Chapter Text
No one enjoyed having Maths last thing on a Friday.
No one except Gregory Bridgerton that is.
This wasn’t because he liked the subject. He didn’t. He wasn’t particularly good at maths, nor was he particularly bad. His feelings toward statistics, mechanics, and the quadratic equation hovered firmly in the category of tolerable.
No. What made Gregory look forward to Maths was certainly not the content.
It was the seating plan.
Most people dreaded the class purely because of Mr Reinhold - the ancient teacher whose birth year was rumoured to predate indoor plumbing; possible outdoor plumbing. Reinhold had taught Gregory’s father, and supposedly his grandfather, and he carried himself like a relic of an era where chalk dust was currency and fun was a punishable offence. He was strict, old-fashioned, and obsessed with order. The sort of teacher who would happily bring back corporeal punishment.
Ordinarily, that would place him squarely in Gregory’s least favourite teachers.
But Mr Reinhold had one good point going for him.
A rather major one.
His seating plan.
Alphabetical seating.
It was the sort of thing you’d expect in the Victorian era (which was also the general consensus among the student body about when Reinhold had attended school himself). Most teachers either allowed sixth formers to choose their own seats or put them beside people they knew would actually get work done. But no - Reinhold trusted in the sacred alphabetical order.
Fortunately for Gregory, in this instance, alphabetical order was on his side.
At home, being seventh out of eight had its disadvantages. But at school?
B came delightfully, strategically, beautifully after A.
Which meant he was seated beside Lucia Abernathy.
At first, he had seen this as a convenient pathway toward Hermione Watson, who sat right at the back - due to the positioning of W - and who he had been determined to be hopelessly in love with at least once every academic year since primary school. And who just happened to be Lucia’s best friend.
But somewhere around last spring, Gregory realised something inconvenient and a bit alarming:
He preferred Lucia.
Even though she regarded him with the polite disinterest one might give a fellow passenger on a bus. Even though she refused to acknowledge their seat-sharing arrangement as anything more than proximity forced by alphabetical tyranny.
Even though she was, by all observable evidence, immune to his charm.
Which was frankly baffling.
Gregory was one of the last into the room that afternoon, having sprinted from Geography to avoid being late and incurring Reinhold’s disappointed stare (which was worse than detention). He crashed into his seat with all the grace of an injured swan.
The table trembled and Lucia’s perfect line of colour-coded pens rolled dramatically across the surface like tiny, terrified soldiers fleeing battle.
Lucia didn’t look up immediately. She placed her ruler precisely on the top edge of her exercise book, straightened the corner, then finally turned her head to give him a single, sideways glance.
A sigh.
Soft, resigned, practiced.
She retrieved each pen and realigned them in their exact rainbow sequence at the top of her notebook, already set out with ruled margins and the date written in immaculate handwriting.
“I don’t think Dr Phelps knows the bell exists,” Gregory said, rummaging through the chaos that was his school bag in search of his calculator - or anything that resembled academic preparedness. “She just talks and talks.”
“She likes to be thorough,” Lucia replied, her tone diplomatic. One of the many reasons she had not chosen geography.
“Thoroughly boring,” he muttered.
Before Lucia could respond - or sigh again - Mr Reinhold shuffled to the front of the room, clutching a stack of worksheets like they were sacred texts.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” he said, adjusting his spectacles. “Now, we will be continuing with the integration of curves.”
Groans rippled through the room.
Gregory pulled his hand out of his bag and examined its contents: a half-eaten granola bar, a crumpled permission slip, three quid in loose coins, and absolutely nothing useful.
“Hey, can I borrow—” he began.
Without looking away from her textbook, Lucia wordlessly held out a black pen.
“You always know just what I need,” Gregory said, flashing the smile that had, on more than one occasion, caused actual swooning in the corridors of Aubrey Pines Senior School.
Lucia only rolled her eyes. “You always need a pen. I’m convinced there are at least ten of mine in the abyss you call a bag.”
Gregory offered an unapologetic grin. “Possibly eleven.”
