We're Temporary Anyway (OPEN)

[jaden brooks.]

It had to say something about Jaden that one of the first places he came across at Pencey was the roof. He was still trying to decide how exactly everything was going to go. He'd ended up at Pencey after his father had finally had to acknowledge his son's sexuality after he'd gotten bashed in the head at his old school. Moderate concussion, and a bit of a scar on his forehead, but otherwise he'd come out relatively unscathed. His father, not so much. Acknowledge didn't mean accept. It meant fix it. Apparently.

So here he was. On the roof of some private school meant to "repair" gay teenagers.

Well, you can't fix what's not broken.

Jaden leaned against the wall he was sitting by, blowing his bangs out of his face. He tugged a sketch pad out of his bag and started to draw, not really thinking, just letting his hand go where it would, the image going from his brain to his hand without any real processing on his part. Soon, he was left with a penciled image of a crumpled t-shirt with blood on it. His shirt. He'd seen it not long after he came to in the ER. Someone had cut it off him and tossed it in the floor. Head wounds bled like nuts. He was fortunate the guy with the bat hadn't been concentrating, and therefore the blow hadn't been hard enough to do real brain damage. Fractured skulls were real bitches though.

[leigh huff.]

The roof was always a nice place to get away from everybody. This school was hectic, nothing short of hectic! He was use to going to a very large school in Manhattan where it was just impossible to keep track of everyone's name constantly it was so large and gossip didn't flow the same way. Here it seemed everybody's name was put into a list and then somebody wrote an email out to everyone letting them know of the latest juicy details, and he was the only one not on that list! How else could they know so much in such a short time? At least up in the roof nobody was there and he couldn't hear them whisper about him right in front of him like he wasn't even there. Perhaps if he was a bit louder he'd speak up but most still thought he was a mute.

Another great reason to go to the roof was because shirtlessness wasn't allowed in the schools. Not even the dorms! How was he to even change in front of his roommates? The school rules were so homophobic it made things absurd. Up here on the roof though he could take his shirt off, even if the weather was cool, and just sit back and relax alone. He didn't expect anybody else to come up. He didn't need to be shirtless either, it was more the fact that he was strictly told he wasn't allowed to be or face very serious consequences that made him want to do it so badly in the end.

Seeing another boy come up, cute looking boy, and sit on another part of the roof and not even notice him he perked his head up for a second but then looked down again and closed his eyes as if he was tanning in the sun. It was far to cool weather for that though. After a few minutes of that he peaked open his eyes again to see if the boy was still there and noticed he was drawing something.

Walking over to the boy he sat down next to him and took a look at the drawing without saying anything. The image was a little odd. Taro for instance the other day drew him a dragon, that was normal. Leigh drew mostly flowers, again normal. This crumpled t-shirt must of meant something very symbolic to this boy. Leigh pointed to the picture and raised and eyebrow to inquire what it was about. He didn't even say anything the entire time.

[jaden brooks.]

Jaden was so wrapped up in his drawing, he didn't even notice the other boy until he'd stopped for a moment, tongue poking between his teeth, as he gauged whether it was done or not. Did that spot need more shading? And then there was a hand in his view, and he startled a bit. Showed how alert he was. Guy could've knocked him over the back of the head and he wouldn't have noticed until it was over.

He turned and looked at the other boy, probably about his age, it was a little hard to gauge in high school. Mostly you could just tell the freshman from everyone else. He stared for just a moment, waiting to see if the guy would say anything and after a minute, it became apparent to the blond he wasn't getting anything out of this guy, except looks and gestures.

He sighed softly and looked back at the picture, really taking in what it was. He hadn't paid that much attention to what he was drawing. But any idiot could figure out that the other guy wanted to know why the hell he was drawing a crumpled, bloodied t-shirt. If he was on the other side, he'd sure as hell want to know. He chewed his lip, trying to decide how to explain it. Everyone but the faculty here was gay, and who knew about some of them, but talking about being bashed wasn't easy. It wasn't that he was ashamed of it, he was quite proud of being gay, but getting your skull cracked wasn't exactly the highlight of his life...No, that would probably be that one hand job...

"I was bashed, a few months ago. Just a random image that came to mind from the ER," Jaden said, not speaking loudly, but not really seeing a reason to. After all, it wasn't exactly loud up here. He pondered whether he should mention he hadn't really known what he was drawing until he'd snapped out of the almost-trance he'd been in, not really seeing the whole picture, just seeing lines and shading and highlights, and his mind had sent the image to his hand without consulting him at all. It was weird like that.

[leigh huff.]

Leigh may have been a silent type but he certainly was not oblivious to the situation around him. If anything being so quiet all the time made him more aware of the situation compared to those that gossiped and consistently wanted to know what was going on, thinking the right way to do that was to never close their mouth about other people. When Leigh heard Jaden explain what the torn apart t-shirt was about he wasn't surprised that the t-shirt had meaning because nobody just drew that for fun, but he was surprised at what Jaden said. He caught on that he was in the emergency room because of a hate crime done on him. That was why he was expressing it in a picture. If he had just tumbled down some stairs accidentally the picture wouldn't have meant so much.

