bonitabreezy:

“Ooooh, don’t you look so handsome!” Suzanne cooed, ushering them to the foot of the staircase with a camera in her hand.  “Go on, let me take some pictures!”

“Mama,” Bitty grumbled, his face adorably pink, “We’re not going to the dang prom.  It’s just a high school reunion.”

“Well I didn’t get to take any prom photos, did I?” Suzanne shot back.  She grabbed Jack by the elbows and forcibly positioned him slightly behind Bitty with a frankly shocking amount of strength, and Jack made his living being slammed into the boards by men twice her size.

“Mama, who was gonna take the little gay boy to the prom in Georgia?” Bitty demanded as Jack wrapped his arms around his waist in classic prom pose, which made Suzanne grin excitedly and snap about ten pictures in rapid succession.

“Stop encouraging her,” Bitty pouted, shoving his elbow into Jack’s gut, making him laugh.

“You coulda gone stag, Dicky,” Suzanne pointed out, snapping another photo. “Or with one of the girls on your hockey team.”

“Mama, none of those girls had any interest in being my beard and I had no interest in spending my Saturday night packed in a cheap venue with kids who didn’t like me!” Bitty insisted.

“Well,” Suzanne sniffed as Jack poked and prodded Bitty into a more natural position beside him, draping his arm around Bitty’s shoulders.  Bitty automatically responded by sliding his arm around Jack’s waist in return.

“I’m just saying, I never got to show off prom pictures to all the ladies at church,” Suzanne sniffed. “And your Aunt kept posting pictures of your cousin all over Facebook like it was her dang job, rubbing it in my face…”

“Mama,” Bitty sighed.

“And anyway!” Suzanne exclaimed, snapping another picture even though Bitty was in the middle of rolling his eyes and Jack had given up on smiling. “Why are you even going to this reunion if you don’t want to see any of these people, huh?”

“Because I want them to see us,” Bitty explained, patting his free hand against Jack’s chest smugly. “Those kids terrorized me for years, calling me names and spreading rumors that I was gay.  Now I’m gonna show them they were absolutely right, and that I’m good at it!”

“Good at being gay?” Jack asked, grinning in amusement because he’d heard Bitty’s reasoning nearly a thousand times since the invitation had arrived in the mail.

“The best at being gay!” Bitty declared. “You’ll see, I’ll have the most beautiful man in the room on my arm and I hope Jason Cranston is there so I can see the look on his big dumb face when he realizes how much better my life is than his!”

The grin on Bitty’s face was almost manic, but Suzanne snapped another picture with a triumphant cry and hurried away with her camera, like she thought maybe Bitty might try and take it from her.

“All right, you ready to go show my classmates that I won at life?” Bitty asked.

“Of course, dear,” Jack said indulgently.