Fic: Soggy, Chapped & Faded, Yet Clawing Towards Daylight (MCR/FOB, 1/3, NC-17, Mikey/Pete)
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The label sends Pete to that doctor because, according to them, it's required for insurance purposes. He needs insurance because if he's going to be throwing himself off amps, they want him to be covered, or there will be no "next tour" for the Black Cards.
The doctor is a guy about his dad's age who asks an endless number of questions and has freezing cold hands. Like ice, seriously. Pete's affronted every time they touch his skin. It's a deeply disturbing accompaniment to "turn your head and cough."
"You couldn't buy me dinner first?" Pete jokes on a cough because hello. Cold and awkward. It falls really flat because Dr. Freezing Hands doesn't even blink he just...palpates. "Doc?"
"Mr. Wentz, could you just-" He holds up his other hand, and oh yeah, that's familiar. It's a shut the fuck up gesture. Pete's been given enough of them to recognize it. He doesn't usually respect requests like that but hey, doctor, different rules. So he hits pause on his ramble mode and pulls his lower lip between his teeth until the guy lets go of his junk and takes a few healthy steps back.
"I'm guessing it wasn't good for you huh?" Pete asks as the doctor peels off the gloves and throws them into the bio-hazard bin.
"You can get dressed now," he says, ignoring Pete's teasing again. Jeez, tough crowd. "I'm going to send in my nurse Deb to draw some blood."
"I eat lots of bananas. I'm pretty sure my potassium's fine," Pete says with a laugh, but the doctor isn't smiling. Not even a little. "Doc, seriously, I'm just kidding."
"I felt something unusual, Mr. Wentz. I'd like you to stay there while I send Deb in to do your blood work, and I get you a referral to a colleague of mine at Cedars-Sinai."
Pete sits back and stares. "That's a hospital." He knows this because everyone knows Cedars-Sinai. He knows it personally because Bronx was born there. He remembers the day, the hallway, the smell of antiseptic, and the sound of his heart beating in his ears over the electronics and conversation around him as he and Ashlee made their way to the birthing suite - terrified elation drowning out everything but the two-almost-three of them.
Right now though, it's not making any sense. "What?"
"I'm sure it's nothing. There can be any number of reasons for an enlarged testicle," he says, continuing on like Pete hasn't even spoken. "But I'm a believer in better safe than sorry. I won't report this on your physical just in case, but if I were you, I'd finish settling up with your insurance before you see Dr. Nagda. She's a very busy woman, but I'm sure I can get you in with her in the next two weeks which should be enough time for you to square the paperwork away."
The doctor sounds like he's speaking Urdu to Pete. Twisting syllables that must make sense together but not to him. He doesn’t have the right mental tools for it.
He hits the reset button in his brain and tries again. "I- What? My balls?" He frowns because yeah, he and Mikey haven't fucked in awhile, but that's not because there's anything wrong with him. It's hard to fuck when your boyfriend is on a world tour, and most of Pete's jerk-off sessions lately are directed by Mikey via phone or Skype. They primarily consist of Pete fucking himself on whatever latest toy Mikey's bought off Adam and Eve or Babeland's website and had shipped directly to him, so he hasn’t paid much attention. Still, "Is this because I have gay sex?" comes tumbling out of his mouth before he can stop himself.
The doctor actually does laugh at that. The sound is short and sharp and ugly like Ashlee used to make when he said something particularly stupid and hurtful during a fight - like laughing was the only thing stopping her from killing the shit out of him. This has a slightly sadder edge to it though. "No, Mr. Wentz. This almost certainly wasn’t caused by your sex life - gay or otherwise."
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that you have a lump, possibly a mass, in your right testicle. It could be benign, malignant, an infection - I'm not sure. Hence why my very competent nurse has to come in and do a blood panel on you while I call my other very competent colleague who will be able to help you if it is not something antibiotics can handle."
The man actually squeezes Pete on the shoulder with his cold hand before walking out the door. That's what scares Pete, wakes him up and reminds him what malignant meant in the episodes of Grey's Anatomy he watched when Ashlee's ankles were swollen, and all she'd wanted to combat the morning sickness was McDreamy on her TV and someone to nest with. Malignant meant knives and meds and the big C.
Pete doesn’t puke between the blood panel and walking out of the office with an appointment with Dr. Nagda for 2 weeks from Tuesday. He just really wants to. That's a big distinction, and he's proud to be able to maintain it. He's even more proud of the box he manages to fold the thoughts into by the time he gets home, out of mind completely.
There's an email from Mikey waiting for him when he gets out of the car at his house. It's a picture of Gerard with a ten-gallon hat on his head and a message reading "You are getting this an hour before the rest of the internet. You're welcome." It shocks a laugh out of him. The image of Gerard distracts him as he makes his way through his hallway. He trips over Bronx's toys that are still scattered over the floor from his last visitation night three days ago.
He hits the call button as soon as he's safe in his bedroom and waits the four rings it takes for Mikey to pick up. "You aren’t allowed in Texas anymore," is what he says as soon as he can hear breathing on the other end of the line.
It makes Mikey laugh which is like a reset on his whole world. Everything's bright colorful joy, and nothing hurts. It's so good Pete can barely stand it.
"I didn't do it. Gerard did. He insisted today was Talk Like a Cowboy Day."
"There is no Talk Like a Cowboy Day," Pete counters, falling backwards onto the white sheets of his bed. The cleaning lady changed them yesterday, so they still smell like fabric softener. He breathes deep and says, "That’s exclusively pirates."
"Right. I told him this. I was summarily ignored."
Pete smiles at the ceiling. "You can only do so much, babe."
"Yeah. So, we think we've found a place to record."
"Again?" Gerard had "found" ten different places to write since New Year's. Mikey's gone with him for half of them - mostly to make sure his impulse doesn’t land them out in the desert again. The last one was in Manitoba, Canada but didn’t have central heating.
"I don’t know," Mikey says with a sigh. "I mean, you know Austin's got the weird vibe going on that's really cool. Plus, Robert Rodriguez's recording studio is here, so there are actually enough resources that it'd be doable."
"But it's far," Pete whines.
"That was Frank's complaint, too."
"Hey, it's a valid concern. Not everyone's got a kid whose mom is cool with picking up and moving halfway across the country for no reason beyond artistic necessity." Ashlee, he knows, would never be okay with that. He can't blame Jamia for feeling the same.
Mikey makes a hissing sound between his teeth. "Right. Ashlee doesn’t like Texas either does she?"
"Her family's from there. She and Bronx are going in soon for her parents anniversary so she's being even more snippy when I call her than usual because she hates it. She says she doesn't, but she does. She really, really does."
"That’s what I thought. Jamia's not a fan either. Neither is Ray. The dust's hell on his hair."
"Well, we wouldn't want to upset his hair."
"Of course not," Mikey agrees, a smile in his voice.
Pete closes his eyes and says, "Tell me about Troubleshooter Studios. I've always wanted to go. El Mariachi is beyond awesome." He lets Mikey's low voice wash over him and doesn't think for moment about his doctor's appointment.
~*~*~
Pete gets a call from Deb the nurse thirty-six hours after he's finished the really boring and time consuming insurance paperwork. She clears her voice twice when he picks up, still nervous talking to him as only a fan can be, before she says "Your appointment with Dr. Nagda's been moved to this Friday. Can you make that?"
Impulse tells him to say no. Ashlee had called him with a last minute Jessica pregnancy emergency, and now he's got Bronx this weekend which is awesome. Any extra time with the little dude is worth its weight in gold, but Bronx is not at an age where waiting in a doctor's office is going to be conducive to his mood.
Then he remembers that Gabe's still in L.A. He likes hanging with Pete's son almost as much as Pete and is halfway through a text before "Yeah, sure no problem" leaves his mouth.
Gabe shows up an hour and a half before the appointment with grabby hands. "Where's my buddy, bro?"
"Hi, Gabe. Nice to see you, too."
"Uhuh," he says, patting Pete on the shoulder. "Whatever. Where's the little man?"
"He hasn't woken up from his morning nap yet. Wake him in thirty, or he'll be up all night."
Gabe's white smile lights up his whole face. "I do know how to babysit, Pete. How many times have I done this - for you specifically?"
Pete mutters a number in the triple digits and sighs. "It’s just different now, you know?"
He and Ash have ironed out things with custody, finally, but there was awhile there where it was touch and go and, he can admit, with good reason. They're good now. They have a schedule, plus extras, and she knows that with Bronx, she can trust him even if she can't or won't with anything else anymore. All that and Pete is still half afraid he's going to fuck up somehow, and all that progress will vanish with the wave of a court order.
"No, but I believe you that it is. Is that enough?"
"Yeah."
"So go on. We'll be here when you get back." He pokes Pete in the side just under the armpit because fucker is freak-show tall.
Pete bats his hand away then nods. "I should be back before he has lunch."
"Healthy right?"
"If you want fries, I won't tell Ash."
Gabe's grin widens. "Awesome."
Pete's wrong about lunch. After a manual exam that is more extensive than any of the handjobs he's ever given in his life, he's referred to a new nurse for a new barrage of tests. He lets them ease him into a wheelchair he absolutely doesn’t need for the ride to some scanning machines that look straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Dr. Nagda, a stunning Indian woman maybe five years older than him, is professionally friendly, careful with every word she speaks, and gives away nothing. By the time he lands in her office, it's after six, and the sun is starting to go down outside her window. Pete can't help but feel a little panicky as she looks at him, her lovely features lined with a firm frown as she shows him scans and explains, gently and carefully, what he's looking at.
Pete doesn't go screaming out of the room. He wants to. He wants to kick her desk and tell her to fuck herself too, but instead he takes a deep breath and thinks about Bronx at home with Gabe and Mikey in Texas with his band and says "So, now what?"
Dr. Nagda folds her hands on her desk. Her fingers are long and elegant with gold bands on her ring fingers and left thumb. Pete is a little hypnotized by their gleam. "Now I schedule a follow up with you where we discuss treatment options and begin the process of dealing with your illness."
"Treatment options."
"Yes."
"Because this is treatable."
"Very much so. The rest of the tests should tell us to what extent, but for now, try not to worry."
"Don't worry."
She gives him a smile is probably genuine. "Precisely."
He wants to tell she's crazy because worrying is exactly what a person should do when they're told that they have the most severe form of testicular cancer it is possible to have at the ripe old age of at 32. He wants to tell her to get bent, that this is a mistake and that she can't possibly be right. Instead he just nods, shakes her hand, and leaves.
