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artificialqueens · 7 years

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Bees and Butterflies (Katya-centric Katlaska) - Cactus

A/N – WARNING: Super-long author’s note. Can’t be bothered to read? Just get the bit in bold to see the warnings.

Hi guys! My name is Cactus – new writer, long-time reader. This is just a one-shot to get me started, for now.

In this universe, Katya and Alaska are both boys – Brian and Justin. Brian is a trans man (FTM), and Justin is cis – I’m a trans guy myself, and a lot of the feelings/experiences Brian has here are things I or people I’m close to have dealt with –disclaimer that this isn’t everyone’s experience of being trans; I don’t speak for everyone. The boys are both in college and for the context of this fic, Brian is younger than Justin, which I know isn’t reality but meh, that’s what ended up happening.

Pronouns: He/him for Justin throughout. Brian is he/him, but she/her is sometimes used in his own internal monologues. You’ll see what I mean – I hope it makes sense.

This one isn’t the most cheerful – a fair bit of angst / hurt/comfort, although there’s some fluff in the middle to keep everyone going. So in the spirit of that - CONTENT WARNINGS: Gender dysphoria / misgendering (this is the big one, that’s a theme throughout), mention of self-harm/suicidal ideation (very very brief), drug/alcohol use mention, mention of death (very brief), transphobia. I’ve tagged these, and I’m being conservative with them because I don’t want to trigger/upset anyone, so even the slightest mention earns itself a tag.

This one is super Katya-centric, but let me know what you think, especially RE: Characterisation because it’s my first time writing these characters. I’m keen to continue with this universe and write fluffier/happier things within it as well, and I’m keen to explore Justin’s perspective more if people would be interested.

Enjoy! Cactus

Eyes up. Head forward. Breathe.

You’ve got this.

So goes Brian’s daily shower mantra.

And if the shower edges to the wrong side of scalding, an attempt to burn all the wrong in him and on him away; and if he scrubs at his skin a little too long and a little too hard, some part of him hoping that the she, the her, would slip away down the drain with the swipe of a washcloth; and if a cocktail of shampoo and tears set his eyes on fire each time pruning hands brush over breasts, the lies his body persists in telling protruding from his aching chest –

If these things happen, then nobody is there to see it.

These are the minutes of Brian’s day which make bile burn in the back of his throat – the minutes in which he can’t bind and pack and dress his body into a story that’s his.

No matter what he tries, these minutes are always her’s, and her body echoes with the ripples of everything that he isn’t, and some nights he showers sitting down, tears and water merging through palms pressed to his eyes until he sees stars.

And some nights his eyes linger a moment too long on the razors that his roommate leaves on the bathroom counter, as if he could carve an escape map on his arms and his thighs and leave this lying skeleton behind – but he refuses to die in her body. He can’t stomach the concept of lying under a gravestone dedicated to a phantom that never truly existed.

And some nights he sings, loud and off-key and awful over the drone of the shower, a futile attempt to drown out the voice in his head which slips up and calls him she more often than he’ll own up to (because if he can’t get this pronoun thing down, how the fuck can he expect anyone else to?).

And some nights he thanks every deity he gave up on years ago, that the bathroom mirror fogs over before he steps out of the shower – grateful not a strong enough word when he isn’t confronted with his face on her traitorous body.

But some nights, a hand will reach to wipe away the fog (small, dainty, too much hers and not enough his) and Brian will force himself to take stock of his body – to take inventory of the house he’s grown up in, that he so often dreams of burning to the ground.

(This is invariably a mistake. These nights are the worst nights. These are the nights when sobs threaten to shake his body apart at the joints, to scatter him across the white tile floor).

Some nights, showering is hard, and other nights it’s worse, the skin he’s forced to share with her crawling as he exposes himself, but he clings to the hope of one day it won’t be like this like a life raft.

(And if this is a life raft then someone’s punched some holes in the fucking thing, because it never keeps him buoyant for long.)

On the first day of class, his freshman year of college, there are icebreakers which elicit a unanimous groan rippling around the room as they are asked to share their name, major, and one thing they hate.

(‘That always provides more interesting answers than ‘something you love’ – I don’t give a damn about your dog, or your grandma, or your favourite TV show’ clips the teacher, face wrinkled and folded and faded like torn edges of a weathered road map).

