Bad Boy (1a/?)
anonymous
March 3 2010, 05:37:27 UTC
Arthur Kirkland was a bad, bad boy.
It had not always been so. Once there had been a tiny cherub with soft sandy hair and big green eyes. He loved unicorns and fairies and bunnies. He had pretend tea-parties in the garden and he wanted to learn how to make cupcakes. He had been sweet. But that did not last long.
He had been bad ever since the day he had realized that, as the only true-born heir of his father, he had powers and privileges that his older, bigger, stronger (but bastard-born) half-brothers did not. He paid them back for years of bullying, and when that account was paid in full, went beyond that and made their lives a misery. His father, so wealthy that the size of his fortune was really more of an abstract concept, was not often at home; none of them had living mothers; and the servants were to a man terrified of offending the ‘young master’. Arthur ruled the household like a young emperor, with cringing vassals and utterly conquered, if resentful, subordinate kings.
This habit of utter dominion over all he surveyed continued when he was sent to the Academy, the school so prestigious that knowing its name required a membership on its board of directors. Only those so privileged to attend its hallowed halls were even allowed to know it existed.
Arthur arrived, took one look around, and decided to arrange things to suit him. The teachers, accustomed to instructing famous youth of famous parents, were awed by him. His fellow students feared him. Grades were matters of minor importance to him, as Arthur knew very well that his father would receive his progress report, sign it, and send it back without once registering a single letter of what it said. So, fearing neither man, nor god, nor beast, Arthur Kirkland set about conquering the Academy as he had conquered his home.
In this way did Arthur come to spend his days lording it over his elders, his teachers, and his peers. He thrashed some, and blackmailed others, and bribed yet more with things he regarded as mere baubles. His impeccable upper-class British accent could be turned, in a trice, into a stream of profanity enough to make London’s worst thugs blink. He drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney, and took drugs now and then as it pleased him - not often, not because of any moral outrage, but because he mistrusted the effects on himself, and did not like to rely on others to supply him.
This was his life for years. It was a pleasant life, to be rich and feared and utterly his own master. His problem was not so much getting things he wanted, as finding new things to want. And then, one day, shortly after Arthur had celebrated his sixteenth birthday, Alfred F. Jones came to the Academy to teach them science, and Arthur’s world was changed utterly.
***
Alfred F. Jones was a curiosity and a wonder. He had the looks of a runway model and the sartorial sense of the very opposite of a runway model. Francis Bonnefoy, heir to the famous Parisian fashion house, mourned aloud and at length over the wasting of such golden good looks on such a fashion-dunce as Jones, who wore mismatched socks, buttoned his shirt up wrong half the time, could not properly tie his tie, and whose favorite piece of attire was a leather jacket that was at least three times older than the American who wore it, and looked it.
He talked like a mic dragged across the continental United States; the turns of phrase of a California surfer, followed immediately by New York slang and Brooklyn accents - happiness expressed in slow Texan drawls, and irritation in the clipped Germanic talk of North Dakota rural towns. He explained this by professing a nomadic childhood, spent traipsing all over his beloved United States and engendering a love separate and specific for each state he ever set foot in. His students waited on the edge of their seats for the next shift in his speech.
Bad Boy (1b/?)
anonymous
March 3 2010, 05:41:30 UTC
He acted like an empty-headed fool but - Arthur had hired his private investigators not even a day after Jones arrived - he held a doctorate in aerospace engineering and a host of lesser degrees. NASA, his source told him, for further flavor, had courted Jones rather aggressively and it was only the Academy’s clout that had kept them from putting US government pressure on the young man to join their team. Arthur was impressed - that was a rare thing - with both Jones, and the money the Academy must have spent just to get him to teach the mob of idiots who were Arthur’s schoolmates. Arthur, of course, did not share this information with anyone else, but other people were interested in Jones as well, and inaccurate versions of the information Arthur had acquired began to spread through the halls.
