Hey! Did you miss me? Of course you did!

(::)

And that's to the only current reviewer of the last chapter. You want a cookie? Then review. I'll remind you after the chapter.

Piper

The day finally came to an end, and Piper couldn't have rejoiced more. She already had three projects, four essays, two presentations, three worksheets and five pages of math homework to finish, her arms full of every textbook, notebook, and school accessory ever to exist. So when Leo walked by her in the hallway when the last bell of the day rang, even before he started to speak Piper interrupted by saying, "Sorry, can't chat now, too busy."

"What?" Leo asked as if he had misunderstood. "No one is ever too busy for da Leo."

Piper suppressed a grin but failed slightly. "Joke all you want," she said. "I have so much homework right now it isn't even funny."

"Mme Rivet for French?"

"Yeah."

"No wonder," said Leo. "Though I don't have her myself—"

"So lucky," added Piper.

"—I have kids in my homeroom who do, and they say she is a nightmare when it comes to homework," he finished.

"Thanks for the moral booster," muttered Piper, rounding to a stop at one of her classrooms. "Can you hold this?" she asked, gesturing with a prod of her head at all the things she carried. "I forgot something in this class earlier today."

So for a while they shifted around, trying to get a good angle on where to direct the armload. After a few awkward moments, Piper was finally able to walk into the classroom item free. She promptly exited with a single pencil in her hand. Leo groaned.

"Really?" he asked, peeking over the top of all of Piper's stuff.

"Yeah," Piper said, weaving the pencil through her fingers and snapping the eraser end into Leo's face. "Let's go."

So Leo had the privilege of carrying all of Piper's stuff back to the dormitories. Piper had assumed he would give it all back when he went for his own things, but apparently he was let out of eighth period early and was able to drop them off in his room before coming for Piper. She cleverly didn't mention that he could give her back her stuff until they got to the common room.

"Thank you," said Leo, spilling his arms out and dropping everything onto the floor on the first floor of the dormitory building. "I take my labour in cash. Anything over ten will do."

Piper reached into her pocket and pulled out a dime. "Here's your ten," she said, flicking it in the air.

Leo sighed and caught it, promptly chucking it over his shoulder. "Very thoughtful," he said. "And speaking of thoughtful, I forgot to ask you something earlier; why did you steal that BMW again?"

Piper frowned. "Why did you run away six times?" she asked hotly, turning away from Leo. She kept fiddling with the pencil in her hand, turning it over in her fingers. "I don't wanna talk about it."

"Oh, come on," said Leo. "It's not like your dad got mad at you for making out with your boyfriend in his car or something." He stopped. "Did you?"

"Oh my God, no!" yelled Piper, whirling around, feeling some relief knowing that Leo was as clueless as she wanted him to be.

"…and then his parents banned the car, so you decided to go get your own…" he continued to himself, eyes pointed upward as if thinking of the most impossible story he could imagine.

"Oh, God, shush!" yelled Piper, a little annoyed and embarrassed, but fortunately nobody seemed o be paying attention to them.

"And then— Oh, Pip-er, you're such a bad girl," Leo sang. Piper rolled her eyes.

"Are you always like this?" she asked. "Because I don't think I could survive to see graduation it if I have to put up with you all year."

"That's what every teacher I ever had said," Leo agreed. "And don't you have homework to finish?"

Piper groaned. "Don't remind me," she said, collapsing on a couch.

"I've got my own things to finish," said Leo. "Plus, for knowing Spanish, I get to present an all second-language speech to my class tomorrow!" He faked a cheesy smile with two thumbs up. Piper resisted the urge to laugh, but failed anyway.

"So you know Spanish?" asked Piper, once all her laughter had left her.

"That is what I just said, right?" said Leo.

"That's so cool," said Piper, clapping her hands together. "Here—say something for me."

"Uh, like what?" Leo asked.

"I dunno—something," said Piper.

"Piper es estúpido," Leo said in Spanish. Piper clapped enthusiastically.

