We're doing nothing, and by nothing I mean literally nothing besides stare at the wall and at the table, back and forth in the delusion that perhaps there will be something new resting there next time, but there never is, and our silence scolds us for it like we're dogs guilty of tearing up the pillows, or in this case our lives.

I already tore up my life in middle school when I was convinced that everything transpiring around me was my own fault instead of the tyrannical bullies', which would've been the more logical conclusion but nevertheless the absent one, and now Dallon is tearing up his with these fucking placebo pills that we all know aren't placebo in the slightest.

If we were to assess how they're operating inside him, one would find that it's more of the nocebo effect than the placebo effect, because he's not the same person he was when I first met him when he cornered me at the lockers to ask for directions towards the cafeteria, because that person was lively and joyous and practically skipping if not in his body then in his mind, and now I see a fragmented piece of glass that'll cut anyone who attempts to investigate the mystery of why he's so messed up all of the sudden, why he's pushing away the only people who care about him, why he's like this, why he made me love him for it.

I could've just detached myself from his life. There was no point in the excess of basically living with him once the tutoring profession was completed, because chances are people aren't generally intimate with their tutors like we are, so they could just run along and drain their existence until it's dry. I could just run along and do the same. I never had to engage in this relationship, but I did, and now there are stunning repercussions.

Maybe I shouldn't be so selfish, because everyone understands that people's problems don't just vanish when no one's there to witness them. It's the classic tree falling in the woods punchline but chewed up, spat out, and related to Dallon while it's doused in the oddly fascinating performance of well intended mutilation. Someone most likely would've assisted Dallon with his issues, but did it have to be me? Me, of all people. Me, who barely escaped bullies myself. Me, who now has to escape bullies that exist only in the mind, in my companion's mind. Me, who has no idea what they're doing and is scared as shit because they don't want to lose the only friend they've been able to maintain throughout their pathetic little journey to isolation and cup noodles.

I've tried helping Dallon but to no avail, as he's now sitting at the table and staring at the wall and back towards the wooden expanse for dining, and he's somehow content with that, with this open display of nothingness, and I just want to fucking cry. I can't, though, because I'm fucking stupid and anxious and dying inside, and my vibes will only worsen Dallon, so I wallow in the same silence that's been a cloud over us for almost an hour of nothing.

And I hate the fact that we're doing nothing, because that's what I've spent the entirety of my life doing, and I've missed out on many opportunities that could've lifted me from that flaming underworld of boredom, but they didn't, because I was too occupied by doing nothing, and I can't allow this affliction to plague me any longer than it's been plaguing me.

It's time to speak, and it's time for Dallon to listen, and it's time for my words to be heard by the one person I love without end.

"I want you to teach me how to paint emotionally."

This is the first sound reverberating around the room in an hour, and the thought is quite startling to Dallon, his whole body leaping like rocks on water the hue of his blue jay eyes, but he hastily recovers to make it seem like he isn't just as terrified of rapid changes as I am. "Paint emotionally?" His brow gaps his forehead in a finely pointed streak of dark hair, pleading tacitly for clarification.

"Yeah, how do you inspire yourself?"

"All you have to do is assay your emotions like you would assay lab data." And just like that, Dallon's back to his rampant game of silence, but I refuse to back down.

"Show me, then."

Without a word, still enjoying the conservation of quietness, a quietness that battles the pitter patter of Dallon's feet towards the art studio, my friend beckons me to a well of black, no other paints to be seen. "Sit."

I'm obedient, only because I fear that he'll once again surrender to the silence if I don't, so I marginate my back into a ruler to prepare for whatever it is that Dallon has planned.

My companion procures a paintbrush from an old cup riddled with butterflies that Kara crafted in kindergarten, and, bristles diving into the starlings' nest, he spears me with the color of the void.

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what Dallon is constructing entirely out of his imagination that's evidently set towards painting emotionally, but whatever it is, it'll be amazing and totally above my skill level.

Dallon's onyx breadcrumbs are also pins down my neck, spiking me on the apple of my throat and the arteries so vital to life yet so close to his fingers and to devastation, and each stroke is a singular masterpiece strung together on the clothesline of a person who could only survive in his world of art though never feels sorry about it, only offers his melancholic adventures to me but transmuted into security. "I'm going to share a piece of advice with you, Brendon, because I'm guessing you'll be in need of it soon: don't think you are helpless. After all, you can use your tears as paint, just as I am doing now. There is always something good to come out of your ador, even if you cannot detect it at first."

I say nothing, but I imbibe his words like they're the only important things in this world, and they might be.

"I would like to tell you a story. There is a room, a place flavored by the shadowed wolves of the night, whose only source of light is the vintage television propped on the rickety old table hiding in isolation. There are no doors and windows populating the area, no bricks puncturing the cohesive structure, no escape." Dallon halts his painting hand to gaze sternly into my eyes, as if to check to see if I'm okay, which I'm not, but I don't elucidate that fact. "Can you imagine it?"

I nod dutifully, still however stiff on the stool as the paint chips against the texture of my face, a texture approaching tears that will clash against the ebony like a forbidden romance culminating in tragedy.

"Good. Now, very few know about this room, but the select group that does say that no one lives there, but that, you must understand, is a widespread sophism, anyway innocent due to ignorance." He waves it off as if the details affect him in some way or another, though that couldn't be less true, because in the rare chance that he is among the select group who knows of this location, why would he be telling me?

"There is, in fact, a person residing in this wretched place, and it is a boy, a raven-haired teenager, positioned on the floor with legs latched to his chest, eyes domesticated on that archaic television that might as well be his only possession, and he comprehends that he wants something more, but he's trapped inside an area where he cannot acquire it, though he figures that the television is bundling answers inside of it with a commercial modeling eternal happiness, and all he knows is that he needs it, but he's too absorbed in his television program of depression to worry about obtaining that product anyway."

I shift in my stool, considering myself unwelcome in such a profession of authority over my friend's secrets. "Dallon, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Do you know this boy?" Dallon digresses, tone polished by sophistication and a hatred for my question. "He might be more familiar than you would think."

At first, I'm wondering how in the world I would be familiar with this teenager off in the desolate meadows of France in a box that some people know about but won't rescue him from, but then the pieces click together, and I form my answer. "It's you, isn't it?"

Dallon smiles in response, a nuance in the corner of his lips. "Spot on, mon petit ami."

I'm more confident in myself than I should be, so confident that the crow feather paint previously on me is now sloshing over Dallon's mouth like the Black Death, just as hot and jarring and murderous to our modesty, and every speck in peppermint bark belonging to this man is sweeter than it all.

"Je n'aime que toi," Dallon promises, just like always, but this time it seems like he almost forgot about saying it, like he doesn't mean it anymore, though I'm probably paranoid and stupid and wrong, because I am all the time, so I'm accustomed to this idiodicy and should just brush it off and say my fucking line. It's simple enough, for I at least mean it.

"Toujours, mon chéri."

And for a moment it feels like we are healed from the shards of one broken heart meant to be together.

~~~~~

A/N: lmao I just remembered something but spoilers

Quorkchop: how much has wolfstar ruined your life

Arkcharp: LITERALLY bi,,itch I cannot explain how much the love between remus lupin and sirius black kills me on a daily basis because I,,sut cannot

~DaCringe-Kid