"Hello," the girl says, raising an eyebrow.

Lewis is going to take that as a "I am completely okay with what is going on here".

"How's the food?" he asks.  "I'm Lewis, by the way.  I'm new."

"Food's good, and yeah, I figured. Welcome to Selene! When did you arrive?"

"Last night," he says.  "How long've you been here?"

"Coupl'a months! Was there an eclipse two years ago?"

"Nah, couldn't go last year because my aunt had breast cancer, so I stayed home to take care of stuff."  Then, quickly, he adds, "She didn't make me stay home or anything like that.  Actually, when I told her I was staying, she was all," he imitates a woman's voice, "'Lewis, if I die before I see you go to magic school my ghost will haunt you for the rest of your natural life', but I'm stubborn."

"Oh. Is she okay, then?"

"Uh, yeah, she's in remission.  Thanks for asking."

"Good, I'm glad. So, mage or psion?"

"Mage," he says, snapping his fingers and creating a spark for demonstration.  "You?"

"Mage!"

"Whoa!  Nice!"

"Yeah, I left boot camp being able to gendershift. I haven't been able to generalize much more than that, though. I mean to become a healer and figure out how to leverage magic and turn everyone immortal."

He raises is eyebrows, impressed.

"Whoa.  That's...everyone?  That's. A lot.  Wow."

"Well, I suppose there are some nuts who would prefer not being immortal..."

"Hey, they might have good reasons!" he says, and shrugs.  "I don't know if I'd want to be immortal.  Like, I don't want to die, or anything, but I've never really thought about what it'd be like to be alive forever."

"Sure, but currently you don't—well, most people don't have the choice. They'll just keel over some day, involuntarily, after having spent who-knows how many years suffering through their body's degradation. That's completely different than deciding there's nothing else interesting in this spatially infinite universe with a myriad possible configurations of matter including uncountably many people and books and songs and languages and planets and stars and galaxies and stuff so you might as well stop being in it."

"I don't--oh, yeah, I'm a mage.  Still haven't adjusted all the way.  But...yeah, I mean, it's sad when people die, and it'd be nice if people didn't have to, but wouldn't it get, uh, kind of crowded?  If everyone lived forever?"

"Not really, we don't occupy nearly as much of available surface area as we could, not to mention places such as the moon or Mars."

"Huh.  All right.  But...hmm.  I feel like there's gotta be some reason why more people aren't working on this but I don't know what it is.  I mean I guess you could say 'death is a part of life' but, like, so is cancer and we're trying to cure cancer."

"I don't know, don't ask me, I made up my mind to do this when I was ten."

Again with the impressed-eyebrow-raising.

"Wow.  When I was ten I wanted to be a professional wrestler.  Well, sometimes I wanted to be Robin Hood, but mostly the wrestler thing.  Definitely nothing as, you know, huge as that.  You must've been a pretty weird kid."  (It's clear from his expression and tone of voice that he doesn't think that's a negative thing).

"Thanks!" She looks like she'd have taken being called weird as a compliment regardless of intent. "To be fair when I said 'when I was ten' I meant 'when I eclipsed.' My birthday was almost right between the September '99 and the January 2000 eclipses, but was closer to the former, so I eclipsed early."

"Huh, mine was around then, too.  I was in 2000."

"Yeah, I figured. So then I eclipsed, and was like, well now I have magic, so everyone's gonna live forever, ain't that grand."

He laughs.

"You sure got used to it fast," he says.

"You could say I'd been thinking about applications of magic for a while."

"This, for example, was entirely appropriate."

"Huh.  Why that and not, like, flying?"

"I was already genderfluid before eclipsing. It was very nice of my eclipse to give me magery."

"Uh.  Genderfluid?"

"Sometimes I feel like a girl, sometimes I feel like a boy. This has always been the case, even before magery, but magery made it easier to also be... appropriately shaped."

"Huh, weird," he says, and shrugs.  "Do you have to switch, like, your name to a boy's name when you switch to being a boy?  Actually, what is your name?"

"Sadde."

"Sadde?  What is that, one of those weird white people names?"

She sporfles.

"No, it's a 'my mom was a weird person' name."

"I'm guessing you take after her?"

"Yes," she says, still giggling uncontrollably.

Lewis is pleased about having caused laughter!  Look at his pleased grin.

"So you see," she says between giggles, "I don't have to worry about my name."

"You sure don't!" he says.  "Did your mom just make it up or did she name you after, like, a tree or a car or something?"

