FIC: And Back To School For Jonathan
I seem to have never posted this here! In case civilization fails leaving just LJ standing, here we go.
Title: And Back To School for Jonathan
Fandom: The Sentinel
Rating: PG for language and underage drinking
Category: gen
Wordcount: ~5600
Warnings: None
Summary: What it says on the box. Having rescued teen sentinel/best friend/personal project Jason from an inappropriate placement, life returns to normal for Jonathan. Or not.
Though AO3 tells me this is the ninth in my series about teen sentinels (and Blair and Jim dealing with Blair finally growing up), it takes place right after the fifth story, The Other Side; I'm not being terribly linear.
I'll post the tenth, and final (probably), story in the series tomorrow.
Jonathan carefully, carefully kept his expression absolutely neutral as his father laid out the plans the adults had worked out amongst themselves. As soon as dinner was over, it seemed, he was to return to his Cascade Academy dorm room, while Jason was to head up to CSAS to spend a few days working with Dr. Blair, as if the last month had never happened.
Had everyone forgotten - did nobody think - that he might have some useful input into how to help Jason?
Well, given how much work was waiting for him, a couple of days without Jason around might not be such a bad thing. “You’ll let me know how he’s doing?” he asked.
“Of course,” said Dr. Blair. “You can trust us. You both can.”
“Okay then,” he said.
The adults around Mr. Ellison’s insanely large dining table - Dr. Blair, Mr. Ellison, Lawyer Grace, Officer Jim, and his own mom and dad - all seemed relieved by his basic acquiescence, and Jonathan wondered what they’d thought he’d do. It wasn’t as if he was about to become a serial runaway! A near-constant of his life was that he met, or exceeded, expectations, albeit in conjunction with some simple expectation management.
Jason, on the other hand, drew in a breath, his eyes widening; then, as if a curtain was dropping, his expression closed.
Was he mirroring Jonathan’s own careful neutrality? No, this was something else; this was Jason shutting down.
“Excuse us,” said Jonathan, rising as quickly as he could without upending his chair, and circling the table. “Come with me,” he said directly into Jason’s ear, his chin almost touching Jason’s shoulder. “We need to talk.”
When Jason didn’t move, Jonathan pulled his chair back; with a start, Jason seemed to come into himself, flailing a bit; but not more than Jonathan had been prepared to handle. Jason rose unsteadily and Jonathan kept him upright as he half-led, half-propelled him out of the dining room and up the back stairway and down the hall to the room they were working on making Jason’s.
Suite, more like. Jason even had his own bathroom.
Jonathan switched on the white noise generator he’d bummed off of Dr. Blair a short while before, then pointed Jason toward his huge bed.
Jason threw himself backward with a groan. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean to… I can’t keep falling apart!”
Jonathan hopped up beside him and shoved him with his foot. “Item one of your new, revised curriculum needs to be remedial self-advocacy. If you don’t want to go to the camp, just say, ‘I don’t want to go to the camp tonight.’ That’s all it’ll take.”
“That’s okay, I really don’t mind going up. And…” And Jason stopped and looked away. “You need the break,” he said.
“You read me, didn’t you,” said Jonathan. “Shit, Jason, I didn’t mean it!”
Though of course he did; and of course Jason knew it then, and now. “I’m not mad, or upset, or anything, not now,” said Jason.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“It’s just - it’s just - it’s like, my body reacts before my brain gets a say. I think something broke at Dawson, something up here.” Jason tapped his forehead.
“Not broken!” Jonathan insisted. “Maybe - maybe strained, a little. You’ve been fine since Saturday morning.”
“Yeah, mostly,” said Jason. “But… well, you know why.”
“No, actually I’m pretty clueless here.”
“I never mega-zone when you’re around.”
Was that really true?
“You sure you’re okay with us being apart? Until Friday night?” Jonathan asked.
“Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, you’ve been at school here in Cascade since September and it’s been fine. Mostly.”
“Except for the broken arm and the parental kidnapping.”
“Yeah, except for.”
Jonathan reached and took Jason’s hand. “You’re really okay with going?”
“Yeah.”
“Would it be better if you could take some of me with you?”
Jason yanked his hand back. “I can feel the shape of what you’re…” he waved his hand in a circle.
“Proposing? Offering?” Jonathan supplied.
“Yeah. I can feel the shape…”
Jonathan took Jason’s hand again and squeezed it. “Jason Wagner,” he said, “I promise to come when you call, listen when you talk, be a map - or whatever - when you need one. I promise to learn as much as I can about senses, and the human brain, so that I can help you handle your abilities. Not just handle - use them, just like Dr. Blair says. And I promise never, never, ever to give up on you.”
“God, Jon!” Jason visibly swallowed, then said, “I’ll try my best to treat my senses as gifts. I know they’ve never been any good to anybody, but maybe one day they will be.” He paused. “You know I can pretty much read your mind,” he said. “I promise to not judge your thoughts. You don’t have to be afraid of that.”
Jonathan barked a laugh. “That’s good!”
He squeezed Jason’s hand again; not hard at all, but a sensation not unlike a muscle contraction travelled up the inside of his arm and through his shoulder. The room suddenly seemed warmer; somewhere in the distance a wolf howled. His heart thudded, racing for a handful of beats until he turned his focus inward, drawing in one slow, steady breath. Then another, then a third.
He wasn’t alone in those breaths. Though he’d dropped Jason’s hand, a sensation of unlocalized touch remained.
He looked at Jason; the boy’s eyes were huge, his breathing matching Jonathan’s. “We did something,” Jason gasped. “Just now… I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be sorry!” said Jonathan. “This is excellent! This is perfect!”
Jason’s response was interrupted by a knock on the door; that it startled Jason was proof that the white noise generator worked, for which Jonathan was keenly thankful.
Jonathan called, “Come in,” remembering an instant later that it was Jason’s room they were in; another sign that self-assertion was, as the pros called it, “an area of opportunity” for Jason.
Jonathan’s mother peered around the door. “Ready to go back to school?” she asked.
- - - - - -
Returning to the dorm was less awkward than Jonathan expected it to be. The hall parents, one of the music teachers and her husband, announced that they wanted to speak with him at length, but they were quickly redirected by his mother, who pulled them aside for a private conversation.
His roommate, Thad, frowned at him, hands on hips. “I was almost arrested, you know,” he said. “The Chief of Police himself gave me the third degree.”
Jonathan wondered how long it had been since Officer Jim had actually arrested anybody. “Scary stuff, man,” he said. “Sorry. I’d have bailed you out.”
“Yeah, well…”
“You’re a good guy, to’ve endured that for my friend and me.” Jonathan paused, sensing he was on the verge of laying it on too thickly even for Thad. Time for a subject change. “What’d we do in English? Still pounding through Wuthering Heights?”
A few minutes later, his mother popped in to give him a hug goodbye; then, word having gotten around that he’d reappeared, kids he knew began to drop by to hear his story (he pretty much went with the truth), wish him well, and tell him how lucky he was he hadn’t been expelled.
By nine p.m., the crowd had outgrown the dorm room quota (which he was thinking he should probably be obeying just now) and everyone had relocated to the lounge. Someone made popcorn; someone else opened up a couple of two-liter bottles of ginger ale, and they ended up having a welcome-back party of sorts, kids talking about the upcoming semester change and whether there’d be snow in Cascade that winter and gossiping about teachers and whomever wasn’t around.
