I suppose I have to say it. School!AU. I have no idea where the inspiration for this came from. But hey, I hope you like.

Chapter 1

It was a warm day in early September. The sky was a clear, cloudless blue, and the sun was shining down; hot rays scorching the soil. There was but a whisper of wind, and it was the sort of day when all one really wanted to do was lie about on a beach, or laze around in the park, eating ice cream and occasionally making lewd comments about girls in short skirts.

Unfortunately for Thomas Ryan, known universally by just his surname, none of the aforementioned activities were possible. Because it was the beginning of September, and instead of being out in a pair of shorts soaking up the last drops of the summer weather, he was crammed into grey trousers, grey blazer, shirt and worst of all, the torture device known as the tie, and was stuck inside a stuffy, windowless hall / oven, being slowly roasted alive - along with a hundred and fifty or so others - by the last rays of said coveted summer sun. If that wasn't child cruelty, he didn't know what was.

Looking up at the stage, Ryan ran a hand through his short blond hair, before belatedly remembering this was sixth form and he was supposed to be keeping his hair tidy. He tried to re-straighten it inconspicuously, attempting not to look like a preening girl. Clearly he had failed in that department, because the next second, his best mate, Tom, located in the seat to his right, grinned at him, before reaching over and roughly destroying whatever façade of tidiness Ryan had managed to restore.

If the air had still tasted of summer and freedom, Tom would have been tackled and had his face ground into the floor in a matter of seconds, but as it was, the scent of rules, school books and detentions necessitated the use of a mere glare in retaliation.

Wincing, Ryan stretched out his legs, trying to find the necessary space under the seat in front to accommodate his five foot seven frame. He wasn't particularly tall for his age, but whoever set out the room for assemblies seemed to labour under the impression that all of the students took growth suppressants and remained forever at the height they had been in Year Seven. As it were, throughout the hall mutterings of discomfort echoed and from time to time there could be heard the sharp crack of a joint as someone attempted to stretch.

It was half past eight on the first morning of Sixth Form, and the new Year Twelve had been crammed into the assembly hall to await a greeting from the headmistress. There was a general air of sullenness and rebellion, and the atmosphere in the too-small hall suggested about 97% of its occupants would far rather be elsewhere.

Ryan would have like to pretend that he was in the 3% that could actually claim to enjoy school life but that would make him both a liar and a hypocrite. School had never agreed with him. He disliked taking orders, and following rules, he disliked 90% of the subjects he was forced to take, for the most part he disliked his peers, and he loathed the uniforms.

Throughout the six week summer, the most formal Ryan had got had been the jeans and white shirt he'd been forced into for his sister's wedding. The rest of the time had been spent in ripped, faded Levi's, shorts or swim trunks. The upshot of this was that, now, the grey trousers itched, the grey blazer was heavy and far too hot, the white shirt was too small and cut into his skin (a result of his summer growth spurt and refusal to shop for new uniform) and Ryan had suspicions his tie was possessed by an evil spirit and was trying to strangle him.

All-in-all, he was not best pleased to be back at school. Although there was some hope, as far as he was concerned, that perhaps Sixth Form would be more enjoyable than anything so far. He would, for one thing, only be doing subjects of his choice and you were supposedly given a lot more independence. He was also very much hoping his timetable would give him a means of avoiding those he didn't get on with, and the frequent fights that came hand in hand with them.

Two minutes later, the sharp clack-clack of heels echoed, and the headmistress of Oakborne Grammar School, Mrs Queller, took to the stage. She was a dumpy woman in her early forties, and Ryan could, if he squinted, imagine her perhaps having been attractive once upon a time. Now however, she was overweight, pasty-skinned, and had drastically black and obviously dyed hair scraped back into a dry, forehead-stretching ponytail. She was very possibly the least charismatic person Ryan had ever known.

'Good mornnnninnngggggggggg, Year Twelllvveeeeeee.'

Mrs Queller's voice was monotonous in a sing-song sort of way, and Ryan got the distinct impression that she too, would far rather be anywhere but in the stuffy school hall.

'Good mornningggggg, Mrs Quellllerrrrrrrr.'

Ryan's peers sing-songed a response, sounding equally as bored. Ryan couldn't quite bring himself to bother to open his mouth, and a glance sideways at Tom showed that his best mate hadn't either.

Thomas Andrew Richard Anthony Jackson had been Ryan's best friend since they were seven years old. Their mothers had met at a post office, and formed an instant bond over the shop's failure to stock the right kind of canned tomatoes. The next day, Ryan had been dragged to tea at the Jackson's house; his mother labouring under the usual misconception that because she liked Mrs Jackson, Ryan would automatically like Tom.

Even at the tender age of seven, Ryan had been more than aware that life did not work like this, and clearly Tom had felt the same, as when they had been deposited face to face in the garden, and told to 'have fun now' they had spent a good ten minutes sitting and glowering at each other.

The angry glare on Tom's face had, not that Ryan had ever admitted it, unsettled him a little, and in order to show his complete disregard for Tom's mere presence he had climbed to his feet and strolled off up the garden to look at a rabbit hutch. He had been on the verge of opening the cage, when he'd heard a voice behind him saying,

'You can't touch her. She's mine.'

