I walked the halls as I always did, head held high, back straight, slight smirk gracing my lips. This story was how I dealt with hatred, love and everything in between. I was Eridan Ampora and I was fucking royalty, remember that.

...

Chapter 1

School was simply a hell, nothing else to call it, and I was sitting in class bored as usual. In one hand I held a pencil that I was twirling around my long fingers. My other hand sat in my lap. With my violet eyes I scanned the room for something to focus on, anything but the horrid lecture we were listening to as a class.

The window was out, I didn't care much for the view. All I could see from the basement biology room window was the plants on the ground, nothing good was growing. I could see a strip of dirt as well but who really cared about the dirt of this earth? What would distract me there?

That left something in the room, there was the girls, the boys, and the posters. With a quick scan I knew the posters were out, I've been looking at the same pictures for the last two and a half years of high school. The same old plants and animals stared back at me when I tried to focus on them, and details of anatomy I already knew from boring classes only annoyed me.

That then left the students sitting around me. Violet eyes swept the room again as I began tapping my pencil instead of twirling it. Karkat, a close acquaintance, was in the first row, he was passing notes back and forth with John, the class dork who claimed "no homo", nothing there. Kanaya, a possible "friend", was sewing in her lap, nothing good there. Feferi, the girl of my dreams and close friend was playing with her long, dark brown hair, and though that distracted me for a few minutes I soon grew bored again. Oh, I thought simply, why not him?

'Him', the word I used to name the annoying boy I absolutely hated, there was no other word to sum him up. Well, that was a lie, I could use asshole, or nerd, or even pervert, but I stuck to 'him', after all… it worked. Well, anyway today his dark brown hair was messy the usual for him, and his two colored eyes actually were locked on the teacher, typical of my nemesis, Sollux.

I watched as he sighed and pushed back his hair from his face, the hand then dropped to the desk in front of him, his fingers tapped lightly in time with the second hand of the clock. I rolled my eyes, he was boring, and yet…. I couldn't take my eyes off of him, he was strangely fun to watch.

Minutes went by and all I could do was watch the boy take a few notes, sketch absent-mindedly, and dig at the dirt under his fingernail with a pen. Even this spying was boring and made me wish I was home already, maybe on my computer, or on the phone, or even just goofing off. But no, today had decided to seem as though it was going to slowly.

Wait, back to him. What was he doing? I watched as Sollux looked from one side to the other as though he was worried someone was looking, so much for boring. I slid forward in my seat to be able to see what he was doing better, with his right hand he reached down and pulled out his phone with eyes half on the object in his hand he started texting someone.

A few moments later I could feel my phone buzz against my thigh, he was texting me. Interesting, why would he do that? I chuckled a bit as I pulled my own phone out of my pocket and looked at my new messages.

'Hey fi2hbreath, why aren't you lii2tening two the teacher?' I sighed when I read the text, but I couldn't help but feel a small smile cross my face. When we were in middle school our class came up with their own way to text on day, out of those twenty-three students only twelve of us kept it up.

'i pass wwithout listenin, wwhy should i?'I watched as He pulled his phone from his lap quickly, the vibration causing him to jump. I chucked quickly and watched him turn to glare at me briefly before swiviling back to the front of the class.

'Maybe becau2e he'2 lookiing at you.'Before I could ask him who a voice interrupted my thoughts.

"Mr. Ampora, did you hear that?" The teacher asked, his voice daring me to say hadn't, even if he knew the answer before I gave it. Of course I had to give him reason to hate me more than the low life already did.

"No, sir… why would I listen when the world is so beautiful right outside those windows?" the class laughed at the joke, Dave, an asshole in the back of the class, began talking about the irony of the statement as the beautiful dark haired girl sitting next to him rolled her sparkling green eyes behind her large, round glasses. At the reaction of the class I smiled at first, lapping up the attention, letting it get to me I began to smirk.

"I'll tell you why you should listen; it's simple really. The reason you should have been listening is that now your class won't be able to pick partners for this project." The laughter stopped, and people turned to me blank-faced and a bit angry. My mouth dropped.

"W-what? How-w…? w-why…?! W-what project…?" My nervous stutter started up and I flushed red, the entire situation started up a few girlish, shrill giggles, mostly from the beautiful Feferi who probably wouldn't care who she worked with, and though I knew there was no why he'd giggle I saw a small smirk force its way onto his face, he had know this sort of thing would happen.

"The project I was just telling you all about, the one where you will be choosing an animal and doing a three page report on, as well as doing a presentation in front of the class. Your attitude lost the classes ability to choose their partners as well as the animal. Let's see… you'll work with…" He paused for a moment, eyes searching the class, "Sollux Captor."