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Playing games

(A collection)

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Part two:

Count back

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The piece of paper landed on her desk, silent and unnoticed by the teacher pacing the classroom as she talked incessantly about one thing or other.

Stella rolled her eyes as she opened the note; a line of black words scribbled elegantly that read: "Play with me. I'm bored."

It wasn't signed, but she knew very well who it was from.

Satisfied with her response, she flicked it across the aisle to the person occupying the desk nearest to the window.

"I don't want to."

Again, the paper flew.

"I'm thinking of a word."

"I don't want to play."

"Why not? You're just as bored as me."

She rolled her eyes again. "You're supposed to be paying attention Beech."

"And you are?"

"I would be if you'd stop distracting me."

"Stop replying back then," was his cocky reply.

Without thinking she wrote, "fine," and sent the paper back.

For several minutes, only the teacher's droning could be heard, alongside Wen's snores and Charlie tapping his fingers against his desk as he looked up at the ceiling.

Sighing, Stella rested her cheek against her fist and swung her pencil back and forth like a pendulum as she watched the clock in the front of the class tick away. Slowly her eyes began to droop and then –

A piece of paper hit her square in the head.

Forehead crinkling in annoyance, the same scrawl greeted her within the makeshift paper plane, "See, you're just sleeping. Now stop being boring and play with me."

"Beech."

"Yamada."

Resisting the urge to ruffle her hair in annoyance, she took a deep breath and wrote back, "I'm going back to sleep. Leave me alone."

"No."

"Can't you annoy someone else?"

"I prefer you."

"I'm flattered, really." She drew a picture of a smiley with a straight line for both eyes and a mouth; dead panning.

"You should, there's no one I like to annoy more than you."

"Why is that?"

He took awhile to reply, but the paper came, "You're interesting."

"And what does that have to do with anything?"

For a moment, he seemed to be considering this himself before he wrote his reply and sent the piece of paper on its way, "You do wonders for my boredom."

She wanted to groan. "Is everything about you?"

"Of course, self-preservation is an important thing to have."

"It surprises me then that you're risking detention just because of boredom, isn't self-preservation all about protecting yourself?" This particular teacher had a perpetual stick up her ass; there were two rules in her class: Pay attention to me, or go to sleep. And more often than not, it was the latter. Sleeping she was fine with, but students passing notes in class would lead to an automatic detention.

"I'm surprised you even care about something as stupid as getting detained for an afternoon," he wrote back, "besides, I trust that neither of us will get caught."

"Oh really?"

"We've got years of causing trouble on our side. If we were to get caught, it would've happened by now."

"You have faith in my abilities, this is new. Is that a compliment I hear?"

"Maybe."

"Will this be a new thing," she began in fake amazement, "or is it just the boredom talking?"

"Maybe I'm just finding a new way to mess with you."

She rolled her eyes.

"Go to hell."

"Two words back."

"What?"

"Two words back," he repeated.

"'Go'?"

"That's the word I was thinking of," he answered, "bravo, you're smarter than I thought."

She scrunched her noise. "What kind of game are you playing?"

"Something of my own invention," he boasted.

"Really, well don't you think you'd have to explain it to me so that I can play with you?"

Even with the gap between their desks, she could practically hear his smile. "I knew you'd see it my way," was the paper's message.

"Get on with it."

"It's simple really, we write until you say the word I was thinking of then I'll tell you to count back until you get to that word and you construct a sentence with all the words I thought of, and then say it to me in its entirety."

"Sounds simple enough," she replied, "but are you really bored enough to come up with a silly word game? Can't you just knock yourself out and take a nap like everyone else?"

"Seven words back."

Exhaling through her nostrils, she counted back, writing on the front of the paper they were using with the two words he already revealed: "Go" and "Out".

"Okay, now what?"

"Keep talking to me, and I'll tell you what comes next."

"Is this just an excuse to say that I struck up a conversation with you and not the other way around?"

"Seven words back. And yes, it certainly saves me the trouble of trying to talk to you."

Writing the next word down on the other side, she asked, "Self preservation?"

"Exactly. We're not exactly the best of friends, and I know for a fact if I went up to you in the cafeteria to have a conversation, your people will think I'm looking for trouble."

"And so will I, it isn't like you and I are the best of friends."

"No, we aren't," he agreed, "but my people wouldn't say a thing against me talking to you unless I said so."

"So the reason for making it look like I'm taking to you is…?"

"Self-preservation. If this conversation goes bad, it won't really be my fault, now would it?"

"Laying the blame on me, you bastard," she wrote back, chuckling quietly.

The bell rang once the paper landed on his desk, and Stella looked up in surprise. Well, that lesson ended quickly.

As she gathered her things, Ray placed the paper back on her desk and said, "Two words back."

Sighing dramatically, she picked up the paper and counted back the words in the last sentence before scribbling it down with the others.

With Ray still at his desk beside hers, she looked at him with brows knitted as she read the sentence back to him, "Go out with me?"

He smirked.

And as she stood there gaping at him with the paper in her hand, he winked and said, "Self-preservation is making people do exactly what you want."

Her lips twitched. "That would be manipulation Beech."

"It worked though, didn't it?"

"You bastard."

Finis

A/n: I'm working on writing more often so updating this collection seemed like a good idea xD Hope you guys enjoyed it, reviews are always appreciated.