FIC: The Ghosts of Departed Quantities
Title: The Ghosts of Departed Quantities
Author: angevin2
Play: Richard II
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Richard/Henry (with reference to Richard/Anne and Henry/Mary)
Rating: kind of a hard R
Word Count: 6295
Warnings: Dodgy sexual ethics; unhealthy relationships; discussion of sleeping with one's students; brief references to various unsavory practices, sometimes involving sheep and/or root vegetables; reference to 1970s!John of Gaunt; massive amounts of awkwardness
Summary: Henry and Richard are really bad at interacting when they're not having sex.
Notes: Dedicated to gileonnen. Part of the increasingly kudzu-like Crescive In His Faculty AU: takes place just after "Burden of Proof." There is useful background in "Pausa Caffè." The title comes from Bishop Berkeley's dismissal of the concept of infinitesmals (see, I researched math for this AU!). All of the stuff mentioned as being in The Joy of Gay Sex (Revised and Expanded Third Edition) really is in there, although there is, so far as I could discern, no Complete Idiot's Guide to Gay Sex or Gay Sex for Dummies (there is such a thing as Sex for Dummies, but I have no idea whether it includes anything other than het sex). The banana book is real, though. Finally, many thanks to speak_me_fair and gehayi for offering suggestions at points where I got stuck.
When Henry Bolingbroke awkwardly maneuvers his way into a casual relationship with Richard Bordeaux, it had not occurred to him that even meeting up occasionally for fucking is going to be an incredible bloody pain in all ways.
After all, if one embarks upon a relationship that is, by mutual and emphatic agreement, not dating or anything like it, just the aforementioned meeting-up-for-fucking, the expectation is generally that this is a less emotionally fraught arrangement than the usual kind of thing, even setting aside the assumption that even people who meet up occasionally for fucking can generally stand each other's company, which is something Henry is still not sure about in this case.
Of course, if one wishes one's life not to be fraught, one really might be better off avoiding Richard Bordeaux altogether. That was Henry's first mistake, because now here he is sitting on a park bench with Richard attempting to figure out when and where they might get down to business, as it were, in a completely official and non-copier-based fashion.
"I don't suppose I need to ask 'your place or mine,'" Richard says. "Unless you're particularly invested in traumatizing the children."
Henry can very nearly feel his face turning green as he imagines introducing Richard to any of the kids (other than Harry, anyway; he prefers to pretend that Richard and Harry don't actually know each other already, never mind that Richard keeps reminding him in the dodgiest possible ways). The fact that he has no intention of thinking of Richard as his boyfriend (which would be ridiculous even if they weren't both in their forties) or, God forbid, his lover does not help at all. He is especially glad that John is off at Georgetown and thus will not have the opportunity to find out: treasurer of College Republicans he may be, but what he doesn't know won't mentally scar anybody.
"You don't need to ask that at all," he says. He reflects briefly that if he is that interested in fucking another man, there is really no need whatsoever for it to be Richard, is there? Just as a hypothetical, Edward York is, as people twenty years younger than himself might say, totally into him, apparently, and he is quite lovely and, more importantly, not Richard, and apparently not even fucking Richard, despite all appearances to the contrary. Of course, this opens up the possibility that Edward is fond of Richard for his own sake, which is frankly terrifying.
"Well, good," Richard says. "As it happens, I've got an evening class tonight anyway."
"Well, then." Henry fidgets inwardly, caught between disappointment and relief. "I'm not free again until Thursday."
"Works for me," Richard says, with just a hint of a smirk which turns into all-out laughter when Henry reaches into his jacket pocket for his day planner.
Henry doesn't think he's ever heard Richard laugh before. The effect is decidedly unnerving.
"Oh God, you're actually writing it down," he says. "That's -- I don't even know what that is."
"Do you mind?" Henry closes his planner, with half a mind to call the whole thing off and just walk away. He's not sure precisely why he doesn't do just that.
"What are you going to write?" Richard says, still grinning like a particularly sadistic Cheshire cat. "'Calculus IV, department meeting, casual gay sex'?"
Henry pauses, his pen a millimeter above the page. "It's none of your damned business -- "
"Well, I do plan on showing up," Richard interrupts.
" -- and, you know, I don't have to do this at all," Henry concludes, clicking his pen shut. "I could just leave right now."
"It's your call." Richard shrugs expansively. "Some of us have no trouble finding other people to fuck."
Henry glares at him for a moment, feeling as though his bluff has been called, before writing "RICHARD" emphatically in his planner.
***
It's not until he's on the way home that it occurs to him that he has no idea what he's doing. What he will be doing, rather. Apart from the sordid goings-on by the copier, but Henry assumes that the kind of sex one schedules in one's day planner is probably going to be more convoluted, and will probably require the participants to remove their trousers (oh God he's going to have to get naked in front of Richard WHY is he doing this again).
It does not occur to him in any serious context to just call the whole thing off. This might be because other than the Copier Thing (which hardly counts) he can't actually remember the last time he had sex, and dammit, he is forty-six years old and deserves to get laid once in a while.
Which is why Henry takes the opportunity, during the two-hour downtime he has between classes, to go to Borders, which is considerably, and blessedly, out of walking distance of campus, and buy a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex (Revised and Expanded Third Edition), which seems the least awkward option based on a quick perusal of what's on offer, since it does not contain the phrases "Ins & Outs," "For Dummies," or "Complete Idiot's Guide," nor does it feature a man eating a banana on the cover. (And at any rate the heterosexual analogue is a venerable, for this sort of thing, institution. Henry remembers furtively flipping, when nobody else was home, through the one his father owned back in the seventies, and being simultaneously compelled and traumatized by the pencil drawings of shaggy hippies going at it. He shudders at the possibility that he is turning into his father. Then he reasons that if he is purchasing a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex, he is certainly not turning into his father.)
As he stands in line -- why are there so damn many people at Borders at 11:30 on a Tuesday -- clutching a pile of books (so as to slip The Joy of Gay Sex inconspicuously into it), he ponders whether or not he ought to admit to Philippa that she is right and that the Kindle is not such a bad idea after all. Probably not. He wouldn't want to explain to his thirteen-year-old daughter precisely what occasioned his change of heart.
The Borders clerk does not remark on his purchase. Henry suspects he may have "DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT IT" projecting from his forehead.
It's not until after his second class that he has a chance to actually examine what he's getting into. This isn't really the kind of thing he should be doing during office hours, but nobody ever comes to office hours anyway, and he'll be damned if he looks ridiculously inexperienced in front of Richard.
So, he tells himself. Gay sex.
He takes off his glasses and puts them back on. Then he organizes his non-Joy of Gay Sex books on his desk in order of size, like a tiny and unusually-flat ziggurat. Then he sharpens a pencil (in case he wishes to make marginal notes).
Then he wonders why he is approaching an impending sexual encounter as if it were a homework assignment.
He flips casually through the prefatory material until he arrives at the first page of actual instructional material, which informs him, not altogether usefully, that "Culturally induced fears have given many people phobias about their assholes."
At the end of an hour and a half Henry has filled a page of note paper with the following:
He is particularly relieved that no one has seen fit to attend office hours.
He tears the paper off the pad, folds it, and inserts it into the book (right between "Frottage" and "Fuck Buddies," appropriately enough). Then he leans back in his chair staring at the book sitting on his desk, before sliding it into a desk drawer underneath an eval copy of An Introduction to Real Analysis and a New York Times from two weeks ago.
Henry isn't sure whether to feel disappointed that reading about the ins and outs, as it were, of fucking other men hasn't seemed more exciting: everything he has read this afternoon has mostly served to make him feel patronized (he does not think he'll ever stop being annoyed at the bit about the sweet potatoes) and generally crabby. Granted he would like to think that at his age he can read a bloody how-to book about sex without getting all hot and bothered, but perhaps he is not into the whole gay thing as much as he thought he might be.
