Over the next two weeks, Jennifer found herself watching James with a new, quiet intensity. It started from a place of care, a desire to monitor him after his breakdown, to take his emotional temperature and ensure he wasn’t spiralling again. But the more she watched, the more she noticed what they had both seen in the mirror that night.
It was in the small, unconscious adjustments his body was making. One morning, she saw him reach for a coffee mug on the top shelf. Instead of reaching straight up as he always had, he turned his torso slightly, his arm moving in a wider, more careful arc. It was a subtle, protective motion, an instinctual effort to create space for the new, tender fullness of his chest. It wasn’t dramatic, but it was undeniably different. It was the movement of a person navigating a new and unfamiliar body map.
One evening, as they were watching a movie, he shifted on the couch and, without breaking his gaze from the screen, hooked a thumb under the strap of his t-shirt to adjust the bralette beneath. It wasn't the clumsy fumbling of a man unused to the garment; it was a fluid, practiced, undeniably feminine motion, an instinctual twitch she had performed herself a thousand times.
A few days later, she walked past the bathroom just as he was stepping out of the shower. He had his back to her, wearing a plain grey t-shirt, vigorously towelling his damp hair. The damp cotton of the shirt clung to his back, clearly outlining the thin straps of his bralette. The image was jarringly unfamiliar. It wasn't that she hadn't seen him in a bra before. She had. She had even held his new, fuller chest in her hands and suckled on them in a moment of intense intimacy. But that had been in the moment, a deliberate exploration of a change. This was different. This was mundane. The combination of his longer hair falling softly over his neck and that simple, geometric line of the straps created a picture that was… female. Her brain, for a fleeting second, didn't register it as 'James wearing a bra.' It registered the image as 'a woman's back.' The immediate correction—No, that’s James—was what caused the strange, internal jolt. It was like seeing two different pictures flash in succession, her mind struggling to reconcile the soft, feminine silhouette with the solid, familiar identity of her husband. It was a quiet, profound confusion. The lines she thought were clear were beginning to blur in ways she hadn't anticipated.
To his credit, James seemed to be coping well since the breakdown. In fact, a perverse, secret part of her almost wished for another one. Another tearful rejection of the changes would have been an excuse, a door opening for her to say, 'See? This is too much. Let's stop.' But his quiet acceptance was in many ways more worrying than his panic had been, because it offered her no opening. She caught herself wondering if these changes might become too profound, too permanent. For a brief moment, she seriously considered the conversation: the one where she asked him to pull the plug, not just for his sake, but for theirs.
James, on the other hand, spent those same two weeks engaged in a fierce internal campaign of recalibration. The breakdown had terrified him, not just because of the dysphoria, but because it threatened the mission. He would stand in front of that same bathroom mirror, fully dressed, and force himself to see things differently. This is the factory tooling up, he’d tell his reflection. This is progress.
The mood swings still sideswiped him at times, but he framed them as a temporary side effect of the project, instalments that he had to pay on the final product. He had kept his word and given thought to Jennifer's advice, researching therapists specializing in gender and identity issues. He found a Dr. Anya Sharma whose profile seemed perfect. He wrote the name on a sticky note, looked at it for a long moment, then folded it carefully and tucked it deep inside a book on his nightstand. He didn’t need it not. Not yet. He just had to get to the finish line. Once the baby arrived, once the why was a real, tangible bundle of joy in his arms, the strange and difficult 'how' would make perfect sense. These breasts weren't a source of shame; they were the future source of his child's life. He was reframing the narrative, day by day, and with each successful reframing, he felt his conviction grow. It would all be worth it.
* * *
The click of the front door was followed by James’s familiar sigh of relief as he dropped his keys into the ceramic bowl on the entryway table. Jennifer looked up from the couch, her six-month bump a prominent, perfect sphere under her sweater.
“Well?” she asked, patting the cushion beside her. “What’s the verdict from Dr. Science? Am I still married to a medically excellent specimen?”
James flopped down beside her, the couch springs groaning in protest. He leaned over and gave her belly a soft kiss. “The specimen is progressing ahead of schedule,” he announced, his voice muffled by her sweater. He sat back up, a more serious expression on his face. “Three months in and everything’s on track. Milk ducts are developing nicely. He wants me to start pumping in six weeks to stimulate production before the baby arrives.”
