They got to the Chemistry lab with Rachel hauling their soda bottles and Tex hauling everything else. They didn't say anything to each other. They just did what they had to right now. It was whatever. Maybe he would ask Tom over Christmas to assign someone else, but only if it got impossible to handle. He wasn't going to give up on Rachel despite how much he wanted to right now. Because this was a good job. It was paying for this school and picking up an extra check for it too.

They sat down at their desk where there was already instructions for them on how to do the lab correctly, when Tex looked at it, it looked fairly simple. It had a lot of big words but most of it he could get from context clues. And hell, he was taking the actual chemistry class with her too, so most of it he could get. He wasn't as dumb as he looked, despite what that TA seemed to assume.

It was going well. He was setting up the stuff and Rachel was doing all the careful stuff because she had smaller hands and somewhat more control issues. Whatever. They weren't going to talk about that.

He went to pick up a soda. And Rachel tried to stop him. But he didn't listen. He thought it was because she was being a control freak yet again.

And instead he realized just a second too late, it was because the sodas had been shaken up on the walk here and she was trying to save him from fizz to the face. Which he took. Everyone else in the class laughed, except Rachel, him, and the TA, who just pointed to the cleaning supplies. He cleaned up the mess in silence, wiping himself off with a paper towel as best he could and returned to the assignment.

"I'm sorry," Rachel said, and she held out her hand for him. He took it and he felt relieved that she hadn't done this on purpose. Or even if she had that it hadn't been the great act that she thought it was. And she was big enough to say that she was sorry for it.

He closed his eyes and breathed. If they were somewhere else, not in front of people, he probably would have hugged her. He didn't know why. He just knew that he would. It seemed like the natural response, but here, he just squeezed her hand tightly and looked at the assignment. "We should get this done, princess."

He didn't notice that she just nodded and didn't say anything about the princess comment. Despite the fact, she always made a fuss about being called princess. She really sorry for the way that the mess made him the star of the class. He shouldn't have had to go through that. He was always in the middle of cleaning up messes. Hell, he was here because there could be any number of messes that he was supposed to deal with. She thought she could maybe be easier on him. It wasn't his fault that was his job. Well, it was. But it didn't matter that he was so protective because it was his job.

The rest of the class went as normally as it could. Everyone else finished a little bit earlier than they did, due to the mess situation. Everyone had more time than they did. But they finished, put their reports on the desk and went back to the room.

"You're a good lab partner," Rachel said as she walked beside him. "Not that I expected you to be a bad lab partner, but you're a…" She sputtered out.

He smiled as he looked at her, "A good lab partner." He nodded. "I'll take it, princess."

"I'm not a princess." She smarted back.

He stopped in his tracks for a second. He was going to get to the bottom of this. "Why don't you like being called princess? Thought all girls wanted to be a princess, at least sometimes."

She shrugged and kept walking. He struggled to keep up. Despite their differences, she was a fast walker and he walked behind her, trying to keep pace. She sighed. "I never want people to think that I think I'm the princess of the US. I'm just some girl. Some girl who helped her dad run for president. I'm not special,"

He shook his head. "You are not telling me that you are not special," He said. "I won't hear of it. And I'm not meaning it like that hun. I know you're just some girl. But you're special to me. And that means you get to be called princess."

She looked back at him and nodded. "Alright, knight."

"I'll take that," He said as he looped his arm through hers. "Let's go home and have ye royal luncheon."

And they went back to normal. Their version of normal. Which is that they were something akin to friends. He was working for her and her dad, but they were friends. It wasn't the weirdest thing in the world. Hell, he could be trapped on a ship in the middle of the ocean with no hope of getting hope, that would be weirder. Not that that would ever be plausible.

He gave her that hug that he had yearned for in class. She returned it after a moment, leaning into it and it just felt good to be back to the basics of learning how to be a human with another human. He leaned into it too. She smelled good. And that's when he leaned out of it. When he realized that she smelled good, because he shouldn't be sniffing her. This shouldn't be something like that.

She looked at him a little confused. "What was that for?" She asked him.

"For not laughing with all the other dingbats in class."

She nodded. "Well, I would never laugh at your misfortune." She said, "But you should have listened to me when I was telling you not to open that one."

He chuckled. He deserved that. He hadn't listened to her and he'd paid the price for it. Not something that he would ever consider forgetting. Because listening to her, it wasn't so bad. He'd do it when he had to.