ᵢ Wₒₙ'ₜ ₛₜₐy ₕᵢddₑₙ ₐₙyₘₒᵣₑ - H&S

L. Orpheus took note of that, looking up at the teacher for another long moment before he twisted in his seat, trying to catch sight of the other boy. The school was small enough that he knew everyone, but also didn’t know everyone. He knew L by name and face only. He wasn’t entirely sure whether or not they’d gone to the same middle school, but Orpheus found he doubted it. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility – Orpheus has spent most of middle school trying to escape into a haze of music – but it meant he had never had a class with L before. So they were practically strangers.
Even with that in mind, he raised a hand in greeting and gave the other boy a small smile. Group projects weren’t his favorite by far, but partner assignments weren’t terrible, and Orpheus got the impression that L was the sort who actually did his work. Orpheus did, too. Well… for the most part. He tried to, but sometimes he got distracted. Still, his grades were passable.
We’ll spend the last ten minutes of class working with your partners! The teacher’s cheery voice echoed in Orpheus’ ear for just a moment as he moved his backpack from the side of his chair, making room for L if he wanted to sit over here. Or… he could go over there… he really wasn’t sure what L was expecting. He didn’t want to presume L would move for him, but… there was more room at Orpheus’ desk than there was at L’s.

Orpheus was painfully average in most things. There were a great many people he didn’t care much for, but he avoided them the only way he knew how: by disappearing into the music rooms and spending hours there singing and writing songs, mastering every instrument the school had until the music teacher was forced to tell him night after night that he needed to go home. He could have spent time doing the same thing at home, but as much as he loved Mr. Hermes, they couldn’t really afford all of the musical instruments that were available to him at school. His guitar was one of the few he actually owned, and though he loved it, there was something about incorporating new instruments into his songs that gave him a rush of joy.
He doubted most people knew where he went when the school day was over. It would be easy to assume he just went home, because he just sort of… disappeared. And he didn’t reappear until most of the other kids were gone, except for maybe the football kids who were still at practice.
But now wasn’t the time to think about music. It was time to think about… he frowned, gaze skimming over the assignment.
“Hi,” he returned, looking up and giving L another small smile before pushing the worksheet over so L could read it, too. “So… we have to figure out how to drop an egg from the roof without breaking it.” It seemed… difficult. Especially since they weren’t allowed to hard boil the eggs.
Orpheus’ gaze caught on the way L was holding his pencil, and his frown deepened.
“I’ve never met anyone who holds their pencil two different ways,” he commented, lifting his gaze up to meet L’s. “The way you were holding it before was cool.”

Orpheus blinked. He hadn’t really expected L’s thoughts, but that didn’t mean he was annoyed by them. Just… surprised. Most people just looked at assignments and rolled their eyes a little bit before just doing the bare minimum. L seemed to be taking absolutely everything into account. Which wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, it showed that he was probably far more considerate than most of the other people in the room. Orpheus himself hadn’t stopped to consider what might happen if someone was afraid of heights. It was possible, but… maybe they could just watch from the ground. Orpheus didn’t have a problem with heights, and it didn’t seem like L did either.
“I think it’s probably just the roof of this building,” he said after a moment, giving a small shrug. “And I think Mr. Hermes has some eggs at home that we can use to practice. He’s got a friend who runs a farm, and she delivers us fresh eggs every week ‘cause she knows they’re better than the store-bought ones. So… we probably don’t need to worry too much about the roof, or about having enough eggs to practice with. I’ll just have to have something else for breakfast the week we decide to practice!” Orpheus’ smile was wide and genuine, and he hoped his words would ease some of L’s worries. L hadn’t really seemed the nervous type, but Orpheus was getting the feeling that his initial impression was wrong.
He read over the assignment one more time, skimming over the requirements before looking back up at L. Or, more specifically, the hand he was holding the pencil in.
“Why do you do it that way if it bothers you?” he asked after a moment, the confusion evident in his voice. “Wouldn’t it just… be easier to do it how it’s comfortable?”

