college au (for lordofthefries)

[neighsaying]

"BABE! I'm back!"

Jean unlocked the front door to the apartment with a grunt, using his hip to move it out of the way. In his other hand he was juggling two bags and a drink tray, and he turned, closing the door with his hip still and locking it behind him.

He tossed his keys on the weirdly shaped ceramic bowl (courtesy of one of Sasha's art classes) and then transferred the drinks to one hand as he walked in. The apartment wasn't the nicest - they were college kids, after all, and Jean's mom might have been middle class but she wasn't full ride middle class - but it was a step up from the drywall peeling, leaky sink infested shared housing unit he'd first met Sasha in, in year one of college.

This space was theirs and he was going to enjoy it by eating a ton of barbecue. (Okay, theirs, Marco, and Connie's, but Marco was cramming in the library and Connie was over gaming with Reiner. One of the bedrooms was theirs and the lock still worked).

He set the bags and the drink tray down, grabbing a couple fries from the bag and then sauntering out to the living room. There was Sasha, hunched over a book and with a spiral notebook next to it.

He tapped on her shoulder, getting her to lean back, and let her steal the fries out of his fingers before he leaned in and pressed a kiss against her mouth. What? She was cute when she was stuffing her face.

"How's it going? I brought back food from Porco's shop." That had been a surprise, but he knew everyone's orders from that place like the back of his hand.

Comments

[lordofthefries]

That weirdly shaped ceramic bowl might be weirdly shaped, but Sasha was proud of something she not only made with her own two hands but got a passing grade on! Sure, it wasn't A+ design work, but Cs get degrees and that was all that mattered. Plus it held their keys and all sorts of knickknacks like the fun sized candy bars Sasha had tucked around the apartment and maybe a couple of rogue rubberbands. It was their idea of decor in their little piece of home in the rental that was loads better than the small trailer Sasha grew up in. Anything, even the shared housing unit, was an upgrade from that.

But she wasn't thinking about housing at the moment. Sasha was glaring down at the text book in front of her, brows furrowed in something that was a cross between confusion and annoyance. She knew college would be an uphill battle; in fact, most people were surprised she managed to make it out of high school in the first place, much less get accepted somewhere. But she had to get out of her little backwoods town somehow and this was the way. It was just far more difficult at some points than she imagined.

"This is stupid," she said through the mouthful of fries, too frustrated to properly thank Jean for the food. "Why do I need to know any of this?"

This, she pointed at, was a passage from some old fart—in her opinion—blathering on about the beauty of nature and a few simple questions reflecting on the piece. In short, it was English 100 coursework, not even 101, and Sasha was finding herself struggling again.

[neighsaying]

Whenever Sasha's old 'friends' expressed surprise she was in college, Jean had to restrain punching them. Sasha wasn't stupid, she just struggled a lot more with reading and words than the rest of them. He knew her upbringing had been a lot different than his. If they'd met as teenagers, it might have frustrated him.

Instead, it made him annoyed at the other people in life who had clearly failed Sasha.

He knows it's bothering her a lot when she doesn't even acknowledge that the food is from Porco's - she once said she'd sell him to the devil for their ribs and not even be sorry about it - and his eyebrows raise. He lowers his arms to wrap around her shoulder, looking over at the book.

"I don't know," Jean says honestly - he always tries to be honest with Sasha, she respects it when he doesn't have the answers. "I know in my classes they want us to do 'critical analysis' and stuff like that, but I don't think that's where you're at." He'd have to look over her syllabus again to see what they wanted.

He drops a peck on her forehead. "How about a food break? And then I'll come help you with that."

[lordofthefries]

"I don't even know what critical analysis means," Sasha groans, throwing her pen across the desk, but doesn't give into the urge to slam her head there too when she feels Jean's arms around her.

She doesn't know if other people had failed her. Usually she was the one who caught the blame for her educational failures. Her teachers always said she wasn't paying enough attention to text to 'read between the lines' to find the words that weren't actually printed there. Maybe she was actually too stupid to get it and her former teachers just passed her onto the next grade because they felt sorry for her. Or worse, they were tired of dealing with her at all.

Sometimes she accepted the blame because it was easier to just consider everybody else who could read just fine knew better than a dummy would. Sometimes it angered her because she knew how to survive the coldest winters with the little her family got from the food banks and make meals stretch and they didn't. But at least now in college, she can blend into the large crowds, though this means she can be found in the back of the lecture halls, trying to make sense of the big words the professors seem to love using. At least, though, they don't notice her enough to call her out on it.

The best of everything is that Jean has never called her stupid. He teases her, sure, when she doesn't get a joke or something not too important, but the word has never left his lips in regards to her. It's why she feels safe coming to him with her homework when it gets too much like now. He promised to help her and he will. Just after she eats dinner because food, man, it has never led her astray.

"Did you get extra fries?" She looks up at him with her brown eyes, wide and hopeful, as if Jean has ever once returned from Porco's without their family sized bucket of fries strictly for her.

me who barely eats barbecue: i'm not listing the sides i'll fuck it up somehow

[neighsaying]

Jean laughs softly when she looks up at him with her big pleading eyes. Not at her, but enjoying the fact that she asks.

"Of course I got you extra fries," he promises; he shifts his arms to wrap them around her waist and thighs, pulling her up from the couch and over the back of it, then setting her down facing the bags of food. He likes showing off like this; he spent his early years as a (in his own words) fat kid, then an extremely skinny one. The fact that he can lift his girlfriend around now because he can put on muscle is nice.

"And I got you ribs, too, and a shake." The ribs are absolutely all for her, as are the fries. She'll still eat a little bit of everything that they got, and he'll make sure there's enough left over for their two other friends to stick in the fridge. Sasha would be fine to eat out of the containers, but Jean is still his mother's kid; that is, he walks to get a plate, knife and fork for his meal.