friends forever
.friends forever, pt 1
in which ariadne moves to a new school. originally written for this prompt.
pg13 . 2143 words
[1| 2| 3| 4|WIP]
Moving sucks.
It’s an established fact; and it’s a truth universally acknowledged that moving in high school is the absolute worst. Ariadne’s parents said she could get a cat, you know, but a cat doesn’t entirely compensate for losing all semblance of social standing, and also for having to talk to guidance counselors and convince the A.P. teachers that you’re worthy of being in their fucking precious class. Not to mention it’s junior year, and she’s supposed to be worrying about college and brown-nosing for recommendations.
Instead she’s sitting in the office of someone who insists of being called Cobb, not Mr. Cobb but not his first name, either. He’s blathering on about her emotional well-being. Like it’s his business. He squints his eyes a lot and seems like he might be sort of young and good looking, or maybe was good looking once. But he’s a fucking guidance counselor, which is a dead-end job if there ever was one, so that’s null.
“Ariadne,” he says. “I’m here to help you. You can talk to me about anything. Come visit any time.”
At least he doesn’t take out a guitar. Cobb eventually gives her a timetable, and a map, and she slips into the hallway and the flow of the student body. She’d found the school map online, so she wouldn’t look completely bewildered her first day, pulling out the map like some frosh. The building is shaped like a square, with a courtyard in the middle, and she’d already found her locker near the front of the building--having the last name of Andersen has some advantages, though not many. She works out that her art courses will be in on the north side of the building, and French is on the east, next to the library, which is called the media center for a reason that eludes her. Ariadne’s first class, A.P. Language, is on the south side, and she sidles in and takes a seat in the back corner where she can get a good view of everyone without being too exposed herself.
What you wear on the first day of school is Important, even though Ariadne tries to pretend she doesn’t care about that shit; the truth is that even if you’re alternative, or artsy or whatever you want to call it, you have to convince people. So she wears a t-shirt she silk-screened herself, and skinny jeans, and Converse, and her favorite scarf, which she bought for ten bucks from a vendor in New York City when her family went for Christmas a couple years back. She figures it’s conventional enough not to get herself lynched if the new school turns out to be full of weirdo tight-asses, funky enough that her comrades will be able to identify her, if they in fact exist.
The first two people to enter the classroom represent both ends of the spectrum. Comrade comes first, and holds the door open for the tight-ass, who is wearing a sweater vest and carrying a satchel and wearing glasses and Ariadne seriously, seriously hopes he’s hiding a pocket protector somewhere, because that would be something to write home (her old home, not this place) about. His hair looks like it’s been molded to his head, like a brunet Tom-Felton-as-Draco-Malfoy. As if that’s something to emulate.
The guy with him is--well, Ariadne might have a bit of a crush, if she were extraordinarily superficial. Which she isn’t. But the clothes he’s wearing shouldn’t work together, and they do, because of the way he carries himself like he’s pulling it off. He’s wearing an orange t-shirt, bright orange, with a white collar, and it says ‘Tiger Cubs BSA’ on the chest, and it’s far too tight. With black jeans, which Ariadne is pretty sure are no longer cool, and haven’t been for ages. But who knows, here? Fucking moving. But this guy, his shoes are Converse, but white. Seriously, terrible. Only it’s not.
The pair of them look at Ariadne, and then the guy in the orange t-shirt comes and sits down next to her, and the tight-ass sits down in front of him. Which is astounding, because Ariadne thought he’d be front row material for sure. Abso-fucking-lutely.
“Are you new?” says orange t-shirt guy (and Ariadne really needs a better nickname for him, but it turns out he has a bit of a British accent and, okay--crush).
“Can’t you tell?” Ariadne gestures to herself. “Sitting in and empty the classroom alone, far too early--all the markers.”
The guy chuckles, “Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m sure in a couple days you’ll figure out how to be late like everyone else. I’m Eames, by the way. That’s Arthur,” he says, pointing in front himself, and then he continues sotto voce, “He’s trying to remember everything he may have forgotten over the summer, which is nothing.”
“Shut up, Eames,” says Arthur.
“I’m Ariadne,” says Ariadne.
“Well,” says Eames, grinning and opening his arms wide. “Welcome.”
