Bend and break (but I can’t turn away)
It starts with a paper ball thrown across a classroom, and it should’ve ended there.
Instead Connor Bedard starts noticing things: the silver glint of glasses three rows ahead, the quiet scratch of pencil annotations in the library, the way Minten somehow understands hockey without ever touching the ice. Somewhere between chapel, pond hockey, dog-eared books, and a series of increasingly suspicious coincidences, Connor realizes he might be paying far too much attention to one boy.
Bedmint boarding school au
Connor’s head, he figures, is buried deep in the pebbly shore of Prince Edward’s Island, or dunked in the warm sea of Saint Kitts, facing the open ocean air. Really, he thinks, after running his tongue across the rows of his teeth, he could almost taste the salt of the sea. He lets the pads of his fingers run through the pages of some history book he couldn’t care less about, tingly from the shkkt-shkkt of the shuffling pages.
“…Now, this is where most assumptions are made, all false of course, judging from the heinous essays you all submitted,” Draisaitl’s monotonous voice drones in the room, bouncing around the walls. Connor blinks, once, twice, before he straightens up a little.
He looks around the room, just three tables from him is Will Smith, folding an ugly paper crane from his exam paper. Connor watches in some false pretense of curiosity, or more in entertaining his boredom as Will’s exam paper turns into a bird-like thing, he would take anything other than listening about Gilgamesh and his weird friend.
Just outside, the snow is melting into disgusting gray sludge, he had spent most of his weekends shoveling slurry as punishment for bailing on his classes. But then again, it’s not his fault Draisaitl’s classes are boring as hell.
“And Enkidu…” Connor remembers that name from the half-assed essay he submitted, Enkidu being the wild man who ends up wrestling Gilgamesh, then surprisingly becomes best friends, or whatever. Draisaitl continues, in this horrible way that makes Connor wish he could combust spontaneously, “Forged himself an alliance with this spectral being.”
He fights the urge to lay his head on the cool surface of his desk, already having a stack of disciplinary notes under his belt, he really couldn’t afford the axe right now, the next shit hole waiting for him being Fork Union. So he averts his gaze from Will’s now crumpled paper crane to the boy in front of him. From here he could only see the back of his curly head, and the silver temples of his glasses.
The boy, if he’s not mistaken, is called Minten.
And Minten is drinking up this boring ass class, hand diligently jotting down every word that comes out of Draisaitl. Connor shifts in his seat, peering over to catch a glimpse of Minten. This Minten kid is such a royal pain in the ass. Always making the rest of the class look bad next to him, him and his stupid glasses and fountain pens. Seriously. Connor tears a piece of paper from his book, as silent as possible, then crumples it into a ball.
He’s not mature, in any way, and everyone makes sure he knows that. Nothing comes across in his head as he condenses the paper ball in his palm, aiming for the back of Minten’s head, and launches it when Draisaitl is reading from a thick-spined book.
Will jolts in his seat as the paper ball whizzes past him and hits Minten’s head. Connor slaps his hand to his mouth, concealing a laughter. Minten stops writing, and he looks down to the rolling paper ball on the floor. Will looks past his shoulder to Connor, red-faced and grinning, “Good aim,” he mouths.
Minten picks up the culprit by his feet and surveys the room around him, before ultimately landing his eyes on Connor. He frowns, displeased, obviously. Connor leans back in his chair, chest basked in the pride of successfully distracting the otherwise untouchable boy. The boy scowls behind his glasses, then opens his mouth.
”Gentlemen,” Draisaitl interjects, whipping both of them back to face the board. “If there is something you want to share with the class, by all means, please.”
Connor sucks his teeth, he was just about to have an ounce of fun, already imagining the dorkish retort Minten could come up with. “Uh, nothing.” Connor breezily says with a shrug, “Just wanted to borrow a pencil.”
Minten glances at him again, eyebrows knitted in the center, eyes narrowing.
Draisaitl rounds his stand, stepping down. “Is there even an ounce of truth to that, Mr. Bedard?” He asks, punctuating every word, probably to intimidate Connor, but honestly he should’ve known better.
“Yeah,” Connor deadpans, then he thinks about Fork Union and having shit-on-a-shingle as breakfast, “Yes, Sir.” He corrects.
Draisaitl’s eyebrow quirks, bluntly displaying his doubt, God forbid Connor’s telling the truth, right? Connor exhales, eyes shifting to Minten whose ears are now a soft shade of pink. He almost feels bad, now.
“Is that the truth, Mr. Minten?” Draisaitl taps Minten’s desk, and Minten actually flinches in his skin. Connor watches the way Will’s shoulder shakes, holding in laughter. Connor himself couldn’t find himself to find this as entertaining as Will, suddenly aware of the prospect of Minten getting into trouble.
That paper ball toss was supposed to be just a little joke, easing his boredom. It did, for the first five seconds before Draisaitl meddled in with his usual assholery.
Minten flexes his fingers, “Yes, I was about to hand it to him. I was just asking if he wanted a mechanical one or the… wooden ones.” Connor’s eyes widened, as subtle as he could, expecting Minten to throw him under the bus.
Draisaitl weighs it for a moment, assessing the look on Minten’s face that Connor could only imagine looks like a thief caught in action. Connor holds his breath for what feels like an eternity, picking up the little details on Draisaitl’s sour face, trying to catch the displeasure before he could verbalize it.
But,
”Very well,” Draisaitl says, quite agreeably. Connor’s mouth twitches, relishing in this victory and the newfound respect he has for this four-eyed dork. “Who here can enlighten the class with their interpretation of Enkidu and Gilgamesh’s relationship?”
