I saw the prompt and I couldn't resist. :D

Inspired by: A Tumblr user's story: "I sit next to a popular sports boy in my math class and he was sleeping so I leaned over and doodled a flower on his paper and the first time he didn't wake up but the second time he did and smiled at me and later in class I saw he had doodled a whole tiny meadow around the two flowers and he was trying to hide it but it didn't work… I know your secret popular sports boy, you are just as dorky and cute as everyone else."

I'm in the process of writing the word 'disenfranchisement' when a small triangle of paper lands on my desk and hits my pencil, jerking the 'r' into an 'n'. Automatically knowing who the note is from, I look up and glare at Grace, who is sitting in a desk directly diagonal to mine. She makes a motion that says 'Well? Open it!'

I stare at her.

'Go on. Do it,' says her facial expression.

I raise a challenging eyebrow. 'Why should I?'

She huffs quietly. 'Just do it.'

I roll my eyes, but I unfold the perfect little triangle. (Of course it's perfect, she's OCD about that kinda thing.) In her messy scrawl is a short sentence; "Nap time!"

I look back up at her, confused. She nods her head to the side slightly.

I frown and cock my head. 'I still don't understand.'

She jerks her head to the side more insistently and smirks. 'You know who I'm talking about.'

Then I understand, and my mouth parts slightly in a way that says 'Oh, I get it.' Then I stare at her with a face devoid of any emotion. 'No.'

Her smirk turns into a full on grin. 'You know you wanna.'

I glare. 'No.'

We have a little stare showdown, with her amused smirk and my annoyed glare. We have silent conversations like this often, usually resulting in bemused looks from other people. After a couple seconds, I let out a short, defeated sigh.

I turn my head to the side. Next to me is Jack Brewer, fast asleep on his desk. My annoyance at Grace disappears, turning into curiosity. Perfect Jack Brewer? Asleep in class?

Jack is one of those popular guys that everybody worships, except he's not as cruel as most of the other populars. At least, that's what I've heard. We don't hang out. Everything I know about him is secondhand, since Grace is dating his best friend Jerry Martinez. I know that he's a soccer player, takes karate (and is a black belt) and his dad is the soccer coach.

My first instinct is to wake him up and scold him to pay attention. All the rest of us are here working and he's just sitting there asleep.

'He's got a lot on his plate, though,' the annoying voice in my head that I fondly refer to as my mental mother whispers. I want to ignore her irritating logic, but I realize she's right. He's got a major karate tournament coming up (I know because he's competing against my dojo, the Black Dragons), and a championship soccer game approaching as well, and mid-terms are next week.

According to Grace, Mr. Brewer is really pressuring Jack. Like, he keeps him hours after school to practice soccer long after all the other players have gone home, and yet the man still expects him to keep up with his grades and maintain his status in karate. 'He can't do that if he's dead on his feet!' the voice claims. I suddenly feel mad on Jack's behalf.

The more I think about it, the angrier I get. Jerry apparently found Jack passed out on the soccer field a couple weeks ago because the poor guy failed a test and Brewer was punishing him by making him stay at the school doing drills until well past eleven. He'd even set up a freaking camera so he could make sure that Jack was still at the school practicing. The reason Jack failed the test in the first place is because he was freaking exhausted.

(Jerry vents a lot to Grace.)

I look at Jack from a new perspective, one free of the 'ugh, seriously?' mood I find myself in when referring to one of the populars. I take note of the dark bags under his eyes, and think back to the devastated expression on his face whenever he gets a bad grade on a test, and him almost falling over yesterday when someone barely bumped into him.

I make a mental note to have words with his dad.

In the meantime, I decide to doodle on Jack's notebook. Sure, he's cocky, and I want to think he's annoying… but he's really not like the other populars. And I mean, doodles make me feel better. So, while taking the occasional glance at the teacher to make sure she's not paying attention, I lean over and doodle on his notebook.

What better thing to doodle than puns?

I draw a fish. Then I give it wings. Underneath it I write "angelfish." I pause, then add a couple details like scales on the fish and feathers on the wings. Satisfied, I lean back over to my desk. Grace sends me a quizzical look, having witnessed me leaning over but unable to see what I drew. I simply flash her a smile.

