Chapter Text
The camp fire flickered and popped, sending licks of flame and soot into the night sky. Huey stoked the fire carefully. His fellow Woodchucks chattered amongst themselves, calling out cheers as a few of them drank from cans, while others gossiped about this and that between rounds of truth or dare.
The kids surrounding him had changed over the years as they grew from children to teenagers, their appearances wildly different from their innocent beginnings with coloured hair, piercings, styles and body shapes; but one thing stayed constant: that feeling of togetherness that bound them together as Woodchucks. Huey counted himself lucky that so many of his comrades had stayed in their unit for as long as they had, giving him the perfect safe space outside of school, a place that was increasingly becoming one of his least favourite places in the world - something he thought he'd never say. School kids were tough, horrible even. And utterly baffling! His love for learning that once learnt him significant respect strangely now put him in the line of fire to be picked on. But at least he wasn’t alone. Many of his fellow Woodchucks were in a similar boat - not mainstream enough to go through school undetected or targeted, not cool enough to be left alone to do their own thing. The only thing he had going for him, it seemed, was everyone’s strange fascination with him being an identical triplet. People were weird and he didn’t get it. Nor did he want to get it.
B.O.Y.D. He still had B.O.Y.D. Everything else could change around him, but B.O.Y.D stayed pretty much the same. Thank goodness. Even if everyone else left, leaving just the two of them, it didn’t necessarily feel like a bad thing. In fact it was a thought that made his stomach do cartwheels and temple start to sweat, so much so that he had to bury it constantly so as not to let it show. B.O.Y.D was his best friend. This wasn’t the kind of reaction normal people had with their friends.
The younger boy was busy chatting to one of their classmates who was giggling at something he’d said. Huey was abundantly jealous of his friend, able to pick up on social cues and body language in a way that felt so alien to him, which was ironic considering he didn’t have oil and gears powering his body. Although he’d be hard-pressed to admit it, he was also abundantly jealous of the girl B.O.Y.D was speaking to. Joining them now would be weird, right? Would it be obvious that he wanted his friend’s attention, would it seem like he was butting in? What if B.O.Y.D was enjoying talking to her-?
“Hubert!” Irene’s shrill, fake sing-song voice carried over to him. Huey put down the poker and turned to face the one Woodchuck he was glad to soon be rid of. The girl pointed to an empty bottle that was pointing to his place by the fire. Irene leant forward, her smile anything but friendly. “Truth. Or. Dare.”
Irene was popular. He would be lying if he said it didn’t bother him how Irene had gone from a small, comely bespectacled girl, keen to earn badges and friends, to someone any of the boys at school would kill to be seen by her side, her appearance carefully manicured and sharp, much like her tongue, her often barbed words causing the majority of her old friends to abandon her yet gain her approval from the ‘cool girls’ in the older forms. It wasn’t her overnight glow-up that bothered him though, it was that she knew her status and, somehow, that confidence made people take her insults and almost worship her for them. Why she had continued to attend the weekly Woodchuck meetings was anyone’s guess. It was clear she thought it beneath her and, apparently, this seemed to be everyone at the club’s fault. Even Doofus had quit because of her behaviour.
Huey sighed. “Sorry, I’m not playing.”
“Please? It’s my last session with you guys. Live a little.”
If living a little meant potentially spilling secrets to the one person he could guarantee would use it for blackmail and spread it round school, he absolutely wasn’t going to take the bait. She already had enough ammunition on the entire group to keep her going through high school, having served as a Junior Woodchuck alongside them all for a good eight years.
“Huey, come on. Don’t be such a dweeb!”
The kids around the camp fire halted at Irene’s raised voice, a dozen eyes landing on Huey in a way that made his skin crawl. Even if he didn’t want to, he found himself searching for B.O.Y.D, as he always did when he felt a pang of uncertainty. The grey-haired boy caught Huey’s eyes as if sensing where his gaze would follow, rolling his eyes playfully as if to say ‘just go with it’. Huey didn’t want to admit it, but having B.O.Y.D there made him feel protected, whatever Irene was plotting.
“Fine. Truth.” There was absolutely no way he was doing a dare that Irene would pick.
Irene smirked and looked to her friends latched to her sides as if to make sure she had an audience. “Who was your first kiss?”
