Build the Pyre

📅 Early 2010

〚ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ʙᴜʟʟʏɪɴɢ + ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ sᴇʟғ ʜᴀʀᴍ, sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ, ʜᴏᴍᴏᴘʜᴏʙɪᴀ, ᴀɴᴅ sᴇxᴜᴀʟ ᴀssᴀᴜʟᴛ/ᴄᴏᴄsᴀ〛

 Kato’s voice had deepened a little, sometime over the stretch from winter to spring. So, too, had the circles beneath his eyes and the scar of a smirk he wore—more often now, much more often.

 Athena couldn’t pretend she hadn’t hardened, too—it was kind of inevitable. School was…well, hell. Kato had it worse, she knew—the guys were more physical than the girls were, but the insults stung and the put-downs cut anyway. Then there was the steady, hammering bruise of betrayal. Savvy and Dev had started out just ignoring her, which had hurt enough, but it was when they started partaking in sideways comments or the laughter thereafter that it really started to feel like an open injury. 
 She'd thought Savannah and Devon were real friends: They’d known each other since elementary school, after all, and all their parents knew each other—but maybe they took more after their folks than Athena did hers. It certainly seemed like it, with how willing they were to drop her—even drown her—just to stay afloat. It was all so ridiculous. 
 Team sports had always come easily to her; both the team part and the sports part, but abruptly she’d become teamed up against: She couldn’t miss a goal without being singled out like a chronic failure, but half the time, she was being set up for it; tripped with a stray stick or having a soccer ball not passed to her, but launched at her head like a cruise missile so people could snicker when she ducked. Or got knocked over. The other half of the time they’d act like she was as much a player as the painted grass; she’d be open, and call out that she was open, and they’d pass her by like it was a league for the deaf. And then comment later about her being “useless.” Or “slow.” She finally got sick of it all. 
 Her proud streak couldn’t quite let her stomach the idea of roping in her coach and having to deal with everyone harping on about it, so she just quit. She didn’t want to have to play pretend allies with Savvy or Dev or any of their friends—her ex-friends—anyway. Maybe she should have stayed on, if only to punt shit into their faces with a ready excuse, but with their juvenile game of keep-away it would’ve maybe been fruitless and she would’ve had to just start tackling them if she wanted to get dirty. Then, of course, they would have gotten the coach involved all on their own, she was sure. She knew how it worked. 
 Bunch of fake bitches, she thought. 

Kato was nothing like them. 
Kato was nothing like how any of them had ever been.

 It wasn’t just because he was a guy, and a bit of a nerd, or anything that superficial: It was that he wasn’t superficial. She hadn’t thought her previous friendships had been, before, because they’d just been what she’d known, and it’d been easy to believe that someone who was happy to see her and with whom she could talk about life and likes and bumps in the road was well enough a friend. But Kato understood her. Kato didn’t just listen until it was his turn with the talking stick, he heard her. He wanted to hear her. Wanted to know what she was thinking, and feeling, and what the game plan was for either. He couldn’t “get” sports the way she couldn’t “get” Rome, but he still asked—what was it about being on the field that she liked? And when she said it was about feeling strong and fast and capable and like she was playing a part in something bigger, he could understand that and…maybe admire it. 
 He always got a little sheepish about his Mediterranean history thing, but the way he put it—an empire that grew so great that it’s ghost was in everything—language, war, plumbing, politics—having crumbled; simultaneously immortal and long-dead—did give her some grasp of what appealed to him about it. He didn’t know what “offside” meant and she didn’t know who Gaius Marius was, but they didn’t need to share an interest outright to talk about it and have it matter, because it wasn’t the thing that mattered, it was each other. Like the music, when they first talked. Yeah, they liked the same song, but the bond hadn’t been about the song: It had been what the song meant to each of them. Almost everything was like that with him. 
 How had she dealt with just talking at the surface with people, about things, for so many years?

