Well, it's done! The saga of Erik, Christine, Nadir, Meg, and Raoul is finally complete, although there's always next year...

Disclaimer: Not mine, for the last time. Literally.

Where did you go when the sun rose?

Now I know how to get off these dirt roads

To find these streets of gold

Streets of Gold, 3OH!3

Hitting It Home (Well, Maybe Someday)

Erik looked around his blissfully empty lunch table and wondered when it had all come to this, savouring a few moments of peace before the storm hit. He liked his friends, yeah, but to be honest, sometimes they tired the hell out of him. He was too young for all this drama, for God's sake. How was he supposed to focus on year 12 next year when he had to play matchmaker to a bunch of hormonal fucking teenagers?

(Okay, he sort of totally loved it. Not like he was telling anyone.)

Erik had gone from the most unpopular guy in school to stud in a matter of weeks and to be honest, it left him completely baffled. How did he go from having water bottles thrown at his head to fist bumps and high fives from the jocks and batted eyelashes and coy smiles from the cheerleaders?

Oh, yeah. He remembered. The catfight. The ramifications from Meg and Christine going at it in the hallway had been far-reaching. From what Erik could understand, the general consensus was that he'd been sleeping with both of them as well as half the cheerleaders and at least four of the girls from the calisthenics team. He wished - those girls were flexible. Apparently this (blatantly untrue, but still widely circulated) opinion elevated him from freak to veritable god, because no one cared about the mask when the gossip around the water fountain had the list of girls he'd nailed up in double digits. (Nadir thought it was all hilarious.) Anyway, it led to a whole lot more acceptance from most of the guys at the school and a whole lot more phone numbers slipped through the slots in his locker. And no more bottles thrown at his head. And a much bigger group of friends that had swelled to include Meg and Raoul, as well a number of charming hanger-ons that he now couldn't imagine his life without.

He'd had to let Raoul down gently, of course. But in all honestly Raoul had been so distracted by his twice weekly calls to the Trevor Project that he hadn't really been interested in Erik at all. And then, of course, there was Adam. Adam had walked over to their table one Wednesday lunch, leaned over Raoul, and said, "Dinner, Friday, Breadstix. You in?"

The following Monday, they had held hands and they walked into school. A couple of jocks had shouted something rude at them as they walked the halls, heads held high. Erik had looked up over the top of his morning mocha and screamed back a stream of vitriol regarding the jocks' mothers, hairlines, and penis size, and returned to his novel amidst scattered applause. Raoul's eyes had been so grateful, Erik had felt a thrill of heat crawl up his spine. It felt nice to be a good friend to someone other than Nadir. And Meg, of course. (He'd got detention for saying that many four letter words at school, of course, but it was totally worth it.)

Meg and Nadir were a slightly more thorny issue. But then again, knowing Nadir as long as he had, it hadn't expected it to be particularly easy. And Meg wasn't the easiest girl in the world to get along with, either. She was fragile and emotional from Babygate, and Nadir was, well... a guy. They clashed. But Erik saw the way they looked at each other and was not inclined to worry about them too much. He let them take their time in getting to know each other and was confident that his best friend would treat Meg right.

Which left him as the only singleton of their social group - an odd mish-mash of jocks / former jocks (Nadir and Raoul), former popular girls (Meg), drama geeks (Adam and his best friend Sarah - they were a package deal) and the former masked misfit, now guy with some serious respect given to him due to what was already being called the Catfight of '11. He copped teasing from his friends about his single status, of course, but it was not the cruel, mocking jokes of before but rather friendly banter. No one had thrown a bottle at his head or attempted to stuff him into a locker in months, and his little group of oddballs were all blissfully sweet to him. Even Adam, who he'd hardly known before the other boy started dating Raoul. Perhaps it helped that Adam wasn't perfect. His nose was crooked from an early break and his face still suffered from teenage acne. But he adored Raoul, joked with Nadir, discussed hair and beauty with Meg, and as for Erik - their shared love of waistcoats cemented their friendship quick enough.

