This Gender Reversed World Ain't for Me (5) - Excuse Me, Miss Police Officer. What the Fuck?

After a brief, panicky 911 phone call from the staff at the counter and an hour or so later, a total of five police cars and two ambulances arrived in response to the emergency. 

What would've been just a routine call, and with perhaps just a single ambulance, turned into such a whole goddamn ruckus when dispatcher was told a male was in the vicinity and involved in the whole affair, for whatever reasons.

I was so swamped and dizzy with all those flashing lightbars that I felt like my eyes were getting cooked on their very own eyeballs. 'What the fuck just happened...' It wasn't like I'd done anything remotely questionable, to begin with. 

Well, maybe going to a café with an almost exclusively women-orientated demographic could have possibly been a stretch, I didn't realize I could've given them a heart attack or a mental breakdown by merely showing my face.

Everyone was here. The café's staff. The police. The crowd of gawking pedestrians, and the medics. Would the firefighters show up next? The coast guard? Was the FBI coming in? A SWAT unit, perhaps?

They were treating this whole thing as an active shooting. And at this rate, even the goddamn military would most probably rush to the scene.

And I hadn't even moved from my spot at the entrance!

The poor cashier who had passed out was now recovering nicely under the watchful eye of a female paramedic. Still, it didn't stop her from looking at me dreamily as another police officer took my statements for what had to be the fourth time.

"... then, Mister, you didn't feel or sense anything unusual?" A young officer with blonde hair, green eyes, and a smattering of freckles along her nose asked. She was probably in her mid-thirties, with the stiff-upper-lip appearance and mannerism I associated with the law enforcement.

She was quite a beauty, in an austere manner.

I shook my head and stared blankly ahead. "Nope. I wasn't paying much attention; her collapse caught me off-guard. Didn't see her stagger."

"Did you do or say anything in the minutes leading to the incident?"

"I greeted her. Nothing more, nothing less."

She nodded to the statement and scrolled her eyes through the paper that, even to me, looked as meaningless as some bullshit receipt of a gas-station purchase. "What was your purpose in coming here, may I ask?"

Well, what else was there besides the allure of caffeine, I wanted to snicker.

"I wanted a cup of coffee." I replied simply, mechanically.

"You're not in any trouble, mister." She said, leaning down slightly, a look of compassion spreading over her face. She reminded me, for a moment, of the late Debbie Reynolds, the actress. "We merely need a thorough account to investigate how Miss Vivian fared an episode such as this... though this isn't exactly the first time something like this happened..." She trailed off in a thoughtful, but still distant enough tone, likely weary as well, if she had to rush here just for one small-scale disaster in the life of one particular girl in a massive sea of hundreds of thousands and billions of females.

I decided not to delve on the thought or dig further on that weird half-statement she just offered. "As I said, nothing I can add that hasn't been on this statement of mine."

She seemed content with my responses. Or maybe she just had nothing more to add and no point asking another round of the same questions over and over. Either way, it was over. "Anyway, Mr Winters... that just leaves on very important question." She looked up at me, her austere expression turning stony, serious.

"Oh? What might that be, Officer...?"

"Valeria." She answered quickly. "My name is Officer Valeria."

"Alright... officer Valeria. Your last question...?"

"Have you had your coffee yet? It'd be a shame to go back empty-handed, now. Don't you think?" The abrupt change of subjects, and the sudden segue towards a mundane direction was startling, to say the least, but also had an element of curiosity mixed within.

"I would never say no to caffeine, officer."

Valeria nodded. "It just so happens that my break begins in..." She cocked her head in direction of an invisible watch on her right wrist, not remembering she was wearing one on her left. "Right about now, in fact. Do you mind if I join you for the next few minutes?"

"No, I don't." I shook my head, taking the lead into approaching a new cashier, one who was a touch more recovered, a touch less panicking, and a touch more attentive than her partner that had to take an impromptu trip to the back for first aid treatment. When I turned around, I found Valeria rooted on the spot. "You're not coming?"

"You... don't mind?" Her tone wasn't the expected one I had been thinking she'd have. Instead of sounding suspicious, she sounded oddly relieved, and even... gratifying, for a lack of better term.

"Why would I? Unless you don't want to, in which case, have a pleasant day." I waved nonchalantly and proceeded to the counter, where the second cashier—a curly-haired brunette, instead of her co-worker—was looking at me expectantly. "Can I have a plain coffee and an éclair, please."

"Y-Y-Yes! Right away!"

"No, wait!" Valeria exclaimed a touch louder and quite a lot faster than before, visibly swallowing her tongue after that, and pointed a finger at my direction. "I... I mean, please wait! Please?"

I nodded. "Make it two coffees and two éclairs, then." I added, before turning a lazy gaze at Valeria, who was having quite some trouble sorting her thoughts. 

Considering how professional and cold her demeanor had been when she'd questioned me, it was strange. Not that she had been hostile before.

I made my way to an empty table at the back as the cashier started preparing our orders. 

