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.au fic: The Hours of Instruction - D/M (eventual NC17) 8.?
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 notbe happening have happened.
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; 03; 04; 05; 06; 07
Notes: This wasn't the chapter I was planning on writing, but this past weekend has been kind of sucky. I think it shows :/
CHAPTER EIGHT
Father Bryant and a man Martin didn’t recognize met him at the hospital’s admitting desk.
“Martin, Ms. Tolland,” Father Bryant said, taking in Martin, his wheelchair, and his aunt. “How are you doing, Martin?”
“Fine, sir, just tired.” He hadn’t slept, surprising given the events of the day, and he knew it showed; Bonnie had commented on how tired he’d looked the second she’d walked into his room.
Father Bryant didn’t look convinced, either. “The hospital says you can be discharged, but you should still take it easy,” he said kindly. “You’re excused from services tomorrow morning, and classes Monday if you still don’t feel well.”
“Thank you, sir.” Martin couldn’t conceive of anything worse than doing nothing – and worse, doing nothing while stuck in his room all day. Danny would be gone at least; he was tired, sore still, confused by their conversation last night and upset (more than he cared to think about) by Danny’s abrupt departure, and didn’t know if he could deal with the other boy until... Martin didn’t know when.
“Ms. Tolland,” said the unfamiliar man – also a priest, stocky and grey-haired like Father Bryant, but with improbably dark, bushy eyebrows – “I want to assure you your nephew will be perfectly fine, and we will do our best to ensure such does not – ”
“That’s quite all right,” Bonnie said placidly. “I’m sure Martin – ” a speaking pause, and Martin flushed, “ – will be more careful in the future, but thank you for your concern, Father Carson. Martin, say thank you.”
Like he was five, and Martin would have been more indignant if he hadn’t been so surprised at seeing the dean of the school, whom no one ever saw – whom Martin had never seen before – standing there, holding out his hand to shake.
“Thank you, sir,” he muttered. Cool, firm grip and he withdrew his hand sulkily.
“Get well soon, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Father Carson said, patting him on the shoulder.
“Why’d he come down here?” he wondered as the two men walked away, two austere black figures in a sea of hospital scrubs and tired, bewildered faces. “I mean, he’s got to have better things to do, and it’s not like I almost died or something.”
“It was a thoughtful gesture,” Bonnie said, “and you did almost die, your friend Danny said. He rode with you, you know, to the emergency room. The paramedics were afraid you would code in the ambulance.”
“He probably wanted to make sure we weren’t going to sue him or something,” Martin grunted, unwilling to acknowledge the second part of Bonnie’s announcement. “Can we get out of here?”
Bonnie sighed, but at least she spared him the lecture Martin knew he deserved, and wheeled him toward the hospital doors.
* * *
Danny wasn’t in their room when Martin got back, for which he was relieved. And vaguely annoyed. There was a lot of stuff to do Saturday afternoons – Danny had baseball practice for part of it, and there was an unspoken rule that if a student didn’t have practice to attend he would be in the library or one of the study halls, especially if the weather was nice.
Which it was; all the trees had changed, gold and russet and brown, and the sky was clear, which only made Martin feel worse – worse physically, tired and smelling like the hospital, and worse generally, like he’d been not so many weeks ago at the beginning of the semester.
“Are you sure you’re okay? I can walk with you to your dorm,” Bonnie said when she dropped him off. He only barely managed to convince her he wasn’t going to drop dead on the sidewalk and he was fine, just tired; she gave him one last skeptical look before delivering him into the care of Father West, who’d come down to greet him, and driving off.
Now he was in his room, bored, unable to concentrate on anything. Kieran and Ashley stopped by for a moment, Kieran to complain about the breaking of his Ave Maria streak and Ashley because he seemed to be wherever Kieran was.
“Oh, and Tressler’s back – they finally let him out of Brazil or wherever,” he added as Kieran was trying to shepherd him out the door. “And I got pictures, man. They’re sick. Like, I mean... sick.” Ashley shuddered elaborately. “Just be glad there aren’t leeches in the pool, man.”
