Chapter Text
There were a lot of reasons why Charles Rowland had changed schools. His suffering grades, constant reprimands over being out of dress code and the school’s growing suspicions about his home life were only some of the reasons why Charles’ mother enrolled him in boarding school for sixth form. It also would supposedly give him a better chance at getting into a top-tier university. Which was less important to Charles than it was to his Mum. Changing schools meant leaving all of his friends, building all new teacher relationships and not seeing his parents for months at a time… well, not seeing his mum. He was fine with not seeing his dad.
All this is to say, St. Hilarion’s wasn’t exactly his first choice, nor was he the school’s first choice in a student. He wasn’t exactly the posh old-money white boy they usually courted for their exclusive boarding school. But Charles was a top-notch cricket player and a little bit of diversity looked good for the school, so Charles found himself with a scholarship and a prime spot on the Hellion’s cricket team.
There was really only one problem… well two problems, maybe three.
The first problem was one he was equipped to deal with. The dress code was strict. The suits were stuffy and ties (or bow ties, good God) were required every day, but a deep inspection of the code of conduct revealed a long list of ways in which the uniform could not be altered. No patches, no colorful additions, etcetera, etcetera. One notable mention, however, was an exception for lapel pins. Students could wear lapel pins, and then it went on a bit about how important academic societies were to the history of St. Hilarion’s, but nowhere did it say that those lapel pins had to be academic in nature. Bit of an oversight on their part to be honest. It wasn’t difficult at all to find a few pins online that appealed, including a bright yellow smiley face that stood out brilliantly against the school’s mandated blue blazer. It got him a trip to the headmaster’s office, and a discussion about the “spirit of the rules,” but as no one could actually punish him for a rule that he hadn’t broken, the pins stayed and spread quickly across the student body. Within a few weeks, lapel pins went from a snooty thing students wore to show off to something everyone wore to show a bit of personality. The teachers did manage to put a firm three-pin limit on things, but the pins themselves stayed. At least for now. Charles had a feeling that the uniform guidelines may be updated over summer holiday, but by then he’d have time to find some other loophole. Charles tried to switch up his pins a little everyday, but he definitely had his favorites. His go-to pins were a bright red cricket bat, the yellow smiley face and a little pac man ghost that never failed to make him smile for some reason.
The second problem was less innocuous, but equally easy to fix. At least in part. St. Hilarian’s had a bullying problem. Less than a week after arriving, Charles arrived early to cricket practice to find Simon, one of the other blokes on the team, and a handful of other boys punching and kicking someone on the ground. Charles didn’t pause to think. He just charged.
Before he could consider much of anything else, he was grabbing any available appendage of his teammates and hurling them off of the prone boy. In another moment, he was on the ground too, one hand extended protectively, as if he could shield the boy from his attackers with an arm.
“Oh, come off it, Rowland,” Simon said, face and sport kit smudged with dirt and not looking even a little bit repentant. “I know you’re new around here, but—”
“But nothing,” Charles growled. “The way I see it, he’s the one on the ground and bleedin’, mate. Can’t imagine a single explanation you could give where you don’t look like twat.”
Simon reared back like he was about to swing on Charles. That was fine. Charles braced himself. He knew how to take a punch. But then the other boys were pulling Simon away, saying this wasn’t worth it. That it had gone too far. One kid actually took off in the direction of the headmaster’s office.
They scurried away like the cockroaches they were and Charles felt it was a job well done. He was about to turn around and help the other boy up when a posh voice spoke up.
“Are you categorically insane?”
Charles whipped his head around to find the boy pushing himself up off the ground and brushing himself off like he had just tripped and fell, rather than being beaten up and covered in grass stains, bleeding scrapes and the beginnings of a black eye.
“That was an incredibly stupid thing to do,” the boy continued.
Good God, he was wearing a bow tie. Charles had seen that as an option in the handbook, but really, who would do that to themselves?
“I’m sorry?” Charles began, feeling a bit on the back foot before rallying. “No, you know what, I’m not sorry. They were beating the shit out of you. It’s not like I was about to just stand there, was I?”
The other boy just shrugged.
“Everyone does,” he said mildly, meeting Charles’ eyes for the first time. “Drawing their attention will only make you a likely target as well.”
And then he flounced off, like he was obviously in the right and Charles was just a little too slow to mentally keep up.
“Well fuck that!” Charles shouted after him. The other boy didn’t even look like he’d heard.
The third problem was… well, a problem. St. Hilarion’s was old fashioned. Old fashioned in a way that they required all students to study Latin.
Charles had always skated by the language requirement at his old school by doing Punjabi. His grammar was shit, but he’d grown up hearing it from his mum’s side of the family, so it was an easy way to a good grade. St. Hilarion’s did not teach Punjabi, and even the students studying other languages still had to pass an introduction to Latin first.
“Latin is one of our school’s proud traditions,” the headmaster told him, but absolutely refused to elaborate when Charles asked why.
It’s not like there were people wandering around speaking Latin. At least Spanish or French would be useful in Spain or France. Latin was useless everywhere. This argument did not endear him to the Latin professor. By the end of his first month, he was so entirely lost in a classroom full of underclassmen that he bit the bullet and went to the library.
The head librarian, Ms. Connell was a good sort, if a bit strict and the sort that thought Latin was an important and useful skill.
“I wonder if Payne would be willing to tutor you,” she mused aloud after Charles had sunk so low in his chair that he was nearly eye level with the table.
