???
Ulysses finished changing before Sig, so she waits in the showers. It's been too long since she was last here, she looks around the room; a dimly lit corridoor between the changing rooms and pool. Pipes and showerheads jut out of the rough rock walls and spill warm water into a lowered floor, pooling just above her toes.
As the flow pours over her, she feels it trickle down her exposed skin and becomes a little more aware of her body than she would like. Her swimsuit is comprised of a plain black 1 piece suit worn under dark red shorts that must be a size too big for her. Despite the coverage, she feels uncomfortably revealed. At the time when she swam here regularly she had been keeping herself shaved, but she stopped all that a long time ago, and now her wirey frame is sparsely covered in thin patchy hair. Her limbs feel thin and underdeveloped, she can't tell if she's lost weight or just confidence, or both.
Her thoughts are interrupted when Sig enters her field of view. The boy is wearing a sporty one piece - a cute costume with very short legs and no sleeves, with a big cutout showing off the boy's back, all in shade of dull yellow with short soft frills around some of the edges. It's much nicer than Ulysses' swimsuit, and compliments its already pretty body a lot better too. Despite its looks Sig stands awkwardly, holding itself as if totally unaware of its own looks. She glances away with a bitter twinge of envy.
After they leave the showers, Sig is the first to enter the pool. It sits on the edge with its feet in the water before using its one full arm to lower itself in. Dipping its head under the surface and coiling its legs back, it then thrusts forward gracefully, paddling on its front for a short while before flipping over onto its back, where it continues to glide across the surface. Reluctantly, Ulysses slides herself in behind it. She places her goggles on her face, dunks her head under the water, and pushes herself forward into a breaststroke behind the boy.
As she coasts through the surface of the pool, a tranquility passes over Ulysses. Something about swimming always brings this out; the outside world and all its stresses seems to be washed off the moment she steps into the water, every thrust forward only taking her further away. Leaning forward, she dives below the surface and even further away from the world. Everything she sees is a murky blue lit by the shimmer of light dancing across the surface, all sound is drowned out into a low muffle, even gravity cannot reach her while she's sumberged, the bouyancy keeping her hanging effortlessly above the ground.
For a few lengths of the pool, the pair wordlessly swim side by side, basking in the tranquility. After a while of this, Sig stops by the deep end, and stays hanging onto the side. It looks happy, but maybe a little tired. Ulysses lifts her goggles up approaches it, treading water.
"Do you want to rest for a bit?" Ulysses asks.
"Maybe, yeah. It's been ages since I last did this."
"How's the costume?"
"It's good!" Sig beams at her. "It's really pretty, and it's comfortable." It pushes off the wall for a moment to do a little spin, looking down to watch the frills fan out as it turns.
Sig is right, the costume does look very pretty on it. Looking over its soft curves and perfect proportions, Ulysses feels that unwelcome jolt of self-consciousness run through her chest again.
"I think I'm going to do some lengths now." She mutters, sounding more gloomy than she'd intended to come across.
Feeling too awkward to attempt to clarify herself, she quickly turns and kicks off the wall, jetting through the water in a front crawl. She finds her pace and begins to pick up speed. Again, each thrust forward seems to take her further away from the real world, each length takes her further away from her own awkwardness and stress - that seem to follow her every waking moment but here. Ulysses pace slows, suddenly and sooner than it should. She must be more out of shape than she'd thought.
It seems as though she can swim away from everything except her body. Now each thrust forward is a reminder of her weakness, each breath she takes seems to come a moment sooner than she should need to breathe. Ulysses swims harder to keep pace, throwing all her strength her wirey arms can muster into each thrust, moving her legs in a flurry of kicks that quickly lose any rhythm. She has to breathe more to keep up, which means she has to swim harder to keep bringing her head above the water, which only exhausts her more and more until her front crawl deteriorates, dragging herself to the end of the pool in a flailing paddle.
She pulls up next to Sig, who seems to have been watching her for a while.
"Wow, you're way faster than me when you're really trying."
"You think so? I was terrible by the end there."
"But just before that you were going very quick, you were doing that for a while. It's much faster than anything I can do."
"I feel like I have an unfair advantage there."
"You're really good though, how long have you been swimming?"
"Since I was a kid I guess? I think everyone from the platforms gets taught when they're very young."
"That makes sense, with all the water."
"Yeah." Ulysses shrugs.
"I used to go when I was a young teenager, but that was a long time ago. I haven't been in years."
"How come?" Ulysses asks, "what made you stop I mean?"
"I don't really know." Sig gets a bit quieter, "I think I just got busy for a while, too focused on school for anything else. Then by the time I was free again I'd started, you know, turning." It tilts its head and looks downwards as if to gesture at its body. "Didn't really want anybody to see any of this."
"Yeah, I know what you mean."
There is a moment of silence as neither of them know what to say next. Then Ulysses decides to change the topic back to what it was before.
"You're still good at swimming though, even if it's been that long, especially given your - you know, uh."
Sig looks a little confused.
"Sorry," Ulysses says, "I'm not sure how to talk about that without sounding really patronising. Ignore me."
"It's okay, I know what you mean."
"I mean, for someone who hasn't swam in years, you're doing pretty good."
Sig gives Ulysses a small smile, and she kicks off the back wall, swimming with her head under the surface again so she can't embarrass herself any further.
The pair swim some more, Sig continuing with its backstroke and Ulysses eventually returning from her front crawl to her slower but more manageable breaststroke. Most of the awkwardness fades away and they chat a little between lengths, and before long almost an hour has passed.
After climbing out of the water, the pair rinse off the chlorine under the showers, grab their belongings, and look for a changing room. Ulysses goes through two entire row of locked changing rooms, and halfway down another before finding a single empty cubicle. She'd been trying to avoid peak times, they must have been in the pool longer than she'd expected to be.
