AN: Beck/Jade Student/Teacher AU for Silvia.
The huge pile of marking in front of him is beginning to get look hazy and he pushes his glasses higher up on his nose with cramped, tired fingers. Finally he wrenches them off and slams them down on the top of the stack of papers and presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose and breaths in deeply. It doesn't help. He still can't get her out his mind. The school is silent, the stampede of students passing by his office door rushing to catch their various buses and lifts home over. She however had stood by his door, perfectly aligned in the small square of glass, chatting to some friend he couldn't see for at least five minutes after, twirling her long dark hair in her fingers and smiling with those red painted lips. It was like she knew he was watching, couldn't help but stare at the way her lips moved as she talked, how her dark eyelashes fluttered, how her hair slipped like silk through her own fingers. He swore he saw her glance his way numerous times, just a flicker of the eye through the door to where he was sitting, trying hard to be immersed in planning for a lesson, but watching her from under his glasses. She smiled like she knew it was killing him. She probably did.
He tries to get a grip on himself, forces concentration into his mind and hurriedly finishes scratching some comments on a students essay. He moves onto the next one, only to stop short when her name is written in sprawling cursive at the top. He feels his heartbeat quicken at just her handwriting, imagines her signing it with the ghost of a smile on her lips, late at night in her room, already dressed for bed in scanty night clothes and her back coloured hair tumbling down her back to reach the waistband of her shorts. His pulse is racing. He tries to snap out of it.
He makes himself move his attention and begins to read, noting her eloquent use of language, the original points she brings up, the way her sentences flow like this is one sort of play she's written, not a standard english essay. If she were just attractive, maybe he could manage, but Jade West is both alluring and vastly more intelligent than most women he knows. And she's only seventeen years old. And Beck feels like he's drowning in just the thought of her. He shouldn't be having these thoughts, can't be having these thoughts, she's practically a child, godamn it. But she's so much more. It's driving him insane.
WIthout having a chance to stop his racing thoughts, the english lesson her had with her and her fellow students just this morning starts to play in his mind. Stopping it is as impossible as breathing underwater.
He strides in a couple of minutes late and grabs his glasses from the front of his shirt where he stores them, a teen habit he hasn't quite got out of yet. He slams the copies of Romeo and Juliet he's carried from the school library down onto his desk and most of the class jumps at the sudden noise echoing in the small space. He grins at them and rakes a hand through his hair. He can already feel her watching him. He dismisses it.
"Right, glad to see you're awake everyone!" There's some disgruntled murmuring and he chuckles. "Too bad people, you stay awake or I pop quiz you on the stuff you slept through tomorrow. Now are you ready for the lesson?" This time there's some groans but they're good-natured and he starts handing out the textbooks to each student, laughing internally as their face either falls or lights up at the literature in their hands.
"Oh, nah, SIr! Not Shakespeare" pipes up one of his, let's say slightly dimmer, students at the front of the class and he grins. The boy is well meaning, and he tries fairly hard.
"I am afraid so, Mr Davis. For to read Shakespeare is to read the language of love, is it not? And since it was Valentine's Day a couple of days, I thought a sample of Romeo and Juliet was very apt." He winks at the class and smiles wryly when several girls at the front blush and lean forward an inch at their desks. He's 29, the youngest teacher they've got, and he knows he's not bad to look at. People wonder why, out of all the careers he could be doing; acting, modelling, writing, he chose teaching? But he has passion for passing on his love of literature, seeing that spark of recognition in pupils eyes when something clicks, seeing his enthusiasm reflected back at him when he's taught something well. He loves his job, but he has to be careful, he knows that too.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees the girl flicking through her edition and rolling her eyes skywards when he mentions Valentine's Day. He's not surprised however, that when he asks who's read the play before, her hand shoots up as well as a couple of others. He smiles at her for just a fraction too long. She smirks back.
He coughs awkwardly, trying to regain his train of thought. "Right, well I thought we'd do some class reading and discussion today. I want you to concentrate while we read on how Shakespeare portrays the emotion of love, how he uses language to emulate it and whether we truly believe Sir Montague and Miss Capulet are truly soul mates. Understand?" There's some nodding and a few eager looks whereas some students look like they want to nod off already. She shuffles in her seat so her black skirt is hitched up a couple of inches by accident, but he knows it is anything but when she stares pointedly at him, pretending to have been engrossed in what he's said. He tries to find the page number hurriedly, because her crystal blue eyes are burning into him, and he can not absolutely not at all even catch a glimpse of the pale skin of her thigh. Except he does and the breath catches in his throat.
