Work Text:
Footsteps - leather shoes on wood floor. A familiar sound. A student, probably, stopping by on their way home from St Cassian's - it's a bit late for school to be ending, but too early for adults to be on their way home from a full-time job, so the most likely explanation is a student who stays overtime doing some sort of extracurricular. A good student. Not that the priest should be speculating, of course.
The student, after a pause, enters the confession booth. They speak in a voice unfamiliar to the priest; androgynous, light, with a slight air of theatrics that seems to signal they take drama class religiously. "Forgive me, father, for I have sinned." They speak as though it is rehearsed. The priest waits for them to elaborate, and they simply don't.
After the pause grows uncomfortably long, the priest cautiously asks, "How so?"
The student has the absolute nerve to look at their wrist - they aren't even wearing a watch, it's simply for show. "How long have you got?"
Décazeville, France. November, 1930. She had wads of cash in her bra, a knife in her hand, and black charcoal in her heart. Her mission was simple: Find some good Christian man who, with enough coercion, would pay for the rights to her unmarried body and then pay extra for her to not tell his wife. She was doing this because she wanted money, and she wanted sex, and she didn't give a damn about anyone except herself, least of all God. Before men could even start talking to her, her outfit malevolently tempted them to commit sins so outrageous that any priest would be shocked - lacy stockings, shoulder straps as thin as spaghetti, cleavage clearly visible, and all of it a devil-tempting black.
She found her target soon enough - a man who could have been destined for greatness, if not for people like this woman eager to take advantage of him. Just a glance at her took his breath away immediately, and she knew she had her mark. She took a step toward him, and he was powerless, breathless. "Ma'am," he stammered out, struggling to say anything other than a filthy compliment. "What's your name?"
The woman smirked, fingers tightening around the knife, as she answered, "Monique Gibeau."
"Wait," interrupts the priest, frowning. "What's this?"
"My OC," answers the student. "Monique Gibeau. She's my original character. Don't steal her - if you do, I won't hesitate to report you to the DeviantArt staff team, understood?"
...The priest decides not to bother responding to this. "So you came here today to confess the sinful fantasies that you've been engaging in through the proxy of this character?"
"Oh, no," says the student, with a slight laugh. "That's just background context. The actual sinning, ahem..." He clears his throat. "I suppose I should start at the beginning. It was, erhm, last year, in choir practice - I wasn't really paying attention to learning my sheet music, and I overheard an argument." He pauses. "Oh, not paying attention in class is another sin I should be atoning for, isn't it?"
Uranium City, Canada. October, 2022. Noel was hunched over a sketchbook in a way that would have prevented him from actually singing, had he any desire to do so. In the sketchbook were simply many drawings, in black pencil that stained his hands, of the same woman. Monique Gibeau. Noel couldn't articulate what she was aside from her being him, which he knew was ridiculous - he wanted to be her, desperately, but understood fully that he never could be. He could never even come close.
"Are you kidding?!" Noel, focused on his drawings, could only hear half of the conversation, and that half was incredulous and annoyed and annoying. "You can't prank the Catholic Church! Did you forget I'm Catholic too?!" A gap, clearly some response, but Noel heard nothing; she was arguing on the phone, perhaps. "No, not for fifty dollars! Are you insane?!" A small click of her tongue, and she seemed to relent slightly: "Maybe ask Noel."
"Ask me what?" asked Noel, finally looking up. He saw that Ocean had been arguing with Ricky, who was responding in ASL out of Noel's field of vision, and not on the phone as he had previously assumed. Ricky started moving to face him, a task that took a few seconds due to the difficulty that came with navigating a wheelchair in an enclosed space, but before he could answer, the door was violently swung open.
"Noel." Misha was visibly breathless, his hair a mess and only one of his sleeves rolled up. As he entered the room he carelessly tossed his school bag onto the floor and it made a loud thud noise against the carpet. "I -" He cut himself off and Noel's eyes widened. This was a level of vulnerability that Misha had never quite let himself show to the choir, not even in the difficult recent months. "I need help. I don't know who else to turn to."
Noel spent a few seconds cluelessly looking at Ricky, then at Misha, then back at Ricky, until Ricky lamely signed, "His thing looks more important."
With that decision made, Noel quickly closed his sketchbook. He stood up. He vaguely gestured to the rest of the choir - an excuse me gesture, an I'll be back soon, I hope, gesture. Then he nodded at Misha. "Sure thing, I'm here for you." As he tried to leave the classroom, to have the conversation in the relative privacy of the hallway, he tripped over Misha's bag, and on some strange instinct, Misha reached out to grab his arms and steady him.
Misha murmured a flustered apology. Noel glared at the bag and wondered why the hell it was so big, with so many strange lumps as though Misha had disregarded the actual size of the bag and simply tried to shove everything he owned in it, and such a God-damned trip hazard.
"I know it was wrong for me to skip a choir practice," says the student guiltily. "For any reason. But - Misha isn't really the sort of person to ask for help readily, so when they do, you know it's serious, you know?" They clear their throat nervously. "And this was only, like, a month after Talia - his fiancée - they were planning on getting married and then they broke up, and it was just, it was a mess. I mean, they were teenagers, I should have expected it wouldn't last forever, but - Misha was just in a really bad way for a while and when he told me he needed help, I was scared he was about to do something stupid."
The priest can't help but be sympathetic; this seems like a situation in which the good may entirely outweigh the minor infraction of leaving choir practice. "And did you manage to help him?"
An mm-hmm noise comes from the student. "It turned out it wasn't about Talia at all - he'd been eighteen for a few months, his adoptive parents were terrible, and, well, I guess they just lost their patience for keeping him housed and fed that day. No warning or anything, they just shoved all his things into a bag and told him not to come home. But shit, pardon my French, the guy was one month out from losing his fiancée, and now he was homeless? I was worried sick." They clear their throat. "And, look, say what you want about my mother, but she doesn't close her doors when people need help. I knew she would let them stay with us."
Uranium City, Canada. October, 2022. "Curfew is sunset on Fridays and eleven PM the rest of the week," Noel continued to explain, Misha following behind him as he opened and closed every cupboard in the kitchen just to briefly show what was in it. "Unless you're working a night shift, then your curfew is half an hour after your shift ends, but in practice you'll be the only one home at that time, so you just let yourself in and nobody knows when you really got home. I'll get your keys cut soon, I'm not doing anything on Sunday so I should be - that's Mother home."
Misha didn't even look certain what noise had alerted Noel to his mother's arrival. Perhaps he was simply overwhelmed by the flow of information. "Should I go?"
"What? No. I messaged her, she knows you're staying. Don't worry, she never kicks people out." He closed all of the kitchen cupboards and went to go meet his mother at the door, help her with the inconvenient bags of groceries she'd grabbed on her way home from work. "Mother, this is Misha, my friend from choir who needs a place to stay."
Misha stood still for a moment, then jumped into action, effortlessly taking all of the groceries. "Where do you want these?" Noel led him to the kitchen bench that had been unofficially designated as the resting place for groceries that they couldn't be bothered putting away yet. "I'll stay in the basement if you want me to. You don't have to know I'm here."
"What?" Noel's mother was appalled at the mere suggestion; it was clear from her voice. "No, you live here. You don't have to stay in the basement."
"You can keep your stuff in my room if you want," offered Noel, nodding. "Just so it's out of the way and you know it's safe." Then his eyes widened. "Oh, shit, I have to clean my room." He dashed off to hid bedroom, completely ignoring both his mother trying to scold him for his rude exit and Misha trying to assure him it was fine.
He "cleaned" his room rapidly, frantically, in a panic. It wasn't about cleanliness - it was about cleansing the scene of a crime, hiding as much evidence as possible. Things hidden under drawers and in the back of a wardrobe and under a pile of clothes he claimed he was too lazy to pick up - all of it was thrown onto his bedroom floor, just so he could see how much he had, how much space it would take up to hide all of it in one place if he could find somewhere safe. And once he was sure he'd retrieved all of it, hesitantly, he opened his school bag and began to pile things in - Misha would have no reason to check his school bag, and he could justify having it on him at all times.
