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rna-world · 6 months ago

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DEBUNKING COMMON RAIN WORLD MISINTERPRETATIONS

The target audience for this was for people who don't know too much about the game as well, so I'm going to explain things that a normal player might already know.

Rain World is known for how it simply throws you into the world with almost no tutorial, and is often praised for it.

But this lack of explanation if you do not go out of your way to find it has also lead to a lot of misinterpretations from those who did not read all the game’s available information, or misunderstood what they were being told. I used to watch some RW lore videos that would explain and summarize these things, and in the past I believed them.

I’ve since stopped doing that after having some time to actually process what I’ve been reading, and I’m here to say...

YOU ARE ALL WRONG ABOUT RAIN WORLD.

Ok, hyperbole. Not everyone believes these, and art can always be interpreted in different ways by different people, and I won’t stop you from having these beliefs. But also, there’s plenty of ingame content which completely disproves most of these unsubstantiated points from those who do not fully research the game before making videos about it.

Looking at you Tale Foundry…

The purpose of this is to pick apart some of the sadly far too common points I’ve heard many times before from Youtube videos, to Tumblr posts, to people I’ve spoken to on Discord.

Starting with my least favorite…

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“The 5 karma were seen as sinful”

Obvious westernization of a game based off fucking Buddhism aside, there’s no ingame text directly supporting this claim. There isn’t any that says otherwise, but we have good reason to believe this isn’t the case.

The 5 natural urges, as they’re sometimes called, were NATURAL. They were what bound you to the cycle. They never worsened your life or made you a terrible person should you keep following them, but an aspect of life on the same level as suffering or ecstasy.

Hey, I’ll break down the 5 karma and their meanings to show you that they're not just "sins"

I believe the natural urges have 2 different meanings: an animalistic one, and a more “human” one.

KARMA 1 This obviously represents violence, as you see one guy stabbing the other. I believe it also represents competition and intense emotions, For example: Artificer experiencing intense grief and lashing out in violence as a result. It was not the violence that started it, but her emotions. (Yes, its Downpour. But it’s a good point.)

KARMA 2

They’re having sex. They’re fucking. They’re- ok you get it. Karma 2 represents reproduction. But, I also believe it’s desire. Joyful bodily experiences, and such. The 2 figures seen here are in a much more playful pose than if they were simply doing this only to reproduce. No, they’re having fun.

KAMRA 3 Connection. Bonding with others. Yet also trade and personal belongings. Attachment to things that are not yourself.

KARMA 4 It’s mentioned ingame that this represents gluttony It’s overindulgence, you know. Similarly to karma 2, it can also be searching for fulfillment. I'm not particularly good at telling what the meaning of this could be.

KARMA 5 Self preservation. Self preservation can come in many forms, from an animal running away from a predator or somebody getting defensive after being accused of something or being threatened, this one is rather vague about its meaning.

I do this to show that the 5 urges have very NEUTRAL meanings. It being positive or negative is entire dependant on context. They’re not sinful, get out of here with that Catholic shit!

The 5 karmas have both positive, negative, and neutral contexts which they can fit into.

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“The ancients hated being alive”

The ancients simply hated the cycle itself and its unknowable properties, as well as being much more aware of things like karma and the urges. Rather, they valued being effortless to disconnect themselves from this cycle.

“This was an eternal dilemma to them - they were burdened by great ambition, yet deeply convinced that striving in itself was an unforgivable vice. They tried very hard to be effortless.” – Bright Green Pearl (DS)

Some practices did of course include things like starving yourself, but as mentioned by Moon, these methods proved to be mostly obsolete. Void Fluid fundamentally changed their culture from what we see. Rather, we do see the ancients enjoying life and valuing it in their own way, which is INCREDIBLY important to some of the games themes, but I’ll get into that later.

"[...]'In this vessel is the living memories of Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel, of the House of Braids[…] Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel nobly decided to ascend in the beginning of 1514.008, after graciously donating all (ALL!) earthly possessions to the local Iterator project (Unparalleled Innocence), and left these memories to be cherished by the carnal plane.The assorted memories and qualia include:Watching dust suspended in a ray of sun (Old age). Eating a very tasty meal (Young child). Defeating an opponent in a debate contest, and being applauded by fellow team members (Late childhood/Early adulthood).’...and the list goes on. I'm sorry, little creature, I won't read all of this - the list is six hundred and twenty items long.” – Deep Magenta (SH)

There’s quite a lot to pick apart here, I had to cut down some parts short, but even the cut parts have important details. Just not important enough for me to bring up here.

The Memory Crypts we see ingame are… well where memories are kept. The qualia (personalized experiences) is stored within these mutated fleshy neural organisms referred to as “cabinet beasts”. These of course, contain the “living memories” or qualia of those who have ascended. There are people smarter than me who have already covered these ideas of course, so I won't go TOO indepth.

The ancients greatly valued titles and achievements just as us. They still lived normal lives. As well as this, they valued personal experiences and memories of the carnal realm so much they built an entire citadel to store memories.

As we can see as well, Seventeen Axes has quite a lot of enjoyable memories from throughout their life. Eating nice food and winning a debate contest and getting validation from their peers? That sounds rather… complacent with the 3rd and 4th natural urges, doesn’t it?

I do not believe this screams “I hate being alive!” as much as people have made it out to be, and is honestly ruins part of the game’s messages of compassion and personalized experiences, especially in the game’s ending where Survivor dreams of home.

“You have no name. I once had! I was embalmed, adorned, readied for the journey. So proud. There was jubilation! My name was sung, loud and clear. Did they know? That I didn't quite leave, didn't quite stay? Should I be ashamed? That I linger here, where my memories are kept? Should I be ashamed that I now envy your flesh prison?” - Four Needles under Plentiful Leaves

This is leaning into personal theory territory, but...

I personally believe that the ancients were somewhat terrified of the unpredictability of the cycle and the fact that life would always have more suffering in it.

RW’s religion is heavily based off Buddhism. This is well known of course. The Cycle is a variation of Samsara. Now, I’m not Buddhist, and I’ve tried to do my research about some of these topics. Feel free to correct me, I’m simply going off what I know. (Also I'd love to hear what you have to say regarding your thoughts on the game!)

In Buddhism, each new life you could be taken into the body of an animal, or even end up being tortured in hell for a very, very, VERY long time if you made the wrong decisions, which made escaping it as soon as you could seem like a rather reasonable thing to do.

The ancients never fully grasped the scope of the cycle, and the prospects of having your soul wake up in the body of some miserable worm with no memory of your past or any ideas of your future might’ve seemed bleak.

Suffering is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean they hated being alive, like I said before.

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“Rain World is post-apocalyptic.”

It really isn’t. There was never any apocalypse. The ancients simply left on their own accord, leaving behind their mark on the world that will slowly be buried once again in the ever so present cycle.

“The bones of forgotten civilizations, heaped like so many sticks.” - Two Sprouts, Twelve Brackets

The world is thriving, even. The purposed organisms left behind have evolved and taken over and become it’s own ecosystem.

The iterators are dying though. Dying very slowly, but soon they’ll all decay and everything will move on.

It’s all just another manifestation of the cycle.

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“The creatures in Rain World cannot die”

This is definitely something I hear from people who haven’t played much of the game and only hear about it from outside sources and watch the gameplay.

Yes, it is easy to believe this. As slugcat, when you die, you wake back up again. This is entirely a gameplay thing and not actually related to the lore. Saying this might seem like I'm avoiding the question at hand here, but the rules that apply to you do not seem to apply to other creatures.

Every creature in the game has a 4 integer ID (it can go higher, but not in a standard playthrough).

This makes every creature you see an individual of sorts with its own randomized values or appearance.

As well as this, creatures spawn from specific marked dens. When you kill a creature that spawns from a certain den, the next cycle, that creature’s ID will never appear again. Instead, the den spawn is replaced by a creature of the same species with a different ID, or a new species entirely.

Through gameplay, you see that the respawn rules that apply to you do not apply to other creatures. I’ve heard many points about how these dead creatures are transported to another alternate universe where they are alive, but I really do not want to delve into that theory. You do that yourself.

Excuse my unprofessional language, but this is kind of stupid. Billions and billions of little timeline splits accounting for every single insect and microbe that dies seems far too complex of a solution. Occam's Razor and all that.

With this gameplay element you see, I also want to give LORE explanations as to why this is incredibly stupid.

1) If death had no impact, the 5 natural urges would not matter

If no creatures died, there would be no point in eating (karma 4), competing with other species (karma 1), or any form of self preservation (karma 5). Reproduction (karma 2) has no role and there would be absolutely no reason to do anything any longer. All natural processes would be useless.

2) Light Blue Pearl

The information received from the cycle is most likely from the Light Blue Pearl, found in Outskirts.

“[...]The repeating mantra is important because it symbolizes the cyclical nature of life and death, and the termination verse is a symbol for ascension above and beyond it. I don't know how familiar you are with the nature of life and death, but I imagine like all living creatures you have some intuitive knowledge? Then you know that death isn't the end - birth and death are connected to each other like a ring, or some say a spiral. Some say a spiral that in turn forms a ring. Some ramble in agonizing longevity. But the basis is agreed upon: like sleep like death, you wake up again - whether you want to or not. This is true for all living things, but some actually break the cycle. That doesn't apply to you or me though, you are too entangled in your animal struggles, and for me not breaking that cycle is an integral part of the design. Our mantras keep repeating.”

