History Boys // it will pass (irwin, dakin/irwin, pg)
it will pass.
The History Boys. (film)
PG. Irwin, Irwin/Dakin. ~2000 words. Won't make any sense at all if you haven't seen the whole film.
Notes: I dislike Irwin with a passion, but I'm positive it doesn't show here. Thanks to fly_meaway for the beta. This was written for boleyn-take it as an early birthday present. ♥
*
It wears off. The pain, and most other things. The shock wears off. Sometimes you come to understand it, and sometimes it fades in your mind and you do, because it’s there, it’s always there, but you don’t. Wounds heal. His wounds have healed, at least, literally, and it would be surprising if they hadn’t. He’s supposed to reach for knowledge but he hasn’t, not for this. He can figure that he’s younger and in a different place and it’s different. Maybe his will was stronger.
He doesn’t think so.
He stays a year, picks up the pieces. He could stay longer if he wanted to. The boys he teaches seem to like him, or they show their sympathy well. He leaves, not to be dramatic, or to swell psychologists’ statistics all over the world. He was always going to leave; the only reason to keep himself grounded in this hole of a city would be the appearance of not running away, and going about in complicated turns is much too puzzling for real life. So he stays the year, gets hired in March for the following term by a small school in the outskirts of Oxford.
Leading was never his forte.
*
He doesn’t look for-any of them. There are two pupils from his full year at Cutlers’, both in Magdalen College, but there goes the difference that they’re pupils, they’re painfully younger and detached and there’s no point there. Part of him wants to check on Posner, too, and that wouldn’t be much of a situation, but he could easily have kept in touch with Dakin, and it would be inappropriate. Embarrassing, if it went beyond an idea; this is Dakin’s second year at college. He ought to have his own distinct life, now. He’s certain he does. It’s not much of a question.
Irwin wants to sail through life, too, but he’s still hung up back. He doesn’t lead and he’s too old, too depressed, too lost for mentors. He’d say he’s wallowing if he didn’t know better. He’s not even thirty yet.
*
The methods here are different. It’s not the place but the purpose, the schedule. You can’t leave the students loose before they’ve learned the map. He’d burn them all, mind, the maps, but it might be considered cruel, and that’s not his point, anyway. They’re not brilliant, these students, any of them. They learn events and dates and lists, and they do it to get by, to apply them. He could do it his way, but the tests would last entire mornings.
There are no students like Dakin, here. They say you can breathe culture, and maybe there they’re right; maybe children grow with it, are so used to it that they don’t want it anymore. They don’t know how to want it. They’re proud to know their facts, sometimes they’re cocky about it, like Dakin, but they’re immature. Or they’re not, but there’s a veil over Dakin, over a pupil who isn’t quite so. They mean it when they call him sir.
Then again these boys never had a teacher like Hector to break the fourth wall for them.
*
He lasts two years there. He sees Posner once, he thinks, on the basement floor at Blackwell. He looks… well, he looks disappointed. He knows better than to go up and ask.
*
He starts as an assistant director. Answers an ad on the Sunday paper, goes to an interview, gets the job. He keeps his Oxford apartment; they interview historians there. Filming goes around but never stays. His first piece is on Alexander the Great, and he doesn’t have a say in the next five either. He likes to think he chose the angle on the third, but the writers had long since chosen it themselves. He does in the seventh.
He gets funding and directs the eighth. He doesn’t choose the subject, and he has to run everything by no less than thirty people, but he conducts.
*
The network people are happy with him: he’s content with his salary, he doesn’t push too hard, he doesn’t take any holidays. Spends every Christmas with his family, even brings a girl home once. Her name’s Charlotte, goes by Charlotte, doesn’t want an ambiguous name. All she ever wears is dresses. She’s his fifth three-month relationship in four years; they’ve broken up by February.
It’s not about the gender.
*
Early in the spring he interviews several college tutors at Christ Church about the history of the college. They seem to love their work; they seem to love his work. Somehow he’s offered to teach a summer course; he never finds out who recommended him. He takes a holiday of sorts from television; his producers congratulate him, for some reason.
He almost turns the job down.
It’s an unusually stable summer. Warm, even. He stays for the first semester, all the days off he never took.
