Chapter Text
Raven didn’t show up for his funeral.
She had been Taiyang’s first love, had cared so deeply for him that she had honored her firstborn son, her only child, with his name. They were going to get married.
Seventeen years later, Taiyang Xiao Long Jr.’s namesake was lowered in the ground, and Raven Branwen didn’t bother to show up. Tai Jr. wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t had high hopes for her anyway.
Tai Jr.’s half-sister Ruby was crying her eyes out. Ruby’s mother Summer was right beside her, a hand on the shoulder of her child by blood and her child by choice, her cheeks wet with tears. Even uncle Qrow had made it. He wouldn’t have said where his sister was stone-cold sober and was too drunk for anyone to have bothered asking. Nobody talks to crying men anyway.
Only the deceased’s son had dry eyes. Taiyang Jr. had a hard face; a clenched square jaw, five o’clock shadow, eyes with monolids such a bright shade of brown that they gleamed red in the sunlight. All this on top of that notoriously imposing figure, 6’1”, wedge-shaped back, clenched right fist, and the crisp shoulders of the suit could set any stomach fluttering with anxiety.
The others at the funeral looked at Taiyang Jr. and they thought they knew what was going on inside that head. They could imagine the sort of grief a son on the edge of manhood felt for his dead father. The brave face he put on for his sister and stepmother as he became the man of the house just a little too soon.
What a load of bullshit. Taiyang Xiao Long Jr. didn’t feel much of anything and he fucking hated himself for it. What kind of selfish son was he, wrapped up in his head as they put his father in the ground? The things he was thinking made him want to scream. Made him wish he were the one in the ground and not his father. Made him wish he wasn’t such a goddamn piece of shit to throw away his father’s name the moment he was six feet under.
Made him wish he could have told him that maybe his firstborn had been his daughter, not his son.
The last thing he wants is to burden his family with it. Not now, when they’re all still in shock, still grieving, feeling the aching hole in their hearts where he used to be. He can’t do that to them. Not when Taiyang Jr., with his scruffy blonde beard and scraggly curls, is all they left of him. When Summer says he looks so much like his father at his age.
He can’t not think about it. When he tries to block out the grief, he can’t keep his mind away from how there’s something about she and her he thinks he’s falling in love with. When he can’t figure out who he is, what he is, he can’t help but wish his father were here. That maybe if his male role model hadn’t up and died on him then maybe he wouldn’t be the way he is. That maybe if he could see a future where he’s not dead at 49 like his father before him he wouldn’t be trying to worm his way out of the name and the destiny it implies.
She can’t make his death about her. Not when Ruby’s broken down about it, when Summer can’t sleep through the night. She just can’t do that to them. And then she realizes she’s been using she and the cycle begins anew.
Question your gender to get away from grief. Work on the grief to get away from gender. Taiyang’s made zero progress on either front.
He can’t even escape into sports the way he used to. He used to play basketball with his dad in the driveway. The boys in the locker room make his skin crawl, bragging about their latest conquests, about which girls they find fuckable and which they wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. When Tai takes off his shirt in there he has to stifle a scream. Whatever. He has to man up. He needs the PE credits to graduate. Putting him in the women’s bathroom as he is now would only make things worse. So what if he’s a woman? That he can’t bear the stench of sweat and Axe body spray another day without wanting to punch his knuckles bloody? What woman could possibly feel safe in a locker room with him, with anyone shaped the way he is?
He wishes he were here. He wishes that he could talk to him for just a minute. To tell him what he’s going through, that maybe he’s a she. She never got to tell him who she was. She’ll never hear him say her real name. He died and she still has his name. She wishes this weren’t true. That she’d told him. That she even had a name that wasn’t his.
Mostly, though, she wishes it was her. That she had died instead of him, that she wasn’t grieving her father in the middle of a gender crisis. They’d have buried her in a suit, she knows it, but she can’t bring herself to care that the name on the headstone would be the same, because at least she’d be gone and wouldn’t have to care.
