Learning Curve (2/3)
Previous Part
The school is huge. As Ryan pulls up into the parking lot, he can’t help but feel more than a little overwhelmed by how much bigger this building is than the small, comforting one-floor building of his own childhood. Everything seems so much more regulated, too. There are cameras at the door that lead to the main office, and Ryan has to buzz to be let into the building.
A lady sitting at a wood-grain desk looks up as he makes his way inside and says in a clipped voice, “All visitors must sign in.” She points to a computer on the desk that is facing toward Ryan, and he obligingly types in the information. When he presses enter, a nametag prints out, and the lady hands it to him. “Mr. Urie’s class is on the second floor to the left. Room F 220.”
She doesn’t seem up to small talk, which is okay with Ryan, because he’s not sure he could carry a conversation right now. He’s too blinded by the sheer awkwardness that this experience is sure to be. There is no way that middle schoolers are going to like him. He did, however, listen to Spencer and didn’t wear his pink suit even though pink brings out the color in his eyes.
He makes his way up the stairs, which, judging by the way his breath is coming out a little harder than normal, are a torture device that’s sole purpose is to remind him that he hasn’t been going to the gym that he bought a membership for on a whim three months ago.
Catching his breath, Ryan takes a second to look around the school. There are various bulletin boards set up on the walls, showcasing student work. One of the boards has Brendon’s name on it with lined notebook paper underneath it, and when Ryan draws closer, he can see that the pages are full of student samples of a writing assignment. Though there are various grammar mistakes and unfortunate spelling guesses that jump out at Ryan, overall, he’s vaguely impressed with how these seventh graders write.
He follows the bulletin boards of work until he makes it to the F hall, which he finds with only a little bit of trouble. Brendon’s door, however, stands out like a sore thumb. While the other doors are decorated with an inspirational poster, Brendon’s door is wrapped in paper that is covered in multicolored shoe prints. Every adventure starts with a first step! The words are partially covered by various colored prints, and Ryan smiles, imagining Brendon stomping all over a piece of paper to hang on his door.
He only hesitates a moment outside the room before he knocks. Inside the room, Ryan can hear some chatter and people moving around, and when the door opens, the first thing he sees is a mass of almost-teenagers: there are probably about twenty-five of them, and just looking at the awkwardness makes Ryan thank god that he’s not a twelve-year old boy anymore.
The girl who opens the door smiles up at Ryan, showing off her braces with the slightly-faded red bands. “Can I help you?” she asks, but before Ryan can answer, Brendon’s voice calls over her, “Julia, let him in. Class, this is Mr. Ross, a friend of mine who is going to be helping us out with literature for the next couple of weeks.”
Since the desks are formed into pods, several students have to crane their heads uncomfortably to get a good look at Ryan, and awkwardly, Ryan waves at them.
“Come on in, Mr. Ross,” Brendon says, coming over to usher Ryan inside the classroom. The girl, Julia, takes her seat at one of the pods, and the chatter of voices that had pretty much stopped when Ryan knocked start up again. “I’m glad you found us okay,” Brendon says, and he leads Ryan over to a chair next to his desk. “The students are in their literature groups right now, discussing the reading from last night, and then we’re going to move to a full class discussion.”
Ryan nods, looking around the room. Surprisingly, it looks like most of the students are on-topic, talking about the book. “How did you get this to work?” He can’t imagine public school children actually talking about academic work while being allowed to be in groups with their peers.
Brendon laughs. “It took a long time to get it running this smoothly, I assure you,” he says. “The first several weeks were absolute hell for me, but now that they know that I trust them to use their time wisely and still expect them to be accountable for their reading, they do well.”
The group of desks closest to them is arguing in loud voices about the legitimacy of Antony’s devotion to Caesar. From what Ryan can make out, what they’re talking about actually isn’t too asinine.
“So, I was thinking that for today, you can just observe what a typical class is like for us. We’re finishing up “Julius Caesar”, and I thought that you and I could choose which work we want to do next. I can take you to the book room during my planning period.”
“Uh, sure,” Ryan says. It seems like a good idea to just sit back and let the class go on as usual. After all, Ryan doesn’t want to have to start teaching a moment before he is forced to. “I’m surprised that you’re teaching Shakespeare,” Ryan says instead of thanking Brendon for letting him simply observe.
Brendon kicks his ankle - sneakily under the desk, so the kids won’t see. “I like Shakespeare,” he defends. “And “Julius Caesar” is a great piece of literature.” He smiles at the closest group. “Right, kids.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Urie,” a boy says through a mouth full of gum.
