It's Only Skipping Class If You Come Back (Patty & Cecil SL)

Well it was starting to get cold out. Aaaaand Patty was outside. That was freakin' great on its own but it was a lot worse by many, many degrees. So like... it was before noon and right around the start of the lunchbreak. And she was awake so that automatically sucked. Everyone else was in class by now but not her and not because she wasn't supposed to be, shockingly enough. Work program gave her the morning off, but now Patty found herself in the grip of a very powerful, looming emotion. It was an all encompassing sensation, one that compelled and consumed her, the worst of feelings:

Patty just didn't fuckin' wanna.

Didn't wanna go to class, didn't wanna go inside, didn't wanna be outside in the cold, didn't wanna go to work or study or anything else so she sat on a bench shivering and puffing loosely on a cigarette and thumbing through her phone. She was staring at the screen but not really looking at it. It's like her brain was like a motor trying and failing to start. Freakin' morning. Supid cold. Deadass coldass winter, screw you clouds with your snow and shit let the sun back out miss me with that freezing shit. Her knee bounced with her nerves on pins and needles, the druggie chick didn't know WHAT she wanted to do but she had to do SOMETHING or she was gonna freakin' scream. But she didn't know what she wanted to do and that was a problem.

The twiggy girl huffed and stood up, crunching her boots in the snow as she bounced on her toes and looked around for... like... something. She didn't know what she was looking for. Probably something to do or someone to interact with or like whatever, it sucked that everyone else was in class and she was out here alone. But whatevs, she'd have to go find something then if it wasn't here. Like she was starting to get twitchy and fidgety just parking her butt on the bench, if nothing else she could like just walk around one of the districts. Maybe she'd go see street performers or something, maybe she'd be out until sundown but like she'd figure that out whenever she had to be in class. The skinny chick set out with her boots scruffing through the frost in a non-general direction as her eyes stayed peeled for whatever it was that she felt like doing that wasn't sitting and being here.

A couple minutes later, one of the classes started to empty out, courtesy of a tired and irritable teacher unwilling to stretch a lesson plan already far beyond its bounds further when they could end the class now and get a few precious minutes in to pull themselves together and get some last minute marking done. Making their excuses and hoping the students they let loose wouldn't make him regret granting them the early lunch, he turned his gaze to a stack of papers that only seemed to grow in his mind as the doors to the classroom shut.

As much as he tried to hide it, Cecil felt similarly haggard as he left, a long night of worry he'd ill been able to suppress bearing its weight down on him during the day. He rubbed at his head as he trailed footprints in the snow, wanting in that moment to be anywhere but the place home to some of the biggest sources of frustration in his life.
To think he was happy to be invited to attend once. If he knew this was how things would go, he may just have stuck with his old school.

He wasn't out for long before he noticed a familiar face, shivering and restless in the cold. Painting over the stress with a more cheerful expression, he waved as the girl glanced about for something unseen. "Hey. Wasn't expecting to see you. You alright?"

Her head had lifted at movement and looked like to her she was synced up with the students leaving class which brightened her spirits just a little. NOW she had people to talk to if she wanted and then she could figure out what she wanted to do. So she approached closer to the students with her cigarette in hand like she probably shouldn't have but like it was totally fine. She stuck out from the rest in her full outside clothes anyway, like, she just kind of had this feel that she'd been out there for a while and they didn't. Besides, she lived there. Like this was her home and stuff, where else was she supposed to go?

Patty's stride slowed as she recognized just how little people she actually knew out of the students. She could pick... some of them out she guessed and like she could talk to any one of them, that wasn't the problem but like... it was so weird. It was one of the silly little doubts she always shoved down, but like she got it in little moments that she didn't belong with those people. But whenever she thought about that it made her sad, so she tried to think about something else.
...yeah bars. She needed bars, that's why she was so antsy. That was the need and why she wasn't comfortable and chewing the inside of her cheek. She'd just have to go get some, that was the adventure she'd go on.

Patty was about to separate herself from the school before she happened to see one of those familiar faces in the crowd and shockingly enough he waved her down first instead of the other way around. The twiggy chick returned the wave bouncing on her toes and made a beeline toward him. They had SO MUCH to talk about, she heard that he did something awesome since last time she saw him.
"Hey!" she greeted with a much more excited exclaim than he did. "Yeah'm just bored. Hey hehah let's go somewhere~!" The junkie gave him a wide and friendly grin. Adventures were more fun with people to go with so this could be a good time!

It was like a switch flipped, and Cecil reeled, visibly surprised by Patty's turnaround from sluggishly dragging her feet along the ground to bouncing across the snowy grounds, vibrant and alive. "Ah-uh, well. I - you seem in a better mood all of a sudden?" It wasn't really meant to be a question, but the confused tone communicated well enough he didn't really have an answer for the change. Shaking his head and running his hand down his face, he shook off the worst of it and pushed on. "Ah, anyway. Go, somewhere? Where?"