Ryan had turned with an indignant sneer, and uttered the devastatingly witty reply of,

'Who's going to stop me?'

And that had been when Tom had launched himself at Ryan, and ploughed into him with all the subtlety of a tank. Ryan had gone crashing to the grass, all the air expelled from his lungs in a whoosh, but there must be some truth in the rumour that little boys are made of rubber, because in a matter of seconds, he was shoving, thumping, biting and generally giving as good as he got.

And when Ryan's mother had come rushing out about a minute later, clearly alarmed by the war cries echoing from the garden, she had been horrified to find her well-mannered little boy, a guest at somebody's house, laying into her new friend's son.

Ryan and Tom had been dragged off each other, and an explanation had been demanded, both parents irate. And that had been the moment that a bond had formed between them. Because in the face of hostile parents, they turned from enemies to allies, and instantly began constructing a story of red Indians and make-believe games.

This story had placated their mothers and the furious ear bashing had been reduced to a gentle scolding and admonishment.

When the mothers returned inside, there had been a moment of unease, as both of them tried to gauge whether or not they were now back to deadly enemies, before Tom had thumped him on the back and said,

'I'm Tom.'

Ryan had thumped him back, in a friendly sort of way, and replied,

'Yes, I know. I'm Tom as well.'

Tom had regarded him, and then said,

'If we're going to be friends, then we can't have the same name.'

'Why?'

'Because it's weird.'

'Why?'

'Because it is.'

'Why?'

Tom had glared at him furiously at this point before realising Ryan was snickering. Ryan, who wasn't particularly bothered about them having the same name, nevertheless applied his seven-year-old brain to the problem, in an attempt to find a solution.

'What's your full name?'

Tom had gone furiously red, and muttered something.

'What? I can't hear you.'

'I said my name's Thomas Andrew Richard Anthony Jackson.'

Ryan had raised his eyebrows.

'Holy shit.'

Tom had looked impressed by this gratuitous swearing.

'Why?'

Ryan shrugged.

'I was thinking maybe we could call you by one of your other names.'

Tom had shaken his head, looking determined.

'No, I have more names, which means my name is better than yours, which means I get first dibs on the name, which means I get to be called Tom.'

Ryan had wrinkled his forehead, trying to follow the logic of this.

'But you don't even know my full name.'

Tom had shrugged.

'No-one ever has a full name longer than mine.'

Ryan glared at him.

'You should at least ask before making that assumption.'

'Well, what is your full name?'

Ryan glared some more.

'Thomas Ryan.'

'Well there you go.'

There was a mutinous silence for a moment, the peace pact still rather delicate, before Ryan had shrugged and said,

'Well I suppose you'd better call me Ryan then.'

Tom had grinned, and appeared satisfied with this solution.

'Great. So, want to meet my rabbit, Ryan?'

The name had stuck ever since.

Ten years later, Tom was still the best friend Ryan had ever had. They had grown up together, fighting, chatting, laughing, prank-pulling, and sometimes sitting in silence simply because they could. It was Ryan's favourite thing about Tom; the fact that he didn't feel the need to continuously talk or to make crude comments every five seconds or to think of nothing but sex. These were the things that, for the most part, really really irritated him about his class mates.

Ryan had never really seen the attraction in acting like a drunken football lout, and competing to see who could most resemble the missing link between man and ape, whilst surrounding oneself with similarly apeish friends, and girls with fat legs, short skirts, and far too much make-up. It just, as they put it, wasn't his scene.

Had Ryan not had Tom, and not been reasonably well built and co-captain of the wrestling team, he might have had something of a tough time at school. As it was he had made it through pretty much unscathed. He didn't have any other close friends, but never found himself short of someone to talk to, and for the most part the most loutish of the apes left him in peace.

Despite this, he had always hated school, hated the restrictions and the social hierarchy, and he had been aching to leave and go travelling. However, when he was fourteen, his father, a royal marine, had died on a reconnaissance mission gone wrong and ever since then he had been filled with a burning ambition to join the army when he left school.

His mother had pointed out that there were far more restrictions imposed in the army than there had ever been at school, but that didn't matter to Ryan. A psychologist he'd been forced to see at the time had said that it was his way of 'trying to be close to his father'. It was when she started trying to psychoanalyse his relationship with his Dad that Ryan had walked out of the grief counselling sessions and refused to ever go back.

He had always assumed that he could leave school after his GCSE's and join the army straight from there, and had been horrified to discover that in order to join the Special Forces, it was necessary for him to have A-levels.

He had researched and researched, looking desperately for a way to get around that obstacle, but having found none, had reluctantly picked the four least odious of his timetabled subjects and enrolled for Sixth Form. Tom didn't have a clue what he wanted to do with his life, his passions were PE, History, English Literature and Physics, which weren't exactly happy bed fellows, and Ryan had gotten the distinct impression that Tom had joined Sixth Form more to keep him company than because of any burning Higher Education ambitions of his own.

And that was how the two of them had ended up crammed into a hot, stuffy hall, in hot stuffy uniforms, surrounded by people they both disliked. If Ryan had been a bitter sort of person, he might have laid the entire blame at the feet of his dead father and sulked.

As it was, he instead shifted once more to get as comfortable as possible and prepared to tune out the rest of Mrs Queller's 'welcome back' speech.