Work Text:
The hardest part is summer.
Choosing between wearing a hoodie and a jacket and whatever else he can get away with, or going out with only a t-shirt and a binder on. Whether too many clothes or too few, the compression garment guarantees he’ll be fermenting in his own sweat all day, heat-triggered anxiety gnawing at him and a faint, constant pressure encircling his ribs. The slow-building ache in his chest. Not difficulty breathing, but not ease of doing it, either.
Is he on his way to having a panic attack, or does he just need a binder break? Sometimes it’s both. Sometimes he’s probably imagining it.
He should break it down some.
Cait’s always telling him to do that—something something easier if you look at it in bits, don’t you think?
Fine.
The hardest part is choosing what to wear in summer.
If he wears too much, he’ll bake and sweat and stew and his irritation will have almost swallowed him whole by the time he’s home from work, in the bathroom, tearing off layers and taking his first big breath of the day and stepping into the shower to try and wash off more than just the perspiration.
If he wears too little, he’ll spend the day hiding. Or trying to. The binder only does so much, and his favourite t-shirt not much more than that on top of it. No matter how illogical or stupid or unlikely it is he cannot shake the feeling that everyone he encounters clocks his unmanageable, impossible chest and thinks woman. Or if they care to notice the little gifts T’s started giving him—the fuzz on his cheeks, the darker line above his lip, the changing tenor of his voice—maybe they think something else. Freak, at best. Trans, he fears, too. Which fills him with a whole other kind of quiet rage. Trans is what he is, after all, and it doesn’t bother him, except for when it bothers other people. He hates that his inability to hide his chest—no, that another person’s inability to think his chest makes him anything other than a guy with boobs—would turn his love of himself, hard-won and usually unshakable, into something that sits sour on his tongue.
Every morning, the same dilemma.
The hoodie or the hiding, and the quiet self-hatred he wears whether he chooses to or not.
////
“You’re allowed to do it simply because it’ll make you feel better,” Caitlyn says to him, late one afternoon on a random weekday.
They’re spread out on her couch, sharing a rare day off together, the next episode of Drive to Survive about to tick over.
Vi hums at her statement, picking another peanut M&M out of the packet between them and chewing on it before he can say anything incriminating. Caitlyn sits forward to fill more of his periphery.
“I’m serious,” she tells him.
“I know,” he mumbles, and goes for another candy.
Caitlyn grabs the bag and holds it out of reach.
“Hey-”
“Do you? No—Really?”
“I—Yeah. Sure.”
“Because you know you’d never tell me, or anyone else, that I couldn’t actually have surgery unless I had a good reason.”
“So you’re saying the fact it’d make me feel better isn’t a good reason?”
“No, of course-”
“You literally just said-”
“Levi,” she says, but she’s grinning, very slightly, her extended arm keeping the candy from him losing its rigidity.
“Cait.”
“Tell me you understand.”
“I understand.”
Caitlyn sighs. The M&Ms make their way slowly back towards him. Vi goes to take them, but her other hand closes over his, and he looks at her. And she’s looking at him in that way that makes it real hard for him to look back sometimes.
“Now,” she says, quieter, “tell me you believe me.”
Vi swallows. Breathes. Both actions he feels that bit more acutely with his binder firmly in place around his torso.
He read once something about how someone who’d feared the tightness would be uncomfortable was happy to learn it kinda felt like a big hug. He thought so too, for a while. He doesn’t anymore.
“I want to,” he tells her. The best he can do.
Caitlyn lets him have the chocolates, and slowly settles back next to him. A minute later, she reaches to rub a hand across the back of his shoulders in a gesture that’s supposed to be comforting. Makes his skin prickle.
He’s faintly hunched, like always, tense and uncomfortable and aware he’s halfway through another day of wearing his binder way longer than he’s supposed to.
He appreciates her trying.
////
The hardest part is the gym.
Figuring out what to wear, sure, yeah, that—squeezing himself into a binder and wondering whether his muscle tank will cut it or if he should go with a shirt or an old sweater, and then wondering if he might die of heat exhaustion if he has to do pull day wearing a sweater—but on top of it, figuring out what to do.
