FIC: Final Exam
Summary: A nameless, faceless OC sitting next to Stanford Sam during finals week while he has a cold.
Characters: Sam, Sam's his history professor, and a bunch of Stanford students
Spoilers: no spoilers here!
Words: 1,673
A/N: I was supposed to be paying attention during my own final exams but instead this. The narrator is really whomever you make them out to be!
Finals week is cold and quiet. What’s usually a campus full of extra-young adults chatting and sipping their fivedollar, more-sugar-than-coffee lattes has actually become something of a wasteland, common rooms abandoned for the computer lab and the dining hall forsaken in favor of the library. The weather’s become dreary, which is unusual for California but not inappropriate for Stanford’s mood. Everyone is stressed and anxious and running themselves ragged. Nobody’s having fun.
To my history professor’s credit, she did try to make the last week of the semester a little more bearable for her students. Instead of having us take a final exam for our last meeting, she’s had everyone prepare a five-minute presentation on a chosen topic. It seemed to me like too easy of an assignment for a class at an Ivy League school, but she called it a “positive repercussion” for her assigning three research papers earlier in the year.
My presentation’s only halfway done, but I figure I’ll wing it since I know most of the material (the key word being “most”). I plan on going up first so there’s no bar set that I’ll have to match, but instead of asking us who is ready to present (which would have been my cue), the teacher simply calls out a name.
“Tyler Howard, you’re up first!” she says, warm and friendly, and takes a seat in one of the student desks up front instead of her usual chair at the teacher’s desk.
I begin to bounce my leg with anticipation while Tyler drones on about the Roman Empire, or something. I’m ready for it to end so she can call out the next name (mine, mine, please be mine so I can get this over with) but Tyler won’t stop talking about the Catholics. What’s he presenting on, anyway?
Tyler’s interrupted when the door opens slowly and some kid steps in. I recognize him, obviously, from class, but not much else. He’s tall, like really tall, like noticeably tall, and his face is flushed - probably with embarrassment - as he ducks his head apologetically and the professor forgivingly nods at him to take a seat.
The desks are arranged in connected rows of three, and I’m the only one with a row all to myself, in the back. He sits one desk away from me and sets his bag down in the chair between us. His face is still red, and he removes his jacket but not his scarf.
“Being late’s not that big a deal,” I whisper, gesturing to his cheeks.
He looks at me with confused, droopy eyes.
“You’re blushing like crazy,” I elaborate.
He pats his own face, clears his throat. “Oh. I’m not… it’s fine,” he whispers back hurriedly before rummaging through his things to pull out a few papers. His leg isn’t twitching like mine is, but he looks disconcerted so I leave him alone for the rest of Tyler’s presentation.
When Tyler is finally, finally done talking, everyone claps ceremoniously and my tall, blushing classmate takes the opportunity to cough loudly into his sleeve. He winces, like it’s painful.
“Jeez. Have you been holding that in the whole time?” I ask.
He clears his throat again, and then smiles in a way that’s supposed to make me not feel sorry for him. Yeah, right. “For the most part. Sorry.”
What the fuck is he apologizing for?
“Olivia Stratum?” the professor calls, and god damn it I am not Olivia Stratum and her presentation had better not be anything special, just in case I have to follow it. I’m not afraid of public speaking, really - at least, I never think I am until I’m close to a moment where I know I’ll have to. Last night I was fine (so fine that I barely bothered to get a presentation together) and I was even okay before I walked into class… but now it’s weird thinking that I’m about to be talking about something I only know a few things about in front of everyone in the room.
A partially stifled sneeze draws me from my thoughts and I turn back to my classmate (what was his name? Stephen? Seth?) who’s pitched forward with his fingers clamped around his nose. He’s trying so hard to be unobtrusive, it’s adorable.
His eyebrows knit together, like he’s fighting off a second one, so he pinches his nose harder with one hand and rummages through his bag (probably for a Kleenex) with the other. His breath hitches - he’s too late! - and he winces into the second sneeze almost silently and definitely painfully. He looks frustrated, and seriously, dude, nobody is going to reprimand you if you let yourself sneeze. I lean over to tell him this, but I still can’t think of his name. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Seth? Sean?
“Hey, what’s your name?”