“Six weeks,” Jennifer breathed. The words landed with a thud in her stomach. Six weeks until the changes became not just visible, but functional. Until they were truly real. She forced a smile. “Wow. It’s getting real.”
“Tell me about it.” James shifted uncomfortably, pulling at the neckline of his t-shirt. He discreetly hooked a finger under the band of his bralette, trying to adjust it.
Jennifer’s gaze, now preternaturally sharp to these new, instinctual movements, narrowed. “Is that thing bugging you?”
James let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s… digging in,” he admitted, his cheeks flushing. “I think I’m officially, uh… spilling out of it.” He gestured vaguely at his chest. “We’re in quad-boob territory. It’s not a good look.”
The awkwardness hung in the air for a beat before Jennifer managed a short laugh. Keep it practical, she told herself. Just solve the problem. “Okay, well, we can’t have that. We need to upgrade your support system.”
“Whoa, let’s pump the brakes,” James said, holding up his hands. “If you’re about to suggest we go get me fitted for something with underwire and lace, the answer is a hard no. I’m not ready to graduate from the Lingerie 101 course you signed me up for.”
The memory of his breakdown was an unspoken presence between them. Jennifer saw her opening. This was her chance to steer. “No, of course not,” she said gently, her expression softening into one of genuine care, though her motivation was a bit more complex. “But you need something that fits, or you’ll be miserable.” She had an idea, a way to frame this that felt safe, that kept it away from the feminine world of lace and silk. “What about… sports bras?” she offered. “They’re functional. Athletic. No frills. They just get the job done.”
James considered it, visibly relaxing. The suggestion was a lifeline, pulling him away from the scary, identity-altering world of lingerie and back to the safe, practical world of 'gear.' “Sports bras,” he repeated, testing the words. “Okay. Yeah. I can do sports bras. For support. And containment. Definitely containment.”
“Deal.” Jennifer smiled, feeling a private surge of relief. One crisis averted. “We can look online later.”
James nodded and stood up to get a glass of water, but paused halfway to the kitchen, tugging at the waistband of his jeans. They were snug, pulling tightly across his hips in a way they never used to. Jennifer’s gaze followed his hands. It was something she had been noticing for weeks, a gradual softening and rounding of his silhouette. The hard, lean lines of his hips were gone, replaced by a gentler, fuller curve. His old jeans, once loose and comfortable, now strained against a shape they were never designed for.
“You know,” she began, trying to keep a teasing lilt in her voice, “for someone who’s supposedly losing all his muscle mass, your pants seem to be telling a different story.”
He shot her a look, half-annoyed, half-resigned. “It’s not muscle, it’s my ass,” he grumbled, turning to give her a better view. “It staged a coup and annexed my hips. None of my pants fit right anymore. The hormones are apparently redistributing my assets.”
“Okay, new wardrobe problem to solve,” Jennifer said, her mind already working on another safe, masculine-coded solution. She patted the couch again, pulling her laptop onto her lap. “Come on. Let’s augment your wardrobe.”
He trudged back over, peering at the screen as she pulled up an athletic wear website. “What are we looking for?”
“Comfort,” she said, her fingers flying across the trackpad as she deliberately navigated to the men’s section. “Good quality joggers. Stuff with a drawstring waist that moves with you.” She clicked on a pair of sleek, tapered sweatpants. “What about these? They look comfortable, and they’d solve the whole… asset redistribution problem.”
James eyed them. They were loose, functional, and definitively not a fashion statement. They were a practical solution to a practical problem. A slow grin spread across his face. “Fine,” he said, collapsing onto the couch next to her. “Add them to the cart with the skull-print sports bra.”
She laughed, leaning her head on his shoulder as they scrolled. “You got it.”
Together, they sat in the glow of the laptop, shopping for sports bras and men's joggers. James knew, on some logical level, that a pair of women's joggers, with their different cut, would probably drape more naturally over his new hips. But that was a line he wasn’t ready to cross. To deliberately choose an item from that side of the store would be going beyond solving the practical issues at hand, and that wasn't something he was comfortable rationalizing at this point. So he embraced the men's joggers with a sense of profound relief; it kept the mission clean, functional, and safe.
Jennifer, for her part, felt a similar sense of profound relief, having successfully managed the narrative and framed every new change within a context that felt logical and controllable. Small changes that maintained the status quo, that didn't upset the delicate balance of how she perceived her husband. The were both relieved, but for two seemingly aligned but quietly divergent reasons.
* * *