Chapter Text
Taylor felt honored that Lisa trusted her for something so intimate. It was horrifying that her power was affecting the people around her like this but Taylor felt heartened that Lisa was taking it in stride. Lisa didn’t even seem upset about it! Taylor could only aspire to handle something like this with such calm.
“Okay. Okay! Yeah! We can kiss! Platonically! As friends! Very good friends that make out with each other in case lesbianism occurs. I’m glad you trust me with this. Do we- how do we do this?” She’d had a brief dalliance with Brian, but those kisses had been… awkward. They started out enjoyable but then he would insist he wasn’t ‘being manly enough’ in his kissing technique and it just went to shit from there. This would be her first kiss with another girl. Not counting when she had played house with Emma as a child. That certainly didn’t count. She balled up that thought and compartmentalized it into a tiny box to never ever open again. Also not counting the time she had given Rachel CPR when she had gone too hard on her workout routine and Taylor thought she couldn’t breathe. The amount of tongue involved in said implementation of CPR was strictly irrelevant. The number of things she was very carefully not counting may have explained her middling grades in math at Arcadia.
“We should probably. Get closer to each other?” Lisa seemed just as uncertain as Taylor felt, which couldn’t possibly be right. She always knew the right thing to do, surely Taylor was just misreading the look on her face.
“Yes! That does sound like what we should do! Kissing involves being close to one another!” Taylor babbled incoherently as the pair moved closer together. Her mouth suddenly felt so dry. Were her salivary glands on strike? Was this yet another secondary manifestation of her accursed power? All thoughts fled her mind as she drew closer to her good gal pal. Her bestie. Her partner in crime. Both of them paused as their faces drew together, staring at the other’s lips. Who was supposed to initiate the kiss? None of her classes had taught her this. The American education system was truly in shambles.
Their heads bonked into each other with a dull clonk as they simultaneously dipped their heads forward. Taylor experienced a brief moment of horror before the pair burst into giggles, gripping arms and hips as she ducked her head into the space between Lisa’s neck and shoulder.
“We are so bad at this.” Lisa managed while snickering. “Okay. We can try this again. Let me go in for the kiss?” Taylor nodded in confirmation. She waited anxiously while Lisa moved her mouth towards hers. What if it was bad? What if she was disgusted by kissing another woman? Taylor wanted to help out her darling bestie but she was very familiar with how straight women felt about even the idea of kissing another woman. The trio at Winslow had made no small amount of comments about it and her sexuality. She had lost count of the number of times Emma had called her a dyke. Taylor carefully tucked those thoughts back into the compartmentalization zone so she could focus on the most important person in her life: Lisa.
Their lips met and it was surprisingly nice. Taylor could taste Lisa's lip gloss (strawberry) and smell her breath (strangely minty? Had Lisa had a breath mint beforehand?) as they exhaled in sync. Lisa opened her mouth slightly and made several light exploratory movements with her tongue. Taylor moved her right hand to the small of Lisa's back, bringing her closer and eliminating the space between the two of them. Lisa brought the hand that wasn't busy clutching her back up to Taylor's hair and started idly playing with the strands. She gasped into Lisa's mouth when her hand caught on one of her curls, pulling it.
Lisa pulled away for a second. “Wait. You like having your hair pulled? May I?” Her trademark vulpine grin crept onto her face. Taylor nodded her approval and braced for-
Taylor let out a noise that could possibly be described as a moan. Potentially. If you ignored the fact that this was one gal helping out her other good friend with practice kissing. Completely platonic. It was a normal and platonic noise that she made. Her face turned tomato red as Lisa looked delighted at what she had wrought.
“Um-” Both girls turned to face the entrance to the loft when they heard the lock click to the open position. Taylor and Lisa sprung away from each other like magnets, Taylor frantically wiping the lip gloss of her mouth while Lisa was swearing frantically under her breath.
