Doreen and Jean-Paul, Fred and Jean-Paul

[x-cynosure.livejournal.com]

Jean-Paul tries to discuss finals with Doreen; this is less than successful when the student in question is convinced that the class will quite literally be murder.



Doreen took a deep breath, Monkey Joe clutching her shoulder a bit tighter than he normally did. She was nervous and it showed in every part of her. Her eyes, her muscles were tight and ready to spring away at a moment’s notice and her tail was frizzed out and puffed up and high up.

Part of it was due to the conversation with four of the creepiest blonde girls she had ever met in her entire life. She hadn’t even mentioned the email she had gotten from Mr. Beaubier but the girls had known about it and had told her that he had been gone because he had killed someone. She didn’t want it to be true, because teachers shouldn’t kill people and super heroes shouldn’t kill people either. (Super Man didn’t kill people, and neither did Batman!)

But Doreen kept a brave front on as she inched towards the suite the four creepy children of the corn had directed her to and knocked, hoping that no one would be there and she could go run somewhere else. Like outside. In the trees. Where she could be safe.

"Come in."

No such luck. When Doreen screwed up her courage to open the door, there was only a normal-looking living room with a dark-haired man sitting on the couch, reading from a stack of papers. But then, how many serial killers went around advertising the fact? None, that was how many.

The man on the couch looked up and offered Doreen a slight smile before rising to his feet. "Mam'selle Green, I presume. I am Mister Beaubier. I see you got my email. I was wondering. Have a seat. Would you like anything?"

“No!” Doreen said quickly as she inched in and looked at the chair like it might have been made of a thousand spikes and not wood. She REALLY wanted something to chew on, but she couldn’t annihilate all her pencils before she was here even a month, “I mean we’re fine- I’m fine – we’re fine,” she said, Monkey Joe on her shoulder also reacting to her nerves and clicking loudly as Doreen finally took the seat, sitting cross-legged in it, so her feet didn’t even touch the floor.

Doreen's outburst left them staring at each other across the coffee table for a moment, he with one eyebrow raised, she squirming just a bit in her seat, and Monkey Joe flicking his tail warningly at the human making Doreen so nervous.

Finally, "Is there something wrong?"

Doreen shook her head avidly, “No! Absolutely not! Everything is just fine! So… uh…” don’t bring up that people said he killed someone…., “nice… to uh… meet you!” she squeaked as Monkey Joe kept making warning noises.

Beaubier turned his attention to Monkey Joe, trying to lighten the mood. "I have the oddest sensation that I am being cursed out by your pet."

“Oh… um…” Doreen looked at Monkey Joe and clicked and squeaked back, [Knock it off, you don’t want him to kill you too!] Tail frizzing out in all directions Monkey Joe settled down on her shoulder, but not a relaxed pose. A ‘I’m ready to scratch off your face if you move wrong’ pose. A lot of people didn’t know it, but squirrels could and sometimes did hunt smaller animals.

“He’s just…still adjusting,” she said, switching back to her English brain, “It’s been kinda a long few weeks,” she said with a weak smile.

"I can certainly empathize with that." Jean-Paul turned his attention back to the papers in front of him. "As I mentioned before, this is in regards to carrying your grades over from your old school now that you are a student here. Xavier's has been in contact with your former teachers and they have forwarded your grades. I see you did not have a literature course per se, but more a mixture -- a composition course with a literature overview. It does not quite correlate to the courses we are offering right now, but I think it will be easy enough to reach a compromise so far as a final goes. There is not much time left to the semester, but enough to introduce you to some of the works the other students have been covering." He paused, glancing down again. "Did you enjoy your composition class?"

She was starting to wonder if the creepy blonde girls were right, talking with this teacher he didn’t seem like a killer, but you could never really be sure. Monkey Joe even relaxed a bit, but still kept an eye on the pointy eared, tail-less human. “Um, I liked it pretty well,” she said. It was one of the only classes she was actually pulling above a C in. Even just barely. “I didn’t have to stand in the hallway for it,” she said with a shrug.

He did not look terribly pleased by that information, but nodded, rising long enough to fetch a book and a stapled sheaf of papers from the table between them and offer them to Doreen.

"I've highlighted some selections on the syllabus and provided some context for them. Try to get through them by the end of the week; I also expect to see you in my class with the other sophomores come Monday...I believe the entire class will consist of you, Gallo, and Maddicks." A slight smile; after an entire semester of one-on-one classes with the mute projector, the change in classroom dynamic would be interesting. "I will be available to answer any questions you may have. Next weekend, we will discuss the focus of your assignment, whether it is to be a composition or more of a creative writing endeavor."

That was a small class no matter how you looked at it. When she took the syllabus, Monkey Joe had to come in and sniff at it, as if he was making sure it was okay. It seemed to pass squirrel inspection and Doreen flipped through it, “Wow… um.. that’s not a very big class at all. And uh… how much are my old grades going to carry over?”

"In their entirety. I can only speak to your English grades, but you are coming in with a low B -- so long as you make a half-decent showing on your final, you should be safe." At least she seemed to be relaxing a bit. Most likely one of the students had been feeding her entirely justified horror stories about his grading polices. "I do not think you have anything to worry about."

She let out a breath. At least with English class she had always managed a somewhat passing grade. Of course her teacher back home had been one of the few decent ones. She had to wonder what they all had said about her. Of course, she was really, really wondering if he the type of person the blonde girls were saying he was. He didn’t seem like a killer.

