i.
There weren't many things that could get under Harry's skin.
He was an even-tempered, cordial kind of bloke when he wanted to be. Instead of barging against the waves, he much preferred to ebb and flow with the tide, slosh and plod peacefully against rocks, sand, boats, fish. Once his Nan had referred to him as the type a beaver would want around when the river its dam is built on is in spate; he came at things carefully, relaxed, and with a "slow, gentle voice that could guide a missile to a soft landing" (another quote from his Nan, who Harry had long since decided was his greatest confidence booster). When problems presented themselves to him, it was rare to see him fizzle or panic, and if a situation where tensions are quick to escalate, he is the one levelheaded enough to soothe the rigidity. Often, people would seek him out during parties for a multitude of reasons because he just made them feel better – whether it be a bad trip, a shitty comment, or they were just shy to open up – they weren't sent his way, and Harry took care of them. He would take care of anyone if someone asked him to.
But this summer camp...these camp counselors...Harry reckons they might make him break that calm exterior.
It was simple, how he had gotten into this situation; Harry was naive his sophomore year of university and presumed that he could smoke off his mate's pipe in a little nook of conifer trees by the library on campus without regard to the security officer that patrolled every hour. Maybe he could have made a run for it if he hadn't been swinging slightly in a hammock that he had attached to two trunks and his "mate" had bothered to tell him that someone was coming (it was a girl he'd been sleeping with on-and-off at the time, he'd met her in his Intro to physics lecture and they made a bond over their mutual disgust for physics – he fucked her in the bathroom, they exchanged numbers, so on and so forth – she had no allegiance to him, they had only been at it for about two weeks, but he would have thought having his prick inside her would have incited even some sort of regard for his well being), but instead she made a clean break for it.
He got caught, it went through the chain of command, and since he kept his grades high they decided that expulsion was a little too extreme for a considerably small slip (how the President had stated during their meeting, "Well, at least you weren't snorting coke or summat, this would be far harder to maneuver"), so instead Harry had to sign some sort of deal with the school to better himself. He would attend a seminar about how pot was a gateway drug, meet with a therapist to see if he had any form of substance abuse (he wasn't a serial smoker, more of a social smoker, so the most he would do it was once a week if not every other week or two, but they had him feeling like a full blown addict), and he had to do extra volunteer hours for two years in order to keep his scholarship. The regular amount of hours was already hard for Harry to complete as is, because he worked as a bookseller for a little cottage-y shop a few blocks from campus, and if he wasn't working, he was in lecture all day. There were not a whole of organizations that extended their opening hours past six in the evening, so Harry was at a loss for what to do. He reached out to the volunteering center, wondering what he could do to counter this.
That was when they told him about camp Mountain Meadows.
For the better half of his summer, Harry would be wrangling children ages 5-12 through camp activities when he hadn't even been through camp himself. He couldn't tell you the first thing about being a camp counsellor and didn't necessarily want to do the week long orientation to learn how to, but he wasn't left with much of a choice was he? It was either suck it up and risk being one of the cast members in a horror film or get kicked from university, and while neither were ideal, the latter was obviously a bit more severe.
It wasn't horrible, is the thing. The staff was kind to him, the woman who ran the camp didn't treat him any differently (despite knowing why he was there), and when he finally meant the campers, they were fun...sweet and innocent still, living freely without regrets nor worries. The cabins they stayed in were nice enough, with air conditioning units installed and rather than bunk beds, the counsellors got their own twin size beds. Four to a cabin and they didn't fancy a coed situation in that aspect, so the boys were with the boys and the girls with the girls. Harry had figured he could make some friends then – he'd never had a problem making them before.
