girls don't like that, but they are right there. Difficulty is the word of the day, and it crops up in trying to avoid them. Besides, she notices, and all she does is smirk and muss his hair.

"Careful where you look, kiddo," she says in a low voice as they approach the cashier. "You never know — I might have the Ark of the Covenant hidden under this top."

"…Like the Biblical Ark of the Covenant?" he asks her.

"Like the one from Indiana Jones, sweetheart." The clarity was necessary, but at least he knows the movie. Jeff's mom took them and Ethan to see it once, when The Last Crusade came out and a local theater ran a triple feature of the series. "And then I might shift just so and your pretty little head will get incinerated by the full glory and wrath of God. And that'd just be messy, so no one wants it, you know?"

He laughs, because she means it to be funny, but he can't help but think he wouldn't mind seeing her aforementioned shift of posture, and catching a glimpse of whatever he could before his head explodes.

About a week later, maybe ten days, she seeks him out and sits with him in the dining hall, coming over to him and sitting at his table. It's not as though he can tell her "no." With barely any exceptions, he always sits alone. On her face is a smile that says she's planning something, and on her tray is easily enough food for the both of them. Before he can say something he'd probably regret, she decides to give him orders.

"Eat," she tells him, picking up one of the plates and nudging it toward him. The smell of so-called 'herb-roasted chicken' and asparagus cudgels him upside the head and his stomach whispers to his brain, No, really, what's the harm in it? Harm? No harm. He just shouldn't — well, he should. He should always eat — but he can't, and his brain knows that.

Penelope Garcia does not understand this. When he tries to say that, really, he's fine with just a salad, she interjects: "Baby boy, if I wanted to, I could snap you like a twig by looking at you funny. It just so happens that I'm a kind and loving goddess, and not a vengeful one. Eat."

"You know, seriously, Penelope?" he hazards. "I mean, it's not that I don't understand what you're doing, or that I don't appreciate it… but I'm fine. I have an IQ of 187, and an eidetic memory, and even if I didn't, I think that I know how to take care of myself."

"Oh. Really. Is that why you're the envy of Rachel Gardner and her friends?" Penelope raises her eyebrows and looks over in the direction of another table. Surrounded by plastic bottles filled with varying brands of water, Rachel Gardner — five-foot-seven, weighing not nearly enough for her height, likely failing the English class that she and Spencer share and, perhaps, heading for an intervention — and four other girls sit huddled like a circle of mystics. All of them have more angles to them than the curves that characterize Penelope's femininity; they look more like Spencer. For a moment, he startles and he gapes at her.

"I'm fine," he insists. "I know, I do, I'm — I'm the weird genius kid, and maybe I'm a little skinny, but I'm—"

He stops talking when she shoves a spear of asparagus into his mouth. Even though he chews it, he frowns at her and wrinkles up his nose. She smirks like the cat in the canary cage and pokes him in the nose. "See?" she tells him. "You're cute when you cooperate."

Penelope invites herself to the rest of lunch, and then along for the rest of the week. Every day, she leaves first and Spencer waits for the sound of the other shoe hitting the floor. Besides Jeff and Ethan, no friends have ever lasted. Even Jeff and Ethan are sort of questionable; they talk so much less when Spencer's in California. But Penelope keeps coming and, some several Mondays later, when she goes, she leaves behind a pen with a pink feather on the end.

Alone in his room later, Spencer can't look away from the pen. Five minutes of physics, one of staring at the pen. Five more of physics, two of needlessly fingering the cool, clear, colored plastic. Four minutes of mechanics problems he hardly needs to spend such time on, three of brushing the feather under his nose — oh, God, it still smells like her perfume and hairspray… Spencer pales; his stomach churns. Narrowing his eyes, he pulls the atrocious thing away and glares at it like a kitten at a piece of string just beyond its reach. It's just a pen. It shouldn't make his heart beat like this, or have this kind of effect on his stomach.

(He's gained some weight in the weeks they've eaten lunch together, and he's not the only one who's noticed. Penelope loves it; Dr. Clements and Ms. Mestre were thrilled at his last meeting with them, breaking all of their starched formality. Spencer knows he shouldn't think this way, but, really, he can't stand looking so masculine as it makes him look.)

Five minutes of physics, and then he brushes the feather up and down his cheek. He jiggles the pen, trying to bring out the optical illusion of it bending. He inhales that scent again, and when he closes his eyes, Spencer can almost see Penelope's broad, toothy grin, can almost hear the bubbly cadence of her laugh. He feels —

He feels his hands in a fevered rush, yanking open the button and pulling down the zip — he wriggles and nudges his jeans down around his thighs. Without his full consent, his hand vanishes into his underwear. It wraps around an erection; why don't they make guidebooks for this? God, her smile, it's like watching the formation of a nebula — it explodes beautifully. He yelps. He wonders how he learned to do this. It wasn't from the dictionary. His heart races, his breath hitches.

