Essential Circuitry

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Camp Rock or the Jonas Brothers. Camp Rock belongs to Disney and the Jonas Brothers belong to themselves.

Characters: Shane and Brown

Words: 1, 002

Author's Notes: So, I've had this idea for awhile. Finally got around to getting it down today. This will be my own interpretation of how "Connect Three…connected". For the sake of my story, I am ignoring Camp Rock 2 in respect to Connect Three being brothers. In this, they are completely and utterly unrelated.

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"Hey Uncle Brown!"

Brown Cesario looked up from the paperwork he was sorting through to smile at his nephew. Shane had just recently turned fifteen, absolutely thrilled because that meant that he would now be allowed to go to Camp Rock. While the camp didn't have an age limit per se, all campers were fifteen or over by some unspoken rule. As it was, Shane had gone the year before, but only as Brown's assistant, and not as a camper. This year would be the first year he would actually be attending.

"What brings you to my cabin Shane?" Brown asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I just came to give you these," Shane announced grandly, chucking a couple of sheets of paper on his uncle's desk.

Brown leant forward and gathered them together, recognising them as Camp Rock enrolment forms. "You know these were supposed to be handed in two weeks ago, at the latest?" he challenged.

Shane shrugged, throwing himself into the chair on the opposite side of the desk to Brown's. "You knew I was coming."

The Englishman decided to ignore the comment and instead pulled a thick folder out of his top drawer. "Here," he said, depositing it in front of his nephew with a thump. "You can go through the list of attending campers and sort them into cabins. Four to a cabin if you wouldn't mind."

Shane huffed but took the folder, flipping it open, face splitting into a cheeky grin when he saw that his name was right at the top of list – something that indicated that he had been the first person enrolled.

"Guess you knew I was coming after all," he crowed, looking extremely pleased with himself. The look vanished the moment Brown dumped another folder in front of him.

"Just for that," Brown remarked, "You can sort the girls' cabins too."

With grudging compliance, Shane set about doing his task, he and his uncle working alongside in silence for the better part of an hour, Brown finalising things for camp. Shane decided to get the girls done first, since that was what he was looking forward to the least. Once that was done and he was able to work on the boys cabins, Shane really started paying attention, flicking his hair out of his eyes as he studied the names.

Mathematically speaking, while there should have been four people per cabin, the number of people attending this year meant that there would be one cabin of three. Shane nominated this as his cabin. Perusing the names and studying them critically, he argued back and forth as to who his two cabin mates should be. The minor detail that he knew none of the people listed was purely that; minor.

Jason Matthews.

Shane's brow furrowed when he reached that name, something about it ringing nicely in his head. Grabbing a different folder, Shane pulled out Jason's enrolment form. While probably illegal, he wanted to know everything he could about his potential cabin mate before securing him a guaranteed in. He grinned at what he found.

Jason, like him, was fifteen and this would be his first year at Camp Rock. Reading on, Shane saw that Jason – or Jason's parents – had put 'guitar – electric' as his preferred instrument. That gave them something in common, as Shane also played guitar. Continuing to read and finding nothing that displeased him, Shane proudly wrote Jason's name under his own in 'Cabin Coda' – a cabin Shane had personally picked out as it was conveniently closest to both the lake and hot showers.

Nodding to himself, Shane then resumed searching through the list of campers again, hoping to find his second and final cabin mate. Seeing none of the names jump out at him, he sighed, figuring he'd have to go with someone random. As he went to reluctantly make a decision, his eyes fell upon the enrolment date of the final camper, Nathaniel Anderson. His uncle had said the cut-off was two weeks ago, and yet this boy had enrolled just nine days earlier.

Re-grabbing the folder he'd had earlier, Shane fanned them through his fingers until he reached Nathaniel. Extracting the file and studying it, his eyebrows rose. This kid was just thirteen, a good two years younger than any of the other campers. Someone, clearly his mother if the handwriting was anything to go off, had written that his preferred instruments were guitar, drums and piano, along with the fact that Nathaniel was a good singer. Talk about your musically talented kid.

"Hey Uncle Brown," Shane asked, capturing the man's attention. "What's the deal with this kid?"

Brown's face scrunched up in confusion until he saw the enrolment date. "Oh yeah, late entry. His mother said he really wanted to come but had only just heard about us. What could I do Shane? He sounded so keen."

"Well, if he's keen…"

Brown looked at him quizzically but Shane didn't bother elaborating, instead adding Nathaniel's name under his and Jason's, making three.

Rather haphazardly, Shane scribbled names into the other cabins, choosing people with wild abandon and nowhere near the same amount of effort as he had to his own cabin. Assigning the last name with a dramatic flourish, Shane bunched all the papers together and placed them in front of his uncle. Brown gestured for him to wait as he went to stand, indicating with his eyes for Shane to remain sitting.

"You do know I said four to a cabin, don't you?" Brown questioned a few moments later. "Somehow you've managed to put three people in your cabin. How is three anything like four?"

"It's one number off!" Shane protested, folding his arms. "And besides, there isn't an even number of campers anyway. You were always going to end up with one cabin of three." He shrugged. "I just made that cabin mine."

"Jason Matthews and Nathaniel Anderson," Brown read, eyes flicking up to meet Shane's. "Why them? Out of everyone, why them?"

"I don't know," Shane confessed with a wild grin, "But they felt like a good idea."

Little did Shane know that he would start questioning those feelings.

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A/N: Ha ha ha, I left the first chapter on a cliffhanger. -.-' That was purely unintentional, I assure you. I actually feel bad that this is as short as it is. Anyway, hope to have another chapter up as soon as it is written. Til then!

DG777

P.S. The name of their cabin is a musical term, with 'coda' meaning: "a more or less independent passage, at the end of a musical composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close". Fitting, isn't it? ;)