Clothing Choices (Mike)

The twins weren’t really familiar with Old Navy. Sure, they saw the brand around, but they didn’t really buy clothes from there. They mostly bought clothes used, and Naomi—and therefore, Orion—had a fair hand at fixing them. They could hem things, sew on patches, and do other useful things, including cooking and cleaning. There was a benefit to being left on your own. You tended to learn how to take care of yourself.

Which made this whole situation even weirder. It had been four years since they’d had a foster parent of any nature. And Mike worried Naomi. He was too…calm.

”You mean you’re dictating how many clothes we get?” Naomi asked. “C’mon, doesn’t that seem a little autocratic—”

”Shut up, Naomi.” They were trying to stay on this guy’s GOOD side, after all. Besides, he could tell when she was protesting just for the sake of doing it.

”But we can buy those clothes…not on your dime?” Not that Naomi went that far. In this, Orion had had more of an influence on her. She wore tank-tops in the appropriate season, sure, and her tops could be a little low cut, but her outfits tended to be getting more…conservative lately. ”Seems fair,” Orion finished, because it did, to both of them.

Naomi waited a minute to see if he had anything else to say, but when he didn’t, she bolted. Orion swayed for a moment, assaulted with new sights—he really hated when she did that—then blinked a couple of times and smiled at Mike. ”Thank you,” he said, and went off with his sister. Getting clothes was always a hassle. If Mike were to watch them, he would’ve seen most of the time they spent arguing and dragging one another off to a different part of the store, because being separated for too long was a strain on their system. Naomi wanted brighter colors, like the neons that were so in. Orion’s expression could be best expressed as long-suffering when she pulled one of those on over his head. Orion, on the other hand, stuck to the plaids that were out of fashion. Eventually, they managed to settle. A couple of shirts that were nearly identical, despite being for the two genders. A couple of pairs of dark jeans—the only thing they hadn’t argued on, although Naomi also threw in a pair of short-shorts for later—and then layers for Naomi and some plain t-shirts for Orion that Naomi didn’t hate.

Clothing shopping had been so much easier, they decided, when they hadn’t even been close to syncing.

They arrived promptly with a cart and gave Mike a look. It really wasn’t that full—their repairs and stipend had given them enough clothes—but each of them seemed to be anticipating a fight.

”How’s that?” Orion offered, in the politer tones.

”I know that.” It was nearly sullen. Naomi didn’t take these kinds of things well, and she didn’t like that none of her clothing choices had been found objectionable. She preferred to at least get some shock on their faces. None at all was—depressing. But only Naomi would really think like that. He had pegged their actions just right. Orion looked relieved that nothing had been chosen out, while Naomi was eyeing Mike as if trying to figure out the next way to get him to react.

Luckily for him, she seemed to be failing this particular analysis.

”We’ve been here for four years,” Orion explained, since Naomi wasn’t inclined to do so. ”And in Michigan before that.”

“So we don’t mind the cold, thank you,” Naomi was quick to add. Orion’s lips pursed, and there was a long silence of them staring at each other before Orion looked back at Mike and spoke again.

”We have some jackets,” he said. ”We stopped growing young, and we repair most of our, uh, stuff.”

”Besides,” Naomi added. ”Most of the ones here are useless. But if you insist, we’ll add some long sleeves or something boring like that.”

”If you’d like.”

It was Naomi’s turn to roll her eyes at this one. Orion had to be too nice always. Always. She folded her arms over her chest but didn’t say a word. This particular conversation wasn’t going how she’d expected it to. She knew it was possible from Orion’s memories, but she hadn’t ever expected a host family to be, well, nice. Especially when you weren’t being nice. Orion had always had the advantage of being cute. She—well, not so much.

Naomi and Orion said nothing on that score. It was true. The plus of being a Gestalt was it was easy for them to huddle together for warmth, even if neither of them would ever admit aloud that that was what they did. They’d also bundled up in multiple layers, which had only worked part of the time. ”Thank you,” Orion said after a moment, because the words came out much easier from his mouth than from hers. ”You don’t have to do that, so it’s…”

”Nice that you are.” This was from Naomi, since she had more experience with the bad aspects of foster families.