A couple minutes later, I finish the assignment and set it to the side. 'Ugh…' I think, as boredom quickly sets in. I decide to doodle on Jack's notebook again. This time, it's a little cooking pot that says "R.I.P. boiled water. You will be mist."

I grin, taking a minute to think of another pun. I draw a nametag that says "Hello, my name is Tom," but the corner is torn slightly so that part of the 'm' is separated from the rest of the word. The end result looks like "Hello, my name is Torn."

I pause as something occurs to me. What if he's not done with the worksheet? Should I wake him up? It's due at the end of class… then I see said sheet sticking out from behind the page I'm currently drawing on. I lift the notebook paper up and find the worksheet, completed. He made sure he finished it before he fell asleep.

Respect = +1 point.

I'm working on a mushroom with sunglasses and a speech bubble that says "I'm really a fun guy" when Jack's breathing changes and I freeze. He's waking up.

Seconds later, brown eyes crack open. His eyebrows scrunch (adorably?) in confusion as he processes what's in front of him, since the side of his head is resting on the desk and my hand and pencil are directly in front of his face.

There's a few seconds where he's simply staring at my hand, then his eyes slowly travel up my arm until they reach my face. We awkwardly stare at each other for a couple seconds. I don't fail to realize how adorable he looks when confused. I wait for some clever comment or something.

"Hello," he finally says quietly instead, surprising me. His voice is rough from sleep and I have a sudden urge to force him to carry out an entire conversation with me in that voice.

"Hi," I respond. I break eye contact and resume my little doodle (albeit a little quicker than before).

When I pull my hand away, I look back up at his face to gauge his reaction and realize he'd been staring at my face. When we make eye contact again, he sheepishly looks down at the paper (as if embarrassed that he'd been caught…? Whaaaat?) and takes in my mini works of art. He smiles.

Later, he's fully awake. He's sorta lying on the desk with his body half-turned away from me, his upper arm completely flat on his desk and the same hand propping his head up. Through the resulting triangle-ish hole created from his arm and head, I can see his other hand writing on his paper. What could he be doing? The teacher said we could just chill for the rest of the period…

Fully intrigued now, I watch as he writes the words 'Which American pre' before his hand stills and relaxes. Minutes later, while I'm still pondering what the heck a "pre" is, he continues writing and "pre" turns into "president." This entire process occurs four more times before he's finished writing.

'Which American president was least guilty?
Lincoln. He was in a cent.'

I stifle a giggle. He's just as much of a dork as Jerry is.

Huh. I realize I'd just automatically assumed he's as much of a jerk as the other populars, but I've never really gotten to know him.

Class just ended, and I'm take a quick stop by my locker to get one of my other books for my next class. I open the door and a piece of paper folded into fourths falls out. Intrigued, I pick it up and unfold it. Then I grin.

'Broken pencils are pointless.'

'They told me I had Type A blood, but it was a Type O.'

'What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.'

'Energizer Bunny arrested: charged with battery.'

It's the page from Jack's notebook. All over the page are puns, and at the top he wrote "Punography." He didn't illustrate any of them like I did, but they're all hilarious (at least, to me they are).

At the bottom of the page is a string of numbers. I stare at them, not getting the joke, until I see next to it 'Pun me sometime?'

Oh. My. Freaking. God.

It's his phone number.

Do I want to text him? He likes puns. Nobody I know likes puns, at least not enough to write a whole paper full of them.

But populars are jerks…

'Don't make assumptions about people you don't know,' the voice in my head scolds. Again, it's right, but I don't want to admit it.

And with that, I get out my phone and text him, 'So a guy gave his friend ten puns hoping that one of them would make him laugh. Sadly, no pun in ten did. :D'

"What's that?" Grace asks, she and Jerry walking up to me. He has an arm around her waist. When I bite my lip to keep from smiling (I still smile anyway), she grins. "Is it about Jack?"

The Latino's attention had previously been elsewhere, but upon hearing the mention of Jack's name it snaps into our conversation. "Jack? What's wrong with him? Did he pass out again?"

I blink. "What? No." I pause. "Well, he fell asleep on his desk last period."

"Did it take him a long time to wake up?"

I think about it. He did seem to take an unusually long while to become alert again, but some people take longer to wake up than others. A sudden thought occurs to me; whenever his hand stilled earlier, when I was watching (wow, that sounds creepy) him write… did he doze off?

