Human Error - Prologue: Part 1
A/N: After several imploring reviews, I’ve decided to put my Host fic on hold to start up my fic inspired from the movie, The Riot Club. I had four chaps on ffnet, so I’m going to slowly have them beta’d and posted on ao3 before continuing. Feel free to skip over this if you’re not interested. But if you are, please tell me your thoughts! I have a little traffic for it on ffnet, and I’d be thrilled if I got some over on ao3 too. :)
*many thanks to @valeriemperez who betas things she’s never seen before. XD
Synopsis: Final year at Oxford...Lauren's threat to call him out was enough to keep him quiet, but when they're forced to work together in a class neither of them can get out of in their final semester, will even that interaction push her over the edge or will she give him another chance? Miles/Lauren. Multi-Chap.
Prologue - Part 1
There was a light dusting of snow on the ground when the car finally rolled to a stop at the end of a seemingly endless drive leading to their country home.
"We're here!" Ollie announced, unbuckling his seat belt so fast it was a wonder it didn't slap him in the face when he thrust open the door and dashed into the yard.
Miles, who had been trying to achieve a sort of lapse of consciousness against the cold glass window, tried to ignore the enthusiasm bursting from his brother, but the slam of the door and the gentle nudging from his mother ended the 3-hour struggle.
"Sweetheart," she cooed softly. He opened his eyes reluctantly. "We're here." She smiled and turned back around to let herself out of the vehicle. No doubt to keep his younger brother from mischief, Miles mused.
His father caught his gaze and he grinned.
"Snow's come early this year." He beamed. "We'll have a roaring for the holiday party next week."
Miles could only blink. He didn't even want to try to register the impact his father's words made. Had he forgotten so quickly the serious trouble his son had gotten into? Was he just going to forget it even happened just because he hadn't been expelled?
As if he'd sensed his thoughts, his father's gaze suddenly sobered and he turned around in his seat to face his son. His tone was as deadly serious as ever.
"About Oxford," he began, "don't tell anyone what happened."
Miles brows furrowed in a mix of frustration, outrage and confusion, but his father raised his hand to silence any words that would have spilled out of his mouth.
"Everyone makes mistakes, Miles," he said. "No one is perfect. We are all human." He paused to take in his son's conflicted expression. "Whatever it was exactly that you did, you need to put it behind you. Learn from this experience and look to the future. If you don't, history will only repeat itself and the next time it might not be quite so easy to get out of."
Miles tried to let the words sink in, to put stock in them, but it was proving difficult to figure out if they were words of wisdom or words from a rich man not wanting to lose his position in the world and afraid he might if word got out that the Richards wasn't the perfect family in every way.
Before Miles could settle on which option was most likely, his father's face had morphed back into a silly grin and he was joining the rest of his family where they stood on the front porch locked outside of their holiday home. Freda, their house maid, wouldn't be arriving until tomorrow, it seemed, and only his father now held the keys.
…
As advised, Miles did his best to not think about his first semester at Oxford. He tried to focus on life before Oxford and life after Oxford, on academics and family, not false friends and a lost love. For a while, he succeeded.
On Monday he went Christmas shopping with his mother. On Tuesday, he took his brother ice skating, telling him it wasn't as easy as it looked, and quickly delivering hot chocolate when the sheer number of falls became too much for the younger boy's pride. On Wednesday, the whole family went together to chop down their own Christmas tree in the heart of the back woods on their property. The rest of the week went on in this fashion, providing either purely fun activities or planning ones that became fun either thanks to his mother's perfectly tuned singing voice or his father's expertise on the violin. By Saturday afternoon, a mere hour before the party would begin, everything was as blissful as if this was a regular Richards holiday on any year but this one.
"I ran into Bridget this morning when I was in town, Miles," his mother mentioned as she came through the door with flowers to display throughout the room.
"Hmm?" he asked, not looking away from where he stood watching the snow fall at the front window.
"Bridget," he repeated, making her way to him. "Stephanie's mother."
Miles tensed slightly, hoping his mother wouldn't notice. Stephanie had been the belle of the ball to both his parents, and anyone else they were friends with if he was being honest. She was beautiful, smart, well-educated and she came from excellent family background. If you were anyone in the upper class of England, you wanted your son involved with Stephanie Bellington.
To his misfortune, Miles had briefly allowed himself to be swept up in her charm some summers ago. He had been the one to break it off, much to everyone’s surprise. His parents had been devastated, though the relationship – if you could call it that – had lasted little more than a month. Until recently he hadn't really understood why he'd felt the need to cut it short so quickly. It was by far his least tactical break-up. So…we should break up, he'd said, and winced at the memory. To her great credit she'd been neither dramatic or numb about his announcement. Classy as ever, as he recalled.
Fresh off his break-up from Lauren though, which had been both dramatic in the moment and numbed him in the after math, the last thing he wanted to do was endure another scene with Stephanie Bellington that would include his parents – or at least his mother – lingering blatantly in the background, hoping they would decide to give it another go.
As luck would have it, and as he knew was inevitable, she was invited to the infamous Richards' Holiday Party.
