#unless lor really wants to just rip my fucking heart out

[genericpuff]

I FUCKING LOVE MISERABLE JERKASS MALE CHARACTERS WHO TURN THEIR LIVES AND SITUATIONS AROUND AND BECOME MORE THAN WHAT THEY EVER THOUGHT THEY COULD BE AND WHAT SOCIETY MADE THEM INTO THROUGH THE SOFTENING OF THEIR TOXIC MASCULINITY AND EMBRACING THE SUPPORT OF THEIR FRIENDS AND FAMILY AS A STRENGTH RATHER THAN A WEAKNESS

GOTTA BE ONE OF MY FAVORITE GENDERS FR FR

[ibroughtthisonmyselfpixels]

No Return Policy

A Between-Preludes Ficlet Where Certain Clothes Take Some Adjusting to Fit Sims with One Leg

Warning: contains the use of an ableist slur, specifically one against physically disabled people, used by a physically disabled person against himself. It has been censored, but I felt it important for him to use it in this instance, to reflect his mental state at the time. It may also discuss some of the ways cis people inherently see trans people at one point, albeit briefly.

hey jsyk you left 1 of ur bags of clothes in my room? cnt remember what u wanted to do w/it so im just leavin it on the bed. drive careful x

Rigel waits for the text’s ‘delivered’ notice to pop up before flopping with a huff onto his bed, which jostles the bag he’s talking about. Weak as it is, this is the best he can do for now. By the time he found it, Lorelei’d already left with the car, so yelling from the doorway was out; phoning her will be pretty much impossible; and there’s no way he’s taking the subway just to deliver a black sack full of her old clothes to her. Not even his fondness for her can conquer that hot mess of public ‘transport’.

The scrap of lined paper that’s serving as a label is falling off, barely hanging by one sticky-taped corner at this point. SALLY POSS., it says. But what the hell would Sally want with any of Lor’s stuff? Sally’s twice her size. Unless... argh, dammit, I know she explained this before. What is this for?

It’s one of the curses of living with your best-friend-cum-ex-girlfriend, he thinks, scratching his stump. You grow complacent. 

Which isn’t in itself a bad thing - he wouldn’t be staying here at all if they weren’t still enough in sync that they could get away with it. (Some people he’s talked to about it think it’s weird, that it creates an awkward atmosphere after the break-up. But honestly, he thinks it’d be even more awkward for him to just up and walk away from what’s a good thing in its own right just because one small side of it went wrong. Who do they think he is? The guy from that Dashed Hearts sitcom?) He takes care of the mechanical side of things and makes it a functioning house; she fills it with her music and makes it a home. When she’s got too few spoons to make them dinner, he orders pizza; when he’s had a rough day, she’s already turned all the lights down. It just - it works.

Except on days like this, where he’s caught short by not paying as much attention as he should have, and now he’s got a bag of clothes bound neither for Goodwill nor the garbage, taking up space. 

Maybe if I look through some of them, I’ll remember why they’re in there? He side-eyes the bag again. I mean, I saw her put them all in piles, sort them out. I helped her do it, for god’s sake. (Admittedly, he mostly added to the ‘keep’ pile.) It’s gotta jog my memory somehow. And it’ll give me something to do while Lor’s out, anyway.

Before he can change his mind, he pulls it closer to him, almost-tears it open - the label finally peels off and floats to the floor - and starts rifling through what’s inside.

An old frilly red top comes out first. Then a crumpled-up black V-neck, with a glittering tiger design on it; that’s tossed off quickly. A pair of orange pumps, with - wait, was that heel splitting before or after it went in the bag? He sets them aside for now; maybe he can add some glue to them later. White distressed jeans; that one makes sense. She’s never been in the market for jeans, comfortable or stylish. A bundled up pair of tights, some white leggings, yellow t-shirt with sun motifs, yellow this, brown that...

Man, Lorelei really does have a knack for this color coordination shit. ‘specially for a Banilla. ...wonder if it’s the autism that does it? I mean, half the chicks I’ve known couldn’t get on this level, he speculates, adding some dresses to the ever-increasing out-of-the-sack pile. Or am I bias? I dunno. Maybe I am. Or maybe she just looks so comfy in her clothes that they look better by association.  Wish I could be that comfy in mine. 

