Thread Roulette: Protective (Jonah,James)

[Event !]

So you’re the boy who took my daughter to the dance?

[Jonah King]

Jonah would not have chosen to be indoors, if he could help it. He didn’t like to be penned in like this, but even he had to admit that you couldn’t get much done when icy March rain was falling in sheets from an uncompromising sky.

So instead of taking his books out into the fresh air (which made it much easier to concentrate) he was, instead, sitting in the student lounge. It was bigger than his room, and had the advantage of being further away from people than his room, which had next-door neighbours on either side. When Jonah was involved in homework, as he was now, it was far more difficult for him to keep his head free of other peoples’ thoughts. Telepathy was definitely not as fun as all those science fiction books made it sound.

It was the middle of the afternoon, a time when few people had free periods, and he was taking advantage of the lack of people. Seated on one of the sofas he could stretch out in a way he couldn’t in his room – nobody had taken people over six feet tall into consideration when designing those – and spread his books around him in a disorderly pile. It was good to be away from the other areas of the school. When the student lounge was empty, it was the place Jonah came to when he wanted to get some peach and quiet.

‘Peace and quiet.’ Not a phrase he would usually have used in conjunction with himself, but it couldn’t half get noisy with so many other people around.

Why did everyone in Shakespeare’s plays keep on repeating the action? Jonah scowled down at his text of Romeo & Juliet (it didn’t achieve anything, but it made him feel better). Surely the whole audience had just seen the play? They had sat through the whole thing? Why, then, did Friar Laurence need to remind them of everything they had just seen? Maybe audiences had been a lot more stupid, back when Shakespeare wrote the play. Jonah looked back at his notebook. He was supposed to be writing a list of ten examples of the theme of ‘names’ in the play, to be discussed in the next lesson. It was making him lose the will to live. There was: ‘What’s in a name?’ but every other reference was getting lost in the huge volume of text Jonah was confronted with.

A heavy sigh escaped him as he closed the book, putting it to one side and deciding to leave it for now in favour of his other homework: building up his mental barriers. Jonah closed his eyes and focussed, a smile coming to his lips when he finally felt silence descend – he usually had some sort of background hum, like voices in the next room, and it was only during moments of rare concentration that he managed to block it out completely.

When he opened his eyes, he could see a pair of shoes in his peripheral vision.

They didn’t look like the kind of shoes another student would wear. Jonah froze, and released his newfound control for a moment, enough to find out who the shoes belonged to. James. Campbell. His mouth went dry. Did the principal know what had happened when Jonah had accompanied Mia on Operation Suicidal Insanity? For a moment, Jonah was sure that he did. Then he got a hold on himself, and looked up to give James a bemused, uncertain smile. ‘Hi, Dr Campbell.’ He offered. ‘Sorry I didn’t see you come in.’

[Dr. James Campbell]

James wasn't much of an outdoorsy person. He greatly preferred to be inside, where it was warm and he had control over how wet or dirty things were. So on rainy days, he didn't mind being stuck within the confines of the building. His office was clean and orderly, all of his recruiters were either in the field--and doing well, no one had been late checking in that morning--or home, on a day off or maternity leave. He'd finished all of the work that had been waiting for him, written up a few reports, and done pretty much everything else that had needed doing. The recruiting office was quiet and still.

Too quiet.

Though it would be laughable to claim that James was a man of action--he worried too much for that--he was not a man of inaction either. He needed something to do, or else he was going to rearrange all of the books on his bookshelf by an even more complex method than he currently was using. (An algorithm based on a ratio of the number of letters in the titles to the number of letters in the author's name.) Or he could play chess against himself again, but that wasn't as fun as it used to be.

Eventually, he decided to go for a walk around the school, and told the receptionist--a student who just watched their phones for some pocket money--to call him if there was an emergency. Hopefully, something would happen before he a.) Went stir-crazy or b.) Went to check on Chase again. His husband was healing okay, the neck brace was off permanently, and he knew from experience how annoying it was to have your husband hovering around at work.

So James avoided the training rooms completely. He knew Chase's schedule, and wouldn't interrupt an in-progress class anyway. But there had to be somewhere he could talk to someone without actually interrupting work. (This was frustrating; usually his office was too busy, now it was empty.) After just making an idle circuit of the building, he stopped in front of the student lounge again and peeked in through the window. Very few students were in there, which was good, because most of them were supposed to be in classes right now. He did, however, spot a particularly recognizable set of ears. Finally, someone to bother.

The recruiter approached the boy who had taken his daughter--his only daughter--to the Valentine's Day Dance. He wasn't sure how best to announce his presence to the boy, but luckily he noticed him fairly quickly. "That's fine, Jonah." James smiled. He knew the boy was about the same height as him, but he was the one standing up, towering over him. "How are you doing?"