His binder’s too restrictive. He knows he’s not supposed to exercise in it at all and he knows people do and he knows Cait won’t say anything if he does but she’ll frown, probably, when she catches him getting changed when he gets home. Watch him struggle to get the sweaty skin-tight thing off and help him if he lets her and run her finger, lightly, over the raised welt beneath his armpit where the fabric seam has chafed.
He just wants to get dressed and go exercise and be done and go shower and get on with his day, and instead there’s all these fucking—steps.
He’ll feel better if he exercises.
He’ll feel worse if he exercises.
He’ll feel better if he can get in his body and sweat and huff and work and work and work.
He’ll feel worse, if he’s too tightly tied to the skin and sinew he tries to avoid thinking about half the time.
Maybe that’s the crux of it.
Maybe the hardest part is always having to choose between two types of discomfort. Constantly trying to be himself in a world where it’s too fucking difficult to do that sometimes.
Knowing the only options are to feel a bit shit, or to feel a bit shit.
Yeah.
That.
////
Constipation. God.
Bloating and pain and reflux.
Nobody fucking tells you wrapping your torso in a compression garment ten-plus hours a day could have an impact on your goddamn digestive tract but once you figure it out for yourself it’s like, fucking duh.
Sex.
Best not to get started on that one.
Gigs.
Standing in the pit with hundreds of other people only half-focused on the band you’ve been looking forward to seeing all week and getting distracted every time someone bumps into you and you remember you have a body. Eyeing off the merch and not being able to figure what the best option is, appearance-wise, and deciding if you do get something you'll probably never wear it.
Sleeping.
Showering.
Hugging.
Vi knows he shouldn’t keep track. Focus on the positives, and all that.
But as he starts to admit—really admit, for the first time in forever—what he knows he needs to do to give himself the life he wants to live, he finds it’s easier, almost. Motivating in a way the concept of spinning it into a gift, a want, rather than a need, never could be.
That’s all he’s doing, he tells himself, when his quiet collection of reasons starts to feel like pure absent-minded self-flagellation.
Convincing himself he’s allowed it.
That if all the other reasons he’s got—that he wants it, that it’ll make him feel better, that it might even look good—don’t amount to enough to propel him through the process, he can look back on his list and think of it like groceries, or tasks.
Need.
////
It’s Jinx who gets him over the line.
They’re on their way to the mall, a random excursion on a rainy day when neither of them feel like sitting around the house while their brothers play videogames and their dad grumbles over his laptop and his calculator and his receipts at the kitchen table.
Vi’s got all his favourite clothes on—whitewashed jeans, stiff denim jacket, boots, the silly trucker hat Jayce gave him with the cartoon cherries on the front—and he feels good, today. He had a good workout, he had a decent sleep, he’s meeting Cait for dinner later. He likes the rain. Likes sitting in Vander’s truck with an old playlist on, listening to his sister talking about school.
He takes a big breath in, and his binder feels alright, today. Sitting well. The lingering flush of his muscles from his time at the gym a few hours ago helps.
“Wait,” says Jinx, interrupting her own monologue about a new guy in her chem class she hates. “Do we still have clippers at home?”
“Clippers?”
“Like for hair.”
“You mean… the clippers I use on my own hair. Regularly.”
“You could just say yes, but fine, be an asshole.”
“Why?”
“You tell me, dude, you’re the one being all-”
“Why do you want them?”
“To cut my hair.”
Vi glances at her while he downshifts, slowing for their next turn.
“With my clippers?”
“This conversation’s taking a lot longer than it needs to.”
“Your hair’s super long, though. We can ask Lest to-”
“I don’t want Lest to cut it, I wanna shave it all off.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Vi blinks.
“Uh… I dunno. Just. You’ve always had long hair.”
“And soon, I’ll have short hair. Keep up.”
“What if you hate it?”
“I won’t. But. It’d just grow back.”
“What if you look stupid?”
“You think I’ll look stupid?”
“No,” he admits, now he thinks about it. “It’ll probably suit you.”
“I’m gonna look hot.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
“I dunno. Since yesterday.”
“Since—And you’re just gonna do it?”
“Sure.”
Vi frowns at the road.
Can feel Jinx squinting at him.
“What?” she asks, sounding wary.
“Nothing.”
“Violence,” she says, definitely losing patience if she’s calling him that. “What?”
