Euro High: A Eurovision High School AU

Chapter 1: Cliques

It's been a month since Ari and Mikolas got together. They made their relationship public, finally lifting the weight of their secret admiration off of their tired shoulders, feeling complete inside and out for the first time in their lives. A new semester was coming up and the students at Euro High were missing spring break before they'd even set foot on school grounds. The Five Guys met up at their favourite picnic bench, attempting to have some kind of conversation before being called to registration.

"So," Benji began, opening up a bag of gummy bears and proceeding to pass them around the table, "How were your guys' vacations?"
"Average." Kostya sighed, popping a gummy bear into his mouth.
"Guessing you stayed home reading romance novels till 4am every night then?" Niki giggled knowing he was most definitely true.
"Shut up." He laughed, raising an eyebrow at him, "Not my fault I font have a life without you guys." Niki rolled his eyes- smiling at him all the same.

A whistle blew, cutting off their conversation- the guys picked up their bags and waved goodbye, sadly seperated by their registrastion groups; at least Kostya was in the same group as Benji. They met up in the hallway, mildly chatting before walking into the small, slightly over-heated classroom. Averting their attention to their energetic teacher Mr Hacıpaşalıoğlu- everyone just called him Serhat as his name is near impossible to pronounce, they sat down at their desks, confused to see an unfamiliar face at the front of the class- Benji and Kostya exchanged glances, shrugging at each other in almost perfect unison.

"Okay guys!" The quirky Theatre teacher announced, walking towards the stranger, "Since we've just started a new semester, you can expect to have to meet a lot of new students." He looked at the unfamiliar student before exclaiming " This is Duncan. Please make him feel welcome." The boy nervously waved, cracking a sweet smile before taking the last empty seat; conveniently next to Kostya. He noticed the guys looking at him and quickly flashed another quick smile at them "Hey, nice to meet you!" He said cheerily.
"Hey, I'm Benji! And that's Kostya, we're freshman, what about you?"
"That's a shame, I'm a sophomore. I was really hoping I'd have the same classes as people I could meet in registration, you know what I mean?"

At break, Ari was eager to show Duncan around, as he was with every new student at Euro High, the other four thought that they might tag along too seeing as they had nothing better to do after Ari had introduced Duncan to them.
"Okay so those are the science classrooms behind those double doors and then when you turn left you get the canteen and when you turn righ-"
"Forget that! He doesn't need to know that, He can figure that out later." Mikolas began, slightly startling the newbie. "He needs to know about the cliques, the drama, the real tea."
"Please don't call it tea." Niki groaned
"But it sounds COOL!"
"Alright, Alright!" Ari sighed. "You can use the map in the main hallway if you get lost. But, since you do seem interested in what we actually want to tell you..."
"Just a bit." Duncan muttered.
"Then here's what you've really got to know."

From there, Ari introduced him to just a handful of the many cliques. First to be mentioned was the Keiino clique, eccentric theatre kids that wore animal ears from time to time (no one really got it but it seemed to make them stand out). Then there were The Baltic Boys and Baltic Girls, AWS, Hatari, DoReDos and finally-
"And of course, we're The Five Guys." Kostya added, watching Duncan's wide, excited eyes dart towards him. "Previously The Slavic Boys, but we ended up getting super close with Ari and Benji." Loudly, the bell rang for 3rd period: "Thank you guys so much!" Duncan called as he ran towards the science corridor, "You've been great help!"

"I swear to god!" Niki looked over at Benji, who was staring at Duncan angrily.
"What is it man?" He asked.
"That new kid's totally flirting with those girls." Niki glanced back, seeing Duncan talking to a group of girls: Saara Aalto, Nina Sublatti, Cláudia Pascoal and Isaura Santos. It was only the end of the day by then, meaning he'd started to fit in fairly quickly. Niki giggled at this. "Like you'd care."
"Hey, I said I was questioning not that I was gay!" Niki burst out laughing, finding it so hilarious as to what Benji just wasn't realising.
"Benji! They're lesbians!" Benji choked in embarrassment while Niki giggled histericaly behind him.
"All of them?" He squeaked.
"Yep. I think it's cute he's found his own little clique. Plus they seem to really like him. Oh hey, look!" He pointed to the rest of the guys approaching up the hallway- ready to walk each other home.

They collected their things from their lockers and began to make their way out of the automatic double doors- that's when they were met by a group of kids energetically handing out flyers outside; Keiino to be exact.
"Read all about it, show everyone what ya got!" That was Tom Hugo- a blond senior, one of the oldest seniors in fact. He was well known for being in a local magazine for aspiring to work on Broadway, but also for rumours that went around of him being a furry- which were never actually confirmed.
"Have you got something special to show your school?!" That was Alexandra Rotan, a cute Norweigan freshman constantly winning the hearts of girls and guys alike without even realising it. And then there was Fred Buljo- who instead of shouting decided to freestyle dance and make it rain flyers; admittedly a strange way of advertisement but the students seemed very interested. Ari walked over to Tom, waiting to receive a flyer.

"Hey hey hey! Look who's interested! How's it going my man?" Tom held up his hand for a high five, in which Ari happily accepted.
"Yeah I'm fine."
"How's you and Mikolas?" He winked. Ari looked over at Miki, who raised his eyebrows, trying not to blush in pride.
"Great."
"Better than great!" Miki called as he ran over, kissing him on the cheek. Fred wolf whistled from the back, making the whole group laugh.
"So what're the flyers for anyway? Ari questioned him, intrigued.
"Oh, you're gonna love this!" Alexandra replied, passing him a colourful piece of glossy paper. He turned it upright, gazing upon the text on the sheet. In bold, bright letters, the headline read: TALENT SHOW: Show us what you got. He was taken aback, showing the flyer to the rest of the group. Kostya's eyes widened.
"This is going to be interesting..."