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Finding the Young Soul Rebel

Summary:

Casey struggles with her gender, and starts to wonder if she's actually transgender. She worries about how Izzie might react if she realizes that she is one.

Notes:

Note to reader: This is a prequel to "We're the New Face of Failure". Casey uses she/her pronouns because this is in the part of the timeline where Casey wasn't an enby yet, and thus they used those pronouns as a default.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

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She didn’t like the person looking back at her. 

It was early in the morning in their dinky-ass apartment near UCLA. The climate’s always hot here, but the early mornings, when the sun’s only peeking out in the skyline and everything’s still, tender, and quiet—those mornings tend to be a breezier, cooler version of the heat than the noons and afternoons. 

Casey and Izzie’s apartment wasn’t the most livable place, as you can expect from folks in their income range at one of the most expensive places in the world: one bedroom, a small kitchenette, and a bathroom that can barely fit a shower and toilet. The living room barely had enough space for a couch, much less the bikes the two of them use to get to school, and because of how small it is, it’s always messy with clothes, books, bags, trash, and an assortment of different knick-knacks that always seemed in exist in the chaos. 

Usually, it wouldn’t matter. It was their place, a place for Izzie and Casey to exist outside of the world together, a place to rest and recoup as they account for the increasingly harsh times that they find themselves in, economically and for their studies. It was like their own secret garden, their little nook in the world. 

Today, however, as Casey looked over herself in the mirror, red eyes staring at her hair, something was bothering her—a bother that has been lingering behind her mind since she was old enough to think, but only now has been forcing itself to the forefront of her rumination. 

It wasn’t disgust, she knew how disgust felt. It wasn’t anger or apathy or self-hatred. No, it was just this feeling of wrongness in herself, a separation of who they are and who they were seeing in the mirror that she was having a hard time reconciling on her own. How do you solve what’s wrong when your own ruminations can’t even figure it out?

A knock at the door. Even at her sleepiest, Izzie has the strength of a thousand bulls. 

“Casey, can you finish up there? I have a 10 a.m. class, and I need to get prepared now.”

She sighed, closing her eyes. Guess figuring this out will have to wait. 

 

***

 

Most days on campus had started to swirl together in Casey’s mind as she went through the motions of her routine. Classes, lunch, talking, training: at some point, the haze of her mind just stuck out as nothingness, beats in a song that comes together as whimsy. She felt—what was the word? It was a “b” word, something that stayed on the tip of their tongue. Bored? Boring Bothe–

Bothered. She was bothered. 

The worst part is that she doesn’t know why she was bothered, just that she was. Everything seems fine between Izzie and her, grades are pretty great, even their coach at UCLA has been praising them for her athletics lately—she even joked that she might be able to make it to the Olympics starting team for track and field if she kept it up. 

So why was she feeling this way? What was this sick, crawling feeling in her that something was wrong , deep in her body, even if nothing is really wrong at the moment?

“Hey, baby, are you OK?”

Her voice pulled her out of their spiraling thoughts, and she looked at Izzie and flashed a smile for her benefit. “I’m fine, I just feel a little faint.”

“If you say so,” she replied, apprehension on her face. “I’ll be in the corner packing goods.”

The two of them were at the campus’ LGBTQ chapter, a small dinky place with brown walls yellowed by its history as a smoking area for people, where all the outcast queers would meet up together and talk about what they could do to help the community (and sometimes actually be able to do so). It wasn’t really something that Casey had wanted to do—nobody really wanted to pack bags of stuff to send to the homeless folks in San Francisco on a Friday night after a rough day in school—but Izzie wanted to, and it’s not like she had anything better to do. 

So, she sat down in the small cluttered room, and started packing some of the sanitary products in the boxes at the corner inside one of the half-filled bags. 

Izzie was doing far more important tasks of organizing the boxes that were coming in, and except for a few glances at their direction, Izzie was mostly focused on making sure the people packing the supplies were able to do their jobs. 

Casey’s partner in this task was Jessie, a fellow queer who would change his identity on a monthly basis. He was, at the very least, genderqueer, and right now he was identifying exclusively as a trans man. It wasn’t set in stone, however, and they’ve been using their time in the queer chapter to test out their pronouns and names to see which fits better. He’s settled on Jessie (he/him) so far, but he’s also been Jessie (they/them) and Joey (it/its) recently, so Casey learned to take his changes in identity with stride, the experimentation of someone whose self-image and being wasn’t as clear as crystal yet. 