And it wasn't like he tried, really. He went on a couple dates with Emily Thorne, a girl from drama club with Adam and Sarah, and she was sweet and charming. Didn't ask about the mask, went Dutch on the dinners, sat next to him in the movies and hid her eyes in his shoulder in the scary parts. She laughed at his lame jokes. She was nice. But compared to Christine's fire she was sweet and charming and... boring, and he let her down gently after the third date. The resignation in her sweet smile made his heart hurt. So for his next attempt to return to the dating world he chose Emily's antithesis, Stephanie Waters, captain of the cheerleading squad now Christine Daae had turned in her pompoms. Steph was a modern girl. She had offered to blow him in the Subway. The sandwich shop. Now, Erik liked to think of himself as a liberal minded bloke, but that was pushing even his limits. (Nadir was disappointed and said it was the most badass thing he'd ever heard. Even the gay boys concurred.)

And so Erik decided to pine after his lost love in silence and solitude. Christine was an unknown variable. She had pulled away from her old friends and taken up singing once more. Her dad was said to be devastated she refused to sing opera, but when Erik and his friends went to see the school production of Wicked, later they all agreed she was the best damn Elphaba any of them had ever seen.

(When she'd crooned out As Long As You're Mine, Adam had snarked he could have sung it better.

Erik had been spellbound. Even green, she had been perfect.)

He was broken from his reverie of thought (about Christine, of course) when two girls pulled up chairs at his table. One promptly stole his novel.

"OMG, E," Sarah said, flipping her black hair over her shoulder. The purple streaks she had been so fond of had to be dyed out a week earlier, but they couldn't keep the girl from her eyeliner or her girlfriend, Marie. "Erik, Erik. Are you listening to me? E, look at me. Focus."

Marie looked up from Erik's copy of Les Miserables and commented, "She'll just keep at it until you answer her, Erik."

Erik rolled his eyes and said, "What is it, Sarah?"

"Heysen was such a prick in class today." Erik perked up. Nothing like a round of bitching about the fascists that ran their school to cheer him up when he was deep in thought about his lost love.

"I know, what a dickhead."

"I know, right?" Erik had taken to Sarah like a duck to water. She and Adam had stuck together tight as two of the few out kids at their school, until Marie showed up in her combat boots and Sarah fell in love. And then Raoul was outed and the rest, as they say, is history. Erik liked them because they didn't give a shit about him being ugly - "I'm as bent as a two bob watch, Erik, what makes you think I'd care?" Adam had said flippantly, with Sarah adding: "We know what it's like to be hated," and Marie nodding wisely in the background.

"What up, ladies? And Erik," Nadir added, dropping into a chair with a massive thud and enough food to feed a small third world nation. Beside him, Raoul took the lid of his salad. Nadir had taken to escorting Raoul from class to class ever since someone had called him a fag in the corridor between History and woodshop.

"Hey, babe," Adam chirped, kissing his boyfriend's cheek as he slipped into the chair on Raoul's other side and Meg perched on the table beside it. She stole a chip from Nadir's paper plate.

"Oi!"

"Oh, shut it."

Erik smiled fondly at them both. Like an old married couple already.

Adam opened his maths homework with a grimace. "Times like this, I wanna go open up a restaurant in Santa Fe. Who knows shit about quadratic equations? Moreover, what kind of dick gives homework on a weekend?"

"Heysen," chorused five other voices and a mumble from Nadir's full mouth that sounded like "Guy's son." Erik glared at him in disgust.

"Thinks because his grandad founded the school he can be a bastard," Adam grumbled as he abandoned his maths, pulling out his monthly edition of Vogue.

"He's just sore because no one in their right mind would make him principal," Erik reminded him, manoeuvring a chip underneath his mask and into his mouth.

Yes. He was almost content.

"Hey," Marie said quietly, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. She was a quiet girl, reserved. She had only transferred to Heysen High in the last year. When asked, she had emotionlessly said a group of girls in her year had taken offense to her being a lesbian. From the darkness that sometimes entered her eyes, Erik could only guess it had been a lot worse than she ever said. However, those were the times where Sarah would leap into her lap and smother her in kisses. She knew her girlfriend so well. "You're being watched," Marie said in a deep voice, sounding like something out of X-Files. At Erik's snort of amusement she smiled and pointed over her shoulder.

Erik followed her finger and found a pair of blue eyes watching him. They were a lot closer than he expected. It wasn't the first time he had seen her since their last confrontation, of course, but it was the first time he noticed her looking directly at him.

Chris.

Time seemed to slow, the earth seemed to cease it's turning, and he was lost in her once more. Until she gracefully got to her feet and left.

Go fucking figure. Erik sighed and turned back to the conversation, acknowledging Marie's sympathetic glance with a tilt of his head as if to say, women, huh?

"All I'm saying is, Batman is way cooler than Spiderman," Nadir was saying loudly.