After Jaden explained the situation to Leigh to show his support Leigh frowned and whimpered a little loudly, the first noise he had made so far next to Jaden, perhaps proving he wasn't so much of a mute as he had everyone fooled around the school being able to make that noise, and then wrapped his bare arms around Jaden. Holding his shirtless body against Jaden he continued to listen to Jaden talk, if Jaden really wanted to talk about it. The thing was he could tell it was a very sensitive issue as Jaden seemed to almost be zoning in and out of reality as he remembered the scene from those months ago. Perhaps some some other ways what Jaden needed was somebody nice enough like Leigh to be there just to listen to him and understand. The people that ran this school sure didn't understand, they were all to busy denying their sexual preferences to give real advice to the students, which in turn lead them down a very wrong path towards who knows what. Leigh refused to go along with their charade. His therapist is trying the Good Will Hunting style of 'not saying anything until Leigh says something first' and so far they've had 4 sessions in the past week Leigh has done nothing but sit there. When it came to the silent game Leigh could be an Olympic champion.

After rocking Jaden a little to hopefully make him more safe he looked up at Jaden in the eyes to see if Jaden had anything else to say about it and wanted to keep talking. He kept his arms around him but if Jaden felt uncomfortable doing it he wouldn't mind silence, or even just crying if that was what Jaden wanted to do.

[jaden brooks.]

Jaden almost jumped when he suddenly felt an arm around him, the faint body heat warm against the slight chill of the air. And he realized how long it had been since he'd been touched by anyone other than his mother or a doctor. His father refused to touch him, and he'd been under close scrutiny since the bashing, his father not allowing him out of someone who would jump his ass if he was seen so much as talking to another boy's sight. And doctors and mothers just didn't cut it when you were a hormone ravaged 16 year old, going on 17. Even as innocent as the touch, it was comforting, and Jaden felt alive again, even though he was in a place that would most likely try as hard as possibly to make him deny himself.

"I came out of it okay. No brain damage anyway, aside from some amnesia, a crack in the skull and a scar," Jaden said, leaning into the touch a bit. The boy who apparently didn't speak wasn't particularly large, but Jaden was built kind of small. He let the older boy rock them a bit, trying not to think about that moment of impact that he still didn't quite remember, but had imagined over and over.

He sighed again, shifting the sketch pad off his lap and onto the hard floor, pencil following. He looked at it again. It would've been better if he'd had something other than a mechanical pencil on him, something that would shade and blur. He flipped the book closed, like he was closing the door on those awkward memories, bits and pieces that fit together and yet didn't.

"I'm Jaden, Jade," Jaden said, not really expecting the other boy to respond, but feeling it was worth it to mention his name anyway. His parents and teachers and other authority figures called him Jaden, but among his peers, mostly gay guys, but hey, he was Jade. One of his ex-boyfriends had told him it fit him better than Jaden. He wasn't entirely sure why. Maybe because Jaden sounded close to jaded. Not that the blonde wasn't at this point. He'd been hit in the head with the hate he could face, and he was still gay. And still proud of it.

[leigh huff.]

When Jade introduced himself he felt it would be a good idea to introduce himself as well. Leigh wasn't one to talk that often, especially to new people even if he wasn't as shy and timid as he looked. That could be seen by the fact that he didn't hesitate to walk around shirtless or hug Jaden when he needed it before even saying a word to Jaden. It was just with Leigh he hardly ever wasted his words and never knew the right thing to say out loud, he was always better with actions so he always did more actions compared to speaking out loud. "I'm Leigh" Those were two more words then he spoke to any of his teacher and Jaden didn't even have to force that out of him.

Picking up Jadens notebook from the roof he started to open it on the first page and flip through the pictures carefully. First he looked over at Jade to make sure the guy was okay with him doing this but considering he had already seen the torn t-shirt he was going to guess most of them were other odd pictures that had a lot of meaning so the chance of being surprised was slim, expecting only the unexpected. If he flipped it open to suddenly find pictures of lowers that Leigh liked to draw, or regular people he would be more surprised because those were considered regular and normal. Still he liked Jade's originality so he was excited to look through it.

After looking at the first picture he slowly started to turn the page from one to the next slowly so Jade could hopefully give a bit of explanation to each picture, so long as Jade could do it as most pictures probably meant something dear to him and didn't always want to talk about it. As he also flipped through the pages he snuggled closer to Jade to hopefully get him to put his arm around him like Leigh did before.

[jaden brooks.]

((3rd time I've done this post today- my phone wouldn't submit it for some stupid reason *growls* so excuse it, if it's a little off or not up to my usual par...))

Jaden leaned against the older boy's shoulder, happy to have someone to snuggle with even in a non-sexual way. Then he learned the other boy's name- Leigh- and it made things even better. Jaden wasn't usually so clingy, so cuddly, not that he minded cuddling, but having been deprived of a lot of physical contact over the past few months...well, it was taking a toll on the boy. He was almost starved for contact by other males. Who knew what that would lead to?

He let Leigh take his sketchbook, stretching an arm behind the bigger boy's back, his bare arm brushing bare skin, and God, it felt so good to have that skin-to-skin touch. The sketchbook wasn't new by any stretch, and so had pictures from before the bashing as well. However, it was obvious when the bashing had happened. The pictures went from cats, normal scenes of life, still lives, normal things, to a drawing of a dried puddle of blood on concrete...where he'd been bashed and bled massively and the clean-up people had been in no hurry to make the blood pool a memory apparently, sexual scenes of nude men and general anatomy drawings of men, to night scenes, and finally the drawing of the crumpled t-shirt, then blank pages.

Jade watched as the pages flipped by him, each with a memory, some more important than others. Finally, as white pages filled his vision, he spoke.

"What do you think?"