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As Dee dragged the brush under his eye, he found he was immensely grateful that he saved up to buy himself a vanity mirror.
Sharing a bathroom with Heavy had always proved difficult, especially since to get to the bathroom, Dee had to first travel through his room to even get there. Annoying it was, amplified by how insistently obnoxious Heavy could be if he needed the bathroom while Dee occupied it.
As expected, this led to many frustrating mornings of Heavy banging on the bathroom door to pee while Dee tried to apply his make up in peace. So, not only did this mirror save Dee the trip and annoyance, but since it was in his room, he could effectively do his makeup whenever. Which was perfect since he wasn't even supposed to be awake.
For whatever cruel reason, Dee had woken up at four am, long before the sun would even begin to rise. No matter how hard he was trying to fall back asleep, he couldn't. So, of course, with four hours to spare, he decided to get ready for the day.
With the quiet of the early morning and the new privacy of his personal mirror, applying makeup proved to be much more efficient and in a few minutes, Dee had already done both his eyeliner and eyeshadow - A task that would take him half an hour on a good day. He couldn't help the smug side smile as he put his supplies away.
Had he known this would greatly improve his morning schedule, Dee would've just grabbed the first mirror off the side of the street! The only real problem was how fast he managed to finish. With an overabundance of time to kill, Dee was kind of hoping to waste more.
So, he looked for more things he could do. He stood up from his bed, and looked over himself for anything he could add or do. His nail polish was chipping off, he could reapply it. He could try a few outfits for the day. He could- He scrunched his nose as a lock of his hair fell in front of his face.
Instinctively, his hands went through his ponytail and he cringed at how easily they caught in the tangles of his curls. When was the last time he brushed his hair? He relied much too heavily on people assuming curly hair tangled easily and was seriously neglecting his head. Off the top of his head, he made a note to start brushing it more before he ended up with a massive ball of hair.
He sighed, the answer becoming clear. Grabbing a hair brush, he gently pulled out the hair tie to his ponytail and got to work. With the pass of the brush through his hair, Dee was reminded of just how quiet the house was right now.
So quiet that if the sound of the brush screaming in agony attending to Dee's mess wasn't present, he was positive his ears would start ringing to fill the silence.
His eyes stayed trained on the mirror, glossing over his own face as the brush passed through his hair. Slowly, he watched as the lock he and his brush battled with went from misery to frizz and smoothened back to being normal hair.
Now he had to repeat it for the rest of his head.
And it.
Was.
Boring.
He stared at himself for god knows how long, repeating the same actions to fix his hair. Agonizing, he became desperate to focus on anything but the consequences of his own hair neglect.
He counted his freckles. (Six, seven if you count the two that were pretty much merged into one.)
He imagined different parts of his face to theoretically pierce in the future. (Yes to possible lip piercings, no to nose piercings with the exception of one on the bridge.)
He stared at his eyes. Dee winked, and he got to marvel in just how perfectly he had put on his eyeshadow. To think he got bullied over this.
His mind wandered again. Really, it was pathetic how many boys felt it made them more masculine to try and belittle him for wearing makeup.
He's since lost count but just from the top of his head, he could list several separate occasions where a wannabe hot jock came up to him just to point out and ridicule his obvious eyeliner.
Boys at school telling him he must have been a girl in disguise, girls whispering not so subtly behind his back about how he “wasn’t fooling anyone”, in even younger years, crowds would form around him to point and laugh just to call him a lady. Even his own family had given him the nickname ‘Princess’- Which Dee found very hypocritical since no one in his family followed gender norms.
His hair had finally been properly brushed out, taking him a moment out of his thoughts. Without thinking, he put his hair back up in it's usual ponytail, and kept to his train of thought.
What even was it that made people so convinced that Dee was a girl? All he did was wear make up. Surely their minds weren't so narrow that's all it took, were they?
Dee scanned his own face, now curious to where the ‘girl’ people kept seeing was. Sure, Dee supposed his hair was long. But really, that's all else there was. His jawline was much too sharp, wasn't it? And his clothes were perfectly fitting so people could see that he lacked the chest, right? Not to mention his voice. Dee was the first to admit he didn't have a deep voice that his more masculine classmates hosted, but it also wasn't feminine in any way.
His brow raised before he sneered at his own reflection. It was just annoying kids at school making fun of him for being a ‘girl’, based on nothing but the fact he wears makeup. He's never given this the actual emotion it craves to draw from him before, so why was he suddenly focusing so heavily on it?
Dee blamed the night for his sudden emotions. He also blamed the night for what he did next.
He pulled out his ponytail and fluffed out his hair. Leading some of his locks to the front of his face, covering up his jawline. Slowly, he tilted his head to the side, watching as his golden curls stayed mostly in place, covering his jaw.
After closing his eyes to refresh his mind from his face, he was rather pleased to see how just a simple change already did wonders. While a jawline wasn’t exactly was determined if you were a boy or girl- Dee has seen many lovely women with a jawline as strong or even stronger then his in the past- He couldn’t lie and say covering his didn’t help push the femininity just a little more.
But that wasn’t enough, was it?
Sure, his face looked more pretty- So pretty that Dee got a warm sunshine feeling flowing through his body just from looking at how pretty he became. But the sun turned to cloudy wind when he looked down at his body.
