Chapter Text
WARNINGS :
- Blood mentions
- Religious mentions
All Gregg wants is time. But he doesn’t get that, and he hears footsteps up the stairs before the inevitable yelling.
“Greggory!” his dad calls into his room when he comes in. Unannounced, slams the door open, all the normal ‘Dad things’. Gregg barely has a second to blink when the blanket over him is thrown to the edge of the bed, his window curtains drawn to let the sun in. Early sunrise, and Gregg has to squint getting off the floor. “School, Greggory. You’re going to be late.”
Gregg glances at his alarm clock. Scratch that, it’s just a clock sitting on his bedside table, because he never sets alarms. Never wakes up to them, so why bother? He looks at his dad. “Isn’t it 6 in the morning?”
His dad doesn’t give him a real answer, and instead shoves a heavy gray backpack into Gregg’s arms. Gregg manages to get one strap over his shoulder before hearing a scoff. Looks up to see his dad gone, so he leaves his room, meeting the old fox downstairs by the door.
Gregg can tell his dad wants him out as much as Gregg does. No words are shared between them when he walks outside and hears the door slam behind him. Better than staying inside, even if it means waking up at horrendous hours.
The bus rolls up to greet him, squeaky doors and all. Gregg tips his head to the penguin driving. Always had major respect for them, dealing with a bunch of teens yelling and beating each other up. Driver gives him the stink eye though, which is honestly better than Gregg thought. He hops aboard without a word.
He scans through each full seat hoping for a free window spot. Someone grabs his arm and pulls him down in a seat, and Gregg takes a moment to realize it’s none other than—
“Steve!” someone else calls from behind him. It’s a goat standing in the aisle, probably just got on. The crocodile by them takes their hoof, pulling them into a seat across from Gregg and Steve. But the goat’s still yelling, “For fuck’s sake, that’s supposed to be our seat!”
Gregg shoves his back against his seat. As if it will hide him from whatever mess Steve’s gotten into this time.
Doesn’t help much when Steve decides to lean over him, but at least he’s not getting dragged in. He yells at the goat, “When you drop out of wrestling, you get your seat back, ladies!”
Gregg catches the name ‘Jackie’ from the crocodile, but nothing else, so he turns his attention elsewhere. To his friend, who kinda seems busy on his phone, but there’s nothing else to do! Gregg leans against him, until their shoulders touch. “What’cha doin’?”
“Sub Surf,” Steve says, swiping his claw up, and his character leaps over an obstacle with their hoverboard. Man, Gregg wishes he had a hoverboard. It looks cool!
“Cool man,” is Gregg’s only reply, watching his friend keep playing. It stays like that for the rest of the ride to school.
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School looks as boring as it did last year. The hall’s crowded with students coming in, lost newbies trying to figure out where a class is, and it’s just a lot.
Gregg walks alongside Steve as they go in. Some of the walls have those shitty ‘hang in there’ posters, the ones with a baby possum dangling from a tree branch. Couple of them even have claw marks. Why the staff thought those are inspirational when it’s a baby possum about to fall to their death is beyond him.
But hey, he’s no poster-managing-expert-maker-guy. Maybe the whole point is to profit off useless, uninspirational images of the town’s mascot. Free money from weirdly working marketing!
Arm flailing comes natural to him. Both an impulse and an instinct. Just to do it, wiggle his noodle arms around, take up as much air as possible!
And he hits someone in the face by accident. Barely gets the chance to see who it was and apologize when he feels stinging on his cheek. Gregg holds a paw there, looking at the blood from it. His blood. His blood that, as he meets the stranger’s shaky expression, is on their claws.
What a way to start the day, huh?
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“Beatrice!” her mom yells for her downstairs. Bea’s already at the top of the stairs before she even yelled, both bag straps over her shoulders. Her mom doesn’t wait for her to reach the last step, going to the kitchen where her dad is. “Packed lunch for her, and there’s plenty of ingredients stocked when you and the guys are hungry,” she tells him.
