Pom

It happens in a grocery store. Don't all of life's most fragile, emotionally vulnerable moments happen in a grocery store?

(It's where you're most likely to accidentally walk to the beat of an old Doobie Brothers song down the bread aisle, looking for the particular brand of whole-wheat that you actually like, and that is to say that you tolerate, and get amicably, ambiguously, ambivalently analyzed by a woman who's just entered menopause and is buying the most sickeningly sweet and synthetic brand of peanut butter from the lowest point on the shelves because somehow she still doesn't realize that her children are grown up and she doesn't need Peter Pan anymore, right? So I'd say yes.)

Addam and Minoth are in the shampoo aisle. Mythra, their teenage attachment, is grousing along behind, because somehow their hair always magically stays full and lustrous without any particular careful treatment, and so why should they have to put up with Minoth not finding it so easy? They could have been out to eat with Nia, or building something with Hugo (watching him build something and mischievously poking at this exposed part or that, more like), or chasing after Malos to make fun of him for his ridiculous new boyfriend, or--

Ah. There, by the endcap, is said boyfriend. Jin. And with him, his housemates, apparently. One of them bubbly and excitable, the other deep-voiced and sanguine, but both of them definitely incredibly annoyingly in love with the other one.

What was that about going out to eat with Nia, Mythra?

But anyway. There's no fateful meeting of future partners to be seen upcoming, because Addam and Minoth are just as...insert gagging noise here. You know. Less attached at the hips, more intertwined at the lips, though they don't seem to even be doing so much as holding hands in the present moment. Ah, yes. Minoth needs a hand free to smack the back of Addam's head in retribution for some asinine comment or other. Perfect.

Mythra, simultaneously ready, willing, and able to incite some chaos, doesn't clear their throat as the challengers enter, doesn't shuffle aside, doesn't do much of anything. Suddenly the pink tax is quite a scintillating topic upon which to become educated, idly. In the shampoo aisle. (They're looking at razors, but the point still stands.)

The stereotypical cowboy and prince, preoccupied with their selections (something about having dandruff or not, and Minoth having the kind of hair that you can't brush unless it's wet, or damp at the very least), don't turn around either. So, Lora (Mythra remembers this far better than Malos ever will) awkwardly clears her throat, garners no reaction, and settles for pointing vaguely at the visible bottles.

"That one, right?" Mythra can hear her say to Jin. She squints. "For thick-textured hair."

Jin sighs, rolls his eyes. Mythra almost wants to say that they like him already. But only almost. "Lora, for the last time, I don't have thick hair. I just have a lot of it."

"Oh." Lora puzzles, shares a look with Haze, scans the rest of the shelf with both her nose and her finger. "So would you want the thickening type, then?" The three of them seem entirely oblivious to Mythra's watchful gaze. Huh. Self-absorbed much?

(It's the human condition, Mythra. Even you've got to be party to it eventually.)

Oblivious or not, for whatever reason, Jin reddens. (Could be because his friends apparently don't trust him enough to be able to pick out his own shampoo, pathetic little loner that he is, but that aside...) "No, no, I'll just take the normal type, alright? Just the..." he gestures insistently towards the plain containers, devoid of promised special effects, with things like "ARCTIC SHOCK FROST GEL" and "Essence of Sandalwood" alternately emblazoned upon them instead.

At that, Haze briskly nudges Lora, who blushes herself, and dips her chin down towards her chest. "Right, sorry. I forgot if that would bother you or not..."

Oh. Oho. Inchresting. Or, well...makes enough sense. Being able to use girls' products, as much as one ever needs permission or facilitation for such a thing, opens up a whole different world of possibilities, and were it not for the aforementioned pink tax, it would seem to be a not entirely lateral move, but if you'd want to be distancing yourself from that entirely...yeah. Awesome.

So now Mythra clears their own throat, and kicks their heel back into the Achilles' tendon of Minoth's ankle (boots or not, they can get a good whack in, and he wears ankle boots anyway), and places the situation squarely into their not-parents' completely, wildly, effusively incapable hands. After all, those of the so-called "alphabet mafia" can't help but raise an eyebrow at the sighting of a fellow member - three, in fact - no matter how generally unenthusiastic they tend to (want to) be. And it's not intrusive if you relate, right?

Right?

Minoth wheels around, clearly well removed into his stepfather role more than Addam ever is or was as the foster parent, and bites off a tired "What is it, Mythra?" Addam, sensing the disquiet, for once, also makes an about-face, but his eyes go instead to the opposite contingent. "Oh, sorry. Are we in your way?"

Mythra, suddenly unsure why they thought this would be such a good idea, decides to commit to the bit anyway, and makes a half-hearted but very telling (if you're in the know, and Minoth is in the know) gesture towards their chest, and his as well. Minoth parses the unspoken inflection immediately, makes an appraising face and crosses his arms, and then smiles his most genial down at the other group (as if his surliness just moments before was a mere figment of Mythra's imagination, and maybe it was).

Jin squints at them, like a lynx in the snow casing a threat, and does so for a good long while before spotting the entirely too conveniently placed rubber wristband Minoth's wearing: the transgender flag, not colorpicked not cameoed not nothing, just...there in plain view. Almost like it was planted there as a motive narrative device. And since he's the playwright...we won't put it past him.

So then. It's level footing. While we're still dawdling on a gender-neutral word for non-child child that isn't just "teenager", because that doesn't necessarily connote nearby parentage, or even "kid", what shall we call a group of generally gay or gay-adjacent people? Again, we hope amicably, and certainly at the present moment it's ambiguously, but it's just as certainly, perhaps more, not ambivalently. A set of cats can be called a glaring, and that action is indeed lingering in the air, and quite a many collective nouns for animals huddle under the moniker of a team, and...you know what? I've not got a singular noun to set with this. So we'll settle for calling the six of them a squad, and leave it at that.

"You're pretty tall," says Minoth.

"So are you," says Jin.

Now, this exchange would have worked just as feasibly and indeed just as well in the opposite direction, perhaps even better, and maybe it did, but here and now as it stands it makes for the perfect corner from around which Addam can more fully and fully idiotically emerge: "Well. Isn't that interesting. We're all tall, and you're all short. Ha! Would you look at that."

"Look at what?" Mythra echoes, thrusting their elbow unceremoniously into Addam's exposed side; he grimaces, but only for a second. "Who's 'we'?" And they're right, of course, because as odd and amusing as it may be for the men who were not deemed men when they were born to be positively statuesque, and the women who were not deemed women when they were born to be petite and unassuming, Mythra fits neither category. Which, again of course, is the point. Ain't that cute?

(And maybe Addam hasn't even noticed. Maybe he's just commenting on the complementarity of it all. You know as well as I do, and don't I always share with you everything I know? So it proves itself out.)

There's something about this. Such an entirely uninteresting encounter, and yet it's quite important. It almost feels like they could revisit this moment, again and again, whenever animosity rises, and every time find this...strange energy.

What do we call this energy? Perhaps we call it...pom.

"Well," says Addam. "It's Saturday morning. Have you had breakfast yet?"

Haze, boldness shrinking back under nerves, shakes her head. "Have you?" she offers timidly.

"Nope!" He plants his hands on his hips, and Minoth gives him a bewildered look, and Mythra just bites their lip and stares at the ground. Jin, after it all, seems amused by the whole affair, as does Lora. And who wouldn't be? This whole thing is really quite bizarre.

Addam, then, somehow, makes it worse. "Who wants pancakes?"

That scene, at the diner, I won't visit. There's something else entirely to be said for the emotional vulnerability of the things that happen in a Perkins.