Chapter Text
You’re so tired.
Which is funny, because it’s what people always say about universities and colleges in general—how they have you do nothing for days, weeks, months, and then one fine evening you’ll be furiously typing in a Google Doc like there’s every Pagan god imaginable waiting to kill you at your doorstep. Except you did do the work. Except you have been submitting assignments days before they’re due and emailing professors to ask about a project at the end of the semester when it’s only been the syllabus week and in joyful tears they will post a Canvas announcement titled ‘Chill out!!’ and then you’ll ace every test, sign every attendance sheet, and pass the class with flying colors because you always do. You always make it.
But by God, you’re so tired.
The tea is lukewarm beyond recognition by the time it slides down your esophagus. It was supposed to be coffee. It was supposed to be a can of Zero Sugar Redbull Johnny slipped you at the cafeteria when he saw you white-knuckling a bottle of water on an empty stomach. He also stuck around long enough to hear you bitch about how much you want to kill your three useless groupmates, nodding through every complaint like he’s ready to kill them for you until Hot Pants arrived with your Panda Express order and handed you herbal tea she brewed in a thermos. Letting you whine against her chest as she massaged your scalp with gentle fingers.
It's not even midterm week yet.
But it is an important assignment. This class… erm, well, Political Science. Yeah, you didn’t know what you were on when you picked this as your minor. Rumors of a stupidly handsome professor and his stupidly sounding name did well amongst the jobless, internship-less sophomores and it wasn’t long until you succumbed to the hormonal urge of having at least one mandatory eye-candy as your lecturer—motivation to get through just another grueling semester.
And he isn’t really that bad, per se.
With deepest condolences, though, you’re not seventeen anymore either. Your frontal lobe is still developing at this moment, even if you feel like you’re gonna die hunched over your laptop in the cramped space of your dorm’s study desk. His charming smiles and Barbiecore aesthetics had done little to ease your growing apprehension of the man, seeing him sometimes at the on-campus Turning Point USA tables, laughing so loud that Diego’s brows twitched as he walked by, one hand looped around your shoulders.
“His class must be so ass.”
Not quite. The right to disclose one’s political beliefs is protected by academic freedom, after all. Boasting about said personal ideologies in a government class would raise a few eyebrows at best and be considered a violation at worst, but your professor thankfully did none of those things. Hell, that man even tl;dr-ed his homework as ‘I don’t care what your political view is; just do the damn paper.’ You liked that; you liked his lectures. You liked how generous he has been so far with grades and extra credit.
If there was one thing you had to fight those glowing 4.9/5-star reviews on RateMyProfessor about, though, it’s the fact that on your first two assignments, he took off one point on each without ever telling you what was wrong. There was a rubric, sure, by which you knew something about political theory applications that was not up to his standards, but not a single piece of feedback specifically telling you what it was?
‘smartypants.’
That was the only comment awaiting you in Outlook a day after you maxed out the 1,500-word count and were so, so certain you were gonna get full points that you just let Gyro drag you to wherever he wanted in the arcade. 15 out of 16 wasn’t bad, actually, even if you had spent the entire ride back grinding your teeth when your total dropped to a whopping 97%…
But smartypants?
Smarty?
Pants??
You love pants! Short pants, long pants, Hot Pants. The English language truly works in wondrous ways, having combined your two most favorite nouns and bred out an adjective that could have blasted a small Victorian child straight into the sun… or you, because in disbelief you foolishly Googled the term again just to have some Indian guy with a PhD on Quora tell you that yeah, it was not a compliment!
Whatever.
It’s fine.
Funny Valentine isn’t the root of your frustration tonight, anyway.
Distantly, there’s a sound of a window breaking over the obnoxious thump of EDM and you have the sudden urge to run everyone in that fraternity house on the other side of the campus with a pickup truck. You will, in fact, run over the three guys in that crowd whose contributions to the project stopped short at their phone numbers and Instagram handles. Messages left on read, crickets in the group chat when you texted, as politely as you could have managed, “hey guys, iphones don’t come with built-in mind reading yet so can anyone tell me why no one did what i fucking told them to? ^_^”
Someone's car broke down for the third time this week. Someone's grandma just died. Someone had to walk their goldfish at 3AM and pick up their niece and mow the lawn and work a 4-hour shift and all the excuses to not do the thing that they fucking signed up for.
But whatever.
