Teacher's Pet - 2. Chapter 2

Ash was also disquieted by the conversation. He was very well aware that he was treading on thin ice, but lately...

No one had ever paid much attention to him before... well not good attention at least. The school bullies had never had a problem singling him out from the crowd but no one else had ever seemed particularly interested, certainly not a teacher. Sure, he knew he could paint... had always known it, always done it as much as he could but no one had made a particularly big deal about it.

And then along came Mr Steerman. Young, enthusiastic, committed and... quite frankly, hot. He was young looking for a teacher, with warm brown eyes and not a bad body. His hair was a bit short and he seemed a bit straight... in the attitude department that was, everyone knew he was gay. He was the first person Ash had ever met who had neither done anything to try and hide it, nor thrust it in your face.

Ash had known he was gay since he was old enough to think about sexuality at all. The female form had never appealed to him in any way. Not that he was entirely unable to appreciate beauty in a woman; he knew that Ruth, for example was truly beautiful with her fiery red hair and flashing emerald eyes. He also know that she would have been happy to give him first hand experience of the rest of her if he had ever shown the slightest interest, which he had not. She was his friend, his best friend and that was more than enough for him, if not for her.

Ash had been very careful to conceal any sign of his sexuality from all but his very closest friends. From age seventeen they had been frequenting the gay clubs and bars in Cardiff most weekends and those were the only times he was ever truly himself. His parents had been more than happy with this because they went in a foursome.... Ash, Ruth, Judith and Jay. As Jude and Jay were a couple, a lot of people simply assumed that he and Ruth were together and he had simply never done anything to disabuse them of the idea.

Sometimes it came in useful to hide behind a fake relationship. Sometimes it got... difficult because sometimes Ruth let herself start believing in it. At those times Ash almost invariably ended up doing something stupid with a stranger which he always regretted... well almost always. He smiled at that thought.

“Hey Leonard... where you been? Making out with your boyfriend in the art room is it?”

“Oh great, it’s the dweeb twins. Still sharing the same brain cell? It must be getting quite overburdened by now. Word on the street is that you managed to remember your own names for a whole week.”

“Careful pretty boy, one of these days you will get sharp enough to cut yourself.”

“Oh good joke... as if I haven’t heard that one before.”

“Seriously, sweet cheeks, you want to watch yourself... and your boyfriend too. The word on my street is that it has not gone unnoticed that you are the teacher’s little pet... and petting of pupils is strictly against the rules. Your sweet infatuation is going to get your precious Joshua sacked.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

The twins blocked his way as he tried to push past them. “Take our word for it, Mr Steerman’s days are numbered and it’s all thanks to you.”

“Get out of my way.”

“Make us you Goth freak.”

“I’m not a Goth.”

“Long black hair, pale skin, wears make up and nothing but black with a freaky obsession for all things spooky and dead. That makes you a Goth in my book.”

“I don’t read your books. In fact I seriously doubt you know how to read a book. Get out of my way.”

“Be careful precious... you really don’t want to upset us... you never know how we might react.”

“Oh, I know how you’ll react... stupidly, the way you always do.”

“Stop calling us stupid.”

“You stop being stupid, I’ll stop...” He stopped as he was slammed into the wall a fist bunching the front of his shirt. He smiled mildly. “I rest my case... stupid.”

The red face came close to his and he was flecked with spittle as the voice hissed. “Be careful. Be very, very careful. We know what you are, smart arse, and we don’t like your sort. Behave yourself, be a good little fag and I won’t have to rearrange the features on that pretty face.”

“Well, I suppose you could try.”

“Oh big words, big man. Are you looking for a fight?”

“Not looking, no, but I’m not afraid of you.”

“Well you should be. Trust me, you should be.”

“Give me a break Joel. You and Jake like to come the hard men but you’re a pair of pussies... and I don’t do pussy.”

