You wake to the same smell of over-burnt coffee you do every morning, and the same old grungy little living space you call a room. You check the clock and goddammit, it is too early for your dad to be making that horrid, inky, black liquid he likes to call coffee.

The perfect way to start every morning.

You roll out of bed, like the smooth mover you are and narrowly miss breaking your nose, pulling yourself back up to your feet, with more groans than necessary. Time to drag yourself to yet another shitty day of this equally shitty year.

The rest is mechanic work to you, a boring routine which couldn't get any blander than grey oatmeal. Throw on yet another one of the grossly gray hoodies you stack up on, the casual daily wear of jeans and a shirt you express no interest whatsoever in and sneakers. Like you know, the average teenage boy. No biggie.

Breakfast, pfft, who needs it? Not you. Especially not when your dad's the one who's serving it.

A quick goodbye is forced out of your mouth as you rush out of the door before the adult can pull you back inside and, granted, head straight for school.

Sollux is early. He always is though. He's always on his laptop too, one which he should really consider replacing judging from how batted his current one is. You slide in next to him and wait for the asshole to say hi and when he doesn't you do the job (very begrudgingly) for him.

"Yeah, hi I got it, not like I'm busy or anything at the moment," He mumbles out, fingers still working furiously against the keyboard.

"Sollux, you're always busy, since the definition of the word in your terms mean whenever your glued to your old, heaving, computer which you insist on dragging around with you everywhere as if your very life depended on it,"

He sighs and shuts it, turning to face you with a very fake over-exaggerated smile.

"Hi Karkat, how are you today! How's your morning going th'o far?" he pipes, pitch rising by about eight octaves as his lisp breaks through.

You roll your eyes at him, making a point to do with an extra dramatic affect adding a sigh to it. "That's not what I meant nor what I desired as the result, you know that,"

"Yeah but you should know by now that my favorite past time is bugging the everloving fuck out of you and I'm doing it quite well thank you very much," he says followed by a toothy grin which really makes you want to smack those teeth right out of his mouth.

Two periods and a half later of absolute bore the table is occupied with the usual Sollux, Vriska, Kanaya and Aradia. Your lunch bag is dumped on the table with a sad slouch, and you take your seat.

"So, did you hear about the mysterious fortune teller?" Vriska asks in between bites of her sandwich.

"Why would I of? The last thing I want to do is hang around superstitious goons and last I checked, they're the only ones who talk about such stuff," you shoot back retrieving the flattened sandwich out of the bag. "Oh wait, then there's you,"

She sneers at you and casts a glance at a table three tables down from your own and turns back to you. "Can it grumpy, this stories actually interesting,"

"Doubt it,"

"I said can it! Anyway, there's this new girl who's been here for a week, and everyone thought she was some lunatic at first because she's blind yet can manage her way around perfectly and sees everything in colors and smells,"

"And this is interesting how?"

"Uuuuuuuugh! Listen! So anyway, she tries making friends and this kid she talks to lets her do a palm reading, and so she goes ahead with it, and a week later it comes true! Insane right? And the same thing happened with a few other students," she finishes.

You pretend to look interested and roll your food around in your mouth as she looks at you expectantly, looking between her and the ceiling.

"You're telling me this why?"

Her smile falters and she drags a hand down along the side of her face, "Because, duh! I want to go talk to her!"

"Then why the hell do I have to get involved?"

She deadpans at you but regains composure with seconds, replacing her thin line of a mouth with a diabetic smile. "Because, silly, if you haven't realised yet, most people don't usually want to talk to me!"

Great so now you're a pawn in yet another one of Vriska's games. "Ha ha funny, and you think I'm going to go right ahead with it and go 'oh sure Vriska!'" you finally respond after some time.

Her smile remains but her eyes narrow at you and her voice gets low. "I think you and I both know what happens when I don't get what I want,"

This is dumb. This is so dumb. The girl sitting in front of you in your biology class is looking at you like you're dumb. Everything, about this situation screams dumb.

"Uh, may I help you?" she asks finally, frowning at you.

You open and close your mouth a few times, yes good job Vantas let's make you look more like a premature spaz maggot propelled out into the harsh gravity free realms of space and time.

"You're new?" you finally spit out, mentally cursing at yourself.

The ends of her lips twitch up into one of those smiles that make it look like she's trying to keep herself from laughing and she nods vigorously.

"Well, new kid, being the gratuitous person that I am, I'm offering to show you around since probably no one else would care enough to," Smooth, she's /totally/ going to want to make acquaintances with you after that backhanded insult.

"Oh, that's nice of you and all, but I think I can manage quite well on my own!" she replies, before turning back to her food.

"Let me rephrase that, I am not offering, I am going to show you around, like it or not," you say, fists clenching. This was a stupid idea, and you can't believe Vriska made you do this.

"Oh? Is that a challenge? Well then, since you're so keen on it, fine! But you won't be insisting that you show me around soon enough crabby pants!" she says, looking back up at you all too cheerily.

And upon hearing that, you know that you're going to regret this.

Author's note:

Wow yeah I'm going to post this on both my ao3 and here, and I'll give note on when it updates on my tumblr condescestuck so yeah okay. Uh, this was actually really sort of rushed because the idea came to me when I woke up in the middle of the night and I just hurriedly typed it out on whim so, the second chapter will hopefully be better proofread and thought through?