a closed RP in which hats and vests may be discussed (closed RP for Drs. Grant and Silvey)

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Most of the work in Care of Magical Creatures had little to do with teaching. While house elves could muck out stalls, the actual care and feeding of magical creatures was better left to more intelligent life forms. Chance didn't begrudge the work: it kept her busy, and it wasn't as though Dr. Grant didn't pitch in, either. Realistically she'd estimate he did more of the heavy lifting and weird animal care than she did. He'd been there longer, he'd dealt with some truly scary shit at Hogwarts (the nature of which wasn't completely clear to Chance), and when it came to dealing with man-eating winged horses, his dinosaur-dodging skills were far superior to any talents Chance could call upon.

Still, it wasn't the most intellectually stimulating work. Though neither of the two paleontologists were chatterboxes, the occasional conversation made the chores go faster. Never anything too deep or personal, just companionable talk: derision of creationists, some amusing anecdotes from the classroom or the field, idle speculation on current wizarding events.

Today Chance's mind was wandering toward the secrets post on the computer network. "I don't know if it's trainwreck syndrome or not, but I had to read this. Did you see it? Someone declared their love for Professor Dumbledore on the computer network."

Comments

[dinosaurman.livejournal.com]

"Somebody also declared their love for a vampire," he said. Grant had seen it, and posted on it. Now in retrospect, he wished he hadn't. Not that any truly horrible secrets had been exposed, but he'd gotten drawn into a conversation he should have ignored.

"Apparently I am not with it. It used to be that you'd have to go to great lengths to publicly embarrass yourself to a love interest. Now, I guess you can do it with a few clicks."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"It's funny," mused Chance, who was mixing a solution of formula for some baby nifflers. "It seems more plausible to me that a person would declare love for a vampire than for Professor Dumbledore. If I think about it rationally, even his age doesn't really bar him completely from the whole grad-student-meets-grey-eminence scenario. It's just that, well, it's Dumbledore. Less likely than vampires. Even though I've seen plenty of people fall for their professors, and vice versa. For good and for awkward."

[dinosaurman.livejournal.com]

"The less I think about Dumbledore's personal life, the happier I am." Chance had escaped the love-fest that had been Dumbledore's first incarnation, and Grant disliked the man for personal reasons.

"I don't understand the reaction people seem to have about professors dating the students here. There's only what, a dozen staff positions? Half of the professors aren't even human." It was certainly no secret (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1114818.html?thread=56439746#t56439746) to Chance where Grant came down on the issue. Even two years after that party, not much had changed.

Grant shrugged. It was conversations like this that really highlighted the fact that he and Chance didn't come from the same dimension. Grant's work (http://dinosaurman.livejournal.com/5505.html) had made him famous before Jurassic Park, and the price for that (unintentional) success was having his personal life discussed as much as his research papers. Any person in the same academic circle who had heard of his professional work had also probably heard about his penchant for blonde co-eds.

"I've had my share of the good and the awkward. And when it was awkward, it was very, very awkward."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Had they come from the same dimension, Chance would definitely have heard of both. Gossip in academic circles was a currency unto itself; people shared tidbits just to show they had access, had knowledge. Who had moved to what university, and why? Who was giving job talks in a desperate attempt to escape his present backwater? Who was divorcing? Who was an alcoholic? Who was married to an alcoholic?

Chance's standards of conduct weren't terribly exacting. She prized competence far above social niceties. She would've raised an eyebrow at hearing of some infamous professorial philanderer's exploits, but that was about all.

"Depends," she said. "At a school like Hogwarts, where people aren't exactly getting graded, the usual accusations of quid pro quo can't really be leveled. Funny how the quid pro quo works, for that matter. With undergrads, it's more dodgy, especially if they come from a sheltered background. Maybe they really aren't mature enough to know what they're doing. With graduate students, on the other hand ... well, I'm not speaking from personal experience here, but I've seen it happen. Seduction of established major scholars as a career-building move. The student's actually getting more out of it than the teacher, in a sense, there, and meanwhile both parties are acting like jackasses more often than not. Cocky student and lovestruck old man." She winced, remembering: "Or woman. I meant it when I said I'm not speaking from immediate personal experience, but that wasn't for lack of an offer."

