A Cultured Tone

[Trillian]

Hew was so shocked by the notion of \'turning tricks\' and that he\'d been asked if he did it, that his true reaction showed before he could stop it.  His lips parted and his eyes widened, brows drawing downward with an almost offended frown.  "No!" he denied, sounding about as prim as he was on the whole subject.

For a strapping sixteen year old boy, Hew was by far abnormal in his lack of interest - even his royal parents had prompted him about any girls he liked, even forcing many social situations, before quietly asking if there were any other boys he was \'good friends\' with, only to receive an answer from Hew that was non-committal before he ran off to practise his swordplay or horse riding.  It seemed constant activity kept his mind off sex.  In truth, he\'d not met anyone yet that had provided him with the zing of lust, nor had attracted him to them through charisma and respect.  Only the Captain had come close, for Hew had a bit of a crush on her, but he knew it wasn\'t serious - borne mostly from respect.

[Existentially Odd]

Phinn snickered at the outraged reaction, believing Hew hadn\'t ever sold his wares willingly - and sensing it was a sore point.  Maybe someone had tried to get him to and he\'d resisted for some unknown reason?  The blonde was distracted by the first sign of a shaken reserve and went after it.

"Why not?" he asked smarmily, grinning and looking the boy over as if he were imagining him naked - which he was.  "You\'d make good cash, with a body like that.  I mean, y\'aint the prettiest o\'boys but you hold yerself real nice and ya\' have an air o\'... je ne sais quoi," he complimented in a passable French accent.  He didn\'t know what the words meant but he\'d heard them used by a noblewoman once and he assumed it meant \'attractive\'.  He hoped \'attractiveness\' would be covered as well.

Phinn liked dropping clever-sounding words into his conversations because he always got a good reaction.  Women cooed over how smart he sounded and men became wary, thinking he knew more than they did (which he believed to be the case anyway).  They\'d often ask what the words meant and he\'d tell them; none of them were smart enough to be able to correct him, so it rarely mattered what he told them his words meant - through his explanation, they got to understand the crux of his message.

[Trillian]

With the suggestion, Hew floundered, feeling uncomfortable.  Any rejection he had phrased in his mind was likely to be spoken with good grammar and he didn\'t know how to bastardise it, so he stuck with his original plan of short answers.

"No thanks," he said, as though Phinneus had offered to be his pimp - and it had sounded almost like he had.  Perhaps that was why he\'d brought Hew up here in the first place, to try and recruit him.  "Sir," he added, not wishing to make the fellow angry, though his wariness jumped a few spaces because of it.  Hew wasn\'t stupid enough to think the guards could help him here and now.

[Existentially Odd]

Now Phinneus was terribly amused and he chuckled appreciatively at the boy\'s succinct response, realising he was very uncomfortable.  "Yeah, but why not?" he demanded, his gaze lingering.  "I\'ve never met a boy yet who\'d say no to a tumble with a lonely lady - they\'d be much older, o\'course, but some old ducks ain\'t looking for aught but a bit of a chat, and the money\'s good," he lectured, speaking from experience.

"Don\'t tell me you got yerself a girlfriend and yer in love or sumfin, so yer too good to make yerself a living on the side?" he jeered.

[Trillian]

"I..."  Why not?  Wasn\'t not wanting to good enough of an answer?  "I..."   He didn\'t want to give Phinneus another reason to talk around, and so the first excuse - which also happened to be a truth - was the first thing out of his mouth.  "I-I\'m..." he closed his eyes as he said the word, "...inexperienced."  Then he opened his eyes.

He forgot his accent, he forgot his bad grammar, he forgot everything as he tried to put off Phinneus from this course of discussion.  He truly believed now that Phinneus was trying to recruit him, and he wasn\'t insulted at the suggestion - to be so was to be truly naive, for being a sex worker was often the easiest occupation for the uneducated without a skill or trade.

It was only after the fact that he realised his \'inexperience\' excuse wasn\'t really anything that would stop Phinneus from trying to talk him around at all - in fact it was more likely to encourage the argument.  He blushed.

[Existentially Odd]

Phinn raised his eyebrows, hearing the shy way this was said, observing the near-blush about the boy\'s cheeks.  "Inexperienced, are ye?" he asked, intrigued because he didn\'t believe the boy unattractive enough to have never gained that sort of attention, so he figured there might be some sort of reason behind it.  Thing was, he also believed that this claim was genuine, which at least put his mind to rest on the drunken-roll theory he\'d been toying with.  That was one possibility for familiarity eliminated.

"What?  Never even with your hand?" he smirked crassly, eyeing off Hew\'s crotch because he predicted it would make the teenager squirm.  He liked seeing boys such as Hew squirm; especially when he was trying to unseat them so he could get to the information he actually wanted.  They were still far from getting a solution to his mind niggles, unfortunately (in his opinion), but were making progress... in a roundabout and amusing fashion.

