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So that’s it then.
Tour ends almost with a whisper. A part of Pete wanted it to have a hell of a lot more fanfare - a huge show, the crowds going crazy. And they do, but a part of it feels like every other night on the tour, like they’re going to get up tomorrow, drive to another state, and do it all over again.
Except they aren’t, there’s no ‘next date’, and it hasn’t quite sunk in yet.
There’s a huge party, of course. A bonfire in a local parking lot. It reminds him of summer nights back in Chicago - just a different kind of humid and not nearly the same amount of traffic as background noise.
He’s approximately four beers deep when an arm slings around his waist and Pete would have been able to tell who it was before turning by the amber scent that he caught, even if he didn’t know the familiar grip by heart. He turns, a loose grin on his lips as he stares up at Mikey.
“I know you’re tired of this shitty beer.” Mikey remarks, a matching smile on his face as his gaze slides towards the bonfire for a moment. Pete watches the sparks reflect in his eyes before he reaches out, grabbing Mikey’s hand to tug his attention back to him - just where Pete likes it the most. “I think I can probably tempt you with a better offer.”
Of course, Pete could never say no to that - never say no to Mikey.
–
Morning comes much earlier than should be legal. My Chemical Romance is heading out early in the morning to head back to Jersey. It isn’t that far, and Pete had absolutely made his complaints known when Mikey told him earlier in the week that they were leaving before 7 in the morning. He understood, of course. They had only a short turnaround before heading off to London.
The alarm goes off and Pete refuses to open his eyes, throwing an arm over his eyes. Mikey stirs next to him, and then there’s an elbow in his ribs, eliciting a groan from him.
“Sorry,” Mikey whispers, and Pete cracks an eye open to squint at him.
“You aren’t.”
“I am.” Mikey promises. Pete drops his arm then arching his back to feel it pop before he props himself up to stare down at Mikey.
Sleep rumpled Mikey is one of his favorite Mikeys - and if you ask Pete, he’s got a lot of favorite Mikeys. He even made a list once. Joe told him it was embarrassing.
“I should probably get going before Gerard comes over to drag me out by the hair, huh?” He doesn’t want to. There’s nowhere else he would rather be, and there’s a funny twisting feeling in his chest at the idea of walking off of the bus and across the parking lot to his own.
Mikey stares up at him, eyes so fucking full of something that Pete isn’t willing to unpack. “Unless you want to hitch a ride to Jersey.”
There’s a moment that drags between the two of them; it seems to go on forever. Mikey’s expression is one of pure neutrality, and Pete - well, Pete isn’t sure what his face says.
Mikey breaks the silence a moment later with a laugh, but it doesn’t do anything to the tension in Pete’s chest.
“I’m joking.”
“Obviously. I wouldn’t be caught dead in Newark.” Pete jokes, but the words come off with a note of strain to them. He swings his legs over the edge of the bunk, breathing in deeply before pushing himself off of the bunk entirely. He grabs Mikey’s bag off of the floor, grabbing his shirt out from where he had dropped it the night before. Moving away from the bunk, Pete pulls it over his head before starting the hunt for his shoes. He can hear Mikey getting out of the bunk behind him, but he makes a point not to turn around, not to look at him.
His shoes are, unfortunately, where he expected them to be by the front of the bus, and by the time he gets there to start pulling them on, he can hear the other members starting to wake up and move around to prepare to head out. They’re probably going to stop at a gas station and Mikey’s going to get a Minute Maid lemonade like he always does and a pack of Starburst but Pete won’t be there to eat the orange ones and steal his bottle and-
“Hey.” Mikey’s arms wrap around him from behind and Pete stops dead in his tracks. He breathes through it, practicing counting to four before letting his breath out like he’s supposed to. “I had fun.”
Fun. It’s enough to break through the tension in his chest and Pete plasters on a smile. He doesn’t feel like his heart is going to break through his ribs anymore, but he might be sick at any moment.
“Hell yeah, man. Me too. It was a fun summer.” Pete says, easily sliding out of Mikey’s arms and offering him a huge smile. Mikey stares at him like he’s looking at someone he’s never seen before. Pete feels like he’s someone he’s never seen before, and he can’t even see himself. “See you for the next one.”
The pavement beneath his feet as he bolts across the parking lot feels about a hundred miles long and he can’t cross the distance fast enough.
–
He’s been back home for over a week when he decides to finally unpack. There’s so much shit that it feels like it’s going to take forever, and he’s spent the last seven days using whatever he can to distract from the ghost in the back of his mind.
