Archive of Our Own

The whiteboard reads, become transgender.

Jay sits twisted on the piano bench as he looks at Matt, mouth falling open into a confused little smile. His voice matches as he says, “What?”

Matt sweeps his arm out, like, ta-da. “Become transgender,” he says, as if Jay can’t read the words himself, as if he is being helpful, as if he is making sense. This is how the majority of their plans begin, and today is evidently no exception.

“Become—become? Listen, Matty, I don’t—”

“No, not Matty. It’s Maddie, now.”

“Matty?”

“No, Maddie.”

“I’m saying that.”

“No, you’re saying Matty. I’m saying Maddie.”

“You’re saying the same thing I’m saying.”

“I’m categorically not.”

“Matt—”

“Maddie.”

“You’re being—”

“You’re being transphobic.”

Jay scoffs, affronted. “How am I being transphobic? I’m an—I’m an ally.”

Matt clicks his tongue, disapproving. “That’s not good enough anymore. You have to be transgender now, or else you’re—what?” He laughs into it a little, like there’s something Jay’s just not getting and it’s the most amusing thing in the world. Jay bristles and before he can protest Matt continues, “Dude. The Rivoli totally has to let us play a show if we’re transgender. Or else, we cancel them. Hashtag cancelled.”

Jay laughs, on instinct, a short bark of a thing. Then he thinks about it. “Wait, this is—” He shakes his head. Opens his mouth, closes it. A beat, and then, finally, he smiles. “That’s actually pretty good,” he admits. 

Matt’s smile blooms under his gaze, marker flipping over in his excited fingers. Then, he points at Jay and says, “Okay, so you’re a girl now, and—”

Wait, what? Jay frowns. “But I don’t wanna be a girl.”

“You don’t wanna be a girl?” Matt seems genuinely astonished, smile disappearing as his mouth falls into a surprised little pout. “What do you mean you don’t wanna be a girl? Everyone wants to be a girl, it’s so much better than being a dude.” He says this as if he is stating simple fact.

Jay blinks. Matt blinks back and says, “Girls are so, so—pretty. Everyone wants to be pretty.”

I don’t think I want to be pretty, Jay thinks. Does Matt want to be pretty? Matt is—he’s—well. He’s—Jay presses his lips into a thin line. Closes his eyes tight, shakes his head. “What about—” He fumbles for the words. “—what about the misogyny?”

“What about it?”

“You said being a girl is better. But there’s, like, sexism. And misogyny. Girls have to deal with that.”

Matt purses his lips, looks up at the ceiling. “Oh, that’s not—that’s not. Come on, Jay. Misogyny is—it’s like, it’s bad, sure, but. Come on.”

“Hey,” Jay warns, “now you’re gonna get cancelled.”

Matt puts his hands on his hips. It looks kind of gay. Jay looks at the couch. “You can’t cancel me when I’m a girl,” he says, “Name one—Jay, name one girl that’s been cancelled.”

He can’t. Fuck. 

“Uh-huh,” Matt says.

Jay rolls his eyes. Reaches back and presses a key on the piano, just to have something to do. “Whatever.”

Matt turns back to the whiteboard, flaps a hand back behind him to signal Jay to keep playing. He settles back into familiarity, into safety, as he plucks out a tune. Matt writes a one and circles it. Beside that, he writes, get dresses. 

“We have to get dresses.”

“Wait,” Jay whines. So much for familiarity and safety. “I don’t wanna—I’m not wearing a dress, Matt.” Matt sighs and rolls his eyes, incredibly put upon. Jay huffs a sigh of his own and tries, “Wouldn’t it be enough to have one? One transgender person? And I can be norm—uh, I can be—”

“Oh my god, dude, were you about to say normal? You are so not woke, oh my god.” He laughs but turns back to the whiteboard and scrubs out the end of dresses so it just reads dress. “There, transphobe.” He points at Jared’s camera and says, “They all know you’re a transphobe, now.”

“I’m not a transphobe. I’m an ally.”

Matt looks at Jay and raises his eyebrows like, sure. Then, he looks at the floor. “Alright.” It’s a touch quieter, but just as soon as it’s there it’s gone again, and his eyes are back on Jay, smile forming on his lips once more before he turns back to the whiteboard.

They don’t go to the Eaton Centre because fuck Yonge-Dundas Square, and also it’s a Saturday so it would be a nightmare, anyway. After roaming down Queen for twenty minutes, they end up in the poorly lit, subterranean dust-sink that is Black Market. This is because, one, they’re running low on cash after last week’s plan, and, two, queer people (I don’t think you’re allowed to, like, reclaim that, Matt) apparently like thrifting and Matt is committed to going full method on this transgender thing. 

