Sina Libbu Ziana (Part 5a)
Title: Sina Libbu Ziana (Two Hearts Beating)
Rating: NC-17
Part: 5a/7
It is Monday morning and the seventh day of Will's cycle. A few days ago he would have expected to wake up to the relentless throbbing of his Eru Emuq, use that pain to his advantage to sound utterly pathetic when calling in sick to work, then dose himself up on Advil and try to sleep off the worst of his sexually-frustrated symptoms. Instead he is waking up to find his Eru Emuq present and accounted for, but quite sated, his whole body refreshed and ready to face the day. Yet somehow, he still has the urge to call in sick to work, so that he can spend the day lazing in his bed enjoying the encompassing warmth of the blankets and the fragrance of Finn... Wait, Finn?
He sits up abruptly and looks down at the bundle of blankets tucked in his arms. He has an indistinct memory of tossing and turning for an hour the previous night, before tumbling out of bed and raiding the laundry hamper, pressing his nose to the stained sheets still carrying Finn's essence and only managing to fall asleep with the fabric bundled up in his arms. Will cringes and throws the linens aside, because isn't he just the most pathetic Sumer to grace the face of the planet!
He strips out of his pajamas on the way to the shower and cleanses the faded scent of sex from his skin under the heated spray, firmly reminding himself that he was never supposed to let himself fall for Finn and that he needs to return to the mindset of a teacher before he can step into the halls of William McKinley this morning. Yet, Finn's presence pervades the apartment: his spent pheromones bled into the fabrics, the echo of his moans and laughter reverberating in the kitchen, and when Will steps through to the bedroom to dress after his shower he cannot look at the bed and not recall the sight of Finn, bare and hard and waiting for him.
It would take far longer than Will has to exorcise the presence from his home; so he dresses hurriedly, prepares a toaster pastry and coffee, then collects his satchel and dashes out of the door to escape the persistent reminders. He munches on the piping hot pastry and brushes fallen crumbs from his vest as the elevator trundles down to the ground floor, a traitorous voice in the back of his mind wondering whether it is actually Finn's encroachment within his heart that he is reluctant to let go of.
The halls of McKinley still carry the voluminous excretions of hundreds of active young libidos; Will stands in the doorway of the main entrance and inhales heavily, feeling the first of the day's pheromones sink into his pores, then steps inside and heads towards his classroom. Whether it is from the reduced number of students present at this early hour, or the waning strength of his Eru Emuq as his cycle nears its end, the miasma of sexuality surrounding him is not the nuisance it had been before.
He sits at his desk and manages to grade the Freshman pop quizzes before his AP class arrive for the first lesson of the day. Their discontent mutterings from last week are replaced with good cheer when he returns their marked essays to them and spends ten minutes running over some of the most common mistakes that had appeared; they really are a good class and he feels confident that the majority of them will score a three or above when they sit the exam this summer.
That first class is like a baptism of fire, he feels the strongest and most confident Ni that the student body has to offer surging all around him and makes it through with barely a twitch. Full of fortitude, he finds himself falling back into the practiced routine of his job. He teaches two Freshman Spanish 1 classes back-to-back, trying not to despair at the fact that a distressing number of the students have a shaky enough grasp on the English language, let alone Spanish; spends the next lesson trying to keep the peace in study hall while making regular trips to the reprographics room to produce photocopies of the test that the Junior class will be taking that afternoon; attends a scheduled meeting with the other foreign language teachers so that Figgins can enthuse over a seminar he wants to send them on, trying not to roll his eyes at how worthless the whole thing sounds; then finishes up the morning by threatening to put an entire Sophomore class in detention if they won't confess who scrawled a rude message about the Glee club across the whiteboard while he took a quick bathroom break.
It is life as usual: crappy, frustrating, infuriating life as a teacher at William McKinley High School.
With his rush to leave the apartment that morning, he'd forgotten to pack a lunch for himself. He's almost thankful of that now though, because he feels worn out and taking a sedate stroll through the pleasant greenery of the park might help him to recharge before he has to face the afternoon. He walks the perimeter of the park, then crosses the street to the plaza opposite and buys an overpriced tuna sub and a carton of tropical juice; he walks back through the park, stops to sit at a bench under a shady ash tree and peels the greasy brown paper away from the sandwich to take a bite.
He casts his gaze across the prim flowerbeds, the lush, slightly weedy, lawn and notices a small group of Seniors having a picnic. He can see the two Ni of a young couple intertwining playfully as they snuggle together on the grass and he feels a stab at his lower back, he gives a light grimace and rubs the sore spot with his free hand as he sips at the tropical juice. While he's not as sensitized to the pheromones as he had been before the weekend, that shouldn't be mistaken as total immunity; and that information might be of particular relevance considering the class he's going to be teaching next.
