Summer of Oz: Lesson Learned
Title: Lesson Learned
Pairing: Tobias Beecher/Chris Keller
Rating: PG-13 (for language and sexual situations)
Word Count: 2,830
Summary: Toby tries to help Chris study for the GED test-but Chris is being Chris, and Toby is, well, being Toby.
Setting: There were indications near the end of Season 3 that Chris was working on his GED, so this story could, in theory, take place very early in Season 4. I, however, prefer to think of it as a post-Season 6 AU.
Note: Two of the GED sample questions I used in the story were lifted from the official GED Testing Service website (with some slight modifications).
Additional Note at the end of story.
____________________________________
Toby entered the pod holding a thick workbook, several loose sheets of paper, and enough pencils to supply a small school. Chris watched him warily from his bunk, hands clasped behind his head, as Toby laid everything out on their makeshift desk.
With a clap of his hands, Toby proclaimed enthusiastically, "Study time!"
Chris frowned. "I was thinkin' it was more like blowjob time."
"You think any time is blowjob time," huffed Toby.
"Yeah? Well, don't try tellin' me you got a problem with that."
Toby put his hands on hips. "I do! At least, when it interferes with a convenient opportunity for you to study."
Chris glared at him. "Studyin' ain't gonna make any difference. There's no way I'm passin' that test."
"Oh, no, you don’t!" exclaimed Toby, wagging a finger in the air. "You can't fool me with that act. I know just how smart you really are." He paused before adding, "There's no reason to be afraid, you know."
Chris bristled at that. "I ain't afraid," he retorted as he sat up.
"Not of the test, no." Toby walked over and sat down next to him. "But you're afraid that everyone else in Oz is going to find out how smart you are. Trust me, Chris, that ship has sailed. These people here stopped underestimating you a long time ago. Hell, even McManus knows better."
A smile tugged at the corner of Chris's mouth. "Maybe I just need some extra motivation to study," he suggested.
"Like what?"
"Like a blowjob."
"Jesus, Chris, is sex the only thing you ever think about?"
Chris raised an eyebrow and stared at Toby. After a moment, he said, "That must be what you educated people call a rhetorical question."
Toby sighed. "Okay, listen. If you study until lights out, and if you make decent progress, then you'll get a special treat." He lowered his voice, despite the fact that no one else was around to hear. "I'll give you my signature Beecher Blowjob Deluxe. Deal?"
"You'll do that thing with your tongue where... "
"Yes! But only after you're done studying! Deal?"
"Deal. But you're gonna help me, right?"
"Of course!" replied Toby as he stood up. He walked back over to the desk, picked up the workbook, and waved it in the air. "I got this from the library. It's a study guide with a bunch of sample questions inside. I'll quiz you."
"Oh, great."
"Let’s trade places. You sit over here," Toby tapped the seat of the chair, "and I’ll read the questions to you from your bed."
Chris reluctantly stood up, sauntered over to the desk, and sat down. By the time Toby had settled himself onto his bunk, Chris had folded one of the sheets of paper into an airplane. He tossed it across the pod and grinned when it made direct contact with Toby’s head.
Toby glared at him as he wadded the airplane into a ball and threw it onto the floor. "Do something like that again, and you can kiss that blowjob goodbye," he warned.
Chris held his hands up in surrender and gave Toby an apologetic look. "I promise it won’t happen again, Mr. Beecher."
Toby’s glare continued for several more seconds, then he slowly opened the workbook and began skimming the introduction. "As you’re probably already aware, the test is divided into four subjects: science, social studies, language arts, and math. The language arts section is divided further into two subsections: one for reading and one for writing."
A loud snoring sound filled the room.
Raising the volume of his voice, Toby plowed on. "I think it would be best to start off by asking you one sample question from each subject. That way you can get a feel for the types of questions and the level of difficulty you can expect."
"Whatever you say, boss."
Toby nodded his head. "Okay, let's try science first. The questions are multiple choice. Here goes:
A cook decides to recover some table salt that has been completely dissolved in water. Which of the following processes would be the most effective method of extracting salt from the solution?
A. spinning the solution in a mixer
B. boiling away the water
C. pouring the solution through cloth
D. dripping the solution through a paper filter
Do you think it's A, B, C, or D?"
