[All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Mr. Brian's Kindergarten Class]
Title: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Mr. Brian's Kindergarten Class
Author: thelawofkarma
Pairings/characters: Kidfic! Feat. Tom Conrad, with a supporting cast of the rest of empires, Gabe and William, Gerard, Brendon, Jon, Greta and Vicky-T, Mr. Brian, Mr. Bob, and Mr. Pete.
Rating and word count: So very G | 4941
Summary: Stolen things! Toy keyboards! Kid angst! Haircuts! Shenanigans! Warning: may induce cavities.
Author's note: None of this is real. A huge thank you to nova33 and saykendrawithme for betaing, to quarterturn and lessthangreat for cheerleading and contributing, to berserkide for all the inspired bits of plot - and also, rather importantly, to the rest of the people who encouraged this. ♥ It takes a village to write a kidfic, apparently.
PS: If you haven't seen this yet (TAI TV, episode 16), the first bit where Gabe torments William won't make as much sense. That scene's what started it all, actually.
Kindergarten
It was all Gabe Saporta's fault, Tom thought, as he sat huddled in the corner of the indoor playhouse (the outdoor one was much cooler, with a spyglass and a ladder and everything; this one was pink and had a kitchen set, but he figured that nobody would think to look for him there). Stupid, stupid Gabe with his stupid, stupid Cobra and his stupid, stupid party. Tom didn't mean to really lose it, he just wanted to get back at Gabe - but now it was gone and he was in trouble and Mr. Brian would probably put him into timeout if Gabe tattled on him, which would mean missing arts and crafts time. It was all so stupid.
A girl peeked through the window, her blonde, curly hair tumbling down into her face in strands. She brushed at it impatiently, narrowing her eyes at Tom. "You're not a girl," she said, in a business-like tone.
"Go away, Greta," Tom told her.
"Can't," she replied brightly. "Me and Vicky-T are sub-ju-gating boys. That means you have to cook for us."
Tom just stared blankly at her until Sean poked his head through the window next to hers and waved at him. "Tom! What're you doing in here?"
The three of them - and their compatriots - were in the same morning kindergarten class led by Mr. Brian. Nobody could ever remember or pronounce his last name (sometimes, after classes were over and while wearily massaging his temples, he told Bob that he couldn't remember his last name), so they called him Mr. Brian. Whenever afternoon rolled around, some of the kids left with their parents while the others stayed behind for a daycare program. Well, the adults called it daycare. The kids considered it "let's run around and scream and make Mr. Brian make shouty faces at us! time".
Tom gave up on hiding in the playhouse because he couldn't let Sean think that he wanted to stay and be sub-ju-gated by Greta and Vicky-T, whatever that was. It sounded painful. So he gloomily got up and scrambled out the door, telling Sean all about what had happened and why he was hiding from Mr. Brian and Gabe.
It had happened like this:
Everyone knew that Sean's prized possession was his toy keyboard. The kids weren't usually allowed to bring things in from home unless it was show-and-tell day or if they kept it in their cubby for the entire day, but Sean refused to go anywhere without his keyboard - even though he could only play Twinkle Twinkle on it. Tom knew that the other kids thought it wasn't really fair of Mr. Brian to allow Sean to bring his keyboard to school and carry it around with him, but Tom thought it was perfectly fair, because Mr. Brian said that he could only do it if he paid attention during class and only used it during music time. And he did.
Earlier that morning, after Mr. Brian attempted to teach them how to tell time (Ryan J said that it was Batman time and everyone else laughed, but Mr. Brian didn't find it that funny and kept telling Ryan, no, look at the hour hand first, no, Mr. Luciani, stop eating your paste, please, that does not mean putting it into Greta's hair) they had half an hour of free play. Tom was putting together a puzzle. Sean and Gerard Way were quietly sitting in a corner, poking at a stuffed bird and wondering if real birds had cotton inside them as well and if they were dead, did they turn into stuffed birds? Because if they did, that would be kind of icky. They thought about grown-up things a lot; that was one of the reasons Tom liked Sean.
Suddenly, out of the blue, Gabe strolled up to Sean and grabbed the toy keyboard from where it was sitting next to him. He put it up to his ear and started pressing random keys; it was something that he did to other kids during playtime no matter how many times Mr. Brian told him, no, Gabriel, you have to ask politely before you take something that belongs to somebody else - but he had never done it with Sean's keyboard before. It all happened so suddenly that Sean sat there wide-eyed as Gabe took off across the room with the keyboard blaring Camptown Races.
"Hey, hey, Bilvy!" He said, skidding to a stop in front of William Beckett and bobbing along to the music. "Where's the party?"
William's lower lip started to tremble.
"Mr. Briaaaaaaaaaaan," he said, hiding behind Mr. Brian's legs, "the creepy boy's bothering me again!"
"Gabe," Mr. Brian warned, "give Sean back his keyboard."
Before Gabe could refuse (and he would have) and before Mr. Brian could threaten him with a timeout (and he would have), Tom decided that he was going to stop everything once and for all, because he was tired of Gabe picking on everyone, and seeing Sean sad made him sad, so he was going to fix all of that.
He marched across the room and punched Gabe in the face with his tiny fist.
"Thomas Conrad," Mr. Brian said, as Gabe stared in shock, but Tom just grabbed the keyboard and marched back across the room and handed it to Sean, who was staring at him with wide, wide blue eyes.
"Thank you," Sean said quietly, and Gerard clapped, and Tom was okay with getting a half an hour timeout and missing story time because he kind of did deserve it - but Gabe didn't even apologize and five minutes later, he was already making fun of Max, who Tom didn't know very well but was really nice and smart - and Tom thought that he should do something else. He didn't know what until he looked over at the cubbies lining the side of the room and saw the stuffed Cobra sitting in Gabe's cubby.
