The world around us is burning but we’re so cold
Buttercup_ghost
He figured it out sooner than most, at least part of it. He knew he wasn't normal, knew that whenever someone called him a girl his skin would crawl. He tried to ignore it, his parents hardly paid attention to them, he knew, so it wasn't hard to hide. His hair was short, and he usually wore T shirts, typically with some kind of space aesthetic on them, and everyone just assumed he was a tomboy.
He first met tucker and Sam in first grade, a glaring girl wearing a pink frilly dress stained in mud, and a boy with glasses. He joined them at recess to play, and soon, somehow, they became friends.
Sam—never Samantha, unless you wanted to be on her hit list—always smeared mud on whatever dress of the day her parents made her wear, saying something about the a e s t h e t i c ™, and voicing her dislike of pink. Tucker says that she looks cute in pink, and is rewarded with a slug on the arm and a light dusting on her cheeks. He tells her that she looks good in anything, and tucker mutters about him being extra. He ignores him, though, trying not to dwell on how he related to sams dislike for frills, even if for him it was a bit different.
In second grade, when tucker pukes in sam lunch, he blames it on Ricky marsh. Sam pushes him off the jungle gym, and Danny makes a note not to get on her bad side. He goes with Tucker's lie, if only to protect him.
In third grade sam finds some matches, and they burn her old clothes, every pink monstrosity of a dress gone for good. He wishes he could do the same with his clothes, burn away any traces of the girl he's supposed to be, leaving only ash and dust.
In fourth grade tucker comes to them in tears, saying that he has to move out.
His dad got a new job, or something like that, no one really paying attention to the details, or at least not the kids. They drive up to the beach, a four hour drive in the fenton RV, and go to a restaurant on the boardwalk. Somehow, Sam ends up smuggling out the lobsters in the tank before anyone could boil them alive, storing them in the cooler. Tucker denies screaming when he went to get a soda, and instead saw them. The restaurant somehow never catches sam.
At the end of the day, they end up on the beach, hugging, and though they would deny it later, crying. Danny has the urge to kiss them both, but he's pretty sure that would be weird, so he doesn't.
Then, they're gone.
Sam hardly talks to him anymore. Apparently, her parents are keeping her locked up, but it still hurts. Tucker talks to him on his phone, and later, pda, but it's not the same. He feels alone.
His hair is getting longer— too long.
The scissors in his hands are shaking as he snips.
Jazz finds him later, crying on the bathroom floor, hair surrounding him, hair uneven. She doesn't yell, she doesn't shout, all she does is sigh and take the scissors in her own hands, quietly fixing his hair, evening it.
He tells her everything between sobs.
She buys him a binder at Christmas, their parents to caught up in their yearly argument to notice.
People start to bully him in middle school. There is so much work, but he has dream of being an astronaut, and some bullies and homework isn't enough to make him give that up. For as long as he could remember, he wanted this, and it would take some kind of major disaster to make him change his mind. But it's stressful, and one day he snaps, his parents being just a bit too pushy about how tired he looks, asking what was wrong. The one time they're out of the lab, and the one time he doesn't want them to be. He yells, jazz tries to calm him, but he yells at them, tells them to stop calling him Elle because that's not him that's not him he is not a girl!
By the time he realizes what he said, it's too late. They look confused, and shocked, and silently ask for answers, so he gives them. They crush him in a hug, afterwards, and say, we're so proud of our son.
Jazz hands him tissues, and kisses his forehead, as his eyes leak.
Tucker moves back at the start of high school, and Sam's parents seem to lighten up on keeping her locked inside. He thinks it might have to do with the grandma she keeps telling him about, and how she tends to get her out of whatever imposed grounding she has ever since she moved in. It's the first time they've been together in years, all three of them, in the flesh. He doesn't know how to tell them, but he knows he needs to. Somehow, he ends up just blurring it out awkwardly after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence. To his surprise, Sam and tucker just go with it, fully supportive. They call him Danny and he feels like he might cry.
They start talking about things on the sofa, after that, and eventually land on the topic of ghost, and the portal his parents dubbed as a failure. Sam seems excited at his explanation of it, and somehow he finds himself in front of it with her and tucker. Sam is telling him to go check it out, and hey, it seems pretty cool, and he didn't want to look like a loser, so he zips up his jumpsuit and goes. He looks back as sam removes his dads face from his chest, and smiles.
He's a bit scared—I mean, wouldn't you be? Most of his parents inventions brought his dinner alive!—but he knows his friends are here, and they wouldn't let anything happen to him. They accepted him, and maybe, just maybe, it will be ok. He feels, he feels ok for once, for the first time in what feels like years. Things are looking up, he thinks.
And then he trips.