It's fine.
If that frat hazing makes it to the local news by morning, all of them are going to jail. Good. Serve those white boys right for making you power through this much workload.
“Ugh, where’s my phone…?”
You blink wearily at the last slide on your screen for a few seconds before shaking your head.
You haven’t touched it for hours. After heading back from lunch, you did end up falling asleep after about 30 minutes of doomscrolling and woke up with the sheet’s imprints on your face, feeling more disoriented than ever. Still, what has to be done has been done, and you have, ultimately, finished doing the entire team project on your own in less than a week.
Yayyyyy…
Darkness clogs your vision for a brief moment when you stand up a little too fast for someone who has been rotting on the same chair since sunset. Accepting your deteriorating health, you let gravity do its job to bring you face-first into the pile of unfolded laundry on top of the bed, rummaging somewhere underneath to find your phone. They still smell really sweet though, your clothes. The thick jacket that Hot Pants draped over you a few nights ago lies amidst the mess, and you nuzzle against the fabric, swinging your legs happily.
The screen dims; your battery is at 12%. Not really that surprising, considering how many times you’ve plugged and unplugged it today to hastily search something on Google, refresh your Canvas, check the group chat to see if anyone has responded, refresh your Canvas again, and stare at the assignment because you were really losing the will to do anything but.
Increasing the brightness, you scroll through your unread messages.
There’s one from Johnny asking if you’re still sane, which you reply with a cat thumbs-up meme. There are two from Hot Pants begging you to at least hit the sack before 1 AM lest you have a stroke and fucking die; you heart her messages, knowing you will probably stay up to compensate for the time you’ve spent on this one class either way.
Then there's Gyro who stumbled through some slurred, poorly-spelled versions of your name before sending you a clip of him trying to impale himself on one of the clothing racks in Hot Topic. Johnny, luckily, forwarded a text from Risotto into the common group chat before you could call the cops, clarifying that the Italian blonde had gotten home safely.
So far so good.
You gloss over the few dick pics that Diego unsent and squint at the time on the edge of your screen.
11:53PM.
“Time to turn it in…" you mutter before hauling your ass across the room and back down the squeaky swivel chair.
Everything looks good; well, you’ve run the raw content through dozens of online grammar checkers and had all four of your friends proofread it to exhaustion, anyway. Going into OneLogin and the course’s menu on Canvas, you drag your five-day-old unaborted child into the assignment dropbox, click submit, and watch with mild amusement as confetti rains down your screen.
11:57PM.
Immediately you’re hit with a wave of drowsiness strong enough to sedate six elephants. The caffeine and adrenaline rush out of your system just as fast as they enter; you barely have any time to think before you collapse back into your bed and get plunged into the deepest slumber you’ve had in months.
: :
It's bad that you wake up with a sore back.
It's worse that you wake up with an oily scalp because it means you’re unlovable and incapable of loving until you’ve hopped into the shower and washed the grease away. Oily scalp is bad because it smells bad, feels bad and it whispers bad thoughts into your brains in general. In fact, why are you even lying here? You should get into the shower right now.
Ugh, what time is it again?
Your throat feels itchy, prompting a string of dry cough as you blindly reach for your phone and tap the screen a few times.
Pitch black; of course it's dead.
Sighing, you reach for the charger on the nightstand and plug your phone in. The pile of laundry is temporarily swiped aside as you put on your comfy slippers, grab your bag of toiletries, and lock your room. It's a chore having to walk down the hallway, but given how high the sun has risen, the communal bathroom should be empty at this hour.
Huh…
While lathering your hair with shampoo, something odd stirs in your guts.
I don't feel too…happy.
Which is fair. Valentine’s classes are pleasant in-person but each and every topic he assigned drains the living daylight out of you for how ridiculously detailed the instructions are. Still, you pushed through. You submitted everything on time, all by yourself. Not that this warrants a huge celebration or anything because this will unfortunately be a pattern for many years to come and many more deadbeats you’ll have to work with, but by the very least, right now, shouldn’t you be relieved?
You aren’t.
In fact, walking back to your dorm room, anxiety gnaws at you like, uh, you know that feeling when your palm itches and you have to bite around cluelessly just to soothe it? You can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, but it’s there, and it’s bothering you. You blow-dry your hair, fold your clothes, and clean around your room before remembering that your phone must be on by now.
