Post by day tripper on Jul 18, 2006 0:48:22 GMT -5
Hi! I'm new here, and absolutely in love with BHH. This is my first BHH fic (I'm a Harry Potter veteran :]) so be nice. ^^
Beginnings
He does not know when or where the feelings began, possibly they were always there and he blocked them from his mind, because Josie Trent is a student, and he is Professor Noel Zachary. He has read cases like that, cases where a person blocks traumatic events from their brain—but they do remember them eventually, the memories come back in a slow unraveling of the mind, not unlike poor Humbert in the Nabokov book that Z read the summer he felt most adventurous.
It must be that, he tells himself some night. It must be traumatic, for what else could it be? What else could send him to his room alone so many nights, drinking to forget all the things about Josie that occupy his mind?
* * *
Z finds it harder every day to conduct class, and he places his hand on Josie's shoulder one Tuesday as he looks at her work on a yellow legal bad. It is raining outside and as his eyes scan her explanation of friction, he begins to feel some form of it himself.
"Am I right, Professor Z?" she looks up at him, his hand still on her shoulder, and she is smiling like she knows she is right ad she just wants to hear him say yes. He wants her to say yes too, in so many ways.
"You certainly are, Josie," Z replies, making his way to the front of the classroom. As he gets to his desk, the bell rings to signal the end of class. His students tumble out the door and into the hall. Paper airplanes are thrown, notes are retrieved from the floor where they had been kicked. Marshall grabs Corinne by the wrist and kisses her awkwardly on the cheek; she smiles at him, the smile of a teenage girl, of promises and sex. Z remembers the smile; he has seen it on the lips of so many young women.
Lucas offers to carry Josie's books, but she shakes her head, laughing, and says she can take them herself. Vaughn follows the rest of the science club out of the room, fixated on Josie, and it takes Z a few moments to realize he is becoming jealous of one of his students.
He thinks he can trace the beginnings of his feelings to science class, though he does not know what particular day, what moment, brought his emotion toward her. (Am I such a coward I cannot call it love?) Z thinks the love was slow in creation, and when he thinks about it, when he tries to pinpoint when he knew he loved Josie, there is a movie-montage of her—of her gestures, her triumphs, her smiles. The montage is intermixed and interrupted by visions of the universe, expanding quickly and populated with pinpricks of light. If he could only focus on those thoughts, on the universe, he would be okay. He would forget.
Occasionally, he cannot focus on science without thoughts of Josie disturbing his concentration. His feelings are immense and vast, expanding like the universe, and their weight is comparable to the mass of the Earth (5.9742 times 10 to the twenty-fourth power). He feels like Atlas, forced to the edge of Earth to hold the heavens on his shoulders, so they do not share their colors and embrace. He holds himself from Josie so as not to hold her the way he wishes he could.
Z closes his eyes, though the sunlight goes right through them and all he sees is red. He holds his head in his hands, massaging his temples, his face arranged in an expression of pain, of confusion.
"Professor Z, are you okay?"
He hears Josie's voice but does not open his eyes, afraid he is imagining her concern. Loneliness is not a thing he cares to face; he stares at the insides of his eyelids to avoid it.
"Z!"
He hears footsteps and feels her hands on his back. His breath hitches, he is frozen in time, he has fallen through some kind of wormhole, he is living the impossible, she is touching him, her palm moving back and forth on his back.
"I'm fine, it's just a headache," Z looks up at her, taking off his glasses and placing them on a thick stack of papers yet to be graded. "Aren't you going to be late for your next class?"
"I forgot my notebook in here. Besides, it's English, who really cares if I cut it or not?"
"I care," Z replies as Josie retrieves her notebook. "What are you studying in that class?"
"Lolita. It's this book about a guy falling in love with his stepdaughter, and she's only fourteen or something."
"I've read it." (Oh, have I read it.)
"Did you like it?" Josie wonders, stalling her eventual departure to English.
"I did," Z admits. "What do you think of it?"
"To tell you the truth, I haven't exactly started it yet." Josie smiles (promises, sex) and puts her notebook back to where it had been. "Can I stay here with you? I can catch up on my reading and you don't have to be so lonely on your break. It's a win/win situation."
Z pauses, joining Josie in her stalling, this time stalling his answer. There is no harm in letting her read, reading is a good, solitary activity.
"You can stay—but don't tell anyone that you were here." Z is amazed at his response.
Josie seats herself on a table, her stocking-clad legs dangling, and pulls a book from her bag.
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."
