Blue-Gay

For Salemq.

"Lance, Keith!"

Two pairs of eyes were drawn to the professor standing at the front of the room holding two pieces of paper he'd drawn out of a box.

"You're partnered up for this assignment."

Lance groaned. Keith. He was that awkward kid who always sat quietly near the door.

He looked mournfully at his friend, Hunk, who shrugged before returning his attention to the professor to wait for who he was going to be partnered with.

When Lance looked across the rows of seats to locate Keith to see his reaction, he found the other glaring at him. It was because he did things like this that people rumored Keith hid a knife in the jacket he always wore.

Lance made a face before he threw his hands up in a challenge. He mentally snarked, "You got a problem?" before Keith's eyebrows furrowed impossibly more and he looked back towards the front of the class.

"I really don't like that guy." He muttered quietly so that only Hunk and maybe the person next to him would hear.

Hunk opened his mouth to answer before the professor called his name.

"Hunk, you're with Kolivan."

Hunk looked anxiously over at the intimidating face of the older student, rumor had it the scar over his right eye was acquired in a bar fight. He never told anyone otherwise, or offered an explanation of his own, so the rumor stuck.

Class carried on this way until everyone was partnered up. There weren't many students, it was a teaching class after all, so it didn't take too long.

"I want you guys to pick a topic off this list," He waved a piece of paper in the air before he stuck it to the whiteboard with one of the many magnets. "And teach it to the class next week. I'll be passing out a survey sheet for everyone to grade how well the topic was presented and if it was understood."

Hunk raised his hand.

The professor sighed before he announced. "Yes, Hunk. The rubric will be posted online under your course resources tab by tonight."

Hunk smiled bashfully as he lowered his hand.

"Any further questions?"

Lance petulantly thought about requesting a new partner, but he held his tongue. Professor Rufus Leon was a great man, and one of the few professors that seemed to like him and actually get his jokes. He didn't want to do anything to make the man not like him.

It wasn't like he'd picked the partners himself. He'd obviously drawn them at random from the box.

Lance had no way of knowing that Prof Leon didn't have any of the names on the papers. He just assigned people into groups based on who he thought would be good together and pretended to read names from a bunch of blank slips of paper.

When no one answered, Professor Leon nodded. "Good. I'll give you the rest of class time to pick your topic and come up with a plan to work on it. Use this time wisely because anything you don't get done today will have to be done on your own time."

There was a murmur of agreement among the class before the professor took an available seat near the front of the class and began scrolling through social media on his phone.

A few brave students got up first and meandered over to the list to look through the topics.

Lance sighed as he got up to join them. He threw a look over his shoulder to find Hunk pushing out his chair to follow before he looked to see if Keith was following his example.