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"Don't you miss anything about being a man?" Raichu asked Gardevoir. "As fun as it's been, I still don't really feel like a girl."

Gardevoir narrowed her eyes with a raised brow, Raichu looking into her coffee to avoid meeting her gaze. It had been two months since Gardevoir (Gallade, at the time) signed them up for that transformative treatment. Both had quickly set out to make full use of their new equipment and met almost daily to share tales of their accomplishments. "Raich, you've practically made chu an invasive species," Gardevoir said. "You let someone knock you up last night, didn't you?"

Raich held a paw on her belly and felt her cheeks flush. That egg was too far along to even bother denying. "Well, yeah," she mumbled. What started as a little competition between the two of them quickly left Gardevoir in the dust, and not because mon had any less interest in her. Quite the opposite, her shiny coloring made her infinitely more desirable, but that mouse had an insatiable thirst for cock.

That left Raichin the awkward position of having to explain her qualms with the role while embodying one of its defining features. Raich looked pleadingly up at Gardevoir for a moment, trying to think of something to say, but couldn't come up with anything and dropped her gaze back down to her coffee.

The smirk fell off Gardevoir's face and tugged her mouth into a concerned frown. She looked into her own coffee with a glint of guilt. "Do you...," she started "regret getting locked?"

"Mother Mew, absolutely not," Raich said without a second of hesitation. "If I'd known how amazing it felt to get filled, I would've gotten locked the second I hatched."

Gardevoir let out a sigh of relief and sipped from her cup and chuckled, "Well, you still had an ass as a guy." Raich merely smirked at her. "No, I know. It doesn't even begin to compare." She rolled her shoulders back and adjusted her dress around her chair. "Didn't you say it felt like a performance? Like you were acting all masculine because you felt like you had to?"

This attempt to open up quickly became an interrogation Raich hadn't prepared for, and her tail flicked a bit in agitation. "It was," Raich admitted. "Being a tough, strong guy, acting like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders, and that's the way it should be...," she trailed off and took a sip from her coffee. The caffeine buzz helped by boosting her mood, but it also worked her up more. "It was all so exhausting."

"Exactly," Gardevoir said. "Because you're a girl."

Raich narrowed her eyes at her friend. "There's more to it than that!" she said, just loud enough to earn annoyed glances from the surrounding tables. "Look!" She brought her tail over the table to show its pointed end. "If I'm a girl, why isn't my tail flat?" The evidence rejuvenated her a bit, and she puffed out her chest with confidence. "You went all the way from a gallade to a gardevoir, grew an entire dress, but my tail couldn't lose a tip?"

She grinned with newfound certainty, validation blazing in her chest until a chink of doubt dulled her eyes. "Well, I don't know if it dulled during the massage, but," she shook the doubts out of her head. "Either way, it's pointed now!"

All of Raich's certainty and confidence confused and ever so slightly annoyed Gardevoir. She wanted to help her friend, but it all made as much sense as, well, a girl claiming to be a guy.

"Are you still sore about getting locked?" Gardevoir asked and watched as all her friend's confidence melted into a flame of anger obscuring an ocean of hurt. "Look, I'm sorry, I'm trying." She threw up her hands in defense and reached to grab Raich's shoulder, but got shrugged off.

"It's just, we've talked about how much fun this is from day one," Gardevoir said. "You've loved it, right? I mean, you certainly keep doing it." Raich held her paws together, kneading her discordance into them as Gardevoir continued. "Getting fucked, eaten out, sucking dick," the surrounding tables looked at Gardevoir in abject horror while Raich's cheeks burned hotter than a charizard's tail, but she went on unfazed. "Laying." She gave a pointed glance at Raich's midsection.

Raich grimaced at the reminder of the growing weight in her stomach. "That one, I think I can live without," she groaned. Her first few times had been wonderful, the intense pain paling in comparison to the beauty of bringing life into the world. The novelty quickly faded away, though, and she viewed it less and less as a beautiful miracle, more and more as an annoying waste of the time she could spend getting spread open by something going _in_rather than out.

The awkward silence of the café spread a gulf between the two friends. Gardevoir looked down at Raich in confusion, an expression silently begging her to start talking sense. "What makes you want to go back to that?" Gardevoir asked.

