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It’s 2010 when Mikey realizes he’s in love with Pete, and he’s five years too late.
It doesn’t happen all at once, god no. Mikey could deal with it if that were the case. It’s gradual, like the sun setting over the horizon.
It starts with Green Tea KitKats. He picks them up out of habit, and it’s not until he’s in the car on his way back to the hotel he realizes there’s no one to give them to. Pete isn’t here; Pete wouldn’t answer if he called. Mikey gives half of the bag to his brother, and pointedly doesn’t check his phone until Ray gets on him for not answering.
He’s gifted a copy of Infinity on High the first week he’s back in America. The disc sits on his kitchen counter for two months before he can bring himself to peel the plastic off.
Mikey holds the casing in his hand, runs his fingers over the list on the back. He doesn’t play it until winter comes. Then, he wears out three CDs within a year.
When I said that I’d return to you I meant more like a relapse. He pulls the plug from the wall, watches the disc spin to a stop.
He moves at some point, giving up his apartment for an actual house. In moving, he finds everything from that summer he shoved in a cardboard box. Mikey means to put it in storage, bury back where that summer belongs, but it still worms its way into his closet.
It sits there, buried under jackets as the seasons change but Mikey stays exactly the same.
On his birthday, Gerard forces him out.
It’s… nice, in a way. Mikey has always enjoyed being around his brother. He’s spent the last nine years following him across hell’s half acre. He’d do it for a hundred more if Gerard asked him to.
He catches the attention of a guy he doesn’t learn the name of, and within ten minutes he has him crowded against the brick in an alleyway with blue RGB lights lighting them up. The guy tastes like tobacco, poor decisions, and vanilla. He tastes the same way Pete did, only sweeter.
His hands are gentle against Mikey’s shoulders, pushing their way under the collar of his jacket. It’s a dark washed denim. Mikey doesn’t know where his white one went, or if it was ever really his to begin with.
There’s some else in the alleyway, coughing under a streetlight. For a split second Mikey wonders if his brother finally came looking for him. Looking up, he finds himself looking back through a Time Machine.
He catches a boy on the outskirts of his vision, for just a moment. Mikey sees a rising sun hoodie, stupid soccer mom shades and too tight skinny jeans. He’s gone just as quick as Mikey sees him.
“Fuck,” Mikey curses, steps back away from the guy in the alleyway. He can’t do this.
“You getting cold feet?” The guy asks. Mikey laughs, hollow and destroyed from the inside out.
“Something like that.” Mikey watches the street. There’s no one under orange street light. No one is looking for him.
The guy is gone after that. Mikey never got his number. He doesn’t care. Gerard collects him, and deposits him on his doorstep with a pat on the shoulder and a reserved look Mikey knows all too well. Neither of them comment on it.
“Happy birthday, Mikey,” Gerard says, in lieu of anything else.
“Thank you,” Mikey replies on instinct. He forces himself to smile at his brother. It’s not convincing.
A handful of weeks later, Mikey slices a box cutter through the top of the box he’d been burying. The tape splits easily, and so do his fingertips when his hands shake so bad the blade slips. He presses them to his mouth, and only tastes copper on his lips.
He’s greeted by that stupid fucking Steamboat Mickey plush that Pete had won for him at a carnival during the early days of tour. Pete had held his hand, dragged him down a pier and blew too much money on a game Mikey doesn’t remember.
He does remember tucking the plush into his bunk the nights Pete didn’t find his way next to him. Mickey still smells like salt spray and cigarettes. Mikey drops him back in the box to avoid the bile pushing at his throat, and kicks the cardboard back into the corner it belongs in. That chapter of his life is dead, and he’s never been one for necromancy.
Mikey begins to accept that he has feelings for Pete. He’s too late. They haven’t seen each other since 2007, and Mikey doesn’t google him out of fear for his own sanity. That’s slowly starting to slip too.
