the buddy system / lrh 🍒

7:friends?

"So you're fucking telling me that you got stuck in a zoo with Luke Hemmings and canoodled in a dolphin piss filled tank?" Calum asked in utter disbelief as he leaned on the lockers beside his red headed best friend.

Monday had reeled in quickly, signifying another week of rolling out of bed sadly at 6am, yet the school hallways practically buzzed with life and noise. Not that anyone minded though, it was like this all the time.

"We didn't fucking canoodle," Katherine cringed, grabbing her books from her locker before closing the small locker door behind her.

Calum stared at her blankly, a smirk spreading across his face. "You canoodled the school's asshole" he teased, snickering as they made their way to devilish Mrs. Reynolds' biology class, or, as Calum enjoyed calling it, hell. She was a nice old lady but she was boring as hell, which, when he thought about it, were weird ass combinations.

Katherine punched his arm, a blush coating her cheeks. "Shut the fuck up" she responded simply, letting out a huff as she walked into the classroom with a whining Calum trailing behind her, tending to his so called "battle wounds."

Mrs. Reynolds' classroom was unnecessarily bright and having her in the morning really sucked because you spent at least half of the class squinting at the bright lights. Other than that, the classroom was excessively small and the desks seemed to be so squished together that people had to climb over multiple ones just to grab a tissue.

In short, it was an all around pain in the ass just existing in that class. But at this point, no one really gave a shit anyway. They all just wanted to pass and get the fuck out of there.

Katherine sat in her usual seat behind Calum, setting her things down onto the wooden desk table just as people began to pile into the fairly small room, talking and joking as they shimmied and/or climbed between desks to get to their seats.

Luke came in early due to his dire fear of being late, laughing along with Michael, who, as always, had his arm wrapped around a pretty girl. The two best friends weren't exactly popular since they didn't play sports, but the school did know about them. It was kind of hard not to.

"Excuse me miss, is this seat taken?" The blonde asked politely, pointing to the seat beside Katherine as he made his way towards her.

"Oscar's not here today, so yeah, i guess it's not taken" she retorted, ignoring how her cheeks heated up as Luke took his seat, practically making the class erupt like a volcano of snickers and whispers.

Michael gave Luke a surprised glance before sitting in the empty seat in front of his best friend. It was a shame in a way, because the poor boy seemed pretty damn confused. Calum, on the other hand, just gave the two a sideways glance, wiggling his eyebrows at them briefly before turning away just as the bell rang.

Katherine frowned and took out her stuff, watching as Mrs. Reynolds hobbled up to the center of the room, starting up a lecture about taxonomy of zoo animals they saw on Friday.

The redhead sighed and looked up at the ceiling in disinterest. Biology came easy to her for some reason. It was interesting, so she never really had to pay attention to know what was going on.

That is, until Calum slammed a stack of papers against her desk. "Katherine, psst" he groaned, glaring at his friend as she took her paper sheepishly before passing it back, her cheeks heated. The raven haired boy just frowned at her, his gaze fixating back and forth between Katherine and Luke.

"I'm gonna work with Michael" he declared finally after getting a bright idea, visibly catching the now red haired boy (Katherine could see he had a habit of dying his hair since it was blue just last week) by surprise before he agreed, once again looking very confused.

"Calum you fucktard don't leave me with him" Katherine whined, pouting at her best friend unsuccessfully, attempting to bribe him into changing his mind. The kiwi just gave her a small shrug of the shoulders and a smug, slightly sleepy grin in response.

The redhead stuck her tongue out before looking over at the blue eyed boy beside her. "Why don't you want to work with me, babe? After all i've done for you and Oscar. I've worked my ass off for this family and this is what i get?" he scoffed, sounding faintly offended in the most charming, yet joking way. Not that she cared.

Katherine smiled and rolled her eyes, looking down at the worksheet filled with sets of essay questions. "So how about these questions?" She asked thoughtfully.

"How about that date?" Luke asked, making her scoff despite the heat in her cheeks.

"Never gonna happen, Hemmings" she stated simply, looking up at him as he thought for a bit, tapping his mechanical pencil against the wood of his desk.

"Why not?" he asked, a frown evident on his pale face.

"Because i barely know you, Luke" she said.

"Okay, lets compromise. I'll take you out as friends?" he offered, a polite smile tugging on the edges of his lips.

Katherine thought for a bit before nodding, not seeing the problem in hanging out with the quirky blonde. Besides, she didn't really have anywhere to go considering that Calum had guitar lessons after school on Monday's and her mum was at work.

"Yeah, sure, as friends" she nodded, watching as the boy practically lit up with excitement with the word "friends" escaping her lips

"Cool! I'll meet you by the track after school, yeah? Then we can figure out where to go unless you want to meet somewhere else? Then thats cool i'm down with tha-" he rambled on and on, making Katherine cut him off again in joking annoyance as she pointed to the blank biology worksheets on their desks.

"So how about these questions?"
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Aww lil baby Luke found a friend and is super duper nervous around Katherine like pls just kiss already.

Ha ha sorry about the extremely short chapter, i promise the next one'll be longer but i wanted to incorporate their friendships with Calum and Michael just a bit. I also wanted to incorporate Mrs. Reynolds classroom since most of the story'll probably be there and only there considering that its the only class they all have together? So yeah.

And sweet little Calum's being a doll and playing the matchmaker best friend.

Also wowowow??? 100 reads?? Its not a lot but im actually happy this is being read? Because i think it has so much potential and i know what i'm doing with it??
Yeah but thanks for reading! I promise the next Chapters gonna be so much more interesting and definitely longer.