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Chapter Text

A Couplet of Fools

Chapter 1: Your voice came down to me like angels’ chorus

             Jonathan Sims hated poetry. It was a fact as certain as the sun. Water was wet, sand was gritty and gets everywhere, and when presented with a poem Jonathan Sims would wrinkle his nose as if faced with a bad smell.

             That did not seem to matter at all to the Head of the English Department and Jon’s brand new boss, Elias Bouchard.

             “I mean, I’m qualified to teach it technically I suppose,” Jon tried to press again as he squirmed uncomfortably on the ancient wooden chair set facing Elias’s annoyingly sympathetic face on the other side of his office desk, “But I hardly did a dissertation on the subject! Besides, you’ve already got me teaching five classes for the semester which I believe is the maximum-”

             “For goodness sake Jonathan, it’s only poetry,” Elias managed to cut Jon off smoothly, “It’s not as though Gertrude was any more qualified to teach it than you are, and I’m sure she’ll have had a lesson plan lying around somewhere you can use for the semester. I realise this may seem like a lot to ask of you seeing as it’s your first semester with us, but I assure you that having a professor pick up classes for another when they are… unexpectedly indisposed is quite normal in this profession.”

             Jon grimaced. It wasn’t just his first semester at this university, but his first semester teaching at all. Not that he would dare tell Mr. Bouchard that he didn’t think he could handle the work load. “Yes, but surely if a professor isn’t passionate about the subject matter, the course itself would suffer-”      

             “I reiterate, it’s only Poetry 101. Even in the English department it’s only an optional first year course, and most taking it are upper years in other majors looking for an easy elective. These aren’t future poet laureates, they are children looking to write some nonsense and get an easy A. Don’t worry so much about it, you’ll hardly notice it on top of your other classes I assure you.”

             “Well that’s the other thing! My other five classes already have me working through most of the usual class day, and the poetry class time overlaps with Literature and Crime on Tuesdays, so I don’t see how I can teach two classes at once!”

             “Oh, that’s easy enough to change. We’ll move poetry to a different time slot, it’s… twice a week I think, yes?” The question felt rhetorical as Elias turned to his frankly antique Mac computer on his desk and brought up the scheduling program. “Ah yes, the 11:30 slot. So we can move it to… oh, hm, I see what you mean.”

             “Exactly! You could move it to 4:00, but I don’t see any classrooms available for that time that are big enough.”

             “You’re right, you really need a proper lecture hall for a first year class like this… I suppose we’ll just have to go earlier.”

             “I already have 8:00am classes across the week,” Jon scowled as the words left his mouth. He’d never considered himself an early riser but he knew well enough that a first time professor such as himself wasn’t exactly going to get first pick of time slots.

             “Yes, well, it’s a little unusual but we’ve had popular classes take earlier slots before. 7:00am isn’t too early-”

             “But it’s an hour and a half class both days!”

             Elias looked at Jon critically over the top of his glasses. “Alright, 6:30am then. If that’s not too early for you to get your beauty rest in, of course.”

             At the comment, Jon felt his entire face heat up. What was he doing? This was his boss! “Ah, right, sorry.”

             “Gertrude never seemed to have trouble with the schedule-”

             “Yes! Yes, you’re right I’m being… foolish. Just… nervous about the start of semester. I- I want everything to go well. 6:30am is fine. I will be more than happy to cover the class for you.”

             “Of course, Jon. Lucky for you, I don’t have time to go hiring a new professor this soon before the start of the new term.”

             “Ah, y-yes, lucky…”

             “… that was a joke, Jon.”

             “Oh! Er,” Jon laughed awkwardly as Elias continued to watch him over his glasses. The laugh ended on a swallow. “Right. That would be… inconvenient, after Gertrude… left unexpectedly? Did she, er, retire early for some reason, an illness or…?”

             “Hm, no. It seems that Ms. Robinson was forced to flee the country after she was indicted in a domestic terrorist incident.”

             “Ah, well, that’s a shame to hear but these things do hap- wait, the prior poetry professor was indicted for- oh, ah, another joke?”

             “No, I’m afraid not.”

             “…oh.”

*

             Jonathan Sims never did things by half measures. It was a fact as certain as death and taxes. Birds flew, fish swam, and if Jonathan Sims was going to teach a poetry class then he was going to make damn sure he did it right, even if the subject matter made him want to casually throw up in Elias’s polished shoes.

             The first regrettable thing Jon discovered on the first of the four days leading up to the start of semester and his first poetry class (the first class he would ever teach, and wasn’t that it’s own regret) was that despite Elias’s ‘assurances’, if Gertrude Robinson had ever possessed a lesson plan for her poetry class it wasn’t anywhere Jon could find. Hell, he couldn’t even find an old syllabus posted on the school’s website to lead him in the right direction.

             Strapped for options, he even went so far as to check ratemyprofessor.com to see if he could glean any idea of how this class had been taught in the past. The reviews of Gertrude Robinson proved more concerning than anything else. She didn’t seem to have had any more respect for the subject matter than Jon did, and being under tenure seemed to have no trouble displaying that fact for all to see. Apparently most of her so-called ‘lectures’ were merely anecdotes about her summer-long crusades against one terrorist cell or shady politician or another, and most worryingly it seemed that she was actively trying to recruit her ‘favoured students’ into going on these ‘missions’ with her.

             Of course, these tales were told on a website that rated their teachers for ‘hottness’ level so it had to be taken with a grain of salt. Not to mention most of the students also seemed sure that the stories were probably made up and that Gertrude simply had an odd sense of humour, but knowing what Jon knew about Gertrude’s absence this semester well…

             The other thing evident by Gertrude’s five star rating is that she was a ridiculously easy grader. Several reviews stated that she graded based on quantity rather than quality of assignments. As long as you handed in something you would get full marks. They were pretty sure she never looked at what was handed in either, as one student reported they turned in an entirely plagiarized Keats poem (urgh) with no comments and a full score, and another saying they had sent in a recipe for chocolate chip cookies with the same result.

             By the end of that first weary day of trying to figure out what to do with this class, Jon sat over his rickety kitchen table in the glow of his laptop screen and made a decision.

             Yes, it was only poetry. First year poetry at that. And yes, maybe Jon didn’t truly have any passion or even a passing liking for the subject. But if the university he worked at was going to offer a course, then damn it that course deserved to be taught comprehensively! These students were paying good money to be sat there, and they were going to learn something and earn their marks!

             So Jon quickly opened a new document and titled it Poetry 101 Syllabus. Then he opened his web browser and searched for ‘history of poetry’, ‘famous poets in history’ and ‘types of poetry’.

             He was glad he had been over-prepared for his other five classes for a month already, because these next few days he was going to be awfully busy. He might be starting from scratch, but if anyone could write an entirely revamped poetry curriculum in a few days, it was him!

             And if the extra work helped to calm his nerves over having to face down an entire lecture hall full of students who would be watching and judging his every move to make their own ratemyprofessor.com reviews about him… well, all the better.

             He was going to have to microwave a lot of tea for this.

*

             For a long time, Martin Blackwood didn’t think he’d ever go to university. His grades in secondary school hadn’t been anything special even before he’d dropped out, and aside for some thoughts toward the idea of an English degree, he hadn’t really had any firm idea of what he’d even go to school for. Career plans fell to the wayside a lot when you were seventeen and navigating around a mother who only got more and more sick despite her insisting she was fine and soon enough she couldn’t look after herself and well…

             For the next several years, Martin often worked two or three jobs at a time to make ends meet and keep a roof over his and his mother’s head. When she insisted he put her into a care home he followed her wishes even though his budget was stretched ever thinner by having to essentially pay for two rentals instead of one.

             And then, she died. It was years ago now, and Martin had felt adrift for a while. He kept working of course, he could hardly afford to take time off to mourn, but he couldn’t help but wonder what the point was. He had no family, or close friends, not even a pet to care about. At one point, he was pretty sure he was only going to work every day because he would feel bad about screwing over his coworkers who would be short staffed until the manager replaced him.

             After about six months though, Martin had realised with a start that he had significantly more money in his bank account than he’d thought he’d had. He hadn’t been watching the numbers too closely while swamped with depression, but when he realised he had near a thousand pounds more than he’d expected to see (which was closer to zero), he realised that without his mother’s expenses he actually was managing to save money for the first time in his life.

             The trouble was, after living frugally so long, Martin wasn’t really sure what he should do with this revelation. 

             Eventually he found himself with quite a nest egg, and yet he still wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. After thinking it over for a while, he’d gotten himself a new mattress to help with his aching back and even a decent laptop. He certainly didn’t regret either purchase, but he couldn’t bring himself to justify any other big buys for himself. So he kept working, watching the encroaching next few decades approach him at a snail’s pace with nothing but an endless stream of rude retail customers to look forward to.

             Then, something changed. One of his new coworkers at the tea shop, an exceptionally tall girl with very large glasses named Sasha James, mentioned she was taking courses at one of the local universities. She was taking a double major in parapsychology and library sciences, and Martin had congratulated her and glumly added that he hadn’t even managed to finish secondary school.

             “You could take an equivalency test and get your diploma anyway!” Sasha suggested.

             “What, no I--you can do that without finishing secondary school?”

             “Yeah! I know someone, Daisy I think? She's in my year, and I’m pretty sure she dropped out of high school and wrote the equivalency test. She got into the program easy enough. You could do the same thing!”

             That had stirred something in Martin that he’d taken far too long to realise was hope. He didn’t want to get ahead of himself, but he used his new laptop that night to look up the study guides for the equivalency test and hesitantly began to read them. He was surprised to find the material wasn’t as difficult to understand as he had expected. Once he had passed the practice test online a few times, he signed up to write the real thing. It wasn’t long before Martin found himself officially graduated from high school at last. He wondered if his mother would’ve been proud of him.

             … probably not.

             But his mother wasn’t here anymore, was she? And when he’d told Sasha of his success, she had excitedly insisted that he take his rare night off to spend with her and her best friend Tim to celebrate. That night had been the most fun Martin had had in years, if he were honest, and when Tim started talking about how he had taken what he’d called an ‘extended gap year’ and was planning to go to Sasha’s university the next autumn in pursuit of an English degree, Martin had been tipsy enough to moan that he wished he could go to university with them.

             “Mate, what’s stopping you? You’ve got savings and a high school diploma now!”

             “I… I guess but I doubt I’d be able to do a Masters or anything, and I don’t know if I could write essays and research papers for the rest of my life and-”

             “Woah mate, you don’t need to go into academia, you know? You could do like, accounting, or some kind of admin accreditation? Just something to get you a 9 to 5 job so you aren’t running off your feet all day, you know?”

             And that, above all else, had gotten Martin thinking. He’d spent so long assuming going to university was something beyond his reach that once it was in his reach he’d needed someone else to point out what was now in front of his face. Now though…. Now he realised that this might be an answer. Sure, maybe a lifetime as an office receptionist wasn’t the most glamorous work, but it was a hell of a lot better and more sustainable than what he had been doing.

             So he looked into it, with encouragement from the first new friends he’d made in ages. And the next September, he found himself dropping one of his jobs, cutting his hours on the others, taking out a school loan, and starting university as a mature student.

             In that first semester, alongside his administration classes, he had space for exactly one elective course. Over the last several months of being in better spirits, Martin had rediscovered one of his hobbies from secondary school, and so it felt natural enough to pick the poetry course as his elective. It had helped that Tim had announced he would be taking it as well, so he could have at least one class where he wouldn’t have to sit by himself.

             He hadn’t even minded when he’d received an email mere days before the start of the semester telling him the poetry class had been moved to 6:30am. It still fit around his other classes, and he was used to waking up that early from working opening shifts at the tea shop. Tim had sent him plenty of text messages complaining about it (he, Martin and Sasha had been hanging out more frequently once it was confirmed they’d all be attending school together come fall), but honestly Martin was kind of excited that this ensured his university experience would start with poetry. Perhaps it was a whimsical idea, but he figured that had to be a sign that things would finally start turning around for him, right? To start his student life with something he loved?

             When Martin put himself to bed the night before his first day of classes, he found he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face.

              Martin was getting his life together. Martin wasn’t going to let things slip away from him this time.

*

             Martin was late to class.

             He’d had a bad start to the day when he’d slept through his phone’s alarm. Luckily he was an early riser anyway but 6:00am just didn’t give him enough time! Then he'd skipped breakfast and run out the door only to realise on the Tube that he’d forgotten his pens. He’d have to borrow one from Tim, he supposed. Speaking of, he was texting the man frantically to get him to take notes for him until he got there.

--

Martin: Have I missed much, yet?

Tim: nah, prof’s going over the syllabus first. Its looking a lot tougher than I thot tho? Id heard on the student gc that this class easy af

Martin: Oh well, it can’t be that bad. It's a first year course, right?

Tim: dunno, looks like theres gonna be quizzes and like, a LOT of hw? Wait lemme ask some1

Tim: k so, apparently this is a new prof? the old one basically passed everyone but I guess this guy didn’t teach here last year? guess we’ll be his guinea pigs, huh marto?

Martin: I guess. Okay, I just got to campus and heading for the Arts and Languages building, I’ll be up in a minute.

--

             Martin shoved his phone back into his pocket and power walked his way through the door of the building. He felt so, so grateful that Sasha had taken him and Tim on a private tour of the campus the week before and had made sure he knew where all his classes would be ahead of time. If it wasn’t for that, he surely would’ve spent another twenty minutes searching through the maze-like corridors on the second floor for the right lecture hall. 

             Of course, the door squeaked when he opened it, and by the dead silence and numerous pairs of eyes that turned his way it must’ve done so in a moment of silence. Most of the students took him in with a single glance and then returned to facing the board below them, but one set of eyes focused in on him with a ferocity that left Martin’s heart hammering in his throat. They held so much disdain in fact that Martin could make out the eyebrow crease at a distance, which was actually a bit impressive, though it might’ve simply been easier to focus on the face given it belonged to the professor teaching the class.

             “You’re awfully late,” the professor declared with a deep voice that carried itself easily around the room and, frankly, landed on Martin’s ears like melted butter. Surely it wasn’t fair that his voice sounded so nice when he was obviously so cross?

             “Um, sorry? I m-missed my alarm,” Martin managed to squeak out as he edged his way sideways along the wall to the tempting empty seats nearest the door. There were a couple of students far younger than he was glancing up at him with dubious faces, probably concerned that Martin’s girth would knock over their laptops if he tried to squeeze by them. One was already scooping hers nearer to her chest in preparation. Maybe if he moved fast…

             “If you have trouble getting up on time, I assure you that you will not be doing well in this class. Attendance is five percent of the grade, but any pop quizzes will take place first thing and those will be worth ten percent of the grade. You can see as much on the syllabus on the board, which you will now have to go over in your own time since you were late. You’re lucky this is the first day and a first year course. I certainly wouldn’t be bothered going over this with upper years.” The professor fell into indistinct muttering as he turned back to his laptop and started fiddling with it, removing the syllabus projected on the screen behind him and setting up a PowerPoint presentation in its place. Martin felt stunned, face heated red as people kept turning to look at him while he stood frozen in the doorway.

             Someone cleared their throat next to him, and Martin turned to see the girl who had moved her laptop already. She was three people deep in the row with a free seat next to her. Her long, curly brown hair was pinned back with both a green headband and a ponytail, and he was surprised to see she was smirking at him.

             “What a dick, right? Come on, get in here before he snaps again.”

             “Right, thank you!” Martin whispered back as he wiggled by multiple pairs of knobby knees and steadied laptops, managing to settle into the seat beside the girl and flip down the half desk which sat propped flush with his thick thigh and made him feel bigger than usual. He pressed himself toward the side with a free seat so as to avoid touching the girl nice enough to offer him room and gave her a hesitant smile as he stuck his hand out. “I-I’m Martin.”

             “Melanie,” the girl snorted, but humoured him by shaking the hand offered. It flooded Martin with hope that maybe he could still make some friends here, even if there was an age gap with most of them. He quickly began to fumble with his bag.

             Martin hadn’t packed his laptop, not realising that this was apparently the note taking method of choice in university by the numerous computers he could see lit up in the tiered seats before him. He pulled out his notebook, but again remembered he had no pens.

             “Er, s-sorry to bother you again, but-” Martin was cut off by a slam of flesh on wood.

             “Alright, that’s it!” The professor, who had been droning pleasantly in the background as Martin had struggled to right himself in his seat, now stood with his hand on his desk and a clear glare on his face directed at Martin exclusively. “While you weren’t here for my instruction on how little I tolerate noise in my classroom, I would think it would be common sense that talking would be forbidden!”

             “Ooh, forbidden is it?” Melanie muttered with an eye roll, even as Martin felt his shoulders start to shake. God, he had no idea university professors would be this intimidating!

             “S-sorry, I just, I n-needed a pen, you see, for my notes?” Martin managed to croak, though that didn’t make the professor any happier.

             “Late and unprepared?” Jon huffed. “Does anyone have a pen Mister… er…”

             “M-Martin. Ah, Martin Blackwood.”

             “Yes, does anyone have a pen Mr. Blackwood may borrow?”

             There were a couple of murmurs, but no one raised their hands. A sweep of the room revealed an awful lot of laptops, and a couple of students sitting with nothing in front of them at all, and two others with notebooks, but no one seemed able to spare a pen. Jon scowled.

             “Fine, you may borrow one of my pens, though I expect it to be returned when you’re finished with it.”

             “Oh! Um, thank you. Ah, sir. Thank you, sir.”

             There was an extended pause where the professor continued to look at Martin as he squirmed in his seat, which lasted until the man began to tap his foot.

             “Oi, is he serious?” Melanie muttered as the professor raised his voice into a sharp ahem and pointed at the floor by his feet. There were some titters of laughter around the room and Martin realised with a start what the man wanted.

             “You want me to go down there and get it?!” Martin yelped.

             “Do you expect me to climb all the way up there to hand it to you?”

             There were more snorts of laughter. Martin thought he could see someone with their phone out recording the professor and then… yep it was pointing at him now. God his face was flushed again, this was just great. Taking a deep breath, Martin staggered up onto his feet again and edged back out to the aisle. Melanie watched him go with wide, disbelieving eyes and a hand pressed firmly over her chin as he made his way to the front of the room feeling the weight of a hundred eyes boring into him.

             This was his worst nightmare. He couldn’t believe it was happening. He was gripped with such terror for having messed up so badly already that he worried he would start openly trembling.

             Until he got up next to the professor, that is.

             It had been hard to tell from the elevated back of the room, but this man was tiny . Surely no taller than 5’2, with his heavily greying hair done up in a bun around a severe but overall handsome brown face. In his little sweater vest and fitted trousers he looked… well he looked admittedly rather adorable up close. Even if he was scowling and holding out a pen toward Martin like it was a dirty tissue held over a waste bin.

             But this close to him, Martin could see the man’s hand was minutely shaking and sweat was beading on the professor’s upper lip. Was he nervous? Well, Martin was awfully big, he supposed. Tall and wide, often in the way. Maybe Jon hadn’t realised how big he was until he was this close, either. Swallowing hard, Martin chanced a soft smile in hopes of relaxing the other man.

              It did seem to help. The scowl softened as Martin took the pen as gently as possible, and as the expression loosened he had the sudden suspicion that the professor had to be a lot younger than he looked at a distance. Grey hair and lined face aside, his eyes held some sort of youthful quality that-

             God, what was Martin doing?! He was just standing there staring! “Thank you Mister- er, Doctor-? Professor.” Martin swallowed, feeling even more like an idiot for not even knowing his professor’s name.

             “Professor Sims is fine.” The man cleared his throat. “S-so what have you learned from this?”

             “Er… be on time?”

             “And?”

             “Bring a pen?”

             “Good. Let’s not have it happen again. Back to your seat, I’ve still got a class to teach.”

             As Martin headed back up the aisle, the back door of the room opened with a loud bang and Tim appeared, doubling over to catch his breath and then looking up at Martin with a wide grin.

             “Marto! There you are, mate?! I went out looking for you! Glad you made it back alright. Hey boss, did I miss anything important?”

             “Of course he’s friends with that little…” Professor Sims muttered while Martin was still close enough to overhear. “ MISTER STOKER if you would take your seat, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know you missed very little.”

             “That’s great! I’m going to sit with Marto though. Where’re you- oh I recognise your bag. Hold on a tic, let me get my stuff!”

             “Mister Stoker, I’m trying to-”

             Tim grinned again as he skipped past Martin who was desperately trying to reach the back row with his head bowed. “Excuse me sirs! Just gotta reach back here and… Got it! Oops, sorry miss, knocked your bag there a bit. Ah, what’re you looking at there? That’s not school related! It’s alright, I won’t tell. Just another…”

             Tim got into the aisle, bounded up the steps and neatly edged past the people barring him from Martin with a practiced ease and nestled soundly into the empty seat on Martin’s left. He then immediately shoved a hand across Martin’s middle toward Melanie.

            “Tim Stoker, at your service!”

            “Melanie King. You old guys love your handshakes, don’t you?”

            “Hey! I’m not that old!”

            “ALRIGHT, THAT’S ENOUGH! I’m trying to-”

            “RIGHT, SORRY!” Tim called back down. More laughter rang around the room, and Professor Sims folded his arms and pressed his lips together while it slowly died down again.

