Chapter Text
1999
Whenever Arthur and Jason wanted to play pretend at the school’s jungle gym, he always got stuck with the role of the mom. And even though it made sense when they told him why, because Shane was a girl, and therefore he had to be the mom, it always made him feel all squirmy inside.
Like he had swallowed those tangles of worms they found on the sidewalk, after it rained all day and there were still puddles upon puddles to splash in.
(Which was a really gross thought to think about, because Shane hated those worms and he hated whenever Jason scooped them up on a stick and chased them around the playground with it.)
Whenever Jason and Arthur wanted to imagine new stories, they always chose something way more fun than being the mom character. They could do anything, be anyone, like businessmen, or tigers, or police squad detectives who fought crime by day and aliens by night.
But no matter what they played, Shane always got stuck with the girl role. He was the mom tiger, or the secretary lady, or the alien queen who landed on Earth to destroy all humans.
…That last one was actually pretty fun, and Shane was happy he got to play the bad guy for once.
Still, Shane was sick of being the girl. So that’s why he quit playing with Arthur and Jason and instead started sulking next to the baseball field and playing with the grass.
The grass didn’t care if he was all weird inside. And the grass didn’t care if he didn’t want to be a mom. Or a secretary lady. Even a stupid alien queen, even if it was super fun to chase Arthur around the playground. He grabbed a fistfull of grass and tugged, yanking out roots and clumps of dusty dirt.
And because it wasn’t winter, the pond that laid behind the school wasn’t even frozen. So no recess hockey. For 8 more months. Because the school year wasn’t even over yet and the sun was shining as bright as ever.
He fiddled with the hem of his dress and tried not to feel icky about that too. His mom had gushed a lot when she bought it for him, and he liked how soft the fabric was against his legs and arms. It was yellow, with pink and green flowers that were embroidered into the pleats.
He really liked how swishy it was too, how it pooled around his knees whenever he moved or how it spun out when he twirled. And he really liked wearing it around the house, whenever he was just reading his hockey books, or trying to remember his times-tables at the kitchen counter.
However, he didn’t really like it when he wore it to school or when he went out with his parents. He always had to be careful about how he was sitting, and how he was acting, and he hated how it always made his science teacher call him “Miss Little Lady.”
He really hated his science teacher.
But that was okay. Because he was different from all the other girls who didn’t mind wearing dresses, or playing the mom, or being called a little lady by Ms. Halbert. He was different from them, because they told him so, and so did Arthur and Jason.
He picked another strand of grass out of the ground and blew it out of his palm.
There were 8 more months until the pond froze, 7 and a half more days until his new hockey gear arrived, and only three more hours until his mom promised to take him to the public rink.
At least in hockey they all had to wear the same gear and the same padding, so all the guys and girls looked the same anyway. No dresses, no skirts, and no itchy stockings. They all had the same plasticy helmets, the same laces, the same types of skates.
He looked exactly like his teammates when they were on the ice, when all of their jerseys and gloves were the same color. It made him giddy with excitement whenever he saw how his shoulder pads made him look as equally bulky as the other guys on their team.
He grabbed another handful of grass and sighed, smushing his fingers into the cool dirt as he pouted.
Just 8 more months, 7 and a half days, and 3 hours.
2002
Shane wishes he’d been born a boy, and it’s not because he hates being a girl.
In fact, he really likes being a girl sometimes. It’s fun, and it’s silly, and he likes being able to cling to Yuna and hear her gush about doting on her only daughter. It makes him special, like him and his mom are bonded together because they have to outnumber his dad on everything. They’re the two girls of the house, the queens who get to decide everything.
He gets to feel special whenever he does something smart, like he’s breaking a new record or setting a new goal. It’s fun to surprise people with what he can do, when they only used to look at him and assume he couldn’t do anything cool.
And really, Shane doesn’t even wish he was a boy right that second. Because changing it up on the fly would be pretty confusing, and he’d probably be really bad at it. It’d be too much work to tell people that things were different now, and plus, it’s not like that’s a thing that can happen in real life.
But whenever he’s daydreaming about it, he wonders what it would be like if he had just come out of the womb as a boy. Like if he only changed that one little detail, what would his life be like?
Would his friends be different? Would his parents still put him into hockey, or would they choose something else? Would he still like the same subjects in school, or would being a boy supersede everything else?
Sometimes, these thoughts keep Shane up for hours. He’d turn over the answers, trying to come up solutions that satisfy him and feel like the truth. Sometimes he’d stare at his own freckled face in the mirror, his long black hair spilling around his shoulders, and wonder about a different life.