He drives home somehow, but the cognitive dissonance is so severe that he doesn’t know how he gets from Cedars to his house and couldn't say if held at gun point. It's a goddamn miracle he doesn't crash into anything.
Gabe opens the door before he can get the key in the lock and hisses "Dude, where the fuck were you? He was getting suspicious." He casts a quick look over his shoulder towards the living room where Pete can hear Yo Gabba Gabba coming from the big screen. "I'm not good with 'why' questions."
"I'll take it from here. Just, hang out?" It comes out more a plea than a question, but Gabe nods. For this and so many other reasons, Pete thinks, he is the best of friends.
Bronx hits him hard with a bear hug when he walks into the living room. "Daddy!" he giggles as Pete hugs him back. "We're gonna have pizza. Uncle Gabe says." Fuck fuck fuck he is going to lose his shit, right here, right now clinging to his kid in his living room.
"That's great, buddy." He says. It comes out choked, but Bronx doesn’t notice. He just gives Pete another squeeze and trots back to his spot on the floor in front of the LCD tv screen where his DVD is playing.
Gabe notices though. He watches the whole exchange like a hawk and grabs Pete by the back of the neck as soon as Bronx lets go. He drags him across the house and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind them with a click. Bronx gets into everything, everywhere, and all of Pete's friends and family know it. But he's learned the bathroom boundary at preschool, so it’s a safe place to talk.
He shoves Pete away and folds his arms over his chest and glares down at him. At eighty feet tall, it's an impressive look on Gabe. He stares him back down, with his own arms crossed. They stand in silence for a long moment until Pete finally breaks. "What?"
"Don't 'what' me, man. I'm not the one who spent 8 hours at the doctor and then came home ready to cry."
"I am not going to cry."
"No? You want to go back out there and try again with Bronx? I bet you ten bucks that you break down in thirty seconds flat."
Pete tightens his arms. His fingers dig into his forearms, and he inhales deep through his nose. "Fuck you."
Gabe doesn't flinch. "No. Talk to me. "
"About what?"
"I don’t know. About what the hell happened today, maybe. Are you dying?"
"What?"
"They speak English in 'what'? Say what again motherfucker, I dare you."
Pete barks out a laugh because how many times have he and Gabe watched Pulp Fiction drunk or baked and talked about what a bad ass Samuel L Jackson is. It feels ripped from him, but Gabe's not even flashing a hint of a smile.
"Seriously, Pete."
"I'm not dying." Probably, he thinks.
"But you're sick."
"Gabe."
"You are. Fuck, man, what is it?"
"We're not talking about this now. We need to get back out there. Bronx's show's over."
"He's fine. Pete," He reaches out and grabs his shoulder. "Can you really sit on whatever this until Ashlee comes to get him? Because I'm more worried about what it'll do to the little man if you crack."
"I'll be fine." He has to be. He's got Bronx to be strong for, and that makes it easier somehow to not lose it now. At least in theory.
"Uhuh."
"I'll be fine."
"I don't-"
"I have to talk to Ash first." He says because she's not his wife anymore. He knows that; he doesn't really want it anymore because things with Mikey are so good that sometimes he thinks he's hallucinating. Even so, there's still a part of him that can't quite let go of the "for better or worse, in sickness and health" promises that he made just yet.
That hits Gabe hard though. His eyes go huge, and his face goes pale under his perpetual tan. "Pete."
"I'll be fine."
"You've got twenty-four hours to tell me what the fuck is up starting from now."
"Deal." Pete is pretty sure he can find the balls to send 'I have cancer' into a mass text by then.
"Daddy," Bronx yells - loud as hell but perfectly calm. It's a skill that seems to belong exclusively to little kids, sport coaches, and the very drunk. Pete's tried to replicate it sober, and he's never quite managed it.
Pete thinks those lungs come from his mom's side of the family. He gives Gabe a strained smile. "That's my cue."
"Twenty three hours, fifty-eight minutes." Gabe replies, reaching around him to open the bathroom door.
Bronx stands on the other side, his blond curls hanging in his eyes as he squints up at both of them. "Watcha doing?"
"We were just talking, kiddo. Come on." Gabe doesn't even pause as he bends down and scoops Bronx up, holding him above Pete's head. "Let's go make that pizza."
Pete watches them go and takes a deep breath. Then another. He takes one more before he turns on the sink - extra cold. He splashes his face and stares at his dripping reflection - young, a little tired, a few lines around his eyes that probably weren’t there a couple years ago but healthy. Then he calls Ashlee.
She makes it from Jessica's place in Malibu three hours later. Pete kicked Gabe out after dinner with the threat of "Twenty-one hours, forty-five minutes." Bronx is mercifully sacked out for the night. Pete read him Goodnight Moon and Oh, The Places You'll Go twice and managed not to cry once. He's asleep in Pete's big empty bed now, mouth open, hand curled around a snoring Hemmy's ear.
Ashlee doesn't waste breath with pleasantries. She waits for him to get the front door closed behind him and grits out, "An emergency - Pete? Really? Because it doesn’t look like your house has burned down."
"I told you it wasn’t that kind of emergency."
"And yet you insisted. You know, beg me to give you more time with Bronx every time we talk and when I actually give it you -"
"Ash, please." He says, holding up both hands palms out. "Can we not do this?"
"Right." She takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Right. What is it, Pete?"
This isn’t how he wanted to do this. "I, um." Okay, he doesn’t actually have a preferred method of breaking his diagnosis to his ex-wife, but if he did have one, it wouldn’t be like this.
"You what? You and Mikey are moving to Iowa to get married and want to talk joint custody? You want to go skydiving with Bronx tomorrow and need me to sign a waiver? You're going back to the Persian Gulf to challenge Ahmadinejad to a duel for the honor of Western music? What, Pete? " She demands, and oh God, he wishes he knew when he pushed her this far.
He knows it happened sometime in the past three years. Maybe after the fight, the one where Gabe flew up and put his bloody face back together, but he's not sure. Either way, he hates the anger and resignation he sees in her face and her voice. It dries out his throat, puts lead weights on his tongue.
"Well?" She doesn’t raise her voice, but at this point in their relationship, she doesn’t need to. "Tell me. What could you possibly be doing now that could be a bigger fucking deal than anything you've ever done before?"
"I'm sick, Ash." There. That wasn't so hard was it?
Her eyes narrow at that. "What kind of sick?"
"Hospital sick."
"Don't make me play this game with you. He's the three-year-old, not you. Spit it out, or I'm going to take him home, and we'll try to have this conversation again on your next weekend."
"Cancer sick." Pete says. It's the first time he's said it out loud. Cancer. He has cancer, and he is sick, and now someone besides his doctor knows. Ashlee knows.
She stares at him, hand drifting to cover her mouth like its drawn by a magnet. Her lovely eyes are huge in her face, and she's pale, paper skin that he can see veins through. "Pete."
"Don't do that." She looks ready to shatter, and if he has to watch her go, he's not going to be able to hold his own shit together.
"Is it terminal?"
"I don't know."
"When do you start chemo? Are you even going the chemo route?"
"I don’t know."
"What do you know?"
"I know that it's testicular cancer, which is so fucking stupid, right? Who the fuck gets nut cancer, right? And uh, I'm supposed to see my doctor again on Monday. But I just- I had to tell you, Ash."
She nods, her hand still pressed to her mouth. "Does- Does anyone else know?" Pete shakes his head, and she lets out a tremulous breath. "Right. Bronx."
"Right."
"Jesus Christ, Pete." She breathes and then he has his arms full of Ashlee. She's smaller than he is which is new because since she left he's only been hugged by people taller than him with the exception of Patrick. Her body is solid and warm, and god, in a year he's actually managed to forget what hugging her feels like. He feels like he should apologize to her for that, but she's too busy trying to squeeze the air from his lungs.
"I just need you on my team for this one," he murmurs into her hair, still blond and short. He focuses on that instead of the fact that she's crying now, silent but shaking against his shoulder, and it's nice to know that she still loves him, even if it's not like they used to. "In case, I don’t know. Just in case."
"Yeah. Okay. It'll be fine. Bronx will barely notice. He's three. We'll get through this. You'll be fine."
"Yeah. I'll be fine." Pete doesn’t tell her this is the fourth time today he's said this, and that so far, he still doesn’t believe it.
~*~*~
petewentz Pete Wentz - P£†∑
Finding out you have stage 3 testicular cancer & watching a pretty girl cry. My luck is just shit today.
7 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply
Pete comes awake painfully, landing face first on his bedroom floor with a crash. He looks up blearily and finds Gabe standing over him, with an expression that could light fires from the heat of his anger alone. "Wake the fuck up, asshole."
The light is painfully bright, and the carpet is rough against his cheek. He hates the world and everyone in it in this moment. "Ow."
"Ow? Ow? That's all you have to say? You turn off your fucking phone after you tweet that? Mikey called me in a goddamn panic. He's on a plane right now by the way. God, Pete, what the fuck?"
Pete rubs his face and climbs to his feet. Then he gets back into bed because he is not awake yet. "I'm sorry I turned off my phone," he groans into a soft fluffy pillow that is much kinder to his nose than his carpet.
"Really, you think that's the fucking problem?"
"You said twenty-four hours."
"Don't move. Also, don't speak. I may have to kill you." Pete can do that. He groans into his pillow and waits. "Your brother called to ask me what the fuck. Your sister called me, too. She says 'Call Mom before the Associated Press does or I will disembowel you with a snow shovel.' Have I mentioned lately that I find Hilary extra hot when she's pissed?"
"Hate you."
He drops Pete's phone on his back. It hits with a jarring little thud. "Call your mother now. Then get dressed. I'll be back in an hour." He slams the bedroom door shut behind him so hard Pete can feel the vibrations across the room.
Calling his mother is mercifully easy because he gets the answering machine. He tells her and his dad he's "sorry but." He tells her that he'll call her when he knows more on Monday and please not to call him back because it will only stress him out. He tells the machine not to worry because people beat this all the time, that literally three times not to come to LA, because he is fine right now and anyway - Gabe's with him, and Mikey will be there in a few hours. He hangs up and sets his phone so that any calls coming from his parents, Hilary, or Andrew go straight to voicemail then takes a shower that cleans off the sweat and strain and hospital smell from yesterday.
When he comes out of his bedroom with still wet hair half an hour later, he finds Gabe on his couch, texting furiously. "Hey."