Ariadne grins back, and other students begin to trickle in, and finally a woman Ariadne assumes must be Ms. Cobb comes in (which, shit, is she married to the guidance counselor? Because she is way too hot for him, and has a French accent, which--what is with the accents here? At her old school, the best you could hope for was Canadian). She tells them to call her Mal, and makes them pull their desks into a circle, and then passes around battered copies of The Grapes of Wrath, which Ariadne read at her old school last year. And she didn’t like it then.
“This year,” Mal says. “We will be searching for the ever-elusive Great American novel, as per your school’s nationalistic curriculum.”
Eames and Ariadne snort. Arthur looks offended, and raises his hand.
“We did world literature last year, Ms. Cobb,” he says, but only when called on. Mal corrects him about her name, and his mouth puckers.
“Darling,” Eames interjects, drawling on the ‘r’, “Only if a few books from Africa, a play by Ibsen, and an entire quarter on Amy Tan covers the entire world. And please note that our friend Amy is Chinese-American.”
Arthur raises his hand again, and Mal massages her forehead before calling on him.
“Well,” he says, glaring at Eames, “I’m sure if you were back in England, you’d be reading Dickens or something, but try to appreciate your adopted culture.”
“Will do, mate,” Eames says cheerfully, and some of the other students chuckle, and Mal has them all do ice breaker activities and talk about their favorite books and shit, and Ariadne thinks she should hate it but it really isn’t that bad.
Painting is next, which is something of a relief. Ariadne stops at her locker in between to kill some time, and someone’s already tacked up a poster advertising the first meeting of the Gay-Straight Alliance, which, okay. She’s still early, anyway, but the art classrooms have big windows facing the courtyard, and spacious square wood tables with stools around them, so it’s nice. Ariadne settles down at a stool near the windows, and manages to make easy conversation with the girl next to her, who is probably high but that’s okay. Ariadne works Eames into the conversation, no use being subtle with someone this stoned.
“Oh yeah, he and Arthur are cute, aren’t they?” the girl laughs, and Ariadne isn’t sure what that’s supposed to mean, so she just nods along. Maybe class-interrupting bickering is cute, here, or maybe it is but only if you’re stoned. Whatever.
The art teacher is good, probably better than the one at her old school, and she lets them fight over which radio station to play and doesn’t seem overly concerned with specific assignments, so long as they’re painting. But some of her paintings are in her office at the back of the classroom, where she talks to Ariadne after class, and they’re good. So maybe Ariadne will learn something here, even.
Then she’s in the hall again, and going to gym, which--Ariadne purposefully didn’t bring a change of clothes, in hopes of sitting out if they actually had to be active the first day. Arthur is in that class, too, but he’s sitting with a group of preppy looking kids talking about student council. Not actually very surprising, if Ariadne thinks about it, and from snippets of their conversation she works out that Arthur is president of the junior class, not treasurer or secretary or one of the shitty positions, but the actual Big Tamale. And that’s kind of a surprise.
The good news is that junior year gym class at the new school is not only the last required year of gym but surprisingly chill--they have to take ballroom dancing, but for the other units they can pick between team sports and things like archery and bowling, where they apparently bus them over to the Circle B near Ariadne’s class. Ariadne actually kind of kicks ass at archery, so she puts her name down under Arthur’s for that.
When the teacher starts talking about ballroom dancing, shrugging his ex-football-player shoulders uncomfortably, Arthur raises his hand. Ariadne can see the teacher rubbing his forehead, and she barely resists snorting.
“Excuse me,” says Arthur fussily. “But, as co-chair of GSA, I have to ask if you’re prepared to permit non-heteronormative couples to dance together.”
“I told Eames last period,” the gym teacher growls. “You can pick partners for the skill tests, and then I don’t care. But the rest of the time partners will be randomly assigned, and it’s easiest for that to split the class by gender. Okay?”
And Arthur concedes that, yes, that will be okay, but the gym teacher still looks like he wants to break Arthur’s neck.
Ariadne isn’t sure what to think about the GSA thing. Mostly, she thinks Arthur seems over-committed and he’s probably in GSA because he’s asexual, or attracted to school, or something.
Ariadne has study hall next, and she goes to the library (correction: media center) and finds a book and a chair facing into the courtyard. She’d tried all the doors to get into the courtyard proper, but they all seem to be locked, so windows will have to do.