He swallows a mouthful of oily fish awkwardly, given the sudden constriction in his throat; he tightens his grip on the sandwich and wonders if it's too late to go with the sick plan... but then he thinks about what Finn might suspect if he doesn't show up to class, thinks about what the young man might inadvertently let slip in his absence and realizes that he'll have to find the courage to face up to him.
He finishes his lunch and returns to the school, putting in a brief appearance at the faculty lounge while he collects a cup of coffee, then returns to his classroom. The photocopier in the reprographics room isn't the most reliable of devices and has managed to cut a few inches of the right hand side of the test paper off entirely, so Will spends twenty minutes going through the stack, manually rewriting the maximum points offered for each question on the margin; he takes a point from each of the three big questions and lumps them together for an extra credit question, testing the students' capacity to ask directions to Cincinnati, to see how many of them retained the information from last Friday's lesson and have enough common sense to incorporate the new location into the question instead of Sydney.
He's nearly finished with the stack when the students begin to trickle into the classroom in groups of two or three. He ignores them as they take their seats and hold muted, personal conversations, keeping his attention on the papers in front of him; he ignores them until there is a reprise of the odd sensation he'd felt in the parking garage yesterday and he glances up in time to see Finn walking in, less than a minute ahead of the bell.
It's been lurking on the periphery of Will's mind all day, but in that instant every single moment from the weekend seems to flood through his consciousness. It's been half a day since he left Finn behind on the gloom of his porch, he wants nothing more than to leap up from his desk and pull the young man, his wondrous Etlutu, into his arms; but he can't, so he makes do with reaching out along the Duranki so that their Shi can emulate the embrace. At the touch, Will is suddenly filled with the knowledge of how the younger man has been antsy all day waiting for this lesson to arrive and Finn grins buoyantly over at him. Will looks down at his desk sharply, scribbling the extra credit question onto the final test sheets.
“Take one and pass them back,” He instructs, splitting the stack of test papers into smaller piles and handing one to each student in the first row of desks. “You have until the end of the lesson to complete the test, there will be no need to talk.”
He returns to his desk and chances a glance at Finn, worried that he may have hurt him with his callous greeting, but Finn is watching him with soft brown eyes and a shy, secretive smile. Finn's smile grows when he notices Will looking at him, he spreads his thighs wider in his seat and places the end of his pen between his lips, sucking it with false-thoughtfulness. Will narrows his eyes warningly, but can't stop the spike of arousal from running through him; and while there are all sorts of devious things he'd like to do to Finn, he's also strangely yearning to pull the pen from his lips and press a soft kiss to them instead, wants to wrap his arms round Finn's broad shoulders and cuddle against his back while he takes the test.
“Mr. Schuester.” A voice breaks into his thoughts, an impatient timbre that expresses previous failed attempts to catch his attention. He turns sharply away from Finn as if he's been burned and looks to see who has spoken. A girl in the front row has her hand raised, swaying slightly back and forth, Jackie; smart girl, B+ average; no real interest in Spanish besides how it will look on her transcripts.
“Yes,” He prompts.
She lowers her arm gratefully, “I can't read the extra credit question.”
He acknowledges that his handwriting had gotten progressively lazier as he'd written the same question out thirty or so times and so stands up to write the question more legibly on the whiteboard. As he glides a dry-erase marker across the surface, he chastises himself for getting so distracted by Finn that he'd neglected the rest of the class; it's exactly the kind of thing he'd been worried about and just one reason why he and Finn could never work.
When he sits back down at his desk he finds the entire class bent over their papers, either scribbling away or looking down uncomprehendingly; everyone that is, except Finn. Finn meets his eye timidly, then ducks his head, and Will realizes that the mental tirade he just delivered to himself probably passed through the Duranki directly to him. He grits his teeth as he tries to convince himself that it is really for the best, that the ties be severed here and now, but his softer instincts get the better of him and he reaches hesitantly along their empathic connection to console the young man; Finn looks up slowly, the frailty in his eyes strengthening into a familiar vibrancy and he smiles as he turns his gaze back to the test paper.
