::
"Danny." Hearing his name, Danny paused in his latest text message to Randy before looking up to Tucker, who was standing in the doorway of their French class. "Danny, I think I'm losing my mind."
"As opposed to you actually having one?" Danny pushed Tucker in, making sure the teen kept his balance. "What are you even… No." Sitting behind the teacher's desk was a far too familiar ghost, Andrew looking a mix between disgruntled and amused. "You're subbing French- When did you find out? Why didn't you tell me? Andy!"
It was only through pure luck that no one was paying him any attention as he headed over to Andrew's side. And that no one heard just how familiar he was being with their substitute teacher. Andrew, on his part, only shook his head, "I thought they were joking. I was in the teacher's lounge yesterday and someone brought up how I was French and your Principal just began smiling. It was...disturbing, to put it mildly."
"Yeah, she usually is. How does that relate to you teaching French- Where's Mrs. Flores?" There hadn't been any mentions of vacation leave, as far as Danny could recall. "Are you even qualified to teach French? No offense, I mean, I know you have your teaching degree for English, but-"
"No, no, I brought up the same point," Andrew sat up, absently moving a few papers around and giving a disgusted look to their textbook. "She started going on about how it's only beginner French and there should be enough lesson plans to get me through the few months I'll be needed here-"
"Months? You'll be here teaching for months?" Okay, that one had been overheard, and Danny's pure joy had probably been noticed, but, really. This only helped his act. "Seriously?"
"Yes, Danny, 'seriously'." Shaking his head with a smile, Andrew stood up and uncapped one of his purple markers. He was starting to carry them around more than even his knives, at this point. "Class is starting." Making sure to show his pout as much as he could, Danny retreated to his seat beside Tucker. "Good afternoon, class. As you're likely confused, let me catch you up to speed."
In one corner of the board, Andrew had written his name as well as the day's current date, blocking it off from the lesson he was now writing on the board in a mixture of English and French. It was amusing, since he honestly thought he needed to write his name. Everyone in the school already knew it. "Your French teacher, Mrs. Flores, is going to be on maternity leave for the next five months, last I was informed."
"Mrs. Flores was pregnant?" Oh, good. The rest of the class was as startled by that information as Danny was.
"Is. Present tense, please, Mr. Ryu. Yes, however, she is. She'll be returning sometime around late March, but for now, I'll be taking over your classes. As most of you might know at this point, I was born and raised in France when I was younger. This seems to be enough for your principal to think I can teach this class. Heathen."
That earned bits of laughter scattered throughout the class, Danny rolling his eyes dramatically when Andrew caught his gaze. Andrew let his own eyes flick to the ceiling in a half-hearted parody of an eyeroll, Danny trying to hide his laughter. "It can't be much different from teaching English," someone muttered near the back, Andrew giving a snort.
"You would think so, wouldn't you? Learning a language is never easy, especially when it's so different from one you grew up with." Andrew capped his marker, smile twitching on his face. "And I will tell you now that half of the French language is for 'aesthetics'. A good deal of it doesn't make sense, is redundant, and is purposely difficult to learn. Much like English, no?"
Paulina was the one to raise her hand, this time, speaking before even being called on. It seemed most of Andrew's classes were like that, once they all learned he was a pushover when it came to his students. "But it sounds utterly gorgeous. It can't really be as bad as you're making it sound."
"Photonically pleasing does not mean grammatically pleasing," Andrew rifled around the teacher's desk for a moment, finally pulling out a folder. "It says you last left off around learning the feminine and masculine verbs for words, oui?" There was a collective answer of oui, Andrew looking like he was trying not to wince. "Please feel free to not answer as a class unless asked. It's largely unhelpful as a learning technique."
"It's because their pronunciation was terrible," Danny muttered to Tucker, knowing Andrew had heard him by the smile he was trying to hide.
"Have any of you learned to speak in complete sentences, yet?" There were a few hands raised throughout the class, Danny halfheartedly raising his own. "Alright, I'm going to switch to French and ask a few questions. I want you all to follow along as best you can and answer if possible. Don't worry if you can't, I just want to see where you all are. Everyone understand?"
The last few words were in French, everyone nodding and a few chiming in with 'oui's scattered throughout. Andrew nodded again, looking around before thinking for a moment. "Has she taught you basic sentence conjunction?" Someone raised their hand, Andrew nodding.
"A bit. We can put together simple things. Not much else." It seemed more than Andrew was at least expecting, the man continuing with the theme of asking questions and waiting for answers. He started using more obscure dialects and words, getting to the point where he was speaking as a native instead of the words they had been taught.