Jay was sort of secretly hoping that on the way Matt might get bored or distracted or otherwise discouraged and drop the plan altogether, but he has a laserlike focus as he zeroes in on the circular rack of colourful fabric labelled with signs reading Women’s Dresses and Everything $10! Jay watches him leaf through the hangers with a sneeze in the back of his throat and a small pit in his stomach, a pit that only grows as Matt holds up a flowy yellow thing with spaghetti straps and says, “I think this one would show off my breasts.” It is stated matter-of-factly, as if it is a normal thing to say.

“Show—your—whuh?” Jay sputters, vaguely aware of Jared turning to catch his reaction. 

“My breasts,” Matt repeats flatly, seriously, palming at his chest for emphasis. 

“Ew,” Jay says, “Don’t—don’t call them breasts, Matt.”

“What do you want me to call them? Boobs? Tits? Titties?”

“I don’t want you to call them anything. Besides, you don’t even have them.”

Matt frowns, grabs a handful of his chest, then looks at Jay consideringly. “I have them more than you have them.” Then, he exhales a laugh. “Hey, do you think I should get a bra?”

Jay blinks. His brain supplies him with the mental image of Matt wearing a bra, then promptly blue-screens. When he opens his mouth, what comes out is, “I’m going to go look at the jeans,” and then he turns around and walks straight into a clothing rack that is nowhere near the jeans.

He wanders around the shop for a while, phasing in and out of earshot of Matt’s stupid happy chattering about hem length and sleeves and breasts. He flicks through some deadstock t-shirts for bands he doesn’t care for and wonders, idly, if this plan is even going to work. He imagines a world in which it does and Matt, in the name of keeping up appearances, has to play the show as a girl. How far would he take it? 

Jay’s instinct tells him, far. 

They play the music really fucking loud in this store/dungeon, so he almost doesn’t hear it when Matt, arms overflowing with fabric, calls out a Birdie! and motions frantically to the changing rooms. They’re basically just little stalls with threadbare curtains in front of them. Jay slinks over and posts himself up beside Jared as Matt dramatically snaps the curtain closed behind him. He’s not sure what he’s expecting to happen when Matt comes out of the change room—he holds out, maybe, just a little bit of hope that none of them will fit and he’ll give up on the plan and they’ll move on to the next thing or have a video game day or something else—but he’s bracing himself for something, the pit in his stomach hardening into a little knot of muscle as he and Jared wait, patiently.

They wait, but the other part—patiently—expires after four and a half minutes. Matt is taking for fucking ever, socked feet unmoving below the curtain as Jay watches him from ankle-down, ostensibly just… standing there. Jay can see his pants in a crumpled heap on the floor. Jared shifts the camera in his grip. The girl at the cash register glances over at them, smiling thinly when Jay makes eye contact. The song switches to the third screamo track in a row and Jay’s fingers curl and then uncurl. 

“Matt?”

The response is immediate. “Yeah?”

“You, uh, good in there?”

This time, he takes a second. “Yeah.”

“You wanna show us your dress?” Despite the blooming headache in his right temple, Jay smiles. Matt’s not gonna show them his dress. And if he can’t even come out of the dressing room, he certainly won’t be able to go to the Rivoli—or whatever the next step in the plan is—like this. For some reason that Jay does not care to analyze, this brings a rush of relief. 

It lasts about three seconds, because then Matt rips open the curtain, leans up against the side of the stall and says, “Tell me about it, stud,” which is great, because the urge to correct Matt lets Jay’s brain completely gloss over the fact that he is wearing a dress as he says, “She’s wearing a catsuit in Grease, not a dress.”

Matt straightens up and rolls his eyes. If Matt were more well-lit and Jay were more observant in this moment in time, he might notice they are rimmed with red. “Yeah, but she’s being a sexy lady, and I’m being a sexy lady, and—fuck you, dude, it tracks.”

“It does not track.”

“It tracks enough.”

“It,” is all Jay gets out, because then his brain catches up with what it is he’s seeing, which is Matt, in a dress. And the thing is that it probably isn’t objectively flattering—the neckline is kind of wrong, the colour washes him out and the fabric is clinging in weird places, accentuating the line of his boxer briefs—but Jay still feels kind of punched out with it, the power of speech completely obliterated as he sputters around a breath he no longer has. 

Matt has the audacity, then, to look coy. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah.” The answer falls from Jay’s lips before he has a chance to stop it, before he has a chance to mask it into anything but completely genuine. 

Matt looks up, eyebrow raised with a shit-eating grin on his lips. Great. “Oh yeah? You like it?”

“I—”

“You like this, Birdie?” He strikes another exaggerated, faux-sultry pose. “You like my dress? Is this—is this doing it for you?”

“Matt.”

“You little freak.”

“Matt.”

“Mhm?”

Jay sighs. “You look—it’ll be good. For the plan.”

“For the plan,” Matt echoes. 

Jay purses his lips and nods curtly as Jared flashes a supportive thumbs up, then Matt goes back into the stall and comes back out half a dozen more times in half a dozen more dresses, each one more stomach-knot-tightening than the last. Which could mean nothing. It could also mean that Jay is pulling out his phone and opening up google and typing out the words is it gay if before frantically backspacing, because, really, he doesn’t even know what he wants to ask it. 

