Content warnings can be found here

Edward sat up and touched her shoulder, “Oh, there now, sweet thing. I’m sorry. It’s just so difficult. I have to be this one person with everyone else, and then here you are, my Peaches. You know I don’t mean to speak to you like that.”

“Right,” she said.

“Come on. You know that I...” but he stopped, because of course, the rules were more rigorously enforced than ever now. “I couldn’t do it without you. And you have to acknowledge that this is the finest jape we’ve ever pulled.”

“A jape,” she said, “Yeah.”

“Please,” he said, and he tried to pull her to him, but she resisted. “I mean it, Peaches, I’m being a beast and I know it, and I shouldn’t do that. Not to you.”

“But it’s fine to do it to Dickie? Or this Miss… oh, whatever her name is.”

“Tooting,” he said, and began to laugh, before remembering that she really wasn’t in the mood for that. He reaffixed a solemn face. “Look, Dickie deserves a bit of pain, alright? He’s doled out enough in his time. So, let me put a ball in his leg, and I’ll be happy to call it quits. And as to Miss Tooting, well, I get the impression that she quite likes it.”

Peaches made a disgusted sound in her throat.

He looked at her, appalled. “Are you coming on prudish in your dotage, Peaches?”

“There’s never an excuse for treating a person badly, Teddy.”

“I’m only flirting.” 

She gave him a sceptical look.

“I mean it. With some people you win their love by doing them injuries. Look, when I was at school,” he paused, brushed his fingernails over her nipples. She shivered at it. 

He smiled. 

“You like my school stories, don’t you Peaches?” Safer ground. “Well, this is the best of them. So... Dickie Thornton. Dickie was a prefect, and in the form above me - and he was the absolute terror of the place. Oh, yes, most of those with the whip were were brutal bastards, but him? Six of the best for a minor infraction, and a method of counting that was quite unique. And whereas most of the rest would be happy to twist your ear and make you write lines, nothing was beneath old Dickie. He enjoyed it - the evidence was there if you had the wit to see it. And of course, as he was merely protecting the honour of the school, encouraging us to behave like gentlemen, and so on, no-one ever did step in to tell him to calm it down a bit. And all that was over the small beer that most people let slide - heaven forbid you ran into him over anything more serious.”

“Such as?”

“Such as... being about in the wee small hours, out of bounds, and with a flask of brandy on your person?”

“Oh, I can imagine it,” she said, relaxing a little. “Pretty, reckless little brat that you were.”

He felt a warmth in his stomach start at that. “You even sound like him now.”

“Sometimes, I think you deserve it.”

“Yes, well, maybe. Back then, I was certainly up to my neck in it. One infraction away from a thrashing from the masters - in front of the whole school no less - and dear old Pater called in to chat with the headmaster. I would have done anything to get off that. And Dickie knew it too, of course. So, he pulled me in without too much gentleness and after the obligatory lecture on the seriousness of my offence, he took a good look at my face and told me he’d decided to cut me a break. Either he could take me to the prefects’ room, where I’d take something in line with the rules - and the masters would hear about it - or, I could come back to his study with him and we could settle the matter between us without touching my record. Of course, it wasn’t the first offer like that I’d had,” he said, embellishing, flattering the vanity that Peaches sometimes had in his looks, and slipping his hand between her legs again. “But I was a bit flabbergasted to get it from Dickie ‘Upright’. That’s what we called him in fourth, I’m sure you can guess why, eh?”

“You’re getting off the point.”

“Am I? Well, I went with him, of course - he had me over the barrel. He wasn’t the only Prefect who went in for that sort of thing, as I said, but while most of them would let you off if you sucked them, Upright Thornton had a rather different idea of extra-judiciary settlement.” For all that his legs ached from dancing, Edward felt something in him twitch at the memory. “And after that, I was a marked man. Dickie knew I’d play along with whatever he wanted. I was, as the parlance went, ‘a sport’, and if I balked at all, he could hold the original offence over my head. So it was that for the next two years, I could barely walk down a hallway without getting beckoned over for a birching or a buggering.”

“Oh, if only.”

“You really are a terror, Peaches. But, look, the point I was getting to was that, after he got his teeth in to me, Dickie lost interest in thrashing the lower school. Oh, he enforced the rules, alright, but that streak of tyranny played itself out on my skin. Not that I minded.” He smiled. 

Peaches was smiling herself, writhing against his hand and looking up at him as though she were picturing all the welts and bruises for herself.

