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It would go on the record as one of those nights that no one really admitted to knowing how it had come about. The educators of Walt Disney Private Academy were far, far too enormously dignified to contemplate attending something as pedestrian as a karaoke bar, least of all when they were all together. They didn’t particularly enjoy each other’s company in dead silence, so the matter couldn’t possibly be improved by noise and flashing lights.
As far as Mr. Ratcliffe was concerned, team-building exercises were responsible for what was wrong with the world today. It promoted all sorts of unsavory inclusions, this latest horror only the most recent in a long list of abuses.
And then there were the TAs along for the ride, too.
Ms. Yzma had taken the stage and was crooning--a somewhat unsetting phenomenon--into the microphone. A little further down the table, her assistant Kronk was watching with an uncannily keen expression of glee. Without warning, the tempo of the song suddenly increased and the old girl began vamping on the stage.
Mr. Ratcliffe shuddered, looking away in disgust. This was going to be a long three hours.
“Could I get you a drink, sir?” Wiggins asked.
Mr. Ratcliffe looked down into the face of his painfully eager teacher’s assistant with a rather hopeless sneer. “Yes, I suppose you might,” Mr. Ratcliffe murmured. “Anything shall do.”
“I’ve got just the thing in mind,” Wiggins promised, standing up and briefly squeezing Mr. Ratcliffe’s shoulder on his way over to the bar. “Just yelp if you need me.”
Mr. Ratcliffe rolled his eyes. Oh, the ship had sailed on that one.
--
He’d been given Wiggins approximately a year ago and from the start he’d been terribly unsure about how, exactly, he regarded his assistant.
“Here’s your tea, sir,” the young man had whispered in the middle of class on his first day, while the students’ heads bowed to their desks as they filled in their tests. “Just the way you like it.”
Ratcliffe had shuddered, unable to restrain the impulse that came from having hot air breathed against his ear and neck. He tilted away, scowling. “And how should you know that?” he grumbled quietly.
“It’s my talent,” Wiggins had said through his bright and guileless smile. “I always know what a fellow wants.”
Frowning, Ratcliffe had sent him off to read through the backlog of essays his students had turned in at the beginning of the week, wanting to rid himself of the svelte, obsequious man before his students saw the interaction.
It hadn’t worked. Over the next weeks, he heard dreadful gossip in the halls when students thought he couldn’t hear them.
“Ratcliffe’s got himself a girlfriend!”
“Didn’t you hear? Skinny’s got it for the Rat!”
“I always knew the Rat’d be a poofter!”
And even worse, the tea had been exactly the way he liked it.
Ratcliffe decided that what was needed here was tough love. Wiggins knew the way the hierarchy worked--he probably would’ve barked like a dog if Ratcliffe had told him to--but he needed to realize that education was war.
He gave Wiggins steadily more work designing tests, grading essays, producing lesson plans. He even assigned the TA several rounds, unsupervised, with Ratcliffe’s rowdiest class. The children were as merciless as ever--more, he heard, without his own iron grip of discipline. Wiggins came out of a week of it rumpled and exhausted and should have been completely disheartened.
Instead, he was rumbled, exhausted, and smiling brightly. “Little angels,” he murmured, brushing dried spitballs off of his shoulders. “Can I get you anything, sir?” he asked with the kind of breathy delight that Ratcliffe had thought only existed in certain movies from the 1940s.
Which was all well and good, really--Ratcliffe had never been one to turn his nose up at a little breathless adoration. To be honest, it improved his own estimation of Wiggins to know how much the man worshipped him. Ratcliffe was a superior specimen and he knew that having such excellence thrown in one’s face occasionally made some people balk; consequently, Ratcliffe was not particularly well-liked. Wiggins had a better palate, clearly, and was able to take inspiration from his betters, instead of sulking in impotent jealousy.
Ratcliffe decided that he could respect Wiggins. As much as a TA deserved respect, anyway.
All would have been fine--indeed, this would have been the makings of a supremely pleasant work relationship--if it hadn’t progressed at all.
Ratcliffe had not had a lot of positive reinforcement growing up. His family was well-enough to do and constantly aware of the fact that they were the nouveau riche--wealthy enough to be barely respectable, while simultaneously derided as pathetic social climbers.
Wiggins was very big on positive reinforcement, which was rather peculiar as it did not avail him anything like the respect or affection of his students. Still, he was quick to reassure Ratcliffe in particular that he liked him and that he approved of his decisions. Although he’d wanted to stay aloof, Ratcliffe quickly found that he enjoyed Wiggins’ input. It was always positive, unquestioning, and enthusiastic.
On the rare occasions that he didn’t receive it, Ratcliffe caught himself very nearly double-checking that Wiggins had heard him. If Wiggins smiled blithely without offering explicit approval, Ratcliffe found, quite against his will, that he’d begin second-guessing himself, concerned that there was something wrong with what he’d said.
Appalling!
