Throughout his life, there were about two things Quinn had been really obsessed with. The first one, according to his family, was subways. Yeah. Quinn himself barely even remembered that part of his life, because he was like, three maybe, and he didn't really have recollection of life before age fourteen in general.

His parents had taken him on the subway as a toddler, and he'd become fascinated with it for about a year, and every toy he owned was subway or train related, until he dropped all that when he found his true calling.

It started one August in a small polish village his grandma called home, where two big eyes stared up into the sky, shooting stars rushing across the firmament and burning away, yet staying ingrained in a little boy's mind who would remember this sight for years to come.

Quinn must've been five then, or maybe a little older, but either way, it was his first memory, one clear as day, or rather clear as the night sky that time.

From then on, Quinn did not give a shit about earth and what happened on it and if people used subways or not, because suddenly something else, something much bigger, had opened up to him.

There was more. There was something never ending, something infinite, something expanding. And all Quinn could see of that vast expanse were little glowing dots whenever he looked up at night. And so, his hunger for knowledge and explanation was born, and his childish little brain could barely catch up.

And then, in fifth grade or something, Quinn walked into his first physics class. So there he was. A ten year old, suddenly fascinated with astrophysics. A gifted kid who felt at home among numbers and formulas and measurements. The fact that he could barely read or write was tossed aside in favour of praise and promises of a bright future.

This wasn't a bright future, though. Him sitting in the physics classroom at Oakwell Abbey, last row, staring out the window, his teacher's voice distant. The problem with school physics was that it had long lost its appeal to Quinn. He just... knew most of it already. These simple things like thermal physics. There was no challenge to it anymore. No feeding that hunger in Quinn's brain. Nothing would, nothing that was taught in school at least.

Mister Richardson, a teacher whose pale bald head sometimes resembled the moon, pointed at the words he'd written on the blackboard, talking and talking and talking on.

His handwriting, Quinn thought, looked odd. Every time he'd seen an actual scientist at work, or a science professor at one of those big prestigious universities, they'd jot down letters and numbers hastily, almost stumbling over their own words in an attempt to have their hands keep up with their brains. They'd be scratchy and quick and sometimes slightly neurotic. Mister Richardson wrote in cursive. Slowly and neatly, like he was signing a letter. This man wasn't a real scientist. What a fraud. How was Quinn supposed to learn anything from this man?

He now knocked on the board, looked through the room, was saying something, probably, at least his mouth moved, but Quinn didn't really hear anything. The numbers the man had written on the board were perfectly proportionate and rounded. It didn't look right.

"Harvey? Mister Harvey?"

Quinn blinked, and at least ten students turned around to him.

"Hm?"

"Can you hear me or are you asleep?"

"I-" Quinn cleared his throat, Mister Richardson's voice now clear as day, a little too clear for his taste. "Sorry. What were you saying?"

The teacher's eyes narrowed and he crossed his arms, let out a very audibly disappointed sigh.

"Would you like me to start from the very start again, Mister Harvey, or did you at least get the beginning of the class?"

Quinn sat up in his chair, a playful grin appearing on his face. An automated response to being called out by a teacher, because embracing the fact that he hadn't listened had saved him from being embarrassed too many times in his life.

"You may start from the beginning, Sir." Some of his old teachers had sometimes laughed at that. Some had turned red from anger. Mister Richardson remained terrifyingly unbothered.

"Get yourself together." He remained straight faced, with just one of his thin black eyebrows raising. "We are discussing last lesson's homework, so it'd be beneficial for you to listen."

Quinn blinked a few times, and the neat little curved chalk lines on the board actually began forming letters and words, turning into a question he recognized from his homework, which, by the way, he'd actually done. Because 'Introduction to Thermal Physics' was basically done in about five minutes.

"Listen now so you can write down the correct answer."

"Uh, I already have that." Quinn looked down onto his sheet, all questions filled out with the correct answers, he was fairly certain of that at least.

