Work Text:
Lately, it feels like every day you’ve had is exactly the same, with absolutely nothing but a pitiful check in the mail every two weeks to show for it.
“You look tired,” Your manager points out when she pokes her head out from the heart-of-house, opening the doorway fully and leaning against it with a gentle smile. You sigh, then shrug.
“Yeah. Long day.”
“Oh, I can tell. Go clock out and get some rest, okay? I’ll take care of closing.” She smiles. “I wanna see you bright-eyed and bushy tailed for your shift tomorrow morning.”
You chuckle lightly. The small gesture warms your heart, but your smile- genuine as it is- falls when she turns her back to you and disappears back into the heart-of-house. She’s right. You are tired.
You’re desperately in need of some rest, but no matter how long you sleep, it never really comes: only in little bite sized pieces that are far from satisfactory, only serving to remind you of what you’re missing and making you yearn for more. Half of the time, there are nights when the act of resting feels exhausting in of itself; the paranoid thoughts and banshees screeching in your head refusing to fall silent and still.
Truth be told, it’s been more than a few long, exhausting days. It’s been a long, exhausting year.
Tonight, over everything else, you just want a hug. It’s a shame you live alone.
The only thing more exhausting than your long, drawn out workday is inner-city Philadelphia’s less-than-stellar public transportation system. With everybody either on their way home for the weekend or ready to go out on a Friday night, the bus feels like it's long since overflowed its maximum capacity. You’ve been standing all day, but sitting on the bus tonight is entirely out of the question: instead, you find yourself crammed tightly between an overdressed man reeking of cheap dollar store cologne and an elderly woman with a tote bag twice the size of her head.
Somewhere, someone coughs, wet and phlegmy before they mutter a gruff excuse me. A woman speaks in a hushed, frustrated voice on her phone, struggling to keep her voice level. A baby cries. Your phone chimes.
You’re exhausted. It’s exhaustion that runs bone deep, leaching out of your tired bones. You want to ignore the message, go home, and sulk about how shitty life has been for the past few years.
You check anyways.
hey
u still in philly
need a place to crash
The texts come in three short successions, but it’s the messenger’s ID that catches your eye and causes you to pause before you can start typing no without a second thought.
Pico, it reads, and when you unlock your phone, you’re greeted with texts that you had sent years ago- all unanswered- and the face of a freckled boy you haven’t seen since, well… senior year. Highschool.
What a terrible year that had been.
Your fingers hover over the screen, not quite sure what to make of his question.
A lifetime ago, you two had been close. Not as close as his other friends, like Nene and Darnell, and certainly not as close as he’d been with that blue-haired boy he used to ‘mess around’ with, but close enough to give way for the memories that you two shared to ignite a bittersweet feeling deep within your gut: late nights spent making fun of cheaply produced horror films; trading notes in calculus; and the night he tried to climb a fence while stoned out of his mind and begged you to stitch up his favorite pants after he had fallen and torn them.
The night after the surviving seniors had graduated, Pico had wordlessly packed up his bags and fucked off to who knows where without so much as a goodbye, leaving you- and everything else he’d ever known- in the dust.
Despite your best efforts to check in on him and reach out, you hadn’t heard from him since.
Years later, you’re not sure what surprises you more: the fact that he’s back; the fact that he’s reaching out to you of all people; or the fact that he’d bothered to keep your number even after years of ignoring you.
As the bus begins to slow at your stop, his text bubble reappears.
you have read receipts on asshole
i’ll bring weed
good weed
You squeeze between passengers, muttering absentminded apologies as your fingers type away. You don’t press enter until the bus has driven off and you’re left alone on the long walk back to your apartment, and by then, your message has changed a million times.
I don’t smoke anymore.
There’s a pause.
that’s chill
i’ll bring whatever
You can’t afford a motel?
damn
just say no
I mean, you can stay.
You bite the inside of your cheek.
I’ll share my address.
Bring takeout. Your choice.
But it better be good.
k
You quickly forward your address, and Pico says that he’ll be there in about half an hour. By the time you make it back to your apartment, suffering through five exhausting flights of stairs and a short battle with your perpetually jammed door, the wait has been shaved down to only seven minutes. You look around your apartment and catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Everything’s a wreck.
You could shower and get some real clothes on. You could organize your living room a little so your guest won’t be sleeping in a pigsty. You could pop a few beers, find a nice film to watch, and psych yourself for reuniting with an old friend. It’s Pico, after all.
