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Harry Hook wears eyeliner and skirts and scribbles in “p for pirate” on forms that offer a bolded M/F. Carlos de Vil wears pastel blue and pink for an entire month in the summer and posts excited daily updates online when he starts taking testosterone. They go to parades together and come back laughing with colorful flags painted on their cheeks and colorful friendship bracelets wrapped around their wrists, big blocky alphabet letters that spell out HE/HIM and THEY/THEM.
Audrey watches them and watches them and watches them.
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Audrey is a princess. She is.
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She could have done it, is the thing. If it had been Ben, she could have done it. Ben who was her oldest friend, her best friend, her surest friend. Ben helped her do her makeup when she was little, and he let her return the favor sometimes, and they giggled over messily applied lipstick and raccoon-like eyeshadow.
Ben didn’t care when she got older and stopped wanting to do it, or when she got even older and furiously wiped off her makeup the moment her grandmother was out of sight, or when she got older still and learned how to apply mascara without ever making eye contact with herself in the mirror.
Ben never cared. Ben liked her all the same, high heels or bare feet. They were in love but they were friends first, friends forever. She could have been a queen, if it was for Ben. She could have been a girl, if it was for Ben.
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She does actually like it. She likes pink and pastels and she likes the way skirts feel swishing around her knees when she dances. She doesn’t hate her body. She doesn’t hate herself, very much.
She doesn’t love the makeup, but who does, really? It’s a hassle to put on, and it feels thick and uncomfortable on her skin. She looks pretty, though, when she wears it. Very pretty. The prettiest. People get caught on the prettiness and don’t bother to look past it, and thank god for that.
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“You can ask, you know.”
She doesn’t scream, because that wouldn’t be ladylike, but she does start, a little bit. She sits up straight, too, because leaning both her elbows on the table and resting her chin in her hands isn’t ladylike, either.
She folds her hands in her lap and offers a polite smile as Harry takes the seat next to her. They’re friends, kind of. They talk when they see each other and sometimes dance together at parties, and they enjoy each other’s company. She enjoys Harry’s, at least, and she likes to think the feeling is mutual. “Ask what?”
Harry doesn’t look impressed. “You know perfectly well what. It’s not nice to stare.”
She blushes, but she wasn’t lying. She doesn’t know. She might watch, but she doesn’t let herself wonder, doesn’t put words to the curiosity. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.”
Harry sighs. “Just calm down about it, will you? Carlos is too polite to say anything, but neither of us really loves being stared at. Use our pronouns, treat us like people, stop looking at us like a freak show. Especially at his own party.”
It is Carlos’ party, and he’s dancing around in a suit jacket but no shirt, laughing as he shows off the freshly-healed scars on his chest. Audrey’s jaw drops. “I don’t think you’re freaks! I don’t, really,” she insists when Harry just raises an eyebrow. “I think it’s nice. That you two can- that you’re allowed- it’s nice, is all,” she says softly. “I like that for you.”
Harry cocks his- their? Their. Harry cocks their head to the side. “Huh.”
-----
Harry calls her, and they make casual plans to meet for a late dinner a few days later. They do get dinner, and then they go for a walk, and Harry finds an out-of-the-way spot near the back of a public garden and invites her to sit with them and enjoy the evening. They do, and they make conversation, and then Audrey bites her lip and Harry smiles and the conversation takes a turn.
They talk for three hours. Harry answers all the questions Audrey’s never dared to ask even herself, and a few more besides. They tell her, over and over while she stumbles over her words and panics and loses her voice, that it’s okay if she’s unsure, it’s okay if she’s confused, it’s okay if she’s scared.
“I don’t feel like a princess,” she blurts out at one point, the closest she can get to it. “I’m- I’m a- but I’m not-”
“It’s okay,” Harry says. “You don’t have to say it.”
“I want to,” she says, and she wishes she sounded more confident, not so weak and wavering. “I want to say it, but I… I don’t even know how.” Her voice cracks. “I don’t even know what.”
