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Her mother dies in a hospital room, all sterile white and smelling of bleach. The blankets the doctors give her are scratchy, but she doesn’t get much sleep anyway. Her mother is sick, her face drawn and pale, her eyes sunken and fever-bright. She is dying, and all Genima can do is sit there and hold her hand. At the end, her mother reaches up, touches her face, runs her fingers over the smooth skin of her cheek. “You look so much like me,” she says, and Genima can’t help but start to cry.
Grief is a funny thing- not ha-ha funny, but funny in the way where it hurts to even entertain the notion- and Genima and her dad discover that over the next week. Her mother is buried in a white dress, the one she wore in the pictures of her honeymoon. Scott is there, and he holds her hand as they stand near the front of the mourners. Genima’s nails leave sharp crescent moon marks in his palm, but Scott says nothing about it. He doesn’t even flinch. They’re thirteen and Genima feels like she’s drowning, her mother six feet underground.
Her dad stays in his room for days, doesn’t leave unless it’s for work, and for weeks they don’t speak. Genima stays in her room, curled up with Scott, who is more of an anchor now than he ever was before. The two of them huddle underneath the blankets with Scott’s arms around Genima’s waist, holding her tight and close and warm. Scott sometimes strokes her hair- long, brown, mousy, down to her ass and so prone to tangles that it’s hard to brush- or he kisses Genima on the forehead, tells her that it’s okay and they can get through this. When she wakes up, drenched in sweat and screaming, it’s Scott who’s there, hand in hers, whispering small things in the darkness so the panic ebbs and she regains control.
One night, a few weeks after the funeral, the two of them on the couch attempting to marathon Star Wars, Genima leans back, looks at Scott, and murmurs, “I want to cut my hair.”
“How short?” Scott asks. He doesn’t ask why, and Genima is grateful for it. Scott doesn’t need to know why in order to help. It’s why they’re best friends in the first place, have been since second grade, and Genima is beginning to realize just how much she appreciates Scott. “I can cut it for you.”
The sheriff is at work so they grab his electric razor and go into Genima’s bathroom, the two of them sitting on the floor as Scott clipsher hair close enough to where they can shave the rest. When they’re done, Genima has a cut on the back of her head but she’s all right nonetheless, looking at herself in the mirror and touching the space where her hair used to be rather self-consciously. “Does it look okay?”
Scott nods and smiles, running his hand over her head gently. “It looks great.” He pauses, hand on the back of Genima’s neck. “What’s your dad gonna say to you?”
Genima shrugs, not wanting to think about her dad. She likes her hair this way, likes the way it makes her normally feminine cheekbones look sharper, the way her lips are slightly fuller. Her eyes look nicer, too, and if she stands just right, she looks like a boy. “My mom told me I looked like her.”
“A little,” Scott admits, and Genima, who hasn’t cried since the funeral, looks at him, eyes watering. “But you are so different, Gem.” It’s been his nickname for her since they were little, and she smiles slightly despite the need to cry. “Don’t worry.” He grins and nudges her side. “Besides, short hair suits you.”
Her dad comes home for breakfast the next morning and when Genima sits down at the table with a bowl of cereal, Scott still asleep upstairs, the sheriff simply looks at her before nodding. She isn’t sure if it’s approval or just consent, but she smiles a little anyway and digs into her frosted flakes.
Scott helps her with hair for the first little while, but soon she’s gotten the hang of keeping it short. It’s summertime, so they spend their days at the mall or in the woods, Scott practicing lacrosse in anticipation of their freshman year of high school and Genima acting as his practice partner. Her breasts- still budding, but already too large for her liking- are a little bit of a hamper, especially when Scott tackles her, and she starts looking online for ways to keep them hidden.
Her binder arrives two weeks later and she tugs it on, topless in her room except for it. Her chest is flat for the first time in two years and she runs her hands over the smoothness of it, Scott watching from the bed with some interest. “I like it,” she says, looking at him, and Scott nods.
“If you like it, I like it, too,” he says, smiling brightly, and he tugs off his hoodie- a baggy red thing he’s had since sixth grade- and hands it to her. “Put that on. I want you to keep it.”
Genima tugs it on over her head- she’s still trying to get used to the shortness, but she loves it all the same- and looks back in the mirror. The hoodie hides the beginnings of her curves, the slight-but-still-noticeable bumps of her breasts, and she looks, for the first time, like a boy. Not a girl just pretending, but an actual boy. Grinning, she turns to Scott and hugs him tightly around the neck. He laughs and hugs back, holding her as close as he possibly can and kissing her cheek. “If you’re happy, we’re both happy,” he says softly, and Genima loves him more in that moment than she ever has before.
Over time, she asks him to call her Stiles. He does so happily, teases that it’s better suited for her than Genima ever was. When school starts back up, Stiles asks the teachers to call her Genim. Just Genim. Since it’s a new school and they don’t know her too well, all of them oblige, and while most of the classmates she’s been with since elementary school give her odd looks from time to time, by Christmas break Genima is gone for all but a select few holdouts. She’s Stiles now.
They break for winter and Scott is over every day, Stiles wearing the bright red hoodie he gave her and spending her time on the couch with him, curled up and cozy with hot chocolate and Doctor Who. It’s been seven months, and losing her mother seems far away. It still hurts, a bruise that doesn’t ache unless she presses on it, but Scott has helped her cope, helped her realize that her mother’s death didn’t have to be the end all, be all.
Scott, head against Stiles’ shoulder, curls up against her a little more and Stiles looks at him before starting to speak, heart fluttering. This is it, really. She knows that he knows, but saying it out loud feels weird, feels like more of an admission than she is willing to concede. Scott is safe, though, and he has helped tremendously since her mother’s passing. Maybe they’ve always known about Stiles, maybe they’ve just never known how to put it until recently, but Stiles says it anyway, the words lingering in the air like an unwritten contract. “I’m a boy,” he- oh, god, he, Stiles reminds himself, the pronoun feeling like home, feeling safe and warm and settled- says, and Scott sits up slightly, quiet.
“I’m a boy,” Stiles repeats, and this time it’s concrete, perfect, certain. “I’m a boy, Scott, and I want you to call me him and he and know that I’m going to kick your ass in lacrosse once we try out. I want people to look at me and know I’m a boy, and I think some people already have, but shit, I want you to know it, too.”
Scott is laughing now and Stiles is kind of pissed that he’s laughing during such a serious moment but then Scott leans forward and kisses him, this time on the mouth, this time soft and sweet and accommodating, and Stiles practically melts, kissing back gently and finding Scott’s hand. “I know,” Scott says softly when he pulls away, squeezing Stiles’ hand. “Man, all I want is for you to be happy and comfortable, and if this is how that happens, then I’m okay with it.”
Stiles grins at him, leaning in for another kiss, and Scott tugs him forward by the hoodie strings, holds him in his lap and lies with him on the couch. Stiles isn’t stupid, he knows it won’t be easy, that his dad may not understand, but Scott is there and Scott is tangible, Scott is going to support him no matter what, and that somehow makes everything better.