S1 E18 / 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖙𝖜𝖔

Seven months later, Adam Young's face was all over Mystic Falls.

She watched through a window, fingernails chipped against the arm rest as they put it up across the road: pinching tape between their finger and thumb and pressed a printed image of him against a street light.

Creases and edges were smoothed out, a palm run over the bold, frantic words.

She must've driven past a dozen on the way here, but not once had she actually looked at them. She hadn't done anything but glance at the posters on stop-lights, not stopping once to look back at the dark eyes printed in fresh ink.

But that was nothing unusual to the days she'd had since coming back here. Life had been the too fast type, always washing her up and lathering her with lake sludge until she was too disorientated to do anything but keep pushing forwards––

Until she was staring at a missing poster for her ex-boyfriend across the street.

...

..

.

  "Mrs Gilbert?"

Jeanie blinked.

She'd once sworn that Adam had a permanent glare, and the poster across from her confirmed it: a heavy, imposing stare that burned into the same cheeks that flushed as she was called to across the hallway.

Flustered, her chin dropped down to gather her things. Jeanie fumbled and cursed under her breath as her purse fell to the floor. Maybe it was being back in this high school or maybe it was the fact that she was so sure Adam's eyes were following her, but her hands shook slightly as she slung the old bag back over her shoulder.

  "Miss," Jeanie corrected before she could even look up, "Miss Gilbert... not Mrs––"

And then, again, when she looked up at the man in front of her, she was cut short.

When she'd gotten the invitation to come down to Mystic Falls High School for an informal meeting with her kid brother's new history teacher, she'd immediately assumed it was bad.

Real bad.

And that had made her feel real bad too.

She didn't mean to be a pessimist. She didn't like that about herself these days. Once upon a time, maybe she'd even considered herself a glass-half-full kind of person, but circumstance had called for a change.

This circumstance? A suspicion deriving from the fact that this definitely wasn't the first time she'd sat in this corridor and outside this classroom, prepping a speech in her head like a lawyer preparing to defend their client.

I know he's difficult... It's just... It's been a long year...

She had it memorised, off by heart

...he's a difficult kid in really difficult circumstances...

and had it held against her chest like armour.

Please, just give him a chance––

But, this new history teacher, standing in front of her, wasn't the same man who'd been in the last meeting.

Instead of Mr. Tanner, the teacher who had spent so much time lecturing Jeanie, three months ago, on how exactly she was failing at guardianship as drastically as Jeremy was failing his class, she found herself blinking up at a vaguely familiar face as they stood in the doorway of the history classroom.

He blinked back, caught off-guard by the sight of her standing in front of him.

Half of that surprise, she was used to. His eyebrows were raised and he looked at her, very tenderly, from head to toe.

Jeanie knew that was inevitable.

People tended to have that look in their eye whenever she showed up to this kind of stuff; the 'You're a little young to be responsible for two teenagers, huh?' that made her fumble with her words.

But then there was the second half–– his head tilted to the side and Jeanie squinted, almost desperately, as if she could place his face but just couldn't–– She just couldn't––

And then she could.

Oh.

Oh god.

Her eyes widened.

She could.

She recognised him.

And then, in unison, an awkward, strained laugh passed between them.

(Oh god.)

  "Hi," Jeanie said.

  "Hi," Jeremy's history teacher said back.

A pause.

"Ric?" Jeanie said, almost sheepishly, "Ric... right?"

Her nose scrunched as the memory of their first meeting flashing across the back of her frazzled brain. She watched his chin dropped to the floor as his lip quirked into an equally awkward smile.

She'd got it right. She'd always been good with names, no matter how drunk she'd been when they'd been first introduced.

He looked away and, in that moment, she knew that he was playing the memory back too. Or maybe he didn't remember her all.

God, she really hoped he didn't remember her.

He seemed to pause, and, when he looked back up at her, there was a dent in between his eyebrows and a slight squint in his eye.

A hand raised to point at her and, in that moment, Jeanie knew she was screwed.

(Or, at least, had been.)

  "Jenna...?"

She blinked at him.

A dent worked its way between his eyebrows.

   "Jenny?"

The mortification in her congealed into a bitter, sticky taste at the back of her mouth.

(Oh god!)

Immediately, she realised that she'd made a big mistake coming here.

  "No but, uh," Not-Jenny dragged in a breath, nervously adjusting her bag strap on her shoulder,  "Close."

  "Shit," He said, equally breathless.

  "Jeanie," She corrected.

He winced lightly and then, as if it was the only word programmed in him, he swore:

  "Shit."

  "Close," Jeanie said again, "But, not..." A dent worked its way between her eyebrows, " Not really––"

  "Yeah, I, uh, I got a few letters, but, uh..."

