Work Text:
The first time Fundy tells someone he’s a boy, it’s his dad. Who else would it be? Some parts of the reaction, he expected - the babying, although that’s because it’s his dad, not because Fundy’s turned out to be his son, and the cooing, which is pretty much the same schtick, and the incessant and smothering love and support that his dad seems to have in spades whenever it suits him. Fundy ducks his head, mock-embarrassed but good-natured, away from the grasping hands with which his dad never seems to stop seeking hugs, and sighs, and tunes back in to whatever soft overenthusiastic thing his dad is saying. For the past ten minutes it’s just been Fundy and son, and it was like something warm and comforting being poured into Fundy’s chest the first two - the emotion ‘yes, that’s me’ distilled into liquid and flowing through him - but it kind of overflowed, after a bit, and now he’s just humouring his dad until he wears himself out -
“So,” Wilbur says, business-like, suddenly, “like Eret?”
Huh.
Fundy had not been expecting that.
“I mean,” he says, stalling. “Yeah, I - I guess? What do you mean?”
“With the - pronouns. Do you want all of them? I know I don’t use them differently for Eret as much as I should, but listen, Fundy, in my defense, he’s - I mean, she’s kind of a bastard sometimes, you gotta admit -”
“Whoa. Whoaaa,” Fundy says quickly, “nooo, I am - no.” He grasps for words. “I am - I’m gonna stop you right there. If that’s okay.” He pauses. “Dad.”
Miraculously, his dad shuts up. Wow. Fundy did not know he knew how to do that.
“I only - I mean, I only want you to use he,” Fundy says. “For me! Not for Eret. I just - want you to talk about me how you would if I’d been your son all along.” He falters. “If that’s - okay.”
“Of course it’s okay,” his dad says, grin broadening again, and Fundy watches as the line that etches itself into his dad’s brow every time he’s puzzling something out disappears. “Holy shit, Fundy, you’re - you’re my son! I have a boy!”
Fundy’s an - Fundy’s not - He’s almost an adult, actually, he’s aged much faster than his father must believe he does, since he treats Fundy like he’s three or something. He’s not a - He’s independent, and mature, and far too old to be babied like this. He’s definitely not touched by this. Not in any way. At all.
So when he leans further into his father’s touch, grumbling a little but going with the hug anyway - it’s just to see if he can make his dad shut up again, okay? All ulterior motives. Fundy is so ulteriorly motivated, and cares nothing for affection, and -
Yeah, the hug’s nice.
Fundy maybe should’ve seen the Eret thing coming, but hey. It really isn’t a one-to-one comparison; they’re just the only two in L’Manberg who don’t quite align with what was expected of them at birth. So Fundy kind of gets where his dad made the connection, but it probably won’t come up again.
“Little champion,” his dad coos into his ear, and Fundy groans.
Niki’s first reaction, when he tells her, is to message if he ever needs anything, which is - nice enough of her. Niki’s nice like that. She sits him down in the corner of her sunlit bakery and points out that his hands are shaking, and he lifts one to his face to find she’s right. Huh. Not quite sure what’s going on there.
She transitions to calling him Fundy smoothly, almost effortless, and then offers to use his pronouns in a sentence if it ever feels necessary.
“How else would you use them?” he asks, baffled.
“Oh!” Niki says. “No, I mean - Eret and I are quite good friends, you know, and sometimes she has days when - Well, I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but they don’t feel very good about themself. And so they call me up, and I talk about them, with the right pronouns, to reassure them, you know? Apparently it helps her to hear it.”
“But if you’re talking to them?”
“I talk in the third person!”
Fundy’s sure that’s very well-intentioned - after all, it’s Niki, and how could it be anything else - but he’s not quite sure how that’s meant to help. Hey, if it works for Eret, it works! But Fundy pictures his own Bad Days, the vague disgusted sickness that creeps into the corners of his brain and sits there, and can’t imagine that hearing constructed, clunky third-person sentences - made up just for his benefit - would make him feel any less fake. (Makes him shiver a bit, actually. He has enough issues with convincing himself he isn’t a real man without demanding to be spoken about like he isn’t there just so that he can hear it, thank you very much.)
He spends his own Bad Days in the forest, knees skinned, forearms scratched, tears mostly-unshed, foraging and foraging and foraging and coming back, more often than not, with dryer eyes and a broader smile and stacks upon stacks of resources. It distracts him, the gathering, and makes him feel better to know that he’s helping. Being greeted with a Hey, Fundy! would be nice, but anything beyond that -
Still. If it helps Eret to hear that, well, Fundy’s not gonna judge. They all have their coping mechanisms. It helps Fundy feel masculine when he goes shirtless while alone, sometimes - these things can be counterintuitive.
“I’d prefer if you didn’t,” he says, “for me. Just, like, just personally.”
“Oh,” Niki says, blinking. “Are you sure? Fundy, I promise it’s no trouble -”
“Yes I’m sure,” he snaps, a little exasperated, and immediately feels guilty about it. “Sorry. I’m a bit - It’s been a - Well, it sure has been a day. I sure have - done things.”
Niki’s face softens. “Any time,” she reminds him gently, but doesn’t press the matter any further.
They make cookies. Then Fundy goes to fetch some of the berries from his last Bad Day harvest, and Niki teaches him how to make pie, using his right name - free, natural, easy - the entire time.
“Ah, hey, Fundy,” Jack greets, which puts a grin on Fundy’s face just to begin with. He’s tilling soil by the lake, and some of the earth’s turned a satisfying water-rich dark colour, ready to be sown. “D’you mind giving me a hand?”
