Chapter Text
Work.
Everything seemed to revolve around work. You couldn't remember the last time you had a whole evening to yourself, and it was draining. Sleep, lecture, lesson, assignment, sleep. Hours on end spent listening to your professors drone on with their monotone voices why you struggle to keep up with scribbling down notes, let alone notes you will have to understand at a later date. You just wanted everything to slow down, to stop, even for just an hour.
Your alarm went off at the usual time of 7:00am, ripping you from sleep, and forcing you to stick an arm out from the warmth of the bedsheets you had wrapped yourself in to give the clock a good smack to shut it up. You tore your eyes open, and let out a monstrous yawn.
Simply giving in to sleep once more was so tempting, but the last time you'd let that happen it hadn't ended well, and resulted in you bursting through the doors of the lecture hall with your top on backwards, and wearing two different shoes. Even the professor was crying with laughter, and you had sworn to your flustered, embarrassed self to never let anything like that happen again.
With that distressing thought in mind, you threw off your bed-sheet cocoon, sat up, swung your legs over the side of the bed and stood up in one swift movement. You stretched out your arms and rolled your head, easing off the slight stiffness from sleeping. You showered, brushed your teeth, dressed, dried your hair, packed your notebooks into your bag, and grabbed your keys before slipping out of your small one-bedroom apartment to make your way to class.
You were out by 8:20am, and the fifteen minute walk meant you arrived slightly early, giving you time to grab a cereal bar from a vending machine as an excuse for a quick breakfast. You continued on your way to your fourth psychology lecture of the week, which, as much as you liked the subject - it was fascinating, intriguing - you hated the professor.
Professor Lake was the walking definition of asshole. Arrogance and narcissism radiated off of him, and every second you had to spend in his presence felt like an hour. Every word that came out of his mouth was dripping with self-worship and vanity; he could never be wrong, and if anyone dared to try and offer a contrasting opinion, he would shoot them down again with an unsettling squint and a sarcastic comment. This was definitely not the type of person you had imagined would be teaching you about the world and the way people's minds worked. You didn't know what the university were thinking, employing someone with such a closed mind. It was infuriating.
It wasn't just his personality that was repelling. His clothes were always obsessively neat, without so much as a crease on them. They looked as though they had been passed through four generations of Lake men, old but well kept. Whenever he waltzed passed you, his odor was of old fabric and dust with a hint of sour cologne. With an outdated tie, glasses on a chain, aging face and just a whisp of grey-brown hair left, he was the perfect 'demon head master' stereotype.
Oh how you looked forward to spending another hour with him this morning.
You crossed the busy campus, looking around as other people your age were talking in groups, scrawling down the last paragraphs to 15 page essays they hadn't quite finished the night before, couples latched onto each other by the mouth - did they even need to breathe? - and the students scurrying past, who were going to be late for their classes because they were on the completely wrong side of the facility.
You hadn't had much time for a social life since you'd started here; you didn't know how other people managed it, and you, for the most part, kept yourself to yourself, just wanting to get your work done and make your way through your time here as smoothly as possible. You were happy this way. Stressed to high heaven with the amount of work, but content with being alone. You'd happily chat to people if they started a conversation or needed some help with an assignment, but that was as far as it went.
By the time you got to the familiar room you would be spending the next hour in, other students were already going in. Two girls closest to the door slowed their pace as they got to the entrance, looked at each other and started giggling to one another, obviously seeing something in the room which you hadn't yet discovered.
What would make them giggle like that? Had Professor Lake come to work naked or something? On second thought, you decided a naked Professor Lake would definitely not cause that reaction. Vomiting, yes. Giggling, no. The girls went into the room after some deliberation on who would go in first. You shook your head at them before heading on in. You looked up and,
Oh.
This was definitely not Professor Lake.
The first thing you noticed was the trench coat. Tan in colour, and long; it went all the way down to below his knees. He wore black suit trousers and black boots. His upper body consisted of a white shirt that looked slightly too big for him, and you could see the edges of a black suit jacket underneath the trench coat at the collar and lapels. Around his neck was a dark blue tie, not completely done up, with the top button of his shirt undone.
He had a slight stubble, and his eyebrows were furrowed as if he was confused. His short, dark brown hair was parted on your left, the majority of it pushed to the right.
In short, he was beautiful.
You realized you'd been staring for a few seconds, with him only returning your gaze with that confused look, before snapping yourself out of it and continuing into the room and taking your seat on the far right of everyone else. You took out your notebooks from your bag and looked back up at the new stranger once more. Everyone else was as perplexed as you were at the new arrival.
He moved to stand in front of Professor Lake's desk, standing up a little straighter than you felt he was used to, with his hands hanging straight at his sides. His eyes scanned the room.
When his eyes fell on you, he held his gaze a second longer than he had done with anyone else, and you felt a light blush spread across your cheeks.
His eyes moved to the center of the room again, and almost nervously, he spoke:
"Hello. My name is Castiel. And I am your new teacher."