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Making friends was never easy for Susie, but this Noelle kid was really something. Whenever Susie got detention, Noelle would attempt to double down on whatever Susie said so they could still spend their lunch break together. That stopped working once they started getting put in separate classrooms, but Susie still really appreciated the thought.
Soon enough they were spending a lot of their free time at school together. They would pick each other for group projects, sit next to each other on the bus ride home, spend basically every lunch together just shooting the shit, and - in Susie’s mind - this meant it was time for their relationship to go to the next level.
It was time for a sleepover.
“Hey mom, is it okay if my friend comes over?”
Susie pokes her head through the door and holding it just closed enough that Noelle can’t be seen hovering behind her. The woman beyond the threshold - Noelle assumes Susie's mom - sighs softly.
“Is she already here?”
Susie glances back over her shoulder, a guilty smile crawling across her face as her and Noelle lock eyes.
"Yes..."
Susie's mother lets out a longer, deeper sigh. The two of them have a short, muffled back and forth about hamburger meat.
"I'm actually a vegetarian if that helps."
Noelle pokes her head through the door under Susie's arm and takes in Susie's mom. A tall, stocky monster-woman with two handfuls of ground beef and a face like an enormous rat. She smiles seeing Noelle for the first time. She pulls a Tupperware from a high shelf and starts to unload the beef into it.
"Alright, fine. We can do burgers tomorrow and Y'all can get a pizza or whatever."
“Cool, thanks, love you mom!”
Susie quickly pulls Noelle into the apartment and tries to rush past her mother into her room.
“Hey whoa, upbupbupbupbup!"
"You’re not going to introduce me?”
"Oh, yeah. Sure."
Susie nudges Noelle forwards a bit as if to present her to her mother.
"Mom, this is Noelle. Noelle, this is my new mom, Ratty."
"Good to meet you Noelle."
"Nice to meet you too Miss Ratty."
“Alright, cool, thanks mom. We’re gonna hang out in my room and watch movies now.”
“Don’t show her fight club or matrix.”
“Aw, what? C’mon.”
“You’re gonna scare her! Watch fuckin’ Spy Kids 3D or something.”
“Actually I’ve already seen both of those. I'm not super scared of either of them.”
"Oh, but thank you for the concern."
“Oh, alright. That’s fine then."
"No kissing alright?"
"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!"
"Hahahahaha!"
Susie drags the flustered deer into her room as her mother cackles. Noelle, still slightly in a daze, takes a seat on the twin bed in one corner. Susie's room feels kind of new. Like someone just moved in recently and hurried to make it feel lived in. It's teetering on the fence between real cozy and fake cozy, and the purple reptile deftly navigating the piles of clothes and old looseleaf homework is a firm push towards real. There’s a Depeche Mode poster with a fake autograph that reads: “Depeche Mode sux - Love Kris.” Most of the space is taken up by the bed, a desk, and a drum kit.
"You play drums?"
"I hit drums."
Susie deftly navigates the mess to a literal pile of DVDs in one corner. Noelle has a private moment of enjoyment picturing Susie just whaling away on the worn looking drum kit. Susie’s desk is home to an incredibly old looking TV/DVD player combo and a fairly new looking laptop with a flag sticker on the lid: a white axe in a black inverted triangle against a pink, purple and blue background. Noelle allows herself a little fist pump.
"Your mom lets you have a TV in your room?"
"She doesn't really know it's here. I just kind of found it and she mostly leaves me alone."
"That kind of sounds like it sucks."
"Oh, nah,"
"I guess the way I said it kind of makes it sound like she sucks, but like, I mean she leaves me alone in that I have a decent amount of privacy and like I don't have to clean my room if I don't want to. She's there when she should be."
Susie plunges her hand into the pile of DVDs, rummages around for a few seconds before a tattered copy of Fight Club is retrieved from the depths. She grabs a screwdriver off of her desk and pries the DVD tray open, gently places the movie in the tray, and hits the eject button. The mechanism whurs for a few seconds then slides in with a continuous clicking that's so loud and sudden it makes Noelle jump.
"Jesus, is that safe?"
"I 'unno."
Susie drops herself down into a pile of clothes and leans up against the bedframe.
"Is that comfortable?"
"Well when I play GameCube usually the cord isn't long enough to reach all the way to the bed, so this is where I always sit."
"You still have a GameCube?"
"Well for one, you can't beat the classics, and two..."
