Chapter Fourteen – Educational Value

"Schuldig?"

"Yes?"

"What's that?"

"A cat."

"Did I ask you to draw a cat?"

Silence.

"What did I ask you to do, Schuldig?"

"Write my name."

"And yet, there is a cat."

Schuldig glowered at him. "Look, I'll write my name, okay? See, I'm writing my name. I'm signing my picture, if you like. See, look at the writing." And in big, childish letters, he wrote 'Shuldug' and stared at it with impatience. Eventually, he crossed out both 'u's and replaced them with 'i's. Bradley sighed and pressed his hand to his head. "Now what?" Schuldig moaned. "Look, I've written it and… it's wrong, isn't it? It's wrong. I still can't write my own name." The defeatist attitude was resurfacing more and more often now they'd actually started the tutoring.

Bradley leant over and neatly pencilled in a 'c', as well as turning one of the 'i's back into a 'u'.  "Don't worry," he soothed. "You don't pronounce the 'c'. Look, I'm trying to teach you this from the point of view of someone who grew up with English pronunciation, not German. This is more my fault that yours."

"Yeah right," Schuldig moaned. "Look, let's face it, I'm stupid."

"No-oo," Bradley sighed. "Look, let's switch to arithmetic, okay? We've been doing this too long."

"We've spent two hours trying to get me to spell my name correctly," Schuldig sighed. "Come on, it's never going to happen. Can we take a break?"

Bradley considered. "Yes," he agreed eventually, as much for his own sake as Schuldig's. "But you shouldn't leave this room. You're missing all of your normal lessons for this."

"I don't need them," Schuldig pointed out. "I'm a telepath. Anything I need to know I can get from other people's heads."

"Except this, it seems," Bradley noted wryly. Schuldig's face fell immediately. "It's a good cat," Bradley ventured.

Schuldig glanced down at the piece of paper. A slender feline was sprawled across the page, mottled black and white with large eyes that gazed out of the page in complacent luxury. It was an amazing cat, truth be told, but Schuldig thought art was a pointless subject with no real value. Bradley shared that opinion, but part of him had been trained to feel that art appreciation as something every gentleman should be able to do, and he knew a natural artist when he saw one.

An idea occurred to him. "Perhaps it would be easier," he ventured, "if you treat the letters and words as pictures. You have a good visual memory, as opposed to phonetic. Think about what the words look like, instead of what the sound like." A memory of his early years suggested itself. "Like 'bed' in English. It looks like a bed. It should also help you keep your 'b's and 'd's the right way round."

Schuldig frowned. On a fresh piece of paper he wrote the word 'bed' carefully, in rounded letters. The look of concentration on his face wrenched at Bradley's heartstrings. He was beginning to develop a real affection for the German kid.

"Watch it, old man," Schuldig grinned. "I ain't some adorable little moppet. I've killed before."

"So have I," Bradley revealed casually. Schuldig had ceased to listen, and was staring at his handiwork. With the beginnings of a smile he added a pillow to one end of the word, and held it up for Bradley to see.

"That right?" he asked, hardly daring to hope. Bradley nodded. Schuldig flung his arms around Bradley. "I wrote a word without copying!" he said proudly. "Now, if only my name was bed, instead of Chri- Schuldig."

"'Chri'?" Bradley slipped a companionable arm around Schuldig's shoulders, giving them a congratulatory squeeze. "What is your real name?" he asked with curiosity.

"Schuldig. If you mean 'what's my birth name', who gives a fuck? It was given to me by a pair of idiots a long time ago, and represents part of my life I don't want to revisit," Schuldig said candidly. "Schuldig suits me much better. It's not only who I am, but what I am."

"Okay," Bradley accepted this. Schuldig gave him a surprised look, but didn't push his luck.

"Can we go outside?" Schuldig asked. "I bet I'd learn much better outside."

"The only bit of 'outside' you're allowed in is that awful courtyard."

"So? I haven't been outside since I got here. I need to stretch my legs and smell fresh air."

"We're not allowed. Tell you what, I'll open the window."

Bradley got up to struggle with the stiff frame. Schuldig gave him a sceptical look. "That's it?" he asked. Bradley didn't spare him a glance. "We're not going outside because 'we're not allowed'? That's a bullshit answer."

"Yes," Bradley said simply, "but I'm still regrowing skin from the last time I did something I shouldn't have, and I don't really feel like being beaten into unconsciousness again."

Schuldig considered this. "And if we weren't caught?"

