(Apologies in advance for this gargantuan comment.) Firstly, Anne, thank you simply for having the guts to write. That alone warrants applause. And to write something that deals accurately and just as sensitively with FtM experiences, well, bravo. More than content, however, I have to say I admire your writing choices, stylistically and plot-wise. You know just where to make us laugh, and where to make us cry, and you know how to keep us anticipating our next emotion. So bravo again for writing a fic that is both sensitive and of sound prose. But all this has been said by others previously... There have been some comments made regarding Spy's 'easy' acceptance of Sniper, and the level of believability in this. I have to leave my two-cents-worth-of-opinion-and-self-insertion here on this topic. I am not a transgender person, but I am in a relationship with a transgender person, and I have to say that Anne's portrayal of the relationship from Spy's perspective has been very pleasing to me thus far, and no I don't think Spy's acceptance of Sniper has been an easy one. Certainly, it has been easy for Spy to support Sniper from the beginning, but this is simply expected; being in a relationship with a trans* person can be 'all or none' in terms of support - if there is no support, or not enough support, there is no relationship. Evidently, Spy is aware of this, or else why would Sniper have allowed him to stick around? Not to mention the fact that Anne specifically wrote them as friends even before they began their relationship. Thus, Spy's support should have come easily, given that Sniper is a man for whom he genuinely cares. An easy acceptance, though? I don't think so. Anne has made it clear, with appropriate Spy-esque subtlety, that there are aspects of Sniper that he does have difficulty accepting, even if he says otherwise (Spy is still Spy - just because he is a protagonist here doesn't mean we don't have to take anything he says with a grain of salt). But what is acceptance, really? In my experience, acceptance is knowing that your partner has a daily battle with the toilet seat and acknowledging that your own feelings toward that fact may not be pleasant, but you still wake up in the morning wanting to say 'Hello, I love you'. Acceptance is knowing your lover may not be able to please you in all the ways you like (but then how many of us can say all of our past and present lovers have known how to please us exactly and immediately) but also having the capacity to overlook that fact simply because your partner is someone who you appreciate, physically, intellectually, emotionally, aesthetically. Aesthetics, as I understand, are especially important here for Spy. This is one of the few fics I have read in which Spy is more appreciative of Sniper's personality, his mannerisms, his habits, his physical appearance and his sheer masculinity than he is appreciative of the sex. More often, I've seen Spy barely tolerating Sniper in favour of some great sex. And you know what? It takes a skilled and courageous writer to write sex that is bad, or has something intrinsically disconcerting about it. We can see Spy is very disconcerted by Sniper's genitals, but he accepts them because he is invested in Sniper as a person, and as a man: this, in my experience, is realistic. Is it easy? No. But I've been told I make it look easy, so I suppose Spy has that in his favour as well (and let us remember, Spy is good at glossing over the truth.) I'm not saying that it's easy to lie about acceptance, I'm simply saying that it is very easy to be supportive of someone special to you, and that makes acceptance, which is not the same thing as support, look just as easy. Perhaps (and more likely) the issue people are having here is in regards to Spy's character? In that being case, I think Anne has done as well as she possibly could appropriating both Spy's and Sniper's characters into this scenario. Trust is the main topic here, for Spy as a character as well as for Sniper as trans*, and Anne has addressed that trust is something that they have garnered over time (it is easy to forget, while reading this fic with all its time collapses, that their friendship and eventual courtship has been built over an indefinite number of weeks and months, not days). Trust is an issue for Spy in any universe he is put in, whether he is taking it or giving it, and say what you will about Sniper and Spy as a pairing, but I think Sniper, also in any universe, is most likely the merc to whom Spy will offer his trust, for any number of reasons. Sniper is solitary, Sniper is generally quiet, Sniper is not a man who can be easily blackmailed, Sniper is in many ways Spy's antithesis, and most importantly for this fic, Sniper has secrets of his own. If Spy is going to give his trust to anyone, and give it willingly, then it is going to be someone who understands the value of it, and won't betray it under any circumstances. I think Anne has established that Sniper is that someone. So why shouldn't Spy have supported, accepted and trusted Sniper with at least a certain degree of readiness, given that Spy likes Sniper, enjoys his company and shares similar experiences with him? And, I'll be honest with you all here, in my experience, I think it would be much easier to gain the trust of a Spy than that of a transgender person, at least where this level of trust - good and real trust - is concerned. And let's face the alternative: if Spy didn't support and accept Sniper from the beginning, then that would have been that, Sniper would have written him off and this story would have ended very quickly. Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now. Lastly, I would just like to say, aside from the issues some may have with Spy in this fic, I find his conduct with Sniper pretty accurate in terms of the relationship. From asking questions to the fear of asking questions to exchanging gender/sex experiences to comparing hand sizes to being extremely cautious with touch to simply being occasionally ignorant and desperately trying to change that fact: these are real things that I have experienced in my relationship, and it was very nice to see them reaffirmed here. So, all in all, thank you, Anne, simply for sharing this with us. Honestly, can't thank you enough. (Apologies again for this excessively long comment.)