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Briya Jameson groaned as she looked over her course registration options for spring semester. Beside her, her best friend Mari shot her a concerned glance.
“What? Are you gonna have to take an 8am?” she asked, leaning over to look at her computer screen.
“Worse,” Briya sighed. “I’m going to have to take a class with professor Wolfwood.”
Mari slid her computer over, unconcerned. “So what? I have to take the same class, we’ll be together. Hopefully he’ll be a batter Spanish professor than professor Elendria. She made this semester hell for me.”
“No, you don’t understand,” she groaned, pushing her friends computer away. “Professor Wolfwood is a notorious hardass, he’s basically a brick wall and he’s a super strict grader.”
“Come on, nothing can be worse than Professor November in freshman year, that guy was actually insane.”
Shaking her head, Briya resigned herself to her fate by pressing the ‘register’ button just below the course information.
“Cheer up!” Mari quipped. “I know you still need to fulfill your science credit. Why don’t you take professor Saveren’s environmental biology class with me? He’s literally so cool, he’s the one who convinced me to major in environmentalism.”
“I’ll take any cool profs I can get this semester. What’s the course number?”
Briya dropped her head onto her folded arms, groaning.
She had just gotten out of professor Wolfwood’s class, and she felt just about ready to die. Spanish was not supposed to be such a hard subject, yet she found herself scraping by with a C.
By her side, Mari sat looking significantly more put together than her best friend.
“I still think you have an unfair advantage in that class, you grew up speaking Spanish,” Briya lamented, poking her friends arm.
Chuckling, Mari reached out to poke her back. “It’s not much of an advantage. I lost most of it once I hit elementary school and my parents decided to speak English at home.”
Before their conversation could continue, a hush fell over the class as the door was thrown open.
“Hello everyone!” a cheerful voice called out.
Briya immediately brightened upon seeing her now-favorite professor’s signature red coat and spiky blond hair. Professor Saveren hopped up, taking a seat on the desk at the front of the room. Shrugging off his jacket, his prosthetic arm was revealed to the room. Many of her classmates had speculations on what had happened to his arm, but one one had come up with the courage to ask him yet.
“Good afternoon Vash!” Mari greeted, smiling bright at him. Ever since he had become her advisor, she had become much more casual with the blond man.
“Hello Mari! How are you?” His smile fell slightly upon seeing Briya’s frustrated expression. “What’s up Briya, did something happen?
Before she could say anything, Mari quickly cut in.
“She’s just frustrated with our Spanish class. Our professor is a really hard grader and he’s pretty closed off.”
“Ah,” professor Saveren nodded, a small smile stretching across his face once more. “Do you guys have professor Wolfwood?”
“Oh, you poor things,” one of the seniors, Carter, cut in. “I had him for Spanish 102 in my sophomore year too.”
“Same here,” Xiaoyin, another senior, commented. “He’s basically the oposite of you, professor Savaren. A total brick wall.”
“Aww, don’t worry too much, he’s not actually the brick wall you all think he is,” professor Saveren assured them, his grin never wavering. “That’s just how he acts when he’s teaching, thinks it makes you guys take him more seriously.”
“Are you friends with him?” Briya’s brows furrowed picturing the two men hanging out together.
Professor Saveren winked, pushing himself off the desk. “You could say that. I’ve known him for a very long time, and I can tell you with full confidence that no mater what you might think, he actually cares a lot about all of his students.”
“Tell that to his horrible grading system,” Briya snorted, before quickly covering her mouth. “I mean—“
“No, that I agree with you on,” professor Saveren cut her off, sending her a reassuring smile. “His grading system is very harsh, I think he could be a bit easier on you all. But alas,” he sighed, pressing the back of his prosthetic hand to his forehead dramatically, “he never listens to me when I tell him that.”
Some of the class giggled at his antics, but Briya frowned.
“I still don’t quite get how someone like you is friends with someone like him.”
“Well, you see,” leaning in close, as if they were sharing a huge secret, he stage-whispered, “he’s actually a major loser.”
“Says the bigger loser I know,” a familiar voice called out from the open doorway to the lecture hall.
Both Briya and Mari jumped, whipping around to see the familiar form of their Spanish professor in the doorway.
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear!” professor Saveren exclaimed, his grin growing even wider, if that was possible. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“You left your computer in my car.” Professor Wolfwood held out the computer, it’s bright red case immediately giving away whose it was.
Smacking himself on the forehead, professor Saveren groaned. “I knew I was forgetting something, thank you love.”
The classroom froze, and Briya and Mari both exchanged looks of shock as professor Saveren leaned over to kiss professor Wolfwood as he was taking the computer.
The two pulled apart, only having eyes for each other. At least, right up until the entire room exploded in noise, the student clammoring over each other to ask when and how their two most different professor had ended up together.
“Ah.” Professor Saveren scratched his head sheepishly. “I guess I forgot to mention that professor Wolfwood and I are married.”
The class erupted in even more chaos than before, everyone shouting over each other to be heard.
Bryia watched as professor Saveren laughed as he leaned further into professor Wolfwood’s chest. Seeing them together, it made sense, in an odd way. Seeing the soft look gracing her normally cool and standoff-ish Spanish professor’s face, she decided that there might be more to the man than she gave him credit for.
Maybe he wasn’t as bad as everyone said.