GREASE LIGHTNING / HUMAN AU

[MYERS]

[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]If Roxanne got into a fight on the first day of class, he wouldn't hear the end of it. She was supposed to be a shining example of a star student, the daughter of a teacher who put in his fair share of elbow grease when the Parent-Teacher Association called for somebody to host the annual bake sale. (Not that he was any good at baking, but it was the effort that counted.) He hadn't earned his seniority rights just yet - he'd only gotten the all-clear to work a couple of years back - and the tenured old bastards upstairs had a monopoly on the principal's time and patience. Anything Ahab brought to the office was set on the back burner, dismissed with a brief explanation that it would cost too much, that fundraising was too time-consuming. Already, he wasn't on the best terms with the front office.

What the principal didn't know was that he'd be cheering her on until she pummeled that particular nobody's face in. That was his girl, and if she was going to stand up for herself he'd make sure she had the strength and the willpower to do it right. Luckily he'd yet to be put in a situation where he had to explain where his daughter learned how to throw such a mean right hook.

Beyond the fact that he spent most of his time hovering worriedly over his child, he wasn't exactly a thrilling teacher. Worked right out of the book, kept assignments short and to the point, meandered from his lectures to discuss the life cycle of his basil plant that sat half-wilted on the edge of his desk. Sometimes he'd assign impromptu essays to make up for time lost. His pass rate was high because he didn't have the heart to fail anyone, even the worst of his students - instead he'd stop them after class, ask if everything was alright on the home front. Luckily he floated just above the cut for layoffs, so he kept his history classroom and Roxie kept her Friday milkshakes.

(...Fridays were special. She'd made it through the week, so he'd use his lunch period to bring her something from the malt shop down the street. Sometimes he scribbled a note on the side about making new friends, or acing an exam she'd been fretting over.)

The late bell rings, and he sits up a little, scanning an eye over the class. A few fidgety teens are staring at his eye patch. The rest are watching him turn the pages of his textbook with a hook prosthesis. He liked to mess with them a little, change up the story every time they asked - it kept people on their toes, made them think he was some kind of ex-supervillain that could kill them ten ways with just his thumb. Which, of course, was only enhanced by his usual introduction and various acquired pseudonyms.

Speaking of which.

"Welcome to English Literature. You'll call me Snake - unless the principal's in the room, in which case you're my crew, n' I'm Captain Ahab." His gaze flits back down his textbook as he scrawls a few stray notes into the margins, sighing with a disinterested air about him. Roxie knows his bluff - she told him he ought to pick up the mantle again over dinner last night, saying that he'd better make class interesting if she was going to have to listen to his boring lectures for an hour a day. (An extra hour, on top of his usual ramblings back at home.) He hadn't bothered with the whole 'intimidate to convince the class they're in for the long haul' charade since she first suggested it at the start of his teaching career. "If you did your summer reading assignment, you already know that with a name like that, I'll be killing you all off one by one for the duration of the semester. By the way, I want that right here -" he raps his prosthesis against the desk once, twice, "- By the end of class."

Ahab is aware that he can be... Kind of intimidating. The massive scars digging into his face told stories that he couldn't put to words, punctuated by the pockmarks of removed stitches that dotted each line. There's a roughness to his edges he's tried hard to smooth, but he still caught the uneasy glances that followed him down the halls as students shuffled to clear the way. Hopefully his sweater vest and puppy-dog knitted socks would alleviate that nervousness, just a little. He wanted to help, wanted to care when other teachers didn't. Even if he couldn't contribute edible food to the school bake sale or convince the principal to fundraise for new textbooks, he'd still do his best to try.

"Anywho, with formalities out of the way, I'll hand the mic over." Now that he's picked himself up and scratched out his name (names) on the chalk board, he points a finger over towards the window seats. What better way to break his imposing facade than to be the doting father that made every kid cringe in secondhand embarrassment? Even better, she appeared to be lost in thought, doodling around the pages of her notebook. Time to snap her out of that reverie.

"Roxie!" A few kids jolt at the sudden thunder of his voice, whipping around to stare in the direction he'd pointed and waiting to see who was already getting the reprimanding of their life. The group eases, though, as he grins and gives his daughter a little wave. "Hi, sweetie, hope you're having a good day so far! Y'wanna step up here and introduce yourself to the class? We'll work our way down the rows from there." Hopefully she wasn't about to tell the class that he'd just shoved somebody into a trash bin not ten feet down the hall. He'd heard that commotion, if she couldn't already tell. He wasn't supposed to be proud of her for that, but he'd definitely give her a clap on the back and an atta girl later on.