TW // Mentions of homophobia
CW // Swearing
Jax Dawson gripped the strap of his backpack as he flung it over his shoulder and onto his back. It was a sunny day in mid-October, and he was pouting because he had to go to a new school because some motherfucker at his old school outed him to the entire school. And, well. He didn’t exactly live in an accepting area.
It would be difficult to make new friends this late in the year since everybody generally already had their friend groups. But he would’ve had to do that anyways, given all his old friends were homophobic. They weren’t actively talking about how much they hate gay people, but when he came out to them as bisexual, they started distancing themselves from him. Jax pretended not to notice. But he did. And it hurt.
He wasn’t entirely lost since the principal had offered to let him do an orientation over the weekend. Thank fuck for that. Besides, his new homeroom teacher happened to be working that day and had introduced himself. He knew at least one person, then. Even if it was a teacher. But the teacher, Mr Kamatani, seemed nice enough.
Entering the classroom, he swallowed as he noticed everyone staring at him. Fuck, do they really have to do that? It’s annoying.
The classroom was rather plain for the most part, save for the little reading corner that was set up in the corner. In Jax’s opinion, it looked more like an elementary school classroom. But he liked that. It was nostalgic for all the right reasons.
“Jax!” Mr Kamatani greeted, standing up from his desk to meet the boy. Jax offered him a small smile. “I have a seat for you. Sorry if you were hoping for unassigned seats. This class is a bit rowdy. They lost that privilege pretty quickly. They’ll have another chance after the next major break, though!”
He liked how Mr Katamani ran things. His rules were reasonable. He gave his classes a chance instead of just assuming things. In Jax’s experience, most teachers didn’t like to give students that chance.
His teacher led him to the back of the room, which he was thankful for. A seat in the front with all the attention of being a new kid in the middle of the year? No, thanks. Mr Kamatani paused at a desk occupied by a boy with shoulder-length hair. He had his arms crossed on the desk and his head laid atop them. He appeared to be sleeping. Mr Kamatani huffed out a laugh. “Running from Mrs Woods already, Logan? Homeroom hasn’t even started yet.”
The person in the seat — Logan, Jax supposed — simply lifted his head slightly, huffed, and stuck out his tongue. Mr Kamatani smiled and shook his head. “Come on. Move over a seat until she comes looking for you. This one is Jax’s.”
The boy rolled his eyes but moved anyway, stealing a curious glance at Jax. Jax did the same to the boy. What had his teacher meant by ‘running from Mrs Woods’?
He would have thought on it longer, but he couldn’t really be bothered to care much this early in the morning. Who decided that school should start before most adults went to work? It was absurd.
To quote who knows, “It sucks.”
Jax took the time before homeroom to look around the classroom. Find a group he would fit in with, mayhaps. The group closest to his desk was a definite no. A well-dressed boy was actively bragging about how his parents got him a high-end gaming PC for his birthday. A moment ago, a girl had been complaining about how the Gucci purse her mother gave her was pink, not lavender like she wanted. First-world problems, really.
Two students a few rows in front of him were pointing at some other kids and grinning. Making fun of them, he figured. Yeah, no. He hated that type.
The kids they were making fun of weren’t even doing anything strange. They were going over the math homework from the previous night, it looked like. In Jax’s opinion, that was a normal thing to do. One of them had glasses, so the mean kids probably thought he was smart. A nerd, if you will. They didn’t seem like they’d be too bad to talk to.
A quick glance to his left and he immediately pegged another group as a no. It appeared to be a group that was once entirely girls until one of them brought her boyfriend. Now, it was those girls and all their boyfriends. Normally, if there were no other options, he would have tried for that group. But the couples were middle-school-like. Ultra cheesy. Ultra clingy. Ultra no.
The classroom had yet to fill entirely yet, so Jax figured there was another group or two. They’d probably come in seconds before the bell rang.
