Ever's just sitting at the bar, trying to get drunk or something like that. Minding her own business.
Mirajane says it causally, while wiping fingerprints off of the beer tap, all soft and sweet with no hint of malice, "He's too good for you."
And even though it's been a good two hours since anyone in the bar has said anything beyond another round and it's probably been six or seven weeks since the bartender said anything at all to Ever, she knows what the other woman means at once.
She downs the last dregs of her martini.
"I know."
/
"And I hope to continue to see all of your fresh and happy faces around the school this year," the principal concludes, and Ever smothers a yawn and thinks longing of her post-first-day-of-school drinking binge. Just-she checks her watch idly, not bothering to conceal the action-seven and a half hours, plus travel time and maybe a few minutes to stop at home and doll up a bit.
The faculty begin to file out of their assigned row and, sitting in the last chair, Ever hustles to her feet, heels clacking across the gymnasium floor as she trails after the Algebra II teacher, a man so old that he may be growing actual mold behind his ears. He has a thing for nurses; she remembers him from last year.
Just then, the door to the gym bangs open, and the teachers stop their disheartened procession out. The students, who haven't been dismissed yet, gape from their seats at the newcomer.
It's a boy, probably; he's wearing a school uniform at any rate but he's taller and broader and, well, man-er than any boy she's ever seen. The hands holding the double doors open are about the size of her head, the knuckles of his left fist a bloody, wrecked mess. A long scar runs down one side of his face, and for a moment, while the whole gymnasium stares openly at him, his eyes are very, very scary.
Then he grins, and it makes his face about ten years younger despite his size, and says, "Am I late?"
/
It's about a week before he comes into her office, and by then he's already built up a reputation. Ever doesn't listen to rumors, of course, but they're hard to ignore when she sees half the school for one ailment or another over the run of the day and all of those high school girls never do anything but talk, and God, she wasn't like that when she was their age, was she?
He knocks while she's downing her fifth aspirin of the day, frantically battling the hangover that keeps coming back to nip at her like a yorkie pup at the most inconvenient time, and she snarls, "Come in," because she thinks that it's yet another dodgeball casualty and she's seriously sick of those, but it isn't, it's a mountain coming to visit with a bloody nose.
"Teach'r wouldn't let me in the room until I cleaned up," he explains, looking as though he's embarrassed and annoyed all at once and generally not willing to be there and since there's no one that Ever likes having more in her office than a student who doesn't want to be in her office(because then they leave faster), he instantly becomes her favorite patient in the history of ever(Ever?).
She runs a rag under the tap in the sink and squeezes the excess water out before tossing it to him carelessly. She isn't here to play babysitter. She isn't even really here to play nurse.
He catches the cloth easily and starts to mop up his face, wincing as he accidentally probes sensitive spots with his huge, clumsy fingers. Ever examines him from a distance, trying to determine if his nose is broken or not. She decides not-less paperwork that way-and shepherds him out of the office.
"I didn't want to come," he objects, as if she accused him of otherwise.
"Well, I don't want you here, so we should get along just fine," she says, and then he looks at her funny and she looks funny right back and it strikes her that she might like him for real, so she shoves him out and tells him to not come back.
He doesn't listen, or else doesn't have a choice, because another teacher sends him to her office later that afternoon and Ever wonders if he's having an especially bad day or if it's normal for him to fall down the stairs and run into doors once an hour.
He doesn't flinch as she pulls the thread tight on the stitches closing up the gaping slash on his forearm. He's tough like that, or at least doesn't want to look bad in front of her. She somehow doubts that the latter is the case. "I didn't know school nurses could do stitches."
"I didn't know you were as stupid as you look," Ever snaps back, and then, because he gives her a look like a wounded puppy and it inspires actual guilt in her which hasn't happened since Hell last froze over, that is, never, she adds in grudging explanation, "I was trained as an EMT, a long time ago. I still have the certification, and since this is practically a school of gangsters . . . it comes in handy."
"Why didn't you stay an EMT?" he asks her.
She pinches his arm and commands him to get out before I add another scar to your face.
/
She meets up with Freed and Laxus at the bar after school lets out, and they get plastered in the middle of the day.
"You should come back," Laxus slurs.
Freed splutters out a weird laugh-he's always been shit at holding his liquor-and shoves his half-full glass across the way for Ever to finish. "Which is what you always say when we lose someone." He slides his gaze over to her, head swaying. "Little girl, DOA," he goes, and passes out, head slamming onto the sticky bar.
"You werrrrr the best," Laxus goes on, and the barmaid-a blond that Laxus has had his eye on since they were all rookies and since it's been five years, it's fairly safe to say that he has no chance in hell with-says, "That's it, Dreyar-I'm cutting you off."
