Romance & Comedy short. A young man returns to his old school to teach, and attempts to pursue his old history teacher.
Rated M, 12.6k, cis M/M. A man returns to his old school to teach, and also returns to his old school crushes.
Obviously there’s a big age difference here and a teacher fucking his ex-student, some implied BDSM, some daddy issues, some sex at work, et cetera. Adapted from a TweetFic.
It’s funny, after so many years, to be back at Llanddewi Comp.
Tudur remembers the geography of the place exactly, has never really forgotten any of it, and at the same time he feels like he’s walking through a place he shouldn’t really be, or that shouldn’t really exist anymore. There’s still something startlingly odd about how he can just walk straight into the staff room — it doesn’t feel right, that he should be able to, and now and then when he crosses the threshold he feels like one of the other teachers is gonna snap at him that he needs to knock first and wait to be invited in.
It’s been seven years since he left, got his degree, did his training, and that’s not a huge amount of time, really, but it’s natural to look back on your schooldays and think of it as being worlds away, even though half the staff are still the same as they were when he left.
Obviously, the fifth English position is down to him, which means Mrs Ericson’s finally retired; old Mr Graves and Mrs Locke also retired, and Miss Jones and Mrs Marston both moved to different schools.
A lot of the teachers, though, they’re in their usual teaching posts, same as ever, just with new grey in their hair and slightly different clothes.
It’s weird.
When he’d been easing into it, the first two months, it had been strange having his old teachers showing him the ropes: Mr White was still head of English, and it had been funny, with Mr White’s genial, easy nature, the way he always used to joke, but being on more of an even keel; Mrs Redbone and Miss Trent had never taught him, either of them, but Mrs Redbone had used to work with him in the library sometimes when he was at a writer’s club, and he’d known Miss Trent by sight.
He didn’t know Miss Trent was married to a woman, and that her actual name was Mrs Trent-Berkeley — he didn’t know, for that matter, that Miss Delaney was a lesbian too, and she’d been his favourite maths teacher for the whole time he was at school.
As for other favourite teachers —
Well, he still likes Mrs Waters, but knowing that she never washes up her own mugs does put her in a slightly different light. As for Mrs McManus, he’d never thought she’d be so fucking funny outside of the classroom, that she’d always be cracking so many jokes, or that she’d swear quite so fucking much.
Mr Ellis…
For his first few years at school, Mrs McManus had been his history teacher, and then he’d swapped over to Mr Ellis for his GCSEs and then his A-Levels. Mrs McManus had been kind of warm and gentle, always encouraging when it came to her students — she could be blunt, but she was always full of praise for you.
Mr Ellis had always been kind of provocative, almost, biting and sharp, so that you’d always be on your toes in his classroom, never able to relax. Anything you said, you had to be ready to back it up and argue it out, and if you didn’t, he’d just stare at you, take the piss in front of everybody.
He’d always been so on the fucking ball, always active in the classroom, never sitting back to quietly do marking, or putting on a video, or whatever, and that’s why it’s a surprise, Tudur supposes, when he never sees the man in the staffroom.
He doesn’t come in to hang around in the mornings, he eats his lunch in his classroom, and in staff meetings he doesn’t actually talk much even in round table talks, whether it’s the all-staff ones or whether it’s all the humanities together. He glances at the old man a few times in the course of discussions, and he wonders if he’s misremembering, if in his head he’d just bigged the man up, that he’d never really been opinionated.
Maybe Ellis had never been all that savage, or funny, or what, maybe —
Tudur’s got a scant period free where he’s trying to get his handouts finished, and he dips to the stationery cupboard to fetch more staples and he stops in the corridor as he goes past Ellis’ door, leans in to look through the window. There’s the Ellis he remembers, standing in the middle of the classroom and talking animatedly, turning to talk to different of the students around him.
You look in a classroom window sometimes and kids are just kind of switched off, or at the very least, quiet and looking forward to pay attention to the teacher with one or two not paying attention. In Ellis’ class, a lot of the kids look actually comfortable, smiling and into it, engaging with it.
One of them says something, and a few of them laugh — Ellis whirls on him, and Tudur remembers how much he’d fucking loved it when he did that, the way his eyes light up, the way he almost snarls as he retorts, gesticulating wildly with one meaty hand.
He’s a big man, broad-shouldered and fat, with thick fingers. He always brings a suit jacket to school, although he rarely wears it, always leaving it hung on the back of his chair even when it’s cold and he’s wearing a jumper in the classroom; today, he’s wearing a burgundy shirt and a striped tie, and Tudur’s gaze flits down to the way the shirt it tucked into the waistband of his trousers, the way it curves around the base of his rounded belly, the way the tie sits on top.
Ellis catches him looking, and Tudur feels himself blanch, takes a step back to actually move along, but Ellis was already a deceptively fast old cunt, and the door bursts open, Ellis pouncing out to fucking grab Tudur by the shoulder and haul him inside.
“Mr Julep has strong opinions on this subject, as I recall!” Ellis announces to the students, and Tudur’s stomach flips, feels as fucking small as he ever used to now, all the kids staring at him.
Tudur’s cheeks are burning, because the thing is, he actually does remember Ellis doing this before — he’d see someone looking in and go grab them, drag them in and provoke them into a debate in front of everybody, whether it was another teacher or sometimes one of the A-Level students, if he was teaching GCSE or lower.
“Do you want to fill me in what the subject is, Mr Ellis?” Tudur manages to say, glancing back toward the board, which is just set on a timeline of events contributing to the beginning of World War II.
“War,” says Ellis succinctly, a slight smile on his face. He’s got dark eyebrows and dark hair and a dark look in his eyes, his hand a warm weight on Tudur’s shoulder.
Tudur stares at him, feels fucking swept away with the moment, wants to be swallowed up by the fucking ground as Ellis pulls away, saying, “I believe Mr Julep once penned an essay on the subject of the soldier as personal identity. When it comes to mobilising a state’s people, there’s a push toward taking pride in its armies, its navies — seeing them as strong, seeing them as vital to the regular workings of the state. Making soldiers into heroes incentivises regular people to join up, makes it all about doing your national duty, eh?”
Tudur vaguely remembers the essay, and he turns to stare at the board.
“Yes, Mr Ellis, but it seems you lot are talking about Weimar Germany,” he blurts out, and a lot of the kids laugh, which seems to light a fire under the older man, making him raise his head as he comes away from Tudur.
“Want to expand on that, Mr Julep?”
“It was not incentive to join up,” says Tudur. “As you and all these kids well know. It was serve as part of the police state or be devoured by them — yes, there was a lot of state propaganda pushing the heroism, valorising military service, but there also wasn’t a choice not to engage. Fascists famously don’t really care about individual choices — and nor do armies in general. Sure, getting people to join up because soldiers are impressive is one thing, but in this case, there was also a threat of punishment if you didn’t, in this case retaliation from the state, otherwise, social ostracization.”
He does remember the essay, now he thinks about it.
It was about World War I, not II, and not about Germany, either — it was about Wilfred fucking Owen.
“So the people of Germany didn’t have a choice,” says Ellis, raising his eyebrows.
“You’re twisting things,” says Tudur. “I’m not saying they didn’t have a choice, but for the average citizen under fascism, it’s like a frog in boiling water, isn’t it? Slowly turn the heat up, bit by bit, and people don’t realise that that’s what’s happening until it’s too late and they’re trapped in it. Which, sure, is the case with a lot of military recruitment as a whole, but fascism is obviously a different kettle of fish.”
“They didn’t realise, of course,” agrees Ellis. “Their neighbours hung up in the streets, helpful labels hanging from their necks saying what they did, the executions — and of course, the average Nazi citizen didn’t know a thing about the work camps or the gas chambers.”
