Composed at Randy’s (Diner Days)

1. Wren

Chapter 1

Wren

T his is literally the dumbest thing I have ever done.

Why did I think I could be left alone during a major deadline?

Why did I tell my agent, my handler, and my closest friend that I would be fine without them because another one of them would be around to take care of me?

Go back and read the first line again. I am a total fucking dumbass.

Smooth brain. No thoughts. Not a single smarty wrinkle to be found.

Sigh.

Everyone keeps going on about how genius my work is and how my mind operates on an entirely different level. What they don’t realize is that said level is the very bottom of the sub-basement.

All of my fancy, inspired ideas?

Yeah, those aren’t mine.

No, no, I’m not stealing them or anything. They come from me, but they also don’t. I don’t think about what I’m doing when I’m painting or creating a piece. Something makes my brain go ding! and I have to do something about it.

Honestly, I don’t think about anything at all.

That’s why I have every art medium under the sun in my studio. That way, when I go to start on a new piece, I can just open the gates to Artland and let whatever is in there do its thing.

Then I let go.

All sense of self vanishes, and when I come back to myself, I either have a finished piece, or I’m lying face down on the floor in a puddle of drool because I passed out from exhaustion.

Or at least that’s what used to happen before my bestie Marty found out how bad my lack of self-care was.

Once he did, he forced me to accept one of the dozens of agents beating down my door to represent me.

I’d been putting it off, because how is a person supposed to choose the right agent when they can’t remember to eat regularly or pay their bills on time?

Fortunately, Marty did it for me, and I crafted a statue in his honor. No, seriously. I totally did. Some people are joking when they say that, but I really did. You know that new statue downtown? I slapped Marty’s face on it and then inscribed Marty Rocks! right under the armpit where a casual viewer wouldn’t see it.

I made sure Marty saw it, though. I could tell he liked it by the way he hugged me until I nearly passed out.

I’m a bit on the small side compared to Marty, so getting the stuffing hugged out of me isn’t much of a challenge for him.

So anyway, after Marty found my agent, Shelly, I started getting regular gigs, and I went from financially secure to holy shit rich. It was pretty nice.

It wasn’t until Shelly found out how I lived that she got me a handler. I mean, Marty had told her I needed help and explained my situation, but Shelly had thought it meant I needed a housekeeper to come and check on me once a week and an accountant to pay my bills for me.

When I went MIA on her for a week and my housekeeper found me unconscious on my balcony, Shelly flipped out and got me someone to manage my entire life for me.

Enter Kai. He’s awesome. Ever since Shelly hired him, I haven’t passed out from hunger or sleep deprivation a single time.

It’s been great, and I love him with all my heart.

Not that way. Kai is straight, and I’m… well, I don’t know exactly what I am. I haven’t had a lot of time to explore all of that since I transitioned, but I definitely enjoy riding a dick.

It’s been a whole-ass journey for me. The gender thing, I mean.

Marty was great about all of it when I started realizing that my outsides didn’t meet my insides, but then Marty is about as queer as they come.

Marty raised me after my parents died, by the way. He didn’t have to, but I was eleven, he was eighteen, and we’d permabonded at the fancy art school I’d been attending since I was five.

I know our ages are a bit extreme for us to be best friends, but for us, it just works.

So Marty was my legal guardian when I hit puberty and had the whole Oh god what is happening to me??? Make it stop!!! thing start up.

He made sure I had access to puberty blockers as soon as possible so I didn’t have to worry about getting major changes I’d need to have reversed, which is totally sweet in my opinion. Blockers don’t always work that way for trans folks, but I was one of the lucky ones. Bottom surgery was enough of an ordeal without needing to add top surgery into the mix too. I only required minor intervention in that area.

Anyway, let’s fast forward to right now. I’m twenty years old, a wildly successful artist, trans, and dumb as a bag of rocks.

But I have Marty, Shelly, and Kai to help me out with that last part, so life is pretty great.

Except for today, I guess.

When Shelly informed me that she’d be out of town for a month to shepherd a baby artist through the challenges of spontaneous fame and fortune, I’d been all, “Don’t worry! I have Marty and Kai to help me while you’re gone!”

Unfortunately, my smooth brain completely forgot about that when Kai told me he needed to go home to Japan for a while because his dad had gotten sick and he needed to be there for him and his mom.

I told him, “No sweat! I’ve got Shelly and Marty! Go take care of your family, my dude.”

Aaaaand when Marty had some bigass gay event thing going on in Brazil, I’d forgotten all about Kai’s and Shelly’s situations and told Marty to go have a blast.

Hell, I didn’t even have a housekeeper anymore because Kai made sure he and I kept my place clean. He didn’t believe in housekeepers, so he made me do housework with him. He also made me shower (alone, you perverts), do grocery shopping with him, and water my plants.

He was nice and didn’t make me deal with my own paperwork and bills. He saw that it seriously put a dent in my ability to create art, so he made sure my accountant continued to take care of most of it. Kai took care of the rest.

Kai was super worried about leaving me when he went back to Japan, but he trusted Shelly and Marty, and he was so worried about his dad dying that he forgot to check in with them before he left.

He nearly left burn marks on the carpet as he went.

You’d think that kind of energy would make an impression on a guy, and that I’d remember it, but I was on a deadline, and as I said before, when I’m in Artland, I’m gone.

Sometimes I’m not sure anyone understands exactly how gone I am when that happens.

When I finally surfaced today, two weeks had gone by since everyone had skedaddled, I was out of food, horribly sleep-deprived, and my phone was in a pitcher of water.

Why?

No clue. I think from now on you should just chalk all the weird stuff up to smooth brain syndrome, okay?

So here I am, stumbling down an unfamiliar street in search of food because my stomach is trying to eat its way to my spine.

I can’t call for takeout because my phone is dead as a doornail, and who has a landline these days? Not me, that’s for sure.

My feet are wobbly, and my eyes have this permanently sparkly and gray at the edges thing going on, but if I can just get some food in me, I’ll be okay.

Then I can sleep, and I won’t have to worry about Shelly, Marty, and Kai blowing three separate gaskets when they come back and realize I spent weeks completely unsupervised.

Hell, they might even be impressed. Kai might even let me out of his sight for more than ten minutes without calling to check up on me every three. He’ll probably leave the tracker on my phone, though, but that’s just common sense when it comes to me.

Hey, look! There’s a funky neon light on a store front up ahead. Maybe they have food. I wonder if they know it’s really blurry and wiggly. Maybe I’ll warn them about it when I get some food in me.

Man, I’m tired.