"Now you're just being mean to them, my angel. You know there's a difference between native speaking and standard speaking."
"That and the fact my French is from the 1960s," Andrew snickered, sitting on his desk at this point, most of his attention devoted to Danny. It felt safe enough, since no one else seemed to understand a thing they were saying. "Think I should show mercy?"
"When do you ever? Also, I'm pretty sure Randy is planning something worrying for dinner. Not sure what, though. He was being vague about it."
"When is he ever straight- Don't-" The warning came a bit too late, since Danny was already laughing loudly and trying to smother the sound, failing rather spectacularly. "Honestly. Right, so you all have a rather strong grasp of basics. That will serve you well if you choose to continue learning French, but for now I want to go over a few things with you that might help make the language easier to learn."
::
"So what's this I hear about you teaching French?" Randy hid his laughter against Andrew's neck as the man groaned loudly. "Petit mec tells me everything."
"As if you wouldn't have found out eventually anyways." Andrew shifted and squirmed, Randy only wrapping more around his shoulders from where he was standing behind the couch. "Randy."
"Andy." He probably would have been shoved off if Andrew wasn't trying to be careful of Danny, who was curled up on top of him and napping, reading glasses low on his face. "At least you get the chance to teach them the language the right way."
"I wasn't exactly trained in teaching French," Andrew complained, letting his head fall back to rest on Randy's shoulder, one hand grading papers that were floating around him, another buried in Danny's hair and rubbing at his scalp. "Speaking the language doesn't automatically qualify someone to teach it."
"It's Amity Park, are you really that surprised." Reaching past Andrew, Randy gathered up the homework Danny had been working on before moving to sit on the couch. It took a bit of poking and prodding to get Danny to move even an inch before Randy sighed and shifted the teen to where he was laying over the both of them.
Settling down, Randy flipped to the teen's math homework, reaching for a pencil to start making corrections and notes as needed. He read through half the paper before he was running a hand through his hair, "Oh, dear." Every question was wrong, and Randy had to check that he had Danny's paper in hand and not a list of what not to do in math.
"Oh dear?" Andrew leaned over to look at the paper himself, wincing after a few moments. "Oh, dear." It was really bad if even Andrew could see the problem after a few moments of glancing at the paper. "I thought you went over these problems with him last week?"
"I did! I remember because he was making math puns the whole time." At the rather judging look, Randy fiddled with the paper for a moment. "I might have encouraged a few of them, here and there, but that's not the problem here. He knows these, I know he does, so it doesn't… Hold on a 'mo."
Pulling over a blank piece of paper, Randy scribbled down a new equation, this one near similar to the first except for a few rearranged and changed numbers. A quick moment and the answer was the same as the one Danny had. "Did… He read the questions wrong? All of them?"
"Well the word problems are perfectly fine but, yeah. It's like he couldn't see-" Randy cut himself off, looking back down to where Danny was asleep, reading glasses near falling off of him at this point. "You don't think…?"
"He… He never went to an eye exam," Andrew chewed on his lip, tilting Danny's head towards them with a hand on his cheek. "I just gave him a pair of old reading glasses I had lying around when I noticed he was having problems."
"Which was about three years ago, right?" The silence seemed weighted, unspoken words flying back and forth, half-formed arguments that died without even a breath, snippy remarks conveyed with nothing but a tilt of the head and narrowing of the eyes, and finally a noise that was nothing but a quiet sigh.
"I'll call Jazz and have her set up an appointment for him sometime this week," Andrew mumbled, pulling his phone out and already dialing the number. "Neither of them are going to be happy about this."
"Considering how he is about you and your glasses, I think he'll be okay with it." Right. Scribbling out Danny's answers and re-writing the equations to be more reader friendly should at least help short-term. He'd talk with Danny about it a bit more once he woke up from his nap. "Hey, is it just me…"
"It's not." Andrew was hiding a smile as he buried a hand in Danny's hair again. "Hello, Jasmine. I wanted to talk to you- No, Jasmine, I am not asking you for his hand in marriage." Snorting at that rather delightful thought, Randy went back to writing things out, thoughts churning.
Danny was sleeping so much more these days, and it… It was a good thing. Instead of pushing his body to his limits and forcing himself to keep going through his pain, he'd instead find one of them and curl up for nap. He was still up all hours of the night dealing with stray ghosts and problems, but nothing like it had been the last few years. He had finally acknowledged his limits and was working with them, instead of against them. It… It was good. Nice.
Now if they could just get him to wear a pair of prescription glasses, things might end up going even better. Randy didn't hold out much hope on that front, however.