That’s when he sees Dakin.
*
Or, Dakin sees him. He would have ignored it.
Dakin looks… different. Scruffier, somewhat. Older. Older than him. He always had that there, under his skin; had to grow out of his teenage years eventually and his looks would fit his manners. He’s perfectly shaven and his jaw seems stronger than it used to be. Of course memory’s a deceitful thing.
They’re going opposite ways on the same corridor, and their eyes meet for a second. Social customs oblige.
“I see you finally made it to Oxford”, is Dakin’s opening line. He’s smiling. He’s not smirking. Irwin keeps walking, and Dakin turns around and follows him. Tags along.
Maybe he’s smirking inside.
“I’ve lived here for years, Mr Dakin. You might want your investigative skills checked.”
“So you’ve avoided the colleges, then.”
“This particular one was never on my way”, he answers.
“It certainly is now”, Dakin points out. Irwin frowns; there’s something there. Maybe he’s seeing things. He should loosen up, his mother said in their last call, or he’ll die alone. Maybe just loosen up, then.
“It’s a destination, here. I’m taking time off work.”
Dakin snorts. “I won’t tell Scripps that.” And why would he care what Scripps knows or doesn’t know about him? Maybe Dakin’s just as hung up on the past as he is. Looking back, thinking bonds closer than they were. Trapped in a moment of youthful freedom, delight. Curiosity’s there, though, as Dakin never seemed the type to stay anywhere.
“Excuse me?” he says finally.
“You don’t know?” Irwin shakes his head. “He’s in your class.” Ah. “He looks forward to it.” And Dakin would make that sound filthy, of course. “I look forward to living vicariously through him.” That, too.
And Dakin vanishes into a classroom. It’d amusing, if it were anyone else.
Dakin’s worked for two years, he finds out. Taken a year to do research, say his files, although Irwin’s not sure what research Dakin may want to do, considering the field, or his career goals. He hopes, for a second there, that he misses learning; that he wants to learn.
He pushes that thought down, down. It fades.
*
And it’s nonetheless true, he finds out. Scripps is still doing his Master’s, seems to be drawing out his academic years, perhaps. Irwin’s course is on interviewing; it makes sense that he’d be in it. When he sees him, they barely acknowledge each other.
He’s a good pupil. Slightly too serious, at times. Hasn’t changed much.
*
He exchanges greetings with Dakin-or whatever Dakin calls hello these days-every morning for a week. They go to lunch on Saturday.
It’s Irwin’s idea. (He’s the one who voices it first, anyway.)
*
They choose a small, centric restaurant, Dakin’s idea. The staff seems to know him well; they all call him Stuart, and Irwin finds it hard not to chuckle, doesn’t since he’s not sure why he would. Dakin is comfortable about this; still self-satisfied, taller in behaviour than in physical qualities. He orders for both of them, and it’s strangely reminiscent, this sense of being unimportant, as if it didn’t matter in itself and was a happier place, a chair that saves you from standing up.
The conversation flows fairly well, carried nonchalantly by Dakin. They’re not so different now, not so far apart in any way. Dakin asks questions about his documentaries that Irwin wishes he had thought of at the time, offers angles. His creativity’s going to waste, Irwin thinks, but then so is his own, not that it compares.
They’re not different at all; as people, as personalities, they absolutely are, but there’s the same level, there’s no morals to beat down. Dakin has matured, against Irwin’s expectations, and he doesn’t just sound like he knows what he’s talking about. He’s justified in his arrogance.
Irwin wonders what he did in his free time as a student, if all the courses he took aimed for tax law.
Surprisingly (for himself), he asks.
Dakin laughs, first, and then he answers.
*
From here on they never meet accidentally on corridors-and that, that is why Dakin walked with him, turned around; he wasn’t going anywhere else.
Dakin calls him every few days, now. They meet up for tea or lunch. Dinner’s a romantic activity, Irwin figures; dinner is a date. He takes girls to dinner. Dakin and he-they talk over coffee. Dakin’s honest and then he’s not, gets deeper into digressions on economics than he does about his life, but it’s unaffectedness, there, rather than lying. It’s a list. He almost got engaged three years ago. He decided that he was too young, and wanted to live more. That’s not how Dakin words it,
“Scripps told me I should. Dragged me around to find a ring. One day I got drunk and threw it in the Thames, and the next week the girl finished with me”, is what he says, and then, “Why is it that girls only want you when you don’t want what they want you to want?” It’s not angry, it’s not disappointed, it’s not even a suggestion; it only sounds like loud wondering and Irwin doesn’t answer. Wondering’s not meant to be solved.
