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Nick isn’t sure when exactly it starts. When the discomfort begins to seep under his skin and make itself present in his veins. Maybe it was in his first-year gender theory class, or when he joined the LGBTQ+ Society and began to learn just how many colours there really are in the rainbow. Maybe it’s always been there, just under the surface. Regardless, it’s certainly become more present lately. It’s an uncomfortable tingling feeling that creeps up the back of his neck when shopkeepers casually greet him and Charlie with a “hello, gentlemen” or when the others on the rugby team make frequent comments about “the lads”. It even strikes once his mum tells him on one of their weekly calls that she’s proud of the man he’s become.
He's not sure how he was so unaware before of just how often people just casually assume these things about him (about everyone, really)—of just how freaking gendered the world is. Now that he’s aware of it, it’s like every single time it happens, it tears another little hole into the fabric of his world view, leaving mere tatters that he stares through and sees nothing but the absolute bullshit that is the patriarchal construct of gender.
Initially, it’s enough to be aware of it and to begin to actively do the work to unlearn it all with the help of his friends. They keep him in check, kindly calling him out when he slips and says “guys” or when his overwhelming privilege as a straight-passing, cis white male shows. He knows that being called out is uncomfortable—and it should be, he thinks—but it’s not slipping up that keeps him up at night, it’s a feeling much like he’d had back when he had first met Charlie that there’s something within himself that’s just a little out of sync with the version existing out in the world.
The first time he gets an inkling of what that might be, he’s getting ready to go out to a gay bar with some of the others from the LGBTQ+ Society. Cherry asks Nick if he’d like some glitter, and when he nods, she dusts it liberally across his cheeks and then sends him to the mirror to see how it looks.
“Oh,” Nick says, a little awed at the impact of a bit of glitter. “It’s so pretty.”
“Let me know if you want some eyeliner or anything too,” Cherry says brightly, clearly pleased.
“Um,” Nick says, still looking at himself in the mirror.
“No pressure,” Cherry tells him.
Nick forgoes the eyeliner that night, but for days after he thinks about how nice he had felt with the glitter sprinkled across his cheeks, joining the freckles there. How pretty he had felt even.
He’s curious about how it would feel to have his eyelids painted rainbow or his lips bright red like Cherry’s always are. So, a week later when he’s getting coffee with Cherry between classes, he asks her if she’ll give him a makeup lesson. She’s an absolute whiz when it comes to makeup—even Nick, who knows nothing about the stuff, can tell that from the looks she pulls together—and her eyes light up like a kid on Christmas when he asks.
“Oh my god, yes!” she nearly screams at him across the tiny table they’re sat at. “I absolutely love when boys get into makeup,” she says dreamily.
Nick grimaces a little internally, but outwardly he smiles at the colourful girl across the table from him.
“Do you want to come by tonight?” she asks, and then she continues, clearly enthused. “Oh, you’re going to look so fucking hot—we’ll have to take pictures for you to send to Charlie!”
Charlie. Nick’s smile falters briefly. What is Charlie going to think of his rugby player boyfriend wearing makeup? If Nick is honest, Charlie won’t care about the makeup—he will likely, as Cherry has noted, find it hot—but Nick is maybe more worried about something bigger than just makeup. He shoves any thought of it deep into the recesses of his mind.
Cherry carefully paints Nick’s face, showing him different products and looks. It’s a fascinating process, Nick thinks. One he can’t see himself doing with any regularity, though he offers to let Cherry use him as a practice model anytime she wants, because the process of having it done is somehow incredibly soothing. Ultimately, when Nick looks in the mirror with a full face of makeup, he doesn’t even see himself. Not in the way that people on makeover shows seem to express, where they feel like some sort of inner beauty has been revealed. Nick just feels like he's looking at someone who literally isn’t him.
“So, what do you think?” Cherry asks when Nick has been staring silently at himself for probably a few beats too long.
“I don’t think it’s really … me,” Nick says eventually. “But I’m happy to know that, at least.” He can see Cherry nod behind him in the reflection of the mirror, her eyes peering shrewdly at his reflected face.
“That’s fair,” she says. “Makeup isn’t for everybody. But I still think you look hot, especially with the eyeliner,” she tells him.
“I do like the eyeliner,” Nick says, nodding. “And glitter.”
They settle onto Cherry’s bed, and Nick lets her take photos of the look. She promises not to post them, but she does send him a couple of the best shots.
“So,” Cherry starts, “can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Nick tells her.
“Was there something you wanted the makeup to make you feel?” Nick stops breathing for a moment. He doesn’t know how to answer that question.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly.
“Okay,” Cherry replies gently, accepting the response without further question.
That night, Nick finds himself staring at the photos of himself that Cherry had taken. They’re definitely not him, not in the way he thought he might feel with makeup on, but there’s still something about them, about seeing himself so blatantly subverting gender norms, that’s a little thrilling.
Over the following days, Nick Googles obsessively, as he always does when he’s trying to figure something out. He’s not really sure what trip around the internet has led him to a body modification forum, but here he is, reading through pages and pages of threads about tattoos and piercings and how many people feel like they’re reclaiming their own bodies by turning them into art. It makes Nick’s heart beat a little faster to think about. He scrolls through the galleries of piercings, imagining adorning his own body with them. He’s intrigued by the idea of cartilage piercings, but it’s when he sees an image of a person with little curves of gems set into gold bracketing the sides of each nipple that Nick’s breath stutters. It’s not the image of this person that has him breathing hard, not really, it’s the thought of his own body sporting delicate jewels that makes his pulse quicken and his nipples harden as if in anticipation.
Nick saves the image to his phone and then tries to forget about it. He places his phone face down on his bedside table, trying to force himself to sleep, but within moments he’s picking up his phone again and seeking out jewelry for piercings he doesn’t even have.
Over the next few days, Nick spends an inordinate amount of time staring at his chest in the mirror—in t-shirts, naked, with his nipples soft and then hard and puckered from a few quick twists. He can’t stop thinking about his own damn nipples and how fucking much it turns him on to think about them decked out with jewels.
It’s almost impulsive when he books an appointment at the tattoo and piercing parlour for the following weekend, except that he’s been thinking about it nonstop for well over a week already.
It’s not exactly a fun process. The needle fucking hurts, but Nick doesn’t even care because it feels so good to be doing what he wants with his own body. When the piercer hands him a mirror to take a look, Nick feels emotion bubble in his chest, threatening to overwhelm him.
When he gets home, he immediately strips off his shirt and stares at himself in his full-length mirror. He hardly notices when he starts to cry until one hot tear drips off his cheek and hits his collarbone. “Fuck,” he says to his reflection in the mirror, hands swiping at his damp cheeks, even as more tears well up in his eyes.
When he looks in the mirror now, he feels like he sees himself. He feels pretty. He also … doesn’t really feel like a “he”. Nick swipes back more tears, not really sure what exactly to do with that thought, even as it settles like a burning ember in his chest.
He’s certain that ember is going to burn him up if he lets it, but maybe, Nick thinks, burning down the last vestiges of the things that are holding him back is exactly what he needs to do.