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1.
Tucson is, and always will be, some degree of home for him.
Even after moving out to the 'burbs, he still found time with his mom to steal away. Go to the cheap seats with its pink walls and fading red carpet, to the music store with rows upon rows of CDs and movies, the used bookstore where he would gladly spend hours wandering. Going to Second Saturdays downtown with his mom and her friend, eating from food trucks and looking at crafts.
All of them are staples, places that are steadfast and somewhere for him to go. Horror movies and sci-fi books from Bookmans, a Halloween at the cheap seats seeing a movie with his ma, his first CD from Zia Records which was a Queen compilation. Walking into any of them makes his shoulders feel lighter, easier for him to smile, and he's someone else for a while.
Then it's up to Tempe for college, and things are strange but-
There's the Bookmans a few bus stops over, and Zia is just 20 minutes away on his bike from the dorms. No cheap-seats, but there’s a movie theatre with brand new stuff in their downtown area about ten minutes walking off campus. A twenty-four hour donut place about twenty minutes walking from the dorms that makes apple fritters to die for, a burger place called the Chuckbox that has some of the best root beer he's ever tasted, a comic store called Ash Avenue down the road near a clothing exchange place where he picks up back issues of Shade the Changing Man for a few bucks.
Tempe becomes something like a home too.
Something completely his, and comfortable in a way that Tucson wasn’t ever fully.
He gets a Rush album from Zia, picks up a copy of The Exorcist to read from Bookmans, watches Doom in theatres as his first real movie he's seen by himself. Buys most of his clothing from the Buffalo Exchange, oversized and soft, before running by Ash Avenue to pick up his comics when Pop Culture Paradise is full of people playing Magic: The Gathering.
He’s able to be himself, do what he likes when he likes, and that kind of freedom is staggering after hiding for what feels like years. Sometimes it’s a bit scary, if he’s honest, but it’s a bit like heaven too.
(It's the same year he unashamedly works on becoming himself, and there will always be a soft spot for Tempe in his heart because of that.)
2.
Derek does some stage makeup for the acting department, which is how they meet.
Not Theory of Film 101 where they've been on separate sides of the room for weeks, but backstage where he's testing makeup on someone and Bim's kind of waiting around for his class to start. The dorms are close enough he tends to pop in fifteen minutes early, mostly to look around a bit cause every day there's something new happening and maybe he's kind of in love with this labyrinth of a place.
(Walk the right places and you pop out above the art museum steps, it's that kind of weird.)
Plus it's somewhere to go, and Bim likes the costuming/makeup areas. The feeling of witnessing a transformation in the making, that was something wonderful.
Derek had been trying to turn someone's face corpse-like using grays and blues and purples, and he'd been about two-thirds done when Bim showed up. He'd been talking quietly to the young woman in front of him as he applied layer after layer, tilting her head to the side now and then as he talked about zombies. It was him talking about Shaun of the Dead that got Bim's attention, because otherwise he was just admiring the ongoing work.
"Oh come on, it's a shame yer guy won't throw it in. 'We're coming to get you, Barbara' is a classic! Hell, even Shaun of the Dead did it and it's a parody." Derek had commented, the loudest he'd been since Bim started watching. That was when Bim was still mentally calling him Fin-man with no name to go on, after the fauxhawk he had then.
"He's the playwright, man. I just act in it." She’d replied, smiling a little and even laughing when the guys replies "Nah, cut that smiling out. Ain't done with your cheekbones."
"That's probably one of the best bits in any zombie movie," Bim finally said, working up the nerve to interject. "Seriously, I get chills from the original. The brother being a dick and people suddenly swarming moments later. It'd be great to have something similar in a zombie play." He continued, growing a bit meek by his last sentence as Derek and the young woman turned to look at him.
"Yeah, same. The whole mob mentality vibe of zombies is really creepy. Don't know what's in the play though, anything like that Chrissy?" Derek finally replied, a faint smile on his face that helped Bim feel less likely to make a run for it.
(For the next ten minutes they talked zombies, and the next time Bim was waiting outside of Film 101 Derek introduced himself. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.)
3.
He meets Sammy in a similar set-up, before he met Derek. Wandering around backstage when he had some extra time before class, talking to some of the people who take theatre to work behind stage rather than on it.
He knows it takes a lot of time and effort for the sets to get ready, a lot to pull together a cohesive wardrobe for a single show, and he's gotta give respect where respect is due. They're the ones who make stuff work, he just happens to take advantage of their awesomeness.