Nail polish was safe, explainable; nail polish could stay in his room. Eyeliner, too, maybe, though that was pushing it a bit. Everything else had to go. Tubes of lipstick, lacy stockings, feminine wigs, the few dresses he owned - all of it shoved unceremoniously into a bag where he could find somewhere to put it later. His room was no longer a safe space to wear whatever he liked and pretend he was Monique Gibeau. Noel Gruber was a man and he had to stay that way, even in his own bedroom.
The student is silent for a few moments. "I had been crossdressing in secret, for ... a few years? One day when I was in town by myself I just grabbed a dress at a clothing store and from there I just couldn't stop." They clear their throat. "Until Misha came, of course."
"It's good that helping a person in need could bring you closer to God," says the priest evenly. "I understand that the threat of being found out led you to realise you were sinning."
"Huh? No, I just didn't want Misha to find out. And I especially didn't want them to tell anyone." A pause. "I really needed Misha to be on my side."
Uranium City, Canada. June, 2022. Noel was smirking but his heart was pounding. He understood, now, that the absolute worst thing he could do here was show weakness, of any kind. He would have tried to re-closet himself if he thought it would help but it wouldn't. High school bullies operated on the same principle as his father, who used to be capable of spending weeks on end telling him he needed to quit acting like such a girl and then spending weeks more telling him that he'd finally grown a pair. Doing what they wanted you to do would only ever draw attention to the fact that you didn't immediately do what they wanted, that you were somehow broken and incapable of intuitively knowing what you were supposed to be.
Noel didn't look over his shoulder, because that would be showing weakness, but he saw familiar movement out of the corner of his eye. This was it, he realised. There were no teachers or adults of any kind in his line of sight, and if they were, he wouldn't have been able to ask them to intervene because that would be showing weakness, and if he did ask, they probably would have made some excuse to stand by. He was going to get the ever-loving shit beaten out of him.
Post-war France, Monique Gibeau - Noel could get through this, without showing that it was hurting him, if he could focus on thinking about Monique. That was how he could stay safe. He was outnumbered and he didn't have a chance in Hell of getting out of this unscathed but Monique was giving into the fantasy of being loved. He was being grabbed and held down and he couldn't move but Monique would sing songs until the break of dawn because she didn't need to sleep. His vision was starting to blur after the third or fourth blow to the head but Monique would embrace a new man every night, instead of being the only out gay guy - probably the only queer person - in a violently homophobic small town.
Monique could be a woman. And confident. And straight. And whatever gender she wanted to be. This sort of shit would probably never happen to Monique.
But then there was a fight, someone being pulled away from him, and Noel's eyes were wide because this did not happen. People did not fight for him, people did not stand up for him. Even among his friends, if they could be considered friends, Constance wasn't confrontational in that way, Ocean kept reminding him that this wouldn't happen if he wasn't so needlessly open about it - her intentions were good, he was sure, but God could she be a bitch without meaning to sometimes - and Ricky couldn't even do anything, and besides, if it wasn't Noel getting bullied it would be Ricky and that made it pretty reasonable for Ricky to let himself fade into the background.
Stranger still, the kid was winning the fight. Despite being drastically outnumbered. He was tall and muscular and seemed to be overflowing with so much rage that the physical matchup was entirely irrelevant - emotionally, if nothing else, he could have kicked all of their asses with ease, and that seemed to translate to the real world somehow. Looking closer, Noel managed to recognise the kid - new kid, had showed up to a couple choir sessions but seemed more interested in rapping than chorial singing, Eastern European but Noel couldn't remember exactly where he'd come from. Perhaps he wasn't even queer, or an ally - very possibly he hadn't been in Uranium long enough to learn that Noel was very obviously gay and that was why this was happening. Perhaps he just didn't like seeing people get beaten up.
"And after that," the student continues, discomfort clear from their voice. "I couldn't risk Misha deciding I was - I don't know, too queer to be worth defending. Like, if they were going to decide I don't deserve to be beaten up if I'm cis and gay and a bit feminine, but doing anything too out-there with my gender would change things... I was finally starting to feel safe at school. I didn't even realise how much that was a big deal until it happened, and I couldn't lose it." They sigh. "So. Misha asked me for help and I let them crash on my couch because I owe them a favour and my mother's okay with it. And then I hid all my ... my Monique cosplay gear, and looked at myself in the mirror, and said, 'okay, Noel, this is it - no more pretending to be a woman in the middle of the night'." They clear their throat. "So then Misha moved in with me. And things were pretty good for a while."
Décazeville, France. November, 1930. Monique knew that this man wasn't really as in love with her as he claimed, but tonight, just tonight, she was letting herself give in to the fantasy. You have to take love where you can when you're a whore. It would probably be a matter of days, weeks if she was lucky, before their attempt at a relationship would turn sour - he would start hitting her, probably, men tended to do that. But Monique Gibeau had wads of cash in her bra and a knife in her hand and black charcoal in her heart and that meant you couldn't hit her. The last prick that tried that faded to black quickly enough. She was feminine, and her confidence wasn't fake, and she could fight back, and as soon as he tried anything, she would effortlessly -
"Noel!" His mother's voice snapped him out of his fantasies. "I said, can you help Misha find the seasonings?" His mother was visibly so busy preparing the food that Noel didn't have the heart to snap at her to deal with it herself.
Uranium City, Canada. October, 2022. Noel opened the pantry and squinted. "Top shelf. I can't reach it, but it's the one with the green lid."
Misha followed his gaze, took the jar from the shelf, and frowned. He looked at Noel's mother, who was around the same height as Noel, maybe a bit shorter. "Why do you put things on shelves you can't reach?"
"Force of habit. Father used to be able to reach it." Before he left, Noel didn't add bitterly, even though he wanted to. "Normally we just stand on a chair to reach it. Hey, this kitchen isn't really big enough for three people, I can handle the cooking if you like. You're a guest."
Misha raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm not a guest." Noel couldn't argue with that, Misha had clearly moved in, but he went to help his mother with dinner anyway. Misha stayed in the kitchen and started removing items from the top shelf, putting them where Noel or his mother could access them without needing to stand on a chair or get his assistance.
Misha was later caught taking a sneaky hit of a vape at the dinner table and Noel, in whispers when his mother was distracted, said he would tell on him unless he let Noel have a turn. After several minutes of violent coughing that made it obvious to his mother what was going on, Noel tried to claim that his lungs weren't that weak, and Misha rolled his eyes and tossed the vape into a nearby garbage can.
"Does God say anything about vaping?" the student asks, presently.
"It's frowned upon," says the priest.
"Right. Sorry about that. Anyway, I told myself, no more fantasizing about Monique. But it just ... happened. More and more." A pause. "I guess I needed some sort of outlet for ... I don't know. Everything?"
Décazeville, France. November, 1930. Blood. Blood all over Monique's hands, all over the pavement, all over her knife. She had just stuck it into that man's back - how many times now? Eight or nine? One more, for good measure. She left the knife in and stood up, preparing to run before the police could arrive. It was a pretty knife, but she had a feeling she wasn't going to be seeing it again.
Uranium City, Canada. October, 2022. Blood on the pavement, blood on Noel's hands, and he wasn't even sure how he had ended up on his hands and knees in the first place. Ocean raised an eyebrow at him, looking somewhere between annoyed and concerned, and said he'd managed to fall pretty badly. He must have tripped. Where had he been walking, again?
Décazeville, France. November, 1930. Monique told the officers that she had no idea where to find the missing person, but if the officers did find him, she'd really like them to ask him if he could return the knife, because she would have quite liked it back after the ten entrances to the man's back. This sort of comment should have gotten her arrested immediately, basically a murder conviction speedrun, but Monique walked away free because she was Monique, and Monique was the sort of person who could always get away with things.
