the non-judging breakfast club
Patrick is the love of Pete’s life, and Pete is happier than a pig in shit that they found each other so early on, in fucking college, so as to spare them both from asshole guys and cold girls (and while Pete’s been around, Patrick’s still- Pete is still so new, to this whole thing). Patrick grimaces when Pete says it, tells him it sounds vulgar, but Pete just presses happy kisses to whichever part of Patrick he can reach, sometimes gets down on his knees (which, Patrick admits, is fine, better than fine in private. But if he ever has to stand blushing through a repeat performance of that one time with the tuneless rendition of Umbrella in the cafeteria, he will die and take Pete with him. The threat’s somewhat less effective than it should be). Pete smiles like he’s just found out his shitty band got signed or like Gerard just drew him up a new tattoo design. He touches and touches Patrick and says, See this, baby? This is a shit-eating grin and it’s all down to you. Patrick holds back his smile and tells Pete he spends too much time with Professor Hoppus.
It’s the way it always goes. Patrick lights up rooms, Pete thinks, and tells him so. He’s gotten good at ducking well-aimed magazines and spotting subtle signs of happiness. The blushing.
Pete employs a “don’t ask, don’t tell” ethos with Mikey and Gerard and Frank. He doesn’t care that the brothers hold hands, doesn’t notice anything but that Mikey is happy when he is curled up in a corner of the bookstore on his break with Gerard leaned against him and Frank reading dramatically from a self-help book (although Pete certainly notices the softness in Gerard’s eyes as he watches, seems to take note). Notices the glow around them and the difference. The way Gerard doesn’t shake any more.
I can’t remember who met who first, or who fell in love with who first. All I can remember is the seven of us, always together.
It’s a little like that, but only a little. Pete knows as well as anybody that he met Mikey first. They were in the ER. Pete’s bass had attacked him. He was sat with his hand across his chest, blood trickling down his wrist, drying sticky and cracked like fucked-up paint. He was staring at the “be free” banner and the keyhole there, stained rusty red, and waiting to get stitched up and sent off. He can remember the way Mikey’s skin had looked like paper, and the way it made Pete ache for him. He remembers the fact that Mikey was wearing a Radiohead t-shirt and that was why Pete made up his mind to talk to him.
“You here for you, or waiting?” Pete asked, knocking his knee against Mikey’s.
“I’m-“ Mikey begun, and cleared his throat, and tried again. “Frank is sick.”
“Oh,” Pete said, and held up his hand and stated dumbly, “I bust up my hand.”
It’s also only a little like that because there are so many of them. There are Pete and Patrick and Joe and Andy, working the checkouts and stacking shelves in Wal Mart, and there are Mikey and Frank and Gerard gathering dust in the bookstore. There is Gabe who Pete rooms with (and who Pete is sure never has a job although Gabe seems fucking flash considering all the sneakers he owns), and his following of tiny boys with swoopy hair who all meld into one until you get them talking, and then there are RyanandBrendonandSpencerandJon, who stick themselves together like a bunch of baby birds with great expectations and high hopes. Jon works at Starbucks with Conrad and William, and after a hard day of doing nothing, mostly, stacking shelves, Pete loves the sound of the Barista Boys (only in his head, only in his head) laughing down the hall. Because he knows they each have an armful of cardboard cup holders, with Gabe’s black coffee and Pete’s sugar-laced latte, and pastries for Mikey who is sat in the corner of Pete’s room with his boys, and mineral water for Ryan who has had Such A Hard Day. Because it is an unspoken agreement that Saturday afternoon is Gravitate to Pete and Gabe’s Afternoon, and Saturday evening is best spent lounging in front of a shitty television watching shitty movies on cable, sometimes passing around a bottle of vodka and sometimes not (and Gerard is so good about this, so good, Pete doesn’t know how he does it).
You broke another mirror; you’re turning into something you are not.
