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Kevin really felt for the kid. He knew that look. Anyone who had been at Stanford long enough knew that look. His laptop was on the floor, he had books thrown all over the place, pens, highlighters, everything was a giant mess. He even had three different colors of highlighter on his socks, somehow. Meanwhile, he was curled up in a ball with his face buried in his knees, rocking back and forth and muttering to himself. That was the look of a kid who needed Taco Bell, now.
After a quick jog back to his room, Kevin nudged a chemistry textbook out of the way to make room to sit by the kid. He wrapped the blanket he’d retrieved around him, which got the kid to peek out. “Hey. I’m Kevin. Too much homework, midterm, or group project where everyone else in the group is a complete slacker?”
“None of the above.” The kid looked up, and Kevin winced in sympathy at the tears streaking his face. “It’s just, I know I’m only in my first quarter and no one cares that I don’t have any idea what I want to major in, but how am I supposed to choose? I had trouble getting my class load down to something approaching reasonable for this quarter!”
Oooooooooof. Kevin couldn’t relate to this one; the only doubts he’d ever had about what to major in had been based on whether he’d actually make it to school to pick a major. “What do you want to do when you finish school?”
“More school.” Off Kevin’s skeptical look, he clarified, “Seriously, I don’t plan on leaving school until it’s time to retire. Probably become a professor at some point, just because, but I’d be okay with just taking classes forever.”
“Wow.” Another thing Kevin couldn’t relate to. He was looking forward to being done with the grind and the projects and the idiocy of stupid classmates. Of course, kid was only in his first quarter. When he got to his tenth, he might feel differently. “What’s your name?”
“Jesse.” He held out a pen-covered hand, which Kevin took for the shake. “What’s your major? How did you pick it?”
“Religious studies, and it… kinda got picked for me. It’s a very long story.” Jesse threw a hand out over the mess around them. “All right. Fair point. Got any food allergies or anything? I’m gonna order Taco Bell. You look like you could use some.”
“No, I’m good with whatever. Thanks.”
Kevin put in an order while Jesse watched in silence. Once it was paid for and his phone put up, he heaved a long sigh. “Are you sure you wanna hear this? It’s not exactly the most believable of stories.”
“You wouldn’t believe my childhood either. Try me,” Jesse said with a smile.
“All right. When I was in high school, Mom had everything all planned out for me, I was going to double major in bioengineering and music and could then pursue any of the three acceptable career paths: engineering, medicine, or symphony. Then, my last year of high school, right before AP exams, I got hit by lightning.”
“Ow! I’m glad you survived!”
“Yeah, me too, although at the time I wasn’t so sure. See, this is the unbelievable part – the lightning turned me into a prophet of the Lord.”
Jesse’s surprise was expected. Kevin was rather floored by Jesse’s question, though. “If you’re a prophet, why are you taking religious studies in college? I’d have thought you’d know it all, or at least have better sources. More reliable than textbooks written by humans.”
“Yeah, but when I’m trying to talk to people, it helps if I know what they’re expecting to hear. Besides, it makes my mom happy that I’m still going to college, and I’m more interested in this than I ever was in bioengineering.” Kevin stared at Jesse, head cocked to the side. “You aren’t gonna question my sanity? Call me an attention whore or a schizophrenic or something?”
“No?” Jesse ducked his head. “If I can exist, you can be a prophet, and I know enough lore to know that you’d have to be crazy to want to be one.” Jesse paused. Kevin didn’t say anything – if Jesse wanted to clarify, fine, but it really wasn’t any of Kevin’s business what Jesse was. If he were dangerous, Castiel was only a prayer away. “I’m the Antichrist.”
“Uh, what? Like, son of Satan, destroy the world?” Kevin refused to believe that. This kid was so eager to learn about the world, why would he destroy it?
Jesse laughed softly. “The son of Satan thing is a misconception. My father was just a normal run-of-the-mill demon. My understanding is that during the Apocalypse I’m supposed to nuke the angels, but my parents – adoptive parents, not the demon – raised me better than that. I just wanna live my life, although I’m not gonna apologize for the fake lobbying group I set up to take money from billionaires to fund being a perpetual student. After all, it’s only a little evil.”