“Stop losing them.”
“I don’t lose them,” he whispered. “I just… misplace them indefinitely.”
“Irretrievable is lost, Gregory,” she murmured, flipping to the next example problem.
When the final bell rang Gregory stretch in his seat and smiled, as Lucia repacked her bag.
“Any plans for the weekend?” He asked.
“No,” Lucia replied, standing up.
“Do you fancy studying for the test on Sunday?” Gregory asked, putting his bag over his shoulder. “Might be easier to make sense of those questions together?” He wasn’t going to give up easily.
“You just want to use my notes,” Lucia said, slightly accusingly.
“No!” He said a little hurt, “not completely.” Lucia raised an eyebrow before replying.
“You should ask Hermione. She’s really good at explaining things.”
Gregory felt his ego deflate like a sad balloon.
“Hermione?” he repeated. “You think I should study with… Hermione?”
“Yes,” Lucia said simply, as they headed for the stairs. “You talk about her constantly.”
“I do not,” he protested. And he didn’t anymore. He didn’t think.
“Last week you said her hair looked like caramel in the sun.”
Gregory turned red. “It did!”
“And the week before you said she had a laugh like a—what was it? A summer breeze?”
“I was being poetic,” he mumbled.
“Yes,” she said, completely unruffled. “About Hermione.”
Gregory opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again. Maybe he had said those things; but it was to get a reaction from the girl in front of him. “Lucia, I—”
Her phone buzzed and she looked down.
“My uncle’s here. Have a good weekend Gregory,” Lucia said, before hurrying off.
Gregory had barely taken three sulking steps down the corridor when a voice echoed behind him—
“Ohhh, that was tragic.”
He flinched. “Hyacinth, go away.”
His younger sister trotted up beside him, perfectly composed in her purple coat and braids, carrying an armful of library books entirely too heavy for someone her size.
“What was tragic?” she asked innocently. “Your attempt at flirting or the fact that you genuinely hoped it was working?”
Gregory groaned. “How long were you standing there?”
“Long enough,” Hyacinth said with a smirk. “I heard the whole… thing.”
“It wasn’t a thing.”
“It was definitely a thing,” she corrected. “A crash-and-burn thing.”
Gregory shoved his hands in his pockets. “For your information, Lucia and I were having a perfectly normal conversation.”
Hyacinth snorted. “Gregory, she didn’t even look at you the way one looks at a potential romantic option. She looked at you like… like a helpful houseplant.”
He stopped walking. “A houseplant?”
“Yes,” she said cheerfully. “You’re there. You’re pleasant. You require minimal maintenance. But she doesn’t think about you once she leaves the room.”
Gregory wilted. “Thank you. That makes me feel so much better.”
“It gets worse,” Hyacinth said helpfully.
He glared at her. “Of course it does.”
They stepped outside into the cold, late-afternoon air. Students streamed past them toward buses and idling cars. Hyacinth adjusted the strap of her backpack and lowered her voice dramatically.
“You should give up, you know.”
Gregory stopped walking again. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” She looked up at him with pitying sincerity far too sophisticated for someone her age. “Give. Up.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Because you think I have no chance?”
“No, that’s just a bonus.” Hyacinth leaned closer, eyes sparkling with the thrill of gossip. “I’m saving you from heartbreak.” She was trying to be a good sister.
Gregory blinked. “Hyacinth, Lucia and I are friends—”
“Friends?” Hyacinth cut in, amused. “You’re not even that. She treats you with the same emotional intimacy she gives to her pencil case.”
Gregory groaned loudly.
“And,” Hyacinth continued, now clearly enjoying herself, “there’s her uncle.”
Gregory frowned. “What about her uncle?”
“Super strict. Madi MacMillan heard he’s going to send her to like a convent after school and she’ll be locked away in like a tower for the rest of her life,” she said, dramatically. Gregory rolled his eyes.
“ Don’t be stupid,” he groaned. She was exaggerating. “By Christmas I’ll have kissed Lucia Abernathy. Just you wait and see.”