Transitioning Home
by poetheather

For Sergeant Thomas Simmons, getting injured in Iraq was just the start of an adventure that would throw him down the rabbit hole into a world where nothing made sense anymore. Having to restart his life, this soldier has to take his battlefield courage and turn it to a different arena in order to face this newest set of challenges. He just wonders if he is strong enough to handle this newest change in his life.

Five

This situation was, of course, just what he didn’t need - more time to sit in his head and think, to roll the issues around in there over and over. Yet here he was yet again in his bed staring at the door, thinking about all sorts of things, like his body, his future, his family. He had also gotten the runner to grab him lots of magazines and catalogues, just a huge stack, without telling him why, simply stating that he was bored and needing something to read. He had sorted out the guy magazines and had them in a pile and had a pile of the chick magazines on his desk. The task of going through them kept him busy for a while and his mind quiet, as he found that when he was busy trying to look at things and feel if that pull existed he didn’t think about anything else. The pull apparently did exist with things as well, as he had a large number of pages marked. He was currently going through a women’s clothing catalogue, marking different outfits that he felt that jealous pull towards. That jealous pull felt a lot like the pull of him wanting something, which sort of creeped him out. He wanted bras, panties, dresses, skirts, all of the feminine crap?

This task he had been given by Dr. Richards was screwy and he wasn’t sure what he thought about it. He focused on the exercise, trying to get it done, to finish what had been asked of him. Slowly, he built up a collection of clothes and objects that gave him that feeling of pull. He put them aside after that, wanting to get away from the task for the time being. Tomorrow he would tape or glue them into place on the poster board he had gotten for this task. The private had actually grabbed it, taking it from the orderly room, which he was okay with. At least it was saving him money and with the unit deployed Thomas doubted that anyone would actually miss the thing.

He got out a pad of paper and started working on his list of things he felt jealous about. It felt weird to be making a list like this and he kept nervously looking at the door, expecting the runner to show up for no particular reason. He felt embarrassed even writing the list, to be even thinking about what kind of breasts he felt most jealous over. He sat back and thought about what sort of things really made him feel jealous. The first person he thought about was the nurse in Iraq, the really hot one who always made that feeling show. What did she look like and what specifically made him feel jealous?

Probably C in breast size, which was still firm and tasty looking. Then there was her really nice round ass that filled her BDU’s so nicely, keeping the seat of the desert fatigues stretched taut. And she had great curves in addition to that. Then there were the girls with long hair. Thomas had never had long hair of his own, but seeing it certainly made him twinge with jealousy. It drew him like a moth to flame and he realized that all the girls he had dated had long hair, at least past the shoulders. What else was there? Some of the outfits he saw added to the feeling. He listed the skirt and blouse outfits he had seen that he liked, some of the lingerie as well. The way some women filled out BDUs also did something for him. He wrote it all down, trying to keep up with the flow of images rolling through his head.

There was a knock at the door. Thomas’ heart rate increased and he quickly stuffed the notepad under his pillow. He tried to calm down and sound natural, even though he felt embarrassed enough to have been caught masturbating instead of writing. “Yes?”

“Sergeant, did you need anything?” It was the runner again. “Lunch is coming up soon and I wanted to see if you wanted anything special?”

“No thank you, just the basic lunch would be great. I have water and Cokes here, so I should be fine. Thank you though.” Thomas was starting to calm down. This wasn’t easy but he was making an effort.

“Okay Sergeant, I’ll be right back with your food.”

When there was no more talking from the other side of the door, Thomas breathed a sigh of relief and was almost panting as if he had run somewhere. That was embarrassing. He almost felt like he was going to get caught masturbating by his mom and he wasn’t sure what he could do to deal with the discomfort.
He kept the notepad under his pillow and hidden from view until the runner came back with his food. He saw no reason to tempt fate and get all tense again. So long as he kept everything in its own place he was good.

The food was what he expected from military food, fuel but not much better than that. The nominally better cooks had gone with the Battalion to Iraq. He washed down the swill with a cold Coke and played a video game for a while, losing himself in virtual violence. That helped him take his mind off things as he killed several dozen things. Video game violence was definitely better than the real thing in his opinion as he had had his share of both. However, he couldn’t actually play any of his more realistic combat games as they made him really twitchy and brought out flashbacks to Iraq. In a way he was glad he wouldn’t be able to go back and in a way that depressed him. He sighed and lay back, taking more pain killers, using the pills to take more than the pain in his side away.