"I told you, I was bored?" Patty fired back with a raised eyebrow and an equal tone that shouldn't have been a question but explained her situation. Like she did happen to be bored and like that might be the problem anyway, she just keep her mind occupied with something. It just jumped to bars but like no one needed to know that. Besides, Cecil was here so now she had someone to talk to instead of being restless by her lonesome. But her silly grin came back pretty quickly.
"Heeheehaha I dunno~!" she laughed. "I just wanna go somewhere to go. You got lunch, right? C'mon, let's go f'r walk, we can find something."

Patty tugged on Cecil's arm and pulled him lightly, trying to lead him toward the path out the front gate until he like just didn't go or came on his own. They could just stop wherever looked like a good place to stop, right? Sometimes that's how you found the most interesting stuff. Like no one ever discovered anything following their routine and junk and like... structured lunchtime blocks were stupid. Especially if you weren't allowed to go places. Like the real world wasn't that much of a freakin' kindergarten dude.

...good talk, that was. Very productive. Much communication.
It was a dumb thing to say anyway.

"I gue- hey, hey-!" As he was pulled along, his feet came into motion, nearly slipping on the icy grounds before gaining traction to spare him the dumb stumbling that had long been typical for him whenever he found himself in these scenarios. Was it just him, or did he tend to get dragged about in some form or another when he and Patty met? He felt like this was just him being silly, but at the same time this was happening again and theeeeere went the gates.

...fuck it. If he ended up back late, it wasn't like he was missing anything anyway.
God, for one of the more prestigious schools about (even if that was just because of the associations it had with the government), they had one sorry excuse for a history class.

He breathed a sigh of relief, breath visible in the cold air, and grinned. "If I knew I was going to get pulled across the ice, I'd have worn different shoes."

Patty's mood dropped just a little bit as she stared at Cecil. Just stared for a bit while walking. Like she wasn't mad or anything but she was onto something, like something just came to her and she felt compelled to give voice to it and speak her mind.
"Y'know... for a guy you complain a whole lot," she stated flatly. Like she didn't mean anything by it but like... he totally did. Cecil was always talking about how he like didn't wanna do something or how something was hard. Couldn't can't won't. Patty never ever complained. Except about schoolwork and other stupid shit for the sake of it. But this wasn't stupid like those things, this was fun. Patty smiled as her mind went back to interacting with things and people around her instead of bouncing around by itself.
"I think ya wore the right kind of shoes since you didn't wind up busting your ass!"

What to do, what to do... they could go ice-skating like he said. But then she'd need to find ice skates. She didn't know how to ice skate either but that didn't really change her decision-making process. They could street skate on the side walks but that'd get old unless she could like find cardboard or something to sled on and it wasn't icy everywhere. Patty took a charging step to slide across a patch of ice on her shoes for about a yard while she was thinking about it. Fuck it was cold. Oh yeah! She knew where they could go!
"So I heard you did somethin' pretty awesome since I last saw you..." she prodded with a sinister smirk, walking backward toward the place she had decided they'd go.

"...for a guy?" It registered in his mind what she meant, and she wasn't exactly wrong, but it did feel like something of an odd statement in his mind. "I didn't realise women had a monopoly on complaining. Do I need to pay royalties?"

Cecil maintained an even pace as Patty shot and slid about, following her lead as she led them onward. As he saw her smirk and heard her words, however, a shot of ice pierced and flowed through his veins, and suddenly he felt all too tense. He got the idea he already knew just what Patty was referring to, and he was not looking forward to having to retell the tale. "...what...what are they saying this time? If it's what I think it is, I'm losing count of how many versions there are..."

"Ya well apparently they don't 'cause you've got some skin in the game," she sniped back. The druggie girl made a stupid grin and planted a hand on Cecil's shoulder to shake him back and forth.
"Haha you did it! You made it buddy! Started from the bottom now you're heeeeeere!" she'd sing as she gave him shit. The look she got told her everything she need to know and it was just about what happened: he was hanging out with that weird guy doing some kind of kink shit during class hours. Something about golden showers. Patty kinda figured, she got the feeling he was gay and the strange ones always had some kind of really big skeleton in the closet but like you do you or whatever. But she didn't say any of that or try to make fun of him.
..................hey, why were all of her friends gay anyway? That was pretty weird, right?

"I heard you hired a stripper for a club and brought moonshine and when Principal Hughes walked in you told him to suck your dick and slammed down like half a bottle, ha ha! Why? What'd YOU hear?" Yeah it was a lie but she was really good at that and didn't give any kind of hint that she heard differently. Rumor Master McDowell. Cecil was probably catchin' a lotta flak for it already and like he could probably use an ego boost. Or he'd like come in wearing a trench coat one day playing Pumped Up Kicks and quoting Full Metal Jacket.

With every word of Patty's fabrication, it was possible to see Cecil die inside a little more. The light in his eyes faded away, their shine being smothered and dying down. "I...I'm not sure if that's better than apparently selling toxic moonshine on campus." Another damning version of events, filled with promise of scorn and isolation. "...ugh. I never should have gone to the literature clubroom. Turned right around and left, instead of trying to impart some level of common sense into that maniac."

He let out a hollow, pathetic sigh.

"There was nothing awesome then, Patty. Just sexual harassment by a lunatic I shouldn't have tried to help and a near death by alcohol poisoning."