Health 101 [Tag Tristan]

[Summer Bellwood]

 Summer sat in the back of her class with her head in her hands. Her mop of golden-brown hair fell around her in a cascade, and she struggled to focus on the luxury of each individual strand as her eyes crossed mercilessly. She was going to fucking fall asleep if their substitute kept droning on and on about shit she didn't want to hear about. The woman had warned them at the beginning of class that there'd be a surprise at the end, and she was eager to see it, but she was going to pass out way before the last thirty minutes of class was up.

A wadded up piece of paper landed on her desk, startling her. She sat up a little, brushing her hair back in a dignified sort of manner. With a frown, she nudged the note with the edge of her pencil. She hadn't seen who'd thrown it, and when she looked up, the only friend she did have in class, Heather Kendrick, was staring straight ahead, absorbed in Rick Paluchek's biceps. She glanced back down at the note, and slowly unfolded it with some degree of annoyance.

  ohmygod, Marley just texted me and she told me what the surprise was. we're getting BABIES.

"Babies?!" she said out loud, staring down at the paper in disgust.

The whole class burst into laughter as the sub glanced up, eyes fixed on Summer. "Actually, yes Ms. Bellwood. I didn't think you were paying attention to my hints. Today you're all going to become proud parents!"

Summer sank down into her chair, hand over her face as Heather shot her the Stare of Utter Shock from the second-to-front row. She mouthed something to her and pointed at Rick, and Summer gave her a weak thumbs-up, pretending that this wasn't happening. She remembered when Seth had brought home that stupid baby thing. She thought this semester they were going to skip it, because NOBODY else had said anything about it, but evidently the staff had planned one last prank on the class that was notoriously evil to their teacher and constantly causing the school to fork out money for substitutes.

  "When I call your names, come up to the front and get your baby. These things have sensors in them, and there are things you need to do in order to keep them happy. It's got one for rocking, burping, feeding, going to the bathroom - the usual kid sort of stuff. And they WILL wake you up in the middle of the night, before anyone asks," she instructed, passing out a Chinese baby two two of the whitest whitebread kids Summer had ever laid eyes on.

"Um, wait - I don't understand. We're supposed to take these things with us to school? And this is to show us realism? Look, I may not have been paying extra close attention to whatever you were saying, but I've never seen anyone bring a little baby to school with them. How does this teach us anything except that we're basically being forced to drag this lump around?" she asked, getting angrier by the second. She still hadn't had her name called, and the class was thinning drastically. She didn't talk to anyone in here except Heather, so who the fuck would she get saddled up with?

She glanced over and saw Tristan furiously scribbling into his notebook, probably something unrelated to the class. Oh, god. Not Tristan. Not Tristan. Not Tristan, she pleaded silently. She toyed with a small gold hoop earing nervously.

"To punish you, Ms. Bellwood," the teacher said glibly with a large smile across her lipstick-coated mouth. "Speaking of, you're paired up with... Ah, Mr. DeMortei! Won't you two proud parents come up here and fetch your new baby girl!" she cheered, holding up a baby with a head full of curly blonde hair.

Summer felt like she was going to puke. "Serial?!" she heard herself shriek, slamming her hand down on her desk in disbelief. Tristan shot her a dark look from across the room, and then stood up and marched to the table. Summer made a whining noise and slowly trudged up behind him, Candies making loud clicking noises on the floor as she walked. She smoothed over her skirt several times while the teacher gave them their assignment list, and then stood there like an idiot while Tristan read over the paperwork.

  When they'd gone back to the desks, she moved her things over to him with such fury that Heather held up a piece of paper that said OMG SRY UR STUCK IN LOS-R-VILLE. LATTE AFTER SCHOOL KK? to which Summer just put her face into her hands again and moaned.

"This isn't even realistic," she hissed to Tristan. "I mean, like, can I swap this for a stuffed cheetah?" Because if they had a child together, it'd BE a Letotse. No question.

[Tristan DeMortei]

Tristan had been paying about as much attention the entire class period as Summer had, but not because he was falling asleep or reading random notes.  He'd already slept through his English class because they were watching a movie, and those power naps sure went a long way.  During this period, he was working on a song, which implied that he was humming a melody under his breath, just low enough that the newest sub couldn't hear him over her own voice, and working out the lyrics.  He didn't exactly advertise it, since he already had the black hair, pale features and generally (and deceptively) small build that could draw the wrong kind of attention if people knew that he was one of those poetry kids.  All music was poetry, though.

