King of Hearts (House of Cards Series 2) [Student/teacher]

Six of Spades

A/N: I will be away this upcoming weekend, so this is me promising to try and give you guys some juicy updates this week. Because you all know me well enough to know that I love nothing more than to cliffhanger you guys right before I go away for the weekend. :D *insert evil, malicious grin here* Consider yourselves warned.... and now you all get to freak out over what mean, horrible thing I have planned for my poor characters. Muahahahah! (maybe I should lay off the caffiene?)

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Maddison tried to hide the smug feeling warming her gut, but the stretch of the smile on her face gave it all away. She was sitting with Mr. Vega and Mr. Bottomswell in the bar of hte airport, discussing the 170 odd bodied students trying their best to look cool and not show how excited each and every single one of them was to be going to Mexico. H** Maddison was wiggling with excitement, a fact that had West staring at her with almost reverential focus.

"So we'll each get one day off, away from the students. I know it's not much but with only the three of us, it's all we can truly spare." Mr. Bottomswell went over the information one last time. For the next ten minutes at least. He was a fanatical list maker, and everything anyone said or did got compared to one of his lists somewhere. Maddison didn't mind that so much, but it would be far more effective if the sometimes sweet but vague principal could remember where he put the lists once he wrote them.

"I think that's more than fair enough. And I already know what I'll be doing for my day." Malcolm stated with confidence. Maddison wanted to spit out her sarcastic 'yeah, her name is Alice', but held it back knowing it would be a BAD time to joke about that.

"So do I." Maddison stated with a beautific smile. "It involves the words beach and lounging." she spread her hands, as if imagining a scene.

Malcolm laughed, knowing what she wasn't saying. That if at all possible, she'd sneek West into her day off too. The three chaperones spent the rest of the flight talking about their experiences in the past with airports and flying. Maddison had the least amount of travel expierence but surprisingly it was Mr. Bottomswell whom had the most. He'd been to North and South America, Europe and Asia. After they ran out of personal accounts to talk about, they switched to the worst flight experiences that they had even heard of and Malcolm was cut off of a very entertaining story involving a man trying to explain the vibrating something in his bag to airport security by the announcement that their flgiht was loading. Getting nearly 180 students from mostly comatose to moving and onto a plane is a thankless task that seems to involve a lot of grumbling and not a few muffled curse words. Mad couldn't really blame them, she was feeling weirdly gritty herself. It seemed to be a combination of travel nerves mixed with the strange restlessness that everyone is inflicted with the moment they stepped foot inside an airport.

Once she got settled into the flight, Maddison plugged in her head phones and decided she could use the flight down to Mexico as a chance to catch up on some sleep. Even without having to wake up for the troupe, Maddison had been as short of sleep as her students these last few weeks. It was her own fault, she refused to give up the discipline of the troupe and would get up at the same time as she used to, drive herself even harder than she had back then, and then shuffle to the school to flex her patience and mental muscles while her body twitched and cooled. Anyone who believed the old adage 'those who can't do, teach', have obviously never been teachers themselves.

When the plane had landed and everyone started to sort themselves out, Maddison groggily followed along behind, one of the masses that had to strip away her winter layers and try to stuff them out of the way as the heat of Mexico welcomed them in. She stopped, amazed as the heat and humidity hit her like a fist. Of course West was prepared for his, the blue guyabara he wore was startlingly handsome against his dark skin and it suited him in the way that dancing suited Maddison. This was a part of his heritage and Mad felt a little guilty that she hadn't shown much interest in it before now. Part of it was that she spoke maybe six words in Spanish, and if she put them together in a sentence, it would get her slapped or arrested. Part of it was that her own heritage hadn't played a significant role in her life so she mostly forgot that some people took theirs very seriously. Her father was British and Maddison still had the faintest edge of an accent from her barely remembered youth amongst the British Isles. Her mother's accent was adorable and always cracked Maddison and Siobhan up when she quoted that cereal commercial with the leprechaun.