Prompt fill: Could you write something where Oliver and Connor are teachers and Connor is a new teacher at the school? Bonus points if their classrooms are right across the hall from each other!School dances are the absolute worst, Connor thinks as he starts another lap around the gym. He thought the days of terrible music, horrific dancing, and spiked punch were behind him but then he’d had the brilliant idea to drop out of law school and teach high school. Now he’s stuck chaperoning these things and if he thought attending school dances was awful, he was wrong. There is truly nothing more awful than chaperoning them.
“Step back, Mr. Anders, Ms. Gutierrez,” Connor calls out to a pair of his students all but having sex on the dance floor. He really wants to add in “Leave room for Jesus” but his superintendent is wandering around here somewhere and he really doesn’t want to have that conversation with Annalise on Monday. His first year at Middleton High has been going remarkably well; he doesn’t really need sarcasm to be the reason he’s not asked back next year.
As he rounds a corner he spots one of the girls from his second period American Government class, Nina, sitting off to the side on the seats near the punch bowl. She’s looking glum as she watches the couples on the floor dancing along to some song that Connor can’t understand the words to (when did he get so old?). Part of him wants to just keep walking, there are a number of students hanging around who also don’t look like they are having the best time either, but there’s something about the look in her eyes and the way she’s hunching her shoulders that stops him.
“What’s up, Nina?” Connor asks as he pulls a chair up close, but not too close, next to hers.
“Huh? Oh,” Nina looks over to see who sat next to her before dismissing him and turning back to watch the dancers. “Nothing much, Mr. Walsh.”
“Really? Nothing’s going on?” Connor knows he should just leave the kid alone, she clearly doesn’t want to talk to him but again it’s something in her eyes that’s bugging him. “Then why aren’t you dancing?”
Nina looks over at the dance floor, her gaze fixed on one couple in particular. “No one to dance with.”
Connor looks out onto the floor; trying to follow her gaze and figure out which student Nina is talking about. “Well, I’m sure any of the boys here would—”
“It’s not—” Nina stops herself and then swallows once. Angling slightly towards him, she whispers, “It’s not the boys.”