extendedmetaphor | (no subject)

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.

If at all they made it to his hut, Guy thought fleetingly as the other kissed him back eagerly.

It should be confessed that Guy deepened the kiss quite eagerly himself, a hand passing through the other's hair. It had been far, far too long.

It was so easy to get lost in, so easy to give yourself over entirely to sensation and not really think about it. Any of it.

It was sort of glorious in that regard.

Professionalism, no, but comfort perhaps was worth worrying about. Guy, however, was not worrying about anything at all. There was only hair under his fingers, then a neck and a shirt collar, then a shirt button that he undid. Not because of a master-plan. It was a button and buttons needed undoing.

It was only a button but it felt more than that - it felt like something with weight. He pulled back from the kiss, his breath shivering against Guy's lips.

"Not here," he said. A part of him thought that it ought to be a question. But it wasn't, in the end. Some evidence of a backbone, at least.

Guy smiled. "Not here," he agreed and with the same hand that had undone him, buttoned the button again.

He pulled him out of his chair then. "It's not far." And with another kiss, guided him outside. Work would have to wait.

He walked with Guy in a sort of haze, sure that what they were about to so (what he hoped they were about to do) was ringing out of him like a bell.

But God, he wanted it.