#i can never decide if whiskey and tango is a good friendship or a relationship

[backwardscapsmh]

tango: do you ever think alternate realities are real?

whiskey (trying to be romantic): then i’d love you just as much in those alternate realities as i do in this one 🥰

tango: but if those realities are alternate wouldn’t that mean that you wouldn’t love me? and what if in those realities llama’s could talk? and what-

whiskey: *disappointed but not surprised*

[whatwouldfrogsdo]

Best Friends

Written for @omgcpwinterextravaganza Day 8 prompt:  “You are safe here now”. 

This turned into a whole thing. So. Trigger warnings for mentioned/implied transphobia, and also child (illegal, implied) immigration without parents.

“We have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with nonno and lola. That’s Papa’s side. This year, Filipino Christmas is on the 24th, with all the cousins, and Italian Christmas is on the day. Then we have Puerto Rican Christmas on the 26th with abuela and abuelo. Mama’s side.”

“Three Christmases?” Whiskey repeated.

“Yes! Do you mind going to midnight mass Christmas Eve?”

Whiskey shook his head. Tango smiled and pulled his phone out. “Great! I’ll call mama now and let her know. As long as you’re sure? Do you really want to-?”

“Tony. Yes. Please.”

Tango half-turned away as his phone rang. When Whiskey had let slip that he was worried about going home over Christmas, inviting him to Christmas with the Tangredis was the obvious solution. In a few short months, Whiskey had become Tango’s best friend. He knew a lot of the upperclassmen on the hockey team didn’t understand their friendship, but Tango had seen through the stoicism to the awkward, terrified boy beneath. Question after question gave him insight into Whiskey that none of the rest of the team - so loud; so tactile; so together - had seen. Whiskey had opened up to Tango. He had come out to him, first about his background playing girl’s juniors, and he’d been so patient with Tango through all his questions about gender - how did he know he was trans? What made him feel different? How could he even work out what gender he was? - Not only that, but he had turned the questions around, slowly breaking down Tango’s own feelings about gender, and working out why the topic intrigued him so much. Together they had come to the conclusion that maybe Tango didn’t feel a hundred percent male, and Whiskey reassured him that it was okay if he didn’t know what that made him. Tumblr both helped and confused further with scores of labels and more terminology than Tango could process in one sitting, but Whiskey had been there through the whole process to remind him that he didn’t need to work it out straight away.

Later, Whiskey had come out again, this time about his attraction to multiple genders, and his budding romance with Kyle from the lacrosse team. Tango found this harder to process, but he wasn’t sure why. He couldn’t have a problem with boys dating boys when his homecoming date senior year had been a boy. But if he wasn’t completely a boy, did that mean he could still have an issue with that? Except, he liked Bitty very much, and Bitty was dating Jack Zimmermann, who was definitely Tango’s idol, and none of that had changed when he’d discovered that they were dating. Eventually, he had decided that his discomfort with Whiskey’s relationship stemmed from an internal hatred of the lacrosse team that the SMH had somehow already instilled in him. Ever since, he had been trying harder to be happy for Whiskey, and to ignore the strange feeling in his stomach. (What was that feeling, anyway?)

After all, they were best friends.

“Mama! How’re you? I have a question for you.”

*

They had three days for Whiskey to get used to Tango’s parents, and his younger brothers and sister, and the idea of having a family Christmas before they squashed into the Tangredi’s station wagon and drove the one and a half miles to Tango’s paternal grandparents’ home. They were barely across the threshold before they were being offered hot chocolate, the tweens were disappearing upstairs in the direction of the games room, and eight year-old Ricardo was asking if there were presents. Kisses were shared all around and lola pulled Whiskey into a tight hug.

“You must be Connor. Antonio is always talking about you. How are you liking Camden?”

“Very much, thank-you.”

“And where is home for you, usually?” Whiskey blinked at his hot chocolate. “New Haven, Connecticut.”

“Oh! Oh, I thought- So are your parents-” Tango’s mama joined, but she trailed off uncertainly.

Whiskey jut his chin out, chewing over a response, but not saying anything. Tango jumped in to save him the trouble. “He doesn’t live with his parents, mama.”

Ricardo frowned up at them from his place on the rug with cousin Angelina. “Why don’t you live with your parents?”

“Rico,” Papa scolded.

“What?”

“I- My parents live in Brazil. I moved to the States without them,” Whiskey explained.

“Why?” Ricardo prodded.

Tango held back a sigh. Sometimes his brother asked way too many questions. “Does it matter?” he fired back.

“I just-” Whiskey looked around, his eyes wide like a deer in the headlights.

“Rico, mimmo, why don’t you and Angelina go and see where Julia’s got to upstairs?” Papa suggested softly.

Lola rubbed her hand up and down Whiskey’s back, and waited until Ricardo and Angelina had raced out the room. “How old were you?”

“Ten.”

“And you’ve never-”

“They might not let me back.”

Tango frowned. Who wouldn’t let him back where? His parents to Brazil? “What-?”

“Not now, Tony,” Mama told him, in the same hushed tone with which his papa had sent the children away.

“Oh, nonoy.” Lola pulled Whiskey into another hug. “Who kept you in Connecticut?”

“Uh,” Whiskey grunted into her shoulder. “Some family friends. But they don’t believe I’m a boy.”

Tango choked, but neither Whiskey, nor his lola looked up, until the door slammed open and the children ran back in.

“We found Julia and Berto!” Angelina told them, proudly. “Presents now?”

Tango sank into the couch, next to Whiskey. For once, he was lost for words, and didn’t know what to ask our how to ask it.

“Listen to me, young man,” his lola told Whiskey. “Your family is here from now on. Antonio.” She pointed at Tango. “You hold onto this boy, and you look after him, and you bring him back here in the summer.”

Tango nodded, despite how confused he felt.

“Tonio, come help me with the ham,” his papa said. Tango squeezed Whiskey’s shoulder as he stood.

“Isn’t it zia Lorena’s turn to do dinner this year?”

In lieu of a response, his papa handed him a pot of the juices the ham had been poached in the night before. Dutifully, he poured it into a pan.

“Tonio, tell me. Are you and Connor together?”

Juice splashed over the side of the pot. “What?”

“You make a good couple.”

“Papa, no. No, he’s got a boyfriend. Kyle on the lacrosse team.”

“He’s stupid then.”

“Papa!?”

“No, I know. He’s not stupid. He’s a smart kid. A good kid. He’d be perfect for you, and I know- I can see how you look at him.”

Tango’s face was burning. “How do I look at him?”

A knowing smile appeared on his papa’s face, but he shook his head.

“Tonio!” Ricardo shouted from the next room. “We want to do presents!”

His papa pushed him to the door. “Go. Tell them I’ll be just two seconds.”

Whiskey pulled away from the hug when Tango took his place next to him on the couch again, but Tango still caught his lola saying, “you are safe here, now.”

This time, he knew not to ask (at least straight away), but he nudged Whiskey, and offered up a smile. “Are you okay?”

Whiskey nodded.

“Good, because you’ve got some presents to open.”

“I do?”

Tango grinned and turned to his middle brother. “Al, pass that red bulky one, please?”

He really liked seeing Whiskey smile, and he was very glad he’d invited his best friend over for the holidays.