Work Text:
You get your first tattoo in a desperate attempt to change your body. Right on your forearm, a beautiful swirling monster in red and blue. And then another, and another, because maybe all the color will make you like looking at yourself in the mirror. Both your arms get covered, piece by piece, then inwards, a collage of those incomprehensible beasts you love so much that carefully avoid your upper chest, distract from it, look at this instead. Guys like tattooed ladies. The guys you like do, anyways. Maybe that will make up for how you never let them take off your bra.
And then you realize it, and you can’t help but laugh. It took over 20 years to figure it out. For a genius, you were always a bit slow when it came to anything but science.
When you first reintroduce yourself to your lab mates as Newton, the reactions are a mixed bag. Many are stilted, professionally polite acknowledgments, since science folk never quite know what to make of you. Some older folk grumble under their breath about kids these days and their blah blah blah— you were always the youngest at all your workplaces, and always met with the most scrutiny, so it’s no surprise. One of those loud, entitled types- the kind of academic that spends their whole lives being the smartest in their circles and hate it when they’re not- snickers. “What, like Isaac Newton? You know you’re a biologist, not a physicist, right?”
You figure a dumb joke warrants a dumber response. “No, not like him, like the snack. I have a passion for fig.” It’s obviously sarcastic, but you’re you, so he almost believes it.
There’s a pause, and then he goes, “Well, you were always too boy-crazy to be a dyke like we thought, anyways.” And that was that.
Getting surgery takes a long time. The shots were easy enough to acquire— but the money, the waiting line, the are you really really sure you want this, because it’ll be permanent (ha!) begin to weigh down on you. When you finally are able to go, it’s been a year, and you have the start of a beard, and a scratchy, breaky voice that makes you sound 10 years younger than you are, and man are you ready to get this over with. The doctor asks you one more time if you’re sure, gives you the anesthesia, and hours later you wake up, aching in the chest and finally free.
However, it doesn’t feel truly done until months later, when you’ve fully healed and you go back to the tattoo parlor. “Right over the chest, please,” you tell the artist. “Over the scars and all that. Cover me.”
Years later, when the world has really and truly gone to shit, you really do look like yourself. Your voice has grown past its puberty stage, although it’s still a bit high and boyish, something you don’t really mind, and your body is covered in dark hairs that only barely obstruct the tapestry of kaiju you’ve obtained over the past decade or so. Some at your new workplace know, most don’t. You don’t feel the need to tell people, but if they ask, you never lie. It doesn’t feel like it matters, not when there are monsters from the sea that are leveling cities. Not when there’s science to do, samples to study, music to listen to.
You don’t think your lab partner knows. He’s one of the most intelligent people you’ve ever met, quick as a whip, but you think he might be a bit dense, at least socially. In that way, he’s just like most of your old coworkers. In every other way, though, he’s nothing like them. He’s a pretentious jackass and he throws out insults and nitpicks and british-y scoffs of vexation like it’s his job, and you’ve never met someone who hates you so intensely and openly and as equally as you hate him. And yet, you’re equals. Rivals, adversaries, the antitheses to one another— order and chaos, numbers on chalkboards and guts and viscera strewn across lab tables— but equals, and behind every biting comment is an ounce of respect, behind every language-transcending argument is a bit of recognition for the other. Despite his crutch, and your, well, everything, (peculiarities, they’ve been called, your leather jacket and brash attitude and the way your mind can’t sit still,) there’s a silent acknowledgment that the two of you are the smartest people here, and a resentful challenge-filled understanding that comes with.
You wonder (fleetingly, flickeringly, as if his respect could ever mean that much to you,) if that would change if he ever found out.
It’s isolating in the lab. Working alone was something you’re used to, but usually you’d be working alone next to five lab mates who would be talking about their weekend or a movie they watched recently. Typically, you didn’t participate in the conversation (you were always horrible at small talk,) but it was nice to listen to. Your lab partner doesn’t do small talk. He only mutters under his breath. He’s a good mutterer. You wonder if he put that on his resume. Mad scientist, good at numbers, expert at muttering.
