HB fic: Past to Present [Irwin/Dakin, adult]
Title: Past to Present Author: celandineb Fandom: History Boys Pairing: Irwin/Dakin Rating: adult Summary: Irwin tells Dakin about a man he once met in Oxford. Note: This connects to my HB/HP crossover fic Passing, but is not itself a crossover and stands alone. Dedicated to emiime.
It isn't often that Dakin draws on his carefully-honed skills in evasion when he is with Irwin, but when Irwin asks him one night – after they've both had rather too much to drink – who the other man was that Dakin once said he had sex with, Dakin manages to turn the question around so that it is instead Irwin who talks about a man he once fucked in Oxford.
"It was the first year you were up at university," Irwin says, looking sideways at Dakin and shaking a cigarette from the packet, inhaling the smoke as if the cloud of it could conceal. "I'd left Cutler's and was knocking around trying to decide what to do next, and I went back to Oxford to see... to see where I'd come from."
Dakin nods. He's finished his whisky but nothing would induce him to go fetch another just now. He doesn't need Irwin's words to know that Irwin had gone to Oxford hoping and fearing to see Dakin, and that fear had had the best of it.
"I still had quite a few friends there," Irwin says, "but I didn't end up seeing any of them. I went into a book shop."
Of course he had. Dakin has never known anyone who owned so many books; mostly histories of course, but a vast array on other subjects as well.
"So what happened?" Dakin prompts. "What were you looking for?"
"A history of Poland," Irwin says, his expression ironed blank, daring Dakin to think it funny. He doesn't, not at all. "There wasn't one, though a shop assistant helped me look. Eventually I gave up and went to have a drink, and then he turned up in the pub. He was remarkably easy to talk to; something about him seemed familiar, I don't know why."
Irwin has turned sideways on the sofa and lifted his legs up onto it, putting his feet in Dakin's lap so that one rests lightly against the quiescent bulge of Dakin's prick. Dakin keeps his voice steady as he asks, "So you went to bed with him?"
"Not that night." Irwin shakes his head. "We spent several evenings together, and he asked if I'd like to have dinner at his flat." There's a faint smile on his face. "It was terribly grotty, a typical student bedsit although he wasn't a student. He'd a name out of a Dickens novel – Remus Lupin – and I was surprised he didn't own some terrifying Alsatian to match the name. But he lived alone, lonely, and I had the impression he felt he deserved it, although I've no idea why that would be the case. He was certainly amiable enough. One of the few blokes back then who didn't object when I insisted on using a condom."
The two of them share a lopsided smile at that. Irwin's been exceedingly cautious about such things over the years, and still has gone to be tested three times. He's seen more than one friend die of AIDS. Dakin has not always been so careful, and he is thankful that he's never caught anything that couldn't be cured, one way or another.
"So you did have sex with him," says Dakin, and puts his hand on Irwin's foot, pressing it against his cock, which is beginning to stir as he imagines Irwin, young, fucking this stranger in a dirty flat. "What was he like?"
Irwin inhales sharply. "Rather like me; brownish hair, on the thin side, medium height." He frowns a little, as if the memory bothers him. "He had a number of scars, I don't know what from."
"Perhaps he'd been in a motorcycle accident too?"
"I don't think so. I mentioned that I'd had one and he didn't say that he had. They were too scattered for that anyhow."
The scars are unimportant. "Did he fuck you or you fuck him?" Dakin asks, reaching to adjust his cock, now quite hard.
A smile plays over Irwin's lips. "I fucked him, but he was on top." He rubs the sole of his foot across Dakin's prick. "Would you like to try it?"
Dakin licks his lips. They have done a fair few things in bed by now, but not exactly this, and he knows he'll enjoy it the way that he always enjoys Irwin's prick in his arse, a discovery that had surprised him although probably it should not have.
Irwin's expression, which has been reflective while he has been talking about this former lover – well, not lover, Dakin corrects himself, not if they fucked only once – twists into pleasure as Dakin opens his trousers and palms his cock, hard as Dakin's own already. Dakin goes quickly to get the lube and slicks them both with it before lowering himself bit by bit onto the jutting flesh, his mouth opening in unconscious imitation of his arsehole, letting Irwin's tongue and cock penetrate him at the same time, doubling the connection between them.
He wishes that Irwin had had the courage to come and find him back then... or perhaps he doesn't wish it, perhaps it's better this way, having lived divided so that the stories they now share have greater meaning. He shudders as Irwin strokes him, urging him to rock his hips faster, until Dakin comes with a muffled groan through Irwin's fingers, leaning forward afterward to ride him for a few minutes more, drawing the orgasm from him.
Perhaps Irwin will be willing to tell him more stories of his past, Dakin thinks. He should reciprocate somehow, though he can't imagine that Irwin is keen to hear about the women Dakin has slept with; but the telling of them matters more than their subjects, joining minds as well as bodies, cross-tying past to present.