She stood there, hands clasped in front of her, as the newest member of Mystic Falls High School's faculty let out a long breath. It was a hopeless sigh, the kind that told her he knew exactly how much he'd screwed up already, and they hadn't even gotten into his classroom.

His cheeks flushed and he averted his eyes, briefly to the floor. A moment ticked over and she got the strong impression that he was slightly embarrassed––

Great, was all Jeanie could think to herself as her skin itched under the gaze of printed outline of Adam's eyes, We have that in common.

  "You're Jeremy Gilbert's guardian?"

Jeanie nodded, almost apologetically.

Her own embarrassment was intertwined in the way she, for a moment, was stiffly fixed to the floor. Her nod was choppy and she tried not to be insulted by the way Ric seemed to debate whether this meeting was a good idea.

  "Uh-huh."

He stared at her and she really didn't want to even know what was going through his mind. She played with her hands and dragged in and out a breath and cursed the woman she'd been a month ago.

If only she made better decisions on boxed wine––

  "I can go," Jeanie said and she hoped she didn't sound too enthusiastic about that option, "If you don't want to––"

  "Oh," He said quickly, "No... Don't, uh..."

And there was a pause.

Jeanie hadn't wanted to come to this thing to begin with, and the thought of being stuck in an office as the elephant in the room threatened to flatten them now made this all that much worse. Despite the No, she could see the calculation in his eyes; for a few, hopeful seconds, she wasn't sure if this informal guardian-teacher would go ahead.

But then he seemed to just shrug and nod to himself, as if to say 'what the hell' and stepped back in the doorway.

She watched, with a twinge in her chest, as he gestured for her to enter.

  "Jeanie Gilbert," The history teacher said, "Please take a seat."

──────

Alaric Saltzman had a friendly face.

If memory served her right, he'd been friendly to her too.

He was slightly scruffy at the edges but clean shaven, wearing a blazer that she could tell was only steamed by a hot shower and slacks that seemed just a tad bit too short. She watched as he rounded his desk, running fingers through his brown mussed hair––

Meanwhile, Jeanie settled opposite him in a student's desk, wondering idly who should lead with 'Thank you for coming' first.

She heard that thought back and grimaced to herself.

Yikes, Jeanie. Yikes.

She tried to make herself comfortable, but nothing about this situation was the kind that could make her unclench. She set her purse by her feet and quickly fixed her hair, as well, when his back were turned––

Jeanie hated that sudden feeling. It was the kind of feeling she'd felt every day since she'd come back to this town: the paranoia that she looked just as crappy as she felt.

She wondered if he thought she looked crappy, too, and then it all just felt worse.

To preoccupy herself in the quiet, Jeanie's eyes sank to his desk. She played with her fingers under the table and tried to swallow the tightness in her throat.

It was a neat desk and a neat classroom. The smell of it was vaguely familiar, like a pinch at the back of her nose just to remind her how many years she'd spent in these halls  as a student almost a decade ago.

Jeanie also wondered what the psychology of a teacher's desk was like and whether it could be read off like lines on palms or scatterings of stars. Would it be able to predict how this was going to pan out?

At least with Tanner she'd known he'd be difficult.

Now, all Jeanie could do was put her purse on the floor, a pager in her pocket and cross her arms and her fingers to hope that this man... of all the people in this world... wouldn't rip Jeremy to shreds.

Jeanie chewed on the inside of her cheek as she read the bronze plaque on the front of the history teacher's desk.

With Mr. Alaric Saltzman, she had no idea where this would go.

   "Are we expecting anyone else?"

That's what he began with.

Jeanie's chin tilted upwards as Mr. Saltzman began speaking, eyebrows raised expectantly. Her mouth froze in a slightly awkward smile, the kind that did everything but hide the frantic whir of her brain as she over analysed every word in that sentence.

(Her pep talk in the car hadn't quite prepared her for this. She'd covered a lot of scenarios but... not 'seeing the guy she'd met a month ago at a Mystic Falls Historical Society wine night', that was for sure.)

  "Hm?"

  "Is anyone else coming to this meeting?"

  "Oh... No," Jeanie remarked, shaking her head, "No, it's just me."

Just me.

She'd gotten better at saying that out loud and not wanting to disappear through the floor. It came with her smile tightening and her ankles crossing under the table. She adjusted her posture and dragged in a deep breath through her nose.

It's just Jeanie.

  "And he's your..."

He squinted slightly at her and Jeanie let out a slightly too loud laugh.

  "Brother," She answered, as if to say 'good joke'.

But Mr. Saltzman didn't laugh back.

Her smile slowly faded as she realised that maybe he'd been serious.

