Chapter Text
The first thing Rey had noticed about him were his hands. They were large, oversized for his body, really, dwarfing the syllabus he’d slid across her desk. That, and he moved them constantly – through his hair, across the bridge of his spectacles, along the top of his lips.
He moved constantly in a general sense, too, pacing the length of his chalkboard as he lectured. It was almost like watching a pendulum. The hypnotic effect was amplified by his manner of speaking – slow and low. His speech was a mumble, or rather, a deep rumble, and it was completely unaffected by excitement – that was, if he felt any, Rey doubted that he did – or emphasis.
Privately, Rey doubted that even the most dynamic – or attractive – professor could make Introduction to Classical Art and Literature interesting. She’d signed up for this course for three reasons, and only three reasons: she needed a liberal arts credit, it fit neatly in her schedule between Differential Equations and Fluid Mechanics, and she had had it on good authority that the professor was cute. That is, her friend Poe, who was a junior and a year ahead of her, had used the word “cute.”
Cute was not how Rey privately characterized Professor Ren. He was tall and broad in a way that made her mouth dry, and his hair – the way he put his hands in his hair, really – was distracting, but his face was odd, proportioned all wrong. What’s more, he wore drab clothes that were only suited for academia, and bookish glasses. In short, he wasn’t bad looking, but he was too monkish to be titillating, and so, inevitably, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, fifteen minutes into his lecture, her eyelids would droop. His words would fade into an unintelligible drone. It was kind of soothing, really. And it was eight in the morning and very warm in the lecture hall.
***
Slam.
A textbook had been dropped unceremoniously onto her desk, dangerously near to her head. She’d been sleeping, mouth open, cheek on the faux wood top of her lecture hall desk.
Professor Ren loomed over her, looking down the bridge of his nose at her, as if he were expecting her to jump up and stand at attention. The class was silent, the rest of the students either peering nervously at her over their shoulders or studiously looking away as if that could avoid incurring the professor’s wrath.
He cocked his head at her, eyes boring into her. But he still didn’t speak. The silence was excruciating. Whatever he was going to say, however he was going to berate her, nothing could be worse than waiting to see what it was. She felt like a bird, being toyed with by a cat before being dismembered and eaten – in front of a captive audience, no less.
After what seemed like an eternity, Professor Ren pivoted on his heel and went back to the board. He ran his hands through his hair one more time, smoothed the lapels of his tweed blazer, adjusted his glasses, and then, just like that, resumed his pacing and droning.
The class collectively exhaled. Rey shrank into her seat.
***
“Professor,” Rey scrambled to her feet from where she’d been sitting in the hallway outside of Professor Ren’s office. He’d taken an excruciatingly long time to get there from the lecture hall, considering it was a short walk across the main mall between the two. She could see what had taken so long now – he’d stopped for coffee.
He looked at her, blandly. “Miss…”
“Kenobi. I wanted to apologize.” She blurted out.
“There’s no need to apologize, Miss Kenobi.” He drawled, unlocking his office door. He didn’t turn around and face her, but as he moved into his office, he left the door open. She wasn’t sure if he was inviting her in or not, so she lingered in the doorframe. “You haven’t hurt my feelings, only your grade.”
Rey swallowed heavily. He was busy shuffling through papers on his desk, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose “I can do extra credit.”
“I don’t offer extra credit.” He looked up, finally, almost as if he was surprised she was still there.
Rey fidgeted, fingering the strap of her messenger bag. Now that his eyes were on her, the stayed on her, disconcertingly. “Can you make an exception? I promise, I’m not – I work all night. I’m not –”
“No exceptions.” He cut her off, and she could swear she saw disappointment flash across his face. He went back to his papers. “That’ll be all, Miss Kenobi.”
“Oh. Okay.” Her voice came out in a pathetic little squeak.
“Oh, and Miss Kenobi.”
She half-turned on her way to flee the cramped office. He was looking at her again, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Perhaps consider prioritizing your schoolwork over your part time job. I’m sure you can do without the beer money.”
***
“I hate him.” Rey poured herself more cheap red wine, still fuming.
