“A Fan of Your Physical Form” (57.11) (Oka)

I found the storage room very cozy and quiet. We double checked and made sure no one was around.

“This is almost too convenient,” I said. “What’s the catch?”

“Hopefully none,” Zeta said.

“Are we just having a random bout of luck, then?” I asked.

“Well,” Zeta said. “I maaaaybe saw a picture of this place on the website. And hoped it wouldn’t be too tough to find. And sneak into.”

“You planned this out?” I asked.

“Hehehe,” Zeta snickered. “My backup plan was to sneak to the changing rooms with you and do it there.” We both jolted at ‘do it’ and stammered about that until we confirmed we meant the living out the dream part.

“Wow,” I said, almost at a loss for words about my girlfriend. While I was teetering on the edge of an existential crisis about our relationship, she'd been working to help us through my fears and my desires in her own way. “You’re really awesome, Zeta.”

“You are too!”

We went to the backdrops, which had a mechanism on its side to scroll through them.

"Do any of these look like your dream?" Zeta asked.

“I…er…”

There was one that was an arctic mountain, one that was in space, an ancient castle…

"Um, that second to last one kind of does," I said.

Zeta scrolled back to it, a forest-y landscape.

“Background, check!” Zeta said. “Next up…any...bathrobes in the wardrobe?" Zeta asked.

We scrolled through the surprisingly in-depth collection of outfits. My heart skipped a beat when we found a set of puffy robes that looked almost identical to the one in my dream.

“I’m totally fine if you don’t, but do you want to match?” Zeta asked.

It didn’t really occur to me that I could be getting a bathrobe too. I don’t know why we arbitrarily decided on this as the way to reveal our bodies to each other when we could just take our swimsuits off, but it made perfect sense to us. I felt selfish at the idea of Zeta doing this for me alone. I didn’t even remember what I was wearing in the dream, I was usually just sitting around.

“I’d love to,”

We each stared into our bathrobes like they were mystical artifacts. Mine felt magical as I put it on.

“I guess we just…take our suits off under this? Would that be easiest?” I asked.

“Mhm,” Zeta said. "I'll go over here, then."  She stepped away so she was hidden by the other clothes racks.

I undid my swimsuit and watched it fall to the ground. Just a few feet away from me, Zeta was doing the same thing. Was I dreaming? Surely this wasn’t actually happening, right?

We regrouped together in front of the nature backdrop. For something that felt so huge, it also felt so casual.

"My heart is pounding so hard," Zeta said.

"If it's too much, just say so," I said.

"Alright, you too," Zeta said. "But I think it's more excitement than nervousness. A lot of nervousness, but...way, way more excitement."

Zeta put her hands on her hips as she stared at the painted landscape before us, trying to work out the mechanics of how to best live out a dream she’d never seen.

"We don't have to do it exactly like the dream," I said. "If you want me to um, mirror the action? So we both show each other at the same time?”

“That works for me,” Zeta said. She bit her thumbnail with her fangs. “I kind of want to say the lines, though. What did I say again?”

“It was…” I paused, pretending to recollect it so it didn’t seem like I had those words emblazoned into my memory. “’The water’s a bit cold. Kay, are you ready?’”

“The water’s a bit cold,” Zeta repeated. “Kay, are you ready?”

She said it a few more times so she would remember.

In the dream I was lying down observing Zeta, but in real life we decided we would stand across from each other.

"Here goes," Zeta said.

I could only nod. I kept looking around expecting some annoying interference like always. We were maybe technically breaking into some place, but that didn’t bother me. It seemed like the only thing standing in my way of this was myself. And I wouldn’t let this opportunity pass me by.

“The water’s a bit cold,” Zeta said, tapping her bare foot against the lake on the backdrop. “Kay, are you ready?”

“Yes,” I said.

My anxious girlfriend taking this huge step was amazing. I was so proud of her.

After one last moment of hesitation, we were both in perfect sync as we undid our bathrobes. I braced to suddenly wake up and have this all be an elaborate and annoying dream. But it was real. And after all this time, Zeta and I were naked in front of each other.

"Um, yes, here is...yep," Zeta said, swaying her arms back and forth, her tail flicking around. "I should probably shut up but I'm afraid what'll happen if I stop talking, and you're not saying anything, so I'm worried this is a sewer mutant situation again, and—"

"Zeta," I said. "You're really beautiful."

I wasn’t lying, my initial reaction to seeing her fully unclothed was stunned silence. Just ‘beautiful’ seemed like it didn’t fully describe the sight before me, but I was not in a state for poetic descriptions like I was in my diary writing. Seeing her whole body would probably inspire hundreds of pages of diary entries writing poems about her as soon as I was home, from her slightly curved hips to the way her shoulders looked somehow even more perfect with the rest of her body laid bare.

For all my time daydreaming about this, it didn’t remotely compare to the real thing. To really seeing all of Zeta's body. Her figure was gorgeous head to toe. Her skin looked so smooth. She always worried her breasts were too small, but they looked just right to me. OK, I know I just said I wasn't in a state for poetic descriptions, but a corny one did come to me while I looked Zeta over that became the first line of my diary entry that night; that no flower I'd ever seen was as perfect as hers. 

I didn’t get a good look for the brief, accidental glimpse of her I saw last time. That incident gave me very little, but with this I had a complete picture. I must have looked like a startled wild animal as I tried to scan every detail into my memory. 

“You really mean it?” Zeta asked.

"It's great," I said. "Amazing."

We traded off twirls, spinning around, Zeta probably doing that from all the times she caught me staring at her butt. The way her tail spun as she moved gave me the same joyful sensation as watching a butterfly float around (another poetic description that made it into my diary that night).

"You are too," Zeta said, giggling.

"You think so?" I said, distantly. I had barely registered my own lack of clothing, or that Zeta was seeing me naked for the first time.