YOU KNOCK ME DOWN, I CAN'T GET UP (OLIVER).

[OLIVIA JANE WINSTEAD]

Grading papers wasn’t the twenty-seven year old Pack Politics professor’s favorite thing to do. In fact, out of everything teacher-related, it was her least favorite thing to do. There was nothing the teacher hated more than a student not trying, and then, after the fact, having to give that student a grade she knew they were better than. The brunette sighed as she scribbled another sixty-five on a test she had practically made fail-proof. Thirty multiple choice, five short answer, and one incredibly easy bonus question about the hierarchy of a pack had all been on the test, yet most of the questions had either been left unanswered, or fudged. She knew her student could have tried harder and done better on the test, but to put in the time and effort was obviously beneath him. Olivia frowned, knowing there was no way she could find any place to give extra points. The woman placed the test face down in her “completed” pile, and move onto the next one.

The student, a female this time, clearly put in more time and effort into her test, scoring a ninety-five overall. Olivia smiled, obviously proud of her student, and placed the test in its designated pile. The grading process of Olivia’s class of twenty continued for another five minutes before the teacher realized she still had her lunch waiting for her in the fridge. The teacher stood up from the table, smoothed out her skirt, and walked over to the refrigerator where her chicken Caesar salad had been sitting for five periods. The shifter’s stomach growled as she opened the fridge, hoping that nobody had snatched her lunch.

Aha! There it was.

Olivia’s lunch had remained untouched, sitting, sealed inside a container, which had been sharing its place inside a plastic bag with a fork and some napkins. Olivia had written “O. Winstead” on the bag in permanent marker, which was visible to anyone who happened to open up the fridge. Olivia grabbed her lunch, and made her way over to the vending machine. She reached inside the back pocket of her skirt and came up with four quarters, which she deposited into the machine. After the pressing of some buttons and giving the machine a kick, her drink of choice, Coca Cola, appeared at the bottom of the machine. Olivia took the drink, and sat back down at the table, and opened up the container of salad. The smell of Caesar dressing filled the air, and Olivia took her first bite. As she chewed on the greens, Olivia clicked the red pen she hated using and started up grading papers again. She laughed at the cartoon Dingo her student had drawn for her, and continued to mark answers incorrect. Olivia looked up at the clock, in hopes that the period would be over soon, no such luck. It was early in the period, and the hands on the clock were moving slower than ever. It looked like, by the way things were going; the period wasn’t going to end anytime soon.

[/justify][/center]
-----*-----

Outfit: This.
Status: Completed.
Words: 511.
Notes: And so the Oliv's meet!
[/SIZE]

[Oliver Ken Toulson]

Most of the time, Mr. Toulson was good with his kids. They may have been brats, but he obligingly memorized their names and taught them about the human body, graded their papers and cleaned up their messes when they failed on tests by giving them detentions and study time during lunch. It was a whole new kind of parenting, but at least he didn’t have to wipe their asses after they took a dump or help them with their homework. Sighing, the anatomy professor sat at his desk, scratching out another F with his pen and making a little circle around it that communicated the need to redo the little test. His students were so… what was the word? Annoying honestly didn’t cover it, but they weren’t exactly stupid either. There were some of them that actually got good scores, and that was great! He wouldn’t have to have them in his class next year. Based on the work they were turning in, Oliver was pretty sure that he would be seeing a lot of familiar faces next year… Why couldn’t they try harder? Right, because they were lazy bitches and his class wasn’t considered important by most of the students. Of course it was important; probably the most important for them, in fact. This particular bunch of horny teenagers needed to learn that they had to wear condoms. In fact, they should just keep their damn junk in their pants, but no, none of them seemed to understand that.

For once this year, Oliver had arrived at school early enough to give him a chance to store his lunch somewhere other than his desk. The fridge of the teacher’s longue, to be specific. Throwing another test into one of his messy piles of paper, the anatomy professor stood up, heading for the stairs. It wasn’t even that far into the lunch period, so he had plenty of time to eat. The last time he had tried to eat in the teacher’s longue… well, things had ended badly, and he had missed his lunch. That hadn’t left him in a very good mood. He mused about why he had bothered to eat there today. Was he hoping to see Tatsuya again? It was possible, as he hadn’t seen the man since they had met in the teacher’s longue. Did he miss Tatsuya? Well… he couldn’t answer that. Not yet.