"Not anymore. I pulled it off the desk by accident and now it won't read my disks."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
They let a few minutes pass in silence as Edward Norton bloviates about the evils of convenient living. It's kind of difficult to get comfortable longways on a twin bed, but Noelle eventually settles with her back against the wall and her hooves just hanging off the front edge next to Susie's head. Susie slumps her head over onto Noelle's ankle, presumably to get more comfortable. Noelle is thankful that Susie can't see her blush.
"So, uhh..."
"How come your mom said no kissing?"
Susie jumps at this, sitting up straighter and being careful to settle back into a position where she's not touching Noelle.
“Uhh, she was just being funny I guess?”
"Oh, cool."
a few more seconds pass between them.
“So do you think that like… she was just joking? Like there’s nowhere she would have gotten an idea like that from?”
“I told her I’m bi, so I guess she assumes anyone who I bring home might be like my ‘girlfriend’ or ‘boyfriend’ or whatever.”
Noelle lets some of her tension go.
“Oh so like she probably said like a similar thing the first time she met Kris right?”
“Uhh no, actually. I think she knows Kris is like different.”
...and it's back with a side of intrigue.
“Different how?”
Susie turns away from the movie for the first time since it started to hide her face.
“Uhh like… y'know… whatever! Like, Kris is a different kind of friend, y'know?”
Noelle's heart leaps into her throat as she realizes what Susie means by ‘different.’ She steels herself as Ed Norton wanders around his apartment on hold.
“Like different like you have a crush on me?”
She tries her best not to spit the question out too quickly to be understood. From the foot-and-a-half jump into the air, it seems pretty clear that Susie got the message.
"I- WHO TOLD YOU THAT?"
"Oh my God, you totally do!"
Noelle laughs, flopping over so she's lying down on the bed and gently bonking Susie with her hoof.
"...and you told your mom about it too! You huge dork!"
"I'm not a dork! I'm hard as fuck!"
“and so what! I’m allowed to have crushes!”
“Susie I’ve had a crush on you since like the sixth grade! This is incredible!”
"What the fuck, no way."
Susie silently thanks her mom for the hamfisted approach to parenting. The next 45 minutes of the film pass in relative silence, the glow of young lesbianism just sort of comfortably permeating the room like sunlight. The sun starts to set as the two of them settle back into comfort, Susie resting her head back on Noelle's ankle.
Susie's mom pokes her head in towards the end of the film, cellphone in hand.
"What do yall-"
"When do you get a TV?"
"Found it."
"Alright, 100% not what I asked."
"Is that not okay?"
"Oh, no, yeah, it's fine. Just like, why not watch movies on your laptop?"
"Laptop doesn't have a DVD hole."
"DVD hole?"
"Yeah, y'know. The hole where the DVDs go."
"It's the hole that you put the DVDs in miss Ratty."
"Yeah, okay, whatever. What do you kids want on your pizza?"
"Can we get green peppers and feta and all that?"
"You gonna eat it if it has green pepers Sus?"
"I can pick them off."
"Alright cool. There's money on the counter, if you need more just don't try and grab it out of the ashes jar."
"You should probably start putting those two on different shelves."
"Are you going somewhere?"
"Yeah. I have my normal Thursday night lecture,"
"and then Professor Witherspoon wants me to supervise her exam tomorrow morning, so I'm just going to crash in my office probably."
"But, you kids get run of the place for tonight as long as you can get yourself to school tomorrow."
"We actually have a long weekend this week!"
"Oh, tight, alright, in that case, you can show Noelle your breakfast skills."
"You cook?"
"I'm, uh, learning."
This might be the best pizza Noelle has ever had, she thinks. It might just be who she's sharing it with though. Somehow, despite the second movie of the night being one of the greatest movies of all time, Noelle has become obsessed with the little pile of green peppers forming in one corner of the pizza box. There's something kind of adorable about how carefully Susie's relatively large claws peel off the soggy little veggies. Susie is also kind of distracted, she's been re-reading the same texts for the past few minutes. Noelle decides to let Susie think she's being stealthy, rather than confront what she's actually reading.
“Hey sus sorry 4 saying no kissing earlier”
“I kno ur smart"
“This whole mom thing is just kind of new for me so i think i might b overdoing it lol”
“Just dont do anything i wouldnt do"
“Love ya, see u tmrw"
There were other things to put on the table before anything like that happened though, Susie thought. Noelle quickly grew bored of The Matrix, the pile of green peppers and of re-reading the texts over Susie's shoulder however. A little teasing never hurt anyone, she thought.