Will takes the stack of homework booklets he collected from the Sophomore class that morning out of his desk drawer and sets to work on marking them. He'd tasked them with translating the first chapter of a book of their choosing, so there's certainly some variation; the lazier students choosing novels with only a short prologue and those seeking to impress picking more verbose works, he decides that next time he is going to set a word limit because he isn't looking forward to picking through Joey's translation of War and Peace. He reads the first page of Tyler's Harry Potter y el prisionero de Azkaban before smiling thinly to himself and scrawling 'Google Translate isn't always right' across the top of the page. He's about to make a start on the next booklet in the pile when something makes him stop.
He looks across to Finn and he can feel the young man softly searching his Shi. He waits until Finn notices him and then narrows his eyes, his question obvious, 'Are you trying to cheat?'
'Well duh', comes Finn's reply, expressed in a sideways tilt of his head and an incorrigible smile.
Will shakes his head dismissively, 'You should have studied.'
Finn squints and drops a hand casually to his lap, palming his crotch openly. The accusation is clear, 'I was a bit busy this weekend.'
Will rolls his eyes and considers pointing out that the test was supposed to be last Friday anyway. He really ought to stop Finn, because this is just another reason why them being together is a bad idea, but if he were to smile to himself and calmly nudge the relevant nuggets of information into Finn's probing, intangible fingers... Well, it's not like anybody ever has to know, right?
Finn burns through the test paper while Will marks a few more amateur translations, but he has enough sense to wait until at least half of the other students have handed their papers in before adding his own to the pile so as not to arouse suspicion; Will doesn't look up, but he can feel the grin on Finn's face.
The bell rings a few minutes later and the two students still writing make furious scribbling sounds as they finish up the sentences they're on and slam their pens down. Chairs scrape on the floor as everyone pushes away from their desk and heads towards the door; Finn is caught up in the flow, lingering behind but unable to postpone his exit for more than a prolonged minute. Will shares his desire to maintain their connection for as long as is feasible but he glances over in time to see Finn lurking in the doorway, Quinn's delicate hand curled possessively round his bicep and attempting to tug him out into the hall, he gives a stiff, pointed nod and pushes along their Duranki to coax Finn out of the room.
He feels Finn's Shi unravel from his own, feels the warmth of his Ni unfurl, watches him be led from the room by Quinn. He tries not to think about the symbolism involved, tries not to let his thoughts linger on the fact that all too soon he will lose his tentative claim on Finn, have to watch the young man slip through his fingers as he returns to chasing after Quinn, or Rachel, or some other pretty thing that looks good in a skirt and is his own age.
Rating: NC-17
Part: 5a/7
It is Monday morning and the seventh day of Will's cycle. A few days ago he would have expected to wake up to the relentless throbbing of his Eru Emuq, use that pain to his advantage to sound utterly pathetic when calling in sick to work, then dose himself up on Advil and try to sleep off the worst of his sexually-frustrated symptoms. Instead he is waking up to find his Eru Emuq present and accounted for, but quite sated, his whole body refreshed and ready to face the day. Yet somehow, he still has the urge to call in sick to work, so that he can spend the day lazing in his bed enjoying the encompassing warmth of the blankets and the fragrance of Finn... Wait, Finn?
He sits up abruptly and looks down at the bundle of blankets tucked in his arms. He has an indistinct memory of tossing and turning for an hour the previous night, before tumbling out of bed and raiding the laundry hamper, pressing his nose to the stained sheets still carrying Finn's essence and only managing to fall asleep with the fabric bundled up in his arms. Will cringes and throws the linens aside, because isn't he just the most pathetic Sumer to grace the face of the planet!
He strips out of his pajamas on the way to the shower and cleanses the faded scent of sex from his skin under the heated spray, firmly reminding himself that he was never supposed to let himself fall for Finn and that he needs to return to the mindset of a teacher before he can step into the halls of William McKinley this morning. Yet, Finn's presence pervades the apartment: his spent pheromones bled into the fabrics, the echo of his moans and laughter reverberating in the kitchen, and when Will steps through to the bedroom to dress after his shower he cannot look at the bed and not recall the sight of Finn, bare and hard and waiting for him.
It would take far longer than Will has to exorcise the presence from his home; so he dresses hurriedly, prepares a toaster pastry and coffee, then collects his satchel and dashes out of the door to escape the persistent reminders. He munches on the piping hot pastry and brushes fallen crumbs from his vest as the elevator trundles down to the ground floor, a traitorous voice in the back of his mind wondering whether it is actually Finn's encroachment within his heart that he is reluctant to let go of.
The halls of McKinley still carry the voluminous excretions of hundreds of active young libidos; Will stands in the doorway of the main entrance and inhales heavily, feeling the first of the day's pheromones sink into his pores, then steps inside and heads towards his classroom. Whether it is from the reduced number of students present at this early hour, or the waning strength of his Eru Emuq as his cycle nears its end, the miasma of sexuality surrounding him is not the nuisance it had been before.
