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.au fic: The Hours of Instruction - D/M (eventual NC17) 3.?
Title: The Hours of Instruction
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: D/M
Rating/Warning: PG/PG13 for now; R/NC17 eventually.
Disclaimers: If the boys were mine, this season would not be happening.
Advertisements: Catholic school AU. For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
wordclaim50 challenge #01 (AU) and philosophy_20 challenge #08 (Faith).
Chapters: 01; 02
Notes: Third part. Also, for the record, there is nothing quite like waking up and realizing that one doesn't have to read or write an obscene amount of material for the next four months. *shivers pleasurably*
CHAPTER THREE
Danny didn’t say anything to him when Martin woke up the next morning, except to observe that Martin was going to be late for orientation if he didn’t get a move on. Almost a quarter-past eight, and Martin, who’d forgotten to set his alarm and had also spent the night in an agony of humiliation – with brief flashes of lust, thinking how good Danny looked – had launched out of bed, racketing around to grab his book bag, shower stuff, uniform, more desperate to escape from Danny’s presence than make it to orientation on time.
Of course, Danny watched all this silently, distracting lying there on his bed pretending to read his mystery novel, throwing Martin hopelessly off-balance, and at the thought that Danny was seeing far too much of how the whole situation was getting to him, Martin managed to collect himself. Control, control, where the hell is your control, Fitzgerald? and he calmed enough to tuck a folder into his backpack and remember his tie, and walk out the door with a laconic “Later.”
To which Danny replied:
“Sleep well?”
* * *
He was two minutes away from being late, trying to collect himself before walking into Trinity Church, and knowing he looked as terrible as he felt: faintly red from residual embarrassment and the sprint across the lawn, hair definitely not in compliance with the “students’ hair must at all times be short (not to touch the collar), well-kept, and tidy” part of the Dress and Appearance Code, face a little wild-looking, maybe, from adrenaline. A glance back in the direction of the dorms – houses, dammit – showed, to Martin’s dismay, that there were no more stragglers behind him.
He turned back around, recognized Father Bryant standing at the door to the church and groaned internally, expecting an epic lecture on punctuality of the sort they’d had inflicted on them last night, but Father Bryant merely offered him a reproving look, along with a piece of paper – schedule for the service, Martin supposed – and waved him through. The heavy thud of the door slamming shut told Martin that yes, you are the last person in, and you’re holding things up.
While his agenda hadn’t included cooperating with his parents’ plan to get him “The Best Education Possible” at a place like Trinity, he hadn’t planned on making a spectacle of himself. As such, Martin was acutely aware of sixty or so eyes tracking across him, all wondering at the latecomer.
Martin ignored them as best he could and collapsed somewhere near the back next to a kid he didn’t recognize, who glanced at him dismissively before looking away.
“Ah, what was lost is found,” observed the priest standing at the lectern. Pulpit. Whatever it was. Father Perry – Martin had a vague memory of him from the introductions at last night’s dinner, a slender man with a Texas accent, surprising to hear in the backwoods of upstate New York.
There was, Martin realized after a long and silent moment, a response expected.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, barely loud enough, he thought, for the boy next to him to hear the words.
“Well, better late than never,” Father Perry said placidly.
When Father Bryant had mentioned the special chapel session for new students, Martin had envisioned full-dress ritual, complete with incense and choirs. Instead, Father Perry offered a brief prayer and a few readings from the Bible, and an interminable sermon on the benefits of a Catholic education.
Martin spent the entire time thinking about Danny, Danny who wasn’t here and Martin supposed he should feel relieved that Danny was somewhere else (probably, Martin thought, telling the others about his spying freak of a perverted roommate). Instead, sitting in an uncomfortable wooden pew, pretending to pay attention to Father Perry, Martin felt strangely cut off, adrift in an unfamiliar place. And, like it or not – and Martin told himself he most emphatically did not like it – Danny had become the only way Martin could even hope to understand what was going on.
