Only it wasn’t. Trevor had been fascinated by it for a
while, but he’d triggered severe dysphoria with his interest
in some of Blake’s less desirable parts, so to speak. Trevor
was fascinated with the things that Blake was disgusted
with. They’d had fights about it, many of them mostly Blake
telling Trevor to stop playing with his chest or to stop
begging him to stop binding or making cracks about girls in
relation to him. Trevor knew how to push his buttons. He
never tried to fix that, though.
Eventually, they drifted apart because Trevor couldn’t
take the idea of duality, and Blake was deathly afraid of that
happening again, and so he swore off relationships. All they
ever did was hurt him more. He didn’t want the person he
ended up with seeing him as anything but male, but that
seemed to be such a big thing to ask, so he just stayed away
from it. The thought of being objectified again made him
shiver with disgust.
Blake bit his bottom lip and opened the text message,
shifting up from his half-laying position and running his
hand through his hair as he forgot to breathe for a moment
or two. It felt oddly like the entire world had stopped
around him.
How are you, B?
was the simple question on his phone,
and he scoffed, lips quirking into a rueful sort of smirk,
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Joey James Hook
shaking his head and pulling both legs close to his chest
with a heavy sigh. He didn’t know what he was expecting,
but that simple question wasn’t what he was waiting to read
on his screen. It wasn’t disappointment he was feeling—he
wasn’t sure what it was.
How was he? Funny question, he thought with a roll of
his eyes and a derisive scoff as he scratched at his forehead
in slight agitation, staring at the screen until it felt like it was
burning his retina.
That’s a very fucking funny question, Trev,
considering you’re the one that gave me a ton of complexes about
my gender identity.
Okay, so maybe it was a little bit on the bitter side, but he
couldn’t help but think it. Trevor had set back his dysphoria
so fucking badly that it made him squirm to think that he
was contacting him in such a casual sort of manner. He bit
down hard on his bottom lip and slid it between his teeth
until he was just biting on the right corner as he rocked back
and forth on the bed idly, trying to think of something to
respond with.
I’m doing all right, I guess. How’re you?
He responded with, wondering exactly what kind of
response he was going to get. Was Trevor going to tell him
that he was great, wonderful with a fantastic girlfriend who
knew she was a girl and didn’t question it? Would he say he
was miserable without him and wanted him back? The
second was unlikely, but the first was quite possible.
His phone beeped again and he looked down, opening
the message with bated breath, jaw tense and nostrils flaring
as his heart beat wildly in his chest. His chest was tight and
his stomach was tensed like hell. He tried to get it to stop,
tried to relax and let it roll off him, and most of all he tried to
convince himself that it was probably nothing, that he was
just going through his phone and decided on a whim to text
him for shit and giggles. That had to have been it.
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He found it almost amusing in an ironic kind of way how
right he was.
Okay I suppose. Was bored n thinking about you so I decided to
check up on you. How’s the transition going?
Something about it
made his stomach clench uncomfortably. It sounded so
flippant, so carefree. Like it didn’t matter. Trevor had never
cared much after they’d drifted apart, and hell, he’d
confessed that he would have stayed with him if he’d
decided to stay a girl. The thought made him shudder.
Never.
Great, I’m on hormones now and I’m saving up for top surgery.
He told him despite all the emotions the simple text cropped
up. It was hard to work when his schedule was so intensive,
but he worked a couple days a week in the college
bookstore. It wasn’t the most glamorous job, of course, but it
was effective for what he was working toward.
Congrats,
was all the next text said, and Blake stared at it,
mouthing the word with a confused look on his face. What
the fuck did that mean? He couldn’t tell if it was sarcastic or
serious. He didn’t even bother to try and reply because he
didn’t know the tone of it. He didn’t want to make an ass out
of himself.
Blake put his phone back on the bedside table and curled
back up in the bed, letting his head rest on his pillow as he
shut his eyes and willed himself desperately to fall asleep.
He flipped on his computer and turned music on his iTunes,
hoping that might lull him into some half-ass dream state if
nothing else.
He knew it wasn’t going to happen, though, even with the
music, because his mind was going a mile a minute. Things
just kept cropping up in his mind, things he shouldn’t have
been thinking about. He hated that his own thoughts and
everyone who had shaped them had such control over him.
His emotions were a wreck right now and he wasn’t quite
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sure why.
Well, he knew why.
It was only the first day of the new semester, but it was
already proving to be very interesting, and just as rocky and
strange as the last two. People who said that college was
easy were out of their fucking minds, as far as Blake was
concerned. Then again not many people had to deal with the
issues that he did. He’d actually never met another transguy
like him, and if he had they’d been so good that he didn’t
know the damn difference. He envied that, even though he
passed a lot of the time.
He felt oddly alone even though he had friends all around
him, some better than others. Ethan didn’t quite understand
what he went through every day, no matter how often he
tried to explain his discomfort and anguish. He could only
say ‘I hate myself for the way I was born’ so many times
before it seemed to lose its meaning and turned into some
kind of excuse or something. He didn’t want that to happen.