[dinosaurman.livejournal.com]

Cocky student and lovestruck old man? That certainly hit the nail on the head.

"You probably saved yourself one hell of a headache," he said at her admission. "I had one student who made out well. She's gone far, but I really think it had to do with the good head on her shoulders, and much less to do with dating me." Ellie had always made out better, even escaping the horrors of the island without it ruining her life, like it had with him and Malcolm. Unfortunately, the popcorn phenomenon had claimed her in the end.

"My other student, though, had the worse end of the deal. My professional reputation was already in the gutter by then, but if anyone found out, it would have killed his career." Another shrug. "Then again, I think the risk is part of what he liked in the first place."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Didn't save myself much of a headache. Deke had already been giving me shit about it and I thought he was making a big deal out of nothing. I never saw it coming -- by the time she made a pass, I'd finished the degree and moved on to become junior faculty myself. If she gave me any special treatment I figured it was because she'd worked with my grandparents, felt protective." Chance sighed. Despite that awkward, offputting kiss Alice had ventured, she felt loyal to the woman still, and this line of conversation seemed vaguely disloyal, to her. "Hell. She was protective. And a damn fine scholar, and mentor, and I don't think less of her for slipping up. But there it was, and if she'd lived, if I'd lived, I don't think things would ever have been the same."

It wasn't weird to talk to Grant about stuff like this, at this point in their friendship. They'd known one another for years now, and weathered weird trilobite adventures. All the same, it wasn't as though they had regular girl talk sessions or locker room chat, and there were certainly things Chance didn't know -- had never even considered might exist. She knew Laura, sure, and liked the woman (hard to think of Laura as a girl; she didn't carry herself like a teenager). But she had no idea Grant had been dating students of his for years. Also didn't have any idea he'd dated a male student, which the pronoun clearly indicated.

She gave a slow whistle. "Damn. Must've been true love. You don't risk your shot at tenure-track employment for just anyone."

[dinosaurman.livejournal.com]

He listened to Chance talk about her mentor. There was a fundamental difference: in both of his cases, Grant had been the one who was pursued. After the death of his wife, Grant had settled into a bachelor's lifestyle. He was comfortable in solitude, and oblivious to anything more subtle than a flat-out proposition. It didn't excuse his behavior, but it explained why he never bothered widening his dating pool.

"It was fun while it lasted," he said, not able to keep from smiling a bit, "but it didn't work out, obviously. We got very good at keeping things under wraps."

He had been cleaning out the tribble cages, smelly work, but somebody had to do it. "So she died, too?" he asked, setting down a clean cage and picking up a dirty one. The only time Chance had mentioned her death was back when she still thought Hogwarts was a delusion.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

She'd grown accustomed to being dead, by now. Could talk about it more readily, if perhaps no less confusingly. "She died in the same fucked-up chain of events as I did." Chance wouldn't go into the details of that chain; it didn't seem called-for, and besides, she hadn't seen the thing that happened to Alice. Only knew it from a vision of sorts, and later from pure deduction. "She wasn't any part of it. She got dragged into it. Nothing to do with trilobites, either," and the Niffler she was hand-feeding made a weird little noise, as though it didn't like the mention of trilobites. "She went outside to see if it was safe, and she never came back. I never saw her again. I kind of thought --" A grittiness in her throat. "That at the end of the tunnel of light you hallucinate when you're dying, I might see her waiting, since I knew she was dead by then. But instead what I got was Hogwarts. Cold water in my face, literally, thanks to Simon."

[dinosaurman.livejournal.com]

Grant had heard enough stories about death that he didn't feel the need to ask Chance to elaborate, but he couldn't help but wonder. What had to happen to a person where they not only died in a 'fucked-up chain of events,' but apparently it was a different fucked-up chain of events from the one involving trilobites?

"Do you know a lot about Simon?" he asked, changing the subject. "What's with the vests?"

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

A snort of laughter. "I know him, yeah. Knew him well before he popcorned. We were close." Which, from Chance, meant what it sounded like, in an understated way. "The vests, I never did get. I guess it could be psychoanalyzed. Embracing formal order, that kind of thing. Maybe if you or I became a fugitive from the law in the outer-space equivalent of the Wild West, we'd start wearing vests on a daily basis, too."