He startles, looks at me, and takes a moment to answer as if he thinks I’d been talking to someone else. “Oh. It’s Sam,” he says with a sniffle, only it sounds more like “Samb” through his congestion - and then it hits me that he wasn’t blushing earlier, and he wasn’t embarrassed (at least not to that extent) about coming in late.
Poor kid is sick and showing up to fucking presentation day which probably only counts for five percent of his grade anyway. So what in the hell?
“Are you okay?” I ask.
It’s a valid question but he smiles and nods and actually looks guilty. “Sounds worse than it looks,” he mumbles in an attempt to sound casual and indifferent, but I can tell that he’s feeling miserable. I try not to look too sympathetic when Olivia’s speech about the Salem Witch Trials ends and Sam blows his nose gently.
I’m tracing the pen carvings in my desk (obviously someone else sitting in the back was bored, too) while the professor writes in her legal pad at the front of the room. Everyone else is staring absently at either her or the projection screen on the front wall, waiting.
“All right,” our professor says brightly. “Nicole Marsh?”
That’s not me either! And I know Nicole Marsh and her droll, monotone way of speaking and I’m already, like, pre-bored, if that's even a thing. She pulls up a PowerPoint on the projector and starts to basically read off of it, which seems pointless to me but really, whatever.
Sam’s turned away from me, coughing quietly into his sleeve. Maybe he’s rightfully given up on trying not to interrupt (as if anyone would care if you coughed in class, people get sick, Sam, Jesus). When he’s done I can see that his eyes are wet and red to match his nose, because that’s what happens when you hold back coughing fits.
I tear a piece of paper from my notebook and start sketching pictures of - whatever, trees, badgers, strings of Christmas lights - things, to see if I can make Nicole’s presentation any more bearable. It’s not working.
God I’m bored! And my leg is practically having a seizure; I can’t stop shaking it. Maybe I should plan out what I’m going to say for my presentation (if I ever get to make a presentation, oh my god Nicole could you speak any more slowly). Maybe I should offer Sam a cough drop. Wow, Christ, listen to him - can he even breathe?
I scrawl out my offering above a doodle of a street lamp and I slide the paper across to his desk.
Sam reads it, then smiles and slips a hand into his coat pocket and pulls out a handful of Halls. He’s prepared! That means he must know how sick he is. So what is he doing here? I’m about to get a new piece of paper and ask him when my old doodle-sheet is passed back to me.
He’s written next to my drawing of an owl, Got some. But thanks. Nice of you to offer. His handwriting is interesting, a seemingly haphazard mixture of capital and lowercase, and all of his A’s look like stars.
Take one then! I write back. You sound like you’re getting worse.
He reads my message and clears his throat before writing a response, which is totally amusing because it’s not like he’s going to actually be saying anything.
Haha, his message says, and what the fuck, haha, because his scraped up throat isn’t funny at all. I’m okay. Thanks. These always make my mouth numb. Maybe after I present.
I wonder if he even has a voice to present with, so obviously I ask him, Do you even have a voice to present with?
Sam writes, I guess we’ll find out, passes it back to me, and stifles three sneezes in a row.
I raise my eyebrows in his direction while he rolls his eyes from behind a tissue. “I’m fine,” he whispers.
But, like, no, Sam, you’re sneezing and coughing up a storm, come on.
Nicole finally ends her presentation, praise be to God, and everyone claps out of obligation instead of enthusiasm while she walks back to her desk.
“Sam Winchester?” the professor summons.
Winchester. Is that the same Sam?
My question is answered when he stands up and gathers his papers, and I take a moment to marvel again at how tall he is. He doesn’t seem nervous or excited or even phased, just calm and sick. He treks through the aisles, sets his notes down on the podium, and clears his throat.
“Hi. Um-” he’s literally not even a word into his speech before he’s pausing to cough. “Sorry.” He sounds pathetically hoarse. “So! For my topic I chose…” and he continues on with his presentation, sounding sore and stuffed up and sick but still somehow muddling through like a champ. It’s impressive, actually.
I let him know when he sits back down after he’s done speaking, with a smile and two thumbs up. “You were good!”
“Thank you.” Sam tightens his scarf and unwraps a cough drop.