The Ruin of Many a Poor Boy (Open)

OOC Note: The events in this thread take place on February 6th, 2012, sometime after the IM thread of the same day takes place.

Hux pinched the bridge of his nose as he stared at the rows upon rows of books in the library. He couldn't do it. Not now. Maybe some other time he'd seek to expand his horizons with a little light reading, as he was always being encouraged to do, but right now he just wanted to... well, he didn't know what he wanted to do. And that was the problem with being at Highgrove, wasn't it? Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink. That was from a poem, he knew. Tennyson. One of the wardens hadn't stopped going on about it when Hux had paused to chat him up a couple of days ago. Foolishly, he'd been blind to the uniform at first. Honest to goodness, he'd thought the cheerful blond was a resident, he was so slender and baby-faced. Hux wouldn't be making the same mistake again. The staff would give him hell if they knew he was looking for a little nookie on the sly. It was forbidden, after all, that oh-so-dreaded word no one wanted to hear - teenagers least of all. The only reason The Good Warden Marsden hadn't suspected Hux was because he hadn't given him a chance to slip more than a word in between his mind-numbing chatter of great novels and epic poetry. Hux couldn't even remember how they'd gotten on the topic, only that the blond had looked so eager and bright-eyed at his approach that he'd been momentarily taken in by it. Turns out he hadn't been looking for a good time, after all, only someone to masturbate over literature with. Check, please.

Frustrated by his lack of options, Hux slammed both palms into the creaky wooden doors of the old chapel as he left, sending sharp splinters flying off to either side of him. He ducked and dashed to avoid the shower, coming across the threshold unscathed. Much to his surprise, it seemed that the sun had come out during his brief stint inside, and the revelation made him pause, tilt his head skyward, and smile. Its warm, creeping rays slithered across his scalp and caressed his bare arms, a welcome departure from the frigid temperatures The Lake District had lately been assaulted by. Since it was still winter, it made sense, but Hux was eager for it to be over, and this little reprieve promised an early spring to come. Hopefully it wasn't just wishful thinking that told him that, but with his luck it probably was. Nevertheless, he was of a mind to enjoy the balmy, unseasonable weather while it lasted.

His footsteps took him to the rose garden, where he threw his bag to the ground and flung himself down on the nearest bench. The flowers held little interest for him; instead, he turned his face to the sun again, basking in its light. His skin, marble pale for lack of Vitamin D over the last long months, glowed with faint undertones of warm golden honey, and he knew he would tan if he stayed out long enough. Nature, the cantankerous old bitch, likely had other plans and would roll the clouds back in before he was ready. Folding his arms beneath his head, Hux closed his eyes and watched the patterns swirl and grow against the backs of his lids, lazily picking out shapes as if he was looking at cotton candy cumuli instead. For the moment there were none, so no fluffy bunnies appeared to him, or grotesquely smiling faces, only thin threads of red where the veins stood out, pulsing with blood.

Still bored, but reasonably content for the time being, Hux hummed softly under his breath. He wanted company, wanted someone to know that he existed, but he was too lazy, too heavy, to stand up and shout it, so he'd have to do something to make someone, anyone, come to him. His humming grew stronger, louder, and as the seconds ticked on his lips began to shape the words of the old song in his head, voice growing in volume until he was all but screaming the lyrics. "There iiiiiiis a house in New Orleanssss, they callllll the riiiiiiiiising sun, and it's been the ruin of many a poor boooyyy, and god, I knoooow I'm one..." His face was scrunched up with the effort of singing, sweat already beading on his brow. God knew - or whoever, whatever, was up there - that the boy hadn't been blessed with much, but his voice wasn't half bad. With a few lessons, he might actually be good and worth a second look from a talent scout, but Hux had never had much ambition or drive for anything but sex and drugs and the attention of pretty girls and boys. Hell, they didn't even have to be pretty if he wasn't planning on jumping in bed with them. Fucking wasn't the only way to raise his spirits or self-esteem... among other things. "My mooooother was a tailor, she sewwwwwed my newww blue jeans, my faaaaather was a gaaaamblin' man down in New Orleans." Hux's throaty, bluesy voice cut through the peaceful quietude of the quaint rose garden, and he chuckled to think of the stares he might draw from whoever happened to wander through at the same moment he was belting his malcontent little heart out. He wasn't sure this was a good tactic to get someone to come to him, but if anyone did, they'd likely be more worthy of his interest than the person who turned away, thinking he was crazy.

