Work Text:
Ren pinches the fabric between his fingers.
It’s a beautiful dress, to put it plainly. A deep red hemmed in lace with a sweetheart neckline. It caught his eye the second he entered the little clothing store on the corner.
He rubs his thumb over a sleeve.
It would probably look nice on some of his friends. Ann wears red like this all the time, but Ren can’t remember the last time he saw her in a dress. It matches Kasumi’s hair almost perfectly. Is it weird to imagine someone he barely knows in a dress? Maybe. It’s definitely not Makoto’s thing, in any case.
And, well, how would he look—
Ren pulls his hand away from the dress and shoves it into his pocket.
“So, what were y’doing in the dress aisle?” asks Ryuji a little while later, walking with his arm slung loosely around Ren’s shoulder.
“Oh, you know,” Ren replies, looking into the sky. “Guess I was thinking about Ann.”
“Hell yeah, dude!” Ryuji gives his chest a playful jab. “You’re gettin’ it!”
“Yup.”
Ren imagines what he would look like in the dress every night for a week.
***
“Makoto?”
Makoto glances up attentively from her workbook. “Yes?”
“Do you ever, like,” Ren loses his grip on the pencil he’s flicking around in his fingers and it falls onto the table, “uh, wish you looked different?”
She tilts her head. “Well, I do wish my ears didn’t stick out so much sometimes. Why?”
Shit. “No reason.”
“Um. Well, alright.”
They continue working in silence.
***
Akechi Goro refuses to go to the bathhouse with Ren.
In fact, he looks terrified after he asks. Real terrified. Not that fake plastic shit Ren knows he’s been wearing for— for however long. For years, probably.
“I’m truly sorry, Amamiya-kun,” he says with a worried little smile that makes his face look gaunt, “I simply— can’t, tonight.”
“Some other time?” Ren suggests. He glances at Sojiro behind the counter and he seems just as startled by whatever’s going on.
“No,” Akechi replies too quickly. “N— Oh, I couldn’t. I apologize. It’s your little cove, isn’t it? I’d feel like I’m intruding.” He laughs slightly and it chimes like a bell. “I should be going, actually. It’s getting quite late.”
“It’s a… public bathhouse,” Ren tries again.
“Yes, well,” Akechi mutters, shuffling his things into his stupid monogrammed case. “Thank you for the coffee, Sakura-san, as always.” He bows just barely before turning and pushing his way through the door, waving over his shoulder.
Sojiro frowns at the door. “I always tell him to call me Boss.” He scoffs and takes Akechi’s half-finished coffee. “Weird kid.”
“…Yeah.”
Ren stares over the bar at Akechi reading his philosophy book for smart people or whatever and cannot come up with a reason why he’d be wearing a sweater vest in the summertime.
Akechi looks up. “Is something the matter?”
“Why are you wearing a sweater? And pants?” Ren continues making his coffee like he never stopped. “We don’t have air conditioning in here.”
Akechi gazes very blankly at him. “I’m not affected by the heat easily, I suppose.”
Ren knows for a fact this is not true. Every day Akechi’s arrived at Leblanc this summer he’s been red in the face and shiny with sweat and really looking like he wants to ask for a water but never doing so, meaning Ren has to get him one so he doesn’t pass out, and he says oh, thank you very graciously before ordering a fucking hot coffee and undoing all the work the cold water did. It’s a weird little game at this point.
“Alright,” Ren replies anyway.
***
Ren does not remember the week of November twenty-first.
He remembers the feeling of his awful lumpy futon swaying underneath his skin as he sat still as a statue so his muscles would stop setting on fire. He remembers Ryuji mentioning that Akechi crosses his arms weird, like he tucks his hands under his armpits, and noticing that he does, in fact, do that.
He remembers December twelfth.
And that’s it.
***
Ren knows he’s transgender.
At least — that’s what he thinks he knows. He doesn’t know anything at all, if he’s being honest. He’s just not been thinking very hard about it because everything else is more important.
Everything else.
Really. Saving the world is more important than that. More important than thinking about…
Well, he’s not thinking about it.
He helps with making the necessary preparations before finishing off Maruki’s reality once and for all. They’re going to school and training in Mementos and clearing their way through the palace and he’s working his part-time jobs and studying and he just remembered it’s Futaba’s birthday next month so he needs to do something about that too, and he—
and he realizes Akechi is dead, and he can’t think about it, because everything else is more important. So he doesn’t.