‘Brian, performance art major, and I hate showering more than anything in the world. If I could, I’d find a way to remain clean indefinitely without ever having to shower’ draws laughter from his classmates for the conviction behind his answer, punctuated with staccato hand movements and an open palm slapped on his desk.

The best jokes bloom from seeds of pain.

******************

Brian gets dressed in the dark.

The irony of this, given his penchant for problem patterns and clashing colours which cause friends and (very fucking rude, thank-you-very-much) strangers alike to jibe that he looked like he was dressed by a colour-blind six-year-old with ADHD, thank you Trixie, is not lost on him.

It isn’t – contrary to popular opinion – that he doesn’t care what he looks like; he is, in fact, pathologically particular about his clothing and general appearance.

He spends eons agonising over what to wear, bony fingers grazing back and forth amongst shirts and pants in his closet which he pulls out in endless combinations, finding fault with each in turn with expert precision.

A teal tank top – No. Won’t hide his binder.

A red plaid shirt that he’d fallen in love with in the store – Won’t make his chest look flat enough. No way.

A green floral jacket, garish and ugly and bright and perfectly him; it had been the first piece of “men’s clothing” he’d ever bought (although last he’d checked, none of his clothes had a penis or a vagina, and therefore gendering of clothing was archaic fucking bullshit), and a smile had itched at the corners of his lips the whole walk home, persisting even through the traitorous I’m sorry, ma’am of the man who’d bumped into him on the pavement.

He aches to wear it – to slip it over too-narrow shoulders and walk out the door with every ounce of the Pride that he sees in others, but can’t seem to dredge out of the gutters of his own veins.

But garish and ugly and bright is certain to elicit stares of strangers – and staring strangers means people who will look through him to find the her he’s choking back, staring strangers means not even Justin’s hand dwarfing his own can quell the rolling of his stomach, staring strangers at best means yes ma’am, means young lady, means the ladies’ bathroom’s that way, aimed at him like needles in the soft skin behind his knees, and at worst –

The blazer joins the pile of discarded clothes on his bed.

One day.

Glancing at his phone and realising he has – motherfucker, he only has twenty minutes before he needs to leave to meet Justin, and absolutely positively in no way can he be late, Barbara – he settles on black skinny jeans and a graphic T shirt that’s both loose and high-necked enough to conceal his binder.

Not what he would choose, necessarily, but the clinging denim and nylon are enough to choke the rattling breath out of her for the evening.

He reaches out and flicks the switch; plunges the room into darkness by the time his towel hits the floor. The dark won’t – can’t – smother her. But at least he won’t have to see it.

Lights off – clothes on.

This will do – for now.

**************

Leaning against the wall of the movie theatre, casual in a way that’s calculated and intentional, Brian waits for Justin. He’d bit the inside of his cheeks to swallow a wry smile and feigned annoyance at the ‘I’m so sorry I’m going to be late – I’ll buy you popcorn to make up for it! 😊” that had popped up on his phone ten minutes previously, honestly expecting nothing less of his boyfriend (and holy shit it felt so good to be able to call Justin that).

Pulling his jacket tighter across his shoulders, bitten fingernails drum residual tension out into the bricks behind him.

Beneath the carefully constructed calm façade, his brain vibrates dully with the bees humming at the edges of his skull, wings beating out a dirge of keep your shoulders back it’ll make them look broader and don’t pop your hip it makes you look feminine, with stand up straighter it’ll make you look taller and that guy at the bus stop has looked over here five times now does this mean I don’t pass?

The bees are something which he can, if not ignore, relegate to the back of his mind on most days; a disquieting, discordant constant that underscore his existence. On some days, the days he doesn’t talk about, the wings beat themselves into a flurry, swarming and swooping and stinging him in places he tries to numb with pills and booze and blunts and Justin.

Justin.

And the sight reaches inside him and pulls laughter out from way down deep, and for once he doesn’t care that it’s too high too feminine too her, because Justin is fifteen minutes late and still walking the pavement like it’s a runway, slow and yet purposeful, all hip and leg and sass like a high-fashion giraffe, and the bees’ wings scratching at his temples slow a little as Brian pushes himself off the wall and crouches, miming taking pictures like a photographer at one of the fashion shows Justin makes them watch together.

And Justin is hamming it up, twirling and pouting and posing, and when he reaches Brian they both glance left right left and behind them for unkind prying eyes before you’re so fucking stupid is breathed from one set of lips against another between quiet chuckles and Justin tastes like vanilla and home.