            “Right… right,” The professor sighed and returned to looking balefully up at his projection. “Where was I? Ah, yes. So as I said, we are beginning the semester learning about the basics of poetry composition. We will be going over some of the more famous types of poems, learning their history, and how to compose them according to their rules. While some may tell you poetry is an art form that has rules made to be broken and there is no way to write a poem wrong , I will not be adhering to such poppycock in this class. Rules exist for a reason , and if you can’t prove you know what they are then there’s no reason to feel good about breaking them. While you’re in this class, you will write by the book!”

             “… what,” Melanie murmured, seeming to have abandoned writing down notes as she had shut her laptop and was now simply staring down at their professor incredulously. Martin was scribbling down the lecture word for word as fast as possible, but even he had to admit he wasn’t sure what it was supposed to mean. Tim just seemed amused.

             “This guy is wild, huh?” Tim leaned over to whisper into Martin’s ear. “You should’ve heard him go over the syllabus. Said we’re going to have poems due every class , and he will be counting every syllable and half rhymes get half marks . Guy must be obsessed with the subject, I bet he did his Masters thesis on Shakespearian sonnets or something. Must be a sucker for punishment, making himself grade all that though, there’s got to be a hundred students in here.”

            Martin had to agree it seemed more than a little excessive, and he had to admit he was getting nervous again. He’d taken this course as an elective, but if they were getting graded that harshly, it might be better to drop it in case it would lower his GPA… that would be such a shame though, it was the only class he had on his schedule he was actually interested in.

            Not just that but, odd teaching methods and foul temper aside, Martin still had to admit that the professor had an incredibly soothing voice. As he began outlining the history of sonnets (“See! Sonnets! I totally guessed his thesis, Martin!” “He didn’t say it was his thesis-” “CAN WE CUT THE WHISPERING UP THERE, PLEASE ?”) Martin found his mind drifting. He certainly wasn’t ready when the professor announced he would be reading a sample for the class.

            Professor Sims cleared his throat, and read verbatim from his PowerPoint screen. “This is Shakespeare’s sonnet number 138, as written in your textbooks. Pay attention to the rhyme and meter here, next class I will expect perfect format.” Then with a soft breath, the man began to recite in tone even and honey-rich.

“When my love swears that she is made of truth

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutor’d youth,

Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:

On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love loves not to have years told:

Therefore I lie with her and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.”

             Martin was glad he realised his mouth was hanging open before Tim did, or he’d have never heard the end of it. As it was, he slammed his jaw shut with an audible click as the last line floated in the air. He knew the professor was clearly versed in his subject and had a nice voice, but that recitation was perfect. For a moment, Martin entertained a fantasy of the professor reading one of his poems in that beautiful voice one day.

             He was going to pass out in class at this rate, it couldn’t be healthy to have his blood rushing to his face this often, and the man was still talking in that lovely voice...

             “So, ah, as I’m sure was obvious to you all, this sonnet’s theme surrounds the nature of truth and flattery in romantic relationships, as well as the effects of age and deterioration of beauty and its effect on sexual and romantic relationships. You will notice that most sonnets, indeed, most poetry in general, tends to obsess itself with themes of love. Trite as that is.”

             The soppy look on Martin’s face erased itself as a furrowed brow took its place. Maybe it was just the contrast between the lyrical beauty from a moment ago, but the professor’s analysis of the poem seemed extremely brief and clinical, and more than a little snarky. Trite he said. He called a Shakespearian Sonnet trite? God, what on earth would he think of Martin’s poetry if the great playwright himself wasn’t good enough for him?

             A sharp beeping noise began to echo around the room, bringing the professor up short. “Oh for the love of- right, ah, I’ve been told because of the class length you are all entitled to a ten minute break beginning now. Don’t be late back.”

             With a tiny nod, the professor sat himself behind his desk and focused himself entirely on his laptop screen as the students began shuffling with their bags and computers, some of them getting up to leave the room and others gathering into groups to gossip with each other.

             Not wanting to risk sparking the professor’s ire again, Martin remained seated. Tim asked him if he wanted to go with him to introduce himself to their classmates, but Martin swiftly declined.

             “I-I think they’ve all seen quite enough of me for one day, thanks.”

             “O-kay? What does that mean?”

             “I don’t want to talk about-”

             Melanie swiftly leaned toward them and let out a semi-hysterical giggle. “Oh my god, I swear I’ve never seen anything less professional in my life, I’ll tell you what happened.”

             And so, Martin was left mortified in the middle as Melanie outlined what had happened in Tim’s absence. Tim seemed amused at first, though when Melanie got to the part where the man had called Martin down to the front of the room in front of everyone, he seemed to grow a bit indignant.

             “What? All that for a stupid pen? You shouldn’t give it back, he deserves to lose his pen for being that much of an arsehole to you.”

             “Er, no, no I should give it back. I don’t want to give him another reason to be angry, he’s the one grading us after all.”

             “Well that’s dumb. Okay, you can take my spare pen, and I can take the arsehole’s pen back down for you and tell him to leave you alone.”

             “Oh no, don’t do that!” Martin groaned, clutching the professor’s pen to his chest and scrambling to his feet. “I-I’ll return it myself right now and then I’ll use yours, okay?”

             “And tell him off for it!” Tim instructed.

             “He’d deserve it,” Melanie agreed. Martin winced.

             “I don’t think so. I’m… I’m sure there was just some misunderstanding.”

             “Sure, you’re misunderstanding the fact our prof’s a twat.”

             “Melanie!” Tim admonished with a look that read as though Christmas had come early, “You might be my new best friend, right after Sasha.”

             Martin snorted. “So much for me, then.”

             “Martin, you’re clearly the love interest, keep up.”

             “Urgh, yeah, sure,” Martin rolled his eyes at Tim’s trademark flirting and wriggled his way out of the aisle again, picking his way down the steps toward the professor who was still hunched over his laptop. He might’ve been reading something, Martin noticed that his fingers weren’t on the keyboard.

             As Martin drew up beside him, the man didn’t raise his head and he got a glimpse of the screen, which only showed the same PowerPoint slide they had on the board. Being so close again, Martin could see that the man was still sweating with flyaway grey hairs plastered to his forehead. He turned Professor Sims’s pen over in his hand and debated just placing it on the desk and making a run for it.

             Though if he did that, it was possible the professor wouldn’t even notice and then assume Martin hadn’t returned it. He had to get his attention.

             “Sir? Are you alright?” Oh no, why had Martin said that?

             Professor Sims’s head snapped up and turned to stare at Martin like a deer in headlights, his back turning ramrod straight as his hands folded themselves in front of him automatically. For a bizarre moment, Martin felt as though he was the teacher reprimanding the man in front of him for sleeping at his desk, and he pressed down the urge to giggle at the absurdity.

             “Ah, yes er, Mister… um…” the man’s cheeks darkened slightly. “Martin? You’re Martin. What… what do you want?”

             “I was just going to uh, give um… y-your pen, you see?” Martin held up the pen, and the man looked at it for a moment before composing himself back into a scowl deep enough that Martin flinched.

             “Are you not planning to take notes for the second half of class?”

             “Huh? Oh no, I got- Tim said he-”

             “If you’re relying on Mister Stoker to take your notes for you, I think you’ll find yourself disappointed with the results. He doesn’t strike me as someone who takes these things very seriously.”

             “No he just- I mean, well, that’s hardly fair! You haven’t seen his work yet or anything.”

             “Oh I know his type,” the professor grumbled. “If you aren’t going to take a class seriously, why take it at all?”

             “Ah, yes, you s-seem very serious about poetry!” Martin piped in, eager to move away from dunking on Tim. “Um, w-was it your main area of study? You seem to know a lot about it.”

             The look the man turned on Martin now was positively scathing. “As if I would waste years of my life studying this drivel. I know about it because I was asked to teach this course and so I ensured I was prepared for it. I will give it the attention a university level course deserves, but if it was my decision, I wouldn’t bother having it taught at all. Now if that’s all, I believe the break is nearly over.”

             Martin stared at the man slack-jawed and heart sinking as he mumbled an apology (for what, he didn’t know) and stumbled his way back up the stairs to his seat with his head swimming. He reached it just as Tim was also returning from whatever socializing he had been up to.

             “Alright Marto, want to hear my amazing prank to get back at the prof for embarrassing you?” Tim asked as soon as Martin’s butt hit his seat.

             “What?” Martin asked, still feeling rather shell shocked about learning the professor with the beautiful voice apparently thought poetry was drivel.

             “Right, so, I went around while break was going on, and I got a lot of people in on it. The sonnet assignment next class, we’re all going to write the most trite, disgusting, soupy love poetry we possibly can, and make it super obvious it’s all about Professor Jonathan Sims. You in?”

             Martin blinked, and then flushed brightly. “I’m sorry what?”

             “Come on, you heard him! He thinks love poetry is stupid, and it’ll be super embarrassing to get a room full of students telling him his hair is… is grey like wool on a lovely sheep…” Tim trailed off for a moment and then shrugged. “Okay, so I’m not exactly good at poetry. But that won’t matter, cause I’ll make it up in raw sex appeal.”

             “Oh my god that’s hilarious, I’m definitely in,” Melanie giggled and opened her laptop for the first time since class started. “I’m going to start drafting. Maybe ‘There’s nowhere my two lips love best, than underneath that sweater vest?’”

             “That’s disgusting, I love it,” Tim said in awe and then looked at Martin who honestly had no idea how this was happening. “Well? You in?”

             “N-no!” Martin managed to gasp. “Th-that’s completely inappropriate!”

             “Aw, but Marto I’m sure you’d come up with the best rhymes…”

             “Absolutely not, Tim!”

             “Fine, fine…” Tim sighed, “Well, I guess having one non-Jonathan Sims related poem for variety is good too. I think everyone else I talked to said they’d do it and would spread the word. Teach the prof a lesson.”

             Martin blinked, awash with confusion. “What? But, why would they all want to do that?”

             Melanie huffed. “Why wouldn’t they? They all saw how much of a dick he was to you. They laughed at how weirdly mean he was being, but it was obvious you didn’t deserve it. Plus, it’s a funny prank.”

             “O-oh. Um. Well, I’m still not comfortable with that… so…”

             “It’s fine Martin, I’m sure not everyone else is actually gonna follow through with it. It’ll just be funnier if it’s more than just us, you know?” Tim shrugged.

             “ENOUGH CHATTER! Honestly, next person I hear talking in my class is getting sent out in the hall!” Professor Sims yelled from the front of the room, shaking his fist up at Tim, Martin and Melanie. There were more scattered snorts of laughter that left Professor Sims folding his arms around himself again. “Right, so, back to the history of the Sonnet…”

             As the professor carried on the class, Martin tried to take notes but still felt more than a little adrift regarding his strange new teacher and Tim’s ridiculous scheme. He was enough out of sorts that by the end of class his notes looks more like chicken scratch that he wasn’t keen on deciphering, and he was already well out of the building heading toward his next class when he realised he’d never returned the professor’s pen after all that.

             Well, he hadn’t taken Tim’s offered pen either and he still needed to take notes the rest of the day… it couldn’t hurt to hold onto it. He’d return it for the next class for sure.

             Despite knowing that his class on Microsoft Office programs was far more important to his major, he found himself using his poetry professor’s pen to write rough drafts of his sonnets in the margins of his notebook.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Your scornful words decreed there’s no hope for us

             By Thursday morning Martin already felt ragged, and he’d only been in classes two full days. He might’ve been less beat if he hadn’t had a late shift at Tesco the night before, but his manager hadn’t bothered to take note of his changed availability.

             So he endured the late shift with the early morning, thankfully waking with his alarm this time and managing to ride the Tube and stumble into class ten minutes before the start of lecture.

             Upon entering the lecture hall, however, Martin wondered for a moment if he’d gotten the room number wrong. Professor Sims was not standing at the front, and compared to Tuesday there only seemed to be about half the students present.

             Well, Martin supposed he was a bit early. He noticed a couple of students at the front placing sheets of paper face down on a pile. Deducing that was where their assignments were to go, Martin  quickly dug his own out of his bag and made his way to add his to the collection.

             When he was but an inch from setting down his paper, there was a bang as the door slammed open. Martin yelped and stumbled forward, only just managing to slam his hand down onto the stack of papers to stop it from flying off the desk. He turned his head to see the professor had finally arrived. His hair was a mess, half hanging out of his bun, and his eyes ringed with dark circles. He adjusted the laptop under his arm and scurried toward the front of the class. Right toward Martin.

             A glance at the clock showed it was still seven minutes to class time, so Martin wasn’t quite sure what the rush was. Professor Sims seemed to pay Martin little mind as he passed him by and set his computer on the desk beside him, prying it open and groping for the cable to connect it to the projector.

             “Er, running a bit late?” Martin asked with a tentative smile. He meant it kindly, of course, but the look the man leveled at him in response was foul enough to peel paint.

             “I was in a meeting with the Head of the department across campus.” The professor’s voice, while still deep and posh, was adorned today with a tired rasp. “And I’m not late. The class starts at 6:30am.” He named the time as though it personally offended him.

             “True!” Martin piped in, hoping to smooth over his misstep. The unimpressed stare this earned made him feel only more flustered. “W-well, I’ll just be heading to my seat. I was just handing in my poem and now I’ll just… yeah!”

             Martin let out a nervous laugh before turning too fast without watching his elbows. His arm caught on the stack of homework and knocked it all off the desk to the floor. Martin let out a tiny ‘eep’.

             “I-I’m sorry! Oh god, I really didn’t mean to! Let me just-” Martin dropped to his knees to start gathering up the pages, looking up and flushing to see three other students he didn’t recognise looking down at him while holding their own homework.

             “You three, just put your papers on my desk and clear off, watch your step!” The professor sighed deeply and then a brown hand with lovely long, thin fingers was thrust in front of Martin’s face. He stopped and looked at it in confusion for a moment. “The papers, Martin.”

             Martin blushed, quickly passed up the papers he’d already gathered, and bent back down to get the rest. As he did so, his eyes trailed along one of the poems that had landed face-up, accidentally reading one of the stanzas.

‘You are a man who likes to be prepared

And I sure hope that I am never late

To bury my face in your silver hair

And profess or admit my need for dates’

             Suddenly Martin remembered Tim’s ‘prank’ like a wet smack to the face, and frowned as he handed the rest of the papers up to his professor. The man shuffled them together, grumbling as he had to flip a few around so they all faced down again.

             Martin got up and dusted off the knees of his jeans. He just managed to get away from Professor Sims when the door to the class flew open to reveal Tim and Melanie. The two spotted him immediately and dumped their bags in the back row before passing him in the aisle with their homework in hand.

             “Don’t even think of not sitting with us, Marto!” Tim tutted on his way by.

             “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about that,” Martin rolled his eyes, but smiled.

             They dropped off their papers (with much less spectacle than Martin had) and settled in on either side of Martin, despite having left their bags next to each other when they dumped them.

             “Damn, I wish I could see his face when he reads what you wrote, Melanie,” Tim sighed. “I wonder if anyone else followed through on the prank.”

             “Even if they didn’t I think he’s still going to have a conniption when he reads yours,” Melanie laughed into her hand.

             “Is that where you two were? Reading each other’s poems?” Martin asked, voice a little strangled. Maybe he should have gotten one of them to proofread for him before he handed it in. “H-how were they?”

             “Melanie’s was great. She had wordplay, rhythm, the works. Not exactly flattering, but can’t fault the form. My favourite bit was uh, If only I had one eye for to see/ And did so see your concave-like behind/ I’d shriek and stab that eye with ecstasy/ To say that your flat ass did make me blind.” Tim grinned. Melanie smirked.

             “What can I say? Our professor is just that inspiring. Anyway, Tim’s nearly made me piss myself.” Melanie’s smirk widened. “My favourite bit was the eyebrow thing. But it might’ve just been the delivery.”

             “Oh! You mean Hey honey why don’t you come up here now/I’ll show you what to do with that high-brow,” Tim wiggled his eyebrows and Melanie collapsed into instant hysterics and even Martin had to giggle along at his syrupy tone. “Yeah, I was pretty proud of that one.”

             “Alright, yeah, that’s pretty funny.”

             “So what did you write about, Martin? If it wasn’t about the prof, was it about… I don’t know. Flowers? Tea?” Tim raised an eyebrow and Martin flushed.

             “Um, tea might’ve been mentioned…”

             “Well they say write about what you know.”

             There was a throat cleared at the front of the room, and the chattering of students slowly died away as Professor Sims opened the first slide of his PowerPoint presentation.

*

             “As it said on your syllabus, today we will be studying Haikus. They’re actually quite simple really, I doubt we’ll need to waste an entire hour and a half on them. So pushing those to after the break, I received an email from a concerned student asking about the publication assignments I have listed for next Thursday. While I will be going more in depth next week, I think it would be useful to touch on it now in case anyone wants to get started early.”

             Jon covered a yawn with his hand as he pressed the button to move to the next slide, pretending he didn’t hear the shuffling and light coughs echoing around the cavernous lecture hall he was teaching in. That had always bothered him when he was a student, the oppressive silence waiting for the teacher to move to the next point, punctuated by people who couldn’t sit still.

It was unreasonable to get annoyed by that, he knew that was doubly true now that he was teaching himself. But he was still rattled from his meeting with Elias, and that didn’t help the tremor of nerves that ran through him as he waited for his old laptop to follow his command. 

             When Elias had asked Jon to come into a meeting on Thursday at 7am, it had been clear that he hadn’t cared enough to remember his new professor’s class schedule. He’d even had the nerve to sound disgruntled when Jon reminded him that he had a class at 6:30, but he’d agreed to have the meeting at 6:00 instead.

             Honestly, the mistake was made more irritating when Elias revealed the meeting was about the very same class he had nearly made their meeting in the middle of.

---

             “Nearly a third of your roster dropped the course after the first class. Would you care to explain why that might be?”

             Jon had to hold back a scoff, and instead examined the tall, hot coffee sat in front of Elias that his secretary had brought for him. Jon hadn’t been asked if he wanted one.

             “I have to assume it’s the time slot. It was changed at the last minute, so I presume a number of students simply don’t wish to be awake so early for a pointless elective.”

             Elias had studied him over the top of his glasses for a while before taking a long sip from his coffee. He looked tired. Jon would sympathize if he wasn’t quickly gaining the opinion that the Head was an arsehole. “You may be right, but I do wish to stress that the English department’s funding does depend on people paying for English courses. We need a few easy classes that students from other departments feel comfortable taking to boost that funding. If the time slot is putting them off, perhaps you could try to do something to make the class more fun, hm?”

             “I’ll… see what I can do.”

---

             Then Jon had run across campus to reach his class on time, had another irritating encounter with Martin B… something, and then had to fiddle with his unreasonably slow laptop. Needless to say, if he was going to make his class more ‘fun’ it wouldn’t be today. He really wished he’d had time to grab a coffee before class, or for Elias to have offered him a tea at least. He was still exhausted from prepping his lessons last night.

              He’d have to look at the syllabus again later and see what he could do. Maybe he could move the, urgh, limerick lecture up sooner? Limericks were ‘fun’, right?

             “Publication!” Jon said in his clearest lecture voice as he paced in front of the room. It still sounded a little hoarse. “While I’m sure there exist plenty of would-be poets in this world that write for their own ‘enjoyment’,” he paused to do air quotes while rolling his eyes and then waited for the students to laugh.

              They didn’t.

              Well, maybe his Crime and Literature class just had a better sense of humour. “Er, I would expect that if one is paying to take a poetry class at a university level, one would at least have a passing interest in getting their poems published. Therefore, 25% of your grade will be made up of a series of assignments made to teach you about how you would go about doing that.”

             There were some scattered murmurs, and as Jon scanned the room he found a mix of expressions ranging from annoyance to intrigue. He even chanced a glance at the back row, but Martin and the other students there were too far away to get a proper read on. Whatever, it wasn’t like it mattered what they thought, specifically, he’d just wondered…

             Coughing lightly into his fist, Jon moved on to the next slide and began to outline the sorts of places poetry was normally published. Typically, a new author will not find much success trying to get their own poetry book published unless they try to do it themself, and then it can be difficult to find traction with an audience. The best places to start making a name for themselves were submitting poems to magazines and poetry journals.

             Jon rubbed one of his eyes, forcing himself to focus. “Your first assignment, therefore, will be to research five magazines or journals that accept poetry submissions, and write a brief summary of the application process for each of them. Specifications on format will be listed on the learning module for this class on the school website, but I will also go over them now.”

             Then Jon pulled up an example of a summary to show the students what in general he would be looking for, written for a fictional poetry magazine. He felt rather proud of how specific he’d written the rubric to be.It detailed exactly how many words he wanted, the font, the heading organization, and even the writing style. He’d always hated it when his professors were too vague about their assignments and so he vowed to do better.

             By the time break rolled around, he felt sure he had done an excellent job. While poetry itself was largely pointless, surely getting his students used to the publication process would be useful even if they were sensible and didn’t try to pursue poetry as a career.

             As the students got up and stretched, many heading into the hall, Jon collapsed into his seat. Maybe this was a mistake after all and he should’ve cut class early. He would’ve had time for a power nap at his desk… ack, no that would be horribly unprofessional. What was he thinking?

             Oh and he would have to dash across the building to the Grammar and Punctuation 201 classroom after this. No time for a coffee break then, either.

             He could try making it to the tea shop at the ground floor of this building before break ended, maybe there was still time? … likely not, half his class was probably in line there already and he couldn’t risk being late to start the second half. He’d just have to power through.