Except if that's true, why is it he can't stop thinking about Richard's hand in his trousers, and his other hand clenching in Henry's hair, his eyes tightly closed and his cheeks flushed, his mouth twisted into a grimace as he struggles not to cry out -- Christ, he can remember what Richard's skin tastes like.
Why the ever-living fuck is he so turned on by a man he's hated since the first time they met?
***
On Wednesday Henry runs into Edward York at the coffee shop and spends about half a second trying to figure out what he thinks Edward knows before Edward announces, thankfully not too loudly, "So I hear you're fucking Richard officially."
Henry does not want to know exactly what the expression on his face looks like, but it makes Edward laugh and add, "And no, I don't expect you to confirm or deny it. But don't think Richard doesn't kiss and tell."
Henry's face and his palm have become much closer acquaintances since he inexplicably decided that having any kind of extra-professional relationship with Richard was a good idea. He suspects that by the weekend they will probably be engaged.
"Why is it," he asks himself aloud, "that I always end up talking to smart-arsed historians in contexts where I can't drink myself into a stupor?" Not that he can really do that anyway, since it buggers up his meds, but Edward doesn't need to know that.
"Just lucky, I guess," Edward says; his smile is sharper than he probably means for it to be, and it doesn't really make it to his eyes, and it occurs to Henry that he is, against his better judgment, jealous.
When did his life become a bloody soap opera? Not that that question, rhetorical as it may be, is difficult to answer.
***
If he'd had any reason to think about it, Henry would probably have expected Richard to live in one of those brownstone Victorian rowhouses that well-to-do hipsters seem to live in a lot of the time, or at least the ones on the Anglia faculty do, rather than in the slightly bland building he finds himself approaching on Thursday evening.
He looks at the post-it note with Richard's address on it to the door and back several times, just to make absolutely sure he is standing in front of the right door and that the number isn't something other than 506 (he squints at the card briefly: that couldn't be a 5 instead of a 6, could it?) before knocking awkwardly, rapidly, and probably too softly.
There's no answer. Why is he doing this again?
He knocks at the door again, louder this time. Someone walks by carrying several bags of groceries, and Henry does his best to pretend she isn't there. He wonders, idly, if he has any clothes that would blend into the walls, if for some reason he deems a repeat visit necessary.
There's no sound of footsteps before the door opens.
"So!" Richard says. "Should I bother to say hello, or do you want to get right to the fucking?"
"You know, you could close the door before you say that sort of thing," Henry says, stepping through the door and closing it behind him. There's something ineffably mind-wrenching about actually being in Richard's flat -- all right, yes, he's been to his old one in Oxford, but that was in another country, and besides -- it would be incredibly inappropriate to finish that particular reference, and, at any rate, knowing intellectually that Richard is actually a person with a life and not some horrible imp who materializes at will to annoy him is markedly different from being in his actual living room with him standing there being all amused-looking and unnervingly barefoot (Henry does not know why that unsettles him, but it does) and surrounded by stuff -- the flat itself is the vaguely sterile kind with faintly off-white walls and track lighting, but there are things everywhere: bookcases painfully overstuffed and with random papers sticking out; a pile of old issues of the New York Review of Books, stacks of journals with names like Speculum and Medium Aevum and English Historical Review, sweaters and socks and a staggering number of teacups and purple-stained wineglasses.
"Insecure about our sexuality, are we?" Richard folds his arms across his chest and smirks even harder. If that's possible.
Henry glares at him. "I just don't think it's anyone else's business."
Richard laughs, which apparently is never going to not be slightly creepy. "You know, you might be less uptight if you came out."
There are roughly a million replies that spring to mind and create some sort of gridlock in the front of Henry's brain as they scramble to get out of his mouth; the one that makes it, just beating out Why would I, I'm not really gay and Fuck you, Richard, is the safest, but unfortunately it is also the dumbest.
"I'm not uptight," he says.
Richard's eyes widen, and his lips purse incredulously. "Well, you're going to be a great lay."
Henry folds his own arms and frowns. "I didn't come here to be insulted."
"As I recall," Richard says, uncrossing his arms and running a hand through his stupid floppy hair, "you actually came here to plow my arse. Or get your arse plowed -- I suppose the polite thing to do is to let you pick which one you want to get up to, isn't it?"
"You don't need to make it sound so sordid," Henry mutters, and Richard's grin is disquietingly vulpine as he peers over the top of his glasses.
"That's what makes it fun," he says, and when Henry rolls his eyes, he continues, "Well, you're the one who actually schedules appointments for sex. In your planner. You can't tell me that's not at least a little sordid."
"I'm a busy man," Henry says. "And quite frankly you're wasting my time."
"I wouldn't want that on my conscience."
"I could just leave, you know."
"You'll have to do better than that," Richard says, "if you want me to try to stop you."
"And you'll have to do better than that if you want me to kiss you in order to shut you up."
Richard's eyebrows make a brief attempt to exit his forehead, and then he apparently gives up, grabbing the front of Henry's shirt and kissing him hard, and Henry responds in kind while Richard goes to work on unbuttoning his shirt.
"Have I mentioned lately that you're incredibly vulgar and obvious?" Henry says -- not that it wasn't a pretty good kiss considering that it was with Richard, but he doesn't need to look so damn self-satisfied about it.
"You know it turns you on," Richard says, "and don't even try to argue that that was someone else's tongue attempting to get down my throat."
"Oh, for God's sake -- " Henry grabs Richard by the shoulders -- God, he is pointy when he's not wearing a jacket -- and kisses him back, shivering a little as Richard's hand slides up the back of his shirt, and then he's got Richard's back pressed to the front door and Richard strains against him; he moans softly against Henry's lips, and Henry can feel Richard's cock beginning to harden against his hip.
"That's more like it," Richard murmurs, when they've pulled apart; his eyes are bright and his cheeks an emphatic shade of pink, and the word beautiful drifts across Henry's mind for half a second before he quashes the thought, because God, what is wrong with him? Except by then Richard's already slipped out of his grasp and is on his knees undoing Henry's belt, and it occurs to him that Richard is about to suck him off right in front of the front door and in no wise does he trust himself not to react in any way that might be audible to anyone who happens to be out in the hall. He takes a substantial step backwards, nearly tripping over a pile of unfinished marking and causing Richard to wobble in a most undignified manner as he leans forward to unbutton Henry's trousers.
"You," Richard says, leaning on one wrist and glaring up at Henry, "are utterly infuriating. And to think I was about to give you a blowjob."
"We are not doing this right in front of the door," Henry says, sounding startlingly prim even to his own ears, which may be why he follows up with "We can go somewhere else and then -- " and it's becoming quite unavoidable how good an idea this sounds at the moment -- "you can suck my cock all you bloody well want."
Richard pulls himself awkwardly to his feet -- his tall, thin frame appears to be unfolding, which is yet another disconcerting thing about him -- and then he slumps against the arm of the sofa, looking noticeably deflated, and mutters, "Well, who says I want to now?"
Henry rolls his eyes and grabs hold of the waistband of Richard's jeans, which necessitates that Richard follow him.
"The bedroom's that way," Richard says, gesturing to his left. "Unless you're planning on bending me over the kitchen table. Not that I'd mind, except we'd have to clear it off first, and then cleaning up after kitchen sex is always such a bloody pain. Have you ever tried -- of course you haven't. Suffice it to say that getting Astroglide out of -- "
"We are not going to have sex in your kitchen, Richard," Henry says, as much to head off the anecdote at the pass as anything, as they pause in front of the bedroom door.