Pete’s pretty positive that half of the shit in his bags isn’t even his. They’ve been living in each others’ pockets for months and it’s impossible to untangle the materials of their lives. Hoodies, socks, hats, sunglasses were passed around and stolen and lost and returned and signed and given to fans.
Pete finds a beanie in his luggage. It’s not until he goes to put it on that he realizes it’s not one of his -- it’s thin and smells like smoke and pomade and just a hint of the amber perfume Mikey wore. Pete wrings the beanie in his hands, then presses it to his face and inhales deeply once before shoving it over his bedhead. It’s only been a week. It was only fun. His chest shouldn’t be twisting like this.
–
He’s in a dark club in San Diego when it happens.
Pete doesn’t want to say that he’s giving into cliches, but he went out that night searching for a club that he could forget himself in. The one he found is across the city from their hotel and somewhere he sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s like he’s trying to disconnect as much as he can possibly manage. Maybe he is.
The last time he was in San Diego was over a year ago on Warped. He and Mikey had snuck away from the party that they had held on Mission Beach and wandered along the shoreline together. It had been the first time that Pete had the fucking courage to hold Mikey’s hand in public.
Those kind of thoughts are the exact ones that Pete is doing his best to escape from, pressed up against the bar and sipping on a whiskey-something, he isn’t sure what it’s mixed with, had just sort of waved his hand when the bartender tried to clarify, unable to hear him over the loud pop music.
He turns on his heel, ready to head into the crowd to find another distraction when a familiar scent makes him stop dead in his tracks.
Warm vanilla, rich amber.
Pete whips his head around but Mikey isn’t there. He could have sworn he was there - there’s nothing he would recognize faster in a room, on Mikey’s skin, on his skin.
It’s so jarring to be dragged back to square one that Pete feels suddenly like he’s standing in a vacuum. The glass in his hand has too much condensation on it. The voices around him are too loud yet too quiet, all at once. He can hear everything and nothing beyond the rushing in his ears.
He pushes himself through the crowd, downing his drink in one go before heading out of the club. Pete doesn’t stop when the bouncer holds up a stamp for the back of his hand - he can’t go back in there. He can’t go back in.
–
He writes and he writes and he writes. He shows Patrick words scribbled in notebooks with the pages falling out from Pete flipping through them so many times, trying to finish something anything.
Ever the solid force that’s always grounded him, Patrick picks through the lyrics with a guitar balanced in his lap, prompting him to put lines together that he never would have considered before.
It’s only then when it starts to come together. Suddenly, time moves faster than Pete could even comprehend, and suddenly they have an album in front of them, one that reminds him of vanilla more than he’d ever be willing to admit.
–
If there’s anything Pete hates, it’s industry events.
He always feels out of place, despite the blatant invitations that he’s been given. It’s never just a case of his manager saying ‘you should go, I’ll see if i can score you an invite’ (at least, not anymore). He’s clearly wanted there, for whatever reason, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.
He was in New York meeting with some executives about the future of the label when his manager approached him about this particular invite, and since he didn’t have anything else to do, Pete agreed. Now, he’s not so sure it was the best idea.
There’s an uncomfortable itching underneath his skin as he moves through the crowd, falling back to the wings as the lights dim. He barely even knows what the event is for - some sort of live music meets fashion show fusion. Pete’s not sure how much interest he should be showing in whatever is happening on the stage, so he settles for pulling out his phone and taking a sip of the beer in his hand.
He scrolls through Snapchat, responding to some of the messages he’s gotten there, posting one of him sipping on his beer to his story. It’s basic, mindless. A distraction from the fact that he would rather be anywhere but there at that exact moment.
He’s in the middle of typing out a text to Joe begging him to please send him a picture of his dog before he dies of boredom when he catches someone approaching in his peripheral vision. Pete’s prepared to make his normal comment after they ask if he’s really Pete Wentz or “that guy from Fall Out Boy”, ready to say ‘yeah, absolutely, great to meet you too’, when amber and vanilla and something sharp like cigarettes jolt him to reality.
His head snaps up so quickly that he’s immediately self conscious about it; but that melts away almost immediately after he meets the gaze of none other than Mikey.
“Mikeyway,” he says, the words escaping him in an exhale. The smile on Mikey’s face makes his stomach twist pleasantly.
“Hey.” Pete has to consciously hold himself still - his first instinct is to move forward, closer to Mikey. It’s been years; they’ve seen each other since Warped, of course they have. It’s nearly impossible to exist in the circles they exist in without running into each other. But it’s always the same for him - he always has the instinct of wanting to move closer to Mikey, to melt into him like they did so many years ago.
