Seymour had known to expect the Skid Row School For Teens to be big, even bigger than the already overwhelming Skid Row School For Children he had attended previously. Mr. Mushnik had warned him that it would be repeatedly, in an effort to, in his words, "make sure he didn't end up dead or in a loony bin before second period." And yet, the hallways seemed so much bigger than they had when he had run his schedule for this semester more times than he could count as if that would do anything to ward off trouble, now that they were jam packed with a massive, tumultuous river of students that threatened to overflow and take them down with them. Seymour managed to tear his eyes away from this seemingly eminent disaster and redirect them towards the paper he held in his far from steady hands after a long moment, eventually managing to gather from it that his first class was AP Calculus AB with Mr. Martin in room h986 even through the overwhelming cacophony of the student body and then reading the words a few more times, not trusting his ability to perceive them correctly or wanting to brave the crowd to get to his first class. Or brave his first class.
He had done well in his previous high school semesters, somehow, despite attending classes online due to a mystery illness he had contracted and never been seen by a doctor for… Mr. Mushnik didn't think the price was worth it… as well as his general and all-encompassing existence as a disappointing failure, and the pressure to keep this miracle of a perfect GPA and his only actual accomplishment and justification for his existence going mounted with each semester. AP Calculus AB had been his hardest class the previous semester, and he had barely squeaked by with a 94.98%; what if it was finally what did him in?! What if he… Seymour's spiraling thoughts were abruptly scattered as he was simultaneously hit by the sound of the one-minute bell and a clearly very post-pubescent… student? teacher? He made a desperate grab for the handle of a nearby locker far too late, reeling from shame even before he had hit part of the floor but mostly his now scattered books at an angle that felt and probably looked extremely awkward. Ignoring the pain in his stomach and ribs where his books had jabbed into him, Seymour quickly moved to start picking them up, just as quickly stopping as he saw the man of unclear student/teacher status at this school who had run into him kneeling in front of him with, ironically, his probably fourth or fifthhand at least AP Calculus AB textbook extended in front of him.
That leather jacket and the confidence with which he wore it, its complete suitability to him alone outclassed his entire meager store of machoness and net worth… "My apologies, I didn't see ya there. Matter of fact, I don't recall ever seein' you here. Are ya new here?" Seymour flinched as the bell signaled that he was now late to his first class, even as it seemingly didn't phase his mysterious and charismatic companion, and eventually took the book from him and started to gather the others with his help before answering, pondering the black rope with subtle gold stripes wrapped around his arm that had briefly poked through the sleeve of his jacket while doing so. "Yeah, I was homesch- at a different school before… Thanks." The man acknowledged his thanks with a distracted nod as he peered at Seymour's schedule before placing it on his now restored stack of books. "Mr. Martin's decent for AP Calculus AB, I had 'im last year." He sprung to his envious height, practically reaching the tops of the lockers, and extended a hand that Seymour took after a moment of longing for his to be that size. The second after he had gotten to his feet as well, the man took off in a direction that Seymour realized headed towards room h986, and he got his wits about him enough to follow him a moment later, causing him to look over at him.
"Looks like the only class we have in common is Botany, but you just tell me whenever you need help, ya hear? I had most've your classes last year. The name's Orin Scrivello, D.D.S." Seymour looked at him confusedly. "...D.D.S?" Orin laughed slightly, mostly good naturedly but with a hint of annoyance. "Well, it'll be D.D.S. soon enough, anyway. And you are?" Seymour tried and hopefully succeeded in fixing his ever slumping posture, hoping to bridge the height gap between them as much as possible. "Seymour… Seymour Krelborn." Just as abruptly as Orin had started walking towards room h986, he stopped outside of what Seymour realized after a moment was the door to it, and he halted his movement as well after a delay. "Well Seymour, I'll see you in Botany. We'll see what kind of havoc we can wreak there." As the sting of Orin's probably friendly slap against his back and the sound of his laughter as he sauntered down the hall in the same way they had come faded, Seymour braced himself for the reception he would receive upon being late to his first class, eventually managing to open the door and enter the room. Immediately upon hearing the creak of the door, Mr. Martin spun around, affixing an almost triumphant glare to Seymour and causing him to freeze up while still holding it open.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't the little smarmy, unreliable, weaselly Mr. Krelborn. Everyone, gaze upon him, for his majesty is too important to show up to class on time like the rest of us lowly peasants!" As the other students contributed to his feeling of being pinned down further with their piteous, slightly sanctimonious gazes, he barely heard Mr. Martin drop his grandiose persona with an unnervingly quiet "Find a seat" over the ringing in his ears. After a moment, he managed to drag his gaze away from him and look across the room, quickly realizing that there were only two seats left in the back right corner of the room and sheepishly sliding into the one closer to the door while offering up something that hopefully resembled a "Sorry." His classes swiftly progressed in a stressful blur as he fought against his awful as usual handwriting in an attempt to produce legible notes and his omnipresent anxieties and other distracted thoughts that threatened and all too often succeeded in dragging his attention away from this material that he just had to get right.