And he hid it. He hid it in a really, really good hiding place - but maybe it was too good of a hiding place because he couldn't find it anymore. That was the problem, because he was sorry and he wished the whole stupid thing was over and nobody stole anything from anybody else anymore, but being sorry didn't help you find lost things.
All of this was related to Sean in solemn tones, who nodded and looked sympathetic and was a little surprised that Tom would steal Gabe's stuffed Cobra for him.
"It's okay," he told Tom, "we'll find it! I'll look for it with you and then we'll find it and then all of us can be friends."
Except then they were distracted by lunch, as boys usually are. Sean shared his animal crackers with Tom, and a few with Gerard, though they didn't share with Ryan because Ryan would have taken the whole box and maybe eaten everything or maybe just thrown it all at somebody.
Lunch flew by quickly, but they were reminded of the missing Cobra again when it was naptime.
As Ryan rolled around on the ground in between the cots and made dinosaur noises at Max, who just turned the other way and hid his head underneath his blanket, Gabe stood in front of his cubby, staring at the empty space where the Cobra used to be. Tom looked over and saw him and he knew that he was going to tell Mr. Brian and he knew that Mr. Brian was going to know it was him, because Mr. Brian was smart (Sean actually misread his name as Mr. Brain once and they sometimes still called him that, but only behind his back).
To his surprise, Gabe didn't tattle. He just walked back to his cot and lay down and maybe sniffled once or twice, which was even worse because Tom didn't mean to make Gabe cry, even though he had punched him in the face.
Mr. Brian was immediately suspicious. "What's wrong, Gabe?"
"Nothing," Gabe mumbled.
That was when Tom fell asleep.
When he woke up again, naptime was over - but Gabe still hadn't fallen asleep.
A few days later, it was almost the end of the school year. Nearly everyone was excited because next year they would be first graders! That meant that they got to stay in school all day - and Mr. Brian said that he was moving on with them, so they would get to have him as a teacher again. "I have all the bad luck," he said, but he was smiling when he said it, so he probably didn't mean it. Tom didn't puzzle over it too much; sometimes grown-ups said things that way.
Tom, however, was getting really worried because they still hadn't found the Cobra. Well, they hadn't really looked because they were distracted by Mr. Brian's story time the other day and thinking about how cool it would be if they were all pirates, and then of course they had to pretend they were pirates during play time, except then they got into an argument with Greta and Vicky-T about who would get to be Captain and if girls could be captains or not.
Greta won, but it was still fun.
That didn't mean that Tom wasn't sorry, though, and that he didn't want to find the Cobra. He was pretty sure he had hidden it somewhere good, where nobody would ever find - wait. Where did he think nobody would ever find him?
With a surprised "Hey!" from Vicky-T, Tom burst into the playhouse and looked in the oven of the kitchen set, and there it was. The Cobra.
Ten minutes later, he brought the Cobra to Gabe sheepishly, but Gabe didn't ask him where he had found it, only looked at him with wide eyes and immediately hugged the Cobra to his chest. And, you know, ran off to taunt William with it by telling him that see, that's what he got for not wanting to be his snugglebuddy during nap time back when he didn't have the Cobra. Because now the Cobra was back and he wouldn't get to, which led to William yelling "I don't want to be your snugglebuddy" back at him and kicking him in the shins and Mr. Brian having to separate the two of them.
Overall, however, it was a success.
---
First Grade
First grade was really, really cool.
Mr. Brian was there to greet them on the first day of school, looking grumpy and mumbling something about coffee and not having enough to deal with the kids again. Greta immediately hugged him around his knees and told him that she missed him so much over the summer, which made him turn bright red, and he smiled at everyone before he put on his shouty face again and made them all go inside and sit down at their desks, and no funny business, Mr. Luciani or Mr. Urie. (Mr. Brian was the best teacher ever.)
Most of the students in the class were the same as last year, but some of last year's class had moved on to a different elementary school. They were replaced by a couple of kids from the afternoon kindergarten class. The new kids included Jon Walker and Brendon Urie, who were really good friends, but - and Tom noticed this, since it was like him and Sean sometimes - very different from each other.
Tom really liked Jon. They got along really well, even though they had some trouble when they first met, on the second day of school. Tom had a new Fisher-Price camera - and the name made it seem like it was supposed to be for babies, but it was a real digital camera, one that actually worked and took pictures! He had brought it in for show-and-tell that day because all throughout summer vacation he had been clicking away, taking pictures around his house, and now he had a billion pictures to show everyone. During recess, he was fiddling with it out on the blacktop.
"Can I see?" Jon asked, and Tom jumped, because he hadn't realized that someone was watching him.
After a moment of consideration, Tom shrugged. "Sure." He handed over the brightly-colored camera.
Jon squinted at the pictures. They were really good for a 6-year old, but haphazardly taken and some of the angles were weird.
"These people don't have heads," Jon commented. It was a casual remark, but Tom didn't like having his photographs criticized, so he snatched back the camera with a grumpy look directed in Jon's direction.
"So? Maybe they're supposed to be headless."
It was a tense moment before Jon companionably offered Tom some of his Cheetos, and then they became best friends.
So, Jon was cool, but Tom wasn't as sure about Brendon Urie. Brendon seemed really nice, and he was actually pretty shy the first few days - they all were, and Mr. Brian said that it was nice to have some peace and quiet for once, as short as it was going to last - but then he grew more and more animated as time progressed. One day, Tom told Jon that they should probably have a secret conference out on the playground, especially if Brendon and Ryan J wanted to play together during recess more. Tom had a bad feeling about that.
"Did you see the swings?" Tom pointed to them. Only three of them were functional - one was completely missing and the other was only hanging on by one chain. "Ryan did that. He was pretending to be Superman. Except then he fell off and he wanted to go to the nurse, but everyone says it wasn't because he was hurt, but 'cause he wanted the superhero bandaids that the nurse has. But then he had to go to the nurse that day anyway 'cause he ate some fingerpaint. And Mr. Brian yelled at him a lot."
