Thanks to my beta, irite, for being betamazing, and correcting my use of 'professor' instead of 'teacher.' Oh, high school, it's been a little while, hasn't it?
So, I'm not a big fan of AUs, or of high school AUs in particular, but I wanted a challenge. We'll see how it goes.
Warnings: this story is going be completely overblown in terms of angst. I've been in a writing funk, and I felt like doing something really self-indulgent to try to get out of it. That said, this story is going to contain alcoholism/drug use, child abuse, bullying, graphic violence, and major character death before it's done.
I do not own The Avengers.
It was 8:35 AM on a Wednesday, and Tony Stark was just waking up.
Groaning, he cracked his eyes open to glance at the clock before shutting them again quickly as the dull green glow drilled sharply into his skull.
Fuck. He was late. And he'd had a test today, too. Damn it.
He should have been in his chemistry class. He wasn't sure what moron had decided to schedule AP chemistry during first hour, but whoever it was, they must have been sadistic. As if being awake at that unholy hour wasn't enough punishment, they decided to pile chemistry on top of it.
This was his second time in AP chemistry. He'd actually been a year ahead in science when he'd taken it as a junior. But then he'd failed it. It was the only class he'd outright failed last year—all his other teachers had passed him, even though he'd stopped handing in homework after Christmas, and had largely stopped showing up in April. Whether their leniency was due to the fact they knew he didn't need to be there, or to Howard's extremely deep pockets, Tony didn't know and didn't care. That was just always how it went: he did nothing and he passed. His GPA was shit, sure, but it wasn't like any university in the country was going to say no to Howard Stark's kid. Not when he practically used money for toilet paper.
The chemistry teacher—Mr. Gardener—was a dick, though, and he'd refused to pass Tony like everyone else had. And now Tony had to take the class again, because if he didn't pass it, he wouldn't have enough credits to graduate.
It wasn't that Tony didn't know the material. He did. He'd gotten the highest possible grade on the AP chemistry test at the end of last year, his failing grade in the class notwithstanding. The material was, honestly, insultingly easy. Stuff he'd figured out on his own in elementary school.
Everything was insultingly easy to him, though...except maybe English, but who gave a shit about that anyway? Why bother wasting his time listening to people tell him what he already knew, where there were so many more interesting things he could do instead? No one else saw things that way, though, and so Tony taken it upon himself at a young age to manage his own schedule.
He thus had a long and colorful history of truancy issues that had seen him thrown out of two boarding schools, four private schools, and one public school. His parents didn't really have a lot to say about his habit of getting expelled. His mother just sighed and registered him somewhere else when it happened.
His parents didn't have much to say about most things when it came to Tony, really.
Now, Tony was on his second public high school and still, somehow, miraculously on track to graduate on time. All he had to do was pass his classes this year. Easy enough.
Of course, it was 8:35 on a Wednesday morning, and Tony was not in class. So maybe it wasn't going to be as easy as he thought.
It was just, at the moment, he had a killer hangover. Howard and Maria had flown up north to some party to celebrate the signing of a new contract, and they'd left Tony behind with no one but the housekeeping staff for company. He'd managed to amuse himself for a few hours by debugging his new program, but that had only taken until 8:00 or so. After that, he'd decided to take the opportunity to make his way through the rest of the bottle of vodka he'd 'borrowed' from the liquor cabinet downstairs a few days before.
And, well, when he'd finished that, he'd 'borrowed' some whiskey, too.
If Howard noticed that someone was pilfering his liquor stash, he didn't say anything. At least, he didn't say anything to Tony, and Tony took that as permission.
Anyway, it hadn't, admittedly, been the best plan Tony had ever had, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Just like how, around midnight, he'd decided to text Pepper. That probably hadn't been the best plan Tony had ever had, either. Especially given her extremely terse reply—Tony winced as he remembered her message, which had more or less amounted to 'go to bed, you're an asshole for waking me up.' Texting her had seemed like a fantastic idea at the time (he'd been feeling lonely, as pathetic as that was), and he'd just kind of gone with it.
Perhaps he shouldn't have.