And, crucially, he is not gay. So there’s that. 

Jay puts his phone in his pocket, and then Matt comes out in the yellow dress, the one with the spaghetti straps that he first picked out from the rack. 

“And the back is like—woah!” Matt turns around to show off the back—plunging, showing off the smooth swathes of skin and moles and muscle Jay has all seen before so really he shouldn’t be feeling like he is about to throw up or die or get a boner or something like that—and the dress flares up at the hemline, flowing softly in the air around Matt’s exposed thighs. “Oh my god, dude, look at that,” he says, fully twirling around and looking at the dress over his shoulder like a dog following its own tail.

“Cool.” Jay’s voice is strained, but Matt is all unbridled joy as he finishes spinning, holding his arms out to catch his balance. Jay has the absurd, stupid urge to reach out and steady him. His stomach aches as Matt smiles—really, really smiles—and moves on to swishing his hips back and forth. 

“How do they even get the fabric to do that?” he says idly, hands on his hips. He looks up at Jay and furrows his brows. “This is cool, eh?”

“Yeah,” Jay says weakly. He has got to get Matt out of this dress. Not like that—not like that. Like he has to get him back into his stupid fucking jeans and his stupid fucking blazer and his stupid fucking hat and then things will be normal and fine and Jay will stop feeling whatever it is he’s feeling. Matt’s arms look fucking massive. “That’s the one, then?”

“This is the one,” Matt affirms. Then, after a beat, through a thin laugh, “Rivoli here we come, right?”

Jay exhales. He almost forgot this was for another plan. “Right.”

Just for another plan. 

Back at home, Matt stands at the whiteboard again and marks off a rare check beside where he wrote get dress. Then, he writes a lopsided number two and circles it. “Step two,” he announces, “is we go to the Rivoli and we say, hello, we’re Nirvanna the Band and we would like to play a show, please.”

“And they let us just like that?”

“And they let us just like that.”

Jay hums. Usually their plans are a little more elaborate than this, but it’s possible that keeping it simple is what they need to finally get a show at the Rivoli. And maybe it really is as simple as putting Matt in a dress? Jay still feels kind of weird about that, and he still can’t quite put his finger on the why of it. Maybe it’s, like, cultural appropriation or whatever to pretend Matt is transgender? Maybe that’s it. Maybe Jay is just, like, actually super accepting of transgender people and he knows deep down that this is sort of problematic in its own backwards way. 

When Jay looks up again, Matt is in his underwear. 

“You ready to go?” he asks, the yellow dress in a heap in his hands. He shakes it out and starts putting it over his head, and Jay stares at his bare stomach. 

“What?”

“Bird,” Matt breathes, letting the fabric fall over his thighs, “You good?”

“I’m good,” Jay says, too fast, too defensive. 

If Matt notices, he doesn’t say anything. But what he does say is, “Do I look pretty?” 

Jay sputters out a cough as Matt reaches up and tucks his hair behind his ears, then puts his hands on his hips. His feet are sinking into the couch cushion as he stands, waiting, and the thing is that he does. Look pretty. 

Jay should nip this in the bud. He should cut it off now, stop the plan: very funny, we all had a good laugh, but it’s time to be serious, now. He should tell Matt it’s offensive and that he looks like an idiot and that the Rivoli is going to ban them (again) if they show up looking like that. He should reach down his own throat and scoop up the knot of his stomach and untie it, lay it out on the keys of the piano and he should say, enough of that, now. He should feel differently. He should feel differently. 

Instead, he says, “Yes, Matt. You look pretty.”

Matt smiles, a bright thing. A delayed thing. There is a moment before it happens where he almost looks afraid, but Jay doesn’t clock it. He doesn’t clock a lot of things. Meanwhile Matt is going red, full body flush as the back of his arms turn rosy, his chest splotchy. And Jay has obviously seen Matt’s chest before, has seen him shirtless, but this is different. This is—this is cleavage, basically, and it’s doing something to Jay as he takes in the little moles dotting Matt’s skin, the blush contagious as it creeps up his own complexion. He hopes Matt can’t see it, but he knows he probably can. Black Market was dim; the living room has all the southwest afternoon light rushing in like a goddamned dream. If Jay can see the goosebumps on Matt’s skin, then Matt definitely can see the sorry truth on Jay’s.

He definitely can see it. Jay hopes Matt doesn’t see it. 

Jay clears his throat and swivels back to the piano, fingers clumsily moving over the keys as he plays a couple of notes, twitchy and discordant. 

“Aw, thanks, Bird,” Matt says finally. He does a little curtsy, tosses the whiteboard marker over his shoulder, and leaps from the couch with confidence, traipsing down the hall and stomping his shoes onto his feet. Jay gets up from the piano, lightheaded, and follows him to the entryway. 