Tudur works his jaw, and he can feel the sweat on his cheeks, burning on the back of his neck, as Ellis stalks up and down the rows of desks, moving around Tudur like he’s some sort of hyena, with his pack of students listening hungrily, eagerly. They’re into it, too, are enjoying seeing someone else on the receiving end of Ellis’ bad faith arguments and provocation, enjoying seeing another teacher experience it, and also talk back, he supposes.
A lot of them are grinning, and he feels his own mouth get filled into a smile, even if it is slight and he tries to tamp down on it before it can grow into a real grin of his own.
“Mr Ellis,” says Tudur slowly, “you know full well I’m not defending Nazi citizens. But that’s part of what the fascists did so well in Germany — the police state was everywhere. It didn’t need to even be massive, just the fear of one person in your community who’d turn on you, one weak link in your network of resistance, could bring the whole thing crashing down — and if you can’t voice dissent, if there’s a terror of even saying the slightest thing against the ruling opinion, how can you develop that dissent into real resistance?”
“If all the frogs are boiling, why shouldn’t I boil too?” replies Ellis.
“More like, I’m not really boiling, they say I’m not boiling — it’s other frogs who are boiling, and they deserve it, unlike me.”
“So that makes it alright.”
“Oh my God,” snaps Tudur, and that makes the kids laugh again, makes Ellis laugh, too, a low chuckle.
“You’re the one going to bat for the Nazis, lad,” says Ellis, spreading his hands. “Listen to you with your frog metaphor — I bet you’re still trying to twist it around to use it again. What next, when the police state put down collaborators, it was like putting a lid on the pots?”
Tudur had, in fact, been about to say something exactly along those lines, and he leans back on his heels, staring at the awful old man.
“Well, Mr Ellis, I suppose metaphor is the realm of English over History,” says Tudur. “In the meantime, it’s your prerogative to be as wrong and stupid as you please.”
There are gasps around the room, several of the students releasing a low, “Ooh,” and Tudur feels like he’s been dropped into a pot of boiling water himself, his stomach giving a horrible flip, lurching in his gut.
Ellis doesn’t even flinch, although his grin becomes more of a smirk.
Turning to the kids, he says, “When you know you can’t win a debate, insults can be your way out of your depth. Sign of weakness, though.” The kids are laughing again, many of them sniggering and nudging at each other. Tudur tries to remind himself that many of them have been on the receiving end of this exact fucking routine, that they’ve seen him do it to the others, too, but still. He’s being tugged toward the door by his shoulder, suddenly so angry he can barely stand it, but he has no opportunity to retort, to reply with anything at all before he’s out in the corridor. “Thank you, Mr Julep! You’re dismissed.”
Ellis’ big, meaty palm gives his arse a condescending pat as he’s shoved out into the hall, and the door shuts behind him.
Yes, he does it to the kids, yes, he’s done it to other teachers, probably, but fuck — there’s something excruciating about it, about having been drafted in as a teaching tool, an example of weak debate. There’s nothing wrong with a fucking metaphor, and the frog thing was actually —
Robust, actually. It’s a regular comparison for a reason.
“Fuck’s sake,” he mutters to himself, and tries to ignore the heat under his skin as he stalks to get his staples, tries to remember what it had felt like when Ellis had debated him at GCSE, at A-Level — he’d never been on his feet when he’d been argued with, had always been at his desk, and it had never been so focused on him, had always dipped between different kids at different desks.
He’d been barely able to string two words together in front of an audience back then, and Ellis had almost never kept on at him in front of the class, because he’d just go quiet, wouldn’t ever be able to say much.
If it had been that focused on him, he doesn’t know that he’d have been able to handle it — he’d already spent many of his evenings wanking over Mr Ellis, over the thought of him keeping him behind after class and bending him over his desk, telling him that he needed to refine his essays more, telling him that he could do better, as if he wasn’t already getting As, as if he hadn’t come away from his History A-Level with an A*.
It’s later that day that one of the students, Sally Phipps, says, “How do you do that, sir, with Mr Ellis?”
Tudur is in the process of drawing up a table of nouns and verbs on the board, and he glances back at her and the rest of the GCSE kids, a handful of which had been in Ellis’ class, earlier.
“Look,” he says, taking his pen away from the whiteboard for a moment and capping the pen, looking across the rows of them, “earlier — Mr Ellis took me by surprise, and it’s really not appropriate to — ”
“Sir, you bodied him,” says a boy whose older brother is in Tudur’s AS-Level class. “How are you not even scared of him?”
Tudur nearly says, “I am so scared of him,” but he manages to hold his tongue. Instead, he says, “Mr Ellis is a master of provocation — and rhetoric in general. He used to run rings around me when I was at school, as well. I didn’t win that particular debate by losing my composure.”
“You did and all,” says Sally. “Else why would he be so fast to get you out of the place?”
Tudur isn’t exactly in the mood to get into the finer points of debate with these kids for now, and so he says instead, “Look, personal insults is no way to win an argument, Mr Ellis was right on that front. Can we just look at An Inspector Calls, please?”
* * *
“What did the other kids at school used to call you?” asks Ellis as he comes into the staffroom the following morning, leaning over Tudur where he’s sat back in an armchair with his laptop in his lap. His laptop is half-closed by the push of Ellis’ belly, and the thought is so distracting that Tudur’s really glad his lap is completely fucking covered. “Minty?”
“My friends used to call me Minty,” says Tudur, his cheeks burning. “Why?”
“They’ll be calling you Knight, now,” says Ellis, pushing off from the armchair and standing over him, his lips pulled into a grin. “All the kids have been off about how that Mr Julep is the man come to kill the big scary dragon.”
“More likely to get eaten by him,” remarks Mrs Redbone from behind them, and Ellis laughs, but Tudur can’t help the way that he fucking flushes over it, the way his cheeks bloom into a burning blush before Ellis goes over to stand around the big table for the morning meeting.
It wasn’t as if Ellis hadn’t paid him attention when he was at school, but he’d been quiet, hadn’t been that confident expressing himself and talking to most of his teachers; he remembered Ellis complimenting his essays, occasionally coming and leaning over his desk when he didn’t call on him directly in classes, and even that had been overwhelming, had been —
He’d wanked himself fucking raw over it, and coming back to school to teach turns out to be a repeat of exactly the same thing.
Over the coming weeks, Ellis talks to him a bit more often, between classes, or on the rare occasion he does dip into the staff room.
In line for yet another disappointing lunch of pasta in overly sweet tomato sauce, Ellis leans in and growls in his ear, “It’s no wonder you’re such a fucking beanpole when you never eat anything substantial.”
“You’re eating the same pasta I am,” Tudur hisses back, and Ellis laughs at him, shoving him forward so that Tudur only just manages not to stumble.
Ellis keeps —
Touching him.
He brushes against Tudur in the corridors or on the stairwells, so that Tudur is obsessively aware of how Ellis’ shoulder is so much higher than Tudur’s own; he claps him hard on the back when he stops to talk to him, to say one thing or other in his ear about exam results or a problem student or just to take the piss out of his tie or his cardigan.
After lunch the second day they’re back after the autumn half term, Ellis grabs Tudur in the corridor just before he trails into his classroom after the year sevens he’s covering for Miss Trent.
“The fuck are you wearing?” he asks in an undertone, and Tudur rolls his eyes.
“Do you have to take the piss out of every tie I wear?”
“I don’t have to, but you don’t make it easy not to,” rumbles Ellis from low in his big, wide chest. “But, no, I meant them.” He indicates downward, and Tudur follows his gaze, then jumps to pull his trouser clips off. He’d forgotten this morning, and he does look like a fucking prat. “Fuck are you wearing them for?”
He tries to keep his voice even, tries to keep the embarrassment out of it, as he mutters, “Well, as much as I’m sure you’d love it if I went over the handlebars of my bike, Mr Ellis, I’ve been trying to avoid it.”
“Oh, yeah,” says Ellis, his lips twitching as he starts walking down the corridor backward, his eyebrows raising. “What bike’s that, then?”
“Don’t tell me you’re anti-cycling.”
