He stands on the broken bit of concrete wall that faces the building he's just left. There's a red mark on his face that will later be a bruise, given to him by the boys blocking his way. He's beautiful, like an angel some say, and it makes the fear in his face something more terrible than it should be.
The boys shout insults and epithets, feeling a momentary power over the boy their honeys lust after. There's a scrape on his knuckles that matches a split lip on one of his attackers.
"I've told you," he says, panting from adrenaline, terror, "I don't want your women."
"Not good enough for you, ese?" Every word is a trap. The boys want blood.
"Whotcher up to, all this?" The voice echoes down to them with a laconic English accent. Standing in the fire escape, a plain boy grins and asks, "They givin' you a bit of trouble, mate? Peter, I think they're givin' him trouble."
A face framed in bright red hair leans over the rail to look. "Are you giving my friend here some trouble?" The handsome boy in the street frowns, sure that he knows the red-head.
One of the mean boys shouts a foreign insult. Another says, "Maybe we are. What're you gonna do?"
Peter shrugs. He pulls a butterfly knife out of his pocket and opens it. He gives a crazy Indian war cry and starts down the fire escape. The British boy doesn't follow, but a pack of other boys, hidden on the roof, do, including a very small girl with blonde hair and glitter.
It's over so fast. Peter appears in front of the angel boy, grinning like a most impressed cat. "Did you miss me?" The boys hug, almost too quick to have happened at all. Peter keeps a hand on the other boy's shoulder. "What happened anyway?"
"Some of their mamacitas were hitting on me," the boy says with embarrassment and tugs a hand through his dark hair. He looks up and smiles. "Peter, hm?" He considers the name in its plainness. "Thought you were gone for good. Guess you've done well for yourself." He squeezes Peter's arm.
"Meet the Lost Boys." The dark-haired boy nods at his saviors. Peter's older than they are, but it's hardly noticeable. Some of the Lost Boys look older than they really are as well. The tiny blonde girl though, she's got a tough look in her eyes beyond Peter's. She gives the boy an appraising look while she pulls her hair out of her face. She grins and wipes the blood off of her knife with her fingers, flicking it to the ground. "Come with us," Peter says. "You can change your name and never have to come back here again. We're going to be the ones everyone's afraid of. The ones they all want to be."
The boy smiles at Peter. He forgets his name first, and the Lost Boys call him Romeo. It takes longer to forget Peter's other name, especially Peter's other personality. Peter has always been the kind of person who did a better job living than you did. The new Peter is violent and sometimes scary, and Romeo decides he doesn't like it.
But sometimes Peter is quiet and earnest. Sometimes he doesn't posture, doesn't get defensive. Romeo stays for those moments. He stays until the months are years of blurred together memories, friendships and intimacies and smiles. He stays until there's a Wendy to catch his fancy with a fierceness that's solemn and muted, not like Peter.
And Romeo knows what it's like for Peter to want something that's his. Romeo loves that as much as he loves Wendy's fierceness, so he lets it go on until one day he realizes.
He realizes at the same time, two things. Peter's gone beyond some crazed form of brotherly lust about Wendy. He shelters her where he never sheltered Romeo. And Wendy, Wendy no longer sees the difference between himself and Peter. She loves and hates them both without distinction.
So in time, when he tries to protect Peter for the last time out of long habit, Romeo will let Wendy beat his face into numbness. He will worship her for taking the face that Peter had to possess, and he will be surprised when she forgives him, Romeo alone, because she did see the distinction from the Pan.
He'll limp to Tink's house just to get away from the Boys - it'll make his leg burn like fire - and she'll greet him at the door with a searching look. "I love what you've done with your face," she'll say and grin.
Romeo will sit on the couch, Mexican beer in one hand, Tink's tiny hand in the other, and he'll forget the Pan, the Wendy.
His life will begin.