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 Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2013 7:37 pm
With the craziness hat was the holidays, Ladon was comfortable enough to call up Paris without worrying he was bothering him. It had been a while, and he felt he really needed to get out of the house. Despite how much he loved Billy, sometimes he needed to talk to someone else. Unfortunately for him, that was just Paris.
Sending a text, he asked if they could meet up, and they set up a plan to meet at a cafe in town. After taking the bus, Ladon went, got a hot chocolate, and sat down.
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Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:54 pm
Paris arrived sometime later in a flurry of tights, blond curls, and glossy magazines, the jingling of the bell above the door heralding his arrival. He searched around for Ladon and spotted him quickly enough, waving excitedly before hopping in line to order a hot chocolate and a scone, juggling his drink and snack and the magazines that threatened to slip out of his hands as he made his way over to the table.
“Jesus, it’s cold outside,” he said pointlessly, setting his purchases onto the table and dropping his dance bag onto the floor beside his chair. The magazines he hid on his lap beneath the table, models in ivory and cream.
He looked sheepish, almost shy or bashful, smiling across at his best friend. He slipped off his wool coat to hang it on the back of his chair, pulled his hat off and dropped it on top of his bag, the hair beneath it pulled back and out of his face but for the bangs that fell over his forehead, his skirt, cardigan, and boots over a leotard and tights somewhat haphazard looking, but casual and warm. Paris pulled his mittens off last, discarding them as he’d discarded his hat. With his now bare right hand he reached for his hot chocolate. The left he hid under the table with his magazines.
Paler and thinner Paris might be, perhaps, than he’d been a year previously, but the dark cloud he’d had trailing after him for a majority of the nine months since his father died seemed to have all but dissipated, replaced now with the sort of dynamic energy he hadn’t shown in quite some time. Paris shifted in his chair and stilled on the edge of his seat, part hesitant and part excited, cheeks pink, eyes shining, and smile brighter and more open than it’d been in what seemed a long while.
“Hi,” he said blithely, shifting again to cross his legs, keeping his magazines in place with the hand that remained hidden. “How was Christmas? I mean, I assume it was okay since you didn’t text me anything terrible, but since I kind of missed out this year… God, I missed you. Chris’s family is great and all, but if I have to sit and listen to them try and plan my… uhh… well, the stress could drive you crazy. It’s so freaking intimidating.”MoonKitsune Sorry for my slowness. I hate work. QQ Ilu. <3
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Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:06 pm
Ladon hadn't seen Paris in several weeks, the holidays having passed time in a blur of this and that. Sometimes he forgot what month it was, but he was trying to get a better grip on reality. To break his time between patrols, training, finding a job, and finishing his Highschool Diploma. There was a lot on his plate, but he didn't feel stressed out by it. Life felt like it wasn't bleak or full of hopeless, unreachable goals.
Holding his own hot chocolate in both hands, he smiled as Paris peeled off each fashionable layer, no longer feeling the need to stare too long at his choice in clothing. It was so familiar now that he couldn't picture the boy in male clothes no matter how hard he tried. Someway or another, even his imagination put him in a skirt.
All a fluster with energy, Paris broke into what he had been up to, in no specific detail, and he continued to smile. "Yeah, it's been crazy. Sorry I didn't text you. Billy rented a cabin during Christmas and..well, it would have ruined things if he saw me texting all day since he went through the trouble." It would have also ruined the mood.
"I've missed you too. It's good that you're getting along with Chris' parents." He paused, looking to the window to sip his hot chocolate, feeling his own guilt twist in his gut. His mother....
He turned back quickly with a smile. "How has everything been? With you and Chris? Dancing? Everything. I felt like I haven't talked to you in forever."
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 3:34 am
“Bills splurged on a cabin?” Paris said, with quite a bit more… affection, he supposed—though the word could only be applied loosely—in his voice than he might normally have shown.
With everything else settling into place, it seemed so tedious to hold onto old grudges.
Of course, it was easy to say that when Paris wasn’t being faced with him, but the effort to remain angry and antagonistic toward that whole situation seemed so exhausting. He couldn’t say he was totally ready to let bygones be bygones, or accept Ladon’s boyfriend as anything more than an awkward acquaintance—would there ever be a day when he’d think of Billy as a friend?—but the burning hatred he used to feel wasn’t nearly as strong. At the moment, he couldn’t tell if that was simply because it’d been a while since he’d actually seen Billy, or if he was beginning to mellow out now that he was a bit more secure in himself and in his own relationship.