"I heard my name—what did you say?" she asked excitedly.

"Piper has homework," Leo lied.

"Ugh, seriously!" she cried, still oblivious. "Okay, say something else."

Leo said something else.

"What does that mean?" asked Piper with a blank expression.

Leo told her, and she ended up smacking him on the back of the head for swearing.

"I have homework to finish up," she said, sorting through her large pile on the floor.

"And I've got to start that speech," said Leo. "Do you know if there's a study hall in the dormitories somewhere?"

Piper pointed down the room to a clean wooden door. "In there," she told him.

"Great," he replied. "Now I know which room to avoid. I'm going outside." He bent over and ripped out a page from Piper's open notebook as well as stealing one of her pens.

"But won't you be even more distracted outside than inside?" asked Piper.

Leo just plucked the pencil out of her hands and tucked it behind his ear, journalist-style. "Inspiration," he called it.

-o-O-o-

Even though Piper knew her presence would distract Leo even further, she joined him on his homework hunt. They climbed up the same hill they had eaten on earlier that day during lunch, but instead of doing what he was supposed to do (the speech), Leo pulled out a small half-built machine from his jacket pocket along with a few screws and other tiny mechanical things and began to fiddle around with them.

"What is that?" Piper asked, thinking that after five minutes of doing homework with whatever Leo was doing was enough. He scarcely looked up.

"Some people read for fun," he said. "Others play video games. I build."

"You… build?" asked Piper, not quite being able to believe this. "Like—build what exactly?"

Leo shrugged. "Usually I just buy a mechanical toy or whatever and take it apart, rebuilding it with a few of my own special touches."

Piper noticed the machine he was working on was a silver bird. She spotted the structural frame and a few original parts inside, but a few of Leo's adjustments in there as well.

"I've been working on this one for a few days," said Leo. "Started just before I was shipped here, really. Bought it from a vendor at the train station."

"That's cool," said Piper, subconsciously reaching her arm out to touch it, but remembering her manners just in time. "May I?"

"Go ahead," said Leo, holding it out for her. "Doesn't work yet, but I'm hoping it will by the end of the week."

"This is so awesome," Piper repeated, etching her fingers across the elegance of the metal toy bird. "What does it do?"

"Nothing so far," Leo replied. "Before I got it it just hopped on the floor, pecking at the ground. Once I'm done, I'm hoping I could get it to fly."

"Really?" asked Piper. "You can do that?"

"Remotes are easy," said Leo. "Perfected them a long time ago."

"And when do you work on it?" asked Piper, still carving her fingers along the side of the bird. "This must be very time-consuming."

"At night when all the other guys are asleep I try to spend a few minutes on it," said Leo casually. "And sometimes during the boring school lessons. Like math."

"Like math," echoed Piper. She handed it back to Leo. "Good luck with it," she said.

"I have a good feeling about this one," said Leo, taking it gracefully. "My last three didn't work for some reason."

"Why?" Piper asked.

"Gee, I don't know," said Leo. "Maybe it's because I didn't do something right. Or because of a curse. Take your pick."

Leo went back to fixing it, Piper watching over his shoulder awkwardly.

"And, um, where did you learn to do this?" she asked just so that he wouldn't forget she was there.

"My mum taught me before she died," he replied. Piper winced.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to—"

"It's fine," said Leo, shrugging it off. "I got my problems. You've got your making-out-in-the-back-seat-of-the-car problems." He broke out into a grin.

"You are so infuriating!" yelled Piper, shoving Leo with both hands, causing him to lose balance and topple a few feet down the hill.

"That wasn't very nice," he said, dusting himself off and crawling back up.

"That comment you just made wasn't very nice," Piper shot back. Then she saw the expression on Leo's face and, once again, broke out laughing.

So she spent the rest of the Homework Hour watching Leo work on his toy bird. Soon dusk fell and they headed back inside the dormitories half an hour before curfew. Piper didn't finish her homework that day, and Leo had nothing to present the next day in front of his Spanish class.

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