Of course! Girls, or at least the girls he knew, had a certain posture. When they sat in class, they snapped into a pose that was just… Dee thought for a second.
Beautiful.
They sat in a way that was undeniably beautiful and they did it naturally.
Ignoring how he apparently payed too much attention to how his female classmates sat, Dee had to shift his posture. Normally, he sat with his back curved in a horrible position for his posture and his legs, ankles, and feet pointed in whatever direction felt comfortable; Often times in entirely different directions from each other. Dee sat like a shrimp.
But girls, even when they were slouched, didn’t look like shrimp. They looked like girls. And Dee, in this moment, wanted to look like a girl. So, he turned slightly in his chair and pointed his knees together. His hands gripped the side of his bed and he held them gently as he eyed himself.
Yes, that was much better.
The warm sunshine feeling was back, and it rested not only in his chest this time, but now pooled down to his stomach and even up to his face.
Pride was earned.
But there was still something off, and Dee knew that. Something that stopped the sunshine- Or his pride from fully flourishing.
Soon, his eyes began scanning over every little detail of himself.
Was it his face?
Was it his clothes?
Was his brain so used to seeing himself as a boy that it repelled any attempts or ideas that he could look like a girl?
Or was it his body?
His eyebrow raised as he landed on his body. Of course. Of course! Dee felt only the slightest bit stupid.
Of course it would be his body that was the problem. Girls had pretty bodies and Dee was a twig. A girl didn’t need to follow with the other rules if her body was feminine. His Aunt Lydia had a sharp jawline just like him and his Dad- To the point she could easily be mistaken for his dad in drag. But she wore dresses and made it clear that she was a woman.
His own mom was horrible at having a lady-like posture. She sat with her legs open and back hunched over. But she had a muscular womanly figure.
Dee wondered for a moment if any further attempts were going to be futile. Surely, he couldn’t force himself to change his body at all, could he?
He blamed the sting in his eyes to be a lack of blinking.
Swallowing, Dee still tried. A feminine body wasn’t all there was to looking like a girl. Plenty of girls out there lacked in features. Small breasts, minimal curves, thighs like sticks- Not to shame these women at all, but plenty looked exactly how Dee looked now.
Flat, skinny, and maybe even a little more on the masculine side.
In fact, Lif herself was fairly similar to how Dee looked. The only difference between their bodies was the small lump of a chest that she had! She was still plenty beautiful and looked like nothing but a woman! Even when she binds her chest down with those ace bandages and completely flattened her chest, she still looked like a girl.
…
Somehow, Dee didn’t feel much better after his train of thought. Because even if there were plenty of girls who looked like him, it didn’t mean he looked like them.
Even with his hair down and an adjusted posture, Dee knew he was a boy and that his body was masculine and that had to be stunting any growth.
So Dee pushed his body to look as feminine as possible.
When he pulled his shirt back to be as tight on his body as possible, he made a quick study. He was horribly skinny, probably underweight with how often he skipped meals. If either of his parents saw just how skinny he’d gotten again, he already knew they’d start forcing him to work on gaining it all back. But that didn’t matter at the moment. What mattered was how well he could pull off his next trick because of this.
He sucked in a breath, focusing on sending the air up so he could puff out his chest. What he got was… Well, a puffed out chest. Not at all too feminine with his shirt pulled back. So, he let go of his shirt, of course. This was mostly an improvement. From afar, you could mistake Dee for having small breasts. But up close, he looked like he was puffing out his chest.
Frustrated, Dee did one final attempt at gaining a more feminine figure. Arching his back.
It did wonders.
Suddenly his night shirt was pooling around his body, adding to the illusion that Dee had… Well, forgive the crude language, but it looked like Dee had a huge pair of tits!
Maybe not huge but certainly noticeable. The warm feeling was finally back and now it was all over. In his face, in his legs, finger tips, chest- Especially in his chest.
Quite pleased with himself, he resumed his earlier position with his hands down to the edge of the bed and his knees pointed together. For further emphasis, he tilted his head to the side and gave his best half lidded eyes.
He stayed like that for however long it took him to realize he was holding his breath for much too long. With as much work as it took to give the illusion, suddenly it was gone in just one breath of air.
Dee sat still for a moment, watching how all that hard work had just vanished. A beat. Then he cracked a smile.
Wasn’t his point to prove he didn’t look like a girl? Seemed ironic and maybe hypocritical that he had gotten so mad at his bullies (and his family) for teasing his femininity if he was just going to sit in front of a mirror and make himself look like a girl!
Dee knew when to laugh at himself, and he did. Quietly as he reached out to grab the brush and put his hair back into his regular ponytail since it had messed up due to his fluffing.
As he brushed his hair back into his fist, he thought once more briefly about the people who had so often teased him about his femininity. He thought about the people who called him a girl to get under his skin. He thought about his family’s nickname for him; Princess Dee. He thought about the people who made it their life’s mission to try and ‘convince’ him that he was actually a girl, just in denial.
While none of these ever seemed to be in good faith, Dee didn’t think as badly of them anymore and as he brushed his hair, he had a brief thought; Maybe they’re right.
The brush dropped to the floor.