Chris smiled. "The answer would be B. You boil the water away."
Toby glanced at a page at the back of the book and replied, "Yes! You are correct."
"Did you just check to see what the answer was?"
Toby looked up, his mouth slightly open. "No! I mean, yes," he stammered. "I checked, but it was just to see if they had an explanation. I already knew the answer."
"Mmm-hmm."
"How did you know the answer, anyway?"
"Shit, if you grow up poor, salt can provide endless hours of entertainment when you're a kid. Did you ever sprinkle salt on a slug?"
Toby made a face. "Eww, no! Why would I do that?"
"To watch them shrivel up and die. It's fascinatin'. Slugs are made of, like, 90% water, and the salt draws the water out of their bodies. They start bubblin' up, and it usually takes less than a minute for 'em to die from the dehydration."
Toby sat there and stared at Chris, a horrified look on his face.
Chris narrowed his eyes. "I guess your parents' gardener probably used another method to get rid of 'em."
Toby finally came to his senses. "I don't know," he mumbled with a shake of his head. "Slugs were never high on my list of interests when I was a kid." He cleared his throat. "Let's move on to social studies."
"Oh, yes, let's do that."
Toby flipped through a few pages of the book before continuing. "Okay, listen to this question:
Which of the following is best described as opinion rather than fact about immigrants to North America? Immigrants…
A. traveled long distances
B. migrated to find employment
C. learned to live in a foreign culture
D. found a better life
Which one is most like an opinion: A, B, C, or D?"
"I imagine the answer is D, 'cause some of them might've ended up in prison," Chris grumped. "In which case, they might as well have saved themselves the trouble of movin'."
"Yes, D is the correct answer." Toby fidgeted for a moment before elaborating. "Remember, an opinion doesn't necessarily have to be wrong, it could also be right. That's why it's considered to be an opinion, and not a fact."
"Yeah, okay, I'll be sure to remember that."
"Could you hold back the sarcastic tone? I'm trying to help you here."
Chris sighed. "I know, Toby."
Toby rubbed his forehead and pushed his hand through his hair. "Let's discuss something a little less contentious," he said as he proceeded to flip through the workbook again. "How about grammar? The writing portion of the language arts section includes several questions devoted to that."
"Sounds like fun."
Toby threw him a look.
"No, really! I was good at that kind of stuff in school. I was the fourth grade spelling champ, believe it not."
"You were?"
"Sure. You find that hard to believe?"
Toby shook his head. "Nothing about you is hard to believe. That's why you're so good at lying."
Chris grinned. "Is that an opinion, or a fact?"
"Yes," replied Toby.
"Ah, spoken like a true lawyer."
Toby opened the book wider, creasing the cover at the binding. He walked over to Chris and laid the book down in front of him.
"This looks like a good exercise," Toby indicated with a wave of his hand. "There’s a sample letter on this page with several spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. Why don’t you read through it and see how many you can find?"
Slowly, Chris picked up a pencil and began to read. He circled and crossed things out and wrote corrections in the margins of the page. When he was done, he handed the book back to Toby, who was waiting patiently off to the side.
Toby reviewed the letter, noting everything that Chris had marked. "Good, good," he said, nodding his head and smiling. "You really seem to know... " Toby’s voice trailed away, and a slight frown formed on his face. Quickly thumbing through the book, he glanced at the page in the back where the answers were located. His face turned pink and he started to make little huffing sounds as he turned back to the sample letter that Chris had corrected.
Chris looked at him in confusion. "What’s wrong? Did I screw something up?"
Toby shrugged his shoulders. "No, no, I guess not. Technically, you did everything right. At least, as far as the idiotic author of this study guide is concerned."
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
Toby shook his head as he tapped at a spot on the page. "Right here at the end of the letter-there’s a sentence that lists a series of items: Please buy some glue tape staples and paperclips for the office. You put some commas in there, but not the Harvard comma. You really should have included it, too."
Toby started breathing a little faster, and he added in a louder voice, "But apparently the ignorant dumbass who wrote this study guide has a difference of opinion. An opinion that is wrong, by the way."
Chris squinted at him. "What the fuck is the Harvard comma?" he asked.