"So, umm, we're looking for the part where Romeo and Juliet talk after he arrives, uhh, at her balcony, and I think it can be found at page…' he trails off, trying to hide the fact he's doing everything he can to stop even the slightest of blush reaching his face.
"Page 38" comes a clear, but slightly amused sounding voice from the other side of the room. He doesn't even have to look up to from rifling through pages to know who has spoken, but of course he does. Jade leans back in her chair, with her legs crossed now, and a smile playing across her lips. A single eyebrow is raised in his direction and damn it all if he doesn't find her so very sexy, sitting there with her book in her lap and her full lips twitching into a smile.
"Thank you, Miss West." He hopes the rest of the class can't hear the strain in his voice. He's sure she can.
There's some noise while everyone turns to the correct page. "Can I have two volunteers to read, please?" He's met with a hushed quiet. He sighs. "No one? Come on guys, help me out here?" he pleads.
There's another couple of seconds silence while most people do they old trick of sliding down in their seat so they're not chosen and avoiding his eye, and he's just about to pick anyway when she cuts in.
"I'll read for Juliet." He whips around to look at her. "If you want…Sir." She accentuates the 'sir' at the end and he has to take a deep breath to steady himself. Can't, shouldn't, won't. He needs to remember that.
"Great!" He puts on a fake enthusiastic voice. "So now for a Romeo. Do we have any vol-"
"They're all a bunch of dunderheads, Sir. They'll completely butcher the part if any of them read. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes. We need someone who can actually read Shakespeare. I'll only read if you read for Romeo." There's some more murmuring while the guys are middy offended at what she's said and half the girls nod and whisper enthusiastically. She's staring at him, pressuring him with her eyes and the blink of her eyelashes, and like the weak person he is, he gives in. This can only end badly.
"Umm, right Miss West. I'll be Romeo. Care to start?"
She takes a deep breath in and begins to read, her voice like velvet, slipping around the sometimes cumbersome language effortlessly, making it sound like music, not letters, and he watches the way her tongue darts out around the syllables and listen to the way she acts out each line, the intonation in her voice soft, beautiful and distracting. He's also too late, jumping in with his line, but she carries on like she hasn't noticed he was too busy staring at her to pay attention.
"How camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?
The Orchard walls are high and hard to climb
And the place death, considering who thou art,
if any of my kinsmen find thee here."
He answers, his voice just barely holding together.
"With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls.
For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do that dares love attempt.
Therefore they kinsmen are no stop to me."
They read more, answering each other in verse, and he is so enraptured by her delivery, her face as she speaks, that the classroom fades in comparison. It's dangerous. Finally they reach the part he's been dreading, his favourite Shakespearian quote from this play and it spills from her lips.
"My bounty is as boundless as the sea
My love as deep. The more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite."
She stops then and puts her book down open on her desk and raises her eyebrows at him.
"Can I stop now?" He blinks at her a couple of times before he answers and pushes a hand through his hair.
"Uhh, yes. Thank you Miss West."
"Welcome." she returns, a little smugly.
He swallows uncomfortably. "Right class, so you heard that extract. What do you think of Shakespeare and their love affair?"
A girl called Ashley pipes up, talking about how the love is presented as exciting and new for them, and he nods at her. He didn't quite think this lesson through. Gareth sticks his hand up.
"But, like I heard, that Juliet was like thirteen in this? Is that true, Sir?" he lumbers out.
"Quite true Mr WiIkins, if you are drawing on the original tale Shakespeare himself took his play from. It is true the girl Juliet is based on was very young, but our Juliet is perhaps a little older."
"But they still met, like once, and they're in love?" Gareth continues.
"It's the original whirlwind romance" he says. "It was love at first sight."
"That's stupid" another girl replies and couple of people shake their head. He can't help but think of his first lesson with her, the way she marched in and flung her bag onto the seat, hair swaying, then saw him and did a double take, eyes sparking. He felt drawn to her, and they've been in a hopeless game of Cat and Mouse ever since.
"But what do you think about Shakespeare and how he's used language to portray their relationship?" He asks and the class fall silent again, until, surprise surprise, she speaks.