After forty-five minutes of waiting he could feel them start to kick in. He just coasted in the pain free haze that the meds induced and that was a good thing as far as he was concerned. His thoughts just started wandering hither and yon, released thanks to the meds. He was thinking over the list he had made and what those things could mean. Did he want to look like that? It seemed odd. Maybe he should give it a try? He started to picture himself with that one nurse’s curves and everything but with long hair instead. He liked the image and it made him smile. It also gave him a slowly building erection.
He kept picturing himself as a girl, seeing himself in different outfits, wandering around different places at different times. The whole thing seemed right somehow, fitting, true. Those pictures danced through his head, showing him his own feminine face, his penis almost painfully erect when he drifted off to sleep, the meds pulling him under.

The images that had been in his head before he slept showed up in his dreams. The way he looked switched between a male and female version of himself, though he hardly registered it a being different. The dreams were vague and indistinct. He awoke a few hours later, groggy, the meds making him feel just a bit off.

He got out his list and looked at it again, blinking a few times to bring it into focus. As things moved around in his head, Thomas added a few more things that came to mind and figured that he had about everything he could think of. He even added the severity levels that he felt them at, since some things made it worse than others and that was kind of interesting. He looked down at the page filled with his handwriting and tore it off the notepad. It went into his desk folded up and put under a book to keep it safe. He knew he could remember the spot.

Thomas went through a few more magazines and marked things that caught his eye and got some sort of response from him. He was getting a lot of things marked up and he wasn’t sure if they would be too much. The doctor hadn’t said anything about a limit and he did have a good sized piece of poster board that he could put these all on, so what would a lot of things hurt? He went back to scanning pictures, trying to make sense of what was going on in his head.

* * * * * *

“Are you okay?” asked the doctor, as Thomas limped into his office.

“Not really. I slipped and fell after our last appointment and got laid up for three days. It aggravated my injuries to an extent but no extra damage. So that was good.” Thomas was feeling much better, though it still really hurt. The extra stretching and physical therapy exercises he had done really helped. It was a good thing to be able to remember those exercises.

“I see you have the assignments done. May I see?” asked the doctor, smiling politely.

Thomas handed over the poster board with the pictures glued to it and the list. It was almost a relief to get rid of it, as the stress of having it in the barracks was making him crazy. “There you go.”

The doctor went through the images carefully, paying a lot of attention to several sections or individual items. “Did you find this assignment to be difficult?”

“Not really. I have thought about that feeling a lot since it first showed up, so I knew what to be aware of.” replied Thomas. “I just grabbed whatever triggered that in the least little way.”

“You have a lot of things on here and a pretty wide variety of things at that. I guess I wasn’t expecting to see furniture on here or pieces of art.”

“True. Being hurt gave me more time to lie back and go through a lot of catalogues. I saw a wide variety of things that made me feel that way.” remarked Thomas. “That and I had all of that space to fill. I had finished what I already had and then I needed some more so I picked out some more pictures.”

The doctor nodded, as if that had meant something. “What made you chose these pieces of furniture and such?”

“I don’t know. They stood out to me in some way and I marked them to be cut out. I don’t know why that feeling arose… it just did.” Thomas was searching for some way to explain things and couldn’t. There were a lot of things on that board that he couldn’t explain their presence.

“Don’t worry about it. The fact that you were able to broaden your search beyond simply clothes and the like is good. Now let’s go over this list I had you bring in, shall we? It does seem fairly specific and detailed, just like your poster. All of these things get you? And to these degrees?” asked the doctor, looking at the list instead of Thomas, as if he were making sense of what Thomas had put down.

“Uhm…yeah. I figured you might need to know that information in order to do your job right.” Thomas answered nervously. “Was that wrong?”

“No, not at all. I was just interested in why you did it this way. I notice you have some very specific items here listed as to size.”

“I thought you wanted specifics?” Thomas was getting a bit confused. Had he done this correctly? He wasn’t sure anymore as that question seemed to imply that he had done something wrong.

“I did, I do but I was not expecting you to be this specific. Thank you. That will certainly make this analysis easier. Anything else interesting happen this week?” asked the doctor, turning things away from the list for the moment.

“Besides getting hurt? Not much… though, I have been having odd dreams.” said Thomas as he sat back in the chair. This was not as nerve wracking as him going through the picture and the list.

“Dreams? Like what?” the doctor got out his notepad and was ready to take things down. He scrawled a few notes in preparation.

“Well, odd ones. I don’t remember much, except vague images. Me dressed as a woman, catcalls, Iraq, stuff like that. They’ve been really disjointed but have not been really good for resting. They have woken me up, ready to scream and such.” replied Thomas, unable to nudge anything more out of his memory and kind of glad about that.