It was nice. Normal. Not exactly scintillating, but not fraught either, and Jonathan found that that wasn’t a bad place to be.
Things cleared out pretty early, though, with the sophomores having a huge paper due in history and some of the seniors still elbow-deep in the college application process. Eventually only a senior girl, Joy Silva, remained. “Was it scary, going into Dawson?”
“A little, but, honestly I wasn’t too afraid of a breaking-and-entering charge.” He paused. “Dogs I’d have been afraid of, but the guy I was with, he has pretty acute senses and he didn’t hear anything. I was mostly afraid we’d be too late. My friend Jason was really sick and they were essentially torturing him to death… that’s what I was afraid of.”
Joy shook her head, smiling. “You’re such a rebel. Which reminds me - I was supposed to ask if you could come to Cali’s on Friday night. Bring that friend of yours we’ve heard so much about - and, yeah, I’m being sarcastic, I didn’t know he had a name until today.”
“I think he’s out of town.” Actually, Jase was supposed to be returning to Mr. Ellison’s sometime Friday, but there was no way Jonathan was going to let his universes collide any further.
“Too bad,” she said. “We’re going late, so figure out some excuse for a weekend pass if you can. Let’s see how resourceful you really are.”
Cali Bronn was a day student who lived in a cul-de-sac in the same general neighborhood as Mr. Ellison. Smart, pretty, and a little bit of a lit crit nerd; Jonathan liked her. He’d twice been invited to off-campus parties at her house, and both times he’d been unable to attend, first when Jason had broken his arm in October, and then again in December because he’d had to go to a family wedding in Vancouver. Saying no again just wasn’t going to happen.
- - - - -
Lying in bed that night felt - well, unusually unfamiliar, unusually uncomfortable. There was a new uneasiness in the back of his mind, a sense of being in a room too full of smells and too many other guys, on a mattress that creaked, behind a curtain that blocked nothing.
Jonathan squelched a flash of irritation and instead thought about his toes, relaxing them one by one, from the outside-in, first his right foot, then his left. Then his calves, gently tensing each and then releasing, being careful not to aggravate his problem knee. Then his thighs…
Soon, the sense of discomfort faded, and Jonathan stopped his tour through Remedial Relaxation. Was he really going to have to lay everything out for Dr. Blair? Don’t assume Jason understands what you’re saying; don’t assume he’ll be able to use what he seems to understand. Don’t just let him flap in the wind, you’re supposed to be the WORLD EXPERT in SENTINELS damn it…
With an effort, Jonathan again diffused his rising irritation. Not helpful; and he did need to get to sleep…
- - - - -
Breakfast was waffles, scrambled eggs, and real maple syrup this week. But the syrup made the waffles too mushy, too sweet; and the eggs - well, they just weren’t right.
The eggs are fine, Jonathan thought. I like them this way .
In the back of his throat, there was the taste of milk, of hay and mildew, and a banana still sharply green. The milk is fine, he thought. Don’t get all judgey about the poor cow’s diet. And if you don’t like the banana, don’t eat the banana.
But I’m hungry!
Jonathan felt like banging his head on the table. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, and opened them slowly.
Thad and a couple of the other guys were staring at him.
Jonathan shrugged. “Trust me, you don’t want to know,” he said, then choked down the rest of his eggs (he was not going to get through this morning without protein!) and fled.
- - - - -
Classes went well - Jonathan did, indeed, have some catching up to do, but not as much as he’d feared. After lunch (pizza for him, a remarkably tasty ham sandwich for Jason he was pretty sure) he met with the Head Dean, and again he blasted through with the honesty. Yes, what he’d done was stupid. But, yes, he’d probably do it again.
“So you didn’t learn any lessons?” the dean asked.
“Probably the wrong ones,” he answered. “My big take-away is that it worked. I acted when nobody else would, and the result is, my friend Jason is in a much better situation now than he was this time last week. Last Wednesday, he was comatose.”
Even now, days later, describing how Jason had been his final few days at the Dawson still hurt viscerally, like a blow to the gut; he felt ready to spring, ready to run as fast as his knee would let him.
The woman made a gentling motion with her hand, and Jonathan steadied his breathing, forcing his body to reconfigure itself to the shape of the chair. Calm and reasonable, he was calm and reasonable, and smart enough to make any oddities tolerable.
“You could have come to me,” she said. “I would have helped.”
“Standing there, outside Dawson, knowing what was happening to him… We had to act. I honestly didn’t know if he was going to survive the night.”
“It was that bad?”
Jonathan nodded. “It seemed that bad. Maybe it wasn’t. Probably it wasn’t. But - ma’am, you know I’m not an idiot. I had a call to make, and I made it, knowing there would be consequences. I just thank you that they’ve been minor so far. I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay here.”
The dean smiled. “You’re really very good at this, kiddo. You could teach a seminar. Just, stay out of trouble, would you?”
- - - - -
As usual, there were no Wednesday afternoon classes, to facilitate interschool athletic and academic competitions. Jonathan, having passed on winter sports to give his knee a break, had nowhere he had to be, so he took some work with him to Thad’s JV hockey game. Midway through the second period his calc homework started to blur, the symbols losing their familiarity.
Stop it he thought angrily. This is just math. JUST MATH. I rock at math, okay? This is fun for me. Well, kind of.
After the game, he returned to his dorm room and flung himself onto his bed. Either he was going crazy, or he and Jason had done something to themselves yesterday evening. And, right now, he wasn’t sure which he’d rather it be.
You’re only crazy if you do what the voices tell you. He’d heard that somewhere once; or had Jason?
Dinner went fine - the baked chicken and ziti tasted like Cascade Academy’s baked chicken and ziti always did, the chocolate cake tasted as much, or as little, like chocolate cake as ever. Maybe things were getting better; maybe the mind-link-thing was fading.
The evening was devoted sending quick emails to his parents and to Mr. Ellison (care of his more-technologically-competent housekeeper, Ms. Wang) asking if he could stay with Jason at Mr. Ellison’s for the weekend; then more homework, as he continued to dig himself out.
A half-hour in, approval came from the Dean of Students - he was excused from campus as of 5 p.m. Friday, see you Sunday by 8 p.m. Super. He shot a quick note to Jason saying to expect him around 11 p.m. Friday, then dove into his physics homework.
At about 8:30, a couple of the senior girls in his Latin class stopped by to make sure he had the vocabulary list for Friday’s quiz, and they ended up ordering in pizza and watching some sitcom in the lounge. He was critiquing the pacing of the show, using the most ostentatious language he could come up with and making the girls laugh, when a feeling of panic hit him like a blast of cold air in his lungs. He jumped up, needing to run, to flee, to hide…
Both girls were staring at him. “A phone!” he almost shouted. “I need to make a call.” With the amount of financial aid he was getting, having his own cell phone would have been unseemly, but almost everyone else in school had one. One of the girls, her eyes wide, handed him her Nokia.
His fingers shook as he punched in Dr. Blair’s number. “What’s going on? How is he?” he asked over Dr. Blair’s laconic “Hello.”
“That you, Jonnie? I didn’t recognize the number.”
“Yes, yes… Dr. Blair, you’ve got to go check on Jason RIGHT THIS MINUTE.”
“Um, okay. I think the guys are watching a movie in the boys’ cabin… How’s school?”
“It’s fine,” Jonathan responded automatically, moving into the hallway. “How is he? Are you checking?”
“Of course I am,” said Dr. Blair. “I’m walking over right now. You had to talk to your head of school, right? How’d that go?”
