Chapter Text
Jude hated Mondays.
It wasn’t particularly because of anything—he had no problem waking up in ungodly times, even when he stayed up late on Sunday, fine-tuning code for Parker’s new passion project, or was bullied into some weird 4 am side quest with Godis and Bitzel—no, his biological clock never failed to wake him up at seven sharp in the morning.
His hatred only originates from one thing. The 10:30 am CS202 lecture.
First of all, let him first clarify that it wasn’t due to the rumors of Professor T being a hard ass—that was solely reserved for the students—he was fortunate enough to have already passed the course before the professor had transferred from the overseas branch to deal with the ever-growing popularity of CS202.
As a result, while the rest of the student body needed to bear with the professor’s increasingly foul mood as the quarter dragged on, Jude got to experience the more laid-back side of the professor, who was surprisingly chill for a guy who regularly set debugging assignments with the shortest recorded deadline in all of the college’s 40 years of history.
No, it wasn’t anything about Professor Twirps, nor the general class if he wanted to be honest, as they were usually a quiet bunch. His workload here was light compared to his other TA gigs he’s done in the past for other professors.
Even Shadow, whom he had rarely seen around ever since he took up that Architectural Drafting TA role, had a lot more on his plate than Jude.
More specifically, it was the guy who always sat in the second-to-last row who just transferred this quarter for his master’s, pretending like he hadn’t been playing Valorant on his shitty gaming laptop the entire class.
Jude had first approached Sharpness Conexion as he would any new student, with a pleasant, calm demeanor that Parker always claimed to make him seem more mature. Trying to brave past the initial awkwardness of two young adults suddenly becoming legally related out of the blue (don’t ask Jude’s dad why he ever thought this was a good idea, of course, Mrs. Conexion was quite pleasant to be around, but the timing of it was more than a little awkward.)
And yes, maybe people treated him with a little less respect than other TAs get because of his age or inexperience, because he might’ve skipped too many grades in high school, but it never had gotten beyond the typical patronising jab or concealed sneer, until Sharpness plopped his grey sweatpant-wearing ass onto the lecture hall seat in May right after their parents tied the knot.
It was petty too, high school shit Jude thought he left behind when he opted to just skip it because clearly he was smarter than all of those hormonal teenagers combined.
He couldn’t even keep track of the little things for how frequent they are; Sharpness seemed to be spending every spare moment casually ruining everything Jude’s been building for himself with a yawn. He swears that it was intentional, even if Parker always looks at him weirdly whenever he complains.
Much to his irritation, Sharpness had also weirdly become the professor’s favourite student despite his penchant to ignore all deadlines and general lack of basic etiquette when dealing with teachers and professors.
There were rumors of the two of them being distantly related to explain the complete 180 the professor undertakes when interacting with the shaggy-looking guy. But they must be very distantly related if there were any semblance of truth in the rumor, even Jude looked more related to Sharpness than Sharpness did to Professor Twirps.
Not a lot of students complained, after all, Sharpness did excel at anything the professor threw at him. Most kept to themselves and their mountains of assigned coursework, only a few whispered a little discontentedly amongst themselves. Because, infuriatingly, the guy was actually well-liked amongst his peers, even with his temper on the shorter side, there was just an undeniable charisma he exudes.
For all his expected social awkwardness Jude has come to expect of computer science majors (because the stereotypes did have a basis, believe him). Sharpness apparently had a softer side that the senior girls kept raving about.
Not that Sharpness has ever shown him a side beyond being an absolute asshole.
It got worse when their parents decided to move in with each other, because Jude’s house was just close enough to campus that moving into a dorm would just be a waste of money, and Sharpness was apparently enough of a hermit to even consider living on campus anyway.
Jude bemoans the dorm signup date passing by so quickly every Monday morning.
For one, has he ever mentioned he was allergic to cats?
Not that Jude hated Tom, he was adorable, very very cute alright? (Shut up Sharp, I like Tom too!) It was just that his nose died anytime he was even remotely near any surface that Tom had been on, which was virtually every single flat surface within the household at this point. So he’s forced into the refuge of his room.
Every time he entered the house, it was a race against his sinuses to his room. Which was the only room Tom hadn’t gotten his paws all over, mainly because Jude had always had the habit of closing his doors when leaving, and thank god that Tom hadn’t learned to open doors like those cats on TikTok, otherwise it would’ve just seemed like he was crying perpetually every time he got home with the amount of tissues he went through.
It ended up with a further divide between him and his family that a cat should have caused. His favorite couch in the living room is now forever occupied by the allergy demon, and the spare room he used to tinker in has officially transformed into Sharpness’s man-cave.
Everything about him got on his nerves. The way he seemed so unbothered when Jude attempted to develop at least a talking relationship, the way he could never tell when Sharpness was joking or not, with everything said in the same teasing monotone.
His hatred might be one-sided because there hasn’t even been any effort behind the things Sharpness had done to irritate him (yes, Parker, he’s well aware). But he swears that there was always ill intent behind every word.
All his friends think he’s either slowly going insane—Parker—or has a massive gay crush on the guy—Tai—which, to your information, he absolutely does not.
Just because his hair was kind of pretty and he was tall and had a nice face to look at doesn’t mean he was at all attracted to that hobo.
He needed proof. Actual, concrete evidence to redeem himself in front of his friends. And he had just the starting point.
The emotional support group that their parents forced them to join after their divorce.
And Sword still owed Jude a favour.