“Sweet deal. I bet it was nice getting out of the city for a while,” he observed, sipping at his hot chocolate and fiddling with his scone, almost moving his left hand over the table to grab for a bite before deciding against it and keeping it in his lap instead.
“Chris and I went to Boston,” he explained. “Saw his grandparents again. We went over Thanksgiving, too. You should see their house. It’s insane. Like, it makes his parents’ beach house look like a normal house. But it was cool. Nana, his grandmother, she knows a bit about ballet and she keeps having me dance for her, so that’s nice, I guess. Dance is going good. Can’t really complain. Lots of hard work, but that’s not really any different from normal. So far my teachers at DCU are a little more lenient than my old one. Still not sure if that’s a good thing yet, but at least I can have bangs and wear whatever color leotards I want. I can’t stand some of the girls in my class, though. Freaking snobs. But that’s not anything new,” he rambled.
Every once in a while he’d look off to the side, or glance around as if to get a look at some of the café’s other patrons, whether or not any of them were particularly interesting. A couple of times he looked down at the hand and magazines in his lap, alternately grabbing at his hot chocolate with his other hand and then releasing it to tap a set of French tipped nails against the table, humming a random tune to himself once he finally trailed off, looking back at Ladon only when he’d gotten his expression—excited but furtive as it was—under control.MoonKitsune Early morning tag before work~! <3
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Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 2:23 pm
"It was nice. I haven't been out of the city for a while, and I was surprised he got the time off work to get away. He must have been saving behind my back without me noticing. He made sure I didn't know, packed my bag, and even had me blindfolded." He smiled down at the table at the thought of it. "It was nice and quiet there. Just us and the snow." And a warm place to share. "I wish I could get a place up there all to ourselves." But he needed a sweet job first, and then he'd feel disconnected from the city he was trying to protect.
As he sipped his hot chocolate, he noticed how happy Paris was, but at the same time he was moving, twisting, shifting, and tapping in a way that made him nervous. After making most of his life being a Negaverse officer, he got paranoid and on edge when people became fidgety. He also noticed Paris kept shifting the magazines on his lap.
"Are you uncomfortable? You keep moving around. Do you want to put that stuff on the table." Ladon moved his drink off the table and gestured for Paris to use it. "I don't mind." It would also come to a great relief if Paris stopped moving about like that.
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Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 7:03 pm
“Hey, that’s way more romantic than anything Chris could pull off,” Paris observed.
He still had that note of fondness in his voice, so even though his comment hadn’t been one of the most supportive ones he’d uttered in regards to his boyfriend-c**-fiancé, it was quite clear that he didn’t spend any time agonizing over it at all. He’d never been one for romance; he was fairly certain he didn’t have a romantic bone in his body—and if he did, it was nearly unrecognizable from all the others. Most of the time he was all about getting down to business instead. It was all he really had the time for these days.
Then again, there was that little secret he was keeping, and he supposed that was romantic in its own way. Of course, it wasn’t so much a secret as news he’d yet to share. He intended to; he’d intended to since the very night it’d happened, but he had no idea how he was supposed to go about doing that.
He could have texted. It’d been a very strong impulse at the time, to just take a picture and send it with a little blurb of text in a mass message that would have hit all of his friends at once. But that seemed so impersonal, and while it wouldn’t really matter when it came to some of the numbers he had stored in his phone, there were at least a handful that he knew deserved a proper one-on-one sharing session. Ladon was perhaps at the very top of that list of people.
Well, him and Paris’s mother, but he’d already gotten that uncomfortable encounter over with soon after.
“Um, well… you see… the thing is…”
Finally he just picked the magazines up to drop them on the table, bringing his left hand with them. The magazine covers were littered with pictures of models in long white gowns of silk and lace, veils upon their heads and flowers within their hands, and on his left hand sat a rather large ring, platinum and diamonds, the center of which was a characteristic pink.
“This kind of just happened… um… right before Christmas,” he mumbled. “I mean… Chris asked, and it was really sweet, and he brought me flowers after one of my performances. Blue roses, he knows they're my favorite. And it was really scary and, you know, totally surreal but… I said ‘yes’…”
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Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:14 pm
Sunshine Alouette Sorry for taking this long
He wasn't sure how he felt about this, and mainly just looked shocked.
"But....you're a guy. He's a guy. He knows your a guy, right?" For whatever reason, Ladon just assumed that neither Paris nor Ladon would ever marry due to having boyfriends, and seeing Paris had a ring on had him feeling both embarrassed that he had been rather stupid to assume that, and hadn't thought about it himself.