 She’d quit the sports teams, but the two of them became a team all their own. Though she had been the one coming to his defense at the beginning, ever since she’d dropped to his status, he’d started returning the favor. Suddenly on a team, feeling that same energy that she knew—the drive of being part of something—Kato had begun to change. He’d had that spark of a fire before, the one that let him run his mouth when backed into a corner so he at least didn’t go down silent or sniffling, but it was burning hotter, now. He’d gotten more challenging, more ready for a fight, however unwinnable they were. The two of them obviously didn’t seek out any battles, but Athena found herself chomping at the bit sometimes, when one was brewing; feeding on the friction: They had each other’s backs like soldiers in a warzone, and even though it frequently sucked ass, there was something about the us-against-the-world that felt powerful. They were a two-man rebellion refusing to be crushed. They rallied instead, and the fire in both their eyes felt like something worth feeding. 

 “Don’t you sometimes want to burn it all to the ground?” Kato asked while they walked towards the bus stop after school. 
 “Yeah. I'll bring the matches, you bring the gasoline?”
 “And a fiddle to play? Deal.”

 Their unity didn’t end with the school zone. Their music-playing grew in ambition and drive, too. It didn’t require the battle-readiness that school did; it was still easy—Kato’s presence acted as a barrier against her parents' barbs, and he was actually happy away from school hallways and his dad’s endless lists. They’d gotten pretty good together, Athena thought, and their time outside of school was actually enjoyable; a world away from the locker rooms and hallways. They did start challenging themselves, more, though, and could feed off each other’s energy all the same. It was exhilarating to master a new song; to exchange a look in the garage, them both dripping sweat, and have that grin spreading across his face; the one before he whooped and jumped in celebration of a flawless playthrough with all the vigor of them landing a gig at Warped Tour.

 “We should do something with this,” she said, sometime near the end of winter, spring starting to shoulder its way into the air and the ground.
 “What, like, start a band?” Kato asked. He looked thoughtfully down at his guitar. “I dunno how we could. But…Um. I write lyrics. Sometimes.”

 His definition of ‘sometimes’ was debatable. He’d said he wrote lyrics like it was a confession, and then was so reluctant to share them that she practically had to beg, and then he dumped about a million composition notebooks onto her floor the next time he came over.

 “So by ‘sometimes’ you meant, like, every minute of every day that I’m not actively talking to you?” she asked wryly. She flipped through a few pages. There were a lot of scribblings-out and revisions; multiple versions of a potential chorus with notes to self in the margins. Some pieces were more substantial. Quite a few seemed to be about school.

 “I guess I mean I only finish them sometimes,” Kato said, fiddling with his hands as though fighting the compulsion to grab the notebook back away from her. “Almost none of them are done…and I haven’t got tabs or chords figured out all the way, yet, either. I always end up starting something new, and it hasn’t felt like there’s a point to finishing ‘em. Since I couldn’t have all the instruments I wanted and play around with it. I always imagined them being a whole band sort of thing.”
 “Well…maybe now you can start finishing them,” Athena said, looking up. “We’re part way there, right? What else do we need?”
 “A bassist and a vocalist. And keys if we can get ‘em, but that one I can compromise on, I guess.”
 “They’re your lyrics, don’t you wanna sing ‘em?” she asked, surprised. It wasn’t just the half-song she was looking at; even from a cursory glance at the other pages she’d passed it’d been obvious how intensely personal a lot of his work was.

 “I thought maybe I could scream. I don’t know if I can sing well enough…” He looked troubled for a moment. “I think I sang at church, or a church preschool or something, with some other kids when I was really little, back in Montana. I can’t remember if we kept going to church after we moved. Maybe we stopped because I was so bad at singing. Can’t take the chance; I’ll keep it in the shower,” he half-joked. “Don’t really know how we’ll manage to build a band when everyone at school hates me, though.”
 “Hey, excuse you. They hate us both. I deserve some credit,” Athena objected. 
 He laughed.

 They shelved the band concept, at least for the time being, because he was refusing to even try singing in front of her at all, and he wanted to finish up a couple songs, and come up with tabs, and, well…they didn’t know how to actually find additional members. Craigslist seemed ill-advised, but the environment at school did really suck, even with them being ‘war buddies.’ Despite her assertion, however, Athena knew she wasn’t quite so on the outside as Kato was. She was getting shit from her old crew and their periphery, and from randoms jockeying for a chance at being in with the “in” crowd, but as a rule people didn’t necessarily hate her. Avoid her, sure, but not always. 
 In class, sometimes, some of the more gothy or burn-out type kids would still ask her to borrow a pencil or if she understood the homework. It wasn’t really friendship, or even acquaintance-ship, but it was a chance, maybe, and so she tried to broach the topic with Kato: Telling him that so-and-so from her history class seemed alright; that Trent had his moronic gang of meatheads, and if it was gonna get tribal up in this, the skater kids might understand what’s up. It wasn’t like none of them got picked on. She knew what he said in fall, about people wanting to protect themselves from the consequences of association, but what was the worst that could happen that hadn’t happened already? Besides, maybe they could find a bassist.

