SRRY FR TH SPMMNG
Random Generation Kill fic amnesty. This was going to be a boarding school AU because I am me and apparently that is all I write in any fandom, ever.
Morning announcements are held at 7:30am, in some kind of seminar room right next to the library. It's crowded but not stifling; the room has high ceilings and an entire wall of open casement windows. Plus, there's less than 100 students in the junior class, and the entire student body falls just short of 400.
Brad remembers facts like these from the brochure at random times, things he doubted were true when he was flipping through the welcome package back on the West coast. They were just words on a page with 2-D pictures back then, spouting some bullshit about acreage and building histories and seasonal sports, all of which were impossible to imagine when he was lying on his ratty old bed from junior high, with bare feet hanging off the edge and the smell of the ocean drifting through his window.
Still. High school is high school is high school. This might be a nicer one than Brad's used to, but that's about it. There are noticeable jagged lines among the rows of desks as people scoot closer to chat with their friends. Guys are yelling across the room at each other, girls are leaning over desks and talking more quietly. If Brad closes his eyes, he could be in homeroom right now, in Mrs. Schroeder's 1st period with the rest of the turds in his class.
The bell rings with a weird harmonious tone that Brad would associate more with a philharmonic than a high school. Right on cue, some guy goes up to the front and stands behind the podium with a bunch of papers. He's got that all-American, overachieving, wide-eyed, "I seem innocent but I'd stick a potato in your tailpipe and fuck your 90-year-old grandma if it meant that I'd get ahead in life" look about him. He probably blows Senators over the summer when school's not in.
"Welcome back, everyone. I'm Nate Fick, your prefect for this year," he announces.
Everyone else is only half-paying attention, but their conversations immediately die off within a couple seconds. Nate Fick, of course, waits with a smile. He's nice to look at, a high school girl's wet dream, but then he starts talking about mundane shit like changes in library hours and where to sign up for study hall, so Brad tunes him out and just looks. He watches as Nate makes eye contact with almost everyone; he's so busy watching, in fact, that it comes as a surprise when Nate looks directly at him for a brief moment before skipping a few people to Brad's right.
Then Nate's eyes slide back to Brad in a very subtle double take, as if he's processing the unfamiliar face. There isn't even a hitch in his announcement about where to buy readers.
"And before I hand it over to the deputy principals, I'm obligated to reiterate the strict three-strikes policy with a reminder that drinking will be monitored particularly closely." Nate smiles. What a fucking sham. He's probably the type to sneak whiskey from his dad's liquor cabinet and replace the ingested volume with water.
When the principal takes Nate's place at the podium to go over class schedules, the last Brad's attention dissolves. He slouches in his seat and mentally checks out.
*
Brad's roommate is this kid named Ray, who was probably heroin thin before puberty and came out the other side looking just a bit taller and even more drugged out. He eats a lot of candy and pops a lot of pills and babbles on about Brad just being jealous of his svelte physique. Notebooks and socks bounce harmlessly off his head and torso without complaints, which Brad can appreciate. If the first week is any indicator for the rest of the year, Ray is barely going to be in the dorms. But when he is, he shares his junk food and watches a lot of Say Yes to The Dress, and Brad likes him. It's weird.
The campus is finally becoming familiar to him. The first class of every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is Calculus. Instead of individual desks, there's a single long table with chairs around it. Another reaffirmed fact from the brochure pops into Brad's head, the 11:1 student/teacher ratio. He thinks about school last year, when they barely had any budget and were breaking all kinds of fire codes by having thirty-five students crammed into one classroom with broken air-conditioning. In that atmosphere, Brad had just wanted to stand and tell everyone to shut the fuck up so he could learn some goddamn math. Now all he wants to do is lay out on the grass and smoke a joint.
He goes to class. He does his homework in the library. He studies. He doesn't talk to anyone, except Ray.
He spends some time wondering why the fuck he ever came here, but mostly he feels okay.
*
When Brad walks out of the library around midnight, he sees that the lights are still on at the soccer field, piping industrial-strength beams through the trees, past where Brad is standing, and all the way out to the east parking lot. The shortcut he takes to the dorms is partially covered in shadows; it looks empty, but when he walks closer, he can vaguely make out a group of people standing around in the shadows of the math building. The navy color of their uniforms blends into the dark but there's a lot of scuffling and hushed laughter, and Brad sees at least four, five white shirt collars highlighted dimly in the dark.
He can only make out one face, and that's Nate Fick's.
"Hello," Nate says easily. He's sitting with his back against the brick, knees bent up near his chest and both feet flat on the ground. His eyes are bright, rimmed with water and faintly pink. Out of everyone who's there, he's the only one that's not situated in the shadows. It's pretty ballsy of him, considering that they're all breaking curfew right now, but also because he's pinching a thin joint between his thumb and index finger.
Mike Wynn leans into the light and greets him, too: "Hey Colbert," he says with an easy smile.
"Colbert what?" Nate asks.
"Brad Colbert," Brad says slowly.
