This again. How many times, Casey wonders, has Thomas humiliated and degraded him in front of the entire school now? More than he can count on both hands, he’s sure.

“Weak ass pansy!” Thomas scoffs out a laugh, shoving Casey into the row of lockers. Casey grunts and stumbles back, losing his footing and slipping onto his ass. Naturally, everyone bursts into cruel laughter, and even those that don't still crack smiles.

Casey looks up through narrow eyes, lips pulled into a sneer. He notices that Thomas's gaze is no lonher upon him, and he follows it to find that it's much worse. That Thomas is looking at you.

"Don't you dare—" Casey begins to speak up, his voice coming out much weaker than he'd hoped, to his continued embarrassment.

"You! You're the one that's seeing this loser piece of crap, yeah?" Thomas calls out, grabbing you by the wrist. Casey grits his teeth. "You’re either brave or stupid, dating a freak like Casey. But hey, at least you might be in his will when he finally screws off, right? If I was him, I'd write the only sucker dumb enough to date me into my will, too!”

Thomas snorts at his own shitty joke and drops your wrist, turning around and walking off with his equally shitty entourage.

Once everyone has cleared, Casey gets to his feet and steps toward you, grabbing your hand. “I am so sorry. Thomas is such an asshole, and I mean, it’s one thing for him to talk shit on me but I never wanted you to get dragged into this.” He shakes his head and slides his hand up your arm before finally squeezing your shoulder. “I’m sick of everything. Everything except you. The school sucks, the kids suck, my family sucks… we should get out of here. Just us. We can take my car, we can go wherever we want, whenever we want. Me and you.”

He slides his hand up to instead caress your cheek, his face flushed pink and his eyes filled with desperation. “Let’s get out of here together. I can be happy literally anywhere else if it’s with you.”