"No. Not hey. I can't fucking even."
"Right. Um, Captain Crunch?"
"I ate."
"Okay then."
Pete wanders into his kitchen and finds Hemmy munching on kibble. The leftover pizza trappings are scattered around the sink. Pete picks around it as he gets his cereal. Ashlee took Bronx home with her last night, so it's all shockingly, jarringly mundane and quiet. He settles on the couch and eats, waiting for Gabe to break the silence.
He does with a short sigh. "Mikey's flight gets in at 2."
"Okay." That gives him plenty of time to get his shit together. Well, not really. There isn't enough time to work out an apology of that magnitude, but he can come up with something before he sees Mikey again.
"I shouldn’t need to tell you this. I'm not dating him. Fuck, Pete."
"I know. I'm sorry I just- After talking to Ashlee all night - I couldn't do it again."
"That's bullshit, and you know it."
"I don't know anything, man. This is all new for me."
Gabe nods and scrubs his hands across his face. "Us, too. So."
"So."
"WebMD isn't as helpful as it could be about this whole thing."
"I haven’t gone looking yet. I was sort of planning on spending this weekend in denial until you gave me the whole deadline."
"Twitter, Pete. You don’t get to turn this around on me when you told your friends and family you've got cancer over Twitter."
"It seemed like a good idea at the time. Easier, you know? You didn't see the look on Ashlee's face when she found out. I just - I didn't want to do that times twenty."
"And you don’t think that some people deserve it just as much as she did?"
"I-" Pete breaks off and stares down into his cereal. He can imagine Mikey's wide eyes and full mouth and knows he's fucked up royal. It's just - he can't imagine the way Mikey's going to react to this. A part of him was really convinced last night when he sent that tweet that he could avoid it this way, wrong as it is. "Yeah."
Gabe pinches the bridge of his nose. "I shouldn’t be the one who has to tell you this."
"But you're doing it anyway."
"Someone's got to, and with Patrick out on tour, no one else is willing to break into your house and smack some sense into you."
He drags his spoon through the sugary milk. He can't meet Gabe's eyes. "You shouldn't have to."
"I don't have to do shit. I'm not your fucking relationship nanny, man, but you're both my friends, so, fuck, I don’t know. Assume I'm not here for you. I'm here for Mikey and Travie and your mom and Patrick and pretty much every fucking person who has ever given even half a fuck about you including the Ross kid who, by the way, sounded pretty fucked up about the whole thing when he called me for info. "
"Ryan is twenty-five. He's not a kid anymore."
"Way to miss the fucking point on purpose."
"I don’t want to talk about this."
"And you think I do? What, man, do you think this is how I planned to spend my Saturday morning?"
"Could be. You were never exactly normal." Pete hopes he sounds teasing, but Gabe glares at him so hard that he can feel it like physical contact.
"Fuck you, Pete. Seriously."
Setting the cereal aside, he turns on the couch to look at Gabe. He's wearing a long sleeve thermal shirt under a black hoodie he's had since '03 at least and pajamas bottoms with sandals. The whole look screams dorm living but mostly means that something woke Gabe abruptly, and he hasn’t stopped moving since - chasing and putting out the fires that Pete's thoughtless announcement lit. "I'm sorry."
"You fucking better be."
"I am. I don’t know what I can tell you beyond that. We okay?"
Gabe doesn't speak. His arm rabbits out lighting fast and lands a dead-arm punch to the fleshy part of his arm where Howl and Sophie are curled together in ink on his skin. He yelps and jerks away, almost knocking over his cereal in the process. "Jesus! What the fuck?"
"Now we're okay."
~*~*~
Pete goes alone to the airport. He didn’t go for the full incognito in a hat and sunglasses, but he's not wearing any Clan merch, and he hasn’t shaved yet. Simple clothes like an ancient Midtown hoodie and jeans go a long way to keep people from paying attention. Of course, this is LA. Most people are so involved in themselves they don’t notice anyway.
He waits at the terminal entrance to baggage claim with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his hoodie. He doesn’t look for Mikey's face, just waits with his eyes cast on the ground until Mikey is right in front of him. His arms wrap around Pete's neck, and he's being hugged breathless.
The full body contact, tall lean form wrapping him up is like slipping into a pool for Pete. He hugs back because this is Hollyweird, home of entitled freaks with more money and less sense than they had any rights to. Two guys clinging to each other isn't the strangest thing that will roll though baggage claim today by a mile.
"We need to go get your stuff?" Pete asks, breath fanning against Mikey's neck. He can feel him shake his head.
"Gee's bringing most of my stuff. I've just got my bag."
Pete pulls back a half an inch to nod and regrets it. He can see lines of exhaustion around Mikey's eyes and mouth. He's been on a plane for who knows how long to come home to LA to Pete and all of his shit. It's not fair.
"I'm sorry," Pete says for what feels like the millionth time.
"Shut up." Mikey's voice wavers a little. "Let’s just get out of here, okay?"
"Yeah. We can do that."
Mikey keeps a tight hold of his hand on the walk out to the car. Their laced fingers sit on the gear shift between them entire drive out to the Hills, and neither of them speak. Mikey only moves to adjust Pete's ipod and fiddle with the sound on the car stereo, deftly moving from song to song away from anything even remotely grim until they arrive at Pete's house.
To Pete's surprise, Mikey kisses him two feet inside the door. He tastes like airline pretzels and diet coke and a hint of summer that never goes away. Pete groans into it because it’s been six weeks since they last kissed, and he's only human.
Mikey kicks the door shut and manhandles Pete to the back of the house and onto the bed. It's awkward, desperate and silent like they never are. They laugh when they fuck - always have, even when it’s so intense they can't focus. This is grim, and Pete pushes Mikey back when he goes to shuck off his shirt, his hand resting on Mikey chest, stopping the motion. "Hey. Mikey, stop."
Mikey jerks back. It's precarious as they are, Mikey straddling his legs just above where they hang over the edge of the mattress. Pete has to grab his hip with his other hand to keep him steady. It ruins what little balance Mikey has managed.
He falls over to the side, landing with thump that only bounces Pete a little but seems to shake Mikey all the way through. He curls over on his side, away from Pete towards the headboard, tucking his arms to his chest.
Right, Pete thinks, sitting up and scooting back so that he's all the way on the bed, toeing off his chucks as he goes. Mikey's pulled himself tighter in, bringing his knees up, and god this is so much worse than he thought it would be. "Mikey?"
"Yeah?" His voice comes out sounding like it's been dragged over spikes and turned to spun glass - jagged and so fragile.
"Babe, hey. Tell me what's wrong. "
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Mikey shoots back. "You can't really be asking me that."
Okay. Okay yeah. He fucked up. He fucked up big time, but it's just that he doesn't feel sick yet. It's been less than a day. Between being in Dad Mode and dealing with Ashlee, taking his sleeping meds, then facing down Gabe, he hasn’t had time to wrap his head around all of it.
Mikey though has a apparently had a last minute trip with two connections worth of time to think of it, and he probably came to the same kind of Black Parade nightmare his brother dreamed up five years ago. Only this is real and has Pete in the starring role.
"It's going to be okay."
"I should be telling you that. I'm fine."
That is such a lie, Pete thinks. Fine doesn’t land you in the fucking fetal position. He slides off the bed and gets to work on Mikey's boots. They lace up and take forever, but once they're off, Pete feels like he's accomplished something. Mikey hasn't moved or spoken, but he'll be more comfortable and won’t need to move. That's good. Pete can work with that and does, curling up behind him and wrapping his arm around Mikey's middle, the big spoon for once. "Shitty flight, huh?" he asks finally.
Mikey laughs. It's another broken glass sound, but it's a Mikey-laugh so Pete'll take it. "Yeah. That's one way to put it."
Pete nods, rubbing his nose against the back of Mikey's neck. They lay in silence for awhile before Pete tries again, a different route this time. The one Mikey deserves. "I'm going to my doctor on Monday. You know, to talk about options and stuff. You want to come with me?"
The entirety of Mikey's body relaxes at that. Pete can feel it from his head to his feet, resting against Pete's shins. "Yeah. That'd be good."
"Okay. We'll go together. You can take notes while I freak out."
"You won't freak out."
"How little you know me," Pete sighs, and Mikey pushes back with an elbow, right in the diaphragm. "Bony ass," Pete mumbles.
"You like my ass just the way it is." Lightness finally returned to his tone.
Pete is pretty sure that means he's gotten it right. He's not stupid enough to think it's fixed, but this is better than shell-shocked, practically catatonic Mikey. "I love your ass." He kisses the back of his neck, and Mikey twists back to look at him. "I love all of you."
"Good to know."
"Yeah. It is."
"I love all of you, too," Mikey says into the quiet. "You could've told me."
Pete gives Mikey's middle a brief squeeze. "I know. It was a dick move."
"Yeah."
"And I'm so sorry. I didn’t- You know I didn’t do it to hurt you, right? I just- I had to tell Ashlee because of Bronx, and after that it was like I couldn't do it again."
Mikey doesn’t move. If anything his muscles tighten up. "I get why you told her first," he says. "I just don't - Pete."
"I know. God, I know, and I promise you can dine out on it for the rest of forever if you just… stop sounding so sad."
Mikey jerks away at that. He sits up and oh god. Oh Jesus fucking Christ there are tears on his face. "How am I supposed to sound? Pete, cancer? What if-" he breaks off. "You know that when we were writing Black Parade, Gerard used to spout off facts about cancer treatment, like-" He pause to rub his cheek with the heel of his hand. "Like what the difference between stage three and stage four meant for leukemia patients, statistics for deaths in the US per year, and, uh, what chemo can do to your feet and the inside of your mouth. It can cause sores," He says. Then he swallows. "That bleed."
Pete stares at him. "That…isn't comforting."
"It's not fucking supposed to be. God, Pete you take things lightly a lot of the time. I love that about you. I do." He rubs at his face again, with his wrist this time. "But stop it okay? For right now? I can't fucking take it."
Pete sits up. He reaches out and brushes away a stray tear with his fingertips. He's never seen Mikey cry. He hates it. He'll do anything to make it stop. "Okay. What do you want me to do?"
"Be scared," Mikey whispers. His hand comes up to capture Pete's. He brings it down and stares at it like some strange bug in a box that could very well be poisonous and bite if opened. "I'm fucking scared, Pete, and it's not even me."
"I haven’t gotten to scared. So maybe this is good?"
"How is this good?"
"Maybe you'll be done being afraid when I start really freaking out."