He sits at his desk and manages to grade the Freshman pop quizzes before his AP class arrive for the first lesson of the day. Their discontent mutterings from last week are replaced with good cheer when he returns their marked essays to them and spends ten minutes running over some of the most common mistakes that had appeared; they really are a good class and he feels confident that the majority of them will score a three or above when they sit the exam this summer.
That first class is like a baptism of fire, he feels the strongest and most confident Ni that the student body has to offer surging all around him and makes it through with barely a twitch. Full of fortitude, he finds himself falling back into the practiced routine of his job. He teaches two Freshman Spanish 1 classes back-to-back, trying not to despair at the fact that a distressing number of the students have a shaky enough grasp on the English language, let alone Spanish; spends the next lesson trying to keep the peace in study hall while making regular trips to the reprographics room to produce photocopies of the test that the Junior class will be taking that afternoon; attends a scheduled meeting with the other foreign language teachers so that Figgins can enthuse over a seminar he wants to send them on, trying not to roll his eyes at how worthless the whole thing sounds; then finishes up the morning by threatening to put an entire Sophomore class in detention if they won't confess who scrawled a rude message about the Glee club across the whiteboard while he took a quick bathroom break.
It is life as usual: crappy, frustrating, infuriating life as a teacher at William McKinley High School.
With his rush to leave the apartment that morning, he'd forgotten to pack a lunch for himself. He's almost thankful of that now though, because he feels worn out and taking a sedate stroll through the pleasant greenery of the park might help him to recharge before he has to face the afternoon. He walks the perimeter of the park, then crosses the street to the plaza opposite and buys an overpriced tuna sub and a carton of tropical juice; he walks back through the park, stops to sit at a bench under a shady ash tree and peels the greasy brown paper away from the sandwich to take a bite.
He casts his gaze across the prim flowerbeds, the lush, slightly weedy, lawn and notices a small group of Seniors having a picnic. He can see the two Ni of a young couple intertwining playfully as they snuggle together on the grass and he feels a stab at his lower back, he gives a light grimace and rubs the sore spot with his free hand as he sips at the tropical juice. While he's not as sensitized to the pheromones as he had been before the weekend, that shouldn't be mistaken as total immunity; and that information might be of particular relevance considering the class he's going to be teaching next.
He swallows a mouthful of oily fish awkwardly, given the sudden constriction in his throat; he tightens his grip on the sandwich and wonders if it's too late to go with the sick plan... but then he thinks about what Finn might suspect if he doesn't show up to class, thinks about what the young man might inadvertently let slip in his absence and realizes that he'll have to find the courage to face up to him.
He finishes his lunch and returns to the school, putting in a brief appearance at the faculty lounge while he collects a cup of coffee, then returns to his classroom. The photocopier in the reprographics room isn't the most reliable of devices and has managed to cut a few inches of the right hand side of the test paper off entirely, so Will spends twenty minutes going through the stack, manually rewriting the maximum points offered for each question on the margin; he takes a point from each of the three big questions and lumps them together for an extra credit question, testing the students' capacity to ask directions to Cincinnati, to see how many of them retained the information from last Friday's lesson and have enough common sense to incorporate the new location into the question instead of Sydney.
He's nearly finished with the stack when the students begin to trickle into the classroom in groups of two or three. He ignores them as they take their seats and hold muted, personal conversations, keeping his attention on the papers in front of him; he ignores them until there is a reprise of the odd sensation he'd felt in the parking garage yesterday and he glances up in time to see Finn walking in, less than a minute ahead of the bell.
It's been lurking on the periphery of Will's mind all day, but in that instant every single moment from the weekend seems to flood through his consciousness. It's been half a day since he left Finn behind on the gloom of his porch, he wants nothing more than to leap up from his desk and pull the young man, his wondrous Etlutu, into his arms; but he can't, so he makes do with reaching out along the Duranki so that their Shi can emulate the embrace. At the touch, Will is suddenly filled with the knowledge of how the younger man has been antsy all day waiting for this lesson to arrive and Finn grins buoyantly over at him. Will looks down at his desk sharply, scribbling the extra credit question onto the final test sheets.
“Take one and pass them back,” He instructs, splitting the stack of test papers into smaller piles and handing one to each student in the first row of desks. “You have until the end of the lesson to complete the test, there will be no need to talk.”