Yeah. Did not like that at all.
“As you go on to university and then your careers, we hope you will remember and adhere to the values and ethics you will have learned at Trinity…”
Martin rolled his eyes. Passing the collection plate already? But Father Perry continued on, flowing into the need to have responsible, moral individuals in charge of the country and the economy.
Danny had looked really good, though. Unfair to have a roommate who looked like that, with those dark eyes – brown, black, Martin hadn’t been able to tell – and that smile, making Martin think things he doubted Father Bryant would approve of. Definitely unfair to have a roommate who so effortlessly got to him, knocked him off balance, and made detachment and logic difficult.
A sharp jab in his shoulder startled him from his thoughts, from his thoughts and back into church, back into his uncomfortable pew and his place next to the kid he hadn’t met yet. The kid who had – Martin blinked and looked up, saw the boy glaring down at him.
“Hey, we’re praying,” the boy hissed. “Get up before Father Bryant gets over here.”
Martin got up as unobtrusively as possible, glancing upward to see if anyone other than his seatmate had noticed. Fortunately, all eyes were respectfully cast down and Father Bryant’s attention was fixed on Father Perry, who was too busy praying for grace for the coming year to notice Martin belatedly standing up.
* * *
Three hours, a campus tour, advising session, and bookstore trip later, Martin barely made it back to Coren for lunch. The line at the bookstore was, as he’d expected, obscene, not only the new students but most of the old ones – procrastinating, which unexpectedly made Martin feel a bit better – crowding the aisles, and the others who weren’t picking up books were standing in an interminable line.
He’d had to run back to Grey to drop them off – no way was he going to pack around every single textbook he’d need for the rest of the year. With something between apprehension and relief, he’d seen that he was in most of Danny’s classes: Honors American History, Honors Seminar in Advanced Chemistry, Honors American Literature, Honors Calculus, and two others he couldn’t remember from Danny’s bookcase, Seminar in Virgil (Trinity required two years of Latin, even if you’d had it at your old school) and something called Christian Doctrine to 1500, which met once a week for two and a half hours.
Danny hadn’t been in their room and, while he waited in yet another line, Martin scanned the dining hall for him, on the verge of an irrational anxiety attack at being unable to find him when he heard a deep, familiar voice calling to him from across the sea of noisy teenagers.
Matt, and Martin saw him a second later, towering over the rest of the students. He nodded to Matt to acknowledge that he’d seen him and proceeded through the line at the counter. A different setup than for dinner, a free-for-all cafeteria-style with none of the formality of the previous night, but with equally-questionable food and a tyrannical policy on dessert.
“One only,” the woman behind the counter informed Martin, in case he was thinking about taking two brownies. Which he had been, because the brownies looked at least mostly edible, unlike the main course.
“Danny’s running late,” Matt said as Martin pushed through one last knot of students surrounding their table. Absolutely unreadable tone, face serious – but Matt seemed like the serious type anyway – and Martin wondered what Danny had told him. “Locke is his advisor” – and for once Martin knew what someone was talking about, because Professor Locke was also his advisor – “and Locke always runs over.”
Martin knew that, too. He’d been waiting outside Professor Locke’s office for fifteen minutes, which had also contributed to his lateness. Professor Locke, British and with the oddly wild hair of the true academic, had spent the first ten minutes of their session talking about the death of the humanities in the United States before moving on to how Martin liked Trinity – a complete non sequitur that had surprised an “It’s okay” out of Martin – and finally on to the plan for the semester.
“You’ll like Walker,” Locke had muttered, peering myopically at the print-out of Martin’s schedule. “Very good scholar. Knows his Latin. Nice schedule, very good. Challenging.” And then, when Martin had thought he’d been released, Locke looked up at him, adjusted his glasses, and asked, “Would you care for tea?”
