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Every time he looks in the mirror, Nica's face looks more like his own.
It's not in the weird magical-morphing way that the dolls had - he's not started losing his hair or growing any new, ahem, appendages - but in the raw, human way that makes his skin crawl. He's checked a thousand times, tilted his head this way and that, scanned every curve of her jaw and every curl of her hair; Nica's face still looks like Nica, if he smooths his expression into something sweeter. Nothing about it has changed, he hasn't done anything to ruin this body.
It just… looks like him now, too.
Not literally. Well - he grumbles thoughtfully, tugging at his - Nica's - hair - a little literally. She's got his same curls, and his same sharp eyes, and his throat doesn't hurt when he speaks with his own voice. If he pushes his bangs out of his face with his hands and tenses his jaw a little, it's almost uncanny. So, yes, he supposes, Nica's face does look like Charles' face just a little bit literally.
But also in the weird, fucky, shit-to-repress-for-later way. He sees glimmers of himself even when he forces his face to relax, hears his voice in hers even when he forces his accent back down into his throat, even when he pitches it high and soft and scared.
He sees himself in the curve of her hips, the line of her collarbone, the softness pressing against his wrists when he crosses his arms against his chest.
It's fucking disturbing. Those old Voodoo For Dummies manuals hadn't prepared him for whatever uncanny valley bullshit this was.
He starts avoiding mirrors.
He spends the first week or so strolling around in whatever random shit he could throw on - Tiff was kind (read: obsessed) enough to keep his coat for him, and Nica's hospital garbs - sans straitjacket - were ambiguous enough that nobody spared him a second glance. He complained about the heels - fucking deathtraps - and managed to nab some of Glen's battered old flats from the trunk of the car when Tiff stopped for gas, but got so bored of the things that he eventually swapped them back.
("Red's for danger, doll," he drawled, keeping his eyes locked with Tiff's, daring her to put the confusion on her face into words. "Gotta let the world know what they're dealing with.")
Tiffany eventually got so sick of him dressing like, quote, a "homeless businessman", that she dragged him into the nearest mall and insisted that she'd buy him anything he wanted (with Jennifer's money, of course) so long as it wasn't 20 copies of the same outfit. Chucky was half tempted to do just that - "difficult" is practically his middle name - but kept getting distracted by the (admittedly far more interesting) shit on the racks.
Now, he may not have piloted an adult-sized human body since 1988, but last time he checked, the men's section didn't have nearly this many options. After throwing a few slightly-too-big button-ups in the cart for good luck, he marched his way out of that hellish maze of near-identical tee-shirts and never looked back.
The boots came first. They were just his (Nica's?) size, brown and unassuming, and looked perfect for kicking the shit out of someone with, in a situation that was too casual for his newly-beloved Crimson Throat-Stompers™. He announced this thought process as he swung them enthusiastically off the rack, leaving them to bounce clumsily onto the pile of flannel cushioning the bottom of the cart, and grinned at the look on Tiff's face. (She seemed to be somewhere between scolding him for having no personality traits other than violently murdering people, and being vaguely proud that he was making not-horrible fashion decisions all by himself.)
The rest was a little harder.
It went like this: Chucky would see something he liked. Chucky would run his fingers across the fabric (a good texture is important, he's not putting some scratchy bullshit on his brand new body, it's not the 80s anymore), or hold it up against Nica's (his?) body in the mirror, or point it out to Tiff - "Hey, doll, wouldn't my tits look stellar in that number?" - and then promptly move on, empty-handed, laughing half-heartedly under his breath.
Tiffany, having known her husband for decades and seen those same micro-expressions on dozens of his faces by now, would sigh, pull it off the rack, and lie it gently in the cart.
(Chucky never mentioned the very visibly-growing pile, not even when they made it to the checkout. Tiff never mentioned the way his face flushed and his jaw twitched when he caught her watching him. There was nothing to say anyway.)
