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“Jon?”
“Mm?” Jon replies, not looking up from his marking.
“How did you and mister Blackwood meet?”
“Mm?” Jon says again, before blinking once, twice, and returning to the world, his student’s poor handwriting fading to the back of his mind. “I’m sorry?”
“How did you and Martin meet?”
Jon immediately squints at Madeleine, who’s kicked herself back in her chair, balancing on its hind legs. She’s also blowing a bubblegum bubble, which she ruthlessly pops and chews. “You’re in detention, Madeleine. Chair down, please. And get rid of the gum.”
Madeleine sighs, completely unthreatened and returns to the ground, though continues chewing. Jon checks his watch, sees she’s only got three minutes left, and gathers his papers together. He waits a cursory one minute more then sits back in his own chair. “We met at work.”
“Like, at a school?”
“You could say that,” Jon says. “You can go home, now.”
“Was it at this school?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
When Madeleine doesn’t move, Jon begins packing his bag. “At the place we worked before here.”
“A school?”
“An… Institution.”
“What does that mean?”
“A place that’s been around for a while.”
“So like a uni, then.”
“Yes,” Jon says, not technically lying.
“What did you think when yous first saw him?”
“Er,” Jon says, guilt overriding his instinct to keep his mouth shut. “I don’t remember. I saw his CV first. ‘Good CV’, probably.”
“You were his boss?”
“Er,” Jon scratches his temple, “Technically his line manager.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means - it meant that I would give him something to do, and he would do it.”
“So his boss, then.”
Jon takes a breath to centre himself. “Yes, I suppose. Is this going somewhere, Madeleine, or may I go home now?”
“What did you think when yous first saw him?”
“I don’t remember. Probably something like, ‘it’s a good thing this person looks like he’s actually interested in doing this job’.”
“Hm.” Madeleine kicks herself off her seat, slings her backpack over one shoulder and makes her way out the classroom. “Alright.”
“Madeleine,” Jon says as she goes, halting her in the door. “I don’t want to have to do this again.”
“Yep.”
“I expect better from you.”
“Sure.”
“Right,” Jon says, defeated, and she leaves.
-
“Mister Blackwood?”
Martin jumps, not having noticed the girl stood beside him, engrossed as he was in his book. “Madeleine! Sorry! Hello! How can I help you!”
“What did you think when yous first met Jon?”
“Oh!” Martin says, taking a sweeping glance around the office. He’s the only teacher left, waiting for Jon to finish up with his work before they head home together. Finish up with detention, he remembers. “Detention over?”
“Yup.” Madeleine’s expression doesn’t change, and she doesn’t drop Martin’s eye.
“Right. Uhm, well, Jon, huh!”
“He said yous two used to work at an Institution.”
“Did he,” Martin says, suddenly a lot more on guard. “What exactly did he say?”
“It’s like a university. He was your boss. He liked your CV. What did yous think of him?”
“Uhm,” Martin says, placing the book of poetry back down on his desk and interlinking his fingers together in his lap so he doesn’t fidget, “Well, I think I thought ‘oh no’.”
“‘Oh no’?” Madeleine repeats.
“Yep. Uhm, well, because my second thought was that he was really rather attractive, and I didn’t think that my first serious job as an adult should start with my finding my boss hot.”
“Oh,” Madeleine says, as if that hasn’t answered her question.
Martin glances around the room again, as if someone might have snuck through the door while he wasn’t paying attention. “What’s up? Anything I can help you with?”
“Nah.” Madeleine hitches her bag over her shoulder and walks backwards. “See you tomorrow.”
“Ah, yeah, see you tomorrow Madeleine!”
The door’s only really just closed when it opens again, Jon popping his head in. “Ready?”
“Yep!” Martin says, springing up from his chair and stuffing his book into his satchel. “You just missed Madeleine.”
“I saw.” Jon’s shoulders sag and Martin squeezes one gently, urging Jon out and flicking the lights off in the office as he goes.
-
They chatter about nothing as they walk through the old stone building, planning dinner and catching each other up on meetings until they get to the privacy of their car, Jon slipping into the driver’s seat.
As soon as he’s closed the door and Martin’s strapped in, Jon groans, head plonking back against the headrest. “I panicked,” Jon admits.
“Yeah?”