The Doctor look concerned for a moment, his brows furrowed. It passed just before he said, “I think you need to start a dream journal. Record all of your dreams, simply whatever you remember, and then we can see if there are any patterns in them. If you cannot remember anything one night r other, still write something down. Feelings, vague memories, sensations, all of that is valid in this search. It can help us to build a more complete picture of what is going on inside of your head.”

Thomas nodded. He could follow that. “Okay. I can see the sense of that. Anything else you need me to do?”

“Well yes Thomas. You have mentioned that you get this jealous feeling and you have now handed me this list of traits that make the jealous feelings worse. Jealousy is often caused by wanting to be in that persons place, or to have something this other person has, it is symbolic of a desire for something else. Why would you want these things?” The Doctor asked Thomas.

“I… uhm… I don’t really know. I never really thought about it too much before but I have been doing a lot of thought on that lately.” Thomas felt his mind whirling. What could this mean? He wanted to be a girl? Like for real and everything? Is that what the jealousy symbolized? “Maybe that is who I want to be?”

“Is that a statement or a question?” asked the Doctor, sitting back watching Thomas carefully.

“I don’t know?” Thomas looked confused, obviously focused inwards. “It would make sense, I guess, given all of those feelings, but I have never thought about doing anything like that.”

“Never? You have never, in your whole life, thought about dressing and being a girl?” asked the Doctor, making the occasional note about whatever Thomas said.

Thomas sat there in his seat and thought about his life. He tried to run through everything in his life, to see if there was any truth to this. Was there anything? He recalled something and was a bit embarrassed by it. “I think I had a few sexual fantasies about that in high school, but I’m not sure. I can’t remember clearly. I can tell you that I have never worn girl clothes or anything. So, why would I think about things like this?”

The doctor smiled comfortingly. “Isn’t that part of the reason you are here, to figure this out?”

Thomas grumbled under his breath. This thing was more frustrating that answer providing. Any answer he got brought out fifteen or more questions. “I know that, I was looking for some sort of explanation.”

“Well, what if this is some sort of Gender Dysphoria, what are you going to do then?” asked the doctor calmly.

Thomas rubbed his temple as he thought. This seemed to be the crux of his discomfort. What the hell would he do if this gender thing were true and he wanted to be a girl? “I don’t know. I want to stop having these jealous feelings, as they are really irritating and distracting. If it means that I have to be… become a… girl… then, I just don’t know. It is almost too bizarre to even consider. I mean, I’m a guy, right?”

The Doctor just sat there watching as Thomas shook a little. “I mean, I can’t figure out why I would ever want that? My life has been normal, with nothing out of the ordinary happening. I grew up in a good Christian household. I never really connected what I was vaguely feeling with jealousy until I got injured. Could this have something to do with the concussion I got?”

“I won’t say it’s impossible Thomas, but it is doubtful. That kind of trauma rarely has effects of this nature on a patient. I think, however, this may be something deep seated that came out under the stress of combat. I think that this is something you buried deep inside of yourself and now that it has surfaced you are going to have to deal with.” The Doctor looked right into Thomas’s eyes. “You can try to hide from it but this whole issue isn’t going to go anywhere.”

Thomas just sat there quietly. This was overwhelming and he felt a little scared. He whispered, “I don’t want to be a girl. I am happy as I am. Why can’t that be good enough?”

“I don’t know Thomas, but I am here to help you work through this problem. If the two of us work together we can get to the root of this issue and find a way to make sure that this particular problem doesn’t bother you again.”

* * * * * *

Thomas hobbled out of his car and down Franklin Street towards the bar. He felt good enough right now to get out of his room and do something other than think about this fucking gender problem that ran in circles in his head. Maybe he would get lucky tonight? It would be better than nothing that was sure. There was only so much that Rosy could do for you.

The music pounded against him as he entered the bar/ nightclub and he sort of sighed in relief. He had come here several times before he had gotten deployed and something familiar, like this place, was a good thing right about now. Thomas limped past the doorman, after flashing his ID and he made a beeline for the bar, wanting something strong to quench his thirst and shut his head up. The music was helping and that was a good thing, as the beat thrummed through his body. Since he was a bit early for the crowds, he managed to grab one of the few tables that were scattered about. Thankfully, he was early and since the base was fairly empty due to the deployment there were almost no other soldiers there. He drank his beer and just listened to the music, letting himself get lost in it.