“Just weird,” he mutters. “Most people think about stuff like that longer. Before they decide to do it.”
Jinx huffs. Props her feet on the dash.
“People are idiots,” she says. “My hair’s shitting me. I want it cut. So I’m gonna cut it. The end.”
“Right,” says Vi, fingers tapping absently on the wheel. “The end.”
Then the rain returns hard enough to make simple conversation tricky and Vi focuses on getting them to where they’re going in one piece.
The mall has nothing for them except a milkshake each and some window shopping in the name of pregaming for Vander’s birthday next month. Jinx wants to get him a beanie, but Vi knows he has just one favourite one he always wears and there’d be no point. Vi wants to get him a case for his phone because he keeps dropping it, but neither of them can remember what type of phone he has.
At dinner time, Caitlyn trades places with Jinx in the passenger seat and Vi takes them to pick up the Chinese food they voted to get, and when he pulls into the parking lot he leaves the lights and the engine on and looks out the window and takes a breath and says to the grubby shopfront housing the best Mongolian beef in the whole of Zaun, “I think I want top surgery.”
Caitlyn looks at him, frozen in her motion of opening her door.
She looks surprised. For maybe half a second.
Then she smiles. Abandons the door and rests her hand on his where he’s left it on the gearstick.
He feels warm. Relaxed. Kind of… relieved?
Caitlyn says, “I think you do, too,” in that careful-gentle way of hers, and Vi lets out another breath.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Shit.”
When he doesn’t say anything else for probably a few seconds or maybe a few minutes, Caitlyn squeezes his hand lightly.
“Okay?”
Vi looks at her, which—oh. She’s…
“Wh—Why’re you—”
“I’m alright-”
“Are you crying?”
“No-”
“You-”
“Shut up,” she says, her tone light, and she wipes at the corners of her eyes with the thumb of her free hand. “No, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m just… happy. For you. Very.”
And she’s smiling. The kind of smile that makes your cheeks hurt a bit and her eyes are shining and her hand is squeezing and Vi’s chest fills with laughter like bubbles and his own vision starts to blur and why is his nose running and oh, oh, oh.
“Shit,” he sniffs, wiping his hand over his cheeks. “Fucking—making me-”
Caitlyn giggles quietly. Leans forward to rest her forehead on his and push at his hair in that mindless, habitual way she has.
“Happy?” she asks.
And like, not always, not usually, not sometimes, not every day, but–
“Yeah,” he chuckles, a little delirious with it—the relief of some fucking momentum. A decision made. The end. “Very.”
////
It gets worse before it gets better. Classic.
His deliberating and procrastinating and hand-wringing gives way to planning and researching and booking and saving and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting.
At an interval they both agree will be more helpful than discouraging, Jinx downloads an app onto his phone that counts the days between him and the body he’s finally admitted he wants for himself.
Wants enough to believe he’s allowed to have.
Wants enough to give himself.
The real hardest part: admitting what you want, and admitting you can’t get it without going after it.
It’s some hundred-odd days when Jinx does it, lounging on the floor with the Switch controller forgotten in one hand and Vi’s phone in the other.
“Check it out,” she says, holding it out to him when she’s done. “That’s like, nothing.”
Vi can’t decide if it is nothing, or if it’s a little more like an eternity. But the next day, he has to admit there’s something to be said for watching the number go down by one.
And again, the next day.
And again, the day after that.
And he’s not even doing anything. Nothing left to do now. Except let it do its thing, and wait for zero.
////
The hardest part is not backing out.
At a point late in the overblown, drawn-out process, all of the reasons conspire to look more like reasons to not rather than reasons to do. He's got his modest pile of savings and his doctor's letter and his psych letter and he's filled out his absurd dysphoria diagnosis forms (on a scale of 1 to 10, rank how much you lowkey hate yourself) and now the path ahead is clear but for all the fucking... obstacles.
“This is stupid,” Vi says, to Caitlyn and Jinx’s baffled faces. Jayce is somewhere behind him, reheating the pizza Vi told him was in the fridge because he’s a freak who won’t eat it cold. “This is—I’m not just—Objectively, this is like, so fucking stupid.”
“What is?” Jayce mutters, because he has not been paying attention.
“The—All of this. Surgery and—all of it.”