             He caught himself swaying forward in his seat. He straightened his shoulders and blinked rapidly. He checked the clock on his laptop screen. Two more minutes left in the break, had it really gone by that quickly?

             “Um, sir?”

             “What do you want?!” Jon yelped reflexively, followed by an immediate wince as he rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “Sorry, sorry, you surprised me. Do you have a question about- oh. You.”

             “Er, yes, me!” Martin laughed lightly. He was holding two Styrofoam coffee cups in his hands, each with a tea bag string hanging out of the top, with a number of sugar packets held between his fingers. “Um, c-couldn’t help but notice you seemed a bit run down earlier, and well, I just thought- well since I was at the tea shop anyway, you might like something? It’s only black tea, but I brought sugars. They were out of milk.”

             “Out of milk?” Jon snorted, incredulous. “They would only have been open half an hour at most.”

             “I-I suppose they ran out yesterday and haven’t gotten more stock yet? I didn’t actually ask. Um, but, did you want…?” He offered one of the cups toward Jon.

             He eyed the cup dubiously, but the smell was getting to him. He was really tired, and though he would have preferred a coffee, black tea might hold him over until his next class.

             “Fine. Yes. Thank you Martin, you can leave it just there. Keep the sugar, I take it black.”

             “Oh! Um, if you’re sure…”

             “Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

             Martin didn’t seem to have a response to that, and merely set down the cup. He then bit his lip and left a couple sugars anyway.

             “I’ve already done mine up. Um, sorry, it’s only… this particular shop doesn’t really have very good tea? S-so I’ve noticed the last couple days anyway. The sugar might help if you don’t like it.”

             “I’m familiar with the tea in the building I work at, Martin.”

             “Right…”

             “Incidentally, I don’t take bribes. Bringing me tea will do nothing to affect your grade in this class.”

             “Oh! Oh no, this wasn’t-”

             “Though I suppose if this is an apology for disrupting class the other day, I will accept it as such.”

             Martin’s cheeks were starting to flush. “Ah, well, that’s… good, but it wasn’t really about that? I just thought you could use it.”

             “Hmph. Well, if that’s all, I believe the break should be over.”

             As Martin stammered an awkward goodbye and turned tail, Jon drew the cup toward him. Casting a short look of disdain at the sugar packets, Jon took a sip of the tea and grimaced at the sharp, ever so slightly burnt taste. Not pleasant, but about the same as what he usually made for himself. It would do.

             He stood again, switching over the PowerPoint slides. The caffeine was appreciated, he decided. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get through the next dreadfully dull forty minutes without it. Urgh, haikus…

*

             “I hope that arsehole’s reading mine right now and spitting,” Melanie grumbled as she scrolled over the publication assignment on her phone. Martin made a hum of polite agreement as he sat with her, Tim, and Sasha in the English student lounge during a moment of the day when they all had a bit of free time between classes.

             “Is it really that bad?” Sasha asked. She had a couple thick textbooks in front of her on demonology and historical ghost sightings. Martin imagined parapsychology must have some, er, interesting required classes.

             “Not the first one I guess, researching a few magazines is… whatever. But look here, starting the week after we’re supposed to actually submit to a publisher! He wants us to actually submit our work to a publisher as an assignment?! This is a first year class! It’s not like any of us are actually going to get published. What’s he trying to do, get us used to rejection?”

             “Ah, well,” Tim shrugged, “Since I’m hoping to get into publishing, maybe I should know that particular stabbing pain before I’m the one sending out the scathing rejection letter.”

             Martin made a tiny squeaking sound before managing to get some words out. “I-I-I’m sorry, he wants us to what?”

             “Right?!” Melanie turned her phone around to show Martin the evidence. “This can’t actually be allowed. Besides, what if we don’t want to have our names in a poetry magazine?”

             “Use a pseudonym?” Sasha suggested. “Unless he’s requiring you to use your real names.”

Tim leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head, the picture of ease. “I thought we were only doing this to ‘ get used to rejection’ . You won’t have to worry about your name getting in if they’re going to reject you.”

             Melanie flushed a little and grumbled, pulling her phone close to her face again. “It’s still stupid. Sims is a joke.”

             Tim hummed. “I don’t know, he’s actually pretty funny in his Crime and Literature class. Dry humour, but he’s not nearly as nuts about homework as he is in Poetry. Maybe he just hates poetry and wants to make his students hate it too so we all drop and he doesn’t have to teach it anymore.”

             “You’re right, he does hate it,” Martin said with a brief frown. Immediately Tim’s and Melanie’s eyes snapped to him while Sasha’s trailed back down to her textbooks, clearly bored by the conversation.

             “You sound oddly sure, I was just joking. I heard a rumour that his Master’s thesis was on Shakespearian love sonnets?”

             Melanie rolled her eyes. “You started that rumour, you git.” Tim grinned.

             “No, er, h-he said so, actually.”

             Tim’s jaw dropped. “He did? When? I would’ve thought I’d’ve made a note of that.”

             “I don’t remember him saying anything like that either.”

             “He didn’t! I mean, not to the class. The other day when I was trying to return his pen? I-I asked him if he studied poetry in school. H-he um, I believe he said that poetry was, er, drivel. A-and a waste of time, and er, that he’s rather it wasn’t taught at all.”

             Melanie’s eyebrows climbed to her hairline. Tim let out a low whistle and then laughed, smacking both hands down on the table. “HA! So I’m right! He IS trying to make everyone drop it!”

             “I didn’t say that!” Martin protested, feeling sweat bead on the back of his neck. “Please don’t spread that around, couldn’t he actually get into trouble if the administration thought he was doing something like that?”

             Melanie shrugged. “Am I supposed to care? Not sure why you would, he was a dick to you specifically.”

             “I mean, he might just be stressed or er, not so great in the mornings?” Martin suggested hesitantly. “L-like Tim said, I mean. If he’s different later in the day that’s probably all it is. E-even if he liked poetry, I doubt he would’ve chosen to teach it so early in the morning, yeah?”

             “I guess,” Melanie muttered, returning to her phone screen. Martin nibbled his lip and turned to Tim for confirmation, only to see him perked up on his chair and waving frantically across the room.

             “What is it?” Martin asked, squinting over the lounge and then freezing as he caught sight of none other than Professor Sims himself. He was standing near the entrance to the bathrooms, talking with what could have been another professor or perhaps an older student wearing a hijab and holding a number of books under one arm. She pointed toward the floor and the professor scowled briefly before handing the woman the Styrofoam cup he had been holding and bending down to the floor.

She laughed at something the professor said, and even from his seat Martin could see the man’s face light up in a pleased little grin. It was shockingly cute, and Martin was quick to avert his eyes. God, he couldn’t think that sort of thing about his teacher for god’s sake!

             … he did take another peek to confirm that the cup looked very like the one Martin had delivered to him that morning. Logic would dictate it was probably a different one, all the cups from the tea shop looked much the same after all, but there was a slight flutter in his chest as he imagined that his professor might’ve held onto his first one for some reason.

             Oh.

             Oh no.

             “Martin, you alright there? Don’t worry mate, I swear I wasn’t calling over Sims!” Tim laughed, slapping Martin on the back as he startled back to himself. The professor was leaving the lounge now, quickly vanishing through the double glass doors at high speed and the woman he had been speaking with was now making her way toward them. She was shaking her head as she reached Tim and set down the professor’s cup, which she was still holding for some reason.

             “Stoker, getting a start on a study group?” the woman asked, raising an eyebrow at the others around the table, stopping on Melanie. “I only recognise that one from our classes.”

             “Melanie King,” Melanie introduced herself smoothly, holding out a hand.

             “I thought handshakes were for old guys?” Tim asked with a mock pout. The newcomer snorted as she shook Melanie’s offered hand.

             “Basira. You’re in my Creative Fiction and Script Construction classes, right?”

             “Think so. You sit next to the scary girl with the short hair and sleeve tattoos, right?”

             “Daisy, my girlfriend.”

             “Nice.”

             “Um, sorry,” Martin piped up, eyes fixed on the cup sitting on the table. “Ah, I’m Martin by the way. Er, did Professor Sims just… give you his tea?”

             “It’s coffee I think,” Basira huffed, but smiled. “Yeah, I think Sims is a bit scatter-brained today. He handed it off to me to brush some dirt off his pant leg, checked his watch and was running out the door before I could yell for him to come back. It’s probably fine, they aren’t that expensive.”

             “Ah, even so, h-he probably needs it today. He looked awfully tired this morning,” Martin fretted, hands already reaching across the table to wrap around the cup as he rose from his chair. “I bet I can catch up to him, he just left!”

             “Why?” Melanie asked flatly just as Martin made to leave.

             “Yeah, uh, it’s probably not a big deal?” Basira asked, eyebrows knitting together just as Tim’s eyebrow rose to his hairline and a grin started spreading across his face.

             “Oh Martin you sly dog!”

             “No! Don’t say anything Tim, whatever you’re thinking you’re wrong!” Martin swore, ignoring the heat rising in his cheeks as he backed away from them. Sasha snorted.

             “I’m sure your professor will appreciate your thoughtfulness, Martin,” his former co-worker grinned traitorously, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Are you sure you don’t want to make him a fresh one, though? You always made lovely tea for the customers. Made with love you could say.”

             “Stop it Sasha!” Martin admonished.

             “What?” Melanie looked vaguely nauseous. “Ew. Martin, bad taste.”

             “I’m not listening to this, I’ve got to go or I’ll lose him. I’ll be back!” Martin jogged purposefully away from the peanut gallery before he could lose his nerve, pointedly ignoring the stares from the other students around them as Tim wolf-whistled in his wake.

*

             Jon was already halfway through the building toward his Reading Fiction class when he raised an empty hand to his mouth and realised he’d left his coffee with Basira. Great, not only would he probably be nodding off halfway through talking about Dickens novels but now one of the few students he had developed some respect for was going to think he was some absent minded idiot. Perfect. The only mercy of the situation was that Basira didn’t strike him as the type to gossip, so hopefully no one else would have to know about this.

             “Professor! Professor Sims!”

             Jon felt his hackles rising. He knew he recognised the voice behind him, but it was taking him a moment to place it and he really didn’t have time for this. It wasn’t Elias anyway, he knew that much. “Sorry, heading to class, email me about it!” Jon called over his shoulder.

             “Please, sir! I just have something here, you left-”

             “I said, email me!” Jon insisted again, his voice overly sharp even in his own ears but he pressed down the brief wash of guilt. It was probably a student asking about homework, but he really didn’t have time. He opened the door of his classroom, glancing at the desks to find most of the group was there already. It was a smaller class than Poetry 101, he was lecturing to sixty instead of two hundred (more like 120 now but he really didn’t want to dwell on that). That said, it didn’t make it less embarrassing to be coming in three minutes before the start of his own class only to visibly struggle to set up his laptop and then realise the projector screen was still rolled up for some ungodly reason.

             He looked up forlornly at the handle dangling above him mockingly. If he were alone, he would have no problem trying to jump for it, or dragging a chair over if that failed. But doing either of those things in front of all the eyes boring into his back felt distinctly unprofessional, and he still couldn’t shake the feeling that, despite his students being adults, he was one slip up away from losing their respect entirely and having them descend into the level of chaos normally reserved for classrooms full of sugar-fueled third graders.

             He’d have to ask for help getting the damn thing down, then. Surely there would be a taller student willing to do that much, anyone could see Jon was a bit… well, he couldn’t help that he was short, could he? Maybe if he sounded annoyed enough, no one would comment on it.

             The door of the classroom opened again, and Jon’s head jerked up as a throat cleared pointedly. He looked toward the sound and his eyebrows rose as he took in none other than Martin from his poetry class. The man was standing awkwardly large in the doorway, gripping a Styrofoam coffee cup from the tea shop as though for dear life.

             … was Martin in this class, too? Surely not, Jon would have noticed him. A new transfer, maybe? Not uncommon in the first week, plenty of students were still hammering out their schedules and changing electives. He’d have to check the roster, but class was about to start if he could just get the damn- oh right, Martin was plenty tall if nothing else.

             “Ah, Martin. If you could pull down the projector screen for me and then take your seat, I’m sure you can catch up with the syllabus in your own time,” Jon groused and then immediately busied himself with his laptop so he wouldn’t have to see whatever face Martin must be making to Jon’s prodding. There were a few stammers Jon pointedly ignored before a sigh and the distinctive sound of a screen unrolling.

             Then, before Jon could even think about voicing a thank you, Martin’s coffee cup was set down heavily in front of him on his desk.

             Jon stared at it blankly for a moment before looking up at Martin with what he hoped was a distinctly unimpressed expression. “Martin, attempting to brown nose your way into good grades by becoming my personal coffee boy is demeaning to both of us.”

             “What?!” Martin’s mouth gaped open like a fish for a moment before shutting with a snap. “But that- okay first of all, this morning I brought you tea so I’m not a coffee boy! S-secondly I’m certainly not trying to brown nose, or bribe you into anything! And third, that’s your-”

             “That’s enough! Now please, take your coffee with you to your seat- good lord, did you not bring anything with you again? Not even a bag this time, do you have such a perfect memory that you don’t think you need to take notes at all?”

             Then Martin’s face did something a bit funny, and instead of taking the coffee back he twisted his fingers together, appearing nervous. “N-no, I don’t think I need to take any notes at all, actually?”

             That made Jon bristle. The audacity! He hated students like this when he went to uni, ones that thought they didn’t need to study and could just coast their way through like secondary school. “You won’t last long in this class without them, I assure you.”

             “Sir, I’m not in this class.”

             “You- what?” That brought Jon up short.

             “I’m not in this class! I was only bringing you your coffee because you left it behind with Basira and I told her I’d get it to you. Look, it’s already half drunk.”

             He opened the lid to prove his point, and Jon felt his cheeks starting to warm as he slowly realised he’d possibly made a mistake.

             “You’re friends with Basira too, are you?” Jon grimaced. Martin nodded frantically.

             “Yes! Well, sort of? Maybe not? J-just met her, actually. A-anyway, just delivering this, I’ve got to get back.” Jon swallowed in his seat as Martin looked down at him, and once again Jon was struck by how very… big Martin was, even wide-eyed and clearly afraid of getting snapped at yet again. Jon slowly reached out and cupped his hands around his cold, half-finished coffee and pulled it toward him while Martin continued to stare. Jon couldn’t think of what else he could possibly want until the man let out a tiny sigh, nodded glumly, and headed for the door.

             That’s when Jon realised he probably should have thanked him for bringing him his coffee. And maybe apologized for accusing him of trying to bribe him.

             He looked up to see dozens of students still and staring at him, a few leaning toward each other and whispering. Coughing into his fist, Jon abruptly stood up and fumbled with the button to start his PowerPoint.

             “Right, that’s quite enough of that! I trust you’ve all read the first three chapters of Oliver Twist as required, so you’ll be ready for our first Pop Quiz.

             The chorus of groans as Jon flipped on the first slide full of multiple choice questions nearly made Jon sigh in relief. At least he’d kept his dignity.

             Still… he probably did owe Martin an apology.

             Very well, he’d bring it up with him in class the next Tuesday. A quiet, professional apology and then they could move on. Unless… unless perhaps if Martin stewed in this long enough he might contact Elias, make a formal complaint…

             Jon grit his teeth amid the scratching of pens on paper and pulled his laptop toward him, only to remember at the last second that the projector was mirroring his screen and he couldn’t just minimize the quiz. He’d have to wait until after classes, but perhaps the best way to handle this was simply a concise email. Honestly, writing an email would be easier to deal with than addressing the man in person anyway. This was fine.

*

             Martin had to do a late shift at work after his classes on Thursday, and so was browsing his phone rather late as he tried to wind down for bed. It was just past midnight when he was notified of an email in his student mailbox. He opened it with little trepidation, not even bothering to check the sender as so far the only emails he’d gotten in his box this week have been notifications for upcoming student orientation events.

             This was not that.

RE: Today’s Coffee Incident

Martin Blackwood,

             This email is in regards to the unfortunate incident earlier today. I understand that you were trying to be helpful. However, in the future, please do not enter any classroom unless you are a part of the class so as not to cause confusion and embarrassment. At any rate, the coffee was already cold by the time you got it to me so it would have been more prudent to simply throw it into the garbage.

             I apologise for assuming you were trying to bribe me. If that were the case, you would have at least bothered to get a fresh cup.

             I expect I’ll see you in class on Tuesday. Do be on time, I will be handing back your sonnets and you will likely want to go over yours in detail. Frankly, I would recommend several revisions.

             Sincerely,

             Jonathan Sims

             The email ended with the usual college watermarks and signature stamps to signify it came from the professor’s school account. Martin stared at it dumbfounded for a long time. Then he re-read it.

             What was this? Somehow it was both overly formal and horrifically rude at the same time. This was from his teacher! And was he implying he got a bad grade on his sonnet?!

             What- what a prick! 

            Martin deleted the email quickly before he could do something stupid like hit the reply button. He then grabbed his poetry book from the side table and started scribbling into it. Most of his poems were about sweet, lovely things but he had a feeling this one would be a bit different.

             He then realised with a start that he was writing with the pen he’d inadvertently stolen from the professor. Well, he certainly wasn’t getting it back now, Martin decided with a rush of giddy spite.

*

             Jon sighed, pushing his hand through his hair as he slumped over his desk. He could barely keep his eyes open, and he had to be up in five hours. At least he remembered to send Martin that damned email, and after having to look up his student email he even knew his last name finally. Blackwood. Martin Blackwood. Urgh, he even sounded like some pretentious poet who’d write the sort of dreck he’d submitted as homework.

             It… it wasn’t that bad compared to some of the ones he’d graded so far, but it was just… very… Keatsian. Or something. Flowery with no substance. Utter hogwash. He’d written a lot of notes. He thinks he did anyway. It was getting hard to focus.

             He picked up another poem. Urgh, Tim Stoker. The words swam in front of Jon’s eyes and he set it back down. Maybe he ought to try and get some sleep after all.

*

             On Tuesday, Martin waited until he was all the way back to his seat after collecting his sonnet from the front of the room before looking at it, but from the glimpse at how much red ink marred the page he knew it wasn’t going to be good. But, well, he had to at least figure out where he went wrong if he wanted any hope of doing better on future assignments.

             “A zero. A zero? I’ve never gotten a zero in my life! Not on anything I’ve handed in anyway.” Tim brandished his paper in the air, raising his voice. “I demand a recount!”

             Professor Sims straightened his gaze toward the back of the room and appeared thoroughly unimpressed. 

“Mr. Stoker, I told you to write a sonnet. What you wrote was six couplets, two lines shy of the needed fourteen with an incorrect rhyme scheme and your meter was completely off. That was not a sonnet , Mr. Stoker. That was a travesty .” There was some scattered laughter as Tim sank back into his seat, but he was nodding.

             “You know what? Fair enough!” Tim waved at the Professor who rolled his eyes and turned to the papers he was still handing back.

             Melanie made to quietly tuck her poem into her bag, but Tim managed to snatch it before it was out of sight. 

             “Hey, give that back!”

             Tim’s jaw dropped. “Ninety-two?! Melanie, have you been brown nosing?”

             “No, I just know how to follow basic instructions, Tim. Anyway,” her voice dropped, “Doesn’t look like he noticed what the content was about. Not a word, even about the sweater vest.”

             “Yeah, he didn’t seem to notice mine either. He told me I should ‘remember my audience’ which, yeah, if he knew it was about him that probably wouldn’t have come up. Hey Marto, what did you get? If you got a zero too we should celebrate with drinks tonight.”

             “Can’t, I’m working. And aren’t you normally supposed to celebrate good grades?”

             “Not how I do it.”

             “Oh, okay? I er, well it’s a… a fifty-five.” Martin let out a long-suffering sigh as he made to tuck the page away. Obviously not what he’d hoped for, but given the professor was willing to dole out zeros maybe he should count his blessings that he didn’t fail him.

             “Ah well, I’m sure you’ll get a zero next time.”

             “Very funny, Tim.”

             Melanie sighed and leaned back in her seat. “What did he say was off?”

             “Er, I guess he wasn’t kidding about ‘half rhymes half marks’? But I couldn’t get a perfect rhyme with ‘persistence’ that made sense. And my meter was off too, apparently. … he also knocked off points for ‘pedestrian subject matter’ but I don’t know what that means.”

             “You could ask him after class?”

             “No, he runs out right after, you know that.”

             “On break?”

             “I’d rather not,” Martin scowled faintly, remembering the email from last night. Of course, Melanie and Tim noticed the look.

             “Ooh, now we know Sims is the devil if he got Marto angry! Did he mock your feelings when you gave him his coffee yesterday? I thought you looked off when you came back, but you really should have known better.”

             “I’m not angry! He just- he’s so…”

             The professor cleared his throat and began his lecture with a quote from a Robert Faust poem and Martin could feel something melt in his chest.

             God, why did such a prick have to have a voice like that? It just wasn’t fair.

             As the lecture went on and the man detailed the history of poetry publishing, Martin supposed for all the man’s faults he at least knew the subject. He was very thorough, and Martin had noticed that the first week as well. As much as he worried about his grades under the man, he was learning quite a lot about the history and technical aspects of poetry that he really hadn’t thought about before.

             Martin had certainly enjoyed poetry for quite some time, but he’d never been much good at writing it. He could tell a good poem from a bad one, he thought. But it was hard for him to put a finger on what made a poem work, and he supposed that probably showed in his own feeble attempts at writing it. From the textbook readings and the lectures, he might actually be starting to get a better grip on what he was missing before. Even the publication aspect… Well, Martin had never seriously considered submitting his poems anywhere before, but if this class actually helped him improve enough?