He was friendly and popular - not in the trying-hard ways of teachers who chased after popularity, for their own egos and for the sake of manipulating their students - but because he genuinely enjoyed the company of the students who, after all, looked hardly any younger than himself, and they genuinely enjoyed his. This might have led to a breakdown in classroom discipline, but Jones clearly knew his stuff, and as clearly was determined to impart it to his students come hell or high water. The students moved from merely liking him to adoring him.
Much to Arthur’s disgust, even he was not immune to Jones’s charm. He had held out impressively long, had erected defenses that no one could claim were less than foreboding. But Jones was concerned about his problem student, Arthur Kirkland, who skipped classes and smoked and cursed at him. He also did not seem the least bit afraid of Arthur.
So Jones followed him around, constantly chattering at Arthur’s scowling head about everything under the sun, ranging from fluid dynamics to the latest Harry Potter flick to the burgers served at the cafeteria that lunch-time. He hunted Arthur out when the boy wanted to ignore school for a little while, and made that manifestly impossible. He had once or twice physically dragged Arthur to class.
What he did not do was lecture Arthur on his many sins, nor did he tearfully plead with him to make a man of himself. The only thing he said about the drinking and the smoking was that he preferred Wild Turkey bourbon to all other things, and that raw egg mixed into a glass of tomato juice was good for hangovers. He never spoke about drugs, not even alluding to them, and his silence spoke volumes of how he felt about the whole thing. He did not tell Arthur how science was a vital area of knowledge - instead he spoke with genuine, hand-waving, jumping excitement about the beauty of orbital mechanics, and the awesomeness that was nuclear fusion reactions inside stars.
And one day, Arthur looked up from his especial hidey-hole in the gymnasium cat-walk, drinking bourbon, an unlit cigarette hanging at the corner of his lips, and did not see Jones - Jonesy, his more irreverent classmates had taken to calling him, and Arthur sneered each time they did - dashing into the gym looking for Arthur, and he felt bereft. Where was Jones? Arthur had been missing almost the whole day! He had deliberately boxed Francis, that frog, on the ear at breakfast! Why wasn’t Jones looking for him? Then he realized he felt bereft, and almost swallowed his cigarette in his shock.
He looked deep in his soul (while coughing up a mouthful of bourbon and a cigarette) and realized certain things. Then his pop-eyed meditation on the soul of Arthur Kirkland, for Arthur Kirkland, by Arthur Kirkland, was interrupted by the rapid tramp-tramp-tramp of Nike-clad feet running into the gym, and Jones caterwauling: “Artiiiiiiie! Come on, you lil’ sonuvagun, where you at? Kirk-kirk-kirky, come on, I’ve got an awesome lesson this afternoon....!”
Bad Boy (1c/?)
anonymous
March 3 2010, 05:42:22 UTC
Great was the joy in Arthur’s heart at that, and equally great was the consternation he felt at that joy. He did not dare raise his head or signal he was there, nor to shout profane things about Jones’ ancestry and sexual appetites as he usually did, but wanted to be left alone to wrestle with his idiotic feelings.
Jones, however, who seemed to be equipped with the nose of a dog as well as the manners and intelligence of one, found him out, and grabbed him and pulled him to class, chattering excitedly about blowing things up in the lab via the magic of chemical reactions, and discussing aloud the wonderful possibility of setting fire to the wooden desks.
Re: Bad Boy (1c/?)
anonymous
March 3 2010, 15:03:58 UTC
This is awesome anon! I was cackling at your writing style, it seems to be very tongue in cheek. ;D I can't wait to see where you're going with this, I love that you made America had a brain and be a cutie (so hot!) and England be the bad boy (a dynamic we need to see more of!) I also really enjoyed France's cameo, I don't know why but I could just see him agonizing over America's bad fashion sense. I especially loved that England was so affected by America (adorable!) I am really enjoying this fill, have bookmarked it for later rereadings already and can't wait for the next chapter!
Re: Bad Boy (1c/?)
anonymous
March 3 2010, 15:08:29 UTC
I'm really glad you enjoyed it! France wasn't supposed to be there at all, but he inserted himself. I'm typing up the next chapter now, so you don't have to wait long. :D
Re: Bad Boy (1c/?)
anonymous
March 3 2010, 23:05:23 UTC
You had me at the first sentence. <3
This was utterly amazing and I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for more! :D Please please please update soon! I adore your characterizations of them both and seriously, that little episode in the gym? Perfect. XD
Re: Bad Boy (1c/?)
anonymous
March 3 2010, 23:36:12 UTC
This is, by far, one of the most beautiful things I have ever read (and it's only just begun...~!!)
