Chapter Text
It was too late to be up, Clarke told herself. Her roommate had fallen asleep hours ago and with each passing moment the dorms grew quieter and quieter. The only sounds now were the humming of their mini fridge, the scratch of pen on paper, and the pages flipping back and forth in her Calculus textbook. Even though they were the most insignificant noises during the day, Clarke found them deafening against the stagnant silence of the night; her heart jumped every time she had to turn a page of her textbook or flip to a clean page in her notebook.
If only her brain would agree that nights were for sleeping, she would be able to crawl into bed and forget all about her Calculus 3 class. It was ridiculous, but for some reason her concentration, creativity, and general problem solving peaked during the late hours of night. Normally Clarke didn’t take advantage of that due to her eight-AM class every day of the week, but math was more important than anthropology for a pre-med student.
The sad thing was, Clarke wasn’t even working on actual homework for the future; she was trying desperately to figure out why exactly she had gotten a D- on her very first graded assignment. Once a month all the homework was graded in bulk, and she had been mortified to learn that at least half of her hard-won solutions were marked up in red and awarded partial credit, if anything. No explanation; just red marks. It was up to Clarke to find the mistakes herself, except after hours of reworking every marked problem using all the resources available to her, including her friend the internet, she got the exact same answers that were apparently wrong.
Maybe she was mistaken; maybe her superpower of late-night smarts was a lie induced by a deadly combination of exhaustion and adrenaline. Anything was possible. Everything was questionable. Her previously earned and cherished Calculus skills were apparently a big fat lie.
Life was so unfair.
Clarke sighed and put down her pen, running her fingers through her roots before remembering she had tied her hair back in a bun that was now ruined. She pulled at the band aggressively, ignoring the pain of small clumps coming out with it, and ran her fingers through her freed locks. Much better. After a moment she picked up the pen and turned back to the equation at hand, but the black scratched numbers, variables, and symbols staring back at her were no different than those she arrived at the first time, incorrectly.
It was useless. She looked for the time, and groaned when she found it. “3:57 AM” glared back at her in angry red. This was going nowhere. It had been going nowhere three hours ago, but she was too stubborn to back down then. Now the battle was lost, and she was willing to accept defeat to claim the consolation prize of at least three hours of sleep.
Fantastic.
Crawling into bed, Clarke was overcome with an intense determination before falling immediately asleep. Tomorrow she would get answers. This so-called professor had some explaining to do.
That morning was awful. Anthropology on three hours of sleep at eight in the morning was Clarke’s living hell. She regretfully realized at every lecture that the subject would be extremely interesting if not for her horrible monotone professor that seemed to think reading a PowerPoint to the whiteboard was the most effective teaching method. It wasn’t. For one, falling asleep was almost guaranteed and Clarke didn’t even feel bad due to the dozens of other heads around her, nodding off and jerking awake every few minutes. There wasn’t even a good reason to take notes, since their professor had the decency to post each presentation on their class website. If attendance wasn’t twenty percent of their grade, Clarke wouldn’t even bother showing up. Obviously her professor knew that. Well played, sir; well played.
At the end of class Clarke immediately perked up, along with everyone else. She had over an hour to kill before Calculus and her professor luckily had office hours that day. Armed with her pages of attempted reworking and her original assignment, she sprinted the half mile to his office.
Catching her breath, she knocked on the door. It wasn’t open yet, which was a good sign; that meant she must be the first person there. Her questions were guaranteed answers.
The door opened. Her middle-aged, bespectacled professor opened the door and welcomed her in with his thick Russian accent. It had taken some getting used to during the first week, but now she understood and clung to every word that came out of his mouth. He beckoned Clarke to sit down, and she obliged.
“Professor, I just have a few questions on my homework,” she started, and he immediately jumped up to grab his own textbook.
“Yes, yes, of course.” He opened to a page near the beginning and began flipping through. “What are we on now, chapter two, section three…” Clarke moved to correct him, but he didn’t see until he was on the proper page and looked back up at her expectantly.
“No, I’m sorry, I meant I have questions on my previous homework—the assignment we just got back? I was looking through it, and I have some questions marked wrong without any notes—“
He raised a hand to cut her off. “Unfortunately all of your assignments are graded by your TA, Mr. Blake. I can help you with strategies for your current assignment, but if you have any questions on grading you will have to speak with him.”
