Human festivities are all I see around me: a large Christmas tree looming overhead, variegated glasses of liquid spilled on the counter, commercialized music being strummed through the speakers. Christmas in general.

I'm pretty sure no one in this house has ever had a knack for spiritualism, which makes it all the more enticing when we sing Christmas carols about our love and devotion towards the savior, Jesus Christ. It's all in the irony, I suppose.

Gerard carries a drunken stupor, though only by saturation from the sparkling apple cider, as he dances clumsily with Frank, proving to be quite the struggle for the shorter boy in the ugliest yellow cardigan I've seen, most likely to be more ironic than all of us.

Dallon only observes from the corner, Lindsey chatting away and thinking he's listening, his sapphire eyes capturing many sights before settling to a seismic cessation on me, who unfortunately happens to be a lonely fellow in the opposite corner with my best friend swept away by the flamboyant Brendon Urie as Ryan wrestles to hold on to them.

Dallon's hand protrudes cautiously to stop Lindsey's bubbling personality, and he rouses from the sofa to offer me a dance.

"Why would I dance with you?" I scoff, backing into the wall until there's no place left to go.

A smile reflects the mood of the glittering lights around us, and his voice portrays a standard Victorian man on a holiday. "Because it's Christmas, and the spirit is in the air."

"It's just another day out of three hundred and sixty-five."

"Your friends are watching," Dallon reminds me through unnecessarily gritted teeth, and before he can progress with any manipulative schemes, I enclose my fingers around his gloves and lead him into the foyer, where the aforementioned chaos proceeds.

"I hope you're having a nice time," my attacker wishes, vision absent from me and twirling through the room with the dance skills he's never had.

"Not really."

"That's a shame."

"Hmm," I say, loosely witnessing the other events flicking the air with their holiday joy of which I will have no part, such as Gerard dipping Frank and almost dropping him, or Lindsey rising to put Ryan out of his misery of trying to dance with both Pete and Brendon and tangoing with him instead.

"You used to love Christmas," Dallon reminisces, oblivious to my lassitude.

"I used to love a lot of things." My spotlight then subsides onto him, austere. "Including you."

"But now there's just hatred, yeah?"

"Basically."

Dallon chuckles dryly, fake merriment tarring his disposition that I know to be malevolent. "Won't you lighten up for Christmas?"

"Not likely."

"I've noticed that your answers have been getting shorter." Dallon nods in agreement with himself, considering his hypothesis to be stable.

"Like my patience with you."

"Ah, that had more words this time!" he chirps, muscles tensing from thrill underneath my quivering grasp.

My blood is cleaned with ice, having had enough of this man's antics. "I hate talking to you. That's why I don't say much, and you should've recognized it sooner from the way I abhor your presence."

No signs of damage stamp Dallon's face, but I still assume them, for he's always been adept at shadowing his emotions beneath arrogance. "You really detest me that much?"

"Absolutely." My stare antiquates the conversation until it's obsolescent to travel on, but Dallon is persistent as hell, so he only elongates the strife, just as he elongated our relationship when it should have ended immediately after my psychosis screening so that I couldn't harm him and he couldn't harm me.

"I didn't think I did anything wrong." Dallon synthesizes two parts of pretentiousness and genuine obtuseness to invent a concoction of my utter hostility towards him, and in no way am I thankful, even for the opportunity to degrade him further.

"You're still here, aren't you? Remorseful people usually vanish."

A smirk lightens his mouth, acting as though he's achieved something important in annoying me. "Not this one."

"Pity," I drawl, hastily clenching his shoulder before releasing it again, just enough to tell him that his existence here is a blight upon the cottage, and that spending Christmas with us isn't going to persuade me in favor of him, no matter if it's a season of cheer.

I notice that Pete's broken up with his partner of Brendon to grant Ryan a chance with the extroverted nymph, and he's now ambling towards me with an ambivalent pigmentation to his skin.

"Would you save me from this beast?" I pretend to jest, but the connotations still lie beneath, and Dallon partially understands them but says nothing.

