Chapter Text
It was two days before Kiwanis. After Ocean made a particularly cutting line telling her classmate to “just go back to Chernobyl with your fake girlfriend,” Mischa threw a chair across the choir room. The chair was made of fairly cheap plastic and clattered into the corner ten feet away from where everyone was sitting so no one was hurt, but it sent a chill of silence over the room. Father Markus definitely should have given him some sort of discipline, but the white knuckle grip on his baton and the stunned look on his face showed he was far too scared to do anything. Mischa stalked into the corner opposite of the slung chair and whipped out his phone. There was a beat of silence before Ocean, artificially cheerful as ever, regained her composure and made the chorus start back up. Everyone noticed the lack of a bass line and the aggressive vibrato of everyone’s shaking voices, but no one said anything. No one also said anything when underneath his hard typing, it sounded almost like crying.
When the last bell of the day rang, Mischa looked up from his phone and was beginning to grab his backpack when he felt a light tap on his shoulder. His head snapped around, expecting to see Ocean, but instead saw Noel Gruber standing before him with a nervous expression. He realized at that moment that despite sitting beside him in 3 classes, including choir, he had never really looked at his classmate. His strongly arched brows like a painting. His wide green-grey eyes rimmed by thick eyelashes. The blotted pink in his cheeks. At this moment he also realized he was staring.
“Uh… Mischa?” Noel was holding his hands to himself, wringing at his chest.
“Sorry.” He shook himself out of his haze. “What is up Noel?”
“I saw Ocean was fucking with you. She has a special way of finding what hurts someone most and just… Burrowing under your skin with it. I was wondering if you’d like to hang out and get your mind off of it?”
“For real?”
“Yeah! You don’t, like, have to say yes, I completely understand if you just want to go home-“
“Noel.” Mischa rested his hand on Noel’s arm in an attempt to stop him from rambling. ”Home is the last place I want to be. I would love to hang out.”
“Oh! Well in that case,” Noel flashed a bright smile that Mischa would die to see again, “I need to go and turn in this paper to Father Richmond, but then we can meet at your car? We can go to my house and watch a movie or whatever you wanna do.”
“That sounds great, now hurry up.” Mischa felt a small smile playing at his mouth as he gave Noel a strong pat on his shoulder.
He watched as Noel spun around and sauntered to the choir room door, messenger bag bouncing on his shoulder. And for the first time in a while, Mischa felt something aside from rage or passion welling inside him. He couldn’t quite place it, something between confusion and excitement. He liked it though.