these are my confessions
Title: these are my confessions
Characters: Ben, Serena
Rating/Word Count: PG-13 / 1, 656
One-Line Excerpt: He wakes up twisted in sheets and with her name tucked into his mouth like a secret.
(Confession:
Sometimes, Ben dreams about it.
There is nothing about Serena van der Woodsen that suggests virginity - she is all coy glances and fingers that hover but never touch, all perfect pink tongue darting out to lick her lips, all skirts just a little too short and gaze lingering with his just a little too long. But there is something about her that suggests innocence; maybe it's simply her age compared to his own, or maybe the freckles spattered across her skin under her blue eyes, or maybe the way that she smiles at him: tentative and awestruck and hopeful, like he gives her something to believe in.
And so when he dreams about it, she is always innocent, always stretched out beneath him, always with blonde hair splayed out on his sheets, always taking in big nervous gulps of air. She is always smiling, always keening when he touches her, always saying his name like a prayer. He always teases out her orgasm, whichever ways his dream allows, slow and tempting until all she can do is cry out his name and come completely undone.
He wakes up twisted in sheets and with her name tucked into his mouth like a secret.)
*
"Mr. Sharp." Her voice is soft and unobtrusive. "Can I ask you a question?"
He smiles at her. She's like fantasy come to life in that uniform of hers, one too many buttons unbuttoned on the crisp white blouse and bare legs underneath the plaid skirt.
"Sure, Serena." He gestures to the chair meant for anyone who visits his small office -
But she sits right on the desk, and her legs just aren't fair. Her flats slip from her feet and end up dangling from the tips of her toes. She nudges a well-worn copy of Sense & Sensibility across his desk. Her nails are painted electric blue.
She leans close. "I wanted her to end up with Willoughby so badly."
He laughs and watches the way her smile works itself into her eyes.
*
He jokes with her once. She's lingering after class, not even attempting subtlety, and he touches a page of her notebook.
"Your writing is a mess," he teases.
It's a surprise, when she looks at him. Something flickers through her eyes, bright and startling and raw. It's a memory.
She doesn't say a word and he catalogues it in his mind as one of her mysteries.
*
He sees her drunk.
He doesn't expect to be so enchanted by it, by that image of her, twirling under the stars and the streetlights. Her late-Saturday-night clothes are much different than the ones she wears in his classroom: tight jeans that hug her hips and a flimsy little shirt that's entirely inappropriate for the cool night. And heels, serious heels, the kind no sixteen-year-old kid has any business wearing.
Her laughter rings out for a long, long time.
*
(Confession:
Sometimes, Ben thinks about writing a book.
He's got a protagonist sitting right in front of him, chewing the end of a pencil idly, eyes raking across the chalkboard critically. When he was in college his roommate was a Fine Arts kid, with paintings drying all over the room and charcoal stains permanently marking his hands - by now, Ben knows what a muse looks like.
It scares him, what the result would be. He wrote short stories in high school sometimes, less-than-one-thousand-word things that were allegories for locker-lined hallways and jocks with their cheerleader girlfriends. He was published once. It meant a lot less than he thought it would.
Now, he's sure that a private school teacher would come to life on the pages, a fairly young man head-over-heels for a stereotypical pretty young thing with her head in the clouds - a little girl grown up too fast, lost in the bottle and white powder, reaching for the kind of love that someone forgot to give her.
If he were ever a best-selling novelist, he'd be living out his fame in jail, he's sure. He won't write a book about an under-aged temptress. He's long been resigned to teaching the classics.)
*
There is a line, and he crosses it.
Touches her cheek, thumb against the apple of it. She stops breathing.
"I didn't know they made eyes that blue," he says.
Her lashes flutter like she wants to kiss him. Neither of them move for a moment.
*
He sees her cry, just once.
She is sitting in a stairwell, lights dimmed, hidden away. Her hands are clenched around a cell phone, her head dipped forward, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, which shake a little. She looks impossibly, heartbreakingly young.
