Thanks for the warm reception already, guys. :) I always love getting reviews as much as I love letting my feels out into this story. Contemplating introducing the rest of the class - possibly making Kate into Molly considering her gushing. Sherlock, John, etc. could be teachers... But I'm not sure yet - let me know? :D
:2:
Mr. Moriarty held her paper up appraisingly, nodding as he read each word – tilting his head as he silently articulated the words she'd written to himself as if he had all the time in the world. Regan, on the other hand, was drumming her fingers impatiently on the edge of his desk – watching the last few members of the class trickle out of the room through the corner of her eye.
"Regan Byron." he suddenly said, snapping her wandering eyes back to attention. He slapped the paper down on his desk, crossed one leg over the other and faced her with steepled fingers – as he often did. "Any relation to Lord Byron?" he smirked from behind the flexing digits.
"I wouldn't know," she mused, looking down at her own fingers. "But I highly doubt it."
"Fair enough." he held her paper up again. "Regan Byron," he began again, "The first interesting fact about myself is my inexplicable ability to smell like cigarette smoke even though I completely abhor the habit. The second fact is a strange premonition I must've had in a dream in which I found myself wagging all my English classes because somebody there made me uncomfortable. The third and final fact is that I have a large dog that doesn't take kindly to unwelcome intruders in my house."
Regan cleared her throat and met his eye. A single thin eyebrow was raised questioningly. "What can I say," she forced out, "I'm an interesting person."
"Now I do apologise, Miss Byron, if I have caused you any manner of-" he uncrossed his legs and edged forward, "Discomfort. As that is simply not my intention."
"Not your intention?! You fucki-"
Mr. Moriarty held up a hand. "You will address me with the same respect with which you address your other teachers, Miss Byron. And that includes controlling your horrendous sarcastic tendencies."
Regan grit her teeth. This was bullshit. This man was clearly deranged, and was going to pretend that he didn't practically stalk her all the way from her house to her school. The truth of the matter was that he had scared the crap out of her, and was now acting like she was the one who was behaving unreasonably and disrespectfully.
"Now, Regan..." he continued, "I'm not an unreasonable man. I'm aware that you have interpreted this morning as cause for alarm – so I'm not opposed to a little... Quid pro quo." he purred, eyes not leaving her own for a moment. "Please, sit."
"-I'd really best be getting off, sir..."
"Sit."
It was a simple command, but somehow said with an authority different to that which she was used to. Sure, she'd been a little shit in her time and had had her fair share of teachers barking various commands at her – but nothing like that. So, naturally, she sat on the desk opposite his own.
"Let me tell you a few interesting facts about myself." Moriarty offered, stretching himself out with dramatic effect. "I'm a Gemini," he shrugged, pouting his lips innocently. "I... drive a Mercedes..."
Regan glared at him darkly and was met with a condescending grin.
"Andddd... I enjoy poetry."
"So you're in fact, not a dangerous psychopathic criminal hell-bent on making my life as unpleasant as possible and driving me into a state of paranoia and other associated complications?" she spoke quickly and quietly in a single breath.
"Of course not, and you should probably watch less crime thrillers – yes?" he winked.
Regan forced out a nervous laugh. "Can I go now?"
He nodded and she scooped up her things in record time. She was halfway out the door when he called out after her, "Regan."
She paused as he took a few purposeful strides towards her, and held out the paper. She looked down at her writing and back up at him. She took it, giving it a gentle tug – but the English teacher was holding onto it firmly. "Yes...?" she breathed. He was close. She only need lean forward and they'd be touching.
His eyes were scanning every feature on her face with guarded intent. "I want honest answers out of you by tomorrow."
Regan parted her lips to say something, but they hung heavy and useless. She pulled the paper out of his clutches and made a quick escape.
"I didn't know you smoked." Kate mused from beside her.
Regan had quickly down the hallway, through the entrance to the school and was propped on the steps – it seemed like some place Mr. Moriarty wouldn't be able to get to – what, with a busy schedule being a teacher and all. "I don't." she replied curtly.
"Then why did-"
"Because he's a filthy liar, that's why." Regan sulked, drawing her legs up to her core and hugging them protectively.
"Regan I don't think you can say that... What's your problem with him, anyway?"
Regan let out a long breath of exasperation. In truth, she wasn't sure anymore. She didn't question the validity of the disturbing events of the morning – but he was playing the game, or whatever he was up to. She couldn't do anything about it now. She needed to keep her enrolment to the school, and that was fact. She didn't want to imagine her parents stopping their bickering long enough to turn on her – and all for what? Being uncomfortable with a teacher? "Do you remember, back in grade 5, we had that god awful class teacher? The old crone with the hairy lip and talons for hands?"
"Ms. Pearson, yeah..." Kate shuddered.