             Well if that were the case, maybe he should talk to the professor about his grade. Just to get feedback on how to improve if nothing else. He’d mentioned revisions in his email, but the chicken scratch notes on the page didn’t seem to make it clear where those revisions should be exactly. If he wanted to do better on his next assignment he’d have to, right?

             “Hey Martin!” Tim greeted happily as he fell back into his seat toward the end of the break. “I poked around and it turns out no one seems to have alerted the professor to our love poem scheme? No one! Can you believe it? So we’re going to just keep it going until he notices. You can still get in on this!”

             “Er, no, I don’t think so. Um, don’t you think this prank might get a bit creepy?”

             “Nah, it’s not hurting anyone. It’s just a joke, you gotta lighten up! But if you don’t want to participate, it’s fine. Wouldn’t want you uncomfortable, righto Marto? Heh, a rhyme! I’m getting better at poetry already.”

             A wry smile crossed Martin’s face. “More of a half rhyme, actually.”

             “Half rhymes half marks. That was a travesty Mr. Stoker,” Melanie intoned in a surprisingly deep voice. Tim snorted so hard he started choking. Martin tucked his poem away again and sighed, watching his professor take a sip from the coffee cup he’d brought in with him and entertaining a tiny, innocent daydream of tucking the man’s long hair behind his ear for him.

             God, why is it always the arseholes? Martin sighed. He twirled his professor’s pen between his fingers and barely stopped himself from gnawing on the tip.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Yet I can’t help but call across the distance

             Given how long it had been since Martin had been in school, he was surprised by just how quickly he was able to fall into the rhythm of the semester. It was actually rather nice, he thought. After years of erratic work hours, having some consistency in his schedule was quite pleasant. Most of the subjects he was taking were a bit dry, but he seemed to be picking them up fast enough to keep up with the class and assignments

             The only class where his progress continued to be slow was, unfortunately, his only elective. As the early weeks of the semester had worn on, his altercations with his professor had lessened, but his grades on the weekly assignments only seemed to improve to a lacklustre 70% and remained stuck there. The only exception to this was getting full marks for his publication process summaries, but that was mostly because Melanie agreed to help and edited for him.

             She had offered to do the same with Martin’s poetry, but he declined because he was pretty sure if she read any of his work his soul would evaporate instantly.

             That said, maybe there was still hope if Martin could just get a grasp on what was preventing him from breaching that seventy percent mark that had dogged him through the last three assignments. He’d been sure he’d followed the instructions perfectly, but he kept getting marked down for failing to have the correct ‘stresses’ and ‘emphasis’ and ‘meter’, and he just wasn’t sure what the professor was talking about.

             If Martin wanted a chance of improving his grades he was going to have to go to Professor Sims’s office hours and so, Martin sent a brief email to the professor to inform him that he would be dropping by on Friday. 

             Professor Sims’s office was in the English building, but it wasn’t in the same third floor hallway as the other offices. It was on the largely unused fourth floor, awkwardly wedged  between two former classrooms that now seemed to be mainly used for storage. Martin had actually walked by it and had to double back as the closed door didn’t read as an office at first glance.

             However, the silver nameplate on the solid wood door did clearly read ‘Jonathan Sims’ and it was his office hours. Martin knocked with the hand that wasn’t holding his thermos of home brewed tea. He had gotten sick of the perpetually burnt brews of the tea shop.

             “Mr. Blackwood, I presume. Come in.”

             The voice through the door was muffled but Martin breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed Sims had read his email.

             “Er, yeah, it’s me!” Martin laughed awkwardly as he opened the door and peered into the dimly lit room beyond.

             It immediately struck Martin that the reason his professor’s office was away from the others was because this was not, in fact, an office. Rather it appeared to be a tiny converted storage room with exactly zero windows. The lightbulb overhead was bare, operated by a pull string, and flickered ominously; shedding negligible light on the room below. The laptop screen perched on the bare-bones wooden desk  illuminated the room more, along with a silver metal lamp that seemed to house an LED bulb for how bright and washed out it made the papers strewn about every other free inch of tabletop.

             The small room had been packed tightly with bookshelves lining every wall. Martin caught himself thinking it was lucky the professor was such a little guy, or else he might have had trouble moving around his own space. As it was, he sat primly behind his desk with his hands folded while Martin edged around the wooden chair occupying the last bit of floor space and sat in it, wincing as it creaked under his weight.

             “If you could shut the door please, Mr. Blackwood. For your own privacy.”

             Martin merely stretched his arm behind him to push the door closed from his seat. Once it was shut, Martin was struck by the overwhelming feeling of having invaded someone’s space. Hard not to do so when it rather seemed he was locked in a dark closet with his unfairly attractive teacher, but there it was.

             Martin cleared his throat and tried to break the suddenly oppressive silence. “So, is there a reason I’m Mr. Blackwood now?”

             “That’s your name, isn’t it?” The professor’s lip tightened, but his widening eyes seemed to say that he might not actually be sure.

             “Well, yes. It’s only that you called me Martin the first few days of class, so it seems odd that you’d go back to formalities at this point.”

             “Ah, I see. Well, er, I-I have decided that I was being… overly familiar. Anyway, I doubt this is the reason for your visit today. In your email you mentioned the homework? I should tell you, I don’t offer extensions unless there are grievous circumstances.”

             “No, I don’t need an extension. Um, i-it’s about my grades so far?”

             "What about them?” Professor Sims’s stare hardened, and Martin quickly averted his gaze. Instead his eyes trailed over the desk again and noticed with a start that there was also a tea thermos sitting on it, identical to his own. He twisted his own thermos around in his hands as a distraction.

            “Ah, well, th-they have gotten a bit better with each assignment, but the last three were all seventies, and I really was hoping to see more improvement by now? Is there anything I can do to change that?”

            Professor Sims abruptly sat straight in his seat and coughed into his fist. “I-I stand by the grades I’ve given, Mr. Blackwood. They’re already logged in the system and I’m not interested in taking any… favours in exchange for such a thing, so if that’s all-”

            “What?! No!” Martin gasped, heart hammered in his chest as his thermos nearly slid out of his fingers. He shakily slammed it onto the desk in front of him so he could wring his sweaty hands together properly. “I’m not here for that , just… no! I want to know what I’m doing wrong! I-I was hoping you could show me exactly how to- to revise better, or what it is you’re looking for that I’m missing. I just don’t always quite understand your notes, I’m not an English major and I’m not familiar with all the terms?”

             The professor immediately ducked his head and looked directly at his laptop screen, moving his wireless mouse with the tips of his fingers. The bluish glow made the man’s darkening cheeks evident, and Martin really had to force his eyes away this time because it was just ridiculous how lovely the man looked when he was embarrassed.

             Maybe this meeting was a mistake after all.

             “Right, er, that makes sense. Right. M-my apologies then, for assuming… a hem . Did you bring your previous assignments to go over?”

             Relieved that his teacher seemed to have recovered himself enough to move on, Martin nodded and unzipped his book bag. “Yeah, the last few anyway. Um, especially this last one. You said the meter was still off, but I don’t really understand how? I counted the syllables over and over, and I really thought I had the rhyme scheme down, so I’m not sure why I was marked down for it?”

             Sims took up the paper Martin handed to him and squinted at it under the light of his desk lamp for a moment. “Ah, yes I remember this. The epigram. Meant to be short, witty, satirical, and in this assignment the form of a quatrain. You also lost marks for it being neither witty nor satirical.”

             “Right, I’m not very good with that, I’m afraid. But I still don’t follow the bit about the ‘meter’?”

             “Ah, yes. Well, it’s really quite simple, and with this particular poem I don’t think there’s much excuse for lacking it, given that you essentially had the opportunity to make your own meter. Somehow you failed to even keep to your own rhythm within the stanza.”

             “Okay but what does that mean though? Like I said, the syllables are the same in every line, and it rhymes…”

             The man across from him sighed, pulled out a red pen (of course) and began making more marks on the already very red page. Above each word, each syllable really, he wrote out either a dot or a dash. When he finished he coughed into his fist again and turned the page so Martin could also see it properly if he leaned forward enough.

             “The dashes are where the words are stressed or emphasized,” The professor explained, “In a word such as ‘apple’ you’ve got here, the emphasis is on the first syllable. AP-ple. When you say the word, the stress is on the first part, if you said ap-PLE, it doesn’t sound quite right. You see?”

             “Oh… oh! Yes, I-I think so?”

             “Yes, so reading your poem out loud, you can hear that it’s completely off.”

             Then the man cleared his throat once more and Martin’s heart skipped a beat when, yes, his professor started reading his poetry with the same damn voice that had smoothly flowed over the Shakespearian sonnet from the first class.

 “An apple a day keeps the doctor away

Friends have told me this and I did believe it

They didn’t tell me the price I’d have to pay

No one treated my wounds when the worms all bit”

             Martin winced as his professor scowled over the page as though it offended him and then snorted. “Actually you’re right, this grade isn’t right at all. I can’t believe I gave this a seventy, I must’ve been more tired than I thought.”

             “Er, I didn’t say the grade was wrong, just-”

             “I mean, the meter being completely off is one thing, but this doesn’t even make sense! The first line is fine obviously since you stole it from a common saying that already has a lyrical note to it, but the rest is just prose, there’s no flow to it, and why on earth are there worms? Why are the worms biting you? I don’t think worms even bite, they don’t have mouths.”

             “What? I- no, worms have to have mouths! How else would they get inside apples?”

             “What?”

             “You know, the whole, the whole worm in an apple thing? How would a worm get into an apple if it can’t bite it?”

             “I- er, they… they burrow, obviously.”

             “Yeah alright but how? They have to break the skin somehow don’t they?”

             “Well, I expect they only get into rotten apples with bruised skin. They might rub against it.”

             “I guess, but I’m pretty sure they have mouths.”

             The professor squinted at Martin for a moment before turning to his laptop and typing something into it. Martin’s jaw dropped.

             “Are you googling it?”

             “Well, now I’m a bit curious. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a worm biting someone. It still doesn’t make any sense, but even so… ah! Right… apparently worms do have strong, muscular mouths.”

             “Ha! So I was right!”

             “But no teeth,” Jon turned his screen and pointed to the relevant text. “So no biting.”

             Martin looked at the screen for a moment and then sighed, slumping down in his seat. “… yeah, alright fine. I was having a lot of trouble trying to come up with something funny, alright? Melanie suggested finding a new twist on a common phrase and that’s all I could come up with. You only gave us two days, I know it was a short poem but I’ve got a lot of homework for my other classes and I didn’t have a lot of time to concentrate on it.”

             Then his professor rolled his eyes at him and Martin only just managed to not leave his mouth hanging open in shock at evident disdain. “Yes, I’m sure writing four lines is far too much homework to be bothering with. Poor joke aside, if your meter was correct you could have been marked much higher. As it is, I’m sure you could tell it was abysmal.”

             “I… I suppose so. No, you’re right it really is pretty terrible hearing it out loud.”

             “You really should have read it out loud to yourself before handing it in.”

             “I did though! Only… I suppose when I did I might’ve been forcing the… emphasis? I might’ve been forcing it in when it wasn’t there naturally. I didn’t seem to catch it at any rate.”

             “Maybe you should have one of your classmates or family members read it to you, then.”

             “Um… I’d rather not, actually,” Martin made a face and his professor quirked an eyebrow. He thought the man might scoff at him again, but instead he lowered his chin into his hand in apparently thought.

             “Alright… then, perhaps recording yourself might help,” he said after a moment.

             “Recording myself?”

             “Yes, if you record yourself reading your poem and play it back, that should help you figure out if it sounds off.”

             Martin straightened up in his seat, face brightening considerably. “Oh! Yeah that- that could work, probably. I never thought of trying that before. I bet I could pick up a cheap tape recorder on the way home.”

             “Or you could just use your phone.”

             “I mean, I guess, but um, I’ve always sort of liked the idea of a tape recorder? They have a bit of a low-fi charm to them. I’ve just never thought I’d have reason to use one before.”

             Martin looked up and caught what looked like the ghost of a smile being quickly wiped from his professor’s face. “Seems a bit pointless, but if it makes you happy.” Professor Sims coughed again and shrugged, moving to shuffle some of his papers. He pulled his thermos closer to himself, unscrewing the lid. “Anyway if that’s all, I really should be preparing for my next class.”

             “Ah, right, sorry. I’ll just…” Martin grabbed his own thermos and scrambled to his feet, nearly running into the door in his rush to reach it. This office really was absurdly small, surely this was some sort of fire hazard. As he opened the door, he swallowed and shot a small smile over his shoulder. “Um, thank you. This was actually really helpful.”

             The professor looked up from his papers toward Martin and swallowed visibly. “Yes… er, that’s what office hours are for of course. It’s good to see someone make use of them. Um, goodbye Martin.” He winced. “Mr. Blackwood.”

             “You know, just Martin is fine, really?” Martin tried as his professor took a long sip from his thermos and then smacked his lips, looking at it with some faint surprise and a slight upturn of his lips. Jesus, Martin should not be thinking of his teacher’s lips. “A-anyway, see you next week, sir!”

             With that, Martin pulled the door shut and scampered down the hall. When he was a safe distance away, he unscrewed his own thermos and took a long drink from it.

             Then he coughed and spat it on the floor. Urgh that certainly wasn’t his tea! It was even more burnt than the tea shop’s on the ground floor! How could anyone drink this?!

             Then it occurred to Martin that this half-finished thermos must be his professor’s. And Martin had drank from it. His mouth had been where his professor’s had been.

             “No no no, indirect kisses aren’t a thing !” Martin groaned, leaning up against the wall as he looked at the thermos in his hand. He tentatively took another sip. 

             Screw it, he was already a pen thief. He could be a thermos thief too. He squeezed the gross tea into his overstuffed bag and hurried off for his next class.

*

               Jon sat numbly in his seat, holding a thermos of tea that absolutely was not his and feeling like an idiot for having let his student leave without alerting him. He was sure to be disappointed because it was absolutely startling how much better this tea was compared to his own. He wondered if Martin had ever considered doing this professionally, he was certainly a better tea brewer than a poet.

              For a moment, Jon could see it. That lovely, round face holding a cup of tea out with a bright smile. His gentle voice saying ‘have a nice day’ . Shame jobs like that didn’t pay more, they really were the backbone of society. Well, with any luck Martin’s actual degree would be in small business management and perhaps he could start his own tea shop. He seemed to be of an age to be thinking ahead to such a thing. Perhaps he could replace the disgusting excuse for a shop in this building. Jon certainly wouldn’t mind the change from the usual surly youths that handed him his daily caffeinated sludge. Martin would be nicer to look at, at least.

              Jon’s hands abruptly tightened hard around the thermos. Where had that thought come from?! Martin was his student! And not even a very good one!

              Jon took another sip without thinking and shut his eyes, an unintentional sigh of pleasure slipping from him. If Martin had brought this to him that first day instead of the slop from the tea shop, maybe that would have been a sufficient bribe.

              Urgh, no. This was ridiculous. He had work to do, and it was completely inappropriate to moon over a student in any respect. He took another sip of tea. He shivered.

              “Alright well, he came to office hours. Maybe I can give him the benefit of the doubt,” Jon mumbled out loud to himself. “Maybe I should make a note about meter and emphasis not being common knowledge for students outside the English curriculum. Hm.”

              Pulling his laptop nearer him again and taking yet another long sip of tea, Jon began making some notes on the subject. As he did so, Martin’s freckled face rose in his mind, eyes lowered fetchingly as he said the words ‘ low-fi charm’ …

              Jon stopped mid-sentence to press a hand over his mouth. Shit, this was the last thing he needed! Nope, he wasn’t going to think about that at all. He was not getting a crush on his student . Especially not Mar- Mr. Blackwood. Aside from him being an… an oaf, and a poor excuse for a poet, having a relationship with a student--no, even someone finding out he had feelings for a student would end his career before it started! 

             Therefore he simply wasn’t, and he would drown himself in work until he believed it.

*

             Not that long after Martin’s visit to Sims’s office, some interesting news dropped into the lap of his social circle.

             “Hang on, Melanie got published?! ” Martin’s mouth fell open as Tim slung an arm around the newly professional poet’s shoulders. Melanie pressed her face into her hands.

             “Sure let’s just announce it to the whole English department, why don’t we?” she mumbled, which was a mistake because Tim immediately got on his chair and Melanie had to tackle him off of it mid-announcement, irrespective of the odd looks cast in their direction.

             “That’s pretty impressive,” Basira said idly as she flipped through Crime and Punishment and made notes in the margins. “Must have been some poem.”

             “It wasn’t anything!” Melanie insisted as Tim pulled himself back into his seat. “It was just- I don’t know, I reworked my sonnet a bit since it was one of my highest marks but I didn’t think it was, you know, publishable. I’d never have submitted it if I didn’t have to.”

             “Huh, lucky it was an assignment then,” Sasha commented before taking a big bite of her Pad Thai she’d brought for lunch. “Otherwise you’d never have known you have a future as a poet laureate.”

             “I’m not going to be a poet laureate,” Melanie snapped, folding her arms. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. It was a fluke, alright?”

             “I don’t know, you’ve been getting pretty good marks in that class consistently in spite of what you call ‘Sims’s shitty teaching style’. And you got published! Did they pay you?” Tim asked, excitable as ever.

             “Er, yeah actually.”

             “How much?” 

             “Um… two hundred and fifty pounds.”

             “Two hundred and fifty?!” Martin wheezed, blinking rapidly. “That’s way more than I would have expected.”

             “Honestly? Same. Weird for how much Sims wanted us to talk about how to submit to these places, he didn’t ask us to find out how much they paid for submissions.”

             “Yeah that’s… something,” Martin shook his head slowly and looked down at his own poem he had been revising to hand in. He needed to figure out which of his poems he was going to submit for the third publishing assignment. He could probably rework his epitaph but...

             “I’ll say it’s something!” Tim chirped, “I certainly haven’t gotten published yet. Though I have, in fact, received one entire rejection letter!”

             “A rejection letter?” Martin gaped. “From a poetry magazine?” He certainly hadn’t received acknowledgement of any sort from the two magazines he’d submitted to so far. It had rather felt like throwing his poems directly into the void for all the reception they got.

             “Nope! From a poetry journal. Apparently hearing about Sims’s high brow and what he could do with it isn’t appropriate for an academic publication, and I really ought to learn what a poem is before I waste their time again.” Tim said this as though it meant nothing, but Martin’s chest still ached with sympathy. He certainly hoped he never got a letter like that.

             “Wait, seriously?” Melanie snorted. “They sound pretentious as fuck.”

             “Heck yeah they do! That’s why I’ve been sending them plenty of new submissions of course.”

             “You sent them more?” Basira asked, sounding amused.

             Sasha laughed, “How many did you send in?”

             “So far? I think about thirty. Not even long ones, so really, they have nothing to get worked up about. Just want their opinion on if I’ve learned what a poem is yet, of course,” Tim’s grin was incredibly impish. “I think the best one I’ve done so far was a couplet. It went; Am I a poet let me know / Return with circled yes or no.”

             “Huh, yeah, that one is a bit clever,” Basira nodded.

             “A bit?” Tim scoffed, hand over his heart. “I’m offended! Wounded even! I’ll have you know that one was extremely clever and I’m sure I’ll be getting an offer on it any day now.”

             “Oh yeah, sure,” Melanie rolled her eyes, but was still grinning along with the rest of the group, save for Martin who still felt a little catatonic as he weighed the possibility of getting published alongside the possibility of having his dreams smashed to pieces and found both equally terrifying for some reason. “Fair enough prank anyway, sounds like they deserve that much. Twats.”

             “Amen!” Tim high fived Melanie and then sighed, leaning back in his chair. “If only our other prank seemed to be gaining any traction. I’ve sent in like, ten assignments waxing poetic about Sims and he still hasn’t caught on. A bunch of people have given up on it too, it sounds like. Either he knows and he’s purposefully ignoring us till we stop or he’s just too oblivious.”

             “I’m guessing the latter,” Melanie sighed, “I haven’t been doing it consistently, but the last one I handed in for the prank was the shape poem that I literally made into the profile of his damn face and started each line with a letter of his name so it spelled out ‘Jonathan Sims’ down the side and he just had… no comment. Well, about that anyway. It was my lowest mark but apparently that was because he couldn’t figure out what my shape was supposed to be so… that’s how that’s going.”

             “Maybe you should give up on it then, you’ve got to be running out of material by now,” Sasha quirked an eyebrow as Tim scoffed.

             “Never! If I end up spending the entire semester giving my professor love poetry, so be it! He’s got to catch on eventually.”

             Martin took a moment to imagine his professor reading Tim’s poems, and had to cover his mouth with his hands to hide how red his face got. 

             He really wished he was less of a hopeless fool when he had a crush on someone.More than a few of his classes had been spent thinking about various other ways those office hours could have ended. He’d just been so… well, he’d been argumentative for sure. Sour, maybe. But not nearly so intimidating in his glorified cupboard of an office, and somehow Martin  now found himself endeared.

             Tucked into his bag he had the notebook he’d written that angry poem into the night he’d received his professor’s email. In the hours after his meeting, he’d curled up in the school library sipping bad tea and made several revisions. When he’d read it out into his freshly purchased tape recorder, he was surprised to find it sounded, well, a bit good.