"Yeah," I respond. "His back was turned to me for a while after he woke up, but I think he kept dozing off and then waking back up."

"Shi…itake mushrooms," he says. Grace always glares at him when he cusses, so he's been trying to stop. This was clearly a near slip-up. He unwraps his arm from her waist and kisses her on the cheek. "Gotta go find him, babe, see ya later."

"Wait, Jerry," I say, frowning. "Why are you so worried? He's just tired, isn't he?"

He hesitates. "Well, uh…" He sighs, clearly losing a mental battle as he says, "Normally as soon as he wakes up he's awake and ready to go. But lately he's been on the verge of collapse and 's passed out a couple times… whenever it takes him a while to wake up then he's absolutely exhausted and I gotta watch out for him."

My frown deepens. He's talking like this is a regular occurrence…

"Jerry… does this happen often?" Grace asks. He's clearly anxious to leave as he searches for an answer, and finally just says "Come with me" and briskly walks away. I quickly slam my locker shut and Grace and I follow him.

"He doesn't really like me talking about this," Jerry says. "But you won't tell anyone… right?"

"Of course not," Grace and I say simultaneously.

"Good," he responds. An uncharacteristic scowl mars his features. "Coach has been really cracking down on him to get ready for the game in two weeks, especially since there's this really complicated foot maneuver thing that Jack doesn't have down yet." Jerry shakes his head.

"Coach keeps him here 'til at least ten every day. Then Jack has to go home and spend another two hours at least to finish work he couldn't do in class because he was too tired to think straight. Then he gets up at three thirty to practice some more, then he has to get in the car at six to drive his little sister to school, and that takes like forty freaking minutes because traffic is always bad, then he has to drive another forty minutes to get here, then Coach makes him practice the next forty minutes until school starts."

My jaw dropped more and more with every word that comes out of Jerry's mouth, until I'm sure it's going to fall off my face. I quickly do the math. That gives Jack, at minimum, three and a half hours of sleep every day. And I thought waking up at six was bad, but three thirty?! How is Jack still functioning?!

And here I thought he was just an annoyingly cocky popular with an annoyingly easy life.

Jerry turns into a room and I realize we've arrived at the nurse's office.

"Jack's not here," the nurse says sympathetically before Jerry can even open his mouth. "I saw him pass by the doorway earlier, though. I think he might be headed for the locker room." Grace and I exchange glances. Just how often does this happen?!

Jerry curses again (not even bothering to censor himself this time) and thanks the nurse, before practically sprinting out of the room. Grace and I hurry to follow.

"Jack!?" Jerry yells, bursting into the boys' locker room in the gym. Grace hesitates at the door (it is the boys' locker room after all), but I don't even stop to think as I follow Jerry inside. He pauses, looking around, before taking off to the left. I turn and see Jack bracing himself against the lockers, holding a hand to his forehead. At the sound of the Latino's voice, he looks up staggers forward, only for his legs to give out on him. Luckily, Jerry catches his friend on the way down and slowly sinks down to his knees with him.

"Is… is he gonna be okay?" I ask softly. Jerry moves the out cold Jack into a sitting position and leans him against the lockers, letting the other teen slump against his side. Grace sits down in front of Jack and gingerly brushes his hair out of his face.

"I dunno," Jerry responds. "I'm not sure how long he can go on like this. On the weekends he comes over to my house. Saturdays we go to the dojo, and for the rest of the weekend Coach thinks we're practicing. My dad lies to him and says we are. I let Jack sleep as much as he needs to, but…" 'It's not enough' say the unspoken words. As if to chime in its agreement, the bell rings. We ignore it.

For the first time, I realize it smells like coffee in the room. I look around and see a brown mug on its side not far from us. Jerry sees me looking at it and says, "He practically lives on the stuff."

I nod, before going and sitting on Jack's other side.

After a couple minutes of us sitting there, Jerry gently moves Jack off of him and stands up. I move Jack into a more comfortable position, so now he's leaning against me. His head lolls on my shoulder and I reach my hand up, carding my fingers through his hair.

Jerry slowly walks a few feet away before abruptly punching the wall and cussing loudly. "Dios mio! Doesn't Coach see what he's doing to his son?!"

We sat there in the locker room with Jack until the final bell rings. By the end of the day, I intend to have more than just words with Coach Brewer.