Ren still can’t think about it when Maruki’s sitting across from him and says I didn’t want to make it seem like I’m holding him hostage even though that’s exactly what he’s fucking doing because he feels like he’s about to vomit all over the table and he already knew this and he didn’t need someone to say it to his face, and Akechi’s just standing there with his fake-unaffected look and Ren knows this because he told him— he told him he’s scared. Ren knows too much and Ren doesn’t know anything at all, and Ren is seventeen and his own Atlas, and Ren is transgender.
But he can’t think about it. He can’t think about anything when he watches Akechi leave through Leblanc’s door in tears that he doesn’t want a single living soul to see.
Not even Ren.
***
Snow continues to fall quietly outside Ren’s bedroom in a house that is not a home.
Morgana nudges his hand resting on the book he hasn’t picked up in an hour. “Ren?”
He sighs softly. “Yeah?”
“You should turn the lights on. Himiko says—”
“I don’t give a shit what she says,” Ren mumbles, rolling over to face the wall instead of the window. Light therapy doesn’t even sound like a real thing. He thinks his therapist just wants him to run up the electrical bill.
“Ren,” Morgana repeats, and Ren knows he’s just going to go into one of his I’m worried about you rants, so he turns to grab him under his little kitty legs and pulls him into his chest.
“Ugh— Ren!” He wiggles around in his arms. “You’re gonna suffocate me!”
“Am not,” he says into Morgana’s cheek. “Can’t help it when you’re so soft and warm.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He adjusts enough to fit snug into Ren’s neck like a pillow. “Seriously, though. You haven’t even tried her suggestion or anything.”
“‘Cause it’s not going to work.”
“You don’t know—”
“Mona,” Ren interrupts, “can we not?”
Morgana does not say anything else.
Akechi is alive.
Ren does not remember anything about prison, and he does not want to.
What he does remember is coming home, back to Leblanc, and being unable to do anything but cry as everyone embraced him and shuffled him into a seat and talked thousands of words a second into his ear. He made them all go and wait upstairs while he spoke with Futaba privately.
They sat in a booth together, hugging. Ren was probably hugging harder than she was. Futaba cried harder instead. I love you, she sobbed. I know, he sobbed back. I love you too.
Do you know what happened to him? Ren asked so quietly it barely registered as words. He didn’t have to specify who.
He’s alive, Futaba replied, and Ren clenched his hands against the back of her hoodie so hard he left imprints in his palms.
His phone number sits on Ren’s phone like a ghost, even if it isn’t one.
Ren is told not to contact Akechi. He doesn’t let this fact get to him until it’s the middle of winter in his hometown and the sky gets dark as he’s walking home from school during senior year and he’s so lonely he thinks his heart might burst.
Ann had to cancel her plans to visit him over the break because she got a gig overseas. Ren is so happy for her. He’s so happy.
Ryuji’s track scholarship offers and college scouting deals become real and they aren’t only part of Maruki’s fake reality anymore. Ren is so happy.
Yusuke—
Well. We can’t go on forever, now can we?
Ren continues to imagine what he might have looked like in that dress. He wears lots of layers now. Ren knows that he is transgender and this is called body dysmorphia. He does not do anything about this fact, because there is nothing he can do, because this is the only thing he knows.
He doesn’t know where Akechi is. He’ll be turning twenty this year. Ren hopes he’s better.
Every once in a while, he calls Akechi’s number to make sure it’s still alive, like he is. He never picks up, of course. Ren doesn’t expect him to.
(He squashes any hope that he might every time he dials.)
He never leaves a voicemail, or texts, or does anything but this little ritual. Everything he’d ever want to say to Akechi again would have to be said in-person.
Ren hates himself for being this way. He hates himself for wishing well on the person who shot and killed him, because he’s still angry. Now he’s angry that Akechi is gone, but he’s sure he’d be angry if Akechi were back, too.
He’d be angry no matter what.
College entrance exams pass uneventfully. Ren does fine, but Ren is not going to college. Ren is fine. Ren walks downstairs at one in the afternoon on a Sunday and his mom comments about how long his hair is getting, which is funny, because his hair has been getting long for half a year and he thinks his parents just don’t really see him as a person anymore. But it’s fine.
