Work Text:
It’s Lyn-Z’s second active non active meeting, and apparently the second where it’s only her and Gerard. It’s a good thing there are no minimum requirements for clubs. They’d never meet any numerical demand.
At least this time Gerard doesn’t make her help push the tables to the wall. Last meeting he insisted on chairs in a sharing circle set up. This time it’s just them facing each other across a table. Well, and Mr McCracken in the corner. He’s grading assignments rather than paying any kind of attention to them. Not that he’s paying all that much attention to the papers either. He’s mostly just writing on his arm, like he’s a junior high school kid, not a man in his late twenties. The art teacher at her old school was much better.
Gerard’s really prepared. He pulls a beige file folder from his pin adorned backpack. An elasticised dozen of pens comes out a second later, before a rolled cylinder of paper. Lyn-Z can easily see this progressing. This week it’s file folders and typed notes. A month from now it’ll be a newsletter and a radio talk show. She just hopes she doesn’t get designated vice president just because she’s the only other one here. She’s not in this for responsibility. Just answers, maybe.
“Okay, so I was thinking the first thing we should do is each write a list of personal priorities. Then we can see where they overlap. Obviously we’ll get around to everything, but common needs will be addressed first. Mr McCracken, as a non active that’s lived a life of censorship and pain, your thoughts are really welcome.”
She takes the paper and pen Gerard offers her, even though she has her own in her backpack. Gerard stands at Mr McCracken’s desk for almost a minute holding one out before putting it on a pile of paint smeared paper towels and sitting back down.
To her the A.N.A.A goals are pretty obvious. It only takes her a second to write them out.
1 force people to join
2 make people realise they aren’t fucked up
3 make everyone else realise they’re not fucked up
Gerard takes a lot longer writing out his list. When he finally stops writing she hands over her paper. His dismay only shows for a second before he pastes on a smile. “Okay, I was going to compile our ideas on a chart paper, but I’ll just save it and write yours on my list.”
She watches upside down as he scrawls LynZ’s List, and writes her points. His handwriting is messy as hell. It matches him.
“So yours are pretty broad. But still valid, of course, don’t get me wrong. Yours cover three main areas that a lot of mine do. Recruitment, self esteem and presence in society. Recruitment is utmost right now. Clearly we can’t rely on just asking our friends.” Gerard sounds momentarily bitter, but Lyn-Z can beat that. After all, she’s the one that got kicked out of her old school. Gerard’s friends might be bailing, but he still has them. The moment she got kicked out for ‘sexual aggressiveness’ her old ‘friends’ decided they didn’t approve of scandals and stopped replying to emails.
“We need posters.”
“I’m not drawing on posterboard with glitter pen.”
LynZ rolls her eyes. Like she’d suggest that. She wants something eye catching. Bubble letters are not interesting enough to turn a head. “No. I was thinking photos. Like a picture of me eating fire with a caption of ‘sub with a temp play slant or non active street performer?’ or something. And then you with, I dunno- "
“A multi knotted rope in my hand, and ‘dom with an outdoor skills scout badge, or non active with a bondage slant’."
“Can you be non active and into bondage?”
It’s mostly rhetorical, which is probably why Bert answers. “Yes. Slant and who’s on top aren’t the same. Though me and Quinn don’t really get off on it. It’s probably one where the vast majority are active. Unlike, I dunno, foodplay or toys. Anyone can enjoy that shit.”
“Lyn-Z, do you think that’s true? That there are some slants that non actives just can’t have? Without trying to be prejudice against them, and obviously all non actives are different just like all actives are different. But what do you think?”
She thinks about it for a second then shrugs. “I haven’t really thought about it. I mean, I guess? Like the bondage thing. Even though Mr McCracken said anyone could enjoy it, I mean, think about it. Bottom line is you either like tying someone up, or like being tied up. There’s not a lot of room for not domming or submitting there. What do you think?”
Gerard has lots of opinions. It doesn’t bother Lyn-Z. At least what he’s saying is interesting. The girls that used to be her friends weren’t all that fascinating. Though they did have good taste in accessories, making the private school uniform look even nicer on them. That had been a plus. She listens to his rant about slants and interjects when she wants to. She kinda gets the feeling that while he talks a lot he might not be heard a lot.
They’re still talking when Mr McCracken holds up a collage towards them that's just beer labels. “Kid knows what he likes. B plus, right?”
“What is it supposed to represent?” As far as collage work goes it’s not very interesting. It’s not bragging to say her own papercrafting is much better.
“Dunno. Gerard, what was your last assignment?”
“You wanted something that represented 'step one'.”
Mr McCracken puts the collage back on his desk to give it another look. “Step one is beer. Yeah, I can see that. B plus.”
Gerard’s clearly unsettled by his teacher’s grading criteria. Lyn-Z’s not sure why, unless he’s an art diva. In her book, a grading curve helps everyone.
“Annnny way, getting back on track. It’s simply shameful this school has been running for twenty years and we’re the first A.N.A.A group. Maybe once it becomes a force in this school we can get on the news and it’ll spread through the division.”
“It doesn’t need to get on the news to become a thing. We can just make a website, or a Facebook page. That’s not an I-we thing,” she hastens to add. “I don’t know shit about coding. But if we recruit someone that does, then we can have something. Maybe it’ll become a big thing in California, or Canada.”
They’re still talking about viral exposure when Mr McCracken’s phone rings. It’s human nature to go quiet for a second while a person answers. He doesn’t raise it to his face though, just looks at it. “Can we wrap this up? You guys can Skype or some shit. Quinn got these lace gloves, he's such a pansy but whatever. He just sent me a picture.”