[Trillian]

At the repetition of his answer, he thought perhaps he hadn\'t been believed.  That was okay, but he felt a little silly for even bringing it up.

Hew brought his knees together at the gaze and blushed furiously.  His hand had been in play for quite some years now, but it was not something he ever wished to discuss.  He realised that his knees were together like a girl, and then spread them slightly to a point of comfort, and hoped Phinneus would let him go free now.

He had nothing to say to that, so said nothing, his gaze dropped to the floor for a moment while he tried to think how a street urchin would behave. Rudely, probably. Crassly, likely.  He didn\'t have it in him, so just remained quiet.

[Existentially Odd]

Phinn giggled (perhaps cruelly), enjoying immensely the way Hew blushed and shielded himself.  He had to hold in huge guffaws of laughter at the pressing together of the lad\'s knees, for he truly could have become carried away with things then.  That was not his goal, though.  He was smart enough to figure that if he presented all manner of disagreeable topics of conversation first, by the time he got round to tame ones that would give him some genuine information, his victim would be so grateful that they would gush out facts that they were suddenly content to part with (simply because, by comparison, they were nothing).

Hew\'s discomfort topic was definitely sex.  Luckily, that was Phinneus\' preferred topic to chat about, so he had all sorts of angles and nuances he could yet raise for discussion.

"Sorry," he apologised insincerely, running a hand through his hair in an effort to magnify his good looks.  "I just can\'t relate, see?  I mean, I was twelve when I had my first woman," Phinn reminisced fondly.  His eyes drifted off Hew and he looked at the ceiling, as if deep in thought.  "Fourteen with my first man," he added casually, shrugging at the same time.  "By your age me mam\'d pissed me off enough that I was buckin\' up, not turnin\' tricks fer\'er anymore and it was all fer th\'pleasure of it - or for me own coffers, not hers.  Selfish cow," he muttered resentfully beneath his breath (he\'d be dead and in Talon\'s fields of remorse before he ever outwitted his mother, that was for sure).

He looked frankly at Hew now, smiling sexily and dropping him a knowing wink.  "But I s\'pose you have no idea what I mean, do ya\'?" he mused, expecting that the boy might answer - and he should, if he were to allay some of Phinn\'s suspicions about him.  "Given that it\'s jus\' been you\'n ya\' hand n\'all," he finished slyly, his gaze challenging the boy to object and make an explanation one way or the other.

[Trillian]

"I\'m..."

educated

Hew paused, realising that he\'d been about to drop both his token accent and the grammar with which he\'d been using all along.  He couldn\'t use words such as educated or anything large where a smaller word would do.  The talking of sex and such was throwing him off, and only now he was starting to think that this was Phinneus\' true goal.  Did he suspect something?

"I\'ve heard tales," he said, "so\'s it\'s not like I don\'t know what to do an\' all.  I jus\' not seen anyone I like yet."  He spoke defensively, and lifted his chin to take on such a role, peering down his nose at Phinneus before he realised this could be accepted as a rude gesture, so he lowered his gaze to his lap for a moment before looking across at Phinn.

[Existentially Odd]

Phinn\'s admiration for the boy rose when he lifted his chin to look him in the eye, then dropped again when he backed down from the strong gesture and regarded his lap.  Yep, the boy was still spooked by him but it wasn\'t getting him anywhere.  All he\'d established was that Hew was a virgin and eliminated one way in which they might have met.  He\'d also heard that he mucked stables - which Phinneus didn\'t exactly believe but realised he\'d stopped that line of questioning short.  It was time to bring it back.

"Yeah?  I seen plenty o\'pretty girls and boys at them stables I wouldn\'t mind a roll with," he sniggered, the satisfied glint in his eye likely advertising that he had.  He tilted his head thoughtfully in contemplating the boy.  "Linley work you too hard to think such things, does he?"

His tone was light but he was very deliberate about his question.  Everyone in the castle knew the face of the stables to be the Stable Manager, Gallagher, simply because he\'d made it his concern to do everything he could for those that came to the stables.  He was the friendly, smiling face that everyone was happy to do business with because he knew what he was talking about, when it came to horses.

Fewer citizens - especially younger ones - were aware that the Master of the stables was, in fact, George Linley.  He was not a presence generally felt around the stalls for a few good reasons; mostly Gallagher was such an overwhelming go-getter that he didn\'t have to lift much of a finger to earn his keep, so his laziness bore rare fruit in this manner.  Linley was also one of the most corrupt men Phinneus had ever met, so a great deal of his business - which often had nothing whatsoever to do with horses - was conducted from the back tables of the Falcon\'s Mask.  He was a bad apple in the keep\'s barrel to be sure, and that was exactly why Phinn dealt with him quite a lot, Gallagher very little and the general population only knew the nicer, prettier face of the stables.

He was keen to see what Hew would make of the name for, by all rights, the boy wouldn\'t have much to do with the Master at all - and he was well aware he\'d dropped the fairer man\'s name as Hew\'s boss earlier, too.  How much did the boy before him know?