Ren does not know how to style longer hair.
Ren still wears his fake glasses every day.
He’s packing to leave for Tokyo and Morgana is dictating his luggage skills, which are severely lacking according to him, Ren’s cat. “You definitely need more than two pairs of shoes.”
Ren shrugs from the floor. “I can run in boots.”
“You can’t run in sandals, though.”
“You’ve just never seen me try.”
He cannot run in sandals.
“Okay, well,” Morgana continues, “I know you need more pairs of pants than that.”
“Says the one who doesn’t wear pants.”
“Hey!”
Sojiro cries when Ren returns to Leblanc. Futaba says he’s been crying all morning. The three of them sit, plus Morgana, Sojiro with a large glass of water, and Ren feels his heart being massaged back into place. Into warmth.
He never forgot how to use the coffee machine. Or how to make curry. “Tasty!” Futaba comments with a full mouth from the bar, swinging her legs and tapping the counter in an off-rhythm beat. She looks better. Her frame is filled out and she cut her hair to look like Wakaba’s, although she is slacking on her dye job. She claims she hates the smell of the bleach.
Ryuji noogies him very hard by way of greeting when they meet at Inokashira Park later in the day. “Woah, dude, this shit’s long!” he says.
“Yup,” Ren replies, flicking him between the eyes. “You’re looking a little long yourself.”
“Hey, I know I needa cut it.”
“Didn’t say that.”
Makoto is busy helping a friend move in and Haru isn’t going to school in Tokyo, which Ren is… heartbroken to learn. Even more heartbroken that nobody thought to tell him before he came back, but. They all have lives. It’s not like she’s gone for good. Ann is still on her modeling trip, and Ren is so happy for her.
Yusuke hugs him, which temporarily puts Ren into some sort of full-body arrest because as far as he knows he has never been physically affectionate with any of the Thieves before. “It’s great to see you again, my friend,” he says with his little rare smile, holding Ren’s hands with his own. His hair is very long and braided to the side. “Have you been well?”
Sumire visits for only ten or fifteen minutes because she has practice. “How’s gymnastics been?” Ren asks. She, surprisingly, is a very bad texter.
“Oh! That’s right, I haven’t told you, have I, senpai?” She smiles slightly. “I’ve… I’m not doing that anymore.”
Ren raises his eyebrows. “What’re you practicing for, then?”
“I do competitive swimming now. It was—” she tucks her hair behind her ear, “oh, this is really a conversation we should be having later, I’m so sorry, but I realized gymnastics was still sort of… leftover from Kasumi. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. You’re the one who always told me to think for myself, senpai, and I really took that to heart, you know!”
She leaves in a rush and Ren sits at Leblanc’s bar slightly dumbfounded for the rest of the afternoon.
“How was it all?” Morgana asks later while he’s making his bed up in the attic. (That’s right, bed! It’s a bed now!)
“Everyone seems great,” Ren replies, fluffing his pillow. “I’m really glad.”
“How are you, though?”
Morgana hops up onto the fresh pillow and bats Ren’s hand away when he tries to push him off. “I was worried you’d get overwhelmed.”
“‘Overwhelmed’? Really?” Ren sprawls out over the bed, annoyedly avoiding his snatched headspace.
“I mean, I was thinking about when you came back from jail—”
Ren taps his little head. “Okay, completely different circumstances.”
Morgana huffs. “I guess. But I’m glad you had a nice day.”
“Yeah.” Ren glances at his phone on the windowsill. “Me too.”
It’s getting warmer outside.
Ren’s hometown errs on the colder side. He has too many long-sleeved shirts and pants for a Tokyo summer. He should do something about this.
But he thinks about it. He feels better wearing the shirts and the pants, and they’re not all that heavy anyway, and he won’t have to wear sunscreen.
He won’t have to think about what his body looks like, either, or—
Ren comes up with a reason why Akechi used to wear sweaters in the summer.
June second comes and goes without incident.
Ren almost bakes a cake before realizing that’s a stupid and hopelessly romantic thing to do. He pretends not to think about Akechi for the entire day instead.
He’s not sure if anyone else on Earth knows his birthday.
Ryuji slaps his back. “C’mon, just come into the water with me! Please?”
“I’m good,” Ren says. He adjusts the umbrella stuck in the sand.