He’s ridiculously attractive, still, stripped of the dubious morality. Irwin’s never been much for forbidden fruits, always thought they were attempts to feel special by people who were not.
*
It’s November and it’s pouring outside. He’s staring out the kitchen window, waiting for the water to boil; the sky’s already darkening and the streams of water take on the shape of lightning on the glass. It’s not a storm, just rain, for now, but he wouldn’t be surprised to hear thunder.
He’s drunk less than half of his cup of tea when he decides to call Dakin. Make dinner, maybe, be something other than alone. It’s somewhat scary, calling at this hour, a bit too active for him, but it’s been a week since the last time they saw each other, and they’re on friendly terms now, very similar levels. It’s not-it’s a level-headed decision. It’s nothing more than anything.
So he phones him, stays calm through the call, and by the time he’s back to the kitchen, his tea’s freezing cold.
*
He cooks-pasta, easy and faster than most other recipes he’s ever tried-and the food’s about ten minutes from done when Dakin knocks on his door.
They talk over food, they talk over coffee, they watch TV. One of Irwin’s documentaries is on and Dakin insists on watching it even though they’ve both seen it before. (Dakin laughs before the parts he laughs at happen. Irwin may consider him many things but psychic is not one of them.)
There’s nothing remarkable about the way Dakin distracts him by mocking a question and places a hand on his thigh, turns his head around, locks Irwin’s eyes on his mouth. There’s nothing remarkable about Dakin grabbing the front of his jumper and kissing him, not particularly, except maybe how doubtful Dakin is not, and how much longer than other kisses this one’s been coming.
It’s easy afterwards, fast enough, slow enough, but above all it’s not about fulfilling a promise-there truly exist things that dissolve them.
It’s about leading, really; leading oneself where one ought to go.
The History Boys. (film)
PG. Irwin, Irwin/Dakin. ~2000 words. Won't make any sense at all if you haven't seen the whole film.
Notes: I dislike Irwin with a passion, but I'm positive it doesn't show here. Thanks to fly_meaway for the beta. This was written for boleyn-take it as an early birthday present. ♥
*
It wears off. The pain, and most other things. The shock wears off. Sometimes you come to understand it, and sometimes it fades in your mind and you do, because it’s there, it’s always there, but you don’t. Wounds heal. His wounds have healed, at least, literally, and it would be surprising if they hadn’t. He’s supposed to reach for knowledge but he hasn’t, not for this. He can figure that he’s younger and in a different place and it’s different. Maybe his will was stronger.
He doesn’t think so.
He stays a year, picks up the pieces. He could stay longer if he wanted to. The boys he teaches seem to like him, or they show their sympathy well. He leaves, not to be dramatic, or to swell psychologists’ statistics all over the world. He was always going to leave; the only reason to keep himself grounded in this hole of a city would be the appearance of not running away, and going about in complicated turns is much too puzzling for real life. So he stays the year, gets hired in March for the following term by a small school in the outskirts of Oxford.
Leading was never his forte.
*
He doesn’t look for-any of them. There are two pupils from his full year at Cutlers’, both in Magdalen College, but there goes the difference that they’re pupils, they’re painfully younger and detached and there’s no point there. Part of him wants to check on Posner, too, and that wouldn’t be much of a situation, but he could easily have kept in touch with Dakin, and it would be inappropriate. Embarrassing, if it went beyond an idea; this is Dakin’s second year at college. He ought to have his own distinct life, now. He’s certain he does. It’s not much of a question.
Irwin wants to sail through life, too, but he’s still hung up back. He doesn’t lead and he’s too old, too depressed, too lost for mentors. He’d say he’s wallowing if he didn’t know better. He’s not even thirty yet.
