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"Cal."
"Hm?"
"I need to tell you something."
Calum looks up from his phone vaguely. They're sitting in Michael's bed together, under the covers, Calum doom scrolling while Michael stares at the wall and figures out what to say. Neither of them has spoken in nearly half an hour, but that's pretty normal. When they're together like this, they don't need words.
"What's up?" Calum asks when Michael doesn't continue.
"I've, um, been trying to figure out how to tell you this, but I never- I figured I'd just say it, y'know?" Michael stumbles through his words. Calum just stares at him, eyebrows raised - he doesn't know, of course he doesn't. "I'm, uh, not a girl."
"...what do you mean?" Calum asks, but it isn't hostile, just puzzled.
"I mean I'm, like, transgender." Michael chokes out, tears welling in his eyes. "I'm a boy, I wanna- I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"Hey, babe, don't cry." Calum holds his arms out. "Come here, you're okay."
Michael sinks into Calum's arms indulgently, resting his chin on his shoulder as tears roll down his cheeks. The warmth of Calum's body soothes him, the gentle thud of his heart beat slowing Michael's down.
"Thank you for telling me." Calum threads his fingers through Michael's hair. "I love you no matter what, okay? Whatever you wanna be, nothing will change how I feel."
Michael sobs. He cries as the mirage of Calum disappears and he's left alone, arms wrapped around himself. There's blood on his sheets, dripping slowly from his arms. No one can love him like this, a stupid girl who thinks he's a boy, who hurts himself when he can't be. He should clean up but he can't move, trying to get the image of Calum treating him kindly back in his vision. It's safe there, in the sick fantasy of someone loving him for who he really is.
"Unlovable fucking faggot." Michael mumbles to himself. "Get a grip."
"Hey." Calum slides his arm around Michael's shoulders as he sits down at the table beside him, pulling him in so he can kiss the side of his head. "There's my sweetheart."
Despite his awful mood, Michael smiles. He can't help himself - Calum always knows how to make him feel better, even if he doesn't know what exactly is wrong. It's nice being Calum's sweetheart instead of his girlfriend. Calum must've noticed that Michael flinches when he calls him his girl and has adjusted accordingly. Maybe Calum knows deep down what Michael is, and is just too polite to bring it up.
"Hey." Michael does his best to keep the fresh scars on his arms from brushing anyone. If he winces too much, they'll know he's at it again. "Sorry I'm late, class overran."
Actually, it didn't, but Michael had to spend fifteen minutes pleading his case to his professor so he can get an extension on a paper he didn't do. Sometimes he wishes he could pull up his sleeves or rip off his bracelets and say look what I do to myself when I'm stressed, asshole, but he can't. He can't remember if his college professors are mandated reporters or not, and he doesn't want to go back to the psych ward.
He doesn't want to be in the cafeteria either, but his friends need to eat. Michael never does, just watching them, ignoring the concerned glances he gets from them all. It's fine, he eats when he's at home. Or that's what he tells them when they ask.
"S'okay, you're here now." Calum kisses him again, so sweet. Michael wonders if Calum will still kiss him like that once he's out, or if he'll call it off altogether. "I missed you. I text you to come over last night but you never answered."
Michael did get that text. He stared at it while he was in the laundromat at one in the morning, watching his bedsheets spin through the glass door of the washing machine. The blood washed away, bleached out and down the drain. Michael wonders if he went through the wash, would he finally be clean? How would he come out, boy or girl?
He didn't answer the text because he wanted to be alone. Calum is an angel but Michael doesn't trust himself not to be too honest in the dead of night between soft sheets. It could ruin everything, and Michael will trade his life for another minute with Calum.
"I love you." Michael says, just to hear Calum say it back.
"And I love you, sweetie." Calum nuzzles against Michael's neck, and Michael can't help but smile.
"Get a room." Ashton says, sitting down in the chair across from Calum. In his defence, they are in the middle of the cafeteria. "PDA somewhere else."
"You jealous, Ash?" Calum teases.
"I can make out with you in public if you want." Luke drops into the chair across from Michael and winks at Ashton. "Just say the word."
Ashton rolls his eyes at him. "You're gross."
