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When Jared is six, he likes to pretend he’s from Mars.
He likes planets and likes learning about them. He gets a big book about them for his birthday, and it looks like the grownups books his parents have at his house, the ones he’s not allowed to use his crayons on. It makes Jared feel like a grownup when he uses it. It has a lot of photos and pages to color using the box of markers it came with. The back of the book says it’s for kids from eight-to-ten years and it makes Jared giggle and feel important, even if he struggles to read it himself and has to wait all day for his mom to come back from work and read it to him.
Jared learns that Mars is a red planet, and since that’s his favorite color, he picks that one for himself.
He likes to think he’s from Mars and that’s why he doesn’t have any friends.
He sits alone during breaks, under the smaller tree in the back of the playground, sipping his juice box and waiting for the bell to ring again so he can go back to class. He watches the other kids give each other pretty invitations for birthdays all year long without getting a single one himself. He spends his birthday alone with his parents after he invites his entire class and nobody shows up, even though Jared was excited about it for weeks. There’s so much cake it lasts for days, and Jared brings it to school to eat it under his favorite small tree.
His mom says it’s okay, his dad says it’s okay and even Mr. Murray, his cool funny teacher who’s always nice to him, also says it’s okay. They all tell him making friends at this age is hard because kids are kids, but Jared doesn’t understand what that means, so he likes his explanation much better.
Everybody is from Earth but Jared’s from Mars, so they probably don’t understand him when he talks and think he’s from another planet when they see him. That’s why they never invite him to play or share their lunches with him, they must think he doesn’t understand the games or eats different food than them.
Not many people know that Martians like Jared love playing hide and seek and that peanut butter sandwiches are their favorite food. But it’s okay, Jared doesn’t blame them, how could they know that he would very much like to play with them? They don’t have his big book of planets to learn about Mars, like he does.
It’s fine anyway. Jared knows that learning new things is difficult. So he can wait until they are ready.
For almost two years Jared thinks he’s from Mars, but he doesn’t talk about it.
Then, Jared finally tells that to someone—Justin Hartley—when they have an obligatory biology project together. He laughs and tells Jared that he’s not from Mars. It’s just that nobody really likes him.
That’s the first time one of his classmates had come to his house, and even if Jared spent the night before organizing his room so it would be easier to play there with Justin once they were done with their project, he can’t wait for him to leave so he can lock the door and cry the rest of the afternoon.
When his mom gets home Jared’s head hurts from crying and she puts his head on her lap, brushing his hair and whispering in his ear that’s it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with him. And Jared tears up on her blue skirt that smells like flowers.
—
When Jared is twelve, he doesn’t pretend he’s from Mars anymore. He hasn’t read his big book of planets in years and hates to hear about them during his science class.
Apart from that, nothing has really changed. He still eats lunch alone, but it’s under the big trees in the courtyard of his school. He doesn’t get invitations to go to eat pizza and then play laser tag for birthday parties, and now he doesn’t bother inviting anyone for his own. No need to make his parents spend money on extra cake for just the three of them.
He sits in the back of the classroom—even though he likes to sit in the first row, his classmates always complain that he’s too tall and can’t see what’s written on the board—and tries to make himself as invisible as possible. It’s not really hard, since sometimes even his teachers forget his name no matter how far they are into the school year. Everybody in his family stopped telling him it’s okay, the fact that he has no friend and nobody really likes him. Except for his mother. She still wears the same blue skirt that smells like flowers, brushes his bangs out of his face every morning and tells him he’s the best kid she could ask for, and if others can’t see it it’s their loss, not Jared’s.
He’s pretty sure that’s not true, but he always smiles and nods so she doesn’t have to worry about it.
Jared’s not from Mars. He doesn’t need more excuses to understand he’s the weird kid nobody wants to be around.
He doodles around his notebook and tries to read what their Math teacher wrote on the board. He can’t really see sitting this far back but he doesn’t want to bother anyone else by moving to the fronts seats. That’s when the director walks in the middle of the class and Mr. Cohen interrupts his explanation of integers subtraction to introduce a new student who just moved to town from Dallas.
He has freckles all over his face along and big green eyes, and when Mr. Cohen asks him where he wants to sit, three other classmates raise their hands and tell the new kid he can sit by their side. But the new boy ignores them all and silently marches to the back of the room without even letting Mr. Cohen finish introducing him to the two girls and one boy who raised their hands.
Jared watches, almost in confused terror, as the freckled boy pulls the chair next to his and sits by his side without saying anything.
Mr. Cohen quickly starts the class again and Jared tries to keep his eyes on the board, wanting to make himself even more invisible than before. He doesn’t need another classmate to look at him and decide he doesn’t like him either.
Then, he hears the boy opening his backpack and pulling something out of it, the crunchy sound of a bag of gummi worms being open distracting Jared from the class. He tries to peek at the boy through his bangs, but before he can even try, the new kid almost shoves the bag of worms against his face, not moving it an inch until Jared takes one with shaky hands.
“Thank you,” he whispers so low he wonders if the other really heard him. The boy smiles then, sucking the sugar from his fingers before taking another worm for himself.
“No problem.” He shrugs and peeks a look at Jared’s notebook “I’m Jensen.”
Jared nods and doesn’t say anything else until Jensen pushes his chair with his left foot and makes him look back. Jared’s startled and confused until he realizes Jensen wants to know his name, too. That never happened before.
“Jared,” he whispers again, his heart beating so fast in his chest he feels like throwing up the apple he had twenty minutes ago. Jensen hums and grabs the red marker from his pencil case and writes JARED in big letters all over his forearm.