Without a good answer, Raich downed the lukewarm remains of her coffee and stared into the empty cup. "Well, I guess fucking myself a few times," she said absently, cheeks flushing when she heard what she said. Gardevoir did her best to hide a chuckle, and Raich couldn't hold it against her, even appreciating the effort. "I know you've met them before. Treating you like a conquest, or another notch."

It was Gardevoir's turn to grimace, her shiny coloring making her uniquely vulnerable to that brand of guy. "At least Pangoro knew how to fuck. I don't mind it so much when they're actually good as they think they are," Gardevoir said.

"See?" Raich asked, a hint of desperate hope in her voice. Gardevoir looked down with a bit more clarity but still mostly befuddled. "I guess, seeing it from the other side, I can see how much of an act it always was. It's not the kind of guy I want to be." Raich's eyes rested on her reflection in her mug's base, no longer looking down in distress, but instead in quiet rumination.

"The guys who treat me with care, like an equal they want to share a good time with instead of a thing to shove their dicks in. The way they take care of me because they want to, not because they think I can't take care of myself. Opening up to talk to me, treat me like a person instead of acting like impenetrable walls with dicks taped on. That's the kind of guy I want to be."

The beginnings of a tear started to spill out of her eye, but she wiped it away before Gardevoir saw. "Wish I could've been."

The air stood silent between them, even as the other patrons got on with their lives. Raich kept a close vigil on her reflection, trying to see a man looking back at her. "You're saying being a girl made you more of a man?" Gardevoir asked.

"I'll see you later," Raich grumbled, moving to hop down from her chair.

"Wait!" Gardevoir said, jumping up to grab her shoulder. Raich let out a silent sigh of relief (that egg had gotten a bit big for her to hop down like that). "I'm sorry, I just don't get it. It's confusing and weird to me."

Raich raised a brow as if to say, "To you?"

"Point taken," Gardevoir chuckled. "I want to help, I just don't know how, all right?" She knelt down to face her friend eye to eye. "I love you gi--rrrr, bud."

The close call made Raich chuckle. "Thanks. For now, at least, can you refer to me as a guy?" he asked.

"Deal," Gardevoir said. "Anything else, man?"

The warmth of a smile spread his lips to meet the burning embarrassment in his cheeks. "Could you help me down? I think the egg will fall out if I try to jump," Raich whispered. Gardevoir grabbed his paw and stayed close while he climbed down just in case of a fall. "Thanks," he said once his paws hit the floor. "For everything."

Gardevoir scratched behind his ears, stood up, and the two headed out together, about to walk out when Gardevoir yanked Raich back by the nape of his neck. He started readying a shock to blast up her arm, but then he saw a sandshrew across the street. "Shrewbert," they both groaned in unison.

He was a particularly frustrating dude, very similar to how Raich acted before that mudsdale locked the mouse, but with a crucial, extra dash of unbearable. Shrewbert was always eager to mention he'd locked precisely two to three more than Raich any time the two crossed paths (and the shrew had a suspicious habit of stumbling upon Raich's location).

Neither Raich or Gardevoir had seen him fucking once, let alone locking someone, but he was supposedly always at another party that happened to be scheduled the same night as the one they were recovering from. Worse, when he found out Raich got locked, he quickly claimed he'd gone to that same massage parlor and convinced his masseuse to spread legs for him instead.

He did everything to rub that _definitely real_story in the raichu's face until Raich took it upon himself to remind the shrew that chu could learn more than just electric attacks. "I swear to Raikou, I'm gonna file for a restraining order," Raich sighed.

"You haven't yet?" Gardevoir asked. She'd wanted to say it as a joke, but she was so sick of that guy she might do it for Raich.

Raich chuckled despite himself and shrugged. "Too much paperwork," he said.

That managed to get Gardevoir to chuckle. "I'll do it for you, deal?" she asked.

Raich giggled and glared up at her. "You really think I'm gonna fall for that again?" he countered with a paw on his distended belly.

The attempt at levity soured Gardevoir's smile, and she looked away with a tint of guilt in her eyes. Raich bit his lip, trying and failing to take back the words as regret rained over Gardevoir's countenance. "I'm sorry," she said.

"H-hey, don't be," Raich said, patting her on the back with his tail. "It's all a confusing mess," he glanced down at his body with a light sense of revulsion in the back of his throat, "but I don't regret it at all."