“I’m not hanging out with the skaters,” he told her, point-blank, folding his arms and looking away.
“Why not? I’m sure they won’t, like, have some kind of kick-flip initiation ritual. We can just buy some Vans,” she joked. “I know it’s not that easy. But—”
“I already know some of them.” He frowned. “I told you before, I wasn’t always a friendless outcast. I’m not gonna try and shoot the shit with anyone Cyrus hung out with, I don’t care if they grovel, even. No.”
She blinked at the venom in his voice. “Who’s Cyrus?”
Kato sighed and seemed to tighten his grip on himself. “...Ex boyfriend, I guess.”

 He’d still been bullied back in middle school, Kato explained, but he did have a small group of friends then who were similarly outcasted and kicked around. One of them was Cyrus, a boy a year older than him. They were friends; Kato developed a crush on him and, eventually, confessed his feelings. 
 “Is it still a boyfriend if no one knows about it?” Kato interrupted himself to ask, rhetorically, his lip curling as though his bitter tone actually had a taste. 
 Cyrus didn’t want anyone knowing about the whole ‘gay’ thing, apparently, but definitely wanted to do some experimenting. 

 “I went along with it, ya know, like…in puppy love, and all that,” Kato said, fidgeting with his sleeves and not meeting her eyes. “But even when I didn’t want to—because I was stressed or tired or just not feeling it and only wanting to kiss and watch a movie together or something—Cyrus would get…forceful. Physically and emotionally.” Kato sank deeper in his seat and continued to pick at the fraying cuff of his hoodie sleeve. “He’d pull my hair, or, like, push my head, or say if I didn’t…you know…that he’d ‘out’ me to everyone and say that I was a weird little gay freak going to sleepovers just to ogle other boys…that sort of thing.” He finally raised his eyes to meet Athena’s. 
 “I’m sure you can guess what eventually happened,” he said. “It wasn’t even my fault, though.”
 “N…None of it was your fault!” Athena burst out. She wanted to add more, but ended up stuck just mouthing her horror, unable to find the words. 
 Kato shrugged and looked moodily away again. “I just mean I didn’t, like…I don’t know. I didn’t push back. Someone caught us kissing one day behind the gym shed and he had to protect his rep…slapped me, put me on the ground. Called me all sorts of things and acted like I’d kissed him out of the blue. Helped his friends jump me for being a creepy desperate fag. Ya know?” 
 “What the fuck?” Athena finally wrenched herself out of wordlessness, enraged. “Where is this guy? I wanna teach him about testicular torsion.” She clenched her fists.
 “He and his folks moved to Missouri.” Kato scratched his chin and frowned. “I actually missed him for a bit. Despite everything. Brain damage, maybe. But yeah…no one really wanted anything to do with me after that. Even my friends who might’ve believed me about anything didn’t wanna put up with being queer-smeared-by-association or whatever.”
 “That’s so stupid,” Athena said. She hoped Missouri would get hit by an asteroid.

 She had a warier take on that crowd afterwards, knowing what at least some of them did and didn’t do to and for Kato. Still, maybe some of them weren’t that way—just in the crowd—and maybe those more reasonable ex-friends could have evolved, because she didn’t hear the f-slur or “that’s so gay” from their little corner so much. Some of them really didn’t seem all that bad. One of them, Gabriel, an emo-looking boy from her algebra class with long, side-swept black hair, actually looked like he gave her and Kato a nod in the hall when passing them. Gabe’s twin brother played the piano, she thought, or she thought she’d heard that he did. She tried telling Kato about it, since he hadn’t seen the nod, but he dismissed it. He didn’t know Gabe—different middle schools—but he was beyond handing out chances. 
 “The nod was probably a threat,” he said. “Elsewise it's just because they all know we’re nuts and wanna stay on our good side.”

