Peeping Through Keyholes

I'll tell you something right now. You can try to pass Pete by all you like, but you’ll always come back to him in the end.

It’s impossible to ignore him; he’s the wasp at your windshield, unwittingly demanding attention until he stings you when you try to swat him away. Lured by the bright stripes to his personality, you acknowledge the tainted sunshine yellow but push the black out, hoping it will never surface – and when it does, you won’t be ready for it. It’ll hit you like a swarm of locusts hungry for anything in its path.

He’ll set his gaze on you and guarantee you no freedom. Whether it be from across a sweat-slick dance floor, a crowded room or from the stage to the audience, you’ll make eye contact with him - and never will you forget the exact shade of those honey glazed irises that could coat your soul with the sickly mess. Thousands of teens under his spell at once, adolescent hearts thumping for the reality-driven promises that morph from the ink in his pen. Drugged up on fascination, admiration, lust; you know that the day you never see Pete again is the day you need to buy a pair of rose-tinted glasses.

He hides under hoods the colours of children’s crayons and those sunglasses as black as his hair. The cameras feed off the swelling ego they believe they’re extracting from beneath his layers, exaggerating everything into bitter confectionery for every gossip-hungry teen in the country. The people behind the lenses may not be genuinely interested, but I’d bet my bottom dollar that you will be. Like so many rock stars, famous-for-nothing celebrities and shattered souls before you, you’ll encounter this loner draped in attention and beg to feel the bones of his brains - may it be through the gloss used to paint magazine pages, the concaved glass of a TV screen or simply air itself. What is it that makes the blood pulse through his veins the way it does? What makes those obnoxiously large lips curl up at the corners? What inspires those words, scrawled on paper napkins and grocery bags that grow and blossom into fully-fledged songs, ready to ensnare and capture?

I still don’t know if I’ve figured it out.

All those nights hunched together over guitars and forests of paper built strong foundations. The best of friends, the closest of souls, and it’s a one-way mirror. His smile is a mystery to most, if not all. On those evenings we devour one alcoholic beverage after another and drown in our intoxicated disillusionment, sometimes with others. Various members of the label, dripping all over him like molten wax while he burns like a candle. They pretend they know and act like they care, but they can never do one while they are incapable of the other. All anybody recognises is the effect he has on them – and of course, he knows it too. He is the strobe light to their disco. He is the frets on their guitar.

He is the benzodiazepine in their vodka and lime.

Inescapable and deadly. His chapped hands will close round your heart and squeeze, out of sync with your pulse. If you’re lucky enough to be gazed upon by those dark eyes and subjected to the infamous smirk, you’ll shiver and the air will heat up in your lungs. This will probably be in some cramped pile of mortar, down steps encrusted with multiplying bacteria and in a room filled with swaying skeletons swathed in hairspray and cheap perfume. Vibrations too loud to think through will be punching at your ear drums and the stench of salty sweat will be scratching at your nostrils as your eyes linger for too long on his face, ass or whoever’s shoulder his hand happens to be on at that moment in time. He’s Jesus among his disciples and Lucifer among fallen angels. If his eyes and smiles are on you then you feel privileged, and if not then you’re jade amongst all the other three-leaved clovers. You’ll be longing to be a rose in this thorny battlefield – but if you’re picked, you’ll never be put in water. The next morning you’ll be shrivelled, fading and frustrated - because he’ll never go home with you.

Maybe you’ll live with this. Maybe you won’t. After all, he’s only a person, right? A person with brown eyes, dark hair, a smile. He has hands, he has legs, he has a torso. Or, he’s a person with eyes that can lie and love at the same time, hair that gleams even in darkness and a smile that can teach your heart how to forget everyone you’ve ever fucked. Those hands have palms you wish you could hold, his legs you envision wrapped in some kind of deadly tryst round your body and you want to feel every inch of that torso beneath your own greedy fingertips.

People like Pete are rare recipes for explosives that greedy arsonists thirst for.