Bea stands at the counter, waiting to be given her lunch bag. Feels smaller, like a kid again, when her mom’s attention is back on her. Like she’s somehow done something wrong when she hasn’t. She doesn’t think she has.
“You aren’t a kid anymore, Beatrice,” sounds like she’s being scolded. She is being scolded. She should be used to it already. “Use your claws like an adult. Danny will wait with you until the bus arrives.”
Bea blinks at her mom. She gets the Ol’ Pickaxe can be busy, but are her parents that busy they won’t take her to school anymore? Even just one of them? “But—”
“Argue with me, and you’re not going to school at all.”
That’s enough for Bea to shut her mouth, as she always does when it comes to her mom, and she goes outside with her lunch box shoved away in her bag. Like her mom said, Danny’s outside, sort of just... standing there. Her mom doesn’t let him have a phone, in case he ‘talks badly about the business’ to people online. Same reason Bea’s not allowed a phone either, even though most her age do.
“Hey, Dan,” she greets the cat. He’s watching a pigeon on a fence. It has one wing. She’s seen this pigeon every morning for years. No other one has a single wing like this does.
Danny sits down. Right on the sidewalk. Bea sits next to him. “Cross again?” he asks, pointing at her necklace.
Bea nods. She holds it in her claw, the cross necklace around her neck that her mom has her wear anywhere, anyday. “You know how Mom is.”
Danny hums what she thinks is in agreement. “Won’t the school take it again? Like last year?”
Bea thought about that. Last year when she was a junior, it’s always either kids her age making fun of it, of her beliefs, or staff telling her it’s not allowed. The ban isn’t even against religion of any kind, but the school in particular has banned any religious thing, be it cloth or not, that the staff find ‘disruptive’. Turns out, a necklace that happens to sway and swing is ‘disruptive’, especially if Bea’s caught touching it because she’s ‘playing and not paying attention’.
She told her mom the first time it happened, back in freshman year. Her mom said to ignore it. She says that about anything Bea tries to bring up to her about school, telling her to focus on making good grades so she can go to college like everyone else. It’s why Bea stopped telling her things, and instead sharing stuff like this with Danny.
“Is it against the rules if I wrestle them, so they don’t take it this time?” Bea asks, a little smile on her face. She’s mostly joking. Not because she doubts her own strength, God knows she has her mom’s muscle, but she doubts she’d hurt someone over it. God probably wouldn’t be cool with her punching her teachers anyway.
“Against the rules?” Danny tilts his head. Yeah, Bea’s not sure if there actually is a rule for that specific thing. If there is, then maybe the board should have decided against having a wrestling team. That’s on them. “Hmm... I don’t know, Bea. They have rules for everything.”
That’s something she’s sure of. Strict dress code, even with ‘disruptive’ religious wear, is her least favorite of rules. Limits on what you can wear, what you can talk about in-class, how much of yourself you’re allowed to be.
Her mom always says society won’t change until the people do, and that right now, there’s not enough people who care. Bea has overheard her parents talking about how far Possum Springs has fallen from grace. Her mom says stuff about God rolling his eyes at all the people who could change and don’t, while her dad brings up how much trouble the old miners back then had to deal with because of certain people in Possum Springs.
By the time she knocks her brain out of ‘daydream mode’, she hears that painful squeal of wheels as the bus intrudes her vision. She returns Danny’s silent fistbump with her own, and gets on the bus. No more needs to be said.
Jackie’s yelling at Steve for taking their spot, and she pulls Bea into the seat with her, right across from him and some fox.
Bea tries to calm her friend, rubbing her shoulder to try and help. “Jackie, it’s gonna be fine. He’s just trying to work you up ‘cause he’s insecure.”
Jackie scoffs, and Bea doesn’t blame her. Steve’s been a real pain in the everywhere since their first run-in with him. She doubts he’s one of the people who can change the way her mom says they should.
One of the nice benefits of being the last ones on meant a shorter bus ride, since the school was right around the corner. Less literally, and more in the sense of ‘just drive straight for a good five or six minutes and it’s there’.
