"Patrick, you have a visitor." Elisa's pigmentation sheens with elation, masking the apparent visitor behind the door to amass my own fervor.

Only moments earlier I had been enjoying a compelling novel about life in the seventeen hundreds on a mountain not much different from the one on which the Caribou cottage lies, with the plot development so gripping that its verisimilitude could be interchangeable with my real life, and it offers a more colorful approach to the dull actuality of this hospital room that I don't want to release for a visitor that I see every day.

Because Dallon never got his chance to frequent me, he's probably making his move right now without the memory that I behold his sapphire eyes very often, and that I hate it all the same. Being a regular at someone's party of existence doesn't mean that you're welcomed, but Dallon is egotistic and stubborn, so nothing is ever straight in his mind, chiefly with me.

Dallon, however, isn't the one that slides through the door, and I suppose I now have to give him credit for knowing his boundaries, even barely, though part of that donation resides in the fact that the person standing in my room is even worse of a human being than he is.

So much for not getting stressed out by visitors.

"Patrick!" the woman exclaims, and if this were any other person, they would be fraught with motherly love, but she does not love me enough to be my mother, and I do not love her enough to be her son.

"I'll leave you two alone." Elisa winks, shutting the door and neglecting the signal of begging in my body language.

Immediately after she leaves, my intentions are wholly political once discarding my apprehension with the idea that no one will help me anyway. "Why are you here?"

"I'm your mother," the woman reiterates, overexaggerated fibers of anger plowing through her words, if only quietly in the cognizance that anxiety will produce another seizure, and the payment is already growing too large (it's not like she cares about my safety).

"Only because disowning me would get you in trouble."

"Why would I travel all the way from New Jersey if I weren't your mother?"

I pick at my nails phlegmatically, enraging anyone who observes my caustic actions. "So you could pay the medical bills in person."

"You know, Dr. Saporta is helping me with bills," my so-called mother digresses, tone bouncier when it shouldn't be, when it should be far from the clouds and far from me.

I rebound from my nails, daunted. "Why the hell would he do that?"

The woman encloses herself in sheepishness, reminiscent of a school girl with a crush on some sexist kid in her history class. "Because we're dating now."

Part of me wants to laugh, but that would be inappropriate, although who really gives a shit anymore? My mother was the one who told me to be socially acceptable, and while I may have acquired some friends because of it, Pete Wentz is the only one that I love, and I'll always have social anxiety to screw me over no matter how many friends I keep.

"You're, like, fifty, and the last time I checked, you were still lamenting over Dad."

Tears corroborate the woman's emotions, conquering her elocution as well, but I'm not even sorry after everything she's done. "I've gone through the five stages of grief, and it's time to acknowledge the truth that he's not coming back, that I can move on with my life and not waste my time with him, rather waste my time with Gabe, and you just have to understand that."

First of all, this lady referred to my fucking psychologist, who is always about being professional with the use of his formal title, as Gabe, which is a nickname for Gabriel and goes against everything her new boyfriend believes in, so that leads me to question why the hell they thought they were compatible in the first place.

Yeah, calling people names doesn't decree whether or not they're a match, but it's odd how fluid Dr. Saporta is about this when I've only ever been able to address him with his title. In fact, I only recently unearthed his real name (Gabriel on the material I found) and was thoroughly disappointed at the result. Someone like him shouldn't be named Gabe, unless Gabe is some gross nickname my mother has for him, in which case I'm out of this tacky relationship and will live in the woods with Frank to make me sandwiches.

Honestly, we'd all have a good time in the forest, and as implausible as it sounds, life is so much more peaceful and serene in a setting like that, opposite of the bustling city life of the Caribou town and the vaguely murderous aura of Newark.

Until I can retreat from my mother's custody, I'll be forever stuck in the cycle of human life, which now includes Dr. Gabriel Saporta and exhibits nothing worthwhile for my future, and though Pete will be there, he's an interval amidst a majority of suffering, and if that's what I have going for me, I'm not surrendering.

"I don't want to understand, lady."

