Title:
Two Years and Counting
Author: Sarah
Feedback:
Love it, please leave it. . .positive or negative
Pairing:
Implied Angel/Collins, but post-mortem
Word Count:
1361
Rating: R, if only for language
Genre:
Angst/fluff
Summary:
Notes:
Special
Thanks:
scotsinkilts
for betaing and encouraging and giving me all kinds of ideas, and
shillaire
for being a hella-writer and inspiring me daily.
Spoilers:
Angel's dead. . . sorry
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer:
Nope, still don't own
I
hate this job.
I hate this city.
I hate my life.
I miss her.
It always came back to that, didn't it? He really didn't hate anything. Well, sometimes he did hate his job, but he never hated teaching. It was a complex set of emotions, he never could explain it to anyone, but he always dreaded class until he was in the midst of it. Teaching sucked until you were doing it. Once he started, it was like a high, less like the mellow high of the pot he'd always smoked and, he guessed, more like his friends had described cocaine or heroin. He'd never been into heavy stuff, he was far too much of a control freak. In any case, school was beginning again and he was grumpy and unprepared to face another year of the same over-privileged, under-educated whiners that he'd dealt with the year before. He had already sat through the mandatory meetings, which in his head he often entitled "What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Or, Why I'm a More Prestigious Scholar Than Any of You Losers." He remembered when he'd first come up with that title, almost three years ago in his first semester, he had made it up on the fly to make Angel giggle. He smiled, thinking of that day and looked at the photo on the desk, then at her red rhinestone ring he wore on his left hand.
Yeah, he missed her. Not a day went past when he didn't think of her. He sighed and looked at his watch.
Ah dammit! Time for fucking class already. Fucking freshmen. He groaned a little as he stood up. He packed up the few things he needed for class, kissed his finger and pressed it to Angel's picture, and headed down the hall, stopping just momentarily in the mail room to grab a cup of coffee.
Most of the class was assembled when he got there. He sighed. The usual suspects: a group of wanna-be goth kids, four girls and two boys, lined up in the back wearing black eyeliner and cookie-cutter outfits, probably bought from Future Shock.
Ooooh look, he thought a little nastily, they're individuals, just like everyone else.
In the front row were the requisite groupies, they weren't hard to spot, rarely did sorority girl types take cyberpunk classes. These three had clearly heard that he was new, young, and male and had enrolled in his class to get a look at him. He smiled at them and was amused to hear a group titter escape from that side of the room as he passed.
In the middle there were a few random kids, a scared-looking freshman, two studious-looking girls, and a boy who was already asleep.
Great. Might as well get started.
He called roll and discovered that there was only one kid missing: A Katie Johnston. That was pretty good for a first day.
It took him only a few minutes to get back into his teaching groove and fifteen minutes into the class, he even had the groupies involved. About halfway through the class, the door slammed open, surprising everyone, Collins included. They all turned toward the door to see a girl standing there dressed awkwardly wearing a men's western shirt with a scarf thrown around her neck like a feather boa, a short skirt, tights with cherries printed on them, and haphazard pigtails tied with yarn ribbons. She tiptoed into the room theatrically, finger to her lips, "sneaking" in anything but silently. The class laughed. Even Collins had to struggle with himself to keep from cracking up.
You're the teacher, don't laugh, you're the teacher, don't laugh
It was a battle he quickly lost, bursting into gales of spontaneous chuckles, the first since Angel had died.
Once the laughter had died down and Collins felt he could speak again, he looked directly at the girl who had seated herself in a desk on the opposite end of the front row from the groupies.
"Miss Johnston, I presume?"
"In the flesh," she announced.
"Miss Johnston, let's have a chat after class about the appropriate way to enter class." He was smiling, but serious. The other freshmen were properly chastened. Not so Katie. She grinned back at him.
"Ok, Professor Collins. Sorry. Carry on."
Katie was quiet and respectful for the rest of class. She even asked a couple of really good questions. Collins found himself really liking this kid.
When class was over, he dismissed the rest of the students and caught Katie to chat.
"I assume you know that was not an acceptable way to enter my class."
Her manner had changed.
"I know, Professor Collins, and I'm sorry. I was just . . . really excited about this class. I didn't want to miss it and I knew I was gonna be really late so. . .well I guess I acted badly. Sorry."
Throughout that semester, Collins found himself talking more and more often with Katie about all manner of things. He discovered that her eccentric clothing and quirky personality belied a deep intelligence in which he found a kindred spirit. She learned quickly and he was amazed that several times once a concept was introduced to her, she often gained a deeper understanding, even, than he had. Collins had yet to meet a brighter student. He grew to respect her more and more as the semester progressed.
One afternoon after class they got into a lengthy discussion and Collins motioned to Katie to follow him down the hall to his office.
"C'mon girl, walk and talk. I gotta meeting this afternoon. I gotta get ready."
Katie followed, debating with him the whole way down the hall. Once he'd opened the door for her, she flopped into the extra chair in his office, her leg up over the arm in a rather unladylike way.
"See, what I don't get is why people can't get past themselves enough to realize that not everyone has to be like them," she complained.
He shrugged "Not everyone can handle real diversity. Some people talk about 'diversity' and mean including black people, Latinos, or Asians, or God help us, Jews, but they don't understand it on a real level."
"Yeah. People are fuckin' stupid."
Collins laughed at the reduction of what was a fairly deep discussion to a very simple phrase, especially one with which he agreed so wholeheartedly.
He sat down in his chair to collate a stack of papers and managed to knock over the picture on his desk. Before he had a chance, Katie picked it up and looked closely at it.
"Speaking of diversity . . . who's this?"
It took Collins a moment to look up. When he did, he looked at the picture, not at Katie.
"That's
Angel. She's . . . she died." He reached across and took the
picture away from her. He looked at it reverently then set it out of
Katie's reach.
Katie stood and went to him, to touch his
shoulder. She noticed that he was holding back tears. "I'm
sorry," she said, not sure what she was apologizing for.
He nodded, biting his lip. "I have a meeting to prepare for," he said tersely. "I'll talk to you later Katie."
"Ok," she replied without her usual vibrancy. "See you on Tuesday."
It was always his fashion to hold an end-of-semester review before the exam. He knew his tests were hard and he wanted to make certain each student felt prepared, or if they didn't, at least it was their laziness and not his lack of effort that was to blame. At the end of the review for Katie's class, she raised her hand.
"Yes, Katie?"
"Professor Collins, can I have a hug?" She stood up and held her arms out to him.
Collins laughed, again, surprised into it. He held out his arms and she leapt into them, hugging him hard. She kissed his cheek, making him blush, then hopped to her seat, grabbed her stuff and skipped out the door.
"See you at the exam, Professor Collins!"