“Yeah, he’s damn grateful,” Kieran snorted, rolling his eyes and offering Martin an apologetic look. “Come on, Ash. See you later, Martin.”
They’d left and David had come by to drop off the notes their chemistry instructor had emailed them – on the very correct assumption that Martin would not feel like checking his email – and had departed in his usual, unobtrusive way.
Unobtrusive... That was David, hating to be the center of attention, so unlike Kieran and Ashley that Martin wondered why they were friends. And Matt, a football player who should have been one of the more popular guys in the school, hung out with them, and Danny who was... Martin wasn’t sure, but Danny could be popular, one of the cool kids, if he wanted to be – he had that sort of personality, magnetic, attractive, as Martin was too helplessly aware. Martin sensed that by being Danny’s roommate he’d become a de facto member of this group, that there was something about the six of them that kept them together, slightly separated from the rest of the school.
Faith, maybe? Martin shifted on his mattress and crossed his hands over his chest. The crucifix, as it usually did, drew his gaze, brown and austere between the windows and the riot of color beyond them.
Although few of the boys Martin had met were devout, most had a definite Catholic view of things. An upper-class Catholic view of things, he amended, an unwillingness to question. Professor Rose taught his theology class as the inevitable march of orthodoxy over heresy and Martin’s classmates rolled their eyes – of course this is right, we know this is right, why bother to teach what we already know? And at the same time a bifurcation, a time for church and a time for the Real World, faith being fine so long as it didn’t get in the way of the career, a compartmentalizing that Martin could have admired if it didn’t feel so wrong.
He remembered Sunday mornings, his father sighing as he tried to knot his tie and gulp down coffee at the same time, his mother fastening her earrings in stoic, patient silence. At least the Episcopalians don’t preach at you too much, his father had remarked irritably, and I don’t care what your mother says. He’d hated being dragged to hours of singing and listening and praying, had understood even as a little kid that his father had hated it too, but did it anyway because of work and his in-laws.
Martin’s mother’s family was staunchly Catholic, with the notable exception of Martin’s mother, and Martin often wondered if that – her agnostic daughter marrying a closet atheist – had driven his grandmother to an early grave. The funeral... Not six months ago now. They’d never been close – she’d always been a stiffly formal “Grandmother” and he’d been “young man,” someone who got checks on his birthday and Christmas and came for a couple days to remind her that her daughter, despite her other failings, had reproduced – and the only feeling Martin had been able to summon up for the woman lying in the lacquer coffin had been annoyance. She was the reason his father was always gone, the reason why he would be transferred to a school he knew he’d hate, the reason why both his parents had Plans for him and didn’t want him to have a choice in the matter.
Danny, though... He’d been around the Church his entire life, like a lot of the other boys, but he’d somehow come out different. His parents dying? Being gay? There hadn’t been anything orthodox in their make-out session against their bedroom door, anything even expected, the memory of Danny against him too overwhelming, too intense for Martin to contemplate – too amazing for Martin to be able to darken it with the fact that he was angry as hell at Danny at the moment.
A tentative knock at the door startled him from his thoughts. Danny? Danny wouldn’t knock on his own door – he wouldn’t knock on anyone else’s, as he seemed to have no concept of things like privacy or courtesy or how wrong it was to just, like, run off and leave your roommate hanging.
“Come in,” he called reluctantly.
“Hey.” Matt shouldered his way in through the door, effortlessly filling the small confines of the room. “Where’s Danny?”
“Who knows?” Martin winced at the obvious sarcasm, knew Matt would catch onto it. “I haven’t seen him since I got back.”
Matt regarded him silently from under the unruly thatch of his dark hair. Not like Westmore’s football players, who were generally oblivious to anything except themselves and their girlfriends, not like most boys Martin knew at all, for that matter. A seriousness, a reflectiveness to him that reminded Martin of Danny in some ways.