"Oh, you're no fun anymore," Richard pouts. "If you were ever fun to begin with, and quite frankly, in twenty years I've never seen any evidence of that."
"I'm quite personable to people who don't introduce themselves by shoving their tongue down my throat."
"I can't imagine you have that problem very often."
"No, just with you."
Henry smirks as Richard shoves past him, rolling his eyes and sighing heavily as he sits on the bed, crossing his legs in a manner that puts Henry in mind of a particularly disjointed and markedly effeminate marionette. The association is particularly disturbing, all the more so because, knowing Richard, he would undoubtedly find it kinky.
"Well, I had no idea what a repellent personality you had. If I'd known, I'd never have tried anything, I assure you."
This is such a ridiculous statement that the only thing to do is laugh -- which causes Richard's face to elongate visibly.
"Are you laughing at me?"
"No, you great idiot, I'm remembering something I saw on Come Dancing -- what do you think?"
"My God." Richard leans back on his elbows. "I'm about to fuck a man who watched Come Dancing. There is not enough booze in the world."
Henry folds his arms and glares. "What makes you think I still want to fuck you?"
"You're still here, aren't you?" Richard stands up then and draws very close to Henry, enough that Henry has to look up at him. It does nothing whatsoever for his sense of dignity -- neither does Richard's trailing one finger down his chest and making him shiver.
"God, I hate you so much," he murmurs, as he begins undoing Richard's trousers.
Richard's lips are a millimeter from Henry's ear, and his breathing is labored. "You know you get off on it," he says, as he slides Henry's shirt off of his shoulders.
He's right, of course. Which makes Henry hate him all the more.
They undress each other hurriedly, almost frustratedly; Henry ends up snapping one of the buttons off of Richard's shirt when it won't come out of its loop, and Richard is too intent on getting Henry's trousers off to notice.
"Good God," Richard mutters, pushing them down his hips. "You're wearing Y-fronts. It figures."
"Do you speculate about my undergarments often?" Henry is working on Richard's jeans; they're the kind that button rather than zipping, and he curses Richard mentally for going with the least convenient sartorial choices possible -- even though, it turns out, he isn't bothering to wear any sort of pants.
"I'm just saying," Richard says, his fingertips pausing at Henry's waist, "that you're clearly the type of person who'd wear sad constricting pants. We'd better get you out of them as soon as possible." He pauses, maddeningly, almost as soon as he's started to slip them off. "And then you can take off your damned socks. I refuse to fuck a man with socks on."
Henry rolls his eyes -- but he does awkwardly shuffle out of his socks before running a thumb along Richard's hipbone, suppressing the impulse to conspicuously check for blood afterwards. Richard seems even sharper and more angular once he's got his clothes off; he might actually look frail, even, if he weren't peering critically at Henry in a way that's at once uncomfortable and arousing enough to make Henry question his own conviction that he is resolutely unkinky.
"You're flaky." Richard pokes at a red, inflamed patch on Henry's shoulder, and Henry flinches -- his psoriasis has been mostly under control for years now, but he can't help having the odd flare-up. He tries with all his might to avoid running through the mental catalogue of things his father has said to him about it, most of them along the lines of "Do you want people to think you have some kind of contagious disease? Because I can assure you that's what they think when they look at you," and wishes that Richard would just make fun of his cock or something instead, because Henry is pretty sure that that's nothing out of the ordinary and thus he could be sure Richard was just trying to wind him up, especially since Richard has probably seen about a billion cocks and Henry imagines they probably start to blend together after a while.
"It's nothing," Henry says through gritted teeth. "Shut up. It's just psoriasis. Hardly my fault."
"Well, I wasn't actually accusing you of having secondary syphilis." Richard rolls his eyes. "Frankly, I can't imagine your sex life is that interesting."
Henry glares back at him. "You know, I don't actually find your detailed knowledge of venereal diseases particularly encouraging. Maybe I should stand over here." He takes a slightly theatrical step back, and Richard's lips thin.
"I'm sure you weren't paying attention at the time," he begins, folding his arms, "but I came of age in the 1980s. It wasn't exactly the best time to be queer. I'm not an idiot, Henry."
"I never said so," Henry says, and it comes out suspiciously gently, so he adds, "Just completely intolerable."
Richard very nearly bares his teeth in a sort of thing that's probably supposed to be an ironic smile, and he moves closer to Henry, his eyes diabolically alight.
"And you," he replies, "are perhaps the most annoying -- well, no. You're really not the most annoying human being I know. That would require someone far less mind-numbingly dull -- "
-- and that's all he can get out before Henry's grabbed him and kissed him furiously, and has stopped caring about the fact that he's undoubtedly played right into Richard's hands, particularly given what said hands are doing to him right this minute --
-- and then Richard sinks to his knees, and Henry's breath catches as Richard's mouth closes on him, his eyes nearly rolling back in his head as Richard runs his tongue along the underside of his cock -- and it's about then that the idea drifts into his mostly-pleasure-fogged brain that if he lets Richard get him off this way, Richard will probably expect him to do the same thing and he's entirely sure he's not quite ready to do that at this stage in the emphatically-not-a-relationship, or at least, he's not ready to do it to Richard, who would probably just criticize his technique the entire time, and if that's going to happen, he'd much rather be in the process of getting off when it does.
Pulling back from Richard requires more willpower than Henry realizes he possesses, although he is gloomily certain that his stores are now utterly depleted and that when his Calc IV students ask for an open-note midterm he'll probably cave in.
"Wait," he manages to force out. Richard's eyes go all wide and Henry has the distinct impression that he is disappointed.
"You know," he says, "your inexplicable determination not to let me suck you off doesn't speak well for you at all."
"I changed my mind," Henry pants. "Shut up and bend over."
"Oh, excellent," Richard says. The annoying impish grin is back. "I figured you'd be all squeamish about that. There should be lube and whatnot in the drawer over there." He gestures vaguely toward the bedside table, which Henry peers at with no little trepidation; he isn't sure he wants to know what sorts of things might be in there. "Promise you won't be all tentative about it."
"Fine with me," Henry mutters as he steels himself to open the drawer. It turns out there's nothing all that traumatic in it: some condoms, as expected; some loose change; a couple of batteries; something rubbery-looking that Henry doesn't want to try to identify; a few of those tiny liquor bottles like they give you on aeroplanes, now empty; some suspicious-looking plastic rings of varying sizes, an empty prescription medication bottle (Henry resists the temptation to look at the label), and, for some reason, a bunch of post-it notes.
There is, however, no lube in sight. This is something of a problem.
"You're out of lube," he says accusingly, and Richard frowns.
"That's ridiculous. I just started a new tube -- " He's already on his feet, peering over Henry's shoulder into the drawer. "Someone left the bloody thing out again, and I think I know just who it is."
Oh, wonderful, Henry thinks. If he starts talking about other people he's fucking, I'm just going to leave. Especially if it's anyone I know. He remembers Edward's advice, or possibly warning, or possibly just comment made out of jealousy and spite: Don't think Richard doesn't kiss and tell. For a moment he wishes fervently that it were Edward in this increasingly ridiculous situation instead of him, although Richard would probably be much less of a twat if it were.
"How do you know you didn't do it?" he says, since keeping the conversation out of that particular area is probably the best thing to do. "You don't strike me as someone who leaves things where they're intended to go."
"Because," Richard says, peering under the bed, "I understand the importance of knowing exactly where the lube is."
It's a good point. Henry can't really argue with it.
"Are you going to help, or are you just going to stand there like an idiot?" Richard says, getting back to his feet and preparing to look behind the bed. Henry is still pondering which area of the bedroom is least likely to be completely off-putting when suddenly there is an audible splort and a great deal of cursing.
