Truth Is Overrated
Category: The History Boys
Characters: Irwin, Dakin
Summary: What difference, now, did one more lie make?
Notes: For Kathleen, with her prompt of "truth", and for Lichen (__morpheus_), because I promised her one :D
--
So he might have mentioned that he’d attended Oxford. Yes, it was a minor source of pride to him, and nobody had ever questioned it before. Or rather, no one had bothered questioning- after all, respectable young men like him were dime-a-dozen; taking the bus, he blended in neatly with the shades of grey and tried to stay out of the splashes of colour; walking on the street, with a black umbrella and a tidy briefcase, marching to the same rhythm as every other raincoat-clad passer-by, he was the paragon of the Everyman. The Everyman, shielded from excessive scrutiny, drifting through a somewhat lacklustre existence-
In fact, come to think of it, he rather enjoyed the anonymity of teaching at an obscure grammar school in some godforsaken part of England; he lived and breathed through the past, vicariously through well-thumbed tomes that more often than not, found themselves scattered in piles around his sparse bedroom. A sparse bedroom- a sparse life- one embellished by momentary interludes of entertainment derived from his students’ naivety- “but it’s all true, sir!” and he feels his insides wrench a little bit more as he wonders when he’s last thought that.
It doesn’t surprise him to find Dakin standing before him, confronting him. And he realizes that he cannot lie any longer- cannot say the words that once seemed to come so easily- and he retreats back into his shell of security, fumbling for the right words, the nearest metaphor, the easiest euphemism- Sunday it is, he says, unable to summon the right words of protest, and as he watches Dakin lope away with that confident, self-assured ease, he slumps; he buries his face in his cold hands- one more lie, he thinks, one more won’t matter now.
--
Constructive criticism! Woo!
Characters: Irwin, Dakin
Summary: What difference, now, did one more lie make?
Notes: For Kathleen, with her prompt of "truth", and for Lichen (__morpheus_), because I promised her one :D
--
So he might have mentioned that he’d attended Oxford. Yes, it was a minor source of pride to him, and nobody had ever questioned it before. Or rather, no one had bothered questioning- after all, respectable young men like him were dime-a-dozen; taking the bus, he blended in neatly with the shades of grey and tried to stay out of the splashes of colour; walking on the street, with a black umbrella and a tidy briefcase, marching to the same rhythm as every other raincoat-clad passer-by, he was the paragon of the Everyman. The Everyman, shielded from excessive scrutiny, drifting through a somewhat lacklustre existence-
In fact, come to think of it, he rather enjoyed the anonymity of teaching at an obscure grammar school in some godforsaken part of England; he lived and breathed through the past, vicariously through well-thumbed tomes that more often than not, found themselves scattered in piles around his sparse bedroom. A sparse bedroom- a sparse life- one embellished by momentary interludes of entertainment derived from his students’ naivety- “but it’s all true, sir!” and he feels his insides wrench a little bit more as he wonders when he’s last thought that.
It doesn’t surprise him to find Dakin standing before him, confronting him. And he realizes that he cannot lie any longer- cannot say the words that once seemed to come so easily- and he retreats back into his shell of security, fumbling for the right words, the nearest metaphor, the easiest euphemism- Sunday it is, he says, unable to summon the right words of protest, and as he watches Dakin lope away with that confident, self-assured ease, he slumps; he buries his face in his cold hands- one more lie, he thinks, one more won’t matter now.
--
Constructive criticism! Woo!