Raising an eyebrow, Ryan laughs. “It’s good to see that you’re including some of the classics,” he says.
“Well, to be honest, I have to teach “Julius Caesar as part of the mandated curriculum,” Brendon says, “but it could be worse. At least I don’t have to teach “Macbeth”. They leave that mess for high school.”
The only thing that Ryan really remembers about Macbeth is the famed Lady Macbeth speech about blood on her hands, but that’s okay, because he can work his way around a conversation about the cursed play but just dropping that little tidbit in at a calculated moment.
“Just make yourself comfortable,” Brendon says, and Ryan scoots back to allow him to get through. Brendon goes to the side of the room and turns the lights off, almost instantaneously extinguishing the talking in the room. “Okay,” Brendon says. He’s grinning at his class as if there is nothing quite as exciting as the historical Shakespearean plays. “Who wants to start us off: someone tell me about Mark Antony.”
Ryan listens to the students talk - pretty intelligently, actually - but his eyes never leave Brendon, who looks so confident standing up there in front of the class, who looks so happy.
---
After nearly twenty minutes of staring each other down, Brendon and Ryan settle on Dracula for the next book. It takes awhile - Ryan fighting for the classics while Brendon tries to lobby for some up-and-coming author - but they finally settle on some good old-fashioned Gothic work.
“I guess,” Brendon says. “But only because I’m required to teach the proper formatting of letters, and we can work that in with the novel in a fun way. Plus, we can talk about Lacan and The Other.”
Ryan, who quite possibly wrote his undergraduate seminar paper on Lacan’s view of The Other in literature, is more than a little impressed that Brendon knows about it, but he doesn’t let it show. He just grins at Brendon as he steals himself a copy of the novel, his mind already swimming with ideas.
He can almost see the Socratic seminars in his mind with flowing, constant conversation about the novel. 7th graders are capable of that, right?
“We’re going to have to introduce Gothic Literature,” Brendon says as he walks Ryan down to the main office. “And view the novel from an approachable standpoint. Let’s start thinking of different works we can pair the novel with. And, oh! We could even bring in an element of the current vampire trend to try and rouse interest.”
Apparently, Brendon is planning on making this more complicated than simply responding intelligently to a classic novel.
“No Twilight,” Ryan says, gritting his teeth. “Just promise me one thing, Brendon. No Twilight.”
Brendon hesitates but agrees. “Fine. But we’ll have to find someway to connect the students to the book. The style can be off-putting to some readers and the language difficult.”
A part of Ryan wants to shrug and say that it’s not his problem - he himself has read plenty of books that he’s had no interest in for various classes, but he knows that Brendon would just frown at him the way that his group had last class when he admitted he had never seen anything bad with standardization. Instead, he says, “I’ll try to think of something.”
“We should attempt to go through various mediums of literature,” Brendon continues on. “Poetry, visual, movies, music. Really make this fun, you know?”
Ryan, who had been looking forward to reading the classic vampire novel just mere minutes earlier is now starting to think that there is far too much work involved in this. “Can’t we just read and discuss the novel?” he asks.
“We will,” Brendon assures, “but we also have to connect the novel to something more than just getting through a couple of hundred pages. By providing students with ancillary materials and activities, they become truly engaged in their learning.”
Brendon babbles on for the rest of the walk, talking about some theorist or another, but Ryan is busy thinking of how he could possibly extend Dracula past the novel. He has no problem giving themes, authorial background, historical context, critical reviews, but he’ll stab himself with a wooden stake before he prints out a coloring page of a happy vampire.
---
As far as research goes, Ryan is doing pretty well finding support for his canonical view of literature. He’s talked to several professors from the English Department and has been pouring through old, slightly musty smelling volumes at the University library. There are plenty of scholars who agree with his assertion: canonical literature is vital to the education system and ensures intelligent readers.
Ryan thrives off of this kind of research. He loves proving that he’s right, and there’s something comforting about being locked away in the back part of the library with stacks and stacks of books. He’s comfortable with this - it’s something he’s been doing for longer than he can remember, but now, he also has something new and unknown on his plate.
He’s reread Dracula and has made sure to annotate the fuck out of the flimsy public-school copy of the novel. He has pages of handwritten notes, outlines of quotations and how they play into general themes. He has a power point prepared on Bram Stoker with a mental note to ask Brendon if it would be okay to mention the possible homosexual aspect of Stoker’s relationship with Oscar Wilde.
He has everything prepared that he needs to talk at the students, but he’s completely lost on how to talk with them.
