Title: “Corpus”
Author:  kdbarbaro
Pairing:  Dakin/Irwin
Rating:  R, most like
Summary:  That ‘drink’. Oh, and guilt
Disclaimer:  Don’t own any of them, for profit or otherwise.  I just play with them and I promise to put them back when I’m done.
Movieverse

I wanted to get this second piece up before the madness of Nanowrimo begins.  One of the reasons for posting it at all is to give a HUGE thank you to solvent90 who did the most amazing beta anyone could ever hope for (especially after she explained what a beta was;-)  I think that the fic is infinitely better because of her very close reading and astute insights.  Thank you!
If people do wander over here to read it, I have a Posner fic that might go up as well.
Thank you for your patience.  You may now return to your regularly scheduled programs.



Irwin’s flat is clean but rather disorganized, aesthetically and academically.  Stacks of books are on the kitchen table, precariously perched.  More stacks on the floor here in the living room.  As well as the usual, two deep on every shelf of the five bookcases.  Dakin’s never known anyone with so many books that were personal possessions.  Must be like living in a library, with kitchen privileges.

“You could just put this lot together, throw a cloth over the top and you’d have a nice extra table.” Dakin shakes his head, a bit amused, a bit patronizing.  Irwin’s smile says he’d expected something of the sort.

Somewhere in the background is Bach.  Dakin looks round until he locates the speakers, sitting atop two stacks of books at opposite ends of the room.

“Didn’t figure you for a Baroque lover,” Dakin says, just for something to say.  “Not really your era, I should think.” It’s unduly and unfairly narrowing of him.  He’s always been impressed by how wide reaching Irwin’s interests actually are.

“Perhaps not,” Irwin says, shrugging.  There’s a slight pause.  “It means ‘irregular pearl’.  Baroque.”

“Mmmm,” Dakin says.

“I suppose it’s that I don’t actually fancy having to listen to ‘Hitler Has Only Got One Ball,” Irwin says.  And blushes a bit.  Dakin grins.  On the chair lies an open copy of the book Irwin presumably was last reading.

“*On the Black Hill*,” Dakin reads.  “It’s a novel.  Thought you didn’t read novels.”

“He’s from Sheffield,” Irwin says, as if that explains it.

“Ah.  But the novel’s about Wales,” Dakin insists.

“Yes.  Yes, it is rather.”

“What else . . . “ Dakin lays the Chatwin back on the chair and takes it upon himself to give a superficial look over the other, most visible books.  He picks up another that has a marker halfway through.  “*The Gathering Storm*.  Churchill.  Volume one.  I’ll bet you’ve read all six, haven’t you.”

“Several times,” Irwin says, absent any bragging in the admission.  “They’re really quite magnificent.  I think you’d find them interesting.  You should . . .” He falters.

“I will, thanks.  You ever loan a book out?”

“I would to you, yes.  If you wanted it.”  Irwin blinks, looks away.  As if his discomfort has blossomed simply from the word “want”, in any conjugation.  A rather long silence ensues; Irwin puts his hands in his trouser pockets, an anchor for himself.

“So,” Dakin says, rather suddenly, taking command.  “How’d we go about this, eh?  Shall we . . . in here?  Or is . . . well there’s no place for me to sit in here, is there?”  He makes another show of looking at the books and papers strewn over everything.  Curious that there’d been no attempt to straighten the place up a bit.  Maybe Irwin never thought they’d actually get this far.   Geographically or relationally.

“I could stand, I suppose.” Dakin jams his own hands into his leather jacket and lifts his chin.  It makes him look a little thuggish.  “Which would be more comfortable for you?”  Irwin’s gone pale at his brashness, the sheer goal-directedness of it.

“Relax,” Dakin says, voice lowering. “I’m only taking the piss.  God, you’re a bit of a mess, aren’t you?”

“Yes.  Yes, I expect I am,” Irwin says.  “This isn’t a situation I’ve ever –“

“What? Never sucked off a bloke before?  Now, I’m not going to believe that one.”  Irwin looks close to fainting, poor bastard, so Dakin has to take charge of this part as well.  Goes up to him, right up close and slides his forefinger along the opening of Irwin’s shirt, then inside, resting it against the button.

“You always this nervous?”