“You okay?” Matt’s tone suggested that he wasn’t only asking about the hospital trip.
“Fine, just tired.” The response he’d been giving to everyone today, not a reassurance so much as a brush-off, and he felt bad about giving it to Matt.
“My mom and dad divorced a few years ago – I sort of take care of her, when I can,” Matt said softly. Out of nowhere, enough to catch Martin’s reluctant attention. “I haven’t heard from my dad since he left. Not even a card or a phone call or anything, and my mom didn’t want any money from him.”
“Sorry, Matt.”
“Don’t be; I’m not.” Matt shrugged. “He’s a bastard.” He paused, glancing around the room – Danny’s motorcycles, Martin’s poster of Mt. Everest, the small signs of chaos beneath the surface, Trinity-imposed orderliness – before returning to stare at his clasped hands. “It was because of my brother, David – not DiMatteo,” he added quickly, seeing Martin blink, “my older brother. He died a couple years ago.”
“I – ” Martin paused on the edge of another sorry.
“He was gay,” Matt continued as though Martin hadn’t interrupted. “He came out to my parents and me when he was fourteen. David was always my mom’s favorite, out of the two of us – he was like her, you know, quiet. He probably could have told her he was a serial killer and she would have loved him anyway, you know? But my dad... God, was he pissed. When my mom told him she wouldn’t kick David out, he moved out the next day.”
When he’d first realized that he was gay, Martin had tried to imagine how his parents would react. His mother... She was distant, unfamiliar enough that Martin couldn’t say. But his father... Martin shrank from the thought. His father’s plans for Martin’s future included marrying well and making the Fitzgerald name famous, definitely not having relationships with other men.
But cutting him out of their lives entirely? As much as he couldn’t stand them, Martin couldn’t, didn’t want to imagine that.
“David died his junior year,” Matt continued, voice quieter, more strained. “He was murdered –random act of violence, the police said, but I don’t think so.”
“God, Matt.” Matt just looked at him, face dark and serious like it always was. “Why –”
Why do you think he was killed?
Matt shrugged, as though his suspicions were unimportant. “My dad never came to the funeral; I don’t even think he’s been to visit where Dave’s buried.” Unsteadiness in the deep voice; Matt scrubbed an impatient hand over his eyes. “Like I said, I don’t see him anymore; I guess he figures I defected or something, when I stayed with my mom.”
“Matt, why’re you telling me this?”
“Not too many people know – I mean, a lot of them here know David died, but they don’t know why. It was kind of hard to keep quiet, you know? He died my first year here at Trinity; my mom didn’t want the administrators or other kids hassling me, so she told me not to tell them, you know, that David was gay. Kieran, DiMatteo, and Ashley know, though.” He paused and fixed Martin with a meaningful look. “Danny knows, too. And I guess it goes without saying that if you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you.”
“Yeah.” Matt could do it, too, probably snap him in half like a twig. “I mean, I swear I won’t tell, but why?”
“Danny told me, about the two of you.”
“He told you?” Martin almost strangled on the words, pity and concern washed away in the tide of mortification.
“Yeah, after he got back from the hospital last night.” A grin flickered across Matt’s lips and was gone. “He also said he was freaked as hell; that was about all I could get out of him.” He paused consideringly. “More than enough, though.”
“Oh, my God.”
“You should talk to him.” Yeah, he should, Martin knew this already, but knowing and implementing policy were two different things. “There’s reasons why he is the way he is, Martin.”
“There’s reasons we all are the way we are,” Martin grunted.
“Yeah, but still.” Matt rose and stretched impressively, looming over Martin. “He said he was going to blow off study hall this afternoon. There’s a place he runs, out past the Grotto.”
Not-so-subtle command for Martin to disobey orders to rest and get out there. The light had begun to fade toward late afternoon, faster now so late in the year, and Martin would maybe have a couple hours or so to track Danny down, talk, and still get back to Coren for dinner.