Uranium City, Canada. November, 2022. Ricky poked Noel and he flinched violently. Then he felt bad for flinching because Ricky only ever did that when he had been trying to get someone's attention for several minutes and was rapidly running out of ideas. "Sorry," he muttered quickly. "What's up?"
Ricky was giving him an incredulous look. "Are you trying to get a detention speedrun?" he signed. "You're not going to be able to get away with not doing any work." Noel looked down at his math work assigned for the lesson and realised he hadn't done any of it. He looked up at the clock and realised the lesson was nearly over.
"Shit," he mumbled. "I zoned out."
"You've been zoning out a lot lately," Ricky signed, and Noel's eyes widened because if Ricky of all people was scolding him for zoning out - Ricky who went through life with his head in the clouds, who was more rarely zoned in than out, who would complete as much work as possible in the first five minutes of class and then move on to thinking about cats and aliens - Noel had to take that as a bad sign. "Are you okay?"
Noel's hand instinctively moves to the side of his chair, where his bag is sitting on the floor next to his desk and he feels a need to keep it safe. "Yeah," he mutters quickly. "Yeah, I'm okay. I've just been ... really needing to zone out lately." It wasn't a lie, not an exaggeration in the slightest. He needed to imagine Monique just like he needed to breathe.
Décazeville, France. December, 1930. It was snowing but Monique still wore her sinful dress, more skin exposed to the cold and less left to the imagination. Black fabric, white snow, red blood - the unholy trifecta. She was immune to the cold in every way that mattered and nobody had to see the illness growing in her lungs from being constantly on the verge of death - from cold, from drugs, from despair - and her immune system having no chance to recuperate. Men walked past her and thought she was some sort of otherworldly being unaffected by temperature. She had an endless stream of men who would fall over themselves to hold her in their arms, and she had freedom, and she had confidence, and she had control over her own fucking life and she had safety. Safety? She wasn't safe. But she had safety.
Uranium City, Canada. November, 2022. Blurry sheet music and muffled voices. "Poet." A concerned mumble in the instrumental break. "Noel." A hand curling around his wrist as only one of the tenors sung their part. Noel's voice wasn't working; he couldn't even keep track of where they were up to in the song. "Hey, stop the music, I think something's wrong."
A pause. Then Ocean stopped singing and marched over to the laptop that was responsible for playing the backing track, pressing the spacebar to stop the music. "Noel? Are you okay?"
Noel didn't know how to answer. His lips wouldn't work. The whole choir was staring at him, concerned, expectant. His legs were starting to shake.
"Is he having a panic attack?" Constance's voice. Noel didn't have anything to be panicking about but he physically couldn't speak to assure them that he was fine. Maybe he wasn't fine.
"Misha." Ocean's voice. "Sit him down, in case he's going to faint. Noel, can you hear us?" Noel managed to nod, and he managed to make his legs move when Misha led him to a chair, and he couldn't really manage much else. "Have you eaten? Drank water?" He nodded again. "Look up, Ricky's talking to you." Noel was looking down. When had Ricky gotten in front of him?
"Five things you can see," Ricky signed. Noel blinked rapidly. "Ground yourself. Pay attention to what's around you. What are five things you can see?"
Monique, Monique, Monique - Noel couldn't see Monique. She wasn't real and she never would be and Noel's chest was tightening for reasons he couldn't explain. His eyes darted around the room, looking for something that could ground him, but it was all just reminders that he was stuck in Uranium fucking City. He was never going to live in post-war France and he was never going to embrace a new man every night and he was never going to be a fucked up girl, only a pathetic teenage boy. Was this supposed to be making him feel better somehow? His vision was blurring again.
"Oh my God," he blurted out, finally finding his voice. "Everything in this room sucks." And with that final statement said, he buried his face in his hands and started crying.
"Oh," mumbled Ocean quietly. Ocean didn't swear but sometimes she said oh in a way that sounded like she wanted to say something else. "Um. Is he okay? Should we call someone, or something ... ?"
"His mother's at work." Misha. "Poet? I'm here. Talk to me." Noel didn't even know how to begin to talk about the unjustified crushing feeling that came with realising his real life would simply never be as exciting as the fantasies that had been distracting him so much lately. He thought it would be better for him to be dead than talking to Misha about how he wanted to be a fucked up girl. There was some sort of connection now, between Misha's approval and safety - Noel was safe as long as Misha thought he was worth protecting, Misha was safe as long as he wasn't opposed to sharing a house with Noel. Safety was nice but in some ways the looming fear of losing it was worse than not having it to begin with.
The choir practice ended early. Noel suspected it was Ricky to suggest that but he wasn't in a state to even really look at anyone, let alone understand sign language. Constance brought up that it didn't seem like a great idea to leave Noel alone and Misha and Ocean got into a brief argument over which of them was more equipped to be the one to stay with him. Misha won on the grounds that he was going to be walking home with Noel anyway because, while he technically had keys to let himself in, he wasn't quite comfortable letting himself into Noel's house and being home alone while he stayed at school. Staying at home when Noel had work was uncomfortable enough and a necessary evil that he only tolerated because it usually meant Noel was grabbing him something at Taco Bell on the way home.
"Hey." Misha again, moving a chair to sit opposite Noel. "You can talk to me. If you want to." Noel wiped his eyes so that he could glance around the room to see that his school bag was where he had left it, untouched and safe. "Or - Or we can go to your place. Or we can stay here until you feel better. Is your choice." He was wringing his hands, looking nervous. "We've been worried about you, Poet."
Noel sniffed. "Poet?"
Misha shrugged. "I give everyone nicknames. It felt right." Noel wasn't sure he had ever let Misha see a poem in his life. "How can I help you?"
Noel would have preferred to just sweep this whole mess under the rug entirely and never even entertain the idea of needing help. But he and Misha were intertwined at this point and he couldn't deny it. Misha, it seemed, viewed help as a right and not a privilege - that was why he stepped in when he saw Noel being bullied without even thinking to ask him if it was a problem, that was why he burst into choir saying openly and unashamedly that he needed help. And Misha, clearly, was not going to let this go without doing something, and if Noel didn't find something he could do then he would just come up with a solution himself and Noel's mother would probably end up being dragged into the mess.
So, hesitantly, Noel answered, "...Can you just give me a hug?"
"So..." The student takes a deep breath. "I stopped singing during choir practice. I insulted the room we were in. I made us pause choir practice early. And then I went home and lied to my mother about how my day was because I didn't want her to worry." They clear their throat, nervous. "And, of course, this whole time I was engaging in sinful fantasies - being a woman, tempting men, and even violence and murder - through my daydreaming."
The priest frowns. "It sounds like your crossdressing and indulging in your fantasies was allowing the Devil to take a hold in your mind. And what you experienced in choir that day - what your classmates saw as a panic attack - was actually the result of conflict between impure thoughts and a soul that wanted to be saved."
The student makes a noise that cannot be interpreted as anything other than a snicker. "...Yeah, I guess you could say that."
Uranium City, Canada. November, 2022. The issue with having a highly visible unexplained panic attack in the middle of choir practice was that people simply wouldn't stop fucking asking if you were okay. Noel had to be okay. There was no other way he could be. He had no right to be so crushed by the absence of Monique - a person who had never existed in the first place - in his life, so he simply wasn't crushed. He was fine. He was fine. Everyone asking if he was okay was just getting on his nerves, was all.
Choir was wrapping up and Noel was going through his school bag like an absolute maniac. "Come on," he muttered to himself, as everyone else was busy packing their belongings up instead of frantically unpacking them. "I know I bought it."
"What are you looking for?" asked Ocean.
"My work shirt," he answered through gritted teeth. He was already dreading having to work until midnight at his stupid fucking job, and then having to go through the next day at school sleep-deprived as all hell, and he really didn't need to get yelled at on top of that because he was going to be late going home to grab his uniform. "I'm sure I remembered it this morning."