He paused before he opened the door, rubbing his knee absently. It still kind of hurt. The little circle of burnt skin hadn’t completely healed over yet, and it pained him when he ran or walked too fast. Well, it was a good measure of how active he was being, at least. Sighing, Oliver opened the door, looking around for anyone he might know. Nope, just a female teacher who was currently nameless to him… mentally shrugging, he walked over to the fridge and opened it, looking around for his lunch. And… he couldn’t find it. Maybe someone had taken it by mistake, seeing as he hadn’t marked his name on it… whatever. Well, the brown bag with a sandwich and soda was gone, but the thermos of soup was still there, at least. He retrieved it out of the depths of the fridge, holding it in his hand for a moment before walking over to the other counter and placing it in the microwave, punching a few buttons before standing back and looking around. Oh, how fond his memories of this place were… After all, he had only been knocked off the couch and burned by the headmaster’s cigarette. What else could go wrong in this place? Mmm, did he believe in karma? Well, even if he did, he hadn’t done anything wrong… yet. It was interesting to think about as he took his soup out of the microwave, sitting in the seat across from the female teacher and beginning to eat.

[OLIVIA JANE WINSTEAD]

Olivia practically threw her fork in the air as she compared the final answer on a particularly lazy student’s test to the key lying next to her salad container. A huge smile crossed the woman’s face, and the fork managed to find its way out of her hand, but she didn’t care, the kid had managed to score a perfect hundred, one of only three in the pile, and she was proud of him. Although, not like she wasn’t always proud of her students – she was. They were far from stupid, all intelligent in their own ways; they just sometimes forgot to use their intelligence. But, being fair, it wasn’t all of her students that were allergic to effort, just a handful, but that handful needed to pass her class, and after the professor graded this particular batch of tests, she was determined to motivate her students in any way that she could so there would be no failing grades on the next test.

Olivia neatly placed the most recently graded test paper onto the pile before realizing that her fork had gone missing, and she was no longer alone. Oops. Maybe the newcomer hadn’t seen Olivia’s burst of excitement. Olivia didn’t even notice the blonde walk over to the fridge; as she was too busy searching for her missing instrument. Olivia scanned the floor around her hoping to catch a glimmer of the silver utensil. After scanning the floor three times over, the fork, lying near the leg of one of the tables, finally caught Olivia’s brown eyes. The woman stood up and walked over to the table, and, tried, as gracefully as she could, to reach down and grab the object. Success came at the sound of the microwave starting up. And, Olivia, having no desire to eat with a dirty fork, walked over to the sink, getting a good look at the blonde who had entered the room minutes ago.

The blonde, as Olivia mentally referred to the stranger as, was a rather good-looking guy, there no doubt about that. He looked to be about her age, maybe a couple years older. Olivia felt like she’d seen him before. She hadn’t talked to him, obviously, or she would have known his name, but she probably passed him in the hallway a few times before. She studied the teacher as he heated up his lunch, but the only conclusion she came up with was just that; he was a teacher- and that was all she knew.

When the sudden germaphobe felt that her fork was sufficiently cleaned, she returned to her lunch and the stack of papers that still needed grading. Minutes passed, and the teacher became so engulfed in her grading, that she didn’t even notice when the male took a seat across from her. It was when she circled an eighty-eight, which wasn’t a bad grade for this batch of tests, that she noticed the blonde eating across from her. Well, it couldn’t hurt to make new friends, right?

She smiled at the man, ”I’m Olivia Winstead,” the professor introduced herself holding her hand out across the table.

[/justify]
-----*-----

Outfit: This.
Status: Completed.
Words: 524.
Notes: forks.[/size]

[Oliver Ken Toulson]

As something silver and sharp sailed through the air, Oliver froze, his spoon half-way to his mouth. Uhm… okay. Didn’t everyone throw utensils in a fit of… whatever the female teacher was currently experiencing? Maybe where she came from, fork throwing was a sign of happiness. He didn’t know, and he honestly couldn’t care less as long as the fork didn’t hit him. Luckily, it hadn’t hit him, so no harm done. Except now the female had to wash her fork. Great. Oliver quickly ate the spoonful of soup that was still hovering near his mouth, watching the other teacher with a mix of interest and disgust. She had thrown her fork, and that may have caused the disgust, but the interest wasn’t a ruse either. She was quite good looking, actually, but her outfit was a little… well, teacher-like. There wasn’t anything particularly bad about that, but Oliver didn’t see the point in dressing up for the students. It wasn’t like they gave a shit what their teachers were wearing, after all. Oliver tended to stick with t-shirts and jeans, tennis shoes. Nothing fancier. He would have flirted, but flirting and food just… they didn’t mix for him. So the fellow teacher was safe from his much unwanted advances for now, he guessed. Well, whatever. His flirting wasn’t that horrible, was it?