“She and Femi were having one of their fights. Verbal. Over lunch. Madeleine threw her water bottle at her. I panicked, and I punished her. God, after all I lecture them about not doing that, not believing in detention, teaching them about restorative justice, I just.” Jon scrubs at his face with both hands, pressing his fingers deep into his closed eyes, knocking his glasses up until they’re resting on the top of his head.
“Have you apologised to her?”
“I-” Jon stops himself from outpouring a series of excuses: he didn’t think she’d listen, he didn’t want to seem like he was breaking down in front of the class, he didn’t have the chance, but he swallows them, his jaw setting in a frustrated clench. “No.”
“Well you’ll just have to apologise to her tomorrow then, won’t you.”
Jon nods, slowly, the guilt lodged thick in his throat.
“You can tell me.”
“It’s just,” Jon says immediately, knowing he’s going to feel worse after saying the words but not able to stop them from coming out of his mouth, “Femi didn’t seem phased, and she told me not to punish Madeleine, but Femi shouldn’t have to be used to being hit, even by a friend — especially by a friend! And if Madeleine had just said sorry, or — I just — I just, I did exactly what she did, lashed out because I was frustrated something wasn’t going my way.” Jon lets out an angry growl at himself, pressing his fingers in even harder, until he feels Martin’s hand coming to rest lightly on his thigh.
“I’m supposed to be the one teaching her the right way to react, not pushing her away.”
“Yeah,” Martin says, tone impartial.
“I just expect better from her,” Jon says, helpless. “She’s bright, and she’s got so much potential, and she questions everything, and she’s just—” Jon bites his tongue stopping the next words from coming out. Then he decides ‘fuck it’ and throws his guilt to the wind, already feeling like shit anyway. “She’s just pissing it away,” he says, bitter.
He feels empty as he says it, then clenches his hands as a familiar knot of tangled emotion: helplessness, failure, inadequacy, hatred, guilt, crawls its way back under his skin, sitting on the back of his neck, at the top of his spine, like an ice pick flirting with the idea of driving itself through the back of his head.
He shudders, and Martin’s hand tightens on his leg.
“He’s not here,” Martin says quietly.
“What?”
“He’s not here. Elias isn’t here.”
Jon’s head turns towards Martin, hands still covering his face. He hears Martin swallow and shift slightly in his seat.
“He groomed you, Jon. He crafted an idea of perfection, and for years you literally destroyed yourself trying to fit yourself into his mould.” He hears Martin’s voice go weak with tears he can’t see. “He expected something from you. A lot from you. And you liked it.” Jon freezes, and he knows Martin’s giving him a moment to process that. It’s not an accusation, even though it sounds like one. It’s blunt, and he knows he needs it to be.
“Jesus Christ, Jon, we’re both over-achieving humanities students. You read a different book, what, every day when you were a kid? You got hired at a supernatural institution where a man who styled himself as a God asked you to be his Prophet and he showed you Perfection and you saw how you could achieve it, and you tasted ‘full potential’, and you don’t think you came away from that with an absolutely fucked headspace?”
He hears Martin wipe his face with his sleeve. “Yeah, Jon, you know what, maybe if you keep telling yourself that you failed to live up to your potential because you didn’t meet bitch-arse Bouchard’s demands, maybe that’ll have consequences.”
Jon snorts a short, snotty snort.
“Oh no,” Martin says in his theatrical voice, though wet with emotion. “You didn’t live up to your bloody potential, Jon. You didn’t live up to his bloody expectations. Oh no. Boo hoo. An authoritative figure controlled us in an abusive situation and now we have a fucked up relationship with power structures and-” Martin swallows, and some confidence returns to his voice. “… And sometimes, we lash out at our students, and we need to apologise for that.”
Jon nods, and then because he’s not sure whether Martin can see him, he makes a verbal “mm,” of assent.
“Because no matter what we think, they’re not us.”
“Mm.”
“And we try desperately not to do it again,” Martin says.
“Mm.”
“And probably fail, because we’re human, we’re not gods, or Jesus, or any Prophet.”
“Hah. Yeah. Definitely not,” Jon agrees. The pair of them take a few measured breaths together, then Jon lets out a shaky laugh. “God I hope no-one’s filmed us having a full-on breakdown at 4 on a Wednesday afternoon.”
“Pfft,” Martin laughs. “I have to admit, I debated whether I should keep my hand off your leg in case anyone thought I was trying it on in broad daylight in the school parking lot.”
Jon’s smile widens at that, and he rubs the beginnings of his tears from his eyes.