"But..." His eyes wen to the magazine and the women in white dressed. "..does his family know you're a guy?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2013 3:54 pm
Paris brought one of his hands up to shield his face like he was embarrassed to be seen with Ladon in public.
“Oh my God, Lady, you suck the fun out of ev-er-y-thing,” he complained, drawing out the last word to better get his point across.
Sighing dramatically, Paris dropped his hand and leaned over the table, supporting himself with his elbows on the surface and staring across at Ladon as if to lecture some poor, innocent child. “So what if I have guy parts? What does that have to do with anything? Of course Chris knows, and his family, too. I told him, like, two summers ago. God, I thought you knew that. And then we got back together the December after. That’s when he proposed to me. I mean, not then, obviously. But this year. On that day.”
The look he gave Ladon then was one of tired disbelief, though it was not entirely the result of Ladon’s questions, but the side-effect of a regret and a frustration he felt in himself for not being able to explain himself in a way other people might understand. He was used to the questions and the odd looks by this point, from Ladon and from a majority of the people he met on a daily basis, but he was never sure how to respond to it. For all his ramblings and sociable demeanor, he couldn’t ever seem to find the right words.
“But never mind that,” he said, waving his hand as if what’d happened a year and a half ago was hardly important at all. “On to the more important part… seriously, what does it matter what parts I have? That's not all I am, you know. Who says I can’t get married or wear a dress if I want to? We live in Destiny City, Lady. Me and Chris being Paristopher LeFay-Gallo is totally cool here.”
Finally he sat back in his seat again, fingering the corner of one of the magazines. “Anyway, I’m only looking at these because Momma… I mean, Chris’s mom… she thinks I might want to. I was gonna wear a dress anyways. Just because I’m getting married doesn't mean I have to suddenly do a one-eighty and walk down the aisle in a dude’s suit. Please. Not that I really care to wear a wedding dress, just a normal one, but I figure there’s not really any harm in trying some on.”
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Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2013 6:37 pm
He rose his hands up quickly. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be a downer! I just didn't think it could be done. I never...really gave it any thought so it's just a surprise." He didn't want to depress Paris when he was probably high as a kite at he prospect of being in an extravagant gown and getting married to someone he wanted to spend his entire life with.
"It's just - every sudden." He said, dropping his hands to set them on the table. "I didn't know you guys were that serious that Chris would go that far. I mean, not that he didn't seem in love with you - just." He shook his head, not knowing where he was going with what he was saying.
"I'm happy for you. Congrats. I mean it." He said, breathing out before looking down at the magazines. He had grown used to seeing Paris in girl's clothes but never once thought of him as a girl. "I'm used to seeing you in your clothes, but I've always thought of you as a guy. A wedding dress is just.......something so .. like it's reserved for women. It's like a bra or something." He looked down, feeling flushed just speaking about this, but the cafe was busy enough for them not to be overhead over the sound of milk being steamed and espresso being ground.
"Does this mean that once you get married, you'll move in and live with him?" Ladon had wondered what Paris was up to after all. He had been quiet for a while and he just wasn't sure what was happening in his life. He really should have talked to his friend sooner.
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Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 3:49 pm
“I wear a bra sometimes,” Paris announced, with absolutely no shame nor a single bit of concern for the fact that some of the other café patrons sitting nearby might have been able to hear him.
What did he care what a bunch of random strangers thought?
His voice was notably teasing as he did so, his face overcome by an amused grin. As frustrating as it could often be when his intentions were misunderstood, there remained a part of Paris that sought amusement in other people’s confusion or pre-established conclusions. He did not go out of his way to fool people the way he used to, having learned his lesson after the whole fiasco with Chris, but there was still something very entertaining to him about the reactions of other people. With most people he let them think what they wanted; with others, he still liked to tease, and joke, and poke fun, particularly when it came to those who had such firm opinions already.
“I’m flattered that you’re so attached to my peen that you only see me as a dude,” he said blithely, completely nonchalant, and still heedless of their surroundings and the fact that he had the sort of voice that carried. “Really it’s just kind of there. Not that hard to tuck away. I’d show you, but you’d probably be traumatized.”
Paris brought his hands back up to his face, one on either side, his smile wide and wicked. For just a second he wondered if he was being mean, but he quickly decided Ladon was a big boy and should be able to handle a little teasing by now. It wasn’t as if Paris hadn’t teased him about such things before.
