***

The unpleasant incident was soon forgotten, Josh and Nick lived together, although since Nick became Josh's girlfriend, they have become much closer: they spent more time together, sharing with each other what Josh would never have decided to share with Nick-guy. and, of course, every night was spent on a shared bed. If at first Josh had any doubts on the topic “wasn’t it all too fast?”, Now he had no doubts about anything: he was well with the alchybian girl. Toll introduced Josh and Nick to the guy he mentioned: the guy was called Victor, he was a native Earthling with Latin American features and studied at the steering spacecraft, and his girlfriend was called Alexis (she was also on some kind of dugout) She was a lively red-haired and tanned Alchibian, who was even more of a boyish appearance than Nick, and studied at the Xenolinguistics Department. It’s impossible to say that Josh had a special friendship with Victor, but Alexis and Nick, who met each other for the first time in a long time “sisters in the face” of each other, talked a lot, sometimes switching to alchibian, in which Josh did not understand a single word.

Nick-girl was all in all like Nick-guy: Josh did not notice a radical change in her behavior after the sex change (or rather, all the changes were due to the fact that she was him by a girl). With Josh's friends, Nick no longer had any particular problems, except that sometimes they found it difficult to behave with Nick as a girlfriend, or as “his boyfriend,” and at times it drove them into cognitive dissonance. But overall, Josh was even surprised at how few problems caused the sudden transformation of his neighbor into his girlfriend. True, to his parents who lived on Ganymede, he never admitted that he was dating an Alchibian — he knew well that it was not recommended to be “different” on Jupiter’s satellites, and “not to be like everyone else” means to become a target for everyone. of the numerous clans into which the Jovian society was divided. Josh's parents, of course, were more educated than most of the inhabitants of the satellite, and should have been less inert, but Josh still could not decide to reveal his secret to them. But those times when Josh sent letters to his native Ganymede every week or two have already passed: now the guy wrote to his parents once a month or less, and he could still delay the moment of recognition ...

Nick and Josh met for about a month when something happened that Josh had forgotten to think about. Just once, when he returned to their common room, he saw Nick sitting in the kitchen in a tense posture - and when he smiled and said to her, “Hello!”, Her reply “Hello ...” sounded lower than usual in tone. in the voice of Nick-guy. Struck by a hunch, the young man looked at the chest of an alchibian, half closed with his arms crossed in a protective gesture, as if Nick wanted to hide the disappeared chest - and for sure: Nick turned into a guy again.

- What happened? Josh asked worriedly. - So I see that, but ... how?

“Public toilets,” Nick replied grimly. Raising his head and seeing Josh's confused look, he explained: “Well, I told you that I have a sex change when I feel pheromones of the same sex.” And in public toilets they are easy to run into. I used to have this not happen, put on an oxygen mask - I used it more often for this than from depressurization. But for the last few days I have forgotten about it, and nothing seemed to be happening ... and now — well, please, Nick finished gloomily and looked away.

Nick looked so depressed that Josh, almost without hesitation, quickly put the bag with the portacompact on the floor and sat on the chair opposite Nick, touched his hand with his hand.A thought flashed through my head that they were both guys now, but damn it, Nick needed support now, and if Josh didn't give it to him ... what would have happened then the young man did not have time to think when he felt Alchibian’s fingers squeeze him a hand.

“Have you ever raped anyone there?” Josh asked, recalling the release of hormones that occurs in Alchibians when they change their sex. He tried to smile, making it clear that he was joking, but after a second he thought that if his friend did just that, it would not be funny at all ...

“No,” Nick laughed out through force, “but I had to run to the men's room until I was noticed as a female guy.

“Do you, Alchibians, have any public toilets?” Josh asked the first thing that came to his mind.

“Well, there aren't any like you, with a bunch of stalls,” Nick began to explain. “We have such ... each cabin as a separate room, with this, a closet, a wash basin, and so on.” In Alchibians, in general, architecture differs greatly from yours: there are much more individual rooms, and one person has noticeably more space. In such houses as yours, Alchibians with the same size would have lived fewer people.

“Now I understand why you are so ... sensitive about personal space,” Josh chuckled, remembering their first days of living together. - You, probably, and parents do not enter children’s room without permission?

“Well, that's about it,” Nick smiled, finally throwing away the gloomy mood, and began to tell: “Alchibians used to live in such a way as not to provoke a hormonal explosion and a sex change from each other.” We are sometimes, especially young, even afraid of hormonal explosions, because under the action of hormones we can do something that we will then be terrified of. Some of us have such a complex, when we are afraid under the influence of hormones to sleep with someone from our family members, it’s just the same as yours ... well, I don’t even know that ...

- How is the Oedipus complex? - suggested Josh.

- Mm ... I heard the name, but do not remind what it is?

“Well ... this is when a boy, that is, a teenager, experiences a sexual attraction to his mother,” (speaking the truth, Josh was not familiar with Freud's work, and hoped that he did not distort the information too much).

- And what, you have it often? - surprised Nick.

“Honestly, I don’t personally know a single guy who would like to fuck his mommy,” Josh laughed. - Although, maybe they just hid ... Well, in short, I realized that you also do not approve incest. And I used to read that Alchibians are sexually liberated ... - he smiled.

- This is where you read this? Is it me sexually liberated? - Nick cheered.

- Well, in bed with me, that is when you are a girl - very much so! - Josh laughed. - But with other people ... you, perhaps, are sometimes rather enslaved.

“So it is,” Nick smiled. - We keep people at some distance from ourselves, but with those to whom we give “access to the body”, we come off in full.

Josh smiled back, but a thought flashed through his mind: did Nick hint at sex in this way? - and from this Josh felt awkward, because they were both guys now. To banish these thoughts, he said the first thing that occurred to him:

- Listen, you tell very interestingly, but I'm a little hungry now. Prepare something to eat? - and he smiled.

- Of course! - smiled in response to Nick.

And Nick went to dinner, but the feeling of some awkwardness, constraint, Josh felt more clearly. He saw that Nick also felt constrained, that he would like to continue to behave with Josh as his beloved, but he was afraid (and, I must say, absolutely rightly afraid), and Josh himself felt uncomfortable, not knowing how to behave with his girlfriend turned into a guy. The food cooked by Nick, Josh swallowed, almost without noticing the taste, and finally, after dinner, he decided to say what did not bother him:

- Nick, listen ... Can I, well, turn you back into a girl? Because, well ...

“You can, of course,” Nick smiled a little, but in that smile Josh felt some hidden sadness.

“It's just, you know ...” Josh hurried to explain, “you're my girlfriend, but you're a boy now, and that, well, breaks me ...” Read more →