Chapter Text
It was difficult to identify where the soft pitter-patter was coming from: the light sprinkling of rain beating against the building's window panes or the little wererats skittering past. Judging by the matching bobs of blonde hair bouncing on their tiny heads and the similar way they carried themselves across the floor, even a blind ghoul could tell that they were related. Maybe even twins.
Everything that Jackson knew about small furballs of rodents told him that they were skittish, easily frightened things. But he found that he was the one startled, jumping back so that the back of his head smacked against the cool bricks behind him with a loud thud that rang through his ears like a bell. His flat, dull canines pressed tightly together in a grimace, his free hand that wasn’t stacked full with books coming up against the side of his head. The digits of his fingers rubbed over the sore in small, continuous circles that did nothing to ease the shock of pain.
Through the blur of his blurred and glossy eyes, he could see four big, bright, shining eyes staring up at him like those of children watching their mother scold them. The pairs of heavy, full lashes that loomed over their pupils batted together, eyelashes weaving tightly like a basket as the two stared at him.
They were definitely saying something, he knew it. Their tiny mouths were flapping as they squealed out something too distant and faint to make out. However, once one of them tilted her head to the side and went silent, he assumed they must have been asking if he was alright. Frankly, it didn’t feel exactly right for them to be the ones apologizing. Or at least, that’s what it looked like they were doing.
After all, he was the one who nearly screamed like a young ghoul at the mere sight of them, who were just probably trying to reach the creepateria for their free period. Jackson, despite his jumbled and confused state, knew one thing for sure: he was just incredibly rude for no reason.
“I…uh…yeah, I’m okay,” he lied. Truth be told, his head felt like something was trying to claw its way through the back of his skull. “...sorry…” he murmured under his breath, too quiet for them to hear. Well, maybe. It’s hard to tell what those big, round ears of theirs could and couldn’t pick up. Nonetheless, he decided not to draw out this humiliation ritual to find out. So, he turned on the balls of his feet and hurriedly rushed the opposite way.
He slithered and weaved between mansters and ghouls alike, letting himself become engulfed in the crowd nearby. The tips of his fingers brushed against the shoulders of goblins, and his head against the shoulders of werewolves and manticores. Taking a deep, shuddering breath that failed to fill his lungs, he gripped the strap of his backpack and kept his pace until he found himself stopped behind someone, staring at the red of the back of their shirt. Taking this chance to calm his nerves, the nail of his thumb picked and dug at that of his upper palm.
Around him, he could hear bits and pieces of conversations like he was going through a tunnel and losing signal. Some about lurch, casketball, after-school plans, parties, and everything in between. He didn’t bother to pay any of it much mind until picking up on a strangely familiar-sounding word. But it couldn’t be. He hadn’t even been out in so long; why would anyone be talking about him now?
Despite this, it was indisputable. There was no doubt in his mind that he had heard it right;
Holt. Holt? Holt!
He nearly choked on his own spit, a flood of saliva draining down his throat as he swallowed a waterfall. His knees just narrowly avoided giving out from beneath him, his feet tripping over themselves as he stumbled forward and knocked head-first into a brick pillar. His hand shot up to his forehead, his thumb rubbing over a sore swell forming at the front. His cool-to-the-touch, silver rings chilled his skin, and his studded bracelets clinked and jingled with the kandi ones laced between them. His thick-rimmed rectangular glasses slid down his nose, catching on a bump at the bottom and hanging off his ears. Again? He was definitely going to get a concussion at this point.
Pressing his pointer finger to the center of the frames, he pushed them back up to his eyes and ran his fingers through his short, messy hair and ruffled it further. His heart pounded in his ears, blood rushing to his head and making it feel light. Jackson stepped off to the side, putting his shoulder against a locker and removing himself from the bustling crowd. Diamond-blue eyes drifted from monster to monster, searching for where the voice had initially come from.
“He still hasn’t responded to my DMs,” the same nasally voice cut through the surrounding chitter-chatter that was one octave away from drowning them out completely. Jackson’s senses went numb and cold, his jaw tight as he stared aimlessly in the direction that the words rang out from.
“He didn’t hold a single party last moan-th! It was as boo-ring as a graveyard at daytime!” another ghoul chimed in, and Jackson finally managed to hone in on the conversation. A towering orc ghoul was digging through her locker, a stubby little vampire next to her. Jackson could barely make out the vampire, only managing to spot the top of her dyed hair. The blonde streaks of his bangs hung over his eyes, obscuring his vision even further as he squinted to try to sharpen the image.
His plush lower lip trembled, small creases forming in his chin just underneath the fat. His fingers twitched like a spider was crawling on them, and he was trying to get it off without scaring it and causing it to bite. A lump the size of a tennis ball caught in his throat, and the world around him seemed to slow to a stop until it was just him and those two ghouls.