He had already retreated into his little land of thoughts when she introduced herself, and he had to blink back to reality faster than he normally liked. It may have given him quite a surprised expression for a few moments, but he recovered quickly, putting the spoon back in the thermos and reaching his hand out to take hers. He tilted his head slightly to the side and grinned. ”I’m Oliver Toulson. Nice to meet you, Olivia.” A greeting by the guidelines that children learned at such young of an age. Respond with your name, say that it’s nice to meet the other, address them to show that you were listening when they introduced yourself. Maybe if he wasn’t eating, he would have added something suggestive at the end, but… yeah, no. This could be an experiment, to see how well a non-flirting relation went compared to one where Oliver was making endless suggestive comments. It wasn’t very fun, but if he wasn’t going to flirt, he might as well learn something from it, right? Well, it seemed logical enough.

notes short post is short. so sorry!

[OLIVIA JANE WINSTEAD]

If Olivia had been alone when the whole fork throwing incident happened, things would have carried on as normal afterward. She would have washed the utensil off, and gone about her business, munching away at her salad, and marking questions incorrect. But no, she had company. Company that probably thought she was an alien from some planet where fork throwing was a perfectly acceptable way to show joy. And, truth was, that when a student who normally failed, didn’t, utensil throwing, even sharp utensil throwing, was a perfectly acceptable action. But maybe the teacher’s lounge wasn’t the right place to be tossing forks up in the air - even if the joyful professor didn’t mean to. At least the object hadn’t hit the blonde, who had introduced himself as Oliver. Oliver Toulson. Olivia imagined that if the fork had actually hit Oliver, she would feel like she’d have to apologize several billion times, and that would probably get on the other teacher’s nerves.


The blonde looked a little surprised at Olivia’s sudden greeting, but he held his hand out to hers, and Olivia took Oliver’s hand, and shook it firmly, but not too firmly, and released it after a few seconds. She smiled at her colleague, ”It’s nice to meet you, Oliver.” And it was nice to meet him. Mostly, the female spent time with her students. She was almost always available for extra help, and her more dedicated students took full advantage of that. And, besides her teacher duties, Olivia was the coach of the track team, which included numerous afternoons spent with the students on the track team. And, besides a few other sports coaches, and some girlfriends outside of Sabal Palm, Olivia wasn’t the “Queen of Popularity”. Even throughout school, she only really had a close circle of friends. She’d never been a part of the “in” crowd. But what friends she had, true to her canine nature, she was loyal to. And, at the end of the day, it was the loyalty that mattered. So, it was the combination of the fact that Olivia needed to get to know her colleagues along with curiosity about Oliver that made Olivia want to know more.

”I haven’t really seen you around. What do you teach?"

[/justify][/center]
-----*-----

Outfit: This.
Status: Completed.
Words: 381.
Notes: Mad short ): sorry![/size]

[Oliver Ken Toulson]

His expressions never lasted for more than a few minutes unless he wanted them to, and by the time Olivia proclaimed that it was nice to meet him the absently amused smile was already back on his face. He hadn't been expecting her to throw the fork, either, so he wasn't exactly sure what to expect from this woman. She had a strong grip on his hand, which was unexpected. The woman he had dealt with over the years were normally wimps, but he supposed that she did have to deal with children all day, five days a week. Wimps normally didn't last long at that job. Though, seeing as the only thing he knew about her was her name and her gender – the latter very obvious to someone like Oliver – he wasn't in the place to make assumptions. So he took what was thrown at him, keeping his face close to expressionless the whole time.

