Summary: Jane soon realizes she's sorely going to regret breaking her self-imposed exile from the teacher's lounge when Darcy tells her a rumor concerning her and a certain English teacher.

A/N: Written for these prompts:

Anonymous said:
For the au post, could you do the high school teachers au plz! Bonus for crazy students in love with a *cough cough* possibly black haired green eyed *cough cough* professor!

glitterisfitter said:
Hello there, how about 'forget high school students AU i want a high school teachers AU'

Jane didn't often venture into the teacher's lounge. She found that it was often a den of gossip disguised by sweet smiles and asking about lesson planning and suggesting that she could perhaps use some new clothes, and they would be ever so happy to help with that. And at other times the rumor mill was more blatant as her colleagues griped about students or ogled the new math teacher at the copy machine.

But today she needed a break from the routine of grading through lunch as she munched her way through a bland ham sandwich. Jane realized this when she woke up with pen smudges across her forehead ten minutes before the lunch bell rang. Even though she scrubbed they hadn't come off very easily and she had to spend the rest of the afternoon with her bangs strangely fluffed to hide the faded smudges.

So today Jane ventured into the teacher's lounge with her sack lunch clutched in front of her and a smile plastered to her face like pieces of armor. Only a few teachers looked up. Most were too absorbed in their conversations to see her. But Darcy Lewis, the senior US Government teacher, leapt from the couch and ran over to her, enveloping Jane in a spine cracking hug.

"I haven't seen you for a while! You need to stop by my classroom more often, or I might think that a black hole ate you or something," Darcy said, removing her arms from around Jane.

Jane resisted the urge to rub her arms. She was friends with Darcy, but didn't appreciate her lack of regard personal space at times. "Sometimes I feel like it," she sighed.

Darcy walked back over to the couch, plopping onto its sagging, hideously loud 70s patterned cushions. She patted the seat next to her, and Jane took the nonverbal hint, sitting down next to Darcy and sinking into the depths of the sofa.

"So, what's new with you?" Darcy asked, picking up an apple from the coffee table in front of them and biting into it.

Jane dug around in her lunch sack, pulling out the standard ham sandwich. "Nothing much. I recently finished a unit on the atmosphere and the sun, and most of my classes did well on the test, though second period didn't."

"Why is that?" Darcy worked her tongue against a molar that had a piece of apple stuck in it.

Jane looked away from that sight. "I think it's just the mixture of personalities. There's a lot of outgoing kids that all know each other in that class that would rather talk than pay attention." She sighed.

Darcy patted her shoulder in sympathy. "I know how that goes. My third period would rather browse the internet on their phones than learn about gerrymandering."

Jane didn't admit that she would probably also rather look at Facebook updates that learn about gerrymandering. She took her ham sandwich out of its plastic wrap and took a bite of it, only half listening as Darcy rambled about Congress. In the corner of her eye, she saw a tall teacher enter the lounge with a stack of folders in his arms.

Darcy punched her in the shoulder, causing a small piece of lettuce to fall out of her sandwich as she jumped. Jane whipped her head around and gave a glare. "What was that for?"

"Two students in one of my classes yesterday thought that you and Loki have the hots for each other," Darcy whispered.

Jane coughed on a piece of ham. "What? No! English teachers and science teachers mix like oil and water," she said. And she thought those words exactly proved her point because he would no doubt criticize her use of such a cliched adage.

Darcy gave her a crooked smile. "Then why are you vehemently denying it?"

"I'm not! I'm just saying that I don't want rumors like that to spread," she hissed, lowering her voice even further.

"Maybe it's best if you don't really like him, since you don't seem to know what the word vehement means." Darcy took another loud bite from her apple.

Jane glanced at the aforementioned senior English teacher. His brows were furrowed as the copier machine whined and coughed.

"Yeah, you just keep denying when you like at him like that," Darcy said.

Jane pulled her eyes away, her fingers pressing dents into the bread of her sandwich. "Like what?"

Darcy raised her hands. "I'm not going to keep arguing about this, if you just keep refusing to acknowledge the fact that you were checking him out."

And this was why Jane did not like the teacher's lounge. It was the den of salacious gossip tossed between pursed lips and narrowed eyes. Even if Darcy was a friend, Jane was getting fed up with it. "You know, I think I forgot about a stack of papers I need to grade. My fifth period will complain even more if I don't get it back to them tomorrow."

Darcy sighed, slumping back into the back of the couch. The blaring yellow print embraced her. "Fine. But you better stop by my classroom before Friday to make up bailing on me."

"Right! Yes. I will do that. Mm-hmm," Jane said, cramming her lunch back into her sack, not entirely sure of what she had just agreed to.

Loki was coming straight towards them and time was running out. "Ms. Foster—" he began.

"Oh, so sorry!" She held up her wrist, and then dropped it when she realized when she wasn't wearing a watch. Jane glanced to the clock at the back of the room. "I've got to be going. Talk to Darcy about Congressional corruption, she'd love to hear your thoughts on it, I'm sure."