The characterization; the descriptions (in particular, "He talked like a mic dragged across the continental Unites States;") the speech patterns and pet names; pure brilliance!
Bad Boy (2a/?)
anonymous
March 4 2010, 01:47:51 UTC
Arthur soon discovered that deciding to seduce Alfred Jones did not mean Jones was seduced. This confused him. It had never happened to him before. Good-looking, rich, and powerful, generally all he had to do was crook a finger and eager partners jumped into his bed. The problem was chasing them away after. (That was not much of a problem, Arthur was very good at it. In fact he found it rather fun - more fun, at times, than the sex had been.)
Jones did not understand why Arthur, who had wrenched away from Jones’ friendly pats-on-the-shoulders and rufflings-of-the-hair with scowls and bad language, all of a sudden wanted to ruffle Jones’ hair (it was soft as the downy feathers on Gilbert Weillschmidt’s pet chick) and pat his shoulders in return; and more - to lean against him, to sit close and ask for help with diagramming the make-up of a hydrogen atom, to cluck and make disapproving noises as he unbuttoned Jones’ shirt to do the buttons up again properly, to yank Jones’ head down close to Arthur’s own by his necktie while Arthur tied it the correct way, to get his attention with pokes and grabs rather than with shouts and curses. Jones not only did not understand, he did not even seem to notice the change; he accepted all of Arthur’s actions with the pleased simplicity of a well-petted, belly-rubbed dog.
It was driving Arthur mad.
“Well, of course, you silly boy,” purred Francis, who had stopped in to have some of Arthur’s never-ending supply of alcohol. He sipped at a snifter half-full of cognac and continued: “You have bedded boys and girls. Alfred is not a boy nor a girl. He is a man - a most foolish man, true, but a man nonetheless. Furthermore, he is our teacher. He does not grovel for your approval, as do our undignified schoolmates. He does not even look at you as a potential lover. You are jejune - most callow to his eyes.” He spoke with the tone of a judge giving judgment. Arthur saw sex as an amusement; Francis saw it as an art and that was why - he was convinced - he would always be above his English friend in its practice and theory. (Francis and Arthur had never slept together; what they had between them, blows and insults and all, was something rare and - neither would admit it on pain of death - needful to their souls, and they did not dare alter it by sleeping together. They each saw how the other treated bed-partners. Besides, it was not as if there was a lack of willing lovers/fuckbuddies for both of them)
Arthur snarled, “Who said you could call him Alfred?”
Francis rolled his eyes. “That is what your concern is? And for your information, my little friend, I have called him that to his face and he does not mind. It was when I was scolding him for what he had allowed to be tied around his neck - a necktie with polka dots, mon ami, can you credit it? But I tell you he truly had the audacity to wear such a thing...”
“The devil take the polka-dots, and you too!” Arthur replied, bolting to his feet. He glared at Francis, paced his dorm-room (it was more luxuriously-appointed than a flat at Kensington) with quick, angry steps, and his face was like the dark clouds before a storm.
Francis looked and he saw - he saw many things. And he laughed to himself, quietly, because he predicted a good deal of amusement to be extracted from Arthur in the coming days - and, at the end, either heartbreak or something else, both of which, he thought, would be good for the arrogant little English boy.
Bad Boy (2b/?)
anonymous
March 4 2010, 04:09:56 UTC
“Don’t laugh, you --!” Arthur shouted when he saw Francis smiling to himself over the cognac. He called Francis many bad names, in English and in deliberately-mangled French, but even calling him a “fills day pyoot” did nothing to ruffle Francis’ feathers.
