SUE: Opportunities (Sean and Adam)

[Event !]

Adam had only been walking by when the power went out. Sean's office tends to be a place of refuge.

[Adam Deulane]

Foregoing brushing his teeth in favor of falling asleep at his desk was a habit that Adam's dentist had advised him to break. Adam resented this. Technically, yes, there were aspects of his personal hygiene that he sometimes neglected in favor of another hour working through a proof. Fortunately, stubble suited him well. But he ate more than ramen and caviar now and talked to people without shouting at them. Overall, he felt his lifestyle choices were on the upswing.

The young teacher ran his tongue over his still semi-numb gums as he pushed open the front doors of Hammel's main office. He had taken the morning off to get a small cavity filled, but his afternoon calculus class had a test tomorrow and he had promised today as a chance to ask questions. He was halfway down the hall and puzzling over whether they should even bother with trig identities when the overhead lights began flickering. Adam paused, looked up, and with a buzz the lights snapped off and plunged him into semi-darkness.

Muffled shrieks of surprise sounded from all directions, and Adam gave an irritable sigh and turned around to head back to the offices he had just passed. It was probably a simple downed line, but with a school like Hammel it was better to stay on the safe side. Proceed immediately to the nearest room and remain there until given instructions to do otherwise.

The secretary in the main office was out, and the first door Adam tried was locked. The second was Dr. Neville's office. He hesitated for a moment when he saw the black plastic plaque. Wouldn't this be fun. Well, by now he already knew he was here. Adam knocked for the benefit of any student that might be inside, tried the door, and pushed it open.

Adam's contact with the psychiatrist had been limited to date. Nory had introduced them to each other back in January, but at the time his face was merely another in a long, blurred line of intimidating coworkers. A few weeks later, they had bumped into each other in the staff room. Looking unhappy and staring at the collar of Sean's shirt, Adam had awkwardly thanked him for the help he'd offered Nora and then shuffled away with his bagel.

Since then, their interactions had been limited to staff meetings where he spoke up only when discussion turned to the mathematics or physics department. With the exception of Kateri and Cee, he remained terse, moody and introverted among his colleagues. He and Kateri got along well enough and the computer teacher he genuinely seemed to like, and some truly bizarre equations had begun popping up on whiteboards around the IT and mathematics department.

From student reports, as a teacher he was demanding, uncompromising, and worked twice as hard as any of his pupils. The underachieving layer of the population loathed him; those willing to put in the effort were flourishing. It took about ten minutes in his company to understand how he had walked out of MIT with a Master's at age 21. Half the time that Sean caught a stray thought it was just an impression of...moving number constructs.

That was not what he was thinking about now. Adam tugged on the strap of his shoulder bag and shut the door behind him. “Sorry to bother you," he said flatly. "Power's out. Do you have any idea what happened?”

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean had designed and maintained his own filing system since he had first entered private practice three decades prior. At that time, computers were slow and lacked the processing capacity of machines a fraction of their size, and thus the psychiatrist did his notes by hand.

That filing system followed him to Hammel. Although technology had improved greatly, working at the meta-human school provided myriad other reasons for him to prefer his own system. Technopaths, for instance, could not access his files if they existed only in physical form and were left under lock and key. Electrical surges posed no risk to his work, and any fire large enough to take out his filing cabinets would also destroy a computer.

As such, he did not lose his work when the lights went out. He did, however, lose his concentration.

To his knowledge, they were not due for a security drill. The security team typically warned the rest of the faculty of this during staff meetings, so that they could prepare. The students received no advance warning, as was typically during other disaster drills (fire drills, air raid drills, earthquake drills, the useless atomic bomb drills of Sean’s youth during the Cold War...)

It was unusual, although not unheard of, for them to change the time and date of a drill at the last minute. Still, the drills included not only the loss of lights but also the sound of the drill alarm. Instead, the halls were silent aside from the gasps and occasional screams of students plunged suddenly into darkness.

To check in about what had happened, the psychiatrist sent a mental query to Yvette. She was not a friend to him, not the same way that Claude had been, but she had also never directed him not to use his telepathy with her as a means of communicating across the administrative buildings, particularly in emergencies. Given that she had no qualms expressing her displeasure in other settings, he did so judiciously.

With the door opened and a voice, he turned his attention to the doorway, where Adam Deulane stood. He shook his head in response to the question, which was the honest response. “Not yet. In case we have a half-prepared drill, you can make yourself comfortable.” If security did their rounds, they would get an answer soon enough.

[Adam Deulane]

Adam blinked in the semi-darkness and remained standing by the door. "I'm fine here, thanks." He began rifling back through the planned events of the day. If it was a drill they'd be out in ten minutes and he'd expect his students to be in his next class. If not...well, he would just have to wait and see. He hoped Nory was all right. 11:43, she should be in training right now. Then she was down in a lead-lined bunker and was probably the safest out of any of them if something was wrong.

