Yet another bottle of sparkling apple cider sews a river from its tip to my wine glass, chased by an obsessive snarl from Gerard that mildly puts me off, but I only thank him for the consideration, but that's mostly because I realize that he's sacrificing his favorite beverage to allot some to the rest of us, and that means something special to him.

"Perhaps we should propose a toast," Gerard suggests, emigrating to his chair once his task has been completed and positioned in the space before him.

"You're really into this whole Christmas thing, aren't you?" I chaff, analyzing the soussouses of the carbonation inside my cup so that I can't see Gerard chastising me for being such a Debby downer.

"Never mind that." The host shakes his head, dismissing me for a reputation of stupidity, and he confronts the crowd strewn across the table. "A toast to our occupancy here."

Our glasses illuminate the dining room, shredding leather silhouettes within the crystal of the adjacent chandelier as they block the darkness from spreading anywhere else, and a chorus of "cheers" aligns the stars with our dinner party.

My wariness is ostensibly eternal, until my neighbor's glass coordinates with mine, and the air is wholly alive with Christmas spirit, so I lighten up for the traditions.

"Excuse us for a moment," Ryan pardons himself unexpectedly, scooting out of his chair and dragging Brendon along with him to an unknown destination. "We'll be back soon."

Dallon watches as the two boys dissipate from the room in a vaporific mélange, studying every move, every step, every nirvana of proprioception, and a conclusion is salvaged from the tumult. "It seems your friends always leave, Patrick."

Abomination brews inside me, leaves whirling as a precursor to a storm without questioning why I'm all of the sudden so angry when I'm never usually so worked up, but rage does not cease for logic, and that's idolized in an effigy cast towards my attacker.

"Don't listen to him," Pete instructs in a low bar, tantalizing my comfort with a sole tap of the knee.

Dallon detects the bond and leans back in his chair, cachinnating out of the farce of all of this. "You rely on Pete for everything, don't you?"

"I'm sure you wouldn't know what that's like," I divulgate. "No one ever liked you enough to offer that chance."

A sophic moan tunes Lindsey's larynx, and her glass prints the table cloth as she begins. "It isn't the time for this."

"You wanted us to resolve our conflict, so why not do it now?" is Dallon's defense, and though it's flimsy, it's the only thing that he can fabulate quickly.

"Because it's Christmas dinner!" the woman roars with a certain accuracy to her claim that neither of us care to admit. "Gerard, tell them."

Gerard is taken off guard, but he fleetly mutters a brief "yeah, you're right" before he continues to bully a mound of mashed potatoes on his plate, the entertainment from Ryan and Brendon vanished.

Frank, however, pipes up from next to his putative boyfriend with something actually helpful. "You can settle your dispute later, but you must remember that there are other people besides you at this table who are just trying to enjoy their meal."

"Right, sorry," I apologize, sinking into my food while queueing sporadic glances towards the assailant across the table. Belligerence still rends my neck, compelling me to add another thought. "You know, dinner table drama is part of the reason why I hate Christmas."

A tempest of exasperation undulates upon Frank's face, his stalwart solution lost in his own sea. "Just relax, Patrick."

"People like me don't relax," I contradict, hands mastering an earthquake close to Pete's. "They relapse." My head makes a beeline towards my opponent, crafted with danger and venom while concomitantly seething. "Isn't that right, Dallon?"

His sapphire irises vitrify into black glass through a manufacturing process of pure irascibility towards someone he used to love, irascibility towards someone currently berating him for being so bellicose, irascibility towards someone who's had enough.

Persisting through my attacker's silent mordancy, I display a plethora of vexing expressions to wind him up and usher the truth out of him, and the deluge soon floods in.

"How dare you," Dallon fumes, the handle on his fork barely pliant enough to contain his virulence.

My brows cambre in an unmistakably flexible manner, mouth parting in astonishment. "Oh, you didn't tell them?"

"Patrick, stop," Lindsey apprises, sheer panic shedding its mask in her chocolate irises, but I don't heed her warning, only pursue my old friend's nerves.

"I thought a cigarette addiction would be difficult to hide."

"Shut the hell up." Dallon's voice is a blend of spleen and misery, each like a blade to skin, but I deftly twine my wrists in bandages so that the magic won't transfer to me as it had to him, because it was in the end a life ruiner when he did this to himself before now in pretending he was all right, even when he cracked, and the tables have turned.

I was the ocean, and he was the moon, but I'm just now realizing that maybe a concept such as that isn't as productive as I had once thought. No one should control another like Dallon controlled me, because if this is the end result, it's clear how horrifying the outcome is, and we should all be running in fear.

