A/N: I uh, I dunno about this one. It seems the more I wrote, the more uncertain I am about the chapters XD. Let me know what y'all think. Enjoy.
AVP: They're separate snippets until I say so XD
COShepard: I'm planning on it
Anon: Will he though?
Professor Goodwitch doesn't normally drink, but today was definitely an exception. With a tired sigh, the blonde woman pushed the door aside, stepping into the air-cooled bar. Looking around cautiously, the professor took in the scene of a few men laughing and fooling around, drinks in hand. There was one girl sitting at the bar, nursing a drink and chatting with the bartender. Well, that was to say, the bartender was the one speaking, and the girl was nodding attentively to whatever the boy—because in her eyes, he was about as young as one of her students—was saying.
Slowly, the blonde witch walked forward and settled down close to where the bartender and the girl was sitting. The bartender glanced over at her and greeted her with a warm smile.
"Hello. I'll be right with you." He said the words quietly, confidently, waiting for her to nod in acknowledgement before turning back to the patron sitting in front of him, who had finished her drink while the blonde-haired boy was greeting Glynda.
"That's it for you right?" Professor Goodwitch glanced at the name tag on his vest, which labeled him as JAUNE. The girl didn't answer the question, instead slapping some lien on the table before standing up, smiling at the boy. Jaune nodded, grabbing the empty glass and pulling in back down off of the counter.
"I guess I'll see you next week then." The girl saluted playfully at him when he said that, which made him roll his eyes. "Remember to behave now." The girl pouted and pointed a finger at herself innocently. The blonde boy nodded firmly, lips drawn in a playful glare. "Yes, you. Now say hi to your employer for me, alright?" The girl waved dismissively and skipped out of the bar, not making a single sound while she did so.
Finally, the boy turned towards the professor, an amused smile lingering on his face.
"Sorry about that. What'll you have?"
Glynda blinked uncertainly, not sure how to reply. This was the first time in a long time that she had been in a bar, and it showed in the way she struggled to think of what to order. Uncomfortable and out of her element, her first words to the bartender weren't a drink to order, but an intrusive, and slightly rude question.
"Aren't you a little too young to be serving drinks in a bar?" One of Jaune's eyebrows rose, his face drawn in exasperation.
"Aren't you a little too young to be questioning someone else's choices?" He shot back sarcastically, making the professor frown.
"I'm a lot older than you think." She never thought she would ever have to say something like that, having taken pride in how young she looked relative to her age. "I'm a professor at Beacon Academy." She said, assuming that it would help with her case. It did, in fact, Jaune nodding with his mouth open, face drawn in understanding.
"Ah. Lots of professors seem to be visiting the bar these days." The professor nodded, agreeing with Jaune's statement.
"It helps that it's closer to Beacon than any other bar. And the fact that it's one of the more reputable bars in Vale." The professor admitted sheepishly. Jaune laughed, nodding his head.
"Yeah, we get that. Although…" Jaune thoughtfully looked at the woman, making her feel uncomfortable, but externally as cool as she always is. "Forgive me for saying this, but you just don't seem to look like the type to visit the bars around Vale." Professor Goodwitch didn't blame his curiosity, knowing that her typical school teacher outfit wasn't the type of thing most people wore when they went bar-hopping.
Not that she was planning on doing something like that anyways.
"I… usually am not." The woman admitted, one hand gripped onto the bar stool in an attempt to not touch her riding crop. "A friend… a colleague of mind recommended this place to me." Jaune's eyebrows rose.
"Well it's nice to know someone likes this place enough to tell their… colleagues about it." Jaune said slowly, emphasizing the word lightly. Professor Goodwitch shook her head, snorting.
"Well, he's certainly had enough experience with bars and drinks to know what he's talking about."
Jaune nodded, eyes a little unfocused as he mentally picked out his customers to see if he could find someone matching that description, if only to thank him later for bringing in another customer.
"So, what'll you have?" Jaune repeated the question he asked earlier. After all, this was a bar. Glynda's eyes narrowed dangerously, as if she was about to face a Grimm, before she slumped down onto her stool and shook her head.
"Just… just get me anything. Surprise me." The blonde woman said in resignation, giving up on trying to recall the drinks she had enjoyed so many years ago. Jaune hid his smile and nodded, grabbing a glass and placing it onto the countertop.
"Surely you have some sort of alcohol you're impartial to? You can't be telling me that you just don't drink?"
Glynda snorted at the question, shaking her head. "Gin. And I do drink, it's just usually at the end of the day in my office, after I've finished all of my work. Oum knows I need it." She muttered the last part quietly, but Jaune, being experienced with quiet talkers, was able to pick out the words.
"I can understand that." Jaune sympathized, nodding in concentration before he pulled out some London Dry, tonic water, lime juice, and a wedge of lime. He stared at the ingredients for a moment before nodding again, pretty sure that a simple and straight gin and tonic should work for the lady in front of him.
"So, you do a lot of work at Beacon then?" Jaune asked conversationally, filling the glass with ice and pouring the drinks into the glass, using a short knife to cut the lemon and drop it in as well. The professor thanked him, taking the glass and looking at it carefully, before taking a tentative sip of the drink. Placing the drink down, Glynda smiled.
"Yes. You could say I almost run the place." She shrugged, taking another sip. "Not to say that our Headmaster doesn't do anything. It's just I do the more… public handling of the academy." Another sip. "This is good. What is it?" Jaune nodded, smiling.
