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"Everybody find a partner."

Sue had been scrabbling down notes out of the geology textbook, "FUN SCIENCE ADVENTURES WITH ROCKS AND MINERALS." He'd been trying to make up for the class he'd missed yesterday, when he'd fallen asleep, and as a result, was so focused on his writing that he hadn't been keeping track of the lecture the teacher had just started for today.

But at the sound of those four fateful words, his attention was brought sharply upwards, and his whole body flinched. And snap went the tip of his pencil, a pointy chunk of lead rolling off the desk, leaving him temporarily bereft.

There was a lot to think about as he went to sharpen his pencil in the back of the room. Like whether this was the teachers' way of secretly punishing him. Sue hated partner assignments - hated them with every bone in his body. Every time he was forced to get near someone, it was inevitably pleasant - so why did the teachers insist on finding excuses to force him into contact with another human being? He didn't want to be near them, they didn't want to be near him. It was a mutual hatred, so why....

Oh, and naturally. He arrived back at his desk to find that the rest of the class had paired off already, begun the experiment without any thought to the odd man out. Just like he'd thought, he wasn't wanted or needed.

Fine with him, then. See if he cared. Sue would just use this as an excuse to persuade the teacher to let him work on his own. Setting his pencil down on the desk, Sue raised his hand to call the teacher over, and began pleading his case. Everyone else was already partnered up with someone they liked; the assignment was simple, really, and Sue liked working alone; the desks really only seated two comfortably, and with all the samples, there wouldn't be room for three students' notes on the surface; it was just simpler for him to work alone....

He could see it. His persuasions were working. The teacher was coming around, nodding to what Sue said. He wasn't happy about the situation, of course, but Sue was adamant that it was the best way to arrange things, in light of an odd number of students in the class, that he should work alone. The man was just about to give his permission - Sue could tell - when suddenly, the door to the classroom opened....

That cinched it. Lab partners were definitely a punishment, enacted by the community of teachers as a whole solely for the sake of torturing one Sue Gottschalk, who had never done anything to deserve it in his life.

It was impossible, however, to persuade the teacher to let him work alone when a perfectly viable partner was standing right there. And Sue tried - believe me. He walked right after the teacher and did his damnedest. However, the old geology professor firmly instructed Sue that he would be partnering with Miss Esther today, and that was that. Sue was sent packing back to where he'd left Evie standing.

Of course, any work would have to wait until after Sue was done deathglaring the living hell out of the girl who had messed up his plans for some solitude.

"Do you even know what we're doing today?" Sue accused flatly. It was a dumb question - Evie had just walked through the door, how the hell was she supposed to know anything? But asking it gave him an air of superiority, of being the Knower, with the power of Information, and he was going to grab for every advantage he could get.

This wasn't a lab assignment. It was a fresh battle in a long war, and it was going to be Sue that reigned victorious.

On that part, at least, they were agreed. The less that he had to listen to that self-interested diva prattle on, Sue was certain, the much happier he'd be for the rest of the day. In fact, it was such a good idea, Sue was going to get a head start on it and not say a damn thing to answer her!

Without uttering a single word, he headed over to the lab spot and took over the magnifying glass, angling it at the closest rock and stooping over it just so. Every now and then, he would scribble down a note on his lab sheet, but his handwriting was utterly unintelligible. And stooped over the magnifying glass as he was, it was impossible for Evie to get a peek in order to properly make her own notes.

You know what? Sue had been wrong. Working with partners was fun. I mean, it was basically like working alone, only with the satisfaction of knowing that you were preventing someone else from getting their work done in the process!

They were keeping very different scoreboards: Sue now counted his points to two, while E-Z E-V was still sitting at zero flat.

Truth be told, Sue wasn't entirely sure. That was something they'd gone over in the last class, and all he really remembered of that was a funny little dream in which a winged turtle had been droning tonelessly in his ear, right up until the point a piercing bell had begun ringing somewhere within its shell, and he'd woken up to find the class period over. But could he let Evie know he didn't know? Of course not! He'd just have to get... creative.

