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“Oh my god,” Tommy gushes genuine euphoria pouring into his words. The sides of his mouth pulled so hard that his cheeks hurt. “Holy shit - ugh. This is just the coolest. She goes - ugh, chat, I love this - she goes ‘me and my girlfriend’. That’s just. So fucking cool.”
Tommy’s mouse hovered over the end stream button, his fingers just having pressed the button, when an incoming call from Wilbur appeared. “Tommy?”
“Wilbur!” Tommy cheers. He’s fucking knackered - a long day at college and an even longer stream, but he can muster up some energy to talk to Wilbur. “How are you, man? What’s - what’s poppin’?”
He hears Wilbur snort, then laugh. “Tommy - Tommy. What the fuck, man. I just watched your stream. Why are you so infatuated with lesbians?”
Tommy reels back in his chair, collapsing so hard against it the wheels go spinning and he skids across the room, headphone cord snapping from away from his PC. He scoots forward and stabs the end of the cable back into its slot, spluttering indignantly. “I am - Wilbur, you there? I am not infatuated with lesbians.” His finger picks at the side of his nail, already red from the daily stressors of life.
“You are ,” Wilbur says. “If I had a penny for every time you were amazed or stunned by the mere idea of lesbians on-stream, I’d have two pennies. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.”
“Shut the fuck up, TikTok man,” Tommy groans. He slumps down, head slamming against his desk. “I’m not weird. Lesbians are just - they’re just cool.”
“Cool?” Wilbur echoes, amused. “Tommy. What the fuck.”
From his defeated place face-down on his desk, Tommy grumbles. “Wiiiiiiilbur. Quit harrasin’ me. You know what I mean. It’d be cool to like, be one. Y’know?”
The sound of scream-wheezing fills Tommy’s ears as Wilbur screeches. His eyes glance towards the discord voice chat box to confirm that Dream wasn’t in the call - the noise is startlingly similar.
“Do you know how fucking weird that sounds?” Wilbur's laugh was that of a maniac, his loud wheezes tormenting Tommy, causing him to face-plant against his keyboard in an attempt to get Wilbur to Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
“Wilbur, can you be fucking quiet? Holy shit .”
“No, no,” Wilbur wheezes, unrelenting, like a little bitch. “You want to be a lesbian? What kind of thought is that?”
“A rational one,” Tommy says, voice distorted. His cheek is kissing at the WASD keys and his speech comes out all funny. “Wilbur, do you ever wish you loved girls... but, like, in the way girls do?”
Tommy can practically hear Wilbur shaking his head. Wilbur’s soft hums of confusion tell Tommy all he needs to know. “I don’t, hun, no.” Tommy ducks his head at the pet name. His blood runs to his checks tinting them red. Wilbur continued talking, “keep - keep going, though. Talking.”
“Okay,” Tommy whispers. He clears his throat once, twice, three times - there’s some sort of unidentifiable object stuck in it. Emotion, maybe. He winces. “Sorry. I don’t - I don’t get why this is so hard.”
He aims for a joking tone, but his voice betrays him and the words come out caked in fear. His skin crawls with anxiousness. What is this feeling? Why is he feeling like this? There’s a shuffling sound from Wilbur’s end. The clicking of a keyboard. It’s grounding. “It’s a hard subject, bud. Take your time, yeah? I’m right here.”
Tommy ignores the feel-good feeling in his heart caused by Wilbur’s soft calm tone. He inhales deeply. “I - I thought everybody feels like that, y’know? It’s like when you wish to be a girl for years in like, primary school or some shit; bein’ a woman who is into women is just better. Superior.”
There’s no reply. Tommy sits upright, spine popping, the palms of his hand reaching up to rub the dark bags which consume his eyes. “Wil - Wilbur? You there?”
When Wilbur finally speaks, his voice is quiet. Subdued. Gentle. “Kiddo, most people don’t think that. Or spend years wishing they were the opposite gender.”
It’s Tommy’s turn to be silent. His eyes are glued to the little circles of the discord call. “Oh.”
“Oh,” Wilbur says. “‘Oh’ indeed.”
Tommy brings his legs up to his chin and closes his eyes. His heart is pounding out of his chest. It’s just too much. Surely every other guy felt like they wanted to be a girl. Surely every guy’s eyes gravitated towards the swirling dresses and colourful skirts in the girl’s section. Surely every guy feels some sort of discomfort with their body, with their mind, with themselves. It’s normal, isn’t it?
“Oh, honey,” Wilbur says, and Tommy realises belatedly he’s said all of that out aloud. “There’s nothing wrong with you for feeling that way, yeah? There are so many people just like you.”