But he doesn’t want to be a boy right then and there. That’s the weirdest part of it all, it’s the fact that he doesn’t really want to be a boy whenever he thinks about it. At least… he’s pretty sure that he doesn’t want to be a boy right away, because being a girl is pretty nice when he’s not feeling so awkward.
It’s nice when it’s only him and his family, or maybe some of his teachers and his hockey coach, because they always treat him normal. They don’t care if he’s a boy or a girl, they love him all the same.
And being a girl is nice because he gets to have friends who are girls and nobody’s weird about it—not like how people act when he has best friends who are guys. Shane’s fine with being a girl. He even likes it, and he loves feeling special whenever his parents tell him that they’re proud to have him as a daughter.
But he'd be happier with it if people stopped reminding him all the time, like when Noah Struch called him a sissy girl when they did the face-off the other day.
Shane didn’t like when the chirps on the ice brought up the fact that he was a girl. It always felt unnecessarily mean, like they were rubbing it in or something. A reminder of a detail Shane could never ignore.
Like, Shane Hollander’s a girl who does girl stuff, don’t ever forget it!
How could Shane ever forget it? He was constantly reminded of it, everyday in fact. In fact, sometimes he wishes he could just ignore the fact that he’s a girl, just for a day, so that he wouldn’t have to remember about what he’s supposed to act like.
So yeah, Shane wishes he’d been born a boy. And he wishes he’d come out of the womb as a son instead of a daughter, even if things would’ve been really different.
But it’s too late to do anything about that now, so he guesses he’ll just have to live and die as a girl. Maybe if he wishes hard enough in this life, he'll be able to be reborn as a boy in the next life.
2005
Shane tried not to cry as he stared in the mirror in front of him. He really fucking tried not to cry. He probably should’ve known it was going to be a losing battle when he opened the package that had arrived on his doorstep.
Outside of the bathroom, his parents were waiting patiently on the living room couch, excited and eager to be supportive. They’d been nothing but amazing when Shane had awkwardly asked them to wait, when he went up to them and barely breathed around his request because he was so nervous.
He knew, logically, that he parents would always be his #1 supporters, the coaches in his corner to help him fight his battles and catch him when he falls.
But Shane couldn’t help but feel tears prick at the corners of his eyes. He sniffled once, twice, before he finally brought a shaky hand up to his eyes to wipe away his spilled tears.
God, it was just a stupid, stupid chest binder. He shouldn’t be reacting like this!
And yet.
He stared at his reflection, with his red-rimmed eyes and his shaking shoulders, and turned his body to the side. He stared—absolutely fascinated—as his chest was suddenly flatter than he’d ever seen it. There was no more mound of flesh that tormented him, day after day after day.
There was no shame welling up in his gut when he looked down and saw the smooth transition from shoulder to stomach, a flat plane that he could run his hand down and feel the satisfaction he’d been looking for all these years.
It was the absence of it all—the absence of something he swore he didn’t care about, something he swore didn’t matter to him—that shattered him.
A broken sob slipped out of his mouth and he slapped a hand over it to crush the noise back into his lungs. To swallow it back down, to pretend like it wasn’t a big deal, because it wasn’t supposed to be.
He crouched down on his bathroom floor, his toes digging into the plushness of the mat underneath him, his jeans slightly scratchy underneath his face, and silently cried into his knees.
He didn’t know how to feel less overwhelmed, how to process the sheer amount of righteous joy circulating through his body, now that he finally looked normal. He didn’t know how to process the feeling of loss, of guilt, of fucking mourning. He was fucking mourning all the years he spent being miserable instead of feeling like it was all beginning to snap into place.
All those years, all those little moments of dissatisfaction and discomfort, washed away because of some stupid fucking chest binder that cost 55 fucking dollars and had fucking 5 day shipping.
He’d done so much research into finding the damn thing, but everyone on the internet had such drastic opinions about what worked best, what didn’t work at all, and what used to work but had since gone out of business.
It was exhausting, trying to find the most credible source when there was literally no way of knowing where to start. It wasn’t like there was a textbook on the interest for being trans, or a checklist of the perfect timeline for him to follow.
He’d know because he checked.
“Shane? You alright in there?”
A gentle knock thudded against the door, and Shane let out a loud, wet gasp of air at the sound of David’s muffled voice. He felt like he was resurfacing from a lake of sludge, breathing in his first deep breath after days of being submerged in tar.
