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Katelyn was straddling Aaron’s waist, her legs bent on either side of his body, her hands holding his face in place so that he wouldn’t move and ruin her meticulous work. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration as she applied mascara onto his eyelashes, the final step before she was done. It was a struggle to stay still, but somehow he managed, only getting three muttered comments from Kate on staying still.
Her face broke into a smile as she pulled away, resting her hands on his chest to admire her work. Her stare was intense, her gaze self-satisfied, and it made Aaron’s entire body feel hot and restless. He would do anything to make her happy, to keep her looking at him instead of anywhere else in the room.
“Do you want to see?” She asked. Honestly, Aaron didn’t care how it looked, he could resemble a clown and he wouldn’t mind because Kate had enjoyed the process – he trusted her makeup skills, though, she did it on herself every day and it was breathtakingly gorgeous.
He nodded anyway, and took her hand when she offered it to him, helping him stand despite the fact that he could easily do it himself. He squeezed her hand tighter so that she would not let go as she led him to the full-length mirror in the corner of her room, by her dresser.
She stopped him in front of the mirror, sliding up behind him and hooking her chin over his shoulder, leaning into him as he just… stared.
Aaron didn’t know what exactly he had expected, but it was not to look into the mirror and for once in his life feel good about his appearance. He didn’t know what Katelyn had done exactly, he was very clearly still himself yet his features seemed softer somehow, and with his hair grown out and desperately due for a cut according to Nicky, he could pass as a girl. A more masculine girl, but a girl nonetheless.
The thought should disgust him, or at least make him feel vaguely uncomfortable, and yet it didn’t. There was definitely a twisting, gnawing sensation in his gut, but it was something else, something hungrier.
“It’s not perfect since we’re not the same shade, but I think I did good,” Katelyn said brightly, pressing a barely there kiss to his neck. He watched pink crawl up his neck and paint his face, and yet his reaction was subdued by the roiling thoughts in his mind, distracting him. “You look pretty.”
The compliment hit harder than it ever had before, almost shocking a gasp out of him, but he swallowed it down. It affected him more because for once, he believed it, he thought so too, and he was uncomfortable with how comfortable the thought made him feel.
The strange feeling lingered with him after that, long after Katelyn removed his makeup and they reluctantly went back to studying, prodding at the back of his mind even when he returned to the loneliness of his dorm, still there after he slept and woke up and slept and woke up and days passed.
And maybe it wasn’t entirely a new thought. He could admit it, completely alone in the dead of night, that he’d had more than occasional thoughts as a child about how he wanted to be like his female classmates, wishing he could play with the girls and look like them and be accepted by them. He’d wanted to go through his mom’s clothes and makeup and see how he would look as a girl. But there was never any time to focus on those desires when any small mistake meant he wouldn’t get food for days. He had to focus on surviving.
There was no longer anything holding those thoughts back, not now that his life was as normal as it could probably ever be with the Foxes and Andrew and Neil fucking Josten. He wasn’t an abused child trying to avoid attention, or a drug addict craving his next hit, or dealing with his psychotic brother and a mafia runaway. He could afford to search for happiness, had the time and the safety to do so.
Except… Aaron was meant to be the normal twin. There were certain expectations for him, and this didn’t fit the carefully curated image he’d fought to present to the world. He couldn’t let those kinds of thoughts linger – what would people think if they found out? He would lose the acceptance he had fought to achieve, the friendships he had struggled to build, the life he was trying to create away from the reputation of the Minyard name.
He forcefully reminded himself of everything he had to lose whenever his mind wandered, and yet every night he couldn’t help but ruminate on the thoughts, wondering, imagining scenarios of himself as a girl, not particularly different from who he was now, but always with a much wider smile. His body, curved in different places, pressed against Katelyn’s, fitting together like puzzle pieces.
A week passed, then two, and she started using she/her pronouns to refer to herself in her head. It was a private indulgence, one that no one else could know about and therefore couldn’t take away from her.
Her life continued as normal, going to lectures and labs and Exy practices, making her way to Katelyn’s dorm whenever she wasn’t too tired, repeating the same cycle day after day. It was exhausting and sometimes miserable, but the secret thrill of referring to herself as a girl brought back a sense of joy to her life that she thought she’d lost long ago.
Of course, it being Aaron, that happiness couldn’t remain untainted for long. Once she had begun to consciously acknowledge how she felt, what she secretly desired for herself, it made every “he” or “dude” thrown at her so much worse, a punch in her gut that had her wanting to rip her skin off. At least the physical pain would distract from the sharp stabbing in her chest.
It was everywhere now that she was focusing on it – she couldn’t escape the feeling. She walked into the Exy locker room before and after practice, eyes lingering on the sign on the door that indicated it was the male locker room, gaze flickering to watch the girls pushing through a different door.
