A/N:Oh God, it's vague and it's on crack and yeah, it probably needs major help. Yet I'm strangely fond of it. Inspired by Iris' and my latest crack pairing that was born in a high school AU community on LJ, which explains why Xaldin teaches French. (Constructive criticism would rock pretty darn hardcore, actually, since I need to know if this is okay, or just plain godawful crack.) Thank you!
Teacher's Pet
Alice
Liddell isn't entirely sure what to make of New York City, but
she's not entirely sure what to make of America altogether, either.
It all seems very confusing and much bigger than London ever was. There are things called U-turns instead of roundabouts; instead of the Houses of Commons and Lords it's the House and the Senate; there's no pretty monarchy along with a functional Prime Minister, just a President who's supposed to be a combination of the two; they drive on the left side of cars instead of the right; she can't have sex or drink until she's eighteen and twenty-one respectively, versus sixteen and eighteen back home. Jaywalking's a crime all of a sudden and cabbies and normal people alike drive like they're on at least three different drugs at once.
But she's got to get further and so she brushes all her worries aside. The sun's high in the sky over Manhattan and the future's bright so why would she want to be anywhere else?
She adjusts her black bow in her blond hair and smiles prettily at the world, her Mary Janes clack-clacking as she approaches her new exclusive private high school in Manhattan. Her shoes are new, her ribbon is new, her cute little sky-blue dress with its proper apron are new, new, new.
And she's ready to take on anything.
---
She can't take on anything at all. She's barely two months in and she's already sick for the stars above England, already sick for home.
Back home people didn't think her stories she wrote for her English composition class were funny. Back home people liked them, said she'd be a good children's book writer someday. They didn't laugh and they didn't think her stories meant she was smoking something seriously good.
Back home people didn't ask her to say anything ad nauseam in her accent because they had the accent too. Back home people didn't hate the way she gave presentations and didn't think she was a teacher's pet just because she liked talking to them.
Don't you know, Miss Alice Pleasance Liddell, don't you know we don't do things that way here?
She sits in the bathroom stalls for lunch, scratching at her pristine white tights, drinking tears along with her sandwiches packed in tin foil from home. She hopes and waits, tries to make polite conversation to hope one of them may be her friend.
And they just laugh and walk away.
---
He's trying really hard not to feel sorry for her.
Xaldin tries to keep a distance from his students, has always thought that to be the best policy.
But the girl, Alice, had shown such promise at the beginning of her honors first-year French class, and now that her grades are slipping and she shows up to his room, eyes red with tears, he knows something's wrong.
He's not a counselor but anyone could see it.
Anyone could see that Alice Liddell is absolutely miserable.
And since nobody's helping her out, he comes over to her and she tells him the whole teary-eyed story.
---
It becomes a habit they fall into. She begins to depend on him, but Alice doesn't need any help with French, and when people start asking why she's over there with the creepy teacher all the time she doesn't know what to say.
She tells Xaldin this and so she begins starting and ending her days as his TA, even if she doesn't necessarily need the financial credit. She corrects his papers and starts learning advanced French, starts speaking at an Honors French III level, starts studying for the AP exam under Xaldin's care.
She tells him that maybe someday she hopes to be a French ambassador for the United States, and he's confused for a while on what he feels about it.
Then he realizes he's proud of her, his student, his Alice who's smiling again even if she still hasn't got any friends, even if she's still far from home.
He doesn't think it strange, that she's become "his," and apparently she doesn't either.
---
It's the beginning of the end when she first clings onto him: she is small, pale, a tiny thing that has to be protected from the world. She wraps her arms around him, desperate, and he wraps his arms around her too.
It's funny, they're student and teacher. It's funny, this shouldn't be happening. It's funny, how safe Alice feels and how needed Xaldin feels.
It goes downhill from there.
---
They try to pretend like it didn't happen.
They are sitting up late on a Saturday where Xaldin had to come back to school to enter more grades into the computer, seeing most grades drop, seeing Alice's soar even further up.
She sits down on his desk, Mary Janes crossed, running her fingers through her long blond hair, so unaware of what she's doing to him.
She asks him how he is but all he can look at is her pretty pink mouth.
He's not going to be able to take much more of this and so he kisses her and for once, for once she actually doesn't have any qualms on what's proper and what isn't and she kisses him back, and slides to his lap so easily, like she's always belonged there.
---
The affair continues even when it shouldn't. The first summer comes and goes and they hardly see each other, because even if New York's a big place and easy to get lost in they have to be careful. Their visits are pre-arranged down to the last detail, because if they slip up Xaldin will be sent away forever and Alice hardly wants that, or hardly wants her parents to know she thinks she's in love with a man about twenty years her senior.
She thinks it's love. She's not really sure. She's never been in love before. But he makes her heart beat faster, she smiles when he whispers low French words in her ear, she loves it when she slips out of that tiny little dress she should have outgrown years ago and when he runs his hands and his lips all over her.
She thinks it's love.
And she really, really hopes it is.
---
For the sake of normalcy Alice starts contemplating finding a fake boyfriend, someone she could be cute with to throw the suspicion off Xaldin. People have started to pick up things they shouldn't, and while they're trying very hard to cover it up, secrets like theirs don't last long in a private school like theirs. Xaldin tries not to overreact, though he doesn't want anyone else touching her. But he knows that Alice only means well, knows that she's only trying to hide them away.
One day a very handsome boy with auburn hair and bright green eyes introduces himself to Alice as Peter. He's new from England too, a junior, and he was wondering if she'd like to just sit down with him and talk about home for a while.