* * *
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In a point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
* * *
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns." Josie finishes reading the first few paragraphs and smiles at Z, who is too enraptured to notice the promises on her lips.
* * *
"Quitting?" Corinne bursts out at what would be the last science club meeting.
"I am afraid so," Z replies. "I haven't given Durst my two weeks' notice, but yes, I am resigning."
"But you can't quit!" Vaughn protests, "not after what all of us have been through!"
"What about the wormhole?" Lucas exclaims.
"And Pearadyne Labs?" Marshall adds.
His students demands become static and dull, he is not paying attention; he is watching Josie, who is sitting in an angry silence, her eyes glazed and mouth set in a defiant line. Z hates to see her lips arranged that way: He prefers them smiling, laughing—he would prefer them on his own lips, making promises on his skin.
"We're going to be late for history," Corinne announces after more protesting and grumbling, all muted to Z's ears. Everyone but Josie and Z runs off to their next class, slamming the door as they depart.
"You can't leave," Josie is crying, her skin shines with tears and her lower lip trembles. She looks ridiculously vulnerable, and it is against all the laws she has set for herself to be crying here so openly.
"Josie, you don't understand, I have to."
"What would it take you to stay?"
"I—"
And she is shoving him into his chair, she is kissing him, and he is kissing her back, his hands beneath her skirt, caressing her skin so like silk, and this is all he has ever wanted. In one quick motion he has slipped her panties to her knees, and universes are expanding and stars are being born and her lips are on his lips and on his neck and buttons are coming undone.
Josie is saying yes yes yes (it is all I ever want to hear, I don't care if I never hears of neurons or atoms again, all I want is yes yes yes) feeling the friction between them, watching worlds unfurl like flags in the wind.
Only in their own universe could their love ever be valid, and Z knows it, and Josie knows it, and two weeks later the new science professor writes his name on the blackboard, underlining it twice and asking the class to please turn to page 126.
But all Josie can think of is Z. The sticky, fumbling encounters with Vaughn leave her empty, the two of them lying on her bed in the afternoons, his hand on her thigh in the back of his father's limousine. It's never enough, and it never will be.
Weeks pass and Z still dreams of her, still dreams of her skin and her voice and her breath on his neck. Some days he thinks he may be unraveling with his want for her, with his need.
Look at what depths man falls to in the name of love.
Look at this tangle of thorns.
fin
**NOTE: The excerpts are from the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Go read it, it's amazing.
Beginnings
He does not know when or where the feelings began, possibly they were always there and he blocked them from his mind, because Josie Trent is a student, and he is Professor Noel Zachary. He has read cases like that, cases where a person blocks traumatic events from their brain—but they do remember them eventually, the memories come back in a slow unraveling of the mind, not unlike poor Humbert in the Nabokov book that Z read the summer he felt most adventurous.
It must be that, he tells himself some night. It must be traumatic, for what else could it be? What else could send him to his room alone so many nights, drinking to forget all the things about Josie that occupy his mind?
* * *
Z finds it harder every day to conduct class, and he places his hand on Josie's shoulder one Tuesday as he looks at her work on a yellow legal bad. It is raining outside and as his eyes scan her explanation of friction, he begins to feel some form of it himself.
"Am I right, Professor Z?" she looks up at him, his hand still on her shoulder, and she is smiling like she knows she is right ad she just wants to hear him say yes. He wants her to say yes too, in so many ways.
"You certainly are, Josie," Z replies, making his way to the front of the classroom. As he gets to his desk, the bell rings to signal the end of class. His students tumble out the door and into the hall. Paper airplanes are thrown, notes are retrieved from the floor where they had been kicked. Marshall grabs Corinne by the wrist and kisses her awkwardly on the cheek; she smiles at him, the smile of a teenage girl, of promises and sex. Z remembers the smile; he has seen it on the lips of so many young women.
Lucas offers to carry Josie's books, but she shakes her head, laughing, and says she can take them herself. Vaughn follows the rest of the science club out of the room, fixated on Josie, and it takes Z a few moments to realize he is becoming jealous of one of his students.
He thinks he can trace the beginnings of his feelings to science class, though he does not know what particular day, what moment, brought his emotion toward her. (Am I such a coward I cannot call it love?) Z thinks the love was slow in creation, and when he thinks about it, when he tries to pinpoint when he knew he loved Josie, there is a movie-montage of her—of her gestures, her triumphs, her smiles. The montage is intermixed and interrupted by visions of the universe, expanding quickly and populated with pinpricks of light. If he could only focus on those thoughts, on the universe, he would be okay. He would forget.