"Maybe you forgot it because you're stressed," suggested Misha.
"I'm not stressed!" Noel insisted quickly, too quickly. "Mish. What do you want from Taco Bell?"
Misha blinked. "Now?"
"No, in eight hours."
"How am I supposed to know eight hours in -"
"Just tell me." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Oh, forget it, just text me if you're still awake. Let yourself in, Mother's working late too so you'll probably be home alone all night." Go away wasn't quite the intended message, but it was the one Misha received. He left the room, and the rest of the choir soon followed.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Ricky asked as soon as they were alone together. Noel very narrowly avoided the temptation to throw something at him.
Noel was okay, because Noel had to be okay, because Noel was not allowed to think about why he might not be. "I will be as soon as I find that fucking shirt." He knew it was in the bag somewhere, it was just hiding from him, the little shit of a shirt. Well, the joke was on it - he would give it nowhere to hide. He started taking everything out of his bag, piles of workbooks slamming onto the desk next to him, fistfuls of fabric grabbed indiscriminately and tossed behind him so that he could differentiate between the shirt he was looking for and the hoodies he'd forgotten to take out of his bag when they were all laid out on the floor, any miscellaneous objects thrown at a wall just so he could do something with the terrified fury burning in his veins.
It wasn't until he heard the click of plastic against plastic - a lipstick tube against the whiteboard at the front of the room - that he remembered that he wasn't alone in the room and this was a terrible idea.
"It's for Ocean," he said quickly, instinctively, not looking at Ricky - Ricky couldn't yell at him to pay attention, if he wasn't looking at Ricky then Ricky wasn't saying anything, and yes it was a dick move but sometimes being a dick was safe. But Ocean was barely five foot two and Noel wasn't that short and the black, lacy thing on the carpet was decidedly not something Ocean would wear. So he tried again, "It's my mother's," but those were two obviously mutually exclusive lies, and Noel hadn't even begun to think of why he would be carrying dresses for either of those women, and, oh, God, he was bad at this.
So, Noel started picking up the things he'd thrown. He found the shirt. Suddenly it didn't seem so important.
"Listen," he began, still not looking at Ricky as he began to pile things back into his bag. "First of all, it's none of your business what I have in my own bag, or what I do in my own time, so lay off." Ricky still hadn't said anything, not that Noel was giving him a chance to. "Second of all, Misha's crashing on my couch, and that means he's in my house, like, all the time, and I haven't had anyone in my house except for Mother and sometimes Ocean, like, since Father left, so this is a lot for me to adjust to. And..." He gulped, finally looking at Ricky. "Third of all, please don't tell anyone, oh, God, please, Ricky please."
Ricky just blinked at him a couple of times, then signed, "You've been keeping all of that in your bag?" His face looked more concerned than anything else, and when Noel opened his mouth to defend himself further, Ricky cut him off, "If your bullies find that, you're in deep shit."
Noel had to admit that Ricky had a point. In fact, the thought was making the blood drain from his face. But there was nothing he could do. "If Misha finds them I'll be in deeper shit."
"What?" Ricky was frowning, maybe concerned or maybe just confused, "He's cool with..." But then he seemed to decide it wasn't worth trying to convince Noel of, and cut himself off. "Look. Do you want me to hide them at my place until you're comfortable keeping them at home?" He rubbed the back of his neck, seeming nervous, before continuing. "I don't want you to get hurt..."
Noel stared down at him with wide eyes and his heart pounded. "What? No. Don't be ridiculous. Why would I ever trust you with that?"
"I ... I don't want ... I just ..." The line was starting to blur between signing and confused arm flailing. Noel's vision was starting to blur, too. "Please. I'll keep it safe. I don't want you hurt." Maybe, just maybe, Ricky was being genuine. "I already - There's a specific place I have in my room. Where I hide girl stuff." He offered Noel a smile. Noel blinked.
Then, Noel took a deep breath. "If you make me regret this, I promise you... I will lay out your organs on this table in alphabetical order. And I will invert your ribcage. And I will replace your vocal cords with guitar strings, and then to make that punishment more effective I'll tie your hands up with guitar strings so you can't sign. And then I'll replace the wheels on your wheelchair with fucking kitchen plates."
"Understood."
"So you can add 'threatening the disabled' to the list. Are you writing these sins down?" Before the priest can answer, the student continues talking. "Okay, I should ask. How does the church feel about transgenderism?"
The priest considers before answering. "We believe that rejecting the body you were born with is a rejection of God," he says carefully. "And that God created a man and a woman, and no other genders. But we also believe that God loves everyone, and that our job as Christians is only to spread the word of God - not to spread hate, against anyone."
"Ah," says the student, a grimace clear in their voice. "You see, well, I've kind of failed at every possible part of that. Ahem, a couple of months before the Misha thing..."
Uranium City, Canada. May, 2022. It was probably about four or five in the morning, some ungodly hour before the sunrise. Noel wasn't even sure why he was awake in the first place. All he knew was that Ocean - who, being a psychopath, always pulled an all-nighter to study all Saturday night and through Sunday morning - had texted him at about one AM asking if she could come over, and, for some reason, he had been so restless and so bored and so alone that he frantically took off his makeup and got changed and told her she was free to come.
Ocean was hunched over a coffee table, ostensibly studying. Noel was lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling. "Question," Ocean began, and Noel rolled his eyes pre-emptively.
"Are you doing one of your secret crosswords again?"
Ocean blinked. "What?" Her laugh sounded slightly forced. "What do you mean?"
"That thing you do," he answered irritably. "Where you're doing a crossword, and you need help with it, but you don't want to admit that you're doing a crossword, because you're insanely competitive and you don't want people to know the crossword exists until you're done with it because you don't want anyone to finish it before you. So you just ask these absurdly specific questions that couldn't be about anything except a crossword, while refusing to admit that's why you're asking."
"Don't be ridiculous," Ocean scoffed. "I'm not doing that."
Noel looked up and narrowed his eyes at her. "Are you sure? Because if it's an obvious crossword question, I'll refuse to help."
"It's not an obvious crossword question."
"Okay. Go ahead."
"Do you know the name of a location where the name has eight letters, the seventh letter is N, and there's a palace there which was at some point lived in by Anne of Cleves, the fourth wife of Henry the Eighth?"
Noel glared at her. "Richmond."
"Thank you," said Ocean, before writing it into the crossword.
Noel once again checked his phone for notifications. He had none, because nobody was awake at this time of night. Or morning, technically. "I've fallen down this Twitter rabbithole lately. I can't tell if it's an elaborate ARG or just some teenager shitposting."
"Language," scolds Ocean.
"What am I supposed to say? Shirt-posting? Crap-posting? You won't die if you have to hear a swear." He rolled his eyes. "They've just been posting the most incomprehensible shit. Like..." He unlocked his phone and started scrolling through the Twitter account in question. "Yesterday, at eight PM, they tweeted, 'she catfherine on my aragon till i create the church of engand'. No explanation."
"I'm impressed by how you managed to pronounce all those typos out loud."
"It doesn't even make sense, it should be 'Anne on my Boleyn', the Church of England was about her. And then before that they tweeted - 'want to. Eatf dirt.Eating urfanium' and I have no idea what that means. And then the next tweet is just a poem about how their cat needs to stop demanding food when their bowl is visibly full."
Ocean turned to him, looking amused. "Have you been scrolling through this Twitter instead of studying? How did you find this account, anyway?"
"That's the other thing!" he answered, sitting up slightly. "It showed up in my recommended accounts, like, next to Misha's Twitter. Misha and I have nothing in common, so I figure I just got recommended him based on location services, so you'd think this person lives in Uranium City too, right? But I have no idea who they are."
"Well, do they have a name anywhere on their account?"
