Work Text:
Gross, gross, gross.
Ben has shut himself under the blankets. Has shut his eyelids. He can’t look at his body today - not without the need to vomit, not without nails digging in his arms, not without tears twisting their way into his eyes. For some reason, today is worse than usual. He can’t watch himself, can’t hear his own, too high-pitched voice, can’t stand to cross his reflection in the mirror and catch a glimpse of his face.
It’s his own; but it’s not. The lashes are too long and too thin. The jawline is too soft. The short hair is already starting to be too long again. Maybe, if he brushed it, it’d look better. Maybe, if he washed it and slicked it all back with water, it’d be a little more bearable. But showering is getting naked, and the mirror is in the fucking bathroom, and dear ungodly being on Earth, he can’t see himself. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never.
It’s not his body, he knows. It’s a vessel that carries his brain, muscles, nerves and bones, but it’s not the one he sees himself as. The features are slightly wrong. There’s fat where there shouldn’t be. When puberty kicked in, he faced the truth: his body doesn’t match his mind. He’s retreated under baggy clothes to cover the unwanted curves and shapes, no matter how little they seem to others, has taken to avoid his naked reflection. Periods are the worst. Blood drips between his legs and pain twists his stomach, and Ben feels gross, gross, gross and uncomfortable, wishes he could wrap his tentacles around the organ he doesn’t need and tear it off him like he rips off people’s limbs.
He envies his brothers. It’s their type of body he craves. It’s their type of body he should have, their type of body he sees himself with.
And yet, he looks like his sisters.
He hates it.
“BENNY.”
The door slams open, and then Klaus is here panting, smashing his hand on the light switch, kicking the door behind him as he breaks into a run, takes of-
“... Can I?”
Klaus’ hands linger on the blankets, but the blankets stay where they are. Klaus is impulsive, but he knows better than ripping off Ben’s fortress without asking first, because Ben might not want his body to be seen today. Ben’s head peeks out of his shell, and throws his brother a tired but curious glance. Klaus looks like a mess - breathing heavy, curls sticking to his forehead matted his sweat, uniform and knees trashed by mud and blood. Klaus is a mess of a person but it’s worse than usual. Mom isn’t going to be very happy.
Klaus drops a bag on the bed before climbing on it, huddling close to Ben’s blanket cocoon. “How do you feel?” Klaus’ voice, sweet medicine, chases the intrusive thoughts away. “Did you manage to shower?”
Ben answers by shaking his head from side to side. Gross, gross, gross. He wants to push Klaus away as much as he wants him closer.
“It’s okay. I don’t understand your situation because I’m not living it, but I want to help you as much as I can. So...” Klaus grabs the bag he dropped earlier and empties it on the sheets. Several clothes fall in front of Ben. “I got you this!”
Ben’s eyes widen. He extract one hand from his carapace, starts digging into the pile. The fabric is stretchy under his fingers, the front a little stiffer than the back. There are tank tops and half tank tops of various colors: white black, skin tones. Soon, he has a second hand in the cloth heap.
“... Binders...?”
It’s not a real question: it’s a whisper full of awe and growing happiness. Several times, he takes a binder, looks at it for a long time, then puts it back in the pile before reaching for another one.
Hey.
Hold on a second.
“How did you get them?”
The happiness gets swallowed in his guts behind the tentacles crawling beneath the surface of his skin, bubbly feeling replaced by the familiar squirming of the Horror. He’s a little suspicious. No matter how much Klaus wants to help, he can sometimes do bad things without realizing it, and Ben doesn’t want that kind of joy to be at someone else’s expense.
Klaus dramatically slaps the back of his hand on his forehead, fakely offended. He’s a born actor. “Darling, your piercing and accusing eyes are murdering me! I nicely asked the people in the charity thing for queer people, downtown. They gave me this. If there’s one which fits you, you can keep it, I’ll just give the rest back.”