He was right, his tits do look stellar in this shirt. Tiffany ensures he is very aware of that fact, squeezing one of them in her palm as he leans back against her chest, both of their eyes trained on the TV screen.
The goth-y fucker on the screen starts singing to his knife. He can't see Tiff's face from this angle, but he can feel the pointed glance she gives him, and snorts, shifting in her grasp.
"Yeah, fuck you too," he mutters amusedly. He feels her chest shake as she laughs, her hand smoothing across his chest to the other side.
"D'you think she looks like me?"
"Hmm?" Tiff looks up from her phone, turning to face her husband - he's standing stock-still in a shop window, staring at something in the glass with one of his little screwed-up concentrated faces.
(It's one of the things she likes most about him - no matter what body he's inhabiting, he has the subtlety of a cartoon character. She never has to wonder what he's thinking - not unless he's trying his best to hide it from her.)
"Who, sweetface? The mannequin?" She squints. It's one of those glossy, white, faceless things that doesn't quite look human. It's wearing the ugliest dress she's ever seen. "No, honey, you make far better decisions about your wardrobe-"
"Fucking- what? No." He turns to face her, his face furrowed more in the what-the-fuck-are-you-on-woman way. "Not the fucking mannequin, Tiff, god. Nica."
She blinks, surprised. "...Of course she does. She's got your eyes. Your hair, too. That's why you chose her, wasn't it? So you wouldn't have to adapt much?"
He blinks hard, like he's been punched. A glance at the glass again. His face twists into something pained and confused, and then, quick as it came, he's snapping back into practiced nonchalance, all half-smirks and tired eyes.
"Yeah, course. Just testing you," he says, grinning. She smiles back, ignoring the spike of fear in her chest.
(It's like she said - he's good at hiding things, when he wants to.)
Tiffany's been wearing the same shade of lipstick since 1986.
Well, not exactly the same - she's changed brands a few times, and the formula isn't an exact match - but it's the same sort of deep, bloody red that he remembers, the same shade that she paints her nails.
("It matches your lip-gloss," he'd said mildly, watching her smooth out her nails with a bloody file. He'd thought it for ages - ever since they first killed together - but it had never felt like the right time to say it. He almost regretted not saying it sooner, from the way Tiff's face had lit up, from the love in her eyes.)
Tiffany is also, in the most literal of ways, a bombshell blonde - smoking hot and deadly. She kisses hard and fast, her hand on the back of his neck, her nails digging into his skin.
He shudders at the feeling, choking back a noise he never wants to admit to making. Tiffany somehow hears it anyway, starts sharpening her nails into dull points and raking them down his back in their intimate moments, leaving thin, angry red marks that sting when he twists.
His back isn't the only thing streaked with red in the morning - his lips are swollen from Tiff's excitement, and reddened even further by the second-hand residue of her lip-gloss.
She laughs when she sees it. She wipes her thumb across his lip, calls him gorgeous, and doll, and baby girl - and generously pretends not to see the way he flushes.
(She probably should've asked before slipping that last one in there, but she had a sneaking suspicion that had to be confirmed.)
Glen had taken one look at their father's new body, shrugged, and asked for his pronouns.
Chucky, being a straight ("straight", Tiffany had dramatically air-quoted behind him, halfway out the door) and… not-trans ("Oh, there's a word for that!") man from the 80s, had blinked at them with the comprehension of a land-dwelling (and therefore very dead) goldfish for a moment before being offered an explanation.
"So, for example," Glen very graciously swallowed their chewed-up mouthful of toast before continuing, "I use they-them, mostly. But sometimes I use he and she as well."
Chucky blinks slowly, sliding down his chair. "So… all of them?"
"No," Glen says patiently. "But all of the… traditional ones, yes."
He considers asking what constitutes a non-traditional pronoun, before deciding he'd really rather not sit through another twenty minutes of asking his kid to repeat themselves.
"Right," he says instead.