He was, he realized, actually hungry, a welcome change from the inertia and futility of the day. Frustration with his thoughts gave him energy, shook him from his lethargy enough for him to sit up and hunt for his sneakers. He felt Matt watching him as he put them on and stood.
“I know it sucks,” Matt said sympathetically, motioning for Martin to lead the way out of the room – probably wanting to make sure Martin was actually going to leave – “but you should.”
“You’re not going to tell, are you, Matt?”
Matt glared at him in affront, its own answer, and Martin nodded.
“Just so we’re clear,” he added.
“Get moving,” Matt growled, the tone he usually reserved for when Ashley was in his more obnoxious moods.
Martin shut the door behind them and headed off down the hall, hoping no one would stop either to ask him how he was doing or – in the case of Father West – to tell him to get back to his room before he fell on his face. The burst of energy that had gotten him up and out had left him and he was tired again, and probably looked like he was about to fall on his face, but Matt was still there and anyway he did need to find Danny, because none of this (the exhaustion, anger, futility) was going to go away until they worked things out.
Until he could hold Danny down and pummel some straight answers out of him for once. He could probably find the energy to do that. And Martin had a lot of questions, starting with what the hell happened the other night? to what the hell gives you the right to fuck with me? because that was so what Danny was doing, making things terrifying and uncertain and sending Martin bouncing back and forth between lust and elation and fear and doubt and back to lust again all in the space of a week.
And Martin didn’t think he liked that.
So, yes, Danny owed him and Martin was going to collect.
As soon as he could find him. The campus, green grass drenched in fall, stretched before him, hundreds of acres to look and only a couple hours to do it. But Matt had said Danny might be out near the Grotto, on the running paths that the cross-country team usually used. Far more interesting than the track and more challenging than the paths that looped around the fields near Raine.
That did it, then. Martin glanced behind him to make sure no one was watching or planning to report him for violating doctors’ orders (which, he realized, would probably un-excuse him from the seven-thirty morning service tomorrow), and headed off.
-tbc.-
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
Advertisements: Catholic school AU. For
wordclaim50 challenge #01 (AU) and philosophy_20 challenge #08 (Faith).Chapters: 01; 02; 03; 04; 05; 06; 07
Notes: This wasn't the chapter I was planning on writing, but this past weekend has been kind of sucky. I think it shows :/
CHAPTER EIGHT
Father Bryant and a man Martin didn’t recognize met him at the hospital’s admitting desk.
“Martin, Ms. Tolland,” Father Bryant said, taking in Martin, his wheelchair, and his aunt. “How are you doing, Martin?”
“Fine, sir, just tired.” He hadn’t slept, surprising given the events of the day, and he knew it showed; Bonnie had commented on how tired he’d looked the second she’d walked into his room.
Father Bryant didn’t look convinced, either. “The hospital says you can be discharged, but you should still take it easy,” he said kindly. “You’re excused from services tomorrow morning, and classes Monday if you still don’t feel well.”
“Thank you, sir.” Martin couldn’t conceive of anything worse than doing nothing – and worse, doing nothing while stuck in his room all day. Danny would be gone at least; he was tired, sore still, confused by their conversation last night and upset (more than he cared to think about) by Danny’s abrupt departure, and didn’t know if he could deal with the other boy until... Martin didn’t know when.
“Ms. Tolland,” said the unfamiliar man – also a priest, stocky and grey-haired like Father Bryant, but with improbably dark, bushy eyebrows – “I want to assure you your nephew will be perfectly fine, and we will do our best to ensure such does not – ”
“That’s quite all right,” Bonnie said placidly. “I’m sure Martin – ” a speaking pause, and Martin flushed, “ – will be more careful in the future, but thank you for your concern, Father Carson. Martin, say thank you.”
Like he was five, and Martin would have been more indignant if he hadn’t been so surprised at seeing the dean of the school, whom no one ever saw – whom Martin had never seen before – standing there, holding out his hand to shake.
“Thank you, sir,” he muttered. Cool, firm grip and he withdrew his hand sulkily.