"Oh, well, wonderful. So why won't you come to the board and write down the answer for question four, then? Explain the second law of thermodynamics."

Well, he'd love nothing more than that. Perhaps a great way to show these nepo babies that he wasn't as stupid as he looked. Quinn got up, walked past all the students up to the board as nonchalantly as he possibly could, and picked up the chalk and began writing. Like a real scientist, not a fraud like Mister Richardson.

Satisfied with the answer he wrote down, Quinn brushed the white chalk dust off his hands, took a step back, and turned around to return to his seat, but was stopped by Mister Richardson clearing his throat as loudly as humanly possible.

"Now, Mister Harvey," he said, a grin audible in his voice. "I would tell you that this answer is correct. However, it appears as though it was written by a six year old."

Laughter rumbled through the classroom. Nothing Quinn wasn't used to. He turned back around to his teacher, who'd now picked up a faintly orangey-red coloured chalk, going through Quinns answer to mark every second or so word.

"I have no idea what this says," the man said, while circling a word that very clearly read 'entropy', underlining more and more, adding question marks and- Oh, the way he laughed. A mocking laugh. "Have you misspelled 'equilibrium' here? For a STEM scholarship student you sure seem to lack an understanding of the English language."

"For a Physics teacher you sure seem to piss yourself a little too much about orthography." Giggles again, this time less, as though the audience was too scared to agree with Quinn. Mister Richardson remained calm, continuing to mark word after word with red strokes.

"Did you speak like this to your old teachers as well?"

"I did, that's why they sent me here." Quinn buried his hands in the pockets of his blazer and walked back to his seat, feeling the eyes of the other students on him. A feeling he was familiar with. One he'd always enjoyed. When they all looked at him, when they laughed, when they sometimes gasped or whispered. Quinn, the class clown, and his little fights and back and forths with his teachers had always entertained the masses at his old school.

It seemed to be different here, though. Because nobody appeared to want to side with him. Everyone's gazes were still fixed on Quinn, including Mister Richardson's.

"You find yourself to be very funny, I see. I don't. I find this-" He gestured towards the board. "-to be very, very sad, actually. The fact that you barely spelled a word correctly actually makes me think that you may have just copied this from Wikipedia."

Now that was an insult.

"Respectfully, Sir, if I had copied it, I probably would've been able to spell most things right."

"I'm not so sure about that. Either way, it's worrying. I wonder how you managed to pass the entrance exam like this, I really do." Scattered laughter again. "Perhaps they switched up yours and someone else's?" It stopped being funny now. "Or did you have an AI write it for you? I hear that happens a lot nowadays." But everyone else really found this hilarious. "I can't imagine how-"

"Is insinuating that a student highly praised by Mister Osborne should not have gotten entry to this school really a good move, Mister Richardson?" Quinn's tone had long lost its playfulness, had instead given way to a slight tremble in his voice, barely noticeable. This shouldn't have been happening. How many times had a teacher made fun of him before? Never had it mattered. Except now, it did matter. Now, it was different.

"Quinton Harvey, the student Mister Osborne had described to me sadly doesn't seem to be here. Now." He erased Quinn's writing from the board. The correct answer. It'd been right. "Would someone else like to answer this question? In a way that is readable, preferably?"

Quinn pressed his lips together, sunk deeper into his seat. But the answer he'd given was fucking correct.

      Quinn was the first to leave the classroom once the bell rang, playing a melody more akin to church bells than the high pitched electronic noise that announced the breaks in his old school.

Mister Richardson hadn't paid him dust for the rest of the lesson. The scholarship student he'd been promised was no more, that genius, that gifted kid, it'd gone up in smoke and now Quinn was nothing more but an ugly room decoration in the back of his class, a moth stuck to the high ceiling lights for the next years to come until its papery body finally detached from the bulb.