Luke is Michael's best friend, and Ashton is Calum's best friend. As a result of Calum and Michael dating, the four of them hang out a lot. It's nice to part of a group of boys - it makes Michael feel more like one, like he's one of the lads. They don't really treat him like a girl, not the way other people do in insisting he wear make up or dresses. Michael is allowed to be like them, be one of them. It's nice.
He just wishes they would call him Michael. Not that they know to, of course, because he hasn't told them. Probably never will. He'll just be Michael in his head forever, like a private joke.
It's then that he realises that Luke has said his name. His other one, the one that makes his skin crawl. Too feminine, the name of some childhood friend of his mother's. Not his, not really. He's glad that most of his friends have other nicknames for him instead, but Luke always said it if Michael isn't listening to him. Michael wishes he didn't still respond to it. He wishes, sometimes, that that version of himself was dead.
"Huh?" Michael asks, not even pretending he was listening instead of spacing out.
"I asked if you wanna watch a movie at ours tonight." Luke repeats. "Y'know, I don't like you living on your own. You should come live with us."
Michael lives in a studio apartment just off of campus, and he likes it that way. He likes that he can crash out in peace, no concerned friends knocking at his door. "I can't live in the boys dorm, dude."
"Bullshit. You're basically one of the boys." Luke says, and it's so nearly gender affirming that it hurts.
"Michael's a good name." Ashton says, sitting on the bench next to Michael. They're outside Michael's apartment building together - it's the dead of night so no one else is around. Neither of them sleep well so despite the initial degrees of separation between them, they bonded over late nights with too much caffeine. "It suits you."
"You think so?" Michael asks, tugging at his bracelets.
People keep buying them for him thinking he likes them, so he has tonnes. He actually uses them to hide his scars, so more bracelets means he can go higher up his arms. It's one of those things that people do with good intentions that doesn't help Michael at all.
"One question, though," Ashton says, "Did you name yourself after Mikey Way?"
"Maybe." Michael giggles. So what if he did? Mikey Way is fucking awesome. "Is that dumb?"
"Sort of, but like I said, it suits you." Ashton throws his arm around Michael's shoulders. "I'm proud of you dude."
"You don't mean that." Michael mumbles to himself.
Ashton fades until he's gone, leaving Michael alone under the street light. A car drives up the road towards him and he considers stepping out in front of it, but he doesn't feel bad enough to ruin someone else's evening about it. Instead, he gets up and goes back into his apartment.
They're at the pool, because it's hot as fuck out and some genius didn't put working AC in the dorms. Hanging out at Michael's place wasn't an option, because there's blood on his bedsheets again and he doesn't have time to wash them. He doesn't want to explain that to anybody, let alone his boyfriend and his best friends. They all think that he's doing okay, that he's doing better. There's no good reason to change their perception of that.
"You coming in?" Calum asks, resting his head on Michael's thigh, getting his shorts wet.
The boys are in the pool but Michael stays sitting on the side, legs dangling in the water. There's no way in hell he is forcing himself into a bathing suit in public. Even in the height of summer he is wearing a long sleeved shirt - shorts he can get away with as long as they're not too short - and he refuses to take it off, no matter how much Calum pesters him about heat exhaustion. Michael can't have his arms out, he just can't.
"Not today." Michael says, as if he would any other day. He runs his fingers through Calum's wet curls. "Are you having fun?"
"When those two chucklefucks aren't trying to drown me, sure." Calum points to Luke and Ashton who are, in fact, actively trying to drown each other in the deep end. As long as neither of them shrieks too loud, it's fine. "You feeling alright, sweetheart?"
"'Course." Michael puts on the best smile he can.
Calum hums, seemingly not believing him, but swims off to try and stop Luke and Ashton from actually killing each other.
"What do you wanna eat?" Luke asks, scrolling through a menu on his phone.
They're in Luke's dorm - his roommate is gone for the weekend, which is great because Michael doesn't know him very well. He wishes he and Luke could share a dorm like Calum and Ashton do, but it's a boys-only dorm. Even if Michael was out, they probably wouldn't let him in. That's why he got his own apartment off campus - having to live in a building full of girls would have broken him.
"I don't care, I'm not hungry." Michael mumbles, picking at his fingernails. There's so much dead skin on his hands but he has never figured out why, exactly. Maybe because he keeps pulling at it, an anxious habit, some sort of self-fulfilling cycle.