What if AP Calculus AB was a bust now that Mr. Martin had been privy to the full extent of his incompetence on the first day of classes for the spring semester? What if no one wanted to work with him when that group project that Mr. Mushnik had mentioned in AP Environmental Science came along? Would the hybrid between a butterwort and a Venus flytrap he had bred in the hopes of presenting it at the school's science fair finally stop wilting and start growing if he added more iron to its soil? Wasn't it amazing that such phylogenetically distant plants could be bred together in the first place? They weren't even in the same order, and yet they had been able to be crossed together! That was one of the many reasons plants were so much more fascinating than animals, even moreso than the complete lack of judgment or social isolation that they offered them… although they certainly exhibited parallels to those with each other… and with some animals such as pollinators that lacked the optimal features for spreading their pollen and insects that sought to steal their nectar… they could breed and produce viable offspring despite immense physical and genetic differences and phylogenetic distance, while he, supposedly an example of evolution's cream of the crop as a human, couldn't even form connections with his fellow humans… so maybe the plants he spent much of his time with rather than his fellow man really were more evolved than him… although Orin hadn't seemed to be too repulsed by him, so maybe there was potential there? If he didn't catch on to his unrelenting nature as a failure of a person as Mr. Martin and everyone else in his life had, anyway…
The bell loudly signaled the end of class and his failure to write down notes for… five? ten? even more?! minutes as he had oh so stupidly daydreamed about plants and a potential friendship… or maybe even something more… that was doomed to never happen, and Seymour frantically wrote down what was on the board while trying to remember any snippets of what Mr. Mushnik had said during that time and mentally cursing himself out for completely dropping the ball on paying attention to it. He shoved his woefully lacking notes into his backpack, avoiding Mr. Mushnik's gaze and quickly moving past the only desk that had been bereft of a student in any of the classrooms he had been in so far besides that of AP Calculus AB on his way to the door while hoping that he hadn't caught on to the lack of attention he had been paying him near the end of class and wouldn't want to talk to him about it or anything else before he made his way to his last and most looked forward to class of the day: Botany. Seymour tensed up even further as his semi father figure passed him, eventually relaxing back to his customary level of unease as he sped past him without even a glance in his direction.
After he had exited the classroom, Seymour made his way out as well, turning in the direction opposite to the one he had taken to get to the non-Honors or AP class that he really shouldn't have taken but hadn't been able to resist. At least it might be helpful for his science fair project? And he shared it with Orin, that was also a definite plus. Seymour found the room and slid into an empty seat front and center, periodically and hopefully not too frequently looking behind him until Orin emerged through the door. He waved him over to the seat to his left with a level of enthusiasm that hopefully did not test the boundaries of social acceptability, feeling extremely rare pride shooting through him as he grinned back at him and unhesitatingly took the seat he had indicated. "So… Cecil, was it? How're you likin' your classes so far?" While questioning whether he should correct Orin about his name or just accept his new life as Cecil, Seymour instinctively looked back at the sound of the door opening.
And saw her.
The most stunning and beautiful woman… the most stunning and beautiful thing in general he had ever seen… she was toned and elegant, with a magnetic aura and figure… radiating strength and warmth and… well… radiance that practically dragged him away from his desk and towards her. "H-Hi." He only fully realized that he was standing right in front of her after he had greeted her, causing panic to flare up in him until it was mostly quieted down as he processed that the warmth in her gaze and demeanor hadn't left upon being subjected to his presence… it almost never left him almost entirely like that… "Hi." Simultaneously exhilarated by the smile she was now bestowing upon him and once again panicked by the mostly expertly hidden shakenness he now thought he was registering from her, Seymour found himself gesturing to the thankfully still empty desk to his right. "Do you want to…"
He trailed off as Orin's voice caused him to register his presence at his side, totally imposing in spite of his earlier and now completely absent friendliness. "Audrey, why aren't you in the left wing where I left you?!" She shrank away from him slightly, pressing up against the wall behind her. "...Mr. Mushnik found me and let me go, and I didn't wanna miss another class…" Seymour stared with increasing horror and loathing towards Orin as Audrey ran a graceful hand along her wrist, gingerly rubbing her skin underneath a black rope with yellow stripes that bound it far too tightly. Orin unceremoniously grabbed it, forcibly ripping it off and causing her to flinch and Seymour to want to kill him. "It's ALWAYS him…" He muttered something that vaguely resembled "that son of a bitch" under his breath before roughly pulling her towards the desk to his left and shoving her into it before sitting back in his. Eventually, Seymour managed to force himself to sit back next to him, wishing that the other seats next to Audrey hadn't been filled and that Orin would fall off a roof and die.
