After All, I'm Your Secret Admirer~!!

Ch38 - Status Quo

Hatecrimed...?

What in the world—

"Mom, what in the world are you talking about?"

"Paige, do you not remember seeing your locker covered in those horrible notes a couple of days ago?"

"N—oh!" Paige jolts. "The notes on my locker! I... I never got to read them. Everyone told me to stay away from them. By the time I was able to see them, they were gone."

Quinn sighs in relief. "You never even saw them?" Paige shakes his head and Quinn lets out a laugh. "Oh my god, you never even saw them!"

"Mom?"

Quinn moves over and hugs her son, only to noogie him gently. "You're something else, Paige. Even when bad things happen to you, good people are always around to help you, aren't they?" She looks at Paige with love. "My lucky book of Paiges."

Paige thinks of all the many, many things that were going on in his life right now, and chuckles awkwardly. He wouldn't exactly call himself lucky but... No need to upset his mom with that right now.

"I love you too, Mom," he says with a small smile. "But... if I never saw them, was it really a hatecrime?"

Quinn frowns. "Of course it is!" she says loudly. "Paige, it was a targeted attack against you!"

"Yeah, but..."

"No but's!" Quinn says, shaking her head. "You know what, we should sue. Teach the little so-and-so who did this to you to take responsibility for his actions."

"Sue?" Paige repeats, confused. "Mom, we don't have to sue anybody over this, really."

"But we should! It's despicable what they did to you. Even if you didn't see the notes, they still affected you, didn't they?"

Paige opens his mouth but then pauses, thinking. There was the fact he was anxiety ridden the whole rest of that day. And how awful it felt to have people laughing at him. And how alienated he'd felt after the fact.

"...Yeah," he finally says. "It did."

"Then they shouldn't get away with hurting you like that," Quinn frowns.

"But, Mom, think about it. The amount of money, the amount of time, the amount of police and reporters and everything..." Paige shivers. "I don't wanna go through that anymore than you would."

Quinn tries and fails to come up with some sort of rebuttal, but ultimately gives up. "You're right," she sighs. "And I don't wanna do anything that would upset you." She pats his head. "I'm sorry, buddy."

"It's okay, Mom," Paige reassures, leaning into the touch. "I'll be okay."

"I know you'll be," Quinn smiles. "I know you'll be."

+++

After that, Paige goes to school on Monday feeling... not happy, per say, but not freaking out either. He's able to pay attention to his classes a bit and actually answers some questions correctly. And best of all, lunch would be returning to normal.

Why? Well, because Paige had written a note to be ferried off to OJ last night. He'd given it to Brandon this morning before they split up and now he was almost guaranteed to be getting one back.

So, when he sits down at the Bro Crew's usual table, he's pretty excited. "Hey guys!" he greets.

"You got well soon," Sue smiles.

Paige laughs. "Something like that," he says. "Oh, but!" He turns to his brother. "Brandon! Did I get a note? Did I get a note?"

Brandon laughs. "You did, king! Calm down!" He digs through his bag before pulling out the note, handing it over to Paige, who reads it with a dumb look on his face.

Things continue on for about two weeks like this. Knowing notes fly back and forth as Paige and OJ play a silly game neither of them really needed to. Because of this, there's a calm throughout the entire Bro Crew, Paige included. Things were finally starting to go well for him again.

It's not until Paige's mind wanders to Leaf one night does he realize—

He had never let Leaf out!

"Oh, shoot!" he swears, closing his eyes and looking inside himself. What he sees makes him gasp hard and start shivering.

Leaf is curled up and trembling in the cage, but it's not how Paige left it. Instead, it's shrunk down on them, leaving barely enough space to get up. Inside of it is a cold snowstorm, heavy snow covering the ground and Leaf's tattered clothing.

Paige doesn't know how or why that happened to it, but he shakes his head. Now wasn't the time to dwell on it, now was the time for action.

Again, Paige clasps his hands together and thinks and wills really hard for something to happen. It takes a moment of straining, but the sound of the storm soon clears up. When Paige looks again, Leaf is still on the ground and covered in snow, but the cage and clouds are all gone.

"Leaf!" Paige cries, running over to him. He pushes away the snow on top of him. "Leaf, wake up!"

Leaf's eyes are shut tight as they shiver and shake. "C-c-c-old..." they chitter.

"Um! Um!" Paige thinks hard about a green blanket covering Leaf, and when the other moves under him, he looks to find they're now starting to clutch at that exact blanket.

"H-h-hel-p..." Leaf all but begs. Paige nods and takes the blanket, wrapping it around the other. "Th-anks..." they cough once the deed is done.

"Leaf, what happened here while I was gone?"

Leaf chuckles a bit, but it devolves into a cough. "I started—I started th-inking. A-about everything I'd done." They cuddle up closer to their blanket. "A-and I thought, 'wow, I-I d-eserve to go to h-ell, h-huh?'"

"But? Th-the snowstorm...?"

"Your hell m-might be hot, b-but not mine," Leaf laughs a bit painfully, looking away. "It's s-so cold..."

"Leaf..." Paige is so distraught. He didn't know ignoring Leaf like this, by accident or not, would make something like this happen.

"Can you—c-can you do that m-magic shit w-with like, a-a space heater or s-something?"

"Oh!" Paige gasps. "Y-yeah!"

Paige does his magic thing as requested, popping a fireplace into the dark room. It lights it up a bit, but not enough to see any sort of walls yet.

"Yess..." Leaf hisses, pushing out his hands. "F-fuck yes."

Paige sits there quietly as Leaf warms up steadily, thinking hard. This was all his fault. He was supposed to have let Leaf out weeks ago. He can't believe he forgot!

"H-hey," Leaf grins. "Shut th-e fuck up w-ith that."

"What?" Paige blinks.

"Y-you forgot," he sighs, "So what? I—I deserved th-at, I think." Paige opens his mouth, but Leaf shushes him. "I-I did!" he asserts. "I did—I did you s-so bad."

Paige is quiet. They're right, they were pretty awful to Paige for a while there. But stil...

"Maybe you deserved something, but not this."

"S-sure, man," Leaf says, tossing an arm up. "Wh-whatever you say. C-an you get in bed and get under the covers n-now?"

"Oh!" Paige jolts up in reality, shivering. Oh, he didn't like that he was a bit cold.

He slips under his bedsheets and holds on to Teds, warming up immediately. "Is this better?" he asks.

"Y-yeah," Leaf nods.

Paige sighs. "We're gonna have to talk about this."

"...Yeah," Leaf says again. "Just... g-give me a bit."

Paige nods back, and does just that.