Sanders Sides One-Shots

All That Matters | Moceit

summary: janus's best friend comes out to him, all he wants is to be the best possible ally he can be

word count: 1965

i recently read this discontinued book that was a lot like a one shot i did a while ago (the parent trap moceit one) so i just really felt like writing some good old moceit content, you're welcome :))

tw// kind of a lot of transphobia, dysphoria (slight mentions), very brief mentions of afab things (literally like only a few words), a lil bit of crying, that's it :))

~~~~

Janus frowned as someone knocked on his front door. His parents, who were currently out, had a key so that wouldn't be them. 'It's probably some delivery guy.' Janus thought. It had been a minute since the person knocked so Janus assumed they were gone by now.

He opened the door and froze as his best friend stood there, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. "Mad-" "Patton." Janus furrowed his eyebrows and looked around his best friend before looking back at the eyes he'd grown up with. "Who's Patton?" "Me. I'm...Patton." Janus let his best friend inside and closed the door before asking for clarification once more. "I, uh, don't think I entirely understand what you're saying. You're Patton?" Maddy, or Patton, shifted from foot to foot awkwardly, Janus suddenly felt a little bad for putting his best friend on the spot. "Um, yeah."

"How is that possible? I thought Patton was a..." Janus trailed off, a possible realization setting in. 'Patton is a boy's name.' Growing up in a religious, conservative town with a religious, conservative family for his entire life meant Janus wasn't too educated on many things in the outside world. He'd accidentally stumbled upon something like this before while scrolling through Instagram.

The post had shown a girl named Daisy, how she was born a boy but now she was a girl. Janus asked his parents how it was possible, since they'd put harsh restrictions on his internet access and he couldn't look it up himself, but he'd instead gotten a whole speech about how people like that were "perverts" and "against God's nature".

He knew their argument didn't have much evidence, and so he couldn't accept it as a fact, but he knew better than to push the subject or try to find out more, so he dropped it. Yet here his best friend was, standing in front of him and saying they were one of those people, one of those people his parents warned against.

Janus could hear his parents' voices in his head, telling him that whoever this was wasn't his best friend anymore, that they were perverted, an abomination. But as he stared down at M- 'No, Patton. His name is Patton.' As he stared down at Patton, how he seemed to shake nervously, the way he curled in on himself, the fearful look he gave Janus, scared he'd probably hate him now, Janus couldn't find it in himself to believe any of that. This was the same kid he grew up with, the same kid he'd gone to school dances with, the same kid who was in love with animals and baking, not any of the things Janus's parents told him.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to spring this on you. You were just the only person I felt I could trust, you've never said anything about the LGBT community before, I-I just figured-" Patton sighed, tears gathering in his eyes. "I'm sorry, just forget this happened and please don't tell anyone, my parents would kill me if they found out. I'll just leave now." Patton began walking towards the door.

Janus grabbed Patton's hand but pulled back when he turned around. "I don't really know about any of that, how about we go to my room and talk about this, okay?" After a moment, he added, "I'm not mad, I promise, just confused." Patton seemed to relax a bit at that and made his way to Janus's room, a room they'd been in together so many times before.