The door stays closed. 

Matt stands in front of it, unmoving. He lets out something halfway between an exhale and a laugh, breathy and unsure, and Jay knows that something is very wrong.  

“Matt?” 

“Yeah?”

“You gonna… you good?”

Matt doesn’t say anything. Which is a little scary, because Matt is always saying something. He plays at the hem of the dress, worrying the fabric between his fingers, and—oh.

Oh. 

“Hey,” Jay says, “It’s—it’s okay. We don’t have to go.” He’s a bad friend. He’s an idiot. It’s easy to forget that Matt is a person, sometimes. Which sounds weird and kind of dehumanizing, but he’s normally just so larger-than-life that he seems to operate on a different level than most other people, endlessly confident and naive and enthusiastic and petulant and fearless. Nothing and everything seems to phase him at the same time, which is something that Jay both admires and hates about him. It’s the thing that drives him away and it’s the same thing that has him coming back every time, the two of them so tangled up in each other that Jay sometimes doesn’t know who he would be without him, without this. He’d follow Matt anywhere. He’d follow him out the door under any pretense, for any plan.

But this time, Matt isn’t going. This time, Matt is afraid.

“We totally don’t have to go.” Jay puts a hand, hesitant, on Matt’s bare shoulder. He wishes he would look at him. “We can do the plan later, or we can do a totally different plan, whatever you—whatever you want. It’s okay.” 

Matt takes a breath, only a little bit gasping, and finally, says, “Yeah. Sorry, man, wow. I just—”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s like, it’s actually scary.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t even put the dress on. So you’re already—you know, you’re braver than me.”

Matt turns, rolls his eyes. Jay relaxes so hard he feels a little faint. “Uh huh.”

“Besides,” Jay tries, “they’d probably just think you’re a dude in a dress.” He looks Matt up and down as he says it, lightheartedly, half a laugh in his throat. “Not, like, actually transgender.”

Matt looks at the floor, frowns at it for a long time. It doesn’t take a lot to hurt Matt, to set him off, but this feels different already, the air evacuating the room as the moment stretches out fraught and spindly between them, Matt just staring at their feet. He doesn’t even try to laugh it off or to jab back at Jay with something mean or stupid or both. He doesn’t do anything but shoulder past Jay—not touching him, very careful not to be touching him, and this is when Jay knows he fucked up. By the time he turns around Matt is back in the living room and he’s pulling the dress over his head, tossing it on his bunk and reaching down to grab his regular pants. He’s still not saying anything, just stiffly dressing himself with jerking movements, lips pursed into a tight little frown. 

Softly, Jay says, “Matty.” There is no response. Then, he tries, “Maddie,” and watches Matt’s eyes flick up, just a bit, just to the piano. He turns his hat over in his hands. 

He hums quietly, an acknowledgement. 

Jay will take it. Jay will take anything Matt gives him. He will take anything Matt gives him, and, he will fix this. “Maybe,” he starts, “Maybe we could get you some, some makeup? Then you would look—it would be more—you know, like—”

“Makeup!” Matt’s mouth drops open and he throws his arms up in the air. “Oh, Bird, that is good, I definitely need makeup if I’m gonna be a girl. That’s—” He cuts himself off with a breathy laugh and gives Jay a sideways look, like he’s letting him in on a joke. “Can’t leave the house looking like a slob, without putting my makeup on,” he giggles, pitching his voice up as he parades over to the couch. He climbs up onto it and starts writing on the board again, tongue poking out of his mouth. 

As easy as it is to set Matt off, it’s that easy—can be that easy—to put him back again. Jay feels faint again. He feels a little mad, too, but mostly he’s relieved. The knot in his stomach eases, just a bit.

Jared follows them out to Shoppers, camera in tow as Matt beelines for the makeup aisle. It’s one of the bigger stores so it has a small gaggle of women who work specifically at the makeup counter, selling cheap perfume and expensive skincare with lipsticked smiles. Matt breezes by them with a smile and a hello, his earlier trepidation completely evaporated, at least in the face of social convention. Jay hangs back with Jared and watches as that trepidation—or something like it, something adjacent, something that reminds Jay of Matt’s unmoving feet in the change room—takes over him again as he stands, absolutely paralyzed, in front of a wall of nail polish.

He’s slack-faced. It’s hard to tell at this distance, but he might be trembling. He picks up a bottle of nail polish—a soft pink, almost white—and puts it down. Then he picks it up again, puts it down. He does this twice more before shaking his head like coming out of a reverie, lips pressed tightly together. He looks down at his hands, running his thumb over his nails. Jay hears the mechanical sound of Jared zooming in. 

