i'm back on my shit
The moment the word 'partners' leaves their teacher's mouth, North twists in her seat - directly in front of his own - and grins at him brilliantly. When Miss Harding continues with, "I'll be deciding the pairs," North's smile falls off her face and she turns back around with a scowl. There's absolutely no way that he'll be with North, not after their dramatic reenactment of To Kill a Mockingbird last year which resulted in a minor - minor! - explosion, the entire school being evacuated, and all three emergency services turning up in the parking lot. Carl had seen the funny side to it all, at least, even if the bomb squad hadn't.
Miss Harding draws everyone's attention by clapping her hands. "If your surname begins with A-L, stay where you are. If your surname begins M-Z, move to your partner, please. Capiche?"
The class responds with a collective chorus of 'capiche's. For all her assigned partners bullshittery, as North would put it, their English teacher is fun and teaches them what they need to know, so she's well-liked by the student body. And it's not just her - none of the staff will allow North and himself to work together now, apart from their Chemistry teacher. Given their track record, he's probably the one who should be trying to keep them apart the most, come to think of it.
The students with A-L surnames are clearing away their clutter to make room on their desks - apart from North - and those with M-Z surnames are gathering their supplies into transportable piles - apart from him.
"Markus," Miss Harding calls, grabbing his attention. "You'll be working with Connor." She moves onto the next student, but her voice fades into the background.
Oh, fuck. Oh no. No, no, no.
It's not that he doesn't like Connor. It's the opposite.
He's had a crush on him since they were thirteen, which makes it three and a half years now. They've never actually interacted, as such, and Markus doesn't know if Connor is aware of him past 'somebody I see in the corner of my eye every so often in English class'. It's the only class they share - Connor is in honours and advanced placement for everything he takes, and Markus is either in regular where Connor is in honours, or in honours where Connor is takes advanced placement. AP English grants him three hours a week to spend in Connor's general vicinity, at least.
He would be ecstatic but -
Well.
North turns round in her chair again, wide-eyed. "Dude!" she mouths, looking excited. Then she frowns. "Why aren't you freaking out?" she whispers, tipping her chair back precariously onto two legs to get closer to him.
Markus struggles to find the words, mainly because he knows North will be pissed that he didn't tell her about the incident immediately. "Connor knows about Leo," he finally replies, at an even lower volume.
North's chair clatters back to four legs. The teacher, and half their classmates, glare at her. As usual, she's completely unfazed, and proceeds to scrape her chair round so she can face Markus. Miss Harding looks askance at her but carries on reading out the last few partners. "Markus, what the fuck," she hisses, looking infuriated already. "Why didn't you fucking tell me when this shit happened?"
"First off, stop swearing-"
"Go fuck yourself!"
"And secondly, because I was...embarrassed, I guess." Markus throws his hands up in mercy, and accidentally flips a pencil backwards off the desk. It hits the wall and snaps in two, which is a waste of a good pencil, but at least breaks the tension and makes North giggle. Her eyes softened anyway as soon as he spoke, clearly understanding his situation.
"You don't have to be embarrassed about it," she says sincerely. Her nail polish is starting to flake off, dark red covering her nails in irregular patches, but her hands are as warm and delicate as ever as they curl around his own, fingers squeezing gently. "It's not your fault that your brother is a piece of total shit."
"It's still - okay, so, you remember when he went missing for, like, three weeks?"
North nods. "The police found him in a condemned building."
"Yeah, so, uh, they called us and said he was in a holding cell, they found him on the system from his fingerprints? We had to go and pick him up, and sort out bail and stuff."
"He got community service, yeah? I remember."
"Yeah. Perks of being rich." Markus waggles his eyebrows at her; North suppresses a smirk. "So, anyway, we turned up and the receptionist was like, 'Go in and find Lieutenant Anderson,' so in we go and almost straight away I see Connor, just, like, sitting at one of the desks."
North slaps a hand on the desk. Their classmates barely react this time. "Had he been arrested?" Her eyes flicker over to the boy in question, who's actually paying attention to their teacher and whatever vital information she's giving them about the project.
"No - well, I thought so, too, right? Then I saw he had his textbook on the desk, he was, like, doing homework? Then Carl says he can see Lieutenant Anderson's desk - he points to it, and it's directly opposite where Connor is!"
"Shit." North leans in closer, her blonde hair obscuring half her face for a moment until she scoops it out of the way impatiently. "Oh, shit! Connor's last name is Anderson!"
