Chapter Text
It feels like skydiving, the exhilaration of finally knowing who you are, and the fear of falling to your death.
***
Foggy tells his father first, because his mother would simply say "Yes, dear" the way she always does when she cannot deal, the way she said "Yes, dear" when he had told her that there probably wouldn't be any grandchildren in her future. His father looks him in the eyes, then something distant just below his right ear, and gets back to work without a word. Foggy doesn't know what to do with that.
Later that night, there is a knock on his door. His father looks serious, and when he opens his mouth to speak, Foggy's eyes dart towards the window. He wonders how quickly he can climb out of it, get away. What he hears is, "Listen... son." It's tense, and it doesn't roll of the man's tongue easily, but it makes Foggy want to collapse and sob with relief.
They sit his mother down to tell her, and she says, "You are such a pretty girl." He doesn't know what to do say to that, doesn’t quite know how he feels. Later, she cries. It breaks his heart, but there is no turning back. You cannot jump and then get back into the plane.
***
Foggy has always been Foggy. The nickname is older than the decision, older even than their notions of gender, so his friends - those who stay, those he doesn't have to fight off with words or, sometimes, fists - barely need to adjust. This part is simple.
He decides against a variation on his birth name. To his father, he is Franklin now. His mother, who before had so easily called him Pat, now insists on Patricia. His heart breaks all over again every time she does, so he stops giving her reasons to call him anything at all.
***
How seriously people will take him on any given day moves up and down on a sliding scale from "Have a good day, sir" to "Who does that dyke think she's kidding?". It depends heavily on how he feels, what he wears, whether or not he ties his hair back in ponytail or leaves it as it is. He never considers having it cut short - it was too much work to grow it out like this, and he likes it, never mind what other people think. It's one of the many things that his parents have a hard time wrapping their heads around.
On good days, that's alright. They don't have to get it, nobody does. He is who he is - and all that has changed is that he can be honest about it, breathe deeper, smile wider, because there is nothing to hide anymore.
On bad days, he wonders if maybe there is. If "I'm a man" is enough of the truth, if maybe that is just another lie, albeit the more comfortable one. What he actually feels is so much more complex and complicated than that, and he can barely think it, much less put it into words. If he should tell his parents to not spend their savings on a therapists who will just tell him that he is a fraud.
On bad days, all he can see is the ground coming closer.
***
It's on one of those bad days when his mother finds him in front of the mirror. His chest has turned from an inconvenience to an alien landscape, red and purple and yellow. Discarded duct tape is strewn all over the floor. Foggy knows it's not safe. He can see, right there in the mirror, that it isn't, and the pain in his ribs tells him that there is nothing sane about it, either. He doesn't tell her any of that. He doesn't know how.
A week later, he finds the duct tape gone, and compression shirts where his bras used to be. She still doesn't call him Franklin, but she stops calling him by his birth name, tip-toeing around gendering her child in whatever way she can. She doesn't understand, but she doesn't want to wound, either.
The parachute opens.
It's a start.
***
Eventually, there is a therapist. She says that this is about figuring himself out, but Foggy knows better. He is still a minor, and his parents will only go through with what she approves of. Everything hinges on her believing him, on her judging him to be the real deal. So he finally gets a haircut, and he sticks to the only narrative, the only script he knows: He is straight as an arrow. He always knew that he was a boy. There was never any doubt. Never any doubt whatsoever.
Eventually, there is an endocrinologist, and then a surgeon, and the scars on his chest are much wider than he had wished for, but he realizes that he is lucky to have this, and God, it is so much better than the alternative.
Eventually, the name on his driver's license is Franklin Nelson.
Eventually, he has to choose. Either he undergoes a surgery he doesn't want, doesn't need, never even considered – or the gender on his birth certificate stubbornly remains the same.
Foggy chooses to become a lawyer.