             “Right, Martin?”

             “What?” Martin jolted in his seat, his mind having long trailed off from the conversation only not to find Melanie quirking an eyebrow at him. “Sorry, er, missed the question?”

             “I said, Sims has been an arse since day one and deserves something worse than awkward love poems. Basira said no, Tim’s on board for anything non-lethal. You in?”

             “What?! No! Why would I- I didn’t even want to do the love poem thing!” Martin’s eyes darted to his bag as he thought of the blatant love poem tucked within it, but it didn’t seem like anyone noticed. “Really, he’s not that bad. A-and even if he had been at the start, he’s loads better now. He even smiled at me when I handed my last assignment in!”

             “Eh, I don’t know, I still say it looked more like a grimace,” Tim shrugged. “I think your crush is giving you a bad case of wishful thinking.”

             “I-I-I don’t- there’s no crush! And not so loud!” Martin moaned, sinking his face into his folded arms as Melanie groaned next to him.

             “Right, of course lover-boy can’t see reason.”

             “So, what were you thinking of doing?” Tim asked, leaning in conspiratorially. Despite their professed disinterest, both Basira and Sasha leaned in to hear more as well as Melanie’s voice dropped in volume.

             “Well I figured I’d…” she trailed off and then narrowed her eyes at Martin. “Actually, no. Martin, you have to leave.”

             “What? Why?” Martin asked, eyes round as saucers as Sasha snorted out a laugh.

             “Plausible deniability maybe?” Sasha suggested, a grin on her face. “Wouldn’t want to ruin your chances over this.”

             “I don’t have any chances!”

             “Too right,” Melanie nodded in, frankly, rather hurtful agreement. “But I don’t trust you to not muck it up if you know too many details. The less you know, the less you can interfere if you don’t like us pranking your crush. Besides, I’m trying to cut out negative influences from my life and being against my prank idea feels negative to me.”

             Tim hummed. “Gotta say, she has a point. Sorry Marto, you scamper off and I’ll text you when it’s safe to come back.”

             “Oh ha ha,” Martin mumbled, folding his arms. The rest continued to stare at him silently until his arms dropped. “Wait, seriously?”

*

             Martin stewed on the opposite side of the lounge in a cushy chair by the window. He peered down into the parking lot and his heart skipped a beat when he recognised the slight silhouette of Jonathan Sims making its way to a brown sedan and fumbling with his keys before popping the trunk. From what little Martin could see from the second floor and the distance, the trunk looked about as messy as his office desk had been.  He still seemed so stressed too, despite appearing to have calmed down some regarding keeping militant order in his lecture hall.

             He really didn’t deserve to be pranked on top of whatever he was going through.

             His phone buzzed in his pocket just as Sims shut his trunk with a bundle of papers now tucked under his arm, his tea thermos clutched in his other hand. Martin’s tea thermos, actually.

             Martin had to wipe his sweaty fingers off on his pants before his touch screen would let him open the message:

Tim: ok buddy u can come back. just dont be in the parking lot friday at 6pm and youll be gucci

             Martin swallowed hard and then gave Tim a wave from his seat before gathering up his bag to head back over. He had an accounting software class from five to seven on Friday, but it usually let out early. If he slipped out at the first break, he might not miss much and would have time to get across the campus and…

             And what? Tattle on his friends? Jump in the way of the glitter bomb at the last second? 

             Martin glanced out the window again and saw that at some point the professor must have lost his grip on his papers as they were now blowing around the parking lot and he was running around desperately trying to catch them. Martin was gripped by the sudden urge to run down there and help, though he couldn’t think of how he would justify running off to his friends.

             His phone buzzed again. And again. He looked down to see Tim was sending him a succession of question marks. With a sigh, Martin shouldered his bag and left the window alone.

             He didn’t know what he could do to save his professor for Melanie’s horrible prank, but he already knew he was going to give it a try.

*

             Fridays didn’t hold the same promise of freedom for Jon as they did for students. He certainly didn’t foresee much of a break in his work anyway. Sure, he didn’t have to lecture for two days but that only meant having two days to ensure his classes for the next week were prepared and his grading was caught up on. If he told anyone he was anything less than exhausted it would be a harsh lie, but he didn’t see how he could get out of it. At least a day without poetry class meant he didn’t have to be up at four bloody AM to be prepared and at work on time, but the extra two hours sleep wasn’t as big of a help if it only encouraged him to stay up later the night before to try to get things done.

             If the little sleep wasn’t enough to frazzle him, the content of the few dreams he’d managed to catch destroyed the rest of his nerves. As Jon dragged himself through his classes for the day, he kept remembering the strong smell of tea and fuzzy pressure of being wrapped up in thick arms, crushed snuggly into a cozy jumper. 

He knew damn well who he’d been dreaming of, but he was trying very hard not to think about it. 

             Still, Jon was feeling remarkably relieved at the end of his last class at 5:50pm. He packed up his laptop and watched the last students leave the class before swiftly following the pack into the hallway. As much work as he had left to do, at least now he would have a chance to replenish his caffeine and recover from a day of social interaction.            

             “Professor!”

             Jon snapped out of his dazed walk toward the front of the building as a tall figure darted in front of him. He still was mid-step and nearly bumped into the man anyway. “Wha- Martin!”

             “Er, yeah! It’s me!” And indeed it was him, all six foot whatever towering over Jon’s head, wearing an unfairly soft-looking yellow jumper, reminding Jon far too much about the dream he was trying to forget about. “Um, h-heading out for the day?”

             “Ah, yes, so if you’ll excuse me.” Jon tried to maneuver around the man, only for Martin to take a side step and block his path. Jon craned his neck back to scowl. “Do you need something?”

             “Uh, no. I-I-I mean yes! Yes, I need something!” Martin huffed and Jon realised the man looked unusually red-faced and maybe a touch out of breath.

             “Are you alright?”

             “I’m fine! Er, j-just didn’t think I’d be able to catch you? Um, i-it’s about the next publication assignment. The one due Tuesday?”

             “What about it? Just pick one of your poems and submit it, then hand in a brief report on where you sent your work and why you thought your poem would be a good fit for that magazine or journal. It’s not exactly rocket science.” Jon winced as Martin’s face fell and then sighed heavily. “I… I apologize. It’s been a long day. What is your question?”

             Martin cleared his throat and clutched his shoulder bag nervously. “Um, I know you probably want to get home but, I was wondering if you could help me with picking a poem to submit. It’s for an academic journal, and I don’t think any of mine so far are any good for it, but I’d really appreciate your opinion.”

             Jon sucked in a breath through his teeth and glanced over Martin’s shoulder to the door beyond with longing before quickly giving up his dream of getting out of there on time. Martin had already told him that he didn’t really have family or friends he trusted with his poetry, and being an effective professor meant helping his students when asked. Besides, it couldn’t take that long to pick out a poem and Martin did look rather desperate.

             “Yes, alright. Er, I don’t suppose you’d mind looking through them down here?”

             “Um, I-I don’t know if I want anyone to overhear?”

             “Right, that’s fine. My office, then.”

             The trip up to Jon’s office felt oddly quiet. By this point on a Friday most staff and students had left, save for a few late classes. Even the tea shop only had one employee lazily wiping down the empty pastry display case.

             When they reached the creaky, narrow elevator, the silence finally got to him. “So, how has the semester been so far?”

             “Hm? Oh! Ah, fine? Your class is very… thorough. Which is good! I-I’m actually quite glad, Basira says that Professor Robinson didn’t actually do much teaching and if that had been the case I’d have probably been disappointed. You clearly put a lot of effort into your lectures.”

             Jon glanced up at Martin’s earnest face and had to immediately duck his head, pretending to fumble with his laptop bag to hide the pleased smile that had wormed its way onto his. “Er, that’s… good. To hear, I mean. As I believe I’ve told you, I don’t intend to do badly on a subject just because I personally dislike it.” The doors of the elevator opened onto the fourth floor and the two spilled out into the hall. Their footsteps echoed around them, and Jon felt a deep certainty that they were the only ones on the whole floor. 

             “Why though?”

             “Hm?” Jon paused, steps from his office door with the key in hand.

             “Why don’t you like poetry? I mean, it’s everywhere isn’t it? Song lyrics for one, but they put it on tombstones and greeting cards and engrave it on buildings… seems weird to be so dismissive of it, since your area of study is English and all.”

             Jon snorted as he unlocked his door and pushed it open, groping upward blindly for the pull string on the overhead lightbulb only to give up and instead bend over to switch on his desk lamp. The click of the door shutting behind him sent an unwelcome shiver up his spine. “While I acknowledge that poetry is… prevalent in society, I find the vast majority of it syrupy and difficult to get through. I prefer writing that is clear and to the point. Things I can parse quickly for information and then move on from. Poetry is rather counter to that, and therefore I find it largely useless.” 

             “Useless is a bit harsh, it’s supposed to speak to the soul, you know? Evoke emotion, make you think.”

             Jon sighed wearily and turned around. He was immediately thankful for the dim light and his dark skin that would hide his ruddy cheeks when he noticed Martin was much closer to him than he had thought he was. His office was honestly tiny, how had he never realised how small it was before? At least Martin seemed just as embarrassed and pressed himself into the door to let Jon squeeze by him and around the desk to his office chair. Both he and Martin sat on opposite sides of the desk, and yet they still seemed to be far too close to each other for Jon’s nerves to take.

             “I understand that there are people who get something out of poetry. But I don’t. I can’t see you convincing me otherwise at the moment, and I’m not quite sure why you care so much. You’re not taking any other English courses, are you? What is your major?”

             “Ah, it’s not strictly a major? I’m not exactly getting a degree, just an administrative accreditation. Just… tired of working in Tesco and tea shops, you know.”

             “Ha! I thought you seemed the type.”

             “… the… type?” Martin did not look happy, and Jon felt a chill. He could practically hear Georgie admonishing him.

             “That came out wrong. I just… you mentioned a tea shop, and I figured… well it makes sense now.”

             “What makes sense?” Martin’s eyes narrowed.

             Jon hesitated, but then pressed on. Surely Martin knew about the thermos situation by now? “We er, have rather identical thermoses, and I believe we swapped them last time you were here. The tea was… very good. Had a professional quality to it.”

             The irritated look faded from Martin’s face, replaced by something much pinker. “O-oh yeah. Yeah, um, d-didn’t notice that till like, way later and uh, since they’re the same kind of thermos didn’t see much point in asking you to swap back so…”

             “I’m not upset over it! It was just… very good tea.”

             “Right.”

             “I… I actually wondered if you were getting a degree in small business management. Y-you’d probably do well, opening a tea shop.”

             Martin straightened in his seat briefly before slumping over and a weak laugh wheezed out of him. “Yeah, sure, fancy me owning a shop.”

             “Really! If what I drank was your product I’m sure it would do well. Ah, you could even host Poetry Nights, if that’s something that interests you.” Jon wasn’t sure why he was pushing this, but something about seeing Martin so dismissive of the idea felt unpleasant.

             “… maybe,” Martin checked his watch and then cleared his throat. “So, er, can we just look at my poems then? I-I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

             “Oh! Yes, of course. Did you bring them with you? I don’t remember them offhand.”

             “Yeah, just here, um…” Martin rooted through his bag quickly, pushing aside seemingly identical notebooks before grabbing one near the bottom and dragging it out. Jon took it and opened it to leaf through while Martin tried to organize his overstuffed bag back into an order where he could zip it closed again.

             It didn’t take more than a moment before Jon realised he didn’t actually recognise any of these poems, and given they were all free verse (his least favourite kind of poem, it felt like cheating somehow) he was sure this was the wrong book. Yet his eyes lingered on a few anyway. They weren’t much better than what he had been handing in, but the subject matter seemed a little more solid, if unoriginal.

             “I know I don’t hold much appreciation for love poetry, but if that’s what you want to write about you can still hand it in. You’d be surprised how many of your classmates have been doing so,” Jon commented as he flipped to a more recently filled out page and hummed. “This one doesn’t seem too bad. Had I a tongue as harsh as yours/I’d temper it upon thy lips-”

             Jon was cut off by Martin screeching and yanking the notebook straight out of his hands. As Jon sat stunned he crammed the book into his bag again and rummaged again before pulling out another book and squinting at it in the dim light.

             “Er, something wrong?”

             “Yeah, um, wrong book! That one is… personal… this is the class one. Sorry.”

             “… right.” Jon took the new book and flipped through it, relaxing back in his seat as he looked over the more familiar, if still lacklustre stanzas. He flipped through them for a few moments before huffing. “Honestly, I don’t know if any of these are really publishable in their current state.”

             “Well, yeah. I figured whichever I picked I’d have to edit over the weekend.”

             “Yes, but… you know, the publication assignment only suggests you use a poem you’ve submitted for assignment. There’s nothing wrong with writing a new one, or er, working with one you’ve already written in your spare time. If you think you have a better one, that is.”

             “Ah, well, like I said those are personal.”

             “That’s fine, it was only a suggestion.” Jon cleared his throat and pulled Martin’s sonnet from the notebook, it was the copy he had handed in, Jon’s mark clearly visible. “I think for your journal, the sonnet would probably be best. You’ll have to clean it up for meter and fix the half rhymes to make it more presentable, but the subject matter is… passable enough. Probably the best you have for this.”

             Martin seemed to squint at his writing upside down and grimaced. “That sort of sounds like I’d have to rewrite it from scratch anyway.”

             “Not necessarily, here if you’ll watch, I’ll go over the meter again like we did before with the epigram. I-I think I might have some suggestions as well, if that would help?”

             Martin’s face brightened, and Jon felt something in his chest unwind slightly. “Yeah, sure, that would be great, actually?”

             So Jon leaned back over the page with his pen and Martin tried to follow along until Jon realised he was having trouble seeing upside down. He turned the paper sideways, but it was harder to get the full thing in the light of the desk lamp and it was a pain to write in that position.

             “Damn it. Alright, come around here.”

             “E-excuse me?”

             “Come around the desk, Martin. It’s too awkward showing you from this angle.”

             “Ah, yeah but I’m just not sure there’s room for… well, um, I’ll try?”

             There was some shuffling and Jon winced as his whole desk scraped the floor as Martin tried to edge around the side of it. Maybe it wasn’t Jon’s office that was small, maybe Martin was just too big for it? No, that was silly. Jon really needed to talk to Elias about his office location, but he hadn’t exactly had the time.

             “Right, so, your sonnet is, uh…” Martin had settled in over Jon’s shoulder, and his looming presence was sending ever more chills racing through him despite the absolutely astounding amount of body heat the man was throwing off. He even set one of his big, warm hands on the desk for balance, not so far from Jon’s own. Jon had not thought this through. “Um, your sonnet. Right. So.”

             “So?” Martin sounded ever so slightly amused now, and Jon fought the urge to put his head down in his arms to scream.

             “I-if you’ll look at this first line, just here, you need to change the pace of the last first words to get the write rhythm. I-imagine walking down a street, the thud of- um.” Jon had been marking emphasis dashes on the page and Martin had leaned in closer, clearly peering at the sheet but god his face was close. He was probably just concentrating, but what if he knew what he was doing? If Jon just carelessly turned his head too far to the right he would be kissing the fool. O-or something! No, not that, shit this was his student, he couldn’t-

             Then, without so much as a knock of warning, the door to Jon’s office opened wide and none other than Elias Bouchard appeared in the threshold.

             “Ah, Jon. I was hoping you’d still be in here, are you aware that your car is… oh my, I do hope I’m not interrupting anything?” Elias spoke delicately as Martin, previously doing an impression of a horrified statue, immediately stood up ramrod straight and started stammering nonsense. Though in his defense, Jon wasn’t feeling much better.

             “Elias! I was just- I was h-helping one of my students with his homework!” Jon said hurriedly, grabbing Martin’s sonnet and holding it up like evidence at a trial. “See? Er, poetry. I er, I teach… that.”

             Elias raised a skeptical eyebrow and Jon felt his heart race in his chest. After a moment the man shrugged. “Well, I’m sure your student will have no problem leaving us for the time being and returning to finish his… homework help… at another time. Hm?”

             “O-oh yeah, yeah, sure. No problem. Just leaving actually!” Martin practically snatched his sonnet from Jon’s hands again and didn’t even pause to shove it into his bag before rounding the desk (knocking it again) and squeezing around Elias into the hall. “I-I’ll see you Tuesday, professor! Thanks for the help!”

             The sound of retreating footsteps echoed down the hall. Elias, notably, did not shut the door nor sit in the visitor’s chair, instead choosing to loom over Jon in his desk like a hungry vulture.

             “Nothing happened!” Jon insisted, sputtered really as Elias continued to merely look at him. “There’s nothing going on! It really was just homework, I would never conduct a- a- well anything with a student, I swear!”

             “Hm, well, be that as it may, I caution you about keeping things… discreet. There is a lock on your door, you know.”

             “I know, but there wasn’t-”

             “Anyway, that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about. Are you aware that your vehicle is standing in plain sight in the parking lot covered in yellow Post-It notes? It’s causing quite the eyesore, and I think it would be best if you moved it.”

             “… excuse me, what?”

*

             On Friday, Martin revised his sonnet.

             It didn’t feel quite right.

             On Saturday, Martin revised his sonnet.

             It still didn’t feel quite right.

             On Sunday, he opened his poetry book.

             His personal poetry book.

             His eyes lingered on a poem.

             That poem.

             It wasn’t ready, but it could be.

             They always say, write what you know.

             He knew this better than anything.

             On Sunday, Martin revised.

             On Monday, Martin revised.

             On Tuesday, early morning,

             Martin hit submit.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: And though I know you’ll put up some resistance

             As the last week to drop classes approached, Jon couldn’t help but feel relieved.

             After the first mass exodus over his first week of classes, there had continued to be a slow but steady rate of dropouts as more assignments were handed back and, presumably, their mediocre grades made them worry for their GPAs. At this point his class of 200 had dropped to eighty, and Jon had noted with some resentment that if the class had been this size from the start they could have used one of the smaller lecture halls and had the class much later in the day.

             Not that this mattered much in the face of Elias being constantly on his back about the dropout rate. Evidently there had been a few complaints made about his grading, and while this couldn’t exactly be quantified and proven, Elias had strongly suggested Jon let up on them.

             “At least until after the cut-off date for dropping out. Really Jon, this is getting out of hand.”

             Jon had grumbled but had consented to a couple of weeks spent gritting his teeth and making more allowances. Finally his class size began to hold steady for the first time all semester. After the deadline next Monday he could go back to the grindstone again at least; he wouldn’t have to let the slackers get away with wasting his time anymore. 

           Especially after some of them did that to his car! He’d spent the better part of an hour picking all those post-its off his car and if he ever found the culprits he’d certainly give them worse than bad grades!

             Anyway, certainly at least a few of the students had proven they were above the need for an easy curriculum. In fact, three of his students had managed to get poetry submissions accepted in a few magazines and one even got a poem into the school paper. While hardly prestigious, at least this was enough to reassure Jon’s irritating boss that his restructured curriculum could bring some notoriety to their school’s English program. 

             Anyway, Jon only had to suffer through one more poetry class of placating dullards and then he could return to his reign of academic terror, or whatever it was the students assumed he was doing to them. He expected there might be another few dropouts by Monday, but at this point he hardly thought he’d miss any of the few left who refused to work on improving themselves. Which honestly didn’t seem to be many of them. In fact the only student Jon had noticed making steady improvement after the first couple of weeks had been, well, Martin.

             He hadn’t been back to office hours after Elias had walked in on them, and honestly Jon couldn’t blame the man. Elias had made things extremely awkward and Jon might even have a case for HR if he could work up the nerve to confront him over it. Nonetheless, he seemed to have taken what advice Jon had given him to heart.

             In fact while Jon had been grading the short free verse poems over his lunch break, he’d stumbled across Martin’s and had been impressed enough that he gave him his first A of the semester. He’d found himself rereading it and found it to be rather… striking. It seemed like a bit of a rehash of the themes from his sonnet, but this time the lack of structure did it more justice. Speaking to the concept of an early morning, cold shower, hot tea, readying for a day… pedestrian imagery, awkward in a sonnet, but as a free verse Jon found himself almost able to close his eyes and smell the warm beverage in front of him.

             It was nice. It deserved the grade. Jon found himself smiling at the thought of handing it back to Martin the next morning and seeing how his face would surely light up. 

             Jon set Martin’s aside and began to skim the next. Urgh, Stoker’s. 

             Jon readied his red pen, only to startle badly when the door to his office swung open without any warning. Of course it was Elias.

             “Really, Elias! You know it IS considered polite to knock in this country!”

             “Fascinating observation, Jon,” Elias hissed through his teeth, which were very visible in his much too-large grin. “Do you know what else you perhaps should have spent time observing?”

             Jon gaped for a moment, casting about for what on earth Elias could be talking about. “I, er, i-is it more drop outs? I-I did what you said! I haven’t been grading as harshly, and they haven't been- it’s probably just because the late drop date is next week, I’m sure there won’t be any more!”

             Elias snorted and shook his head. “You know, as the Head of the English department it is part of my job to stay caught up on any academic journals that our school subscribes to, both in hard copy and online. It seems that one of your students managed to get a poem published by one of them this semester.”

             “Oh!” Jon straightened his glasses and frowned, rather confused. “Um, that doesn’t sound especially bad? I thought we agreed that my students getting their work published would reflect well on the school.”

             “Were you, or were you not, aware that this poem had been published?”

