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Irwin hadn’t been feeling right since the accident. He was never the most emotionally or physically resilient of men, but the aches, the lingering guilt, and the way the world seemed to shift under him left him feeling unmoored. Not unwell enough to cancel the two-week study group Crowther, Posner, Akhtar, Dakin, and Scripps had insisted he lead before Oxford in the fall, but unsettled enough that every waking hour felt like he was floating just below the surface, hearing life through water.
And then there was that drink. Euphemistically speaking, of course—he and Dakin had both known it meant something else entirely. Irwin hadn’t been slow enough to miss the suggestion, and Dakin had made it clear anyway. How about you suck me off, he’d said, half-challenge, half-joke. And God help him, Irwin had wanted to.
Why Dakin had agreed to join the group, and why Irwin had agreed to lead it, was a mystery. Nothing would happen now. The accident on the back of Hector’s bike had pushed that drink firmly into the past, something that would remain, like history itself, fixed and irretrievable. At least that’s what Irwin told himself.
The boys tumbled into the makeshift classroom Irwin had cobbled together in his study. With his left arm he pointed toward the blackboard—nicked from the A/V department at Cutler’s before he had “resigned due to illness and accident.” The assignment was scrawled across it: something difficult enough to keep them quiet until mid-morning, but not so demanding they’d grow restless.
Compare and contrast Wallis Simpson and Anne Boleyn and their effect on the monarchy in at least 4,000 words. NO GERUNDS AND NO EUPHEMISMS!
“Are you drunk, sir?” Akhtar asked.
It was, Irwin thought, a fair question. Except for the odd injunction, the assignment had none of the spin-history-on-its-head flair of his old lessons. “No. Not drunk. Headache.” Not a lie. He shuffled papers on his desk—half-graded essays from last term, a pile of unpaid bills—until the effort of pretending to be busy became too much. When he glanced up, Akhtar was still watching him.
“Is there a problem, Akhtar?”
“No, sir.”
“Fine. Get to work.” Irwin added a glare for emphasis. It seemed to do the trick; Akhtar finally bent over his notebook.
“Sir. Sir!”
Irwin sighed. “Yes, Dakin.” He’d been waiting for it. For what, exactly, he wasn’t sure—but Dakin’s gaze had always set him on edge. Once, it had even made him believe they’d already shared that drink. How he had pulled himself back from that delusion intact was something he could only chalk up to luck—or grace.
“Were they worth it?” Dakin asked. “Wallis and Anne, I mean. Edward gave up the throne, Henry made a mess of everything. Why not just have a good shag and leave it at that? Seems odd.”
A smile tugged at Irwin’s lips. Of course Dakin would turn it into a question about sex. “Wallis and Edward were in love.”
“Love’s an illusion. There’s only lust, sir.”
“Ah, sod off, Dakin,” Crowther cut in, already scribbling notes. “Love’s real. Your problem is you think with your dick so much you can’t see it.”