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"Sweet - now you can show us more of the handsome ginger with the cute Asian across history again!"
Doctor Armitage Hux scowls at her from across the lectern. Proprietary and rumours be damned, I will call you out Miss Tico. You are a grad student, not an undergrad, and are only here to taunt me and my theories.
The little minx in question sits there, eyes shining and a smirk plastered all over her (adorable) face.
Historical Literature studies was not how they met - he had done work for the engineering department and met her. A few parties and months later and his ice walls melted and she was his.
Which was great until she pulls shit like this.
"Yes, student - there will be some images in my slides for you to examine shortly. Do you have a question aside from an interruption?"
"Well, sir - I was wondering whether you could tell us more about these theories. They are somehow connected."
Hux shudders at the honorific, but doesn't rise to the bait. He was going to wait until next week before testing his students, but he might as well start now.
"There are stories, little student, that seem to recur across time and place. Two people with similar features - a tall, icy, red-haired westerner and a short, dumpy, fiery woman of Asian origin are somehow together and linked intimately. Observe in this tale about the Tinker in the Copeland translation of The Lytell Gest and Tale of Robyn Hode - how the Sheriff is not beaten by arms but is won over by a "fair and exotic beauty". Or the Comte du Huxley who was executed during the Jacobin Terror and how his partner was "from the company territories in the oriental lands". I propose that, for reasons unknown to us, these figures (both mythic and historic) are actually a reflection of some earlier, more foundational development in our story."
Hux takes a breath before continuing, aware those shining brown eyes are watching him. I'll make sure you get yours, Miss Rose Tico.
"Whether these stories have some psychoanalytical meaning, or whether they represent a deeper, more metaphysical reality for certain individuals I do not know - all I know is that some people in this world seemed destined to find someone, and this almost fated connection recurs enough to warrant theorising about."
Hux knows many students will at best consider this a harmless eccentricity in their otherwise ordered professor. Others will laugh outright - certainly enough of his colleagues do ( one day he will get revenge on the patronising laughter of Solo, Dameron, or Snoke ). And he knows Rose only humours him when he explains it, and enjoys taunting him by being a twit in his classes.
But as he feels Rose's lips meet his after the class, he finds he doesn't particularly mind her cheekiness when she visits.