Connor slumps in his seat, the tacky sweat that has formed behind his back sticking to the cotton of his shirt. He eases his mind again, he’s back home now, playing pond hockey until his nose is stiff, while he tracks Minten’s hand slowly raising into the air, ready to enlighten the class.
—
Frank Nazar is crouching underneath the table, Connor folds his leg underneath him to avoid kicking Frank’s ribs. The rest of the table waits for their turn, each holding a steak knife in their hands while huddled shoulder-to-shoulder to conceal Frank maneuvering below them.
“Hurry up,” Olen hisses, slamming his fist on the table. Connor could feel Frank shift under them in annoyance, “What the hell are you carving down there?”
Connor peers down, catching the shine of Frank’s leather shoes he oh so prides, scuffing the flagstone floor. Frank has his tongue sticking out in focus, eyes blinking away the debris that’s chipping away with each scratch from his steak knife. “You cannot rush art,” Frank chirps.
The water in their glasses shakes along with the table when Frank hits his head, earning a suspicious look from Father Reaves. Connor kicks Frank’s shin in a warning. It’s been a tradition for them to carve out a crude picture, or just their initials followed by the year under each dining table. They’d rotate tables every week. The first week after the winter break was the table closest to the teacher’s table, which was the most challenging one. Will was almost caught if not for Connor spilling a whole jug of cherry kompot, enough to distract the dinner ladies.
Olen leans closer, an annoyed look clear on his face. “If that Lohrei kid opens his mouth again, I’m gonna lose it” Connor shifts, intrigued at Olen’s sudden venom. He knew the Lohrei kid. Always in cahoots with Minten, even though they don’t share a class together. Practically glued to his side, but he looks… less with a stick up his ass.
Will punches a breath from his nose, elbow pressing against Connor’s. “What’d he do this time?”
“Told Reaves I skipped chapel,” Olen says, eyes zeroing right by Connor’s ear. Connor sneaks a glance past his shoulder to the table across the dining hall to find Lohrei talking to Minten. Minten’s got a ratty copy of Dostoevsky’s White Nights open in one hand, and the other hand bringing a dainty tea cup to his mouth.
“I swear, that Lohrei kid.” Olen’s voice sobers him, right, Lohrei. Connor clears his throat, bringing his attention back to Olen. “I bet he and his bootlicking friends keep a ledger or something. Who breathes too loud, who blinks too fast.”
Connor couldn’t help but let out a little noise of amusement, even if he didn’t agree with the sentiment, it was still pretty funny. Will on the other hand, shrugs, “I don’t know. Macklin’s alright.”
“Shit. Reaves, twelve O’clock,” Connor warns. Will immediately starts stuffing his mouth with food, a pathetic attempt at masking the delinquency happening just below them. Olen grunts, knocking the table impatiently.
In this little commotion, Connor slips a look past his shoulder to find Minten laughing at something Lohrei said.
The table rattles one last time, “Alright, move, move, I’m done.” Frank squeezes past an opening between Olen and Will, squinting at the dining hall lights. He smiles, all teeth, clumsily settling down on a chair across Connor. “Who knew anatomy classes would come in handy?”
Connor scoffs, “You’re disgusting.” He doesn’t mean it of course, he’s laughing anyways. “My turn.” He grabs the discarded steak knife from Frank’s plate, sawdust clinging to the glinting blade. He kneels down, ducking under the table cloth, and everything is quiet down here.
Frank’s leather shoes are nicer up close, and Olen’s missing a chunk of his shoe lace, Will must’ve gotten new cleats. He muses for a handful of minutes, picking apart the sludge smearing Olen’s soles and grass stains on the side of Will’s brand new kicks. Down here, the conversation is dulled, as if he’s submerged underwater, or he has traveled into an alternate reality where nothing exists other than what he sees.
It’s nice, grounding in the isolation. The humming of chuckles reverberates into this muted warmth, he thinks, if a memory has a sound, it would be this. It reminds him of his childhood of hiding under his own bed, pissed-stained-pants scared of getting sent away to a boarding school.
Connor looks up to the underside of the table, he dismisses the dried up chewing gum from generations ago, and sets his eyes to the smooth surface next to Frank’s carved rendition of the female upper body anatomy. He presses the blade, scratching a curved line to form some hopefully coherent letters.
He had read, ages ago, back in Roman times, their graffiti was carving instead of spray paint. That was not the part that amuses him the most. He didn’t care how they did it, or why, since it was mostly politics. What amused him was this: humans have always wanted to let their presence be known, be immortalized, to not be forgotten. Like the ancient Romans have their own way of saying, “I was here, you dick heads.” And Connor had found something romantic in that, no matter how crude and boorish the messages were.
He coughs out the falling debris over his nose, carving deeper and deeper into the wood. One day, when the world is burning because some idiot president or something started a nuclear war and the only surviving thing is this very table, they will all know a group of boys from Barton Academy had left a very important message.
Connor brushes the rest of the debris collecting in the little crannies he carved, smiling to himself. They will be immortalized, somehow, if this table doesn’t end up to be firewood, and if he wants to be remembered, he wants the image to be simple and straightforward of who he is.
Inspecting his work, Connor lets another wave of chuckles wash over him from above.
Virtus et depravata
A/N: here we go! As promised, a little snippet of the bedmint boarding school au (with willmack slowly happening in the background) please excuse my mediocre skills in tumblr blogging. There are more sitting in my google docs, but I’ll be posting all of it on ao3 soon when it’s 3/4 done. Check out my ao3 for my past works if interested: frasermittens
thank u party people