It was a pretty big speech for Tom, but he had to get across the importance of how dangerous Ryan was. Jon looked suitably impressed at the fingerpaint-eating. In turn, he pointed over at the other side of the playground. "Brendon broke the seesaw! I dunno know what he was doing, though."
"Mr. Brian said that Ryan J is why we can't have nice things," Tom said solemnly.
"Does that mean we aren't going to get the playground fixed if it gets broken more?"
Both of them contemplated this as well as the impending destruction that would happen if Ryan and Brendon were allowed to be on the playground at the same time. It was a sobering thought for their first grade minds to take in. School without a working playground? What if they broke the slide? If that happened, it would seriously be the end of the world.
As a result, they made a pact that from then on, they would try to keep Ryan J and Brendon as far away from each other as possible. It turned out to be pretty easy, because both of them were easily distracted.
They, however, didn't think to keep Ryan away from Al.
Al Smith was also a new kid. Everyone was kind of scared of him because he was so tall and because he was so cool. Al didn't understand why everyone in the class avoided looking at him and got really nervous whenever he tried to ask them to pass him the red crayon, please. Until they got used to him, the only person in class he could really talk to was Max, because Max didn't understand why it was so cool that Al sat next to a third grader on the bus every day and held hands with her (and not like they held hands when they went out on field trips, either, but like Mr. Brian and Mr. Bob sometimes held hands when they thought that nobody else was looking), and Max was sometimes really nervous without Al around, anyway.
Ryan didn't find Al intimidating, though. He thought Al was the coolest person in the world, basically, and kept following him all around. See, Ryan had a slight superhero complex. He loved superheroes and - okay, if that meant sometimes jumping off of chairs or steps just to see if he could fly, or sometimes trying to climb buildings like Spiderman, and sometimes getting hurt because of that - that was fine! Every superhero had to face challenges before they could find out what their power was and before they saved the world, right?
Not only that, but he sometimes just idolized people, naming inanimate objects after them and following them around with stars in his eyes because he thought they were the coolest people ever. One week, his art project was named Tom because he thought that the way Tom punched Gabe in the face was awesome, because it was just like the movies, and Ryan wanted to be exactly like him. Another week, the notebook that Sean always carried around was named "V". And, sure, it didn't belong to Ryan, and he actually wanted to name it "Van Vleet" because Sean was smart and had the coolest name ever and Ryan always giggled whenever Mr. Brian called Sean "Mr. Van Vleet" - but he couldn't figure out how to spell it, so he just wrote a huge V on the cover. Tom saw what he did and said that Sean would be really angry with him for messing up the notebook, and Ryan was sort of scared that he would, but Sean actually found it funny - and a little weird that Ryan wanted to be like him, because he wasn't awesome at all, really!
This week, Ryan's lunchbox was named Al.
He tried to be like Al, too, but whenever he went up to third grade girls and said "Hi", instead of giggling and turning funny colors, they all said things like "oh, how cute!" and asked him if he wanted to play dress-up with them, so then he had to run away from them and go hide in the bathroom, which was kind of stupid, but - dress-up.
Al was just confused. Who was the short boy who kept following him around and asking him all sorts of silly questions? It was weird.
The problem was that Ryan had way too much energy to spare. So instead of concentrating in class, he spent it falling off his chair, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not, or putting things into William's hair, or teasing Vicky-T until she closed her desk on his fingers, or eating paper or glitter or paste. He could eat anything. After he ate some stickers, Mr. Brian sighed and called him "stomach of steel Luciani", which he found hilarious - and after that he went around yelling "STOMACH OF STEEL LUCIANI" and patting himself on the stomach while saying that, "like a gorilla!".
Maybe that was his superpower?
It was around that time that the class started music lessons.
Mr. Bob came in to teach those. Mr. Bob was kind of scary-looking because he was so big and tall, but he actually smiled more than Mr. Brian, which was okay, because even though Mr. Brian made shouty faces all the time, all the kids knew that he didn't mean it. He brought in a guitar, a few percussion instruments, a piano, and a drumset. After noticing Gabe pretending to use a xylophone mallet as a microphone, he brought in a real microphone - except not really, it was just one of those bright green echo-y ones, but Gabe thought it was really cool - and it matched his clothes, sometimes! - and he spent most of music time dancing around the room and singing into it. Everyone loved Mr. Bob.
At first, Brendon and Tom had a slight tussle over the guitar, but then they eventually decided to share. Sean stared with an absolutely amazed look at the piano, though it was so big that his feet didn't even touch the ground when he sat at the bench. He had to share it with Greta, but that was okay, because Greta sometimes shared her pretzels with him at lunch. Ryan, however, perked up at the sight of the drumset. He could flail around with his arms! And hit things with sticks! And make a lot of noise! What wasn't cool about that?
Mr. Bob noticed Ryan staring at the set, handed him two tiny drumsticks with a small smile, and said "Go for it, kid."
And he did. He nearly broke the set, but he had so much fun and used up so much energy in the process that he actually sat still during class the rest of the day. Mr. Brian noticed all of this with an amused and surprised - and extremely relieved - expression on his face. Maybe that was the solution to all of their problems.
With the added music lessons, fall passed quickly, and after a holiday vacation that was entirely too short for Mr. Brian, they were back in school again.
During the first week of school after break, a few administrative people visited the classroom and observed Mr. Brian for half an hour. They seemed pretty happy with what they saw, and before they left, spent a few minutes walking up and down the aisles, watching the students practicing their penmanship. (Mr. Brian called it 'penmanship' because it sounded fancy and made the kids go 'ooooh!' at the long word, even though it was actually 'practicing writing the ABCs'.) As an older man stood over Ryan's desk and frowned at what he was writing, a younger woman stopped next to William's desk.
"Why, what an absolutely charming young lady you are!" She said, smiling down at him and his long, wavy head of brown hair. "Your penmanship is beautiful, honey."
