Content Warning: mention of internalized transphobia, self-hate
The drive back to Danny’s place was rather keyed up. He refused to say anything, and kept himself turned away from Ariana. He had his hood pulled up over his head and his body shook as if he was chilled in the 80 degree weather. Ariana cast more than a couple worried glances in his direction on the drive, but decided against saying anything. He’d come to her when he was ready.
He tossed his pack onto the couch as he passed by, looking like he was about to storm off to his bedroom. “Darren!” Ariana called after him, a note of panic in her voice. He kept walking towards his room until he hit a solid force that blocked his path.
“Get out of my way, Babel!” Danny growled at Babel.
Ariana lightly grabbed Danny on a shoulder, trying to turn him around to look at her. “Darren, talk to me, please.”
He spun around in place, his face shimmering with tears and his eyes bloodshot. “My name’s not Darren! It’s Danny! Or… I think it is?” He held a hand to his face, more tears running down his cheeks, dripping onto his clothes and the floor. “Something’s changed and I don’t know what it is. Something up here…” He tapped on his head for a moment, then he slammed the palm of his hand into his forehead with undue force in frustration. Ariana stepped closer, grabbing his arm in worry. But she wasn’t holding Danny with any real strength, so when he wrenched his arm away and threw off his balance he fell to the floor.
Ariana watched the shivering mess that was her boyfriend and lover slowly sit himself upright, and she sat on her knees in front of him. He held his arms close to his chest with his head bowed, sobbing but no longer attempting to retreat.
“I’m going to take your hood down… okay? I’m not going to grab you.”
Danny didn’t respond, didn’t want to respond. He wanted to be able to close his eyes and wake up from this nightmare. He kept his eyes shut tight, trying to put himself outside of his own body if he could.
**
Ariana slowly reached forward, pushing Darren’s hood off of his head, catching hold of an internal gasp of shock. She had seen him only hours earlier, so it came as a surprise when several extra inches of hair spilled from the open hood. Even Darren’s face seemed different--not much, but enough that something looked off. A little lighter, perhaps. A touch rounder, in spots. She tried not to stare, and as her gaze traveled from his face to his torso she could see that Darren was drowning in his top. From there she saw his hands. Their impossible litheness, their long and dark nails, their trembling…
She closed the distance between them, then pulled him close into an embrace.
He grabbed her shirt and pushed, trying to create distance. “Let me go,” Darren growled angrily.
“No,” ahe simply responded.
“Let go of me!” He pushed harder against her.
“No.”
A heavy sigh escaped him, and she felt much of the fight leave him.
“Just leave me alone… I’m not good for you.” His voice came in choked sobs. Though he still exerted some force to push her away, she had a firm hold on him.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Dar-Danny… There never has been.” She kept her voice as level as she could, but the growing knot in her throat threatened to steal her voice. Ariana barely managed to keep her own tears from mixing with his. He needed support. She knew she’d be able to cry about it later when he was able to be her support.
“Yes there is… I can’t be the man you deserve… especially not with BABEL torturing me!”
Ariana took his face in her hands, lifting so they could look into each other’s eyes. “Dannielle Michaelson,” she started. Danny’s eyes widened, his breath hitched; with the firmness of her voice she had managed to all but entirely disarm him. “I have lied for years to keep your secret, and I was fine with it since I got to have you. For years I’ve told people I’m bi, but the truth is I’m a lesbian, with some leaning in homo-flexible. When you told me how you felt and who you were, that’s when I truly saw the real you. I love you, Danny, so much so that when you told me six months ago you’d rethought who you were I knew I’d still be with you. Yes, my attraction began when you told me you were a woman, but I love YOU. Woman, man, anything and everything between.” She sighed before continuing. “Danny… I’ve lied for you for years, to help keep your secret. I will not lie TO you to help you lie to yourself.” She leaned her head closer, touching her forehead to Danny’s.
“Are you angry and scared… because you like the changes?”
**
Danny opened his mouth to argue, but as he did his mind wandered for only half a moment, but it was half a moment long enough. The subtle feeling of his chest pressing against Ariana’s, the way he was smaller and felt less disproportionate, the way his jeans hugged him just a little more, the softness of his hands and the overt femininity of his claw-like nails. A winded and heartbroken sigh escaped Danny as he realized Ariana was right. He hated himself for liking it, for some part of him wanting it and willing it on, he hated being a freak and not knowing how not to be one. Danny shook his head, his new length of hair tickling his ears as he did, not wanting to admit it. Admitting it made him weak… made him lose to his compulsions.
