What's the point? (Tag Philippe) on Library

Oz Spellman

July 31, 2022 6:43 PM

What's the point? (Tag Philippe) by Oz Spellman

OOC: CW - internalised/accidental homophobia BIC:

It was hard to get a private conversation with someone. Well, okay, maybe private would have been easy—he could have just asked Philippe for a quiet word, or followed him into the bookshelves, but whispering and then slinking off down the aisles with a known gay was not what his reputation needed right now. It was hard to get a secret conversation. He really hoped Phillipe had never told anyone about their comparing wands conversation. Oz thought that was pretty normal guy stuff to talk and joke about, but now… Now it read differently. Joking around with Philippe, hanging out with Xavier… Why did he gravitate towards all those things? The answer nagged at the back of his head, but he was too scared to admit it.

When Philippe got up for books, Oz went to a different, parallel aisle. He’d tried this a couple of times already, but either been too rambling in the routes he took to Philippe’s aisle (meaning he was back at his table when Oz got there) or there were other people browsing the same section. He was considering giving up for the day, if this attempt didn’t work out.

He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not when he rounded the corner, and found Philippe still in the aisle and alone. The way his legs wanted to bolt in the opposite direction suggested the latter.

“Hey,” he said, trying to sound neutral, and forcing himself forward. His voice sounded more or less normal, but his usual cocky, cheerful smile was absent, replaced with a clenched jaw that could read as either anxious or menacing. “Xav keeps going on about your gay club thing. He keeps telling me allies are welcome and stuff,” he said. That was Xavier’s line, though he kept saying it like a challenge, like he was trying to goad Oz into admitting something. Oz couldn’t shake the things Xavier had said under the influence of his magic beans last year. At the time, they had seemed like nothing but rambling, but now… Xavier could see the future. Had that been what he was doing then? Even if Xav had forgotten about those visions, could he have had more since he started tapping into his gift? Was he poking around Oz’s future in crystal balls and tealeaves? That wasn’t fair. Xav couldn’t just look into a teacup and tell Oz he was gay. “But no one straight actually goes right? It’s just all you lot hanging out? What’s the point, anyway? Everyone already knows you’re gay, and you’ve already got a boyfriend.” The more he said, the tighter his voice and his body became, until his arms were firmly crossed over his chest, his eyes narrowed, and his words were being spat out. It was why he didn’t talk to Xav about it. He couldn’t do it without getting prickly. He could feel it, rubbing up under his skin whenever Xav mentioned it, building into the urge to snap.

13 Oz Spellman What's the point? (Tag Philippe) 1514 1 5

Philippe Delachene

August 01, 2022 8:16 AM

Feeling accepted and welcome? by Philippe Delachene

Philippe was vaguely aware of Oz being in the library and counted it mildly odd because he sort of associated Oz and Anya as similar types of Pecari who didn't go into the library unless on pain of getting their gymnastics class dropped over the summer if they didn't get their grades up. (Or whatever it was that Oz's mom could hold over him. Oz didn't seem like a gymnastics kind of guy.) But Philippe was still adjusting to the higher level and workload of advanced classes, so he'd mostly forgotten about Oz by the time he ran into him in the Charms section where he was trying to find enough sources to impress a Head of Aladren with an essay.

"Hey," he returned the greeting easily, also passing this off as a random encounter, because anyone might need an extra charm book or two to keep up with Professor Wright when he gets on a good ramble, but then Oz kept talking, and Philippe realized he was high enough level now that random encounters could still be pretty dangerous.

He blinked a few times, not quite sure if he was offended or just confused. "Okay," he started when Oz stopped. "Um. A few things. First, it's a place to feel safe and welcome, not a dating site. That's not even where I met Freddie. What we do is we talk to each other about how to deal with problems we're having or help each other figure out how to navigate a change in self-awareness."

Philippe was picking up some antagonism here, but didn't think it was aimed at him personally, and he had a guess who Xavier's outburst about a 'massive homo with stupid fragile masculinity' last year might have been about, especially since it was Xavier who had put him up to this conversation. So he continued, carefully, "Sometimes it's really hard, realizing you're not who you thought you were. My great-uncles are gay, and my mom's brother is bi, so I was never under the impression that men kissing each other was unusual, but for some guys, it's a big change to their world view that they might want to do that."

