u/rebirth-publishing

There's a single-occupancy bathroom at the end of the east corridor — the one with the accessibility sign and the slightly sticky lock that everyone knows about and nobody has ever put in a maintenance request for. I've used it before when the men's is occupied. Today I go there first, directly.

I push the button to lock the door and it clicks.

The anatomy makes the mechanics different in ways I'm still working out. The approach, the position, the wiping — this morning was a long private education and I'm applying what I learned, or trying to. I'm mid-process, focused, when the door opens.

Seo-yeon.

She has her phone in one hand and the expression of someone who has come here to be alone for five minutes and found the room occupied in a way she did not expect. The expression lasts a fraction of a second. In that fraction several things move across her face — the first response, whatever it was, then something settling, then a kind of focused stillness that I recognize as her arriving at a decision.

She looks at what I'm doing with the toilet paper. A fraction of a second — she takes it in, decides.

"Other direction."

Then she steps back and closes the door.

I sit there.

Long enough for the heat in my face to recede slightly. Long enough to process the sequence: door open, Seo-yeon, the fraction of a second, the two words, door closed. She saw enough. She said the useful thing and nothing else, and she left.

I finish, wash my hands, look at myself in the small mirror above the sink. My face looks back — unchanged, unhelpful.

I stand there a moment longer than necessary. The encounter keeps replaying: the door, the fraction of a second, her voice saying those two words in that register.

There's also a warmth spreading through me now that has nothing to do with embarrassment. Heat low in my abdomen, a slickness between my thighs that wasn't there five minutes ago. And my chest aches — has ached all day, I realize, the tissue tender against the wool in a way I'd been managing to not notice until I stopped moving. I straighten my jeans and go out.

She's not in the corridor.

Back at the lab she's at her desk, head down, pen moving. She doesn't look up when I come in. I sit down and open the data and we work. The afternoon proceeds. At some point she asks about the confidence interval on ARIA's projection and I tell her I've already set up the full dataset run and she nods and says good. Her voice is exactly as it always is.

I keep looking at the data.

I've been thinking — still thinking, in the background, through the pathway logs and the calibration check and the procurement email — about what her face did in that fraction of a second. The first response, the one she didn't use. I don't know what it was exactly: surprise, probably, and possibly something else, and then the decision to put it all away and leave me with only the practical information. The practical information was useful. I needed it and she gave it and then she removed herself, which was also the right thing.

I want to thank her. I also want to never mention it. These two things are both true and the second one is going to win.

When she said other direction she said it the way you say something to a person you're concerned about. The tone was warmer and more careful than the correction of a stranger's mistake, and I found, in the moment, that I wanted to be spoken to in exactly that register. I'm still not examining why.

At five-thirty I close the logs. Seo-yeon is still at her desk. I say goodnight and she says goodnight and neither of us says anything else.

♦  ♦  ♦

Home by six-thirty. The apartment is exactly as I left it. I drop my bag and stand in the middle of the living room for a moment, not doing anything.

The day has been a lot.

Toast, because toast is the simplest available thing. I stand at the kitchen counter and eat it and look at the wall — the biometric reader, the hallway, Seo-yeon's face in the bathroom doorway. The heat afterward that I still haven't fully accounted for. The afternoon at my desk aware of the seat, the jeans, the ache in my chest.

I put the plate in the sink and go to the bathroom.

There's a smell I've been half-aware of since mid-afternoon. Not unpleasant, just unfamiliar — organic, warm, coming from me. From the warmth between my legs that has been present and absent and present again throughout the day, leaving evidence in my underwear each time. I want to wash it off. I want to feel like myself again, or a version of myself that isn't tracking its own body temperature every forty minutes. I turn the shower on.

I've turned it down without deciding to — the skin calibrating to heat differently now. The water hits my shoulders and runs down and this is immediately not the simple act of washing I came in here for. The chest, first — the tissue tender, the water against it a continuous low-level signal I have to consciously ignore. I soap my arms and stomach, trying to be efficient. The inner thighs report the contact with more detail than I want right now. I keep going. Between my legs the soap and the water and my own hand produce a sharp upward pull and I stop moving for a moment and breathe.