At least he was sharing a room with probably the most well-informed person in the school. He assumed that Sean was poking around for answers and left him to it. In the mean time, he sank back into the details of his lesson plans. And since he was supposed to care about this now, after what was slightly too long to stand silently by somebody's door he asked, "Any news?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“If it is a drill, security will push you in here and lock the door behind you,” the telepath informed the younger man. Security took their drills, like every other aspect of their job descriptions, quite seriously, and they had little tolerance for when staff members blatantly disregarded them. This was why Sean always complied with the spirit of the drills, if not every letter. He always closed his door, he always moved from the window, and he lowered his voice when talking so as to give the illusion of full compliance.

Then, in response to the question, he shook his head. “Not yet. I’m waiting for Yvette to get back to me.” Sean hoped to hear from her soon, so that he had some indication of what had happened and what was on the horizon. He sensed no hostile presences on the grounds, and no panic in the minds of others beyond the inevitable surprise that came from a sudden loss of lights. That gave him hope that they were not under raid or siege.

Unfortunately, Adam did not make for the most engaged of companions during this situation. That would not stop the psychiatrist from trying to engage him, and thus he asked, “How have you been adjusting this term?”

[Adam Deulane]

At Sean's words, Adam's thoughts detached from his lesson plans and surfaced like a submarine periscope. He nodded. Sean did not yet know what was going on, but he did not look concerned. Most likely, a fuse had blown somewhere and they would simply have to wait it out. Nora, his primary concern, was underground in a bunker with a trainer that could produce force fields, so no action was needed on her behalf. Thus, Adam concluded that the current situation required no further response from him and back under he went.

But alas, the surface had other demands to make. "What?" Eyes mostly adjusted to the darkness by now, he looked over to the psychiatrist sitting at his desk. "Oh, it's fine," he said automatically. Sean could tell that maybe five percent of his attention had diverted to make that remark. The math teacher readjusted himself slightly against the door and fell silent once more.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

In that brief exchange, Sean determined that subtlety was a waste of time and energy. That left the direct route.

He could understand the difficulties that both Nora Marie and their father had had in interacting with Adam in the past. Conversations like this, wherein one half barely paid attention, felt like pulling teeth in the best of times. That was without the background noise above Sean’s mathematical pay-grade. And without waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding the lack of lights, wherein he either received an answer from Yvette or a security guard came by to yell at them.

His interactions with the math teacher, since Adam had been hired in January, had been few, far between, and limited in both scope and duration. That was fine, in that they worked in different departments, the telepath had no belief that they were friends or that they would become friends, and he was not Adam’s psychiatrist.

However, he was Nora Marie’s psychiatrist. As such, Adam remained on his radar for reasons unrelated to himself and to his paltry or potential relationship with the younger man. Small steps.

He could not force the younger man to sit.

Rather, he could but that would be such a gross overstep and a petty abuse that the thought did not even cross the older man’s mind. Instead, he held back a sigh, turned his chair to better face the doorway where Adam continued to stand, and he folded his hands in his lap. “It can be difficult to work at a place like this without the appeal of being an alumni.”

[Adam Deulane]

cos²θ + sin²θ = 1² -> 1 + tan²θ = sec²θ -> 1 + cot²θ = words csc²θ without the appeal of being an alumni "Hm?" place like this sin2θ it can be difficult Hammel classes meta-students

Having rewound and registered was Sean had said, Adam glanced back over. He would have been perfectly happy to work on his lesson plans in silence until they received the all-clear, but it appeared that the psychiatrist was determined to have a conversation. "I suppose so," he grunted. His stepfather was a telekinetic, so exposure to meta-humans was nothing really new. It was teaching itself that challenged him more than his students occasionally levitating their papers. "Most of the teachers are, I guess."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Unlike his partner, Sean had never found math intimidating, just as he had never found science intimidating. However, the telepath’s course of math study had ended with his pre-requisites for the pre-med track, and, aside from some recreational reading, had remained in the realm of practical math required for medical dosages or handling his estate planning or maintaining a household budget.

He knew high school and college level math, but that didn’t mean that he thought about it outside of specific contexts. And yet, he was receiving a refresher course simply by sitting across the office from the younger man.

Fitting that this would provide the background noise for a conversation only slightly smoother than a root canal.

“Most of the teachers are,” Sean confirmed with a nod. While most Hammel alumni left Pilot Ridge never to return, a portion remained behind. Or, like Sean, a portion left and then returned years later, and they inevitably found themselves working at Hammel to pay forward their experiences. It led to a certain degree of camaraderie born from shared experiences.

“Are you getting on with the rest of the math department?” That was a neutral enough question. “Has Kateri given you any trouble?” Rather gentle ribbing than Kateri, as the telepath had always found her a pleasant person, but he knew how she could be with some other people.