"It’s the serial comma. Some people call it the Oxford comma," explained Toby, his face now a bright red as his agitation continued to grow. "It’s the final comma that separates items in a list, placed immediately before the conjunction. It prevents ambiguity, and it also does a better job of matching the spoken cadence."
The vein in Toby’s forehead began to stick out. "There are some lunatics in the world who believe that it's optional-that it’s not necessary to make the meaning clear, that the conjunction itself separates the final two items in the series. But that’s just stupid. It should always be used. Always, always, ALWAYS. People who think otherwise are INSANE."
Chris watched Toby with increasing amusement and rubbed the corners of his mouth to suppress his grin. "You feel pretty strongly about this comma, huh?"
Oblivious to Chris’s mockery, Toby replied, "You bet I do! The only time I got detention in high school was when I got into a heated argument with my English teacher over this. He thought it was unnecessary, too."
"I guess he didn’t go to Harvard, huh?"
"Obviously not!"
Chris took the workbook out of Toby’s hands and set it back down on the desk. He took his pencil and made another mark on the page. Then he handed the book back to Toby.
"There," Chris said with a smile. "All better."
Toby looked at Chris’s revised corrections and returned his smile. "Thank you," he said with a sigh of relief. He walked back to Chris’s bunk and sat down again.
"Maybe we should do some math now," Chris suggested.
Toby nodded his head in agreement. "Yes, I think that’s a good idea." He turned to the final section in the book.
"Okay, listen carefully," Toby instructed. "Here is a problem dealing with ratios. I'll read it out loud, and you can write down the information you need to calculate the answer:
Mike wants to paint his house purple, but the store is out of purple paint. Mike knows he can mix red and blue together using a 2 to 1 ratio to get the right color. If he needs a total of 15 gallons of paint to cover the house, how much red paint should he buy?"
Chris sat motionless, staring at Toby with glazed eyes and a bored expression.
Toby raised his eyebrow. "Do you want me to read it again?"
Chris folded his arms across his chest. "Who the fuck would paint their house purple?" he asked.
"Mr. Pine," Toby quickly answered.
Chris blinked. "Who?"
"Mr. Pine!" Toby repeated. He bounced slightly on Chris's bed. "From Mr. Pine's Purple House."
"English, please."
"Mr. Pine's Purple House was a favorite book of mine when I was little," Toby explained. "It was one of those early learn-to-read books, with lots of repetitive, rhyming words. I read it over and over again. I was practically obsessed with it. It's the reason why purple is my favorite color."
"Purple is your favorite color? I didn't know that."
"That’s because you never asked."
"You've never asked me what my favorite color is, either," Chris responded defensively.
Toby eyed him fondly. "Your favorite color is silver."
Chris looked at him in surprise. "How'd you know that?"
Toby smiled. "Every September when school started, you'd get a big new box of crayons, the kind with the built-in sharpener. It included all the unusual colors with weird names like apricot and cornflower and goldenrod... plus the metallic colors like gold and silver. And you loved that silver crayon because you could use it to color bullets coming out of the guns you drew in your cowboy pictures."
Eyes wide, Chris sat and looked at Toby, an embarrassed expression frozen on his face. Very quietly, he mumbled, "When the fuck did I tell you about that?"
"A long time ago."
"Jesus," muttered Chris with a shudder. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Changing the subject, he asked, "Well, anyway, what was so special about Mr. Pine and his purple house?"
"Oh, it was such a clever story," answered Toby with a grin. "Mr. Pine is this guy who lives in a neighborhood full of identical white houses, and he's frustrated because he can't tell his house apart from the others. So, trying to be different, he plants a tree in his yard-and it looks great! So great, in fact, that all of his neighbors decide to plant a tree in their yards, too.
"So then, Mr. Pine plants a bush, and the same thing happens-all of his neighbors plant a bush. Mr. Pine gets fed up, and that's when he decides to paint his house purple. Turns out, none of his neighbors want a purple house. So, the story ends with Mr. Pine being all happy because he and his house are finally different."
Chris quietly stared at Toby for long moment. Finally, he said, "Wow."
Toby sheepishly looked down at the floor. "It seemed like a cool story when I was a kid, anyway." He cleared his throat. "And the illustrations were nice, too. Black and white mostly, but with a fair amount of purple, obviously."