I keep going. Efficient, or trying to be efficient, which is not the same thing.

The smell of the shower is different — steam and soap and underneath it something warmer, something the water is lifting from my skin rather than washing away. I reach up to adjust the showerhead and the movement pulls across my chest and I make a small involuntary sound.

I fight it for a while. I don't win.

My hand moves before I've decided it should — down my stomach, through wet curls, the angle different, the pressure different, everything different, and I brace the other hand against the tile and my knees go slightly loose and it doesn't take long, the buildup faster than I remember, the crest closer. A shudder runs through me. I stand there afterward, hand still pressed to myself, water running over my fingers.

I soap everything again. The lather between my thighs is almost too much, the skin reporting every pass of my fingers with exaggerated clarity. I turn the water cooler. I stand in it until my knees decide to be reliable again.

The towel is worse — terrycloth dragging across the chest, a friction that makes me wince. I end up patting dry instead of rubbing, careful around the places I'm still learning. I wrap the towel around my waist and look at myself in the mirror. Flushed. My face doing something I recognize.

I have laundry to do.

I pull on a t-shirt — the fabric moving across still-sensitive skin, nipples reporting it immediately — and sweatpants, gather the bag from the bedroom, and take it down to the basement.

The laundry room is empty when I get there. I start the machine and stand against the far wall with my phone.

The door opens at the seven-minute mark. The woman from the third floor, with her bag, and behind her a man I haven't seen before — taller than me, a kind of easy proprietary energy, someone who has come along because that's where she's going. I step back to let them get to the machines and hoist myself up onto the top of the dryer to be out of their way.

The dryer is warm from a previous cycle. The machine starts up and the vibration comes through the metal and I realize, about thirty seconds in, that this was not the best place to sit. The warmth, the low steady hum of it — present, impossible to tune out given everything that's already been happening in my body today. I shift. That doesn't help.

The cold air from the corridor is still dissipating and my nipples, already pressed against the thin t-shirt, respond to the temperature change. I'm aware of this the way you're aware of something you can do absolutely nothing about.

The woman glances over. Friendly, neutral. The man clocks me with a brief assessing look and turns back to her.

I look at my phone. The dryer hums. The warmth radiates up through the machine's top and I am acutely aware of exactly how thin the sweatpants are, and of the fact that I am wet from the shower and possibly from other things, and of the smell — faint, warm, recognizably mine — rising in the heat of the room. I breathe through my nose and look very intently at my phone.

"Cold out tonight," she says.

"Yeah." I glance up, smile, look back.

She starts her machine. He leans against the counter. I sit on the dryer and wait for my cycle to end and think about literally anything else, which works moderately well until the machine starts its spin cycle and then doesn't work at all. The man says something to the woman and she laughs. I stare at an article I have not read a single word of.

I pull my laundry out the second the cycle ends, bag stuffed rather than folded, and take the stairs back up.

In bed I look at the ceiling. The apartment quiet around me. I try to order the day into something coherent — the reader, the hallway, the bathroom, Seo-yeon saying two words in a particular voice, the dryer — and the attempt at coherence falls apart about halfway through. The parts don't add up to any shape I recognize.

---

The Premium Patreon version of this post includes images of Caleb in the bathroom at work discovered by Seo-yeon, showering and in the laundry room at the apartment complex. Additional chapters are published weeks ahead on Patreon, along with exclusive content.

A week later. The alarm blares and Caden slams a palm down on it, the sharp sting of impact radiating up his wrist. He stares at the ceiling. Podcast day — out of town, he and Hale are both guests on the show. Keynote finalized. Twenty-eight days since the first flannel seam had scraped his neck raw.