Vests: a far cry from Hawaiian shirts and cowboy boots.

"Or maybe in the future, everyone has a thing for vests. Why?"

[dinosaurman.livejournal.com]

You'd think Hawaiian shirts and cowboy boots together were a bad thing (http://www.ibiblio.org/samneill/pictures/miscmedia/artc.jpg). Oh wait, they were.

"I wasn't sure if the vests were a cultural thing, or a personal thing," Grant said. "It seems awfully formal." Then again, paleontology was a profession where clothes were chosen for how well they kept the elements off the body, not how good they looked. If you had a shirt on the top and pants on the bottom, you were doing well.

"I hope he likes t-shirts, though. I have a feeling he'll be seeing a lot of them."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Facial hair would be necessary to complete the look.

Billy's penchant for quirky t-shirts was no secret. Chance had gotten him one for Christmas (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1724278.html?thread=92998262#t92998262), in fact, such was his predilection for the things. They weren't her personal style but they tickled her to see, especially when they involved paleontological in-jokes.

All the same, Grant's allusion was oblique. Chance really only caught it because she'd sort of noticed the same thing, on the occasions she happened to run into the two of them (in the compy lab, in the Great Hall, wherever; infrequently, but over the course of months, a handful of times could add up). She'd talk to one of them or the other of them, if she ran into Billy or Simon when one was on his own, but if the two of them were together, she found it uncomfortable to intrude. She knew what a happy Simon looked like. Dorky computer games should not make him smile quite so sunnily.

She'd set down the first hungry niffler and moved on to another of the same. She didn't have the luxury of looking away from the niffler to give Grant a significant eyebrow-raise. She said: "Yeah? I kind of wondered about that. T-shirts aren't very formal."

[dinosaurman.livejournal.com]

"And vests --those vests, at least-- are not very practical."

Grant still talked to Billy on a regular basis. Chance was a great assistant for the care of the creatures, but he'd recruited Billy to help him with his pet project, a comparison of dinosaurs and dragons. Over the weeks he'd noticed Simon's name creeping into their conversations. "Simon showed me this book in the library." "I was in the compy lab with Simon." "Simon told me that in the future..."

"I'm hoping that whatever they've got going, it's based on more than fashion sense," Grant said.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance snorted. "He's practical when he needs to be," she admitted. "Don't let the vests fool you. In all seriousness ... Simon's a good person. A really, genuinely good person. Maybe too good for his own good, if that makes any sense. And it's not his fault he went and popcorned, and I wish him all the happiness in the world. It's good he's with someone who'll treat him really well. Won't mess with his head."

[dinosaurman.livejournal.com]

Chance's last comment was met with a snort of Grant's own. "I think Billy wants to be a good guy," he said, "but sometimes he forgets. I don't know what it is. He's someone who's so used to being charming that he doesn't know what to do when it doesn't work."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance glanced up from the Niffler cage. "Yeah?" Her tone was neutral. But what Grant had just said did not sound very good to her. "What happens when it doesn't work?"

[dinosaurman.livejournal.com]

"He makes it work." That still did not sound very good. "He'll beg and he'll plead, and if that doesn't work, then he''ll start to get drastic."

Grant took off his hat and wiped a nonexistent speck of dirt off the brim before putting it back on. "I think Billy knows that he's willing to go farther to the edge than any sane person would. So he pushes, and the rest of us keep giving in, because one of these days he's going to go to far unless somebody stops him."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance had long since come to realize Grant had some kind of attachment to his hat. She thought it must be like a security blanket for him. Since she wasn't much for psychoanalysis, the thought stopped there, and she hardly registered his routine interactions with the hat (not to be confused with the Hat). If a significant connection between the hat and their present topic of conversation existed, it went over Chance's hatless head.

"Huh. That ... well, Simon's one of the most stubborn people I've known, in some ways. In other ways he can be nice to the point of pushover, but then, if you get to the right place, or the wrong one, rather --" She shrugged. "Between your observations and mine, it sounds bad. Could become a case of unstoppable force meeting immovable object. Especially if it ever involves Simon's sister. Around whom the universe revolves."

Bitter, a little?