Chapter Text
Bender was the first to find out.
They were sitting in the back of an abandoned pickup truck in the junkyard by Bender's house, Bender smoking cheap pot from a tightly-rolled joint, Brian trying very hard to not look around for adults.
"So, like, you do know you're the only virgin left, right?" He'd asked Brian, in that tone that somehow managed to sound bored and patronizingly mocking at the same time.
It didn't really bother Brian anymore that Bender talked to him like that. Bender was incapable of being warm or friendly, he'd never learned how. He didn't tread lightly — he was loud and angry and bombastic, and even if Brian didn't like it, he could at least sort of respect it. If that's what got Bender through living with his nightmare of a family, then hey, Brian was just happy he'd gotten through it at all.
But damn him if he thought he'd take the bait.
"If that's your way of telling me that you and Claire finally did it, then mazel tov, I'll send flowers to the appropriate addresses."
Bender rubbed the back of his neck, but Brian still saw the little flush that managed to creep up whenever he thought about Claire. "Yeah, smartass, this past Saturday. Her parents went out dinner with some other rich fucks, and we screwed on the couch."
"Not in her bed?"
"Nah, her room is too damn pink. It's impossible to get a hard-on in there."
"I've seen her couch though, it's not exactly the most erotic setting."
"It is when she's on it."
Brian's hand flew to his heart, and he swooned exaggeratedly. "Why, John, what a sweet and charming thing to say."
Bender shoved him. "Fuck off," he said, smirking around his joint.
"Really, though, I'm happy for you. For both of you."
Bender looked at him critically, eyes squinting. "Why the hell would it make YOU happy that I was fucking somebody? Especially Claire."
Brian scoffed, giving him his best are-you-really-this-stupid-and-emotionally-stunted look. "Because you guys are happy, and you're my friends. I like it when my friends are happy."
Bender rolled his eyes and started to say something undoubtedly cocky and hurtful when Brian cut him off, something registering in his brain. "Wait, why'd you say 'especially Claire'?"
Bender looked down, a vague expression of discomfort briefly passing over his features. His face immediately returned to its usual steely look, and he answered, "Well, you know. 'Cause you used to wanna fuck her."
Brian nearly fell off the back of the truck. "I never wanted to fuck Claire!" He sputtered, eyes wide with surprise.
Bender just rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah, you did."
"Why would you think that? Does she think that?"
"Back in detention, when I asked if you were a virgin, you didn't want Claire to know. You wanted her to think you were a stud. Which, hello, Brainiac, she might be vain, but she ain't stupid."
Brian huffed a laugh, slumping against the back of the pickup. "That had nothing to do with wanting to fuck her. I just...I thought she was gonna make fun of me. I mean, I thought you would, too, but I could deal with that, because you always make fun of people. But Claire had never said a word to me, and I...I just didn't want her to be mean, and I sorta thought she would be, if she knew."
Bender leaned back next to him, nodding. "I guess that wasn't an issue with Freak and Jock, huh?"
Brian shook his head. "Ally didn't have any friends. She wasn't exactly in a position to judge me for lacking experience in any kind of human interaction. And Andrew had a reputation for being a pretty nice guy."
And now those two were fucking, and Brian had never seen two people crazier about each other. A few weeks back, he and Ally had been drinking terrible wine under her grandmother's deck, and she told him that she was thinking about proposing to Andy after graduation. She told him not to tell any of the others, so he hadn't. It was funny, how different life was after that one damn detention.
Bender took an obnoxiously long drag on the joint, holding the smoke until his eyes watered and he was coughing up curly white wisps. "So, does it bother you?" He asked, voice now hoarse.
"Does what bother me?"
"Being the virgin."
Brian closed his eyes, thinking. Thinking about if he really trusted Bender, if he thought Bender would hurt him if he knew something important, if he was even willing to definitively find out the answers to those questions.
If there was one thing that Bender said to him during their five months of friendship often enough to be considered a motif, it was that he thought that Brian really, really needed to stop being such a pussy.
"I don't tell you everything, you know."
Bender's jaw dropped in shock, and the joint fell out of his mouth. His head whirled around to face Brian, his expression a mix of disbelief, surprise, and a tiny bit of stifled hurt.
