A/N: Wow, I really should stop posting things at 2 o'clock in the morning. Have now gone back and fixed all the typos and stupid things in that last chapter. Please feel free to let me know if I've missed any! Sorry!

I've got to say just quickly – I absolutely love Libby Gant as a character and I really hope this story does her justice. That said, I still don't ship her with Schofield. Sorry. Slasher, through and through.

For the people that watch glee, I almost imagine Libby and Juliet as Quinn (from the part where she becomes friends with Mercedes onwards, nice Quinn, not bitchy Quinn) and Santana. Minus the teenage pregnancy and lesbian dramas… Just sort of the picture I've got in my head there.

Where possible, I've kept the characters call signs or other identifying features.

If you don't know what cauliflowered ears look like, google it, they're fascinatingly gross. They tend to happen as a result of contact sports. Forwards in Rugby Union often have spectacular ones as a result of scrummaging without headgear.

Chapter 2

It was a truth universally acknowledged that Shane Schofield hated school about as much as the school hated Shane Schofield.

Some of the classes were fine – like maths, where he could just keep his head down and do his work, or science where occasionally they let him blow stuff up – but whoever's idea it had been to try and force a bunch of teenage boys into reading anything by Austin was a fucking idiot.

He could even ignore the doddery ancient teachers who had been there longer than he had been alive and the ones that tried to act cool, not realising that it had the opposite effect. The ones that looked at him with disappointment when he didn't contribute or bother to hand in an assignment though, they were the real problem.
It was so much easier when nobody had any expectations of him.

He was trying to pass the rest of lunch in the safety of the library, mostly because nobody would ever think to look for him in there, when the door to one of the seminar rooms slid open behind him and a voice said curiously, "Shane?"

Internally, Schofield cursed.

Because of fucking course, Buck Riley Junior and his gang of friends would hang out in the library during lunch.

"What are you doing here?" Buck asked again.

"It's not illegal, is it," Schofield shot back, keeping his back firmly to Buck and reaching aimlessly for the nearest book, hoping to look like he was already engrossed in it.

Unfortunately for him, Buck just took that as an opportunity to walk out of the room and over to him.

Shane thought briefly about covering his face with the book but that wouldn't be dignified and besides, Riley was going to see it at some point.

"Fuck, man," Buck breathed out and Schofield almost snorted, he'd never heard the younger boy swear before. "What happened to your face?"

"You're not exactly roses yourself, are you?" Schofield quipped back, trying to play it off as no big deal. He jerked his head at Riley's squashed boxers nose and heavy-set eyebrows, both of which he'd inherited from his father but Buck didn't rise to the bait.

Buck shrugged.
"At least I don't look like someone used my face for target practice."

Schofield tried to scowl but twisting his facial muscles like that hurt, so he settled for half a wince and spitting back, "At least I'll be pretty again in the morning."

In the many state and foster homes he'd been in, Schofield's smart mouth had earned him his share of beatings. Some of the older boy who had been slipping through the cracks for too long used to hit him every time he opened his mouth, just in case he was insulting them without their realising. And he'd been put with more than one foster parent that thought they could beat the cheek out of him.
It had never worked.
He'd just put more effort into being clever about it.

But Buck just laughed and grabbed Schofield's arm, dragging him into the seminar room against his will, saying "Come on, we can't leave you out here looking like you've gone half a dozen rounds with Wolverine. Mrs Price'll give you detention for sure."

Inside the room, Shane stopped short.

Buck looked at him nervously.
"Do you know everyone?" he asked.

Schofield knew of every one of them but he'd never spoken a word to any of them.

One of the girls was the fastest to recover from his sudden arrival and probably disquieting appearance. She managed a wave and even a smile.

Shane would have had to have been living under a rock to have not known who she was. Hell, everyone knew who Libby Gant was.

Athletic and beautiful, she still managed to stay top of every class and was the chairwoman of the student council. With her lithe body, choppy blonde hair falling just above her shoulders and eyes clearer than the sky on a cloudless day, she was most people's idea of perfection. All the girls wanted to be her and all the boys wanted to date her.

Really, it was enough to make anyone hate her on principal, except that she was so goddamn nice that everyone loved her and she loved everyone. Somehow, around her busy schedule, she still found the time to mentor the new freshmen or comfort the classmate whose grandma had just died. There wasn't a single person in the school she considered beneath her.

So really, Schofield shouldn't have been so surprised that she knew him.

"It's Shane, right?" Libby said, showing perfect white teeth through a genuine smile.

Schofield just nodded.

The girl beside Libby surveyed him with icy eyes. She looked like she could kill him with her little finger and not break a sweat. Juliet Janson was head cheerleader and head bitch in charge. Her only real competition in the classroom and on the field was Libby Gant and yet somehow, the two were best friends. Though not as conventionally pretty as Libby, with her flawless Eurasian complexion and elegant almond eyes, Juliet still had more than her fair share of unwanted admirers.
And she had no qualms about cutting them down either with her scathing mouth or her black belt.