Orpheus didn’t mind the rambling. He tended to be pretty quiet around strangers, unless he had a reason to talk to them or something he could connect with them about, but… mostly he was shy. L didn’t seem too bad, at least. Orpheus would rather be paired with a stranger than one of the popular kids. Although he spent much of his time hiding away in the music rooms, even he knew who was popular. He didn’t spend enough time with others to know who tended to be picked on by the popular kids, but he could guess, usually. As nice as L seemed (or perhaps because L seemed nice), he was prime material to be picked on. Orpheus hoped it didn’t happen too often. He wasn’t going to ask. That would be weird. ‘Hey stranger, I know we’re supposed to be talking about eggs, but do you regularly get bullied?’ That was one way to get his new partner to hate him.
Orpheus wasn’t thinking yet about how exactly they would do the project. He wasn’t considering the implications of having to go to one person’s house in order to get eggs.
“Maybe… we should start with measuring how high the roof is?” he asked after a moment, considering. “I mean… we can’t really practice if we don’t know how high we’re supposed to be dropping it from, right?” Orpheus wasn’t the best at science. He didn’t really know how to do things all the time, but he had a good idea of where they were supposed to start for this, at least.
It was easier to let that thought sit in the back of his mind as he turned his attention back to L’s pencil. “I think that’s stupid,” he said, expression genuine. “If it’s easier and it works, then you should be allowed to do it.”

Orpheus was aware of the bullies, of course. He avoided them like the plague, but he wasn’t oblivious or anything. He had a healthy amount of self-preservation instinct, and even if not risking meeting the bullies cost him the opportunity to have friends, at least he had music. That was enough for him. As long as he could keep playing during lunch and after school, he was happy. It meant that the bullies didn’t have anything on him, because people really only saw him when he had classes with them. He was friendly in classes to almost everyone. Actually… no, everyone. He was just a little bit less friendly to the bullies, because they were mean to everyone else, and they didn’t deserve to be treated as kindly as everyone else. It also meant, however, that he didn’t know the extent to which other people were bullied. He figured it was a small problem.
“D’ya think the teacher will know?” he asked after a moment, tilting his head a little bit. “It’ll be a lot easier if we don’t have to measure it ourselves. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tape measure long enough to stretch the entire height of the building.” It was only about three stories high, though. How high was a story? He was fairly certain someone had told him there was a standard unit of measurement for that, but if that were the case, wouldn’t all ceilings be the same height? His mind was wandering.
“Well,” Orpheus said, grateful that L had grounded his thoughts, “when we’re working on our project, you can hold it however you want to hold it, because I’m not a teacher, and our group shouldn’t have any rules except… like… the normal ones. Be nice and stuff. And… we each have to do some of the work.” He thought about that, then nodded firmly. “I don’t like rules, much. I think those are the only two we really need. For the project, I mean.”

Orpheus was lucky. None of the bullies had very much time after school to search for him, even if they wanted him gone. Even if they did, nobody would think to look in the music rooms. Those were deserted more often than not, because the band practiced during class times and occasionally in the mornings. He had found a good hiding place, and it just so happened to be where his true passion lay. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, he had a way to avoid the bullies.
Not that he really needed to avoid them. He was nothing if not average. He got decent but not great grades, he was friendly enough to be looked over, and he spoke in class a moderate amount. The only area in which he excelled was music, and nobody ever heard him play. He didn’t want to join band because he wanted to write his own songs, and although he was a freshman, he was already in the most advanced guitar class. None of the bullies could possibly know that, because even if they were interested in music, they would be in the beginner classes. Orpheus’ excellence was kept under wraps, which was fine with him, because he didn’t even consider it excellence. He just considered it an awful lot of practice.
“I don’t think they can really expect us to do the assignment without knowing that, right?” Orpheus asked, tilting his head. He stuck his hand in the air, waiting for the teacher to notice him and answer their question.
He gave a small smile, meeting L’s gaze for a long moment before looking down at the assignment sheet. He didn’t think the rules were very difficult, but it seemed like being nice was hard for some people. His gaze flicked back down to L’s hand, and he gave a satisfied nod. Good. If L thought it was better, than he was probably right. Orpheus wasn’t going to make him settle for adult rules that didn’t make sense.
“I guess… we should probably talk about when we wanna work on the project?” he frowned, then sat back. “I have second period off. Do you have a free period?”

