I THINK I'VE SEEN YOU SOMEWHERE [griffin]

[tobias aaron marshall]

tobias knew the moment he assigned the analysis that he was going to be in way over his head. he could just feel it - it was a new assignment, different from the last final assignment he had kids do with mary shelley's frankenstein. his student teaching, he had recommended doing something more creative than a five page analysis of what a monster is and two style analyses on passages from the book. he had wanted to do art projects or something that allowed people to use their more artsy sides. however, that had not worked out the way he'd hoped. the projects were great - perfect, really, and he was fairly impressed with them seeing as when he was student teaching, he had lived in a pretty shitty school district. however, it was the mess he couldn't take. the glitter and the paint and the markers and bits of paper left all over the classroom just made his skin crawl, and he decided then and there to never let an art project be the final project again. he was going to stick with smaller art projects and just...analyses like the teacher had originally suggested. that way, he couldn't be driven crazy by the mess.

however, he could be driven crazy by the paperwork. he should have known that giving kids in an accelerated class the freedom to write a paper that was at least five pages was going to bite him in the ass. he had a few ten page papers, more common eight pages, and the majority were five or six and that was just the essay about what a monster was. the style analyses added at least another four or five pages to the stack and factor that into two classes with about twenty-five students in each one...and you had a very busy tobias marshall who really could only grade so many papers before he started to go insane. god bless hartford, connecticut, for pony expresso, though, because without their coffee and generally calming store aura, he would probably go insane. there was really only so much that one english teacher could take and honestly, grading the ap work didn't even take into the account how much he had to do for his regular english four classes.

he was really going to have to stop assigning them such long essays. as he sipped on his coffee and wrote some notes in the margins of a paper that he felt went completely off topic (he had no idea how paris hilton had anything to do with romantic gothic literature), he decided that next time he was going to give them a three page minimum and probably six page maximum because this was just ridiculous. he was stressed enough all the time without having to worry about papers of all things. he paused on his writing, resting his hand on his hand for a second, closing his eyes against the noise and hustle and bustle around him. he was tired. he'd gone through about three cups of coffee already and his hands were shaking so badly it was a miracle he could write, but still he felt his eyes begin to droop shut again as he opened them to review the paper in front of him again. he needed a break. the kids could wait a few more days for grades, right?

he gathered up the pages around him. he couldn't take all the assignments with him to the shop - oh no, there wasn't a bag on earth big enough or a tobias marshall around strong enough to be carting around that many papers. so he only had about fifteen or so but really that was enough. he didn't bother trying to put them back in the bag. his hands were shaking so badly it'd probably just take him about fifteen minutes or so and he really just wanted to get home or at least somewhere where he could have a quiet moment of peace to himself. he stood, gathering up his empty coffee cups, but his foot got caught in the chair and he reached out to catch his balance...and in the meantime dropped his papers and two of the empty cups and hit his elbow back against the bar. right on the funny bone. great. red-faced, he bent down to start gathering up papers, mumbling random obscenities and other such words under his breath as he tried to focus on just...getting his shit picked up and getting out of there.

[/justify]

[griffin]

hjkljlk

I KEEP PUSHING MYSELF EVEN THOUGH I CAN'T TAKE IT AT ALL

griffin's life had become a hectic mess ever since he had moved from the united kingdom to hartford connecticut, which, considering had been a good year, was honestly ridiculous to admit. he blamed it not on trying to hold down a balanced social life or a keeping a regular routine, but instead, it was none other than his job as a journalist on the hartford courant, connecituct's largest daily newspaer in the state. honestly, he could have cared less about both of the former. his life depended on the latter, though. in fact, his life was the newspaper. writing put griffin into a happier place, a place where he could focus and forget worries. however, this left the boy very stressed. although, that was a bit of a contradiction once one thought about it. he was happy, stressless, and worryless writing, yet it left him tired, cranky, and extremely stressed.

pumping out article after article left griffin very exhausted. there wasn't a night that he got more than four hours of sleep and there wasn't a day that he could relax- sit down, put his feet up, and relax. it didn't have to be that way, though. griffin made it that way. he was too much of a perfectionist, a bit of a maniac when it came to being the best of the best. his day consisted of waking up from usually a three hour rest, and on special occasions, four hours, a small breakfast, and then straight to work, with a lunch break somewhere in between. sometimes he chose to write at the courant building where he was less distracted, sometimes at his apartment where he would keep himself prisoner, or on rare special days, he'd let himself go to a local coffee shop and people watch as he wrote. however, those special days didn't come very often, hence why they were rare. he only allowed himself to do that when he knew that he didn't have articles that he volunteered for piled up or when he knew that his work was at it's highest point and there was only a small amount of editing.

