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Pete borrowed Mikey's Midtown hoodie what felt like every couple of days, wrapping himself up in it and peering out of the hood like a pop-punk monk. The hoodie was already a few years old, and Mikey had worn it hard, wearing the soft fuzz inside into roughness and tearing a hole in the sleeve that his hand slipped through if he wasn't careful when he put it on. It permanently smelled like beer and pot and what Frank called Way-funk.
And Pete still never wanted to let go of it.
"Gabe Saporta himself sold me that hoodie," Mikey told him once, his face resting against Pete's bare stomach, his breath stirring the hair just above the batheart tattoo. Pete was using the hoodie as a pillow, right then, with the hood pulled half-down over his face to protect his eyes from the sun.
"His hands touched it?" Pete peeked at him from under the edge of the hood. "His very hands?"
He only sounded a little mocking. Mikey knew perfectly well what a crush Pete had on Midtown Saporta. "His very own hands. He told me to put the twenty in his waistband."
"Sexy."
"So sexy." Mikey shifted a little closer and rubbed his nose against Pete's ribs. "And that's, like, ignoring the fact that his brother is actually the hot one."
"No way."
"And their dad is even hotter than that."
"I don't believe it." Pete ran his fingers through Mikey's hair, then twisted it into slow, flaccid spikes. "I'm not into older dudes."
"I kinda am."
"That works out for me, then." Pete tugged, just a little, and Mikey moved up to kiss him, and that poor Midtown hoodie got all ground down into the grass and dirt.
**
At the end of the summer, Mikey let Pete take the hoodie with him. It was a small gesture, maybe the smallest one possible. But it felt like all he could do, right then.
**
After the album, after the fight (but before the pictures with Chris), Mikey texted Pete and said, send me my fucking sweatshirt back.
Pete never answered.
Maybe that was why the pictures happened, a little bit.
**
After they reconciled sort of (he divides time after the summer into reconciled sort of, reconciled for real, that time they laughed, friends again, the big silence, and maybe), Pete gave him a link to one of his secret blogs. Super-secret, you needed a password to view the content. Very paranoid. Very elite.
It was mostly text, but a few pictures now and then. One of them was of Pete and his guys, hanging out at his house. All the guys. The Panic kids, the Academy kids, Travie, Gabe.
Mike zoomed his monitor in like six times so he could get a better look at Gabe.
This was Cobra Gabe, he should've been wearing purple and bleached denim, but he was wearing a Midtown hoodie, just sitting there on Pete's couch flipping off the camera and wearing a Midtown hoodie that Mikey was pretty sure he recognized even before he blew the picture up enough to see the hole in the left sleeve.
Gabe was wearing Mikey's sweatshirt, sitting on Pete's couch with his hand on Pete's thigh.
What the fuck did that mean?
**
After Paramour, a package came in the mail. Stacey opened it for him, because Mikey was still afraid to hold scissors or knives.
"It's a sweatshirt," she said. "A really fucking gross sweatshirt, oh my god. Let me run it through the washer. There's a note, here."
"Don't wash it," Mikey said immediately, grabbing the note. "Please don't wash it."
dear mikey way-
i hope you feel better soon. think you need this more than i do right now. wrap up warm & feel safe ok?
i miss you.
xoxo petey
Mikey tugged it over his head and breathed in. He could smell himself. He could smell Pete, warm and a little musky. He was pretty sure he could smell Gabe's cologne, just a hint of it.
He knew he couldn't really smell grass or sun or summer, but it felt good to pretend. It felt better than he'd felt in days.
**
Mikey heard from Suarez that Gabe was getting throat surgery. He thought about texting, and he thought about sending food or vodka or something, but in the end he packed up the sweatshirt and sent that.
Ask Pete if it doesn't make sense, he wrote on the box, because he'd sealed it before he realized he should send a note. He'll get it.
A week later Gabe texted him a picture of himself sitting up in bed, wearing the hoodie, giving his phone a thumbs-up. There were dark circles under his eyes and his mouth was twisted up in pain. take yr pills, Mikey texted back, then added miss you brother.
**
Things got busy, with working on the album, and Bandit being born, and life. Mikey didn't think about it again until he heard from Rob Hitt that Fall Out Boy was going on hiatus and not the amicable kind.
How are you hanging in dude? he texted to Pete, wishing he could say anything better, anything more solid than that. Maybe he should've started with "I'm sorry to hear the news." Maybe he should've minded his own business.