His eyes locked with the blazing grey ones and, for a moment he thought that he was going to be hit, there and then. He smiled. “Go on Joel. Hit me. I know you want to. Hit me right here, right now. Get it off your chest. But, while you’re doing it, ask yourself why. What is it about me that makes you so uneasy? What are afraid of? Could it be that maybe... just maybe... that this isn't the kind of pummelling you want to be giving me at all?”

“What?” He watched the light come on and the expression change. Joel flung him away a look of disgust on his face. “Filthy fag. You got a death wish or something? I’m warning you... stay away from us. I see you outside this place and I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“Yeah, yeah big man.” He turned and walked away with measured steps, his head high.

“Don’t think that being teacher’s pet is going to save you.”

“The thought never crossed my mind.”

“Your boyfriend won’t always be there to look out for you.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s not that lucky.”

“You’re dead Leonard.”

“Am I? And I never noticed. Bad job.”

Just before he turned the corner he waved and smiled. As soon as he was out of sight he stopped smiling and scowled. Jerks. He hated them; both of them; all of them. It was almost the end of lunch break but he didn’t head back towards the classrooms. Instead he walked in the other direction, out of the gates, fast and unhesitatingly.

Once out of the gates Ash turned up towards the lane that ran along the back of the school and headed along it, away from school away from home, away from all the jerks who made his life a misery. Half way along the lane he clambered over a ditch and up into the woods. Climbing steeply he continued in a fairly straight line, scrambling over fallen branches and averting deep ditches and cracks in the forest floor until he finally broke out of the trees onto the fairly open top of the mountain.

Walking across the rough grass, the sun hot on his back he began to relax. In the middle of the clearing was a large flat rock on which he often sat to sketch, think or just to escape the world. Today, he simply stretched out and stared up at the sky. He had no way of knowing but it was the exact same shade as his eyes.

Ash closed his eyes feeling very, very tired. Why did life have to be so bloody hard? He wasn’t a bad person, in fact he was a good person, a really good person. Polite and respectful, responsible, hard working. He was good to his parents, kind to his grandma, a great brother to his kid brothers and sisters. He was an all round good guy... so why did he have to suffer like this? Why did he have to show talent in the one discipline his father would never accept, never approve of? Why couldn’t he have been a rugby player, or even a musician... his father would have been made up if he’d been able to play guitar.

And why... for the love of the gods... with the father he had, why did he have to be so... pretty? He hated the way he looked, hated it and because he hated it he enhanced it and underlined it at every opportunity. If he was going to be continually taunted by his father and older brother for looking like a girl he was going to thrust it in their faces not hide from it. If he had to be pretty he was going to do it aggressively.

It paid to be aggressive in his house. His father wasn’t a bully as such. He was a good man, in his way. He was just a typical beer swilling, rugby playing Valley man full of roar and thunder. The fact that his older brother; all of his brothers, were the same didn’t help. He had no idea where the hell he had come from, had always considered himself to be an outsider in his own family. He had been teased for being girly, which he wasn’t; and gay, which he was, so often and for so long that he had become very good at hiding it. So good in fact that sometimes it was hard to remember what the real Ash was like at all.

The real Ash. It had been a long time since he had seen that person. These days the real Ash was buried deep and didn’t come out to play very often. Even on the increasingly rare occasions they went clubbing the real Ash rarely lifted his head above the parapet. The Ash who went clubbing now was quiet and pensive, all the energy gone, the excitement drained away. He took attention when it came without looking for it and he clung to it with indecent desperation. Crumbs from the table, never enough to satisfy the need that was like an itch deep inside, an itch he couldn’t scratch, could only relieve for a while, an ever decreasing relief that made him sick with disgust at himself.

He lifted his hand and rubbed at his eyes, shading them from the sun and sighed languidly. He should move to the shade. His skin was sensitive to sunlight. He never tanned, never came close but he burned easily.