"Miles—" His mother forced him away from where he stood stacking logs by the fireplace and to the door where the Bellingtons had just arrived in the front hall, despite his protestations. "You remember the Bellingtons, don't you? Mrs. Bellington, Mr. Bellington, Ni—" she frowned mid-sentence. "Where is—?" she addressed the lady of the family.
"Niles is away at boarding school, I'm afraid," Mrs. Bellington said. For some reason that got Miles' attention.
"For the holiday?" he asked.
She nodded somberly. "Yes. We begged him to come home, at least for Christmas, but he's loving it there in Ireland and he's on his final semester, so he said he'd just be staying with friends."
Miles nodded vaguely, wondering if he would be doing the same thing had his parents lived farther away and the outcome of the incident with The Riot Club not been quite so friendly for him.
"And of course, there's Stephanie," his mother continued, urging the blonde out from beneath her parents' wings and relieving her of the caramel-colored fur coat she was wearing. "How are you doing, dear? You certainly look lovely." She glanced over at her son pointedly. "Doesn't she, Miles?"
He nodded politely. "Stunning."
She blushed faintly. "Thank-you, Miles." She turned briefly to his mother. "I'm doing well, Mrs. Richards." Her eyes found Miles again. "Better now."
His mother was practically beaming with delight, no doubt designing the wedding invitations in her mind as she scurried off with the coat of only one of the Bellingtons in her hands. Freda, as well as their butler, Theodore, were both around to receive coats and dispose of them in some upstairs room, but Miles offered to take the other Bellington coats anyway to get away. Whether Stephanie had never gotten over him, despite appearances before now to the contrary, or she'd just sparked a sudden interest potentially after learning he attended Oxford, he was sufficiently over her and had been for years. The last thing he wanted to think about tonight was his love life, and certainly not anything Oxford-related.
Despite his best efforts, Miles found Stephanie joining his company sometime after dinner when a portion of the guests were sinking in the rest of the evening with champagne and the beauty of Mister and Misses Richards' duet.
"So, my father tells me you're attending Oxford now."
Miles closed his eyes, suppressing a groan.
"Your parents must be on cloud nine."
He forced a smile.
"They were, yes." He didn't look at her, but he could sense her frown and knew he had to erase it somehow, if only by lying to her. "When I got accepted, they were thrilled," he clarified to which she looked instantly relieved. "They're even more thrilled now that I haven't been kicked out."
She laughed coquettishly, and he knew he was in trouble, but made a valiant effort to ignore any flirtation on her part.
"They shouldn't have worried," she said, her eyes shining with admiration and boundless confidence. "There is nothing you do that you don't succeed at." She took a sip of her champagne and murmured, "I should know."
To his chagrin, he blushed a light pink and was grateful for the atmospheric lighting in the room. She was referring to their first time together – his too, entirely.
"We're all human," he said, repeating his father's words. "Eventually we are bound to make mistakes." She was about to say something else and likely slip her manicured hand high up on his thigh discreetly when he excused himself to attend to some matter or other that he didn't actually need to be bothered with.
He didn't escape the party altogether, because surely his mother would have condemned him for that, but he did manage to avoid all the placements of mistletoe throughout the house that Stephanie might stand under.
"Where did you disappear to last night, Miles?" his mother asked him far too sweetly the next morning after she'd had her first full cup of coffee. "It looked like you and Stephanie were getting on so very well."
He forced a smile and set out to involve himself with his brother's morning activities.
"I was around," he said, and that was the end of the conversation.
…
Two days before holiday ended, Miles began to pack for his return to Oxford. He didn't know how it would play out, and frankly he was afraid of everything. He didn't think he could really trust anyone, and the ache he would feel whenever he was likely to spot Lauren in a courtyard or down a hall or in her own secluded library was inevitable. He felt it even now as he packed, and any time he saw a brunette on the street, any time his mother mentioned Stephanie too because Lauren had been so much better than a pretty blonde with a nice inheritance and the class of an heiress to the throne.
What weighed on him heavily was that he was starting to feel not at home in his own home, with his own family now too. The pressure about Stephanie had been only amusing before, but now it irritated. His father's flaunting of money and insistence on it, he'd brushed aside, but now he became angered by it. His brother's eagerness to attend Oxford had made him laugh before. Now he wanted to warn him on all the horrors of the world and try to persuade him to join any university but that one in the hope there would be no temptation like the riot club.
His experience at Oxford had started to change him immensely. He was not just the down-to-earth rich kid he'd been when he first arrived. Now he was angry, cautious, resentful, and if he was honest, a little bit hopeless.
All he could do was focus on his studies, and not cut any corners. While Hugo had once said in great amusement that some people attend Oxford to get a degree, Miles now planned to do only that. He would not make mistakes the way he had in his first semester. And he would go in with eyes wide open. That was the only way to avoid the kind of catastrophe he'd been sucked into before. If people wound up hurt this time, it would not be on account of him.
His guilty conscience already had enough to bear.
*Also posted on AO3 and FFnet.