That’s the kicker, though, isn’t it? It’s Pico. He wouldn’t give a shit.
You’re still exhausted, and that’s all you really need to push you into taking the lazy route, opting to turn on some mindless television as you collapse into your sofa, throwing your legs up. You heave a deep sigh, closing your eyes to the drone of some senseless soap opera you really couldn’t give a flying fuck about. Your mind is a trainwreck of anxiety and nostalgia that tumble about, and a part of you dreads seeing him.
The more vocal part of you is beyond ecstatic. Sure, a few years of radio silence is bound to make any reunion tense and awkward, but it’ll be nice to see him. You’d spent so much time worrying about him over the years- everyone had, really, and it was hard to watch a hero spiral into such a dark state-, and you haven’t had visitors in longer than you care to admit. A little catching up with an old friend in the comfort of your own home would definitely do you some good.
Your phone chimes from your back pocket, followed by a knock on your door, and you lazily roll off of the sofa to answer out of it. You peer out of the peephole, carefully inspecting your visitor and making sure your dinner is here as promised, and unlock your door.
Opening it is an embarrassing struggle, but it swings inwards fast enough to make Pico jump. “Sorry. It gets stuck a lot.”
“Sounds exhausting,”
The laugh that escapes you is light but humorless, but your smile lingers as you step aside, allowing Pico inside and closing the door behind him. He kicks off his shoes. “What type of food did you bring?”
He raises a plastic bag silently, an eyebrow shooting up to the familiar black-and-white panda logo accentuated by a splash of red.
“I said good takeout.” You fold your arms.
“This is good takeout.” He says flatly, but his gaze is elsewhere as he takes in his surroundings. “Did you just get home?”
“Yeah, just about,”
“I could’ve given you a ride,”
“Doesn’t matter. I got here safe, right?” You wave him off, making your way back to the sofa as Pico turns away from you to set down the bag. “If you’re still in town, though, another time. Consider it repayment for my generosity.”
“Right, because dinner isn’t enough.” He trails off. “Where do you keep your plates?”
“Up in the cabinet next to the fridge. Make me a plate, will you?”
“Yes, your majesty,” He says as you sink into your spot on the sofa. Once Pico has set up two plates- one for you and one for himself- he sits down besides, the cushion squeaking underneath his weight, and hands you your plate with an overdramatized Vanna White flair. As you poke at your food, Pico digs in, and you watch him.
For the most part, he still looks pretty much exactly how you remember him looking: he still has that light, ginger hair that never wants to be tamed, standing in nearly every direction except down; even lighter eyes; and the freckles spilled across his scarred skin like scattered diamonds are exactly the way they were when you two were teenagers. The only real difference to him now is that there’s more meat on his bones and his scars- particularly the gnarly one etched over the bridge of his nose- have healed rather nicely.
Upon closer inspection, though, there’s a lot more of them than you remember… and, more notably, he’s packing.
“The fuck, Pico?!” You snap, jerking backwards. “The hell are you bringing a gun into my house for!?”
“There’s two!” He pats his other holster.
“Yeah, because that’s so much better.”
“It’s not illegal.”
“I don’t give a rat's ass if it's illegal or not.” You scowl. “I thought you believed in gun control?”
“Yeah, I do. I believe I should control the gun.”
“Ha-ha. Put it away.”
“It is away.”
“I mean away. Out of my home. In your car, whatever, I don’t care. I want it away.”
“I’m not going out to my fucking car, man, I had to park a block away,”
“Not my problem.” You fold your arms. For a moment, the two of you are trapped in a total stalemate as he stares at you, his brows furrowed, and then his gaze flickers to the nearest window.
“They’re for safety,” He says finally, and when he looks back at you, there’s a softness to his expression that wasn’t there before.
“Fuck are they keeping you safe from? Me?” You shoot back anyways, pinching the bridge of your nose. “If you’re not going to put it in your car, leave it in my closet or something. I don’t want to see it,”
Stubborn as always, he hesitates. “Fine.”
“Thaaaanks,” You drawl, watching him get up and leave. As you hear him open the closet door, you pick up the remote and flick through the channels in hopes that something will catch your eye. It’s late: there’s bound to be something interesting on.
By the time he returns, you’ve settled on some obscure horror film from the 90s you’ve never heard of, and half of your plate is already gone. “Had fun digging through my closet?”