“I don’t think I can handle any more pain from Latin,” Charles groaned.
“No,” Ms. Connell chuckled, her Scottish accent rounding out the vowels, “Not P-A-I-N, P-A-Y-N-E, as in Edwin Payne. He’s our most gifted language student here. Not always good with people, mind you, but you seem to be charming enough for two.”
So Charles found himself in one of the library’s private study rooms on a Wednesday evening waiting for a boy who went around calling himself “Pain.” Great.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have been quite as surprised as he was when Edwin Payne arrived wearing the yellow-green remnants of a black eye and the most withering glare that Charles had ever had the misfortune of having leveled in his direction.
“It’s you,” Charles said stupidly.
“You’re having trouble with Latin,” Edwin said bluntly instead of replying.
“I mean yeah,” Charles replied, mouth running away before his brain could get involved. “I’ve never even thought about Latin before this year. But Ms. Connell said you're some kind of genius.”
Edwin hummed and narrowed his eyes.
“Does it still hurt?” Charles asked.
Edwin blinked, seeming genuinely startled by the non sequitur.
“What?”
“Your eye, does it still hurt?” Charles reiterated. “I know you told me to leave it alone, but Simon was being a right tosser. You can’t expect me to just sit back and do nothing.”
Edwin furrowed his substantial eyebrows. Charles had the unnerving feeling of being a logic puzzle about to be picked apart by a very clever person.
“It’s fine,” Edwin said at length. “I can’t feel it anymore.”
Well that didn’t sound right. Yeah it was healing, but Charles knew from experince that it probably still twinged a little. He opened his mouth to say so, but Edwin cut him off.
“Latin really isn’t so hard,” Edwin insisted, taking a seat beside him at the large study table. “And the first year of learning any language is mostly rote memorization anyhow. Do you know your primary learning modality?”
“My what?” Charles said, thrown off again by the shift in Edwin’s train of thought.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Edwin said with a tiny twitch of his lips.
Surprisingly, Charles didn’t feel like Edwin was laughing at him, but rather like he’d made a joke that Charles hadn’t quite caught.
“Put it this way, do you remember things better when you read them, when someone tells them to you, or when you take notes?”
Charles just blinked at him. It was genuinely not something he’d ever considered before.
“The answer is likely a combination thereof,” Edwin continued, “But if one modality is particularly strong for you, it can be advantageous to start there.”
“Listening, I guess?” Charles said. “I mean that’s how I learned English and Punjabi.”
Edwin paused where he had been unpacking a number of books and papers and turned his full attention to Charles. Honestly Charles hadn’t realized that he hadn’t had all of Edwin’s substantial attention until he had it all. Edwin’s eyes were a bright shade of green and when he made eye contact, Charles found he couldn't look away.
“You speak Punjabi.”
He said it like a statement, just repeating back what Charles had just said, but there was an inherent question there too. An unspoken demand for more information.
“Yeah, my mum’s family is from India and she taught me—”
“Headmaster Crowe heavily implied that you were simply uninterested in foreign languages.”
“That wanker!” Charles shouted, ready to stand up and march over to the headmaster’s office and set him straight.
But Charles stopped short when Edwin flinched. It was subtle. In less than a second, the other boy was back to his impeccable posture, staring straight ahead, hands folded in his lap. But Charles knew what it was like to be afraid. What it was like to have your ear tuned every second of every day to see if the wind was changing. What it was like to always be on alert in case hurt was on its way.
Charles plopped back into his seat, suddenly and deeply ashamed of himself for making this boy feel that way even for a moment.
“Sorry,” he said, taking deep breaths and very intentionally lowering his voice. “I just— I told him I didn’t want to take Latin in 6th form since I’m not exactly going to be taking an A-level in it, am I? Also, who speaks latin? It’s not like it’s very useful—”
Edwin a tight noise of disagreement.
“Where can you use Latin?” Charles asked playfully, hoping to draw out the other boy again. “It’s a dead language, mate!”
To his delight, Edwin fully rolled his eyes and turned back to face Charles.
“It’s a key language of antiquity,” Edwin argued. “Furthermore it’s a root language that forms the base of all the Latinates, not to mention the spelling of many English words.”
“You lost me with the Latinates, mate.”
“Languages that started as cruder forms of Latin; Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese.”
“No shit?” Charles said with a smile, mostly hoping that it would encourage Edwin to continue.
“And European colonization means that learning Latinate languages ensures that you’ll be able to talk to more people than you could reasonably expect to,” Edwin continued, falling into a professorial tone. “Add Cantonese and Hindi and you’ll be able to speak to a majority of people on Earth.”
“Wait,” Charles said, a thought hitting him with such force it felt true even before he asked for clarification. “Do you speak all those languages?”
“Among others, yes,” Edwin confirmed.
“Woah, so you are a proper genius, then!” Charles said, grinning broadly.
To his surprise and delight, Edwin ducked his head a bit as a pink flush bloomed across his cheeks.
“Most people choose the word ‘nerd,’” Edwin said softly.
“Well that too,” Charles agreed, still grinning as he knocked their shoulders together lightly. “So you’re willing to help me with remedial Latin even though you’re a proper Einstein?”
"Einstein was a physicist, Charles,” Edwin said exasperatedly. “Michael Ventris would be a more apt comparison.”
“Hmm,” Charles said, still grinning, “No idea who that is.”
“He deciphered Linear B—” Edwin cut himself off when Charles just kept grinning unrepentantly. “Oh nevermind. Where are you in the Latin textbook?”