The woman sighed as the bathroom door stayed shut in front of her, despite the promise of the occupant that it would be opened three minutes ago. Hell’s bells, how long does it take to put on a shirt, she thought to herself. After waiting another minute, she sighed once again and finally spoke. 

“Hey, hon, you alright in there? Get lost on the way to the buttons or something?”

A slightly muffled reply came through the door. “Damn it, Dakota, don’t rush me! I’ll be out in just a minute.”

“You said that five minutes ago. And another five minutes before that too, for the record.” Silence served as her answer, prompting another sigh from the ever so slightly annoyed woman. “Look, I’m going to go sit on the bed. Just come in when you’re done, alright? I’m tired of standing out here.”

Dakota walked down through the slim hallway and opened the door to the bedroom with a quiet creak. The mattress springs groaned as she flopped herself down onto them, her annoyance quickly turning to worry for her girlfriend as she sat back up. It shouldn’t take her twenty minutes to change clothes, even if it is-

Dakota’s thoughts were cut short as her girlfriend suddenly appeared in the doorway, dressed to kill in a three piece suit. Her ginger hair was tied back in a high bun, helping ever so slightly to draw attention away from her shoulders tenseness, which was showing through even with the three layers of cloth over them. Dakota’s eyes wandered lower, drinking in the (in her opinion) marvelous view. An immaculate windsor knot sat on top of the fully buttoned collar, explaining the long wait she had to endure. 

A cough rang out, breaking Dakota’s silent stare. The nerves that had already been eating away at her girlfriend were even more obvious as she spoke in a quiet, shaky voice. “Um, how-how do I look? Is it bad?”

“Oh, Sylvia, no. I promise you, you look amazing.”

Sylvia’s shoulders stayed tense, her mind refusing to believe it after spending so long staring in the mirror to tie her tie correctly. “Y-you really mean that?”

“I promise you, I mean it with every part of me. You’re gorgeous.” An ever so slight wince crossed Sylvia’s face at that, a small pain that would have been impossible to see by the average observer. But Dakota was no average observer. “You’re still not crazy about being called gorgeous, huh?”

“I app-preciate the compliment, I really do!”

“Never said you didn’t.”

Sylvia gave Dakota her best puppy dog eyes to try and weasel out of having to answer, a stern concerned but caring look being her only response. She sighed as she sought the words to try and articulate a subject that slipped out of her hands like a live fish every time she tried to explain it. “I just… I just thought I’d grow into them, you know?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. Can you explain it more for me? It’s okay if you can’t.”

Sylvia shot a glance at the bed, asking for permission to sit down. Dakota scooted over and patted the mattress to the left of her, simultaneously making room for her and inviting her over. She walked over and sat as she undid the button of her suit jacket, still trying to pick out the right words that seemed to be impossible to find. “It’s just like… look, let me ask you a question. When you first realized you were maybe not a guy and you started letting yourself explore the other options, did you ever feel like you didn’t deserve the things that came with that exploring? Like using she/her, even just in your own head.”

“Uh, yeah, a bit. I feel like that particular combination of imposter syndrome and dysphoria is almost universal, honestly.”

Sylvia nodded slightly, eyes shifting from her girlfriend to the carpet as her seemingly  never-ending quest for words continued. “It might be, yeah. But, but, that is what it is. It’s imposter syndrome and dysphoria and the feeling that you can’t feel like something other than utter shit because that's how you’ve gone through all of your life so far. And you grow out of it or maybe over it you know? You realize that you don’t have to earn them and you come to like them and have no problem with using them all the time with everyone. Is this even making any sense?”

“It is, yeah.”

“I just always thought that everything else would be like that too, you know? I just thought I’d grow into skirts and makeup and being called things like ‘gorgeous’ and ‘good girl’ and shit like that.”

Worry flashed on Dakota’s face before she forced it back into a neutral position. “Do you not like being referred to as a woman? It’s okay if you don’t, you don’t have to pretend to for my sake especially if it’s hurting you.”