Jay feels his stomach tighten again. It actually kind of hurts, now, and he resists the urge to double over. He doesn’t often stop to examine the way that he feels. Most times, he’s too caught up in whatever plan or scheme or mishap Matt is dragging him through to even think to wonder how he feels about it beyond the initial rush of this is stupid or this is brilliant or, more often, both. He’s not sure which one this is. This is, for all intents and purposes, the loosest definition of a plan they’ve had in a while. Usually by now they’d have failed and pivoted at least twice, or at least been to the Rivoli. This is Matt buying makeup. 

It strikes him that the plan could take longer than their usual one- to two-day timeline. 

He doesn’t often stop to examine the way he feels, but right now he feels that he feels… uncomfortable. He’s been uncomfortable this whole plan. Which doesn’t make sense, because—

“I’m an ally,” he says to Jared, who does not respond. “I am. You know, I even went to Pride, once.” He exhales a soundless laugh. Then, a beat later, “Okay, I didn’t, like, go to Pride, but I was on the 505 and it got diverted because of the parade and I didn’t make a fuss and I even, I even waved, to some shirtless guys that were dancing on the street, so. I am an ally. To the, the community.” 

Jared looks at him, raises an eyebrow. 

Jay asks, “Are you? An ally?”

Jared shrugs. “I’ve got a cousin.”

Jay nods. Right, right. Damn. Jared totally has more ally points than him. “I’ve got—” he starts. I’ve got Matt. Is that what he was going to say? And, more importantly, does he? Have Matt? His stomach flips again. Jay is the one who leaves. Matt is the one who tries—desperate, pathetic, thrilling—to get him to stay. So it would follow that Jay does have Matt; he has him in his back pocket. And that is, really, exactly where he wants him. But now he’s here and Jay is wondering if he’s got him, in the way that Jared’s got a cousin, and he’s wondering why the fuck that thought makes him so damn uncomfortable if he’s an ally. 

If he’s got him, does he still have him?

The camera is on Jay now, for whatever reason. 

Matt talks animatedly to one of the lipstick ladies, waving a tube of mascara in the air like it’s a sword. Jay watches it go flying out of his fingers, crashing into a display. He still manages to surprise him. 

Matt paints his nails between turns on Ocarina of Time. It’s not the pink he initially waffled over but a bright red, matching the lipstick the sales associate picked out for him. Bold, she had said, You seem like a bold guy. 

The game’s music loops over itself as Jay watches Matt’s hands shake, little wand gripped between two fingers as he drags it clumsily over his nails. He’s doing that thing with his tongue again, concentrating so hard he doesn’t even notice Jay noticing. Jay could probably say whatever he wanted right now and Matt wouldn’t hear him, wouldn’t react. We haven’t vacuumed in like eight weeks. I think this plan is starting to scare me. I think I get scared a lot. I am having weird feelings about you wearing nail polish. I am having weird feelings about you. 

Jay shivers and wonders what Matt would say if he heard. What do you mean, Bird? And the thing is that Jay doesn’t know what he means. It’s a nothing statement. I am having weird feelings about you. That’s about as specific as the last four vintage pop-ups on College Street. But it’s true, because he is. Having weird feelings. It would follow from that that he is having—having feelings, period. 

And the thing, the crucial thing, is that Jay is an ally. Jay is an ally and he is not gay. 

These are true things about him. 

Amendment: these are things about him that he believes to be true. 

Further amendment: these are things about him that he has to believe are true. 

The Saw trap is this: If Matt is just fucking around about being a girl, then Jay is having feelings about a dude. But if Matt is actually kind of serious about being a girl and is like, actually transgender or whatever, then Jay is—he’s having feelings about a woman, great, yay for being straight and woke. This doesn’t challenge his sexuality, but it does challenge the other fundamental truth of his life that Matt is a man. And if Jay is uncomfortable with that, as he honestly really has been throughout this stupid plan, then he is a fucking asshole. 

So really it follows that there are only two options for Jay: gay or transphobe. Awesome. 

The guy in the Saw cut off his own leg to get out of the trap. Jay’s not sure what the equivalent action would be for him, here, but he knows he can live without a leg. He doesn’t think it’s that simple, with Matt. The part of Matt that is a part of him is not a leg or a gallbladder or a lung or even a heart. It is not easily removed. Jay knows, he’s tried. He’s tried and he’s learned that removing Matt would be like removing himself, like vivisection over surgery, like cutting until there’s nothing left to cut. It is something he cannot live without.

Jesus Christ, maybe he is gay. 

Is that better than being a transphobe? Probably. Both options fly in the face of the things about Jay that he believes are true, and moreover both options bring change, which—in a rare moment of clarity and self-reflection, Jay realizes—might be the crux of it all, here. Jay-and-Matt is a fundamental, load-bearing part of Jay. If that part changes, then who even is Jay, anymore? What would be the point of him?

He feels, profoundly, like a loser. He turns to Matt—instinct, inane, ingrained—and finds him twisting the cap of the nail polish bottle closed and waving his hands around in the air like he’s a toddler that really has to pee but hasn’t figured out how to verbalize that yet. 

Jay softens. He doesn’t mean to. 

