Work Text:
Middle school is when things get different.
Not a bad different, but still… different.
“Hey Cunningham?”
“Yeah?” Randy whispers back, eyes on his paper where he’s doodling instead of writing about whatever dumb thing they’re supposed to be doing right now.
“Is it weird if I don’t wanna be a girl?”
“Well yeah, kinda.” Randy says it casually but it’s so him it’s hard to take offense. They’re both too close to be hurt by honesty.
“Well I don’t. ...Wanna be a girl.” Randy’s eyes finally lift up from his paper at the shaky uncertainty. “I don’t wanna be a girl.”
“...okay.” Randy says, nodding a bit. “Still kinda weird but cool juice.” He adds a few more lines to his doodles. “So like… are you gonna have a guy name now?”
“...I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any guy names I like.”
“You like Randy,” He points out.
“We can’t both be Randy, you shoob.” But there’s a sort of raw relief there that neither of them are going to comment on because Cunningham knows he’d end up with a bruise for it.
“What about your parents?” There’s an awkward silence of scratching pencils before Randy realizes he needs to explain that further. “I mean, your parents didn’t know if you were a guy or a girl when you were born right? So they should have guy names they were gonna use for you.”
“...that’s a good idea, thanks.”
Randy smiles at him and the world is right for a moment.
His hair is too long and his clothes are all weird but he’s still a boy, because Randy says he is, and because he says he is, and he goes to his parents after a few days to ask what Randy had suggested. He says he takes so long because he’s busy with homework but Randy and him both know it’s a complete lie and neither say anything about it.
His dad is confused and his mom cries but she still tells him that his name is Howard and she loves him a lot.
She hugs him and he maybe hugs her back and cries a lot too, but nobody knows that. Not even Randy. Okay, well, Randy maybe knew him well enough to know without being told, but Howard never tells
anyone
and nobody ever finds out.
Heidi is a saint.
Howard never ever thought he’d get along with his sister but once she’s sure their parents aren’t going to yell and scream she marches to her room and dives into research and comes up with more than enough for all of them. Howard is overwhelmed and he and his dad take that first step of figuring out this new step in their lives because Heidi and Mrs. Weinerman are whirlwinds of change and the two men in the house have to struggle to keep up.
He doesn’t mind the long hair, for now, and just tucks it under a hat. But Howard’s old clothes get slowly shifted out to younger cousins. They go shopping for new clothes and Howard’s kind of upset because boys don’t have as many options as girls, but he likes the way the t-shirts and shorts feel on him so he doesn’t complain. Randy insists on coming with them every time they go out shopping so he can get matching t-shirts.
Heidi shoos Randy off once and grabs Howard by the shoulders.
“You’re a bit too young to really have boobs, but knowing this family you’ll start to grow some in soon.” She says firmly, and Howard realizes how uncomfortable that thought makes him. He nods with a sick feeling in his stomach. He’s just been wearing sports bras so far. “Binders are tricky and you’ll probably grow out of a lot of them, but we have to order them online anyways so let’s pick out some tight sports bras for now and go from there, ‘kay?”
His throat is really tight and all he can really do is nod. Heidi is keeping him together at this point.
Howard starts his period and feels like crap.
He doesn’t want to go to school, or talk to anyone, or even get out of bed. His parents don’t really know how to handle him and he’s shuffled off to school dressed shoddily and grouchy and uncomfortable as hell.
Randy is confused. Especially when he goes in for a hug and Howard just kind of makes a gross “belurgh” noise and hunches in on himself.
Heidi rolls her eyes and drags Randy off for a conversation. By the time the bell rings and school starts, Randy is pale and wide eyed and practically glued to Howard’s side.
...Howard still feels gross but it’s not so bad when Randy’s trying to wait on him hand and foot all day, worried and trying to make Howard feel better. After the first few days are done with Howard isn’t feeling so terrible and makes it through normal enough. He’s not sure who’s more relieved; him, Randy, or his family.
They’re playing video games and Howard is considering the merits of that haircut his mom kept suggesting. Between that and beating Randy at Gravepuncher he’s distracted, so it takes a moment for Randy’s comment to really hit.
“So if you’re a guy now and I still like you, does that mean I like guys?”
“Uh yeah, I guess?” Howard’s entire brain freezes. “Wait what?”
He turns to look at Randy so fast his ponytail whips him in the face. Randy’s looking down at his controller, face red.
It’s quiet except for the game’s background music.
“You like me?” Howard feels himself turning red and he really wants to hit himself for being all gross and mushy but…
“Yeah..? I mean, is that… I mean if you want we can just like pretend I never said anything, if you’re not a guy who likes guys…”
They’re both silent again and Howard is intensely aware of the fact that Randy is really cute.
It’s nothing new, he’s always known Randy was cute, but now it’s kind of finally hit why Randy is always cute.
“Actually… I think I might be a guy who likes guys? I- I like you too.”
“Really?” Randy finally looks up, eyes widening and pure glee on his face.