“As I . . . as I said; it’s not a situation I’ve been in before.  With a student.”

“Not a student any longer,” Dakin corrects.  This doesn’t appear to make much of a helpful impact on Irwin.  In fact, he takes a step back, breaking the tenuous contact.

“You were.  That’s what I’ll always remember of all of that, quite clearly.  Wanting . . . “ Irwin takes a hard, resigned breath, as if unsure he should, even now, name it.  “Letting you on that last day . . . before you’d even left school.  *My* student.  When-“

“Have you met my friend, Scripps?” Dakin interrupts, with cheeky inquiry.  “You could go to confession together.  The pair of you.  You Catholic?”

“No, I-“

“C of E, then?”

“Dakin . . .”

“What?”  Irwin’s eyes seem pale behind the delicate rims, as if the glass has washed out all the colour.  Dakin sees he’s on the verge of committing to being miserable, and he can’t have that.

“Look.  I’m an Oxford student now, aren’t I.  Think of it that way.  You teach at Cutler’s.  I’m at Oxford.  I asked; you said yes, remember?”

“I remember,” Irwin says, mouth twisting into bitterness.  “Hector said . . .”

“What?  Hector said what?”

“He told me . . . he said,” and Irwin stops, right on the edge of it.  He bites his lip.  “He told me not to touch you.”  Dakin’s eyebrows lift, in surprise that such a conversation had ever taken place.  Irwin looks directly at him, pained.  “That . . . that you’d think me a fool.”

“You *are* joking,” Dakin says.  This is all too absurd.

“No.  No, I’m not.”

“How can that be, eh?  I’m here.  In your flat.  It’s not like a quick grope, is it?  At least, I don’t think it’s to be that.  And I don’t think you’re a fool, and I wouldn’t do.  It’s ridiculous for you to fixate on that.  That’s gone, we’re past that.  This is now.  Now.  And something is going to happen.  D’you understand?”  Irwin gives him a smile that isn’t actually one, and runs his hand through his hair.

“God, I wish this weren’t so awful for you,” Dakin says, and means it.  It’s hard watching Irwin do this, when for Dakin everything is so simple.  The upside of being uncomplicated, he supposes.

Irwin’s quiet then, nods near imperceptibly, and Dakin can actually feel the moment when he’s made his decision.  Like a bolt slid back, the door not yet opened.  But there’s something else that Dakin can sense, beyond the guilt of him being a student, former student.  Irwin appears to be steeling himself.

“What?  Just say it for Christ’s sake, whatever it is.”

“All right, then,” Irwin says, taking a deep breath.  “All right.  Could I - would it be okay if I . . . if I kissed you?  First, I mean.  I know that it isn’t . . . well, it isn’t what we’d talked about.”

“No.  We’d only talked about your sucking me off.”  He can see Irwin retreat, without having moved at all.  Impressive accomplishment.  He thinks about it, stares at Irwin’s mouth, feels rather than sees Irwin twitching away from him.

“All torn up about that too, are you?  You’re really something,” he says.  “Maybe you should think about becoming a Catholic.  You’ve apparently had loads of practice in the guilt arena.”  But he makes his smile gentle, smoothing out the edge.  “Okay, yeah.  You can kiss me.  I don’t mind.  But these go off first, yeah?  I don’t fancy getting injured in the course of this.  How would I explain it to people?”  Very carefully he removes Irwin’s glasses and sets them respectfully on top of the nearest stack of books.

“God,” he says suddenly, considering.  “You’re dead fit without your glasses, you know that?”  The nascent smile on Irwin erodes into something more self-conscious, something more twisted up in it.

“You don’t think so, do you,” Dakin says, not quite believing it could be true.  Never having had any difficult believing in his own attractiveness, this surprises him.  Because Irwin is strikingly handsome without his glasses.  It’s as if this secret had been kept from him all term.  He doesn’t know of what importance it would have had, earlier, but he’d have wanted to know.  And now he knows something none of the rest of them do.

“Well, never mind.  But you should work on that.  So, do you want to kiss me here?  Or have you got a bedroom?  You do have one of those, don’t you?  We could go in there.  Unless you’re one of those people who falls asleep upright in a chair with a two stone book on your lap.  Mr. Churchill’s Volume Three cutting off the circulation, eh?”