             “No! I’ve only seen the ones in the school paper and the magazines, when did it come out?”

             “This Monday, though I only ran across it today myself. In that case, I suggest you read it for yourself and tell me what might be the problem.”

             With that, Elias shoved his tablet under Jon’s nose, forcing him to take it and squint at the too-bright screen. It was when Jon’s eyes trailed to the author of the poem printed neatly under the title that his heart sank into his shoes.

             Martin Blackwood

             Worryingly this was followed by Martin’s full college credentials and personal information, so it wasn’t as though Jon might be able to claim it was a different Martin Blackwood if he had gotten something truly heinous published. If it was bad enough that Elias was intervening…

Jon squeezed his eyes shut to brace himself, opened them, and read:

Change the Rhyme

Submitted by: Martin Blackwood

A prickle to her words

And harshness in her gaze

But I prayed for her attention

And I danced to earn her praise

She left me and I wilted

She died and set me free

Alone, I took a breath

Then I saw you

And I recognised you, too

Why must you make me sigh so?

Your voice beautiful but cruel

Calling kindnesses deception

As you claim that I’m a fool

You aren’t the first to do this

Someone else taught me this rhyme

I smile while you reject me

And my prayer to share your time

I’d write a dozen poems

And you’d claim to hate them all

“Fix the rhythm! Fix the meter!”

And I’d fail to heed your call

This may be what my fate is

To care for those who sneer

Who take my heart for granted

And yet, the rhyme has changed?

Meter, rhythm, wrong

The rhyme I think’s half-gone

Where once you scorned, you praise

Where once you scowled, you smile

To think you told me once

That poetry is drivel

You’ve uprooted me

Turned my poems on their head

Ripped out my rhyme and meter

Gave me new ones, made me better

How can you say it’s worthless?

When you teach it like no other?

When it drew us together?

None speak poetry like you

In that small space together

Locked close in that dim light

My words between us

Did I change you?

Was it the tea, I wonder?

Or perhaps my idle chatter?

Did I simply wear you down?

Or could it be that in rare boldness

I dared ask you for your help?

Your pen weighs heavy in my mouth

Your voice is softer now

But I see your hands are shaking

My hands might steady yours

My lips might soften yours

There is a desk between us

Were I braver I would breech it

But I won’t tell you my feelings

Both for your sake and for mine

Yet I dream you’ll know them still

Find the words wrapped in my praise

Find them shining in my gaze

I might love you

Maybe as you changed the rhyme

Maybe you might change the end

And I might yet share your time

And you might love me back

             When he finished reading, Jon’s hands were shaking so badly the tablet fell out on his hands to clatter on his desk.

             “Well, given the fact you rather look like you’ve swallowed a lemon, I have to assume you actually didn’t know the contents of this poem. However, you surely understand why this is highly inappropriate? I trust you’ll deal with this?” 

            Elias’s too-wide smile was unpleasant, and Jon averted his eyes. For a moment, he had the instinct to hide himself under his desk and perhaps never show his face anywhere ever again.

             Instead, Jon took a breath, forced himself to meet his boss’s eyes, and managed to keep his tone even in spite of the urge to hyperventilate.

            “Yes. Yes, I’ll deal with it.”

*

                On Wednesday afternoon, Martin had shown up in the lounge only for Melanie, Tim, Sasha and Basira to disrupt everyone around them by setting off noisemakers and throwing confetti in his face.

                “CONGRATULATIONS MARTIN!” Tim announced loudly for the entire room to hear, “ON YOUR FIRST FORAY INTO THE WORLD OF PUBLISHED POETS!”

                “Oh my god, how did you find out?” Martin gasped, hands clammy as he sank into the seat Sasha had pulled out for him.

               “Melanie told us,” Basira said with a smug little smirk. “She’s been watching the new additions of the student journal since a lot of your classmates were submitting to it.”

               “Wanted to check out the competition,” Melanie shrugged, then smiled. “Definitely was a shock to see your name. Though, seriously? Still bad taste.”

               “Yeah! You didn’t tell me you finally gave in and joined our little scheme! I’m hurt, Martin!” Tim bemoaned as he settled an arm around Martin’s hunched shoulders. “But seriously, you laid it on pretty thick. Can’t believe Sims didn’t notice THAT when you handed it in.”

               “It’s not about him!” Martin said quickly, cheeks hot but damn it he wasn’t going to let this get around! They were in public, and he would deny this into the grave! The last thing he wanted was even a chance that this could get back to his professor. 

               “It’s not?” Tim raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that? What about the bits where the guy ‘said poetry was drivel’ and then taught you about it? And about him being a prick to you.”

               “It’s not about him. It was about… someone else I knew a long time ago. In secondary school,” Martin said, quickly making something up on the spot that sounded reasonable. “I took elements of things Sims said, you know, for the artistic value of it? But I swear, it wasn’t actually about him. ”

              “Huh, really?” Tim sounded genuinely surprised, but believing. “Well, I’d say watch out since it does make it sound like it’s about him… but given how oblivious the guy is, I doubt it’ll matter much.”

              “Yeah,” Melanie snorted. “Anyway, you make any money off that deal, Blackwood?”

              “Er, just fifty pounds.”

             “Let that be a lesson to you,” Melanie said, expression flat, “Academia doesn’t pay.”

             So that had been that, and Martin had gotten away with it. After all, there was no way Sims was going to be reading those poetry journals.

*

             Or so he had thought.

             “Mr. Blackwood, I will be dismissing class fifteen minutes early today. I would like you to stay after so that I can speak to you about your homework,” Professor Sims had said stiffly when Martin had turned his weekly poem in, and something about the way the smaller man was resolutely not looking up to meet his eyes made Martin’s blood run cold.

             “Y-yeah, sure, um, I can do that. N-no problem!” Martin’s voice came out as squeaks as he had scurried like a mouse back to his seat where Tim and Melanie looked at him curiously.

             “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, mate.”

             “No, no, um… the professor just said he needs to speak to me after class?”

             “Oh, it might just be about getting published,” Melanie said with a shrug. “He congratulated me when he found out.”

             “That’s what I’m afraid of! And he didn’t ask you to stay after, did he?”

             “Well, no, but maybe he considers getting published by an academic journal a bigger deal than a magazine?”

             “I-I’m just… worried about what Tim said?” Martin tried. “W-what if the professor also… misunderstands?”

             “He won’t,” Tim snorted, “Trust me, he’s got some kind of poem blindness. And even if he did, he’s a teacher! He’ll just give you something about ‘I’m flattered but I need you to respect our professional boundaries’ and you can tell him it wasn’t about him, and he’ll be embarrassed… oh man, maybe I should stay behind and listen in, that sounds hilarious.”

             “Gee, thanks Tim,” Martin muttered.

             Melanie leaned over to whisper, “Wasn’t Sims going to hand back our free verse poems today? He’s never been late grading before. That’s kind of weird.”

             Martin sank down even further into his seat.

*

             By the time Professor Sims called the class early, Martin’s shirt was sporting massive pit-stains and his hands were so sweaty he was having trouble holding onto his pen. It didn’t help that as soon as everyone was reaching for their bags, Sims’s eyes trained themselves on Martin and the gaze seemed to fix him in place until Tim nudged him and told him to get down there.

             Martin would have liked to delay the inevitable indefinitely, but that didn’t seem to be in the cards as the room started to properly empty out. He swallowed hard, and made his way down the steps to the front of the room. When he reached the Professor’s desk, he opened his mouth to speak only for the man to raise a hand to silence him.

             “Don’t. Just stay here, I will speak with you alone about this. I would have arranged to meet you at my office later but given the circumstances I don’t think that would be wholly appropriate.”

             Martin’s heart sank into his shoes, which he took great interest in looking at as he heard the heavy fire door heave open and shut several times as more and more students left. He chanced the tiniest glance up as Tim was one of the last in the room. The man sent Martin a wink and a thumbs up before following the masses out the door, and a moment later Martin and his professor were alone in the cavernous lecture hall.

             “So, er, w-what did you need to talk about?” Martin asked. 

             Sims didn’t look at him, but he still gave a nod and circled his desk. His hands trembled as they opened his briefcase and pulled out a very heavily marked sheet of computer paper from it, setting it on the table between them.

             It was his poem, clearly printed from the student poetry journal’s website judging by the banner at the top. Martin went very still. It was marked up in red, like Jon had graded it. Odd, the publication assignment wasn’t graded based on the poem submitted, but rather on the report done after. Still, that didn’t mean Sims knew anything.

             “Er, right, I hadn’t gotten around to mentioning I was published but er, you found it anyway I guess?” Martin tried as his professor let out a hiss of breath through his teeth and tapped the first stanza of his poem with his finger.

             “Firstly, I want you to know I’m failing you for this assignment.”

             Martin’s eyes flew wide open and his jaw dropped. That was certainly not what he expected. “What? Why? I got published! Surely that’s the whole POINT of the publication assignments!”

             “Not exactly, but I’m trying to send a message. This poem… having a poem like this published is- it reflects badly on the class! Poorly constructed, for one thing!”

             “Poorly constructed?! It’s a free verse poem! It’s not like there’s any standard rules you can mark me down on!” Martin argued, feeling himself growing more indignant by the second. He’d worked his arse off on that poem!

             Sims still wouldn’t look at Martin, didn’t even acknowledge him as he prodded the first stanza again. “For example, it’s clear you were trying to contrast a meter and rhyme scheme with a lack thereof, but if so there are several places where the meter was off when it clearly shouldn’t have been. I’ve marked them down.”

             “Are you serious?!”

             “And on top of that, there’s half rhymes everywhere, and it’s altogether far too long. You could’ve probably cut… well, several of these stanzas. I can’t imagine why they would waste so much paper on a poem like this, but you… y-you need to contact them and… and tell them to remove it from their website immediately. It’s not- this simply won’t do!”

             The man was still not looking at Martin, his eyes fixed on the page. Martin felt something inside him boil over.

             “NO! No, I am NOT going to do that! I don’t even think I CAN do that now since I was paid for it and they have the rights, but even leaving that aside there’s absolutely no way I would! I get it, you hate poetry! You clearly don’t understand this, but poetry is subjective! Not everyone is going to like every poem, and you not liking it isn’t a good reason to fail me! Especially when the poem I got published has nothing to do with my grade on this assignment anyway! SOMEONE clearly liked it, or it wouldn’t have been published, so you have no right to tell me it’s garbage! Besides, you probably wouldn’t know a good poem if it farted in your car!”

             Finally, Professor Sims raised his head to make eye contact and Martin nearly bit his tongue from how acidic he looked. “Maybe not, but at least I know it’s extremely inappropriate to publish a blatant love confession to your teacher in an ACADEMIC PUBLICATION!”

             The shout echoed around Martin as his heart seemed to stop in his chest. He couldn’t even find the words to deny it as his professor fell into an absolute tirade. 

             “This could–you have no idea–the reputation of the University–” 

             Martin could barely understand what his teacher was saying. He only heard it as though he were sinking deep underwater with every word.

             His eyes stung. God, he was crying. Sims didn’t seem to have noticed yet. He had to get out there. He stumbled back from the desk, nearly tripping on the stairs as he moved to escape.

             “Mr. Blackwood? Mr.- MARTIN! Martin, come back here! You can’t just- MARTIN!”

             But Martin did not turn back. He ran up the stairs, pushing the cracked door open and barely noticing Tim’s angry expression as he brushed by him and mumbled something about seeing him later before racing off out of the English building.

*

             Jon watched Martin’s back as he stormed out and felt like his heart was going to hammer its way straight through his ribcage. Had he been too harsh? Damn, he clearly hadn’t thought it through enough. Since Monday he had done nothing but panic over how he was supposed to do this. He had barely slept, and all he could come up with was telling Martin directly what was wrong. Only–the second he had told Martin he needed to see him after class he lost the will to manage even that much.

             The nitpicking was stupid, he could see that now. He’d just gotten caught up in his own embarrassment. Hell, he hadn’t even been able to look at Martin until it was far too late, and then he’d yelled at him.

             He wished he’d read that poem in different circumstances without Elias breathing down his neck he at least might’ve felt–less panicked?

             Well, at least he surely communicated that these… feelings were inappropriate and unacceptable. And most importantly, not reciprocated. Even if part of him...

             Martin’s hurt look flickered into his mind and something awful twisted in his stomach. He tried to push it down.

             “Heeeeey Teach! Can I talk to you for a sec?”

             Jon jerked to attention, wholly shocked at being interrupted. “Er, Mr. Stoker? Did you have a question about tonight’s assignment?”

             Tim Stoker wasn’t quite as tall as Martin, but Jon still had to tilt his head back to look at him as he hovered with a slightly crazed grin. Jon instinctively took a step back as Tim casually crushed his fist into his open palm. “It’s actually more of a question of why the hell you thought it would be okay to yell at my friend until he cried. What kind of prof are you anyway?”

             Jon blinked owlishly, still trying to put space between him and Tim as he wheeled behind his desk. “What? Martin… cried you say? Well, I-I didn’t mean-”

             “Are you playing favourites? Is that it? You don’t like Martin so you think it’s okay to tell him his work is trash and accuse him of things without evidence?”

             “No! I mean, wait, you were listening? He just left, he couldn’t have told you!” Jon ran a shaking hand through his hair. “A-anyway, i-it’s none of your business, but it was quite obvious the poem was about me, and as that was the case he shouldn’t have submitted it to be published for obvious reasons!”

             “How do you figure it was about you?! Because he mentions learning poetry in it? Listen, little newsflash for you sir, but Martin was the only one in the class who REFUSED to write sappy love poetry about you! He already told me that poem was about someone he knew back in secondary school, so yeah, whatever that little freak out was? Totally unwarranted.”

             Jon stared at Tim, feeling something rather like a lead weight form in his chest. “I-it… it wasn’t about me?”

             “No! I told everyone in the damn class to write love poems about you as a prank, and Martin was the only one who DIDN’T! Are your listening skills as bad as your reading comprehension?!”

             Jon made some strangled noises as he staggered against the projector screen still rolled down the wall.

             It wasn’t about him. The poem wasn’t about him at all and he’d assumed it was. Well, so had Elias, but Elias had also assumed something was happening between him and Martin during his office hours when there was clearly no reason to think that, so he was hardly an authority, was he? But Jon hadn’t questioned it, and then he’d told Martin that…

             Oh god, it was him. He was the inappropriate one.

             “I… I have to go, I have t-to…” Jon trailed off as the rest of what Tim said hit him and suddenly a little blossom of horror and indignation rose in his chest to drown out the panic. “Wait, did you say EVERYONE ELSE’S POEMS WERE-?!”

*

             By Monday, Jon felt confident that he had something together. He would apologize to Martin before class. Then he would address the frankly awful love poetry issue. Then he would hand back the homework, and everything would be alright again. He could do this.

             During his lunch on Monday, Elias called Jon to his office again.

             “I see you’ve dealt with our little student publication problem,” Elias said cheerily as Jon shut the office door behind him.

             “Oh, er, not really but I’m working on it. Is this meeting about more drop outs by chance? I did tell you that with the drop out cut off being today, we’d probably see a few more-”

             “Oh no, there was only one more who dropped over the weekend. That’s why I thought you’d dealt with the issue, actually. Regardless, I suppose there won’t be any more chance of a scandal after this.”

             Jon’s brow furrowed. “Wait, what do you mean? Who dropped?”

             “Isn’t it obvious? Your not-so-secret admirer.”

             “… shit.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: I still shall sing your name and beg your favour

             Jon stood in his usual spot at the front of the class while seventy-nine poetry students stared blearily down at him. 

             “I’m banning love.”

             It took a moment for them to register exactly what he had said, and then there were a few coughs, some blatant sniggers.

             Jon cleared his throat and went on, “No one is allowed to write about love in their assignments from now on. Compliments on a person’s appearance are banned. Descriptions of a person’s eyes or scent are not allowed. Any poem that uses the word ‘sexy’ gets an automatic zero.”

             More laughter. Jon schooled his face into a glare.

             “I hope you know that I’m serious about this. You all know what you did! I’m not standing for it any longer. Love is banned in this classroom. Write about trees, or… or the moon, or the pencil in your hand, but I will not tolerate love any longer. Now when I call your name I will be handing back your free verse poems from last week, alphabetically.”

             Jon managed to keep his hands steady as he moved through the stack until he reached Martin’s paper. He hadn’t taken it out of the stack. Swallowing hard, Jon quickly pulled it off the top and practically threw it face down on the desk before he moved on to the next.

             More than a few of his students looked unhappy as they saw their grades. While he hadn’t implemented his ‘no love’ ban on this assignment, any he graded after Stoker’s revelation that hinted at the themes received intense scrutiny. He was sure plenty were receiving their worst mark of the semester with this assignment.

             Martin would never even know he’d gotten an A.

             As Jon started his lecture on Poetry and Classical Storytelling, the poem lying face down on his desk seemed accusatory. By the time break rolled around Jon had scooped it up, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it into the bin.

             Then he later released the class early, upturned the bin, and slipped the paper into one of his thicker textbooks to try and flatten it out during his next several classes.

*

             “I mean in retrospect, it was kind of hilarious. The guy just says ‘I’m banning love’ like he’s telling us all our grandmothers just died. Not surprised it’s getting a response on his ratemyprofessor page,” Tim mused from across the table in the corner of the campus food court.

             The group had chosen to permanently relocate from the English lounge so Martin would have less chance of running into Sims and the food court was centrally located. “But even so, he’s a right arse for how he treated you, Marto. I’m just sticking with the class so I can do the student evaluation at the end of semester and drag his arse hard enough that they fire him.”

             “Please don’t do that,” Martin groaned, covering his face with his hand. “I-it’s not his fault really, even you thought it was about him, right?”

             “Sure, but that didn’t give him the right to yell at you about it!” Melanie snapped, ripping into her falafel with vigor and proceeding to talk with her mouth full. “That guy has it coming, I’m telling you. Those Post-It notes were nothing, I’m slashing his tires this time.”

             “Please don’t do that either!” Martin stressed, unconsciously twisting Sims’s thermos in his hands. He kept meaning to replace it, but it was a good thermos and it felt like a waste to just get rid of it. “For one thing, you could actually get arrested. For another, what he did really doesn’t deserve that. He reacted badly, sure, but that doesn’t mean he deserves some divine retribution for it alright? I dropped the class, which I didn’t need anyway, and honestly it’ll probably be better for my GPA in the long run.”

             Sasha nodded carefully. “That might be true. And hey, you can still write poetry for fun and try to submit more to be published, you don’t need a grade to do that.”

             “Yeah, ah, not sure I’ve felt much in a poetry mood lately…”

             “Urgh, see? He ruined poetry for you! And you actually liked poetry!” Melanie scowled, slamming a hand down on the table. “Definitely slashing his tires. Tim, you in?”

             “Fuck yeah!”

             Basira sighed and waved a hand of silence. “Okay, no, don’t do that. With all the students who dropped the class already I’d imagine he’s not going to have a good case for getting his contract renewed anyway, so no point risking trouble over it.” Basira sighed as Tim and Melanie resumed sulking in their seats. “Sort of a shame though. Guy’s kind of nuts, but you have to admit he really knows the subjects he’s teaching.”

             “Doesn’t change that he’s a dick. He better pray he’s not here next year,” Melanie muttered into another bite of falafel.

             “I could find out, probably,” Sasha said thoughtfully.. “I could always hack his emails, find out if he’s been talking with the Head about his performance.”

             “Okay, seriously, are ANY of you listening to me?! Don’t do anything illegal just to avenge me or whatever!” Martin ran a hand through his hair and pulled on it fretfully. “Seriously! It’s not like he threw me out of his class, I left! A-and I may have done anyway, since my grades weren’t very good. It’s got barely anything to do with him!”

             “Oh come off it Martin, we all know you like him and then he went and broke your heart.”

             “TIM! Honestly, I’ve had enough of this!” Martin stood abruptly from his seat and slung his bag over his shoulder. “Do what you want, just don’t do it for me. I don’t want anything to do with Sims anymore, alright? I’ve got to go.”

             Sasha made a small, distressed sound. “But your next class isn’t for another hour?”

             “Yeah well, I’ve got a thing.”

             “Geez, Marto I’m sorry! I’ll let it go. Hey, want to share some of the coffee cake I got for dessert? Surprisingly creamy for food court food.”

             “Not interested, I’m leaving,” Martin mumbled and turned away, marching off into the throng of students around him and pretending not to hear his friends calling for him to come back.

             He didn’t notice the professor hiding behind the trash bins across the room leaving his cover to join the throng following him into the hallway.

*

             Jon knew this was probably a bad idea, but he wasn’t sure what else to do.

             In the first week after Martin had dropped the class, he had tried his best to put the incident from his mind. After all, surely it would be best to keep his distance from his former student and simply allow them to go on as strangers. Martin wasn’t even in his department, it was easy enough to avoid him. But it was needling at him, the guilt of it all, and that came out in a myriad of little ways.

             Drinking tea, any tea, turned his stomach. Substituting with coffee had done little to help when he often drank it out of Martin’s very own thermos. Instead of managing to get rid of it, he would look at it glumly twenty times a day and reflect on his sins.

             When he graded poetry assignments now, he had initially thought the lack of love themes would help keep his mind off of Martin. Instead their absence was starkly noticeable. Every pointed, aggressive dirge about pencils,clouds and oceans seemed to accuse Jon of having sucked the joy right out of life, and were they wrong? Not that Jon planned to rescind his proclamation, but still. It ate at him.