“Get well soon, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Father Carson said, patting him on the shoulder.
“Why’d he come down here?” he wondered as the two men walked away, two austere black figures in a sea of hospital scrubs and tired, bewildered faces. “I mean, he’s got to have better things to do, and it’s not like I almost died or something.”
“It was a thoughtful gesture,” Bonnie said, “and you did almost die, your friend Danny said. He rode with you, you know, to the emergency room. The paramedics were afraid you would code in the ambulance.”
“He probably wanted to make sure we weren’t going to sue him or something,” Martin grunted, unwilling to acknowledge the second part of Bonnie’s announcement. “Can we get out of here?”
Bonnie sighed, but at least she spared him the lecture Martin knew he deserved, and wheeled him toward the hospital doors.
Danny wasn’t in their room when Martin got back, for which he was relieved. And vaguely annoyed. There was a lot of stuff to do Saturday afternoons – Danny had baseball practice for part of it, and there was an unspoken rule that if a student didn’t have practice to attend he would be in the library or one of the study halls, especially if the weather was nice.
Which it was; all the trees had changed, gold and russet and brown, and the sky was clear, which only made Martin feel worse – worse physically, tired and smelling like the hospital, and worse generally, like he’d been not so many weeks ago at the beginning of the semester.
“Are you sure you’re okay? I can walk with you to your dorm,” Bonnie said when she dropped him off. He only barely managed to convince her he wasn’t going to drop dead on the sidewalk and he was fine, just tired; she gave him one last skeptical look before delivering him into the care of Father West, who’d come down to greet him, and driving off.
Now he was in his room, bored, unable to concentrate on anything. Kieran and Ashley stopped by for a moment, Kieran to complain about the breaking of his Ave Maria streak and Ashley because he seemed to be wherever Kieran was.
“Oh, and Tressler’s back – they finally let him out of Brazil or wherever,” he added as Kieran was trying to shepherd him out the door. “And I got pictures, man. They’re sick. Like, I mean... sick.” Ashley shuddered elaborately. “Just be glad there aren’t leeches in the pool, man.”
“Yeah, he’s damn grateful,” Kieran snorted, rolling his eyes and offering Martin an apologetic look. “Come on, Ash. See you later, Martin.”
They’d left and David had come by to drop off the notes their chemistry instructor had emailed them – on the very correct assumption that Martin would not feel like checking his email – and had departed in his usual, unobtrusive way.
Unobtrusive... That was David, hating to be the center of attention, so unlike Kieran and Ashley that Martin wondered why they were friends. And Matt, a football player who should have been one of the more popular guys in the school, hung out with them, and Danny who was... Martin wasn’t sure, but Danny could be popular, one of the cool kids, if he wanted to be – he had that sort of personality, magnetic, attractive, as Martin was too helplessly aware. Martin sensed that by being Danny’s roommate he’d become a de facto member of this group, that there was something about the six of them that kept them together, slightly separated from the rest of the school.
Faith, maybe? Martin shifted on his mattress and crossed his hands over his chest. The crucifix, as it usually did, drew his gaze, brown and austere between the windows and the riot of color beyond them.
Although few of the boys Martin had met were devout, most had a definite Catholic view of things. An upper-class Catholic view of things, he amended, an unwillingness to question. Professor Rose taught his theology class as the inevitable march of orthodoxy over heresy and Martin’s classmates rolled their eyes – of course this is right, we know this is right, why bother to teach what we already know? And at the same time a bifurcation, a time for church and a time for the Real World, faith being fine so long as it didn’t get in the way of the career, a compartmentalizing that Martin could have admired if it didn’t feel so wrong.
He remembered Sunday mornings, his father sighing as he tried to knot his tie and gulp down coffee at the same time, his mother fastening her earrings in stoic, patient silence. At least the Episcopalians don’t preach at you too much, his father had remarked irritably, and I don’t care what your mother says. He’d hated being dragged to hours of singing and listening and praying, had understood even as a little kid that his father had hated it too, but did it anyway because of work and his in-laws.