“Mr. Blake?” asked Clarke slowly, trying to remember a face but coming up empty.
“Yes, he sits in on the lecture a few times a week in the back left at the wide desk.” He began waving his hand impatiently as he spoke, looking behind Clarke as he did so. As subtly as possible she glanced back, saw a line of five classmates behind her, and was immediately grateful for her mastery of cardio. “He will be there today. Find him after class if you would like to speak with him.”
“Thank you,” said Clarke, standing up before he could ask her to leave.
Clarke took excellent notes, even when she wasn’t completely paying attention. On days like this when she was horribly distracted by specific thoughts, feelings, or life in general, she was eternally grateful for that skill. Half of the class was spent looking around for this “Mr. Blake” that she was supposed to be talking to. Obviously the first place she looked was at the large desk at the back left where her professor had told her to find him, but her heart had immediately fallen when she saw it empty. The thought crossed her mind that he was perhaps in a different spot, but she didn’t see anybody who looked significantly older or wiser than everyone else in the classroom. Consequently she looked back at the desk every couple of minutes in case he decided to show up.
Twenty minutes before class ended, he did. The rest of the period was spent glancing back at him to make sure he didn’t slip out as quietly as he had come in. As soon as class was dismissed, Clarke hurried to the back of the lecture hall and stood in front of the wide TA’s desk.
In her determination to find him and catch him, Clarke realized she hadn’t even really looked at him. Up close, she was surprised to see he wasn’t much older than her, relatively speaking. Apparently the title “Mr. Blake” had made her imagine him as the mature and all-knowing keeper of Calculus homework, even though that was ridiculous since TAs were most commonly grad students.
On top of his younger than expected appearance, Clarke had to admit that he was extremely attractive. Even though he clearly did not give a damn how he looked while sitting in on a lecture at the very back of a large lecture hall listening to information he already knew, his dark disheveled hair over bold features and stern expression suited him.
All too late, Clarke realized she was staring and blushed. She opened her mouth, horrified, but he spoke first.
“What do you want, Princess?” he asked dully, already gathering up his bag.
“Princess?” The name offended her enough to make embarrassment a thing of the past. “That’s kind of inappropriate, don’t you think? It suggests gross and overall inaccurate judgments about me and my character, and I find that really rude.”
He stared at Clarke blankly for a long moment, but she held her ground. “No, I see now more than ever that the name suits you just fine.”
Clarke huffed and moved to argue, but he cut her off. “Look, Princess,” he said, and Clarke could swear she saw an infuriating little smirk flash across his face, “Either I call you what I decide to call you, or I don’t call you anything at all. I have a lot of students. They change every year. If you want me to know who you are, you need to let me decide who you are.”
She pursed her lips and held her tongue, even though it was screaming to fight back. This was a fight that she could concede in lieu of more important battles. Her compliant silence extended until Mr. Blake had stood up with his packed bag slung over his shoulder, arms crossed.
“Okay,” she said, then realized that she had jumped into speaking to him rudely without addressing him at all, and added, “Mr. Blake,” except that made his expression turn to one of deep and intense disgust.
“Ugh, no, it’s Bellamy,” he said. “Is that what Kruglikov is telling students to call me?” Clarke nodded slowly. “Great. Awesome.”
“Okay, um, Bellamy,” she said, and he seemed to relax a bit. “I was wondering what exactly I did wrong on my homework. I have answers marked wrong and points taken off, but you didn’t say which part is inaccurate or give any explanation.” She held out her paper and Bellamy raised his eyebrows, then took it from her, paging through too quickly.
“Yeah, that’s a lot of red,” he said with a laugh, then handed it back to her. “I take off points for numerous reasons, and what you did wrong should be obvious. If you can’t figure it out, you aren’t trying hard enough.” With that he walked away, leaving Clarke alone in the lecture hall, stunned and speechless.
Professors and TAs were supposed to teach and help you. They were supposed to appreciate students who took the time to come see them and ask questions. If nothing else, they were supposed to have a clear explanation when it came to questions on grading. Instead, Clarke had even more questions and only one new piece of information…
Bellamy Blake was an asshole.