Work Text:
Two Souls
by Irena Adler
"Would you still love me if I was a woman?" Will asked.
Don choked on his beer. Will looked on silently as Don tried to remember how to breathe air again.
Finally, Don managed, "What?"
"A woman," Will said. "Would you still love me?"
"Damn, Will, what brought this on? Coop and that stupid dress and those pictures of you in drag? I told you then that I prefer you dressed as a guy."
"But that's because I am a guy, what if I was a girl?"
Don bit back a groan. It was just like Will to spring something like this on him when all Don wanted to do was relax with a game and a beer after a particularly stressful day at work. He eyed Will then bit back another groan. Will had that brittle tension about him that Don had learned the hard way meant he couldn't just say, `Of course I would, you emotionally needy idiot,' and be done with it.
Don put down his beer and paused the game. "Are you talking being born a female or a sex change?"
"Can't change what I was born as, but I've thought about the operation at times."
"Hell, no!" Don said with horror.
"Not for a while, but there was a time when I thought very seriously about it."
Don's stomach churned sickly. "When you dressed up as a woman?"
Will nodded. "I know that most men who dress in drag aren't secretly wanting to be women. Drag can be fun and very liberating. Most of the time it was for me, too, but sometimes I would look in the mirror after putting on my persona and I'd think `if only'."
"But you don't even like women!"
"That's the point! I love men, and if I was a woman, that would be normal. I would be normal. You like women ..."
Don closed his eyes and wished nasty things for all the people in Will's life who had told him repeatedly that he was abnormal. Will's sexual preferences might be in the minority, but blue-eyed people were a minority too, and they weren't told they were evil and sick.
Opening his eyes, Don took a deep breath. "Now, I'm probably going to garble this but bear with me, okay?"
Will nodded slightly.
"I think that people have souls, something beyond their pure physical body that makes them unique. I've seen too many good people and bad people who have come from the exact same conditions and family. I don't know what a soul is made of or how you measure it and I can't prove it exists, but I believe in it, okay?"
"Okay..."
Don plowed on, "I think that there's also something truly different between men and women, and not just society or biology, but that there are male and female souls."
"You've thought about this?"
"You talk about all sorts of things on long stakeouts." Don shrugged. "Okay, so the vast majority of the time, a male soul goes into a male body and so on. Occasionally there's a mistake or a trial of faith or something and the wrong soul goes into the wrong body. That's when a sex change surgery might make sense, though it's always a huge thing."
Don looked at Will out of the corner of his eye, testing how this was going over. This was normally only something that he talked about after days and days on a stakeout. Will at least seemed to be listening.
"What I think," Don continued, "Is that you've got a man's soul in a man's body and that's just how it should be."
"And if I had a woman's soul in a woman's body?"
Don allowed himself an audible sigh. "You'd be a different person. You would no doubt be a gorgeous, sexy woman with a wicked sense of humor and I'd probably fall in love with that person, too."
"Probably?"
"Dammit, Will," Don snapped. "How can I know something that's entirely some sort of parallel universe thought experiment and-"
He stopped when he saw the twinkle had returned to Will's eyes. Will had heard and understood him, and was now just needling him.
"Stupid, needy idiot," Don grumbled with a smile.
"But a very manly one," Will smiled back.
Wiping the smile from his face, Don fixed Will with a glare. "But, Will Stevens, if you ever even think again about chopping off your guy parts and adding girl parts, I will lock you in a chastity belt so fast that your head will spin. Then I'll contact all of the doctors in the area who do that kind of surgery and scare the hell out of them from even talking to you."
Will laughed and slid his arm around Don's shoulders. "You don't like me in a skirt, but are going to put me in a medieval chastity device?"
"If that's what it takes," Don said, running his hand possessively down Will's masculine body.
"Naw, just needed to hear you say it."
Don rolled his eyes and reached for the remote. "Now, can I get back to the game?"
Will nuzzled Don's ear. "If that's what you want ..."
Nodding firmly, Don unpaused the game and reached for his beer. Will kissed Don's ear and neck, his hands roaming over Don's chest.
Don managed ten minutes of the game before finally giving in to Will's warm persuasions. He did love Will, and Will's male body, more than he'd loved anyone and any body before. And, though Don thought he'd done pretty well with the words, he'd always been a man of action.
"Alright, Stevens," Don said, turning off the TV and pulling Will closer. "My guy's soul has a few things it would like to impress upon yours."
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