“We are straying from the point, mon ami,” Francis interrupted Arthur’s angry explanation of how Francis’ mother had met his father, and what staples of German pornography had been involved. “My point is, if you wish to have M. Jones - see, I do not call him Alfred (even if I could) - if you wish to have that Adonis with the polka-dot ties in your bed, you will need to be more mature about it. Show him that you desire him - none of this close-mouthed hinting around - and, moreover, you must show him that you will not be a child about it. You have been as a child to him - a sulky little child, who must be coaxed and petted into coming to class, who is very rude - as little children are rude - and who must be taken care of. Do not blow your nostrils out like that, Arthur, it is most unattractive. I tell you these things so that you can be helped. He nurses you after you drink too much, and he helps you with the work you ignore in favor of larking about. He defends you in front of the other teachers, and he worries about your health. He has been taking care of you, I say again - he has been babysitting you. Now you must shift his perception of you, and only then will you have a chance at his dick.” Having ended his dispensation of sage advice, Francis re-dedicated himself to the enjoyment of the cognac. Whatever else he might say about Arthur - and he did say a lot - the boy knew his drinks.
Arthur, his face darker than ever, grabbed the bottle of cognac and swigged straight from it, hoping to annoy the more decorous Francis. Babysitter! A sulky child! Arthur’s feelings were hurt, and he did, in fact, sulk. But other thoughts - Francis’s last sentence was very distracting - and the sweet warmth of the cognac soon distracted him, and he fell to musing, his gaze absently fixed on a new bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon displayed prominently in the wet-bar he’d had installed in his room.
Francis, following his gaze, grinned. “Most unoriginal, Arthur, half-a-dozen students have already given him bottles; Kiku Honda (from the Honda zaibatsu, you know) gave him a crateful of the stuff. You shouldn’t have shouted so loudly that he liked Wild Turkey, they’d never have known otherwise.” Arthur scowled, about to demand clarification, when he remembered an episode in the dorms - Alfred mildly suggesting that he’d had enough rhum for one night and Arthur yelling back that he was sure Jones would do the same if he had Wild Turkey.
“And Karpusi - out of the shipping Karpusis - he actually gave him a wild turkey, as in the bird, all plucked and ready for roasting, and suggested sleepily that he have it stuffed with rice and raisins.”
Arthur’s impressive brows drew together, as the gray storm-clouds gather at the mountain peak. Then he smirked. “Well, I’m sure he won’t refuse my gift, at any rate.”
Francis regarded him with narrowed eyes and raised brow from over his snifter. Then he shrugged, a Gallic shrug of surpassing elegance. Having advised him, he would now leave Arthur alone to conduct his campaign as he willed. He made a note to advise Erzsébet, the Hungarian girl, to keep her video-camera handy, and a healthy supply of memory cards too. This promised to be most amusing.
*** Notes: Arthur’s insult was supposed to be “fils de pute”, son of a bitch.
Recaptcha says radio zombies. Recaptcha, how did you know Arthur's plan was to summon the undead and command them to bring Alfred to him? Now he'll have to change his plans!
Re: Bad Boy (2b/?)
anonymous
March 4 2010, 05:45:14 UTC
I love this fill so much; I'm surprised glad you updated so quickly!
I adore how you wrote Francis and Arthur's relationship. I've always had a soft spot for the whole hate-each-other-but-need-each-other dynamic. :D
I wonder what Arthur's going to do next? (reCaptcha: area chasers)
By the by, is this going to be student/teacher or teacher/student? Because every time I make a prediction, somehow it turns upside down with the next paragraph. XD I guess I'm just that bad at reading the atmosphere. :D
It had not always been so. Once there had been a tiny cherub with soft sandy hair and big green eyes. He loved unicorns and fairies and bunnies. He had pretend tea-parties in the garden and he wanted to learn how to make cupcakes. He had been sweet. But that did not last long.
He had been bad ever since the day he had realized that, as the only true-born heir of his father, he had powers and privileges that his older, bigger, stronger (but bastard-born) half-brothers did not. He paid them back for years of bullying, and when that account was paid in full, went beyond that and made their lives a misery. His father, so wealthy that the size of his fortune was really more of an abstract concept, was not often at home; none of them had living mothers; and the servants were to a man terrified of offending the ‘young master’. Arthur ruled the household like a young emperor, with cringing vassals and utterly conquered, if resentful, subordinate kings.