Ryan’s been to Brendon’s class three times now, and the classroom is less of a lecture zone and more of a whole-class discussion place. Brendon is a fan of expansive activities and reflection paragraphs and free-flowing talks. Honestly, Ryan thinks it would be a lot easier to just tell the kids what they need to know, make sure they take decent notes, and have them write a paper about it. Or fill in a multiple-choice test. Ryan’s seen the Scantron grader, and it certainly looks easier than reading thirty or so three-page essays.
But Ryan knows that he needs to step up his game. All of his classmates are of the same breed: a strange mix of liberal hippies and empathetic drill-sergeants. Brendon, likewise, expects the most out of his students, so Ryan is forcing himself to put away the century-old research on the formation of the canonical library and starts to search the web for ideas on how to make Dracula interesting to 7th graders.
Off of Greta’s advice, he pulls up webenglishteacher.com, which directs him to various sites that help with extension activities.
There are a couple of things that look interesting: an activity to help students critically think about the supernatural, research about vampires through different cultures, information about historical influences of the novel, and connections that link vampirisms to other pandemics.
While some of it seems lame, there are other activities that could actually be interesting. And, now that Ryan thinks about it, Brendon was probably right in thinking that they should connect Dracula to the modern incarnation of vampires, especially since attraction to vampires is born out of feelings of ‘otherness’, something that Ryan knows from experience middle schoolers know all about.
It’s almost fun - thinking of ways to make the novel seem more interesting to others. Dracula isn’t Ryan’s favorite novel, but it’s still one that he enjoys, and he finds himself almost looking forward to teaching the novel. The kid situation he still isn’t that thrilled about, but at least now he feels as though he has a better grasp on the content.
After leaving the library, Ryan calls Brendon on his cell phone, telling him about all the information that he’s found already, and even through the phone, Ryan can tell that Brendon is smiling.
“That’s great, Ryan. I’ve been doing some researching, too, and I think we can work in a Margaret Atwood poem and a Carver short story. It’s awesome that you’re getting so into this.”
Ryan shrugs even though he knows logically that Brendon can’t see it. “Well, I’ve always been a book nerd,” he says.
Brendon laughs. “How about you come over this Friday and we can go over what we have planned for the unit. We’ll be finished with Shakespeare on Tuesday, so we can start teaching on Wednesday.”
Shit. That’s soon. Brendon must sense that Ryan’s about to freak out because he says, “We’ll talk about when you want to start actually teaching, but we don’t have to rush into anything.”
Ryan lets out a breath that he didn’t even know he was holding. Good. That’s good. He’s not ready for anything that terrifying quite yet.
---
Brendon’s house is nicer than Ryan had been expecting. It’s not a mansion, by any means, but it’s decent and looks far more welcoming than his and Spencer’s shitty apartment.
It only takes a couple of seconds for Brendon to open the door once Ryan rings the bell, and Brendon’s face has a reddish tint to it. “Come in,” he says, ushering Ryan into the foyer. “I decided to make us dinner. I hope you haven’t eaten yet.”
Ryan actually hasn’t and when he says as much, Brendon grins. “Good. I’ve made my world famous spaghetti.”
“Can spaghetti really be world famous?” Ryan asks.
“You will learn soon enough that it most definitely can,” Brendon assures. “And if you hate the spaghetti so much, you don’t need to worry, because I also have plenty of semi-decent wine to wash it down with.”
Already, Ryan thinks this night is more fun than he had expected. He has his materials for the unit with him - he was expecting for them just to pour over the various papers he had printed out for a couple of hours, but dinner and wine definitely sounds like a good idea.
Ryan sets his bag down, watching as Brendon saunters into the kitchen. It’s a little strange, Ryan thinks. He can’t help but remember the attractive guy at the bar that Brendon wanted to just be friends with. Huh. Dinner. Wine. Conversation - granted, conversation about a 7th grade English unit. It all seems rather like a date.
“You can make yourself useful and open the wine,” Brendon calls from the kitchen, pulling Ryan out of his thoughts. It’s not like he would be opposed to something happening with Brendon, but they’re partners in class and Ryan’s basically Brendon’s student teacher.
He tries not to think too hard about it. It’s not like Brendon has tried to make out with him or anything. They’re just friends. And friends do things like have dinner together and drink wine. He drinks with Spencer all the time.
Shaking his head, Ryan finds Brendon in the kitchen and takes the wine opener from his hand. “Just pick out whichever wine looks best,” Brendon says, pointing over to where there are several bottles of wine placed in a wooden holder.
