mutual

These couple of weeks at the start of term were the make it or break it time for his classes.

Noah sat on the edge of the desk at the edge of the staged area at the front of the classroom, shunning the lectern he hated using. Blue eyes studying the class as they scrawled down notes from what he’d been drawing on the board throughout the lesson. Some already chattering lightly, one or two who hadn’t even bothered getting a pen out and would likely not make it back here the next week. Blonde brows rose queryingly as one girl looked up but it was just to flash him a grin, her cheeks already flushed. One who was gonna stick it out beyond this kiddy pool of the Viking era and its sudden popularity thanks to streaming shows.

The clock ticked closer to class finishing, Noah feeling it in his bones with a faint echo. A single minute left before they’d file out. Just enough time for shoehorning one last word in, one last chance of keeping them on board. The same thing he’d done for the High School class yesterday. ”The two episodes are up on the network. Of course, if you’ve got your own subscription, use it, get hooked.” His grin flashed for a moment. ”Reports are due in a week. Go forth, enjoy.” Two episodes of Vikings were about as far as he could cater to the popularity of Scandi pop culture these days, although the screening of Thor last year had gone down pretty well too.

One last tick of the minute hand and the bell was ringing out. Kids were already shoving their stuff into their bags, a couple practically racing for the door. The girl who’d smiled at him at the end took her time, lingering with her notebook at the front of the class. Noah watched her as he slipped behind the desk to start clearing his own things, unsure if she was gonna come up to him but she paused as a guy slipped in the door.

Older than the rest, automatically catching Noah’s eye in a way that had him frowning faintly. Old enough to be a parent or another member of staff, although the typical ID lanyard wasn’t hanging around his neck for that.

A glance aside as he set his packed bag down on the surface of the desk showed the girl scurrying out. Not wanting to talk in front of company maybe, someone to follow up with later.

The ‘can I help you’ didn’t get past that initial almost inaudible hum of sound in his throat. The guy was already talking, hand extended as he greeted him by name, offering up his own with that ‘don’t worry, we’re practically neighbours plug for his company. ”Can’t say I have but it’s a pleasure Mr. Hawthorne.” He guessed. Still unsure of what connected an electric company with him, Noah gripped the offered hand, shook it. Friendly enough at least, the sort of civil start to proceedings his dad had taught him to reach for. As an emissary you couldn’t even go into war with your battle face on.

Noah’s expression remained friendly as he slipped his hands into his pockets. The buttering up was coming thick and fast in that way that always left him wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. This wasn’t the first guy who’d approached him this way, although most had ulterior motives that presented themselves soon enough. Noah inclined his head, lips twitching. ”Thank you. It’s … rare, although I like to think that’s the draw for my students and for the board of governors.” It had been easier to talk his way in here than it had been with the principal at the high school.

His chin dipped slightly, that trace of chagrin colouring his expression as he shook his head. ”Not myself, no. Boston. My family emigrated there from Norway, yes, and we’ve held on to our origins. Multiple times. There are still family back there and there’s always a plethora of research opportunities there. Have you got an interest in the country yourself?” It might explain it, although how and why the guy had decided to turn something like that into a visit to his classroom was still beyond him. Was this gonna fall closer to his other line of work? He’d tried to spread his name and reputation thick in Mystic Falls but there hadn’t been a single bite on that front so far.

Tagged: CURTIS HAWTHORNE * Word Count: 756

At the start of each semester the first couple of classes were always spent balancing the scales. Mentally marking out the kids who had picked the class cause they thought it was a cake walk, the ones who had been forced into it – the mulish looks on their faces as they flounced into their seats, the ones he knew were there out of choice, who lit up the way the student who’d been cut off by this guy’s arrival did. Varying levels of how hard he was gonna have to work to get and keep their attention, various degrees of disappointment when some would inevitably fail his class.

Noah had already marked out some of them, the same way he had the girl. His eyes flicked away from the man’s, tripping from seat to seat – mostly back row. He didn’t know them all by name yet but it wouldn’t be long til he had them all memorised and the real focus would start. The drift of attention called back, the same way his own was now by the man’s chuckle. ”I’m sure there are more than a few students at Whitmore who do just that. Hopefully not during my classes.” He looked back at those seats, sighed faintly. It was going to take every tool in the box. Maybe with this guy too.

Fine lines sprung up between Noah’s brows as he shook Hawthorne’s hand, blue eyes shrewd, sizing him up like he had done thousands of others over the years. Not carving him impressions in stone but sketching them out so he could fill in the lines more solidly later. He hummed lightly in agreement, not enquiring if the man had an interest in it himself before he started tossing answers back to the peppering of questions. A polite interrogation, leading somewhere.

He settled himself on the edge of his desk, studying the grin that lit up the guy’s face. An expanding electric company, not exactly something that would have any sort of tie to his own specialities – not unless he was planning to expand it with the sort of ‘renewable’ energy that came from burning supernatural carcasses. Oh there it was. Noah nodded, his arms crossing over his chest as he grinned. ”Scandinavia’s a growing market, especially for renewable energy.” There were resources that were now being farmed out to other countries because of their success. And still people didn’t always see the vast bounty lurking right there.

”It’s an interesting international mix. Seems like you’re aiming on being all over the globe, Curtis.” Catching his upper lip between his teeth and his tongue, Noah nodded with understanding dawning. ”You’re looking for a middle man? Someone to slip in seamlessly between you and them.” That shift in the pit of his stomach, the slow ripple of curiosity – had Hawthorne found out more about him than just what he taught? A negotiator, one skilled in things other than simple business. An emissary and not for the pedestrian greasing of wheels.