A beat. Glen takes a slow bite of their toast. Something thumps concerningly upstairs, followed by the muffled sound of Glenda screaming profanities. Glen takes another bite.
"He," Chucky says finally. He feels so deeply, thoughtlessly uncomfortable, for reasons he can't quite explain - like something's going to burst out of his chest if he sits here for one more second.
(Oh, fuck, maybe it's Nica. If anyone was gonna find a way to overpower a fucking possession spell, it'd be her. He makes a mental note to do… something, about that later.)
"Okay," his child says, smiling reassuringly. "But if that changes, you let me know, alright?"
He nods thoughtlessly, and can't help but feel like he'll regret agreeing to that later.
"You must be Ms Tilly," the teacher says brightly. "The twins have been so excited for me to meet you!"
"Yes, I'm sure," Tiffany says brightly, flashing her most charming smile. "They've told me lots about you, too."
"Ah, then perhaps it's best we get this meeting underway!"
The teacher - a kind-looking woman, thick-rimmed glasses under golden ringlets of hair - is halfway to her chair across the room before she notices Chucky looming behind her guest. She startles momentarily, but quickly recovers, smoothing her expression into a polite smile.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know Ms Tilly was bringing a plus-one!" Her smile is bright and welcoming, and makes Chucky want to rip her throat out more for every second it's directed at him. "You must be-"
"My husband," Tiffany interjects, voice raised but still polite. Her smile is stiff in warning. "This is my husband, Chucky. Their father."
The teacher falters, confused. She glances quickly between her two guests - the challenging look in Chucky's eyes, the danger in Tiffany's smile - and obviously must come to a conclusion, as she returns to her (infuriating) sunshine-y demeanour a few moments later.
"Ah, of course. Not to worry - we're very accepting of non-traditional family structures!"
He used to be more dominant. He used to pick the prettiest woman in the room and drawl his way into her underwear. He used to fuck and kill and make a swift exit; no witnesses, no regrets.
With Tiffany, he sits on his knees, neck bared. She kisses lines down his throat, cherry-red and smudged by his sweat. She pins him beneath her and tells him he's gorgeous, that she loves his tits, that he's the prettiest thing she's ever fucked.
He flips her over and returns the favour, adamant on not letting her best him.
"I'm not a woman."
Tiffany pauses. Her husband is lay flat on his back, head braced on the pillows as she carefully wipes the lipstick smudges off his neck and waist. His skin is shiny up close, his stomach adorned with soft little hairs. She stays there for a moment, quiet, before resuming her task.
"I know, sweetface," she murmurs, "just because you've got Nica's body doesn't mean you identify the same as her. Glen's told me all about it."
For a moment, he's silent, allowing Tiffany to turn his hips and dab her little wipe against the beads of blood in the small of his back. He relishes the sting of the scratches, grounding himself with it.
"You called me baby girl, once," he mutters, "but you know I'm not a girl. So."
Tiffany hums in a way that somehow clearly demonstrates that she's properly listening, despite the fact that she's rolling her sleepy dead-weight husband around like a ragdoll. "You don't have to be a girl to be my baby girl, sweetness." A pause. "You don't have to be a man, either."
(She'd only paused for a moment, but somehow it felt suffocating, all-knowing.)
Chucky stares pointedly at the ceiling, and resolutely does not think about why Tiff felt the need to specify that.
He's started trying out this new thing called "minding his own fucking business", and would absolutely love it if the rest of the fucking world gave it a try too. It's surprisingly hard to enjoy your 3AM post-murder McDonald's run when there's a table full of high-schoolers across the room very obviously glancing at you and muttering to one another. If he hadn't already hit his killing quota for the day, he'd be trying to find new inventive ways to gouge out somebody's eye with a McNugget; but, luckily for the brats, cold-blooded murder is tiring work, and, again, it's 3AM.
So he decides to do the mature adult thing - because yes, he is perfectly capable of being a mature adult, fuck you Tiff - and scroll aimlessly through his phone instead, hoping that they'll just piss off once they realise it's a school night.