"What do you mean, you sayin' you boned somebody without tellin' me? Nah. No way. I ain't buyin' it."
Brian turned his chin up, staring at the sky, as if any kind of heavenly deity could have possibly made this conversation easy. "I...it's kind of a big thing, okay?"
"Damn right it's a big thing." Bender's guard slipped a little bit, and Brian could tell that Bender was genuinely upset at the thought that he didn't tell him about losing his virginity. Bender just didn't get it.
"You don't get it."
"No, I guess I don't." He stood up then, climbing out of the car. "And I'm sure you've got some real smart explanation that a retard like me couldn't possibly understand."
"Bender, stop it, it's not like that."
"Whatever, Brainiac, fuck you. Do whatever you want, you don't gotta tell me shit." He started walking away, and Brian sighed heavily.
"Friday before last, a guy gave me a blowjob in a closet at that party we went to for Claire's friend."
Bender stopped dead in his tracks, and it was a full minute before he turned around. "Excuse me?"
"I didn't tell anybody about it." He said, in a voice that was considerably smaller.
Bender crossed his arms over his chest. "So, what does that make you then, a faggot? Is that what you're telling me?"
"If that's what you wanna call it." Brian kind of felt like throwing up.
Bender just stood there like that, looking at him, before wordlessly turning around and leaving.
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Brian didn't see him for the rest of the weekend, and he didn't see him Monday morning. He was in the cafeteria, grabbing a carton of questionably-aged milk, when one of Andrew's old jock friends knocked into his shoulder as he walked by. "Queer." He tossed in Brian's direction, before turning back to talk to his teammates.
None of them had a chance to register the plaid blur that ran by until the jock was on the floor, Bender beating the ever living shit out of him. 'Does he even have lunch sixth period?' Brian wondered, distantly. The jock, recovering from the surprise of the attack, threw a hard punch at Bender's jaw. Bender grabbed the tray from the table and whacked the jock across the face with it, audibly snapping the old plastic. Two teachers burst into the room then, running to pry the boys apart.
Brian stared at Bender as he was hauled off to the principal's office, and in return he received a very wide, very bloody grin.
In that moment, Brian Johnson knew no matter how long he lived, that he was never going to find better friends than the ones he had right now.
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Claire was the second person to find out.
She showed up on his doorstep that night, manicured hands in the pockets of her miniskirt. She gave him a small smile when she saw was that it was him who answered the door.
"Can I come in?" She asked, and he stepped aside, closing the door behind her. They sat on the floor in his room, the radio providing Top 40 background noise.
"You wanna talk about what happened today?" She said, after a long time.
He laid down, crossing his arms behind his head. "Your boyfriend got suspended for me."
She looked at the floor, a slight flush teasing her cheeks. "I know. I was really proud of him."
She sighed then, drawing her knees up. "He told me why, too. As soon as he said it, I knew that he shouldn't have, that you should have been the one to tell me about it. If you wanted to, I mean."
He sighed too, letting his sleepy eyelids fall closed. "There's not much to tell, really. I got a blowjob in a closet. And, okay, I didn't tell Bender this part, but I gave him a handjob too. Both felt great. It's not exactly a Pulitzer-worthy story."
He didn't open his eyes, but he could hear the eye-roll in her voice. "Of course there's more to it, there's a lot to wonder. But you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. Just, wait, okay, it was Sloane's party, right?" Brian nodded tiredly.
"So it was Cameron Frye, wasn't it?"
Brian opened his eyes, startled. "How'd you know?"
Claire smiled, a bit self-satisfactory. "He's always come off that way to me. Like, he's so afraid of everything all the time, but he still wants to please everybody else. He's just, I don't know! It's like he knows who he is, but he's scared of it. You know?"
Brian nodded, a little sad. He did know. "Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean."
Claire hugged him, then, which was kind of weird, because they never hugged before. "I'm happy for you." She said, face pressed into his hair a little bit.
He drew back quickly. "Tell Bender that that is a totally appropriate response to finding out that your friend has had sex, and it's not weird at all to be happy for somebody else when they get laid."
She looked at him strangely then and, yeah, there we go, that's much more familiar than the hugging.