Partners

Partners
Viva La Viveca

Disclaimer : I don’t own any of the characters in this story…

Chapter II :: Roulette

I glared at Lucia and his stupid, arrogant smirk. I hated him with every fiber of my being. I wanted to beat the hell out of him every time he smirked at me like that. It was like I was something lesser than him. I wanted to yell at him, call him every name in the book just because he was just an asshole… I wanted to run my hand through his blond hair, to wipe that smirk off his lips with a kiss. This was the greatest of all of my dilemmas. He was the only person in the world who could piss me off and turn me on all at the same time. It had frustrated me for all four years of high school, when he had first moved into town, and continued to frustrate me to this day. I didn’t like anyone having that much control over me.

I wasn’t truly sure how it had come to be like this… Our father’s had once been friends, but sometime before either of us was born they had a fallout. I first met Lucia when we were five, and our fathers had gone to the wedding of a mutual friend. It hadn’t been pretty, from what I remember. I didn’t like Lucia back then, he was bossy and pushy back then. Now he was just a jerk. Of course, that was probably because his father was in prison for murder. That’s another story completely.

Through high school we were pretty much just rivals, challenging each other at just about everything we did. As much I hated football, I joined the football team sophomore year just because I thought I was better at it then him, though by the end of the season in junior year I quit. I kicked his ass in basketball for four years in a row. In everything we competed at, it was always about half and half. In the end it came out pretty even. In academics, he made me look like the stupidest kid in school. I was lazy, but I had the knowledge. I worked my ass off to pass, he seemed to strive to overcome everyone else. It was always a battle between the two of us, and nothing had changed since graduation.

I heard Elie move away, assuming she was going to join her own partner, but my focus was solely on how I was going to manage this situation. I was positive this project was going to end in tragedy. There was no way we’d be able to tolerate each other long enough to finish any type of project, especially one where we had no choice but to work together. Sieg wouldn’t hesitate to fail us, not to mention he only ever assigned partners if it was something we had to work together to do. Otherwise he let us pick out our own partners; just as long as the work was done.

“I know I look like a god, but it’s really not nice to stare…” Lucia sat down in the desk next to mine, raising an eyebrow at me. Typical arrogant Lucia.

“Screw you, Raregroove,” I plopped down heavily in my chair, glaring at him out of the corner of my eye. He always had a way of annoying me without really even trying. Or at least it seemed to me that he wasn’t trying.

“Sorry, Glory, I normally don’t go for the pale, skinny type,” he crossed his arms across his chest smugly. I gritted my teeth, not willing to admit that the comment actually sort of hurt. After all, he was my regular fantasy, and this was just further proof to crush those fantasies. Somehow everything that should make those types of things go away only tended to fuel the fire even more. It pissed me off even more than his better-than-thou attitude.

“Let’s just get this over with so that I don’t have to deal with you any longer than necessary!” I replied angrily, not deeming his comment worth the breath to comment on. Had I bothered to keep looking at him, I probably would have seen the glimmer of hurt in his eyes. I didn’t though, I turned my head away from him instead. At the time I doubt I would have cared about anyways, because I was just as hurt and pissed off.

“Fine by me,” came his stubborn reply after a minute or two of silence. Instead of talking about the project, though, we sat there brooding like little boys that had just been told to share a toy that we each felt the other didn’t deserve. It wasn’t like this was unusual for us, though no teacher had ever been dumb enough to pair us up. Maybe Sieg was hoping we’d kill each other so it was one (or two) less students to deal with.

It was nearly the end of the class before we uttered another word to each other.

“What is this project even about?” I finally broke our hour-long silence, realizing I had no idea what we were supposed to be doing. If I could somehow manage to do it by myself, I would have been glad to. It wasn’t hard to put his name on the paper an make it look like we worked together. I waited for him to answer, watching him out of the corner of my eye again.

“First we have to fill out some survey and be able to tell the class three things about each other. That’s why he didn’t pair people in the class with their friends or significant others,” he rolled his eyes. “After that, he called out partners and said he would tell us the second part of the project when we completed the first part…”

That was the most I had ever heard him speak before. I felt like I could have gotten lost in his deep voice. I had heard him speak before, but for once it didn’t sound like he was being a jerk about having to explain something to someone else.

Then it dawned on me that to successfully complete the project I would have to get to know the blond beside me, and that knowledge sort of terrified me. At the time I wasn’t sure why, but the thought of him being involved with any aspect of me (except for the parts of being my rival and the parts that he associated with in my dreams,) made me want to hide in a tightly locked vault and never come out.

Instead I gulped down my fear and said in a indifferent tone, “Oh, okay…”

“Okay, everyone, that’s it for this morning!” Sieg said, glancing at everyone. “We’re probably not going work a lot on this in class, considering you’re supposed to be getting to know your partner. We really don’t want to hear things we already know about each other. So I’ll see all of you tomorrow evening then. Now leave.”

