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Charles glared at the blinking cursor on his screen that was illustrating exactly how few words of his assigned essay he had written so far. It was due at midnight tonight, and even though he’d had two weeks to do it, something or other had kept popping up, and now he was left with less than seven hours.
He didn’t even like this class—it was one of the requirements for his major, a dull history class on early 20th century Europe. More often than not he found himself drifting off in class, the lectures too dry and the hour too early to pay attention. And the textbooks for the class could put anyone to sleep within a couple paragraphs, let alone an uninterested student with a notably short attention span.
He groaned and let his head sink down onto the edge of the desk. This was impossible.
“Charles? Is everything alright?” came the voice of his roommate, Edwin, from the living room.
“Brills,” he replied sarcastically, his voice muffled by his own arms. “I’m gonna die here.”
“I should hope that you don’t, for then I’ll have to deal with your corpse all by myself, and I have plans for tonight.” Classic Edwin. Despite his general despair at the situation, Charles smiled.
“Oh? Where are you headed?” he lifted his head just in time to see Edwin come to stand in the doorway to their bedroom. He looked immaculate as ever, his hair perfectly coiffed and his suit expertly pressed. Despite the fact that nobody had dressed like that for decades, Edwin always made it work, somehow.
“Niko has invited me to the ballet. Swan Lake, though I believe an experimental version—the dancers will be gender-swapped.”
“Sounds like fun.” If you enjoyed that sort of thing—Charles preferred the kind of dancing that happened in clubs late at night. “What about your paper for Professor Nurse’s class, though?” Early 20th Century Europe was the one class the two boys shared, though Edwin was much more interested in it than Charles. It supplemented his Lit classes quite well, apparently.
“The one on Edwardian-era class struggles? I submitted that three days ago,” Edwin said with a frown. “Haven’t you?”
“Mate, I haven’t even started,” Charles admitted, a trace of panic in his voice.
“Charles!”
“I know! I know! Look, things kept coming up, and you know I’m not a bloody genius like you, I can barely wrap my head around the material in the first place. I’m just too thick-headed for it to get through, I guess.”
“Don’t speak so badly of yourself. You’re a wonder when it comes to music. Not to mention how you excel at sport. Our talents lie in different areas, that’s all.”
“You’re the brains, I’m the brawn?” Charles joked.
“I don’t know that I would put it like that. Anyways, I sincerely hope you’re able to submit your paper on time. And that this teaches you a lesson on the importance of good planning,” Edwin lectured, raising an eyebrow.
“Thanks, Mum. Go enjoy your ballet.” Charles waved Edwin off. “Say hi to Niko for me!”
Once Edwin was gone, Charles had no other distraction from the endlessly blank page staring him down. Right, he could do this. Just find some scholarly sources, pull some quotes that sounded good, and write the rest of the essay around them. Easy.
Hours passed. Charles struggled through what felt like millions of shitty PDF scans of books that seemed written specifically to make his head swim. Eleven p.m. rolled around before he knew it, and all he had to show for it was an introductory paragraph. He could feel his eyes fighting to close, the exhaustion in his body warring with his panic at the approaching deadline. He was absolutely, utterly fucked.
In a fit of despair, Charles’ eyes slid over to Edwin’s desk. He had a habit of printing out all of his assignments—he claimed that working on the computer gave him headaches, and had gained permission from several of his professors to submit his papers analog.
Edwin also had a habit of printing duplicates for his own records. Which meant that there was a fully-finished version of this essay sitting somewhere five feet away from Charles.
He shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t, knew that both of them could get in major trouble for cheating, but he told himself that he wasn’t going to actually copy anything. He just needed to absorb the material, just so he had some knowledge to work off of.
He slid his chair over to Edwin’s desk, immediately spying the essay filed neatly on top of a stack of other papers. Biting his lip, his conscience still screaming at him, Charles flipped the cover open, only for the bedroom door to swing open.
Charles hadn’t even heard Edwin return, but then, he could be proper quiet when he wanted to. Probably trying to spare waking Charles up—in the unlikely event that he had actually finished his work and gone to bed like a good student.
Charles froze as Edwin’s eyes landed on him, caught with his hand in the cookie jar. There was no way to explain this, and immediately he regretted even entertaining the idea in the first place. Even the thought of Edwin’s disapproval had a way of shriveling his heart in his chest. What a stupid idea.
“Charles? What are you doing?”
“I—I’m sorry, mate, I swear I was only—” Only what? Only taking a peek at his best mate’s work, to cover for his own failings? He couldn’t even come up with a good excuse. His voice failed him, and he hung his head.
Edwin sighed, his lips pressed together tightly. “You haven’t finished your essay, then?”
Charles shook his head morosely. God, a failing grade sounded better than having almost betrayed his best friend.
“Right.” Edwin nodded, glancing around the bedroom, then nodded again. “Grab your laptop. We have—” he checked his watch “—fifty-seven minutes to work. I assume you’ve settled on a thesis, at least?”