We shouldn't be like this, whether I'm noting on two years ago or this very moment, because one is filled with despondency, and the other is filled with contempt, so weighing the pitfalls is just wasted time that we spend on bickering from a standpoint of delusion without considering the fact that even two years ago we were unhealthy and ugly and messed up teenagers who couldn't boss around their emotions with the strength at which they bossed us around, and we're the same people in that aspect, if not in alternate aspects by effect of hatred for each other, because our emotions seem to be ruled by outside forces, but we joined them together in the search of help that existed only in our paranoid conceptions, and we were lying to one another and to ourselves through it all.

We didn't riot, though, because it felt natural to depend on each other for emotional support, but we then grew into positions where Dallon was convinced that he was protecting me, and I still didn't testify, because I suppose it looked nice in my cage.

Now that I'm free, now that the moon doesn't control my waves, I'm ready to fight, because even if I drown in myself, I'm not hailing a meaningless rock in space, and through this the world has begun to think that I'm a person worth acknowledging.

Of course I don't utilize that power for anything fruitful though, because the moon is still the antagonist that made me love a battlefield painted with my crimson watercolors, and maybe that isn't so right. Maybe I deserve to live, to breathe, to break free from Dallon's force and hunt for a solace of my own without being bothered by the fact that it's eons away. It's not like I'll listen, especially not now, where Lindsey is reprimanding me for being so astringent, where she's so ineffective.

"Patrick, don't be a petulant child!" the woman scolds, a petrified circus touring her face as no fucks tour mine.

"Lindsey, don't be a hover parent!" I mock, fueled by the perpetually bristling Dallon across from me.

"I will be a hover parent if I need to, because you don't have the right to share someone's secrets without that person's permission."

"Well now you know," Dallon concludes, gaze frozen in amber with a monotone barely slipping past the wall.

"Dallon..." Lindsey's throat parches as her words break away into a futile gap of indifference, but her concern fails to affect my attacker.

Frank's hand crooks through the coal jungle of his hair, elbow hammering the table. "Can we just agree to drop this subject?"

"It's clear that Dallon is uncomfortable," Pete adds, and I notice that his touch has withdrawn from my knee.

"I've been uncomfortable for this whole trip." My teeth wrangle each other in their vehement brutality, pushing the phrase out.

Pete's jaw fastens a corset around itself with the indomitable talent of churlishness, and though his sentence is an ordeal to release, he does so anyway and damns the consequences. "Not everything is about you."

An equivocal light cremates part of my implacable umbrage, and I accost the man I previously thought I adored. "No, you're right. It's—"

"We're here, we're queer, and we're ready for Christmas cheer!" the infamous Brendon proclaims, roped to a giggling Ryan Ross in a web of fingers that neither hope to dissect.

"What were you doing in there?" Pete inquires, our darkening contact riven by digression.

"Come and find out." Ryan winks, and the guests slowly move to investigate the scene that the two kids have planned.

Brendon and Ryan lead us to the living room, which has nothing out of the ordinary that anyone can spy, but the two are grinning like idiots, so there must be something.

I accidentally bump into Pete, muttering a quick apology, and instantaneously, the Ross and Urie duo shriek in ecstasy.

"Look above you, rats!" Brendon instructs, tilting back on his hips with a laugh circulating his body.

Though confused, I do as I'm told, and on the ceiling I detect a sprig of mistletoe strutting to the music that prances in the background.

"Are you serious?" Pete chuckles, an indecipherable contortion adhering to his face as his limbs dial their surrounding hips.

"Positively" is Ryan's chirp, and with a sigh, Pete pivots to face me, beholding my shrunken frame in all its glory (or lack thereof).

The moment is pacified in anxious stares, in distant woes, in truly believing that hatred is possible in our relationship, but with the coming action, that notion isn't so far off.

Pete constructs a throne for my chin, breath tugging at mine with a bit more intensity with each second that our lips near, and the heat is becoming so familiar to me that I can smell the pungency of sparkling apple cider on him like a dear friend, but he slants away at the last opportunity, leaving me alone.

"No," he whispers, a sad smile drafting a tale of poignancy on his face, and I believe I am sincerely abandoned by the one I thought would stay.

Not even the voices did, and I presumed Pete Wentz rose above that standard each and every time I saw him, but both of us are always cloaked in mystery, and this is just the grand reveal.

Maybe he's always hated me, and maybe enough so to hide it.

~~~~~

A/N: this chapter went too quickly like I need to reminisce on Dallon's addiction

current vibe: when I was trying to hit the high notes of Bohemian Rhapsody in peace, but I could not find anywhere where my parents couldn't hear me

~(the next Freddie Mercury) Dakota