Chapter Text
Lukas’ life has always been fine. More than fine, actually.
There’s never been much excitement to it, but that’s never bugged him before. He likes his small town, he gets along fine with his dad most of the time, he’s got Rose. He’s popular at school, he’s getting by in his classes, and he’s stellar in motocross. That’s all there is to it, right? He has his ticket out of the town -- should he ever want one, and he’s pretty sure he never has and never will -- and he doesn’t need more than that. Rose makes him happy. His friends are good enough, and what else could he possibly need from life? There’s nothing more he could want. His life is interesting enough on it’s own and he’s fine with the small town -- so when any excitement comes, he’s instinctively unhappy about it.
It’s not Lukas’ fault if he has bad feelings toward the idea of change. His life had stayed the same from years 0-9, and he was the happiest kid you could find. But when he was almost ten years old, his world finally came crashing down around him with the first big change he had ever experienced: his mom’s death. Obviously, that was not the best time in Lukas’ life.
He doesn’t remember much from when his mom was still alive, but he does know that the days after her death were probably the worst of his life. She had been his best friend, he knows that, and his dad didn’t handle it too well, either. They spent days on end eating the same shitty take out over and over because Bo didn’t know how to cook, and Lukas spent most nights alone while his father was at work. There was a period of time where they just didn’t speak -- almost two weeks -- never saying anything above a simple four-word question or one-word answer. He locked himself in his room for hours on end and couldn’t eat a lot of the time. He remembers his father didn’t really know what to with him because Lukas just kept smashing things, couldn’t stop until he found another vice: motocross.
If that’s your first experience changing your lifestyle, the subsequent ones are bound to consistently be met with skepticism and a cold attitude.
And if some of that has simply become a part of Lukas’ personality, well, it’s not exactly his fault.
That’s not always how it goes, though; sometimes his dad buys him a new bike or he and Rose go closer to the city for a date than usual, and that's exciting. That's entertaining. But most changes are bad. When the school got rid of the cheerleading outfits in favour of band uniforms, when the new Sheriff comes into town and actually arrests him for speeding? Bad changes. When his mom died, when his dad was thinking about selling the farm? Awful changes.
And when the new kid moves in: even worse than the first two at least, with the potential to be close to the second pair when Lukas thinks about it long enough.
The new kid shows up a month and a week or so into the school year, all dark hair and full lips. He looks like the type of guy to roll his eyes at rugby players (the sport of choice for popular boys at Red Hook) and (former) cheerleaders. The type dead set on being an outcast, because God forbid anyone actually like him if it means talking about meaningless bullshit all the time. Lukas has played the game his entire life (and done a good job of it if he does say so himself) so for this kid to waltz in and assume he’s above Lukas -- because he doesn’t know how to submit, admit defeat and grovel -- is fucking insulting. The kid clearly thinks he’s superior because he’s never been to a field party, and Lukas, for some reason, wants to prove him that he’s wrong.
All of that from a two minute long glare Lukas gives the Newbie as he walks to his locker on his first day. Lukas shakes his head, turning with a smile back to Rose, who is so much less irritating than this new boy. He hasn’t heard a word Rose has said the whole time, but that’s the great thing about small towns and having Rose for a girlfriend: it doesn’t really matter. It’s probably about one of three things: parties, new couples, or homework. He can smile and nod and zone out and manage not to miss much in the conversation.
When he focuses back in on her speaking, though, he’s met with a surprise. She’s talking about the new kid, who she’s now staring at, and Lukas feels a twist in his chest that he marks down as ‘jealousy.’ “I wonder where he came from,” She says, and Lukas wants to tell her to shut up, that it doesn’t matter, that he doesn’t care anyway.
But then the rest of their group of friends join in, and over the course of the day Lukas hears conversations from a ridiculous amount of people can’t seem to focus on anything else. This is why Lukas hates change, and, by proxy, hates the new boy.
It's disturbing. Everyone in the school seems to flock to him without flocking to him. They all want to talk about him, the new kid , but no one seems to actually want to talk to him. It’s frustrating, and infuriating, and frankly Lukas is over it. He finds himself feeling antsy for the day they all finally get bored of this scrawny asshole and move on with their lives, go back to talking about what they used to. Namely, boring shit like who’s dating who and who’s having a party on the weekend and why the Calculus homework seems like it’s in a different language. That’s what Lukas misses -- the second the new kid becomes old news, it’ll be the happiest day of his whole semester. Everything will finally go back to normal, and Lukas will be content knowing the freak of a city boy shoved upstate never had an impact on his life.