“Great, great, she loves me. Are you there yet?”
“Yeah, I’m looking in… waving through their picture window… I’ve got five teenage sentinels and your dad staring at me right now, what did you want me to do exactly?”
“How’s Jason?”
“He’s sitting next to a new girl. Um, do you really want me to talk here? Half of them can hear me.”
Jonathan sighed. “Do you know what they’re watching?”
“I think Alien.”
“You let them…”
“Jonnie, they’re more than old enough for Alien.”
Another blast of terror washed over him. “Thanks,” he muttered, and turned off the phone.
- - - - -
Thursday and Friday went about the same. School was great; the kids were bright and - well, not angst-free, but generally okay enough that he didn’t have to do anything about it. Which made life pretty darn good. Except for, once or twice every hour or two, being hit by a feeling, a taste, a smell, a state of being, that wasn’t his. Sometimes - usually - it wasn’t too bad, or too strong, or he wasn’t mid-sentence or something - and it wasn’t a big deal. On Friday afternoon, though, he experienced a flash of vertigo while he was halfway up the shallow steps leading from the art barn to the library; there was no railing, and he found himself on the ground beside the pavement, his thigh and knee pounding, Thad and a couple of the guys from fall soccer looking at him.
“The idiot won’t tell anyone how bad his knee is,” Thad was saying. “He’s going to be useless to you guys next year at this rate.”
So he hadn’t almost fainted, nope, no way, his knee had buckled. Jonathan could work with that. “It’s fine as long as I don’t twist it,” he said, letting himself sound a little whiney as he turned and sat on a step. “I can run on it okay.”
They got him to his feet and continued up the stairs past him, towards the cafeteria; he ducked into the library and sat in the first chair he saw. Jason he thought, What was that about? Are you okay?
Nothing.
Cali Bronn dropped into the seat beside him. “Hey there. You’re coming over tonight?” she asked. “Can you stay past curfew?”
“Yeah, all set,” he said.
- - - - -
Jonathan went light on dinner, then packed up his homework and a couple of changes of clothes and headed across the Cascade Academy ball fields to Cali’s house.
Or, rather, her back yard, which backed into the woods that surrounded the school. Music (Blink 182) and the varying illumination of a fire quickly proved that he’d found the correct path.
He was afraid he’d be too early, but there were already a couple dozen kids there when he arrived, standing around a fire pit, playing ping pong and foosball in the heated barn/garage (complete with sink and half-bath), and - yeah, there was the famous hot tub, spurting steam into the dark.
It was a nice mix of kids; not the brainiest of the brainy, necessarily, or the richest of the rich, or most talented of the school’s artists and athletes, but the kids who made things happen. Cali Bronn herself had won a state writing contest, and captained the volleyball team. Gil Jian had helped direct the fall musical; he also had taken most of the pictures in the new school catalog. Stu O’Brian was being recruited by a Big Ten school’s football program but was considering spending a gap year spelunking.
Cali handed Jonathan a stick and a bag of marshmallows. “You can’t stay unless you can make a decent s’more,” she said.
- - - - -
Jonathan had forgotten how good he was at ping pong; turns out, it was a very different game if your opponent wasn’t a sentinel. After winning a couple of games, he found himself leaning against the wall trying to out-snark Joy Sliva about the less-than-stellar play of the other kids.
Around 8:30, the boarding kids, with the exception of Joy, who was staying over, started to head back to campus; around 9, a few local kids arrived, including Cali’s boyfriend. Mark Something.
What had he expected?
“Let’s see you play against Mark,” Joy giggled. “He’s really good.”
Jonathan shook his head. Cali wasn’t going to dump some townie (my, haven’t we gone snobby, a part of him jeered) because Jonathan had a better serve.
Apparently he wasn’t an open book only to sentinels, because Joy was peering at him and laughing. “Poor baby,” she said. “This will help.”
Which is how Jonathan found himself holding a beer.
“Sam Adams Winter Wheat,” he read aloud, trying to buy himself time. What was he going to do with this thing?
“It’s a twist top,” said Joy. “Go crazy.”
“I don’t drink.”
Apparently he’d said that a little louder than he’d meant to; or maybe it was just the sort of thing that caught peoples ears, because now the ten or so kids in the garage were staring at him, some looking incredulous, some exuding pity, some awe.
Cali came over and took his beer. “Let’s see. You’re super-stressed. Your knee is killing you… uh, you aren’t taking anything, like, narcoticy, for it, are you?
“Just Tylenol.”
“Time for some more aggressive self-medication, then.”
“Beer smells - uh, gross.”
“Not that we want to despoil you or anything but - let’s just start with rum and coke then, okay?”
And so, he did. And it was pretty good. Not quite identical to regular old cola, but not so different - just a little less sweet, and, somehow, a little harder to convince his throat to let pass.
At least the first glass was. The second was going down much more smoothly.
Did he feel it? How long did booze take to hit?
Yeah, maybe he felt something, but it wasn’t a huge deal.
And… there was something he wasn’t feeling. His sense of Jonathan was fading. Along with - some of his worry? Because the alcohol was lessening his anxiety about all things, or did it have some specific effect on the link?
If there really was a link. If it wasn’t all in his head.
He felt lighter, though.
Cali handed him a ping pong paddle. “That’s enough for starters. How about you beat my boyfriend?”
And so, he did. Convincingly. And with maybe a little more flare than the situation really called for. Maybe a lot more. It was pretty great.
- - - - - -
“Do you think Emily Bronte would have been on Facebook?”
That was Joy; Jonathan had no idea who she was talking to. He also had no idea how he’d made it to seventeen without knowing how much rum improved Coke.
“I bet she already is,” said someone; Jonathan knew that, any other night, he’d be trying to come up with something witty, but instead he concentrated on savoring the sweet sweetness of the liquid in his cup.
This was going to be his last drink, he decided, because wasn’t three drinks some sort of limit?
Maybe he could have one more; he waved his hand and Mark, who was a pretty good guy if you ignored that he was dating Cali, handed him another. “Make this one last,” he said.
Halfway through, nature started to call; he got to his feet maybe a little more clumsily than was his want, which was interesting because he was sure the alcohol had improved his hand-eye coordination earlier against Mark.
“Hey there.” Stu, who, like Cali, was a day student, was at his elbow. “You okay?”
“Of course,” he said. And he was. Mostly.
After finishing, though, he sat on the toilet seat, trying to evaluate his physical state. For science.
He could touch his nose with his index fingers. He could say the alphabet backwards. He didn’t feel remotely like puking, or throwing rocks at cops. “Supercalifragulistic expealidotious.” His diction was fine. He was fine.
The quiet, the privacy, was nice, though, so he sat a little longer.
Walking back to where he’d been sitting, he kind of stumbled. It was, as usual, his damn knee’s fault - it hadn’t been hurting and he’d forgotten how unstable it could be. He caught himself on the edge of the pool table, so didn’t go down, but now all conversation had stopped and everyone was looking at him.
He straightened and made it back to Joy, then slid down the wall.
“Don’t mind them,” Joy said. “Tell me about Jason.”
“What do you want to know?”
“He’s essentially all right, right? Mostly normal?”
“I guess. Why?”
“Because he’s in the hot tub.”
“What the…”
Jonathan got to his feet and, in a line of such straightness that nobody could ascribe it a fractal dimension other than 1.0, went out a side door and to the recessed hot tub, where Cali, Mark, and Jason were sitting amongst bubbles.