[Adam Deulane]

Since it had by now become abundantly clear that terseness was not going to be enough to get the psychiatrist to leave Adam to his thoughts, and he was no longer relying on open hostility to achieve the same effect (or trying not to anyway), Adam reluctantly shifted the majority of his attention to Sean.

"No, we've been getting along fine," he replied with a shrug. Their relationship was a working professional one. The fact that Adam's presence reduced her student load by half was enough to make Kateri overlook many of his faults, and he had appreciated having a reasonably unintimidating coworker to show him the ropes. He considered some additional comments he could add, but in the end left it at that. Just because Sean was weaseling a conversation out of him didn't mean he had to be cooperative about it.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean considered the fact that Adam had begun to pay more attention to be a victory. One might wonder when his standards had sunk so low, but he attributed that to decades of work at Hammel; although, he typically expected more of staff, Adam was both young and new, and, as such, the telepath’s expectations shifted accordingly.

However, he nodded a single time to acknowledge the math teacher’s statement. “That’s good.” Which it was. As someone who had largely occupied his own department (alone) both when he had joined the faculty in the 1990s and then for most of his tenure at Hammel, he believed in the important of being friendly with department members, when available.

While Adam was now paying more attention, the younger man still did not display any particular enthusiasm for this conversation. Not that Sean had other expectations.

“And how are things with Nory?”

Since the other man made it plain that he preferred bluntness, then the psychiatrist could provide that. With the question, he turned his full attention on Adam, anticipating not only his verbal reply but his body language, facial expression, and inevitable mental reactions.

The question had not been loaded; nonetheless, the older man was invested in the answer.

[Adam Deulane]

Had Adam been privy to Sean's expectations, he would have protested them. It was not his job to make small talk with his half-sister's ex-psychiatrist, it was his job to teach math. And Sean was, in his mind, interrupting preparation for that task.

At the question about Nora Marie, all but a fraction of the young man's laser-like attention snapped to Sean. He had been anticipating a such a question, which was part of the reason he had been reluctant to enter into a conversation with the psychiatrist. His eyes, so similar to his sister's in color and shape but wildly different in expression, narrowed a fraction. "She's fine. Her training's going well." After a small pause, he added, "She likes Mr. Batista very much."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

In one sense, Sean and Adam had reached an impasse. Adam was correct in that conversing with Sean was not in his paid job description. However, tending to the wellbeing of students was in Sean’s, which meant that this fell within the psychiatrist’s purview.

Moreover, standing in someone else’s office in the dark hardly created the typical, or appropriate, atmosphere for lesson plans, so Sean considered this time a wash as it was.

Sean did not mirror the younger man’s expression. Instead, he remained focused and nodded again. He was aware of the status of Nora Marie’s training, as it came up in the course of their check-in discussions. He also knew of her fondness for her trainer, both from the girl herself as well as from Mike, who was a friend.

The psychiatrist’s voice held no undercurrent of accusation; instead, he spoke a mere fact to someone who should be aware. “She hasn’t had the easiest time. Her power is...unique.” Not unheard of, but rare, and not as practical as many other powers that came through Hammel, although it made her sick like many other powers did to those who possessed them.

“Have you been spending time with her? This situation is a rare opportunity.”

[Adam Deulane]

It was only his weekly counseling session for the past nine months that stopped Adam from slapping both of his hands on Sean's desk and responding with a roar. As if he didn't know that she hadn't had the easiest time. But his eyes flashed. "So I've been told," he replied, barely moving his lips.

At the second question, Adam was unable to bite back a retort. "Yes, considering that her presence was the sole reason I applied for the job, in fact I have," he snapped. "The courtesy of the staff and students not withstanding."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean had a remarkable talent to remain calm during confrontations. He was difficult to rile, difficult to anger, and he held back his frustration – when it emerged – behind a mask of calm professionalism. In this situation, he was not frustrated, although he made a mental note about the younger man’s short fuse.

Without shifting his expression, he replied, “Her power and temperament can make it a bit harder for her to fit in.” Not that Nora Marie lacked friends, even with the damaged relationships that had resulted from her reconciliation scheme with Adam. Still, there were certain adolescent behaviors and cliques that persisted despite staff efforts to undermine them.

By contrast, the psychiatrist’s voice remained even, seemingly unperturbed by the other man’s loss of composure. “I’m glad to hear that.” That was sincere. Sean didn’t use sarcasm often, and he was not interested in a fight or in any form of backhanded compliments or revenge needling. On Nora Marie’s behalf, he was glad that she and her brother had the opportunity to spend time together. “I’m sure she’s grateful for the opportunities.”

Since they had reached the crux of the matter, the telepath chose not to share metaphors by way of anecdotes. Instead, he added, “It means a lot to her.”