You Told Me to Buy a Pony, But All I Wanted Was You
Summary: He never considered himself one to look back on the past. But when the past is all he has left, sometimes he has no choice but to reminisce and regret.
Word Count: 1796
(A/N: uhhhhhhh listened to “Hidden in the Sand” by Tally Hall once and decided “yeah this vibes for pico/bf” and then wrote This. am i proud of it? ask me again after i get some sleep. also, this heavily references @insinirate ‘s art that i remembered Solely From Memory so I Just Realized my memory is pretty bad LMAO WHATEVER TAKE IT. if anyone wants this on ao3, let me know!)
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He doesn't like schools too much. Too many people trying to act smart or look cool when they're all stuck in this hellhole together. It's easy for them to forget that it could all go to hell quickly. How easy it is to become trapped in a classroom somewhere, hiding out under a desk with your hands covering your ears.
(Constant gunshots.
Screaming.
Sobbing.
Stifling his own breathing.
Breaking glass. Don't flinch, don't flinch they can hear your heartbeat loud and clear-
A cacophony of sounds that broke up into dead silence for only a minute. And then suddenly, his thoughts are the loudest things in his head.
Where's Pico?
Where is he?)
His footsteps fall to a halt as he looks up at the closed high school he managed to graduate from. He's been accepted into a community college now, a feat that should be considered incredible for someone like him. But accomplishment is the last thing he feels as his gaze falls down to a memorial that lays just by the entrance of the school. Curled photos and framed pictures stand among the candles long since extinguished and whittled down to the bare bottoms of wax, with scattered dried flowers that look different each time he stops by. The headphones he wears are pulled down to rest around his neck, music softly blaring as numbness blurs the edges of his thoughts. Cars drive by behind him, the sound of rushing traffic filling the remaining dead air as his thoughts consume him.
A voice from his memories laughs, bright and clear and so full of youth and hope that he almost wishes he could close his eyes and be there instead.
"Boyfriend!" The voice calls to him from just down the path, and his own, young laughter answering back. "Boyfriend, look at this!"
He can see them now. Him and Pico. The two of them were running down the sidewalk, Pico dragging him along with a smile as he pointed down to the memorial. Except there wasn't a memorial there that day.
Instead, a pretty little oddity caught the ginger's eye as he knelt down to pick it up. A silver, plastic ring with a little fake blue jewel in the shape of a heart was carefully held up by Pico for Boyfriend to see. It clearly came from one of those toy dispensers at the mall, but it didn't matter too much to the boys.
Pico presented it to him like it was the most expensive treasure he's ever owned. And the ring wasn't even his to begin with.
Boyfriend gladly accepted it and slipped it on easily. "I thought the hearts are supposed to be pink."
"Guess they got different colors for them." He leaned closer to Boyfriend and laughed as Boyfriend posed with it. "You look dumb!"
"Get me a better one then," he joked, slipping the ring off.
"I'd have to save up a lotta money then," Pico mused, looking all too serious. "I heard wedding bands are very expensive. 'Specially the ones with lots of diamonds."
"Shut up!" He laughed and handed the ring back to Pico. "Here, it's your turn to try it on."
When Pico tried to try it on, it wouldn't fit his finger. They both laughed at that, saying his fingers were bigger than Boyfriend's because of his DJ practice.
But, as it turns out, Pico's finger slipped easily into something else instead. The laughter fades from his memories as Pico's visage melts away from the warm boy he once knew into...
Into...
...He always did look as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders after the shooting. Though, Boyfriend always thought that part of that weight always belonged to that huge rifle Pico would carry around like a backpack, always strapped to his back like a dangerous safety blanket.
They were standing in the same place, though they weren't looking down at a little ring anymore. The memorial stood in mournful silence, the light of the candles still standing tall in vigil as they burned brightly. Vibrant flowers were neatly tied up in carefully placed bouquets all over the memorial as the faces of their deceased classmates continued to haunt them.
It felt like years since they found that ring in that very spot.
But really, it'd only been a few months at best. Pico had changed. They'd all changed. But Pico changed the most. The smiles were gone from his face, as was the warmth from his voice, laughter vanished without a trace. All Boyfriend wanted to do was reach over and hold Pico's hand. Tell him they'd be okay. That they still had each other. That he still had Boyfriend.
"I love you," he whispered to Pico, but the ginger merely pulled his hand back. "I love you," he repeated, his lip trembling as he watched Pico draw deeper within himself as he continued to close himself up. Pico said nothing, hands gripping the strap to his gun instead.
(Hold my hand instead, Boyfriend had thought to himself. Why won't he hold my hand instead?)