“I swear, the One fucking time these jackasses show up early-”
Brian came in through the door, followed closely by Aisha and Alec. “-and I’m just saying, if you two want me to keep giving you rides then you need to respect the rule! Driver gets to pick the music, we all know that! Hey, Lisa, Tay- Did you run all the way here? Your face is bright red, wow.”
Taylor started trying to stutter out a response but thankfully Lisa beat her to it. “Why are you here so early? You guys never show up early!” Her lip gloss was slightly smeared around her lips from the kiss. Oops.
Brian pulled out his phone. “You texted the group chat ‘c u @ 4! xoxoxo lots of luv’ followed by a surprising amount of heart emojis. I didn’t think you liked the non-Taylor members of the Undersiders so much! You did mean to send that to us, right?”
Lisa’s expression froze into a grim rictus. “Yes. I definitely meant to send that in the group chat. Thank you. For coming early.” She spoke through gritted teeth.
Aisha sauntered past Brian. “Aww sorry to interrupt your Taylor time. I know you need plenty of it or you get all pissy. Honestly, I’m surprised you don’t just tell her you have blood circulation problems and need her to hold your hand on missions so it doesn’t get cold, you two are at that level.”
“You have blood circulation problems?” Taylor gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me? You know I’d do absolutely anything for you.” She held out her hand for Lisa to hold so she could provide valuable life saving heat.
Lisa seemed torn about something. “Yes. Aisha is right. I have blood circulation problems. And need to hold your hand.” Her teeth had somehow become even more gritted, rapidly reaching the levels of grit needed for sandpaper. Nonetheless, she took Taylor’s offered hand in her own. It was strange that her hand didn’t feel remotely cold but Taylor wasn’t about to question a potentially life threatening medical condition.
“That- you- what the fuck.” Aisha threw her hands up in the air. “I’m not touching that with a 10 foot pole. I’m not getting paid enough to deal with. Whatever this is.”
Rachel came in through the loft door exactly at 4pm, looking dashing in her black tank top, slightly stained cargo pants (with a carabiner hanging off one belt loop and a multitool hanging off another), and black combat boots. She was so fashionable. It took Taylor a solid second to tear her eyes from the sweat rolling down her left tricep.
Lisa spun away from Taylor and clapped her hands together. Taylor missed her hand held in hers immediately. “Okay! You’re probably all wondering why I called you here.” Vague mumbles came her way. “You all know our good friend Skitter? The gal who set our team on a new direction focused towards ruining nazi’s lives, one of the strongest capes in the city,” That couldn’t possibly be right, Lisa was just talking her up because she was such a good friend, “and the light of my life?” Such a good friend. “It turns out that her power may have unintended side effects.” She took a breath and paused for dramatic effect. “It might, and I stress might, turn the people around her into lesbians.” Lisa waited for the team’s reactions.
Aisha was the first to speak. “...is that it? I’ve been dating women for months, I don’t see what the big deal is. You said this was an important team meeting!” Brian looked at her in shock.
“You’ve been dating women for months!?”
“You don’t get to know about my love life dude! Chill.”
Rachel interrupted their argument. “What the fuck is a lesbian?”
“It’s a term for a woman who loves other women.” Taylor said. She sighed wistfully. “Sometimes I wish…” She trailed off.
“You’re talking about fucking women.”
“I mean. Yes? After you’ve established a deep connection with your lover, the two of you stare into each other’s eyes and-”
“I’ve been lesbianing for months. I’m with Aisha, why is this a meeting? I’ve got shit I could be doing.”
Lisa jumped up and started pacing. “Wait, both of you started engaging in sapphic situations several months ago? When exactly did you first start feeling this way about women? We can use science based evidence to confirm if Taylor’s power is doing something hinky!”
After several minutes of interrogation and frustration, Lisa discovered that neither Aisha or Rachel had kept exact dates of their romantic escapades but they both confirmed that it had been after Taylor had joined the team. Taylor’s stomach churned uneasily as she realized this was the last nail in the coffin.