Markus gestures wildly and uselessly, glad she's making the same connections he did. "Right! So we go over, and Connor looks up, and he goes, 'Oh, if you're looking for Lieutenant Anderson, he'll be right back," and Carl says thank you and asks him about his homework-"
"And you were having a major gay panic at this time, correct?"
"You have never said anything so true, North, oh my God, I genuinely thought I was going to die! Then this man appears, and asks if we're here for Leo, and Carl says yes, and then the guy starts looking on his desk for the file and Connor, like, picks it up and hands it over and says casually, 'red ice', so obviously he knows everything, and then as we walk away I look back and he's, like, looking at me? Really intensely? Then he just...nods, and fucking goes back to his homework like my entire world didn't just flip on its axis!"
"Quite the trip," North comments. She sounds impressed. "But - like, he won't be judging you, dude, like, he sees that shit every day. His dad's a cop. He's, like, cool with it."
"It's still embarrassing!" Markus implores her to understand. "Anyway, I don't even know if that's his dad."
"Oh, no, it is, I remember seeing a picture of Connor and a dog on his desk now," North says absently.
Markus gapes. "Nor - North, what the fuck, when were you at the fucking police station-"
"Remember when I got arrested for scratching 'dickface' into that asshole's car? Lieutenant Anderson was there, he told them not to put me in a holding cell because I was too young and made somebody make me coffee while I waited at his desk for my parents."
"And you didn't - you didn't think to mention this?"
"Okay, well," North narrows her eyes. Not good. "You're not in any position to lecture about fucking secrets, and, and, I told you I was arrested and a nice cop stopped me from getting shoved in jail, I just didn't say who the nice cop was. Because I forgot, I was kind of preoccupied with being fucking arrested."
"How could you forget?"
"Because, Markus, and I know you're going to find this, just, like, fucking out-of-this-world crazy, not all of us are obsessed with Connor."
She's won. They both know she's won. "Fuck you," Markus mumbles, and shoves his stuff into a haphazard pile when he notices other people standing up. "I have to go now."
"Have fun sucking diiiiiiiiiiiick," North not-quite-whispers.
"I will," Markus hisses back, and flounces off so he can at least pretend he has some dignity left. He slows his strut to a normal walk when he gets a few paces away from Connor's desk. His first - fuck, second - impression on the guy doesn't need to be any worse than it already inevitably will be.
"Hi," Markus announces lamely. Connor looks up from his notes, a pen clutched horizontally between his lips, kind of like a dog with its favourite toy but infinitely cuter. It's also - well, Markus has to banish some impure thoughts.
Connor removes the pen, taps it nervously against the paper. "My name is Connor," he says, in his stupid raspy-smooth voice.
"I know. Markus. I mean - I know your name. And mine is Markus."
Connor smiles slightly. "I know." He glances between Markus and the chair next to him when he doesn't move. "Are you going to sit down?"
"Yes," Markus says a little too fast, and sits down so quickly his spine creaks. "I am sat." Oh, it's even worse than he thought.
"Like a cat on a mat," Connor replies instantly. Markus stares at him in surprise. "What kind of project do you want to do?"
"I - uh, I wasn't listening," Markus confesses sheepishly.
Connor's lips twitch upwards again. "I saw you talking to your friend, so I thought you might not be." It doesn't sound like a reprimand from him, not like it would from Josh or Simon - Markus winces to think about lunchtime, when North will undoubtedly tell them what he just told her, and also give a wildly exaggerated version of events in the class. "I came up with a few ideas while Miss Harding was talking - here." He pushes his notebook towards Markus, open to a double-page spread.
Markus blinks. The left half is full of meticulous neat notes in almost perfect handwriting, certain parts highlighted or underlined. His own notes can be described as scribbles at best and the illegible scrawlings of a toddler at worst. The right half is a little messier, but still neater than anything Markus produces; and wow, there are a lot of ideas.
It's not that Markus is stupid, but his talents lie more in art. He likes English too, likes how you can change the entire meaning of a sentence by adding or removing one word, or how you can create a chasm between meanings using synonyms. He likes to analyse books and see the meaning behind the words, but he's a dweller. He sits, and ponders, and lets his mind wander and draw conclusions.