A few minutes after the bell rings Eames strolls in, and tips an imaginary hat to the librarians, who look alternatingly charmed and annoyed. When he sees her he waves, and comes over to sit in the chair kitty-corner to hers.
“Ariadne!” he says, loudly. “Fancy meeting you here! How’s your first day of school, my dear?”
“Better than I expected,” she says. “I just came from gym.”
“So you’ll have been with Arthur, then?” he says brightly.
“Yes, Sir Tight-Ass was there,” she confirms, and Eames raises his eyebrows.
“Aw, Arthur’s not so bad, once you get to know him. You should have lunch with us.”
Ariadne’s not about to turn down knowing where to sit when lunch rolls around, so she acquiesces.
“Hey, what sort of things did you do, at your old school? You know, extracurricularly?” Eames asks.
“Art club,” Ariadne says, ticking things off on her fingers. “And board game club, which sounds lame, but the chem teacher was cool and it was really just an excuse for a bunch of us to hang out and drink Mountain Dew.” Okay, it was kind of lame. She wonders why she always thinks of the more embarrassing things first. “And I did stage crew, painting sets and lighting and stuff?”
“You did?” Eames interjects. “Seriously, that’s great. We need someone who knows something about lights, our whole crew is shit.”
“You do drama?” Ariadne asks, and it turns out that yes Eames does drama, and their fall production is Our Town, and it’s going to kick ass, even though it’s American and shit, and then they talk about that until the bell rings.
Ariadne needs to stop at the bathroom before lunch, but Eames tells her where their table is and says he’ll wave for her, and shout loudly, and she grins and waves him off.
When Ariadne gets to her locker someone in a loud orange shirt is making out with someone on it, and, okay, Eames has a girlfriend or whatever, at least she met someone cool and has an in with the drama club. Though, seriously, making out on her locker is not okay. She taps him on the shoulder.
“Um, excuse me?”
Apparently she was too quiet, so she gives him a swift elbow in the ribs, and suddenly Eames and Arthur are staring at her, and Arthur’s hair is all mussed, and both their lips are swollen--and damn, how did she miss this?
“Well,” Ariadne says. “I guess you can show me where your table is, then?”
It turns out Arthur’s last name is also Andersen.
in which ariadne moves to a new school. originally written for this prompt.
pg13 . 2143 words
[1| 2| 3| 4|WIP]
Moving sucks.
It’s an established fact; and it’s a truth universally acknowledged that moving in high school is the absolute worst. Ariadne’s parents said she could get a cat, you know, but a cat doesn’t entirely compensate for losing all semblance of social standing, and also for having to talk to guidance counselors and convince the A.P. teachers that you’re worthy of being in their fucking precious class. Not to mention it’s junior year, and she’s supposed to be worrying about college and brown-nosing for recommendations.
Instead she’s sitting in the office of someone who insists of being called Cobb, not Mr. Cobb but not his first name, either. He’s blathering on about her emotional well-being. Like it’s his business. He squints his eyes a lot and seems like he might be sort of young and good looking, or maybe was good looking once. But he’s a fucking guidance counselor, which is a dead-end job if there ever was one, so that’s null.
“Ariadne,” he says. “I’m here to help you. You can talk to me about anything. Come visit any time.”
At least he doesn’t take out a guitar. Cobb eventually gives her a timetable, and a map, and she slips into the hallway and the flow of the student body. She’d found the school map online, so she wouldn’t look completely bewildered her first day, pulling out the map like some frosh. The building is shaped like a square, with a courtyard in the middle, and she’d already found her locker near the front of the building--having the last name of Andersen has some advantages, though not many. She works out that her art courses will be in on the north side of the building, and French is on the east, next to the library, which is called the media center for a reason that eludes her. Ariadne’s first class, A.P. Language, is on the south side, and she sidles in and takes a seat in the back corner where she can get a good view of everyone without being too exposed herself.
What you wear on the first day of school is Important, even though Ariadne tries to pretend she doesn’t care about that shit; the truth is that even if you’re alternative, or artsy or whatever you want to call it, you have to convince people. So she wears a t-shirt she silk-screened herself, and skinny jeans, and Converse, and her favorite scarf, which she bought for ten bucks from a vendor in New York City when her family went for Christmas a couple years back. She figures it’s conventional enough not to get herself lynched if the new school turns out to be full of weirdo tight-asses, funky enough that her comrades will be able to identify her, if they in fact exist.