Officer Valeria, unsure of her actions, stood rooted near the doorway, stealing a glance here and there. The remaining officers and medics, seeing there wasn't anything else they could do or that warranted their presence, scattered.

Attention was still bestowed upon me like I was standing on a freaking pedestal. It was not to the point where everyone quit whatever they were doing to stare, but it was enough to remind me I was still the only guy in this joint.

After a long minute, Valeria must've gathered some courage, and the attention was diverted off me in the direction of her. Maybe because I'd given her some form of my implied consent by being the one to initiate our impromptu and completely accidental 'break', that a female—a police officer no less—sat herself in the same table as I, and did this right under the noses of other women.

There was a look of mystical wonder on Valeria's face as she sat down in a proper manner from across me, with that dazed look of someone wondering if they had finally died and met their angels or some shit.

Now that I noticed, her police uniform wouldn't have passed strict dress-code inspection. Tight-fit. Revealing. With a disgustingly deep and exaggerated cleavage. A short skirt. Stockings. More skin than fabric. You'd likely see her uniform on some online store and a ten out of ten in their search engine bar when you typed the words 'police-dominatrix porn'.

The paramedics from earlier had the same clothing manufacturer, all right.

"Is everything okay, Valeria?" I decided to speak up. After all, no one spoke when she settled herself here, so who would.

"Aa..." The sound came from a foreign part of her body that was almost completely forgotten and dusty from disuse. "Yeah, sorry... I... this is my first time having coffee with a man, you see. First time ever." She explained in that same distant tone. Her eyes weren't glazing or teary, however. In fact, her tone suggested nothing.

A first time ever with a man for something as mundane as coffee.

"Really, someone as pretty as you?"

"......!!!"

It was a good thing we had yet to get our coffees, or she'd have spat or spit-sprayed or otherwise choked on hers after hearing that. Under normal circumstances, I would have worn a self-satisfied, smug smile at the red coloration rapidly rising from her neck. That would have made me stay up at night for many days, gloating over it.

But there was no rush of adrenaline or flair in the pit of my stomach, no real joy in this act.

This had all been given to me, in a way.

She wasn't blushing because I was suave or because of the beauty of my words, or the elegance of their utterance.

This was all due to sheer circumstances aligning in my favor that a hot police officer was here to eat her damn éclair across from me, and probably fantasizing about eating my éclair—my own meat. 

The universe gave me this face, this body, this social cachet. 

Everything here had already been accounted for. 

This reaction I got, was predicated not on me and the worth that I actually had, but on something I had not earned whatsoever.

I was just a regular guy in my old world, with a regular job, a regular face, a regular-sized cock, a regular apartment, a regular life.

This was a social credit economy given to me in an absolutely unfair and unbalanced exchange.

It was too good to be true, enough that my reaction was a disproportionate one—I felt neither the pleasure that should have come nor any shred of victory from achieving this milestone.

"Do... do you really mean that?" Valeria swallowed thickly, tugging at the collar of her uniform to breathe better. That naturally had the sweet consequence of revealing a generous, if not a bit scandalous, display of creamy breasts. Was that intentional? A social faux pas I had to be disgusted about, like those males on the forums?

"Of course I mean it. Why would I say it if I didn't."

The color remained in her cheeks for a few seconds, after which she regained the slightest iota of control. "Thank you, you're... you're very handsome yourself." There was no hesitance, and the statement didn't look fake, either. Not that I would've taken insult if it were. Objectively speaking, I was already quite the 10 at the highest, without any additional garnishing needed to appeal to someone like her.

"Thank you."

"This is the first time a man tells me this, though."

I supposed they wouldn't tell a police officer who was about to haul their ass to jail. "Surely, other guys must have tried..."

"None. They never talked or reached out to me. After all, no self-respecting man would talk with a female. No decent male would be so... bold."

"Ah..." I tilted my head. "In that case, allow me to be the first."

Valeria's eyebrows shot up again, before she stilled her expression into something that was calm. It looked like a replica of some spasm of the face and lips instead.

I wondered if she thought I was being bold or blatantly trying to hit on her. Or maybe mocking her, as that could have been a valid assumption based on her preconceptions and beliefs.

She stared in a trance, removing her police cap, untying the severe bun behind her hair, and giving it a toss. It fell messily onto the nape of her neck, giving me a nice view of pale gold curls falling elegantly down her shoulders.

"Valeria...?"

She blinked, eyes re-focusing on me again. She had a pistol strapped to her belt. I exhaled, reminding myself that she wasn't a simple civilian but a full-pledged armed agent of the state. Whether she'd use it on a male was debatable, but one could never be too sure.

"Ah, sorry, Damien. I—Actually, could... could I ask you something?"

"Yes." I didn't think her line of questions would include asking about the nature of the universe or the reason why she and countless millions of others lived in this suffocating gender imbalance-infected hellscape, but I was curious. "Fire away."

"Do you wanna fuck?"

"......?"