Chris leaned forward. "So, did you'n Gen live in a purple house after you grew up?"
Toby looked back up at him and laughed. "No, of course not. I don't think our neighborhood's homeowner's association would've approved of that."
"Hmm," murmured Chris in contemplation. After a moment, he inquired, "Have you ever told Sister Pete about your fascination with this book?"
"No," Toby answered in confusion. "Why would I do that?"
Chris shrugged. "Maybe you should. She might find it... insightful."
Toby stared at him until the insinuation started to sink in.
"What?" he snorted. "You think I became an alcoholic because I had to live in a white house when I grew up?"
"Fuck, I dunno, Tobe. I ain't no shrink."
"That doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense. That's like saying you became a killer because you liked to draw silver bullets with your crayon."
"Who knows? Maybe I did."
Toby slowly tilted his head to the side. "I don’t think life works like that," he said quietly.
The light in the pod flickered, indicating that lights-out was just minutes away.
"Shit! Where did the time go?" Toby exclaimed. "It seems like we just started."
Chris rubbed his face with his hand to hide the roll of his eyes. "Yeah, well, ya know what they say-time flies when you’re havin’ fun."
Chris stood up and stretched, and then threw Toby a lascivious grin before adding, "And now the fun's gonna really start."
Toby returned the grin. "I don't know about that. Remember, I said that you had to make decent progress in your studying in order for you to earn your special treat."
Toby stood and slowly walked over to Chris. He proceeded to run a finger down the length of Chris's shirt, stopping when he reached the waistband of his pants. "I'm not sure that you learned enough tonight to warrant a blowjob deluxe," he teased.
"Oh, I think we both learned plenty," Chris quietly responded. He leaned forward into Toby's touch. "Besides, you're not denyin' me just because of some loophole you created."
The lights went out, flooding the pod with darkness.
After a moment of silence, Toby whispered, "Oh, I'll loop your hole, alright... "
____________________________________
Additional Note: Mr. Pine's Purple House is an actual children's book, written by Leonard Kessler and first published in 1965. And it is indeed AWESOME. It was out of print for several years before a wave of nostalgia brought it back for a 40th anniversary printing in 2005.
Pairing: Tobias Beecher/Chris Keller
Rating: PG-13 (for language and sexual situations)
Word Count: 2,830
Summary: Toby tries to help Chris study for the GED test-but Chris is being Chris, and Toby is, well, being Toby.
Setting: There were indications near the end of Season 3 that Chris was working on his GED, so this story could, in theory, take place very early in Season 4. I, however, prefer to think of it as a post-Season 6 AU.
Note: Two of the GED sample questions I used in the story were lifted from the official GED Testing Service website (with some slight modifications).
Additional Note at the end of story.
____________________________________
Toby entered the pod holding a thick workbook, several loose sheets of paper, and enough pencils to supply a small school. Chris watched him warily from his bunk, hands clasped behind his head, as Toby laid everything out on their makeshift desk.
With a clap of his hands, Toby proclaimed enthusiastically, "Study time!"
Chris frowned. "I was thinkin' it was more like blowjob time."
"You think any time is blowjob time," huffed Toby.
"Yeah? Well, don't try tellin' me you got a problem with that."
Toby put his hands on hips. "I do! At least, when it interferes with a convenient opportunity for you to study."
Chris glared at him. "Studyin' ain't gonna make any difference. There's no way I'm passin' that test."
"Oh, no, you don’t!" exclaimed Toby, wagging a finger in the air. "You can't fool me with that act. I know just how smart you really are." He paused before adding, "There's no reason to be afraid, you know."
Chris bristled at that. "I ain't afraid," he retorted as he sat up.
"Not of the test, no." Toby walked over and sat down next to him. "But you're afraid that everyone else in Oz is going to find out how smart you are. Trust me, Chris, that ship has sailed. These people here stopped underestimating you a long time ago. Hell, even McManus knows better."
A smile tugged at the corner of Chris's mouth. "Maybe I just need some extra motivation to study," he suggested.
"Like what?"
"Like a blowjob."
"Jesus, Chris, is sex the only thing you ever think about?"
Chris raised an eyebrow and stared at Toby. After a moment, he said, "That must be what you educated people call a rhetorical question."
