Work Text:
Allies and Alleys, One.
Seven am in the Darnell-Nene-Pico household.
"Okay, so, round this up for me, Nens."
"Mh?"
"You want me to join your group to present a play based on our lives?"
"No! You got that part wrong, dude! I said it's a spin-off of our lives!"
Her voice is the loudest thing in the morning, Pico thinks.
"Do we really have to start this today, Nens?"
"Yep! You just need to come to school!"
Darns yells from the kitchen.
Ah, yes, school.
School.
Pico is a NEET.
As he flips the pages that contain the script, he hears Nene struggling to pull him off his covers.
"Get off your covers, you lazy!"
She kicks him out of his own room.
Pico drops himself onto their couch, as he hears Darnell's giggles in the kitchen.
'Allies and Alleys', he reads.
'Plot: Where Pico is a sound technician (audio technician?) and Keith is a kind-of-famous rapper simply known as Boyfriend.
Things happen.
Characters included :
Boyfriend/ Keith
Girlfriend / Lynn
Pico
Nene
Darnell
Father / Luis'
Ah. This is gonna be a total drag.
Keith as a rapper, huh?
Interesting.
Pico looks at the title, written in half-neat, half-chicken scratches.
Pre-typed and neatly presented is the opening.
'Perhaps, waiting at a coffee shop was the best choice for now.
Girlfriend and Luis went on a shopping trip, and now Boyfriend’s stuck at this damn place.
He doesn’t really mind, despite his annoyance.'
And god, does that sound like Pico in the flesh.
The next thing Pico processed is the forceful removal of the script from his hands and his
entire body dragged to the dinner table.
Right. Breakfast is a thing for these two.
He sighs.
-
At school, Pico feels so small.
He feels insignificant, out of place, out of line, out of order.
The last thing he tries to tell Darnell is "I want out.".
The keyword is tried, because they enter a theatre room, with three people on stage – Keith, Lillian and his internet man, Luis.
"Pico?!"
"Internet Man!"
The smile on Pico's face is cheek-splitting.
"Pico! You agreed?!"
Lillian jumps and hugs Pico, nearly toppling him.
"Uh. Yeah."
"But you're doing this out of your own free will, right?"
Keith asks, reaching for a high-five.
Hm.
Pico mainly did this because he wanted his four best friends to have stellar grades unlike himself.
(He doesn't even have any.)
"Oh, yeah, dude,"
Keith starts, bashful because he calls his fellow bois 'dude'.
By the tone of his voice, Pico knows he's calling for Darns.
"Hey, Darns, Keithy's callin' ya."
"Yeah, what's up?"
"We filmed the part where Sir Luis is, so he'll be going off now."
The only sound they hear next is the sound of the metal door closing.
(Pico hears a small "Bye Daddy...")
He feels a shoulder hit his chest.
Oh.
It's...
"Have you seen the script?"
Pico nods.
"You as a rapper? Pff, that's pretty fuckin' funny. You'd be spitting water, Keithy!"
The next few hours are just all of them acting out their scenes to the best of their abilities, and Keith is so smug it makes Pico want to gut himself.
Courts and Forts
Summary:
'Nearly everything in a certain sound tech’s perspective.
(B-side of Allies and Alleys.)'
They all drag Pico on the stage because this is his perspective on everything.
Pico sighs.
What sucks is that he wishes for their kisses at the end to be real.
The scenes feel real.
The scenes feel like memories.
(They never happened, but they still feel so real.
They feel like memories he would write out on paper and rip into pieces he'll still be able to put back together.
They're like writings he scrawls on his walls. Easily removed.)
Of Bangles and Vandals
Summary:
'Where Pico is a V2F (Vandal For Fun) and Keith is a bartender.
Pico-centric.'
(Plus the cursory chicken scratch from Keith: 'lmao')
A breath of fresh air.
Finally, an act that requires real-life action.
The last two acts did have some sprinkle of real-life and very "professional" amateurish adlibbing.
Here, he got to drink.
But of course, it's limited, because no one wants to see Pico crying and shaking and all sorts of shattered walls and glass.
After all, Cassandra still haunts him more than everyone else.
After all, a bitterness so void of taste still eats at his flesh, his organs – it eats at his consciousness.
When Keith's bangle traces itself on his bare back 6 hours after shooting, he gasps for air, shaking in Keith's frail arms.
Him and Flower Crowns
Summary?
'I miss you, I really do.'
A more accurate summary was posted in the form of a comment on Google Docs.
'An act where Pico has passed and Keith & Lynn struggle to come to terms with this fact.'
Contrary to popular belief, this was not a subject the four of them were fond of.
(Pico was intrigued by the prospect of death, so they signed him up for therapy.)
Contrary to even more popular belief, it isn't Pico who knows how to make flower crowns, it's Darnell! (Bless his soul.)
They had to imagine Pico was dead.
(Pico offered to die for reals, but Keith was stern in his decision that it would hurt more if he died for some measly numbers on paper than for them.)
The sound of Keith crying and screaming tears his heart into a million pieces – Keith's performance is the personification of a fallout with the world; an anagapesis with the idea of a life without him of all people.
It feels so raw, so unscripted, so sudden.
All thoughts of death slowly fade in his mind.
If his hand is filled with the warmth of Keith's three hours after filing, it's not anyone's business.
If he's kissing Keith a million times in the dark of his room in an attempt to reassure him he won't die, that's no one's business too.
Spin-Offs and Youth
Three months after the filming and previewing/showing of their school project, everything is secure in Pico's life.
Except for the hem of everyone's skirt, which is why Pico's repairing them now.
Darnell offered that everyone wears a jean skirt and they can choose whatever top they want, as long as it looks good.
As Pico looks on at his friends on the beach and roaming in a prestigious public museum, he smiles.
This is youth – youth is a mix of positivity and failures, of cracks and stitches, of smiles and snorts, of hugs and kisses.
Youth, he mumbles to himself, is one of the many spin-offs of life.
He would happily live out any of the millions of spin-offs,
if it means his friends are happy.