"Thank you. It's a Gin and Tonic, with a little twist."
"What's the twist?"
Jaune tapped at the bottle he had placed onto the table last. The Huntress had only seen him put a swig of it into the drink but… did it really make such a difference? Professor Goodwitch asked him, and he kept his grin, nodding.
"Not to most people, no. It's a special brand of drink that I made myself. Something for the Hunters and Huntresses out there." Jaune puffed out his chest, proud that the drink was effective. She nodded, humming in approval. It didn't take much longer before she placed the empty glass in front of Jaune, who was quick to make another for her.
"You know, I would not have thought that I would find someone as young as you bartending." Professor Goodwitch brushed a lock of hair out of her face, eyes watching Jaune closely. "Most people your age have, ah, bigger dreams." Jaune looked at the woman in front of him, expression unreadable.
"You make it sound like bartending isn't something people would want to do." The professor winced a little, quick to apologize to him, something Jaune waved off just as quickly. "I understand. You would be right about that."
The two of them went silent for a moment as Jaune found something wrong with one of the customers that were fooling around at a table, the boy quick to apologize and fix the problem. Returning back to the bar, Jaune spoke again.
"I did have a dream before I got this job." Jaune looked at the woman in the eyes, gaze unwavering. "I wanted to be a Hunter. Applied to be entered into Beacon, actually." Professor Goodwitch winced, eyes falling to the counter.
"I'm assuming that you didn't get in." Jaune snorted in amusement, a wry grin appearing on his face.
"Seeing as how I'm serving you a drink and not doing your homework, no, I didn't get in." Jaune waved a hand, shaking his head. "Don't worry about it though. I understand why." Glynda's eyes widened in surprise.
"You're not mad?"
"Mad? No. A little bitter?" Jaune shrugged, taking the empty glass from the blonde woman's hands, replacing it with a full glass. "I'm human. Gotta be a little disappointed about that."
They went silent again for a moment, Jaune's gaze a little unfocused, his thoughts far away before he shook his head, moving to grab a glass to polish with a clean rag. It was Glynda's turn to speak again.
"So you decided to take a job in Vale instead. What about your family?"
"What about them?" The tone was angry, rushed. Professor Goodwitch hesitated, before continuing.
"Well, why don't you go back to your family? After all, I'm sure they don't approve of—"
"It really doesn't matter what they do or don't approve of anymore." Jaune said flatly, slamming the clean glass onto the countertop. The schoolteacher stopped talking, eyes wide as she saw anger and regret visible in his eyes. The view was blocked when Jaune closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and giving a sheepish smile, the raw and crackling anger that was on his face moments ago disappearing under the professional map.
"Sorry about the outburst. Please, disregard what I said and have this complimentary drink." His tone was cool, calm, and collected, another glass almost forced into Goodwitch's hand.
"I—thank you." She replied, taking another sip. She was dumbfounded to see the boy look so hurt. If this had been in Beacon, the professor would have thought of a way to comfort the student, giving him good advice and a gentle push to keep moving forward. But this wasn't Beacon, and he wasn't a student.
Because we didn't accept him in.
Professor Goodwitch was at a loss for words. How many people, friends, students, colleagues, has she seen that look of hurt and rage in that she had just seen in Jaune's eyes? How many of them were still living, happy with the choices that they made?
The professor had never been the one to ignore a child in need. That's what made her one of the best teachers in all of Remnant.
"I'm sorry. To bring up such a sensitive subject."
Jaune shook his head, waving his hand dismissively. "It's alright. You didn't know. It's my fault for reacting so badly."
The next words she said were carefully chosen, picked out and examined to deliver the right amount of sincerity and warmth that she could muster.
"I know… how hard life can be. I've seen it many times, in many people, myself included." The professor placed her glass down, hands reaching out to grab Jaune's hands, ignoring the rag that was in the way of one of them. "It isn't good to bottle it up like that, and I've seen what happens when you let it… fester for too long." She stopped for a moment, letting the words sink in before continuing. "I know we don't know each other very well but. Everyone needs a ear lent to them every once in a while."
Jaune stared at his hands, covered at the thin hands of the Huntress, feeling the calluses on her palm. Eyes rising, Jaune gave a small smile, nodding.
"Okay then. On one condition." The woman nodded. "You talk about your problems too."
What?
The woman blinked in surprise, hands starting to withdraw before Jaune tightened his grip on them, if only hard and long enough for her to stop pulling back.
"I can see it, Miss. I can see there are things that bother you, and it's just like you said. Sometimes you need to vent. And who better than someone who doesn't have a biased opinion of you?" Jaune closed his eyes, sighing before he continued. "I… I'll admit I'm bad at talking about myself." Eyes opened again, connecting with hers. "Maybe you can help me."
She was enchanted, the surprise visible on Professor Goodwitch's face.
This boy couldn't have been older than her youngest students, but there was a depth, a maturity that she only saw once every hundred students.
There was a brief regret that flared inside of her, knowing that this trait was something that could never be shown in a written transcript. Something that could never truly be shown except during the times when it mattered the most, when it was needed.
She had the feeling that Beacon had missed an opportunity, something that she hadn't thought was possible in a long time.
Professor Goodwitch smiled, her hands tightening around the glass. This. This was a place she could see herself coming to frequently. Nodding, the woman looked at Jaune, for the first time in a long time showing her teeth when she smiled.
"It's a deal."