Diary of a Falafel Lord

HALLOWEEN

A couple of you have been wondering what I'll go as for Halloween. A couple of you have been wondering what Alex will be going as for Halloween. A couple of you have been wondering if we're still together after the big fight.
Yes. Yes we are. And we're better than ever.
Anyway. Today. It was brilliant. It was spooky. It involved murder.
Alex will try and tell you that it was his idea to go as Harley and the Joker, which (as my loyal army know) is total bullshit. It was my idea. His vote was for Elsa and Ana, with Charlie as Olaf (creepy pale-ass snake dude who's still living on our floor), but I turned that down when he suggested that I be Elsa and he shapeshifts into a perfect replica of cartoon Ana complete with the huge eyes and cartoon drawing style. There are some things you can never forget, holy gods above...
Anyway. After I puked until I couldn't breathe and Alex revived after laughing so hard his vocal cords shot out of his mouth and he stabbed himself to revive and heal them, I suggested my idea. A far more reasonable one.
Complete with a push-up bra and Alex's inserts for his more female days, I was a flaming hot Harley Quinn and Alex barely had to dress up to be the Joker. He even slit his cheeks open and used some special gel from Asgard to make them very realistic, and healed into that.
We went down into the human world to meet with our whole squad, and their costumes were....interesting. Aamir was dressed up as some game character??? He said it was called Fortnite??? I'm getting really out of touch with the human world. Then he started laughing and lashing his hands around his hips and did something called a "dab." Alex did the same thing back. Blitz was the "Paragon of Fashion" and, honestly, I couldn't tell the difference between him on Halloween and him usually. Hearth said that he had tried to get Blitz to go as a leprechaun, but not even Blitz could make the green tights look good. In classic Hearth style, he'd dressed up as Captain America. I didn't even know he was into Marvel, the movies are super noise-related. (Ah shit, that's Alex. He wants to know if I've ever heard of a. Subtitles and b. The comics. Well I'm sorry if I was I've only seen the movies on crappy screenings when I was homeless, and then a bit tied up with saving the world from his fucking dad. Some people.) Sam went all out with the costume, easily the best one we saw that night. She draped a sheet over her head and...nope. That's it. Just a sheet. That costume was really sheet, tbh. She flipped me off when I made that pun.
Mallory went as Merida, Halfborn went as Single Ladies Music Video Beyoncé (much to Mal's delight - she went as red as her hair and whenever to kids looked away she smacked CENSORED), and TJ went as TJ from Hamilton in magenta splendour that I think he's been working on for months. Charlie went as Voldemort.
We started going door to door, smashing on them and demanding sugar (Hearth was really confused at first, wasn't it just forced robbery?) and it was a pretty good loot. Our bags filled up super quick, and people quickly started asking for photos with our cosplay group. Halfborn and Mal got drunk within twenty minutes.
Laughter and light spilt out from all the houses, everyone was dressed up and having a good time. It was great, like everyone was just one huge group. At one point Alex saw a Loki cosplay and he laughed so hard that he fell over and almost died again (laughing is dangerous for my Terrifying Dragon). I never knew how quickly he got sugar high, but I'll never forget green and red and pink candy dribbling out of the sides of his sharpened teeth. He started giggling at shadows and talking to cats.
Then he took me aside, into a dark patch between two houses while our friends made small talk with another group, and he kissed me with the moon climbing over us. He tasted like sugar and blood and love, and under that the grapefruit and mint and honeycomb that I know so well.
When we looked up, our friends were gone. My heart dropped for a moment, but when Alex took my hand in his my fear vanished. They were fine, and we both knew the way back to our respective homes. He led me back onto the street, our hands held tightly.
Someone tapped my shoulder and we both turned, back on the pavement with our bags of candy swinging beside our sides. The people from the house had gone back in, and we were alone with a bunch of kids and their mum, a woman dressed in - Alex tensed. She was dressed in a sombrero, with day of the dead makeup and a striped poncho. She was wearing cowboy boots and holding maracas and had cactus earrings.
"Hi." She said. Alex nodded stiffly. "I was wondering if you could, maybe, not hold hands around my kids?"
