I do not own RENT.

This is my second attempt at a RENT humor fic, since the first one was so well received.

This started out as a Collins missing their anniversary fic…well, you can see that it didn't stay that way for long.

She was going to kill him. No maybes. She was going to kill him, no questions asked. Collins knew it. He had been working late for the past few weeks and it really got Angel upset. So he promised to spend the night at home, just the two of them. But he couldn't go home until he finished up at work. And as he gazed at the stack of term papers, he could see no end in sight. Uh-oh.

There were too many papers to grade and students to fail. He would be up through the night, alone in a cold room with florescent lights that constantly flickered, threatening to blink out, when he should be with Angel in a warm embrace, lips leaving fiery trails down bare skin, hands wandering to unspeakable places—No! He couldn't think about it, he got too distracted. And the more he let his mind wander, the longer it took to grade the papers.

"And Lee gets a 33 for the many, many mistakes on his paper. The worst was, by far, the word 'fhylosafee'. What an idiot," Collins mumbled. Some of his students had no knowledge or passion for the subject. It infuriated him, the way they treated his class. Collins could feel Angel's hands on his feet, rubbing them the way she did when he was upset or angry. She told him once that all the nerves ended in the feet. He knew that. Then she told him that if she rubbed the right spot, then he would…well…

He hadn't known that.

And when she demonstrated it…he was getting off task again. "Okay, Tom, concentrate on the paper."

Up next, Angela's paper. Someone had called Angel 'Angela' by accident once, but it got Angel fired up. She hated it when people got her name wrong. She especially hated it when people didn't believe that it was her real name. And Angel mad was…scary. She turned into a person different from the sweet Angel that he knew. Like that time with the lady in the park. There was only one way that Collins knew to calm her down, which was to…

"Stop it, Thomas! Concentrate on the papers! Not Angel. Not the way that you're talking to yourself, which is a sign of insanity. Just the papers."

He grabbed the next off of the stack and held his red pen ready. Cary Lyn's paper. He'd need the pen for this one. Why didn't the kids get this? It was so simple. Even Angel understood some of it, and she hadn't passed high school. He explained some of his lesson to her once in an attempt to include her. She managed to give him better answers to the questions he asked than some of his students. Maybe she was just the best at everything. Collins knew something that she was definitely best at—woah.

Don't go there, Tom.

Concentrate.

Think about the papers.

Think about philosophy.

Don't think about—Aw, screw it.

0----0

Angel kissed her lover's head and ran a hand across it. She giggled as she thought about the first thing he said to her when he walked through the door. The comment that had led them straight to the bed.

"You can't stop thinking about having sex with me, can you?" she asked.

"You have no idea," he groaned.