NOVEL WEB Chapter 4: And They Were Roommates
Jonas sat down on the bed. His impromptu run with Toby, strange though it had been, had helped him clear his head a bit. Being all wolf-like had made Toby a lot faster, but he’d been happy to slow down. He’d reassured Jonas that the school’s track team was more of an each-according-to-their-ability thing, because there were creatures on campus that were a lot faster than even he was. That did quash Jonas’ competitive spirit somewhat, but if it meant that ‘not faster than an actual wolf-person’ wouldn’t get him kicked off the team, he’d take it. And Toby was a cool dude. While jogging, he’d given Jonas some more instructions about stuff on campus, explained how food and so on worked. There was a form of WiFi, even, although it would only connect to the campus network. For obvious reasons, administration didn’t want people tweeting any pictures.
He looked over at Brett, who had propped himself up on the bed and was reading something. Without his luggage, he hadn’t had a lot to unpack. The room itself was fairly bare, but with enough room for some creativity and self-expression. They even had their own bathroom-with-shower.
“You alright?” he asked. Brett was not, and never had been, the most stress-resistant person. Jonas considered it a matter of luck that Brett hadn’t been the one to faint, or that he hadn’t screamed when the snake-girl had introduced herself. Not to say that he hadn’t been deeply shaken by everything they’d seen. But he’d always been a little more flexible, and a little more open the possibility of there being more to life than they’d been taught in schools. Still, this was taking things a bit far. Brett lowered his book and looked back at Jonas, and held his gaze for a moment. Jonas did his best not to look away. Brett could be awfully intense if he wanted to be, even if he didn’t realize it himself.
“Holy crap, Jonas,” he said, emphasizing every word.
“Yeah.”
“Holy Crap, Jonas.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s monsters here, man.” Brett wasn’t freaking out. In fact, Jonas was acutely aware of how hard Brett wasn’t freaking out, as if he was trying as best he could not to freak out. He could tell Brett’s eye was twitching and that he was tensing up every few seconds. But, distinctly and very clearly, not freaking out. “Actual monsters.”
“I know, Brett.” He’d been thinking about it too. It had been hard not to think about it, of course. Being an exchange student at a campus specifically for monster people had a tendency to occupy his mind. Like a whale in the middle of an intersection, it was impossible to get around, impossible to just get over, and, above all, impossible to ignore. The only option, of course, was to accept it. “I went running with Toby, after all.” Brett’s expression seemed to sour a bit, and Jonas hoped that this didn’t mean he was going to freak out and cause a scene about him trying to make friends with the local… populace.
“Yeah, I noticed that. Y’all have a good time?” Brett raised his book again. There was a biting sting in his voice that annoyed Jonas slightly. Either Brett was being actually childish about Jonas trying to accept where they were, or… Jonas considered the unpleasant option. Well, the other unpleasant option. Maybe Brett was being envious. Did he really not want Jonas spending time with anyone else? Or was there more going on? They’d been inseparable since high school, to the point of accusations of them being gay for each other, but that had been laughed off easily. But now that it was just the two of them in a sea of strangers, was Brett in danger of, well, drowning? Clinging to him like driftwood? The image of Brett curled up against his chest, looking for help, briefly popped into his head and he tried to suppress it.
“It was fine,” he said, trying to keep his tone level, but quickly found himself getting just a little excited. This whole place was crazy, and not even Brett’s weird little mood swing was going to distract from that. “It’s pretty weird being a werewolf, apparently. He… changed. Like a lot. He had to hide, because they aren’t, you know, public knowledge. There was uh...” He paused for a moment. The two of them had never talked much about lgbt stuff, so he didn’t know how Brett was going to respond. He tried to be casual about it. “Apparently he didn’t know he was a guy until he uh… turned.”
“Really?” Brett seemed more confused than anything now, which Jonas much preferred to snippy or annoyed. “I didn’t know it worked like that. Huh.” Jonas breathed a sigh of relief. Toby was a good guy, and he’d hate for him to have a falling out with his friend if he’d turned out to be an asshole about… people like that. “Being a monster sounds… hard.” Brett chewed his lip, frowning at the ceiling. Jonas nodded.
“Yeah. But he says he’s never been happier and that the community is pretty great. Besides, he mentioned that it probably won’t stay that way forever,” Jonas added. “I wonder what he meant by that.”
“Probably why we’re supposed to be advocating for them at some point,” Brett mused. “Do you think that means they’ll go public soon?”
“Guess so.” Jonas shrugged. “I’m not sure it’s gonna matter any time soon, though. Maybe it’ll be a senior project?” Brett’s silence was its own answer. “Other than that, we mostly talked about the school and stuff. The cafeteria serves some pretty good food, apparently, and there’s all kinds of activities you can join on campus while we wait for the year to start. Oh, and we need to sign some stuff, but we’ve got all week to do that.”
“The whole… transformation thing… how’d you feel about that?” Brett asked. He seemed almost careful, like he was testing the waters. Was he being envious? “Like, you two seem to be getting real close.” Jonas caught Brett side-eyeing him. “No weird… feelings?”
“Not… really,” he said. “Toby is just a guy.” He briefly considered the weird image he’d had in his head of Brett falling asleep on his chest, and tried to imagine Toby there. That mostly looked heavy. And like he’d quickly get fur in his mouth. Nah, the feeling of gently being hit with a truck was there only when he imagined holding Brett. “He’s a cool dude, and I think he was just happy to have someone to run with, honestly. I get the feeling he likes going on walks.”