Toby sighed. "Okay, listen. If you study until lights out, and if you make decent progress, then you'll get a special treat." He lowered his voice, despite the fact that no one else was around to hear. "I'll give you my signature Beecher Blowjob Deluxe. Deal?"
"You'll do that thing with your tongue where... "
"Yes! But only after you're done studying! Deal?"
"Deal. But you're gonna help me, right?"
"Of course!" replied Toby as he stood up. He walked back over to the desk, picked up the workbook, and waved it in the air. "I got this from the library. It's a study guide with a bunch of sample questions inside. I'll quiz you."
"Oh, great."
"Let’s trade places. You sit over here," Toby tapped the seat of the chair, "and I’ll read the questions to you from your bed."
Chris reluctantly stood up, sauntered over to the desk, and sat down. By the time Toby had settled himself onto his bunk, Chris had folded one of the sheets of paper into an airplane. He tossed it across the pod and grinned when it made direct contact with Toby’s head.
Toby glared at him as he wadded the airplane into a ball and threw it onto the floor. "Do something like that again, and you can kiss that blowjob goodbye," he warned.
Chris held his hands up in surrender and gave Toby an apologetic look. "I promise it won’t happen again, Mr. Beecher."
Toby’s glare continued for several more seconds, then he slowly opened the workbook and began skimming the introduction. "As you’re probably already aware, the test is divided into four subjects: science, social studies, language arts, and math. The language arts section is divided further into two subsections: one for reading and one for writing."
A loud snoring sound filled the room.
Raising the volume of his voice, Toby plowed on. "I think it would be best to start off by asking you one sample question from each subject. That way you can get a feel for the types of questions and the level of difficulty you can expect."
"Whatever you say, boss."
Toby nodded his head. "Okay, let's try science first. The questions are multiple choice. Here goes:
A cook decides to recover some table salt that has been completely dissolved in water. Which of the following processes would be the most effective method of extracting salt from the solution?
A. spinning the solution in a mixer
B. boiling away the water
C. pouring the solution through cloth
D. dripping the solution through a paper filter
Do you think it's A, B, C, or D?"
Chris smiled. "The answer would be B. You boil the water away."
Toby glanced at a page at the back of the book and replied, "Yes! You are correct."
"Did you just check to see what the answer was?"
Toby looked up, his mouth slightly open. "No! I mean, yes," he stammered. "I checked, but it was just to see if they had an explanation. I already knew the answer."
"Mmm-hmm."
"How did you know the answer, anyway?"
"Shit, if you grow up poor, salt can provide endless hours of entertainment when you're a kid. Did you ever sprinkle salt on a slug?"
Toby made a face. "Eww, no! Why would I do that?"
"To watch them shrivel up and die. It's fascinatin'. Slugs are made of, like, 90% water, and the salt draws the water out of their bodies. They start bubblin' up, and it usually takes less than a minute for 'em to die from the dehydration."
Toby sat there and stared at Chris, a horrified look on his face.
Chris narrowed his eyes. "I guess your parents' gardener probably used another method to get rid of 'em."
Toby finally came to his senses. "I don't know," he mumbled with a shake of his head. "Slugs were never high on my list of interests when I was a kid." He cleared his throat. "Let's move on to social studies."
"Oh, yes, let's do that."
Toby flipped through a few pages of the book before continuing. "Okay, listen to this question:
Which of the following is best described as opinion rather than fact about immigrants to North America? Immigrants…
A. traveled long distances
B. migrated to find employment
C. learned to live in a foreign culture
D. found a better life
Which one is most like an opinion: A, B, C, or D?"
"I imagine the answer is D, 'cause some of them might've ended up in prison," Chris grumped. "In which case, they might as well have saved themselves the trouble of movin'."
"Yes, D is the correct answer." Toby fidgeted for a moment before elaborating. "Remember, an opinion doesn't necessarily have to be wrong, it could also be right. That's why it's considered to be an opinion, and not a fact."
"Yeah, okay, I'll be sure to remember that."
"Could you hold back the sarcastic tone? I'm trying to help you here."
Chris sighed. "I know, Toby."
Toby rubbed his forehead and pushed his hand through his hair. "Let's discuss something a little less contentious," he said as he proceeded to flip through the workbook again. "How about grammar? The writing portion of the language arts section includes several questions devoted to that."
