letterman

2:00 pm

A time George's grown to look for, as the passing weeks nurture the habit in him. Minute hand slotting onto the 12, and the hour has been grazing the 2 for a while now. Second class after lunch and the last of the day.

He's been accustomed to the sight- the achromatic, simplistic analog that views everyone else also assigned to this wing of dark lockers. He knows the angle and can tell apart each minute in the 5 they all have between classes, giving himself two to complete the stretch of hallway, round the corner, and his class is the third on the left.

The subject in question, math, well, his opinion is in a constant back-and-forth as each module of their curriculum tips the scale wildly. Some days it's easy, he gets it, breezing through homework and sometimes even faster than Alex.

And then some days he's up at midnight or past, scrutinizing scattered papers or the teacher's posted notes, willing the foreign scribbles and symbols to make sense because when did math even go beyond numbers? He looks to Alex for assistance but helping George is an arduous deal especially as the frustrated nights bring out the testy impatience in both of them.

Those end with Alex either viewing him unimpressively through Facetime or falling asleep on call, leaving George to fill in the rest of his homework with numbers that look right, and to hope that their teacher doesn't look over it too carefully. But they're childhood friends ever since the fifth grade, and a few difficult math assignments isn't going to fork them apart, especially since they've been placed in the same class, finally.

They'd been excited, when their schedules were finalized. They'd been excited, when the teacher assigned them seats right next to each other.

And they were especially excited when they realized they were to sit in the farthest corner from the teacher, free to converse whenever they wanted, pass snacks under tables and, well, an occasional peek at the other's paper during tests. But only during emergencies, of course.

And not even five minutes into the very first class of what George feels to be his best one yet, his last two classmates stumble into the classroom, clapping each other on the back with well-worn sneakers scuffing over the tiled floor, hallway-talk still dropping from their lips.

He remembers passing Alex a half-exasperated glance, lost in the sea of hoots and boos at the latecomers from his classmates. Then he looks back, and the teacher is pointing at him and Alex, she's looking at him, they're looking at him, and he realizes there's two empty seats behind him and oh gods why.

Not even five minutes into what George thought was a miraculous stroke of luck, he knows miracles aren't real. He watches them warily as they clamber through the aisleways, spirit in a rapid plummet but the heads of his classmates are turning so he tries not to let it show too much.

But when they shrug into their seats, the blond one claiming the one behind George and giving him the cocky smile that's known schoolwide, George is surprised how easy it is to flash a sarcastic one back. He's even more so when he laughs.

Dream laughs, and even though Alex is still eyeing the other as his first interaction with Sapnap is swathed in silence, George feels a pleasant stun in his chest. And also unease.

George begins leaning heavily towards the latter, because the first few days are hellish.

They talk relentlessly to anyone and everyone, even with random classmates who are purely thrilled to have both Dream and Sapnap, the schoolwide infamous duo, in their class to make the lessons at least half-interesting. Going on and on and on about games, girls, other terms George doesn't really understand and definitely doesn't want to, thank you very much.