Private Finished Accidental Date

['No way is that actually a thing! I was joking.']

Vivian snatched up her menu and looked at the pizza options. There wasn't a way to make General Tso's pizza, but there was something similar. ['Okay, good, I don't think I have to willhelm scream. But we could make a kung pao pizza - that's pretty similar. And I guess if we asked...']

When Arno suggested the possibility of actually ordering a pizza like that, Vivian snorted and shook her head. ['I guess if you ordered it I'd try a bite of yours.']

Vivian looked at the other foods available, ultimately settling on the Indian fusion enchiladas with tandoori chicken. She knew she liked enchiladas, and she liked indian food when she tried it for the first time a few months ago. A part of her dreaded speaking her order out loud to their server, and getting all dysphoric about her voice on her first date.

['So, the cool, exotic thing about me is I lived like a normal human in middle America until I started doing telepathy stuff. So if you ever want to know what being a normie is like, ask me anything I guess.'] She smiled like she was about to laugh at her own joke. It was bizarre to her, but some people were really curious about that stuff.

['Alright, hope you like your weird stoner pizza. You can have some of my weird stoner tacos if it doesn't work out for you. God help us, we could have asked for normal food.']

Not that Vivian was planning to order something safer instead. They were already committed.

Vivian wasn't used to receiving compliments - and she wasn't sure what to make of this one. She was forward? What could she be talking about? She just smiled and rolled with it - maybe she'd figure it out as they went along.

For now there was a question about normie school. ['Well it's probably different everywhere, but where I was from, we did this thing where we all had to stand up and recite the pledge of allegiance to the United States flag every day. I never thought about how that as kind of weird until I came here. There's also a bunch of schools with sports teams that compete with each other, and they take the whole sports thing way more seriously there. Football especially. Everyone always acted like football was a huge deal, and I guess it kinda was, because of sports scholarships. But it still feels kinda dumb to me, since we were supposed to be learning stuff there. ']

It occurred to Vivian that Arno had no reason to know what a 'scholarship' was.

['So, most schools were just day schools, so they didn't have dorms for people to live in. And there were different schools for each level, like high school versus middle school and college. Going to college where I'm from was super expensive. If you get a scholarship it means you don't have to pay as much money to go to there. It's not free like here.']

While she telepathically explained, the waitress came to get their orders. Vivian hesitated before using her actual voice to order, raising the pitch, trying to sound girlier with mixed results. At least the waitress didn't misgender her.

Vivian nodded. Yeah, those horns probably would make living in the narrow pretty tricky. Arno might have needed to do something silly, like wear a hat whenever she went outside.

Vivian took her turn ordering, with some hesitation. "I'd-" she would clear her throat and start over, trying to make her voice higher, softer. She wasn't so sure whether or not her voice 'passed.'

With the orders made, the waitress said "I'll get that right out for you two ladies." After that sunk in for a few seconds, Vivian smiled a little about that.

Arno asked her about stoner food. Vivian went right back to her telepathy. [Apparently. Not that I've done drugs or anything. Stoner food is when you put different kinds of food together that don't make any sense going together. Like you'd have to be high to think it was a good idea. Like how one of my cousins made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich using pancakes instead of bread. Pretty sure he was high.]

"It's definitely not boring," Vivian agreed. [Now let's find out if it's good.]

It was.

The two chatted and ate, discussing all sorts of things. It was starting to hit her how much Arno had been insulated from the world before coming here - there were so many things she didn't know about, so many things she didn't even know she had been missing out on. There was something kind of delightful about the prospect of getting to introduce her to those things.

Vivian took a moment to explain to Arno why people wish there were only three Star Wars movies, and they'd have to see those three specifically. It was around this time that the conversation fell into a lull, and Arno changed his gender back to male again.

[So... sorry if this is a weird question,] Vivian started, [but... how did your family deal with the whole gender thing?]

It couldn't have been too bad. He still lived with his parents, as far as Vivian could tell.

Vivian had a lot of feelings about all of that - which she wasn't expecting. It almost made her want to cry for some reason? But that didn't make sense. She guessed the hormones she was on were supposed to give her mood swings sometimes, and maybe this was one of those.

She tried to play it off. Arno wouldn't hear anything different in her telepathy-voice.

[It's really cool that... well, that your parents and your uncle were so cool about it. I actually...] She spent a beat sipping from her drink, as though that would stop her from speaking. Telepathy meant she could be a chatterbox for the whole lunch with her mouth full, without even being rude, and she'd taken that opportunity every time until now. [I'm still trying to figure out how to tell my own family. About my whole thing. They don't live here, so I guess it only really matters when they come to visit.]

She had to wonder how much longer that could work. She'd been on hormones for almost a year now.