Kate and Regan had instigated a series of plots to get her fired, sick of her constant clutching at their cheeks and musing about the blessings of youth. In hindsight, she was just a lonely old woman who probably never had any children and wanted them – or wasted her own childhood and was desperate to reclaim that feeling. In the end, though, that didn't matter. They somehow managed to send her to hospital with botulism. "Do you remember how she made you feel?"
"Terrified, disgusted, uncomfortable-" Kate began.
"Precisely." Regan interrupted, frowning at her friend.
Kate gazed blankly back at her. "But he's so..." she began, sounding incredibly taken aback by Regan's feelings.
"So?"
"Hot...?" Kate said with a lopsided smile, before giggling to herself.
Regan rolled her eyes. "You're telling me that the entire time I was being singled out for this torture, you're busy ogling his arse?"
"Well, not ogling. But you can just see the lean muscle beneath that perfectly tailored suit? And his eyes!"
Regan held up a hand in protest. "Oh my god, that's really enough of that." She looked away from her blushing friend and out at the street. They sat there together for quite a while as Regan watched the world. At the busy bees in the hive of society, the ordinary people doing ordinary things. They'd leave their ordinary family and their ordinary home, to go to ordinary jobs. The jobs in which there are hundreds of painfully ordinary people working for just one extraordinary person who'd look down at them and see what they really were – unfortunate and unmotivated. Regan would often watch the streets, the hustling and bustling of work-a-day people, and think. She thought so much, that she swore to herself that she wouldn't end up there. She wouldn't leave this school, get an ordinary job, have an ordinary romance, and die an unremarkable and ordinary death. That wasn't the way to go, it was too average.
"... Imagine fucking him." Kate pondered.
The stampede of feet in the hallway signalled the end of the period. Regan looked over at her friend in disgust. "I don't fuck the crazy ones, thank you very much." she grinned.
The rest of the day crawled by on its hands and knees. She found herself terribly bored and hardly took anything in – not that it was too much of a shame, anyway, her classes mainly consisted of hungover and angry teachers trying to wrangle the still hyperactive class they were supposed to be teaching. Some of them even gave up, which surprised Regan – they usually lasted longer. She reflected briefly on the attention and respect with which the teens treated Mr. Moriarty, and then quickly scolded herself for letting her mind wander to him when she was clearly meant to be solving equations.
Eventually, though, the clock struck three and she was free to leave. And leave she did, fast. But evidently not fast enough, as Kate tracked her down instantly and proceeded to gush to her about the boy who'd winked at her in third period as they walked to Regan's home. Regan didn't have to the heart to tell her that she frankly couldn't give a shit, so instead she just nodded and smiled and made appropriate reaction noises. In reality, she was just keeping an eye open for a suspicious black Mercedes. She had doubts that he could be, well, psychotic, anymore - just because they were both certain he was a teacher at her school, and any untoward attention would surely get him out of her life as soon as he shoved himself into it.
"Are you listening?" Kate squeaked.
"What? Yeah, yeah I'm listening."
Whatever he was trying to do, whatever his Machiavellian motivations were - she'd figure it out.
"Prove it then!"
"Uh... His... Arse...?" she guessed.
"Yes but whose arse?"
She'd figure out what disturbing things were swimming around beneath that slicked backed hair, behind the stupid grin, behind the dark brown eyes and thick lashes and-
"Oh Jesus Christ, Kate. I don't know."
Kate huffed, but didn't say another word.
The next morning, the urge to stay safe under the covers was more overwhelming than ever. Why on Earth would she need to leave the bed - when she had everything she could ever possibly want, right here? Sure, there was that little voice in her head that said, 'Hey, Regan. No, you need to get out and socialise and mingle.' - but what good were people anyway.
She stretched. Her mouth's perfect "o" pursed, and she furrowed her brow. She had had some pretty fucked up dreams in the past, but this one took the cake: she'd been wandering the school halls, but they weren't quite the halls, one of the doors was surrounded by a consuming darkness - save for the the door, which illuminated the scene. She'd made her way over to it, and opened - looking frantically for whoever was inside. She felt desperate, like something was wrong - guilty, almost. There was nobody there, but a voice in her ear was hurling unintelligible accusations at her - things that hurt, and she supposed she must've been crying. A book was waved in front of her face: it was small, red, with black cursive writing on the front. It frightened her... Then she woke up.
What a start to a day, though, being scared of a book. She did detest reading at times, but she wouldn't go so far as being terrified by processed piles of pulp and a various arrangements of a 26 letters. On a brighter note: there wasn't any trouble in paradise. Downstairs was quiet, and instead of the usual shouting - happy clinks and clatters of spoons on bowls and warm laughter came from below. Odd, yes, but she'd take it.
Perhaps this year wasn't going to be so bad after all.
And then Regan recalled that she had English again that day, and proceeded to let out a hearty scream into her pillow.