Orpheus didn’t know L very well. He didn’t know about the rules that bothered him (other than the pencil), and he didn’t know how he could make things better. School… wasn’t great, but it was definitely better for him than it was for L. He didn’t know that yet. He just knew that L was the smartest kid in his class, and though he never bragged about it, everyone knew it. And Orpheus knew that plenty of people held it against the other boy, which didn’t quite seem fair. They didn’t have the right to be upset, not when they didn’t even try that hard to get good grades in the first place. But… from Orpheus’ limited time in class with L, it seemed like he didn’t try very hard either. Good grades came naturally to him. Orpheus was right in the middle of the pack. His grades were decent, and he had to work somewhat hard on them. He probably could have gotten straight As if he spent more time doing homework than playing music, but… in truth, he didn’t think he needed to excel academically to do what he wanted in life. He would rather get really, really good at music and nail his audition to music school. All he needed for that were passable grades.
For Orpheus, high school was more of a pit stop than the main event. He knew it wasn’t like that for a lot of people, but… those people had friends. Orpheus just had music.
It wasn’t the right time to get lost in his thoughts, though, because the teacher had noticed his raised hand.
“Oh. Yes… well… we can’t really figure out how to stop the egg from breaking if we don’t know how high the building is, right? So… do you know where we could find that out?” Orpheus glanced at L for a long moment, giving him a small smile before he turned his full attention back to the teacher as they nodded and began fishing through some paperwork at the front of the classroom. They’d probably have their answer soon.
For now… “We can work on our project after school, if you don’t have any extracurriculars. Whenever your last class finishes you can meet me in the music rooms, maybe?”

Orpheus didn’t hold L’s intelligence against him. He wasn’t sure he could. It was impressive, and he wasn’t the sort of jerk who went around telling everyone that he was better than them just because he was good at getting the right answer. Orpheus knew plenty of those kids, and although L was probably smarter than them, he didn’t try to use it to make other people feel bad. Of course… there were people who did end up feeling bad, but most of those kids became bullies so Orpheus didn’t really feel bad for them. If they couldn’t deal with feeling like they weren’t as smart as someone else in any way other than lashing out to make other people feel bad about themselves, Orpheus wasn’t going to be mean to them, but he didn’t have to like them, either.
Besides, Orpheus found he sometimes learned more from L’s classroom contributions than he did from the actual class itself. The things L pointed out seemed to be relevant, and the things the teacher brought up sometimes seemed tangentially connected at best. They didn’t follow a path that made a lot of sense to Orpheus. It was like… they jumped from chord to chord instead of doing it in a way that created a melody.
He looked up at the teacher, waiting for them to find the answer, then gave a small smile as they wrote it up on the board so everyone would have it. Good. That way everyone would have it to use.
“I spend most of my time in the music rooms,” Orpheus admitted, awkwardly rubbing at the back of his neck. “They’re nice. Nobody’s usually there after school, and the music teacher gave me the keys to the instrument closet, so long as I promised to pay for anything that gets broken, so sometimes it’s fun to practice on instruments that I don’t know how to play very well…” he trailed off, blushing a bit as he realized L probably wasn’t very interested. The passion in his eyes died down as he turned his attention back to the instruction sheet. “It’s quiet. It might be a good place to start talking about our project, at least.”