Sure enough, moments later, a group of boys walked in. Jocks, he figured, based on the fact that they all had at least some definition of arm muscle. He would have scolded himself for stereotyping if it weren’t for their uniforms. Football players and basketball players alike. How were six of them in his homeroom? Surely they would be more spread out than that?
He wasn’t sure how many players football teams normally had, but it surely wasn’t enough to put six in every homeroom in the school.
He was stereotyping, he realised. Maybe they weren’t all that bad.
The bell rang, signifying the start of homeroom. Everyone went to their proper seats without Mr.Kamatani sparing them so much as a glance. He stood for the pledge and moment of silence, as did everybody. The second bell rang not long after, signifying the start of the first block.
To seemingly nobody’s surprise, not even Jax’s, a few moments later, a woman came in to drag the boy away. She seemed fed-up with him like this was an everyday occurrence. It probably was, based on everyone else’s reactions. But again, it was eight in the morning. Nobody could be bothered to care if they were all anything like Jax.
“Alright, open your textbooks to page 97. Harry, start reading.”
He was thankful his teacher had heeded his request to skip the whole ‘we have a new student, introduce yourself’ thing. He didn’t mind talking in front of people in a classroom setting. Typically, nobody paid attention. But most transfers came in January. An October transfer might raise questions. Besides, most people had already noticed him because hey, that desk is normally unoccupied. Pretty obvious when it’s all of a sudden not.
Nothing worth noting happened in English class, save for the seven times Mr Kamatani had to ask the class to be quiet or stay in their seats. Really, for a bunch of high schoolers, they were immature.
The second block was slightly more interesting, given that Jax had PE. on his schedule for that. It started at the ungodly time of 8:40 in the morning. Jax couldn’t help but wonder if the person who created these schedules had ever gone to school themselves. He supposed he could consider himself lucky that he didn’t have it first period. As much as he enjoyed basketball, the first period would be too early for him to want to so much as consider exercising.
This time, he was not so lucky as to be able to avoid his self-introduction. It was worse this time since it was a larger class. He noticed that more students than he anticipated were nodding off to sleep. Either he was really boring, or everyone was tired today for some reason. Probably both, since it was a Monday
The teacher made them run laps for some reason. P.E. teachers? More like sadists. What made it worse was that, like P.E. teachers usually did, the coach was just sitting there in his comfy rolling office chair behind a desk.
In any case, the laps sure woke Jax up. He was thankful for that when he entered his third-period classroom, French III. He was expected to introduce himself again, but this time in French. It was an easy feat, given that this class was called French three for a reason. He was assigned to a desk behind a group of girls. And, boy, were they annoying. When the teacher asked the class to partner up, they all argued over which one of them got to partner with Jax. He turned to his right and asked the boy next to him to be his partner, and that was that. Seriously, didn’t the girls think he had a say in all this?
The boy next to him, as it turned out, was actually quite nice. He had honey-brown skin and brown eyes to match. His hair was cropped short on the sides but a bit longer on the top so that he could style them into short dreadlocks. He looked quite handsome if Jax was being honest. He was almost jealous.
“I’m Raymond,” the boy introduced himself. He grinned at Jax. “You’re Jax, right? Nice to meet ya.”
Jax nodded, offering a smile in return. “Likewise.” He paused for a moment as he stared at Raymond, a faint sense of familiarity washing over him. “Do we have…” he thought for another second. “P.E. together?”
Raymond smiled brightly. “Hey, now, I’m surprised you remember! I’ll be honest, you didn’t seem to be very attentive in that class.”
Jax gave him a half-grimace. “Would have been more up-and-ready if Coach Brewer didn’t make us run laps at nine in the morning.”
Raymond grinned and was about to answer him, but their teacher finally offered some instruction. “Talk about your weekend with your partner in French. If you’re listening, correct them on any mistakes you hear.”
So Jax told Raymond about the tour of the school he had gone on, and then Raymond told him about how he had gone to a lake a few hours away that his grandparents lived near. After they were done, they sat in awkward silence for a few moments before Raymond spoke up.
“Don’t mind those girls. They’re always like that.”