---

I bet they're going through my shit right now. Right. Now. Corpsepicking vultures. Why the fuck do I need to be outside anyway? There's nothing out here but a bunch of trees and mentally handicapped sheep. Newton -better known as Newt- was also lacking in that all essential vitamin D, though it wasn't from captivity exactly. It was more that his habits saw him awake through the crazed and hectic hours of night before he found somewhere to crash that wasn't the home, where they'd irritate him out of bed by eight o'clock at least. John was especially obnoxious when granted that task, and he blared incomprehensible, booming Reggae rap from the little portable stereo in their shared room until Newt wanted to bounce his red-headed skull off the walls. Swear to god, the first person to try that here's going to be... to be... Well, they'll be sorry! He tossed his hands up as he stropped out onto the terrace above the rose garden, gesticulating dramatically before he turned around and flipped off the building behind him with both hands. Manny had wanted to cage Newt, stop him from running off all over creation. And he'd won this round. For now.

At St. Saviours, Newt had been pegged as a 'flight risk'. It was scrawled hastily and underlined at the very top of his wrap sheet, for all the good it did the staff. They'd have just about as much luck containing a fart in a canvas bag as they would have of keeping those twenty-something kids in line. The residents of St. Saviours stalked the streets of Leicester at will, hollow-eyed and hungry for life, searching for a place in the world to call their own. Even if only for fifteen minutes. Night or day, it didn't matter. The staff couldn't watch them every second, and the house had not been bordered in by fences and barbed wire like this place was. Security was a distant idea, a laugh. But now... I can't believe this shit! Sending me outside like a little kid at playtime? His hands fell back to his sides and flapped limply when he turned from the house with a little more force than was necessary. They swung about his hips as if he'd lost the use of all the muscles in his arms, and he made a point of stomping down the stone steps with as much noise and aggression as was humanly possible. If they wanted to treat him like a kid, then a kid they would get.

In his mind, he began formulating a hundred different ways in which he'd fuck those wardens up for this, none of which he'd actually have the guts to go through with, but it served as a soothing distraction from his anger. At least until another distraction pierced the haze of his childish tantrum. Singing? Great. This really is the loony bin. Fuck you, Manny. I shoulda stayed at Ben's. Maybe I'll write to him later, tell him my heart's bleeding for him or some crap. He'll come get me. Appropriately derailed from his murderous imaginings, he shrugged his coat up around his shoulders from where it had lazily slouched, and stalked off in the direction of the bellowing. He recognised the song from the radio Manny always had playing in the house's single, communal office. Sometimes he'd sneak inside and flip it back to Radio 1, to catch the newest Snow Patrol single, or the Saturday night dance show. Right now, this song was better than the angry, dejected silence that had been hovering about him like a swarm of black flies. He even hummed along faintly as he approached, not so much as wincing at the loudness of the other boy when he eventually came to stand behind his head, staring down at him. Here, we see the rare and timid lunatic in his natural environment. Observe as he imagines himself on the Grateful Dead tour while the stealthy but ubiquoo-... ubikwitoo- but awesome urban socialite looms above, unnoticed and resplendent in his stolen FCUK shirt thank-you-very-much.

"Hey." Cool, nonchalant, easy. A simple, one syllable word. The universal greeting of the new generation. Newt stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat. Sun or no sun, this countryside was miserable as far as he was concerned. He didn't see all that much poetry in the world, considering the bleak and withered junkie's vein of an existence he had come from. Staring down at Huxley, his eyes could almost have just been holes in his head, through which the blue skies above could be clearly seen, complete with the occasional wisp of cloud and the faint fleck of an orange sunburst. He smiled very slightly, wondered if this guy regularly licked the wallpaper too. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries. He was starting to imagine this place like some fabled Bedlam of yore. After all, it was just a nuthouse for kids, right?

