Pico adjusted the collar of his faded green jacket, his thumb instinctively brushing against the empty space beneath his armpit where his Uzi usually rested. Security at the front gate had been a nightmare, requiring him to leave his precious pieces in a locker.

He felt naked. Vulnerable.

His gaze darted constantly to the exits, tracking the security guards, the families with strollers, the teenagers taking selfies. His orange hair caught the ambient blue light of the main lobby, making him look like some sort of aggressive deep-sea organism himself.

"Stop doing that," Nene muttered beside him. She wasn't looking at him; her dark eyes were glued to a massive, cylindrical tank in the center of the room where a school of silver fish swirled in a perpetual, hypnotic vortex. "You look like you're about to rob the place."

"I just— I feel like I'm trapped in a giant glass cage," Pico grunted, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. "Remind me why we're here again? Since when do you care about fish?"

Nene finally turned her head. Her expression was masked of boredom, but Pico knew her well enough to read the slight tension in her jaw. Her short hair bounced slightly as she shifted her weight. She was wearing a oversized off-shoulder beige-pink knitted dress that swallowed her frame.

"I wanted to go somewhere where nothing is screaming," she said, her voice dropping to a flat, quiet register. "And where nothing is... bleeding. Is that a crime, gun boy?"

Pico closed his mouth. The sarcasm died on his tongue. He knew that tone. It was the tone she used when the intrusive thoughts got too loud, when the weight of surviving their childhood felt less like a miracle and more like a cruel joke. He sighed, the tension draining out of his shoulders little by little.

"Fine. Lead the way, knife queen."

They walked into the deeper exhibits, moving away from the noisy crowds of the main lobby. The light dimmed significantly, replaced by the eerie, undulating blue and green glows filtering through massive acrylic panels. It felt like stepping into another world, a subterranean kingdom where time moved differently.

Nene stopped in front of a wide, flat tank labeled Jellyfish.

Dozens of translucent, ethereal creatures drifted inside aimlessly. They had no brains, no skeletons, no hearts. Just delicate, pulsing bells and trailing tentacles that glowed faintly iridescent under the blacklights.

Pico watched Nene watch them. The light washed over her slight tan skin, softening the sharp, defensive lines of her face. For a brief second, she didn’t look like the girl who carried a rusted kitchen knives hidden in her usual pink overalls and joked about her own mortality just to see people flinch.

She just looked tired. Beautiful, but profoundly tired.

"...They're so lucky," Nene whispered, her forehead leaning gently against the cool glass. A faint circle of condensation formed from her breath. "No thoughts. No memories. Just floating."

Pico stepped up beside her, his arm brushing against hers. He didn't pull away, and neither did she. "You know, they also eat through their mouths and poop out of the same hole, Nene. Don't get too jealous."

A high-pitched, genuine laugh cracked through Nene’s composure. She shoved his shoulder with her elbow. "You are completely incapable of being romantic, you know that?"

"Who said this was a romance?" Pico smirked, though his heart did a strange, erratic flutter in his chest. "This is just an escape from reality. Big difference."

"Shut up."

But she didn't move away.

In fact, her fingers, tipped with chipped black nail polish, hovered for a second before wrapping around Pico's wrist. She tugged him gently toward the next exhibit.

Pico let himself be pulled, his hand sliding down until his calloused fingers intertwined with hers. Her palm was cool to the heat radiating from his own skin, but she held on with a surprising, desperate grip.

They entered the underwater tunnel. It was a massive archway of glass, with thousands of gallons of water pressing down from above.

Giant manta rays glided overhead like silent, aquatic stealth bombers, their pale bellies passing just feet above their heads. Sandbar sharks cruised through the gloom, their black, soulless eyes unblinking, their mouths perpetually turned down in a jagged sneer.

Pico stiffened, his eyes locking onto a particularly large shark. His grip on Nene’s hand tightened reflexively.

"Hey now," Nene said softly. She stopped in the middle of the tunnel. The crowd had thinned out here, leaving them momentarily isolated in the blue twilight. "Pico. Look at me, not the teeth."

Pico forced his gaze away from the glass and looked down at her. His chest felt tight, the phantom weight of a hundred bad dreams pressing down on his lungs. The aquarium tunnel suddenly felt too restrictive, the threat of the glass shattering and drowning them becoming a vivid, terrifying flash in his mind.

"It's just water," Nene said, her voice steady and grounded. She stepped closer, closing the distance between them until she reached up with her free hand, her fingers gently touching his jawline. "The glass is thick. We're safe. Nobody is coming through that door."

Pico swallowed hard, his eyes tracking the movement of her thumb as it stroked his cheekbone. The hyper-vigilance that usually consumed him began to recede, replaced by the overwhelming reality of her proximity.

"I hate being defenseless," he muttered, his voice rough.

"You're not defenseless. You have me," Nene replied, a rare, soft smile playing at the corners of her lips. It wasn't even her usual mocking grin. It was vulnerable. "And I'm vicious."

"Yeah. A real menace to society," Pico murmured. He let out a long, slow breath, his body finally relaxing. He looked down at her lips, then back up to her eyes, searching for any sign of her usual deflection.

