Keep it cool, keep it calm

[Elias Weber]

The biology lab was unsupervised.

That was the first thing Elias noticed when he passed by. He always glanced through the door when passing, just in case the super cute new science teacher was there. He had tried to not mention this to his friends, because he didn't really want them to tease him about having yet another crush on a teacher. It wasn't a reputation he enjoyed having even as he sighed through crush filled pain.

At the moment, however, there was no sign of his teacher.

There was also no sign of any other student, which meant this was the perfect opportunity to forget about his lunch plans entirely and slide into the classroom. He dropped his backpack - Harry Potter, adorned with far too many pins for fandoms and bands alike - onto the floor by the door, too excited to remember to close it. He spun over to the class skeleton, which was a good half foot taller than he was, peering up into empty sockets as he pulled his phone from his hoodie pocket. A few swipes and the opening chords to One Kiss from Descendants 3 began to play.

Because what was a better use of an empty classroom than serenading Mister Bones?

When Sofia Carson's voice began to sing he joined her, although several octaves lower, hiking one leg up so that he could appropriately pretend he was seducing...not a skeleton. As the lyrics switched over to the chorus of one kiss, one kiss, it all comes down to this he caressed Mister Bones' skull and....

His hand was stuck.

"Shoot!" He exclaimed, trying to lower his leg so that he could find better purchase to unstick himself, but that was stuck too.

[Micah and Moses Grey]

Because they didn't live on campus, and therefore didn't have a dorm room to go to between classes, Micah and Moses spent a good deal of time just wandering the halls of Hammel looking for something to entertain them. In the warmer months, they could get some energy out fooling around outside, but now that it was getting colder, their options were limited. They had already been thrown out of the library for the day for being too loud and they still had an hour or so to kill before their next class even after getting themselves an early lunch.

They heard music coming from one of the labs and made a beeline to see what was going on in there and were quite surprised to find Elias in quite the predicament. 

"If you needed some private time - " Micah said, standing in the doorway and already laughing.

"- maybe you should have closed the door, man," Moses finished, as the twins held on to each other to avoid falling over in laughter. 

"Seriously though, what are you doing?" "- are you doing?" They asked once they had managed to compose themselves a bit.

[Elias Weber]

Oh, no, not the Grey twins.

They were friends, and he enjoyed their ideas (even if sometimes he refused to partake, the specter of disapproval from teachers a strong deterrent on what might otherwise sound like incredible fun) but they were also known to be constantly video taping everything. And sure, that was mostly videos of one another pulling their hilarious stunts, but what if they decided this was the perfect time to film him? Not as blackmail the way some of the more cynical students might, but because they thought it was funny.

And they clearly did think this was hilarious judging by the peals of laughter coming from the both of them.

"I was singing!" He exclaimed indignantly, even though that explanation didn't answer why he was stuck to the skeleton in a pose of seduction.

And this still wasn't in the top five most embarrassing ways he'd found himself stuck to something.

"Wanna give me a little help? I don't want Mr. Ettinger to know."

Because this was exactly the type of incident one could keep quiet when your teacher was a telepath.

[Micah and Moses Grey]

"Sure, ya were," Micah said, still trying to catch his breath a bit. He traded a devious wink with his twin before reaching into his pants pocket to pull out his phone. "Can we hear a little tune?" He asked, pointing the phone at Elias.

Moses laughed at his brother, but did at least step forward to help out their friend. "Wait, why don't you want Mr. Ettinger to know?"

Now both brothers were a little confused and Micah even stopped his filming to wait for the answer. This was the second time one of their friends had acted weird about the Biology professor. The twins didn't think there was anything special about it. Sure he was a little weird some days, but they just chalked it up to normal adult weirdness. He was probably just sad he couldn't complete the Sunday crossword or something. 

With confused identical expressions, they waited for their friends' answer.

[Elias Weber]

"Because I care about his opinion!" Elias responded, feeling his face grow warm with embarrassment. Pretending to get stuck to chairs in class so that he could spend time alone with his teacher was one thing, but using Mr. Bones as a prop in his theatrics was another one entirely. He didn't have permission, and he wasn't sure he could look Mr. Ettinger in the eye again if his teacher found out that he'd been pretending the skeleton was the other half of a romantic duet.

He wanted his teacher to take him seriously, because obviously this crush was totally, completely viable and if he could just act mature enough then his carefully constructed fantasy around this would come true. Theoretically teachers who took an interest in students were bad, sure, and this was a point he typically wouldn't argue against because he knew what you were supposed to say on this subject but all of those reasons were easy to dismiss in the face of his overwhelming adolescent crush.

"I mean, he's...my favorite teacher?"

Definitely not suspicious coming from the student with a pattern of crushing on teachers.

[Micah and Moses Grey]

Lucky for Elias, the twins could be pretty useless when it came to noticing any sort of romantic stuff. Moses didn't care about it at all. And Micah spent so much time shoving away any feelings he might have to keep them from Moses, that he had started to become immune to them as well. So the fact that Elias had a huge and obvious head over heels crush for the biology teacher had gone way over their heads. And unless the other boy spelled it out for them, it probably would continue to. 

Instead, they assumed that Elias cared about the older man's opinion because the boy looked up to him as a mentor, probably hoping the teacher would put in a good word for him after graduation. Maybe he wanted to be a teacher just like him. How lame. How sad. 

"Seriously?" Micah said, laughing. "Come on, you can do better than a biology teacher!" Moses added.

Phone now forgotten, the twins finally started to help untangle their friend. He must be really serious about learning Biology to get this tangled up in a skeleton. Both were trying to also think of other, better, career options for the boy. 

"What about your music career?" "What about your music career?" Because who would throw that away to be a stupid science teacher?