"SOY, UN PERDEDOR, I'M A LOSER BABY, SO WHY DON'T YOU KILL ME?"

Lewis Nixon reached out an arm that felt like it was made of lead and swiped blindly around the surface of the bedside table, his hand indiscriminately knocking down anything in its path: a bottle of aspirin, a box of tissues, a pair of sunglasses, before finally grabbing his phone and pressing the button with a disproportionate amount of force. Anything to make that goddamn music stop.

Rolling over onto his back, he shut his eyes so tightly that it hurt, rubbing his temples with his fingertips. After more than five years of teaching, he was barely beginning to get used to the change of schedule that came with the new school year. 5:30 AM was not a time for any reasonably sane person to be waking up at, even if it was not completely of their own volition.

He licked his lips, dry tongue longing for something sweet and bitter that went down soft. He'd been forced to cut back on his drinking when he'd gotten the job at Toccoa High, but that hadn't meant cold turkey. The shadow of his addiction still clung to the stubble along his jaw, and darkened the spaces around his eyes. But even he had to admit that having a hangover would have made this morning immeasurably worse; waking up before the sun was bad enough without feeling like your tongue was super-glued to the roof of your mouth. He drummed his fingers on his stomach, heather-grey t-shirt that over the night had twisted around his middle. The red lines on the digital clock now spelled out 5:37. Upsy-daisy.

Breakfast was a piece of leftover pizza and a cup of black coffee, and Nix found himself counting the minutes until the caffeine started to work its magic. It didn't exactly turn him into the Energizer Bunny, but rather raised him to the level of sufficiently-functioning human. He'd hit his stride around eleven, maybe ten if he was optimistic.

Everyone who knew Lewis Nixon knew he probably could have conquered the world if he'd ever wanted to; he talked a good game but was whip-smart to back it up. But he didn't want to, and that was good enough for him. Conquering the world probably involved getting up early.

After his meal, with the sweet buzz of caffeine starting to course through his veins, he dressed quickly and assembled his papers from his desk. To anyone else his office looked as though a tornado had recently come through it, but to Lew it was a carefully balanced ecosystem. He grabbed the pile of lesson plans and syllabi, his many folders, his laptop, and the rest of things, tucking them all into a leather messenger bag that he slung over his shoulder as he walked out to his car a few moments later. The first day was all about introductions, which he could handle quite well off the cuff. All he had to do this morning was distribute the syllabus and try to keep a group of juniors off the ledge about their summer work. The seniors were only slightly better, but he wasn't worried. Once you collected their projects and let them know the deal for the year, about how they were all this together and they just needed to breathe deeply and get their shit in on time, then he would see them all visibly relax. Which was good, considering the two outlines, three readings, and in-class group project they'd have by the end of the week. Ahh. The sweet smell of a new school year.

He got into his clunking hunk of a car- a 1978 Ford Country Squire he'd picked up for a few thousand back when he lived in Chicago- and pulled out of the driveway, the dulcet tones of AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" emanating from the radio. The commute to Toccoa was probably about half an hour without serious traffic, which Lew appreciated, and the music made it easier. He took his aviators out of the front pocket of his pale blue button-down to shield against morning sun, mouthing along half-heartedly to a few of the songs on the radio.

After pulling into the parking lot and his spot around the back of the building, he checked the clock: 6:45. Half an hour until the first bell and forty minutes until his first class. Perfect.

The first thing he did after setting his things at his desk and looking over his classroom was walk down to the office of the school's guidance counselor, knocking on the half-open door with a knuckle and opening it as he did so.

"Hey, just checkin' in to see how-"

The room was empty. Neat as a pin, smelling of freshly-brewed Earl Grey, and empty.

Nixon turned around to walk back to his room and bumped straight into Richard Winters, just the man he'd been looking for.

"Hey Lew, it's good to see you!" Nixon briefly surveyed the man across from him. "Best friend" had always seemed like a restrictive, clichéd term to him, but it was completely true. They'd been the best of friends ever since they'd met freshman year of college, and throughout the four years of stress, parties (on Nixon's end anyway), and general college craziness they'd been there for each other.

Winters looked, well, the same: tall, hair like pale fire, and a look of eternal patience behind his calm blue eyes. Cool, composed, collected, perhaps even unruffled; whatever word you had for that all-knowing look of utter placidity, Winters was it. He and Nix could not have been more different, least of all on a day like this.

Nix let out a small chuckle. "You sound surprised."

"You sound tired."

"Well, I am." They both laughed then, and Winters' lips curled up into a small smile, an occurrence about as rare as a unicorn sighting. Any layer of subtle tension that had previously been in the air (though perhaps it was only Nix's imagination) instantly evaporated.

"How's your state of mind?"

"Do you really want an answer to that question?"

Winters smiled again and shook his head the smallest amount, looking down at the floor. He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.

"You missed Sink's briefing this morning" he said by way of a transition. "Though of course it wasn't much different than last year's."

Robert Sink was the school's principal, Vietnam vet and all-around hardass, but also a genuinely decent and caring man. He demanded the best not only of his students but also his faculty. Less charming though was his right-hand man, vice-principal and boys' track coach Herbert Sobel, who had been given the unfortunate nickname "Black Swan" after his rather unique running style. He was obsessed with giving detentions for the smallest things, and worked his athletes to the bone, but his record of success spoke for itself. Even if he was kind of an asshole.

Nixon felt a little guilty, if only because he didn't like to disappoint Sink, so he'd be sure to stop by and apologize later. But he definitely didn't feel guilty about missing another opportunity to have Sobel breathing down his neck about the test scores of last year's students. Frankly he didn't understand the fuss- he'd rather give them a difficult test and go over the answers with them and explain than give something easy to lull them into a false sense of security about their abilities. Besides, his students had always scored 4s and 5s on the AP World and AP Euro exams in May, both notoriously difficult even for APs, and that was what Nixon always tried to point out to Sobel (even though he personally thought that enthusiasm about the subject was what really mattered).

He looked at Winters with what he hoped was a face of genuine repentance. "Oh well."

"Sink told us they're adding a few new staff members this year-."

"Mmhm?" Nixon vaguely remembered an email regarding this development.

"An English teacher, a school nurse to replace the one who retired, and a new French teacher, I think."

"Names?"

"Uh, Edward Heffron, Renée LeMaire, and Augusta Chiwy, I believe."

"Good, good."

Winters checked his watch, which caused Nixon to glance at his. 7:13. "Well I think it's time to get this show on the road."

Nixon made it back just as the first bell rang for homeroom.

Archive of Our Own: /works/1007058