Twenty minutes and a cup of tea later he’d been released to the bookstore, and the boy who’d been sitting next to Martin in chapel shot him an aggravated look as he stepped inside Locke’s office.
“So how’s your morning been?” Matt asked, and Martin shrugged, said something about it being busy but okay, and Matt nodded, let the conversation go after that. Nothing more about Danny, or a sly comment about how Martin slept, and it occurred to Martin that even if Danny had said something about last night to Matt, Matt wouldn’t talk about it.
Ashley collapsed at their table a few minutes later and was in the middle of dissecting his lunch, with loud questions on whether the meat was beef, as advertised, or dog, when Danny appeared. Came out of nowhere, sliding flawlessly into place next to Martin, and if Martin weren’t so on edge already he would have been at a loss again – but he wasn’t, and when he returned Danny’s greeting, it was with a composure and coolness he hadn’t felt all day.
A relief, really, to be able to look squarely at Danny without flinching or turning red, despite the smirk he could see at the corner of Danny’s mouth.
“So, how’d orientation go?” Danny asked. “You weren’t late, were you?”
“No,” Martin said, holding Danny’s eyes with his own, ignoring the swift, sharp jolt of excitement, the unexpected rush of having all Danny’s attention focused on him. Like something good, something he could want and get used to having, this weird sort of hostility, like agreeing to dislike each other.
“Good to know,” Danny said, turning back to his plate like nothing happened. “Don’t know how I would’ve lived with myself, if I’d let you get in trouble your first day.” So solemn and insincere that Martin had to roll his eyes, and Danny, catching him at it, snickered.
“Yeah, I bet you’d be all broken up about it,” Martin said. “Couldn’t let that happen to you.”
“Fitzie, I didn’t know you cared.”
Martin rolled his eyes at the nickname, not caring if Danny saw his irritation, stabbed emphatically a piece of roast beef.
“Man, it’s already dead.” Ashley poked at the shredded remains on his plate. “I think.”
“So what’re you guys up to this afternoon?” Matt asked.
“Nap,” Ashley and Danny said in unison.
Well, that removed one possible way for Martin to spend his free afternoon. After maybe five hours of sleep uninterrupted by excruciating embarrassment, speculations as to whether Danny would tell someone, and playing over the unfairly brief memory of Danny’s shirt sliding down his shoulders, Martin could have used the rest.
“Thought I’d go for a run,” he said. Then again, maybe he needed a run, adrenaline to clear out some of the stupidity that had taken up residence in his head.
Matt nodded. “Meeting with Quintero,” he said, cryptic and, seeming to realize it, added for Martin’s benefit, “He’s the football coach.”
“Matt’s on the football team,” Ashley explained. “Stupid jock.”
“You want to eat the tiles for dessert?” Matt asked mildly.
“They might taste better,” Danny said, peering down at the floor of the dining hall, and Martin had to agree with him on that.
* * *
What he hadn’t counted on was changing into his running clothes in front of Danny. Raine Hall, the athletic center, was closed until the first day of classes, so no escape to the locker room for Martin. He briefly contemplated changing in the bathroom, but that would have been tantamount to an admission that he didn’t feel comfortable being even partly naked in Danny’s presence, and he was tired of Danny having the advantage.
He ignored Danny as the other boy unbuttoned his jacket and flopped down on his bed, uniform and all, legs dangling off the side, hands laced over his stomach. Danny’s uniform shirt, untucked behind his jacket, had ridden up a bit.
Martin very pointedly Did Not See this as he hung up his jacket and tie, made a point of studying the Trinity Academy crest embroidered in miniature on the left breast of his jacket. Took out his running clothes, t-shirt (no tank tops; those were forbidden), shorts, dug his sneakers out from where they’d somehow made their way under his bed.
Pulling off his shirt was easy, despite once again feeling Danny’s eyes on him, and he wondered why the other boy was looking. Payback for last night? Because it was either look at Martin or look at the crucifix hanging on the opposing wall? On principle, because he liked making Martin uncomfortable?