“Chris and I are already living together, silly,” he continued. “I mean, there were a few months last summer when I stayed with his family instead, but in August we got our own place. We could have just stayed in the apartment Chris already had, but I kind of wanted something that was ours, you know? That place was always his. I wanted one that was his and mine. So that’s where we are now. I don’t know about once we’re married. I don’t see why we wouldn’t just stay where we are. We don’t plan on being engaged for very long anyways. Neither of us really want to make a big deal about it, even though Chris’s mom and grandmother want this huge wedding with tons of people there, so we’re just going to go to the courthouse. We’ve already set the date for the end of March. The 29th, so don't make any other plans or go out of town on some other romantic getaway, because you and Billy are invited.”
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Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2013 5:13 pm
The attention they were getting made him uncomfortable, and he sank a bit as Paris more or less said he was spending days on end thinking of his best friend's d**k. It wasn't even like that, and they both had boyfriends now. Well, a boyfriend while the other hand a fiance. Sure, it...might have been different before, but not now. They were both claimed for and happy.
"But you ARE a dude. I mean, you don't think of yourself as a girl...I mean up here." He pointed to his head. "Do you?" He never really prodded Paris too much about it, but now that Paris was getting engaged, he wondered if he would want to change gender via surgery if he really did feel like those people on TV that said they were a woman in a man's body. He just assumed Paris was - well, a crossdresser.
Thinking about Paris actually getting married, he looked over at the magazines and then thought of him and Billy attending. "It's nice that you invited Billy. I know you don't like him much and it's your big day and all." He played with cardboard band around his cup. "So, if you are like, going to dress up in a white gown and all, and this is in the court house, do you get like a best man or lady or something?"
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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2013 12:22 pm
“The easy answer is that I think of myself as both,” Paris said, a bit more seriously now, though his face was still overcome with a smile and he didn’t appear as if this were a subject that bothered him at all.
In truth, it didn’t. The only problem he ever had when it came to talking about it was that he was never quite sure how to explain himself, nor did he know how deeply he should go into the issue. Most of the comments he made about it barely skimmed the surface, partly so he wouldn’t get frustrated trying and failing to answer a question that was actually pretty complicated, and partly because he wasn’t even sure if he was done examining the question himself. He knew how he’d felt about himself as a child, and he knew how he felt about himself now, but he didn’t know if that was all there was to it or if he was still muddling through trying to figure it all out.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” he admitted. “Gender isn’t just this black or white thing, you know. I mean, I guess for some people it is, but for other people… there’s a lot of gray area. I’m somewhere in there, I guess. I’m totally okay with what’s going on out here,” he said, motioning to the length of his body (short as it was), “and with what’s going on up in here,” he added, removing one of his hands from his face to tap a finger against his temple. “And as long as, you know, people aren’t dicks about it, pun totally intended, then I’m pretty cool with letting them think what they want to. Guy, girl, honestly, you can think of me either way, just… acknowledge that there’s more to me than that, too. And, I mean, I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do or not. Maybe I should make more of a big deal about it, but it’s worked for me so far and I figure as long as I’m okay with it, that’s what’s most important, right?”
By the end of the spiel Paris’s overly-enthusiastic , bubbly behavior had abated, and his voice had lowered to a more reasonable tone. His expression, though somewhat troubled looking, was an honest one, and his posture was mostly relaxed as he lounged in his seat, occasionally fiddling with his drink cup or a napkin.
After a moment or two he let himself look sheepish, a wordless apology if he’d failed to make any sense at all.
“Anyway, I figured it’d be pretty mean if I didn’t invite Billy,” he admitted, returning to the wedding talk now that he’d gotten the more complicated stuff over with, “since I don’t want you to have to come by yourself, and it’s not like I hate him, I just… when he and I met, and when you and I met, I was sort of in this really bad place emotion-wise. I guess I still am sometimes, but it’s… kind of different. Or it all stems from a different thing, since me and my mom’re okay now. I didn’t really feel all that great about myself back then, and when you and Billy got together… I don’t know. I didn't trust him at all, for one. And it was just easy to resent him. It still is sometimes, and, I mean, I’m not about to be his best friend or anything, but… I want to be happy. I don’t want to feel like I used to, and I think letting go of all that dislike is a part of that.”
Paris paused to consider what he was saying, his face coloring an uncommon pink. Forcing a laugh, he said, “Wow, that got way deeper than I’d meant it to,” and smiled brightly again as he moved right along to happier thoughts, bouncing excitedly in his chair as he tried to return to the gushing mood he’d exuded before. “Since we’re getting married at the courthouse, I didn’t really know if it’d be worth it to have a wedding party, but I know Chris is gonna ask his best friend if she’ll be is Best Woman, so if you want to be my Dude of Honor or my Best Lady or whatever, it would make me really, really happy! I promise you don’t have to wear anything ridiculous, and you don’t have to worry about paying for anything for it ‘cause Chris’s mom and my mom are splitting the costs.”