“Does this come off with, like, what, soap?” Matt asks, stopping his flapping to scrutinize his handiwork.

“No, you need—it’s like, nail polish remover.”

“Did we buy nail polish remover?”

“I don’t know,” Jay replies plainly, “Did you buy nail polish remover?”

Matt pokes his foot into the plastic bag sitting on the coffee table. It looks discouragingly flat and empty. “Ugh, we might have to go back. I kind of got it all over my skin.” He holds his hands up—red fingerprints mark his palms—and then grimaces. “I don’t really wanna go back out tonight. But I want—this is—ugh.” He flops back onto the couch and holds his hands out at arm’s length, squinting at his overpainted fingertips. It looks kind of like he dipped his fingers into flamin’ hot cheeto dust. He curls his arms into his chest and rolls onto his side, looking up at Jay through his eyelashes, stupid and long even without the mascara sitting unopened still on the coffee table. 

“Well,” Jay says, trying and failing to ignore the rush of fondness that takes over him. “Let me know what you wanna do.” As if Matt couldn’t go by himself, as if it’s implied that Jay will go with him. As if he ever couldn’t go with him. Which—wow, okay. Again, Jesus. 

Jay closes his eyes. If you could also let me know whether you’re a dude or not so I can know what flavour of absolutely fucked I am, that would be great, thank you. 

Despite Matt’s yo-yoing confidence, the plan continues the next morning. Jay wakes to the sound of dry erase squeaking, Matt already at the whiteboard, underlining something Jay is too bleary and far away to see. He does see, however, as Matt peaks over cautiously, quietly, cutely (...fuck), to their bunks, and he certainly sees the smile that breaks out on his face as he realizes Jay is awake. 

“Birdie!” He cheers brightly, “is it too early—too early for a song?”

It is too early for a song, but Jay looks down and finds his legs swinging over the side of the bunk anyway, finds himself shambling over to the piano in his underwear as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes. This is automatic. “What do you want?” he asks, except it comes out a little more like Whay’wan. 

Matt is not deterred. “Girl music,” he says.

“Girl music?” Jay’s hands hover over the keys, and he stops to fully turn back and look at Matt. “What is girl music?” He starts playing out the melody to Call Me Maybe. “Like, music by a girl?”

Matt makes an ehh face. “I don’t know, just like—” He waves a hand in the air. “Like, something—girly. We’re doing girl homework today.” 

Jay squints at him, then realizes it also says girl homework on the whiteboard behind him. He blinks and starts out playing something a little slower. Matt seems satisfied enough with the girliness of it because then he starts rambling again, hands waving wildly as he speaks. Jay tracks the movement of his fingernails, still red from when he painted them last night: not a dream. 

“Okay, so,” Matt is saying, “I have to show the Rivoli that I’m a girl. We got the dress, we got the makeup, we got the nails, but I have to—I have to act like a girl. I have to embody girl. And I have to do it like, under, under scrutiny. They’re gonna be looking for a reason to say no. And if they say no, we’ll just cancel the shit out of them, but that’s plan B. Plan A—” He taps the end of the marker against the whiteboard and looks to Jay expectantly. 

“Is girl homework?”

“Girl homework! What do girls do?”

Jay moves his hands across the piano, going back and forth on a melody. “Girls talk,” he offers. 

“Talk! Gossip! Girls love to gossip.” Matt starts scribbling on the board, near illegible. “We do that all the time.”

Jay bristles, biting back a smile. “We do not gossip,” he says. 

Matt ignores him. “Girls laugh. They love to giggle, like—” Matt lets out a high pitched giggle, throwing his head back in glee. The longer he talks, the longer Jay feels like Matt’s entire understanding of girls comes from, like, cartoons and outdated stereotypes. It probably shouldn’t be as charming as it is. He turns to Jay. “You know, like, like—” He giggles again, just to get his point across.

“Okay.”

“Girls like shopping,” he says confidently, then, a beat later, crestfallen, “but we already went shopping…”

“You know, this is maybe feeling a little—it might come off as misogynistic, to—” Jay stops himself as Matt levels him with an unimpressed look. “I’m just saying,” he tries, “is that girls are just people too, Matt. Like—” He stops again, testing it out as he says, “Like you.”

Matt swallows, jaw clenching slightly. Jay watches it happen, but it only lasts a second, because then Matt waves him off, turning back to the board. Though, to his credit, he does write down people and circles it twice around. 

“Girls like…” Matt drones on and Jay tunes him out as his playing turns pensive, fingers slowing down and sound fading into the background of his thoughts. When was the last time either of them even really interacted with a girl in more than passing, much less had a girlfriend? It is an exercise in shame, trying to recall. If he could, Jay is sure he would be mortified by what kind of boyfriend he was. He’s probably never gotten glowing reviews in the relationship department. He’s never been outwardly affectionate, and he’s pretty sure he’s never stepped foot in a florist’s in his life. Which is embarrassing, but hey, there’s an idea in there.

