Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dave’s chest was hurting and he let out a groan as the pain slowly grew, not only affecting his chest, but his back as well.

He had a hard time breathing, and he knew he was sore, who wouldn’t be?

He had been wearing his dumb binder for let’s say, was it four days straight?

Yes, just reading that makes you realize that it’s pretty bad, he needed to take it off to get some real rest before he injured himself badly.

But he couldn’t, he was way too insecure to leave his room on the meteor without it on.

No one knew he was trans, and he had no idea how they would react, especially the trolls.

And Karkat. How would his boyfriend react?

Did trolls even have such a concept of gender? What if it was considered bad in their culture

What if Karkat wouldn’t see him as a boy anymore?

The fears were slowly creeping up across his back, mixing with the extreme pain from the right fabric across his chest.

He wanted to rip it off, to be able to breathe properly, but what if someone walked in?

What if?

He bit his teeth and laid down on his bed, trying to endure the pain, knowing this was bad for his body, even if he was a god.

Damn why him?

As he looked up at the gray ceiling, breathing became even harder, and tears were running down his cheeks. He was so focused on the pain that he didn’t hear when the door to his room opened and a scared Karkat ran towards him.

“Dave? Fuck! Dave? Are you okay? PLEASE FUCKING ANSWER ME!”, shouted Karkat as he saw the human, he was unnaturally pale and you could see that he was in pain from miles away.

Something was off.

Dave didn’t want this, but he had no choice.

“It hurts”, he whispered and pointed towards his chest. Karkat looked confused, but immediately began to undress Dave from his god tier garb, and found a black piece of fabric tightly wrapped around his now red and sore chest.

“What the fuck is that?”.

Dave closed his eyes in shame, heart slowing down a bit.

“Is this a human thing or?”.

Dave shook his head.

“No, it’s just me that’s fucked up”.

“Why in the world are you fucked up? Yes you may have the ugliest skin color in the universe but that’s because you’re a weird species. You’re not at all fucked up”.

“Yes I am Karkat. My body is fucked up, I’m a boy”.

“Yeah captain obvious, I know that. What about it?”.

“Well, my body is that off a girl”.

…

“Wait… what? Why’s that a problem?”.

“BECAUSE I GOT THE WRONG PARTS DUDE!!!”.

“Wrong… parts…?”.

“Yes, I know you’re an alien but you got to know what genital differences are for fucks sake”.

Silence.

“Wait… humans have different types of genitals?”.

“Don’t you fucking joke with me… wait are you serious?”.

Nod.

“Yeah. What type of weird species has different types of genitals? That makes everything so much more difficult, like what even”.

“Trolls… don’t have any of that?”.

“No? All trolls have the same genitals, and all of us have small chests, just a little fat on them. We’re not flat but not big chested. What even is the human differences except your weird genitals then? And why are you wearing that torture device?”.

“Well, guys get deeper voices and have a penis between their legs, while girls have a vagina and gets huge chests. My body doesn’t match me, I’m a dude but my chest is still growing and I hate it. I wear this thing so that my chest will look like that of a boy, but it hurts so bad after a while, but I’m afraid to take it off because of how you would react. I was afraid you’d stop seeing me as a boy. Some people on Earth didn’t believe in it and just called us sick, and that we’re wrong, that they knew our gender better than we ourselves”.

Karkat looked at Dave in disbelief.

“Fuck. That is sick, what kind of species is that? There’s nothing wrong with you! You must feel horrible, we trolls get to decide what we are and there’s no difference. But that, that is… oh fuck Dave I had no idea. I’m so sorry you had to be part of the species with the weird biology, I could never imagine how I could survive like that, if people considered me a girl and there was things that “disproved” my gender. You’re a boy okay”..

Dave nodded at Karkat and he saw red tears beginning to form.

“Please take of that thing on your chest so that you can breathe properly okay. If you don’t want me to see your human things then you can just relax under the covers and take it easy. I’m here to talk, okay?”.

Dave nodded.

“Thanks Karkat, you’re the best”.

He felt his lips softly press against his forehead before he turned around so that Dave could take off the binder and just recover.

Oh how amazing it felt to be able to breathe with full lungs again.