"Explain." Lindsey's gaze is as contriving as I've seen it, unsuitable for the generally cheerful crunching around her eyes, and it elicits a fluctuating kind of terror within both Dallon and me, broadcasted by our reserved posture inside our parallel chairs as we confront the now conciliatory Ms. Ballato.

"There isn't anything to explain." My legs are becoming nomadic, willing my attention to follow it on its journey around the room, and to any person who doesn't know me, it would seem as though I'm lying — and truthfully, I am.

"Hush," she settles, pinning my mouth shut with a simple sound (it's not like I dare to cross her). "Dallon, what is your bearing?"

Charged by the sudden limelight beating down on him, he omits my anxiety for a priggish grin. "Well..."

"Don't ask him!" I interrupt, like a child hell-bent on getting their way. "He'll warp the story until it favors him!"

"Who's to say you won't do the same?" Lindsey attunes her brow higher on her forehead through the iniquitous silence, prosecuting me for a trained lie that I could never develop without partial verity.

"I don't tell lies."

An incredulous laugh flowers in Dallon's throat, but Lindsey gags him with a poised finger, beseeching me to continue.

"Will I be obliged to take you into different rooms for interrogation, or are you going to be cooperative?"

That threat extinguishes our squabbling, and the woman's mouth grips in endurance.

"Let's start with questions, shall we?"

Dallon and I nod sluggishly, resuming our fight within our peripheral vision so that Lindsey won't come over here and slap us for being so immature.

Put off by her own finesse, Lindsey leans forward onto her knees to obtain a more affable composure. "What launched the schism?"

My attacker exchanges a peculiar look with me, unsure of who will commence the answering process.

"Apparently having a psychologist is something to be ashamed of, according to Dallon," I dictate, stare hollowing out Lindsey's caliber as a distraction so that I can't view an objection from the assailant reclining beside me.

"Never said that," Dallon contradicts, burrowing his feet into the coffee table that's dismembering us from the currently cold-hearted woman. "Just didn't think you'd be the type."

"You've only known each other for a few days," Lindsey protests, bewilderment misting in her chocolate irises, the exact style as Gerard had when he said the same thing. "How do you determine if he's the 'type'?"

Musing percolates Dallon's flesh, an impish gleam mooring his lips upward. "Interesting, isn't it?"

"Hmm?" Lindsey's now even more miffed than she was, and it seems as though Dallon takes pride in her confusion.

"Interesting how I know so much." My attacker's direction aims to earn my recognition, a dart of hostility, only visible to me, nicking my casing.

"Anyway..." Lindsey's vision crosses between Dallon and me, examining the connection. "How did you interpret his remark, Patrick?"

"It was obvious that he was maligning me." I glance over to see a bemused Dallon, shaking his head towards his lap so it appears an internal monologue.

Lindsey is skeptical, depicting an alternate impression. "Was it?"

My hands soar through the air, exclaiming, "He's doing it right now!"

"Yet I wouldn't call for a fight, now would I?"

Dallon's brows tango, grateful for someone on his team, and that's the only action in the quieted room, the rest of the void being my guilt for opposing Lindsey's superior verdict.

"I thought you were neutral, your only goal to adjudicate," I demur, surveying my friend. "I suppose that's not valid anymore."

A sigh cuddles into Lindsey's esophagus, distressingly vivid. "Patrick, I'm trying to be as fair as possible, but you must understand that not everything is inclined towards you."

"No, of course not," I mutter, and even through my anger Dallon's face dips with empathy, degenerate to his normal behavior, and the nostalgia glows with the most fervor yet.

He used to be so compassionate, always looking out for me amidst a crowd of hawks that reside only in my brain, cooking meals when I wasn't capable of doing so, authentically harried by the prospect of my fate, what was to become of me, and perhaps that man isn't so far away.

But even so, Dallon Weekes is not entitled to my pity, and it's the snobbish sheen that characterizes him that proves it's his choice to be such a cunt, and I shouldn't be enchanted by him, yet when those sapphire eyes imprison me within his authority, discipline isn't beneficial to my motives, and the reigns I once clutched so tightly now slip from between my fingers like smoke.