"That doesn’t sound all that convincing."
"I'm sorry," Pete says again. He doesn’t know how many times he has to repeat that before it starts to work, before Mikey's face gathers back into the familiar clear expression that Pete knows and loves. Mikey squeezes his hand then tugs. Pete scoots forward, the bedclothes scrunching up beneath him so that their knees are touching. "I didn't mean to hurt you, and I'm so sorry. You want some pizza?"
Mikey laughs - braying and dorky and surprised. He shakes his head and says "You need to not ever change, Pete."
"I'll try."
"What kind of pizza?" Mikey asks, lacing their fingers together in a more casual, less desperate arrangement that pressed their palms together - warm and dry.
"The cheesy kind."
Mikey laughs again. "Yeah. That sounds good."
"Kiss me first?"
The smile Mikey gives him is the definition of beatific. Pete soaks it up like a plant in the sun. He feels shitty that Mikey came the way he did, but he's not even a little bit sorry that he's here now. With Mikey around, everything is better than it would've been. That's just the way Pete's life works.
~*~*~
Mikey sits with him at Dr. Nagda's office, and this time is both better and worse than the last. Better because Mikey's long fingers are laced tightly with his, leaving white indentations in each other's skin, and that is grounding and comforting. Worse because Dr. Nagda is talking about cancer cell infiltration of the tissue of his fucking balls and what to do about it - options including but not limited to chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and cutting off one or both of his nuts. So yeah, that part is way worse.
"So, just to be clear - you want to castrate me?"
"Pete," she says with a small shake of her head that is holding back a laugh. She's very pretty and clearly has a good sense of humor, but she's trying to be serious. He can tell by the way her lips are twitching. "I am not talking about castration. I'm talking about attacking the tumor and cancerous cells with chemotherapy and a possible lumpectomy once we've reduced the malignant tissue as much as possible."
"But you still want to deball me."
Her lips twist again, and Mikey's fingernails dig into the back of Pete's hand, which is less funny.
"No. The goal is actually to avoid that. I'll be honest with you - the realistic outlook on this prognosis involves surgery, but I want to reduce the cancerous cell growth as much as possible before I start cutting out viable tissue. See? The opposite's the goal."
"But chemo," Mikey says.
"And surgery. Chemo first, then we remove anything that's left. My colleagues don't usually take this route but I've found it particularly effective with stage three cancers of this type. So for my practice? It's standard."
"Oh good," Pete says, "There's a standard for nut cancer."
"There's a standard for almost everything," the doctor replies, and Pete does like her. He wants to trust her, but the things she wants to do to him to save his life - because people can and do die from this - scare the shit out of him.
Dr Nagda flips open a Blackberry and scrolls through it. She makes little hmming noises. Then she stops and says "Can you start on Wednesday?"
"Two days from now Wednesday?"
"You have cancer, Pete. The sooner we can start the better. I just want you to have the time to get things in order. Chemotherapy is exhausting, and the side effects can be intense. You need to have things in place - some to drive you to and from, that sort of thing."
"I'm driving him. I can do it." Mikey sounds worse than he looks, but he's got his determined face on. Pete knows better than to go against that face if he can help it.
"That’s wonderful. A solid support system is going to be key the farther you get into treatment. All factors being equal, having people to fight for puts you ahead of the game."
Pete nods, then clears his bone dry throat. "So. Wednesday."
"Yes. Wednesday. Ten am work for both of you?"
"We're self-employed."
"Right. Musicians. My daughter loves My Chemical Romance. She went as a member of the Black Parade Halloween of '07."
Mikey gives her a wan smile. "Okay."
"Don’t worry. This is beatable. This is treatable. This is something the both of you can get through one way or the other."
They walk out of the hospital in a daze. Mikey's holding his hand so tight; it’s gone numb from lack of circulation. Even so, Pete doesn’t pull away. For some reason, this is scarier for Mikey than it is for him, and he's not about to upset him more.
The next couple of days pass in a blur. They make love, frantically, like the world is crashing down outside and all they can do is cling to each other and wait it out.
On Tuesday night, they don't get out of bed for anything more than necessary bodily functions. Mikey takes Pete on his back and on his knees and curled up behind him. They come that way, spooned together and bound with sweat and come.
When they've been still all of five minutes, Mikey makes a low whimpering noise in the back of his throat and digs his fingers into Pete's hip and shoulder, his face pressed into the space between Pete's shoulder blades. "Stay," he whispers directly into skin, the touch vibrating down his spine.
For some reason, that’s the moment reality lands like a piano dropped from six stories up. Pete realizes that this may be the last time they ever make love like this. Hopefully not. Probably not. But it is possible. It's possible that all the things they're going to do in the next few months will take this way from them. That thought alone is enough to have Pete wriggling around in Mikey's embrace to wrap himself tight around his boyfriend with all the force of an enthusiastic octopus. Only octopi don't cry big shaking sobs into the necks of their partners, as a general rule.
"Shh," Mikey murmurs stroking his hair. The tension in his limbs is gone now, as if finally seeing Pete break broke him out of his own emotional rut. "I know. God, Pete I know. I've got you."
"I don't- Mikey. What if-" He can't even finish the sentence. He tries, pushing the words up his throat, but his vocal cords constrict, and his tongue goes dry.
"Don't, okay? The ifs aren't going to happen."
"You don't know that."
"Yes, I do. I know things."
"How?"
"Because I love you. And I know. Look at me." He plants his palms on Pete's cheeks and tilts his head back, just a little. "It took us half a decade to get back here. You do not get to leave me now, you hear me? Not because of the cancer, not because I'll have to leave on tour and we'll be apart again, not because you're an insecure ass who convinced himself he doesn’t deserve to be loved. You do not get to leave me. Do you hear me? This is it. You're done, I'm done. No leaving. Are we clear?"
Pete nods in Mikey's gentle hold. It wins him a smile, thin but genuine.
"Good." Then Mikey kisses him. Pete has been soulkissed a few times in his life, but this is different, smoother somehow, where the others were edged with desperation and newness. It's familiar and comforting and warm. They melt into each other, and Pete thinks that if this is his last time, there are worse ways to spend it than kissing someone he loves while they move together, slow and lazy.
They shower together in the morning. Afterwards, Mikey watches as Pete clambers into the most comfortable clothes he owns. It's a pair of pajama pants, one of Mikey's old Journey t-shirts, and 5o4plan hoodie. He gives Mikey a smile and holds out his hands in a perfect mockery of Gerard's jazz hands. "Showtime."
"You are not allowed to watch All That Jazz ever again."
"Hey, it's a classic."
"Ever. Again."
Pete pouts. It's a patented full on, watery eyes and pooched out lower lip move which succeeds in its objective of making Mikey laugh. They feed the dog and pretend to consider breakfast before making their way out to the car.
They listen to ancient Midtown songs and talk about the old days, about people they both know who they haven’t seen in ages, because it's safe. It's easy. They both know that things are going to be difficult soon, but neither of them are eager to address it before absolutely necessary.
"Do you want me to come in with you?" Mikey asks, sitting in the car, hands drumming a staccato beat on the steering wheel. "Because I can. I want to. I'm cool with waiting. I've spent a lot of time waiting."
Pete thinks about that, actually thinks before he opens his big stupid mouth. He could say yes, and Mikey could come in. He'd be cheerful and friendly as they put in a central line and pump toxins into his body. He'd smile, put on a brave face, but he'd be freaking out inside.
Pete doesn’t need that now. Right now, he feels fine. He's going to need it later when he's puking up his esophagus and suffering from body aches, and his hair is falling out. At the moment, he can deal for himself. It might be one of the last times he can deal with things on his own for a very long time, and Pete wants it. He needs to know he can do this himself.
"I'm good."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive. Go. See Gabe, walk my dog, watch some porn."
"Your priorities are in perfect working order."
He kisses Mikey's cheek and climbs out of the car, laptop, iPod, and a book in a messenger bag hanging at his side. It bangs against his hip as he walks to the hospital.
They shuffle him through the hallways of the hospital to get the line put in. It hurts some. They use needles that look long enough to go straight through him to shoot him up with lidocaine before they cut into him and put a tube in his chest, so they don’t have to put in an IV over and over. Then they hustle him back through the hospital to the infusion center and settle him down in a large, puke green armchair. They screw the IV bag into his central line and set him up for a long several long hours of watching poison drip into his veins.
It burns a little. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's his imagination. It's really hard to tell much of anything, honestly. Pete's brain feels like it's been shaken. He scrolls through his iPod, first by artist, then by song until someone clears their throat a few times.
"Um, Pete?"
He lifts his head and comes face to face with a pair of wide green eyes. There's a girl in her early teens sitting across from him with a white bandana with red dots wrapped around her bald head. She has no eyebrows, and her eyelashes are very thin, and the whole thing lends itself well to making her look like a skeleton.
"Hi."
She grins at him, wide and bright. She's got braces on her teeth, the metal glinting in the florescent lighting. "Hi. Um, I'm a huge fan. I know you're sick, too, so I promise I won't be weird or anything, but I just wanted to say-" she waves her hand. "Hello."
Pete smiles at her. He can't help it. She's an adorable baby scene kid, the kind who built his career. In fact, now that he looks at it, he can see that her bandana is the same one Gerard wore in the Killjoy videos. Yep. A scene kid rocking cancer chic. He bets she's listened to the Black Parade so many times she could recite it word for word.
"Hello. Nice to meet you-"
"Jessica. Jessie. You can call me Jessie." She holds up three fingers. "Jessie with the stage four lymphoma. You don’t need to say why you're here. I read your tweet," she says, blushing bright red. It goes all the way to her ears. "Anyway, I didn't think you'd be here. But I just meant to say- hi."
He laughs. "You said that already."
"Right. Sorry. Just, you hope when you meet one of your favorite musicians you don’t think it's going to happen when you're bald as one of those mole rats and look like Skeletor."
"You do not look like Skeletor. He had a cloak. How the hell do you even know about He-man? You were an infant when that came out. Actually, I don’t think you were even alive yet."
"There was a DVD release of the whole series for a couple years ago." Jessie shrugs. "I like crappy cartoons. My mom and I watch them together when I'm sick. I don’t need to focus. It's good."
"What are you watching now?" He asks. This conversation is miles better than he expected to get out of the day.
"Thundercats and Sailor Moon." She's got an iPad in her lap, and she holds it up, showing him in the image of Cheetara paused mid-word.
