All That We See or Seem (Edgar Allan Poe x Reader)

Prologue

'Prefect of Sports, Mark Twain. Prefect of Chapel, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Prefect of Academics, Edgar Allan Poe. The Headmaster's Prefect is-'

The air in the room was instantaneously stagnant. Girls, boys, teachers alike fixated their eyes on the Headmaster, in bated breath. You clenched your jaw, accepting the fact that you raised the stakes on your annual bets, throwing in your prized ramune marble collection, along with an extra $20 into the gamble. Please. Please let it be Steinbeck.

'-Francis Fitzgerald. Ladies and gentlemen of Melville Academy, please welcome your new prefects to the stage.' 

The masses applauded with staged ardour. Now the revelation was over, everyone just wanted to go home.

Damn. The wrong blond. Margaret, a true southern belle, directed a sardonic smirk at you. Based on personal experiences, you concluded that a sardonic smirk insinuates something along the lines of 'I told you so'.

Attempting to direct your attention away from Margaret, and the impending, inevitable future without ramune marbles, and a debt, superior to your oxygen debt during summer athletics, you started observing the new prefects. For once, you were the jury, not the judged.

The new prefects were merely a year above you, yet somehow, they possessed a sort of frosty dignity, and exquisitely assertive demeanour, unfathomed by the likes of the ordinary student body. 

Most of them fitted seamlessly into their archetypes- Twain, with his partially unbuttoned shirt and ruggedness, Hawthorne, with piety engraved into the very hollows of his face, and Fitzgerald, emulating charisma, like a beacon of (pretentious) charm. However, the one who truly caught your attention was Poe.

In your lengthy Melville years, you've seen Prefects of Academics come and go. They all seem to be of the same, unanimous breed- studious faces carved out of inertia, heads without a single hair gone astray, uniforms ironed without a single crease in sight and apathetic eyes.

Poe's dark locks were messy, like they've just been tousled by the northern gales. His eyes seemed to be wrought out of a highwayman's gunmetal. Strangely romantic, and has probably seen too much. His blazer was draped across his shoulders, in a haphazard fashion.

He may have noticed you, admiring from afar. You looked down, pretending to practise piano on your lap.

Little did you know; those gunmetal eyes were still observing a certain fifth-year, fumbling with their hands in the crowd.