“You said that.”
“He’s such an ass.”
“You said that, too.”
“How could you think he was cute?” Rey turned on Poe with an accusing tone. “He’s a monster.”
Poe sipped his coffee mug of red wine more delicately than she had. “A very cute monster.”
“You’re crazy.” Rey huffed. “His syllabus lists class participation as thirty percent. Thirty percent!”
“He’s not going to knock your grade down by thirty percent.”
“He might.” Rey grumbled.
“Just stay awake from now on.” Poe offered, unhelpfully.
***
She couldn’t stay awake.
Slam. Again, the textbook dropping onto her desk. Again, groveling at his office door after the lecture.
Slam. The third time in two weeks of the course, he met her at his office door with something like a smile. More of a lip quirk, really. “I am beginning to be offended that you can’t stay awake during my lectures.”
“Please don’t fail me.” It was a stupid thing to say, but it was what came out of her mouth under the weight of his inscrutable eyes.
“Please stay awake for more than sixteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds.” He set his customary coffee down on his desk. “Although that may be less than precise, I just noted the time when I first saw you sleeping. You may have been asleep long before that.”
Rey had the distinct impression that he was mocking her, and her temper flared. She opened and closed her mouth, resisting the urge to tell him off. “Can I do –”
“No extra credit.” He made a noise that might have been a laugh. “You ask that every time.”
“Well, I have to try.” Rey said, weakly. “Can you make an exception?”
A lone eyebrow ascended his lofty forehead into his hairline. “Try harder, Miss Kenobi.”
He turned away from her and started absently shifting through his papers. It was a clear dismissal. Defeated, Rey slunk out of the office.
It wasn’t until she was halfway down the hallway that she wondered what he’d meant by that.
***
Rey was drooping over her Fluid Mechanics textbook at the check-in desk at the library at one in the morning, eyelids fluttering, when someone cleared their throat to get her attention.
“Maybe I shouldn’t take it personally.”
Professor Ren was leaning on the intake desk, tapping his fingers on a notepad.
“Um – what?” Blearily, Rey smoothed her hair out of her face.
“You falling asleep in my class.” He looked almost amused – for once, she didn’t feel like his humor was at her expense. “So this is where you work.”
Rey eyed him suspiciously. “Yes. Can I help you find anything?”
He ignored her standard query. “Do you work all night?”
“I told you that.” Rey couldn’t stop herself from snipping at him. He didn’t seem offended.
“I thought you were just making excuses.”
“I thought you didn’t care about excuses.” Rey muttered under her breath, as she stood up, hopped off the tall, swiveling stool, and yanked the metal handle of the library cart. It was past one; she was supposed to restock every two hours.
“I don’t care about excuses.” Professor Ren did hear her, apparently. He sipped his coffee deliberately, leaning heavily onto the intake counter. Rey eyed the Styrofoam cup longingly. “I just need help finding some books.”
“I’m re-shelving.” Rey dragged the metal cart out from behind intake. “Maybe Jessika can help you. She’s on the second floor, help desk.”
Doggedly, he followed her as she rolled the full cart across the main lobby and into the endless rows of stacks. She started at A, as always, methodically re-shelving books high and low until she got to C and could no longer pretend that she didn’t realize he was still following her. She huffed and turned to him. “Can I help you?”
“Like I said.” He drummed his fingers on the cart. “Books.”
***
The books he wanted, as it happened, were epic Greek plays – not translations, but Greek Greek plays. They were in the rare books section, under lock and key. Rey unlocked the door to the third floor enclave and snaked through the smaller room until she found them. “Here.”
“Let me.” He took the two books off the shelf, almost reverently. “Thank you.”
She stood there, awkwardly, for a moment. “You’re not allowed to take them out of this room.”
“That’s fine.” He set the books down on the small central table. “I can work here.”
Just like that, he sat down and was lost in his own world, carefully opening the old books and tracing the pages ever so lightly with his fingertips. She might as well have been a wall fixture for all he noticed her presence. Finally, she cleared her throat. “You aren’t really supposed to be in here without supervision.”