“Um… is the final hard?”

"I think not, but I have been called a chronic perfectionist, so perhaps my perspective is not the most trustworthy." The look Doreen was giving him suggested that he could have picked a better time for that joke. "You will be fine. If you have any concerns, I am not hard to find."

“Um…okay,” Doreen said, sure that she couldn’t be drug back here kicking and screaming, “As long as it doesn’t kil- I mean, if it isn’t too hard!” Doreen corrected herself quickly.

She wasn’t going to bring up killing.

"I do not think it will be," he said, "and you will have plenty of say on the direction of the paper, so the odds of us finding something you can be enthusiastic about seem very high. So I will see you a week from today?"

“No! Yes! I mean, yes! I’ll be back and it will be good, I promise so you won’t to ki- worry at all, I promise!” Doreen said, standing up, Monkey Joe still giving her teacher a very suspicious look.

Jean-Paul watched with some bemusement as Doreen practically scrambled out the door, making a mental note to ask Callie if everything had gone all right between them.

--

Fred comes in next for a slightly more successful visit as Jean-Paul offers him his choice of weapons in regards to the final.



The meeting with Doreen hadn't taken nearly as long as Jean-Paul had thought it would; the girl had seemed as if she couldn't get away from him fast enough. Fredrick Dukes was next, but at least the stout junior was a better-known quantity. The young man rarely spoke up in class unless prodded or outright targeted, but the few assignments he had turned in during his short time in Jean-Paul's class had an interesting tone to them. Jean-Paul had the feeling that Fred Dukes had seen a lot for seventeen years of living and suspected that the discussion of his project would be similarly interesting.

Fred had been told when his meeting was, and arrived promptly at the assigned time. Fred had liked Mr. Beaubier, and his class; the blunt academia of the subject was softened for Fred by the natural elegance Jean-Paul seemed to exude. To be honest, it was a bit intimidating, but Fred had tried to get past it. He'd been told to enter when he arrived, and it took him a moment to overcome his adherence to closed doors and privacy to open the door and enter the Literature Professor's office. "Hello, Mr. Beaubier, " Fred had to practice several times pronouncing the French surname when he was first assigned the Lit class, and was a little proud he'd gotten it right, "You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Of course." Jean-Paul stood and waved Fred to a chair. "Have a seat, s’il te plaît." He waited until Fred had settled before sitting again himself. "To be honest, Monsieur Dukes, I debated calling you in at all. You have seen the syllabus and had time to bring any questions you might have about the course to me, and, aside from a bad habit of trusting the grammar check on your word processor more than your own instincts, I cannot say that I have had many reasons to be concerned about your work. The edges are rough at times, but the core reasoning is always solid." The older man leaned back into the couch cushions, seeming very at ease. "At the same time, however, finals are all but upon us and this will be the first and only major paper you will have had to turn in for my course. It will count for a substantial portion of your overall grade. I thought I might offer you some options."


Fred listened carefully as he sat, taking both small praise and constructive criticism quietly. English was never his strongest subject, and Fred particularly would get lost in more overblown or poetic prose. However, he never went without trying to consider what the subject was trying to say, and always attempted to eloquate his opinions on more objective matters. When Jean-Paul spoke about option for a final, Fred nodded, "Thank you sir. I appreciate it. What are the options?"

"Firstly, you may opt to do a somewhat truncated version of cumulative paper I am asking of your classmates. You will not be required to touch upon subjects that were covered before you arrived at the school, though you may do so if you wish. I will require the same page count of you that I will of the other student and you will be required to expound on your subjects more thoroughly while avoiding padding out your paper just to make length. As for the other...well, it is something of an experiment," his teacher confessed. "We have been covering the Grimm Brothers all term. If you wished to demonstrate that you have absorbed the history and the themes of their tales by writing a story in a similar vein, dissecting it, and laying out the component parts, that is also an option."

Fred's eyes widened, "You mean...writing one from scratch?" The idea intrigued the young mutant almost as much as it frightened him. He'd liked the stuff he'd read from the Brothers Grimm, and had read a lot more of it recreationally than what was assigned. The writing style was interesting to Fred, without being overwhelming, and he'd loved the moral ambiguity of the stories. Still, creative writing wasn't an endeavour Fred had taken on previously, and it seemed far out of his reach. He scratched the back of his head, "I don't know, sir. I don't think I've got the, uhm, the chops for it, t'be honest..."

"If I did not think otherwise, I would not have offered." There was no irritation in Beaubier's voice; his tone was very matter-of-fact. "Some students display what they have learned best by recitation, others by practical application. I have had long enough to work with your classmates that I think we are all on the same page so far as their knowing what I expect of them in terms of the former. I have not had quite so long to indoctrinate you, so I thought I would give you your choice of weapons when it comes to finals. If you wish, you may take a day or two think it over. It is fine if you do not wish to have the bulk of your grade resting on an experimental format. It is less work for me, non?" Now he was definitely teasing.

Fred's brow knit together, and he finally said, "Thanks, Mr. Beaubier. I'll, uhm...I'll think it over. It does sound pretty cool. Daunting, but cool..." Fred looked around the room, not knowing whether he was excused or not...

"That is fine. Try to get back to me by the end of the week, and, of course, if you have any further questions."