#atomiktaco

Logan turned his head to stare at the sleeping teenagers next to him. He had taken the spot closest to the edge of the tent so from here, he could see the entire group packed next to each other in the too-small-for-all-of-them tent. They all looked so peaceful, passed out after a day of questionable shenanigans in the surrounding woods.

Logan didn’t even try to push away the twinges of envy that were creeping into his mind. He wanted the peace that they had- and he didn’t just mean sleep. Everyone else in this tiny little tent was so sure of themselves; they knew exactly who they were and what they were. Even Virgil (who was generally excepted by all as The Baby) was comfortable and open about their nonbinary identity. They had all seemingly outgrown their questioning stages of life. And here was Logan. Stuck. Glitching. Like a thread of himself had gotten snagged and now the whole thing was unraveling.

He didn’t know who he liked or how he liked them. He didn’t know who he was. And it was eating him away.

Logan threw his head back into the pillow behind him. He just wanted to close his eyes and drift to darkness, ignore all of the question marks in his head until later. But if the past few hours proved anything, it was that he wasn’t going to sleep tonight. It would make more sense just to give up on the whole futile attempt.

He glanced sideways again at the pile. None of the others had shifted in minutes. They wouldn’t notice if he got up and left for a few minutes, would they? On his other side, his guitar was wedged between the side of the tent and his sleeping bag. He could just grab it and leave for a little while and the others would never notice.

Before Logan was really conscious of his actions, he was already tiptoeing past the tangle of bodies with the neck of his guitar in his grip.

The relief of stepping outside was physical. His shoulders relaxed immediately and the pressure in his head subsided. A warm breeze played the scent of firs through his hair. Far above, the stars stared down like a thousand shining eyes. He gazed back lovingly.

A few feet ahead of him, the last embers of the fire were quietly fading away. He grimaced slightly at the fact that the other hadn’t put the fire out completely but he couldn’t help appreciating the beauty of the warm glow that burrowed out from the dead ashes.

Logan sat down on one of the logs they had rolled over earlier. The quietness was starting to creep back over him; the charm of the crickets fading to white noise the colour of dirty snow as a thousand questions regained their throne in his mind.

He hung his head and tried to memorize the patchwork of leaves and pine needles beneath his bare feet. There was no pattern- just a mess. It reminded Logan of himself. Logan liked things that were clear and made sense but no matter how hard he tried, he could find nothing familiar or reasonable within himself.

Logan strummed a chord. He didn’t even think about it, no thought going towards the note or the sound he was creating. He just wanted to feel it. Strings pressing into the pads of his fingertips. Neck lying securely in his palm. Body resting against his lap. Vibration moving comfortingly from the guitar to his chest.

His fingers swept down the neck, catching the next note before the echo of the last had a chance to fade away. He found another note and chased it all the way up to the second fret. His fingers danced over the strings, weaving together a melody as his thoughts wandered else where.

Logan had spent years thinking he was straight; it was kind of the “default” of society. But then he learned that guys were an option and, hey, that sounded kind of nice too. When he hit middle school, people started to talk about attraction- er- differently and he thought maybe he was asexual. But that didn’t feel quite right either. It made him wonder exactly how he felt at all.  For a while he wondered if he had ever been attracted to anyone. He thought for sure he would know what love was like. Maybe he just hadn’t experienced it yet. Maybe he was just a late bloomer. Maybe he had felt it and just didn’t know it.

He was brought back to reality when a drop of water hit the top of his hand. He blinked up the sky, trying to find the source of rain in the cloudless sky. He squinted up at the stars, damp eyelashes flickering against his skin. It was only then that he realized he was crying, tears dripping off of his cheekbones and running off of his jaw.

He shook his head and started playing again. He was pressing against the fretboard so hard that his fingers were beginning to feel like he had been playing for an hour. The muscles in his hand were sore and he could feel the strings digging little trenches into his skin. He ignored the sensation and picked the rhythm up.

Things didn’t get easier when gender butted its ugly head into the discussion. It changed everything. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to change everything and maybe it shouldn’t have changed everything but to Logan, it did. How the hell was Logan supposed to put a finger on his sexuality if he didn’t even have a gender to contextualize it in? Logan kept using the same pronouns because it was easier, because maybe he was just imaging it, because maybe he just wanted attention. He just wanted a box to check, just tiny little square he could stand in and say “Hey this feels ok.”

The body of his guitar dug sharply into Logan’s chest as a shuddering sob brought him slumping forward. He didn’t stop playing. He couldn’t stop playing. It was the only thing that he he understood right now.

He let the weight of his body fall completely over the curve of the guitar. The hum of the strings carried directly from the instrument and into his chest where it echoed back until he wasn’t even sure where the sound was coming from. It was just one long harmony, tiny whimpers mixing with melancholy strums that called into the darkness around him. If only an answer would step out of those empty, lonely woods.