His hand is covered in ejaculate. He slumps back against his chair and, shaking, stares at the wall. He's male after all.

~*~

Spencer makes a mistake with Penelope Garcia: he lets her worm into somewhere in his heart.

He knows better than to do something like this; wishes in fairy tales never have the intended outcomes when those making them don't work for them. He knows that nothing good can just happen without someone working for it, something he didn't do to get Penelope in his life, and, despite this, Spencer wonders if, maybe, she might stay around for ever. For several years, he's had Jeff and Ethan, but he's never had a best friend. Maybe, he thinks, she could be his best friend. Maybe they can have lunch together all the time — he would like that.

He lets himself think on her more often, and he lets himself wonder if, maybe, something could happen with them — nothing sexual, of course. It would be massively illegal, as of yet, and he has no desire to get her into trouble. But she likes him well enough to act like he's a person, not just a brain with legs. And he likes her. And, despite his various neurotic objections (which he knows are neurotic and, as such, ought to be invalid; they aren't based in anything beyond his perceptions of reality, anyway, which no one else seems to readily agree with), he likes that she sits with him at lunch. Slowly, he comes not to mind the fact that, when he thinks of her, he feels things between his legs that he'd rather not acknowledge — sexual things, male things, which make normal, healthy sexuality feel wrong.

She makes him feel special and important, and, then, just as quickly as she entered his life, she leaves him. No explanation, no apparent reason, not even a note slipped under his dorm room door, more covertly than Dad's note left on the table — evanescent as a whisp of water vapor, she simply ceases to be. This conclusion, Spencer knows, is fallacious: matter can't be destroyed, only changed in form, and as such, Penelope hasn't ceased to be; she's only disappeared from his life, in a move to disprove one of his most basic theses of human gender differentiation. Men leave; women stay and go insane — if she could leave him, then this isn't true. There are no exceptions that prove the rules, only absolutes that reality proves to be false in their exclusion of possibilities.

It can't be that she's hiding, although he does consider the possibility. Someone like Penelope Garcia can't hide from anyone, nor does he think that she would really want to do so. She needs people to thrive and be happy, and from her size to her brightly colored wardrobe, from her styled mess of big, blonde hair to the feathered pens that she wears in it, she's a hard one to miss. This is where they differ, she and Spencer: he doesn't need people. He doesn't want to need them. After a night spent ignoring his homework, playing with the feathered pen he never gave back, and wondering if the threat of tears would ever actualize in crying, he knows that he cannot allow these things to happen again. Coming to rely on people never works out for the better.

Even over the summer and moreso when fall semester descends upon him, Spencer abandons life for work with a fervor that his genius renders meaningless — little that he does is truly challenging, it all comes down to whether or not he chooses to out-achieve the classes' overachievers. Usually, he does. More and more, his time gets given to the library, and, as he used to do when Mom would take him to hers back in Nevada, he seeks out little corners he can call his own. He volunteers for extra assignments. He runs errands for professors, even ones who aren't his. He lets his pleasure reading list double in length. He takes drivers' ed courses at the nearest high school. He stays out of everyone's collective way, even Jeff's and Ethan's, even though they're here too, by his third year, and even though they know him better than anyone else. Even though they're eighteen, he's fifteen and getting thinner once again, and they could easily take him in a fight, if they so desired, Spencer avoids them.

Sequestering himself with books and things to learn, he lets the heavy weight of academia and research drag him further into its depths, and he's shocked at how much these actions come to sting. Once, Jeff tries to talk to him about it — Spencer's arms are laden down with things he's taking to the library, and Jeff catches him by the shoulder and turns him around in the middle of the quad. All of a sudden, Spencer's awareness of his surroundings jolts from 'barely any' to 'hyperacute' — the leaves are all done up in reds and golds and oranges. It's colder than he remembers it being yesterday. His sweater isn't nearly enough. Posters all around them say it should be Halloween soon, and Jeff's face looks different — more tired, more adult, more male, at least in the stubble on his chin. Does Ethan look like that too, Spencer wonders quietly, looking up at Jeff in a daze.

"What the Hell, Spencer?" he balks by way of greeting, looking as though Spencer has, somehow, just offended him. Skipping over the question why don't I ever see you anymore, he asks, "Come on, Ethan and I are going off-campus for dinner."

