no need to panic! {gideon<3!}

[GIDEON GLASS]

“Gideon, have you always lived in New York?”

The question was abrupt, but a welcome distraction, though Gideon was now frantically checking and rechecking the files to make sure they were actually the right ones. Yes. Yes. Yes. This was good. This was very, very good.

”Uh.” His head was starting to clear. Excellent. More than excellent. He was feeling better already. Given, this copy of the paper would need some fixing up before it was suitable for submission – at least in Gideon’s eyes – but on a scale of one to ten, it was a very safe and comfortable seven.

”No, actually, I haven’t...I was born in Canada, believe it or not.”

He listened to the quiet clinking and thumping noises of Cleo moving about in the kitchen, feeling his body begin to relax as it uncurled from the terrified state in which it had so recently been locked. Thank Science. Thank Science a thousand times over that he had evolved into a creature intelligent enough to save an extra one of these rough drafts somewhere on his hard drive.

Cleo reentered just as he was finishing checking the document. “Is it?”

”Y...yes, I think it is. I know it is. It’s...it’s not the final copy, of course, sloppy, probably with plenty of typos and grammatical errors...there is a great deal I will have to add back in, but...strictly speaking, it’s considerably better than starting over.” He let out a sound somewhere between a relieved sigh and a thin laugh, and proceeded to slump over his laptop.

“Oh, wonderful! I’m so glad you found it. Editing it shouldn’t take too long, right? You’re in the clear.”

”If my memory serves me correctly, I have...well, had some cited material in the content that I added, but I think on the whole, it shouldn’t take more than two hours to get it up to snuff,” he reported, already typing away and fixing the little errors that caught his eye. He was a desperate perfectionist.

[CLEO EVERETT]

Cleo picked her tea back up and sipped it, careful to not burn her tongue. That was the last thing she wanted. “Canada?” Huh… the more you know. Cleo was sometimes so careful about who she knew and befriended, it wasn’t often that she knew somebody that wasn’t from the States. “That’s cool. I suppose all of the stereotypes aren’t true?” Cleo grinned, having heard of such things but never quite believing them. “Riding polar bears and living in igloos?” She almost felt rude for even bringing it up “I certainly don’t believe it.” Cleo shrugged, feeling a bit sheepish now.

Cleo couldn’t help but to roll her eyes. “Your papers? For some reason, I just can’t imagine them ever being sloppy.” She understood editing, especially since she had to go over her essays quite often to make sure they were perfect. She was a bit picky when it came to things like that. If she didn’t think it was perfect, how could her teacher? Nonetheless, when it came to editing, that went by easily enough. Having to rewrite what he’d lost? That might take awhile. Or… only two hours. Wow! Cleo was impressed. It took her ages to rewrite paragraphs she’d lost.

“Two hours is nothing. That’s impressive. It usually takes me forever to rewrite papers.” Cleo paused, drinking some more tea. She watched as he began fixing the paper. “Then again, I’m easily distracted.” That was perhaps her biggest downfall when it came to homework. She was good at starting, not much of a procrastinator, but if something more interesting caught her attention (which was pretty easy), then… well, it just took that much longer to finish her work. She thought it was pretty lucky that she even turned assignments in on time. “Really, though. I knew it couldn’t have just disappeared.”

[GIDEON GLASS]

Gideon actually laughed, a slightly strained sound after all of the panicking he had just been doing. "No, no, they're not. Well. Not in Toronto, anyway. I don't know about the rest of the country, the farthest from home I ever went was Vancouver. Montreal on a school trip, once." He shrugged and offered her a wry smile. "No need to be embarrassed about asking, it's a common misconception that we all say 'eh' and I didn't expect a smart girl like you to believe it." Taking a sip of tea, he felt himself slowly unwinding. The conversation helped.

"They're never sloppy," he admitted with a slightly sheepish note in his voice. He was very much a red pen fan, eager both to critique his own work and others. It was obvious what a grammar Nazi he was sometimes; he corrected people in the middle of their sentences. He shared the view that Cleo had on the subject, that it had to be perfect or no-one else would believe it. Of course, Gideon could never be happy with his work, but that was another story entirely.

"Well, I do have a tendency to acquire some excellent focus when I'm working on school assignments," he noted. "And I'm also a very fast typer. It's one of those things." He wiggled his fingers and took a sip of his tea. "Of course, I always spend a lot of time on it anyway. The actual writing might only take me an hour and a half, and the rest will be going back through it and fixing citations, grammatical errors...word choice, oh, yes. The little things." Glancing over at her, he looked slightly embarrassed. "Yes...I'm sorry that I got so worked up and dragged you into my mess. Seems I had nothing to worry about."

[CLEO EVERETT]

It was nice hearing Gideon laugh; relieving. As if laughter wasn’t already totally fantastic, it was even better after a particularly stressful situation. Cleo planned on doing her Canada research later. Maybe she’d even visit someday. Just because Toronto didn’t have people living in igloos and riding around on polar bears didn’t mean the rest of Canada didn’t do so. Not that she believed they did! She was just… curious to see if maybe the rumors were even a tiny bit true… which she doubted they were. Thank goodness she wasn’t saying any of this out loud; she was making absolutely no sense.

“That’s cool that you still got to a few places, though.” Cleo said, tilting her head. She’d only ever been to California and New York. Despite wanting to get right back to her favorite state, she wouldn’t mind taking a long road trip. “How long did it take you to get used to New York?” Just because she still wasn’t used to it didn’t mean anybody else wouldn’t grow accustomed to it by now. She sipped her tea, trying not to be obviously obvious that being called smart was a big deal to her. It wasn’t something she was called often and for someone like Gideon – total genius – to say so… well, it was a huge compliment.

Cleo grinned and lowered her mug, determined to not finish her tea so quickly. Of course his papers weren’t sloppy. Cleo laughed a little when he wiggled his fingers. She definitely wasn’t the fastest typer – that was probably just another reason it took her so long to get computer assignments done. “Mind sharing some tips on how to focus?” she asked teasingly (even though she honestly could use some help with it). Cleo wondered if her grades would be any better if she spent more time on revising her papers. It wouldn’t hurt to try. “I wonder if I could go into an assignment with that much dedication…” She murmured, already thinking about any upcoming essays.

She smiled at him and shrugged. “I don’t mind, really. I’m happy I could help.” Cleo hadn’t had anything better to do, anyway. In fact, this was probably more exciting and rewarding than anything she could have planned. She had that warm fuzzy feeling you get after helping somebody (aka the best feeling ever).

notes: i know it took me months to reply to this & we don't have to continue if you don't want to. i just was going on a cleo spree, so. <3