But that first day the new kid walked in, Lukas had the briefest moment, a fleeting premonition that shit was about to hit the fan. That maybe, with the first step that boy took into the school, Lukas’ school, things were going to change for him forever.
There was no doubt, even from the first day, that the boy with the tousled brown hair was a city kid -- if they couldn’t see it from his clothes, they all saw it in his face, in the way he pretended he might be able to escape the crowd or go unnoticed. It was clear he was a city kid almost solely by the way that he didn’t come in with a shining smile on his face; everyone in a small town would have known that would be a death sentence in a new school, but poor Prettyboy didn’t know. You see, everyone knows everyone in small-town schools, so you have to be as likeable as possible, but clearly Newbie missed the memo. He thought he could scrape by, hating everyone and keeping to himself and be fine. He thought his leather jacket could protect him.
Lukas knew better. Lukas knew Newbie wouldn’t last very long at all, and he wasn’t afraid to admit it. That first day, he had sat beside Rose at lunch with the rest of his friends and started a betting pool for how long it would take poor Newbie to give up and either start skipping class, get into drugs, or run away.
His first bet was three days. His second bet (once the pool got higher and he couldn’t risk being wrong) was five days.
His friends had laughed, one of them (Austin, the one who irritates him the most) trying to out-humour him by seriously putting $10 on “two hours,” which, while funny at first, soon got old when he could no longer talk of anything else because he was just so damn funny. You can't really laugh too hard at any of his jokes or it’s all he'll talk about for the next day and a half. Another friend, Will, had put a bet on eight days -- which, after a lot of arguing, meant eight school days, not including the weekend. Miles’ was ten, and Kyle’s was three weeks. Even Rose was in on it, though she only put down $6, and her bet was two and a half months from then, into January.
“I'm just saying,” Lukas says, all eyes of the group on him as he speaks, “there's no way that kid makes it into November, let alone January. He’ll be crying to change schools or move back to the city in no time.”
Another friend, Miles, speaks up. “Who knows, maybe he’ll be fun.” He has this smirk on his face that makes Lukas’ skin crawl, though he doesn't know why. Probably because he has it on solely to impress Lukas, the thought of which makes him feel tired. “We haven't had any new kids in a while, how long do you think he'd hold out in a fight?”
“Less than two hours!” Austin says, and Lukas has to fight the urge to deck him right at the lunch table. There’s a round of awkward half-laughter from everyone else in the group, but Lukas doesn’t bat an eye of approval at him, just forces the conversation to keep going so he can focus on something other than what Austin would look like if he punched him in the face.
There's a weird feeling sitting in the pit of Lukas’ stomach though, so he writes it off as meat in his sandwich that was probably overdue. “I don’t want to fight him, not yet. Give him a false sense of security first,” Lukas says, and the look of admiration he gets from Miles across the table is sickening.
In all honesty, Lukas isn’t usually that involved with the beating up of new or weird kids in the school. Somehow, he made it to being the leader of a group by barely harming anyone at all, and he’s kind of grateful. Not that he couldn’t do it, he’s not a pussy -- he just wouldn’t want to if he didn’t need to. He’s beaten up guys who hit on Rose, and assholes from other schools who insult his friends, but never much more than that. He doesn’t let his friends know, but he doesn’t really think it’s that much fun . He fights when something’s upsetting him, and he fights when it’s socially required for him to. Never really much more than that, even if there’s a nerd who’s extra irritating to him.
That’s why it’s weird when he suggests they wait before beating up Prettyboy. Normally he wouldn’t say anything, normally he wouldn’t care. In fact, he’s not exactly sure why he speaks up at all, but he doesn’t dwell on that thought for long. He writes it off as wanting a city kid with a superiority complex to get what’s coming to him more than anyone else, and that’s that. In fact, his face does look particularly punchable, in the way that if you punched it he’d probably break -- and when Lukas pictures him with a black eye and a split lip, he gets a feeling in his stomach he doesn’t understand. It’s not an unappealing image, in his head, but he gets the feeling that he couldn’t bear to be the one to make it a reality. The bruised-and-broken look seems to be a good one for the new kid, but the thought of actually hitting him makes Lukas a little uneasy.
