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Fitz and Daisy had a very similar schedule. Had they sort of planned it that way? Yes, yes they had. Out of the eight total classes they were taking, they had a solid five together: Math, Computer Science, English, American History, and Art History; and out of those five classes, there was only one that they didn’t sit next to each other in and it happened to be the class taught by Daisy’s father. He knew better than to place the two next to one another. However, as the school year went on, more of their teachers had become aware of what putting Leo Fitz and Daisy Coulson next to each other meant.
They worked well together, being best friends and kindred spirits, but they also had a proclivity for causing chaos. When it came to class discussions, they often answered questions to one another more than to the class and there was rarely a day where a doodle or two was not created. They even passed gum wrappers back and forth for some unknown reason, silly little messages passed one to the other on the tiny slips of silver sided paper.
“Excuse me, Mr. Fitz,” their Art History teacher, Ms. Hand, whispered as the rest of the students started on their essays, “may I see that gum wrapper for a moment?”
Dropping his pencil on his already half-way done essay, Fitz raised his head to the stern face of his teacher. “Yes, Ms. Hand.”
Fitz placed the wrapper in her palm and he couldn’t help the little look he passed across the table to Daisy, catching her raised eyebrows and her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
“What exactly does this mean?” Ms. Hand gave the wrapper, no longer neatly folded, back to Fitz. His whole face was doing its best imitation of a beetroot, impersonating the color with extreme accuracy.
“It’s--It’s stupid, Ms. Hand.”
“Leo?”
Daisy’s nose scrunched up and she hid a grimace. Oof, she called him Leo.
His eyes drifted to the wrapper and back up to the bespeckled gaze over his shoulder. “Well, you see, we were watching a show a few months ago--”
“For the meme,” Daisy cut in, her helpful comment appearing quite the opposite to their teacher.
“For the what, Ms. Coulson?”
“The meme. You know, for the sake of irony. It’s like Dadaism.” Her head nodded forward, her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised. Fitz groaned. Did Daisy actually think that relating it to Art History would save them?
Ms. Hand’s face remained as stony as ever. “Continue, Mr. Fitz.”
“Well, we were watching this show and the couple in it continued to call their relationship ‘endgame’ and so for the past few months we keep sending different things we think are endgame.”
“This gum wrapper just says mac and cheese.”
At this point, the class was so quiet and their conversation, although in whispers, carried easily through the silence. The “endgame” comment caused a few other students to begin to giggle and one girl, Bobbi Morse, even had her face buried in her crossed arms to hide her laughter.
“Well you see Ms. Hand,” Daisy piped up, her features now brimming with an almost pride, “I do believe my relationship with mac and cheese is endgame. I was just informing Fitz of it.”
“When you were supposed to be paying attention to the lecture?”
Ms. Hand’s eyes were daggers and the red stripe in her hair almost seemed to glow like Hades’ in that Disney Hercules movie.
The class stopped talking and pencils began to scratch on paper again leaving Fitz and Daisy to fend for themselves.
“We were paying attention, Ms. Hand,” Fitz assured. His whole body turned on his art stool so that he could display in body language how earnest he was. “I could tell you every topic we covered today!”
“And could you, Daisy?”
Daisy’s face reached for the tip of her nose. “Could I on the best of days, Ms. Hand?”
And that was when Daisy got moved to a table closer to the screen. Away from Fitz.
Daisy was upside down on one of the desks in her father’s classroom, her hair tickling the tile floor.
“I can’t believe she moved me,” she said, her voice a little strained due to the gravitational pull on her vocal cords.
Fitz grabbed another piece of candy from the jar on Mr. Coulson’s desk, chucking an M&M at her face and hitting her nose. “I can. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck, though.”
“If anything, sitting by you in that class helps me learn better! That one day you were out with the flu and moping about at home––”
“Hey! I was sick! I was allowed to mope!”
“––And I had to go to Art History all by myself, I learned absolutely nothing! I vaguely remember something about the dude holding the cat but that’s about it.”
