This is my sixth gay erotic novella on Nifty, which means I'm on my way to being prolific. This one is the second of a trilogy about Henry Atwood. His earlier adventures are chronicled in Henry in the Outfield' and Henry in High Politics' in the section High School. Before beginning, I have to point out, had you any doubts, that there is no university of Cranwell and a resemblance to any real university in its portrayal is simply generic. The Michael Arram stories are now beginning to appear together at: http://www.iomfats.org/storyshelf/hosted/arram
This story contains graphic depictions of sex between young males. If the reading or possessing of such material as this is illegal in your place of residence please leave this site immediately and do not proceed further. If you are under the legal age to read this, please do not do so.
HENRY IN HIGH POLITICS
by
Michael Arram
I
`Get outa my way you little queer.'
A shoulder charged Henry in the back and sent him spinning into a door post. A star of pain went supernova behind his right eye, and he ended up hard down on his bum in the upper corridor. He heard the steps of his assailant pound a few more feet down the corridor, and then stop.
`Outa my way, Cornish,' snarled the same voice.
No,' said a suprisingly cool and determined voice, cos first you have to go back, pick up Henry and apologise.'
`Me! Apologise to little fairy boy there? You're kidding. Now outa my way.'
Oh dear,' said Ed Cornish, then I've got no choice have I?' There was a crack followed by a heavy thud. The floor bounced under Henry's bottom, as a heavy body landed on its back next to him.
Henry blinked his watering eyes as Ed reached down, hooked him under the armpit and lifted him up, setting him on his shaky legs.
`You OK, Henry babe?'
No ... I can't see out of my right eye, and someone's stuck a white hot needle through my temples.' He sensed there were other concerned sixth formers round him. Mark Peters murmured, You're gonna have a shiner, Outfield. You OK on your feet? Good.' Henry heard a muffled thud next to him.
Ed said, `Peters, you shouldna kicked him in the side like that when he's down.'
`No? Where should I have kicked him?'
`Between the legs?' ventured Ed.
Oh yeah,' Peters said. You never think of these things at the time do you?'
Henry felt it was time to assert his existence. He wiped his left eye and tried to focus on the figure unconscious on the floor beneath him. `Who was it?'
`Would you believe it was Rudi Burlesdon?' said Mark Peters.
`Oh. I suppose I would. Is he out for the count?'
Ed prodded the prone boy with his foot. `He just groaned, so I guess that he is in fact coming round, if, that is, he wasn't just lying doggo in the first place, the git. Henry. Did he say what I thought he said to you?'
`He called me a "little queer" if that's what you mean.'
Mark let out a hiss of breath, `He never did!'
`Wish I'd hit him harder then.'
To be technical,' said Henry a little precisely, he did not in fact say anything other than the truth, I am small, I am homosexual and I'm into ...'
Hold it, Outfield,' interrupted Mark, I'd not prefer to hear the details of yours and Ed's sex life. It's bad enough me not having one of my own.'
Henry looked down on Rudi Burlesdon, now struggling to his knees. Two upper sixth formers hauled him up. He had an unfocussed look about him. One of them told Ed that he'd take Burlesdon down to the head of sixth and give him the details of the incident. `Which are?' asked Ed.
`That he made an unprovoked assault on our little Outfield, and that he was restrained in a commendably moderate way by Edward Cornish and Mark Peters, who remonstrated with him. OK?'
Fine.' Ed pushed his face into Burlesdon's, Now you git, even so much as look at Henry Atwood in future, and I'll fucking kick you in the balls so hard that they'll come out your ears. Got it?'
There was no answer, just a sullen look on the other boy's face as the older boys hauled him off. Ed clapped his hands and smiled at the surrounding group, busily dusting down Henry. `And that, hopefully, will be the last we see of young Rudi, and very good riddance too. Assault is an eminently expellable offence.'
Henry got his black eye, but felt strangely ambivalent towards the boy who had given it to him. He was curious about him. Oh Henry,' Ed scolded, you're not off on another salvation kick are you?'
`No. But he's a bit intriguing isn't he?'
`No, he's a pain in the neck. What is it with you, little babe?'
`What do you know about him?'
Ed shrugged, `He arrived a month after the beginning of Michaelmas term. He boards in Temple House, thank God, with the other Slytherins. He's got no friends and he has a serious temper problem. Redheads. It's always the same story. Oh wait ... now I see what's going on here. Henry, you're projecting on him, aren't you. You're trying to compare your experience of arriving in Year 11 and not making friends with his. But you're sweet, cute and kind, and he's a thug with issues. There is no comparison. Now repeat after me ... I will not go looking for trouble.'