Orpheus knew he had a tendency to ramble. He knew he talked about things that people weren’t interested in, and he knew he often said things that didn’t make much sense to anyone else because they hadn’t grown up surrounded by music. He became popular around Valentines day, when everyone wanted him to write songs for their girlfriends (or perform cheesy pop songs for them), but that was about it. Otherwise, he rambled a bit too much about instruments and metaphors in lyrics and what a line break meant in a song… it had taken him a while to learn that most people in middle and high school weren’t that interested. If they liked a song, they didn’t care how it worked, so Orpheus had learned to back off on his explanations.
“Oh…” he whispered, holding L’s gaze for a long moment. He hadn’t expected L to practically ask him to continue. To invite him to keep talking, even though class was almost over and they were technically supposed to be talking about the project right now.
“I guess… I play the guitar most often, but I don’t know for sure if it’s my favorite. It’s the one instrument I own… well, I own a harmonica, but you can’t do as much with a harmonica as you can with other instruments. I want to learn harp, I think… and one day I’d like to try to make a lyre. Like… a traditional one, not the lyre harps you see sometimes. I guess… I like stringed instruments best. I tried learning violin once, but I like instruments I can sing with.” He gave a small smile, shaking his head just a little bit. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to play bass – you have to be really careful with that one, because the places where you put your fingers aren’t very clearly marked. But once I learn bass then I’ll know how to play cello, too.” He set his pencil down, his face a little bit flushed from the excitement of actually getting to talk to someone about the passion he had for these instruments.
“Have you ever played an instrument?” Orpheus asked, tilting his head a little bit. Maybe… they might have something in common. That would be nice. But it was alright if the answer was no, too.

Orpheus himself wasn’t very aware of his reputation. He just knew that people thought they could write songs and were often very quickly proven wrong. They didn’t know how to write poetry, let alone music. And asking someone else to write a song for your girlfriend was a lot easier than doing it yourself. Not that anyone gave him credit for the songs, unless the was the one performing them, which… he often was. The popular kids who used him for his music weren’t very musically gifted themselves. Orpheus thought they could be, if they were willing to put in the effort. But their effort went almost entirely towards sports and being mean to other people. Still… the best way to avoid them getting mad was to just do what they wanted him to, and he didn’t have an issue writing songs. It was easy enough, and it got them off his back.
“Oh,” he murmured, a small smile settling over his face. He picked up his pencil and doodled a lyre on the instructions for the egg drop assignment. “This is what a lyre looks like,” he explained, moving back a bit. “I mean… this is what a more traditional lyre looks like. Lyre harps are a little bit smaller and they don’t have the big section down there. Hold on…” he hesitated, then very carefully doodled a lyre harp next to it. “That’s a lyre harp. They’re different, the lyre harp is a lot smaller than an actual lyre. But… it depends on where the lyre is from, because a lot of them look different depending on the culture. And even in Greece, where they first came from, they had a lot of different numbers of strings, because they were sort of used for different purposes… and it was up to the individual musician how many strings they wanted.”

Orpheus thought anybody could probably write songs, if they wanted to. If they put the time and effort into learning how. He would have been happy to teach L – or anyone really – if they were interested, but the thing about most people was that they didn’t want to put in the effort. They just wanted the thing done.
“They are really different,” Orpheus replied, nodding a little bit. He was ecstatic that L was willing to listen to him talk about this, was asking questions even, although he didn’t need to. There was nobody making him sit there and talk to Orpheus, he was just doing it of his own volition. Which Orpheus was more than grateful for. He watched as L picked up the paper, a tiny smile on his face. So what if they were supposed to be talking about their project? They had already set up a time to actually talk about their project, and it wasn’t like they were the only group that wasn’t focused. And unlike some of the others, they had at least started out with talking about their project. Orpheus didn’t really like group projects, but he actually had hope for this one. Maybe it was just because L seemed nice, so far.
“Maybe one day I’ll actually get one,” he smiled, placing his feet on his chair and hugging his knees to his chest. “And then I’ll play it for you, so you can see how they’re supposed to sound. I found a video a while ago teaching you how to make one, but you need lots of supplies and also skill with working with wood, and I… don’t have that.” He frowned a bit at the thought, but brightened up almost immediately at L’s question.
“Seven,” he said decidedly. “I’d like a seven string lyre.” He looked up at the clock, expression clouding as he realized they only had a few minutes left.
“Sorry… I’ve been talking a lot about music. But… we can talk about something you’d prefer talking about, if you want!”

