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Conner has been staring at her all day. M’gann knows it even though he sits three rows behind her in the back of the classroom—assigned seating, the teachers are catching on that they distract each other, even if they don’t blame them—but she can’t turn around without making it obvious and getting scolded. He’s been staring so much that she’s starting to itch on the back of her neck.
Thank God for the mental link. She has no idea how normal people just go without talking to each other for the entire class periods.
What is it?
Nothing. Conner sounds coy, though. Like he’s holding something back from her.
There’s something.
What are you, a mind-reader?
It makes her smile, although she wipes it from her face before the teacher can see it. You’re definitely not supposed to smile when the teacher is going over pre-calc functions for their midterm. She should really, really be paying attention.
I’m serious. You’re staring. Is something wrong?
Sorry. He pauses, and she can feel the churn of his mind, trying to find the way to tell her while also not telling her. She can’t pick out the actual feelings, when they’re this rapid, but she knows there’s a lot. That he’s trying to keep something back from her.
M’gann chews on her pencil before she catches herself and stops. Almost pulls out of the mind link, but Conner would be withdrawing from her if that was what he wanted. He’s not shy, when he wants his space. Other people might be offended, and she was the first couple times, but now it’s refreshing to have a boyfriend who speaks his mind so she doesn’t have to wonder if their relationship is working.
So she waits.
After a long moment, Conner thinks, with an edge of defensiveness, you’re hard not to stare at.
M’gann has to duck her mouth into her chin not to start giggling aloud. God, how did she get this lucky?
See why I didn’t want to tell you? Now he sounds satisfied. Kind of mischievous, too. I don’t want to get you in trouble with the teachers again. It’s a problem.
It’s a good problem, she thinks back, and sneaks a glance over her shoulder this time. Conner is still looking at her, but now she can see he’s being far more obvious about it since he’s in the back. She has his full attention: his body turned towards her instead of the teacher at the middle of the classroom, his chin resting on his palm, eyes soft, a tiny smile on his lips that makes no sense in the middle of math class. He looks… looks…
He's in love with her.
M’gann jerks her head forward, feeling her entire face flame red. Next to her, someone who clearly saw clears their throat, and she buries her entire mouth in her hand to keep from giggling. Let them think what they want, someone loves her.
“Megan?”
It never gets any easier when a teacher calls her out in class. M’gann purses her lips and glances back to the front of the classroom. Mr. Price looks unamused, one eyebrow raised. “Which equation do you use to solve this problem?”
Oh no. Instead of just getting in trouble, he’s trying to prove she wasn’t paying any attention. Her eyes jerk forward to the white board, trying to put the pieces together quickly.
Divide by sin, Conner thinks.
“Divide by sin,” she says immediately.
Silence. Someone else clears their throat to hide laughter, because it’s clear that she’s right even though she definitely wasn’t paying attention and everyone likes when one of the teachers gets their intimidation tactic thrown back in their faces. Mr. Price still looks unamused, but now also like he’s going to have an aneurysm trying to figure out she got that right when he was so sure she wasn’t actually listening. M’gann has learned in the past few months how to have an excellent poker face, so she just smiles back at him and waits for him to move on.
After about three seconds of awkward silence, he slowly turns back to the board—still giving her a stink eye, as if expecting her to break first, she never does—and starts to divide by sin. When he speaks next, it’s addressing the entire class this time, as if he never called on her.
She doesn’t relax for a full ten seconds, expecting him to call on her for the next thing too—she still has no idea what they’re doing, but Conner is still calm through the mind link so she hopes that means he’s paying attention better than she is—until he moves on to the next problem. Then her nerves start to unwind and she lets herself exhale into her palms. Her heart is pounding like when they’re on a mission, which is just ridiculous, but apparently adrenaline is adrenaline. Her stupid human body doesn’t always know the difference between danger and exhilaration.
Close call, Conner thinks with a touch of amusement.
That was your fault! M’gann retorts back, and her cheeks are still red and warm when she carefully hides her smile behind her palm when she rests her chin on it and faces forward. You distracted me!
And then I saved your life. You’re welcome.