Henry just laughed and went off to double RS with Miss Prendergast, to confront another of his current problems.
Henry was a sensitive boy, not much given to self love, which - as he said to himself -- was just as well, because in looks he was ordinary and in build, a bit slight. Henry's strength was in personality. That was why he had picked up the problem of David Skipper quickly. David was one of the other two in the lower sixth RS group, and before Christmas Henry had realised it was not love of the subject that had decided David to choose AS Religious Studies. There had been a term of David being tongue-tied everytime Henry tried to talk to him, and then after Christmas a tendency to act like a limpet any time Henry was near.
David was in lust with Henry, so much was clear. What was not clear was how far David had accepted his own homosexuality. Henry rather suspected that David was in denial of what his body was telling him, and was rationalising his urges as a simple need for friendship. Henry knew that David's father was a colonel of a tank regiment and David was a service boarder. Not a good background to be gay against.
But the really serious part of the problem for Henry was that Henry was not immune to David Skipper. He was the first boy apart from his Ed who had sexually stirred him. It was a different feeling from his attraction to Ed, a handsome and swashbuckling young man, intelligent and courageous, a boy to admire. David was different, dark and pretty, slightly better built than Henry, and beautifully proportioned. Naked he must be a sight to see, Henry's libido had concluded, and his penis had reacted accordingly. David was quite a tennis player by all accounts, while Henry's sporting accomplishments were pitiful. It was the mirror thing, Henry concluded. David resembled him physically, but was a sort of perfected Henry in face, coordination and build. Only self-love, Henry muttered to himself, but then with a grin decided that of the two, he had the nicer bum.
`Morning miss,' said Henry cheerily, for RS was his favourite subject and Miss Prendergast his favourite teacher. David looked up into Henry's face and moved his bag off the next chair so that Henry had to sit next to him. He beamed when Henry did it.
`Hey Outfield, you OK? ... your right eye's a bit puffy.'
`Er ... walked into a door.'
`It must hurt ... can I have a look at it?'
Henry had to go along with it, and tried not to enjoy it too much when David's cool fingers delicately moved over his face. He saw with no surprise at all that David was erecting as he did it, and as he realised it was happening, David backed off him, placing his bag in his lap. `Er ... you're going to have a black eye,' he said.
`I'd worked that out; thank you, Bounder.' Bounder was David's nickname.
`Are you alright, Henry?' Miss Prendergast too was concerned.
`Thank you miss, I will live, honest. You wanna look at my eye too, Morton?'
The third member of the class grinned and said he would pass.
Rudi Burlesdon was not expelled, although he was confined to the school premises and placed on Headmaster's detention. He did not come back to the sixth form block, as the sixth form council suspended his privileges. Henry Outfield' Atwood was a popular member of the lower sixth, despite his notorious gay affair with his Ed. As Mark said, If Burlesdon was after popularity, he might as well have shot Bambi on Princess Diana's grave.'
That was Wednesday. It was the hot topic for the rest of the week, that and the fact that Bounder got in a slugfest with Burlesdon on Thursday afternoon in their boarding house, and came off worst. Henry sighed when he heard about it. He might have guessed that it would happen. Come Friday, Ed joined Henry on the day boys' minibus that went in the direction of Henry's home in the village of Trewern, where Henry's father was priest-in-charge of eight Shropshire parishes. Ed was a boarder, but his fosterparents and the Atwoods had arranged it that he spent the weekends with his boyfriend. They shared Henry's large bedroom, and a lot of Ed's clothes, books, CDs and games were now part of Henry domestic environment. He was known to sleep with items of Ed's clothing under his pillow when he wasn't there. His mother might have thought it cute except that Henry tended to use Ed's unwashed boxers, as being more evocative, as he said, of the full Cornish body odour. Henry's mum said he was disgusting.
As usual the pair helped with making Friday dinner and cleared up, and then headed directly for their bed, and vigorously caught up on what they had denied themselves during the week.
Ed slumped onto Henry, his penis still erect and embedded in his lover. He squirmed gently over Henry's sweaty back, clasping him hard with his strong arms and kissing his neck. It had been a very thorough working out of Ed's organ and he had delayed his orgasm for a suprising amount of time for a seventeen year old, maximising Henry's enjoyment under him. Ed was developing into a very skilled lover: sympathetic, unselfish and more sensitive than many people would have expected of him.
