Part 1 of 2. Words: 2.5k CW: Trans!John Price, Graphic Descriptions of Periods and all the problems that come with it, Gender Dysphoria, PCOS, Hurt/Comfort Ships: Implied Poly141 Summary: Price has his period for the first time in 6 months and, as someone that suffers with PCOS, it's just as bad as he remembers. A/N: I also want to preface that this entire thread is based off of my personal experiences with periods and PCOS so what better way to make Price suffer than give him my pain. This also got unreasonably long so I'm splitting it into 2 parts :D Original Thread.
It starts on the Sunday. Sleep had been difficult from the second he laid down and he was sure he could count how many hours he had gotten on one hand. If said hand only had 3 fingers. When he opens his eyes, though, something just felt... off. Above the lack of sleep, anyhow.
When he rolls over to slap his alarm to shut it up, he was very quickly seized by dizziness that left him immobilised for several seconds, not daring to move lest he make it worse and vomit over himself. There was a pressure in the back of his head, like someone was pressing down on it.
His right eye is twitching, too, adding to his already heightened irritability. Furiously, he scrubbed and dug his fingers into the socket to try and relieve the twitching but it, naturally, didn't work. Sunday was his day off, blessedly. No paperwork or training. No prep for the next mission.
Just time to relax.
Was the lie he commonly told Laswell. Huffing and convinced he wasn't going to heave on his sheets, he gets out of bed and hates the lightheadedness that follows.
Dehydration maybe. Probably hunger. Who knows. People said to treat one's body like a temple. He treated his own like a ransacked one. The dizziness continued throughout the day but was manageable-- easy to hide from the others. He just had to be careful how quickly he got up and how much he smoked.
Monday it continues.
The dizziness and headache are gone. But his body aches. Price feels like he's been run over again when he returns to the waking world despite his best efforts not to. There's an aching in his bones that feels like he's run a marathon. Which, to be fair, he did on Saturday. But the aches don't usually take 48 hours to kick in. Nonetheless, he has a job to do. If he can give a debrief two hours after coming out of surgery after being shot, a few aches are nothing he can't handle. The more he moves, the less he notices it. It's only when he's hunched over his desk writing reports that his skeleton reminds him that it's not happy.He decides it's best to go to bed early. But spends several hours adjusting his position when it feels like he can't get comfortable.
There's no improvement on the Tuesday, he puts it down to getting ill from his last mission when he had to stake out in the rain.
By Wednesday, the dizziness is hardly noticeable unless he turns his head too suddenly-- but his body decides to tap in an all too familiar ache that leaves him curled up on his bed and panting. It feels almost as bad as being stabbed in the stomach. And he has been stabbed in the stomach. Twice. If he hunches more to the left it relieves the pressure in his lower abdomen and, if anyone notices, they don't say anything.
Thursday he notices spotting in his boxers and he groans, knowing what's to come. As much as he wants to prepare, he doesn't know if it's just spotting or the first period he's had in six months finally coming back with a vengeance. The throbbing around his hips tells him it's the latter. He sighs as he gets the biggest night pad he has and curses his body for existing the way it does.
Friday morning he's stopped spotting and there isn't a drop of blood in sight.
On Saturday he has to forgo the jog he usually takes with his team around the base and waves off their concern when they ask if he's alright. He doesn't have the heart to tell them that he can't find it in him to get out of bed. He's so exhausted that he flits in and out of sleep the entire day.
Price doesn't realise he's missed Breakfast and Lunch until Ghost knocks on his door with dinner. The second his Lieutenant is gone, Price throws it away, gagging at the smell and dry heaving at the mere thought of putting anything in his mouth.
Nobody sees him on Sunday.
On Monday he wakes up wet.
And not the good type of wet. His boxers stick uncomfortably to his thighs and there's the awful sound of slick when he moves. There's blood between his legs and he whimpers when he rolls out of bed and staggers dizzily to the bathroom. Even blinking makes the room spin.
