The Less I Know The Better [complete]

32 ;; partners

"Oh, fuckin' Jesus.."

John cursed under his shallow breaths; his feet nearly skidded and slipped on the smooth flooring of the school hallway as he forced his legs to a standstill in front of his locker. The soles of his shoes tracked foot-shaped water puddles from outside, where the streets were still soaked to the teeth from the rain of yesterday; unfortunately, the inside of the academy was almost as cold as it was outside, where a clouded sky overlooked frost-sheeted cars and the antsy people of Liverpool trying to escape it on their way to work. The hallway was derelict, white lights above dispersed evenly down the corridor that were too brash, as if screaming at John's sensitive, sleepy eyes. He fixed his gaze on one that was blinking erratically a few metres away - even though it was just blurry flashing colours to him without his glasses - before turning back to his locker to begin working the lock.
He was late. Again.
He'd slept in for the millionth time, Mimi not having bothered to try and wake him up; she had had enough of having to wake him up if he'd forgotten to set his alarm clock or had simply slept through it, and was continually reminding him to make use of said alarm to wake up. In her own special words, of course: "I will not continue to enable your abhorrent laziness, John! It's time you started waking up on time for once." So, now that he was well and back at school again, he had to fend for himself in the morning. And, like most other mornings, on this particular one he'd slept right through the alarm. After haphazardly throwing his uniform on and skipping breakfast, he got to school half an hour late. He couldn't afford to get many more detentions or write-ups for his mistakes - Mimi would absolutely kill him if he got suspended. Then she'd probably send him off to some shit strict boarding school or something like that and he would never have time to himself. Or with his friends, for that matter.

Over the weekend, he'd been mainly by himself anyway. Only on Saturday he hung out with George for the afternoon at his place - meeting George's parents for the first time was a little bit frightening and intimidating since he'd expected them to take a dislike to him like Jim had, but in fact they had been quite amiable - and they'd just talked about random things while listening to records. Lazing about, mainly. Which was John's speciality.

He returned to the present to hastily shovel his books for music class into his arms and slam his locker shut with a harsh chime, adjusting his guitar case slung tightly over his shoulder. He only hoped that Mr Martin would go easy on him with his punishment for his tardiness.
He fled down the corridor and veered right where it met an intersection of more corridors that snaked and bent around the campus, stopping at the closed door where his music classroom was. John decided not to stall any longer, no matter how unappealing school was in that moment and just go inside; though, when he clutched his books tightly to his chest with one arm to keep them from slipping to the floor and used the other to clasp the doorknob and twist it open, he found the door wouldn't budge at first. He thought for a moment that maybe it was locked - but the knob was able to turn all the way, which meant that it probably wasn't and it was just stuck - so he pressed his shoulder up against it and with a mighty heave, he managed to dislodge it. But, in doing so, it caused his body to continue flying forwards into the classroom with the momentum and nearly topple to his knees, only just managing to stop his books from meeting the floor. The door struck the wall with a resonant thwack, instantly causing the kids chattering quietly in their seats to jump in fright and train tens of pairs of wide-eyed gazes right on him.

Mr Martin, who'd been in the middle of some speech, was startled by it too, but as soon as he saw who exactly had made the ruckus, his arms crossed over his chest and he narrowed his sharp eyes at John, obviously annoyed by the interruption. The auburn-haired boy's cheeks went scarlet red, heart clenching in utter embarrassment; even though he couldn't see their faces very well, he knew his fellow students were all looking at him, and he heard them begin to whisper. People still continued to gossip after Kevin began to spread the rumours of him and Paul. They must think he was deaf as well as blind, since they would blatantly stage-whisper as he passed them, pointing and staring at him like he was an exotic animal at a zoo: he would always catch the words "queer", "fruit", and all the fanciful words people liked to use, alway said louder as if they were trying to catch his attention so he would retaliate. And if Paul and John even passed by each other in the hallways, or even stand within a hundred metres of each other, everyone in their vicinity would go quiet and mutter things, sometimes eyeing them with barely hidden disgust and vile.