Lukas panics, then, thinking maybe it’s weird to imagine what the boy would look like beat up, cheeks and lips red, on his knees -- and he shakes the image from his brain. He hones back in on the conversation at hand, but doesn’t add anything. He’s bought the new kid a couple days, maybe, and Lukas honestly can’t tell if he should feel good or bad about having done so.
Austin’s bet
The rest of the day continues weirdly, unsettled by the appearance of the new boy, and Lukas is in a weird mood until he goes home later that night. It’s weird that he drives home without seeing Rose, but he tells her he’s tired and actually wants to get some homework done, and that’s it.
It’s when Lukas is at home and back in bed that he realized how weird his mood really is, because he can’t seem to get the new boy out of his head. Someone had mentioned his name in passing conversation earlier that day, and now it was like a tape recorder in Lukas’ head couldn’t stop repeating it over and over.
“Philip.”
What a weird fucking name. It sounds like the name of a fifty year old uncle, Lukas thinks, before he drifts off without meaning to a couple hours before dinner. He doesn’t remember any of his dreams, though he know he had some, and when he goes back downstairs to reheat his dinner, Lukas feels unsettled all over again.
Lukas’ Bet (#1)
After the first day, nothing in Lukas’ life at school is the same anymore. Most things remain unaffected, in reality, but his attitude doesn’t. Two hours have clearly passed, and Austin seems now overly concerned that he wasted $10 on his idiotic bet, though he receives sympathy from approximately no one.
Lukas’ first bet of three days comes, fucks him up, leaves him high and dry.
The first day Philip arrived at the school, he hadn’t attended many of his classes, instead being lead around by the Vice Principal on a guided tour because no student was even a little bit willing to take over. They’re supposed to have procedures, ways to force the students to greet the new kid and show them where they shouldn’t hang out if they want to keep their Broken Nose Counter at zero, but in a small town, the Principal can’t really be bothered more than any of the rest of them. Hell, even the secretary turns down the request, or so Lukas hears from some random kid trying to get his approval in the hallway. You can’t actually trust a word that comes out of their mouths, not kids like that, but it’s funny, so Lukas allows himself a laugh anyway as he walks away.
The new kid’s second day at school, there had been a routine practice fire drill during homeroom, and an assembly at the end of the day, so he hadn’t gotten to most of his classes then, either. It was the classic anti-bullying spiel they get every year, Lukas heard later from someone once he got back from skipping. He could never sit through those things -- they made him antsy, anxious, irritated; though he never told his friends, he always left to go for a bike ride.
Lukas knows all of this because finally, on the third day, the day Philip finally gets to most of his classes -- Lukas gets the fun surprise of realizing he’s in them. They have the same homeroom, the same third period and the same fourth. And once Philip sits down in his seat, Lukas comes to the slow, aching realization that it’s going to be like that until January.
At almost every one of the classes, Philip instinctively sits at the back. Lukas is comforted by the fact that he’s pretty popular, arguably the most popular in his grade, so all the seats around him are taken. That’s his saving grace for day three.
Homeroom passes by slowly after Newbie makes his grand entrance fifteen minutes late. He had walked in, stupid messenger bag slung over one shoulder like the great, city hipster he is, and his stupid oversized leather jacket hung over one of his arms. He was wearing a grey and blue baseball tee, dark, one that hugged him in weird ways that made Lukas want to burn it. He’d never had such strong feelings for a shirt before, certainly not one he’d probably wear himself, but the hatred he felt for the boy wearing it made him want to see it in a dumpster on the side of the road.
The teacher had only briefly introduced him, and once again the name “Philip” went on repeat in Lukas’ head. It slowly became infuriating, until Lukas was tapping his foot impatiently. Rose leans over from the seat beside him, putting her hand on his knee, but it did nothing to calm him. His mood turns sour, uncomfortable, and though Philip found a seat at the back of the class, behind him, Lukas can’t stop seeing his face. His cheeks, his eyebrows pulled together. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to ignore the feeling of someone’s eyes on the back of his head.
Class continues, though it’s distant in Lukas’ head, and mentions of Shakespeare are drowned out by his own mind, where thoughts clamour around as though he has no control of them anymore. He tries to focus on Rose’s hand, now back on his leg, but instead he feels something in his hair, worming it's way up the back of his neck and into his head. He knows it's the stare of the boy behind him, and it makes him furious.
There’s no logic to it. The guy just showed up, hasn’t said more than a word to anyone, but Lukas just can’t stand him. He’s getting in the way of normalcy and has thrown off everything about Lukas’ life.