He leaves. She'll never know he was there.
*
Serena does not like Fitzgerald.
He teaches The Great Gatsby and she accosts him in the hallway when it's empty, coffee cup in hand and lips all puckered in disapproval.
"Tell me what you don't like," he says softly, after she informs him of her disappointment, and waits.
"I just - " Her mouth clamps shut.
Ben smiles at her. He understands all too well, what it's like for every cliché literary theme to hit you too hard, right in your heart. Some days he thinks she taught him that the moment she appeared in his classroom, Daisy Buchanan a few decades too late.
He laughs. "Alright," he says, like it's that easy. "You don't have to like it."
Serena grins at him, big and bright, childish and alluring all at once. She takes a long sip from the coffee cup before she hands it over to him, eyes twinkling.
He puts his mouth right over the spot hers had been the minute she's gone, drinks the contents of the cup in several quick gulps.
*
(Confession:
He is tempted as all hell to say yes.
Her hair is soaked and her skin is damp and she's smiling that damn smile of hers, like he holds every single hope she's ever had in his hands.
When he turns her down, saying no to a night in a hotel room with her, the disappointment in the air around them is palpable, and he's not quite sure who it belongs to.)
*
He wonders if it's obvious to anyone else.
The lingering glances, the way she laughs at his lame literature-related jokes, the habit his eyes have of following the swing of her hips as she moves down the hall.
No one ever says a word to him. There is never a single implication.
The secret makes it all the more desirable - he can't help but wonder, would anyone, ever, have to know?
*
Ben is not so deluded as to believe he is in love with her. And the more he gets to know her, the more he realizes that Serena is not so deluded as to believe she is in love with him.
Except in their quieter moments, when she's sitting with him on a park bench, legs tucked up underneath her and smiling a little too brightly over Saramago's Blindness, and she just looks like a kid with stars in her eyes and wishes he could never grant.
"You know - " he begins.
She slips her gloved hand around his, hidden behind her knapsack. His fingers feel out the beat of her pulse at her wrist.
*
Once, she asks him.
"Have you ever been in love, Ben?"
He shrugs, wanting to evade this topic. "Sure, I have."
She nods like she understands.
They encounter one another at a party once, thrown by the Headmaster. Her dress is black and slinky, which is the only reasoning Ben can think of for downing three entire flutes of champagne in under ten minutes.
When he walks by her he moves slowly.
"Miss van der Woodsen. I didn't know you would be here this evening."
Her tongue pokes into her cheek. "Family name gets me a lot of invites."
He laughs. "It must get you a lot of things."
Serena's eyes twinkle. "Not everything."
*
(Confession:
When the police show up and he's fired and there is commotion, so much commotion, about what he's done -
For a couple minutes he wonders if it's true. He's dreamed it enough times, Serena falling back onto his bed, what her mouth might taste like, conversations that stretched longer and farther than the books he teaches could ever take them.
And then he remembers it's not.
But he finds himself in jail anyway.)
*
He writes a novel in prison.
It might be appropriate to call it a memoir, really, since he hasn't changed much but names to protect the not-so-innocent.
It is pages and pages long. He'll never tell a soul about it.
*
He sleeps with Serena the night he's released from prison, sleeps with her on pretty, satiny sheets in a room in an outrageously ornate penthouse - this has been her reality, always, while his has been concrete walls and a pitiful excuse for a mattress.
He is rougher with her than he intends to be, though that might be a lie. He's angry, and he wants this, wants her in a way that is meant to justify the hell he went through.
She is even better than all of his dreams, all smooth, sweet-smelling skin and long limbs and easy experience. She says his name like it means something.
*
Ben lies naked in her bed, watching unashamedly as she stands before her mirror in her underwear, hands tracing carefully over the bruises he left on her skin.
"Have you ever been in love?" he asks her.
Serena's eyes meet his in the mirror, uncertain but defiant. She's older now.
*
(Confession:
He has no idea what he wants her answer to be.
It's terrifying to think it might not make a difference, either way.)