He hadn’t locked the door, so after a moment of hesitation and a clear: “I’m coming in now, son,” David slowly pushed open the bathroom door.
Shane looked up and felt a new wave of overwhelm slide through his chest at the sight of his dad’s comforting face.
“Dad—I… I just—”
“Oh, Shane, shh, it’s okay.”
Two strong pairs of arms wrapped around his shoulders and he couldn’t help but burrow his head into the crook of his dad’s neck, desperate to cling to something stronger than just his own body.
His tears had dried up, but his lungs hadn’t caught up to what his brain was telling the rest of his body, so dry, heaving gasps were escaping through the clench of his teeth and out into the air.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.”
A hand cradled the back of Shane’s head and the other rubbed soothing circles in between his shoulder blades, right where the fabric of his binder started.
“Everything’s gonna be okay.”
And somehow, someway, Shane believed him.
2006
“I was led to believe that we could get Shane’s prescription today. Today.”
Yuna’s voice was cold, a chill of frost spreading across the sanitized doctor’s office as she crossed her legs over one another. She always sat primly when she was upset, or trying to figure out the solutions to pressing issues and problems that no one else cared about.
“Not that we had to schedule two more appointments into our already busy schedules.”
Shane had never before wanted the sun to explode into a million pieces as much as he wanted it to happen right that moment.
“Do you understand how hard it was for Shane to be here when the hockey season is starting in only two weeks?”
…Even though he knew she was only doing it because she cared, Shane had never felt so embarrassed to be related to his mother.
The doctor, who looked remarkably unruffled at Yuna’s aggressive question-statements, just smiled gently and leaned forward in his spinny chair.
“I understand completely that it can be a struggle to fit everything to a schedule. But the procedure of these types of appointments is standard.” He had a thick mustache and little glasses, and he had a spotted bow tie that made Shane think of band directors and librarians.
The doctor—Dr. Callavan, Shane remembered after looking at the guy’s name tag—smiled while adjusting his glasses. “They’ll be at least two more meetings before we can start Shane on testosterone.”
Yuna’s eyebrow raised up, and Shane felt a shiver run down his spine. That eyebrow meant trouble. It usually only showed up when Shane was skipping meals or ignoring his schoolwork in favor of hockey.
Her mouth opened to speak and Shane finally just grabbed his mother’s hand and tried desperately to interrupt her.
“What—what my mom’s trying to say is,” He licked his lips and squeezed Yuna’s hand once more. “What would the meetings be about?
Dr. Callavan’s eyes were a bright green, and they twinkled with a hidden warmth, kind of like a warped version of Santa Claus. Distantly, Shane realized that he also had a small trans pride pin clipped to his nametag.
“Oh, well they’re quite simple. In fact, due to your busy schedules, we can even shorten the amount of additional appointments!” He pushed up his glasses again before grabbing a packet from the various shelves on his desk.
“We’d start with a physical exam, just to check how your body is progressing. If everything looks normal, we’ll go ahead with the labs—that means we’ll draw your blood—to finish creating the right dosage of testosterone for you.”
Shane felt a little off at the idea of drawing his blood, but if he was going to be potentially stabbing himself in the stomach for the next foreseeable future, then he figured he’d better get over his small fear of needles.
“Since we’ve decided on self-administered shots, you’ll have to come back to the clinic to receive your training for it. But if you’d like to conduct the exam today, you’ll only have to schedule two more appointments.”
Dr. Callavan clicked around on the computer for a few moments before he let out a hum and spun around in his chair with a smile across his face. “Does that sound like something you’re comfortable with doing today, Shane?”
Yuna squeezed Shane’s hand appreciatively, and Shane realized that she was probably more terrified than he was walking into the office. Shane had been researching what he could about testosterone for years, and he’d listened to first-hand accounts from people going through the process themselves.
But his mother didn’t have the luxury of a few years to read up on it, and to come up with her own questions, at her own pace. Shane felt a small wave of guilt hit his chest when he remembered how embarrassed he’d been at his mother for simply asking a healthcare professional a question.
He threw his mom a small, gratitude-filled smile, and felt relieved to see her return the small gesture.
“That's… yeah,” He felt another boyish grin creep onto his face. “That sounds great.”
Yuna’s voice was small but full of emotion as she turned to stare at Dr. Callavan. “That sounds absolutely perfect, thank you.”
Dr. Callavan smiled broadly and fiddled with his mustache. “Oh, no need to thank me. Just doing my part to help make Shane’s journey as easy as possible.”
