Chapter Text
Murdoc always showed up to school looking dishevelled, unkempt and reeking of booze, so it wasn't a surpise people had been avoiding him like the plague since he had been forced into the cesspool that was the British public education system at the ripe age of 4, and by the time he had reached year 13, he had become all too used to the averted eye contact and glares he garnered simply by existing, leaning into the identity that had been thrust upon him before he was even old enough to challenge it. An attention seeker and troublemaker. A burden, destined to end up like his father, never to escape the steaming shithole that is Stoke-on-Trent.
At least, that's what Stuart thought about him. He had never been able to work up the courage to actually speak to his upperclassman, preferring to simply observe Murdoc from afar, and to notice things others didn't care to (or were too scared to) notice about him- how his tie was always askew, almost certainly on purpose, how he never even botherered to bring in his blazer and how fast his self-assured grin faded when he thought nobody was watching. But Stuart saw. He was always watching.
It helped that Stu was a nobody. His classmates looked straight through him, almost as if he wasn't there. And he let them. Preferring to watch from the sidelines as life blurred past him, a smear of school hallways his home, his bedroom and back again. A never-ending static that buzzed monotonously in his ears. It wasn't like he'd had a rough upbringing, like he had an excuse to be this way. His parents were good enough. He lived in a nice enough house with a nice enough room. Perhaps it was when he had fell on his head as a young boy. Perhaps he had just been born this way. But there was something deeply wrong with him, deeper than simply the mind and flesh. And whatever it was, Murdoc had it too. He could feel it. Maybe that was what had drawn to him the older boy the first time he had seen him. Murdoc was the only thing -the only one- that stood out from the smudge of colour Stuart's life had become, broke through the thick layer of static in his head. And he had become infatuated with him.
He wasn't sure when exactly it had gotten to this point. Reached the point of absolute obsession. But before he knew it his every waking thought was trained on the other man, if his eyes weren't already. What he could be doing right now, thinking about, talking about. He began to study him, carrying a journal of the older boys habits, whereabouts and photos taken with sweaty palms and a racing heart. It gave him life. Made Stuart feel alive for the first time in years. He needed Murdoc. Needed him to be complete. Like a soul split in half, and nearly obliterated in the process, left wandering endlessly for it's missing piece. He would save Murdoc from this torturous search. He would be everything he needed.