“Don’t have to,” Harry says. “Don’t have to say it, don’t have to know what you’re not saying. Take your time. And hey, if you don’t have a word for it, that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.” They grin. “There’s me, for one thing.”
“I’m not,” she says immediately. “I mean, I know that you- and that’s fine, I get that, but I’m not. I’m- I’m-”
Her fists are resting on her knees, and she doesn’t realize how tightly she has them clenched until Harry reaches over and gently uncurls them before her nails can break the skin on her palms. She lets out a slow, shuddering breath.
“I’m not a girl,” she says, voice so small it feels like it’ll get lost in her chest before it makes it out of her mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever been one.”
Harry holds both of her hands in one of theirs so they can sling an arm around her shoulders and tuck her in close. She sucks in a hiccupping little breath and hides her face in their coat.
“Yeah,” they say. “That’s okay, too.”
-----
Harry tells Carlos for her, so she doesn’t have to say it out loud again, and then all three of them go out. This one is a quick trip, just long enough to go pick up piles of candy and junk food before they settle in at Carlos’ apartment for a movie marathon. Jane, apparently, is having a girls’ day with some of the cheer team.
“She doesn’t know,” Carlos assures her. “I invited you over because she’s out of the house today, not the other way around.”
“Great,” Audrey says. “That’s, um, that’s great, thanks.”
Carlos grins and hands her a giant bag of chocolate chips. It’s not until halfway through the second movie—some action flick that she’s pretty sure none of them are actually paying attention to—that she asks, “When did you start, um. I mean, when you moved her you were already…”
Carlos shrugs. “Things are kind of different on the Isle. I mean, the medical stuff, you know I didn’t start that till a couple years ago, because that definitely wasn’t available when I was growing up. But for the rest of it… I knew I wanted to be Carlos since I was six. No one there really cared, as long as you could handle yourself and be useful to whoever was in charge. People care a lot more about what you can do than, like, what you are.”
“Not really like that here,” Audey mumbles. “Most important thing in the world is what you are. Your station and title and…” She shrugs. “Your other stuff.”
“Seriously,” Harry says around a mouthful of gummy bears. “No offense, your highness, but you lot are absolutely insane about that nonsense here.”
That surprises a laugh out of Audrey, and if she sniffles a little bit afterwards, neither of them says anything.
“Yeah,” she says, “we kind of are.”
-----
She’s worried, for a while, that knowing will mean she has to do something about it, that telling Harry and Carlos means she’ll have to start telling everyone. Or, worse, that they’ll start telling everyone.
They don’t, and they promise her that she doesn’t have to, either.
“Baby steps,” Carlos says one day when they’re once again at his place, sprawled across the sofa and loveseat with something they’re not watching playing quietly on the TV. “There’s no schedule, or timeline, or checklist. You do things when and how you want, in whatever way makes you feel best.”
“You don’t owe anything to anyone,” Harry says. “You don’t have to tell people, or change the way you look and act. Just do what makes you happy.” They grin. “Your parents are royalty. Who’s going to tell you no?”
“My grandma,” Audrey says. “She doesn’t even like when I go outside without blush. If I- if I start, I don’t know, if I cut my hair or tell people to call me a prin-” She chokes on the word, like she has every time she tries to say it out loud, and she curls her knees up toward her chest and shivers. “She’ll be so angry.”
Carlos sighs. “That sucks, man.”
“Man,” Audrey repeats, half under her breath. Carlos frowns.
“Sorry, should I not-”
“No, it’s good,” she says quickly, and she holds herself a little tighter. “I know it’s just a thing people say, I just, it sounds…” She swallows. “It’s. Could you just, I mean. I haven’t said it, could you- would you just. Could you say it. Please.”
Carlos bites his lip over a smile. Stretched out on the sofa next to him, Harry grins.
“Are you a man, your highness?”
“Yeah,” Audrey breathes, and it feels like something cracks inside him even as something else maybe, just maybe, starts to put itself together. “Yeah, I am.”