Tap, tap, tap. Emma sighed and tried again, tapping the eraser of her mechanical pencil against the open textbook across from her.
Tap, tap, tap. Again, nothing. This time she tried a different approach.
"Ah!" Fidelio snapped to attention, rubbing the red, eraser shaped welt on his forehead.
"Fidelio, focus," Emma said pointing back at the geometry book in front of him, "All I'm asking is that you finish this ONE practice question."
The grinning boy leaned back in his seat, balancing on two chair legs and rocking back and forth. Emma scoffed and went back to her homework. The problem with musical geniuses was that they weren't often geniuses in anything else. Fidelio was legitimately intelligent and clever, but he was always too distracted or too disinterested to have a go at anything academic. Like maths. Which is why the geometry professor had asked Emma Tolly to tutor him for some extra credit.
So for two grueling weeks, Emma had been sitting in the library attempting to help the unwilling Fidelio study while he just stared out the window watching the sun, or the birds, or the rain or whatever was outside. When he got bored of watching the clouds, he would try to drive Emma crazy. Sometimes he would draw the lead of his pencil across the paper, creating the most spine tingling noise in the world. Or he shake the table very suddenly every few minutes, so her pencil would slip. Even when he didn't illicit a response, a smirk would creep across his face. This daily hour of Hell was not worth extra credit, even if Fidelio really needed the help. He had retained nothing and refused to learn anything new. Now they had a midterm exam and Fidelio couldn't have given less of a crap. Emma was beginning to think that he was an idiot in disguise.
Emma took a moment to spare a glance at her pupil. He was hard at work, trying to drive her slowly insane. This particular day he was slowly tapping each finger on his left hand against his notebook. Emma's free hand shot out across the table, slapping down hard on the other teen's hand. "Stop."
"Why are you tutoring me?"
"What?" Emma put down her pencil. She was not in the mood for a press conference.
"You really obviously don't want to be here."
"And?" She noticed that her hand was still covering his. Slowly, she drew it away and replaced it by her book.
"So why are you here."
"Because you need a tutor and I need extra credit."
"Why do you think I need a tutor?"
" Because you signed up for one."
" Why do you-" Emma pressed her palm against his mouth.
"Shut. Up. And. Work." With this she went back to her work, not noticing Fidelio's frown or his determined scribbling in the lined notebook.
A few minutes later, Emma jumped as a spiral bound notebook was pushed in front of her.
"Is this right, Professor Tolly?" Emma was stunned into silence. The work before her was impeccable. Orderly and organized, the answer was thorough and all the equations were lined up neatly. It was like an alien had taken over. "Emma?"
She pursed her lips, pumping the eraser of the mechanical pencil. Drawing a two quick, perfectly straight lines and handing the notebook back to Fidelio. "You forgot to extend the square root sign."
A/N I literally got 4 points of a geometry quiz for not drawing the lines on the square root sign. Shakes fist.