"A'course I know what type it is," Sue grumbled, his pencil hovering over the identification line on the page. What were the types called again? There was... sedatory... iguana... xenomorphic....

Iguana, Sue penciled lazily. That'd show the dumb b***h what he knew.

Sue gave a nasty grin, flipping a glance over his shoulder. "Of course, if you're saying that you need some help...."

... See, now, if Sue had been partnered with a cat, they wouldn't have been a god-damned know-it-all about it. Though igneous did sound a lot better than iguana - but come on! He was shooting from the hip here, running off of old bits of trivia and half-remembered things he'd heard in his sleep, and at least he'd gotten damned close!

"Hah. So you are paying attention," Sue muttered, erasing madly the answer he'd written down. As though he'd scripted that just to see if she'd copy off of him. Who knew? Maybe she'd even fall for it.

But now he was balancing on the cusp of doubt, and he had to do something to prove that he was paying attention. Setting down the magnifying glass, he peered at the rest of the rocks, hoping for an easy clue. Finally, he reached out and picked up a porous grey stone between his two fingers, holding it up.

"This one is iguana," he determined. "Igneous."

See? He'd been the one that got the answer. Therefore, it was still his point, right?

Metamorphic. Right. Sue could let her have that one - they were at least on equal standing in the assignment, one for one, so he didn't feel a need to second-guess her.

Once those answers were scribbled down (he was leaving the "why did you pick this answer" section blank for now - he'd make something up later, when he cared more), Sue pulled Evie's book over to him and began reading on the page. This rock didn't have the glassiness of the metamorphic rock, and wasn't riddled with holes like the igneous. That meant that it had be to the third type, which was not sedatory, but....

"Sedimentary," Sue determined. Not because he was actually sharing the answer with Evie, mind! He didn't need her approval of his identification. Just because it was right there in the book, and it helped him remember to say it out loud. That was all.

Writing out the word on the page (it took him two tries, as he accidentally transposed the 'i' and 'e'), Sue double-checked the spellings of his other answers with the text, then started filling out a few of the observation boxes he'd skipped. He didn't get far, though, when the sounds of Evie's humming began to catch up with him. The boy wasn't much for tolerating irritations, and now less than ever. "Will you focus so we can get this over with? Christ, it sounds like someone's peeling apart velcro!"

Not, it wasn't something that someone like Sue would have noticed. But see, there's an interesting thing about being a non-thespian living in a school of supremely gifted students. After a while, you just stopped caring about how good student A was at the piano, or student B was at acting, and most certainly how good student Evie was at singing. All you came to care about was how much god-damned noise was polluting your workspace on a given day, and all of it was an irritant when it was uninvited.

"Meh," Sue responded to her comment on their progress. Half-way wasn't good enough for him; after all, up until they were well and truly finished, he was still stuck partnered with her. Eyes on his paper as he wrote a few more notes, he thoughtlessly held out his hand, palm-up in demand. "Pass me that funny-looking rock over there, so we can wrap this puppy up already."

If he was supposed to be, you know, explaining himself or apologizing at this moment? Yeah. He totally wasn't getting the clue.

Sue... had not played that last bit well. He should have just grabbed for the rock himself - and he was certainly snatching it away now - but it was too late. In his gut, he knew that Evie had given the right answer, and the score was tied. Nobody won, nobody lost.

Now, for a lot of people, this would be fine. After all, it was fair, wasn't it? All the world should work so smoothly!

But for Sue, well... he had to get an upper hand. Even if it wasn't on the official score, it was something he needed.

"Yeah, amorphous." He dropped the rock back into place with a disgusted look on his face. No need to double-check it, that would just prolong his indignity. He began to write it down on his paper, but his brain was somewhere else, slowly churning, trying to find some way to meet his aggressive demands.

"By the way...." Time for a shot in the dark, see what it would get him. "Is it true that you and Trace got a thing going on?"