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Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 1:08 am
“Uh, well, I only ask cause I try to like, ya know, understand. I don’t mean to make you all self-conscious or something. I just thought if I could figure it out better, I’d get you more. I don’t think I get it all the way or that I could ever understand how it all works, but if I say something stupid, you can always just hit me over the head or tell me to shut up. I don’t mean to hurt you if I say something mean.” He honestly just wanted to have a better idea on how it all worked, but the idea was something foreign to him for someone who always thought himself as a guy, and who had to take a while just to accept he liked men. After considering that a rather foreign idea and rather game changing to his whole world, the idea of thinking you were both a man and woman was just a bit beyond his boundaries. He honestly tried as best he could to understand Paris, but his brain continued to try and work him back into a set if ideas he could best handle and understand. To him, Paris was a guy who liked to dress as a woman, who had girly mannerisms, but was still like, well, a “bro” to him. Or as much as a bro Ladon ever had or wanted.
Feeling sheepish with Paris, he looked back up with a smile that was probably bigger than he intended in that he was both offered and encouraged to take the role of Dude of Honor. “Well, you already got me in a skirt once, and it is your big day.” He joked. “But…if you don’t have anyone else to take that role…I wouldn’t mind. I only got to attend weddings as a relative and never as anyone important to a bride or groom.” He was usually just the kid that got to sit by his parents and hope it was over soon. Even the role of ringbearer was given to someone cuter than he was.
“Oh, uh, do you have a registry anywhere? I’d still like to give you something since it’s tradition.”
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Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 1:47 pm
“I won’t hit you, silly,” Paris said, broad grin firmly back in place. “If anything I’d just tease you about it and try to embarrass you, ‘cause that’s way more fun for me, honestly.”
Perhaps he’d changed in certain ways since that day the two of them had met. He was certainly less promiscuous; his behavior in general had improved significantly, and he had to admit he thought he dressed better now. He presented himself better overall, partly because he cared more about what people thought (as much as Paris could ever care about what people thought when he continued to insist that he didn’t care at all), and partly because he’d grown more comfortable with who he was and who he wanted to be. He was more aware of his own self-worth than he’d been then.
There were, however, some things that would never change—the relentless teasing and the amusement he took from it remained high on that list.
“Oh, we don’t have a registry anywhere yet,” he said, and paused to consider this for a few moments. “Um… I’ve never done the whole wedding thing before. I mean, obviously. It’s not like I’ve ever been married, or ever thought I’d get married. But I’ve never even been to a wedding. I’ve kind of just been letting Chris’s mom handle everything. She might have mentioned something about gifts before, but it probably got lost between all the talk about dresses and flowers. But, I mean, it’s not like Chris and I really need anything so, seriously, if you want to just, like, donate to charity or something, we’d both be pretty chill with that.”
He was fairly certain Chris would agree wholeheartedly, since his fiancé was rather generous like that.
“I’m actually really terrible at this. God, we should have just eloped. Do you think it’s bad that I don’t really care about the wedding all that much? I just want to be married and not have to deal with too much of the in-between stuff. I’m probably crazy. Do you think I’m crazy? We’re kind of young, aren’t we? You can be honest, I promise I won’t be offended.”
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Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 5:37 pm
Now that Paris was talking about it, Ladon noticed his rush words. "You're not getting cold feet, are you?" He asked, wondering if Paris was second guessing all his decisions now that everything was being arranged.
"If you met Chris' family, it probably means a lot to them to have it perfect for their son and for you. You'll be part of their family. It's why his mom wants to take care of everything, and she's probably just excited. I actually don't think many mothers would be considering.." Well, it wasn't a very traditional marriage after all.
"Just do what you feel you want to do and let them take care of it. And I want to give you something. It's not that you both can afford it on your own, but I want to give you a gift for this occasion. I'll think of something." He knew Paris enough to know what he liked.
To dissuade any worries, Ladon only held his cup. "You might be young but....well, the world is a crazy place. Anything can happen. I think it's best to do something now than put it off later." Any day now, something could happen to them. that thought made Ladon worry for Billy, and he also wondered if the man wanted to marry. Did...Billy think about those things.
"How.." He closed his mouth again, but continued. "How did you know you two wanted to get married? Like...did you just reach a point?"
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