QUARTER-LIFE | HS

FRIDAY

Harry's left the flat at the same time he usually does, but because he doesn't stop at Bene for a coffee, he's at school a full twenty minutes earlier than normal-and he's usually only twenty minutes early. With forty minutes to kill, a sick caffeine-withdrawal headache, and a new pack of cigarettes, he settles down on a bench at the corner of the school entrance where he told Layla he'd wait for her last night.

He reckons he could use the time to go over his lesson plan, anyway, and make sure it's concise enough for everyone to understand. He spent the duration of his evening finishing it, but Anna's desire to have a full-blown conversation over Facebook kept him up past eleven and cut into his revision. He is trying to get to know her, after all, so he indulged her despite the fatigue in his bones.

"The Wars of Austrian Succession in the mid-sixteenth century pretty much made Prussia seem like it was stupid powerful, and therefore, Frederick like he was stupid powerful because Prussia was now- arguably- the most powerful German state in..." he practices aloud, pausing to take a drag, but realizing the cigarette's extinguished on its own.

His loopy handwriting is fairly legible, but the thought of being on schedule with his students instead of ahead of them is what's contributing to his exhaustion. He feels it in his throat, dry and heavy when he lights up the cigarette again, pushing the white lighter back into his briefcase.

It isn't the craziest thing he's ever bought, nor the most expensive despite it being genuine leather, but the worn briefcase is quite possibly one of his favorite personal items besides his pink converse and the black jeans he's had since uni. How he can stuff an entire school year's worth of lecture notes, lunch, his wallet, and two packs of cigarettes inside it without its buckle giving up is beyond him, and he certainly wasn't expecting it when he bought it at a musky thrift shop for six dollars the night before his first day at Greene East.

He'd probably be lost without it, and the thought makes him move it from beside his jean-clad thigh to his lap, under the paper that's on his bouncing leg.

"You got one?"

The scent of stale sweat smacks Harry in the face as he whips up his head to see a stout, barefoot homeless man in a stained jumper that he recognizes as Dior (only because he'd stalked an internet secondhand store for a budget-friendly one and failed) and dirty cargo shorts. His forehead is tense until he realizes the guy's asking for a cigarette, so he digs back into the briefcase for his black pack and extends one out to the man.

He lights it with a transparent lighter in his wobbly hand, his glassy eyes visibly relieved when he takes a drag. "Thanks."

"Yeah," Harry says before returning his attention to the outline on his lap, starting at the top of the page where he'd written 'Enlightened Despotism, a.k.a. Tyrants Being Manipulative' but unable to continue because he's shit at ignoring people. Plus, the prospect of talking to himself in front of others is weird.

"College student."

"Uh, no," Harry starts, but when he looks back up, the man is walking off without another word, so his gaze comes back to the top of the outline. He's chewed a stinging hole in his cheek by the time he's returned to the paragraph on the Wars of Austrian Succession.

"Even though he switched sides more than I switch lines at Bravo on a busy day, the Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle validated Frederick the Great's conquest of Silesia, and his ego. It's important to remember that just because a treaty is signed, it doesn't mean that people aren't pissed off- treaties are like political Band-Aids," he pauses to take a drag and continues, "so it makes sense that Maria Theresa, the rest of Austria, and France were piss-"