Noel suddenly grimaced. "Well... Their display name is 'savannah, she/her'. But they also have that trans flag emoji next to their name, so there's no knowing what their real name is." He sat up properly, frowning. "Is it bad that I kind of hate trans people?"
"I don't think so," said Ocean neutrally. "I mean, you're supposed to accept the body you're born with, aren't you?"
"I don't know. It's not, like, a religious thing, it's just - it's weird. And I think it makes gay people look bad. You know, when I first came out, I overheard Father saying, 'Well, at least he's not telling us he's transgender or anything'. And then he started being really homophobic, and, I don't know, maybe it was because he thought I was going to be trans." He sighed. "And, like, whatever, if you want to be called a girl I'll go along with that. But I'm not using plural pronouns for one person. It's just not grammatically correct."
Ocean cleared her throat. "Um, actually, singular they pronouns are used outside of trans people all the time and most scholars agree that it's acceptable and easier than 'he/she' or any other way to refer to a hypothetical person of indeterminate gender." After an awkward pause, she added, "I think 'nonbinary' people are just doing it for attention, though."
"Of course they're doing it for attention!" Noel, inexplicably and unjustifiably, was wide awake now. "I think all the trans people are, honestly. Like - what, you're a man and you want to wear dresses? The idea of having to be a man for your whole life makes you want to kill yourself? Welcome to the real world, dude, everyone feels like that."
"Huh." Ocean's eyes widened. "I didn't realise guys felt like that."
"Of course guys feel like that. Dresses are amazing. Not that I'd know." He cleared his throat. "Trans people just seem so entitled. Like, what, just because you feel bad, we have to call you whatever you want to be called and let you wear whatever you want? What makes you so much better than everyone else in the world, huh?"
"They act entitled to hormones, too," said Ocean. "Make a big fuss about how it's 'lifesaving medical care' even though there's nothing physically wrong with them. Honestly, it's a waste of taxpayer dollars."
"They always seem to have the biggest victim complex. Picking a set of pronouns just so they can claim transphobia when people don't use them." Suddenly full of energy, he stood up on the couch. "Ooh, look at me! I'm transgender and I identify as an attack helicopter! You have to call me they and them and he and she and if you ever make a mistake, you're personally attacking me." His voice grew even higher pitched and more dramatic, his body language becoming theatrical, until he wasn't sure if he was parodying Savannah or some hypothetical caricature or himself. "Gender is a feeling! You can identify however you want! I'm better than everyone because I've decided I'm going to walk around in a dress and if you look at me twice I'll sue you, you transphobic -"
"Are you making fun of trans people?" The blood drained from Noel's face and his eyes widened. That was his mother's voice, coming from behind him. Why was she even awake? "That's not very nice, you know." Noel sat back down on the couch and deflated as though he was the one being made fun of.
"I thought my mother was just being a bitch," the student continues. "Pardon my French. But..." They take a deep breath. "It turns out it's different when you're making fun of a close friend instead of some random Twitter account you stumbled onto, you know? Even when you don't actually know they're trans, even if it's just ... having a weird hobby in common."
"Mm," says the priest. "So, your friend Ricky. Were you able to warn him against the dangers of crossdressing and rejecting the roles God has given you?"
The student turns sheepish. "...Not exactly."
Uranium City, Canada. December, 2022. A frantic cleaning session - you never really realised how inaccessible your house was until a wheelchair user was coming over. Noel had always avoided inviting Ricky over because his house was small, and usually messy, and the walls were probably asbestos and Noel had few enough friends without giving them reason to judge him. But, well, Noel only knew that Ricky would think of his house as small because he knew the Potts' house was big, and he knew that because of an excruciating gaming session in which he also learned that all fourteen cats had very loud bells. How anybody in that house got any sleep was a mystery. Noel did not want to repeat that experience, so his house it was.
The doorbell rang. "That'll be him." Anything that hadn't been put away was simply shoved onto a table or against a wall to clear out a decent-sized walkway. "I'll let him in, you relax, thanks for helping me clean."
Noel's mother frowned. "You seem nervous."
"I'm not nervous," said Noel, too quickly. Quickly enough for his mother to get entirely the wrong idea and smirk at him.
"You know, you can tell me if you've got a -"
"I don't like him like that!" Noel hissed, blood rushing to his face at the accusation. "We're friends. That's all. Now leave us alone." He frantically patted down his pockets for the keys to let Ricky in. "Don't come into my room without knocking while he's here." It was a simple enough boundary, one his mother would respect without expecting a justification for it, but he still had to glare at her to make her wipe the intolerable smirk off her face.
It wasn't until they were sitting together on Noel's bed that Ricky actually dared to unzip the backpack he had bought with him. You could tell immediately what belonged to who - Ricky had none of the ladylike black dresses that Noel coveted, only girlish things, pastel-coloured skirts and crop tops with silly designs and pink headbands with cat ears on them. Ricky seemed to feel similarly towards the one singular colour that Noel's secret wardrobe featured. Noel was fully expecting to be asked whose funeral it was and fully prepared to respond that it would be Ricky's if he didn't shut up, but instead, Ricky signed, "You dress like you're having your emo phase late in life because you were busy being a theatre kid when you were supposed to have it." How was Noel even supposed to respond to that?! He was still a theatre kid! "Hey, calm down, it's okay. No judgement."
Noel glared at him. "Once again, tell anyone about this and you're dead."
"You think I'm going to put a target on my own back just to get people to bully you?" Noel rubbed the back of his neck nervously, unwilling to admit that he sort of did think that. Ricky shoved a cat ear headband toward him. "Lighten up a little."
"I am not wearing that."
"You know, they say black cats are the most romantic."
"Shut up." A piece of light grey fabric caught his eye because it didn't look like something he or Ricky would wear voluntarily, and when he fished it out to look at it properly, he found it was a skirt with the words MET THE VIRGIN MARY, HE'S BLACK written on it in clumsy black letters. "What the hell is this?"
Ricky turned sheepish. "I'm still working out the rest of that outfit. Do you know where I can get, like, fabric paint in the colour of Hatsune Miku's hair?"
"You know what? I don't even want to know." He continued to go through the piles of fabric and his eyes widened. "You shoplifted a bra, too? That's too far, man. You're, like, an actual freak."
"Okay, rude."
Noel realised that he was being a dick. And that he was being a dick specifically to prolong the thing he had invited Ricky over for in the first place. "Right. Sorry. Um." He chose his favourite dress from the pile. He realised he probably wasn't supposed to have a favourite dress. He realised his hands were shaking. "Look away." Ricky was probably the only guy in St Cassian's who hadn't seen him shirtless - the only guy who had never entered the PE changerooms - but Noel wanted to preserve the shred of privacy he still had.
Getting changed had never been so terrifying before. He had to keep reminding himself that the presence of a second person in the room, even the fact that his mother was awake and home and could in theory come in at any moment, was a feature and not a bug. Every part of this felt forbidden. But, well, Noel couldn't deny that he looked good when he put it on. There was something powerful about, after God knows how long of only being able to look good in the privacy of his own room, finally having another person who might compliment him, validate him.
He turned to face Ricky. Pastel blue skirt, pink cat ears - he should have expected that, really. "You look great."
"Thanks," Ricky signed. "So do you."
Noel's heart swelled at the compliment but he also had the sudden, inexplicable feeling that Ricky was getting too close to his heart, that he needed some sort of distraction before he could find the truth. "I can't believe you shave your legs."
Ricky raised an eyebrow. "You don't?"
"I like my leg hair. And it looks like so much effort!" He gestured to a patch just below Ricky's knee that was covered in tiny cuts. "You're not even good at it."
"Okay, again, rude."
Noel was halfway through deciding whether or not he was being a dick this time when he heard the door open. Fuck. He had told his mother not to come in without -
"Oh, hey Space Jesus, didn't realise you were here."
