Chapter Text
Arthur frowned as he opened one of his powerpoints and loaded the whiteboard up. He had about 2 minutes until his first class of the day started. At least it wasn’t a bad class, they always seemed to get on with their work, even if they were a bit talkative he thought, sipping his luke-warm coffee. The Brit hadn’t always wanted to be a teacher, when he was young he’d dreamed of becoming a historian or a writer, however, Arthur knew as well as the next man that dreams do not come true, thus he was a history teacher in a country 8 hours away from his home. The school bell sounded suddenly, drawing the green-eyed man from his thoughts as the first of his students started to file into the classroom, each one looking more tired than the last. Arthur let them all settle down while he busied himself with a pile of textbooks which were at the back of the class.
After ten minutes the class was in full swing, Arthur was at the front talking about the Roman Republic.
“So as you know from your last lesson, the first triumvirate was aligned in 60 BC, can anyone tell me who was in the alliance?” Green eyes scanned across the room as a few hands flew up, indicating they knew the answer, not as many as he had hoped but then again it was a Monday morning. “Chris,” he pointed to a boy near the back.
“Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, sir,” the boy said.
“That is correct, well done, this lesson we will be moving on to the reign of Julius Caesar as Rome’s dictator.” Arthur was about to hand out the textbooks when another hand flew up. “Yes, Jamie?”
“Are we going to look at the book?”
“Excuse me?” the teacher turned his whole body to the student, indicating his confusion.
“You know, the book, Julius Caesar, we’re studying it in English.”
“You’re studying wh- oh,” Arthur frowned and picked up the textbooks, “you mean the play by William Shakespeare?”
“Yeah, are we-”
“No, we are not, because that is a play which is dramatized for entertainment, therefore holds no reliability for a historian,” the blonde said, setting the textbooks on each desk.
The rest of the lesson passed quickly and before Arthur knew it he was sitting at his desk marking test papers.
“God, some of these kids are bloody stupid,” he muttered, scribbling an ‘X’ and some notes about why the student was wrong.
“Shouldn’t say that out loud, someone might hear you.” The British man jumped at the voice and glared at the bespectacled man in front of his desk. Alfred F Jones, physics teacher.
“What do you want?” Arthur grumbled, setting his pen down before resuming his glare at Alfred.
“I was looking for Mattie, thought he might be with you since you’re both from the same department thingy.” The younger male waved his hands in the air, referring to the classroom.
“You mean our classrooms are near each other?” Arthur sufficed.
“Yeah, that, I needed to ask him if he can give me a ride home, I left my wallet at home so I ain’t got no money to catch the train like normal and my car is still in for repairs,” the American said, picking up one of the textbooks and flipping through it. “So…” The Brit waited for the man to carry on, but it seemed he had no intention of doing so.
“So what?”
“Sooooo, is he here?” Arthur face-palmed and sighed.
“Yes, in fact, I was able to find a spell that made him invisible to only you, he’s been standing in front of you this entire time,” he said, picking up his pen again to continue marking. Alfred obviously didn’t sense the sarcasm.
“Really? Wow, that’s so cool bro, how’d you-”
“No! Of course, he’s not bloody here, I was being sarcastic,” Arthur almost shouted at his fellow teacher, “He’s probably upstairs with that frog,” he added, calming down enough to finish the current paper he was marking.
“You mean Francis?”
“No, I meant the pet frog that Matthew totally has.”
“He has a-”
“Sarcasm!” Arthur cut in once more, his temper being tested; how could this man be so stupid and a physics teacher at the same time?
“Oh, right, so you did mean Francis?” The blonde male sighed and rubbed his forehead in exasperation.
“Yes, I meant Francis, that bloody french frog.” Alfred started laughing at this, causing Arthur to look up in annoyance and confusion. “What?”
“I dunno, man, it's just weird that he’s french but he teaches English, I know it's not like the language but I dunno, just kinda funny.” Green eyes were rolled as new irritation grew within the blonde. It wasn’t funny, in his opinion it was almost an insult English, that bloody Frenchman was teaching English? While he taught history? Something just didn't add up, at least he Alfred spoke English as a first language and didn’t have a stupid accent; well not as stupid as his.
“Its an offence to the English language,” Arthur said, bushy eyebrows furrowed as he barely contained his anger.
“Well I dunno about that, he’s not bad at teaching the kids about books and whatever, I even heard some of them imitate his accent to remember quotes from books.” Alfred clearly didn’t notice the look of contempt upon the Briton’s face as he carried on speaking. Arthur could imagine students reciting poetry with a French accent, then his mind wandered and he imagined the students reciting Shakespeare with a French accent; he had never wanted to kick someone more in his life.
“Hey, Art, are you even listening to me?”
“What? Oh yeah, I-” the bell suddenly rang and Alfred jumped off the table he had been sitting on.
“Jeez, gotta run I’ve got to teach 10th-grade physics.” And before Arthur could scold the man for knocking his coffee mug over he had dashed out of the classroom and down the corridor as another class started to walk in. I’ll get both of them, the frog and that bloody wanker he thought as he started his lesson.
About 2 weeks past and Arthur had changed his mind about Francis. He no longer wanted to kick him… no, he wanted to kill him.
“He’s doing it on purpose I know he is!” The Englishman growled as he slammed his empty mug on the counter. It was Wednesday and already Arthur had had his Julius Caesar classes interrupted 5 times when a student asked about the book. It’s not even a bloody book! It’s a play!
“I don’t think he chooses what to teach them, Arthur,” Matthew said quietly, nibbling on a cookie.
“Yeah, well the bloody wanker could’ve chosen a different time to teach it instead of the same time I'm teaching the real thing!” Every lesson he had to explain that the ‘book’ was actually a play and that it wasn’t historically accurate, there’s no evidence that Caesar said ‘Et Tu Brute?’, that ‘Mark Antony’ was actually ‘Marcus Antonius’ and that Shakespeare had made up most of the things for dramatic effect. The already short-tempered Brit was becoming more and more annoyed by the continuous cascade of questions about the play instead of about real history.
“Good morning Matthew, Arthur,” Roderich said as he passed the two men with a cup of coffee.
“I don’t see anything particularly good about it,” the history teacher grumbled, “I swear if another one asks about Shakespeare I will tear my eyes out.” Normally Arthur would be delighted that one of his students was asking about Shakespeare; one he loved reading and would’ve prefered to teach English rather than history and two, he liked to think that the kids would rather ask an actual English person about an English playwright.
“Have you talked to Francis? Maybe tell him to include facts or tell them that it's just a book?” the Canadian asked, brushing crumbs off his lap and standing up.
“It's not a book!” Arthur cried, making a number of heads turn to him in alarm. “And no, I don’t want to spend any more time with that sodding frog than I have to.” Matthew sighed nodded, gathering his things like all the other teachers.
“Yeah I know, but maybe you shouldn’t get so worked up about it, after a month or two you’ll both move on to different parts of the module, just suffer through it.” The green-eyed man was about to protest but he was interrupted by a loud voice.
“Yo! Mattie! You’re meant to be helping me mark my papers!”
“Yeah, I’m coming Al! I’ll see you later, Arthur.” And he disappeared out of the door of the staff room.
“Fine,” mumbled the Brit, picking up his bag, “I’ve got that class to teach again anyway.”