If Huey had a functioning braincell that hadn’t suddenly exited from the shock, he would have kicked himself for not having anticipated this kind of question from Irene. Or from a game of truth or dare. Had ever kissed anyone? No. Had he dreamt about it a million times with a certain someone? Yes. But it was never going to happen. Ever.
“Oh my God, you’ve never kissed anyone, have you?!” The girls giggled next to her as she turned to them, looking for a reaction. Huey sighed in annoyance and tried his best not to look frazzled, which was clearly not the reaction the girl opposite him had hoped for. “Or have you and you just don’t want to tell?” she jabbed again.
“I’m not playing any more, Irene. This is juvenile.”
With that he stood, brushed off some rouge leaves from his shirt, and padded over to the drinks table, keeping his back turned and trying his best to appear nonchalant. Not long after, the chatter around the fire resumed and he let out a long breath he didn’t know he was holding. Unfortunately it wasn’t more than a minute before the resident mean girl had made her way over to him, breaking his internal congratulations on a lucky escape.
“I’m sorry. I got carried away. Drink?” He regarded her hand with scorn as if she was offering him poison. She rolled her eyes, bringing the cup she’d offered to her mouth. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve not kissed anyone yet. You don’t have to freak like that.” Not knowing what else to do, he grabbed a bottle of water and took a swig. At this point he didn’t care if he appeared rude: he didn’t like her and didn’t care if she knew it.
For a moment, Irene looked smaller, reminding him of the old Irene who hunched up when she was worried, like a snail retracting into its shell. It wasn't the first time Huey reminded himself that she was largely all talk. A bit like his brothers, who were no where near as malicious but definitely as annoying. Especially Dewey.
“We could…” Wait- “..if you wanted-” WHAT. “You know, to get it over and done with.” Huey’s face spoke all the words he couldn’t summon, his tongue suddenly desert-like. Irene took a step back with a strange look on her face that he couldn’t quite analyse before it changed back to her knowing smirk and glitteringly judgemental eyes that made him instantly feel about two foot tall. “Jesus! Lighten' up. I'm only teasing,” she crowed, arms folding firmly across her chest. Her calculating eyes ran over him, as if taking stock. Take your drink and walk away. Ignore her. Walk away and ignore her. “Hold up…” Slowly, she leant in close, keeping her voice just above a whisper. “Are you gay?”
As her smirk reached her eyes in the quiet that followed, the gnawing pit that was forming in Huey’s stomach grew tenfold. Huey bumped the table behind him as he physically recoiled, the bottle of water clattering to the ground, leaking into a sizeable puddle at his feet.
Suddenly a hand was on Huey’s wrist, pulling him away from Irene before he could comprehend what was happening. In his disorientation, he stumbled over his own feet- What now-?! All his thoughts were screaming in his mind, begging equally for attention, but the sight of B.O.Y.D angrily facing off against Irene, hand tightly clasped round his wrist brought everything to a deafening silence.
“Get away from him!”
A flicker of surprise crossed her face before she relaxed back into one of usual discontentment. “What’s your problem, Tin Man? You jealous?” Irene chuckled to herself, eyeing him up. “You together or something?”
“Yeah, we’re together. And?”
For the second time that evening, the campsite was rendered to silence, their eyes pulling to look at the trio by the drinks table.
What.
The.
Hell?!
It’d been a long time since anyone had seen mean girl Irene struggle for words, but there she stood, opening and closing her mouth like a fish gasping for air. Before she could recover herself, B.O.Y.D pulled Huey tottering behind him to the opposite side of the campsite, hand still tightly gripping his wrist. After that he more or less dissociated. Only flashes of B.O.Y.D leading him away from all the eyes and murmurs registered, the faint feeling of nodding as a couple of his peers asked if he was alright, acutely aware that he was flitting between staring at his shoes with a crazed interest and anywhere but the grey-haired boy.
The cold fingers of the late night air shocked him back to reality, in time for him to catch B.O.Y.D asking him if he was okay. And not look like a total freak of nature.
“I…” He took a deep breath to settle himself. “I just want to go home.”
As their eyes met a guilty sensation swept through him. What must he look like right now? Why was he behaving like this? What is B.O.Y.D thinking? Huey was acutely aware of his heart hammering against his ribcage, blood rushing to his head culminating in a sudden headache, the pain like someone was twisting his brain around with an electric whisk. He wasn’t all right. But he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was bothering him the most right now.
His feelings, thoughts… everything was a mess.