Summary: Tony Higgins, a devoted people-watcher, is intrigued by the new kid in his English class. Sean Conlon is hiding something, and Tony wants to know what it is. Four-shot, mild SpRace and Blush
Disclaimer: If I owned "Newsies," Sarah would die in a tragic carriage accident ten minutes in, and the whole thing would be rated R for sexual themes.
A/N: Yay! New fic! I missed about seven days of school, due to being sick, and instead of doing homework or working on "Right Hand Man," I started a crap-load of new stories. Which was dumb of me. But I blame the cough medicine, and take no credit for my stupidity whatsoever.
Anyway, I've plotted this one out a bit, and hope to finish it within the next few days. It'll have four chapters. And, um. This is the first one. Yay!
Oh, wait, quick other note – I decided not to use nicknames for this fic, so just to avoid confusion: Tony is Racetrack, Sean is Spot, Micah is Mush, and Kid is… Kid. Duh. Okay, yeah, so… enjoy!
Part I.
Tony twirled his pencil absentmindedly between his fingers. The blank sheet of notebook paper on his desk taunted him, as did the essay question on the chalkboard. His classmates scribbled busily around him, but Tony found himself unable to write.
How have your parents affected the way you see the world?
He sighed, and put the pencil to the paper. "My parents," he wrote, and then stopped again. My parents, what? My mom had too many kids, so she's stressed out and a chain-smoker. My dad's loaded and spends as little time as possible at home. Therefore… Tony looked at the clock. The period had only just started. He ran a hand through his hair in frustration and wrote down "My parents are," before he stopped again.
The door to the classroom swung open, and Principal Sietz walked in.
"Bryan, can I speak to you for a moment?" he said.
Bryan Denton rose from his desk, adjusting his bow tie, and stepped outside the room to speak with the principal. A minute passed, and the classroom started to buzz with unreleased, unmonitored energy. The door reopened, and Denton came back in, followed by a new kid.
The teacher cleared his throat for attention. "Everyone, I'd like you to meet the newest member of our class. This is Sean Conlon. He's just transferred from a school in Brooklyn. Please make him feel at home here. Sean, why don't you go take a seat next to Anthony? Do you have materials with which to write?"
The kid nodded.
"Great." Denton gave him a cheesy smile. "You can go ahead and try to write something for the essay question on the board. Just write whatever pops into your head." He clapped a friendly hand on Sean's shoulder. Sean regarded him with a scarcely concealed look of contempt.
Tony caught his eye, and nodded to the empty desk on his left. Sean stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled over.
"You're Anthony?" Sean asked.
"Yeah. Call me Tony, though."
"Okay." Sean flopped into the chair. He wasn't very tall, and he was remarkably skinny, but his limbs seemed to take up an extraordinary amount of space. He had an air of casualness that reminded Tony of the models that sprawled in magazine ads, and on billboards. Sean looked a little like a model too, with pouting lips, and light blue eyes lined with long, dark lashes. His face looked like some of the antique porcelain dolls that Tony's little sister collected. The image was disrupted only by the torn, baggy, blue jeans and hooded sweatshirt with "The Vines" printed across the chest that Sean was sporting.
After studying Sean for a moment longer, Tony turned back to his paper. "My parents are," was still all he had written, and he still wasn't sure how to finish the sentence. He glanced back at Sean, and noticed that the new kid seemed to be having an equally difficult time. His eyes were narrowed into cynical slits and he looked at the question as though it had just asked him to perform some dirty sexual act with his mother.
Tony rubbed the wrinkles on his forehead, and tried to start writing again. "My parents are Italian," he finished. He erased that, and rewrote, "My parents are very Italian." He looked at Sean again, who had commenced chewing on the end of his pencil, while still glaring at the chalkboard.