“Then you know that death isn't the end - birth and death are connected to each other like a ring, or some say a spiral. Some say a spiral that in turn forms a ring.“

This line is very misunderstood. Moon specifically mentions birth and death. She mentions death. She never brings up the notion that nothing truly dies either.

As well as this, Moon says that “some say”, implying that even the ancients weren’t sure what the cycle was either. This is more important to my point regarding how the unfathomable nature of the cycle was why the Ancients were so averse to it from above, though.

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“Sliver of Straw found the solution.”/"There is/isn't solution"

No she didn’t.

Ok fine I’ll explain.

If you’ve played Rain World you know that the purpose of the iterators is to find the solution to the “Great Problem”, the problem of how to ascend ALL living creatures.

You’ll also know Sliver sent out the Triple Affirmative…

“[...]affirmative that a solution has been found, affirmative that the solution is portable, and affirmative that a technical implementation is possible and generally applicable. She's also one of few that has ever been confirmed as exhaustively incapacitated, or dead. We do not die easily.[…]” - Pale Yellow (SL)

After sending out this affirmative, the iterators became conflicted. They never could figure out if she really ascended and had found the solution, or if it was some sort of catastrophic error.

The answer to the Great Problem is clearly intended to be as obscured as possible. There cannot be an answer one way or the other. The themes of it and the endless tolling of the iterators would not be as impactful if we knew there was or wasn’t a solution.

“[...]Either way, after that these different factions developed, as well as a huge forensic effort to recreate and simulate Sliver of Straw's last moments. Some of the simulations were wrapped in a simulation wrapped in a simulation, in case something dangerous might happen. Nothing much has come from it.[…]“ - Pale Yellow (SL)

Here’s my favorite way of explaining what I mean…

Imagine Schrodinger's Cat, the famous thought experiment. There’s a 50/50 chance that when you open the box, you either find the Solution, or find out there is No Solution.

Except you cannot open the box. And the box is entirely theoretical and nobody’s seen it. It seems impossible, but maybe one day you’ll find that box. That’s what the Great Problem is.

Sliver apparently having found the solution would have completely broken everything. Five Pebbles wouldn’t have ended up hurting himself and Moon had Sliver finding the solution been known with certainty. He was taking a shot in the dark.

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“Ascension is akin to suicide.”

I strongly believe this point harms the role that ascension and the void sea play in Rain World’s narrative. Ascension is meant to be a final destination, a goal you build up to and prepare for when you’ve lived every bit of life you possible could, and can now move on.

Bringing up the Memory Crypt pearl from earlier, Seventeen Axes lived an incredibly fulfilling life from what we see, and ascended happily.

As well as this, Buddhism strongly encourages those who wish to liberate themselves to discover their own path, which is also subtly shown through the gameplay, as there are many many routes you can take to Five Pebbles, Looks To The Moon, and The Depths.

I do also think this is why Five Pebbles failed. He tried to brute force his way to ascension.

Suicide implies that ascension is only meant to be a fruitless escape and that it’s wrong to ascend. I… do not want to go into why suicide is bad. It’s a strong topic and I’m just here to talk about video games. But ascension is a neutral thing that you can choose to do or not do and to wait until you’re ready.

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Conclusion...

I really only have the time to cover these 6 misconceptions, and I believe it should be enough. There have been many others I’ve seen, such as the ancients being malicious or that there weren’t any civilizations before them, but there’s not as much to say about them, and they aren’t as common.

Rain World is a very confusing game. I’m not upset at people who think these things to be true, and I do not believe they’re stupid or don’t have any media literacy. I just wish that the people who did actually cover this game did some more looking into it, and actually discussing it with Rain World fans.

Also I should say, that during this entire discussion I have avoided talking about Downpour- RW’s DLC- as it’s more of a official fanmade project. And so much of what it says may not be entirely in line with Vanilla. Because my life isn’t easy and of course there has to be an incredibly divisive and confusing thing like this that I need to avoid bringing up so that way the conversation isn’t muddled.

Thanks if you managed to make it through all this by the way

#itref #rw #rain world #rain world lore #rain world ancients #textadactyl

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dolphin-diaries · 1 month ago

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Death Of The Woman

Originally posted on the Dolphin Diaries substack.

The following essay is not my usual fare. It’s my personal story as a detrans woman, and as such, it will lack in abstracted theory or argumentation. After this I will be publishing a special interview, and then I’ll return to my usual programming.

For now though, be advised this isn’t quite light reading material. There is some cursory description of sexual violence. If you do not feel like you can engage with that, skip from the paragraph beginning “At one point, …” to the next titled section.

Girl/Flesh

Before there is an adult, there is first a child—a not-so-blank slate, a state of being with an expiration date. Boys must be made men; girls must be made women. To the end of that becoming, childhood is a prelude and adolescence a ritual.

Contemplate for a moment, without any input from me: how is a girl made a woman?

My upbringing was rather feminist, compared to the average for my country. My mother did not take my father’s name; she earned more; they had a whole and loving marriage. A husband-and-kids were expected of me eventually, but ever nebulously and not quite yet; my own family’s example seemed perfectly encouraging. For the time being, the biggest expectation placed on me was intellectual accomplishment. You might think a boy child would be preferable to such an endeavour, but it was quite the opposite. Boys will be boys, after all: rowdy, willful, lascivious, ever in need of someone else’s care. Handed gently from the mother’s hand to a wife’s, they’re basically eternal children. But girls? Girls are born older. Mature faster—biologically, essentially, fundamentally. Girls listen. Girls obey.

By all accounts I was a fantastic foundation for such a purpose. Tallest, strongest, bursting with curly dark hair. You couldn’t possibly mistake me for a fragile doll, no, not like some other, more childish girls; I was obviously ready for responsibility. And not just in superficial appearance. Speech came to me quickly and easily; writing flowed from my fingertips with perfect calligraphy; I made art worthy of fridges and walls; I took to learning with all the energy of an insomniac puppy.

Did other kids like a fat, moustachioed girl that beat them at everything, and after class also won at arm-wrestling? Fuck no! But that was alright. I was born into intelligentsia, and envy was our natural curse, one to be proud of. At any rate, someday puberty would come. A body-shedding into something physically desirable; combined with all this accrued talent, it would ensure I’d have the pick of good men. Though I didn’t yet know men, only the irksome boys from whom they hatched. I lived for the attention of adults and for making other girls laugh—if clever ogres are good for nothing else, it’s humour. There was something transcendent in seeing someone fae-pretty and so unreachable be made happy by my effort. Even if they bullied me after. Of course, that meant I was too rowdy—oh, and too stubborn. Girls are supposed to understand the rules of the world exist for a reason; I didn’t. I needed things explained before I obeyed.

The rule I didn’t understand most of all was touch. I was brutish, and my brutishness marked me for disgust—and yet, I was constantly touched, even as I was told I’d never be touchable. My body burgeoned with entirely too much flesh, and every hand was drawn to grab it, to pinch and assess it in some unannounced Try-Before-You-Buy. Teachers, children, family members. It would not stop and it made my skin crawl, but it was also normal. The adults I liked did it. My peers did it. No one remarked on it.

When womanhood was yet a distant prospect, I dreamt of something ethereal. Power-suited. Someone that looked like mother, or like Barbie. Someone untouchable. Because surely this was all a growing pain. I was a girl, and that meant all the things that made me revolting, naive, and unruly would be purged by shed blood.

That’s not how that goes, though. How is a girl made a woman?

When adolescence finally arrived, it was rather early, eleven or so. I always was an overachiever. And I discovered I was not yet becoming something better. I was just myself, but more. More flesh. More hair, in all the wrong places. Same moustache, same swollen face, same ungainly buffoon demeanour, only now with hips bursting through trousers and a boyish deep voice.

The leering and touching did not cease—they got worse. The older I grew, the older my mother dressed me, dolling me up in heels and arse-hugging skirts with the vicarious glee of someone who got another chance at making a woman, and who was emboldened by the powerlessness of my ‘no.’ The dress-up had a goal in mind, of course. Same as my obligation to intellectual accomplishment; the only difference was, I was now failing, while the prospect of adulthood loomed ever closer. So I had it spelled out to me: it was all to ensure I could return to my family the debt I incurred with the costs of my existence. To birth them a child and uphold their reputation. If I was unfeminine, untouchable, unfuckable, they would not get a return on their investment. If I preferred girls—which, big surprise, I did—that would invite untold humiliation on the family name. That I was given to choose my would-be boyfriends, nudged to enjoy the makeup and skirts, was a just bit of carrot to the whip. If I sneered too much at the carrot, I’d get the whip.

So on I wobbled, a fleshy, moustachioed doll. Every new softness and curve invited a groping hand or a disgusting comment. Every fault of my body was bared as proof I should be happy to get this much at all. In old deformity and in newfangled woman-ness, I was just a girl.

I sought other ways of being. An escape from the barbed chain link of The Family. I had limited recourse in my small town, but the internet is a wide-reaching thing. No lesbian community existed for miles, but I could still read about the ring and the hanky code and whatever else. I could look at pictures.

(Although those were at times alarming, because all these lesbian women I glimpsed looked rather like me—whereas I had hoped that, by the time I grew up, I’d be something better.)

Regardless, I tried the codes and the cargo trousers, as much as I could—which wasn’t much. I stoked fascination in my classmates with giddy and secretive coming-outs. Only some showed me compassion and dignity, but I was even happy enough to be seen as a weirdo monster. At least they saw me. Worse was their dissecting vigilance. Their attention to the way I moved or spoke. The moment I’d do something girly, they’d cry, they knew it! I was just a girl. I did have a boy crush, and I should admit it; I was surely—as they put it—a faggot. Yes, really, literally ‘faggot,’ that word precisely. Even when I flicked my wrist like so while all dolled-up from head to toe, no one seemed to quite stomach believing me a real woman.

