Chapter Text
Professor Nygma was an interesting character to say the least. Abby had only been in his class for a few days, but she could say with certainty that he was far more eccentric than any of her high school teachers had been. For starters, all of his suits were green. He seemed to rotate through the shades as the week progressed, shifting from shades that were almost eyesores to ones so dark they almost passed for black. This alone wasn’t much; after all, who didn’t have a favourite colour? However his bizarre fashion choices didn’t stop there. His ties and pocket squares were always a brilliant purple or a softer pink, matching the leather driving gloves he wore, and he wielded a cane with a gilt tip, often using it to gesture extravagantly. This, alongside his flaming red hair, the bowler hat he occasionally donned and his question mark cufflinks and earrings, made for a striking appearance. Comparatively, his facial features were not very noteworthy: crystalline blue eyes, pale skin that looked as though it should be freckled but was not, a sharp nose which, to a discerning eye, seemed to have been broken and reset at least a few times, thin pink lips that rarely stayed shut, perfectly sculpted eyebrows that he raised whenever someone asked a particularly stupid question, and a soft jawline that, combined with his talkative nature, made him appear deceptively approachable.
Initially, Abby had been sceptical about taking his class as, never one to jump into something without doing her due diligence, she had gone and read every single review of him on RateMyProfessor. Opinions were mixed. Many students found his class insanely difficult and his office hours borderline incomprehensible, while others considered him engaging and the course content fascinating. She cross referenced these reviews with the grades achieved by the reviewers and found that positive reviews coincided almost completely with higher grades. Having been at the top of her class in high school, she had decided to take the risk, confident that she could handle anything the professor could throw at her.
Her first class with him was a whirlwind: he had walked in exactly on time, in his peculiar getup, and had strode across to the blackboard, not saying a word as he wrote his full name on the board in a flurry of chalk dust. This silence was broken swiftly, and wouldn’t return for some time.
“Good morning students. My name is Edward Nygma,” he gestured to the board, “but you may call me…” another cloud of chalk dust, “Mr. E” He ran a hand over his carefully coiffed hair as he spoke, “I have three doctorates in math, computer science, and art history. I love questions, so long as they’re not completely stupid. There will be pop quizzes and everything and anything could be on the final exam. My office hours are on the syllabus which I will hand out momentarily.”
Abby looked down at the pamphlet that had been handed out. It contained a list of topics they would be covering, the percentages of their grade that each exam and pop quiz was worth, and a link to a website, under which was a riddle and a set of numbers. Upon seeing this, a boy from the third row raised his hand.
“Yes?” Professor Nygma intoned (it felt weird to call him Mr, even in her own head, knowing that he had three doctorates.)
“This is a riddle.”
“That’s not a question.”
“Oh, uh… Why is there a riddle here?”
“Why, to help you access my office hours of course. Now, if there are no more questions, we shall proceed with the lecture.” Without missing a beat he began his spiel, leaving Abby and the rest of the class to scramble to grab their laptops and notebooks and begin their notetaking. If his office hours were this obscured, they would have to make sure they didn’t need them. It was almost impossible to keep up as Professor Nygma spoke, one hand gesturing flamboyantly with his cane, the other making his own notes on the chalkboard, a borderline incomprehensible mess of words and numbers. By the end of the class, an hour later, Abby felt as though someone had put her brain through a mangle. Trying to keep track of everything Professor Nygma had said was proving difficult and she suspected that a significant portion of her free time was going to be spent going over the content until it stuck. Still, she couldn’t deny that the lecture had been engaging. Professor Nygma had a clear flair for the dramatic and, though it was clear he loved the sound of his own voice, it was understandable: he spoke in crisply enunciated syllables that rolled off his tongue pleasingly, and he never passed up the opportunity to drop in a pun or some form of wordplay. Talking around with some of the other students revealed that most felt the same way. Apparently he was pretty universally liked within the university, aside from a few disgruntled students he had failed.