He barely paid any attention to Mrs. Luce, even as she lectured on what had been his favorite subject of inquiry, that had since been demoted to his second favorite the second Audrey had walked into the room. What were her likes, dislikes, ways she had dreamed of being proposed to? How had such an incredible woman ended up with Orin of all people, and how did he have it in him to treat her with anything but the utmost respect and care? Could he find a way to talk to her with Orin literally and figuratively between them? Did he dare to hope that those empty seats beside him in AP Calculus AB and AP Environmental Science would belong to her? Surely at least the latter did, how else would Mr. Mushnik have realized that she wasn't in class? The realization that this horrific situation between her and Orin must have at least been going on as early as last semester for Mr. Mushnik to have figured out that she had literally been tied up by him slowly, horrifically broke through his awareness along with one that that question of Orin's he had answered probably several minutes ago had been "Do you wanna be lab partners?" and he had… probably? said yes out of habit.
Soon… probably soon… afterwards, the bell signaling the end of class rang, and for once Seymour didn't bother to chastise himself for failing to pay attention to the lecture. Orin stood up and was quickly joined by Audrey, who he couldn't help but stare at as Orin asked him some kind of question that he didn't want to pay him the respect of listening to. His breath caught in his throat as she met his gaze, offering him a warm smile that he managed to return after a pause, before looking back at Orin with much less warmth and some added fear as he repeated the question, louder this time. "Do you have any ideas for the project?" There was a project? Seymour managed to force himself to look away from Audrey and at him, trying and hopefully succeeding in hiding his loathing towards him. "...Uh… well, I have this plant I've been working on… it's a cross between a butterwort and a Venus flytrap… we could do something with that." Orin sat on his desk, thankfully completely ignoring Audrey in his amazement. "Wow, that is incredible! Do ya have any pictures of it?" After a pause, Seymour reluctantly started digging his phone out of the mass of papers and notebooks in his backpack, wishing that he didn't have to show Audrey such a beaten up, cheap, not even secondhand thing in his possession.
Covering it with his hand as much as he could, he waited its customary agonizingly long time to load anything, that it was seemingly making even longer now to spite him, and eventually got to the picture of the plant he had now decided was named Audrey 2 where it looked the least sickly. It always looked at least a little sickly for some reason… Seymour was left with his hand awkwardly extended as Orin unceremoniously grabbed his phone from him, and his anger at this was quickly suppressed by the joy and pride of seeing Audrey clearly taking an interest in his plant from behind Orin. "Cute plant. It's nice. And big! It'll make a great project! Do you have a name for it?" Orin handed Seymour back his phone, and he quickly shoved it back somewhere in his backpack without looking at it while shaking his head. Audrey couldn't find out that he had named a plant after her after just meeting her, and he didn't even want to think about how Orin would react if he knew. "...Not yet. I'll keep thinking on it, though." Orin nodded contemplatively, and Audrey shifted uncomfortably behind him. "...Shouldn't we be leaving now?"
Immediately, Orin spun around to face her, his entire demeanor completely 180d into inappropriate, seething anger. "You're quite the little chatterbox, ain't ya?" She flinched away from him, looking at him in fear. "I'm sorry." He stalked towards her menacingly, causing her to back away from him until she was against a wall and reinvigorating Seymour's barely dormant desire to kill him, that he would never be brave enough to even get close to acting upon… "Sorry, what?!" Audrey pressed up against the wall while Seymour tried and oh so pathetically failed to get himself to move in between them. "Sorry, Doctor. Doctor. Sorry, Doctor." After a tension-fraught pause, Orin sneered down at her. "That's better." He redirected his gaze behind him at Seymour, now sneering in a more friendly manner, as if he thought there was still an understanding and camaraderie between them after how horrible he had been to Audrey. "Ya gotta train 'em, heh, stud?" Orin approached him with that stupid sauntering gait, writing something down on a piece of notebook paper with handwriting that was somehow even worse than his before extending it towards him, causing Seymour to concede to taking it after a long moment.
"Listen, here's my cell and home phone numbers. Text me with yours and give me a buzz if you ever need anything." Just as Audrey finished hesitantly slinking to what seemed to be her customary place behind him, he spun around to face her, the completely unjustified contempt that he seemingly always looked at her with flashing across his face. "Audrey! You got the handcuffs?" Audrey looked at Seymour for a brief moment, embarrassed, and he only managed to attempt to give her a reassuring expression through his anger after she had looked down at the floor. "...They're right in my bag…" For some reason, Orin laughed harshly at this as he roughly herded her towards the door. Seymour stayed there, stunned and disgusted along with a million other emotions, for a long moment, eventually managing to force himself to pack up his things and leave the scene of the crime against Audrey and the decency of humanity he had just witnessed as a mental image of Mr. Mushnik impatiently waiting for him by his car flashed across his mind.