His head was really aching now. Too many thoughts and none of them pleasant. Usually he could let his mind wander to his art, thinking of the pieces he was working on or that he was particularly proud of. Usually he could think of Mr Steerman and feel that he had at least one friend who truly understood him. Now he wasn’t so sure that was a good idea... thinking of him that was. Was he really in trouble because of him? In this fucked up world anything was possible.

Ah gods... every time anything started to go well; every time it seemed that finally there was something good in his life, something that was his, just his, that no one could spoil or take from him... something came along and swept it right out from under him. What had he done to deserve this?

And now he was pulling someone else down with him, someone good, someone who actually cared about him. Fuck! Maybe he should walk away. The exam piece was pretty much finished, at least good enough to submit for the exam; if not to his uber critical standard then at least good enough to get an A. The rest of the bits and pieces he had been working on were also ‘good enough’ so there was really no reason why he should go to the Art Room at all, not unless he wanted to.

The truth was that he did want to. Over the past weeks, especially when he had finally become resigned to the knowledge that Art School was beyond his reach, he had wanted to pretty much all the time. More than that, he craved those times, the quiet times with the sounds of the school blowing through the open widows, muted, unreal, and the air fragrant with the smells of paint and clay. These were the only times he truly felt himself, the only times that the real Ash got to sniff the breeze. And then there was Mr Steerman... Joshua... Josh. He’d heard the rumours, couldn’t help but, they were thrust in his face every day by the likes of the Brust twins, and he had wondered.

He had looked at Mr Steerman closely, watching for any hint that his interest might be more than professional and there was something, signs he could find if he looked hard enough but the truth was, in all honestly Mr Steerman had never done anything, said anything, given him anything; a look, a sign, a touch; that was anything other than purely platonic. If not always entirely professional they were, at best friendly, never sexual, even sensual. He had no doubt that if Mr Steerman thought of him at all when they were not together it was with nothing more than professional interest.

The way he felt about that confused him. He could not truthfully say that he found his teacher particularly attractive. He was pleasant looking, a bit too ‘straight’ for Ash’s liking, but fairly cute, with eyes that had a tendency to sparkle and held an absorbed intensity when discussing Art that he had never seen in anyone else but himself. He seemed to have a good body too, toned and tanned. Not something that Ash aspired to but it was an asset. All in all the word Ash would use to describe him physically would have to have been.... pleasant. Hardly something to set his pulses racing. He was by no means a virgin and every single one of the men he had allowed to touch his body had been better looking, far better looking, more stacked, more toned, more polished. He seemed to attract the studs and he had certainly taken advantage of it.

The fact was though, that although there had been a procession of beautiful men who had touched his body, none of them had managed to touch his mind and certainly no one had ever touched his heart. Mr Steerman may not have been a stud but he had given Ash something that no man ever had before. He had given him genuine interest and stimulation of more than just his body, stimulation of his mind, his spirit, his soul. He had given him praise that was earned and not empty, concern that was genuine enough to put his own position in jeopardy, caring that had prompted him even to speak to Ash’s father who was not an easy man to approach about such things and had actually impressed him, not enough to persuade him that Art College would be a good move for his son but enough to make him take a second look and acknowledge that there was talent there.

He was a nice man, a genuine man, a man who cared about all his pupils. He was interesting to talk to, and not just about Art. In those long hours that Ash had spent in his company, often with just the two of them there, they had talked about anything and everything. He knew a lot, had read widely and, although his tastes were different to Ash’s in many ways, their thirst for knowledge, real knowledge was the same. Astronomy, astrology, philosophy, psychology, spirituality, politics, religion; they had had talked about it all, discussed it thoroughly and found they had similar ideologies on most of it. That was rare enough.

Was it possible to fall in love with someone’s mind? Was it possible to look at someone and see, not what they looked like but what they thought like? To feel your heart beat faster at the excitement of pure conversation? The fact was that he had been having dreams... exciting dreams, dreams that made him wake with his heart racing, his mind reeling and his body tingling. And the dreams had not been about just talking.