Taiyang Jr. dreams about him sometimes. That he faked his own death somehow, even though she’s seen his body, cold and hard and magnificent as a Roman statue. Sometimes he returns from death only to die again before she can speak to him. Sometimes it’s a heroic sacrifice, sometimes it’s a hunting accident; sometimes it’s drowning in a flood that swallows up the whole world and leaves Taiyang Jr. alone on a mountaintop with nothing but instant ramen. She doesn’t know if the dreams will ever go away.
Taiyang Xiao Long Jr. is not a happy man.
Fuck, he might not even be a man.
She can’t get away from it when she’s alone with her thoughts, no matter what she’s doing. She cooks for her family -- for her stepmother and her half-sister -- more often than not, and even then, with her mind on the oven and her hands busy with knives and veggies, she still can’t escape.
Taiyang Jr. can’t decide if it’s wrong for her to feel this way about cooking. To feel like maybe it’s part of her, the real her. That it’s evidence, that it’s a sign she’s really a woman, the way her heart melts when the people she cares most about tell her the food’s delicious. The kitchen is more home to her than her bedroom, with its sports posters and plastic model dragons and the boxing trophy she won when she was fourteen that has the name she shares with her father carved into it.
Sometimes cooking feels like home. Sometimes Taiyang Jr.’s stomach twists and he wants to tear out his hair, that he’s a monster, a misogynistic man, because who else would say that feeling comfortable in the kitchen is a sign of inner womanhood? He wonders what his sister would say if she could read his thoughts, if she knew just how deeply fucked up and sexist her older brother was. That he thinks he could be a woman because he likes to fucking cook.
Taiyang Jr.’s knuckles are white as he grips the knife. It’s with particular relish that he finely chops the cucumber into little slices, wishing it were something else.
They just call him Taiyang now. They don’t bother with the junior. Not when there’s not a senior to confuse him with anymore. Summer calls him Tai, Ruby calls him big brother, and his friends just call him bro, as if hearing the name he shares with his dead dad will shatter him like glass.
In her head, she still calls herself junior. Ironic, she knows, especially as she nurses a Strawberry Sunrise at Junior’s. At least Junior Xiong calls her Blondie. It might be condescending, leaning toward emasculation, but what the fuck does Taiyang care about masculinity anymore?
She waves down the bearlike man. It’s not often she runs into men a full head taller than her, but when she does, it makes her feel odd. She’s thought about fucking Junior. Never really entertained the notion seriously, but it’s not bad, as far as fantasies go. She’s not certain he swings that way -- he likes women, not people like her -- but sometimes, lost in her head, she can imagine a world where Junior sees her like that. That he can hold her in his burly arms, spoon her after sex, make her feel small and delicate and protected for just a minute.
Maybe she really is attracted to him. Maybe he’s just one of the few men tall enough to make her feel feminine. Some part of her hates herself for this, thinks that she’s not really into him, that she’s just using him to fuel her twisted misogyny fetish. She’s been on the Internet enough. She’s read enough blog posts with the word autogynephilia to wonder if she’s just a man with a sissification kink. She only wants him to be the big, strong man to her delicate little imitation of a woman, so she can feel pretty and beautiful and sexy get off on herself.
If that’s the case, which it probably isn’t, she hopes, but if it is, it really should be himself.
Junior snaps his fingers in front of Taiyang’s eyes, startling him. “What the fuck you want, Blondie?” he asks. Tai orders a shot of vodka. Junior gives him a dirty look, but Tai can catch the hint of sympathy in the black pits of his pupils. He knows that look. Everyone gives him the same look. Pity.
It’s not the first time Taiyang’s gotten drunk at Junior’s. Sure, he’s seventeen, but he’s got a fake I.D. good enough to fool the pigs, if it gets to that. It doesn’t fool Junior. He’s the one who made it for him, some precautions so it doesn’t get out that a man nearly a foot shorter than him could beat his ass. In return, Tai’s a loyal customer. He doesn’t go drinking anywhere else.
He relishes the way the shot burns down his throat, leaves his stomach warm and blurs the pain a little. Junior doesn’t usually give him shots like this. To be fair, Taiyang’s always been partial to fruity drinks. He may not have the sweet tooth of his sister, but as good as the alcoholic burn feels right now, most of the time he’s content to feel the heat in his stomach and keep his windpipe clear. Tonight, though, it’s shots. He didn’t even have to bully Junior into it. Who’s gonna turn down the hard liquor to a son grieving his dead dad? Junior might try to keep him off the hard stuff most of the time, but not now. Besides, Taiyang’s still a paying customer.
