Petekey Standalones

you held me down in this starless city

you held me down in this starless city
By: endlessnighttimesky
Pete/Mikey, Frank/Gerard
PG-15
1266 words

"We don't have irreconcilable differences, do we, Mikeyway?"

Mikey laughs on the other end of the line. "Hello to you too, Pete."

*
Pete tells Patrick who tells Mikey who decides to call Pete, because Warped Tour '05 was short but not short enough for Mikey not to catch on to how quickly Pete will fall to rock bottom if no one stops him.

Pete is moping - has been ever since he signed the papers. Bronx is sleeping soundly away in his crib, making snuffly noises that make Pete smile, despite everything. His phone is on the coffee table, and Hemingway is curled up by Bronx's crib, ever as protective. It makes him smile a little, that too.

Then his phone starts playing the intro to The Sharpest Lives, because Gerard has The Ghost of You and that's just too morbid for Pete - one of the few things that is. He doesn't want to think about Mikey dead on a shore somewhere, bleeding everywhere and glasses askew on his dirty face.

"We don't have irreconcilable differences, do we, Mikeyway?"

Mikey laughs on the other end of the line. "Hello to you too, Pete."

"Like, what does that even mean? I'm the one with the stupid metaphors, but I don't get it."

"Your metaphors aren't stupid, Pete," Mikey says, sounding patient as ever, and Pete wonders what he'd do if he bought him a plane ticket to California. If he'd get on the plane. Bring Gerard, maybe, who'd bring Frank, and Frank would go because he loves Gerard more than he hates California. That's what Pete wants. Someone who loves him more than they hate him.

"Sometimes they are," Pete says, because sometimes they are, and Mikey knows that.

"Okay," Mikey relents. "But just sometimes."

"I'm lonely," Pete complains. Bronx is awesome - Bronx is the best thing that has ever happened to Pete, to be honest, better than bassists with skinny limbs, better than her - but he doesn't do much. Mostly sleeps and eats and makes weird noises that fascinate Pete to no end. Still, not really that good a conversational partner. "And bored. Entertain me, Mikeyway."

"Kinda hard from the other side of the country," Mikey says, but makes a valiant attempt by telling Pete about Gerard and Frank's latest domestic dispute, involving fake bacon and a pair of gloves that no one knows the origin of.

Pete's laughing by the end of it, so Mikey smiles and considers it a success.

"How the two of them ever got together is beyond me," he says. "Gerard is so fucking dense sometimes. I don't know Frank puts up with it."

"He loves him," Pete says, because it's been obvious, has always been obvious, in old photos and on the bus and in hotel lobbies, Frank and Gerard always within arm's reach of each other.

"Yeah," Mikey says, and Pete can hear the smile, the relief that his brother has found someone, even if that someone is Frank and thus means Mikey will have to witness their public displays of affection for the rest of his life.

It makes Pete smile, too, because when Mikey's happy, Pete is happy, even if it doesn't seem like he is. He'll be sad later, he knows, when he goes to bed alone and wakes up alone and eats breakfast alone and lunch and dinner and does everything alone, the house big and quiet and empty around him, but he's happy now, and that's really all that matters.

"I miss you," he tells Mikey, because he thinks Mikey should know.

"I miss you too, Pete," Mikey says.

"You should come here," Pete suggests, because he totally hasn't been looking up flights from Newark to Los Angeles, no, he definitely hasn't done that, hasn't even considered it, not at all. "You could do with some sunshine."

"Fuck you, sunshine, you're from Chicago." That's not a no, though. Not a yes, either, but not a no.

In his head, Pete sees Mikey, first during Warped Tour, tall and tanned and Pete's, only Pete's and no one else's, and then he sees Mikey at the airport, waving him off as Patrick dragged Pete towards security, muttering about how neither of them was dying, he was just going back to Los Angeles - "There's a reason phones were invented, Pete." Mikey was still tall, but pale, and smiling, looking only the tiniest bit sad that Pete was going away, and Pete spent the entire plane ride worrying that maybe Mikey wouldn't miss him, until Patrick had to break into the emergency stash of Ambien he kept in a small box with a lock that he changed the combination of every other month. Only then could Pete fall asleep, and when he woke up, he could call Mikey and the first thing Mikey told him was that he did miss him, so Patrick had probably talked to him, but Pete couldn't even be bothered to care about anything but Mikey's voice and the smile, the smile he could see even through the phone.

"You should, though," Pete insists. "You can bring Gerard, too, and Frank. They can take care of Bronx."

"Frank hates California," Mikey says, like Pete didn't know, like everyone doesn't know, but he sounds like he's considering it, so Pete counts it as a win. "Why do you need them to take care of Bronx, anyway? Planning to do something to me?"

"You always see through my plans, Mikey, it's no fun."

"Maybe if you weren't as subtle as an anvil, I wouldn't," Mikey says, not that he wants Pete to be any less subtle. He wouldn't be Pete if he were.

"But then you wouldn't know what I'm thinking and where is the fun in that?"

"Because all I've ever wanted is a direct line into your dirty mind," Mikey says, like that has never come in handy. Heh. Handy. Apparently Pete's mind never matured past twelve years old.

"You didn't answer my question," Pete says then, and Mikey's not even thrown because one summer is more than enough time to get used to the way Pete's mind jumps between subjects. He'd walk onto My Chem's bus, sometimes, and pick up the end of a conversation they had a week ago. Mikey got it, though - said that Gerard has always been like that, a little disconnected from the rest of the world, perpetually stuck inside his own head. Pete's still doesn't know if it's a good or a bad thing - probably a little of both, but he's learned to live with it, so what does it really matter, anyway.

"I don't think so," Mikey answers. "I mean, if we did, would we know? Did you know, when it was her? Or did she?" Mikey Way, ladies and gentlemen, fucking up the world by asking questions no one can answer since 1980.

"I don't know," Pete says, which is a shitty answer, but true. All he knows is that he doesn't. He can make guesses and pretend he knows, but he never asked her and so he'll never know, not for sure.

"I think it's like that, though," Mikey goes on. "You won't know until you do."

"That's a shitty fucking answer, Mikeyway," Pete says.

"Sometimes that's all there is."

They're quiet for a while, Mikey's breath staticky through the phonelines. Pete wishes for the static to go away, for another warm body beside him on the couch, all sharp limbs and bleached hair and soft breaths in his ear.

"No," Mikey says after a while.

"No?"

"I don't think we do. And if we do, they're definitely reconcilable."

Pete smiles. "I'm buying you a plane ticket, just so you know."

Mikey smiles too. "See you soon, Pete."