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Harder Than You'll Ever Know
Traveling with Ash for the first time was supposed to be fun - and it was! For the first week…
And then Gary started to feel off. At first he thought it was the summer heat that was making him feel so drained and sore. All of his muscles ached and his back screamed even with his pack being at its absolute lightest. His appetite was off and he suddenly couldn't stomach any of the food he had brought with him. Already exhausted, the lack of food only made him feel worse and he could feel his mood plummeting.
Gary had a feeling he knew exactly what was happening.
Please, no. Not now…
He should probably give Ash a heads-up that their adventure was about to get derailed, but he kept quiet, not wanting to disappoint his close friend. Instead of confiding in Ash, the researcher mentally begged any entity that might be listening to please just wait until we get back to Pallet. When they passed through a town, he avoided that one section in the Poké Mart and pointedly ignored the very items he knew he would need.
Maybe he was wrong, maybe he just was feeling off for a different reason…
But then he awoke in the middle of the night to a horribly familiar pain stabbing through his lower abdomen. A sharp gasp escaped him, the sound bordering on a sob as his body curled in on itself.
"Fuck…" he moaned, twisting about in an attempt to find a less painful position. Umbreon was awake in an instant, and though she knew she couldn't do a single thing to relieve her trainer of his pain, she could at least offer the quiet comfort of her presence. "No, no, no… Why?"
It felt as though a hand were reaching into his body, grabbing a handful of innards and yanking, pulling, twisting until tears came to his eyes and his breath came in sharp gasps. It wasn’t a panic attack, though he wished it were - at least that would be over soon enough. This would last a week. If he was lucky. Sometimes it was longer.
When the wave of pain finally released its hold, he uncontorted his body and reached for his bag. Umbreon illuminated the tent with a gentle light as he rifled through the bag. He knew he should have stocked up in town, but he had to have something.
But a frantic search through his first aid kit and every pocket, compartment, and bag in his pack turned up nothing.
"No…” he groaned. “C'mon, there has to be something."
But no amount of pleading with the universe would unearth the items from his bag.
Gary heard Pikachu's concerned squeak from the other teen's tent and Umbreon replied with a quiet bark. There was a rustling in the other tent, followed by the sound of a zipper and then footsteps approaching his tent.
"Gary? Are you okay?"
He could hardly breathe, let alone think and, to make matters worse, the pain came back for another round.
Unable to do anything else, Gary groaned and curled in on himself once more. He didn’t have a choice here. He was going to have to tell Ash.
"Not really," he replied to the other boy.
Ash’s concern was immediate.
"What's wrong?" But Gary couldn't make those words come out. Ash tried again when he didn't reply. "Can I come in?"
"Yeah…" Gary relented.
The zipper on the side of his tent opened and Ash’s face appeared in the opening, hair mused from sleep and eyes wide with concern. "What's wrong?" he repeated.
Gary heaved a sigh. It was bad enough that this was happening in the first place, but now he had to tell Ash?
“I…” He hung his head with a dejected sigh. “We have a problem.”
“Okay. Well then, let’s figure out a solution.” Ash crawled into the tent, Pikachu still atop his shoulder, and sat crossed-legged across from Gary.
There was barely enough room for Gary, Umbreon, and his bag in there, and Ash’s added company only made the small enclosed space feel tiny and claustrophobic. Gary had to fight for a breath as another painful cramp tore through him.
“We need to go back to town tomorrow,” he bit out through gritted teeth.
Ash didn’t question it. He nodded, expression far more serious than the situation called for. “Alright. I have my rapidash with me, you can take her if you want.”
It was a kind offer but Gary cringed at the thought of having to climb up onto a horse. The last time he had tried riding Arcanine into a town like this, he’d ended up on the ground sobbing for an hour, overwhelmed by pain and frustration with his body for refusing to function properly. He could deal with some bleeding and cramps, but this? This wasn’t that.
This was so much worse and, worse than that, there was no real end in sight.