"Why the fuck not?" He asked.
"You see, they're still pretty young and don't understand about gay marriage and I kind of want to save that conversation for when they're a bit older. You understand, dont you?" She said, and gave us a sweet smile underneath her face-paint coated skin.
Alex shook her head. "No I don't." He said. "I really don't. Explain to me how my boyfriend and I holding hands is any worse or better than two straight people doing it?"
"They're just kids!" The woman said, swelling up.
"We're just fucking kids!" Alex said, his voice raising.
"You're old enough to understand what you're doing! They're still young!" She yelled. "Don't you have any dignity?"
"You're yelling at two kids in front of a pack of five year olds so don't lecture me about dignity, bitch!" Alex yelled back. I tried to drop his hand, but he gripped it tightly. The woman was tall, at least a foot taller than Alex, and looked pretty terrifying.
"You're lucky I don't want to start something in front of the kids!" The woman roared back. "Now just keep it in your pants and stop it!"
"Stop what?"
"You know exactly what you're doing!" One of the kids, a little girl dressed as a dinosaur, started crying.
"You know how racist that costume is?" I asked, trying to turn the conversation away. The argument away. This seemed to make the woman even more angry.
"You know that I'm part Mexican?" The blonde, white woman asked. Alex laughed. His caramel skin caught the light, and his brown eyes seemed to flash.
"Bitch, my full-Mexican ancestors call bs on that." Alex roared. "It's disgusting that you'd dress up as my ethnicity just to look 'cool' or 'trendy' or 'ethnic' and don't give me any shit about representation because we don't walk all around in sombreros and cacti."
"Come on Alex." I muttered. He wasn't finished.
"I'll dress however I want!" The woman yelled, a real yell. "You little faggots can't tell me what to do!"
Alex swelled upwards, literally shapeshifting so that he was as tall as the woman. He thrust his head so that he was properly in her face, inches away from her, his hand still in mine.
The woman screamed and staggered back, covering her eyes. She choked, tripped, and landed on the ground. Alex returned to his normal size and turned to me.
"Come on, Maggie." He said, then leant in to kiss me. I reached out as our lips met, flipping off the woman in the spotlight of the streetlight, and when we broke apart we turned to march down the street with our hands woven together and our heads held high.
I turned to Alex. He was shaking.
"Asshole." I said.
"He ruined my spooky day." He replied.
"You're okay." I said, touching his jaw. "I got you, beautiful."
"I wish I wasn't me." He buried his face in my shoulder. "People hate me without knowing who I am. Racists and homophobes and even other members of the LGBT+ community who get online and scream about how genderfluid isn't real and I'm not real. They tell me that being demisexual is just normal so whatever I'm just a special snowflake uwu trying to muscle in on the community because there are people who actually need it.The only people who love me are weird as well."
I lifted his chin up with my finger. A tear slipped out of his eye. I brushed it away. "We have to flaunt the weird, my friends." I said. Alex choked on his hollow sob and turned it into a laugh.
"Magnus." He said. "I have something to tell you."
I frowned. "What?"
He took a deep breath and stared into my ears. Gods they were mesmerising, mismatched and glistening with a thin layer of tears. His eyelashes were fused together with salt-water, his cheeks flushed. "I'm a BTS fan."
I dropped his hand. "Dammit, I'm out." I turned to stalk away, but he grabbed my hand, still laughing.
"I love you, Mango." He muttered, resting his head on my shoulder.
"Love you too, Fierro." I reached up to stroke his hair.
"There you are!" Mallory yelled from behind us, laughter still floating on her voice. Alex jerked away from me. "There's an ambulance down the street for a woman in a racist costume who's had a mental breakdown and a stroke and a panic attack, so we figured you'd be nearby."
Alex and I turned to face our friends, him subtly mopping his face on his glove, and I grinned at them.
"Come on." Sam said from under her sheet. "Let's go get falafel."
Alex and I nodded, and we walked with our friends down the street, candy bags swinging from our hands and our Halloween already slipping away.
I still don't know what Alex did to that asshole woman.