I tell Grace and Jerry of my plan, and they agree with me. Jerry brings his car right up to the outdoor exit of the locker room, and together we get Jack into the backseat of the vehicle. Out like a light, he didn't even stir once. Jerry drives off, heading to his house and Jack's sleeping grounds.

Meanwhile, Grace and I go to my house. Within a half hour, we've prepared a whole 'ninja' outfit for me, comprised of a long-sleeve black shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a ninja mask I wore for Halloween last year. We agree that I'm best at intimidation, so Grace drops me off at the school and wishes me luck.

As predicted, Coach Brewer is steaming with anger by the time I arrive at the soccer field. His son hadn't shown up for practice, so of course he's mad. He's pacing back and forth so quickly that he'll practically wear a rut into the grass at the rate he's going.

I quickly sneak up behind him while his back is to me. When he turns around again, I feel a smug satisfaction when he jumps and squeaks in surprise.

"What the— what do you want, girl, I don't have time for you," he says gruffly.

"I know," I say with a light, casual tone of voice. "You're waiting on your son so you can work him like a slave driver, right? Right?"

He narrows his eyes at me angrily. I definitely have his attention now. He steps closer, as if to intimidate me. "What did you say to me?"

"Your son," I repeat. I cock my head to the side, keeping my tone light. "You know. Jack? The son you seemed to have had solely for the purpose of yelling and screaming at him and giving him all the reasons why he's a horrible failure of a child just because he can't get a stupid soccer maneuver down?" Jerry told me all about that. Needless to say, I'm furious at the man before me.

"What are you—" He leans down and gets into my face, again probably for the purpose of intimidation me. "I don't appreciate you coming here and throwing around wild accusations. The way I treat Jack is none of your business."

I feign disinterest, pretending to examine my nails. "It is when he collapses from exhaustion because he's only getting three and a half hours of sleep every day." It's getting harder and harder to keep my voice casual.

He straightens. "He's never collapsed—"

"Yes he has," I interrupt. I lock eyes with him again. Something in my expression (as much of it as he can see, anyway, considering that my face is mostly covered by the ninja mask) must throw him off, because he takes a small step back. "Today. In the locker room. Two days ago in the bathroom. Last Friday, in the parking lot. Need I go on?"

I've never seen anyone's face so red. He steps forward into my personal space again and grabs my arm. "How dare you—"

"No, how dare you?" I move so fast he can probably barely processes it, and suddenly he's on his knees with both arms twisted painfully behind his back. I lean in and hiss dangerously soft in his ear, "Jack has been done nothing but try to keep you pleased his entire life, and you do nothing but bring him down and everything in your power to make him think that he has to work harder. You shove grades and karate and soccer down his throat, but you don't give him the chance to freaking relax and recover from it all. He's is going to burn out at this rate, and for what? A stupid trophy? A new belt? It's not worth it if he's dead before he can enjoy it." I scoff. "Then again, not like you'd care. You just want bragging rights and a shiny trophy to put on your wall."

I let go of his arms, but before he can get up I've flipped him over and pinned him to the grass, purposely digging my knees painfully into his upper arms. "Now, here's what you're going to do. You're going lay off of Jack and let him freaking sleep for a few days. And then, you're going to leave him alone for the next week so he can concentrate on midterms, because God knows those are stressful enough without some jerk like you breathing down his neck. And then, you're going to let him practice for as long as he wants for the game in two weeks, and then, if he doesn't want to play at the game, you are going to let him sit out." He starts to protest at that last one, but a glare from me silences him. "Understand?"

"And if I don't?"

"Then you're a freaking idiot, because I spoke perfect English," I say, knowing full well what he meant. He scowls deepens. "And if you don't do these things, well." I shrug. "You'll be hearing from me again."

(I walk away feeling like a complete badass.)

Three weeks later, Jack is looking a lot better. With the combined help of Jerry, their friends Milton and Eddie, Grace, and I, Jack was finally able to study for midterms and managed to pass all of them with flying colors. Jack opted out of the soccer game last week, fearing that he would mess up his team, but he felt okay enough to participate in the karate tournament against my dojo… er, my ex-dojo. Turns out my sensei's a giant cheater, so I'm with Jack and the other Wasabi Warriors now.

He doesn't know what Grace, Jerry, and I did for him. He just assumed his dad had a change of heart. If only.

