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Adrian Chase is about 11 years old when he starts to accept that maybe, just maybe, he is different. He's sitting on the bench on the side of the playground watching his supposed peers play on the blacktop. When his brother was here, he'd try to play with him, or else group him in with his friends when they played basketball or four square. But Gut graduated to sixth grade last year, leaving Adrian behind. Leaving him here, on this cement bench that, despite the May sun beating down on it, is still quite cold. That doesn't matter though, Adrian doesn't really mind the feeling. It distracts him from the growing pit in his stomach. The thorny reminder that he doesn't have any friends to be playing with.
Maybe it's because he doesn't know how to talk to people. That would make the most sense, Adrian thinks. His dad tells him that normal people would be able to just walk up to people and start talking about shared interests, and there would form at least some kind of bond. Adrian is pretty sure that isn't how it works, because the last time he did that, the girl he'd been talking to had run away screaming and he'd been dragged to the counselor. How was he supposed to know that he wasn't supposed to kill lizards in his backyard? Gut did it all the time, and Gut was pretty much like an adult.
But anyways, it's not like he cares. No, really. He doesn't care. The only things he could feel in that moment was that the bench was cold, and that the sweater his mom had forced him into that morning was both too hot and itchy. It wasn't like him to think about more than immediate physical or mental stimuli, so if he can't see the kids staring at him, he's fine. (Definitely. Totally. 100% fine)
He picked at the fraying strands of yarn on his sleeve and returned his gaze to the thrush of traffic just outside the chain link fence of the blacktop that the school called their recess play area. Sometimes he would hear the other kids say that he was a heartless emotionless monster, and he knows that's not true. When he sees the dead cats in the street on his walks home, he definitely feels sad. He's pretty confident that's what that emotion is.
One time, Gut told him that the sky isn't the same color for everyone.
"Whaddya mean by that? It's blue you idiot."
"Let me finish you moron. My teacher told me that everyone sees different shades of blue when they look up at the sky. That everyone sees the colors in slightly different shades. Something to do with the cones in your eyes." By the end of his story, Adrian was gazing at Gut with the absolute reverence that only little siblings could have for the older.
"Oh. Huh. Well I think the sky is light blue. What about you?" Adrian stared up into the sky.
"Same." He felt Gut's fist push into his shoulder and he snapped his attention down, sending the wire frame glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose slightly. He giggled and pushed them up. Gut was holding up his fist to bump. "Light blue crew?" Adrian smiled his biggest smile he could. He's pretty sure this is what happiness is supposed to feel like.
"For life." He said, bumping his fist against his older brother's. He fell back and continued gazing at the cloudless light blue sky.
He's fine, he thinks. It's entirely possible that his emoti-ometer (as Gut liked to call it) was dialed all the way down. And he's not totally sure what fine is supposed to mean, cuz maybe his fine is different then what everyone else thinks is fine. And maybe, just maybe, that's ok.
He's 16 when he thinks that he doesn't like women. Gut had been trying to set him up with one of his friend's younger sisters, and he'd been his typical disinterested self. He'd blamed it on his lack of emotional regulation. At this point he had a diagnosis, which didn't really help, but it was something. He'd laughed off Gut's matchmaking attempt with a flimsy excuse about being too busy, and went back to planning his DND session for the next week. He was the DM, because of course he was. The elaborate plots in his head need somewhere to go after all.
But later he's lying alone in his bed when he thinks that maybe he doesn't like any woman. Like at all. He's staring up at the tacky glow in the dark stars on his ceiling and considering the fact that he's never felt butterflies in his stomach for any girl in his whole life. Gut described to him once what a crush felt like, and he said that it feels like an airy lightness in your stomach and chest. Like there are butterflies in your stomach that are flapping so hard that the winds they're generating is going to lift you off the ground. Adrian thinks the analogy is disgusting, why would you want butterflies in your stomach? Furthermore, he thinks that maybe he doesn't want that feeling, or at least his kind of love is different from any other kinds. It sure as hell ain't towards women. He knows that for certain (he's pretty sure.)
He slides his glasses off and sets them, neatly folded, on the nightstand and continues to gaze at the artificial stars that are more like blobs of very dim light without his glasses on. Love is confusing and weird. It's such a big concept that he feels he doesn't necessarily have to understand right now, or maybe ever. Actually no, fuck that. Maybe he doesn't want to understand it. Maybe not everything has to fit into a neat little box. Maybe he doesn't want it to fit into a box. Maybe he's actively avoiding the box because he's scared of what might happen if he does try to categorize what he's feeling.
Maybe he feels just the tiniest amount of what Gut describes as love towards one of his classmates. A definitely not-a-girl classmate.
His head is spinning and he feels like he might be sick. It feels like the biggest secret in the world, this feeling. Like something he can't even share with his brother, who he tells everything to. The pit in his stomach feels like it's opening again, and desperately he tries to cover it over with dirt.
Going to sleep that night is hard. Once the train starts down the track, it's very difficult to stop. He's not sure if he's okay with what he's thinking, but it's too late now, the train had whizzed past his ability to control it long ago.