Darcy bit the bait and grabbed his arm, pulling him down to the couch. "Yeah! I'd love to hear your thoughts on political theory, since English is basically like the friendly, distant cousin to political science."

Jane scampered out of the room before she could hear the rest of the conversation, fist digging into the top of her sack lunch.

—

Jane was through the middle of her last class when Loki knocked on her door frame. Jane almost didn't look away from her slide on elliptical galaxies. She looked from her students, and back to Loki, who waited with raised eyebrows and hand of papers. One of the girls in the front row popped a bubble of her chewing gum and glanced at the Mr. Laufeyson, then back to Jane, and gave her a nod and thumbs up. Girl code hadn't changed enough from her high school days for Jane not to know that the gesture meant, Good job. That's a hot one.

"Just a moment, class," she said, keeping her forceful smile on, holding up a finger. Her students were already pulling out their phones.

Jane made her way to the back of the room, aware that more than a few of her student's eyes were on her. She crossed her arms and looked up at the other teacher.

"Yes, what do you need?" she asked in a hushed voice.

Loki waved the papers under her nose. "You left a stack of these next to the copy machine. Please do be more careful next time," he said, pushing them towards her.

She didn't take them yet. "I was going to pick them up after class. There was no need to bring them here," Jane told him.

Her refusal to take them only made him continue to wave the papers. "Actually, there was a need. Your star charts got mixed up with my Beowulf test print outs, which caused me to spend more time than I needed to sorting through the papers. Carelessness is a bad trait in a teacher, don't you think?" He gave her a smile that was laced with insincerity.

Jane bit her lip, refusing to take the bait. She had to get back to her class, so she just grabbed the papers and jabbed a finger at him, making sure her back was angled so that none of her students could see the motion.

"Will that be all?" Jane asked, her voice like poisoned honey.

"I believe so, yes. Unless you want to talk about the fact that you left pieces of lettuce on the teacher's lounge couch, which got stuck to my pants." He flicked his hand at a stain she would not have noticed had he not pointed it out.

"Goodbye, Mr. Laufeyson," Jane said, loud enough so the class could hear.

"Goodbye," he replied, once again stiff and formal. She saw through it in a second, and so could anyone else. Especially her students. They had to deal with two faced people like him every day in the jungle of their social hierarchy.

He left her door, and Jane went back to the front of the room, papers held loosely in her hand. Dropping them on the desk that held the projector, she turned on heel to face her class, pressing the palms of her hands together. She flicked her eyes to the notes. "Sorry about the interruption. Now, where were we?"

The bubble popping girl raised her hand. Jane suppressed a sigh, but called on her anyway. "Yes, Janice?"

The girl pushed her bangs out of her face with a smirk. "I think we were talking about gravitational attraction." The class hummed with laughter.

Jane felt a burn begin to crawl up her cheeks, but she just shook her head with a laugh, brushing her hair across the side of her face. "No, I'm afraid that's not correct."

"Could have fooled me," Janice said.

Jane turned her back to the girl, and glued her eyes to the shining slide of an elliptical galaxy sitting in the middle of space. She cleared her throat, took a breath, and readied herself to plow through the rest of this day that seemed to only continue to spiral downward.

—

The rest of the day was thankfully void of any more embarrassing incidents, and most importantly of all, she did not see Loki again, not even when she passed by the English hallway. Jane was on cloud nine as the week proceeded in a similar fashion, her only annoyance stemming from students turning in their work late or not paying close enough attention.

But her cloud dissipated by Friday when Darcy came into her room during lunch, plopping a sack lunch on her desk, and sitting down in the chair in front of her with a scowl. "Some friend you are," Darcy said with a deep pout.

Jane looked up from an extra credit essay that discussed the formation of stars. Her surprise at seeing Darcy left a green pen squiggle beneath a grammatically perfect sentence. Jane bit her lip. "Did I say I would come to see you this week?"

Darcy rolled her eyes and fished out a protein bar from her lunch sack. "Duh."

"Well, you could always talk to Ms. Potts about reforming campaign funds," Jane said, going back to the essay.

"Are you kidding me? I don't think she would care about that. Besides, her high powered exec boyfriend comes to visit all the time during lunch. It's kind of funny, actually." Darcy munched on the protein bar. Jane flicked away a dusting of crumbs that had sprinkled onto the papers.

"Well, what did you want to talk to me about?" she asked, finger tracking her place in the essay.

"Whatever you want," Darcy said.

"Can our conversation wait until I've at least finished this essay?" She leaned closer to it, scribbling a few corrections in the margins.

"Sure. I'm not in a hurry."

With that, the two of them sat quietly for a few minutes, the only sounds being Darcy's chewing and the scratch of Jane's pen. Soon Jane was done with the essay, completing her job by underlining the student's grade with a flourish of her pen. Darcy put her elbow on the desk and leaned her chin against her palm.

"Now that you're done with that, you can tell me about your encounter with Loki on Monday," she said, pressing her lips together in a way that said, I already know everything because of my students, but spill anyway.

