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i have so much work, omg
here, have a ficlet.
***
The first time is ill-omened, happening as it does during a Christmas party their misguided faculty has chosen to dub a prom, which means that the boys stand around looking awkward and the girls stand in groups and giggle meaningfully.
Mikhail is in the parking-lot finishing off the fag he’s bummed off Aniket—and is therefore honour-bound to smoke, whether or not he finds the taste entirely foul—when he hears a feminine voice raised high in indignation and decides to investigate. Watching schoolmates getting slapped is always good entertainment and often great blackmail material.
He rounds the corner in time to see one of the most gigantic men ever—“no seriously”, he’ll tell a tolerant Shumon later, “he was like seven feet tall”—backing away under a high-pitched tirade of “and then I’ll row out to sea and I’ll tip the bucket over the side of the boat and the fish will eat your flesh and drink your blood and lay eggs in the crevices of your…”
(In later years, Mikhail will claim that since the apparition delivering this tongue-lashing was four-foot-ten and her knobbly shoulders stuck out of a dress made for someone with greater height and pulchritude and her hair was funny, he was completely justified in beginning to laugh hard enough that he had to double over and cross both arms over his stomach.
Sophia will claim with equal stubbornness that since Mikhail was annoying and fifteen and a boy and Mikhail—all synonyms for annoying—and she was furious and a ballet dancer and kicked like a horse, she was more than justified in putting her boot-clad foot in his balls.)
Because neither of them has (or ever will) a shred of decency, politeness not-acting-like-little-street-urchins in their natures, nor has any ever been beaten into them (both sets of guardians being entirely and conspicuously lacking in the higher moral ground), and because Sophia rather stupidly came within grabbing range, by the time their teachers, alerted by the rather vociferous glee of their charges, find them, Mikhail has a black eye, a perfect set of teeth imprinted on his left cheek and Sophia pinned underneath him by dint of superior mass and a hand on her throat.
Shumon, called to come pick him up—“No, Mr. Dutta, sending your driver will not suffice.”—has to stifle laughter till Katyusha Shetty’s arrival does the deed for him.