She quirked a single eyebrow at Schofield.

This girl, he reckoned, this girl was more than a match for him.

Both girls were sitting cross-legged on the floor and behind them sat the large footballer and a couple of his cronies that Schofield only knew by sight. The three of them were half-sitting half-leaning up against a large and hopefully sturdy desk but it steal creaked ominously every time one of them moved.

"Paul Wilson," the first one introduced himself, holding out a hand for Schofield to shake. He was pleasantly surprised to find that whilst his grip was firm, it clearly wasn't the precursor to a pissing contest.
Shane liked that.

"Usually called Bigfoot," Buck added and Schofield could see why. Even perched on the desk, he was still taller than Schofield, who had admittedly always been a little on the more compact side, himself. Had Bigfoot stood up, Shane was sure he would have towered over him. And yet his hand not offered to Schofield was messing with Libby's hair, almost subconsciously carding through the short layers at the back of her head.
A gentle giant then.

"Wendell and Ashley," Buck introduced the cronies as.

They both scowled.

"Try calling us that," Wendell, a loud-talking and generally large African-American guy, said. "We dare you."

"It's Elvis and Love Machine," the one called Ashley finished off. Shorter and stouter than the other, to put it politely, he was built like a brick shithouse.

"Love Machine?" Schofield retorted.

Ashley waved a hand in the general direction of his face.
"It's 'cause I got such a pretty mug."

Schofield snorted a laugh. It was true; Love Machine was astonishingly ugly with a broad, flat nose and cauliflowered ears from one to many football collisions.

In the other corner of the room were huddled a pair of comic book geeks and with matching blonde hair, blue eyes and too pale skin from extended computer usage, it may have been impossible to tell them apart at a distance but close up, Schofield could see that one of them had 'boy-next-door' good looks whilst the other had a thin, scrawny neck and a nose too large for his thin face.

"This is Sean Miller and Gus Gorman," Buck said, waving a hand in their general direction. "Nerds extraordinaire."

The one called Gus – with the big nose - let out what sounded like an offended squawk and piped up, "If Elvis and Love Machine get cool nicknames, we want them too. We're going to be Astro and Brainiac."

"Whatever," came the sly reply from the last person in the room, who had escaped Schofield's attention at first. The speaker was another boy, leaning languidly on a desk away from the others, with his arms folded across his chest. He had olive skin and hair as black as Schofield's own that fell all the way into his eyes. He gave off an air of deliberate aloofness and effortless cool.

The boy's dark eyes flicked up, locking onto Schofield's blue ones nonchalantly.

"The nickname's only cool if you are to begin with," he said to Gus and Sean, without letting go of Schofield's gaze. The 'and you're not,' was left unsaid but clearly implied.

It was a challenge and be damned if Shane was going to give in first.

Luckily, Buck interrupted, drawing both their eyes.

"This is Paulo Sanchez," he said, "but it gets confusing having two Paul's around so he's usually just known as - "

"Sanchez," the other boy cut across smoothly, smirking.

Schofield lifted his chin in acknowledgement – two could play at the hard boy act and Shane had plenty of years practice – and took the abandoned table in the corner directly opposite him wordlessly.

Schofield was having trouble piecing together this strange group of friends. Libby Gant could have sat down at any table in the cafeteria and been welcome but Shane could understand why she would choose to hang around with Buck. Much like his father and namesake, Buck Riley Junior had a calm and steady presence; he was quick to think, though slow to speak. Like Libby, he was pretty well liked amongst most of the students but smart enough to keep his nose out of the dramas of being really popular. Shane suspected that Buck and Libby, as secretary and president respectively, had probably met at some unbearably boring school council meeting that nobody other than them could ever be bothered to attend.

Juliet was easy – she went where Libby went. In a small school, two girls like that, each other's worst competition, could only ever be best friends or mortal enemies.
And Libby Gant couldn't cultivate mortal enemies.

Bigfoot, Elvis and Love Machine, as seniors and the stars of the football team could have been the kings of the school. The reason why they hung around with a bunch of sophomores was obvious, Bigfoot was dating Libby and Elvis and Love Machine following Bigfoot.

They should have been a cliché – the footballer and the pretty blonde – but Bigfoot's gentleness despite his imposing physique and Libby's niceness that just shouldn't be allowed in a girl with that much else going for her, made them something else entirely together.

And yet this group of people that could have been popular, could have been cool, could have been the sort of group that every high school kid dreams of belonging too, somehow not only tolerated but clearly welcomed the presence of the geeky Sean and Gus.

Schofield didn't pretend to understand the intricacies of high school cliques. Usually he tried to avoid forming friendships so that it made leaving every time just that little bit easier.
But he was pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to go.

And then there was Sanchez, the outlier.

With Schofield hanging around the fringes, the group slotted back into the conversation he had obviously interrupted.