“Huh?”
“I can’t—do this.”
“Vi,” says Cait, in that soothing voice he’s almost embarrassed she’s using on him in front of his sister and her own brother. “Of course you can.”
“No, not like—I know I can but from a fucking—practical standpoint, this is—this is insane. This is something an insane person would do.”
That earns him a few raised eyebrows. Vi clenches his fists in front of him, aware he is not making sense to anyone else despite how much sense it makes to him.
They think he’s being irrational, emotional, anxious. He isn’t. He’s thinking perfectly, completely clearly.
“Not that it’s insane to want to do it,” he says, as if it even needs to be said. “Not that. But like. The logistics. The—I’m gonna be useless for like, a month. Or more.”
“Compared to your usual uselessness,” Jinx says, and Cait shoves her lightly, stood next to her on the other side of the kitchen counter.
“I’m not gonna be able to—drive you to school or-”
“Oh, woe.”
“Or help Vander at the bar, get groceries—I won’t be able to lift anything for weeks. Weeks.”
“We have two entire brothers who can-”
“What if something happens while I’m out of action? You know? Babette’s—she’s been so unwell and like—I can’t not be able to help her if–”
Jayce pulls the oven door open then and the surprising roar of it cuts him off. It thuds shut a few seconds later.
“I’m not sure your oven’s working.”
“Dude,” says Jinx, like she’s winding up to a creative string of insults.
Vi doesn’t let her.
“I’m taking so—Everyone at work is like, doing shit for me that I should be doing but I’m not because I’m taking so much time off. A month.”
“People do do that, in general,” Cait says, because she’s a fucking hypocrite and a traitor.
“Don’t you get like, sick leave?”
“Thank you, Jayce.”
“Yeah, but—I’m not sick-”
“You’ll be recovering from major surgery.”
“That I opted in to! There’s nothing wrong with me, it’s not like I have to-”
“Okay, hold up-”
Caitlyn puts her hand on Jinx’s arm and Jinx stops, looking at her. Vi barely notices.
“I'm not gonna be able to sleep. For weeks. I can't sleep on my back or sitting up and I'm supposed to do both? Some people don't shit for a week after surgery, did you know that? I bet I'll get constipated like crazy. If I spend a week not being able to shit or sleep I'll lose my damn mind. And I hate anaesthetic, I hate being put to sleep. It might not even suit me. What if I hate how it looks? What if I hate how it feels? No, this is obviously—I should just—I can—postpone it, or whatever. This is insane. All this time and money and inconveniencing everybody around me, for what? To put myself through all of that. I can’t do it, it’s ridiculous to think that I can actually… I can't. I know I can but I can’t. It’s too insane. There’s no way. There’s no fucking way.”
He stops. Well. He stops talking. The refrain’s still echoing around in his skull but there’s probably no point voicing it any further.
Jinx narrows her eyes. So does Caitlyn.
One looks to the other.
“Do you wanna–”
“Please. By all means.”
Jinx returns her gaze to her big brother and does a great job of pretending she can’t see him vibrating.
“Hey man,” she says. “What the fuck?”
////
After Jayce has gone home and Jinx has gone to Ekko’s and Vi’s stayed sat on the couch, quiet and stuck in his head and numb, Caitlyn switches the TV off and drags him into their bedroom and makes him lie down. Lies down with him.
He lets her curl against him with her knee resting on his thigh and her hand in the middle of his chest, playing absently with the thin silver chain he’s got round his neck.
He sighs at the ceiling. Lifts and lowers her with the motion.
“This is overwhelming,” he murmurs.
Cait kisses his shoulder and doesn’t say anything. He rests his hand at her elbow, thumb rubbing at her forearm.
“Think it feels like it… might actually happen,” he says, to the ceiling fan above them, unmoving. “Like I’m really gonna do it. That nothing’s getting in the way.”
“It will. You are. Next week, in fact.”
“I think I keep waiting for something to stop it. Someone to call me and say sorry, we had to rebook it, see you never. Sorry, it’s gonna cost double, see you when you’ve finally saved it all.”
He sighs again, and it’s more like a shudder for some reason. There’s a strange heat in his chest, throat, face. He thinks about Cait’s arm under his hand, her body against his.