Gardevoir looked down, afraid to let go of her guilt until she saw Raich's genuine smile. In a blur of motion, she dropped down to hug the ornery little mouse. "Thank you," she said. "I love you, Raich."

The hug caught him off guard, but Raich quickly returned it, wrapping both arms and his tail around her. "Yeah, I love you, too," he said. Then, as if remembering a forgotten obligation, he stiffened and stepped back. "Or, uh, I mean," he mumbled, trying to force his voice lower and clearing his throat. "Wh-why don't you just marry me, then?"

His attempted, serious facade lasted precisely two seconds until he saw Gardevoir's cheeks bursting with the smile of repressed giggles, eyes begging for permission to laugh. The two burst into laughs in unison and Raich re-initiated the hug he'd retreated from. Whatever the hell he was going through here, he knew he'd always have Gardevoir.

---

"Ten," Raich grunted as he completed the last of his squats and smashed the bar into the rack. He gasped in breath for his burning lungs and tried his best to even them out. Before getting locked, he didn't go to the gym much, didn't even have a membership since he didn't really have to work for the body he wanted to see in the mirror.

Now, though, he couldn't bear to even think about mirrors unless he'd gone to the gym every day he physically could.

That's not to say he'd gotten any weaker. If anything, the new mass in his thighs brought his squats way heavier in barely any time at all. He still didn't know what to think of that, but at least the other muscle mass he'd built countered the existential crisis of his thicc thighs.

Raich grabbed his towel and fluffed all the sweat he could out of his fur with one paw while the other tugged at his ill-fitting shorts. While usually seen as redundant, a lot more pokémon wore clothes at the gym. Be it to keep their bits from bopping, or for the performance benefits of compression, Raich was just glad he had an excuse to cover up.

Unfortunately, shirts didn't seem quite as effective. While far from obvious to anyone else, Raich couldn't bear the sight of his bare chest, or the way shirts hung off his _pecs._Instead, he'd taken to wrapping a tight strip of bandage around his chest to bind down and hide his mammaries. It sucked, but it worked. It might've sucked less if he didn't pump out enough eggs to populate a small country, but for now he could only stop it from getting worse.

Once he got his face drier than his towel (more accurately, his towel wetter than his face), he dropped it by his side and grimaced when he saw the sweat soaking his bandages. "C'mon," he said, shaking the disgust out of his head. Men could be clean, too, but getting grossed out by that kind of stuff was girl shit. "Sweat's good! I love sweating."

A set of footsteps stopped mere feet away. His cheeks flushed, and he looked up to see a blaziken staring at him with lip curled up into a disgusted snarl. "I-it proves how hard I'm working!" Raich proclaimed, flexing both of his arms. The blaziken hesitantly nodded his head, gave Raich a thumbs-up, and hurried away.

Okay, maybe disliking feeling gross and dirty wasn't 'girl shit' after all. He fought the urge to disappear beneath his towel and went to put his weights back, a habit he had learned the value of his very first day at the gym.

Some asshat had left the bar loaded with weights at the very top notch of the rack. Raich'd climbed halfway up when a kind nidoking rushed to stop him from killing himself. The stakes weren't quite so high when it came to him since raichu weren't all that tall, but he still wanted to be considerate.

Was that masculine? Feminine? Would anybody clock him as secretly a girl if he was too nice? He'd started glancing around to look for anyone giving him funny looks and shook the thought out of his head. He wanted to act like a guy, not an asshole. Unfortunately, his experience of being one was intrinsically tied with his experience being the other.

His breathing sped up a bit as he put the last of his weights on the rack and went to grab the spray bottle to clean off the equipment. "Clean, considerate," he mumbled to himself. Two c-traits he'd discovered men could have today. "Any other c's?" he absentmindedly wondered, his eyes glancing down at the secret (cunt) hidden his shorts. "I wish," he chuckled with the slightest drop of bitterness.

He finished wiping down the equipment while trying not to think too much about his own equipment, tossed the paper towel, put the spray bottle back, grabbed his towel, and headed to the benches. As he approached the bench-presses, his mouth curled up into a sneer. Taken. Every single one. Ridiculous, he specifically arrived when it wasn't busy, so why was it busy now?

Time's passage was a bitch.