“Renren, you’re at the beach n’ you’re not even in a swimsuit. What’s up with that? You feelin’ okay?”
Ren looks up at Ryuji’s concerned face. It makes him want to cry, strangely. “I’m alright. Just don’t want to get burnt.”
“If you say so, man.”
Ren holds a bag of ice against the hoodie he’s wearing. Ryuji and Ann and Futaba all arrive back in Yongen-Jaya with bright red, peeling faces, and Makoto makes it very clear to Sojiro that she begged them to put sunscreen on.
Ren’s the only one without any evidence of sun.
***
11:34 AM sumire: hello senpai!! this is sort of sudden, but would you like to train with me this week? :))
2:19 PM Me: sorry i’ll have to decline
2:19 PM Me: dunno how to swim
3:07 PM sumire: I could always teach you!!
Read 9:58 PM
***
Ren barely considers working at Leblanc a ‘full-time job’. The patronage has changed nil since he left and came back. He can only wipe the goddamn counter so many times before he starts feeling like he’s in a time loop.
A time loop. Isn’t that a funny thought?
Not really.
“An Americano, please.”
He makes the Americano.
“Curry, please.”
He makes the curry.
“Happy birthday, Ren.”
His birthday passes. He gets his own cake.
“Is that your phone, Ren?”
What?
“What?”
“I hear a phone ringing.” Futaba sits up from the table she is definitely not supposed to be lying on. “Is it yours? Mine’s silenced.”
“Oh, probably,” he mumbles, pushing his apron aside to grab it from his pocket. He answers without checking the caller ID, which is really something he should stop doing. “Hello?”
There’s staticky silence on the other end.
“Hello?” he tries again. “Anyone there?”
“Hello,” replies—
Ren whips his phone in front of his face—
and drops it into the sink. “Shit,” he breathes, scrabbling to pick it up and thankful he just drained the damn thing, “holy shit— Hello? Akechi?”
He hears more than sees Futaba whisper-shout AKECHI? next to him. “Yes, it’s me,” comes Akechi’s voice.
He sounds… brittle.
“Oh my— holy shit,” Ren says again. “Uh— I’m working right now—”
“I’m sorry,” Akechi says, cutting him off.
“No, it’s fine, I just—” Ren glances around at the empty café (save for a very shocked Futaba). “Uh. What’s up?”
What’s up. Ren should bite his tongue off.
“This doesn’t seem to be a good time,” Akechi replies. “I’ll call you later, Ren.”
And then he hangs up.
Ren just stands, bracing his arm on the sink and staring at the phone in his trembling hand.
“I’m sorry, what was that?!” Futaba comes up behind him and shakes his shoulders. “Ren! What the heck was that?!”
“He called me Ren.”
“What?”
Akechi Goro contacted Ren for the first time in years to talk for half a minute over the phone and call him by his given name for the first time.
Was he waiting to?
As the days pass, Ren feels sicker and sicker about it. He feels angry. About a stupid phone conversation that was five percent conversation and ninety-five percent him having a heart attack.
He doesn’t want to be at Akechi’s beck and call anymore.
No part of the year is good to Ren. Spring is a widening of distance, summer is Akechi’s birthday, autumn is getting killed. Winter is everything. Winter is still and always everything.
It’s going to be winter again soon. At least he knows Akechi’s phone number still works.
“When did he call you?”
“A few weeks ago. Don’t remember the day.”
October 18th.
Ann shifts on her creaky dorm bed. “Maybe you should call him back.”
Do you think I haven’t thought about it? That I haven’t scripted how the conversation would go in my head? “Maybe.”
“I’m serious, Ren. This is really bothering you.” She looks at him with her big, worried eyes.
She has class in ten minutes.
“I know,” Ren says, pulling at a thread on his shirt.
Ren secretly checks if the dress is still in the little corner store.
It’s winter, so the dress is out of season.
He laughs when the cashier says it’s nice he’s looking for a gift for his girlfriend.
Ren is trying not to have a panic attack.
He stares at Akechi’s sweater vest and notices how it’s too big on his shoulders. It’s probably always been that way. “Ren?”
“One sec,” he mumbles, pushing himself out of his seat and nearly running to the bathroom.
Akechi is the same and he’s different. He sounds a little less brittle than he did over the phone, but he carries himself much more tentatively. He picks at his fingers a lot. He doesn’t smile or smirk.