Sammy looked faintly familiar, from the meet and greet thing at the art museum at the beginning of the semester, so Bim says fuck it and wanders over to talk to them. When it does turn out to be the person he talked film scores with and movie soundtracks, he's overjoyed. There hadn't been enough time to get contact info before the meet and greet wrapped up, meeting on the patio before it ended ten minutes after, and he found the person he talked The Thing with!
There’d also been talking about haunted houses, the right way to set up proper atmosphere, and it had just…felt easy, normal. Like he’s talking to his best friend in high school before she graduated, or one of the kids from Drama over a new play. It’s weird how he misses the people in high school now that he’s two hours away, but whatever. It’s like talking to a friend, someone like-minded, and to find it so soon…
He’s happy.
They talk music until Bim checks his watch to see it's five minutes ‘til his class starts, and secures a promise to have lunch or dinner later to keep talking. They live in the same dorm complex so that makes it easier to meet up, and hey maybe watch some movies they've been talking about?
It's kind of great, having a fresh start. Making new friends without preconceived notions kicking in cause everyone's a freshman again.
(Even if it leaves a sour taste in his mouth a few months later, looking back on how they did so much together only for it to somehow twist into something different. Something uneasy, unequal even, and it takes him the last few weeks of the second semester to mostly find his feet again.)
4.
He meets Wilford Warfstache on a Saturday at the music store, with Derek by his side. They'd walked from the dorms together, him and Derek, and Bim has a moment looking at Wilford where he thinks 'How didn't I meet you sooner?'
Bright red hair freshly dyed with color under his fingernails, gesturing widely when he spoke, a certain brashness that was almost admirable. He felt like someone who'd be perfect onstage, but he didn't live in the art dorms and Bim didn't remember someone so colorful in his classes. Blue, orange, purple, and green were bountiful among students but red was something else.
(There was a cute girl who worked at Pop Culture Paradise that had light pink hair, an adorable snort of a laugh, but she used to be an art student before she graduated so maybe that canceled out the outlier part.)
When Derek's first move after entering the music store is to head for the horror movies, Wilford looks over at Bim with a crooked grin and says "S'not like he'll find a whole lot he doesn't have, but worth a shot."
Bim laughs a little then in agreement, replies "Maybe some foreign stuff, if we're lucky."
They wander that direction themselves, end up looking over the comedy section, and a few 80s movie references later Bim is more confident that they could be friends. Afterwards Wilford drags him over to the actual music section, rows upon rows of CDs, and Wilford asks what he likes. They talk about Queen and David Bowie, Wilford bringing up Adam Ant and Bim talks about Incubus.
After a while and a few jokes about disco, Wilford's pressing two CDs into his hands. One is Erasure's cover album of ABBA for three bucks, the other an album by some group called the Barenaked Ladies, and when he laughs in surprise Wilford just grins. Bim ends up recommending a Billy Idol compilation and Fashion Nugget by Cake in return, a bit of a soft spot for both. Somehow Wilford hasn't heard Rebel Yell before, which is just an absolute tragedy. Derek ends up with a Cure album, some kind of zombie movie triple-feature, and an Anthrax compilation.
Wilford snorts, an almost inelegant sound considering how he carries himself, and gently teases saying "Another Cure album? Don't telling me you're cheating on New Order."
(Pizza next door at Zeke's afterwards confirms his hope of Wilford as a friend, similar humor and turns of phrase, when Derek laughs both of them treat it like gold. He hopes Wilford will be one of the people he has around for a long time.)
5.
He has a tape measure here and there, a small box of sewing stuff. A few balls of yarn, some metal crochet hooks he borrowed from his mom that he never got back to her. All of it is scattered, no real rhyme or reason besides the fact that's just how things end up sometimes.
Bim doesn't think he'll ever be like either of his grandmothers, with sewing rooms. Not like his mom either, with bins of yarn. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's just...
Not really his way of doing things.
That means like two grocery bags in his closet with three half- finished scarves each, but that's just how he works sometimes. Scarves are one of the few things he can do off the top of his head, so he starts them when he needs something to do with his hands that doesn't need a lot of focus.
Sewing is what he does when things need mending, for a few hours thing have to make sense as he fixes them. He fixes the holes on the cuffs of his hoodie from general wear and tear, adds a patch to his messenger bag. Anything bigger he relies on access to the costuming department as a theater student, buys his own thread and material but uses their machines.