At least he had a seat to wait in. He didn't particularly want to admit it, but he could use the break. Right as he leaned back and took in a deep breath, a voice shouted, "Dude." He wondered if the guy meant him, but quickly dismissed the thought. "Bro!" His ears fell. Definitely not him. "You, Raichu guy!"

His head jerked up in surprise, and when he looked over his jaw nearly hit the floor. A towering, glistening, squishy aggron bulging with muscles looked back at him. He gulped a deep breath in and steeled himself. "Yes?" he squeaked, but then coughed, pretending to clear his throat. "Yeah, what's up?" he asked, trying to force a bit more of a masculine edge into his voice while simultaneously trying not to think about that dude's sheer unbridled hotness.

"C'mere," Aggron said. Raich started to race towards him but dug his heels into the ground to stop looking quite so eager. "Let's switch off. I need a spotter, anyway."

"Yeah, sure," Raich said, keeping careful vigil on his voice. "Thanks, bro." It shouldn't take much effort to talk the way he used to for almost his entire life up to that point, and it normally wasn't. Yet, all his confidence and stability melted at the sight of this beefcake. It didn't help that he'd avoided sex the past week. Well, as best he could.

Mew did it feel good.

Yet, every time he gave in to the temptation, the sweet pleasure and relief struggled to overcome the pit punching a hole in his gut. It's not like he could wear shorts during it, so he did his best to act in the role guys expected of him. They'd take control, they'd wait on his every need, and he'd grit his teeth and try to focus on the feeling of their dicks filling his pussy while they called him a beautiful girl.

He wanted to at least try asking a partner to call him a guy in bed, but he lost his nerve every time. His favorite pastime had become a nightmarish war of atrition. Yet, despite it all, he squished his thighs together trying to avoid thinking about what that iron-type must've been packing.

"Bro?" Aggron asked, yanking Raich out of his introspection.

"Huh?" Raich squeaked. Act cool, act cool. "S-sorry, was just thinking of--" fuck what did he think of all the time as a guy--oh right, "Babes."

Aggron laughed. "Damn, that's disappointing," he said. "I was hoping you were thinking of me."

Raich chugged from his water bottle. "Haha, what?" he mumbled. Act cool, act cool, act cool. "I'm a dude."

Aggron looked down at him and raised a brow. "Yeah you are," he growled. That sent a shiver down Raich's spine. "A cute one." Another instant under his gaze would've melted Raich, but luckily for the mouse, Aggron plopped himself down on the bench to get lifting. "Name's Aggy, by the way."

"Raich," Raich said, letting out a chuckle. Not the most creative names, but at least they were easy to remember. Aggy grabbed the bar, and Raich hopped up behind the bench to get in position. Aggy was a good bit bigger than him, but luckily the bench had a place to stand for smaller spotters. "Need me to count?"

Aggy nodded his head and said, "I'd appreciate it. To ten." With a grunt, he lifted the bar off the rack, and Raich hovered his paws close behind. Aggy pushed the bar up and down with such ease that Raich had to wonder why he needed a spotter at all, doubly so when he saw the weights on the bar. Six forty-fives.

The reps flew by, Raich's eyes helpless but to linger on the bulging pecs with every single one. "Dude," he mumbled. "You're huge." Aggy finished the tenth rep and gently slammed the bar back onto the rack, the loud noise enough to snap Raich out of it. "Err, ah, umm," he raced to look anywhere else and swallowed his nerves, "Not bad."

No word came in response. Aggy looked down at him with an oppressive leer which Raich couldn't for the life of him discern the meaning of. Every inch of height over him crushed Raich, making him feel more like a mouse than he ever had in his life. Not just a mouse. Prey.

The desert of his throat couldn't choke anything but a squeak out until Aggy finally said, "You suck at counting." Raich blinked. "You didn't make it to one."

All of the pressure dissolved at once. "Oh right," Raich panted, trying to gasp in the air he'd forgotten to breathe. "Sorry."

"No worries," Aggy said with a shrug. "Your turn. How many plates you need?"

Raich wobbled over to the opposite side of the bar with rubber knees (because of the squats, of course). "Two forty-fives, one five," he said, his cheeks flushing. Barely enough for bicep curls to Aggy, probably.

A sputter from Aggy confirmed Raich's worst fears until Aggy said, "And _I_impress _you?_How much do you weigh?"

