History Boys fic: DVD-style commentary
Because hype45 asked for it, and I was more than happy to oblige. :) My rambling in italics.
Barring Accidents
“There is no barring accidents,” Rudge tells him, and then he says what he’s said before, that thing that’s somehow been seared into their brains by now and pops up at inopportune moments, during finals, or over long semi-intellectual conversations punctuated by cigarettes and slightly too much beer: “History’s just one fucking thing after another.”
Obviously I'm inventing a situation which, it was established in the movie, these two characters never got around to. ("Duh," you are saying to yourselves.) Just like everyone else, I was intrugued by the notion of what might have happened had Dakin and Irwin actually got together, but I felt that giving them anything resembling a happy ending would be trite and simplistic, and wouldn't be terribly faithful to the wonderful themes of the play. So I had it happen, but I wanted the story to be able to slide neatly into canon (a pet device of mine), because I thought it would be that much more interesting to write them having their shining moment and have it end as it ended to begin with. (Wow, can I talk myself into a corner or what?)
That, Dakin has come to think, after years of Totty’s lessons, years and wars and empires passing page by page, is more or less the truth, but it’s not exact. History, in its making, runs quietly on as it has always done - the hands of the clock move, things change, they stay the same - but, Dakin has discovered, it is possible to put your foot out and trip History up a little, not enough to make him fall, or to turn round and go the other way, but enough to make him stumble and then carry on.
I really like the flow of this paragraph. It sounds terribly pretentious (as it should, because I culled some of my ideas from my philosophy textbooks), but I think it is the fic in microcosm.
*
He’s down at the pub a few days after Hector’s memorial. Fiona’s off doing something with her mum, and the other lads are fucking around elsewhere - Scripps is probably off thanking God for his acceptance, Posner’s writing poems about him, no doubt, and it’s likely that Lockwood is hiding from the rain with some dim and pretty bird, his cigarettes, and his Clash records.
Dakin makes sweeping generalizations about everyone, including his friends. It's what he does.
Also, I like mentioning Fiona. She keeps things from getting too gay. :P
No matter - things have been strained since Hector went off to the great motorway in the sky. It’s good to have them around, but too long and they get melancholy, and Dakin begins to consider punching Timms in the mouth every time he spouts one of his (theirs, Hector’s) bits of poetry.
In re-reading, I often find this paragraph too sentimental. I sometimes wonder if Dakin is really too self-involved to be terribly broken up about Hector.
When Irwin shows up, Dakin is melancholy all by himself, and half-drowning in his pint. They haven’t planned this, though of course they have; they’d decided to meet after all, but left to themselves to the details, the way Irwin still smells, somehow, of schoolrooms, in addition to the wet wool of his coat, in a way that makes Dakin think sourly, fucking gerunds; how his glasses fog over in the warmth and have to be cleaned on his sleeve. How bloody awkward this is when it doesn’t have to be, after all that talk of surprises and sucking off. He lets Irwin buy him another beer and then returns the favour. They smile. “No euphemisms here,” says Irwin, and swallows.
It turns out that the flat Irwin’s renting is only a few blocks away, and while they walk he talks about neutrality clauses, as if he’s still testing Dakin. And of course he is. It’s what he meant about Poland all along - he can’t make the first move, so he’s edging around for the truth, complicit, but having to wait to see what happens.
Except that when Irwin fits his key in the lock and ushers Dakin into a narrow, badly lit corridor, it’s Dakin who’s surprised, Dakin who’s pushed backed against the blue-striped wallpaper, finding his way into a kiss that comes as less of a surprise, but which is still a revelation.
Turns out Poland has a few tricks up its sleeve.
One of my favorite things to do in any sort of fic is expand the boundaries of the physical world we're shown in canon - I like to know where characters are when the camera's off them, what they're doing when a chapter ends. I've actually got a very detailed picture of Irwin's building in my head, because I think it reveals a lot about his character- some of it we're suprised by, some of it we aren't. I like that we get to see more of Irwin's flat as Dakin gets to know him better.
I also really like the mood I was able to evoke in the fic trying to utilise the style of the Boys' language in the film, flip and articulate, and never quite in the one place at the one time. It feels authentic I think, and not too frilly, and one can totally imagine Dakin thinking of Irwin as Poland. :)
*
It’s dark when Dakin leaves, and though the spinning in his head has subsided, he walks for a while with a cigarette unlit in his mouth. He doesn’t want to go home still drunk and encounter his mum.
I love characters that smoke. There's one in almost every fic I write.
It’s stopped raining, but the streets are shiny-slick, and every tree he passes under shakes droplets of water down the back of his neck. Some of the houses have lights on inside, and the windows glow pleasantly, casting long beams down in front of his feet as he walks. There ought to be a poem about nights like this; there probably is, but even though he learnt those Hector taught them, line by line, Dakin’s never been much of a poet himself, and they slip away far too easily.