"Pico?"
"What?"
"When can we... I want us to be okay again."
"I... can't do that right now." His grip tightened on that fucking gun strap again. He remembers the visceral hatred he had towards that rifle. It was always there. A crutch for Pico to lean on instead of Boyfriend. All he wanted was things to go back to normal again. To see Pico happy again. Was that so much to ask?
"How long..." He trailed off at the time, not sure if he should finish the question. But Pico figured it out anyways. He was always good at figuring out Boyfriend.
"I dunno." He'd hunch forward, guilt furrowing his brows as he stared down at the pictures of the students he couldn't save. It wasn't his job to save people. It wasn't his fault they died. But still, he blames himself endlessly for being a boy who found a gun a little too late to prevent most of the massacre.
How he wishes he told Pico that reassurance instead. The boy needed it desperately as the crushing weight of the shooting threatened to snap Pico in half. Instead, what he said was:
"...I just want you to be normal again."
And Pico's eyes widened at that. He turned slowly to face Boyfriend as the dread had set in. Angry betrayal was real in Pico's eyes that day.
"W-wait, what I mean is-" Before Boyfriend could take the words back, Pico's gaze snapped back to the memorial instead, his hand gripping the gun strap like an anchor.
"...Fine," he interrupted, voice tight and restrained as Boyfriend was halted into silence. "You want normal? Go find someone else. I can't be who I used to be, don't you get it?"
"But," he'd tried to grab Pico's hand to no avail, "maybe we just need time, y'know, to heal and-"
"This is different!" Pico snapped at him, something he never did before. "I watched people die! I had to kill people- you don't just recover from something like that and pretend everything is normal. It just-" He wiped his own tears away as Boyfriend stood around staring. "It just doesn't work like that."
"Maybe it could," he'd naively said. "Maybe we just need to try harder-"
"Forget it." When Boyfriend looked up to meet Pico's distracted gaze, the ginger already miles and miles away from him. "I can't do that. But someone- someone else could. If you want normal so bad, maybe you should find someone else."
He should have argued. Fought harder to correct his words and said what he meant to say. Instead, all he could muster up was a pathetic: "Are you breaking up with me?"
And Pico returned his gaze back to the memorial, his voice more broken up than usual as he replied, "Yeah, I guess so."
They were quiet after that. Like Pico was waiting for Boyfriend to say something. But the silence was drawn out as neither of them said another word. Boyfriend was too stunned to say anything, too busy trying to keep his sobs in check that he missed Pico walking away. He didn't even ask him to stay. Let him say sorry. Beg to make things work like they used to. That it wasn't normalcy Boyfriend craved.
He just wanted Pico. Just Pico.
But by the time he'd managed to pull himself together, Pico was already gone. Gone without a single "goodbye" uttered between them. Just the cold, dead silence that lingered for too long.
And now, it was too late to fill with it any sort of noise.
Boyfriend breathes in the cold air, the memorial aged in the present and reminding him of the loneliness that's become his new brand. Music continues to blare from his headphones, and it's only then that he realizes what song is playing.
Damn.
He really should remove it from his library. But his fingers hesitate in skipping the tune, his voice already mindlessly humming the song he and Pico used to love listening to together. Because in the end, he still missed Pico, didn't he?
Kneeling down in front of the memorial, he searches just beneath his shirt for a chain that holds a single, plastic ring. He takes it off as he continues to hum, gently letting the thin chain cascade down from his hand as the remnants of his past slip through his grip. The song ends as he remains where he is. Not even the sounds of traffic can fill the empty air as he grasps at nothing. Just a lone man kneeling by a memorial meant for those he used to know. Tears well up in his eyes as he mourns by himself.
And he thinks.
That even the survivors died that day. In some way. In some form. All who survived lost something vital to them.
And Boyfriend? What did he do in the end?
(He failed to be there for the one person he swore he'd love until the end of time.)
Reflexibly, he reaches for a hand that's no longer there. And he stops. And he squeezes the air between his fingers once more as if expecting a different result.
...Nothing.
As usual.
Just him and himself with no one else around. Tears streak down his face as the lingering pain makes itself more pronounced.
...If only he could see him again.
But even Boyfriend knows that that's impossible. So why bother hoping? His sobs wrack his frame as he finds his hands clinging to that little plastic ring once again. Even now, he still doesn't know how to let go of the past. Pathetic.
i have gotten too attached to valentines sour so heres their arrow thingy
the pinch for poisened arrow is kinda like the dread that soemones gonna reject you, the charmed arrow is more supposed to be liek a note being thrown at someone thats like "be my partner? yeas/yes" that they used to do in very old movies.