And Ren confirmed, from the second he sat down at their restaurant table, that he is transgender.
Futaba just got first in her third Mario Kart race in a row. She flings her arms in the air and kicks her socked feet out again. “Yeah, baby!”
She turns to Ren and elbows him, nodding towards the TV’s display of their scores. “You’ve got some catching up to do if you want to beat moi.”
“I do,” Ren laughs.
His hands have been a little too unsteady to play properly tonight.
He sets his controller down on his bed and glances at Futaba.
“Bathroom break?” she asks, crossing her legs.
“No, I wanted—” He breathes. “Can I talk to you?”
She nods and mutes the TV, turning fully to face him. “Yep. I’m all ears.” She cups her ears for emphasis.
But the words won’t come.
“Okay,” Ren says.
Futaba stares at him forgetting every morpheme and every sound. It’s very cold in Leblanc’s attic.
“Are you—”
“Okay,” Ren says again. That’s all he knows how to say.
“Ren, you’re kinda freaking me out.” She pulls at his sleeve. “Look, you’re shaking. We don’t have to talk about anything if you don’t want to.”
“Okay.”
They don’t continue their Mario Kart game. Futaba wins in spirit, they decide.
Ren is transgender. We’ve been over this one.
Akechi is also transgender. Ren does not know what to do with this information, because nobody else knows this, probably.
Akechi doesn’t know that Ren knows this.
Probably.
After his freak-out in the restaurant, Ren has been thinking about this every day. Thinking about it while he changes, while he showers. While he washes the dishes. He and Akechi see each other on the same regular basis that young adults tend to, meaning about once a week.
Ren says I don’t forgive you in a queue for a museum and Akechi doesn’t say anything back.
And it’s true, because he doesn’t forgive Akechi. He still has nightmares about him. Ren doesn’t think there’s anything Akechi can do to make himself forgivable, which makes him feel horrible, because Akechi spent a year in rehab and has his own life now and he seems better.
Isn’t that what Ren wanted?
Akechi has a roommate who is a regular person with regular hobbies and regular likes. Ren lives in his pseudo-dad’s attic in a coffee shop. Akechi asks, Do you remember what blend I used to ask for? and Ren does, because Ren always will, and he sometimes thinks of it as ‘Akechi’s blend’ even though it’s a blend you could find in any café.
If you’ve forgotten, Akechi Goro is transgender. This just makes every time Ren looks at him about ten thousand times more important than if he weren’t.
How does one broach a topic like this? Ren has a feeling Akechi might just run away if he even mentions it. Actually, he’d more likely feign obliviousness. He’s really awful at that, but he does it a lot.
“I’d prefer if you called me Goro,” he says one day, thumbing through some books in a store they entered on a whim.
Ren feels stupid. Of course he’d want to be called the name he picked for himself.
“Sounds good,” he replies. It comes out a little too enthusiastically. Goro glances at him briefly before continuing to pick through the books.
Ren is transgender, but he is not a girl.
This is just another thing he thinks he knows, though. He’ll have to see.
Ren wishes he knew this. Goro seems to know just fine.
“He’s alright,” Ren says, holding his phone between his chin and shoulder as he scrubs a plate. “I’m surprised you’re asking about him, though.”
“Why wouldn’t I, dude?” Ryuji asks.
“You don’t like him?”
“Yeah, but you’re close with him. I dunno.” He sighs. “I don’t gotta like him to ask if he’s doin’ okay.”
Goro isn’t in college either. He has a job, but he won’t tell Ren what it is. Ren assumes it’s just something boring he sees no point in talking about because he cannot imagine Goro being involved with anything underground or conspiratorial anymore. He thinks the mere idea would put Goro into cardiac arrest.
Ren is taller than Goro now.
They hold hands, sometimes.
Both of them are busy on February second. Ren thinks it’d be some sick joke if they tried to commemorate the day with anything, so he’s glad. He’s glad he won’t have to watch Goro leave again.
Ren cannot name all the things he feels towards, about, or in relation to Goro. One of them is jealousy. It’s extremely ironic but Ren cannot find it in himself to care because he is, he is deeply and uncontrollably jealous of Goro and how much better he seems and therapy worked swell for him and he has friends he made in rehab and— and—
and sometimes, Ren is so scared something will happen again he doesn’t leave his bed because taking a step outside is a death sentence. Sometimes, he thinks about who he’s spending time with and who he—
Well. He’s not thinking about it.