*
fin
Characters: Ben, Serena
Rating/Word Count: PG-13 / 1, 656
One-Line Excerpt: He wakes up twisted in sheets and with her name tucked into his mouth like a secret.
(Confession:
Sometimes, Ben dreams about it.
There is nothing about Serena van der Woodsen that suggests virginity - she is all coy glances and fingers that hover but never touch, all perfect pink tongue darting out to lick her lips, all skirts just a little too short and gaze lingering with his just a little too long. But there is something about her that suggests innocence; maybe it's simply her age compared to his own, or maybe the freckles spattered across her skin under her blue eyes, or maybe the way that she smiles at him: tentative and awestruck and hopeful, like he gives her something to believe in.
And so when he dreams about it, she is always innocent, always stretched out beneath him, always with blonde hair splayed out on his sheets, always taking in big nervous gulps of air. She is always smiling, always keening when he touches her, always saying his name like a prayer. He always teases out her orgasm, whichever ways his dream allows, slow and tempting until all she can do is cry out his name and come completely undone.
He wakes up twisted in sheets and with her name tucked into his mouth like a secret.)
*
"Mr. Sharp." Her voice is soft and unobtrusive. "Can I ask you a question?"
He smiles at her. She's like fantasy come to life in that uniform of hers, one too many buttons unbuttoned on the crisp white blouse and bare legs underneath the plaid skirt.
"Sure, Serena." He gestures to the chair meant for anyone who visits his small office -
But she sits right on the desk, and her legs just aren't fair. Her flats slip from her feet and end up dangling from the tips of her toes. She nudges a well-worn copy of Sense & Sensibility across his desk. Her nails are painted electric blue.
She leans close. "I wanted her to end up with Willoughby so badly."
He laughs and watches the way her smile works itself into her eyes.
*
He jokes with her once. She's lingering after class, not even attempting subtlety, and he touches a page of her notebook.
"Your writing is a mess," he teases.
It's a surprise, when she looks at him. Something flickers through her eyes, bright and startling and raw. It's a memory.
She doesn't say a word and he catalogues it in his mind as one of her mysteries.
*
He sees her drunk.
He doesn't expect to be so enchanted by it, by that image of her, twirling under the stars and the streetlights. Her late-Saturday-night clothes are much different than the ones she wears in his classroom: tight jeans that hug her hips and a flimsy little shirt that's entirely inappropriate for the cool night. And heels, serious heels, the kind no sixteen-year-old kid has any business wearing.
Her laughter rings out for a long, long time.
*
(Confession:
Sometimes, Ben thinks about writing a book.
He's got a protagonist sitting right in front of him, chewing the end of a pencil idly, eyes raking across the chalkboard critically. When he was in college his roommate was a Fine Arts kid, with paintings drying all over the room and charcoal stains permanently marking his hands - by now, Ben knows what a muse looks like.
It scares him, what the result would be. He wrote short stories in high school sometimes, less-than-one-thousand-word things that were allegories for locker-lined hallways and jocks with their cheerleader girlfriends. He was published once. It meant a lot less than he thought it would.
Now, he's sure that a private school teacher would come to life on the pages, a fairly young man head-over-heels for a stereotypical pretty young thing with her head in the clouds - a little girl grown up too fast, lost in the bottle and white powder, reaching for the kind of love that someone forgot to give her.
If he were ever a best-selling novelist, he'd be living out his fame in jail, he's sure. He won't write a book about an under-aged temptress. He's long been resigned to teaching the classics.)
*
There is a line, and he crosses it.
Touches her cheek, thumb against the apple of it. She stops breathing.
"I didn't know they made eyes that blue," he says.
Her lashes flutter like she wants to kiss him. Neither of them move for a moment.
*
He sees her cry, just once.
She is sitting in a stairwell, lights dimmed, hidden away. Her hands are clenched around a cell phone, her head dipped forward, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, which shake a little. She looks impossibly, heartbreakingly young.
He leaves. She'll never know he was there.