"You haven't eaten all day. I'm not even sure you ate yesterday. We gotta get some calories in you." Luke insists. "You're gonna end up dead."
"Who cares?" Michael mutters.
"Girl, I care-" Luke begins. He has always called Michael 'girl', since they were kids. Just a stupid little pet name, a word that shouldn't mean anything, but it gets to Michael, now more than ever.
"I'm not a fucking girl!" Michael snaps, voice cracking.
Luke stares at him for a long, tense moment. Then, gently he says, "What?"
Oh. Oh, shit, Michael shouldn't have said that. This isn't one of his daydreams where things go alright when he comes out. Luke is actually here, watching him, not quite understanding. But he will, and then he'll kick Michael out and tell Calum and Calum will break up with him and then even Ashton won't want to be his friend and Michael will be alone and if he's alone is there really any point in him living-
Michael starts to hyperventilate. This is his worst nightmare.
"Mara, mate." Luke shuffles over and puts his hand on Michael's knee. "Talk to me."
"Don't call me that." Michael whimpers. His birth name feels like a knife in his back.
"Uh, okay. What should I call you then?"
"Michael." He breathes out - he has never said it out loud before, and it feels unfamiliar but so good. "I wanna be Michael."
"Alright, Michael." Luke nods slowly. It's the sweetest feeling, having someone else say it outside of Michael's head. Michael relaxes against Luke a little, feeling incrementally safer. "I don't think I really understand what's going on here, but I wanna help."
"Do you promise not to get mad at me?" Michael asks. Luke nods, kisses him on the side of the head. "I'm transgender."
"I don't really know what that means." Luke admits.
"Um, well," Michael doesn't have a speech prepared like he intended to when he planned to come out, so he wings it, "I'm a boy, not a girl. I've never liked being a girl, like, being called she makes me feel sick. It's- I feel so much happier when I'm a guy even though I don't get the chance very often."
Luke is silent for so long that Michael thinks that he's angry. When he looks up at him, though, Luke just looks puzzled. Like he's trying to make sense of an optical illusion.
Eventually, Luke whispers, "You can do that?"
"Well, yeah. I want to, at least." Michael shrugs self-consciously. "It's stupid."
"No, no, it, um, makes a lot of sense, actually." Luke mumbles. He has a look on his face like something is dawning on him, but he shakes it off. "So I just call you Michael and treat you like a dude, right?"
"Basically." Michael can't quite untense his shoulders. "Aren't you upset with me?"
"No, mate, of course not. If this is what makes you happy then I'm happy."
Then, it finally gets to him. Michael chokes on a sob, collapsing into Luke's arms as he cries it out. Years of pent up feelings tumbling out all at once.
"You're still my best friend, Mike." Luke whispers, and Michael can't stop crying for an hour.
Calum still doesn't know, weeks later. Michael has no idea how to tell him. The last thing he wants to do is lie to Calum but he's so scared that this will end their relationship. Calum is the most important person in Michael's life, second only to Luke. Losing him would be catastrophic.
At some point, though, Michael has to rip the band-aid off and get it over with. Luke wants to correct people on Michael's pronouns but he can't because no one actually knows what the correct ones are, and it's stressing them both out. If Calum dumps him, then Michael can just walk into traffic and it won't be his issue anymore. Then Calum will feel guilty forever, or something.
God, he's petty.
"I need to tell you something important." Michael says when they're out on a coffee date one day. He figures if he does it at a cafe, in a public place, Calum won't yell at him. "But I don't think you're gonna be happy about it. It might make you break up with me."
"Are you having an affair?" Calum asks, taking a sip of his latte.
Michael sputters. "Wh- no, of course not."
"Have you done something irreparable to Ash?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Then nothing you could say would make me break up with you." Calum reaches out and takes Michael's hand. "Talk to me sweetheart."
It's easier to just say it. To put the words in the air and see what Calum does with them, good or bad. Still, it takes Michael a moment to put the syllables together and force them out of his mouth.
"I'm transgender. I wanna be a boy and I wanna be called Michael."
"So you'd be my boyfriend." Calum says. It's a statement, not a question. There's no doubt in Calum's mind that they would stay together. It takes every piece of Michael's constitution not to pass out. "Did I do something that made you feel like you couldn't tell me that before?"