“Fuck off,” Irwin says, his smile shy.  “I have a bedroom, like everyone else.”

“Let’s see it then.”  It’s a mess as well, the bed unmade, clothes thrown over a chair.

“Didn’t expect to be entertaining in here, did you?” Dakin asks, having walked right in.  Irwin haunts the doorway.

“Not . . . no, I didn’t.  I thought . . . well, never mind.”

“Right, never mind,” Dakin says, echoing.  “Come in here, then.”  Irwin comes towards him with slow, near reluctant steps.

“Can you see without your glasses?”

“Well enough,” Irwin says, softly, and Dakin feels a thrill of something up his spine.  Something other than the thrill of being more confident than Irwin.

 If he waits for Irwin to make the first move, they’ll be here watching the sun go down and come up again, so Dakin carefully takes Irwin’s head in his hands and kisses him.  They’re of a height, although Dakin’s an inch the taller from self-confidence alone.  Even though he’d never kissed a bloke before and had never considered he would, he finds it’s nice.  More than nice, actually.  Irwin moves into the kiss as if Dakin’s a bottle of rare Bordeaux, but he’s only to be allowed a taste of it.  And that’s nice as well.  Feeling that want.  Tentatively, Irwin’s hands come up, rest at Dakin’s waist, move slowly over his shirt, up his back.

“Is this all right?” he says.  He touches Dakin as if he’s trespassing.  There’s no answer, Dakin’s mouth brushing along Irwin’s shoulder.

“Do you . . . mind this?” Irwin says, pulling back.

“Do you always ask permission this many times?  Shall I sign something?”  Dakin moves back into the kiss, still surprised he’s liking it as much as he does.  It isn’t as if he doesn’t understand Irwin’s extreme hesitation; clearly he’d expected Dakin to walk in his front door and unzip by the hanging coats and mufflers, kicking the overshoes aside.  

The expression in Irwin’s very blue eyes and about his mouth ranges from guilt, to a flickering sort of pain, to puzzlement, to a very faint show of pleasure.  But he won’t let himself show more.  If he feels it, he’s looking away when he does.

“It’s all right, you know.  Here,” Dakin says, pulling out his shirttails.  “I’ll just help this along a bit, shall I?”  Reclaiming Irwin’s hands once more, he settles them underneath his loosened shirt.  The fingers that smooth over his bare skin are surprisingly warm and there’s that little thrill of something again.  Leaning in a bit, he kisses Irwin more deeply, encouraging, moving his fingers through the fine, blond hair.  Those hands move upwards, stroke over the muscles of his back.  At his shoulder through his shirt, Dakin can feel Irwin’s warm breath.

“Do you . . . do you like that?” Irwin says, filled with hesitant, hopeful desire.  “My touching you.”  Dakin makes some sort of noise of assent, mouth now preoccupied at Irwin’s throat.

“Is it exciting to you . . . at all?” The hopefulness sounds almost dashed in his voice, closer to sad really.  And Dakin pulls back to look him in the eye.

“Can you not tell that?  Really?” he says.  It’s unbelievable, given the way he’s just been kissing Irwin.  Who again goes a bit pale.  That smile self-deprecating.  Still judging himself for his own wants.  Ashamed of it.

“Well, the answer’s yes, then,” Dakin says.  “Maybe I didn’t expect it to be, but then I didn’t expect we’d be doing this.  And neither did you.  Different rules now, yeah?”  Irwin appears to expect there to be something else, some qualifier.  When it doesn’t come, that look of puzzlement crosses his features again.

It’s a bit like driving blind, for both of them.  For himself, he has no idea, really, where he’s going.  Has decided he doesn’t so much care.  It was to be just a wank, then just a blowjob, now there’s kissing and all.  Who knows what else?  But Irwin apparently, doesn’t believe they’ll get wherever this is going without a smash up.  All Dakin wants to think of is this moment, that he likes the taste and the feel of Irwin’s tongue, his mouth and his hands.  And that the impact of all of this is slowly wending its way through his body.  Disappointingly, Irwin backs off him again.

“I want . . . that is, I’d like,” Irwin says.

“I’m listening,” Dakin says.  He’s still finding this amusing.

“I don’t . . . I don’t know how you’d feel about it.”

