⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝐯𝐢. —— what's the story?
— i —
The last few days of the trip were slightly weird for Rome; he focused on his work more than he did before, this trip was supposed to get them acquainted with their partners so Rome knew their teacher didn't actually expect them to start working on the project right away, but Rome was quite good at distracting himself from things he didn't want to think about. Right now he didn't want to think about Pick and his anonymous girlfriend, or how clear Pick needed it to be that he already had someone as if anything Rome did would suggest that he was flirting with Pick—and that made Rome kind of scared that he unintentionally let Pick know he likes him.
So overall, it was better to keep his distance, wasn't it? Rome liked to think he's being smart.
But fate had different plans for him. Fate or, how Emma would call it, Rome's incredible stupidity—he preferred to think about it as the desire to capture everything beautiful; and if that beautiful thing made him climb a tree and hang from a branch above the river, was that really his fault?
"Shorty, you're going to fall from there," Pick called out, looking up at Rome with doubt on his face. It was the last day of the trip and most of the seniors used it to swim around, knowing that from the next Monday they will have to go back to school again. Pick was in the water directly under the branch that Rome climbed on, there was a big tire hanging from a rope as a swing; Emma tried to convince Rome to sit in it a few times but for him, it was way too close to the water. Apparently, a branch was far enough.
He just wanted to photograph a pretty bird, he did not deserve to suffer like that. Not to mention that the bird flew away because one of the students accidentally threw a ball this way, scaring it.
"Screw you, P'Pick. I won't fall," Rome answered, slowly turning around. He carefully handed the camera back to Emma, swinging it on a stripe so she could catch it, just in case he did fall. It was Din's camera, he couldn't break it the way he did with his own.
"Hey, watch out!" someone yelled suddenly, just when Rome was extending his arm to hold onto the trunk of the tree. The same damn ball that scared Rome's bird hit the branch again, making it move under Rome. He didn't even have the time to think about yelling when he was falling; he just hoped it wasn't the same student that made the bird fly away because otherwise Rome would have to commit premeditated murder during this trip and his teacher wouldn't be too happy about it—though she probably knew he was capable of doing it.
The water wasn't as cold as the last time Rome fell into the river which was comforting considering the fact that Rome went under immediately and his head didn't have to suffer from a shock. He wasn't far from the side of the river, he knew that and he tried to think logically instead of panicking again; the thing was that the river was deeper here, that's why the swing was situated exactly above this part — people used it to jump to the water all the time. Rome uselessly moved his legs, he couldn't touch the bottom. His heart was beating rapidly when suddenly someone pulled him up by his wrist, and then there was an arm wrapping around his waist to keep him steady.
"Hey, hey! Stop moving, I'm holding you!" a familiar voice yelled when Rome kept thrashing around for a few more seconds, trying to find anything to hold onto. Finally, he clutched onto the person next to him with one hand, wiping the water from his eyes with another to see Pick's face a few inches away from his own. "You're safe already, stop moving before you drown us both," Pick added and Rome nodded immediately, looking at the senior with wide eyes. "You're... you're really scared of water, aren't you? I told you you're going to fall, why the hell did you climb the tree?"
"It was..." Rome started, his voice was shaking so much that he needed to take a deep breath before he could even continue. "It was a Chinese Grassbird," he muttered like it could explain all the stupid things he ever did in his life.
Pick sighed, shaking his head. "Just hold onto me."
Rome didn't need to be told twice, his fingers were already squeezed on Pick's shoulder so hard that they would probably leave bruises on the boy's skin. Pick took Rome back to the river bank where Emma was already waiting with a lecture that lasted three hours.
Keeping distance be damned, Rome just wanted to feel safe so he didn't let go of Pick's arm unless necessary for the rest of the day.
Well, Pick didn't seem to mind that much.
