Chapter Text
He came as suddenly as he went.
Jax had turned up in my science class one day, unannounced but nowhere near unnoticed. We hadn’t been told we would be getting a new student, but they weren't an uncommon occurrence. He wandered in the room slouched yet proud, bringing an air of coolness with him wherever he stepped. His fuzzy purple ears twitched as he took in the sounds of this new environment, before settling as he peered out at the cramped room. His eyes were yellow with inky black pupils, half lidded to portray carelessness, or maybe nonchalance. His arms were thin with short-cropped fur like mine, only topped with yellow gloves instead of pink. His coral overalls hung loosely over his rectangular frame, folded up at his ankles to reveal trimmed paws. He would've looked just like me, except my fur was red and I sported a soft tuft of spiky hair between my ears. He opened his mouth to speak, and I immediately noticed how his teeth matched his eyes. They were that same shade of creamy yellow, but there were no signs of plaque. In fact, they looked cleaner than my white teeth, so I supposed those were just how purple rabbit teeth looked. The boy was tall, at least compared to our other classmates, but he must've been the same height as me from what I could tell. But more than anything, he was cool. Cool in a way that doesn't ask to be cool, it just is.
Girls immediately flocked to his side, and guys flanked his front, hurling questions at him. Of course they would. A new kid with such a placid energy, he was a magnet for friends. I just sat at my desk alone, tapping my pencil on the extension question I had spent the last ten minutes on. I had never been one to put myself out there, and Jax seemed to have already been swept away by the small crowd forming around him. Mrs Queenie’s voice boomed through the dank classroom, commanding my peers back to their desks.
‘Alright, new boy, Jax, right? Yeah. You can go next to…’
She hummed uncaringly as she glared across the room, looking for somewhere to put Jax. I found myself hoping silently that it would be with me, but quickly shoo’d the thought from my mind. Why even hope?
‘With Thomas. Over there.’
The words spat from her mouth like just another equation, but by the time they hit my ears they were coated in a sweet candy that tugged the sides of my mouth into a barely suppressed smile. I felt a strange sense of victory, like Jax was a prize that I had won over all the other kids that wanted him so badly. Jax pulled out the chair beside me and threw himself over the cold plastic.
And just like that, we were inseparable. Right place right time I guess, I just happened to be there.
Day after day, lesson after lesson, it was me and Jax. Best of everything was lunch, where Jax would plop down beside me, click open his lunchbox, and then trade all of his carrots for my sandwich. Jax hated carrots, he hated them more than anything in the world, but his parents still filled his lunch with them no matter his protests. I had always liked them, and so this swap became our unspoken routine. Despite his hatred for the things, Jax always smelt like carrots. It was an earthy scent, like mist, or maybe damp, but not unpleasant. That smell followed him everywhere, like a stain on his own being, that contaminated anywhere he spent too long at. He hated it, but I found it nice. It was calm, grounding even.
About a week after he arrived, I learnt just how unlucky Jax was. The carrots had been one thing, but what really proved his misfortune was the test. Our class had finished the topic the day before he arrived, and so he was at an enormous disadvantage. The test was brutal. Most of the popular boys didn't try, I gave up halfway through, and the previous smartest kid in class madly scribbled out answers with force that should've broken his pencil, but Jax finished it without a care in the world. He handed it into the desk like all he had been asked to do was write his name. And best of all, he got 100%. Of course he did, Jax was quickly becoming the king of year 8. His smarts and popularity could’ve won him anyone he wanted, but he still stayed with me. I couldn’t figure out why if I had a gun to my head. There were certainly other kids that would've traded something for his carrots, but he wanted me. Despite his unbelievable grades, Jax had said I was smart for getting as far as I did and gave me the biggest grin I’d ever seen from him. I had never been more appreciative of my red fur than in that moment, because without it, the deep cherry blush that flooded my face would've been visible from space.
It continued like this for a month. Lazy jokes and quick smiles. Days consisted of mind-numbing work, but it all felt like background noise with Jax cracking jokes next to me. One well timed ‘Thats what your mum said too’ in my ear in a quiet classroom and my hands would fly to my mouth to stifle my laugh. My first thought when I woke up was him, and I strode to school knowing he would be at the gate to see me. Every day the earthy smell of carrots would find my nose, and the familiar sound of his voice would find my long ears. We spent countless summer afternoons sprawled across my treehouse wrapped up in Minecraft or Halo. One of us would simply ask ‘Hang out?’ and we would be next to each other under the wooden roof less than 5 minutes after school ended. He walked there together, which could barely even be counted as a walk based on how close the hidden getaway was to school. He would lay on his stomach on my greying beanbag, and I would sink into the torn old couch. The stillness of the treehouse would quickly be replaced with laughter and joking threats as we played the same game over and over just to get one more win.
These afternoons were heaven. No rules or expectations, just the trust of each other's company and the fizz of the lukewarm soft drinks I kept under the old mattress. It never got used anyway, until that night. It was cold, and I knew neither of our parents would mind, so I finally let loose the question I had been holding in for the past hour.
‘Sleepover?’