Mr. Brian had to quickly usher all of the administrative people out before William threw a fit. Sadly, it was a common occurrence.
It seemed to be the absolute last straw for William, however. The next day during arts and crafts, while they were supposed to be making paper mache animals out of newspapers and balloons, William decisively took the craft scissors up to his head. Without hesitation, snip, they went, and down went a long strand of brown hair. It landed on the table. Snip, they went again, and by this time, everyone was staring at him, Greta's mouth an open 'o' of surprise.
Mr. Brian rushed over and carefully extricated the scissors from him. "What do you think you're doing, Mr. Beckett?"
William cheerfully beamed up at him. "It's okay! I don't look like a girl anymore, Mr. Brian!"
The kids thought they heard Mr. Brian mutter "my life, so hard", but they might have been wrong.
William wasn't entirely right, though; even though, eventually, after his mother scolded him and took him to get a proper short haircut, he did look less like a girl - it still didn't change other things.
As Tom and Sean were sitting out on the playground talking about music and monster movies and other important things, they watched William run past them as fast as his skinny legs could carry him. Gabe was chasing him, yelling "I just want to kiss you on the cheek, okay? Just one time!"
It was kind of weird, but when wasn't Gabe Saporta weird?
---
Second grade
Second grade was also really cool, except they had to say good-bye to Mr. Brian and hello to Mr. Pete, who was kind of like Mr. Brian because he had drawings all over his skin, but also not like Mr. Brian because he was less likely to be angry at them and more likely to just grin and think whatever they did was really cool. (Sometimes, they missed Mr. Brian, but other times, they liked Mr. Pete more.) He told them stories about his dog and his best-friend-ever-you-don't-understand-how-cool-he-is, Patrick - and Tom sometimes wondered if Patrick was Mr. Pete's best friend like Mr. Bob was Mr. Brian's best friend, but he didn't want to ask.
Most of the year was like the year before, though: Tom and Sean talked a lot, Sean and Gerard read grown-up books together, Ryan J caused havoc, Gabe chased William around, and one time, during arts and crafts, Brendon somehow got glitter all over everyone and everywhere, including on the class hamster, who they had named Alex.
His eyes grew really, really big and his lower lip stuck out, and he said "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" a billion times before Mr. Pete told him that it was okay, they were just going to be extra-sparkly that day - and speaking of sparkly, they might as well learn about the solar system, right? But Tom thought that he partly said it was okay only because Brendon looked like he was going to cry. Tom didn't blame him, though.
Soon enough, Halloween approached.
Everybody was talking about what costumes they were going to be wearing that day, because Halloween was an extra important holiday and they were now in the second grade, so obviously, they had to choose carefully and make sure that it was a super-awesome costume.
Sean and Gerard discussed it in solemn tones on the bus one day.
"Gerard, Ryan wants me to be a superhero with him, but Tom wants me to be a rock star with him. Is that, um." He thought for a moment. "An ex-is-ten-tial crisis?"
Gerard frowned and thought about it as well, then shook his head. "Only if you want to be both of them at the same time and can't decide."
"Well," Sean said slowly, "I don't want Tom or Ryan to be mad at me, but I kinda want to be a vampire for Halloween."
"Cool," Gerard said, his eyes widening. "Are you going to use fake blood?"
In the end, the best costume that year was definitely Greta's costume. She dressed up as Mr. Pete. (He thought it was the best thing ever, of course.)
As the months passed and Valentine's Day drew nearer and nearer, Tom grew more and more nervous. Mr. Pete told them all that Valentine's Day was the day when they showed someone special in their life exactly how special they were - and then he started talking about Patrick again, so Tom thought that maybe Patrick was his special person, but then he mentioned his wife and that they were going to do something special for that day, so then Tom was confused. He was pretty sure that Sean was his most important person at school, but did that make Sean his wife?
One day, he walked into class, and everything was decorated in pink and white. He froze. It was Valentine's Day and he had forgotten.
He felt horrible, worse than when he had lost Gabe Saporta's stuffed cobra, worse than he had felt when he got sick and had to stay in bed for two days and Sean came over but could only peek through the bedroom door, but then Sean got really sick.
It only got worse when Sean walked up to him and gave him a sheet of paper. It wasn't really a valentine, not the frilly kind that Greta was giving out to everyone, but it had a poem in it. Properly spelled, meticulously neatly written, and in the form that Mr. Pete had taught them all, it read:
roses are red
violets are blue
i have a best friend
and it's you!
It even rhymed.
Tom stared at the poem and mumbled his thanks, feeling even worse - if that was possible - when Sean gave him a confused look when he turned and walked away without saying anything else.
That night, he worriedly went through all of his parents' magazines, carefully looking through all of the colored pictures, scissors in one hand. He even stayed up until ten to finish it.
The next day, he gave Sean the valentine, with a sheepish "Sorry it's late". It was a collage made up of all of the prettiest pictures that Tom could find in all of the magazines. Gorgeous natural scenes, elegantly dressed people - and even photographs that weren't taken to look pretty were all arranged in an artistic way, carefully pasted down on a sheet of paper. In the center was a picture of a gleaming black grand piano, neatly cut out of a catalog of musical instruments.
Sean stared and stared and stared, and finally, when Tom started shifting from foot to foot, he looked up and smiled. "Thank you," he said, and everything was back to normal again.
---
Epilogue
On Valentine's Day, the only person that Gabe made a valentine for was William, of course. It was cut out of white paper and on it, were crayon drawings of the two of them as stick figures. Gabe had tried to write "to my snugglebuddy" on it, but he couldn't figure out if there were one or two g's and if the two words were supposed to be together not, and the card had to be perfect, so he gave up and instead wrote "to Bill" on the front of it instead.
That day, he marched up to William and proudly gave him the valentine. William cautiously took it and read it.
Gabe waited expectantly. And then-
"Fine," William said, with the sigh of someone who's only giving in because they want to. "I'll help you find the party."
