His thumb pushed at the eraser, worrying it back and forth, clicking it down several times, before taking to tapping the pencil impatiently against the desk.

Taptaptaptap. A pause, where he wiggled it in the air, soundlessly, spinning it slowly once around his fingers; then his hand dropped back down. Taptaptaptap.

Fast. As fast as he wanted the long, thin second hand of the clock to tick, to speed through its eternal circle and declare another minute had passed. If anything, the hand appeared to slow down.

The graphite tip snapped off.

"Mr. Azteca!"

His head jerked back, switching from staring at the clock to staring at his increasingly irritated herbology professor. Strange, how the ruler in her hand smacked against her palm in much the same way he'd just been tapping his pencil.

"I trust I have your attention now?" she asked, and he could hear the cold venom dripping off her carefully clipped sentence. Because herbology was such a serious subject, right? So important, it needed his complete and undivided attention, lest he foolishly salt the ground and condemn the class garden project to failure by his sheer inability to stay focused.

His mouth opened, paused, then snapped shut with a click as he reminded himself he needed to get out of here as soon as possible. And that meant no back-talk today. Best behavior.

"Yeah, Miss Floros." He leaned back in his chair with a passive-aggressive slouch. Coyote gave his chair leg a swift, sly kick under the teacher's radar to knock him over, but he saw that move coming like, an infinity away and straightened out before he could be spilled to the floor. Miss Floros looked as if she wanted to continue scolding him (or, maybe, boil his ears off, but it was so very hard to tell those expressions apart), but she evidently called it a good-enough victory half a beat later and turned back to the lecture.

"b***h," he muttered down to the desk.

"Detention, Mr. ******** Floros heard everything.

~*~*~*~*~

The great thing about lunch detention was the opportunity it gave your friends to belittle your failures. Unlike after-school detentions, when most students chose to take off immediately for Central's premiere hang-out districts, lunch detentions on a closed campus were often frequented by an audience, intent on providing running commentary about all the ways in which you could never measure up as a person.

"Sometimes," Shamash began, the serious set to his face unchanging despite how hilarious Tezcatlipoca knew he found this. "I wonder where you went wrong."

He ground the whiteboard eraser against a smudge that just would not come off.

"Most students have very little trouble behaving civilly in class. But you?"

Goddamn smudge.

"Well. Can't expect too much of a barbarian."

"Why," Tezcatlipoca growled, a dark and unamused smile splitting his face as he clenched the eraser in his grasp, turning to his best friend forever, "are we friends, again?"

Shamash appeared to honestly consider the question, before shutting the textbook he'd been studying from with a soft and final clap.

"Because otherwise you would have no friends at all."

The eraser crumpled in his grip.

"Oh, and you missed a spot. Right there."

~*~*~*~*~

So, lunchtime had not been the success he'd been hoping for. But that was alright - he had backup plans. Tons of them.

He just didn't know what they were, yet. He had an entire class period to strategize once more, anyway. He stretched out on the bleachers, easily taking up three rows as he rested his heels against the seats below and his arms on the seats above, idly watching the rats below running their circuit around the dusty track as the assistant coach Mr. Thanos encouraged them to keep running from his own place in the shade, trusty mutt at his side.

Tezcatlipoca scoffed.

Someone plunked down next to him (really, more like vaguely in his vicinity, because he was just that awesome and they could tell and would keep away out of amazed respect). His head turned to survey his fellow gym-ditcher as they sized each other up.

"Forged a note, right?" Hypnos laughed under his breath, which quickly broke off into a yawn as he dug around in his backpack, producing what was definitely not a tobacco cigarette.

"Yeah, and I'm sure that's for medical reasons," Tezcatlipoca quipped snidely, disdainfully turning back to watch the jocks form a game of football.

They spent the rest of class time in the silence. He mentally railed against the students below.

Poseidon probably thought he was so great. With his muscles, and popularity, and being on the varsity football and swim team, and oh, can't forget having a school legend for an older brother. So great. So damn great.

Tezcatlipoca could care less, really. He was awesome. More than awesome. Clever, sexy, he had ladies falling over themselves for him, really. Nobody liked having him around because he was too cool.

Poseidon could take that classic Greek hero thing he had going on and shove it.

~*~*~*~*~

Moment of truth. The entire day was only a lead-in to this single event. A distraction - or maybe preparations. He didn't know, and he didn't care. School was over, he'd snuck out five minutes early, and he was ready.

His heart was beating about ten thousand times a minute - out of excitement, obviously. Never anxiety. Tezcatlipoca didn't do anxiety. That swallowing thing he kept doing? The shortness of breath? Totally excitement.

There. There he was, by his locker. The goody-two-shoes he'd gleefully tormented their entire lives (since beyond preschool). The nerd who was loading up his backpack with honors textbooks and a meticulously organized binder. The stuck-up, glasses-wearing prep who...

He'd been hopelessly in lov-lust with since junior ********, those glasses had no right to look so good on him--

No! Focus! Brushing his palms off on his pants, he bee-lined it towards his prey, casually leaning his body against the neighboring locker with a too-cool-for-school slouch.

Quetzalcoatl's startled eyes looked up right into his own. All the lines he'd brainstormed over the course of the day blew through his mind:

Go out with me?

Hey, want to go to the movies?

Look, I sort of need some help in math...

I wanted to apologize for being such a jerk to you all this time.

You look really nice today.

Want to hang out at my house?

How was school?

Do you have a map? Because I just keep getting lost in your eyes.

Please, please go on a date with me.

He smiled.

"Your sister was great last ********! Ow!" He pressed the towels to his sluggishly bleeding nose, biting his lip and kicking his heel back furiously against the tile of the school bathroom. "******** me!"

"That is the one thing he'll never do at the rate you're going."

"Ha, ha, ha. So, so funny, Shamash."

There was always tomorrow.