A/N: Please ignore Belle's last name. When I started this fic, I hated French. :D HOPE YOU LIKE THE REST THOUGH.
Raphael Gold, PhD, sat at the cramped desk in his too small office, scrolling through his many reviews on Rate My Professor. He made time to do this whenever he handed back grades, or when students had just been exposed to their first lecture. This was when they hated him the most, when all of their reviews turned scathing and cruel.
These were his favorite reviews.
It was the middle of the semester, and the senior-level class that he taught on Chaucer had just received their first papers, shredded by his red pen. One person had received an A-. It was the highest grade he'd given.
As such, his reviews had taken that plunge he loved to see—
Dr Gold is a fucked up basterd. I'm in his chaucer class and I spent a week on a paper and I got a fcking D. Don't take his class unless your suisidal.
If you take Gold's class, you will fail. He doesn't give detailed expectations, and then when you don't meet them, he fails you. He is the least communicative professor of all time.
most arrogant profeessor I have had in all my years. Rude, disrespectful, hostile class environment. I would not recomen this guy or class to my worst enemy. Complete jackass.
And then, the ever eloquent, always present—
Fuck Doctor Gold.
It was easy to see the mark of his grading in his reviews—it was also easy to see who was female and who was male. He had the chili pepper to indicate hotness, from all of the female students who craved his approval, and then the reviews that wavered between wanting to hate him for being a hard grader and wanting to praise him for knowing more about literature than anyone in the department. Most of his other category ratings were between 1 and 2, with his highest rating at 2.7. Surprisingly, this was in "overall quality."
The reviews were all accurate, for the most part, but he never felt like an unreasonable man. If anyone came to talk about a grade they'd received—which few did, because they were all terrified—he could always point to each individual error, usually without looking at the assignment. There were a few people who managed to slip past his barricade and earn themselves a good grade, but for the most part, people either dropped or retook his class with another professor.
Worst professor I've ever had. Spent an entire class lecturing on—
"Here's your coffee!"
Gold didn't look up at the sound of his teaching assistant's voice. She was used to his inattention anyway.
"Leave it."
"Right here? On the corner of your desk? Or shall I bring it to you?"
"Whatever." He scrolled down the page, making note of another chili pepper by a mediocre review.
She huffed, and began to speak again, but he was done with the interaction, and heard nothing of what she was saying, until she said, "Are you looking at porn, Doctor Gold?"
At this, he looked up, lips pursed. "Can I help you, Miss Blue?"
His TA, Belle Blue, stood before him with her arms full of books, binders, and folders, grinning like a cat pretending it didn't scratch the furniture. He wondered where she had held the coffee.
"I was asking if I could sit in here and read."
"Don't you have an office?" He gestured to the door.
"No." As if she knew that he was going to give in, she started unloading her arms onto the corner of his pristine desk, making the whole thing look less organized by comparison. "I have a cubicle. And that cubicle has a nametag, and that nametag has my name. And every time Jefferson Hatter walks by on the way to his cubicle—which is about every five minutes because I swear that man cannot sit still—he thinks it's so hilarious to poke fun at said name. And—"
Gold raised a hand to cut her off. He was surprised that it worked.
"If I let you stay, will you stop talking?"
"Yes, sir," she said, and all she had to do then was plop into the chair he was mandated to keep in his office, in the event that students willingly came to see him one-on-one.
"Good. Now, organize your things, Miss Blue."
"Why? They're my things." She was already curling up in his chair, kicking off her impractically high heels and settling her skirt to cover the tops of her legs, as though this were her living room and not his office.
"They're on my desk. I do like to maintain order, dearie."
Looking at him with lips pursed, she untucked her legs from beneath her and began to rearrange her pile into something more organized.
Raphael Gold understood the impulse to make fun of Belle Blue's name. It was nice to say that the name was unfortunate, and in the first week that they'd been thrust together, he'd taken any and all opportunities to make snide remarks as to just how unfortunate it was. When he'd gone so far as to say that her parents were punishing her, Belle had retaliated by informing him that her full name was Isabelle, thank-you-very-much, and Isabelle Blue wasn't nearly so unfortunate as Belle Blue. She couldn't help it that 'Belle' was her nickname.
It was known throughout the English department that Doctor Gold hated teaching assistants. Working at the small, little-known University of Maine Storybrooke, he did not see many brilliant minds coming in. Sure, they boasted an excellent English department, but so few people knew about it that it was difficult to keep their standards up.
He had seen his share of big-headed grad students, intent on doing as little work as possible for huge rewards. A lot of them came to work with him—his work in literary criticism was legendary. Most of them changed their minds midway through the semester in which they happened to meet him. For most of them, this happened by taking his class. For a select few, he deigned to be their dissertation directors, and he only ever advised enough to keep his job.
For the past two years, he had neglected to advise anyone. He had taken on one extra three years ago, because one of his colleagues had fallen ill and was unable to fulfill his own obligations. Gold had been holding this over everyone's head ever since, and because he was such a draw to the program, no one ever questioned it.
Something, however, had told him to take Belle Blue on as his student—the first and only since his 'overload'—and it was not just the dean of graduate studies saying, "Take on Isabelle Blue, or else." He had come to his office one morning to find her writing sample on his desk—and the fact that it attempted to refute one of the first papers he'd ever published caused the thrill of challenge to rise in his veins, and he knew that he had to accept her.
For the past month, his charming arguer had been nothing but a thorn in his side—popping up at inopportune moments, trying to have emotional and heartfelt chats about their backgrounds, giving him cheeky advice on how to teach. Since she was his only grad student, she took on TA responsibilities for all of his classes, as well as teaching three sections of freshman composition herself. She bore the workload well, and somehow found time to submit the weekly dissertation updates that he required.
She was an admirable woman, and he often found himself thinking praises when his colleagues mentioned her name. If only she would just keep her mouth shut—then perhaps he could tolerate her a bit more.