‘Something is very wrong,’ Olivia’s brain keeps telling her. ‘Alison has been avoiding us.’

‘It’s partly my fault, right?’ Olivia thinks.

‘Yes.’

‘I really thought things were okay. I could have sworn she was flirting with me when we were on our way home.’ She merges onto the interstate and then checks the GPS: three hours to go until they get back to school.

‘And now on the drive back she’s barely talking. This is exactly what we were scared of. So what happened in the last couple of weeks?’

‘I was trying to give her space. I thought things were fine between us, like when we were testing her powers. But then right afterwards I must have done something, because she started being more distant again. Oh, yikes, it must have been the way I reacted to being mind-controlled. What if she knows it’s a kink thing?’

‘It might not be too late. You haven’t actually done anything problematic yet. What if you tell her you’re sure you want a relationship, but let her set the rules for it? Then she’ll know you care about respecting her boundaries, and we’ll know what we have to do to not hurt her.’

‘I’ll talk to her soon, I promise.’ Olivia tries to stop dwelling on the situation, but that just makes the silence between her and Alison more uncomfortable. “Do you want to put on some music?”

“Huh?” Alison must have been lost in thought too. “Oh, sure, do you care what genre?”

“Whatever you’re feeling is fine with me.”

“You got it.”

Olivia feels a lot better having something to listen to other than awkward silence or her own anxious thoughts. Alison’s playlist is a strange-seeming mix of genres, Syd Matters and Daughter right next to The Ink Spots and Marty Robbins, but Olivia recognizes enough of the songs to see the pattern. If she wasn’t so worried about where their friendship stands, she might tease Alison about how transparently her music taste is shaped by video games. Instead, she stays quiet and just listens for the rest of the drive.

Once they’re back at their apartment, Olivia unpacks and then utterly fails to make herself go talk to Alison. She just freezes up, imagining the ways this could go if she says the wrong thing. She thinks back to Alison telling her not to talk about them being together, not unless she was certain. She didn’t think Alison was using her power when she gave that order, but she can’t be sure; either way she finds herself dwelling on the words, unsure if she can ever be one-hundred-percent certain that her motives are pure.

She’s still sitting on her bed and trying to organize her thoughts when Alison knocks on the door.

“Come in?” she answers, trying not to sound as freaked-out as she feels.

Alison comes up to her open bedroom door and says “I think we need to talk about, you know, us.”

That’s terrifying, but at least Alison is rescuing her from her own indecision, one way or another. “Yeah, I was meaning to talk to you about that, if that’s okay.”

Alison smiles at her, maybe a little nervously if Olivia is reading her correctly. “Of course it’s okay. I mean, just to put all my cards on the table… I love you. I know you know that, we said we’d still love each other as friends. But I also never really stopped having feelings for you. And unlike some people I won’t name, I know you see me as a woman. And I’d very much like it if I was your girlfriend.”

“I’d like that too.” Olivia feels hope swelling from a part of herself that hasn’t felt hope in literal years.

“I still don’t know if it’s a good idea, though. I trust you, but the problem is I don’t trust myself.”

“What do you mean by that?” Olivia pats the spot next to her on the edge of her bed, gesturing for Alison to join her.

“I have villain powers. Even with your consent, changing your orientation felt like taking advantage. Are you really okay with me using my voice on you?”

‘I hate to say it,’ the voice in Olivia’s head tells her, ‘but I think at this point the least-risky choice is to be honest.’

“To be honest, I like it when you use your voice. I want you to have that power over me.”

That makes Alison pause in confusion. “Why?”

Olivia’s face must be completely red at this point. “Because I’m a total sub, I have a hypno kink, and nothing is hotter than knowing that you could reshape my mind into whatever you want. That’s what I’m scared of, knowing that one of the many reasons I want to be with you is because I’m fetishizing your superpower.”

“If my superpower stopped working tomorrow, would you still want to be girlfriends?”

“Yes, definitely, of course.”

Alison suddenly hugs her tight. “Then let’s be girlfriends.”

“We should probably take things slow, to be careful. I really don’t want to mess up with you.”

“We already moved in together, literally could not be more Uhaul if we tried.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think we should just pick up where we left off, or extrapolate where we’d be if I’d never broken up with you. I want to start from the beginning. Let’s have a second first date.”

Alison lets go of the hug, but she’s still smiling. “That sounds really nice. Do you have a date idea in mind?”

“Milkshakes, of course.”

“Seriously, Liv? It’s January!”

“Come on, it’ll be cuuuute. Back where we started, but gayer this time.”

Alison giggles. “Alright, milkshakes in January.”