His thoughts take on an all-too-familiar bitter tone, and not for the first time that day, his amputation sticks out too strongly where he’s sitting. A literal double-edged sword: source of pride for survival; source of scorn and shame in blackest nights when every word spoken, in bitterness or sincerity, comes back to him. Ugly leg, ugly eyebrow, ugly face, ugly figure... Crack it open the wrong way, and he bets all the uglinesses in him will fall out. 

Fucking Saul. Fucking Bernadette. Fucking Gabe. Motherfucking Gabe’s fucking stupid fucking MMBC, leaving everyone dead but the fucking cr*pple, too low brow to fucking kick it. Fucking me for ever thinking I could fuckin--

A flash of sunset filling up his vision stops his long, long string of expletives. He blinks as though blinded, then the fog lifts and he realizes that he’s grabbed one of Lorelei’s more vibrant skirts in his distraction. Shifting it so he’s holding it from the top, he takes a better look at it. It’s multi-layered and ruffled, sort of like a flower; her standard yellow on top, down to orange, down to a red so dark it’s like... no, not like that, not like Bryce round the jaws of the glittering - like the YouTube logo! Yeah, that works. 

Lorelei wore this for their first-but-actually-second-if-you-count-their-first-meeting-ever date, her and Rigel’s. It looked good on paper, but it didn’t really sit on her hips well - he knew it, she knew it, neither actually said so because, you know, tact; and yet it was so very obvious that he hasn’t seen it on her since. He strokes the fabric absently. Almost a shame she’s getting rid of it. This relic, almost, this beginning of a better part of his life is in his hands, on the cusp of being thrown away. Maybe if it fit him better than her, she wouldn’t have to--

That last thought throws him up short.

Whoa. Come on, Rigel. Thought you’d cracked this. Haven’t had that urge for weeks. His wonky brows knit together at the lie. Okay, days. Haven’t had that urge for days. But you can’t go back on it now, you can’t act on it now! What the hell would Lor think? Cam freaked out and he was a fucking saint, what’s she gonna do if she comes back and...? 

...but she’s not coming back, and probably won’t be back for another few hours, and the decadence of the skirt cascades over his leg, drowning it out with the familiar comforting whisper of ~wear me, wear me~ he’s heard so oft...

...okay, a few minutes. Half an hour. Half an hour won’t hurt.

His trousers struggle and scratch against him, as though pleading for him to change his mind; he pushes through regardless. They always do that - always have. Through high scholarship, internship, relationship. And it’s never stopped the skirts from sliding on like silken butter, as the surviving leg pokes through, then the other, the hem stopping just at the empty knee. Never stops her heel (his? his... her heel) from stretching, landing, poised, dusted with imaginary glitter. Never stops the material clinging to her waist as she hoists herself up, brushes herself off - a little too tight, but so close to just right. 

A few elastic burns are a small price to pay for feeling human.

With every step in the flowing mass of cotton and cloth towards the full length mirror in the bathroom across the hall, the thick tar that makes up Rigel Maurer drips down, seeps through the floorboards to be someone else’s problem. It’s an unknown, unseen, copper-hair(ed-legged) fatale making this walk now, swinging open the door. Beautiful. Worthwhile in her own right. Alive, despite everything, despite all that--

She jerks back involuntarily, inches from the mirror. Fuck, the skirt’s got caught on the door handle.  Okay, don’t panic. She can handle this. It’s just by a belt loop - hell kind of skirt has belt loops anyway? If she tugs this way - no, this way, it ought to be able to slip out - no, nothing doing. Come on, if she just tugs-- 

She hears the tearing sound before she sees it. All else gets swamped up in the sudden rush of falling, crashing with an undignified thud. Pain cracks through the calf, and the skull; he’s hit his head on the sink. The room spins uncontrollably, scattered with stars, as he pushes himself back, tries to get his bearings. 

The first thing he sees as his vision clears is the skirt, prone on the floor, ripped clean in half from top to bottom.

“Oh shit.” 

The next hour or so goes by in a blind panicked blur for the now-re-trousered Rigel, and by the end of it the remains of the thing are, in this order: flattened out; frayed at the side where he tried and failed to do a basic blanket stitch; covered in flecks of masking tape on the inside; crumpled up after being tossed at the wall; and finally, in desperation, stuffed into a plastic bag from Mike’s Cornerstore and balanced precariously on top of a whole load of other clothes in the top of his closet. After that, for the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon, he halfheartedly puts the things he took out back into the SALLY POSS sack and potters about the house, making no attempt to escape the pitch black thundercloud over his head.