“You have quite the digs for a teacher,” Ryan comments as he looks through the wines. Red is always good, but he’s kinda feeling like a nice Chardonnay tonight. Plus, he has a habit of spilling, and he doesn’t want to ruin his shirt. “Maybe Wisconsin has it right - we are paying you all too much.”
Brendon frowns and throws a piece of cooked spaghetti at Ryan. It misses, hits the wall, and sticks. “Don’t worry. I get paid a depressingly low number.”
“Then how-?”
“My parents left me a good deal of money,” Brendon says quickly. He looks down for a moment, but then he smiles. “Spaghetti’s done. Pour us some glasses and I’ll get the food on the table.”
Ryan’s not going to focus on the family thing. He knows about difficult families. Instead, he opens the wine with the prettiest label, because in the end no matter how much he claims to know about wine it’s what he always does.
“Good selection,” Brendon says as he puts down a bowl of spaghetti on the table. There’s a small spinach salad and a loaf of bread on the table, too, and even though Ryan wasn’t expecting dinner, his stomach growls in anticipation. Brendon laughs. “Sit down. You’re obviously hungry.”
Ryan grabs the glasses and wine and pours them both generous portions. “You probably need it,” he says off of Brendon’s raised eyebrows. “I know you love your kids, but they can be a handful.”
“They sure can,” Brendon agrees and takes a swig of his drink. “Now, tell me, isn’t this the best spaghetti you’ve ever had?”
Taking a tentative bite, Ryan prepares himself to suppress his gag reflexes, but it’s actually pretty good. “Not half bad,” he says.
Brendon smiles. “I opened the jar of sauce myself.”
Ryan laughs. “So, how’s your research for the paper going?”
“Pretty well. I was thinking that we could each take a class period of 7th honors and teach them according to the different view points.”
“Does that mean that you want me to start with the one class on Wednesday?” Ryan asks.
“If you feel up to it.” Ryan’s not sure if he’s ready to be in charge of a whole class. So much could go wrong. “If it helps, I think that you’ll do fine. And I’ll even give you the smaller class. And since they’re honors, they’ll want to suck up to you and show you how smart they are.”
It actually doesn’t sound that bad.
“And we can go over lesson plans together. Even if we’re taking different approaches, we should still correlate as much as we can.”
Ryan nods. Brendon has obviously thought this through, and he’s thankful. He’s all for proving that he’s right in their paper, but he’s glad that he’s not doing everything on his own.
The night goes by quickly. They eat their meal, which thankfully has a wonderful store-bought tiramisu to top it all off with and go through nearly a bottle and a half of wine. They manage to talk out the unit - planning nearly four weeks for the whole thing, and Ryan mentally kisses his free time goodbye.
But even though they spend most of the night working on their unit, Ryan finds that he’s having fun. Brendon is hilarious. His humor is sarcastic without being mean, something he says he’s honed after teaching middle school for two years. He understands that Ryan is scared, and Ryan knows that Brendon will do everything he can to make everything run smoothly.
The whole night goes by in a blur, and before Ryan knows it, Brendon is yawning. The wine that has long been drained has cleared from Ryan’s system, so he knows he can’t really blame the way his eyes follow the strain of Brendon’s neck when he leans back to stretch from too many hours sitting on the couch.
“You okay to drive home?” Brendon asks, and a part of Ryan wants to lie and say no, just to see how far he can go with this feeling he’s riding right now. Brendon is sort of wonderfully great and gay, and it’s not Ryan’s fault if he is maybe wondering what those lips would feel like against his own.
But he doesn’t lean in, even if he thinks it would be great. Maybe even perfect. “I’m pretty much sober now,” Ryan says instead of pressing his lips against Brendon’s. “I’ll see you in class on Monday?”
“Sure thing,” Brendon says. There’s a strange look that flickers across his face, but it’s gone before Ryan can pin it down. “I’ll, uh, walk you out,” Brendon says.
Ryan lets Brendon walk him out to his car and watches as Brendon waves from the sidewalk as he pulls away. When he gets back to his apartment, Spencer is already asleep, and Ryan envies his friend because he can’t sleep. His mind is racing with the faint lingers of alcohol and the way that Brendon had looked at him, almost as if he didn’t want Ryan to leave either.
---
For the past twenty-four years, Sunday has been Ryan’s day of rest. As far as Ryan is concerned, it’s the one thing that he agrees with the Bible on. He likes nothing better than to wake up on a Sunday morning and know that he has absolutely nothing that he has to do, but this Sunday, Ryan has foolishly agreed to go to some concert in the park with Spencer.