“Yup,” He says, popping the P as he plops down on the cushion next to you. “Found your secret ketamine stash, stole a few things.” He leans over slightly, nudging you with his elbow. “Hope you don’t mind,”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” You briefly look over, cocking your head. “So what’re you doing in town, anyways? I thought you were up and done with this shithole,”
“Work.”
“Packing guns on the job, but your employers can’t even find you a place to stay?” You stab your fork into some orange chicken. “Sounds illegal.”
“A little,” He says lightly, waving his chopsticks around nonchalantly as if to emphasize his point.
“So you’re on the run.”
“No,” He pauses, then smiles, revealing a gap between his two front teeth. “Not yet. Give me a few months,”
“Hm,” You hum halfheartedly, turning your full attention to him once the commercials start. “So,” You begin, pulling your legs up onto the couch. “If you’re not on the run, then what are you here for?”
“Meeting a client. Something about ‘scaring off’ his daughter’s scrawny boyfriend.”
You raise your eyebrows, waiting for some sort of clarification. The silence that draws out between the two of you is context enough, and you realize it might be in both of your best interests for you to be left in the dark. “Okay, well, speaking of boyfriends, whatever happened to yours?”
“What?”
“You know… short. Blue hair. Different school,”
“We never dated,”
“Sure, but wasn’t his name literally Boyfriend?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
“Oh, come on, maybe? You’ve gotta give me something to work with here, dude. I’m trying.”
“It doesn’t matter,” He says flatly, eager to shut down the conversation. “We haven’t spoken since I’ve left,”
“Yeah, can’t say I’m surprised about that one,” You say, an edge creeping into your voice despite your best attempts to bite it back. Your words leave behind a bitter residue, like gunpowder, but there’s a strange sort of comfort to be found in the fact that it hadn’t just been you that was abandoned. “Where’d you end up going, anyways?”
“Straight after? I think I was up in New York for a while,”
“Shit,” You blink, sitting upright. “You were only two hours away this whole time?!”
“Don’t start,”
“It felt awful, you know, when you left like that,” You continue, despite his warnings. “There were a lot of times I wondered if it was me, you know? If I’d been there that day, then maybe I would’ve understood, and we could’ve kept in touch, and-”
“Hey,” He interrupts you, his raspy voice smoothening out in an attempt to sound gentle, placing a hand on your shoulder and giving you a gentle squeeze. When you meet his gaze, it’s distant, but tender nonetheless. “I… know what you’re trying to do here, but I can’t have this conversation. Not tonight. Not when we haven’t spoken in fuckin’ years,”
“I-”
“It wasn’t you, okay?” He says a little more firmly, lowering his hand. “And we can talk about it more another night, but for now… it wasn’t you.” He paused. “It’s a good thing you weren’t there. You’re alive, and you get to be normal,”
“You think I’m normal?” You snort.
“If you don’t count the survivor’s guilt, and the survivor’s guilt is pretty normal for everyone who survived senior year anyways,” He bites the inside of his cheek. “I just had to get out of here, okay? That was all me.”
“Yeah,”
“But I’m back now. I’m back tonight,”
“And you’re alive,”
“And I’m alive,” He confirms. Onscreen, the movie starts up once more: something about vampires wreaking havoc on a small college campus. How original.
“So what’s with you picking apart my life, anyways? You some sort of cop?”
“Do I look like a snitch to you?” You shoot up your eyebrows. “Hell, if I was a cop, you’d be absolutely fucked. Who just spills that they’re in town for definitely illegal reasons to someone they haven’t spoken to in years?”
“Hey man, I need an alibi in case things get violent!”
“Great, so now I’m in hot water.”
“Nobody’s gonna come for you. I’m good at what I do. The fact that nobody’s been able to contact me after all these years is a pretty surefire sign of that,” He kicks his legs up onto the ottoman. “Besides, you couldn’t arrest someone to save your life,”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Look at your arms, dude,” He pokes your arm. “Those things are meatless.”
“Not all of us can be tall and beefy. I bet I could kick your ass if I wanted,”
“Go ahead, then,” He holds his arms out.
“And kick your ass?” You stand up, holding up your fists. He follows. “I bet I could beat you in my sleep!”