             Eventually Jon reached a tipping point when he opened his grammar textbook to write his next pop quiz and found Martin’s last free verse poem wedged between its pages. Perhaps it had been because it was one in the morning after a very long day, but Jon had held the crinkled paper against his chest and sobbed hard enough that his tears stained the textbook. He coughed, took a swig from the thermos to calm himself, then remembered who the thermos had belonged to and cried again. 

             He’d woken late the next morning still sat at his desk with his back aching and snot dried onto his upper lip. He had to admit enough was enough. He had to find a way to apologize to Martin and, perhaps, return him to class.

             But as Martin was no longer his student, he didn’t have access to his email address and couldn’t remember it offhand either. He couldn’t access any of his contact information, and he certainly didn’t think asking Mr. Stoker or Miss King would bear much fruit. So Jon did the only thing he could think to do. In every spare moment, he would circle the campus buildings, frequently the ones that hosted admin courses, hoping he might catch sight of Martin alone.

             Unfortunately, whenever he did spy Martin, he always seemed to be amid a crowd of students shuttling from one class to another, or else sitting with his usual group of friends on his breaks. When he couldn’t catch Martin alone organically, Jon resorted to, well, following him.

             Which is why Jon had been across the food court from Martin and his friends that day, pretending to tie his shoe behind a garbage can for twenty minutes.

             When Martin got up to leave, alone for once, Jon was quick to follow. A bit too quick, actually. The second he had cleared the food court, Jon had taken off at a sprint to catch up to Martin’s retreating back and by the time he reached him he was far too out of breath to actually say anything.

             Cursing his smoker lungs, Jon instead reached out and grabbed Martin’s sweater sleeve with the vigor of a dying man begging a passerby for water. Martin spun on the spot with a wild look in his eyes.

             “For fuck’s sake, Tim! I said I don’t- P-professor Sims?” Martin gaped down at Jon as he released his sleeve and instead grabbed his own knees to heave in more breath. Jesus he was out of shape, this was honestly embarrassing.

             “M-Martin… wanted to… tell you… fuck…” Jon grimaced and shook his head as Martin looked as though he were considering bolting at any moment. Jon hoped he wouldn’t, there was no way he’d catch up to him in this state.

             “Um… is this important?” Martin winced, looking down to check his watch. Right, of course, Jon was probably keeping him from something.

             “Y-yes, um,” Jon managed to straighten himself back to full height and cleared his throat. “Your friend, Mr. Stoker, explained that I was mistaken. About your poem. It was entirely inappropriate for me to have accused you of having written about me without evidence. I apologise for driving you to drop my class because of that, and if you want to come back, I am sure I can arrange some way to make up the assignments you’ve missed and restore your grades.”

             Martin stared at Jon for a moment. His face twitched, and Jon had a sudden bizarre urge to reach up and cup it. That lasted until the other man’s lips twisted down and an odd, bitter laugh fell from them.

             “Yeah, um, that’s okay. It’s fine. I… understand why you would have, hm, made the mistake? But don’t you think it’s a little conceited to assume that’s the only reason I dropped your class?”

             “… Excuse me?”

             “Well it’s just, you’ve been kind of a prick to me from the start, right? And my grades weren’t that great anyway. Who am I kidding? I’m no good at poetry, it was a bit silly risking actual academic credits and wasting money on it, you know? Seems a bit pointless to come back to the class now that I’m out of it.”

             “Pointless?! Aren’t you the one who told me poetry is good for the soul or something?”

             “Yeah, well, can’t say my last poem did much good for my soul overall. Maybe made things a bit worse, actually.”

             Jon was sure he’d never seen Martin’s eyes so cold before. “Please, Martin, as I said I’m very sorry-”

             “And I said it’s fine. It’s over now. I dropped the class, you don’t have to worry about any inappropriate poems from me or… well, anyone else it sounds like if what Tim said is true.” Martin sighed as Jon unconsciously wrapped his arms around himself. “Look, if it makes you feel better, I forgive you, okay? There. I’m not rejoining the class, and yeah, maybe I won’t be writing any poems for a while. Or ever. But I really doubt there’s anything you can actually do to fix this? I’ve got to deal with my end on my own. So just leave me alone, okay?”

             It was not okay. Jon had the horrible sinking feeling that he had managed to fail Martin utterly as the man turned away and started walking down the hallway.

             “W-wait!” Jon called, but either he wasn’t loud enough or Martin was pretending not to hear him because a group of students crowded the hall between them and when they cleared, Martin was gone without a trace.

*

             Martin sat in his accounting class with his teacher droning on about accounts payable, twirling that pen in his fingers. He was thinking about how lost Professor Sims had looked when he had said he wasn’t coming back to class.

             It was still the right choice. He knew it was. Better for his GPA, and better for his heart. Hearing the professor’s reaction when he had thought, rightly, that Martin had confessed to him made him realise how deep his feelings had gotten in a short period of time. He’d skipped class the next day and spent most of his non-work hours that weekend crying his way through his last box of tissues and a roll and a half of toilet paper. He had been heartbroken. Going back now would only be reopening the wound.

             So he had made the right choice, pretending to accept Sims’s apology while keeping that distance. It wouldn’t help anything to tell him the apology didn’t matter, because the poem was about him, and surely he wouldn’t have apologised if he’d known.

             The pen landed on the margin of his notebook. The previous pages were full of micro-drafts of poems he never quite wrote out all the way. Today his pen only formed loops and spirals as he doodled up and down the side of his classwork.

             Then, abruptly, the ink faded out into a dry indent. Martin squinted and rolled the tip of the pen against the paper over and over, but nothing else came out. The pen had run dry.

             Martin took a breath, got up, and threw it into the trash.

*

             Jon had to fix this.

             When Martin had left him in that hallway, Jon had retreated back to the English building in shame. He had failed Martin as a teacher, but Jon was sure now that what he wanted wasn’t forgiveness. No, what Jon needed was to atone. And atonement here, he believed, would mean giving Martin back his inspiration.

             Maybe he wouldn’t return to Jon’s poetry class. Jon could accept that much. But damn it, Martin shouldn’t give up his love of poetry just because Jon wasn’t cut out to teach it. Jon being forgiven didn’t matter, but Martin being happy and confident in himself certainly did. He never wanted to see Martin look so… so lifeless again.

             So Jon sat at his tiny kitchen table in his flat, a lined notebook poised in front of him and a pen in his hand. Martin’s thermos was set up beside it as though judging every word Jon wrote and crossed out on the page. It felt… deserved.

*

             Martin stared at the blank page of his poetry notebook. It had been blank for almost two weeks now. He was thinking about ripping out the pages he’d written on and re-using the book for accounting notes, since that class was eating up pages fast and it couldn’t hurt to save a few quid on a new one, right?

             He sighed heavily and shut the book again, shoving it back in his bag where it continued to take up space. He really ought to get rid of it. It was just dampening his mood.

             “Hey Martin, you alright?”

             Martin lifted his head as Tim took up the spot across from him at his little table in the library.

             “Oh, ah, yeah I’m good. What’s up?” Martin asked, nervously tapping his heel against his metal chair leg.

             “Well,” Tim leaned forward, hands pressed together in front of him, “We haven’t really seen much of you lately. And you’ve been a little… let’s say short with those one-word reply texts. I get that you’re still bummed over Sims, but that’s really not a great reason to blow the rest of us off, yeah?”

             “I’m not blowing you off!” Martin said incredulously, “I’ve had like, three midterms in the last couple weeks! And homework as well. Just because I’m down a class doesn’t mean I’m not still busy.”

             “And the texts?”

             “Really busy.”

             Tim sighed. “Martin, I’m just worried about you, mate. You sort of dropped off the earth, you know? I only knew you were here because I flirted with the librarian and got him to swear he’d call me when you showed up.”

             “…that’s a bit creepy of you.”

             “You left me no choice! I texted you like, twenty gifs of sad faces and you just replied ‘ok?’! What else was I supposed to do, Marto?!”

             “Not seduce a librarian? What the heck, Tim?!”

             “Listen, we’re getting off topic. The point is, come for drinks tonight.”

             “No. I have to study.”

             “All work and no play makes Marto a dull boy!”

             “I said no! Look, I’m just not in the mood, alright?!”

             “Geez, someone’s grouchy,” Tim pursed his lips. “Alright, at least come to lunch with us today. You gotta eat, right?”

             “I’m-” Martin sucked in a breath and shut his eyes. He was being irrational about this. He knew that. “I know you’re trying to help. And I appreciate it. I do. But I’m still pretty down, and I really don’t think I’d be good company. I don’t really want to be around too many people right now.”

             “…right,” Tim rubbed a finger along his lips as he eyed Martin critically. “Okay, then how about you talk to me about it? See if we can help you work through some of this.”

             “No offense, but you’re not exactly a therapist.”

             “I’m not, but I don’t see how it can hurt. So, Sims yelled at you, you quit the class you loved, and now life is dragging you down. Anything else I should know about?”

             “Not really.”

             “Oh come on Martin-”

             They were then interrupted by a light cough and when Martin looked up he was struck by the sudden urge to flip the table and run. Professor Sims looked sheepishly down at both of them, eyes darting from one to the other as he clutched his briefcase to his chest.

             It would have been cute if it weren’t for the horribly mussed hair and incredibly dark bags under his eyes. He was trembling lightly, too. Martin felt his mouth tighten in unwanted concern.

             “Can we help you?” Tim asked, breaking the tension with an uncharacteristically icy tone. Sims grimaced and re-adjusted his grip on his briefcase.

             “Well, actually, I was rather hoping to catch Martin alone. The librarian told me you’d come in and-”

             “Is everyone seducing the librarian into spying on me?!”

             “What? No! I didn’t- I didn’t seduce- Why would you think-? Never mind! Martin, I can’t stay long, but I-” his eyes darted to Tim who was squinting hard at him and then back to Martin, his voice lowering. “I need you to come to my office later today. Er, my last class ends at seven, if that time works for you.”

             Martin frowned. “I guess? But what do I need to come to your office for?”

             “I- I need to discuss the um…” he glanced at Tim again, “I-it’s for class.”

             “He’s not in your class.”

             “I know that, Mr. Stoker!” Sims snapped and then took in a deep breath through his nose before focusing himself back on Martin. The hair on the back of Martin’s neck prickled. “Martin. Please. It’s about the poem you published. I don’t want to discuss it here. Please.”

             Tim scoffed. “Martin, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. He’s not even teaching in your department, he’s got nothing on you, okay? He’s got no right to still be on you when you’ve dropped his class.”

             “I know, Tim.” Martin chewed the inside of his cheek. He didn’t have to go, Tim was right. But having his former professor standing over him, looking so unkempt and desperate? He had no idea what the problem could be with his poem, but it looked like it might be legitimately bad. “Is it… did someone else think it was about you? Do you need me to, what, write a statement declaring ‘all similarities to persons living or dead is coincidence’?”

             “What?” Sims blinked, looking bewildered. “I don’t want you to- although I suppose that could help… no! No, that’s not it. I just- please. I swear, if you don’t want to talk to me after this it’s fine. But just, give me one chance to say my piece, alright? Privately.” He eyed Tim again, who scowled back. Martin sensed a storm brewing as Tim opened his mouth again.

             Martin cut him off. “Sure. Fine. I’ll see you at seven, then.”

             Tim’s jaw snapped shut and his eyebrows rose as Sims’s shoulders sagged in relief.

             “You will? I- yes. Good. Very good. I-I’ll see you then. Right.” Stumbling over his words even as he turned, Martin could hear him muttering as he strode out of sight among the bookshelves, tugging on his loose hair all the way.

             “Guy’s balmy,” Tim shook his head. “Hey, I can go with you at seven if you want. Wait outside the door in case he tries anything.”

             “No, Tim. It’s fine. He’s half my size, and I seriously doubt he’d try anything anyway.”

             “You never know! He could poison your tea!”

             “He’s not even going to offer me tea, Tim! Don’t be ridiculous. It’s fine. One last meeting about… whatever this is, and I’ll never see him again.”

*

             “Tea?”

             “Um…”

             Martin had only just managed to shut the office door, plunging himself and Sims into the insufficient light of the desk lamp (the lightbulb overhead seemed to be burnt out) and found the man nudging a Styrofoam cup toward him.

             “It’s got plenty of sugar and milk,” Sims said helpfully. “I, er, recall you saying you don’t care for the tea shop fare otherwise.”

             “… I’m surprised you remembered that,” Martin admitted slowly as he sank into the still-familiar wooden chair across from his former professor. The man looked a little better than he had earlier, though that might just be a result of the dim lighting. “So, what’s wrong with my poem this time?”

             “Oh! Er, nothing. Nothing wrong with it, I er,” Sims swallowed hard and then snatched up the papers strewn on his desk in front of him, sorting through them for a moment before pulling out one dotted with red pen marks. “Right. I- I’ve reconsidered what I said about your poem before.”

             “O-kay?” Martin said slowly, folding his arms and raising an eyebrow. Sims swallowed visibly, and Martin felt a little thrill run through him as he realised the man was clearly quite nervous.

             “R-right. So, um, I think it’s actually quite good. Well, obviously it must be to have been, to be published. But I think my assumptions about the subject matter rather distracted me from actually reading it properly the first few times.”

             “You think?”

             Sims looked up at Martin and ran a hand through his black hair, tugging on it for a moment before turning back to the page. Even in the dim light, Martin thought he saw his cheeks darken. “I’m still sorry, you know. I… I shouldn’t have…”

             “It’s fine,” Martin sighed. He didn’t want to go over that again. “You were saying?”

             “Ah, yes. Well. Upon re-reading it, I actually found the idea quite unique. Using rhythm and rhyme as a means to show treading familiar ground with trying something new was good. Some of the imagery was actually quite striking as well, and so-”

             Martin made an irritated sound. He didn’t mean to, but when it stopped the professor mid-sentence he decided to run with it. “Sir, if you just called me here to tell me I did a good job actually, then can I stop you there? I don’t need your approval to know if I’m good enough to be published.”

             “I- no, no of course not. But, er,” Sims dropped the poem and searched his stack again, pulling out another. “I also thought you might want this back? The last poem you did before you… dropped. You got an A?”

             Martin’s eyebrow rose again. “Was that how you planned to apologise if I’d stayed? By giving me an A?”

             “No! It wasn’t- you earned it! It was good! I especially liked the bit about the tea! The imagery was quite vivid! I- I would never give a student an A just to improve their opinion of me!”

             That brought Martin up a bit short, because honestly that would be out of character for him. Certainly Sims never seemed to have much problem making students hate him with poor grades before. He must have actually liked it. Probably. Huh.

             In spite of just having said Sims’s opinion didn’t matter to him, Martin felt his heart stammer in his chest and his cheeks heat up. He lowered his face bashfully. “I- well, thank you. Good to know I’ve written at least one worthwhile poem, I guess.”

             “Two, at least. Including the published one.”

             “Which you hated.”

             “I- on the first reading I- look it doesn’t matter what I think of it!”

             Martin lifted his head, a little surprised. Actually, Sims looked a little surprised himself, but he rallied faster than Martin did.

             “It doesn’t matter! Poetry is subjective. Whether or not you take a class in it, or get a good grade, that doesn’t matter! Whether you were published or not, even that doesn’t matter! You have an entire book of poetry you’ve never handed in for class, that you didn’t even want me to see, right? You write poetry because you love it and I… and I ruined that for you, didn’t I?”

             Martin wanted to respond, but it was like his throat closed up and he felt his eyes prickle. As much of a front as Martin tried to put up, Sims wasn’t wrong. After working so hard, having his professor tear him apart like that… no, not only that. Having his crush tear apart his unwitting confession and throw it back in his face. He hadn’t felt a scrap of joy looking at a poem since. Hadn’t wanted to write a word of it.

             The professor went on before Martin could even swallow down the wave of sadness choking him, as though he couldn’t bear the lingering silence between them.

             “I did. And… and I… well. That was an awful thing to do, as a teacher. I don’t know if you’re aware, but this is actually my first semester teaching.”

             Martin blinked. He hadn’t known that.

             “I don’t look that young, I know. I didn’t want that to get around, since I was afraid it would mean I’d be less respected but I don’t think that matters so much now. I’ve clearly been making more than a few mistakes with how I’ve been going about things, but I… I can’t let this, I can’t let you be one of them. You came to my class because you loved the subject, and your professor made you hate it. I made you hate it. And I just can’t live with that, until I’m sure I’ve done everything in my power to try to fix it.”

             That was unexpected. Well, this whole thing was unexpected. Deep down, Martin did sort of want Sims to feel bad for what he’d done but he hadn’t imagined him feeling quite this guilty? Especially since at the heart of it, his professor had reacted badly because he had thought Martin had confessed love to his professor in an academic journal and… and he had been right. And it had been inappropriate for Martin to do that. He finally made himself respond.

             “I don’t hate poetry now. I’m just distancing myself from it, for a while. Plus it’s not just me, I’m sure plenty of the students who dropped your class aren’t so keen on poetry anymore.”

             Professor Sims let out a rather undignified whining noise and Martin coughed lightly into his fist. “N-not that that’s so unusual? Plenty of students find they don’t like a subject that much once they actually try it out.”

             “Well, you shouldn’t be one of them!”

             “Why not? I’m not any more special than any other student.”

             “Yes you are!”

             “Why? Because I got published?! For all you know that was a fluke!”

             Sims slammed his hands down on the desk and Martin jumped. “It was not! I know it wasn’t, because I don’t think a single student in this class has been trying to improve as much as you have! You stuck with things, and… and you came to my office hours to ask questions, and you WERE improving! That poem you got published is genuinely good, and if you continue to write, you will keep getting better! I see absolutely no reason why you couldn’t continue to do this professionally if you keep putting the effort in!”

             Martin stared at the professor with his lips parted, but hardly daring to breathe. Finally, “You… you don’t mean that.”

             “I do,” Sims said in his most serious voice, leveling his brown eyes. He certainly looked serious.

             “U-um… thanks, I guess.” Martin couldn’t hold eye contact and instead found himself looking at the tea on the desk again. He reached for it and took a long sip. 

             “So… ah, there is… there’s one more thing. Um, p-probably unnecessary now that I think about it, but I thought… well, er, I-I was also going to say something about how poetry is inspiring, not just subjective. And I was going to prove that by um…” There was the sound of more papers shuffling and looking up this time he found the professor holding a lined piece of paper with what looked like a handwritten poem on it. “I wrote something. For you. Er, inspired by you, rather. Which was the point I was making. Trying to make.”

             “You- what?” If everything before hadn’t thrown Martin for a loop, this certainly was enough to make him wonder if he might’ve stepped through a portal to the twilight zone. “You wrote… you wrote a poem for- for me?!”

             “Yes, well, it’s not… I mean, actually it’s a bit…” Sims twitched a little as his eyes scanned the page. “Um, looking at it now I… well it’s still… rough. I wasn’t sure when you’d be available, and… did you know writing poetry is actually much harder than you’d think? I didn’t want it to be too- but looking at it now maybe it’s not appropriate… ah… maybe we’d best forget about it.” Sims then made to pull the paper back, but in an uncharacteristic display of curiosity and defiance, Martin found his hands darting out to snatch it.

             “Oh no,” Martin said, a small, impish grin spreading across his face as his professor morphed into a look of horror. It was cute. Damn he was cute. “You said this was for me, so I want to read it.”

             “I-it’s really not that good! T-turns out I’m not, er, not much of a poet.”

             “With all your knowledge about proper rhyme and meter? It can’t be that bad.”

             “I- gah, fine then. But don’t say I didn’t warn you and I was quite tired when I wrote parts of it so some parts might come across d-differently than I intended. The meter is a bit off too but that’s not as important as- I promise I was not intending to be awkward, but-”

             “Shush, I’m reading.” Martin held up a finger and felt a trill of pride when Sims’s jaw clicked shut.

--

A Poem for Martin

By Jonathan Sims

To love a man is to behold his faults

And find within someone to share my time

He leaves my heart in twisted somersaults

Where I have naught but rhythm left, and rhyme

Though I might dare to criticize his form

Though I might claim to know his thought and voice

He’s proven that he differs from the norm

And I’ve no right to criticize his choice

I saw myself in him where I was not

For that I know that he must find me strange

But though I was not subject of his thought

I find he’s still inspired me to change

For him, next time I’ll praise instead of scorn

And side by side we’ll see new poets born

--

             Martin lowered the paper, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and sniffled.

             “Oh- damn, where are my- I didn’t expect you to- ah, here,” Martin felt something nudge his arm and found Sims was nudging a box of tissues into it.

             “Th-thank you,” Martin whispered hoarsely as he grabbed one and wiped his eyes properly, then took off his glasses to wipe the fogged lenses off on his shirt. “That was… you wrote that because of me? It was lovely.”

             “It was?” Sims sounded downright shocked, but came back quickly enough. “Er, yes well, sonnets are… traditionally quite structured so it was a mere matter of fitting an established pattern but… I-I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

             “It’s just so… lyrical, I guess? Which is the whole point of sonnets but… and you… you took lines of my poem and you… you s-said I changed you… and you said y-you’d share your time, even though I said my poem wasn’t actually for…” Martin’s breath hitched and something very like a sob leaked out of him. He hid his face again.