The point is, it’s usually just you and him. You don’t mind it as much as you pretend to, though. Talking to people interrupts your workflow. Also, you get nervous sometimes. Not that it matters.
However, occasionally someone new will wander down, watch you work like they’ve got nothing better to do, try to strike up conversation. With you, usually, because you’ve got the friendlier face of the two.
“So, what, do you guys just stay down here all day? Ever see the sun?” This new guy’s got a square face and sounds like he never grew out of his college fraternity.
“We just work down here. We have quarters upstairs like everyone else,” you respond honestly, with all the politeness you can muster for someone who likely would’ve shoved you into a locker twenty years prior.
He laughs. “Well, I guess they gotta put you guys somewhere, huh? Too bad girls never come down here, I bet. I mean, you’re probably not getting any action anyway. Chicks probably think you’re gay, right? The way you talk like a girl and all.”
The onslaught of bullshit this guy just crafted pierces you in an embarrassing fashion. “I don’t talk like a girl,” you respond, too quick and too defensively. Your internal explanation is that it had been so long since you’ve gotten a comment like that, it caught you off guard. Truthfully, you suppose you’re still a bit sensitive.
“No, dude, you totally talk like a girl!” He laughs again, and he probably thinks this is normal conversation for two human beings to have. “You have the guy voice, but you say words the chick way, you know? I knew a guy like that- he had like four sisters or something- and everyone thought he was either gay or a tranny. Dude couldn’t get laid for shit.”
Your knees wobble under your desk, and you try and keep your mouth in a straight line. Stuff like this shouldn’t affect you anymore. You should be used to this, you chide yourself. The new guy must’ve noticed your discomfort. Bullies always could, you remember. “What, why’re you making that face? Are you actually a tranny?”
You don’t have time to respond, which is good, because you’re not sure how you would’ve. Your partner, who had been listening the entire time, of course he had been, turns around abruptly and stalks over from his side of the lab to yours. “Alright, that’s quite enough of that,” he says, and there’s a notable coldness in his voice, different from the competitive heat that you so often provoke in him. “I think it’s best you leave, now, or I’ll have to inform your boss you’ve been slacking off on your work.”
“Oh, come on, we were just joking around! Right, dude?” He looks toward you, and you set your jaw. If you say anything now, you know you’ll break.
“Leave. Right now.” He’s all ice, and grips his cane like a weapon. It could be, if he wanted it to, you know from experience. Silently, you wish he’d hit him.
“Jesus, fine. Guess I hit a nerve or something, sorry.” As he walks out the door, you hear a few more rude words, just loud enough that you know he wanted you to hear them.
He returns to his side of the lab, expression still cold, stony anger. You wait a minute, then decide to speak first when he doesn’t. “You didn’t have to do that. It was fine, really.”
There’s a pause. “I don’t like bullies,” he responds tightly.
“Oh, what, is it an ‘only I can make fun of you’ kind of thing? You jealous?”
He scoffs, rolls his eyes, all that. “Mein gott, you are an insufferable child. I don’t know why I bother.” Warmth returns to his voice, exasperation and familiarity.
You laugh, and when another new guy comes down a few months later, and his name is Raleigh and they’re saying he’s going to fix all of this, you’re not even nervous one bit.
You start thinking about him more. It’s weird. You don’t want to talk about it.
You wonder if he knows.
And then the drift happens, and you know he knows now. He knows other things, too. How you were always the loudest in your classes and picked fights with your teachers. How the only thing your parents hated more than you was each other, and how you escaped them the second you got the chance. He knows about all of your boyfriends, how you would always go for guys older than you and didn’t care about getting hurt. How you got hurt, a lot. He knows what it feels like ride a motorcycle, tune a guitar, and to have a needle buzzing into your skin in a desperate beg for change change change. And he knows.
You don’t talk about the drift until a few days later. After the world is saved, too much happens all at once for there to be time for a conversation. Lots of celebration, even more alcohol, and then hangovers and award accepting and beginning to rebuild all that was destroyed, until finally it’s just the two of you in the lab again, this time to clean up.