“I’m not, but you’ll have a job being pro-cycling, not having a bicycle.”
“What the Hell are you talking about?”
“Should’ve chained it up if you wanted it keeping, lad,” says Ellis as he turns on his heel, and Tudur runs into the classroom, leaning out of the window at the head of the classroom and looking over to the bike racks in the staff car park, which are empty.
Helplessly, he looks at the year sevens, and then pulls out Miss Trent’s lesson plan.
There’s no CCTV pointed at that part of the car park, and when he asks in the reception, they say that they weren’t paying attention, that it’s his own responsibility to keep track of his bike.
He’s standing in the staff room and looking at bus timetables on his phone when Ellis comes in and claps his palm against Tudur’s arse, making a clap of sound that fills the empty staffroom and makes him stand up straight. There’s heat searing across his backside, let alone the rest of him.
“What is wrong with you?” he demands, and Ellis grins at him.
“Want a lift, do you?” he asks.
Tudur hesitates, glancing at the bus timetable, which would take him home in the course of about an hour and forty minutes, across two buses with a long wait in between.
“You can’t go around slapping people’s arses,” he manages to say, as if he’s not still feeling the stinging hot weight of the slap, as if he isn’t going to think about it over and over again as soon as he crawls into bed tonight after he kills himself over the pile of fucking marking he has to do it. “It’s not still 1970.”
“If it were still 1970, I wouldn’t have my own car,” says Ellis, “given that I was two years old, you cheeky sod. D’you want a lift or not?”
“I live out toward Drenewydd Gelli-fawr. Is that really out of your way?”
“No, as it happens,” says Ellis, “although seeing as I offered before even asking where you lived, that’s barely even relevant. Now, am I taking you or not?”
“Thank you,” Tudur mutters, and he pulls his satchel over his shoulder, trudging out of the staffroom and out toward the car park. Ellis’ battered old four-by-four, which is dented in several places and is smeared all over with mud, is one of the few cars left still there, except for the headmistress’ and the caretaker’s. “When did you see it had gone?”
“When I came up the stairs and glanced out of the window in the well, then saw you there,” says Ellis, sliding into the front seat, and Tudur slides into the passenger, glancing at the inside of Ellis’ car.
The outside is battered to fuck, but the inside is cleaner than he expected, not dusty or dirtied with mud: he’s got organisers hung on the back of both of the seats, a stack of file boxes in the passenger footwell, and in the backseat is a large plastic bag full of branches alongside an old wooden medicine cabinet.
The car has a CD player with no USB connection, and it looks pretty old to Tudur; he’s not got a phone frame or anything, either, which isn’t a big surprise, because Tudur has seen Ellis’ phone, and it’s still a Nokia brick.
What is on the dash, instead of a jack for a smartphone, is a battered photograph on a little clip, of Ellis leaning into a woman behind a picnic table, a bunch of kids sitting around them. He hadn’t realised the man was married, not when he doesn’t wear a wedding ring, and there’s no reason it should make his stomach give a flip.
“Is that your wife?” asks Tudur.
Ellis glances across at him as he pulls out of the school gates and onto the main road. “What?”
“In the photo,” he says. “Is that your wife?”
“The fuck are you talking about? Of course it’s not my wife. That’s my sister and my nieces and nephews, you silly pillock. I’m gay.”
Tudur stares forward at the road, not trusting himself to look sidelong at Ellis right now, feeling like he’s on fire. “You’re… gay?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you, lad?” asks Ellis. “Of course I’m bloody gay.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t know I was gay?”
“You don’t act gay,” says Tudur before he can stop himself, and Ellis starts laughing as he pulls onto the roundabout, cracking up as he smacks his palm against the steering wheel, and Tudur is fucking mortified as he goes, “No, I didn’t mean — that’s not — ”
“No, no, liberal little lad that you aren’t, thinking there’s a gay way to act — ”
“No!”
Ellis trails off into more laughter, and Tudur decides to wait until the old prick is finished, shifting back in his seat and pushing his shoulders into the meat of the seat, looking across at him.
“I’m,” he says, when Ellis finally stops laughing. “I’m gay too.”
Ellis sniggers. “Oh, wow, you don’t say. I thought you spent all your History classes fantasising about me shoving my cock down your throat in a very heterosexual way up ’til now.”
“I didn’t — I… For — I was fifteen!”
“I know,” says Ellis. “Horny little twat you were, too. Wouldn’t make eye contact with nobody, but kept staring at my fucking crotch, I noticed.”
“God,” says Tudur, putting his face in his hands. “Did I do that?”
“Uh huh.”
“Um — Sorry?”
“Yeah, I bet you are,” mutters Ellis, grinning to himself as he drums his fingers against the wheel. “It was a nice change for me, so. Not often I get lads lusting after me instead of one of the fit little PE teachers.”
“You knew? Like, the whole time? I barely ever said a fucking word, I didn’t come out ’til I was at university.”
“Well, you didn’t have to say, did you?” asks Ellis, raising his eyebrows. “Yeah, I knew. Knew you were gay even without you writing your little essays about Wilfred Owen or fucking Sassoon. But as for crushing on me — Well, like I said, it’s not as common for me as it is the pretty young fuckers, but it does happen. You think you were alone? Kids develop inappropriate attractions, it happens. You ignore it or you shut it down, case by case. You’ll be noticing it yourself, given that you’re a handsome 23-year-old in drainpipe suit trousers. They’ll be following you around like stray cats.”
“I’m twenty-four,” says Tudur.
“Twenty-four,” echoes Ellis, rolling his eyes. “’Cause that makes all the difference.”
“You never said anything,” says Tudur.
“What, about you having a crush? Of course I fucking didn’t,” says Ellis. “The fuck was I gonna say? It’s none of my business what sexual confusion a teenager is going through just because I’m teaching them history. Besides, when I was your age teaching, the girls mistakenly cooing over me was one thing, but lads were another story — that was under Section 28, and all. I was always a big lad, but once I got to be about forty, it started to tell me more about the kids in question than it did about me, eh?”
“I was crushing on you because I had issues, you mean,” says Tudur.
“You said it,” says Ellis. “You wanted a fifty-year-old bending you over a desk instead of some fella you could imagine was your age. Why’s that?”
“What do you want me to say, that I was molested?”
“You don’t really have to say it,” says Ellis.
“I fucking wasn’t,” snaps Tudur, and Ellis doesn’t say anything, just keeps on driving, his gaze on the road. Tudur bites the inside of his lip, chewing on it, and then says, “I wasn’t. I was just… Lonely. And you were — I don’t know. Safe.”
Ellis’ smile at that is smaller, warmer, and he shakes his head, shifting his grip on the steering wheel.
“That must have been hard,” says Tudur after they’ve driven in silence for a little while. “I mean — Teaching under Section 28.”
“Harder for lads like you, where people can tell,” says Ellis. “No one ever suspected when it came to me — the hardest part was teaching classes, having to watch what I was saying. She was a vile fucking woman, ruined the country, ruined fucking education — if I could dig the bitch up and kill her again I would do.”
Tudur’s huffs out a laugh, turning his head in the seat to keep his gaze on Ellis.
“What did you do when people came to you for advice?”
“What sort of advice?”
“I don’t know,” says Tudur. “What would you have done if I’d come to you about being gay?”
“Dunno,” says Ellis, “but you never did, did you? You spent most of your classes staring down at your fucking shoes, or at other people’s crotches. Learned to talk at university, did you?”
“I got better at public speaking once I came out,” says Tudur. “I was less… self-conscious.”
Ellis’ grin is filthy when he says, “Got your cork popped, did you? Have all the anxiety fucked out of you by some mature student twice your age?”
Tudur immediately turns to face the other way, feeling like he’s been dropped in hot water, and Ellis’ laugh is triumphant.
“How the fuck do you just say shit like that!?”
“You wear everything on your face, you do,” says Ellis. “What turning am I taking?”
