DetectiveRed

The start of part 2. Huge content warnings for suicidal thoughts, planning, identity death and disordered eating. If you are sensitive to those things maybe wait until the next chapter is out. A smaller summary of what happened will be in that chapter and those things will be only mentions. Be safe and only read if you fell you can handle it.

“How long are you going to keep letting her push you around Jay?” Nick asked. Things had been tense for a while. Jay had known this was coming, but she could never bring herself to stop it. She couldn’t bring herself to do much of anything. No matter how much she loved Nick things were never going to work out as long as she was herself. 

“She isn’t pushing me to do anything anymore,” she lied. Her ability to lie had steadily improved. Countless "I’m fine"s had made sure of that. Why was she even bothering with it at this point? Nick knew her mum was shit. 

“So you’ve just given up. Jay, you're my boyfriend. Please just talk to me. We’ve been going out for eight months can’t you just be honest?”

“It’s been eight months and you still call me your boyfriend. What is it? Do you think I’m going to turn into a guy again? I’m a girl. I’m stuck as one and I always will be. Get it through your head, Nick,” she spat. She felt like she would have been crying if her tears weren’t dried up. 

“James?”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Jay, for the love of fuck can you stop trying to push me away? We both know that’s not going to work. I might be autistic, but I’m not stupid. You’re hurting. You’ve barely been eating. You're basically skin and bone.”

“I thought guys were meant to like it when their girlfriends were skinny.”

“Please. I already asked my parents if you could move in with us. We can get you help. Maybe even help you transition!” Jay desperately wanted to grab the outstretched hand offering him a better life. She could go back to being him. Being James. A snarky guy with a wonderful boyfriend. The person she’d been for the first couple of months when she could push the dysphoria out. 

“I’m fine. I’m happy. If you can’t understand the guy you like is gone then we should just break it off.” She’d finally said it. Finally broken the awkwardness. Finally severed the last thing she wanted to keep in life. 

“Jay, you’re not serious.” Tears were welling up in his eyes. He wanted to help her. She could see that, but there was no getting out of this aside from her plan. 

“I am. Just forget about James. Forget about having a boyfriend or I’m gone.” She’d worn the frilliest dress she had to this date for the sole purpose of illustrating who she had become. There was no going back to James. She wasn’t even pressured into wearing dresses anymore; she just liked them. James would hate who she’d become. She wasn’t worthy of being a man.

“I can’t, Jay. Please just talk to me. I love you.” He was sobbing. She’d hoped this wouldn’t hurt him. She wasn’t sure she could deal with that. Luckily, she wouldn’t have to deal with it for much longer. 

“There’s nothing to talk about, James is gone. He’s not coming back.” 

She ran. Maybe it wasn’t the most articulate or kind way to end things but the less he cared the better. She needed to get home. It wasn’t like there was ever going to be a happy ending for them together and now he might find someone who actually deserves him. The walk home gave her a chance to think. Convince herself she was doing the right thing.

Adam and Katie were gone. They’d tried reaching out a couple of times. Katie had been adamant she could help. That her mums would be willing to take her in. Adam had been the best bro type friendship she’d ever had. He’d help her navigate her dysphoria. Taught her how to look more masculine but in the end, he couldn’t fix her. The year ended and she was still like this. She wasn’t strong enough to be like them. She wasn’t strong enough to assert her identity. So she'd blocked them and stopped letting them in.

Nick still hung out with them, and somehow convinced them that she needed help. They came together and staged some sort of intervention on the holidays; which she had left without saying a word. Even Melody had tried to intervene. She would come into his dreams nightly and updated her on ways she might be able to back into a guy and things that Jamie could do to make it easier. She, of course, did none of these things. Why bother?

“Welcome home, Jamie,” her mum said. Jamie’s acting had gotten a lot better. Enough that she could convince her mum that not only was she happy, but that she’d never been happier. Maybe after tonight that would be true. “How were things with Nick? Did you spend some good quality time together?” The innuendo was obvious. She hadn’t expected her mum to be so awkward and embarrassing about her dating a guy. She talked about how she should let Nick turn her into a woman. It was disgusting. She was disgusting. 

For once Jamie dropped the act. “We broke up.” That was all she said before heading to her room. 

She hit her bed with a thump. There were parts of her that wanted to feel sad. She wanted to do something girly and cry about how she’d broken up with her boyfriend. That wanted to scream at the world for being a torturous hell hole. Instead, she laid there. Silent.

“Are you okay, honey?” There was a sweetness in her mother's voice that made everything worse. 

“I’m fine.” Jamie’s voice came out raspy. How long had she been lying there? 

“Okay, well I’ll get us some fish and chips for dinner and a pint of ice cream. It’ll be a mother-daughter night.”