“Girls like flowers.”

Matt spins around, hands coming up to either side of his head. “Girls like flowers! They so like flowers!” Then he stares off into the middle distance again and says, “Jay, I have an idea.”

Which is how they end up at the Allan Gardens, hopping off the streetcar and heading north to the conservatory before Jay can even have the chance to have breakfast. He follows Matt into the thick veil of humidity and colour explodes into view. There are a few other people milling about—an elderly couple regarding the orchids, a mom pushing a stroller beside the banana leaves—but it’s mostly empty, still early on in the day. 

Matt had said they were going there to learn about different types of flowers and to pick a favourite, because, quote, Girls always have a favourite type of flower—but he almost immediately abandons both Jay and all pretense of looking at flowers in favour of draping himself over the railing of the little bridge overlooking the pond housing the turtles. 

Jay takes off his blazer and folds it over his arms, then walks over to join Matt on the bridge. Their shoulders bump softly together as he leans down, Matt letting out an awed, soundless laugh and saying, “There’s so many, eh?”

“Yeah.” His voice is quiet. He watches Matt watch the turtles. There’s one of them that’s struggling to climb up onto one of the stone platforms sitting just out of the water, little flippers working overtime just to stay in the same place. It makes Jay a little sad. 

“C’mon, buddy!” Matt cheers. It’s altogether much too loud for the decidedly serene vibes of the garden, and it definitely turns a few heads, but Jay doesn’t move to quiet him. Blame it on the heat in the air—a weighted blanket on Jay’s shoulders comforting him into sleepy, fond submission—but he is perfectly content in this moment to just lean there and watch as Matt pounds his fists on the railing and urges, “You can do it!”

The turtle tries for another few seconds then sinks back into the water. Jay kind of feels his heart break for it because, really, it looks like it’s drowning, but then it swims over to the other side of the platform and tries again. It’s kind of stepping on another turtle to do it and it’s moving slow but it does make it eventually, Matt letting out a quiet Nice as the turtle drags itself up onto dry land, victorious.

Jay clears his throat. “Should we look at the flowers?”

“Oh. Yeah, probably. Let me track down a guide.” And with that Matt takes off again, only to return two minutes later with the information that the Allan Gardens does not have guides. Which is how, of course, Jay ends up trailing behind Matt with his phone open to google, looking up every flower with smart and helpful descriptors such as blue flower a lot of them together small petals and green and red pink spiral flower green leaves. He’s not sure what Matt is even wanting to accomplish by having Jay look up the flowers but he does it anyway, annoyance simultaneously assuaged and aggravated by Matt asking him to stop and take a photo of him with each new species, for “evidence”. After a while, they end up just making up names for the flowers by themselves, much to the delight of the elderly couple from the orchids at the start. 

“You two are quite the pair,” the lady says with a smile.

“Thank you,” Matt replies brightly, going on and making conversation in that effortless way he always does. Are you from Toronto? Awesome, yeah, us too. How long have you been together? Forty-five years in June? Wow, you’ve got—haha, yeah, you’ve got a couple years on us. Forty-five years. That’s a long time, isn’t it Bird? Bird?

It’s then, sandwiched between the koi pond and the norfolk island pine, that Jay realizes he is on a date with Matt. 

Then, he realizes, secondarily, that everyone else probably also thinks he is on a date with Matt. Probably always has thought it, for years and years and years. 

Then, tertiary, revolutionary: he’s not sure he completely minds that. 

“Yeah,” he says, “forty-five years is a long time.”

The lady winks at him. “You’ll get there soon enough,” she says, little smile playing on her lips. “Have a nice day,” she says, and then they’re gone.

Matt smiles, humming to himself. “That was nice. Weren’t they nice?”

Jay is still stuck on his troika of realizations—nothing has changed, not materially, but he feels lighter. Which could actually be the hunger getting to him and making him literally lightheaded, now that he thinks about it. They should probably stop somewhere before they go home, lest he actually goes and faints on Matt or something like that. Like he was scared he was going to, back in the basement at Black Market, watching him twirl. 

Now, in the light of another perfect Toronto morning, sunshine filtering through the leaves of ivy, he doesn’t feel scared anymore.

A fourth realization crests over Jay. It’s just Matt. Guy or not a guy. Pretending or transgender. Gay or not gay. It doesn’t matter, because it’s just Matt.

The sun shifts, the shadows with it. A worker wheels in a cart of dirt, a breeze passes through an open door. The world keeps turning. Matt stands there looking suddenly very beautiful, and when he says “What?” Jay feels like he might faint all over again. It is not the hunger. “What is it, Bird?”

Jay exhales, surrenders to the smile overtaking his lips, and lies. “Nothing.” 

Later, on the streetcar ride home, Matt throws his hands up and shouts, “Shit!” Jay nearly drops his phone on the dirty floor as Matt laments, “I didn’t pick a favourite flower! That was the whole point!”