There was none. She was entirely present, looking at him with a warmth she rarely allowed anyone else to see. Driven by a sudden, fierce wave of affection, Pico leaned down.

Nene met him halfway.

The kiss was tentative at first, a gentle pressing of lips in the dim, blue light of the shark tank. It tasted like salt and the quiet safety they so rarely found in the outside world. But as Pico’s hand came out of his pocket to cup the back of her neck, pulling her closer, the kiss deepened.

It became an anchor. A silent acknowledgment of everything they had survived together, and everything they were still fighting to keep alive inside themselves.

Nene’s fingers tangled into his hair, holding him there as a massive sea turtle drifted lazily above them, casting long, fractured shadows over their joined forms.

When they finally parted, both of them were slightly breathless. Nene’s cheeks carried a faint flush that had nothing to do with the colored lights of the exhibits. She cleared her throat, stepping back just an inch, though she kept her hand firmly locked in his.

"Well," she said, her usual sarcastic edge returning, though it lacked any real bite. "That was certainly better than watching the penguins."

"Penguins are jerks anyway," Pico replied, a smile breaking across his face. He squeezed her hand, feeling a sense of peace that he hadn't experienced in years. "Come on. Let's go find the gift shop. I want to buy you a horribly overpriced stuffed shark."

"Only if it looks as miserable as you do and same color of your hair," Nene countered, matching his stride as they walked out of the tunnel together.

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━

© Copyright Protection Notice:

All works belongs exclusively to the author. Do not reupload, translate, rewrite, or alter my creations without permission. It's officially shared only via Tumblr and AO3.

Pico sighed, leaning his hip against the cheap plastic divider of the checkout lane. His hand instinctively rested on the grip of the Uzi tucked beneath his canvas pants, makes him a comforting presence. He stared blankly ahead, his gaze drifting over the impulse-buy racks. Batteries, mints, cheap lighters, and then... the bucket.

It was a black plastic bucket filled with water that smelled vaguely of stagnant pond life. Sticking out of it were several plastic-wrapped bundles of half-dead, aggressively dyed carnations. Some were neon blue, others were a sickly shade of magenta, and one sad bunch was a mottled combination of red and yellow that looked remarkably like a crime scene.

Pico blinked. He looked at the milk. He looked at the red-and-yellow flowers.

Nene likes red, his brain supplied, entirely unprompted. It was an intrusive thought, completely detached from any logical track of reasoning. She also likes blood. These look like blood.

Before his conscious mind could veto the executive decision made by his deeply traumatized, poorly medicated subconscious, Pico reached out, grabbed the plastic sleeve of the red-and-yellow carnations, and tossed them onto the conveyor belt next to the toaster pastries.

The cashier didn’t even blink. She scanned the flowers, the barcode making a sharp beep that felt like a starter pistol.

"Six-fifty," she mumbled.

Pico handed over a crumpled ten-dollar bill, took his plastic bag and the wet bundle of stems, and walked out into the blinding afternoon sun.

It wasn't until he was halfway down the block, the plastic wrapping of the bouquet rustling aggressively against his thigh with every step, that the crushing weight of reality hit him.

What the actual hell am I doing?

Pico stopped dead on the sidewalk. He held the flowers up to eye level. They looked even worse in the daylight. They smelled like a combination of cheap perfume and wet cardboard. He was a mercenary. He was a guy who spent his weekends clearing out mutant rats from abandoned subway tunnels and dodging bounty hunters.

He didn't buy flowers. Especially not for Nene.

If he gave these to her, she would either:

 1. Laugh until she vomited.

 2. Assume they were booby-trapped and stab him.

 3. Think he was dying of a terminal illness and stab him out of mercy.

He considered throwing them into a dumpster. He really did. He walked over to a metal trash can, raised the bouquet over the rim, and prepared to drop it. But then he thought about the six dollars and fifty cents. Plus tax. That was practically the price of a pack of cigarettes. Pico hated wasting money.

With a agonizing groan that came from the very marrow of his bones, he pulled the flowers back, tucked them under his arm like a football, and started walking toward her apartment.

He’d just tell her he stole them. No, that made it sound like he went to effort. He’d tell her someone dropped them. Yeah. A dead guy dropped them. Perfect.

Pico didn’t knock on Nene’s door. Knocking was for people who didn't know how to pick locks, or people who didn't want to get shot through the wood. Instead, he kicked the bottom of the door twice—their universal code for "It's me, don't blow my head off"—and turned the knob. It was unlocked, because Nene possessed zero fear of God or the law.

The apartment smelled like acetone and burnt toast. Nene was sitting cross-legged on her thrift-store sofa, surrounded by an absolute war zone of cosmetic supplies. She had a magnifying mirror balanced on her knees and was aggressively applying thick, sharp eyeliner with the precision of a brain surgeon.

"You're tracking dirt on the rug," she said without looking up, her voice a sharp, familiar grate.

"You don't have a rug, Nene. It's bare plywood," Pico retorted, shutting the door with his heel. He stood awkwardly in the entryway, hands shoved into his pockets, the flowers clamped tightly under his bicep.