 “And because old Upright had found himself an official whipping boy, other martinets-in-waiting found the space to commence their reigns of terror, and, do you know that whenever one of them showed especial zeal, and I mean, real commitment to the maintenance of school spirit, the boys would say ‘Harris major’ - or whoever it was, but you get the picture - ‘Harris major really seems to be looking for his Valance.’ Apparently, they say it still. Isn’t that sweet?”

“Very romantic,” said Peaches, gasping a little and wet as an April shower. “But that doesn’t explain why I should let you off.”

“Oh, you really sound like him now. Oh, yes. Just like that.” He circled the fingers of his right hand around one of her nipples, and then the other. “Just the way he’d talk before he’d take his belt to me. But that’s just it. Dancing needs a partner, don’t it? People focused on Dickie because he was the one making their lives so uncomfortable. But I was there I too, eager little thing with a pash for some untouchable Greek God in the fifth, doing the only thing I could to get some attention. No-one noticed that there are some people in this world who are just looking for their Dickie Upright.”

Peaches shook her head and ran her hand over the cock that was beginning to stir again at the recollection of all these innocent memories. “Dickie Upright? You really are a bloody fool, Teddy.”

“Then explain how Miss Tooting, who is clearly and devotedly attached, was twitching in her drawers when I did my best impression of the of old Dickie Upright?”

“Because you reminded her of the person she loves.”

“No,” he said, “that’s just it. You see, I wasn’t impersonating dear, subservient Mr Thornton the bank clerk. That’s how he carries himself these days, as if he’s all too aware that he’s a terrible cadet scraping among the quality - I’ve seen his act. No, what I was doing was Upright Thornton of the beloved old school, the way he was that night, when he dragged me back to his study and got me kneeling on the floor.”

“You’re trying to distract me.”

“Trying? Peaches, my darling girl, you are a very harsh critic.”

“You want me to ask you what he did to you, in his study, and it will be a very pretty story. I bet you end it sobbing your eyes out and kissing his hand - I know what you schoolboys are like. And I do want to hear it, Teddy.” She licked her lips like the terror she was.

Edward knew how to pick them, how to the find the ones with that note of cruelty in them, the ones who would let him fall deep into their arms and their regard until his whole skin sung with the interweaving of pleasure and pain. 

“But you would never have treated me, or any of the girls like this. The Teddy Valance I… met, would never have treated someone like that.”

“Well, yes, but Dickie’s got it coming. The way the bastard’s treated me over the years-”

“I ain’t talking about your precious Dickie. I mean the way you’re going to hurt this Miss Tooting. She don’t deserve that.”

“Hurt her? Who says anything about hurting her?”

“I think putting a bullet in her sweetheart is going to upset her, Teddy. Women are funny like that.”

“Nonsense. You girls love playing the nurse. Besides, I’m not intending to drop him permanently - just a knee or an arm or something. Then Miss Tooting is free to run to the poor invalid’s bedside, hands clasped, true love declared while I discreetly exit the scene, owning honour satisfied.” He paused, considering. “You know, when I put it like that, I’m really doing them a favour.”

“My Lord,” said Peaches, “has it ever crossed your mind that Thornton’s violent outbursts are less to do with him being the jealous type, and more just a natural reaction to your character.”

“You mean he’s still sweet on me?”

“I mean that sometimes it’s very difficult to look at your face and not want to punch it.”

“You know, Dickie said something very similar to me once.”

Peaches put her face in her hands. “And you thought it was a compliment.” She sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Teddy?”

“Well, you could fuck me again. Work out some of that anger.”

She made a sound of frustration that would have been terrifyingly audible to anyone still up and about. Fortunately, Edward had sent the rest of the staff to bed. 

“I ain’t encouraging this.”

“Oh, come on, Peaches. Look, we’ve got a stiff-necked little cad we properly owe a shafting, and a pretty, fiery creature whose fancy I can tickle for a handful of days before letting the dust settle and exeunt-ing stage left. Where’s the harm?”

She seemed to consider it. After a long time and some persuasion of the fingers, she said, “Two conditions.”

“Which are?”

“One: any thing gets broken or screwed up, you, my Lord Forthenby, and only you, need to pick up the pieces.”

He faked a salute with his free hand, “As you say, Milady.”

Peaches made a tutting sound.

“And…”

“And you let me do to you what Dickie Thornton did when he got you to his study.”

“Well,” said Edward Valance, and he swept Peaches into his arms, burrowing the pair of them into the bed, “We’d need some hazel wands…”