Sieg turned to his desk and started shuffling papers around as everyone began to leave. I glanced at Lucia. “So um… See ya, then, I guess…” I mumbled, trudging off, hopefully to peacefully make it to Business Math without much fault.

“Hey, when are we going to get together to do this stuff… He said we’re not going to be doing it in class,” Lucia asked as he followed me toward the room’s exit. I stopped, slightly shocked he even suggested it.

“We can figure it out tomorrow, I have to get to the other side of campus in the next twenty minutes,” I said, motioning to the door. What was I supposed to tell him? ‘Hey you can come over to my house tonight and we’ll rock out to some music and spill our sob stories to each other’? I think not! So I left it at that and left, feeling kind of stupid and a little bit like a jerk. Then I felt stupid for even thinking that I felt guilty being a jerk to the King of Jerks. I dare you to say that one twenty times fast…

The rest of my day was pretty uneventful, other than many comments from Elie that she was proud of me for not killing Lucia, a few text messages from Musica that he was going to be out late that night, and a call from Catt yelling at me for being late to class again. Then again, after that morning, the planet it could have been eaten by a black hole and I really wouldn’t have thought it dramatic. It wasn’t like I stopped caring about the world around me, more like my mind kept wandering back to earlier in the day.

I didn’t really start worrying until I started making my own fantasies about what I would have wanted to do had no one been in Sociology this morning with us. Normally I managed to keep my dreaming limited to when I was at home in bed, where no one was there to notice if certain parts got a little excited.

I walked up to him, caressing his cheek before pulling him into a rough kiss and unbuttoning his shirt. Next thing I knew I was on his lap in the very chair he had sat in that morning, trying to pull off all his clothes before he could remove mine, never once breaking our hungry kisses... It didn’t get much farther than that because the next thing I knew, Musica was slapping me upside the head and telling me it was time to go. I left the university just a bit dazed, trying to recall the dream as clear as it had been earlier.

Normally I was careful, after all, the streets near the college were always busy except for in the early hours of the morning. It was the center of business for the most part; there were plenty of cafes, stores and apartments that made life for a normal college student a lot easier. I don’t know why I didn’t stop as I started to cross the street. I didn’t see the car coming until it was too late. One minute I was walking, and the next a sleek red car was coming at me too fast for me to register. It felt like everything was moving in slow motion, as I prepared to collide with the vehicle. Next thing I knew I was rolling on the ground with someone’s arms locked around me. I heard screeching breaks, and a lot of yelling around me, though everything seemed sort of hazy at the time. I was sore from the impact with the ground, probably with a few scrapes and bruises, but I didn’t feel like I had just been hit by someone’s convertible at sixty miles per hour.

The arms around me loosened up and the person who was obviously my savior pulled themselves off of me. The world was spinning a bit as I tried to sit up. A gentle hand on by back helped me sit up properly. “Hey, take it easy, you just almost got killed,” the very voice I had just spent all day dreaming shocked me out of my stupor. I looked up quickly, my forehead brushing his nose.

“L-Lucia?” I stuttered out. I couldn’t believe I had just been saved by the very person that I had always considered an enemy. There was someone else behind him.

“Oh my god, oh my god! Are you okay?” she was panicking, looking like she was about to have a heart attack. I saw Lucia look up at her and nod, she rushed off, supposedly to check and see if anyone had called 911.

“You should lay back down, Haru,” I flinched at his use of my given name. The last time he had used it, he was just about ready to kill me and the name had sounded like an insult on his tongue. He sounded concerned though, but I thought that was just because I had hit my head a little bit and was imagining things. He pushed me back down carefully, his other hand supporting my head so I didn’t hit it again.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, just out of morbid curiosity. I suppose I could have figured out the answer myself, but it didn’t seem fair to assume. Assuming tends to get me in trouble. Plus my head hurt too much for me to really bother thinking.

“How the hell am I supposed to get a grade for the Sociology if my partner’s dead? I’ll have to remember to put this down. ‘Walks out in front of speeding cars as pastime,’” he tried to joke, though it didn’t come out as sarcastically as I figured it was supposed to. I could tell what it was in his voice; worry? Pain?

There were only two things I knew for a fact, and they were things that repeated themselves in my head on my long ride to the hospital in the ambulance I clearly remember asking someone not to call. I was glad to be perfectly alive, with only minor injuries, and I now officially owed my life to Lucia. What I didn’t know was how I was going to manage to pay him back.

Authoress’s Note :: I kind of decided to name the chapter ‘Roulette’, mostly because it talks a bit about how Haru can’t figure out his feelings for Lucia at this point in time. And just as a little teaser; that ‘life debt’ will play a BIG part in later chapters. I know this is going kind of slow, but I’m trying to take my time with this without doing overkill. ^_^; I just love this pairing so much!