"Patrick, don't be obstinate," the woman groans in distaste, hands slamming through the air without the stomping feet to accompany them. "You know, you're such a brat!"

A mixture of spite and woe sterilizes any source of sensibility, and my insides rattle with candid evil towards the woman who purports to love me but is the farthest person away from that ideal. I want to whine about this situation, about how fair my mother is being, and I don't care if it's childlike, so I do it anyway and only stop at the notice of my doctor.

"Excuse me, ma'am," Elisa interjects, tumbling through the door and into the room. "I heard screaming, and it's not healthy for the patient to undergo large amounts of stress."

"Excuse me—" my mother's phrase is sliced by Elisa's authoritative order as she's pushed out the door by fiat of the hospital's rules, and my doctor yelps a brief "I'm sorry, ma'am, but this is hospital procedure" before permanently sealing the aperture.

Minutes later, rapping palliates the wooden structure of the door, and the doctor shrieks at the comprehension that it's my mother, back at it again with her problematic opinions.

"Mrs. Stump, please stop," Elisa shouts while nevertheless allowing the opening to be unscrewed from its hinges, but she is instantaneously taken back by the man paused behind the door, feline features anathemized by constant fretting to the point of investigating me himself.

For some reason, Gerard is out of breath, maybe because he's been increasingly anxious, maybe because he sprinted down the hall to get here so quickly, and the crook of his hipster frames displays this as he points to a vanished figure down the hall. "Patrick, was that your mom?"

"Unfortunately."

"Who is this?" Elisa inquires, intrigued by my admittedly handsome friend as she not so subtlety creeps towards him.

"Gerard Way," he responds with a flirtatious grin. His style of introduction has been misleading numerous times, yet he continues to perpetuate it without shame, and he hasn't learned from the instances where people were a tad too gullible for it. He's a people pleaser, I guess, and he gives no fucks about the consequences.

Elisa nods like the women from the book I was ready before my mother burst in and fucking ruined my life, a graceful and calculated bow. "Nice to meet you."

"Anyway." Gerard pivots towards me, latent ashes of damage anathetizing my doctor, and claps officially. "Pete was burned to shit without you."

I chuckle genuinely, marking the first anecdote since I was admitted into this hospital. "Glad to know he's faithful."

"I think he's by the vending machines if you want to talk to him." Gerard's brows are gentrified in fresh prospect, gesturing once more out into the hallway.

I glance over to Elisa for permission. "May I?"

Elisa debates it for a few seconds, then relenting. "Sure, just try not to stress yourself out while you're at it."

I don't contemplate why she's so concerned about me getting stressed out (using those two words very frequently), as she'd possibly relinquish my freedom to yet another hour of boring cartoons with slapstick humor for the masses, which I've hated since a child and would get me more worked up, so I only release myself through the door to expose my boyfriend.

The hall is packed with busy doctors and nurses, buzzing about their daily lives of saving the public and feeling guilty when they can't (a horror if you ask me), and after I unwittingly crash into a couple of them, the sight of Pete is blurring into the horizon and is the only thing on which I can focus.

"Pete!" I yell, joyous to see his figure looting a bag of animal crackers near the vending machines as I swing my arms around him and lure the man closer to me.

He laughs while I tug at his neck, then scaling his height in a straddle without the fear that he'll drop me. "Hey, buddy! Are you doing okay?"

"My mom came and told me that she's dating my psychologist, but other than that, I'm in good shape." My voice is as pleasant as I've heard it, atypical for the circumstances in which I'm legitimately suffocating, and the avidity wanders to my hands, scrunching Pete's misty shirt in a fist that broadcasts that I am, in fact, scared of falling.

"Well that's absolute shit."

My nose furls, inviting the strawberry fields into my lungs. "Having you here makes it better."

"Patrick, having you here makes everything better." And in hosting butterfly lashes and doe eyes, Pete's lips cast a shadow over mine and promise to never let me go, so I believe him, because I am hopelessly in love with a silent vow.

~~~~~

A/N: when you've got excess cunts in your story so you ship them together

current vibe: me taking a screenshot of when I got to 66666 words on this story (I also did this for my other book, Dove)

~Dakainta