“Ask then.  I can only say no.  Surely you’d survive that.”  Irwin’s glance is that blinking hopeful look, without an actual shred of hope in it.

“Would you let me see you . . . undressed?” Irwin says, his voice faint.  “Before, I mean.”

“Got brave, have you?” Dakin says.  And immediately begins to strip off his clothes.  He doesn’t mind if Irwin sees him naked, far from it.  There have always been these moments in the boys’ changing room where Dakin’s affirmed over and again, his comfort with his own nudity, his own body, his own attractiveness.  But there was never anyone to actually look, or feel comfortable looking – except Posner, and however accepted that longing was, it didn’t do to encourage it.  

Dakin had considered only that he’d feel gratified.  Nothing else.  Thought he’d get hard, not through actual attraction to Irwin, only through experiencing Irwin’s attraction to him.  One way.  Not this, particularly.  He doesn’t really know what ‘this’ is yet.  But he’s glad he scoffed at getting Irwin a subscription to The Spectator instead.

He lies on the bed; half smile, half hard, watching while Irwin guiltily drinks him in.

“Are you not going to get your kit off as well?” Dakin asks, idly.  Because it’s gone from just wanting Irwin’s mouth on him – and no need to remove any clothes for that – to wanting to see him as well.  All of him.

“What for?” Irwin says, retreating.  “That wasn’t . . . it isn’t about me.  This isn’t.”

“Isn’t it?”  Dakin stretches deliberately on the bed like a cat, watching Irwin in his neat scholar’s trousers, his vulnerable bare throat visible at the top of his opened shirt.

“Of course not.  That wasn’t part of it; your . . . your request.  Offer, I mean.”  Dakin laughs.

“Can’t decide, can you?  If I offered you something, or if I requested it.  Scripps called me a ‘complacent fuck’ once.  Am I, d’you think”  He can see Irwin react to the knowledge that Scripps is aware of this.  Them.

 “I suppose that depends on the definition of the word,” Irwin says slowly, choosing to ignore the mention of Scripps.

“How d’you mean?”

“What Scripps called you.  There are two definitions, you know.”  It’s fairly clear Dakin didn’t know.  “Complacent can mean ‘eager to please’.”  Dakin smiles at him from the bed.

“Or what?”

“Or self satisfied.  Smug.”  They stare at each other; Irwin holding on longer than Dakin would’ve thought he’d be able to do.

“So which are you now?” Irwin says.  “Smug?  Or eager to please?”  Dakin eyes him thoughtfully.  Something else has entered into Irwin’s tone that wasn’t there before.  But not unfamiliar to him.  There’s a hint of what he recalls from the classroom.  A hint of that challenge.

“Maybe English is your thing.  Not History at all.  So.  You pick.  Which do you think he meant?”  Scripps was right about one thing, Dakin is a flirt.

“I suppose . . . well, I suppose we’ll see.  From here on in.”

He likes the dare in Irwin’s words.  And it’s terribly gratifying that this whole exchange has taken place with him lying naked on Irwin’s very rumpled bed.  Odd how it makes him feel more in control of this.  And being objectified does have its merits. Just to underscore this, he takes his hard prick in hand and strokes slowly, and watches Irwin, near frozen, the challenging stance melting a bit.

“I suppose we will,” Dakin answers, almost carelessly.  “I think you should come here and find out.”  Irwin doesn’t move.  “Listen.  Rules’ve changed, yeah?  Would you like a codicil added to the originally negotiated terms?”  Irwin says nothing.  “It isn’t what you agreed on, but then, it isn’t what *I* thought I wanted either.  It’s different.  And it’s all right, really it is.”  Maybe he does want to please, after all.  There’s a very long moment in which he feels Irwin struggling with himself, clearly wanting, even now afraid of making a move.  Mired.  Dakin gives him a slow smile.

 “C’mon, Poland,” he says softly.  “You knew something was up.”  Irwin startles, stares at Dakin, then shows that half rueful, half shy smile.  And begins to unbutton the rest of his shirt.