That was Misha. Misha wasn't even supposed to be home for another hour but Noel supposed that, what with this being his house and all now, he had the right to be here whenever he wanted. And he was even storing most of his clothes in Noel's wardrobe. Of course he had the right to come in. Noel hadn't even thought to tell him to knock first.
"Close the door!" Noel hissed immediately, frantic, but before Misha could even begin to do so, Noel was sprinting past him and slamming the door closed himself. "Fuck, dude, have you ever heard of privacy?! You asshole. Listen, if you ever say a word about this, to anybody, you will fucking regret it, I swear to God."
"Okay," said Misha.
"I'm serious," Noel continued. "If you tell anybody, I'll take out your organs and re-arrange them in alphabetical order, and I'll invert your ribcage, and I'll replace your vocal cords with guitar strings, and - and nobody will even care what rumours you want to spread. Okay?" He shot a glare toward Ricky that sent the message of just go along with this and Ricky looked at him like he was positively insane. "This is actually completely normal. Okay? Men just get together in bedrooms to crossdress sometimes and it's completely socially accepted. And you just don't understand that because you're not from here, but if you try to spread rumours at school, everyone will laugh at you, I promise. If you have a problem with this, you're the only person in Uranium to feel that way."
"I don't have a problem with it," said Misha, sitting down on the bed. "Hey, if this is socially okay here, do you have skirts in my size?"
Noel's heart was still pounding to the point where he thought he might actually keel over and die. Hesitantly, he sat back down, between Ricky and Misha. "Okay. Sorry for calling you an asshole. I didn't mean it, I just panicked."
"What's there to panic about?" asked Misha, and Noel realised maybe his lie had worked too well. Then he heard laughing next to him.
"Good one," Ricky signed with hands that clearly wanted to slam against the mattress with hysterical laughter. "Did you see his face?" He reached over Noel's head to hi-five Misha. Noel began to feel as though he was the butt of a joke.
"Sorry, sorry," Misha finally muttered, throwing up his hands in surrender, still laughing himself. "I should have tried to seriously reassure you, but when you started lying, I just thought it would be so funny to pretend I don't see what big deal is, see how you react." Noel blinked several times. "It's okay. I've known about Savannah for ages."
Noel suddenly felt like he needed alcohol, or maybe a lie down, or maybe both. Desperately, he stared at both of his friends, "Savannah?!"
Pale hands sheepishly signed, "I hadn't told him about that part yet."
Misha's eyes widened. "Oh. Shit. Sorry."
The student is bitter now. "It turns out, they were just transgendering behind my back the whole time."
Uranium City, Canada. September, 2022. Misha was in the middle of his workout routine when his phone buzzed and, even though he no longer had a girlfriend texting him regularly, he still felt compelled to stop and check it immediately. The friend saved in his contacts as Space Jesus had sent him a message and, upon checking it, he found that it consisted entirely of an image of a dog looking at the camera, with text overlayed onto the picture saying I know what you are.
Misha sent back a text asking Ricky what he was talking about and got a "lmao" response almost immediately, quickly followed by "so how was your move?"
Misha responded, "What move?" and went back to his workout routine. There was a pause long enough that Ricky might have decided to give up on whatever joke he was making, before two more notifications arrived in quick succession.
"i saw ur twitter location changed"
"from he/him to he/they".
Oh. So that was what that was about. Misha wasn't in the mood for a slew of questions about their gender so they changed the subject just slightly as they messaged back, "how did you find my twitter?"
The response was very quick. "u know what they say about trans girl hackers lmao :3". What was that even supposed to mean? Ricky had a weird sense of humour sometimes. Misha went back to their workout routine.
Three minutes later they stopped exercising, went back to their phone, re-read their text messages, and their eyes widened. "wait"
Two messages, again, in quick succession.
"took u long enough lmao"
"savannah she/her"
The priest taps his fingers against the wood, not entirely able to wrap his head around the story so far. The student continues, "And, I mean, considering I was a proud transphobe before, I think I took her coming out pretty well."
Uranium City, Canada. December, 2022. "So you're just ... being trans?!" Noel choked out. "Like, unironically?!"
"How would you be trans ironically?" asked Misha.
Noel ignored him. "Aren't you scared?!" He looked at Savannah like she was suggesting something incredibly stupid. "Like, why would you be trans?! What if someone just decides to beat you up for it?!"
"...Then I guess I'll get beaten up?" Savannah signed in response, looking vaguely uncomfortable with the topic even being bought up. "Why do you think I'm closeted? I only told you because I trust you."
"And because I fucked up," added Misha. "But I hope mostly because she trusts you."
"I mean..." Noel frowned, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "I'm not going to, like, out you or anything, but - I'm not totally on board with this whole trans thing?" He gestured vaguely. "Like, I'm not sure I believe in gender as a separate thing to sex."
"That's funny," signed Savannah without hesitation. "Because I don't remember having gender with your mother." Noel glared at her.
"I had gender with Noel's mother," said Misha.
Both Savannah and Noel turned to face them in blunt shock. "What?!" choked Noel, sounding very personally betrayed. "What does that mean?!"
Uranium City, Canada. October, 2022. Misha didn't think anything of it at the time, but it wasn't until Noel was at work that his mother approached Misha. "Ahem. Misha, is it?" Misha nodded. "There's something I think I should ask you."
"Go ahead," said Misha.
"I, ah..." There was a tint of red to her cheeks. "I don't really understand all of what the kids are doing nowadays, but, um, I'm trying really hard to be supportive. Do you ... have any pronouns?" Misha blinked. "I just, um, a lot of kids your age have pronouns these days, and I want to be respectful, but I'm just never sure how to -"
"Oh," said Misha. "Uh, they/them or he/him. Either one works." They opened a cupboard. "Hey, which plates am I allowed to use?"
Uranium City, Canada. December, 2022. Misha and Savannah were both laughing hysterically and everyone was fully aware that having gender with Noel's mother was simply the most insane wording possible to annoy Noel. Noel glared at Misha. "I hate you."
The student is silent for a few moments. The priest is developing a headache.
"And from there I kind of had to accept her," the student finally continues. "I mean. I was still secretly wearing dresses when Mother was out of the house and they both knew, they had perfect blackmail material. So when they told me to stop being a dick I just had to apologise and knock it off." They clear their throat. "You know, here's the thing. Before all that, I was fantasizing about Monique all the time, as a substitute for not actually being able to be her. But now that I could be myself at home again, I was ... just kind of retreating more and more into my own head anyway. Like it wasn't safe to be in the real world." They force a snicker. "And, of course, the whole time Mish and Sav are trying to reign in my assholery while I'm barely paying attention to anything, let alone criticism."
Décazeville, France. December, 1930. It was snowing and Monique, as usual, was wearing so little she may as well not bother with clothing at all; but she didn't need to. She could huddle for warmth, because she was Monique Gibeau and she could embrace a new man every night. She was letting another man get close to her, the Slavic man who kept offering money for a night with her. She was giving into the fantasy; she was pretending that somebody could actually love her, that she could let down her walls. But she couldn't. Hubris would be her downfall, and thinking she could be worthy of love and safety was flying a little too close to the sun, and the hand she used to caress his body was burning.
"Noel!"
Uranium City, Canada. December, 2022. Noel's hand had been resting on a hot metal surface for probably too long and his manager was telling him that there was a customer he had to serve.
Furiously shaking his burnt hand, he went to serve the customer - customers always came first, he could deal with the injury later. But when he got to the counter he saw a familiar face and his eyes widened. "What are you doing here, young ma..." He caught himself just in time. "...Maddening person."
"Nice save," Savannah signed with a straight face. "You still have to put a dollar in the misgendering jar." A dollar? Noel swore it was twenty-five cents the last time he checked. That made more sense, considering the swear jar that this concept was based on would only charge him ten cents per fuck, but of course Savannah was financially extorting him now. Even so, he fished around in his pockets for a dollar.
"What are you doing here?" Noel asked again.