Kevin’s laughter caught them both by surprise. “I’m not gonna ask you to. I think it’s hilarious. I don’t even wanna know where my sponsors are getting the money for my scholarship. Being a prophet… what’s supposed to happen is that I get taken out to the desert to study with the angels, but there’s about a million reasons why that wasn’t gonna work. Instead, they hooked me up with a full-ride scholarship to whatever university I wanted to go to. Before the prophet thing I’d been looking at MIT, Harvard, Yale… decided to come here instead because a friend went here and loved it.”
“Fair enough. I picked Stanford because I liked their open approach, letting me do pretty much whatever I wanted, and I got enough snow when I lived in Nebraska, didn’t want to go to the Northeast. Of course, the open approach thing is kind of backfiring now…” Jesse picked up a book. “I’m trying to decide what to take next quarter. Only thing I’ve got so far is the freshman writing course, and that, I basically looked at the list of possibilities, counted them up, and used a random number generator to pick one.”
“Heh. What did you get? Some of those choices are hilarious.”
“Making Mashups. The course summary sounds wild. Hamilton, plastic surgery, and Steph Curry.” Kevin snorted – that sounded hilarious, all right. “My writing class this quarter kinda sucked. The research skills are nice, but the teacher was boring and the assignments were the worst of any of my classes.”
“Heh. Some classes are like that.” An alert from his phone had him getting to his feet. “I’ll be back. I should probably look into what to take next quarter, too. Not nearly as big a decision as it is for you, for me it’s just about knocking out the rest of my requirements for my major, but I will have some free units too. We can look together while we eat crappy tacos.”
Tacos and laptop secured, Kevin rejoined Jesse, who wrapped the blanket around Kevin too. Kevin didn’t have much trouble finding the classes he needed for his major, but after that, he had no idea what to do next. Jesse had settled on another class, the second part of the introductory chemistry sequence he was taking since he needed a second science class even if he didn’t major in science, but from there was still lost.
“I take it you didn’t start a language this quarter? Because that would be an easy five units right there, plus knock out another requirement.”
“Yeah, I probably should have. I can start one this quarter, right? If I do a popular language? Like Spanish?”
“Yeah, you can. What language did you take in high school? Because you might be able to place into something beyond the first course.”
Jesse shook his head. “I took French, but the teacher sucked. I would rather switch to something else now and then come back to the French in a few years, when I’m less traumatized and more in the mood to learn. What did you take?”
“In high school, Latin. Here, classical Greek and biblical Hebrew. Tell you what, I’ve got room for five units, pick a language and I’ll take it with you. We can practice together.” It would fill out Kevin’s schedule nicely, and why not? He liked this kid.
Jesse settled on Japanese, and after another twenty minutes of back and forth, gave up. “That’s all the units I need right away, and I can go to some extra classes for the first day and decide on one or two then. You got everything you need?”
“Yeah, as far as units are concerned I’m good to graduate already, it’s just getting the specific classes for my major and finishing up my honors project. My mentor was weirded out when I told him I can read Enochian, but he was happy to let me do my project on angels using primary sources.” Kevin lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m totally bending the truth about one of my main sources. ‘Angel’, notes by Marv Carver… actually notes I took on a tablet dictated by God and written down by Metatron. Marv is the name Metatron used when he had his grace cut out, and Carver, that’s Carver Edlund.”
“The guy who wrote those terrible Supernatural books about Sam and Dean Winchester?”
“Yeah, that guy. Turns out he was actually God in hiding. How much more primary a source on angels can you get than the words of the guy who created them?” Kevin grinned at the look on Jesse’s face. “Sadly, that’s about what my mentor’s face would look like if I told the truth, so I got a friend to hack some databases and at least make Marv Carver’s notes have just enough presence to be acceptable.”
“Wow. I think I need to meet your friends,” Jesse said. “They sound like the kind of people who can handle having a cambion as a friend.”
“Yeah, they’re awesome that way. Of course, if I bring you home, they’ll make assumptions about why I’m bringing someone home…” Assumptions Kevin wouldn’t mind a bit, but he wasn’t going to expose an unsuspecting person to the Winchester Inquisition.
Jesse tilted his head, considering Kevin. “Midnight Taco Bell and bonding over a college meltdown’s not a good first date. Only objection I have to those assumptions.”
“Okay! Do you like football? There’s a home game on Saturday afternoon, and then we could go get dinner at somewhere the food isn’t a meme.”
“…It’s probably an NCAA violation if I use my powers to heal our team and not the other guys,” Jesse said. He winked at Kevin. “On the other hand, how exactly are they going to catch me? Still, play it safe, no brain damage for either team on Saturday.”