Martin’s mother’s family was staunchly Catholic, with the notable exception of Martin’s mother, and Martin often wondered if that – her agnostic daughter marrying a closet atheist – had driven his grandmother to an early grave. The funeral... Not six months ago now. They’d never been close – she’d always been a stiffly formal “Grandmother” and he’d been “young man,” someone who got checks on his birthday and Christmas and came for a couple days to remind her that her daughter, despite her other failings, had reproduced – and the only feeling Martin had been able to summon up for the woman lying in the lacquer coffin had been annoyance. She was the reason his father was always gone, the reason why he would be transferred to a school he knew he’d hate, the reason why both his parents had Plans for him and didn’t want him to have a choice in the matter.
Danny, though... He’d been around the Church his entire life, like a lot of the other boys, but he’d somehow come out different. His parents dying? Being gay? There hadn’t been anything orthodox in their make-out session against their bedroom door, anything even expected, the memory of Danny against him too overwhelming, too intense for Martin to contemplate – too amazing for Martin to be able to darken it with the fact that he was angry as hell at Danny at the moment.
A tentative knock at the door startled him from his thoughts. Danny? Danny wouldn’t knock on his own door – he wouldn’t knock on anyone else’s, as he seemed to have no concept of things like privacy or courtesy or how wrong it was to just, like, run off and leave your roommate hanging.
“Come in,” he called reluctantly.
“Hey.” Matt shouldered his way in through the door, effortlessly filling the small confines of the room. “Where’s Danny?”
“Who knows?” Martin winced at the obvious sarcasm, knew Matt would catch onto it. “I haven’t seen him since I got back.”
Matt regarded him silently from under the unruly thatch of his dark hair. Not like Westmore’s football players, who were generally oblivious to anything except themselves and their girlfriends, not like most boys Martin knew at all, for that matter. A seriousness, a reflectiveness to him that reminded Martin of Danny in some ways.
“You okay?” Matt’s tone suggested that he wasn’t only asking about the hospital trip.
“Fine, just tired.” The response he’d been giving to everyone today, not a reassurance so much as a brush-off, and he felt bad about giving it to Matt.
“My mom and dad divorced a few years ago – I sort of take care of her, when I can,” Matt said softly. Out of nowhere, enough to catch Martin’s reluctant attention. “I haven’t heard from my dad since he left. Not even a card or a phone call or anything, and my mom didn’t want any money from him.”
“Sorry, Matt.”
“Don’t be; I’m not.” Matt shrugged. “He’s a bastard.” He paused, glancing around the room – Danny’s motorcycles, Martin’s poster of Mt. Everest, the small signs of chaos beneath the surface, Trinity-imposed orderliness – before returning to stare at his clasped hands. “It was because of my brother, David – not DiMatteo,” he added quickly, seeing Martin blink, “my older brother. He died a couple years ago.”
“I – ” Martin paused on the edge of another sorry.
“He was gay,” Matt continued as though Martin hadn’t interrupted. “He came out to my parents and me when he was fourteen. David was always my mom’s favorite, out of the two of us – he was like her, you know, quiet. He probably could have told her he was a serial killer and she would have loved him anyway, you know? But my dad... God, was he pissed. When my mom told him she wouldn’t kick David out, he moved out the next day.”
When he’d first realized that he was gay, Martin had tried to imagine how his parents would react. His mother... She was distant, unfamiliar enough that Martin couldn’t say. But his father... Martin shrank from the thought. His father’s plans for Martin’s future included marrying well and making the Fitzgerald name famous, definitely not having relationships with other men.
But cutting him out of their lives entirely? As much as he couldn’t stand them, Martin couldn’t, didn’t want to imagine that.
“David died his junior year,” Matt continued, voice quieter, more strained. “He was murdered –random act of violence, the police said, but I don’t think so.”