End.
Author: thelawofkarma
Pairings/characters: Kidfic! Feat. Tom Conrad, with a supporting cast of the rest of empires, Gabe and William, Gerard, Brendon, Jon, Greta and Vicky-T, Mr. Brian, Mr. Bob, and Mr. Pete.
Rating and word count: So very G | 4941
Summary: Stolen things! Toy keyboards! Kid angst! Haircuts! Shenanigans! Warning: may induce cavities.
Author's note: None of this is real. A huge thank you to nova33 and saykendrawithme for betaing, to quarterturn and lessthangreat for cheerleading and contributing, to berserkide for all the inspired bits of plot - and also, rather importantly, to the rest of the people who encouraged this. ♥ It takes a village to write a kidfic, apparently.
PS: If you haven't seen this yet (TAI TV, episode 16), the first bit where Gabe torments William won't make as much sense. That scene's what started it all, actually.
Kindergarten
It was all Gabe Saporta's fault, Tom thought, as he sat huddled in the corner of the indoor playhouse (the outdoor one was much cooler, with a spyglass and a ladder and everything; this one was pink and had a kitchen set, but he figured that nobody would think to look for him there). Stupid, stupid Gabe with his stupid, stupid Cobra and his stupid, stupid party. Tom didn't mean to really lose it, he just wanted to get back at Gabe - but now it was gone and he was in trouble and Mr. Brian would probably put him into timeout if Gabe tattled on him, which would mean missing arts and crafts time. It was all so stupid.
A girl peeked through the window, her blonde, curly hair tumbling down into her face in strands. She brushed at it impatiently, narrowing her eyes at Tom. "You're not a girl," she said, in a business-like tone.
"Go away, Greta," Tom told her.
"Can't," she replied brightly. "Me and Vicky-T are sub-ju-gating boys. That means you have to cook for us."
Tom just stared blankly at her until Sean poked his head through the window next to hers and waved at him. "Tom! What're you doing in here?"
The three of them - and their compatriots - were in the same morning kindergarten class led by Mr. Brian. Nobody could ever remember or pronounce his last name (sometimes, after classes were over and while wearily massaging his temples, he told Bob that he couldn't remember his last name), so they called him Mr. Brian. Whenever afternoon rolled around, some of the kids left with their parents while the others stayed behind for a daycare program. Well, the adults called it daycare. The kids considered it "let's run around and scream and make Mr. Brian make shouty faces at us! time".
Tom gave up on hiding in the playhouse because he couldn't let Sean think that he wanted to stay and be sub-ju-gated by Greta and Vicky-T, whatever that was. It sounded painful. So he gloomily got up and scrambled out the door, telling Sean all about what had happened and why he was hiding from Mr. Brian and Gabe.
It had happened like this:
Everyone knew that Sean's prized possession was his toy keyboard. The kids weren't usually allowed to bring things in from home unless it was show-and-tell day or if they kept it in their cubby for the entire day, but Sean refused to go anywhere without his keyboard - even though he could only play Twinkle Twinkle on it. Tom knew that the other kids thought it wasn't really fair of Mr. Brian to allow Sean to bring his keyboard to school and carry it around with him, but Tom thought it was perfectly fair, because Mr. Brian said that he could only do it if he paid attention during class and only used it during music time. And he did.
Earlier that morning, after Mr. Brian attempted to teach them how to tell time (Ryan J said that it was Batman time and everyone else laughed, but Mr. Brian didn't find it that funny and kept telling Ryan, no, look at the hour hand first, no, Mr. Luciani, stop eating your paste, please, that does not mean putting it into Greta's hair) they had half an hour of free play. Tom was putting together a puzzle. Sean and Gerard Way were quietly sitting in a corner, poking at a stuffed bird and wondering if real birds had cotton inside them as well and if they were dead, did they turn into stuffed birds? Because if they did, that would be kind of icky. They thought about grown-up things a lot; that was one of the reasons Tom liked Sean.
Suddenly, out of the blue, Gabe strolled up to Sean and grabbed the toy keyboard from where it was sitting next to him. He put it up to his ear and started pressing random keys; it was something that he did to other kids during playtime no matter how many times Mr. Brian told him, no, Gabriel, you have to ask politely before you take something that belongs to somebody else - but he had never done it with Sean's keyboard before. It all happened so suddenly that Sean sat there wide-eyed as Gabe took off across the room with the keyboard blaring Camptown Races.
"Hey, hey, Bilvy!" He said, skidding to a stop in front of William Beckett and bobbing along to the music. "Where's the party?"
William's lower lip started to tremble.
"Mr. Briaaaaaaaaaaan," he said, hiding behind Mr. Brian's legs, "the creepy boy's bothering me again!"
"Gabe," Mr. Brian warned, "give Sean back his keyboard."
Before Gabe could refuse (and he would have) and before Mr. Brian could threaten him with a timeout (and he would have), Tom decided that he was going to stop everything once and for all, because he was tired of Gabe picking on everyone, and seeing Sean sad made him sad, so he was going to fix all of that.
He marched across the room and punched Gabe in the face with his tiny fist.
"Thomas Conrad," Mr. Brian said, as Gabe stared in shock, but Tom just grabbed the keyboard and marched back across the room and handed it to Sean, who was staring at him with wide, wide blue eyes.
"Thank you," Sean said quietly, and Gerard clapped, and Tom was okay with getting a half an hour timeout and missing story time because he kind of did deserve it - but Gabe didn't even apologize and five minutes later, he was already making fun of Max, who Tom didn't know very well but was really nice and smart - and Tom thought that he should do something else. He didn't know what until he looked over at the cubbies lining the side of the room and saw the stuffed Cobra sitting in Gabe's cubby.
And he hid it. He hid it in a really, really good hiding place - but maybe it was too good of a hiding place because he couldn't find it anymore. That was the problem, because he was sorry and he wished the whole stupid thing was over and nobody stole anything from anybody else anymore, but being sorry didn't help you find lost things.