"Nice dreads..." He considered freeing a hand to touch one of them for a moment, then thought better of it. Half the hippies and Rastafarians in Leicester were either greasy drug pushing creeps, or would judo-chop his nuts off if he did that out of the blue. And he needed those nuts for later. So he shrugged instead. You're welcome. It's nothing. "Soooo..." Rocking back and forth heel to ball, heel to ball a couple of times, he peered out over the perfectly horrifying boredom that was a rose garden. Who the fuck found the time to upkeep this nonsense? And in a nut house of all things. He imagined the next suicidal thrashing about in the bushes, hoping they'd sever a vital artery. "What do you people do for fun around here, bite the heads off birds? You know... Aside from screaming songs at the top of your lungs."

---

"Oh. Hey." Raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, Hux's voice cut off mid-lyric and, as if he hadn't just been screaming at the top of his lungs, easily switched to that cool, detached tone he affected when he didn't want someone to know that their regard mattered to him. It did, of course. It meant everything. They didn't have to like him, they just had to think something about him. He'd prefer that that something was good, but any attention was better than none at all. When it came to forming new acquaintances, he tried to start off on the right foot if and when he could, because he wasn't a disagreeable sort by nature, just by circumstance, but if it didn't work... well, it wasn't as if he ever planned ahead for it. Hux was a creature of impulse, and often didn't know how he was going to act or feel about something until it just... happened. That was one of the things he was supposed to be working on at Highgrove, but he didn't see how thinking things through had ever served him well in the past, so he was decidedly rebellious against the notion. It wasn't a bigger man who walked away from a fight, it was a coward. Hux had no use for people who refused to take a stand. They had to know what their convictions were and stand up for them, even if the only thing they wanted was a fag and a bottle of Jack. It wasn't an unreasonable desire. The best things in life were often dirty and disagreeable, and the world would be a lot better off if people could just admit to and get on with it. He considered not giving into temptation to be a sin, not the other way around.

Who are youuuuu? His mind crooned as he tilted his head to consider the new boy. He couldn't get a very good look at his face from this angle. The way the sun illuminated his form from behind cast his features partially in shadow; the only things that stood out were the sharp, focused points of his eyes, blue enough to rival the sky. Or maybe they were clear and he was seeing the sky through them. Wouldn't that be a trip! Fondling one of the aforementioned dreadlocks, Hux beamed, an expression that was directly at odds with the nonchalant shrug that happened at the same time. "Oh, these old things? I've had them for aaaaages. Didn't cost me a pence either." Pushing himself up onto his elbows, Hux had to tilt his neck at an even more extreme angle to look up at the other boy. It wasn't worth the effort, so as reluctant as he was to stay prone and not move another muscle, he inevitably levered himself upright, scuffed Converse finding purchase in the annoyingly immaculate grass. God, that job had to get tedious, and it was as if fairies or wood sprites did the work or something; he'd never seen a groundskeeper, but then he didn't spend a lot of his time outdoors. "Anyway, don't mistake me for one of those peace and love ponces, yeah? You've no idea how much I wish to avoid that label. I just thought they'd look cool, honestly. No profound reason behind the look. Sorry if that's a disappointment."

The frankness with which Hux spoke was not uncharacteristic of his nature, but he had stifled it quite a bit since arriving at Highgrove. At first it had seemed advantageous to him to stay under the radar, but now that he was realizing he wasn't going to get off for good behavior, he was less and less interested in conformity and more about having fun where he could find it, if he could find it. Do this, don't do that, talk about your feelings, don't whinge about it, be polite and respectful to others... oh, it's all bollocks, isn't it? He wasn't sorry, not really, but he felt that the disclaimer was only fair. Besides, he was sick of people jumping to conclusions about him on account of his hair and figured he'd get that awkwardness out of the way as fast as he could. Hippie, his locks branded him, but that couldn't be any farther from the truth, not if you didn't count his fascination with drugs of every kind and color. Okay, meth, heroin, and crack weren't included in that count, along with a few others, but most illicit substances were created equal in his eyes. There wasn't much he wasn't willing to try at least once, if only for bragging rights afterward. Anyway, he didn't have anything against that kind of folk, at least not when they were his own age. Having grown up with aging flower children for parents, and knowing how goddamned irritating they were, the last thing he wanted was to be compared to them in temperament. It was bad enough he had their genes, that his taste in music overlapped theirs in spots. He wasn't proud of it, but he wasn't going to relinquish the things he enjoyed because his parents had once had a hand in them too. Fuck them.