“Don’t make me say it twice!” Howard sputters.
“Do you… wanna be boyfriends?” Randy’s grinning that stupid cute full grin of his that shows all his teeth and spreads across his face and Howard doesn’t know how he hasn’t realized this before.
“Y-yeah, I guess.” He says to try and save face. He’s lost so many man creds by being a blushy, mushy mess over this.
“Bruce!!” Randy’s grin somehow gets even bigger and brighter.
“Y- yeah! Bruce!” Howard swallows and fights the smile trying to break its way across his face.
They’re both breathless and blushing and smiling for one beautiful second and then Gravepunchers starts to beep dangerously at them and both boys burst into loud screams as they scramble to catch up where they’d fallen behind.
Howard goes home and tells his parents and Heidi squeals. His mom smiles and pats his shoulder and his dad is still confused, but Howard’s getting used to his dad being confused. It’s kind of the new normal for them.
Howard doesn’t know what to think about high school. It’s loud, it’s annoying, it’s boring, it’s hard, and Randy keeps acting weird until eventually the secret pops out. His boyfriend is the Ninja! THE actual Ninja!
Randy’s weird nommybookthingy is loud and annoying but apparently Howard’s stuck with Randy because eventually Randy stops looking strained every time he tells Howard about Ninja stuff. Howard is just glad they’ve already established themselves as an overly PDA couple in middle school or people would be suspicious of all the time Randy falls asleep on him or uses him as a crutch.
The ninja suit only protects Randy so much. Randy can do all sorts of magic flips in the suit and take all sorts of damage but if he pushes himself too far he comes out of the suit with bruises and practically oozing exhaustion. Howard makes sure to smooch all of Randy’s worst bruises and lecture him about his stupid ones and let his dumb cute boyfriend sleep on him if he needs it.
Howard would have to move towns to find a school that wouldn’t know about him being trans. He was subtle at first, but only at first. When he first started to wear guy clothes in middle school everyone called him a tomboy and left it at that.
After a long time of excited waiting, his parents came in to change his name on his papers and then everyone knew. That old name was gone. All his school paperwork said Howard Weinerman now. They couldn’t brush off Randy’s nicknames as them flirting or anything anymore.
Howard was lucky he already didn’t have any friends outside of Randy, because he probably would have lost all of them.
Middle school was one thing. Middle school was that wonderful age where kids could be total jerks but they weren’t quite as capable of maliciousness just yet. Entering high school was… hard.
Howard used to still have makeup nights with Heidi. They used to have a sibling makeover night and paint each others’ nails and try on clothes and eat lots of junkfood while singing to some weird pop songs Heidi was into lately. Heidi didn’t mind because she said girly stuff wasn’t just for girls. Howard hadn’t minded because he knew he was still a boy. Randy helped, because sometimes he’d kidnap Randy and he and Heidi would do his nails too and force him to hang out with them. (Randy only pretended to hate it; even though he only ever let them paint his toenails, they both knew he had fun too.)
Howard stopped doing that when he got to high school. Suddenly makeup and nailpolish wasn’t as nice as it used to be because boys didn’t wear makeup. And he was a boy, right?
(He might have been jealous of Julian, just a little bit, for having the courage to wear eyeliner and mascara to school every day. Even if he wanted to strangle the goth for caking on way too much, did he even know how to apply makeup-)
So Howard had a lot of bad days and he stopped wearing the bright colors he liked and started to try and dress down a lot. He still styled his hair faithfully every day and thanked everything that it wasn’t weird for him to do that. Randy was kind of upset about it. He knew Howard was upset. He knew it was because Howard could stand the stares and the insults but he couldn’t stand people saying he wasn’t a real guy.
But as it reached the middle of the school year and the chaos of monster attacks and robomonsters kind of reached a peak, Howard kind of stopped caring. Randy was more than willing to get in scrappy fights to protect his honor anyways. (Howard said ‘scrappy’ because without the ninja suit Randy was kind of a limp noodle, even if he was still a really fast and angry noodle.)
It was just kind of hard to care what people thought of you when your boyfriend was the Ninja and you were covering his ass in class all the time or risking your life on some insane stunt. Oh Howard still cared what he looked like, and he certainly still cared what image he presented, but he came to realize that image was entirely different to what everyone else thought and expected of him. Everyone thought that since he was a ‘trans guy’ he had to be all masculine to try and ‘balance out’ being born with the wrong hormones. Howard hated that stupid stereotyping.
Howard wore a bright blue buttonup to school and took a deep breath before walking in. Randy noticed, looking at him curiously, but didn’t say anything.
Howard unbuttoned his shirt and showed off his gorgeous spoonflower print binder with flowers and dumb pictures of dogs. He wore his shirt open all day. Randy wouldn’t stop beaming and bouncing excitedly. The school was so confused. Howard felt powerful.
He really stopped caring what “boys” wore after that and started wearing makeup again. It felt amazing.