Author's Note: I'm ba-ack! And feel very badly at having taken such a large gap between updates… and was struck with a sudden Christmassy, festive mood while writing this, even though we're more than six months away. Reviews are love and thank you for all I've received thus far.
December
"I know you are all rather preoccupied with the Holiday season, not to mention the beginning of your vacation tomorrow," said Johnson, addressing the faces of his students – glazed with a familiar Christmas stupor – "However, I see no reason for that to interfere with my class. As such, we will continue as usual. Open to page 106, Chapter Seven in your text books, Cell Meiosis…."
Johnson trailed away, a noise in the hallway outside his classroom snatching hold of his attention.
It was a muffled voice, raised to the top of its lungs…singing.
"–Deck the halls with boughs of holly!"
Johnson saw as the singing also caught the attention of his students and drew their minds even further away from their text books.
"Fa la la la la, la la la la!"
Johnson's eyes flickered to the characteristically empty seat in the front right corner of the classroom, then turned to look at the door.
"Tis the season to be jolly!"
Class had started ten minutes ago. Johnson had been beginning to hope that Pierce had, in fact, given it up.
"Fa la la la la, la la la –" and with a terrific swing of the door and arms spread wide, large grin stretching across his face, Pierce stepped into the classroom with one final, lingering, "LA!"
There was a spattering of applause across the classroom. Pierce bowed. The applause evaporated when Johnson cleared his throat.
"I suppose I don't have to tell you that you are once again late, Mr. Pierce."
"Just call me the late Mr. Pierce," said Hawkeye, and winked.
Johnson frowned. "Take a seat, Mr. Pierce."
"Oh, right!" Pierce held up his finger as though he had just remembered something, face brightening. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a lint-covered bar of chocolate.
"Merry Christmas, sir. I figured I'd get you something other than an apple because that's really so unoriginal."
"Take your seat, Mr. Pierce."
Pierce shrugged and left the candy on the edge of Johnson's desk. "Whatever you say."
He stepped toward the empty desk, took hold of it and hoisted it into the air.
"Mr. Pierce, what are you doing?"
"Taking my seat –"
"Sit down this instant, Mr. Pierce!"
Pierce let down his desk with a clatter to the floor and looked mystified. "But you said –"
"That is enough, Mr. Pierce. If you insist on being difficult than, I assure you, you have another thing coming."
Pierce finally complied, grumbling under his breath about people not being able to make up their minds.
Johnson looked down and saw that he had subconsciously ruffled all his notes. Feeling distinctly off-put and forgetting where he'd been before Pierce had come in, Johnson attempted to regain control of his class.
He began discussing the finer points of Anaphase II and then instructed the class to fill out a worksheet he had supplied at the beginning of class. He swept the chocolate bar Pierce had given him into the bin on the floor, doubting that it was, in fact, wholly chocolate.
From the front right corner, Pierce yawned largely and exaggeratedly.
Johnson debated whether or not an interruption of the class would be worth a reprimand. But before he could make up his mind, the words had sprung from his lips "Mr. Pierce, is it that you assume I can't see you sitting right before my eyes?"
Pierce shook his head. "Oh no, sir. You see me when I'm sleeping. You know when I'm awake –"
"Mr. Pierce!"
"You know when I've been bad or good –"
"Enough, Mr. Pierce!"
Pierce smothered a grin but fell silent. "So be good," he muttered out of the corner of his lips to his neighbor, "for goodness' sakes."
Johnson rolled his eyes before he could stop himself.
"If you're quite finished," he snapped to Pierce, and waved for the class to proceed.
"But, sir," said Pierce, "there's all the other verses –" and launched into song, yet again:
"You better watch out. You better not cry. You better not pout –"
"Mr. Pierce! Why do you insist –?"
"Wait, I'm telling you why –"
"Mr. Pierce!"
"Because Santa Claus is coming to town –"
By then the concentration of the class had fully dissolved and had turned into utter hysterics. Johnson surveyed his students from behind his desk and wondered gloomily if the battle was lost. His eyes again strayed to the perpetrator – Pierce, grinning as always – and he scowled.
"Mr. Pierce, I will ask you only once more to control yourself –"
Pierce pouted mockingly, "Oh, please sir, Mr. Scrooge. It's Christmas."
Johnson's fist came down on surface of his desk without having thought to command it there. His cup of pens rattled dangerously near the edge. "I do not care if it is Christmas! It gives you no right to turn my classroom into a farce!"
Pierce's fist hammered against his own desk. "Humbug! Ba, humbug!"
One of the students near the back of the class was laughing so hard, he rolled off his seat and onto the floor. Johnson finally conceded that he had, in fact, lost this round. Pierce, unfortunately, had something on his side that Johnson did not. Something that Mr. Dickens had quoted rather well in the very book Pierce was referencing:
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.
As Johnson surveyed his classroom gone to chaos he remembered another line:
And, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.
And there at their head, was Pierce – grinning, as always.
Johnson attempted to gather what little of his dignity that had been splayed across the floor. He cleared his throat and the students at least consented to look up at him, wiping tears of mirth from their eyes. And Pierce – grinning, as always – looked triumphant.
"Very well. I can see that I have lost any hope I had in completing today's lesson. You may be dismissed early. However, let us remember what Charles Dickens warned us of – of which Mr. Pierce reminded me of just now:
"This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased."
Jonson frowned at his students for a moment longer, taking an almost perverse pleasure in their looks of blank confusion. He flicked his wrist as though trying to rid it of some slimy residue, "You may go. Merry Christmas."
The students gathered there things, stood from their desk with the scraping of the chair legs upon the floor. When the last of them had filed out the door, there was Pierce, grinning, even though Johnson had not asked him to stay.
Johnson avoided looking at the boy, because surely he had stayed behind to gloat. He snapped his brief case shut and walked out the classroom door. Pierce followed.
"Sir?"
Johnson turned. "Well," he said, "I suppose you are very proud of yourself, Mr. Pierce. You have succeeded in not only undermining my authority by yourself, but leading your classmates to do the same."
Pierce shrugged. "Oh, come on, Mr. Johnson. It is Christmas. Give them a break."
Johnson pressed his lips together. "Yes, so you have said." He turned around again, preparing to make his way to the teacher's lounge and make himself a cup of coffee, perhaps collapse onto the couch and think of all the devious way he could get back at Pierce for this – perhaps with a one-hundred multiple choice question quiz to begin the next semester.
He remembered something and turned back around to face the boy, "And, Mr. Pierce?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Strike two," said Johnson and watched in satisfaction as the boy's smile slipped off his lips. Johnson let the door swing shut behind him. "Merry Christmas."
And missed it as Hawkeye crossed his arms over his chest, falling to lean against the closed classroom door. "And a happy New Year, sir," he muttered. He watched as Johnson walked down the hallway, briefcase swinging in his paw and a jaunty little lilt to his step.
Hawkeye smiled. Surely, this meant war.