This habit of utter dominion over all he surveyed continued when he was sent to the Academy, the school so prestigious that knowing its name required a membership on its board of directors. Only those so privileged to attend its hallowed halls were even allowed to know it existed.
Arthur arrived, took one look around, and decided to arrange things to suit him. The teachers, accustomed to instructing famous youth of famous parents, were awed by him. His fellow students feared him. Grades were matters of minor importance to him, as Arthur knew very well that his father would receive his progress report, sign it, and send it back without once registering a single letter of what it said. So, fearing neither man, nor god, nor beast, Arthur Kirkland set about conquering the Academy as he had conquered his home.
In this way did Arthur come to spend his days lording it over his elders, his teachers, and his peers. He thrashed some, and blackmailed others, and bribed yet more with things he regarded as mere baubles. His impeccable upper-class British accent could be turned, in a trice, into a stream of profanity enough to make London’s worst thugs blink. He drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney, and took drugs now and then as it pleased him - not often, not because of any moral outrage, but because he mistrusted the effects on himself, and did not like to rely on others to supply him.
This was his life for years. It was a pleasant life, to be rich and feared and utterly his own master. His problem was not so much getting things he wanted, as finding new things to want. And then, one day, shortly after Arthur had celebrated his sixteenth birthday, Alfred F. Jones came to the Academy to teach them science, and Arthur’s world was changed utterly.
***
Alfred F. Jones was a curiosity and a wonder. He had the looks of a runway model and the sartorial sense of the very opposite of a runway model. Francis Bonnefoy, heir to the famous Parisian fashion house, mourned aloud and at length over the wasting of such golden good looks on such a fashion-dunce as Jones, who wore mismatched socks, buttoned his shirt up wrong half the time, could not properly tie his tie, and whose favorite piece of attire was a leather jacket that was at least three times older than the American who wore it, and looked it.
He talked like a mic dragged across the continental United States; the turns of phrase of a California surfer, followed immediately by New York slang and Brooklyn accents - happiness expressed in slow Texan drawls, and irritation in the clipped Germanic talk of North Dakota rural towns. He explained this by professing a nomadic childhood, spent traipsing all over his beloved United States and engendering a love separate and specific for each state he ever set foot in. His students waited on the edge of their seats for the next shift in his speech.
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He was friendly and popular - not in the trying-hard ways of teachers who chased after popularity, for their own egos and for the sake of manipulating their students - but because he genuinely enjoyed the company of the students who, after all, looked hardly any younger than himself, and they genuinely enjoyed his. This might have led to a breakdown in classroom discipline, but Jones clearly knew his stuff, and as clearly was determined to impart it to his students come hell or high water. The students moved from merely liking him to adoring him.
Much to Arthur’s disgust, even he was not immune to Jones’s charm. He had held out impressively long, had erected defenses that no one could claim were less than foreboding. But Jones was concerned about his problem student, Arthur Kirkland, who skipped classes and smoked and cursed at him. He also did not seem the least bit afraid of Arthur.
So Jones followed him around, constantly chattering at Arthur’s scowling head about everything under the sun, ranging from fluid dynamics to the latest Harry Potter flick to the burgers served at the cafeteria that lunch-time. He hunted Arthur out when the boy wanted to ignore school for a little while, and made that manifestly impossible. He had once or twice physically dragged Arthur to class.
What he did not do was lecture Arthur on his many sins, nor did he tearfully plead with him to make a man of himself. The only thing he said about the drinking and the smoking was that he preferred Wild Turkey bourbon to all other things, and that raw egg mixed into a glass of tomato juice was good for hangovers. He never spoke about drugs, not even alluding to them, and his silence spoke volumes of how he felt about the whole thing. He did not tell Arthur how science was a vital area of knowledge - instead he spoke with genuine, hand-waving, jumping excitement about the beauty of orbital mechanics, and the awesomeness that was nuclear fusion reactions inside stars.