And “sorry I’m late” and “you owe me popcorn, Brenda” is as good as I love you for both of them.

And a hand clasping his as they walk inside, homophobes be damned, and the casual ‘hey, boyfriend? You look handsome’ said like it’s nothing when it’s everything, turns the bees in Brian’s brain into butterflies for a while.

*****************

When they’re buying tickets inside, and the young girl behind the desk (fumbling and awkward, smudged glasses slipping down her nose as she prints their tickets) smiles sweetly and asks Justin if he and his girlfriend will be paying for tickets together or separately, it feels like someone’s taken scissors and sliced across every muscle and tendon that holds him upright, he wants to origami himself invisible because she said girlfriend, so he looks like a girl, because who is he kidding he’ll always be a girl, and Justin deserves the type of real man that shots and scalpels and sheer fucking will won’t – can’t – make him, and –

And the pad of Justin’s thumb presses itself in an arch across the back of Brian’s shoulder, firm and there and as reassuring as if the other man had pulled him into an embrace, as he looks the woman in the eye and informs her that yes, he and his boyfriend will pay together.

And the reply is polite, and it’s courteous, and Justin’s smiling as it passes his lips in a Sahara-dry drawl, lips snagging and dragging on every vowel, but it’s laced with conviction and with don’t fucking question this, bitch and the girl’s owl-eyes, impossibly larger behind coke-bottle lenses, widen as she takes their cash, grins an enjoy the movie, sirs, and watches them walk away.

And Brian exhales, her fingers unfurling as sweating palms wipe against his jeans.

And Justin’s lips are quirked lopsided as he walks beside him taking Snapchat selfies, trying every filter and guffawing unashamedly as they distort his face, showing Brian every one and saving the most wonderfully heinous to his Camera Roll.

(And it will take three kisses and a joint, later that evening, for Justin to convince Brian to take a selfie with him, and when he relents Justin glows enough to make Brian wish he’d agreed an hour ago, and they take about 50 in Brian’s bedroom before there’s one they’re both happy with, and Justin captions it “Effortlessly photogenic boyfriends” with a clown emoji and puts it on Instagram, and 112 people like it.)

There’s a bounce in Brian’s step as they ascend the stairs to the movie theatre, and he’s all wide mouth and crinkling eyes as he turns to Justin, mirth in his voice.

“Did you hear her? She called me sir!”

And the other man laughs, honest and joyful, locks his fingers through Brian’s where they’re clasping his arm in excitement.

“Damn right she did, sweetheart!”

Sometimes it’s the little things.

***************

The movie – some saccharine, vapid rom-com, because finals week is approaching like a freight train down a steep hill with broken brakes and neither of them have the mental capacity to cope with anything heavier at this point – is simultaneously fucking terrible and worth every penny.

There isn’t much in the way of plot, and what plot there is they struggle to follow, too busy furnishing elaborate and so-implausible-they-could-come-true backstories for every character on screen. They decide that the heroine is really a Latvian supermodel who teaches disabled cows gymnastics in her spare time, and the hero a retired circus clown now working for MI5, and Justin is laughing so hard he almost chokes on the popcorn that he’s eaten about 97% of despite the fact that he’d bought it for Brian as an apology for being late a-fucking-gain, asshole, and Brian, when he realises, grabs one of the strawberry laces that taste more like a chemical plant than anything resembling strawberries, and feigns choking Justin with it.

And Justin – the fucking drama queen – is so over-enthusiastic in faking his death that he slips off his chair onto the sugar-sticky linoleum floor, then, deciding it’s more comfortable, remains there for the rest of the movie, periodically throwing popcorn kernels at his boyfriend.

And Brian thinks three things simultaneously:

1) How in the ever-loving hell is this overgrown, beautiful 21-year-old goddamn toddler about to graduate college?

2) The three other people who’ve got little enough common sense to have actually paid to see this shit, must really hate us by now.

3) Finals are clearly turning both of our brains into a vat of cold, lumpy mashed potato between our ears, that’s being stamped on by an elderly man with sweat problems comparable to Brian’s. And athlete’s foot.

