I'm more concentrated on my art than I ever have been before, and that's partially because Dallon refuses to speak, only catching his cheek with his hand and spiraling his paintbrush around and around aimlessly as if it'll suddenly morph into something beautiful, something he thinks he's not. That'll never happen, on the contrary, but I don't tell him, because I'm sure he would never listen anyway.

In fact, he hasn't listened to anything I've said in the past twenty-six minutes and eleven seconds (and counting), and it's as if he's a drone now, only programmed to swish that fucking paintbrush around on the carousel of his numbed fingers, staring blankly off into space where he thinks that he can be free from humanity's plague.

He can't, though, because it's always there, and I've tried the same as he has with no luck or outcome or anything other than frustration and an urge to try again, but nothing works, because you're still human just like the rest of the people around you, and both your biology and your mind are mundane spirits fighting against you, mundane spirits persuading you that there's nothing operating in the undergrounds of your own self, even when you've decrypted the slightest hint about the truth.

Dallon is familiar with this, and violently so, and he's quiet about what's really functioning inside him, about what those random checks on his paper resemble to him, about why he's not talking to me.

I've tested broaching the topic of why he left — unsuccessful with a dash of anxiety — or inviting him to the new movie that was just released — a blank response — or even Van Gogh, his favorite artist, but all that lies before me is a shell of a man, and nothing can wake him from his coma.

It is my hope that Ryan's arrival will light a conversation into our heads, for his regular loquaciousness is sure to prompt people into small talk at the least and affect their day for the better, if only a bit, but Ryan isn't here yet, so I'm forced to endure more silent minutes where Dallon and my roles have flipped, where Dallon is lazy about his art and I am avid.

Ever since he slid through my window like a vandal in the night, a vandal I've feared doing just what he did, Dallon has seemed somehow disillusioned by what he's already experienced with me, despite professing that any time he spends with someone he loves is magnificent.

His art is dull and dreary, his clothes are mismatched and sloppy, and his eyes, formerly so awake and gleeful, are now dulled not to a blue jay's feathers but to faded cobblestone trekked over by bombs. His hair follows no orders, instead trickling over his forehead while its roots are cramped by a beanie to hide the fact that he only cares enough to make it seem like he doesn't not care, just to please the public, but anyone can decry that the shallows under his eyes are not the same as the violet on his paper.

It's evident that Dallon won't be chatting with me anytime soon, and Ryan is late to school for a dental appointment but will be back within the class period, so I focus on the art that Dallon taught me to enjoy, to worship, to improve in my own fashion, and with that mindset installed into my brain, each cascading leaf of crimson and cobalt something special born directly from my paintbrush like scenery never before witnessed by mankind.

It's nothing much, but I extract the details from it so that it is, at least to me, and I feel that there's something to be said about my passion for this scrappy painting of a tree, because even though it's nothing from an art gallery, it's important to me that it was manifested out of Dallon's faith in my creative skills, a faith that is now lifelessly hovering over his own painting of nothing distinguishable, just a ballet of lines and dots and swirls, and as much as I labor to decipher what it all means (Dallon seems the type to pile significance into ostensibly ordinary things), there's just nothing, plain and simple.

Dallon notices my efforts and shields his paper from me with an arm strewn barely past the sheet, narrowly diverging from a blood splatter of zaffre, and he still doesn't speak a single word.

"Dallon, why won't you talk to me?"

Nothing, only the rhythm of my absently grabbed pencil upon the metal table.

"Dallon, you used to be so happy."

"I used to be a lot of things," he finally protests, transporting the radiation from his eyes unto me. "Things that are dead and gone, just like I am, and none of them are important anymore, as you can't even exhume them from their shoddy graves and estimate how much they were a part of me, because I hate them all anyway."

"So you prefer this drone of a self to your jubilant childhood?"

"My childhood wasn't jubilant" is his snarl, packed with aggression and shipped to my fragile heart. "My childhood was solitary and unbecoming. My childhood was a disappointment to my parents who only ever wanted me to pursue literature. My childhood is the reason I'm the mess you see today, so don't you dare assume that I've broken off of that time like you've broken off of your rationality."

Though a comment meant to calumniate my lack of stability in a world where the lines are bleared and confounding, it's more of a jab at Dallon's own atrocity, dictating that no one who chooses to be around him is in their right mind, so the only offense drizzled over my ego is an offense I drizzle vicariously over his.

"I'm all right, okay?" Dallon pauses until he can trap my attention within those gentle hands of his, and with my sheepish eyes he does. "I'm all right. I wanted to make sure you understand that, because I know that you're not all right."

I'm on the verge of crying — no, sobbing into Dallon's arms and never letting him go, because I know what will happen if I do, but this is art class with homophobes who despise any form of cracked masculinity, so I can only collect the waterworks internally as my organs mutate into pools and slides to accommodate them.

Because I know that Dallon's correct. I'm not all right, and neither is he, but we've somehow expelled a sort of levee system from each other for protection against ourselves, and that's all we need to survive, to just scrape by, and we're trudging through it together.

"Je n'aime que toi," Dallon whispers, allowing a blanket to cast shadows over his words and lure them into secrecy.

It seems as though I'm not the sole one he loves, reflecting on both his pills and his demons who have found a home in his heart where I thought only I could reside, but I'll exchange the phrase with him and personify his intentions.

"Toujours, mon chéri."

Dallon smiles for an abbreviated moment of three seconds, then selling himself to the wretched painting in front of him as if the treasure we just shared is as worthless as he views himself, and now we're both typified by a despair that's only smitten by the entrance of the perky Ryan Ross, sketchpad clasped to his side.

"Hey, guys!" His cheer is dissonant with the mood with which we previously struck our portion of the art room, but we eventually grow towards it, like moths to their fiery murder weapon.

"Hey, Ryan," Dallon mumbles, still perusing the utter modesty of his painting.

Grinning with a tad of irony, Ryan injects far too much bounce into his step as he sits down. "The dentist was fucking shit," he claims, reminiscent of a character on a kids' show who's more parts sarcasm than fervor and is attempting to showcase how much he hates performing for imbecilic children. "They put this shit on my teeth that tastes like the flesh from the roof of your mouth after you drink something hot (or like sprinkling too much parmesan on star-shaped pasta), and it's equally as pasty as their Caucasian asses, and it's terrible."

Everyone knows what Ryan's describing — the dreaded tooth cleaner that concludes the dental appointment and rushes you towards the water fountain to spit out as much as you can, but the dental assistant is asking you what kind of toothpaste you want before you can flee, and as you're struggling to speak with a mouth full of fluid, they'll tell you to swallow that pasty ass motherfucking cumshot of dentistry like it isn't the worst thing on this godforsaken planet, and you'll then disobey the dentist by eating promptly afterwards just to remove that horrible taste in your mouth, and it's odd to think that this is what Ryan has been doing for the past hour while he stranded me with an unconscious Dallon.

Glimpsing hastily Dallon's work in progress then guiding myself towards Ryan, I wish him one thing, the only thing I can muster: "I hope you had a great time."

~~~~~

A/N: "THE CUMSHOT OF DENTISTRY" WHY DID I WRITE THIS

Qualepeno: what's the worst part of the dentist for you?

Alepeno: the same part Ryan and Brendon hate

~DakoTEAR-IN-MY-HEART