Pete remembers when he was young like Ryan, although after the first time Ryan yells at him - really yells at him, leaves Pete’s ears ringing and Mikey with a quietly amused look on his face - Pete quickly also remembers not to call Ryan young, ever.
“I’m just sick of it,” Ryan whispered. His lips were chapped and his eyes were glazed, purple blooming from the inner corners and making him look old and young and timeless. Pete stared at Ryan's gloves and saw the way the loose threads were shaking. With static or frustration or fear, he wasn’t sure.
Brendon was in the back room with Gerard, watching him work colour into whatever he was working on for school. Pete could see Brendon’s leg jack-hammering up and down, nervous energy coming off him in waves like it always did when Ryan cut at him with his words, face unkind and voice level.
“It’s not that I don’t- he thinks it’s him I lash out at. It’s not,” Ryan snapped, as if Pete had interjected. And he closed his eyes for a long moment and said, “it’s this place.”
Pete was tired. He smiled, “I understand,” and meant it.
The three most important places in town were the most important because Pete’s favourite things happened there. It was a happy coincidence that two of the things involved Patrick.
There was the dorm Pete shared with Gabe (where Pete slept in on Sundays and wrote, with huge windows in the roof that meant he had to pay an extra ten bucks a month but he wouldn’t give up for anything), and there was the supermarket where Patrick worked on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. But room eleven in the music department at school was Pete’s favourite place in the world.
Pete needed to find his green boxers. It was absolutely essential to his wellbeing. Gabe had borrowed them for one night and lost them in a music room and Pete had a paper due in in three hours. He still had three thousand words to go.
Juggling texting Gabe and trying not to trap his backpack in the door, Pete didn't notice the quiet melody coming from the floor. He'd turned, and startled, and tripped on a Chuck-Taylored foot.
The first time Pete met Patrick, he literally fell at his feet.
It was ten-oh-five and the light from the window was catching dust motes. It bleached the hair of the boy with the guitar from the angle Pete had, caught perfectly on his jaw.
“Hello,” said the boy. “You're Pete Wentz.”
“Never mind that,” Pete was smiling too wide and too open for a guy he just met but he couldn't bring himself to care. He could barely feel his toes. “Who are you?”
“Patrick,” said the boy “Stump.”
Sometimes when Patrick is away visiting his mom for days at a time, Pete calls in sick. He skips lectures and coffee dates with Mikey or Jon, silences his phone so Gabe can't bug him, and sits in the corner of room eleven. He writes until he feels like he's drowning in it, about the crackle-static running in his veins, in this town, when Patrick isn't there to ground him. He covers himself in post-its of things he doesn't want to forget. He writes drafts upon drafts of love letters to Patrick and to Mikey and to the posters on his ceiling back home in Chicago. Falls asleep and dreams of dusty arenas split wide open by spotlights with no source, ideas and light shining on him, through him, onto the duct-taped wires under dream-sneakers he'll never afford.
And if the world does turn, and if London burns,
I'll be standing on a beach with my guitar.
I want to be in a band, when I get to heaven.
Anyone can play guitar,
And they won't be a nothing any more.
One of Pete's best memories ever is the time they stole Frank's mom's minivan and took it to the beach. It was Mikey's idea.
Pete was woken at seven AM by his cell buzzing fervently then falling off the side of the bed, then carrying on. Patrick made a noise next to him that meant Pete had better pick it up or Patrick would get up and Pete would be left alone in the bed while Patrick went and showered, out of habit more than anything else. Pete had stayed at Patrick's for a reason. He flung out an arm and found his phone.
“It's a hundred miles to the coast,” Mikey said as soon as Pete picked up.
“It's a hundred twenty-three,” Gerard chipped in, loud enough for Pete to hear, then went back to mumbling (just as loudly) in the background, presumably calling Gabe because there was an unforced yelp of laughter a second later, and Pete knew the only thing that could make Gerard laugh that early besides an incredibly caffeinated Frank was Gabe and his dirty-ass jokes.