Logan started as a hand landed lightly across his shoulders, causing him to jump and spin around.

Roman was standing there, one of Remus’ old volleyball jerseys hanging off of him and making him look like a neon-coloured ghost. His hair stuck up at ridiculous angles but his face couldn’t be more serious, “Logan? Are you ok?”

Logan hurried to wipe his face clear of tears, “Oh yeah. Why are you out here?”

Roman laughed without humor as he took a seat down next to Logan, “I think I could ask you the same thing.”

“I just couldn’t sleep,” Logan shrugged.

“So you decided to play your guitar loud enough to wake me up?”

Logan stared into the maze of trees so didn’t have to look at Roman, “Sorry about that.”

Next to him, Logan heard Roman sigh, “No you don’t have to apologize. I just want to know what’s wrong.”

Logan kept staring a mile ahead. He wasn’t exactly the best at talking about things like this, about himself. Besides he hadn’t ever mentioned this to anyone before. Whenever the others discussed their sexualities or genders he would step back and go quiet, walled off by his own confusion. He didn’t know how to join the conversation when his experience seemed so, so different than theirs. He would probably seem like an alien to them- so unsure of himself while they seemed so comfortable. Maybe they would decide he didn’t belong after all. He didn’t know how to join the conversation and he sure as hell didn’t know how to begin it.

But maybe now was the time to try, “Roman, have you ever felt lost?”

“You do remember how we met, right?” Logan could hear the ruthful smile that tugged on Roman’s mouth.

Logan turned to face him, unsure of where exactly this was going, “Yeah. In our freshman year.”

“Your freshman year. My repeat year.”

“Oh. Right,” Logan didn’t know what to say; he got the feeling he wasn’t really supposed to say anything yet.

Roman nodded like he was having a silent conversation in his head with someone else and they had just made a good point, “The year before and the start of that year, I had never felt more lost in my life. I couldn’t keep up with the year I was supposed to be with. I didn’t fit in with the incoming class and I didn’t know anyone there. I was separated from my twin for the first time ever. And I was still struggling to come to terms with my identity as a guy. I was cut off from my friends, my family, the people around me, even myself.”

“So what changed?”

“I met you,” Roman smiled warmly.

Logan felt his eyebrows weave together, “How did I do anything?”

“You gave me a place to stand, somewhere safe that I always knew would be there while I figured everything else out. You gave me a friend. You were always so there that you gave me the room to find myself.”

“Oh,” But that was exactly the problem. Because he wasn’t there, he had no clue where he was.

“So yes,” Roman bumped his shoulder into Logan’s, “I’ve been lost before. And you helped me find myself and my friends and even my brother again.”

“Oh,” Logan cursed in his head. He must sound stupid, but he didn’t know what else to say.

Roman leaned sideways to nudge Logan with his shoulder again, “You obviously didn’t ask me that just so you could hear some sappy rant; what’s up?”

Logan moved the guitar off of his lap and set it down in an attempt to buy time. He was staring off again, half hoping that if he stared into the dark woods long enough he would just melt into them. The other half wanted to explode and tell Roman every single thought bouncing through his mind. He sat forward with his elbows on his knees, “I’m lost.”

“Ok,” Roman spoke slowly, confusion evident in his tone as he began to rub his hand over the plane of Logan’s shoulders, “How are you lost?”

“It’s going to sound stupid,” A laugh escaped Logan in a breathy wheeze; it sounded sickly to his own ears, but he was far away. There was no humor in his voice but the situation could only be described as ridiculous. He was out here, in the middle of the night, sobbing like a man whose heart had been broken- and over what? Because he couldn’t decide who to crush on? He shook his head; he was obviously making too big of a deal out all of this, “It doesn’t really matter.”

Roman gave a similarly humorless laugh, “I’ve seen you cry- what? Maybe three times? This matters.”

“I’m just questioning a lot of things.”

“What sort of things?” Roman was clearly trying to draw more information out of him.

Logan teetered for a moment, stuck on the top of the fence and too scared to jump down. Except that’s where he always was, wasn’t it? Always questioning, always unsure, always overthinking things, always analyzing the path and never actually taking a step forward. He took a shaky deep breath. Maybe it was time to take the leap, “My gender. My sexuality. It’s like I don’t know where I fit in with all of it.”

“Oh.”

A beat of silence played into the night, filling the space between them with the quiet murmur that trees whisper at the dead of night. Under any other circumstances, Logan would have found it beautiful. Now it just served as an indication that he had said something wrong. He found himself counting out the measures as he held his breath and wished he could fill the painful space with something, anything. He wanted to start playing his guitar again, get completely lost in it, and pretend nothing else existed. He settled for clearing his throat.