Goro invites himself over to Leblanc one day in March and is restless for a solid fifteen minutes before Ren can’t stand it anymore and drags him upstairs in the middle of his shift to beg him to say what’s bothering him.
There’s something I’ve been needing to tell you, Goro says, and Ren is worried all of his blood will flow out of his body and his lungs will capsize.
Akechi Goro is transgender.
Amamiya Ren is transgender, and nobody else knows.
***
He’s going to try again.
He’s going to try again. Yes, he’s going to do it today.
Ren grits his teeth sitting on Futaba’s bed and watching her play some online game with a UI so cluttered he can’t tell what’s going on at all. “Futaba?”
“Yup,” she says. A light flashes on the screen and she quietly goes yesss.
“Can you pause that?”
“No can do, my man.” She glances back at him for a moment. “Gotta wait for me to finish this raid first, ‘kay?”
He’ll do it tomorrow.
***
It is so unbelievably lonely to be the only friend who isn’t in college.
Well — as previously established, Goro isn’t in college either, but he’s busy in other ways. Ren’s never busy. Futaba has started taking over some shifts at Leblanc when she feels up to it and he appreciates the help, he really does, he’s sure Sojiro does too and is probably extremely happy that Futaba’s doing something like this at all, but Ren’s
so
lonely.
He’s not used to feeling lonely like this. He got a good year of loneliness when he went back to his hometown and none of his old friends looked at him anymore. He didn’t make an effort to reach out because, he reasoned, he was going to be going back to his other friends soon enough. And he had Morgana, who is more of a friend than a pet, really.
But now he’s lonely even as he’s surrounded in a city of his friends. Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.
He doesn’t want to visit any of the places he became so familiar with years ago because it’s just going to be fucking lonely when he’s not around any of the people who used to accompany him there. Being in Leblanc makes him feel lonely, which is uniquely terrible, because that’s where he lives. And works. And does every other thing in his life because where else is he supposed to go, Shujin?
He’s sure going to Shujin would make him feel lonely, too.
It’s not like Ren never hangs out with anyone, ever. He’s sure he’d be… worse, if that were the case. He savors the lunches he has with Ryuji, the people-watch-and-talk outings with Yusuke, and even Haru came by during a school holiday to spend nearly the entire day with everyone. It was very nice. She’s studying biology.
He just can’t help but feel that his friends and relationships are falling through his fingers like sand.
Is it so selfish to want to hang onto teenage friendships?
He doesn’t know. Ren doesn’t know anything.
A shipment of new mugs and cups arrived at Leblanc today. I’m replacing them, Sojiro had said around a week ago. The old ones have too many chips and scuffs.
Ren thinks the old ones look fine, personally. He wants to save one. Brainless sentimentality, etcetera.
He hefts a milkcrate full of them up onto his knee and then against his chest. “Heavy,” he grunts.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Sojiro comments from the door. He’s holding it open for Ren to take the crate into his car. Ren has not asked what he’s doing with it.
He walks over and makes it about halfway through the doorway before he stumbles on the ledge into the café, tripping forward and sending the porcelain flying over the street in little shattered pieces.
“Oh, hell,” he can hear Sojiro saying, but he’s not comprehending, because he’s staring at these little white pieces and—
Ren swallows a lump in his throat.
“Hey, kid— kid, are you alright?” Sojiro asks from above where Ren’s kneeling on the pavement.
When Ren glances up at his face, Sojiro looks older. He’s been looking older. It’s only been three years, and he looks so much older, and this is what makes Ren start crying.
The remnants of the cups and mugs glow like stars on the dark ground. Hundreds or thousands of memories Ren let go of so easily.
He didn’t get to pick one to keep.
Sojiro helps him up and back into the café and he’s saying things like it’s alright, I was just going to give them to a local shop and there’s no reason to cry, but Ren continues silently sobbing into his sleeve and slumps against the counter anyway.
He doesn’t want anything to leave him.
Ever again.
The dress is back in season and back on the same rack it used to be on. Ren can’t help but feel giddy and stupid with luck that nobody else has bought it yet.
He only feels lucky because he does intend to buy it, which…
Well.
He’ll think about it later.