"You wanna take a seat, mate? I've been warming this bench waiting for someone to come along. Would be a shame not to take advantage." He patted the bench beside him, trying not to look too eager. Newt was just kind of... looming there above him, and it took a lot of restraint for Hux not to take hold of his coattails and yank him down, giving him no choice in the matter. "And I dunno, honestly. I haven't found much fun here. If you get lucky the power goes out and you get to make out with your cute roommate for awhile. That's about it though, and it's only happened once. Fucking boring. Might be some crazy enough to bite the heads off birds here, lucky I haven't come across one in the act yet. I'm Hux, by the way, Huxley Constable, and not near as posh as it sounds. What's your story?"

---

Newt, graciously as a fronting teenager could, did take a seat on the bench next to Hux, slumping down with the artfulness of a sack of garden rakes. His long legs sprawled out in front of him, and he watched the other young man's face as he spoke, appearing earnestly interested in what he had to say... Right up until '...get to make out with your cute roomate.' After that, every syllable that came out of the dreadlocked boy's mouth was utter gibberish, like the teacher in a peanuts cartoon. Wah wah wah waaah, wah wah. Blue eyes stared. Was this too good to be true, or was it too good to be true? Yes, it must just be too good to be true. But then Newt had never much cared about the truth of things, only what was on the surface, to be enjoyed and skimmed upon without ever dredging the murky depths of any real emotions lurking far below, in the hazy deeps. The other boy was telling Newt his name, and for the life of him, Newt couldn't process it or remember what he'd said when he was finished. He did recall that the boy claimed not to be a hippie. Newt fancied he didn't really mind if he was a hippie. A sequence of rather nefarious cogwheels were already turning in his head. Was this other accidentally nameless boy that easy? Or was he crushing on said roommate beforehand? Only one way to find out, really.

"Sorry, I missed your name," he bumbled, as if waking from a dream. He blinked at the other boy and leaned in a little closer, his gaze as intense as it ever was. Wild spirits trapped behind pale blue glass, beating against it to try and escape. "I know we just met, but... do you wanna fuck? " Subtlety, thy name is not Newton. It was worth a try. Besides, one of two things would happen. he would either be shot down, shrug, and move on to someone else, or this would go fabulously and they'd be behind the bike sheds in no time at all. No mirrors out here, but frankly he was so desperate after weeks of being spied on by Manny that he didn't think it would matter. If he didn't hook up with someone soon, he was pretty sure he'd lose it entirely. Maybe you could be the next Ozzy Osbourne, biting the heads off of birds. No, wait, that was a bat. Whatever. Just drag this boy off somewhere! In his haste, he had completely neglected to tell Hux his own name, and naturally had forgotten Huxley's too. But that didn't matter. Names were just words you could moan instead of oh god, or harder!

Newt had been with people back in Leicester whose names he was pretty sure he'd never learned. He didn't regret a minute of it. They hadn't known his either, so what did it really matter? They wouldn't be around for long anyway. No-one ever was. Newt's life was one great transition phase. Now you see him, now you don't. The same was true of Ben, since John had gone and snitched, getting him fired. He guessed Simon was among the ranks of the gone now too. No-one had been in newt's life from beginning to end. Any psychiatrist worth his salt would probably see Newt's history and immediately assume he was compensating for this very fact. And maybe he was, but not consciously. To him, he just needed this. Weeks without it put him on edge, made him more irritable than usual, disturbed his sleep. He felt neurotic, like he belonged at Highgrove. One of the crazies. But all that could be fixed so very simply. So he stared at Huxley, awaiting his answer utterly shamelessly as one slender and sneaky hand crept up onto the other boy's thigh and slowly squeezed a little, a promise of things to come.