*
The methods here are different. It’s not the place but the purpose, the schedule. You can’t leave the students loose before they’ve learned the map. He’d burn them all, mind, the maps, but it might be considered cruel, and that’s not his point, anyway. They’re not brilliant, these students, any of them. They learn events and dates and lists, and they do it to get by, to apply them. He could do it his way, but the tests would last entire mornings.
There are no students like Dakin, here. They say you can breathe culture, and maybe there they’re right; maybe children grow with it, are so used to it that they don’t want it anymore. They don’t know how to want it. They’re proud to know their facts, sometimes they’re cocky about it, like Dakin, but they’re immature. Or they’re not, but there’s a veil over Dakin, over a pupil who isn’t quite so. They mean it when they call him sir.
Then again these boys never had a teacher like Hector to break the fourth wall for them.
*
He lasts two years there. He sees Posner once, he thinks, on the basement floor at Blackwell. He looks… well, he looks disappointed. He knows better than to go up and ask.
*
He starts as an assistant director. Answers an ad on the Sunday paper, goes to an interview, gets the job. He keeps his Oxford apartment; they interview historians there. Filming goes around but never stays. His first piece is on Alexander the Great, and he doesn’t have a say in the next five either. He likes to think he chose the angle on the third, but the writers had long since chosen it themselves. He does in the seventh.
He gets funding and directs the eighth. He doesn’t choose the subject, and he has to run everything by no less than thirty people, but he conducts.
*
The network people are happy with him: he’s content with his salary, he doesn’t push too hard, he doesn’t take any holidays. Spends every Christmas with his family, even brings a girl home once. Her name’s Charlotte, goes by Charlotte, doesn’t want an ambiguous name. All she ever wears is dresses. She’s his fifth three-month relationship in four years; they’ve broken up by February.
It’s not about the gender.
*
Early in the spring he interviews several college tutors at Christ Church about the history of the college. They seem to love their work; they seem to love his work. Somehow he’s offered to teach a summer course; he never finds out who recommended him. He takes a holiday of sorts from television; his producers congratulate him, for some reason.
He almost turns the job down.
It’s an unusually stable summer. Warm, even. He stays for the first semester, all the days off he never took.
That’s when he sees Dakin.
*
Or, Dakin sees him. He would have ignored it.
Dakin looks… different. Scruffier, somewhat. Older. Older than him. He always had that there, under his skin; had to grow out of his teenage years eventually and his looks would fit his manners. He’s perfectly shaven and his jaw seems stronger than it used to be. Of course memory’s a deceitful thing.
They’re going opposite ways on the same corridor, and their eyes meet for a second. Social customs oblige.
“I see you finally made it to Oxford”, is Dakin’s opening line. He’s smiling. He’s not smirking. Irwin keeps walking, and Dakin turns around and follows him. Tags along.
Maybe he’s smirking inside.
“I’ve lived here for years, Mr Dakin. You might want your investigative skills checked.”
“So you’ve avoided the colleges, then.”
“This particular one was never on my way”, he answers.
“It certainly is now”, Dakin points out. Irwin frowns; there’s something there. Maybe he’s seeing things. He should loosen up, his mother said in their last call, or he’ll die alone. Maybe just loosen up, then.
“It’s a destination, here. I’m taking time off work.”
Dakin snorts. “I won’t tell Scripps that.” And why would he care what Scripps knows or doesn’t know about him? Maybe Dakin’s just as hung up on the past as he is. Looking back, thinking bonds closer than they were. Trapped in a moment of youthful freedom, delight. Curiosity’s there, though, as Dakin never seemed the type to stay anywhere.
“Excuse me?” he says finally.
“You don’t know?” Irwin shakes his head. “He’s in your class.” Ah. “He looks forward to it.” And Dakin would make that sound filthy, of course. “I look forward to living vicariously through him.” That, too.
And Dakin vanishes into a classroom. It’d amusing, if it were anyone else.
Dakin’s worked for two years, he finds out. Taken a year to do research, say his files, although Irwin’s not sure what research Dakin may want to do, considering the field, or his career goals. He hopes, for a second there, that he misses learning; that he wants to learn.
He pushes that thought down, down. It fades.
*
And it’s nonetheless true, he finds out. Scripps is still doing his Master’s, seems to be drawing out his academic years, perhaps. Irwin’s course is on interviewing; it makes sense that he’d be in it. When he sees him, they barely acknowledge each other.