"Are you freaking kidding?" Raoul replied, Adam backing him up. "Batman? Please."

Erik grinned. Boys will still be boys, no matter their orientation.

"Zydrate comes in a little glass vial. A little glass vial? A little glass vial! And the little glass vial goes into the gun like a battery - "

"Oh, that's me," Erik said, fishing his phone out of his pocket.

"Wicked ringtone, man," Adam said appreciatively.

"Thanks, my little sister made it for me - hello?" Erik asked. If it was his mum one more time -

"Hi, Erik," said Chris Daae. "Could you meet me in the hall?" she asked and oh, her voice, after so long.

"O-Okay," he stammered out, and the click as the call ended felt like a gunshot.

"What's up, man?" Nadir asked, examining the remaining half of his hotdog as though questioning if he could fit all of it in his mouth in one go.

"Christine Daae wants to meet me outside," Erik replied, more than a little dazed.

Silence, and then -

"Go for it, man, she's banging," Sarah sang out. Marie folded her arms. "What? I have eyes, hon."

"Yeah, Erik," Raoul added.

"We're sick of you moping," Adam chimed in.

"And she's missed you." Meg ended. When six pairs of eyes turned to her, she shrugged. "What? Chris and I were frenemies for years, I can read her like a Cosmopolitan."

Erik swivelled until his eyes connected with Nadir, his first friend, his staunch companion. Nadir nodded, just once. It was enough.

Erik took off after Christine like a bat out of hell.

"About bloody time," said Adam in satisfaction. There were nods all round. "Now, who's got the answer to 24b..."

Erik nearly bowled two thirteen year olds over in his attempt to get into the hall. He half thought she might change her mind if he took too long and disappear into the ether like a ghost. But no, there she was, leaning against the far wall next to the fire hydrant and looking far too gorgeous for her own good.

"Hey," she said quietly. Now he was up close, he hardly recognised her. All of the accessories and makeup she had once worn were gone. It seemed to him like a weird kind of penance, or maybe she just didn't care anymore.

If she didn't care about that, what else might she not give a damn about?

"I'm a bitch," she said abruptly. Erik blinked.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I. Am. A. Bitch," she enunciated clearly. Erik couldn't disagree. "I'm awful, really. I use people to get what I want and then I throw them away. I don't think about the consequences of my actions at all and I hurt people just because I can. And the thing is, I didn't care about any of that. Or if I did, I buried it. I didn't let myself think about it. Until I met you."

Erik's head was spinning. This was all far too much at once. "Christine - "

"Please, she interrupted. "Let me finish." In that moment Erik worked out that when a woman wants something, it's probably best to just stand back and let her go for it. So he nodded.

"But I really like you, Erik. And I want to be with you," she finished a little anticlimactically, and his brain took an immediate derailment. "So, what do you think?" What did he think? Was he in heaven? Was this a dream? Was Christine Daae really admitting she wanted to be with him? The little voice in his head that was ever overanalysing things went into overdrive, but in a sudden flash of understanding Erik silenced it. He didn't need it anymore.

"I think..." he said, trying to find a way of expressing his thoughts that were at least moderately cool. He gave up. "I think that would be bloody fantastic."

Her smile was like the sun. "Could we start again?" she asked, and Erik found himself smiling back at her.

"I'd like that." He stuck out his hand. "Erik. Student, sinner, and bastard."

She grinned. "Christine - Chris. Singer, bitch, and handjob goddess."

He took her hand, shook it. It felt like a beginning. It felt like a promise. It felt like... love. Of course, he knew that was all bullshit. They were teenagers, for Christ's sake. They would probably break up in a month. They would drive each other mad, fight over the stupidest things, go on dates that would get epically cocked up and be taunted by their friends for sappy love notes. They would spend all summer together and then they would be forced back to complete their secondary education, and then all hell would break loose as they frantically tried to learn enough to get a decent TER.

But as he pulled off his mask and kissed Chris Daae in the middle of the hallway at 1.24 in the afternoon, Erik decided he really didn't give a damn.

Oh my God, it's done.

Thank you to everyone who stuck with me until I managed to finish this little slice of high school life. After much deliberating I chose to write about what I know and set it in Australia, because quite frankly all I know of American high school life comes from Glee. A very big, very special thank you goes to the one person who gave me con crit, told me to update when I was being lazy, and made me my Zydrate Anatomy ringtone... B, you are amazing. :)

That's all, folks!