How long had he been on the head???
“This,” said Jason, “is living. Think Mr. Ellison would put in a hot tub if I asked?”
“Uh…” said Jonathan.
“Probably,” said Mark. “If he lives in this neighborhood he can afford it.”
“I think we can come up with some really good sense-related reason,” Jason said. “Jonathan’s good with words.”
“Uh…” said Jonathan.
“So you really are drunk.” Jonathan couldn’t tell whether there was rebuke in Jason’s voice. Another thing drinking seemed to dull.
“Want to come in?” asked Cali. “There’s more than enough room.”
“Uh…” said Jonathan. He’d actually brought a suit… where was his bag?
“He can’t,” said Jason. “I’m wearing his swim trunks.”
- - - - - -
Cali insisted that his boxers would be fine; and there were offers to let him borrow a suit; but Jonathan ended up sitting by the fire pit listening to Jason and the other kids talking. It seemed - actually kind of even. They talked about movies - Jason had loved Alien, it seemed, and Cali and Mark were trying to convince him to see Aliens ASAP. Then they were debating whether Alien 3 was worth seeing or not - Mark said no way, but Cali was a completist. Jason joked, questioned, and was - well, essentially, normal.
After a bit, all three of them got out to make way for Joy and some other volleyballists. (Volleyballist? Well, it sounded better than volleyballer. ANYTHING sounded better than volleyballer. Volleyball player? That was probably it.) A few minutes later, Jason was dried, dressed, and hauling Jonathan to his feet.
“Ready to go?” Jason, Jonathan’s bag over his shoulder, said it like it was a question, but Jonathan was pretty sure it wasn’t. Then he was being hugged goodbye by a bunch of kids he knew, and a bunch more he didn’t. It seemed they were all a little drunk, and Jonathan thought maybe he should do something about that.
Then he thought, right, no.
Walking down the driveway to the street was… weird. Jonathan knew it had to be cold out - probably close to freezing, and his jacket was really just a wind-breaker - but he didn’t feel it. He could be out like this all night. Also, the asphalt kept on being just a little closer to his downgoing foot than he expected it to be. This wasn’t a bad thing, but it was a THING-thing. Some sort of thing.
At the end of the Bronns’ driveway, Jason asked, “I cut through the woods to get here, but maybe we should stick to sidewalks. What do you think?”
The only way Jonathan knew of getting to Mr. Ellison’s involved cutting across Cascade Academy property, but that was probably a bad idea.
“Do you even know how to get to Mr. Ellison’s…”
Jonathan stopped; what was the next word he wanted to say? A common English word, meant “by way of”…
“…via sidewalk?” he finished.
He really didn’t feel very well.
“No,” said Jason. “I thought you might.”
Jonathan shook his head, which did nothing for his general sense of wellbeing.
“The woods it is,” said Jason. “We can get on the path from Cali’s back yard…”
No…
“Or, through those trees up there.”
In spite of the (tastefully proportioned) streetlights, or maybe because of them, Jonathan couldn’t see a thing. “Lead the way,” he said.
“Maybe you should hold on to me,” said Jason.
“No way!”
“Suit yourself,” said Jason, starting along the wide sidewalk.
Jonathan made it all of forty yards before he stumbled and found himself sitting on pavement, his palms stinging, Jason glaring at him. “I think they call this ‘falling-down drunk’,” he said.
“I’m not drunk,” he protested. “The sidewalk’s uneven.”
“Right,” said Jason, reaching a hand down. Jonathan grabbed it and let Jason haul him to his feet. As soon as he was upright, Jason transferred his hand to Jonathan’s elbow, and didn’t let go when Jonathan tried, half-heartedly, to shake him off.
“You don’t need to walk me like a dog,” he said.
“Yeah, I think I do,” said Jason.
“I really don’t want you reading my mind right now.”
“It’s okay, it’s pretty blank.”
A minute later, they were in the woods, on a path that seemed obvious to Jason but that Jonathan had no sense of.
“Nice to know I learned something from all those hikes at CSAS,” said Jason.
Jonathan felt constantly on the verge of face-planting; only Jason’s hand was keeping him upright. This - was not a good feeling.
- - - - - -
Jason had a key to Mr. Ellison’s back door; they made it inside, and up the back stairs, without encountering either Mr. Ellison or Ms. Wang. Jason knocked a quick rat-a-tat on a closed bedroom door - Jonathan didn’t know whose - and then they were in Jason’s room.
Jonathan changed into his sleeping clothes slowly and deliberately. Nothing ended up backward, buttons made it through the correct slits. Then he perched on Jason’s bed.
The world was moving. Had there been an earthquake, far far away, so far only long-wavelength, low-amplitude waves were reaching Cascade?
Actually, he was pretty sure that wasn’t how earthquakes worked.
Jason sat beside him, close but not touching. “How do you feel?”
“You can’t tell?”
The world was really starting to spin, and Jonathan wanted it to stop. Right now.
“When you called during Alien on Wednesday - you were reading me,” said Jason. “I was afraid I was imagining it.”
“It’s been pretty obvious to me.”
“I hear - okay, ‘hear’ is the wrong word - I feel a lot of things. Sometimes they’re real, sometimes they’re not. But tonight - I knew something was wrong with you, and I found you.”
That - was pretty horrifying.
Slowly, without asking permission, Jason reached over and placed a hand on Jonathan’s calf. “You’re kind of a mess.”
Jonathan nodded. That wasn’t a good idea.
“Maybe you should puke.” Jason gestured toward the bathroom door.
He was not going to puke. That was not a thing that was going to happen.
What he was going to do was Metabolize. And what sped up metabolism? Oxygen. He was just going to breathe more than usual.
Unfortunately, increased oxygen also made the world spin.
“So what sort of stuff can you pick up about me?” asked Jason.
Were they really going to do this now? Jonathan grabbed a pillow and rolled away from Jason. “I know everything you ate since Wednesday morning,” he answered. “I think I get strong emotions, or maybe just shifts.” He paused. “I know you think your bed’s lumpy.”
“What about temperature? Or smells?”
“Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“Sure you don’t want to puke? Nobody will hear you.”
“Stop mentioning puking!”
“What are you reading from me right now?”
“Nothing,” Jonathan told the pillow.
“Nothing?”
“I think alcohol dims things.”
“Oh.”
Jonathan rolled onto his other side. “It’s not like that! I didn’t drink to tune you out!”
“Actually, I think you pretty much did,” said Jason. He got up and headed toward the bathroom.
“Wait!” said Jonathan, trying to get and follow but not quite figuring out how to make all his limbs cooperate. But Jason reappeared almost immediately, carrying a cup and some pills.
Tylenol. Jonathan swallowed them, then lay back down, again clutching the pillow.
“You hate this,” said Jason.
“I don’t hate anything.”
“You do. You hate the way you feel right now. Everything about it.”
Jonathan hugged the pillow more tightly. “I’m just tired.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Jason. He did something that made all the lights go out; then he put a pillow under Jonathan’s head and drew a comforter over him.
“I’m going to sleep UNDER the covers,” he said. “Wake me if you need me.”
“Okay,” said Jonathan; then, “Sorry.”
“I know you are, now apologize,” said Jason.
“That’s pretty lame.”
“Yeah, so are you.”
“If only you knew how true that is.”
“I know how true that is. I’ve been linked to you since Tuesday night, remember?”
“Shit.”