Most likely the first or the last, Martin thought as he straightened his t-shirt and reached for the button and zipper of his pants. Shoved his pants down and kicked them off before he could think too much about it, felt his heart skip oddly, unwelcome, as he reached for his running shorts, standing there in t-shirt and boxers.
He turned around again, sat stiffly on the edge of his bed to put his shoes on, and in the periphery of his vision saw that Danny had his eyes closed.
So had Martin imagined the past two minutes? Danny lay there, right leg swinging meditatively back and forth, small patch of tan skin showing between shirt and pants, like he really didn’t care if Martin was looking.
Impatiently, Martin finished tying his shoes and escaped out the door, keeping his movements as steady as possible. Proud of himself when he shut the door behind him, proud for not being caught out like last night, for feeling like in the weird non-exchange they’d just had, he’d managed to come out ahead – slightly less stupid already, more self-possessed than he’d felt since his mother had dropped him off yesterday, and that had to be a good thing.
His run helped a bit more, not as much as swimming would have done, but the rhythm of stride and breath, feet crunching on the gravel path, gave him back another measure of control. No room for Danny in his head, no distractions as he ran, finding the space where his mind went blissfully blank somewhere near the end of the first mile, and by the fifth he felt like himself again.
So much so that Martin didn’t mind Danny seeing him, sweaty and flushed and elated, as he returned to their room to grab his shower stuff, sort of liked it as Danny watched him, bemused and curious, but not saying anything, maybe – for once – not finding anything to say.
-tbc.-
In other news: *sporfle* I just saw the SGA special from the TV Guide channel, and Joe Flanigan and David Hewlett slay me, they really do.
JF: Do they manhandle each other?
DH: There could be fondling.
Which is also a way of saying McShep fic tomorrow, and possibly WaT as well, if I can get it finished. Both for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
svmadelyn's kink/cliche challenge because that is the level at which my brain is operating at the moment.
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: D/M
Rating/Warning: PG/PG13 for now; R/NC17 eventually.
Disclaimers: If the boys were mine, this season would not be happening.
Advertisements: Catholic school AU. For
wordclaim50 challenge #01 (AU) and philosophy_20 challenge #08 (Faith).Chapters: 01; 02
Notes: Third part. Also, for the record, there is nothing quite like waking up and realizing that one doesn't have to read or write an obscene amount of material for the next four months. *shivers pleasurably*
CHAPTER THREE
Danny didn’t say anything to him when Martin woke up the next morning, except to observe that Martin was going to be late for orientation if he didn’t get a move on. Almost a quarter-past eight, and Martin, who’d forgotten to set his alarm and had also spent the night in an agony of humiliation – with brief flashes of lust, thinking how good Danny looked – had launched out of bed, racketing around to grab his book bag, shower stuff, uniform, more desperate to escape from Danny’s presence than make it to orientation on time.
Of course, Danny watched all this silently, distracting lying there on his bed pretending to read his mystery novel, throwing Martin hopelessly off-balance, and at the thought that Danny was seeing far too much of how the whole situation was getting to him, Martin managed to collect himself. Control, control, where the hell is your control, Fitzgerald? and he calmed enough to tuck a folder into his backpack and remember his tie, and walk out the door with a laconic “Later.”
To which Danny replied:
“Sleep well?”
He was two minutes away from being late, trying to collect himself before walking into Trinity Church, and knowing he looked as terrible as he felt: faintly red from residual embarrassment and the sprint across the lawn, hair definitely not in compliance with the “students’ hair must at all times be short (not to touch the collar), well-kept, and tidy” part of the Dress and Appearance Code, face a little wild-looking, maybe, from adrenaline. A glance back in the direction of the dorms – houses, dammit – showed, to Martin’s dismay, that there were no more stragglers behind him.
