Work Text:
“This essay is going to be the death of me,” Lilith groaned as she shoved her computer away from her. Eve caught it just before it hit the floor. “Should’ve let it smash. I can replace it easily, and then I’d have had an excuse not to have this stupid essay done by tomorrow night.”
Eve gave her an unimpressed look. “And when was this assigned?”
“In my defense, last week, and you know how busy I’ve been with my important classes,” Lilith argued. Labs and reports due in both physics classes, a midterm in her math class, and an essay to write about Tycho Brahe for her astronomy class. “It’s only 5000 words, but what the hell do I care about courtly love in medieval literature? Why did I take this stupid class?”
“Because you’ve been procrastinating on your literature class and it was this or French Enlightenment literature, and you thought this sounded less boring,” Eve reminded her, earning an eyeroll from Lilith. She hadn’t been procrastinating. She’d just kept not finding anything good that fit into her schedule, and now she was out of time. Eve opened the laptop, typing in Lilith’s password. “What’s this essay supposed to be about, anyway?”
“Courtly love in medieval literature, weren’t you listening?” Lilith grumbled.
“Yes, but you didn’t mention if there were any specific works you were supposed to reference, and that’s kind of a broad topic. Are you comparing it to modern notions of love, or discussing common tropes that made up the stories, or taking a feminist or queer perspective…?”
Lilith stared at Eve, trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about. “I dunno. Give me that.” She pulled up the assignment. “See? All the prompt says is courtly love in medieval literature. Oh, it does say we have to talk about more than Lancelot and Guinivere in the tales of King Arthur. Then a bunch of technical details and that’s it.”
“Excellent. Can you pull up your reading list for the course?” Lilith did, wondering what Eve was doing. If it were most of her other friends, she’d assume that they were just going to do this stupid essay for her, but Eve refused to bow down to the queen the way Ruby and the others did. She took her role as Designated Mom Friend seriously, including insisting on people doing their own work.
An hour later, Eve handed back the laptop. “Here you go. I gave you two possible essays, with bullet point outlines for each that ought to get you to 5000 words. If you can get it written by noon, I’ll proofread it for you before you turn it in.”
Lilith’s jaw dropped. “What happened to you not doing the work for us?”
“I didn’t. You’re writing the essay. I just gave you a framework.” Eve smiled at Lilith. “If you didn’t do any of the reading, you’re still going to have trouble, and you’ll notice a couple bullet points that demand you give your own answer to a question I put in there.”
“Fair enough. Thanks.” Now that she had a place to start, Lilith was much less cranky, and managed to force herself to get going on her work. She quickly chose the comparative essay, comparing the notions of courtly love to how love was portrayed in modern romance novels, because romance novels, she got. She had almost two thousand words when she noticed something odd.
“Um, Eve…?”
“Yeah?” Eve looked up from her own laptop, where she’d been writing something herself. “What’s up? Something need clarification?”
“Yeah. This bullet point here.” The one that said Will you go on a coffee date with me? “Is this supposed to be about the coffee shop trope in fanfic, or are you telling me to ask my TA out on a date because seducing him is my only hope of passing this class?”
Eve raised an eyebrow. “Really? Those are the only two options you came up with? You can’t come up with a third option?”
“Well, normally if I saw that someone had written that to me, I’d assume I was being… asked…” At the smile blooming on Eve’s face, Lilith trailed off. “Are you asking me out?”
“Yes. I’ve been meaning to for weeks, but never quite found a way, and when I decided to help you with your essay I figured why not slip it in there? Nice and low pressure, if you’re not interested you could just ignore it… except that I overestimated your ability to figure out what I was doing.” Eve laughed softly at herself. “So? What do you say?”
“I say I’ll have this essay done by noon, and we can go get coffee instead of you proofreading it for me. You’re such a dork.”