Patton: hey kiddos, happy pride month! Thought I’d sing you a little cover to celebrate! Just remember, this month and always, you are valid. No matter what others might say, you are valid, you are beautiful, you are you. Don’t let anybody tell you different. Just be your self! I’m always here for you! Ok? Well see ya later kiddos!
Happy pride month from Patton in the YouTuber au! Patton’s design being consistent? Me? Laughable. But yeah I think this the final design. Love you all no matter what, happy pride!
If you want any backstory on the YouTuber sides just ask! :)
Summary: Patton is a pretty happy person, most of the time. Except when he’s not happy. Or even a ‘he’.
Notes: After this, updates will be more sporadic until the end of the month. Also, this series is now posted on ao3, if you’d rather read it there!
Warnings: Descriptions of gender dysphoria.
Patton knew, at this point, that sometimes he hid his feelings a little too well. It had started as a way to not make the others feel upset, but everything just kept piling up until he couldn’t ignore it anymore. Thankfully, they had all talked that out a while ago, and Patton showed his not-so-happy feelings more often now. But there were still some things that he just didn’t talk to the others about. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them! Or that it was bad! But there was just a feeling in his gut that told him it was a bad idea to put this stuff in the open.
He had known from a pretty young age that people, in general, were pretty, well, pretty! Patton got crushes left and right as a kid. Whether they were a boy, girl, or any other gender, Patton gave his love away like Hershey’s kisses. While Thomas just liked boys, Patton was able to fall in love with anyone of any gender. And he loved using the label he had chosen for so many puns, to Logan’s eternal irritation. The word ‘pan’ was just so versatile! How could he not? But there were other parts that weren’t quite as straight-(heh)forward. He knew what sex was. He had been playing that whole ‘adultery’ thing for laughs since forever ago. But he’d never really felt that… urge that everyone seemed so excited about. Sure, if he had a partner he’d probably want to try, and he figured that it could be fun or a way to get closer. But he just didn’t quite get the importance placed on it. It wasn’t really something that he tended to think about all that often, but he wondered, sometimes. Did everyone else really feel like that?
There were also… other things that Patton barely admitted, even to himself. Like the fact that sometimes, ‘he’ didn’t really feel like the right thing to be called. Sometimes, ‘she’ felt better, or ‘they’. Or that, as much as it hurt to even think, being called Dad felt really wrong. It made his skin crawl, and some days it was bad enough that he just stayed in his room, buried under blankets until his body felt okay again. It was a lot easier to do that when the other Sides didn’t know the effect his room could have. But now that the secret was out, they tried not to let him spend too much time alone in there. Which was very sweet, and so good of them to try not let him get stuck in the past, but sometimes he really just wanted to be alone.
One day, a little bit into June, Patton had been clicking around on YouTube. He had started out looking at cute videos of animals (and mentally saving some of them to show the others later), and found some nice Pride things along the way. Just by chance, he saw a video about a bunch of different nonbinary genders and clicked on it, figuring that it would probably help to know more about this kind of stuff. It certainly couldn’t hurt! So he started watching. Not too far into it, tears started dripping down his face as he looked at the screen. That… was him. The person in the video was talking about genderfluidity, and there was the word on the screen, and the flag and… other people felt like Patton did. There was an entire community of people with experiences just like his!
A little while after that, Patton decided to try some things out. On one of Patton’s ‘she’ days, instead of burrowing herself back in bed, she grabbed a bag from her closet. It had been put together especially for a day like today. It had a light blue sundress in it, along with some makeup she had borrowed from Roman (she was going to give it back! Honest! But… it just looked so pretty…) Quickly changing into the dress, she stood with her back to the mirror. Eyes squeezed shut, she quickly spun around. Patton opened her eyes. She looked… cute! She’d been a bit worried that she would look silly, or like she was playing dress-up. But she looked pretty good! She beamed at herself, and then grabbed the makeup from the bed. She would tell everyone else later. For now, she sort of wanted to keep this to herself.
