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Coming out was the easiest part, actually. She’d dated girls before; it’s not like having a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend was going to be an issue. If anything, once the initial surprise had worn off, she’d been even more thrilled about it than you were. You’d talked about names; you’d talked about hormones. Then, she’d told you that she had an idea -
“See, I told you it would fit.”
You look at yourself in the mirror, look down at the skirt, give it an experimental spin like they do in the memes.
It’s - look, you’re not sure what you expected. It’s clothes. It covers you, sort of. Below that -
“I don’t like seeing my legs,” you say, finally.
She wrinkles her nose. (Cute.) “Too hairy? We could shave them.”
“That’s not, like… problematic, is it?”
That makes her laugh. “It’s just hair. You can do whatever you want.” You must still look skeptical, because she continues: “We can figure that out tomorrow, though. Here, try my jeans, maybe they’ll feel better.”
You slip out of the skirt, doing your best not to look at yourself too much. The waist of the jeans is fine, but when you button them up they’re way too tight around your -
“Nope, can’t do this.”
You pull them off, too, and she gives you a quizzical look before realizing. “Shit, sorry, of course. I should have thought of that. Alright, one more thing…”
She dives back into her closet, then emerges triumphant a moment later, holding a forest-green dress. You’ve seen her in it once before. She was stunning.
“Girly? Check. Legs covered? Check. Loose where it’s gotta be? Check. This should be perfect.”
She helps you into her bra, then helps you pull the dress over your head. You avoid the mirror as long as you can, trying to forget that you’re inhabiting your own body. It almost works, for a second - you think you feel something, anyway, not that you’re sure what that thing should be - but then you catch sight of yourself and it all falls apart.
You’re noticing things about yourself that you’d never really noticed before. The width of your shoulders. The hair on your chest. The hair on your legs, still brushing around out of sight. Your bra is empty. Your boxers are full. Your face is wrong - too wide, hair in all the wrong places and none of the right ones.
You look away. It doesn’t help. You’re crying.
“These are - oh god, these aren’t good tears, are they?” She wraps you in a hug, and you bury your face in her shoulder.
After a minute: “Do we need to get you out of that dress?”
You nod into her, silently.
She separates from you, tugs the dress over your head, helps you back into your clothes. By the time you’re done changing, the tears have mostly stopped too, and you sit sniffling on the end of her bed, her hand squeezing yours.
“I don’t know what happened,” you finally tell her. “It’s like… when I’m wearing my own clothes, I’m me. I’m, like… whatever it is I normally am. A guy, I guess, which isn’t great, but it’s just, like. Passive.” You breathe in, breathe out. “When I put on your clothes, it’s like… I thought I’d feel more like a girl, maybe, but it was the opposite of that. I felt like a man in a costume. Like a grotesque parody of a girl. It’s like I suddenly couldn’t ignore any of the stuff I was used to ignoring anymore. I felt like I was barely even a person.”
You stop again, wipe your eyes, blow your nose into the tissue she offers. “I think I’m fine now. I’m back to feeling like I used to. I think that, uh… I just think we need to take it a bit slower.”
She nods and squeezes your hand again. “You’re right, it’s not like we’re short on time. C’mon, let’s do something else and forget about all this for a while.”
She guides you to the couch in her living room, guides your head onto her lap, threads her fingers through your hair again and again while you watch videos of some guy playing cheap horror games and freaking out. She calls you her girlfriend - that one feels good. She kisses you.
You go home that night wearing her cute lilac socks and a massive, dumb smile.