Chapter 2: Hellfire Tutorial
The next week passed in a haze of ordinary routines. Merlin moved through classes, ate lunch in the cafeteria, but everything felt filtered through a new, vibrating lens. The encounter in the gym closet had left a mark deeper than the faint bruises on his hips, which had since faded to yellow smudges. A charge hummed under his skin, restless. It had been satisfied, then awakened, and now it prowled.
He caught Mr. Finch’s eye in the hall once. The teacher gave him a slow, knowing nod, nothing more, before turning to answer a student’s question. The normalcy of it was its own kind of violation. Merlin felt simultaneously invisible and tattooed by the memory.
It was Thursday, and the air in the old east wing was cooler, smelling of polished linoleum and dust. Merlin had stayed late, a half-hearted excuse about needing time in the library that even he didn’t believe. His feet carried him past the lit classrooms, down a short flight of stairs marked MAINTENANCE.
The boiler room door was heavy steel, slightly ajar. A deep, metallic thrumming vibrated through the floor. He pushed it open.
The heat hit him first, a damp, oily blanket. The space was vast, lit by wire-caged bulbs that cast more shadow than light. Pipes coiled across the ceiling and walls like industrial intestines, hissing faintly. In the center, the great furnace growled, a beast of iron and flame.
And there was Mr. Nixon, his back to the door, examining a pressure gauge. He was in shirt sleeves, his tie loosened, the strict English teacher’s armor slightly compromised. He turned at the sound of the door, his sharp features tightening with immediate disapproval.
“Morgan. This area is off-limits. You know that.” His voice was the one he used for doling out detentions, crisp and unforgiving.
“I got lost,” Merlin said, not moving from the doorway. The hum inside him, quiet since Finch, began a low thrum. It felt different here. Not a live wire, but a deep, resonant pull, like a bell underwater.
“Doubtful.” Nixon wiped his hands on a rag. “Leave. Now.”
Instead, Merlin took a step inside, letting the heavy door swing shut behind him with a final clang. The sound echoed in the metallic space. “I had a question about the Milton essay.”
“Office hours are tomorrow. Get out.”
Merlin advanced, his sneakers silent on the concrete floor. The heat was becoming oppressive, beading sweat at his temples. Nixon watched him come, his body rigid. He didn’t retreat, but his hand tightened around the rag.
“It’s urgent,” Merlin murmured, stopping just within arm’s reach. He could see the pulse jumping in Nixon’s throat. The teacher’s cologne was barely detectable under the scents of grease and heat.
“Nothing about Paradise Lost is urgent enough to warrant—” Nixon began, his academic rebuke automatic.
Merlin reached out. Not for him. He placed his palm flat against the side of the rumbling furnace. It was searing hot, almost unbearable. He left it there, looking straight at Nixon, watching the man’s eyes widen at the blatant, painful act.
“What are you doing?” Nixon’s voice lost its steel, becoming strained. “Stop that.”
“It hurts,” Merlin stated calmly, not removing his hand. A sickly, sweet smell of scorching skin began to mix with the oil.
“You idiot!” Nixon lurched forward, grabbing Merlin’s wrist to yank it away. The moment his fingers closed around the slender bone, the connection snapped into place.
The resonant hum in Merlin’s core surged up, through his arm, into Nixon’s grip. The teacher gasped, as if shocked. But he didn’t let go. His breathing hitched. His gaze, locked on Merlin’s, fractured. The discipline, the rigor, the entire carefully constructed edifice of Mr. Nixon showed a hairline crack.
And Merlin saw it. He leaned in.
The kiss wasn’t given; it was taken. Merlin pressed his mouth to Nixon’s, who stood frozen for one endless second. Then, with a shattered groan, Nixon’s control crumbled. His hands came up to frame Merlin’s face, not gently, but desperately, his tongue plundering Merlin’s mouth with a clumsy, frantic hunger. It was messy, wet, all teeth and choking breaths.