Oh.

The grown man in front of her seemed to trip over his words as he realised, too, what he'd implied by asking.

  "I didn't mean––"

  "Jeremy is my brother––"

  "Yeah, I can see that, I just––"

Alaric cut himself short as Jeanie just felt her skin crawl in that familiar paranoia––

Did she look old enough to be Jeremy's Mom?

But then came the flicker in the corner of his eye and they both seemed to realise that they were thinking perfectly opposite things––

You're older than I thought you were, Jeanie's mind broadcast to him just as he seemed to digest that maybe Jeanie was a fair bit younger than he'd first thought too.

As if a little too caught up in the pause, Mr. Saltzman's temperament wavered. He stared at Jeanie as she tapped her fingertips nervously against the top of the desk, her thumb running over a student's carving in the faded and worn wood––

He faltered and then, just as easily as he'd forgotten her name, he pushed on.

  "Right," He said and then seemed to reorientate him on the notes on his desk, "Right–– uh, thank you, I guess, for taking some time out of your busy day to drive in today. I think that's the place we should start––"

  "Sure," She said with a very nonchalant and not at all mortified bob of her head, "It's no problem."

Lie. It had been a problem, but everything to do with time was a problem these days. Jeanie didn't have enough of it.

  "I doubt that," Mr. Saltzman noted, almost knowingly.

Her eyebrows raised, and, in response, he nodded to the scrubs she hadn't had time to change out of.

  "Trauma nurse," He said. Her face froze as he smiled to himself, tapping a hand against his desk. "See, I remembered that, right?"

In a flash, again, their last conversation (or, really, lack thereof) flickered across Jeanie's mind. She watched the relief flush across his face and, at the same time, felt her sanity slip.

The smile Jeanie gave him in response was strained.

(She blinked so many times she was sure it looked like she was having a stroke, and begged the floor to split and swallow her whole.)

(Really, she just felt like she had something in her eye. Maybe it was her sanity making a last ditch attempt to jump ship out of her body.)

  "Anyway," He cleared his throat, "This won't take too long, I just wanted to touch base on Jeremy. He..." A falter as the teacher seemed to hesitate on how exactly to describe him, "He's a very interesting young man."

Interesting.

Huh.

That was a new one.

Tanner had had it out for him. That, Jeanie had been more than sure.

She'd sat in this room and squinted, in the same way, at a grown man who'd torn a mentally ill teenager apart as if for sport. He'd called Jeremy so many things that Jeanie had lost count: disappointing, stoner, a curse against this school's good name and the kind of burden that kept teachers up at night from sheer stress alone––

But Jeanie, in all honesty, had just wished people in this town called things as it was.

He was a struggling young man, and he was her kid brother.

She sighed through an uncomfortably set jaw and mentally unfurled that speech her brain was holding in an iron fist––

I know he's difficult... It's just... It's been a long year...

That's where she was supposed to start, right? But Mr. Saltzman hadn't called Jeremy difficult. He'd called him interesting, and, somehow Jeanie thought it was worse.

  "I inherited the these notes from the last teacher," He said and Jeanie's stomach twisted as he lifted a binder off the desk and waved it, "Believe it or not... this is virtually a full essay about every issue he's ever had with Jeremy Gilbert––"

  "Shit."

She hadn't meant to say that out loud.

Jeanie hadn't known it existed until he was opening it right in front of her.

  "––it even uses Harvard referencing which," Mr. Saltzman's eyebrows seemed to raise, vaguely miffed as Jeanie just tried to fight the urge to sink down in her chair, "Honestly? It's kinda impressive. As a teacher, I wouldn't even have time to put a binder together in the first place––"

Yeah, as Jeanie had said, Tanner had really had it out for him.

  "Jeremy's not, uh..."

She tried her best to say that Jeremy wasn't that bad. She tried her best to refute whatever accusations Tanner had made in that binder before she'd even heard them–– but she couldn't.

She knew that Jeremy had been a pain in the ass. She knew he'd spent the last seven months high off of his ass, flunking lessons and missing deadlines, all like it was an Olympic sport––

Oh god, Jeanie thought to herself as Mr. Saltzman put the binder down on his desk and started flipping through it, We're screwed.

  "I mean there's a lot of stuff in here," Mr. Saltzman commented idly and Jeanie's mouth twisted at every flash of paper against the light. "The work he's submitted. The work he hasn't... transcripts of meetings... a statement from the principal––"

  "Jeremy is a good kid."

That's how this vouch for her brother began.

There was a tug at the bottom of her stomach and a tightness in her throat. She chewed on the inside of her cheek and said it earnestly, ready to fight for a teenager who had spent the last eight months fighting against her guardianship like it was a prison sentence.