And it shouldn't have fucking felt like this. Quinn should've laughed, or rolled his eyes, or made another joke, shouldn't have taken it to heart. How many times had teachers talked to him like this before? How many people had told him how his handwriting was unreadable and that none of his words were ever spelled right? How many times had he been laughed at, or laughed with, and he shook it off?

It had always been like this, and it never ever fucking mattered. Until now, apparently. Now, Quinn was squeezing past the other students, skipping down the grand staircase, and slipping outside into the courtyard.

It was raining, a warm summer rain, yet most students had opted to spend their short break inside. Quiet. Peace. Quinn sat down, sheltered from the rain, on one of the benches underneath the loggia. And he breathed.

Attention was attention, no matter if good or bad, and usually, Quinn loved attention. So why not now? Why not this kind? Being able to declare a new teacher his arch enemy should've been a highlight, as it always was. To fight disrespect with disrespect.

Mister Richardson seemed to be the perfect contender for that, calm, a bit silly looking with his big bald head, quick to return a blow. But his blows... hu-

No, stop that. They didn't hurt, nothing could hurt Quinn Fucking Harvey, especially no pretentious teacher with a pretentious handwriting at some pretentious rich kid school. Quinn already knew that nobody here was going to have a good opinion of him, he'd signed up for exactly that, and he'd been fine with it. Fine. Actually, he was loving it. He loved that people thought he was a weird freak, he loved that they got angry at him all the time for being a freak, he loved it. He loved being weird.

He didn't love being stupid, though, because he wasn't, but he kind of was, but-

Quinn inhaled, held his breath, counted to five, exhaled again. He forced his thoughts to fall quiet and instead gave his best to focus on the sound of raindrops hitting the ground. The worry hurt his head. And he wasn't one to worry usually. Quinn stared out at the courtyard, watching a few students run from the main building to their dorms, blazers pulled over their heads. Nothing mattered.

He pulled his phone out of the backpocket of his pants, hesitantly unlocking it. There was this urge to call Grace. To tell her... what exactly? That Quinn had a moment of weakness? Right. Sure. What would she even say to that? 'Stop fighting with teachers, dumbass,' that's what she'd say, and then Quinn would be like 'it's the only thing that brings me joy', and then she'd say-

"No phones in the hallways," someone said, and Quinn flinched, his eyes darting upwards to meet Nico's, standing tall in front of him, a canvas under his arm. Ah. He hadn't talked to him in a while.

"Does this count as a hallway, though?" Quinn asked, yet complying and letting his phone slip back into his pocket. He forced a smile on his lips. He couldn't not smile at Nico. "It's more like an outdoor hallway, maybe-"

"Alright, no phone during school hours on and around the building, is that better?" Nico should've smiled here as well, this was the perfect opportunity to grin at Quinn. He didn't, not really, just a little bit maybe.

"Got it, captain." Quinn held his hands up. "What's on that canvas, by the way?"

Now, Nico's eyes finally lit up a little, that familiar smile appearing after all, though it had looked a little gentler back at the lake. He turned the canvas around to Quinn, revealing... himself. Like a terrifyingly good, extremely realistic copy of his face painted on it, just with even bluer eyes.

"Aah," Quinn made, then: "Ooh."

"I came up with a series I call 'True Selves', one of the projects I'm going to present at the end of year exhibition next summer. Me and my mates are going to create self portraits that show our truest forms."

"Okay." Quinn put on his 'wow that's really interesting' voice. "That's cool."

"Isn't it?" No. "I'm attempting to capture every feature of myself in this. It's going to be my greatest work in hyper-realism yet. This is just a test run, the final product will be on a huge canvas and hopefully a perfect mirror image of me. You won't even be able to see the brush strokes anymore."

Nico said a bunch of things, and these handsome blue painted eyes stared into Quinn's soul. To be fair, he already couldn't really make out the brush strokes on the small version. Maybe it was a little too smooth, though. Nico's skin was nice, it had small blemishes and red spots and the faintest of freckles that made him look more alive. The painting didn't.

