guns for hands -- private

[Shadow]

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Pushing the heavy green-painted door to the teachers' entrance of the school open, Zeke couldn't help but feel a bit nervous. He'd only begun teaching here about a three days ago, and the anxiety was still flashing through his mind before he trudged his way to his classroom. A couple students were parking their rears just outside the door, right in his way so he couldn't reach the door to unlock it and push it open. Huffing as he somewhat impatiently waited for the students to move their asses out of his way - he had no patience for anyone in the mornings, as they would quickly learn - he sent his glare down the hall, pretty sure he may have scared the tall blonde-haired student who was gracelessly slamming the door to his locker shut about ten feet away with the intensity of his look.

Once he was in the room, the door was closed again, leaving the students out in the hallway to stare in confusion. Their former teacher must have gotten to school early and let them into the classroom, judging by how confounded they had seemed when their new teacher shut the door on them, then proceeded to lock it. He couldn't care less how their old teacher did things; this was his job and his classroom now, and he planned on doing things his way.

It wasn't that he didn't want to be there. He'd been rather excited when he'd gotten the news that he would be transferring to a different school to teach. Kingston High School just wasn't cutting it for him any more, so he's jumped at the opportunity to move to this school. New faces; new students and new teachers...and a new principal, who seemed like a bit of a bitch in his eyes, but he wasn't about to say that aloud. The only downside, of course, was that a new town meant a new house and moving, and he would no longer see good old Mr. Lanza at the corner grocery store every Saturday afternoon. A small price to pay for this opportunity, which happened to be paying him way more that Kingston High had.

He unceremoniously dropped his binder at his desk, which was somehow already messy and disorganized although he'd only been using it for three days. And he would assume that the teacher who'd taught this class before him was a neat freak, because the supplies on the shelves along the walls were color-coded - what kind of enchantress was that woman, to have the sort of patience to color-code that much junk? - and the students seemed surprised when he just plopped his stuff down on the desk and called it good.

As soon as both his hands were free, to the back room he went, immediately finding his trusty coffee mug sitting there right where it belonged beside his Keurig. Damn, those Keurigs were handy. This particular machine was his little angel of light most mornings, the artificial energy it produced acting as the fuel he needed to snap himself awake just as school was about to start. He popped a K-cup into the machine, and it got to work making him his nice, hot drink. A single packet of sugar and one of those little half-and-half containers was all he added, stirring it gently with the spoon he kept beside the sink before taking a sip. The heavenly brown liquid felt like embers on his tongue, but oh, did it taste good. And the burst of awareness that he felt from just that initial sip was enough to coax the smallest of upward quirks onto his lips.

He meandered back to his desk, figuring he should probably unlock his door and let the students in instead of acting like he was in some zombie apocalypse RPG game, but made no move to go to the door. His mind was telling him that yes, it was a good idea to let the twerps in before school, since maybe if he gave them time to finish their surely last-minute procrastinated homework then they would pay better attention in his class, but he just couldn't muster the ability to care at the moment. He hadn't slept much that night, and he'd forgone his contacts today, meaning that his black-framed glasses were balanced on the bridge of his nose, aiding his terrible vision in discerning one colorful blurry smudge on the whiteboard from another. He despised the things, and despised his horrid luck in having horrid eyesight. 20/40 vision was bullshit. If he got the chance to have LASIK eye surgery, he would take it in a heartbeat. No, shorter than a heartbeat.

Another, longer drink of coffee served as the motivation and energy he needed to push himself out of his cushy chair, and he stalked to the door with a hardly-withheld groan. Flipping the lock, he dragged the door open, throwing a kid who was leaning against it off balance, not that the man cared. The students couldn't really expect a teacher just like their old one, could they? He just hoped they liked him so far. That was always a thing of his, feeling the need to live up to expectations that he should never even be held to, and if there was any better way to send him into a spiral of stress he'd sure love to hear it.

His life hadn't always been this simple - whose was? A family of ten meant that he competed for any attention at all from his parents or any of his seven siblings. He was one of the two middle children, meaning that out of all of them he and Sara were the ones who were sort of skipped over, like placeholders with no special value, though you would notice immediately when they were missing. The eldest siblings were Mia and Arthur, so of course their parents placed all their trust in them that they would help out everywhere. Sure, Ezekiel was glad that he didn't have that sort of responsibility on his shoulders, but it would have been nice to be his father's right-hand man. And the two youngest, Charlie and Everett, were the babies of the family, the ones everybody had to provide assistance for and defend from the world. The two of them Zeke would have hated to be, despite the fact that they were the hogs of all the attention of their parents.

He was never one to be so petty as to dislike his family members for something that was in the past, and there was no way he could ever dislike one of his siblings for the way they were raised. If he was to hold it against anyone it would be his parents, but even them he couldn't blame. They'd done a good job of parenting despite all the troubles and unbalanced attention that came with having eight kids - something Zeke knew he'd never be able to stand. Children just weren't in the picture for him right now, and the same went for a relationship. There was no need if he wasn't in a spot to have either.

Closing his eyes, he leaned his head against the back of his chair, just getting a couple more seconds of relaxing before the next hectic school day started and students poured into the room like they were flies drawn to a pile of shit - and if that was the case, Ezekiel was the pile of shit. But he wouldn't mind, because the sooner the day started, the sooner he could go home and hit the sack.

