Running (Patreon)

Author's Notes

So, uh, I started thinking about how once upon a time I'd write a gender bending story pretty much every day. They were small stories - sometimes just two hundred words - but all the same, I'd write them every day.

I'm... not up to that, these days. My mental health quite literally can't take it. But. At the same time, I felt inspired to at least try to write something, and so... we ended up with this? It was sorta stream of consciousness, with none of it really being planned out in advance, so I really hope you like it.

~~~

He ran. His breath ragged, his heart pounding in his chest. No idea where he was going, or what he was running from. An idea, perhaps? An idea, that kept wriggling its way deeper into his skull, day after day until he couldn’t ignore it anymore. Until there was no choice but to physically run away from it, as if he could ever possibly put space between himself and his own brain.

What if you were a woman?

It was an innocent question. One asked by a stranger at a party, when he’d been ranting about his bestie - Anna, a lesbian who was constantly bemoaning about how she was too nervous to hit on girls, or talk to girls, or even go up to them despite being one. About how he didn’t have feelings for her, and it wouldn’t matter if he did, because she was a lesbian anyhow.

What if you were a woman? Do you think you’d like her then?

An innocent question, and yet it kept worming its way deeper into his brain. If he was a woman, if he was her type, would he like her? Would he want to get closer to her? Closer than he ever could, as a man?

What else would change, he wondered, if he was a woman? Or rather, he tried not to wonder that. Tried with all his might to think about something, anything else, and yet even as he ran the thought kept digging its way deeper into his brain.

Would he have long hair?

Yes, he thought. He’d have long blonde hair, that reached all the way down to his ass.

Not that it would be much different than what he had now, he realized. After all, his long blonde hair did go all the way down to his rear.

Though… didn’t he used to keep it cut short? He swore he could remember keeping it trimmed, meticulously kept from ever getting long enough that anyone could even think about mistaking him for a girl from behind. All so that he wouldn’t have to deal with questions like the one that stranger had asked.

But she had asked that question, and he did have hair down to his ass, and obviously there wasn’t anything wrong or strange with that. It wasn’t like it had simply grown that long in an instant. Such a thing would be impossible. Obviously it had always been this way, and he had simply gotten over his fear of being seen as feminine for his hair.

It wasn’t like his body was anything less than manly, anyhow. Broad shoulders, wide back, thick hairy arms and big hands. 

If he was a girl, he’d be smaller. Not Six foot one, but five foot nothing. He’d still have muscles, would still take care of himself, but he’d be leaner, with definition over bulk. His hands would be thin and dainty, and the only part of his body with any real bulk would be his ass, hips, and thighs.

…Not that such a description was far off the mark of his real form. He’d always been short, never been able to put on bulk, and the way he carried his weight and muscles… Well, combined with his long hair, it was no wonder people were always mistaking him for a girl from the rear.

Only from the rear, though. His face was too rough, and that broke the illusion. If he was a girl, he’d have a smaller nose, fuller lips, and rounder cheeks. She’d have long, dark eyelashes perfect for batting, and soft honey brown eyes that would easily catch any girl’s eye. Even Anna’s.

Not that he really wanted a more feminine face than what he had already. As it was, he often had to lift his shirt just to prove his own sex. Guys were always hitting on him, girls were always saying they weren’t into other women - or else they were into other women, which was a problem in and of itself considering he wasn’t one.

If he was a girl, he surely wouldn’t be a flat one, after all. He’d take after his Mom, or maybe his aunts on his dad’s sides, all of whom had rather massive racks. Kinda like the one he was sporting, actually - a result of a hormonal imbalance. He was on a waiting list of some sort for surgery to correct the issue, but things kept coming up and he kept pushing the operation back further and further. It wasn’t like he hated having breasts. Sensitive globes of flesh with pink peaks that brought out moans when they were touched. Just fondling them could make him explode in his pants.