"I, uh... lost her before it ever occurred me to ask."

"Oh.  I'm sorry."

"It's fine. It's been years."

"All right," he says, still a bit upset about Sadde's mother but willing to drop the subject if it needs to be dropped.  Subject change, subject change, come on..."So, uh, what do you do for fun?  Besides, like, scheming about immortality."

"Well, I don't actually scheme about immortality yet, seen as I haven't even made myself immortal, I'm waiting until I get that down, but I read books, think about magic, talk to people, convince them to ensconce me somewhere private and do whatever they want to me or vice-versa depending on the case, sometimes I like going out to restaurants or strip clubs with friends, I joined choir..."

"Uh.  Wait.  Back up.  So. You're..."

"I'm?"

"The thing about the ensconcing.  Are you a...you know..."

"...a switch?"

"Yeah, uh, that."

"Yeees...?"

"Uh.  All right.  You know, my friend has a cousin who has a neighbor who we're pretty sure is a switch."

She raises an eyebrow, then giggles. "Is that so. You do realize like ten percent of people are switches, right?"

"Yeah, of course," he says, but the look on his face indicates that he didn't realize the implications of that statistic until just now.

And Sadde being Sadde, she has to spell it out. "That means that on average one out of ten people you know are very likely switches. I think it's very unlikely your... friend's cousin's neighbor? Is the only switch you know. Unless your social circle has like twelve and a half people in it."

"I don't know, I feel like if I had friends who were switches they'd've told me."

"Right," she says, raising an eyebrow and smirking. "Do you also happen to have a third-degree cousin who your great-aunt suspects may not be monosexual?"

He looks confused for a second.  "I mean, yeah, pretty much no one's monosexual, it's not like it'd be weird to--" He pauses, and then grins.  "Ohhhhh, oh, yeah, okay, because there's a lot of switches, I get it."

Which means that at least some of his friends back home are switches and they don't feel like they can tell him.  He chews his lips and wonders if there's a way for him to let his friends know that he's okay with people being switches without them thinking he himself is a switch.

"Yes, indeed," she says, still smirking a bit.

That sure is a smirk.

"So, uh, looks like we've got everyone's role sorted out.  Nice to know."

"Isn't it just," she says, still giving him a certain look. "So, are you going to grab any food or did you decide to come to the cafeteria just to socialize?"

"Oh, yeah, I should probably eat something, since I'm here," he says.  "Be right back."

"Bring me a muffin," she suggests, given that she's almost done with her food.

"Yeah, sure," he says, because why not, he's getting up anyway.

About halfway there it occurs to him that that isn't really a thing that doms are supposed to do.  But he already said he would, and it would be rude not to.  Maybe he can say they were out of muffins?  ...they're obviously not out of muffins, Lewis, that's a bad plan.  He briefly considers just eating all of the muffins, mentally slaps some sense into himself, and grabs a muffin for Sadde.  He's not being a sub, he's being nice, there's a difference.  Doms can be nice.

When he returns she grins at him. "Thank you very much," she says, regarding him as one might regard a particularly well-behaved pet.

He likes that.  Why the hell does he like that?

"No problem."  (It doesn't sound like there's no problem).

Hmm. Should she back off? She's getting mixed signals, here.

"So. Tell me what you like to do for fun, besides walking up to random people in the cafeteria and being confused about their roles," she rephrases his earlier question, a playful smirk on her lips indicating she wasn't quite bothered by said confusion.

He relaxes a bit when the conversation veers away from flirting territory.

"Hang out with my friends, mostly.  We go to clubs and parties and do sports and stuff.  I box.  Used to be pretty good at it, too, but VR kind of wrecked that."

Her eyebrows shoot up. "You used to be pretty good at boxing when you were twelve? My, aren't you full of surprises," she says, her eyes trailing up and down his body in a downright predatory way. One would almost expect her to be licking her lips.

(Away from flirting territory? Ha. Ha ha ha.)

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH why is she looking at him like that help.

"You know.  For a twelve year old.  Who boxed other twelve-year-olds."

"But you've kept up with training, haven't you?"

Pretty, pretty little pet.

On the one hand, what the fuck is going on, but on the other hand, he is really tempted to flirt back.

...but why on earth would he do that, he's a dom.  Obviously.

"I mean, I've tried.  I work out and stuff.  But, y'know, VR."

