Fandom: Runaways

Characters: Molly & Xavin

Rating: Teen

Wordcount: 1,159

Notes:

It all starts because Xavin has no fucking manners regarding bathrooms, closed doors, and when it is or isn't appropriate to barge through one.

"Haven't you ever heard of knocking?" Molly bites out. She makes an ineffectual attempt to cover herself with one arm while holding up the bandage with the other, but it does no good. Xavin doesn't budge.

Instead they cock one eyebrow at Molly. "Karolina said you were cutting your hair. I merely wanted to see if I could help."

"I was cutting my hair," Molly says. She had been. The sink was still full of shorn off strands, and what was left of her hair was cropped close, much closer than it had been. Closer than it ever had been before, in fact. The problem was that when she'd finished cutting it, clipping it as short as she could, she'd looked at herself in the mirror, and the picture that looked back was still wrong. So she'd pulled out the stretchy bandages Gert had bought a year ago when she'd sprained her ankle and began, slowly and carefully, to wrap them around her torso. She's pretty good at it by now.

Xavin doesn't say anything, and still doesn't move. Damn it. Molly would need to perfect a few new glares.

"Stop staring at me," she says finally, annoyed at the heat rising in her own cheeks.

"I'm not staring."

"I know it looks funny, it's just, once I get clothes on it looks...better." Still nothing. She ducks her head down and resumes fastening the bandages. "Not all of us can change our bodies as easily as you, you know."

Xavin stays silent for a few more long moments; when Molly sneaks a peek back up at them, their face is inscrutable. Then they tip their head to the side. "So you do not need any help?"

"No, Xavin," Molly says. Xavin flashes her an odd, small smile and turns to leave, closing the door behind them.

It's a few weeks before either of them mention it again. Xavin doesn't appear to have told anyone, and Molly's just starting to think they'll let it go when they show up in her bedroom door one afternoon and fling a package at her.

"Ow," Molly says when it hits her lightly in the chest, and then, "What the fuck is this?"

"I thought you were Princess Powerful," Xavin replies. They tilt their chin at the package.

Molly rolls her eyes. "Helpful. And whatever, that was years ago." She picks it up and unwraps the plastic, pulling out what appears to be some kind of cropped black tank top. "Uh. Thanks?"

"Try it on. For--" They gesture at their chest. "You know."

"You know." Molly snorts. "You spend too much time around Karolina."

Xavin ignores her. "It's meant to be safer than those bandages you used before. You should not use those. Apparently they can have detrimental effects on human rib cages."

They turn to leave, but Molly calls after them. "Xavin. Um. How do you know about all that?" she asks, looking back down at the tank-top-thing in her hands. She fingers the strange fabric. The top layer feels odd and rough against her skin, and the layer beneath seems to almost shine.

Xavin looks affronted. "I am acquainted with the internet, Molly," they say. "I know you humans like to think that you alone have the ability to work these marvelous technologies of yours, but I assure you, a Skrull can manage a search engine." 

Their defensive tone sounds so much more Xavin than the soft, fond tone from before, and Molly feels herself smiling. "I'll take your word for it," she says. "And, uh, thanks." Xavin nods and leaves.

She holds the garment for a while longer: staring at it, exploring it, stretching the fabric with her hands. It's very tight; she supposes that must be the point, if it's going to flatten her down. Eventually she stands and pulls off her top and wriggles her way into it -- and wriggles and wriggles, because holy shit, this thing does not want to go on, and she's got one arm stuck in the air and is halfway convinced that Xavin actually bought her some messed up torture device when by some miracle she finally tugs it past her shoulders and down into place.

When she's adjusted her breasts under it, she looks down at herself. Nothing looks all that different, just...more smushed. But when she pulls on a t-shirt (her favorite, one of Gert's hand-me-downs) and stands on her toes to examine herself in the mirror, the difference is like night and day. Her torso is a perfectly flat plane, one smooth line from collarbone to hips. Molly slides her hands down her chest and grins.

Some days she wears the thing, some days she doesn't. It all depends on how she feels. Nobody really says anything about it -- Karolina raises an eyebrow the first time but says nothing, Gert makes one joking comment about how Molly's "looking angular today", and Vic probably doesn't even notice -- but Xavin smiles an infuriatingly ambiguous smile every time they see Molly in it, and it really starts to piss her off.

"I'm not a boy, you know," she says one evening over a game of Scrabble. They're the only ones in the room, everyone else gone off to bed, and Xavin is hunched over, contemplating some undoubtedly completely made up word to add to the board.

Xavin looks up and raises their eyebrows. "I know," they say simply. "Neither am I."

"Okay, but I'm not a girl either."

A shrug. "Okay."

Molly runs a hand back and forth through her hair, tugs at the shortest strands near the nape of her neck. "It's just, it must be so fucking easy for you," she says, "how Skrulls can just change gender whenever. It's probably not even a thing for you."

Xavin considers her for a moment. One side of her mouth is quirked up. "It is, actually," they say finally. "A 'thing'. I was very young when I left, so it was still tolerated, but most Skrulls do not shift their body as their mood pleases them the way I did. And do."

Molly watches Xavin across the table for a while, studying their face. This is a kind of emotional honesty most people -- or most people who aren't Karolina -- don't often get from Xavin. Xavin, for their part, just gazes back.

"I don't understand it," Molly says eventually. "That's what frustrates me the most. It's supposed to be an easy thing, and I don't understand it."

Xavin shakes their head slowly. "Neither do I. I once told Karolina that I do not know who I am. Years later, it's still true." They turn back to the Scrabble board and begin arranging tiles, a small smile on their face. "But at least neither of us is alone in this."