“It’s outside?” Ryan complains. Outside was not part of his plans, though, in retrospect, parks are usually outside. Regardless, his Sunday plans are always indoors and consist of beautiful air conditioning and cable television.
Spencer just throws Ryan one of his infamous death glares at all the whining, and Ryan promptly shuts the fuck up. “It’s only for an hour and it’ll be good for you to get some fresh air. All you do is stay indoors with musty books or smelly middle school students.”
He has a point. Most of Ryan’s time lately has been spent either in the library or with Brendon at the middle school. He’s had very little time to hang out with Spencer, so he figures he owes his best friend. It’s the whole reason that Ryan gallantly gets out of his bed a full two hours before he was planning on.
It’s his duty to help ensure his friend’s happiness, and so Ryan allows Spencer to drive him to the nearby park, where some strings orchestra is playing a free concert as a part of the city’s goal to promote the arts.
“Since when are you so interested in classical music?” Ryan asks. It’s not like Spencer has bad taste in music, but he’s never really appreciated it when Ryan plays Chopin. That could be because Ryan only has a tendency to play Chopin when he’s feeling sad about some girl or guy who fucked him over, but still.
Spencer doesn’t take his eyes off the road, and he sighs a little. After thirteen long years of knowing Spencer, Ryan knows those are not good signs. “You know I hate bullshit,” Spencer says.
It sounds like a start to a long speech, and Ryan mentally prepares himself. No one can give a long speech quite like Spencer.
“And you know I hate lying to you.”
This catches Ryan’s attention, because what?
“I’ve sort of been seeing someone,” Spencer says. Ryan would swear that Spencer was blushing, but he can’t see anything through that blasted beard.
“Who?” Ryan demands.
“Just this girl who is friends with my coworker. She’s really sweet. Really different from all the other girls I’ve dated, you know?”
Spencer didn’t go through quite as extensive of a sexual freedom stage as Ryan did, but he got around during their Freshman and Sophomore years. For the past couple of years, though, Spencer has been claiming that he isn’t interested in a relationship and just wants to focus on his job.
“Her name is Haley,” Spencer continues. The way he says her name sounds different than any other word Spencer’s ever spoken before, and in that moment, Ryan knows that this Haley isn’t just some girl. “We’ve been seeing each other for about three months now.”
Damn, has Ryan really been that self-involved that he hasn’t noticed that his best friend has been dating someone that he’s apparently in love with for the past three months? But it’s not like Ryan and Spencer share every little detail of their lives. After all, Ryan hasn’t even so much as mentioned Brendon outside the context of his educational requirements. It’s not like he’s told Spencer that there’s something about Brendon that makes Ryan excited to go to a class that he was once dreading. But still, he should have noticed something was up with Spencer.
He doesn’t get much time for self-pity, however, because Spencer pulls into an open parking space and fixes Ryan with his most serious look of his serious looks. “She plays the viola for the orchestra,” he says. “I want you to be on your best behavior when you meet her.”
“Of course,” Ryan says. He can be civil. Polite even. Hell, if Spencer is really that serious about the girl, he will be fucking amiable.
Spencer doesn’t look like he completely believes him, but he lets Ryan out of the car, so he must have some confidence in him. They walk across the lawn and find decent seats. Ryan wants to ask Spencer questions about this mystery girl, but the music starts only a couple of minutes after they sit down, and suddenly, Spencer looks as though he were a million miles away.
His attention is fixed permanently to a girl in the second row. It would almost be funny if it weren’t for the way that a little pang runs through Ryan. It’s not that he’s jealous of Spencer. Spencer is the best guy that Ryan knows and deserves to be happy, but maybe, for the first time, Ryan thinks that he might want that. That he might want someone who he would go see at stupid concert-in-the-parks and keep to himself for a while just so he could protect it.
Spencer is lost in his own world, taken away by the music and the girl making it, and Ryan tunes out, too, thinking about brown eyes and a warm smile.
---
Professor Wentz spends class on Monday going over various educational theorists, and unlike the rest of his classmates who are nodding along like they already know everything, Ryan is taking furious notes. He is so, so completely out of his league with all of this.
Logically, he knows that he could just go up on Wednesday and bullshit his way through a unit, but Ryan’s had bad teachers before - he’s had fucking awful teachers before, and the students don’t deserve having someone half-ass their way through a class.
So he writes down everything Wentz says about scaffolding and diverse teaching strategies. He’s so wrapped up in what the professor is teaching that he is genuinely shocked when he feels his cell vibrate against his leg, and he jumps, causing Greta to cast him a worried look that he brushes off.
