"Pete!" Gerard hollers, rousing both of us from our deep slumber in each other's arms, then becoming quite surprised at what he's witnessing. "Oh, and Patrick, I guess."

Pete disbands Gerard's suspiciousness with a question strung in a groaning lyric, forcing himself upright. "Why are you waking us up like this?"

Gerard deliberates for a few seconds, still registering the scene where I'm in Pete's bed, but he eventually catches on with a goofy grin. "Oh, we're going fishing."

"Who thought that would be a good idea?"

"Frank, and he was pretty insistent on it, too, so suit up."

I roll my eyes. I thought he was only interested in sandwiches.

~~~~~

Both the wind and the persevering Pete Wentz manicure my cheeks in shades of flamingo with kisses made sharp by the extreme weather as they manage to grasp their fishing poles effectively while they dip into the frigid water in search of a creature that they'll never collect but still retain the ambition to, but ambitions are useful, I presume.

"Patrick, are you hoping to catch something?" Frank asks, leaning over while maintaining a close surveillance on his rod.

"Not really. I'll just watch."

"Are you sure?" Frank reinstates. "Fishing is really fun."

"Is that why you dragged us out here?" I jest.

No response, only a sly smirk before he returns to his activity that at least holds some significance to him but not to me, and that's why I'm so bitter about everything, though I'm performing well at seeming somewhat entertained. I never learned to fish, but I don't want to, either, judging from the monotony of it.

The boredom of this is overwhelming to the point where my feet scream at me to be rested, but I'm so stationary, just fixedly gazing into the distance, that I can't respond to my body's wishes properly. I just don't understand how people can exhume pleasure from an activity so dull as this. The main goal is to wait for a prolonged time just to discover that no fish have clung to the hook. Where's the profitable experience in that?

A slight glint in the water has my head turning its direction after breaking from my gaze towards the horizon, and my feet soon step into gear to stride to it in the only fascination I can derive from this tiresome excursion that everyone but me is somehow enjoying.

It appears to be the first fish we've encountered in the thirty minutes we've been out here, soaking in thinning patience, and it's a magnificent one at that. Its scales rage with color, and its grand size would surely earn someone a spot at whatever fair they choose to attend. I guess I love my friends enough to alert them to this beautiful animal, but Pete's already behind me before I can utter any coherent syllables other than the ones produced by shock.

"What's that?" my boyfriend inquires, deeply intrigued by the spectacle.

"I don't even know how to fish. Do you expect me to identify every animal on this planet?"

He claps a hand over my shoulder as if condescending me for an anger that is surely placed correctly, which only fuels me more. "Relax, Patrick."

"I'm not a child." I cramp my fists together, admittedly something a child would do, but I don't care, because Pete's a person who's supposed to support me no matter what, and that's the opposite of what he's doing most of the time.

"The note would disagree," Pete contradicts far too casually for this situation. "So would your mother."

Now I don't particularly care for my mother, but seeing her used as a reinforcement to Pete's argument, to an argument designed to slander me for being so fucking socially unacceptable, like it's my fault I was paired with autism, is absolute shit. In addition, Pete shouldn't be reminding himself of the notes, as one of them instructed him to kill himself, and if he's dwelling in holes such as those, that's productive for neither of us and is potentially dangerous to anyone who ever loved him.

"You know what?" I snap, addressing my companion with my teeth tied together. "Fuck you. You're being the child right now, and you know it."

Pete accosts me from the front, gathering himself so that he's all I can stare at while I speak, eliminating any barriers between us and summoning an eerie ambience to the cloudy skies. "Patrick, I think we're both overreacting, and—" Before Pete can wrap up his sentence, he's plunging into the icy waters from a careless mistake involving the fumbling of the feet, and he's slipping away faster than ever.

"Pete!" I shriek, hands covering my mouth to stifle an agonized gasp.

Immediately, Dallon is rushing to lift Pete out of the water, assisted by Gerard and Frank, but the victim is already being anointed by sickly blues and purples and may be already lost, but we aspire to save him anyway, with desperation mobilizing our actions.

Pete sputters and moans on the dock, a tremor eulogizing him while already planted in his funeral attire, because it knows that he's been claimed for death, and as much as we'd like to salvage him from the cold, only a portion of his health remains.

