Peroxide (Peterick)

get a bowl cut

"I-I just came in to get paper towels for Lindsey," Pete stutters, immobilized by the scene he's unluckily witnessing.

Dallon somehow takes no blame for this, only watches my reaction as if he isn't a part of the consequences, but he's a half of it just as I am, and he'd better be ready to explain.

Without so much as a glance at Dallon, I levitate and intersperse my fingers onto Pete's, dragging us further into the hallway as I utter a simple command. "Get me out of here."

Pete, trusting me throughout the turmoil of this bumpy relationship, follows me down the corridor until we plop down on the bed of his room and I prepare for my delivery.

"You don't need to elucidate anything, Patrick," he assures, stopping me. "I just want to understand why you would do this if you hate Dallon."

Avoiding the question directly, I ponder, "Do you recall when you told me to touch my arm and see how it felt?"

Pete nods slowly, unsure of where this is going from here.

"Well now it's like that touch doesn't even matter anymore," I complete. "Because Dallon touched my arm, and he should be the worst of all people, but it didn't feel like anything, and I—"

Upon seeing the first of many tears emphasizing my melancholy, Pete swarms me and slithers his embrace over the top of my frail body in a protection of something special he's convinced I possess. "Patrick, why should Dallon be the worst of all people to touch your arm?"

"B-b-because..." I crease myself into Pete's chest in order to discover a stable place to channel my message. "Because he was the one who did it." I had predicted a steadfast response after wrestling the words to be torn out from my queue one by one, but all Pete does is become weaker than me at the news I had spent so long shielding from the world.

"Patrick" is his raspy feedback, and he is in need of a home more so than I am, so I allow myself to become a provision for him.

Gluing Pete's hands to mine once the tables have fully flipped, I study each nick and bump on his bones and tendons and pigmentation and everything that is wholly his. "Dallon James Weekes attacked me two years ago, and ever since then, I have been soaking myself with hydrogen peroxide and warding myself against the public, because that was the only secure thing I could describe when I was first assailed by the ambivalence of this anecdote."

"Why haven't you told someone about this?"

"I'm telling you," I contend with a pitiful shrug.

"And I'll tell Gerard." Pete elevates to do just that, but I pause his activities with a single look of desperation.

"Please don't."

Pete's agitation is at its horrible birth, and he taps his foot along to its hell-bound chorus. "Why not?"

"I'm doing better, and making my attack common knowledge isn't going to help me further." Abruptly then, my lips click their heels with an idea. "I know what will, though. Would you like to replace those bad memories with good ones?"

Pete's cognizant of what I intend to do, ink skidding over his sides as his shirt is drawn from him and bundled on the floor by his own force. "Are you sure you want to do this?" my friend asks, a bit nervous himself.

For the first time in two years, I'm equipped to start an optimistic relationship with someone new, so I agree to the conditions. "Positive."

Pete exhales a shaky river and manumits my shirt from me so that we're both showcasing our varying torsos, and Pete's response isn't nearly what I had foreseen. "Aww, you're so adorable!" is his squeak, Hudson River irises blithe with what they're perceiving.