And one day, Arthur looked up from his especial hidey-hole in the gymnasium cat-walk, drinking bourbon, an unlit cigarette hanging at the corner of his lips, and did not see Jones - Jonesy, his more irreverent classmates had taken to calling him, and Arthur sneered each time they did - dashing into the gym looking for Arthur, and he felt bereft. Where was Jones? Arthur had been missing almost the whole day! He had deliberately boxed Francis, that frog, on the ear at breakfast! Why wasn’t Jones looking for him? Then he realized he felt bereft, and almost swallowed his cigarette in his shock.
He looked deep in his soul (while coughing up a mouthful of bourbon and a cigarette) and realized certain things. Then his pop-eyed meditation on the soul of Arthur Kirkland, for Arthur Kirkland, by Arthur Kirkland, was interrupted by the rapid tramp-tramp-tramp of Nike-clad feet running into the gym, and Jones caterwauling: “Artiiiiiiie! Come on, you lil’ sonuvagun, where you at? Kirk-kirk-kirky, come on, I’ve got an awesome lesson this afternoon....!”
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Jones, however, who seemed to be equipped with the nose of a dog as well as the manners and intelligence of one, found him out, and grabbed him and pulled him to class, chattering excitedly about blowing things up in the lab via the magic of chemical reactions, and discussing aloud the wonderful possibility of setting fire to the wooden desks.
It was then that Arthur decided what he must do.
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/stalks
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I can definitely see Alfred yelling "Where you at?!" and just the whole description of the way he talks was complete win.
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This was utterly amazing and I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for more! :D Please please please update soon! I adore your characterizations of them both and seriously, that little episode in the gym? Perfect. XD
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I'm not usually into US/UK but the way you write this, my god, I want more.
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The characterization; the descriptions (in particular, "He talked like a mic dragged across the continental Unites States;") the speech patterns and pet names; pure brilliance!
I anxiously await the next chapter.
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I fucking love you, anon.
This fic has made my DAY!! 8D
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Jones did not understand why Arthur, who had wrenched away from Jones’ friendly pats-on-the-shoulders and rufflings-of-the-hair with scowls and bad language, all of a sudden wanted to ruffle Jones’ hair (it was soft as the downy feathers on Gilbert Weillschmidt’s pet chick) and pat his shoulders in return; and more - to lean against him, to sit close and ask for help with diagramming the make-up of a hydrogen atom, to cluck and make disapproving noises as he unbuttoned Jones’ shirt to do the buttons up again properly, to yank Jones’ head down close to Arthur’s own by his necktie while Arthur tied it the correct way, to get his attention with pokes and grabs rather than with shouts and curses. Jones not only did not understand, he did not even seem to notice the change; he accepted all of Arthur’s actions with the pleased simplicity of a well-petted, belly-rubbed dog.
It was driving Arthur mad.
“Well, of course, you silly boy,” purred Francis, who had stopped in to have some of Arthur’s never-ending supply of alcohol. He sipped at a snifter half-full of cognac and continued: “You have bedded boys and girls. Alfred is not a boy nor a girl. He is a man - a most foolish man, true, but a man nonetheless. Furthermore, he is our teacher. He does not grovel for your approval, as do our undignified schoolmates. He does not even look at you as a potential lover. You are jejune - most callow to his eyes.” He spoke with the tone of a judge giving judgment. Arthur saw sex as an amusement; Francis saw it as an art and that was why - he was convinced - he would always be above his English friend in its practice and theory. (Francis and Arthur had never slept together; what they had between them, blows and insults and all, was something rare and - neither would admit it on pain of death - needful to their souls, and they did not dare alter it by sleeping together. They each saw how the other treated bed-partners. Besides, it was not as if there was a lack of willing lovers/fuckbuddies for both of them)
Arthur snarled, “Who said you could call him Alfred?”
Francis rolled his eyes. “That is what your concern is? And for your information, my little friend, I have called him that to his face and he does not mind. It was when I was scolding him for what he had allowed to be tied around his neck - a necktie with polka dots, mon ami, can you credit it? But I tell you he truly had the audacity to wear such a thing...”