Jason didn’t respond; and Jonathan let sleep overtake him.
* * * THE END * * *
Title: And Back To School for Jonathan
Fandom: The Sentinel
Rating: PG for language and underage drinking
Category: gen
Wordcount: ~5600
Warnings: None
Summary: What it says on the box. Having rescued teen sentinel/best friend/personal project Jason from an inappropriate placement, life returns to normal for Jonathan. Or not.
Though AO3 tells me this is the ninth in my series about teen sentinels (and Blair and Jim dealing with Blair finally growing up), it takes place right after the fifth story, The Other Side; I'm not being terribly linear.
I'll post the tenth, and final (probably), story in the series tomorrow.
Jonathan carefully, carefully kept his expression absolutely neutral as his father laid out the plans the adults had worked out amongst themselves. As soon as dinner was over, it seemed, he was to return to his Cascade Academy dorm room, while Jason was to head up to CSAS to spend a few days working with Dr. Blair, as if the last month had never happened.
Had everyone forgotten - did nobody think - that he might have some useful input into how to help Jason?
Well, given how much work was waiting for him, a couple of days without Jason around might not be such a bad thing. “You’ll let me know how he’s doing?” he asked.
“Of course,” said Dr. Blair. “You can trust us. You both can.”
“Okay then,” he said.
The adults around Mr. Ellison’s insanely large dining table - Dr. Blair, Mr. Ellison, Lawyer Grace, Officer Jim, and his own mom and dad - all seemed relieved by his basic acquiescence, and Jonathan wondered what they’d thought he’d do. It wasn’t as if he was about to become a serial runaway! A near-constant of his life was that he met, or exceeded, expectations, albeit in conjunction with some simple expectation management.
Jason, on the other hand, drew in a breath, his eyes widening; then, as if a curtain was dropping, his expression closed.
Was he mirroring Jonathan’s own careful neutrality? No, this was something else; this was Jason shutting down.
“Excuse us,” said Jonathan, rising as quickly as he could without upending his chair, and circling the table. “Come with me,” he said directly into Jason’s ear, his chin almost touching Jason’s shoulder. “We need to talk.”
When Jason didn’t move, Jonathan pulled his chair back; with a start, Jason seemed to come into himself, flailing a bit; but not more than Jonathan had been prepared to handle. Jason rose unsteadily and Jonathan kept him upright as he half-led, half-propelled him out of the dining room and up the back stairway and down the hall to the room they were working on making Jason’s.
Suite, more like. Jason even had his own bathroom.
Jonathan switched on the white noise generator he’d bummed off of Dr. Blair a short while before, then pointed Jason toward his huge bed.
Jason threw himself backward with a groan. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean to… I can’t keep falling apart!”
Jonathan hopped up beside him and shoved him with his foot. “Item one of your new, revised curriculum needs to be remedial self-advocacy. If you don’t want to go to the camp, just say, ‘I don’t want to go to the camp tonight.’ That’s all it’ll take.”
“That’s okay, I really don’t mind going up. And…” And Jason stopped and looked away. “You need the break,” he said.
“You read me, didn’t you,” said Jonathan. “Shit, Jason, I didn’t mean it!”
Though of course he did; and of course Jason knew it then, and now. “I’m not mad, or upset, or anything, not now,” said Jason.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“It’s just - it’s just - it’s like, my body reacts before my brain gets a say. I think something broke at Dawson, something up here.” Jason tapped his forehead.
“Not broken!” Jonathan insisted. “Maybe - maybe strained, a little. You’ve been fine since Saturday morning.”
“Yeah, mostly,” said Jason. “But… well, you know why.”
“No, actually I’m pretty clueless here.”
“I never mega-zone when you’re around.”
Was that really true?
“You sure you’re okay with us being apart? Until Friday night?” Jonathan asked.
“Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, you’ve been at school here in Cascade since September and it’s been fine. Mostly.”
“Except for the broken arm and the parental kidnapping.”
“Yeah, except for.”
Jonathan reached and took Jason’s hand. “You’re really okay with going?”
“Yeah.”
“Would it be better if you could take some of me with you?”
Jason yanked his hand back. “I can feel the shape of what you’re…” he waved his hand in a circle.
“Proposing? Offering?” Jonathan supplied.
“Yeah. I can feel the shape…”
Jonathan took Jason’s hand again and squeezed it. “Jason Wagner,” he said, “I promise to come when you call, listen when you talk, be a map - or whatever - when you need one. I promise to learn as much as I can about senses, and the human brain, so that I can help you handle your abilities. Not just handle - use them, just like Dr. Blair says. And I promise never, never, ever to give up on you.”
“God, Jon!” Jason visibly swallowed, then said, “I’ll try my best to treat my senses as gifts. I know they’ve never been any good to anybody, but maybe one day they will be.” He paused. “You know I can pretty much read your mind,” he said. “I promise to not judge your thoughts. You don’t have to be afraid of that.”
Jonathan barked a laugh. “That’s good!”
He squeezed Jason’s hand again; not hard at all, but a sensation not unlike a muscle contraction travelled up the inside of his arm and through his shoulder. The room suddenly seemed warmer; somewhere in the distance a wolf howled. His heart thudded, racing for a handful of beats until he turned his focus inward, drawing in one slow, steady breath. Then another, then a third.
He wasn’t alone in those breaths. Though he’d dropped Jason’s hand, a sensation of unlocalized touch remained.
He looked at Jason; the boy’s eyes were huge, his breathing matching Jonathan’s. “We did something,” Jason gasped. “Just now… I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be sorry!” said Jonathan. “This is excellent! This is perfect!”
Jason’s response was interrupted by a knock on the door; that it startled Jason was proof that the white noise generator worked, for which Jonathan was keenly thankful.
Jonathan called, “Come in,” remembering an instant later that it was Jason’s room they were in; another sign that self-assertion was, as the pros called it, “an area of opportunity” for Jason.
Jonathan’s mother peered around the door. “Ready to go back to school?” she asked.
- - - - - -
Returning to the dorm was less awkward than Jonathan expected it to be. The hall parents, one of the music teachers and her husband, announced that they wanted to speak with him at length, but they were quickly redirected by his mother, who pulled them aside for a private conversation.
His roommate, Thad, frowned at him, hands on hips. “I was almost arrested, you know,” he said. “The Chief of Police himself gave me the third degree.”
Jonathan wondered how long it had been since Officer Jim had actually arrested anybody. “Scary stuff, man,” he said. “Sorry. I’d have bailed you out.”
“Yeah, well…”
“You’re a good guy, to’ve endured that for my friend and me.” Jonathan paused, sensing he was on the verge of laying it on too thickly even for Thad. Time for a subject change. “What’d we do in English? Still pounding through Wuthering Heights?”
A few minutes later, his mother popped in to give him a hug goodbye; then, word having gotten around that he’d reappeared, kids he knew began to drop by to hear his story (he pretty much went with the truth), wish him well, and tell him how lucky he was he hadn’t been expelled.
By nine p.m., the crowd had outgrown the dorm room quota (which he was thinking he should probably be obeying just now) and everyone had relocated to the lounge. Someone made popcorn; someone else opened up a couple of two-liter bottles of ginger ale, and they ended up having a welcome-back party of sorts, kids talking about the upcoming semester change and whether there’d be snow in Cascade that winter and gossiping about teachers and whomever wasn’t around.
It was nice. Normal. Not exactly scintillating, but not fraught either, and Jonathan found that that wasn’t a bad place to be.