He turned back around, recognized Father Bryant standing at the door to the church and groaned internally, expecting an epic lecture on punctuality of the sort they’d had inflicted on them last night, but Father Bryant merely offered him a reproving look, along with a piece of paper – schedule for the service, Martin supposed – and waved him through. The heavy thud of the door slamming shut told Martin that yes, you are the last person in, and you’re holding things up.
While his agenda hadn’t included cooperating with his parents’ plan to get him “The Best Education Possible” at a place like Trinity, he hadn’t planned on making a spectacle of himself. As such, Martin was acutely aware of sixty or so eyes tracking across him, all wondering at the latecomer.
Martin ignored them as best he could and collapsed somewhere near the back next to a kid he didn’t recognize, who glanced at him dismissively before looking away.
“Ah, what was lost is found,” observed the priest standing at the lectern. Pulpit. Whatever it was. Father Perry – Martin had a vague memory of him from the introductions at last night’s dinner, a slender man with a Texas accent, surprising to hear in the backwoods of upstate New York.
There was, Martin realized after a long and silent moment, a response expected.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, barely loud enough, he thought, for the boy next to him to hear the words.
“Well, better late than never,” Father Perry said placidly.
When Father Bryant had mentioned the special chapel session for new students, Martin had envisioned full-dress ritual, complete with incense and choirs. Instead, Father Perry offered a brief prayer and a few readings from the Bible, and an interminable sermon on the benefits of a Catholic education.
Martin spent the entire time thinking about Danny, Danny who wasn’t here and Martin supposed he should feel relieved that Danny was somewhere else (probably, Martin thought, telling the others about his spying freak of a perverted roommate). Instead, sitting in an uncomfortable wooden pew, pretending to pay attention to Father Perry, Martin felt strangely cut off, adrift in an unfamiliar place. And, like it or not – and Martin told himself he most emphatically did not like it – Danny had become the only way Martin could even hope to understand what was going on.
Yeah. Did not like that at all.
“As you go on to university and then your careers, we hope you will remember and adhere to the values and ethics you will have learned at Trinity…”
Martin rolled his eyes. Passing the collection plate already? But Father Perry continued on, flowing into the need to have responsible, moral individuals in charge of the country and the economy.
Danny had looked really good, though. Unfair to have a roommate who looked like that, with those dark eyes – brown, black, Martin hadn’t been able to tell – and that smile, making Martin think things he doubted Father Bryant would approve of. Definitely unfair to have a roommate who so effortlessly got to him, knocked him off balance, and made detachment and logic difficult.
A sharp jab in his shoulder startled him from his thoughts, from his thoughts and back into church, back into his uncomfortable pew and his place next to the kid he hadn’t met yet. The kid who had – Martin blinked and looked up, saw the boy glaring down at him.
“Hey, we’re praying,” the boy hissed. “Get up before Father Bryant gets over here.”
Martin got up as unobtrusively as possible, glancing upward to see if anyone other than his seatmate had noticed. Fortunately, all eyes were respectfully cast down and Father Bryant’s attention was fixed on Father Perry, who was too busy praying for grace for the coming year to notice Martin belatedly standing up.
Three hours, a campus tour, advising session, and bookstore trip later, Martin barely made it back to Coren for lunch. The line at the bookstore was, as he’d expected, obscene, not only the new students but most of the old ones – procrastinating, which unexpectedly made Martin feel a bit better – crowding the aisles, and the others who weren’t picking up books were standing in an interminable line.
He’d had to run back to Grey to drop them off – no way was he going to pack around every single textbook he’d need for the rest of the year. With something between apprehension and relief, he’d seen that he was in most of Danny’s classes: Honors American History, Honors Seminar in Advanced Chemistry, Honors American Literature, Honors Calculus, and two others he couldn’t remember from Danny’s bookcase, Seminar in Virgil (Trinity required two years of Latin, even if you’d had it at your old school) and something called Christian Doctrine to 1500, which met once a week for two and a half hours.
