"Hey, Brendon, can you get my binder from my backpack?" Dallon inquires, gently nudging me from my partial sleep. "That's sac à dos in French, by the way."

Slingshotting a curt laugh from my lungs once the grogginess escapes, I rise against the gravity of the couch to retrieve Dallon's binder, quipping, "I don't need French lessons."

"Well I don't need English lessons."

"Fair enough."

Upon reaching Dallon's backpack, the zipper shreds away from its loyal counterpart to reveal the contents of the bag, or sac à dos, as Dallon taught me only moments prior. However, what snags my attention is not his binder, rather a pill bottle reclining atop his books, a pill bottle that contrasts with Dallon's generally joyous personality.

I thought he was going to be a happy artist. I thought he was going to be the first. If so, why are these in here? He's supposed to be doing fine. What does any of this mean?

"Dallon, what is this?"

Dallon materializes from behind the door to the living room with a pleasant simper still rouging his cheeks, but once he spots the accusatory pill bottle clenched in my hand, his posture immediately crumples like his scarf. His glow is furnished with panic, his aura flickering on and off like a wearied light bulb. "You're not supposed to have that."

I hold the bottle farther away from him, though he's making no advance to obtain it again."Why not? Is it a secret you don't want to tell the people who care about you?"

Dallon's jaw scrabbles at the surrounding bones, knit boldly by annoyance. "No, because I knew you would freak out over it, and you are."

"Of course I would freak out!" I exclaim, jostling the contents of the medicine container as it follows my arms into the air. "I'm your fucking friend!"

Conflicted by my sudden anger, Dallon's tone slopes into begging, into a lukewarm drink. "Brendon, would you sit down with me on the couch? I would like to explain my case."

Reluctantly, I chase Dallon to the sofa with only the compliment of metal by my side as it drags me down, but that hindrance is discarded once I sink into the cushions.

Dallon toys with his fingers, twisting them around each other in positions unnatural to anyone else, and it requires my doe-eyed approval for him to begin. "The placebo effect is something that has haunted me for years, always cackling in the eaves of my heart. At first, it was just acknowledging the sensation that was the difficult thing. I hated it, turned away from any possibility of change, because as far as I knew, my life was messed up, and irreversibly so.

"In other words, the placebo effect was the phenomenon that woke me from sleep in a cold sweat and ordered me to write something down or else forget what I came to this earth to accomplish. It provided me a sense of authority that could never be revoked by anyone except myself, and I was hungry for that, you know?" Tears scribble over Dallon's bluebird eyes with a messy blade of chalk that everyone can see but only means enough to him for credit, and he swirls his hand into mine, compressing it, clearing his throat, struggling to continue.

"I thought that you could take pills without consequences, without allergic reactions and anaphylactic shock, and I was correct on that terrain. I could withdraw at any time, and it may not have been completely healthy, but it was a better solution than lorazepam or something equally as unstable. I could supplement my life with purpose, with a reason to rise from bed in the morning, with a dose that protected me from an abnormal mindset." Dallon nods to himself, as if still unsure that he made the right conclusion and nevertheless attempting to assure himself that he did.

"So I decided that fake medicine was the way to go, and I've always been interested in psychology, as you've no doubt already observed, and what better way to express that than an experiment involving the very thing that hollowed my heart for intrigue? Don't you think that it's harmless?"

I want to tell him no, want to scream it from the rooftops so that the whole world can understand that what he's doing to himself is reckless and stupid and so unlike the Dallon Weekes I know, the Dallon Weekes I would hate to lose.

But I don't say a thing, reminding myself that nothing I offer will ever matter to him, because he's just so fucking decisive about killing himself, and the pleading of those around him is just another trigger to push him along, to finally break him.

This is the mind of an artist, and not a single artist is happy.

"The nocebo effect is the opposite reaction, however, and it entails ghastly results, but that's not what's afflicting me, and I'm fine. I promise I'm fine, and that should be viable, because I don't lie half as much as you do. You can trust me on that."

And I look him straight in those blue jay eyes of his and tell him he's wrong. "No, I'm not sure that I can."

"Brendon." Dallon's voice is severed at both the r and the usually lovely connotations of my name, emotion disabling the coherence I once attributed to him for the bittersweet fruit of complete and utter turmoil.

"Don't think that you do not matter to me. Don't think that I would ever give up on you. Don't think that you deserve to die. Don't you fucking dare." I swipe away three fallen locks of hair towards Dallon's ear, and he shies away. "But don't think you can injure yourself like this. There's still a chance of you falling into a harmful cycle, into the nocebo effect."

"Why would I do that to you? Why would anyone do that to someone they love?" Dallon's mouth is partially agape, welcoming a centimeter of air into him as he waits for a response to his existential question, to his existential question that I could never answer.

But he's still waiting for it, 'cause he's so fucking clueless as to how I could blame him for downing the pills that he selected on his own, and I'll have to say that I'm unable to answer that question, because not even I know what my best friend is going through, and maybe I should, and maybe I shouldn't, but I nevertheless don't, and I'm paying for it now.

"Do you think I'd love someone while simultaneously torturing them like this?" Dallon's brows remain scrunched as he scours my face for some sort of solution, because none of this is making sense to him.

"The only torturous thing about this is loving you in return and having to agonizingly watch you suffocate."

"Then suffocate with me." And before I know what's happening, Dallon's lips splinter against mine, rosewood against cherry, artist against scholar, the world against us.

He tastes like winter, smells like peppermint and the good old days. He is the monochrome palette of his clothing, the only color on him the blues of his scarves. He is everything beautiful in this world, everything pure, everything worth living for, everything that he is extending to me so that I may acquire it, so I do. I tug on the strings surrounding him, like fibers of hair stroking the area behind his ears where they coil, and his shirt is suddenly ragged within my fingers as my body is in his.

Each breath is a scalding feather on my skin, scarlet petals cascading down to a blanket of snow and sinking wholly inside of it with a fluid rhythm of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until we thirst for more — more of each other, more of art, more of life.

Because we are magnificent, and we are art. We are the hues of paint gliding over each other as they fade into the sunset. We are each individual scratch on paper with the grey tones of graphite. We are an artist's frustration, depression, unfiltered rage at the world. We are each other's masterpieces.

I am prepared to love what I can about Dallon. I am prepared for late night conversations over a bottle of champagne and not worrying that drinking it is illegal. I am prepared for when those placebo pills aren't so placebo anymore. I am prepared for the tears that streak from relationships. I am prepared for the heartbreak, the anguish, the stages of loving someone so captivating, someone so destructive. I am prepared for anything that flies my way, and I am prepared to fight for Dallon Weekes.

So we climb through one another's emotions, switching between smiles and tears upon chipper mouths and batting lashes, and every word is treasured like it'll be our last.

"Je n'aime que toi" is Dallon's whisper. I love only you.

And that's all I care about. Not the fruitless aching of this town. Not the "rat ass" and "banging the rat ass" sticky notes on our foreheads in the morning. Not any of it.

Only Dallon Weekes and his knack for making me fall in love with him. Only Dallon Weekes and his faith in me. Only Dallon Weekes — forever and ever.

~~~~~

A/N: right, so like

I'm just apologising for this straight up savage bullshit I'm doing lmao

I feel like this was forced but this is only going to be around 50k words just so I can say I've written three novels and I guess there's not much space for relationships anyway (I'm just a lazy fuck, sorry)

ChinChin: Do you think this relationship was forced?

InChin: idk probably but some of you have been shipping it so

~DaCRAPPY-WRITER