And it's an antagonistic thing, because Dallon James Weekes devastated my life, and here I am, mulling over why he is, in fact, a good person, but it should be a lie. I should be brushing his idiosyncrasies away without a thought. I should be cursing his name instead of shivering at its sound. I should be breaking eye contact with him after a curt scoff, but I'm not, and I'm fucking horrified at myself for being so naive.

Because I've acknowledged that his personality will forever clash with my reputation for him, but everything has become bland, and that infirmity doesn't mean as much as it used to, so if it's my duty to abhor Dallon, only a minor clamor still exists, and I will defend myself.

"Of course not everything is inclined towards me, but some things are, and you should be one of them, because I am not at fault."

"Your reasoning is fallacy," Lindsey traverses rather bluntly, blinking here and there to hammer through the ice.

"Do you want facts then?" I lament, conniption paining my voice. "Because there aren't facts in emotions!"

I know that Lindsey's attempting to be courteous, but indignation curbs her rationale, a burdened brook of air tripping from her lungs. "I realize that, Patrick, but—"

Tears block my ability to allow my friend to finish her sentence, advocating my own tragedy. "I can't tell you what Dallon did to me, but you, of all people, should comprehend that if I maintain a convicting astuteness towards someone and display it outwardly, it's not some petty case of paranoia."

Lindsey's hands fructify in the surrounding oxygen, cataloging the situation's structure through my antipathy. "I never said your paranoia is petty, and if you haven't noticed, I'm playing a nonpartisan figure, so not everything is about you."

Dallon's sapphire oculi germinate in a stupor, gladly appalled at Lindsey's vindictive line thrust at me without a proper warning, and just when I suspected that his soul was transferring to morality, he does stuff like this, mocking and stone-like.

"He's merely irked by my conduct, aren't you?" Dallon fathoms, and a slow nod governs my body.

Why the heck would my attacker do this? This is an argument between me and him, so shouldn't he be supporting himself, even if it's biased?

No, because Dallon Weekes is a capricious asshole who can't be trusted, and any time you think you have him figured out, he strikes back with the polar opposite calamity, and you're off-kilter once again until the course repeats.

I can't blame Lindsey for needing to anatomize this circumstance.

"Yeah, I'm just irked," I agree, striving for a reason as to why I'm forthwith dreamy.

"Then is that all?" A contented smile fulminates a visage made ghostly in contrast to Lindsey's popping matte shade, and she excitedly awaits the answer after a long while of prying.

Dallon responds without my input, recompensing the smile and saying, "It should be."

"That's fantastic!" my friend blurts, annihilating the folds of her skirt.

"Totally dandy," I grouch while I explore the terrain of my nail to obviate their scrutiny.

"I'll be leaving then," Lindsey announces, cheekbones perched decisively on her skin as she beams at her work.

"Great, yeah," Dallon greets and is flung back into reality from a temporal blank lasting only a second in my general direction. "Have a good time."

"Just...try not to pester each other any more." Her brows crumble with a melancholic sincerity, and remorse dampens her gait as she exits the room, abandoning us for silence.

Almost immediately, Dallon captures my tenacity with a fierce leer crumpling his garnet mouth, and in a reciprocation of my prior advance, he pegs my shoulders deep into my chair. "What the heck do you think you're doing?"

A train of phlegm inches down my throat at a weak command, burning with my own anxiety. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean." Dallon's stinging words sear his lips, each syllable toting half a ton of lead through agonized screams whose whereabouts I cannot pinpoint.

"Don't stand up for myself?" Suspiciousness is strung from each point of my voice, enraging my attacker, though only within his soot-tinted heart that he never extended to me, and the victory is beautifully sweet.

Dallon narrows in on me, his breath a concoction of cigarettes and decay, and a whisper delivers a greater blow than a punch. "Don't cry wolf."

And just like that, he's gone.

~~~~~

A/N: everyone in this chapter is pissing me off idk

current vibe: when I was uploading this to AO3 and realised rich text would've put in my italics

~Dalloota