Anxiety pools at the bottom of his stomach, filling him from head to toe. It feels like cold water. His chest is tight, breaths short, body shivering. He needs to breathe, he needs to breathe, he needs to breathe. The backs of Tommy’s eyes sting. He’s finally found the goddamn missing piece of the puzzle and he’s slotting it in, but it’s too much. Everything is too much. “Just like me?”
“Just like you,” Wilbur repeats. “Do you need a moment, kiddo?”
Tommy nods his head on autopilot, forgetting Wilbur can’t see him. The world is - fuckin’ spinning . He breathes, in and out, in and out, just like Wil taught him, and opens his eyes.
He thinks of the hours in primary school he spent under the demountables with Markus Finely, watching the girls play rip or make believe or Barbies on the back oval, Markus pining, Tommy admiring. He thinks of the wide eyed, gangly little boy holding on to his mum’s hand as she dragged him past the girl’s section in Primark, as she ripped a pastel pink skirt from his hands with a gentle condescending smile, ‘ the boy’s section is over here honey’ . He thinks of late-night cry sessions when his voice started deepening, when his shoulders started widening, when he shot up like a beanpole, all masculine features and nothing good . He thinks of the way his finger always hovered over the girl filters on Snapchat, thinks of the female edits of him on Twitter, the Fem!Tommy fanart scattered through Tumblr, thinks of his gravitation towards the lesbians in school, his innate desire to be one. It all makes sense.
“It’s okay, kiddo. Let it all out.”
Oh. He’s crying. Dumbly, Tommy raises a hand to his eyes and thumbs at the tears soaking his cheeks. This is so fucking stupid. He’s so confused. “I’m - I’m sorry.”
“Nope,” Wilbur says immediately. “No being sorry. Not in my household - no sirree.”
“You’re weird, big man.” Tommy reaches for a tissue.
“Love you too,” Wilbur rebuttals, his voice a soft hug which Tommy really needed right now. “I don’t want to rush you - let me know if I’m, like, overstepping - but pronouns? Do you want me to call you anything different?”
Tommy blinks. “Um. Uh. Give me, like, two, three hours? I gotta comprehend this all. Pack it all into my massive brain, bitch.”
Wilbur huffs. “Sure, sure.” He pauses. “Let me know if you need anything, yeah? I love you, kiddo.”
“Love you too, big man.”
tommyinnit: (3:42am)
wilbur wilbur i see that green circle bitch you cant fool me youre awake bitch respond i swear to god
salmonfucker: (3:43am)
shu t the fu ck up ill punt you
what’s up?
tommyinnit: (3:43am)
why r u using punctuation ur so weird. and old.
yknow those girl words
salmonfucker: (3:43am)
...pronouns?
you mean she/her?
tommyinnit: (3:43am)
shut the fuck up
yes
those
can you . say those
salmonfucker: (3:43am)
of course hon
love you sis
tommyinnit has changed their status to: crying
“Tommy, can you pass the salt, please?” Her nail picks at the skin on the side of her thumb, her eyes focused on her hands. That name , it hurts so much to hear.
“ Tommy ,” Her mother’s voice is sharp.
She glances up through her eyelashes, eyebrows raised. “Hmm?”
“Your mother asked you to pass the salt,” Her father says amicably, prodding his steak with his fork. “You good, son? Distracted?”
She flinches. It’s the weirdest fucking thing - now that Wilbur’s said ‘she’ and ‘her’ and she’s scoured the internet for pronoun paragraphs and pronoun dressing room websites, it’s like she can’t go back. She’s thinking of herself as she and her in her head, as a girl. It’s so comforting and more right than he and him and male gendered language had ever felt. Everything’s happened so fast: today’s just been one big whirlwind of connecting the dots. It’s not even been twenty-four hours since Wilbur had helped her, but she’s entirely sure. This is her. She’s a girl, and hearing the word ‘son’, even after mere hours of referring to herself as a woman is - hard.
“Yeah,” She aims for a chuckle. It comes out strangled, weak. “Yeah, I’m good. Sorry.”
She passes the salt into her mother’s hand and stops . Her parents.
Her parents.
What are they gonna say? What are they going to think now that you’re not the son they thought they had?
It’s a terrifying thought. Her heart rate speeds up and she tucks her hands under her jeans to keep them from shaking. Her parents aren’t - they wouldn’t be unsupportive, surely. She doesn’t know who they vote for; they don’t talk about politics at home. She strains her memory and thinks of the time they’d nodded supportively when a gay marriage ad came on or the marriage equality act was passed. It’s slightly comforting, but being trans is a whole different thing being gay.
“Toms? You drifted off again.”
She jerks back to Earth at the mention of her deadname. Her spaceship’s crashing and she’s falling fast through the atmosphere, burning up, without a parachute. She needs out. “Sorry - I think I’m sick or something.”