"Oh, but you left a full year ago, that was quite enough to at least bulk up a bit, I believe," she says in a tone of voice one could use to say "I could just eat you up," her eyes still not quite managing to stay on his face.

...Lewis decides to eat rather quickly.

"Yeah, I mean, I didn't really go to school so I spent most of my spare time at the gym."

Oh dear. Maybe she's gone a bit too far. She'll tone it down a bit.

"Well, there's a gym here, everything paid for by the very generous alumni donations. Don't load up on classes, by the way, they keep the requirements very light so we can spend most of our time networking and thinking about magic."

"Oh, nice!  Thanks for letting me know!  I wasn't planning on taking too many classes anyway, but it's nice to know I won't get in trouble for it."

"Yeah, there's a few placement tests you have to do to know where you'll fall."

"Oh, cool, I guess I'll take those at some point."

"You do have to, to be placed," she says, smiling. "So, I'm curious, why do you keep your hair short? Too much work?"

He laughs, because clearly she is joking.

"Yes, and also I'm a dom."

That arrests all her forward momentum and she grinds to a screeching halt. "You're—really?"

"Uh, yeah.  What, you didn't know that?"

Pause. "I—um—I'm really sorry, I—I kinda—" She lowers her eyes and stops talking.

(Oh look, she is a switch after all.)

(She's not flirting this time, though.)

(And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you drive Sadde speechless.)

He shrugs.  "It's fine, don't worry about it."

He's a little miffed that she assumed he was a sub, but mostly just relieved that he now knows why she was acting so weird.

Also he definitely, positively is not any less attracted to her now that she is presenting as a sub.  Because he is a dom.  Clearly.

"Um," she starts, still not raising her eyes. "Anyway, uh—" She's lost some of her momentum, here, let's see, let's see... "Anyway, the, uh, cafeteria isn't open all day, there's a student's welcome pack thing in your room probably that says the times and all the other information and. Stuff."

"Hey, thanks," he says.  He hesitates, then says, "And seriously, don't feel bad about, like, misreading me.  It happens, and I did the same thing to you, so, hey, we're even."

She looks up a bit at him again and nods. "Alright, if you say so."

Good!  That's sorted out.

"So, uh, what's choir like?  Is it fun?"

"I like it," she says, somewhat demurely. "I like singing, and the practice's fun."

"Cool!  I might join something like that, to meet people, but I don't know how good I am at singing.  Are there sports here?"

The demure expression feels...weird, to him, probably because she was acting like such a dom before.  He kind of liked that.  One thing about being a dom he doesn't like is the thing where people feel like they have to pretend to be less interesting than they are around him.

Well, she's definitely not going to pretend to be less interesting, she's just gonna be interesting while submissive! Like so:

"Yes, sir," she replies, smiling slightly and looking at him through her eyelashes. "I'm not sure if there are enough people for full teams of most sports, but the facilities are there, and they want to encourage as much socialization as they can."

...being called "sir" feels really weird.  It must be because he's not used to it, what with having been in VR and then spending most of a year taking care of stuff for his aunt.  Not a lot of time for romance.

"Yeah, I'll probably look into that," he says.  "Although, uh, there are a lot of other ways to...socialize."

"There are," she agrees, batting her eyelashes at him (talk about fast recovery!). "Are you thinking of any in particular?"

"Well, you know, when you meet new people, it's nice to find out about their interests," he says.  "And I'm real interested in some of yours."

"Sir?" she asks, looking at him in shy interest.

"I mean, I like to know people a little better than I know you before I see what they get up to in private," he clarifies, because leading people on is a dick move.  "But I sure am interested."

That is encouragement in her book. "Good to know. I can definitely do friends." Pun intended. "Well, I did tell you most of what I get up to day-to-day, my days aren't terribly interesting."

He laughs at the pun.  It's a good pun.

"What're you working on, magically?  Just 'healing', or a certain kind of healing, or what?"

"I'm... branching out? Self-healing right now, mostly, I can already do bruises and broken bones. Also small cuts. How about you?"

He shrugs.

"I was gonna do the element thing, but after last year I kinda want to do healing.  Stuff like cancer mostly.  I'll probably ask around, see what I can do easily."

"Haven't you read the brochures? Pretty sure 'magic' and 'easily' don't go together."

He laughs.

"I meant, like, with the background I've already got, would one thing be easier than another thing."

"Yeah but in any case magic's just way too personal for that. You can read five thousand books about it and you will find out about five thousand different ways to do magery."

