Professor Khan ✔️(completed)

20. h a y a t - life

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She sat against the glass window as Willow lay in his bed. She ran her hand softly across his back and the cat purred in content. They'd come back to his place after the car ride to the beach.

Telling him about her past hadn't been easy, but it was cathartic. He listened without interrupting, without judging, without ridiculing her pain, and most of all he actually listened to her.

"What's this obsession with cats?" His voice interrupted her chain of thoughts. She looked up, across the living room. He was in the kitchen yet again, cooking something that smelled amazing so far. Hair tied back, sleeves rolled up his forearms as he focused on the task at hand. He was a damn beautiful sight for sore eyes. 

"When Hassan was leaving for college, he got Akira for me. He said I needed someone to be with me. Someone I could take care of and have emotional support. So he adopted Akira from the shelter. She was so tiny and squishy. I was so scared to touch her, but Frosty, Sanaz and I watched so many youtube videos just to feed her. It was a mess." She laughed and he looked up, freezing for a second and then going back to stirring the pot. "We almost overfed her because whenever any of us saw her we gave her treats."

"Frosty? What's his real name?" 

"William. I've just been calling him Frosty since childhood and it's stuck now."

"You guys grew up together?"

"Since diaper days." She snickered.

"You and him..." He seemed to want to say something but trailed off.

"Frosty and I what?" She absentmindedly scratched Willow's head, not paying much attention to the seriousness of his words. 

"Nothing." He shook his head. "Dinner is ready."

After washing her hands, she sat on the four-chair dining table across from him. Her mouth watered at the sight of fettuccine in creamy alfredo.

"I could die after this and not regret it." She grated extra cheese on her plate.

He shook his head in amusement as he picked up the fork.

"This is the best fucking pasta I've ever tried." She closed her eyes as she tasted the pasta.

"Language." He raised his eyebrows as she opened an eye and just shrugged.

"Sorry." Giggling, she ate another spoonful.

"Why are you a professor? You should be a chef."

"I like cooking it's a stress reliever something I enjoy and have lots of memories associated with it. I don't think I could ever make it a career."

"So what made you want to be a professor?"

Swirling around the fork in his plate, he stared at it, getting lost there for a second.

"Never wanted to be a teacher. Hated them."

"What?" She chuckled. "And you became one." She tilted her head to the right slightly in amazement.

"That's life as you know it. You plan one thing and your destiny is written somewhere else. So one way or the other you get there."

"So what did you want to do then?"

"Hmmm." He leaned back in his chair. " It's been so long since I thought about it." Running the hand across his jaw, he sighed. " I wanted to be a scientist, maybe an astronaut. The sky was my escape from everything. Watching the stars flicker across the coal black sky then watching them splitting apart and disappearing within a second. Then there was the mystery of the black hole. How it swallowed everything even the glimmers of light. I connected to it somehow. Just the thought of this whole entire universe filled with different planets, galaxies, stars. Things we probably have no idea exist out there. There was something about all this that had me wondering, pushing me to reach out to it."