(It’s a lie - just a half lie, to his credit. Ben just doesn’t need to know that might or might not have broken into the charity’s place to get those binders. He’ll give back those Ben won’t wear, and the charity would have wanted Ben to have one anyway, it doesn’t really count as theft . Klaus just didn’t ask for permission.)
Still suspicious but somehow reassured, Ben goes back to his exploration. He finally breaks his blanket fortress down, takes the binders and slides off the bed. The mirror is in the corner of his room. He swallows his disgust as he makes his way towards it.
First, he takes off his hoodie and throws it in Klaus’ face as a warning. It means ‘no peeking’, and Klaus presses it against his face with two hands as a promise.
Once shirtless, Ben focuses on the binders. His reflection hovers in front of him in the mirror, but he ignores it. The binders are all that matter.
The first one is way too big for him. It holds nothing, just floating as if he stole one of Luther’s training shirts. He takes it off with a grunt. He battles to wear the second one correctly. He does everything as he’s seen and heard, pushes his boobs as it’s recommended, takes a deep breath. It’s on. It’s on him.
In front of him, his reflection is waiting. Ben runs his hands on the binder, over and over, eyes stuck on the stretchy fabric, on his flattened chest. Come on, he tells himself. Come on.
And he raises his head.
He meets his own wide eyes in the mirror. The binder fits. The binder fits perfectly.
It’s him.
It’s really him.
He turns to Klaus who is nervously squirming on the bed with the hoodie still pressed on his face, visibly waiting for the worst.
“Klaus.” Ben’s voice echoes in the room. “It fits.”
“Really? So how do you feel?”
“It fits!”
Klaus lowers Ben’s hoodie from his eyes, blinking to adjust his vision to the light again. He blinks again when he sees Ben. Ben’s face is a beaming starlight, a mix of excitation, happiness and surprise, something bright and warm and positive that flows out of him like the rays of the sun. Klaus grins, carried away by that flow.
“It fits!”
“It fits! Look at me!! It fits!”
Euphoria.
Ben laughs, and Klaus laughs, and the room glimmer with shared happiness - Ben feeling like himself for the first time in what felt like centuries, Klaus taking in the oh too rare sight of his brother shining with joy.
Gender euphoria.
Ben lacks the word to describe what’s happening inside him. It’s bursting, it’s too much, too intense; but it’s blissful , it’s positive and it feels good , and he lets himself be rocked by that storm of feelings he hadn’t felt in so long. If he could scream, he would. He feels like running in the whole house, barging in every of his siblings’ rooms, in Reginald Hargreeves office, even, and tell them all: ‘ Look, it’s a little more me’. He feels like holding the whole damn world.
So he does.
He bolts back to the bed and throws himself on Klaus, and hugs him as tightly as he can. They’re both crying at that point. Happy tears. Lovely tears. Klaus’ fingers tangle into Ben’s hair, which suddenly don’t feel too long anymore, and Klaus holds him close, keeps him safe and wild. They don’t speak. No need too. For a few seconds, in this intense, strangely intimate moment, it’s like they’re attuned to each other. Ben’s cocoon has finally broken down to leave place to colorful wings, and Ben feels it, and Klaus feels it, sees it, privileged witness of the wonderful show of Ben’s metamorphosis. He wouldn’t trade his place for anything in the world.
“Thank you, thank you!”
Ben presses his lips against Klaus’ before Klaus can answer that there’s no problem. It tastes like tears, salt and joy mix together, a better way than words to convey the gratitude pouring out of Ben’s heart.
When Ben finally lets go, he immediately rushes back to the mirror to look at himself with a shirt on, admiring how better he looks, how close of his flat chest dream he is. Klaus gives up on trying to say something, cheeks still burning. Between him and Ben, words have stopped being necessary a long time ago.
Klaus takes a second before picking up the unused binders and shoving them back into his bag. He has to bring them back as soon as possible. But this time, he won’t break in and be out in the blink of an eye - he needs to have a little talk with the members of the association, because this kiss made him feel something no one ever managed to make him feel, and they might be able help him to put words on what bloomed inside him.
One word, maybe.
Euphoria .