"The best!" Laus bellows. "Mira, another round for th' best medic ever, Ever!" He dissolves into laughter. "Ever, Ever . . ." he cackles. "That's a good one." Mira scowls, unimpressed.
"You're all drunk," Ever mumbles. "Besides, I love my-my studeeents . . ." She cradles her head in one hand. "I dont'wanna leave."
She does love her students. She loves them so fucking much . . .
/
"Ma'am? Ma'am?"
"She's out cold."
"Yes, I can see that, Elfman." There are voices in Ever's dreams-voices, disturbing her happy hour. Wait. Is she dreaming? Or is she drinking?
Maybe she's drinking in her dream. Ever snickers. That sounds like her.
"She's not coming around. Someone should take her home."
"Her friends are shit-faced, too."
"Language, Elfman. And yes, we'll call a cab-this one looks like he has alcohol poisoning."
"You could let them sleep on our couch."
"Or I could let my baby brother take them home."
/
She's moving. Whoa, okay, she's moving. Her stomach roils, and she bends over. She's pretty sure that she's throwing up-it hurts, and her throat burns, and she fleetingly thinks that this is extremely unbecoming behavior for a teacher, even a teacher who's just a nurse and is really shitty at her job and hasn't been fired for the sole reason that no one else would ever be crazy enough to take her place.
There's a wall at her back, and she leans against it, gratefully sinking her aching head on the warm . . . fabric?
Ah, well. Walls can wear clothes if they want, right?
The wall lifts her up, but she's too tired and sick and-hey, there are puppies. She's dreaming of puppies, or something.
She should get a puppy. So that she doesn't have to live alone anymore. Puppies are a hell of a lot easier to take care of then boyfriends.
The wall rumbles with laughter.
Oh. She's talking, isn't she? That muffled sound in her eardrums is her own voice.
She's pretty sure that she's seasick.
/
Ever goes to school the next morning with sunglasses and a spotty memory, totally clueless as to how she got home the previous night. It's not her best look.
"Mornin', teach," a mountain greets her as she steps through the double doors.
"It's six-thirty," she says, too hungover to manage a tolerably intolerable level of bitchiness. "Why the hell are you here at six-thirty in the godforsaken morning?"
He hands her a flask. "My sister sent this for you. Hair of the dog that bit'cha."
She slides off her sunglasses, confused. "Your sister?"
"Mira. The bartender?" he prompts. Ever stifles a groan. Of course the new student just happens to be the younger brother of her favorite bartender. Of course. She's going to have to stop frequenting the Fairy, now, and that is just going to . . . ugh. So much trouble. Laxus won't quit whining about it for months, and if Laxus isn't happy, ain't nobody happy, Ever included.
Not that she's usually happy. But.
She takes the flask anyways and says grudgingly, "Thanks."
He beams. "I gotta ton of 'em, back in my locker, if you run out."
Ever massages her temples, tucking the flask under her arm and quickly moving past him. "I'll pretend that I didn't hear that."
/
Second period. Ever no longer feels like she's a ground-up piece of horsemeat; but her stomach is rumbling something awful and there's still an hour left until lunch.
She hates moving through the halls between classes-there are too many students, ripe with hormones and bad hair and terrible fashion choices. She has to push through the crush of them, pretending that she doesn't notice the eyes on her rear end(most conveniently stuck out due to her towering high heels)or cleavage, the latter of which she does her best to hide with the stack of permission slip forms she has to deliver to the principal before eleven a.m. . . . which is six minutes from now.
She shoves past a particularly brawny football player in time to see that student, the new and big one, slam a kid half his size into a row of lockers.
"You say I'm not manly?" the Incredible Hulk bellows, and Ever feels the abrupt return of her headache. This is great, just great. She has to stop them now, since she saw them fighting and the rest of the kids saw her seeing them fight, and it's expected that she'll stop them. If she doesn't, who knows what will happen. Mayhem, probably, and it will come out of her paycheck, which means less hairdresser money, so.
Ever elbows her way around the students who are gathered to watch the fight. The smaller guy is writhing, kicking the giant in the stomach; Ever recognizes him. Grant or Gray or something-he's been in the principal's office for indecent exposure like, ten times since the beginning of school. Kid's got a problem.
But, hey. They all got problems, here; this is the school where the bad kids go.
"Break it up," Ever orders, trying to sound authoritative. "Cease and desist. Drop your hostage. Whatever." She lays a hand on the mountain's shoulder, attempting to not be awed at how far up she has to reach to do so. Ever's always thought herself fairly tall, and that's before the heels; this guy has to be nearly seven feet, if not over.
