Chapter Text
It all would have gone to plan if she didn't wake up in such a state of absolute dysphoria that the bed felt more like a prison than a trove of comfort. She blames it all on how vividly she'd dreamt that night, a product of going to bed with tension in her body and mind, restless and broken sleep tearing into her despite her usually chaotic sleep pattern. In her dream, she’d been sat alone on a stage, nude save for her mask, a spotlight shining down at her from above, highlighting every part of her. There was no audience present, only an icy breeze chilling her down to her very bones; the mocking, distorted voices of her closest friends bouncing from wall to wall, echoing, tearing into her without discernible words or meaning.
She presses her face hard into her pillow, pushing and pushing until kaleidoscopic patterns dance across the insides of her eyelids, replacing that vision with pressure and colour.
The night before, she went to bed in an old t-shirt and a pair of briefs, and she felt good.
Today, she hates how the briefs fit snugly; how the lines of her t-shirt will fall straight and boxy around her torso when she stands up. She worked hard to lose the weight she was endlessly bullied for in school, and now she desperately wants it back, selectively, and it's the exact kind of cruel and horrible misfortune that makes her wish she never had that initial realization at all; wish she could just settle, be comfortable as a boy, as a man.
It would have been easier then.
She doesn't want to stand up. She wants to stay in bed with the lights off all day until this feeling leaves her the fuck alone, the way she always does, the way she's always done. When dysphoria hits hardest, the house becomes a pocket in the vacancy of space, in which the weight in her chest is the only body of any significant mass. It coalesces within her until it collapses; fills her with an endless heaviness; her own personal singularity.
(The image of being spaghettified and made abstract is not so frightening anymore.)
She has to get up. She has to get dressed. She has to make breakfast for her friend, her housemate, she promised him last night that she would–they both practically salivated at the promise of an omelette, with onions and bacon and a drizzle of pepper and scallions. The kinda thing she doesn't make for herself, but she wants to, as part of the warm welcome she wants to give her best friend.
It's humid in Orlando, it always is, but pulling on a thick sweatshirt that she's practically swimming in becomes her saving grace. There's a Gators logo on the front, worn and washed out, and the fabric is a little rough from years and years of wear. It's hers, a gift from an uncle for her 17th birthday, that despite its age is huge on her. She used to look… different, to what she looks like now, in many ways.
Just different.
She struggles not to place value judgements on the person she used to be; to hound him for all his choices; all his flaws.
She forgets, sometimes, that her past self is still her, and not just a crude vessel for her memories to be haphazardly stown away into.
When she pads her way downstairs to the kitchen, Sapnap is blessedly still asleep, and she pulls out everything she needs–her largest non-stick frying pan, a spatula, four eggs, half a pack of bacon, half an onion, and some scallions from her mom’s garden that she chops up with a hefty knife until they form little green ringlets. Half of the little mountain of scallions go in the egg mixture, the other half she saves to sprinkle on top.
She catches a glimpse of her own reflection in the stainless steel of the knife as she pushes the thickly rinded bacon strips into the pan. The bacon sizzles. Dream freezes. Everything is wrong today, everything about what she sees.
Her broad nose; her awkward, mid-length hair that she loved just the day before; the placement of her cheekbones and the still oh-so-noticeable angles of her jaw.
The salty-smokey odor of the bacon is suddenly nauseating.
She's too deep in thought to hear her friend's footsteps down the stairs, dropping the knife and hugging herself in a futile attempt to push all her feelings back down, down, down. The knife clatters across the counter, skidding to a halt right at the edge. Teetering; threatening to unleash its potential energy all at once.
"Dream? What's up?"
Sapnap's voice resonates oddly, as though her head is encased in an upside-down fish bowl, vowels too loud and plosives too sharp. He moves to touch her, a hand on the shoulder, but she flinches away the moment his hand twitches.
"Okay, no touching, I'l just–I'll just get the, uh...I'll get the knife and stuff."
Paralyzed, Dream watches Sapnap chuck the knife into the washing machine and pull the pan off the stove. The eggs are a little burnt. The bacon is underdone, barely cooked through, but probably edible.
"I'm sorry", she says, rocking back on her heels, eyes screwed shut, "this–...this isn't how I hoped this morning would go."
Sap splits the mass of eggs in two onto the plates Dream had picked out. "Bacon?"
"No, I–I'm not really feeling it anymore."
"More for me", he says, and Dream can tell he tries hard to keep the worry out of his voice, how he tries to act normal for her benefit. Gloss it over, give her a chance to play it off as any old anxiety attack, like a good bro.
"You don't have to pretend", she says, taking a seat on the barstool by the kitchen isle, head in her hands, "I know that I'm not–that this isn't, or, like...I'm not what you expected, and there is a reason for that, obviously there's a reason, and you've probably guessed it anyway but–"
"Dude, it's okay, whatever it is. It's okay."
Something about it–him being so flippant, like he's not understanding the gravity of the situation; how big this is for her, how monumental–snaps within her like a load-bearing wire.
"It's not fucking okay!"
She's yelling, she knows, but once she starts, she can't stop, "it's just not, it's not okay, I'm lying to the entire fucking world and to you and to myself and I don't know what to do! I'm a girl, okay, Nick, I'm a girl, there, I said it, I-"
A sob breaks its way up her throat, cutting her off from spilling any further. She feels sick. Wrong.
"You know that's okay, right? You're right, I–I might have been able to guess. But that's none of my business, y'know?"
Dream rubs her eyes hard, until swirling patterns erupt under her eyelids and she's covered in saltwater; face rubbed red and raw. "We live together now. That makes it your business."
"Not really? I care about you bein' happy and shit. It'd be a dick move if I didn't let you."
Dream feels sick. Her best friend just told her he accepts her, he supports her, and she still feels sick.
It'd be a dick move if I didn't let you.
If i didn't let you.
She should thank him, she thinks.
"I don't need your fucking permission," she says instead.
Sap stands up, clutching his plate in shaking hands like he'll throw it to the ground if he doesn't. "I know you don't, I'm just trying to be supportive!"
He’s shaking; standing there in his hoodie and his shorts and shaking, from some emotion Dream can’t fully identify. Sapnap is barely 20, just a kid, and despite what his decent beard does to his face, right here in this moment, it shows.
He looks so young. Lost; scared, like a child is scared to lose his best friend on the playground, doomed to build half a sand castle forever. Dream deflates.
“I’m sorry”, she says, on the exhale, like a sigh, “I’m so fucking sorry, I–can we just–can we hug this out?”
“I’m not sure that’s–”
“Please", she says. "Please.”
She pleads, and she doesn’t know what she’s pleading for, be it forgiveness or acceptance or understanding, but whatever it is, she finds it–just a glimpse, forming over forgotten breakfast, between her best friend’s trembling arms and her own exhausted body.
Sometimes that’s all it takes.