* * *
“When’d do you reckon you’ll be able to get a new bike, then?” asks Ellis the next morning, insufferably cheerful and awake, and Tudur stays limp and half-dead with sleep in the passenger seat, wrapped in his coat and huddling in it like it’s a blanket.
“I did report mine stolen to the police,” says Tudur. “I might still get it back.”
“Oh, aye,” says Ellis, not sounding convinced. “I’m sure that our local pigs will go to immense effort, knocking door to door in search of your bike. It’ll have been pieced apart by now with all the different parts sent from Cardiff to fucking Wrexham.”
Tudur groans, wrapping his coat tighter around himself.
“Why do you cycle, anyway? You’d be better off driving from where you are.”
“I don’t need car payments and insurance on top of everything else,” mutters Tudur. “And besides, it’s better for the environment.”
“Oh, the environment,” repeats Ellis. “You’re Mr Green, is it? Gotta be eco-friendly, yeah?”
Tudur knows full well it’s bait, and he is not going to rise to it. If he tries, he knows full well that Ellis is gonna own him.
“Toddling along on his bicycle,” muses Ellis aloud. “You’ll be like the Dutch, eh? And the thing is, after all this effort with your bike, and getting it stolen, you end up in a car anyway. Talk about the reliability, hm?”
Tudur hasn’t had his coffee. Perhaps that’s why he snaps, “Oh, and your car is so reliable on top of being better for the environment, is it?”
“Offset the damage with my solar panels, don’t I?”
Tudur groans, because of fucking course he has solar panels, and Ellis chuckles.
“I fucking hate you,” says Tudur.
“Sure, sure,” says Ellis. “Sure you do.”
They come into the school early enough, earlier than most of the other teachers, and Tudur logs into his computer and sends a follow-up email to the email address he’d scrawled down of the cop he’d talked to when reporting his bike stolen, although he doesn’t have much hope of getting it back.
Mrs Redbone dips her head into his room twenty minutes before the start of registration, glances around to check that there are no kids inside, and then steps in, nudging the door closed with her arse. She stands there with her hands on her hips, her eyebrows raised, her lips shifted into the slightest of smiles, and then a smirk. She’s a big woman, tall and imposing, broad-shouldered with cascades of curling red hair that, according to her, she does not fucking dye, thank you very much.
“So,” she says.
“So,” says Tudur, continuing to draw examples of tension graphs in four different pieces of theatre on the board.
“Huw gave you a lift, then,” she says.
“Ie,” says Tudur.
“Huw Ellis,” she says. “Big bad Hywel Ellis. He gave you a lift, then.”
“Ie,” says Tudur again. “He did.”
“He gonna give you a lift home?”
“He said he would.”
“Right,” says Mrs Redbone, and then laughs a big, booming laugh. “Of course he is.”
She leaves, shutting the door behind her as she goes, and Tudur huffs out a laugh, reaching up and rubbing at his own burning cheek before he keeps on drawing his graphs out.
Ellis gives him a lift home that night, and he gives him a lift into work come the morning, too; he does the same the next day, and brings him into work on the third morning, too.
On day three, in the afternoon, Ellis says, “You know you owe me for this.”
Tudur isn’t paying attention, is just staring distantly out of the window as music plays faintly on the radio, and he looks up and across at Ellis, blinking, half-asleep. “Huh?”
“You owe me,” says Ellis. “For the lifts.”
“Oh, fuck, I didn’t even think,” mumbles Tudur, rubbing at his eye. He’d put a film on for the last two hours, the newest version of An Inspector Calls that he’d picked up on DVD with the blinds closed, and sitting in the dark he’d started almost to doze. “How much do I owe you for petrol?”
Ellis pulls up outside of Tudur’s estate, underneath an old conker tree that puts it entirely in shade, some of the branches coming down and shielding it from the road. Ellis is leaning back in his seat, one hand rested on the wheel, his lips curved in a thin crescent, and he says, “Who says I want cash?”
Tudur stares at him, heat creeping up the back of his neck. “You can’t be serious.”
“What, you a virgin or something? Never sucked a cock?”
“I’m not a fucking virgin, Jesus, just — ”
Ellis grabs him by the tie and pulls him forward, across the gap between the front and passenger seat, and Tudur heaves in a gasp; his cock is suddenly fucking aching as it jerks between his legs, trying to get hard in his too-tight skinny grey trousers.
Ellis’ laugh is soft as he pats Tudur’s cheek with one big fucking hand, and he murmurs, “See, I can see the gears in that head of yours whirring, can see you preparing that fancy dancy little lecture about pressure and coercion and all that, all them ethics. All that shite aside, I can see that your cock is hard, and you’d be liable to cream yourself just at the sight of me with my jeans undone.”
“You’re such a cunt, d’you know that?” Tudur asks, but he’s shivery and oversensitive, and before he can keep talking, before he can go on, Ellis is squeezing his jaw, and the pressure makes Tudur’s hips jump.
“Arguably, I’d be doing you another favour, letting you suck me off, desperate little bastard as you are,” says Ellis, “but I’m willing to let you call it payment.”
“Dream about shoving me around, do you?” asks Tudur. “Is that what you’ve been thinking about, giving me lifts?”
“Dream about it? Nah, I’m not you, lad, I wasn’t a lovesick schoolboy, and I’m not a horny little untouched prick like you still are seven years on. But I can see you’re desperate for it — I like desperate.”
His hand is sliding up the back of Tudur’s neck, his fingers curling in his hair, and very slowly he’s pulling Tudur’s head down, bit by bit. It’s incremental, it’s fucking excruciating, and Tudur is more than breathless, knows he’s red in the face, knows there’s sweat on his face, because they’re out of sight of the main road but they’re in fucking public, someone could fucking see —
Ellis says, as Tudur is staring the fat bulge of his cock in his trousers in the face, “If you don’t want to, don’t.”
Tudur fumbles to undo Ellis’ trousers with shaking hands, his skin burning under his clothes, and Tudur feels his body go loose and relaxed the moment he gets the head of Ellis’ cock in his head, feels it twitch on his tongue. He doesn’t mean to moan out loud, the sound eking out of his throat unbidden, and Ellis laughs, his hand still curled in Tudur’s hair, his hips tipping up and gently thrusting up for more. He can taste the salt-skin of his cockhead on his tongue, breathe in the scent of his sweat, and the soft skin of his cockhead is smooth under his tongue as it grows in size, fills Tudur’s mouth.
Ellis’ cock is fucking thick, stretching out his lips, and Tudur’s every hair feels like it’s standing on end, his skin tight all over and warm underneath.
“Good lad,” Ellis murmurs, and Tudur’s body shudders as he hollows his cheeks, sucks as hard as he can. “Da iawn, that’s it.”
He comes untouched sucking Ellis off, because it’s been fucking months since he’s been with anybody, and Ellis doesn’t say anything about it, but what he does do is laugh, and tell Tudur to run along inside and change his trousers.
The rest of the week falls into the habit of it, of Ellis ending each trip by gripping Tudur’s hair and pushing his head down, and he doesn’t fucking have to, is the thing. He doesn’t need to grab Tudur and pull him down, doesn’t have to shove his head into his crotch, doesn’t have to grip his hair that way, but every time he does, Tudur’s body surges, something utterly electric happening to his libido.
There’s something about being manhandled by any big man, but especially by Ellis, especially when they know what the two of them are here to fucking do anyway, when Ellis knows that Tudur’s going to suck him off.
It’s a pretty nice fucking habit, even if he doesn’t get off to it again — Hell, that’s not true, he gets off to it every fucking night, but he manages not to come untouched in his trousers again.
He’s settled into a good rhythm at school, is happy with the work he’s getting done and the impact he’s making with the kids even though every pile of homework to mark and every last form feels like a fucking mountain of shit to get through; the kids like him, the other teachers like him.
And they find it funny, too, that Ellis likes him.
Mrs Redbone obviously knows, but it’s Mr Jones that makes a comment over lunch one afternoon, says, “Huw Ellis seems to like you, Mr Julep.”
