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Alex pushed Magnus along ahead of him, a grin on his face as they neared his room. Magnus dug in his heels slightly, though he didn’t really mind being pushed. “Is this really necessary?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder at Alex, who was currently his boyfriend. Alex nodded sagely, still with a wide grin on his face and amusement in his mismatched eyes.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Completely.” They reached Alex’s room, and Alex pushed Magnus inside, heading for the closet. Alex opened the door, and with a final shove, pushed Magnus inside. Magnus felt like he should probably make a joke about the fact that Alex had just shoved him into a closet, but as he turned to face his boyfriend, Alex clearly read the intention on his face and placed a finger over his lips to shush him. Magnus dutifully kept his mouth closed. In fact, it went rather dry, and he was trying very hard not to look too obviously nervous.
Alex took a step back, looking him up and down critically. Magnus swallowed hard. Alex crossed over to a hanger, pulling down one of his longer dresses in a summery green and holding it up to Magnus. Alex nodded once, shoving the dress at him, then opened a dresser and pulled out several skirts. He sorted through them while Magnus awkwardly held the dress, selecting a flowy sage green skirt, a mid-length one in a deep forest green, and - with a smirk and a small huff of laughter, a short checkered pleated skirt in a shockingly vibrant lime. Magnus tried to contain a wince at the last one. Alex pulled out several shirts, as well - mainly in shades of light pink, though there was one in a mint green and one in hot pink - as well as another dress, this one satin and a soft pink. Then he handed them all to Magnus.
“Take your pick,” he said, in a voice that made it clear he expected Magnus to try all of them eventually. Then she smiled, and Magnus realized she had just switched to being his girlfriend rather than boyfriend again. “I can join in, if you’d like. I’ve been meaning to plan a new outfit for a nice occasion. Not a lot of excuses to dress up in Valhalla.”
Magnus looked at the clothes in his hands, feeling vaguely uncomfortable, but there was a faint tinge of a thrill as well. “Sure,” he said, cringing internally at the awkwardness. He really should’ve expected this reaction when he’d mentioned to Alex that he’d been considering experimenting with gender presentation, but had no idea what kinds of clothes would work for him. She was certainly no stranger to experimenting with gender, and she’d jumped at the chance to get him into her clothes, though she’d made it clear she would behead him with her garotte if he ruined any. In short, she’d been very Alex about it.
His girlfriend smiled at him, then went back to perusing her clothes, this time for herself. She kept her back pointedly turned to him, and he realized she expected him to change. He set most of the clothes she’d handed him aside to take his current shirt and jeans off as quietly as he could, feeling very clumsy and awkward as he fumbled with the first dress she had given him. He managed to get it on, finding that it fit surprisingly well overall, though he couldn’t zip the back up all the way - not only did he physically not have the reach, but his shoulders were slightly too broad to close it all the way up without risking damaging the dress.
It was silky, the fabric cool and smooth against his skin. He instinctively spun slightly, feeling the skirt spin out around him. It felt strange - he’d never worn a dress before, and it was a new experience to not have fabric hugging his legs on all sides - but he thought he liked it. He cleared his throat slightly, and Alex turned her head to look at him, smiling when she saw him in the dress. She stood, putting the clothes in her arms to the side, and guided him over to a full-length mirror.
Magnus looked, seeing a side to himself he hadn’t seen before. His hair was on the longer side of what it got to be these days - Alex hadn’t yet ruthlessly chopped it off again - so it fell loosely around his face. He knew that his form hadn’t changed - his shoulders were still somewhat broad, his hips fairly slim, a figure that was naturally pretty straight-up-and-down - but the dress seemed to accentuate curves he could’ve sworn hadn’t been there minutes before, making him look somewhat softer. The color made the gray of his eyes pop, and that green in combination with his hair almost reminded him of wheat fields (not that wheat fields were associated with pleasant memories).
He didn’t look quite like a girl, as far as he could tell. But he looked closer to one than he would have expected, and he didn’t look exactly like a boy, either. He found he didn’t mind that.
“You look nice,” Alex volunteered from next to him, voice a bit softer than he would’ve expected from her. She smiled at him, seeming encouraging. “What do you think?’