"Huh.  All right.  That's...huh.  I think I like that.  More room to do my own thing."

"Yeah, but it's really fiddly—haven't you been thinking about magic at all for the past year?"

"A little bit.  I had fire and I'd started working on air in the beginning, but I was kinda busy.  And I figured what I was doing was the same as what everyone else was doing?"

"It's probably not. What does magic feel like, to you?"

"It's, uh, sort of like..." he says, trying to figure out how best to put this.  "Like, I get this feeling that the entire world is made of clay or something, and all I have to do is reach out and poke it and it'll change. And, like, for some things, I can't poke them because I haven't worked with them very much or I might break something, but with, like, heat, it's really easy to squish that or stretch it out.  I figured this was how all mages did stuff because it feels...sort of like how I always expected magic to work, I guess.  You just reach in and..." he makes a squishing motion with his fingers, "...change it around."

"Yyyeah that's really not how it is for me."

"Oh yeah?  How is it for you?"

"It's... complicated to explain. The best metaphor I can find is like doing the splits? Except not really because when you do the splits it feels weird and straining until you stop doing them, whereas in my case it feels like I'm pushing and pulling and forcing until I reach the, uh, shape I want to reach, and then it settles and that feels like the new normal."

"Huh!" he says.  "That sounds...kinda uncomfortable, but I guess right for shapeshifting."

"And healing. I have no idea what it'll feel like when I learn to do that on other people."

"Yeah.  It'll be cool to find out!"

"It will! But I expect a few months still to be able to even heal papercuts on other people."

"Yeah.  Well, you can practice on me whenever."

"...I really can't."

"Well, I didn't mean, like, whenever-whenever, I meant, like, when you can do it and it's safe and stuff.  That kind of whenever."

"Yeah but by then it won't really be practice anymore, it'll be application."

He shrugs.  "All right."

"Magery in general's scary, biomagery has lots of potential for pretty horrifying duck-ups."

"...duck-ups?"

"Uh, yeah, I don't really swear."

Lewis's eyes widen, and then he laughs, hard.

"You...that was not something I expected you to say," he says.  "I've been thinking you were going to corrupt me."

She grins. "Me? Why, I'm an innocent angel."

"I'm picturing you coming down from heaven to the sound of an angelic choir in, like, a really tight bikini," he says.  He strikes a sexy pose as much as one can do while sitting in a chair, thrusting his imaginary boobs out, pouting, and tossing his head like he's pretending he has long hair.  "Do not be afraid," he says in a low, sultry voice.

She sporfles.

Yay!  He caused a sporfle!  He is visibly pleased.

She continues giggling for a while.

She looks so cute when she laughs!

"You're cute when you laugh," he says, because he has no filter.

She trails off but continues grinning. "Thank you."

"I gotta figure out how to make you laugh more often," he says.  "So far, you like jokes about race, sex, and religion.  I'm kinda seeing a pattern?"

"That I'm really inappropriate? Sounds about right."

"Yep!  But no swear words.  That is where you draw the line."

"Not a line as much as a bubble around them."

"Oh, yeah?  What's the difference?"

"I don't have a problem with profanity per se, I just—my mom used to say that you should only swear when you really mean it. I half-believe it was just so I wouldn't swear but she was pretty consistent about it and was okay with me swearing when the situation 'really called for it,' so."

(Wow, way to go, Lewis, why don't you say more insulting things about her dead mom).

"Huh.  That...makes a lot of sense.  So I guess people'll always know if you're really pissed off."

"Or happy. Or," she smirks a bit, "other things. And that's part of the reason why I continue to do it."

He wants very much to get her to swear.

It kind of surprises him, how much he wants that.

"Right," he says.  "There's lots of really intense stuff you can feel, besides anger."

"Indeed," she nods. "Anyway, yeah, my sense of humor does travel along the lines of the transgressive."

"Yeah, me too," says Lewis.

They continue talking for a normal lunch-conversation-time, and then Lewis has to go do New Student Stuff.

He wasn't really an extracurriculars guy at his old school, but he doesn't know anyone in town and he has to meet people somehow.  He looks up what kind of stuff he can join.

Pretty much All Of The Stuff. There's a variety of sports (swimming, football, basketball, track...), choir, a subs' rights movement thing, drama, audiovisual...