— ii —
"So what's the story?" Pick asked, looking towards Rome who was playing some stupid game on his phone. They were driving back at night and most of the students were already fast asleep; this time Rome wasn't even mad that he had to sit with Pick again after Porsche took the place next to Emma with an excuse that they have to discuss some things about the project. Rome probably expected that and he was good at adapting to whatever Emma wanted.
"Story?" Rome hummed with a frown, eyes not leaving the screen. Pick put another Pocky stick in his mouth and sighed loudly when Rome just moved his head closer, letting Pick know he wanted to eat, too. As if he couldn't use his hands. Or buy his pack, for that matter, those were the strawberry flavored ones, Pick's favorites and he had to share? After two seconds of considering it, he slowly moved one stick closer to Rome's lips, letting the shorty bite it.
"Yeah, your story with water. You're not just scared because you can't swim, there's something more," Pick answered thoughtfully, feeling the way Rome stiffened next to him. The boy was honestly terrified when Pick pulled him out of the water earlier and then he didn't want to leave Pick's side, even though he's been avoiding him during the last few days of the trip unless he had to take pictures of Pick. Pick knew it was because of their conversation by the drive-in cinema and he didn't like it, but there wasn't much he could do.
Rome cursed quietly, pouting at his phone. "See? The butcher killed me because of you," he muttered, lightly shoving Pick with his elbow. "I... why do you want to know?" he suddenly sounded sheepish, finally looking up at Pick instead of the screen.
Pick shrugged noncommittally. "I like to have approximate knowledge of a lot of things. For example, the fact that Emma is scared of dogs... that can be quite troublesome for Porsche."
"Yeah, I thought about it too," Rome sighed, scratching the tip of his nose. He had a lot of antics that appeared whenever he was nervous and Pick was still surprised at how many things he noticed about the shorty just in one week of living together. "But I guess they'll have to figure it out on their own. That is... if P'Porsche finally asks her out. Really, he's your best friend, can't you help him a little more? I think you've dated every possible girl from our university, you should give him a bit of advice or something," Rome raised an eyebrow. Pick could tell that the kid was trying to change the topic but it surprised him that Rome sounded quite... bitter when he talked about those girls. Why was that?
"It's not the same," Pick said carefully after a moment of thinking. "Porsche genuinely likes Emma, as I'm sure you can tell by now."
Rome laughed involuntarily, nodding his head. "So you don't like the girls you're going out with?" he tried to understand. Pick sighed, absentmindedly giving Rome another Pocky stick to bite, even though Rome wasn't focusing on the game anymore and could take the snack on his own.
"I do, it's just... I like it when I approach them, you know? But then when we actually start dating, it's different."
"Hm, so you like the thrill of chasing a girl but it disappears once she's yours? Aren't you a bit superficial?" Rome frowned. Pick usually didn't care what other people thought about him, the worse he was in their mind the better, but strangely enough, he didn't want to be misunderstood by Rome, so he shook his head.
"This isn't about them. It's that they agree to date me because they have those weird expectations about me and then when I can't meet those expectations, they just try to pretend that I'm the person they think I am," Pick said with a shrug. It's not that it bothered him a lot, he did change his girlfriends quite often so it's not like any of them was important enough to make him feel bad about who he was, but it's just a fact that none of them knew what he was like.
"Oh. Well, you do have quite the reputation, P'," Rome told him and then covered his face when he yawned. "I've heard it usually takes time to find the right one."
Pick looked towards the younger boy, Rome was smiling softly with a head slightly tilted to the left. "Did you find the right one?" he asked without much thinking. He was just curious because Rome sounded as if he had experience with this kind of thing, which would be quite surprising for Pick.
"I'm... I'm still trying to figure it out, I guess," the shorty blinked quickly, moving his gaze towards the window. He probably couldn't see much there because the bus was driving through the woods now, but he suddenly seemed uncomfortable with this topic, so Pick decided to go back to what he originally wanted to know. "It's nothing that serious," Rome said when Pick wouldn't let it go, which was weird considering how unwilling Rome seemed to talk about it. "It's just... I was pushed into the water when I was a little kid."
