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The boy in the ugly skirt that had joined Raph in punching slurs and teeth out of his classmates' mouths ends up sitting beside him in detention. Raph dares not to make conversation. He mindlessly bounces his leg, passes a hand on his neck and up sometimes, head unmasked in all its buzzcut glory. By the time ma had found him slicing locks with merciful kitchen shears it was already too late, and all she could do to repair the harm was finish the job and make it more even; hair fell in the sink and down the drain, as heavy as ma’s eyes were, and somehow he could tell she was crying.
He does not know the boy, nor has he asked anything of him. Raphael’s fights are his to battle: he’s made the town his war zone even since the haircut, ever since the new name and the new face, and his heart shrinking to the size of a tight fist. Before: the first time a boy laid hands on him unasked, the first time they called him dyke , the first time they called him something else, too. Got suspended, got kicked out, got kicked around, blessing their faces with the shape of his knuckles, cutting his hair so they wouldn’t grab it, breaking his nose so they couldn’t. That the boy had decided to step from his own private warfare and into Raphael’s, that’s none of his business. Still, the marks they’ve left are the same; still, his gaze burns underneath a black eye, and it must mean something, at the very least.
The boy looks like a girl. That’s not the first thing Raph thought when he first saw him, it was something more along the lines of who brings a baseball bat to a fist fight? and fuck yeah. fuck, yeah. But he looks like a girl, if a girl was incredibly ugly and ill-at-ease and looking ‘bout to shred a skirt to pieces and start dancing in underwear, and that’s how Raph knows they’re alike.
He digs a lighter out his coat pocket, ponders in passing if he should stick spikes around the jacket’s shoulders someday. The flame ignited flickers around his finger, on and off and on again. He turns to the boy and tells him: “that skirt looks fuckin’ bad on you”.
The kid snorts. His laugh is wild and made of sharp edges, fading somewhere into nothing but warmth.
“Nice hook you had back there”, he says, “too bad it can’t make up for your face.”
His grin misses a tooth - either lost or not grown yet, and Raph can’t think of anything but punch him in the shoulder, punctuating the gesture with the most heartfelt fuck off he can manage. The boy laughs again, a beautiful, toothless, teethful roaring of a laugh.
"I'm Casey", he says, suddenly quieter as if sharing secrets, "as in Casey. Not…"
not whatever name you've heard before. not the name written all over this fuckin’ skirt. look at my fist. it bore my name long before i did. Raph understands; so much it burns, so much his insides twists in a feeling of want he's yet to name. His right eye pulses, sending jolts of pain at every blink, so he thinks he’s got a shiner, too. He thinks they’re the same.
“Raphael”, he answers.
“Or Raph. ‘tis the same, really.”
The linoleum hallway they’re stuck in is empty but not really, and Raph has already gotten used to being watched and scrutinized and torn apart. It’s just a fact, that folks won’t leave him the hell alone; as his name and body and teeth, as it is that the war’s not won nor lost, or that whatever Casey is it has to be something pretty fucking good.
That grin, again: wider than the sky, a thunderstorm of possibilities. On and off and on and off goes his lighter, a mindless gesture -half anxiety half home-baked nerve- and Casey smiles at him like he’s just dreamt fire into existence.
“Say, Raph, wanna get the fuck outta here?”, Casey finally asks, and now Raph’s sneering, too, saying, thought you’d never ask.
Soon they’re running out the school and into the street, soon no one can stop them. Soon they'll grow up, keeping the fight as close as a saint, keeping their fists right next to their hearts. Soon, Casey will ditch the skirt and Raph will add metal studs to his jacket, spread over worn-out leather like stars, shining all over, lighting the way; and everyone will know their names, and tremble in their wake.
They’re not tender people -too late for that, now- but they’ll hold each other, they won’t let go. They'll be larger than the whole town. They will tear it to the ground.