🌷FROM
https://archiveofourown.org/users/resurrectdead/pseuds/resurrectdead
teacher trainee phil x student dan
daddy kink ft. power bottom dan
Words:4509
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The leaves on the trees outside the window aren't bright orange and red anymore, nor are they green and healthy; they're crumbling, rotting, turning brown and crisp and falling off their branches to the just as melancholic ground. Some sort of symbolism to how Mr. Lester's time as a teacher trainee at the university is almost at its end, Dan is certain.
Why else would the world have a reason to slowly die around him?
It's a friday, and it's the beginning of november. Mr. Lester stands by the desk at the front of the classroom, smiling brightly and giving out the usual goodbyes and thank-you-for-todays as his classmates pour out of the room for the weekend. (Dan had sort of taken a habit of calling him that in his head sometimes rather than Phil; something strangely sexy about. Something enticing about the forbidden aspect of it all, despite Dan being actually totally legal, Phil being an actual total sweetheart too good for this world and, whatever, he has his needs. It's the hard life of a pre-adolescent boy with infinite access to kink-friendly porn.)
Phil doesn't appear to notice him there at first, or at least he can pretend not to. So Dan sits and watches from his spot in the back, fidgeting with papers, pretending to save documents on his laptop, taking far too long to reach for his bag. Taking far too long to scramble up and leave.
Lost in thought, he suddenly hears the door shut as the last student leaves the room. And then they're alone. Dan, in band t-shirt with once-black skinny jeans; him, in a checkered shirt and unfairly tight trousers, new black glasses with an inner red rim that Dan had helped him pick out on display on the bridge of his nose. The tension feels thick in the air for a reason he can't explain.
"Hello, Mr. Howell." Phil becomes the first one to break the silence. He smiles brightly at him across the room, and Dan remembers a thought, the thought how he'd never have to freeze in this classroom again. Philip Michael Lester still successfully melts him to pulp on the floor with just his goddamn smile. "All is well, I suppose?"
"All is well", he echoes in a murmur. He props his elbow on the desk and puts his head in his hands, looks ridiculous but hopefully also a tad bit adorable with his cheek all squished up and sleepy eyes. "Just pondering the meaning of life and the inevitability of death."
Phil snorts a laugh, but only a small one. "Okay?"
Dan quotes from the top of his head. "What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly." He looks out the window dreamily. "And if we drop a pen, it can't change its fate. But gravity isn't an objective truth. Some people believe in levitation."
He sees Phil tilt his head from the corner of his eye, so he looks back at him, in time to notice a smile twitching at his lips. But then he shakes his head out of the trance and turns on his heel to walk towards his desk, clears his throat.
"Fascinating train of thought", he concludes, nodding. "Bit wayward, I'm afraid. Hard for me to philosophe about. But I'd like to be part of your reality."
He goes to mind his own business, grading shit or whatever it is teachers do, but then notices Dan staring at him. Deadpan.
"What reality?" he says. He drops his hands to his sides. "Reality is whatever we decide to make it out to be for the moment being."
Phil blinks at him. "I'm losing you."
"Everything we think we can truly see and things we think we know are really just things that we've been taught to think what they are. It's just language, words we've been socialized into knowing and taught to associate with specific things. And without language, at least we know actions, but who decided what our body language meant? How do we know it's the same for you as it is for me? How do we even truly know we exist?"