Mickey finds his way out of storage, tucked on the floor next to his mattress. Far enough away where he doesn’t need to think about it, but close enough that the wound bleeding from his heart is allowed to heal— even if improperly sutured.
The invite to Gabe Saporta’s birthday doesn’t come as a surprise. Mikey doesn’t read anything in the email before clicking RSVP. What’s the worst that could happen? He’s already breaking his own heart, it can’t get any harder.
The universe is sick, Mikey decides. Fate is cruel and whatever god there is wants him to hurt.
After four years of avoidance and dead cellphone lines, Mikey sees Pete again.
Pete is sprawled over a lawn chair, non eloquently and maybe a little drunk. He’s grinning, laughing at something Gabe says. Gabe is talking with his hands. Mikey can’t hear and isn’t sure he wants to.
Catching Pete’s gaze, with his mouth turned up but not smug, is.. Well, Mikey would rather relive the end of that summer again than watch the happiness and unchecked light leave his eyes. Mikey feels sick.
Tan skin is lit up with pink and gold in the setting sun. It’s not New Mexico. There’s no waterpark, no day spent out in the sun laughing and knowing that was being loved. Mikey feels the words he never returned burning in his throat, clawing at his lungs as they try to push free. He firmly stamps them down into concrete. Pete bites his tongue and leaves Gabe dumbfounded in his seat.
“There’s my sweet little dude,” Pete says, looping one arm around Mikey’s shoulders like he used to; like nothing has changed in four years of silence. He smells like green tea, salt and memory. Mikey isn’t sure how much of that is fiction. “I missed you.”
“Sweet little dude,” Mikey repeats, laughs just to avoid saying anything else. Pete tilts his head at him, meets pretty hazel eyes, and Mikey is a fool.
Mikey wishes he were someone else, someone smarter and more grounded on this earth. Someone else wouldn’t have made this mistake; twice. Someone else wouldn’t be crowded up against the blank wall of a dark hallway in Gabe Saporta’s LA house with Pete Wentz’s mouth on theirs, though. He tastes sweet, like chocolate and the floral flavor of Haku.
Mikey didn’t miss this. He didn’t miss the aftermath, when Pete wipes his kiss bruised mouth on the back of his hand and licks his lips like he’s chasing the taste left behind. For a brief moment, he remembers the alley way, the mouth of someone else and a ghost.
Pete is dragged away, caught on the arm of some girl. Mikey doesn’t cry, but it’s a very near thing. He wishes Gabe well, laughs as a stupid joke a girl he used to know makes, catches Pete across the yard with someone he doesn’t remember, and doesn’t stick around after that.
The ghost of Pete’s hands on his jaw, hips pressed against his, and mouth against mouth haunts him by the time he resigns himself to his living room. It’s still mostly empty, with Mickey tucked neatly on a throw pillow and a few posters he’d kept since he was a kid plastered on the wall. Mikey clicks play on his CD player, already knows the disc inside. It’s started skipping again.
Me and you, setting in a honeymoon. The track dies, skips again. Mikey doesn’t hear any of the songs over the blood rushing in his ears and deafening sound of his own heartbeat. I couldn’t bring myself to call. Mikey is right back where he was in 2005.
Gerard knows. He always seems to. Brotherly intuition, their mother had called it. Mikey didn’t have to call him for his brother to show up with greasy pizza and a blue ray edition of Star Wars.
“So, what happened?” Gerard has never been one to beat around the bush. Mikey pushes his cup back and forth between his palms on the counters. “Is this about Pete again?”
Mikey stills, bites his tongue for a moment and watches the sun outside of his kitchen window. His neighbor’s roof blocks any view.
“It’s not..” He knows it’s a losing battle. “This isn’t like you and Frank.”
“Michael.” Gerard reaches across to shove his shoulder. “What happened?”