"I'm going anywhere that'll offer me a scholarship and get me out of Beaufort and South Carolina," Libby said.

To which Juliet replied, "Not me. I'm not settling for anything less than the big city itself, NYU."

Schofield guessed they were talking about college and he couldn't help but heartily agree with Elvis when he said, "Aren't you two a bit young to be thinking about college yet? Hell, I'm nearly finished and I ain't got a clue where I'm headed."

"Come with me," Love Machine said with a wide grin. "I'm enlisting."

"Why would you do that?" Sean asked, tearing himself away from the side discussion he was having with Gus about the marvel multiverse. (Is Earth-913, without future incarnations of the x-men really better than Earth-811, a dystopian alternate reality where mutants are held in concentration camps; and would we rather live in either of those worlds with the supernatural present and possible instead of Earth-1218, the real world. Then again, how do we know we don't live in Earth-1218 and that the writers have convinced us these alternate realities don't exist by making them the realm of science fiction and comic books… and so on. Apparently this particular conversation was ongoing and unlikely to be resolved soon.)

Love Machine shrugged, "I got an ugly head and not much in it, serving my country seems my best option."

"It's not a bad option," Buck said in his soft voice. "I'll be joining you and my dad there, I reckon."

When Bigfoot spoke, his voice was slow and measured.
"College'll let me play football, that's good enough for me."

It was Juliet who first turned a sharp eye on Schofield, lurking in the corner, listening to the conversation with growing dread.

"And what are you going to do?" She asked pointedly, the one question Schofield didn't want to hear.

Aiming to look like he could care less when really he didn't have a clue, he shrugged it off as all eyes turned to him.
"Dunno," he said, "I'm just hoping to pass Spanish first."

Juliet lifted an eyebrow at him disdainfully, as though he was confirming every stereotype she had imagined about him and fuck that, he didn't need to put up with that sort of shit. There were always assumptions every time he started a new school – he wasn't just the new kid, he was the new kid with no family, the one who needed to be fostered. There was always some kid asking him if he could set them up with crack or a fake I.D. assuming he had connections and shit like that. His locker had been searched more times than he cared to recall and most of the schools had some dorky older student waiting to mentor him "on the right path."

He went to class, kept his head down and tried to cause no more trouble than any other kid but still there were assumptions and nobody wanted to be friends with 'that Schofield boy.'
Which was fine, he didn't want friends because they never stayed friends after he'd left anyway.

And then it was a whole new school with a whole new set of assumptions and a whole bunch of new kids to not be friends with.

Of course the scars probably didn't help. His arms were littered with small circular cigarette burns as well as the scars from growing up in the state homes without antiseptic or a mom to wash away scrapes and bruises. But it was the one on his face – a long thin weal that was still red and angry after all these years – that cut down obliquely across his right eye that most people noticed first; a leftover from a belt buckle gone astray.

Today, it was mostly covered by a swollen, discoloured bruise that was sure to be a good black eye tomorrow.

The one day his – perhaps unwarranted – reputation might have come in handy was naturally, the one day it didn't work. He'd been angry already, pretty sure he'd bombed a Spanish test, when he'd walked into the cafeteria to find one of the Jocks mashing a freshman's face into his mystery lunch meat. He'd yelled, hoping it would be enough, that no one would willingly pick a fight with the foster kid with a bad past.

But the jock in question was apparently that stupid.

He'd dropped the kid and started in on Schofield instead.
Which was stupid because Shane had picked up some moves in his time.

There's a reason bullies pick on people smaller than them – that way no one ever hits back. All Schofield had to do was land one fist into the other guy's belly and he was doubled over, backing away. Unfortunately, the jock had friends and that was perhaps one of the benefits of them that Schofield had overlooked.

He had landed a few more decent blows but it wasn't long before they had him in a blue and black heap on the floor.

Schofield had limped off to the library but at least they left the freshman alone.

Juliet's tone of voice more than the question itself had him on his feet in a second and she flinched momentarily. Maybe she thought he would hit her too but whatever she thought, he'd been defending a little kid, he didn't go around picking fights and he'd never hit a woman.

He glared at her for a full minute whilst the tension in the room ratcheted up. He turned sharply to leave but before he could reach the door, Bigfoot's voice broke the tense silence.

"If you're having trouble with Spanish, Pancho could help you," he said softly.

Schofield was momentarily confused, trying to work out who Pancho was until he realised all the eyes in the room had turned from him to Sanchez. Except for Sanchez, who was staring straight back at him, as though weighing him up.

"Next time you don't know something in class," he said in a soft voice that was very different to Bigfoot's. Bigfoots was soft and gentle, pacifying; whereas Sanchez's was soft and silky, sly, "Say 'Soy embarazada.' It's like, slang for I don't know and I'm sorry. Better than saying nothing at all."

Schofield nodded his thanks and then he was out the door.