Pick frowned at that. "The same thing happened to Porsche. Well, he slipped and fell into the pool because he's an idiot, but then he just decided to learn how to swim instead of avoiding the water. Why didn't you?"
Rome tugged at his too-long sleeves; this was the thing he did the most when he was anxious—probably that's why he seemed to enjoy wearing Pick's clothes so much, they fit on Pick just fine but Rome was considerably smaller, not only shorter, he was just... really small.
"I've tried. My mom used to like swimming and she tried to teach me," Rome answered, fiddling with his phone now. "I just couldn't force myself to do it. When they pushed me into the water, they held me under for a while, you know? It was probably fun for them," he shrugged as if he was talking about someone else and it didn't have anything to do with him.
Pick frowned, not able to tear his eyes away from the younger boy. How could he just act as if none of this concerned him and his life? Pick suddenly understood why Emma could have been frustrated with Rome's definition of being fine; if Porsche pulled shit like that, Pick would beat him up himself and then ask if he's still "fine."
"P'Pick, have you ever went through something so traumatic that you've had nightmares about it even though you knew it's very unlikely that it will happen again?" Rome asked quietly, slowly putting a hand on his neck. "Sometimes I still wake up at night because I feel like I can't breathe."
Suddenly a few things clicked in Pick's brain, finally making sense. During a few nights, Pick could hear Rome waking up and coughing, as if he was trying to catch his breath, and then the shorty would walk out for a few minutes, probably to spend some time on fresh air. Pick didn't ask about it because he thought it might be uncomfortable and, honestly, he wasn't that interested in it back then—he just thought Rome is weird like that or maybe he got scared of Porsche's snores, that was also plausible.
"But I'd like to learn how to swim one day, maybe you could teach me," Rome said jokingly before Pick could even answer. Then Rome's eyes moved back to his game, making it clear that he didn't want to talk about it anymore.
Pick sighed, he didn't know what to do with Rome. How could Emma even sleep at night knowing that Rome can literally die while being left alone for a second?
"How do you play this game?" Pick asked resigned, leaning over to look at the phone screen. He wouldn't push it, Rome probably already told him more than he wanted to and definitely more than Pick needed to know if he wanted to keep their relationship strictly as project partners.
"Oh, it's easy. You can be either the survivor or the psycho, the psycho's task is to catch all the survivors before they can escape," Rome started, showing Pick different characters he could choose from. "Look, now I'm a survivor along with three other people. We need to fix five generators to escape."
Pick frowned, catching Rome's hand to turn the phone a little more towards himself. "But how do you know where the psycho is? You don't have a map here."
"You... you need to..." the boy stuttered and when Pick looked at him, he noticed that Rome was staring at Pick's hand holding his own. Well, wasn't that interesting? Pick didn't let go, after that serious talk, he felt like messing with Rome again. "You need to look at the-the heartbeat... It's on top of the screen. If... if the heartbeat is getting faster, it means that the psycho is close."
Pick hummed thoughtfully, moving his hand down so he could catch Rome's wrist and feel his pulse. "Do you think I'm the psycho? Your heart sure is beating fast right now," he noticed with a smirk.
Rome's eyes were quickly looking over Pick's face as if he was trying to find something, but then he pushed Pick away with a frown. "Stop teasing me, P'. It's not funny," he huffed out annoyed. "You're such a jerk," he added when Pick only laughed, leaning back on his seat.
But apparently, Pick wasn't that big of a jerk, seeing as Rome's head still found its way onto his shoulder when Rome fell asleep an hour later. It wasn't even amusing anymore because Pick kept playing and losing the stupid game, all because he sometimes couldn't tell the difference between the quickened heartbeats of the survivor and his own heart.
Pick kept telling himself it's not because of how Rome's small hand was clutching at Pick's sleeve as if even in his sleep he felt safer knowing that Pick was next to him. But it's not like anyone else was asking Pick about the reasons for his fast heartbeat—why would he need to convince himself so much?