Pete grins at her. "Awesome."
~*~*~
Continue to Part 2
Continue to Part 3
The label sends Pete to that doctor because, according to them, it's required for insurance purposes. He needs insurance because if he's going to be throwing himself off amps, they want him to be covered, or there will be no "next tour" for the Black Cards.
The doctor is a guy about his dad's age who asks an endless number of questions and has freezing cold hands. Like ice, seriously. Pete's affronted every time they touch his skin. It's a deeply disturbing accompaniment to "turn your head and cough."
"You couldn't buy me dinner first?" Pete jokes on a cough because hello. Cold and awkward. It falls really flat because Dr. Freezing Hands doesn't even blink he just...palpates. "Doc?"
"Mr. Wentz, could you just-" He holds up his other hand, and oh yeah, that's familiar. It's a shut the fuck up gesture. Pete's been given enough of them to recognize it. He doesn't usually respect requests like that but hey, doctor, different rules. So he hits pause on his ramble mode and pulls his lower lip between his teeth until the guy lets go of his junk and takes a few healthy steps back.
"I'm guessing it wasn't good for you huh?" Pete asks as the doctor peels off the gloves and throws them into the bio-hazard bin.
"You can get dressed now," he says, ignoring Pete's teasing again. Jeez, tough crowd. "I'm going to send in my nurse Deb to draw some blood."
"I eat lots of bananas. I'm pretty sure my potassium's fine," Pete says with a laugh, but the doctor isn't smiling. Not even a little. "Doc, seriously, I'm just kidding."
"I felt something unusual, Mr. Wentz. I'd like you to stay there while I send Deb in to do your blood work, and I get you a referral to a colleague of mine at Cedars-Sinai."
Pete sits back and stares. "That's a hospital." He knows this because everyone knows Cedars-Sinai. He knows it personally because Bronx was born there. He remembers the day, the hallway, the smell of antiseptic, and the sound of his heart beating in his ears over the electronics and conversation around him as he and Ashlee made their way to the birthing suite - terrified elation drowning out everything but the two-almost-three of them.
Right now though, it's not making any sense. "What?"
"I'm sure it's nothing. There can be any number of reasons for an enlarged testicle," he says, continuing on like Pete hasn't even spoken. "But I'm a believer in better safe than sorry. I won't report this on your physical just in case, but if I were you, I'd finish settling up with your insurance before you see Dr. Nagda. She's a very busy woman, but I'm sure I can get you in with her in the next two weeks which should be enough time for you to square the paperwork away."
The doctor sounds like he's speaking Urdu to Pete. Twisting syllables that must make sense together but not to him. He doesn’t have the right mental tools for it.
He hits the reset button in his brain and tries again. "I- What? My balls?" He frowns because yeah, he and Mikey haven't fucked in awhile, but that's not because there's anything wrong with him. It's hard to fuck when your boyfriend is on a world tour, and most of Pete's jerk-off sessions lately are directed by Mikey via phone or Skype. They primarily consist of Pete fucking himself on whatever latest toy Mikey's bought off Adam and Eve or Babeland's website and had shipped directly to him, so he hasn’t paid much attention. Still, "Is this because I have gay sex?" comes tumbling out of his mouth before he can stop himself.
The doctor actually does laugh at that. The sound is short and sharp and ugly like Ashlee used to make when he said something particularly stupid and hurtful during a fight - like laughing was the only thing stopping her from killing the shit out of him. This has a slightly sadder edge to it though. "No, Mr. Wentz. This almost certainly wasn’t caused by your sex life - gay or otherwise."
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that you have a lump, possibly a mass, in your right testicle. It could be benign, malignant, an infection - I'm not sure. Hence why my very competent nurse has to come in and do a blood panel on you while I call my other very competent colleague who will be able to help you if it is not something antibiotics can handle."
The man actually squeezes Pete on the shoulder with his cold hand before walking out the door. That's what scares Pete, wakes him up and reminds him what malignant meant in the episodes of Grey's Anatomy he watched when Ashlee's ankles were swollen, and all she'd wanted to combat the morning sickness was McDreamy on her TV and someone to nest with. Malignant meant knives and meds and the big C.
Pete doesn’t puke between the blood panel and walking out of the office with an appointment with Dr. Nagda for 2 weeks from Tuesday. He just really wants to. That's a big distinction, and he's proud to be able to maintain it. He's even more proud of the box he manages to fold the thoughts into by the time he gets home, out of mind completely.
There's an email from Mikey waiting for him when he gets out of the car at his house. It's a picture of Gerard with a ten-gallon hat on his head and a message reading "You are getting this an hour before the rest of the internet. You're welcome." It shocks a laugh out of him. The image of Gerard distracts him as he makes his way through his hallway. He trips over Bronx's toys that are still scattered over the floor from his last visitation night three days ago.
He hits the call button as soon as he's safe in his bedroom and waits the four rings it takes for Mikey to pick up. "You aren’t allowed in Texas anymore," is what he says as soon as he can hear breathing on the other end of the line.
It makes Mikey laugh which is like a reset on his whole world. Everything's bright colorful joy, and nothing hurts. It's so good Pete can barely stand it.
"I didn't do it. Gerard did. He insisted today was Talk Like a Cowboy Day."
"There is no Talk Like a Cowboy Day," Pete counters, falling backwards onto the white sheets of his bed. The cleaning lady changed them yesterday, so they still smell like fabric softener. He breathes deep and says, "That’s exclusively pirates."
"Right. I told him this. I was summarily ignored."
Pete smiles at the ceiling. "You can only do so much, babe."
"Yeah. So, we think we've found a place to record."
"Again?" Gerard had "found" ten different places to write since New Year's. Mikey's gone with him for half of them - mostly to make sure his impulse doesn’t land them out in the desert again. The last one was in Manitoba, Canada but didn’t have central heating.
"I don’t know," Mikey says with a sigh. "I mean, you know Austin's got the weird vibe going on that's really cool. Plus, Robert Rodriguez's recording studio is here, so there are actually enough resources that it'd be doable."
"But it's far," Pete whines.
"That was Frank's complaint, too."
"Hey, it's a valid concern. Not everyone's got a kid whose mom is cool with picking up and moving halfway across the country for no reason beyond artistic necessity." Ashlee, he knows, would never be okay with that. He can't blame Jamia for feeling the same.
Mikey makes a hissing sound between his teeth. "Right. Ashlee doesn’t like Texas either does she?"
"Her family's from there. She and Bronx are going in soon for her parents anniversary so she's being even more snippy when I call her than usual because she hates it. She says she doesn't, but she does. She really, really does."
"That’s what I thought. Jamia's not a fan either. Neither is Ray. The dust's hell on his hair."
"Well, we wouldn't want to upset his hair."
"Of course not," Mikey agrees, a smile in his voice.
Pete closes his eyes and says, "Tell me about Troubleshooter Studios. I've always wanted to go. El Mariachi is beyond awesome." He lets Mikey's low voice wash over him and doesn't think for moment about his doctor's appointment.
~*~*~
Pete gets a call from Deb the nurse thirty-six hours after he's finished the really boring and time consuming insurance paperwork. She clears her voice twice when he picks up, still nervous talking to him as only a fan can be, before she says "Your appointment with Dr. Nagda's been moved to this Friday. Can you make that?"
Impulse tells him to say no. Ashlee had called him with a last minute Jessica pregnancy emergency, and now he's got Bronx this weekend which is awesome. Any extra time with the little dude is worth its weight in gold, but Bronx is not at an age where waiting in a doctor's office is going to be conducive to his mood.
Then he remembers that Gabe's still in L.A. He likes hanging with Pete's son almost as much as Pete and is halfway through a text before "Yeah, sure no problem" leaves his mouth.
Gabe shows up an hour and a half before the appointment with grabby hands. "Where's my buddy, bro?"
"Hi, Gabe. Nice to see you, too."
"Uhuh," he says, patting Pete on the shoulder. "Whatever. Where's the little man?"
"He hasn't woken up from his morning nap yet. Wake him in thirty, or he'll be up all night."
Gabe's white smile lights up his whole face. "I do know how to babysit, Pete. How many times have I done this - for you specifically?"
Pete mutters a number in the triple digits and sighs. "It’s just different now, you know?"
He and Ash have ironed out things with custody, finally, but there was awhile there where it was touch and go and, he can admit, with good reason. They're good now. They have a schedule, plus extras, and she knows that with Bronx, she can trust him even if she can't or won't with anything else anymore. All that and Pete is still half afraid he's going to fuck up somehow, and all that progress will vanish with the wave of a court order.
"No, but I believe you that it is. Is that enough?"
"Yeah."
"So go on. We'll be here when you get back." He pokes Pete in the side just under the armpit because fucker is freak-show tall.
Pete bats his hand away then nods. "I should be back before he has lunch."
"Healthy right?"
"If you want fries, I won't tell Ash."
Gabe's grin widens. "Awesome."
Pete's wrong about lunch. After a manual exam that is more extensive than any of the handjobs he's ever given in his life, he's referred to a new nurse for a new barrage of tests. He lets them ease him into a wheelchair he absolutely doesn’t need for the ride to some scanning machines that look straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Dr. Nagda, a stunning Indian woman maybe five years older than him, is professionally friendly, careful with every word she speaks, and gives away nothing. By the time he lands in her office, it's after six, and the sun is starting to go down outside her window. Pete can't help but feel a little panicky as she looks at him, her lovely features lined with a firm frown as she shows him scans and explains, gently and carefully, what he's looking at.
Pete doesn't go screaming out of the room. He wants to. He wants to kick her desk and tell her to fuck herself too, but instead he takes a deep breath and thinks about Bronx at home with Gabe and Mikey in Texas with his band and says "So, now what?"
Dr. Nagda folds her hands on her desk. Her fingers are long and elegant with gold bands on her ring fingers and left thumb. Pete is a little hypnotized by their gleam. "Now I schedule a follow up with you where we discuss treatment options and begin the process of dealing with your illness."
"Treatment options."
"Yes."
"Because this is treatable."
"Very much so. The rest of the tests should tell us to what extent, but for now, try not to worry."
"Don't worry."
She gives him a smile is probably genuine. "Precisely."
He wants to tell she's crazy because worrying is exactly what a person should do when they're told that they have the most severe form of testicular cancer it is possible to have at the ripe old age of at 32. He wants to tell her to get bent, that this is a mistake and that she can't possibly be right. Instead he just nods, shakes her hand, and leaves.