“Okay, but this only affects women, right? Alec and I don’t have anything to worry about.”
Taylor turned nervously towards Brian. “Wellllllll. I may have. Kinda sorta. Already lesbianized Gallant? And also my dad, who’s now my mom. Jury’s out on other men since I don’t typically form friendships with men for some mysterious unknowable reason. It’s actually kinda weird that I get along with you two so well! So um. Sorry if I accidentally turn you into a lesbian?”
Brian murmured, expression downcast, “So it was power induced…”
Alec took the opportunity to chime in. “Yup, I can absolutely 100% confirm that you’ve lesbianized me! I’m feeling so forcibly feminized right now. That’s just something your power does! Aisha can corroborate, she’s been helping me out with makeup.”
“What? No I hav-” Alec jabbed her in the side. “Ow! Oh! Yes! Alec is a transbian. You’re the second coming of Sappho, Taylor.” What did Taylor’s favorite poet have to do with this? She felt horrible realizing that she’d mind whammied every single person close to her. Except Amy! Her mood brightened a smidge as she realized she would see her good heterosexual friend Amy at school tomorrow. Her beacon of normality in this time of crisis, Amy Dallon. She could always rely on good ol’ Amy to be ordinary.
Aisha continued. “Wait, if Taylor’s power supposedly affected me, Rachel, and Alec, then what about you? Have you been doing dyke shit without telling us?”
Lisa flushed. “Wow, would you look at that, there’s something else we need to talk about! I conducted more research regarding the phenomenon of Skitter making women realize that they’re gay and realized something. You’re popular with the LGBT+ community sweetie. Like. Really popular. As in,” She grabbed a whiteboard with several drawings from the ground and propped it up, “I think we should start selling merch. Of you.” The pieces of art depicted various things: Skitter attacking police with insects with the text BE GAY DO CRIMES, Skitter with a pride flag wrapped around her shoulders with accompanying text saying I GOT LESBIANIZED BY SKITTER AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID T-SHIRT, and finally Tattletale and Skitter holding hands captioned PARTNERS IN CRIME. Taylor’s jaw dropped. “We could make some serious money from this! There’s enough demand that I’m pretty sure we’d make more from merch sales in a month than we have in the past 3 months combined.”
“But I’m not gay!” Taylor protested. “I’m a completely heterosexual woman! It would be wrong of me to queerbait the lesbian community like that. I’m a staunch ally and pretending to be gay to sell merchandise is Not something an ally would do. Also, did you draw those yourself? Your drawings have improved so much over the past few months! My favorite is still your portrait of Narwhal though, the way you depicted her abs really shows the love and care you put into your art.” Lisa beamed at the praise and Taylor felt her heart skip a beat.
“Listen honeybee. We’re already pretending to be dating because of the whole thing with Glory Girl and Gallant. This is just us making the best of it! Besides,” Lisa pulled out a printed page of… what appeared to be PHO posts? “Everyone already thinks you’re a lesbian. For some reason there was a big hubbub last week about you personally saying that you were dating me and Rachel? Not really sure how that got confirmed.”
The blood drained out of her face. “Um. You know how I realized my secondary human mastering power when I helped those two gals out last week? I. May have told them that we’re girlfriends.”
“You told them that we’re girlfriends.”
“I thought they meant it in the platonic sense! You know, like heyyyy girlfriend! Besties! Gal pals! How could anyone ever look at me and think ‘hm, that girl must really love women’? I mean of course I love women. But in the platonic way that every woman loves other women. Like how could you possibly see a lady and not think to yourself ‘this woman is a goddess and it would be the most wonderful moment of my life if she would deign to let me worship at her feet’!?” Every single person in the room stared at her.
“Yup, sounds to me like something a heterosexual woman would say. No latent feelings of lesbianism to unpack there.” Alec said helpfully, something that was possibly a first for him. Her? Taylor wasn’t sure on which pronouns to use since Alec hadn’t mentioned anything.