Actually, until Summer busted out with 'babies', he hadn't given a shit one way or the other what the class was about.  He hated this one, and didn't really prefer substitutes, either.  That Summer managed to not only be in the class with him, but causing a scene over the assignment made it even worse.  Honestly, he didn't mind sharing classes with her usually because they didn't really interact, but times like this made him hope they wouldn't do much of it in the future.  Graduation wasn't that far away, and he could do without the drama from the Bitchy Committee, or whatever they were calling themselves.

He went back to his notebook and the lyrics he was trying to get down before he forgot them all, trying to listen to about 10% of the fuzz that came from the rest of the class, but his own name caught his attention.  He glanced up, just in time to hear Summer burst out for the third time.  This time, she was expressing her distaste at being partnered with him, and he was suddenly wishing that he'd managed to switch his periods around to have this class with Olivia.  It would have been so much easier, and more fun.  Instead, he gave Summer a harsh look and rolled his eyes as he got up and strode over to the teacher's desk to the sound of her heels clicking up behind him.  Holy fuck, shoot him now.

He took the assignment list and left her to grab the ball of blonde curls, giving it a darker look than he'd given Summer for her outburst, looking it over like he didn't trust it.  Truth was, he didn't.  It was going to make a lot of noise, and it was going to piss him off.  That is, it would if Summer didn't make him crazy first.  She was all kinds of angry herself, pushing her stuff over so that she'd be sitting with him for the project, and he didn't miss it when her friend held up a sign that made plain their opinion of him.  A loser, right.  This was going to be beautiful. 

Realistic?  Realistically, he wouldn't have ever had a kid with her, because he wouldn't have touched her, so they'd never be in this kind of situation if not for this stupid class.  Period.  Then, there was the matter if it being a blonde, cupid-esque thing that would never work.  "You want realistic?  It's blonde, I want a divorce," he told her dryly, joking despite his tone not reflecting it.  She wanted to be a bitch to him, so he wasn't even going to TRY to be nice back.  Why would he?  He made it a point not to be friendly to the people who treated him like shit, and between her and her friend, he knew where he stood.  She'd made her agreement plain with that facepalm, like the very reminder upset her.  Whatever.  What did he care, anyway?  The best part about this project would be the thing waking up and pissing off his father.  Maybe he'd set it up outside the man's door. 

[Summer Bellwood]

 "Like I'd ever even marry you in the first place, furrball," she snapped. She slammed her hand down on the back of her chair angrily, bracelets slapping together in a chiming tune that wasn't unpleasant. The noise on the chair, though, was loud enough - the thing started to cry, and it was loud. Summer nearly went backwards out of her chair, and then snatched the thing up by the arm.

  "How the FREAK do I make this thing stop?" she demanded through gritted teeth. The rest of the class was already trying to get acquainted with their own children and her shouting set more of them off. It was like the most painful thing she'd ever heard, and it was only fueling her fire even more. Before she almost flung it face-first at the wall, the teacher ran over and took it from her.

"My lord, Summer! Do you have no maternal instinct whatsoever? Here, you hold her like this," she demonstrated, rocking the baby slowly. Eventually it stopped crying, and Summer had a twisted, angry expression on her face - one that quickly shifted to absolute horror when the woman tried to hand it back to her.

"Uh, no thanks. I don't want it," she said, holding her hands up. She heard Tristan make a noise of anger beside her, but Summer wasn't going to do this the easy way. She wasn't trying to make his day worse, but there was no way she was dragging this thing around for one more class period. Home Ec was next, and it was Tristan and Olivia, and Summer ALONE with the baby - or that's how she saw it happening. Fuck, she was going to be stuck with this thing forever.

  "Summer, you have to learn this sort of responsibility. What happens when you have children of your own one day?" she demanded, holding the child out again.

"Uh, not having kids. Sorry, baby factory is closed for business. So, so very closed," she added in a harsh tone, taking a step away from the danging baby. It was Tristan who finally took the kid from the teacher after she told them it was a fourth of their class grade, replying with a, "We'll handle it, thanks," before she would go away.

Summer didn't sit down yet, but she felt like she was going to pass out. Her mouth felt dry and her lips felt chalky when she pressed them together. Okay, not that she needed the entire world to know how she felt about kids and how they get there, now everyone thought she was twice the freak she was before. In truth, nobody had really noticed except for Heather who kept trying to give her funny faces or waves to make her feel better about her utterly devastating situation.