The subtext is still obvious — even to Spencer, it's obvious. "I — you know, I want to, Jeff," he excuses himself wearily, "but I… I really have to work on these assignments for class—"

"And when are they due?" Jeff snaps.

An Achilles heel in this lie exposes itself, thus prompting further lies. "Tomorrow," Spencer says, knowing that they're really due next week. "I — I seriously procrastinated on getting them done… because of drivers' ed." He should probably be perturbed at how easy he finds lying to someone who's supposed to be his friend.

"Spencer… come on, you look like you haven't eaten in a week."

"That's ridiculous," Spencer informs him. He hasn't eaten anything substantial since yesterday morning, and then Sunday evening before that; there's a subtle but important difference. Not that Jeff understands it — he doesn't, and neither does Ethan. They don't understand and, because they've always felt at home in their own skin, or at the very least in the constraints of their gender, they can't. They don't even see the logic of why Spencer lets himself thin out, and carefully undoes the work Penelope did on him. All they know about what's going on is that, once again, he may be the envy of the cabal of skinny girls who sit together in the cafeteria with bottled water and empty trays.

Jeff tries to call him out for being so avoidant, but Spencer only begs off, inadvertently proving Jeff right. He scuttles away into the back corner of the library, sets his books down, and gets to work. Reading always comes easily to him. It sails by without him even noticing what's going on, although he absorbs the words with his usual proficiency. The completed assignments pile up, but there isn't any warm satisfaction to having seen them done. They only represent the fact that Spencer can wreak havoc on himself, forego eating as well as regular sleep, measure out everything in cups of coffee, and work himself to a frenzied numbness, and it still won't be enough to bring Penelope back or to change the body with which he's stuck. Shuddering, he looks around his books for something new to do, something as yet unassigned. As he turns a page in his physics textbook, Spencer plummets down, face first.

He doesn't know how long he stays asleep, or why it doesn't hurt him in his chest to have a dream about Penelope, but some time later, someone rouses him awake. There's a warm hand on his shoulder, holding him up against the back of his chair, and another one tapping his face, and a low, hurried voice snapping, "Spencer! …Spencer!"

He groans. His eyelids feel immovably heavy. Somehow, though, he managed to crack them open, only to shut them again when they're assaulted by the too-bright library lights.

"Jesus Christ, kid," Ethan sighs, holding fast to Spencer's shoulder, as though he feels Spencer might slip away. Even from back here, Spencer can smell the cigarettes and cheap beer lingering around him. "What the fuck have you been doing to yourself?"

"Working himself into an early grave," Jeff chimes in with a huff. Spencer cracks his eyes open again to see Jeff collecting up his books.

"Put those back," he protests weakly, but not without the energy to argue. "I — I'm just studying, okay? I know being a freshman's easy enough, especially for you guys, but I… I am in a lot of difficult classes, and I… no, Jeff, I mean it, put those back, I am studying."

"You're coming back to my room," Ethan corrects him. "Then you're eating something, and then you're going to get some sleep."

Spencer tries to shove past Ethan's hand. He tries to grab one of his books off the table, he doesn't even care which one

"You're acting pretty dumb for a genius, Spencer," he says, his calm almost unnatural. "You ought to be the first to know you're not a damn superhero. Homo sapiens means you have limits. Do yourself a favor and start respecting them."

"Homo sapiens sapiens." He can't help wrinkling his nose in frustration as he amends Ethan's word choice, and the fact that Jeff visibly rolls his eyes and shakes his head doesn't help. Spencer's already been corrected and had his intelligence impugned tonight; he deserve to go and correct Ethan back.

Ethan just takes it as an invitation to thump on the back of Spencer's head.

The lesson learned here, Spencer thinks a few days later, as he stares across the table at Ethan and Jeff and the assortment of food they expect him to eat, is likely not what they intended him to glean… but, if this is what happens from not needing people, then he really needs to get better at acting like he does. The more normal he appears to be, the less likely things like this are to happen, and things like this cannot happen again. Everyone who has ever prodded Spencer has, no doubt, meant exceptionally well, but the end results are never, ever worth the effort. What's worst is that he can't forget anything to save his life.

~*~

Needing people is, if anything at all, a show of weakness, or so Spencer decides. Actively showing that one doesn't need people, however, is even worse because it makes people decide that they need to come and help him. So it goes — he gets through his undergraduate degrees because he has no other options; he goes on and gets his first PhD because it's that or trying to be sixteen and get a job. The best he could hope for would be obnoxiously erudite waiter, check out boy at a grocery store, or maybe answering the phone for a psychiatrist, who would probably forego giving him a paycheck in favor of giving him therapy. He keeps Jeff and Ethan around, because they make an effort, at least, to understand him (as much as he lets them see, anyway), and he makes routine visits home, but Spencer lets no one in behind the walls of his citadel, lest everything fall to ruin.

