Chapter Text
“The men who phased- “
“-Wait,” Quil said. Everyone groaned at the interruption.
“I have a legitimate question!” Quil said.
“What is it?” Old Quil said with a long-suffering sigh.
“So, only men have ever phased? In the history of ever?” Quil said.
“As far as the legends go, yes,” Old Quil said.
“Really, this club’s boys only?” Quil said.
It’s not that simple, Embry thought.
---
When he was little, he, Mom, and Gran spent every night in front of their tiny TV. Embry’s bedtime was dependent on if something that Mom wanted to watch alone was coming on. When the Blockbuster in Forks had Indecent Proposal in stock, he was in bed by 7:30 all week. Sometimes, Mom was so tired from work that she watched with her eyes closed, and she forgot to tell Embry to leave before the dirty scenes. When he realized Mom was asleep, he’d turned the volume down and watched Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson have sex on a kitchen floor, marveling over how breathy the act was.
“Dances with Wolves’ butt-ugly face has no business ending up with Whitney,” Mom said, as she painted her big toe baby blue. Embry nodded in agreement. He’s seven or eight. This was such an oft-repeated phrase they might as well have it on a cross-stitched pillow. The Bodyguard was one of the only VHS’s they actually owned. Gran had told him to pick one tape out of a bargain bin as a Christmas gift for Mom, and he’d been so excited to find this one because it was both of theirs’ favorite. They liked the music.
“Why didn’t you paint your toes at work?” Embry asked. She still worked at the nail salon, then.
“I don’t get paid to paint my own toes,” she said, “Plus, I’m a lousy tipper.”
“Pretty color,” he said. Mom looked at him, then past him at Grandma, who’d been asleep in the reclining chair since Wheel of Fortune.
“Do you want me to paint yours?” she said. Embry nodded, without thinking. He put his feet up on the coffee table, like Mom had. He stayed very still as Mom turned his tiny toenail the color of the sky on a rare sunny day. The polish was cold, and there was a tiny bit of weight on his toenails after.
“I used to think I’d do this with my daughter, but, well,” Mom said. She gave him a look like they should both be embarrassed about this. Embry didn’t know why.
“One day I’ll find a man to teach you how to bait a hook,” she said, doing a funny voice, then laughing to herself. Mom often told jokes that were just for her.
“Okay,” Embry said. Grandma said he was the man of the house, but usually with a wink and a smile. That felt like a lot of pressure and also not very true. Grandma was the one who made sure they were all taken care of and stayed serious and steady. Mom was their center, the connecting link. She brought in the money and took care of Gran because she was getting old.
“All done, now sit still and let them dry,” she said. He stared at his toes instead of Whitney Houston for the rest of the movie. Then in bed, he sat and stared at them some more. The blue looked so pretty against his skin, but he disliked how the yellow and reds on his construction truck bedspread were so bright and ugly in comparison.
He laid on his back and pressed the pads of his feet against his white stucco wall and looked up at them. Better. Prettier.
---
Embry is fifteen and he knows he’s different from other guys. He’s not afraid of it, but he’s not quite proud of it all the time either. He dresses emo (well, as much as he can manage based on the selection at the Ateara general store). Mom obliged his desire to cut his hair like Craig Mabbitt. He even tried eyeliner on the first day of freshman year, but Jake and Quil told him, hey, we get it, but you’re going to get our asses kicked. So, he’d wiped it off in the bathroom before first period.
All the music he listens to is written by outsiders who nobody understands. Embry’s not sure about how some white guys from a huge city like Chicago could feel like nobodies, but their words resonated anyway.
The first band he really liked was Nirvana because he lives in Washington, and it was the punkest cassette his mom owned. But he’d heard one Jimmy Eat World song and slid into emo hard. Scream-o was too hardcore for him, he liked the higher voices. Emo’s easier to sing along to because you can actually understand the lyrics. Embry can get through most of Take This To Your Grave on his walk to school, and he picked what songs to skip based on his mood.
Most days, he did his homework in the library after school, which has one ancient, slow-as-molasses computer on which he can log onto a server for emo fans. Discovering all these people from all different walks of life who shared this passion felt like going to Oz, getting to see a whole new world after a lifetime on the same sepia soundstage. He could be part of the scene without actually being there. Embry burned with jealousy at the people arranging carpools to concerts because he’s not even close to close to somewhere where he could hitch a ride. He wanted to be in a pit just once, thrashing his body and screaming the lyrics with other people who got how it felt when you were all alone walking home and that one lyric pierced right through your chest and made you feel like something had happened to you.
