Chapter Text
Yesterday's rain water soaked Ethan's Converse on the walk to school, the fading sharpie lines of the eyes Rory had drawn on his converse last year struggling under the runoffs assault. Rory had claimed they might just help him see where he's going and avoid tripping over himself for junior year. It was a backhanded gesture of kindness but the eyes looked cool and the nail polish remover stunk too much for Ethan to bother removing them.
As his socks got soggy Ethan was beginning to think he should have just asked his mom for a ride. There was no greater misery than wet socks.
If Ethan Morgan had learned one thing in his first few days of senior year it was that Whitechapel high had possibly the most grating first bell in existence. Alongside the usual slamming of lockers and dragging of feet you could hear distant thunder emitting from clouds gathered near the south side of town.
The one saving grace of the day was that the rain had spared the rest of his cloths from its damp clutches.
Walking towards his locker Ethan met Benny's eyes and smiled. He was wearing an old hockey jersey that hung loose on him, his jeans were the baggy ones Ms.Weir always insisted he’d grow into at some point. Maybe today wouldn't be that bad after all.
“How were the engineering nerds?” He said, almost all of their mutual friends were nerds, the clarification was necessary.
“Nothing special, ride here sucked without you though. I hate the radio but never remember to grab a CD before I leave the house. Next time I'm gonna break in and drag you out of bed.” he said smiling with his eyes staring off into the hallway against to Ethan's locker.
“You have Chem first E?” Benny said, eyeing a group of girls handing out cheerleading flyers. He now seemed only half interested in the conversation.
“Yea then we have a bio with Erica second, what are you staring at?” Ethan replied knowing full well the answer.
“What? No! Hey that was sophomore Benny, I’m senior Benny, and senior Benny is a lot more worried about the possibility of that coven popping back up than whether any of those girls will give him a second glance ok?” He replied tone becoming softer as he went.
“Look dude just go to your English class and I’ll keep an eye on it ok?” Ethan said in a half hearted attempt at entertaining the excuse. He hadn't had enough caffeine to deal with this yet.
Ethan kept his eyes down as he went towards his chemistry room, the practical wasn't until next week so maybe if his chem teacher was sick he'd-
A hand gripped his wrist before he knew it the cheerleader had tripped over herself.
He tilted his head down in muscle memory. White slipped its way past his eyes. Warm iron tipped his tongue - A sharp pain in his sholder- warm soil and the image of this very cheerleader with a stake in hand peered down at him.
She looked at him, now standing, after presumably picking herself up. “Are you a space case or something?” She said side eying Ethan so hard he thought they were about to crawl from there sockets and jump at him.
“I’m fine, I just get a lot of migraines, sorry, bye” he spewed while running in the direction of his chem class. If he truly didn't have a sub he was going to be handed his proverbial ass by Mr. Crawls. Maybe this is a DEAL WITH IT NOW kinda vision fuck- She followed him before walking into the class across from the chem lab. She seemed to linger at the door but passed through the threshold as a voice called oh to her. Now that was weird, I haven’t had a vision that detailed before. I could actually smell and taste what I was seeing.. Maybe Benny's grandma needs a visit again soon.
By now Mr. Crawls would typically be yelling at him to get his sorry self into his assigned seat but as Ethan rushed into his class another man stood before him. He was about Crawls age, maybe younger but a whole lot healthier than Crawls is. His hair was thicker and his eyes really dark. Looked south east asian and rather clearly unphased by Ethan late entrance. Weird maybe my prayer for a sub was answered?
The drill now went on, “peer review” as Benny insisted on calling it. Ethan wrote down his vision in a note pad before tuning in to whatever the teacher was saying. If the stake was anything to go by the brunette was some kind of wanna be buffy and would probably try to kill anything she saw act off. Bad news for the bloodsuckers, probably just another weekly nuisance for Ethan and Benny.
“Alright class my name is Mr. Singh, and for the remainder of the semester I'll be your Chemistry teacher. I Know you all very likely have questions but I am not permitted to answer anything beyond atomic structure or electron construction alright?”
“Sir what happened to Mr. Crawls?” said some kid from beside Ethan.
Great, we can ignore the teacher as a group I guess.
“Fantastic question Mr. Muller, Yes I will be assigning homework for the class on the first week back! And yes it's compilation goes towards your final grade.” he said tone dripping with as much sass as a man in his 50s could muster.
Chem was coming to a close when Singh pipes up asking for a few kids to stay behind and Ethan thanks whatever ancient power that was left out there (that hadn't tried to kill him yet) that he was not one of them. As he packed up his laptop and notes he looked over at the sorry souls and realised it was mostly the kids lagging behind on tests. Well at least he gave enough of a shit to look through our histories. Ethan thought walking past them. Bios up next than sweet sweet lunch period. I really gotta start eating before class this sucks-
“Hey space case!” The Buffy girl had tracked him down, and before he could walk any fastener she grabbed his arm. again.
“Sorry , I just wanted to apologise earlier, and I didn't actually know your name plus I thought you tripped me and-” If Ethan didn't know the beginning of an apology tangent he could not call himself the best friend of Benny Weir so before he trailed off he replied.
“Look, it's really fine, you don't have to worry.” Buffy smiled back at him and let go of his wrist. Thank fuck that was getting weird.
“Um.. hey do you know where room S-12 is? I have Bio there and don't know where to go.” The universe has seemingly decided that Ethan Morgan was undeserving of peace.
“I'm heading there now if you wanna know.” he said, smiling as disinterested as possible. Women were not really his thing these days as he swung decidedly left of that field. Don't need another Shara incident. The two had tried dating for a bit before mutually realising that Ethan was not interested in her that way. He was mortified; she found it funny after a while.
“Great!” She smiled looking a little to pleased towards Ethan.
The trek to class was a short one as both chem and bio were in the labs. Weird she didn't realise it would be just down the hall. He thought about brushing it off as fast as fast as the idea came. Hopefully giving her attitude isn't enough for her to think I'm worth staking.
He was taken from his thoughts by the voice of a familiar blonde shouting.
“Ethan! Please for the love of Single Tear tell me you did the homework.” Ethan rolled his eyes at Erica before handing her his book.
“It's 4 days into the semester Erica please tell me you're not gonna do this all year.” jokes to her as Benny turned the corner towards them. “Because I have nerd minions that are way better at this than I am.” she said with a threatening smile.
“Need I remind you that i got a better score than Ethan on the last bio exam?” Benny announced after getting to them. “Half a point absolutely does not count as better Benny'' Ethan reminded him for what felt like the hundredth time.
“Whatever if you nerds are done flirting I'm going to go find a lab table that isn't covered in sharpie penises. Coming with?” she said, walking backwards towards the door with a frankly unfair amount of grace.
“Yea yea were coming you bleach blond blood sucker” Benny retorted, scruffing Ethan's hair as he walked past.