Maybe it's a little cheating doing it that way, but food is more important in the long run than a sewing machine would be right now. There's something gratifying though, in making something out of nothing. Scraps of fabric to turn into little button-eyed critters, balls of yarn into hats and scarves.
Things for people he cares about.
Sure, in some ways he doesn't have all the technical capabilities he could. Needs to learn how to knit again, refresh the few crochet stitches he hasn't used outside of simple hats and scarves in forever. He can still look at patterns for later days though, find yarn or fabric to match.
(He saves a soft finger weight that's pale pink for a shawl, a chunky red, black, and gray mix for a cabled scarf. He doesn't have them ready for this Christmas, but by next one... well, he has a little something for his friends.)
6.
They have a capital-t Talk about things, the first October they live together.
Mostly to clear the air when all of their Bad Days seemed to line up in one giant clusterfuck. Bim's hair has been growing out only to kick his dysphoria into overdrive, Derek's insomnia is upsetting his anxiety, and Wilford's being forced to see his family more often which is a bitch on his mental health as they pick and tear him apart with their words.
(In these moods Bim isolates himself, can't deal with people staring. Wilford plays a ghost, quiet and reserved dreading interaction. Derek gets frustrated with himself, and wallows.)
There's a certain tension, a strain as they maneuver around each other at first. Bim's skittish and wearing more layers than usual, trying to hide. Wilford's unusually quiet, starts cutting himself off in conversations and falling into self-deprecating humor. Derek's barely scraping by with energy drinks, thoughts more disjointed and unable to get sentences out without some stuttering. They keep to their own spaces, classes getting in the way of talking, and their hangouts dwindle too.
Then about two weeks into October, when Bim's been crying every day and Wilford's jokes are more biting and Derek's freaking out almost every ten minutes, that's when it crashes down in a fight. A full-on fight with yelling and balled fists and trying to rip each other apart verbally because ‘How fucking dare you, you fucking dick this isn’t a joke-‘
It ends in more or less a pile on the couch when they can't say anything without being close to tears and everything just hurts, clinging to each other cause it's not like they have anything else to hold onto. They might’ve fought minutes before, but there’s no one else who’d care enough to listen, no one else who’d understand as well.
All that’s there is clothing that doesn’t fit right, books that used to bring hope falling flat, and a slowly dying dream that things will be different, they have to be better somehow now they’re older and supposed to be adults.
Then they start rebuilding, because that's something they know how to do. It's easier fighting the world together than alone, and maybe they’re lost right now but they will find a way.
(Wilford helps Bim cut and dye his hair, because if anyone understands self-transformation it's him. Bim slides some of his sleep supplements over to Derek, starts staying up late to watch Good Eats with him ‘til he gets drowsy. Derek just happens to be passing through certain places when Wilford's family drags him around, ready with barbed comments and razor smiles.)
7.
He kinda hates the fact that he can't wander around the house shirtless.
Weird thing to feel dissatisfied over, but he’s pretty sure his voice is getting deeper and he's starting to get more facial hair than peach fuzz. His face looks more and more like his own with every passing day, so why can't he have this?
He wants to stop averting his eyes from the mirror before a shower, quiet the panic when someone drapes an arm around his shoulders and a hand drifts too close. He's tired of the dry skin and chafing that comes with wearing his binder almost every time he leaves the house, how he has to layer to feel some degree of security even when it's sweltering just because he’s in a sports thing instead to give his body a rest.
Then there's the jealousy that makes him feel bad after feeling it, like he's an asshole. Jealous of the guys who can wear tank tops without worrying about how their chest looks, the ones who can ditch their shirt at the pool when he can't even do that.
Not to mention he lives with two guys who can, and do, pull that shit cause to them it's no big deal. Derek sleeps without a shirt, wanders around in the morning like that ‘til he has to get ready to head out. Wilford wears tank tops with open button-ups when he starts his shoulder tattoo, doesn't blink an eye shrugging the layer off. They saw Bim in his binder once before he managed to get a shirt on, and he wanted to die. Like even when they said it was fine, no big deal, if you're comfortable it's cool, he still couldn't look them in the eye for a few days out of embarrassment.
He just...
He wants to look in the mirror, getting ready for work or something, and have him staring back. No holding up a towel to hide things, no self-consciousness about lingering curves as he smooths down his binder under his shirt before pulling on his hoodie to hide it even further.