He was acting like a child seeking approval, worried about pleasing this little nobody who had come to serve him!
“I rather think I’ve exhausted his usefulness,” he’d said, in a meeting with the headmistress. “I’m sure someone else with a less complex subject can make ample use of him.”
“Is that so?” Maleficent had murmured, her red lips curved slightly upward. “Well, if you’re quite certain you have no further use for him...”
Ratcliffe knew when he was being mocked, but it was the prerogative of the better classes to condescend in such unpleasant situations. “I am quite certain,” he’d said slowly, to ensure that there was absolutely no miscommunication between himself and the smirking headmistress.
“Very well,” Maleficent had said. “I’m sure I can put him just as cheerfully to work elsewhere.”
Approximately two days later, Ratcliffe had the distinct impression that he had made a tactical misstep. Not a mistake, exactly, for his reasoning was still sound as a pound, but he may have been slightly premature in throwing Wiggins to the dogs.
Watching him trail after Ms. DeVil had been a hard pill to swallow. The woman was borderline abusive at the best of times and there had been more than one supremely unprofessional outburst of shrieking rage from the over-dressed prima donna. Ratcliffe had watched with a brave attempt at dispassionate attention as his former teaching assistant was brow-beaten, derided, bullied, and insulted.
The fact that Wiggins had lit up so entirely whenever they were knowingly in the same room together made his pathetic state all the more unpleasant to bear.
Fortunately, Cruella hadn’t seemed to like the young man much more than he liked her, and Wiggins was subsequently fobbed off on Yzma--possibly, Ratcliffe would admit to himself, the only one of them that actually needed an assistant.
That was the beginning of the troubles. Yzma and Wiggins had gotten along. In fact, they had gotten along splendidly. Wiggins had seemed to adore the woman’s aging vamp routine and her outlandish fashion sense and Yzma had been quietly, approvingly impressed by Wiggins’ initiative, eagerness to please, and cheerfully mercenary obedience. Ratcliffe had walked in on more than one conversation in which they’d been using each other’s given names, for goodness’ sake, ignoring him entirely. It was disgusting.
And the headmistress would not. Stop. Smirking. If ever there was a woman who more needed to know her place...
She’d called him into her office one day, giving him a cool, faintly amused look as he stood behind the uncomfortable straight-backed chair that stood before her desk. Headmistress Maleficent was one of the few people that Ratcliffe had ever met who could be sitting down and looking up at a person, and still give them the impression that she was looming threateningly above them, dominating the situation.
“I’m afraid I have bad news,” Maleficent had said, in the tones of one who was always pleased to be the bearer of bad news. “Ms. Yzma is getting a new assistant. Something about needing more muscle mass--I rather see her point.”
Ratcliffe had raised a single eyebrow.
“And unless we can find a place for young Mr. Wiggins, he will have to be let go,” Maleficent shrugged. “I’m not in the habit of wasting fresh blood, Mr. Ratcliffe, not when it comes so cheaply and tries so hard. Unfortunately, no one here wants him for an assistant.”
Ratcliffe’d straightened his back. He had not gone through the trouble of getting rid of his pleasant torment to get it foisted back upon him so easily! “Madame, I--”
Maleficent had smiled, a slow flattening and tightening of her lips. “I must insist, Mr. Ratcliffe. If you do not take him as an assistant, I am sure he is equal to taking your post.”
And that was that. Insulting as it was to know that the headmistress would rather fire him than a mere teacher’s assistant, he was not entirely surprised. She, like most of her gender, were improperly cultured to recognize a man of quality.
Wiggins was transparently ecstatic. Ratcliffe found it tiresome in an unsettlingly endearing way, which served to prove his point that this was a state of affairs not at all to be wished.
With a certain fatalist misery, he concluded that matters would continue at their plodding, unsatisfying pace until either he or Wiggins left (equally unlikely) or his assistant did something that would require a vicious and intense rebuff. It was a barely livable situation, but he had been making what he could of it up until they’d been shuffled off, en masse, to the biannual state teacher’s conference.
With the prospect of a few overnights in the same building as Wiggins ahead, Ratcliffe had been carefully considering what methods to most effectively crush Wiggin’s ardor while preserving his respect when Wiggins did something entirely unaccountable. At the first sight of a slim, blonde beauty, Ratcliffe’s entirely flaming teacher’s assistant skipped off like a randy rabbit in the springtime to embrace the little wench with an exclamation of perfect joy.
It was unfathomable. Wiggins? And that absolute stunner? She positively radiated sex appeal, all long legs and short skirts as she was, and she and his gawky, embarrassingly eager, doe-eyed assistant were...intimates? It absolutely beggared belief!
Ratcliffe thought that he had to be mistaken. Never mind that his assistant had publicly humiliated him in front of their colleagues with his inexpressibly inappropriate familiarity with one of their opposite number--it was strictly outside the realm of physical possibility that Wiggins was familiar with that blonde. They must be friends.
Old friends.