He laughed, a short and sharp thing, almost bitter. ”Most people say differently. I'm not exactly popular among the staff,” he said, being surprisingly honest for once. It was true. Oliver wasn't exactly king of the world, though he thought himself to be. If he was, he was a tyrant that faced rebellion for his subjects. He wasn't someone that anybody would want to follow, let alone be friends with. If this female – this Olivia – said that it was nice to meet him, she hadn't really met him yet. The other teacher was lucky that he was in the middle of eating. It wasn't like he would do anything terrible if he got bored, but nobody seemed to appreciate the insane amount of flirting that he did. Why would they? Most of the teachers here were married and were part of a happy family, unlike Oliver. Unlike Olivia, he had been part of the in crowd. Once upon a time, Oliver had been popular among other students. Girls had liked him, he had had a lot of friends, and... most of them had dropped out of highschool. It had made him look at things differently, and look where that had landed him. Unhappily married and stuck with a kid, cheated on, and stuck as a teacher for the rest of his career. What a lovely little fairytale.

Even after pretty much selling himself as someone to dislike, Oliver didn't just get up and leave. No, he continued chatting. Small talk, sure, but it was a conversation... sort of. Anyway, maybe Olivia wouldn't hate him just because everyone else did. It was a slim chance, but it was there, and he wasn't about to walk out on that. Had telling her he wasn't well liked been a sort of test? Maybe it had, but he hadn't admitted it to himself yet. Maybe Oliver was just an insecure kid who desperately wanted friends... after what he had gone through, it was quite likely. He chewed on his thumbnail, looking around the room, his soup ignored for the moment. Right, she had asked a question, and he was probably supposed to answer it. Social protocol and all. Not like he had any manners in the first place... he distinctly remembered talking about his lack of manners the last time he had been in this room. ”Oh,” he laughed, turning back to the fellow teacher. ”I don't leave my classroom much. The brats require too much of me. Them and the headmaster, no?” Why was he talking about Tatsuya, now of all times? He mentally cringed, rushing to change the subject. ”I teach Health and Human Physiology. Fun fun. I get to watch kids learn about the human body and all its wonders.” He rolled his eyes, showing his contempt of how the students handled the information. Like they were children instead of teenagers. ”I swear, I have to work in giggle time to the teaching schedule.”

notes sorry if it's a bit all over the place. it took a span of five hours to write it.

[OLIVIA JANE WINSTEAD]

Most people would say differently? He wasn’t popular among the staff? Really? Olivia had known Oliver for all of five minutes, and she wouldn’t say differently. But then again, the brunette had just met the new man. She didn’t have a lot to go on. Except for maybe the fact that he didn’t particularly like forks being tossed his way. But then again, who did? Maybe the man was pulling some kind of act? Maybe he was total jerk, and this was his way of suckering someone in? Or, maybe, other people didn’t give Oliver a chance? Olivia didn’t spend too much time speculating. And, honestly, she had no interest in hearing about why other people would “say differently”. The only thing that mattered to Olivia was what she thought of a certain person. And she thought Oliver was a pretty decent guy based upon her first impression of him. Maybe that would change, and maybe it wouldn’t. But what others thought of the male wasn’t Olivia’s business, and she wasn’t going to pry. But it didn’t hurt to say something , ”Well, I’ve known you for what, five minutes? And I think you’re okay!” She smiled at the other teacher.

The blonde seemed distracted. And it wasn’t the first time in the conversation Olivia had noticed his almost, lack of interest. The man reminded Olivia of a particular group of students she taught. There physically, but not as much mentally. Olivia didn’t take much offense to it. After all, it happened daily that someone would zone out of the conversation. She was even guilty of it on occasion. Finally, after a moment of surveying the room with his eyes, Oliver came back to answer Olivia’s question. She nodded her head at the other teacher’s answer, although she didn’t particularly agree with Oliver referring to the students as “brats”. Although, it was likely that more than half of the teachers at Sabal Palm would, but Olivia wasn’t one to dislike her students. No matter how difficult it was to motivate them to do well on tests and quizzes.

Wait. And the headmaster? Was this the guy that was in a relationship with the headmaster for a while? The teacher was new to the school around that time, and she didn’t believe in rumors or gossiping, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t heard anything from her more meddling colleagues. Apparently the relationship was over and done with, and Olivia didn’t want to risk embarrassment if Oliver wasn’t the guy the headmaster had been in a relationship with. She ignored the headmaster part, and laughed lightly when Oliver rolled his eyes when explaining the immaturity of the teenagers he taught.

"Well, weren't we all like that when we were teenagers?" Olivia raised her eyebrow at the Health teacher.

-----*-----

Outfit: This.
Status: Completed.
Words: 468.
Notes: -
[/blockquote]
[/SIZE]