They all met at nine. Pete could feel the tarmac, hot under the soles of his sneakers. He sat on the curb with Mikey while Gerard and Patrick sat under the trees and talked about how hellish the sun was or something. Mikey was still but not tense, mumbling about how Frank wanted to get a dog.
People showed up in groups and dispersed, spread out across the Ways' front lawn and up the porch steps. Vicky was the last to arrive, holding loosely on to the hand of a girl with blonde curls and no shoes.
“This is Greta” Vicky grinned. “She works at the milkshake place.” Vicky wasn't wearing any make-up; her hair was still damp. Pete was happy for her.
They piled into the van, finding their spots like they always did. Mikey sat in front with his friend Ray from the second-hand music store and turned up the stereo.
Ray drove, and drove. They talked, anticipation settling into the air. Frank fell asleep on Gerard and Brendon chatted happily to Patrick. Ryan talked to Pete about the acoustic he'd picked up the other day. Pete watched the dusty roads give way to the highway and yellow-green fields.
The sun was high and there were no clouds but the beach was deserted. Everyone climbed out, stretching cramp out and cracking joints after being still for too long (way too fucking long, Pete thought, yeah).
“Race you,” Frank yelled, and they all set off at a sprint, collapsing on the sand one by one. T-shirts and shoes and socks were discarded. Towels were forgotten in the van. They swam for hours in their clothes and dried off on the rocks after, lips dry and cracking with salt. Pete rubbed sunblock into everyone's shoulders, but only kissed the freckles on Patrick's. He watched Mikey's hair bleach in the sun while Ryan and Brendon kicked his and Frank's asses at volleyball. Andy was finding rock pools. Gabe was still in the ocean and Greta had gone with Jon to buy fries and slushies at the top of the hill. Pete fell asleep listening to the waves and laughter and dreamt of nothing at all.
He woke and decided to explore. Soak up this place he didn't know.
Mikey found him at the top of a cliff. The sun was setting. Pete was satisfyingly out of breath and his face was cooling rapidly along with his toes. He wondered how long the sand would hold the day's heat for. Mikey's hair was sticking up, wet, and his arms were gold and impossibly skinny. He put a blanket around Pete's shoulders and sat with him. They looked down on the sun as it sank beneath the horizon and painted the sky and Pete drew his feet up to his chest, tense and tired.
Mikey kissed Pete's hair. “You know we have to leave.”
“I don't want to go back to a place I know everything about,” he told Mikey, and then he was crying. His lips dried out again and he tasted salt. “What if I never get out?”
“You will,” Mikey told him. Perfect certainty in his voice.
Pete sits on the windowsill in his and Gabe's room. He is a human island on a sea of boxes. Gabe is out stealing bleach from Nate and Alex's room so they can lean the gunk out of the sink. Later tonight everyone is coming round for a glorified sleep-over. They'll drink diet beer and watch one of the DVDs that hasn't been packed yet and listen to Madonna. Everyone will fall asleep on everyone else and Pete won't let anyone talk about “lasts”. It's funny how he's wanted out ever since he got here, on some level (even after the first couple weeks in tenth grade when he didn't know anyone, when he was too mad at his mom for bringing him to a town where he couldn't breathe), but now he can't think what he's going to do. He isn't going to see Mikey or Gabe or Ryan or any of them every day. He won't be able to loan books from Gerard or pay Jon for coffee in weekly installments.
Pete rests his head on the window frame and sighs. Orders his thoughts like Patrick tells him to every time he starts to freak. Moving to Chicago means city air and people and new things. He will come back to visit and he will have Patrick.
He doesn't jump when he feels Patrick slide a hand between the thin material of his hoodie and his shirt, because he heard the footsteps. He smiles and opens his eyes and sees the leaves falling from the trees. He feels oddly still.
“Early,” Pete says.
“I know.”
Pete taps his foot. He's going to see traffic jams.