Layered; Of horses & acid & ale; Elementally Viral
Title: Layered (like an onion!)
Theme: Second Period: Literature_Romance (2b), usako_mamoru, 2010 anniversary challenge
Genre: Fluff
Rating: G
“That’s awful!” Serena decided, throwing her pen down on her paper.
Darien sat back up from where he’d been slumped to look over what she’d written.
“I think you finally understand metaphors, Meatball Head,” Darien grinned.
The young blonde glared at her high school tutor. “That sonnet sucks. I wish I’d gotten the same one as Molly,” she sighed. Molly had gotten Sonnet 18, and even Serena knew how that one began.
“That one’s a good one,” Darien agreed patiently, “but so is this.”
“He’s mean in this one,” Serena pointed out.
Darien snorted. “He’s being sarcastic but not mean.”
“He says that she smells,” Serena stated, as if that should end the conversation.
“Maybe she does,” Darien joked. “Look, some people say that he did it as a joke, making fun of all the poets who kept comparing women to flowers and suns and perfume.”
“But that’s nice!” Serena protested.
“Maybe. But the fact that the narrator doesn’t do that is what makes it romantic.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Look. It’s easy to love someone who’s perfect and beautiful, right?”
Serena shifted uncomfortably in the hard wooden chair. “I guess.”
“Well, what about people who aren’t perfect and beautiful? The narrator’s saying that he loves her even though she’s not all those things.”
The blonde thought silently to herself for a while. “But he never says why he loves her.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know why.”
Baby blue eyes rolled to the ceiling of the school library. “So basically he loves her because she’s not all the things that she’s supposed to be? That’s dumb. That’s just the same as loving her just ‘cause she’s pretty.”
“I didn’t say that.” If anyone had told him he’d be discussing Shakespeare’s intentions with the blonde freshman, Darien wouldn’t have believed it.
“Well, we don’t have proof of anything else.”
“No, but we can start inferring.” The older student quieted, while the younger opted not to interrupt. “It’s like. Maybe- maybe he doesn’t know why he loves her because he can’t explain it. He doesn’t love her for her looks - he doesn’t care what she looks like. But he does love her-“
Eyes the color of the ocean depth met with the shade of the sky’s horizon.
“-he just can’t explain the attraction, especially when none of the normal attractors are there.”
Serena swallowed, lowering her eyes from his. The letters of the poem blurred into words which blurred into lines which she did not even try to read. “So, he’s admitting he loves her even though he’s not supposed to and even though he can’t reason it out?”
Darien watched the golden head musingly. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Something like that.”
“Oh.” It came out as a squeak. Eventually, Serena hunched over the table again, scribbling into her notebook once more. Darien glanced down at his physics text in the same casual manner of needing something to do.
Though they did not speak for the rest of the session, it somehow felt like the most productive hour they’d ever spent together.
---
Title: Of horses & acid & ale
Theme: Third Period: Math_Tangent (3f), usako_mamoru, 2010 anniversary challenge
Genre: General
Rating: PG13
“Signs of happiness come after having tankards of ale.”
“What are tankards?”
“Some of her children are having trouble on algebra.”
“I thought this was trig.”
“Some old horse caught another horse taking oats away.”
“That one’s easy! Say it again.”
“But it’s no fun. How about some old hippie caught another hippie tripping on acid?”
“Or sex on holidays can always help teachers overcome anxiety?”
Raye glanced at the curious expressions.
“Where’d you get that one?”
She shrugged. “They’re nuns. They’re sexually repressed. And I tell you what, none of us ever forgot it.”
Serena fretted. “I don’t think I can remember anxiety, and I don’t want to think about nuns having sex. The horse one sounded easy. Some horses caught another old horse eating oats,” she recited. “That doesn’t sound right.”
Darien leaned into their booth. “Meatball Head. Do you even know what it means?”
“Of course I do!” she said indignantly. “I just can’t remember which is which.”
“Repeat after me. So.”
“So,” she repeated dumbly, rolling her eyes.
“Cu.”
“Cu.” The other girls chimed in for fun.
“Toe.”
“Toe.”
“Uh.”
“Uh.”
He handed Serena a napkin with writing on it.
SOH-CAH-TOA
“So-cu-toe-uh,” she sounded slowly. “Soh-cah-toa! I can remember that.”
She chanted under her breath, “Sohcahtoa-sohcahtoa-sohcahtoa-sohcahtoa.”
Mina piped up. “I still like Raye’s one about the nuns.”
Darien settled back into his own booth, wondering if listening to Serena huff and puff like the little engine that could was any better than the girls’ endless list of mnemonics.
“Horses and acid and sex anxiety,” he muttered to himself. “No wonder we rank so low in math.”
---
Title: Elementally Viral
Theme: Fifth Period: Science_Element (5g), usako_mamoru, 2010 anniversary challenge
Genre: Humor
Rating: G
Notes: Serena & Darien are the same age, because they needed to be in the same class.
Darien cringed as the first notes tinkled lowly through the speakers. He had studying to do.
“Give it a break already!”
Serena looked at him scornfully before digging out a pair of earphones from her bag. Turning away from Darien dramatically, she put them on and hit play.
Darien reveled in the silence of the absence of the childish tune, quietly and determinedly murmuring elements to himself.
~
“Ready for the quiz, Meatball Head?”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” she retorted.
“Yeah, I saw you ‘studying’ yesterday,” he returned with air quotes. “Youtube’s got loads of information. My next history paper’s gonna be on the evolution of dance.”
“Youtube,” Serena gritted out, “had a song that helped me memorize the first ten elements and more than half the families.”
Darien stared at her, truly dumbfounded. “There’s no way that’ll work.”
Serena smiled and swept into the classroom.
~
Darien finished the quiz quickly and spent his extra time tearing his gaze away from Serena. The way her feet tapped annoyed him. The way her hair danced as she bobbed her head made him grit his teeth. The way she finished writing in her final answer with a flourish grated on his last nerves.
~
He got the quiz back the next day. He’d passed with an A. Surprisingly, but probably not so shocking to the girl, so had Serena.
Their teacher informed them that they’d be having a quiz on a few more of the elements next week.
Instead of sitting as his regular study table in the library, Darien found an unoccupied computer and went straight to Youtube. As he scrolled through the videos, a hand appeared over his shoulder. He jumped back, startled, but Serena paid him no mind.
“That one,” she said, tapping the screen. “That was the one I was going to use. It’s catchy.”
Darien automatically clicked on the link, both of them purposefully avoiding having to look at each other by keeping their eyes trained on the screen. Still, Darien’s peripheral vision managed to pick up the way Serena’s lips inched into a smile. He fought his own rueful grin down, trying to think instead of the subsequent gloating he’d have to endure when this worked.
---
Notes: Here’s the video for the elemental table. And here’s the Evolution of dance. If you still haven’t seen it, watch it. Seriously.