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The Perk, Friday Afternoon

April had tried very hard to talk her parents out of making her enroll in community college classes. The walk across the causeway was long, textbooks were heavy and had a lot of words in them, and classes, as she understood it, tended to be boring with fairly few opportunities for napping or playing video games.

Unfortunately, her parents weren't budging, which meant that today she finally dragged her laptop to the Perk for the free wi-fi and signed up for classes on the stupidly impractical course registration site. Introduction to Computers, Russian History, CPR Training, and... hmm, Gaming Law or Beverage Management? Or neither. Maybe there was a dodgeball class she could take...

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Coffee to follow up the coffee that Jono had brought to class with him that morning? Yes, please. And he was going to walk into the Perk with his head up and no limp to be found, too. And, if he happened to stumble across a familiar face while he was there?

"Afternoon, April." Why yes, there was a coffee in either hand as he took a seat across from her, sliding one her way. "Hard at work, are you?"

"Nnnrgh," came April's whiny reply as she gratefully accepted the coffee. "I'm being productive. Make it stop."

"Ugh, productivity," Jono replied, almost actually sounding sympathetic. Almost. "Next they'll be expecting you to do grown-up things, and then you'll be stuck with responsibilities. Nobody wants that."

He leaned forward and attempted to see over the top of her laptop to check out what in the world she was up to, there.

"It's school, Jono," April whined, tilting her laptop back so he could see the screen. "I have to go to that now. In Baltimore. I have to walk there and learn things. It's like being tortured by fire all over my body."

"And I speak from years of experience when I say that isn't any fun at all," Jono noted, dryly, before leaning over and reading what he could, upside-down. "Are there at least half-decent courses at this school?"

"I don't know," she complained. "Jack told me to take Computer Science and Russian History, and there's one on CPR that gives out cookies every week, but I need another one and I don't want it to be work."

She shoved her laptop over at him. "Choose for me."

"Er." Whelp, that was Jonothon with a laptop in front of him. And, considering he didn't see any need to replace the computer that Lizzie had fried on him, it probably wasn't much of a surprise that he had no idea what in the world he was doing with it.

Especially on a college website. Those things were the most unintuitive bits of so-called web design out there.

"And what would you define as 'not work?'"

"I don't know, Advanced Sleeping," April suggested. "Or anything non-textbook-related. Do colleges have boxing class?"

April would get taken down in a second if she tried boxing.

Edited 2013-01-11 22:53 (UTC)

"... Some might, though I think I'd count boxing as work," Jono noted, glancing up at her with a raised eyebrow. "What about a music class, perhaps? I imagine a lot of it would be theory, but... music."

Not that he was at all biased.

The only thing shocking about that suggestion was that April hadn't considered it already. "Dude, yeah," she said, eyes going big. "I could learn guitar or something. That'd be awesome. Or at least non-terrible."

She actually meant awesome.

"I have a definite guitar bias," Jono noted, smirking a little. "And I could help you with your homework, if you found yourself having any trouble. I do have a bit of experience with guitar, after all."

You know. Some.

"I hadn't noticed," April drawled, smirking. "Yeah, man. Jack's already going to do my history homework for me. Now I'll only have to pay attention to like half of what goes on."

April was clearly going to learn a lot.

"You know any tech people who could do my computer science work for, like... no money?"

"Offhand... No." Jono gave his shoulders a shrug. "I have this terrible habit of burning bridges when it comes to people I know who know their way around a computer."

Of course, in the case of people like Paige, that wasn't a terrible loss.

"You might actually have to learn something in that course, luv."

"Gross, don't say that," April said, in the sort of scandalized tone that suggested Jono had just proposed something so heinous that she might never recover. "Maybe they'll let me not do homework if I say I don't have any hands or something."

...That was bound to be convincing.

"Freak guitar accident. Got both wrists tangled in the g-string, and they had to go." No, that probably wasn't going to fly. But Jono was smirking all the same. "Does this school offer classes through correspondence, I wonder?"

Because that was just what Jono needed. College homework to do, on top of the superheroing, teaching, radio broadcasting, directing, running a business...

April shrugged. "I think you have to show up. But it's in Baltimore. Like a six-dollar cab ride."

So much for her idea of walking to class, right?

"Wanna come?" she asked, adopting a sarcastically mock-excited tone. "It'll be super fun. We can take turns sleeping and taking notes."

"I... don't know that I'd exactly fit in in Baltimore, luv," Jono replied, blinking. "If I could take classes from here, I might actually be tempted. I've got all of a week of experience as a university student, at Empire State, but I didn't exactly accomplish much in the way of going to classes in that week."

In fact, he hadn't actually gone to any. But he'd been shot six times point-blank in the chest. So, there was that.

"Oh, right." She sometimes forgot Jono's face wasn't normal. That probably was a little weirder than April realized. "Scarf? You can call it a religious thing."

"Well, I did get a scarf from Natalie for Christmas," Jono mused, tilting his head thoughtfully. "And I used to pass myself off as a bandaged-up burn victim, back in my more fiery days. But I'd have to wrap myself right up to my hair, I think, for something like that..."

He could cover his mouth easily enough with a tall coat collar, but he was still blue all over.

"Or sit in the back of the room," April offered. "Or whatever. There's a guy on the show City College that has star-shaped sideburns. I think they expect people who look weird at these places."

Beat. Then instead of saying 'no offense' like a normal person, April offered him an eyebrow quirk and a half-shrug to the same effect.

Edited 2013-01-12 00:09 (UTC)

... Fair enough. Jono mirrored the shrug, and then looked down at the laptop again.

"I wonder what other classes they have..."

If anyone got really suspicious, he'd just tell people it was extreme tattooing, or something. Maybe. Colloidal silver overdose?

"Seriously?" Wow, this was about to suck a whole lot less. "Cool. Yeah, check out the catalog. I saw some that are about... British stuff."

History, maybe. Or maybe just plain English classes. Either way, wasn't that helpful?

Edited 2013-01-12 00:30 (UTC)

"British stuff, hm?" Jono smirked faintly at that. "I'm already well-versed in 'British stuff,' luv. I got the full immersion experience every year of my life until I turned seventeen."

And then he blew up and moved to America.

"But some... business management courses to help me with th'Boards couldn't hurt. Or I could take music along with you. Or... Hm..." He furrowed his brow as he poked at the laptop some more. Large fingers and touchpads mice. Awkward. "Maybe I should take some sort of computer fundamentals course, just so that I can learn how the hell to navigate their bloody webpage."

"Could take computers and music with me and then two business ones," she suggested. "Just don't pick anything before 10 AM, obviously."

"Nothing before ten, and nothing on Tuesdays or Fridays before noon," Jono clarified. "And no evening classes on Thursdays..."

He grimaced a little.

"Spare time is in short supply these days, it seems."

His own fault for teaching two classes and being a radio broadcaster again, really.

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