But Jeremy was not going to fail this class.

Not if she could help it.

...he's a difficult kid in really difficult circumstances...

  "Jeremy is a hard worker," She said quickly, "He's deceivingly smart. He's probably smarter me and... and I know... I know he's struggled over the past year and I know you're new to town but it has really been a really rough time for us––"

  "Did you know that Jeremy has one of the worst records of any student in this High School?"

Jeanie blinked a lot in a very small window of time.

  "I didn't know that, no––"

  "Just from the past year alone..." Mr. Saltzman remarked and squinted down at the notes in front of him, "He's the only student to have more than fifteen detentions in a single month that hasn't been suspended––"

Jeanie's eye twitched.

She'd had to do a lot of grovelling for that.

  "It's kind of impressive too," He added after a moment, "His track record is... it's so bad it's almost impressive––"

  "But he's getting better," Jeanie interjected and, for a single breath, she sounded so tired, "Jeremy will do better."

Mr. Saltzman's head tilted slightly to the side.

  "You sound very sure on that."

Jeanie held his gaze and, in that moment, she wondered whether this really was the same man she'd met a month ago.

He'd introduced himself as Ric. She remembered that. She remembered that he was from Boston and that he'd labelled himself a historian, and asked a lot of questions about the history Mystic Falls. Jeanie also remembered that he'd called himself an optimist when she'd asked him what it was that made him so interested in the past––

I don't know, he'd said over a beer at the Annual Mystic Falls Historic Society Wine Night as their newest guest, I guess I'm hoping there's good things in the past for us to find, y'know? That it's not all as hopeless as we remember.

Jeanie kissed her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.

Optimism, in reflection, had been a very strange pick up line.

What made her so sure?

  "If you're asking me to sell the fact that a teenage boy that lost both of parents seven months ago, deserves compassion to you," Jeanie said, "Then maybe you're in the wrong job."

Tenderly, Mr. Saltzman's eyebrows raised.

  "My brother has been going to therapy for months," She said, "And he's been doing his homework and he's been drawing again and he's an amazing artist... and–– and he's incredibly... insanely talented and..."

Jeanie cleared her throat.

She couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.

God, she'd driven down her and (OH GOD!) she'd already met this guy and (OH GOD!!!) she'd made the kind of mistake with him that she hadn't made in years. In a decade, maybe.

It was disappointing to have that sneaky suspicion that Ric from the Annual Mystic Falls Historic Society Wine Night was just another person in this town to look at a Gilbert and think, sheesh, what went wrong there?

  "I know it's difficult to imagine," She said in his quiet, "I know it's really... really hard looking at everything that Mr. Tanner has probably written down about him but... Jeremy is a good kid. He just needs some time and that compassion and I just..."

Jeanie trailed off lightly and shook her head.

  "Not a lot of people have given him that chance."

Admittedly, in the past, she'd been more succinct about it.

Tanner had been the kind of teacher that just coaxed arguments out of people. It had helped Jeanie gather herself and speak almost strategically and calmly; after all, she'd had a lot of experience with angry men.

But Jeanie supposed it was pretty hard to be cool with a history teacher she actually had history with; even if it was just a month ago.

Across from her, Mr. Saltzman seemed to take a moment to digest everything she'd said.

She couldn't read the expression on his face. It was slightly vacant, or calculated, as if he was trying to read her back–– she just winced inwardly to herself and wondered if this had been more awkward before or after she'd opened her mouth. At least it looked like he was actually listening, though.

Tanner had had this angry blank look in his eye and Jeanie, again, had been reminded of how many times she'd felt like she was talking to a brick wall.

And then Mr. Saltzman looked down at the binder in front of him and let out a sigh. He rubbed at the scruff on his chin.

  "He's kind of an asshole, huh?"

Jeanie's eyes widened.

  "What?"

The teacher didn't seem to realise how it'd come across until he looked back up and saw the expression on her face–– immediately, Jeanie watched the panic bloom in his eyes. His eyes widened too and he shook his head––

  "Oh no, I didn't mean Jeremy, I wasn't––"

He cut himself short and then looked down at the binder again. She watched him toss it closed, mouth slightly ajar as she realised that maybe she really had made a mistake–– one that she'd told him she didn't even want to talk about.

Mr. Saltzman seemed to wince to himself for a moment, his face contorting.

He took another breath and then tried again, speaking slowly.

  "I don't want to speak ill of the dead or anything but..."

He pressed a palm against the closed teachers notes and gave Jeanie an exasperated look.

"Reading this," He said, "Tanner sounds like a total asshole."

...

????

Jeanie's brain didn't quite compute with that.