"It's a spiritual rug. Use your imagination, ginger." She capped her eyeliner with a loud click and finally looked at him. Her dark eyes immediately dropped to the plastic-wrapped monstrosity wedged under his arm. Her eyebrows shot up so high they practically merged with her side bangs. "What the fuck is that?"

Pico stiffened. The carefully crafted lie about the dead guy vanished from his brain, replaced by pure, unadulterated panic.

"Nothing," he barked, his voice a little too loud, a little too defensive. Cool dude.

"It doesn't look like nothing. It looks like a radioactive bush." Nene swung her legs off the couch and stood up, stepping over a pile of fashion magazines.

She approached him like a cat inspecting a suspicious new piece of furniture. His shoulders tense, eyes narrowed, ready to spring backward at a notice. "Pico. Did you steal a corpse's funeral arrangement?"

"No!" Pico snapped. He ripped the flowers out from under his arm and thrust them forward, shoving them directly into her face. The plastic crinkled violently. "They're for you. Take 'em or I'm throwing them in the incinerator."

Nene froze. She looked at the flowers. She looked at Pico. His face was flushing a spectacular shade of pink that almost matched his hair. He was sweating slightly, looking less like a hardened killer and more like a teenager who had just been caught shoplifting spray paint.

Slowly, carefully, Nene reached out and took the bouquet by the stems. "You... bought me flowers."

"I was at the store," Pico muttered, looking intensely at a water stain on her ceiling. "They were by the register. They were cheap. Don't look into it."

"They're hideous," she whispered, her voice laced with a strange, breathless awe. She turned the bouquet around. "They smell like a hospital wing. Pico, are these dyed? They're bleeding on my fingers."

Sure enough, the cheap red dye was transferring onto her skin.

"They're carnations," Pico said, defending his terrible purchase with sudden, irrational vehemence. "They last forever. They're hardy. Like weeds. Or cockroaches. I thought of you."

Nene stared at him for three long seconds. Pico’s hand crept back toward his Uzi. If she started laughing, he was going to shoot her television.

Instead of laughing, Nene suddenly yanked the entire bouquet upward, burying her face directly into the crinkling plastic and the garish, chemical-scented petals. Her narrow shoulders hunched toward her ears, completely shielding her face from his view.

She stayed like that, frozen, holding the cheap supermarket stems like a makeshift shield.

Pico blinked, his hand halting on the grip of his gun. "Nene? Hey, are you sniffing them? I literally just said they smell like a dumpster."

She didn't answer right away. When she finally lowered the bouquet just a bit to see enough for her empty white eyes to peek over the bright, bleeding red of the carnations. Pico saw it.

A heavy, dark flush had crept all the way from the collar of her shirt to the tips of her ears. She was blushing sheepishly, her usual razor-sharp composure entirely melted into something intensely awkward, hidden behind a mess of crinkling cellophane.

"You're a moron," she mumbled into the petals, her voice muffled and entirely devoid of its usual venom.

"Yeah, well, you're the one holding 'em," Pico grumbled, though his own face was burning a matched like hers. He cleared his throat loudly, desperately needing to break the sudden, suffocating quiet in the room. "Just throw them away. Give them back, I'll burn them."

"No way!" Nene dropped the flowers from her face, though the pink on her cheeks didn't fade as she skipped—actually skipped—into her tiny kitchen alcove. "I'm keeping them. They perfectly match the existential dread of this apartment."

Pico watched from the doorway as Nene rummaged through her cupboards. She didn't own a vase, obviously, so she eventually pulled out an empty, extra-large plastic jar of pickled pigs' feet. She rinsed it out with hot water, filled it to the brim, and violently shoved the carnations inside, sending a small tidal wave of water over her counter.

She slammed the jar down in the center of her coffee table, right next to a half-disassembled switchblade and a bowl of stale cereal.

"There," Nene said, clapping her hands together, her hands still stained a faint, bloody pink. "Beautiful. It really ties the room together."

Pico finally let his hand drop from his pocket. The tight, defensive knot in his chest loosened, replaced by a strange, hollow warmth that he hated acknowledging. They were broken people, both of them. They didn't do normalcy. They didn't do traditional affection. If Darnell were here, he'd be making gagging noises in the corner.

But Darnell wasn't here. It was just the two of them, surviving in the wreckage of a life they never asked for.

Nene walked back over to him, her expression shifting from manic amusement to something softer, though still inherently sharp. She reached out and punched him hard in the shoulder.

"Ow," Pico mumbled, not even flinching. "What was that for?"

"For being a weirdo," she said. But she didn't step away. She leaned her shoulder against his arm, staring at the terrible, ugly, beautiful flowers sitting in a pig-foot jar. "Thanks, Pico."

"Whatever," Pico muttered, looking away, though he didn't move away from her side. "Next time, I'll just buying you a knife toy set. It's less stressful."

Nene laughed, a loud and sharp, genuine sound that echoed off the bare plywood floors. "I'd like to see you try."

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━

© Copyright Protection Notice:

All works belongs exclusively to the author. Do not reupload, translate, rewrite, or alter my creations without permission. It's officially shared only via Tumblr and AO3.