Doing his best to ignore how much he felt like puking—or alternately, curling up under a rock to die—Tony opened his eyes into slits against the light shining in through the curtains before swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He stood.
And then promptly lurched for the bathroom as he felt bile climbing up his throat.
After puking, brushing his teeth, taking four Excedrin, showering, and dressing, Tony felt somewhat more human. It was now after 9:00 AM, and he frowned. Second hour was Government, and if he wasn't there, Rhodey was gonna get on his ass about it. Well. He couldn't do anything about it now, he'd just have to deal with the lecture when it came.
It wouldn't be the first lecture he'd sat through.
For breakfast, Tony drank half a bottle of orange juice straight from the container and ate a couple slices of the pizza he had left over from last night. Then he threw a pair of sunglasses on and made his way out the door towards the car parked crookedly in the wide driveway.
If he didn't run into traffic, he'd make it to third hour calculus.
Joy.
It was 8:35 AM on a Wednesday, and Bruce Banner was taking a chemistry test.
It was the first test of the year, and it wasn't particularly hard, but he was nervous about it anyway. He hadn't had much time to study, and even though he knew the material, sometimes he didn't do so well on tests anyway.
It didn't really help that he was, at the moment, so hungry he could gladly eat the test, ink and all.
He'd crept out of his house at 6:00 in the morning before his parents had gotten up, and he hadn't had any breakfast because he hadn't wanted to make any noise. And really, he'd rather be hungry than deal with, well. What would happen if he made noise in the morning. Being hungry was just a little distracting, was all.
So he'd walked to school in the dark, thankful that, at least, it wasn't raining like it had been yesterday. The doors had been locked when he'd gotten there (as they were every morning), so he'd sat on a bench outside, watching teachers and staff arrive, until a janitor had unlocked them. Then he'd made his way to the library.
The only time he could really study was when he was at the library. He didn't study at home. Ever. That was a good way to get his father started on one of those tirades, and those tirades could easily escalate from only words flying around to fists.
So no, he didn't study at home.
But then, Bruce didn't spend much time at home. He left early in the morning, usually by 6:30 at the latest. After school, he usually went to the public library until they closed at 8:00. Then he'd go home. There, he'd stop in the kitchen just long enough to make himself a sandwich or something before skirting back upstairs to his room. On a good day, he'd make it, and he wouldn't have to see his parents at all.
On a bad day...he wouldn't be so lucky.
So that morning, he'd studied in the school library until 7:50, going over the different elements and seeing how much of the periodic table he already had memorized. As it turned out, it was most of it. When the first bell had rung, Bruce had headed up to his chemistry class. He made a quick stop at his locker—ignoring the large, spiky-lettered 'FREAK' scrawled on it in black sharpie—and grabbed his books for the morning, and then he'd gone to class, doing his best to mentally prepare for dealing with the people at school.
He could try all he wanted; he was never prepared anyway.
Bruce's desk was a little island in the back of the room. No one sat on any side of him, and that suited him pretty well. He tended to have a similar island setup in most of his classes, excepting those in which there were too many students for such a design to be feasible. Then, every desk needed to be utilized, and the other kids usually complained when they had to sit next to him.
He was pretty much used to that, at this point. Sure, it still stung a little bit, but by and large he could ignore them. He'd had a lot of practice. Since that thing in 10th grade, his classmates had more or less treated him like he was contagious. In the subsequent two years, the rest of the school had pretty much come to adhere to that, too. Including, interestingly enough, the new freshmen.
Bruce sometimes wondered who told them what had happened, if anyone did, or if it was just part of the lore of the school at this point.
From the vantage point of his desk island, Bruce had been able to survey the rest of the class fairly well. It had looked like everyone was there, except Stark. Which wasn't surprising—Stark was almost never there. But it seemed strange that he would miss a test.
Or not, really. He'd already failed the class once, so the rumors went.
Everything had seemed fairly normal, really. The only weird thing was, a few seats over, one of the juniors in the class had been scowling down at the desk in front of him, arms crossed tightly over his chest. He'd slipped into the room just before the bell and had practically thrown his bag on the ground before hurling himself into his seat. He'd seemed pretty angry about something, but that wasn't so odd. This was high school. It was full of assholes, and there was a lot to be angry about.