"Greene, you complete bastard, I am going to kill you -- " Richard picks up a purple tube with the cap still open and covered in translucent gel. "He always leaves the fucking lube lying around and didn't even put the sodding cap back on," he complains. "There is lube all over the fucking carpet and in my fucking laundry and half the fucking tube is gone -- "
"Well, maybe if you didn't leave -- " Henry has, after all, raised six children largely by himself, and the scolding is automatic, except then a much more pressing issue occurs to him. Henry has been assuming, admittedly more for the sake of his own sanity than in any genuine belief in Richard's sense of ethics, that Richard's suggestive remarks about Harry were entirely to wind him up. "Wait, Greene as in your TA?"
"First of all, how the hell do you know that, and secondly, so what?" Richard pulls a towel from the pile of laundry, inspects it to make sure it's not covered in lube, and then wipes his hands on it. "I already told you I'd leave your son alone. Generally, when I mean to fuck someone, I don't go about it by fucking his dad first."
"The course description is available on the department website," Henry mutters, glaring and folding his arms. "And besides, sleeping with your grad students is incredibly unethical. I can see I've given you entirely too much credit as far as being a decent human being goes."
"Well, I don't sleep with all my grad students." Richard rolls his eyes. "Just the prettiest ones."
"You're disgusting," Henry finally says.
Richard's smirk is maddening. "And that's why you want me."
"I told you -- " Henry says. Richard has moved very close to him by now, like within-cock-length close, and Henry makes his most valiant effort to ignore the degree to which the blood is rushing out of his head, because God, Richard is right about the wanting-him part -- "Don't think I can't see through your transparent efforts to manipulate me."
"If I weren't manipulative," Richard whispers, "you wouldn't even be here."
And that's what finally gets Henry to fuck him.
It's very awkward at first, because it turns out that if you're unaccustomed to buggery all the stuff you have to do to make hard and fast sex happen kind of spoils the effect, especially when inconvenient things happen like the stupid condom wrapper refusing to cooperate, because you've managed to get lube all over your hands by that point. Richard, braced against the edge of the bed, props himself up on his (ridiculously pointy) elbows, waiting for Henry to just bloody do something already, and finally Henry shoves into him and oh holy fuck yes. Richard cries out in pain and pleasure, his face red and his knuckles turning white as his fingers dig into the mattress, and the bed is precisely the wrong height for doing this comfortably, but Henry can't bring himself to care even though it's hurting his back, because he's got Richard pressed to the bed, one hand still clutching at the sheets and the other wrapped around his own cock as Henry grinds into him -- and then Richard's crying out again and his body shudders and clenches and that's enough to set Henry off. And then it's over and Henry sinks down onto the bed and closes his eyes because he needs a moment before facing a world in which he has just buggered Richard Bordeaux.
He doesn't look back at Richard until after he's wandered over on shaky legs to drop the condom into the bin. He'd expected him to be smirking, but he's just lying on his back staring pensively at the ceiling, his skin blotchy red and white against pewter-grey sheets -- it's almost like Henry's not there at all. Which is incredibly disconcerting.
In lieu of saying anything, Henry takes stock of his scattered clothing. He can feel Richard's eyes on him as he pads across the room to retrieve his shirt, draped over the armchair in the corner, and when he picks it up his breath catches for a second.
Underneath his shirt is a handmade sweater in burgundy wool; it's slightly lumpy and the seams are crooked, and it is the only neatly-folded thing in the entire apartment. Henry recognizes it immediately as Anne's handiwork.
"Don't touch that," Richard snaps at him, sitting up as quickly as he can, and Henry steps back instantly.
"Jesus, Richard, I'm -- " and he can't make himself say sorry, he didn't actually do anything wrong, and yet.
He had been friends with Anne at university. He might have asked her out, even, if they hadn't both been happily partnered. And he'd always thought Richard wasn't good enough for her.
Which is a much more complicated feeling now that he's just fucked Richard, and not even in a spontaneous whirlwind of awkward copier-based sex, but in a deliberate, planned-in-advance-and-even-written-in-his-day-planner sort of way. He returns to the bed to sit down beside Richard.
"Is that what this is about, then?" he says.
Richard runs a hand through his hair, and removes his glasses. He looks oddly vulnerable without them. There's a red mark on his cheek from the frame, where his face has been pushed into the bed.
"You never really think about it," he says, finally. "When you lose someone you love -- that you're really going to miss the sex."
Oh God what. Henry is not at all prepared to have this conversation with Richard. Certainly not now and very likely not ever. Because it's not as if he can't relate. But even if he were less convinced that grief is a supremely private thing, it's not as if he'd want to talk about that with Richard. He is more than a bit surprised that Richard wants to talk about it with him.
"I suppose not," Henry mumbles, looking down at his hands, and then realizes that's less of a non-awkward place to look when everyone is naked. He's always felt very weird about missing sex. Especially since it's only been recently that all the kids are old enough that he has time for it. Not that he's about to tell Richard any of this, and not that it matters, since Richard is very unlikely, after all, to be particularly interested in his methods of dealing with grief.
Then, too, he hasn't had sex with any of Mary's friends. That probably makes a difference.
"God, I can't believe I'm telling you anything," Richard says. He's got hold of a corner of the sheet and is absently folding it into pleats; Henry can't seem to stop watching his fingers. "They put me on meds, you know. Because they didn't think I was making any progress."
There's no good answer to that. Henry nods, instead; if Richard were actually looking at him, he could interpret that however he wanted, but he's not, anyway.
"I went off them, though," Richard continues. "It had completely killed my libido. I had no idea what to do with myself."
Henry, having restrained himself manfully for so long, finally slips and actually says the first thing that comes to mind: "That explains so much."
For about half a second Henry is worried that he's said something completely inappropriate and horrible, and at the same time he's worried that it bothers him as much as it apparently does that he might have said something completely inappropriate and horrible to a man he generally cannot stand, at least, when he is not fucking him.
Richard puts his glasses back on, which is a relief to a degree that is surprising given that nobody in the room is wearing anything but glasses.
"Oh, good," he says, and he is back to himself again, or at least pretending to be. "I was afraid you were about to say something comforting. I can't stand that sort of thing."
It's clear he doesn't mean it, but it's just as clear he doesn't want to be contradicted. Henry lets it pass.
***
It's still early evening when Henry returns home, and as far as he's concerned this is an excellent thing, because he will have plenty of time to get to ignoring what has just happened and all the troubling implications, such as the fact that Richard is clearly more psychologically damaged than he though, and yet Henry is still having sex with him despite the fact that Richard is apparently motivated by the knowledge of Henry's friendship with his dead wife, and the fact that, despite all that, he and Richard are meeting up again on Tuesday, and he can thus forget about the entire thing until the next time he runs into Edward, who will no doubt have something to say about it.
He does kind of hope that none of the kids are home yet -- they are all terribly involved, after all, and it is still early -- but Blanche is curled up on the sofa, looking decidedly upset.
"What's wrong, honey?" he asks, sitting down next to her.
"Ethan broke up with me," she wails, and Henry wraps his arm around her while she gives a tearful explanation that he can only follow halfway, not least because last time he remembers hearing about Blanche's boyfriend his name was Matt, and really, his personal life isn't so complicated that he should have trouble keeping track of the kids, especially since only three of them still live at home.
"Why are boys stupid?" Blanche sniffles.
"I'm sure I can't begin to explain," Henry says.
Author: angevin2
Play: Richard II
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Richard/Henry (with reference to Richard/Anne and Henry/Mary)
Rating: kind of a hard R
Word Count: 6295
Warnings: Dodgy sexual ethics; unhealthy relationships; discussion of sleeping with one's students; brief references to various unsavory practices, sometimes involving sheep and/or root vegetables; reference to 1970s!John of Gaunt; massive amounts of awkwardness
Summary: Henry and Richard are really bad at interacting when they're not having sex.