After two more shots and polishing off the Sunrise, Tai stumbles his way into the bathroom. He fumbles with his zipper at the urinal, gags on the acrid air of the men’s bathroom. He suspects someone didn’t flush their shit. Typical men. Shame he has to be one of them.
He knows it won’t fit. He knows he’s stretching it out, that he’s going to look ridiculous, that it’s just going to make him feel worse, but he can’t help it.
He’s done this before more than once. Snuck into his little sister’s room to plunder her dresser for a bra. He’s thought of robbing his mother’s dresser, but there’s too many variables. She’s his mother, sure, but she’s not his blood. Her frame is even more slender than Ruby’s. He might find her obnoxiously loud vibrator. She’s more likely to ask questions.
Even as loose as it gets, the bra straps dig into the skin of his shoulders. Part of him wants it, wants the imprint on his skin as a reminder, but of what, he isn’t certain. Maybe that he could make it work, someday, with the right hormones and a boob job or two. Maybe he wants the imprints to remind him that he can’t make it work, that he’s too broad, too bulky and mannish to ever pass as a woman. He thinks that maybe the next time he takes off his shirt and sees the red imprints on his skin, it’ll remind him that he can’t do this.
Ruby probably knows he’s been borrowing her bras. He makes sure to put them back before anyone gets home, but with the way he’s messed with the straps and stretched out the back, Ruby’s probably put two and two together. She’s a smart cookie. Taiyang’s proud of her.
After all, he’s the closest thing to her father she has left. He’s all she has of her dad and he’s stealing her fucking bras.
He covers his lower face as he looks in the mirror, tries to cover up his stubble with his hand. He can’t help but stare at the way his veins bulge, at the glint of the blonde hair on the back of his hand in the bathroom light. There are two distinct lumps under his shirt, but the cups are hollow, as though he’s starved, or wearing a bra a couple cup sizes too big, which, he supposes, he is, even though the straps are so tight on his shoulders and he’s scared of unhooking the back if he flexes his traps.
He’s always wished he had tits. It was kind of his awakening. He remembers the day a little under a year ago when he was staring down some classmate’s cleavage like the lecherous man he is and found himself thinking fuck, why don’t I look like that before jolting to awareness with his face red and tingly. He remembers the way he tried not to immediately press his hand against his flat chest. The way he’d tried to convince himself he was staring at the Belladonna girl’s tits because class was boring and he was a horny teenage boy. That he wasn’t wishing he had her beautiful curvy figure, that he didn’t want to have a chest like hers and not like Sun’s, that he was an ordinary bisexual jock boy with a preference for girls. That he didn’t want to copy her low-cut shirt with the amber necklace pressed against her bosom, that it wasn’t even sexual, that it was purely for the aesthetic, the glamor, the beauty of the look.
He remembers wishing he’d never heard of the term gender envy. Fuck the Belladonna girl. Fuck her and her unfair goddamn cleavage. Fuck her for making him realize he didn’t want to be a man, that he’d never wanted to be a man, that he wishes he were a woman and can never be one.
Taiyang Xiao Long Jr. looks at herself in the mirror. She sees her ill-fitting attempt at femininity, smudged lipstick, the faint bulge of her flaccid penis in her slacks, and sees a crossdressing man who isn’t even any good at it. When she cries, her mascara stains her cheeks, and she’s afraid she won’t have time to clean it up before her family gets home.
He tosses in his bed. The window is open, but he’s still too hot, too sweaty. He can smell the stench of man on him. His stomach twists. He wants to throw up.
His goddamn boner won’t go down.
It’s been thirty-three minutes since he got hard for the umpteenth time today, thirty-three minutes of his brain flush with testosterone, thirty-three minutes of this torture. His heartbeat’s elevated. It’s pitch-black and he can’t keep his eyes closed.
Tai fists his hair. It stings his scalp. A strand comes away with his hand and for a moment he can feel tears forming in his throat, wondering just how long he has before male-pattern baldness kicks in and he starts losing his hair, his precious, beautiful blonde locks, the one part of his body he cares about.