He drives home somehow, but the cognitive dissonance is so severe that he doesn’t know how he gets from Cedars to his house and couldn't say if held at gun point. It's a goddamn miracle he doesn't crash into anything.
Gabe opens the door before he can get the key in the lock and hisses "Dude, where the fuck were you? He was getting suspicious." He casts a quick look over his shoulder towards the living room where Pete can hear Yo Gabba Gabba coming from the big screen. "I'm not good with 'why' questions."
"I'll take it from here. Just, hang out?" It comes out more a plea than a question, but Gabe nods. For this and so many other reasons, Pete thinks, he is the best of friends.
Bronx hits him hard with a bear hug when he walks into the living room. "Daddy!" he giggles as Pete hugs him back. "We're gonna have pizza. Uncle Gabe says." Fuck fuck fuck he is going to lose his shit, right here, right now clinging to his kid in his living room.
"That's great, buddy." He says. It comes out choked, but Bronx doesn’t notice. He just gives Pete another squeeze and trots back to his spot on the floor in front of the LCD tv screen where his DVD is playing.
Gabe notices though. He watches the whole exchange like a hawk and grabs Pete by the back of the neck as soon as Bronx lets go. He drags him across the house and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind them with a click. Bronx gets into everything, everywhere, and all of Pete's friends and family know it. But he's learned the bathroom boundary at preschool, so it’s a safe place to talk.
He shoves Pete away and folds his arms over his chest and glares down at him. At eighty feet tall, it's an impressive look on Gabe. He stares him back down, with his own arms crossed. They stand in silence for a long moment until Pete finally breaks. "What?"
"Don't 'what' me, man. I'm not the one who spent 8 hours at the doctor and then came home ready to cry."
"I am not going to cry."
"No? You want to go back out there and try again with Bronx? I bet you ten bucks that you break down in thirty seconds flat."
Pete tightens his arms. His fingers dig into his forearms, and he inhales deep through his nose. "Fuck you."
Gabe doesn't flinch. "No. Talk to me. "
"About what?"
"I don’t know. About what the hell happened today, maybe. Are you dying?"
"What?"
"They speak English in 'what'? Say what again motherfucker, I dare you."
Pete barks out a laugh because how many times have he and Gabe watched Pulp Fiction drunk or baked and talked about what a bad ass Samuel L Jackson is. It feels ripped from him, but Gabe's not even flashing a hint of a smile.
"Seriously, Pete."
"I'm not dying." Probably, he thinks.
"But you're sick."
"Gabe."
"You are. Fuck, man, what is it?"
"We're not talking about this now. We need to get back out there. Bronx's show's over."
"He's fine. Pete," He reaches out and grabs his shoulder. "Can you really sit on whatever this until Ashlee comes to get him? Because I'm more worried about what it'll do to the little man if you crack."
"I'll be fine." He has to be. He's got Bronx to be strong for, and that makes it easier somehow to not lose it now. At least in theory.
"Uhuh."
"I'll be fine."
"I don't-"
"I have to talk to Ash first." He says because she's not his wife anymore. He knows that; he doesn't really want it anymore because things with Mikey are so good that sometimes he thinks he's hallucinating. Even so, there's still a part of him that can't quite let go of the "for better or worse, in sickness and health" promises that he made just yet.
That hits Gabe hard though. His eyes go huge, and his face goes pale under his perpetual tan. "Pete."
"I'll be fine."
"You've got twenty-four hours to tell me what the fuck is up starting from now."
"Deal." Pete is pretty sure he can find the balls to send 'I have cancer' into a mass text by then.
"Daddy," Bronx yells - loud as hell but perfectly calm. It's a skill that seems to belong exclusively to little kids, sport coaches, and the very drunk. Pete's tried to replicate it sober, and he's never quite managed it.
Pete thinks those lungs come from his mom's side of the family. He gives Gabe a strained smile. "That's my cue."
"Twenty three hours, fifty-eight minutes." Gabe replies, reaching around him to open the bathroom door.
Bronx stands on the other side, his blond curls hanging in his eyes as he squints up at both of them. "Watcha doing?"
"We were just talking, kiddo. Come on." Gabe doesn't even pause as he bends down and scoops Bronx up, holding him above Pete's head. "Let's go make that pizza."
Pete watches them go and takes a deep breath. Then another. He takes one more before he turns on the sink - extra cold. He splashes his face and stares at his dripping reflection - young, a little tired, a few lines around his eyes that probably weren’t there a couple years ago but healthy. Then he calls Ashlee.
She makes it from Jessica's place in Malibu three hours later. Pete kicked Gabe out after dinner with the threat of "Twenty-one hours, forty-five minutes." Bronx is mercifully sacked out for the night. Pete read him Goodnight Moon and Oh, The Places You'll Go twice and managed not to cry once. He's asleep in Pete's big empty bed now, mouth open, hand curled around a snoring Hemmy's ear.
Ashlee doesn't waste breath with pleasantries. She waits for him to get the front door closed behind him and grits out, "An emergency - Pete? Really? Because it doesn’t look like your house has burned down."
"I told you it wasn’t that kind of emergency."
"And yet you insisted. You know, beg me to give you more time with Bronx every time we talk and when I actually give it you -"
"Ash, please." He says, holding up both hands palms out. "Can we not do this?"
"Right." She takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Right. What is it, Pete?"
This isn’t how he wanted to do this. "I, um." Okay, he doesn’t actually have a preferred method of breaking his diagnosis to his ex-wife, but if he did have one, it wouldn’t be like this.
"You what? You and Mikey are moving to Iowa to get married and want to talk joint custody? You want to go skydiving with Bronx tomorrow and need me to sign a waiver? You're going back to the Persian Gulf to challenge Ahmadinejad to a duel for the honor of Western music? What, Pete? " She demands, and oh God, he wishes he knew when he pushed her this far.
He knows it happened sometime in the past three years. Maybe after the fight, the one where Gabe flew up and put his bloody face back together, but he's not sure. Either way, he hates the anger and resignation he sees in her face and her voice. It dries out his throat, puts lead weights on his tongue.
"Well?" She doesn’t raise her voice, but at this point in their relationship, she doesn’t need to. "Tell me. What could you possibly be doing now that could be a bigger fucking deal than anything you've ever done before?"
"I'm sick, Ash." There. That wasn't so hard was it?
Her eyes narrow at that. "What kind of sick?"
"Hospital sick."
"Don't make me play this game with you. He's the three-year-old, not you. Spit it out, or I'm going to take him home, and we'll try to have this conversation again on your next weekend."
"Cancer sick." Pete says. It's the first time he's said it out loud. Cancer. He has cancer, and he is sick, and now someone besides his doctor knows. Ashlee knows.
She stares at him, hand drifting to cover her mouth like its drawn by a magnet. Her lovely eyes are huge in her face, and she's pale, paper skin that he can see veins through. "Pete."
"Don't do that." She looks ready to shatter, and if he has to watch her go, he's not going to be able to hold his own shit together.
"Is it terminal?"
"I don't know."
"When do you start chemo? Are you even going the chemo route?"
"I don’t know."
"What do you know?"
"I know that it's testicular cancer, which is so fucking stupid, right? Who the fuck gets nut cancer, right? And uh, I'm supposed to see my doctor again on Monday. But I just- I had to tell you, Ash."
She nods, her hand still pressed to her mouth. "Does- Does anyone else know?" Pete shakes his head, and she lets out a tremulous breath. "Right. Bronx."
"Right."
"Jesus Christ, Pete." She breathes and then he has his arms full of Ashlee. She's smaller than he is which is new because since she left he's only been hugged by people taller than him with the exception of Patrick. Her body is solid and warm, and god, in a year he's actually managed to forget what hugging her feels like. He feels like he should apologize to her for that, but she's too busy trying to squeeze the air from his lungs.
"I just need you on my team for this one," he murmurs into her hair, still blond and short. He focuses on that instead of the fact that she's crying now, silent but shaking against his shoulder, and it's nice to know that she still loves him, even if it's not like they used to. "In case, I don’t know. Just in case."
"Yeah. Okay. It'll be fine. Bronx will barely notice. He's three. We'll get through this. You'll be fine."
"Yeah. I'll be fine." Pete doesn’t tell her this is the fourth time today he's said this, and that so far, he still doesn’t believe it.
~*~*~
petewentz Pete Wentz - P£†∑
Finding out you have stage 3 testicular cancer & watching a pretty girl cry. My luck is just shit today.
7 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply
Pete comes awake painfully, landing face first on his bedroom floor with a crash. He looks up blearily and finds Gabe standing over him, with an expression that could light fires from the heat of his anger alone. "Wake the fuck up, asshole."
The light is painfully bright, and the carpet is rough against his cheek. He hates the world and everyone in it in this moment. "Ow."
"Ow? Ow? That's all you have to say? You turn off your fucking phone after you tweet that? Mikey called me in a goddamn panic. He's on a plane right now by the way. God, Pete, what the fuck?"
Pete rubs his face and climbs to his feet. Then he gets back into bed because he is not awake yet. "I'm sorry I turned off my phone," he groans into a soft fluffy pillow that is much kinder to his nose than his carpet.
"Really, you think that's the fucking problem?"
"You said twenty-four hours."
"Don't move. Also, don't speak. I may have to kill you." Pete can do that. He groans into his pillow and waits. "Your brother called to ask me what the fuck. Your sister called me, too. She says 'Call Mom before the Associated Press does or I will disembowel you with a snow shovel.' Have I mentioned lately that I find Hilary extra hot when she's pissed?"
"Hate you."
He drops Pete's phone on his back. It hits with a jarring little thud. "Call your mother now. Then get dressed. I'll be back in an hour." He slams the bedroom door shut behind him so hard Pete can feel the vibrations across the room.
Calling his mother is mercifully easy because he gets the answering machine. He tells her and his dad he's "sorry but." He tells her that he'll call her when he knows more on Monday and please not to call him back because it will only stress him out. He tells the machine not to worry because people beat this all the time, that literally three times not to come to LA, because he is fine right now and anyway - Gabe's with him, and Mikey will be there in a few hours. He hangs up and sets his phone so that any calls coming from his parents, Hilary, or Andrew go straight to voicemail then takes a shower that cleans off the sweat and strain and hospital smell from yesterday.
When he comes out of his bedroom with still wet hair half an hour later, he finds Gabe on his couch, texting furiously. "Hey."
"No. Not hey. I can't fucking even."
"Right. Um, Captain Crunch?"