He doesn’t want his reflection to be a stranger anymore.
8.
Living with Derek and Wilford initially is...kinda stressful, just a little.
Like sure they know some of his personal stuff, how he's trans and the sitch with Sammy that's still fucking him up, but he's a nervous guy, okay? What if he's too weird, what if they just faked everything to have another roomie, what if they don’t like him after knowing each other for so long? What if, the one time he doesn't keep up the whole ideal manly guy thing, they hate him?
But over the first few weeks he's proved wrong, which is... a relief, to be honest. Wilf is a dork that bakes cookies because he can, comes equipped with a handy dandy box cutter to be borrowed at a moment's notice, has multiple bowties cause he just loves 'em. Derek is a nerd who doodles goofy shit to stick to the fridge for a laugh, gets angry when people don't use bookmarks and break the spine of a book, will sometimes randomly points at things only to say deadpan "I will fight that."
They're weird but his kind of weird, make this feel like home, even if it's just an apartment off campus. They make him feel like he belongs somewhere as he is, messy emotions and all.
Over time, he even gets a bit more confident in front of them. Doesn't skulk around on weekends playing invisible when he wears a sport thing, a loose t-shirt, and boxers as comfy wear.
One time when Derek was being an asshole, he undid his sports thing in the heat of the moment to fling it at his stupid smug face. Maybe not the best idea, cause his dysphoria says 'Go fuck yourself', but Wilford laughs so hard he wheezes and Derek just looks stunned with it partially caught on his glasses.
"Fuck your found footage shit. Don't care it changed the genre, Blair Witch can go fuck itself." Bim says firmly, crossing his arms over his chest a bit self-consciously because oh god did he seriously just do that, god damnit brain this is not like hanging out with Ellie you don’t fling bras at your dude friends.
Derek just ends up tossing his shirt at Bim as a response, and there's no real bite when he replies "It's suspenseful though, and creepy!"
(Ah, friendship. Where you toss shit at each other, and fight over what movies to watch next. Settling in to watch Fright Night after Derek concedes, it's something like perfect. Chris Sarandon is a pretty vampire, and movie dude eye candy makes shit like this easier to handle for Bim.)
9.
One of Bim's favorite moments has to be hitting up the Pima County Fair their second to last year of college. It's maybe the third or fourth time he's ever been, and it's...
It feels smaller, than when he was a kid. Like there's less space being taken up by the animals on display, the rides, assorted booths with food or merch. It’s almost disappointing because of that.
But he gets to see Wilford get all soft and mushy over chickens, dipping into animal baby talk as he wiggles his fingers at them. Derek goes all wide-eyed patting the side of a cow, which is hysterical looking back on cause he looked like a punk around then. Bim gets to pet an alpaca for the second time in his life, and ends up drawn over to the rabbits because 'Look at their little noses wiggle!' Going to the pig race is just great, cause Derek and Wilf didn't believe it was an actual thing ‘til he sat them down when it was about to start. Ended up with another little ribbon for his choice making the top three, to accompany the one he got in elementary school from his first visit to the fair.
And this time, he can actually go on the rides. It's not a field trip, where it's all a group or nothing. It's just three bros messing around, and if one of them wants to sit out they can. Which is how Bim learns fast rides are atrocious if you wear glasses, Derek actually isn't super big on heights, and Wilford is probably the adrenaline junkie out of all of them.
They had a disposable camera along for the ride too, which ended up with lots of animal photos if Bim's honest. There were some neat shots from the top of ferris wheel though, a few blurry ones from their wandering where the shot wasn't quite lined up right.
There's a photo with all three of them smiling, probably taken before lunch if the giant bag of caramel corn in Derek's grasp is any indication. Bim when he dyed his hair dark blue, wearing his favorite Queen shirt, his mom's old Mickey Mouse watch around his wrist. Derek trying out the punk look with eyeliner and leather bracelets, wearing a My Chemical Romance shirt heavy on the red and black, slinging an arm around Bim's waist and another around Wilford's shoulder as he grins. Wilford caught in the moment of saying cheese, red Lennons over his eyes and his hair dyed pink, wearing a Ziggy Stardust t-shirt that they'd found in a booth a little before.