After his fourth bottle of Import beer, the place was really beginning to fill up. He was watching the dancers with some envy, remembering when he could move like that, back before his accident, before Iraq. He watched the girls, enjoying the way the moved, the flow of their bodies, the way their hair bounced in time with them and doing his best to ignore the few twinges of jealousy that kept popping up. He growled to himself in annoyance. He just wanted this to shut up, was that really too much to ask for?

After his fifth bottle a girl came up to his table. She had blond hair that fell down to the bottom of her shoulder blades with a little flip at the bottom, bright blue eyes and was thin and pretty. She made him a bit jealous and that pulled out a sigh. She asked, “Hey, can I leave my drink here?”

Thomas smiled, as it really was no big deal. “Sure.”

The girl set down her glass on his table and went out to the dance floor, still in his view. Thomas smiled as he watched her all but writhe in the air as she danced. She certainly could move out there on the floor and they did say that good dancers made better lovers. She was tremendously hot and he wanted her. When the waitress came by, he got another beer for himself and a refill of the girl’s drink. This might just turn out to be a good day after all.

The girl came back to the table, sweat glistening on her body, her hair matted down with sweat. It looked really good and Thomas only wanted her more. She saw the two drinks on the table and looked over at Thomas, a touch confused. “Why are there two drinks?”

“I thought you might be thirsty, so I bought you another one. Have a seat, rest a bit.”

The girl looked at him for a moment as if appraising him, shrugged and sat down. “Sure. Why not?”

Thomas felt like it was his lucky day. Things really were looking up. Just maybe he would get laid tonight.

“So, what’s your name?” asked the girl.

“My name is Thomas. And yours?” The smile was mostly guileless. Mostly.

“Debra. You in the military?”

“What? Did the haircut give it away?” he joked.

She smiled as if amused by what he had said. “Just a little. So why aren’t you over in Iraq?”

Thomas shrugged. Might as well go for the truth on this one as it was a great story. “I got injured saving my platoon and for that I got sent home.”

Debra’s eyes went wide in surprise. “Like as in you’re a real hero? Really?”

“Yep. Got a medal and everything out of the experience. So that’s why I am over here not dancing. My leg got tore up over there.” Thomas loved flirting. It was like stalking prey and it made him excited. If this worked and he bagged her, he would be very happy indeed. It had been far too long since he had gotten laid and he really could use that after all of this stupid gender crap. Nothing like a good old fashioned heterosexual fucking to get your mind off of wanting to be a girl.

“Aw…poor baby. Do I need to kiss it and make it better?” She smiled at Thomas and then had another sip of her drink.

“Yes. Yes, you do.” He grinned at that. Things were indeed looking up.

Debra got up from the table, came around to his side and ran her hand along his head. Thomas almost closed his eyes in enjoyment. “Let me see if this helps.”

She kissed him on the cheek and then leaned back a little. “Any better?”

Thomas pretended to look sad and hurt. “A little bit. Could you maybe, help a little more?”

Debra smiled broadly and then kissed Thomas on the lips. Thomas opened his mouth in response and the two of them began making out. Thomas had to shift a couple of times as he grew hard and it was in an uncomfortable place. She really kissed nice.

“So, what do you want to do now Debra?” asked Thomas, with a little bit of a leer. He certainly knew what he wanted to do.

She giggled at the leer. “Well, my place is pretty close by. Want to come over to my house and you know… play?”

“Sure. Sounds like a plan to me.”

The two of them walked about two blocks to her apartment building. The alcohol numbed the pain in Thomas’s leg and he managed to make fairly good time as he hobbled along the sidewalk. As they rode up the elevator in her building, they started kissing and fondling each other again, wanting each other and hating the fact that they weren’t already naked. Her tongue was warm and wet on his throat and Thomas liked the fact that the girl had breasts that fit perfectly into his hands. It made the groping easier.

Debra fumbled a little with her keys while trying to get her door open, since her hands didn’t want to be working right. Once they got inside, the two horny people stumbled towards the bed, pulling their clothes off each other and flinging them away. Once naked, Debra dropped to her knees and started sucking Thomas. The sudden sensation was intense and he fell back into the pillows happily. Debra managed to hold on and keep sucking as he fell.

When she climbed on top of him, in order to impale herself on to him, he didn’t mind, as he figured this wouldn’t hurt his leg so much as doing it the other way. The beer numbed him just enough so things took longer than they might have otherwise. Once the two of them both screamed out their climaxes, her first and then him, Thomas collapsed onto the pillow and fell into a deep post sex sleep.