"Getting Taco Bell," answered Savannah. "Didn't expect to see you here, actually. It's nice, though - having a cashier who understands sign. Makes things way easier." Then she frowned. "Why are you working today?"
Noel put on his most dramatic bitter face, a crude impersonation of a tired old man but with the energy of a teen younger than himself. "Well, thanks to selfish brats such as yourself who have no respect for the sanctity of holidays, humble establishments such as ourselves simply have no choice but to remain open on Christmas Day, and it falls on the innocent workers such as myself to feed your greedy, disrespectful - oh, shit, dude, don't actually feel bad, I'm joking." He broke character as soon as he saw some sort of genuine guilt on Savannah's face. "It's cool. I don't celebrate Christmas and I get double pay on public holidays. This is basically free money for me."
"Nice," signed Savannah, recovering quickly. "That means you can afford to be more generous with the misgendering jar."
"Oh, shut it," Noel snapped, but then he remembered he was at work, and that only his side of the conversation was intelligible to his coworkers which meant his friendly teasing could be coming across very differently out of context. "Sorry, I'm at work. I don't think you came to Taco Bell to have the cashier degrade you and give you money." He leaned over the counter, hands dangling over the edge - he wasn't allowed to give a customer money, not at work, but if Savannah just happened to grab the dollar from his hand for the misgendering jar, that was out of his control. "How can I help you?"
Before ordering, Savannah asked, "What happened to your hand?" Noel couldn't explain why he froze up.
Décazeville, France. January, 1931. One of the other hookers was giving Monique trouble and, since leaving wasn't an option, Monique had to teach her a lesson somehow. That girl was an absolute menace ... Showing up to restaurants just to surprise Monique, pouring drinks onto Monique's carpet, and overall getting too close to the truth. Monique had a secret, a secret even darker than that murder she'd committed a while back, and she would be dead if the hooker found out and started telling people. So, even though it was cruel, Monique had to hurt anybody who dared to get close to her. She had to drive people away before they could learn the truth.
Uranium City, Canada. January, 2023. "I'm gonna have to stop inviting Savannah over," Noel complained, lying down on his bed and staring at the ceiling. "You know, last week, they just came into my room, poured chocolate milk directly onto the carpet, and left without saying anything." Misha, standing in the doorway, opened their mouth to protest but Noel cut them off, "I know they're mute, but man, if there was ever a time for them to fucking say something..."
"She," corrected Misha reflexively.
Noel frowned. "Huh?"
"She came into your room, she's mute, if there was ever a time for her to say something. Savannah doesn't use they/them pronouns." They frowned. "Why did she pour chocolate milk onto the floor?"
Noel huffed. "Well, what if I don't want to call them she?"
"Then you're being a dick," said Misha, before leaving the room.
Noel's eyes widened and he leapt out of bed. "Wait!" He raced down the hallway before Misha could get too far away. "Okay, okay, I'm being a dick! I'll stop! I'll call her she."
Décazeville, France. February, 1931. The Slavic man was getting closer to Monique, and she acted as confident as ever but deep down, she was terrified. The closer they got, the more inevitable it would be for him to find out her secret. Monique kept one hand on his thigh and another gripped around her knife and she calmed her pounding heart by telling herself that, if he took it badly, she would simply kill him. The last man to find out had taken it rather badly, but, well, apparently he hadn't heard that you should never mess with Monique. Ten times in his back. Any amount of violence was justified if it prevented word from getting out about the well-kept secret that Monique hadn't been born as a woman.
Uranium City, Canada. February, 2023. "This is a really uncomfortable plotline," Savannah signed, frowning at Noel. "And the fact that you added this right after I came out makes me wonder if you have some weird views about me that you need to unpack."
Noel scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous. It's not based on you. I made her trans to make her more relatable to me." Something was dawning on Savannah's face, and Noel rushed to correct himself, "Not that I'm trans! It's just - I think we all have some things about ourselves that we want to keep secret. And we all feel like we have to push people away sometimes, because we're scared of them getting too close to the truth." He rubbed the back of is neck nervously. "It's not really about her being trans, that's just ... a metaphor for being scared of yourself."
"Okay," says Savannah. "I might actually get attacked if someone finds out I'm trans. And unlike your OC I can't just commit murder in self-defense. So that metaphor came across as pretty tactless."
"I came up with that plotline at one in the morning on my third day in a row working night shifts and then having to go to school in the morning, Savannah. I planned the whole thing out while running my hand under cold water because I'd burned myself again and it hurt too badly to pretend it was fine. I wasn't even actually doing anything for a customer to justify burning myself, I was just meant to be cleaning the cooking equipment, but I got distracted thinking about Monique again and when I came back to reality I had been touching the same piece of hot metal for so long that it really fucking hurt and I just had to stare at a wall for ten minutes while running my hand under cold water, and that was another ten minutes of staying at work when I was already staying late on a night shift, so please forgive me if the ideas I came up with during that time don't exactly hold up now that I'm well-rested." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration, tugging at his scalp. "I'm trying, okay?! I'm fucking trying. I'm sorry. I promise, I'm trying."
The student is silent. Uncomfortable. The priest takes it upon himself to speak up. "It sounds like you were really trying to understand and respect what your friends were doing, even though you knew it was leading all of you down a dark path." He remembers another aspect from the story. "Do you think you're like your mother in that regard?"
The student laughs. "Oh, no. God, no. We, ahem ... We definitely handled the trans thing in... Very different ways."
Uranium City, Canada. May, 2022. "Are you making fun of trans people?" The blood drained from Noel's face and his eyes widened. That was his mother's voice, coming from behind him. Why was she even awake? "That's not very nice, you know." Noel sat back down on the couch and deflated as though he was the one being made fun of.
"But Ms Gruber!" Ocean protested immediately, a whine in her voice. "They're a drain on society! A waste of taxpayer dollars!"
"No," snapped Noel's mother, walking to sit down on the chair opposite the couch so she could face both of them. "That isn't true, and you shouldn't be saying things like that about a vulnerable group of people. You should know better. You should both know better."
Noel rolled his eyes emphatically. "Mother, you're ruining our kvetch session!"
"Some things need to be ruined!" She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You know I don't tolerate bigotry in this house."
Without really thinking about it - just the first thing that popped into his mind in a desperate attempt to reverse the dynamic of this conversation so he wouldn't be the one under attack for his actions - Noel snapped, "You tolerated it from Father." It was clear immediately from her face that this was a low blow, so he decided to go lower. "But I guess you would tolerate anything from him, wouldn't you?"
The room was deathly silent. Ocean started to pack up her study gear, clearly hoping to leave, and Noel's mother gestured for her to sit back down. Noel braced himself for whatever was going to come next. His mother didn't hit him, didn't ever yell at him, had never been abusive before. But there was a first time for everything and, frankly, Noel was kind of asking to get hit.
But Noel's mother didn't move to hit him. She didn't even raise her voice. She just took a deep breath, and then sighed, and then muttered, "I'm sorry, Noel." Why couldn't she just hit him? Then he'd at least be able to storm off to his room and cry about how he was the victim in this situation instead of feeling guilt tightening around his chest. "I - I didn't even realise you - I'm sorry."
It occurred to Noel, suddenly, that his mother was interpreting this as an overflow of years of pent-up resentment, and not just a shitty thing he said in the heat of the moment because he wanted her to stop fucking talking and attacking her failed relationship was the easiest way to do that. He felt bad for continuing to deceive her but he had to continue to let her think it was just an overflow of pent-up resentment, because if she didn't think he was angry, she might realise he was scared. His heart wasn't in it, but he had to keep up the act. "Yeah, you should be sorry." He stood up. Ocean started to stand up again too and he turned on her, "Oh, don't worry, Little Miss Connie-Rose, you're completely free to stay! Mother never kicks anyone out of the house!" He didn't even need to say the unspoken especially not Father. Ocean sat back down. Guilt was stabbing at him.
