omgggg while trying to pick any one of your tropes to apply to Sparks Nevada I realized that ALMOST ALL OF THEM HAVE BEEN AN ACTUAL PART OF THE SHOW. sooooo... Sparks/Croach: High School AU.
I really want to do the obvious-yet-somehow-feels-like-cheating answer where Sparks is the principal and Croach is the vice-principal that the school board installed because of somehow-school-related onus reasons, and they spend their days dealing with juvenile delinquents and paperwork and the dude who doesn’t want any trouble in his cafeteria and the lovely red-haired history teacher that Croach knows from his last school that they’ve both got crushes on, except, yeah, that feels a little bit like cheating.
So, actual answer:
Sparks is a jock who secretly loves, like, D&D and playing Risk, Croach is a chess club nerd exchange student, and Red is also a jock—I want to say volleyball player, but no idea where that came from—but she’s probably in the marching band too? They all get put on hall monitor duty together, like The Breakfast Club but for hall monitors, and they have to work together thwart the robotics club’s plan to break into the principal’s office (and gym and supply closets and wherever) and sabotage the school’s big Under the Stars dance—all while trying to deal with the HUGE CRUSH Sparks and Croach both have on Red & the resentful, begrudging not-quite-a-friendship that’s blossoming between Sparks and Croach. Jocks! Nerds! Onus!
It ends with them at the Under the Stars dance that they’ve saved, huge cutouts of the planets hung on the walls of the gym, Croach and Sparks framed under a big, orangey-red one with ice caps. Sparks slugs Croach in the arm, like teenaged boys do to show friendship, and Croach glowers at him, and Red dances with somebody who isn’t either of them, because c'mon, those losers?