“But we just started!”
Lyn-Z pointing out that it’s been forty five minutes goes unheard under Mr McCracken answering “lace gloves are lace fucking gloves. Don't make me fail you.”
“That’s unethical!”
The art teacher just starts laughing. Lyn-Z’s willing to bet no one's ever accused him of being ethical, never mind unethical. Gerard scowls but stands and starts putting his stuff back into his bag. She waits, even though she’s got nothing out. Might as well walk together, try to make a friend.
Halfway to the front door he asks “you wanna go to Gabe Saporta’s birthday party?”
“What?” The invitation is a bit out of the blue.
“All you’d need is a bottle of alcohol for a birthday present. But since everyone is bringing one, there’s more than enough to go around. So you’ll get drunk too. It’s at Ryan Ross’s, at around seven. I don’t think there’s any designated so you should probably walk if you can.”
LynZ shrugs. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s walked home at 5am. Depending on what she’s wearing there might even be a thrill in it. “I’ll try to show up.” There’s no reason to ask if Gabe will be okay with her crashing, he’s a friendly guy.
“Cool. Great! See you there!”
She’s not dumb. She knows she’s getting an invite because she might be n.a. and Gerard wants to show off he knows real life non actives. As far as exploitation goes though, it’s really not bad. Lyn-Z’s seen a lot of Gerard’s friends around. Most of them seem like the kind of person she’d like to get to know. Especially Frank. They’ve both been utterly screwed by principals. He’s the first person she knows that might understand getting slant shamed, and how depressing and enraging it is at the same time.
Just like every time she thinks of Mrs Stevens and her complete lack of respect for her, Lyn-Z takes a moment to remember all the reasons why her slant is awesome. No old biddy is going to bring her down. She didn’t have enough to call the cops for sexual harassment, she barely had enough to expel her. She sure as hell doesn’t have enough to make her feel ashamed about what she likes.
A mental list of reasons why uniforms, and more specifically school girl uniforms, kick ass run through her head with little prompting. A few accompanied images makes her squirm. It’s officially time to ditch Gerard Way and go get off. Unless... “You have any level of crossdressing slant?”
“It’s not really a slant. I’ve tried it. Maybe a five out of ten for enjoyability? Why?”
“You like it enough to come to my house and borrow a skirt and fuck me?”
Lyn-Z can see the no on his face before it falls out of his mouth, along with a non-stop explanation. “It’s not like you’re not hot, Lyn-Z. Because you are. Not that you need me to tell you that. It’s just me and Pedicone are really happy together and-”
“You call him by his last name?”
“It’s not a sir thing or anything, I don’t do formal. But my brother’s Mikey, and that one vowel isn’t quite enough. But anyway, we’re good and we’re pretty much monogamous. I mean some exhibitionism or a group scene, but not one on one, and not just ‘cause I’m the sub. I wouldn’t want him to-”
If she doesn’t cut him off he’s gonna talk forever. “Dude, not offended. I just wanna get off, so I was ruling you in or out. Out is fine. I’ll see you on Friday, okay?”
“See you then.” He looks distinctly relieved. It’s cute. She almost wants to hug him.
After they part ways, she stops on the sidewalk to think about where she’s gonna go next. There are half a dozen different places Lyn-Z can go if she wants to act out a scene. Her slant is easily accessible.
The Adults As Youth has a building in Newark. It’s not as big as their New York centre, of course. She visited that chapter once, it had a whole building; one floor for each developmental milestone. Here it’s just a converted house broken up into baby, child, and teenager. At least half the adults in the teen room will be wearing school uniforms.
There’s also Imagine Studios. The school room is ancient. It has wooden desks with inkwells, chalkboards instead of a whiteboard, a gold bell attached to the wall. It also has a good trade in marms and girls.
If she wants to go high class, there’s Linen Odyssey. In some ways they’re the ones that understand her the most. They get how perfect a scene can be when someone is wearing the exact right combination of socks and shoes. On the other hand, they’re also pretentious as fuck. Every time they ask where she got a skirt and she says at Target she gets a pause of long seconds before oh, or </i>huh</i>, or well it still looks nice. Just because she doesn’t sew doesn’t mean she doesn’t have an eye for if the lines match at the seams, or if the khaki vest goes with the navy skirt.
Hell, she could even go to a more general playspace. Because the world loves her, short plaid skirts are pretty common club wear. As long as a guy or girl is wearing it, Lyn-Z’s up for doing whatever they want to do.
However, with all these places she needs to pay a cover. At the core, Lyn-Z Ballato is a cheap bitch. Which is why she’ll do what billions of tens and adults have done since the invention of the internet. She’ll go to Google Images and start trying phrase combinations until she finds what she wants.
It’s not until she’s in her bedroom with her door locked and closet open that she feels whole. She owns pants, thanks to the conference Stevens had with her parents. A lot of shit came from that meeting that she wasn’t invited to. She goes to a casual dress public school now. She’s not allowed on the grounds of any private school. And they watch her in the morning to make sure she’s only wearing one article of her old uniform at a time. With such a pathetic rule imposed, white button down shirts, short cut vests and knee high socks have all fallen to the wayside, pushed into the back of her closet for the evenings she has freedom.
They can try to oppress her all they want, but she has skirts. Plaid and not, pleated and not, zippered or buttoned, zigzag stitch or double needle stitch hem. They can’t take her entire wardrobe, they can’t take her porn, and they can’t take her slant. It’s hers.