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This was bad. This was very bad. This was about as bad as it could get and she had only been in the situation for less than six minutes. Trisha groaned, flopping face down on the desk in front of her and not deigning to look up until she felt someone slide into the seat next to her and tap her shoulder gently.
“Trisha? Is everything ok?”
She gave Riza, for it was Riza’s voice, a thumbs up and listened to the sounds of her flatmate getting her books out and getting ready for the lecture. Riza dutifully did not say anything else until she was sitting down next to her.
“I think you might want to look alive,” she said, completely matter of fact and accepting that if Trisha had said she was ok, she was ok, even if she was currently face down on a desk. “He’s about to start.”
Trisha heaved herself upright and looked down from the back row of the lecture theatre towards the chalkboard where the lecturer was writing in elegant if somewhat spidery handwriting.
Ancient Xerxian History 101
Professor Hohenheim
When Trisha had first come to university, almost six months ago now, she had made a vow that throughout her first year, she was not going to do anything stupid. She was not going to fall head over heels in love with someone at first sight, she was not going to dance on any tables, and she was not going to allow her flatmates to talk her into doing jelly shots at three in the morning.
On these last two counts, Trisha had failed spectacularly within her first two weeks of student life, and she blamed Riza and Rebecca for both of them. Still, having got them out of the way in the first fortnight, she thought that she’d managed to get all of the silliness out of her system and would be fine for the rest of the year. Indeed, for her first semester, everything had been going well.
Now, though, she had entered her second semester and had started a new history class, and she was very much on the way to breaking the first self-imposed rule of stupidness, because as soon as the Professor Hohenheim who was currently introducing himself and giving a brief overview of the course syllabus had walked into the lecture theatre and started setting up, Trisha had taken one look at him and lost all sense of coherent thought. He was older, probably in his late thirties or early forties, but Trisha had always tended to like older men. Especially older men with beards and long hair and really nice asses, and Professor Hohenheim managed to tick all of these boxes very nicely. He even sounded nice, now that she was trying to focus on what he was saying and not on what he looked like. He had the lilting rise and fall of a Xerxian accent that hadn’t quite gone away despite speaking perfect Amestrian, and it was the kind of voice that she could fall asleep listening to.
Not that she wanted to fall asleep, even though it was half past eight in the morning and far too early for anyone to be having any classes, and even though falling asleep would offer her some temporary respite from the very embarrassing situation of finding herself checking out her history professor.
She could feel Riza’s eyes and amused expression on her and she tried to ignore it until her friend slid a note across the desk, as if they were back in high school.
Please don’t tell me you have a crush on the new professor having only been aware of his existence for the last five minutes.
Trisha looked over at Riza, who raised an eyebrow, and Trisha felt her face beginning to flame.
“What?” she mouthed. “He’s hot!”
Riza’s eyebrow remained raised as she looked from Trisha to Hohenheim and back again, then finally shrugged, as if to say ‘to each their own’, before returning her attention back to the matter at hand, namely the lecture. Trisha looked down at her papers to find that she had written absolutely no notes whatsoever and sighed. She was going to have to see if she could cadge a look at Riza’s later once they were back in the dorm.
This was bad. She didn’t do this. She was supposed to be the sensible one. Of all of her friendship group, before they had gone their separate ways to various places after high school, she had always been the voice of reason. Sarah had always been the one falling in love every five minutes, but now she and Yuriy had been going strong for a couple of years and Sarah seemed to have settled down into being the responsible adult, and Trisha was thirsting after professors twenty years her senior.
She shook herself, grabbed her pen and started trying to listen to what he was saying instead of just his voice. It was just a momentary lapse of judgement, that was all. By this time next week, she’d find herself wondering what she ever saw in him. She was absolutely not going to make some kind of excuse to go and see him in his office hours to get a closer look at him.
No, she was absolutely going to do that because it would be best to get it all out of her system sooner rather than later instead of potentially admiring him from afar and pining for weeks. She’d already seen how Jean was pining over the barmaid in their local… Actually Jean was a bad example, considering he was still pining over the barmaid in their local even after she had threatened to stab him with her false fingernails if he tried to ask her out again.
The lecture came to a close and Trisha felt justified in resuming the close contemplation of the desk that she had been performing when Riza had come in. For her part, Riza just laughed.
“Oh, you’ve got it bad,” she said. “You’ve got it very bad. I could tell just how much effort it was taking for you not to mentally undress him.”
“Shut up.” Trisha started gathering her things together, pointedly not meeting Riza’s eyes as they left the lecture theatre.
“Hey!” Rebecca hailed them from the other end of the corridor and ran down to meet them. “What’s up? How was the new class? Why has Trisha gone as red as her baby tomato plants?”
“The new class is good,” Riza said. “I think it’s going to be interesting. Trisha’s gone as red as a tomato because she wants to bang the professor.”
“I’m guessing tall, light and mysterious over there?” Rebecca pointed down the corridor to where Hohenheim was deep in conversation with the head of the Ishvalan History department. “Huh. Yeah, I can see where she’s coming from. Cute butt.”
“Not helping, Rebecca,” Trisha grumbled, at the same time as Riza just sighed.
“Don’t encourage her, Rebecca.”
They made their way down the corridor and were almost in the clear when whatever conversation between the two professors came to a close and Hohenheim turned back in their direction. He just gave a nod of recognition as he passed them, and now that she could see him close up, Trisha could see that he had the most beautiful golden caramel eyes she’d ever seen.
It was clear that she was fighting a losing battle, and she decided that she might as well just ride the wave now that she was on it. She wasn’t the first person ever to be attracted to one of their professors, and she wouldn’t be the last.
She was definitely going to find an excuse to go to his office hours though. After all - it couldn’t hurt to look, right?