Then the credits roll, Justin hoists himself back into his chair as the house lights come on, and neither of them could tell you the first thing about what the fuck they just watched because they’re both too far into a spiral of giggles to know why they’re laughing anymore beyond why the fuck not. Because their lips are loose and happy like rubber bands that have been stretched too far and Brian’s fishing popcorn kernels out of his hair as they walk out to dirty looks from other movie-goers, and Justin almost knocks an unsuspecting ten-year-old flying because he’s talking with his whole body about how he could give a tortoise on Benadryl an etch-a-sketch and it would probably be able to write a more captivating storyline than that and Brian’s wheezing because Justin has so many opinions on a movie he just fully didn’t watch.

Brian smokes outside while they wait for the bus, half-slumped against the taller man (and damn, he hates being short sometimes, but it feels so good to be enveloped in Justin), and Justin’s eyeing his cigarette pointedly like he wants a drag, but Brian smirks softly and doesn’t relent, laughing ‘You already took my fucking popcorn, jackass’, and blowing smoke-clouds in his face when the other man flips him off.

They find themselves sitting perched up on the same wall, the buses as consistent in their lateness as they tend to be, silent and soft and feet swinging, stealing glances back and forth and periodically tilting their phones towards one another to share gorgeous makeup on Instagram, or a funny meme on Facebook, breathy chuckles and throaty hums of appreciation the only noises to perforate this bubble in which Brian feels unequivocally himself.

Then a man comes jogging through the double doors of the movie theatre – leaves them swinging behind him as he spots the pair of them and ambles over.

Excuse me, ma’am? You left your jacket inside.

And Justin’s hand is on Brian’s in a second, tightening imperceptibly as he drawls ‘Oh, Brian, you did forget your jacket’, eyes locked like a sniper on the stranger before them the whole time.

The man stiffens, and the jacket in question discarded quickly – strewn haphazardly over the wall next to them as the man turns sharply on his heel back towards the building.

It’s as he’s walking away that they hear it – thrown under his breath out into the early summer breeze, it turns the air at once stagnant and hot.

Fucking tranny.

And Justin at once makes to stand, to go after the stranger, to – to do what, exactly, Brian has no earthly idea, because Justin Honard is a twig, a high-fashion giraffe, built like Slenderman ready for a runway; he’d (quite possibly literally) be slaughtered.

And Brian may or may not have drunk his own blood in high school (because nobody can prove it and it’s therefore pure hearsay) but he prefers his boyfriend alive, thank-you-very-much, and so with quaking hands he grips Justin’s shirt, a murmured “please – just don’t” breaking past his lips, and he’s inclined to write a personal letter of thanks to whoever the fuck is in charge of public transport in this city when their bus arrives just at that moment.

The funny thing about bees? You don’t notice they’re gone, until they come back.

And when they come back, they come back louder.

*******************

He feels intangible, like he’s not even really there, as Justin grasps his hand impossibly tight and leads him onto the bus, his long face a paradox of clenched jaw and soft eyes that never leave his boyfriend.

Brian’s aware of the small things – his saliva thick and viscous against his tongue, his pulse throbbing one two one two in the soles of his feet, and before he’s fully aware of anything beyond fucking tranny fucking tranny fucking tranny a soft kiss that says both too much and not enough is pressed to his temple and he’s pulled down into the itchy-scratchy stained seats of the bus.

His face buried in the pale nape of his boyfriend’s neck, Justin’s fingers tracing silent affirmations into his spine, Brian breathes – shudderingly steady.

He doesn’t cry. Wants to, sure. Arguably deserves to.

But doesn’t.

It’s as though whatever part of him can express emotion – can do anything other than breathe right now – has shut itself down, locked itself away, and Brian is stuck in a shell – her shell.

And so he breathes, Justin a buoy that he clings to in a vacuum – Justin’s fingers on his spine, Justin’s scent in every inhale, his soft voice a lighthouse as he speaks aimlessly of nothing much at all as they drive through the city, expecting no response. Asking nothing of Brian at all.

Brian breathes.

Justin lets him.

******************

This isn’t blunt-force trauma; no bullets ripping through him, no knife-wound in his chest.

His blood doesn’t stain the seats – doesn’t seep down into the once-red-now-browning-orange fabric.

This won’t kill him.

It’s not a speeding car, 70 miles per hour downhill late at night, blowing her body into the air as a careless breeze carries autumn-burnt leaves.

(And those cars have, and do, and will, come for so many others like him, so many beautiful people whose minds and bodies, like oil and water, couldn’t ever mix, and the thought of all those others, all those graves he uses as stepping stones across this world he doesn’t quite fit into, all the bones of those who come before him that he ties together to build himself bridges, makes his breath catch a little even now.)