— iii —
Looking through old pictures was something that always could calm Rome down; he kept all of them, even the bad ones since he liked to see how much his skills have improved since he first became interested in photography. It's been already nine years and he's still embarrassed when he looks at blurry and overall crappy pictures of street animals and his neighbors he took as a kid. But when his mind was especially messy, he would sit on the floor and put them all in order from the oldest to the newest one; he had a habit of numbering the pictures for some reason, and later on, he just found it useful for situations like this one. Putting them side by side was a task he didn't need to think about, he could keep his mind empty and just let his hands do the work.
From the old to the newest ones, he could see his growth as a photographer—it was good, it meant he wasn't stuck in one place at least in this aspect of his life. Through old works, he saw the moments where he started to learn how to edit pictures and play with colors to make something look better, and when it was best to leave the picture as it was because it had the biggest effect in its original form. He liked to photograph people, Rome had been quite introverted while growing up mostly because of his older brother that made him think others were just... scary to be around, really. And so he learned how to see them through pictures.
Now Rome's fingers hovered above pictures of Pick he took during the trip, some of them without Pick's knowledge. And those were the ones that bothered him the most; he could feel something wrong in them, it was like he felt itchy but didn't know where exactly. Uncomfortable.
Rome frowned and put two pictures next to each other; on one Pick was smiling at something Porsche said, if Rome remembered correctly, and even now he could feel how happy and relaxed Pick had been at that moment. The second picture was different and Rome couldn't help but wonder if it's because Pick didn't know Rome was photographing him. The senior was sitting alone at one of the lunch tables, he was hunched over and kept the phone in both hands, staring down at it with a frown; he seemed worried and... really sad.
Rome started to put aside the pictures he took secretly, just because he wanted to check something when suddenly the doors to his bedroom flew open.
"Get out of my room," he said immediately when he noticed his older brother.
"Watch your mouth, princess," Noh snorted. Rome quickly tried to cover pictures with his hands but Noh's attention was already on them and he managed to snatch a few, crumpling them a little in the process. "Is that why you were too busy to help your dad?" he asked with a grimace, waving the photos at Rome. He just had to take the ones where Pick was shirtless, didn't he? "Isn't that... this guy called Pick? What, he's your boyfriend now, or were you just creeping on him?"
"He's nothing," Rome answered quickly, standing up and trying to get his photos back. He didn't want Noh to spread useless rumors about Pick or tell people that his younger brother is not only gay but also a pervert. "He's just helping me with a project and it's none of your business. Give that back."
Noh pushed Rome back harshly and then ripped the pictures in half, throwing the pieces at Rome. "I don't give a fuck, go tell your dad you're back already. He set you up with someone but you might not like it. Maybe it's the highest time to let the old man know that his son is a little fag—"
"He's your dad too," Rome interrupted before Noh could start with the slurs again. Rome was putting up with princess, he didn't want to hear the other ones. "And why don't yo... wait, what? What did you say?" the boy frowned with confusion.
Noh smirked. "Oh yes, sweetheart. You have a date. With a girl. Like, you know, normal guys."
Suddenly Rome thought he would've been better off drowning during the trip.
— iv —
Pick broke up with his girl.
Well, at least he thought they broke up. He wouldn't exactly say it was something they talked out peacefully but the outcome let him think that she wouldn't bother for a while; if Pick doused someone with a glass of water in a restaurant full of people, he wouldn't show himself to that person for a while to make it more dramatic. God, he was starting to think like Rome.
Pick's relationships usually ended because of one from three reasons: he was bored, they cheated, or their jealousy was becoming obsessive. This time it was the last one. Pick liked girls that knew what they wanted and he liked knowing that they care but treating him like their possession was a don't while being in a relationship with him. Nong'Lamai was a very nice person but after Pick came back from the trip she was acting quite unreasonable, accusing him of spending this time with other girls just because he ignored her phone calls a few times when he was busy. The funny thing was that Pick told her she can go and check at the Faculty of Photography that he did attend the trip with them, but that was when Lamai spilled the water and walked away, telling him not to call her.
