Shimmer (boyxboy/alien)

Chapter 15: Real me

"You're laughing at me."
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As the curtain makes a 'shush' sound on the rail, the boy behind it cowers. 

Joe looks down to see a curled up ball of clothes. It was as if someone was trying to hide their entirety within the confines of the material they wore. "Vinnie?" Joe asks, a little cautiously, just the mention of the name making the figure at Joe's feet tense up.

"Go away...please!" Comes the muffled response. 

Joe crouches down, getting to eye level with a hoodie pulled over what seemed like a rather large head. He sees the tips of two long white fingers poke ever so slightly from the cuff of one of the sleeves. Joe reaches a hand forward and places it gently onto Vinnie's forearm. "Hey...look at me." Joe coaxes, trying his best to prepare himself for what he may or may not bear witness to. 

"No...I can't." Comes the reply.

Joe breathes out a sigh. "You can't...or you won't?" 

This time he gets no response. 

Joe now edges a little closer, his other hand now resting itself on Vinnie's other shoulder. Joe tries again… "You should know by now that I don't care what people look like Vinnie. I don't care what you look like. I want to get to know you...the real you." He can feel the boy's once tense shoulders relax a little at his words. Joe takes this as an opportunity to see if Vinnie will let him in...just a little. He moves his hands towards the hood of the jacket and as slow and as carefully as he can, Joe begins to pull the material down. 

Vinnie, who still has his head cushioned between his knees, screws his eyes closed, feeling the hood being lowered, to reveal a hairless head of pearlescent white. 

Joe swallows down hard as more of Vinnie is revealed. The head is so literally 'alien' to him that he finds himself chuckling at the irony!

Vinnie instantly reaches out his long skeletal fingers to attempt to pull the hood back up and over his head. "You're laughing at me!" He says, almost at the cusp of tears. 

"No, I'm not!" Joe insists. He tries to find the right words to explain. "I'm not laughing at you I promise...I'm just laughing at this moment." He suddenly leans forward and places his hands on top of Vinnie's, making Vinnie freeze once again. His hands felt as cold as ice. "Vinnie. This is silly. Just show me who you are and…"

"And what?" Vinnie looks up without warning, without thought, his big brown eyes catching Joe by surprise. "So you can point out how hideous I am? Why did you have to discover the truth? Austin was perfect for this world. He fitted in, he…"

"He wasn't you Vinnie!" Joe interrupts, his voice low but with conviction. 

"What?"

"I said he wasn't you, not completely." Joe closes his eyes in thought, working out what to say next. Never a man of may words, but right now he needed to find the exact right ones. "When we wear certain clothes, makeup, dye our hair, we take on a personna to fit the brief, to live up to that design. Austin and Michael were you, but they weren't because you played the roles differently. You behaved the way you thought those faces should behave." Joe takes one of his hands back to scratch his head. "I'm not making any sense am I?"

"No!" Vinnie interrupts. "You're making perfect sense." He graces Joe with a smile, making his large eyes crease a little around the edge, in turn making Joe smile back. 

He then stands up, pulling Joe up to standing with him. His hoodie now falling back from his head with ease. "You really wanna see me?" He says, feeling brave and a little more sure of himself as he pushes Joe backwards until the back of his knees hit the mattress of Vinnie's bed, making him fall back to sitting. 

Joe just nods as he watches the alien boy take a few steps back away from him. 

"Then, this is me…"

Vinnie takes his long slender fingers to the zip of his hoodie and slowly pulls the fastening down. The zipper seems extra noisy as the metal teeth open and divide the garment to reveal a flat humanlike chest. The sleeves now fall down the arms, as Vinnie shakes the garment off, to reveal two slim white arms. 

Vinnie looks up at Joe. His hands were gripping tightly to the mattress either side of him as his eyes looked at Vinnie up and down. "This is me Joe!' He says. A half smile present on his very pink and full alien lips. 

"Mmhm." Joe hums with a slight nod. He was in awe and wonder of the sight of Vinnie before him. Then a feeling foreign to Joe washes over him. It was a new feeling, something he had never experienced before. Something he couldn't really explain, but Vinnie was somehow making him feel it. So much so that when Vinnie reaches for the knotted string on his sweatpants, Joe just waits in anticipation as the lace slowly loosens the waistband.

Joe knows that he should really call time. No matter how much Vinnie wanted to show Joe his true self in his entirety, he wondered how much Vinnie actually knew about people. Getting naked in front of another they hardly knew wasn't all that common, only in certain situations...was this one of those situations? Joe didn't really know, but the words to tell him to stop, evaded him as he watches Vinnie's slender thumbs hooking inside the elastic …

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