The reply came from Gabe's phone, not Pete's. It was a picture of Pete curled up in an armchair that Mikey recognized as living in Gabe's dad's house. Pete's face was a mess of bruises and stitches, his eyes swollen and puffy, but he was wearing the Midtown hoodie with the hole in the sleeve.
I've got him, Gabe's message said. I won't let him fall.
**
When Gabe went to Brazil, he sent Pete and Mikey both an email that said see you on the flip side with a picture of the hoodie tucked in the top of his suitcase. Mikey wondered if it would be too hot to wear it, where Gabe was going, but probably it wasn't the wearing the sweatshirt that helped. It was having it.
Pete called Mikey a few days later and didn't even say hi, just, "Do you think he'll make it? Do you think he'll be okay?"
"He's stronger than he looks," Mikey told him. He couldn't think of anything else to say.
"I wanted to go with him, but he said no. He told me to stay with Bronx."
"Bronx needs you."
"All I could do was give him the stupid hoodie."
Mikey took a breath and tried to pretend that didn't sting. "Did you tell him that?"
"Yeah." Pete made a sound that might have been a laugh. "He told me I know perfectly fucking well that the shirt means everything."
**
When Pete's divorce hit, Mikey didn't even have to ask. He was on tour, he was busy, he was six million miles away between the geography and his own head, but he knew Gabe would get the hoodie back to Pete, and that it would help Pete be okay.
When he and Pete managed to meet up for their stolen sushi hour in Seattle, he knew Pete would be wearing it. The sleeve had torn so much it was barely hanging on. Mikey sent his security guy to find a drugstore and buy safety pins, and they sat at a table eating sushi and making the shirt good and punk.
"I don't know if I can pull through this," Pete said, matter-of-fact like he was talking about the weather. "If I didn't have Travie on the tour to stay up with me and Marcus wasn't riding my ass, I would probably just..."
Mikey bumped his knee against Pete's under the table. "You're gonna be okay."
"I don't know."
"I know." Mikey picked up a tuna roll with his fingers and held it out, waiting patiently until Pete took it in his mouth. Then Mikey flicked him on the nose just hard enough to make him smile.
A smile through tears in his eyes still counted.
**
Mikey pretty much figured nobody was going to speak to him ever again, especially Gabe "marriage is sacred" Saporta and Pete "had a shitty divorce" Wentz. This time, he'd gone beyond the pale and was going to have to tough it out on his own.
He met Gerard for coffee at a neutral-ground Starbucks and almost spilled his latte when Gerard tossed a carefully-wrapped package down on the table.
"Wentz brought this to my house? He said he doesn't have your address right now." Gerard made a face. "I wasn't sure if I was supposed to give it to him or not, so I just took the package and gave him an ice cream bar. Bandit and I were playing polar bears."
Mikey knew what was inside, but he peeled the tape back anyway. Seeing was believing.
There was a note on top, scribbled in Pete's awful handwriting. take care of yrself & call us when yr ready. yes us, GS sends love. xoxo peterpan
"Are those safety pins?" Gerard asked, squinting across the table. "What is it?"
"Just a thing," Mikey muttered, curling his fingers between the safety pins. "Secret message, kinda."
Gerard's eyebrow went up. "Gotta be careful with secrets."
Mikey shrugged and didn't answer. This was maybe the only secret he'd ever been good at anyway.
**
Mikey didn't know what to expect when Pete called and said "Come over. Pack to stay for the weekend." They were grown-ups now. Pete was a dad. Dads didn't have weekend sleepovers.
Except apparently Pete did. And he invited Gabe, too.
Pete banged his fist on the kitchen table. "I call this meeting of the Brotherhood of the Traveling Hoodie--"
"The Brotherhoodie of the Traveling Shirt," Gabe said. "I told you that sounded better."
"Whatever. I call it to order."
"We're a brotherhood?" Mikey asked.
They both looked hurt. "Of course we are," Gabe said.
"We're a gang," Pete added. "Mikes. Come on. Get in the spirit. You brought it, right?"
"Yeah, of course. It's in my bag." He hadn't even thought about it, just grabbed it from his closet. Maybe he knew they were a gang after all.
"Okay, then." Pete banged on the table again. "The only rules for this weekend is no talking about heavy shit. Unless we want to. And we have to spend at least, like, sixty percent of the time cuddling."
"Twenty percent on personal hygiene and twenty percent on food," Gabe said. "That's math."
"Thank you," Mikey said, rolling his eyes. "Dick."
"This is going to be awesome." Pete grabbed Mikey's bag. "I'm gonna wear it first."