"Oh. I thought -- yeah, the other way around," Nate explains, like he's used to hanging out with people with first names like Colbert without it being a big deal. He makes some back-and-forth gesture with his hand, then waves it off. "Anyway. I'm Nate. You're new, right? I noticed you during morning announcements the first day."
There's something about the way he says it -- Brad sees him differently, just for a moment, and then it's back to some guy he doesn't know, sitting on the ground and looking up at him, a little stoned and curious at the same time.
"Yeah," Brad says. "Yeah, I'm new."
When Nate proffers him the joint, he takes it. The paper is wet between his fingertips. Brad retrieves his own lighter and efficiently licks the flame against the joint a few times to get rid of some of the spit. He feels Nate watching him as he takes a hit, then passes to Mike.
"It's some bammer weed, but it's all we've got," Mike apologizes.
"He spends a weekend visiting relatives in Humboldt County and suddenly he's an expert on all things horticultural," Poke snorts.
Another voice pipes in. "Hey, there was a dude in my class named Cerulean in junior high."
"What the hell kind of hippie school did you go to, Ray?" Brad asks. He exhales, then walks a few steps to lean against the brick without taking his backpack off.
"A beautiful one, where the students' names encompassed all colors of the rainbow." Ray swipes an imaginary rainbow in the air with one hand. "Anyway. What was I saying?"
"Landing strips," Mike supplies.
"Landing strips!" Ray repeats. "Yeah. Okay. Listen, a landing strip is the pussy equivalent of a goatee. Nobody likes that shit except for the person who's growing it."
"Ray, when are you going to learn to respect a woman's body just the way it is?" Nate chides mildly, but then he grins a little lopsided and Brad can't tell if he's serious or not.
The joint gets passed around one more time in silence before Mike makes a noise and says, "Oh, hey, I forgot. Ray, Lilley wants to know if you have more Adderall."
"Goddammit, that asshole is bleeding me dry," Ray complains. "Last time I sold him some, he spent fourteen hours editing some psycho homemade music video instead of studying for American Lit and then he cheated off me for the test."
"Academic steroids are fucked up," Poke declares. "Way to perpetuate the flawed ideals of this facist educational system."
"Poke, my man, you are the last person who I thought would throw a word like 'facist' around. I know you're just being lazy, so I forgive you." Ray pats Poke's cheek a few times. He adds, "I mean, you're just pissed because you have to work that much harder to set the curve. Some of us have to keep up, you know."
Poke slaps his hand away. "Go drop out and fail the GED already. You're a waste of a fucking scholarship, you know that?"
They all hoot. Brad accidentally catches Nate's eye as he's laughing; he looks away, but can't help glancing back a second time, only to find that Nate is still looking at him with that soft, stoned smile.
Morning announcements are held at 7:30am, in some kind of seminar room right next to the library. It's crowded but not stifling; the room has high ceilings and an entire wall of open casement windows. Plus, there's less than 100 students in the junior class, and the entire student body falls just short of 400.
Brad remembers facts like these from the brochure at random times, things he doubted were true when he was flipping through the welcome package back on the West coast. They were just words on a page with 2-D pictures back then, spouting some bullshit about acreage and building histories and seasonal sports, all of which were impossible to imagine when he was lying on his ratty old bed from junior high, with bare feet hanging off the edge and the smell of the ocean drifting through his window.
Still. High school is high school is high school. This might be a nicer one than Brad's used to, but that's about it. There are noticeable jagged lines among the rows of desks as people scoot closer to chat with their friends. Guys are yelling across the room at each other, girls are leaning over desks and talking more quietly. If Brad closes his eyes, he could be in homeroom right now, in Mrs. Schroeder's 1st period with the rest of the turds in his class.
The bell rings with a weird harmonious tone that Brad would associate more with a philharmonic than a high school. Right on cue, some guy goes up to the front and stands behind the podium with a bunch of papers. He's got that all-American, overachieving, wide-eyed, "I seem innocent but I'd stick a potato in your tailpipe and fuck your 90-year-old grandma if it meant that I'd get ahead in life" look about him. He probably blows Senators over the summer when school's not in.
"Welcome back, everyone. I'm Nate Fick, your prefect for this year," he announces.
Everyone else is only half-paying attention, but their conversations immediately die off within a couple seconds. Nate Fick, of course, waits with a smile. He's nice to look at, a high school girl's wet dream, but then he starts talking about mundane shit like changes in library hours and where to sign up for study hall, so Brad tunes him out and just looks. He watches as Nate makes eye contact with almost everyone; he's so busy watching, in fact, that it comes as a surprise when Nate looks directly at him for a brief moment before skipping a few people to Brad's right.
Then Nate's eyes slide back to Brad in a very subtle double take, as if he's processing the unfamiliar face. There isn't even a hitch in his announcement about where to buy readers.
"And before I hand it over to the deputy principals, I'm obligated to reiterate the strict three-strikes policy with a reminder that drinking will be monitored particularly closely." Nate smiles. What a fucking sham. He's probably the type to sneak whiskey from his dad's liquor cabinet and replace the ingested volume with water.
When the principal takes Nate's place at the podium to go over class schedules, the last Brad's attention dissolves. He slouches in his seat and mentally checks out.