“Hey Jackie—”
Jackie turns to her, like Bea’s about to ask her to take someone down or something. She’s like that sometimes. “What’s up?”
Bea holds her necklace. When she was little, she used to hold her mom’s claw every time she felt afraid or nervous about something or someone. She’s not little anymore, so this is the next best thing. Her mom thinks it’s just her devotion to God though, and Bea’s not confident enough to tell her otherwise.
“Am I gonna get expelled?” Bea finally asks. She doesn’t meet her friend’s eyes, looking out the window. Like if she stalls, maybe she can keep Jackie from giving her an honest answer. Jackie’s always honest with her. “Teachers keep complaining when I wear this, and... and what if they call Mom? What if she pulls me out of school, and– and makes me go to church school?”
Jackie puts a hoof on her shoulder. “Come on, Bea. While your mom’s scary, like, amazingly scary actually, she’s also the one who keeps making you wear this, yeah?” Bea nods. “Think your mom’s too stubborn to take you out of here. Plus, the church is so weird about her being a socialist, y’know? Doubt she’d think that’s good for her own kid.”
She’s being told half of what she expected Jackie to tell her. The truth, and nothing but the truth. And it makes sense to hear it coming from her friend. If her mom makes her wear the cross regardless of what the school thinks, then she’d find a way to keep Bea in school if problems went wild, right? Her mom’s a badass like that!
Takes her a minute to realize people are getting off the bus, and that Jackie’s in the aisle waiting for her to wake back up out of dreamland. Bea tugs her backpack securely over her shoulder, does the same to her other strap, and she follows Jackie down the bus steps.
“If anybody gives you shit ‘bout your cross,” she leans in to whisper, “tell ‘em to go fuck ‘emselves.”
It startles a laugh out of Bea, and Jackie’s laughing too. She knows they are getting weird looks from it, two girls laughing like they’re high, and hell, they could be! High off life, as Jackie would put it.
“Can’t believe it’s our last year,” Bea gets more than a word in when she gets most of the giggles out, but she’s still smiling. Hard not to around someone like Jackie. “God, we’re gonna graduate and be real adults, Jackie!”
Jackie raises a hoof to bap the crocodile’s nose, snorting at the sudden confusion on Bea’s face before realization hits her. “I know right? Gonna stick it to The Man, and people will have to listen when we’re finally old ‘nough! We are old ‘nough!”
“So old,” Bea laughs, and it feels like she’s a kid for a while. Like she doesn’t have responsibilities or expectations other than to just do what she wants and live life. She wishes she could pause this moment and hold it in her claws forever.
But that doesn’t happen. They’re inside now, and Bea watches her friend yank down a hanging possum poster from one of the walls. Weird how the school has so many of them. Even weirder no one on the board got the memo that they aren’t actually inspirational. Guess it’s good they don’t have any possums in the building, or that’d probably be awkward.
If she were a possum, she’d find some way to get back at the school for their ridiculous rules. No idea how to do that, but possums found Possum Springs, right? So they must be smart enough to overthrow a school and its board.
She sees a flash of orange before she gets hit in the face. So, reasonably, Bea grits her teeth and fights back. Slams her claws against the attacker’s cheek.
She’s been in fights before, but they were either behind closed doors or miniscule. And yeah, she was on the wrestling team, but she’s never had to fight someone with her claws outside that. Not that wrestlers in-school are allowed to actually lay a claw or claw-equivalent on other wrestlers, but still.
It’s the blood that makes Bea realize. Blood, and tufts of orange fur. Claws are something every crocodile should be proud of, it’s the way she was raised. She has to clutch her cross with her clean claw, and she looks up at who she hit back. It’s the fox from earlier, on the bus with Steve.
She thinks she hears yelling. She sees everything move around her as Jackie hooks an arm around hers, taking her somewhere, away from what happened. What she made happen. What the fox made happen.
Bea feels something in her throat when she glances down at the fox fur in her claws. She gags, but doesn’t vomit.
She’s not too sure she’s proud of her claws.