 Maybe they were a little nuts. They’d tried to avoid confrontations like they were supposed to; heading out to the parking lot with their food at lunch and giving the shit-stirrers a wide berth when possible, but sometimes it wasn’t possible, and in those situations Athena was getting sick of taking the high road and still getting pit maneuvered. 
 One day while they waited for their chronically-late English teacher to arrive and unlock the classroom, Trent had walked up and slapped Kato’s books out of his arms and then put on a stupid commanding voice and said, “Hey, your shit’s all in my way. Pick it up, bitch-boy.” 
 The teacher had come around the corner just afterwards, which left Kato to bend the knee, so to speak; ice in his eyes as Trent and his friends started snickering over their dominion.
 “Yeah, hilarious,” Athena snapped, tossing her own books to the floor. “How about I break your fucking jaw, Trent, and we see how funny that is?!” 
 “Athena!” her teacher exclaimed, startled, and she’d had to abort stripping off her backpack straps in order to be told off, but when class ended, she’d not simmered down.
 She ended up hurling her bookbag at Trent in the hall and yelling, “If you want to fight, let’s fucking fight,” and even though he failed to square up, she clocked him in the jaw, and things had sort of snowballed from there. They weren’t quite having rumbles, but it was close.
 At one point one of his guys tripped her in the cafeteria, and even though she felt like she was perfectly capable of getting it under control, Kato had seen it happen and he whipped a hardcover book, upright like a tomahawk, at the side of their head, and then charged straight into them; kicking off the ground and torpedoing into their ribcage, fists flying. He wasn’t really a fighter, but—or, maybe due to which—he didn’t fight fair, either; everything was guerilla warfare for him and when it came down to it, he didn't hesitate in throwing an elbow into someone’s Adam's apple or head butting them in the face. Athena followed suit—she’d been willing to bite from the beginning—and the two of them ended up somewhat feral.

 They were almost always outnumbered, and though she’d get shoved, or tripped, or even thrown on occasion, she didn’t get punched, kicked, or bloodied the way Kato did. The one time someone slapped her was maybe the first fight he won—succeeding in putting the guy on the ground, despite being nearly half his weight—and she felt bad for being the one to stop it, but she was afraid that if he actually kicked Chris in the head like he was about to that he’d straight up kill him. 
 He hadn’t been allowed to bask in his victory, either, because it was tit for tat, essentially, and four guys had made sure to come around and put him back in his place that same afternoon.

 It seemed to harden him, or sharpen him, or something, the fighting. The unfairness. His voice adopted a new, harsher, flint-strike quality; his eyes got steelier. When they were at her house, playing music, his smile could warm the room; at school, it chilled instead. Even when confrontations stayed verbal, his retorts were more forceful, and he carried himself more like a rattlesnake than a rabbit.

 “Hey David, your mom killed herself yet over having given birth to you?” someone jeered in the hallway.
 “She's still working on it, I'll frame the obit for you,” he sneered back. It wasn’t what he was supposed to say; the people around looked at him weird and they uneasily backed down, for the moment.
 “That's why they think you’re a psychopath, K-O,” Athena said, watching his stormy expression roil.
 Athena hadn’t told anyone other than Seth about his mom’s condition, but it seemed like Kato's old ex-friends might have spread the information, and somehow people had decided it was a decent enough way to hurt someone in the halls. She was consistently appalled by how once you were down, almost any aspect of your life became fair game for the kicking.
 “Well, good. Then maybe they’ll stop fucking with me.”

 They didn’t, though, and his mom didn’t seem to take any more notice of him than the admin took of the bullying. Or, well, maybe she took even less notice—the admin at least managed to sometimes put him or Athena in detention. Athena was perplexed by it; incensed by it.
 “They all think I’m the problem,” Kato said, nursing a bloody nose around the back side of the school with her, where they met up to skip class. “‘Cause I’m combative.”
 “Yeah, I guess you’re just supposed to ragdoll,” Athena replied, rather grumpily. She’d been told she was combative, too.
 “You’re supposed to let them crucify you.” Kato set his jaw and let his hair fall into his eyes. “Christian nation…If you want to be good, you have to let them kill you.”

 Judging by the state of his wrists, the forces at play weren’t always external, it seemed like, though. 
 Or maybe he was trying, in some way, to be ‘good.’