So Dakin walks on, feeling as if he’s stolen something, or else been robbed.
Again - too sentimental? Actually, I think it works, because Dakin is robbing Irwin of something, agreeing to play a part in his own self-gratifying game, but I also think Dakin's more deeply involved than he realises.
*
Four weeks later, and it really is an accident this time. Irwin’s at the corner shop, picking up milk and bread at the same time Dakin’s in buying another pack of fags. The sight puts Dakin in mind of the phrase “gourmet meals for one” - he never does decide whether it’s pity or curiosity that makes him follow Irwin home.
“Sir,” he gasps (it’s Irwin on his knees this time, and he’s still got his glasses on), “shit, sir, I’m gonna….”
Now is the moment to speculate exactly what it might be like to give a blowjob with glasses on. It's been pointed out to me that it might be difficult, but as I don't wear glasses I don't actually have any idea.
Hector would have liked this, too - sex in the subjunctive. Dakin’s hands falter nearly as often as his voice does, but his mind follows each uneasy little movement, mapping out all the possibilities, all the things that could have happened, all the ways this might go differently. He could have touched here, and made Irwin come sooner, or kissed him, and drawn it out longer. The whole scene is a knot of possibilities and routes unfollowed, but it ends the same way, every time, with Dakin pulling on his trousers and his shoes and going.
Dakin is such an arse. Not writing him as an insensitive twat would be like writing Posner as a manly beefcake.
Let's spare another moment for me to go "ooh, I'm so clever, working in Hector's love of the Subjunctive!"....aaaaand we're done.
*
The third time is also the last; it’s neither an accident nor a plan.
What I said earlier about Dakin being in too deep? He starts off the whole charade as a very complex power trip (he can't figure out why Irwin doesn't melt under his charm the way the others do, at first), and he thinks he's in control of the situation, but for once the situation is getting the better of him, and I think he's starting to realise that there's a little bit more to it than the sex.
Dakin finds himself standing on the doorstep, staring at the ugly brass knocker on the door, and Irwin finds himself pulling the door open. Dakin allows himself to be courted, to have his jacket taken and a cup of tea poured. It’s the first time he’s seen how Irwin really lives. It’s also the first time he’s seen this flat with the lights on. Somehow, perhaps just because Irwin’s smart, and a teacher, he’s always imagined that he listens to the sort of fruity orchestral music the BBC is always going on about, but Dakin realises with a smile that the record Irwin’s playing is Bowie. There are photographs and posters and unframed paintings on the walls, and squat shelves everywhere stuffed with books.
Bowie rocks. So do books. And paintings. Please note that most of my favorite characters will always have books somewhere in their immediate living space.
This time it’s almost funny, because Irwin leads him to the bedroom like they’ve never met before, and there are condoms waiting on the bedside table. “Been waiting for me, have you, sir?” Dakin jokes as he shrugs off his shirt.
It’s different than with Fiona - Irwin’s body is different, and he makes noises like Fiona does, but they’re deeper and softer, and the whole time Dakin is reminded that he’s with a man. He stays for a while, until Irwin has fallen asleep, and then he goes and hauls Lockwood out of bed and they drink cheap whiskey until the sun comes up.
Once more, with feeling - Dakin's an ass. But he just might have feelings, and I think the whole business bothers him more than he'll ever let on.
I also love the idea of Dakin and Lockwood being best friends - it just makes sense to me in a way that it doesn't quite, with anyone else, and I like to give Lockwood a bit of depth that he doesn't have in the film, if only in that we don't really know what his relationships with the other boys are like.
*
He went to school. He did the work even though he never had to try too hard, because that’s the way it’d always been. And it went on. Being a tax lawyer isn’t what he’d always dreamed of, but then he’d always been a practical lad, and taken what came to him. Suited him well enough.
He never marries, but there are women enough in his life, and he’s content just dropping in on Timms and Akhtar and their young ones, so he never really thinks about kids of his own.
He catches Irwin on the telly now and then, graying, slender, and as quick as ever. Dakin doesn’t have much patience for the television in general, but he watches now and then, and finds himself wanting to argue back, or chew over some interesting thing Irwin has said.
They never meet again, but Dakin is sure that if they had, he would have called him “sir”.
It was always meant to end this way, I'm sure of it, but knowing how callous and strange the relationship was makes it just that much more heartbreaking. I'm sure Irwin's not crying into his pillow about it twenty years on, but you just know he'll give their dalliances the occasional thought, whereas Dakin will write it off completely and move on to other conquests.
This ending bothers me, because it feels rushed and insincere, and maybe it is, but I think it does work, in its own way, because we already know who ends up where, and I didn't really want to repeat the epilogue of the movie.