A shrill screech echoed through the halls, bouncing off the walls and back at Jackson. He was running late. He never ran late. His heel dug into the top of his other shoe as he hurriedly scrambled through the remaining monsters mingling together in the hall, nearly tripping and crashing into a zombie, who may as well not have even heard the bell, in the process.
Along the way, the numbered doors all seemed to blend together. Clawculus: Room D 106, Scareology: Room D 108, Biteology: Room D 110, Home Ick: Room D 112, and finally, Jackson’s score, Mad Science: Room D 113. It was all the way at the very end of the D wing, and his calves burned by the time he finally reached the entrance. A sticker was plastered on the front door that read “Screechers Against Bullying” in bold red letters with a silhouette of glasses just underneath. Sometimes Jackson wondered if the word ‘bullying’ was made just for Manny. He was the personification of the word atrocious, after all.
With his checkered backpack hanging low on his shoulders, Jackson lifted his hand and thwapped his knuckles against the door, making a hollow echoing sound that he wasn’t sure the screecher could hear. A lecture was going on inside, and he could pick up every other word and make them out if he tried hard enough. Since the screecher never paused and the door wasn’t magically opening, Jacksonś chest tightened, and he lifted his fist to hit it again. As the blunt of his fingers came down, they passed right through the air as the door swung wide open.
To his horror, his fist came straight down and hit the blade of a broad shoulder. Hand instantly bouncing back towards him, his fingers unraveling as he moved his arm quickly to his side. Bowing his head down, his mouth started to move on its own, babbling on with apologies as his glasses fell down his nose yet again. Pushing it up with his thumb, he straightened his back to the best of his ability and tucked his books back underneath his arm.
However, in place of the voice he expected, a hissing sound flooded his senses.
“Hey, watch it,” a faint, gravely voice breathed out. Each syllable and every other letter was dragged on to an almost agitating point, and Jackson’s eyes darted up but met only with his own in the reflection of thick sunglasses that covered ⅓ of the manster’s face in front of him.
Deuce hushed one of the snakes writhing on his head, wrapping his fingers around its “neck” and pressing down. Not hard enough to choke the poor thing, but just enough to startle it into silence. Its sunshine-yellow eyes narrowed into a glare, still staring intently at Jackson like it was going to lurch at him at any given moment.
“Hey, no worries. No harm done.” Deuce said with a brief laugh, bearing his upper fangs as he brushed off his shoulder with the back of his hand. Jackson caught a glimpse of razor-sharp neon green claws that breezed by. It still surprises Jackson to this day that Deuce was the kind of guy to paint his nails. At the same time, though, he knew Deuce to be a bold manster, so maybe it wasn’t as out there as he should’ve thought.
Jackson meant to say thank you; he really did. But he didn’t. Making a weak groan that sounded more like a croak in a meager attempt at a response, he slipped past Deuce and into the classroom.
“We just ended the circle. You won’t be able to make those points up, but you haven’t really missed anything,” said the screecher, moving behind her desk and sitting at the spinning stool on wheels. She tapped continuously at the computer, the keys clacking loudly. She barely even spared Jackson a glance, and he wondered if she even knew which student he was. “And no ICoffins today - administration says I need to start enforcing the no phone rule, so I’m just sending them down to security if I see them now,” she continued, waving him off. She probably had recited this little spiel repeatedly to every late student who came through the door.
He nodded, glancing back to the gorgan who was making his way to wherever he had chosen to claim his spot for the day. Cleo was lounging around like a rich ghoul’s pampered cat as usual, filing her nails with a teal nail file that contrasted with gold detailing. Of course, she was there. She was always around Deuce unless fighting with him over something small, like forgetting exactly how long she liked to keep her lashes. Which could take weeks to sort out, because there was nothing she hated more than communicating or being the first to apologize.
Cleo De Nile was one of those ghouls where, even if you were her beastie, you could call her a bitch and no one would argue because it was an objective fact. She wasn’t mean, she was cruel. Cleo was like the poorly written antagonist in a coming-of-age ghoul movie. Relentless attacks that seemed to derive from nothing. Popular ghoul who had nothing better to do than harass anyone who walked a little funny or picked at their lips.
Behind her, tapping her shoulder while talking away, was Frankie. Frankie was a ghoul that couldn’t be more different than Cleo. She was kind and generous. Instead of fearing it, she strived for communication. If someone didn’t like her, she wouldn’t rest until she found out why. She was an angel by the Devil’s side, and Jackson couldn’t figure out why she chose to stay there.
In her typical Frankie fashion, she waved excitedly at Jackson with a grin that split the lower half of her face. The corners of her lips dug into her skin in a way that formed dimples against the stitching of her flesh. Her teeth were framed with a bright, vibrant cherry-red. Wrinkles formed on her forehead as her eyebrows raised, her eyes crinkling with the sheer volume of her smile. And yet, she was still so beautiful.