Jax nodded, but it still didn’t sit right with him. Raymond offered a small smile. Another awkward moment of silence ensued. It was soon interrupted by their teacher, who had seen that everyone was done chatting and started to give them more instructions.
“Alright, so…”
The rest of French was uneventful. He and Raymond went in opposite directions after that. Jax had a little trouble remembering where his fourth-period class was, but he found it nevertheless. The teacher, Mr Reynolds, was an older man with grey hair and a bit of weight to him. He gave him a smile and a nod as he ushered Jax to his seat.
“You’ve come at a great time. We’re just about to start a group project.” Mr Reynolds paused for a moment before asking, “Do you know sign language?”
Jax thought it was a strange question, but brushed it off. “Only the basics. The alphabet and a few words,” he clarified.
“But you know some? Great, great. Logan— the student next to you-“ Jax glanced to his left, just now noticing the boy next to him. It was the same student that had been practically dragged out of Mr Kamatani’s classroom. He appeared to have just arrived at the classroom. Apparently, he had sat down with a shocking amount of silence. “-is mute.” Oh. It made sense why he had yet to speak.
“Logan,” Mr Reynolds turned to the boy next to Jax. “You can sign to him with the alphabet. Or write, whichever is easier.”
Logan nodded in response. Mr Reynolds smiled and left.
Jax turned to Logan. “Hi.” He felt stupid for saying something so simple. And then he felt stupid for thinking that.
Jax took a moment to really look at Logan. He had shoulder-length hair that he had bleached blonde. His eyes were a nice blue- maybe green? Either way, they were pretty.
Damn. Jax needed to stop letting his bisexuality speak for itself.
“So,” Mr Reynolds called, addressing the class.
Fuck, Jax hadn’t even realised the bell rang. Had Logan responded when he was spacing out? Double fuck.
“You’ll be working on a group project, as I explained last Friday. You and your partner are to pick an example of oppression in history and make a poster board about it. You will not be presenting these to the class, only turning them in to me. You are allowed to use your phones for research, but your sources must be credible and you must list them somewhere on your project. This is due—“
Jax had already turned to Logan. “Okay, so what do you want our topic to be?”
“Easy,” the boy signed back. “LGBTQ+ rights.”
Jax nodded in agreement. “That is a fairly compressed group, both before and now.” He then walked up to the teacher to tell him their idea. He was a little nervous, but luckily, Mr Reynolds appeared to be an ally. Or, at the very least, he was keeping his homophobia to himself.
Had they been required to present this to the class, Jax most certainly would have chosen a different topic. He didn’t really fancy outing himself again in any way, even if people might just think of him as an ally.
On his way back, he pulled one of the textbooks off its shelf. He doubted they would find anything on their topic, thanks to censorship and all that, but it wouldn’t hurt to check.
Okay, maybe it would cut a few hours off their time. But Jax could always work on it at home. It didn’t matter too much to him.
His project partner didn’t seem to share the same sentiments, based on the look he gave Jax as he approached.
“What?” Jax asked, grinning. “Some guy in my second period pissed me off.” He all but prayed Logan would understand his joke and laugh. Thankfully, he did, and although he didn’t laugh, the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
Jax set the book down on his desk. “I was thinking it would be worth a shot to look in here at the very least. Even if we don’t find much.”
Logan signed something a little too quickly for Jax to read it. “Sorry, can you repeat that, slowly?”
“Censorship,” Logan signed.
Jax nodded. “I figured as much.” His eyes lit up in realisation. “Wait— that’s something we could put on our project! I mean, we’re not even mentioned in history books!”
Logan offered a small smile as he wrote that down. Jax sat next to him and opened the textbook. As expected, there was nothing. Not even a mention of any form of the word ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ in the context he was looking for.
“Alright, then, onto online research,” Jax muttered, pulling out his phone. Quickly typing in the search bar, he frowned at the number of websites that popped up. Not because there were too few, but because they would take hours to comb through.
He sighed, running his fingers through his hair.
This was going to take a while.
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