???????

"I'm not imagining that," Mr. Saltzman said, and he looked miffed at it all, "Am I?"

Jeanie just blinked back at him.

There were a lot of thoughts going through her mind and not a single one of them was a disagreement.

If she was in the business of calling people names, asshole probably would've been a very accurate one for the teacher that had been mauled to death in the school parking lot.

  "It took me ages to get my head around that a fully grown man wrote this about a fifteen year old boy," Mr. Saltzman added after a few moments, "Complained about a teenager for this many pages... with the Harvard referencing too..."

Again, he shook his head.

   "I just..." He sounded, again, suspended in disbelief, "If I'd known this guy I get the feeling I wouldn't have liked him. Even in the way he writes he's just..."

  "––An ass," Jeanie finished for him.

She spoke softly and Mr. Saltzman's head raised back to look at her. She watched his brows bunched as he realised maybe, just maybe, he wasn't entirely insane for thinking the recently deceased was a subjectively awful and arrogant individual.

(Jeanie was significantly less scared of the dead than the average individual.)

She cleared her throat and he blinked for the first time in what felt like a very long time..

  "Not to speak ill of the dead," Jeanie said tentatively, her voice very quiet, "But I'd agree."

A smile twitched in the corner of his mouth and Jeanie, in complete whiplash of what had happened two minutes ago, was reminded exactly why she'd been drawn to this man in a busy room in the first place. Her cheeks flushed with the memory of that night.

  "I agree too, by the way," He said, "Jeremy is very talented––"

Oh?

  "––and he has a lot of potential."

Oh.

She watched as he, both physically and figuratively, pushed Tanner's classroom notes to one side.

  "I'm sorry if you got the impression that I'd called you down here because Jeremy's in trouble," Mr. Saltzman said and Jeanie really was just lost for words, "Because he's not... That's not what this is. You're right. Jeremy is a good kid and I want to work with you to help him."

──────

Help, in Mystic Falls, usually involved a casserole dish or two.

Jeanie had been up to her neck in them at one point. Who had known opening your doors for a wake was the kind of open-house policy that let in every stray piece of crockery in the neighbourhood?

Not her.

For months it'd been all they'd eaten: sympathy soups, casket casseroles and enough collard greens to feed a small army. Jeanie wasn't particularly great at cooking so a fully stocked freezer had fed them fine–– but then of course, Jeremy had refused to eat and Elena had just...

...

Jeanie had eaten most of the meals alone and cold after a long shift.

Alaric Saltzman's idea of help was, somehow, a lot more promising that than.

He didn't just want to help Jeremy, he was actually planning on seeing it through.

That had caught her off guard.

There was no criticism of her caregiving skills or any implication that Jeremy was some lost cause that would never been bought back to civility.

No, instead Mr. Saltzman talked through a reasonably thought out educational plan, one that had had her eyebrows raising slowly at every detail.

  "What do you think?"

He'd asked her the question, sat in the desk now beside her as he shared his laptop screen. She'd been quiet for a while, teeth buried in her bottom lip as she grappled with how quickly this had turned around. When she looked up from the screen, she nodded, albeit a little disorientated.

Things, she'd found, rarely turned out for the better.

(She really, really wasn't an optimist.)

  "I hope it all sounds good to you."

  "Yeah," Jeanie said, slightly breathless, "Yeah it... it sounds amazing."

Amazing.

  "Great."

  "Yeah."

The history teacher got to his feet, trailing back to his desk as Jeanie checked the time. Instead of Tanner's hour of terror, Mr. Saltzman had only taken up twenty minutes. And, unlike his predecessor, Jeanie felt like Mr. Saltzman actually wanted something to change.

  "I'm glad you agree," He said absently, back turn to her as she adjusted her posture. Her palms were clammy, she wiped them on the pant leg of her scrubs, "There's always a part of me that worries I'm overstepping with stuff like this."

  "God no," Jeanie said, almost a little too fast, "I think it's long overdue."

  "Well," Mr. Saltzman said in reply, "it's definitely a grown adult's burn book worth overdue, that's for sure."

She stayed seated, watching the man who she must've thought of once or twice over the past month. She could still taste the embarrassment at the back of her throat, but also felt a slight smile in the corner of her mouth as she chuckled along with his assessment––

(She missed how he looked up at the sound of her laugh.)

This guy was nice. He wanted to help.

  "I promise I'm usually a lot kinder with people," He said,  "I promise I have compassion, somewhere in me..."

  "Well, might be a miracle but," Jeanie smiled, "I think we found it somewhere between the six month plan for my brother and the opportunities for extra credits."

  He cracked a smile back, "Eh, that's just called doing my job."

