Tavros Nitram was the shiest person in school, and Vriska would know this very well. Often irritated by his inability to speak up for himself, she pushed him along. Some sort of instinct told her that it was her duty – and her duty alone – to toughen the boy. She initiated these events with sarcastic jabs, which turned into full blown roleplaying sessions to teach the boy how to be assertive, but the two haven't spoken for a while since the incident involving certain shenanigans.
Gamzee's room had now become a party of superlatives: the most shy, the most loud, the most manipulative, and the most likely-to-die-of-drug-overdose was gathered together in some strange celebration of academic torture. An awkward pause settled as Vriska struggled to grab the right words.
An internal struggle ensued. Part of her wanted to retaliate against the sudden increase in volume, which slowly caused the precious seconds of her tutor sessions to tick away, with angry yelling and swearing. Another part did not want to get off on the wrong foot and make Gamzee upset for the fourth time today; there's only so many strikes you can make before you're out of the zone.
The four sat in a circle and threw their notes into a pile in the center. The mess that was created turned the Cancer loudmouth into an even rowdier person, whining consistently about how messy everything was. Gamzee simply held up his arms like a flash mob participant. Tavros and Vriska sat with minimal contributions. Since no one seemed willing to break the stalemate of unproductivity, Tavros began to mumble something about going in order of the chapters to make sure they covered everything. When no one seemed to hear the boy, he tried once again.
"Guys, uh. Guys, so I, uh, think that we should, uh, maybe…."
"MOTHERFUCKERS, MY BRO HAS TO SPEAK." Gamzee suddenly declared. The room hushed, and Tavros gave his plan, which everyone agreed to. Vriska rolled her eyes; it was obvious all of her hard work had done nothing to get this socially inept kid out of his shell. They all pulled out a textbook except Gamzee, who Vriska suspected probably had photographic memory and an IQ of infinity. There was nothing else the clown could do now that would throw her off; the longer someone is with someone else who was as eccentric and random as Gamzee, the faster they learn to always expect the unexpected. In fact, the expected was unexpected.
The three who had textbooks began to read the first chapter in silence. Not surprisingly, Vantas burst into another round of incomprehensible screaming; something about boredom and an insult to mother nature by making her babies into these disgustingly bound pieces of crap. In response, Tavros softly reminded him about school responsibilities and grades. And…. Gamzee was Gamzee. This was the most impossible atmosphere to study in.
The harder Vriska tried to read, the louder they got. She reread the same sentence four times, each time slower than the last in hopes of digesting the information. When that didn't work because every syllable in her mind was penetrated by "FUCKASS" and "honk", she tried to read it out loud. It seemed, though, that she would not even get to the first punctuation mark, let alone memorize any information, so she stood up angrily and trotted off.
Karkat and Gamzee watched her disappear into the hallway and neither reacted. Tavros, however, was concerned about Vriska grades and whatever goody-two-shoes thoughts he had running through his think pan, so he crept up and followed her.
In the hallway, Vriska gripped her textbook close to her. The weight of the words bore down on her, mocking them with their existence. You'll never understand me. You'll never know me, they said. A doomed feeling overcame her, and eventually she gave into the idea that she would flunk the test. Fuck this. Fuck the clown. Fuck loud people. Fuck stupid tests with stupid answers and stupid questions. I can fucking guess all the answers and- FUCK!
As she descended down the stairs, she felt a cold hand grip her wrist. Her gut reaction was to wrench her wrist away, and ready the other hand in defense. With her fang bare, and hand raised in a fist, the troll who grabbed her yelped and jumped back in fear. His long horns swung and knocked into the wall, sending the troll flying sideways and into a table. Several photo frames crashed onto the floor. Vriska looked at the pathetic scene before her, and waited for Tavros to speak up.
"Uh, hey, uh, Vriska." He decided then and there to take this moment to be the best time to patch things up. A light brown blush appeared, and he looked down. Eye contact was a definite no-no. "It's been, uh, a while since we talked, right?" His eyes wandered from the ceiling, to the wall, to the fallen frames, and back up, never once laying an eye on even the faintest hint of Vriska's existence. While Vriska did not feel awkward often, the constricting silence between each hesitant syllable was becoming extremely oppressive as the moments passed. She had to exert massive amounts of effort to not punch his face and scream "JUST SPIT IT OUT".
"You look, you look, uh, really nice." He blushed harder. Vriska's mouth contorted, confused by the boy's reaction. "What the fuck," hung on her lips, ready to be spit out if this Taurus boy didn't get his thoughts over with. Before she could confirm her suspicions on why he was being so strange, he quickly switched the topic. Tavros shyly grabbed Vriska's wrist and pulled her closer to Gamzee's room, ushering her to return. His face was now so flushed that he looked like a suffocated corpse.