“No more than he likes anybody else,” says Tudur, and Mrs Redbone actually sniggers. “It’s not like it’s special.”
“It’s pretty fucking special,” she says, and Mr Jones laughs when Tudur rolls his eyes.
* * *
One thing about Huw Ellis is that he does not volunteer for extra work.
The man categorically refuses to help with extracurriculars, to run clubs, to go on school trips, to do charity events, to do pretty much anything at all — sure, he helps students that go to him directly and ask him for help or advice, but that’s just a matter of him having his “office hours”.
Volunteering to give someone a lift every morning and every evening, even if it is on the way to his? That’s not something he’s ever done before.
Tudur doesn’t know that he believes Mr Jones when he says that Huw Ellis has never done anything for anybody in forty years, but he does privately think that whenever any of the other teachers have asked him for a lift, they probably haven’t made Ellis think he’ll get a blowjob at the end of it, which probably makes a difference.
That makes him flustered, just the thought of it, because of fucking course it does.
“I got a new bike,” he tells Ellis on a Tuesday morning on the way into school, sort of announces it far more formally than he means to, and Ellis glances across at him, raising his eyebrows. “I’m gonna walk to pick it up in the afternoon and ride it home. So, um,” he says. “You don’t have to give me lifts anymore.”
“Alright,” says Ellis.
Tudur waits for him to say something else, but he doesn’t.
What he does do, the Wednesday morning, is drop a big fucking bike chain into Tudur’s lap, sneaks up on him while he’s reading his book, making him go, “Hey, you old cunt, what the fuck — ”
“Well, you were basically inviting the little shits to nick it before,” Ellis says, and everyone in the staff room is staring at them, because Ellis won’t even sign people’s fucking birthday cards, let alone buy someone a bike chain.
“I suppose you want me to pay you back for this?” he asks, trying to ignore the fact that he’s so embarrassed he might explode.
“Aye, lad, I do,” says Ellis, barking out a laugh. “Probably leave it until later today, though.”
Tudur does not make eye contact with Mrs Redbone as he treks outside with the chain and replaces the small bike chain he’d bought with the massive one that Ellis had given him.
* * *
After the last bell has gone, Tudur packs everything up and then walks down to Ellis’ classroom, his bag slung over his shoulder.
Ellis’ class have already cleared out, but there’s one girl stood next to his desk. Tudur doesn’t teach her and he’s fairly certain she doesn’t take English, but he’s seen her about, always in cardigans that seem a bit too big for her.
Ellis is talking seriously to her over the essay pages she’s holding in her hands, and when Tudur comes in, she looks anxiously at him over her shoulder, but Ellis waves dismissively in Tudur’s direction and tells her crisply, “Don’t you mind him, he’s good people.”
Tudur feels strangely spot-lit for reasons he can’t describe as he pulls the job gently to even when she turns back to Ellis, and instead of looking over at Ellis and the girl, he feigns not paying any attention and keeps his gaze out of the window like he’s lost in his thoughts.
“Like I said, your ideas are good, you’ve got robust arguments here. I wouldn’t worry about originality here — I like how much you reference here, but don’t feel you have to include absolutely everything in your bibliography, just the stuff that’s actually relevant. Use these sites I’ve given you here, and for the medieval period, these publishers are a good shout.” His voice as he speaks is warm and gentle, about as soft as the old cunt ever actually gets. When he says, “And as for counselling — No, girl, there’s not any shame in it, and I can tell by the face on you that you’re not talking about it with your friends- I’ll mention it to the nurse and your form tutor — that’s Cottage, yeah? — and she’ll be able to refer you. You should be able to get it in one of your free periods, so you won’t have to go anywhere.”
“Thank you, Mr Ellis,” she says quietly.
When she goes, Tudur steps back to let her pass, opening the door for her, and she gives him a weak smile before she steps out into the corridor.
“Paying me back for petrol, is it?” asks Ellis, and shuts the door, turning the key in the lock.
Tudur swallows at how close the other man is to his space, at the sound the lock makes, but Ellis is already walking away from him with a stack of books in his hands and is opening the supply cupboard to put them away.
Tudur hates that fucking supply cupboard because it has two doors, and should be accessible from Tudur’s classroom on the other side, but there’s an extra bookshelf in the way, so to use their shared supply cupboard, Tudur has to go in from Ellis’ classroom.
“Do you do that a lot?” he asks, slowly trailing after him.
“When a student’s dad drops dead, sure,” says Ellis in mild tones as he starts putting his textbooks away. He doesn’t put on the light, so he’s sort of in the shadows in the cupboard, dramatically lit. “Don’t know that that’s ever a lot.”
“You’re such a prick.”
Ellis laughs at that, looking sidelong at Tudur with his eyes glinting, and murmurs, “Aye, yeah, I suppose that’s true.” He doesn’t flinch as Tudur comes closer, stepping over the threshold of cupboard. It’s a narrow little room, one that’s not really wide enough for two people — it’s not really wide enough for Ellis on his own, if he’s in a hurry. “What about you?” he asks.
“What about me?”
“Any of your students call you a prick yet?”
“Ha. They will.”
“Unlike you, Huw, I’m liked by my students rather than feared.”
It feels like he sounds confident, but he feels a lot of pink heat soak into his cheeks at the way Ellis grins at him — that’s the first time he’s used the old man’s first name.
“Oh feared,” repeats Ellis, dry, and then suddenly he looks stern in a way that makes Tudur not know what to do with himself, making his chest feel tight and the back of his neck sweat and his cock give an interested twitch in his trousers. “Afraid of me, is it? Is that what you are?”
Tudur’s knees feel weak as Ellis reaches past him in the narrow space, their bodies pressing together and Ellis’ belly threatening to shove him out of the way, and pulls the door shut. They’re crammed into the little cupboard together in the pitch black, and Tudur opens his mouth to ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, but Ellis grabs him before he can.
Ellis shoves him hard over the little desk covered with more books and papers, and Tudur gasps as Ellis undoes his trousers and hauls them down. Ellis’ hand lands against his arse with a mighty crack of sound and his brain fucking bluescreens, his thighs automatically spreading wider.
“Ha,” says Ellis. “Another one for your spank bank, this, in’t it? Mr Ellis in the stationery cupboard with the steel pipe?”
His cock falls fat and heavy against Tudur’s arse cheeks, and Tudur chokes out, “You’re not funny,” before Ellis swiftly renders him unable to talk at all.
Twenty-five minutes later, Tudur and Ellis go down the stairs with Tudur’s knees weak underneath him, keep threatening to buckle — his body aches from having the edge of the desk bite into his thighs, his arse burning from being smacked, his thighs from being spread so wide apart.
“S’pose you’ll need a lift after all, then,” says Ellis. “Good job I’ve a bike rack, in’t it?”
“You’re a dirty old man,” says Tudur.
“Yep, true enough,” agrees Ellis, and pats him on the arse just as they’re walking past the nurse and one of the receptionists. They don’t even notice, but Tudur has to bite his lip to keep from letting out a shout, the casual pat having made the stinging flesh on his arse burn and his body quake. Ellis tosses Tudur the keys and says, “Lemme have a quick word with Bev,” and Tudur marvels at the fucking oddity of it, the strange casual nature of the thing, that Mr Ellis is letting Tudur put his bike on the back of his car and drop into the passenger seat.
* * *
Ellis doesn’t make a habit of fucking Tudur at school, per se, but over the next few weeks, he not irregularly takes Tudur aside after school in the stationery cupboard or after giving him a lift in the car and absolutely fucking ruin him.
It’s a strange thing to navigate, all told.
Tudur had dated casually in university, and he’d dated a bit more seriously when he’d first started to teach, had also hooked up a lot on the side, but he’s never had a relationship like this where it’s based in the workplace, where it’s just —
Fucking mindblowing sex that’s also so fucking casual.