"I ate."
"Okay then."
Pete wanders into his kitchen and finds Hemmy munching on kibble. The leftover pizza trappings are scattered around the sink. Pete picks around it as he gets his cereal. Ashlee took Bronx home with her last night, so it's all shockingly, jarringly mundane and quiet. He settles on the couch and eats, waiting for Gabe to break the silence.
He does with a short sigh. "Mikey's flight gets in at 2."
"Okay." That gives him plenty of time to get his shit together. Well, not really. There isn't enough time to work out an apology of that magnitude, but he can come up with something before he sees Mikey again.
"I shouldn’t need to tell you this. I'm not dating him. Fuck, Pete."
"I know. I'm sorry I just- After talking to Ashlee all night - I couldn't do it again."
"That's bullshit, and you know it."
"I don't know anything, man. This is all new for me."
Gabe nods and scrubs his hands across his face. "Us, too. So."
"So."
"WebMD isn't as helpful as it could be about this whole thing."
"I haven’t gone looking yet. I was sort of planning on spending this weekend in denial until you gave me the whole deadline."
"Twitter, Pete. You don’t get to turn this around on me when you told your friends and family you've got cancer over Twitter."
"It seemed like a good idea at the time. Easier, you know? You didn't see the look on Ashlee's face when she found out. I just - I didn't want to do that times twenty."
"And you don’t think that some people deserve it just as much as she did?"
"I-" Pete breaks off and stares down into his cereal. He can imagine Mikey's wide eyes and full mouth and knows he's fucked up royal. It's just - he can't imagine the way Mikey's going to react to this. A part of him was really convinced last night when he sent that tweet that he could avoid it this way, wrong as it is. "Yeah."
Gabe pinches the bridge of his nose. "I shouldn’t be the one who has to tell you this."
"But you're doing it anyway."
"Someone's got to, and with Patrick out on tour, no one else is willing to break into your house and smack some sense into you."
He drags his spoon through the sugary milk. He can't meet Gabe's eyes. "You shouldn't have to."
"I don't have to do shit. I'm not your fucking relationship nanny, man, but you're both my friends, so, fuck, I don’t know. Assume I'm not here for you. I'm here for Mikey and Travie and your mom and Patrick and pretty much every fucking person who has ever given even half a fuck about you including the Ross kid who, by the way, sounded pretty fucked up about the whole thing when he called me for info. "
"Ryan is twenty-five. He's not a kid anymore."
"Way to miss the fucking point on purpose."
"I don’t want to talk about this."
"And you think I do? What, man, do you think this is how I planned to spend my Saturday morning?"
"Could be. You were never exactly normal." Pete hopes he sounds teasing, but Gabe glares at him so hard that he can feel it like physical contact.
"Fuck you, Pete. Seriously."
Setting the cereal aside, he turns on the couch to look at Gabe. He's wearing a long sleeve thermal shirt under a black hoodie he's had since '03 at least and pajamas bottoms with sandals. The whole look screams dorm living but mostly means that something woke Gabe abruptly, and he hasn’t stopped moving since - chasing and putting out the fires that Pete's thoughtless announcement lit. "I'm sorry."
"You fucking better be."
"I am. I don’t know what I can tell you beyond that. We okay?"
Gabe doesn't speak. His arm rabbits out lighting fast and lands a dead-arm punch to the fleshy part of his arm where Howl and Sophie are curled together in ink on his skin. He yelps and jerks away, almost knocking over his cereal in the process. "Jesus! What the fuck?"
"Now we're okay."
~*~*~
Pete goes alone to the airport. He didn’t go for the full incognito in a hat and sunglasses, but he's not wearing any Clan merch, and he hasn’t shaved yet. Simple clothes like an ancient Midtown hoodie and jeans go a long way to keep people from paying attention. Of course, this is LA. Most people are so involved in themselves they don’t notice anyway.
He waits at the terminal entrance to baggage claim with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his hoodie. He doesn’t look for Mikey's face, just waits with his eyes cast on the ground until Mikey is right in front of him. His arms wrap around Pete's neck, and he's being hugged breathless.
The full body contact, tall lean form wrapping him up is like slipping into a pool for Pete. He hugs back because this is Hollyweird, home of entitled freaks with more money and less sense than they had any rights to. Two guys clinging to each other isn't the strangest thing that will roll though baggage claim today by a mile.
"We need to go get your stuff?" Pete asks, breath fanning against Mikey's neck. He can feel him shake his head.
"Gee's bringing most of my stuff. I've just got my bag."
Pete pulls back a half an inch to nod and regrets it. He can see lines of exhaustion around Mikey's eyes and mouth. He's been on a plane for who knows how long to come home to LA to Pete and all of his shit. It's not fair.
"I'm sorry," Pete says for what feels like the millionth time.
"Shut up." Mikey's voice wavers a little. "Let’s just get out of here, okay?"
"Yeah. We can do that."
Mikey keeps a tight hold of his hand on the walk out to the car. Their laced fingers sit on the gear shift between them entire drive out to the Hills, and neither of them speak. Mikey only moves to adjust Pete's ipod and fiddle with the sound on the car stereo, deftly moving from song to song away from anything even remotely grim until they arrive at Pete's house.
To Pete's surprise, Mikey kisses him two feet inside the door. He tastes like airline pretzels and diet coke and a hint of summer that never goes away. Pete groans into it because it’s been six weeks since they last kissed, and he's only human.
Mikey kicks the door shut and manhandles Pete to the back of the house and onto the bed. It's awkward, desperate and silent like they never are. They laugh when they fuck - always have, even when it’s so intense they can't focus. This is grim, and Pete pushes Mikey back when he goes to shuck off his shirt, his hand resting on Mikey chest, stopping the motion. "Hey. Mikey, stop."
Mikey jerks back. It's precarious as they are, Mikey straddling his legs just above where they hang over the edge of the mattress. Pete has to grab his hip with his other hand to keep him steady. It ruins what little balance Mikey has managed.
He falls over to the side, landing with thump that only bounces Pete a little but seems to shake Mikey all the way through. He curls over on his side, away from Pete towards the headboard, tucking his arms to his chest.
Right, Pete thinks, sitting up and scooting back so that he's all the way on the bed, toeing off his chucks as he goes. Mikey's pulled himself tighter in, bringing his knees up, and god this is so much worse than he thought it would be. "Mikey?"
"Yeah?" His voice comes out sounding like it's been dragged over spikes and turned to spun glass - jagged and so fragile.
"Babe, hey. Tell me what's wrong. "
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Mikey shoots back. "You can't really be asking me that."
Okay. Okay yeah. He fucked up. He fucked up big time, but it's just that he doesn't feel sick yet. It's been less than a day. Between being in Dad Mode and dealing with Ashlee, taking his sleeping meds, then facing down Gabe, he hasn’t had time to wrap his head around all of it.
Mikey though has a apparently had a last minute trip with two connections worth of time to think of it, and he probably came to the same kind of Black Parade nightmare his brother dreamed up five years ago. Only this is real and has Pete in the starring role.
"It's going to be okay."
"I should be telling you that. I'm fine."
That is such a lie, Pete thinks. Fine doesn’t land you in the fucking fetal position. He slides off the bed and gets to work on Mikey's boots. They lace up and take forever, but once they're off, Pete feels like he's accomplished something. Mikey hasn't moved or spoken, but he'll be more comfortable and won’t need to move. That's good. Pete can work with that and does, curling up behind him and wrapping his arm around Mikey's middle, the big spoon for once. "Shitty flight, huh?" he asks finally.
Mikey laughs. It's another broken glass sound, but it's a Mikey-laugh so Pete'll take it. "Yeah. That's one way to put it."
Pete nods, rubbing his nose against the back of Mikey's neck. They lay in silence for awhile before Pete tries again, a different route this time. The one Mikey deserves. "I'm going to my doctor on Monday. You know, to talk about options and stuff. You want to come with me?"
The entirety of Mikey's body relaxes at that. Pete can feel it from his head to his feet, resting against Pete's shins. "Yeah. That'd be good."
"Okay. We'll go together. You can take notes while I freak out."
"You won't freak out."
"How little you know me," Pete sighs, and Mikey pushes back with an elbow, right in the diaphragm. "Bony ass," Pete mumbles.
"You like my ass just the way it is." Lightness finally returned to his tone.
Pete is pretty sure that means he's gotten it right. He's not stupid enough to think it's fixed, but this is better than shell-shocked, practically catatonic Mikey. "I love your ass." He kisses the back of his neck, and Mikey twists back to look at him. "I love all of you."
"Good to know."
"Yeah. It is."
"I love all of you, too," Mikey says into the quiet. "You could've told me."
Pete gives Mikey's middle a brief squeeze. "I know. It was a dick move."
"Yeah."
"And I'm so sorry. I didn’t- You know I didn’t do it to hurt you, right? I just- I had to tell Ashlee because of Bronx, and after that it was like I couldn't do it again."
Mikey doesn’t move. If anything his muscles tighten up. "I get why you told her first," he says. "I just don't - Pete."
"I know. God, I know, and I promise you can dine out on it for the rest of forever if you just… stop sounding so sad."
Mikey jerks away at that. He sits up and oh god. Oh Jesus fucking Christ there are tears on his face. "How am I supposed to sound? Pete, cancer? What if-" he breaks off. "You know that when we were writing Black Parade, Gerard used to spout off facts about cancer treatment, like-" He pause to rub his cheek with the heel of his hand. "Like what the difference between stage three and stage four meant for leukemia patients, statistics for deaths in the US per year, and, uh, what chemo can do to your feet and the inside of your mouth. It can cause sores," He says. Then he swallows. "That bleed."
Pete stares at him. "That…isn't comforting."
"It's not fucking supposed to be. God, Pete you take things lightly a lot of the time. I love that about you. I do." He rubs at his face again, with his wrist this time. "But stop it okay? For right now? I can't fucking take it."
Pete sits up. He reaches out and brushes away a stray tear with his fingertips. He's never seen Mikey cry. He hates it. He'll do anything to make it stop. "Okay. What do you want me to do?"
"Be scared," Mikey whispers. His hand comes up to capture Pete's. He brings it down and stares at it like some strange bug in a box that could very well be poisonous and bite if opened. "I'm fucking scared, Pete, and it's not even me."
"I haven’t gotten to scared. So maybe this is good?"
"How is this good?"
"Maybe you'll be done being afraid when I start really freaking out."
"That doesn’t sound all that convincing."