Who, besides himself, did he think he was fooling? 

Since life has a bad habit of throwing everything bad at once at him, he hears the hodge-podge skirt fall out of the closet for the third time seconds before Lorelei’s car returns home, engine sounding like it’s seen better days. He’s barely got it back in place before he hears her coming, engrossed in conversation - crap crap crap - and he swings the door shut over him before he can think twice to escape. Better in here than out there, right?

“--my head if it wasn’t screwed on, Sally.” His friend’s voice is loud through the wood, soft-spoken though it is. “I swear I had the bag with the others-”

“Honestly, it’s fine! Anything that gives me a chance to visit is fine. I love what you’ve done with the place!”

“Y-yes, well. That’s mostly Rigel’s... Anyway, it’s over here, on the bed. There should be enough in there for you to work with.”

He hears Sally’s wheelchair humming into the room, then a low whistle and a rustling through. “Hoo-ee, Lorelei, you didn’t have to get this many!”

“I know, but I wanted to.”

“No, hon, I’m not knocking you for - wow, look at all this! This’ll be great to get me started!” More ruffling. “Etsy’s gonna flip when they see this.”

Etsy? Isn’t that-

“Oh, did you leave that old rahrah skirt of yours in there too? Like I asked?”

“I think so? I can’t see it now, but I know we put it in there...”

“AAAAAAA! You’re an angel! A, a preemptive angel - you know what I mean! That old thing’s gonna make the best lampshade you ever did see once I resize it - I’ll have to show you when it’s done!”

In an instant, everything Lorelei explained comes rushing back. “Fuck, of course, she’s gonna repurpose them!” he cries. 

...cries a little louder than he intended, he realizes belatedly; for the next moment, the door swings open, sending the bag once again tumbling onto his head, and she’s got this curious bewildered look all over her face.

“Rigel? What are you doing in the closet?”

“Uh... I, I thought I’d practice coming out of it again. Hey, Sally,” he yells over her shoulder, “I’m bi! Thought you’d like to know.” 

Sally cracks up - she knew that old chestnut about him long ago. But Lorelei, as clear through her ghost of a smile, isn’t quite as impressed with the bluff. (To be fair, who could blame her? It was weak even by his standards.) “No, seriously. Is everything okay?”

“Well, depends how you define--” The object that got him in this predicament in the first place flops down again into his hands as he moves his head, reminding him of its inevitable conclusion. “Ah, right. The skirt. Here you go. I mean, might as well.” 

She takes it gratefully, without question why it’s in a separate bag, and with a “Here, catch,” throws it over to Sally.

“Oh, - just to warn you two, the thing might be a little more, uh...”  But his warning comes a little too late, as she’s already lifting what’s more like a scarf than a skirt out of the bag. “...pre-ripped.”

“Um. Well, okay? That’s convenient!” chirps Sally. “It means I don’t have to go to the tro--”

“No, no no, it wasn’t meant to come like that!” Lorelei’s golden eyes are wide behind her glasses in panic, making him squirm between the coathangers. As ill-advised as the thing was, it’s probably hard for her to see it in such a state... and all the harder when she turns back to him in even more confusion. “You saw me put it in there, didn’t you? It wasn’t ripped before.”

“Y-yeah. I know.”

“W...well, well, how’d it get ripped? It can’t have just done that by itself. Could it?”

A thousand pathetic excuses rear up in Rigel’s throat like last night’s cheap wine. A stray cat did it, a washing machine, a passing gnome, a robber. No, all too unbelievable. But he won’t tell her the truth, he won’t. It’s selfish, it’s ridiculous. She’s never going to believe it if he says that-

“I was wearing it, okay?”

...but nor can he lie to her face. Not to Lorelei’s face.

“...you were wearing it?” she parrots.

“Yeah. I was looking through all the stuff and I found it, and I put it on for a bit, and it got caught on the door handle and it just - it tore.” It all spills out before he can stop himself. “I tried to fix it, really I did, I couldn’t remember if she wanted it intact or what, and, and and it’s not... It’s just something I do sometimes, y’know - wear skirts - or dresses or other such, but not like in front of anyone, it’s not a fetish thing, I - if that’s what you’re thinking... It just helps me not be Rigel sometimes. Helps be feel less Rigel and more... more me. If that makes any sense. Probably doesn’t. Y-y’know.” 