It's perfect, since he's nice to her, and while he teases her, he always says he's sorry afterwards, and sometimes he holds her hand and that's nice, too. And when he asks her to prom it's all she can do not to die on the very spot because she can actually go her sophomore year. Only very pretty girls are able to do that, she tells Xaldin, and he just laughs and says she is pretty, who is she kidding? And she blushes and smiles while he kisses her.
Alice feels bad that she can't give all of herself to Peter, while his whole world starts revolving around her. She lies sometimes and all of a sudden she has a very bad disease, a disease called love for the man she shouldn't love, instead of the boy she should worship. Peter starts seeing less and less of her, Xaldin sees more and more, and when she realizes she can't balance both of them, it's far too late.
---
Peter's smart, too smart and clever for a boy, too smart and clever for his own good, and that's what worries Alice. They've been together, if you can call it that, for about ten months and she has yet to give him more than a closed-mouth kiss.
Even when she wears a gorgeous strapless light blue dress to prom and says he looks handsome, he's already starting to see it: she's not all there.
She's not with him, the way she should be. And that scares Peter, because once upon a time back home he had another girl, Wendy, who fell away from him the way he sees Alice starting to fall. But he doesn't want her to fall; he wants to carry Alice up and away with him, because that's what he does. He's bright, he's shining, he's clever and he's handsome, he's Peter.
And he doesn't understand why that isn't good enough for Alice.
Until he hears the rumors that have been skirting around school, that he's only been picked up because she has a thing for her French teacher and of course, Alice doesn't want them to get caught. It's only a rumor, but they have strong life in the high school hallway, and while none of the administrators have heard yet, it's the richest secret among all the students.
It has Peter seeing red, but he'll never say anything to Alice. Clearly it isn't her fault; girls are far more clever than that.
It's his fault.
Xaldin's.
Somehow he did this to Alice.
And Peter will make him pay.
---
He tells Xaldin that he doesn't understand why the fuck the French teacher's been giving him a hard time lately. And Peter assures him he knows what's going on.
Xaldin calls him a child. Tells him he doesn't understand what he's even saying.
Peter spits out the next words: "'Least I ain't a pedo."
Xaldin punches in Peter's pretty green eyes and cute little nose.
That night Alice calls him and tells him that whatever they had, it's over.
Their world starts to unravel very quickly after that.
---
The complaint is filed later that week, anonymously, which Alice takes as only one thing: Peter.
She screeches at him and asks him how in the world he would ever dare to bring such a charge up against Xaldin.
Peter's eyes are cold, remorseless.
"I saw," he said. "I saw everything. I knew. It wasn't right, Alice. I couldn't just let you do that. I had to do something."
She wants to hit him, but she knows she wouldn't stand a chance and would probably just break her fingers instead, so she stomps on his foot and runs down the hall, crying, while Peter just watches her go, wondering what's going on.
He saved her.
Doesn't she get it?
He's left there, wondering why she's not running back into his arms.
---
A couple of hours later, Peter calls and asks her if it's okay that they stay friends.
Alice replies with venom, telling him that she never wants to see him again and that if he knows what's good for him, he'll stay away from her.
Like he's the one who did something wrong.
Like he's the one with the problems.
He'll never understand why girls end up so weird.
---
Alice rushes to her former teacher's apartment without any care, because she's known where he lives a long time, and there's no need to keep the secret anymore.
He's sitting in the middle of his things, taken away from his office because he's been sacked and it's unlikely he'd ever get another job in Manhattan. He tells her he's headed back home, back to France where his family name will save him and he can just dismiss the entire affair as a silly American rumor.
Alice is in tears. "You'll come back for me, won't you?"
There is exactly a five-second pause.
"You won't want me, Alice," he responds.
And she just laughs, saying, "Mr. Xaldin, you're lying. Don't you know I love you?"
She forgets that she's never told him that before.
His face is frozen.
She finishes lamely. "I love you. I'll always want you."
He says, "No, you won't," and he tells her to walk away.
---
He comes back when she's eighteen. It's funny, he still remembers her birthday. He stops by with a few things from France, and he finds her at the apartment listed under her name in the directory, but she's hardly herself.
Drunk and giggly, she's half-dressed and with some other green-eyed boy guzzling tea, who she introduces as Reggie. She saunters over to Xaldin, leaves the other boy behind and offers him a pretty greeting: "So good to see you, Mr. Xaldin. I'm rather happy you came back for me."
She presses her lips to his. She tastes, vaguely, like cotton candy-vodka-vomit.
She pulls away and says, politely, more American than British now, "Excuse me."
She retches all over his shirt and that's all he can expect from her now.
She isn't the girl that he remembers. He ruined that girl, and this Alice Liddell standing in front of him drunk on spiked tea isn't his.
He leaves her behind because she doesn't really want him. She has Reggie; why would she ever want anyone else?
He leaves her behind, like he'll forget her someday. But he never does.
---
The trouble is, she forgets him, forgets everything she ever learned from him, forgets the dreams she shared with him.
When her death makes the papers, when he reads in the international news about an 18-year-old girl identified as Alice Liddell found dead in a New York gutter from an alcohol overdose, from tea spiked with whiskey, he's left with nobody to hear him, with nobody to hope for.
He prints and clips the article, expecting to hear back from the paper that it's all some horrible joke.
He never gets what he wants, and he won't again, now that she's gone.
---