Okay, walk it back to something more general now; Philippe didn't want to get punched by a beater if he stepped on something too sensitive. "Families might not be supportive, either, so we make sure we are there for each other." He was making this club sound very Teppenpaw. And it kind of was, but Oz wasn't one, so he tried to bring it around to something he might relate to better. "You know, help each other adapt," Pecari keyword there, "to seeing themselves and each other as people first, regardless of how they identify, accept them for who they are, and become their best self." Nope. Still sounded Teppenpaw. Oh, well, he'd tried. This was why he had not been sorted as a Boar.

"Second, allies are very welcome. My sisters both joined as allies. They were both friends with Ellie, the cafe's founder, and wanted to support her in what was important to her and who she was as a person. Jasmine is the straightest straight girl who ever existed but she is proud to wear that ally flag to support her friends and family." Anya later turned out to be Ace, but she hadn't known that when she joined, so he wasn't lying by mentioning her, but he focused more on Jasmine because he didn't want to make too many misleading statements that painted Anya as still being an ally or straight. "Unfortunately, we lost a lot of our membership to graduation the last couple of years, but we still have a few who count themselves as allies." He wasn't sure if mentioning Lenny by name would help or hinder that argument.

"I'm glad Xavier's trying to get more people in. It's important to have allies so we don't feel like we can only talk to each other to be accepted for who we are. We're a very informal club, more a hang-out space than a club really. We have snacks and talk and help each other out - whether that be something related to being gay or queer or plus, or just some extra practice with the latest Transfiguration spell Professor Skies is teaching. You don't need to come every week. Val only shows up when she's got the time to spare. Cole Pierce comes by with his twin every now and then but isn't even formally a member. If you just want to swing in like that, that's totally fine. You are welcome to do that. We just ask that you be a safe person to be around. Like," he offered in mild criticism, "maybe not call us 'you lot' like we ought to be segregated and shouldn't be hanging out with straight people."

He felt a little weird that Oz had singled him out as Lead You Lot Guy. It was clearly because Ellie had asked him to take over the club, making him the slightly more obvious point guy when people had questions about 'your gay club thing' but Philippe had always been more of a follower than a leader and Philippe had figured Val would always outshine him in any category they shared. Particularly for the next two years, while she was running around being blatantly bi, Philippe wasn't going to project as particularly gay at all, other than leading the Café, now that his boyfriend had graduated without him.

1 Philippe Delachene Feeling accepted and welcome? 1489 0 5

Oz Spellman

August 01, 2022 5:25 PM

Not very likely by Oz Spellman

It was a place to feel safe and talk about feelings. Of course it frigging was. And ‘problems.’ If they even had any. Xavier was always on about what a safe, nice place Sonora was. Oz didn’t understand what ‘navigate a change in self-awareness’ meant but it also sounded very touchy-feely. The next part of Philippe’s explanation, about how it could be challenging to realise you weren’t who you thought you were, struck a nerve. Worse than that though, was that Philippe was using words like ‘bi’ and ‘men kissing each other’ out loud in public. Admittedly, not very loudly, as they were standing face to face in the library, but he was like… still saying them like they were totally normal words. Oz let out a hiss of air between his teeth that might have been discomfort or a shushing sound.

He clenched his teeth tighter as Philippe moved onto families.

My mom is totally supportive.

He swallowed it down, along with all the other reactions he’d had to Phillipe’s other comments. He was aware how often his own poor behaviour was attributed to his mom, like it was her fault for how she’d raised him. As if Henry wasn’t standing right there disproving any suggestion that it wasn’t just Oz that was inherently screwed up and prone to trouble. It was a reflex, to defend her, even when she wasn’t specifically being attacked. But even if he said it casually, hypothetically, that his mom was generally a supporter of said things (and might even be one of them herself, except that was a mental box he was very not ready to unpack let alone declare) it might come off wrong. It might make Philippe make assumptions. He could feel his hands shaking as he wrestled the desire to defend his mom—probably one of his few decent personality traits—back into its box. Coward.

Philippe went on to confirm that a few straight people went, and that indeed, they had so few real problems that they sometimes did homework. He was pretty sure he could do that without making himself a target. And Oz was always welcome. So long as he was a ‘safe’ person who didn’t go around saying stuff that he hadn’t even said and which was just Philippe putting words in his mouth.

“For crying out loud,” he huffed, except he didn’t feel the need to tone it down that far, and used words that were distinctly stronger than ‘crying out loud.’ “I didn’t say that. I would never say that! I spend all my time with Xavier, so clearly I don’t think that! Why do I need to show up to a meeting to prove it?”

13 Oz Spellman Not very likely 1514 0 5