need you guys to suffer with me. i will probably write this one day as a short story.
tom ryder and ryland grace are childhood friends BUT! tom ryder is trans. back when he went by cecilia (or “cili” for ryland, exclusively), ryland did not exclude him, didn’t make him feel lesser, didn’t make him feel like he was too weak or fragile to keep up; ryland was one of his first gender affirming experiences, and he never understood why that influenced his life so much at the ripe age of 7 years old, but ryland made him feel fully equal. made him feel like he mattered so much that it was suffocating.
they had their own little jokes. they had so many stories they shared. so many places they’d go. they’d spend days at each other’s houses and nights with sleepovers in the living room, with ryland’s twin brother colt, and their family dog, john (who was later tom’s inspiration to name his dog jean-claude). they had one adventure they loved the most; every time they’d get out of school (despite being in different grades, cause cili was two years younger than ryland), they’d always meet up the SECOND they could to go play space roamers! they were wandering little space cadet cowboys that would ride the stars to each new planet and find alien life! they even had a secret little handshake for it (although thats a little generous of a description), they’d have their index, middle finger, and pinky up, and would create a little circle with their ring and thumb, and theyd join links with that circle, and whenever they had to leave each other, they’d do it again but breaking the link like their little goodbye!
then one day, ryland grace’s father is killed, brother ends up in jail, and rylands telling him that he has to go, he’s being sent to live with his mom, and cili is fucking devastated. there is no consoling him for almost two years after ryland is gone.
fast forward 20 years. they’re both nearing their thirties. tom ryder has fully transitioned and is quite literally unrecognizable by now, and he’s been a mainstream name for god knows how long. he doesn’t talk about his past much; he doesn’t like running the risk of being recognized, doesn’t trust the general public to respect him as much if they find out he’s trans, cause the world kinda really fucking sucks. so he hides just about everything he can about himself pre-transition, and it feeds in WELL to his mysterious action star persona.
then one day, he takes an interview, same as he always does after wrapping up a film, he’s advertising for it hard and heavy, an action romance thriller, and he sells his role so well that the interviewer asks, “have you ever been in love then?” tom answers vaguely, “oh, plenty.” and so they ask instead, “what was your first love like?”
this sweet kid who kept up with all of toms energy, made him feel like such a welcome friend within minutes of meeting, this kid who shared in his passion and joy, who was attached at the hip, where their parents would be even frustrated by it because they could never feed one child without being responsible for the other - they were just never apart that long, to enjoy a lunch by themselves. they only knew each other for three, maybe four years, but it was the best time of tom ryder’s life, being able to play and feel free and be loved like he was. and he describes it as the best feeling he’d ever felt in his entire life, that he’s never felt such an intense belonging and adoration for anyone even in any of the years since.
the interviewer asks for a name, and of course, he refuses. their lives are so different now, he doubts the kid would even recognize him even if he did call them out by name, plus he doesn’t want to subject him to whatever might come with the made association of tom ryder. so instead, the interviewer asks if he has anything he’d like to say to them, so tom just smiles and holds up that little three-fingers-up link to the camera.
and that is how ryland grace discovers his old childhood friend, cili, who he’d originally believed had fallen off the face of the earth, because all attempts to find cili nowadays were completely useless. now he knows why; cecilia literally does not exist anymore.
he has no idea how he might be able to reach an A-list action movie star, one of the biggest names on the planet, as a random middle school teacher from san francisco, but after all these years, he at least owes tom the respect to try.
(bonus: their little make-believe world inspired their career choice! studying aliens as a scientist, a microbiologist who is ultimately one of the first responsible for studying an alien microbial species! and performing as the aliens or the space cowboys in mainstream movies, as an actor!)
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