They did make it rather hard to convince people he wasn’t a girl, though. Especially with his figure, and his long hair, and even his carefully manicured and pink-painted nails.

It was only what was in his pants that marked him anything but a woman - and even then, plenty of women sported similar. Some of them even liked it. But as for him?

…No. If he was a woman, he’d want to have a vagina. A pussy. A cute, tight slit just begging to be violated by the fingers of her tall, strong, tomboy girlfriend, with her short cropped red hair and her goofy grin, and those seafoam green eyes that were always sparkling with mischief.

Or at least… that’s what he fantasized about. But Anna would never go for that - not when he was still a guy, on the inside. Not when he was just George.

If she was a girl, her name would be something completely different. Like Hannah, maybe. Yeah. If she could pick her own name, it would definitely be Hannah.

Which made it a pretty good thing that her parents had such good taste, no? Not to mention the foresight to give their delightful daughter the very name that she would have given herself.

Except… No. That was wrong. Something was wrong. Even if she couldn’t pinpoint what. She was… she’d been running.

She’d been running away from… that’s right. From her feelings for Anna. For her best friend, who was always complaining about other girls, without ever realizing that the one in front of her craved her presence oh so much. That she would do anything to be ravished by the strong hands of her best friend.

She’d been running from that thought… and yet how strange - without a thought to her movements, without a thought to where her legs were taking her, she now knew exactly where she was.

At Anna’s place.

Not only that, but the door was swinging open. Even though she hadn’t knocked, or rung the doorbell, or done anything at all to attract attention to herself, the door was swinging open all the same and behind that door was Anna. Anna, with her short cropped hair and her face full of freckles and her usually mischievous seafoam green eyes that were now staring at her best friend with a mix of worry and curiosity.

“Hannah?” she asked. “What are you doing here at this time of night? Did you… did you run here? Alone? At night?”

“I… I uh… I…” Hannah swallowed, looking away from Anna. She wanted to run, she wanted to hide, she wanted to keep burying her feelings and pretend they didn’t exist.

She wanted to keep running.

And yet something stopped her. Something told her… something told her that she’d been given an opportunity. One she wouldn’t be given again.

“I uh… I just… wanted to tell you, that I… I’ve always had a crush on you!”

“Huh?” Anna asked, blinking and pointing at herself. “Me? But… I…. I thought you were…”

“Straight?” Hannah asked, hardly able to believe it. When had she ever expressed interest in guys?

She shook her head, though. “Asexual, actually… And maybe aromantic? I mean, you never even once talked about liking anyone with me…”

“That’s because the only one I wanted was you, you doofus!” Hannah declared, stepping forward. “I wanted you. Every time you talked about why one girl or another wasn’t good enough for you, I’d compare myself to her… wonder how I’d match up to her… whether I’d be tossed aside as not good enough, to. I was afraid to ever come out and say my feelings. Afraid they’d be rejected. Afraid they’d be… impossible.”

Afraid they wouldn’t fit. She thought, for a moment, that there might have been something else to it - a reason why they couldn’t possibly work, but in that moment - before she could grasp what it was - Anna sprung forward, wrapped her arms around Hannah’s waist, and tugged her in for a kiss.

It was fierce, and it was sweet, intoxicating heat, like molten fire through her veins and filling up her heart. All thoughts of what might have made them impossible to be together scattered, all worries over what she might be missing faded into background noise.

“Come inside,” Anna whispered, and though her words were a clear invitation there was just the faintest tremor to them - the faintest acknowledgement that once Hannah stepped through the doorway, things would never be the same.

Hannah in particular could sense it. Could feel it. That once she went beyond that door with Anna, things would truly never go back to how they’d once been. Not that she was entirely sure why that was a bad thing…

She was tired of running from what she wanted, after all… and so, with a sense of determination and hope in her chest, with a sense of finality that she didn’t quite understand and yet instinctively recognized all the same, she walked into Anna’s home, closing the door to her old life behind her.