Disclaimer: I don't own anyone, other than Kelly.
Rated: M
Warning(s): AU, Slash, Threesome, Teacher/Student, BDSM, pain kink, etc.

"I don't understand why you're here, Chris. I thought that Mr. McMahon had suspended you for two weeks." Maryse said. She looked Chris up and down with poorly concealed disdain, clearly remembering their less than pleasant encounter in the beginning of the year. Oh, she remembered it all too well.

He produced the photos and dropped them onto her desk unceremoniously. "This. This is why I am here." He said.

She paled noticeably, but for the most part was able to maintain her composure. "I don't know what you're talking about. I've never seen these photos before in my life. But if you know what's best for your career, I'd recommend that you don't show them off to too many people."

"You know exactly what these are, Maryse, because you were the one that took them and you were the one that slipped them under Mr. McMahon's door. You've had it out for my career ever since I called you on the situation with Phil and Brock - and don't think that I don't know that that never made it into Phil's record."

Maryse frowned, "As I've told you before, I can't talk about the students' personal medical records -,"

"I'm not concerned with his medical records." Chris hissed, before forcing himself to take a deep breath. He needed to stay calm, because there was no way he could rationally win an argument with this woman if he started to lose his cool. "I'm concerned with the fact that you seem to want me to lose my job."

"I didn't take those photos." But her resolve was weakening, and he could read her like an open book. She'd definitely taken the photos... and much, much worse.

Chris closed his eyes, counted backward from ten, and offered, "I'm not in the mood to be lied to, Maryse. You'll either tell me now, or I'll find out myself."

He was pulling a huge bluff. He knew, standing across from her now, that there was no way to know for certain about the photos should he walk away now. For a moment, he feared that Maryse would call his bluff - she could turn him down now, and then he'd never know the truth. But from the nervous way that she was fidgeting, he knew that she'd been caught off guard by the idea that he could find out the truth about the photos from somewhere else. Slowly making her way around the desk, she picked up the stack of photos and started to leisurely flip through them.

She was looking at them with an uneasy familiarity - the kind of familiarity that only came from being an unwelcome voyeur when the actual event was taking place, and being forced to relive the situation without giving away the fact that you'd already been exposed to it once. Just watching her, he didn't have to hear her say the words. He knew, without a doubt, that she had been the one taking the photos. Now, the only question that remained was why she had felt the need to slip them under Mr. McMahon's door. With a sigh, she placed the photo down on her desk and leaned against it, arms crossed over her chest.

"I took the photos, alright?" She huffed indignantly.

"No, it's not alright. You could have cost me my job, Maryse. Not only that, but you really fucked with Phil, however unintentional it might have been. Because of you, I can't see him for two weeks. Do you know the abandonment issues that boy suffers with on a daily basis?" Chris asked angrily.

"Do you realize how much older you are than Phil?" Maryse countered agitatedly.

"He's legal. I'm no cradle-robber. Besides, we haven't done anything. He's still recovering from the trauma he endured from Brock. I can respect that." He said.

Maryse rolled her eyes. "That doesn't change the fact that you're still his teacher, and he's still your student." She said. "You're still crossing so many lines by just kissing him, or spending time with him the way that you have -," she quickly cut herself off, realizing that she was saying too much.

Chris raised an eyebrow, simultaneously intrigued and angry. "Exactly how much do you know about the two of us?"

She was quiet for a moment, and then she whispered that she had seen the two of them together, "studying". When Chris attempted to tell her that that was all that they had done, she was incredibly skeptical. He was pained, realizing that an honest attempt at trying to help his student had been so painfully misconstrued. First and foremost, he was a teacher - and a teacher's job was to ensure that they gave one-hundred and ten percent of their time and energy to helping their students understand the material to the best of their abilities. If he couldn't even do that without being questioned...

"You need to go to Mr. McMahon and tell him that you made a mistake. Tell him that you doctored the pictures or something, anything, I don't care. But don't let Mr. McMahon take me out of Phil's life because you did something stupid." Chris said.

"Why would I do that?" She scoffed. "It's only the two of us in this room. Nobody but us realizes that I took the pictures. You have no way to blackmail me." She said. "If I tell him I took the pictures and changed them, then I'll get fired. This mess isn't worth my job."

Chris frowned. "If you don't fix this, I will make your life hell. You will wake up every morning, regretting that you signed the contract to work here."

Now, she just came out and laughed. "Is that supposed to be a threat?"

Chris took a step forward, and Maryse tried to take a step back, only to realize that the back of her legs were already pressed against the desk. "No, Maryse. That's a promise."

