Chapter Text
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Races POV
What in the actual fuck.
“Excuse me”
He manages to spit out. Words twisting up and dying on his tongue.
Staring at the stranger with an almost cartoonish squint of disbelief.
The man smiles, tapping the little magnetic tree on the desk to bring attention to it. The tree has polaroids attached, many areas left blank or empty, only covered with spare magnets because of how early in the year it is. Of the few polaroids there they all seem personal, the same people popping up in the different ones repeatedly.
Few of them show the man in front of him and the ones that do are all group photos, although it does make sense to not want photos of yourself hanging around.
“Oh my god you aren’t kidding”
It actually starts to compute what’s happening after a few seconds.
In his defense he runs on a few hours of sleep and a dream every day, over the summer holidays in particular.
“That’s fucking awesome! Shit I was so rude, obviously you could be a teacher -you are a teacher I mean, the teacher. And fuck I shouldn’t swear in front of the teacher- fuck -wait no”
This has gone downhill so quickly it couldn’t have gotten down faster if he had put a tire on a slip-and-slide down a cliff.
“No I get it man, I don’t look like you would expect”
The man -teacher shrugs and somehow is still smiling. Although it’s probably just him enjoying making Race suffer.
Great.
He gets on his tippy toes again and leans in.
“And between you and me, you seem like the coolest person here”
To be fair the bar is pretty low.
Although in all honesty, one of these kids can probably do a handstand.
Therefore meaning while he may appear to be the coolest, whoever this statistically likely kid is, they are far superior.
The teacher backs up and looks at the clock, apparently deciding he had waited long enough and moving into the front of the room. Thank god. Race now had space to actually breathe.
Not that the other man was too close -no, he has just managed to fuck this up in five diffrent postions so well he might as well have conceived another child. His internal freak out was making it a little hard to breathe, particularly when the subject of half of that freak out was directly in front of him.
The man clears his throat, frowning when nobody pays attention, looking over to him with a knowing look and rolling his eyes.
He feels a giddy smile dart across his face.
The teacher does a series of claps and smiles as everyone turns to look at him, although most of it is a ‘shut the fuck up’ type deal, or if anything else a judgemental look up and down before he is again dismissed.
“Excuse me, your attention please, class is starting”
The groups all swivel to look at him with a mixture of blasphemy, horror, indignity, and confusion ranging from astounded face to astounded face. A collective disbelief falling on the classroom.
“Now that everyone is listening, to start off I would like each parent to stand with their child just so I know who is who and we can sort the kids into a seating plan. I like the parents to know where their kid is in the classroom.”
There's a few moments of awkward murmurs, kids slowly leaving their little groups of friends that had been almost instantaneously formed and coming to their parents' sides.
Dasher makes his way back to Race and reaches up to grab his hand, tugging him towards one of the children he had been playing with. Race lets out a nervous laugh when the parent of said child clutch him closer as they look him up and down.
“Okay! Now I would like to get four volunteers to tell me their favorite animal”
Strangely enough the children don’t seem to be clamoring as you would assume. A few come to raise their hands and have their parents lower them. Others staring warily at the teacher -or as warily as eight year olds can.
Dasher, who has never had any time or sense for social expectations or environments, shoots his hand up so fast he smacks Race in the face when he jumps up and down waving it.
The teacher lets out a barely visible sigh of relief, sending an appreciative smile to Race before turning his attention to Dasher.
“Alright, what’s your favorite animal?”
He asks, looking at Dasher as though that was a perfectly regular question. One that you might ask an equal or peer, not an excitable eight year old who is so happy he is the first one to answer that he’s shaking.
“I like deer because they are the coolest animals ever”
Dasher chirps, clearly very proud of his answer.
“Alright, this table here-”
The man taps the nearest table. It has a small blue mat in the middle with pen and pencil holders, and eight little chairs are positioned around it.
“This is going to be the deer table, if you want you can come and be the first one to sit here”
Turning to look at Race, Dasher motions towards the table.
He isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry about how it looks like Dasher is almost asking if he’s going to be okay on his own. The giddy grin he hadn’t noticed coming over his face from when the teacher smiled at him quickly slipping off before he covers it with a neutral mask.
On one hand he is a grown man and the proposal that he can’t stand in a room of parents and children without his own child for support is hilarious, but Dasher shouldn't be worrying about him and how he’s managing.
If he learnt anything from his own parents it’s that you need emotional maturity to look after a child.
And that is definitely a red flag that he’s been failing at that.
Fuck.
How the hell are you supposed to be healthily emotionally mature when you missed out on most of the time you were supposed to spend being emotionally immature?
He gives Dasher a small nod and what he hopes is an assuring smile. Dasher then immediately ran off to take a seat. -There is a reason that his name is somewhat speed related.
The teacher smiles, seeming to calculate for a few seconds before narrowing in on a boy in the midst of a small group of kids whose parents seemed to be absent. The one in question had light brown hair that fell in his eyes slightly, scrawny and buck toothed.
Said child had been keeping an eye on Dasher for almost the entire time he was there for god knows why. Never approaching him, merely observing from a distance. Weird.