Giddiness over coming out doesn’t last. Disobedience brooks punishment. Through the listicles of lesbian identities and vocabulary, you dig through to testimonies. To rape. To abjected and dysphoric butches. To abuse at school, university, work, home. To the loss of all those things. To death. Elsewhere lesbians sometimes got their happily-ever-afters, loving families and the luxury of walking free, but here, we have not earned it. Visa-barred from leaving, doomed to die fighting for a future we would never live—even as far away, someone already got it just for having been born.

When I Saw The TV Glow

2011. A documentary, in all the glory of 480p. I’d heard of trans women before in concept—dear, some men just become women, it happens, okay?—but I’d never heard of trans men before. Never conceived of it.

I watched the screen like it was a revelation. A man in a white tee tucked into light jeans, cut like a Ken doll, strutting down a springtime street in low resolution.

Before then, I’d accepted that the burgeoning breasts and hips was simply something I had to contend with. That the way the boys around me were growing stronger while I was ever-groped was simply nature asserting itself. My body was proof of my place in the world.

I looked at the screen and thought, So that was a big fat lie.

The moment I knew it was possible, I wanted it like nothing else. The broad shoulders, the muscles, the dapper swagger. I wished for my body to take the shape of my being, instead of my being contorting to the body’s mould. Perhaps I could be loved for all the things that made me a deformed monster. Perhaps I didn’t need to watch every step to prove I wasn’t just a girl. Here was a place already in the shape of me, rather than a stifling lot I had to constantly fight against.

How could one go about changing sex? According to the documentary, it started with a psychiatric assessment—and so, my little twelve-year-old self took to studying the DSM. As I scoured it, I learned I could not be described by its standards as a true transsexual. I’d never before thought of myself as a boy nor had wanted to be one. Yet in the same breath, the DSM claimed no girl could ever desire physical masculinity beyond what came naturally to her. It was either transsexualism or some fetish or self-harming disorder. I had neither of the latter. My desire to inhabit masculinity was undeniable and crystal-clear, and the only kind of person that could’ve felt this way was a transsexual man—so that meant I must’ve simply remembered my life wrong. Or interpreted it wrong. If I twisted my memories this way or that, discarded one as an anomaly and repainted another in baby-boy blue, it would all make sense. It had to. Trans people online talked about a sense of mis-belonging, and I did feel like an outsider among the girls—what did it mean to feel like a gender, at any rate? I only knew what I felt like. And I felt like something sorry and misshapen.

Somewhat later, circa 2013, I did hear of weirder gender concepts in the distant West, mostly as just definitions of words. Genderqueer, nonbinary, et cetera. I comprehended them rationally but I did not understand or relate to them. Wherever I read about it, genderqueerness was described in a manner parallel to transsexuality—the sex-changing—or else as an exotic alternative to hormones and scalpels. But I desired body change so desperately, and regardless, I could not envision living as a nonbinary gender in my own country. Maybe in the West that was possible, but here nothing but derision would entail. It just wasn’t for me.

Naturally, trans men’s testimonies of hardship met and rivalled those of cis lesbian women. But the vast majority of them were concentrated on the times before and during transition. After that—sure, all of medicine reviles you and you’re at risk of a heinous hate crime. But the same has been true before; now though, when you walk down the street or meet a new friend, when you live, you’re just some guy. Your life is tinted by your queerness as much as any other sex/gender-deviant, but that constant, unabating struggle against a blistering torrent of humiliation, of being forced into the place of a woman? That seemed to end. Eventually. And then—who knows? Move to a new town, a new country even. No one need ever know who you had once been.

At that time though, I was still very young, and the thing about discovering a solution to a problem you thought inescapable is that it makes the problem itself feel that much more acute. So I did the stupidest thing imaginable: come out.

Dear reader, it wasn’t a good idea.

It is, after all, rather trivial to exact whatever punishment one desires upon one’s queer children, for children are parents’ property. It is true everywhere, but if ‘in some fucking America’ there is something called ‘child-protective services,’ here nothing short of murder, starvation, or exceptionally unsubtle and repeated rape could possibly broker an outside intervention. The debt you incurred to your parents for being born still holds, and you’ve just betrayed its very foundation. A woman still needs to be made of you. And anyway, who are you gonna call? The police? For what, total social isolation? For derision and humiliation? For the hours spent unmaking all your agency, all your desire as nothing more than delusion brought on by that damned internet? For total control over you, over every movement, every manner, every gesture, every word? For what you claim was assault? For what you claim was an attempted murder? I mean, it’s all rather sad, but it’s not a crime; not provably. Not against faggots.

I Win, Bitch

I am first and foremost a problem-solver. Even in total solitude, without access to the internet or to kindred spirits, there are plans to be made. I did not want to die, and I was still in the questionable position of being my family’s pride. Had to be. My parents couldn’t have any more children; they had to get it right with me.

So of course, if I got free admission to a prestigious university many kilometres away, and if I proved I’d learned my lesson enough to be trusted with leaving—who was to gainsay me?

Getting out was a decision I made almost the moment my abuse took on a corrective and violent turn. I knew what I had to do, even if it cost me immeasurably. Overnight I had to call quits on any remnant of childhood and learn to steal money to ensure future independence. Had to play my woman’s part convincingly. Had to look as if I’m enjoying it, convincingly. If I’d found the role stifling before, now it was as razors under my skin. Everything that ‘woman’ encompassed had been weaponised for my constant abuse, and I could not stomach a second of it—but I had to. Until I broke free.

Besides the severance of any familial support, financial or otherwise, my psyche was thoroughly shattered. All the times I’d been told, at length and for hours, that I was suffering a dangerous delusion, that I had to be forced to conform to my true nature—every single time, I knew that it was wrong. Even when I was as young as twelve, I knew I deserved none of it. I knew it was abuse and injustice. All the same it broke me. There was no pride and no resilience strong enough in me to withstand years and years of it. For a while I could barely look at women that whatsoever resembled me; the very concept, the very idea was a trigger. When it came to my own mind, I struggled to tell what was real, what I did and did not feel. Everything laid under panes and panes of ice, and that disassociation was the only way I could maintain a grip—or else everything erupted in screams.

The worst of my C-PTSD would be dealt with in the ensuing years thanks to NGO-sponsored therapy for queer patients. Unpacking pane after pane, unwinding coil after coil of the rage I had to swallow, piecing together shards of abandoned and dissociated memories. But I’d be paying mental dividends on my damage for longer still, and in ways I couldn’t even imagine.

For now though: I won.

Social transition was easy for me. It took little more than cutting my hair and swapping out wardrobes to pass as a man pretty reliably—well, a teenage boy, but I was only seventeen, so it didn’t raise eyebrows. I felt freed. Like I could walk and speak and make friends without chains attached to me. Only the softness of my shape gnawed at me, how it had shifted from despicable womanly maturity to boyish youth. I hated not having my coming adulthood recognised. Hated that other young men got to grow stronger and larger while I was stuck in perpetual pseudo-adolescence. I was free, I was no child, no property of adults; I wanted to be seen.

But it was also the first time I discovered queer spaces in person. Mixed and trans ones—especially trans ones. For the first time, I walked among people who understood. Really understood, the dysphoria and the otherness and the abuse and the whole lot. I’d found my home amongst the gender criminals; we talked feminism and activism; we braved protests despite threats of alt-right retaliation; we stumbled through relationships. Like most trans people, I harbour no nostalgia for my childhood or early youth—but for that time, I do. Not because it didn’t have its share of struggle, but because of my then-partner A. and my friends. Because it was the first time I felt the mutability of sex/gender, and breathed the freedom that entailed.

Things don’t last though, especially not in youth. Relationships fall apart; social circles reshuffle. I was leaving university to pursue a career—after all, I could not afford to be on HRT without income.

Moreover I felt… insecure, you could call it. Most of my social connections were to trans people and/or women. But I was a man. Shouldn’t I—commit? Make an effort? If cisgender men did not accept me as one of theirs, didn’t that make me a kind of impostor? I chafed in the body of an eternal adolescent, and the rift I felt between myself and cis men salted the wound.

Brain/Worms

The first problem was easily addressed with exogenous testosterone. Starting it was a euphoric experience—the rapid swelling of muscle, the spike in energy and hunger and libido. I loved the changes to my body, and I wished all traces of insidious womanhood would wilt from me.

The second issue was more difficult. I’d always felt at an arm’s length from cis heterosexual men, and never got much closer. No matter what, I simply felt other. That made sense, though. Once I re-conceptualised my gender as male, I did not identify as straight. I didn’t feel so sure anymore I was solely attracted to women, and that feeling only solidified the more I transitioned. If gender and sex were uncertain, how could I be so sure? I had no genital preference. What did it mean to be attracted to a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ anyway? Some men could be as pretty as women. Wouldn’t giving a definitive answer be a little bioessentialist? Aren’t we all, as they say, a little bisexual?

Yes, I thought, it made perfect sense that I, a bisexual man, would find no belonging among cishet men. And the more I thought about the sort of relationships I desired, the more I realised I could not possibly be fulfilled in a straight relationship. I attempted facsimiles of a straight man’s role, and they all left me feeling hollowed. The attraction and relationship calculus of straight women was an arcane language to me. The sorts of women I liked were distinctly dyke-y; sure, some of those happen to be bisexual, but if they were to date me, they’d still be dating a man. I’d hate that as much as I’d hate not having my manhood acknowledged or recognised. And that’s to say nothing of how sleazy and dishonest it felt to intrude on queer women’s dating scene as a man. Now that I lived as a man, what made me so different from cis men? Innate birth-assigned woman-ness? Misogyny-flavoured childhood trauma? The vagina? All excuses felt like pathetic, opportunistic self-humiliation. Debasing myself by appealing to someone else’s cissexism so I could appear like something I wasn’t.

