Work Text:
Peter is twenty-three, sober, and laying on her friend’s couch the first time she thinks to herself with terrifying certainty: I am not a man.
“Fuck,” she says, quiet. Then, “Okay.”
It’s not new, this thought - it's been a question in the pit of her stomach for a few months now. A quiet nudge in the back of her mind since the end of her first long term relationship. A discomfort with the role she's been expected to perform for far, far longer than that.
"Hm?" Nola asks, looking up from her phone. She's sitting on the other couch, bowl of chips in her lap.
"You know," Peter starts, then drags her hands down her face. "You know how we were talking about gender?"
Nola puts her bowl down, turning to face Peter. She's not referring to a recent conversation, exactly - hell, it was hardly a conversation. About a month before, Peter had asked her how she had known she wasn't a man, and Nola had turned wary, then understanding eyes on her.
"Yeah," Nola says, and leaves it at that. Open, waiting.
"I think," Peter says, and groans. No, that's not right. She's been thinking for a long time now. Still - it's easier to put it in those terms. To make it tentative, uncertain. "I don't think I'm a man."
Nola blinks, then grins. "Nice," she says. "Thanks for telling me. Do you know what pronouns you want to use?"
Peter shrugs, covering her face again. "I don't know," she says, the words muffled, and a heavy, beautiful sensation rises in her chest.
Nola isn't the only person Peter tells, of course, but she's the first Peter tells for a while. She doesn't even know what pronouns fit her best, for christs' sake, or if she should change her name. Nola takes to talking about her in the third person for a while, uses a mix of pronouns, or they/them, or she/her. It's terrifying; it's exhilarating.
For the moment, it's enough to know that someone knows, that she's not alone. She'll tell other people when she's ready.
She sees Balthazar Jones again for the first time in at least a year at Bea and Ben's housewarming. She thinks about telling them – saying hey, I know what that feeling was, back when you came out to me. I should have recognised it then because it was the same jealous yearning I felt when you told me you liked boys and I said, "but not me right?"
She thinks of saying hey, I'm not cis either - isn't that funny? Want to get coffee?
She doesn't, of course, because Balth is there with their partner and she can't exactly pull them aside for this. And there was so much more between them at the end than Balth not wanting to date a cis person.
"Hi," she says instead and Balthazar nods and it's - fine. Awkward, but fine.
She does start telling people eventually - Nola's partner Xavier and Xavier's boyfriend, J. Her parents, John, her co-workers. Bea, who says, "fuck TERFs!" when Harry Potter is brought up, to which Peter responds, "I'm trans." Her doctor, who refers her to a specialist, who starts her on E.
She starts using she/her exclusively. For now at least, she thinks. Gender is difficult, and she doesn't feel like a binary woman - doesn't feel like much of anything, some days. Femininity fits her in a way that used to terrify her, though, and these pronouns feel comfortable. Welcoming.
She keeps the name - tried others for a bit, but they didn't fit. She'd fought for and held tight to that name in uni, rooted herself in it. Why should she change her name?
She's Peter. She's comfortable in herself in a way she hasn't been in a long time.
It's galling, sometimes, to think about university, especially those early years. So much of herself is online. Her high school fuck ups, the entire messy start to her relationship with Balth, far too much private information. She was miserable, then - depressed, an alcoholic, saturated in self- loathing. She doesn't watch those old videos, doesn't talk about them with her friends.
She can still remember being that person, is the thing. The "all around great guy" who was never that great, never a guy, trying so hard to be what people expected. Soccer player, student leader, one of the guys. Inside she’d felt uncomfortable, unfitting. She’d bolstered her doubts with toxic masculinity and made stupid teen decisions. People had ended up hurt - and now, looking back, she can’t even remember what she was thinking.
Then later, in uni - shakily applying eyeliner and telling herself the butterflies in her stomach were because she was defying gender roles. Waking up with hangovers more often than not, wearing clothes that people said she looked hot in even as she hated the shape of her body in or out of them. Pining after Balth, watching her years-long friendship with Ben crumble. Making friends with Jacquie and Costa, at least, who she still catches up with when they're all in the same city.
All of that is just online, accessible to anyone. She’s thought about asking Bea and Ben to take their videos down, but it seems kind of pointless. It’s not as though that would erase who she was, then - her misery and stupidity. Their channels were pretty popular, but no one’s come up to her asking if she’s that Peter Donaldson, from Ben Hobbes’ channel, in years. The benefits of the passage of time, or an unexpected side effect of transitioning. Now, Peter gets to be uncomfortable in public for entirely different reasons!
At the very least, the more years pass, the further she is from that person. She still doesn’t watch those old videos, but there are moments she can think of that person with a sad, compassionate fondness.
She dates, works, spends time with friends, acts in a small production. Takes up knitting, briefly, and puts it down again after one lumpy attempt at a scarf.
Bea asks her to be a bridesmaid, and Peter cries a little. She's not as close to Ben anymore, but she and Bea had worked hard to reconstruct their friendship after everything fell apart at the end of high school. It's been close to a decade, now, and they're not high school close, but they're close. They get brunch.
Maybe it makes her a hypocrite, that she hasn't put in the same work with Ben. Maybe it makes her a worse person than Bea. She's not still angry, of course, and they're friends. They're just not the friends they used to be.
Peter agrees to be in the bridal party, and helps out with the arrangements. Balth RSVPs to the wedding with no plus one, and Peter - wonders. Considers. Balth will know she's trans, now. Will they say anything? Will they tell her that it's a surprise, or that they had always suspected?
The first thing she says to Balthazar Jones, who is standing by the snack table in a floral dress, is "Hey." She hasn't seen them since Bea and Ben's housewarming a few years ago. The years have been kind to them.
Balth looks up at her - she had worn heels, and regretted it while helping set up, but appreciates it now - and smiles, soft and familiar. An old friend, a new beginning.
"Hey," they reply. It's good to hear their voice again, outside of the music Peter has bought every album of. There was a time that Peter wanted to hear nothing but their voice; there was a time Peter said she never wanted to hear their voice again.
They talk - about names, about gender, about knowing. Balth is changed, of course, but in many ways the same. Peter wants to know them like she did in uni - better. She's in a better place now than she was back then: she's trans, sober, happy. She wants to know how they fit now, whether their differences will bring them closer together or further apart. She wants to hold their hand.
She gives them a flower and asks them to dance, and Balth keeps the flower, and later they talk, the sense memory of Balth's hands in hers and on her waist and her eyes and mouth so so close playing over in her mind. Later again, they get coffee, and it is a beginning just as much as it's a continuation. Picking up where they left off and changing the pattern, making something else beautiful and theirs.
If Peter could say anything to the version of herself that exists online, she would say this: you're going to be okay. Also, you're trans. But mostly: you are going to be okay. You will learn to breathe easy, and to step away from the roles that people want you to fill, and you will be okay. You will wake up before your partner in the morning and unwind yourself from their octopus limbs to start the coffee. You will fall in love again and again, and fall back in love even after years have passed. You will like the way your body looks and you will like that you exist.
Peter is twenty-eight, sober, and standing in her kitchen in the gentle light of morning, and she thinks to herself: I am okay.
This fic has been converted for free using AOYeet!