Chapter Text
Will was glad for the break. The rest from hell that he was given, because seriously, no one should have to go through what he did. He's been the head of the infirmary since he was twelve for gods sake!
All the loss that he had seen up to this point had kept him busy; he was working a lot.
As soon as he had been given time to rest he realized how horrible he always felt.
It was like a desperate ache a longing to be someone other than who he already was. His problem wasn't obvious until he started looking for a problem. People calling him dude were met with a bright smile, and inside, he felt the same way, but maybe he was just used to being addressed as such.
What he really didn't like was his own body, everything that physically made up Will was something he frowned at, but he didn't know why. You just seemed like a normal person when you're dressed up in a doctors outfit and treating dozens of patients a day. When he was alone, he was conflicted by this strange idea that something should be different.
He narrowed it down to a few options, but he was frustrated, because he was a doctor for gods sake. Couldn't he diagnose the problem based off a list of symptoms?
The first option was stress and overwork, his body so tired and uncomfortable that he wants to actually turn into someone else to help. If this was the truth then he just needed some time to de-stress and maybe gain some self confidence in himself. He didn't feel like this one was very logical as his condition was sometimes more of a sickness about how... tough? hard? Anti-squishy his chest was.
The second was that he was mentally insane and imagined his skin as foreign to the point of the idea it was just a skin suit lying over his figure. No, that wasn't it, sure, his boyfriend and a few of his cabin mates have told him to get therapy, but he wasn't desperately in need of it, Mr D confirmed that.
Which left a third option. He was brain dead as he thought that maybe he was looking at it from a different angle and maybe it was just simple. He didn't like his arms, and how broad they were despite him working in the infirmary and not in like, a gym, so they had no excuse to be this big and tough. He hated how his chest felt when he grabbed at the stitches he got in his chest when he worked to fast. It was just so /strange/. His legs were stocky to say the least, Nico had longer legs and was still shorter than Will. So is chest was like a wall, tall and hard, while his legs refused to carry him around the place fast enough.
His face was impish and he kept his hair long in a sort of tomboy-ish fashion called a wolf cut. He liked is hair, spent a long time brushing and styling it, it might be because it was the only physical feature that he could really control.
He liked his hair long, liked how the breeze whipped his bangs around, he also knew that his long hair was easy for Nico to play around with. Did he have another reason? Possibly. It was sometimes a great pain when he had to get it cut due to it obstructing his work and training, and he didn't think that liking a breeze and entertaining his boyfriend were good reasons to make such a fuss about having short hair.
When will was younger his mother complained about how hard it was to maintain his hair because he had gotten some sort of genetically issued problem with how his hair reacted with most shampoo.
Now that he lived full time at camp he never cut his hair unless completely necessary because he always ended up crying for some reason. As he got older another reason for not cutting it was just that, he was embarrassed. Why was he crying over something as small as short hair? Wasn't that a normal thing for boys?
...oh
As soon as Will had thought about the question it hit him, it was normal for -boys-, he associated the short hair with being more masculine. He didn't want to be masculine.
This was fine, he knew it. The Apollo cabin was full of diverse identities and a little bit of everything, and Apollo himself was an icon, but for this to be happening to Will? They couldn't believe it.
After Will discovered that they didn't like masculine they thought about what they were actually. It didn't take long.
Everything had become a giant flashing arrow pointing to 'feminine Will' and trying it out, she found out that it fit.
She felt so good, now that she had a lable on her issue and knew how to make herself more comfortable, her mind drifted to something they, hadn't, thought of. Nico. Gods darn it, she didn't want to lose her boyfriend who she loved more than ever. Nico likes guys, he never mentioned liking girls. He's said himself that he's gay. Will wanted to hold onto a bit of desperate hope that Nico wasn't fully Shure, that growing up being taught liking boys was weird mixed up his mind and feelings but she wasn't the most hopeful.
Well, she decided that she would cross that bridge when she gets there, and to focus on making herself happy, which was more important.
She was ready though, to start a journey to change to be more her. She was ready.