“What?” Charles said, dumbfounded. “You’re not—you’re not angry?”
“I very much am, but there is a deadline approaching, and it is clear you require help. We can discuss your impetuous actions later.”
Still in shock, Charles rolled back over to his desk, scooting to make room for Edwin too. Edwin took one brief look at the sparse notes Charles had managed to pull together, reading over them quickly, before pulling out his own notebook and starting to scribble down something. “You have the bones down, at least. Really, I don’t know why you felt tempted to use my writing when your own is perfectly good with a bit of work.”
“Sorry,” Charles said miserably. Edwin waved him off.
“Later. Now, your first point here—the emergence of a middle class in the wake of the Industrial Revolution…”
As Edwin spoke, summarizing the points Charles had left scattered about, it was as if the pieces of a puzzle were falling into place. Charles typed faster than his eyes could even keep up with, his fingers dancing across the keys like they did when he was playing the guitar or keyboard. Paragraphs flew by as time ticked down, and when he wrote his concluding sentence, the clock read 11:56 p.m.
Charles chewed his thumbnail as he went through the steps to submit his paper online, finally getting it in two minutes before the deadline. When the little green checkmark appeared, he slumped backward in relief, falling halfway out of his chair. “Oh my god,” he said. “I don’t think I can feel my fingers. You’re a fucking lifesaver.”
“I hope you remember this for next time,” Edwin said waspishly. “What were you thinking, Charles! You know any academic dishonesty is grounds for expulsion!”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Charles said miserably. “I just—I panicked. I’m so sorry, I don’t know how—I can’t fail this class, my dad, he—” To his horror, tears started to well in his eyes. As if he had any right to feel fucking sorry for himself.
Edwin sighed and knelt down in front of Charles, taking one of his hands in his own. Charles quickly swiped at his eyes with the other. “I understand that there can be things that pressure us, outside of the normal stresses of the classroom,” he said gently. “And, seeing how truly miserable you are right now, I can safely trust that you won’t risk anything so stupid again.”
Charles quickly shook his head. “No, never, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have even in the first place—”
“It’s alright,” Edwin interrupted. “In the future, will you please promise to ask for help before the situation devolves so terribly? I know you have all the skills to succeed—you’re intelligent, it’s just your truly horrible time management that has failed you. Which is itself a skill that can be acquired in many different ways, so really, it is the adults in your childhood who have failed you.”
“You’ve got your own classes and stuff, though, you can’t be wasting your time fixing my fuck-ups,” Charles protested. “I’ll just—I’ll make it better, stop letting myself slack off so much.”
“Nonsense. It is perfectly reasonable for two classmates to study together—in fact, it would give me the chance to strengthen my own grasp on the material. We would both benefit.”
Cautiously, Charles broke out into a grin. “Then that sounds aces, mate.”
“Excellent. Now, seeing as it is past midnight, and I know you have a lecture early tomorrow morning, I think we ought to go to bed.”
They got ready for bed side-by-side, dancing around each other in their tiny bathroom like they’d been living together for years, though they’d only moved in together a couple months ago. Charles slept deeply, his alarm only rousing him on the sixth ring, and he made a valiant effort to keep his eyes open through the entire lecture.
Just after class let out, he got a text from Edwin inviting him to join him in the library, which improved his mood considerably. Edwin had already claimed an armchair and low table tucked in a hidden corner when he arrived, a highly-coveted spot for its considerable privacy.
“You’ve mentioned before that you have trouble digesting the textbook for this class,” Edwin said, pulling out his copy of Europe Between Democracy and Dictatorship: 1900 to 1945.
“Yeah, the words get all swimmy. You’d think the textbook companies would hire better writers, for how much money we waste on them,” Charles joked.
Edwin hummed. “I’d like to try reading it aloud to you, if that’s alright. I have a hypothesis I’d like to test, and I would like for you to try and concentrate on my voice without distraction.”
“Sure, mate.” Charles doubted it would make the dull material any easier to digest, even if Edwin’s voice was pretty nice, but he’d give it a go. He settled on the floor with his back propped against the front of Edwin’s armchair, his feet stretched out in front of him.
Edwin began to read aloud, and at first Charles found his eyes wandering, desperate for stimulation, but Edwin’s hand settling in his hair snapped his attention back. Edwin continued to read while he softly stroked through Charles’ hair, which felt so nice that Charles found his eyes closing and his head leaning back against Edwin’s knee.
When Edwin reached the end of the chapter, Charles opened his eyes. “Was that any better? I had my suspicions that you may learn better auditorily.”
“Yeah, that was brills.” Not just the physical contact, though that had been nice—when Charles thought back, he could actually recall the chapter in detail, much more than he ever could while reading it and taking notes. “Can we do another?”
“Of course.” Edwin smiled and turned the page, and shortly his hand settled in Charles’ hair again. The quiet murmur of his voice once again began, and Charles found himself riveted by a tale of the German Reich when narrated by that lovely voice.
Maybe this class wasn’t so bad after all.