He puts it in a frame after it's developed, gets copies for Wilford and Derek too. They give him shit a few years later when they visit him in LA and it's hung up in his hallway, alongside a handful of other photos with his family and friends. He just grins and flips them off, letting it devolve into a snarkfest of nostalgia and friendly teasing.
(He's been in their home office once or twice by then, and knows for certain one of their copies is hung up on the wall. It gives him a warm and fuzzy feeling, thinking about it.)
10.
The wedding is in fall, Ellie's favorite season, because her and her fiancé wanted a Halloween wedding. Ellie had stuck by Bim through thick and thin in high school, and even if they didn't talk as often as they could she had a spot in his heart. Hell, she was honorary family according to his ma, which few could claim.
Ellie and Chris were huge on the idea of everyone dressing up, and usually Bim would be all for it but...
There are photos of him, from past weddings of a couple of other Trimmers that he can't quite look at anymore. It still means the world he was there to see his aunts and uncles married, but if he's going to another wedding it'll be as himself. Fifth time should be the charm hopefully, when it comes to that.
Both bride and groom will be in red and black as Harley Quinn and Spiderman, so it's not even a question of renting a black suit with a red brocade vest. A dark bowtie with hidden skulls on it rounds it off nicely, as well as a blue flower hairclip with an eye in the middle serving as a boutonnière. His biggest concession to the costume aspect is a pair of white gloves, a domino mask.
He was meant to be the maid of honor, back when Ellie had daydreams about this stuff in the past. As her best man, watching her walk down the aisle...It feels strange, odd even, seeing her get married when held up against his memories of geometry class and horror movie sleepovers at her house.
At the reception though she calls him her 'more manageable little brother', doesn't mind him cutting in for a dance after Chris, laughs when the story he chooses to share has to do with the time they went camping with a few other friends and tossed Oreos at ducks trying to bait them closer. She's still the girl who hugs him half to death managing to almost lift him off the ground, gets excited over Queen vinyl, runs in her heels which is forever terrifying.
She's still one of Bim's closest people, and for the first wedding as himself...
He hopes it sets the trend for the rest of the ones he'll probably attend in his life, where they'll be happy and goofy and just a bit messy because nothing can be perfectly clean-cut.
(He still calls her his culinary witch whenever they have time to catch up, and she always giggles.)
11.
When it was still his early days, working with what he had, he almost wanted to cry in happiness whenever someone called him 'Sir'.
Especially when it was one of the days where he wasn't binding, or felt off because he had to dip into his old clothes with nothing else clean. People saw him as himself, even with things not quite working the way he wanted. Most of the time it just made him grin like a doof, a streak of pride in his chest because 'I made it! I can do it!' It left a spring in his step, feeling on top of the world because this was possible, he could be himself even if he didn’t have it all together yet. The rest of his life was a big question mark past college, but he’d have this at least.
Whenever the caveat was 'Miss' however, treated as if the first was a mistake, it was like a knife twisted right between the ribs. Made him resist the urge to pull his hoodie tighter around himself because that’d just make it more obvious, the problem. Made him try to ignore how the once comforting brush of hair against the tops of his ears from his shiny new haircut suddenly made him feel sick, left him with the sudden fear that he’d wake up tomorrow with hair down to his shoulders. A fear that people would look at him and only see the person he left behind in front of a computer at seventeen, with hair too long and a shirt that felt too tight under his hoodie.
Once or twice, before he came out, it happened with his mom. She didn't get why a lady at the craft store though he was a young man perched on the railing of a cart round-up, body swallowed up by an oversized hoodie and hair tucked up in a beanie. Tried to turn it into a joke with his gram when they were all back in the car, 'She must be blind, you obviously have tits.'
Gram thought it was funny too, laughed even, and Bim...
He didn't say a word, couldn't even muster up a tiny 'Heh' to try and cover his ass. He wedged himself further between the car seat and door, and hated how sitting like this made his hoodie look weird with how it settled on his chest. Hated how it'd be a two hour drive back home from a day in Phoenix, and his eyes were bugging him so he couldn't read very well.
He still picks up the book next to himself anyways, to at least pretend. If he looks busy, they'll leave him to it. He tries to block out everything else they say, even as another part of him listens in like some kind of masochistic.
(She doesn't remember it after a month. He brings it up in therapy over a year later, because 'I hated it, how I was reduced to my chest. Made me feel like shit, like she knew and did it on purpose. She supports me now, but I...I don't think I can trust her like I used to, because of that.')