Of Rhinos & Griffins

If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour, you're going to see some serious shit.
-Doc Brown, Back to the Future



They aren’t, in actual fact, late for Physics, and manage to get a fairly decent seat near the front. Merryn likes her teacher, a youngish blonde woman called Miss Dennings, and finds that the hour goes by too quickly, even though they don’t actually do anything except sit on the desks and argue about - that is, discuss like the sensible, mature adults that they are - string theory.

They have Chemistry after break, in which Mr Ashworth makes them write notes on the first chapter while he checks his email, under the not particularly convincing pretence of writing up important teacherly reports. He orders them to work in silence, but that doesn’t stop people passing notes across the rows and even folding them up into paper planes to throw to the back and front of the class when Mr Ashworth isn't looking.

Merryn’s in the middle of writing up the properties of an electron when there’s a familiar tap-tap-tappity-tap on the table. She looks up at Benedict, a questioning look on her face, and taps back.

(They learnt Morse code years ago in order to allow them to communicate silently, adapting it to work better with tapping on surfaces rather than intermittent beeping noises or flashing lights. It comes in handy pretty much all the time, but is especially useful for tests, silent work and secret ninja communication when there are nefarious individuals lurking in the vicinity.

It’s surprising how often that happens, actually.)

You look bored, Benedict taps.

Of course I’m bored, is her response. You know how much I hate making notes.

He looks vaguely amused at the disgruntled look on her face and the increasing frenzy of her tapping, but she knows he understands when he leans his head sympathetically against her shoulder for a few seconds before going back to work.

She finishes the chapter in half the lesson, then decides she may as well start the next one since that is more than likely what he’ll get them to do next lesson. She has just started on the third paragraph when the bell rings and, like a switch has been flipped, the entire class starts talking again as they gather their stuff and pack it all away.

“Well that was a completely pointless lesson,” Merryn announces as they make their way out of the classroom, not particularly quietly. “I thought we were here to be taught by qualified individuals, not spoon-fed information from a text book. I could do that by myself, thank you very much.”

“Merryn, he can hear you,” Benedict whispers, glancing around furtively as if Mr Ashworth's about to jump out from behind the door and clap them in irons - that is, give them detention - for besmirching his good name.

She gives a derisive snort. “Good. Maybe it’ll spur him into changing his approach to teaching, though I very much doubt it.”

Merryn continues her tirade all the way to the Maths block, rambling about every terrible teacher she has ever had - which is kind of a lot, considering - and the punishments they ought to endure for their transgressions - (“Put them all to death, the lot of them! But not Mr. Ashworth. Death would be too good for a man like him.”)

They’re a few minutes late so by the time they get to the classroom, the only two seats are right at the front beside a blonde guy sitting by himself, his head bent over the table. Their teacher, a grumpy-looking woman called Mrs Pettilfork, glares at them as they sit down before turning back to the board where she is scribbling down some questions for them to do.

Grabbing some paper from the front, Merryn turns to the blonde guy they’re sitting next to and pokes him in the arm. “What have we-” she begins, stopping abruptly when he lifts his head to smile at her.

He’s really quite attractive, she realises, in a detached, observing sort of way. His smile stretches up from his lips to his vivid, moss-green eyes, almost unnatural in their intensity. His cheekbones are high and prominent, helping to shape his sharp, angular face into something perpetually proud and haughty. His hair is gelled into effortless little tufts but it looks like it would be soft to touch, if she were to lean over the few centimetres separating them and run her fingers through it. Which she has the sudden, inexplicable desire to do, for some reason.

And there’s something else, something about him that she can’t quite put her finger on. Something... familiar. It’ll occur to her soon, she just has to-

The boy clears his throat meaningfully, and it’s only then that she realises she has been staring. Shamelessly. Her mouth is even hanging open. Just a little. There may or may not be a tiny globule of drool forming at the corner of her lips.

She closes her mouth quickly and glances away, forcing a nervous laugh. “Missed,” she continues, latching back onto her previous train of thought. “What have we missed?”

The boy looks amused, biting back a smile as he whispers, “Nothing much. We’ve just started recapping quadratic equations.”

“Well. Um. Thank you,” Merryn whispers back, turning to her sheet of paper to note down the questions on the board, her face hot.

Not three seconds later, there’s an unmistakable tapping sound coming from her left and Merryn stills, her gaze lifting slowly to rest on Benedict. He’s grinning at her, his message clear in the way his eyes are gleaming: you fancy the pants off him, don’t you?

“I do not!” she says hotly, perhaps a little louder than she intended because every head in the class swivels around to stare at her, including Mrs Pettilfork’s.

The teacher whirls round at the disruption, her angry brown eyes searching out the source of it. Finding Merryn, they narrow to slits. “First you disturb my lesson by coming in late, then you have the cheek to talk when you're supposed to be working silently! What’s your name?” she demands.