He’s a good pupil. Slightly too serious, at times. Hasn’t changed much.
*
He exchanges greetings with Dakin-or whatever Dakin calls hello these days-every morning for a week. They go to lunch on Saturday.
It’s Irwin’s idea. (He’s the one who voices it first, anyway.)
*
They choose a small, centric restaurant, Dakin’s idea. The staff seems to know him well; they all call him Stuart, and Irwin finds it hard not to chuckle, doesn’t since he’s not sure why he would. Dakin is comfortable about this; still self-satisfied, taller in behaviour than in physical qualities. He orders for both of them, and it’s strangely reminiscent, this sense of being unimportant, as if it didn’t matter in itself and was a happier place, a chair that saves you from standing up.
The conversation flows fairly well, carried nonchalantly by Dakin. They’re not so different now, not so far apart in any way. Dakin asks questions about his documentaries that Irwin wishes he had thought of at the time, offers angles. His creativity’s going to waste, Irwin thinks, but then so is his own, not that it compares.
They’re not different at all; as people, as personalities, they absolutely are, but there’s the same level, there’s no morals to beat down. Dakin has matured, against Irwin’s expectations, and he doesn’t just sound like he knows what he’s talking about. He’s justified in his arrogance.
Irwin wonders what he did in his free time as a student, if all the courses he took aimed for tax law.
Surprisingly (for himself), he asks.
Dakin laughs, first, and then he answers.
*
From here on they never meet accidentally on corridors-and that, that is why Dakin walked with him, turned around; he wasn’t going anywhere else.
Dakin calls him every few days, now. They meet up for tea or lunch. Dinner’s a romantic activity, Irwin figures; dinner is a date. He takes girls to dinner. Dakin and he-they talk over coffee. Dakin’s honest and then he’s not, gets deeper into digressions on economics than he does about his life, but it’s unaffectedness, there, rather than lying. It’s a list. He almost got engaged three years ago. He decided that he was too young, and wanted to live more. That’s not how Dakin words it,
“Scripps told me I should. Dragged me around to find a ring. One day I got drunk and threw it in the Thames, and the next week the girl finished with me”, is what he says, and then, “Why is it that girls only want you when you don’t want what they want you to want?” It’s not angry, it’s not disappointed, it’s not even a suggestion; it only sounds like loud wondering and Irwin doesn’t answer. Wondering’s not meant to be solved.
He’s ridiculously attractive, still, stripped of the dubious morality. Irwin’s never been much for forbidden fruits, always thought they were attempts to feel special by people who were not.
*
It’s November and it’s pouring outside. He’s staring out the kitchen window, waiting for the water to boil; the sky’s already darkening and the streams of water take on the shape of lightning on the glass. It’s not a storm, just rain, for now, but he wouldn’t be surprised to hear thunder.
He’s drunk less than half of his cup of tea when he decides to call Dakin. Make dinner, maybe, be something other than alone. It’s somewhat scary, calling at this hour, a bit too active for him, but it’s been a week since the last time they saw each other, and they’re on friendly terms now, very similar levels. It’s not-it’s a level-headed decision. It’s nothing more than anything.
So he phones him, stays calm through the call, and by the time he’s back to the kitchen, his tea’s freezing cold.
*
He cooks-pasta, easy and faster than most other recipes he’s ever tried-and the food’s about ten minutes from done when Dakin knocks on his door.
They talk over food, they talk over coffee, they watch TV. One of Irwin’s documentaries is on and Dakin insists on watching it even though they’ve both seen it before. (Dakin laughs before the parts he laughs at happen. Irwin may consider him many things but psychic is not one of them.)
There’s nothing remarkable about the way Dakin distracts him by mocking a question and places a hand on his thigh, turns his head around, locks Irwin’s eyes on his mouth. There’s nothing remarkable about Dakin grabbing the front of his jumper and kissing him, not particularly, except maybe how doubtful Dakin is not, and how much longer than other kisses this one’s been coming.
It’s easy afterwards, fast enough, slow enough, but above all it’s not about fulfilling a promise-there truly exist things that dissolve them.
It’s about leading, really; leading oneself where one ought to go.