It’s rather a shock, Irwin naked; Dakin’s never been this close to another naked man in his life.  And certainly not pressed up against one who’s showing all sorts of obvious signs of wanting him.  Irwin’s long, and lean, and underfed looking.  Fragile almost.  Dakin flashes on Fiona’s round strong looking and very female body.  Which he’d never seen the whole of.   Another jolt to realize that Irwin’s now seen more of him, and desperately wanted to, than Fiona has.  The difference between several months of dating, and a handful of days of seduction.  Although to be honest, his seduction of Irwin started fairly early on, even if he hadn’t realized what it was, at the time.

He’s got Irwin underneath him in a half second, where both of them apparently want him to be.  Dakin’s never been one to shy away from a challenge, and since Irwin’s done nothing but shy away, except in brief moments, it’s his race to lose.  

Even though it’s become more than allowing Irwin to service him, Dakin does indeed let him suck him off.  Stretched out on the bed, eyes closed, it crosses his mind that Irwin excels at more than getting them into Oxbridge.  But he stops it long before he’s close to coming, and the confusion is back in Irwin’s eyes.  He seems not to adapt very easily.  Quite unlike the classroom where he was quick on his feet, quicker than them, always.

“Lay back,” Dakin whispers and then settles his hips in such a way that Irwin has to part his long legs to accommodate him.  Then he gives that cheeky grin and raised eyebrow.  Slides his hand over Irwin’s hip and under his knee, pressuring until Irwin gives in, both legs loosely enclosing Dakin’s body in their grasp.

“Do you want that?” Dakin says. “For me to fuck you.” And feels such a responsive shudder it would be difficult for Irwin to say no and get away with it.  He leans in and kisses Irwin, deeply.  “Tell me what you want,” he whispers.  “I’m being complacent now, that first definition.”

“Wouldn’t it . . . I mean, would it . . . Doesn’t it disgust you?” Irwin asks faintly, his skin once again that shamed white colour.

“Christ.  Your syntax really leaves something to be desired,” Dakin says, with a grin.  “Wouldn’t it?  Would it?  Doesn’t it? You should decide whether you’re asking about the presence of, or the absence of, the disgust in question.  It’s rather confusing, as it is.”  

In his arms, Dakin can feel Irwin’s heart slamming in his chest.  He wishes Irwin trusted him a bit more.  But then he can’t let go of the need to spar with him either.  However much he denied it to Irwin, there’s no escaping that he does rather like the idea of himself as mastering the master.  

“Anyway,” he says, “how’d you know I haven’t done it with a girl?”

“It’s not the same . . . it’s--“ Dakin raises his eyebrows.  “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Dakin says with a manic grin.  Although it’s a lie.  He’s never fucked a girl in this way, but he doesn’t think it would happen here either, if he lets the word ‘virgin’ occur to Irwin.  Just one more thing for him to feel guilty about.

“But you’re still a teacher, aren’t you,” Dakin whispers.  “So, you have to show me exactly how you want it.”  He desires this, desires Irwin, with the same kind of intensity with which he wanted Oxford.  Irwin had been out of reach and now he’s not and Dakin doesn’t stop himself from imagining there could be a next step he’d be interested in taking.  

He hadn’t ceased wanting Oxford when he knew he had it.  It’s a distinct possibility he won’t cease wanting Irwin either, after having him.  At first he’d admired Irwin, wanted his approval more than he’d wanted it from anyone.  The discovery of Irwin’s caution and his insecurity could’ve put him off, but it doesn’t.  The contradiction of it only entices him further into the field.

It fascinates him now, the moment when he judges that Irwin’s become entirely defenseless.  The moment when he’s entirely engulfed, overrun by superior forces.  One could say.

“Ah, Poland,” Dakin finds himself repeating, irresistibly.  The analogy too good to relinquish, just yet.  His tone is aroused and teasing.  Perhaps before, he would’ve said the illicit thrill of it would be about fucking a man, or maybe fucking his former teacher.  Before, it might have been about winning only; winning a scholarship to Oxford, winning a blowjob from Irwin.  He didn’t expect to really want this, like this.  But now, fucking this clever, uncertain, scared and provocative man who’s becoming undone by what Dakin’s doing to him, well, it’s fucking amazing.  

Irwin still shakes underneath him, arms holding Dakin tight, as if it’ll be for the very last time.
“Jesus,” he says, softly.  Dakin rears up a bit, enough to meet his eye, his grin bright.
“Corpus,” he whispers, before leaning down into another kiss.