fandomhigh | TeeVee for Beginners, Friday Period Two

They were not in a classroom today. In fact, they were in the gym. And there weren't any couches, just very cold, very plastic chairs. The A/C was running on high. There was a flatscreen at the front of the class, which Mitchell was standing in front of - many feet away from the chairs.

He had some wads of cotton plugged up his nose. With his complexion, he figured he could get away with saying he was simply a bit ill. It wasn't that whatever was happening affected him, but it meant that the air was full of pheromones - of desire, want, blood rushing heavily through veins and--

It disgusted him. He didn't want to hurt any of them. He would've stayed at home, if he hadn't been afraid it'd cost him his job. "Today, we'll be discussing recent television," he started, "It's faster-paced, cut more rapidly, making its departure from the theatre." He wasn't planning to be speaking long today. His classes always seemed to be affected by this sort of business. "Some say it's because our cultural attention span has gotten so short. Some say it's simply because we can absorb more information than we did previously. I'm not a scientist, I can't tell you which one it is, but I can tell you that modern standards of comedy seem to have fallen quite a bit."

"The television medium is much more scattered now. There's far more channels than in the past, when at best you'd get five or six. Now, you can watch a hundred different things or more, geared towards your tastes, wishes, and expectations. Cooking channels, comedy channels, news channels. Anything you might want to learn, anything you might want to follow, anything you might want to have fun with? It's there on the TV. Just a click of the remote away."

He went into a bit of a routine about sci-fi and fantasy channels and fiction, but it was a bit sketchy, along the lines of, 'sci-fi is about the future, fantasy has dragons, all of these types have their standards'. "Then there's the sitcom," he finished, at last, "Developed back in the 50s, perfected in the 80s. Situational comedy. A cast of characters operating from the same 'situation', like a drama with jokes. It's often about the dialogue."

He pointed at the TV with the remote. "Today, we'll be watching different channels. You'll discuss what defines each and every one of them. What are the most obvious visual markers? Who does the channel seem to be geared at? Would you watch it on your own?"

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The teacher looked unwell and was obviously trying to avoid the students.

Jack's sex pollen-assisted hormones didn't especially care, strangely enough. They decided that, with the way this week had been going, trying to chat up Professor Mitchell would be a brilliant capper.

... all right. Jack would have been entirely capable of deciding something like that without extra sex pollen assistance. Anyhow, he had a question! An entirely logical, important, class-based question.

"Professor Mitchell?" he began, and his manners were, for the moment at least, entirely appropriate. "May I ask you about something they mentioned on the news channel?"

Mitchell wasn't George. That's why he wasn't banging his head off of anything, ranting, or letting much more of his discomfort on than he already had. He was here to be a teacher, and if he just focused on the A/C enough, he wouldn't be focusing on all the bloody smells in the room.

(I am not going to be a shark)

"Sure," he said, casually. "Shoot."

"They kept saying something about following CNN on Twitter, on the little text at the bottom of the screen," Jack noted. "Is that a periodical?"

... no, no one had showed him the Internet yet.

"Er." He opened his mouth to speak, then took a moment to think of something. "Not really," Mitchell said, finally, as affable as he could manage in the state he was in. "It's this service that sends messages to your phone or your computer." Beat. "I don't really know the technical details."

Sometimes these things slipped his notice, although for a vampire of his age, back home, he was pretty good in comparison.

"Oh. Right," Jack said, as if that made sense. "I can ask ... Tony. Or someone. I know he's good at the technology bits."

And if that were really all, he would be going. But it wasn't all, so he stood there for a second, idly fidgeting with a piece of hair, and finally came out with, "Are you sick?"

Mitchell never Twittered. That much was obvious.

"No, I'm..." He tried to smile as disarmingly as possible, "I just quit smoking."

It was always the easiest explanation for the slight tremble his body had on a regular basis.

Mitchell was always attractive. That smile was lethal, and Jack's smile in response was as reflexive as it was boyish.

A schoolgirl crush on a teacher. (Really, Jack, haven't we already been here?) He would roll his eyes at himself later. Right then, it felt appropriate to murmur sympathetically even though he wasn't entirely sure what stopping smoking had to do with anything. "I'm sorry," he said. "And you had a bit of a nosebleed, too, it looks like."

Edited 2009-06-05 13:36 (UTC)

"A cold," Mitchell corrected, "Quitting's hit me in the immune system. Easier to catch one."

He felt a light thunk-thunk-thunk at the back, and that wasn't good, though. "Thanks for asking," he said, "But don't you have a whole day left ahead of you that doesn't involve any teachers?" When I was your age, he nearly started.

"I don't have another class until Tuesday," Jack said, as if he couldn't hear the please go and bother someone else implicit in Mitchell's tone. "Nothing but time. I may take the train back to Baltimore tonight, if I can find a rail schedule."

It would be a surprise visit, and a bit soon for one, but Jack was almost certain he could make Sebastien not mind.

Mitchell was going to chalk the sharing intimate details with a stranger up to the human thing. Or, quite possibly, on any of the number of reasons that had always made him a good predator to begin with.

"Yeah, but there's got to be more interesting things to do than to talk to an old dodger like me," he said, with some irony. "When I was your age," impulse given into, "I couldn't wait to get out there after class. Sometimes even during."

Thunk-thunk-thunk. He needed to get better cotton, except he knew that wouldn't really help.

"You don't look that old," Jack said, which he knew was cheesy even as he said it. "And this hardly feels like class, really. It's sitting around watching films."

"Don't blaspheme," Mitchell returned, "Old films are much more sophisticated."

He was a teacher. That meant he had tools at his disposal to shoo students out, right? He was going to have to do that before the noise overwhelmed him.

"I've seen this," Jack said, waving a hand vaguely at the screens in the room in a subtle challenge, "and I've seen a few novelties about girls tied to train tracks back home. Oh, and two or three things back in the dorms. Not much sophistication in any of it."

... no, he still wasn't going anywhere. Stupid, stupid boy, stupid sex pollen.

"The really good films didn't happen till the 30s and 40s," he started, making a mental note that he'd have to rent ~~meta for~~ Casablanca so he could show George the part where he'd thrown over that chair.

... he was getting distracted by the thrumming.

He knitted his half-gloved fingers together. "Jack," he started, "I think it's time for you to start packing up, though, yeah?"

Now that really couldn't be ignored, even in Jack's addled state. It was nicely phrased, but it was an order. "Of course," he said, trying to keep a whine of frustration out of his voice entirely. To sound at all like that wouldn't be appropriate, helpful, or terribly likable.

The train ride to see Sebastien, though ... that was sounding better every moment.

"I'll see you in class next week, then. Sir."

"If you have any questions about films, feel free to ask me next week," Mitchell said, which was something of a consolation prize.

At the same time, he was berating himself for saying something even remotely encouraging on this issue, but he hoped at least this-- endless--

He glanced sideways at the class to hide the shimmer of black that appeared over his eyes between eyeblinks, then vanished on the next. He turned back to offer Jack a last nod in goodbye.

The shimmer in Mitchell's eyes was gone too quickly for Jack to notice anything beyond what could have been a trick of the light; he wouldn't have known what it was, anyhow. (The crisps alone would have ruled Mitchell out as a vampire to Jack, even if he had seen a reason to think in that direction. The vampires he knew didn't eat.)

"I will," he said, by way of goodbye, and took his leave.

Edited 2009-06-05 14:46 (UTC)

Mitchell, however, had noticed his own slip, and adjusted his shoulders nervously.

He should call Max and get out of town; he had a feeling the big guy wouldn't mind a quick escape.

TeeVee for Beginners, Friday Period Two

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