My fingers fondle the length of the oak wall, shrouded in the black fabric that Pete did, in fact, store in his bag, and it isn't as worthwhile as I had envisioned.

I predicted vibrations of suppressed memories curdling in my fingers, and though they're ghastly, they're necessary, and like Pete, I just want to feel — feel the jagged texture of the walls, feel the erosion filing my skin, feel the reality of knowing why Dallon chose to wear those gloves, even when drinking a beverage with condensation adhering to the sides.

No one does that, not even me, and I consider myself the worthiest of employing archaic and abnormal methods to soothe my restless mind, but now the gloves are protecting my flesh with the utmost security, and I almost hope to wear them more often, but that would remind me of Dallon, and I've had enough of him.

This is only an experiment. I'm not...I'm not trying to die again.

But even so, milliliters of water swish in my lungs and subtract oxygen from the equation, and even though it is slight, it's phenomenally imperative that I attend to it before I drown, yet I've drowned many times before, and this is the rainbow after rain because of its gentility.

And despite the connotation of these gloves, I tear them from my body with disdain, banishing them to the floor so I won't have to look at them.

I am nothing like Dallon Weekes.

~~~~~

We're relaxing in the living room when the echoing screeching of the door reduces the beams of sunlight to nothing more than an unimportant detail.

The aperture eases open, a shrill voice punishing the person to whom it's directed, but judging by its wavering tone, the volume isn't often exercised.

"Gerard Arthur Way!" a woman shrieks, marching into the room with her fingers pinching her companion's ear. "Can you believe what he did?"

Pete and I trade befuddled expressions, soon projecting them onto the two people entering the place.

"Let go of me, Lindsey," Gerard complains, feet inching away while the rest of him stays stapled to the woman next to his crouched figure.

Her lips, padded by a bright red similar to autumn leaves, part to justify her case. "I saw this man cutting flowers from the garden I planted when I came here last." She turns to him, brows stressed. "You know how much I love those tulips."

Gerard continues to squirm in his friend's grasp, speaking through the cruelty being engraved into his body. "Relax — I just wanted to give them to Frank."

In Lindsey's excitement, her hands release Gerard's ear and primp for some gossip. "Who's this Frank?"

"Some kid he met at the club." Pete's hair folds over his extremities, eyes meandering around the room. "A lot like Stockholm syndrome, if you ask me."

Lindsey pivots towards the man next to her, trimming her hands to her hips accusingly. "You went to another gay bar?"

"Does he have a reputation for this?" I chime in from the end of the couch.

Lindsey addresses me with a withered sigh. "That's where he took me for my fourteenth birthday."

Gerard smirks, but after a prompt smack to the head, he protests, "Hey, we had a good time!"

"No, we did not. That guy who smelled like urine kept trying to talk to us, and we only got in because you pretended to be too drunk to function, so the bouncer just pitied you."

Gerard simply shrugs, defeated, and I use that as an opportunity to inquire, "So who are you?"

Lindsey exiles the wrinkles on her ebony skirt to the void, responding, "Gerard's cousin, though most of the time I'm just his overprotective mother, because he can't seem to do anything correctly."

Gerard starts to riot, but the woman hushes him. "I'll make some lunch," she declares, skirt billowing as she exits the room to prepare sandwiches.

Pete rises, shouldering Gerard as he migrates to another place while he waits for lunch. "Are you sure she's not your mother?"

A river of breath scuffs the eighteen year-old's lips, hand jostling his hair. "I don't even know anymore."

"Make sure to invite Frank over!" Lindsey yells from the other room.

As Pete departs with a straightness to his walk, he suggests, "Why not bring Dallon, too?"

Wonderful. I sure love that Dallon Weekes fellow, so much that it's like drowning.

~~~~~

"When is lunch ready?" the newly introduced Frank Iero moans, propping his feet up on the coffee table and hoping that Lindsey doesn't stomp in here and slap them away.

"Maybe if you actually got in here and helped, you could eat sooner!" the woman quips, voice extending from the kitchen.

I would've registered it as a joke, but Frank seems pretty intent on devouring millions of sandwiches, whom he proclaimed as his favorite food, his one and only true love, so he ascends from his chair without an objection to go and assist Lindsey.

And now that the air is devoid of one person, that allows space for the notice of one particular man, clad in thin suspenders and gloves just as dark, a smirk tinting the edge of his pink lips without a worry of repercussions for acting so arrogantly.

