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Pico Newgrounds is quite good at running.
He’d always been a nervous person – you’re like a rabbit, Nene had told him once, back when there hadn’t really been anything to run from, and he’d laughed at her, but these days he supposes it’s quite accurate. The instinct to bolt at the drop of a pinhead was always always clawing at his insides, never letting him rest too long, keeping him skittish and on edge like some sort of deranged, sick prey animal. He’s learned to talk big nowadays, learned to mask and intimidate and swagger (and aim and shoot and kill) but at the end of the day he will always be Pico Newgrounds, and all Pico Newgrounds knows how to do is run.
After The Incident he’d fallen back on his roots, never allowing himself to rest long enough to let the sticky awful mass of his own thoughts catch up to him, a hare on adrenaline, running escaping running burning melting . One-night stands let him forget, bars and cheap alcohol made sure it stayed that way. The haze of it all was comforting, welcome in its dizzying warmth – If he drank enough, smoked enough, maybe he would break away from his own body, disconnect himself from the trembling boy covered in blood that did not belong to him. Maybe if he ran fast enough, he would be free of the gut-wrenching red colour that plagued him every time he closed his eyes. Maybe he could breathe fresh air without having his lungs burn with each inhale.
Maybe he wouldn’t be Pico Newgrounds anymore.
Meeting Benjamin Fairest had felt a lot like being awake for the first time in a long, long while, mainly because he was so fucking odd that Pico was certain that he couldn’t have dreamed him. During the earlier days a lot of Pico’s time had been dedicated to trailing after the man like a lost dog, indulging the painter when he asks him to help him climb out of his family’s ridiculously fancy window in the dead of night (once, and then again, and again, until Benjamin didn’t even need to ask), staring at his feet most of the time because staring directly at the sun would be less blinding then at that cotton candy hair. There was something curious about him, and Pico couldn’t help but chase it – he just didn’t make sense, impossibly gentle but frayed around the edges like a worn blanket, bright eyes with dark shadows under them, soft hands with ragged, bitten nails. Even his smiles were unsure, flickering across his face, smoke-quick and so delicate they might’ve been no more than a nervous twitch, and Pico had found that fascinating. And a little bit beautiful.
He can blame curiosity for why he’d stuck around the man. He can only blame himself for getting attached.
Benjamin Fairest is not a runner. Pico had learned this when they were on the run from his awful claw-nailed sharp-teethed parents (Pico’s suggestion, because he is Pico Newgrounds), when they had finally managed to scavenge a place for the night, both aching and scared beyond belief. Ben had locked himself in the dingy little bathroom and hadn’t come out for a very long time, and Pico had remembered, rather belatedly, that running tires most people.
He’d forgotten, either because he’d been doing it for so long or because he’d sort of always been living in a perpetual state of unwavering exhaustion, that how he lives is not sustainable for others.
(It’s not very sustainable for him, either.)
Ben had come out of the bathroom a while later, eyes glistening with unshed tears and hands clasped tightly together as if in prayer, face so soft and voice so much softer, whispering apologies that had no reason to be uttered as Pico had taken him in his arms and held him so so tight, and for the first time in his life, he did not run.
Ben had said that he was sorry. Pico could not possibly fathom what for, so he’d told him. Ben had laughed wetly and buried his face further into Pico’s hoodie like he was trying to hide away, and Pico had thought ah. He’d thought this is new. He’d thought maybe my hands were made to hold him, and then he’d thought what the fuck was that thought, and then he did not run.
Benjamin Fairest is a hider, Pico comes to notice. While Pico’s first instinct is to bolt to the nearest exit, Ben’s is always to dart under something, behind something, into something – darting behind walls at the first sign of danger or, if nothing else was available, retreating into the hood of his jacket like a turtle, squeezing his eyes shut as if it would make him disappear. Even when there’s nothing to hide from he’ll still cover his laughter or his eyes with hands or hoodie sleeves, too afraid to let the sun meet his face.
The prey animal between Pico’s ribs had stuttered when it had noticed. At least he wasn’t alone.
Healing will never be a linear process, but they’re definitely getting better at letting themselves do so. Better at staying and living and not hiding, better at letting eyes slip closed and convincing rabbit-quick heartbeats to slow down – and breathing. They’re getting marginally better at breathing, as ludicrous as it sounds, but slowly, surely, like the sun rising, inhaling doesn’t come with a burning ache anymore. Smiling comes naturally, rather than having to be pulled by strings. And life… comes. They don’t run from it. It just comes.
All this to say that Pico has spent all too much of his days running and not nearly enough experiencing the mundane, and that fact doesn’t hit him properly until he’s in the quaint little market across from their hole-in-the-wall apartment for the first time with Benjamin, holding two milk cartons in each hand to deduce which one would be better to buy and thinking, rather uselessly, What the hell?
Judging from the furrow between Ben’s eyebrows, he’s thinking the same thing. “Um. Lite milk is better, right?”