But Ash distracted him before he could go far down that particular buneary hole of thought. "Why do we need to go back to town?"
Gary hesitated. Ash had traveled with so many girls, he probably understood what it meant halfway decently. Still Gary groaned, preferring to keep this information private.
Finally he relented with a dejected sigh. "My period just started," he mumbled, gaze anywhere but on Ash.
The trainer was quiet for a moment and Gary was well aware of his lingering gaze. "Right, you get those," he finally replied, sounding largely unperturbed. "Is it bad?"
"Painful," Gary managed to grit out as a other cramp wracked his abdomen with agony. He doubled over, arms wrapping around his abdomen as Umbreon leaned into him with a sympathetic whine. "And I don’t have anything for it."
"Oh!" Ash exclaimed, as though he'd be able to help with that. "I'll be right back!"
He crawled out of Gary’s tent and scurried back over to his own tent. Unsure of what to expect when he returned, Gary tried his best to breathe through the pain while he heard Ash digging through his bag. Wait. He didn’t actually have what Gary needed, did he? Sure Ash traveled with a lot of girls but there was no way…
There was a triumphant whoop a moment later and Ash came scurrying back over to Gary’s tent. He crawled in and sat across from Gary, holding out a handful of small, plastic-wrapped packages and a little bottle of painkillers.
How…?
Gary stared at the objects in Ash’s hand warily. "Why do you have tampons?"
"Because I travel with girls a lot." Gary’s eyes narrowed. "I'm not calling you a girl," Ash quickly revised. “I know you’re not. You just deal with some of the same things as them.”
Good save. Gary rolled his eyes and immediately regretted it. Here was Ash, being a good, kind friend, helping him out when he had been too stubborn to prepare for something that he’d known was fast approaching, and here Gary was, already getting irritable with him for no reason. Why did this time of the month always have to make him so bitchy? The pain and blood loss was bad enough.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, taking them from Ash’s hand and looking anywhere but at his friend.
“What are friends for?”
Ash said it so cheerfully and earnestly that it grated on Gary’s nerves like nails on a chalkboard but he closed his eyes rather than rolling them and took a deep breath.
“These aren't gonna be enough, you know?" he pointed out. "We still have to go into town tomorrow.”
Hopefully the three tampons would be enough to last them to town tomorrow. Good thing he had picked his black pants for this little adventure.
Granted, there hadn't been much in the way of other options – most of his pants that weren't black now had blood stains on them. Just another way that this disease fucked him.
It sucked.
"I can take Rapidash into town and get some stuff for you, if you want."
Tempting as it was to take him up on that offer, he needed a hotel room. Gary shook his head. "The only thing that helps the pain is a hot bath," he explained, curling further in on himself as another cramp tore through him, painful as a lightning bolt.
"We pass a hot spring a few miles up the trail on the way to the next town. You could go ahead while I go into town and we can camp there. You can take all the soaks you need and it would be less of a trip than going back to the last town."
Gary hadn't thought about that and he was the one who had planned the damn trip — a true testament to how he was feeling. He knew the relatively short hike would be absolute agony but the thought of an endless soak where the water stayed hot and he didn't have to hide that he was in agony was as close as he would get to relief.
"Okay," he agreed, nodding as he steeled himself for what would be a miserable hike in the morning.
…
… … …
…
Gary groaned as he sank into a secluded corner of the hot spring. The heat enveloped him instantly, providing the first bit of relief he'd felt all day. The trip from last night's camp site to the spring had been torturous and he had been grateful to not have Ash there to see it — the pain had been blinding and he'd relied on Arcanine to carry his bag while he staggered along between the fire dog and Umbreon. He'd thrown up twice by the time they made it the three miles to the hot spring but Ash didn't need to know that. It wasn't as bad as passing out from blood loss. Again.
Another thing Ash probably didn't need to know right now.