Raich struggled for a moment to understand the question. "Like, seventy something?" he said. Oh Arceus, did Aggy think he was fat? "I haven't checked in a bit." Should he lie and say he's on a diet? Would that be more impressive--no! Guys didn't go on diets! He needed to change the subject. "You lift like twenty times more, though."

"Less than three times, more," Aggy chuckled. Raich thought for a moment about the math, but decided giving up would be easier. "And it's not as impressive when I weigh like eight times more than you." They slipped the fives on in unison, and Raich went over to the bench. "Hell, I can't even bench my body-weight, yet."

Raich twisted his mouth into a frown, and his ears drooped a bit. "Hey, you still lift a lot," he said. "Don't undersell the work you've done." He hopped onto the bench, but didn't lay on it quite yet. "Besides, how much of that weight's just iron? Or steel, or whatever."

Raich smiled up at him, and Aggy smiled back down. "I like you, Raich," Aggy said. "Most dudes can't lift without making it a dick measuring contest."

By some miracle, this information didn't make Raich panic that he wasn't being masculine enough. "Thanks," he said. "I like you, too." His cheeks flushed. He got lost in his own mind, and his eyes started drifting south. From Aggy's face, to his pecs, to his belly, to his--

"Raich?" Aggy said. Raich jumped again, looking up to see Aggy looking down at him with an incisive smirk. "Thinking about _babes_again?"

"Y-yeah," Raich blurted out. He flopped down onto the bench. "Just dudes--Babes! Thinking about babes."

Aggy leaned over the bar to stare directly down at him. Raich gulped, his attempt to move on having trapped him under that oppressive glare. "Babes?" Aggy asked, tone holding an undercurrent of that same growl that melted Raich earlier.

"Mhm," Raich mumbled. "Babes."

Aggy stared right down into his eyes, yet Raich felt his gaze all over his body. Every strand of fur stood up as Aggy started leaning down. Flashes of a certain mudsdale standing over him invaded his vision. Terror filled him, but Raich couldn't bring himself to even wiggle as Aggy approached closer and closer, inch by inch, until his muzzle hovered inches from Raich's right ear. "Sure," he said, then popped right back up into position. "Ready?"

It took Raich a moment to regain motor function. "Uh-huh, mhm, yep," he stammered, raising his rubber arms up to the bar.

Aggy pressed some of his weight down onto the bar. "Are you sure?" he asked.

Raich took a deep breath to steel himself. "Yeah," he said, shaking the nerves off. "Yeah, I'm ready." Aggy nodded, and took his weight off the bar.

The other sets went by without much note. Aggy tossed a few more teases about 'babes' at Raich, but for the most part the pair made as good conversational partners as they did lifting partners. As the time went on, Raich found he could finally relax in a way he hadn't for a while; Aggy talked to him like any other dude to the point Raich let himself be one, at least for a little bit.

No good lasts forever, though, and Raich felt a pang of regret as he finished the last rep of his last set. "Good shit," Aggy said. Raich panted too much to respond with more than weak nods. "You good?"

Raich took special effort to slow his breaths down and breathe deep. "Yeah," he panted, sitting up.

Aggy nodded and gave Raich his water bottle while drinking from his own. Raich eagerly gulped all the water left, wiping the residual away after. "Whelp, let's hit the showers," Aggy groaned while stretching.

All the water threatened to jump back out of Raich's throat. "Actually," he coughed. He glanced over at the men's locker room with a sting of fear (and guilt). If he took off his shorts, or hell even his bandages, Aggy would instantly know. The thought of this dude who'd treated him like a guy, any other man, finding out the truth made all the acid in his stomach turn. He scanned around the lockers and saw exactly the lie he needed. "I'm gonna go on the treadmill for a bit."

Aggy looked down at him with admiration that set the mouse's heart and nerves ablaze. "I wish I was in your kind of shape," he chuckled. "Or are you just saying that so I don't get to see your wet, naked ass?" A squeak of panic jumped out of Raich's throat. Did Aggy know? "Cutie."

Oh, right. "Sorry," Raich said, shrugging with borrowed confidence. "Maybe some other time."

"I'm holding you to that," Aggy growled, both starting over to the lockers together. "Either way, let's do this again. Here." He dropped his phone down into Raich's paws, and Raich filled it out before Aggy had a chance to ask. Aggy took his phone back and glanced at the new contact. "Hm," he brought a claw to his chin. "Something's missing."