“All I’m hearin’ is a lot of smack from someone who used to walk the mile,”
“Funny, ‘cause if I remember right, you’re the one who used to walk it with me!” You throw a fist at him, missing near comically as he dodges your swing. Your second punch lands straight in his chest with a dull thud, and he laughs as you throw a third and he catches your fist.
“Your form is ass!”
“I bet you can’t do any better!”
“Oh, I’ll show you what a real punch looks like,” He pushes you off of him, causing laughter to bubble out of you as you stumble backwards--
-- tripping right over the ottoman and bumping straight into your television. The flatscreen is the most expensive thing you own and it topples forward, landing on the wooden floor with a crack.
“Aw, fuck,” You breathe. The silence that draws out in the small space of your apartment is excruciating, nearly deafening as the two of you stare at the back of the television. After a while, you move to pick up the television. Pico joins you a moment later, helping you hoist it back up onto the stand.
The screen is completely and utterly fucked, a deep crack lacing through the screen and bright colors eating away at the shitty vampire film. You throw your head back with a defeated groan.
“Man, that thing’s my baby…” You sigh. “It’s always something, man.”
“Can’t have shit in Philadelphia,”
“For real,”
“Sorry, man, I didn’t think-”
“Don’t apologize. I’m the one that fell on it.” You walk over to the couch, picking up the remote and flicking the screen off. “I mean, I’ve got work tomorrow anyways. If this isn’t a sign for me to wrap things up and get to bed, I don’t know what is,”
You reach over to the scattered plates and takeout boxes, but Pico follows suit a minute later, taking the plate straight out of your hand.
“Hey, I got it,”
“But-”
“You look like shit, dude.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“I mean it. You look like you haven’t slept in months. If you go near that sink, you’re gonna crumble into dust. Then, I won’t have an alibi,”
You purse your lips. “Fair enough, but I’m only letting you insult me because I hate doing dishes,”
“I remember,” He smiles. “‘Night.”
“G’night, Pico.”
That morning, pale rays of sunlight filter through the gaps of your window blinds, where they pool directly on your face and cause you to smack a hand over your eyes once you return back to the realm of the living. The street outside bustles with life: traffic and music and dogs barking, and much like everything else in your apartment, your bed is located in what just might be the most inconvenient spot possible. You can’t be assed to move it, though- it’s not like you have anywhere else to put it, anyways. There’s no space.
Even with the crude awakening of sunlight being searing directly into your tender retinas, though, you slept good. You’re still exhausted- and such is the way of a miserable and burnt-out customer service worker-, but you’re not as tired as you were before. Your steps don’t feel as heavy as they used to. There’s a lightness in your heart that hadn’t always been there.
You throw a hoodie over your pajamas after you finally manage to crawl out of bed. You’ve still got a few hours before you need to head down to the store, and when you peer out into the living room to ask Pico if he wants to come with you to grab a breakfast burrito, you notice that the living room is suspiciously empty.
Your heart falls.
In lieu of Pico’s presence is a wad of hundred dollar bills haphazardly left next to your cracked television screen. To make up for the crack, you note with a frown, and you’d snap at Pico if he was still there to be snapped at. He’s gone, though, and save for the money and the cracked screen, there’s no sign that he was ever there in the first place. When you check your bedroom again, there’s no sign of his guns, either.
You’re thankful for that, but you close the closet door with a frown anyways, the boring monotony of your life settling back onto you. Pico was nothing but a temporary distraction. You’re still the one that has to live in the sisyphean hellscape that is your 9-5 job.
On your end table, your phone chimes. There’s a message from Pico.
had to leave before u woke up
hope u got ur beauty sleep tho
not gonna be in town for much longer
but it was nice to see you again
u and ur shitty fighting skills
There’s a pause, the typing bubble lasting for a good few minutes before he follows it with another message.
u wanna grab dinner before i leave tonight?
A smile teases at the corners of your lips, that lightness settling back into your heart. It’s something. It’s not what you used to be, but it’s still something, and that’s enough.
It was good to see you too, Pico. I'm glad to see you're alive.
Any places in mind for dinner?
nah
haven’t been in this part of philly before u
surprise me
I know a stand that sells the best tacos in town. You’re never going to want to eat anywhere else ever again.
i’ll believe it when i see it
see u at 7?
How's 5? I don't want to ride the bus home today.
works for me
good luck on ur shift
Right back at you. Stay safe.
u too
It’s been a long time since you’ve had a friend. It’s nice to have him back in your life.