“I saw Pete when I went to Gabe’s birthday,” Mikey gives up easily. They’ve seen each other at their worst time and time again, and Gerard wouldn’t judge him for being human. He watched the carbonation of his drink fizzle and bubbles pop. “Made out in a hallway like Warped Tour. We didn’t talk. It’s been how many weeks of absolute radio silence.”
“You never called either,” Gerard points out through a mouthful of pizza. It’s gross and Mikey flicks him for it.
“I don’t have his number.”
Gerard sighs in response, drops his slice to reach for Mikey’s phone. He slides it closer.
“His number never changed. You can call him. You never deleted his contact.” It sounds like the easiest thing in the world. “If you could stomach the sharpie notes, emotional torture, and dead end that was 2005, you can tolerate calling him again.”
Mikey knows he’s right.
Gerard sleeps on his couch that night, while Mikey is curled up in a rising sun hoodie he can’t get himself to get rid of yet. Gerard had laughed, extended the blanket to him. It’s like being kids again, staying up past their bedtime while Luke saves the galaxy and nothing can hurt them. Nothing can hurt him like this.
Mikey doesn’t call until April, nearly two years since the first moment he’d realized maybe his feelings started to thaw from the freezer burn. The number burns itself in his memory. After all these years, he still knows it by heart.
It’s impulse, really. He’s been watching a House MD marathon, just to distract himself from the endless spiral of nothingness he’s pushed him into. Between touring and pushing himself until he breaks, it’d been easy to forget why he’d started slipping in the first place. Patrick Stump is on his TV, and Mikey is violently thrown back into the feeling he’d been burning.
Pete picks up on the second ring.
“I’m sorry,” Mikey says immediately, because nothing else seems to fit. “I couldn’t bring myself to call.”
He feels pathetic.
“I never thought you would,” Pete replies, voice thick like he’s forcing tears back. Mikey chokes on a sob. “Told you. I missed you, sweet little dude.”
Mikey isn’t sure how long they talk, only knows that darkness takes over his house and he won’t hang up to turn the light on. Pete makes him burn just as bright, like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Neither of them want to hang up first, and Mikey watches his battery drain.
“We’re going to fuck this up,” Mikey says eventually, when it starts to get quiet. He’s lying fully dressed on his bed, while Mickey watches him from the dresser. The hoodie clings to his chest.
“I’m willing to let you break my heart again.” It’s so quiet, like Pete means to keep it inside. Mikey sucks in a sharp breath.
“I won’t,” Mikey promises. He means it, would wrap his pinky around Pete’s to swear it were he here. “But I want to try this, us, again.”
“Yeah, me too.” Pete sounds like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Been waiting for you to ask since July of 2005.”
Slowly, it starts again. Mikey treads carefully, still won’t link hands in public but pulls him close at night. They don’t go on dates, not really. Sometimes it’s driving to the middle of the desert, blasting Smashing Pumpkins and Rancid loud enough to where they can’t think. Pete will pull him close under a hot LA sky, press their heads together as sweat melts them together. It’s sticky and the worst feeling Mikey has ever known, but he craves it.
“I think I’m in love with you,” Mikey breathes out one night, under an LA sunset. The clouds are purple, watercolored on a blue sky. It’s so similar to New Mexico, where Pete had told him the first time and Mikey had pressed their mouths together to swallow down his own confession.
“I know,” Pete says, grinning as he looks back at Mikey. He interlaces their fingers, runs calloused tumb along the soft skin on the back of his hand. “I knew I loved you the first time. Nothing had changed.”
Mikey doesn’t deserve this, he knows that, but that won’t stop him from having it. Fuck whatever he deserves, whatever contrition he will have to pay for this. Pete is his, and he’s Pete’s. Maybe they can never get married, or something else equally stupid, but Mikey believes that maybe a god can be kind for just a moment. Pete tucks his head against Mikey’s neck, breathes out a sigh of comfort and relaxes. It’s everything he’s ever fucking wanted, and he gets to have it. He smells like green tea, leather, sand, and tobacco. It’s everything.