It’s a long and rambly speech for someone like (more-)Rigel to make, especially spur of the moment. And the fact that Lorelei’s expression only softens slightly during it doesn’t help his nerves. But when she senses he’s done, she lets loose a sigh that cuts into his eardrums. 

“Okay. Thanks for telling me, Rigel. That was...” She pauses, looking somewhere above him - probably for any more surprises. When none arrive, she adds evenly, “Okay. I’m going to go check on Sally. I’ll let you calm down in here if you want.” (Belatedly, it occurs to him that Sally actually slipped out of the room while he was doing all that talking.)

“Thanks. ...Lor, I’m really sorry--”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you mad at me?”

She ignores that, heads to the living room. 

“Cus it really feels like you’re mad at me!” he calls, but again, she’s gone before he can finish. Feeling like a lemon, he finally steps out of his dark cramped box, but still opts to stay in his room for the rest of Sally’s visit, just to stay out of their way. It’s for the best.

Lorelei doesn’t approach the subject again even after Sally leaves, with the evidence of Rigel’s transgressions tucked into the rest of her clothes; nor does she bring it up by morning. In a way, it makes sense: that kind of revelation isn’t something you just discuss at the breakfast table. But even when he tentatively asks her again if she’s mad at him still, she deflects the subject onto what’s in the morning paper, and it feels wrong to press the point again after that... 

Still, he almost wishes she’d just tell him to move out and take his sickness with him and get it over with. It’d be better than this hanging over his head.

That sense of anxiety follows him through his work day as well. He starts his Fixit duties by, at both her request and his instinct, looking at the car. It turns out that the cam shaft belt is slipping off, which he takes care of with his usual expediency - he even tops up the oil in a (possibly futile) attempt to sweeten the pot - and that in turn allows her to set off for ‘some more last-minute shopping’. He’s got a series of pretty furious repairs to get through besides that, too: a washing machine at the Bumble place, one of the projectors at the cineplex which takes up most of the day, and a park-based porta-potty that ‘conveniently’ clogged itself just after two Hope’s Peak students got caught making out in it. Not to mention his usual weekly check-in at the local pool to see if that’s still running smoothly; fortunately, things still seem to be in order. 

It’s quite late by the time he gets home, and Lorelei still hasn’t returned, as far as he can see. No dinner on the stove, nor any sound of her in the house... though, he discovers, his bedroom door is ajar, enticingly so. His heart drops into his stomach, and he enters to face what’s surely a letter of regret, or an eviction notice, or something like that.

...what he finds instead is a well made bed, and another skirt on top of the bed.

He gasps - he can’t help himself. It’s... glamour! It’s long, he estimates about ankle-length, and looks almost like it’s made of leather, or faux-leather at the very least. And though it’s not as brightly colored as the last one he tried, it’s a deep brown flecked with lighter shades, perfectly matching the jacket he has on. He hops over to it, barely believing it’s real and in his room, touching it to make sure... no, surprisingly it’s still cotton! Very soft indeed! This’ll be a dream to - 

wait, is it for...? He lifts it up and off to make sure there’s no sign that it’s just a joke, and there’s a receipt underneath it. The telltale signs of Lorelei’s scattershot handwriting bleed through from the other side.

R, I have a feeling this one might fit you better than my old one. You can keep it on when I get back round 7pm if you want so I can see how it looks. I hope it does suit you - this store has a no return policy. - L x

A wild laugh escapes him as he hugs the skirt close. “Lorelei, you deceptive little miracle-worker...!” 

Unlike before, he wastes no time in getting this one on. (Except to head to the bathroom beforehand - he’s not making the same mistakes again.) The second it slides up, near seamlessly but for a zip on the side, over her hips, it feels like coming home in one swift motion. All the fears of the day dissipate in that oh-so-comfortable fit, that swooshing sound of fabric, the shaking loose of limbs and of notions and of names that have plagued her for minutes hours eons. It just screams... It doesn’t even scream Rigel. It screams her.

...so why, then, standing there in her new self, does something still not work about it? The mirror image seems just fine: top half false, bottom half real. Skirt over leg... and stump.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe the strongest beauty is also in being a little ugly. A little - risky.

With that thought pulsing through her head, she rifles through the medicine cabinet, pulls out a dainty pair of scissors, and tears a long slit up the right side of her skirt. Both loose flaps are picked up, then tucked into the top, letting her amputation shine through, true and - god forbid - proud.

“Perfect.”