Friends for whom it was perfectly normal to pepper his assistant in lipstick smudges.
It was revolting, unquestionably. He despised that his assistant could behave so entirely unprofessionally. Wiggins was his assistant. Wiggins took orders from him. He was unbelievably out of line, running off with that scantily-clad vixen when his employer--his superior--his boss was left to wonder to where he had scarpered. It was disloyalty, a breach of conduct, an absolute abandonment of decency! He could only barely restrain his complete detestation enough to work with the man after that night.
Wiggins cared nothing for the cold shoulder with which Ratcliffe presented him. he was bright, bubbly, warm, and as friendly as ever--at least until he saw that blonde tramp and hared off to go ferry her around the conference for an entire day. Ratcliffe was reduced to half-bellowing every time he needed his assistant, and every time he had to holler for Wiggins’ attention only threw oil on the fire of his rage.
Enough was enough.
After the panels ended for the night, Ratcliffe had demanded Wiggins’ attention and dragged him away to Ratcliffe’s own bedroom, closing the door behind them.
“I’m not entirely sure what you think you’re doing,” Ratcliffe had said, his voice low and threatening. He’d hemmed the young man in against the wall, those large brown eyes of his looking up at Ratcliffe, bright and attentive. “But you need to decide for yourself what, exactly, you hope to achieve. I had thought you devoted to the pursuit of your duties, Wiggins, but I am beginning to wonder if that is your interest at all.”
“Nothing could interest me more, sir,” Wiggins’d said, his voice scarcely above a whisper, ‘“than doing my duty...and then some.”
“Your definition of ‘then some’ is in dire need of close revision,” Ratcliffe had sneered, pushing even further into Wiggins’ personal space. “I am not satisfied with your performance, not at all. I think you have lost sight of your obligations--allow me to remind you. You work for me, Wiggins...I am your direct superior and it is very essential to your interest to see that my interest is cared for, do you understand?”
“Perfectly,” Wiggins had agreed.
“Take some time to remind yourself who you work for, Wiggins,” Ratcliffe’d intoned, taking a single step away from him. “More of this behavior and I will see to it that you regret your inattention.”
“No need for punishment, sir. I’m very sorry for my behavior, sir. It won’t happen again,” Wiggins had nodded, seeming really contrite.
Ratcliffe had sighed. “See that it does not.”
Of late, Wiggins had kept to that. He was at Ratcliffe’s side at all business hours and never so much as tossed a glance at that trollopy bint who had so consumed him for the space of those few days. Ratcliffe deemed himself satisfied, in a grim way, to see that Wiggins had gotten back on track. Yet as he recalled the conversation they had had, he wondered, wincing, if there hadn’t been a trace of something like jealousy in his language. Certainly, it was nothing so blatant as that Wiggins would pick up on it, but he felt it rather more keenly than he ought.
As of now, Ratcliffe had no game plan for the future and Wiggins’ place in it, beyond a careful maintenance of the status quo. He had needs, as every man, even the very best, inevitably did...and Wiggins was so very eager. It reeked of unprofessionalism, even desperation, to consider his assistant in such a light, but Ratcliffe wondered if it wasn’t the more mature and businesslike way to go about satisfying those ugly little consequences of mortality that men called ‘urges.’
He was in an ugly situation, no matter which way one looked at it. His dreams revealed terribly unpleasant things to him and he found that despicable subconscious bleeding over into daily life more and more often. He knew he was in dire straits when he began wondering if he shouldn’t wear the cologne Wiggins had complimented once. The fact that he recalled Wiggins’ preference was enough to make him wear something else, of course, but who knew how long that resistance would hold out?
His assistant was unpleasantly lovely, undeniably good-tempered, and unwisely free with his goodwill and admiration. Ratcliffe disdained it very much and found himself utterly addicted to it, all the same.
His saving grace, he reflected as Yzma finally got off the stage and the next embarrassment to the school got up, was that Wiggins was far more in love with him than he was with Wiggins.
--
“One Scotch, neat, and one Sex on the Beach, please,” Wiggins asked the bartender with a smile, before turning to the side to watch the next act get on stage. Scar and Shere Khan were leaning on each other, obviously hammered and trying not to show it. Wiggins covered his mouth with his hand as the wheezy strains of Sonny and Cher began to play--obviously the childrens’ nicknames for ‘Cher’ Khan were about to get some substantive material.
He wouldn’t leak that kind of information to the students of course, no--that would considerable reduce the teachers’ respectability!
Wiggins pulled out his cellphone and typed out a message. ‘Wendy-dear: if you want a laugh, get that big brute of yours and come down to Vanessa’s Karaoke Lounge. I’m going to try to get mine to serenade me--it’ll be a scream!’
Wiggins took his drinks with a self-assured smile. He was confident he could do it--Mr. Ratcliffe was so wrapped around his finger, so assured of having Wiggins’ heart, that he scarcely knew which way was up.
Just the way Wiggins liked it.