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Henry is finishing his thermos of Earl Grey as he navigates the hallways of NYU, triple checking his schedule to make sure he finds the right classroom.
He smiles in acknowledgement at the few students already sitting at their desks and sets his bag and thermos down on the teacher’s desk at the front of the room. He takes out his laptop to go over the lesson plan one last time and the textbook as well, the words ‘French B2.2’ bright and bold on the cover.
Henry couldn’t be prouder of his job as a French professor at NYU. He’s had this position for years and there has never been a day where he regrets it or wishes he could get away from it. The satisfaction he gets at the end of the semester in seeing his students – who could barely string two sentences together at first – so much more confident in themselves, is unmatched. It always fills him with pride, and now, at the beginning of a new semester, he can’t wait to start it all again.
When it’s exactly two minutes past eight am, Henry rises from his chair and starts the class.
“Bonjour à tous,” he greets the classroom almost filled to a brim, “et bienvenue à un nouveau semestre. Je m’appelle Henry Fox et je serai votre professeur ce semestre. J’espère que vous avez tous passer de belles vacances d’été. Est-ce qu’il y a quelqu’un qui voudrait partager ce qu’ils ont fait avec la classe ?”
Silence is his only response. Thirty students are staring at Henry with wide eyes like he’s grown a second head, and he fights the urge to smile. It always takes a couple classes after the summer holidays for most students to feel comfortable speaking a foreign language again, but Henry is nothing if not a patient man.
“Um...” After almost a full minute of quiet, a girl with purple highlights in the front row timidly raises her hand. “Sir? I think there’s been—”
“En français, s’il vous plaît,” Henry cuts in gently. One thing he usually demands from his students, especially at a B2.2 level, is that they always speak French in his classroom, no matter how out of practice they may be or how insecure they are in their own skills. Only by practicing can they improve.
Now the majority of the class is staring at him not like he’s grown a second head, but like they’ve stepped into an alternate reality. Even the girl that raised her hand has lowered it again, glancing at the boy beside her for help, but he only shrugs in response, equally hesitant.
Henry frowns. This is unusual; three months of holidays with no contact with a foreign language is a long time, but it’s hardly enough to make them forget the entire thing. It hardly explains the bewildered looks shared between students, the slightly panicked eyes planted on Henry, the whispers of confusion and uncertainty travelling through the room.
“Alright, then,” Henry concedes, more than a little intrigued. “I’m clearly missing something. What seems to be the issue?”
“You’re speaking French,” a student blurts out from across the room, immediately flushing red. “Uh, sir.”
Henry’s lips quirk up. “That I am. I figured that much was expected. This is, after all, a French B2.2 class, is it not?”
A chorus of “No,” and startled laughs erupt from every single student in the room, and Henry’s smile falters. What do they mean, no?
“Professor,” the girl with the purple hair speaks again, clearly fighting off another giggle. “I think you might be in the wrong classroom.”
No, he’s in the right room, that much he’s sure of; he double checked his schedule before he even left the house and checked it yet again when he reached campus. There’s no way he walked into the wrong classroom.
Then a student with headphones hanging on his neck and a pride pin on his jacket points to somewhere behind Henry, and he turns to see the white board he hadn’t paid attention to when he walked in – more importantly, he reads what’s written on said white board.
‘Spanish C1.1’
Henry curses internally. He’d much rather curse out loud, but he’s still in a room full of students looking at him with grins on their faces like they can’t wait to see how he’s going to get himself out of this mess. Henry would also very much like to know how he’s going to get himself out of this mess. He’s not completely unknowledgeable in the language, but there’s no way in hell he can teach a Spanish C1.1 class. He’d have a better chance teaching a cooking class, and he’s never been a good cook.
“Right. Well, then.” He turns back to his students – who, as it turns out, are not his students at all – and tries to look much more confident than he actually feels. “Would anyone care for a lesson a bit out of the ordinary?”
When the last student leaves the classroom almost two hours later, Henry sinks into his chair with a sigh of relief. At least he survived the bloody class, however awkward it was. He’s going to need to have a lengthy conversation with the administration to get him the right class and the correct schedule, maybe figure out why the hell he was assigned the wrong class in the first place—
A knock pulls him out of his thoughts. He knows who’s at the door without even opening his eyes.