“It’s not that I don’t like being a woman or being referred to as one, as much as I don’t like it being emphasized? Like, if I’m at work and someone says ‘she’s over there’ or calls me a woman I like that. I like being a woman in casual conversation, but being a woman in intimate conversation just still doesn’t feel like me.”

“Can I ask you a question? And please don’t be upset by me asking it.”

“I promise I won’t. Go ahead.”

“Have you considered stopping HRT? Just to see how you feel off of it now that you’ve had more time on it?”

Another sigh left Sylivia’s mouth. Five in one day, approaching her record. “I can’t say I haven’t, because I have but I don’t want to and I’m not going to. I know you never knew me when I was running on testosterone, but it wasn’t great to put it mildly. I barely made it to eighteen to be able to sign my own consent forms. T’s great for a lotta people, but I ain’t one of them.”

Dakota nodded, at a loss of words herself. The couple sat in silence for a moment, Dakota laying her hand over Sylvia’s before she quietly spoke up once again. “So, what do you want then?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that you’ve spent the past few minutes listing off all of these things that you never liked and thought you would, so what do you like? What have you grown into?”

Sylvia chuckled as she averted her eyes once again. “Babe, there ain’t no point in daydreaming as nice as it might be. You spit out the back window, you’ll hit West Virginia. Spit out the front window, a transphobic republican. I have to look and act a certain way to be safe, same as you do, so there ain’t no point in pretending I don’t.”

Now it was Dakota’s turn to imitate a puppy, a tactic Sylvia was far more susceptible to. “Please, for me? Just think of what you could do whenever we can finally move to Lexington to let you finish your degree.”

A sixth sigh, a new personal record of Sylvia’s. “Fine, fine. I guess I’d want to look more like my namesake, Sylvia Scarlett.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute! Out of all the movies Katharine Hepburn made, you named yourself after that Katharine Hepburn movie? That movie was awful!”

Sylvia was indignant at the mocking of her namesake. “Look, I’ll admit that the film isn’t great from a plot standpoint-”

“What other standpoint is there?”

Sylvia continued louder at her girlfriend's interruption, a small smile gracing her face in response to the behavior. “-But, she is amazing in it. Plus, how she looks with her hair done for that terrible, terrible plot? She’s - I don’t even know the word, honestly. But, it’s wonderful.”

“Handsome,” Dakota suggested quietly.

“Handsome… yeah, handsome. She was very handsome in that film.”

Dakota saw an opportunity and knew she had to take it. She just hoped it wouldn’t explode in her face. “But not as handsome as you in that suit.” 

A smile appeared on Sylvia’s face while her eyes showed nothing but disbelief. “You’re just saying that because you know I like it, even though it’s not true.”

Dakota’s hand moved from laying on top of Sylvia’s to gently hold the edge of her tie, her thumb running back and forth over the front as it got acquainted with the material. “Now, there’s that dysphoria denying the truth you mentioned earlier.” Sylvia laughed at that, the smile slowly creeping up to her eyes. Dakota said a quick prayer in her head that she hadn’t misread what her girlfriend had just said before she continued. “So, tell me, how long did it take you to tie this knot, pretty boy?”

Sylvia’s eyes widened and her cheeks flushed hot as her mouth tried to stutter out a response. Dakota grinned like a Cheshire cat at being right. Eventually, and with great difficulty, Sylvia managed to stutter out “W-what?”

Dakota wrapped the tie around her hand, slowly bringing Sylvia in closer to her face as she spoke. “What I asked is how long did this knot take you, pretty boy?”

Their faces were inches apart, Sylvia’s still radiating heat from its red color and Dakota’s grin never having disappeared even as she slightly tilted her head. “F-fif-fifteen minutes.”

“Want to see how long it takes me to ruin it?”

“Pl-please.” 

“As you wish, handsome.” Dakota murmured just before she planted a kiss on Sylvia’s lips and pulled her down onto the bed on top of her by her tie.