A/N: Random college AU. Well, actually, not so random. It's mostly inspired by how much I hated my Calculus class last semester – this chapter has been sitting around for a while, waiting for me to write the previous prompt. (So the Calc class I'm in now is actually way worse xD)

Aqua is a college sophomore, Vanitas is a college freshman. I see Departure University as being a religious school; why Van even goes there is hinted at later on. 'TA' stands for "teaching/teacher's assistant" and is basically a student who's done well in the class before and is paid to teach a small group of other students and grade papers and stuff for big lecture classes where I go to school. I don't know if that's a thing at other colleges or not or if they're called something different.

"And then you differentiate sine of 2x using the chain rule…" Aqua's hand flew over the piece of scratch paper, leaving behind a string of mathematical functions that made as little sense as his decision to come to this college in the first place. "Which should give you two cosine of 2x times the derivative of 2x, which is-"

"Two," Vanitas interjected forcefully. It was the first part of the whole freaking problem that actually made sense.

"Right," his teacher's assistant nodded with a smile. "Then you'll want to use the product rule again on the other side to find the derivative of x times the cosine of 2y…"

Aaaand he was lost again. His brain would process the sound of her voice, but not the meaning of the words. Wasn't math supposed to make sense? Numbers, real things that actually mattered. Calculus probably wasn't even real math.

"…minus 2y times cosine of 2x…"

He clenched his pencil in his fist, barely resisting the urge to snap it in half. Focus, idiot. You'll never pass this class if you keep spacing out like this. And then they'll send you packing right back to the graveyard you worked so hard to escape…

"…so now we – Vanitas?"

His head shot up when she said his name. "What?" The growl bled through into his voice. Idiot, he berated himself. Aqua was the one person here at Departure University who had bothered to show him kindness, even if she did get paid for it. Besides, it wouldn't do him any good to tick off the person who graded his homework.

Aqua moved from leaning over his desk to sit at the one beside him. It probably didn't mean anything more than that her legs were tired, but it felt like it put her on his level. She wasn't being Aqua the TA right now; she was being Aqua, the kindhearted sophomore who would stay after class to help even someone as ungrateful as him.

Not that he wasn't grateful. He just had a hard time showing it.

"I know this is difficult material. You'll get the hang of it, I promise," she said gently.

"I know," he snapped back. What was wrong with him? She was just trying to make him feel better. Apparently his despair had been obvious enough to warrant her pausing her explanation. If only he could have a mask or something to hide the rebellious emotions on his face.

"Is something else bothering you, then?" She pressed. He looked up from the homework sheet he'd been trying to burn with his eyes. Her own eyes were filled with genuine concern, he was surprised to see.

"Why do you care?" He asked bluntly, but for once not rudely. He just honestly wanted to know. After all, in spite of helping him after class every day for the past few weeks, she was still just his TA. She wasn't obligated to pry into his life. Unless his life's greatest problems involved finding the derivative of sin of 2x, that is.

She seemed surprised at the question. "Because you're a human being, and I'm not heartless?"

He actually chuckled at the almost-sassy answer. "That's probably the nicest thing anyone's said to me."

"That you're human?" She asked. "Vanitas, have the other students been picking on you?"

He shrugged. Sure, he heard them whisper about him behind his back, and no one ever invited him to anything. Not that he wanted them to. After all, over ninety percent of the students here were Denizens of Light, and he certainly wouldn't fit in. He'd known that before applying to Departure University; in fact, he had done it just to spite his stepfather Xehanort and Uncle Braig. He'd like to see them try to drag him back into all of their family drama from way out here.

"…I understand if you don't want to tell me," Aqua finally said when he just tightened his grip on his pencil. "But if you do want a friend to listen to you, my offer stands."

"A friend?" That was enough to snap the melancholy for a moment. "You?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Is something wrong with that?"

"No!" Finally, the right word came out of his mouth. "I just… well, look at me." He let out a pitiful, deflated laugh and gestured to his clothes. Black jeans, a maroon t-shirt that had clearly seen better days, a set of bulky headphones that screamed 'don't talk to me' hanging like a collar around his neck. "What do you see that looks like friend material?"

She smiled, making her face soften again. "I see someone who cares."

If he'd been drinking anything, he would've spat it out. "Someone who cares? Really, Aqua? I think you need your eyes checked. Maybe your brain, too."

"Oh, come on. You don't mean that." She pointed to his homework. "You stay late after class every day, just to make sure you know how to solve the problems. You don't give up after one or two tries, like most students would. No matter how much you complain, you always finish."

"So?" He raised an eyebrow. He could only afford to be here on scholarship, and his scholarship depended on him doing well in this light-forsaken class. That didn't mean he cared about this stupid subject.

"So, either you care a lot about your academics, or you just really like seeing me," she teased.

He snorted, trying to play it cool. "You're the one who takes the time to actually teach me stuff. So maybe it's you who really likes seeing me."

That got a laugh out of her. "I get paid for that; you don't."

"You don't get paid for staying after class." He shook his pencil at her smugly.

"Well… alright, you've got me there," she finally admitted defeat. Though what the goal of the game was, he still wasn't sure. Was he trying to convince her not to be his friend? "Since I'm not getting paid for this, I guess I'd better be going to my next class, hm?"

"…I didn't mean that," he muttered quietly, rubbing his arm. He hadn't had a friend in so long; Xehanort had made sure of that, when his own contentious personality didn't. What was he supposed to say? "I'll be your friend. But only because you're clearly desperate."

"Hey!" She swung her own pencil at him, but he blocked it with his. "You don't know how to take kindness, do you?"

His pencil dipped loosely at that. "…You have no idea."

This was the most human interaction he'd had in days. His roommate Riku always either kept to himself or was gone with his friends. His classmates were too intimidated by his appearance to strike up a conversation. And he was fine with all that. …Wasn't he?

Yet, talking with Aqua… it wasn't so bad. She didn't ask stupid questions like, "what's your name?" "what's your major?" "where're you from?" She was patient with his occasional… well, frequent… outbursts about the stupidity of Calculus, despite clearly being invested in the subject enough to TA for it. She seemed to want to actually get to know him, not just the 'back off' persona he projected.

…And maybe, he wouldn't mind putting in a little effort to get to know her, too.

She scooted her desk closer. "Well, it'll just take a little practice."

It took him a moment to remember what she was talking about. Practice in accepting kindness. That was something he wouldn't mind. It would sure beat practicing Calculus, of all things. Speaking of which…

"So will this homework," he grumbled. "You were saying something about a 2x?"

"Oh, right…"

By the time she finished explaining the problem, they were able to pinpoint where he'd gone wrong.

"You actually did better than you thought," she realized, circling a small symbol in one of the steps he'd written on his homework. "All you needed to do was change this minus sign to plus sign, and you'd have gotten it right yourself."

"Really," he mumbled before viciously attacking the problem with his eraser. "Stupid mistake…"

"Hey, don't think of it like that." Aqua smiled. "Think of it this way. There's so much you can fix just by changing something negative to something positive."

Wow. That was so blatantly life-lessony, she might as well have slapped him with it. He gave her an exaggerated sigh to show what he thought of it.

Still, when the bell rang and he realized he'd spent a whole hour getting help from Aqua, he left with a smile. Maybe something as negative as Calculus could turn out to be positive… if it meant making friends with her.

A/N: That Calculus problem at the beginning? Actually came from my homework the day I wrote this. XD

P.S. look, I wrote something with Vanitas and Aqua and kept it platonic, whoa! Though it probably still comes off as ship-teasy knowing me… x'D