“Merryn Griffiths,” Merryn replies brazenly as she leans back in her chair, making sure to emphasise the last syllable of her first name for future reference.

Mrs Pettilfork’s eyebrows rise at her response, and her face seems to soften a fraction. “Merryn Griffiths? You got straight A*s at GCSE, didn’t you?” Merryn only shrugs in response, knowing the teacher doesn’t really expect much of one. “Well done. I’ve heard great things about you.” Mrs Pettilfork pauses, surveys the girl in front of her, then smiles, a strange, toothy grin that somehow makes her look even more intimidating. “I’ll be expecting better behaviour from you, then. You’re a further mathematician; I shouldn’t have to tell you to be quiet.”

“But surely as an A-Level student of Further Maths, I should be trusted enough to work at my own pace without having to be silent whilst doing it,” Merryn counters, tilting her head to one side to give her teacher a level, even look. “Surely if you want me to behave like a mature, responsible adult, forcing me to work in silence like a naughty primary school student is merely counter-productive, not to mention an insult to my intelligence.”

Benedict sinks into his chair, muttering something about Merryn not knowing when to shut up, but Mrs Pettilfork only frowns.

“I think you have an attitude problem, young lady,” she says slowly, her eyes narrowed.

“I don’t have an attitude problem,” Merryn replies, glaring back at her teacher. She wouldn’t have pushed it, does have some perception of boundaries and lines that should never be crossed under any circumstances, but she couldn’t just ignore the blatant condescension in the way Mrs Pettilfork said ‘young lady’. “You simply have a perception problem.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Mrs Pettilfork snaps, her eyes narrowed so much so that the whites of her eyes are barely visible as she turns back to the board. “You just get back to work now.”

Merryn mutters something disparaging under her breath about double standards in education and the injustice students have to suffer through every single day of their lives. Mrs Pettilfork pointedly does not notice.

“Leave it out, Merryn,” Benedict murmurs, glancing about himself nervously. “You could have gotten a detention, or worse, and it's only the first day.”

But before Merryn can protest her innocence, the blonde boy sitting next to them turns to her with an utterly serious look on his face and says, “I actually think you were completely justified in what you said. It’s incredibly hypocritical for them to expect us to behave like adults when they insist on treating us no better than children.” He smiles at her then, a wry sort of what-can-you-do? smile. “I admire you for standing up for yourself, really.”

“Yeah,” is all she can say in reply, her mouth hanging open a little after it finishes forming the word. Any intelligent responses vanished from her rather expansive brain the second he turned that brilliant, illecebrous smile on her. “Thanks.”

Still smiling at her, the boy ducks his head and returns to his sheet of paper, and after a few moments, Merryn does the same.



Merryn and Benedict head over to the sixth form common room straight after Maths, making a beeline for ‘their’ spot in the corner.

(Give it a few days, maybe even a week or two and they’ll have sufficient claim over it, but for now their ownership of the space is fragile and tenuous and dependent entirely on them being around to stop others nicking it first.)

Rhys hasn’t arrived yet, but he’s just had Maths too and he probably has a particularly evil teacher who takes pleasure in keeping their minions - sorry, students - back as long as they can get away with. There are a few of those in the school, Merryn notes with some distaste.

Plonking her stuff down on a chair, Merryn roots in her bag for her lunch and pulls it out, her fingers closing on the chicken salad sandwich she made fresh this morning. Beside her, Benedict wrinkles his nose.

“Merryn,” he says with a long-suffering sigh, “would it be too much to ask for you to not eat that dead animal in front of me? I’m about ready to throw up here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s delicious!” she retorts, taking an enormous bite just to spite him. He makes an exaggerated gagging noise, and she shakes her head at him. “Honestly, you’d be able to appreciate its magnificence if you hadn’t been a vegetarian all your life.”

The last part’s not strictly true, although it might as well be. Benedict stopped eating meat about eight years ago on a school trip to a farm when he found out exactly what happened to the cute little cows parading around the field. He threw up all over their teacher, and for weeks afterwards the mere sight of meat turned him a little green. He hasn’t so much as touched meat-related products ever since, which is some feat considering he’s half-Italian and his grandmother delights in cooking delicious Italian food which is invariably meat-oriented in nature.

(Merryn, being the shameless carnivore that she is, loves Mirella’s cooking. Merryn’s a decent enough cook and she’s a dab hand at making basic meals but she has nothing on Benedict’s culinary genius of a grandmother. Hence, when Miri cooks she always makes twice as much – including a vegetarian portion for her grandson, bless – and gives it to Merryn to salivate over. Merryn loves Italian food like Rhys loves granddad jumpers.)