This server was the closest he could get. If it wasn’t for them, he’d probably still think Kurt Cobain was the end and the beginning of good music. He felt a tickle of smugness when he learned the words to a song by a band only a handful of people knew. Embry had a whole system now of burning CDs from Limewire and PureVolume (He lived in constant fear of giving the library computer a virus and having it be traced back to him). He drew album covers for all his mixes and gifted them to Quil and Jake regularly, trying to gently push some decent music taste onto his radio friends.
Music wasn’t the only horizon opened for him through the servers. Someone had started a thread to speculate about the new MCR album. Embry was kind of embarrassed about how much he liked them. If he was ever around anyone in the know enough to make fun of him for it, he could defend himself by saying he liked the insane guitars and the good lyrics, even if they were sung so…theatre-y. This server was mostly girls for a reason, and half the time they were just gushing over how cute Mikey was. The more hardcore bands’ followers mocked girl fans who acted like that. Embry refreshed, hoping for someone to change the subject.
[xX_againstmeat_Xx]: did any1 read the new alt press interview? -- atom {xe/xim}
Embry squinted to read the new person’s signature. He hadn’t seen them before. Sometimes people put jokes in their signatures, but he didn’t get this one. He opened AIM. Sadie was online. She was the only person from the forums he’d talked to one-on-one and exchanged real names with. She lived in Seattle, was fifteen too, and thought Gerard Way and David Bowie were the two greatest artists to ever live. They started chatting after he’d expressed his dismay over not finding the latest Dashboard Confessional album anywhere near him. He’d really wanted the hard copy over the torrent. She’d said if he mailed her the cash for it, she’d mail a copy to him. He was amazed when it actually came, it might as well have been a package from Mars.
[MBreezeXD]: do u know atom?
[ZiGgYwAy]: yeah seen xim on the Against Me! threads
[ZiGgYwAy]: cuz against me ruuuuules
[MBreezeXD]: yeah yeah uve told me
[MBreezeXD]: dumb question
[MBreezeXD]: whats xe/xim?
[ZiGgYwAy]: pronouns
[ZiGgYwAy]: for someone who’s not all the way a boy or a girl
Doesn’t that apply to everyone? Embry thought. Surely, everyone thought about being the opposite sex sometimes. That was just being human.
[MBreezeXD]: oooooh
[MBreezeXD]: like bowie?
[ZiGgYwAy]: bahaha yes like bowie
[ZiGgYwAy]: but really, I think its sort of like being transsexual
Embry looked over his shoulder. No one was sitting near him, and the school librarian was at her desk. He opened up a search engine to look up “transsexual.” He skimmed through the first couple sites.
Well, I like my dick so I’m not that, he thought, with relief. Then alarm at his own relief. Duh, of course, he wasn’t like that. He was just emo. Artsy, maybe, like his Mom said. Artists just thought about stuff like gender with less rules. Yeah. That was it.
---
Since New Year’s, Embry’s kept having moments where he’d feel like he was walking under a dark cloud. These moods made him pick fights with his mom over how she cooked dinner or her dumb way of needling him and her stupid, freaking secrets. The world was really a fucked-up place. Both his friends had parents they’d give anything to see again, but his mom denied Embry the identity of his dad probably because she was ashamed that she’d slept with some douchebag. God, what if she didn’t even know and that’s why she wouldn’t tell him? The whole rez probably snickered behind their backs about it.
That winter, he’d grown five inches almost overnight. He learned growing pains were literal and really, really painful. He thought he looked freakish, stretched out like a Looney Tune run over by a steamroller. He felt a burning shame when people made comments about it. At least his height meant he’d probably never get picked on again, but he kind of resented that too. Especially when the comments came from girls.
It felt like being this tall put a wall between him and girls, excluding him from their kingdom forever. He was their other. He noticed them looking at him now, appreciatively, but not like someone they considered the same. Eventually, his frame would fill out, broaden, he knew. He wouldn’t look like a string bean. He’d look like a man.
It felt like the end of something.
---
“You were friends with those weirdo’s the Cullens, right?” Quil said.
“Quil,” Jake warned. Quil’s foot-in-mouth disease was at its worst around strangers, but Embry thought that was an innocent enough question.