"And then we'll basically have this trinity, me in the middle, and Zach and Dev left and right from me. Zach is going for a hyper realistic style as well, but with a twist, he's going to try and invert the colours. He is somewhat decent at colour theory. And Dev will do whatever Dev does." Be annoying. "Have you seen his art?"

"I have not," Quinn said, and he didn't really care about it too much either.

"It's quite... interesting. He is very good at realism but he wastes his potential sometimes. On weird stuff. Sometimes I think he's not as similar to me as I thought." Nico shrugged. "Well. He's like that, a bit weird, but he's my mate anyways."

A cat walked past Quinn and Nico, a calico called Jupiter, if Quinn remembered correctly. He'd encountered a bunch of cats here in the past weeks, still didn't really know where they came from or who they belonged to though.

Jupiter sat down a good distance away from Quinn, watching him from afar as if to listen in on the conversation.

"I'm hoping for this to be kind of the main attraction of our exhibition. A lot of critics and curators and journalists will be there. I think I can maybe draw some attention to myself."

"I mean, you're gonna show them your face really big. Probably draws attention to your face, right?"

Nico inhaled, his eyes narrowed, but the grin on his face stayed.

"Right."

"And you have a nice face." Dangerous word choice there, Quinn. "So someone's gonna notice it. Maybe you can become a model."

"I'd prefer to be an artist, Quinn."

"Modeling can be art."

"Proper art. I want to make real art."

Quinn shrugged. "I don't know the difference between real art and fake art, I think. But like, the painting is pretty cool, so I assume the chances of you becoming a real artist are pretty high."

Nico laughed, not as loudly and hearty as he had a couple of times during the get-together at the lake, but he still laughed, which could only be a good sign. Quinn had been laughed at enough today. So Nico was laughing with him.

"I see, Quinn, cool, alright, I get it." Quinn didn't seem to get it. "Okay then. I'm gonna head off."

"Right." Quinn shifted in his seat, smiling at Nico. "Cool. Have fun with your real art stuff!"

Nico waved, turned around, pulling his blazer over his head and clutching the canvas against his chest, and walked off into the rain.

Quinn exhaled. As much as he liked Nico, liked his face and his eyes, there was something off putting in him now, talking to him during the daylight, alone. Everyone was off putting, though. Everyone here, they all were part of a conspiracy against Quinn. God.

He exhaled, rubbed his hand against his face as though the air he was inhaling here was causing these strange conspiratorial delusions he was going through.

Was he so wrong though? Was it that unlikely that half of this school had the urge to hunt Quinn for sport? For being too poor or too weird or too inappropriate or too- stupid.

Like Mister Richardson. Quinn pressed his lips together.

He was left alone again, by himself, and the tight feeling in his chest that Nico had temporarily pushed away with his strangely perfect painting was welcomed back in. Well, he wasn't alone for long.

Jupiter now jumped up on the bench Quinn was sitting on, meowed as a greeting before pressing her head against his leg. His hand slid over her fur as she moved against him, letting out a satisfied purr as though to remind him how great Oakwell actually was, because it had cats, plenty of them even.

"Sorry," Quinn murmured, scratching Jupiter's head. "I know, it's a privilege to be here and all." Jupiter meowed in agreement. "I don't know why I'm so bummed out by everything today. Probably the weather, huh? Can't let myself get all dragged down like this, you're right."

Jupiter knew that she was right, purring and stretching her body underneath Quinn's hand.

"I'll get my shit together, okay? Now will you let me get back inside?"

Jupiter didn't seem to plan on letting Quinn leave any time soon.

☆-☆-☆-☆

WC: 3177

this chapter is dedicated to @Zwiebelhund <3 sorry your birthday chapter has THAT character in it. i love you happy birthday anyways!

well, here's. A Chapter for sure. sucks, eh?

well, if you liked this, or didnt like it, or had any kind of thought, be sure to comment and vote! see you next time mmmwah