“Okay, Mum.” She had no plan of joining her. 

She curled into bed for what she hoped would be the last time, closed her eyes and began to drift off. 

Melody’s tree came into view. It was cold. So cold. The familiar sight offered no comfort and the world around her seemed almost grey. Now she just had to wait. Melody would be somewhere around here. 

“What the hell were you doing today James?” Melody shouted. 

“What did it look like?” She laughed. 

“It seems like you decided to finish destroying your friendships? What’s wrong with you?”

“You can see inside my head, right? You tell me, Sherlock.”

She went quiet for a moment as she tried to sift through the waves of Jamie’s thoughts and emotions.  A look of shock and terror spread across her face as she realised what the emaciated figure in front of her wanted. 

“I already told you I’m not doing that. I wouldn’t even know how!”

“Then try, or I’m going to do it tonight.” 

“James, think about this. Do you really think me turning you into a girl would fix things? You aren’t a girl. I can try and turn you into one but could you live with knowing that it’s not the real you.” Melody knew the answer. Jamie had been planning this for a week. She knew that Melody wouldn’t let her do it. 

“I don’t care, Melody. I just want this to stop. Fuck you can just have this body. Either you take it, or turn me into a girl, or I walk under the nearest truck.”

“You can’t just do this.”

“Yes, I can, and I’d rather not take you with me. So what’s it going to be?” A person on the verge of suicide had no right looking cocky, but that’s how she felt. 

“You are an asshole.” 

“That was established a while ago.”

------------------------------------------------------

Melody woke up to the sound of Jay’s mum knocking on the door. 

“Dinner’s here. It’s hard to be depressed while eating so get out here.”

“Okay, Mum,” she replied. She could still feel Jay was alive. That was one positive. That didn’t mean he would help her get used to being alive again, though. She could feel his consciousness there, but it was dormant? Asleep? Comatose?

First things first, she needed to remember how to move. She started small, by twiddling her fingers, then her hand and then finally her entire arm. It was easier than she thought, though everything felt weak. Had he seriously been refusing to eat? She tried sitting up. Harder than simply moving her arm but she managed. It felt weird to be alive again. She could feel Jay’s heart pump in his chest, and his stomach rumble for the food it had been deprived of. She slid her legs off the bed and learned quickly that walking is a skill that stays with you. 

Now it was time to meet his mother. She was observant. Except when it came to the suffering she was inflicting on her child. If she found out they’d switched or noticed that she was a trans girl, things were going to get messy. It was gonna be hard to hide too. Melody hated the woman. Her treatment of Jay put Melody in this situation. If she’d just listened and let him be himself Melody could have fixed his body by now. Adam had his ideal body, and if she’d just cared about Jay he could have had his. 

Still, it was nice to feel things. She’d gotten some of Jay’s second feelings, like hunger, some touch but it was always dull like she was reaching through a very tough glove. When this whole thing began, she would always go back to the school and her tree whenever she thought it was safe, there was never time to really connect with Jay’s feelings unless he was having a breakdown. At which point she’d try and talk to him. The last couple of weeks had been particularly draining. Jay didn’t feel much of anything. His body was fading and she had been trying to reason with him. Trying to get him to just talk to someone or take Katie or Nick up on their offers and he kept ignoring her. 

She opened the door and walked down a hallway full of Jay’s memories. Photos of his life before she ruined everything sat framed on the wall, alongside pictures from his first date with Nick that his mum had insisted on printing and framing. She felt a lingering sense of embarrassment from Jay. How was she going to explain this to Nick? He was going to be so pissed. He already blamed her for ruining his life but now she was forced to take it over? This was only going to get messier.

The smell of fried food filled the air and all thoughts of what she was going to do were gone. She was ravenous, Jay hadn’t eaten properly in weeks and his mother had just bought her so many chips and two pieces of flake. From what she was able to gather this was Jay’s old order and she was glad. 

Coming face to face with his mum was intimidating. Her eyes were kind but she knew that behind them was the person who’d been torturing Jay for weeks. Bigots she had found, were sometimes kind to those who they thought were normal. Part of Melody wanted to stand up to her. The other part was starving and knew that without a plan she might ruin his life further. Quietly, she sat down and started shovelling chips into her face. 

“So are you going to tell me what happened with Nick?” his mum probed. Melody stopped the aforementioned shovelling of food. Was it okay for her to respond? Jay had forced her to take over his life so it’s not like she could avoid it. 

“I’m not the same person I used to be.” She said. It was vague. True and from what she understood of teen romance wasn’t an unlikely scenario. 

“Well, that’s his fault for not seeing what a wonderful girl you’ve become.”

“Thanks, Mum," she said through gritted teeth.