Jessie wasn’t really a weird person otherwise. Quiet, contemplative, always reading this book or that book with subdued interest. He tended to have an undercut on the left side of his bleached hair, and he always seemed to wear a wifebeater shirt (god, why do they call it a fucking wifebeater anyways, Casey thought, shaking her head in disgust) and a leather jacket with Pride pins on it. 

The two of them worked silently together for the next few minutes while everyone around them seemed to be chatting up a storm about different stuff—it seems like, even in activism, collective action goes hand-in-hand with teenage gossip and flirting. At some point, the silence started to feel a little heavy, so Casey decided to go in and do some idle chit chat while they packed the bags. 

“So,” Casey said, “read anything good lately?”

“You don’t have to talk to me, Casey,” Jessie replied. “We both know neither of us like talking that much.”

“Yeah,” Casey replied. “I mean, I wasn’t trying for idle chatting. Not asking for the campus gossip or anything, just wanted to know what you were reading because, you know, you read a lot.”

“And you think that I’d want to talk about it just for that fact?”

Casey raised her hands in surrender. “All right, whatever. Fucking off like you want me to.”

With their efforts at a conversation stifled, Casey decided to rededicate their attention towards putting the products in the bag, trying to understand the growing feelings of uneasiness emanating through their body. And then she heard a sighing sound in the background, turning around to see Jessie rolling his eyes and pulling out a book from his pocket, the covers slightly wrinkled and its edges mildly folded as he gave it to Casey silently. 

“It’s a book I’ve been reading, Stone Butch Blues, and it’s good. Helping me deal with my weird identity crisis-es with some of the autobiographical words. Might help you, too, I think,” he said, gruffly, looking down and re-focusing efforts to repackage the material. 

At the sound of that, Casey found herself staring blankly at Jessie before trying to stutter out a panicked reply: “What do you mean? I mean, I don’t have an identity crisis right now! Who told you that?”

Jessie looked at them for a moment before stifling out a laugh. He shook his head and replied, not removing his focus at the work: “I mean, I wasn’t implying that, I think, but honestly, if that’s the way you reacted to an innocent book recommendation, maybe the book will be more helpful than I expected.”

Casey’s consciousness drifted towards the book. She stared at the beaten cover, the neutral apathetic pose of the author staring back at her. The person (a man? a woman? does it even matter?) looked back at her silently, and she felt a curiosity in her head about the contents of the book. 

“I’ll give it a read,” she replied. Jessie nodded at them again, and then the two started focusing on the repacking again, the conversation going to a lull. 

 

***

 

Casey was riveted

Stone Butch Blues, as a classic piece of autobiographical fiction, puts you in the shoes of someone struggling with their gender, and it’s something that weighs both masculinity and femininity in equal measure, looking at the different prejudices that one faces both in cis and queer circles due to the nonconformity to the standards in either group—and the freedom and loneliness that one can find in being yourself at your own timeline. 

Casey couldn’t help but read and re-read it, and then she went to the library and got more of Leslie Feinberg’s books, including Trans Liberation and Transgender Warriors . With that, she started thinking about it deeply, that question that constantly nags her mind when she looks in the mirror, when she gets called “sir” or “ma’am” or whatever by clerks or delivery people when Izzie and her pick up the mail—heck, when she’s touched by Izzie while they fuck.

It looms heavy in her mind, this…dissonance. She doesn’t know what it means for her. She doesn’t know why she really feels this way. But she knows she’s never felt more seen than reading this sentence from Stone Butch Blues herself:

 

“Who was I now—woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked.”

She started reading Feinberg’s books, and other books on being transgender, everywhere . In class, on breaks during practice; on some days, she was even reading the books at the LGBTQ Chapter, poring through pages in between lectures about gender identity and women’s rights. A couple of times, she was caught by Jessie reading the book, and ze (Jessie changed zir pronouns again because ze felt like the he/him was too restrictive) looked at her with a knowing expression. 

“I’m happy that you like the book,” ze said. “Anything you picked up from it?”

“I dunno yet. There’s something , but I don’t even know what to call it,” she answered. 

“Alright. Well, I dunno if you’ll get there on your own, but if you do realize you’re trans, I’m sure that Izzie will be fine with it,” ze said. 

Casey looked at zem, confusion in her face. “Well, of course she would be fine if I was trans. Why would you think it’s an issue?”

Jessie sighed, and sat down next to Casey on the floor with a dismissive look on ze face. 

“Well, Casey, I don’t know if you know, but Izzie likes femmes.”

