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The term 'study break' to most people meant stepping away from the work, getting a snack, and then returning to the important task of learning. Jonathan, however, viewed it in a different light: to him, a 'study break' was something you took from other activities to get work out of the way and move onto bigger and brighter things like the fact that he had a six pack of beer and a dime bag with his name on it, and a campus of people to coax into enjoying them with him. There was a reason why he was still at Barren Pines, why he'd been held back...

This philosophy, however, did not apply to math. It wasn't that he was studious, exactly, but more that once the problems were in his head, the numbers rattling between his ears, Jon had no choice but to get them out and put them on paper or else he feared they might just knock something else loose. Even this early into the semester, the numbers were lighting up his eyes, driving away some of his comfortable laziness. He thought he might just be excited about this curriculum.

So sometime after Ara settled in, the green-haloed fuzz of Jon's head poked in through the door, eyes blinked around the room [one, two, three...seven chairs, okay] and then settled onto Ara. He smiled.

"What'd you get for problem seven?" This was a standard sort of hello, wasn't it?

The probability that Jon didn't own a brush was much higher than 78%. He should at least have had the decency to chop the mess short, if he didn't have the time to deal with it, but that would have been too much effort. He shifted to lean in the door, considering Ara with a bemused sort of smile dancing around the corners of his mouth as he shook the boy's hand.

"Jon Sharp. You're in my class. I was in the back, though, so dunno if you saw me, man." Green eyes strayed to the mess of equations on Ara's page, the carefully neat handwriting. His own notebook was already scribbled on, terrible doodles across the cover, numbers in piles. A mess.

Hexcode. Obviously, Ara needed to study up on his hexcode. But Jon just blinked at him, unperturbed by the staring and only a bit bemused by the use of his last name. How...formal. Kind of quaint, actually. He scratched at the back of his neck, worked fingers through his hair, and finally fussed it up into a knot at the back of his skull.

"Seriously, dude, just Jon. I finished the homework. Was thinking of a mind meld." He wiggled fingers at Ara, offered a sloppy sort of grin, and held up his notebook. "Curiosity. Sharing."

"I wish I could study sober." There was more of that wry twist behind his words, signaling that it might have been a joke. Then again, maybe not.

Jon dropped down to sit, several strands of hair tumbling free already and his notebook set down with a thud on the table. It probably stirred the multitudes of paper Ara felt a need to carry around with him; he'd have to clutch after the pages to keep from losing them scattered across the room.

"You finish yet, or still working?" From anyone else, it might have been snide, or a challenge. From Jon? Sheer, simple curiosity. He blinked up at Ara, offered a smile that was friendly and hard to be annoyed with.

"That's what words are for." His mouth was trembling, just a touch, fighting down the edge of a smile. Good god, Ara was funnier. He would have been funnier twenty minutes ago, when the drugs were still fresh in Jon's system, but they were still doing the job. Polar opposites. Combing his hair. Hysterical.

Jon flipped his own book open -- and his notes were a mess, his displayed work a wandering, circling, unintelligible kind of logic. It must have been in secret code, whole steps omitted here and there and tangents added in the sidelines. He was easily distracted. His answers, however, were correct.

"Confuse you. Don't see why they can't just throw the numbers at us."

"Clearer? What...oh." He blinked at Ara, and the trembling smile finally blossomed into fruition. Jon raised his eyebrows and tipped his head, thoughtlessly counting the taps. He'd take note, eventually, of all the combinations and Ara's little obsession, just because he couldn't not.

"Dude, you need to chill. It's not a big deal. Do your work or don't, it won't be the end of the world." He'd gotten to problem eleven, himself, and now settled with his chin in his hand and hair cutting across his eyes to consider Ara. "Slow down. Take a deep breath. That's what it's good for."

Another reluctant glance at the page. Ara could figure out some kind of logic between a couple numbers. By logic, though, he should rather mean “some kind of relation between cause and effect that he would never think of on his own unless he was drunk”. Wait, is that a scribbling? A drawing? He felt the overwhelming urge to completely cover that aberration with pen ink. And maybe add another ink spot at the other side of the page. And cover 75% of the numbers with the Tipp-ex he hasn’t used yet since the start of the year.
But he knew better than disfigure the work of others (but damn, was it tempting).
“Oh, I’m breathing just fine. A rythm of 18 per minute is quite chill. Let’s focus.” The tone his tone immediately changed to a nicer one and even a hint of a smile. “I can’t help but notice that in the part with the Poisson distribution, you got y^b=47,5 and 498 – that’s a 499, right?- before the final answer. May I know how you found that?”

The insisting noise eventually got Ara’s full attention after 6 seconds. His grey eyes stared at the cupboard. His amazing deduction skills immediately came in action. “There’s something alive inside that. A squirrel, maybe larger, or a large rat, 12%. Must have been there for a while. Woke up when we talked. Make it 19%, then.” A pause. “Only someone who doesn’t need extra pencils and paper must have done this”, he mumbled, “probably one of these musicians. Do you want me to check, Jon?”