Orpheus would have been intrigued to hear L’s poetry. Maybe it wasn’t conventional, but maybe that was what made it interesting. Maybe he thought everyone was a little bit of a poet, whether they believed themselves to be or not. But they weren’t really talking about poetry. They were just talking about music and lyres, and Orpheus was a little bit too aware of how much he had been talking. L had been interested, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked all the questions, but Orpheus still felt bad for dominating the conversation. He should have asked L earlier about his interests, not when class was nearly over. Hopefully they would get more time to just talk even when they were working on their project. L was interesting. Or maybe it was just because nobody had actually been nice enough to listen to Orpheus go on and on about music except for Mr. Hermes, and he didn’t count. Listening to your children ramble about things you weren’t interested was just part of the deal, if Hermes was any indication – though Orpheus was grateful he at least pretended to be interested. He knew plenty of parents didn’t.
“I guess… there’s not much more I could talk about that wouldn’t be too time consuming.” Orpheus glanced at the clock again, almost willing it to slow down. He wanted to stay here talking to L, he didn’t want to have to go to Algebra and stare at numbers for an hour until they stopped making sense in his head. He wished L was in his algebra class so they could continue their conversation without the teacher finding out.
“Well…” he said, somewhat reluctantly, “I suppose that just means that you’ll have to tell me what you’re interested in talking about when we meet after class in the music rooms.” He kept his voice low, making sure the teacher didn’t’ hear him more or less planning to use their group project time to make friends instead of actually focusing on the group project. They’d finish the project. Eventually. But Orpheus was (more than) a little bit more interested in his potential new friend.

Orpheus watched L very carefully “fix” himself to once again fit the standard that was expected of him. He watched him switch the pencil to the way Orpheus himself was holding it, watched him adjust himself to be seen by other people. It made Orpheus sad. No… not just that. Angry. Or… no, perhaps not quite angry, but indignant at the very least. L should be allowed to act however he wanted, especially since he wasn’t hurting anyone with how he held his pencil. He wasn’t hurting anyone by being curious… Orpheus found he didn’t like the way L closed himself off, though he understood why he did it. People were cruel. They were mean for no reason, sometimes, and they picked on certain people. Or maybe that wasn’t why L did it – he didn’t know, he wasn’t in L’s head. But he still wished he didn’t have to.
-
Orpheus lost track of time. He didn’t mean to – he always tried to be respectful of other people’s time, but… but sometimes he got carried away in a melody, found himself wrapped in notes that had never been heard in this sequence before… his eyes were closed as the music worked its way through him. Not the sort of thing he usually performed for other people. For others, he knew a lot of pop songs and various memes. He knew what people wanted to hear from him. But when he was by himself… he plucked note after note on his guitar, his voice folding poetry between the vibrations of the strings. He didn’t know if he had a genre, just that it wasn’t what most people liked to listen to. It made him happy though, and in his head he could imagine what it would sound like with a lyre instead of the guitar. No… not instead of. On top of, perhaps. He liked the way it sounded now, the lyrics soft and steady, already formed by the time they left his lips. Improvisation. He was recording it on his phone so he could write down any part of it he liked later. He played straight through the alarm he had set to remind himself he was supposed to be meeting with L.

Orpheus didn’t notice L. He probably wouldn’t have noticed him unless he had entered the music room with a foghorn and a troop of elephants. When Orpheus was working, when he was writing and thinking and making music, sometimes it felt like there was room for nothing else in his brain. Just the notes and melodies that he was doing his best to work into something manageable. It was harder when he wasn’t as familiar with the instruments, but he was learning. And you never got better if you didn’t struggle a little bit, first. That was how Orpheus saw it, anyway.
He let the music run through him, leaking into the music room and filling it with a melody that nobody in the world had ever heard before, even Orpheus. It took him a long time to let the song wind down. He was already picking up on the progressions and harmonies that might be good enough to keep, and it wasn’t until he hit the ‘stop record’ button on his phone that he realized what time it was. His gaze snapped up, hazel eyes landing on L as pink spread across his entire face.
“S-sorry!” he stammered, trying to get the instruments put away as quickly as possible. “I didn’t… mean to keep you waiting.”