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“Tammy?”
“Yeah, baby?” she answers absently, attention taken by sifting through a stack of papers.
But when Sebastian doesn’t reply, she looks up and finds him hovering in the doorway, fingers twisting anxiously and face scrunched in an almost painful expression.
Slowly, she places the papers down and gives him her full attention, “What is it, Sebastian?”
His mouth opens, then closes, then opens again and Tammy uses all the self-control she has to not snap at him to just get on with it.
Eventually he takes a deep breath and, “Tammy, I think I’m pan.”
Blinking at the completely out of nowhere (at least on her end, she’d assume he’s probably been thinking about it for a while) revelation, she clarifies, “Pansexual?”
He nods, his expression hovering somewhere between relieved and nauseous.
A smile spreads across her face and she steps towards him, keeping her voice as sincere as possible, “Thank you for telling me, hunny, that’s amazing.”
Her hand lands on his shoulder, squeezing reassuringly.
There’s a beat where the look of panic doesn’t really leave his face, then she softly reminds him, “Breathe Sebastian.”
Obediently he takes a few deep breaths, pressing the back of his hand into his face, “Sorry, sorry,” he shakes his head, eyebrows scrunched, “you’re the first person I’ve told.”
Tammy remembers that feeling, the finally voicing it aloud.
There’d been one too many shots and a kind woman in a bar who’d only asked if she’d wanted a drink but ended up with a sobbing Tammy on her shoulder instead, breaking open as fifteen years of repression had come flooding out.
Somehow, the woman had been nothing but understanding. Many times in the intervening years, Tammy has privately wondered where she is now and if she knows the impact she’d made that day.
“Well, thank you for trusting me.”
Sebastian fixes her with a serious look, “I trust you more than anyone.”
“Cool.”
The response is small but the smile that appears couldn’t be more real.
She’s honoured, truly. Sometimes she feels a bit like she’s won the affection of a bouncy puppy; utterly adorable and a bit much at times but there’s a strange reward to the relationship that she can’t quite quantify.
“I don’t think I’m ready to be… out, out yet,” he offers, awkwardly.
“There’s not really any such thing as out, out, sweetie,” she frowns, mostly to herself, “even if you come out to all the people close to you, even if you start looking for potential partners of different genders, even if you’re confident in it, you’re always coming out to someone. You’re not what’s considered the ‘default setting’ anymore, so there is always explaining even if people are accepting.”
Sebastian smiles humourlessly , “That sounds exhausting.”
Briefly, she wonders if she maybe shouldn’t have said any of that. But she’s always been the brutal honesty type – especially when it comes to him. She’d prefer to prepare him slightly for the world ahead.
Even though she tries to keep her own sexuality as low-key as possible and she surrounds herself by accepting people, there’s still moments of awkwardness and vulnerability sprinkled wherever she goes.
“I suppose it is, in a way,” she admits with a slight shrug.
She has an armour built up but it isn’t always perfect. As they know first-hand, kevlar can stop a bullet from killing you but it won’t stop it from making an impact.
Staring down at the floor, he twists his long fingers together, “I don’t think I’m there yet. There feels like there’s a weight behind it, politically, socially… there’s all this history!”
His voice rises and she throws a hand up to stop the impending spiral.
“Hey, hey! As long as you’re living your life as you, no one has the right to ask anything from you,” she reminds him, impassioned.
He nods, like he wants to believe her, but there’s still so much anxiety bunching into his shoulders and eyebrows.
Deflating with a sigh, she grips him gently by the wrist and all but drags him over to the couch, depositing him amongst the cushions then plopping down next to him, keeping a hand resting reassuringly on his knee.
“You don’t have to force yourself into anything before you’re ready, okay?” she tells him seriously, voice low, “I understand and you’re right, it can be a lot. But it’s freeing too, being truly yourself.”
Tammy knows that her sexuality has been a big part of her finding out who she is. It shapes her life, who she interacts with, where she goes, her outlook on life in ways that she doesn’t generally consider in her day-to-day.
It means she gets another angle on seeing the best and the worst of humanity, beyond what she already sees in her day job.