Connor, on the other hand, clearly needs no great length of time to shoot out ideas. Markus skims down the list quickly - the theme of the project seems to be symbolism, which he can do easily, except oh wait his brain has a meltdown whenever Connor says anything goddamnit. The ideas are solid - a couple of Shakespeare's works are noted as examples for each, some American classics, some British too, some titles that he's never heard of. "I like - I like the idea of doing feminism over the years. So, female characters? And comparing them to each other, and saying how times have changed. Or how they haven't?"
Connor beams. "Great. That was probably my favourite. Like, Shakespeare wise, I immediately think of Lady Macbeth, and then more recently, Curly's wife? But we'd also need to like, balance it. Because Steinbeck purposely wrote the story in that way as, like, social commentary, and in some Shakespeare tragedies women are given bigger roles."
"Do you - do you have any paper? I think better if I can get my thoughts out. And I'll probably forget everything, too."
"Sure." Connor retrieves a jotter pad and neatly tears two pages out for him, and then grabs him a pen too, from a case that seems to be entirely full of black ballpoints.
Markus immediately draws an uneven oval in the centre of one page, and scribbles inside it, Feminism over the years, in his cramped handwriting. He spiders several legs out from it and jots down everything they've said. Connor is watching him with fascination. "I know it's not very neat," he says, suddenly very aware of the contrast between their notes.
"I like it," Connor says quietly. "I mean - I like that you can think like that. I - I can't. I'd like to." Connor sounds sadder than Markus would have expected over something as simple as English notes - it runs deeper, then, this is something Connor struggles with on a much more personal and meaningful level.
"If it means anything, I really like your notes. I wish I could be that neat and organised," Markus offers.
After a second, Connor's furrowed expression transforms into a gentle smile. "Thank you, Markus. You're very kind. Ah - anyway, the project. We should try to find some more examples of female characters. Maybe all the way back to classical times too? And something modern, too.
Markus adds the ideas to his mind map untidily, not missing how Connor's eyes dart after his every movement.
When the lesson finishes forty-five minutes later, Markus has filled three more pages of mindmaps, ranging from characters to quotes to additional themes to cultural references, and Connor asks politely if he can use his phone to take a picture of them to copy out himself.
"Hey, we should exchange numbers," Markus blurts, and then hastens to explain that he's not actually a creep, "To meet up outside school, I mean? To get the project done?"
"Good idea." Connor closes his camera and with a few deft taps opens a new contact. "Here, put your number in, I'll text you later today?"
"Sounds good!" His usually graceful and delicate fingers have suddenly become fumbling and clumsy, and he makes more than a few typos as he tries to enter his name and number. He puts his surname in too, just in case, and double-checks his number. "Here. That, uh. Should be it." The bell rings. "See you later!"
Before Connor can react he rushes back towards North's desk, kicking her in the back of the leg when he reaches her. "I'm coming, you dickbag," she hisses, and turns back to her partner, Traci. "I'll text you tonight, then?"
"Sounds good," Traci agrees, and shoots Markus a quick smile. "Bye, guys."
North scoops up her own stuff and they exit the classroom rapidly, heading to their lockers. "He's going to text me later and we're going to arrange a time to hang out after school to work on the project. He's going to keep saying intelligent and clever stuff, and I'm going to look like a bitch and a fool."
"Well," North flings her locker open more aggressively than she has to. "You always look like a bitch and a fool, so we're fine on that front."
"I'm serious, North, he's so amazing and I just turn into a pile of mush!"
"Why do I have the feeling that you're talking about Connor?" Simon asks tiredly from behind them. Josh trails behind him, looking vaguely concussed.
"PE?" North asks in return, and gets two nods. "Rough. Let's go eat our body weights in mashed potatoes to make up for it."
"There's a reason I love you," Josh mumbles, and slings his arms around North's shoulders as they walk. "What's this about Connor, anyway?"
"We've been paired together for an English project," Markus explains, reluctantly allowing North to tug him into a sideways embrace as they head towards the cafeteria. "My brain doesn't work around him, he's going to think I'm a massive idiot and want nothing to do with me."
"If he thinks that, he's a fucking moron and I will punch him in the dick," Simon says, quite seriously, and surprises him into laughing.
"Just be yourself around him," Josh advises. "I mean - what can go wrong with that?"
"Don't jinx it," Markus moans. "I have enough bad karma already."
North perks up. "That's true. Hey, remember when you nearly impaled yourself on a baton during the relays in PE because Connor smiled at you?"
Markus slaps her arm feebly. "North, bad karma!"