“Wha—no, she doesn’t. She likes me . She loves me , no matter what I am.”

Jessie shrugged and stood up. “If you say so. But it won’t be the first time a lesbian couple broke up because one of the partners admitted to being trans.”

And with that, Jessie walked away, leaving Casey unsure—not about the direction of her gender identity, but by the unknown-ness of having to face that without the love of her life. 

 

***

 

One day, Casey and Izzie lay down together on the rooftop of their apartment building, sitting on some cozy beach chairs as the two of them looked up at the stars. It was…nice. Comforting. Something they haven’t had for a while thanks to their busy schedules. But with some classic George Michael songs playing on Izzie’s phone, the two of them cuddled together quietly, happy in the warm embrace. 

“So, your birthday is in two weeks…” Izzie started.

As Casey looked up to Izzie’s face, she could see that her girlfriend had something devious planned in her mind. 

“Why? Are you thinking of doing a party? For me?” she replied, a giggle escaping her mouth. 

“I mean, some of the gals are thinking of doing a small celebration for you. I think they’re pretty ecstatic about making you dress up and take you to this local lesbian bar where we could just…chill,” Izzie replied. 

Casey’s eyebrows flurried at the implication: that it would be a girls’ night for her, and for some reason, she didn’t like that. A girls’ night because they’re all girls , she thought.

Except me.

Izzie saw the expression on Casey’s face before she was able to change it, and a worried look came over her face. 

“What’s wrong, Casey?” 

“Nothing, nothing.” Casey tried to just bury her head in Izzie’s chest, but Izzie sat up and moved to the edge of the beach chair before facing Casey. Finally, Casey exhaled loudly and sat up herself, feeling a fear that rushed up her head as she began to read more about being transgender. 

“What if…I’m a guy?” she said.

“A guy?” Izzie said, chuckling. “Casey, I think we’ve seen each other naked enough to know that you’re not.”

“No, I mean…what if I’m…trans?”

“Uh—ohhhh.” Izzie stayed silent as the implications of the word sank into your mind. 

“I mean,” Izzie said, this fearful tone coming out of her voice that she was failing to hide, “I guess we can’t do the lesbian bar and femme dress-up thing, you know. We can do something else.”

“I—that’s not why I brought it up, really. I meant, like, what would it mean for us ?”

“Us? What does this ha—”

“You like women, Izzie. Femme -presenting women. And maybe sometimes I can do that, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I…don’t really feel feminine. And I don’t feel masculine either. I’m…not there. A fuckery. Just…too beyond those two already that I can’t really relate. I’m not anything, and I’m worried that you won’t love me anymore because of that.” 

Izzie exhaled, before picking up her phone to pause the music. 

“I—I think I need some time to think about this, OK?” Izzie said. As she saw Casey’s face fall, her hands cupped her lover’s face, moving closer to her quietly. “I don’t mean that as a ‘no,’ I mean that as a ‘I haven’t considered it before and I need to think about it for a bit,’ OK?”

Casey nodded, even as she was unable to keep the tears in her eyes from coming out. 

“Come on, I think it’s time to prepare for bed,” Izzie whispered, and the two of them stood up from the beach chair and walked silently back to the room, the topic pinned for another time. 

 

***

 

The rest of the two week was torturous for Casey. Izzie has kept her communication with her to a minimum, mostly telling her where the food was or what the homework was for their mutual class. Things even stayed frosty in practice, with the girls there gossiping that the two of them were in a fight. And Casey honestly didn’t know if they were fighting in the first place. 

She saw her go to the LGBTQ Chapter a lot during the week; Casey herself had been scared to go in after her, afraid of what opinions were forming in Izzie’s head from the people there. One time, Izzie came home late at night, obviously intoxicated, and collapsed onto their bed without a word. 

Casey didn’t know what was happening. She was used to a short silent spell from Izzie when they argued, but they weren’t arguing at the time; they weren’t arguing now . Izzie insisted that everything was fine and alright, but it wasn’t ; she wasn’t talking to her at all. 

Casey was expecting the same things to happen on Thursday; it didn’t matter that it was her birthday, she wasn’t expecting anything good to come out of Izzie anymore for her birthday. 

She woke up without Izzie in bed with her. Even with the Californian weather, she felt cold as ice. Her phone had a lot of notifications from her family and friends in Connecticut greeting her. Lots of happy birthdays and see you soons; not one of them from Izzie.

She stood up and started walking to the bathroom to start her day when she saw a faint light coming from their normally-heavily-curtained living room. Walking in that direction, she saw Izzie, looking at the clock, foot tapping impatiently, with a cupcake and a candle right in front of her. 