Many people would like to have his body. His broad, sloped shoulders, his toned arms, cut abs, muscular thighs, his height. It’s a pity he’s not one of them.
The red glow of his digital alarm clock clicks over from 12:43 to 12:44. It’s thirty-four minutes of unrelenting arousal now. Tai wants to cry, wants to sob the way he did the other day when he saw himself in the mirror, but he can’t make his eyes tear up. It’s not often that he cries. Maybe once or twice every six months before Taiyang Sr. passed away, but in the three weeks since he’s only cried once. He hates himself for it, for crying at his body in the mirror instead of for the man who raised him, but Tai can’t cry, no matter how he tries.
12:45. Thirty-five minutes of this merciless erection. Tai knows he should take care of it, that he should man up and jerk off like a functional human being so that he can ride the endorphin rush to sleep, but the thought of touching his penis makes him want to claw his skin off. He knows what he has to do, what he needs to do if he’s going to get any sleep tonight, and he already hates himself for it more than words can say.
If he weren’t such a coward, he’d just touch himself. He’d craft some sort of beautiful and colorful sexual fantasy in his head that he could get lost in so he doesn’t have to notice that he’s touching himself. Fuck, he wouldn’t even be in his fantasy. He wouldn’t be aware of his body, wouldn’t feel anyone touching his bare, flat chest or the curves he wishes he has, because both of those feel too weird for him. He wishes he could just imagine a man and a woman under neon bisexual lighting, gasping and moaning for his pleasure, but he knows he’s too broken to manage that for as long as it takes him to get off. He’s pornsick. Internet access at an age far too young and the disgusting curse of male puberty once his age hit double digits has probably ruined his sex life for the rest of his miserable existence.
Sometimes, in his worst moments, he wonders if this is why he is the way he is. Why he feels like a boy who wishes he were a girl, or like a girl who thinks she’s a guy who wishes he were a girl. Maybe it was some sissy jerk-off-instructional video on pornhub, some futanari hentai on reddit, some video slathered in transphobic slurs where a woman with a cock fucks a man in the ass. Maybe he’s just so brainwashed by porn that he’s losing his mind.
Even if she is a woman, it can never change the fact that her first introduction to the idea of being transgender was through a pornographic, fetishized lens. Until the day she dies, she’s going to have to live with the knowledge that if it wasn’t for something her teenage eyes were legally not meant to see, she wouldn’t have known that people like her existed.
She looks at the clock, sees 12:47, and sighs. She slips her headphones over her ears, opens up an incognito tab, and tries not to wish she were dead. She’d rather be dead than do this right now, rather be buried in the ground like her dad, like the man whose name she wears. She wishes it were her instead of him.
She knows women are more auditory and men are more visual. At least, she thinks she knows it. It just makes her feel worse when she winds up watching lesbian porn clearly created for the male gaze. Two women, both conventionally attractive, with chests Taiyang wished she had. One woman has a big black strap-on buried inside the other woman’s ass. Taiyang’s cock twitches at attention and not for the last time that night, she wishes she were dead.
Tai has tried other options. She’s visited r/GoneWildAudio, squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to get off. She’s tried for hands-free orgasms when she was too disgusted with herself to touch her penis, but never succeeded. Somehow, inevitably, she winds up back here: watching lesbian porn in the middle of the night on her tiny iPhone 4S screen, barely even paying attention to the overacted moans in her headphones.
When she cums, it’s not without pleasure, a brief tingle of excitement and heat in her gut, but it’s entirely outweighed by the feelings of self-loathing that wash over her brain the moment she’s done. There’s no afterglow, none of the so-called post-nut clarity she’s heard so much about. There’s only disgust. Disgust at the sticky slick on her fingers, at the half-limp organ in her hands, at the misogynistic, fetishizing filth she just watched, just got off to. She has to go clean up, make her way down the hall without waking her sister, without alerting her mother, who sleeps just as poorly as Taiyang Jr. does.
She briefly toys with the idea of getting a bit of her own cum in her eyes just to make herself cry.
When she’s clean and no longer plagued by her libido, the clock reads 1:01 AM. She falls asleep fifteen minutes later, and when she does, she dreams her father dies once more.