He looked at her over the tops of his glasses. “I assure you I’m trustworthy.”
“It’s just policy.” She muttered.
“This library seems awfully understaffed for that.” He was right; there were two desk and seven-thousand square feet of books, and from midnight to five in the morning, she and Jess were the only ones on staff.
“Most people don’t have a pressing need to get into the rare books room at one-thirty in the morning.” Rey countered.
“I’m writing a book.”
“It’s technically closed at eleven.”
“Oh.” He leaned back in his chair. “I see.” He looked very expectantly at her, and he struck her as very young and large-eyed. He was beseeching her, she realized. It wasn’t fair – she could hardly deny him when he had her grades in his hands.
After a long moment, Rey said, grudgingly, “I’ll come back after I’m done re-shelving. You can stay.”
“Thank you.”
***
She finished re-shelving at quarter past two, rolling the squeaky, empty card over the rare books room. The third floor stacks were completely empty, the study tables long vacated by sensible students. The fluorescent lights hummed comfortingly in the silence.
In the rare books room, only the desk lamp was lit. Professor Ren had cast off his drab gray tweed jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows, as if bending over the old texts was physically, and not just mentally laborious. His pen moved fleetingly over the notepad next to him – a mix of English and Greek letters, Greek on the right, English translation on the left.
“What are you writing? Your book, I mean.”
She’d almost expected him to be annoyed at the interruption – maybe that’s why she’d done it, to give him a taste of his own medicine after he’d tortured her for two weeks – but he wasn’t. He looked surprised and pleased. He immediately adopted his professorial tone. “Violence and literature in the ancient world.”
“What?”
He leaned forward on his elbows, his voice picking up pace. It was the most animated she had ever seen him, and she had seen him lecture for two weeks – or at least, she had when she’d been awake during his lectures. “The Greeks and Romans memorialized war in poems, plays, epics – literature was central to their culture, and war was a reality of their world. Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles – their ideas about sacrifice and honor and what it means to be a warrior shaped Western civilization.”
Rey blinked. “How… how did you decide to write a book on that?”
“I wrote my thesis on The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides.” Rey privately wondered how long ago that had been, it couldn’t have been very long. His enthusiasm made him seem even younger than he normally did. Thirty, maybe? “It consumed my life for about a year, but I didn’t mind. I thought I should write a book next, and so I became a Professor so I could… indulge my scholarly pursuits.”
“Late at night.” Rey inserted. He laughed.
“Yes. Late at night. When I’m not teaching an Introduction to Classical Art and Literature.” He named the course almost disdainfully. “Unfortunately, the University mandates that I teach a certain number of introductory courses to keep my funding.” He added, sardonically, “And, besides, how else would I meet such alert, motivated young students such as yourself?”
Rey flushed. He was ribbing her playfully, she could sense, but it still stung. “I’m sorry. It’s not that your class isn’t interesting, I’m just tired.”
“It’s not particularly interesting.” He interjected, good-humoredly. “And you are tired. You shouldn’t work these hours.”
Rey considered rebutting him – she took a full course load, and she needed the money for rent and tuition and ramen noodles. She didn’t have the luxury of sleeping. She decided it was better not to delve into that subject with a man she hardly knew, her teacher, no less. It was too personal, and sensitive. She dodged and addressed his first comment. “But… your book. It seems much more interesting than your lectures. Maybe you should teach more of this. What you’re interested in.”
He nodded, thoughtfully, studying her like she was a rune to translate. “Maybe. When does your shift end? I’ll leave before then, so you don’t get in trouble for letting me in here.”
“Five.”
“All right. Thank you again, Miss Kenobi – wait, what is your name?”
“Miss Kenobi.” She couldn’t resist snarking, just a little. He grinned, and looked positively boyish. She would never have guessed that he had a sense of humor, but there it was.
“Your first name.”
“It’s Rey.”
“All right. Thank you, Rey.”
***
The next day in class, there was a latte on her desk in the lecture hall when she trudged in at three minutes to eight, operating on two hours of sleep. The barista’s scrawl on the cup, in black sharpie, read: For Rey – stay awake!