"Sounds like fun."
Toby threw him a look.
"No, really! I was good at that kind of stuff in school. I was the fourth grade spelling champ, believe it not."
"You were?"
"Sure. You find that hard to believe?"
Toby shook his head. "Nothing about you is hard to believe. That's why you're so good at lying."
Chris grinned. "Is that an opinion, or a fact?"
"Yes," replied Toby.
"Ah, spoken like a true lawyer."
Toby opened the book wider, creasing the cover at the binding. He walked over to Chris and laid the book down in front of him.
"This looks like a good exercise," Toby indicated with a wave of his hand. "There’s a sample letter on this page with several spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. Why don’t you read through it and see how many you can find?"
Slowly, Chris picked up a pencil and began to read. He circled and crossed things out and wrote corrections in the margins of the page. When he was done, he handed the book back to Toby, who was waiting patiently off to the side.
Toby reviewed the letter, noting everything that Chris had marked. "Good, good," he said, nodding his head and smiling. "You really seem to know... " Toby’s voice trailed away, and a slight frown formed on his face. Quickly thumbing through the book, he glanced at the page in the back where the answers were located. His face turned pink and he started to make little huffing sounds as he turned back to the sample letter that Chris had corrected.
Chris looked at him in confusion. "What’s wrong? Did I screw something up?"
Toby shrugged his shoulders. "No, no, I guess not. Technically, you did everything right. At least, as far as the idiotic author of this study guide is concerned."
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
Toby shook his head as he tapped at a spot on the page. "Right here at the end of the letter-there’s a sentence that lists a series of items: Please buy some glue tape staples and paperclips for the office. You put some commas in there, but not the Harvard comma. You really should have included it, too."
Toby started breathing a little faster, and he added in a louder voice, "But apparently the ignorant dumbass who wrote this study guide has a difference of opinion. An opinion that is wrong, by the way."
Chris squinted at him. "What the fuck is the Harvard comma?" he asked.
"It’s the serial comma. Some people call it the Oxford comma," explained Toby, his face now a bright red as his agitation continued to grow. "It’s the final comma that separates items in a list, placed immediately before the conjunction. It prevents ambiguity, and it also does a better job of matching the spoken cadence."
The vein in Toby’s forehead began to stick out. "There are some lunatics in the world who believe that it's optional-that it’s not necessary to make the meaning clear, that the conjunction itself separates the final two items in the series. But that’s just stupid. It should always be used. Always, always, ALWAYS. People who think otherwise are INSANE."
Chris watched Toby with increasing amusement and rubbed the corners of his mouth to suppress his grin. "You feel pretty strongly about this comma, huh?"
Oblivious to Chris’s mockery, Toby replied, "You bet I do! The only time I got detention in high school was when I got into a heated argument with my English teacher over this. He thought it was unnecessary, too."
"I guess he didn’t go to Harvard, huh?"
"Obviously not!"
Chris took the workbook out of Toby’s hands and set it back down on the desk. He took his pencil and made another mark on the page. Then he handed the book back to Toby.
"There," Chris said with a smile. "All better."
Toby looked at Chris’s revised corrections and returned his smile. "Thank you," he said with a sigh of relief. He walked back to Chris’s bunk and sat down again.
"Maybe we should do some math now," Chris suggested.
Toby nodded his head in agreement. "Yes, I think that’s a good idea." He turned to the final section in the book.
"Okay, listen carefully," Toby instructed. "Here is a problem dealing with ratios. I'll read it out loud, and you can write down the information you need to calculate the answer:
Mike wants to paint his house purple, but the store is out of purple paint. Mike knows he can mix red and blue together using a 2 to 1 ratio to get the right color. If he needs a total of 15 gallons of paint to cover the house, how much red paint should he buy?"
Chris sat motionless, staring at Toby with glazed eyes and a bored expression.
Toby raised his eyebrow. "Do you want me to read it again?"
Chris folded his arms across his chest. "Who the fuck would paint their house purple?" he asked.
"Mr. Pine," Toby quickly answered.
Chris blinked. "Who?"
"Mr. Pine!" Toby repeated. He bounced slightly on Chris's bed. "From Mr. Pine's Purple House."