Nerd. It’s all the message reads, but when Ryan looks over to where Brendon is sitting, Brendon smiles and shakes his head fondly as he echoes his message, mouthing the word emphatically.
I’m surprised you’re texting during class Ryan writes back, and Brendon’s quick response of It’s not like I’m a middle schooler. I’m a grown up - I can text whenever I damn well choose makes Ryan snort a laugh. He makes a point to show Brendon that he is turning off his phone and directs his attention back to Professor Wentz, who seems to have gone off topic as he’s now talking about how the latest revolts in the Middle East have caused gas prices to skyrocket and maybe he should have bought that bike when it was on sale last winter.
When the class ends, Ryan waits for Brendon to come over to his desk, and they walk out to the parking lot together. “So, have you given any thought to whether or not you want to jump in on Wednesday?”
Their footsteps are in tandem, their hands swinging past each other as they walk, and Ryan thinks back to the way that Spencer had grabbed Haley’s hand at the park yesterday, easy as anything, and squeezed it tight as he had introduced them. Brendon’s hands are roughly the same size as Ryan’s. It wouldn’t feel as if he were overpowering him when their hands touched. It would feel comfortable. Safe.
“Ryan?” Brendon says his name like he’s been trying to get Ryan’s attention for a good thirty seconds. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “Sorry, you were talking about Wednesday, yeah?”
Brendon frowns, but he doesn’t prod any further. “Do you think you’ll be ready to take over a class? I was thinking you could do fourth period. You have a couple of hours free then, right?”
Normally those couple of free hours was when Ryan took a nap or pretended to read something intellectual while really he was rereading old Palahniuk novels.
Honestly, the thought of taking over a class is terrifying, but he can do this. He can prove to himself and to Brendon that he can handle it. And maybe that’s his way in. Maybe by impressing Brendon, Ryan won’t hesitate to take this spark - this whatever it is - between them and do something about it.
“Yeah. Wednesday. Fourth period sounds good. I can do that.”
Brendon smiles. It’s quickly becoming Ryan’s favorite part of Brendon - his smile. “I know you can, Ryan. I’m excited to see what you come up with.”
“We’re just introducing Gothic literature and Stoker, right?”
“Yep. You do it from the canonical approach and I’ll do it from the relational approach. If you want, you can stay after your class and watch mine. I mean, it’s only fair that we both watch each others.”
Even though Ryan doubts that staying for Brendon’s class will do wonders for his ego - after all, Brendon’s been teaching far longer than Ryan has even thought about it - he can’t turn down the opportunity to watch Brendon in action. There’s something about the way that Brendon lights up that… Oh god, Ryan thinks, he sounds like Spencer.
It’s getting embarrassing. The staring. The daydreaming. The fucking desire to watch Brendon teach to pubescent teenagers. If Ryan were smart, he would do something about it now and get it all out of the way, but when Ryan angles his walking to get a little closer to Brendon and their hips bump, Brendon just blushes and takes a step away.
“Clumsy, much, Ryan?” he asks, laughing, but there’s something off about the way he says that. The tips of his ears are turning red, and he hurries his steps a little. “I better get going. Busy week. I’ll see you Wednesday, then.”
Brendon rushes away, leaving a very confused Ryan in his wake.
---
Tuesday passes in a blur, and suddenly it’s Wednesday morning, and Ryan can’t decide what to wear. Sure, the students have seen him in and out of the school for the past two weeks, but now he has to do more than just sit placidly beside Brendon’s desk and smile awkwardly at the students when they say hello. He has to actually get in front of the class and fucking teach.
Spencer, who has always been a far better friend than Ryan deserves, wakes up early with him and makes Ryan pancakes. “You’re going to do fine,” he assures Ryan, who is trying to stuff as many pancakes into his mouth as he can just so he’ll have an excuse later when he throws up from nerves.
The four hours that Ryan had planned to use to relax when he woke up early that morning pass quickly, and then he’s walking down the now-familiar hallway toward Brendon’s room and his first ever class as a pseudo-teacher.
Since he knows that Brendon has a planning period now, Ryan walks right in. Brendon looks up from his desk and promptly laughs.
“What?”
Brendon tries to muffle the laughter with his hands, but there’s no use, and now his eyes are welling up from the contained mirth. “You look like Pete when he wanted to scare the head of the department with his professionalism,” Brendon says through a fit of near-giggles. “You’re so fancy.”
Ryan feels his cheeks flair up hot red. “I just wanted to look nice,” he says. Now all he feels is self-conscious. He knew he should have just gone with a button down, but no, he added a tie and fucking sports jacket.