He’s acutely aware, however, that he’s not in control of things between him and Ellis. It’s hard to talk to the old man at times, difficult to speak to him — he coaches himself sometimes, thinking that he’s going to jibe the old man into taking him out for dinner or going out somewhere for drinks, and the conversation turns — the old man turns it — to them bickering about something on the news or music on the radio or cycling or how Tudur dresses.
Now and then, Tudur will sidle into his classroom, wanting a lift home, wanting a shag, and Ellis will just bark without even looking up, “Fuck off. I’ve got a mountain of fucking paperwork here.”
It’s not as if Tudur doesn’t, it’s not as if he doesn’t have paperwork and marking to go through. For fuck’s sake, because he’s still in his first year, he’s got more to do than Ellis does!
If Tudur has learned anything from Ellis’ history classes, however, it’s that manipulation is the better part of valour, and so he waits until the two minutes before the staff meeting actually starts before he, in earshot of the rest of the staff, asks, “Are we still on for dinner on Friday?”
Mrs Redbone and Mr Jones immediately both glance over, their ears pricked, but a few of the other staff are also paying attention. It’s not exactly explicit, the thing they’ve got going, but everyone knows they’re spending time together even if they don’t know the two of them are fucking.
“Eh?” asks Ellis, glancing up from the magazine he’s reading.
Tudur keeps his voice as even and casual as he can, almost breezy, as he says, “Dinner, old man. The evening meal. You and me, Friday night. What, you senile as well as a twat?”
Ellis, sitting across from Tudur at the table, slowly raises his head, and he looks at Tudur over his reading glasses, his lips twisted in a little smirk. He doesn’t look sideways at the other teachers who are looking their way, very obviously listening in.
“Friday’s fine for me,” says Ellis. “So long as you’re a good lad and get all your homework done first.”
Mrs Redbone sniggers, and a few of the others laugh as well, but it’s worth it, because that’s a commitment, that’s a date.
It’s a busy two days and they don’t really get any time together after that, so when Tudur slides into the passenger seat of Ellis’ car, his bike in the rack, Tudur asks, “So?”
“So?” retorts Ellis, smirking, and doesn’t allow for any further conversation, just turns the radio up the way he always does to keep Tudur from talking.
At first, Tudur actually thinks the old man is just driving him home after all, but he takes a different turning as they get on their way to Drefnewydd, pulling off the main street and going into one of the winding roads through the woods.
“Are you going to kill me?” asks Tudur.
“No.”
“Are we… going dogging?”
Ellis glances at him, his hands resting on the wheel, his eyebrows arching.
“I don’t want to go dogging,” says Tudur quickly.
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
“Because it seems like the sort of thing you’d be into.”
“I’m not taking you dogging,” says Ellis, amused, and ten minutes later, they pull up outside of an old fucking farmhouse with a big garden and a few trellises that are grown thick with brambles, a few fruit trees scattered around the place as well.
“Wait,” says Tudur. “Wait, wait, wait. Is this — Is this your house?”
“Nah, lad, we’re gonna break into the place,” says Ellis. “The fuck do you think?”
They hang up their coats on an old oak hatstand that looks to be made of the same wood at the bench Ellis sits down to take his shoes off, ditto the shelf on which their shoes actually go. He’s got a bunch of different boots lined up, wellingtons and hiking boots, and as Ellis strides off into the house, Tudur looks around the corridor.
There’s a stained glass of the Welsh dragon in his front door, and there’s old photographs framed and hung on the walls of Capel Celyn, all in black and white, before Tryweryn was drowned. Looking in the doorway of the living room, he sees a pair of axes mounted over the fireplace, and then realises that there’s more stuff on the walls, too — swords and daggers, and a crossbow, too, because apparently the old man fucking collects weapons.
Apart from that, though, the place is extremely clean, all the wood surfaces clean and polished, all the stone clean and free of dust; he’s got blankets piled up on designated shelves in the corner, and a few more on the wood-framed sofas and chairs.
One of the armchairs, which is made out of wood like a throne but with red cushions settled into it, has dragons’ heads carved out of the armrests, and he reaches out to brush his fingers over the scaled surface of one of the cheeks, feeling where the texture’s been chiselled into the wood.
He pads in his socks over the black stone floor and into the kitchen, watching Ellis wash his hands and listening to the way he whistles to himself as his three-legged cat, a tiny little pot of ink who Ellis could easily scoop up in one hand, clumsily weaves between his ankles.
The force of the realisation hits him like a wave, and he says, “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“You’re like… a full human being.”
He cringes at having said it even before Ellis starts to full on cackle, his laugh loud and booming in the little kitchen as he starts to pull things out of the fridge.
He’s prepped all his vegetables and potatoes in advance, and he’s got two steaks marinating in bags already, just sets everything to cook immediately. Tudur is spellbound, watching how well-practised he is, the ease with which he works as he keeps stepping over the cat.
“Jesus, lad,” says Ellis. “You really are a trip.”
“What? I can’t be impressed?”
“You can’t cook, is it?”
“I can barely boil water for pasta.”
“Idiot.”
It tastes as good as it looks — the steaks were in a marinade that’s sweet and a little spicy, so tender the meat melts in Tudur’s mouth.
“Don’t act too impressed,” Ellis says over the table. “I’ve three good meals in me.”
“Three?”
“Steak marinade, I can fry a mean chip, and I do a good cottage pie. Nothing else to write home about.”
“It’s still more than me.”
“Well,” mutters Ellis, and he gets up and scoops up the cat, putting her down in her tree and putting some food down in front of her. Before she touches it, she looks up at him like she’s expecting something, and Tudur feels his stomach give a flip at the way he delicately picks her up and kisses her on the top of her head — it’s only when he puts her down again that she bows her head and starts to eat.
“What’s her name?”
“Princess,” says Ellis.
“Huh. Guess you do act gay.”
Ellis gives him the bird, making Tudur laugh as he stands up and puts their dishes in the sink, starting to wash them up.
“Tywygoges too much of a mouthful?”
“I’m a nationalist, lad, but we have to draw the line somewhere,” says Ellis, and Tudur laughs. “I had another cat called Morwyn, though — that was her mother.”
Tudur has washed up most of the plates and pans when Ellis comes up behind him, wraps his arms around Tudur’s chest and grinds his crotch against Tudur’s arse, making him let out a gasp of breathless noise. Ellis feels ridiculously big, crowded up behind him like this, and Tudur’s eyes flutter closed as Ellis’ hands come around to squeeze at his chest, not generous enough to really be called tits, but with just enough fat there to squeeze.
“What, me doing the dishes turns you on?”
“Not particularly,” says Ellis idly, his hands sliding down to press into his arse cheeks instead, massaging him through his trousers. His hands feel fucking good. “But presumably you want to be rewarded for doing chores and doing your homework like a good little lad.”
Tudur is hit with that in a wave of heat. “… Jesus.”
“Blushing again, is it?”
“You don’t need to go so hard on the daddy issues.”
“I don’t,” Ellis agrees. “You radiate it yourself — all that hot for teacher, and getting flustered because a fella old enough to be your dad treats you a bit rough and gives you a bit of discipline? That’s on you, not me.”
“The amateur psychoanalysis suits you,” mutters Tudur. “It just has to be about daddy issues and not about my student-teacher fantasy.”
“Never met your dad at parents’ evening. Walk out on you, did he?”
“In a manner of speaking,” says Tudur. “He died when I was two.”
Ellis’ hands go still on Tudur’s arse, and after a second, he says, “Oh.”
It’s Tudur’s turn to laugh now, because the dead dad card does tend to be a bit of a trump, and he turns around to look up at the other man, at Ellis’ grinning expression.
“Don’t you think it’s fucking weird?” asks Tudur, raising his eyebrows. “Fucking your ex-student?”
“Don’t give a toss if it’s weird or not,” mutters Ellis. “You’re the one that brought it up in front of everyone else, exhibitionist slag that you are.”