Jane sighed and put her head in her hands. She rubbed a hand through her hair. "There's nothing to tell you other than the fact that he came into my class on Monday to give me some papers that got mixed up with his own test copies."

"Wow, that version of the story just removed everything interesting about it and turned it into some kind of scientific report. I'd say you're highly qualified for your job," Darcy said with a sigh. She picked up Jane's now unused pen and began to click it. "I heard that you had a pretty heated little exchange about being careless."

Jane closed her eyes. "Did the students hear that?"

"Yup." Darcy popped her lips on the last letter.

"I was trying my best to be quiet about it."

"Jane, you do realize that high schoolers are human beings that are at their peak ability to be able to sniff out hormones a mile away?"

Jane glared. "There were no hormones."

Darcy raised an eyebrow and took out a boxed salad. "Uh huh."

"And how's your love life?" Jane countered.

"Oh, you know. Ben and Jerry are the main guys in my life right now." Darcy stabbed her lettuce.

"So is that why you're so interested in my own non-existent love life? You need someone to live vicariously through?" Jane tilted her head with a smile.

Darcy put a hand to her heart. "I plead to the fifth."

Jane rolled her eyes. "Can we maybe drop this topic?"

"I guess we can if you really want to," Darcy sighed. "Would you rather talk about Congressional oversight?"

"I don't know. Do you want to talk about H II regions indicating O-type and B-type stars?" Jane asked, the terms rolling of her tongue.

Darcy's eyes widened and her mouth twisted in horror. At least she had the grace to swallow her salad before doing that. "What language are you speaking?"

The side of Jane's mouth turned up. "I take that as a no, then."

"You win this jargon round, Ms. Foster," Darcy said, pointing the fork at her.

They continued on through the rest of lunch in silence, which surprised Jane. She didn't think that Darcy was capable of keeping her mouth shut for that long. But maybe it helped that her jaw was currently occupied by chewing. As the lunch hour teetered on the edge of 12:30, Darcy stood with a smile, packing her garbage away into her paper sack.

"What do you look so happy about?" Jane asked. She was already half through another essay.

"I have to grade some practice FRQs from my AP government class about Iron Triangles and Concurrent powers."

Jane quietly applauded. "And now you win this round of incomprehensible terms."

Darcy twirled her hand and bent at the waist in a bow, spreading her arms wide with a smile. "I do what I can," she said, and walked out.

—

That weekend, Jane analyzed her interactions with Loki. Surely they had been nothing but hostile? Their encounters in the past had hardly been favorable before.

Once she dropped a file in front of him when they were walking down the hallway and he didn't even slow down. He just looked annoyed at her and kept walking. Then there was the time in October during a meeting when he commented that she would probably be able to chaperon the Harvest Dance since she didn't assign her students very much work, and thus wouldn't have much to grade that weekend.

And there was to say nothing of their little interactions that were always abrupt and sharp. No, there could be nothing more to it than Loki being a smug, pretentious jerk with his head so full of information about Canterbury tales and Oscar Wilde quotes that he had no room left to remember how to actually be a decent person.

—

Before class on Monday Jane was checking her power point to make sure that she had all the information that she needed on nebulae. She was making a few corrections here and there, trimming down any extraneous language. That was when she jumped at a knock against her door. She swiveled around in her rolling chair.

"Darcy I don't really have time right—" her hand grew limp as she was readying to point it. "…Loki? What do you want?"

Jane wanted to make a snide comment about wondering whether he was coming to finish their argument, but she wasn't in the mood to begin to morning on the wrong foot. She was already running on little more than a thermos of coffee and a piece of burnt toast.

"I wanted to get your input on the relevance discussing the Norse using the stars to navigate in my next lesson," he said, taking her acknowledgement of him as an invitation to step into the room.

"Er…well, I'm sort of busy right now. I'm not sure I'd be much help, anyway. I don't know much about Beowulf or the Norse," she said, laying her hand against the arm of her chair.

"Shall we discuss it during lunch, then?" Loki held a palm up.

Jane's eyes flicked to the power point, then back to Loki. She should say no. The less time she spent around him, the better. Any conversations they had were likely to end in hostilities. But it was rare that anyone approached Jane for advice, and perhaps this future conversation could help smooth things over between the two of them.

"…All right?" she said. She didn't mean the last sounds of her words to curl up into a question, but they did.

Loki inclined his head in what seemed to be his attempt in nodding politely. "Excellent."

Jane rolled her chair back up to the desk and placed her fingers against the keys. She blinked. Had that really just happened? Had she really just willingly allowed Loki into her domain? She pressed her hands to her face and shook her head. Hopefully none of the students from her last period saw him come in during lunch, or they would have even more fodder for their rumors.

Jane slowly inhaled, counting backwards from ten to release the tension in her chest. She pressed a smile to her face, hoping that if she pretended to be happy long enough then the falsity would become truth

It would be fine

It would be completely fine.