He’s also just going to have to hope that he fits in the damn thing because this store doesn’t offer refunds and there is no way he’s going to go around offering a dress to his friends out of the blue if it doesn’t, and he is not going to try it on before buying it because—
Because—
“Thank you,” he says to the cashier, intentionally avoiding eye contact as he takes the paper bag. This is the same one who made that ‘girlfriend’ comment however many months ago.
He doesn’t really want to hear it again.
The dress makes it back to Leblanc and is immediately, not even a second of hesitation, shoved under Ren’s bed, still in its bag and clad in tissue paper and folded perfectly. He slides an old bookbag in front of it.
“Hey,” comes a voice behind him and he starts so intensely he accidentally thunks his face forward into his mattress.
“Woah, sorry!” Morgana hops up onto the bed and looks down at Ren kneeling, swishing his tail back and forth. “What are you doing?”
“Cleaning,” Ren answers easily.
“Well, you’re just making a bigger mess under there.”
Ren stands and brushes off his thighs. “The art of cleaning means shoving things under your bed. You wouldn’t get it.”
“That’s not how it works!”
***
Ren always watches Goro very closely.
Ren always watches the way Goro doesn’t bind around him when they’re alone anymore and the movement of the same kind of clothing he wore when they were high schoolers and the length of his hair, going below his shoulders now, and Ren feels so envious he believes he is sick.
***
Ren wishes someone would have told him something about the way things would end up.
This is not a reasonable wish and he knows it; it’s not a realistic one, it’s not one that could have ever happened, it’s not one that he could ever count on being true. But he wishes.
He slouches further against Leblanc’s attic window on his bed and tries to read the title of the book Goro’s holding without his (now unfortunately necessary) glasses on. He cannot. “What’re you reading?”
Goro glances up. “You’re squinting very hard.” He closes the book and sets it down on the couch cushion. “It’s nothing important.”
“I somehow doubt you’d read things you think are ‘unimportant’.”
“I can’t indulge in bad literature?”
“So it’s a bad book?” Ren crosses his arms. “Doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“It’s not bad, per se. It’s more that it’s…” he clicks his tongue, “juvenile.”
Juvenile? Ren tries to imagine the kinds of books Goro would have read as a child and the only ones he can come up with really aren’t even all that different from the books he still reads. He loves his detective novellas. “Like?”
Goro waves a hand around. “As I’ve said, it’s not important.”
“Tell me what it is, then.”
“You’re so stubborn,” he mumbles. “It doesn’t matter.”
Goro would not be this defensive about something that truly didn’t matter. He might have been, years ago; he’s much more open about things now. He’s even told Ren what his job is: he works in a bookstore.
He won’t tell Ren where said bookstore is, but. Baby steps.
Ren puts his glasses on and slides off his bed, to which Goro immediately places his hand over the cover of the book. “Wow. Can you just show me? I don’t think I even saw you come in here with a book.”
“I… didn’t,” Goro says, scrunching up his face.
Ren also scrunches up his face. He doesn’t own any books he thinks Goro would read. “Is it mine?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So you found a book in my room and you won’t even tell me what it is?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Goro shouts, immediately throwing his head to the side and wincing again after he does. “It doesn’t— I’m sorry.” He sighs through his nose. “I’m being dramatic. Here.” He holds the book out in Ren’s direction and waves it around in the air slightly.
As Ren walks over and plucks the book out of Goro’s hand, the first thing he notices is that it’s got a very colorful cover. The second thing he notices is that it’s a manga. “You read manga?” he asks, thumbing a page.
“It’s— I’ve just told you I think it’s juvenile. No, I don’t.”
For some reason, this makes Ren laugh.
He looks at the cover a little more closely, tilting the book around in his hands. It’s a drawing of several cartoon rabbits with very large eyes; the colors, while still bright, are very faded, and the pages are soft and round-edged with time and love. He instantly recognizes it as something from one of Futaba’s collections and infers she must have brought and left it here the last time she came over.
He places the book back down on the couch and sits next to it. “Yeah, this isn’t mine. Happy Happy Clover.” Resting his elbows on his knees, he turns to look at Goro. “I liked mecha stories.”
“Did you.”
“Yeah. I mean, the art was amazing. The stories were cool too, but I think I liked how… powerful? It was? I liked that.”
A moment of silence passes.