She gets to see people with shared experience and pain and queer joy come together just as often as she sees how the dicks of the world try and tear into them.
“That’s why we group together, help each other carry the weight, welcome each other with open arms.”
They have no choice but to band together but she chooses to see the good of the community and she wants Sebastian to see it too.
“So, when you’re ready to take that next step and while you’re not, I’ll be right here,” she promises, unequivocally, “take your time, the world can wait for you.”
He swallows harshly and gives a minute nod, his eyes just a little shiny and his voice breaking as he asks, “Is it worth it?”
“Sebastian,” she breathes, placing a hand on each of his shoulders and staring straight into his eyes so there can be no doubt of how completely she believes, “I know I’m loved to my core. Even if not by the people I hoped for. I have a family here and I’d known for years that I was going to lose my mom to this and yes, it still hurts...”
Of course it hurts. Being rejected by someone who is supposed to love you unconditionally. To know that they see you as broken or misguided or something to be embarrassed of instead of celebrating your individuality.
She’s always known that if her mom accepted her after finding out, it would be despite and not regardless of her sexuality.
“But you’re not going to have that problem,” she reassures resolutely, “some of the conversations might be difficult but your mom is there for you. I know you have your issues but she loves you and she’s open to these things. When you’re ready to tell her, I know she’ll be ready to listen.”
Sebastian bites his lip, still unsure but he takes a few deep breaths then nods, “I think I’m going to see how it goes…”
“All you have to do is go day-by-day, baby,” she promises, rubbing her hand up and down his arm, “just make sure you’re proud of yourself.”
“I am. I am proud of myself,” he replies.
And she believes him but there’s still a hesitance to his words.
Letting her hands drop back into her lap, she nudges their knees together encouragingly until he gives a helpless shrug.
“It’s just I see, like your confidence in it all and I struggle to believe I could be the same.”
“Sebastian, there’s a flag that’s just waiting to honour you. I mean, it’s not very aesthetic – pink, yellow and blue – give me the lesbian flag any day-” she allows herself a quick grin when her teasing is rewarded with an amused little snort- “but it’s there.”
At first, she hadn’t really seen the need for Pride flags. Well, not sexuality specific ones at least, she hadn’t seen the point of having a flag to hold.
And while she still doesn’t feel the need to decorate her whole life in the colours of the lesbian flag – the sapphic artwork she has up all around her room gets the point across just as well, she feels – she has come to enjoy the understanding that she finds in those who recognise the colours in the subtlety of her phone background, or the tiny heart pin on her bag.
Again, it’s that community. Any way to not feel so alone in the experience.
“Whether you want to wave it in the safety of your own home, in a gay bar or,” gesturing wildly, she smiles, remembering the first Pride parade she’d ever been to, “dancing down a street with hundreds of other celebrating queer people with a rainbow in the sky above our heads...”
“You know the statistical probability of a rainbow appearing on the same day as a Pride march is not-“
“I know,” she cuts him off, rolling her eyes.
But she’s not really mad and he knows it, ignoring her mild irritation at his pedanticism to let out his first proper laugh of the whole conversation.
It makes it hard to keep her own amusement concealed because he seems lighter now, a little more at ease, like some of the weight has lifted.
“I do want to wave it, though,” he admits after a few moments.
Pulling her phone out of her pocket, Tammy brings up the website for a local independent queer shop she’d found, scrolling to the pan section and wading through different designs of jewellery, keychains and buttons until she finds a pen-pot flag.
Turning it to face him, she asks, “How about… starting small?”
Sebastian’s gaze shifts from the screen, to her and back to the screen again. She just has time to see the slight shine of tears in his eyes before he crashes into her, nearly knocking her phone clear out of her hand as he pulls her into a tight hug.
It only takes her a few seconds to recover before she reciprocates, closing her arms around him just as firmly in the knowledge that this is about so much more than just the flag.
“Thank you,” he murmurs into her shoulder, probably inhaling some hair on the way.
Patting his back gently, she replies, “Anytime, baby, anytime.”