Bleeding Hearts Cauterised

Hurrah! New part to the series that has no name! Yay! Ahem. So yeah, Ricki's starting University… what's in store for him now?

In part one, Ricki seduced and slept with a loner kid named Seritroe, who was enamoured of Ricki to begin with anyway, and wasn't much of a conquest. After discovering that it was all for a bet, Illkitt couldn't take any more, and committed suicide, not before telling the school about what Ricki had done.

In part two, Ricki was a little bit older, a little more depressed, but was still refusing to admit to himself that he liked other guys. Until he met Illkitt, the schools own delinquent masochist. They didn't start a relationship as much as occasionally screw around, but as time went by, Ricki became more and more involved in Illkitt's life, discovering that Illkitt kept an awful secret hidden away, but eventually finding that he had fallen in love with the other boy. This admission scared Ilkitt, and he broke it off. The last Ricki saw of him, he was on a bus with a new boyfriend, and Ricki was heading for another fresh start at University.

Dedicated to: Everyone who pestered me for more after Razor Bones Shredding and Rubbing Skin Raw

Warning: Mentions of m/m

'Even in his youth he was nothing/Kept his body clean going nowhere/Daddy was ashamed/Disgraced the family name'

Even In His Youth- Nirvana

'And I'm eaten alive by what I hold inside/All the things that I live with I can't easily hide/ And I'm left here with nothing, nothing to live for/ But you/ It's not easy to hide/All this damage inside/I'll carry you with me/ Until I'm not alive'

Excess Baggage - Staind

'Bruise, pristine, serene, we were born to lose'

Bruise Pristine- Placebo

'Chances blown, nothing's free/Longing for what used to be/ Still it's hard, hard to see/Fragile lives, shattered dreams'

The Kids Aren't Alright - The Offspring

'Your chasing the dragon, your chasing the high/A bird with one wing whose still trying to fly/You're all out of spirit, a dead man alive/A born again junkie, you'll never survive'

Junkie- Ozzy Osbourne

'Get back on your feet again/You always seem down'

Lullaby- Starsailor

'Pink pill/Feels good/Finally/Understood/Take me in your warm embrace/I am trying/I am trying'

Electro-shock Blues- Eels

Chapter One

Once again, Ricki Martinez found himself on the grounds of a strange new school, only this time, it was a university that puzzled and confused him.

He'd passed his A-levels and had gained acceptance into University, where he was doing English. He'd thought hard about whether or not he should live in halls, unsure that it would be wise with his past track record for calamity and tragedy in relationships.

Not only did he still become depressed over thoughts of Seritroe, the boy he killed, but he now also felt a hole in his life which had previously been filled by Ilkitt, the troubled, abused masochist he had met in his last year of college.

He remembered the last time he had seen him, giving his latest squeeze a blowjob in the back of a bus, and wondered if they were even still together now. Probably not, knowing Ilkitt.

In the end he had decided to stay in digs, promising his parents that he'd move back in with his mum if things became too stressful for him.

He was now wandering around, searching in vain for the cafeteria.

*Damnit. This is why we were told to take our maps with us until we knew where everything was.* He thought to himself.

Looking around he stopped the first solitary figure that he saw.

"Hey, you don't know where the cafeteria is, do you?" He asked.

The other boy, who'd had his head down, looked up and pulled his headphones down around his neck.

"Sorry, what?"

Ricki's breath seemed to seize in his chest and he actually coughed, causing the other boy to look concerned and pat him on the back.

"You okay?"

"Yea, yea, I'm fine..." He gasped, staring at the helpful stranger.

Ricki had been straight as an arrow, and thought he really was straight as an arrow until the episode after Seritroe. He'd convinced himself that he had no feelings for the other boy, and had spent a year out of school trying to cope with his depression after Seritroe had killed himself, more because he'd pushed the boy over the edge than because it had been a boy he had actually SLEPT with who had died.

That changed when he had met and started a liaison with Illkitt, who taught him, in his very unique way, that he really did like boys that way, and that he should accept it and accept himself. Also, that you got a lot more tail if you swung both ways, but that was just an added bonus.

Only the thing with Ilkitt had been that Ricki had actually realised that he loved the guy! He'd actually confessed it to him and, as a result, had scared him of. Illkitt would never be able to be in a long-lasting stable relationship and not go looking for punishment, both bodily and mentally. So they had 'broken up', in as far as a couple who weren't dating could, and Ricki had gone on with his life, only THIS time he KNEW that he could like guys and still be Ricki Martinez.