His eyes were wide, shifting focus from eye to eye on Ariana. He had to deny it, all he had to do was open his mouth and deny it. Surely if he could do that he’d finally be worthy of being fixed… right? He opened and closed his mouth several times, attempting to will the fortitude to deny and rebuke, to stand against his strangeness. Yet every time his voice almost came, he felt as if he stood at the mouth of a great maw that threatened to devour him, that what he’d truly be denying was peace. But then… what would accepting it be? A chasm? Something equally terrifying? What and how much would he lose by accepting it? Danny felt that acceptance would be tantamount to being weak willed… but that denying it would kill him.
“It’s going to kill me,” Danny said quietly. He hadn’t even meant to say it, it just came out. The moment he’d thought it he said it, and hearing it come from his own voice made it real. There was no escaping that single fact: He could not run away from his unhappiness. Not anymore. He was being faced with a temptation so ridiculously ambrosian, that he didn’t know how he’d ever be able to deny it. Though through sheer moments of pain, ever since Babel told him his fate, he’d been fighting back the potential joy. All the times he’d prayed to God as a child, all the times he’d wished an Angel to set him free, and his salvation came at the hands of an unstable Demon. He was far from being able to accept the conditions under which all this was happening to him, but- “I want it all… so badly. It’s like every fiber, every cell of my body screams for it. I want to beg for more but I can’t do it, I just can’t!
“I feel like I’d be betraying myself, and my father, everything I’ve worked so hard for! What does it say about me if I just… give it all up!? I made my decision, and now it’s taken from me. I’m disgusted that I’m so happy that someone else forced me to change my mind. I want to tear Babel out of me and then rip her apart with my bare hands. And yet I want to throw myself at her feet for her gift…” Danny bowed his head, hands clasping the sides of his face. “I don’t know what to do.”
His face burned with shame as he sobbed, and then he felt coolness on his cheeks as Ariana gently slipped her hands beneath his. She lifted his face gently to meet hers. Ariana’s eyes were full of compassion and a calmness that he desperately needed.
“Well then, Darren… or Danny… who is it you want to be right now?” she asked.
He let himself relax into her hands as he was wracked by more quiet sobs. Danny knew now, without a doubt, there really is no escaping yourself.
“I want to be me…” he said as a non-admittance, though Danny, Ariana, and Babel knew what it was he meant. Ariana nodded slowly before responding.
“Who are you right now?” Ariana asked, causing Danny to shrink away some.
He stared at himself, his hands, the hair in his face, the subtle but defined curvature of his bust. “I’m Danny,” her whispered. He crossed his arms and held himself.
And then, it happened. Danny’s face shifted into a very small, crooked smile. “I’m Danny,” he said at a normal volume. He broke into a light fit of chuckles, his smile widening. “I’m Danny!” he repeated jovially.
Ariana looked at him with a mix of anxiety and surprise. Danny continued to chuckle for several seconds, his smile warm and genuine, but it didn’t last. As the relief and realization washed over him, so too did the guilt of having made a promise he never could have kept. The discouraging mess of memories and self-delusions playing in his mind, reminding him of the many times he had tried to repress himself and change his behavior, thinking that if he only changed a little bit more… tried to be a little more masculine… he’d fix whatever was broken inside of him.
But… was he broken? Had he ever been? It’s not that he’d ever wanted to change, it’s that he didn’t want to seem different. He didn’t want to be HER, he just was her. He’d spent all this time and effort believing he was trying to not be someone else, when in reality all he’d been doing was BEING someone else. He was… She was pretending to be Darren. She had assumed she was a man who felt like a woman, but with everything, it occurred to her that she’d always been a woman who was convinced had to be a man. She was broken, not because of what she was, but because of what she had done to herself. The pain and misery she allowed herself to go through for the sake of… what? Being normal? Whose normal was she trying to be?
“I’m not broken, I’m just me! I’m Danny… I don’t want to feel like this anymore, I can’t take it! I just want to be me!” Danny yelled out through her tears. She grabbed onto Ariana, pulling her close and burying her face in her chest. “Please don’t be mad at me, I’m just so tired all the time… and I’m tired of looking at myself and feeling nothing but disappointment! I wish I felt like that when people looked at me, they saw me, not this costumesque caricature!”
Ariana wrapped her arms around Danny, sighing in her own relief. She ran her fingers through Danny’s hair, feeling the softness. “I never once thought you were broken. I’ve just loved you as you are… however you are. I’m sorry if I made you feel like I preferred you one way or the other, I only want you to be happy.”
**
Danny continued to cry into Ariana’s shirt, while off in the distance by the bedroom, Babel stood silently and watched. Unsure of how she was going to add to what Ariana said… unsure if it would even be appropriate. Somehow, though, a pang of guilt tore through her at Danny’s tears. Babel held her head in her hands, a new feeling gripped her… was this shame?
Yey