Bored
Note from Azzy: So to have my brain decompress after The Rictor Effect, I wrote Marius and Jennie drabble. This is set back in the good old days, when Marius's powers extended only to having to floss his palms.
Another day, another horrifically boring class. This one somewhat exacerbated by the fact that Jennie and Marius had both been out way too late the previous night. While it had been a routine adventure that had somehow ended up with the loss of one of Jennie’s shoes and Marius’s belt, (he claimed it would get them over the wall faster, and in the half-drunk melee that followed they forgot to retrieve it from the tree) it also had run a bit longer than either of them intended. It was morning entirely too soon, and they eventually found themselves in their shared history class.
Marius was stretched out in his usual languid sprawl, taking up as much space as bonelessly as possible in the tiny desk. Jennie sat with her chin propped on her hand, slightly to the left of him, staring off into space and wishing desperately for sunglasses. The late morning sun was entirely too bright for someone as hungover and sleep deprived as her. She eyed Marius, who except for two slight dark circles looked like his normal self. The bastard didn’t get hangovers at all. Especially unfair since Jennie got hangovers no matter how much water she drank. She flicked the eraser off her pen cap at him. It bounced off his forehead. He twitched a bit and gave her a smirk.
Jennie tried to focus back on the teacher, whose back was turned as he wrote some dates up on the board, when she felt an eraser bounce off the back of her head. Jennie’s mouth twitched.
10 minutes later they were both thoroughly bored with hitting each other with erasers and rolled up pieces of paper. Especially when Jennie started cheating and hit him in the ear. Every time.
The teacher continued droning on about the industrial revolution. The rest of the students looked about as comatose as she. Jennie decided that the morning was entirely too boring. She squinted and aimed an eraser at the back of Kyle’s head. Marius leaned over and whispered in her ear,
“Back of Kyle’s head, off the wall, chalkboard, teacher’s desk, Fred’s arm, and back t’me. Think you can do that?”
Jennie raised an eyebrow at him. “Just who do you think you’re talking to?” She whispered back. Her fingertips glowed white around the black eraser. A barely perceptible flick of the wrist, and the eraser made a statistically improbable journey off the back of Kyle’s head, the left classroom wall, the side of the teacher’s desk, Fred’s elbow and back to Marius, who caught it deftly. The girls sitting behind him giggled.
“Show-off.” Jennie muttered. Kyle rubbed his head and looked back at them, annoyed. Marius and Jennie waved cheerfully.
Marius pushed his hair out of his eyes and leaned back over to Jennie. “Point’s off for the elbow, I said ‘arm.’ Still, good show. The Russian judge gives you a 6, but that’s because of your style.” He tossed the eraser back to her. Jennie caught it and stuck her tongue out at him.
“And I say the Australian judge is a git.” Jennie whispered back, borrowing one of Marius’s favorite terms for their PE teacher. Marius gave a look of mock-pain and put a hand to his chest as if wounded, what he was going to say next was never known, for it was at that moment the teacher chose to figure out that they were not paying attention.
“Is there something you’d like to share with the rest of the class, Miss Stavros? Mr Laverne?” He inquired. The man was a normal part-time teacher hired out of Salem Center and paid a tidy sum of money to teach the kids. Something the kids themselves resented.
“No, Mr. Thomas.” Jennie said, cheerily.
Marius inspected a lose thread on one of his gloves. “Can’t say so, no.”
Mr. Thomas put his hands on his hips. Out of all the kids, he was the most fed up with those two and their flagrant disregard for his authority. It wasn’t that they didn’t like him, he merely bored them to death. “Have you been paying attention to a word I’ve said, Miss Stavros?” He rounded on the girl, the boy had a habit of insulting him in such a way that Mr. Thomas wouldn’t figure it out until after the class had ended.
Jennie clasped her hands in front of her and tried to look the model student. “Yes Mr. Thomas. You said that the industrial revolution started in the nineteenth century, and was the responsible for the reduction of the agricultural lifestyle of normal poor people.” She’d at least been halfway paying attention.
Mr. Thomas tried not to sigh in frustration. He knew not to show weakness. “And that would be the correct answer Miss Stavros, about five minutes ago, we have since moved on. Can you tell me about what I’ve said in the past five minutes?”
Jennie blinked and racked her brain. “Karl Marx?”
“Good, and why was I talking about Karl Marx, Miss Stavros?” Mr. Thomas spoke to Jennie slowly, as if to a very dull child.
Jennie gave him an annoyed look. “Karl Marx is responsible for the communist manifesto, since the industrial revolution resulted in the rich becoming incredibly rich and the poor staying dirt poor.”
Mr. Thomas had to concede to her on that one. Jennie smirked. She’d done her reading earlier in the week. Mr. Thomas opened his mouth to ask her another question when Marius interrupted.
“Oi, this is facicinatin’ having Jennie repeat everything you just said an’ all, but could we move along here? I’ve covered this particular piece of history at least twice, enthrallin’ as it may be, but I’m eager to get to World War Two. I’d like to find out who actually wins.” He gave the teacher a plaintive look.
The other students chimed in their agreement. Mr. Thomas sighed and threw up his hands. “Fine. Now where were we?” He turned back to the chalkboard. Marius turned and flashed Jennie a smile. She was perfectly capable of handling the sod herself, but he couldn’t resist a chance to get a dig in. She smiled and gave him a thumbs up.
They both turned back to the board, watching Mr. Thomas scrawl yet even more dates in his barely legible handwriting. Marius sighed and worked the eraser off of his own pen cap. He placed it on the corner of Jennie’s desk.
“Now, this would be for the win. Off his bald spot…”