Cool!  Lewis decides to look into various sports (probably not football, he doesn't have the build, but maybe track).  The subs' right movement thing catches his eye.  Normally, he'd skip it--no one he knew growing up took subs' rights all that seriously--but, well, after his recent conversation about switches, he's starting to realize he has a few blindspots about this sort of thing.  Besides, it's a way to meet people that doesn't involve singing or putting on a costume.

Various sports meet at various times during the week, but the subs' rights club has a meeting tonight, actually.

Then he will be at that meeting!

"Hello! Are you new?" asks a girl with shoulder-length hair at the door.

"Yeah, hi, I'm Lewis," he says.  "New dom.  This is the, uh, sub's rights thing, right?"

The girl raises an eyebrow at "new dom." "That's correct. I'm Allie. Always good to have new faces." She hands him a pamphlet.

"Cool, nice to meet you," he says.  He goes inside and sits down, then glances through the pamphlet.

There are two other kids in there, both obviously subs, a boy and a girl, talking to each other about something. They smile and wave as Lewis walks in but return to their conversation.

The pamphlet has a few sections:

• Introduction
• History
• Statistics
• Gender and role
• Movements
• Meeting times
• References

He skims the first couple sections.

Then he will be Informed about the importance of subs' rights activism, about historical examples of subs who pretended to be doms in order to get taken more seriously, about scandals and how it's terrible that they were scandals and people covering up their roles, about switch erasure and common stereotypes, about famous subs and switches whose role gets downplayed...

Wow, he did not know a lot of this!

"Shit," he says to the nearest not-otherwise-occupied person.  "There is a lot I didn't know about the guy on the ten-dollar bill."

"Hamilton?" asks the sub boy he said this to. "Yeah, a lot of people don't know stuff about him," he explains.

"I'm just saying, if teachers had talked less about the Constitution or whatever and more about Hamilton's weird sex life, I would've probably been more enthusiastic about going to school."

He giggles. "Ah, so you like hearing about historical figures' weird sex life, I see," he says, looking at Lewis through his eyelashes.

Well, if he'd known subs' rights meetings were good places to pick up cute subs, maybe he'd have come to one sooner.

"Yeah, it's more interesting than other parts of historical figures' lives," he says.  "Although Hamilton's not so much my type."

"Oh? And what is?"

"Oh, you know, smart, politically active subs with long, dark hair and pretty eyes," he says.  "D'you know any of those?"

Well now he's blushing.

"Oh, I also like blushing, blushing is very cute.  Can't believe I forgot to mention that."

He starts stammering something but other people start walking into the room and he turns away and tries to pretend he's not blushing.

It doesn't really work.

Lewis is sort of concerned!  He hopes he didn't make this poor sub uncomfortable or anything.

(He's also sort of guilty-proud that he managed to provoke this kind of reaction).

"So, uh, what usually happens at these meetings?"

"U-um," he says, looking at Lewis again. "They usually, um, decide on a discussion topic in advance and we talk about it. Or sometimes we share stories. Or organize events."

"Cool," he says. "So is there a topic for today?"

"It's this semiquarter's first meeting, we usually do the story-sharing thing then."

"Cool, so it won't be hard for me to catch up."

"Yeah."

A few more students start arriving and, after making sure there don't seem to be any latecomers, Allie—the girl who greeted Lewis at the door—walks in and closes it.

Oh hey things are starting!

He wonders if it will be necessary for him to Share A Story. He totally has one--he got mistaken for a sub like immediately after arriving here--but that's sort of embarrassing so he's sort of hoping he can skip that part.

They arrange themselves in a circle and Allie starts, "So, hi, everyone! Since we have new members here, we should do a round of introductions, and tell everyone something about ourselves. My name's Allie, I'm a switch and a psion. When I was a kid I wanted to be a mage, but I love being a psion now that I am one."

"I'm Robbie, I'm a sub and a psion. I've never kissed anyone," says a blushing red-haired freckled sub.

"I'm Leanna, I'm a sub and a mage. I don't actually like dogs or cats, and when I live by myself I'm gonna have a pet rabbit."

("Heathen!" calls a boy who hasn't introduced himself, and a girl punches him lightly, grinning.)

"I'm William, I'm a sub and a mage," says the boy who'd been flirting with Lewis. "I'm allergic to cats and rabbits so I can't live with Leanna."

She flashes him a grin when he says that.

"My name's Lewis, I'm a dom and a mage.  Uh, when I'm done with school I want to do medical mage stuff."