Tipping his head to the side, Noah gave a shrug. Compensation was never half as important as the outcome. He didn’t need the money. His family had always done well enough and between his work and his wife’s, they weren’t desperate. Still. ”Jeg gjør. Norsk, dansk og litt av svensk og finsk også. Hvis du trenger islandsk, vil det ta litt lesing først.” He tapped his fingers on his bicep, studying the man and then the room around him before circling back. ”If I think you’re bringing something to them and not just taking. I might be. It feels a little ‘father of the bride’ but what exactly are your intentions with the expansion?” Find the lay of the land, sketch it out in his head and then step into the battle field. No matter the situation it was always the same way for him – everything clouded in that consideration.

Tagged: CURTIS HAWTHORNE * Word Count: 651
Translation: I do. Norwegian, Danish and a smattering of Swedish and Finnish too. If you need Icelandic it'll take some reading up first.

Some men were pragmatists, practical to the bone. Others were dreamers, always looking to something more, imagining what could be. Some – and he liked to include himself in that – fell squarely in the middle of that. They weren’t afraid to roll their sleeves up and get their hands dirty, throwing themselves into whatever was going on around them, but they weren’t going to settle for that alone, they dreamed too, seeing how they could make those things better. Knowing that had the voices to do it. Noah could see echoes of that in Curtis. He didn’t know what the man had done so far, other than lit up the school of course, but there was that desire ringing in the words – that OK, were maybe a little cheesy.

Illuminating the world. The one thing he tried not to do most of the time. Peace in his world didn’t often come with blowing the lid off of things so everybody could take a look at that dark world that existed alongside their own.

Noah made a small sound at it, lips curling as he gave a faint nod. Maybe that was agreement, maybe not. He still wasn’t sure how Curtis Hawthorne wanted him to bring light to the world he was imagining expanding to encompass Scandinavia. A trip back home would’ve perhaps been nice, a chance for his wife to see it with him and Kiera.

Alas.

That sound came again more understanding to it now. Noah shifted his weight, his hands slipping into the pockets of his pants as he nodded to Curtis. Not a middle man but a beard of sorts. One of theirs right there to catch all the nuances you didn’t get from a computer algorithm capable of strict translation only. ”An interpreter in more than one way,” he murmured. One to be watched over, just in case he greased those wheels a little too hard or steered Hawthorne Electric in the wrong direction. Sabotage intentional or not. Chuckling lightly, Noah let the lie about his experience trip off of his tongue. ”Nope, no sales experience I’m afraid. Not unless you count selling a seriously niche subject to my students.” Or peace to an army of creatures who wanted anything but in that moment. Blood lust had a tendency to overwrite any sort of sense or logic – even when he stood in the middle of it all doing his best to drum it into them.

Hawthorne wouldn’t be interested in that anyway. The man wanted his skill with the language, his ease with the culture he’d been raised in, even if it was in that tiny enclave his own family had held onto thousands of miles away from where they’d started out. A little smug edge his smile as Noah brushed his knuckles over it. ”It’s a yes,” he confirmed. Perhaps he should’ve talked it over with his own triumvirate first but this was an added incentive to stay in town perhaps. Another tie to Mystic Falls when the ones he’d looked to establish here had failed.

There was a chance he’d been too much, those questions that’d tripped from his lips after his agreement to wade into Hawthorne’s swiftly flowing river of business. Noah watched him, blue eyes ticking up and down the man, teeth back on his lower lip. He hadn’t signed on the physical dotted line yet, if the wrong answers came now there was always a chance to squirm out of the offer. Gentleman’s agreements wouldn’t hold an ounce of water in court. ”So there is a decent pay packet coming with it then?” he asked, a thin thread of amusement to his voice that he was instantly waving off with a flick of his fingers as he uncrossed his arms. ”Family’s important to me,” Noah said seriously. ”Hearing that it is to you, to this business, it means something.” And it would to nations built on that idea of family and community rather than ‘what’s in it for me, how is this gonna get me ahead’.

It seemed as though Curtis Hawthorne had come home to take over the family business and establish a legacy further afield than the one his family had already built. His eyes narrowed slightly as Curtis harked back to what he’d said earlier. He rose slowly, hands returning back to the harbour of his pockets. ”The world’s moved on in a lot of ways and what you’re bringing to it might help it do that again,” he echoed, as though he were repackaging the man’s words. There was a belief in them as he continued, the sort his own father had always raised him to see in things. ”A triumvirate, each part supporting, strengthening the other.” Hawthorne couldn’t have aimed for a better concept. ”It sounds like you’ve got a plan that’s gonna work, something worthwhile.” Maybe Hawthorne wasn’t just a salesman after all … or maybe he was slick enough with it that he hadn’t seen every step in his being drawn in.

Noah tugged his hand free of his pocket, letting it hang lose for a moment before he slanted a smile at the man and extended it. If this did come back and bite him on the ass for this, at least it had been done with the best of intentions. ”I usually make people go down on one knee for that but I wouldn’t on this floor. You’ve got yourself a deal Curtis.” And he had himself one hell of a story to pass around with the peas at the dinner table.

Tagged: CURTIS HAWTHORNE * Word Count: 929