He hated the skin he’d been born in, and it crawled every
time he looked at himself in the mirror unless he had his
binder on. He liked his face well enough, it’d been
masculinized by testosterone, but that didn’t mean his
disgust of his body was fixed at all.
Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Blake sighed and
buried his face in his pillow, clutching at it hard and trying
to lull his brain to sleep.
Fat fucking chance of that.
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Phoenix
aking up the next morning, getting out of bed, seemed
W to be the hardest thing that Blake had done in a very
long time. Once he’d finally lulled himself to sleep, he’d
crashed hard because he hadn’t slept well in over a week.
Anxiety from going back to school was a killer, obviously,
but it seemed he had finally worn himself out. Before
tonight, he’d slept maybe two hours a night, and he’d been
able to feel the exhaustion pulling at him the night before.
To be honest, he was pretty sure that was why he was
thinking about so many things. His mind was so tired it
reverted back to when he would think about things for
hours, dwell on them and focus on them until he exhausted
himself. He didn’t like that he’d gotten himself back to that
point already, when he’d done so well at pushing all of that
down.
He was groggy and listless when he finally pulled himself
out of the bed, his limbs feeling heavy as he rubbed at his
eyes with the heels of his palms, groaning a little and
running his hands through his wild hair.
He heard Devon mumbling from across the room,
probably trying to wake himself up. Blake chuckled a little
and shook his head, adjusting his hoodie and grabbing his
phone to look at the time. After clearing another message
from Trevor without even looking at it, he finally looked at
the analog numbers on the background of his phone.
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Joey James Hook
He groaned. He hadn’t slept in until one in a very long
time.
“Well, it’s a good thing my first class is at two today,” he
mumbled as he dragged himself out of the bed, stretching
with another groan and walking into the bathroom after
grabbing his binder, packer and clothing for the day. He
passed Devon’s bunk on the way there, and he grinned at
the way he had his face mashed into the pillow, his arms
splayed out with one hanging off the edge of the bed, feet
kicked out chaotically. It was pretty funny, he had to admit.
He himself slept on his side with one arm tucked under
the pillow, curled into himself with his head ducked down
firmly. It was funny how differently he and his roommate
slept, because as far as he remembered, Ethan slept like he
did. His mother used to say they made a heart-shape when
they fell asleep next to each other because they’d face each
other and both tuck their knees up close with their heads
bowed.
His mother was silly.
He reached the bathroom and stripped off his hoodie,
debating for a few painful moments whether or not it was
worth it to shower. He’d taken his binder off before he’d
actually passed out, so he felt oddly exposed standing in
front of the mirror. He tried not to look at it, but instead he
looked down at his thin t-shirt. He could see the contours
that his binder normally hid, and a sudden bout of nausea
turned his stomach and he had to swallow against it.
His chest wasn’t big, a B-cup maybe in bra sizes, but it
still made him incredibly uncomfortable. It made him even
more dysphoric than the bottom area. That part of him was
even more feminine. At the same time, it didn’t matter
considering he wasn’t sexually active anymore and he had a
packer that he strapped on every day to make it look like he
had a dick. He just kind of ignored that part of himself. He
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pretended he had what he so desperately wanted. But his
chest was something he couldn’t pretend with.
It was a feat to even bring himself to shower sometimes
because he didn’t like getting undressed even by himself.
He knew he had to, though, because if he didn’t he’d
probably be cursing himself for it later, and so he sighed,
shutting his eyes and taking off his shirt, discarding it
somewhere to his left and stepping out of his pants, kicking
them aside as well.
He didn’t look in the mirror at all as he walked over to the
shower and turned the water on, and once it warmed up, he
stepped under the spray with an abstract sigh of relief. It
was an odd sort of feeling, the way the tension seemed to try
and ease its way out of his body with a heavy sigh. He let his
head fall forward, letting the water drench his hair as he ran
his fingers through it.
He stepped further under the spray, letting the hard
water beat at his broad shoulders. It was so strange, to look
at himself in the mirror because he had broad shoulders,
semi-muscular arms and his curved hips were pretty much
gone, but his chest was still so completely out of place. Hell,
he even had a happy trail leading down to his groin, but that
was where everything seemed to go wrong.
At least his body was getting more masculine, he tried to
tell himself as he soaped up his body quickly, barely even
wanting to touch it as he went along. He did it just enough
to clean himself off, but not any more than that. He couldn’t
really do it, because after a few minutes it felt like his hands
were hypersensitive and his skin was like sandpaper,
making him recoil, especially the now-unnatural curves of
his chest.
He shivered and distracted himself by soaping up his
hair, amusing himself momentarily by watching the way the
suds turned pink before he washed them down the drain.
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Joey James Hook
He quirked a small smile and watched as they circled their