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The year was 1951. The war was over, the rations were a thing of the past, but thankfully the bright shade of red lipstick so famously detested by Hitler was still very much in.
You were one of the proud group of pioneers — women who fought for their right to higher education and refused to be reduced to the role of a housewife. It was the new era, the new dawn and the beginning of the new semester at the university you taught at—alongside your eccentric husband.
The birds were singing, the students were rushing to their morning classes, and Professor Marsden, the head of your department, almost lost his breath as he was chasing you down the corridor.
“Mrs. Solomons! Mrs. Solomons, please wait!”
“Top of the mornin' to ya! What can I do for you, Mr. Marsden?" you chirped happily, not stopping even for a minute. There was a heavy stack of books in your hands and you had a literature class to teach in exactly four minutes.
“It’s Professor , actually, Mrs. Solomons, please wait! We need to talk about your husband—!”
“Well, in that case it’s Doctor , as you well know I haven’t taken my husband’s name. He wasn’t the one who had done my Ph.D.,” you rambled, “ and so I figured… In fact, he has two of his very own, but for the life of me I can’t remember what they were on—”
“Doctor Y/L/N, please…!” Professor Marsden huffed and, feeling sorry for the elderly gentleman, you finally stopped your tangent and turned around.
“What is it, Professor?” you asked gently.
“You need to speak with him, Doctor. I’m at my wit’s end!”
“Well, what has he done now?”
“Well!” the man huffed. “He keeps throwing chalk at the students who give him the wrong answers, he doesn’t mark the papers correctly, he refuses to learn anyone’s names, and last Friday he called a student an irredeemable case of fuckwittage!”
“Ah… I see. And why can’t you talk to him yourself?”
“I tried. He… didn’t seem to take it very well.”
“Did you tell him to wear a suit as well?” you sighed.
“How… how did you know?”
“Professor, my husband can’t wear suits to work. It’s an agreement we have.”
“What?!”
“I can’t tell him to wear one and neither can you, otherwise all the female students will start falling head over heels for him. It’s the truth and it happened before. I can’t explain it and neither can the boys at the Physics Department, although they did suggest to me once that it might have something to do with Quantum Entanglement…”
“Doctor Y/L/N, are you joking?!”
“A little, Professor.” You grinned. “I do apologize, but I’m running late as it is.” You sighed and fixed your glasses that slid down the bridge of your nose. “I can’t imagine I’ll manage to knock any sense into that thick skull of his, after all he is a historian…”
“What?”
“Yes, I’m as surprised as you are that I married him at all…” You looked at your watch. “I’ll try to talk to him after lunch, but don’t expect great results, he never listens to me.”
“But…”
“You were the ones who gave him tenure, Professor, you only have yourselves to blame!”
The entire classroom trembled in fear. You sighed and observed through the glazing in the door as your husband walked back and forth in front of the blackboard, only to stop from time to time and ask the class the questions nobody was able to answer.
“McLaren!” Alfie barked at the student in the first row and you saw the young man physically wince.
“McLaren, now what would happen, right, if Queen Charlotte had involved herself in the French Revolution anyway?”
McLaren gasped and looked down at his notes only to be met with another heavy sigh from his professor.
“Wrong, McLaren, she was involved, right, ‘cause her an’ ye olde ‘let ‘em eat cake’ were pals… Yeah. Charlotte was tryin’ to bring her friend back to England, but pay attention, all right, ‘cause it’s important, now her husband—”
You smiled when you noticed how much passion Alfie had for the description of King George’s illness. Unfortunately, his students interpreted said passion for lack of kindness and you could easily see how it could be so. He wasn’t an easy man to read, your Alfie, but still—by some bizarre notion his lecture hall was always full, and with the university having granted him the tenure, well… He was now impossible to dismiss.
“McLaren.” Alfie stepped away from the blackboard after he wrote down the most important dates of the lecture.
The students held their breaths, at least those who were foolish enough not to pretend they were diligently taking notes. Alfie approached the unfortunate student directly and you almost felt bad for the young man.
“An’ ya thought you’d be safe in the first row, right?” Alfie smirked at the lad who looked just about ready for the Earth to swallow him whole. “Right. While McLaren packs his things and leaves my classroom as quietly as possible, let us move on… McLaren, the hell are ya doin’, stop packin’, right, that was a joke, for cryin’ out loud, lad… Sit the hell down.”
You chuckled and waited for the end of the lecture, then stepped aside and only entered the classroom when all of the students vacated it.
“Yeah, the lecture’s over, come back durin’ office hours,” Alfie said absent-mindedly, without so much as looking towards you.
“Well… Isn’t there anything I can do to improve my grade, Professor?” you teased.
He looked at you immediately and you could see he liked the suggestion very much.
“Hello, luv.”
You kissed him instead of answering the greeting, but judging by the grunt he made, he appreciated it even more.
“How are you, Professor?” you asked slyly, still unwilling to let go of him.
“Very well, Doctor Y/L/N,” he murmured and kissed you again, harder this time.
When you finally separated, you needed a moment to catch your breath.
“They’re onto you again, you know,” you said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Hm. The department isn’t happy.”
“Nah, they can fuck off, yeah.”
“Alfie…”
“What?”
You shook your head and said nothing.
“Ah, fuck.” Alfie rubbed his face with his hand and pulled you closer still. “They asked ya to talk to the fucked up professor, yeah? That it?”
“Well…” You kissed his cheek and then sat in his lap.
You were now in his chair at his desk and you found the position very satisfactory.
“Doctor Y/L/N…”
“Yes, Professor?”
“Don’t think I heard ya speak your case yet, yeah?” Alfie put his hands around your waist and you gasped in surprise.
“Someone might see…” you said, breaking the charade a little bit.
“Yeah? Let ‘em.”
“Alfie…”
“What? They gonna see a husband touch his wife? How fuckin’ scandalous, hope the university’s insured…”
“I married a scoundrel,” you murmured, before leaning in closer and kissing that insufferable man the way he deserved; passionately and without control.
“Y/N…”
“Hm?” You smiled at the tone he used; it was that guttural sound he made right after saying your name that drove you crazy.
“I don’t think I can give that next lecture now, darlin’…”
“Well. You’re going to have to. And behave, Alfie,” you chuckled and kissed him on the nose before getting off his lap.
Just as you did that, students started to enter the classroom and you shot your husband one final look before exiting and pretending none of those affectionate moments ever happened.
It’s not that you were ashamed of him–quite the opposite. It was your husband who had the ambition to remain the big bad wolf of the campus and, well, who were you to deny him that little bit of power.
You just hoped he would keep that persona for a few minutes longer after he got home, just to show you how much you have inconvenienced him and forced to perform the entire lecture sitting down.