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By: Druscilla Way
About:
Title: The Boy Who Looked Like a Girl
Prologue
Rating: R
Warnings: Extremely dark subjects, random religious discussions(I am Christian just to make you sure)
AU: Ville's only a year older than Bam. Ville's parents send him to America to go to school.
Summary: His androgynous looks fuel lustful looks and he's grown accostumed to it, but when the annoying boy from his new school gives him a look full of everything but . . . his life becomes even harder to control, to understand.

Prologue:
"You're never going to be normal. You look too pretty, too much like a girl. You look so young for your age, like a piece of art. You're timeless, classic. Beautiful people are never appreciated until they're older. But I appreciate you now. You understand that, right?"
"But . . . I-I'm . . . not s'pposed to."
"But if feels good, doesn't it? Doesn't it? You're so pretty and I'm going to make you feel pretty."
"N-No."
"You didn't say please. Just be quiet and don't say a word. Be a good boy, you understand?"
"But it hurts."
"It only hurts for a little while."
"N-No."
"Shhh, darling. It's all going to be okay. Oh, God, you're so beautiful."
* * *
"Oh, honey, why'd you cut off your hair? You looked so pretty."
"I don't want to look pretty. I looked like a girl. I don't want to look like a girl. I want to look like a boy! Minä haluan näyttää pojalta!"

---To Be Continued---

Part One:
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Ville was always pretty, looked just as much a girl as a boy. Dark lashes against pale skin and dark green eyes. Hair falling in his face as he walked to school, head down as he stared at his shoes.

This school wouldn't be any different than the one in Finland. He wasn't going to keep his hopes up that someone like him could fit in. A boy who looked like a girl, who wore eyeliner and black nail polish, who only did well in art and writing . . . a boy like that could never fit in.

"Watch out!" Ville barely managed to move out of the way as a boy sailed past him on a skateboard. "Sorry!" the kid called back.

Ville gave a sardonic smile at nothing. Those could be the nicest words I'll hear all day.

* * *

It took about three years for Ville to go through every school within driving distance of his house in Finland. From eighth grade to sophomore year. As a last chance, his parents had sent him to America to stay with a family friend. A family friend Ville hadn't met, save the time he was still waiting to be born.

He'd gone through only two American school so far and was wondering how long it would be until his parents decided he could just drop out. And it wasn't just that Ville decided he didn't want to go to a school anymore and would ask nicely if he would leave. It was that no one expected the boy who looked so much like a girl to be able to pack a punch.

Ville could . . . and did when he got sick of hearing everything people were saying about him.

And that would lead to him getting expelled.

* * *

Ville was sitting in the back of his homeroom, waiting for the teacher to call off his name for roll call so he could get a bathroom pass and wander the school aimlessly until the bell rang.

The teacher started calling off names from a list she hadn't bothered to memorize yet, marking off a few absenses and putting checks next to those who were present.

"Brandon Margera?" she looked around, sighing. "Brandon Mar--"

"Here." A brown-haired boy hurried into the room, pulling his backward hat off as he did. He threw his book bag onto the floor and slid into the seat ahead of Ville.

"Try being on time for once, Bam." the teacher said.

"Well, I would have been." the boy (Bam? Brandon?) said. "But you told me I couldn't bring my board in the room anymore, so I had to put it up. I was just following your rules, Mrs. Jameson."

The woman at the front of the room, shook her head, but with a smile on her face, putting a checkmark next to her tardy student's name.

The brown-haired boy turned around, looking at Ville. "You're the guy I almost ran over earlier, right?"

Ville raised an eyebrow, but couldn't help but give a small smile. "Yeah. That would be me."

"Are you foreign-exchange or something?" The blue-eyed boy cocked his head to the side. "'Cause if you are, I think you're the first one we've had since the last one got knocked up."

Ville's smile increased slightly. "I'm not foreign-exchange." he said.

"Ville Valo?" Mrs. Jameson asked, looking extremely confused at the name on her list. "How do I say that?"

"f**?" one of the guys across the room guessed in an undertone when Ville said "here".

"Ville Valo." the green-eyed boy said, openly giving the finger to the senior who had made the remark.

"Where are you from?" the teacher asked, mild interest in her voice, blatantly ignoring both the comment from the senior and the physical retort Ville was giving him.

"Finland." Ville said, putting his hand on his desk and drumming his fingers lightly on the top of it. "Hellsinki."

"Your name's Ville?"

"Is your's Bam?"

The other boy grinned. "It's a nickname. No one calls me Brandon. Unless my mom gets really pissed or somethin'. What grade are you?"

"I'm a junior. But I'm taking shitloads of sophomore classes." Ville said. "I'm not the brightest junior, but all the American teachers pass me because they think I'm underpriviledged."

Bam laughed. "Lucky son of a b***h. I'm a sophomore." he added. "Do you act and stuff? Like in school plays?"

Ville shook his head. "No. Do you?"

"No." Bam said. "But you kind of look like you would."

Ville glared at those blue eyes. "******** off." he snapped, picking up the notebook and pen on his desk as the bell rang and storming out of the room. Why do the assholes have to pretend to be nice?

* * *

He got through his first three classes--Algebra, Biology I, and Health II--without any more than the typical hassle and at least three girls openly flirting with him.

He skipped the lunch line, breezing past the cliques on the quad and heading for the back of the school, fumbling for the cigarettes in the pocket of his jacket as he did.

* * *

Bam was walking backward with his skateboard under his arm, talking animatedly with Chris Raab and Ryan Dunn, the only two people in the school he really gave a s**t about. He saw the boy with the eyeliner and henna tattoo hurrying past them and looked at his friends. "Hang on a sec."

"Yo!" Bam turned and started after the green-eyed boy. "Ville!"