So naturally, I pursued community and companionship with gay men. As any gay trans man will tell you, it is usually a thankless and annoying task; transphobia is insidious and oft-unchallenged in gay male circles. The way they treat trans men ranges from hostile to patronising to weird. But overall I had a better time of it than most, and cultivated a few long-lasting friendships. The gay men around me had more class consciousness than average. They were not shy about liking me, even after apologising for speaking ill of vaginas. It was ego-boosting. But I was still afraid that when we took our shirts off, they’d stop seeing me and find a woman in me. Fuck me like one. Erase me.

A new ghost began to haunt me. It’d coalesced from pieces that already existed within me, but never before had this shape. What were fragments of my desires and thoughts coalesced into a singular fixation that constricted all of my libido, all of my sexual being. Fantasies of being fucked into womanhood invaded my mind and would not let go of it. In them, men were personless and barely corporeal, but the women existed in graphic detail. I myself was either completely disembodied and not present, not even as a voyeur—or else oddly, vaguely within the woman, both me and not-me at once.

I was horrified. Not even by the fantasy itself; its contents were murky and not particularly original. By my singular lust for it. I felt as though I’d discovered a monster within. A violent misogynist puppeteering the woman’s image to quench a fetish for sexist humiliation. A depraved and lowly creature fed on my own abuse.

But it made a kind of sense, I thought, the horror aside. I’d experienced plenty of misogynistic violence, the sexual kind included, and I guessed I’d sublimated it. Except—

There was a problem with that interpretation. That coercive return to womanhood, what I feared men might do to me—it was not the same as what aroused me. In the fantasy, I was not returning or reverting; I was not giving in to transphobic violence, which these scenarios notably lacked; I just was.

Despite all my efforts, this creature within responded to no self-insight, no cross-examination, no rationalisation. Everything I learned from the handbooks of either trauma therapy or kink-positive thinking failed utterly. I could not unlearn shame. I could not arrive at an epiphany. Like a hungry tapeworm, the unnameable thing inside me gnawed and gnawed, and any attempts to understand my desire, to make it less dissociative, only caused it to mutate to something more esoteric. The images morphed from banal patriarchal brutality to anonymous men forcibly feminised via sex by domineering, ultra-feminine women. Once my mind arrived at image, it sank its teeth into it so completely that it began to hollow my waking life, which now paled by comparison to the fantasy. And yet the thing still resisted knowledge even as it drained blood from me. I could not comprehend what pleasure I derived from this, what desire this fulfilled. When looked upon in the light of day, beyond the haze of arousal, the monster within me became only fear, a terrifying and nameless anxiety that liquefied all efforts to understand it.

In any case, the only ‘gay man’ I ended up dating long-term was a severely closeted trans woman. I failed thoroughly at sourcing validity from gay male partners as I realised I never wanted them in the first place; it’d all been a self-delusional charade whose only purpose was to forestall loneliness and to quench the thing within. So I settled on helping a girl find her gender. My perversion remained my little secret. No one in the world could’ve possibly shared it, and if they did, it was probably for the best that I did not know them.

A strange and nameless discontent festered. Past the initial joy in well-sculpted shoulders, the more virilised my body became, the more difficult it was to differentiate myself from the Average Cishetero Man, or even the Average Gay Man (which do not, in the end, look that different)—and it felt existentially important to be differentiated somehow. Looking like that made me feel dead. Whatever ‘that’ was. I found myself confusedly wishing for jewellery and makeup and feminine fashion—things that were once violently forced upon me. So the desire itself made me squirm. At the same time though, it’d been a while since my abuse. Years. Therapy, time, et cetera. I knew it was normal enough for someone later in transition to mellow out on strict gender expression, now that doing it ‘incorrectly’ no longer threatened misgendering. I’d met plenty of people with that exact experience. So, I thought, maybe that was my damage. Desire for gender-nonconformity, which I’d repressed in a bizarre manner.

Of course, experimenting with being a feminine man in public would get my head kicked in; discovering a craving for femininity was very inconvenient for me. I wasn’t pleased to regress back to stifling my gender presentation for social security. But no one could stop me from crossdressing in private—so, bit by bit, I tried.

When I finally built up the courage to order proper womenswear and put it on, I looked in the mirror and saw a man in a dress. I did exactly as I wanted and achieved exactly what I thought I would. Except, instead of relief or joy, a wave of such profound disappointment hit me that I could neither understand nor describe its nature. I could only comprehend it as a compulsion to tear my skin off. As dysphoria.

Well, duh. I was a trans man. Of course dolling up would make me dysphoric. Especially after all that’d happened to me. What did I expect? This had all been a waste of fucking time. There was nothing to discover behind my desires. I abandoned my pursuit, resigned to the daily kaleidoscope of sexual depravity that I couldn’t stop my mind from spinning; I’d given up on understanding the source or goal of any of it; I would simply entertain it in the privacy of my head and carry it to my grave.

Or at least, I’d try.

At one point, a cis woman took an interest in me. That interest was not reciprocated; something about her person was off-putting to me. She acted towards my friends with extreme jealousy, and even though I rejected her advances in no uncertain terms multiple times, she would not stop offering. At the same time though, now that I realised I did not belong among gay men, I felt extremely alone. And revolting. How many women were out there that’d even want to touch me? I really shouldn’t look a gifted horse in the mouth.

We were drunk, and I a complete mess. I’d bristled before when she pointedly asked if I knew she was bisexual—the implication being, she wasn’t afraid of vagina—because there was nothing un-straight about a woman wanting a trans man. But with so much wine in my veins—you know, maybe I wasn’t such a trans man after all? Maybe I was—I dunno. Like a girl—like, only for sex, though. I had stockings and lingerie in my bedside drawers and shit. If you squint and turn off the light.

I remember a shift in her gaze, once it finally sank in. From giggling and alcohol-addled to something sharper. Not quite homicidally disgusted, but still vicious; like I’d been made a thing. I didn’t know what I did wrong; I didn’t tell her about any of the truly despicable things—I was still me! Wasn’t she bisexual? Wasn’t she queer? We don’t have to do it, I said, forget it.

The next thing I remember is a body forcing me down. Vicious, gleeful lust. “Oh, you’ll be a girl, alright.”

My whole body stiffened. I snapped at her to stop, tried to push her away, but she only pressed down harder, fingers sinking into flesh.

When I threw her off me to the floor, blood split her lip. She cried and shrieked. So much for a feminist man! How dared I hit her! She just did as I asked!

I yelled at her to get out, but once the door slammed shut, I thought of the unending parade of rapacious fetish in my head. Of how well I knew this woman didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and how I caved to her anyway. And, well, I couldn’t help feeling like—

Didn’t I ask for it?

Unmoored

A few years later, I found myself abroad. Far from family, and from most friends—except one. Shortly before I moved, I had met my once-partner A. from my university days and felt drawn to her all over again. Our relationship rekindled, and hand in hand, we flew westward. It was a dark time for unrelated reasons, but in a twisted way, it granted me as much of a ‘clean start’ as I could’ve ever hoped for. I was untethered from traces of growing pains I left all over the city I once called home, from the messy parts of transition—it’d been, at that point, well over five years since I started.

No one here needed to know who I’d been.

I’d never doubted it. In fact, I was then in the process of fighting bureaucracy to re-ensure my access to hormones. They were the only way I could ever hope to rid myself of that bodily displacement I’d been feeling. That was how it went with trans men; it helped them, so it should help me.

Only I’d already been on T for a while then. Whatever ‘feminine curves’ I had left, had melted away; a beard had sprouted from my face, which now increasingly resembled my father’s. Even if I stripped naked, I looked more like an intersex man than anything else. That was basically what I’d expected. I’d always been rather cold-blooded about my transition expectations and proud of that fact; I’d sourced my information from many sources and first-hand accounts, and I neither underestimated the changes nor hoped for the impossible. All in all, I got what I sought. The thing I kept waiting for had already happened.

And I felt nothing. The disappearance of features I used to despise evoked naught more than a quiet oh well. My photos seemed oddly unfamiliar. A numbness had subsumed me, as if I’d been encased in wax.

But I had more pressing problems. Relocation, unemployment, the lot. Dealing with a subtle and unnameable depression seemed like a waste of time. Perhaps there was just something broken about me—that much had been clear for a while now. If I just kept a lid on it, I could live a happy enough life. On and on years went.

Lesbians In My Phone

What to do, when you’re hopelessly unemployed and feeling like there’s a black hole inside you threatening to swallow it all? Try to find a Discord to distract yourself, of course.

E.: mostly girlies in here so I hope you won't feel too out of place! we do strive to be an inclusive place

Me: haha i hope i got here thanks to a diversity and inclusion programme

My excuse for entering a transfem-majority space was an invitation thanks to my writing and editing. I’d put out a short story myself, and I was eager to help fellow authors. Of course, I was still a community outsider on the gender side of it, so I didn’t expect to get much out of that space personally. It just felt good to be involved in something, anything.

But, it turned out, many of the women on that server were good and easy company regardless. Unfamiliar subcultures are easily learned when its members are not hostile to you; they seemed to like me.