//ack i'm never writing at night again (a lie, obviously) & idek what the last paragraph is omg

[crows]

yells and tracks

[Shadow]

softly yells back

[crows]

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evan took at least a week to finally get used to the swing of things after school started. sure, he'd had time to prepare, but evan didn't have time to prepare for new students. see, evan was the type to get attached to classes, and a new school year meant having that same confusing, daunting experience of having to get to know the new class in the slot where the old freshmen had sat, or the old juniors. he found himself mixing up names with people who weren't even in the same class sometimes, something he'd never live down as long as people remembered, he was sure. it was nice, knowing that he could at least joke around with the older classmates. but the new people, he had no clue what they'd be like. they could hate his guts, for example, and make that class a living hell. he could end up with people who never listened, and evan would have to repeat things over and over and over until he forgot what he'd even been talking about. new students, new teenagers that evan could only slightly trust, since evan's experience as a teenager was still fresh in his mind.

of course, this fear happened every year. evan was anxious, he knew that. he really wasn't sure why he was still working as a teacher, because evan didn't really need to teach, he was just fine not working. and out of all the places to work, why a school? nothing was fun there, everything reeked of depression and teenage hormones. evan's high school experience had sucked, so why was he purposely coming back here to relive it, this time as a teacher? out of all the people he'd heard get mocked, teachers were at the top of the list. well, at least the ones that deserved it. evan hoped he wasn't like that to everyone, but he knew for a fact that there were a few seniors that'd gladly key his car if they were given the chance.

as evan walked into the school, he found himself rubbing the tattoo on his wrist for comfort. he'd gotten the tattoo specifically for that purpose (well, there was a meaning behind it, but it'd managed to work for both meaning and coping), and it helped him focus on something else other than the stress of having new students file into his classroom that day. he couldn't really feel the black lines on his wrist of course, they were more like guides. his fingers already knew the path the dark ink took, he didn't even have to look down once. and it kept him focused on getting to his classroom, so it was pretty nice, in his opinion.

his classroom wasn't really that much different from other classrooms. he had a bunch of posters relating to french, sign language, and spanish up, he had a few bookshelves filled with textbooks (behind the middle row there was a really old drawing of dat boi that a student had scribbled, but evan chose to hide it and wait until someone finally found it before he did anything with it), he had a desk towards the front and side that was organized for now, but probably not after today. the only real signs of evan's personality and quirks was the ukulele that hid carefully beside his desk, and the sailor moon figurines that were scattered throughout the classroom (sailor pluto was placed on his on his desk, and the rest were carefully hidden so only those looking could find them).

he left the door open as he wandered over to his desk, adjusting his rolled-up shirtsleeves before setting his backpack on top of the desk. his laptop, lunch, and various chargers and tuners were stuffed inside the backpack, but what he really cared about at the moment was getting everything out and organized. evan had told himself he'd be organized this year, and he was gonna start by sorting out his chargers, and making sure his laptop was always in the right place at the right time. sure, there were school computers, but evan preferred his laptop to anything else, since the school laptops they'd offered to give out didn't exactly work with the sims software, and evan had a lot of time between tests, breaks, and lunch to meddle in the fate of computer ais.

he'd started to relax a little as the time slowly ticked down to class starting. students were slowly filing in (freshmen were his first period this year), looking around with apprehensive stares at both the classroom, and the teacher. evan had gotten used to the prying looks. well, they weren't gonna get anything from just looking at him. evan was a closed book the first few days (for once, feeling utterly nothing was useful), just because of that fear. he had to judge the classroom, see what would fit and what wouldn't.

this one seemed to be fine, though. pretty laid-back, a lot of tired faces. which was what he expected from a group of first-time high schoolers who hadn't been out of bed before noon anytime in the last three months. evan wished he could feel that exhaustion, but he didn't. insomnia was a bitch, and evan really didn't feel much of a difference between now, and the summer. it was just that he had something to do during the school year. he could use his time instead of just lying in bed, feeling sorry for himself and binge-watching the office for the fifteenth time in his life.

the bell ringing was a welcome sound, and evan cleared his throat, opening his laptop and pulling up the roll. "welcome to day one of french one. i'm mr. harkness, but i'd really prefer evan, or some interesting nickname you can come up with during the school year, that isn't negative, or a play on harkness and darkness. it's fun, i've done it with every class before you guys." he was mostly stalling as he read down the list of names, counting in his head. sixteen wasn't bad, not bad at all. taking roll was easier. evan struggled with remembering names, but at least this year there weren't any repeating names.

"if you have any questions, please raise your hand. i'm gonna ignore you if you blurt stuff out, okay? we're gonna keep this first class kinda casual, since we're all trying to get to know each other and the pace of the class. i can promise you guys, it's not hard, but you will wanna do homework. french sneaks up on you fast." shrugging, evan flipped on the projector, grabbing the remote and flipping through slides. "i don't know who decided french was the language of love, but it's more like a strange-accented langu..."

the class went smoothly, evan only tripped up a few times during the short lecture, but not enough to make him nervous. spanish class was next, he knew that. lots of spanish students, then asl (less people than he'd hoped, but he had a lot of faith in the ones there), then his lunch period. he didn't usually eat in the teacher's lounge, but he really needed to get some coffee. as he wandered down the hall, he heard the mutter of "keurig in the new teacher's back room.." well, he had to investigate that. evan didn't really go out of the way to meet or talk with a lot of the teachers (they intimidated him, honestly), but a caffeine addiction made you do crazy things. finding the classroom and opening the door, evan rapped his knuckles on the door, a slight metallic clink against the wood whenever his ring hit the wood. "hello? anyone here?"

/wow can you say lATE im so sorry i totally understand if youre not down for this anymore i stg my human muse has suffered so much this summer

[Shadow]

heck i forgot to reply
your late-ish repy is a-ok lmao
let me write up my reply today

[crows]

[s]tbh that's a big mood
don't worry take your time my dude