Nixon drove him backwards until Merlin’s shoulder blades hit a network of hot pipes. He gasped at the new burn, the sound swallowed by Nixon’s mouth. The teacher’s hands were everywhere, tugging at Merlin’s clothes, fumbling with his own belt.
“Christ… Christ, what are we…” Nixon panted against Merlin’s neck, even as he shoved the boy’s jeans and briefs down to his thighs. His own trousers were pushed just low enough to free his cock, which was fully hard, ruddy and thick. There was no foil packet this time, no forethought. Only heat and raw, panicked need.
He spat into his palm, a crude, hurried lubrication, and slicked himself. His other hand gripped Merlin’s hip, fingers digging in, turning him roughly. Merlin’s chest met the rough concrete wall, cool against his flushed skin. Nixon’s body covered him, heavy and shaking.
The blunt, wet head of Nixon’s cock pressed against him. There was no asking, no preparation beyond the spit. Nixon pushed, a strained, grunting effort.
Merlin cried out, the sound bouncing off the pipes. It was a brutal, burning stretch, a violation so complete it blurred into a kind of agony that felt like power. Nixon was inside, bare, his body rigid as he fought not to simply ram forward.
“Fuck… fuck, you’re tight,” Nixon choked, his forehead dropped between Merlin’s shoulder blades. He smelled of starch and sweat. “This is… we can’t…”
But he could. He did. He withdrew slightly and shoved back in, deeper this time. A broken moan tore from his throat. His rhythm was jagged, unpracticed, each thrust a sharp, driving piston-stroke that knocked the air from Merlin’s lungs. The furnace roared beside them, drowning out the wet, slapping sounds of their union.
Nixon’s mouth was on Merlin’s neck, his shoulder, his ear—not kisses, but open-mouthed, slobbering bites of breath and skin. “Why… why did you come down here?” he slurred, fucking into him with relentless, guilty drives. “You fucking little… shit.”
Merlin couldn’t answer. Pleasure was a thin, high thread in a cacophony of pain and overwhelming sensation. He was pinned, impaled, being unmade by the very man who taught him sonnets on iambic pentameter. The irony was lost in the physical storm. He reached back, his fingers finding Nixon’s thigh, gripping the wool of his trousers, pulling him closer, taking him deeper.
That seemed to snap the last of Nixon’s fragile control. His arms banded around Merlin’s chest, crushing him. His thrusts lost all pretense of rhythm, becoming a frantic, pounding race. “I’m gonna… I can’t stop…”
He came with a guttural sob, his body convulsing, pumping his release hot and deep inside Merlin. He held himself there, pulsing, for what felt like an eternity. The only sounds were the furnace and their ragged, ruined breathing.
Slowly, softening, he slid out. A warm, wet trickle followed down Merlin’s thigh.
Silence, except for the machinery. Nixon staggered back, fumbling with his clothes, his face a mask of horror and satiation. He looked at Merlin, at the vivid red burn on his palm, at the pale curve of his ass, glistening.
“Oh, God,” he whispered, the sound full of a profound, consuming dread.
Merlin turned, pulling his own clothes up with trembling hands. He felt raw, used, filled. The hum was quiet, sated. He looked at Nixon, who was now just a man, pale and terrified in the industrial gloom.
“The Milton essay,” Merlin said, his voice surprisingly steady. “I was confused about the line. ‘The mind is its own place…’”
Nixon flinched as if struck. He stared, his mouth working soundlessly.
Merlin didn’t finish the quote. He didn’t need to. He walked to the heavy door, pulled it open, and stepped back into the bright, empty hall. The cool air felt alien on his burning skin.
Behind him, left in the heat and the hum, Mr. Nixon slowly sank to his knees on the oily floor, his head in his hands, the proof of his ruin soaking into the wool of his trousers. The door swung shut, sealing him in with the beast and what he had done.