Raph guided Yuko to a shady trail head and she looked at it skeptically. She was not entirely comfortable in nature. She was mostly familiar with nature that was Central. And Parked.

“Are there bears? It looks bearish.”

“Yes, there are bears.”

“What!? I was kidding! There are bears!? Are they hungry?”

“I mean, they’ve been up and about post-hibernation for a few weeks, so yes, I imagine so, but they're not peak hungry?”

“I taste great, Raph. I’m not sure if this is a good idea.”

Raph gave her a long look and a little color moved into their cheeks.

“They’ve never had a bear attack at the resort, and if a bear shows up, I promise to run much more slowly than you do," they assured her.

Yuko laughed. “I doubt you could run faster than me if you tried, though! I ran track in high school and that was without a life-and-death motivator coming in hot behind me. It was the only sport I didn’t hate. I’d had a whole lot of practice running from people, figured I might as well get a scholarship for it.”

“What? Why? Why did you have to run from people?”

Okay, here we go. There was a whole lot of debate in the trans community about this moment. About whether anyone was ever owed the disclosure of private medical information unrelated to transmissible diseases just because two people might have sex. As if sex with Yuko could fundamentally change who someone was and she owed them a warning before she de-straightened them? 

If a trans person felt that they did need to tell a potential sexual partner about their transition beforehand, when was the optimal time to do it? That was another big question mark. Where to have the conversation was also fraught— a lot of trans people advocated having the conversation somewhere public for safety reasons, but discussing her sex life in public always added to the general unpleasantness of the ordeal. It really pissed Yuko off that other people’s opinions about her body could feel so important to them that they might feel justified in physically attacking her. Trans people were at a four times higher risk of being murdered than the average person in the US, however, and she didn’t let herself forget that statistic. Yuko did prefer to handle disclosure in advance of sex, but only if she was relatively confident they were heading for the bedroom. If she had any suspicion that the person who had asked her out might have any tendency towards violence or transphobia, she shut the whole thing down entirely. 

Yuko's post-transition life had been going pretty smoothly, largely because she was lucky enough to have passing privilege. Because she’d had no support from her parents and no money or insurance coverage until she got her first real job, she'd transitioned well after puberty. Nevertheless, she presented as very feminine. She was only five-six and she had a slender build. Like many Asian people, she’d had relatively little facial and body hair, and what she’d had was dark enough to respond well to laser hair removal. After college, her career in finance provided insurance and a salary generous enough to pay for therapy, hormones, and top and bottom gender-affirming surgery with spectacular surgeons. She’d also had a few minor facial feminization procedures involving shaping her chin and jaw and reducing her adam’s apple. The hair on her head had shown no signs of thinning so far, so she didn’t have to deal with hair transplants or hair loss drugs. She had recovered well from her surgeries, fortunately. With regular dilation, her vaj had been very good so far about not trying to undo itself and she had excellent sensation in her new clitoris, vulva, and vagina. She’d had the works, and the works had worked.

All in all, despite an exhausting and difficult start in life, she’d been unbelievably blessed in her adulthood, and was thrilled that her body now looked just like she’d always felt it should. Better, even. Still, after all the meds and expense and physical pain, after the hours and hours of therapy, here she was--scared. She checked her passing privilege at the door when she chose to disclose. Perversely, sometimes, the more easily people read her gender correctly, the more aggressive those people got if they decided that her disclosure meant she had been maliciously “fooling” them. It was never not scary to Yuko to disclose her medical history to someone she was seeing. Never. 

Yuko hadn’t had any really frightening episodes related to disclosure so far— one polite and respectful opt-out and a couple of opt-ins that didn’t have staying power. She never took the next result for granted, however. On that note, and because she felt the conversation might lead towards disclosure on the hike, she wanted it done before they were out of sight and earshot of the retreat center. She mostly knew Raph wouldn’t freak out or hurt her, she knew it, but that wasn’t enough. She always had a back-up plan in place, and no matter what she knew, her muscles were tensed, her adrenaline was high, her armpits were sweaty, and blood was pounding in her ears as she spoke.

“Raph, I’m a trans woman. When I was a kid, I presented as a very feminine boy. I got bullied and chased a lot. I got caught a couple of times. That motivated me to get very fast, very quickly.”

“Are you? Well, that explains the amazing energy you give off, and why you have so much of it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me, actually,” they said. “I’m really sorry you got chased and bullied. That sucks. Were you badly hurt?”

Ok? Yuko scanned their face. Raph wasn’t trying to cover their surprise, they were just not surprised. Raph had absorbed the big reveal very quickly and moved on to the chasing and bullying issue without missing a beat, but it didn’t seem to be because they felt awkward. Ok, so that was kind of a new reaction in her admittedly slim portfolio of dating disclosure reactions. Frankly, those opt-ins hadn’t been worth the anticipatory angst—not bad, just dull. In the end, the disclosure anxiety was so steep and the hormones so thick and zesty that she and her libido had agreed not quite a year ago that they were on a break. Thus Nachelle’s excitement when she’d manifested a case of the hots for the Snack. 

As she sorted through her reactions to their reaction, she remembered that there had been a question in there. “Uhh, no, I just got pushed down and punched and kicked a few times, shirt torn open. Nothing broken. More humiliated than seriously hurt.”

“I’m so sorry. My gender expression was a little too avant garde for the Tampa Bay area, too, so I got the shit kicked out of me outside the mall once by a bunch of burnouts, and had a couple persistent bullies at school. Luckily, I had the most ferocious mother possible, and the most supportive dad, and they went apeshit until the administration actually did something about it. In high school, my brother Gabriel, who at that point was like… five inches shorter than me, kicked a guy right in the fork once for trying to pull up my skirt at a pep rally. Just nailed him right in his princely delicates. In front of the whole gym. The crowd went wild. No one was ever prouder to earn a two-day suspension than Gabriel was that day. My parents picked us up and we went to Disneyworld for two days as a middle finger to the school. Ah, good times. Was your family supportive?”

Yuko just looked up at them as they walked along the path, blinking rapidly, unable to imagine growing up in a family like that. It would have made things a hell of a lot easier. No wonder Raph was so chill and wholesome. “Um, they are… not supportive. My mom still cries at random intervals every time we see each other. My dad and I barely talk. They both still dead-name me. Luckily, there’s therapy. And Nachelle.”

“I see. That sucks. That really sucks. I’m really sorry.” Raph leaned over and gave her a gentle one-armed hug, resting their cheek on the top of her head for a moment, and that made two damned tears leak out of the corners of her eyes. She hastily swiped them away with her fingertips. What the fuck. She never cried! At least, not in front of other people. Not counting Nachelle, obviously.

“It is what it is.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I like to get that conversation out of the way. If you put your hands on me, I don’t want it to be done out of gay panic or vengeance or anything like that. Obviously some parts of me require slightly different care and handling than the stock female body, so there’s that, too.” That was too much to say. That had probably sounded like an invitation. She had said too much just then. As usual. Shit, shit, shit.

“Wait. You’re thinking about letting me put my hands on your body?” Raph asked alertly, coming to a total stop. Yuko stopped with them. They looked down at her with unmistakable hunger and no aura of zen detachment at all.