Benedict makes a face almost entirely reminiscent of the I’m-literally-about-to-throw-up-on-your-shoes expression of eight years ago. “I’m perfectly happy with my vegetarian lasagne, thanks,” he replies mildly, poking a fork into his lunch box to prod at the bits of pasta. “Hey, do you want some?”

But Merryn’s already leant over to steal a chunk of lasagne, stuffed it into her mouth and swallowed it before he’s even finished offering it to her.

“You’re welcome,” he says, shaking his head at her, and goes back to eating his lunch.



The reason for Rhys’s lateness becomes evident when he wanders into the common room a few minutes later, practically attached at the hip to an Asian guy Merryn doesn’t recognise, with messy dark hair that flops all over his greyish blue eyes. Frowning, she watches them approach, narrowing her eyes at the way Rhys is beaming at the new boy.

“Hey guys,” Rhys says once they grind to a halt, lifting a hand to wave at Merryn and Benedict. “This is Nikesh. Nikesh, this is Benedict and that mean-looking girl over there is Merryn, with whom I had the privilege of sharing a uterus for nine months. Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite... much,” he amends, before turning to the other two. “Nikesh is new and in most of my classes so I’ve kind of adopted him. That okay?”

Merryn holds up a hand without looking at him, her eyes narrowed, and gets to her feet to inspect this Nikesh bloke. He’s wearing an easy smile and a bright orange hoodie with a black butterfly on it, which begrudgingly earns him points in Merryn’s book. She sits down, steepling her fingers and resting her chin on top.

“Take a seat, Nikesh,” she says slowly, inclining her head towards the chair opposite her. Nikesh glances at Rhys, who nods almost resignedly, before he obeys, sitting down in the chair that Merryn indicated. “Tell me, do you watch Doctor Who?”

“Kind of compulsively, actually,” Nikesh admits with a goofy smile. “It’s one of the few shows I remember to watch all the time. Why?”

“What about Star Trek?” she continues, ignoring his question.

“I’ve... seen the film,” he replies truthfully, shifting a little in the chair. “Zachary Quinto is awesome.”

Merryn makes a harrumphing noise, but that’s not to say she disagrees. “How about The X-Files? Firefly? Quantum Leap? Battlestar Galactica?” Nikesh just looks blank. “Merlin?” she says with an exasperated wave of her hand.

“I don’t, um, I don’t really watch that much TV,” Nikesh says uncertainly, glancing at Rhys. “Is that bad?”

“Maybe.” Merryn narrows her eyes, silently deliberates the next question. “Do you play any computer games?”

Nikesh’s face lights up. “Oh yeah, loads. Call of Duty, Halo, Left 4 Dead, Gears of War, Super Smash Mario Bros-”

“That’s enough,” she cuts him off, shaking her head. No wonder him and Rhys hit it off so quickly. Merryn looks across at her brother, who is trying mostly unsuccessfully to hide the distinctly hopeful look on his face. “He can stay,” she informs Rhys, and he almost sags with relief. “He’s just about geeky enough.”

“I think I'll take that as a compliment,” Nikesh says, still looking utterly confused. “Am I supposed to know what the hell that was about?”

“We have this rule that, well, people can’t sit with us unless they like geeky things,” Rhys shrugs, his lips tugging involuntarily into a sheepish smile.

“What, like a geeky version of the Plastics?”

Rhys leans forward, eyebrows waggling conspiratorially, and says, “On Wednesdays we wear Spock ears.”

Nikesh bursts out laughing at that, and Merryn’s lips maybe twitch a little. Just a little. “And if you don’t like something that we like,” she adds with a sardonic smile, “we reserve the right to push you in front of a bus at any time.”

(And Nikesh is pretty sure that she’s joking, but something in that smile suggests that if he were to hurt her or Rhys or Benedict or someone else that she cares about, she wouldn’t hesitate in doing much, much worse to him than pushing him in front of a bus. To be honest, Merryn kind of scares him, but he gets the feeling she scares a lot of people, so he’s not as ashamed of that fact as he normally would be.)

“I thought you said she didn’t bite?” he whispers to Rhys, shivering a little with mock-terror.

“Much,” Rhys reminds him. “We’ve mostly got her house-trained. She takes a while to warm up to strangers, but if you scratch her behind the ear just right-” He breaks off to duck the shoe aimed at his head with an ease perfected by years of practice. “-then you’ll have her eating out of your hand in no time,” he finishes with a triumphant grin.

When Nikesh leans forward as if to test that theory, Merryn holds up her other shoe with a menacing glare and he falls back quickly.

“Don’t even think about it,” she growls, still clutching the shoe like she’s about to bring it crashing down over his head.

“Obviously, she still retains some of her feral habits, but we’re hoping she’ll grow out of them eventually,” Rhys continues, with a regretful shake of his head.