“So,” you start, and he looks up from where he’s organizing his papers. It’s been hard to stay apart from him for long after the drift. Sometimes you think in his thoughts. Apparently, it never fully goes away.
“Yes?” He’s only slightly more patient with you now. You still hate each other, but it feels more painful, like hating yourself.
“I’m trans.” He knows.
“Y-yes. I could- er. I saw.” He grimaces, and you know he doesn’t like thinking about sharing memories, thoughts, with you (with anyone). He knows you know, and his expression collapses even more.
“What, no ‘congratulations’? No ‘wow, I couldn’t tell, you’re so tall and manly that I would’ve never guessed?’”
He shakes his head. “I had considered the possibility.” Your eyebrows shoot up, and he laughs. “You have injection scars on your leg. I figured maybe you required some sort of medication, or you were possibly doing so recreationally. Testosterone shots make more sense.”
You pause, registering the information. “Wait, did you think I was doing heroin?”
He shrugs.
“Dude! What the hell!” Now you’re both laughing, and doing the same thing at the same time makes your brain feel funny. He feels it too, and you both stop.
“We’ve gotta talk about this,” you finally say. “‘Cuz we both know this shit is gonna keep happening. There’s no helping it.”
He sighs shakily, and sits down. You do too. “You… you know more about me than anyone ever has. I don’t know what to do about it.” You do. You know about how his mom died when he was almost too young to remember, and you know his dad always expected too much of him. You know he got hit by a drunk driver when he was twelve and he almost didn’t finish college because of it. You know he’s had four relationships in his life, with three girls and one guy, and none of them lasted long and were always second to his studies. You know he’s bad at sleeping, and he always pushes himself to his breaking point, and some nights when the pain in his leg is too much, he cries.
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to tell anyone your personal information if you’re concerned about that.” You look down at your lap. “To tell you the truth, it kinda freaks me out, too.”
“Yeah.” Silence. His watch ticks. Your leg bounces, and your sneaker squeaks on the linoleum.
“You know,” you try, gently, “you don’t have to be someone you’re not around me.”
“What?” He wasn’t expecting that. You weren’t either, actually, but you might as well finish the thought.
“You- you don’t have to put on the act with me, if you don’t want to. Act all shut off and calculated and stuff. I- I respect you. Either way.”
He doesn’t look at you. You hope you didn’t just overstep. All of the sudden, it’s really important to you that you don’t mess up whatever this is.
“…Thanks, for that. I- err- respect you. Too. By the way.” A heartbeat quickens, and you’re not sure whose.
“No problem.” Pause. “You’re still an ass, by the way. And this lab still needs to get cleaned.”
He huffs out a laugh and hits you (softly) with his cane. “You’re the ass, and your desk is the one that’s still covered in kaiju blood, not mine.”
You roll your eyes. He’s so fucking annoying. You might be in love a little bit.
Everything feels lighter now. Better. Things are changing at a rapid pace, and you’re a goddamn rockstar scientist who rules the fucking world (at least for a month or so), and you’re brain-linked to a guy who respects you and cares about you, and fuck, that’s all that fucking matters. You’re trans, and happy, and you have people that care about you. Jesus. Talk about the end of the world.
There’s one last thing to do. You warn him before you go, because he might feel it, and you don’t want him to think he’s having nerve damage. Surprisingly, he asks to come with. The thought of him standing awkwardly in a grungey tattoo parlor in his uniform slacks and tie makes you want to laugh so hard you can’t not accept this strange new gesture of kindness(?).
The artist has you lie on your back, and you turn your head to the side to see him sitting there, watching you. Electricity snaps in your head. He’s blushing. He brought a book on theoretical physics. Good lord.
“I like them,” he says when it’s done.
“What, my tattoos? I was under the impression you thought they were ‘distasteful’.”
“I was being mean, mostly. But I do like them. They make you, er, you.” His voice softens. “Your scars, too.”
You look down. Your top scars are in full view. You forgot to hide them from him. Didn’t care to, you guess. One last monster sits on your chest, fresh and covered in plastic, right above your heart. His thoughts are the same as yours. Everything is different now.
You reach for his hand. “Thanks, man. I like them too,” you say.