“That wasn’t exhibition,” Tudur snaps. “I wasn’t — I just wanted to make sure you said yes to dinner.”
“By making sure everyone else knew I was gonna fuck your bratty little brains out?”
Tudur swallows.
Ellis laughs.
“D’you have a sex dungeon or something?” asks Tudur.
“Don’t need a sex dungeon to fuck you up, lad,” says Ellis, and with no further warning, he leans in, bands one arm around Tudur’s lower back and hoists him onto his shoulder.
“… Fuck,” mumbles Tudur against his shoulder, and laughs giddily as he’s carried to bed.
* * *
The next morning, Tudur is just fucking exhausted and sore, and what’s funny is that Ellis is pretty tired as well.
“That take something out of you, old man?” asks Tudur.
“I’m fifty-four,” says Ellis through a yawn as he pads across the room, arse wobbling tantalisingly with every step. “What’s your excuse?”
There’s something unbelievably —
Nice about it.
Being in Ellis’ house on a Saturday, where neither of them have anywhere to be, and particularly not being in his own flat, where he’s got washing to do and two roommates to pick around and online stuff he’s meant to be working through… He can relax, and it’s curiously domestic in a way he’d never associated with Ellis before.
He’s able to just observe him, and observe the man he does, sort of follows him around and watches him as if he’s a rare bird as Ellis scrolls through weapons for sale on online stores, as he plays with Princess by swiping around a little plush red dragon on a stick.
They watch a movie together, some Japanese war film that Tudur’s never even heard of before but is surprisingly captivated by, until he isn’t captivated and he falls asleep against Ellis’ shoulder.
He wakes groggily an hour or two later to find that Ellis has left the movie on pause, but that the man himself is doing a pile of ironing while doing a videocall on his laptop. He doesn’t move, stays laid down against the cushions as Ellis talks with the guy who is after an expert for his history podcast, and is asking some preliminary questions about medieval Welsh arms.
“What?” asks Ellis after he hangs up the call.
“Nothing,” says Tudur.
“You’ve a funny look in your eyes,” says Ellis. “You enjoyed that film, yeah?”
“I’m enjoying it so far,” says Tudur. “I’d like to finish it.”
“So the face like a slapped arse is because…?”
“I don’t know,” says Tudur, rubbing at his eye. “It’s just — I don’t do anything.”
“Pillow princess, you are.”
Tudur looks at the old man flatly, and says, “I don’t mean that.”
“Uh huh.”
“Just — You’ve got a whole life, and you have all these hobbies, and you do stuff. The arms, and you’re consulting for a podcast, and a lot of this furniture you’ve made or carved yourself or whatever. I don’t do anything, I don’t have anything.”
“Sad, that.”
“Pathetic, you mean.”
Ellis shrugs. “You’ve got time.”
Tudur reads, sure, his part of the flat is full to the brim with books, but mostly he just works. He studies, he does his mountains of fucking paperwork, he marks stuff, tries to do his lesson plans far enough in advance but never actually feels prepared for anything — half the time, while he’s working through the syllabus, he ends up changing tact, and he knows it’ll get easier the longer he works with the same books, it just feels like a neverending pile of paperwork and pages and work to be done.
When he has spare minutes at home, there’s just chores to be done, and even catching up on TV or podcasts, it’s normally while he works through other stuff at the same time.
And as for working at school, he’s been spending his spare minutes on Ellis — on top of helping the students that come to him and ask for more resources, the debaters who ask him to sit in with them once a week, or helping the librarians with a project in the library, or occasionally going with the hockey and football teams on their trips because they need an extra teacher to supervise.
How is he supposed to have time for anything else, let alone the money?
To get into weapons, or have a cat, or even (apparently) get into hard-core BDSM with a plethora of toys and bondage gear stored neatly in a bedroom cabinet?
He barely even did stuff like this at university.
As Ellis drives him home that evening, Tudur asks, “Are we… dating?”
“Nah.”
“But, aren’t we…”
“What?”
“We have sex. And I enjoy your company.”
“And?”
Tudur closes his mouth, and says, “Wednesday night?”
“Sure,” says Ellis, and pulls into the space in front of the house. Tudur’s hand is on the car door when Ellis clears his throat and says, “Forgetting something?”
Tudur refuses to smile as he turns back and reaches to undo Ellis’ belt.
* * *
Sometimes, when Tudur says, “You driving me home tonight?”, Ellis laughs and says, “You want a car, lad, you buy one. I’m not your fucking taxi service.”
Other times, he says, “As far as I know. Why, you got a better offer?”
He never gives specific whys and wherefores, never goes into why he’s saying yes one night and why he isn’t another, and even then, it’s only ever Ellis saying he’ll bring Tudur home to his — there’s never any mention of Ellis coming to Tudur’s, or the two of them going out somewhere else together, and sure, Tudur doesn’t really want to entertain Ellis at his flat when Ellis’ house is much more comfortable, but it’s the principle of the thing.
“I don’t suppose you’re free to see a movie Friday night,” he says: bluntly as anything, Ellis says, “Fuck no.”
He tries eating lunch with Ellis in his classroom, which Ellis allows, but treats him like a fucking student every time — tells him to shut up, that he’s welcome to sit down and eat in his classroom so long as he’s quiet and lets Ellis read his book.
It’s at a staff meeting in February where they’re talking about a national quiz that the school’s been invited to take part in, and when the headmistress says, “You’ve got time to take this over, haven’t you, Mr Julep?”, he says automatically, even though no, of fucking course he doesn’t, “Uh, yes, ie, sure. Of course.”
Ellis, without looking up from his book, is smirking on the other side of the table, and Tudur asks pointedly, “I suppose you can’t be bothered to get involved, Mr Ellis?”
“I suppose you’re right, Mr Julep,” says Ellis placidly.
“God forbid you go to any effort for the students’ sake.”
“I’ve only put forty years of my life into teaching the little fucks. Don’t see that I need to accompany them onto The Chase and Tipping Point and all.”
“It’ll look good on their university applications.”
“So would a posh address and an alumnus’ surname, but I’m not about to go fixing that for them either.”
Tudur rolls his eyes, dropping back in his seat.
“Think the domestic’s over,” says Ellis to the head. “We can go back to business, now.”
At lunch, Tudur is sat in the staffroom and Ellis comes in, leans right over him with his hands on the arms of Tudur’s chair, and says, “You think you’re too big and old for me to put you in detention?”
Tudur, trying desperately to hold his ground, says, “Yes, sir.”
The “sir” just sort of slips out, entirely against his will, and makes Ellis raise his eyebrows and look all fucking victorious.
“You’ve no power to do anything to me at all that I don’t let you.”
“Going to let me put you over my knee?”
Tudur shivers. “Sure,” he says. “If you do the quiz.”
“You really think you’re worth that?” asks Ellis, tilting his head and laughing at him in a way that just makes Tudur feel bad, actually, rather than teased. “No, lad, I’m not up for that.”
“Just that horrible a thought, spending time with me?”
Ellis raises his eyebrows, whistles low under his breath, and leans back. He’s so confident, always, and Tudur wishes he had the trick of it, wishes he had whatever makes Ellis go.
“S’that what you think, lad?” he asks softly, in the same deceptively gentle voice he’d used when speaking to the girl whose father had died.
Tudur can’t answer, words freezing on his tongue, and Ellis squeezes his shoulder and goes out from the staffroom, leaving him be.
Mrs Redbone says, “I fucking see you do it every day, and I still don’t know how you handle him the way you do.”
“Handle him?” asks Tudur, turning across to look at her.
“You’ve all but got that man wrapped around your finger.”
Which —
That’s not true.
If it was true, Ellis would actually do things with him other than fuck his brains out and laugh at him, which Tudur very much likes, but isn’t the same as a normal relationship.
“Am I doing something wrong?” he asks that afternoon.
“I don’t know,” says Ellis, taking the copies of Nicholas Nickelby off him and giving them a foul look as he puts them away.