All of this was related to Sean in solemn tones, who nodded and looked sympathetic and was a little surprised that Tom would steal Gabe's stuffed Cobra for him.
"It's okay," he told Tom, "we'll find it! I'll look for it with you and then we'll find it and then all of us can be friends."
Except then they were distracted by lunch, as boys usually are. Sean shared his animal crackers with Tom, and a few with Gerard, though they didn't share with Ryan because Ryan would have taken the whole box and maybe eaten everything or maybe just thrown it all at somebody.
Lunch flew by quickly, but they were reminded of the missing Cobra again when it was naptime.
As Ryan rolled around on the ground in between the cots and made dinosaur noises at Max, who just turned the other way and hid his head underneath his blanket, Gabe stood in front of his cubby, staring at the empty space where the Cobra used to be. Tom looked over and saw him and he knew that he was going to tell Mr. Brian and he knew that Mr. Brian was going to know it was him, because Mr. Brian was smart (Sean actually misread his name as Mr. Brain once and they sometimes still called him that, but only behind his back).
To his surprise, Gabe didn't tattle. He just walked back to his cot and lay down and maybe sniffled once or twice, which was even worse because Tom didn't mean to make Gabe cry, even though he had punched him in the face.
Mr. Brian was immediately suspicious. "What's wrong, Gabe?"
"Nothing," Gabe mumbled.
That was when Tom fell asleep.
When he woke up again, naptime was over - but Gabe still hadn't fallen asleep.
A few days later, it was almost the end of the school year. Nearly everyone was excited because next year they would be first graders! That meant that they got to stay in school all day - and Mr. Brian said that he was moving on with them, so they would get to have him as a teacher again. "I have all the bad luck," he said, but he was smiling when he said it, so he probably didn't mean it. Tom didn't puzzle over it too much; sometimes grown-ups said things that way.
Tom, however, was getting really worried because they still hadn't found the Cobra. Well, they hadn't really looked because they were distracted by Mr. Brian's story time the other day and thinking about how cool it would be if they were all pirates, and then of course they had to pretend they were pirates during play time, except then they got into an argument with Greta and Vicky-T about who would get to be Captain and if girls could be captains or not.
Greta won, but it was still fun.
That didn't mean that Tom wasn't sorry, though, and that he didn't want to find the Cobra. He was pretty sure he had hidden it somewhere good, where nobody would ever find - wait. Where did he think nobody would ever find him?
With a surprised "Hey!" from Vicky-T, Tom burst into the playhouse and looked in the oven of the kitchen set, and there it was. The Cobra.
Ten minutes later, he brought the Cobra to Gabe sheepishly, but Gabe didn't ask him where he had found it, only looked at him with wide eyes and immediately hugged the Cobra to his chest. And, you know, ran off to taunt William with it by telling him that see, that's what he got for not wanting to be his snugglebuddy during nap time back when he didn't have the Cobra. Because now the Cobra was back and he wouldn't get to, which led to William yelling "I don't want to be your snugglebuddy" back at him and kicking him in the shins and Mr. Brian having to separate the two of them.
Overall, however, it was a success.
---
First Grade
First grade was really, really cool.
Mr. Brian was there to greet them on the first day of school, looking grumpy and mumbling something about coffee and not having enough to deal with the kids again. Greta immediately hugged him around his knees and told him that she missed him so much over the summer, which made him turn bright red, and he smiled at everyone before he put on his shouty face again and made them all go inside and sit down at their desks, and no funny business, Mr. Luciani or Mr. Urie. (Mr. Brian was the best teacher ever.)
Most of the students in the class were the same as last year, but some of last year's class had moved on to a different elementary school. They were replaced by a couple of kids from the afternoon kindergarten class. The new kids included Jon Walker and Brendon Urie, who were really good friends, but - and Tom noticed this, since it was like him and Sean sometimes - very different from each other.
Tom really liked Jon. They got along really well, even though they had some trouble when they first met, on the second day of school. Tom had a new Fisher-Price camera - and the name made it seem like it was supposed to be for babies, but it was a real digital camera, one that actually worked and took pictures! He had brought it in for show-and-tell that day because all throughout summer vacation he had been clicking away, taking pictures around his house, and now he had a billion pictures to show everyone. During recess, he was fiddling with it out on the blacktop.
"Can I see?" Jon asked, and Tom jumped, because he hadn't realized that someone was watching him.
After a moment of consideration, Tom shrugged. "Sure." He handed over the brightly-colored camera.
Jon squinted at the pictures. They were really good for a 6-year old, but haphazardly taken and some of the angles were weird.
"These people don't have heads," Jon commented. It was a casual remark, but Tom didn't like having his photographs criticized, so he snatched back the camera with a grumpy look directed in Jon's direction.
"So? Maybe they're supposed to be headless."
It was a tense moment before Jon companionably offered Tom some of his Cheetos, and then they became best friends.
So, Jon was cool, but Tom wasn't as sure about Brendon Urie. Brendon seemed really nice, and he was actually pretty shy the first few days - they all were, and Mr. Brian said that it was nice to have some peace and quiet for once, as short as it was going to last - but then he grew more and more animated as time progressed. One day, Tom told Jon that they should probably have a secret conference out on the playground, especially if Brendon and Ryan J wanted to play together during recess more. Tom had a bad feeling about that.
"Did you see the swings?" Tom pointed to them. Only three of them were functional - one was completely missing and the other was only hanging on by one chain. "Ryan did that. He was pretending to be Superman. Except then he fell off and he wanted to go to the nurse, but everyone says it wasn't because he was hurt, but 'cause he wanted the superhero bandaids that the nurse has. But then he had to go to the nurse that day anyway 'cause he ate some fingerpaint. And Mr. Brian yelled at him a lot."