Oh, she wouldn't have to worry about that. Lamai must have changed her status fast though because approximately fifteen minutes later Pick's LINE started to crash from how many messages he got; most of them from girls asking if he's okay and if he wants to meet someone to cheer him up. Maybe later. There was also one message from Porsche that only said "again?"
Pick snorted at that, he was just about to call his best friend to ask if he wanted to watch a movie with Pick, but then he needed to do a double-take in front of the cinema.
Was that... Rome? With a girl? And that girl wasn't Emma? Now that was groundbreaking, especially when she kissed Rome's cheek before walking away. Pick quickly tapped on messages with Rome.
[7:12pm] what are you doing?
Pick watched the way Rome took out his phone to check the message and a few seconds later he got a reply.
[7:13pm] ROME: dying. none of ur business
[7:13pm] yeah i can see that
Rome first frowned at his screen and then started to look around, spotting Pick and waving a hand at him. Pick walked closer, looking into the direction where the mysterious girl went.
"Please don't ask," Rome muttered, already knowing that Pick must have seen him.
Pick smirked. "You know I will. Does Emma know you're cheating on her?" he mocked, wrapping an arm around the shorty.
"Stop being annoying. Remember when I told you that my dad was looking for me because he needed me for something?" Rome asked with a blush, making Pick frown. "Well, this was that something."
"What? He wanted you to go on a date? Parents really do that?" Pick laughed. Rome pushed him away, groaning with displeasure. He was probably embarrassed that Pick saw him which only made the whole situation even funnier for the senior. "Alright, alright. Why did he set you up? Does he... does he know about you? And hopes that a pretty girl will change your taste?"
"No! No," Rome frantically looked around like he was scared someone will hear. "It's business. Her father owns a big company and apparently, the only thing he adores more than that is his daughter, so I'm supposed to make her like me so that her dad will consider being business partners with my dad. It's messy," he sighed, running a hand through his dark hair.
"That sucks," Pick summed up.
"Yeah, well... at least she's nice, you know? She knows why my dad wanted me to meet her, otherwise, I wouldn't do it. She said we can just go out a couple of times for the appearances," the shorty shrugged, but he looked like it bothered him even if he had been somewhat honest with the girl. "I've never even had a real boyfriend and I already have a girlfriend, what the hell?"
Pick burst into laughter, ruffling Rome's hair. "Stop being dramatic, buttercup, it will be fine. I was just about to go see a movie, wanna come?"
"Why would I do that to myself?" Rome deadpanned, suspiciously squinting his eyes. Pick sighed, why did he have to be so difficult? It's not like Pick was an asshole to him, right?
"Because at least I'm a guy?" Pick tried, rolling up the sleeves of his black and red flannel shirt.
"Are you saying you're taking me on a date?"
"Call it however you want. But I'm choosing the movie," he decided, turning around and walking towards the cinema without waiting for the shorty.
He didn't know what he was doing; he wasn't used to being nice to anyone that wasn't Porsche or Pick's closest family. But Pick wasn't stupid, during the trip he noticed that Rome was at least on some level interested in him, it was in the way he'd get nervous when Pick got too close, or the way Pick would catch Rome staring from time to time. There were guys before that flirted with Pick and he simply ignored them, but the frustrating thing about Rome was that he didn't even try. If he did like Pick, why didn't he act on it? Was it because of the things Pick said or because Rome was scared?
Pick felt... something towards the shorty but the fact that he couldn't name it was driving him crazy and he just wanted to know. So at that moment, he decided that if Rome won't do anything, Pick will.
~ * ~
[a/n: and here comes pick with his 2 braincells and a "plan"
someone tell me why do i like making rome suffer? i swear i love him
i was bored and i edited the story a bit so it would look prettier (for me fnddfs), so sorry if any of u got some unnecessary notifications. anyways, comments are as always very appreciated!]