He turned around, glaring openly before turning back around.

"Hey, I'm talking to you." Bam said indignantly.

Ville stopped and turned around, raising an eyebrow. "And I'm ignoring you. Or did you not catch on yet?"

Bam was face to face with Ville now. "Hey, man, I just wanted to say sorry for what I said earlier, but if you're going to be a d**k about it--"

"I don't need an apology from someone like you." Ville said angrily. "I know exactly how you people work. You're either apologizing because someone told you to or you're apologizing because it secretly turns you on."

"Dude, all I ******** said was that you looked like you might be in the damn theatre group."

"Because I look like a f**?"

"I never said you looked like a f**!" Bam snapped.

"Two steps short." Ville said coolly, glancing for a teacher and then lighting a cigarette. "So, are we done here?" he asked, blowing smoke in Bam's face.

"I wouldn't call you a f**." Bam said shortly. "You're not the only one who gets called that, you know. They say you're a f** because you wear eyeliner and they say I'm a f** because I skateboard. So I wouldn't ******** call you that."

And then he turned and walked off.

And Ville just walked across the street and finished smoking his cigarette.

* * *

"I'm not supposed to be in this class." Ville said to the art teacher, Mrs. Henderson. "I didn't sign up for this class."

"Not everyone gets the classes they sign up for." She smiled at him. "I know you boys think that art is going to kill you, but--"

"No," Ville said, cutting her off, "I've already taken this class. I've taken Art I. And Art II. And every basic art class you can think of. I signed up for Advanced Drawing and Advanced Photography."

Mrs. Henderson took a deep breath and nodded slowly. "Okay. I'll write you a pass and you can go up to the counselor's office and work this out with her."

* * *

"Stalking me?" Bam asked when he saw Ville walk into the room.

Ville ignored him and walked up to the desk, handing his pass to the senior girl who took phone calls and made out notes as an easy A. "And what're ya here for?" she asked, taking a drink from the water bottle in front of her.

"I'm supposed to talk to her about a class transfer." he said, chancing glances at the blue-eyed boy who was tapping his feet on the ground impatiently.

"'Kay. I'll tell her when she comes out. Just have a seat." A sparkly pink nail pointed at the chair next to Bam.

Swearing in Finnish, Ville sat down, refusing to acknowledge the presence of the boy next to him.

Bam, it seemed, had lost any anger or harsh feelings after their verbal argument during lunch. "So you can talk Finnish?"

"Can you speak English?" Ville said in a patronizing tone.

"Yeah." Bam said. "But I can't speak Finnish. And you can speak in both. I can curse in Spanish, though. And I can say 'dickhead' in French."

"You're just like a trained puppy-dog aren't you?" Ville asked, not caring how mean or cutting he sounded. It didn't matter anyway. Bam's smile wasn't going away anytime soon.

"So what class are you transferring out of?" Bam asked.

Ville answered, mainly because the other alternative was to have Bam talk his ear off. "Art I."

"I took that class last year." Bam said. "You not like art? I don't really. But it's an easy A."

"I like art just fine." Ville said, gritting his teeth.

The girl who had taken Ville's pass, fought a smile. Having been subjected to Bam's nonstop mouth for ten minutes before Ville showed up, she had extreme sympathy for him.

"So why are you transferring out of it if you like it?"

"I already took that class."

"So what are you taking now?"

Ville turned to Bam with wide eyes. "Do you always talk this ******** much?"

"Usually." Bam said without missing a beat. "Everyone thinks I have ADHD."

"I think you're overdosing on Prozac." Ville muttered, turning back around.

"Bam?" The girl at the desk looked at him. "You can see her now."

After Bam had disappeared into Ms. Prewett's room, the girl at the desk--Kendra--gave Ville a smile. "He's relatively harmless." she assured him. "He just likes the sound of his own voice a little too much."

"I noticed." Ville said dryly.

"Are you the guy who's staying with the Taylors?" Kendra asked, typing something into the computer. She laughed as Ville tried to figure out why the ******** the girl he'd never seen knew that. "It's a small town, Ville. You'll figure out how it works quickly."

* * *

Ville was walking home from school now, a cigarette in between his lips. The boy who looked like a girl was ignoring the cruel whistles from the lips of guys passing him in shiny cars their parents had brought them and ignoring the more obvious yells of 'f**' and 'queer'.

He was supposed to turn right on Hyatt Street, but he turned left instead. He didn't want to call it a day yet, spend the rest of it avoiding loaded questions from Brenda Taylor and looks from her husband, Bryce.

It was October. Most of the leaves had turned colors and were now falling off the trees like a dance sequence from a Christmas pageant. People around here kept talking about how cold the fall was, how hard the winter was going to be, but Ville was still wearing the same thin jacket he always did, his inner thermostat still set to 'Hellsinki'.

He came upon a park at the end of the street. Sitting on a paint-chipped bench and staring at the vacant playground equipment across the street from a skatepark. Ville could barely make out Bam's features, but he sighed when he did. Cursing, the Fin lit another cigarette and stood up, taking a step toward the children's paradise in front of him.

Slowly, he ran his hand over the cool metal of the jungle-gym before running his fingers along the chains holding the swing to the swingset.

Shaking his head, Ville pressed the cigarette back to his lips, trying to forget the words to the nursery rhyme his mother used to sing to him. It was easier then. He put out his cigarette and lit another one. Before I was too pretty to be a boy.

Ville turned and looked at the boys skating across the street, particularly the one with the crystal-blue eyes. The one, Ville knew, had honestly wanted to apologize, had wanted to make Ville understand that not everyone in the world was evil.

Ville put out his cigarette and turned to walk away, trying to burn away the image of Bam Margera. Sometimes it was better to be guarded than to ******** up and make a mistake.

---To Be Continued---