Peroxide (Peterick)

these titles are like panic songs

"Where is it?" I shriek, sorting through the piles of clothing and useless trinkets in my bag that I hoard anyway. "Where did it go?"

I wouldn't make a scene about hydrogen peroxide at the hospital, but this isn't the hospital, now is it? Just because I made a promise doesn't mean that I'm not fighting against the leash that holds me to it, but that doesn't really concern me now, because I'm out of the hospital and can make as many scenes as I'd like.

So I do, and I perform them without remorse, but they're emerging on the opposite side of fire, and my peroxide is still nowhere to be seen.

"Are you looking for this?" a mysterious figure taunts, and as I pivot to face him, it's my own friend, the feline man with whom I share the residency of this cottage.

"Yes, and may I have it back?" I pounce to capture it for myself, but Gerard dangles it farther away from me, expecting an explanation.

A challenging stance accents the man's entire demeanor, frightening me if anything. "Depends. What are you using it for?"

Put off my Gerard's new personality, I wring my bones under the milky terrain of my flesh and subdue my volume. "None of your business."

"It is my business, because I don't want you hurting yourself." This sentence is unwaveringly on the kinder end of the line from what Gerard said earlier, but even so, this kind of authority is unnerving and the thing I hate the most.

"It's not your job to guard me."

"As your friend, it very much is," Gerard contradicts, grip cloaking the bottle of hydrogen peroxide in suffocation.

"Just give it back." I reach for the liquid, but Gerard once again thrusts it away, continuing to pry.

"What do you need it for?"

"Why do you care?" I scream, arms inverting gravity.

"I'm your friend!" Gerard responds with just the same intensity.

Finally my tone slopes downward, but spite still coerces my speech. "Not if you're doing shit like this."

Gerard's brows stale with equal portions of anger and chagrin, genuinely oblivious to what's happening in my sorry little head. "Shit like defending you against yourself?"

Hysterics trickle from my lungs, a display of fireworks with the utmost autoschediasm of insanity. "Why do you always assume that I'm going to fucking kill myself all the time?"

"Because you always look as though you're just on the edge." And from a reason I want to slap Gerard for, his face feathers in a pinnate bouquet at the reminder of my apparent suicidal tendencies that have never appeared until Gerard just now suggested them.

"Doing this will push me off," I snarl, a threat that holds more meaning than anything I've ever said, because I've been ready to jump since the day I first employed the hydrogen peroxide as the metaphorical version of suicide.

"Doing this will bring you back."

Groaning and never accepting defeat, I storm out the door, jostling Gerard on the way out so that he thoroughly comprehends that I'm never companions with someone who deprives me of my basic human needs, and just because other humans don't need the same things as I do doesn't mean that they're not essential to me.

My goal was to sashay right out of this stupid fucking house for a while, or at least until I cool down, but those plans are foiled right when the touch I was trying to prevent trails back to me and squanders anything I ever worked towards.

"Don't be so indignant, Patrick," the man heeds, teeth herded to lock with each other and convey more levels of spleen than I had previously expressed.