Work Text:
Detention was about as boring as Peter had always thought it would be. He was told to sit in an empty classroom and had his missed math homework condescendingly placed face down in front of him. Is this what it felt like to be a kid that always fails tests? The thought made his stomach churn.
He supposed ‘empty’ wasn’t the right word for it, there was a teacher that sat in the corner on her computer, and there was a couple kids up the back, regulars by the looks, and a boy two tables over from Peter with his arms crossed on the desk and his chin resting atop them, eyes blankly staring ahead. Peter inferred by the small bandaid adorning his jutting cheekbone that he was in here for picking fights- what was with juniors and being goddamn psychos? Peter may have only entered the senior year this year but come on, he never picked fights, even when he was a junior, surely it wasn’t that hard to fly under the radar? Wasn’t that hard to control yourself? It was ridiculous if he was honest.
The boy looked to Peter and the blond quickly looked down to his math homework, which had only gained the neat scrawl of his name since it’d been placed in front of him. He grit his teeth and exhaled through his nose, his cheeks were burning at being caught staring, and staring judgementally at that. God, who was he to judge someone for winding up in detention when he was no better? And, like his brother always said, “you don’t know their side,” it had always made Peter roll his eyes and snap back an ‘it doesn’t matter’ and then Alexander would glare at him and Peter would stomp off to his room waxing poetry about how nobody understands him. Because they don’t understand me.
Peter sighs, shaking his head slightly and pressing his pencil to the first question, his eyes focus but there’s white noise in his head, nothing registers as he stares at the question and after a minute of nothing he groans and lets his forehead fall onto his desk. He could never do math work outside of class and being punished for it was doing nothing to awaken the knowledge deep inside him.
“What you doing?” the sound of a voice from beside him startles Peter, and he jumps in his seat, paper almost sticking to where his forehead has grown tacky in the muggy heat of the closed classroom (seriously, no fans, no open windows- this truly was torture). When he’s done fighting the sheet of paper he looks to the source of the sound- the boy two desks over has moved into the one right next to Peter’s. Whilst he looked slightly weirded out by the blond’s actions, it didn’t stop him from nodding to the sheet, repeating his question.
Peter stammers a moment, managing no more than an ‘uhh’ as he smacks his hand down on the sheet, the action turning out a bit louder than he’d wanted, which earnt him a glare from the teacher and a muffled hum of amusement from the boy beside him. “Math homework- missed it” he finally managed to conclude. He’d never much liked the younger grades, and the way this kid was laughing at him was only serving to make his dislike worse at the moment. He swallows the growl threatening to bubble up in his throat and instead returns the question, his voice somehow coming out lightyears more friendly then he felt at that moment.
The boy sighed, moving a hand to gesture at the bandaid, “got into a fight.” When Peter opened his mouth to ask why, the brunet beat him to it “people were saying stuff that wasn’t true” when he speaks, his voice wavers, and he clears his throat, averting his eyes for a moment. Peter felt a pinch of recognition in his belly, a pinch that made his heart shake in his chest. If they were both thinking the same kind of ‘stuff,’ then Peter could understand the fight. Could relate so much it hurts. Their fears were one in the same.
He knew that desperate feeling, the one that crawled up your belly into your chest and made your fingertips itch and your throat tighten. Made your heart thump so heavily you can see your chest quaking under your shirt, can feel it in your ears and struggle to find breath through the violent shake of your own body. The same desperation that made nice boys mean and quiet boys violent- made them end up in detention with bandaids on their face talking to strangers in the hopes they could for five minutes make an ally in a world outside of the playground where that desperation ran rife.
It might not have been that deep, and a part of Peter knows that, but all Peter can do is nod, looking away from those nervous blue eyes and down at his math homework, Peter knew his side, he understood it, or at least, he convinced himself that he did. The boy could understand him, one of the only ones that could, if even in the slightest. Peter swallowed thickly and pressed his pencil to his paper, he heard shuffling from beside him and could see from the corner of his eye that the boy had gone back to resting his chin on crossed arms atop his desk.
Peter hadn’t realized what he’d been scribbling until the lead on his pencil snapped with a frustrating crunch. It was the Moonstone, what else? How ironic, drawing the reason he was in detention on the homework that had gotten him detention in the first place. Peter wasn’t any good at drawing, but by this point he’d spent so much time on that boat he could draw it in his sleep.
“I wish I could go on a boat” the boy sighed from beside Peter, the blond humming but only half paying attention as he sharpened his pencil, grimacing as lead stuck to the plastic sharpener stained his fingers and promised to ruin the entire image if he tried to continue, Peter would’ve sworn if he wasn’t scared of getting yet another detention. “My dad says if I get good grades he’ll take me out on the water, it’d be great if it was ever going to happen” the boy continued with a sigh, eyes glued to the little doodle, wishing he was somewhere else, he says as much when he turns his head back to stare at the clock at the front of the classroom.
Peter does pay attention then, if only because once again they find themselves in the same boat… no pun intended. He throws his sharpener back into his pencil case and inhales deeply, resting back in his chair, eyes on the back of the younger boys head, “I guess we have something in common,” more than he could ever know.