And that's where the meeting ended, with Jeanie picking herself up out the desk and grabbing for her things a little too eagerly–– the verdict of this whole thing? Jeremy's new history teacher was exactly what she'd both dreaded and hoped––

A guy that could actually make a difference and––

And??

AND???

...

No.

Jeanie didn't even want to think about it.

She couldn't. She really couldn't.

If she looked at this man for long enough, the pieces of that night started to slip back together. The tips of her ears burned and she backed her bag and she tried her best to chew her own tongue out of her own mouth––

God, she really shouldn't drink wine.

Yikes. Jeanie. Yikes.

  "So, I'll get him started on that essay––"

  "Yeah!" Jeanie interjected, a little too brightly. She hadn't been listening to what he'd been saying. When she looked up at him, mid throwing her purse over her shoulder, his eyebrows were raised. "Yeah, sounds great. Yeah–– awesome. 100%––"

A perturbed smile dawned across his face.

  "Great," He repeated slowly as Jeanie caught her breath, "I'm glad to hear it."

She was standing by then, dragging herself up out of a desk that had felt a little too like a time machine. He stood too as a momentary lull stretched out between them–– it was the first prolonged pause since the hallway and Jeanie, for a moment, found it hard to breathe.

That's why her voice sounded so tight

  "I guess I should probably––"

Jeanie gestured to the door.

  "Yeah, of course, yeah––"

  "Okay."

  "Yeah, sure, uh––"

  "Unless there was anything else that you needed to talk about?"

Jeanie was already half-way to the door by the time she asked that question. Maybe it was more of a courtesy than anything; her head was stuffed by the multitude of other things that she had to do with the rest of her day.

Then, there was the increased pressure to look as cool as physically possible while walking out of this room.

But then he spoke:

  "Well, I guess just..." Mr. Saltzman trailed off, "It's just nice to see you again, Jeanie."

That made Jeanie pause.

God, she'd so nearly made it out of the door.

She'd so nearly made it out of this without even addressing it. She'd nearly walked away without having to linger on the fact that he'd forgotten her name and she hadn't forgotten his and chalked everything up to a dodged bullet.

She'd nearly left this classroom with the reassurance that he didn't remember it, that they'd both just been too drunk and too caught up in the moment and that maybe, just maybe, she could make it through another parent-teacher conference without sacrificing her dignity––

Jeanie winced just before she turned around.

When she did, however, Mr. Saltzman had a very specific gleam in his eye.

Crap.

Jeanie let out a long breath.

He remembered.

  "Mr. Saltzman..."

She sighed his name out just as he shook his head.

  "Ric," He interjected, "Call me Ric."

Crap (x2)

She gave him a strained, deeply uncomfortable smile, before she corrected herself:

  "Ric..."

But Jeanie didn't know what to say.

What could she say?

In all honesty, Jeanie felt like she hadn't had the right words for anything from the moment her parents had driven off that bridge.

Holding his gaze felt a lot like self-sabotage and she'd met that in her life once or twice. As she stood there, half way out of the door and fully intending on never speaking of that night again, she couldn't help but remind herself that finding her siblings history teacher extremely attractive was probably a sin in the bible somewhere.

So, evidently, was the way Ric's lip twitched as her cheeks flushed and she, for a moment, struggled with her words.

  "I was hoping I'd see you around," He added after a few moments. His voice was soft and it made Jeanie's chest clench. "I was hoping to see you again... and, uh... and here you are––"

  "I bet you didn't expect it to be a parent-teacher conference, huh?"

Her reply was drier than she'd expected it to be.

She watched Ric's eyebrows raise a fraction and a slightly miffed laugh fell between his lips as he shook his head.

  "No, not really uh..." There were a lot of pauses. A lot of gaps. He looked down at his desk, as if to ground himself and then back up, "But it's kind of crazy really... I was, just, uh... Just thinking of you this morning and uh, there you are––"

  "Wow." Her 'Wow' was even drier. Jeanie's brow furrowed and she tilted her head to the side, "Do you say that to all of the women you invite in for meetings?"

  "No," Ric said, "Just one." And then he cleared his throat, shoving his hands into his pockets."I've been thinking of you a lot, lately, actually––"

  "Oh," She remarked, "Well, you clearly weren't thinking of my name."

A pause.

Jeanie heard it out loud, saw the expression on his face and, for a second time in the past five minutes, she winced.

Yikes. Jeanie. Yikes!

   "Sorry, I––"

   "No," Ric whistled, "That was deserved. Maybe I'm the real asshole here––"

   "You're not," Jeanie shook her head, trying to speak before he got the wrong impression, "I get it, I, uh–– I didn't mean it like that. It's just..."