"Uh, yeah, sure."

"He's just kidding about me being a beast," Dallon soothes shakily, but Pete is skeptical.

"No, he's not." And before Dallon can reject the statement, I'm circumscribed by the dance floor and Pete's contact with me, and my attacker's complaints are but background noise.

Our puzzle pieces join more fluidly than mine had with Dallon, an ambrosial bud within the Christmas tree from the upbeat music watering its poised figure as it blooms, and every step is calculated — not by the mind, however, but by the heart, and that's more than I can ask of my attacker, who is most frequently glib in an amnesic coating and not worth my time.

But Pete Wentz most definitely is, and his feet, licking the dance floor with more elegance than I've ever seen, reflect the mental opulence at which his grace only hinted, and I'm now experiencing it for myself.

That's far away, though, farther than I've ever been, and staying cooped in my room won't boost my ambitions, only smother them, but there's something about Pete Wentz that tempts me into believing that I actually left the enclosure of my house, and though I hate lies, this one's different, because it makes me think that I did something worthwhile with my life, something that people insist is already there but is the consistency of nitrogen to me.

What's right here, on the contrary, is just as blissful as anything else that could pass by the window of the train heading towards paradise, and that paradise exists with the man locked in a messy — yet guileless — fandango with me, and if I ever doubted heaven and hell before, that notion is just a fallen petal outside of its vase, where it ultimately doesn't belong.

Some part of me would argue that I, too, don't belong, primarily as Pete's dance partner, but nothing has stopped us, especially not Dallon, which serves as a surprise to both me and him, an electrical arcana shredding our cohesion as Pete is unaware of the whole situation.

That doesn't stop him nevertheless, for his face marvels at the stentorian melodies, occupying shapes of music, lights, and decorations, and it appears as though he aspires to share his discoveries with me. "I just love Christmas," Pete gasps, Indus River locks cradled in the buzzing cadence of yet another holiday song.

"I don't see what's so great about it."

Pete clutches his breath to him, aghast. "What about the carols? The snow? The ornaments? Surely you at least didn't forget about pumpkin spice lattes." Noting upon my lack of response, my friend's face is shot by mishap and disaster. "Patrick Stump, you complete and utter killjoy."

"Pete Wentz, you complete and utter white girl."

"Whatever," he retorts, rolling his eyes. "I actually accept my quite admirable title, so you've already been upstaged, kid."

"Dork."

"My little cabbage," Pete remarks, preying on my nose for a one-sided kiss that I shove away in disdain and a bit of laughter.

I chuckle faintly around the creeping flute of the current song, disrupting our dance to push my friend a few inches to the left. "Pete Wentz, anglicizing French terms since he could talk."

A shrug pliés within my companion's shoulders, collecting a cool manner throughout our bantering. "Or since I became a hipster."

My brows fill to the brim of my forehead, a daunted aqueduct upon my flesh. "A white girl and a hipster? You're full of mysteries."

"So I've been told." Pete winks.

"Please tell me that wasn't a sex joke."

"Would it kill you if it were?"

"Nearly." Through my consternated ilk, a giggle cues my vocal chords to react, and soon the entire hall is veiled in splendor for no reason other than to release our guilt, and it's nice to do so, but the reprieve ends when I monitor the absence of coloration on Dallon's face, just a shell nestled in the corner, but I don't let it sway me.

The moment feels like a long gone justice that has just staged its grand reopening, and it's my unspoken duty to savor it until the sun endeavors to point its toes above the horizon without prosperity, but I do my best anyway in order to gift my friends a merry holiday.

It's Christmas, apparentlythe time of generosity, and it's time I become generous towards myself.

~~~~~

A/N: I forgot that I needed to add another scene to this, so I'll just make a new chapter whatevs

current vibe: when my history teacher showed us "the men who built america" and when he saw nikola tesla he was like "who's that handsome guy in the corner" i'm cry,gning

~Gaykota