Not a good weekend
Carter had his first period and freaked the heck out.

Obviously, it wasn't his body's first period, or even his first period in that body. But having been kept in a dark room for the first few months of his life as a woman, tied up sitting on a toilet naked, occasionally hosed down by Dmitri and Mikhail, he didn't know when they were happening. So he woke up on Saturday with blood between his legs, he screamed loud enough to wake our neighbors.

I managed to get him to stop screaming and get into the shower while I removed the sheets from the bed. There was a fair amount of blood, which worried me a little, since Michelle's body thankfully doesn't bleed that much and it's the only point of reference I have. It wasn't as bad as it looked, though, getting the sheet red but not getting through the lining to the mattress. Pretty terrifying for people who aren't used to bleeding from the groin on a regular basis, though.

I got the bed changed, and knocked on the bathroom door. "You okay?" I'd noticed the shower had turned off.

"Yeah. Can you get me some clothes?"

I got him a change of clothes and brought them in. He was sitting on the toilet, wrapped in a robe. I opened the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out some pads. "If it makes you feel any better, I still haven't had the guts to try tampons."

"Thanks."

I made some pancakes while he changed, and gave him the first couple off the frying pan. We pretty much stayed quiet until I turned the stove off, and ate in silence. Once we were done, we just sat there for a few minutes until he decided he was sick of it.

"So," he said bitterly, "are you going to take me to get ice cream?"

"Do you want me too?"

"Fuck no."

"So what do you want to do?"

He thought about it for a second. "I want to go to a park, play basketball shirtless, stop by a bar for a few beers, get the phone number of a woman with an even better body than you have, and get a blow job on top of just screwing her. That's what I want to do. More than anything. Short of that, I'd like to be able to walk around without feeling guilty about this girl, who I thought was really weird and didn't much like and in fact thought was some kind of skank for dating Dmitri, is trapped in that old guy's brain and may never get out. Can I do that? Can I fucking do that?"

"I... I wish you could."

"God, this is going to be the rest of our lives, isn't it? This shit is going to happen every month for the rest of our fucking lives and there's never going to be anything we can do about it."

I didn't make the comment that this would only happen for twenty years or so, but did say that it wasn't hopeless. To which he got even angrier, asking if he'd be just like me in a few months, willing to spread his legs for anything with a penis and glad everything turned out the way it has.

I resisted the urge to yell back at him. I took five or six deep breaths, and tried to be calm. "You might get used to it. Or you might not. But the status quo won't last forever. The FBI, Mags, someone will figure out who was able to do this to us and then they'll be able to switch you back."

"You really think the FBI will share?"

"Even if they don't, someone else will figure out how to do it, and odds are they won't keep it as secret as whoever developed this version. You know what they say about knowledge wanting to be free, right? It'll work for you, eventually."

"That's not terribly reassuring."

"It's what I've got."

He wanted to argue, but what could he say? We wound up staying in all weekend, watching sports, doing a Die Hard marathon, talking about our old girlfriends. It must have seemed kind of surreal from an outside view.

I was kind of worried about leaving him for work this morning, but he seemed to spend it working out. I want to tell him that building up muscle won't make him a guy, but I guess it's about trying to feel in control of his body. Can't begrudge him that.

-Marti
- posted 8:06 PM - - (archive use only)