A/N: And this is the prequel to Stubborn Love that I mentioned...wow, last weekend. Anyway, it's only a oneshot of their first meeting which was a birthday gift for theoofoof. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it! :)

In which our Professors meet and chemistry might sizzle but first impressions aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Charles checks his watch again with a frown, raising his wrist and tapping a finger against the glass as though he can't already see the second hand twitching its way around the clock face. He brings it to his ear, lips twisting into a scowl. There it is, the steady tick tick tick and even though it's childish and he has a note on his calendar every nine months to send the watch in for a new battery, he finds himself counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four- in his head just in case.

Of course it's keeping perfect time, which means she's late.

Dropping his hand back to his side, Charles does another sweep around the building's entrance. It's busy, but not so much that he would miss anyone new arriving. Especially not her; a journalist.

In his head he can hear Beryl calling him an elitist and a hypocritical one at that (after all, isn't he just a glorified archivist and he doesn't even like the majority of his students) but that doesn't stop his eyes narrowing at the doors, ready for when she does finally arrive.

Elsie Hughes.

She's not even fully qualified, is getting to follow up her Masters here while she starts teaching and something about that rubs him the wrong way, even though that's how Beryl did it and half the math department too; all bankers and accountants that burnt out. Still, this is his department (well, not yet, but it will be, when old Mr Baines retires or collapses at his desk, whichever comes first) and he wants only the best.

No matter how Lady Grantham sells it, he doesn't think a journalist can be that. He suspects she'll be gone again in a year, when the dull routine and ridged schedules aren't outweighed by the steady income and whatever else it is that's made this Miss Hughes decide to pack up her passport and pen and settle for academia.

She's a good writer, he'll give her that. Even if he doesn't exactly agree with her opinions, which come through loud and clear in her articles and yet not so much that her writing is biased and one-sided. She is good and perhaps if she wasn't joining the faculty and likely to bring a wave of headaches his way, he might actually have found himself enjoying her wit and appreciating the risks she's taken to bring that kind of news to his breakfast table.

Of course, if she wasn't coming to Downton he'd likely never have picked up a single one of her articles and the whole thing would be moot.

Which it already is, because if she ever does decide to grace them with her presence today, Charles has absolutely no intention of ever telling Elsie Hughes that he's read anything she's written (let alone that he's read everything, because even though he tried to resist it, something about her writing spoke to him and he couldn't get enough of it until he'd read it all at least twice.).

"Excuse me, Professor Carson?" He jerks, eyes pulling away from the double doors and to the woman beside him, her hand raised and hovering between them as though she might have touched him if her voice hadn't gained his attention first.

She looks nothing like he expected, nothing like the black and white photocopied picture that had sat above one of her articles.

"You're late." He says and then grimaces inside because he's correct of course, but his mother would be so ashamed at the lack of manners.

For a moment he thinks she might actually roll her eyes at him, but she seems to have more control than he does this morning and so she crosses her arms over her chest and nods.

"I am, sorry. I don't know the area yet."

Her jacket is open, the lapels falling further apart than he imagines the tailored design is intended for and she has a rosy tint to the skin across her collarbone, a slight sheen that can only mean she hurried here.

"There're signs everywhere." He crosses his own arms because yes, his mother would be completely mortified by him right now.

Miss Hughes hums, her lip twitching as she looks up at him (she's smaller than he imagined too, even in her heels. He'd thought she'd be larger somehow, this woman who has stood in a war zone and taken notes). "There are." She agrees and then her hands are settled on her hips. "But it seems that some of your students have taken to twisting them around on the posts."

Oh. Yes, he remembers that from the last faculty meeting. He'd thought they might have fixed that by now.

"Regardless—"

"—I'm still late." She agrees with him again, before he's even able to finish the thought. He can feel his frustration growing already. Somehow her writing got under his skin and she's looking to be doing the same in person. "Not a great first impression." She admits, wryly.

He thinks then of his mother again and pulls out those manners of his that he so loves to laud over everyone else. "Professor Carson." He says and holds out his hand, surprised to find that he can almost touch her, she's gotten so close.

"Elsie Hughes." She says with another smile and with her elbow bent against her stomach she takes his hand and shakes it without stepping back.

"I'm supposed to show you to the Dean's office."

She lets his hand go and waves her own in some kind of vague gesture, clearly with no direction in mind. "Then please do. I don't want to be any later than I already am."

She smiles again as she turns, as though sharing some private joke with him and he can feel the corners of his own lips twitching.

"Right then, this way Miss Hughes."

"Good Lord, don't call me that. It makes me sound like I'm back in school again." She seems to find her own irony in it (of course she does, she's a writer) and laughs. "Is there a rule against you calling me Elsie?"

"Not exactly." He admits, glaring at Spratt leaning up against the reception desk and leering.

"Good." He flashes a quick glance at her while they walk and she's running her fingers through her long hair, pulling apart the tangles, her jacket already buttoned up again.

"Here you are." He says, pointing through the wood-framed doors to where just beyond the glass, the Dean's nameplate hangs on the wall. "Good luck, Elsie."

At just that moment, he means it. Even though he knows he wasn't wrong and she is going to be more trouble than she's worth, before she moves on out again and leaves them all behind.

Her hand grips his arm, just below his elbow and squeezes. "Thank you, Charles." And then she squares her shoulders and lifts her chin, and she's pushing her way through the doors to greet the Dean's Secretary.

He turns on his heel before the doors have even closed behind her, thoughts already moving on to his next class and the essays he still has to mark. They've put him behind schedule, she and the Dean; he still doesn't understand why he was roped in as the welcome committee.

He's already lost himself in the minutiae of his job before his mind has time to realise that he never told her his first name and that she used it anyway.

He never does think about that and what it means. Not until fifteen years have passed and he's looking at her over a tea cup, admitting that he's read her work and she's saying the same thing.

He always did know she'd be trouble, that she'd find a way under his skin. He couldn't have known how long she'd stay there, though. How much he would be glad she did.

(Of course, he still doesn't know that himself, not until he sees that smile outside his door and realises just how deep under his skin he's let her get.)

End.