Most of the server members were transfem lesbians writing and reading sexually explicit fiction—some of which resembled my personal nonsense kaleidoscope, if… unpacked, let’s say. It was rather surreal to see the sorts of things my mind inflicted upon me being discussed in jest or dissected for the purposes of creating more elevated, self-conscious art. When I thought about it from the perspective of a trans woman, escapism via fancies of forced feminisation only made sense. Trans women internalise what society deems to be the place of women as much as anyone else, but also, trans womanhood is violently flagellated for existing in any way whatsoever. The fantasy would then revolve around removing the element of choice from it—so you could not be punished for wanting it.

Intellectually fascinating, but why it appealed to me made no more sense than it ever had. I wasn’t a trans woman—quite the opposite. They just wanted to be women; what the fuck was my problem? Although it calmed me somewhat to see normal people have experiences so similar to mine, I still felt like an intruder, stealing away pieces of someone else’s intimate life for my own shallow pleasure. I spoke nothing of it. No one would take kindly to me skin-walking their innermost desires this way.

As I spent my time in the company of trans lesbians, silent or not, I was still exposed to a stream of art and stories and images. Their depictions of women differed drastically from what I’d seen before. Two metres tall, or tiny as a gnome, or more muscular than a Greek god, or more voluptuous than a fertility idol, or werewolf-hairy, or covered in scales, or made completely of metal. A thousand melodies in fractal variations of flesh, all desired and lauded. I was no stranger to ideas of body positivity or ‘celebrating queerness’, but that all came wrapped in stipulations and activism. Always a statement, a process of battling or quieting shame. Never before have I experienced such utterly shameless, sincere, and carnal fanfare for everyone and anyone who claimed the space of ‘woman,’ in such a way that ‘woman’ meant nothing more and nothing less than simply ‘human.’ Not for statements. Just because it made them happy.

It was as alien as it was beautiful.

It’s not that I felt like I was missing out. Or that I wasn’t sufficiently fanfared. There were other spaces that did the same for men, run chiefly by gay transmasculine people, and they seemed to be having a great time of it. I just didn’t personally care for them one bit. I wanted this.

Naturally, it was all only fantasy. Art and books. That’s great, but that’s not real. In reality I was a twink with a receding hairline. It seemed prudent to know my limits rather than get too hung up on the fact I couldn’t be a two-metre-tall lesbian cyborg.

Except that some of it is real. Not the cyborgs and werewolves, but the diversity of body; the desire for its freedom and customisation. Women discontent with taking simply what they’re given. Through acquaintance and anecdote, I met lesbians with the same ‘unnatural’ desire I’d had. Lesbians on testosterone, desiring embodiments which, according to all I’d ever known, were never meant to be. Lesbians who wished for phalloplasty or for top surgery or both; lesbians that went on T temporarily to drop their voices and grow more muscle and body hair. Lesbians that weren’t women at all. Only there was no DSM attached. No packaged deal of ‘total’ transition, no script, no chain of demands that followed one to another.

No requirement of man.

It felt like anathema—and like a revelation. Whereas before genderqueerness seemed hypothetical and divorced from my reality, now I suddenly understood it. Now that I saw it, I knew it.

And I felt only directionless, ennui-steeped anger. As if someone stole the last ticket to a train that would never again leave my station. I didn’t know—how could I have known? No shit the things that helped trans men didn’t help me. I looked at all the past incongruences I’d revised and sanded over to fit the fucking DSM transsexualism diagnosis, and found only someone groping in the dark for a path they couldn’t even imagine existed. Except this realisation was arriving some fifteen years too late. Had I been younger or born elsewhere, then sure, I could’ve been one of those lesbians middle-fingering gender and microdosing T. But I wasn’t. I was a man. And when I dared think of relinquishing my grip on manhood, memory clawed at me. The assault. The humiliation. The un-personing. What would I be asking for? And what would that even yield? Look in the mirror, idiot. You are a man.

It wasn’t a rational calculus of consequences. It was a buzzing storm inside my head, pitch-black, impenetrable. I’d long stopped seeing women in their totality as my conversion-therapy prison, but even still—to see myself attached to ‘woman’ even slightly, even tangentially, even if I wanted it—this all evoked visceral, horrible fear.

But: knowing that a problem has a solution only makes it that much more impossible to ignore. My off-handed remarks and jokes about my miseries had my transfem friends looking funny at me. As if they recognised something.

T.: do you mind if I ask what you conceptualize your specific gendered deal as, or is that invasive?

Me: great question, i’ll get back to you in 5 to 10 business years.

Although I still loved the early changes I received from my HRT, everything I’d accrued since then was undeniably eating me alive. It was becoming difficult to dismiss dysphoria as mere vanity or body image issues; through all my attempts to make peace with my flesh, nothing helped even slightly. When I stopped binding, that felt better. When I lowered my T dose, that accomplished nothing in particular, but it felt comforting in a placebo sort of way. I tried to schedule laser hair removal—and that was too much. I panicked. Too obvious. What if someone noticed? What if someone asked why? I couldn’t deal with it. What if my partner noticed? She didn’t sign up for this shit. She was dating a man. What if—

No, it couldn’t go that badly. My partner wasn’t like that. Still, I felt paralysed. If I just did nothing, it couldn’t get worse. No one needed to know.

T.: hey, what’s up with the depression beard? do we need to get you laser?

Fuck it. I understood what my friends were seeing in me now. At first I thought myself definitionally far-removed from any transfeminine experience, but now that I’d met trans lesbians in truth, I couldn’t stop noticing patterns. And I wouldn’t have treated a transfem friend with the same denial or nihilistic abjection that I reserved for myself. She would’ve deserved help. A way out.

Didn’t I, too?

Detransition, Lady

The date I mark as the start of my detransition is April 16th, 2024, although I wouldn’t be calling it that for a few months yet. It was the first time I told anyone I was not a man, and that I was a lesbian, even though I didn’t exactly feel like a woman. On the surface it seemed a small thing. I had not yet decided on any particular body modifications (except laser—god, someone flay that thing off my face), and I felt deeply uncomfortable changing my gender presentation too much. So it seemed almost a question of semantics alone. Inside me though, it was a titanic shift: I allowed myself to name that which I’d been avoiding at all cost. To voice a desire I thought would brook only disgust, humiliation, and exile.

It did not.

The reaction of my partner and friends was, across the board, positive—none of my worst fears came to pass. Apparently I’d been far too obviously depressed, despite my best efforts to hide it—and now, I was far too obviously happy and, as some put it, ‘unclenched.’ Nothing in my loved ones’ behaviour should’ve led me to believe they would ridicule and hate me; still, it felt monumentally difficult to stop seeing myself as uniquely undeserving and pathetic.

I pursued my detransition incrementally. I pinpointed sources of dysphoria and addressed them. Laser, first. When my droning bass baritone started getting on my nerves, ensuring as it was that I’d always be gendered male—voice training. Soon I discovered that, despite the kinship I felt with transmasculine lesbians, I did not quite belong with them; whereas they relished the virilisation they’d carved out for themselves, my situation was different. I’d lived as a man for far too long to experience the world the same way they did. Most of them did not share my degree of distaste and distress at getting dude’d and he/him’d; they did not quite match my flavour of alienation from ‘woman.’ They usually strove to distinguish themselves from the category that would have them stifled and consumed—whereas that category now repelled me almost definitionally, whether I liked it or not. When I braved the outside world, there was no amount of social signalling that would make strange cis women see me as akin to them, or at least as not akin to men. Often not even lesbian cis women. Markers of an androgenic puberty singled me out as something categorically Other, and I’d not yet been in detransition long enough to change that.

Only among the transfeminine was I witnessed. Trans women I didn’t know loudly and protectively she/her’d me. The pronouns I actually used at the time were they/them, and my internal gender was nil with a side of ‘dyke,’ yet I found myself unwilling to correct anyone who decided I was a woman. Trans women that did know me playfully teased me for being ‘transfem-coded.’ Beyond initial recognition of repeating patterns, I’d started to realise that of all the people I knew, I belonged with them the most.

It was… confounding. In a way, it made no sense at all. And there were clear lines that delineated us: they would not relate to my visceral hatred of my first puberty, and I would not relate to theirs; I did not share their childhood of a girl trapped among boys. My ever-unchanged legal sex now granted me a degree of protection they could never take for granted. My birth sex gave me leverage to sacrifice trans women for a shred of acceptance—to shriek that I, unlike them, was a real woman. Even when no one but them saw me as one.

But in my daily existence and in much of my psychology, I was indistinguishable from my transfem peers. I’d transitioned a decade ago, right out of school; socially, I’d once been a girl a long time ago, but never a woman. Now I danced a dance I’d only before witnessed as an outsider; longed for and imagined, never performed. I had not the same continuity of belonging that cis women did, and nor did cis women know what it was like to walk among men, a secret alien, slowly realising every step you take is wrong.

I supposed, it made an intuitive kind of sense. Transition works. Not my now-distant history, not my birth, and certainly not my chromosomes or genitals had made me somehow more innately or inexorably woman. As all transsexuals learn sooner or later, lived experiences and hormones trump the rest of sex/gender with ease. So, although I wasn’t a trans woman, when I applied the same logics to myself, it simply worked. Despite the imperfect match, all my current problems had answers from the same solution sheet, from the way I treated myself to the way others treated me.

Well, almost all my problems.

Now that I compared myself to women and not to men, body insecurity cut much deeper and bloodier. I despaired no one would ever believe I was anything woman-shaped; they barely did before I took testosterone. Which I was still taking. I looked at the small dose of T gel I’d been applying, then at the finasteride pills I’d been chasing that with. And I thought, What does this even do? What is this even for anymore?

