“Hey.” When Leo said this, 13-year-old Ivan shut his locker and turned to him with a slightly concerned frown.

  “Hey. Don't you have class now?

  “Yeah I know. Just came to say hi.”

  “Did you hear that there's a fair coming to the human town?”

  “Yep. I heard that it was going to be fun. Is that tomorrow?” He questioned enthusiastically. “You wanna go?”

  “Sure. They're here ‘til Friday.”

  “That would be cool…” Leo drifted off when he glanced over Ivan's shoulder and saw Parker approaching them. When he got to them, he and Leo did a quick handshake before

  “Hey, we're going to the mall tomorrow. Came to ask if you were coming or not.” Parker turned to Ivan and studied him before turning back to Leo with a wary look. “Unless you're busy…”

  Leo shook his head. “Nah, I'm not busy. I'll be there in a sec.”

  When Parker finally left, Leo turned back to Ivan. “What were you saying again?”

  “The fair?”

  Leo smacked his lips, then glanced back to where Parker was standing with the rest of his friends. He turned to Ivan with a shrug. “Sorry. I'm sure it was probably going to be lame anyway.”

  Ivan raised an incredulous eyebrow at him. “Okay…”

  “Hey, you coming!?” Leo heard Parker shout impatiently. Leo glanced at Parker, then turned back to Ivan with a strained expression.

  “Uh yeah— yeah,” Leo said and began to walk towards Parker, not meeting Ivan's questioning eyes.

  That was the last time they spoke for the next three weeks.

  The next time they interacted, Ivan was standing by his locker, which he and Theo had filled with photoshopped posters of Ivan's sister's face on the body of an underwear model. He was standing with Theo, smiling proudly to themselves and watching as Ivan shut his locker slowly and walked up to them.

  He had thought it was too cruel, all things considered, but 13-year-old Theo had managed to convince him that the funniness would transcend any level of morality.

  “Funny,” Ivan remarked coolly and roughly shoved the paper into his chest. As he walked past them, Leo felt a pain shoot up his shoulder as Ivan knocked into it before leaving.

  From beside him, Leo could hear Theo snickering quietly, and he joined in with a smile, but deep down, he could feel a strange twist in his stomach as he watched Ivan calmly walk away.

  ***

  “Oh.” It felt like the only thing Leo could say. He didn't even know if he knew how to say sorry to Ivan. Where would he begin?

  He remembered that after that day, Ivan had started to ignore him. For some reason he hadn't remembered what he had done and thought that Ivan's anger was unwarranted, so he had retaliated, feeling like everything Ivan did was an attempt to get on his nerves. Ivan fought back, and before they knew it, they hated each other for reasons they didn't care enough about to figure out.

  They were both quiet for a moment before Leo finally brought up the thing that had been plaguing his mind since he had seen Ivan walk out of school earlier.

  “Why’d you skip school?”

  “Seriously?”

  Leo nodded, urging him to continue.

  “It was a free period.”

  “Do you normally leave school during free periods?”

  Ivan ran his tongue across his teeth, then turned back around. “I have somewhere to be.”

  He took the same route he had taken and walked back in the direction of the school. Leo watched him leave, resting the voice that was telling him to follow the other boy and find out where he was going, but there was no point, especially if Ivan was going to his pack.

  Later, Leo was lying in bed, glancing up at his ceiling as he twisted in his bed, alternating between pulling his sheets up to his chin and kicking them completely off the bed.

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  It was currently midnight, and he usually would have been asleep, but he couldn't stop thinking about what Ivan had said. In hindsight, what he and Theo had done was terrible, but Ivan hadn't exactly helped absolve their hatred for each other any better.

  He may be the most aggravating person in the world, but they couldn't stay like this — ignoring each other, hating each other for the big things that had happened years ago and the petty things that occurred as a result.

  And Ivan knew it too. Maybe that was why he decided to tell Leo any of that, so they could finally get past it.

  Maybe he did it because he had bottled it up for so long that he couldn't hold it in anymore. Whatever his reason was, now that he knew, he needed to apologise.

  — — —

  The message came at exactly three am the following day. Ivan was in the living room watching a movie because being awake at three was starting to become a regular occurrence, and he had given up on the very idea of trying to go back to sleep altogether. He put down the chocolate bar he had been eating and grabbed his phone.