Dampness. Again. Thicker than the consistency of ovulation. He sits up slowly, fingertips brushing his chest — the new contours there that had no business on his body. A clinical prod, just to assess. His fingers recoil as heat pools low in his abdomen, an involuntary twitch of muscle below.

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and freezes.

Red. Streaked across the sheets in a lazy arc, smeared where his thigh had dragged through it.

Period. The word lands like a verdict. He'd been anticipating it but the reality of it punches the air from his lungs. Blood. His. Flowing from an organ that hadn't existed a month ago.

Caden stands too fast, the room tilting, a slight sway in his chest, his nipples grazing the fabric of his t-shirt. He catches himself on the nightstand, knuckles whitening around the edge. The movement pulls at his lower back, a dull throb that had settled in three days prior. He blamed deadlifts at first. Then hydration. Then denial.

The shower stings when the water hits his chest. He turns his back to the spray, letting it pound the ache in his shoulders instead. A trickle of blood runs down his left leg and swirls down the drain.

Caden grabs a handful of toilet paper from the roll and folds it into a makeshift pad. The paper sticks to his skin, already damp. He pulls on fresh boxers, pressing the wad of tissue into place. It shifts when he moves, bunching awkwardly. He pulls on a t-shirt over his small breasts, the weight of the fabric enough to disguise the slight swelling.

He packs fast: laptop, charger, a spare hoodie. By the time he zips the duffel, warmth has seeped through the toilet paper. He locks the cabin door behind him, the morning air crisp against his still-damp hair. He adjusts the rearview mirror and catches his own eye — still recognizable, if softer at the edges.

Driving is worse than he anticipated. Every bump in the road sends a fresh pulse of wetness between his thighs, a slight bounce in his chest. The makeshift pad is already soaked — he can feel blood smear against his skin, the dampness spreading in his boxers. The scent hits him whenever he shifts — metallic, musky, unmistakable. He cracks a window, letting the cold air rush in.

The pharmacy's automatic doors hiss open. Fluorescent lights glare down at rows of pastel packaging — pads with wings, without wings, ultra-thin, overnight. He grabs the first box he sees, fingers stiff around the plastic. The cashier doesn't glance up as he pays, just slides his change across the counter with a mechanical "have a nice day."

The men's room smells like bleach and stale urine. Caden locks himself in the last stall, fumbling with the pad's wrapper. The adhesive sticks to his fingers before he can peel the backing off. The toilet paper wad he stuffed in his boxers earlier clings in damp clumps, fibers fraying where they'd stuck to his skin. He plucks them away with a grimace — too dry, too rough. A few stubborn flecks remain, caught between the folds.

He presses the pad into place, adjusting the wings awkwardly. The material crinkles when he moves. Too loud.

Back in the pharmacy, he grabs a pack of wet wipes off an endcap. A man in scrubs eyes him as he returns to the register, lingering a second too long on the pink box in his hands. Caden keeps his gaze on the credit card reader, thumb jamming the accept button harder than necessary.

The men's room has a new occupant when he returns — some guy in paint-splattered jeans washing his hands at the sink. The air carries a faint iron tang now, unmistakable. The man's shoulders tense as Caden passes. He doesn't look up, but his reflection in the mirror tracks Caden's movement toward the stalls.

Caden locks the door and sits, elbows on his knees. Waits. The faucet runs. Paper towels rustle. The main door creaks shut.

Alone again, he rips open the wipes. The first pass stings — aloe vera and whatever else they'd saturated the fabric with. He wipes methodically, front to back.

At the sink, he scrubs his hands under scalding water. The mirror shows his reflection — jaw set, shoulders tight.

The guest appearance at the podcast studio waits, a short flight away. Caden shoulders his bag. The pad shifts as he walks — not uncomfortable, just present. A reminder.

Outside, the sun has climbed higher, bleaching the parking lot asphalt. He slides into the driver's seat, the engine turns over. He pulls out slowly, avoiding the pothole near the exit. The pad crinkles again when he brakes at the light. A woman in the next car glances over, then away. Caden keeps his eyes on the intersection, hands at ten and two.