Things cleared out pretty early, though, with the sophomores having a huge paper due in history and some of the seniors still elbow-deep in the college application process. Eventually only a senior girl, Joy Silva, remained. “Was it scary, going into Dawson?”
“A little, but, honestly I wasn’t too afraid of a breaking-and-entering charge.” He paused. “Dogs I’d have been afraid of, but the guy I was with, he has pretty acute senses and he didn’t hear anything. I was mostly afraid we’d be too late. My friend Jason was really sick and they were essentially torturing him to death… that’s what I was afraid of.”
Joy shook her head, smiling. “You’re such a rebel. Which reminds me - I was supposed to ask if you could come to Cali’s on Friday night. Bring that friend of yours we’ve heard so much about - and, yeah, I’m being sarcastic, I didn’t know he had a name until today.”
“I think he’s out of town.” Actually, Jase was supposed to be returning to Mr. Ellison’s sometime Friday, but there was no way Jonathan was going to let his universes collide any further.
“Too bad,” she said. “We’re going late, so figure out some excuse for a weekend pass if you can. Let’s see how resourceful you really are.”
Cali Bronn was a day student who lived in a cul-de-sac in the same general neighborhood as Mr. Ellison. Smart, pretty, and a little bit of a lit crit nerd; Jonathan liked her. He’d twice been invited to off-campus parties at her house, and both times he’d been unable to attend, first when Jason had broken his arm in October, and then again in December because he’d had to go to a family wedding in Vancouver. Saying no again just wasn’t going to happen.
- - - - -
Lying in bed that night felt - well, unusually unfamiliar, unusually uncomfortable. There was a new uneasiness in the back of his mind, a sense of being in a room too full of smells and too many other guys, on a mattress that creaked, behind a curtain that blocked nothing.
Jonathan squelched a flash of irritation and instead thought about his toes, relaxing them one by one, from the outside-in, first his right foot, then his left. Then his calves, gently tensing each and then releasing, being careful not to aggravate his problem knee. Then his thighs…
Soon, the sense of discomfort faded, and Jonathan stopped his tour through Remedial Relaxation. Was he really going to have to lay everything out for Dr. Blair? Don’t assume Jason understands what you’re saying; don’t assume he’ll be able to use what he seems to understand. Don’t just let him flap in the wind, you’re supposed to be the WORLD EXPERT in SENTINELS damn it…
With an effort, Jonathan again diffused his rising irritation. Not helpful; and he did need to get to sleep…
- - - - -
Breakfast was waffles, scrambled eggs, and real maple syrup this week. But the syrup made the waffles too mushy, too sweet; and the eggs - well, they just weren’t right.
The eggs are fine, Jonathan thought. I like them this way .
In the back of his throat, there was the taste of milk, of hay and mildew, and a banana still sharply green. The milk is fine, he thought. Don’t get all judgey about the poor cow’s diet. And if you don’t like the banana, don’t eat the banana.
But I’m hungry!
Jonathan felt like banging his head on the table. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, and opened them slowly.
Thad and a couple of the other guys were staring at him.
Jonathan shrugged. “Trust me, you don’t want to know,” he said, then choked down the rest of his eggs (he was not going to get through this morning without protein!) and fled.
- - - - -
Classes went well - Jonathan did, indeed, have some catching up to do, but not as much as he’d feared. After lunch (pizza for him, a remarkably tasty ham sandwich for Jason he was pretty sure) he met with the Head Dean, and again he blasted through with the honesty. Yes, what he’d done was stupid. But, yes, he’d probably do it again.
“So you didn’t learn any lessons?” the dean asked.
“Probably the wrong ones,” he answered. “My big take-away is that it worked. I acted when nobody else would, and the result is, my friend Jason is in a much better situation now than he was this time last week. Last Wednesday, he was comatose.”
Even now, days later, describing how Jason had been his final few days at the Dawson still hurt viscerally, like a blow to the gut; he felt ready to spring, ready to run as fast as his knee would let him.
The woman made a gentling motion with her hand, and Jonathan steadied his breathing, forcing his body to reconfigure itself to the shape of the chair. Calm and reasonable, he was calm and reasonable, and smart enough to make any oddities tolerable.
“You could have come to me,” she said. “I would have helped.”
“Standing there, outside Dawson, knowing what was happening to him… We had to act. I honestly didn’t know if he was going to survive the night.”
“It was that bad?”
Jonathan nodded. “It seemed that bad. Maybe it wasn’t. Probably it wasn’t. But - ma’am, you know I’m not an idiot. I had a call to make, and I made it, knowing there would be consequences. I just thank you that they’ve been minor so far. I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay here.”
The dean smiled. “You’re really very good at this, kiddo. You could teach a seminar. Just, stay out of trouble, would you?”
- - - - -
As usual, there were no Wednesday afternoon classes, to facilitate interschool athletic and academic competitions. Jonathan, having passed on winter sports to give his knee a break, had nowhere he had to be, so he took some work with him to Thad’s JV hockey game. Midway through the second period his calc homework started to blur, the symbols losing their familiarity.
Stop it he thought angrily. This is just math. JUST MATH. I rock at math, okay? This is fun for me. Well, kind of.
After the game, he returned to his dorm room and flung himself onto his bed. Either he was going crazy, or he and Jason had done something to themselves yesterday evening. And, right now, he wasn’t sure which he’d rather it be.
You’re only crazy if you do what the voices tell you. He’d heard that somewhere once; or had Jason?
Dinner went fine - the baked chicken and ziti tasted like Cascade Academy’s baked chicken and ziti always did, the chocolate cake tasted as much, or as little, like chocolate cake as ever. Maybe things were getting better; maybe the mind-link-thing was fading.
The evening was devoted sending quick emails to his parents and to Mr. Ellison (care of his more-technologically-competent housekeeper, Ms. Wang) asking if he could stay with Jason at Mr. Ellison’s for the weekend; then more homework, as he continued to dig himself out.
A half-hour in, approval came from the Dean of Students - he was excused from campus as of 5 p.m. Friday, see you Sunday by 8 p.m. Super. He shot a quick note to Jason saying to expect him around 11 p.m. Friday, then dove into his physics homework.
At about 8:30, a couple of the senior girls in his Latin class stopped by to make sure he had the vocabulary list for Friday’s quiz, and they ended up ordering in pizza and watching some sitcom in the lounge. He was critiquing the pacing of the show, using the most ostentatious language he could come up with and making the girls laugh, when a feeling of panic hit him like a blast of cold air in his lungs. He jumped up, needing to run, to flee, to hide…
Both girls were staring at him. “A phone!” he almost shouted. “I need to make a call.” With the amount of financial aid he was getting, having his own cell phone would have been unseemly, but almost everyone else in school had one. One of the girls, her eyes wide, handed him her Nokia.
His fingers shook as he punched in Dr. Blair’s number. “What’s going on? How is he?” he asked over Dr. Blair’s laconic “Hello.”
“That you, Jonnie? I didn’t recognize the number.”
“Yes, yes… Dr. Blair, you’ve got to go check on Jason RIGHT THIS MINUTE.”
“Um, okay. I think the guys are watching a movie in the boys’ cabin… How’s school?”
“It’s fine,” Jonathan responded automatically, moving into the hallway. “How is he? Are you checking?”
“Of course I am,” said Dr. Blair. “I’m walking over right now. You had to talk to your head of school, right? How’d that go?”