“I think… I like it,” he said. He did. It was new, and it felt strange, but it wasn’t a bad feeling.
Her smile widened. “Good,” she said. “Because now you’re going to try my clothes some more.”
And so he did. And, to his slight surprise, he found he liked most of them. Most, not all. As Magnus had expected, Alex had made him pair the hot pink blouse (which just barely fit him) with the lurid lime skirt, and then had laughed at him for a few minutes while he stared in horror at the awful color combination. It didn’t escape his attention that she’d made sure that happened in the middle of him trying her clothes, though, so his experience trying on her clothes started and ended positively. And he knew she was laughing at the outfit in general, not just at him wearing it, and definitely not at him. It wasn’t mean laughter, and he couldn’t help but find it funny as well, though he never wanted to try that particular outfit again.
Alex tried on a few outfits too, like she’d promised, briefly disappearing out of the closet each time to change. Those outfits included a deep rose dress that made all the moisture leave Magnus’s mouth entirely from how stunning she looked in it, a neon green and fuchsia ensemble, and a bubblegum pink suit. She’d looked incredible in both of those too, despite the clashing colors of the neon one, though that went without saying. Alex always looked incredible.
When they were both finished trying on clothes, they changed back into the clothes they’d been wearing to start with. To Magnus, it felt nearly as strange to be back in his own clothes as it had to be in Alex’s, though it was familiar. He’d grown almost accustomed to the feeling of a skirt around his legs. He didn’t mourn it, but there was almost a sense of loss.
Alex walked him back to his own room, and they stretched out in the grass beneath the tree, looking up at where it stretched through the space where in an ordinary building there would’ve been a normal ceiling. She didn’t ask him about his gender identity or whether his new exploration of presentation had been prompted by anything in particular. The two of them just lay there together, in comfortable silence, until Magnus spoke.
“I think I’m still a guy,” he said, hesitantly. “I don’t think I feel like a girl, and I don’t think I want to be a girl, but I’m not a macho manly man either.”
Alex could’ve easily made a snarky comment about that, something along the lines of “I know, Magnus,” but she just listened, looking at him.
“...I liked trying your clothes on today, even though I don’t think I’m a girl,” he continued. “It felt nice to branch out. Even when you made me wear that awful green.”
Alex jokingly stuck her tongue out at him. “At least I didn’t make you wear blue.”
Magnus shuddered in mock revulsion. “Ugh. You don’t even have any blue clothes.”
“I could get some and make you wear them.”
“Don’t you dare!”
They laughed together for a minute. When they stopped, Magnus spoke again. “I think I wouldn’t mind wearing feminine clothes again, though I should probably find something that fits me a bit better. Some of your clothes were a little small.”
Alex made a noncommittal noise, smiling slightly. “You looked good in them, though.”
Magnus thought back to his reflection in the mirror. He didn’t usually care much for the way he looked, but he thought he’d looked nice. Normally he’d make some stupid joke, possibly a self-deprecating one, but this didn’t feel like the time. “I felt good.”
“Good.” Alex was looking up at the tree again when Magnus glanced over. “Still he/him, then?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Magnus said, though he found he wasn’t sure how much he actually cared. “Still he/him for now.” But if in the future that changed, he wouldn’t be against it, and Alex would be the first to know.
“Cool,” Alex said, nudging his shoulder in what passed as a rather intense show of affection from her.
They lapsed into silence again, even more comfortable than before. Magnus knew that if he ever wanted to explore his gender identity further, Alex would support him, as he had supported her in her transness and genderfluidity. He had time. All the time in the world, until it ended.
Who knew? Maybe he was just a guy who enjoyed gender nonconformity, or maybe he was nonbinary, or transgender, or even genderfluid like Alex - though he definitely didn’t experience the same thing she did. Only time would tell, and exploration, and he and Alex could do as much of that together as she wanted to be there for.
The next morning, he would wake to a closet that held some perfectly-sized dresses, blouses, and skirts mainly in shades of beige and cream in addition to the clothes that had been there before, and he’d call his once-more-boyfriend over to see him try them on.
But for now, Magnus enjoyed lying in the grass with his girlfriend, knowing that he had time.