She looked down at her body as she changed and felt sick, scrambling to get out of there as fast as possible. She was the first one out, ignoring Andrew watching her as she walked back to the athletes' dorms.
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“Do you ever wish you had a girlfriend?” Aaron asked. It was a stupid way to bring up the subject, but that had been her core characteristic lately. She was grateful that Katelyn knew her so well, that she wouldn’t take the poorly phrased question as a biphobic comment the way others might have.
Katelyn looked up at her, shutting her textbook and pushing it aside for the moment, reaching her hand out in a silent, wordless request for Aaron to come closer. Aaron placed her hand in Katelyn’s, followed the gentle tug on her hand that brought them together, knees knocking against the other’s.
She was willingly putting herself into a position where it would be harder to run away if things went wrong, but the vulnerability of this moment was nothing compared to the extremes Aaron would go to for Katelyn, the atrocities she would commit for her girlfriend if it meant getting to be close to her. She would rip her beating heart from her chest and hand it to her, still warm from being inside her body, pumping blood at an unsteady rhythm, red staining both their fingertips.
“Why would I want anyone else when I have you?” Katelyn asked gently, bringing her other hand up to caress the side of Aaron’s face, so gentle despite her knowledge of everything Aaron was at her core, the rot inside of her.
It was a nice reassurance, and it might have steadied her heartbeat and uneven breathing on any other day, but today it did nothing for the gnawing anxiety chewing up Aaron’s insides.
Aaron closed her eyes, leaning into Katelyn’s touch, her hands so soft compared to Aaron’s, calloused from years of holding an Exy racquet. “Ignore me. If I wasn’t a part of the equation. If you could have a girlfriend, would you want that?”
Katelyn hummed, a sound of genuine consideration. Aaron could feel her girlfriend’s eyes on her face, and she kept hers closed so that she didn’t have to watch the inevitable realisation cross her expression.
“If that girlfriend was you?” Katelyn asked after a few beats. She understood Aaron so intimately, was able to understand her even without Aaron expressing her desires verbally.
There was a hint of a smile in her voice as she spoke, a gentle softness to her tone that she only ever had when speaking to Aaron, and it was enough to convince her to open her eyes, fighting her fear of rejection to observe her girlfriend’s face. Katelyn’s eyes glimmered with curiosity, but her expression was open and free of judgement. Aaron didn’t understand what she had done to deserve someone who loved so genuinely.
“Yes.” She choked out.
“I want you,” Katelyn said, “Whatever that means. If you would be happier as a girl, I would love to have you as my girlfriend.”
There were no more words exchanged as Aaron breathed shakily, the soft trembling of her body steadying, her heartbeat slowly returning to some semblance of normal. Her palms still felt clammy when they kissed softly, the gesture initiated by Katelyn, and the knowledge that she was still reaching out to touch Aaron in the same way that she always had was a soothing balm on her agitated senses.
Maybe they should be talking about it, but Katelyn knew when to push and when to give Aaron time, and they both knew any more discussion of the topic would have Aaron picking at her skin and craving something to get rid of the heaviness in her mind.
It was a conversation they could have later, when Aaron didn’t feel so out of it.
She laid her head on Katelyn’s chest, trying to match her breathing so that they were in sync, moving together like one unit rather than two separate people. She wished they could stay this way indefinitely, wished she could claw her way into the space between Katelyn’s ribs and stay nestled there beside her heart, a permanent part of her.
Outside, the sun was setting, the sky a darkening pink behind Katelyn’s curtains. Her roommate would be returning soon, and Aaron would have to go back to the loneliness of her own dorm.
“I’m still Aaron,” She said after an undetermined amount of time had passed, muttering it into the fabric of her girlfriend’s top.
Katelyn softly scratched at Aaron’s scalp, running her fingers through her hair, “Okay.” She accepted it, just like that, as if it was easy to discover that your boyfriend actually wanted to be a girl, as if it was a normal thing that didn’t require more than a brief few seconds of consideration before moving on.
God, Aaron adored her.
She leaned up to kiss Katelyn again, because she’d admitted her deepest, most repressed desire and hadn’t been pushed away, had instead been accepted and pulled into loving arms. It was logistically no different from any of the thousands of times they had kissed before, but Katelyn was kissing Aaron as her girlfriend, and that made a wave of uncontrollable hunger rise in Aaron’s stomach, cannibalistic butterflies making a mess of her insides.
To the rest of the world, Aaron was still a guy. She would return to her dorm soon and hear the same pronouns that had always been used for her, would wake up tomorrow to her classmates and teammates still all viewing her as a man. She would have to retreat back into her own mind to keep herself from screaming and throwing things and ripping her own hair out.
None of that mattered right now, though, breathing in the same air as Katelyn whenever they broke apart to breathe, because her girlfriend knew. The one person in the world who had always loved Aaron for who she was, genuinely, and she still did.