Author's Note: So I'm not a subscriber to the belief that canon Riley is transgender or genderfluid based on her mixed-gender emotions. However, I thought it would be interesting to look at a potential AU where, three years after the events of the movie (for the purposes of this fic, Inside Out takes place in 2012), Riley discovers that she might not be a she after all and is confronted by her parents about the changes they see Riley undergoing in looks and personality. I noticed that some of the existing trans-Riley fics were making her father out to be something of a bigot and decided to make a one-shot that countered with a reaction that more matched the character from the film.
Also, while this fic is told in third person, it's primarily a reflection of Riley's father's perspective, and thus Riley will primarily be referred to with feminine pronouns, as Mr. Andersen comes to grips with her new identity. I sincerely hope I did not make any glaring mistakes with my depiction of gender dysphoria. Anyways, read on!
...
To say that Bill Andersen was a bit distraught was an understatement. He was absolutely shaken.
Of all the stressful deals and jobs he'd pulled off at work, of all the upheavals he gone through at home, moving cross-country and adjusting to a whole new life, and of all the family issues he'd dealt with over the years, none of them had made him fret as much as he was fretting now.
Even when Riley had run away, the incident was mercifully short. Now, Riley was drawing further and further away from him, and from Jill, even while still living at home. For over two months, Riley had been acting like a stranger in her own house.
At first, Riley was just spending some excessive time alone in her room. Then she started cutting her own hair. Extremely short cuts, too. It wasn't a style that Bill approved of, but it wasn't his decision to make. He thought she might have just been inspired by Mad Max. He'd offered to take her to a barber to get a more professional-looking short cut, but she changed the subject without answering. Soon, she stopped making conversation with her parents altogether. She would spend whole nights in her room, claiming she had lots of homework, but Bill could often hear her crying from behind the door. He'd attempted to intervene once, but she lost her temper and shut him out. He'd almost grounded her, but realized he didn't understand what was going on and he couldn't punish her for what must have been some strange misunderstanding. Plus, she never went out anymore anyways, for reasons he didn't understand.
He wanted to understand, and he craved to know what was afflicting his daughter. He and Jill often had long discussions about what could be happening. The most obvious possibility was depression, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something else was going on. Something was driving Riley mad. He thought about getting a psychologist involved, but even if he could afford it (which he most certainly could not), he worried that if he forced Riley to talk to someone else, she wouldn't ever open up to her parents in retaliation.
Today he was fed up with the anxiety, with all the pressure and frustration of losing Riley to whatever was driving them apart. He had to force her hand. He was prepared for the worst of Riley's wrath.
But of all the possibilities he considered, he never once thought of the truth.
…
Bill stood in front of the door, listening to make sure she wasn't crying. He needed Riley to not be upset. It was his best chance of getting her to open up.
"Riley, I need to talk to you!"
No answer. He hesitated, but ultimately opened the door. This has to be done, he thought.
Riley's head jerked up when she heard her father step into the room. He noticed her eyes. They were horribly bloodshot, with the appearance of someone who had spent the whole night wide awake. He swallowed. It visibly disturbed him to see Riley in such a state.
"Riley, your mother and I were talking about going to the movies tonight. It's been a long time and we thought you might want… to tag along. A while ago it sounded like you were really excited to see Mission: Impossible; were you still up for that?"
Bill noticed the shot of excitement that suddenly crossed Riley's once-perpetually jovial face, but it was gone as fast as it appeared. "No, Dad, I… I don't feel up to it."
"Don't feel up to it? All you do is sit in a chair, watch a screen and eat popcorn. Doesn't take much effort."
"No, Dad, I… I can't."
Bill sighed, closing the door behind him and sitting down in front of Riley, who was lying stomach-down on the floor. "Riley… talk to me. Please tell me what's going on."
"Nothing's going on, Dad."
"I know that's not true, sweetheart. It's been ages since you've talked to us. I forget you're even home half the time. It barely feels like you're here."
"Dad…."
"Please let me finish. It hurts, Riley. I don't know if we've done something, or if you just don't want to talk to us anymore, but this not knowing what is going on is hurting us. I don't know if you're hiding something, I can't… I just cannot understand what you're going through. We want to help, we desperately want to help, but…"
He swallowed, expecting Riley to interrupt. She didn't.
"It just… it feels like you're a different person. Everything about you just went topsy-turvy. Your hair is so short it looks like it belongs on a boy, you don't go to hockey with us, you lock yourself in here all day, and… you're never happy. It's… it's like I don't even know you anymore…"
A tear slid down his face. "What happened, Riley? What won't you tell us?"