The airport looms ahead, its glass facade reflecting the morning sun. Caden parks in short-term, the pad shifting uncomfortably as he twists to grab his duffel from the backseat.

Security is worse than he imagined. The agent at the scanner frowns at his ID, glances up at his face, then back down. "Step aside, sir." A pat-down follows. Caden clenches his jaw, staring straight ahead at the departure board, until he is waved through.

The gate area is crowded. Caden finds a seat near the window, back to the wall. The pad has shifted during the pat-down, edges peeling away. He crosses his legs tighter, willing the adhesive to hold.

Boarding is a blur. He shuffles down the aisle, shoulders hunched to avoid brushing against passengers. His seat is middle — always middle — wedged between a businessman tapping on his laptop and a woman in her sixties knitting what looks like an impossibly long scarf.

The plane taxis. His stomach lurches from the sudden warmth between his thighs as the plane lifts off. He uncrosses his legs slowly, discreetly pressing his knees together. The knitting woman doesn't glance up.

Thirty minutes in, the dampness has seeped through. Caden unbuckles his seatbelt with a click that sounds too loud. "Excuse me," he mutters, squeezing past the woman's yarn. The aisle is narrow, shoulders brushing seatbacks as he makes his way to the rear lavatory.

Inside, the space is claustrophobic — maybe three feet square. Caden locks the door and braces his hands against the sink. The mirror shows his reflection: hair disheveled, lips pressed thin. He turns away.

Changing the pad is awkward in the cramped space. He has to half-squat, one hand bracing against the wall, the other peeling the used pad away. It comes off with a wet sound, adhesive tugging at skin. Blood streaks his inner thighs. He wipes hastily with toilet paper, then fumbles the new pad from its wrapper. The wings stick to themselves at first; he has to peel them apart with fingernails.

The trash bin is nearly full. Caden folds the used pad into a tight square, pressing it down into the crumpled paper towels. His fingertips come away damp. He stares at them for a second before turning on the faucet. The water runs pink for a moment before clearing.

Back in his seat, the knitting woman glances up. "Rough flight?"

Caden forces a smile. "Just tired."

Houston sprawls beneath them as they descend — flat, endless, roads cutting through neighborhoods like arteries. The rental car counter is a blur of fluorescent lights and paperwork. The clerk hands him keys without looking up. "Blue Altima, space twelve."

The podcast studio is tucked between a sushi place and a boutique that sells hand-poured candles. The building has one of those unmarked doors with a keypad — discreet, exclusive. Caden checks his phone. Headshot sent three weeks ago: him in a navy sweater, jaw set, shoulders squared. Neutral. Recent.

The door buzzes before he can press the intercom. Hale stands in the threshold, one hand braced against the frame. He is tall — lean in that effortless way rich men achieve without trying. His gaze flicks down, then up, lingering somewhere around Caden's collarbone.

"Right on time," Hale says, extending his hand. The grip is firm, the skin warm and dry. "Greg has the booth set up."

Caden catches it — the half-second pause where Hale's eyes dart to his throat, his hips, the way his shirt drapes differently now. Then the mask snaps back. Hale steps aside. But there had been something else. A flicker in the corner of Hale's mouth, gone before it fully formed. Not surprise. Not disgust. Something closer to recognition, like he's found a misplaced piece and slotted it back into place.

Greg, the host, sits at the controls — short, muscular, balding, bearded. “Caden, great to meet you.” His grip feels intentionally, overly firm.

Soundproofing panels swallow echoes before they can form. Greg gestures to the guest mic — sleek, matte-black, on a hydraulic arm. "Water's there if you need it."

Caden sits, adjusting the stool height. The pad shifts beneath him, the crinkle muffled by his jeans. The other men don't notice. Greg is fiddling with the mixer, fingers gliding over sliders with practiced ease.

"Level check," Greg says, donning his headphones. He taps his mic twice. "Say something."