*
Brad's roommate is this kid named Ray, who was probably heroin thin before puberty and came out the other side looking just a bit taller and even more drugged out. He eats a lot of candy and pops a lot of pills and babbles on about Brad just being jealous of his svelte physique. Notebooks and socks bounce harmlessly off his head and torso without complaints, which Brad can appreciate. If the first week is any indicator for the rest of the year, Ray is barely going to be in the dorms. But when he is, he shares his junk food and watches a lot of Say Yes to The Dress, and Brad likes him. It's weird.
The campus is finally becoming familiar to him. The first class of every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is Calculus. Instead of individual desks, there's a single long table with chairs around it. Another reaffirmed fact from the brochure pops into Brad's head, the 11:1 student/teacher ratio. He thinks about school last year, when they barely had any budget and were breaking all kinds of fire codes by having thirty-five students crammed into one classroom with broken air-conditioning. In that atmosphere, Brad had just wanted to stand and tell everyone to shut the fuck up so he could learn some goddamn math. Now all he wants to do is lay out on the grass and smoke a joint.
He goes to class. He does his homework in the library. He studies. He doesn't talk to anyone, except Ray.
He spends some time wondering why the fuck he ever came here, but mostly he feels okay.
*
When Brad walks out of the library around midnight, he sees that the lights are still on at the soccer field, piping industrial-strength beams through the trees, past where Brad is standing, and all the way out to the east parking lot. The shortcut he takes to the dorms is partially covered in shadows; it looks empty, but when he walks closer, he can vaguely make out a group of people standing around in the shadows of the math building. The navy color of their uniforms blends into the dark but there's a lot of scuffling and hushed laughter, and Brad sees at least four, five white shirt collars highlighted dimly in the dark.
He can only make out one face, and that's Nate Fick's.
"Hello," Nate says easily. He's sitting with his back against the brick, knees bent up near his chest and both feet flat on the ground. His eyes are bright, rimmed with water and faintly pink. Out of everyone who's there, he's the only one that's not situated in the shadows. It's pretty ballsy of him, considering that they're all breaking curfew right now, but also because he's pinching a thin joint between his thumb and index finger.
Mike Wynn leans into the light and greets him, too: "Hey Colbert," he says with an easy smile.
"Colbert what?" Nate asks.
"Brad Colbert," Brad says slowly.
"Oh. I thought -- yeah, the other way around," Nate explains, like he's used to hanging out with people with first names like Colbert without it being a big deal. He makes some back-and-forth gesture with his hand, then waves it off. "Anyway. I'm Nate. You're new, right? I noticed you during morning announcements the first day."
There's something about the way he says it -- Brad sees him differently, just for a moment, and then it's back to some guy he doesn't know, sitting on the ground and looking up at him, a little stoned and curious at the same time.
"Yeah," Brad says. "Yeah, I'm new."
When Nate proffers him the joint, he takes it. The paper is wet between his fingertips. Brad retrieves his own lighter and efficiently licks the flame against the joint a few times to get rid of some of the spit. He feels Nate watching him as he takes a hit, then passes to Mike.
"It's some bammer weed, but it's all we've got," Mike apologizes.
"He spends a weekend visiting relatives in Humboldt County and suddenly he's an expert on all things horticultural," Poke snorts.
Another voice pipes in. "Hey, there was a dude in my class named Cerulean in junior high."
"What the hell kind of hippie school did you go to, Ray?" Brad asks. He exhales, then walks a few steps to lean against the brick without taking his backpack off.
"A beautiful one, where the students' names encompassed all colors of the rainbow." Ray swipes an imaginary rainbow in the air with one hand. "Anyway. What was I saying?"
"Landing strips," Mike supplies.
"Landing strips!" Ray repeats. "Yeah. Okay. Listen, a landing strip is the pussy equivalent of a goatee. Nobody likes that shit except for the person who's growing it."
"Ray, when are you going to learn to respect a woman's body just the way it is?" Nate chides mildly, but then he grins a little lopsided and Brad can't tell if he's serious or not.
The joint gets passed around one more time in silence before Mike makes a noise and says, "Oh, hey, I forgot. Ray, Lilley wants to know if you have more Adderall."
"Goddammit, that asshole is bleeding me dry," Ray complains. "Last time I sold him some, he spent fourteen hours editing some psycho homemade music video instead of studying for American Lit and then he cheated off me for the test."
"Academic steroids are fucked up," Poke declares. "Way to perpetuate the flawed ideals of this facist educational system."
"Poke, my man, you are the last person who I thought would throw a word like 'facist' around. I know you're just being lazy, so I forgive you." Ray pats Poke's cheek a few times. He adds, "I mean, you're just pissed because you have to work that much harder to set the curve. Some of us have to keep up, you know."
Poke slaps his hand away. "Go drop out and fail the GED already. You're a waste of a fucking scholarship, you know that?"
They all hoot. Brad accidentally catches Nate's eye as he's laughing; he looks away, but can't help glancing back a second time, only to find that Nate is still looking at him with that soft, stoned smile.