"English, please."
"Mr. Pine's Purple House was a favorite book of mine when I was little," Toby explained. "It was one of those early learn-to-read books, with lots of repetitive, rhyming words. I read it over and over again. I was practically obsessed with it. It's the reason why purple is my favorite color."
"Purple is your favorite color? I didn't know that."
"That’s because you never asked."
"You've never asked me what my favorite color is, either," Chris responded defensively.
Toby eyed him fondly. "Your favorite color is silver."
Chris looked at him in surprise. "How'd you know that?"
Toby smiled. "Every September when school started, you'd get a big new box of crayons, the kind with the built-in sharpener. It included all the unusual colors with weird names like apricot and cornflower and goldenrod... plus the metallic colors like gold and silver. And you loved that silver crayon because you could use it to color bullets coming out of the guns you drew in your cowboy pictures."
Eyes wide, Chris sat and looked at Toby, an embarrassed expression frozen on his face. Very quietly, he mumbled, "When the fuck did I tell you about that?"
"A long time ago."
"Jesus," muttered Chris with a shudder. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Changing the subject, he asked, "Well, anyway, what was so special about Mr. Pine and his purple house?"
"Oh, it was such a clever story," answered Toby with a grin. "Mr. Pine is this guy who lives in a neighborhood full of identical white houses, and he's frustrated because he can't tell his house apart from the others. So, trying to be different, he plants a tree in his yard-and it looks great! So great, in fact, that all of his neighbors decide to plant a tree in their yards, too.
"So then, Mr. Pine plants a bush, and the same thing happens-all of his neighbors plant a bush. Mr. Pine gets fed up, and that's when he decides to paint his house purple. Turns out, none of his neighbors want a purple house. So, the story ends with Mr. Pine being all happy because he and his house are finally different."
Chris quietly stared at Toby for long moment. Finally, he said, "Wow."
Toby sheepishly looked down at the floor. "It seemed like a cool story when I was a kid, anyway." He cleared his throat. "And the illustrations were nice, too. Black and white mostly, but with a fair amount of purple, obviously."
Chris leaned forward. "So, did you'n Gen live in a purple house after you grew up?"
Toby looked back up at him and laughed. "No, of course not. I don't think our neighborhood's homeowner's association would've approved of that."
"Hmm," murmured Chris in contemplation. After a moment, he inquired, "Have you ever told Sister Pete about your fascination with this book?"
"No," Toby answered in confusion. "Why would I do that?"
Chris shrugged. "Maybe you should. She might find it... insightful."
Toby stared at him until the insinuation started to sink in.
"What?" he snorted. "You think I became an alcoholic because I had to live in a white house when I grew up?"
"Fuck, I dunno, Tobe. I ain't no shrink."
"That doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense. That's like saying you became a killer because you liked to draw silver bullets with your crayon."
"Who knows? Maybe I did."
Toby slowly tilted his head to the side. "I don’t think life works like that," he said quietly.
The light in the pod flickered, indicating that lights-out was just minutes away.
"Shit! Where did the time go?" Toby exclaimed. "It seems like we just started."
Chris rubbed his face with his hand to hide the roll of his eyes. "Yeah, well, ya know what they say-time flies when you’re havin’ fun."
Chris stood up and stretched, and then threw Toby a lascivious grin before adding, "And now the fun's gonna really start."
Toby returned the grin. "I don't know about that. Remember, I said that you had to make decent progress in your studying in order for you to earn your special treat."
Toby stood and slowly walked over to Chris. He proceeded to run a finger down the length of Chris's shirt, stopping when he reached the waistband of his pants. "I'm not sure that you learned enough tonight to warrant a blowjob deluxe," he teased.
"Oh, I think we both learned plenty," Chris quietly responded. He leaned forward into Toby's touch. "Besides, you're not denyin' me just because of some loophole you created."
The lights went out, flooding the pod with darkness.
After a moment of silence, Toby whispered, "Oh, I'll loop your hole, alright... "
____________________________________
Additional Note: Mr. Pine's Purple House is an actual children's book, written by Leonard Kessler and first published in 1965. And it is indeed AWESOME. It was out of print for several years before a wave of nostalgia brought it back for a 40th anniversary printing in 2005.