"I think Shakespeare makes forbidden love a prominent theme of Romeo and Juliet, obviously, shown in their desperate language to each other and they way they seem to do anything, say anything, to be together. Juliet talks literally about the wall around her house but I think Shakespeare was also talking about the walls people sometimes build around their hearts when they know they are not supposed to love someone, but quite often they are broken down anyway, shown by Romeo ignoring Juliet's warnings and climbing to see her anyway. And when she talks about her love for him, it is something so large, so all encompassing, it can not be stopped. He states it is greater than the sea, the biggest force on earth. Their love is unstoppable, and being forbidden makes it more so."
Throughout this whole speech she looks directly at him, and her double meaning in her words is heard loud and clear. Her analysis of Shakespeare is also confident and intelligent, and she knows it, hiding her smile by rummaging in her bag instead when he attempts to praise her. She looks so godamn beautiful when she's speaking like that, when her face is animated and her eyes are lit up that it stuns him for a second. "Yes, well explained Miss West. Excellent."
He glances at his watch, and lets out a sigh of relief when he realises they've talked through the half hour period and he instructs the class to pack away gratefully. Every muscle in his body feels tensed, just from trying to keep his cool. A couple of students hand him their books back and he goes to collect the rest from their desks wearily. She brushes past him purposefully on the way out, her fingers cool against his shoulder as he's reaching down for a text.
"Sorry, Sir" she mutters, an unconcealed grin on her face before she strides outside to her awaiting friends. He shivers at her touch. This can't go on, he need to sort his spinning head out. Sooner, rather than later. Her perfect face swims in his vision.
He jerks his head up when he hears a door creak. His office is slightly dim, the lamplight the only source illuminating the room, but a shadow falls over his desk when a silhouette appears in the doorway.
"Hello?"
The figure is that of a girl, he can tell, the curve of her hips and the outline of her hair. She walks forwards towards him. His heart beats in his chest just a little bit louder. He knows it's her.
"Sir?"
Her face comes into the light then, and her lipstick from earlier is still in place, painted thickly onto her plump lips. She's touched up her eyeliner too, and she looks stunning in the half light, but it reminds him of her age. Just 17. He's got a more than a whole decade on her. She's so young and fresh-faced, she's a girl in disguise. But he can't find it in him to send her away.
"Miss West?"
She smiles at that, places a perfectly painted nail polished hand on his desk and leans forward. "My name's Jade, Mr Oliver. Or can I say Beck?"
He struggles to swallow, looks up into her laughing blue eyes. "Mr Oliver" he tries to reassert, but in vain, she just rolls her eyes at him.
"Beck." she says again.
"Did you want your essay back?" His voice is cool, collected. His insides are not.
"No."
"Can I help you in any other way? Did you not get picked up?"
"I cancelled my ride."
"Oh."
"Come on, Beck. I've decided we need to talk about it. We have to at some stage, right?"
"Talk about what? We have nothing to talk about, Jade." Her name slips so easily out of his mouth and he tastes it there, so delicate but with a hint of iron too. He relishes it. The lies don't come out so easily. He can tell she doesn't believe him when she raises her eyebrows at him.
"This" she whispers, leaning closer to him over the desk. He pushes his chair away, although everything in his body is screaming at him to do the opposite. From this angle he can see the white of her cleavage, the edge of her black lace bra and he wants to cry, how badly he wants her in that moment. How badly he wants to just give up and give in and taste those lips on his and just lay with her and talk for days on end.
'No, Jade, I can't, I-"
"Can't or won't?" she asks, humour creeping into her voice. She swings her hair around until it's creeping round her neck and he wants to brush it aside, trace his fingers up her jaw. Can't, can't, can't.
He stands up, but quickly realises this is a mistake as she straightens up too, her back arching in such a seductive way. She moves towards him until she's she a couple of centimetres out of reach. He can smell her apple shampoo and the perfume rolling off her body, surrounding him.
"Jade, I'm your teacher, we can't- this isn't allowed, it's against the law-"
"I don't give a fuck that you're my teacher. I love you, Beck. Didn't you get that in class today? I thought I made it pretty clear, though you played into my hands with the Shakespeare. Was that an intentional or a subconscious decision? 'Cos I don't care whether this is allowed or not, Beck, you have to know."