Stasis. It was for stasis, and a little placebo. I feared that if I stopped T, I’d tumble all the way back into the spiral of dysphoria I felt as a teen and young adult. That my body—for all its flaws still mine, still fought-for, still tailor-made—would dissolve again into an adolescent blob hatefully sculpted by others into the image of a future child-bearer. Only now I hated most of my virilisation and would claw at walls if I received any more of it—and my fear was not exactly rational, was it?

I breathed out. The testosterone wasn’t going to spoil the moment I put it away. I could try, and if it didn’t work out—a short period of a second-and-a-half puberty could not be that extreme. Whatever new changes I’d cause would likely revert fast.

For a while, nothing much happened. Nothing dissolved or melted. But little by little, my skin smoothed; my face softened; my wiry limbs lost their mesh of veins. My hips and breasts, once so maligned, swelled and enveloped muscle. I didn’t look the way I used to—of course not. I was stronger and a decade older; all the things I’d done to build my own self did not vanish, but merely, well—feminised.

I’d never met myself in an adult woman’s body before. In a self-made body. Although this flesh too did not feel mine, but for a different reason; I felt as if the moment I looked away, it’d all be gone. It wasn’t mine because it couldn’t possibly be. I wasn’t allowed this, I was never allowed this—the only shape of woman allowed to me was future-husband’s broodmare, mummy’s doll. I wasn’t allowed this.

But I did want it. And now I knew I could have it. Now, that gnawing monster inside my head had dissolved like it was never there at all. No disassociation, no torment, no total death of all other desire, no compulsion to retreat from the real world into a singular fantasy. Just… me.

At almost midnight I walked into mine and A.’s bedroom rambling. What does it fucking mean to feel like something, like a category; I only ever feel like me; what does it mean when you’re a forever-outsider; what does it mean when it’s been used to fucking hurt you, how can you then feel like anything at all; but what if I want it, what if I want it anyway. What if I want to be a woman anyway, the way my friends are women. The way lesbians are women. What if I want to belong among them? How do I know if I feel it? How do I know I’m real? How do I know I deserve—

In a space where freedom is possible, how is anyone made a woman?

Blearily, A. looked up from her Crusader Kings and said, “Look, uh—it doesn’t have to be that deep. If you want to be a woman, you can just do that.”

Could I?

I knew my transfem friends could. They built new shapes of ‘woman’ to their liking, in spite of all outside insistence they cannot. I had no reason nor unkindness to believe that their efforts amounted to less or more than mine. If they could, so could I. If I saw them, they would see me. They already did.

Perhaps sometimes, what makes a woman is who she calls a sister.

Recommended Reading

On embracing the constructed nature of one’s sex/gender: Susan Stryker, My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.

On the asymmetric forces behind patriarchal gender enforcement: Talia Bhatt, Degendering and Regendering.

#transfeminism #material feminism #detrans #detransition #feminism #lesbian feminism #sex is a social construct #gender is a social construct

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ficsilike-reblogged · 28 days ago

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Shelter - 5

Summary: You saved Soap's life. And Chicago has its own surprises in store for you.

Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley/F!Reader Warnings For This Chapter: Continued military and safehouse inaccuracies, slow burn romance, Soft!Simon, mentions of and very light description of childbirth, MDNI

A/N: Thank you all SO MUCH for the love on the last chapter. I don't think I've ever posted so consistently on a fic before. You have all really kept me motivated. Means the world to me. Oh! also, just as an aside, the title of this fic comes from a lyric from the song "Little Words" by The Happy Fits. My brain chemistry was altered by spiltspits beautiful artwork and this is how I now imagine Simon. Please let me know what you think! xx

Previous Chapter

Okay maybe it wasn’t home. But it was still Chicago. After handing over your passport to a woman who definitely didn’t check it, you were shuffled into yet another SUV and you might have pressed your face to the window as you saw the familiar skyline inch closer and closer. You couldn’t go home to your shoebox of an apartment, but Soap did say the hotel where you were staying was nice. Price’s grunted approval did seem to give a little credence to that.

Nice…was not the word you would have used as you looked up at the immaculate stone and glass building in front of you, your vision only a little obscured by the ballcap Soap pushed over your head before getting out of the car. This was opulent. Expensive. A different tax bracket.

Simon nudged you toward the entrance when you stared a little too long. The building was old, probably from the 1800s, but impeccably kept and renovated to modern standards. Everything was a sleek white and gray with modern art on the walls.

“What kind of safehouse is this?” You muttered to yourself as your group joined the small line to check in.

“It’s off the books,” Gaz whispered in return. “Think of it more like a CIA funded vacation.”

“But we are safe, right?”

He reached out and squeezed your arm before his eyes flickered over your shoulder to Ghost…Simon. “We’re going to be fine.”

When you reached the front, a beautiful woman, dressed in a designer suit, gently brushed the clerk away from the desk and arched a brow as Price approached. “Hello John.”

Oh. Oh…there was history there.

(And apparently Price’s first name was John.)

“Laswell called you?”

The woman nodded, letting Price’s lack of greeting roll right off her back. “I have you all up on the twelfth floor. All of the hotel’s amenities are at your disposal.”

Price nodded and wordlessly took the key cards she handed over and then started to herd you toward the shining elevators on the other side of the lobby. You quickly told her ‘thank you,’ earning a laugh, and then were almost immediately pressed into the corner of the elevator. Both Simon and Soap stood in front of you, massive forms basically shielding you from anyone in the lobby seeing you. But you did manage to see Price press a key into a hole beside the button for the twelfth floor and turn it before the elevator started to rise.

The ride up was smooth and silent, even as Price handed out key cards. Plush carpet quieted your footsteps as you stepped out into the windowless hallway and five doors spaced apart evenly. If you were a betting woman, which you definitely were not, you would guess that all the other floors had more than five rooms.

Price stopped at the first door, 121, and then turned to you, handing you the last key card. “Figured you’d want your own space. I’ll have to explain the rules in a bit. But I’ll let you get settled.”

Rules. Of course there were rules. You’d probably not be allowed to leave your room without an escort or leave the hotel at all. And you could live with that. You could. Kirby was waiting for you. You’d keep your promise. “Got it. Thank you.”

The door beeped softly after you tapped the card against the lock. Like the rest of the hotel, the room was beautiful, leather couch, huge bed, a small kitchenette. The bathroom was a work of art in white and silver granite with sleek knobs and spouts. You didn’t even bother looking in the closet tucked beside the bed, too nervous to see if it was as big as your entire apartment across town. And it wasn’t as if you had clothes to put away anyway. That was probably something you would have to talk to Price about when he came in. The cityscape glittered on the other side of the giant window and you knocked your knuckle against it, welcoming yourself home. It sounded a little strange, like the window was extra thick. Whatever.

Your throat still hurt and you wandered back to the bathroom and pulled the arnica lotion from your pocket and wiped a bit across your skin. It was still discolored and tender—and you knew it would be for a while. Your eyes were still red. The bags under your eyes were prominent and tender, too. All and all, you looked rough. Kirby would ask questions but she’d probably be appeased with a simple “I was mugged, yeah they know who did it” explanation. It would be another lie, but it would be for the best.

You nearly jumped out of your skin when a knock came at the door. You hustled over to it and then froze. They did say you were safe but… The knock came again, followed by, “‘s me.”

Simon.

You still looked through the peephole to make sure—which you immediately winced at because you’ve seen too many movies and television shows where someone gets shot right through those—and saw Simon’s hulking figure on the other side. He’d swapped his usual skull balaclava for a simple black surgical mask somewhere between the plane and lobby. The door opened and he stepped in, bringing the scent of gunsmoke and something woody and expensive. He hadn’t been wearing cologne on the plane but you weren’t about to complain. After telling you where you were headed and giving you your passport, you had fallen into a quiet conversation with him. He was funny. Charming, in a dry, dark humored sort of way. The way your heart squeezed in your chest whenever you looked at him was just a coincidence. Really!

“I want to show you something,” he said instead of a greeting. You were almost used to it now. And you trotted after him as he neared the bed and you definitely ignored how your eyes darted between the surely-high thread count sheets and the behemoth in front of you. After all of this was done, you needed to download an app or something. Let Kirby make the profile for you like she’s been dying to do for years so you could focus on that and not how you could see the hints of another scar slipping out from the edge of the mask near his mouth and curling up toward his ear or how blond hair poked out from under the shadow of his hood. You curled your hand into a fist to avoid touching it. You never thought he’d be blond.

Still, you watched his gloved hand slide across the paneled wall and then press down. There was a soft click and the wall slid open.

“A secret passageway? That’s so fucking cool.” The words tumbled out of your mouth before you could think of something less childish to say.

“This is my room,” Simon said, turning to you. “If anything happens, you come to me. Yeah?”

“I thought this was supposed to be safe?”

He shrugged, which wasn’t exactly comforting. “So was the safehouse. But this is me trying to keep you safe.” He paused and you couldn’t find it in yourself to say anything. “You know I’ll come for you.” His heavy gaze didn’t move away from your face and you might have squirmed if it was anyone else but you felt yourself sagging.

He had come for you back at the other safehouse. He had kept you safe. And now he was right next door. Something warmed behind your ribs but you weren’t quite sure you wanted to try to name it. “I know.”

You couldn’t look away. Not yet. Not when the dark of his eyes was so inviting. So strangely comforting when everything else seemed to be slipping through your fingers.