Eventually English ends, and he walks out hand in hand with Rose to their next class. It’s Math, something Lukas had intended to stop taking, but it’s still a mandatory class and he can’t find a way around it that doesn’t involve taking something like Photography or Drama, both of which seem unappealing to him. Theatre seems like a gateway to all the weird kids he has no intentions of talking to, plus a daily mandatory of Putting Himself Out There, which is also unappealing. Photography, though it would probably be entertaining and also pretty easy, feels like an invitation for other people to judge him on something he’s never even done for fun anyway.
So there he is, stuck in Math, zoning out and focusing totally on the fact that this is one of his only breaks from the new kid today. This is where he gets to pretend to be normal, he thinks, until class is over and finally the lunch period arrives.
Having lunch with his group of friends, for some reason, seems exhausting today. They can’t stop talking about the bet, which Lukas now regrets creating if only because now it’s an excuse to talk about Newbie all the time, which is the direct opposite of what Lukas wants out of life right now.
“Can we talk about something else?” He says, bored, and everyone turns to look at him. “The new kid is pissing me off, I’d rather talk about root canals.”
Rose looks at him with this concerned look in her eyes from beside the bench, and she puts a light hand on his own. “Are you okay, babe?” She asks, searching for something in his face that will reveal an answer for her. If she’s searching for a “no,” she’s not going to find it because he’s perfectly fine, thank you.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just wanna stop talking about Newbie.”
“We stopped talking about him a while ago,” she says to him, and then looks to the rest of the group, who nod their respective confirmation of her words. “You kind of zoned out.”
He sighs, rolling his eyes at all of them. “Yeah, probably because you guys talk about him so much I thought I may as well just tune it all out. Give me a break, I’m not going insane.”
Rose gives him a relieved laugh in return, and every other reaction from the table pretty much goes unnoticed by Lukas. There’s a hand that stays on his arm and Lukas knows it must be Rose, but once again he can’t focus his attention on it at all. He keeps scanning the lunch room for a head of brown hair, one he probably wouldn’t recognize anyway because it’s not like he’s been paying that much attention regardless.
Within minutes his mind is back on the new kid again, and it just makes him want to rinse his brain out with bleach, so Lukas excuses himself to the bathroom and decides, once he’s in the hallway, that he’s going to take the long route there and back.
He must be going insane, no matter what he told his friends.
Lukas isn’t the most enthusiastic guy at the best of times. He gets excited about motocross, because it’s an awesome sport, and parties are pretty fun most of the time, and sometimes dicking around with his friends is fun. But for the most part, he doesn’t really feel emotions very strongly. Apart from his mom dying, Lukas has only ever really felt mild irritation, and even then he could ignore it for the most part anyway. To be this bothered by a guy who by chance happens to seem like a natural asshole when he waltzes into Lukas’ school is just weird. Lukas’ life is calm, he's happy, and then this guy walks in and within three days has managed to turn Lukas’ entire personality on its head.
He walks slowly to the bathroom, ignoring the kids he passes in the hallway because they're all mousy-faced or strong-eyebrowed or dirty blond-haired and that's clearly not what has been occupying Lukas’ head recently. When he finally gets to the closest boys bathroom, it's quiet and empty. He sighs his relief, if only because this way no one will be suspicious of him when he stands in front of the mirrors, splashes water on his face and slaps himself once or twice.
He grips the edges of the porcelain sink, absently wonders if the meat in his sandwiches this week really have gone bad. The churning in his stomach has only gotten worse since the morning, when he attributed it to lack of food and waking up early, but it's nothing too unusual. In all honesty, Lukas’ stomach has a habit of getting like this if he's nervous like when his dad gets into drinking spells around his mother's birthday (or mother's day or the day she died), or when he has a big race coming up. Lukas shrugs the feeling off to being nervous about the new kid fucking everything up, and splashes water on his face again.
Of course, that's when one of the stall doors opens to reveal the aforementioned new kid himself, and Lukas meets his eye in the mirror as he walks out of the stall.
Fuck.
For some reason, this scrawny kid staring at him again sets him off, and he feels his heart hammer in his chest with something he’s never felt before, and he assumes it has something to do with loathing someone you've never met.
“What are you looking at?” He spits, venom spilling from his mouth in the form of words he hopes will touch this kid somehow.