As he began to storm out of the living room, his mother called after him, "Noel, please." He ignored her. "Can we talk about this?" He ignored her. "Noel, please don't go to your room and sulk."
Noel went to his room. And sulked. For two hours.
There was no fear or fury left in him when his mother finally knocked on the door. He stood up to let her in himself even though the door wasn't locked because he was afraid his voice would betray him if she told him to come in. "Hey," she muttered uncertainly. "Um, I have to leave for work soon. I just wanted to..."
Noel cut her off, throwing up his hands in surrender. "I was being a dick. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said any of what I said."
His mother was silent for a second, frowning, clearly deep in thought. "I'm sorry that your father was who he was," she finally said, carefully. "And I'm sorry that you were exposed to things you shouldn't have been exposed to. I'm sorry that I didn't protect you. But you can't use that as an excuse to attack another group of people."
"I know. I don't even know why I started complaining about trans people, Mother, I just - I take it all back. I'm just sleep deprived and saying shit. None of my petty complaints are worth making fun of real people over." He took a deep breath. "And - I'm sorry for attacking you about father, I know you tried to reason with him and he just wouldn't listen, I know he -"
"No," she cut him off. "No, you - you don't have to be sorry." Noel blinked several times. He had deliberately found the worst possible thing to say just so the conversation would end and he didn't have to be sorry?
"Fuck, Mom," he blurted out, wiping a tear from his eye. "You're such a doormat." Without thinking he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. "I am sorry. And don't tell me I shouldn't be, because I hurt you, and people should be sorry when they hurt you. I love you."
She returned the hug. "I love you too, sweetie."
"So ... yeah. I was a shit to my mother. I apologised eventually, though, so ... I guess that helps?" The student clears their throat. "Anyway. Um. Did you know that trans people have come up with this sort of nickname, for people that haven't said they're trans yet but you're certain they are? They call them eggs." Their voice takes on a bitter tone. "I became very intimately aware of that nickname."
Décazeville, France. March, 1931. Monique Gibeau's life had become so bleak she was resorting to selling herself for opium so she wouldn't ever have to exist in reality. She couldn't sing anymore. Men only wanted to embrace her for one reason. The whirl of boozy-floozy flashing lights that made up her life had finally started to go dull. She was so high out of her mind that she couldn't even fry an egg without destroying the frypan and burning her hands. Not that she cared. In fact, she had started burning herself on purpose, with cigarettes. Just to somehow prove she was still alive.
Uranium City, Canada. March, 2023. Noel was invited to a groupchat titled "i know what you are" consisting of himself, Savannah, and Misha. He asked what this was about and promptly was spammed with egg emojis. Misha tried to say that this might not be the best way to help him come to terms with his identity and Savannah ignored them entirely.
Noel wrote a long rant about how he was definitely not transgender or an egg, and the amount of absolutely crushing gender dysphoria he experienced was the normal amount for cis people, and Savannah responded with a simple "ok Noelle". He told her that nickname was stupid because Noel was already gender-neutral and Savannah responded with "you are??? congrats on coming out!!!" Noel left the groupchat.
Décazeville, France. March, 1931. Monique Gibeau was in pain, coughing her guts up in an alley, probably dying. It was typhoid flu and she didn't have a hope of surviving without antibiotics, but she wasn't strong enough to drag herself to a hospital and she wasn't weak enough to ask for help. Opium would ease the pain, probably. She was rationing it rather than selling her body for more because she wasn't planning on needing drugs for very much longer. She was so tired that she wasn't even afraid of dying, anymore - she was just waiting for it to be over. Maybe she would make it through to the end of March, get one more letter from the Slavic man. But probably not.
Uranium City, Canada. March, 2023. Noel woke up to an email notification from YouTube saying the bad egg channel had posted a video. He went to watch it and saw that it was only around a minute long, just Misha talking into the camera, the background flooded with Noel's armrest and Misha seeming very much like they'd started filming as soon as they woke up without really planning the video out in advance at all. "I have no respect for this country," they ranted. "In fact, do you want to know what this Canada is the leading supplier of to whole world? Two things: mustard seeds and uranium. It's great for hot dogs, yes, but not so good for Ukraine, so thank you for killing my mother and for indirectly killing me." They sighed, frustrated. Then they paused as though only now remembering why they were making a video in the first place. "Anyway," they finished. "This is my coming out video. I'm nonbinary. They/he pronouns. Happy trans day of visibility. Peace out."
Noel made the mistake of checking the comments and found that, among all of the generic supportive messages, Savannah was there complaining that she'd lost a bet because she'd been certain Noel would come out before Misha. Noel replied pointing out that he had been out as gay for years, what more coming out did she want from him? She replied about three minutes later. Egg emoji spam. God damn her.
Décazeville, France. April, 1931. A priest kneeled down to Monique as she was dying in a dirty, rat-infested alley. He asked her if she had any final words she'd like to say. "Oui," she gasped out with her last breaths of air. "Tell him that like him, I choose to burn out ... rather than fade away." And with those words said, she fell back onto the pavement, too out of it to be aware of the pain in the back of her head from the impact. She couldn't breathe. This was it. She was going to die in a dirty alley with rats crawling all over her and fingers poking her to get her attention.
Uranium City, Canada. April, 2023. Savannah was poking Noel to get his attention. "Any final words?" she signed, with a face that seemed to clearly indicate this was her third or fourth time trying to say the same thing.
Noel blinked. "What?"
"Any final words," she repeated. "Before I start eating your Easter eggs?"
"What?" asked Noel again. He looked at his desk. "When did I get Easter eggs? I zoned out."
"She's been giving them to everyone," Savannah answered, pointing to Constance. "I ate all mine already. Can I have yours?"
Noel frowned. "Sure. I'm not gonna eat them anyway."
"Because you're not a cannibal?"
"Because I don't celebrate Easter. You bitch." Savannah didn't respond, just reached over and started unwrapping eggs. Noel didn't stop her.
"Hello, everyone!" Ocean entered the room with an honest-to-god basket - like she was either an actual child or an actual rabbit - in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. "I hope we're all planning on using our long weekend to study hard?" Everyone turned to stare at her incredulously. "Ha ha! I'm joking, I'm joking! Now, since this is the last time we'll get a chance to see each other before the long weekend ... I'd say 'happy holidays', but I'm pretty sure you guys are only celebrating, like, one holiday each! Not that there's anything wrong with only celebrating one holiday this weekend, ahem, it's just, it's a cute number of holidays... It's not a competition, of course. But if it was, I would be winning, I just want to make that clear." She cleared her throat. "Happy holiday to all of you, whichever one you've got planned! Noel, I didn't get an Easter egg for you because I know you don't celebrate, I hope that's okay."
"That's okay," said Noel.
"I'm celebrating Margaret Thatcher's death anniversary, too," signs Savannah. "Does that count as a holiday?"
Noel let himself think about the fucked up girl he wanted to be for two seconds and when he came back to reality, Savannah was away from him, talking to Misha in the doorway, and she hadn't even finished his Easter eggs. In fact, she'd now moved onto a different source of eggs entirely. Ocean had given them out, big ones, one per person, with obnoxiously bright packaging. Ocean's, sitting on her desk as she prepared to start the choir practice, was bright pink, as was Constance's. Misha and Savannah were staring at eggs that were packaged in blue plastic and looking vaguely uncomfortable with them.
"Um," began Misha. "Should I ... ?"
"It's fine," Savannah responded. And then, with a smirk that was clearly directed at Noel, "Eggs get a free pass on transphobia."
Noel started picking up eggs from his desk and throwing them at Savannah.
"Hey!" protested Misha, jumping in to stop the fight before things could escalate, while Ocean and Constance stared on in blunt shock and confusion. "Okay, okay, calm down." They turned to Savannah. "I think jokes are getting out of hand. Poet, stop throwing eggs."