Raich looked up in confusion, and a flash blinded him. "There we go," Aggy chuckled while Raich rubbed vision back into his eyes. "I'll call you soon, see ya." Before he even had his vision back, Aggy had already disappeared into the locker room.

Raich stood between the entrances of both. His eyes looked longingly at the men's, but his paws went defensively to his chest. He held his tail in front of him. Sharp as the day he'd evolved. He had the tail of a guy, felt like a guy, and even talked like one. Enough like one for Aggy, at least. Maybe he could use the men's lockers. His paws took one step closer, but he felt his resolve drip away.

He couldn't bring himself to do it. As much as he wanted to be one, felt like one, he knew the jig would be up the instant he stripped down. What the real men would do once they saw him wasn't worth finding out. His head hung low, and his tail dragged behind him as he stepped over into the other locker room. A bone came from in front of him, too high for his low gaze to catch it before it was between his eyes, launching him into the nearest treadmill after he felt a tug at his shorts.

"Pervert!" someone screamed. He looked up, but could barely make her out with his dizzied vision. "You think you can fool anyone with these?" His double vision recombined to one to see his shorts in her hand. Her eyes went down to his groin that he rushed to cover with his paws, but the shock on her face showed him it was too late.

A crowd had formed thanks to her earlier scream. Raich wanted to curl up into a ball, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from Aggy. He'd rushed out as well, and now he'd seen everything Raich had wanted to hide. "I'm so sorry!" the marowak shouted as she rushed over to him. "I thought she was a guy!"

Tears welled up in his eyes, and he ran away from everyone before they saw one fall. The new bump on his head throbbed with every step, but he didn't slow down, not even as black spots started filling his vision. He made it into the family bathroom, slammed the door behind him, and curled up into a ball in the far corner of the room. He buried his eyes into his arms, afraid to let even the walls see his tears fall. Sobs forced their way out of his throat no matter how hard he tried to bite them back.

Four knocks banged into the bathroom door. "Raich?" It was Aggy. Raich felt the pit in his stomach deepen.

"What?" Raich shouted back. He sniffled and wiped away as much of the evidence of his tears away as he could. "I lied, okay?! There!" Only silence came from the other side.

The fear of impending screams filled Raich until Aggy finally said, "Lied about what?"

Raich grit his teeth, terror dying to anger. "Don't play dumb!" he shouted. "I know you saw!"

"Saw some bitch hit you over the head with a bone?" Aggy asked. "She said you were trying to go into the women's locker room."

The storm of anger swirled around and back into despair. Raich felt his breath hitch again. "I was," he said.

He heard Aggy click his tongue on the other side of the door. "Not a great way to get babes, man," Aggy said.

What was he not getting? "Are you an idiot, or do you just want me to admit it out loud?!" Raich screamed, despair and rage coalescing to a combined fever pitch. "I lied! There! I'm just a girl pretending to be a guy! Now leave me alone!" Another wave of tears clouded his vision as he collapsed under the weight. More sobs came, and he didn't have the strength to keep them quiet.

His crying remained the only sound in or out of the bathroom. Raich waited for the sound of Aggy stomping away, but it never came. The worst of his sobs came and went, and Aggy finally said, "Raich, it's all right." His voice was so tender that it felt like a pair of arms giving him a hug. "I'm not mad at you. Being trans doesn't make you any less of a guy."

Raich blinked back more tears and rubbed away others. "T-trans?" he asked.

"Y-yeah?" Aggy said, finally thrown off guard. "Y'know, transgender. Trans man."

Raich did not know. He felt simultaneous confusion and concern. Was this some set up for a joke or something? "What's that?" he asked.

"What?!" Aggy asked, breaking down into a rush of chuckles.

Raich grit his teeth, his mouth pulling into a snarl. "Fuck off," he said. "If you're gonna make fun of me, at least get in here so I can kick your ass." The meaning of the words didn't hit him until long after he'd said them.

He didn't get a chance to clarify before he saw the knob turn. "As you wish, Raich," Aggy said, starting to step through the door.