"No, no." Michael squeezes Calum's hand. He wants to cry again. "I just thought... why would anyone love me like that? If they knew there was something wrong with me so deep down that even I couldn't figure it out, then everyone would just leave."
"There's nothing wrong with you, sweetheart." Calum picks up his hand and kisses his knuckles. "I always knew there was something different about you, and that just makes me love you more."
Michael chokes on a sob. "You knew?"
"Not exactly. This wouldn't have been my first guess, I mean. But it's not something that'll bother me." Calum smiles at him, radiant like the sun. "Can I call you Mikey, though? Michael feels a bit formal."
"Yeah, that's okay." Michael says tearily. "I love you."
"I love you too, sweetheart."
Telling Ashton is easy, all things considered.
"Oh, like Elliot Page?" Ashton asks when Michael tells him, Calum's arm wrapped around him protectively. Calum insisted Ashton would be fine about it but Michael still asked he be here, just in case.
"Yeah, exactly like that." Michael agrees. Oh, that was easy. This all could have been so easy if he hadn't been so scared.
"Oh, sick, dude. I can put the 'no girls allowed' sign back on our dorm door." Ashton says. "You're part of the boys club for real now."
Michael has to laugh, because only Ashton would say something so dumb yet so strangely heartfelt. "Thanks, Ash."
"No sweat, mate." Ashton gives him a hug, and it's different. It's not a tentative hugging-my-friend's-girlfriend hug. Ashton squeezes Michael like they're brothers. Michael starts to cry again. "Oh, Jesus, did I do something wrong?"
"No." Michael hiccups. "I'm just a disaster."
"You're gonna be fine, baby." Calum wraps his arms around the both of them. "Everything's gonna be just fine."
For once in his life, Michael believes it.
"Sorry I'm late." Michael says, dropping into his usual chair besides Calum in the cafeteria. Luke and Ashton are there too, and they smile at him as he sits down. He has no idea how he ever thought they would hate him. "I had to ask my professor a question."
That's actually true. Michael finds he lies to his friends less than he used to now that he doesn't have such a big secret to hide.
Calum kisses him on the side of his head. "You didn't miss anything."
"We were having a riveting conversation about sea otters, actually." Luke says, tapping his painted nails on the table.
Luke has started painting his nails since Michael came out last month, and everyone is being very careful not to bring it up in case they scare him into not doing it anymore. Michael will speak to him some day, but not yet. If Luke wants to talk about it, Michael is here for him. Hopefully it will be less anxiety inducing for him than it was for Michael.
"Fascinating." Michael agrees as he takes the sandwich that Calum got for him. He still doesn't eat enough, probably, but now that he doesn't feel nauseous all the time, it's easier. "Your assignments are going well, then?"
"Don't start." Ashton mutters. "You're worse than my mum. Not mum, dad. Sorry."
"You're good." Michael says. They're all still getting used to this. Even Michael himself hasn't quite got the hang of it yet. "Thanks for the jacket, by the way."
"I'm glad you like it."
Ashton coincidentally started clearing out his closet last week, and suddenly had a lot of clothes to offer Michael. A lot of it wasn't Michael's style but he found a few things that he likes - a t-shirt that Ashton sliced up into a tank top, a hoodie, a leather jacket. Clothes from the men's section, stuff Michael has never been brave enough to buy for himself before. He cried a little when Ashton gave it to him. It felt like having a big brother.
It's weird. It's weird, because Michael spent so long convincing himself that being transgender would kill him. He thought coming out would ruin his life, that it would be something that stayed in his head forever, no one would ever know. He would suffer for the rest of his life with this darkness within him, never letting it out.
Except none of his friends are treating it as a darkness. Now that it has been forced into the light, it's... a good thing. It's an opportunity for Michael to be happy.
He still has bad nights. He still has days where he can't look at himself in the mirror. But there's less of that now. There's more grace for himself, more he and dude and boyfriend. Things he never thought he would have. And this is just the beginning of it.
"I love you guys." Michael mumbles. "Thanks for... everything."
"Love ya, man." Ashton says.
"Love you too, Mikey." Luke pats Michael's hand.
"I love you baby." Calum kisses Michael on the lips.
Michael thinks that this is a life he can live.