“Dude holding a cat?”
“Yeah, he painted that picture that everyone and their dog had in their dorm. The one with all the gold leaf on canvas. The weirdly posed couple people.”
Fitz’s hand froze in mid-air, the M&M still clutched in his fingers. “Do you mean Klimt?”
“Yeah! That guy! Ms. Hand put a picture of him and a cat in the powerpoint and that’s literally all I remember from that day.”
Fitz chucked the M&M. Daisy caught it in her mouth and for a brief moment they forgot what they were talking about, Daisy swinging herself upright in a waterfall of hair as they both cheered their victory.
She swallowed the M&M while Fitz collected another handful.
“What if I refuse to move, like as a protest or something?”
“I don’ than’ tha’ a option.”
“Chew and swallow, Fitz.”
Fitz chewed and swallowed and then continued. “I don’t think that that’s an option, Dais. Hand is scary.”
“Does she have that scary red stripe in her air to battle demon children, yes, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a reasonable person.”
“I bet she’s perfectly reasonable which is why she won’t move you back.”
Fitz sat at one of the desks in the front row, pulling out his Art History notebook and starting on the homework. “Maybe you should just let sleeping dogs lie.”
“The dog just fell asleep! He can wake up for a second more.”
They both blinked at each other, Daisy looking like a lecturing teacher and Fitz a confused student. “Eh, Dais.”
“Yeah, Fitz.”
“What the hell are we talking about.”
Daisy shrugged and fell into the seat next to Fitz. “I’ve got no idea.”
Her eyes went bright. “But I do have a plan.”
“Don’t you always?”
It turns out that Daisy's plan wasn’t so much a plan as it was a series of wearing out their Art History teacher. The next class period Daisy sat at her assigned seat and squinted at the screen, her face tilted all the way up and her mouth moving noiselessly. She continued to move her face back and forth like a focusing camera lens, craning her neck to different angles and shifting her stool every now and again.
“Is everything alright, Ms. Coulson?”
Ms. Hand had stopped the lecture, her red lips slightly pursed and her open book lowering from her chest to her stomach.
“I can’t see, Ms. Hand,” Daisy said. Her whole face was pulled to the left like she was fighting back frustration. Fitz closed his eyes and leaned his head up to face the speckled tile ceiling, so far he almost fell off his stool. She was really laying it on thick.
“You can’t?”
“Nope. I’m too close to the screen. It’s all fuzzy.”
Ms. Hand’s expression didn’t change. “You may move to sit back by Ms. Morse.”
The class started up again while Daisy lugged her backpack over to the table behind her, landing on a steel-and-paint-splatter stool next to the tall blonde.
“Nice try,” Bobbi muttered, nudging Daisy with her elbow.
Daisy grinned. “Worth a shot.”
Weeks went by and Daisy acclimated to her new environment. Bobbi was actually pretty cool with an amazing sense of humor and ridiculous comments on the artists.
“Ah, what a guy,” she would say anytime Ms. Hand mentioned some strange personality trait of one of the artists or “good for her” when they looked at a painting of the story of Judith. Things like that. Plus, on a good day when they were allowed to split themselves into pairs, she would walk the short distance to her old table and talk to Fitz. It wasn’t like she didn’t see him every day, so it wasn’t all too bad. The last day before spring break was one of those very nice, not too bad days, Ms. Hand allowing them to pick their seats for the chapter review.
“What up, stranger?” Daisy grinned, slapping her notebook down on the table. “Long time no see.”
Fitz slid a piece of gum across the desk to her. “Yeah, haven’t seen you since second period!”
“I’m surprised you recognized me. An hour and a half with Mr. Garrett can change a person.”
Fitz made a vomiting noise. “I had health with him yesterday. I still don’t know why the gym coach is teaching us health.”
“The same reason we watch the shitty television we watch, Fitz. For the meme.”
Fitz grinned. “For the meme.”