It’s always Pete having to track his every movement so he doesn’t do something stupid.
“What are you doing here? I didn’t know this was your scene.” He gestures to the stage in front of them, but even as he says it, he’s kicking himself. It’s music, and art, tied together intrinsically. Of course it’s Mikey’s scene. It’s just the location that’s thrown him off. Then again, it isn’t exactly his scene either.
Mikey takes it in stride though, he always does. “Someone in the band is a mutual friend. I think they were worried about the turnout, so they invited me. But it’s pretty fucking cool.”
Pete nods as Mikey speaks, lifting the beer to his lips and taking a drink that’s maybe a little too long. Usually when he and Mikey have met in the past, there’s been other people they both know around them. It’s not just them; and yet somehow, in this crowd of people, it is just them.
“Yeah, it’s cool.” Pete pauses for a moment, taking Mikey in before he speaks again. “My manager invited me. Or, like, someone invited me. Through my manager. I’m just here because there’s nothing better to do on a Saturday in fucking New York City, I guess.”
At that, Mikey’s eyes light up.
“Nothing better to do, really?”
–
“Pete.”
The sigh that Patrick sighs is one that Pete has heard many times. He doesn’t even steel himself for it because it’s so commonplace. Instead, he simply waits.
“This song is ab-”
“I know.” Pete focuses on the bass in his hands, plucking one of the strings forlornly. It isn’t even plugged in; so the effect isn’t quite as strong as he would hope.
Silence settles over them and Pete stares at the bass, as if it holds all of the answers. Sometimes it does. Most of the time, it’s a vessel for him to get all of the static out of his brain.
He’s handed Patrick another stack of papers with lyrics scribbled on them, and has sat in silence for the past hour as Patrick flips through them. This is how it always is - he’s always giving his most vulnerable moments to Patrick, but he’s never afraid when he does it. Anything that Patrick might remark on always comes from a place of genuine love and concern for him, rather than a place of judgment.
“It’s been a long time, you know? I just- you’re good, right?”
–
They’re finally going to tour again. It’s been years, and Pete knows the others are as anxious to get in front of an audience as he is. They love making music, love sitting in a studio working out how these lyrics would better suit this part of the song, how this chord progression would be fucking sick here - but onstage, in front of their fans; it’s something they all love dearly.
The openers are loud, the crowd learning to love them even louder, and Pete is in the dressing room, drumming his fingers nervously on the table in front of him. The setlist is laid out, they’re beyond ready. It’s going to be their best tour yet, he’s sure of it.
As he’s immersed in his own world (‘Pete Brain’ as Joe so lovingly calls it), a familiar feeling washes over him. Comforting, warm. Deep amber meeting vanilla sugar and -
“Pete, you look like you’re about a thousand miles away.”
His heart does a triple take in his chest and he tears his eyes from the setlist on the table in front of him.
“Goddamn, if it isn’t Mikeyway.” He remarks, an easy grin settling on his lips as he leans back on the couch. Mikey’s standing a few feet away from the table, surveying the room like he belongs there.
Pete can’t help it when he takes a deep breath. It’s the same, the amber and the vanilla; but something different even still. He can’t place a finger on it. There’s something citrus there, almost fresh, paired with the rich sweetness. Different, but the same.
It’s always the same. It’s Mikey, with the sweet smell of vanilla, the rich scent of amber. But underneath it, it’s Mikey and his cigarettes. Mikey and his passion for art and words in a way that’s so so different to Pete. Mikey and his brazen confidence no matter what he’s faced with. Mikey and his ability to face anything head on.
“Patrick invited me, I hope that’s cool.”
It’s cool, it would always be cool. But Pete doesn’t say this, can’t bring himself to say anything except to nod for just a moment, fingers tapping at the table in front of him before letting out an exhale.
“You know it’s cool.” And that’s just it, isn’t it? They both know that Pete would never say no to him.
A beat of silence passes between them, but it isn’t uncomfortable. It’s the way that his eyes meet Mikey’s, and there’s something Pete can’t quite place his finger on there. If he had to guess, he looks the way that Pete has always looked at Mikey - like he hung the fucking stars in the sky.
“Hey,” Pete says suddenly, pushing himself up off of the couch. “Remember when you played my bass on Warped?”
Mikey laughs in response, bright, open, willing, eager, and Pete realizes in that moment - maybe no time has really passed at all.