“Do you need to?” Roman interrupted the silence.

“I’m sorry, what do you mean?” Logan sat up so Roman could see his confused expression.

“I mean, do you need to know right now?”

Logan couldn’t keep the annoyance out of his voice, “Yes, I need to know right now. I want to know who I am!”

Roman clamped his hands down on Logan’s shoulders, making eye contact so intense it made Logan squirm, “Logan, listen to me. You are more than your sexuality. You are more than your gender. You are brilliant and funny and the only person who has ever been patient enough to tutor me. You’re one of my very best friends and that has nothing to do with who you like or what pronouns you use.”

Logan glanced away, the pressure from Roman’s eyes and words far too great for him to hold on to. He tried to avoid that gaze, but more importantly he wanted to avoid the heaviness of what Roman had said. It meant too much. He tried to resort back to his annoyance, “How can you say that? You changed your pronouns; they sure as hell mean a lot to you. Why can’t they matter to me?”

He wanted his voice to sound bitter, to bite, to cut down what Roman had said. But his words were a whimper and nothing more than a plea. He dissolved into tears again and sank into Roman’s side, “Why can’t it matter to me? Why can’t I know too?”

Logan felt Roman wrap his arms around his upper body. He usually hated contact like this but right now it was exactly what he needed; it was grounding, Roman’s sturdy arms giving himself to hold onto through it all.

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that. It was kind of like dreaming- just fragments of broken thoughts floating through darkness. Roman’s shirt smelled like fire smoke and the scent drifted through’s Logan’s head along with everything else. He seemed to be thinking nothing and everything all at the same time. He didn’t know how to make sense of any of it.

Eventually he sat up, wiping his eyes and brushing his hair back into place as if that could save the shreds of his dignity, “Sorry about that.”

Roman had moved his arms when Logan sat up and he seemed tempted to wrap them around Logan again, “What? No, it’s ok.”

Logan shifted from side to side, “I just... I feel like such an outsider. Not knowing, I mean. You’re all so confident and I’m just lost. It feels like I’m missing a piece of myself. How do I find it?”

Roman seemed to take a moment to think, running his hands through his hair and staring off into the distance. When he turned back to Logan, his eyes were warm and full of little thoughts that bumped around the edges, “I think the first step is accepting that you can’t force it. Then you can just wait until you find something that feels right. And that might take a little while, but that’s ok. You’ll figure it out eventually- you always do. The problem you need to work on is being patient; everything will fall into place once it’s ready to.”

“Yeah, well, being patient isn’t exactly my strong suit,” Logan huffed a laugh up into the twinkling sky, “I hate seeing a problem and not being able to solve it or know the answer.”

“Logan, look at me.”

Roman’s voice came out in one low line of sound. It was more of a command than anything else and Logan felt compelled to turn.

“You’re not some math problem or crossword puzzle. There’s no x to solve for and the sooner you accept that, the easier it’s going to be for you to relax and let the answers come when they will.”

Logan glared at him for a moment because, as horrible as it was to admit, Roman was making a lot of sense. He sighed, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Roman gave him one of the sunshine smiles he had grown famous for at their school, “Thanks, Teach.”

They sat there comfortably silent for a few moments. Wind rustled the trees around them and the final embers dissolved into ashes. The moon basked the entire scene in an ethereal, cold light. For once, Logan felt like he could reflect the peacefulness around himself.

“And Logan? Don’t be afraid to talk to us. We’d all be happy to give you answers- or at least, the best answers we can. If I’m being honest, I don’t know if anyone is ever completely sure about this sort of stuff. How was it that you described the brain- ‘a couple pounds of gray tissue that reacts to electrical currents’ ? We’re humans and we’re messy and it can be hard to figure out what all those electrical currents mean. But we’ll help as much as we can. Hell, I’ll go to the library with you and we can spend the entire day there researching sexualities and identities if you want.”

“Thank you, Roman. That-“ Logan paused to take a deep breath. The sincerity and dedication in Roman’s words had a way of weakening his own voice until it was hard to speak in anything but a thin waver, “That means a lot.”

“No problem,” Roman gave him a smile that meant so much more than his casual words. He held it for a moment before trading it for a playful wink, “Now can I ask for a favour?”

Logan laughed and reached for his guitar, knowing what was coming, “Sure.”

“Play that song I like?”

“Already on it.”

The strings were cool, comfortable beneath the warmth of his fingers. His hand slipped quickly into the melody as Roman began humming. Logan would figure things out. It might take a while but for now, Roman was singing and the trees were whispering their song and the moon was turning everything silver and he could stay here a little bit longer.

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