A/N: I haven't played any of the Half Life games, so I have no idea about the canon personality of one of the characters introduced in this chapter. I really don't even know his personality in this fic yet, to be honest.
Whoever invented the parent-teacher conference was an idiot. The intersection of the set of kids who need their parents to show up and the set of kids who have parents willing to show up is so small that the whole thing is useless. Usually I can tell this to my mother as we stay home and laugh at all the insecure parents.
Not this time.
This time, for some reason, my mother insists on attending.
"Why?" I ask.
"Because," she responds, "I want to see what exactly he thinks he's doing."
I don't ask who "he" is, or even why my mother assumes "he" will be at the parent-teacher conference. Chances are, I'll find out for myself soon enough, and I've always preferred direct study to secondhand information.
I see Michelle and her father before we visit Mr. Johnson. He's an older man, with green-gray eyes and a goatee. Michelle stands apart from him, and if it weren't for his introduction, I would not have thought that they knew each other at all.
"Hello," he introduces when I approach Michelle. "I'm Wallace Breen, Michelle's father." He looks at me, and then at my mother, and then he smiles. "Ah, you must be Caroline's daughter! I'd forgotten that you would be the same age as my Michelle."
I find myself disliking him intensely. His words are bland, normal introductions, but the way he talks is simultaneously insincere and vaguely malicious.
"Yes," I say, "Although I must say that I wouldn't have pegged you as her father; Chell doesn't look like you at all."
It's designed to strike at the connection between father and daughter, which I can already tell is strained; implying that not only do I know Michelle - Chell, now - well enough to have given her a nickname, but that they don't even have the bond of a similar appearance.
He doesn't react with anything other than aplomb. "Ah, no, she's my adopted daughter," he says, still smiling. He reaches to her shoulders and gives her a sideways hug. Chell doesn't respond, and her eyes flick upwards, one of her signs of annoyance. "I love her as though she were my own, of course," he finishes.
"I would say you love her more than you'd love your own child, really," my mother interjects. "It's quite sweet."
As Mr. Breen begins to respond, I grasp Chell's free hand and lead her away, taking advantage of his distraction. Once we are a sufficient distance that our conversation will be private, she raises an eyebrow at me.
"Congratulations," I reply. "You've now got a nickname."
She rolls her eyes at me.
"Never mind that," I say. "I didn't know you were adopted. Did your parents give you up when they realized what a terrible person you were, or did they anticipate it when they saw your horrifying face as a baby?"
She rubs her face with one hand in obvious exasperation.
My next salvo is cut off by a loud crack. I turn and see my mother, arm outstretched, and Mr. Breen's head turned with a reddening hand print on his cheek.
Did she just slap Chell's dad?
"Come along, Gladys," she says, turning and walking away. "We're done here."
"You should come and visit us sometime, Gladys," says Mr. Breen as I begin to walk away. "I'm sure Michelle would love to have you over."
His mouth is still slightly curled in that ineffable smile as I follow my mother out of the room.
"I know what you were trying to do," my mother tells me on the drive home. "I've seen you do it to a lot of people, but believe me when I tell you that Wallace Breen is more dangerous than you know. You need to stay away from him."
"Dangerous how?" I ask.
"You gave away far too much," Caroline says. "Now he knows how much you care about Michelle, and he'll use that."
"Use that? She's his daughter, not some tool."
For a moment, my mother looks as though she is about to say something. Then, she shakes her head, closes her mouth, and continues to drive.
I go to Mr. Johnson's classroom instead of heading home after school. He's packing up collected homework from his latest class when I enter.
"Gladys!" he booms, smiling. "It's good to see you. Most of the students who show up after school are trying to get a better grade than they deserve. But I know you, and that can't be it. You know you're doing well in class already. So, why are you here?"
"I wanted some advice," I say.
There are only two adults I've ever trusted in my life. My mother, and Cave Johnson. Since my mother is acting strangely, Mr. Johnson is my resource of choice.
"Advice?" asks Mr. Johnson, hopping onto the table. "What about?"
"You know Chell - I mean, Michelle?"
He nods, not breaking eye contact.
"She's..." I sigh, running a hand through my hair, searching for the right words. "I like her. She's different, you know? Not an idiot like everyone else."
"A lot of people are stupid," Mr. Johnson says after a short pause. "It's the way they're built. It's frustrating. I've only known two other people as smart as I am. You're one of them." His eyes slide off my face. "The other...did I tell you how I came to be working at this place?"
I shake my head.
"I had great goals when I was younger," he says. "My dad taught agriculture, and I wanted something more. So I decided that I wanted to start up my own company, do research. I knew a scientist, a beautiful, intelligent woman, and I wanted to found a company with her. Maybe even start courting her."
"What happened?" I ask.