Her next class with him came the very next day and this time it was a three hour long lecture to prepare them for a workshop the next day. Engaging speech be damned, half the class was struggling to focus after they passed the halfway point and it became clear that they weren’t going to be getting a break. Abby was considering becoming ambidextrous so that she could keep up with the ridiculous pace of notetaking when the student behind her leaned over her shoulder and whispered in her ear, making her jump.
“Ask about his husband.” The voice said.
“What?”
“His husband. My sister took his class last year; he loves to talk about the guy and it gives everyone a break.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
“Because –
“Is there something you two would like to share with the class?”
Abby immediately snapped to face forward, feeling all eyes on her, “No, uh we were just – I was wondering how your husband was doing.” She said, wishing she could slap the guy behind her, or that he could just shoot her in the back of the head. The professor’s face was impassable and she winced as she waited to see what he was going to do. To her immense surprise, instead of kicking her out of the class, calling her a world-class moron, or assigning her 3000 words on the importance of paying attention, as she had heard another professor did, his face lit up and the lecture stopped in its tracks as he began to talk about his husband and what they had done that weekend. The guy behind her clapped her on the shoulder and she breathed out, stretching her hands and letting the wonderful, non-academic words wash over her.
Soon though, like with his lectures, she found herself utterly engaged with his borderline gushing over his husband. It was honestly pretty sweet – Abby had always figured that over time love would die or at least sour to some degree, but when she asked how long he and his husband had been together, feeling emboldened by how excited he was about the topic, his answer was, “Nine years, six months, and four days.”
“Holy specificity.” The guy behind her whispered. She would have to learn his name at some point. Listening to the professor’s elaborate description of the play his husband had taken him to see (“He got us the best seats in the house!”), Abby has never felt more single. If what he’s saying is to be believed, her professor is married to the most sweet, doting man alive. He kept on like this for the rest of the class, and she left feeling oddly optimistic about her love life – if someone as strange as Professor Nygma could find the one, maybe hope wasn’t totally lost for her. She turned to the guy who had sat behind her and said, “We should do that every class – I’ve never known someone so totally head over heels.”
“Right? I thought my sister was exaggerating. Still, we can’t do it too often. He may look a little crazy but he’s pretty sharp – he’d catch on quick.”
“Makes sense. His husband sounds like a great guy, doesn’t he?”
“From what he says, you’d think his husband was a God.” He goes to leave, before catching himself and turning back, “Oh and don’t try the same trick with Professor Crane – you have him for Psychology right?” She nodded. “He’s got a husband too but unlike Mr E, he’s a grumpy son of a bitch who doesn’t believe personal matters should mix with professional – if you ask about his husband, he’ll totally bite your head off. There’s one student every year who tries it and Crane likes to make examples out of people.”
“Damn, thanks for the heads up.” She was pretty sure she had seen Professor Crane around campus. At least, she had seen a man matching the description of a “grumpy son of a bitch”, and she certainly didn’t want to get on his bad side.
As it happened, she had her first lecture with Professor Crane the very next day, and he certainly fit the description Parker (she finally had gotten his name) had given her. He was a tall thin man, with hard lines in his face and hair that was threaded with gray strands. His brown eyes were sharp behind his glasses and when the light hit them just right, they flashed an unnerving orange. His mouth was set in a permanent look of disdain and his skin was scarred in several places. He wore a beige suit jacket over a plaid shirt and a bolo tie and though it was all perfectly ironed, he had the distinct air of someone who didn’t care for his appearance, as though he were just a coat hanger the clothes had been draped over.