"My parents are very Italian. They had six kids and they brought us all up with traditional Italian values. Traditional Italian values are," and Tony paused again. My family doesn't have values. Or morals. Traditional Italian values are 'eat good food, drink good wine, get laid, and get rich.' "Traditional Italian values include honoring one's family and spouse, providing for the ones that you love, and working hard at the tasks you have been assigned." Tony looked at Sean, and Sean happened to glance at him. Sean raised a delicately curved eyebrow, and sneered at him, then looked away.
"Every night, my family cooks dinner together. We really enjoy the time that we spend together. My dad works very hard, so mealtimes are special to him, since he doesn't see his wife and kids very often otherwise. He always makes sure to be home in time to sit down and bless the dinner with us." Tony stopped again, and looked over at the other kids in the classroom.
Micah was writing slowly and thoughtfully, and no doubt with a touching honesty. Tony knew that Micah had grown up with just his mom, and that the kid was very, very proud of how he'd been raised. With good reason, too, because Micah's mom was the coolest mom that Tony had ever met.
Kid was writing with a wry smile on his face. He lived with his parents and three older sisters, but he maintained that because his parents were such workaholics, he had really been raised by his sisters, which accounted for a lot of things, including his sexuality, his cooking, his taste in music, and his irrational fear of tractors.
Tony turned back to his paper. "Because of the way my parents raised me, I want to have kids of my own someday, and I have a lot of respect for people who can successfully uphold a large family." He counted the sentences; there were eight. In Tony's cramped, messy handwriting it was a meager paragraph, but it would suffice. He put down the pencil, and slouched lower in his seat, going back to his favorite clock-watching pastime.
He glanced at Sean again, who was picking disinterestedly at his fingernails. His paper was still blank, and his pencil was abandoned forlornly beside it. Tony studied Sean's profile. He seemed mightily pissed off about something, but Tony couldn't be sure if it was the assignment, or if the kid was just generally pissed off.
Denton cleared his throat, and asked everyone to finish up and turn their paper in. After about fifteen more minutes of Denton's hemming and hawing, he assigned them their homework, and let them go.
Tony met Kid and Micah outside of the classroom, but encouraged them to wait around before going to their next class. A minute later, Sean walked through the door.
"Hey," Tony said, grabbing his elbow.
Sean jumped and whirled around, but relaxed when he saw who it was. "Oh, hey."
"What've you got next?" Tony asked, ignoring the impatient sighs of Kid and Micah behind him.
"Um," Sean consulted his schedule, "American History, with Mr. Rhodes."
"Ooh, so do I," said Micah. "And Kid does too."
Sean looked at them for the first time. Tony stepped aside, and introduced his friends. "Sean, this is Micah, and that's Kid."
Sean raised an eyebrow at the name. "Kid, huh?"
Kid grinned. "Yeah. Family thing."
Sean nodded.
"Well," said Micah, happily, "maybe we can walk to class together?"
Sean shrugged. "Sure. Whatever."
They turned to go to the history room, which was on the second floor. Tony gave a little wave, and started walking in the opposite direction.
"You're not coming with us?" Sean asked.
"Nah," Tony said, turning around, "I've got calculus."
Micah giggled. "Tony's insanely good at math. It's crazy. If you ever need help with anything math related, just ask him. Oh, and if you want history help, ask Kid. And I'm pretty good with English. And French. Do you take French?"
Sean shook his head, and stuck his hands in his pockets, as he followed Kid and Micah away. Apparently he didn't mind having his ear talked off. Tony smiled. So maybe the guy was a little quiet, and kind of mean-looking, but he seemed nice enough, and if he could put up with Micah's babbling, Kid's musical theater references, and Tony's swearing in Italian, then he'd fit in just fine.
Tony met up with Micah and Kid again at lunch. To his surprise, Sean was still with them, and so they invited him to join them for lunch. He accepted. As Kid and Micah guided him through the school lunch line (with a brief introduction as to what was actually edible), Tony thought back to his own first day, last year. They'd all been freshmen, all scared to death of what high school would bring, and Tony had mistakenly assumed that that would give them a common bond. But the only people who were magnetically drawn to each other on the first day were the popular kids, who were all immediately visible from their good looks, white smiles, and designer clothes.