“I promise not to make too much noise. I won’t keep you up by, like, blaring music or anything.”

A small smile pushed at her mouth and Simon once again couldn’t look away from the curve of her bottom lip. He wanted to trace it with the edge of his thumb. Wanted to know if it was as soft as it looked. A selfish, mean urge. He knew it. He was a selfish bastard.

A knock at the door saved him from acting on that urge and he watched her smile twitch, nervous, before she answered the door. Pride rumbled in his chest when she warily checked the peephole first. But it was only Price on the other side, right on schedule.

Simon listened to Price tell her the rules of the hotel. Don’t go anywhere without one of them. Do not leave the hotel grounds under any circumstance. Order room service if needed—it was on the CIA’s tab so cost was no object. She laughed at that.

But then she asked if she could order clothes and toiletries through room service, too. “I only have this,” she waved a hand at the clothes Simon had given her on the plane. “And while these are comfortable-”

“Your flat’s across town? Make me a list of what you need.”

And that was how Simon found himself and Kyle across the city and in the midrise building after following her instructions to buzz Missus Pirowski, an octogenarian resident on the ground floor who would let anyone in if they asked politely, to get in and then procuring the spare key she hid, taped to the upper edge of the door.

The apartment was nice. Probably expensive for this part of the city. And everything smelt like an expensive candle and something soft. The couch was worn but well taken care of and a half dozen blankets were tucked into a basket beneath the window. Everything was clean if not sparse.

And the more he looked, the more he realized it looked more like a staged house than a home. There was neutral, mass produced art on the walls. Everything was in shades of grey, white, black. The kitchen was organized neatly in glass containers, each filled three quarters of the way up. It wasn’t until he stepped into her bedroom that he saw any sort of life. There was a map pinned over a cork board with color coded pins all over the place. Green pins for places she’s been. Gold for places she wanted to go. Gold vastly outnumbered green and it made Simon sad in a strange way. And there were two and only two pictures on her bedside table, tucked behind a stack of books with bookmarks in each of them.

The first picture was small in Simon’s grasp. The gold frame was fragile, old. The picture behind the thin glass was aged, too, and looked like it had been folded in half several dozen times before being stuck in the frame. It was obviously her, somewhere around 8 and holding an infant in a careful hold on a couch.

The next was her, again, aged 16 or so. Her arm was thrown over the shoulders of a girl who was probably 8. Her smile was smaller but it still lit up her eyes. The smaller girl was beaming at the camera, ice cream in her hand dripping over her fingers. That must be Kirby. Behind them stood an older man, hands on each of the girls’ shoulders and a proud smile on his aging face. There was no resemblance between her and the man, but he and Kirby had a few similar features. Who was he?

The frame clacked as he set it down while Kyle stepped out of her bathroom, a bag of her toiletries in his hand. “Find everything?”

Kyle nodded. “It was color coded.”

Of course it was. Everything of hers in the apartment, anything she might consider valuable, was probably easily moved. Like she was ready to leave at a moment’s notice, which was odd because the lease agreement for her apartment had been renewed eight times according to Simon’s research. But Simon knew the same could be said of him and his flat in Manchester. Easily moved. Easily forgotten.

They turned to the closet and drawers next, referencing their list as they went. Her clothing was color coded, too. But most of it was black, white, or grey. Kyle took what she requested from her closet without much fanfare but Simon did pause, only a little, when her knickers were on his share of the list. (And he knew Gaz did it on purpose, even if the easy smile the other man gave him betrayed nothing. Cheeky.) They were neatly folded in the top drawer; bits of silk, lace, cotton that had his mouth going dry. Like he was a kid again. His thumb brushed against one of the tiny bows as his mind wandered. Did they cut into the side of her hip? Did she have a favorite pair? Did the lace feel good against her skin? He didn’t know the answers but they were all soft in the palm of his hand as he grabbed a handful and shoved them into one of the bags Kyle brought him from the closet.

He followed the rest of the list she’d given them diligently and then spotted a perfume bottle. She’d had a travel sized one of the same brand and scent at the safe house, too. This one must be her favorite if it being half empty with another tucked behind it was any indication. It wasn’t on her list, but if it would make her smile-

The thought crumpled before he could finish it. He tucked the sole pair of running shoes into the bag and saw Gaz had grabbed a pair of boots, too. He needed to get out of here. But he still snatched one of the photos off the nightstand before he left.

It was nearly orgasmic to be able to use your own body wash and lotion after a couple of weeks without it. What did this say about you? What would your therapist say about it? What were the confidentiality parameters when it came to this? Surely you couldn’t just tell Kirby and there were ethics guidelines with therapists, right?

Whatever. You knew you weren’t going back to therapy.

You toweled off, trying hard not to look too long at your discolored throat and monster eyes. Kirby was going to freak out. You needed to practice your speech about getting mugged and telling her not to worry. You didn’t lie to your sister. She knew that and it had caused some friction a few years ago. So, maybe she’d just believe you. She needed to because there was no way you could or would explain the shit show that your life had become.

You pulled the second bag Gaz had dropped off in your room before your shower and your heart hiccuped when you spotted the picture of you and Kirby sitting on top. You’d once kept this one in your tiny wallet after you’d graduated from high school, folded it to make sure it wouldn’t slip out. A prized possession. If it came down to it, your apartment was on fire and you could only save two things? You’d save the pictures with your sister.

Any warm and fuzzy thoughts evaporated when you noticed they’d been placed atop a neat stack of your underwear. You knew it was going to be packed—you had asked for them to be. But it still felt a little strange knowing Gaz had packed them so carefully. You needed to make him another breakfast for being so kind to you. Maybe you could use the hotel’s kitchen if you asked nicely. The manager—the woman who’d checked everyone in, you learned—had been nice when she’d given you a razor when you’d forgotten to ask Gaz to bring you one from your apartment. You definitely owed him after you spotted your favorite perfume carefully packed in between your clothes, too. You hadn’t asked for it, not wanting to be too demanding.

At least it wasn’t Simon. And you knew it was childish for you to think about a man touching your underwear when he was just doing his job. And it didn’t matter anyway because Gaz did it!

Really. What was wrong with you?

All of this would be over, hopefully soon, and you would probably never see any of these people again. So, you grabbed your favorite pair, the ones with the soft cotton lace and tiny bow, and tried to press the thought of Simon and his dark eyes (and your underwear) out of your mind.

The tiny cellphone you’d been given was sitting on the bedside table. It only had Kirby’s number and Price said it was a secure line, whatever that meant, and you shouldn’t even attempt to call anyone aside from your sister. Not a problem. You didn’t really have anyone to call. And it was…perfect, to be able to just call your sister. She was spending the last few days of her pregnancy out of town at a spa retreat; something about seaweed wraps, Swedish massages, and clay face masks being part of her birthing plan. Everything seemed to be running on her schedule, no matter how loose it was.

She’d giggled throughout your short conversation. “I hadn’t heard from you in a while! Thought you weren’t going to make it—I shouldn’t’ve doubted you.”

It was like a shot of pure sunlight right to your veins.

You were going to make it. You’d keep your promise.

That happy thought carried you through the rest of the day, even as Gaz easily beat you at every single card game he tried to teach you and then stole half your fries from your dinner with another megawatt smile. Soap called dibs on trying to teach you a traditional Scottish dance tomorrow with a grin you knew meant trouble.

Price was off somewhere else and, while you didn’t know him very well, you had a feeling it had something to do with the pretty hotel manager downstairs.

Simon had been in his room and Gaz and Soap had both said he was following up on a lead from Laswell. And you promptly ignored the whispered thought that he was avoiding you. He hadn’t seemed the type to be easily annoyed but maybe your long-winded conversation on the plane had worn down his social battery and he just needed a break. Yeah. Sure.

After another layer of cream on your neck, you settled into the ridiculously soft bed and fell asleep, hoping to truly feel rested by the time you woke up in the morning.

The tunnel was dark. Strip lights across the tracks cast darker shadows across the bombs that littered the ground. There were so many of them. Everywhere you looked, there was another, each with curled wires and red numbers that counted down the seconds left in your pitiful existence.

But this was okay. You were alone. No one else would be hurt.

Movement to the right caught your eye and a scream stalled in your throat as your sister leapt onto one of the bombs, landing on the wires without a sound.

“Kirby!” but the scream you could feel building in your throat came out as a whisper. She couldn’t hear you.

Kirby laughed and waved, jumping from one bomb to another with her usual grace and poise. She even spun on one, that same smile on her face.

You went left, she went right.

There were too many barrels between you now. Too many bombs. You’d never catch up to her. You could hear her laughing but when she opened her mouth again to say something to you, the first lines of a Russian lullaby spilled out instead, not matching at all with how her lips were moving.

Bayu Bayushki Bayu…

One by one, the bombs started to go off in slow motion. Fire and scraps of metal inched their way into the air as Kirby continued to dance away, still singing the Russian lullaby. She turned away from you and spun, dress fluttering.

And then she jumped right onto the next bomb just as it exploded.

“NO!” The scream tore its way out of your already mangled throat as you snapped to sitting up in your sweat-soaked sheets. Your pillows flopped uselessly to the ground behind you. A shaking hand pressed to your forehead. “Just a dream,” you muttered. “It’s just a dream.” But the image of Kirby dancing into the explosion had been seared into the backs of your eyes.

Movement out of the corner of your eye nearly had you screaming again but it stalled in your throat when you realized you recognized the enormous looming shadow. A light from a single lamp behind Simon made him look even larger than he already was, the bulk of his hoodie still wrapped around him and his surgical mask looped over his nose and mouth.

