Chapter Text
Richie walked into the room, up to his desk, books under his arm and an apple in the other.
“Alright estudiantes, get in your seats—“ Richie grinned around at his students, pronouncing the word with a dramatic, butchered accent and setting down his stuff. “Take a seat guys, enough chit chat,” he said, shuffling a few papers on the front desk.
A student, Mel, approached his desk looking a little hesitant. He didn’t look up to meet her eyes as she spoke, instead nodding along. “Um, good morning Mr. Tozier, I wasn’t here yesterday and I just wanted—“
“Detention.” Richie said, cutting her off abruptly. He looked up and cracked a smile at her blank face. “I’m just playing, keep goin’, kid.”
“Well— um, I just wanted the work I missed.”
“You want to know something I hate?” He said, gathering up a copy of the notes they had taken yesterday and writing down the homework at the top of the page. “It’s when kids come in and ask 'did I miss anthing while I was gone?'—“ He did what he thought an overdramatic prepubescent teen sounded like and Mel giggled, causing him to smile more,” which thank goodness you didn’t do because I would’ve been a little pissed. It’s like students think that suddenly, when they’re gone for a day, that no work was done because of their absence, which makes no sense. Like yeah, we sat around and waited for you to return, that’s what we did—“ he rolled his eyes, shuffling the papers. “The world doesn’t revolve around you, sad to say, but it’s true.” He said, a bit too dramatically to lighten her up, handing her the page as he finished scrawling out what he needed to.
She did look a lot less wound up then when she first approached him, so he counted it as a little victory. “Thank you, Mr. Tozier.”
“No prob, now go sit down and if you’ve got anymore questions let me know during the break,” Richie said, drumming his fingers on the black table top. Double periods were both a blessing and a curse— Richie loved his job. Getting to talk about and explain biology all day was a score in his book, and making sure that kids understood it and enjoyed it, for that matter, was pretty awesome too. However, the curse was probably the pubescent teens themselves, crazy weirdos they were. He loved all his classes and students, he really did, but some of them were horrible listeners or got off track or something equally annoying but not totally terrible. When he had told this to Stan, Stan had said “Yeah so basically you when you were a kid,” and Richie couldn’t come up with anything to say to that.
“Alright kiddos, get in your seats, we got a lot of learning to do today! Who’s excited?” He addressed the class as a whole, looking around at all the bored expressions. It wasn’t as if they didn’t like Richie, they just didn’t appreciate biology as much as he did.
He heard a distinct mumble in the middle of the room and then a small chorus of laughs that followed. He leaned forward onto the desk, putting his hand by his ear. “I’m sorry Lucas, what was that?”
“I said we’re not twelve, sir.” Lucas said, snickering to himself.
Richie walked around the large desk to the front of it, hopping to sit on top of it. He snorted. “Sir— okay sure. First of all, you were twelve— what? Like two, three years ago? If you don’t want to be addressed like twelve year olds—“ he grinned to show he wasn’t entirely serious, “then don’t act like them.”
There was a small chorus of oohs said around the class and Richie rolled his eyes. “All right, show’s over. Who wants to learn about genes?”
There was a collective groan. Richie pumped a fist into the air sarcastically, swinging his feet back on forth as he talked. “Yeah, that’s the spirit! Who wants to pick us up on where we left off?”
A hand shot up, waving around a little desperately. “We left off on genes and what it means to be homozygous and heterozygous—“
“—Or if you did the homework—“ he emphasized, scanning the room pointedly. He counted five guilty faces. “Then it’s when genes are either the same— homo— between a mommy and daddy gene or different— hetero— between a mommy and daddy gene.”
He heard a few snickers around the room. He rolled his eyes for the second time. “Nope, not happening, we’re going to be big girls and boys in here and be able to say the words homo and hetero like adults. Do you want to repeat our human reproduction unit? You guys can scream them again until we’re used to them, I don’t mind.” He asked, half threatening. The words penis and vagina didn’t go down too well during their reproductive unit.
At that moment, there was a knock on the door. Everyone turned to look at the door that was already wide open, staring at Eddie.
“I— um—“ Eddie flushed a bit under the collective attention. “Mr. Tozier, sorry to interrupt, but do you have a free period today? I was told to come ask you.”
“Yeah, third, right now. I’m skipping this one—“ he joked, cracking a smile at the reactions he got from the rest of the class.
Eddie tilted his head, not amused.
“Fine, I have one sixth period today and seventh tomorrow.” He said, relenting a bit. He gave Eddie a big smile, trying to crack his fierce demeanor a bit.
Eddie gave him a tight lipped smile, which barely counted to Richie, and nodded. “Okay, I’ll be sure to tell him.” He said, making to turn around and leave.
“Bye Mr. Kaspbrak!” A few students called, waving enthusiastically.
Eddie turned back around slightly, waving at them and smiling softly before heading down the hallway.
Richie stared after him for a moment, frowning.
“Does Mr. Kaspbrak hate you?”
“What?” Richie turned to the direction of the voice, looking at the center of the classroom. A freshman, Luna, had spoke up and was looking at him curiously. Her friends sitting around her were laughing into their hands.
Richie let out a surprised laugh. “No, no, course not. He’s just a bit of a tough cookie.”
Another student piped up from the front of the class. “Yeah, but he’s only like that with you. He’s different with Mr. Uris and Mr. Hanscom—“
Richie held up a hand with a disbelieving face. “Okay, first of all, hold up. Everyone's nice to Mr. Hanscom. He’s the librarian and an angel. And as for Mr. Uris, well, if you’re not nice to him, then he’ll probably castrate you.”
Richie tried to keep a straight face as he looked around at the class. There were some scandalized faces, while others erupted into surprised laughter, and some looked just plain confused. Richie broke his serious demeanor, grinning widely. “I’m kidding, I'm kidding— relax guys, geez. I love Mr. Uris, it’s just that he’s a bit of a tough cookie sometimes too.”
“Do you love Mr. Kaspbrak too?” One of the girls next to Luna burst out, earning another laugh from most the class.
Richie scratched the back of his neck, refraining from rolling his eyes at their nosy selves. “Yes, of course, I love Mr. Kaspbrak too—“
“Mr. Tozier, are you married?” A kid in the back, Anthony, said loudly.
Richie wanted to laugh. “Yes, I’m married—“ the class erupted into chatter and he groaned loudly. Two girls at the back of the classroom looked a little disappointed; he snorted, unable to help himself. He talked louder over them to get their attention. “— but this has nothing to do with the lesson so can we move on?”
The class continued to talk, shouting questions at him and friends across the room. “Who is it?” He heard a few people say and look at him expectantly.
He pointed at each of them, narrowing his eyes. “That’s classified.” It wasn’t really classified, whether the students knew who he was married to or not, he just wanted to piss them off a bit.
A lot of the class had stopped talking to listen to him. “Can you please tell us?” Someone from the front, one of the kids in his class who usually wouldn’t shut up, looked up at him desperately.
Richie rubbed his hands over his face, groaning into them more. He placed them on the space on his desk next to him, thinking. “Okay, how about this. If you guys figure out who I’m married to before— um, May 1st, I’ll take you somewhere on one of the days of the last week of school? Class vote.” He knew he’d probably regret this later, but he just really wanted to get on with the lesson, as much as he liked to talk.
The class exploded, shouting their approval. He nodded, pleased, and collected himself. “All right, so, genes!”