Chapter Text
It started out quite innocent and simple.
The simple act of looking into one’s eyes is something to be expected by polite young students who transferred from the mother country to a public school in a small American town. You shouldn’t have been bothered by it but you were because the way that this particular student looked at you wasn’t hazed over by recreational drugs or the linger of sleep. No, his eyes were a clear blue and sometimes you thought you caught specks of violet in them. He actually looked at you when you spoke and it pierced you down to the pit of your stomach.
Eridan Ampora, boy of seventeen who carried with him a Welsh accent and a polaroid camera, the shot of espresso in your morning coffee and the need for an extra pill at night, the extra puff of smoke that would curl out of your lungs during breaks and the light of a better day in your dull sunset. He was your sweet vice, your dangerous virtue and your addiction.
He was late for his first class with you, strutting in like he owned the place. You were fairly new to the job, only twenty-eight, teaching math at the first high school you were accepted to. You hoped to find a better job somewhere else but this is where you would start. He strut into the class like he owned the whole place, standing tall on long, long legs with his glasses and his camera. You could usually tell if you were going to like or dislike a student but this was a strange case.
At first his self-righteousness and audacity angered you to the point where you wanted to slap him across the face. He was obnoxious and arrogant; talking like everyone was below him and walking like he was a prince. He had come from a boarding school so it was understandable that he would be so pretentious but when you thought about it you found yourself with two pencil halves.
As the first two months of school went on this boy started to intrigue you. One of your teacher friends had heard you ranting about how you hated the kid and had given you an essay he had written. You were never much of a reader but he dragged you into a world where he broke the barriers of traditional writing and took you down. You read the rest of his pieces and looked at his art work and even managed to confiscate some of his polaroid’s.
You were drowning in Eridan Ampora.
You observed Eridan in your class and in the halls. You heard the rumors. You heard he was a slut but he never had a boyfriend or girlfriend or hung around any lover looking people. You assumed he was gay because of the way he acted and dressed but judging a book by its cover was something you personally had proved wrong. You had only dated two girls in your life and three men, but most people thought you were as straight as the rulers you kept in your desk. Eridan hardly hung around anyone, really. He seemed to float between groups, a popular loner. He was loathed by other students but they also seemed to want him to join their group for a few days.
You were absolutely obsessed.
You knew it was wrong, he was almost ten years your junior. But your self-control was wearing thin because you couldn’t keep your eyes off of him and you chastised yourself and drank too much coffee and started smoking more and more. He had you strung out completely.
Only then did you notice that he was mirroring you.