“Did you like those—” Ren nods towards the manga, “—kinds of things?”
“I did,” Goro says.
“It’s Futaba’s. She’d probably let you borrow it.”
Goro is not making eye contact. “I’ll… I’ll let her know.”
Should Ren?
He will, even if he shouldn’t. “A lot of girls I used to know liked that series.”
“I…”
Goro squeezes his face together tightly in thought before taking a deep breath in. Out. “This— Ren, this may not make sense, but I need you to recognize that I was never truly a girl.”
The two of them don’t talk very often about things like this. Ren sometimes openly wonders about how Goro has… managed, but that’s all. He only ever inquires where Goro’s the one who brings it up.
He’d like to be the one who brings it up instead, someday.
“What do you mean?”
Goro leans back. “What I mean is yes, I was born female and,” he pauses and holds his mouth open slightly, “socialized as one, I suppose. But I didn’t have the experience of… of being a girl that age. I don’t know what it was supposed to be like.” He taps his foot against the floor. “I can merely assume other girls my age read things like this because I did.”
This is uncharted territory.
Ren forces himself not to fidget. “Is this how it is with, uh, most of your childhood?”
“Meaning?”
“The clothes you wore.” He almost adds and the friends you had, but that’s not likely to get a nice answer. “I dunno. Your hobbies?”
“I wore whatever my mother could afford.”
Ren should have assumed that one.
“Well— I had some nicer things.” Goro picks at the sides of his finger. Ren looks away and has to pretend he can’t hear it because if he doesn’t he will go insane. “A, a dress or two. It was mainly shirts and pants. They didn’t fit me very well.”
What kinds of hobbies do young girls usually have? Everything that Ren can think of is grossly stereotypical and would definitely not apply to Goro in the slightest. Sports? Could Goro have done sports?
“None of my clothes fit me well until I was a teenager, actually. When I began—”
Goro cuts himself off and presses his lips into silence. “Until I was a teenager,” he repeats. “Regardless, I think that sentiment would apply to my clothing as well, yes.”
Ren wonders if Goro has any childhood photos of himself. If he looks the same, different. He will never ask.
“If I must be honest, I don’t remember the specifics of my childhood very well,” Goro says quietly, briefly glancing at the closed door of the attic room. “I’m not sure what I did for fun. Or if I had the capacity to do things for fun at that age. So I can’t say if they were in-line with what was relevant at the time.”
Ren wants to know what it’s like to be a girl.
“Ren?”
“Oh,” he says, sighing. “Sorry.”
“Are you alright?” Goro leans forward on the couch to look at Ren’s face. “You look sick.”
Ren does feel sick. He stares at the floorboards under his feet and wills his heart to sink from his throat.
“All good,” he says, very unconvincingly, because his voice breaks. “I’m good,” he tries again.
The gears in his mind are working overdrive, grinding and clunking so harshly against each other they’re dangerously close to molten. Ren feels sick.
“I hate it when you do this, you know,” Goro says.
Ren blinks at the ground.
“I wish you’d listen to me.”
“I’m listening.” He’s hoarse.
He hears Goro swallow loudly next to him. “I’m trying very hard to be vulnerable with you,” he starts, “but this happens every time. Ren—”
“I’m sorry,” Ren says again.
“Is there any point to me admitting these things at all? Are you wanting to hurt me?”
Ren doesn’t know anything.
“I don’t want to hurt you—”
“Then please tell me why this is happening!”
Ren finally looks up and to the side at Goro’s face. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but he didn’t think Goro would look
so
scared.
“Please,” he says again, with that pinched expression Ren knows he gets only when he feels very, very scared. “I don’t want to think you’re doing this out of pity, or to have me hurt myself, or— or out of malicious intent, but you’re not listening to me—”
“I’m listening,” Ren says again. He can barely find his tongue.
Is it going to happen?
“I promise I’m listening to you.”
Right now?
“I want to know—”
Ren doesn’t know anything.
“You want to—”
“I’m trans,” he says.
“I’m trans,” forty different octaves say.
Trans, the universe says. I’m trans.
***
Goro’s hands don’t linger on Ren’s back after he zips the dress up.
It’s too loose around the chest. The sleeves are too tight.
Ren doesn’t like the feeling of lace on his legs, but he cries into Goro’s shoulder anyway, because he is not sick, and he is trans.
He is not alone.