Okay, so, Author's Note Party Time: This is my first story in a while. Any and all reviews welcome, but I do respond to flames. Viciously. ;) Please let me know what you think!
Blaine is exhausted. He leans forward in his cheap T.A. desk. At 7 a.m. on a Monday morning, he is wondering what possessed him to want to become a teacher in the first place. He waits in the small classroom for Madame Cartier to enter the room with his assignments as T.A. of McKinley High's French department. He realizes he is lucky, though, to have gotten such as young teacher to work with. Veronica Cartier is the lovely 26 year old French teacher at McKinley, teaching French I – V. He looks up as he hears the door open and sees the young blonde woman walk in. He leans up and says "Bonjour!". She flips the lights on and looks up at him, surprised for a minute. Then she smiles at him.
"Oh, good, you're here on time. Maybe this will work out after all," she says.
"Well, you said 7 a.m., so I came at 6:30." He responds.
"Eager, are we? Great! It will be good to have another person here who actually wants to be here. Well, today we're just gonna be getting to know the students. I know most of the upper-class men already, but this will be good for you. I try to get my French 3 classes and above to speak completely in French, but I usually let English slide when we're not doing class work. Also, I just thought I'd give you a heads up: You're young, new, and cute. The girls here are predatory. Be careful." She finally looks up from sorting out her papers and looks at him expectantly.
"Oh, I don't think that will be a problem." He smirks.
"And just why not?"
He looks up, curious to see how she will respond; and says: "I'm gay."
She doesn't even bat an eye and shrugs her shoulders before saying, "Well, the boys, then. And I don't really care either way, but this is a small town -"
"I know." He cuts her off, pleasantly surprised by her reaction. "Westerville. So, not to blatantly change the subject or anything, but do you think you could walk me through schedule? I really don't want to be blind-sided by freshman."
She gives a twinkling laugh, and says "No problem. We run on an 8 period block at McKinley: We have a longer lunch period so the students all have an equal study opportunity, but most kids use it as social hour," she explains when he looks rather confused. "Okay, so, first we have an Intro to Foreign Languages class, that's for anyone who doesn't really know what language they want to learn, it's generally just freshman and sophomores. Then we have French 5. 3rd period, we have French 4, and 4th period we have French 3. Then the long lunch block and we resume with French 2 after lunch. 7th period, we have French 1 and 8th we have another French 1. People generally only take French for one year because of the difficulty level, so we have a lot of etudiantes de francaise un, and then those who enjoy the language move on, and those who don't -"
"Spanish!" Blaine laughs. He understands that. He glances up at the clock. 10 minutes until school started. He could hear the rustling of the boisterous students out in the hallway, and for the first time since applying for the position, he was nervous. Ms. Cartier noticed this and walks over, setting a Lifesaver candy on his desk.
"You'll be fine," she says.
Blaine exhales a breath he didn't know he had been holding. He can only hope.