He groaned again at the memory of the last time that happened and sank further against the stone wall of the spring. At least it wasn't that bad this time around. A cramp tore through his abdomen, cutting off the line of thought and Gary closed his eyes in an attempt to breathe through it.
Fortunately, it passed after a moment and he breathed a soft sigh of relief as he attempted to relax.
A few minutes of quiet passed as the hot water began to work its magic. It never made the pain go away — nothing did — but it soothed sore muscles and took the edge off of the cramps. It made the whole experience slightly more survivable.
"Mind if I join you?" a familiar, cheerful voice asked.
Gary opened his eyes and turned his head to find Ash standing behind him with two bottles of water. He was wearing his swimming trunks and an infuriatingly bright smile. An irrationally irritable side of Gary wanted to tell him to fuck off, but the guy had just made a twelve mile round-trip on his rapidash to buy him tampons. Besides, the company might be a halfway decent distraction from the cramps that felt as though they were ripping apart his innards.
"Sure," he conceded, taking one of the bottles from Ash and taking a long sip. It tasted oddly sweet and salty at the same time and Gary frowned as he looked at the bottle. "Did you put electrolytes in this?" he asked warily.
Ash nodded, taking a sip of his own water. "I didn't know if it would help with blood loss, but I figured it couldn't hurt."
Still so cheerful. Gary almost wanted to strangle him. "Please tell me there's no artificial sweeteners in it," Gary pressed hopefully. Few things could make this week worse than adding artificial sweeteners into the mix. For some reason, the artificial sweeteners and the disorder didn't mix, but only at certain points in the cycle, and the last thing he needed was for his lower digestion to throw a temper tantrum in the woods while camping with Ash.
"No," Ash assured him. "I think the artificial sweeteners taste weird."
Exhaling another sigh of relief, Gary took another sip as Ash stepped into the spring next to him. Pikachu hopped down from his shoulder to join Umbreon on the shore behind them. The electrolytes wouldn't help the blood loss, but they would help with dehydration after throwing up on the hike out here.
Ash was quiet for a long moment before finally saying a bit awkwardly, "I left the… stuff in your tent."
"Thank you," Gary replied, cheeks burning. How embarrassing to have Ash, of all people, going to town for tampons for him. But he'd been kind and understanding the night before and he seemed content to do whatever they needed for Gary to get through the day.
Another quiet fell between them, not quite awkward, but stretching on longer than was entirely normal for Ash.
The trainer wanted to ask something — Gary could tell. He was fidgeting the same way he always had when they were kids in his grandfather's lab, learning about the pokemon. Gary gave him some time to put his thoughts into words but Ash stayed quiet.
Finally Gary had enough of the fidgeting. "Just ask," he sighed, resisting the urge to snap at him to just stay still. The movement of the water was distracting and all Gary wanted to do was focus on how nice the hot water felt.
“Does… being trans… does that make it worse?” Ash asked haltingly.
He'd had a feeling that question would come up.
Gary shook his head. “Not physically, no.” It added a mental strain with a sudden increase in dysphoria , but made absolutely no difference whatsoever on his physical biology.
“Oh… Why is it so much worse for you, then?" His voice was curious, his eyes kind. "I’ve never seen any of the girls in this much pain.”
As much as Gary hated to talk about it, Ash's trip into town meant he deserved at least some sort of explanation. His situation was (most likely) different from the girls, and not just because he was a guy. Besides, dim as Ash could sometimes be, he was as caring and empathetic as they came.
He was someone Gary could be honest with.
“It’s a disease—”
“What?”
Gary rolled his eyes. “I’m not dying, calm down.” He paused and thought for a moment.
How to best explain? Empathetic or not, this was still Ash he was talking to.
The disease was complicated and the research was lacking. Most of the doctors he’d seen misunderstood the basics of the disease thanks to the complexity and lack of research and the prevalence of outdated hypotheses from the goddamn eighteen-hundreds. The fact that he’d read more literature on the disease than the doctors he was supposed to be trusting to treat it infuriated him at the best of times, but now, when he was doubled over in pain, too nauseous to move, plans interrupted, and – soon – weak from blood loss?