When she entered the lecture hall, he had already been at his desk, poring over a battered copy of Ulysses. His name was already on the chalkboard in small neat letters and he didn’t look up until the clock struck one and class officially began, at which point he dogeared the page of his book and slowly sauntered up to the lectern to begin. He spoke with a warm southern accent that did nothing to hide the mild disdain he appeared to harbour for his students. He had a clear love for his subject and as an academic, Parker told her, was outstanding in his field, but unlike Professor Nygma, he didn’t seem to relish the idea of an audience and was noticeably curt with them. He refused entrance to a few frazzled latecomers, levelling them with a hard glare that could strike fear in the hearts of even the most stoic of people. He used this glare liberally and, despite this, it never seemed to lose its efficacy. He used it on anyone who dared to yawn, or cough, or sneeze, and even occasionally, on students who raised their hands at inopportune times.
His reviews on RateMyProfessor were not great. Most of them lamented that his lectures were dry and his tests hard, and, unlike Professor Nygma, he had few quirky eccentricities to endear him among the student body. If rumours were to be believed, he was not well liked by the faculty either. Frankly, Abby was shocked that he had a husband at all, given how universally despised he seemed to be. She herself wouldn’t have taken his course, except she needed the credits and the only other psychology professor had retired the week before she had arrived. So here she was, half listening to him go on about the psychology of fear – it seemed a particular fixation of his and he frequently went off on tangents about it – and half waiting for it to be over so that she could leave. The content was interesting, certainly, but the overall atmosphere that Professor Crane managed to create, whether intentionally or unintentionally, was hostile and even when he wasn’t glaring at her for some imperceptible slight, she still felt slightly scared. Parker seemed to share this fear, if the way he was white knuckling his fountain pen was anything to go off of.
It was as she was thinking this, a voice piped up from the back of the class.
“What’s your husband like Professor?”
Professor Crane stopped in his lecturing and narrowed his eyes. “Raise your hand if you have a question.” A hand tentatively rose, its owner hidden behind another, taller, student at the very back of the room.
“A question unrelated to my personal life.” He said, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. The hand stayed up. “Yes?”
“What’s your husband like?”
The professor glared at him and spoke in weary tones, “He’s a manipulative bastard and I love him very much. Now, what’s your name child?”
“I’d rather not say.” The voice said, still hiding.
The professor smirked slightly, the most positive emotion anyone there had ever seen him display. “I will personally fail anyone shielding this student from view.” Immediately, the students in front of him parted, revealing the offender.
“There you are. Now, your name”
The student trembled slightly as he spoke, “Samuel Brown, sir.”
“Well Samuel, for disrupting the class and wasting my time, I’ll be expecting a 3500 word essay on the effects of fear on the body. Anything less than an A, and you fail the course automatically.”
“Yes sir.” The student stammered
Professor Crane continued his class from there, and Abby thanked God that Parker had warned her to steer clear of the husband approach. The harsh consequences didn’t stop anyone from speculating on his husband outside of class though, with far greater intrigue than anyone ever discussed Professor Nygma’s husband. After all, Professor Nygma was an open book; there was little point speculating on anything when they could just go up and ask him. You could ask him anything, so long as you had enough time on your hands and didn’t mind the occasional implication that you were of subnormal intelligence, so while no one had actually seen his husband, it was well known that he had “the most gorgeous eyes in the universe – well, second only to mine of course” and was “as tall as a tree but far handsomer.” The students would leave these conversations with a newfound knowledge on whatever topic they had originally asked about and a cavity from how sweet Professor Nygma got when they subtly directed the conversation to his husband.
Professor Crane on the other hand had not uttered a word on his husband since the first class, and no one could ask him about it without risking failure. And so, rumours abounded. Some believed that it was a loveless marriage, after all, how could anyone possibly tolerate that man long enough to marry him. He had said that he loved his husband but that could have just been a cover. Others argued that he must be married to someone with significant mental problems, though these claims were less serious in nature and more malicious. The primary conclusion people drew was that he was dating someone who was just as much of an asshole as he was. Like attracts like, after all.
Abby rarely engaged in the speculation, at least, not with random classmates. She and Parker had taken to studying together to ensure that they both actually passed and frequently discussed their theories once they were fed up with their work. They never managed to land on anything more solid than Professor’s Crane’s husband being some twisted misanthrope who was just as cold and sour as he was.