a lil sneak peek of Ch 16 of So Darkness I Became if anyone is interested
catch up on the latest chapter here!
“What do you mean?”
He stared up at the ceiling and shrugged. “Three days is a long time to be alone with your thoughts.”
“Did you think I wasn’t coming back?”
John didn’t answer her, his eyes still on the ceiling. The bubble popped, and all he could feel now was dread and panic.
Hero studied him, starting to think that maybe she’d done a number on John with all her efforts to fight her feelings and act like she hated him. She also realized that he was prone to overthinking and spiraling. She'd seen his anxiety and the dark cloud over his head manifest before. Based on what he’d told her about Pedro and his relationship to his family, Hero figured she had a pretty good idea of how much he’d been struggling with his mental health. Maybe he wasn’t used to having good things in his life. Maybe he wasn’t used to things going his way.
She shifted so she was propped up on one elbow and leaning over John, looking down at him until he was forced to meet her gaze. “I told you I was, and I meant it. Because...because I wanted to. I have a plan, John, and believe it or not, I need you for it to work.”
John widened his eyes at her. “Me? How is that going to do any good?”
“Well, I was going to explain everything over lunch, but now it feels like you think I’m going to disappear at any moment.”
There was a lump in his throat. How the hell did she always manage to figure out what was going on in his head? “Hero.”
“Am I wrong?”
John sighed, running a hand over his face and sliding out of bed to look out the window. His thoughts were going a mile a minute. “No.”
Hero watched him at the window, an ache in her chest. “Why do you think I’m not in this with you?”
“Because you shouldn’t have to be. I’m the one who did this. You’re going to realize exactly how fucked up I really am, and you’re going to go back to your life and your family, and find a way to heal and move on from this. But I’m the one who has to live knowing what I did.” John didn’t turn to face her as he spoke. He sounded defeated.
“You’re spiraling.”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it? You know it. I know it. We both know I'll never be good enough for you.” John gritted his teeth, his eyes focused on the wall of the building across the street from him. It was a nice day, not too cloudy or gloomy. But John barely noticed, lost in his own head. “I never should’ve let you come on to me that night. I shouldn’t have run away with you. I should’ve just let you be. Left you out of the whole thing, with Pedro. Those men would never have...attacked you, if it wasn’t for me. I just keep making your life worse.”
(He should never have fallen in love with her, either. But it was too late for that now.)
Hero was floored. “John...”
“You deserve so much better than me, Hero.”
A pang of sorrow ripped through Hero’s chest, but she felt the familiar anger come back, rising up her throat. “First of all, fuck you.”
THE DONALDUKE ICE DANCE AU THAT WE WILL NEVER WRITE IN FULL
For Lovely Little Ficlets, I wrote a fic about trans!John and trans!Hero as (platonic) ice dancing partners, which was a tiny snapshot of a larger au @thebirdscomeback and I have talked about for ages. We don’t think it’ll ever be a full fic, but we wanted to write a good old long post about it. So this is the sitch:
John grew up with the Donaldsons, and Bill used to take Peter and John to the rink as children. Because of gender norms, Pedro signed up for a hockey team while John got put in figure skating
Hero gets into skating from seeing figure skating on TV and falls in love with it. Her mums are really supportive (even though they get some shit for being a lesbian couple raising ‘an effeminate boy’ and then later a trans kid) and put her into the classes she wants
John and Hero are paired up as dancing partners while young, in spite of not particularly liking each other
They both take to it, each having certain skills that make them work well as a team, Hero loves the performance elements and John gets really into perfecting technical elements. Their love for the sport keeps them skating together even though they don’t get along
In spite of not being friends, they’re really good dancing partners and have an on-ice connection they don’t seem to have with other partners (later they think maybe this is because the gendered parts of ice dance don’t come naturally to either of them and they don’t feel pressure from each other to fit into those roles easily)
As they get to a level of competitive skating, they’re also both starting to figure out being trans in a very gendered sport. Ice dance (esp partnered) heavily depends on and rewards “correct” gender performance, which becomes more and more cloying for each of them
When they can get away with it in practice, they fuck around with the roles though and try the lifts the other way around etc., which smooths the switcharound later at least a little.