"I'm sorry," Pete says again. He doesn’t know how many times he has to repeat that before it starts to work, before Mikey's face gathers back into the familiar clear expression that Pete knows and loves. Mikey squeezes his hand then tugs. Pete scoots forward, the bedclothes scrunching up beneath him so that their knees are touching. "I didn't mean to hurt you, and I'm so sorry. You want some pizza?"
Mikey laughs - braying and dorky and surprised. He shakes his head and says "You need to not ever change, Pete."
"I'll try."
"What kind of pizza?" Mikey asks, lacing their fingers together in a more casual, less desperate arrangement that pressed their palms together - warm and dry.
"The cheesy kind."
Mikey laughs again. "Yeah. That sounds good."
"Kiss me first?"
The smile Mikey gives him is the definition of beatific. Pete soaks it up like a plant in the sun. He feels shitty that Mikey came the way he did, but he's not even a little bit sorry that he's here now. With Mikey around, everything is better than it would've been. That's just the way Pete's life works.
~*~*~
Mikey sits with him at Dr. Nagda's office, and this time is both better and worse than the last. Better because Mikey's long fingers are laced tightly with his, leaving white indentations in each other's skin, and that is grounding and comforting. Worse because Dr. Nagda is talking about cancer cell infiltration of the tissue of his fucking balls and what to do about it - options including but not limited to chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and cutting off one or both of his nuts. So yeah, that part is way worse.
"So, just to be clear - you want to castrate me?"
"Pete," she says with a small shake of her head that is holding back a laugh. She's very pretty and clearly has a good sense of humor, but she's trying to be serious. He can tell by the way her lips are twitching. "I am not talking about castration. I'm talking about attacking the tumor and cancerous cells with chemotherapy and a possible lumpectomy once we've reduced the malignant tissue as much as possible."
"But you still want to deball me."
Her lips twist again, and Mikey's fingernails dig into the back of Pete's hand, which is less funny.
"No. The goal is actually to avoid that. I'll be honest with you - the realistic outlook on this prognosis involves surgery, but I want to reduce the cancerous cell growth as much as possible before I start cutting out viable tissue. See? The opposite's the goal."
"But chemo," Mikey says.
"And surgery. Chemo first, then we remove anything that's left. My colleagues don't usually take this route but I've found it particularly effective with stage three cancers of this type. So for my practice? It's standard."
"Oh good," Pete says, "There's a standard for nut cancer."
"There's a standard for almost everything," the doctor replies, and Pete does like her. He wants to trust her, but the things she wants to do to him to save his life - because people can and do die from this - scare the shit out of him.
Dr Nagda flips open a Blackberry and scrolls through it. She makes little hmming noises. Then she stops and says "Can you start on Wednesday?"
"Two days from now Wednesday?"
"You have cancer, Pete. The sooner we can start the better. I just want you to have the time to get things in order. Chemotherapy is exhausting, and the side effects can be intense. You need to have things in place - some to drive you to and from, that sort of thing."
"I'm driving him. I can do it." Mikey sounds worse than he looks, but he's got his determined face on. Pete knows better than to go against that face if he can help it.
"That’s wonderful. A solid support system is going to be key the farther you get into treatment. All factors being equal, having people to fight for puts you ahead of the game."
Pete nods, then clears his bone dry throat. "So. Wednesday."
"Yes. Wednesday. Ten am work for both of you?"
"We're self-employed."
"Right. Musicians. My daughter loves My Chemical Romance. She went as a member of the Black Parade Halloween of '07."
Mikey gives her a wan smile. "Okay."
"Don’t worry. This is beatable. This is treatable. This is something the both of you can get through one way or the other."
They walk out of the hospital in a daze. Mikey's holding his hand so tight; it’s gone numb from lack of circulation. Even so, Pete doesn’t pull away. For some reason, this is scarier for Mikey than it is for him, and he's not about to upset him more.
The next couple of days pass in a blur. They make love, frantically, like the world is crashing down outside and all they can do is cling to each other and wait it out.
On Tuesday night, they don't get out of bed for anything more than necessary bodily functions. Mikey takes Pete on his back and on his knees and curled up behind him. They come that way, spooned together and bound with sweat and come.
When they've been still all of five minutes, Mikey makes a low whimpering noise in the back of his throat and digs his fingers into Pete's hip and shoulder, his face pressed into the space between Pete's shoulder blades. "Stay," he whispers directly into skin, the touch vibrating down his spine.
For some reason, that’s the moment reality lands like a piano dropped from six stories up. Pete realizes that this may be the last time they ever make love like this. Hopefully not. Probably not. But it is possible. It's possible that all the things they're going to do in the next few months will take this way from them. That thought alone is enough to have Pete wriggling around in Mikey's embrace to wrap himself tight around his boyfriend with all the force of an enthusiastic octopus. Only octopi don't cry big shaking sobs into the necks of their partners, as a general rule.
"Shh," Mikey murmurs stroking his hair. The tension in his limbs is gone now, as if finally seeing Pete break broke him out of his own emotional rut. "I know. God, Pete I know. I've got you."
"I don't- Mikey. What if-" He can't even finish the sentence. He tries, pushing the words up his throat, but his vocal cords constrict, and his tongue goes dry.
"Don't, okay? The ifs aren't going to happen."
"You don't know that."
"Yes, I do. I know things."
"How?"
"Because I love you. And I know. Look at me." He plants his palms on Pete's cheeks and tilts his head back, just a little. "It took us half a decade to get back here. You do not get to leave me now, you hear me? Not because of the cancer, not because I'll have to leave on tour and we'll be apart again, not because you're an insecure ass who convinced himself he doesn’t deserve to be loved. You do not get to leave me. Do you hear me? This is it. You're done, I'm done. No leaving. Are we clear?"
Pete nods in Mikey's gentle hold. It wins him a smile, thin but genuine.
"Good." Then Mikey kisses him. Pete has been soulkissed a few times in his life, but this is different, smoother somehow, where the others were edged with desperation and newness. It's familiar and comforting and warm. They melt into each other, and Pete thinks that if this is his last time, there are worse ways to spend it than kissing someone he loves while they move together, slow and lazy.
They shower together in the morning. Afterwards, Mikey watches as Pete clambers into the most comfortable clothes he owns. It's a pair of pajama pants, one of Mikey's old Journey t-shirts, and 5o4plan hoodie. He gives Mikey a smile and holds out his hands in a perfect mockery of Gerard's jazz hands. "Showtime."
"You are not allowed to watch All That Jazz ever again."
"Hey, it's a classic."
"Ever. Again."
Pete pouts. It's a patented full on, watery eyes and pooched out lower lip move which succeeds in its objective of making Mikey laugh. They feed the dog and pretend to consider breakfast before making their way out to the car.
They listen to ancient Midtown songs and talk about the old days, about people they both know who they haven’t seen in ages, because it's safe. It's easy. They both know that things are going to be difficult soon, but neither of them are eager to address it before absolutely necessary.
"Do you want me to come in with you?" Mikey asks, sitting in the car, hands drumming a staccato beat on the steering wheel. "Because I can. I want to. I'm cool with waiting. I've spent a lot of time waiting."
Pete thinks about that, actually thinks before he opens his big stupid mouth. He could say yes, and Mikey could come in. He'd be cheerful and friendly as they put in a central line and pump toxins into his body. He'd smile, put on a brave face, but he'd be freaking out inside.
Pete doesn’t need that now. Right now, he feels fine. He's going to need it later when he's puking up his esophagus and suffering from body aches, and his hair is falling out. At the moment, he can deal for himself. It might be one of the last times he can deal with things on his own for a very long time, and Pete wants it. He needs to know he can do this himself.
"I'm good."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive. Go. See Gabe, walk my dog, watch some porn."
"Your priorities are in perfect working order."
He kisses Mikey's cheek and climbs out of the car, laptop, iPod, and a book in a messenger bag hanging at his side. It bangs against his hip as he walks to the hospital.
They shuffle him through the hallways of the hospital to get the line put in. It hurts some. They use needles that look long enough to go straight through him to shoot him up with lidocaine before they cut into him and put a tube in his chest, so they don’t have to put in an IV over and over. Then they hustle him back through the hospital to the infusion center and settle him down in a large, puke green armchair. They screw the IV bag into his central line and set him up for a long several long hours of watching poison drip into his veins.
It burns a little. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's his imagination. It's really hard to tell much of anything, honestly. Pete's brain feels like it's been shaken. He scrolls through his iPod, first by artist, then by song until someone clears their throat a few times.
"Um, Pete?"
He lifts his head and comes face to face with a pair of wide green eyes. There's a girl in her early teens sitting across from him with a white bandana with red dots wrapped around her bald head. She has no eyebrows, and her eyelashes are very thin, and the whole thing lends itself well to making her look like a skeleton.
"Hi."
She grins at him, wide and bright. She's got braces on her teeth, the metal glinting in the florescent lighting. "Hi. Um, I'm a huge fan. I know you're sick, too, so I promise I won't be weird or anything, but I just wanted to say-" she waves her hand. "Hello."
Pete smiles at her. He can't help it. She's an adorable baby scene kid, the kind who built his career. In fact, now that he looks at it, he can see that her bandana is the same one Gerard wore in the Killjoy videos. Yep. A scene kid rocking cancer chic. He bets she's listened to the Black Parade so many times she could recite it word for word.
"Hello. Nice to meet you-"
"Jessica. Jessie. You can call me Jessie." She holds up three fingers. "Jessie with the stage four lymphoma. You don’t need to say why you're here. I read your tweet," she says, blushing bright red. It goes all the way to her ears. "Anyway, I didn't think you'd be here. But I just meant to say- hi."
He laughs. "You said that already."
"Right. Sorry. Just, you hope when you meet one of your favorite musicians you don’t think it's going to happen when you're bald as one of those mole rats and look like Skeletor."
"You do not look like Skeletor. He had a cloak. How the hell do you even know about He-man? You were an infant when that came out. Actually, I don’t think you were even alive yet."
"There was a DVD release of the whole series for a couple years ago." Jessie shrugs. "I like crappy cartoons. My mom and I watch them together when I'm sick. I don’t need to focus. It's good."
"What are you watching now?" He asks. This conversation is miles better than he expected to get out of the day.
"Thundercats and Sailor Moon." She's got an iPad in her lap, and she holds it up, showing him in the image of Cheetara paused mid-word.
Pete grins at her. "Awesome."
~*~*~
Continue to Part 2
Continue to Part 3