i thought about it for a long time and then i wrote an ftm!larry/nb!ahk tablet guardians drabble thing i hope it isn’t too awful.
It took a long time for Larry Daley to figure things out.
Being born Lola Daley certainly didn’t help matters, as Larry spent most of his life feeling not quite right, but unable to explain why. It wasn’t like his personality was overtly masculine, or that he enjoyed primarily masculine pastimes or even dressed in a particularly masculine way. When Larry was Lola, he didn’t mind dresses or makeup or any of the stuff that he was expected to do. He didn’t love it, but he didn’t mind.
Running track in high school was a very ‘gender neutral’ elective, but running was freeing. The developing curves of Lola, track runner and Fourth in Her Class, however, were terrifying. Larry didn’t like the swell of his hips or the swell of his breasts. But on other girls? Well, he thought other girls were lovely. Just not him. The fact that this was because he was a he didn’t click into place until much later.
So, in the meantime. Being a lesbian? That took some of the pressure off, he supposed. He met Erica in college, and Erica’s lesbian phase turned into what her sneering father called a ‘lifestyle choice’. Lola and Erica had shacked up in Brooklyn together, and what had been a fling while they had been in Syracuse quickly turned into the Real Deal.
Larry was able to chop all his hair off and wear jeans more often than dresses when he was Lola, in Love with Erica. No one minded, but he still didn’t feel quite right. He had dropped out of Syracuse in his second year to go with Erica, who wanted to continue her interior design classes at NYU. Erica encouraged him to pick up another course of study, but Larry couldn’t settle on anything.
Five years into the relationship - with Erica working in her field and Lola, in Love with Erica was picking up temp jobs that required ‘her’ to wear Feminine Business Casual, a style Larry would always detest if only because he knew how uncomfortable it made the people forced to wear it - they began to discuss the future. Children. Lola, in Love with Erica had offered to carry the child, and indeed some small part of Larry had wished in retrospect that the resulting maternal instinct would make him feel more comfortable as a woman.
Holding Nick for the first time only helped Larry realize he could never fully be a mother.
For months, everyone tried to pin other labels to it. Lola, with Postpartum Depression. Lola, who Needed Therapy. Lola, who Had Patriarchal Lines of Thought Drilled into Her Head from Birth and Thought Her Son Inherently Needed a Father. But Larry knew - for the first time - who he was. Erica laughed when he picked out his new name and chided him for not picking something cooler.
A lot of their friends disappeared when Larry got his top surgery. Even more when his hormone intake went up. And for a long time, Erica loved Larry. But the strain was there. The strain grew, and they decided to let one another go instead of letting the strain stretch their love for one another so thin it was unrecognizable.
Larry gave Erica primary custody, something the judge had planned on doing anyway, due to Larry’s ‘confusion’. He gave Erica their Brooklyn apartment. Erica apologetically said she didn’t think she’s capable of loving a man the way Larry needs someone to (and another five years down the road, Larry will meet Don for the first time and laugh). Life went on.
The Daleys had been ambivalent when Larry first showed up to their door as a son instead of their daughter. His father offhandedly remarked about initially naming him after that song by The Kinks, and laughed. They let him borrow some money to get a place in Harlem, and he hopped around for the next few years. They lamented going so long without seeing their grandson, but Larry just shrugged and said he didn’t know how he’d explain his changing body to a child.
When Larry was comfortable, he’d take Nick on Wednesdays, and every other weekend. Nick was a little disappointed in his father for not seeming to have any roots, and Larry didn’t have a way to explain his maxed out credit cards to cover hormone injections or his inability to hold down a job when employers found a charge he’d gotten in college for disturbing the peace when he was still Lola (the name being more important to them than the details of his arrest, usually).
But then, the job at the museum came through. No one looked twice at Larry, no one raised any questions about his arrest record, or why he was listed as a mother on someone’s birth certificate. Cecil, Gus, Reggie, Rebecca and McPhee were all plenty strange in their own ways, and they didn’t pay too much mind to anyone else’s way of living.
And the museum itself, well. Things coming to life in the dead of night kind of put a lot of humanity’s supposed strangeness into perspective. And all the creatures, both tiny and small, unquestioningly liked and respected Larry for exactly who he was. There was a certain sense of pride that came with every time Teddy called him ‘boy’ or when Ahkmenrah proudly referred to him as ‘Guardian of Brooklyn’.
Ahkmenrah was a surprise as well, though. Ahkmenrah, who was indeed a king, but explained after the debacle with Cecil trying to steal the tablet that being a king didn’t necessarily make one a man. Ahkmenrah, who begged Larry to go to the forever21 in Times Square and spent hours trying on skirts and crop tops. Ahkmenrah, who spent hours perfecting their winged eyeliner. Who rolled their eyes when someone asked what they were if not a man and responded, ‘A Pharaoh, a descendant of the Sun God himself, and thus infinitely more valuable than someone who wastes time asking silly questions.’ Ahkmenrah, who kissed him like some of the sun might still be found on his lips. Ahkmenrah, who loved him long before knowing he was once Lola, and who didn’t mind a bit.
Larry figuring out that he was Larry at all was quite a journey. But Larry figuring out that he deserved to be loved by someone like Ahkmenrah? That didn’t take much time at all. Ahkmenrah was very convincing when they wanted to be.