Jared’s probably looking at Jensen like he’s completely out of his mind, because Jensen laughs and then blows air at the ink on the inside of his arm. “So I can remember” he explains, and Jared makes another face, hopes Jensen understand he wants him to elaborate a little bit more. Jensen sighs, like he’s dealing with a five year old “Your name, you goof. So I can say it to my parents when they ask me if I made any friends today.”
Jared chokes on his own spit, but nobody turns around when he coughs for almost a minute.
“I’m your friend?” Jared repeats, voice breaking by the end. He doesn’t need Jensen making fun of him already if this is a joke. And it clearly is, since Jensen’s been there for around five seconds and Jared knows you don’t make friends that easily.
Jensen shrugs again, still looking at Jared like he’s a little kid learning to walk. “I like your pins,” he says, as if it explains anything at all, pointing at the two plastic circles with Jupiter and Saturn drawn on them that his mom bought him a year ago and Jared felt bad about not using, even if he doesn’t like planets anymore.
That day Jensen sits with him under the big tree to eat lunch and lets Jared eat half of his fries. Then he walks with him for two blocks when school is over, staying with Jared until he needs to go on a different direction. He waves at Jared and says he’ll bring his Game Boy to school tomorrow so they can play during lunch.
At night, Jared feels like crying how he did when he was six and Justin told him nobody liked him, but this time it’s for an entirely different reason.
When his mom gets home from work Jared hugs her, smiling so hard his cheeks are aching. He tells her about the worms, the fries, and Jensen. This time she’s the one who cries, and Jared tells her it’s all going to be okay now.
—
When Jared’s seventeen, he knows he’s not from Mars. But he doesn’t care anymore.
He leans against the cold grass and squints, trying to find the goddamn star Jensen’s pointing at. He’s been trying to find it for fifteen minutes now and this is getting ridiculous. He smacks Jensen’s leg when he laughs and tells him maybe he needs to get his glasses out for this, too, since it’s obvious that Jared needs them to do more than read.
“Shut it, you’re making it up. There’s no third star to make a triangle with those other two” Jared insists, huffing, and Jensen keeps laughing like this is funny in any way. He’s such an idiot.
“Hey don’t call me a liar just because you’re fucking blind.” Jensen pokes Jared’s side, right on his ribs, and then laughs against his ear when Jared squeaks embarrassingly. Jared tries to push him away, saying that Jensen’s breath smells like shit, but only because he knows that’ll make Jensen try to press himself even closer.
They stay in silence, with Jared still looking up and Jensen’s face pressed into his neck. He can feel Jensen’s breathing, soft exhales of air caressing his skin and almost making his squirm on the grass again. They’re outside of Jensen’s house and it’s starting to get cold, but with Jensen right there, Jared doesn’t really care. He knows he doesn’t have to worry about anything as long as Jensen stays.
He hasn’t worried since he met Jensen at twelve. And he stopped thinking about Jensen sometime getting tired of him and leaving after he kissed him on Jared’s sixteen birthday, when even his mom and dad had to work that day so they were alone at Jensen’s house eating the chocolate cake Jensen baked for him using tutorials from YouTube. Jensen kissed him right after Jared told him it was the best cake he’d ever had, even if they both knew it was burned on the inside.
“I used to think I was from Mars,” Jared blurts out with a little laugh, looking around to try and find the invisible star Jensen pointed at. He knows Jensen always had a talent for seeing invisible things. “When I was like six. I was really convinced I was from there and that’s why nobody talked to me.” He shakes his head, remembering how many old drawings he found in his closet of himself living on a red planet when he was cleaning his room last summer.
He looks back at Jensen, who’s smiling fondly at him. Jared laughs again “I still kinda wonder if I am and should go back there sometime.”
Jensen grabs him by the hips and easily manhandles him so Jared rolls on the grass and then ends lying on top of him, using Jensen’s body as a big pillow. Goddamn football captain and his physical skills. He brushes his hair, playing with it before ruffling it, making it even more of a mess than it already is. Jensen presses his lips against Jared’s ear, raspy voice shooting him somehow. “Then I’m goin’ out to Mars for a while.” He feels Jared shudder and hugs him even closer. “We can stay living there together.”
Jared chuckles, face pressed to Jensen’s shoulder. His throat aches and it feels good to know his mom, dad and Mr. Murray were right.
It’s okay. It’s all okay now.
Jensen cups his face, making Jared look down at him. Jared leans, brushing their lips, and when Jensen moves into it so they can kiss, Jared doesn’t feel like he’s a stranger from another world anymore.
“Why did you pick Mars?” Jensen asks, a smirk tugging his lips “Because it’s red?”
Jared snorts and nods, closing his eyes. “Because it’s red.”
Jensen mumbles something about him being a shitty Martian when he can’t even spot all the stars, and Jared smacks him on the chest hard enough to get in trouble. Jensen turns them over and pins him to the ground, starting to kiss down his neck and slide his hands under his shirt, making Jared shudder.
Jensen slides his lips over every one of Jared’s moles on the skin he can reach and doesn’t stop until Jared is out of breath and clinging to him, trying to pull Jensen up so they can keep kissing. He can feel Jensen everywhere, hands and gentle voice distracting him from the rest of the Earth, and he hopes this Friday night can last for as long as possible.
He’s seventeen and a lot of things have changed. He’s graduating this year and moving to Austin to study Astronomy. He and Jensen are going to be roommates, since Jensen’s going to the same college to study Medicine. They’re going to prom as dates and their parents like making fun of what a surprise it is, them doing another thing together.
He likes to think of it a sweet irony. He’s never alone, and never will be.
Now Jared knows he doesn’t need to be from Mars. All he needs to be is Jensen’s.