Notes: Dedicated to gileonnen. Part of the increasingly kudzu-like Crescive In His Faculty AU: takes place just after "Burden of Proof." There is useful background in "Pausa Caffè." The title comes from Bishop Berkeley's dismissal of the concept of infinitesmals (see, I researched math for this AU!). All of the stuff mentioned as being in The Joy of Gay Sex (Revised and Expanded Third Edition) really is in there, although there is, so far as I could discern, no Complete Idiot's Guide to Gay Sex or Gay Sex for Dummies (there is such a thing as Sex for Dummies, but I have no idea whether it includes anything other than het sex). The banana book is real, though. Finally, many thanks to speak_me_fair and gehayi for offering suggestions at points where I got stuck.
When Henry Bolingbroke awkwardly maneuvers his way into a casual relationship with Richard Bordeaux, it had not occurred to him that even meeting up occasionally for fucking is going to be an incredible bloody pain in all ways.
After all, if one embarks upon a relationship that is, by mutual and emphatic agreement, not dating or anything like it, just the aforementioned meeting-up-for-fucking, the expectation is generally that this is a less emotionally fraught arrangement than the usual kind of thing, even setting aside the assumption that even people who meet up occasionally for fucking can generally stand each other's company, which is something Henry is still not sure about in this case.
Of course, if one wishes one's life not to be fraught, one really might be better off avoiding Richard Bordeaux altogether. That was Henry's first mistake, because now here he is sitting on a park bench with Richard attempting to figure out when and where they might get down to business, as it were, in a completely official and non-copier-based fashion.
"I don't suppose I need to ask 'your place or mine,'" Richard says. "Unless you're particularly invested in traumatizing the children."
Henry can very nearly feel his face turning green as he imagines introducing Richard to any of the kids (other than Harry, anyway; he prefers to pretend that Richard and Harry don't actually know each other already, never mind that Richard keeps reminding him in the dodgiest possible ways). The fact that he has no intention of thinking of Richard as his boyfriend (which would be ridiculous even if they weren't both in their forties) or, God forbid, his lover does not help at all. He is especially glad that John is off at Georgetown and thus will not have the opportunity to find out: treasurer of College Republicans he may be, but what he doesn't know won't mentally scar anybody.
"You don't need to ask that at all," he says. He reflects briefly that if he is that interested in fucking another man, there is really no need whatsoever for it to be Richard, is there? Just as a hypothetical, Edward York is, as people twenty years younger than himself might say, totally into him, apparently, and he is quite lovely and, more importantly, not Richard, and apparently not even fucking Richard, despite all appearances to the contrary. Of course, this opens up the possibility that Edward is fond of Richard for his own sake, which is frankly terrifying.
"Well, good," Richard says. "As it happens, I've got an evening class tonight anyway."
"Well, then." Henry fidgets inwardly, caught between disappointment and relief. "I'm not free again until Thursday."
"Works for me," Richard says, with just a hint of a smirk which turns into all-out laughter when Henry reaches into his jacket pocket for his day planner.
Henry doesn't think he's ever heard Richard laugh before. The effect is decidedly unnerving.
"Oh God, you're actually writing it down," he says. "That's -- I don't even know what that is."
"Do you mind?" Henry closes his planner, with half a mind to call the whole thing off and just walk away. He's not sure precisely why he doesn't do just that.
"What are you going to write?" Richard says, still grinning like a particularly sadistic Cheshire cat. "'Calculus IV, department meeting, casual gay sex'?"
Henry pauses, his pen a millimeter above the page. "It's none of your damned business -- "
"Well, I do plan on showing up," Richard interrupts.
" -- and, you know, I don't have to do this at all," Henry concludes, clicking his pen shut. "I could just leave right now."
"It's your call." Richard shrugs expansively. "Some of us have no trouble finding other people to fuck."
Henry glares at him for a moment, feeling as though his bluff has been called, before writing "RICHARD" emphatically in his planner.
***
It's not until he's on the way home that it occurs to him that he has no idea what he's doing. What he will be doing, rather. Apart from the sordid goings-on by the copier, but Henry assumes that the kind of sex one schedules in one's day planner is probably going to be more convoluted, and will probably require the participants to remove their trousers (oh God he's going to have to get naked in front of Richard WHY is he doing this again).
It does not occur to him in any serious context to just call the whole thing off. This might be because other than the Copier Thing (which hardly counts) he can't actually remember the last time he had sex, and dammit, he is forty-six years old and deserves to get laid once in a while.
Which is why Henry takes the opportunity, during the two-hour downtime he has between classes, to go to Borders, which is considerably, and blessedly, out of walking distance of campus, and buy a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex (Revised and Expanded Third Edition), which seems the least awkward option based on a quick perusal of what's on offer, since it does not contain the phrases "Ins & Outs," "For Dummies," or "Complete Idiot's Guide," nor does it feature a man eating a banana on the cover. (And at any rate the heterosexual analogue is a venerable, for this sort of thing, institution. Henry remembers furtively flipping, when nobody else was home, through the one his father owned back in the seventies, and being simultaneously compelled and traumatized by the pencil drawings of shaggy hippies going at it. He shudders at the possibility that he is turning into his father. Then he reasons that if he is purchasing a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex, he is certainly not turning into his father.)
As he stands in line -- why are there so damn many people at Borders at 11:30 on a Tuesday -- clutching a pile of books (so as to slip The Joy of Gay Sex inconspicuously into it), he ponders whether or not he ought to admit to Philippa that she is right and that the Kindle is not such a bad idea after all. Probably not. He wouldn't want to explain to his thirteen-year-old daughter precisely what occasioned his change of heart.
The Borders clerk does not remark on his purchase. Henry suspects he may have "DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT IT" projecting from his forehead.
It's not until after his second class that he has a chance to actually examine what he's getting into. This isn't really the kind of thing he should be doing during office hours, but nobody ever comes to office hours anyway, and he'll be damned if he looks ridiculously inexperienced in front of Richard.
So, he tells himself. Gay sex.
He takes off his glasses and puts them back on. Then he organizes his non-Joy of Gay Sex books on his desk in order of size, like a tiny and unusually-flat ziggurat. Then he sharpens a pencil (in case he wishes to make marginal notes).
Then he wonders why he is approaching an impending sexual encounter as if it were a homework assignment.
He flips casually through the prefatory material until he arrives at the first page of actual instructional material, which informs him, not altogether usefully, that "Culturally induced fears have given many people phobias about their assholes."
At the end of an hour and a half Henry has filled a page of note paper with the following:
- "Throughout history men have fucked one another and relished the experience." <-- DIRECT QUOTATION.
- do not insert sweet potatoes into your arse (WHO needs to be told this?)
- being 'bottom' = state of mind apparently (w/ poss. preference for 'huge donkey dongs') NB. does not sound appealing. If word 'dong' used at any time -- leave immediately.
- book feels need to tell us people enjoy kissing during sex. THANK YOU BOOK.
- NB. water-based lubricants (Astroglide, KY)
- WHY IS THERE A SEX WITH ANIMALS CHAPTER OH GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE WHY AM I DOING THIS
- am uncertain whether or not am being perceived as 'bear.' not keen on the idea, q.v. 'sex with animals.' poss. shave off beard?
- chapter on 'daddy/son' kink makes me never want to have sex again.
- NB. this will make your back hurt.
- the word "cock" has now lost all meaning through repetition. Cockcockcockcockcock oh God now it sounds ridiculously funny
He is particularly relieved that no one has seen fit to attend office hours.
He tears the paper off the pad, folds it, and inserts it into the book (right between "Frottage" and "Fuck Buddies," appropriately enough). Then he leans back in his chair staring at the book sitting on his desk, before sliding it into a desk drawer underneath an eval copy of An Introduction to Real Analysis and a New York Times from two weeks ago.