"Lindsey, get some fresh clothes from the house," Dallon directs, then shifting his focus towards peeling away the drenched layers from Pete's trembling body and wringing out his hair. "Patrick, don't just stand there."

"I-I—" I'm almost as shaky as Pete — anxiety is a bitch — and it's like I'm glued to the dock with nothing to detach me.

"We may hate each other, but let's put aside our differences to help someone, okay?" Dallon glares at me for a couple moments, then proceeding with his work as I lethargically move to aid him, the glue abruptly slick and fluid so that I'm free.

Lindsey is back with towels and clothes, which we hastily drape over Pete's shivering figure as one of our many labors to fix him. "His breathing is shallow, and I can barely detect his pulse," Lindsey notices.

"These are all symptoms of hypothermia," Dallon includes, movements more frantic than they had been only seconds before. "We have to get him to the hospital."

How does Dallon know so much about hypothermia? Did he take some sort of class for whatever weird reason? Why does he even give a shit about Pete when he's the one obstructing the path to me? Why am I listening to him nevertheless?

Woken from my anxious trance, I nod. "Uh, yeah, we should do that."

Partnered by Frank, Gerard hoists Pete over their arms and transports him to the van to ship him towards the only place that can help him more than we can, though we're all unsure of how much more.

Then we're all loaded into the van, and before we can shut the door, Gerard is already taped to the pedal and is speeding ahead, down the mountain, through the trees, into the town, and fear distills the air all throughout the way.

Pete is barely conscious as I whisper a lullaby into his damp hair which used to be so vibrant in hues of black in and hues of metaphors converted to the present circumstances, but now the locks are merely shampooed in hypothermia and tugged until they're dry, though that dryness only transpires when he's dead, so I'm grasping the last bit of life he has if he can't do it for himself.

My stability rocks back in forth with each mile the car travels, rolling over pavement and hitching at the bumps with a brief yelp and the notion that if we don't hurry, Pete could die, and I will be alone henceforth, and maybe I shouldn't be concerned with my isolation, as I've been locked up for a few years already and it won't be much of a change, or better yet because Pete's life is worth so much more than my benefits from it, but we remedy each other, so that phenomenon is more parts mutual than petty.

That remedy will vanish, however, in a matter of minutes because of that fucking ice that had to be so fucking cold, and perhaps it was my fault instead of the ice's for quarreling with Pete right before he fell, so I'm just relying on the manifesto that I fucking hate everything and everyone. Even so, I find it strange that the water with which I love to describe him is the one bound to ruin us in the end, so I suppose it's irony's fault then.

I have quite the knack for irony, chiefly the silence that everyone subconsciously wishes for and crumbles in when it arrives, and I'm just now realizing that the silence is actually death and my two favorite ironies are cooperating with each other.

I shouldn't be desiring that effect, though, and I don't care if it's turning my back on everything I ever strived to achieve, because Pete means too much to my world to dismiss for something as trivial as irony, but he's fucking dying, in case you haven't noticed, and soon I won't have an incentive to deny irony any longer.

However, I've grown to detest it and would much rather believe in the memory of Pete Wentz than find myself praying for the silence to purify me again, and to prove it to my restless mind and harrowing past, I nestle into Pete's hair and cross my fingers that it'll all be over soon for me and nowhere close to it for him.

And it's a bittersweet insomnia, because we're resting, but we're resting in a dull reality and in flushed eyes, and it really means nothing to be asleep when alterations have been made to torture us with the effects of agitation from never being able to repose in a place we could call our homes, because we've been lost for a while now, and every being takes advantage of that with great excitement.

We're never lost when we're together, on the contrary, and I know that I'm about to be thrown back into that void if Pete passes into the grave, so I only grip Pete tightly and prepare to wrestle death when it comes for him.

~~~~~

A/N: lmao kids idk what to say

I'm not even sorry I just don't like happy endings

(don't worry, though, bc there are 51 chapters in total)

current vibe: when I went to target and spotted two emos who complimented my twenty one pilots shirt

~Duhkoota (that's my hipster name according to the hipster Beque-ah)