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Honestly, Rick just kind of forgot he didn’t have a dick until Illana’s hands already were in his pants.
He hadn’t had sex in awhile, maybe that was why. Not since the divorce at least. Rick didn’t really do hookups and he was used to the equipment he was working with enough that he didn’t think much of it during solo sessions.
Or maybe he’d just gotten caught up in the moment. He liked the attention from a pretty girl even if he didn’t want to like it and he hadn’t actually thought things would get this far. There were a dozen bigger, more important reasons he shouldn’t be having sex with the princess than his lack of a penis. It was pretty low on the priority bracket.
Rick’s brain just kind of turned off when she started kissing him. She was touching him in a way that felt nice, he liked the way her body felt against his, he was distracted by the feeling of the warmth of her skin contrasting with the coolness of the bathroom, he could feel the arousal start to pool between his legs… He was feeling, not thinking, and that’s where the problem was.
He felt slender fingers brush something that was not nearly hard enough and a bit too damp to be a dick. Confusion whirled through his mind before he was slammed back into reality, sitting straight up and looking right into Illana’s equally surprised eyes.
“You are… woman?” she asked and the stab of dysphoria that followed killed any semblance of arousal that may have lingered.
“No,” Rick said but it was too late. Illana was already pushing herself off him.
“I’m sorry, Richard,” she murmured and by the time Rick turned, she was already out the door. And in her haste, she left the door wide open, leaving him exposed to the stares of the three pairs of eyes watching from the hall.
Rick stared out at his spectators. G.I. Robot, Weasel, and Doctor Phosphorous stared back. Weasel blinked slowly, one eye at a time. Rick opened his mouth to say something but his mouth went dry before the words could form.
“Not how I expected that to go,” Phosphorous commented, glancing in the direction Illana ran and then back at Rick himself. “Hey, put your pants back on, general. No one wants to see all that.”
“Don’t tell anyone about this!” Rick yelled, voice cracking. He closed his legs quickly and covered the scars on his chest with one arm. The princess seeing him like this was one thing but Phosphorous? Wait no, scratch that. Weasel probably had no idea what he was looking at and had no boundaries. Weasel wandering in would be so much worse. Probably not worse than G.I. Robot asking questions though. Would he even do that? G.I. Robot didn’t care about these sorts of things but Rick wasn’t exactly thinking rationally right now.
“What? Your massive L with the princess?” Phosphorous asked almost lazily. “Or that you got that transgender swag?”
Rick spluttered. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Phosphorous shrugged. “I dunno. That’s what Nina says when I make jokes about how shit archeologists are at gendering bones. See, they usually-”
“Just get out!”
“Geez, chill,” Phosphorous grumbled, kicking Weasel out of the doorway and reaching to close the door. “Not like that’s nothing I’ve never seen before.”
“Get out!” Rick yelled again and threw a toilet paper roll at the closing door for good measure. Could this night get any worse?
It turned out the night could get a lot worse because Nina and the Bride had gotten out of the castle and now Rick had to ride in a compact van with Alexi and the three guys that had just seen him naked. At least Rick could sit in the front away from the rest of the Commandos, but it was a small condolence considering Illana might’ve told Alexi about him. He didn’t know why she would have but the thought was eating his brain and just wouldn’t stop.
Alexi was acting normal though so after giving his thoughts time to settle, Rick figured it was probably fine.
There was too much going on the rest of the night for Rick’s thoughts to truly settle but an odd sense of calm struck him when G.I. Robot hoisted a bathtub into the van and Rick saw Nina without her suit on.
She was fish all over, which Rick sort of expected, but he hadn’t really thought about what she looked like under her suit. It was dark and the water distorted his view a bit but Nina wasn’t covering her chest, both hands clasped below her pelvis, leaving her breasts in full view. Rick found himself staring. It wasn’t sexual, he felt kind of gross after his encounter with Illana anyway, but he’d sort of seen Nina as a kid until now, maybe even a little tomboyish. What he was seeing now was all woman. It was almost jarring.
“Don’t worry, Nina,” Phosphorous assured her as he and G.I. Robot held onto her tub, keeping it from sliding around the van. “Ricky here’s trans too.”
“That doesn’t mean I want him looking!” Nina snapped, voice distorted by the water, and Rick suddenly realized there was a reason why both her hands were occupied covering her genitals instead of her chest. Rick tore his gaze away and tried not to look as embarrassed as he felt.
“Sorry!” he yelped and stared up at the ceiling. The comment Phosphorous made earlier made a little more sense now. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Bride raise an eyebrow at him. He tried not to scowl. “And don’t tell people that, Phosphorous!”
“Was that supposed to be a secret?” the Bride murmured and the comment was enough to keep Rick quiet until they got back to the castle.
They got back to the castle, fought a bit, G.I. Robot exploded, and Phosphorous and Weasel beat the shit out of Circe. Now they just had to wait things out until A.R.G.U.S. came for clean up. Rick didn’t really want to wait it out, not when the people he was actively avoiding were also the only people who spoke the same language as him.
The Bride hunted him down first. Her first words weren’t what Rick was expecting.
“I didn’t pick this body, you know,” she said like she was making casual conversation and maybe she was. Rick really didn’t know what to expect. “No one does, really, but all my body parts were picked for a reason. Makes it a lot easier to feel bitter about the way I was born when I know there are a couple of specific someones to blame.”
“Um, okay?” Rick could relate to some of that, he supposed, but he didn’t know why the Bride was bringing it up.
“My resentment about my birth isn’t quite the same as you transgender people but talking to Nina and Phosphorous at Belle Reve has been rather enlightening,” the Bride went on and Rick still didn’t know where she was going with this. She turned and let her eyes meet Rick’s. “I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t pass well, Rick. Never would’ve guessed you were transgender if Phosphorous hadn’t said anything.”
“But you said- It sounded like you already knew,” Rick stuttered out and he hated himself for it. He sounded like a child. “Before the van, I mean.”
“Yeah. He brought it up on the flight over.”
“He did?”
“You were asleep.”
“Oh.”
“Not in a bad way or anything. We just only have so many things to talk about in prison and being trans isn’t exactly easy there,” the Bride told him. “He just said you sort of reminded him of him before, you know, all his skin got blasted off.”
That was a shocker. “Phosphorous is trans too?”
The Bride looked faintly surprised. “He didn’t make that stupid joke about archeologists?”
Did he? Rick remembered him saying something about bones but he’d been too panicked to really be paying attention. “He said something about transgender swag?”
“Ah. Right.”
“Any idea what that means?”
“Nope. Ask Nina if you really want to know,” the Bride told him. “She knows all those young people slang words better than any of the rest of us do.”
Rick nodded and hummed in acknowledgment but he never actually went to go ask her. He didn’t really need to know. It was just kind of nice to know there were people around who understood, even if they were monsters.