Now it was overwhelming.
Rage. Hopelessness. Helplessness.
Too many negative emotions to name.
His research suggested that hormone therapy would help, but the doctors kept trying to talk him out of it.
Umbreon's nose nudged his shoulder from where she was curled on the bank behind him, pulling him out of his thoughts.
Dwelling on them wouldn’t do him any good. There was still a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of an appointment coming up in a few months. Hopefully, a surgery would follow – one that would actually do something other than provide confirmation to a diagnosis he’d known would be true. One that would give relief for more than a few short months before coming back with a vengeance.
Then the hormone therapy could start. If more doctors didn’t try to talk him out of it.
But that was in the future. He had to deal with the present first.
“It causes tissue to grow where it's not supposed to, on your organs and stuff. It makes them stick together and causes all sorts of issues and… just constant pain." He felt nauseous just thinking about it. As if on cue, a cramp squeezed at his insides, and he felt the surrounding organs move with his spasming womb. He breathed through it the best he could, but couldn't fight back the groan as his arms automatically wrapped around himself. Ash’s hand on his shoulder told him just how little he was hiding it.
"It never goes away," he continued, attempting to focus on the warmth of Ash’s hand rather than the torment his body was putting him through. "And the tissue reacts to the hormones in the cycle. It swells and bleeds and contracts. Every time I have a cramp, I can feel all of my organs moving with it.”
“That sounds horrifying.” Ash certainly looked horrified.
Gary supposed the description brought up a rather disturbing mental image, but this was his life and sugarcoating it did no one any favors.
"Pika…" Pikachu cooed, patting Gary’s shoulder.
He gave a wry smile despite the pain as he reached over the give the pokemon an appreciative scritch behind the ears. “It's not as horrifying as how doctors treat people with it," he admitted quietly.
“Really?” Ash gasped.
"Yeah…"
Gary hated to think about it.
Every doctor had dismissed him — most sooner rather than later. Nurses had made cruel comments. The surgeon who diagnosed him made a point of never referring to him by his correct name or pronouns. Most people told him it was in his head or caused by him being transgender, regardless of the lack of hormone treatment, regardless of the scar tissue visible in photographs from procedures, regardless of the very real diagnosis.
"A lot of people think I'm just being dramatic or making it up for attention," he explained, "and doctors are really dismissive. It's not like they can do much more than give pain meds, unless they're a surgeon that actually knows what they're doing with this disease, but there's only a handful of those in the world… Anything else they do is temporary and just makes it come back worse sooner or later"
At the end of the day, the treatment hurt almost as badly as the disease itself. He didn’t know how he would possibly handle it without his grandfather’s support, the firm advocacy, the frequent reassurance that he, at the very least, believed him.
"It must be hard, dealing with this every month and then dealing with the doctors and all."
"Harder than you'll ever know."
"You can tell me when it's hard," Ash said. "I might not be able to make it better, but maybe I can make it a little less hard for a little while."
His eyes burned. Fucking hormones.
Gary stubbornly blinked back the tears, gaze pointedly away from Ash. He was quiet for a moment, waiting until he was sure his voice would come out normal. "Being able to talk about it helps," he admitted.
"I'm sure the hot spring helps too."
"The hot spring helps so much."
"We can stay as long as you need to."
"You don't have to do that, Ash."
He shrugged, his smile so pure and honest that Gary was tempted to splash him in the face. "It's a nice camp spot," he said, as though that undid the whole disruption in their trip. Maybe, for Ash, it did. Gary wished he was that easily pleased, but then again, Ash wasn’t the one who felt like he was being ripped in two.
It was awful, and there was nothing in the world that could change that, but Gary supposed there were worse ways to spend one of his days of agony. At least he had a friend who was understanding and willing to help. That alone was far better than being curled in on himself alone in a hotel room.