“Yeah, sure,” Fundy says. “Do you have seeds?” He hadn’t actually told Jack his new name - but he asked his dad to mention it to the other L’citizens (Fundy’s coinage), to pass a message via their shitshow of an embassy so that no one misgenders him in, say, a declaration of war. And actually Fundy’d ambled his way down here to do it himself, so it’s a pleasant surprise, not to have to. The grin seems like it’s sticking around.
Jack tosses him several packets of wheat seeds, and Fundy fumbles the catch, but Jack doesn’t laugh at him, so that’s okay. He rips one open at the corner and scatters them over a patch of tilled ground. His dad gets irritated when he does this - says it’s better to space seeds certain amount apart, place them meticulously, there’s science to it - but the wheat grows just the same, and Jack just grins at him and asks some amiable question, and then conversation springs up like a young, spry sheaf of grain.
It’s lovely for all of ten minutes. Then Jack slips up with the name; it stings, just a bit, but Fundy’s fine, genuinely, has just opened his mouth to correct Jack when the penny drops. This would not be an issue, if Jack had just said whoops, sorry, Fundy and moved on. But, of course -
“I’m so fucking sorry, dude,” Jack hastens to assure him. “Genuinely. It’s not that I don’t think you’re - you are one hundred per cent accepted, Fundy, I promise, it was just a slip of the tongue. God. I’m so sorry -”
“It’s fine, ” Fundy says, a little tersely. “Seriously. Relax.”
Jack bites his lip. “Sorry, dude.”
“I managed to live this long without combusting every time I heard that name,” Fundy says testily. “I can survive once or twice more. You can just correct yourself and move on.” He doesn’t mean to be this dickish about it - knows it comes from a place of friendship and respect, knows damn well how lucky he is to have this - but it’s the third time today, because his dad, too, is prone to the over-apologising, and it’s started to irritate him.
“Still, it’s not okay of me,” Jack says. “I, uh. There’s probably, like, tricks you can learn, to stick it in your brain and stuff - we could go ask Eret, maybe?”
And there it fucking is!
“If one more person tells me to go talk to fucking Eret ,” Fundy begins, teeth bared, too foxlike for his liking, and then he cuts himself off. Shoves the packet into Jack’s hands. Stalks his way off down the hill.
That was unfair, he knows, guilt squirming just a bit in his stomach.
But God, it’s getting on his nerves.
Fundy sets himself down, seething, at Eret’s side - a ball of raised hackles and irritation - and does not say a word.
Eret regards him levelly from behind their sunglasses, hands busy with mixing concrete powder for the walls; something about the tilt of their head reads like confusion. “Hey,” he says, sounding taken aback. “What’s up?”
“Supposedly I’m meant to talk to you,” Fundy says acidly. “So I’m here. Talking. Hi.”
Eret’s brow furrows. “What about?”
“We’re the same person,” Fundy grumbles. “Apparently.”
Eret’s laugh is - well, Fundy’s kind of envious, is all, because it’s deep and smooth and lovely. Coloured with confusion, though. “Okay?” she says, the latter part of her laugh fitting itself around the word, still bewildered but not making it Fundy’s problem. “Well, we can talk any time. I don’t mind.”
“Course you don’t,” Fundy says a little snidely, then huffs. “Sorry. That was - It’s not your fault.”
“No worries,” Eret says. They set down the stick they’ve been using to mix the black dye into the concrete powder; Fundy sees a second vat just by it, technicolour yellow and ready to be crafted. “Oh, congrats on the coming out, by the way. That stuff’s hard sometimes.”
“Thanks,” Fundy mumbles. He’s not looking at them.
Eret doesn’t seem to mind; when Fundy chances a glance his way, the twist to his lips is wry, a little rueful. “They weren’t giving you a hard time, right?”
“Not on purpose.”
“Not what I asked.” Eret smiles peaceably at him. “But hey, you don’t have to -”
“They keep expecting us to be the exact same,” Fundy bites, “and it’s - ugh. Like - Not that it’s bad to be like you!” he clarifies hastily. “You’re - you’re really nice, Eret, don’t - It’s not about that.”
“But we have different experiences,” Eret says. There’s an edge to her tone, like it’s something she’s well used to sighing and looking away from, like this is nothing new. “Sorry, dude, I really am. It’s no one’s fault, and they’re trying to be nice, but it can get really annoying.”
Fundy manages a grin, at that - something in his chest feeling warm and a little bit Perceived. Some things, they do share. “Jack Manifold thought I’d be sad if he used any gendered words at all,” he offers, and it is kind of funny, in retrospect - a hell of a lot funnier when Eret is grinning at it with him. “Which is - It’s nice of him to care! It means a lot!”
“But,” Eret agrees, and they’re laughing again.
Fundy snorts. “Dad thought ‘trans’ meant ‘all pronouns’,” he adds.
Eret drags a hand across their face as if in anguish. “Aw, I’m honoured,” they say dryly, and Fundy snickers.
“Does it,” he adds, abruptly, after a time, “actually - help? When Niki makes up sentences for you?”
“What? Oh, yeah, it’s really sweet. Helps me out a ton, when I’m super dysphoric. Why?”
“I can’t imagine that helping me, ever,” Fundy says honestly. For some reason, he’s pretty sure Eret won’t take it the wrong way.
He’s proved right - she only shrugs at him, unbothered. “We’ve all got different things going on,” she says. “Unless it mortally offends you that I feel some things differently to you, I think we’ll be alright.”
“Yeah,” Fundy agrees. He searches for more to say - feels a little inadequate - but can’t quite find words, and repeats, instead, “Yeah,” a little lamely. He blows out a breath, feels the tension going out of him.
Eret scrutinizes him. “Yeah,” they echo, and a smile tugs at the corner of their mouth. “I get it.”
“Yeah,” Fundy agrees, and lets himself relax.