“Is that racist?” Brett looked at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Like, his ears perked up at the thought of going running, so like, it’s not inaccurate.” Jonas looked at him for a moment, and then put his hands under his head and chewed his tongue. Was there such a thing as stereotyping wolf-people? Werewolves? Was Toby a werewolf? He hadn’t really gotten around to ask, he’d tried to just sort of accept it. Maybe he was a were-man. Although that didn’t make sense, because he remembered hearing some time that werewolf meant ‘man-wolf’. Would that make him a wolfwere? He frowned. This was getting him nowhere fast. He turned to Brett again.
“What else did you learn from Malena?” he asked. Brett shuddered, and Jonas couldn’t tell if it was a good or a bad shudder. Should he be envious? Wait, no, why would he be envious? Brett was his friend, they’d both dated girls before, that was never going to be a problem. Was it?
“She’s scary,” Brett said. “But she’s nice, I think. So uh… scary in a good way.” Jonas raised an eyebrow at him. “Fuck off. It’s just hard not to be intimidated by someone so tall. Tall is scary.” Jonas smirked.
“I’m tall,” he said. Brett said nothing, and for a moment, Jonas worried he was worried he’d said something wrong. He didn’t want to get lost in those thoughts again, so he decided to push through the weird feeling in his gut and the awkward pause in the conversation all at once. “Did she tell you anything more?”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah,” Brett said, drumming his fingers on his sternum to a melody in his head. “Apparently there’s two kinds of monster-folk coming to this school. There’s the people who used to be human, and then the ones born as monsters. The two groups used to be a little at odds but the campus is very strict on discrimination and stuff like that.”
“Huh. So like, ghosts and werewolves and stuff,” Jonas figured.
“Yeah,” Brett said. “Versus like, snake people and things like Malena. But the faculty tries to be inclusive to everyone. There’s all kinds of facilities for different body types.” He raised the book he’d been reading. “This has everything in it for all different possibilities. Apparently it’s best that we read through the ‘human and humanoid’ sections, but recommended we go through the rest of it too. There’s all kinds of different bathrooms, and most sports and stuff have categories for body types and weight ranges and stuff. Probably so we don’t get tackled by a minotaur or something big and bulky like that.”
“Phrasing, man.”
“Double fuck off,” Brett said, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it. Jonas couldn’t help but worry about him. Something was bothering him, something even more important than the fact that they’d soon be going to a school that had been designed for coffee-cup-sized people to attend the same lectures as actual living skeletons and centaurs. Was there anything he could do, or was he just going to make things worse? Sure, technically there was only one way to find out, but not doing anything should, in his opinion, be a valid option if the risk of hurting someone -- or his friendship with that person -- was too high.
“Hey…” he said, and he tried to give his voice that intonation that said, loudly and clearly ‘I’m intending to have a very uncomfortable conversation with you, but I’m going to do my best to be supportive about it’. He hated that tone, but he had no other tools at his disposal to make it clear that he intended to have an uncomfortable conversation, but that he wanted to be supportive about it.
“What’s up man?” Brett looked at him. Jonas looked back, and he couldn’t help but feel guilty. Brett had always had kinda sad eyes, like something was always mildly bothering him, but now it was even worse. He looked like a couple of mean words would reduce him to tears. At which point, of course, someone bigger than him would need to wrap his arms around -- no. Jonas gritted his teeth. Bad brain.
“I just… you look like you’ve had a bit of an off day all day--”
“I was asked to high-five someone with seven arms, Jonas. It’s been a long day.”
“I mean other than that.” They looked at each other for a bit.
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play,” Brett said. Jonas rolled his eyes.
“Stop deflecting, man. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Brett groaned and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. It was clear to Jonas that he didn’t want to talk about it, which made it all the more important that they do. He wasn’t going to let something like that hang over his friend, or over his friendship with his friend. Even if that did mean that Brett might be possessive over him. They’d figure something out.
“After I looked at Malena… by the way, don’t do that to yourself, there’s no way anyone comes out of that completely intact. Anyway, after I looked her in the eyes, something really weird happened and it was like…” He sat on the edge of the bed, leaning hard on his knees like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. A part of Jonas really wanted to go over to him and wrap an arm around him. It was a stupid part and he refused to listen to it, if only because, if his suspicions were correct, had the potential to make things a lot more complicated. “It was like I was outside of myself and I had to look at me and it was like I could barely recognize who I was. Like there’s… parts of myself that I’ve taken for granted for so long and now it’s not making sense anymore. You know what I mean?” Jonas nodded, then shook his head, and then nodded again. He wasn’t sure of anything himself anymore, but he was doing his best to understand.
“Is there anything I can do?” He sat upright too. He wanted Brett to know he was taking this seriously. He was going to be there for him. No matter what. He’d already known that; Brett was his best friend. But it felt good to think it out loud.
“There’s a…” Brett seemed to be struggling for words. Or, more specifically, he seemed to be struggling to get the words out. “There’s an LGBT group on campus,” he finally said, and Jonas caught him looking. He was probably checking to see if Jonas was going to be angry or disgusted by him. Of course he wasn’t, but Jonas had no trouble putting himself in Brett’s shoes, and in his position, coming out to his best friend was -- would be something he’d be scared of doing, no matter the friendship they had.
“Well…” Jonas chewed his tongue for a moment, “if you need someone to go with you to a meeting of theirs… I’m here for you, man.” Brett seemed to deflate with relief.
“Thank you, Jonas. It’s just… a lot, even considering the idea that you might not be who you thought you were or how you thought you were, so it’d really help me a lot if you were there.”
“Yeah, of course, man. You can take your time, figure yourself out. I’m gonna be your best friend no matter what.” Jonas nodded, already making a mental note to look stuff up about the school’s LGBT organisations. He was just gonna sit in, of course, being there for his best friend. Maybe listen to other people’s experiences. Jonas laid himself down again, trying to get some rest. He just wanted to make sure Brett felt secure and safe in the fact that he’d just come out to Jonas as gay.