He has to sit down on the toilet as he peels off his ruined boxers, tossing them carelessly into the bath to deal with later, followed by his trousers that are equally as ruined. There's a heavy pressure in his bladder and he feels like he's about to burst but no matter what he does, nothing comes.
Showering is much more of a task than its ever been and he can't even bend down far enough to retrieve his ruined clothes. He nudges them to the side as he prioritizes washing himself. He's barely even out of the shower then he feels blood dribbling down his leg and it's a frantic hobble to his wardrobe for a pair of boxers-- and then a string of curses when he realises he forgot to grab a pad and then it's /another/ pitiful hobble back to the bathroom to get himself sorted.
When he stares at himself in the mirror, he sees a man who definitely shouldn't even consider working.
Half an hour later he closes his bedroom door behind him with a click. The walk to his office feels like climbing a mountain and he catches himself holding onto the wall for support every so often, snatching his hand back when someone walks past him. He's got a briefing with his boys today. Which means, at least in his eyes, a day off is out of the question. He'd dealt with his crappy biology for his entire life-- another period was nothing to him. His office feels too bright when he turns on the light and he rakes his blunt nails down his face, biting back a scream.
The ache in his abdomen is worse again, the waves coming and going and Price doesn't know how to stand comfortably without bending over and clinging to the sides of his desk. He feels hot despite his office being one of the coldest rooms on base and he knows he must be pale but flushed. Unhealthy looking. Disgusting. He scratches furiously at the side of his head, not caring at the red welts it leaves by his sideburns. It doesn’t help, so he scratches around his head with frustration, knowing his hair would hide the redness. Of course that only makes him feel worse and the headache threatening to emerge behind his eyes throbs with a twisted hello. Trudging to his desk, he’s only just about to pull out his chair when his bladder gives a dangerous throb.
He curses and has to clamp his thighs together to stop the sudden urge to piss– he doesn’t think he’ll make it. He does, by the skin of his arse. Nothing comes out but blood and he wants to punch his uterus. Even worse when he sits there and waits for the feeling of nausea to pass. Price catches the face of his watch when he wraps his arms around his stomach and he almost cries when he realises he's late. He was supposed to be briefing with his team 5 minutes ago but he was so distracted trying not to piss his pants that he didn't notice the time passing.
It's pathetic. He's an SAS Captain. He's started and ended gunfights worse than this. But here he is, hunched in the bathroom like it's his first period.
Price doesn't know how or when he extracts himself from the toilet, but he really does consider punching his uterus when the need to piss grips him again and he has to run back into the bathroom for another bloody piss. Literally. He hasn't drank anything in 24 hours.
It's just blood.
He's almost 20 minutes late when he enters his office. Predictably, his team are already sitting and waiting inside, their chatter quieting when they see the state of their Captain. He knows what he looks like. He spent 2 minutes staring at his pale face in the bathroom mirror.
"... sir?" Gaz starts and he waves him off, trying his best not to hunch when it feels like someone's decided to use his lower body as target practice with knives.
"Let's get started." He grumbles, pulling out papers from his desk and not bothering to apologise and explain why he was late.
10 minutes.
10 bloody minutes was all it took before he needed the bathroom again. He tries to hold it-- really, he does. The last thing he needs is to draw out this sodding meeting longer than he already has with his tardiness but he can't hold it.
He excuses himself-- and scratches his hands over his face when he sees that he'd already bled through his biggest pad. Replacing it isn't the issue. It's the fact he has to do it in the first place. He knows it's his hormones out of alignment but all he wants to do is go back to bed and cry.
Why him? Why did he have to go through this shit? Why couldn't he have just been born a man right from the fucking start? He replaces his pad and reenters the meeting like he isn't on the verge of a total meltdown. He's warm again and it feels like there's sparks singing down his spine.
Rationally he knows his office is the right temperature but he's so warm he wants to claw his skin off. Briefly, he catches his men sharing concerned looks and he knows that he's not hiding his suffering as well as he should be. He clenches his jaw and straightens his back even though it makes him feel like someone's stabbed him with a hot poker.
10 minutes.
Another bathroom break.
5 minutes.