“Is that a gun?” you asked, already knowing the answer. And maybe you should’ve cared more at the moment about him charging in with a weapon but you couldn’t. Not now. Not when the low light caught his dark eyes and the barest hints of his blond hair.

“‘eard you screaming.”

“Sorry.” What else could you say? The embarrassment started to tug at the back of your mind—you’d woken him up in the middle of the night—but the nightmare persisted. It was strangely comforting to know he’d come so quickly anyway. Just like he did at the safehouse.

He walked further into your room, the door still slightly open behind him. “Nothing to be sorry about. Need something?”

You dropped your hands and looked at him, feeling the sweat cool on your skin. “N-no, I’m fine. Sorry I woke you up.”

“Was already awake.” He didn’t move. Not for a stretched moment before he holstered the (giant) handgun.

“Do you ever have nightmares?” The question tumbled out of your mouth before you could stop it. How fucking rude and ridiculous could you be? And so, instead of forcing him to answer, you just kept talking. “I used to get them all the time. My therapist said something about trauma or whatever. But I haven’t had one like this in years. I was doing good. I used to be so good. Almost normal.” Another stuttering breath slithered out of you. You weren’t even sure what you were saying or why you were saying it. “Am I just putting her in danger by going to see her? She’d never forgive me if I didn’t go but what if something happened to her because of me? She’s having a baby. Her baby’s going to need her. Kirby’ll be a good mom. Even if we both had crap examples, she is going to be a good one.” You were definitely rambling now. But the past handful of weeks and everything fucking else that had happened was starting to spill out like a shaken up bottle of pop.

You sucked in a handful more unsteady breaths, your tattered throat still protesting. And the embarrassment started to burn, too.

“Sorry. I guess I broke my promise of being a good neighbor.”

Simon was still an immovable mass in the shadow of the doorway but then he stepped closer and slowly, slowly lowered himself onto the edge of your bed. The warmth of him bled across the rumpled blankets but the sharp claws of your embarrassment continued to tighten around your lungs.

“You don’t have to stay.”

And Simon stood again.

“But you can if you want!” You hurriedly added.

He slowly sat back down and you buried your face in your hands with a groan. This was…this was not how you thought tonight would go. But, God, he was being kind. Kind to you again.

“I’m sorry.” Your lungs ached and it felt like you’d tried to line your esophagus with fine grain sandpaper.

“‘s fine.” He paused for another moment and you were too nervous to look up to see if he was staring at you. “Promise.”

And then, to your horror and surprise, his hand landed on your shoulder. It just stayed there, unmoving, and you froze, scared that if you moved too fast, he’d leave…like a feral cat or something. But you slowly lifted your head to see his heavy-lidded gaze anchored on you. And you weren’t sure what compelled you forward—god knows you hadn’t wanted any sort of physical affection since you were a child—but you moved, pressing your hand over his on your shoulder. Soon, your head lolled to the side, smushing your cheek against your tangled fingers.

Simon’s grip tightened just a fraction. Small, firm circles soon pressed against your shoulder a moment later, pulling a stuttered breath from your aching throat. He was warm. Solid. Kind and quiet. And you should not be having these thoughts. It was easier, smarter, to be in the shadows of this all. Friends had been few and far between for you for most of your life. It was easier to keep people away.

It was what you should do with Simon. You knew that was the smarter choice.

But you didn’t move.

Didn’t move until he shifted and his other hand carefully smoothed over your upturned cheek. Your heart hammered against the cage of your ribs but you couldn’t recall a time when you’d felt calmer. His thumb arced across the ridge of your cheekbone as your eyes shut again.

And maybe you could have said something, or maybe he was going to—but your phone chirped. And then chirped again. And again.

Simon’s hands slipped away and you stood, haphazardly running around the bed to grab your tiny phone from where you’d left it atop the opposite nightstand. You quickly read the texts before turning to Simon, almost unsurpised to see him standing beside you. “Kirby’s having the baby.”

And then you were off, shuffled into the back of the SUV and careening across Chicago. And you pointedly ignored Soap’s gaze when he tried to look at you in the rearview mirror. No, you would not explain why Simon had come out of your room with you. Thankyouverymuch.

The hospital was quiet this time of night, or at least the entrance you used was, far away from the emergency room intake. But that only meant you caught the eye of the nurses behind the desk much easier. Kirby had texted you her room number and you just needed to-

“Excuse me, you can’t just walk in here. You need a visitor’s pass.”

You were absolutely not going to get one of those—with your luck, Kirby would already be crowning by now and if you stopped you’d miss everything—but Price, Gaz, and Soap all beelined toward the desk and effectively blocked you (but not Simon) from the nurse’s stare and Simon stood in front of you as you entered the elevator. It took you a moment to realize he was blocking you from being seen by the tiny camera in the corner. His face was still mostly covered and Gaz had made sure your ball cap was firmly on your head before you even left the hotel. They were protecting you. Again.

The elevator opened with a soft ding and you hurried down the hall, following the arrows leading toward labor and delivery. You pressed the button at the door, saying your name and Kirby’s and it thankfully opened without much fanfare. You counted the rooms until you found Kirby’s and let yourself in, a small bit of tension finally falling from your spine.

Kirby was radiant. She always was, to be honest. Even during the standard awkward tween years, she’d been beautiful. The little hospital-issued gown did little to detract from it—she also had a full face of glamorous makeup on, her hair curled and magazine worthy. Her bright eyes widened as she looked at you.

“You look like you’ve been-”

“I was mugged,” you said quickly, waving a hand. “Guy’ll get caught eventually. I’ll be fine.”

Kirby’s eyes narrowed and you could feel her gaze rove over your neck before meandering up to your discolored eyes. You could see her filing it all away and then, in the next blink, it was settled. “Is that why you have that ridiculously long number now?”

“Yeah,” you said, thankful she’d given you a way to explain away a few things. “My phone’s gone. And this number is just temporary anyway. Everyone thinks I’ll get some of my stuff back soon anyway.”

Kirby nodded and then her eyebrow twitched before her hand pressed over her stomach. “I’m glad you’re here. Means a lot to me.”

You reached out and swept your sister into a hug that she quickly reciprocated as best she could from the hospital bed. It was a tight embrace, the points of her fingers lining your vertebrae before smoothing up to your shoulder blades. She’d always hugged you this way, something she’d come out of the womb doing. You’d always tried to respond in kind, wordlessly telling her that she meant the world to you.

As you pulled back, you swept a hand across her forehead, ignoring the sweat now on your palm. “What do you need from me?”

“I would kill for a double cheeseburger after all this. Right now I’m only allowed to have ice chips, which seems a little cruel.”

“I’ll get you that double cheeseburger,” she said. Of course she did. And Simon had no doubt that she would. But still, he pulled out his phone and texted Johnny, telling him to find a burger place that was open.

It was interesting to see her actually interact with Kirby. She called her a sister, but this seemed more like a fretting, doting parent. Even from his “hiding” spot just outside the door, he felt like he was intruding.

A doctor stared at him as he walked by. Or tried to. Simon crossed his arms and the doctor hurried his steps a little. Security here was a joke. But for now, things were okay and he turned just enough to see into the room again.

“I’m trying really hard to be zen.” Sweat dotted Kirby’s hairline and the slightest wobble of her bottom lip betrayed her struggle. But if it were anyone else, Simon thought she might actually look like she was “zen.”

She reached out toward Kirby and held her hand. “Well, if you want to squeeze my hand as hard as you can instead of screaming, you have my permission to break my fingers.”

Kirby took her sister’s hand and kissed her knuckles before patting the back of her hand. “You look rough enough. I’ll try not to break anything.”

The attempt at zen lasted longer than Simon anticipated. A flurry of nurses had come in and out and yelled about dilation and then the command to “push, push, push” came quickly. Very quickly. A nurse or two had remarked about how fast the labor was going. Kirby groaned and huffed. But no screaming. Simon could respect that.

But above it all, he heard her. “Breathe with me. You got this.”

Kirby let out two short breaths.

“She’s nearly here. Come on, Kirbs. You can do it.”

And then there was a shrill cry. A baby. Something long dormant cracked in the recesses of Simon’s chest. And he looked back. It was quiet in the room for a little as the baby was placed against Kirby’s chest. The baby squirmed a little when Kirby started to cry, zen broken.

“You did so great,” she whispered. “She’s beautiful. Healthy. And she’s got a great set of lungs, just like her mom.”

Kirby laughed and pressed a series of short, careful kisses against the baby’s head. The quiet continued, all of them content for a moment. “Want to hold her?” Kirby asked, already holding the baby out to her.

She paused, just for a moment, before carefully taking the small bundle into her arms. Her face crumpled and he watched tears quickly start to slide down her cheeks. “Hi, honey. I’m your aunt. I already love you so much.” She leaned down and pressed a featherlight kiss against the baby’s cheek.

The crack in his chest widened.

He listened to her coo over the baby and her sister, whispered, happy words as the medical team continued to come in and out. He didn’t move. Not when he could see her smile like that.

Simon could feel Johnny staring at him before he even slowed to a stop. The scent of the requested cheeseburger wafted up from a greasy bag in his hand. “How’s our girl doing?”

Simon almost smiled. Our girl. He liked it. His girl.

Next Chapter

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! Your comments really keep me motivated and I love reading all of them. Please let me know what you think! xx

#Simon Riley x reader #Simon ghost Riley x reader #Simon Riley x you #ghost x reader #cod x reader #cod fanfic #Simon ghost riley #cod mw2 #cod mw3 #female reader

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