Tony could have been a popular kid if he'd wanted to. True, he wasn't good-looking, but he was rich, and he was charming. He didn't play sports, but he was smart - and he didn't mind people copying off his homework. The problem was that Tony didn't want to be a popular kid. He detested popular kids, and so when - on that first day - the beautiful Marissa Finney had invited him to join her at a table filled with sparkling blondes, he politely declined, and was forever outcast from popular society.
He had watched them from afar, as did all the kids in his situation, and ignored the voice in the back of his head that was yelling at him for his decision (it sounded too much like his father). It was in watching the mingling of the new freshman that he noticed Micah and Kid. Tony had seen Kid before, and wondered about the eye patch. Micah was in Tony's homeroom, so he'd seen him too. What surprised Tony was that they were sitting together. Even though it was an unwritten rule that new kids spent the first day just watching the popular kids and being jealous, Kid and Micah seemed to be having a good time anyway. They were talking intensely, and then Kid said something at which Micah threw his head back and laughed, and Tony knew right then that he wanted to be friends with them.
He continued to watch them as the first day dragged on, and because he had a knack for it, he started to get to know them. Kid was self-conscious, especially about his eye patch, and the crowded hallways of the high school made him nervous. Micah liked to be the center of attention, and enjoyed making Kid smile. Tony could tell that Micah was a people-watcher too, but that he missed things – like the way Kid was always staring at Micah out of the corner of his eye, or the way both of them took any excuse to brush against each other. Tony picked up these little clues, and by the end of the day, he had figured a couple things out that he was pretty sure they didn't even know about themselves.
The next day he joined them at lunch, and from then on they were best friends.
Kid and Micah returned to the table Tony was saving, with Sean behind them. Sean's eyes widened when he saw what Tony had brought for lunch, and he gave a low whistle.
"So that's why you didn't join us in the line?"
Tony grinned and crunched down on a piece of the fresh garlic bread. "School lunch is for chumps. I'll take last night's leftovers over 'fresh' sloppy joes any day."
"Leftovers?" Sean asked.
"Yup. We had mostaccioli in marinara last night, and my mom made too much, so I brought the rest today." Tony sprinkled some parmesan onto the pasta.
Kid shook his head mournfully. "I wish my mom made dinner every night." He thought for a moment. "Last night we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And Trisha cut up some carrots and celery. We dipped them in ranch dressing."
Micah giggled. "Now that's what I call a classy meal!"
They all laughed and dug into their food.
Sean ate quickly, and then cheerfully stole Micah's hamburger bun. Luckily, Micah didn't mind, since he was cutting down on carbohydrates, much to everyone's amusement. The lunch period went smoothly, and Tony had been right - Sean fit in very well. They all shared a similar sense of humor, and though Sean didn't speak up much, he was a good audience.
What Tony did notice, and it made him wonder, was that any personal questions directed towards Sean were quickly fended off. The boy was pretty skilled at subject changes, and neither Micah nor Kid seemed to realize that their new companion was very taciturn about his own life.
The afternoon progressed. Tony saw Sean again in art class. Micah was in the same period, and the three of them kept one of the art tables to themselves as they worked on their perspective drawings (which Sean was quite good at). Other than that, most of Tony's classes were without company. All four boys met up at the end of the day to say goodbye. Micah wished them well and hopped onto the city bus that took him home. One of Kid's older sisters was a senior at the same school, and she gave him a ride. Tony and Sean stuck around until almost everyone else had left. Finally, Tony saw the black Rolls Royce turn the corner and come up the street. He mumbled good bye to Sean, and climbed in, nodding hello to Joel, his driver.
Tony looked behind him as they pulled away, and watched as Sean hunched his shoulders and trudged off. Tony wondered if the kid always walked home. Maybe tomorrow he'd ask if Sean wanted a ride, but Tony had a feeling that he'd be refused. Sean didn't seem like the type to take charity, or even a favor.
New chapter tomorrow, if all goes as planned. Please review!