extendedmetaphor | (no subject)

"This is appalling," said Irwin, stepping away from the bookshelf and all but collapsing into an available chair.

"They had one teacher who touched them up," he said. "Not me, obviously. I don't think it bothered them nearly as much as it bothered everyone else. They seemed rather determined to protect him, in the end."

"It really isn't. It's... Thank you," Guy replied, calming himself down a bit and setting himself opposite to Tom, against a desk.

"Sign of a good teacher, if nothing else. The protecting, of course, not the fondling." A badly held-back snort.

"I'm not sure I'd class Hector as a good teacher. Or...effective. Good is rather different from effective, isn't it?" He snorted. "One ought to be appalled, but having met Dakin, it doesn't seem to have left its mark."

"Knowing Stuart he would have probably been more insulted if Hector hadn't wanted to feel him up," Guy said, somewhat fondly.

"Oh, I imagine so," he said, and he can't help but think about Dakin standing in that classroom and talking about the likelihood of anyone being sucked off.

"I can't get my head around that - your calling him 'Stuart'. I've never thought of him as anything other than Dakin."

Edited 2012-11-06 21:11 (UTC)

"I haven't been on last-name terms with anyone since Eton," Guy replied. "Of course, it was quite radical at the time..." he drifted off momentarily.

"Has it changed a lot? University, I mean. Oxford, Cambridge."

And here it is again, the old lie. He shrugs, affects carelessness and hopes it washes.

"I don't suppose much has changed there since they opened the doors for the first time," he says. "The boys fell for it, anyway."

"Fell for it?" Guy asked. He held Cambridge in very high regard. It would forever be the best years of his life.

"They were all very excited. They worked very...hard." He shrugged. "I don't what they thought they were getting. They did well." He shrugged.

"I feel like i've spent years talking about this very same thing."

"You sound terribly disillusioned by your former college," Guy remarked. "Wasn't it a happy time for you? I loved it. Never been happier than at Trinity."

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "You could spend your entire life waiting to be happy, couldn't you? I've been happy the last couple of months. I liked the teaching. The lessons....the...I enjoyed it."

"You must have wanted more than to become a teacher." Guy couldn't believe that was all one could aspire to. "Destined for greatness, shouting for change, leading the riot. It was in the air - if you could smell passed the stuffy cloud of the library."

"I always wanted to be a historian," said Irwin, shrugging his shoulders. "I ended up a teacher by accident, but...there are things to love, if you look for them. I was...seduced into it, I suppose."

He frowned.

"Poor choice of words."

A grin had appeared on Guy's face. "Not at all. History can be very seductive."

"You can stop that right now," said Irwin, rolling his eyes and dragging on the cigarette. "I'm not sure I like that at all."

He did smirk though.

"You won't let me tease you, you won't let me seduce you... what will you let me do?" Guy continued, in rather the same tone of voice.

"Seduce me?" He stared for a moment, cigarette forgotten between two fingers. "When did that turn up?"

Guy shrugged, amused. "Thought I'd slide that in there subtly," he said, his hand making a little snake-like sliding movement. "Because I did intend to."

"Is that your idea of subtle?" asked Irwin, painfully aware of the fact that his cheeks were flushing and that he was finding his cigarette increasingly interesting. "You and Dakin must be practically bloody soulmates."

Guy snickered. "Subtlety was never in my character," he shrugged. "Must you bring up horrible boys? That's the third time you've mentioned him, and you still call him by his last name." He found this all too amusing.

"Force of habit," he said, with a shrug, trying to pretend that he didn't mention Dakin all the time, let alone think about him.

"So..." he said, affecting nonchalance. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

He wondered if there were any fucking gerunds involved?

"Well," Guy pondered. "I could invite you over for a glass of wine. I have a Grand Reserve lying about. But since I don't drink, that would be too much like trying to get you drunk, and I don't think that's necessary. So how about we just go back to my place. It's not far."

He was tempted, incredibly so. It had been a long time - the whole mess with Dakin had only reminded him of how long. And this might be good. It might distance him from all of that.

"It wouldn't be...terribly uncomfortable afterwards? One does worry about professionalism."

Guy could only smile at that. "One looks very handsome when one worries, but one oughtn't," he assured the other, standing up. "You're teaching right along side a class in Embroidery, so professionalism is the least of our worries."

He neared the other, cupped his face and kissed him. Seemed appropriate, considering.

Well, that was the end of the argument, wasn't it? Abstractly, he tried to remember the last time that anyone had kissed him but then he stopped thinking altogether.

He actually leaned forward in the chair, pressing forward into the kiss, embarrassingly eager.