The Closet - AKA My Queer Fest Entry
Title: The Closet
Author: Shadowsoffense
Fandom: Animorphs
Pairing/characters: Marco
Rating: PG13
Prompt: Animorph(/any), using morphing the other person/a Frolis manoeuvre as a way to deal with trans* identity.
Warnings: none
Summary: Marco has been keeping her trans identity a secret. This is the story of how she comes out.
A/N: This one got a bit away from me. I already hit the minimum word count before I realized I was writing the ending and had to go back and add the beginning. I didn't leave time to write quite this much before my posting date, so I'm putting up part one now and the rest will follow in chunks before the end of the amnesty period. Sorry.
THE CLOSET - PART ONE
The name is Bond, James Bond. But you can call me Marco. Just Marco.
I’ve always wanted to say that.
Actually, I can’t tell you my last name. Or my real first name. Because you could be one of Them. That’s right, capital ‘T’ Them. A Controller. They can be anyone. Your teacher, your brother, the kid sitting across from you on the bus, the one you wish you could talk to, but they’re just so cool you can’t think of anything to say. No. Wait. That last one is me. The point is, Controllers are everywhere and if they find out who I am, who my friends are, they will come for us and they will kill us. Or worse. Yes. Worse. And then the Earth will be doomed. I’m not actually kidding now. The only thing standing between the planet and its destruction at the hand of alien invaders are five human teenagers and one teenage Andilite. Scary thought, right?
I know it scares the heck out of me.
You see, a while ago I was nobody special. Not in a save-the-entire-human-race kind of way. People relied on me to do things like finish my homework on time or remember to take the trash out. Little things. Things where nobody died if I messed up. Then, one night, I was walking home from the mall. Yeah, the mall. I had been at the arcade, thank you very much. Anyway, I was walking home with some friends. You know them: Jake, Tobias, Rachel, and Cassie; aka our fearless leader, birdboy, crazy it-sounds-like-suicide-so-lets-do-it warrior princess, and Cassie, who I don’t have a good nickname for yet. It was late, it was dark, and we decided to take a short cut. Perfect horror movie set up, except what happened next was way, way too real.
The five of us watched as the Yeerks shot Prince Elfangor’s ship out of the sky. Watched it crash. Watched as they didn’t just kill him, but rip him into pieces. Slowly. So he could feel it as he died. And that was the beginning of ‘things that scare the heck out of Marco.’ Because before Elfangor died, he told us everything. He told us about the Yeerks. About how a race of helpless looking little grey slugs can wrap themselves around the brains of other creatures, take them over, read their memories and control their bodies. About how the Yeerks are conquering the galaxy system by system, planet by planet, turning the useful races into host populations and killing everything else. About how the Andilites, Elfangor’s own people, sent a warship to stop them. How it was destroyed. How he was the last warrior left and how none of the reinforcements would reach our planet in time to save it. And then he gave us a way to fight them. Finally, he told us to hide as the Yeerk ships that had shot his fighter down came back to finish the job, protecting us so that we could go out and risk our lives against the Yeerk army. Because there was nobody else left. Because they were dead.
The others, even Cassie, have this crazy idea that we can win. So we go out and fight a war no one knows is happening. When most kids lie to their fathers about sleepovers, they are sneaking out to go to concerts or see a girl. They don’t sneak around trying to blow up alien motherships or rescue an Andilite Prince’s kid brother from a wreck on the bottom of the ocean. So, yeah, I wish I was James Bond. Kind of. Because James Bond has money, training, an entire government backing him up, and he always wins. Not to mention getting the girls.
I’m not an optimist. I know pain, screaming, and dying are way, way more likely than victory. I wish more than anything that I could just walk away. Live out however much time the earth has left in peace. I can’t.
And right now, I was crouched in alley, preparing to turn into a bird.