It's just... what?

Why couldn't she finish a sentence?

  "Yeah," Ric said, "It is."

She let out another sigh that suppressed the urge to just bury her head in her hands and scream as loudly as physically possible. She wasn't good at this. She wasn't good at the going out in the first place, the eyes that had picked her out in that dress (that damn dress) and the conversation that had stuck in the back of her throat as he asked if she was from around here.

Jeanie wasn't good at any of it at all.

But she let her face twist and tried to lay all of that awkward mortification out in words:

  "I'm not usually that kind of girl," She said and then she realised what she meant, "I'm not really that kind of girl at all, really, so, uh..."

Ric chuckled again: "You're not an asshole, if this is where this is going—"

  "No, I mean, y'know the whole..."

God, why couldn't either of them just SPEAK?!

Jeanie made a nonsense gesture that Ric, somehow, understood.

  "Oh," He said with a sigh, "You mean the..."

  "Yeah," Jeanie said and her face twisted as she said it, "I mean the whole getting really drunk at a town event thing and having sex with a stranger in his car."

Could the situation have been any more embarrassing? Jeanie didn't really want to know.

Ric nodded his head slowly and she watched as he sat back down in his chair, behind his desk. She didn't really want to delve into more details than she needed to— really unpack all of the information that a stranger she'd slept with a month ago didn't really even need to know. All of the stuff about how she hadn't kissed anyone since Adam or even have time to think about anything like that since New York, but she knew Ric just needed to know that it wasn't something she just did on a usual Tuesday night...

But the man sitting in the history classroom just gave her a light, tentative nod.

  "I get it," He said and then, as if to make a joke, he laughed; "At least I'm not a stranger anymore though, huh?"

And Jeanie felt her stomach clench.

  "You're not," She agreed, "You're my kid brother's history teacher."

Instead of ruminating how that made everything so much worse, Ric Saltzman paused. She watched the thought enter his mind and weave its way through his skull, plotting and turning and twisting until it met his tongue.

With her heartbeat in her ears, Jeanie held her breath as Ric's face twisted and the words made their debut:

  "Is it a bad time to mention I also teach your sister?"

──────

Jeanie, in her opinion, didn't even think she had time to breathe, these days.

Maybe that was why it'd been such a surprise when she'd showed up that night anyway, dressed in that dress (that damn green dress) with a cheap bottle of wine and the kind of enthusiasm that had only come out of a pep talk. Elena had taken that role, by the way, it hadn't been the muttering of a madwoman in a rearview mirror––

You deserve a night off.

I don't have time for a night off.

Go, have fun.

Fun, apparently, translated to a walk of shame and a second one (notably without the sex part), out of the front doors of Mystic Falls High School.

It was out there that Jeanie found her brother on the sidewalk, kicking rocks.

  "Crap," he said, looking up and seeing the look on her face as she walked out of a meeting with his teacher, "Oh I'm totally screwed, aren't I?"

No, Jeanie could only think to herself, bitterly, that was me, I'm the one that got the screwing.

Jeremy Gilbert had been waiting for her straight out of class, jacket askew and backpack slung over one shoulder. His eyes widened as he watched his sister almost trip down the stairs in her haste to get out of that building, and immediately, alarm bells went off in his head.

He was the last person out here and Jeanie couldn't have been more grateful. She was rummaging for her car keys before she'd even pointed herself in the direction of the parking lot.

"Crap" Jeremy repeated, slightly breathless and put off completely by the intensity of her stride. "He thinks I'm an idiot doesn't he? He's totally gonna fail me. I'm so fuc––"

  "Language."

Jeanie shot him a look as she reached him, jerking her head to gesture for him to walk with her to the car. He let out a low groan, the kind that signalled impending doom and hopelessness, and turned on his heel. He followed her like a prisoner to the execution block, all while Jeanie just tried to ignore the impulse to bury herself six feet under.

That had been a disaster, right? It wasn't all in Jeanie's head, right? When she'd given herself a pep talk on the drive over, she'd asked herself how, possibly, this could go worse than that it had with Tanner–– and, happily, the universe had risen to the challenge.

Now, Jeanie was convinced that this is what happened when people sinned.

  "–and I thought he was alright!"

Jeremy was rambling all the way back to the car. It lingered behind her like a funeral lament, pausing only for him to shake his head in the corner of her eye. When they stopped, Jeanie could only sigh to herself, her gaze dropping to continue her search for her keys. She pushed past her pager, cell phone and a coupon, teeth buried in her cheek as Jeremy walked around to the passenger side.