This is the bruise that blooms like violet bouquets on dirty elementary-school knees, the child crying more from the shock than the pain of the fall.

This is a papercut across the thumb – the pain greater than the wound, the sort of injury that’s met with rolled eyes and you’ll live, but stinging sweet and sharp.

No sirens; no drama.

He’ll live.

He’ll pull back into place the Jenga-bricks of his soul that shake and scatter themselves loose far too often and far too quickly.

(And some will chip, and some will crack, and more than he’ll own up to are stained and misshapen by now, and he’ll duct-tape them together – until next time.)

He’ll dissolve himself back into his reality; pull himself back to the surface by the thready rope of Justin’s voice.

Justin won’t ask are you okay? – knows this isn’t the sort of thing that is ever okay – and he’ll notice, but won’t mention, the way Brian’s attempt at a smile pulls too tight at reddened lips to be genuine.

As they step back off the bus, into a world whose acceptance of the who and what and why of him – of them – is tempered at every turn with qualifications, Brian watches his ungainly boyfriend swing himself around on a lamppost, singing snippets of showtunes that the other man neither knows nor cares to learn as he wiggles caterpillar brows in time, refusing to stop until he makes his boyfriend laugh.

It doesn’t take long. It’s not quite natural – not yet – as it bursts forth, scratching against his teeth. But it’s there – piercing the dark.

Refusing laughter only snowballs stigma, so they’ll rub humour on the bee stings till they hurt a little less.

With Justin by his side, this will never kill him.

**********************

The intent had been for both men to return to their respective dorms for the evening; with finals approaching, and it being Justin’s senior year, both had to study, as well as navigate relationships with roommates whose begrudging acceptance of their impromptu sleepovers could only be stretched so far.

But Justin sends a text, and then he’s firing excuses one then the next at Brian, citing I need you to read over my French paper and You left your sweater at mine last week and It’s getting late, anyway one after another as reasons that Brian should come back to his dorm, barely pausing for breath between them.

Brian doesn’t take much convincing; neither man wants to end this evening with the slur of a stranger and a sombre bus ride, and Justin knows and trusts that Brian is okay, within the relative confines of the term (knows, from what Brian has said, and what he hasn’t, that he has heard, and does hear, so much worse than that), but, just for tonight, would rather his love was okay with him and not without him.

Nobody should have to make themselves okay alone.

A note pinned to the door, as they arrive, written hurriedly in a lazy scrawl, makes Brian crane his neck to pull Justin into a kiss.

JH -

You owe me one, dude – I’ll take beer or pizza as my payment (jk).

Staying with Tuck – back @ 7am to grab my shit.

Hope ur boy is okay.

Lucas

“You exiled your roommate for me? For the third time this week?! No wonder the guy hates me, Justin!”

“He’ll get over it, he’s a big boy. And he does not hate you, I’ve told you this!”

“Lies, mother, it’s all lies…”

**********************

They share a joint sitting propped up by pillows in Justin’s bed – drag from it what they both need. Brian pulls calm, dispels the low hum of latent anxiety that still nestles itself under the surface of his skin; Justin, peace, to relax the muscles that still pull themselves taut with protective anger at the thought of someone making Bri feel anything less than wonderful perfect amazing beautiful man.

Between episodes of Golden Girls that Brian knows almost as well as Justin by now, ugly selfies, and languid conversation about innocuous topics that somehow feel sacred because it’s them, they build themselves a fortress away from the rest of the world.

Here, nobody can touch them – even she is banished with one word from his lips.

Eventually, with hearts much lighter but eyelids now-too-heavy, lights are turned out and both wait to let sleep claim them.

Between bedsheets too thick for the season (because what self-respecting college student owns more than one set of bedsheets?) Brian clings to Justin.

Clings to him like the other man is the only thing tethering him to earth; pulls him close as though he wants to sink into his bones, crawl inside his skin and feel what it feels like to be born into a body that’s your own.

And Justin presses kisses, smooth like pebbles beaten by waves, into his lover’s shoulders, you are all the man I need you to be caught in a phantom breath between pursed lips.

And in the dark, they dress each other in armour, with closed-mouth kisses and cold feet pressed against another’s legs.

****************

Hope people enjoyed - let me know :)

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