“I was,” Bella said, sounding really small. Quil dropped whatever he was going to say next, and Embry quickly asked Bella for the story of how she’d gotten the bikes. Later, when Bella was in the bathroom, Jake punched Quil’s arm.
“You idiot,” Jake hissed, “Bella’s been really upset since the Cullens left. Like, depressed. Don’t bring them up.”
“She got depression just because her friends moved?” Quil said, “Why, were they so much better than everyone else here?”
“She was dating one of them. Really seriously,” Jake said.
“Woah,” Quil said, “Is that why your dad was all….”
“My dad doesn’t know they were more than friends. I don’t think Charlie told him…Bella was dating one of the girls.”
Quil’s mouth fell open, then he smiled, teasing, “So, she’s really never going to date you, is she?”
Jake leapt forward and tackled Quil, who covered his face and yelled, “Uncle, uncle! It was just a joke!”
“That’s gonna be on your gravestone,” Embry muttered, pushing Jake off of Quil before he could throw another punch. Jake had half a foot on Quil, and besides, it was Quil. He was always joking.
“Don’t be a dick to her,” Jake said, “Grow up.”
“I wasn’t even a dick!” Quil said, “I mean, it’s cool. Really cool, if you know what I mean.” Jake raised his fist again, and Quil raised his hands.
“Don’t be a perv either,” Jake said, “Serious. I will ban you from the garage. Both of you.”
“I didn’t say anything!” Embry said, “Bella’s cool.” Jake smiled at him with appreciation. Embry felt like this moment was important, seeing how his friends reacted to this information. It just showed what kind of person you were whether you judged someone for this, he thought.
---
“If Jake is the first of us to have a girlfriend, I’ll eat crow,” Quil said when they were walking home. Embry usually walked Quil home because he lived closer and half the time, he’d just end up staying for dinner or something. The Ateara’s house was fun and loud and stuffed with sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles.
“Why?” Embry said, though he supposed this was one of those moments where he should say something macho about how he could have a thousand girlfriends before Jake.
“I mean, Bella Swan is like Jake’s dream girl,” Embry said, “This’d be huge for him. And she’s a senior. Who can drive us places.”
“Jake can drive us places. And you, in a month.”
“I don’t have a car,” Embry said.
“You know what I mean. I mean, she is pretty. Though she’s also the whitest white girl I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, she looks like she’s never been outside,” Embry said, but then felt bad, even though it made Quil snicker. His mom told him to never make fun of girls’ looks.
“But it’s not like she’s going to date Jake,” Quil said, “I mean, he said she’s a lesbian.”
“Right,” Embry said.
“I’ve never met a lesbian before. But my cousin showed me this magazine, you know. My grandpa would kill me for saying this, but I heard those Cullen girls are so hot. I mean, Bella and one of them…”
“Don’t be gross,” Embry said, but he was kind of thinking about it too now. Two girls, it must be…nice. Everyone being soft and small and with their long hair. No gross stubble or boy-smell.
Quil stopped and looked at him, and they both laughed. They stared at each other, knowing they were both turned on by the same thing, and laughed again, a little embarrassed. Quil punched at Embry, and he jumped back, so Quil’s knuckles just brushed his torso. The quick contact sent a little shock through his skin. Embry pushed him back, and Quil tried to put him in a headlock, right there on the side of the road, and-
Embry did not leave less turned on than before.
---
He wasn’t gonna lie about it. He knew. He wasn’t stupid. It didn’t feel like hiding either. Because girls were there too, and if he had the choice, he’d pick the option that caused him less trouble. Embry was old hat at separating parts of himself. He’d grown up in La Push, but his Mom wasn’t Quileute, and there were things Quil and Jake claimed that he didn’t think he should too. He also split up the boy who watched chick flicks with his Mom every night and the boy who was best friends with Jacob and Quil. A boy who poured his heart out on emo servers and one who stayed quiet in class except when called on. The eyeliner on the first day of school was a reminder that he didn’t need to be the same guy all the time, that it wasn’t smart to be. Maybe at Sadie’s school, that was wrong, like telling a lie, but being obsessed with white bands and throwing around city lingo would make it look like he wasn’t proud to be who he is, and that’d be its own kind of disrespect.
