Going to start this out with a warning: This is Marstcest. If the idea is too much to handle, just walk away now. Jack is 16 in-universe and John is somewhere in the early-to-mid 40 range.

If you're still in for this ride, buckle up partner.

"May I please be excused?"

It was the same question every day, five minutes to the bell just as it had been since the first time Jack had asked. The boy's hands were already working quietly and dutifully at packing away his things, making sure that all of his various binders and textbooks fit together like Tetris pieces in a perfect game. The moment the practiced words left his lips, his mind was practically already out in the hall. It wasn't until he heard the reply from his teacher, Ms. Lummery, that Jack found himself suddenly smacked back down into his classroom seat.

"No you may not. Class will be ending soon and I'm sure whatever it is you need to attend to can wait."

Jack's hands froze on the clasps to his knapsack. The metal beneath their pads suddenly felt a thousand times colder and his blank, processing stare allowed him to see every individual thread woven into the cloth of the straps. No. What he needed to attend to wouldn't wait. Or, well, that was the problem; What he was attempting to avoid would wait, just as long as it needed to. That, in itself, was the problem.

Jack, in a state of panic, stood from his seat suddenly, his now nerve-chilled hands gripping at the sides of his desk. His body was moving faster than his mind could and his mouth was soon to follow. "Ms. Lummery, I. I need to be excused!" The words rolled out of his mouth like uneducated babble and he could practically feel the stupid wafting off of his very breath.

The gaunt woman looked up briefly from the papers she had strewn across her desk, eyeing Jack's outburst from just above the narrow frame of her bi-focal glasses. "With all due respect, Mr. Marston, this is my class. And because this is, in fact, my class, I have every right to tell you that whatever it is you find so important can wait until the bell. Now please, take your seat before I decide to keep you after the bell."
Her words were stern and condescending. They planted Jack back down into the hard, molded plastic of his chair after taking the piss right out of him. He could feel the heat from everyone's eyes like a spotlight, licking at the curved shells of his ears and dancing pin-pricks across the bridge of his nose. For the remainder of class Jack buried the hotness of his face in the sleeve of his arm and silently listened to each and every tick of the clock as it sat mocking him above the doorway to the classroom.

The seconds were agonizing, seeming to creep slower; almost as though the flow of time itself were drying up and struggling to trickle. It couldn't be much longer, he told himself for the umpteenth time. He hadn't been keeping track, but he knew the universe itself weren't quite that cruel. After all, he could hear the soft murmur of his classmates as they shifted in their seats and packed their things. It couldn't be too much longer. The tyranny of Ms. Lummery wouldn't allow anyone to pack up too early before the bell. The classroom collectively held its breath as the clock whispered its final few 'Tick, Tick, Tick's before the loud belching of the Final Bell.

Jack took it like the starting gunshot in a race and was a blur of motion, grabbing his knapsack, shouldering it, and pushing out of the room before the tanned-skin skeleton with bleached-blonde hair that was Ms. Lummery excused her captives. Already students were pouring out of their classrooms and the halls were flooded with their idle bodies. Jack, ever practiced, snaked his way through the crowds. He was driven by an intense need to break free of the school. He'd hoped to be the first one out, but even he knew that was far too hopeful of an aspiration. Already he could see the double-doors that marked his exit swinging wildly to let the other sheep out of the fold. In an instant it was his turn and he seized the opportunity, pushing out into the warmth of the late-summer air that smelled faintly of cigarettes and freshly-cut grass.

Nervously he fumbled with the shoulder strap of his knapsack, pushing it up as he walked with his eyes turned to the worn cement directly in front of the toe of his shoes. Maybe what he was afraid of wasn't waiting for him yet. Maybe he'd forgotten- started drinking too early in the day and passed out, piss drunk, in the sunshine. Maybe he got distracted. Maybe the truck broke down, again, and Jack would be walking home. Every maybe was quickly cut short by the distant screeches of a painfully familiar sound. Not even half-way up the pathway to the parking lot the loud, tinny whine of the older-than-Jack-was stereo system was screaming out music so loud it was a wonder the system hadn't blown. The only redeemable quality was the bass. It almost shook the ground under Jack's feet as he walked and he could feel the vibrations in the cage of his chest.

There were more eyes on him now than there had been in the classroom as he walked towards the beat-up hunk of powder-blue metal John liked to call a truck. It was like some kind of cruel joke and Jack was the punch line. Reluctance gripped the boy as he hooked his fingers under the rusted door handle to the passenger-side door. Jack sucked in a sharp breath of air in defeat, pulling the handle and listening to the door open with a grinding whimper before bathing him in the oppressive blasting of the music it had been so poor at containing in the first place. John, out of some kind of compassion, turned down the screech of the near-tuneless punk screeching long enough for Jack to get in and close the door. The air inside smelled like sun-hot leather and tobacco. A smell Jack hadn't been missing.

"How'd your day go, boy?" John asked in the gruff low rumble of his voice, straining the vehicle into drive. The engine groaned and whined, pleading helplessly before belching and roaring to life. It lurched forward on brakes that were several months in need of being replaced, switching the loud embarrassment of the terrible music for the loud embarrassment of a run-down truck.

"Fine. It was just fine." Jack said quickly in reply. At the moment he didn't want to speak. The boy was much more contented with imagining he was anywhere else but with John. He didn't dare turn his eyes up from the stained and frayed floor mat under his shoes. He knew that people were looking at him, casting their silent judgments that would never come to spit in his face directly but would find their way into every conversation held behind his back. Spite made the boy want to roll down his window and shout at everyone who wasn't looking to stare, to take a picture because it would last longer.

The truck backfired and choked on its exhaust.

Jack no longer felt the need to shout from the window.

"We've got a couple of stops to make before we turn in. That alright?" John asked as though Jack had a choice, his voice still far too loud from the deafening music that was now just a mumbled whisper in the background.

"Yep... Sure is."