Jackson anxiously waved back, but in a way that made it embarrassingly obvious that he had a lack of practice. His fingers curved like it was his first experience with having humanoid hands.
“Miss Stripes, we have a very busy day ahead, and I don’t have time for this. Go take that to the security hub,” the screecher, Mrs. Maultinez said just above her usual soft, monotone voice. Which was quickly followed by a sharp hiss from a tabby werecat ghoul perched on a desk like a gargoyle.
With the way students behaved at the beginning of every class, you wouldn't believe that they had it in them to collect themselves. Somehow, though, they managed to keep their traps shut just long enough during lectures for the screecher not to write them off to dead-tention in the blink of an eye.
Jackson sat down in his seat. Unlike nearly everyone else who sat wherever they pleased, whether or not the screecher particularly appreciated it, Jackson sat in the exact same spot for the entire scaremester. At a desk that was two desks away from the counter, almost in the center. One of the legs of the chair was uneven, making it bounce if he moved even a little bit too much. A wad of gum was stuck on the bottom of the desk, and another on the chair, which was Holt’s doing. Jackson once had to spend an entire period scraping gum off his seating arrangement, and yet, they still kept appearing.
Nevertheless, he didn't have time to slave away at cleaning. Today was the day that Mrs. Moantinez was going to go over how deformities happened with hybrid toads. Mad Science was one of Jackson's arguably more interesting classes, being one of the few he actually enjoyed despite the restlessness of his classmates.
In spite of that, he couldn't find it in himself to focus. He looked at the warm-up on the whiteboard and back down to his paper as Mrs. Moantinez counted off their heads while taking attendance. Then, he just zoned out. His eyes unfocused as he stared blankly at the whiteboard, like he’d never seen anything like it before.
Breathing sharply through his nose, he unzipped his bag and slid out his chrome-boo-k. As he propped it open, he immediately went to The Ghostly Gossip, which was still a mystery of how it wasn’t blocked by the school. Either way, he didn’t have the time to dig into that kind of mystery. So he instead dragged the cursor to the little magnifying glass in the corner and typed in the search bar.
Holt
No punctuation, not even a last name. It wasn’t needed. Because with just that alone, threads upon threads tumbled open underneath the bar. Of course they did. Because, unlike with Jackson, everyone cared about Holt. He didn’t even look through the posts, since he must´ve seen every one at least a dozen times. Questions about parties, music recs, invitations to outings, the whole nine yards.
Going back up to the search bar, he held down on the backspace until it was cleared.
Jackson Jekyll
Full name. No misspellings, which he could risk when searching Holt’s name, since he was popular enough that there were posts regarding him under every possible variation of his name.
Expectantly, there was only one singular thread regarding back when he and Frankie had gotten together. The second part of the thread was only made back when they separated. Because, naturally, the only possible way anyone would even look at him was when it was in regard to an actually lovable and popular ghoul.
He had gotten beaten up by a manster who was crushing on Frankie for “breaking her heart.” Which, in his opinion, was ironic because if anything, it was the other way around. Maybe they would’ve actually listened to his protests if he were Holt.
Jackson knew he was wrong for hating Holt as much as he did. After all, he had done nothing wrong. Like him, he was just trying to live in a crowded body and make his way through life. It wasn’t his fault that his existence was taking away from Jackson’s.
But oh boy, did he hate him. He absolutely despised that manster with every fiber in his lanky body. He hated his shit-eating grin in his selfies. He hated his try-hard style. He hated how he enjoyed everything Jackson couldn’t. He got to live his life to the beat of music, while Jackson had never even found out what music sounds like.
He got to enjoy Frankie’s affection, which she only forced around Jackson, probably to get to Holt. He got to enjoy huge, extravagant gatherings. He got to enjoy what it’s like to be free and wild. He got to enjoy what it’s like to not be held down by social anxiety. But most importantly, he got to enjoy what it was like to be loved.
The air around him felt like it was starting to cool. Like the walls were closing in around him until his vision was tunneling.
Until something chimed in the air, a sing-song voice just barely managed to silence his own.
“Jackson! Hey, Jackson!” Frankie called out, cupping the side of her mouth with the curve of her hand as she waved the other around. “We’re going to the maul later, wanna come?” she said, and part of Jackson imagined everyone around her snickering at the idea of him, of all mansters, coming out of his shell. Another part of him couldn’t help but feel that maybe Frankie was just inviting him in the hopes of seeing Holt. That was always the reason someone asked him to join them.
With refusal dwelling at the base of his throat and his lips parting around words that hadn´t yet come, his eyes drifted to that same reflection in Deuce´s sunglasses as before. He was smiling at him. A genuine, excited one that Jackson recognized as being meant for him. Not for Holt. He wasn´t even sure if Deuce really knew about his ability to become Holt. Maybe, just maybe, he was actually, unironically, looking forward to being with him.
“I… okay…”