It was a pretty big speech for Tom, but he had to get across the importance of how dangerous Ryan was. Jon looked suitably impressed at the fingerpaint-eating. In turn, he pointed over at the other side of the playground. "Brendon broke the seesaw! I dunno know what he was doing, though."
"Mr. Brian said that Ryan J is why we can't have nice things," Tom said solemnly.
"Does that mean we aren't going to get the playground fixed if it gets broken more?"
Both of them contemplated this as well as the impending destruction that would happen if Ryan and Brendon were allowed to be on the playground at the same time. It was a sobering thought for their first grade minds to take in. School without a working playground? What if they broke the slide? If that happened, it would seriously be the end of the world.
As a result, they made a pact that from then on, they would try to keep Ryan J and Brendon as far away from each other as possible. It turned out to be pretty easy, because both of them were easily distracted.
They, however, didn't think to keep Ryan away from Al.
Al Smith was also a new kid. Everyone was kind of scared of him because he was so tall and because he was so cool. Al didn't understand why everyone in the class avoided looking at him and got really nervous whenever he tried to ask them to pass him the red crayon, please. Until they got used to him, the only person in class he could really talk to was Max, because Max didn't understand why it was so cool that Al sat next to a third grader on the bus every day and held hands with her (and not like they held hands when they went out on field trips, either, but like Mr. Brian and Mr. Bob sometimes held hands when they thought that nobody else was looking), and Max was sometimes really nervous without Al around, anyway.
Ryan didn't find Al intimidating, though. He thought Al was the coolest person in the world, basically, and kept following him all around. See, Ryan had a slight superhero complex. He loved superheroes and - okay, if that meant sometimes jumping off of chairs or steps just to see if he could fly, or sometimes trying to climb buildings like Spiderman, and sometimes getting hurt because of that - that was fine! Every superhero had to face challenges before they could find out what their power was and before they saved the world, right?
Not only that, but he sometimes just idolized people, naming inanimate objects after them and following them around with stars in his eyes because he thought they were the coolest people ever. One week, his art project was named Tom because he thought that the way Tom punched Gabe in the face was awesome, because it was just like the movies, and Ryan wanted to be exactly like him. Another week, the notebook that Sean always carried around was named "V". And, sure, it didn't belong to Ryan, and he actually wanted to name it "Van Vleet" because Sean was smart and had the coolest name ever and Ryan always giggled whenever Mr. Brian called Sean "Mr. Van Vleet" - but he couldn't figure out how to spell it, so he just wrote a huge V on the cover. Tom saw what he did and said that Sean would be really angry with him for messing up the notebook, and Ryan was sort of scared that he would, but Sean actually found it funny - and a little weird that Ryan wanted to be like him, because he wasn't awesome at all, really!
This week, Ryan's lunchbox was named Al.
He tried to be like Al, too, but whenever he went up to third grade girls and said "Hi", instead of giggling and turning funny colors, they all said things like "oh, how cute!" and asked him if he wanted to play dress-up with them, so then he had to run away from them and go hide in the bathroom, which was kind of stupid, but - dress-up.
Al was just confused. Who was the short boy who kept following him around and asking him all sorts of silly questions? It was weird.
The problem was that Ryan had way too much energy to spare. So instead of concentrating in class, he spent it falling off his chair, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not, or putting things into William's hair, or teasing Vicky-T until she closed her desk on his fingers, or eating paper or glitter or paste. He could eat anything. After he ate some stickers, Mr. Brian sighed and called him "stomach of steel Luciani", which he found hilarious - and after that he went around yelling "STOMACH OF STEEL LUCIANI" and patting himself on the stomach while saying that, "like a gorilla!".
Maybe that was his superpower?
It was around that time that the class started music lessons.
Mr. Bob came in to teach those. Mr. Bob was kind of scary-looking because he was so big and tall, but he actually smiled more than Mr. Brian, which was okay, because even though Mr. Brian made shouty faces all the time, all the kids knew that he didn't mean it. He brought in a guitar, a few percussion instruments, a piano, and a drumset. After noticing Gabe pretending to use a xylophone mallet as a microphone, he brought in a real microphone - except not really, it was just one of those bright green echo-y ones, but Gabe thought it was really cool - and it matched his clothes, sometimes! - and he spent most of music time dancing around the room and singing into it. Everyone loved Mr. Bob.
At first, Brendon and Tom had a slight tussle over the guitar, but then they eventually decided to share. Sean stared with an absolutely amazed look at the piano, though it was so big that his feet didn't even touch the ground when he sat at the bench. He had to share it with Greta, but that was okay, because Greta sometimes shared her pretzels with him at lunch. Ryan, however, perked up at the sight of the drumset. He could flail around with his arms! And hit things with sticks! And make a lot of noise! What wasn't cool about that?
Mr. Bob noticed Ryan staring at the set, handed him two tiny drumsticks with a small smile, and said "Go for it, kid."
And he did. He nearly broke the set, but he had so much fun and used up so much energy in the process that he actually sat still during class the rest of the day. Mr. Brian noticed all of this with an amused and surprised - and extremely relieved - expression on his face. Maybe that was the solution to all of their problems.
With the added music lessons, fall passed quickly, and after a holiday vacation that was entirely too short for Mr. Brian, they were back in school again.
During the first week of school after break, a few administrative people visited the classroom and observed Mr. Brian for half an hour. They seemed pretty happy with what they saw, and before they left, spent a few minutes walking up and down the aisles, watching the students practicing their penmanship. (Mr. Brian called it 'penmanship' because it sounded fancy and made the kids go 'ooooh!' at the long word, even though it was actually 'practicing writing the ABCs'.) As an older man stood over Ryan's desk and frowned at what he was writing, a younger woman stopped next to William's desk.
"Why, what an absolutely charming young lady you are!" She said, smiling down at him and his long, wavy head of brown hair. "Your penmanship is beautiful, honey."