Occasionally, he cannot focus on science without thoughts of Josie disturbing his concentration. His feelings are immense and vast, expanding like the universe, and their weight is comparable to the mass of the Earth (5.9742 times 10 to the twenty-fourth power). He feels like Atlas, forced to the edge of Earth to hold the heavens on his shoulders, so they do not share their colors and embrace. He holds himself from Josie so as not to hold her the way he wishes he could.
Z closes his eyes, though the sunlight goes right through them and all he sees is red. He holds his head in his hands, massaging his temples, his face arranged in an expression of pain, of confusion.
"Professor Z, are you okay?"
He hears Josie's voice but does not open his eyes, afraid he is imagining her concern. Loneliness is not a thing he cares to face; he stares at the insides of his eyelids to avoid it.
"Z!"
He hears footsteps and feels her hands on his back. His breath hitches, he is frozen in time, he has fallen through some kind of wormhole, he is living the impossible, she is touching him, her palm moving back and forth on his back.
"I'm fine, it's just a headache," Z looks up at her, taking off his glasses and placing them on a thick stack of papers yet to be graded. "Aren't you going to be late for your next class?"
"I forgot my notebook in here. Besides, it's English, who really cares if I cut it or not?"
"I care," Z replies as Josie retrieves her notebook. "What are you studying in that class?"
"Lolita. It's this book about a guy falling in love with his stepdaughter, and she's only fourteen or something."
"I've read it." (Oh, have I read it.)
"Did you like it?" Josie wonders, stalling her eventual departure to English.
"I did," Z admits. "What do you think of it?"
"To tell you the truth, I haven't exactly started it yet." Josie smiles (promises, sex) and puts her notebook back to where it had been. "Can I stay here with you? I can catch up on my reading and you don't have to be so lonely on your break. It's a win/win situation."
Z pauses, joining Josie in her stalling, this time stalling his answer. There is no harm in letting her read, reading is a good, solitary activity.
"You can stay—but don't tell anyone that you were here." Z is amazed at his response.
Josie seats herself on a table, her stocking-clad legs dangling, and pulls a book from her bag.
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."
* * *
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In a point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
* * *
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns." Josie finishes reading the first few paragraphs and smiles at Z, who is too enraptured to notice the promises on her lips.
* * *
"Quitting?" Corinne bursts out at what would be the last science club meeting.
"I am afraid so," Z replies. "I haven't given Durst my two weeks' notice, but yes, I am resigning."
"But you can't quit!" Vaughn protests, "not after what all of us have been through!"
"What about the wormhole?" Lucas exclaims.
"And Pearadyne Labs?" Marshall adds.
His students demands become static and dull, he is not paying attention; he is watching Josie, who is sitting in an angry silence, her eyes glazed and mouth set in a defiant line. Z hates to see her lips arranged that way: He prefers them smiling, laughing—he would prefer them on his own lips, making promises on his skin.
"We're going to be late for history," Corinne announces after more protesting and grumbling, all muted to Z's ears. Everyone but Josie and Z runs off to their next class, slamming the door as they depart.
"You can't leave," Josie is crying, her skin shines with tears and her lower lip trembles. She looks ridiculously vulnerable, and it is against all the laws she has set for herself to be crying here so openly.
"Josie, you don't understand, I have to."
"What would it take you to stay?"
"I—"
And she is shoving him into his chair, she is kissing him, and he is kissing her back, his hands beneath her skirt, caressing her skin so like silk, and this is all he has ever wanted. In one quick motion he has slipped her panties to her knees, and universes are expanding and stars are being born and her lips are on his lips and on his neck and buttons are coming undone.
Josie is saying yes yes yes (it is all I ever want to hear, I don't care if I never hears of neurons or atoms again, all I want is yes yes yes) feeling the friction between them, watching worlds unfurl like flags in the wind.
Only in their own universe could their love ever be valid, and Z knows it, and Josie knows it, and two weeks later the new science professor writes his name on the blackboard, underlining it twice and asking the class to please turn to page 126.
But all Josie can think of is Z. The sticky, fumbling encounters with Vaughn leave her empty, the two of them lying on her bed in the afternoons, his hand on her thigh in the back of his father's limousine. It's never enough, and it never will be.
Weeks pass and Z still dreams of her, still dreams of her skin and her voice and her breath on his neck. Some days he thinks he may be unraveling with his want for her, with his need.
Look at what depths man falls to in the name of love.
Look at this tangle of thorns.
fin
**NOTE: The excerpts are from the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Go read it, it's amazing.