Nikesh turns to Benedict with a nervous smile. “Are they like this all the time?” he asks, hoping for a show of solidarity from the other boy, who he couldn’t help but notice hasn’t actually said a word yet.

Benedict just nods, blinking owlishly back at Nikesh from behind his glasses, before he returns to his lunch. Nikesh frowns, but he isn’t given much time to be bothered by Benedict’s lack of a substantial response.

“So Nikesh,” Merryn says suddenly, “what school did you go to? What A Levels are you doing? What are your intentions towards my brother?”

She tilts her head to one side, looking every bit the parent meeting their child’s significant other for the first time. Rhys puts his head in his hands.

“Um,” Nikesh says, shooting the other two a look that is half-uncertain, half-terrified. “I... don’t know?”

“Better leave them to it,” Rhys mutters, wincing a little on Nikesh’s behalf as Merryn continues to interrogate him with her typical tact. He shuffles down a little so he’s sat next to Benedict and grins at the other boy. “So how has your day been so far?” Benedict simply shrugs and smiles a little back. “See, told you it was nothing to get worked up about,” Rhys says, nudging the other boy's knee with his own.

“Yeah,” Benedict echoes. “I suppose.”

Rhys arches an eyebrow, but doesn't press it. “Did I miss anything particularly interesting?”

Benedict considers Rhys’s question for a few moments, then says thoughtfully, “I think Merryn might fancy this guy in our Maths class. She was all flustered around him, and I think she might actually have been blushing when he talked to her.”

Rhys bursts out laughing, hiding it behind his hand when Merryn shoots him a distinctly disturbed look. “What, seriously? I have to meet the guy who can make Merryn flustered. Do I know him?”

Benedict shakes his head. “Don’t think so. I think he’s new.”

Rhys tilts his head, curious. “Oh yeah? What’s he look like?”

Benedict scrunches up his nose and his gaze wanders off into the middle distance as he remembers. “He’s blonde, but it’s probably dyed ‘cause his roots were brown. It wasn’t tacky or anything, like bleached blonde, it was sort of... sandy. Kinda like Bradley James’s, you know? He doesn't have blue eyes, though, his are green. Really green, too. Like leprechaun green. He’s tall, got to be six foot at least, and kind of... built, like he plays sport regularly. Rugby, probably. He was quite good-looking, really,” Benedict concludes, nodding to himself. “You’d like him.”

“Sure it was Merryn eyeing him up, not you?” Rhys mutters, shaking his head at the other boy, and he means to sound teasing but somehow he sounds almost... reproachful, somehow.

Benedict just shrugs, poking his pasta around his lunch box with his fork. “I wasn’t flat-out staring at him like she was or anything, I just notice things.”

Rhys nods, well acquainted with Benedict’s skills of observation. (The boy has a near enough photographic memory, and never forgets a thing. It makes Rhys - and, though she’d never admit it, Merryn - more than a little jealous.)

“Think he’s in my English class,” Rhys comments, drumming his fingers on his knee. “You’re right, he is pretty good-looking. Not really my type, though. He’s too...” Rhys gestures around for a word, then makes a face. “Blonde.”

“Rhys Aled Griffiths, there is nothing wrong with blonde people!” Merryn interjects, leaning over to glare disapprovingly at her brother. Nikesh sighs with relief, offering up a mouthed, thank you to the ceiling. “It's simply a ridiculous cultural construct that hair colour has any effect on who you are as a person and-”

“Rhyne, you seriously need to work on your selective hearing,” Rhys interrupts, cutting off her rant before it can gain momentum. “I never said there was anything wrong with blonde people, I just don’t fancy them. Unlike, I might add,” he says, smirking at her, “you.”

Her face promptly heats up and she sits back, flustered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh really? The blonde guy in your Maths class begs to differ,” Rhys drawls.

Merryn shoots Benedict a look of undisguised betrayal that he cowers from, mumbling an incoherent apology. “I don’t fancy him,” she snaps, folding her arms across her chest. “I don’t even know him.”

Rhys’s grin turns devilish. “You don’t need to know him to want to strip him naked and-”

Merryn leaps across the room to smother Rhys's mouth with her hand. “You would be well advised to never, ever finish that sentence. Ever,” Merryn enunciates, her eyes narrowed in warning. “The only thing I want to strip off is the layers of your dirty, perverted mind. Understand?”

Rhys's head bobs up and down, once, and apparently satisfied, Merryn stalks back to Nikesh, who looks very much like he wants to laugh but is too terrified to.

Rhys and Benedict look at each other at the same time, wearing matching expressions of solemnity. Seconds later, they’re cracking up, and when Merryn hurls her bag at them with what is not particularly surprising force, they only laugh harder.