The first two people to enter the classroom represent both ends of the spectrum. Comrade comes first, and holds the door open for the tight-ass, who is wearing a sweater vest and carrying a satchel and wearing glasses and Ariadne seriously, seriously hopes he’s hiding a pocket protector somewhere, because that would be something to write home (her old home, not this place) about. His hair looks like it’s been molded to his head, like a brunet Tom-Felton-as-Draco-Malfoy. As if that’s something to emulate.
The guy with him is--well, Ariadne might have a bit of a crush, if she were extraordinarily superficial. Which she isn’t. But the clothes he’s wearing shouldn’t work together, and they do, because of the way he carries himself like he’s pulling it off. He’s wearing an orange t-shirt, bright orange, with a white collar, and it says ‘Tiger Cubs BSA’ on the chest, and it’s far too tight. With black jeans, which Ariadne is pretty sure are no longer cool, and haven’t been for ages. But who knows, here? Fucking moving. But this guy, his shoes are Converse, but white. Seriously, terrible. Only it’s not.
The pair of them look at Ariadne, and then the guy in the orange t-shirt comes and sits down next to her, and the tight-ass sits down in front of him. Which is astounding, because Ariadne thought he’d be front row material for sure. Abso-fucking-lutely.
“Are you new?” says orange t-shirt guy (and Ariadne really needs a better nickname for him, but it turns out he has a bit of a British accent and, okay--crush).
“Can’t you tell?” Ariadne gestures to herself. “Sitting in and empty the classroom alone, far too early--all the markers.”
The guy chuckles, “Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m sure in a couple days you’ll figure out how to be late like everyone else. I’m Eames, by the way. That’s Arthur,” he says, pointing in front himself, and then he continues sotto voce, “He’s trying to remember everything he may have forgotten over the summer, which is nothing.”
“Shut up, Eames,” says Arthur.
“I’m Ariadne,” says Ariadne.
“Well,” says Eames, grinning and opening his arms wide. “Welcome.”
Ariadne grins back, and other students begin to trickle in, and finally a woman Ariadne assumes must be Ms. Cobb comes in (which, shit, is she married to the guidance counselor? Because she is way too hot for him, and has a French accent, which--what is with the accents here? At her old school, the best you could hope for was Canadian). She tells them to call her Mal, and makes them pull their desks into a circle, and then passes around battered copies of The Grapes of Wrath, which Ariadne read at her old school last year. And she didn’t like it then.
“This year,” Mal says. “We will be searching for the ever-elusive Great American novel, as per your school’s nationalistic curriculum.”
Eames and Ariadne snort. Arthur looks offended, and raises his hand.
“We did world literature last year, Ms. Cobb,” he says, but only when called on. Mal corrects him about her name, and his mouth puckers.
“Darling,” Eames interjects, drawling on the ‘r’, “Only if a few books from Africa, a play by Ibsen, and an entire quarter on Amy Tan covers the entire world. And please note that our friend Amy is Chinese-American.”
Arthur raises his hand again, and Mal massages her forehead before calling on him.
“Well,” he says, glaring at Eames, “I’m sure if you were back in England, you’d be reading Dickens or something, but try to appreciate your adopted culture.”
“Will do, mate,” Eames says cheerfully, and some of the other students chuckle, and Mal has them all do ice breaker activities and talk about their favorite books and shit, and Ariadne thinks she should hate it but it really isn’t that bad.
Painting is next, which is something of a relief. Ariadne stops at her locker in between to kill some time, and someone’s already tacked up a poster advertising the first meeting of the Gay-Straight Alliance, which, okay. She’s still early, anyway, but the art classrooms have big windows facing the courtyard, and spacious square wood tables with stools around them, so it’s nice. Ariadne settles down at a stool near the windows, and manages to make easy conversation with the girl next to her, who is probably high but that’s okay. Ariadne works Eames into the conversation, no use being subtle with someone this stoned.
“Oh yeah, he and Arthur are cute, aren’t they?” the girl laughs, and Ariadne isn’t sure what that’s supposed to mean, so she just nods along. Maybe class-interrupting bickering is cute, here, or maybe it is but only if you’re stoned. Whatever.