Raich rushed to ram into the door, "No!" and block Aggy's entry. "I'm not--," he started to say, but then he saw Aggy's arm poking through the doorway, holding his shorts. He leapt up, snatched the bribe, and yanked them back on. They still fit fine. His tail looped under and out the back to yank them up over his ass as Aggy made his way in.

"Someone who hatched a girl, but decides to live as a guy," Aggy explained.

"You can do that?!" Raich asked, his eyes wide as saucers. "W-wait, hatched?" His tail drooped down to the floor, ears flat against his head. He opened his mouth with a few false starts before giving up entirely, kneading his forepaws over each other.

Aggy looked down with a raised brow. That oppressive presence from before seemed mostly absence, though a shadow of it remained with a more comforting sort of effect. "What? You did hatch as a girl, didn't you?" Aggy asked in a joking tone, but he dropped the levity when Raich shook his head.

"Fountain water," Raich mumbled. He meandered back to his seat in the corner and slouched against the wall. "Lived my entire life as a guy, then poof." He puffed his paws out in the air as if spreading confetti. "Suddenly, I'm a girl." He brought his paws back to rest on his knees.

A stifled snicker furrowed Raich's brow for him. "Raich, that," Aggy chuckled. Raich gave the aggron his best death glare, but it didn't do much against the mirth. "Dude, you can still be trans." Raich perked back up at that, but he tried not to let his hopes rise too far. "Like, if you switched once, why didn't you think you could switch back?"

Raich lowered his head. Even though he knew it was a rhetorical question, the answer weighed heavy on his heart. "A real man wouldn't have gotten locked," he mumbled. His eyes fell down to his groin. "And I don't think a guy would prefer having a vag to a dick." His cheeks burned, and Aggy tread softly over to sit next to him.

Aggy wrapped a paw around him. "What about this?" Aggy asked, flicking the tip of Raich's tail. "Seems like a guy's tail to me."

"What does that have to do with getting locked?" Raich asked. The acknowledgment of his tail, though, did make him feel a lot better.

"What does getting locked have to do with being a guy?" Aggy countered. Raich looked at him with a squint, as if the connection was obvious, yet his mouth hung open while he failed to say it. "What part of us lifting together needed us both to have dicks?" Raich tried again to come up with the obvious answer, but finally relented, shut his mouth and looked away. "Does your pussy mean I'm not gay anymore because I think you look like a hot guy?"

Raich sputtered out flustered babbles while his cheeks caught ablaze. "B-but if, g-did trans you call it?" he stammered. He curled as tight as he could, and Aggy pulled him tighter. A new question (that he knew was stupid) bubbled up to the surface. Aggy wasn't the first gay person Raich had met, but he didn't think about it enough for it to cross his mind unprompted, even when he thought about his own preference for guys. "It doesn't make you a girl to like guys," he said, nodding along as he informed himself.

Aggy snorted, but didn't mock him for it. "You've never heard of being lgbtq, have you?" he asked.

Raich looked up with a squint, tilted his head and asked, "The sandwich?"

Aggy bit his lips looking down at the chu to bite back laughter. "You're so adorable," he cooed. While Raich blushed his yellow cheeks orange, Aggy took his phone out. "Here, I'll give you my ex-boyfriend's number. I think you'll get along all right."

"Ex?" Raich asked a bit too eagerly.

"Yeah, but we're still friends," Aggy said. "He wanted us to be exclusive, I like to sleep around, so we broke it off while we still loved each other." Now that vocabulary, Raich knew very well. "Anyway, here." He showed Raich his phone, and the chu pulled out his own. "He's trans, too, and he's got a great endocrin--," Aggy noticed Raich's glaze over by the third syllable, "gender doctor. He'll probably be better at answering your questions than me, too."

Raich nodded along as a smile spread his cheeks. "Gender doctor," he whispered to himself. A little coo squeaked out of him when he saw the contact's profile picture, a patrat strangle-hugging Aggy while the aggron struggled to take a picture, both smiling wider than anatomy should allow. Raich had to chuckle, too: Aggy certainly had a type.

"Done," Raich said as he double-checked the number. There remained so much he didn't know, might never understand, but Raich felt a bit more resolute in his manhood, if only for now. Still, he had one last conflict beating his heart too fast. "You really don't care that I lied to you?"

"Nope. I don't think you lied at all," Aggy answered before Raich had a chance to look up. "You're plenty man enough for me." A wink highlighted the subtext as more than incidental.

