As I left the house, I took a deep breath. We were free.  I still wanted to go to that guy in Avenglade and get proper ID for me, but that was only a short stop – I’d picked a city far from here for us to live in, that supposedly was a new growing center of supernatural life, so that would be our ultimately destination.  Meanwhile, Phil and Mom and Jolene and that stupid house that Ezra had taken such good care of were now past us.  I hoped they’d realize just how much they depended on him when he wasn’t there tomorrow to keep the place spotless and perfect.

“Bubble gum life,” I muttered.

Stop by the bank, Ezra pleaded.  I don’t want you to get mugged.

I raised an eyebrow.  I beg your pardon, you think someone can mug me?

Yes, yes, you’re strong for a supernatural, or at least I think you are?  But we don’t know if there are stronger ones out there!  Plus we kind of need to keep a low profile, right?

I conceded that he was right, but there wasn’t a branch for the bank Dad had used – his account now belonged to Ezra, but Mom and Phil had never known about it because they didn’t think Dad would have left anything of value behind – on the other side of town, so I took a bus over to the nearest location to add most of the cash to the modest amount already in there, then bought a ticket for Avenglade and settled into the bus.

Finally.  Ezra could heal from what his Mom and her dumb family had done to him and we could start to move on.  Finally we could be free.

Now we just had to figure out what kind of life we wanted to create for ourselves.

~~~~~

Several Years Later 

Ezra

Right on time, I headed out of work and began the bike ride home.  I lived a short enough distance from work that I tried to bike or walk when I could, unless weather kind of made me need to take the car.  I hated having to deal with parking, though, so sometimes I’d rather take the bus than drive if I needed to.  Especially when it was such a short distance.

I was happy with the life Kat and I had created.  It’d been a few years now since we’d officially been on our own, and my first goal, after getting a GED, had been to get a job.  I’d ended up getting a simple, straightforward data entry job which I’d been so good at I’d ended up getting a job as a city/court clerk – combined due to the history of the city and its particular nuances, apparently – after a very short time.  That was where I still was, and while some people didn’t enjoy it or found it tedious, I actually liked it.  I liked the part about there being specific rules to follow and being able to tell immediately if a document didn’t match the requirements.  There was something satisfying to me about filling out forms perfectly.  Granted, it wasn’t as much fun when the forms were submitted by someone else and were a mess, or I came across a document that was a total mess, but I still liked the rigid rules of my job.  It worked for me.

Kat, meanwhile, had followed her own path.  She now helped manage an LGBTQ+ nightclub and she enjoyed it a lot.  She liked the vibrant nightlife.  We were both fairly young but had found our preferred careers and were enjoying our new life a lot.

The only downside might be the lack of personal life outside of work.  Well, in a way.  I actually had a great friend who worked with me and we could talk about stuff for hours, because we both thought in very analytical terms, while Kat was currently dating a girl.  The problem was, Kat’s relationships never seemed to last long and I was afraid it was due to me.

Speaking of, when I unlocked the door to our place and started carrying the bike in, I heard someone call out.

“Kat?  Is that you?”  Leah, who had keys to our place, appeared down the hall, her face visibly falling when she saw it was me.  “Oh.  Ezra.  Um, is Kat, uh, available?”

I opened the door to the garage, stuck my bike inside, and then closed it again.  “Sure, just a second.”

When I sort of “suggested” that Kat shift forward, she seemed kind of reluctant or in a bad mood, which was all the warning I had that things were about to go poorly.

“That’s the third time you’ve done that this week,” Kat snapped as she materialized instead of me, folding her arms across her chest and glaring at Leah.  “It’s not cool, Leah.  Not cool at all.”

Leah, who’d been excited for all of a second when Kat appeared, now looked as confused as I felt.  “Done what?  What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how the moment you see Ezra, you immediately want him to switch to me!”  Kat sounded both angry and frustrated.  “It’s not fair, you know.  You can’t just ask him to stop being around all the time!”

Kat, I protested, it’s pretty normal.  She’s dating you after all, not me.

Leah seemed to be on the same wavelength as me.  “He’s fine, I don’t have a problem with him, it’s just – I was hoping to see you, you know?  Maybe hang out for the night?”  She looked at Kat hopefully.  “I know you’re off tonight, so I thought we could catch a movie or something.”

Kat was definitely not in the “catch a movie” mood, which Leah didn’t seem to have fully processed yet.  “No!  I don’t want – I don’t want to be with someone who’s just going to dismiss Ezra like that,” she stated firmly, ignoring the way Leah’s eyes widened a bit.  Clearly not on the same page at all.  “You never want to spend any time with him, you always immediately just ask to switch to me!  That’s not okay!”

Leah’s expression was now more withdrawn, but with a touch of anger on her end, too.  “I didn’t sign up to date both of you, you know!  I’m gay!  I’m not interested in him like that!  I don’t want to go on dates with your brother, I want to go on dates with you!  What’s so weird about that?  It’s awkward enough to realize that you never really have any privacy from him so anything we ever do together isn’t really private, but you don’t even get to spend a normal amount of time ‘in front’ or whatever – it’s not like you have a normal amount of hours to your day, you have to split it with your brother!  So what’s so weird about me wanting to make sure I’m spending all the quality time possible with you that we have together?”  She asked, her eyes pleading with Kat to understand.