“Oh,” Jay says, kind of only just remembering this whole outing was for a plan, girl homework. “Right. Well—” He opens up his camera roll and starts scrolling, a collage of Matt with what seems to be every species of flower in the entire world. He tiles Jay’s screen, the same toothy smile in every photo. It could be the farmer’s wrap from the walk to the streetcar settling in his stomach, but Jay feels a way seeing it. He lets himself feel it. 

“Here, pick from these,” Jay says, angling his phone towards Matt. He taps on one at random, opening up a picture of Matt grinning underneath a bunch of flowers hanging above his head, the tips of them just brushing his hair. They’re exorbitantly pink, trumpet shaped. One curls down the vine and brushes his cheek, blush spreading as if the flower had come down and painted the colour itself. Jay almost feels jealous. “This one is nice,” he says evenly.

“Okay, yeah, yeah. You like that one?” Matt squints at the photo. Jay does the same. Underneath the curtain of flowers, it’s Matt. It’s just Matt. 

Jay nods. “Yeah, I like that one.”

Jared announces that he has a family thing back in Peterborough so filming and, consequently, the plan, go on pause. Matt insists this is the one, really, this time, so Jared needs to be here for it. They’ll want to remember their humble beginnings when they’re famous, it’ll be great archival footage for the eventual tour documentary, blah blah blah. The next few days go like this: Matt prances around the house in his dress like its a Halloween costume, harasses Jay at the piano, and continuously forgets to buy nail polish remover. Jay quietly burns, and yearns, and earns his fucking ally points by caving into Matt’s demands to help apply his makeup for him each morning. Eat your heart out, Jared’s cousin. 

They don’t leave the house. It’s a lopsided facsimile of their twenties, back when they could accidentally forget about the world for a couple days at a time, too wrapped up in video games and each other to care about things like fresh air and exercise and society. Jay supposes things aren’t all that different, now, when he thinks about it, but he does feel his body acutely deteriorating if he doesn’t have a vegetable every few days now. Which is why he’s grimacing his way through a bowl of cut up celery and watching Matt drown his own—straight up stalk, leaves and all—in Cheez Whiz. Except of course every time he takes a bite it’s left with a ring of lipstick on the stalk, which is distracting for reasons Jay will decline the opportunity to get into at this time. 

All this to say, their little vacation is something that Jay is both enjoying and losing his fucking mind about simultaneously. It’s only a little bit on purpose when he stabs Matt in the eye with the mascara wand a couple minutes later, once snacktime is over. 

“Ow, Bird, Jesus.”

“Sorry. You could do it yourself, you know.”

Matt blinks up at him one million times through his newly long, darkened eyelashes and Jay—who is now a four-day veteran of applying mascara to his roommate he is totally chill and zen about probably having either gay or not gay feelings for—already has a pillow on his lap. Sources are reporting he is also declining the opportunity to get into that at this time. 

“Hey,” Jay says when Matt doesn’t deign to dignify him with a response, “How about we go on a walk today, eh? Looks nice out, should be in the twenties by the afternoon?” 

Matt looks down, red lips scrunching into a pout. “Yeah, maybe,” he says noncommittally, which is what he’s said and how he’s said it for the past three days. Jay isn’t surprised. He is, though, at a breaking point. 

“Okay. What about—what about a plan?” he tries, treading gently. Matt has said that this plan is the plan, but Jay has a feeling that—well, he has a feeling. He has a lot of feelings. He’s been thinking about them, and he’s been thinking about that turtle. 

“We have a plan,” Matt says, a hint of confusion, and maybe a little bit of hurt, lingering there in his voice. 

“I know,” Jay says quickly, on the defense. “we do. And it’s—I was thinking, you know, about the plan. The, the transgender plan.”

Matt looks down again. Quirks his head to the side, shakes it a bit, almost like a tic. It makes him look really young in that moment. Finally, he hums, “Mhm?”

“What if that one can be, you know, a bit of a—a bit of a, a longer term plan?

Matt’s eyes shoot up, wide. “A longer term plan?”

Jay caps the mascara, sets it aside. “You know, sometimes I feel like we sort of rush our plans and that’s—maybe, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why they don’t work. But it’s okay to… it’s okay to go slow, maybe, if you’re trying something different. If it’s something, uh, important. Sometimes these things take time, and that’s like, super, um, okay?” He realizes that he’s asking for permission as much as he’s giving it. Matt’s eyes are trained on him, unmoving. Jay thinks he’s getting it. He hopes he’s getting it. 

“Right,” Matt says finally, “So you—you like the plan?” There’s hope cresting, there, and Jay thinks it might be in both of them.

He swallows. “Do you like it, though?” You can like it, he wants to say.

Matt looks off to the side, out the window. It’s so, so small when he says, “I wanna know if you like it, Bird.”

That, he can give. 

“Yeah, Maddie, I like the plan.”