“I have never bought milk in my fucking life,” Pico says, truthfully. Nene was lactose intolerant. “You’re probably the one with the most experience in groceries, babe, I lived off of the coins I’d find on the side of the road.”
“Uhhh,” says Ben, looking at the cartons like he’s trying to solve a math problem, then rapidly starts pointing a finger between the two while mumbling under his breath. Pico blinks at him. “Are you fuckin’ eeny meeny-ing right now?”
Ben raises his free index finger to his lips and hisses “I’m concentrating,” and the graffiti artist snorts so loud he draws several concerned, borderline scared looks from the family in the fruit aisle across from them. He sticks his tongue out at them. Ben swats at him lightly, snickering, before plucking one of the cartons out from his hands and ushering him away. The painter’s smiles last longer now, full and wide and so alarmingly genuine that they ache to look at too long, like the sky during summer.
They move along (Ben leads, Pico follows, because of course he does), Pico watching as Ben takes things from the aisles, checks prices, adds to their basket. He’s never liked shopping very much, mainly because he’s never liked being surrounded by things he couldn’t afford to have – most of his shopping experience before Ben had been small and hasty, stiff in-and-out visits to the drugstore for chips or cigarettes, never looking around him, so it’s weird to slow down and actually, y’know. Think beyond tomorrow.
Such a ridiculously normal, everyday thing to do, and it feels so absurd to be being so sappy about. They’re literally just gathering groceries for the week ahead, and it is nice.
(Pico knows that he’s healing when he thinks this, the main giveaway being that he lets himself think about it at all.)
Ben bats at Pico’s shoulder gently after a bit. “Ooh, last thing. We need popcorn for movie night. I think we’re done here after that.”
The graffiti artist spares about half a glance at the shelves beside him before knocking a pack of something vaguely popcorn-looking into the basket, which Ben squints at before removing and setting back onto the shelves, his movements measured, careful not to make a mess of the other snacks in the aisle. Pico thinks he might be in love with him. “Sven doesn’t like sweet and salty, Peeks.”
“Sven’s a stupid fucking bitch,” Pico says without missing a beat.
Ben doesn’t even twitch, but the corner of his mouth jerks upward like he’s trying not to laugh. Well that won’t do. “And yet you two still maintain a blossoming, borderline homoerotic friendship.”
“Uh, ” Pico gasps in mock offense as he watches Ben turns to pick out a different (more acceptable, apparently) pack of microwave popcorn, not missing the way the painter’s shoulders shake with unshed laughter. “There is nothing borderline about it? He wants me so bad.”
A giggle breaks past Ben’s lips and Pico can’t help a self-satisfied grin. “Grace would kick you in the balls. I should kick you in the balls.”
“You’re just jealous that her boyfriend likes me.”
“No one likes you.”
“Not what your mom said last night.”
“My mother in particular definitely does not like you. Like at all.”
“Man,” Pico says, defeated, and then adds under his breath “fuckin’ dumbass twat Marilyn ruining my your mom jokes,” and Benjamin bursts out laughing so hard they almost don’t make it to the counter.
It’s raining when they finally pay for everything and make it outside – the sky gray and heavy and wet, the sidewalk rippling and writhing with each raindrop like a mercury mirror. Pico glances down at the garbled reflection of his face at his feet, mindful not to step out from under the shop’s awning lest he get fucking soaked. The person in the water looks… well, healthy. No bloodshot rabbit-trained panic in his eyes, no tangled frantic mess of a hare’s pelt in his hair. He looks gentler than Pico Newgrounds. He looks kinder than Pico Newgrounds.
He looks like he hasn’t run in a long time.
Pico tries to step on his own face and huffs lightly when all he does is distort the puddle further, turning his glance upward as a flash of blue in the water’s reflection catches his attention. Ben’s standing in the carpark before him with the shopping bag tucked into his chest as if that would do anything to protect it from the rain, t-shirt clinging to his back and hair a wet dull blue-brown (more brown than blue, because he’s been letting himself grow out the dye) but the rainwater does not dampen the brightness in his eyes, the droplets tracing his cheeks reverently like even the sky itself is too scared to ruin his smile, to touch him, to blemish him.
“Get under the awning, idiot, you’re gonna get a cold,” Pico says, but the words stumble into each other halfway through, too fast, too in awe. Ben catches his eye and laughs in his gentle worn-blanket way and he doesn’t bring his hands up to cover his smile and he is wet and he is small and despite it all he is not hiding and Pico thinks that he’s maybe the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his life.
“Walk home?” Benjamin asks sweetly, as if it isn’t, in fact, absolutely fucking chucking it down. Pico doesn’t need to think when he says “of course,” because he is Pico Newgrounds and he is not running and Benjamin Fairest is not hiding and it’ll be okay, maybe, because at the end of it all, they will always be doing it together.