Kat frowned instead, pinching the bridge of her nose as she squeezed her eyes shut for a second.  “He’s.  Not.  My.  Brother.  I’ve explained this.  He’s another side to me!  We’re the same person, really – it’s not two separate people.  We’re one.  But we just so happen to have two natures within the one person.”

Leah stared at her for a second.  “Then why the hell did you agree to date me?”  She burst out.  “You knew I was gay and would never be into him that way!  So why date someone who can’t be with both sides of you, if you’re really the same person?”  She ran her hand through her hair, trying to calm down.

“You’re right,” Kat said, her tone cool now.  “We shouldn’t be dating.  I think it’s time we quit seeing each other.  Oh, and I’ll need that key back.”

Leah stared for a second, but her expression turned resigned as she retrieved the copy of our housekeep and dropped it into Kat’s outstretched hand.  “Don’t play around with other people like me,” she told Kat.  “Don’t date people anymore unless you already know they’ll be okay with both of you.”  And then she walked out, almost slamming the door behind her, leaving Kat – and me – alone in our rented townhouse.

Kat, I complained as soon as silence fell, you need to stop doing that!  You keep expecting your partners to want to spend as much time with me as they do you, and that doesn’t even make sense – that’s not how dating works!  Of course they want to spend time with you!  They have feelings for you, you doofus.  Not for me.

Kat huffed as she plopped down onto the couch in front of the TV.  Yeah, well, I’m tired of them doing that.  Her and the ones before her.  We tell them about the chimera thing, which is a big enough thing to reveal, and inevitably they’re disappointed, shocked, blah blah, and the ones that say they’re okay with it eventually reveal that they’re not so much.  She’d have kept asking me to be present instead of you, you know.  Eventually she’d have wanted it to be all me and for you to have no presence.  That’s how it works.

I wasn’t actually convinced that Leah would have wanted me to not exist at all, but I felt like I sympathized with Leah more than Kat did.  I understood being gay and not being interested in someone like that.  I also thought I might understand better why she was so frustrated with having to spend time with me when she wanted to spend time with Kat, but Kat always got mad if I talked about that too much, so I decided not to pursue that line of thought for the moment.

You are – were – dating, I pointed out.  Naturally she cares more about you than me!

Well maybe she shouldn’t!

For a moment, silence as Kat’s angry words sunk in on both of us.

Kat took a deep breath, then tried again.  I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t appreciate you, too.  But she didn’t even want to try to get to know you very well.  She just wanted to me to show up.

I was confused, to be honest.  If you were dating someone, shouldn’t you care about them more than most other people?  I mean, not entirely – there were always those situations where people dropped their friends and family in favor of a significant other, which wasn’t good either, but at the same time, in theory you were supposed to like the person you were dating more than everyone else.

So why on earth did Kat expect the people she dated to like me as much as her?  That was a ridiculous idea, anyway – I obviously paled in comparison to her, so any time people got to know us, they’d naturally pick her.  I’d always be second place.  If it were anyone but Kat, I might have minded, but I loved her and admired her just as much as they did – probably more, to be honest – so I just accepted it as a fact of life.

You’re thinking stupid stuff, I can tell, she interrupted.  I can’t hear your thoughts if you’re not letting me in, but they get this, uh, flavor to them, I guess?  I can tell when you’re thinking something dumb.

I mentally rolled my eyes.  That’s not a thing.  And no, I’m not.

Uh-huh.  Totally plausible.  100% believable.  No doubts left in my mind whatsoever.  Kat dropped her sarcasm to exchange it for a more serious tone.  If you’re blaming yourself for me breaking up with Leah, don’t.  It’s not your fault.  It’s mine, probably – maybe she’s right about having too many expectations.  She let out a heavy sigh.  I just keep hoping that eventually we’ll meet someone who’s not only okay with the chimera thing, but likes both of us equally.

Yeah.  Right.  Now I was the one filled with sarcasm.  No one would ever like both of us equally, it wasn’t possible.

But – but maybe someday someone would like me, too, at least enough to be willing to hang out with me sometimes and not always ask Kat to appear instead.  Maybe that would be enough to make Kat happy.  I hoped so.  I knew she wanted that for us, and sometimes I thought it was more for me than for her, because she knew I longed for physical comfort, yet I was too withdrawn to make friends easily.  Maybe all her dating efforts were actually a strange attempt to find someone to make me happy, because she figured I wouldn’t manage on my own.  If so, I didn’t know whether to be insulted or touched, but I was inclined to go with touched.  Kat was the only person that really tried to put me first and think of what I wanted all the time, and the only person who’d ever done that.

I hoped one day she’d stop trying to find something to work that included me more equally.  I hoped eventually she’d accept that the best that could happen was someone willing to befriend me and not be too bothered by the fact that I couldn’t ever leave Kat fully alone.

And that already felt too much to ask.