“The devil take the polka-dots, and you too!” Arthur replied, bolting to his feet. He glared at Francis, paced his dorm-room (it was more luxuriously-appointed than a flat at Kensington) with quick, angry steps, and his face was like the dark clouds before a storm.
Francis looked and he saw - he saw many things. And he laughed to himself, quietly, because he predicted a good deal of amusement to be extracted from Arthur in the coming days - and, at the end, either heartbreak or something else, both of which, he thought, would be good for the arrogant little English boy.
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“Don’t laugh, you --!” Arthur shouted when he saw Francis smiling to himself over the cognac. He called Francis many bad names, in English and in deliberately-mangled French, but even calling him a “fills day pyoot” did nothing to ruffle Francis’ feathers.
“We are straying from the point, mon ami,” Francis interrupted Arthur’s angry explanation of how Francis’ mother had met his father, and what staples of German pornography had been involved. “My point is, if you wish to have M. Jones - see, I do not call him Alfred (even if I could) - if you wish to have that Adonis with the polka-dot ties in your bed, you will need to be more mature about it. Show him that you desire him - none of this close-mouthed hinting around - and, moreover, you must show him that you will not be a child about it. You have been as a child to him - a sulky little child, who must be coaxed and petted into coming to class, who is very rude - as little children are rude - and who must be taken care of. Do not blow your nostrils out like that, Arthur, it is most unattractive. I tell you these things so that you can be helped. He nurses you after you drink too much, and he helps you with the work you ignore in favor of larking about. He defends you in front of the other teachers, and he worries about your health. He has been taking care of you, I say again - he has been babysitting you. Now you must shift his perception of you, and only then will you have a chance at his dick.” Having ended his dispensation of sage advice, Francis re-dedicated himself to the enjoyment of the cognac. Whatever else he might say about Arthur - and he did say a lot - the boy knew his drinks.
Arthur, his face darker than ever, grabbed the bottle of cognac and swigged straight from it, hoping to annoy the more decorous Francis. Babysitter! A sulky child! Arthur’s feelings were hurt, and he did, in fact, sulk. But other thoughts - Francis’s last sentence was very distracting - and the sweet warmth of the cognac soon distracted him, and he fell to musing, his gaze absently fixed on a new bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon displayed prominently in the wet-bar he’d had installed in his room.
Francis, following his gaze, grinned. “Most unoriginal, Arthur, half-a-dozen students have already given him bottles; Kiku Honda (from the Honda zaibatsu, you know) gave him a crateful of the stuff. You shouldn’t have shouted so loudly that he liked Wild Turkey, they’d never have known otherwise.” Arthur scowled, about to demand clarification, when he remembered an episode in the dorms - Alfred mildly suggesting that he’d had enough rhum for one night and Arthur yelling back that he was sure Jones would do the same if he had Wild Turkey.
“And Karpusi - out of the shipping Karpusis - he actually gave him a wild turkey, as in the bird, all plucked and ready for roasting, and suggested sleepily that he have it stuffed with rice and raisins.”
Arthur’s impressive brows drew together, as the gray storm-clouds gather at the mountain peak. Then he smirked. “Well, I’m sure he won’t refuse my gift, at any rate.”
Francis regarded him with narrowed eyes and raised brow from over his snifter. Then he shrugged, a Gallic shrug of surpassing elegance. Having advised him, he would now leave Arthur alone to conduct his campaign as he willed. He made a note to advise Erzsébet, the Hungarian girl, to keep her video-camera handy, and a healthy supply of memory cards too. This promised to be most amusing.
***
Notes: Arthur’s insult was supposed to be “fils de pute”, son of a bitch.
Recaptcha says radio zombies. Recaptcha, how did you know Arthur's plan was to summon the undead and command them to bring Alfred to him? Now he'll have to change his plans!
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I adore how you wrote Francis and Arthur's relationship. I've always had a soft spot for the whole hate-each-other-but-need-each-other dynamic. :D
I wonder what Arthur's going to do next? (reCaptcha: area chasers)
By the by, is this going to be student/teacher or teacher/student? Because every time I make a prediction, somehow it turns upside down with the next paragraph. XD I guess I'm just that bad at reading the atmosphere. :D
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