"I'm not actually failing any of my classes," she said as she sank down onto the top of the desk, hands white-knuckling as she held the sides of it. She didn't want to look at Tristan, so she looked at the ground. The baby freaked her out. "So, I guess I don't want to start, now. How the fuck are we going to do this? Do we take turns? She said everyone has to 'figure it out' whatever that means," she added. She sure as fuck wasn't taking that thing home with her. What would her parents say?

[Tristan DeMortei]

He didn't care about her bracelets or her angry words, but the impact of her hand on her chair, not to mention the thing starting to scream, took him entirely off-guard, especially since he'd been looking over something else and not paying attention any longer to what she was doing.  He flinched so hard that he visibly jumped, just as an instinctual reaction to sudden, violent movements.  He was more than familiar with them, and he avoided as many as he could.  He'd been ready to try to avoid that one, right up until his rational mind reminded him that it was Summer, and she was definitely NOT a threat.  It made him angrier than he'd reacted that way.

He glared at Summer as she completely overreacted to the fake baby's obnoxious noise, and finally took the thing from the teacher.  It was only because she'd said it was a quarter of their grade, but really?  He'd fail to not have to take it home or deal with it.  He sure as hell never planned on having any offspring, not knowing the kind of wreck his father was.  He'd never risk being that himself.  What if fatherhood just made you snap one day?  He knew his dad wasn't always like he was now, so it must have.  He wasn't doing it. 

"If I take that home, my dad is going to punt it down the hallway as soon as it starts wailing like that," he said, and he was sure it sounded like he was exaggerating, and he was, in a way.  London would only punt it if Tristan deliberately left it somewhere to aggravate the man, but he'd still do it because Tristan was completely oriented around pissing the man off.  It was the least he could do.  "You're welcome to force the subject, though."

Actually, he almost hoped she did.  He liked seeing other people endure his father's wrath, people other than himself and his mom, and he really just liked seeing that vein in the man's forehead start to show.  It only did when he really yelled, or was really, really, violently angry.  Tristan was an expert at getting him there, though you'd think he'd try to avoid it.  He just couldn't bring himself to cowering and slinking around.

[Summer Bellwood]

 Summer looked up at him finally when he told her that she was welcome to force the issue with his father, and she raised an eyebrow. "If my dad didn't spend all his time on the phone, I'm sure he'd probably like to take an opportunity to drown this little thing," she said. Her eyes fixed on the baby, and to her, it was a burden and the utter bane of her existence, which meant that she wanted to destroy it. "It isn't real," she insisted. "No matter what that lady says, nothing is going to make me want to like this thing or take care of it. I don't want it anymore than you do," she snapped.

She also didn't really want to go to his house. She didn't know how long she could keep up the bitch act when she was kind of crushing on him. It was hard to talk to him, or to look him in the eye anyways when he was talking, because he was so totally hot, and Summer felt like it was kind of obvious, despite how NOT obvious it actually was. She drummed her fingers on her desk, careful not to be as loud as she had been before.

"Uh, if you want me to go toe to toe with your old man, I guess we could. I don't think my mom will care one way or the other if I have it with me, but I think I might try to slip my brother a c-note and get him to watch it," she added. "I don't know if he will. I bet not. Seth hated this, he had to do it two years ago. He almost broke his," she admitted. Sure, he almost broke it because Summer drop-kicked it, but to be fair, Seth hated it as much as she had, and he'd been contemplating hurling it over the fence in their back yard when Summer had assaulted it.

Summer still wanted to swap it with a stuffed animal. "It's up to you, but there's no way I'm taking it for the entire week."

[Tristan DeMortei]

Swapping it with a stuffed animal would have been cool with him, though he wouldn't have been in with a cheetah, just because of bias.  He definitely thought that it'd be easier to justify taking care of it if it was something fuzzy and cute, since stuffed animals were made to be that, but this rubber baby thing was NOT cute.  At all.  He didn't like it, and once it started wailing, he REALLY didn't like it.  There was nothing about it that made him want to 'keep it alive', or whatever they were supposed to be doing.  Taking care of it. 

He cocked an eyebrow up at her over her description of her dad, and couldn't help thinking that it was probably the least manly thing he'd heard of a real, live dad doing.  His own father had cop manners when it came to phones, all business, so it was hard to imagine one talking on a phone that often.  Of course, when she mentioned her dad drowning it, he also got a pretty unpleasant idea of the guy.  His own bias was once again coloring his idea of things, this time regarding asshole fathers.  Really, he didn't want her at his house any more than she wanted to go, but his reason was that he didn't want his father playing nice with her, which London probably would.  He was nicer in front of guests, and it only made Tristan angry.