Fin
Barring Accidents
“There is no barring accidents,” Rudge tells him, and then he says what he’s said before, that thing that’s somehow been seared into their brains by now and pops up at inopportune moments, during finals, or over long semi-intellectual conversations punctuated by cigarettes and slightly too much beer: “History’s just one fucking thing after another.”
Obviously I'm inventing a situation which, it was established in the movie, these two characters never got around to. ("Duh," you are saying to yourselves.) Just like everyone else, I was intrugued by the notion of what might have happened had Dakin and Irwin actually got together, but I felt that giving them anything resembling a happy ending would be trite and simplistic, and wouldn't be terribly faithful to the wonderful themes of the play. So I had it happen, but I wanted the story to be able to slide neatly into canon (a pet device of mine), because I thought it would be that much more interesting to write them having their shining moment and have it end as it ended to begin with. (Wow, can I talk myself into a corner or what?)
That, Dakin has come to think, after years of Totty’s lessons, years and wars and empires passing page by page, is more or less the truth, but it’s not exact. History, in its making, runs quietly on as it has always done - the hands of the clock move, things change, they stay the same - but, Dakin has discovered, it is possible to put your foot out and trip History up a little, not enough to make him fall, or to turn round and go the other way, but enough to make him stumble and then carry on.
I really like the flow of this paragraph. It sounds terribly pretentious (as it should, because I culled some of my ideas from my philosophy textbooks), but I think it is the fic in microcosm.
*
He’s down at the pub a few days after Hector’s memorial. Fiona’s off doing something with her mum, and the other lads are fucking around elsewhere - Scripps is probably off thanking God for his acceptance, Posner’s writing poems about him, no doubt, and it’s likely that Lockwood is hiding from the rain with some dim and pretty bird, his cigarettes, and his Clash records.
Dakin makes sweeping generalizations about everyone, including his friends. It's what he does.
Also, I like mentioning Fiona. She keeps things from getting too gay. :P
No matter - things have been strained since Hector went off to the great motorway in the sky. It’s good to have them around, but too long and they get melancholy, and Dakin begins to consider punching Timms in the mouth every time he spouts one of his (theirs, Hector’s) bits of poetry.
In re-reading, I often find this paragraph too sentimental. I sometimes wonder if Dakin is really too self-involved to be terribly broken up about Hector.
When Irwin shows up, Dakin is melancholy all by himself, and half-drowning in his pint. They haven’t planned this, though of course they have; they’d decided to meet after all, but left to themselves to the details, the way Irwin still smells, somehow, of schoolrooms, in addition to the wet wool of his coat, in a way that makes Dakin think sourly, fucking gerunds; how his glasses fog over in the warmth and have to be cleaned on his sleeve. How bloody awkward this is when it doesn’t have to be, after all that talk of surprises and sucking off. He lets Irwin buy him another beer and then returns the favour. They smile. “No euphemisms here,” says Irwin, and swallows.
It turns out that the flat Irwin’s renting is only a few blocks away, and while they walk he talks about neutrality clauses, as if he’s still testing Dakin. And of course he is. It’s what he meant about Poland all along - he can’t make the first move, so he’s edging around for the truth, complicit, but having to wait to see what happens.
Except that when Irwin fits his key in the lock and ushers Dakin into a narrow, badly lit corridor, it’s Dakin who’s surprised, Dakin who’s pushed backed against the blue-striped wallpaper, finding his way into a kiss that comes as less of a surprise, but which is still a revelation.
Turns out Poland has a few tricks up its sleeve.
One of my favorite things to do in any sort of fic is expand the boundaries of the physical world we're shown in canon - I like to know where characters are when the camera's off them, what they're doing when a chapter ends. I've actually got a very detailed picture of Irwin's building in my head, because I think it reveals a lot about his character- some of it we're suprised by, some of it we aren't. I like that we get to see more of Irwin's flat as Dakin gets to know him better.
I also really like the mood I was able to evoke in the fic trying to utilise the style of the Boys' language in the film, flip and articulate, and never quite in the one place at the one time. It feels authentic I think, and not too frilly, and one can totally imagine Dakin thinking of Irwin as Poland. :)
*
It’s dark when Dakin leaves, and though the spinning in his head has subsided, he walks for a while with a cigarette unlit in his mouth. He doesn’t want to go home still drunk and encounter his mum.
I love characters that smoke. There's one in almost every fic I write.
It’s stopped raining, but the streets are shiny-slick, and every tree he passes under shakes droplets of water down the back of his neck. Some of the houses have lights on inside, and the windows glow pleasantly, casting long beams down in front of his feet as he walks. There ought to be a poem about nights like this; there probably is, but even though he learnt those Hector taught them, line by line, Dakin’s never been much of a poet himself, and they slip away far too easily.
