Forbidden (Catfish and the Bottlemen AU)

Part 1

"Remember the coursework's due in on Friday. The deadline's 2pm. I won't be accepting any excuses."

You feel your heart sink at your lecturer's words. You'd barely even cobbled together enough material to write a 1000 word report, let alone the mammoth 6000 word essay that needed to be submitted. And it definitely needed to be submitted. You were barely scraping through as it was, teetering on the edge of failure. Another unsatisfactory module mark and your chances of progressing on to the second year were looking pretty bleak.

It's not that you couldn't cope with the content of the BA History course you'd joined the previous year in September. You were certainly bright enough. In fact with your A Level grades you had probably sold yourself short in picking your current university. You'd not chosen it on its academic merits or league table rankings though, you'd blindly followed your boyfriend there who'd bagged himself a full sports scholarship playing football whilst studying Sports Science. What you hadn't banked on was finding him in a compromising position with the student coach of the ladies volleyball team only a month into the first semester.

Things had swiftly gone downhill from there. All of a sudden poring over textbooks in the evening was replaced with downing shots in the Students Union bar. You told yourself you were having fun, you were only young once, it was just the first term, you had plenty of time to buckle down and better your weak grades after Christmas, but unfortunately your first semester exam marks were a harsh wake up call. If you didn't pull your socks up you'd be out of the course and off campus by the time early summer rolled around. And then Professor McCann came on to the scene...

Professor Ryan Evan McCann or 'Van' as he urged the students to call him was a recent addition to the Faculty staff. Fresh from his PhD studies and eager to teach, he'd fast become a firm favourite amongst both staff and students alike. He was friendly, enthusiastic and always took the time to explain the course content thoroughly. But it wasn't just his engaging teaching style which saw his module fast oversubscribed with keen students. He was drop dead gorgeous, and the flurry of excited whispers that had flowed around the lecture theatre when he'd stepped up to the lectern to deliver a short introduction on semester two options day had less to do with real excitement for the subject, and more to do with the tightness of his skinny jeans and his piercing blue eyes. You could practically hear the collective sigh from most of the females in the room... and a few of the males too.

And now here you were, three weeks into the term, your self-made promises of turning over a new leaf looking more and more like empty vows as night after night you ventured out rather than taking your studies seriously. Not even the thought of impressing your attractive professor was enough to tempt you away from two-for-one cocktails at the Union club nights.

In fact he'd been the main reason you'd been out until two in the morning the night before. It had started innocently enough. Loud cheers and cheeky remarks as the usual gang of revellers from your hall of residence had spotted Van and a male colleague enjoying a quiet early evening pint in the corner of a bar in the town centre. You'd struck up banter backwards and forwards across the room until Van had caved and agreed to join you all at the next bar in your planned pub crawl. Pint after pint had been sunk, and soon enough it was impossible to tell exactly who the responsible adult was. You'd all seen another side to Professor McCann, a fun, reckless, impulsive side which only served to make him all the more attractive. If only you'd not had that last cocktail you probably would have been able to restrain yourself.