Her words hit him, that maybe on some level he chose Romeo and Juliet for a deeper reason that he first thought, not just Valentine's Day; but because the theme of forbidden love has been playing on his mind, reeling on loop recently. And now it's like the fruit is being dangled right in front of his eyes. He tries to answer her, but the words don't come, they get blocked in his throat, sit on his tongue like cardboard, and echo only in his head. Oh God I think I love you too over and over again.
She reaches out a hand and traces the outlines of his chest through his button up shirt, a soft smile fluttering on her lips. "That's what I thought." she whispers. If he were weaker, he would be trembling under her feather-like touch. She moves closer so both her hands are on his body and her breath is tickling his neck, and by this time all thoughts of being found, of keeping the office door closed, of telling her to back away while she still can, fly straight out of his head. He's paralysed.
"Beck?"
"Hmmm?"
"Do you think I'm pretty?" He can only stare at her dumbfoundedly while her hands pause in painting their masterpiece on the canvas of his chest and she tilts her chin to look up into his face. Then he nods slowly and her lips curl into a smile, this one reaching the blue twinkle in her eyes.
"I'm glad."
"Jade, I-"
"Shh, don't ruin it. Don't think if you don't have to."
But of course he has to. Thousands of thoughts rush through his mind in a matter of seconds, most variations on oh god what am I doing?, or oh god, Jade, but they all stop when her lips connect with his. And there is blissful silence. Because he stops worrying, stops panicking, stops resisting, and focuses only on moving his mouth against her small and sweet yet surprisingly fierce one. Concentrates only on the taste and touch of her against his tongue. Manages only to think about the way their whole bodies are touching. It feels like every cell in him is on fire. Everything else just stops existing.
But it all comes crashing down. He comes to his senses and prises her off him, holding her wrists with his long fingers. She stands and stares at him, breathing heavily still, her face flushed and her lips now swollen and bereft of lipstick. He realises with a thrill but also a knot in his stomach that it is now probably on his own lips instead. She has marked him. The look on her face is one of defiance.
"Christ Jade! I'm more than ten years older than you! I'm your teacher! We can't do this!" His own breathing is laboured too and he drops her wrists to push his hair out of his face, and then hides in his hands, his head spinning. He can still feel her watching him and he doesn't want to look up again because if he does he knows he'll just fall for her all over again, just like that first day in class. And everything about this is so wrong. Except it feels just the opposite. "I'm going to lose my job" he mutters, and he feels cold fingers prising his hands away and stroking his jawline.
"Not if no one finds out you won't."
"But what if they do?"
"They won't."
He so badly wants to believe her. He so badly wants to believe that together they can make a fairytale, a story worthy of Shakespeare.
She kisses him again then, hard and desperate and he returns her like for like until they're breathing hard and she's up against the wall where he's pushed her and her hand is in his messy hair and his is cupping her cheek and they're trying to forget this isn's supposed to happen.
They're not star-crossed lovers.
"We need to stop"
She sighs, pulls her leather jacket around her as if to fight imaginary cold air. Maybe it's to protect her from the chill that's entered the room with his words. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply and he looks at her face, so young and fresh and perfectly formed. He's too old, he's too far gone. She needs someone she can relate to, someone who can keep up with her, someone her own age. He doesn't deserve her, not one ion of her heart should be his.
Her eyes flick open, her eyelashes just a little damp.
"Beck, say you love me."
And it tumbles from his mouth before he can stop it.
"I love you."
The smile she gives him is touched with sadness, but there's hope behind her eyes. "I won't give up on you, you know."
"Jade, you can save yourself too by turning away now."
"I'm not interested in saving myself."
"Jade, I-"
"I graduate in a couple of months. Just a couple of hundred days away Beck. And I'll wait. Will you?"
What's a couple of hundred of days to a teenager like her? Nothing. And to him? Days of agony. Will he wait? If he can.
"Until next time, Mr Oliver." she says simply, a knowing smirk back in place on her pretty features. She knows his answer already.
He collapses on to his desk chair when she leaves, her hips swaying as she walks, watching her until the last stitch of her black clothing flicks out of sight. He's already in far too deep to stop swimming. If he stops now he'll drown in her, thoughts and memories combined. The sound of her voice, and now the taste of her lips just waiting to drag him under.
He puts his head in his hands and tries not to cry.
AN: So I like Shakespeare. Could you tell? Thoughts?