And what a thought that was, the idea that Shane now had a journey. He had an end goal that was steadily approaching and he suddenly had a fucking future to look forward to that wasn’t just hockey.
Yuna turned to look into her son’s eyes and pulled his hands into her own. “So?”
“So what?”
“How’s it feel to be one step closer?”
He laughed—God, he was doing a lot of that lately—and felt a weight lift off of his chest.
“Awesome. It feels really fucking awesome.”
2007
The nurse who had helped Shane with his training had joked about it being his “T-day,” when he first got his shot. David had been the one in the room with him, and they both had simply laughed it off, a small joke that had broken some of that tension in the room.
And yet, Shane was now staring at a cake. A small, vanilla-flavored cake, covered in blue icing with green flowers decorating the sides, topped with three candles that burned brightly.
And scrawled atop of the cake were the words, “Happy T-Day, Shane,” written in beautiful, looping letters.
“Do you like it?”
David was hovering, oven mitts still covering his hands as he finished lighting the last candle. Shane knew that his dad had been baking something that morning, but he didn’t realize it was going to be a cake meant for his first day of testosterone.
“I thought it would be nice to celebrate.”
His dad’s words were careful, like he was nervous to present Shane with the best gift he’d ever received.
Shane had a lump in his throat, like he’d swallowed a handful of ice shards and he was just stuck waiting for them all to melt away. He blinked back a couple of tears, struggling to stay composed.
“I love it.” Shane threw his arms around his dad, ignoring the clumps of flour on David’s apron that were definitely getting all over his t-shirt. He could always wash it out later.
“I love it so much.”
2007
Shane squinted at the curve of his fingers underneath the harsh fluorescent lights, and swore he wasn’t going insane.
“I’m not crazy, right?” He called out, shifted his hand underneath the light. He’d be designated as the cart driver for today’s grocery run, left to trail behind his mother as she insisted upon making sure they got the best bargain for their buck.
“Hm, what?” Yuna called out from where she was deliberating over cloves of garlic.
“Are my hands thinner, or am I crazy?” It was here when Shane stuck out his hand towards his mother and gestured with it, convinced he was seeing something different. He clenched and unclenched his hand to try and feel out the subtle shift, and he swore he could tell that his fingers were skinnier.
It felt like his knuckles were sliding past one another smoother than before, like someone had come over and tightened the skin on all of his fingers and fingertips.
“What are you talking about?” Yuna’s face was baffled as she looked up from the produce, but she still stepped closer to gently grab a hold of Shane’s wrist. “Honey, it looks the same as it always does.”
Shane let out a small groan, wiggling his fingers towards her face. “No, you’re not looking right. Check the backs of my hands, like, you can see my veins better, right?”
Yuna raised an amused eyebrow at her son and lovingly obliged his request anyway. Shane could’ve felt a little embarrassed about being so pushy, but he was feeling too giddy to care.
It had felt like a small soap bubble had begun to build in his ribcage, right in the center of his chest. It settled in between his lungs and his heart, and it swelled whenever he heard Hayden refer to him as “his bro,” or whenever his parents introduced him to new people as “their only son.”
It was stupid. Staring at his hands in the middle of an expensive grocery store downtown was stupid. Trying to decide if he was placebo-effecting himself on the results of testosterone, or if he was actually onto something, was stupid.
And yet, Shane’s stupid soap bubble did a traitorous little swell every single time he thought about it.
Yuna hummed as she turned over his wrist, her smaller hands cupping his hand palm-up hand in a gentle cradle. She rubbed the pads of her thumbs across his skin, like a palm-reader about to give some really overpriced advice, and traced the wrinkle of his hands to the tendons in his wrist.
“Mm, maybe you’re onto something,” She smiled knowingly, “Because I can feel a difference from your knuckles.”
She gave his hand one final squeeze and a small smile, before she turned back to the produce aisle.
“Now, stop staring into your hands and come help me pick; Do you want curry tonight or spaghetti?”
Shane stared down at his fingers one last time, a stupid grin creeping onto his face. It felt good to be right.
2008
Yuna was noticing something happening to her son.
At first, it was so subtle she thought she was imagining it. After all, it wasn’t like they were keeping extremely accurate, up-to-date reference points for them to track with Shane’s hormone replacement therapy, before he started taking his shots.
So there was really nothing for her to go off of, except for her own spotty memories. But Yuna knew better than that.