The boy's poker face is downright professional. He raises his eyebrows but doesn't show any emotion from it, and puts his hands up in surrender as he turns to the sink. “Relax, Farmboy. Couldn't care less.” His voice seems unphased, and it pisses Lukas off. The boy, Philip, dries off his hands and walks out of the bathroom without another look. He has his bag on him, which Lukas bitterly thinks might actually be smart. Just because he told his friends not to beat Philip up yet doesn't mean they won't do shit like steal his stuff or fuck up things he owns.
Farmboy. That's what Newbie called him. What the fuck does that mean? It must be a dig at him living in the country, and when Lukas down at himself, he is wearing plaid. His jacket’s still at the lunch table with his friends, but it's a jean jacket with sheep's wool around the lining and collar, so it's probably for the better that he's not wearing it, if only because it would be further evidence for Philip’s insult. Once again Lukas finds himself furious, even though he kind of likes his farm, because he wants to prove to this asshole that he's not above the country kids. He wants to prove that Lukas isn't below him, even though two weeks ago he probably would have enjoyed it if someone had nicknamed him something similar.
He shakes his head once again, staring at his reflection in the mirror, and then walks out to continue eating lunch with his friends.
Before walking back into the cafeteria, Lukas does a quick once around, checking for a tousled head of brown hair and a pretentious leather jacket. He doesn't see it though, and he feels something unsettle in his chest. Maybe it's because he thinks Newbie is planning something, or following him, but there's a feeling in his chest that isn't relief, and that irritates him.
“You were gone a while,” Rose says as he sits down, grabbing for his hand again. He doesn't extend it for her, but leaves it in place and doesn't pull away. It does nothing to fix the tension in his ribs.
“Yeah,” he replies, “sorry. Ran into the new kid and had to stop myself from beating him up.”
Miles laughs, straight up, and Lukas remembers that it's not just him and Rose in the room. Hell, he remembers he's not alone in the room like he really kind of wants to be. “Why’d you hold back?”
“Not the place,” Lukas says, right before Rose overlaps him with “What was he doing that pissed you off? Did he say something?”
“No,” Lukas replies, fighting not to roll his eyes. “He was just staring at me.”
Austin laughs too loudly, leaning forward to look at everyone with a huge, irritating grin as he asks, “For how long?”
“Don't say it, Austin, I swear to fucking God--”
“ Two hours?”
“For fucks sake, dude, holy shit.” Lukas takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. When he opens them, everyone is staring at him, Miles with a smirk, Will looking absently amused, Kyle just looks like he's just about as ready to shoot someone as Lukas is right now, and Austin looks like he either has (or is in the process of) shitting himself. Lukas breathes out, opens his eyes and points his finger threateningly. “One more time with that joke and you’re going to need to learn how to eat through a straw.”
That’s the other thing. Lukas isn’t a violent dude, not even in his head, but his words must make him seem like it. It’s how people know to be afraid of him, it’s half of the reason he’s on top of the school anyway. You never have to follow through on threats (at least not yourself, if you’ve done it right), you just have to sound serious about them when you make them. It helps if you have people around you who are willing to carry them out, even if you ask them not to. It's just how you play the game, how you survive.
Austin shuts up, probably more afraid to lose his popular group of friends than actually having his teeth removed, but the rest of lunch continues pretty much as per usual.
It’s third period that really seals the deal for Lukas and his day from hell. It’s Chemistry, which usually isn’t too bad, because he has Rose. Rose is super smart with that kind of stuff, she’s not big on English or anything else but she’s pretty good at Chem most of the time, which means Lukas essentially doesn't have to pay much attention at all. They’re partners, which means every experiment they do she does all the work and he writes it down wrong and then she fixes it. When there are tests coming up, she helps him study while his dad thinks they’re making out.
But today is clearly already known as the day Lukas’ life is getting turned upside down, so obviously he can’t even hold onto that saving grace. He didn’t even think to worry about something like that, he thought him and Rose were secure, but clearly that’s not true. Apparently he should have been worried, and the teacher makes that clear to him almost immediately when she walks into the room. She has this edge about her, and she’s staring at Lukas and Rose, walking in side by side to their seats, that strongly resembles the look a person would give a chess board when they’re about to make a substantial move against their opponent, who happens to be a nine year old child who only barely knows the rules.
