Chapter Text
“Who the hell is Professor Solo?”
Cassie glances down at her phone, flicking through the calendar until she reaches the lecture they’re meant to have next. Sure enough, the name there is Professor N. Solo, teaching their next lecture course, Modernism in Paris, 1874-1914. “New professor?” she asks her friend. “I haven’t heard anything about him.”
Her friend shrugs. “Give me a sec, I’ll google him,” she says, and she’s already opening up Google on her phone. Cassie reaches her out and steers her round a corner, and by the time they get to the lecture hall she has his bio up on her phone. “Yeah, he’s new,” she says as they walk in and find some seats. “PhD from Cambridge, apparently.”
“What do you mean, apparently?” Cassie points out. “That’s his bio. He’s not going to lie on it.” She reaches over and takes the phone. “No picture, then. He’s probably some old white man, with that name.”
The class settles down, people pulling out laptops and pads of paper and various brightly coloured highlighters. There’s a low murmur throughout the room. It’s halfway through the third year of the course, and none of the students in the room are intimidated by the Cortauld Institute anymore. They’re mostly freaking out over the fact that this is their final year, and they have essays and exams and reading and absolutely no social lives.
The moment that Professor Solo walks into the room, everyone falls silent.
“Sorry I’m late, this place is a maze,” the professor is saying as he sets his satchel down on the table and digs out a laptop. “For those who haven’t looked at their timetables yet, which is probably not any of you, seeing as you made it here, I’m Napoleon Solo. Please call me Solo, not Napoleon. I’m teaching modernism in Paris, and I’ll be chucking some other stuff in there, because you’re all in your final year and life isn’t difficult enough already for you lot.”
He grins, and there are audible gasps from around the room. Cassie briefly glances around the room, and half the people look like they’re almost drooling as they stare at him. “Fuck,” her friend whispers to Cassie as Solo leans back against the table and flicks through his laptop, finding the right lecture slides. “He’s hot.”
On the desk in front of her, her phone lights up with a new message. It’s on the group chat for their class, and she has to stop herself laughing when she sees that someone has just written OH SHIT. Almost instantly, there are notifications popping up of people posting GIFs. She doesn’t even have to open the group chat to know they’ll all be various GIFs of exploding hearts and women collapsing from the sheer hotness of him. She stifles another laugh, and tries to pay attention as Professor Solo starts to talk. This class is going to be interesting.
0-o-0-o-0
What makes it worse, she thinks at gone midnight whilst she’s still trying to finish an assignment, is that he’s an excellent lecturer. Modernism is interesting anyway, and the vague subject she’s thinking of pursuing for her Masters, but Solo keeps everyone awake, even on a Monday morning. She’s pretty sure that people who don’t even take final year Modernism have sat in on some lectures, just to confirm the rumours spreading around the Institute.
There’s been dispute already about whether he’s single or not, which personally she finds a bit weird. Their lectures are small enough that it’s pretty interactive, and half the time they’re in a gallery itself, with Solo talking about the art whilst standing right in front of it, asking their opinions every few minutes. It’s surprisingly hard to draw him off topic, and she gets the sense that there’s a sharp intelligence behind those smiles and sarcastic remarks. Still, he’s older than most of them, probably around his forties, and she thinks it’s weird to talk about anyone like that, let alone their professor.
It isn’t until the second week of lectures with him when a blurry photo of him is posted to the group chat. HE’S WEARING A RING, is the next message, and the chat promptly explodes. Eventually, with some sneaky use of phones, there is clear photographic evidence that Solo is, in fact, wearing a wedding ring. Cassie wonders how, in a room of supposedly intelligent people, nobody thought to look for that before.
Of course, the gossip inevitably turns to who his spouse is. They’re in the middle of London, and pretty much all of them are in their early twenties, so there’s a significant portion of the class voting for husband on the poll that someone set up. Given time, Cassie knows this will develop into an actual bet, though they bet working hours, notes, essay structures and answers to past exam questions, or alcohol, all of which are more valuable than money to them.
Some students try and draw the answer out of him. “Doing anything interesting this weekend?” someone asks on a Friday as they’re all packing away after the last lecture. “Any plans?”
Solo huffs a brief laugh, and shakes his head. “I have your work to be marking,” he points out. “And some of my own research to be getting on with. Let me guess, you’re all going out clubbing?” His expression doesn’t seem to change, but there’s a vague sense of displeasure about the idea.
Someone else scoffs. “We’re final years,” he says. “We don’t have time to go out clubbing. We have your essays to write.”
Solo hums. “Yes, and I think you should all be getting on with that this weekend, don’t you?” he says. “Also, I don’t want all of you just focusing on Cézanne for that essay I set earlier this week. Branch out, find your own artists to support your points. If they’re obscure, that’s fine. If they’re not, that’s also fine, but I don’t want you leaning on the well-known artists just because it’s easier and there’s more writing on them. You all need to start thinking on your own.”
There’s a general groan around the lecture hall, and Solo smirks. “I never said I would be easy on you lot,” he points out. “Like you said, you’re final years. You need a push now and then.”
It’s only after they’ve left and Cassie is sat in her apartment, staring at her Modernism textbooks, that she realises just how easily Solo deflected their questions about his life. It didn’t even seem like he realised he was doing it.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t have enough time to dwell on her professor’s private life, seeing as he’s turning out to be particularly ruthless with his marking and commentary. She knows that it’s because they’re approaching writing their dissertations, knows that she has to push herself to be as good as she can be, but it doesn’t stop her cursing him as she struggles through yet another essay.