Henry isn't sure whether to feel disappointed that reading about the ins and outs, as it were, of fucking other men hasn't seemed more exciting: everything he has read this afternoon has mostly served to make him feel patronized (he does not think he'll ever stop being annoyed at the bit about the sweet potatoes) and generally crabby. Granted he would like to think that at his age he can read a bloody how-to book about sex without getting all hot and bothered, but perhaps he is not into the whole gay thing as much as he thought he might be.
Except if that's true, why is it he can't stop thinking about Richard's hand in his trousers, and his other hand clenching in Henry's hair, his eyes tightly closed and his cheeks flushed, his mouth twisted into a grimace as he struggles not to cry out -- Christ, he can remember what Richard's skin tastes like.
Why the ever-living fuck is he so turned on by a man he's hated since the first time they met?
***
On Wednesday Henry runs into Edward York at the coffee shop and spends about half a second trying to figure out what he thinks Edward knows before Edward announces, thankfully not too loudly, "So I hear you're fucking Richard officially."
Henry does not want to know exactly what the expression on his face looks like, but it makes Edward laugh and add, "And no, I don't expect you to confirm or deny it. But don't think Richard doesn't kiss and tell."
Henry's face and his palm have become much closer acquaintances since he inexplicably decided that having any kind of extra-professional relationship with Richard was a good idea. He suspects that by the weekend they will probably be engaged.
"Why is it," he asks himself aloud, "that I always end up talking to smart-arsed historians in contexts where I can't drink myself into a stupor?" Not that he can really do that anyway, since it buggers up his meds, but Edward doesn't need to know that.
"Just lucky, I guess," Edward says; his smile is sharper than he probably means for it to be, and it doesn't really make it to his eyes, and it occurs to Henry that he is, against his better judgment, jealous.
When did his life become a bloody soap opera? Not that that question, rhetorical as it may be, is difficult to answer.
***
If he'd had any reason to think about it, Henry would probably have expected Richard to live in one of those brownstone Victorian rowhouses that well-to-do hipsters seem to live in a lot of the time, or at least the ones on the Anglia faculty do, rather than in the slightly bland building he finds himself approaching on Thursday evening.
He looks at the post-it note with Richard's address on it to the door and back several times, just to make absolutely sure he is standing in front of the right door and that the number isn't something other than 506 (he squints at the card briefly: that couldn't be a 5 instead of a 6, could it?) before knocking awkwardly, rapidly, and probably too softly.
There's no answer. Why is he doing this again?
He knocks at the door again, louder this time. Someone walks by carrying several bags of groceries, and Henry does his best to pretend she isn't there. He wonders, idly, if he has any clothes that would blend into the walls, if for some reason he deems a repeat visit necessary.
There's no sound of footsteps before the door opens.
"So!" Richard says. "Should I bother to say hello, or do you want to get right to the fucking?"
"You know, you could close the door before you say that sort of thing," Henry says, stepping through the door and closing it behind him. There's something ineffably mind-wrenching about actually being in Richard's flat -- all right, yes, he's been to his old one in Oxford, but that was in another country, and besides -- it would be incredibly inappropriate to finish that particular reference, and, at any rate, knowing intellectually that Richard is actually a person with a life and not some horrible imp who materializes at will to annoy him is markedly different from being in his actual living room with him standing there being all amused-looking and unnervingly barefoot (Henry does not know why that unsettles him, but it does) and surrounded by stuff -- the flat itself is the vaguely sterile kind with faintly off-white walls and track lighting, but there are things everywhere: bookcases painfully overstuffed and with random papers sticking out; a pile of old issues of the New York Review of Books, stacks of journals with names like Speculum and Medium Aevum and English Historical Review, sweaters and socks and a staggering number of teacups and purple-stained wineglasses.
"Insecure about our sexuality, are we?" Richard folds his arms across his chest and smirks even harder. If that's possible.
Henry glares at him. "I just don't think it's anyone else's business."
Richard laughs, which apparently is never going to not be slightly creepy. "You know, you might be less uptight if you came out."
There are roughly a million replies that spring to mind and create some sort of gridlock in the front of Henry's brain as they scramble to get out of his mouth; the one that makes it, just beating out Why would I, I'm not really gay and Fuck you, Richard, is the safest, but unfortunately it is also the dumbest.
"I'm not uptight," he says.
Richard's eyes widen, and his lips purse incredulously. "Well, you're going to be a great lay."
Henry folds his own arms and frowns. "I didn't come here to be insulted."
"As I recall," Richard says, uncrossing his arms and running a hand through his stupid floppy hair, "you actually came here to plow my arse. Or get your arse plowed -- I suppose the polite thing to do is to let you pick which one you want to get up to, isn't it?"
"You don't need to make it sound so sordid," Henry mutters, and Richard's grin is disquietingly vulpine as he peers over the top of his glasses.
"That's what makes it fun," he says, and when Henry rolls his eyes, he continues, "Well, you're the one who actually schedules appointments for sex. In your planner. You can't tell me that's not at least a little sordid."
"I'm a busy man," Henry says. "And quite frankly you're wasting my time."
"I wouldn't want that on my conscience."
"I could just leave, you know."
"You'll have to do better than that," Richard says, "if you want me to try to stop you."
"And you'll have to do better than that if you want me to kiss you in order to shut you up."
Richard's eyebrows make a brief attempt to exit his forehead, and then he apparently gives up, grabbing the front of Henry's shirt and kissing him hard, and Henry responds in kind while Richard goes to work on unbuttoning his shirt.
"Have I mentioned lately that you're incredibly vulgar and obvious?" Henry says -- not that it wasn't a pretty good kiss considering that it was with Richard, but he doesn't need to look so damn self-satisfied about it.
"You know it turns you on," Richard says, "and don't even try to argue that that was someone else's tongue attempting to get down my throat."
"Oh, for God's sake -- " Henry grabs Richard by the shoulders -- God, he is pointy when he's not wearing a jacket -- and kisses him back, shivering a little as Richard's hand slides up the back of his shirt, and then he's got Richard's back pressed to the front door and Richard strains against him; he moans softly against Henry's lips, and Henry can feel Richard's cock beginning to harden against his hip.
"That's more like it," Richard murmurs, when they've pulled apart; his eyes are bright and his cheeks an emphatic shade of pink, and the word beautiful drifts across Henry's mind for half a second before he quashes the thought, because God, what is wrong with him? Except by then Richard's already slipped out of his grasp and is on his knees undoing Henry's belt, and it occurs to him that Richard is about to suck him off right in front of the front door and in no wise does he trust himself not to react in any way that might be audible to anyone who happens to be out in the hall. He takes a substantial step backwards, nearly tripping over a pile of unfinished marking and causing Richard to wobble in a most undignified manner as he leans forward to unbutton Henry's trousers.
"You," Richard says, leaning on one wrist and glaring up at Henry, "are utterly infuriating. And to think I was about to give you a blowjob."
"We are not doing this right in front of the door," Henry says, sounding startlingly prim even to his own ears, which may be why he follows up with "We can go somewhere else and then -- " and it's becoming quite unavoidable how good an idea this sounds at the moment -- "you can suck my cock all you bloody well want."
Richard pulls himself awkwardly to his feet -- his tall, thin frame appears to be unfolding, which is yet another disconcerting thing about him -- and then he slumps against the arm of the sofa, looking noticeably deflated, and mutters, "Well, who says I want to now?"
Henry rolls his eyes and grabs hold of the waistband of Richard's jeans, which necessitates that Richard follow him.