The lie spills from her mouth easily. It’s clearly false, but her parents buy it and wave her away from the table. She smiles gratefully and bolts upstairs. Right now she just wants her family, and not the one downstairs.
The soft sound of Tommy joining the discord call causes the three circles in the call to turn green.
“Wiiiiiiiiilbur. Wiiiiiiiil - “
“Phil and Techno are here,” Her brother says immediately, a warning. She nods gratefully to herself. Her chest opens slightly, air is able to seep into the crack and crevices it couldn't before when she was with her parents. Around Wil - around Phil, Techno and Wil, she can be herself. For the most part.
“Hey,” she says. “What’s up, guys?”
“Hey, Tommy. How you doin’?” Techno’s voice is gravelly. She checks the time - it’s one in the morning for Technoblade.
“Good - uh, mostly good,” She hums, tapping her fingers on the desk rhythmically. “You should sleep, bitch boy.”
“Can’t,” Techno says at the same time Phil says “all he knows is the grind.”
Wilbur snorts, and then quietens. “You said you were mostly good?”
“Mm. Just. Y’know.”
Wilbur makes a noise of confirmation. She can feel the confusion wafting through the screen from Techni and Phil’s end. “Wait, am I missing something? You good, hon?”
There’s a distinct sound of keys clacking in the background and then a distant vwoop . Her phone pings.
salmonfucker: (6:48pm)
you got this, girl! i love you, bitch.
She smiles and breathes. You got this.
“Ah - um… I don’t really know how to say this. This is like, my first time actually saying it to someone other than Wilbur.” She continued to ramble, her heartbeat rattling in her chest. “I - I’m a girl and it would be pretty PogChamp if you could use she/her pronouns, um, yeah. So - “
“Cool.” The low rumble of Techno’s voice cut her off.
She splutters. “That’s - that’s it?” Her heart continued to jump out of her chest.
“What were you expecting?” Phil says, his tone light and playful. “Just because I sound like a Tory doesn’t mean I am one.”
Wilbur wheezes in the background causing the side of her mouth to slightly lift. “Oh my god, Phil. You say that aloud and you’ll get cancelled.” He pauses. “You got any name ideas yet, hon?”
Tommy hums over Phil’s delayed giggling. “I dunno. I was thinking, like, Victoria. Or maybe Clementine.”
“Clementine,” Techno says immediately, so fast she’s taken aback. “There is no way my little sister is naming herself after a monarch.”
She’s glad her face cam isn’t on right now - she can feel the heat in her cheeks. Sister. She’s their sister. She wants to scream and run around and skip and touch the ceiling, because right now she feels like she could; she’s euphoric and happy and - whole. Tommy’s not felt this way before. It’s amazing. “Bitch. I’ll have you know the Queen is the best woman ever.”
Phil laughs harder. “Even better than you?”
Clementine smiles. “Of fucking course. She is better than me.”
technobitch: (13:08)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P6SZlUB2K4
wiblursnoot: (13:10)
oskdhfopsdfjHDKHODILSDFKJoHMYOGFD
@clementine FSHDKJSD FUCKBG WATCH THIS
clementine: (13:10)
what
OH MY GOD
OH MY GOD WRIDUJF THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE
GUYS GUYS GUYS. IM A LESBIAN
newnotch: (13:11)
you’re only just realising?
clementine. I love you, but you’re an idiot.
[clementine has changed their name to THE GREATEST LESBIAN EVER]
THE GREATEST LESBIAN EVER: (13:11)
SAYS THE ONE TYPING WITH PUNCTUATION YOU OLD FART
wiblursnoot: (13:12)
clem… i am sorry to say that mr minecraft isn’t wrong -
THE GREATEST LESBIAN EVER: (13:12)
SAY THAT TO MY FACE BITCH!!
ILL FUCKING DESTROY YOU WEHN I SEE YOU NEXT!!
wiblursnoot: (13:13)
clem 1. i would beat the shit out of you 2. i am NOT fighting a girl
THE GREATEST LESBIAN EVER (13:13)
WHAT ARE YOU SAYING WIL!!?!?
ARE YOU SAYIGN YOU WOULDNT FIGHT A GIRL BC WE ARE TOO WEAK
THATS SEXIST
WILBUR SOOT IS SEXIST GET TWITTER ON THE PHONE
It's a little past midnight when Clementine finally turns her phone off. Her heart is happy and the ghost of a smile is still etched into her face. The seeds of hope and joy bury themselves into Clem’s heart. She may feel the grip of anxiety every time she thinks of her family downstairs but the people in front of her, these people on a screen all hundreds or thousands of kilometers away were also her family. They were the family she had the absolute pleasure to choose, and she’s just so thankful to have them. To have their support, to have their love. It’s comforting to know that if all went to shit Phil, Techno and Will would be there to pick her up and hold her close.
It’s comforting to know that she’s their sister.