Danny hadn’t been in their room and, while he waited in yet another line, Martin scanned the dining hall for him, on the verge of an irrational anxiety attack at being unable to find him when he heard a deep, familiar voice calling to him from across the sea of noisy teenagers.
Matt, and Martin saw him a second later, towering over the rest of the students. He nodded to Matt to acknowledge that he’d seen him and proceeded through the line at the counter. A different setup than for dinner, a free-for-all cafeteria-style with none of the formality of the previous night, but with equally-questionable food and a tyrannical policy on dessert.
“One only,” the woman behind the counter informed Martin, in case he was thinking about taking two brownies. Which he had been, because the brownies looked at least mostly edible, unlike the main course.
“Danny’s running late,” Matt said as Martin pushed through one last knot of students surrounding their table. Absolutely unreadable tone, face serious – but Matt seemed like the serious type anyway – and Martin wondered what Danny had told him. “Locke is his advisor” – and for once Martin knew what someone was talking about, because Professor Locke was also his advisor – “and Locke always runs over.”
Martin knew that, too. He’d been waiting outside Professor Locke’s office for fifteen minutes, which had also contributed to his lateness. Professor Locke, British and with the oddly wild hair of the true academic, had spent the first ten minutes of their session talking about the death of the humanities in the United States before moving on to how Martin liked Trinity – a complete non sequitur that had surprised an “It’s okay” out of Martin – and finally on to the plan for the semester.
“You’ll like Walker,” Locke had muttered, peering myopically at the print-out of Martin’s schedule. “Very good scholar. Knows his Latin. Nice schedule, very good. Challenging.” And then, when Martin had thought he’d been released, Locke looked up at him, adjusted his glasses, and asked, “Would you care for tea?”
Twenty minutes and a cup of tea later he’d been released to the bookstore, and the boy who’d been sitting next to Martin in chapel shot him an aggravated look as he stepped inside Locke’s office.
“So how’s your morning been?” Matt asked, and Martin shrugged, said something about it being busy but okay, and Matt nodded, let the conversation go after that. Nothing more about Danny, or a sly comment about how Martin slept, and it occurred to Martin that even if Danny had said something about last night to Matt, Matt wouldn’t talk about it.
Ashley collapsed at their table a few minutes later and was in the middle of dissecting his lunch, with loud questions on whether the meat was beef, as advertised, or dog, when Danny appeared. Came out of nowhere, sliding flawlessly into place next to Martin, and if Martin weren’t so on edge already he would have been at a loss again – but he wasn’t, and when he returned Danny’s greeting, it was with a composure and coolness he hadn’t felt all day.
A relief, really, to be able to look squarely at Danny without flinching or turning red, despite the smirk he could see at the corner of Danny’s mouth.
“So, how’d orientation go?” Danny asked. “You weren’t late, were you?”
“No,” Martin said, holding Danny’s eyes with his own, ignoring the swift, sharp jolt of excitement, the unexpected rush of having all Danny’s attention focused on him. Like something good, something he could want and get used to having, this weird sort of hostility, like agreeing to dislike each other.
“Good to know,” Danny said, turning back to his plate like nothing happened. “Don’t know how I would’ve lived with myself, if I’d let you get in trouble your first day.” So solemn and insincere that Martin had to roll his eyes, and Danny, catching him at it, snickered.
“Yeah, I bet you’d be all broken up about it,” Martin said. “Couldn’t let that happen to you.”
“Fitzie, I didn’t know you cared.”
Martin rolled his eyes at the nickname, not caring if Danny saw his irritation, stabbed emphatically a piece of roast beef.
“Man, it’s already dead.” Ashley poked at the shredded remains on his plate. “I think.”
“So what’re you guys up to this afternoon?” Matt asked.
“Nap,” Ashley and Danny said in unison.