The time reads 10:33AM.
It’s Friday, and you don’t have any classes.
Still, you plan to swing by the school’s café to hang out with your chaotic friend group. Thoughts of familiar faces bring a smile to yours; maybe it’s gonna be okay. You just need people to talk to, after all. A hectic week doesn’t mean a hectic life.
And then your phone blares the fucking Aztec death whistle.
“Argh—!” the sound knocks you out of your daydream, and you hastily reach for your phone.
It’s an incoming call from Hot Pants.
Unironically enough, the name of the woman you adore most is simultaneously not the one you want to see at this moment.
Because she never calls you unless there’s an emergency.
Last time she did, your car was towed when you unknowingly parked in a spot reserved for the Dean of Faculty, the same morning that man arrived on campus. You had called in sick for your first class, then panicked the whole time you were in her office as she phoned the local law enforcement.
Not even one hour later, your car was back.
All fees were waived, and Hot Pants truthfully had looked amused more than she was annoyed, but guilt clawed your insides still as you bleated, holding onto her shirt then. “I’ll be more careful next time. I’m sorry!”
Okay, maybe you weren’t sorry enough.
“Hello…?"
Hands shaking, you answer the call.
“Are you still in bed?”
The low, smoky alto of her voice vibrates from your speaker. You gulp and start praying.
“I-I woke up and took a shower. What’s wrong?”
There’s a rustle in the background, paper brushing against paper.
“Drink some water first. You sound dehydrated.”
You hurriedly scout your surroundings and find a half-drunk water bottle on the nightstand before downing the rest in one swig. Some droplets make their way down your neck, making you wince.
“Good, now take a deeep breath.”
You comply. Hot Pants’ fingers drum against the surface of her desk on the other end.
Please don't be about Valentine, please don't be about Valentine—
“I saw Valentine at the teacher's lounge this morning. He was holding a paper with your name.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“He has this very… peculiar expression on. We didn't talk, but I’ve heard around the Department that your recent submission stirred quite the reaction out of the man.”
“Must be an excellent paper then,” is what you would have confidently blurted out ten hours ago. Instead, you press your lips into a thin line, awaiting the ultimate predicament.
But Hot Pants doesn't elaborate.
There's a faint hiss that only her favorite Montblanc fountain pen makes during piston filling. You hear rattles as a drawer slides open.
“Check your email. We’ll talk more at lunch.”
She hangs up.
Oh.
Oh.
How bad does it have to be for her to tell you everything in person? You grit your teeth and close your eyes, taking another deep breath.
You’re not seventeen anymore.
There's no point in spiraling and degrading yourself more than you already have because what happened happened. The best thing you can do right now is face your problem head-on and find a way to remedy it.
Outlook isn't your first destination, though. Anxious as you can be, this is something that you took pride in, having completed everything on such short notice and presented your work in a way that matched his standard. Well, your standard, to be exact. You’ve had a rough outline of what you should be doing a week before he even talked about this in class, and the idea of a simple PowerPoint slideshow with voiceover… didn't intrigue you at all. It probably didn't intrigue him as much, too, as Valentine himself stated that it was the most common type of submission he had received.
Was it your goal to stand out?
LOL, no. You just wanted a good grade. There's a section in the rubric labeled ‘Creativity & Originality’, in which he also noted that a max of 2 points in this was one that mainly differentiated a lot of Bs from As. You only got 1 on this from your first assignment, hence that patronizing ‘smartypants’ comment.
But you just wanted a good grade.
Letting out an excruciating sigh, you pull up Canvas. It's been a habit for you to submit most of your schoolwork on your laptop and immediately switch to the mobile app to view your files in case they get corrupted or magically flagged by the system as unsupported. Yesterday was the only time you did not follow through due to your exhaustion.
Did God specifically choose that one day to make an example out of you?
“Let's see…”
You mutter, narrowing your eyes as you speed-scroll through the entire thing.
“32 whole pages including MLA citations..."
You can view all of it just fine; there's nothing that got mysteriously voided during transmission. Actually, even if there was, why would that warrant such a severe reaction? Something about the content, perhaps? You’re pretty sure what you wrote aligned with the course, even to this day. So why the hell is Valentine—
Unconsciously, your eyes dart towards the Comments window where it shows both your name and the name of the file that you turned in.
‘shitclass_assschool.pdf’
You feel your soul leave your body.