“You look great,” Brendon assures, and Ryan suddenly is glad about his choice of clothes. “I’m sorry. You look great.” He gets up from his desk. “So, do you need me to help you with anything for your class? What do you need to use?”
“I just need to use the Promethean Board today,” he says. “So, uh, the computer.”
“No problem. I need to get done grading the papers on “Julius Caesar”, anyway.”
“Great.” Ryan moves over to the computer and sticks his flash drive in. It takes him a couple of tries, because his hands are shaking so bad. Suddenly, there’s a warm presence at his back, and Brendon’s hand is covering his own.
“You’re going to be wonderful,” Brendon says. “Don’t worry.” When Brendon talks, Ryan can feel his breath against the back of his neck. It’s nice, and Brendon still hasn’t moved his hand, but just as Ryan tries to make sense of what that means, the bell marking the end of the period sounds, and Brendon jumps back, leaving Ryan’s hand cold.
“I’ll just go sit in the back, so that I’m out of your way,” Brendon says, and he hurries to the back of the classroom.
Ryan can’t concern himself with the fact that it seems that Brendon is always literally running away from him, because the first students start to trickle into the classroom.
“You not teaching today, Mr. U?” one of the students asks, and damnit, Ryan really should have learned their names. It’s not like he even has a seating chart to refer to, not when Brendon believes that twelve year olds are responsible enough to choose where they sit.
“Mr. Ross is taking over for this unit,” Brendon says. “I’ll just be sitting back here making sure that you’re being respectful,” he adds with an ominous voice that fools no one, if the laughter is anything to judge by.
It starts out shaky, at best. Ryan is nervous. He realizes right as he hits the lights to start the power point that he’s talking far too fast, and so, as he asks the students to take notes on Gothic Literature and Stoker, he tries to even out his speed.
The students themselves are good. They pay attention, and most of them take notes on what he’s saying. There are a couple of times that he goes too fast, because he’s asked to turn back to the previous slide more than once, but the students are quiet and on-task.
When he’s finished with the power point - giving the students an in depth look at both Gothic Literature and Stoker, himself - he passes out the novels to the students. “I want you to read the first twenty pages for tomorrow,” Ryan says, just as the bell rings, and when the last student is out, he lets himself fall into Brendon’s comfortable teacher chair.
“That was great, Ryan,” Brendon says. “That was a great background - I’m impressed with your research!” Already students are pouring in for the next class, and Ryan is looking forward to going back to the passive bystander role. “I need the computer, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course,” Ryan says, and he gets up and goes to pass Brendon. First, he nearly runs into Brendon, who blushes and moves to the other side just as Ryan does. Brendon flushes even redder as they keep getting in each other’s way until finally he just stands still and Ryan passes him.
Huh, Ryan thinks.
He settles himself in the back of the classroom, and much like his own lesson, Brendon begins by telling the students to please take notes, and he turns off the lights. But unlike the power point that Ryan had spend nearly two hours meticulously perfecting the previous weekend, Brendon pulls up a video.
Before he presses play, he asks his class, “Now, who here likes vampires?” A good deal of hands go up. Brendon laughs. “Okay, good. Keep your hands up if you know anything about vampires excluding Twilight.”
About half of the hands go down.
“That’s fine, that’s fine,” Brendon assures them. “I’m going to show you a quick video that accounts the various incarnations of vampires throughout modern art, and then we’re going to talk about why vampires, and Gothic Literature in general is so provocative and popular.”
The movie starts and Ryan watches along with the kids. He watches as Brendon goes on to talk about the appeal of vampires as relating to people outside society. He listens to Brendon characterized Gothic Literature as a subversive genre, leading moral 19th century citizens to boycott it. He witnesses students asking questions, and, when the bell rings, he hears the kids laughing about Nosferatu as they walk out of the classroom.
Brendon comes to the back of the room. “I think that went pretty well,” he says.
“Yours was better,” Ryan says, and Brendon frowns.
“No. We took different approaches. You gave a more extensive background.”
“You engaged the students more,” Ryan says, and he feels like he’s echoing Wentz.
“Hey, Ryan,” Brendon says, and his palm is resting on Ryan’s shoulder, warm and steady. “You did a great job. We just did things differently. Just like our paper. There are different strategies to this all.”
Ryan nods, but he doesn’t feel that much better. Though, at least none of the kids had yelled at him. “How’s your research going, by the way?” he asks to change the topic.