Yes, you read that right. That was the weapon Prince Elfangor gave us, the ability to turn into other creatures. You see, thanks to the wonders of Andilite technology, we can absorb the DNA of any creature we touch. Then, we can focus on that DNA and become that creature. It’s called morphing. And it looks really, really gross.
There wasn’t a mirror in the alley, but I could feel my nose melting into my upper lip as my face began to bulge outward, turning into a beak. All the little hairs on my arms and legs stood up, growing thicker, poking out like thorns no razor would dare touch, before splintering into feathers. Thankfully I started shrinking before my eyesight improved. Because as bad as it looked to human eyes, it would look far worse to a seagull’s. Better than it would to an osprey’s, but still...
Hey! Was that half a bagel in the gutter? I flared my wings and hopped closer. It was! //MINE!\\ I called, lunging for it.
Thankfully I got the seagull under control before I actually ate it. That’s one of the other things about morphing: we can feel the minds of the animals we become and sometimes those instincts can be hard to suppress. Especially for the first few moments after morphing. But it beats having to learn to fly every time I sprout wings.
Resolutely turning away from the bagel, which was harder than it sounds, I declared war on gravity. Seriously, without a nice thermal, gaining height is the mother of all workouts. Breaking out from between the buildings, still flapping furiously, I did a wide turn around the area, getting my bearings. This was way on the other side of town and I couldn’t let myself come here too often besides, so getting lost was a real possibility.
Forget the Yreeks, I didn’t want my friends to find out about this. Actually, in some ways, that would be even worse. Because I’d actually have to live with those results.
Of course, since I was headed out early because of an ‘I’m bored, lets go shoot hoops’ code Yreek emergency phone call from Jake, that fear... wasn’t really feeling very trivial. I literally fought to stop the world from ending every day. Well, at least once a week. For me, any normal day held a good chance that I’d be dead by night fall. And it still felt like it would be... unbelievably horrible if my friends knew about this.
Taking one last turn around the area, I headed south. Towards Jake and whatever crazy thing we needed to do to get ourselves killed this week.
Author: Shadowsoffense
Fandom: Animorphs
Pairing/characters: Marco
Rating: PG13
Prompt: Animorph(/any), using morphing the other person/a Frolis manoeuvre as a way to deal with trans* identity.
Warnings: none
Summary: Marco has been keeping her trans identity a secret. This is the story of how she comes out.
A/N: This one got a bit away from me. I already hit the minimum word count before I realized I was writing the ending and had to go back and add the beginning. I didn't leave time to write quite this much before my posting date, so I'm putting up part one now and the rest will follow in chunks before the end of the amnesty period. Sorry.
THE CLOSET - PART ONE
The name is Bond, James Bond. But you can call me Marco. Just Marco.
I’ve always wanted to say that.
Actually, I can’t tell you my last name. Or my real first name. Because you could be one of Them. That’s right, capital ‘T’ Them. A Controller. They can be anyone. Your teacher, your brother, the kid sitting across from you on the bus, the one you wish you could talk to, but they’re just so cool you can’t think of anything to say. No. Wait. That last one is me. The point is, Controllers are everywhere and if they find out who I am, who my friends are, they will come for us and they will kill us. Or worse. Yes. Worse. And then the Earth will be doomed. I’m not actually kidding now. The only thing standing between the planet and its destruction at the hand of alien invaders are five human teenagers and one teenage Andilite. Scary thought, right?
I know it scares the heck out of me.
You see, a while ago I was nobody special. Not in a save-the-entire-human-race kind of way. People relied on me to do things like finish my homework on time or remember to take the trash out. Little things. Things where nobody died if I messed up. Then, one night, I was walking home from the mall. Yeah, the mall. I had been at the arcade, thank you very much. Anyway, I was walking home with some friends. You know them: Jake, Tobias, Rachel, and Cassie; aka our fearless leader, birdboy, crazy it-sounds-like-suicide-so-lets-do-it warrior princess, and Cassie, who I don’t have a good nickname for yet. It was late, it was dark, and we decided to take a short cut. Perfect horror movie set up, except what happened next was way, way too real.
