#doof 101

"Heinz," Clara Wells calls out from the other end of the office. She's got a huffy tone that implies she had done so more than once. "Heinz." She calls again, and he finally raises a lazy hand in acknowledgement.

"Just five more minutes, Clare."

"Your husband's outside." She counters, tilting her head to further emphasize her point. "And he's been waiting for ten."

"He wouldn't've had to if he'd bothered to read my message I sent 5 hours ago," Heinz volleys defensively, if a bit distractedly. "Or pick up the phone when I tried to call him after lunch. I'll tell him I'm almost done. Say, did we mix up the answers in the scheme for number four...? Or have these freaking papers finally done me in?"

"Let me take a look at that." He hears Dylan O'Malley quip, before he feels the man's towering presence hovering over his shoulder, peering down onto the half graded quiz papers Heinz had sprawled over his entire desk, and even a little into Bess' territory on his left side. She'd gone home hours ago, though, having finished with today's marking yesterday on account of that dinner date with her sister across town, so it's not an urgent concern.

"Oh yeah, no." Dylan adds nonsensically, pointing between the bullet points of the aforementioned question. "It's technically correct, but Clara and I technically stole these questions from the finals 3 years ago and the workings are a bit outdated with the syllabus Lang wants us to use now. It's a bit trickier cus they'd need to use trigonometry on Points S in relative to Y-,"

"You don't need to tell me that, this is foundational physics-,"

"Yeah, well, the kids aren't Physicians, so most of them seem to have gotten confused. I told my kids to table it for now until the department meeting on Monday."

Heinz stops tapping his pen, looking up to the man incredulously. "Are you telling me that I've just wasted 30 minutes of my time quizzing out a tabled question?"

Dylan's answer was promptly drowned by an extremely loud and pointed car honk, and Heinz hears a startled yelp from the pantry. He finally looks up to see Perry, naturally, parked on the lot that was technically Principal Lang's, front facing the tall windows of the office.

Heinz spreads his arms wide, meeting the man's eyes on the other side of the window pane.

Perry retorts by pointedly tapping on the face of his wristwatch, then his car.

Heinz gives him the middle finger.

Perry points at him menacingly, and gestures him to walk, with two fingers on the plane of his wrist. He taps his wristwatch again, before raising his hand, palm straight out. 5 minutes.

"Oh for Gott's sake." Heinz mutters, rapidly getting up and cleaning after himself, just as he hears Adelaide Brimming on the other side of the room go; "Oh, you guys are so cute."

Heinz snorts, shoving all of the papers into the segmented file he's going to have to bring home. "Yeah, well. When I get there I'm about to be adorable."

"It's domestic." Dylan chuckles, stepping aside so he might not interfere with the Doofenshmirtz Maelstrom as he attempts to find his loafers he'd kicked out of sight, allegedly beneath his own desk. "I didn't realize you were married, Heinz?"

The Advanced Sciences teacher frowns, straightening up. "You aren't? Well," he shrugs. "You were probably better off. I'm not anymore though."

"Oh?"

"Yes? Are you sure I haven't told you this before? You've met Vanessa."

"Oh, you meant your first wife? No, I knew that. I meant-I hadn't realized you'd remarried."

Heinz freezes, his hand on the doorknob leading out the office. "What?"

Dylan frowns. "What, what?"

"Stop being nonsensical. I haven't re-married."

Clara snorts into her coffee.

"I haven't. Why is everyone looking at me?"

"You called him your husband." Dylan points out, gesturing to the impatient be-suited man standing outside.

"Perry the- Perry? No. What? No, he's-we're-I can't-you guys are-he's-!" Heinz sputters. "He's practically my parole officer!"

Dylan and Clara exchange weighted looks, the latter with a permanent smirk etched upon her face.

"You want him to be your husband though." She says casually.

He doesn't have to stand for this. "I don't have to stand for this." Heinz says, cheeks burning all the way up to his ears. High school was high school, apparently, no matter where you were on the side of staff doors. He slams the door behind him to punctuate his indignantion, though he could've sworn he still heard Clara laugh on the other side. He's still going to have to see her tomorrow.

Despite his visible impatience not twenty minutes ago, Perry's face visibly softens as he sees Heinz rounding out to the parking lot, where his teal colored OWCA standard Sedan purra idly as they wait. And Heinz hates it, hates that he's able to tell, and how it makes his heart summersault from beneath his breastbone to his stomach with an almost childish shame.

Perry, as he was naught to do, opens the passenger side door for him, as he does to make fun of him, whenever Heinz was in a churlish mood. He's even doing a stupid little teasing bow, like an unnecessarily attractive carriage master. Or a prince.

It's mocking. But his coworkers won't know that.

Heinz grabs ahold of the door, and slams it back closed.

Perry raises a questioning eyebrow. Heinz can barely notice the awkward silence between them, frozen as he was imagining his coworkers giggling over his shame like a pair of bullies.

After a second or two, he opens it back up and climbs inside.

He sees Perry hesitate right outside his door, and when he rounds over to climb into his customary driver's seat, Heinz cuts him off right off the bud.