             “Oh no, I didn’t mean to make you upset!” Martin heard shuffling and a clatter as Sims moved things around his desk and then he felt a hand trying to tug the poem away from him. Irrationally, Martin gripped it tighter to his chest in response until the tugging ceased. “Martin? Are you alright?”

             “Th-this is just so nice! And it had to have taken so much time, and effort, and you did it for me! J-just to apologise?” Martin blubbered into his palm as he kept cradling the poem over his heart. Damn it, he didn’t give a shit if it was going to wreck his chances of getting over this crush, he’d be keeping this poem till the day he died. Sims wasn’t getting it back, Martin didn’t care if he had to blatantly steal it at this point. “No one’s ever tried to apologise to me like this- a-and no one’s ever written well, anything for me before, and this is… it’s just… nice.”

             He finished lamely, but a quick glance up showed Sims still leaned far over his desk and up close it was clear that his entire face was flushed as he stared into Martin’s tear-reddened eyes.

             “S-sorry,” Martin stammered, unconsciously wetting his lips in response to the proximity. “I-I must look ridiculous, sobbing in your office over something like this.”

             “No, no you look nice, actually.”

             Martin stared at the professor. He stared back, looking quite lost and perhaps unaware of what he’d just said.

             “Sorry, I look nice? Sobbing in your office?”

             “Oh!” Sims startled slightly, drawing back slightly but still very leaned over his desk. Actually now that Martin looked properly he was actually half on top of it, one knee crushing a stack of papers. “Ah, no, I just meant, you don’t… y-you just look… nice? In general? Not… not ridiculous. You look good.”

             “Good?”

             “Great, actually. You look… good and great. You know, with your whole… thing.”

             Martin felt his tears drying as his eyebrows rose incredulously. “My whole… thing?”

             “You know!” Sims insisted again, gesturing to Martin so wildly he nearly struck him on the nose. “The whole, the hair and… and the freckles, and glasses, you know it’s cute! I-I mean, I understand that can be cute. To some people. In fact, historically-”

             Martin looked at his former professor as he continued to stammer and excuse himself while knelt on his desk. As he did so, Martin took another look at the poem in his hands. Particularly the first line.

             “Um, Professor Sims?” Martin asked, voice cracking. Said professor’s voice cut off as though Martin had taken a pair of scissors to it. “Your poem. Right here ah, it says to love a man? What ah… what did you mean by that?”

             “It says…” Sims trailed off as he looked down at the page in Martin’s hand with the offending line on it and if he’d been embarrassed before he looked mortified now. “Oh… oh shit that’s not the right draft! I-I’d meant to- I didn’t mean to- oh my god.”

             Now Sims was covering his face and… and he looked adorable, sat there on his desk even as he continued to speak very quickly into his fists.

             “I am so sorry, you weren’t supposed to find out- completely inappropriate- I never would act on it, I swear, this had nothing to do with wanting you back in my class- this isn’t meant to be anything untoward, I-I’m not going pressure you- no I don’t want anything to come of it, this is just-”

             Martin’s heart was hammering as something bright and fizzing like a firework rose inside him. His breaths came faster the longer Sims rambled because… because this meant-

             “I lied about my poem.”

             “- if you want to file an HR report I under- what?”

             Sims revealed his wide eyes again over his fists and looked down at Martin from his desk as though he’d just told him he was the one who put all those Post-Its on his car. Well, maybe this was just as bad, but fuck it.

             “I lied.” Martin took a deep breath in and out, but hell, the poor man deserved to know that much, didn’t he? “I said the poem wasn’t about you but… but it was. I mean, it… it pretty obviously was, looking back on it. You weren’t even the only one to notice. I denied it because… well, it was inappropriate and… and regardless of how good it was, I probably shouldn’t have published it given the subject matter. I didn’t think about how it would affect you. Honestly I never even thought you’d end up reading it so, I apologise too.”

             Sims continued to stare.

             “Er, but I don’t think I’ll write a poem for my apology, given the circumstances.”

             Sims’s eye twitched a little and he made a tiny snort into his hands before taking one and using it to point an accusing finger in Martin’s direction. “I knew it was about me!”

             Martin couldn’t help it. He looked so damn self-righteous, Martin broke into a fit of giggles. “Well OBVIOUSLY! I even- god, I even said you called poetry drivel! That was a direct quote! You really said that!”

             Sims looked satisfied a moment longer before his smile fell from his face. “Even so, I still reacted inappropriately. I shouldn’t have yelled at you for it. It scared me, I think. Though, perhaps I wasn’t as frightened of your feelings as I was of… of mine.”

             Martin gazed up at Jon, face only half-illuminated and cast in strange shadows. But, maybe as testament to how smitten Martin actually was, this only made him look more appealing. Especially now, because his professor… likes him back. Somehow, impossibly, his professor liked him back.

             “So… what happens now?” Martin asked, breathless. Sims swallowed.

             “W-well, er, I-I’m not sure. I mean, we can’t… we can’t do anything. Obviously it can’t work between us, I’m your teacher after all.”

             “Actually,” Martin blinked, a slow smile spreading over his face. “I think you’ll find I dropped your class. You don’t even teach any classes required for my major. I think there’s a fair argument that you’re not really my teacher at all, sir.”

             “Oh, you’re… you’re right.” The man on the desk looked down at Martin as though he were watching the dawn for the first time, wide eyed and lips parted. He leaned in closer, and Martin found himself scrambling up to meet him.

             Their first kiss was clumsy and awkward. Two men seeking blindly for contact and falling askew.

             They made up for that with the second and third, and fourth, until they felt quite sure they had gotten the hang of it. At some point in the flurry, Sims had eased himself from the desk and into Martin’s lap, and Martin had giggled into the man’s mouth only to have the joyful noise smothered with more proof of the other man’s affection.

             When they finally stopped to breathe, chest to chest, Martin found himself grinning up at the man in his lap with unbridled glee.

             “So, ah, I happen to know a tea shop not far from here that actually knows how to brew one properly. Care to join me, professor?”

             Sims groaned and leaned in, burying his face shamelessly in Martin’s neck before talking directly into his ear. “God, please don’t call me that right now. Jon is fine.”

             “Jon,” Martin bit his lip to stifle another burst of joy over how right the name felt in his mouth. “Okay, Jon, can I buy you a tea?”

             “Sure, yes, if you’d like.” Jon shook his head and drew back, climbing out of Martin’s lap and immediately making him regret asking for anything that would make him get out of that position. Not that it mattered so much as the two walked close enough together on their way through campus and across the street that he never quite grew cold.

*

             “Well, I have enough savings right now that the cut in hours isn’t too bad,” Martin said with a shrug as Jon politely sipped his tea across from him. The café Martin had taken them into was small, but not crowded this time of day and they had found a table near the counter. “But what’s really killing me is how much it eats into my study time. It’s not just the hours, it’s the commute. Especially the Tesco job, it’s not that close to my flat and it’s even further from school. I should really try to find something closer.”

             “Why not get a job at the university?” Jon asked, tilting his head as he remembered his self-indulgent day dream of Martin working in the English building tea shop. He traced the rim of his mug hoping Martin didn’t notice his blush.

             He still couldn’t believe he was sitting here having an ordinary conversation with his student- former student- in a café, after snogging him silly in his office. It seemed like something out of the sort of movie he usually went out of his way to avoid.

             “I have tried a bit,” Martin shrugged, “I applied at the bookstore and the food court, but the bookstore apparently gets a lot of student applicants and er… well, frankly the food court responded quickly but Melanie warned me off taking the job. Apparently the management tends to give out a lot of ‘mandatory last minute shifts’ and I don’t know if I want that mess when I’m already trying to balance class work and a second job.”

             “I suppose that makes sense,” Jon sighed, his day dream fading at the edges. Shame, Martin might’ve actually made that slop worth paying for. “Have you considered asking to be a teaching assistant? Probably too late for this semester, but still, those positions usually pay a little over minimum wage as well.”

             “Huh, I hadn’t actually thought of that,” Martin nibbled his bottom lip for a moment, then smirked. “Shame I didn’t finish your class, or you could hire me on.”

             Jon knew there was no hiding his blush this time, but he ducked his head nonetheless. “I- well… hm, yes. Shame.” There was a long pause. He still had so much grading to do. “Hah, you know it really is a shame? I think I could honestly use the help. Weekly assignments in six classes is actually rather a nightmare to grade.”

             Martin carefully stirred his tea around and looked at Jon with a clearly thoughtful expression. Just as Jon was gaining half a mind to lean over and kiss it off of him, onlookers be damned, Martin spoke again.

             “You know, not to be presumptuous, but it’s not as though we need to tell the world we’ve been snogging right away or anything.”

             “Of course not!” Jon leaned back in his seat, dashing thoughts of kissing Martin in public from his mind. “If you’re not comfortable-”

             But Martin held up a hand to silence him, his thoughtful look bleeding into something a bit more mischievous. It piqued Jon’s interest. “It’s not that. I’m only thinking, there’s only six weeks left to the semester anyway. If you did get me back into the class to finish it- properly of course, I don’t expect you to go easy on me just cause we’re snogging- but if you did, then we could just keep this,” Martin gestured between the two of them, “A secret for a couple of months. Then you could get the school to hire me as your TA for the class next semester! That way I get a job on campus, and you get help with grading. Win win?”

             “Well, it… it might be longer than a couple of months. I’m fairly certain professors aren’t meant to be dating their TAs either.”

             “Is there a policy?”

             “I… have to look into it?” Jon paused, and then scowled faintly. “Also… not to be pessimistic, but given how many students dropped the course this semester I can’t say I’ll even be allowed to teach it in the next one.”

             “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that too much.”

             Jon blinked. “What do you mean?”

             “Ah… well, Tim actually showed me last week. Turns out your ‘banning love’ speech turned into a bit of a class meme? They put quotes from it all over your ratemyprofessor.com page, along with some of your more… memorable rants of the semester. I mean, Tim and Melanie kind of hate you for yelling at me, but it seems the consensus with the rest of your students is that you’re tough but very entertaining.”

             “I’m… entertaining?” Jon’s eye twitched. “That was not my intention.”

             Martin shrugged one shoulder as he took another sip. “I’m just saying, I think your student reviews will be better than you think. And to be honest? I do miss your lectures. Even if you didn’t like the subject, you made it feel exciting. Admin classes are dull as shit.”

             “They must be, if poetry is exciting in comparison.” Martin threw a sugar packet at Jon, and he laughed. “But if you really want to come back and finish the class, I’ll help you do it.”

             “And if I need extra help catching up… I know when your office hours are.”

             Jon’s eyes lit up playfully. “Oh yes. In fact, I’ll have to insist you use them, as a prerequisite for rejoining the class of course. Extra credit work and all that.”

             Martin and Jon shared a pair of sneaky little smirks, marred by their twin sets of rosy cheeks.

             Then Jon’s smirk abruptly fled as he recalled what Martin had said earlier.

             “Wait, I have a ratemyprofessor page?”

             “Yes? Not sure who added you but it’s been up for a while.”

             “What’s my star rating?”

             “Um, four I think? Last I checked, anyway.”

             “And what did they rank my… ‘hotness level’?” Jon asked, raising an eyebrow.

             Martin grimaced. “Well, no accounting for taste but… two.”

             “TWO?! I am at LEAST a three point five!”

             “You’re a five for me, if that helps.”

             Jon muttered darkly into his mug as Martin reached out to sympathetically take his hand. Jon let him.

Chapter Text

Epilogue: That one day we may sweetly share our labour

             Martin had been correct. Against all of Jon’s fears, Elias had told him that he would be handling the Poetry 101 class the next semester.

             “And, ideally, every semester after,” Elias had said with a smug grin. “I have received several compliments to the department for encouraging our students to seek publication at an undergraduate level, with notes on how it is testament to a certain standard of excellence we ought to be cultivating. Additionally, counter to my previous concerns, your student course evaluations have called your teaching style comprehensive and largely amusing. Well, the ones who remained anyway. I think it would be wise to continue to ‘ride the wave’ as it were. I’m sure a later time slot will do wonders for maintaining your class size as well.”

             And so, wonder of wonders, Jon was now teaching poetry from 7pm to 10pm on Friday night in the same big lecture hall. Still not ideal for most students eager for the weekend but certainly a marked improvement. To Jon’s surprise he found that not only was the class full, but when a dozen students dropped in the first week a dozen more appeared to take their place.

             Apparently, his class had a wait list now.

*

             “I told you; college kids love memes,” Martin shrugged as he made room on Jon’s desk for the Pad Thai he’d brought from the food court. Jon was already pushing a stack of sonnets toward him to be graded by the time he sat down. “Tim got a lot of buzz on the student discord group when he posted that picture of the poem he handed in. The one you wrote ‘automatic zero, too sexy’ on.”

             “And I regret that now,” Jon rolled his eyes as he made a mark on the page he was hunched over. “I am extremely tempted to ban love again this semester, but I’m starting to think that’s what they want, the little monsters.”

             “Of course that’s what they want, everyone is hoping for their own ‘automatic zero, too sexy’ meme pic now.” Martin smirked at Jon as he lifted his tea thermos to his lips. Martin had fully gotten him off campus tea and coffee once he’d started brewing for two every day.

             “Well too bad for them, I’m certainly not going to be writing any more meme-able comments on homework.”

             Martin’s lips thinned out as he noted one of Jon’s graded papers lying on the desk with the words ‘VAGINA DOES NOT RHYME WITH VIAGRA, THOMAS, WE’VE BEEN OVER THIS’ scrawled in red along the side. He made a non-committal noise in his throat and took up his own stack of poems.

             “They can’t all be that bad. I’m sure plenty of students are genuinely interested in the subject,”

             Jon snorted. “Maybe, but even when it’s not a grab for attention that would make Freud swoon, the subject matter is often about the most asinine things… take this one here, An Ode to the Ugly Duckling. Dreadful story to start with, yet another attempt to tell children if their parents aren’t perfect they’re clearly adopted or some other ridiculous-”

             “Okay, hand that here,” Martin sighed, taking Jon’s wrist gently and pulling the paper out of it while he sputtered. “First of all, that’s not what that story is about but aside from that…” His eyes scanned the page briefly and he snorted when he spied the name at the top. “Jon, this is Alexis Keel’s poem. It’s clearly a metaphor about her transition.”

             “It… what?” Jon blinked.

             “You know, being born told you’re one thing and then growing up to show the world you’re another? It’s pretty obvious.”

             “Well… well it wasn’t to me!” Jon snapped, making a grabby hand motion.

             Martin shook his head and handed the poem back for Jon to start re-reading furiously. “Jon, how on earth can you have missed that? I mean, you’re trans. Your boyfriend’s trans.”

             “Yes, I KNOW Martin!” Jon sent Martin a glare that might’ve made him quake months ago. Now, Martin only grinned back as his boyfriend sullenly picked up his dinner and started tucking in. While he was distracted, Martin snagged Jon’s red pen and twirled it around his fingers to show off his prize, waiting for Jon to scowl at him properly before starting on his grading.

*

             “You know, as much as I still think Sims is a dick and Martin has incredibly bad taste, I kind of wish the school offered more poetry classes,” Melanie sighed as she flipped through her Medievalism textbook in the English Lounge. “We didn’t actually end up studying established poets and famous poems much, and it’d be nice to expand my range a bit for trying to get into more specialized magazines.”

             “I can recommend some poets to you if you’d like, for inspiration?” Martin offered, lowering his own, dreadfully dull textbook about office organizational software options. “I doubt you’d need a whole class just for that anyway, you’ve already gotten your second poem published now, right? Seems like you’re already getting established.”

Martin’s subsequent attempts to get published certainly hadn’t gotten him anywhere yet, though Jon still spoke words of support like the world’s most committed motivational speaker whenever Martin got down about it.

             “Yeah, same student journal you got into. But I dunno, just makes me think I could actually do something with it if I applied myself? Maybe it’s kind of silly, but I guess I just kind of wish I had a bit more guidance around it.” She shook her head and then smirked at Tim, who was rocking on the back two legs of his chair with his eyes closed. “Though I don’t need it bad enough to retake the same class.”

             “Hey! He failed me! I didn’t have a choice!” Tim whined.

             “Well you probably wouldn’t have failed if you didn’t keep writing joke poems ‘for the meme’,” Sasha said, making air quotes. She ignored  his exaggerated pout.

             “I’ll have you know I failed for being too sexy! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” Tim insisted. “Honestly you’re missing out; not taking the class again. I told him I liked the bit he did about how dumb this one Keats poem was, and he just got all confused and went ‘What bit’? Classic Sims, right Marto?”

             Before Martin could answer, Basira arrived at the table and dumped her own books down beside Martin, sitting heavily beside him.

             “Hey. Martin, do you think you could get Sims to give me an extension on his Frankenstein essay? Daisy’s going to a funeral and I’m going for emotional support but it’s happening on the due date.”

             “I’m only TA for his poetry class technically, not for lit…”

             Basira scoffed. “Martin, you know I can recognise your handwriting when you grade my papers, yeah?”

             Martin winced. “Okay, well, I don’t know. It seems like a conflict of interest.”

             “Bigger conflict of interest than snogging your boss?”

             Martin and Basira stared each other down. Martin broke first with a sigh. “I’ll see what I can do.”

             “Speaking of snogging your boss, do you think anyone besides us caught on yet?” Sasha asked casually as Martin made a note of Basira’s request on the planner he used to keep track of Jon’s schedule. Technically not TA work, but it couldn’t hurt to practice some of his admin skills as well.

             “It’s not like we do it in front of people! But I think some of the students might’ve seen us eating lunch together too many times… and seen me bringing him lunch in class… and the tea… and Jon does smile at me a lot now… so they’re drawing their own conclusions.”

             “Oh they definitely are! Actually, Martin, did you know there’s a whole new subsection of Sims’s ratemyprof page for how he’s definitely shacked up with his TA? Scandalous stuff.” Tim waggled his eyebrows as Martin made a stunning array of stuttering sounds.

             “It’s okay, Martin!” Sasha laughed, turning her laptop around to show Martin a post where someone had clearly taken his and Jon’s profile pics from the school website and photo shopped them together into a giant heart with the words ‘School’s Hottest Couple’ underneath it. “Most people think it’s really sweet.”

             Martin squinted at the screen for a moment and then a bone-weary sigh wore through him, making him slump.

             “Sasha, this was posted from your account.”

             “Oh, was it? Sorry, I’ve made so many now I forget which ones are mine.” Tim and Sasha high fived as Melanie snorted and Basira sympathetically rubbed Martin’s back.

             As tempting as it was, Martin did not die on the spot. It would be a shame to miss date night after all.

*

             “Apparently, my so-called friends are fueling the rumour-mill on our ratemyprofessor page.”

             Jon lifted his head from where it had been very comfortably nestled half under Martin’s armpit to look at his boyfriend with a bemused smile. “Our page?”

             “It might as well be now!” Martin sputtered, waving his free hand in the air as if that would help make his point. It was extremely endearing, and Jon pressed his thigh more firmly into the warmth of his boyfriend’s soft stomach as he settled his head back into place where he could feel as well as hear the thrum of Martin’s words. “I was looking at it earlier, and apparently someone’s been taking secret photos of us in class like, every time I put your tea on your desk for you? They definitely figured out I’ve been home brewing it, too.”

             Jon hummed thoughtfully for a moment. “I’m not going back to tea shop swill. Maybe if you put it in one of their Styrofoam cups instead of the thermos?”

             “It wouldn’t stay hot as long.”

             “Well that’s out then,” Jon sighed, stretching his arms out like a contented cat and settling them up around Martin’s neck. “I wouldn’t worry too much, Elias has all but gloated about knowing ‘what we’re up to’ and hasn’t done anything about it. I think he’s just pleased to have something to gossip about with his secretary.”

             “Glad as I am you’ll be keeping your job, I was sort of hoping no one would assume I got my job by snogging my teacher.”

             “Didn’t you?” Jon quirked an eyebrow. He grinned when Martin shoved a hand over his lips to shut him up and wasted no time peppering it with kisses.

             “I just meant- it sets a bad example!”

             “Mm, it certainly does,” Jon agreed once he’d pulled the hand away from his face and leaned up expectantly until Martin sighed and turned to press an indulgent kiss to his mouth. Jon hummed into it for a moment before drawing back and burrowing into Martin’s side again. “But I wouldn’t worry, I have no intentions of kissing any more brownnosing students. I learned my lesson on that.”

             “Oh yeah? And what lesson might that be?” Martin’s arm tightened around his side, and Jon could hear the smile in his voice.

             “Kissing students leads to a devastating influx of love poems. I honestly don’t think I could handle more than what I get from you.”

             “But I thought you liked my-?”

             “Yes Martin, I enjoy your poems. But you can’t deny you write a lot of them. The one you slipped into my lunch today, the short one, how did it go? ‘I’d gladly shun a thousand shining jewels’-?”

            “To string my love in couplets made for fools.” Martin finished for him, letting out a deep breath and shaking his head. “Not one of my best, I suppose.”

             “Hush. I was joking before, obviously. All your poems are your best.”

             “They’re all about you. You’re biased.”

             “Yes, I am.”

             Martin snorted and pressed a kiss into Jon’s hair. The TV in Jon’s flat droned in the background. He didn’t care what was on it. As Martin stroked a broad hand down his back, Jon felt his eyelids droop.

             For the moment, he forgot the world outside. He hadn’t felt so relaxed in ages. He didn’t even remember he had work in the morning as he drifted off in his love’s embrace.

             Luckily, Martin would remember to set their alarm.