“I just had the most intrusive thought of Elias trying on his bullshit on with you,” Martin says, “But instead of trying to be all spooky Christian imagery, he tried to be all spooky Islam because of HR or something.” Jon looks over to Martin, who’s still trying to make his face look like he’s not had a bit of a cry. “‘Jon’,” Martin says in a frankly terrible impression of Elias, “‘You, er, must, er, Islam, was it? Er.’”
“‘Which, er, branch, did you say you were?’” Jon says in a similarly terrible attempt at Elias’s accent, then laughs at himself as he says, “‘Prophet Jon, er, peace be upon him? Is that right? Now Jon, were your family Shia or Sunni?’”
“You think he’d have known the difference? Victorian twat.”
“I don’t know,” Jon says, attempting faux magnanimity, “He must have studied how to be a bastard somewhere, right? Don’t they teach you that at Oxford?”
“If you think Elias Bouchard was at Oxford doing PPE and learning the denominations of Islam and not, I don’t know, fucking a pig, we didn’t know the same man.”
“Well,” Jon says, because he’s apparently feeling like being a snooty little shit, “Since PPE is philosophy, politics and economics, I’d be surprised if he was-” Jon is less surprised about the hand that thwacks his chest, and more that it takes Martin that long to react.
-
“I’m sorry for hitting Femi,” Madeleine says the moment they’re alone, Jon pulling her out of registration at the top of the day.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Jon says. “I’m sorry for giving you detention, instead of finding a way to talk with you.”
Madeleine doesn’t look up from where she’s scuffing her trainers against a well-trodden black spot of gum worked into the carpet of his empty classroom.
“Hm,” Jon says, every planned thought jumping ship and leaving him floundering for words. “I-” Jon sighs and leans up against his desk. “I er, don’t remember what I first thought when I saw Martin. It probably wasn’t very nice, though. I wasn’t very nice to him, when we first knew each other.”
“Sure.” She still doesn’t look up.
“It’s still painful to me, knowing that I caused him, er, caused him that much... I’m not sure it was pain, really, but … heartache? Suffering?” Jon shrugs a shoulder. “But, just as we can’t fix history by forgetting it, there’s no point in me treating myself like some sort of martyr, constantly stabbing myself with the pain when that doesn’t help either of us. We talked about it, and we decided to move past it.” Jon lets that thought settle. “I don’t remember what I first thought about Martin, but I do remember the first thought I had when I realised that I loved him. Do you want to hear?”
Madeleine gives a small half-shrug, which is more than she’s given him for a while.
“‘I really enjoy being around you.’” Jon gives his own helpless little shrug, shoulders lighter than last night. “I wish it was more poetic than that, but that’s life, I suppose.” Jon fights the sudden urge he gets to organise everything on his desk, laying one hand on top of the other. He can’t tell whether he’s even in the realm of saying something of interest to her, let alone helping. Tongue still restless, he continues despite his empty head.
“I love words. I used to make my living from words, from speaking words. I know how powerful words are. But sometimes, there’s just this feeling; I get tongue-tied, and angry, and I can’t find any way to express myself except to find some way to shove, to shove back, to feel like I’m making any sort of progress. To my shame, Martin has traditionally caught the flack from that, and usually it helps, shoving. It makes me feel like I’m strong. Like I’ve won. That I’m not useless, that I’m not powerless, that I am living up to my potential.”
There’s a flicker on Madeleine’s face, and Jon is so glad he catches it so he doesn’t have to continue feeling like he’s digging his own grave.
“I went to a school very similar to this one,” Jon says, changing track and watching her from the corner of his eye. “Madeleine, I’m going to tell you something which, as a teacher, could probably get me fired, but as a fellow human, I would like you to hear.
“A lot of people, including, to my shame, myself, will tell you that they have expectations of you. Your parents, your teachers, your friends, especially as you move up and you take more exams. Whether or not you continue into further education, join a work force, become a, er, bohemian artist living life on the road with your mates, you’ll find people place their burdens on your shoulders. Sometimes it’s affection, as misplaced as it is, but trust me when I say: it can destroy you.
“I… Martin and I moved up here because I failed to live up to someone’s expectations. At the time I thought I was running from failure. Fleeing because I was imperfect, and weak, and I thought that I deserved the exile because — because what, who am I without my potential? Without those expectations? Without the praise?”