Bruce hadn't had really time to muse any further on that before the test had been passed out and he'd gotten to work.
When he finished (with half an hour left in the class), he got up and turned his paper in before making his way back to his seat. He thought he'd done well. He hoped. He was actually taking this class for fun—during his junior year, he'd taken both AP physics and AP biology, so he was all set on his science requirements. This was mostly a way to fill up his schedule so that he didn't have to take an elective like art or something.
God, he was such a nerd. Maybe there really was something wrong with him.
Well, it wasn't like there was really any doubt of that, was it? It wasn't really a secret, either.
With a small sigh and shake of his head, Bruce pulled out the novel he'd been assigned for his English class.
It was 8:35 AM on a Wednesday, and Clint Barton was trying to explain A Farewell to Arms to his English class.
This was hindered greatly by the fact that he had not actually read A Farewell to Arms. And he could tell he was doing a piss poor job of hiding that, because Natasha was practically laughing at him from across the room.
"And then, um, the nurse died. It was sad," Clint concluded lamely, looking down at his desk.
"A stunning analysis of the novel, Barton," came Mr. Martin's acidic voice from where he was leaning against his desk. "I have never heard such an astute summary of Hemingway in my twenty-five years of teaching."
Before Clint could snap something back—and get suspended, probably, given his track record in this class—Martin went on, "Would anyone else like to astound me with their insight?" He looked around the room. "Romanoff?"
Head cocked just slightly to one side, Natasha nodded, then launched into a clear, concise explanation of the themes in the novel.
When Martin's back was turned, Clint stuck his tongue out at her.
The kid next to him—Steve, resident goody two shoes jerk—shot him a mildly disapproving look.
Whatever.
It wasn't that Clint didn't like to read. He did. He might have even have liked A Farewell to Arms if he'd managed to finish it. He just hadn't had time. Barney had managed to get him an extra couple of shifts at the bar, and Clint had been bussing tables and tending bar the last three nights. It had been unusually busy, and he hadn't had time to read the giant novel.
Which Natasha knew, so he didn't know why she was laughing at him.
She was just mean.
When Natasha had finished her perfect analysis of the novel, Martin finally shut up and divided them into groups to talk about the book in more detail. As usual, Clint and Natasha were assigned to separate groups and, as usual, they ignored that and grouped together anyway.
They were with Steve, one of Natasha's friends named Peggy, and some kid Clint knew from a few of his other classes but had never actually talked to. He was from Denmark or Norway or something, and he'd started school in the middle of the last year. Also, his parents apparently hated him, because they had named him Thor.
Cruel.
When they'd pulled their desks together, everyone in the group looked at Natasha expectantly. She rolled her eyes. "What? Didn't any of you read the book?"
"I did," Peggy answered.
"I know you did," Natasha replied with a smirk. "Clint?"
Clint shrugged. "You know I didn't. I was busy." It wasn't like he could say 'no' to an extra shift or two or three at the bar. He needed the money. And Barney would kill him if he passed that up.
Steve gave a half smile. "I was busy, too. Sorry, guys."
"Thor?" Natasha asked, eyebrow raised.
He nodded. "I did read it. Though I did not particularly like it."
"Well," Clint said easily, "You'n'me've got that in common."
"You didn't even read it," Natasha pointed out.
"I read enough," he replied. "And I looked it up online. It's got, like, this perfect happy ending, right? But then the woman just dies for no good damn reason."
"Language, Barton!" Martin called from across the room. Clint ignored him completely.
"It did seem quite sudden," Thor agreed, after glancing cautiously over at Martin.
Clint nodded enthusiastically. "I mean, what's the fucking point of killing her off? What's it do?"
"Barton! Detention!"
Clint frowned.
Well, at least it was only his first detention this week.
Thanks for reading! Chapter 2 is written, but I'm not sure on when it'll be posted. I'm anticipating this being fairly long, although hopefully not a 100k behemoth.
Reviews are always welcome.