He dabbles with the unlit cigarette suspended at the cliff of his mouth, ruminating, "That Frank guy seems like a good kid."

"You're the kid. He's older than you," I bark, fed-up with Dallon's tangential observations that only he cares about but thinks everyone else does, even though palpitating eyelids and focus drifting to anywhere but him.

He hums in a prolonged tide as he develops an accord. "By one year."

"A year is a long time."

Dallon slants towards me, as if proposing a challenge. "Two years is a long time."

"And by definition, three years is a long time," Pete rambles, brows puckering. "Shall I continue with four?"

"I just like counting sometimes," Dallon rescues, lolling on the chair again. "It's interesting, how the numbers fit together and retain that certain merit to whomever beholds them, don't you think?"

"My math grades have been on a rollercoaster since ninth grade," Pete chuckles.

The cigarette trundles in Dallon's attenuate fingers, being studied by the person possessing it. "Yes, I abhor mathematics. The numbers are fascinating, though."

The cushions near Pete ruffle as he stands, smoothing down his pants as he pivots towards another room.

"Where are you going?" I demand, tugging at his shirt as he passes me so that he remains stationary.

A laugh escapes Pete's mouth, subconsciously condescending in nature. "To the bathroom — relax."

"Don't be clingy." A sneer elongates Dallon's bleached complexion, and it's awarded with a socially unacceptable hand gesture, but he simply giggles, amused by my ferocity.

I don't aim to supply Dallon with any more ammunition to gun me down, so my extremities unwind from Pete's clothing hesitantly, my anxiousness now quivering within my feet.

As Pete's frame disappears behind the wall, he assures, "I'll be back soon, if you're concerned about my wellbeing."

Cynosure flitting over a crinkle in his glove, my attacker refuses to acknowledge Pete visually. "Stay safe," Dallon warns as a compromise. "Don't fall in."

And drown.

Promptly after Pete is whirled away to another portion of the house, Dallon's face gleams with a business-like stare.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" My bones budge under my jacket, anticipating an icy comment from the man reposing in the chair across from me.

"You do the same." When my demeanor implies denial, he adds, "Come on — it's obvious. You hate me almost as much as you hate yourself, and everyone can see it."

I fiddle with the seam of a couch pillow, fitting it between my phalanges and sliding it out a moment later. "I didn't think it was that clear."

"Well it is, and people are going to start asking you about it." Dallon's words are draped in acerbity, decorating his ominous character with the precision of a blade.

My eyes circle around, shadowing my figure with a pillow that I've stopped playing with long enough to relocate. "I'm sure you'll love the attention."

"That's not the point."

"Then what is?" I roar, until my voice is subdued at the thought of Lindsey, Frank, and Gerard hearing from the kitchen. "Because all you seem to do is craft your sentences with a pinch of sarcasm here, a dash of animosity there, and I've given up trying to decipher whether or not you're legitimate about what you say to me, because you act as though reconciliation is on your mind, but you speak as though it's the farthest thing away."

Building an empire of egotism, Dallon twirls his cigarette between a slim finger and its partner, musing, "Reconciliation is an intriguing matter, now isn't it?"

"Perhaps, but why the hell would I try to reconcile with someone like you?"

A leering smile brands Dallon's face, disgracing him as a lascivious criminal who can't be trusted. "Because I meant something to your petty brain, if you don't remember, and you don't relinquish that because of a few psychologists who tell you that it's beneficial. You never listened to anyone except me, and though you're bombarding my apparently terrible head with hatred of the past, you're still sitting with me when you could be making lunch, and that's a fantastically infatuating thing. You want to be here, because you absolutely crave our time together."

"That's a lie." I leap from my chair, but Dallon restrains me with the posing of a finger.

"Is it?"

"O-of course," I stammer, descending into the cushion once again as confusion fogs my contemplation.

Dallon's hands pressure the armrests, climbing and dissociating from me. He pauses by the door, sentencing the cigarette to its last ember as it tumbles to the floor and closing with his final words. "Once you sit down and weigh your options, you'll come to understand that I'm not quite the villain you think I am."

And then I'm alone.

~~~~~

A/N: oh my gOD dallon is a bitch

current vibe: when I told my friend that she lives in a condom and the rest of my squad just accepted it and now we casually refer to her condo as a condom

~Dickota (get it cause a co,,,,ndo,, m)