Lisa sighed. “Okay. Right. So you’re already kinda sorta queerbaiting everyone around you by being so,” she gestured wildly, “you. We might as well make some money from it! Besides, you’re an inspiration to these people! Look at this post.” Taylor read a heartwrenching story about how Skitter’s out and proud lesbianism had convinced her to finally accept her sexuality and get out of her abusive relationship. “Plus, the #SapphicSkitterTruther tag has been trending all of last week and this time it isn’t even because of that one popstar, Quick Skit or whatever her name is.”
“It still feels a little, I dunno…”
“Think of how many fancy dresses you could buy for me.”
Taylor thought. She thought very carefully and in meticulous detail. “I’d get to pick them out for you?”
“If that’s what convinces you, sure.”
She nodded her head. “Okay. I’ll sell out. I’ll do irreparable harm to the queer community through intentional queerbaiting so that I can afford to see one of the most gorgeous women I know in cute dresses.” Truly, her villainy knew no bounds.
Aisha was holding her head in her hands muttering something about being surrounded by oblivious lesbians. Rachel asked when they were going to just fuck already. Brian was staring angstily into the distance. Alec was doing Alec things probably. Taylor ignored all of it in favor of watching the gentle smile on Lisa’s face.
“Whenever yall are done making googoo eyes at each other, can you clear out of the loft for a couple hours?” Rachel interrupted. “I’ve got a puppygirl coming over for a collaring and obedience training and it’s gonna be loud.” It was so sweet that Rachel put so much effort into caring for the stray dogs of Brockton Bay. Whatever the public might think of her, she had a heart of gold.
Lisa and Taylor spoke simultaneously. “Ugh I did Not need to know that.” “Aww that’s so kind of you!” Rachel nodded at Taylor in approval and her eyes were heterosexually dragged to how Rachel’s biceps were fully on display in her tank top. Hrngh. Muscles.
With that, the team meeting was adjourned since apparently no one was particularly bothered by the prospect of being a gay woman. Except maybe Brian? He looked like he was chewing on a particularly thorny internal problem. Taylor would be happy to help if he asked for it, but things were still somewhat awkward between them after the breakup so she wasn’t going to initiate anything. Aisha and Alec headed towards the living room to play mind rotting violent video games.
Taylor started packing her things to head back home when Rachel stopped her. “Taylor, wait.” She put her bag on the table and looked at Rachel expectantly. “You've been checking me out for weeks. Do you want to make out?”
Taylor was shocked. “Um! What! I wouldn't call it checking out so much as- I mean I'm appreciating- you have really muscley muscles and- what? I'm a heterosexual woman. I dated a man and everything!” She pointed at Brian who was hurrying out the door as though he could outrun his inner demons, whatever those could possibly be. “It would be incredibly cruel of me to lead on a gorgeous lesbian like you and I mean it's power induced and really there are prettier women that you could-”
“Taylor. Shut up about dumb shit. I don't care. Do you want to kiss me?” Rachel had stepped closer and they were only five feet apart. Just like that one Vine.
“Um. Yes?” Taylor squeaked. “But the power dynamic a straight woman has over-” Her voice abruptly terminated as Rachel crossed the distance and pressed her lips against Taylor. Her kissing style was different from Lisa's- Lisa had been slow, tender, uncertain at times. Rachel seemed to be completely confident about what she was doing. She kept biting Taylor's lips, and the amount of tongue she was using seemed frankly lewd. Taylor's brain shut off completely for several minutes as she melted into Rachel, arms wrapped around her back while Rachel's strong hands were firmly grabbing her hips.
It finally ended when Rachel broke off the kiss, licked Taylor's face from the side of her chin up to just below her eye, and whispered “Mine.” with no small degree of intensity in her ear.
“Mm! Um.”