He returns to his desk and chances a glance at Finn, worried that he may have hurt him with his callous greeting, but Finn is watching him with soft brown eyes and a shy, secretive smile. Finn's smile grows when he notices Will looking at him, he spreads his thighs wider in his seat and places the end of his pen between his lips, sucking it with false-thoughtfulness. Will narrows his eyes warningly, but can't stop the spike of arousal from running through him; and while there are all sorts of devious things he'd like to do to Finn, he's also strangely yearning to pull the pen from his lips and press a soft kiss to them instead, wants to wrap his arms round Finn's broad shoulders and cuddle against his back while he takes the test.
“Mr. Schuester.” A voice breaks into his thoughts, an impatient timbre that expresses previous failed attempts to catch his attention. He turns sharply away from Finn as if he's been burned and looks to see who has spoken. A girl in the front row has her hand raised, swaying slightly back and forth, Jackie; smart girl, B+ average; no real interest in Spanish besides how it will look on her transcripts.
“Yes,” He prompts.
She lowers her arm gratefully, “I can't read the extra credit question.”
He acknowledges that his handwriting had gotten progressively lazier as he'd written the same question out thirty or so times and so stands up to write the question more legibly on the whiteboard. As he glides a dry-erase marker across the surface, he chastises himself for getting so distracted by Finn that he'd neglected the rest of the class; it's exactly the kind of thing he'd been worried about and just one reason why he and Finn could never work.
When he sits back down at his desk he finds the entire class bent over their papers, either scribbling away or looking down uncomprehendingly; everyone that is, except Finn. Finn meets his eye timidly, then ducks his head, and Will realizes that the mental tirade he just delivered to himself probably passed through the Duranki directly to him. He grits his teeth as he tries to convince himself that it is really for the best, that the ties be severed here and now, but his softer instincts get the better of him and he reaches hesitantly along their empathic connection to console the young man; Finn looks up slowly, the frailty in his eyes strengthening into a familiar vibrancy and he smiles as he turns his gaze back to the test paper.
Will takes the stack of homework booklets he collected from the Sophomore class that morning out of his desk drawer and sets to work on marking them. He'd tasked them with translating the first chapter of a book of their choosing, so there's certainly some variation; the lazier students choosing novels with only a short prologue and those seeking to impress picking more verbose works, he decides that next time he is going to set a word limit because he isn't looking forward to picking through Joey's translation of War and Peace. He reads the first page of Tyler's Harry Potter y el prisionero de Azkaban before smiling thinly to himself and scrawling 'Google Translate isn't always right' across the top of the page. He's about to make a start on the next booklet in the pile when something makes him stop.
He looks across to Finn and he can feel the young man softly searching his Shi. He waits until Finn notices him and then narrows his eyes, his question obvious, 'Are you trying to cheat?'
'Well duh', comes Finn's reply, expressed in a sideways tilt of his head and an incorrigible smile.
Will shakes his head dismissively, 'You should have studied.'
Finn squints and drops a hand casually to his lap, palming his crotch openly. The accusation is clear, 'I was a bit busy this weekend.'
Will rolls his eyes and considers pointing out that the test was supposed to be last Friday anyway. He really ought to stop Finn, because this is just another reason why them being together is a bad idea, but if he were to smile to himself and calmly nudge the relevant nuggets of information into Finn's probing, intangible fingers... Well, it's not like anybody ever has to know, right?
Finn burns through the test paper while Will marks a few more amateur translations, but he has enough sense to wait until at least half of the other students have handed their papers in before adding his own to the pile so as not to arouse suspicion; Will doesn't look up, but he can feel the grin on Finn's face.
The bell rings a few minutes later and the two students still writing make furious scribbling sounds as they finish up the sentences they're on and slam their pens down. Chairs scrape on the floor as everyone pushes away from their desk and heads towards the door; Finn is caught up in the flow, lingering behind but unable to postpone his exit for more than a prolonged minute. Will shares his desire to maintain their connection for as long as is feasible but he glances over in time to see Finn lurking in the doorway, Quinn's delicate hand curled possessively round his bicep and attempting to tug him out into the hall, he gives a stiff, pointed nod and pushes along their Duranki to coax Finn out of the room.
He feels Finn's Shi unravel from his own, feels the warmth of his Ni unfurl, watches him be led from the room by Quinn. He tries not to think about the symbolism involved, tries not to let his thoughts linger on the fact that all too soon he will lose his tentative claim on Finn, have to watch the young man slip through his fingers as he returns to chasing after Quinn, or Rachel, or some other pretty thing that looks good in a skirt and is his own age.