This continues until he's eighteen, working on his last PhD, the one in chemistry, when he meets Andy Forster.

She's a research librarian — a new one, and youngish, built larger, like Penelope was, but there's something different, something Spencer readily ignores during their first few (to his credit, brief) interactions. It's only when he notices that she was reading Chaucer before he came to ask about his inter-library loan books, when he engages her in a conversation about the development of love poetry from 'A Parliament of Fowles' onward, when he actually stops for long enough to really consider it that he sees what ought to have been obvious: she doesn't really look feminine. The sound of her voice is a dead give-away, but otherwise, her appearance is a perfect balancing act…

Her hair is short, but not too short. Those Buddy Holly glasses could be a man's or a woman's, these days. That sweater betrays enough curves to suggest femininity, but not enough to say it outright, and her slacks are pointedly neutral — Spencer takes it all in slowly as they converse, letting his eyes linger where they need to (which is everywhere). There has to be some way he can get this for himself. The past few years have been a Hell of Spencer's idiotic war against his body — one minute, he's healthy, but too male; the next, attempts at making himself androgynous wreck the health; maintaining any balance is the most difficult thing he's ever had to do, and yet, Andy Forster, Research Librarian, pulls it off with no apparent effort.

Like Garcia, she notices.

"Hey, Encyclopedia Brown," she snaps good-naturedly. When he looks back to her eyes, everything about her face is benevolent, and yet, he can't help feeling as though someone just caught him in the act of self-pleasure. "What's up, Doc?"

Spencer fumbles even worse than he did with Garcia. "I — I mean, I didn't — I just — I — I'm sorry?"

"It's okay, sweetheart," she tells him. "I know that look. Most people don't understand it. Do you want to hear the whole lecture or the short version? I'm about to go on a break anyway, if you want the long version."

Spencer definitely wants to hear the long version.

Following her lead and towering over her, he leaves the library. In silence, they go to a coffee shop off campus and, to his surprise, they both order black coffee and proceed to over-sugar it. Her smile suggests that she thinks he has good taste. Several questions nag at his tongue, but he isn't sure how to go about phrasing them without offending her more than he already has. He wants to look at her, but, instead, looks more at his coffee than at her eyes — again, he's already offended her. That's why they're here: he's offended her and he wants to learn better, why she has this pull, as irresistible as Jupiter's gravity.

"Calm down, Doc," she says softly. "Squeeze any harder and you'll have a lap full of hot mess."

Spencer nods and agrees, but it doesn't make him feel any better. "I… yeah, I — sorry, but… it's not like I always get caught… you know. Checking people out."

She smirks. "Honey, I've been checked out before, and you weren't checking me out. …I'll just start for you, how's that?" As soon as he nods, she sighs, and starts again: "It's called genderqueer. What I am, and how I identify, I mean. …It means different things for different people. For me, it's all about being both genders but neither, hence how I dress. But other people have all kinds of experiences with it… What it all comes down to is being out of place on the gender binary. Not fitting in with male or female, or feeling like they don't describe you properly. Like your own body's not right, for making you choose… Do you follow?"

Spencer nods and whispers to his coffee, "Yeah, I… I've — I feel the same way." Leaning in closer, looking perplexed, she asks him to repeat that. He's shaking as he looks back up to her, and he wonders how on earth she, Andy Forster, someone he hardly knows, makes him feel so comfortable. It makes sense, he guesses, in a textbook, BAs-in-Psychology-and-Sociology way: they have something important in common, so naturally, they can identify, which leads to comfort. After several deep breaths that fail to calm him down, he repeats it, louder: "I feel the same way."

Her smile softens and she takes his hand; he doesn't pull away. "I thought so."

"So what do I do?" he asks her, unable to help himself, only lowering his voice so no one else can hear them. "I mean, I — I'm, everyone else perceives me as a — do I have to do anything differently, I mean… how do you be genderqueer?"

"Just be yourself," she tells him, and gives his hand a gentle squeeze. "Though… if you want to fish for tips on dressing for your comfort, you can come back to my place and I'll teach you."

Spencer agrees, and, by the end of the night, he's back in his room, wearing one of her sweaters. There's room in it to hide, and even though Spencer knows better than to enjoy this for too long, even though he knows that getting what you wish for without working for it never works, for once, he feels safe in his own skin.