Getting him to drop Gray is not unlike soothing a rampaging elephant, and Ever can't help but feel overly self-conscious as she coaxes him out of pounding the other student's face into the lockers. There are people watching, and there's nothing weird going on, but her eyes keep fixating on her hand, on the muscles rippling under it and the green nail polish and what might happen if she digs their pointed tips into-
Whoa, girl. Get a lid on those hormones.
Ever retracts her hand. "Both of you, in my office," she orders. "I'll be along when I finish my errand-and if I come back to find even one bottle of antiseptic out of place . . ." She glares at them threateningly, and they scuttle away.
/
"I don't get it," he whines, fidgeting in his chair like a much smaller, much younger boy. "Fullbuster gets to spend detention outside . . . why do I have to be cooped up with you?"
"Keep talking like that," Ever says dryly, "and I'll up your time to three weeks, instead of two."
He falls silent immediately.
Ever hands him a box of papers. "Do you know what these are?"
He takes a few, looks. Shakes his head.
"Health forms. Parents or legal guardians are required to pass them in before the start of each academic year, so I know who's got what deadly disease. By the time I'm done making out the chicken scratch and bad spelling of each and every one of these four hundred or so forms, I'm sick of them. So, I throw them in this box and forget about them until Little Johnny comes in with a cold and I need to know if his mommy gave permission for me to give him a box of tissues, let alone a dose DayQuil." Ever pulls another box out from under her desk, stacking it on top of the previous one. "It's hell, trying to find one form in this particular haystack, so I'm going to have you alphabetize them for me and put them in that filing cabinet." She points.
He scratches his head, and she props her hands on her hips. "What? You can't do it?"
"I'm only here for an hour," he reminds her.
Ever sighs. "That's why you're coming back, numbnuts. This is weekly detention, or have you forgotten?"
"That's only twice."
"Then I guess you'd better get started."
Ever sits behind her desk, pulling out the top drawer and beginning to organize the contents. The first few weeks are always hell on her system, as she tries to remember how she did things the previous year; she swears that nothing is just as she left it.
"So," she starts idly, after a few minutes of work have passed. "You live with your sister."
"Yeah." He doesn't look up from his sorting.
"Above a bar."
"Uh-huh." His hair is so blond, it's nearly white. She wonders if he has Nordic blood. That would probably be in his file, if she could find it. But she's having a hard enough time finding her glasses, let alone one folder in a box of four hundred and three. Besides, she's not that interested.
Really.
"And your parents?" she prompts. "Where are they?"
He looks up at her, a scowl dancing across his face and, God, his eyes are scary. This is apparently not the right question to be asking. "Dead."
Oops. Ever quickly moves on to the next question in her mental checklist; the way she goes through them is perfunctory, rote. She's had this conversation with nearly every student who passes through her office, and absolutely with everyone she's spent time with in detention. Ever might be a budding alcoholic with some serious baggage in the Past department, but she's still a medical professional. She knows how to do her job, even if she does cut the corners a little bit . . . well, a lot.
"How's your family life?"
He shrugs. "Normal."
"Normal how?" She surreptitiously takes a pen out of her drawer and begins to scratch notes on a pocket-sized pad. She's no psychiatrist, but she's found that the observations she records often come in useful later-such as in court, if it ever comes to that.
"Y'know . . . normal. Mira doesn't hit me or anythin'. I know that's what you're asking." He dumps the first stack of folders into the filing cabinet under "A". He half smiles, gesturing to his own body. "I mean, I am twice her size."
"Mm." Ever notes that he recognized what she was getting at; but it's not that abnormal. She's not the best at being subtle, for one thing. "And how about school? Are you having trouble keeping up in any of your subjects?"
Another shrug. "Math sucks. The teach is nice, though-he's been helpin' me."
"What about friends?" She's starting to feel like she's interrogating him. Maybe because she is interrogating him, funny that.
He shoots her a dour look. "Real men don't need friends."
Ever has to stifle a sudden, incredulous laugh. "Honey, you're in high school. You aren't a man," she tells him. "You aren't even a young man, yet, you're a teenager and-" And she really needs to shut up because not good is going to come from moving into this territory, so; moving on. "Have you been sleeping well?"
"I'm fine," he says, not snappishly, but curtly enough that she gets the idea; this is him angry, at least angry at a teacher-angry at a student seems to equal physical violence but somehow she gets the feeling he wouldn't raise a hand to her, which is irrational because she doesn't know anything about him(yet)and he could be coming off a term in juvie for any number of things, that's the kind of school this is, but surely not murder because then he would be in jail. Probably.
"There's nothing wrong with me," he goes on, while her internal monologue rattles to a hasty stop.
"You were fighting in the hall," she retorts. "That's not something you do when you're fine."
His head is down, focusing on the task in front of him, but she could swear that she sees the corners of his mouth turning up in a smile. "It is for me."