today was one of those days. not only was griffin feeling very accomplished, thanks to his nearly perfect writing, but he was feeling very sociable. this was a good thing, because griffin didn't allow himself to go out into public feeling like a monster. he didn't like to be cruel to people and if he was to leave his office or apartment with stress galore on his shoulders, he had a feeling that he'd be extremely irritable and unpleasant to be around. he had emerged from his cave and made his way to a coffee shop a couple of blocks away. it was also one of those rare days that the sun had decided to show it's face. it was still cold and below sixty, almost fifty degrees, but griffin didn't mind the weather. the coffee shop, pony expresso, was considerably busy but no so busy that griffin would become irritable, perfect work or not. there were a few couples and a couple stranglers that appeared to be doing work and apparently had the same idea as him. with his black leather messenger back slung on his shoulder, he ordered and was soon delievered a black coffee, which he took with him to a table. he had already gotten started on editing and was consumed by his writing when he heard the sound of papers falling on and cups bouncing and immediately became distracted. a few tables down from his, someone had dropped their stack of work and empty coffee cups, apparently, and was now on the ground hurrying to gather their belongings and, he assumed, get out of there as fast as he could.

griffin, being in the pleasant, people person mood that he had woken up with that morning, left the table that he had been working at, left his work, and his coffee, and hurried to help the stranger. leaning down to pick up a paper that he blown a ways away from where the boy was crouched on the ground, he carefully added it to his pile of already gathered papers. there you go, mate, he said and leaned down to pick up one of the cups that had fallen and placed it on the table. no one said having manners was against the law, right? on this particular day, griffin was feeling especially mannerly.

RENEE AS TOBIAS, YAY JEWNICORN, EXCEPT I DIDN'T REALLY PROOFREAD THIS SO IT MIGHT BE POO OH WELL ~

[tobias aaron marshall]

he tried to imagine that he was just imagining all the stares that were focused on him when he fell. he tried to tell himself that no one really cared; it wasn't that embarrassing and if he just picked himself up, everyone would forget about it. but it was hard to ignore the feeling of everyone turning to stare at you, eyes boring holes into your skull and back just hoping that you're okay so they don't feel bad about laughing. he could feel their judgement even as he scattered to pick up his papers and he hoped to god that his medication was easily accessible in his bag because honestly the only way that this could be worse for him was if his medication was somewhere where he'd have to dig for it and his social anxiety would start affecting his actual anxiety and then he would have a heart attack and die right there in front of everyone in the coffee shop. because seriously. that would be just like him.

he knew there were worse things in life than falling every now and then in a coffee shop. honestly, his entire life was just one embarrassing moment and he should have been used to it by that point in time but he just...he wasn't. he didn't think he would ever get used the feeling of humiliation and he didn't think there was a chance in hell that he would ever get to the point that being looked at by a bunch of strangers just didn't phase him. he had his reasons for being the way he was and he didn't have to explain himself to anybody, but still, sometimes he wished that he could just close his eyes and open them to be somewhere else. or that he could just fall asleep at night and wake up and be someone else entirely. maybe if that happened, he would be able to avoid moments like these and he wouldn't have to put up with the embarrassment of being tobias marshall.

and then - oh god - there was someone getting up to help him and fuck fuck fuck him if that wasn't more embarrassing than someone just leaving him alone. he mumbled a quick, "thanks," to the person who decided to lend a helping hand before the accented voice got his attention and he looked up to see who had lent a hand. he felt his heart jump into his throat as he did so, though, the way it always did when he saw someone and was immediately attracted to them. but it was more than just that the man who had come to help him out was attractive. no, he knew that face. he knew that face because he studied newspaper articles the way a scientist reads another's lab book. he picked them apart and read and reread and when it came to articles he particularly loved, he had a habit of adding them to a scrapbook and finding out something about the people who wrote them. and he knew the face that lent a helping hand. he knew it well.

"i know you," he commented, tilting his head to the side slightly in confusion, as if he didn't understand how one of his favorite local writers could have magically appeared in front of him at the most inconvenient moment: aka when he was scrambling around on the ground like a fucking moron. and then he realized that was a weird statement to be making. he didn't know him. not really. he knew his name - holmes, griffin holmes, but he didn't actually know who he was. "i-i-i mean...not know you, i mean...no, i meant uhm..." he stopped his mouth from flapping open again and closed his eyes, rising slowly as he tried to gather his thoughts. he set his papers up on the table next to his coffee cup before opening his eyes again. "no," he said firmly, more to himself than to the man standing in front of him. "i meant, i know of you. your articles in the paper. i'm a fan." he furrowed his brow. "well not technically a-a fan but--oh, no, not getting into that again." he paused again. "thanks. though. again. for your help."

[/justify]