one more troubled soul » petekey

Fifteen

"You must ask the young
if you want to know what love is.
Only they are deep enough in it to describe."
- A.P, "Sabine"

Dallon retreated back into his own car after their brief introductions, settling into his seat and pushing it backward. He turned on his side, looking about ready for a nap. Mikey took this as a sign to roll his window back up most of the way, sighing loudly and plopping his head in Pete's lap. Pete laughed with surprise and comfort, and then cautiously put ran a hand through his hair. "Looks like we might be here for a while," he murmured, immediately soothed by the silk on his palms.

He was starting to think that maybe the traffic wasn't so bad after all. He could possibly fit in a wink of sleep, spend some quality time with Mikey, stretch his legs or just not worry about driving for a single moment. He'd rather die than admit to Mikey and Ryan that they had been right about his exhaustion, but this way, he wouldn't need to. He felt Mikey shift in his lap and looked back down at him, unable to control the backflips in his stomach.

"Seems like it," Mikey mumbled back, closing his eyes in pure bliss. He let Pete play with his hair like a cat played with yarn. Pete couldn't imagine a better way to spend his time, even when the whole world was ahead of him. It didn't matter, it was all at his fingertips right now. "Didn't know you smoked," Mikey suddenly said, not shifting. There was a pang of disappointment in his voice, and Pete couldn't help but turn red with untapped guilt.

Pete anxiously looked for the words. "Ah, I guess I sometimes do?" And that was true. He was a sometimes sort of disaster. He had started picking up bad habits early in high school when he was desperate for a way to destroy all the shame and sadness that growing up had brought along with it. He found himself smoking outside of lousy punk shows as a way to fit in, and it had snowballed into a bigger demon than he had ever expected. Alcohol was his worst poison, however, and Pete started to feel sick at the thought of it. He felt the world closing in on him. Last time he had been drunk he had nearly severed the only chance at love he'd had in years. His eyes started to ache.

"Pete?" Mikey's voice broke through his suffocating curtain of thoughts. "Where'd you go? Hey, hey..." His gentle voice could house hummingbirds. He sat up, pulling himself off of Pete's lap with only a slight moment of hesitation. He watched Pete with knowing eyes. "Are you alright? I didn't mean to bring up anything—"

"No, no," Pete cut him off before he had the chance to blame himself. He didn't need Mikey feeling all bad about anything, not when he wouldn't even harm death itself. "It's just, I just... wanted to tell you that I—"

He was interrupted by a swarm of giggles sounding behind him. It was unmistakably youthful mirth from Ryan, who was practically rolling in the backseat now, his hands clutching his stomach like he'd been stabbed. The light in his eyes suggested otherwise. Mikey and Pete both stared at him intently, eyes narrowed paternally. Pete followed Ryan's eyes to the boyish face that resided in the backseat of Dallon's car. He was smiling wide, his eyes just as bright, and recovering from a similarly disarming fit of laughter. Pete wondered what was so funny.

"What's going on back there?" Mikey beat him to the punch, smiling crookedly at Ryan, who wiped a joyful tear from the corner of his eye and then turned red. Pete felt his mind begin to race. He could recognize that shy blush color from anywhere. He remembered splashing his face with cold water at a rest stop sink a few hours after meeting Mikey. He had spent an embarrassingly long amount of time looking at his own telling rouge. Ryan had opened the same vein. Pete couldn't help but smirk to himself, hiding it behind the shoulder of his seat.

"Oh, nothing," Ryan rolled his eyes so far back they dragged the earth with them. "Brendon was just saying something really funny. You wouldn't get it." He glanced back out the window at the dark-haired jokester and erupted into another fit of giggles, like a shaken up bottle of pop. Brendon was laughing again, too. Pete watched as Dallon shifted uncomfortably in the driver's seat, sighing to himself. He fiddled with a bright yellow zippo.