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rwbyrarepairexchange · 2 months

Text

Rated: G

Pairing: Goopleck (Tyrian Callows/Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck)

Word Count: ~2k

A/N: @rwbyrarepairexchange for @preppy-lizity, using their coworker professor's prompt! I hope you like it, sorry I'm posting it here a bit late

"Huh, that's wrong." A voice says over Bartholomew's shoulder, making him turn around. Tyrian is staring down at his teaching notes, tail curled around his leg, frowning. "My nana didn't do that."

"Your... grandmother?" Bartholomew asks slowly.

"Yes." Tyrian blinks down at him. "Lieutenant Brunhilda?"

Bartholomew stands quickly, his chair rolling away. Tyrian sidesteps it easily. "Your grandmother was one of the best fighters in the war?"

"Who do you think taught me to fight?" Tyrian says like it should be obvious. Which it very much isn't, though it does explain a few things. Bartholomew grabs Tyrian by the shoulders, Tyrian's tail flicking out briefly in instinct before it curls around both their legs.

"Tell me everything," Bartholomew says with a seriousness and excitement only a history professor can have. Tyrian frowns suspiciously at him. It doesn't diminish Bartholomew's excitement.

"... alright," Tyrian says slowly and perches on Bartholomew's desk. Bartholomew sits back down, moving himself back to sit slightly to Tyrian's side so Tyrian's tail can wrap itself around his wrist.

Tyrian and Bartholomew's relationship was... complicated, to say the least. Tyrian was a well of forgotten history, thanks to his connection to a still little-known (though steadily growing more well-known) island. But Tyrian was also... rough. Not cruel, but not quite kind either. He's saner than he was when he first joined. Often Bartholomew doesn't know what to make of the other man, which to him, simply makes him more intriguing. Bartholomew has always liked learning.

Bartholomew watches Tyrian's combat class sometimes, watching the students run through the intense obstacle course he's still not entirely sure how Tyrian convinced Glynda to let him build. It contains fire dust, though not enough to seriously injure a student. Not after the first time it happened, seemingly to Tyrian's genuine surprise. (Tyrian had asked him to watch over the class while he took the student to Rose and Oobleck still remembers the concerned look on his face, under everything else.) Despite the dangers of the obstacle course, Bartholomew knows several students rather enjoy it. It's also a helpful, if unusual, tool.

Sometimes, Tyrian also comes to watch Bartholomew's class or perches on his desk, tail swaying calmly, while Bartholomew himself paces over every inch of his room as he plans a lesson or grades papers. Sometimes Tyrian will bring food. Or sometimes, Bartholomew brings extra for Tyrian. It always ends with them eating together, anyhow, Tyrian looking over whatever Bartholomew was half-rambling about without noticing.

"I'd still give them points for this," Tyrian says, cackling, looking at one of the answers Bartholomew marked wrong. Bartholomew looks back at it over his shoulder. What stopped the Great War? Signatures

"They're certainly not wrong," Bartholomew agrees, laughing. He adds back half a point to their grade.

Some of the other teachers have questioned Bartholomew before, when they learned he watches Tyrian's class occasionally, about the nature of the obstacle course. They haven't seen the class before, but they think it's too dangerous. It is dangerous, but so is being a huntsman. At least with the obstacle course, they're being watched carefully. Bartholomew always replies by asking how they feel about the accompanied missions, which are just as dangerous, if not more. It's kind of funny how quiet they always get, afterwards.

The first time Bartholomew sees Tyrian like he was when he first joined is also the first time Bartholomew ever sees Tyrian's semblance in action.

Semblances are a mystery of science and philosophy, with some needing to be activated and some always being active. Bartholomew's own semblance sits in a grey area, with how much he uses it. Anymore even he's not sure if it's a permantely active one or not, despite speed semblances typically needing to be activated. Tyrian's semblance is in a similar grey area, simply because of how it affects him.

It's rare for teachers to go on missions, but even combat school's take breaks and teachers are still huntsmen. Tyrian and Bartholomew go on a mission together on one such break during winter, and it goes well, until Bartholomew's own curiosity outweighs their luck. One day, Bartholomew might learn from his own mistakes and be more careful with strange things he doesn't recognize. Of course, he's in his forties and still hasn't learned it, but he's not dead yet so there's always time.

Tyrian is the reason he's not dead and still has time.

It doesn't happen immediately after he touches it, because it's only ever immediate in dramatic scenes in movies or books or plays. Instead, they're walking, keeping an eye out for grimm, when Bartholomew's knees start to buckle and his vision blurrs. He does go down slowly, though. Or at least it feels that way. But for a man who's always going at a rabbit's pace, it's not much of a surprise a fall which likely takes a few seconds feels like several minutes. Tyrian catches him before he wobbles fully into the dirt, lowering him carefully so he doesn't hurt his knees on the ground.

"What happened?" Tyrian asks, looking him over with a careful eye and an expression Bartholomew recognizes from survivors of tragedy. Bartholomew doesn't like the latter, so he chooses now to focus on the former. The hand Tyrian puts on his forehead is cooler than it should be.