Her heart is still pounding, her stomach full of butterflies like she could start floating. He’s so ridiculous. So ridiculous it makes her ridiculous by extension, is the only explanation for why she almost starts giggling right in the middle of class. My hero. Thank god for your superpower of math formulas.
Luthor intellect has to be good for something, right? He still sounds smug, through the mind link, but much more than that is the undercurrent of contentment to the words. No, she thinks, probing a little closer, to the image. He’s still staring at her, still totally oblivious to the class around them. Sorry to get you in trouble.
You got me out of it, too. She sneaks a quick glance back at him. His gaze is even fonder, so soft she feels voyeuristic looking at him for too long, as if he’s opened a door right to his heart in the middle of their classroom. She has to jerk her head forward again and this time her eyes feel hot. She’s never seen someone look at someone else like that. Not even in the movies. To look that tender, it has to be real.
He loves her, he loves her, he loves her.
There’s a slight touch of concern to his thoughts, now. M’gann? Are you okay?
More than. She swallows, closes her eyes, and focuses on him in the mind link. Just for a second—if she gets detention so be it, this will be more than worth it—she tunes out the class and the steady tone of the teacher and the rustling of their classmates, and she thinks only of Conner. Only of how he’s looking at her, and how she feels when she sees it, and if the teacher wasn’t there, she would go to him and kiss him senseless, she wants to make him laugh and make him blush and make him glow like that every second of every day so he would understand how bright he is and how bright he makes her life.
I love you, too, she thinks, and it feels like plummeting from a building—but she knows how to fly, and if she forgets how, he’ll catch her, so the idea isn’t as terrifying as it would have been a few months ago.
There’s a slight crash behind her—from Conner’s seat—at the same time that she feels a surge of emotion so high she can’t even discern all the pieces of it. Not bad emotions, though. She giggles into her hand.
“Conner,” Mr. Price says, and now he just sounds exhausted, some of their classmates laughing more openly this time, “Is something wrong?”
“N-no.” Conner sounds flustered, and when M’gann dares a quick look back at him his cheeks are bright red, all the way up to his ears, and it only grows when he feels her amusement. Not a word, he warns her, leaning further under the desk to pick up his pencils and notebook. Which he, had, apparently, accidentally dumped on the floor when she sent him the image through the mind link because he was so overwhelmed he just… flailed. “No, Mr. Price. Sorry.”
Not. A. Word.
M’gann beams into her hand, doesn’t dare to move it. If she starts openly squealing, proof or not, Mr. Price is definitely giving them both detention.
Mr. Price looks completely unconvinced, but he also is apparently so fed up that he just gives Conner a similar stink-eye and goes back to the lesson without picking on him for humiliation. Conner breathes deeply, settling down at last.
We’re even now, at least, M’gann thinks, trying not to betray her amusement. She has a feeling it doesn’t work, from Conner’s surge of annoyance on the other end of the mind link.
I thought you loved me, he thinks, with a touch of hesitation underneath the joking tone, why are you trying to get me detention?
Sorry. I thought you needed to know.
Conner hesitates a second, and then his energy is the same calm radiance as before. Like the actual sun, in her mind.
So did you.
This. This is what she’s going to remember, now, when someone asks her when Conner and her first knew. Not when the world was falling apart in the nightmare scenario in the training exercise. Not right before she thought he died and she had lost it all. She’s going to think of right here, on an ordinary day, in a boring math class with an exasperated teacher trying to sabotage her and an entire classroom of people who have no idea the significance of what’s happening right in front of them. They didn’t say it out loud, didn’t punctuate it with a kiss in the rain, didn’t even really say the words. She doesn’t need them.
She knows, now.
M’gann closes her eyes, imprints all of it in her mind, and focuses on his energy. Him alone. Even when her eyes open to stare at the board, she isn’t thinking about it at all. She’s trying to hide her smile, fidgeting just enough to seem convincingly attentive, and thinking about the warmth he sends her through the mind link. Bright. Warm. Calm. Content. Like she wants to think about when she dies for real and every day until then.
Conner is staring at her again, and this time he doesn’t take his eyes off of her until the bell rings.