-Requested by Booknerd on AO3, Conner-centric, focusing on how Conner made his first friend-

Mal and Conner didn't get along, that had made itself clear on the first day of school, though they had a lot in common: both were cagey, determined, and were very protective of their friends. This quickly became problematic for Conner, because Mal had a lot of friends, and most of them didn't like Conner; he made them uncomfortable, he was rude and acted standoffish. So Mal felt justified in butting heads with the 11th grader, he was older and he'd been there longer, so he almost felt like it was his job to try and cut this aggressive, know-it-all junior back to size. 

What made it awkward was that Karen and Megan were good friends, and both boys regularly hung around the cheerleaders at their suggestion, as was the case on this particular day: It was a sunny afternoon in mid-spring, and the Bumblebees were running the new routine during lunch.

Conner and Mal sat on the bleachers, on opposite ends.

"Babe!" Karen skipped over. "I thought you had drills today?"

"Coach let us have lunch today." Mal replied, greeting her. He shot a suspicious glance at Conner, who was sat stone-still, staring out at the field.

"Can you please stop beefing with him?" Karen whispered.

"I'm not beefing with him, he's beefing with me."

"He's Megan's friend, and yeah he's kinda creepy, but be nice."

Mal gave Conner another look. "Him first."

"This is ridiculous," Karen replied. "We're seniors, we're supposed to lead our underclassmen or whatever." She laughed.

"Karen! We're gonna run it again!" One of the girls shouted.

She stood on her toes and pecked him on the cheek. "Try for me?" 

Malcom watched as she sprinted back to the other cheerleaders, sinking back down to the bench. Karen had him in a chokehold sometimes; she was beautiful.

He glanced at Conner again, jaw tight, shoulders hunched, staring intently at Megan.

With a sigh, he stood, crossing the bleachers.

Conner looked up as he approached. "What do you want?"

Mal didn't humor this obvious aggression, sitting behind the younger boy instead. "How long have you been here?"

"Start of lunch." Conner replied, and Mal noticed the discarded protein bar and water bottle beside him.

"Is that you're lunch?" Mal raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, why?" Conner growled.

"Hey, chill out, I'm trying to be nice to you." Mal said sharply. 

"I didn't ask you to be nice to me."

Mal had half a mind to just stand up and leave, but he caught sight of his girlfriend and conceded. "I don't need permission to be nice to you." He replied. "Is that seriously all you're going to eat?"

"Why?" Conner asked.

Mal slung his backpack off and began rummaging through it, setting miscellaneous crumpled pages on the bench beside him. He removed a sandwich. It was tuna, not his favorite, so he didn't feel to averse to holding it gingerly towards the shorter student. "Here."

"What?"

"Take it." Mal said. "At our size you gotta be eating more."

Conner watched the boy cautiously, but he took the sandwich. He peeled back the plastic wrap and took a bite. Almost instantly he was devouring the sandwich ravenously.

The two sat there sometime, Conner pensively chewing and Mal watching him.

Conner swallowed. "It's Nairobi."

"What?"

Conner pointed at one of the papers Mal had removed from his bag. "The capital of Kenya. You wrote down Mombasa, but it's Nairobi."

"No shit?" He took out his phone, googling it. Sure enough, the know-it-all was right. "What about Chad?"

"The capital of Chad is N'Djamena." Conner recited.

"Malaysia?"

"Kuala Lumpur."

"Square root of 377?"

"19.416."

Mal scoffed, impressed. "Remind me to keep you around during finals season."

Suddenly, the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. Both boys packed up in silence and headed their separate ways, but the seeds of companionship had been sewn

"Hey M'gann, Conner," Canary waved them down as the two teens returned to the mountain. "I wonder if two big strong teenagers could help be hang up the bags for training later. M'gann giggled, flattered; Conner frowned, condescended, but the both doffed their backpacks and got to work lifting the punching bags to the hooks above. It, like most tasks, was much easier for superpowered aliens than for humans. "So how was school?" Their trainer asked.

"Good! We had a lab in science and then we ran the routine at lunch, then we had a socratic seminar in English!"

"Very busy." Dinah replied, how about you, Conner?"

"I talked to someone." He said.

"You-- you talked to someone? That's great." Canary smiled, genuinely relived that the boy might not be completely left out at school. "What did you talk about?" 