“Great, great, she loves me. Are you there yet?”
“Yeah, I’m looking in… waving through their picture window… I’ve got five teenage sentinels and your dad staring at me right now, what did you want me to do exactly?”
“How’s Jason?”
“He’s sitting next to a new girl. Um, do you really want me to talk here? Half of them can hear me.”
Jonathan sighed. “Do you know what they’re watching?”
“I think Alien.”
“You let them…”
“Jonnie, they’re more than old enough for Alien.”
Another blast of terror washed over him. “Thanks,” he muttered, and turned off the phone.
- - - - -
Thursday and Friday went about the same. School was great; the kids were bright and - well, not angst-free, but generally okay enough that he didn’t have to do anything about it. Which made life pretty darn good. Except for, once or twice every hour or two, being hit by a feeling, a taste, a smell, a state of being, that wasn’t his. Sometimes - usually - it wasn’t too bad, or too strong, or he wasn’t mid-sentence or something - and it wasn’t a big deal. On Friday afternoon, though, he experienced a flash of vertigo while he was halfway up the shallow steps leading from the art barn to the library; there was no railing, and he found himself on the ground beside the pavement, his thigh and knee pounding, Thad and a couple of the guys from fall soccer looking at him.
“The idiot won’t tell anyone how bad his knee is,” Thad was saying. “He’s going to be useless to you guys next year at this rate.”
So he hadn’t almost fainted, nope, no way, his knee had buckled. Jonathan could work with that. “It’s fine as long as I don’t twist it,” he said, letting himself sound a little whiney as he turned and sat on a step. “I can run on it okay.”
They got him to his feet and continued up the stairs past him, towards the cafeteria; he ducked into the library and sat in the first chair he saw. Jason he thought, What was that about? Are you okay?
Nothing.
Cali Bronn dropped into the seat beside him. “Hey there. You’re coming over tonight?” she asked. “Can you stay past curfew?”
“Yeah, all set,” he said.
- - - - -
Jonathan went light on dinner, then packed up his homework and a couple of changes of clothes and headed across the Cascade Academy ball fields to Cali’s house.
Or, rather, her back yard, which backed into the woods that surrounded the school. Music (Blink 182) and the varying illumination of a fire quickly proved that he’d found the correct path.
He was afraid he’d be too early, but there were already a couple dozen kids there when he arrived, standing around a fire pit, playing ping pong and foosball in the heated barn/garage (complete with sink and half-bath), and - yeah, there was the famous hot tub, spurting steam into the dark.
It was a nice mix of kids; not the brainiest of the brainy, necessarily, or the richest of the rich, or most talented of the school’s artists and athletes, but the kids who made things happen. Cali Bronn herself had won a state writing contest, and captained the volleyball team. Gil Jian had helped direct the fall musical; he also had taken most of the pictures in the new school catalog. Stu O’Brian was being recruited by a Big Ten school’s football program but was considering spending a gap year spelunking.
Cali handed Jonathan a stick and a bag of marshmallows. “You can’t stay unless you can make a decent s’more,” she said.
- - - - -
Jonathan had forgotten how good he was at ping pong; turns out, it was a very different game if your opponent wasn’t a sentinel. After winning a couple of games, he found himself leaning against the wall trying to out-snark Joy Sliva about the less-than-stellar play of the other kids.
Around 8:30, the boarding kids, with the exception of Joy, who was staying over, started to head back to campus; around 9, a few local kids arrived, including Cali’s boyfriend. Mark Something.
What had he expected?
“Let’s see you play against Mark,” Joy giggled. “He’s really good.”
Jonathan shook his head. Cali wasn’t going to dump some townie (my, haven’t we gone snobby, a part of him jeered) because Jonathan had a better serve.
Apparently he wasn’t an open book only to sentinels, because Joy was peering at him and laughing. “Poor baby,” she said. “This will help.”
Which is how Jonathan found himself holding a beer.
“Sam Adams Winter Wheat,” he read aloud, trying to buy himself time. What was he going to do with this thing?
“It’s a twist top,” said Joy. “Go crazy.”
“I don’t drink.”
Apparently he’d said that a little louder than he’d meant to; or maybe it was just the sort of thing that caught peoples ears, because now the ten or so kids in the garage were staring at him, some looking incredulous, some exuding pity, some awe.
Cali came over and took his beer. “Let’s see. You’re super-stressed. Your knee is killing you… uh, you aren’t taking anything, like, narcoticy, for it, are you?
“Just Tylenol.”
“Time for some more aggressive self-medication, then.”
“Beer smells - uh, gross.”
“Not that we want to despoil you or anything but - let’s just start with rum and coke then, okay?”
And so, he did. And it was pretty good. Not quite identical to regular old cola, but not so different - just a little less sweet, and, somehow, a little harder to convince his throat to let pass.
At least the first glass was. The second was going down much more smoothly.
Did he feel it? How long did booze take to hit?
Yeah, maybe he felt something, but it wasn’t a huge deal.
And… there was something he wasn’t feeling. His sense of Jonathan was fading. Along with - some of his worry? Because the alcohol was lessening his anxiety about all things, or did it have some specific effect on the link?
If there really was a link. If it wasn’t all in his head.
He felt lighter, though.
Cali handed him a ping pong paddle. “That’s enough for starters. How about you beat my boyfriend?”
And so, he did. Convincingly. And with maybe a little more flare than the situation really called for. Maybe a lot more. It was pretty great.
- - - - - -
“Do you think Emily Bronte would have been on Facebook?”
That was Joy; Jonathan had no idea who she was talking to. He also had no idea how he’d made it to seventeen without knowing how much rum improved Coke.
“I bet she already is,” said someone; Jonathan knew that, any other night, he’d be trying to come up with something witty, but instead he concentrated on savoring the sweet sweetness of the liquid in his cup.
This was going to be his last drink, he decided, because wasn’t three drinks some sort of limit?
Maybe he could have one more; he waved his hand and Mark, who was a pretty good guy if you ignored that he was dating Cali, handed him another. “Make this one last,” he said.
Halfway through, nature started to call; he got to his feet maybe a little more clumsily than was his want, which was interesting because he was sure the alcohol had improved his hand-eye coordination earlier against Mark.
“Hey there.” Stu, who, like Cali, was a day student, was at his elbow. “You okay?”
“Of course,” he said. And he was. Mostly.
After finishing, though, he sat on the toilet seat, trying to evaluate his physical state. For science.
He could touch his nose with his index fingers. He could say the alphabet backwards. He didn’t feel remotely like puking, or throwing rocks at cops. “Supercalifragulistic expealidotious.” His diction was fine. He was fine.
The quiet, the privacy, was nice, though, so he sat a little longer.
Walking back to where he’d been sitting, he kind of stumbled. It was, as usual, his damn knee’s fault - it hadn’t been hurting and he’d forgotten how unstable it could be. He caught himself on the edge of the pool table, so didn’t go down, but now all conversation had stopped and everyone was looking at him.
He straightened and made it back to Joy, then slid down the wall.
“Don’t mind them,” Joy said. “Tell me about Jason.”
“What do you want to know?”
“He’s essentially all right, right? Mostly normal?”
“I guess. Why?”
“Because he’s in the hot tub.”
“What the…”
Jonathan got to his feet and, in a line of such straightness that nobody could ascribe it a fractal dimension other than 1.0, went out a side door and to the recessed hot tub, where Cali, Mark, and Jason were sitting amongst bubbles.
How long had he been on the head???