There were two choices here for Vriska. One, walk away and either risk Tavros blushing so hard that his brain explodes, or two, turn around and head back to study with Gamzee. It had seemed that the noise from above had died down, so to avoid splattering Gamzee's walls with brown, Vriska reluctantly went back with Tavros, who still clung onto her wrist.
As the entered the room, they were greeted with suspicious "oooos". The Cancer and the Capricorn began to chant "matesprit, matesprit, matesprit" as they stared at the awkward contact between the male and female, to which Vriska forcefully jerked her wrist away and Tavros mumbled incoherently. "Tavbro, you motherfuckin' burst an artery or something? You're so motherfuckin' brown."
"Uh, no. I, uh, I just, uh." "DAMN IT, JEGUS. LET'S JUST GET THIS OVERWITH."
"Whatever you say, best friend." Gamzee was the first to sit back down. Vriska crawled closer to him, putting significant distance between her and the other two boys; if not for the desire to remain on Gamzee's good side, she would have pummeled the two idiots into oblivion, knocking them to Derse and back. The remainder of the night, Gamzee spoke mostly to Vriska against his will since she demanded his full attention. Not a single syllable of his knowledge would escape her ears; no way was she going to fail this class. Her pride was at stake and she would do anything to obtain her goals.
[+]
Though the test was postponed due to random troll violence incidents, Vriska eventually faced the horrid trials. The bell rung obnoxiously and trolls fled into the hallways declaring joys for the upcoming long weekend. It was Her Imperial Condescension's wriggling day, which meant that all trolls would leave whatever duty they had to worship her. Of course, there was only so much land that Her Imperial Condescension could watch over, so most people took the day off as a freebie and relaxed. Gamzee trudged down the hallway with his awful posture. His locker was probably close to- pie. And he supposes that after – pie – school, he would head – pie – home and probably –pie.
There was an absolute lack of coherent thought in Gamzee's head; he had forgotten to purchase more slime and Faygo the night before while, ironically, sitting around being high off of pie. Now he was suffering from withdrawal and any slight disturbance to his atmosphere could set him off. Miraculously, he unlocked his locker and withdrew his backpack, which hung limply due to its lack of books. Books, he thought, who needs books right now?
A strong arm slapped Gamzee's shoulder and he flung around in irritation. To his surprise, Vriska stood before him holding a piece of paper to her chest. After the study session, Gamzee was sure he'd never hear of the local spiderbitch again, let alone see her, but here she was. And unlike the last time they meet in the locker area, she looked absolutely peppy.
"Gamzee. Gamzee. Guess what, bro? Gamzee!" Without waiting for an answer – as the huge grin on her face said all - she thrust the paper in his face. Even though the page was too close for the clown to discern the contents of, he had sneaking suspicions that it was the test they had studied for.
"LOOK. YOU STUPID BUTTHEAD. LOOK. IT'S AN A. AN A PLUS!" At this point, Vriska looked like she was about to bounce off the walls and kiss the floor. Her reaction almost made Gamzee believe this was the first 'A' she had gotten in her life. "Motherfucke-"
"My name is NOT motherfucker. It's Vriska-motherfucking-Serket."
"So 'motherfucker' is still in there."
Again, Gamzee still held the upper-hand in retorts and jabs; the Scorpio was never going to beat him. To hide her recent defeat in their ongoing came of sarcastic retorts, she leaned into the Capricorn. "So, how are we going to celebrate," she seductively cooed.
The clown hunched over even more, contorting his spine to inhuman shapes. Sure, Vriska's test had received an A, but anything around 98% was considered an A. He jammed his hand inside his backpack and produced the only piece of paper inside. On it, a large 100 was circled three times and underlined four. The teacher had even humoured the boy and taped a cute clown sticker next to grade. In messy handwriting, Vriska could discern an attempt at spelling the word 'honk'.
"So, Vriska MOTHERFUCKING Serket." He put an extra emphasis on her new middle name. "As you were saying, how are WE going to celebrate OUR grades now?" That's two more notches towards Gamzee's ever growing upperhand score. Vriska internally gave up the fight and admitted that Gamzee was just better at getting the upperhand in pretty much everything. "How about a motherfucking kiss?"
Vriska was as taken back by this request as the time when they were in Gamzee's room. She quickly grabbed his collar and pulled him in, but made sure to barely touch his lips. Her blue mouth brushed softly against his cheek and she stopped abruptly. Next to his ear, she whispered softly, making sure her lower lip occasionally touched his ear as she spoke. "Not. In. Public." She had now initiated a dare, and it was not clear if Gamzee would accept or not. To clarify that it was, in fact, a dare, she pulled back, let go of the clown, and gave him one of her signature winks.
Through half glazed eyes, Gamzee stared at the girl who had now dared him to make the first move on her. He knew that she had given up in their war on who had the best and last retort, so now she was moving into her territory: redrom games. He knew this was her trademark for it was one of the only snippets of gossip be believed firmly.