Well, that removed one possible way for Martin to spend his free afternoon. After maybe five hours of sleep uninterrupted by excruciating embarrassment, speculations as to whether Danny would tell someone, and playing over the unfairly brief memory of Danny’s shirt sliding down his shoulders, Martin could have used the rest.
“Thought I’d go for a run,” he said. Then again, maybe he needed a run, adrenaline to clear out some of the stupidity that had taken up residence in his head.
Matt nodded. “Meeting with Quintero,” he said, cryptic and, seeming to realize it, added for Martin’s benefit, “He’s the football coach.”
“Matt’s on the football team,” Ashley explained. “Stupid jock.”
“You want to eat the tiles for dessert?” Matt asked mildly.
“They might taste better,” Danny said, peering down at the floor of the dining hall, and Martin had to agree with him on that.
What he hadn’t counted on was changing into his running clothes in front of Danny. Raine Hall, the athletic center, was closed until the first day of classes, so no escape to the locker room for Martin. He briefly contemplated changing in the bathroom, but that would have been tantamount to an admission that he didn’t feel comfortable being even partly naked in Danny’s presence, and he was tired of Danny having the advantage.
He ignored Danny as the other boy unbuttoned his jacket and flopped down on his bed, uniform and all, legs dangling off the side, hands laced over his stomach. Danny’s uniform shirt, untucked behind his jacket, had ridden up a bit.
Martin very pointedly Did Not See this as he hung up his jacket and tie, made a point of studying the Trinity Academy crest embroidered in miniature on the left breast of his jacket. Took out his running clothes, t-shirt (no tank tops; those were forbidden), shorts, dug his sneakers out from where they’d somehow made their way under his bed.
Pulling off his shirt was easy, despite once again feeling Danny’s eyes on him, and he wondered why the other boy was looking. Payback for last night? Because it was either look at Martin or look at the crucifix hanging on the opposing wall? On principle, because he liked making Martin uncomfortable?
Most likely the first or the last, Martin thought as he straightened his t-shirt and reached for the button and zipper of his pants. Shoved his pants down and kicked them off before he could think too much about it, felt his heart skip oddly, unwelcome, as he reached for his running shorts, standing there in t-shirt and boxers.
He turned around again, sat stiffly on the edge of his bed to put his shoes on, and in the periphery of his vision saw that Danny had his eyes closed.
So had Martin imagined the past two minutes? Danny lay there, right leg swinging meditatively back and forth, small patch of tan skin showing between shirt and pants, like he really didn’t care if Martin was looking.
Impatiently, Martin finished tying his shoes and escaped out the door, keeping his movements as steady as possible. Proud of himself when he shut the door behind him, proud for not being caught out like last night, for feeling like in the weird non-exchange they’d just had, he’d managed to come out ahead – slightly less stupid already, more self-possessed than he’d felt since his mother had dropped him off yesterday, and that had to be a good thing.
His run helped a bit more, not as much as swimming would have done, but the rhythm of stride and breath, feet crunching on the gravel path, gave him back another measure of control. No room for Danny in his head, no distractions as he ran, finding the space where his mind went blissfully blank somewhere near the end of the first mile, and by the fifth he felt like himself again.
So much so that Martin didn’t mind Danny seeing him, sweaty and flushed and elated, as he returned to their room to grab his shower stuff, sort of liked it as Danny watched him, bemused and curious, but not saying anything, maybe – for once – not finding anything to say.
-tbc.-
In other news: *sporfle* I just saw the SGA special from the TV Guide channel, and Joe Flanigan and David Hewlett slay me, they really do.
JF: Do they manhandle each other?
DH: There could be fondling.
Which is also a way of saying McShep fic tomorrow, and possibly WaT as well, if I can get it finished. Both for
svmadelyn's kink/cliche challenge because that is the level at which my brain is operating at the moment.
no subject
no subject
Thank you! That's kind of how I see him... A lot of confidence, but at the same time a lot of insecurity and uncertainty. *pets Martin*