So Dakin walks on, feeling as if he’s stolen something, or else been robbed.
Again - too sentimental? Actually, I think it works, because Dakin is robbing Irwin of something, agreeing to play a part in his own self-gratifying game, but I also think Dakin's more deeply involved than he realises.
*
Four weeks later, and it really is an accident this time. Irwin’s at the corner shop, picking up milk and bread at the same time Dakin’s in buying another pack of fags. The sight puts Dakin in mind of the phrase “gourmet meals for one” - he never does decide whether it’s pity or curiosity that makes him follow Irwin home.
“Sir,” he gasps (it’s Irwin on his knees this time, and he’s still got his glasses on), “shit, sir, I’m gonna….”
Now is the moment to speculate exactly what it might be like to give a blowjob with glasses on. It's been pointed out to me that it might be difficult, but as I don't wear glasses I don't actually have any idea.
Hector would have liked this, too - sex in the subjunctive. Dakin’s hands falter nearly as often as his voice does, but his mind follows each uneasy little movement, mapping out all the possibilities, all the things that could have happened, all the ways this might go differently. He could have touched here, and made Irwin come sooner, or kissed him, and drawn it out longer. The whole scene is a knot of possibilities and routes unfollowed, but it ends the same way, every time, with Dakin pulling on his trousers and his shoes and going.
Dakin is such an arse. Not writing him as an insensitive twat would be like writing Posner as a manly beefcake.
Let's spare another moment for me to go "ooh, I'm so clever, working in Hector's love of the Subjunctive!"....aaaaand we're done.
*
The third time is also the last; it’s neither an accident nor a plan.
What I said earlier about Dakin being in too deep? He starts off the whole charade as a very complex power trip (he can't figure out why Irwin doesn't melt under his charm the way the others do, at first), and he thinks he's in control of the situation, but for once the situation is getting the better of him, and I think he's starting to realise that there's a little bit more to it than the sex.
Dakin finds himself standing on the doorstep, staring at the ugly brass knocker on the door, and Irwin finds himself pulling the door open. Dakin allows himself to be courted, to have his jacket taken and a cup of tea poured. It’s the first time he’s seen how Irwin really lives. It’s also the first time he’s seen this flat with the lights on. Somehow, perhaps just because Irwin’s smart, and a teacher, he’s always imagined that he listens to the sort of fruity orchestral music the BBC is always going on about, but Dakin realises with a smile that the record Irwin’s playing is Bowie. There are photographs and posters and unframed paintings on the walls, and squat shelves everywhere stuffed with books.
Bowie rocks. So do books. And paintings. Please note that most of my favorite characters will always have books somewhere in their immediate living space.
This time it’s almost funny, because Irwin leads him to the bedroom like they’ve never met before, and there are condoms waiting on the bedside table. “Been waiting for me, have you, sir?” Dakin jokes as he shrugs off his shirt.
It’s different than with Fiona - Irwin’s body is different, and he makes noises like Fiona does, but they’re deeper and softer, and the whole time Dakin is reminded that he’s with a man. He stays for a while, until Irwin has fallen asleep, and then he goes and hauls Lockwood out of bed and they drink cheap whiskey until the sun comes up.
Once more, with feeling - Dakin's an ass. But he just might have feelings, and I think the whole business bothers him more than he'll ever let on.
I also love the idea of Dakin and Lockwood being best friends - it just makes sense to me in a way that it doesn't quite, with anyone else, and I like to give Lockwood a bit of depth that he doesn't have in the film, if only in that we don't really know what his relationships with the other boys are like.
*
He went to school. He did the work even though he never had to try too hard, because that’s the way it’d always been. And it went on. Being a tax lawyer isn’t what he’d always dreamed of, but then he’d always been a practical lad, and taken what came to him. Suited him well enough.
He never marries, but there are women enough in his life, and he’s content just dropping in on Timms and Akhtar and their young ones, so he never really thinks about kids of his own.
He catches Irwin on the telly now and then, graying, slender, and as quick as ever. Dakin doesn’t have much patience for the television in general, but he watches now and then, and finds himself wanting to argue back, or chew over some interesting thing Irwin has said.
They never meet again, but Dakin is sure that if they had, he would have called him “sir”.
It was always meant to end this way, I'm sure of it, but knowing how callous and strange the relationship was makes it just that much more heartbreaking. I'm sure Irwin's not crying into his pillow about it twenty years on, but you just know he'll give their dalliances the occasional thought, whereas Dakin will write it off completely and move on to other conquests.
This ending bothers me, because it feels rushed and insincere, and maybe it is, but I think it does work, in its own way, because we already know who ends up where, and I didn't really want to repeat the epilogue of the movie.
Fin