The other kids introduce, too. The boy who called Leanna a heathen is a switch named Michael, and the girl who punched him is a sub called Natalie. In addition to them there's a sub girl called Montana, a switch girl called Kylie, a sub boy called James, and a sub girl called Heather. "So! I wanna know how you all spent your breaks, but before that I think Lewis should tell us more about himself. And I think he deserves a round of applause for being a dom who's willing to come to this meeting, we haven't had one since Aubrey graduated."

The other kids clap.

"Uh.  Thanks," says Lewis.  He looks a little bit pleased with himself.  But only a little bit. 

They only clap for a couple more seconds then look at him expectantly.

"Uh," he says, "hi.  I'm Lewis.  I'm from Florida.  Most people I know back home aren't really big on subs' rights, and, like, I'm a dom, and I've always known I'm a dom, so I've never really been to something like this.  I'm here now because, uh, there's a lot of amazing subs in my life, and I want to learn more about what doms like me can do to help with how subs are treated and stuff."  He tries to think of something else to say, and then says, jokingly,  "Also because this seemed like a good place to meet cute subs."

...there's a bit of an awkward silence after he says that last thing, but Allie quickly breaks it with a, "Well, it's really good of you to show up, and we hope you learn a lot here! Welcome, Lewis!"

Everyone repeats the "Welcome, Lewis" line, some less enthusiastically than others.

"Thanks!" he says.

...he is, uh, pretty sure he did something wrong here and not sure what it was.  This is a pretty normal state of affairs for Lewis, so it doesn't faze him too much.

"So, I know everyone else here, but Michael, this is your first meeting, did Natalie finally get through to you?"

"I just didn't have anything better to do." Natalie punches him again and he grins. "And yeah sure she convinced me of the merits of coming."

"So why don't you start with a story, then?" Allie encourages.

"Sure," he shrugs. "So last year I had a dom called Monica—" Natalie grimaces. "Come on, she wasn't that bad!" ("Was too," Lewis catches James muttering.) "Anyway, she took me to this restaurant and that was the first time I had a dom so I was kinda acting all subby and stuff—had a collar and all—and the waitress insisted on getting my orders from her instead of me. Like even after I called her out on it she just apologized and started looking at me for my orders but then she'd wait until Monica confirmed everything. That was crappy, I didn't tip."

"Now come on that's a bit harsh—" starts Kylie but Allie interrupts with, "We can talk about tipping later. I'm sorry you had to go through that, Michael."

He shrugs. "She was just an asshole."

Lewis...sort of figured that subs liked that.  Or, well, the sorts of subs who wore collars to restaurants liked that, anyway.  

(Subs are confusing).

"Did your dom stand up for you or anything?" he asks

Michael gives him a look and Kylie opens her mouth but Allie says, "While it's more likely she would have been heard, it should not have been necessary in the first place; if a sub gives their dom permission to order for them then this is easy to see, but assuming a priori that that's the case is harmful and erases subs' autonomy, especially when the sub explicitly requests to be heard. Think about it this way—imagine someone kept asking your parents about your preferences instead of you, and ignoring what you said. That would be pretty annoying at first, right? And if it kept up it would also feel pretty hurtful and invalidating, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah.  That'd be bad," says Lewis.  "And I didn't really get that before.  But I guess what I'm saying is...if something like that happens to you, your dom shouldn't have to stand up for you, because people should just listen to you.  But your dom should stand up for you anyway, or they're a shit person and a shit dom.  You know?"

"Hold that thought," says Allie. "We'll talk about that after everyone's told their story, but I like the way you think."

Lutan holds that thought but also looks maybe slightly pleased with himself.

There are a couple more stories about microaggressions in a similar vein, and then it's Lewis' turn.

"So, uh, one time I was having lunch with this cute, uh, switch—that wasn't the weird part, I'm totally cool with switches—and she was treating me really weird, not even bad, just weird."  He scratches his neck a little and looks at the floor.  "Like, she was looking at me in a way that felt kind of…" good "weird," he finishes lamely, aware that he's repeating himself but unable to find the right words to describe what he felt like during that conversation.  "And then she asked me why I kept my hair short, and I said because I was a dom.  Turns out, she thought I was a sub the whole time."  He makes a bit of a face.  "Like, that isn't what you want to hear from a cute...switch on your first day here, you know?  So that's my story."

"Classic," snorts James. "Assuming someone else's role just like that."

"Why did she assume that?" wonders Kylie.