Was it a crush? He knew that he had been the subject of more than one. There were people at the clubs who were... attentive, very attentive. Despite the fact that he had made it abundantly clear he was not interested they still hung on his every word, gazed at him with sheep eyes. They were embarrassing. Had he featured in their dreams? The thought made him shudder. Is that the way Mr Steerman thought of him? As an embarrassment, someone who was getting too close and should be pushed away albeit gently? Wasn’t that exactly what he had done today?

The swirling thoughts continued to pound his mind and, in the end he just let them go and stopped thinking altogether, just stared blankly at the sky. At some point he must have fallen asleep because suddenly he woke and it was dark.

“Damn!”

Heart pounding he leaped off the stone. He had no way of knowing what time it was because he didn’t own a watch, but the very fact that it was dark was evidence enough that it was too late. Too late to get home without having to answer difficult questions... too late to be able to pretend he had been at school... too late to sneak off to his room without having to speak to anyone. Yep... it was already too late, way too late.

It was a fine bright night so he was never in any danger of falling ... over roots or down the cracks left by the extensive mining works that riddled that mountain and all the others that surrounded the valley, and he made it back to the road without any major incident. Slinging his bag across his shoulder he hurried along the road, towards the school gate where the houses began.

He was about half way there when he heard the voices and cursed. That was the last thing he needed, bumping into a crowd of pissed assholes... he just wasn’t in the mood.

Keeping his head down he increased his speed and hoped that he would get past them without them even noticing he was there. No such luck.

“Hey hey, what do we have here? Look who it is, boys. Where you been cock sucker? Playing with your boyfriend?”

“Oh great! The twat twins. Could my day GET any better?”

“I doubt it. I doubt your day is going to be getting any better at all any time soon. Ours might though.”

“Oh get out of my way. You don’t scare me.”

“Don’t I? You should be scared, pretty boy... you really should. There’s no one here for you now. No one to hear you scream.”

“Dream on.”

Ash tried to get past him but Joel threw him backwards so that he stumbled and was caught by someone else, from behind and pushed forwards again. This time he righted himself and stood upright, throwing his bag to the side so the he had both hands free. The next time one of them came for him, from the side he was ready and, before the boy knew what was happening he was sailing through the air to crash heavily into the fence that ran along the back of the school. Falling awkwardly he lay still, winded.

“Look... I’m not here for a fight. I can do it if you want me to, I’m not helpless but I really would rather not. Come on... get out of my way and let me go home.”

For a moment it looked as though Joel was going to take a swing at him but he flicked his eyes over Ash’s head to where his brother was obviously passing him signals of some kind because he finally nodded and stepped grudgingly to one side.

“Alright. Get the fuck out of here.”

Relieved, Ash walked over to his bag and it was when he was straightening from picking it up that he realised he had done a damn stupid thing in turning his back on them. It was when the piece of wood slammed into the back of his head sending him face first into the fence. After that first moment, the blinding realisation of his own stupidity, Ash didn’t really have time for any more revelation, other than a brief flash of fear and anger as someone grabbed him by the back of the shirt and sent him spinning face down into the road. And after that all he could do was curl up into a tight ball trying to protect his head from the barrage of kicks and blows until he lost consciousness and nothing mattered any more.

When awareness returned it came slowly and in stages. The first thing that permeated the darkness was pain. It was everywhere making the whole world pulse red. At first it was a disconnected kind of pain, one that he acknowledged but didn’t really understand. It wasn’t something that was happening to him just something he was noting in a dispassionate way. Next he became aware of the weight of his body pressed against the hard road, its surface rough under his cheek and the back of his hand. Finally the two came together; the body owned the pain and he groaned aloud.