Hearing her footsteps, Izzie turned to Casey and smiled. 

“Happy birthday,” she said. 

Casey walked slowly to her direction, the whiplash of the sudden warmth from her girlfriend confusing her severely. She sat down on her chair as Izzie smiled and gestured towards the birthday cupcake. 

“Make a wish, Case,” she said. 

Reluctantly, without speaking, Casey blew out the candle, refusing to smile while her confusion at the moment reigned supreme in her head. 

“Oh, I got you something, too,” she said, lifting up a small gift from her side and giving it to Casey. Attached to the gift was a card, one of those “It’s A Boy!” cards they give to newly-born babies; the modification on it, though, was two new punctuation marks, ?!, added in red, seemingly a touch of humor in the proceedings. 

Casey opened it, and read the handwritten message Izzie wrote for her:

 

Casey, 

 

Happy birthday! 

You’re finally twenty years old, and that’s pretty awesome. It’s been a wild and unpredictable ride to get to where we are, between Clayton and Newton, and finally getting to UCLA (and keeping ourselves there). I see it in your eyes, really, that there were times that you didn’t want to keep going anymore, but you’re still here and I’m glad (and, silently hoping, that you’re glad to be here still). 

I’m not really a hopeful person, as you can ascertain by my…everything, but you give me something to look forward to every day. I think that there’s so much love in this world for you—not just from me, but from your family, your friends, and your teammates—that it just overflows so much into your life, and I hope that you know that you make all of our lives better just by being there. 

I know that I can be pessimistic and that I tend to think that the world is fucking pointless, but even then, I think great things do happen in the world once in a while, whether by accident or not. Sometimes you get to your first-choice university on a scholarship; sometimes, you get hired to do something you actually care about; and sometimes, you find a love like ours.

With that said, I want you to know that whatever happens, I’ve got your back one hundred percent. Even with being…trans, you will always have my support and my love. I want this letter, I guess, to be a reaffirmation of my love; to be something that you can hold on to during fights or when things get rough. 

Whatever happens, I love you , Casey. 

 

Always and forever,

Izzie



Casey couldn’t breathe as she felt the tears in her eyes come down, and she looked up at the worried expression of Izzie before she hugged her tightly, sobbing in her shoulder after such a long, stressful week. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what happened?” Izzie whispered to Casey’s ear.

“I thought you were gonna leave me,” Casey said between sobs.

“Leave you? Casey,” Izzie said, removing Casey from her shoulder and looking at her eyes, “I could never. You’re it for me now; there’s no one else, and there will never be anyone else, do you understand?”

Casey nodded. She wiped her tears with the hem of her shirt and then put the card to the side, feeling ridiculous at the worry that she felt all week with the silent treatment that Izzie had been giving her. 

“So, come on, open the gift, I had to consult like five people in the Chapter about it. Jessie said that your first one’s always the one you remember the most,” Izzie said, pushing the gift towards her. 

Casey smiled, before ripping open the gift—she gasped as she opened the box, lifting up what appeared to be a binder, flesh-colored. At a glance, you could see it as like a normal sleeveless gray tee, except that it’s the size of a sports bra—and even then, not really shaped like a bra at all. It’s a t-shirt, or a crop top, or whatever, and yet also none of those things either. 

It’s a whole neutral thing, a whole other thing. A whole undefinable thing.

Just like Casey.

Casey looked at the gift in awe. She almost didn’t hear Izzie telling her to stand up and take off her shirt so Casey could try it on. She took hers off, and with a little help from Izzie, finally got the binder on properly. Izzie pushed her in front of their bathroom mirror to give herself a look, and for a few moments, Casey looked at herself with a sudden rush of understanding .


Finally, they were there.

Notes:

I was meaning to get this out in January! *screams at cloud*

I have had a fucking awful 10 months. I had two jobs, and I was balancing it with writing a fucking THESIS as well as volunteer work for my local queer org and economic price inflation and my long-time QPR partner going quiet on me. IT SUCKS. I HAD TO GO BACK TO THERAPY BECAUSE MY DEPRESSION GOT WORSE.

But anyways, my thesis is done and I'm slated to graduate, I finally found a job that doesn't stress me out, and I've long allowed myself to realize that my QPR doesn't need to be around me all the time for our time together to be meaningful. So now you get the damn one-shot, and hopefully an update to the actual fic by the end of the year.

Life sucks, but I survived!

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