Plenty of Treasures

little moth, it's gonna be hard (some things we cannot fix)

    pairing(s): platonic moxiety and eventual prinxiety
    warnings: major character death, death, murder, traffic accidents, train accidents, blood, implied decapitation, insects, strong language/swearing, fighting, parents fighting, abusive parents (more neglectful, depression, and anxiety
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    Cloudy and dilated, eyes of gingerbread and vanilla stared blankly up at the sky above. Though, ‘staring’ was a rather inaccurate description, considering those eyes belonged to Patton Davies.

    Strawberry blonde locks rested on the rough concrete, haphazardly splayed around Patton’s face and almost copying the soft changing of the leaves flapping around wildly on the trees surrounding him. His chin was tilted backwards, resting slightly to the right as if to hide from the metal debris lying beside him, as if trying not to choke on the thick smoke billowing down the street. And although his jaw was slack and looked as if it was hanging on by a thread, he successfully managed not to breathe it in. The damson matting his hair and dripping down his chin was enough for Virgil.

    He had failed again.

    How many times was he going to be mocked with that scene? The constant torture, like a child tearing the legs off a spider, and hearing that spine-curling scratchy pop as the terrified creature flails and bleeds, unable to even scream. Or, if it could, the child would never be able to hear it.

    One leg. Two legs. Three legs.

    His first failure down the road from his and Patton’s college, as coins crashed to the pavement and a choked gasp became a precursor to the layer of red seeping through Patton’s blue sweater. The sirens. Red. Blue. Red and blue. Wails that scorched his already parched throat as guilty blue eyes, barely visible under a pale blue bouffant cap, watched him crumple like a broken doll down to the cold floor. 

    The second time, he’d hugged Patton too ferociously for too long. They stumbled. He fell. Scarlet pooled beneath his limp body. Virgil threw up his lunch.

    Time after time, he would try to prevent his best friend’s gruesome fate, to keep his heart pumping the purest red and to keep his eyes overshadowing the bright sun. But every time, every fucking time, that sun would suddenly be blocked and that nauseating crimson would spread onto any surface it could reach. It stained, leaving Virgil to give his parents half-assed excuses he knew they’d believe and to go back. He’d barely even give himself time to process everything.

    He wasn’t even startled by the sight of Patton’s blood anymore.

    No matter how much of it there was, buckets or a drop, he’d simply sigh and go back. Even with his best friend lying brokenly in the middle of the road, he followed routine for the seven hundred and thirtieth time, heading back to where it always started. His bedroom.

    The dark walls that only served to drive that emptiness further into his skin until even the abrupt screaming downstairs failed to surprise him. Painful cries of resentment and regret echoed through the house, bouncing off of each wall in the living room, up into the staircase, crashing and swaying down the hallway like a drunken sailor, and under the gap of his bedroom door. He huffed quietly, almost afraid his parents would hear him, before sitting up in his bed and pulling off the covers to meet Patton at the train station.

    ‘How long has it been since I’ve been to college?’ He wondered as he carefully padded down the stairs, silently criticising the baby blue pattern mixed with a dark crimson red. His parents clearly had no good sense of interior design. Not that he would ever tell them as such.

    He supposed it didn’t really matter how long he’d been away from college at that point; if things continued on the same way, it didn’t seem as if he’d ever be going back full-time.