“I’m starting to think that maybe both canon and relationships are important to good teaching,” Brendon says. “I mean, why can’t we have it all? You’re right - there are classic books for a reason, but it’s our job to make the books approachable to students.”
“Your job,” Ryan cuts in. “You’re the teacher here.”
“I don’t know,” Brendon says. “You really were good up there.”
“You’re just trying to flatter me so you can turn your class over to me and take naps in the teacher’s lounge.”
Brendon laughs, “You caught me.”
---
Ryan falls into a routine. It’s one that’s full of classes where he learns that being a teacher is fucking hard and there is far more work than he had ever imagined (it’s not his fault that all of his own teachers in middle and high school had made him believe that every educator was a moron), teaching class every morning, and using his free time thinking about how meeting Brendon might have just fucked up his entire life plan.
His teaching is getting better, if he does say so himself. After watching Brendon work Dracula from a more creative angle, Ryan has started implementing some of the same strategies. It’s not stealing, because as Brendon assured Ryan, “There’s no such thing as stealing in education. Trust me, teachers just want to help each other out.”
So Ryan watches Brendon a little more closely as he teaches. For ideas. Obviously. It’s part of his routine, just like it’s part of his routine that he’s starting to think that if he doesn’t kiss Brendon soon there are going to be some very scarred middle school students when he finally breaks.
It’s just that Ryan is spending so much time with Brendon. He sees Brendon at class, where Brendon seems to always know the answer, and Ryan’s always had a thing for smart people. He sees Brendon at the middle school, where he’s in his element, and they have started doing their research together, now that they’ve decided to write their paper on the blending of the two educational approaches.
Ryan sees Brendon almost every day, and when he doesn’t see Brendon, he’s thinking about him. He’s wondering what Brendon’s doing on his time off. Maybe he’s making his world famous spaghetti or telling another attractive gay man that he’s just not that into him. Or, even worse, maybe he’s found himself a boyfriend.
Needless to say, Ryan’s life these days revolves around school…and Brendon.
“You’re always off with that guy,” Spencer says one night while they’re watching “Modern Family”. It’s one of the only shows they can agree on, mostly because it’s too funny for Ryan to ignore just because it’s popular. “When am I ever going to meet him properly?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan says, and he grabs the bowl of popcorn out of Spencer’s lap. He’s been hogging it all episode. “I guess I could have Brendon over so you two can meet.” The only reason he says it is because that’s the obvious answer one gives when one is not falling in love with his group partner and co-teacher.
Spencer snatches the popcorn back and readjusts himself on the couch to take up more room. “That sounds good. Why don’t you have him over this Saturday? I was thinking about making dinner for Haley. We can have a double date.”
Ryan doesn’t really know how Spencer made the jump from learning Brendon’s name to assuming he’s Ryan’s boyfriend. He thinks back to all the times he’s mentioned Brendon to Spencer. He doesn’t think it could have been that often, because Ryan is good at keeping things to himself. But somehow, Spencer has come up with the idea that Brendon and Ryan are dating. It’s a ridiculous notion, but something stops Ryan from telling Spencer that he’s wrong. In fact, when he really thinks about it, he kind of likes the idea. Brendon and him with Spencer and Haley.
Two great couples. Well, close enough.
“Okay,” Ryan agrees. He knows he’s not thinking this through, but he’s never claimed to be good at relationships of any kind. “I’ll text him right now.”
Spencer laughs and elbows Ryan in the ribs. “I’m surprised you two haven’t learned how to communicate telepathically yet, with all the time you spend together.”
“You’re one to talk,” Ryan says instead of addressing Spencer’s comment. It’s easier that way. Deflection. Though it seems that Ryan is nowhere near as stealthy with his secret crush than he had thought. “You and Haley seem to never be apart.”
“That’s what happens when you’re in love,” Spencer says, and he’s grinning so fucking wide that it reminds Ryan of Brendon. A lot of things seem to remind Ryan of Brendon these days. “I want to spend every single moment with her. She just makes everything better.”
“Thanks a lot,” Ryan says sarcastically. “I’m so glad that I’m such thrilling company.”
Spencer rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean, Ryan. It’s just that she makes me crazy and sane at the same time. She’s amazing.”
Ryan has never seen his friend like this before - so gone over a girl. It’s a little unsettling that his rock of a friend is so lost. Spencer, however, doesn’t seem to notice Ryan’s unease and continues to watch the latest antics on the screen.
Pulling out his phone, Ryan texts Brendon, asking him if he wants to come over on Saturday. He knows he could just ask him tomorrow at the middle school, but he doesn’t want to wait until then.
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