"She got married," Mr. Johnson shrugs. "Started working at her husband's company a few days later. I gave up on my company, started teaching here instead. After a few years, the happy couple got divorced, and her husband got fired from the company."
"Have you kept in contact with her?"
He smiles at me, a little sadly. "I gave up on that dream a long time ago," he says. "My point is, she was brilliant, and I loved her. And when she married Wallace Breen, she ruined me. I'm here, teaching class after class of stupid little idiots because of her. So you'd better be sure that Michelle won't do that to you before you fall any further in love with her."
"Who was she?" I ask. As my mother said, Wallace Breen is dangerous. Any information I can gather about him will better prepare me for any later confrontation.
Mr. Johnson looks at me. "She was Caroline Breen, but after the divorce, she took her maiden name. Her name is Caroline Mathias...your mother."
"...that doesn't strike you as a little bit contrived? You and Breen have a competition over my mother, they get divorced, and now I'm lusting after Breen's daughter? What's next, the revelation that you're my father?"
Johnson laughs. "Believe me, I was as surprised as you when his daughter showed up. And no, you're definitely not my kid. I never got a chance with Caroline before Breen got his hooks into her."
"You never told me you were married," I state.
My mother looks at me and rolls her eyes. "I forgot the part of being a parent where you have to divulge every detail of your life, unsolicited, to your children," she says. "Yes, I was married to Wallace Breen. We divorced after a few years after I found out what a greedy, sociopathic asshole he was."
"Is that why you don't want me around him?" I ask. "You're still the bitter divorcee after all these years?"
She stares at me, suddenly angry. "You listen to me, Gladys. That man destroys everything he touches, and comes out smelling like roses. He will take everything from you that he wants, and then leave you to rot. I'm not telling you to stay away from his daughter, because we both know how well that would turn out, but you must stay away from Wallace Breen."
She goes back to making chicken casserole, an obvious end to our conversation.
"Whoa," Pendleton says. "I knew about your mom slapping him in the middle of parent-teacher conferences - I mean, everyone knows, really - but your mom was married to her dad!" He points to Chell. "Maybe you're actually sisters, like in that one movie! Separated over the years, it is now your task to bring your parents together in love and -"
"One," I say, "that's disgusting. Two, that's not possible, since Chell was adopted. Three, that's a terrible idea. My mom hates her dad's guts."
"So did Lohan's parents!" Pendleton defends.
I don't bother with a response to that.
Seeing Mr. Johnson again makes me remember why I originally went to him in the first place: figuring out what I'm going to do about Chell. I've never been one for self-deception. Maybe it's because I've never had a problem with lying to anyone else, or maybe it's because lying to yourself is a stupid idea and I hate stupidity. For whatever reason, I'm certainly not going to pretend as though I don't have a crush on Chell.
A crush that's steadily growing.
The only question is, what am I going to do about it? I could ignore her, pretend that she means nothing to me. It's easy to do.
I'm a crazy bitch, I remind myself. I don't let other people matter.
Except I already have. Chell means something to me, and that scares the shit out of me. Love for my mother forced Cave Johnson into abandoning his dreams; what if Chell did something as awful to me?
Class ends while I'm still debating, and I absently pick up my backpack.
I'm a crazy bitch, I realize. I don't do safety, and pretending that Chell doesn't mean anything to me is taking the safe route.
I hurry from the room, grab Chell's arm, and press her against the lockers in an eerie parody of my actions a few days ago. Now, however, I'm anything but rage-fueled. I slam my mouth into hers, force my tongue between her lips and plunder her. She's shocked into stillness for a few seconds before her hands come up to grab my shirt and pull me closer. She retaliates, trapping my tongue and pressing her own into my mouth, using the tip to explore my gums, the roof of my mouth. It's a war in which dominance is the only prize; no matter who wins, it's pleasurable for the both of us.
When she moans into my mouth, I'm drawn back into reality: and now I can hear the wolf-whistles of the teenaged boys around us, staring unabashedly. I raise one hand and flip them off before disengaging from the kiss.
Chell is breathing hard, her cheeks flushed, and I have a brief moment of primal pride in her reaction. I did this.
"I'll send you details for our date later," I tell her. Then I smirk. "And do try not to embarrass me. I know it will be difficult for you not to act like a drooling idiot, but I'd rather not have to deal with that sort of behavior from you constantly."
She sticks her tongue out at me.
A/N: Blarg. We finally get some ChellDOS...but it means I'm going into uncharted territory as far as my writing goes. I've never actually written romance before - I think this might be the first kiss I've written about in detail (plus I haven't had the best experience with snogging in real life - it's tended to be cold and slimy rather than, well, sexy). So, if you lot have any suggestions, hit me with them. Please.
And yes, the movie is The Parent Trap. When I was plotting this out, the similarities sorta jumped out at me, and I was just "Well, Pendleton would watch that movie."