Eventually, Ed fell out of his Henry and rolled off him. They snuggled, Ed spooning protectively up round the smaller boy, printing loving kisses on his shoulders, ears and neck. Henry sighed with the cosy delight of it and pushed his little butt back into Ed's crotch. As they were drifting off, Ed said a little dozily, `Burlesdon's in more trouble, little babe. They found cannabis in his bedside table. He'll be gone by next week. He swears it was nothing to do with him, but the Head is tough on drugs on the premises. Frankly, he is screwed, and not in the nice way you screw me. So you can forget about the git. He's outta here.'
Henry sat up. `He had marijuana in his room?'
`Yeah. Wassup?'
`Just that it's odd. The cleaners are in there every day, and everyone knows that the housemaster does random searches of the upper school boys' rooms. So who would put weed in just the place it was likely to be found?'
`He's new to the school. Probably he didn't know how dull it was to keep his weed there.'
`But you knew, and you don't smoke. He'd be bound to have been warned by now. It's the boarder sub-culture. He'd know, however unpopular he was.'
Oh God, Henry,' moaned Ed, I feel a crusade coming on.'
Henry picked up a pillow and hit him with it. Ed pulled him down, there was laughter and bodies threshing round under the duvet. Eventually they slept.
Henry did not go directly to prep on Monday, instead he crossed the fields to Temple House, a gaunt Victorian building overlooking the rugby field. He tapped in the weekly code on the security box and pushed open the heavy door, scarred by generations of energetic youth kicking and slamming it. He checked the room list and found that Burlesdon was in no 24. He went up. The door was closed, so he knocked. A muffled `fuck off' came from inside. A little nervously, Henry opened it anyway.
A tall, redheaded seventeen year old stared at him. `What you want? You're about the last person I expected to see. Come to gloat have you?'
Henry twitched an eyebrow, `No. I haven't.'
`Then what the fuck do you want?'
`Can I sit down?'
`No, fuck off. You heard me!' The boy's ears were bright red, which seemed to be a warning sign, but Henry ignored it, especially as he sensed that if he was not angry, Burlesdon would be crying, indeed he might have been doing just that before Henry had knocked on his door. There was an air of woeful desperation about him and Henry had a very soft heart.
`I don't think that was your weed they found.'
Burlesdon stared at him. What?' he said. How d'you know?'
`Because I don't think you're that stupid, Burlesdon.'
The redhead's face fell. `Fuck. I thought you might know something.'
`It wasn't yours, was it?' Henry repeated.
No, it wasn't.' The boy flexed his hands and balled them into fists, And if I knew who'd done it, I'd beat his face into splinters of bone, the fucking bastard cunt ...'
Henry looked at him quirkily, `Has anyone ever told you that you have an anger management problem?'
Burlesdon gave him a hard look. `You come over here to be patronising, or to be helpful?'
Helpful, I think.' Henry's fear of this angry boy was beginning to ebb. Why did you knock me down last Wednesday?'
`You were in my way,' Burlesdon replied, as if that was all there was to it.
`So do you knock everyone down who's in your way and dump a load of homophobic abuse on them?'
`You are a cocksucker aren't you?'
`Don't you see that that expression is a teensy bit offensive?'
`I don't like queers, Outfield. You have a problem with that?'
We are all entitled to our views, I suppose,' Henry said. So when you called me a "little queer", you were just being ...'
`... descriptive, yeah. Can't stand you, but it don't mean I'm into gaybashing, I was just in a desperate hurry to get outside and use my mobile. I told the Head that, but I get the impression that you're one of his blue-eyed boys.'
`What was that important?' Henry asked.
`None of your fuckin ...'
`OK, OK. I get it. Keep your secrets, man of mystery. But before we bring this uncomfortable interview to a close, could I just ask who would have a grudge against you sufficient to frame you for possession of a Class C drug on the school premises?'
`You.'
`I got no grudge against you, Burlesdon, whatever you might think. Anyone else?'
`Your pansy boyfriend.'
`... who could effortlessly rip your intestines out and make interesting artistic arrangements with them.'
`Then no-one here,' Burlesdon finally said.
`That means that there are people who might do it elsewhere.'
`I told you ... it's none of your fuckin ...'
`I get it. That's it then. OK, I'll be on my way.' Henry turned to leave.
Wait!' Burlesdon said. Henry raised an eyebrow. Sorry I knocked you down,' he mumbled.
`Thanks. If anything else occurs to me, I'll let you know. Bye then.'
The woeful look was back on Burlesdon's face. `Bye,' he sighed. And Henry felt sorry for him, which was, as things were to turn out, a decision which was to have consequences beyond anything he could possibly have imagined.