Characters: Jools and her family
Setting: Jools home in San Francisco
Rating: Candid description of Jools' gender identity
Summary: Jools sees her dad for the first time since coming home and must play the pretense of being Julien.


Jools stood with her shoulders held loosely back and her chin slightly raised, the casual sort of confidence that her father taught her. But of course, he hadn't really taught Jools. He taught Julien.

It felt entirely unnatural being home.

Pants were fine. Pulling her hair back into a ponytail at the base of her neck didn't bother her either. But she couldn't be Jools in front of Lazarus Le Gallo. She had to be Julien, the obedient and grateful son.

She didn't want to think of the situation under her belt. She could give up tucking for the length of her stay at home, but that felt even more unnatural than being pinned back. She could envision herself as a biological woman when she was tucked; when she wasn't that vision became unhinged.

"We've talked about that hair," Lazarus commented with a real frown. "And heaven's sake boy, what do they feed you down at the school? You're as scrawny as ever."

"It's nice to see you too," Jools replied gruffly, lowering her voice to sound more masculine. "How's business?" It was safer to ask how the business was going than how her father actually was. Lazarus was not a man who went on about himself.

He grinned at the boy's clever change of topic. He was pleased to have such a son, even if he took displeasure in the boy's appearance. "Dreadful," Lazarus replied with a rueful shrug. "The market is dreadful." He went on for some minutes about his plan to shift revenues around and consolidate his resources.

Jools found it easy to drift in and out of these conversations, wandering around in her own thoughts. She used to have fantasies of what her life would be like if she'd been born a girl physically. Would her father talk to her the way he did now? Would he pick her up and spin her around, buy her beautiful gowns, treat her like the lady she most certainly was?

She couldn't stomach these fantasies anymore. It would never happen. As soon as she made her transition fully she'd be dead to her father. It was a loss she hadn't come to terms with yet; she was grateful she had at least a few more months before it was done, maybe longer if she opted into the thirteenth grade.

Too heavy; her thoughts were far too heavy today. She smiled at her father and answered dutifully when he questioned how Julien's schooling was going. How was the team playing? Any girlfriends? That was a dreadful question to dodge every time father and son were reunited, but Jools managed it gracefully enough.

This was their relationship; a thin veneer of pretense. Shallow, casual, brutally distant to the point that Jools didn't know her father anymore. Not that she had ever really known her father. He would never really know her.

She smiled through it because of the quiet pleading of her mother. "We must pretend for his sake." So Jools wrapped herself in the pretense of Julien, the private hell she lived every time she looked in the mirror and saw the boy.

The holidays weren't that long. She'd be back at school soon enough, draped in skirts and playing chess with cute, funny boys. She could have 40 presents under the disgustingly huge tree her mother put up every year; her only real present was being able to return to her real life, the life she wanted to live as Jools.