Waves of pain washed over him, stabbing with tongues of flame at every breath. Nausea followed close on its heels and he barely managed to haul himself to his knees before vomiting copiously onto the road. Shivering he wiped his mouth and sat back on his heels, hunched over against the pain. Gradually he became aware that this was hurting him, that there was a burning, insistent pain in his leg that was being made worse by the way he was kneeling. Pressing his hand against his thigh he felt a tear in his trousers, the cloth sticking to him, glued to his skin by something wet and sticky. Beneath the tear was a pain he could not touch, that screamed at him when he pressed his hand against it so that he had to take the hand away.

He crawled a few paces to a clean patch of road and let his tortured body slide to the ground again. There was a pounding roar in his head and the taste of blood in his mouth and so much pain he could not, at first, work out where it was all coming from.

Eventually it occurred to him that he really should be doing something. A creeping coldness was numbing the pain; he realised that he was beginning to drift and it frightened him. Resolve settled over him like a blanket. There was no way he was going to just lie here, waiting for rescue like a kicked puppy... or... or whatever else was coming, breathing sweetly on his neck, soothing his mind and body with its cold, cold touch.

Somehow he managed to haul himself to his knees again and sat huddled, on all fours, his head hanging, almost touching the ground. The pain was a physical entity, external to himself but dragging him down. He didn’t let himself think what it meant. He seemed to have been kneeling in a puddle of water, his clothes were soaked with it, his hair clinging damply to his face and shoulders. It didn’t occur to him to wonder were the water would have come from after over a week of sunshine or why it was thick, sticky and smelled faintly of iron.

It took an almost indecent amount of effort to inch forwards. The streetlight outside the first house was only a couple of hundred yards away but it may as well have been a couple of hundred miles at that point. He didn’t even consider trying to stand up. The slightest movement caused indescribably pain and whenever he raised his head he was overwhelmed by dizziness. He was incredibly cold and the uncontrollable shivering didn’t help.

After about fifteen minutes, having moved less than fifty feet he collapsed and lay still. There was no question of trying to move again. The tarmac was rough under his face, partially obscured by long strands of his own hair, still wet, and he was so cold that he was beginning to go completely numb. The sky was lightening and he stared past the tarmac to the greenery on the other side of the road. He could not turn his head, could not move, could not feel. He could feel himself slipping and it occurred to him that he might be dying. At that point he really didn’t care.

Something touched his shoulder. It seemed far away, as if it was happening to someone else. Hands touched him, grabbed him and rolled him onto his back. He was beyond pain now, beyond resistance. His eyes stared up at the sky, lost in the starry depths, unseeing of the familiar face, now pale and shocked, which leaned over him, the lips moving soundlessly. The beauty of the night sky overwhelmed him until it was blotted out by the face which leaned closer to his.

“Ash... Ash can you hear me? Ash... Oh my God. We didn’t mean... Ash... ASH!”

He could hear voices, distant but discernable and if he could have moved he would have laughed aloud. A flashlight flared in his face and he couldn’t close his eyes to shut out the light. It was painful but what was another pain in a world filled with it?

“Fuck Joel. FUCK! Look at him. Look at the blood. You said... you said he’d be alright. If we hadn’t come...”

“Yeah well... we did come. He’s alright. He’s going to be alright.”

“If this is your definition of ‘alright’ I would hate to see someone who isn’t. Joel... wake up mate. We did this.... FUCK. FUCK we’ve killed him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s alright. Help me get him up. We’ll take him home.”

“Joel, what world are you living in? He’s not... he can’t...”

“Jake. For God’s sake pull yourself together. Here, hold the flashlight. I’ll get him up.”

“But Joel...”

“Just hold the fucking light.”

Ash blinked as the flashlight moved away and back. Hands grabbed his shoulders and hauled him into a sitting position. Pain exploded and he became aware of a strange noise which he eventually worked out was coming from his own throat. It was a gasping, choking noise which stopped when his jaw clamped and his throat closed as the pain engulfed and overwhelmed him and the stars spun into darkness.