Hugging Pete's headboard is a note whose name is unrevealed for purposes to entice the seeker, but all that's evoked is absolute dread as he approaches.

The note is a meager sheet of notebook paper sliced into an eighth of the page and taped to the bed, and that isn't so much to anyone who randomly glances over it, though the contents of the note are more ghastly than anyone could've predicted from first sight, so perhaps that serves as a dangerous trap without a proper disclaimer and is terribly life-threatening.

Pete's fingers tuck into the note, perusing its scanty message of only a few lines, and his jaw slacks with ambivalence.

If you value anything in your pathetic little life, you'll stay away from the petulant child you somehow love as Patrick Stump. You're better off without him dragging you down.

Pete decides through shaking contemplation that he'll just disregard it like he does anything annoying and meant to spook, because chances are this is just a prank and doesn't mean anything to anyone, for if someone were to so much as look at Patrick, they'd guess that he's the sweetest person they'll ever encounter in their boring lives.

Because it's fucking true, and Pete's been existing with that theory in his mind since day one in the Belleville Child Development Center where his soon to be boyfriend drowned in his inconsolable panic attack but Pete was there to save him, and ever since then, Pete's been vying for Patrick's love and has ultimately won it with ease once overlooking the turbulence they've confronted, but they nevertheless made it through alive, so there's no saying that their relationship isn't thriving.

So in that, that note doesn't mean a thing to Pete, because it's a falsification from the pen of a bully who has nothing better to do than slander anyone they can think of, and not even the bully matters in this situation, because he knows that he and Patrick are their own magnificent entities that just happen to flourish when together, so he parades from the room with his head held high.

Until Pete discovers another note, this time smaller to host a more laconic message, but maybe that plays no part in this, because maybe it packs more punch with yet again no warning delivered with it so that its reader will be sputtering for breath while choking on the blood of their sorrows and knowing that the accusation drafted on a paper means more than they thought because it's fucking accurate, and they've understood it for a while now.

The man is tense as he stoops to collect the note's harsh words, cognizant that this is no case of serendipity, but he proceeds anyway, though he shouldn't.

Just fucking kill yourself, you cunt.

He should've walked by it. He should've thrown the note away. He should've gone back to whatever he was doing and forgotten about it completely.

And just like the others who could've read this note, he knows that it's so fucking right, and though he already wanted to kill himself, realizing that others want the same thing is just absolutely monstrous.

It's a motive for anger.

~~~~~

His movements are slow — precise, but slow — with the weight of lead collaring him as he trudges through the hall towards the person the note resented half as much as it resented Pete, and his intentions are to be animated towards the scrap of paper, whether harshly or compliantly, and he's not really sure which one he's launching right now.

Pete identifies his target lounging in his bedroom with a book strewn in between his fingers as he reclines on the mattress without a worry in the world (or at least without a worry that's flaring at the current moment — people like him are always fretting).

"Patrick, I need to talk to you," Pete requests, ballasting his fist near the door without quite contacting it in a knock, uncertain if I'm prone to noise sensitivity.

Wary, I bend the book around my thumb and pat the bed twice to invite Pete to accompany me on it, which he does skeptically.

I had conjectured a more eager advance on me, primarily after what occurred last night and how we peeled ourselves of secrets, but from the torsion of Pete's hands, I can conclude that nothing changed for him. That, or he's incredibly stressed.

"You've been hallucinating, right?"

Pete knows that he's christening the conversation to favor my perspective instead of his, because the truth is that he's fucking terrified of what the note stores for him personally, and he'd prefer to discuss my many issues to avoid his own, and maybe that's selfish, but he doesn't give a fuck anymore, because every day is just another dive into hell as a last resort from his life not glowing with purpose anymore, and speaking about other people's problems provides a bit of substance in a world that lacks it.

Even so, I couldn't care less (except I kind of do), because I've never opened up to people without some sort of emotional spark, whether that's gloom, fear, or rage in the coating of parapraxis, and as far as I know, Pete's doing fine and is just at it again with trying to figure me out, so I'm not revealing myself to him.

"Mind your own business please," I command in an obvious show of passive-aggressiveness, disengaging my thumb's location in the book to continue reading, but Pete tosses the object to the side, causing me to shiver in astonishment.

Pete raises a finger as if a scolding mother, and I set myself up for something I can fight against. "You know, your stubbornness is really getting on everyone's nerves."

He absolutely abhors what he's doing, but he can't seem to stop, because the notes have hired him as an assassin of anything pleasant we contain in our relationship, and he's on a special contract that only breaks once we're destroyed, so I play along and pretend like I'm on the brink of hating him.

"Good. Maybe they'll leave me alone."

Pete detains my arm in a feisty clench, and suddenly I don't have to pretend anymore. "I'm always going to be here, whether you like it or not."

"Unhand me," I seethe through frozen teeth that inflict apnea on everywhere it can reach its grimy sins, but Pete is as stubborn as he claims I am, and he's twirling in a misnomer.

"No." Pete tightens the arrest. "If you say it doesn't do anything to you when people touch your arm, then this shouldn't be a problem."

"Your touch is full of hate, like it was when it first happened, and I guess the only reason I felt safe last night was because neither you nor Dallon hated me." I wrestle with my words in a ring of quaking, and Pete only views it as fuel.

A sigh burdens Pete's elocution, making for some leeway. "I don't hate you, Patrick, but if you're perpetually tenacious (and not in a fruitful way), then I might."

"If you don't hate me, then why are you doing this?"

"You need to improve yourself, and you need to stop holding me down." Anxiety chafes my companion's throat as his words bubble up, and some part of me dictates that he's remorseful, but the other part dictates that he's too susceptible to persuasion and is doing this because he has no fucking spine.

"I don't need to do anything," I bark, weaker than ever at the needles on my arm. "Please just let me go."

A tragedy of pain blemishes Pete's skin, pleading for something to grasp onto. "Patrick, I love you, but—"

I shake my head deliberately, calculating just how delusional my friend is. "You don't love me at all."

At my piercing comment, Pete's grip is reduced just enough for me to slip away and scuttle down the hall and into the same supply closet that Dallon kissed me in, where I can pour the mistakes from my lungs in clouds of sobbing that are audible from the entire house, but it's only Lindsey who comes to investigate.

"Patrick?" she peeps, somewhat smudged by the barrier of the door as she portrays a shy mouse that's scared I'll hurt her. When was that misconception inaugurated? Why do my friends fear me?

"I wonder how often you've seen me cry," I laugh through tears, but Lindsey only reposes with me in an embrace and doesn't respond to that question, because the answer isn't significant to her.

The woman squeezes me into her motherly comfort, hushing herself so that this exchange is reminiscent of a lullabye. "You know that I love you, right?"

"Pete sure doesn't."

"Well fuck Pete!" she exclaims, giggling soon after from the absurdity of this situation that requires us to be huddled in a supply closet with emotions drizzling onto our rationality. "He might've been in a bad mood, but he is helplessly in love with you. I've seen it."

I want to tell her that his bad moods take everyone down with him, that you wind up in a place you never thought you could be, that you're fucked along with him, but I stay silent like I've been doing for a while and convince myself that it's nothing.

~~~~~

A/N: lmao from now on, shit gets real

you've been warned

current vibe: when my friend bought that episode app and told me everything that she was doing on it (okay it's like rly weird)

~Nahkota