"The bedroom's that way," Richard says, gesturing to his left. "Unless you're planning on bending me over the kitchen table. Not that I'd mind, except we'd have to clear it off first, and then cleaning up after kitchen sex is always such a bloody pain. Have you ever tried -- of course you haven't. Suffice it to say that getting Astroglide out of -- "
"We are not going to have sex in your kitchen, Richard," Henry says, as much to head off the anecdote at the pass as anything, as they pause in front of the bedroom door.
"Oh, you're no fun anymore," Richard pouts. "If you were ever fun to begin with, and quite frankly, in twenty years I've never seen any evidence of that."
"I'm quite personable to people who don't introduce themselves by shoving their tongue down my throat."
"I can't imagine you have that problem very often."
"No, just with you."
Henry smirks as Richard shoves past him, rolling his eyes and sighing heavily as he sits on the bed, crossing his legs in a manner that puts Henry in mind of a particularly disjointed and markedly effeminate marionette. The association is particularly disturbing, all the more so because, knowing Richard, he would undoubtedly find it kinky.
"Well, I had no idea what a repellent personality you had. If I'd known, I'd never have tried anything, I assure you."
This is such a ridiculous statement that the only thing to do is laugh -- which causes Richard's face to elongate visibly.
"Are you laughing at me?"
"No, you great idiot, I'm remembering something I saw on Come Dancing -- what do you think?"
"My God." Richard leans back on his elbows. "I'm about to fuck a man who watched Come Dancing. There is not enough booze in the world."
Henry folds his arms and glares. "What makes you think I still want to fuck you?"
"You're still here, aren't you?" Richard stands up then and draws very close to Henry, enough that Henry has to look up at him. It does nothing whatsoever for his sense of dignity -- neither does Richard's trailing one finger down his chest and making him shiver.
"God, I hate you so much," he murmurs, as he begins undoing Richard's trousers.
Richard's lips are a millimeter from Henry's ear, and his breathing is labored. "You know you get off on it," he says, as he slides Henry's shirt off of his shoulders.
He's right, of course. Which makes Henry hate him all the more.
They undress each other hurriedly, almost frustratedly; Henry ends up snapping one of the buttons off of Richard's shirt when it won't come out of its loop, and Richard is too intent on getting Henry's trousers off to notice.
"Good God," Richard mutters, pushing them down his hips. "You're wearing Y-fronts. It figures."
"Do you speculate about my undergarments often?" Henry is working on Richard's jeans; they're the kind that button rather than zipping, and he curses Richard mentally for going with the least convenient sartorial choices possible -- even though, it turns out, he isn't bothering to wear any sort of pants.
"I'm just saying," Richard says, his fingertips pausing at Henry's waist, "that you're clearly the type of person who'd wear sad constricting pants. We'd better get you out of them as soon as possible." He pauses, maddeningly, almost as soon as he's started to slip them off. "And then you can take off your damned socks. I refuse to fuck a man with socks on."
Henry rolls his eyes -- but he does awkwardly shuffle out of his socks before running a thumb along Richard's hipbone, suppressing the impulse to conspicuously check for blood afterwards. Richard seems even sharper and more angular once he's got his clothes off; he might actually look frail, even, if he weren't peering critically at Henry in a way that's at once uncomfortable and arousing enough to make Henry question his own conviction that he is resolutely unkinky.
"You're flaky." Richard pokes at a red, inflamed patch on Henry's shoulder, and Henry flinches -- his psoriasis has been mostly under control for years now, but he can't help having the odd flare-up. He tries with all his might to avoid running through the mental catalogue of things his father has said to him about it, most of them along the lines of "Do you want people to think you have some kind of contagious disease? Because I can assure you that's what they think when they look at you," and wishes that Richard would just make fun of his cock or something instead, because Henry is pretty sure that that's nothing out of the ordinary and thus he could be sure Richard was just trying to wind him up, especially since Richard has probably seen about a billion cocks and Henry imagines they probably start to blend together after a while.
"It's nothing," Henry says through gritted teeth. "Shut up. It's just psoriasis. Hardly my fault."
"Well, I wasn't actually accusing you of having secondary syphilis." Richard rolls his eyes. "Frankly, I can't imagine your sex life is that interesting."
Henry glares back at him. "You know, I don't actually find your detailed knowledge of venereal diseases particularly encouraging. Maybe I should stand over here." He takes a slightly theatrical step back, and Richard's lips thin.
"I'm sure you weren't paying attention at the time," he begins, folding his arms, "but I came of age in the 1980s. It wasn't exactly the best time to be queer. I'm not an idiot, Henry."
"I never said so," Henry says, and it comes out suspiciously gently, so he adds, "Just completely intolerable."
Richard very nearly bares his teeth in a sort of thing that's probably supposed to be an ironic smile, and he moves closer to Henry, his eyes diabolically alight.
"And you," he replies, "are perhaps the most annoying -- well, no. You're really not the most annoying human being I know. That would require someone far less mind-numbingly dull -- "
-- and that's all he can get out before Henry's grabbed him and kissed him furiously, and has stopped caring about the fact that he's undoubtedly played right into Richard's hands, particularly given what said hands are doing to him right this minute --
-- and then Richard sinks to his knees, and Henry's breath catches as Richard's mouth closes on him, his eyes nearly rolling back in his head as Richard runs his tongue along the underside of his cock -- and it's about then that the idea drifts into his mostly-pleasure-fogged brain that if he lets Richard get him off this way, Richard will probably expect him to do the same thing and he's entirely sure he's not quite ready to do that at this stage in the emphatically-not-a-relationship, or at least, he's not ready to do it to Richard, who would probably just criticize his technique the entire time, and if that's going to happen, he'd much rather be in the process of getting off when it does.
Pulling back from Richard requires more willpower than Henry realizes he possesses, although he is gloomily certain that his stores are now utterly depleted and that when his Calc IV students ask for an open-note midterm he'll probably cave in.
"Wait," he manages to force out. Richard's eyes go all wide and Henry has the distinct impression that he is disappointed.
"You know," he says, "your inexplicable determination not to let me suck you off doesn't speak well for you at all."
"I changed my mind," Henry pants. "Shut up and bend over."
"Oh, excellent," Richard says. The annoying impish grin is back. "I figured you'd be all squeamish about that. There should be lube and whatnot in the drawer over there." He gestures vaguely toward the bedside table, which Henry peers at with no little trepidation; he isn't sure he wants to know what sorts of things might be in there. "Promise you won't be all tentative about it."
"Fine with me," Henry mutters as he steels himself to open the drawer. It turns out there's nothing all that traumatic in it: some condoms, as expected; some loose change; a couple of batteries; something rubbery-looking that Henry doesn't want to try to identify; a few of those tiny liquor bottles like they give you on aeroplanes, now empty; some suspicious-looking plastic rings of varying sizes, an empty prescription medication bottle (Henry resists the temptation to look at the label), and, for some reason, a bunch of post-it notes.
There is, however, no lube in sight. This is something of a problem.
"You're out of lube," he says accusingly, and Richard frowns.
"That's ridiculous. I just started a new tube -- " He's already on his feet, peering over Henry's shoulder into the drawer. "Someone left the bloody thing out again, and I think I know just who it is."
Oh, wonderful, Henry thinks. If he starts talking about other people he's fucking, I'm just going to leave. Especially if it's anyone I know. He remembers Edward's advice, or possibly warning, or possibly just comment made out of jealousy and spite: Don't think Richard doesn't kiss and tell. For a moment he wishes fervently that it were Edward in this increasingly ridiculous situation instead of him, although Richard would probably be much less of a twat if it were.
"How do you know you didn't do it?" he says, since keeping the conversation out of that particular area is probably the best thing to do. "You don't strike me as someone who leaves things where they're intended to go."
"Because," Richard says, peering under the bed, "I understand the importance of knowing exactly where the lube is."
