#THE JOKE IS THAT SUNDAY SCHOOL IS A CHRISTIAN PRACTICE AND CHRISTIAN BALE WAS IN THE NEWSIES MOVIE AND THE TREASURE ISLAND MOVIE

[theemmtropy]

Now that I've come out, I have one (1) bit, and that is being trans. I've made the joke that the Sunday School teacher asking for "strong boys to bring out the chairs" made me trans. I've made the joke that the Newsies musical made me trans. I've made the joke that Jim Hawkins in the 1990 Treasure Island tv movie made me trans. The common theme? Christians.

[storytellingape]

neighbours (allan/bernard)

Written for @staticraining, the great enabler. 

Allan is from What If and Bernard from Boy Eats Girl. Bernard is 18 here and Allan is a little younger, around 20-21. 

The day Allan moves next door, Bernard covers his face with a paperback copy of The Hobbit so he doesn’t have to look at him. He slides his headphones on instead and grips the edges of his book a little more firmly, forcing himself to finish a chapter before heading back inside to escape the nascent summer heat.

When Allan comes over to introduce himself two days later, it’s in an outrageously tight shirt that’s disarming as his smile. Bernard realizes then that god must hate him. Therefore, fuck it. Fuck his life.

In no particular order Bernard hates: mushy peas, cold feet, and the smell of cold noodles. But nothing comes close to the wave of self-loathing that hits him when Allan moves into his eyeline to ask whether he could borrow a wrench.

Allan curls his hand into a fist to demonstrate the heft of it (Bernard knows what a wrench looks like, thanks) while Bernard stares and stares and… stares. Allan explains that he needs the wrench for repairs of some kind, leaning into Bernard’s personal space as if they’ve known each other all their lives. He can probably drop in by parachute and insinuate himself into any conversation whatsoever. He’s friendly, practically oozing charm, which is more than what Bernard can say about the old folks that used to live next door who were always complaining about the dog Bernard’s family never had.

And he’s American because — of course he is.

“I’m Allan by the way,” Allan says when he remembers to introduce himself. He flashes Bernard a brief smile, the kind that can thaw snowdrifts and cure epidemics.

“Bernard,” Bernard tells him, managing to keep his voice from shaking. He returns Allan’s gaze mildly, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. Then he shifts around for a bit in mild panic before shutting the door in his face.

It’s not exactly the best first impression, but how can you blame Bernard when he’s only had one friend in his life and a little rusty on social interaction. People don’t come up to him to talk because he kind of just hangs back in the periphery and melds into the furnishings. People forget about him, overlook him, which is fantastic, really, as he prefers to avoid attention. Put him on the spot and he’ll probably piss himself (he did once, in primary school during a talent show) but he likes school enough where he gets good grades and is in the good graces of most of his teachers because of his stellar attendance record and generally agreeable demeanor. His peers are another story altogether. He never makes any new friends because no one notices he’s there.

So it doesn’t make any sense that when Allan sees him in the supermarket, he waves at him from across the frozen food aisle. And the park. And the bookshop. And from his front yard where he’s helping his dad mow the lawn. Allan, the boy next door, in the tight t-shirts and cargo shorts, with the floppy dark hair and the lightly-stubbled jaw. He’s older than Bernard by about a couple of years, which is just the thing to make Bernard’s delicate heart pound a little harder. His mam says Allan is supposed to be on his second year of uni but that he’s taking a break to care for his ailing grandma and help his dad with the move. It’s all very Christian, though they hardly see them in church on Sundays.

Bernard gets the nervous sweats around Allan largely because he’s unused to the attention and partly because Allan can get a little intense: he leans, he touches, he calls Bernard Bern. He makes these jokes that go way over Bernard’s head but are charming in a plebeian way; American humour is so bizarre and mystifying; somehow it almost always has to involve poop.

And he walks around without a shirt on, never mind the time of day. Once he came over to return Bernard’s dad’s hedge clippers, his chest shiny with patches of sweat. Normally, Bernard wouldn’t have a problem with this if Allan wasn’t so keen on teaching him the finer points of American football and tackling him on the ground.

It all comes to a head one afternoon when Allan pins him on grass after a short-lived match that involved a lot of grunting and yelling and Bernard trying to run back inside the house. Allan is shirtless, naturally, and sweaty, as usual, when he straddles Bernard’s skinny hips and flailing limbs and hovers above him with a triumphant grin, his arms braced on either side of Allan’s head. He smells like freshly cut grass and clean sweat and Bernard can feel him breathing, every ragged inhale going straight to his —

“Hey,” Allan says, blinking, cutting cleanly into whatever thought was about to morph in Bernard’s head. He flicks Bernard gently between the eyebrows with his middle finger and thumb and Bernard scrunches his nose and rubs at his forehead before shooting him a baleful look. “You look cute when you’re all thoughtful. Like a baby chipmunk,” Allan observes. He laughs like this is somehow funny to him, and Bernard can feel that too, the sound of it reverberating in his stomach, his chest, every part of them that’s touching.

When Allan pulls away and rolls off him,  he’s almost disappointed enough to make a sad little noise. Whether Allan hears it or not remains a mystery, because he says nothing as he lies there on his back on the grass next to Bernard, staring up at the sky that’s shifting to dusk above them. Then he tilts his head and glances at Bernard thoughtfully, before leaning up on one elbow and touching Bernard’s hip.

Bernard stops breathing, stops thinking, his body frozen in paralysis. He waits: for something, for anything, and trembles like a leaf when Allan’s hand moves away to tug Bernard’s shirt down where it’s hiked up above his ribs. Then he smooths a hand over Bernard’s stomach, once, twice, and Bernard makes that sound again, that pitiful pathetic noise like when the kid from across the street kicked the tar out of him two summers ago.

Allan smiles and sits up abruptly on his elbows. Bernard wants him to — he wants him to kiss him. He’s so beautiful.  He’s dreamt about him before, the weight and smell of him. His kind laughing eyes. Father Flannagan gave him two Hail Mary’s for it, but Bernard had added another two because this is what he didn’t say: that he’d rolled onto his stomach in bed after that dream and rubbed his cock against the covers, coming in his briefs shortly after imagining Allan watching him from the doorway. He was so weak and trembly after that he cried just a little from how pathetic he felt, and he feels like that now, like he wants to get up and leave, like he wants to  cry, like he wants to pull Allan back flush against his body if only he was brave enough. He’d been so warm, so alive. It was nothing like those dreams.

“You shouldn’t let me bully you,” Allan says, keeping his gaze forward and fixed at nothing in particular. He sounds almost angry. “If I do something — anything that makes you uncomfortable, you need to speak up.”

Bernard has no idea what he means. “You don’t bully me.”

“Well, I obviously make you uncomfortable,” Allan snorts.

Bernard thinks about his next words carefully. “That’s not true at all. You’re kind of cool.”

“Just kind of?” Allan grins. Then his expression morphs and he leans forward to brush his knuckles down Bernard’s cheek. “There was a bit of a — ” he cuts himself, trailing off, leaving Bernard holding his breath. Then Allan kisses him — on the cheek after Bernard jerks in alarm and turns his face away, body stiff with panic. It’s quick, barely anything, and Allan looks ashamed as he climbs to his feet and wipes grass stains off his jeans, looking everywhere but Bernard. “Right,” he coughs awkwardly, hands on his hips. “Sorry about the — shit. I better go.”

He leaves. Bernard’s heart hammers loudly in his throat when he finally decides to breathe again. His head thumps softly against the grass as he touches two his fingers to his cheek.