In their early teens they’re dealing with a lot of competitive pressure, as well as the discomfort of the roles they’re forced into. They both love the sport, but it comes to a point where it feels too dire to continue as is. They don’t really talk about this with each other.
John comes out as transmasc first, and while it’s def seen as strange in the community everyone kind of figures they can continue to skate together since John’s pre-T anyways. Hero always refuses anyone saying she should change partner.
Hero comes out not that long after. John breaking up their “perfect” pairing makes it easier to do without feeling like she’s destroying something. They both start transitioning in their teens.
Hero keeps her birth name, while John changes his (John naming himself after Jane hc anyone?)
It means they have to relearn everything they’re doing since the sport is scored along gendered lines and each partner has different roles in the elements. They learn from each other and are able to switch roles.
All the extra practice and helping each other out, plus the shared experience of being othered by the community but also standing by each other as a pair throughout a couple rough years make them finally come to a truce in their relationship and they become friends somewhere mid-teens
They get to know each other better outside the rink, which is great when Hero gets into a late teens ambiguous situationship with Ursula which she can’t talk to her best friend about
They started out with softer, more traditional, romantic music and then as they got older (and especially post transitioning) started to experiment more
A bit of disagreement between them because Hero loves the really pretty, romantic kind of programs but they compromise by coming up with really experimental choreography and ways to execute elements while keeping more traditional music and styles
John HATES compulsory dances (set steps that all teams have to do) but is begrudgingly good at them out of sheer determination. very pleased when they got rid of them
When very young, Pedro tried a bit of figure skating as well, and their parents tried to put John and Pedro together as dancing partners, but John hated it (something doubly gendered at being forced into this role in contrast to his own brother who gets to succeed at masculinity), and Pedro preferred hockey
Pedro is a Hockey Bro with Ben, Claudio and Leo
In this universe, Pedro is a weird hockey nickname, while the rest of the boys go by Hobby (fitting for a nerd who talks loads of non-hockey), Clauds (boring) and The Duke. Bea also plays hockey and is annoyed that Leo got that nickname first, but goes by Beater
Leo is the coach, and Pedro is team captain. He shuts down a lot of transphobic bullshit in the locker room when J&H comes out because only he gets to talk shit about his brother, thank you very much
Ben is obviously a goalie (for those not in the know hockey goalies are famously eccentric)
John and Hero bond over their older brothers fulfilling these perfect Masculine roles in their masculine sport and feeling ostracised by it
Peter tries to get John to play hockey after he comes out, but John is like why would I want to do that I can literally do rotational lift (“bitch im working on my twizzles get real”)
some bonus pedrazar: Balth cannot skate for the life of him but pedro tries to teach him
Balth is ofc swooning by the side of pedro’s hockey games
go see ur crush be shoved against some boards. he frets over him but also finds it hot
there’s an expectation that pedro will get with one of the figure skating girls and probably goes on a bunch of really awkward dates with them
Pedro and Balth then ofc get to have a cute ice rink date where Pedro gets to show off
Bea’s version of this is sitting on the bleachers with Meg discussing the weird combined homoerotics and violence of sport and also chirping the hell out of Ben with mock academic analysis
ultimately John and Hero become the best ice dancers ever and take over the world <3 they win loads of olympics as there are no insensible anti-trans sport rulings:))
hero and john are friends during/after lolilo. she comes out as bi after graduating high school. they end up going to the same uni and start dating in their second year. hero’s already been to their pride march after coming out, before dating john. but when the next one rolls around, he comes along as an ally and to show off his beautiful amazing smart successful talented bisexual girlfriend who he loves so much. fast forward a year or two, and john realizes something about himself. so at the next pride parade, they both go, john newly out as pansexual. and they’re The queer power couple of their uni.
