Chapter Text
It was a Friday evening, and like most Friday evenings Rean Schwarzer and Towa Herschel were doing their grading in the Thors faculty office. They were, after all, both very responsible people. Towa was Irving's favorite for a reason, and while Rean had lost his chance at that title by being easily distracted by literally anyone or anything in distress he was still very good at getting everything in on time.
Crow was much worse at it. Honestly, he probably would have been worse than Randy if not for the influence of his partners. Still, he usually joined them for Friday grading.
Of course, that didn’t mean he was always grading when he did it.
Rean was up and starting a new pot of tea for the both of them when the door opened and admitted Instructor Crow Armbrust, moving with his usual casual disregard. He grinned as he saw the two of them. “Hey, if it isn’t my two favorite sticks in the mud! Hard at work as usual, I see!”
Rean turned an unimpressed gaze on him. “Yes, we are. Unlike you. Classes were out an hour ago, you know.”
“I’ll have you know I was giving some supplemental education to a few of the tykes! Which means my teacher quota is done for the day. I just thought I’d come in and make sure you two were getting some fresh air, is all.” Crow started to move towards the windows.
Towa turned to watch him go, frowning. “Crow, if you procrastinate on your grading for the whole weekend, I’m not going to help you catch up again.”
Rean privately thought that was unlikely. He didn’t say it. Towa was always better at bluffing Crow.
Crow opened the window and took a deep, exaggerated breath through his nose. “Smell that? It’s the great outdoors. You should get out there! Enjoy yourselves! It’s the weekend, you should be relaxing!”
“Crow, we have lessons tomorrow.” Rean reminded him.
“Yeah, speaking of, you know they give their kids full weekends off in Calvard? I heard it’s better for developing minds to have a longer period of relaxation. Think we could swing that with Miss Golden Order?” Crow turned and sat on the desk near the window. It was Michael’s. Crow was definitely going to break his 3-day streak of not getting lectured today.
Towa actually considered it. “It goes against Erebonian tradition… I’d have to look and see if there were actually any studies performed…” she mused.
Crow’s smile widened. Towa noticed, and narrowed her eyes. “Hey, stop trying to distract me with educational reform!”
Crow shrugged. “Eh, it was worth a shot. Time to go with plan B!”
With that, he stood up, reached out, and picked Towa up straight out of her seat in a single fluid motion. Towa shrieked, which transformed into a full-on scream when he flung them both out the window.
Rean shouted in alarm and ran to the window himself, only to see Crow land safely on the ground two stories down, sling Towa over his shoulder like a potato sack, give him a mocking salute and take off running. Rean could hear Towa shouting “LET ME GO, CROW!” at him as he dashed towards the back of the school.
After a moment wasted gaping, Rean turned away and dashed down the hall. Michael was stomping towards the office, clearly having heard something, but he moved out of the way as Rean sprinted down the hall and down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He wasn’t sure what to think of this– clearly this was a prank of some kind from Crow, but this was still beyond what he usually did. Slowly the immediate panic left him, but there were still echoes of Azure Siegfried and C dancing around in his head.
Rean had lost track of where Crow had gone, but saw Ash as he ran back, who pointed in a direction. “Went that way.”
Rean nodded and accelerated. He was pretty certain Ash wasn’t lying, given the footprints in the dirt road and the… was that Towa’s pen? She must have dropped it.
It only took a few minutes more before Rean caught up.
The first thing he saw was Crow, sitting down with a self-satisfied grin. The next thing was Towa, now released and pouting, but also seated.
The third thing was the picnic basket and blanket that were sitting in between them.
“Finally caught up, huh?” Crow asked.
Rean just stared at him for a moment.
“What’s the matter, Crow got your tongue? No, wait, that’s for later.” Crow winked. Rean tried to hold onto his anger. He was failing.
Thankfully Towa could handle that job just fine. She balled up her fist and hit him lightly on the shoulder. “Stop goofing around and explain, Crow! You said you wanted to wait for Rean to get here.”
He shrugged. “Look, I know you two workaholics you haven’t noticed, but we haven’t been on a proper date in a month.”
Towa and Rean both met each other’s eyes. Mental calculations were made.
“Wait, we had that night out in Heimdallr two weeks ago–” Rean started.
Crow shook his head. “Yeah, and that got interrupted thirty minutes in because you ran into some tourist kids who had lost their parents.”
Rean flushed as he remembered that. It had taken four hours to find them. “You helped.” he muttered. Crow ignored him.
“Anyways, if I left it to you, we probably wouldn’t have any real free time for another month. Someone needs to pull you two away from your desks, and as the resident irresponsible layabout, that’s my job.” He pulled a bottle of wine out of the basket, and began distributing the other food. “Now, I worked really hard on these fish burgers, so if you don’t take your time and eat them I’ll be personally insulted.”
So, Rean and Towa settled down and joined him. The food was good, and they really had needed the break.
They still forced Crow to do his own grading when Sunday came though.