Jon tuts as he gets a flash of a cloying, cooing “Jon,” but he punches it back, fights to replace the sound with Martin’s laugh from last night. Jon had been in the bath when he’d heard Martin roll off their bed and approach to brush his teeth, so Jon had made himself a crown from bubbles and doubled his beard length and waited, straight-faced, for Martin to sneak a peek at him in the mirror.
He’d managed to lay a wet hand on Martin’s flanneled butt, too, which had been a double win and had earned him a squawk of indignant laughter.
Jon has to swing back the other way as he pushes down the memory, not wanting to get too caught up in that thought in Madeleine’s line of sight.
“Living up to his expectations was not my responsibility,” Jon says like a mantra. “I did not fail, because I didn’t need to pass to be worth time on this, excuse my French, bitch of a planet. I’m sorry for doing the same to you yesterday. You don’t deserve me acting out on you.”
Jon takes a deep breath.
“God, talk about loving words, huh. Sorry, I’ve talked your ear off and registration's about to end. That’s all I wanted to say: sorry. I hope you... well, I hope in this instance you do ignore me.”
“Fellow human.”
“Sorry?” Jon says as she looks up at him.
“Fellow human. You said ‘I’m going to tell you something as a fellow human’. That’s what an alien would say. Are you an alien?”
Jon can see the mischief in the corner of her eyes, and Jon lets out a short, relieved laugh. “If I was, do you think my alien boss would allow me to come to earth without a way to stop me talking about them-” Jon makes a dramatically confused face, as if he’s been supernaturally silenced, though he knows it can’t be very convincing because he’s watching Madeleine’s face light up, and he can feel the soft warmth mirrored on his features.
“Go on,” Jon says, waving his hand at her. “You’ll miss your first class and nobody will believe you when you say your scrupulous history teacher was telling you his sob story.”
“Can I interview you and mister Blackwood for my media studies project?”
“Absolutely not,” Jon says, already imagining what sort of horrors would come out of his mouth just looking at a recording device.
“Not even because you feel really guilty about giving me detention?”
“Not even then.”
“What if I got a student court together to judge you and they voted that your community service had to be giving me a statement for my coursework?”
“Doesn’t feel like a fair trial if the jury has a bias.”
“But-”
“No.”
“But-” Madeleine cuts herself off when she sees Jon school his features into something less jokey.
“I may be soft, Madeleine, but I’m still your teacher. Have you talked with Femi?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not going to make this a habit, are you.”
“No.”
“Good,” Jon says, pulling a page of A4 and a couple of pamphlets from one of the organisers on his desk. “I wondered, or rather Martin wondered, whether anyone had suggested that we talk to the lady in disability support.”
“No?” Madeleine says warily.
“It would mean taking a couple of tests, and even if they don’t advise you to get a medical diagnosis, we can get you some additional support for when you feel frustrated, or for helping you learn.”
Jon watches Madeleine chew on her lip, brows creasing. “Perhaps what is making you feel like you have to push,” Jon says gently, “Is something we can help you with.”
“Mm,” Madeleine says, taking the pamphlets with a frown.
“Martin says he found the process enlightening.”
“Mm,” Madeleine says, a touch less wary. “Maybe.”
“I’m sure Martin would be more than happy to talk you through any questions,” Jon says, then startles as he hears a nearby classroom door bang open, students beginning to pour out into the corridors to line up for their first classes.
“Alright, this time you really do need to go,” Jon says, moving to turn on his computer and actually start preparing for his first lesson. “Read the information, and if you’d like to talk about it to either of us you can, or you can go and see Mrs. Reed at reception any time you like.”
“Okay,” Madeleine says, slightly resigned, but beginning to read the sheet, which Jon takes as a good sign.
“Jon?”
“Yes, Madeleine?”
“You’ve got a hickey on your neck.”
Jon’s hand is already on his neck when Madeleine lets out a gleeful peel of laughter. “Too easy!”
“God- Madeleine- Detention! 15 minutes! Lunchtime!”
“What? You’re kidding.”
“Absolutely not,” Jon says, feeling his cheeks go a fiery hot. “Fine. Yes, I’m joking, but you’re getting double homework, for a week” he warns, absolutely not looking at her as she makes her escape.
“You can’t give me more homework, I’ve got blackmail on you!”
“Gh-” Jon says, mostly to himself, and then he slumps in his chair, wondering whether it’s too soon to change professions. Maybe Daisy and Basira needed a farm hand. Farm hands didn't get blackmailed by tweens. That would be nice.