“Sounds good,” the two said in chorus. They looked at each other in surprise, as it was one of the first times they’d been in sync since they’d arrived for shopping, then shrugged. Oh well. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

And as for the typical aspects of a stubborn child, Naomi had had those too. She’d just found sarcasm worked better for her later down the line.

”Him, maybe.”

”Her? Not so much.” Which would be weird. Right now they were the same size and could swap things like jackets and shirts (all in a one-way direction toward Naomi, of course, since Orion didn’t wear woman’s clothing. Later they’d get more comfortable, but not right now).

’Let’s just check out then.”

”Where to next, mister?”

The twins stared at him, clearly not sure if he was kidding or not. And when they finally figured out that he was indeed not kidding, but gave shudders in unison. ”Getting up on time,” Orion said.

”Totally got it.”

Walking to school in the winter wasn’t fun. They knew of that through Naomi’s memories. They’d grown up in Michigan, and Naomi had gotten to be extremely good at either bumming rides from parents of friends, skipping class, or scrounging up enough money for a bus pass. No surprise there.

But it was true that the twins were not violent, overly defiant, or even prone to (regular) truancy. Naomi on her own had been somewhat of the second, but even then she’d known that if you had a good home, you didn’t want to royally screw it up on purpose. It was easy enough to do that by accident. And Orion, who had always been the better of the two, now tempered her, and that made things much, much better.

”Why do you require boots?”

”What’s wrong with tennies? Even though I like boots. Actually, could we get some of those ones that are fuzzy on the insides—”

”No.” Orion didn’t often put his foot down, but he would in this. He had absolutely no desire to wear fuzzy boots, and even if it was just Naomi wearing them, he would feel it and it would be disgusting. Besides, he could just tell Naomi wanted to push how much money Mike would actually spend. He could pinch her, but as he’d be the one feeling it the point was moot.

The twins edged a little closer together as the number on the register came up, and eyed Mike, but he didn’t say anything, and they seemed to relax.

No fuzzy boots. Nope. Definitely not.

”Why do I have to be the one—”

”In a skirt?” A pause there as they regarded each other, and then another mutual shudder as they looked away from each other.

”I have shoes.” Naomi sighed. ”He can go first.”

”She thinks I buy lame things anyways.”

Both the twins had remembered the rules, but yes, they did tend to take time for things to sink in. However, there was also the fact that Naomi liked to test and prod at the rules. And as Orion understood her perspective these days, he tended to try it out with her, see how it fit, so to speak.

But Mike…well, so far he liked Mike. And as he couldn’t feel an emotion strongly without Naomi feeling it too—mutually, so to speak—he suspected Naomi did too, even as she crossed her arms and made a face at the idea that she was being ordered to buy boots. But Orion knew she didn’t really mind, and his lips curved up into what might’ve been a smile. ”Thanks,” he said. “We’ll keep that in mind.”

”Waterproof,” Naomi muttered. ”Foster parents have no right to be practical.”

The problem with being typically cisgendered while you were a mixed-gender Gestalt pair was that, well, it was easy to wake up feeling like you’d gained and lost parts. Eventually, they knew that they’d end up as one person in two differently gendered bodies. They were trying to find a middle ground. Sometimes this involved Orion wearing kilts—he did indeed have one—but more usually, Naomi wearing pants. Bras in particular caused a lot of problems. In truth, they were fairly sure—although not clear—that Orion had been just a little more effeminate than Naomi had, and that they’d ended up meeting in the middle to a point that Naomi called ‘normal.’

Kilts were one things. However, that did not mean Orion was ready to try a skirt. The twins both flushed a fiery red, but Naomi laughed.

”Nope. He hasn’t shaved.”

”Shut up.”

Orion did actually shave. Naomi said it felt too weird if he didn’t.

The girl, however, looked thoughtful. ”I might like to try one.”

”But no skirts.”