Somehow, Lukas knows he’s about to be fucked before he even sits in his seat, but he does his best to ignore the feeling and keep his cool. He and Rose sit in their usual seat with their equipment, staring forward and only exchanging casual conversation as the rest of the class files in.
Philip is introduced again, and it’s like his name is only on repeat in Lukas’ head because it also seems to be on repeat in Lukas’ life . If he hears this kid introduced one more time, he’s going to Mc-freakin’ lose it. Lukas leans over to tell Rose the exact same thing, and that seems to be his downfall. The teacher is saying something about there not being enough people for Philip to have a partner while Lukas makes his joke just a little too loud.
That exact moment is when the teacher decides to look his way, lock eyes with him, and smile in a way that tells him this is Check Mate.
“Lukas!” She says, with the most fake grin, one that shows more cunning than real kindness, one that says this is not a gift but a punishment. “Since you seem so eager to talk right now, why don’t you direct some of that talking to your new partner?” She asks, and it’s a lousy connection between topics of conversation, but it’s not as though pointing that out is actually going to change her mind at all.
“But Mrs. Hughes--”
She smiles again, eyes narrowing. “Did I stutter, Mr. Waldenbeck?” Lukas doesn’t say anything, mostly because she’s kind of fierce for a teacher as frail as she is, and if he speaks against her, it’ll end poorly for him. “That’s what I thought.” The rest of the class will understand his silence, he’s sure. No one speaks against Hughes.
When Lukas looks beside him, Rose is staring him with eyes that look heartbroken, as though any of this is actually his fault. He was just being funny. Now he’s cost himself a year’s worth of free homework. And, you know, sitting next to his girlfriend in class and whatever. “What about Rose?” He asks, because despite the potential danger from Mrs. Hughes, Rose seems to want him to. He’s not really in the habit of saying no to her.
“Rose seems to carry most of the weight of the pair of you on her own, so perhaps she should earn all the credit for that work as such. She will work on her own at your desk, and you and Philip here will take the one at the back.”
“Why do I have to move?”
Mrs. Hughes gives him a look that calls him an idiot without words, and he knows he’s just made it worse. “Because Rose has earned that table. Now you get to sit at the back and work your way back up to the front. Try not to fail the course before you get there, I heard it’s pretty hard to hear instructions way at the back.”
He looks to Rose, half-expecting her to back him up, but she just returns his exact same stunned expression. “Chop chop, Waldenbeck,” Mrs. Hughes says again, and he looks up at her with one last pleading expression, which, of course, doesn’t even phase her. “Philip, you can go sit at the back and wait for Lukas to join you.” She looks at him to check that he’s actually packing up his stuff to move, and then moves on to address the rest of the class. “Alright everyone, now that the show is over, let’s have a preview of what we’re going to do today. This unit, we’re talking about drugs in the body, and we’re going to focus on chemical reactions of common drugs when mixed together. This is the experiment we’re going to be analyzing today…”
She goes on, setting up all her ingredients or components or agents or whatever and focusing on her desk while Lukas reluctantly packs up all his shit, moves to the back, moving begrudgingly and dreading every second of it.
He sits down next to Philip, doesn’t say a word to him, doesn’t even look at him. The boy’s name is once again a broken record in his ears, and it’s driving him up the fucking wall. He spends the rest of the explanation from the teacher doing his best to pay attention to her words, and not the feeling of Philip right beside him. It’s like he can feel Newbie breathing, and even his silent presence is invasive. Lukas tries so fucking hard not to focus on the knowledge that Philip is right beside him, in his personal space, in his bubble, probably looking at him, breathing so close to him.
It’s infuriating.
Lukas ends up missing all the instructions, and also the end of Mrs. Hughes speaking, and also when the experiment actually starts. He's still staring off into space, doing his best to ignore the fuck out of the Newbie when the kid smacks something down on the table in front of him and says, “Hey.”
“What,” Lukas spits, turning to look at him and immediately forcing him to look away again.
He's not paying attention to him purposely, but he does notice Philip rolling his eyes and moving another piece of equipment in his direction. The boy sighs. “We have to get shit done. I know you don't like me, but we still have to do the work.”
“I don't have to do anything. And I don't not like you, I just don't care about you.”
Philip scoffs, not even looking at him. “Whatever. Can you just measure that shit out and write it down?”
Eventually Lukas rolls his eyes, pretending that Philip isn't pissing him off as much as he actually is. He writes something down on the piece of paper in front of him and slides it in between them. It occurs to him that he's probably going to have to pay more attention to the class now that Rose isn't his partner, but he knows if he looks at Newbie again he's going to have to hold back the urge to deck him.
