XXX
Janus, having managed to actually be on time to class for once, felt that maybe, just maybe, today was going to be a good day.
And then he'd actually entered the theatre classroom and seen the announcement on the board:
[New Partner Project: Performing a Short Skit]
Seeing this, Janus's heart sank down into his shoes.
This, unfortunately, was the downside of theatre. Janus loved the theatre, and plays, and costumes and makeup, and performances, and everything else about it, but. Theatre was, by its nature, almost always a team effort.
So, he shouldn't have been surprised that they were being assigned a partner project again. It was far from the first they'd had this year, and they hadn't even reached November yet.
In fact, he wasn't surprised. It was more that he was disappointed. Filled with dread? Yes, dread seemed to be the right way to describe it.
Essentially, there were two main ways that people could get partnered up: either by getting to choose, or by being forced together. In the first case, Janus would just end up partnered with whichever unlucky soul happened to not be able to find another partner in time. Or, if there were an uneven number of students at the time, Janus would just get forcefully placed into a group that didn't want him. In the latter case, Janus would get forced to partner up with whichever classmate that happened to be stuck with him- either by the teacher's unfortunate choice or the luck of the draw.
In any case, no one ever wanted to partner with him. His attitude combined with his terrible grades and lack of motivation made it rather clear that being grouped together with him would be a detriment to your grade. Though, Janus thought, if one was being fair, he did at least try more than usual on group assignments. It wasn't his classmates fault they were stuck with him, after all (though, this effort was only employed when he wasn't paired with someone who outright hated him. He'd been paired with some of the students who pushed him around a few times, and in those cases, he'd refused to help at all, even if that resulted in him failing the assignment and getting in trouble. There wasn't any way in hell he was helping those idiots).
Regardless of his dread, however, Janus took a seat and doodled until class began, which was only about a minute later because, even when Janus wasn't late, he certainly wasn't ever early. And with the ending of the bell, their teacher stood at the front of the classroom and clapped their hands once.
"Okay, everyone, I'm sure you've read the announcement on the board already," they said. "So yes, I'm going to be assigning a new project today."
The teacher turned and gestured toward the board.
"And yes, it will be a partner project. There's an even number of you, so there will be ten pairs, which I've already picked out."
At this, the expected groan of disapproval came. For Janus, though, this was at least slightly easier.
"Now, now, I know you all want to work with your friends, but remember," they continued. "If you want to participate in theatre, you will end up working with a lot of people you don't know, and probably, some people you don't even like. So I tried to pair you up based on that."
Janus rolled his eyes, though he doubted the teacher had noticed (nor did he care if they had). Silently, he thought that, if that had been the teacher's criteria, he had likely been the easiest one to pair up for once. No one liked him, so he could be paired up with anyone.
"For this project, you're going to have to write and perform a short skit- about 5 minutes each. You need to have at least 2 characters, but if you have more than 2, then you and your partner will need to perform multiple roles. No outside actors on this one," the teacher rambled on. "Your script will be due in two weeks, and then I'll proofread it and return it with some suggestions. Your performances will take place during the last week of the marking period, so that should give you enough time to meet up for practicing."
Oh, joy.
"Now, I'm assigning this instead of giving you guys a midterm, so it'll be worth a lot of points, but try not to worry too much about it, okay? As long as the effort is there, you should get a passing grade. And remember to have fun with it!" they said. "More specific details are on this rubric, but feel free to ask me if you have any questions."
Oh, joy indeed.
"Now, I'm going to read off the partner list, so please move to sit with your partner once I'm done speaking, okay? You have the rest of the period to start brainstorming for your skit."
And so, the teacher started reading the list of names, and Janus was only halfway paying attention, just enough to hear his name when it was finally announced toward the bottom of the list:
"Janus Hart and Roman Prince."
Oh, fuck.
Janus had practically forgotten that Roman was in this class, since they were in different grades (except theatre was shared between juniors and seniors, so he should have remembered it). He barely paid attention to his other classmates, after all, and he made a point of ignoring Roman extra hard. But yes, Roman was in his class, and now, he was apparently supposed to work with him. On a project that was going to last almost an entire marking period. He was going to be stuck working with Roman for weeks.
Oh, such wonderful fucking joy.
Janus didn't move, but once the teacher had finished, he soon found Roman standing in front of him.
With a huff, likely resulting from Janus's failure to acknowledge his presence, Roman pulled out a chair from another desk and pulled it in front of Janus's.
"So. Any ideas?" Roman asked, clearly trying to sound polite even though Janus could hear the annoyance in his tone.
"Ah, yes, I've come up with an entire 10-hour epic in the ten minutes it's been since we've been given the assignment," Janus replied sarcastically. "In fact, I have so many ideas that we can't possibly choose between them, and so I might as well have none."
Funnily enough, Roman was the one to roll his eyes then.