“God, Matt.” Matt just looked at him, face dark and serious like it always was. “Why –”
Why do you think he was killed?
Matt shrugged, as though his suspicions were unimportant. “My dad never came to the funeral; I don’t even think he’s been to visit where Dave’s buried.” Unsteadiness in the deep voice; Matt scrubbed an impatient hand over his eyes. “Like I said, I don’t see him anymore; I guess he figures I defected or something, when I stayed with my mom.”
“Matt, why’re you telling me this?”
“Not too many people know – I mean, a lot of them here know David died, but they don’t know why. It was kind of hard to keep quiet, you know? He died my first year here at Trinity; my mom didn’t want the administrators or other kids hassling me, so she told me not to tell them, you know, that David was gay. Kieran, DiMatteo, and Ashley know, though.” He paused and fixed Martin with a meaningful look. “Danny knows, too. And I guess it goes without saying that if you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you.”
“Yeah.” Matt could do it, too, probably snap him in half like a twig. “I mean, I swear I won’t tell, but why?”
“Danny told me, about the two of you.”
“He told you?” Martin almost strangled on the words, pity and concern washed away in the tide of mortification.
“Yeah, after he got back from the hospital last night.” A grin flickered across Matt’s lips and was gone. “He also said he was freaked as hell; that was about all I could get out of him.” He paused consideringly. “More than enough, though.”
“Oh, my God.”
“You should talk to him.” Yeah, he should, Martin knew this already, but knowing and implementing policy were two different things. “There’s reasons why he is the way he is, Martin.”
“There’s reasons we all are the way we are,” Martin grunted.
“Yeah, but still.” Matt rose and stretched impressively, looming over Martin. “He said he was going to blow off study hall this afternoon. There’s a place he runs, out past the Grotto.”
Not-so-subtle command for Martin to disobey orders to rest and get out there. The light had begun to fade toward late afternoon, faster now so late in the year, and Martin would maybe have a couple hours or so to track Danny down, talk, and still get back to Coren for dinner.
He was, he realized, actually hungry, a welcome change from the inertia and futility of the day. Frustration with his thoughts gave him energy, shook him from his lethargy enough for him to sit up and hunt for his sneakers. He felt Matt watching him as he put them on and stood.
“I know it sucks,” Matt said sympathetically, motioning for Martin to lead the way out of the room – probably wanting to make sure Martin was actually going to leave – “but you should.”
“You’re not going to tell, are you, Matt?”
Matt glared at him in affront, its own answer, and Martin nodded.
“Just so we’re clear,” he added.
“Get moving,” Matt growled, the tone he usually reserved for when Ashley was in his more obnoxious moods.
Martin shut the door behind them and headed off down the hall, hoping no one would stop either to ask him how he was doing or – in the case of Father West – to tell him to get back to his room before he fell on his face. The burst of energy that had gotten him up and out had left him and he was tired again, and probably looked like he was about to fall on his face, but Matt was still there and anyway he did need to find Danny, because none of this (the exhaustion, anger, futility) was going to go away until they worked things out.
Until he could hold Danny down and pummel some straight answers out of him for once. He could probably find the energy to do that. And Martin had a lot of questions, starting with what the hell happened the other night? to what the hell gives you the right to fuck with me? because that was so what Danny was doing, making things terrifying and uncertain and sending Martin bouncing back and forth between lust and elation and fear and doubt and back to lust again all in the space of a week.
And Martin didn’t think he liked that.
So, yes, Danny owed him and Martin was going to collect.
As soon as he could find him. The campus, green grass drenched in fall, stretched before him, hundreds of acres to look and only a couple hours to do it. But Matt had said Danny might be out near the Grotto, on the running paths that the cross-country team usually used. Far more interesting than the track and more challenging than the paths that looped around the fields near Raine.
That did it, then. Martin glanced behind him to make sure no one was watching or planning to report him for violating doctors’ orders (which, he realized, would probably un-excuse him from the seven-thirty morning service tomorrow), and headed off.
-tbc.-