"There's no question of 'if'," Bradley told him sternly. "The entire place is surrounded by CCTV cameras."

"What's CCTV?" Schuldig asked. He picked up his piece of paper again and began to write the letters 'CCTV'. He got one of the 'C's backwards, but noticed his mistake and beamed at the correction.

"Closed Circuit Television. Look, we can't okay? You shouldn't question my judgement. If I was anyone else you'd be in pieces on the floor by now." Schuldig raised an eyebrow. "I am your superior, as a first year student pretty much every one is your superior, and talking back to your superiors can get you in serious trouble."

"So I see," Schuldig commented wryly. As summer was fast approaching, Bradley had given up on wearing a t-shirt to bed, and Schuldig had seen the words branded on his back more than once. Carefully, from memory, he wrote them out on the paper: 'Pride comes before a fall'. "Prid-e com-ess bef-or-e a fahl," he said carefully. "Prid-e com-es befor-e a fall. Pride comes before a fall." He beamed at Bradley, who smiled despite himself.

"A lesson well learnt," he said softly.

"Can we have sex now?"

Stunned silence.

"What?" Bradley ventured eventually.

"Sex now? During our 'break'?"

Bradley sat down carefully. "No… Schuldig… I don't think that would be a very good idea… at all. Not a good idea. No. No sex." He shook his head sharply. "Why on earth did you even ask?"

"Because I want to have sex with you." To Schuldig it seemed absurdly simple. "We're attracted to each other."

"No. No, we're not. I'm not attracted to you. I'm not attracted to men. We're not going to have sex. Ever." Bradley was flustered. Schuldig looked crushed. "I don't have sex," Bradley said in a strangled voice.

"Why not? You've got everything you need, I've watched you in the shower." Bradley looked up sharply and glowered at the blissfully unaware Schuldig. "Come on, you do find me just a bit attractive." Schuldig studied him, moving closer. "You did," he said uncertainly. "I know you did. You almost thought it. But you keep not thinking it. Like when people don't say things… a secret. It's like you're keeping it a secret. But from yourself." He pressed up against Bradley, who stood up sharply and moved to the other side of the small room. Oh, how small it seemed at this moment, how oppressively small. "How do you do that?"

"Shut up," Bradley muttered. "You're mistaken. I'm not attracted to you. That's why I haven't thought it. You're confused. Of course you're confused, so many thoughts pressing in on you. Yes, confused."

"Who are we talking about?" Schuldig asked, not entirely innocently. "Me or you?"

"You! You've confused me thoughts with someone else's, when they happened to be following similar tracks. And you shouldn't spy on people in the shower!"

Schuldig didn't bother deign to reply to what he felt was an obvious impossibility. He was more than slightly worried about Crawford, though. Why was the man keeping secrets from himself? Didn't he want sex? Especially, why didn't he want to have sex with Schuldig? Schuldig was very attractive, he knew that. Everyone knew that. Except Crawford. Everyone liked having sex with Schuldig. Had… had he changed, since he arrived here? Was he no longer as attractive as before, somehow? Other people still thought he was attractive. Most of the 'teachers' had been perfectly willing to sleep with him. Crawford was just another 'teacher', wasn't he?

"Schuldig?"

"Hmm?" He glanced over at the older man, still thinking hard.

"I think we should get going again. Move on to numbers. Are you ready to do that, or do you want to keep trying with the writing?"

"What ever you like," Schuldig said vaguely. "Have… have you ever had sex?"

"That's not a polite question," Bradley scolded, picking up a child's maths book. "And no, I haven't. I've never particularly wanted to."

"Ah… So-"

"Enough questions. Especially about sex. Come on, we need to start addition today." Bradley put the book in Schuldig's lap, trying to pretend he hadn't noticed the huge erection there.

"What about sex education?" Schuldig asked slyly. "Don't you have to teach me that, too?"

"No. I told you, no more questions. Now, let's start simple: One plus one is?"

"One," Schuldig murmured sultrily.

"No, two," Bradley glared at him. "You know that."

"One," Schuldig pointed at himself, "plus one," he pointed at Bradley, "could be one…" he purred.

Bradley stood up, knocking the books to the floor. He ignored Schuldig and walked out of the room sharply, locking the door behind him. He leant on the wall for a moment, recovering his scattered wits and rebuilding his mental shields. He could feel Schuldig prying, trying to work out why his 'teacher' had left.

"Cold shower…" he murmured under his breath. "Very cold shower."