Prompt Post: ROUND FIVE
ROUND FIVE IS CLOSED
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<< ROUND FOUR | ALL ROUNDS | ROUND SIX >>
Rules post.
Posting Guidelines.
Flat view.
Updates Post (WIPs only)
Fills Post (completed Fills only)
damalur's firstclasskink on Delicious.
Volunteers always welcome.
There is a delay on comments appearing when there is a URL in the message body. This is due to an LJ anti-spam ( Read more... )
Sundays usually see Hank taking Scott out for brunch at Alison's cafe then to the park where Scott meets up with Jean, Warren, Shiro, Kitty and Jubilee for their longstanding weekly play date. On this Sunday, the only difference is Sean's presence.
Scott, always a bit more impertinent after being so thoroughly spoiled at Charles and Erik's, had bullied Sean into joining them in their ritual and had also extracted a promise of a trip to go see the new Thor movie afterwards.
Hank's spread out his papers on the picnic table he likes to think of as his, grading his Intro to Physics Friday quizzes (because being fresh meat, he has to suffer through teaching a 101 class and his weekly Friday quizzes is just him spreading the pain around), occasionally sparing a glance at the swings to make sure the children haven't eaten Sean alive yet, when he notices someone in his periphery.
"Hey," the man says. "Mind if I sit?"
Hank looks at the space beside him and then pointedly at the three unoccupied benches in the immediate vicinity.
The guy doesn't take the hint and just stares at Hank impassively.
Hank, never one to consciously draw out uncomfortable situations, acquiesces. "Sure. I hope you don't mind the mess."
The man shrugs and sits. Hank tries not to feel overly conscious about...well, his everything, really. Hank's never particularly liked people, a characteristic which he attributes to the bullying he'd suffered throughout childhood for being the token geek in any given class. And even when he'd 'grown into his looks', as they were, he'd by then decided to recommence his petitioning of his parents to let him graduate high school at fourteen and start university with a ferventness that would put saints at worship to shame.
His first ever friend had been Charles, his bright-eyed, overly earnest teacher who'd insisted on being saddled with Intro to Bio at the time despite numerous chairs' protestations. He'd wanted the rite of passage and, by virtue of being the University's darling and its most esteemed faculty member, had gotten it. Hank never would have imagined he'd get on with Charles, that first meeting, because while they shared so many similarities, Charles seemed to defy every expectation and by brunt of his charm made everyone adore him his eccentricities.
But Charles had apparently set out to take Hank under his wing and had eventually worn Hank down through sheer force of his personality so that by the end of that first semester, he'd arranged for Hank to move out of the student dorms (and the room he'd shared with a Liberal Arts major who seemed to do nothing but smoke weed and have sex with women all hours of the day) and into his mansion.
That's where he'd met Raven and everything basically changed for him. Because she was his age and went to the local high school and they'd taken to each other as if they'd known one another their entire lives. It was friendship uncomplicated by neither attraction nor envy; it was the two of them against the world.
Admittedly, it wasn't the healthiest way of growing up and it's made him somewhat prickly around strangers.
If the man beside him can feel the tension radiating off Hank, he gives no indication of notice. He plucks at a stack of already corrected papers and grunts, "Teacher?"
"Yes," Hank replies, equally curt.
The man starts fiddling with a plain silver lighter, looking off into the distance. "Local high school?"
"At the University."
The man doesn't reply, just keeps on flicking his lighter open, then close, open, close. Hank goes back to his marking; as a father, he's experienced for more annoying things than that repetitive clicking noise.
Eventually, the man says, "Nice meeting you, doc," and gets up and leaves.
Hank, busy with tallying the score of the latest paper, nods absently. "You too." His marking finished, he looks up to offer a hand only to find the man's disappeared.
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