Chapter Text
It was finals week, and the entire class had gone to an ice cream shoppe to celebrate— some, their perceived success, and others simply that the anatomy final was over. Professor Homura was infamous for being a tough instructor, and his exams were brutal. However, he also graded on a curve and offered everyone a fair chance-- he allowed a retake of midterm and final exams, and was careful to take any students’ learning difficulties into account, with or without a formal diagnosis.
“I’m so glad the Prof let me take that one as an oral exam,” Gojyo was telling Shou’un on their way in. “I’m not great at this stuff, but on paper, some of those names just look like a jumble of letters sometimes.”
“Yeah. Dude’s a dick, but at least he tries to level the playing field.”
Gichou groaned, dropping into a booth heavily. “But only thirty questions! Those multiple choice ones killed me. I had to have flunked.”
“Especially with Hakkai and Toudai in the class, right?” Gojyo prompted, elbowing Gichou playfully. “Can’t grade on a curve if someone aces it.”
For their part, Toudai and Hakkai were poring over their notes and discussing the exam in an adjacent booth. Genjo was listening half-heartedly and checking his email. Goku, Genkai, and Ganpuku sat with them, discussing the menu instead. Soujin covered Genjo’s phone screen with one hand and pushed it to the table gently. “Genjo, he won’t have posted the results yet, he has to grade fifteen papers from our class alone.”
“Shut up, old man,” Genjo snapped, pulling his phone away from him.
“Come now, Genjo, that’s unworthy of you.”
Genjo grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. Jyoan rolled his eyes and slid into the booth with Gojyo, Gichou, and Shou’un. A few moments later, Houmei slid in on his other side while Ryuuzen passed by.
“Bet you did fine, huh, Specs?” Jyoan sneered across Houmei, who frowned at him.
Ryuuzen wrung his hands before sitting next to Toudai. “No, I mixed up the abductors and adductors every time they came up, and I’m positive that wasn’t my only mistake! I wonder if he’ll let me do a retake if my grade isn’t as low as his requirement for one?”
“How do you think you did?” Houmei asked Jyoan.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jyoan replied dismissively, “I didn’t really study all that much. You?”
Houmei laughed. “I didn’t worry about it too much, he said he was planning to hold a retake anyway because someone always scores below 50%.”
Jyoan scoffed. “So you just assumed you’d be one of them?”
Houmei’s expression turned serious for a moment. “I had four exams in the last two days, Jyoan. Physical Therapy exams are all early in the week. I was focussing on my practicals over the one I knew I could retake.”
Gojyo reached across the table and let his hand fall between the two of them with a thud. “Hey, guys, we’re here for ice cream, how about we leave retakes for after?”
A server came around to take their orders as Seiran pulled a chair up to the other booth and Doutaku shoved Shou’un into Gojyo to take a seat. They left bowls of maraschino cherries on the tables, and a few of the students reached for them absently.
Jyoan smirked. “Wanna see a trick?”
Gojyo looked wary. “What kind of trick?”
“Tying a knot in a cherry stem. With my mouth.”
Gojyo stared. “What?”
“I’d like to see that,” Houmei responded, quirking a brow and sliding the bowl closer to Jyoan.
“Hang on,” Jyoan said, and ate a cherry quickly just so he could pop the stem into his mouth a moment later. He made a motion which resembled chewing, paused, moved his jaw around, and then spat a loosely knotted cherry stem into his palm. Houmei took it from him to examine the knot while a few of the others grabbed for the bowl of cherries in the centre of the tables.
“I gotta try that.”
“I bet if he can do it, I can!”
“How hard can it be?”
Several minutes later, all they had produced were bent and broken cherry stems, and Ganpuku had nearly choked on a bit of stem that came loose when he tried. Soujin had simply watched his younger classmates, knowing full well he wouldn’t succeed, and Houmei had given a token effort before shrugging and spitting out the bent stem. He stared at Jyoan while he ate another cherry and then knotted its stem. This one he spit directly at Houmei, who flinched just enough to clear its path. Before anyone could respond, the waitstaff came back with everyone’s ice cream, and the students dug in.
After a while, when everyone had mostly finished their ice cream and some had moved on to coffee, Genjo stood up, phone in hand. “Guys, Homura posted the grades.”
“Don’t leave us hanging, Genjo,” Houmei teased.