[Jonah King]

Jonah had only met James on a handful of occasions during his time at the school. The first had been when he had arrived, but he remembered little of that – indeed, he remembered little of what had happened during the first two weeks of his time at Hammel, before he had properly been able to block out the voices. He had probably been a silent nervous wreck when he had met James for the first time. It was a wonder James hadn’t kept closer tabs on him. Then there had been the time when he was 14, and Mia had used him as a distraction during Operation Filing Cabinet…

He had no doubt that he was on some sort of list somewhere, either due to the angry behaviour he had frequently exhibited when he was younger, or his close friendship with Mia. She was the kind of girl with whom association was ill-advised, especially if you were trying to keep your head down. ‘Jonah King,’ his file probably said. ‘Mostly harmless, but beware attempts to engage you in conversation’. He was used to teachers being a little stand-offish with him as a result, and this attention from James was making him nervous. Dr Campbell didn’t generally try to speak to a student unless he was telling them off about something.

Jonah racked his brain to try and work out what James could have on him this time. Neither he nor Mia had been picked up for anything bad in the past few weeks, at least not that he had heard of. So that couldn’t be it. ‘I’m good, thanks,’ he replied to James’ question, giving a nod. It was very strange to be looking up at someone, and he shifted uncomfortably. There was something – either in James’ expression or the emotions he was carrying with him – which made Jonah uneasy about this conversation. Even though he couldn’t work out what it was, it was definitely there; and he didn’t like it.

Then it hit him.

On some level, Jonah had been aware that Ginny was Dr Campbell’s daughter. He had known it, but not really taken it in – in the same way one can look at a clock but not really notice the time. Jonah’s family was far from normal, but he knew that, traditionally, fathers were never supposed to be too pleased with the young men who took their daughters to dances. Especially when the young man in question was a poorly-achieving student who spent far too much of his time getting into scrapes with one of the most troublesome students in the school.

Jonah wasn’t sure if the pause had been as long as it felt. ‘How are you?’ he asked after a moment, hoping that a polite reciprocal question would appropriately deflect the subject James clearly wanted to bring up.

[Dr. James Campbell]

Really, James didn't have much time for keeping tabs on students already at Hammel. At least not the ones who weren't in the select few who visited him in his office on their own. (People like Moe or Mia were frequent visitors, and there had been more than one student over the years who had taken advantage of the rainbow "safe zone" sticker on his door.) He knew some on sight, but students he hadn't recruited himself tended to blend together for him. He knew Jonah was one of Mia's friends, but so was Ginny, so he didn't judge him by that.

Granted, he didn't understand his daughter's taste in friends in this particular case, but she seemed to have good taste otherwise, so he was going to continue to trust her.

"That's good. The weather hasn't been cooperating much, but at least it's starting to get warmer." What snow was left was melting away by the day, and it didn't look like they were going to get another storm.

But, of course, he wasn't trying to talk about the weather.

James hadn't had much of a chance to intimidate Ginny's dates during her teenage years. Most of her time had been spent in New York, living with her mother. He was going to make up for it now, in case there was something going on. (Though he suspected Ginny would keep her romantic prospects to her campus, for this exact reason.)

"I'm doing quite well, thank you." The recruiter smiled and leaned against an armchair, crossing his arms over his chest casually. He had met the parents of his romantic attachments--not dates, because he'd never really dated either Lucy or Chase--exactly twice, and he'd been older than Jonah then. He'd been intimidated both times, but this was a lot less serious.

That didn't mean he was going to let the teenager steer the conversation away from where he wanted it to go, though. In theory, he knew he could look at the Rumor blog, but he'd refused to look at it again after that lovely post that had made insinuations about what he and his husband did in the bedroom. "So, Ginny came in late after the dance, and had to leave fairly early the next day to get back to school. She never had a chance to tell me how it went. I trust you enjoyed yourselves? Everything went well?"

[Jonah King]

Jonah had actually read the first post of the Rumour blog – but one had been enough. The general tone, and the comments it encouraged, were too bitchy for him. But the post about the dance had made Mia seethe enough at what she perceived to be an insult to him that he had glanced over it. In a perverse way, he had almost felt flattered that the writer felt he was gossip-worthy. Jonah considered himself to be far too normal to cause much of a stir. Indeed, the only thing he had done of note was appear on Ginny’s arm: something which had taken much persuasion.

But, presumably, it wouldn’t do to tell her father that persuasion had been involved. James’ expression was friendly enough as he spoke, but he was giving nothing away (it was probably something they taught you when you got to the level of headmaster), and Jonah couldn’t quite work out if this was a friendly chat, or an interrogation. Reluctantly, he decided it was a mixture of both.