“We need to talk, Fox.”
Because if Henry ended up in a Spanish C1.1 class, that means someone else was teaching his French B2.2. And Henry knows exactly which Spanish professor teaches the eight am class on Mondays.
He opens his eyes.
“Professor Claremont-Diaz. How lovely of you to visit.”
Alex doesn’t look like someone who just so happened to pop by for a friendly visit. He looks pissed, his bag dangling precariously from his shoulder, a stony glare in his eyes and his curls in a right mess like he’s been running his hands through them obsessively. He looks as beautiful as he ever does.
Henry looks away from the wild curls and into the bright eyes shooting daggers at him.
“Is there something I can help you with?”
“You could explain to me,” Alex hisses, closing the door behind him with his foot, “why in the ever-loving fuck I just had two dozen students talking to me in a language I cannot even begin to comprehend before I had the chance to sit down. Think you can manage that, Fox?”
“Perhaps you could do the same,” Henry explains calmly, immune to Alex’s glare or his dramatics. He rises from his chair, leans back against the desk and crosses his arms, pleased when Alex tracks the movement with his eyes. “After all, I just had a classroom full of students who didn’t understand a word of French, and those weren’t exactly the most enjoyable two hours of my life. Care to explain that?”
Alex throws his arms up. “That wasn’t my fault! I was in the right classroom! I checked my schedule three times before even setting foot in the building.”
“As did I. It would seem we’ve reached an impasse.”
The glare intensifies, all hot and pointed and unmovable, and Henry feels the tips of his ears get a little warmer. Maybe not so immune after all.
If Alex notices, he refrains from making any comments, though it looks like he’s trying not to smirk for a moment. Then the glare comes back in full force, and Henry only raises his brow in response. He’d learned long ago how to face Alex’s stubbornness: rise to his level and not back down until he does.
Finally, Alex caves, huffing a breath and narrowing his eyes. “We’re gonna need to talk to the administration about how the fuck we were assigned each other’s classes.”
“A lovely and interesting conversation, I’m sure,” Henry deadpans and begins to pack up his things.
“A short one, hopefully,” Alex retorts, running a hand through his curls and messing them up even more. Henry didn’t know that was possible, and he kind of hates that they look gorgeous regardless. “What did you do for your class, anyway?”
“Oh, you mean after starting to speak French and having thirty-something students stare back at me like I had gone insane?” Alex snorts, and it isn’t elegant, but Henry’s lips twitch all the same. “I asked them what they were majoring in, why they were taking Spanish classes, had they ever considered learning French before, and somehow managed to keep them talking about languages for almost two hours until I could dismiss them and have a moment to breathe.”
Alex’s brow climbs up to his forehead, a smug smile on his lips, and Henry lets out a breathy laugh as he hoists his bag over his shoulder. “Yes, it was the most generic and boring lesson I’ve ever given, is that what you wanted to hear? Christ.”
“I’m just glad to hear I had a much easier class than you, Fox,” Alex says innocently, following Henry out of the classroom and into the hallway.
“Oh? What did you do, then?”
“I put on a French comedy, obviously.”
“You didn’t.”
“C’est quoi cette famille does wonders for the soul.”
“How very high school of you,” Henry mocks half-heartedly. Alex merely grins at him.
“I’ll have you know that my students for the day were very entertained hearing their chosen language, and left the classroom happier than they’d entered. I don’t know about you, but that’s what I call a fucking success.”
“Wait a minute.” Henry stops in the middle of the hallway and Alex follows suit. “If you had such a wonderful class, why did you barge into my classroom in that state?”
Alex has the audacity to bat his eyelashes innocently. “What state? I don’t know what you could possibly mean.”
“You looked like you were a second away from ripping my head off.”
Alex hums, smiling like this is all a game, and takes a step closer into Henry’s space. Henry sort of forgets how to breathe.
“I think you like seeing me all worked up,” Alex says, his voice only loud enough for Henry to hear.
Henry swallows. “You’re a menace, Professor Claremont-Diaz.”
“You wouldn’t love me if I wasn’t.” Alex’s voice is soft now, and his smile is softer still, and his eyes are so fucking soft looking up at Henry, and Henry…
He can’t exactly deny it, is the thing. He’s been in love for a long time.
