so bobby goes to luke alex and reggie’s shared funeral and sees the boys in their caskets. which is already hard on him but then he starts noticing how unlike themselves they appear because their parents got so many details wrong trying have the boys look how they wanted them to be instead of having them be who they are. at first it’s small things that can’t really be helped. but it still hurts to see them like that. completely unlike what and who they are were.

like how reggie isn’t smiling, there’s no color to his cheeks and it’s upsetting and weird because reggie was never so still and vacante. he’s bouncy and always smiling and his cheeks are always rosy but now he’s… stiff and it looks so off and wrong but he’s dead so of course he’ll look pale and still (not mention they didn’t bury him with his leather jacket on like he would’ve wanted) reggie looks too serious and it sits uneasily in bobby’s stomach but he doesn’t say anything. it’s not like the peters had much money to spend on the finer details. even the suit they picked for him didn’t seem to fit him right. a size too small. everything is just a bit off (like the whole world shifted to the left and bobby still struggling to adjust) he doesn’t mention anything to the peters. they wouldnt notice the difference anyways. bobby stays silent and distant and cold with most of the people there because what can be done? what could he or anyone else do? it’s always going feel wrong.

still it doesn’t help when he sees alex’s hair isn’t done anywhere near how he likes it. it’s too neat and pushed back like he’s going to sunday school and bobby knows alex hated when he had to part his hair that way. it lacks any of his personality and carefull reckless and the frustration of they don’t look like themselves builds, the anger and sadness and hurt that they’re gone gone gone gone keeps setting deeper into bobby’s bones and then it all collapses on top of him. the weight of the reality falling hard when he sees luke. something snaps and bobby can’t help himself but ball his fists and sob, though he wants to scream to, at the patterson’s for never caring for their son in the way he needed them to and at himself for not being there when he should’ve and at the world for taking away his friends and maybe at the boys for leaving him, because he walks to the final coffin and sees they put luke in some stuffy outfit with long sleeves. hair combed back and face a slack strict set expression replacing any trace of his once wild grin. even staring right at luke it doesn’t look right. not anything like him. not like the luke bobby knew. the real actual luke who would’ve never touched that outfit with a ten foot pole.

‘he’s in too many layers. the collars too high and he doesn’t like long sleeves. he can’t wear them for too long. he won’t be comfortable,’ bobby mutters and eventually repeats loudly in tears reaching towards the body only stopped short by emily’s hand. ‘why is he in sleeves?’ ‘he looks fine, son. he’ll be alright now’ ‘ no -no his sensory problems. he won’t be comfortable- he won’t… he wouldn’t want be in sleeves’ he’s gripping the edge of the coffin and pushing too close. he wants rip the sleeves off because he knows luke would’ve done it himself. none of this is right. none of them look right.

bobby has never seen a dead body before. let alone three with faces identical to his best friends (because whatever was in those caskets couldn’t possibly be the same people he grew up with and loved so deeply it felt he was dying just looking at them. it made his chest so tight he thought his heart might squeeze out of him because surely they couldn’t be the same. they couldn’t be his boys. not really. not when they looked nothing like themselves. it had be a sick joke. a bad fever dream. something so unreal it couldn’t really be happening, could it?).

mr. patterson pulls him away from the set of caskets. or maybe it had been his own father. bobby isn’t sure. the memory is fuzzy. even while it was happening it wasn’t all that clear. he was still too focused on his boys with faces grim and stiff instead of usual lively grins, and neatly tucked hair that had once been always tossed and messy, and arms suffocated in thick fancy fabric knowing that even in death they’d never wear something like that. but there isn’t anything bobby can do. their bodies may have been laid to rest but bobby would never know peace seeing them buried like that