After a while, of silent brooding and hating his life, Lukas finally sighs and gives in, turning his attention to the actual assignment at hand. But then Philip looks up at him with this face that just-- sets something off in Lukas. He’s mad again, because Newbie looks so goddamn smug, and his eyes are big and Lukas needs to look away again so he doesn't punch him. That particular thought seems to be a recurring theme recently.
Lukas raises his hand, looking expectantly at the teacher and pretending Philip has disappeared into the void and there's no longer anyone sitting beside him. “Yes, Waldenbeck?” Mrs. Hughes says from her desk, and only a few people look up at him. He focuses on asking his question so he doesn't have time to wonder if Philip is one of them.
“Can I go to the bathroom?”
She sighs from her desk, clearly long past her threshold of bullshit from Lukas that she's able to put up with in one day. “You just had lunch, Lukas, can't it wait?”
He looks around him. “Uh, no?” Lukas’ gaze ends up catching on Rose’s, and she gives him a worried look. “Please?”
“Oh for God’s sake, Lukas, fine, ” she says, narrowing her eyes at him as he celebrates internally. “You have three minutes,” she adds on, her stone face slipping slowly into a smug grin, “or I call the office.”
Shit. He was looking for an escape, was hoping for ten minutes away from that class at the very least. “What? But I--”
“You-- You what, Lukas? You like standing there with your mouth hanging open?” She grins again and a kid in the class laughs. He looks immediately at the kid sharply, a threat for later, and he shuts up immediately. “Time’s a-wastin’. Chop chop. Stop interrupting my class.”
With that, he runs out of the room and to the bathroom, but it’s got too many people in there when he opens the door. Some younger boys are clearly trying to skip class and thinking they're being clever about it, so Lukas rolls his eyes and leaves again.
Eventually he settles for just stepping outside of the school, standing in front of the front doors. He leans against the building for a little, breathing in the fresh air before he notices he isn't alone.
It's not a big deal, just a few of the smokers standing about twenty feet from him, staring at him like they're a third afraid to approach him, a third inclined to offer him a cigarette out of pity, and a third totally apathetic about his presence there altogether. Their occasional glances in his direction end up making Lukas more tired than anything else, so he walks back into the school and makes his way back to his Chemistry classroom. He prays, silently, that Hughes was only bluffing and she hasn't actually called the office, because there's no way he wandered around the school and out the front doors in under three minutes.
“Ah, Lukas!” Hughes says as he walks back in, the entire class with their heads up and watching his dramatic entrance. “You've decided to join us again.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Hughes,” he replies, not even bothering with an excuse because it's not like she'd listen to him anyway.
She waves him to his seat at the back of the class, silently asking him to sit down and shut up. As he passes her, she looks at him in a way that makes him stop. “You're lucky I'm feeling lazy and generous today. You almost tripled my time limit, but I don't feel like dealing with the office today. Sit down and listen up, we’re going to be going over the results.”
He does as he's told, but he doesn't hear a word she says, and for the rest of the class he simply stares at his shoes and nothing else. For a while, it seems like he can pretend he's sitting alone, but it doesn't really help anyway. His heart still beats out of his chest, probably with irritation, and he can't seem to focus on anything either.
His next class, which Newbie also shows up in (what are the fucking chances, seriously), is Law. He still isn't quite sure why he took the class anyway, but once again it was either that or something like Home Ec, which he knows would probably end poorly with him either tossing a failed pie out the third floor window or lighting everything on fire, so Law it is.
Even that, at this point, sounds preferable to sitting in yet another class where Newbie spends the whole fucking time staring at him, but he stays in the class anyway. If it gets too bad, he’ll just drop the class and take it next semester instead of a spare.
Law takes years to pass by. Rose isn't in this class with him, so he sits by a window and resigns himself to memorizing the details of the grass outside for a full hour and fifteen minutes. For a while, it's like no one else is in the class with him.
Apart from the sound of Newbie’s voice every time he answers a question, which cuts through Lukas’ focused inattention with ease. It's infuriating, like everything about Philip is, and Lukas just sighs and debates buying big, noise-cancelling headphones for the rest of the semester.
He doesn't remember a single thing said in class that day.
Absently, once he's home, Lukas wonders if he's actually going to pass any of his classes this semester.