"You take this one," she says, "I'll look around some more and see if any others get free, I don't mind waiting."
Sig walks in but doesn't close the door. It pokes its head back out, looking up and down the row at all the locked doors, and then forward at Ulysses, who's trying to look like she isn't shivering.
"Are you sure?" Sig asks her, "I don't mind if you change in here with me?"
Ulysses sighs and then reluctantly pokes her head inside. She needs her privacy, and this cubicle is rather cramped for two people, but maybe it'd be fine if they just turned their backs to each other. It's preferable to shivering outside while she waits for someone else to finish, she supposes. Stepping inside, she locks the door behind her and dumps her bag on the narrow bench - Sig has already started changing.
Gingerly, she peels her top off of her chest before wringing the bulk of the water out. As shes steps back to give her legs room to take off her shorts, she instincitively checks over her shoulder to make sure she doesn't bump into Sig, immediately turning her head back when she sees the rear of its entirely exposed body. Of course it's naked, they're both getting changed, what did she possibly think she'd accomplish by looking over? Now acutely aware of her own half-nudity, she rummages through her bag and slips on a shirt to give her a sense of modesty before she goes back to the shorts. It's strange to think how long it's been since she last naked around another Pseudo, strange to think she almost broke that streak without even realising.
Just after she wrings out her shorts and puts her normal pants back on, Sig asks her a question.
"Ulysses, I'm having some trouble, can you help me put this on?" When she turns to reply she's faced with a half naked boy, holding out a bra in its one hand. This isn't the first time she's seen its breasts but the last time was so brief, she hadn't really had a good look. They're each small handfuls, but still a lot larger than Ulysses', and more developed too, with large dark brown buds that have shrivelled a little in the cold. It's a pretty chest, especially as it is now, framed by soft wet curls of gray hair and glistening slightly from the moisture.
"I'm supposed to take one without hooks when I go swimming," it slightly waves its handless arm to make a point, "but it's been so long, I guess I forgot."
"Oh, sure, let me help you," She says awkwardly, hopeful that she wasn't staring for as long as she thought. Sig pulls the bra over its shoulders and turns its back to Ulysses. She takes the straps into her hands, and firmly closes them together, feeling a slight buzz in her nerves as her fingers brush against its cool skin, pressing into the flesh of its scarred back slightly as it hooks the sides together. "Done."
"Thank you!" It says sweetly, untucking its damp curly gray hair from under the straps on its shoulders. Sig seems so innocent, almost naive - like it's unaware of just how pretty it is. It's kind of cute. Ulysses remains facing the wall away from it, until they're both fully clothed and ready to leave.

A mixture of fatigue, painkillers, and hormones; the fever feels like its cooking her mind, each idea bleeds messily into the next and she can barely hold a thought for more than a few seconds before it melts into incoherence.
???
This isn't the first time she's been this bad since before she and Ingram split. He used to be good at taking care of her when she was ill, but she got used to helping herself once he was gone. After a while the loneliness stops being a yearning, bleeding absence, and starts becoming a static fact of life, eventually she found security in its stability. She thought Sig might break that security, rob her of her privacy and freedom, but she feels okay, or safe? Does she feel safe around it? Maybe not safe, definitely not safe like Ingram used to be, but there's something, some need.
Her head throbs, her body is burning up. She can't tell what she feels about this boy. Or rather she knows exactly what she feels but won't let herself admit it. She can't admit it. If she acknowledged her feelings it would ruin everything. Sig is accommadating and nice to her because it has to be, it's a guest in Ulysses' house, even if it hated her it'd probably still act polite, pretend to humor her. If she asked to fuck it would it just say yes to please her? Out of fear?
Ulysses' train of thought derails. If she asked it what? Is that it? Is that really what all this is about? Entertaining the thought even for a moment disgusts her - its soft body against hers, lips pressing into lips, her hands bracing its sides. Gross. Or well, the idea of her using Sig like this is gross. Sig isn't gross at all, that's where the problem came from. She didn't think much of it at first, but as the two have gotten closer she can't stop herself from looking at it. Its cute face and kind eyes, the way its curly silver hair spills around its stubby horns, the slender curves of its body. Ulysses thinks she could kill for proportions like that - tall and slender, with a little soft fat around its legs and belly, small soft breasts that are much better developed than her own. It doesn't care about hiding its body as much as Ulysses does, she's seen them a couple of times now, she wonder how they'd feel in her hands.
A firm heat is building between her legs, more overpowering than the heat of this fever. The longer her mind dwells on the boy the worse it gets. It won't do any harm just to think, not unless Sig was close enough to feel her hum, but its not. If anything she needs to do this, to get it out of her system before she risks it finding out. Surely if Sig were next to her while she had these thoughts, the psychic bleed would be strong enough that even a red blooded operator could hear her desire screaming out. What if it touched her while she had these thoughts? It would know in an instant. What if that was okay though, what if the boy felt her need for its body and that was okay? If it wanted her back, if without a word it gave itself to her, desperate for her to take it, to use it for her self.
She imagines how Sig might look below her, how its face would twist between pain and bliss. She didn't notice when her hand slipped underneath her waistband, but it's here now, it's been here for a while. Ulysses knows she's stronger than the boy, it would be the easiest thing in the world to pin it to the bed and chew on its neck while she buried herself between his legs. Her thoughts stop moving and linger on that for a while - how it would feel pumping herself into it, the desparate moans as she marked up its neck leaving bruises that last days, proving it belongs to her.
The heat explodes into a rush that surges convulsions throughout her entire body; her hips bucking, breath panting, toes curled so tight it hurts. It reverberates for a while before gradually fading into a peacefull bliss. Her hand is soaked and her mind is full to the brim with shame.