Chapter Text
English is the only class they have in common this semester, and so on the first day of school, Flash dutifully parks himself in the desk just behind Parker, letting his floppy dollar tree notebook smack him in the head as he walks past. He’s late of course, class has already started and the teacher is going through all the motions for the beginning of term. Mr. Saunders barely acknowledges him coming in, his eyes flicking up for a fraction of a second before he goes back to whatever it is he’s saying.
Flash slides into the seat and throws his backpack on the floor beside him, and Parker turns his head, just barely, in acknowledgment. Flash catches the barest hint of a put-upon smile on his face as he says in a low, sleepy voice, “Good to see you too, Flash.”
Flash leans forward and hisses his response right in Parker’s ear, low enough that Mr. Saunders won’t look up from his roll call sheet. Close enough that Flash can feel wisps of Parker’s hair brush against his cheek, and the heat coming off his body. “You miss me?”
Parker gives a stilted nod, “Like a hole in the head.”
He leans back, satisfied, and then braces his leg against the back of Parker’s chair. Parker stiffens. Flash flexes his foot, inching the chair forward and drawing a painful screech from the legs as they grind against the linoleum. It’s loud, and every head in the room turns to look at Parker. Mr. Saunders even trips over his words.
Flash smiles brightly, and pops his gum as Parker ducks his head down so low that the front of his hair bushes the desk, and quickly mutters an apology to no one, and everyone. The tips of his ears glow bright red. The colour reminds him of a stoplight.
He reaches back and scratches at his head, at his too-short, too-patchy buzz cut. He’s still adjusting to the way it feels under his bitten fingernails, the short, sharp little hairs a far cry from soft strands that had been there just a week earlier. Three days ago, Officer Thompson had found a plastic dime bag in a routine search of his bedroom, and had taken it upon himself to show him exactly how criminals would be treated in his house. So it really was his own fault for getting sloppy, for not being careful enough. The cut actually doesn’t look all that bad, now that Flash has sort of gotten used to it. It makes him look tougher, he thinks, sharper all over. It’s less obvious how blond he is.
Flash tears out half a sheet of paper from his notebook, and scrawls a hasty message on it.
ass kicking after class?
He draws two boxes underneath, with the word yes written next to each one. He folds it carefully into a little paper airplane, and tosses it deftly over Parker’s shoulder, and he leans to one side to watch it glide gracefully onto his desk.
Parker looks down at it for a moment, then unfolds it with his spider-fingers. He reads it, and Flash wishes he could see his face.
Parker leans back, barely tilts his head, and says in a low whisper, “Do you have a pen?”
Flash stifles a grin. This is what he likes about Parker. He can fuck with him all he wants, and he never feels all that bad about it ‘cause Parker is a pretty good sport. And it’s way more fun than anyone else ‘cause he’s sort of funny besides. He passes Parker his pen. After a moment, Parker hands it back with the note, refolded now into a tiny cootie catcher.
Flash finds both yes boxes unchecked, but when he turns the note over he finds that Parker’s trying to negotiate.
can we postpone until fourth period?
Flash writes his response underneath.
why?
He passes the note up, along with the pen.
i’m retaking us history with mcclellan and i’m pretty sure she’s a vampire.
Another reply.
your more afraid of a 50 year old woman than me?
And then –
you’re* yes.
Flash crumples up the paper then, and throws it at the back of Parker’s head. Fine. He’ll hold off until fourth period. But correcting his grammar has earned him one in the face, at least. Normally he’s not so considerate about his beatings, but like he said, he sort of likes Parker.
The big kick in the shins of the semester, for English class at least, is a peer review assignment. The whole class is split into partners, with each set being assigned a book. Half the assignment is to write your own report, and the other half is to review and edit your partner’s report. At the end, both partners get the same mark, an average score of the two essays.
“Thompson and Parker,” Mr. Saunders says, “you’ve got Jekyll and Hyde.”
Parker sinks low in his chair.
Fourth period comes, and by the time it does Flash is itching for it like a half-healed wound. He corners Parker in the back stairwell that nobody but the two of them use and buries his fist in Parker’s gut over and over and over again. He grabs him by the shoulder of his t-shirt, holding him upright and pinning him against the wall. Parker’s face crumples in stunned agony as he tries in vain to push Flash’s hands away. He wraps his hand around Flash’s wrist, and Flash lets him, for a second. Then he jerks away. He feels good. The contact, the feel of Parker’s body so close to his own. He feels sated in a rare way.
Between punches, Parker says, “‘Preciate you shuffling around the old schedule for me.”
There’s that sense of humour.
“Anytime man,” he says casually, as if he’s not taking his best shot at giving Parker internal bleeding.
Flash smiles, and punches him in the face. When Parker smiles back, there’s blood on his teeth and his lips are violently red.
Flash doesn’t sleep much, generally speaking. He never has– he sort of likes being awake at night. He likes the dark, the quiet. Everything is less of itself and at the same time more of itself. Including him, and he likes that too. Regardless of any of that though, at night there’s no one around to tell Flash what to do, or to look at him sideways, or to chew him out for all the stuff he’s not doing. He likes the solitude too, he supposes. He likes feeling in control.
Midnight has long since come and gone, and Flash is crouching beside a fire he’d lit in an old wheel rim. It’s only a small one, and he feeds it with little twigs and bits of dry grass. The light makes his eyes burn, but he stares at it unwaveringly, letting himself be hypnotized by the dancing light. He sits there, gazing unblinking at the fire for God knows how long, and it feels good. The heat and light scorch him all the way down to his core. God, it feels good.
Flash reaches out, sort of without realizing what he’s doing. His fingertips get so close to the flame that it’s almost unbearably hot. In a moment of pure impulse, Flash dashes his hand through the fire. Then, when he hardly feels it, he does it again, slower this time and more deliberate. He wants to know how much he can take, how long he can leave it there before it gets to be too much.
He feels it now, acutely and specifically painful. He hisses, but at the same time his pupils dilate at the rush of adrenaline. Flash’s heart races in his chest, and his breathing picks up. He feels like it’s not just his hand that’s burning, but like the fire has somehow penetrated his body, and is racing through him, quick as lightning and just as destructive. He holds his hand in the fire while every part of his body screams at him to pull it away, relishes the overwhelming head rush he gets from it. He’s a little hard, he thinks.
Finally, Flash pulls his hand away and cradles it to his chest. There are shiny pink blisters forming on his fingertips and he’s pretty sure he’s burned off his fingerprints, which is kind of cool actually. Inexplicably, he wants to do it again. He blinks hard, shaking his head as the adrenaline wears off and the real extent of the pain sets in.
The ashes, once the fire burns out, he’s thinking about dumping in the gas tank of his old man’s squad car, though he’s not sure yet whether it’d be worth the beating he would almost certainly catch. He’s curious, more than anything, about what kind of damage it would do.
Flash closes his eyes again, watching the afterimage of the firelight burn on the inside of his eyelids.
It wouldn’t be worth it. It wouldn’t. Flash stamps the fire out, and barely waits for it to cool before he scoops the hot ashes into an empty tin soup can, and takes them to the driveway.