Reciprocal Altruism || Snowbarry College AU

Life Coach/Tutor/Therapist I

Foundation: A basis upon which something stands or is supported.

***

A few days had passed and Barry and Caitlin had begun to fall into a sort of comfortable schedule.

They would plan a tutor date. They would set a time and place (usually at their bench outside the library). Barry would show up an hour late. Caitlin would yell at him. They studied. They would plan the next tutor date.

The cycle went on and on.

This time seemed like all the others, except while Barry ran at the speed of lightning to get to their study spot, Caitlin was nowhere to be found.

Luckily, Barry only had to wait a few minutes before she arrived.

Caitlin casually walked up to the bench and sat down, ready to study.

"I'm here earlier than you for once," Barry declared proudly.

Caitlin looked at him with exasperation, "No, I just told you to come an hour earlier so we would get here at the same time."

"Huh," Barry scratched the back of his head, "That's smart. I should probably work on getting here on time."

"And the trophy for understatement of the year goes to... Captain Obvious!" Caitlin announced with sarcastic flare.

"Alright, I get it, I get it. It's just, I can never be on time for anything. I even missed my final for my physics class because I thought it was two hours later than it actually was."

"You have a phone, right?" Caitlin waved her phone in Barry's face to capture his attention. "Alarms and notifications are a lifesaver."

"Duly noted, now it's time for me to be your life coach instead of the other way around."

"You're tutoring me, not teaching me how to eat healthy and be my better self," Caitlin remarked.

"Biology is a life science, isn't it?"

"You're a life science," Caitlin muttered as she flipped through the textbook looking for the parts she was struggling with.

"Great comeback," Barry chuckled, "I feel truly burned."

"Just tutor me already, Life Coach!"

As the two of them began immersed in their study, Caitlin was getting bored. Everything honestly seemed too easy. Like Barry was giving her all the easy questions.

But Caitlin wondered if maybe it was just her. She had always been a science geek. Everything about science fascinated her from the anatomy of the body to the physics behind space. She wanted to know everything about everything and was pretty good at knowing it too.

She used to be in Professor Wells's class, and while she was in his class, she was at the top and no one else came close to her talent. She had an innate talent for Biotech and was amazing at what she did. And she was proud of herself too.

When she transferred to Professor Stein's class, everything took a turn for the worse. She transferred in the middle of the semester, she struggled to adjust to the newer curriculum, and on top of all that, it didn't help that her ex-boyfriend, Ronnie, was smack dab in the middle of it all and the teacher's pet.

Her first day of class, she had a pop quiz that actually turned out to be a major exam. Most teachers (most sane teachers, that is), would have let Caitlin study for a day or two before taking on the monstrosity of an exam, but Stein being the professor he was, told Caitlin she had to take it that day or get a zero.