Caden leans in. "Testing."

Greg’s eyebrows lift. He adjusts a knob. "Again."

"One two three."

"Good levels," he says finally. He passes Caden a pair of headphones.

The countdown ticks silently on the monitor. The first question lands like a jab — Greg asking about falling testosterone levels in modern men. Caden counters with data on industrialized nations, the numbers rolling off his tongue even as he registers the slow seep between his thighs. The pad shifts when he leans forward, the adhesive tugging at skin that wasn't supposed to be there.

Hale's eyes gleam under the studio lights. "But you'd agree male identity is under siege?"

"Identity's a social construct," Caden says, fingers tightening around his water bottle. "Testosterone's measurable." He takes a sip, throat working. The liquid hits his bladder instantly — another change, another betrayal. He crosses his legs at the ankle, pressing his thighs together.

Thirty minutes in, Greg pivots to Scandinavian paternity leave policies. Caden rattles off statistics, voice steady even as warmth blooms beneath him. The pad is definitely fuller now, the dampness creeping toward the edges. He shifts his weight.

At the fifty-three minute mark, Hale discusses egg freezing trends in Silicon Valley. Caden's left palm goes slick against his knee. He wipes it discreetly on his jeans. The studio air smells like coffee and cologne — sandalwood, overpowering. Beneath it, something metallic.

He excuses himself during a buffer track, grabbing his bag with a muttered bio break. Hale's gaze follows him to the door, lingering on the duffel slung over his shoulder.

The men's room tiles echo under his shoes. Empty. Thank Christ. He locks himself in the farthest stall, back pressed against the door as he fumbles with his belt. The pad is soaked through — dark red in the center, edges just starting to stain his boxers. He peels it off with a grimace, the adhesive pulling at tender skin.

New pad. Wrapper crinkling too loud in the tiled silence. He presses it into place, wings awkwardly folded. The toilet seat is cold when he sits, thighs splayed. The stream is quieter now, less directed. No aiming required anymore. He wipes front to back, the motion practiced now.

At the sink, he scrubs his hands raw. The mirror shows his reflection — jaw set, shoulders tense. Same face, mostly. Same mind.

He takes the used pad to the trash, carries it out wrapped tight in toilet paper, four steps from stall to counter, drops it in. Greg is near the urinal. Eye contact in the mirror. Both proceed. He washes his hands. He goes back to the studio.

Hale looks up as Caden settles onto the stool. "Everything good?"

"Fine." Caden adjusts his mic. "Where were we?"

Hale studies him for a beat too long before tapping his notes. "Page twelve. Cohabitation paradox."

The last thirty minutes pass in a blur of rebuttals and citations. Caden's voice never wavers, even as the fresh pad grows damp beneath him. When Greg finally hits stop, the silence rings louder than the debate had.

"Solid take," Greg says, peeling off his headphones. "You're sharper live than on paper."

Caden unclips his mic. "Thanks."

The playback hits his ears before he is ready for it — his own voice, but not. The timbre is still there, the rhythm of his sentences unchanged, but something in the upper register has softened. Like someone had taken fine-grit sandpaper to the edges of his consonants. He watches Greg’s producer — a woman in her thirties with a messy bun — scroll through waveforms without comment.

Greg leans forward, elbows on the mixing board. "Third take's strongest." His finger hovers over the keyboard, then taps once. The playback jumps to Caden mid-sentence: —correlation doesn't imply causation. The words ring clear, authoritative, but underneath them a faint lilt that hadn't been there before. Like his vocal cords are strung tighter.

Greg’s thumb rubs his lower lip. A hesitation, barely there. Then he nods. "Clean. We'll use this one."

Caden exhales through his nose. He'd recorded every podcast for the last five years in one take. Now he is cherry-picking the least altered version of himself.

"Headshot," Greg says, snapping his fingers at the producer. She rummages in a gear case and produces a DSLR.