But he knew, deep down, that this was a part of him. Deciding he wouldn’t deny it, even silently, had given him an odd sort of dignity. Weird to feel dignified about something as cringe-inducing as the way he’d stared at Gerard Way’s slicked back hair in “The Ghost of You” music video. The way his eyes shone while crooning the slow part of the song. The way Embry had seen the girls on the servers gushed over him and thought about making a whole other account under a new name just so he could join in with them without even his server-friends knowing.
---
It was nice having Bella hanging around. Jake always wanted to be alone with her, obviously, which made Embry kind of sad. He missed middle school when it wasn’t a whole thing for guys and girls to hang out. Bella rounded them out nicely. She was, like, worldly too. She had lived in big cities and nodded in recognition at some of the bands Embry mentioned, which was more than he usually got.
It was raining hard enough that the sound of it on the tin roof made it hard to talk in the garage, so they went inside. Alien was on TV.
“Sigourney Weaver’s hot,” Quil said. Bella and Embry mmm’d in agreement at the same time. She looked at him, and they laughed.
“Is that what your girlfriend’s like, Embry?” Quil said.
“What?” Embry said, “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Your internet girlfriend in Seattle,” Quil said, “Who sends you little gifts in the mail.”
“Sadie?” Embry said. He had regretted telling Quil about almost immediately. Now Quil kept bringing her up, like she was a secret to get out of him, even though Embry had literally told him everything there was to it.
“What, you’ve got more?” Quil said.
“Sadie’s not my girlfriend. We just like the same bands,” Embry said, “Uh. I actually think she’s a lesbian.” He knew she was. She loved talking about it. At her school in Seattle, she said she rolled with “a gang of stoner art homo’s.” She said that word like she was proud of it. He guessed Indians did that too, but with Indian stuff. He didn’t know if it was the same thing.
“So, you and Jake are both dating lesbians?” Quil said, low. Jake shot him a murderous look and threw the remote at Quil’s head with impressive speed.
“I always thought of myself as bisexual,” Bella said. She no longer turned pink at Quil’s jokes implying that she and Jake were dating. He’d only made 700 or so, “Or pansexual, but they’re basically the same.”
“What’s that?” Quil said.
“It means you’re attracted to anyone, no matter their gender. Boy, girl, whatever.”
Whatever? Embry wished Quil would ask. He wanted to pull on that thread himself, but he wasn’t sure if it would unravel the whole sweater, leaving him bare.
“Huh,” Jake said, trying to sound nonchalant as if hearing Bella say she was attracted to boys wasn’t Christmas morning to him, “Cool. I never heard that word before.”
“Yeah, I’ve only heard it in gay spaces and online. It’s weird, like, Forks High doesn’t even have a GSA. I was surprised how- Phoenix wasn’t progressive, but it was still a city, and my mom always hung out with the fringe-y types, so I was luckier than I knew with how much exposure I had. When I came out to her, I think she filled in Charlie, so I didn’t have to. Because he never seemed shocked about- “
Bella cut herself off, but that was maybe the most words in a row she’d ever said to them. Embry wanted her to rewind, talk about every gay person she’d ever met, one by one. Did Bella and her Cullen girlfriend start off as friends who just did everything together? Could she tell Embry was…whatever he was?
Maybe I should talk to her, Embry thought. There must be some sort of gay code that you should be nice to other gay people even if you didn’t know them. Like a secret society.
But maybe he wasn’t really gay, and Bella would be able to tell that too. If he was gay, wouldn’t he be really, really sure? And he did like girls, sometimes. He thought Hayley Williams was hot. And Demi Moore. And Jake’s sisters. Especially Rachel.
Maybe Bella would laugh in his face. Gayness was for white people in big cities, not emo dorks from reservations so tiny they didn’t even get dots on the map.
Bella wouldn’t laugh in anyone’s face. She’s not like that, a little voice in his brain said, she might be happy to know she’s not alone.
---
This thing just gonna live him inside him, he'd thought, if or until he chose to share it.
But then he started dreaming about Quil. At first, purely horny dreams like the one he’d been having since he was thirteen, just now with his best friend in the starring role. It was cringe, but it didn’t feel that big a deal.