  "I thought it was going to be okay," He continued, trying to catch Jeanie's eye as she continued to have a bad day, "I've been handing in work on time and I've actually been trying, y'know... I thought Mr. Saltzman got that. I thought he understood––"

  His sister sighed, "You're fine."

When she looked up at Jeremy, the teenager who had been both a pain in the ass and one of her favourite people in the world, he looked a lot older than he had been seven months ago. In fact, when Jeanie blinked, it was like she'd suddenly become so aware of how suddenly time had gone by––

God... Had that only been twenty minutes too?

Her father's brown eyes blinked at her as she finally found her keys, the fob falling in between her fingers. Relief smoothed out all of the premature shadows and lines in his face.

  "I'm fine?"

  "You're fine," She repeated in overdue reassurance.

His body lurched as an invisible weight was lifted off his shoulders.

"Oh, thank god," He murmured.

Jeanie's eye twitched as she pulled open her door.

She didn't think God needed to be thanked for this. She'd learnt long ago that he wasn't really involved in these kinds of low level miracles. 

It was probably more of a gratitude that needed to be extended to the educational system for actually having a staff member with the energy and drive to do something. She'd almost apologised for telling the guy he was in the wrong career, but it hadn't fit into her escape plan.

  "Y'know, I said when I met him..."

Jeremy's voice filled the interior of her car too. It was the same kind of slightly uncomfortable rambling that had painted the inside of Jeanie's skull all day.

  "...I thought he'd be a good guy... that Mr. Saltzman..."

She tossed her purse onto the back seat and reminded herself to find a moment for a shower when she got home. She felt dry, gross and the kind of pathetic that usually came in Dollar Tree TV dinners.

  "...What did you think about him?"

Suddenly, Jeremy was talking to her.

Jeanie's head turned over to her brother right as she put her key in the ignition. She was too hurried, in too many fragments to really understand what he meant. Her brow furrowed and her brother said that name again: Mr. Saltzman.

  "Huh?"

  "What do you think of him?" Jeremy asked, "Like... do you think he's another Tanner or do you think he might actually help?"

Jeanie couldn't really describe the way her body reacted to that question–– all she knew was that when she blinked, she felt a million miles away, a ghost of a wine glass in her hands and an evening to trash into a drunken dream–– she cleared her throat and moved the car forwards, hoping to leave this mistake behind and move onto the next screw up by the time they got to the road.

  "He seems nice."

  "Nice?"

  "Yeah," Jeanie wet her bottom lip with her tongue, "Nice."

But a dent slowly pressed itself between Jeremy's eyes.

  "Is that a nice nice?" He echoed, "Or is it like a... actually nice?"

"It's just a nice, Jer."

"Okay, but what does that even mean?"

She sighed.

(She wasn't even sure she knew what she meant.)

  "It's a 'seems like a good teacher', kind of nice," Jeanie replied.

A 'had really known how to give one hell of a kiss' kind of nice, too.

Jeremy seemed satisfied with that and, oblivious to the crisis his older sister and caregiver was having in the drivers seat, his head turned back to gaze out of the window. Seven months of life post disaster and she'd finally seen a muscle relax in him; she glanced towards him in the corner of her eye as they slowed to join the busy road adjacent to the High School.

In a moment of quiet as the radio picked up a signal across Mystic Falls, Jeanie let herself unclench too. She took in a gasp of air, one that was less for living and maybe for staying alive, and fixed her eyes on a cloudless sky.

The reminded came like it often did when she was thinking about Jeremy and Elena.

Everything. Everything she did, always.

That was for her brother and for her sister.

...

(Well, maybe not Alaric.)

(That, as rare as it was, had been for her.)

And then Jeremy drew her attention to something on the side of the road.

Her head turned with her foot on the brake.

He was pointing out to a tree in the front lawn of the High School, a tree that would've been unassuming on any other day. However, the flash of white paper attached to it had caught Jeremy's eye.

With a heavy breath, Jeanie followed his finger and found herself stuck, for the second time in an hour, on a familiar pair of eyes that had always been just a day unkind.

The word 'MISSING' stood strong underneath Jeremy's thumb.

  "Oh fuck" Her brother said and this time, she didn't have the energy to scold him, "Isn't that your ex-boyfriend?"

　　AUTHOR'S NOTE ! . . .
ok so this just in: i'm a liar. we're starting in s1.
we're building from the bottom up, baby.

anyway welcome (again) to sweet creature.
this is a kind and gentle reminder that the only alaric saltzman i acknowledge is hot sexy and not a trump supporter!! <3
forever indebted to fxllmoons for the brainwave on the pedro pascal as alaric recast.

hope you enjoy the adventure <3

WORD COUNT ! . . . 7150
WRITTEN ON THE 26TH OF NOVEMBER 2023