“You don’t like that they’re abridged?”
“I don’t like that they’re Dickens,” says Ellis. “Fucking bad enough that that rubbish is on the exam syllabus — you’ve got more freedom with the year sevens, you should at least give them some real books to go through.”
“Oh, do fucking enlighten me,” says Tudur. “What’s wrong with Dickens?”
“Not much, if your standards aren’t high,” says Ellis. “But you could easily replace him with something more worthwhile. A proper author — someone Welsh, or just more contemporary. A woman author, even.”
“A woman author,” repeats Tudur in tones of great irony, and Ellis shrugs his shoulders.
“You don’t teach many woman authors,” says Ellis.
“You don’t teach about women either.”
Ellis puts his hands in his pockets, takes this in, then glances behind him at the display on women’s suffrage.
“Oh, shut up,” says Tudur, and moves to go, but Ellis grabs him by the wrist and pulls him back. Tudur holds his breath as Ellis reaches up with his other hand, adjusting his shirt collar.
“Don’t know what the fuck gives you the idea I don’t like your company,” says the old man. “I’ve never said so.”
“You won’t come out with me,” mutters Tudur, and Ellis pats him on the side of the face, too light to be called a slap but just hard enough that it stings, making Julep’s breath catch in his throat and his heart speed a bit faster.
“Maybe I would, if you fucking asked.”
“I have asked!”
“Have you?”
“You won’t do the quiz stuff with me.”
Ellis clucks his tongue, tone snide as he looks down at Tudur. “That’s work, that is. I’m not doing extra work just because you’re too spineless to ask a man out on a proper date.”
Tudur stares at him, speechless. “I asked if you’d come see a film.”
“You fucking didn’t,” says Ellis. “You said, “I don’t suppose you’re free” or whatever the fuck filler you couch everything in because you’re too scared to ask a direct question. And I don’t like the cinema. It’s too loud, the seats are uncomfortable — and if they’re not uncomfortable, I’m liable to fall asleep.”
“What am I supposed to do, then? Formally invite you out for dinner?”
“That’d be a start.”
“I tried before and you just brought me back to yours.”
“’Course, you didn’t ask me formally, did you? You didn’t even ask me properly. You tried to Art of War your way into a fucking appointment by publicly shaming me into it.”
Tudur opens his mouth, and for a second feels it hanging open, his tongue going dry, then closes it.
“Mmm-hmm,” hums Ellis, stepping away from him. “I don’t pretend not to be a prick, lad, is the difference between you and me. You don’t get to ask the bastard then come to me as if butter wouldn’t melt.”
“Well, you pretend to be conservative when you’re as left as they come.”
“I don’t pretend nothing,” retorts Ellis. “People make assumptions about me ’cause I’m a grumpy old fuck is all, and play the devil’s advocate to keep other people’s skills sharp. Not my fault people trust their biases instead’a their reading comprehension, regardless of what I teach them.”
Tudur stares at him, aware that he’s flushing and unable to escape it.
“You really do blush easy,” says Ellis. “I always thought you did, but with your head down all the time when you were a lad, a man never really noticed it as much — now you talk more, you let people see your face, they can see that too.”
“Is it odd for you?”
“What?”
“Fucking an ex-student.”
Ellis sighs, but this time, he nods his head. “Mmm, a little. Can’t pretend I’m not sometimes watching your back arch and thinking about essays you wrote that stuck with me — weird, how those bits and pieces float back.”
“You remember essays I wrote you? Like, actually? I know you said about the ones I did about Wilfred Owen and Sassoon, but do you actually remember what was in them?”
“You had a funny way of writing your essays,” says Ellis, shouldering the door closed and moving past him towards his desk. Tudur trails after him, suddenly experiencing a strange, excruciating sense that in some way he’s been pinned to the spot. He needs to believe he can still move. “You wrote them like they were prose.”
“I didn’t,” says Ellis. “I don’t. “I got high grades at school, I did well at university. When I write now, it’s readable, cle — ”
“You’re so fucking thin-skinned,” Ellis interrupts him, laughing and shaking his head. “Did I call it a complaint? Did I say it was a criticism, even? S’not bad. It’s a bit different, but it’s not bad at all.”
“How — ”
“Anyway,” says Ellis, pulling on his coat. “It’s weird remembering that while I’m fucking you. Thinking about the way you talk, the way you write now, the way you wrote then. You’re different now than then, have more of a fucking attitude, to say the least.”
“Well,” says Tudur. “I grew up.”
Ellis laughs. “Aye, yeah, so you did,” he agrees. “Grew up in the right direction too. This your first time shagging someone older?”
Tudur doesn’t say anything, trying to think of how to phrase things, but Ellis just huffs out a laugh again.
“Thought you had.”
“You could at least act a little surprised.”
“I’m not surprised,” replies Ellis. “I’m not surprised in the fucking last.”
“Well, you’re not very surprising either.”
“Liar.”
“Smug prick.”
“That’s me.”
“Dinner?” asks Tudur as Ellis folds papers into a box file. “You want to get something in town, sit down for it? I can put my bike on your car and when we can just split up after if you don’t want to give me a lift.”
“Now,” says Ellis smoothly. “Why wouldn’t I want to do that?”
Something flutters in his chest, a kind of funny anxiety and also a kind of relief at the same time.
While they’re going down the stairs, Tudur asks, “You really don’t like Dickens?”
“Fucking hate Dickens,” says Ellis. “I fucking hated him even before Michael Gove pulled him out of a hat as one of the five white Englishmen your students are allowed to study.”
The syllabus is pretty much all white, and mostly English, and Tudur knows it’s true, but he hasn’t thought about it enough to be as pissed about it as Ellis seems right now, even in passing. “Who would you replace him with?”
“Who’s doing Nickelby now? Your year sevens?”
“My year eights.”
“Jacqueline Woodson might be a nice start,” says Ellis.
Tudur takes out his phone and types it down. “Different to Jacqueline Wilson, I suppose?”
“Very different,” says Ellis. “Though I wouldn’t knock the woman. Not saying she’s perfect, but her work’s important to a lot of kids for a reason.”
“Different to Dickens, too.”
“The point is to improve on what little Dickens has to offer.”
“Just because Michael Gove likes him doesn’t mean he’s complete dogshit, Huw.”
“Not a good fucking sign, though, is it?”
“Bellend,” says Tudur, and Ellis blows him a kiss.
* * *
One lunch time the following week, Tudur is going through some of the quiz materials at the front of the class and he sees Ellis looking through the window, jogs over before the old man can get away and catches him by the wrist.
“Hey,” says Tudur. “Can’t I use you for a minute?”
Ellis meets his gaze, and Tudur tugs him by the wrist over the threshold. Ellis sighs but allows himself to be pulled in, coming to stand at the front of the classroom.
“Mr Ellis is an expert at general knowledge,” says Tudur, patting Ellis’ shoulder, and he’s fully aware of the way a few of the kids are staring at them, because Ellis doesn’t normally let people touch him, let alone play with him.
“Want a quiz master, do you?” asks Ellis dryly.
“Will I ruin your day, Mr Ellis, if I say yes?”
Ellis sighs, rolling his eyes, and takes his watch off. “Fine,” he says, glancing down at it as he sets it on the table. “I’ll give you little nerds twenty minutes of my lunchbreak, then I’m gone.”
“We’re not nerds,” says one of the kids.
“Sure about that?” retorts Ellis.
“Mr Ellis is projecting,” says Tudur, and he knows he’ll pay for it later, but in the meantime, Ellis is smirking and looking at him almost incredulously, just for a moment. “If you’d take these, please?” he asks, holding out the quiz cards, and Ellis takes them.
“You’ll owe me for this, Julep,” says Ellis in a quiet, rumbling voice as Tudur steps past him. “Hope you realise that.”
“I’m sure I’ve got it in me to pay you back, Mr Ellis,” says Julep, and gestures for him to start.
FIN.
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