Despite all this, he'd never felt something leap inside him after setting eyes on any boy for the first time. He'd a couple of near-platonic relationships over the holidays, with girls and guys, but none of them had ever made his heart beat this rapidly, or his head sing as it was doing.

The boy was pretty, not delicate and fey like Seritroe had been until he painted himself across the playground tarmac; not devilishly wicked and sinfully dark, like Illkitt; he was softly pretty, androgynous. It wasn't so much that he had a particularly feminine face, or that he was amazingly pretty, but something about his face, about the look in his eyes hit him in a certain way.

He had dirty blond hair, naturally shot through with soft chestnut and light gold streaks here and there. His eyes were arresting, a stormy light charcoal grey. They made Ricki's stomach somersault and his pulse race.

It was lust at first sight.

Unfortunately, not knowing who the boy was, never mind if he could ever feel the same way, Ricki could do nothing but repeat the question.

Ricki strolled into his first seminar and sat at the back, so that he had a wall to lean on. He was early, so he waited, paper and pen out in front of him, for the rest of the class to arrive.

He greeted a few from his halls and a few who were in his other lectures, but none of them caught his attention like the blond who walked in. It was the same boy from that morning, the one with the captivating grey eyes.

He smiled at Ricki as he sat down, and Ricki, inexplicably nervous, gave a half-hearted grin back.

Ricki listened intently as the register was called.

"Laura Bailey."

"Here."

"Alistair Crowthorne"

"Yea."

"Mackenzie Douglas."

"Here."

"Desty Foxe."

The blond raised a hand and was marked off in the register.

*Desty Foxe.* Ricki savoured the word in his head.

All through class, Ricki listened to the seminar with half an ear, the rest of his attention put into discreetly watching this Desty guy. He watched Desty twirl a pencil between his thumb and index finger, watched as he rested his head on his hand and how he would sit up a little straighter when something interesting was mentioned.

Whenever Desty said something, which wasn't often, but was always a viewpoint that no one had noticed before, Ricki listened with devotion, not missing his chance to stare full on at the other boy's face, his lips, his mouth, his unique eyes.

By the time the seminar finished, Ricki was madly, truly, infatuated. He sat, numb in his seat as he watched Desty gather his things and leave the room, then grabbed his stuff up and bolted out after him, running down the corridor.

"Desty! Oi, Desty, wait up!" He yelled, half unaware of what exactly he was doing.

Desty turned around, looking confused, then smiled.

"Oh hey." He greeted as Ricki ran up. "Ricki right?"

"Yup." Ricki said grinning.

After a few minutes of silence, Desty shifted the bag on his shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

"So… was there something you wanted?"

Ricki laughed nervously. *What's wrong with me? I don't laugh nervously like an infatuated seventeen year old school girl. GROW UP Martinez. *

"Oh yea..." He said, after clearing his throat in a 'masculine' way to cover up for his giggles. "I was just having some problems with the text… and you seemed to have a better grip on it than I do. Would you mind maybe going through it with me?"

Desty didn't even seem to think about it, he just shrugged.

"Yea, sure." He said laconically.

"Cool." Ricki said, a little uncertain at Desty's apparent coldness. "Uhmm..."

Desty seemed to sense that he'd been too abrupt with Ricki and smiled at him warmly.

"Hey, Whatcha got next?"

"Oh... I've got nothing for the rest of the day now."

"Me either." Desty said. "Wanna do something in town?"

Ricki was confused and semi-disgusted by the way his heart rate sped up when he heard that.

"S-sure thing."

"Cool. Lemme dump this bag in my dorm and we can go."

Ricki grinned and followed the other boy down the stairs, for once not thinking about the past or the future, but content to simply enjoy the here and now.

Thanks Azghul. You gave my muse the kick up the arse it needed to continue this.

Now, for the guys who are reading, I don't like this first chapter AT ALL. Do you feel the same? Think I could've done better? Yea, me too… So, Ricki's got a new, more confident attitude to dating. Is this relationship going to end in tragedy or is it gonna be third time lucky? Well, I KNOW AND YOU DON'T, HA HA HA HA… I'm sorry, that was mean…

But yes… expect the next chapter out once I've written it

Luv DCJ