“This,” said Jason, “is living. Think Mr. Ellison would put in a hot tub if I asked?”
“Uh…” said Jonathan.
“Probably,” said Mark. “If he lives in this neighborhood he can afford it.”
“I think we can come up with some really good sense-related reason,” Jason said. “Jonathan’s good with words.”
“Uh…” said Jonathan.
“So you really are drunk.” Jonathan couldn’t tell whether there was rebuke in Jason’s voice. Another thing drinking seemed to dull.
“Want to come in?” asked Cali. “There’s more than enough room.”
“Uh…” said Jonathan. He’d actually brought a suit… where was his bag?
“He can’t,” said Jason. “I’m wearing his swim trunks.”
- - - - - -
Cali insisted that his boxers would be fine; and there were offers to let him borrow a suit; but Jonathan ended up sitting by the fire pit listening to Jason and the other kids talking. It seemed - actually kind of even. They talked about movies - Jason had loved Alien, it seemed, and Cali and Mark were trying to convince him to see Aliens ASAP. Then they were debating whether Alien 3 was worth seeing or not - Mark said no way, but Cali was a completist. Jason joked, questioned, and was - well, essentially, normal.
After a bit, all three of them got out to make way for Joy and some other volleyballists. (Volleyballist? Well, it sounded better than volleyballer. ANYTHING sounded better than volleyballer. Volleyball player? That was probably it.) A few minutes later, Jason was dried, dressed, and hauling Jonathan to his feet.
“Ready to go?” Jason, Jonathan’s bag over his shoulder, said it like it was a question, but Jonathan was pretty sure it wasn’t. Then he was being hugged goodbye by a bunch of kids he knew, and a bunch more he didn’t. It seemed they were all a little drunk, and Jonathan thought maybe he should do something about that.
Then he thought, right, no.
Walking down the driveway to the street was… weird. Jonathan knew it had to be cold out - probably close to freezing, and his jacket was really just a wind-breaker - but he didn’t feel it. He could be out like this all night. Also, the asphalt kept on being just a little closer to his downgoing foot than he expected it to be. This wasn’t a bad thing, but it was a THING-thing. Some sort of thing.
At the end of the Bronns’ driveway, Jason asked, “I cut through the woods to get here, but maybe we should stick to sidewalks. What do you think?”
The only way Jonathan knew of getting to Mr. Ellison’s involved cutting across Cascade Academy property, but that was probably a bad idea.
“Do you even know how to get to Mr. Ellison’s…”
Jonathan stopped; what was the next word he wanted to say? A common English word, meant “by way of”…
“…via sidewalk?” he finished.
He really didn’t feel very well.
“No,” said Jason. “I thought you might.”
Jonathan shook his head, which did nothing for his general sense of wellbeing.
“The woods it is,” said Jason. “We can get on the path from Cali’s back yard…”
No…
“Or, through those trees up there.”
In spite of the (tastefully proportioned) streetlights, or maybe because of them, Jonathan couldn’t see a thing. “Lead the way,” he said.
“Maybe you should hold on to me,” said Jason.
“No way!”
“Suit yourself,” said Jason, starting along the wide sidewalk.
Jonathan made it all of forty yards before he stumbled and found himself sitting on pavement, his palms stinging, Jason glaring at him. “I think they call this ‘falling-down drunk’,” he said.
“I’m not drunk,” he protested. “The sidewalk’s uneven.”
“Right,” said Jason, reaching a hand down. Jonathan grabbed it and let Jason haul him to his feet. As soon as he was upright, Jason transferred his hand to Jonathan’s elbow, and didn’t let go when Jonathan tried, half-heartedly, to shake him off.
“You don’t need to walk me like a dog,” he said.
“Yeah, I think I do,” said Jason.
“I really don’t want you reading my mind right now.”
“It’s okay, it’s pretty blank.”
A minute later, they were in the woods, on a path that seemed obvious to Jason but that Jonathan had no sense of.
“Nice to know I learned something from all those hikes at CSAS,” said Jason.
Jonathan felt constantly on the verge of face-planting; only Jason’s hand was keeping him upright. This - was not a good feeling.
- - - - - -
Jason had a key to Mr. Ellison’s back door; they made it inside, and up the back stairs, without encountering either Mr. Ellison or Ms. Wang. Jason knocked a quick rat-a-tat on a closed bedroom door - Jonathan didn’t know whose - and then they were in Jason’s room.
Jonathan changed into his sleeping clothes slowly and deliberately. Nothing ended up backward, buttons made it through the correct slits. Then he perched on Jason’s bed.
The world was moving. Had there been an earthquake, far far away, so far only long-wavelength, low-amplitude waves were reaching Cascade?
Actually, he was pretty sure that wasn’t how earthquakes worked.
Jason sat beside him, close but not touching. “How do you feel?”
“You can’t tell?”
The world was really starting to spin, and Jonathan wanted it to stop. Right now.
“When you called during Alien on Wednesday - you were reading me,” said Jason. “I was afraid I was imagining it.”
“It’s been pretty obvious to me.”
“I hear - okay, ‘hear’ is the wrong word - I feel a lot of things. Sometimes they’re real, sometimes they’re not. But tonight - I knew something was wrong with you, and I found you.”
That - was pretty horrifying.
Slowly, without asking permission, Jason reached over and placed a hand on Jonathan’s calf. “You’re kind of a mess.”
Jonathan nodded. That wasn’t a good idea.
“Maybe you should puke.” Jason gestured toward the bathroom door.
He was not going to puke. That was not a thing that was going to happen.
What he was going to do was Metabolize. And what sped up metabolism? Oxygen. He was just going to breathe more than usual.
Unfortunately, increased oxygen also made the world spin.
“So what sort of stuff can you pick up about me?” asked Jason.
Were they really going to do this now? Jonathan grabbed a pillow and rolled away from Jason. “I know everything you ate since Wednesday morning,” he answered. “I think I get strong emotions, or maybe just shifts.” He paused. “I know you think your bed’s lumpy.”
“What about temperature? Or smells?”
“Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“Sure you don’t want to puke? Nobody will hear you.”
“Stop mentioning puking!”
“What are you reading from me right now?”
“Nothing,” Jonathan told the pillow.
“Nothing?”
“I think alcohol dims things.”
“Oh.”
Jonathan rolled onto his other side. “It’s not like that! I didn’t drink to tune you out!”
“Actually, I think you pretty much did,” said Jason. He got up and headed toward the bathroom.
“Wait!” said Jonathan, trying to get and follow but not quite figuring out how to make all his limbs cooperate. But Jason reappeared almost immediately, carrying a cup and some pills.
Tylenol. Jonathan swallowed them, then lay back down, again clutching the pillow.
“You hate this,” said Jason.
“I don’t hate anything.”
“You do. You hate the way you feel right now. Everything about it.”
Jonathan hugged the pillow more tightly. “I’m just tired.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Jason. He did something that made all the lights go out; then he put a pillow under Jonathan’s head and drew a comforter over him.
“I’m going to sleep UNDER the covers,” he said. “Wake me if you need me.”
“Okay,” said Jonathan; then, “Sorry.”
“I know you are, now apologize,” said Jason.
“That’s pretty lame.”
“Yeah, so are you.”
“If only you knew how true that is.”
“I know how true that is. I’ve been linked to you since Tuesday night, remember?”
“Shit.”
Jason didn’t respond; and Jonathan let sleep overtake him.
* * * THE END * * *