steps at a time

Battler looked in the mirror and thought about what Lust and Viktor said. That he could change his body if he wanted to.

Did he?

He wasn't sure. He didn't think so. He’d never wanted to be a girl, after all. He was, according to Jessica, incredibly, obnoxiously, a teenage boy through and through.

(Although, coming from Jessica, did that really mean much? Hadn’t he once admired how boyish she was, how they could play around without worrying about gender at all? Hadn’t he said he hoped any relationship he’d one day enter would be the same way?)

When Viktor was “shopping” for new clothes, Battler had paid extra attention to the clothes he'd normally write off — dresses and skirts, women's blouses. He was… testing himself, he guessed, if he had to put it into words. He tried to imagine himself wearing the type of outfits his Aunt Natsuhi, or even Lust, would wear, and couldn't.

But he had spotted an accessory stand.

Earrings had always seemed cool and rebellious to Battler, who was not currently able to wear them. His dad didn't give a shit, but his grandparents were more traditional and would click their teeth and voice their judgements at piercings beyond the most subtle women's earrings. Even if he’d been able to get his ears pierced, earrings wouldn’t have been allowed at school, so they’d definitely had closed over time.

He'd picked up a pair anyways. They were black, dangling upside down crosses that reminded him of the zipper charm on the suit jacket he'd discarded.

"Hey, uh, Studio? Could I get my ears pierced?"

He opened his eyes again, with no recollection of having closed them to begin with. A good sign, considering what he'd just asked for. Battler pinched an earlobe between two fingers and recognized a divet that hadn't been there just before. Then he got to work trying to get the earrings in.The clasps, and the holes themselves, were so small, and kept slipping in his hand.

But he finally managed and looked at himself in the mirror.

He looked like a dude wearing earrings.

Which, to be fair, made sense. That's what he was. And yet… he'd been hoping for something different? Something… more?

Ugh. He had way too much shit to think about — Beato’s game, the Host’s — and now every conversation he had with his teammates was piling on more questions. He wanted to be able to definitively say no, he didn’t want to change anything about his body, and no, he wasn’t in love with Beato, and no, he didn’t like thinking about the way her heeled boots dug into his naked back, thank you very much, Lust, just so he could have the mental capacity to focus on what really mattered.

But the fact that he couldn’t immediately say any of those things was… a bad sign.

Was he fucked? Battler felt like he might be fucked.

He didn’t… have to do it all at once, he figured. Getting out of Death Game Tour: that had to be his number one priority. But things like the details of his feelings for Beato, or… his… gender… weren’t life or death. They could go one step at a time.

Or, Battler thought, looking at his reflection, two steps. He pinched a strand of red hair in his fingers and said to no one and everyone in particular, "I know time doesn't really pass here, so could I get a couple more inches on this?"