Mr. Brian had to quickly usher all of the administrative people out before William threw a fit. Sadly, it was a common occurrence.
It seemed to be the absolute last straw for William, however. The next day during arts and crafts, while they were supposed to be making paper mache animals out of newspapers and balloons, William decisively took the craft scissors up to his head. Without hesitation, snip, they went, and down went a long strand of brown hair. It landed on the table. Snip, they went again, and by this time, everyone was staring at him, Greta's mouth an open 'o' of surprise.
Mr. Brian rushed over and carefully extricated the scissors from him. "What do you think you're doing, Mr. Beckett?"
William cheerfully beamed up at him. "It's okay! I don't look like a girl anymore, Mr. Brian!"
The kids thought they heard Mr. Brian mutter "my life, so hard", but they might have been wrong.
William wasn't entirely right, though; even though, eventually, after his mother scolded him and took him to get a proper short haircut, he did look less like a girl - it still didn't change other things.
As Tom and Sean were sitting out on the playground talking about music and monster movies and other important things, they watched William run past them as fast as his skinny legs could carry him. Gabe was chasing him, yelling "I just want to kiss you on the cheek, okay? Just one time!"
It was kind of weird, but when wasn't Gabe Saporta weird?
---
Second grade
Second grade was also really cool, except they had to say good-bye to Mr. Brian and hello to Mr. Pete, who was kind of like Mr. Brian because he had drawings all over his skin, but also not like Mr. Brian because he was less likely to be angry at them and more likely to just grin and think whatever they did was really cool. (Sometimes, they missed Mr. Brian, but other times, they liked Mr. Pete more.) He told them stories about his dog and his best-friend-ever-you-don't-understand-how-cool-he-is, Patrick - and Tom sometimes wondered if Patrick was Mr. Pete's best friend like Mr. Bob was Mr. Brian's best friend, but he didn't want to ask.
Most of the year was like the year before, though: Tom and Sean talked a lot, Sean and Gerard read grown-up books together, Ryan J caused havoc, Gabe chased William around, and one time, during arts and crafts, Brendon somehow got glitter all over everyone and everywhere, including on the class hamster, who they had named Alex.
His eyes grew really, really big and his lower lip stuck out, and he said "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" a billion times before Mr. Pete told him that it was okay, they were just going to be extra-sparkly that day - and speaking of sparkly, they might as well learn about the solar system, right? But Tom thought that he partly said it was okay only because Brendon looked like he was going to cry. Tom didn't blame him, though.
Soon enough, Halloween approached.
Everybody was talking about what costumes they were going to be wearing that day, because Halloween was an extra important holiday and they were now in the second grade, so obviously, they had to choose carefully and make sure that it was a super-awesome costume.
Sean and Gerard discussed it in solemn tones on the bus one day.
"Gerard, Ryan wants me to be a superhero with him, but Tom wants me to be a rock star with him. Is that, um." He thought for a moment. "An ex-is-ten-tial crisis?"
Gerard frowned and thought about it as well, then shook his head. "Only if you want to be both of them at the same time and can't decide."
"Well," Sean said slowly, "I don't want Tom or Ryan to be mad at me, but I kinda want to be a vampire for Halloween."
"Cool," Gerard said, his eyes widening. "Are you going to use fake blood?"
In the end, the best costume that year was definitely Greta's costume. She dressed up as Mr. Pete. (He thought it was the best thing ever, of course.)
As the months passed and Valentine's Day drew nearer and nearer, Tom grew more and more nervous. Mr. Pete told them all that Valentine's Day was the day when they showed someone special in their life exactly how special they were - and then he started talking about Patrick again, so Tom thought that maybe Patrick was his special person, but then he mentioned his wife and that they were going to do something special for that day, so then Tom was confused. He was pretty sure that Sean was his most important person at school, but did that make Sean his wife?
One day, he walked into class, and everything was decorated in pink and white. He froze. It was Valentine's Day and he had forgotten.
He felt horrible, worse than when he had lost Gabe Saporta's stuffed cobra, worse than he had felt when he got sick and had to stay in bed for two days and Sean came over but could only peek through the bedroom door, but then Sean got really sick.
It only got worse when Sean walked up to him and gave him a sheet of paper. It wasn't really a valentine, not the frilly kind that Greta was giving out to everyone, but it had a poem in it. Properly spelled, meticulously neatly written, and in the form that Mr. Pete had taught them all, it read:
roses are red
violets are blue
i have a best friend
and it's you!
It even rhymed.
Tom stared at the poem and mumbled his thanks, feeling even worse - if that was possible - when Sean gave him a confused look when he turned and walked away without saying anything else.
That night, he worriedly went through all of his parents' magazines, carefully looking through all of the colored pictures, scissors in one hand. He even stayed up until ten to finish it.
The next day, he gave Sean the valentine, with a sheepish "Sorry it's late". It was a collage made up of all of the prettiest pictures that Tom could find in all of the magazines. Gorgeous natural scenes, elegantly dressed people - and even photographs that weren't taken to look pretty were all arranged in an artistic way, carefully pasted down on a sheet of paper. In the center was a picture of a gleaming black grand piano, neatly cut out of a catalog of musical instruments.
Sean stared and stared and stared, and finally, when Tom started shifting from foot to foot, he looked up and smiled. "Thank you," he said, and everything was back to normal again.
---
Epilogue
On Valentine's Day, the only person that Gabe made a valentine for was William, of course. It was cut out of white paper and on it, were crayon drawings of the two of them as stick figures. Gabe had tried to write "to my snugglebuddy" on it, but he couldn't figure out if there were one or two g's and if the two words were supposed to be together not, and the card had to be perfect, so he gave up and instead wrote "to Bill" on the front of it instead.
That day, he marched up to William and proudly gave him the valentine. William cautiously took it and read it.
Gabe waited expectantly. And then-
"Fine," William said, with the sigh of someone who's only giving in because they want to. "I'll help you find the party."
End.