The studio lights are unforgiving. Caden stands against the gray backdrop, shoulders squared, chin level. The camera clicks six times in quick succession. On the preview screen, his face looks familiar at first glance — the same sharp jawline, the same heavy brow. But something in the proportions has shifted. His cheekbones catch the light differently. His lips look fuller under the high-contrast lighting. His facial hair entirely absent — not even a hint of a five o'clock shadow.

Greg hands thumb drives to Hale and Caden with the raw files. "Send your edits by Thursday."

Caden dashes to the car to catch his flight back. The seatbelt cuts across his chest at an odd angle, and when he twists to grab his phone from his back pocket, the pad shifts against his jeans. He ignores it, taps the phone screen.

Nothing.

He tries again, angling his face toward the fading daylight. The phone stays dark. His reflection stares back at him — same eyebrows, same nose, but the angles are wrong. The software doesn't recognize him.

Caden sets the phone on the passenger seat. The airport is east; he remembers that much. He pulls out of the lot too fast, gravel spraying behind the tires.

First wrong turn at a fork he doesn't remember. Second at a dead end behind a strip mall. The third time, he circles back to a gas station and buys a paper map with the last of his cash. The attendant doesn't look up from her crossword.

The airport looms just as the map predicted — glass and steel under sodium lights. Caden parks crooked in short-term and jogs for the departures level.

His breath comes sharp as he jogs toward the terminal doors, the rhythmic slap of his sneakers against concrete syncing with an unfamiliar weight shifting beneath his shirt. He hadn't noticed it when he'd left Hale's studio — too focused on navigating with a paper map like some analog relic — but now, with each stride, his chest moves differently.

The fabric of his t-shirt drags across sensitized skin with every upward motion, then settles again as his feet hit the pavement. Three weeks ago, he'd have called it impossible. Now it is just physics.

The automatic doors hiss open. Caden slows to a walk, immediately aware of how the dampness under his arms makes his shirt cling. He'd packed light — just his laptop bag and a hastily stuffed duffel — but the strap crosses right over the new topography of his chest. He adjusts it twice before giving up and carrying both bags in one hand. Glancing down, he sees feminine nipples peaking through the t-shirt fabric.

A group of college kids streams past, one of them glancing back at him with vague curiosity. Or maybe it is just the sweat on his forehead.

The check-in line is twelve deep. By the time he reaches the counter, his collar is damp with sweat.

"Boarding pass," he says, sliding his ID across the laminate.

The agent types without looking up. "Pre-check?"

"No."

She glances at his face, then back to the screen. "Gate C17." The printer whirrs.

Security is worse. The TSA woman holds his ID at arm's length, eyes darting between the photo and his face. Her thumb rubs the edge of the card like she's testing its authenticity.

"I lost weight," Caden says.

She tilts her head. A second agent drifts over, hands on his hips.

"Strep throat," Caden adds. "Couldn't eat for two weeks." He crosses his arms over his chest.

The first agent's mouth tightens. She hands back his ID with a flick of her wrist. "Shoes off, belt off."

The metal detector beeps anyway. A pat-down follows — quick, impersonal. Caden stares straight ahead at the departure board until he is waved through.

The flight home passes in a haze of engine noise and shifting pressure. Caden presses his forehead to the cool oval window, counting runway lights as they taxi. His phone — still useless — weighs heavy in his pocket.

At midnight, his apartment greets him with familiar silence. He drops his bag by the door and goes straight for the laptop on his desk. The screen lights up, then dims, awaiting recognition. He leans in, letting the infrared scan his face.

Nothing.

He tries again, angling his chin. The cursor pulses mockingly. A third attempt — nose almost touching the screen — and the machine locks him out entirely.

Caden sits back. His books line the shelves behind him, his research notes stacked neatly beside the keyboard. All of it inaccessible behind a wall of code that no longer recognizes him.

---

The Premium Patreon version of this post includes images of Caden deal with his period, at the airport and recording the podcast. Subscribers get early access as well as exclusive content.