"You don't have to be an ass. We're supposed to start brainstorming ideas," Roman pointed out.
"Oh, really? Funny, I hadn't been listening," Janus told him, even though he actually had been listening for once. "Do you have any ideas, then?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," Roman confirmed. "I've been hoping we would get to write a skit this year, so I have a few things I've been thinking about."
And wasn't that just wonderful? Of course Roman already knew what he wanted to write. He probably didn't even want to know what Janus would want to do.
"Well, then? What are they?" Janus sighed, hoping that his tone managed to convey the correct amount of annoyance.
"First, I was thinking of something with a prince fighting a villain-"
"Yeah, no."
"What? I didn't even finish!"
"I can already tell it's cliché."
Which probably wasn't wrong, but the real reason Janus denied the idea so quickly was because he had a pretty good idea of which one of them was supposed to play the villain in Roman's little play.
Roman rolled his eyes again. Janus was going to have to accuse him of stealing his schtick at this rate.
"Alright, then, what about someone falling in love with the barista at their local café-"
"The goal here is to get less cliché, not to make us re-enact a badly-written fanfiction."
Silently, Janus was mortified that Roman would even suggest doing a romance skit with him, and there was no way he was ever going to go along with that.
"Hey, I wasn't finished! I was going to say that we should add a plot twist! Like the barista being a robot or a demon or something-"
"Oh, so now we're going to just make it nonsensical? I must say, I certainly prefer nonsense over beating the dead horse of fanfiction tropes, though."
And so the rest of class went, with Roman trying to offer up ideas and Janus denying most of them, more for the sake of annoying Roman than all of the ideas truly being that terrible (though some of the ideas really were quite awful).
It was actually rather shocking that they got anything done at all, but they had at least managed to agree on a genre- though that only happened because the teacher had noticed that they weren't getting anywhere and suggested that as a starting point. So, they were going to do a tragedy, though Janus really had no idea how they were supposed to fit a tragedy into a 5-minute skit, anyway.
That wasn't really his problem, though (or, it was, but he just didn't care). If Roman really wanted to make this assignment even more difficult on himself, that was fine by him.
Janus didn't care if he failed the assignment or not. What was one more failed assignment (failed marking period, failed class, failure), anyway?
Janus fled the classroom as soon as the bell rang, not even bothering to give Roman his contact information like most of his classmates had given to their own partners. If Roman wanted his number badly enough, he could ask Remus (and then Janus could pretend that he didn't know the person trying to contact him, just to annoy Roman some more). He knew he wouldn't be able to get out of working with Roman for long, but he might as well put up a fight.
Even if he wasn't even entirely sure what it was he was fighting against, this time.
XXX
Later, Janus found Patton standing over him while he was trying to eat a late-night sandwich- his go-to dinner since, even after he had stopped completely avoiding his family, he still didn't feel inclined to eat much during the thick tension of family dinner.
"Can I help you, Patton, or are you just here to watch me eat?"
Patton looked somewhat surprised that Janus had technically initiated the conversation, which somehow irked Janus even more than the staring.
"Oh! Um," Patton began. "Roman told me that you two got paired up for a project, but that you left before you could exchange contact information."
Patton pulled out a sticky note and handed it to him.
"So here's Roman's number! Make sure to text him, okay?"
When Janus didn't take the note, Patton's smile faltered but fixed itself within a moment. Sighing, Janus eventually accepted it, though he shoved it into his own pocket without even glancing at the writing.
With the encounter seemingly over, Janus took another bite of his sandwich, only to realize that Patton was still staring at him.
"What?" he hissed. "Are you seriously going to watch me eat? Don't you have anything better to do?"
He saw Patton shift uncomfortably and took a small amount of satisfaction from it.
"I don't know… I just…"
This was getting incredibly frustrating.
"What?" Janus repeated.
"Are you doing okay?"
The sudden, innocent question caught Janus off-guard enough that all of his annoyance was swept away momentarily, before it came back with a burning vengeance as full-fledged anger.
"Just leave me alone, Patton," Janus bit out, hissing his brother's name like it was a curse.
He was so tired of this- of Patton trying to be nice, and just further proving how wonderful he is. Janus silently wished that once- even just once- that Patton would snap at him, or yell at him, or even- or even hit him, just so he wouldn't be perfect anymore. He wanted to force Patton to have a flaw, wanted to show everyone else that Patton had imperfections too, that he wasn't the only one. He wanted Patton to stoop down to his level, even if he rose right back up to his own immediately after- just to prove that it was possible (and maybe, to prove that someone could ascend to something higher, even after being on the same low level that Janus was always on).
"But, Jan-"
But Patton's tone made it clear that this wasn't the day he would get any kind of retaliation from his brother.
"I SAID TO LEAVE ME ALONE!"
And Janus forcefully pushed his chair away from the table and stormed out of the room, leaving his sandwich forgotten on the plate.
XXX