---

Oh, good. He didn't run away flailing or screaming. Not that he'd given Newt an actual reason to do that, aside from his incessant babbling, but the fear that the new boy wouldn't take the offered seat was very real for a tense, lingering moment, his shoulders and breath both tight with restless anticipation. It shouldn't have mattered so much. Hux didn't know this boy from a random hole in the ground, but that was beside the point. The only reason he'd taken up temporary residence in the rose garden, belting out a tune most of the residents likely wouldn't know because it was before their time, was so someone would hopefully notice and come join him, if only to alleviate his boredom and validate his existence. Sometimes, being at Highgrove made him feel almost as if he'd had no life before it, and that scared him. He didn't want to forget the circumstances that had led him here, because as foolish and embarrassing as some of them had been, they'd also been a hell of a lot of fun, and he had to remember what was waiting for him at home if he didn't want to lose hope of ever leaving. The worst thing that could happen, he imagined, was that he'd resign himself to believing what the doctors told him, that he was fucked in the head, not right, that being himself wasn't okay, and that he deserved to be in homes like Highgrove for the rest of his life. Why were they right and he wasn't? Why didn't anyone listen to him when he said he was a normal kid? Did having degrees make them right about everything by default? It was totally unfair.

"I know we just met, but... do you wanna fuck?" Wait... what? Where the fuck did that just come from... and did he even care? Not much, he decided, but the question did take him completely by surprise, mouth flopping open as his tongue fumbled uselessly for some response, any response, that wouldn't end up making him look or sound like an incoherent jackass. The obvious answer to the question was yes, oh god, yes, but he couldn't seem to get that much out, let alone anything resembling a recognizable English word. He stuttered for several awkward seconds after the question was poised to him, all his cool completely gone. "Jesus... I mean, yeah, hell yeah. I could fuckin' use it." Was this guy for real? They'd barely exchanged names - Hux didn't even know the other kid's name yet - and already he was being asked if he fancied a tumble. That wasn't the kind of thing that happened at Highgrove... like, ever. Until now, apparently. The cute kids were either completely boring or asexual, with the exception of Ace, and it wasn't as if they'd gone all the way that night they'd spent alone in their dorm. Hux wasn't complaining about what they had done, but it hadn't been enough to satisfy them completely, even if he liked Ace too much to freely admit it and risk hurting him.

Newt was a looker, that was for sure, so it looked like the usual rules didn't apply to him either. Hux was a tad bit suspicious of this sudden stroke of luck, but he wasn't going to question it. No, he'd learned that when an opportunity presented itself, you grabbed hold of the thing and ran as fast and far as your feet would carry you before someone caught on and tried to stop you. He had to be sure the kid wasn't fucking with him though, so he offered a hasty addendum. "You're not pulling my leg, right? Because that would be soooo not cool." He laughed softly, as if the outcome of this odd chance meeting didn't make a difference to him when in fact the opposite couldn't be any truer. No doubt it was apparent on his face. For as desperate as Hux was for a lay, he sure didn't have the stones to approach someone so boldly. Then again, the new kid probably didn't know the way things worked yet, so he really didn't have anything to lose by bringing it up, didn't have the forethought to realize that asking a stranger if he wanted to fuck might not be the best idea. Either that or he didn't care, which was okay too. Hux stared at the hand on his thigh, blinking slowly. Nope, he definitely wasn't kidding. He was pretty sure he knew the difference between pretense and sincerity when it came to intimacy. The latter was always preferrable, though the former wouldn't necessarily put him off when he was really hard up for human contact... in a manner of speaking.

"So I'm not really sure where we run the least risk of getting caught, but I honestly don't care at this point. I'm up for taking my chances anywhere. There's some old off-limits areas I hear don't get much use..."