  Ignore: We're mates. I know it doesn't seem like it to you, but that matters to me. I hate it too, but I want you to know that I don't really mean it when I say I want to kill yiu (mostly). Friends?

  3:00

  Me: Being mates is not going to just make years of hatred disappear

  3:06

  Ignore: Don't tell me you're so ready to give up

  3:06

  Me: I'm not giving up, I'm being realistic

  3:07

  Ignore: So being friends would be what? Unrealistic

  3:07

  Ivan put the phone down and rubbed his hands over his face, groaning into the silence. He didn't want to be friends with Leo. He didn't want them to be anything to each other. He still hated him. But they were also mates, and as much as they couldn't stand each other, there was literally no way to avoid each other. Not with this bond illness looming over them.

  And sure, maybe they didn't need to spend all their time together, fighting. They just needed to tolerate each other for now, then they'd decide what to do later. But there were so many reasons this was a bad idea. What would they explain to their friends? What would they do if a war really did break out? Did they even suit each other's personalities?

  Then there was the biggest issue. The issue that made this impossible. Leo didn't like wizards, and he had made it blatantly clear before. How would that even work? What would he do if he found out?

  Me: For us it would be.

  3:20

  Three dots appeared at the bottom of the screen to indicate that Leo was typing before swiftly disappearing for a few minutes. Ivan was considering giving up and just turning his phone off again when Leo finally responded.

  Ignore: For you.

  3:23

  Ivan didn’t reply, figuring that was the end of the conversation, until Vivaldi’s Four Seasons blasted loudly from his phone speakers, causing his heart to race against his ribcage. He quickly answered the call to stop his ringtone from waking his parents up and held the phone to his ears. There was silence on the phone for a few seconds until Leo said something he never thought he would ever hear from the other boy.

  “I'm sorry.”

  Leo said the words so softly that Ivan questioned whether he was hearing things or not. But before he could ask, Leo continued.

  “For what happened in middle school. We shouldn't have done that. It was really stupid, immature and disrespectful.” Leo’s voice was raspy, his speech slow and dripping in evident sleepiness, but the conviction in his words told Ivan of his sincerity.

  In truth, he had already gotten over his resentment from the incident years ago, his new hatred fuelled by their bickering, Leo's popularity and all the things that arose from it. But finally getting an apology after all those years was nice. And he knew that he was partly to blame for feeding into the aimless bickering and senseless pranks. Letting their infectious hatred for each other proliferate until their whole relationship was terminally ill.

  “Thanks.”

  The fact that this was the first time they had ever texted about anything other than being mates while simultaneously also being the first time they had ever talked on the phone before began to dawn on Ivan.

  “I guess I’m sorry too. For everything after that.”

  Leo snorted. “I didn't think you knew how to apologise.”

  Ivan gave a reluctant nod of agreement, knowing that Leo couldn't see him.

  “And about the other night, mates are…” He sighed into the microphone. “I don't know. I guess I didn't like the idea of my mate not trusting me.”

  Ivan blew out a breath. “I get it.”

  “You do?”

  Ivan was quiet for a beat. "...How about we start over?”

  “Like what? A truce?”

  “Sure. No fighting, no insults. We’ll let go of everything that happened in the past and be civil with each other. For now at least, just until we deal with this mate stuff.”

  Leo remained silent for a few seconds, then hummed in thought. “Mhm… Well, not everything. Remember when you put dead frogs in my locker back in middle school? I don’t think I can ever forget those shiny devil eyes if I tried.”

  Ivan heard a ruffle on Leo's end and imagined that the other boy had probably shifted on… his bed? The couch? Then Leo said through a yawn, “I still have nightmares about them.”

  Ivan pursed his lips, ignoring the fact that Leo had just revealed he may have a fear of frogs. “Because you put roaches in my lunch. Thanks by the way.”

  “Happy to serve.” Ivan couldn't see his face, but he knew that Leo was smirking at him, like he had so many times in the past. This might have been the first time that he didn't hate it as much.

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “Not if I hang up first,” Leo replied, and he quickly ended the call before Ivan could say anything else.

  “Such an idiot.”