Another bathroom break.
15 minutes.
Another. And a new pad.
Four bathroom breaks in less than an hour-- and it was all entirely blood.
He ignores the next tug.Price refuses to go a fifth time. He clamps down on whatever muscle he can even though doing so makes it feel like he's next to bursting. He can barely focus on the briefing anymore, but he has to. His men need this information. Somehow he distracts himself just enough he can start wrapping it up. The meeting finishes 30 minutes later than it should have and he knows his men are annoyed. He doesn't blame them. He's always on their arses about being on time-- doing things in time slots and here he was wasting theirs.
"Dismissed." He grumbles, gathering the files back into the folder with his back to the others.
Nobody moves. He clamps his thighs together tighter.
"I said: dismissed." He doesn't want to look at them, but he has no choice because nobody will fucking get the hell out of his office. He turns a little too suddenly, the room spinning.
"What?!" he snaps.
All of their eyes are on him-- no... not /on/ him per ce. They aren't making eye contact. They're staring at… He looks down, wondering if he'd spilled ink or something on his--
Oh.
Oh no.
No, no, no, no…
He'd leaked through his pad. The pad he only changed 20 minutes ago. Distracted as he was trying to make sure he didn't piss himself, it hadn't occurred to him that the damage had been done, red blooming on his trousers. He can feel it sliding down his legs and his face burns bright red from embarrassment and shame.
"Dismissed." He repeats with a strength he doesn't feel. Gaz is the first to get up from his chair but he doesn't move to leave, he moves towards Price and he flinches back like he's been scalded.
"Sir, you're--"
"I bloody know I am! Get the fuck out of my office!" He's almost screaming at them and he feels the hot burn of tears.
Fuck-- no, God, please-- he couldn't embarrass himself even more than he already has now by crying in front of his team. This was an entirely new side to their Captain they would have seen and he doesn't know how they'd take it.
They know he's trans. Very well aware of it. Intimately. They know about his usual (or what's supposed to be usual) bodily functions. Told him dozens of times that they don't care.
But this? This is different.
And none of them fucking move.
"That-- that's an order." His voice comes out rougher than intended and the tears are making his vision blur.
Why did he have to be like this? Pitiful. Half a man.
Don't get him wrong, he had the beard and body that many men envied, but it was the cunt that was attached to him that made him feel inferior no matter what he looked like.
Even more so when comparing himself to the others. Sometimes he wishes he could claw off everything that was wrong with him. He wishes that his doctors listened to him when he said he didn't want children. Had listened when he said he wanted his ovaries out. He still remembers the day he was told about the cysts on his ovaries. How it would affect his ability to have and carry children. How his periods would be harder than others, how he could go months without. It was a silver lining, in a way, even more so with the hormone imbalance.
But he still had a vagina. That's what it boiled down to.
And he couldn't do anything with said vagina because doctors still believed at some point that he'd want his own children despite insisting otherwise when he was in his teens.
A soft cry echoed in his office, bouncing off the walls and mockingly in his ears.
"Please leave." He tries one last time, hunching in on himself when Gaz stops in front of him. There's droplets of blood at his feet and he knows he's making a mess.
"No." Kyle whispers, shaking his head and looking down at the forming puddle of blood and whatever else forming at Price's feet.
"Fucking hell, John, you should be in bed..."
Price is shaking and probably crying from a mixture of frustration and humiliation, but as he inspects their faces through the blurriness of his tears-- nobody looks disgusted. Nobody's laughing. They're not making fun of him.
The fact he wouldn't have stopped them or defended himself if they did was telling enough about his state. Johnny moves into his line of sight, hoodie in hand. Kyle silently moves to the side and lets the Scot come closer, wrapping the garment around Price's waist to hide the worst of the stains.
"Just until we get ya back to ya room." Johnny whispers softly, tying the sleeves around Price's waist. It's loose though, not tight enough that it squeezes uncomfortably around Price's hips.
"I-- I'm sorry." Price hiccups and Kyle soothes him.
"Don't apologise, boss. We've got you."