Up until that point, Riley had been desperately trying to avoid his gaze, but something about being called "a different person" had snapped her to attention. And when she saw the little tear on his normally unshakably confident face, her resolve broke. The truth couldn't be hidden anymore.
"Oh, Dad…"
"Riley?"
"I just… just… just couldn't tell you…" she stammered. "You'll be so mad…"
"No, sweetheart…" he replied, desperately hoping her next words weren't I'm addicted to cocaine or I'm wanted by the police.
"It was all so sudden and I didn't know what was going on, but suddenly… suddenly I couldn't look at myself anymore, I saw my hair and I felt dirty and wrong, and every little detail about my body just felt horrible…"
She gulped. Bill was taken aback. All of this was just a body image problem?
"But it's not just some body image thing, it's… I'm different, Dad!"
She sat up and drew back from him. She cupped her face in her hands and whispered out three words that changed her life forever.
"I'm a boy."
…
The weight of that sentence hit Bill like a freight train. He couldn't think of anything he could possibly say.
He'd thought through every possible explanation, how he would keep in control for every possible outcome. Drugs, depression, bullying, even unthinkable scenarios like sexual harassment or worse, but never this. Not even once.
The idea of Riley as transgender hadn't even existed as a possibility.
Riley slow raised her head to face her father, but was unable to comprehend the meaning of his expression. But she knew it wasn't joy.
"I know… I know what you think about stuff like this… and I thought the same way too. That it was just a weird lifestyle, and that it didn't make sense, and that no sane person could ever want to live that way…"
Tears starting streaming across her face. "And I didn't think it was something that could just happen to people but… but then it happened… it happened to me… and I couldn't stop it…"
Riley sniffled and tried to compose herself. "I don't know how to explain it, in a way that makes sense, but when I started… growing up… everything felt wrong. My hair felt wrong, my body felt wrong, and I felt wrong down there too…"
Bill was desperately trying to comprehend her words even as everything he knew about his daughter fell apart in front of him.
"And when my… my boobs started growing I just felt sick. It felt like they weren't supposed to be there, like they weren't even mine…"
She rubbed some of her tears off. "At first I thought I was just scared, that I was scared of growing up, and that I'd get used to it - but all the feelings never went away. And I started trying to look up what was wrong with me, and this was the only thing that made sense at all. I'm not supposed to look like this, I'm not supposed to be a girl at all…"
Bill finally got the courage to open his mouth. "Oh, sweetheart…"
He opened his arms, and Riley climbed over to him and hugged him back. He listened to Riley sob for nearly five minutes.
She finally withdrew, still sniffling. "I didn't ask for this. I never wanted this. I'm supposed to be your happy girl, it's what you deserved. You've taken care of me for so long, you don't deserve to deal with a problem like this…"
Bill had been scrounging to find things he could possibly say to comfort Riley, but those words finally gave him what he needed to reply.
"Riley, you're not a problem. You could never be a problem for us no matter what happens to you. We want you to be happy, but we don't want you to pretend to be fine when you're not feeling fine. And…. something like this will mean we need to make a lot of changes, but it doesn't mean we love you any less."
"You're not mad? You're not mad at all?"
"I won't lie, Riley. This is upsetting news. There are lots of things that your mother and I will be worried about now that we had never thought of before. We never imagined something this dramatic was going on, and I can't begin to say I truly understand. But this is better than not knowing. And we will work this out. We will get through this, together."
To date, the smile that crossed Riley's face upon seeing her father's acceptance was the biggest he'd ever seen.
Bill was far from ready to call Riley his son instead of his daughter. But it was a start. The two hugged once again, tears of joy streaming down their faces.
After a while, Bill noticed Riley chuckling. He glanced over. "What's so funny," he asked playfully.
"Oh, it's just something that popped into my head. It's the stupid jingle from the Triple Dent Gum commercial. Remember that?"
Bill fished around in his head a little, before it suddenly came to him. "Oh, really Riley, you had to remind me of that! Now I'll never get it out of my head!"
"At least you're brain was kind enough to let you forget about it, it's been bugging me for years!" Riley replied cheekily.
The two of them laughed heartily and began softly singing the little song.
"Triple Dent Gum will make you smile,
Triple Dent Gum – it lasts a while!
Triple Dent Gum will help you, mister,
To punch bad breath right in the kisser.
Triple Dent Gum!"
This is all for now, and I don't plan to progress the story past this point. However, I am planning to rewrite this story in the near future from the perspective of Riley's emotions, as well as potentially Riley's own perspective. Stay tuned!