Scooping up the photos, he stowed them away into his messenger bag and stormed off. It was only when he was outside of the nurse's office and a considerable way down the hall that he took the tape recorder out of his pocket and hit the "stop" button. Had she really thought that he was so stupid as to go into that room, knowing that he'd walk out with absolutely no evidence to prove that he'd discovered anything at all? He wasn't stupid. And if Phil was concerned, he would stop at nothing to make sure that he was taken care of - even if, for a time, he wasn't the one to do it.

When Jeff arrived, it occurred to him for the first time that he was absolutely alone, with nobody that he could reasonably expect to turn to. He could always head back to the unused dorms in the school, but they were cold and lonely, and for someone who felt abandoned by the world, that was not a particularly pleasant option. This, of course, left one alternative. He could always turn to Phil. Phil, who had been his best friend in elementary and middle school (he'd ignore the fact that they'd drifted apart in high school - it didn't necessarily help his case), wouldn't turn him away. He couldn't turn him away.

He showed up on Phil's doorstep, more than a little nervous about what was about to transpire. There were no cars in the driveway, and for a moment, he worried that Phil wasn't home. But there were lights on inside, and that was enough to warrant an explanation. So, he raised a fist and knocked on the door. There was a moment of silence, then confused mumbling - it was almost 2:45 AM - before Jeff heard the shuffle of sock-clad feet across the floor, followed shortly thereafter by the door opening. Phil looked at him with swollen, disoriented eyes. He was clutching a pillow to his chest, and his body was shaking.

"Jeff?" Phil raised an eyebrow. He opened his mouth, presumably to ask what the hell Jeff thought he was doing outside his door at almost three o' clock in the morning, but quickly closed it again. Undoubtedly, Jeff would turn the question around and ask why he was still awake.

"Yeah, it's me." It hadn't been this awkward when they'd last talked, had it? But then... when had they last talked again? "Um... do you mind if I come in? It's a little chilly out here." He said sheepishly, adding in a shiver for good measure.

"Oh. Oh, yeah. Sorry." He stepped aside, allowing Jeff inside. Then, he shut and locked the door. "Would you like some tea? I just made a batch of chai."

Jeff nodded. "That would be great, thanks."

Phil remembered just the way that he liked it - a spoonful of sugar and a little bit of milk. He liked it better "creamy", he said. So, maybe they weren't as distant as Jeff had originally feared. It occurred to him, as Phil handed him the tea cup, that Phil's mother was nowhere to be seen. So Phil was alone, just as he always was, and just as Jeff was now. But maybe they could be alone together. He brought the cup to his lips and drank slowly. It was delicious, and he knew that he'd expected no less. Phil was a perfectionist, right down to the amount of sugar in one cup of tea.

"You're mom isn't around?" It wasn't a question, just a statement. Phil tensed up a little bit, but to his credit, remained mostly unfazed.

"No. She got called in for an emergency. One of her clients needed an emergency counseling session and mom agreed to drive out tonight and see her first thing tomorrow morning - or, well, this morning I guess. I don't expect her to be home until tomorrow, or the day after that."

Phil sat down on the couch beside Jeff, drawing his knees into the chest and squeezing the pillow as tightly as possible. Jeff could clearly see that the pillow was a substitute for something, but he didn't know who or what. "You okay there, Phil?"

"No." He was being painfully honest, and it was more than Jeff would've given him credit for. "But I can tell that you're not either."

Jeff shrugged. "I had a fight with my brother. He doesn't..." here, he laughed, before taking another sip, "He doesn't know that I'm here."

Phil, following Jeff's example, offered, "I had a fight with my... boyfriend? Crush? I don't even know what the hell we are. We never really got far enough to officially decide what we were." He sighed, "I don't know what the hell I did. I thought everything was going just fine. Now, he won't talk to me, or text me back..."

"Guess we both hit a kind of rough patch, huh?" Jeff asked, laughing wryly.

They sat in comfortable silence for several moments. Phil didn't tell Jeff any more about his boyfriend-crush-whatever-he-was, and Jeff didn't tell Phil any more about the fight that he'd had with his brother. In those quiet moments, more was communicated in the silence than any words could have expressed. They watched television for a little while - it was amazing, the cartoons that they showed in the early hours of the morning. When they tired of watching cartoons, Phil turned off the television, rose off the couch, and stretched. He was still holding the pillow.

"Well, I'd really rather you stay over with me than kick it on the streets, so let's do this thing. We can use my sister's room - she's over at a friend's house - so her bunk beds are open." Phil said.

Jeff quickly added, "Are you sure? I don't want to impose."

Phil shrugged. "I don't like to sleep alone."