[Trillian]

Hew\'s mind began ticking over at the mention of Linley\'s name.  Because the stables were a place he visited to receive one of his horses for when he wanted to do a bout of riding, he knew the hierachy.  He\'d been educated also, on most of the town\'s more important positions, so he\'d learned socially about Bede Gallagher and George Linley, and had even met both.  Taking a punt, knowing who was in charge of who, he came up with an answer he hoped would appease Phinneus.

His head lifted to look the other in the eye, but without the chin up as he had last time.  Now he just watched, carefully, to see if his explanation would take.

"I don\'t take everyday orders from Linley," he explained.  "It\'s Gallagher that yells in my ear when something needs doing, but I been told to keep my head down and work hard when Linley\'s about."  He took another punt, this one on the truth.  "I don\'t see \'im much."

[Existentially Odd]

Phinneus\' smile didn\'t falter but his eyebrows raised.  "Ahh.  And you haven\'t found time - or the inspiration - under Gallagher\'s friendly tutelage to do more than work with yer colleagues?" the lord enquired, dropping another of the fancy words he\'d learned and also feeding the general rumours about the Stable Manager.  Gallagher was such a handsome, charismatic fellow that there was always plenty of talk about the stable hands he \'nailed\' frequently - supposedly paying those that were willing with his body, not money, and fostering wild stories about what a love nest the stables were, under the friendly man\'s charms.  It wasn\'t true of course, but it was a running snipe from those envious of the tall blonde and an easy enough comment to make.

Besides, Phinn wasn\'t even thinking along those lines any more - he just said it to appear to be continuing along the sex lines with Hew.  The boy was growing a little more confident the more they spoke - it was hard to know whether that was because he was feeding Phinn lies that were believable or because he\'d been nervous but the more he got to talking about himself, the smoother things here went.

There was something in his stupid little niggle thoughts about Hew and horses, but it didn\'t feel right to think that it was just because Phinn had seen him mucking out stables, out exercising them in the yards or walking them through the streets... the streets?  What about the streets had sent that little thrill through him?  His body knew he was thinking along the right lines, but as he tried to chase that tingle down to explore it further, it vanished, leaving him frustrated.  He didn\'t know why thinking about Hew, horses and the streets helped him know what he... sort of knew about the boy better... but it did.  Though it didn\'t tell him enough, by Talon\'s claws!

Phinneus didn\'t even go to the stables; he didn\'t own a horse and had no idea how to ride one.  He certainly hadn\'t met Hew in the blasted place (of course, he\'d done a bit of business through the stables, thanks to Linley, but none of it at the building itself).  He could only accept Hew\'s work there as fact and move on... but to where?  The muscle angle was all he could think to work next.  "Tell me," he crooned at Hew, his gaze intimate, "do you never get time for... extry-circular fun?"

He could\'ve been talking about sex, he could\'ve been talking about alternate employment... such was his gift at the segway.  Of course, he could also have been speaking a foreign language, since he\'d overdone himself on his cleverness front and dropped a word he believed meant \'out of the normal way of things\'.  He had the meaning right, he just didn\'t remember the words \'extra-curricular\' properly, though he had no idea he\'d said it wrong.  His smug look likely hinted to Hew that he expected to be quiestioned on his \'superior\' vocabulary, however; he always was, after all.

[Trillian]

Hew grinned and habit won over.

"Curricular?" he corrected, for such was his habit by tutors that often corrected him.  His own attitude was such that he preferred being corrected, so believed the same of everyone else.  It didn\'t even occur to him that a streetkid wouldn\'t know such a word, so deeply embedded was his vocabulary - and frankly, he was starting to relax and wasn\'t thinking.  A mistake.  "I do, sir, that\'s why I\'m \'ere, hanging with your boys," he explained, pleased to have an answer.

[Existentially Odd]

Phinneus blinked, a crack in his haughty demeanour appearing as he frowned.  Curricular?  He didn\'t understand the context of the word, for he didn\'t know he was wrong.  He registered the rest of Hew\'s sentence vaguely - and didn\'t question it, for his boys certainly were useful for out of work fun - but it wasn\'t the focus of his thoughts.

"Curricular?" he repeated back at Hew, looking genuinely puzzled and putting much more of a questioning emphasis on it - rather than the knowledgeable tone it had been said to him in the first place.  He had an inkling that he\'d been corrected, thanks to that tone, but he wasn\'t positive and... well, it never happened, so it was rather hard to believe.  Hew was different, though; oddly, Phinn would accept a correction from this boy above anyone else, simply because he knew him to be different... just not the details of how he was different.

[Trillian]

Now that it had been brought to his attention, Hew realised his mistake and his lips twisted a little before he thinned them and then nodded.  "Extra-curricular," he said in full, then pressed his lips together, wondering what Phinneus would do to him knowing that Hew had been so forthcoming with his grammar.