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More than anything, Hiccup wishes he was a girl.
It would just be easier. To not have to deal with the injections, and the misgendering, and the dysphoria, and the constant reminders from his body, his family, his mirror, that he’s not a boy. Not a real one, never a real one.
Because she was born, and she was killed, and he was reborn like baby fucking Jesus from his mother’s virgin womb and a bullshit make–believe story that barely anybody believes anymore. Because as much as he wants to be, he’ll never be a boy. And his nose grows longer, and his body grows thinner, and his hair– well, that doesn’t grow. He thinks maybe it never will, and he’s made peace with that, as much as he possibly can. But he watches his male friends grow stubble and thick, dark, body hair, when his is thin and pale auburn just like him, and he watches them in the locker room and wants, wishes, yearns like he’s never yearned before, not for them, but to be them.
And Astrid kisses his cheek, and she’s perfect, and she’s just the opposite of him, dark-skinned and blonde and trans but the other way around, but still, he feels inadequate. Because they’re seventeen and they’ve never had sex. Because they’re seventeen and he fumbles with her bra strap and he has Canadian scars on his chest and she strokes them with love in her painted fingertips and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to make her happy. Because– because he’s such a fucking fraud.
And he buys pads and tampons at the Walmart near them, and the cashier looks up at him with an apathetic gaze and says hello sir oh sorry ma’am and his stomach drops and he never corrects them because what do you say? What the hell do you say when you’ve been on HRT three years this August and you’ve had top surgery and you’re still not man enough? And maybe you never will be? And Hiccup can lie and tell himself that it’s because society is misogynistic, because people don’t think men can buy menstrual products for their girlfriends, but really, deep down, way down, he’s not a man. And he wakes up every day in a body that he’s decorated to make his own, but the feng shui is all fucked up or something, because he rearranges and redoes and relearns and kicks the wall and scratches the floor and throws knives at the ceiling and neglects his plants, and eventually the body feels like Lorde’s trashed hotel room.
So he lets himself fall into artwork of intricately shaded self-portraits that his art teacher thinks are just black holes, and useless knowledge he’ll retain for two hours and then discard, and counting, so much fucking counting, and it’s just a matter of waiting for the next appointment.
Because then maybe he’ll finally feel man enough.