It's a good point. Henry can't really argue with it.
"Are you going to help, or are you just going to stand there like an idiot?" Richard says, getting back to his feet and preparing to look behind the bed. Henry is still pondering which area of the bedroom is least likely to be completely off-putting when suddenly there is an audible splort and a great deal of cursing.
"Greene, you complete bastard, I am going to kill you -- " Richard picks up a purple tube with the cap still open and covered in translucent gel. "He always leaves the fucking lube lying around and didn't even put the sodding cap back on," he complains. "There is lube all over the fucking carpet and in my fucking laundry and half the fucking tube is gone -- "
"Well, maybe if you didn't leave -- " Henry has, after all, raised six children largely by himself, and the scolding is automatic, except then a much more pressing issue occurs to him. Henry has been assuming, admittedly more for the sake of his own sanity than in any genuine belief in Richard's sense of ethics, that Richard's suggestive remarks about Harry were entirely to wind him up. "Wait, Greene as in your TA?"
"First of all, how the hell do you know that, and secondly, so what?" Richard pulls a towel from the pile of laundry, inspects it to make sure it's not covered in lube, and then wipes his hands on it. "I already told you I'd leave your son alone. Generally, when I mean to fuck someone, I don't go about it by fucking his dad first."
"The course description is available on the department website," Henry mutters, glaring and folding his arms. "And besides, sleeping with your grad students is incredibly unethical. I can see I've given you entirely too much credit as far as being a decent human being goes."
"Well, I don't sleep with all my grad students." Richard rolls his eyes. "Just the prettiest ones."
"You're disgusting," Henry finally says.
Richard's smirk is maddening. "And that's why you want me."
"I told you -- " Henry says. Richard has moved very close to him by now, like within-cock-length close, and Henry makes his most valiant effort to ignore the degree to which the blood is rushing out of his head, because God, Richard is right about the wanting-him part -- "Don't think I can't see through your transparent efforts to manipulate me."
"If I weren't manipulative," Richard whispers, "you wouldn't even be here."
And that's what finally gets Henry to fuck him.
It's very awkward at first, because it turns out that if you're unaccustomed to buggery all the stuff you have to do to make hard and fast sex happen kind of spoils the effect, especially when inconvenient things happen like the stupid condom wrapper refusing to cooperate, because you've managed to get lube all over your hands by that point. Richard, braced against the edge of the bed, props himself up on his (ridiculously pointy) elbows, waiting for Henry to just bloody do something already, and finally Henry shoves into him and oh holy fuck yes. Richard cries out in pain and pleasure, his face red and his knuckles turning white as his fingers dig into the mattress, and the bed is precisely the wrong height for doing this comfortably, but Henry can't bring himself to care even though it's hurting his back, because he's got Richard pressed to the bed, one hand still clutching at the sheets and the other wrapped around his own cock as Henry grinds into him -- and then Richard's crying out again and his body shudders and clenches and that's enough to set Henry off. And then it's over and Henry sinks down onto the bed and closes his eyes because he needs a moment before facing a world in which he has just buggered Richard Bordeaux.
He doesn't look back at Richard until after he's wandered over on shaky legs to drop the condom into the bin. He'd expected him to be smirking, but he's just lying on his back staring pensively at the ceiling, his skin blotchy red and white against pewter-grey sheets -- it's almost like Henry's not there at all. Which is incredibly disconcerting.
In lieu of saying anything, Henry takes stock of his scattered clothing. He can feel Richard's eyes on him as he pads across the room to retrieve his shirt, draped over the armchair in the corner, and when he picks it up his breath catches for a second.
Underneath his shirt is a handmade sweater in burgundy wool; it's slightly lumpy and the seams are crooked, and it is the only neatly-folded thing in the entire apartment. Henry recognizes it immediately as Anne's handiwork.
"Don't touch that," Richard snaps at him, sitting up as quickly as he can, and Henry steps back instantly.
"Jesus, Richard, I'm -- " and he can't make himself say sorry, he didn't actually do anything wrong, and yet.
He had been friends with Anne at university. He might have asked her out, even, if they hadn't both been happily partnered. And he'd always thought Richard wasn't good enough for her.
Which is a much more complicated feeling now that he's just fucked Richard, and not even in a spontaneous whirlwind of awkward copier-based sex, but in a deliberate, planned-in-advance-and-even-written-in-his-day-planner sort of way. He returns to the bed to sit down beside Richard.
"Is that what this is about, then?" he says.
Richard runs a hand through his hair, and removes his glasses. He looks oddly vulnerable without them. There's a red mark on his cheek from the frame, where his face has been pushed into the bed.
"You never really think about it," he says, finally. "When you lose someone you love -- that you're really going to miss the sex."
Oh God what. Henry is not at all prepared to have this conversation with Richard. Certainly not now and very likely not ever. Because it's not as if he can't relate. But even if he were less convinced that grief is a supremely private thing, it's not as if he'd want to talk about that with Richard. He is more than a bit surprised that Richard wants to talk about it with him.
"I suppose not," Henry mumbles, looking down at his hands, and then realizes that's less of a non-awkward place to look when everyone is naked. He's always felt very weird about missing sex. Especially since it's only been recently that all the kids are old enough that he has time for it. Not that he's about to tell Richard any of this, and not that it matters, since Richard is very unlikely, after all, to be particularly interested in his methods of dealing with grief.
Then, too, he hasn't had sex with any of Mary's friends. That probably makes a difference.
"God, I can't believe I'm telling you anything," Richard says. He's got hold of a corner of the sheet and is absently folding it into pleats; Henry can't seem to stop watching his fingers. "They put me on meds, you know. Because they didn't think I was making any progress."
There's no good answer to that. Henry nods, instead; if Richard were actually looking at him, he could interpret that however he wanted, but he's not, anyway.
"I went off them, though," Richard continues. "It had completely killed my libido. I had no idea what to do with myself."
Henry, having restrained himself manfully for so long, finally slips and actually says the first thing that comes to mind: "That explains so much."
For about half a second Henry is worried that he's said something completely inappropriate and horrible, and at the same time he's worried that it bothers him as much as it apparently does that he might have said something completely inappropriate and horrible to a man he generally cannot stand, at least, when he is not fucking him.
Richard puts his glasses back on, which is a relief to a degree that is surprising given that nobody in the room is wearing anything but glasses.
"Oh, good," he says, and he is back to himself again, or at least pretending to be. "I was afraid you were about to say something comforting. I can't stand that sort of thing."
It's clear he doesn't mean it, but it's just as clear he doesn't want to be contradicted. Henry lets it pass.
***
It's still early evening when Henry returns home, and as far as he's concerned this is an excellent thing, because he will have plenty of time to get to ignoring what has just happened and all the troubling implications, such as the fact that Richard is clearly more psychologically damaged than he though, and yet Henry is still having sex with him despite the fact that Richard is apparently motivated by the knowledge of Henry's friendship with his dead wife, and the fact that, despite all that, he and Richard are meeting up again on Tuesday, and he can thus forget about the entire thing until the next time he runs into Edward, who will no doubt have something to say about it.
He does kind of hope that none of the kids are home yet -- they are all terribly involved, after all, and it is still early -- but Blanche is curled up on the sofa, looking decidedly upset.
"What's wrong, honey?" he asks, sitting down next to her.
"Ethan broke up with me," she wails, and Henry wraps his arm around her while she gives a tearful explanation that he can only follow halfway, not least because last time he remembers hearing about Blanche's boyfriend his name was Matt, and really, his personal life isn't so complicated that he should have trouble keeping track of the kids, especially since only three of them still live at home.
"Why are boys stupid?" Blanche sniffles.
"I'm sure I can't begin to explain," Henry says.