Rachel stepped back from her slightly. “Do you wanna fuck now? Cassie's on her way but I can tell her to wait. Or she can join in if you want.” Who was Cassie? Wait, fuck?
“I. I think that's a little out of my comfort range right now? Um.” She wasn't sure what else to say. Why did her best friends want to kiss her? Or even engage in sexual intercourse in Rachel's case! Her power might change the sexuality of those around her but it wasn't as though it made people attracted to her! Why would anyone want a girl who looked like a dorky librarian with admittedly lovely curls? That couldn't possibly be something people would be into. It must be because the lesbian dating pool in Brockton Bay was just that shallow. Poor girls. She'd have to do her best to be a good kissing substitute until her gal pals found women they were actually attracted to.
“Okay. Cool. Let me know if you want to do this again.” With that, Rachel left towards her room and closed the door behind her. Taylor watched her leave, not sure exactly what she was feeling.
Lisa bumped her shoulder. “Walk with me for a bit? I want to talk about that and trust me when I say we want to get out of the apartment before Cassie arrives.”
“Sure! Wait, is Cassie the name of the girl Rachel's dogsitting for?”
Lisa paused for a moment and made a face. “Dogsitting is one way to put it I suppose.” They left the loft together, leaving Aisha and Alec to decide whether easy access to video games and snacks was worth whatever Rachel had warned them about.
Lisa's hand found its way into Taylor's and she happily held it as they started walking towards Taylor's house. She was determined to do a good job of being a portable hand warmer for her close friend.
“How do you feel about me and Rachel?”
“The two of you are my best friends! I'm really glad I'm so close with the two of you.”
“No I mean.” Lisa sighed. “How did you feel about us kissing you? Are you… attracted to us?”
“Don't be silly, I'm straight and straight women aren't attracted to other women! Of course I recognize that you're both beautiful but anyone could tell you that. Rachel has that buff stone butch appeal and you're like… upper class business bitch in a cocktail dress, you know? Girlbosses! The kisses were… really nice actually. I think I like that kind of deep intimacy with my gal pals!”
“Gal pals.” Lisa seemed pained for some reason. Was she regretting the kissing?
“Gal pals!” She really hoped Lisa didn't regret being friends with her.
“Okay. Is there… anyone else you want to kiss? Is the Rachel thing going to,” Lisa waved her hand wordlessly in the air, “keep being a thing?”
“Well, I can't imagine anyone else I would want to kiss aside from you and Rachel? I don't do physical intimacy with just anyone and you two are my closest friends whom I love dearly! Would you be okay if I kept making out with Rachel? It was… interesting.”
Lisa eyed her lips for a second. “Sure. I don't mind.”
“Okay!” Taylor bounced up and down slightly as they moved. “And I'll be your practice kissing buddy for as long as you want! Whenever I get a boyfriend he'll probably be upset about it but this hypothetical guy will just have to deal with the depths of my intense meaningful female friendships!”
Lisa stared at her, brow furrowed slightly. “Right. Yes.” They spent the rest of the trip home in uncharacteristic silence, stopping on the sidewalk in front of Taylor's house.
“Um. Could I get a kiss goodbye?” Lisa had her hands held behind her back, toeing the ground with her right foot in small circles.
“Of course!” Taylor beamed at her. It was a quick peck on the lips, nothing like the other kisses Taylor had engaged in earlier that day, but she appreciated the display of affection nonetheless. They hugged and said their goodbyes.
“Love you!”
“I love you too. Bye Taylor.” Taylor watched Lisa leave, appreciating the way her designer jeans framed her hips so nicely.
Taylor spent the rest of the night catching up on homework and preparing for school the next day. She wanted time to run in the morning before school and prepping lunch now gave her more leeway schedule-wise. She was looking forward to seeing Amy at school tomorrow- finally a regular interaction after the week of incredibly baffling social hijinks. Amy was just so well adjusted and normal. Surely nothing could change that!