"Whatcha lookin' at Susie?"
Immediately flustered by the question, Susie scrambled to hide her phone, dropping it between the bed and the cot she dragged through for Noelle.
"Uh, porn."
"Pornography... is what I was looking at."
"While I'm right here?"
"It wasn't actually porn. That was a joke. An old Susie classic."
"Yeah, I thought so."
They both independently decide to focus back on the movie.
"So Trinity is absolutely hot right?"
"Unquestionably, absolutely."
"Okay, yes. Thank you for having taste."
"My pleasure."
The first Matrix ends, then the second with speckles of conversation making up the Susie and Noelle commentary. Over the several hours it takes to watch they decide that, while Cipher is definitely shitty Susie and Noelle probably wouldn't want to be proverbially woken up either. It manages to hold their attention until the mech fight from the third movie, which completely loses them.
"This part sucks."
"Right? I'm gonna take a nap. Wake me up next time Trinity is on screen."
"Actually I'm pretty sure she dies pretty soon."
"Oh yeah I forgot about that part. This movie fuckin' sucks!"
"I didn't know you said fuck?"
"Only for shitty garbage movies and only at like 2 am."
"Say it again."
"No way."
Noelle snorts at this. A few seconds pass between the two.
"Uhh, hey."
"Hey."
"Can I tell you something kind of personal?"
"Yeah, sure."
"I, um..."
"I like you a lot and, I would like it if you were my girlfriend or whatever."
Noelle's heart swells at this. The chilly apartment suddenly feels like the comfortable inside of a furnace.
"but..."
"I think if that's gonna be a thing - like we're going to be the kind of people who hold hands or whatever..."
"you deserve to know about uhh…"
Susie gulps, she's shaking ever-so-slightly. Noelle scoots over to the other bed and rests a steadying hand against Susie's sholder.
"I was born uhh, not a girl. Well... actually..."
Susie scratches her head, trying to come up with an explanation.
"Like I've been a girl for basically forever, and especially now my new mom is like… she knows about this kind of thing and we're talking to doctors and whatever, but I was born with a body like…"
"it's hard to explain."
"You're transgender."
"Yeah. Sorry I didn't know if I just came out and said the word whether or not you would get it."
"No, no, I getcha. So like you were born a boy and now you're a girl?"
"Yeah!"
"Well that's kind of... actually weirdly oversimplified..."
"but that's more or less it."
"Hey, Susie."
"Yeah?"
"I think I would really like it if you were my girlfriend too."
Matrix Revolutions ends unceremoniously as unquestionably the worst film in the trilogy. By the time it's over the two of them have tucked themselves into their respective beds, Noelle under what kind of amounts to a shitty blanket. Despite the good gay vibes, the apartment is still weirdly cold. For a short time Noelle tries to ignore it, but eventually realizes that the shivering will be too much for her to get to sleep.
"Hey, Susie?"
"Mm?"
"I'm kind of cold."
"Oh shit. There's a pullout couch and a fake fireplace in the living room. We can move out there if you want?"
"If it fake how is it gonna help?"
"No no, it's like an electric heater disguised as a fireplace."
"Oh, okay. That actually sounds really nice then."
Susie takes up the blankets from both of their beds and trots them out into the living room. She piles them on the floor, making sure to give an extra thick duvet to Noelle to wait in. She tosses the couch cushions aside, wincing as one of them hits a window pretty hard. She switches on the fireplace and paper cutouts of flames flail to life, slowly filling the room with warmth. she pushes everything aside and pulls out the couch into a huge queen size cot. She grabs the pile of blankets and lays them out flat on the newly constructed bed. Then, with a mischevious grin, picks Noelle and her blanket up.
"Ah! What are you doing!?"
Susie gently places Noelle on the pullout, then turns to go back to her room.
"Hey, hold on! Where are you going?"
"I'm gonna go get the other cot."
"I don't want you to have all that trouble again so maybe we can just..."
"...share the pullout?"
"Oh, um..."
"Okay."
And so they do. They slowly drift together as they fall asleep, the fake fire roaring at their feet. Susie taking comfort in Noelle's peppermint shampoo, and Noelle taking comfort in Susie's teen spirit.