*
Serena does not like Fitzgerald.
He teaches The Great Gatsby and she accosts him in the hallway when it's empty, coffee cup in hand and lips all puckered in disapproval.
"Tell me what you don't like," he says softly, after she informs him of her disappointment, and waits.
"I just - " Her mouth clamps shut.
Ben smiles at her. He understands all too well, what it's like for every cliché literary theme to hit you too hard, right in your heart. Some days he thinks she taught him that the moment she appeared in his classroom, Daisy Buchanan a few decades too late.
He laughs. "Alright," he says, like it's that easy. "You don't have to like it."
Serena grins at him, big and bright, childish and alluring all at once. She takes a long sip from the coffee cup before she hands it over to him, eyes twinkling.
He puts his mouth right over the spot hers had been the minute she's gone, drinks the contents of the cup in several quick gulps.
*
(Confession:
He is tempted as all hell to say yes.
Her hair is soaked and her skin is damp and she's smiling that damn smile of hers, like he holds every single hope she's ever had in his hands.
When he turns her down, saying no to a night in a hotel room with her, the disappointment in the air around them is palpable, and he's not quite sure who it belongs to.)
*
He wonders if it's obvious to anyone else.
The lingering glances, the way she laughs at his lame literature-related jokes, the habit his eyes have of following the swing of her hips as she moves down the hall.
No one ever says a word to him. There is never a single implication.
The secret makes it all the more desirable - he can't help but wonder, would anyone, ever, have to know?
*
Ben is not so deluded as to believe he is in love with her. And the more he gets to know her, the more he realizes that Serena is not so deluded as to believe she is in love with him.
Except in their quieter moments, when she's sitting with him on a park bench, legs tucked up underneath her and smiling a little too brightly over Saramago's Blindness, and she just looks like a kid with stars in her eyes and wishes he could never grant.
"You know - " he begins.
She slips her gloved hand around his, hidden behind her knapsack. His fingers feel out the beat of her pulse at her wrist.
*
Once, she asks him.
"Have you ever been in love, Ben?"
He shrugs, wanting to evade this topic. "Sure, I have."
She nods like she understands.
They encounter one another at a party once, thrown by the Headmaster. Her dress is black and slinky, which is the only reasoning Ben can think of for downing three entire flutes of champagne in under ten minutes.
When he walks by her he moves slowly.
"Miss van der Woodsen. I didn't know you would be here this evening."
Her tongue pokes into her cheek. "Family name gets me a lot of invites."
He laughs. "It must get you a lot of things."
Serena's eyes twinkle. "Not everything."
*
(Confession:
When the police show up and he's fired and there is commotion, so much commotion, about what he's done -
For a couple minutes he wonders if it's true. He's dreamed it enough times, Serena falling back onto his bed, what her mouth might taste like, conversations that stretched longer and farther than the books he teaches could ever take them.
And then he remembers it's not.
But he finds himself in jail anyway.)
*
He writes a novel in prison.
It might be appropriate to call it a memoir, really, since he hasn't changed much but names to protect the not-so-innocent.
It is pages and pages long. He'll never tell a soul about it.
*
He sleeps with Serena the night he's released from prison, sleeps with her on pretty, satiny sheets in a room in an outrageously ornate penthouse - this has been her reality, always, while his has been concrete walls and a pitiful excuse for a mattress.
He is rougher with her than he intends to be, though that might be a lie. He's angry, and he wants this, wants her in a way that is meant to justify the hell he went through.
She is even better than all of his dreams, all smooth, sweet-smelling skin and long limbs and easy experience. She says his name like it means something.
*
Ben lies naked in her bed, watching unashamedly as she stands before her mirror in her underwear, hands tracing carefully over the bruises he left on her skin.
"Have you ever been in love?" he asks her.
Serena's eyes meet his in the mirror, uncertain but defiant. She's older now.
*
(Confession:
He has no idea what he wants her answer to be.
It's terrifying to think it might not make a difference, either way.)
*
fin