“I want it so bad,” he whispers. “And it feels so fucking selfish and impossible.”
“Love…”
She wipes at his temple with her thumb, fingers carding into his hair. He sniffs. Pretends he can’t feel another tear slip sideways to his ear.
“It’s not selfish,” Cait tells him, other hand flat between his collarbones now. He nods. He knows. He does. “It’s not,” she repeats, quieter. Kisses his cheek, twice. “It’s not impossible, either. I know it must feel like it but I promise it isn’t. You’re close. You’re so close.”
Vi nods. Sniffs and wipes his nose and croaks out, “Yeah.”
And he’s not sure he can believe himself much right now, but, he knows he can believe Cait.
Knows if he won’t get it right himself, Caitlyn Kiramman probably will.
////
He loses his mind the day before. No other way to describe it.
He cleans. Everything.
He rearranges their living room, which does not need doing, and the pantry, which really did, and when Caitlyn comes home she soon figures out the only thing that’ll stop him from making an attempt on their bedroom is to physically remove him from the building.
At the grocery store, he buys doubles of most things, including cottage cheese, which he has, repeatedly and on separate occasions, tried and declared he hates.
“Do you think that’s enough?” he asks, staring into the shopping cart.
Caitlyn raises her eyebrow. “Um… in general, or…”
“The yoghurts.”
“The… There’s fourteen of them.”
“So…”
“Yes, love, I think you’ll—I think that's a very appropriate quantity of yoghurt.”
“It’s just. Easy protein.”
“Have I given the impression I’m not willing to go to the store for you if you realise there’s something you want?”
“No, but I don’t—I don’t want you to have to.”
He cooks, too, when they get home. A thing of lasagne, a thing of tuna bake, sandwiches stacked neatly in containers, ready for toasting.
Jinx has come over for a pre-surgery dinner, and she watches him work with increasing bemusement.
“You know they’re not cutting off your arms, right?”
“It’s called being organised.”
“It looks like everyone in this building could get top surgery tomorrow and we’d all be fine.”
“Don’t touch that.”
He tries to push the fridge door shut when she looks like she’s about to take something off the shelf.
“I’m making sure you’ve got the correct amount of yoghurt. One, two… Phew. You’re good.”
He shoves her towards the sink and hands her a scrubbing brush, because clean up is the next part of the overall plan.
She throws the brush at his head.
////
Inevitably, impossibly, eventually, there is nothing—nothing—else to do, except to do it.
////
Small wonders.
////
He wakes slowly, rising from quicksand. Arms heavy. Feet… somewhere down there.
There’s a thing on his face—the oxygen thing—and an intense, bizarre fizzing high on his chest, like pins and needles, or raw sunburn. He gets his eyes open. Someone’s in his periphery, doing something. A nurse.
“Hey, Vi. Welcome back.”
His torso’s wrapped. His hand flops onto it. His hospital gown and something under it. Padding. He’s lying flat.
“‘id we do id?” he manages, bleary and closed-eyed again.
“All done,” says the nurse, friendly. “You took a little while to come round, but that’s alright. How’re you feeling?”
All done.
All done.
All done.
Vi giggles. Giggles. Lies in his bed in the recovery room and giggles like he’s stoned or he’s discovered the secret of the universe or he discovered the secret of the universe while stoned.
His chest’s flat.
He’s on the other side of it.
It’s over. It’s done.
He cackles maniacally, newly conscious and delirious with the thought of his own existence.
It feels like he’s gotten away with something, and there is no fucking stopping him now.
////
Vi: tghink mdone
Caitlyn: Well you either are or you aren’t but I’m taking this as a good sign.
Vi: shut uop
Caitlyn: I’m so bloody excited I could combust xxxx
Caitlyn: How do you feel? Pain okay?
Vi: doesnt feel real
Vi: what the fiuck
Vi: its done after allt hat
Vi: cackled wen i woike up
Caitlyn: Such a huge relief for you xx
Vi: love you
Vi: thank you foor getting me ere xxxxx
Caitlyn: You did that yourself but I love you too. Very much xx
Vi: gona be so handsaome
Vi: at the beach
Vi: get sunburnt
Caitlyn: Jayce demanded I ask how big your pecs are.