Alison Miller has just had the weirdest French class of her life.
She exits the classroom still a bit confused, wondering if she somehow stepped into an alternate reality. She’s pretty sure her teacher is supposed to be Professor Henry Fox, the same one she had last semester, not the man with dark curls and too much energy for an eight am class who started swearing under his breath in Spanish when she tried to speak French with him.
“We’re gonna do something different today, class,” Professor Claremont-Diaz said after he introduced himself, a grin on his face that didn’t mask the perplexity in his eyes.
All the students including Alison were looking at each other in search of an explanation, but no one raised any objections – you don’t really stop your professor when he wants to put on a movie in class.
Alison is still reminiscing when someone covers her eyes from behind and takes her out of her thoughts. A voice whispers in her ear. “Guess who.”
She smiles, instantly turning to meet those gorgeous green eyes that haven’t left her mind once for the past four months.
Alison had known she was going to fall in love with Grace Whitlock from the first moment she laid eyes on her. Purple highlights on her hair and a face covered in freckles, Grace is a force of nature, a beacon of light and chaotic energy confined in a human body that never stops moving, two dimples on her cheeks that always appear whenever she smiles. Alison was drawn in from the start, trapped without an escape plan, and she never once wished she had one.
And now, five dates later and a million kisses in between, the sight of her girlfriend’s face makes her beam until her face hurts.
“I was just coming to find you,” she says, bringing her arms around Grace’s neck. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself,” Grace says, pulling her close. “I missed you.”
“You saw me yesterday.”
“Too long.”
“We stayed up talking until two in the morning.”
“I missed your face.”
“It was a video call!”
“Do you wanna argue over semantics or do you wanna kiss me until it’s time for our next class?” Grace asks with a raised brow, leaning in until the tips of their noses touch.
Alison swallows. Grace smirks. “Uh. Second option, please.”
They’re smiling into it, and it’s as soft and sweet and glorious as ever. Alison cups her girlfriend’s face and stands on her tiptoes as she pours everything she has into the kiss, hoping Grace can feel how hopelessly in love she is already in the touch of her lips and the curve of her smile.
It’s probably too soon to say it. Probably.
“You are not gonna believe the class I just had,” Grace says a few minutes later when they’re walking down the hall hand in hand.
“Spanish, right?”
“I thought it was,” Grace laughs, “but something must’ve gone wrong because the professor that actually showed up did not speak Spanish, the poor guy. He started talking to us in French, of all things.”
The wheels turn in Alison’s head and she finds herself laughing. “Let me guess: a six-foot-tall British guy with blond hair and blue eyes?”
“Yes! How did you—”
“I had him last semester. I was supposed to have French with him this morning, but I’m pretty sure I got your Spanish teacher instead. Otherwise, this is all just very coincidental.”
“It’d be a pretty weird coincidence,” Grace muses, and Alison can’t help but agree with her.
A door opens at the end of the hallway and both Professor Fox and Professor Claremont-Diaz come out of the classroom, bickering and lost in conversation. Alison wasn’t even going to point it out, but something about their body language caught her attention. The way Professor Claremont-Diaz is grinning so freely, the fierce but quiet light in Professor Fox’s eyes, how they’re standing a little too close to each other. Huh.
“Hey,” she says, getting Grace’s attention. She smiles and points to the professors a few feet away from them. “How much do you wanna bet there’s something going on there?”
Grace follows her line of vision. “Oh. I mean, sure. They’ve been married for like five years.”
Alison sputters. “What? They have not.”
“I’m telling you!”
“But… that’s…”
Before she can say another word, she watches as if in slow motion as Professor Claremont-Diaz stands on his tiptoes and Professor Fox presses their smiling lips together, hand coming up to cradle his husband’s cheek, a quiet and familiar intimacy between them that makes Alison’s heart ache.
She watches, a little stunned, as the two professors leave the building hand in hand, and wraps an arm around her girlfriend’s waist. “How are you always right?”
“A special superpower of mine,” Grace murmurs into her hair, kissing the top of her head.
Alison tips her head back, smiling up at her. “Meet me back here after class? Lunch is on me.”
Grace’s smile is brighter than the sun. “It’s a date.”
The next time Alison has a French class, it’s with the right professor. She almost immediately notices the golden band on his left hand, and she smiles to herself.