"Africa, mostly."

Dinah rested a hand on the distant boy's shoulder. "Conner, I'm proud of you. Keep talking to people."

The next time the boys interacted was at a party. Someone invited the new girl, and the new girl invited her comfort-boy. It didn't seem either had ever been to a party.

All the girls were all plastered and Mal himself was pretty wasted, though he was more straight-edge than most of the football players. He'd just stepped out the back of Wendy's house and turned the corner only to find himself on the smoke deck. He personally wasn't a fan of smoking, so the only alternative was to go and stand in the ally with Conner Kent.

"Having fun?"

"It's too loud." Conner said. "And the smoking smells bad." He looked around unsurely. "Do you know where Megan is?"

Mal shook his head, leaning over and trying not to vomit. "How many have you had?"

"You mean beers?" Conner asked. "Ten."

Geez, smart, strong, and tolerant? did this kid have to excel in every category? "You're handling it well."

"I don't feel good." Conner admitted.

"Hey," Mal slurred, swaying slightly, "Do you have a ride home? Eli-- one of the seniors-- brought his dad's car. He's sober."

"Thanks, but I'll stay, I want to help Megan get home safe." Conner replied.

Mal frowned. "Don't you have a curfew?"

"No Re-- uh-- my... my foster parent doesn't know me and Megan are out."

"Oh, I didn't realize you were a foster kid." Malcom realized that sounded weird. "Uh, cool." He elbowed Conner lightly. "Hey, don't tell coach about this."

"Don't worry," Conner said solemnly, "I won't tell him."

"Oh no."

"What?" M'gann slurred, slamming into him as he suddenly stopped on the trail.

"The hanger lights are on."

"We left them on."

"No, we left them off, because we didn't want Red Tornado to realize." Conner replied sharply. "How else can we get into the mountain."

"Uhm," M'gann rested a hand against her hot forehead. "We could, we could go back to Happy Harbor and take the Zeta..."

"I wouldn't bother with that." Both teens froze, stared down upon by a blood red android, silhouetted in the garage's light. "Conner Kent, M'gann M'orzz, I have let you go without a curfew with the understanding that you would be home at a reasonable time, it is now 1:45am. If we have to make stricter policies for the sake of your safety, I will not shy away from doing so, do you understand?"

"Yes, Red."

"Yes, Red."

"Please now go to bed, and be sure that if you consumed any substances you tell your doctors." The robot lead the two grounded teens back inside and to their bedrooms.

As finals season was in full swing, everyone was busy working, and study-parties had become a regular occurrence, and while Mal and Conner didn't actually speak, they sat and worked in each other's presence. 

So one Tuesday, as third period was ending, Malcom noticed a unkempt head of black hair in the sea of shorter students, and called out for him: "Hey, Conner?" Conner stopped and headed over. "There's, uh," He lowered his voice. "It's almost grad, so this year's seniors are gonna be hazing you guys after school,"

Conner stared up at him with those creepy blue eyes. "Why are you telling me this?" He whispered, mimicking Mal's tone.

"Well, I don't think you'd enjoy the public humiliation part so, if you and Meg want to skip out, leave by the east fire escape and run like hell for the woods."

Conner nodded seriously. "Don't worry, I'll get Megan home safe."

Mal smiled, and gave a salute. "Godspeed soldier."

Conner saluted back and took off to find M'gann.

"What happened?" Kaldur exclaimed as the aliens came spluttering through the door, slamming to the floor with exhaustion. Conner was soaking wet and M'gann seemed to be covered in some white powder.

"Seniors." M'gann panted. "Today was the first hazing day for our grade, the graduating call are harassing us left and right, and then next year when we're seniors, we'll do it to the grade below us."

"As some sort of, cruel initiation ritual based around bullying and humiliation?"

"Public high school." Conner replied flatly.

"Well Mel Duncan gave us a short cut,  but they saw us running into the woods. They chased us up half the mountain until me and Conner lost them."

"You were lucky."

"We won't be tomorrow," Conner said. "Some of the students were saying it gets worse throughout the week."

Kaldur nodded. "Remember that you don't have to put up with these things."

"I think it's fun." M'gann said. "But year, we should probably get cleaned up."