Vi: so bjg
Caitlyn: They said we can come up and see you at about half one x
Vi: get ready for how hansome i am
Vi: bit seepy i think
Vi: slepy
Vi: sleey
Caitlyn: Close your eyes for a bit and we’ll see you soon xx
Vi: love you
Jinx: what did you say to her she’s crying again
Jinx: congrats fartface 🔪🙌
Vi: feels insnae
Vi: u shud try it
Jinx: god maybe
Jinx: we told dad you’re out and he sent a shit ton of emojis
Jinx: Mylo wants to know what they do with your boobs now
Vi: dont make me lsugh im in pain
Jinx: too bad i am famously always funny
Vi: thanks for being my sister xxx
Jinx: not having tits is making you all mushy i hate it
Jinx: brother x
Vander: Heard you’re all done very good 🥳🥳🤠🤠😁🤩🤯😎😎🎉🤡🍔🍕🌈🍟
Mylo: What do they do with your boobs now???
////
There’s going to be plenty of these moments, in the coming weeks and years, but the first one happens at the hospital.
Caitlyn comes in when he’s fifty percent less dopey and four hundred percent more shocked that it’s all actually done. She’s on her own, and he feels a burst of warmth at figuring his family opted to let it be that way. Her presence is quiet and grounding, like it so often is. Precisely what he needs, inasmuch as he wants for fucking anything at all right now.
“Hey,” she says, and she does look a little like she’s been crying, pink-faced and shine-eyed, but she’s happy, simmering with it like moonlight on a lake, and she seems to overflow the instant she lays eyes on him, her smile limitless. She’s a mirror, Vi knows it. Can feel himself bursting at the seams, too.
“Hi,” he says back, and lets himself be kissed when she kisses him. “Mm,” he hums after, taking his time to reopen his eyes. “First kiss with no boobs.”
Caitlyn huffs a laugh, sweeping her hair over her shoulder and pulling the chair next to the bed nice and close. Her hand’s found its way into his.
“How’d it feel?”
“Uh. Pretty fuckin’ great.”
She pulls his hand to her face to kiss the back of it, careful of the cannula they haven’t taken out yet, and it looks like a tear’s going to slip out the corner of one of her eyes. She wipes it away, sniffs.
“Good,” she says. "And you were right, too. You're looking exceedingly handsome already."
He grins at her. Has no idea how to respond to that, and before he can even try, his stomach gurgles audibly. Saves him from having to respond to her kindness.
He was trying to eat the yoghurt they gave him, and he’s fallen at the first hurdle. He knew there’d be a lot of things he wouldn’t physically be able to do for a while after this, but he’s going to learn taking lids off things ranks weirdly high on the list. Who knew chest muscles got involved in that?
“Could you, uh…”
“Yeah, of course.” She releases him a second, and hands it back when it’s been opened. Deposits the foil lid on the little table wheeled over the bed, and pulls it closer to where Vi’s propped up on four pillows so he doesn’t have to reach when he wants to put it down.
Thinks of everything, this woman.
Vi has his first mouthful of yoghurt and it’s the best thing he’s eaten in his entire damn life.
He can feel Caitlyn watching him, and he looks at her looking at him and a whole other feeling hits him—an absence. Something else, aside from the obvious change to his body.
A quiet.
She’s looking at him, and he feels—even more than he usually does, when it’s Cait—that she’s really seeing him. Not out of love or understanding, like before, but because he… he just is who he is, now.
“Okay?” Cait checks. His face must be doing something.
It hits him that this is what it’s going to be like, forever: people will look at him, and they’ll only see what he wants them to see. He’ll only be who he wants to be.
There’s no voice—no I hope they don’t notice.
I hope my shirt hides it.
I hope they don’t stare.
No subsconscious desire to hunch, or a conscious glance down to see what he looks like, to check, to fix.
Nothing that needs fixing at all.
Cait watches him eat his stupid yoghurt in his temporary bed with an unflattering hospital gown on and a bizarre compression garment keeping his chest neatly wrapped and compression socks not at all keeping his feet warm under the regular-issue heavy blanket, and Vi looks at her watching him, and he basks in the feeling of not trying to tuck parts of himself away or deaden them or ignore them. He smiles at her, and lets himself unfurl in her gaze, loosening and stretching and vast, and he thinks, Worth it.