The flirting that flustered him earlier suddenly emboldened him just like it used to. "Y'know, I've been considering finding myself a man, too," Raich said. "How'd you like to try that some time?"

Aggy smirked down at the mouse. "How's about right here right now?" Aggy offered. Fucking in a gym bathroom. So scandalous it made Raich's pussy quiver.

He hopped up and wrapped his arms around Aggy's neck to plant a kiss on his cheeks. "That sounds wonderful," Raich said.

Aggy squeezed Raich back and tilted his head into a faux-quizzical look. "What happened to babes?" Aggy asked.

Raich shrugged, tapping the welt on his head as he said, "I'm willing to try new things."

~~~~~~

Happy pride, everyone! I don't tend to like sharing the meaning I was shooting for in what I write, but let's call this a special case.

I wrote this while I was still on the fence about transition. There was a lot holding me back, but the biggest thing was fear of regret. I couldn't think of a reason to regret, but I was terrified I would. Probably because it's all anyone ever asks about when you try to bring up the topic.

So, as any responsible person would do, I turned to porn for answers. Basically any story about a guy transforming into a chu of the opposite gender hit the spot. Either way would work for me, but there's just a lot more mtf smut out there. Because my brain is broken, they all stuck around in there. Instead of helping me ignore my feelings, they made me think about them more.

When I read a certain story, Massage Parlor Tricks (the deleted one), I couldn't get 'Raich' out of my head. The finishing line, especially, about how they both "never looked back" really stuck with me. I had to wonder what that would look like.

I definitely took some liberties with Raich. I tried to keep the core of his character the same, but I don't really think he's that much of a womanizer in the original stories (well, aside from all the guys he womanizes). I think he's a sweety in both, but I'm admittedly biased. I do feel like he was a himbo through and through, though.

The question of what it would look like to never look back but still feel some kind of incomplete started to form, and I started writing this to run it through. I initially intended to lead to porn, but it ended such that I felt like it would cheapen the emotional climax.

Not that porn ever cheapens, but I usually try to have the emotional climax match with the _other_kind of climax.

That's actually why there's this random aside with Shrewbert, who is then never mentioned again. He was supposed to be a little subject of forced-feminization that was going to be _really_hot, but it didn't really come together in the end. Maybe some other time.

But, I digress.

There's just a certain joy that comes from finding your true self. When you look at what there is on offer and tweak the package to be yours, it's like seeing your reflection in the mirror for the first time. I wanted to guide an adorable, idiot man through that journey so it'd be easier for myself, if I ever had to. It also helped to put more rep for trans people happy with their genitals out into the world.

I now know I'm probably never going to go on that road back. In just six months, hrt has completely changed me for the better. I've learned to love myself in ways that I genuinely never thought possible.

That's what always frustrates me about any kind of discussion of trans people. It's always about the dysphoria, about the pain, the suffering, what we're willing to give up, and that framing is obviously to scare us away from ourselves. Being trans doesn't mean all of the fearmongering isn't still scary. It makes this odd image of trans people where we go through all of this hell just to stop pain.

Really, though, I never was in all that much pain. Not until I really decided I wanted to transition, at least, did I ever even think it was dysphoria. Just general body issues not helped by a history of anorexia. The trans experience, for me, isn't suffering.

It's all about trans joy. The story that never gets told. That's why I wanted Raich to meet someone who just treated him like he was, like he felt. There's dysphoria still, of course, but what lets Raich accept himself isn't looking at what he doesn't want to be; it's someone who cares showing him who he does want to be. It's seeing who he is, not who he isn't.

How well did I do there? Well, I don't know. In reality, this has been finished for months, and I was too scared to publish it. The writing is worse than I'd consider myself now, but I'm past the point that I consider insulting my writing to be productive. It's solid, it works.

I'm publishing it now because the deletion of its predecessor reminded me of one of my most deeply held values. Art, of all kinds, deserves to be preserved. It deserves to be on display, out there for people to find.

Especially queer art in these inopportune times. I'm sick of people who don't know us telling their versions of our stories. Finding yourself in art is beautiful, and I believe it's an example of divinity gifted to us. We create with the beat of our heart to pull in the pulse of another's that we may grow stronger and beat as one. That can only happen with our stories out there.

I hope that this could strengthen the beat of your heart.