The five of us watched as the Yeerks shot Prince Elfangor’s ship out of the sky. Watched it crash. Watched as they didn’t just kill him, but rip him into pieces. Slowly. So he could feel it as he died. And that was the beginning of ‘things that scare the heck out of Marco.’ Because before Elfangor died, he told us everything. He told us about the Yeerks. About how a race of helpless looking little grey slugs can wrap themselves around the brains of other creatures, take them over, read their memories and control their bodies. About how the Yeerks are conquering the galaxy system by system, planet by planet, turning the useful races into host populations and killing everything else. About how the Andilites, Elfangor’s own people, sent a warship to stop them. How it was destroyed. How he was the last warrior left and how none of the reinforcements would reach our planet in time to save it. And then he gave us a way to fight them. Finally, he told us to hide as the Yeerk ships that had shot his fighter down came back to finish the job, protecting us so that we could go out and risk our lives against the Yeerk army. Because there was nobody else left. Because they were dead.
The others, even Cassie, have this crazy idea that we can win. So we go out and fight a war no one knows is happening. When most kids lie to their fathers about sleepovers, they are sneaking out to go to concerts or see a girl. They don’t sneak around trying to blow up alien motherships or rescue an Andilite Prince’s kid brother from a wreck on the bottom of the ocean. So, yeah, I wish I was James Bond. Kind of. Because James Bond has money, training, an entire government backing him up, and he always wins. Not to mention getting the girls.
I’m not an optimist. I know pain, screaming, and dying are way, way more likely than victory. I wish more than anything that I could just walk away. Live out however much time the earth has left in peace. I can’t.
And right now, I was crouched in alley, preparing to turn into a bird.
Yes, you read that right. That was the weapon Prince Elfangor gave us, the ability to turn into other creatures. You see, thanks to the wonders of Andilite technology, we can absorb the DNA of any creature we touch. Then, we can focus on that DNA and become that creature. It’s called morphing. And it looks really, really gross.
There wasn’t a mirror in the alley, but I could feel my nose melting into my upper lip as my face began to bulge outward, turning into a beak. All the little hairs on my arms and legs stood up, growing thicker, poking out like thorns no razor would dare touch, before splintering into feathers. Thankfully I started shrinking before my eyesight improved. Because as bad as it looked to human eyes, it would look far worse to a seagull’s. Better than it would to an osprey’s, but still...
Hey! Was that half a bagel in the gutter? I flared my wings and hopped closer. It was! //MINE!\\ I called, lunging for it.
Thankfully I got the seagull under control before I actually ate it. That’s one of the other things about morphing: we can feel the minds of the animals we become and sometimes those instincts can be hard to suppress. Especially for the first few moments after morphing. But it beats having to learn to fly every time I sprout wings.
Resolutely turning away from the bagel, which was harder than it sounds, I declared war on gravity. Seriously, without a nice thermal, gaining height is the mother of all workouts. Breaking out from between the buildings, still flapping furiously, I did a wide turn around the area, getting my bearings. This was way on the other side of town and I couldn’t let myself come here too often besides, so getting lost was a real possibility.
Forget the Yreeks, I didn’t want my friends to find out about this. Actually, in some ways, that would be even worse. Because I’d actually have to live with those results.
Of course, since I was headed out early because of an ‘I’m bored, lets go shoot hoops’ code Yreek emergency phone call from Jake, that fear... wasn’t really feeling very trivial. I literally fought to stop the world from ending every day. Well, at least once a week. For me, any normal day held a good chance that I’d be dead by night fall. And it still felt like it would be... unbelievably horrible if my friends knew about this.
Taking one last turn around the area, I headed south. Towards Jake and whatever crazy thing we needed to do to get ourselves killed this week.