"Nah, it's not worth it.  We can go to your place," he agreed, not wanting to deal with it.  It would be like adding insult to injury if his father and the Queen Bee got along brilliantly.  Cynthia already did, and Tristan couldn't get rid of her.  If Summer became another, he'd probably got apeshit. 

Besides, he figured he'd probably get along with her brother.  Dude had seemed alright when he was still a senior.  That, or Tristan was going to be taking the baby thing to Olivia's most of the time he had it.  Between the two of them, he figured they'd make it work.

[Summer Bellwood]

 "Uh, okay," Summer responded. She really hadn't planned on him accepting her offer. She figured Tristan to be the type to want to do shit on his own turf, and that made her wonder for just a second about what his house was like. Then she wondered what his house was like physically, and frowned. She turned in her chair to get something out of her purse, and produced a light pink sticky note from the bag. She wrote her address down in her bubbly handwriting, and handed it out to him.

"I have practice after school, and then I'm free. So, five?" she asked, brow raised. "Can you handle this stupid thing until then?" She glanced over at the baby, her nose wrinkling in distaste. "Well, I guess you can. It isn't like we have next period together, so you won't be totally single mom'ing," she observed. Of course, he'd be with Olivia and Summer would be at the table by herself since she was an absolute failure in that class. Seth said it had been easy; what the fuck did Seth know about easy and cooking being in the same sentence?

The rest of the class period was dedicated to them going over the checklist, and Summer took it off of his desk and let her eyes roam over it. "Oh, seriously?" she asked. "We have to like, read to it? How does it even know if we're reading to it?" Her voice got shrill again.

[Tristan DeMortei]

Her easy agreement took him off-guard, but apparently not as much as his had taken her.  He glanced at her when she responded that way, frowning and wondering what the hell she was doing until she pulled out a pink post-it to give him her address.  Oh.  Yeah, he was thrilled.  Still, any excuse not to be at home would be fine with him, as long as Summer and her stupid friends stopped bitching about him behind his back.  He didn't want to retake this class, but he would totally let his dad dropkick the fake baby if she was going to be a bitch.  Tristan could focus if he cared, but the fastest way to get apathy out of him was to frustrate or piss him off.  Since he was so prone to that already, it wasn't like it would take much.  

Right, and straight off the bat, the child-thing was his.  Awesome.  

It didn't really matter, because he would just hang out with Olivia, who'd already done this and been fine with it.  Besides, she could make most things fun, so he wasn't all that worried.  She could told it while he measured ingredients, or whatever they planned on doing.  She'd also understand his lack of parenting skills, knowing the situation with his dad as she did.  Basically, if he ever disappeared, it was Olivia who was going to be wondering if his dad hid the body somewhere.  Not that it would help, since Detective DeMortei would definitely know the places to hide a body, but at least someone would know that he hadn't just run away.  

"Doesn't your mom read those stupid romance novels?  We could just read something trashy, make fun of it and pretend that was what the teacher meant," he offered, tone a lot less amused than he actually was by the idea.  He already knew that she didn't like him, not even a little bit, so he wasn't putting out the effort to be anything special or friendly.  He also wasn't going to let her ruin the next week for him, though.  Let her tell her friends how horrible it was to be stuck in LOS-R-VILLE.  He didn't care.

Right, and he was vegetarian.  Whatever.

[Summer Bellwood]

Summer couldn't help but laugh at his comment, even though by his facial expression he hadn't expected her to. She tried to imagine reading the plastic brat the most intimate encounters of Lady Clare on her Isle of Desire (a real book, Desire), and couldn't with a straight face. Although, she wouldn't be able to orate such a tale with Tristan sitting there staring at her, she'd die of embarrassment. When she came back from her imagination spin, she realized he was staring at her, and she brushed some of her hair behind her ear.

"Or whatever," she agreed, voice carefully cold.

She scanned around the room, and then looked back at Tristan. "I guess if you take the baby you'll be hanging out with Olivia, huh?" she said. She remained casual, but there was venom in her voice that she couldn't hide. If she had a baby with Tristan and he spent his time with Olivia and the baby, she'd get pretty jealous, and with good reason -- and she frowned a little,  directing her eyes to her nails. Was she serial or something? This wasn't a real baby - she would never even date Tristan, let alone marry the guy, so why was she concerned about him and Olivia shacking up with the imaginary baby? It was her fake baby, that was why. Sometimes kitty possessiveness really didn't need to make sense.