❀| Town of Salem

I Still Love Him (Serial Killer/Arsonist)

a request for someone on amino. they wanted me to write about some good ol' skarso angst. 

woo, only one more to go after this and i can get started on some other stuff andstartwritingexevhangstextremelyloudcoughing. 

this is going to be so bad even if it's angst because your girl over here is bad at writing romance, even if it's angsty. 

also, lover's mode rules don't apply to this oneshot or else it wouldn't really make much sense, lmao. but keep in mind, lover's mode rules do apply to my oneshots by default unless said otherwise.

...

David knew it was never meant to last.

A serial killer and an arsonist, together. Just suggesting such an idea was already laughable. Such an unlikely pairing had bad news written all over it. It would always pretty much end in heartbreak, really. A serial killer and an arsonist couldn't walk out of a town both alive; one of them had to die. David had always known that when he and Arlo had started their little fling.

So why did he feel so heartbroken?

Even now, standing in front of Arlo's house, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Yet it was all so simple, really; all he had to do was throw the tiny little flame in his hands onto the house, and it would burn up in a blaze. Then, he would be free to leave the town and burn up some other unfortunate townsfolk in another one far, far away. Just like how he had always wanted when he had watched his very first victim burn up to a crisp, a small, madman grin on his face. 

He knew well he had changed after he welcomed Arlo into his life as a lover. He began feeling things that he had never felt before: love, concern, worry and even dread, dread for the very day he had to kill off the charismatic man. He loved him far too much just to let him go like that.

He knew he had made a mistake he told himself over a million times not to make; he had let himself get too attached to Arlo. It was a common yet overly repeated mistake of anyone who had once been in love. They would get too attached and dependant on their partner, and when their lover cut off ties or shattered their heart into a thousand pieces, it would hurt like hell for them. If they had just been careful enough, they would still feel pain, but not as intense as someone making said mistake. 

He was kind of an idiot for making that mistake. A lovestruck idiot, at that. 

He couldn't leave his work unfinished, he decided at last. He still remembered what his goal had been when had first picked up his trusty gasoline can; to watch the whole turn burn. Maybe it was his pyromania kicking in that let the match fall from his palm and onto the gasoline covered house. 

He took several steps back as the house burst into flames. The ends of each flame were admittedly beautiful, rising up towards the endless sky in a fury of raging warm colors. Ash stains and accidental burn marks scattered among the arsonist's features were illuminated by the bright glow emanating from the fire in front of him.  It was almost calming for the pyromaniac, watching the house being engulfed in flames. For a moment, he didn't care that his significant other was in the very house, or that the spine-chilling screams of anguish were in fact made by him. 

The night had come and gone as quickly as a blink of an eye. There was nothing left from the fire last night; just the leftover ashes of a burnt corpse and a house. It was surprisingly a windy day, the cool morning breeze blowing away whatever ashes had remained far, far away from that now long gone town. The air was still warm from the previous night's blaze, with the smell of freshly burnt stuff lingering in the air. The wind was whispering sweet nothings into David's ears as he sat by the gallows, watching over what was left of a once bustling and lively town. 

Perhaps what he was feeling then was remorse, maybe even shame. He could even be feeling regret, regret for letting his pyromaniac tendencies get the best of him and cause the death of many innocent people. Maybe it was simply an amplified feeling of his lovesickness, he himself already missing that charming yet manipulative smile of Arlo's that he had once fallen for. 

"I still love him," he murmured quietly to himself as if the soft rustling of the trees would respond to him. Indeed they didn't, but David swore he could somehow hear forgiveness being whispered into his ear.