They do not, in fact, piss off.
It's as if the lack of attention has made them forget that he's got functioning ears, because their muttering is only getting louder and more excited. He's halfway through the horror section of Netflix and adding some schlocky slasher bullshit to his List (for family bonding nights with Glenda, obviously) when their conversation becomes legible.
"Dude, no, that's fucking rude," one fucker mutters.
"Only if you're a homophobe," a second interjects, "or a transphobe, maybe."
"Nah, it's still fucking rude," chimes a third, "cause it's like - outing them." Chucky tenses for reasons he can't quite explain, "Making them aware that they're visibly queer."
"They're wearing Docs and cuffed shorts - they're fully aware," the second laughs.
"And they can definitely hear you," a fourth says, sharp and disappointed, having noticed the way Chucky had tensed, "so shut up and stop being fucking rude, okay?"
Chucky takes this as his cue to leave. He takes the back door, to avoid the awkward walk-by, and stuffs a handful of limp fries into his mouth as he exits, to dissuade them from trying to talk to him anyway.
Maybe he was too quick to call himself straight.
Tiff's brought a man home for them to play with. He's soft in the middle but undoubtedly muscular, broad-shouldered. His brown skin is already glistening seductively when he gets there - judging by the muscles and the tank-top, she picked him up from a gym, somehow.
Tiffany must've briefed him on Chucky's existence, because he doesn't startle to see another figure sitting on the bed, simply waves and smiles personably. "Brett," he introduces himself.
Chucky shares a glance with Tiffany. "Charlotte," he says carefully, lightening his accent a little without dropping it entirely, "but my friends call me Chucky."
Brett smiles non-judgmentally, already pulling his top off and making to join Chucky on the bed. "It's wonderful to meet you, Charlotte," he says kindly, his tone genuine, "I hope to be your friend tonight."
They don't kill him after. They'd planned to, but they don't, because Brett calls it sexy when Chucky's accent thickens mid-fuck, and is perfectly content to watch their little power-struggle performance without inserting himself, and doesn't bat an eye when Tiffany calls Chucky "baby girl" and "the hottest man on earth" in one breath.
"I get it, man," he explains in the post-nut haze, once Tiff slips away to the bathroom to wet a towel, "All this- identity shit, it's complicated. You wanna be a- a man, or a woman, or a man-woman, you do you, man. You're hot either way, if you ask me."
Tiffany doesn't have to ask why Chucky lets him go without so much as a light concussion. She's smart like that.
"They is fine too, I guess," Chucky abruptly announces.
He's sprawled over the couch, taking intermittent swigs from an ice-cold bottle of cider and watching the twins play Portal 2 co-op. They don't pause the game at his words, but Glen glances over at him, expression carefully neutral.
"Alright," they chirp, smiling, though their eyes are back on the screen. "Is Dad still okay, or would you prefer something else?"
He snorts. "No. Fuck no. I'm just your dad."
"Got it."
Glenda shoots an orange portal at the floor, and a blue portal at the ceiling, and catapults themselves into it. Chucky watches the little robot they're piloting bounce back and forth between the portals for a solid thirty seconds before it becomes vaguely nauseating and he flicks his eyes down to the dregs in the bottom of his bottle instead.
"Or she." he mutters, so quiet he isn't sure the kids will hear it under the sound of portals - but Glen perks up in the corner of his eye, attentive as always. "But I'm not a fucking woman, got it?"
Glen smiles, cheerful. "Of course not, Dad," they say, not a trace of disbelief or mockery in their tone.
Tiffany passes him another bottle without a word, settling into the couch beside him. Their eyes meet for a moment, and he knows she can hear all the words he doesn't say - thanks for not making it weird; fuck you for teasing me like that; I love you, you nosy fucking bitch - but all she does is smile knowingly, tilting her wine glass towards him, the contents the same blood-red as her lips.