fandomhigh | Sex Ed, Wednesday, Period 2, Class #5

When the students arrived in class, they found a basket full of adorable, plush shapes just inside the doorway. Edward instructed each of them to grab the plushie of their choice when they came in.

Once the students were seated, Edward dimmed the lights and began. He used a slide show and talked about sexually transmitted diseases. He used a number of slides showing the effects of these diseases in full color.* He did mention the role of condoms in prevention, but he emphasized that abstinence was the only way to completely be safe.

When the lights came back up, he had one of each of the plushies in front of him. "These are my gift to you as a reminder of today's lesson. They are oversized representations of the microbes that cause some of the diseases we've discussed. The yellow is herpes, the pink is syphillis, the blue is gonorrhea, the black is HIV and the purple is the relatively mild mono."

"Now please find your fellow sufferers and we'll do a game of STD Roulette."

[Looking at the STD slides link is not recommended unless you have a pretty high threshold for gross.]

[~~Please wait for OCD.~~ Have at! Class info post here.]

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"AZT?" Claire repeated. "It's ..." she had no idea what it stood for. "The drugs you take if you have HIV for real, so you don't die."

She was starting to blush. "Please don't tell me you're from Mars or something."

"No," Cal shook his head. "Just the '70s. I didn't even hear about this one until today. I should have figured that, along with new technology, there's be new STDs."

"Of course, you're just from the '70s," Claire repeated rolling her eyes a little at her own urge to be surprised. "I'm seven years off, time stuff so shouldn't phase me. But yeah, if you go home you'll start hearing about this in, like, ten years."

She patted her plushie a little. "It's bad. Which may be why it's black and not a cute color."

"Not to mention cross-eyed," Cal added, giving his HIV another look.

Claire held hers up to judge. "Way cross-eyed," she had to agree. "And all goth, with the black and the red."

"So did you wanna do the roulette thing?"

Well, that's what they were there for, wasn't it? Cal shrugged and gave it a whirl.

"Hepatitis B," he read, "is 100 times more infectious than HIV."

"Well, that's a relief."

"Not if you end up on the losing end of the odds," Claire pointed out, spinning the roulette herself and drawing a card. "Okay, this says more than half the people who have HIV are women."

And what, Cal wondered, if you're half woman?

"Huh," he gave a musing grunt, and pulled out another card. " A large percentage of infected infants become infected late in pregnancy or during delivery, so getting tested and starting treatment early in pregnancy can reduce the risk of a HIV-infected mother transmitting the disease to her unborn child and slow down the progression of HIV disease in the mother."

"...These are some of the least fun fun fact I think I've ever encountered."

Claire nodded in agreement. "More like, depressing facts about things that can kill you," she said, folding her arms and not spinning the wheel. "I think this class is just to freak us out so we never have sex again."

The two were completely unrelated, but considering that Cal had started having sex again after vowing not to in the course of this class...?

"Yeaaaah," he drawled, "that always works."

"Scare tactics," Claire nodded. "Though I will say class has made me wanna sleep with Cullen a lot less."

Cal was trying really hard not to let a grin slip through as he looked at Claire after she said that.

And was probably failing pretty spectacularly.

"You wanted to sleep with Cullen at all?" he asked.

Because he had to.

"No!" Claire yelped, swatting at him a little.

Then, to her desk, she added, "He's hot, okay? In a completely-on-the surface, trying-too-hard way."

"Ow," Cal said through his laughter, cradling the spot where the swat didn't hurt at all. Especially not compared to shin bruises and awkward desk tackles. And his grin wasn't going anywhere any time soon. "What is it with girls liking that whole trying-too-hard thing, anyway?"

"We're retarded," Claire decided after a nonosecond's thought. "Our whole side of the species. It's hopeless."

"I guess," she added, "maybe, it's wanting someone you can take care of? You know, he's so deep and tortured and you can save him." Or at least that was how Gabe had gotten her.

And this would be the second time in a week that Cal had heard something mentioned about a girl just wanting to take care of someone, protect them. He considered Claire's input a little deeper than he had intended to.

Still, he was amused that she just out and admitted the retardation of the female sex. Especially since he could relate so completely.

"Sounds like a lot of work if you ask me," he offered.

"Maybe," Claire admitted, guard down for the moment before her defenses rose again. "So, what, things with Amber are just perfect and easy?"

"Hell of a lot easier than what I'm used to," Cal said, and then he shrugged. "It sounds cliche, I know, but she knows me better than anyone else. It's not perfect or anything, but..."

But he'd really probably take anyone who was that accepting of who he was. He just lucked out that it was Amber and not someone who would abuse it.

He shrugged.

Claire blinked slowly; that was a deeper answer than she expected. "That's great," she said awkwardly.

"I kind of got burned just before I came here, so ..." She played with the end of her hair, not even sure what the hell she was saying, let alone why. "I guess, it's good to hear it doesn't always suck."

Cal arched his eyebrow, studying Claire as she said that while trying to make it seem like he wasn't as interested as he was. Burned just before she came here? If it weren't for the fact that he'd rather be kicked in the shins by Turtle Wexler again than tell anyone else about the Obscure Object, he'd almost wonder who would really win in the worst burn contest.

Which wouldn't really be winning at all.

He gave a faint smile through the darkening thoughts. "No, not always. Funny thing was that I thought I was just going to call it quits on the whole..."

He gestured a hand vaguely in the air to indicate relationship thing.

Cal would probably win, though Claire might have deserved some hairpats and a year's subscription to Soap Opera Digest.

"I say I am," she said. "Don't know if that would last if anybody here was worth taking a chance, but in theory, I'm, like, single for life."

"Yeah," Cal slumped a little into his palm, held up by his elbow on the desk. "People here can surprise you, though. Screw all that weird turning-into-animals crap. That's easy to cope with. But the way people are here..." He shook his head slightly. "Kind of phenomenal. Of course, then you get a dick like Cullen into the mix and that kind of sours the mix, but it's pretty good overall."

Sex Ed, Wednesday, Period 2, Class #5

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