The art teacher is good, probably better than the one at her old school, and she lets them fight over which radio station to play and doesn’t seem overly concerned with specific assignments, so long as they’re painting. But some of her paintings are in her office at the back of the classroom, where she talks to Ariadne after class, and they’re good. So maybe Ariadne will learn something here, even.
Then she’s in the hall again, and going to gym, which--Ariadne purposefully didn’t bring a change of clothes, in hopes of sitting out if they actually had to be active the first day. Arthur is in that class, too, but he’s sitting with a group of preppy looking kids talking about student council. Not actually very surprising, if Ariadne thinks about it, and from snippets of their conversation she works out that Arthur is president of the junior class, not treasurer or secretary or one of the shitty positions, but the actual Big Tamale. And that’s kind of a surprise.
The good news is that junior year gym class at the new school is not only the last required year of gym but surprisingly chill--they have to take ballroom dancing, but for the other units they can pick between team sports and things like archery and bowling, where they apparently bus them over to the Circle B near Ariadne’s class. Ariadne actually kind of kicks ass at archery, so she puts her name down under Arthur’s for that.
When the teacher starts talking about ballroom dancing, shrugging his ex-football-player shoulders uncomfortably, Arthur raises his hand. Ariadne can see the teacher rubbing his forehead, and she barely resists snorting.
“Excuse me,” says Arthur fussily. “But, as co-chair of GSA, I have to ask if you’re prepared to permit non-heteronormative couples to dance together.”
“I told Eames last period,” the gym teacher growls. “You can pick partners for the skill tests, and then I don’t care. But the rest of the time partners will be randomly assigned, and it’s easiest for that to split the class by gender. Okay?”
And Arthur concedes that, yes, that will be okay, but the gym teacher still looks like he wants to break Arthur’s neck.
Ariadne isn’t sure what to think about the GSA thing. Mostly, she thinks Arthur seems over-committed and he’s probably in GSA because he’s asexual, or attracted to school, or something.
Ariadne has study hall next, and she goes to the library (correction: media center) and finds a book and a chair facing into the courtyard. She’d tried all the doors to get into the courtyard proper, but they all seem to be locked, so windows will have to do.
A few minutes after the bell rings Eames strolls in, and tips an imaginary hat to the librarians, who look alternatingly charmed and annoyed. When he sees her he waves, and comes over to sit in the chair kitty-corner to hers.
“Ariadne!” he says, loudly. “Fancy meeting you here! How’s your first day of school, my dear?”
“Better than I expected,” she says. “I just came from gym.”
“So you’ll have been with Arthur, then?” he says brightly.
“Yes, Sir Tight-Ass was there,” she confirms, and Eames raises his eyebrows.
“Aw, Arthur’s not so bad, once you get to know him. You should have lunch with us.”
Ariadne’s not about to turn down knowing where to sit when lunch rolls around, so she acquiesces.
“Hey, what sort of things did you do, at your old school? You know, extracurricularly?” Eames asks.
“Art club,” Ariadne says, ticking things off on her fingers. “And board game club, which sounds lame, but the chem teacher was cool and it was really just an excuse for a bunch of us to hang out and drink Mountain Dew.” Okay, it was kind of lame. She wonders why she always thinks of the more embarrassing things first. “And I did stage crew, painting sets and lighting and stuff?”
“You did?” Eames interjects. “Seriously, that’s great. We need someone who knows something about lights, our whole crew is shit.”
“You do drama?” Ariadne asks, and it turns out that yes Eames does drama, and their fall production is Our Town, and it’s going to kick ass, even though it’s American and shit, and then they talk about that until the bell rings.
Ariadne needs to stop at the bathroom before lunch, but Eames tells her where their table is and says he’ll wave for her, and shout loudly, and she grins and waves him off.
When Ariadne gets to her locker someone in a loud orange shirt is making out with someone on it, and, okay, Eames has a girlfriend or whatever, at least she met someone cool and has an in with the drama club. Though, seriously, making out on her locker is not okay. She taps him on the shoulder.
“Um, excuse me?”
Apparently she was too quiet, so she gives him a swift elbow in the ribs, and suddenly Eames and Arthur are staring at her, and Arthur’s hair is all mussed, and both their lips are swollen--and damn, how did she miss this?
“Well,” Ariadne says. “I guess you can show me where your table is, then?”
It turns out Arthur’s last name is also Andersen.