When Dallon told me we'd be journeying to his house in Bordeaux, I thought it would only be a medium sized cottage in the middle of nowhere, like any French house should be in my stereotypical perception of them, and it's no doubt in the middle of nowhere, but that's only because it's too grand to be plugged into a measly neighborhood. I had not expected such a massive display of decadence with the estate's luxurious acres, healthy grasses sprouted upon every terrain surrounding the building, everything from a movie.

It's still taken me a while to process all of this, all of the wonders I'll be experiencing throughout my stay in the house of strangers who I should know but don't, but even Dallon doesn't know them all that well, and they're his parents, so I should be fine.

Yes, they're a bit nerve wracking. Yes, they're a bit formal. Yes, they're a bit provincial. But that's to be inferred from people like this, people who Dallon abandoned partially for the same reasons I just listed, though we're back again, this time in their elegant dining hall with the producers of Downton Abbey chasing our tails.

Each plate strewn about the cherry surface is as immaculate as a woman's lipstick, shining and vibrant with the spear of porcelain edging through them. The chandelier suspended above us twirls a radiant beam towards us, onto every perfectly placed utensil and every napkin folded by Elle into a dexterous swan and every ember of prosperity for November flickering in our souls. Wine glasses spring from all spots at the table, enriched by a sparkling meteor shower of champagne that I would never have received back in America, which is a sign that chance is coming, and this is a splendid one that I'll welcome wholeheartedly.

Dallon's parents have left me alone for the time being, which my anxiety interprets as both a good and a bad thing, because they aren't tormenting me with questions I can't answer, but they may also be secretly conversing about me or may even hate me already. Dallon, however, is being the gentle boy I know he his by discreetly calming me down with reassuring mantras and pats on the knee mailed sporadically.

And for the time being, I think I'm fine. I really do, because Dallon is with me, but of course nothing lasts forever, and his parents' cunning attention is now on me.

"So, Brendon, tell me. Why did you make Dallon try to kill himself?" This is the first thing they say to me since the genesis of this lovely dinner, and it's a sentence so rotten that it then spoils the mood Elle strived so miraculously to assemble.

A blockage solidates my throat until I'm an amorphous container of gelatin with no emotions, no feelings beyond astonishment, because Dallon's parents could not be any more wrong than they are now. I did nothing to Dallon Weekes besides help him, and though that help did not succeed in the end, it's a fool's move to try and erase it.

But I cannot tell Dallon's parents these things, as I'm choked and stuttering with the only clear air I can expel. I have never been able to voice my opinion, not even now, as there's a physical obstruction in my lungs and in my stability and in everything that I was amassing in order to utilize, but all of those items are broken now.

Dallon recognizes my plea for assistance, face brushed with the sharp wind of offense, and he drags me up from the table before I can collapse entirely, shouting back to his parents in the coldest tone he can fabricate, "We're going to the bathroom."

Dallon's Point of View

My parents are insolent and blatantly disrespectful to the youth, but I didn't realize it would go this far. Brendon is unfamiliar to them, which means that they don't know the first thing about his personality, his morals, his character that's so developed that it's a wonder he's not honored in the Hall of Fame or awarded a medal for his valor, and the old people in this house should not blame Brendon for things they have no proof that he did or did not do.

It's completely absurd that he would lure me into a suicide attempt. This isn't the tragedy of Lucien Carr and David Kammerer where stalking or assault was on the table. We loved each other, and once I loved him more than I know, and yes, my amnesia has taken that from me, but I still remember that something must have been there, something as vivid as the dashing hues of red and pink cupping the falling sun as it says goodbye. Brendon is not a stranger to me as he is a stranger to my parents, and he stuck around because he was utterly devoted to me and my well being. What kind of person who did so much for me would also tempt me into suicide?

Brendon Urie was the love of my life back in September when I was gambling with my very existence as if it were expendable, and I suppose none of that has changed one bit. I believe that I do, in fact, love him, and maybe it's not the same kind of love, but it's love nevertheless, a love that cannot be neglected by stress or the ostentatious fever dreams of the decomposing.

So as I guide him to the bathroom glowing heartily with alabaster tiles, I understand that it is my duty to aid this man as much as he once aided me and continues to aid me even now that I'm a happier person for the sole reason that I don't remember a time when I was overdosing nearly every day, only store it with the memories of people claiming that's how things operated in September.

Brendon is quivering all around, within the rose of his lips, through the strawberry leaves of his fingers, the fortress of his arm onto which I'm latching to pull him down the hall, and I absolutely abhor that he's so shaken up by what rude accusations my parents vomited on him, but the bathroom is still down the corridor, and that's where everything will be resolved. Currently, however, this sensation is hell.

Bursting through the door to the bathroom, Brendon finds his way to the ledge of the bath, planted down on the solid material to add some gravity to his floundering life, and I soon follow after closing the aperture to mask the tears I can assume are mobilizing already.

"D-Dallon," he begins, hammered by misplaced guilt and lachrymose thoughts. "Dallon, I didn't mean t-to..." That's when he completely crumbles like a powerful civilization being swept away by a volcano of illness that not even I, the most important person in his life, can cure, and it's heartbreaking, you know? Because someone I conjectured was strong enough to withstand the hell I threw at him is not actually that strong, though I still tossed that burden his way like it was impossible that he could ever fail, but now his heart is failing, and his faith in me is failing, and everything he thought he knew is fucking failing, and there's nothing I can do about it.

So in the only action I can think of, I hold him, but it is ambiguous, for I do not know him, but I know that he is real and living and with me right now, and his soul is as aching as mine. But perhaps I would like to know him in the future, and perhaps I already do. He has been calling to me since the beginning, and my eyes have been calling to his lips, so I decide that it's time to seal the gap.

Time is nothing in this moment, the twelve pages of a calendar flying back and back, more and more of those calendars piling up and being swept away into nothingness, because they no longer exist, and it comes to a point where time is no longer relevant anyway, where the only thing that matters is the marriage of orchids and peppermint, the sun and the moon, broken people and amnesic minds, but even that doesn't faze me, because no supplemented conditions can shove in between us. It is purely Brendon Urie and Dallon Weekes, as it was all the way in September, and it will forever be Brendon Urie and Dallon Weekes as long as we live.

But splendid things cannot endure erosion, as the pitter patter stamped into the wooden panels of the floor is unknown to me until the door is pushed open by my sister, who is witnessing this whole scene of homoeroticism, and all she can say is: "Does Maman know you're gay?"

My jaw slackens in the abrupt awareness that my mother is even more homophobic than my father is, but I can trust Elle to hoard the secret like she's hoarded many others. "No, and you won't tell her."

"Fair enough." With that simple sentence of only two words, my sister is out the door again to return to appeasing my parochial family and Kara, who has been silent for the duration of the meal or conceivably too stunned by the extravagance of this manor, and Brendon and I are alone again.

I glance back at him, at that honeyed face of crying and prior betrayal, and form a promise with lips still salty from his tears. "I'll stay with you in here until you're ready, okay?"

And all he does is tie his eyes to his hands like he's ashamed of looking at me. Whatever's most comfortable for him, I guess.

~~~~~

A/N: I started writing this in Brendon's POV and then found a quote I was saving but it was in Dallon's POV so here we go for the first POV change within a chapter woohoo i'm suffering

aesthetic: the vibe from abandoned hospitals, the eerie sort of thing

~Dakotape