"It seems I've touched the wrong strange plant," Bartholomew says with a smile forming slower than it should. For a second, Bartholomew thinks he sees Tyrian panic. His tail wraps around Bartholomew's ankle. Before Bartholomew can assure him it'll be fine, he's interrupted by a coughing fit he knows means it likely won't be. Both of them know they are too far away from anyone else and their medkit is too bare to do anything. All they can do is hope whatever Bartholomew touched isn't as bad as it is making itself seem. Except Tyrian's eyes go purple for several moments, the tail around Bartholomew's ankle twitching. When Tyrian's eyes go gold again it's with a terrible, hacking cough. And suddenly, Bartholomew's vision isn't blurry behind his glasses.

Bartholomew helps Tyrian to a hospital, Tyrian's tail wrapped around Bartholomew's waist and Tyrian himself twitching and cackling in spurts around coughing fits the entire way, while Bartholomew's brain reels. It's not until a nurse is treating Tyrian for the plant Bartholomew touched that it really hits. Whatever Tyrian's semblance is, it let him take the poison from him and helped Tyrian's body deal with it better than Bartholomew's own could. Only once the poison is out of Tyrian's system does his tail unwrap itself from Bartholomew and Tyrian stops cackling. Later, he realizes neither the cackling nor the twitching were common effects of the poison.

Later, Tyrian tells in quiet words about losing his moms to a plague no matter how much of the sickness he took from them, and Bartholomew suddenly knows exactly why Tyrian was like he was when he ended up on Beacon's doorstep, looking for a job: Cackling, twitching, with a hollow expression in his eyes.

"I'm technically a prince," Tyrian says one day, out of nowhere, making Bartholomew's eyes snap to him, followed soon after by his entire body. The only thing keeping him from running full-bodied into Tyrian is Tyrian's tail. He might be worried, if he didn't know Tyrian and if Tyrian wasn't laughing brightly at him. Not quite the unhinged cackle, but close. Bartholomew barely notices either, half bracketing Tyrian to his desk with his hands.

"What do you mean?"

Tyrian shrugs, a familiar glint in his eye, backing further onto Bartholomew's desk. "Well when a beautiful, clever woman marries a very wealthy man-" He begins and maybe if he were anyone else, this is where Bartholomew would scoff and roll his eyes, but he's not and Tyrian knows that. Just as much as Bartholomew knows Tyrian isn't anyone else. Bartholomew slowly goes between pacing and simply leaning against his desk listening as Tyrian tells him about a beautiful, clever woman who uses her smarts to gain, only to lose everything in a tragic back-and-forth. It's sad, the way Tyrian tells it, in the way greek tragedies are sad. Inevitable. Unstoppable. For every rise, there is a fall, until there is no longer a rise.

Bartholomew stares at the floor, still, and Tyrian slides to the floor, wrapping his tail around Bartholomew's wrist.

Later, much later, Bartholomew makes a dessert with the help of two archeologists he knows who specialize in Vacuo's history. He's not sure if it's a thank you for the story, or a kind of apology.

Either way, it's one of the few times Bartholomew ever sees Tyrian cry.

It's also the first time Tyrian kisses him.

Dating Tyrian Callows is a bit strange, but there are many things in Bartholomew's life which are strange, from his seemingly always active speed semblance, to his weapon, to his choice of drink actually being decaf coffee instead of caffienated.

It's funny to Bartholomew, as a history professor, but Tyrian is more open about his past than Bartholomew himself is. Bartholomew tells his own story in bits and pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle, where Tyrian is sudden revelations followed by stories, like translating a short novel after finally cracking the forgotten language.

"I worked a dig site in Vacuo one summer. Even after all the warnings, I wasn't quite prepared for the heat."

"My parents died when I was a teen. It's part of why I'm a huntsman."

"I don't actually care for cauliflower."

He can feel Tyrian picking up each piece, fitting them all together to create a single picture. It's odd, because Bartholomew doesn't think anyone's done this before, even Peter. Maybe Ozpin, but Ozpin is more enigma than even Bartholomew can handle half the time and the rest of the time he's in his office, hidden away.

There is something nice about it, though. He doesn't know why, because it's not as if he's ever felt like the amount of thought others put into his personal life or past relates at all to how much they care about him, but something about Tyrian taking the time to figure out where each part fits is nice. Bartholomew wonders if this is how fossils feel when archeologists put their skeletons back together. If, of course, the long dead creatures could feel anything at all. If they did, he thinks they would thank them simply for taking the time to learn their story.

Because that is what archeologists and historians do—they learn the stories. That is what Bartholomew has done, both consciously and subconsciously, a very large part of him always wanting to learn. And that is what Tyrian's done as well, Bartholomew realizes slowly. He has learned as much about Bartholomew as Bartholomew has learned about Tyrian, only he has learned it in chunks and pieces with careful tools in dangerous hands. And Bartholomew has been on several dig sites in several places. He's been a historian for nearly three decades. Bartholomew knows from experience; you only use the most careful brush strokes to sweep away grime to reveal the things you really love. And sometimes, with luck and patience, they reveal themselves to you, and it feels like being loved back.

The next time Tyrian shares a story, they are in the training room, and Bartholomew tells Tyrian a story of his own.

#rwbyrarepairexchange2024

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