(Arya’s note: this chapter occurs between chapters 20 and 21 of the main series, and the important events are vaguely summarized in chapter 21 as well, so it’s not necessary to read it to understand the story).
Monday afternoon, the day after Alex came back from her first weekend alone with Sophie, she was playing online with Aiden at their favorite open-world anime game, doing some coop farming of bosses and equipment as was becoming routine for them these days. After a couple of hours of playing, they simply turned off the game and continued talking to each other over the online call. Alex excitedly told him all about the events that transpired over the weekend (well, not anything intimate of course). She was so glad that Aiden knew about her being trans, she could now share all these things with him too.
Soon after finishing telling him many things about the weekend, Aiden asked her if she wanted to go the following day to his house, just like the old times, jokingly stating that he was jealous that Sophie had her for the full weekend while he hadn’t had her for a long time. It was true that they hadn’t met in each other’s house for quite some time now, with the pressure of the last year of high school and her spending quite a lot of time with Sophie. While they did meet from time to time outside school, and spent a lot of time inside it together, they were normally not alone on those occasions.
Alex accepted gladly, and they decided to meet after lunch the following day, when Aiden would be done with helping his parents. She could hear his excitement over the call, and smiled warmly to herself. With a final joking remark about inviting a girl to spending the day with him home alone at his home, they hung up. Alex then went to bed, feeling excited about the following day, although slightly annoyed about not being able to be in her female form. It was better that way anyway, who knew if his parents would be coming early or need to fetch something.
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Alex waited for Aiden right outside his restaurant, wearing a light blue T-shirt and white shorts and sneakers. He was supposed to finish his shift any minute now, so she guessed it wouldn’t be long. A couple of minutes later, Aiden fetched her and told her that he would need a bit more time, there was a very big table that hadn’t decided to leave yet, chatting to each other after lunch. So, with his parents consent, she could wait drinking whatever she wanted on the house.
After around 20 minutes of drinking her free orange soda and playing with her phone, Aiden was finally done and they walked together to his house, not too far away from the restaurant. He was still in his working clothes, so the first thing he did as they reached his home was to go to his room to get changed. Alex thought this was normal, after all, his waiter clothes were basically a black formal shirt and long black trousers, not exactly comfortable casual clothes.
He came back down around a minute later, wearing a black anime T-shirt and light brown shorts, walking on his socks. They then sat down on the couch in the living room, and played some rounds of an anime fighting game, which she mostly lost (why was she always worse than anyone else at these games, she lamented), and then spent more than half an hour on a round of a party game, which she lost again but only by a small margin. Then, they tried a new asymmetrical board game he had acquired recently, which she loved quite a bit. She was in awe that people could balance such a game, with each character being so different.
Hours had past already, but in principle Alex could stay for a couple more hours before leaving for dinner. Still, they were unsure of what to do now. Suddenly, Aiden asked her a question.
“Alex”, he started sounding a bit uncertain. “Can I tell you something?”.
“Sure”, she replied, a bit confused at his demeanor, starting to worry something might be wrong.
“Look, I…”, he hesitated, but continued anyways. “ For a few months now, I’ve been… wearing girl’s clothes when alone. I always did it secretly, because I was fearing people would give me a very hard time for that or be disgusted by it, but since you told me about you being a girl, my friend, I’ve wanted to tell you.” He did a little pause before continuing. “I thought you of all people might understand me a little”.
It took Alex a few seconds to process what Aiden was telling him. It was clearly something that meant a lot to him, a very precious secret, so she decided to take his hand and smile at him in a reassuring way. Still, Alex was confused about something. Was he telling him that he might also be trans? While crossdressing didn’t really imply any gender identity issue, he did say that she might understand him. She needed to make sure.
“It’s OK, Aiden, thanks for telling me, you know I wouldn’t judge you or anything like that. Specially given what you know about me… But what do you mean with that I might understand you a little? Are you saying that you might also be… like me?
Aiden looked at her confused for a second before realizing what Alex meant. “No, no, nothing like that, that’s not it. I just meant about liking feminine things and not being able to tell anyone out of fear of rejection”, he tried to clarify. “So, we won’t be an all girls friend group now, don’t get your hopes up”, he added jokingly.
Thinking about it, Alex realized that at least in some sense, Aiden was right in that their experiences had some similarities. After all, they were both extremely affected by the hatred and rejection that society had for men expressing anything remotely feminine. While it felt a bit wrong when said like that (she was NOT a man), she probably would have found out about being trans a whole lot earlier if it wasn’t deemed so much a taboo to like and try more feminine things. She might have even worn the girl’s uniform at high-school even before finding out she was trans if that had been the case…
She realized that she had been lost in thought for a few seconds, and she should be focusing in her dear friend right now, in a vulnerable spot. Alex decided to tell him about how she used to envy the girl’s uniform in high-school and similar other “signs” of being trans. Given what she knew of him now, they could have bonded quite a bit about it…
Aiden found it amusing that he also had a similar experience, but they both reached completely different outcomes. It’s quite something to think about, Aiden once again confirming to Alex that he had no desire to actually be a woman, he just wanted to look “cute”, and liked how the clothes made him feel and express himself.
Alex was quite curious now, so she asked him to give her a little fashion show, if he was up to it. Aiden’s face lit up and ran upstairs, telling her to stay down. She sit on the sofa to wait for him, a mix of excitement and curiosity making the wait quite longer than expected for her. She could hear rumbling in his room, he was probably taking his clothes out of whatever hiding spot he had for them.
“Close your eyes~”, Aiden said in a teasing voice. Alex did and could hear steps coming down the stairs, and stopping in front of her, for the big reveal. “You can open them now”
When Alex did, he was quite surprised. He was wearing an oversized white hoodie with an anime character on it, and underneath a short pink skater skirt peaked out for a few centimeters, stopping some distance above his knees. He was also wearing white tights and black cute mary-jane shoes.
Alex was amazed at how well he looked! If one did not look at his face, as he had not shaved and he wasn’t wearing any makeup, he looked perfectly passing! His slender frame made his lack of breasts look perfectly normal, and his legs looked really feminine. Alex was a bit jealous of him, specially being in her male form which could not really look that good in girl’s clothes in any way (sparking a nice dysphoric bout), but reminded herself that she had a female form, she was the luckiest trans girl alive for that, and shouldn’t be feeling those things about her friend.
She smiled at him and started complimenting him intensely, he really looked very nice! Aiden, on his part, could not stop spinning in his skirt, a feeling Alex understood very well and made her chuckle. They didn’t have too much time left, but Alex tried to reassure Aiden and told him that he could be wearing whatever he wanted next time they met.
Aiden smiled, and proposed something to her. He had been working on a surprise cosplay for the coming anime convention, and he wanted her and Sophie to know about this before doing it. He blushed a bit as he said that he wanted to get their approval in a way, even if he knew that was not necessary and all that.
Looking at her phone, Alex decided it was time to return home, and Aiden should probably stash his clothes back away wherever he was hiding them. They hugged each other goodbye, and she walked home, glad to know more about her dear friend, and wondering if it was Aiden himself who should tell Sophie about this.