Jack and I's texts are mostly comprised of puns such as "Every time you make a typo, the errorists win" and "cannibals seem nice, but they're just trying to butter you up."

But then he asked me out yesterday.

So here we are, watching Avengers: Age of Ultron. (When we found out we shared a mutual love of Marvel, the result was a series of Marvel-related puns that drove the others mad enough for them all to convert to DC just to get back at us.) It was freaking awesome. Every time Thor made an appearance, Jack whispered "Stop, it's hammer time" and I cracked up every single time.

We're each wearing t-shirts with our favorite Avengers on them. Mine has a picture of Thor at the top, and then underneath it are various words with his name incorporated into them (Thornado, Calculathor, Escalathor, Navigathor, Janithor, Thoréal[the conditioner], etc.) accompanied by pictures. Thor's my favorite character a) because of his accent, b) because of that fabulous hair, and c) because he still loves Loki despite everything he's done to him. My second favorite is Captain America because a) he's freaking adorable (who doesn't love socially ignorant superheroes?) and b) he probably the most pure-hearted person ever.

Jack's got a shirt with a cartoon depiction of the scene from the first Avengers movie where Hulk is smashing Loki around and then walks away saying "Puny god." His favorite character is Bruce because he feels like he can relate to him, since (and I quote) "everyone loves the giant green rage monster but no one really appreciates the quiet scientist." His second favorite is Hawkeye because "he had a really rough childhood and yet, instead of turning to a life of crime, is now here helping people as an Avenger."

(That's the moment I realized I might be in love with him. This sentiment was strengthened the moment I found out he shipped Clintasha… WidowHawk? BlackEye? Ew, no, not that one. BlackHawk? WidowEye? Spiders don't really have good vision, so that one would be weird… anyway!)

The credits are now rolling. Most people are leaving the theater, but Jack and I decided to stay in case there's an extra credit scene.

"So…" Jack says. He seems kinda nervous. "Was this… alright?"

"I dunno. I'd say it was pretty… Lo-ki."

Jack snickers. "If Iron Man was a skeleton, would he be Bony Stark?"

"If he were a car, would he be Iron Van?"

A man in front of us randomly turns around and says, "If he was a small horse, would he be Pony Stark?"

"If he were a lady were he be Iron Mam?" Jack responds.

"If he went to the beach would he get an Iron Tan?" the woman sitting next to the man asks.

"If he were evil would he be Tony Dark?" says a different man sitting next to Jack.

"If he liked My Little Pony would he be Brony Stark?" a girl behind me says.

"If he were a sea creature would he be Tony Shark?" I say.

All five of us and everyone that heard us are laughing. Finally, people quiet down. Jack says, "Are we done?"

"I'm just getting Starked," I say.

More people heard that one, and the whole theater pretty much sounds like the studio audience of a sitcom. ("That's not even a word!" some random guy yells out).

I turn to Jack, my grin practically hurting my face, and that's when he kisses me.

Surprise keeps me frozen for a few second. I vaguely register the girl behind me going, "Awwww!" but all I can think is 'Jack.'

Whose hand is on my face.

Whose mouth is on mine.

I lean into him and kiss back, smiling into it. He smiles as well, and then we're both smiling so much that we can't even kiss properly so he instead pulls away slightly and rests his forehead on mine.

"I was afraid you'd be Fury-ous at me for just randomly kissing you."

I pause, long enough that he gets kinda worried. "Kim?"

"I recognize your fear, but given that it's a stupid ass fear I've elected to ignore it." And then I lean in again.

Not what I expected this to turn into. At all. XD Welp, finals are approaching slowly but surely, and with them my stress levels rise. Fanfiction probably won't be seeing much of me for a while. :( Oh well. I'll deal with it. Hopefully. It's Friday, and I want to sleep, but I have lots of stuff to do...

Thor: It's Friday! How was your Thorsday?

Me: Eh. It was pretty Low-key.

Thor: Ayyyyy

Me: Ayyyyy

Oh, and I haven't seen Avengers: Age of Ultron yet since it hasn't come out, so I have no idea if Loki's in the movie. Whatevs.

And those of you who haven't seen the first Avengers movie won't understand Kim's last line, but Nick Fury says to the council at one point, "I recognize that the council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision I've elected to ignore it."

Until next time,

~BH