‘It was good, thanks.’ Sometimes, when he was talking to people who intimated him, it was as if Jonah lost all ability to string a complex sentence together. Suddenly he was unexpected tongue-tied, and he paused for a moment. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time – only people who exercised great authority in his life had the power to make him feel like he couldn’t speak a word. He had been getting better, but it was still an inconvenience – after all, it didn’t exactly endear you to said influential people when you could hardly say anything meaningful to them. Jonah’s hands twitched slightly on his knees, as if itching to sign. ‘We had fun.’

No, this wasn’t awkward at all…Jonah felt as if his stomach was twisting. He should be saying something, anything, but he couldn’t think. Bad at expressing himself at the best of times, Jonah was beginning to feel that his brain had abandoned him. It was as if anything he could say reached his mouth and died on his lips. But this wasn’t just a language problem (as it so often could be), this was a content problem. Jonah had never been in this situation before: he had no idea what he was supposed to be saying or doing. ‘Dr Campbell, we’re not – ’ he broke off for a second, putting his words in order. ‘We’re not – going out, or anything. Ginny and me.’

[Dr. James Campbell]

James...honestly didn't know how he would have made it through high school if there were things like blogs and facebook then. It was bad enough that he had been weird and bossy; adding messaging and comments to that would have killed any self-esteem he had managed to accrue by senior year. Over and over, the recruiter marveled at the opportunities there were for students to be cruel to each other now. Sure, gossip was fun, but when it's put online for people to comment on, it became malicious.

And the thought of him or his family being discussed like that, having their relationships dissected, just didn't sit well with him. It made him sick.

So while he could have retrieved some information from Rumor, it was better to go directly to the source.

"That's good to hear, Jonah." James was smiling, mild and pleasant. He wasn't actually trying to intimidate Jonah, but if it was necessary, then that was just a bonus. "I haven't been to the dances in a while. I hope there wasn't any trouble."

Okay, perhaps there was some perverse pleasure gained from seeing Jonah realize what was going on with this conversation. It wasn't easy, being the father of a teenage daughter. But sometimes it was fun. "You're not? Why? Is there something wrong with her?" He let that hang there for a moment, before cracking a genuine grin. Yeah, it was a little mean, but this all started because James was bored. "No, I know that, Jonah. And I'm kidding, really. I really am asking just to ask. She's my daughter and I'm curious how the night went. She didn't tell me, so I'm asking you."

Yeah, he could be a little obnoxious.

"Not to mention, you're friends with Mia, right? I know she's had a bunch of trouble with the security team lately." He was digging now, because he didn't know the details of Mia storming into his office to rant about Ms. Nakajima confiscating her laptop and otherwise causing Mia to have a hissy-fit that threatened to knock his office door off the hinges.

Finally, he shrugged again, because he remembered what it was like to be completely freaked out by someone in authority. "You're not in trouble; you know that, right?"

[Jonah King]

What was wrong with Ginny? Jonah stared at James for a moment, before hastening to reassure him: ‘Nothing – I…’ But then James smiled, and the tense expression on Jonah’s face melted into a relieved smile when he realised that the older man was joking. Mia had once accused Jonah of having no sense of humour. It wasn’t that – just that he took everything a little more seriously than many other people did. And sometimes he had quite a bit of difficulty working out whether people were joking, or being serious. It was a problem he’d had for most of his life.

Maybe it was something common to all telepaths. They were so busy trying not to hear what other people were thinking that they overcompensated by becoming very dense.

Mia did seem to be making herself popular with the security personnel these days. She hadn’t told Jonah about throwing a ‘hissy fit’ in the headmaster’s office, although he did believe that she’d mentioned throwing things until she had his attention. It did seem a rather cruel and unusual punishment to not only allow Emiko to use her ability on Mia, but then also take away her laptop (something which would have been akin to denying anyone else the use of their eyes or ears) – although Jonah had been trying for years to warn his friend that something like this would happen. Not that he thought this would have any effect on what she did in her spare time. Mia seemed to have a secondary power to go with her technopathy: the ability to ignore any lesson whatsoever, if she did not wish to learn it.

There seemed to be a question of some sort in James’ expression, but it was not one that Jonah wanted to answer. He gave the teacher a rueful smile. ‘She’s very good at finding trouble,’ he told James, not wanting to think about Operation Suicidal Insanity in case it showed on his face. He felt as if he had just spoken the understatement of the century.

‘Thanks, Dr Campbell,’ he said after a moment, hoping he sounded genuine. Jonah never quite knew how to take people like James, people who teased you so subtly you hardly knew it was happening. Then he remembered something, and his eyes took on the same, tense expression he had been wearing earlier. ‘I was wondering…’ he paused, and thought through the words for a moment. ‘Is there any way a student can stay here during the holidays?’

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