Kalen watched Claude walk away, and waited until he was out of sight before letting out a sigh. This would be the night that Kalen revealed exactly how stupid he was, and how he wasn't going to fit in that this school at all. He sat himself down in an armchair and silently waited for Claude to return, his heart thumped faster with every second that passed.
Claude came back into the common room after a few minutes, a stack of papers under his arm. "Alright, Kalen. We've got English, history, western humanities, and philosophy papers to look through. Take your pick." He dropped the thick stack onto the coffee table, picking up a western humanities paper for himself, roughly 5 pages. "You don't have to fact check, just look at the formatting and grammar. Make notes wherever you see fit."
"I'll tackle English and History, those are my stronger areas." Kalen nodded firmly, picking up one of the English papers. It was only about three and a half pages long, and already he had found so many grammatical errors. "Do you have a pen I can borrow? All mine are in my room." he glanced up from the paper with a nervous smile.
"Yeah, here you go." Claude didn't look up from his own paper, handing Kalen one of his spare pens. "God, how did these kids get in? They can't fucking write for shit. You need an essay just to apply, for fuck's sake." Claude laughed, shaking his head. "This one can't even figure out, this far into their schooling, that when you start a new sentence, you're supposed to capitalize the first word. I need to start charging these kids."
"I'm surprised you don't charge them already." Kalen mumbled, taking the pen to the paper, leaving annotations and symbols all over the pages where capitals needed to be added and punctuation changed. The paper he had picked up seemed to be rather good in the way of formatting, it was just the grammar and spelling that needed improvement. He flew through the next few papers until he'd made his own little stack of annotated pieces, though there was one that confused him a little. From the way the person had written it, he couldn't tell if anything needed to be edited. "Would you mind looking over this one, it has me pretty stumped. I can't figure out if anything actually needs to be done with it."
"Yeah, no problem." Claude took the paper, scanning over it. "Just these small things right here.." He marked the errors, handing the paper back to Kalen. "Otherwise, no." Claude had his own stack of papers as well, probably four or five fully edited essays. "What would you say is a good rate? Seven cents? I know it's sort of high, but I do a good job."
(Trying to find an inflation calculator is hell, but there's no way I'm doing the math myself lmao)
(Just a quick one, what country is this set in?)
(England, although I haven't successfully found a calculator for pounds yet, this this is in USD. I'm currently searching for one right now)
(Scratch that- found one. I'm editing my response to fit)
(Try looking here, it's a useful site: http://projectbritain.com/moneyold.htm)
(Ah, I used https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1930?endYear=2019&amount=0.07 - it says in 2013 dollars, but it's updated for 2019 as well.)
"I'd say charge how much it would cost for a set of five pens and ink, that way you're making money to replenish the utensils you're using." Kalen shrugged, it was only an idea. He'd never been in Claude's situation before so he couldn't really give a proper suggestion. He added the paper from Claude to his pile and sat back in his chair, running his fingers through his hair with a sigh. "Please tell me we're almost there, I don't know how much more stupidity I can take."
(Ah! Also, just in case you didn't know, our 'cents' are just called 'pence')
"You make a good point." Claude looked at the dwindling stack. "Just two more. It looks like history and western humanities. I'll take the humanities one, if you don't mind." He added his newly finished edit to his pile, yawning. The boy handed the history paper to Kalen, beginning to work on his own.
(Thanks, thanks- I'm from the US, so the whole "pence" thing was a little confusing)
(Yeah I understand it can be a little confusing)
Kalen took the paper and sighed heavily, this was the last one and then he would be free to wallow over his own stupidity at not being able to do something as simple as Philosophy. The pages were filled to the margins with annotations until Kalen felt like there was nothing else he could have added to it. He closed the paper and added it to the stack beside him, taking off his tie and undoing the top two buttons of his shirt. The school definitely spared no expenses making sure the common room was well heated.
He noticed that Claude had yawned upon beginning the final paper, and tilted his head a little with narrow eyes. "Are you tired? Perhaps you should go and get some sleep."
Claude jotted a few things down, shaking his head. "I'll be okay, but thanks. I need to make sure I don't have anything else to work on before I can even think about going to bed." He looked over, noticing what Kalen had done with his uniform. "You're hot, huh?" He added the paper to the stack, leaning back and pulling off his sweater. Claude rolled his sleeves to the elbows. "Finally, the papers are fucking done."
"Yeah I'm hot.." Kalen murmured, running his hands back through his hair to mess it up a bit. "Not used being sat by a fire for what feels like an hour." He let out a breath of air and rose from his seat to stretch. The action caused his shirt to untuck and ride up slightly, and all the bones in his back let out a satisfactory crack. "What happens to the papers now?" he asked while stretching.
Claude let out a breath, having to glance away from Kalen for a moment or two. Maybe it was just a combination of seeing him in the firelight and Claude's tiredness, but god, Kalen really was attractive. "Let's see.. I just keep them in my bag tomorrow, and if the kids want them back, they'll come see me. Otherwise, they're just fuel for the fire." He shrugged, standing up as well, gathering the stacks together.
"I'm going to be seriously annoyed if they don't come to collect them from you, considering you actually went out of your way to edit them." Kalen groaned, his body feeling a lot better after stretching. He helped Claude gather the papers together with a tired smile. The night was far from over for Kalen, he still had his own homework to do, and as much as he wanted to ask Claude for help, he didn't want to be a pain. Perhaps he could drop Philosophy? That was an option, right?
"Is there anything else you'd like from me before I head up to my room?" Kalen asked, digging his hands into his pockets.
"Right? That's why I just burn them if they don't get collected." Claude shrugged. "I can't think of anything. While I'm at it, do you need any help with anything? I won't charge you, promise." Claude added, giving Kalen a lopsided smile.
Darn it! The offer had been made now, Kalen would have been a fool to turn it down. He returned Claude's nervous smile and rubbed the back of his head. "Now that you mention it, I could use a little help with my Philosophy. It's due in tomorrow and I haven't the foggiest on what I'm supposed to do. Philosophy was never my strong point…" And now Claude was going to hate him for being stupid, he just knew it. "I'm sorry, I'm not as smart as I ought to be."
"Don't worry about it, Kalen. Philosophy was a tough class for me too. Besides, classes are supposed to be difficult here. if you don't struggle a little, you're in the wrong classes. What's the homework?" Claude tilted his head, crossing his arms loosely over his chest and hunching forward slightly. "I assume it's in your room, unless you have it with you?"
Kalen stopped dead in his tracks. "I'll be right back." he ran across the room to the stairs up to his room, and grabbed the homework papers off his bed. After second thoughts he removed his jumper and undid another shirt button. Who knew how long they would be spending on this paper, and he was not going to suffer the heat in that jumper again. Kalen took the papers down stairs, reading them as he walked, ruffling his hair slightly as he did so. "I'm not going to lie, I don't understand a single thing to do with this homework and the things I have already written probably don't make sense either."
"Let me try and make sense of it. I'm sure it's not so bad." Claude held out his hand for the papers. "It's for philosophy, yeah? What's it on?" He undid a few buttons on his own shirt, stifling another yawn. If he stayed up any longer, he may just fall asleep working on this homework, but it would be worth it.