Genjo pursed his lips before looking around. “Does anyone not want me to announce their grades?” he asked, waiting through a few moments of silence before he began reading the grades off.
“Toudai, Hakkai, you two both got 25 out of 30, but that was the highest score, so he scaled it to 100%.” The two of them were visibly relieved, and a few of the others tensed up. “Seiran, Soujin, and Doutaku, 24 correct, 96%. Next-- shit, next was 19, and that got me a 76.” Genjo looked around again. “You guys are really sure you wanna hear this out loud?”
There were various murmurs of “I don’t care” and “whatever” with some noises of assent, so he continued. “Genkai, Ganpuku, Goku, you three got 18 right and a 72%; Ryuuzen, Shou’un, Gojyo, and Gichou got 15 right and got a 60%; Jyoan, you got 14 right for a 56% and Houmei, for the love of Buddha, study for the retake, you got 12 right and ended up with a 48%.” He scanned the rest of the email he’d been reading and continued. “Anybody who got less than 15 right is required to do the retake in order to pass regardless of your grade for the rest of the semestre, and he said anybody with less than an 80% semestre grade or 72% exam grade is ‘encouraged’ to retake.”
Gichou and Ryuuzen both started muttering about going to the retake and Gojyo and Shou’un stared at each other for a moment before pulling out their phones to add it to their alarms or calendar apps.
Three days later, the retake was held. Of the six who redid the exam, Houmei and Jyoan stayed the longest, each trying to ensure they hadn’t missed any mistakes this time, as they were the ones that were actually required to retake it. On their way out they paused in the hall.
“You actually study for this one, if your practicals were all at the beginning of the week?”
“Of course. What about you, how come your grade was that low? You seemed to do fine in class.” Houmei looked genuinely curious, watching Jyoan’s face almost carefully. Jyoan almost told him off or lied, but the longer Houmei looked at him, the less he wanted to. Instead he sighed.
“I just don’t test well. I get all mixed up and especially if there’s a time limit and I freeze, I just. I fuck up a lot of stuff even if I know it.”
Houmei leaned on the wall casually. “I think Homura would’ve understood if you told him that. Gojyo had him do the exams orally, after all, he would probably have done something like that for you too.”
Jyoan scoffed. “And test one-on-one? That would only make it worse.”
“So what? You’re fine with me one-on-one, aren’t you?”
Jyoan felt his face warming and hoped it didn’t show. “So what? You’re not a prof and you’re not testing me.”
Houmei scrutinised him again and he looked away, pretending to fix his hair. When he looked back, Houmei was still staring. “I’m not testing you, no,” he said at last. “But maybe... testing the waters.”
“For what?”
Houmei smiled enticingly. “That depends.”
Now Jyoan knew he was blushing. He scoffed. “What, don’t tell me you’re trying to proposition me right here in the hallway.”
Houmei laughed lightly. “Well, I’d offer to take you out for coffee instead, but I heard you say you don’t like coffee late in the day when we were at the ice cream shoppe. And neither of us is exactly dressed for a date.”
They paused while Homura left his classroom and walked down the hall in the opposite direction.
“It doesn’t have to be a proposition, either, we can just head to the dorm and watch a movie or something, if you’d prefer.” Houmei continued, undeterred. Jyoan, for his part, seized the shoulder strap of Houmei’s messenger bag and used it to pull him into Homura’s classroom. He pushed him back against the part of the door without a window and kissed him before pushing the messenger bag from his shoulder and letting it fall.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then.”
Jyoan smirked. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got something to show you.”
He bit his lip briefly, hoping he would actually be able to do what he planned, but this was no test. This he was sure he could do. He dropped to his knees and glanced up to see Houmei’s eyes blown wide and focussed on him.
“I can show you exactly what I can do with this mouth.”
Jyoan hooked his thumbs under Houmei’s shirt and rested his hands on his abs, then went for his jeans with his mouth. He heard Houmei gasp over him and smirked around the denim between his teeth. He pushed the button through the buttonhole with his lower teeth, then pulled on the denim to pop it free. Once he had done that, pulling the zipper down with his teeth was easy. Before he could continue, though, Houmei hauled him to his feet by the lapels of his jacket to kiss him again.
“I have to warn you, Jyoan, if you want this to last at all, you need to slow down before undressing me with your teeth.”
Jyoan smirked. “I can work with that.”