Besides the obvious vocal change, dropping Shane’s beautiful alto voice into a firm tenor, she was noticing something else.
“Mom, did I ever show you this new trick shot I saw that new guy do? Wanna come watch?”
“Hey mom, do you wanna know how to tell the difference between a loon call and a wolf howl?”
“Mom, dad, can we go out to eat tonight?”
“Do you wanna hear about the movie I watched with my class yesterday? It was really weird—”
“And I told Alex not to get involved, but it’s such a lost cause because Mr. Therabault is an absolute asshole—”
“Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about all the times Sam got lost on the way to the locker room!”
“Mom, come check this out—”
“Hey, mom, can we—”
“Dad! Mom said to ask you—”
“They renovated the whole building, you see, so we got these super cool locker rooms, but getting to them is a freaking nightmare.”
“I told you already, Mom!”
“Their team’s a total mess, but Richter's too good for them. If his team could score, he’d have at least 5 shut-outs this season.”
Shane was talking.
Shane was talking so much, in fact, that Yuna almost didn’t recognize him. He’d sit at the dinner table with David and they would actually have a conversation while Shane actively tried to be invested in a puzzle. For almost a full hour!
It was absolutely insane, the amount of which her son had opened up to them in the past few months. As his voice began to deepen, he was left with all sorts of voice cracks and jumps that he swore were extremely embarrassing, but just made Yuna’s heart feel fond.
But Shane’s voice was maturing into something that felt right. It matched the way his shoulders started filling out, and the way he started standing a little taller. Her boy was becoming a man before her very eyes, like his puberty phases were all on steroids and cranked to the max.
Shane had never been particularly closed off, but he never had more to say than what was absolutely necessary. In primary school, he’d been the type to sit at his desk and color, instead of trying to make new friends.
He’d always been fine being in the corner of the room by himself, but he always opened up when he became more comfortable, like at home.
But never like this.
Yuna felt her face stretch into another happy smile as she listened to her boys’ murmured conversation. She picked up another dirty dish and turned on the sink, the peace and quiet of the room broken by the soft rush of water.
She traced the grooves of the plate with her finger before she grabbed a sponge and began scrubbing. There was such a bittersweet feeling that was filling up her chest.
The realization that Shane hadn’t felt comfortable enough in his own body for literal years, that he simply, subconsciously, limited his speech. He was talking more, smiling more, and—Yuna heard a bright giggle make its way across the room and to her ears—laughing more.
Yuna felt small pinpricks of tears begin to form in the corners of her eyes. How was it possible for all of them to be so oblivious to Shane’s quiet suffering, even Shane himself? How was it possible for them to not realize that the solution was right in front of all of them, the whole time?
And yet, whenever she wanted to wallow in the anxiety and the insecurity that slammed into her whenever she thought about how she might’ve contributed to Shane’s confusion and his struggles with identity, she would never trade those years away. She would never change the way the years have shaped her boy, her son, into the young man he was slowly becoming.
Maybe she wasn’t perfect. And maybe David wasn’t either. But they both loved Shane, and they both would do anything to keep his laugh echoing the walls of their home.
“Yuna! Please back me up here, Shane’s trying to convince me that—”
“Mom, Mom, don’t listen to a word Dad says—”
“Alright, alright!” Yuna called out, wiping her hands on the dishcloth by the sink. “Hold onto your horses, I’m coming.”
She cast one last glimpse at the family photos above the sink, the ones with the pink plastic frames that Shane had decorated in the 1st grade. It was a picture of all of them trying skiing for the first time, and it was taken just after Shane started slipping and crashed into David’s back, sending them all down into a pile of snow clothes and skis.
Shane’s little face was flushed from the cold and his face was almost completely covered with a thick neck gater and scarf. But you could see the ends of his smile creeping up from above the edge of the fabric, and Yuna could almost hear those silly little giggles, even 9 years later in the center of their kitchen.
Shane was changing, yes, and he wasn’t exactly the same as that little girl Yuna carried all those years ago. But he was still her child, her little boy who loved hockey and hated the texture of velvety clothes. The freckles were the same, his eyes were the same, and that small giggle was still the very same.
Shane was changing and Yuna couldn’t be happier to see it happen. She couldn’t wait to see the type of man he was going to become, the type of beautiful human being he’d already grown into being, only amplified with the strength of his confidence and love.
Before, Shane had seemed content to live the life he was given, to not rock the boat, to go through the motions as if life was a checklist for him to complete. But now?
Now, Shane was glowing.