“What’s your favorite animal?”
The teacher asks, cocking his eyebrow in almost a challenge.
He sees the kid look between where Dasher is happily poking through the variety of items on the table and the teacher, looking directly at Dasher when he answers.
“I like birds because they are so much cooler than dumb deer.”
Dasher lets out a gasp at the blasphemous statement. Sticking out his tongue at the gangly offender who immediately responds by doing the same.
“Uh, alright then, this table will be the birdie table”
The teacher attempts to distract by tapping on an identical table but with reds instead of blues.
“And you can come and sit here if you want”
The kid looks around his group of friends nervously before nodding. Waving behind as if he’s never going to see them again when he takes a seat at the red table next to the teachers desk.
Dasher pouts and crosses his arm, glaring daggers at the frail boy who instantly returns it.
Thankfully the problem of participants seems to have been fixed, with two consistent repeats of the process children start to ignore their parents and clamor to be the one that picks their table.
Distributing the children around the tables of eight evenly after adding a bug and fish as green and yellow tables respectively. The teacher seems pleased with himself, having carefully pieced the kids together masterfully. In fact the only reason Race really noticed what he was doing was because his kid was already seated and he wasn’t particularly invested in the other children.
The teacher was pairing the children together -seemingly at random, and yet every table group resembled the groups from earlier when the children were loosely interacting. Any possible deviants from the group swapped into one better suited. While all groups had been mixed by one or three kids out of eight he couldn’t help but notice that the group of eight without parents accompanying them from the mat were all at the red table directly next to the teachers desk.
“One thing about me is I don’t believe in ice breakers or first introductions so we will be doing something a bit different”
Que the anxious and judgemental chatters that break out from the parents as if their world order was shattering when someone didn’t want to do something tedious and riddled with anxiety that happens every single fucking year.
“I want you to introduce yourself and then tell me a weird fact about yourself that never comes up in conversation that you think is pretty cool. I’ll start, my name is Spot Colon, you can call me Mr Colon or Spot I don’t mind, and I do not have a favorite type of turtle”
A few children gasp at the idea that this grown man doesn’t have a favorite type of turtle, clearly they cannot be expected to work under these conditions. Others giggle and chitter at the strange man, some seem confused at the idea that he has a full name.
“Now let’s go around the parents first”
Many huff or roll their eyes to which Spot seems to shrivel at. Looking legitimately anxious for the first time.
“Anyone want to start?”
His voice trails off, looking around for someone who isn’t either a child or completely uninterested.
“I’ll go”
He finds himself saying, seeing Dasher send him a thumbs up and Spot visibly relax
“Hi, my name is Race, and a weird fact about me is that uh..”
God he should have thought this through.
He looks down at the floor to avoid the glares and stares, hearing the chatter get louder. All focused on himself after he idiotically threw himself into the spotlight.
Resisting the urge to say ‘I was a teenager with a sex drive, god forbid’ he frantically wracks his brain for anything in his life that isn’t related to Dasher, university, or is not generally depressing.
“Uhm, I did high school theater and once got my leg stuck in a chair and fell over during a big dance number?”
He tries to keep his voice steady, only looking up to see the teacher's reaction.
Spot lets out a muffled giggling, grinning at him and looking over at a chair and then pointedly at him.
“Alright then let's go around the room in circle order”
Spot commands, looking at Race with a small smile and then quickly diverting his gaze.
—
It quickly gets boring after that.
You can only listen to so many white women brag about overconsumption so many times before you get bored out of your mind.
Race preoccupies himself by watching the kids colour in and chatter quietly amongst themselves.
From what he’s gathered he was right, there is a kid who can do a handstand.
So now he knows for certain that there is a child cooler than him.
Half the kids' parents are looking into divorce or probably should be, and all of the kids are too funny for their own good. Although it may be just how out of pocket everything is.
—
The classroom session goes better than expected -which wasn’t much. First days are always crappy icebreakers and unpacking. While most of those things had happened over the last while they were done so well, Race was actually happy to be ethical law 102 for this shit.
And he fucking loves ethical law.
They had made a tire-list of stuffed animals, foods and movies. The kids had chatted animatedly and argued vehemently for their side of the argument. It honestly reminds him of the debates he used to go to for fun.
Safe to say Race misses it. So did he participate in the discussions and occupy a good half hour of class time arguing with the teacher when the ranking activities were over.
Actually he had only realised that he really needed to shut up when he noticed he was getting strange looks while leaning over the desk and resting his back against the surface. Spot who was apparently super professional sitting criss-cross-applesauce on top of the desk. Head leaning against his hands as he animatedly argues the initial texture is alright but the after-texture leaves it undesirable.
Apparently slime was very important at teachers college.
Maybe this year won’t be so bad?
He laughs awkwardly and stands up, moving over to the side to lean against the wall and continue talking in a quieter tone as the two exchange pointed looks at one of the women who had coughed with a little “hem hem” at them and snickering.
Or maybe not since Dasher is somehow maintaining an argument with the kid from earlier-