Then he’d had this one where he was just touching Quil’s face, stroking it while he smiled and looked at him. In the dream, he’d felt so warm and adoring, and it was hard to shake it. It unlocked something he couldn't shove back in a box. Quil was his best friend, of course, he thought he was great. The two of them had always been their own pair, especially this summer, when they’d just go to the beach and talk about absolutely nothing all day. All the pervy posturing and dumb jokes Quil said meant nothing because he really didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Embry could be an emo nerd and knew friendly teasing was the worst he’d ever get from Quil, and that made him feel safe. And Quil fretted over how he was the shortest and had no muscles but he did have those dimples and curly hair and- oh, Jesus, what if Quil looked at him staring one day and just knew in the way Quil could sometimes make a stupid joke that hit on something very true?
Abstract gay thoughts were so much less insistent and so much less terrifying than this, tangible desire that consumed half of Embry’s days. It was so embarrassing he wanted to make freaking romantic mixtapes and the worst part of it all was sometimes they’d be alone, and Embry would start to hope.
And this was now a lot harder to stay silent about. He needed someone to know, but Quil could never now. The dark cloud felt so intense lately, this crush had made it worse, and he’d give anything to not feel so itchy and doomed all the time.
Jake was straight as an arrow, but he was also a pretty sensitive guy. Open-minded too. Jake wouldn’t spit at him or call him names. It’d be pretty hypocritical after how he’d gotten on them about being nice to Bella. Embry didn’t have to say anything about the Quil thing because that might be too much, would be a lot even if Embry was a girl and there was nothing gay about it.
Wouldn’t that make it all easier? Embry thought, with a pang of longing more intense than he would’ve expected.
He’d only just started strategizing how to approach this with Jake, when he found himself having a rare moment alone with Bella. Quil was gonna be working at the store for another hour, and Jake had had to run out to drop his Dad off somewhere, and the possibility of being relieved of this awful secret immediately made Embry say fuck it and speak up.
“Hey, Bella, can I ask you something?” Embry said. They’d just been watching cooking shows. Bella liked them, and Jake liked to do impressions of the hosts to make her laugh.
Bella looked at him, wary but not unkind, “What’s up?”
“How did, um, youknowyoulikedgirls?” he said.
“Uh,” she said. She seemed to scan his face suspiciously, “Ironically, I had a huge crush on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
“That’s ironic?”
Bella’s face paled, if that was even possible, “It was an inside joke with my ex. Sorry.”
“So…you just watched the show and knew you liked girls? That you were different?”
“Well, it wasn’t that different to me. My mom had a lot of gay friends, so I knew you could go both ways. I told her that I thought that was what I was feeling. She kind of gave me a talk like, that’s great, I love you, but just know the kids at school might not be so accepting so be careful who you open up to, but I’ll beat them all up if they give you any crap.”
“Really?” he said, laughing. He hadn’t heard Bella make a ton of jokes, though Jake swore she could be funny.
Bella nodded, smiling at the memory, “I went to a couple meetings of my high school’s GSA, but I wasn’t super close with anyone there. I mean, I’m kind of shy anyway so I didn’t have a big coming out, and most people just assume I’m straight. I mean, I don’t think people at school here even know despite…well, being kind of obvious. But people nine times out of ten just assume girls are really close friends before anything gay.”
“You didn’t feel like you, I don’t know, had to be out?” Embry said.
Bella shook her head, “The people who mattered knew. But Forks is so tiny. It’d be all eyes on us. It would have put more pressure on it.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” he said.
“Wouldn’t have stopped us though,” Bella said, smiling a bit before looking sad again, and he thought maybe it wasn’t all so easy for her, maybe Bella was just her own kind of brave.
“Sorry, I know you really don’t like talking about your ex,” he said quickly.
“It’s…kind of easier when it’s in this context,” Bella said, “Is there a reason you wanted to talk about this?” She was speaking so gently to him, reminiscent of how Jacob spoke to her.
“Um,” he said. Then nothing else.
“You don't have to say,” Bella said, “Or know. My mom said that too. You don't have to know for sure. She actually said it in a way gushier way than that, but I’ll spare you.”
Embry laughed again and felt something loosen a little inside of him. They went back to watching cooking shows.
So, it was still a secret. And it could stay that way. Maybe he and Bella would become better friends, and her quiet courage would rub off on him. Quil and Jake had gotten used to Bella talking about that part of herself. Maybe Embry would end up there too one day, and it wouldn’t be weird at all.
---
He’d felt so hopeful. And then he woke up a few mornings later feeling like every good thing in his life had curdled and died. And then things went to shit.