One word, one patronising glance, and the spark gives birth to a fire. Maybe you’ll get angry or possessive, even though you know you have nothing to claim. You might just need to project your angst back onto the source of it. But if you take it out on him, it’s not going to do you any good. The mind that can convey such emotion won’t show you any now; the smiles and scowls are gone, and he’s nonchalant over whether you’re speaking to him or not. It’s not like he doesn’t have swarms of other followers just like you, or close friends to hang out with; he’s the life and soul of the party - scratch that, he is the party – remember? Whether you’re there or not makes little difference to him, and this isn’t him being rude; he simply knows that you’re the one with the problem and you’ll come crawling back.

Because rejection hurts. Rejection is the teeth marks of jealousy that dint your flesh where his breath wrote meaningless promises on your neck. Rejection is that twinge of annoyance when one of our songs is played on the radio and you’re reminded of the way he left you in the middle of the club to go find somebody else. Rejection is the too-bright sight of someone else standing a little too close to him, as he sings into their shoulder and spares not a thought for you.

The reason for your rejection?

Well, that would be me. Patrick Stump.

When we’re deep in heated conversation and I can feel my pulse rising and my cheeks flush, I’m only focusing on the negatives. Hands tremble through fear of his reply, anger at his actions and anxiety for his well-being, and I forget that he’s a grown man who can think for himself. I forget that he’s not a wreck of a person who needs shielding from life anymore. Sometimes I even forget that he has his own record label and clothing range as well as a band, all of which have accumulated followers like a huge fishnet swept through the ocean. All that matters is the angry glint in his eyes, born from all my warnings and bitchings about other label bosses, bands, women – and guys, for that matter.

Right now, I’m watching from the corner whilst he swims away from me through pools of limbs and alcohol, right after one of those very same heated discussions. I’m flushed and I’m fuming, throwing the remainder of Pete’s vodka down my neck as flocks of corporate beings engulf him, and I quickly lose sight. I do this every time, yet I know that there’s no need to warn, to advise, to nag - because Pete’s a cobra in a world full of mice. He says can take care of himself now. But when manicured hands, lipsticked mouths and even rough, guitar-calloused fingers are biting and grabbing at him, it’s hard not to feel that way. So long I’ve spent getting him back on his feet, nursing him from a scratched, dinted and worn down mannequin back to the burning, animate figure of flashy smiles and sentient conversation. It’s all you want and all you need to keep someone like Pete close and stop them falling back into danger, but it’s a little bit difficult when he won’t take any notice of you.

Tonight will not be another of those nights where I storm after him like an over-protective parent; there’s only so much a guy can take before his aorta is sewn closed and he starts not to care quite so much. My head and my heart are oxymoronic tonight, because now that his swaggering figure has blended into the crowd like a drop of red paint into black ink, I’m almost content on my own. I turn my head away from the crowd and take off my jacket, pooling the cheap garment in the corner. I’m surrounded by bones dressed in diamonds that are all over each other, and tables heaving with bands that think they’re something damn special just because they’re in the same establishment as the leader of their genre. Faces I recognise stagger by me, inclining their heads and wondering for a split second where the other half of me is – because to them I’m obviously incomplete without the one who does all the talking. They’ll see Pete without me and not give a fuck because usually they’re the one who now has his attention, but when I’m alone I’m just a whisper without the lips to form it.

Boredom sets in like red wine seeping into a cream carpet. There’s nobody around me I know at the moment – by the looks of things they’re all down on the dance floor, happily suffocating amongst others of their kind. Ultraviolet lights scan the throng along with my eyes and every so often they gleam on the perfectly styled flash of black hair that could belong to Pete, but doesn’t quite fall the right way or doesn’t quite have the parting in the right place. I laugh dismally to myself – I’m just like all the others. Everything leads back to him like a trail of breadcrumbs directing me back to safety. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this but I’ve spent the whole goddamn evening debating him over in my mind – just like every other night I’ve spent alone, either in a torturous tour bus bed while they’re all still up drinking; in my own house in Chicago while he resides in LA, or on a night on the town such as this one.

And just as soon as this rediscovered epiphany crosses my mind, whoever should cross my path but him. He doesn’t see me or even turn his head this way but I’d recognise that walk if it were dressed in any other wardrobe. I almost leap out of my seat, but some sneering part of me tells the other to remain where I am, chiding my puppy-dog tendencies. I merely watch, and see that trailing Pete closely is a tall, smug figure with a messy shock of hair, clothed in a thin white shirt bearing a logo I identify at once. The garment is a Clandestine Industries shirt Pete gave out numerous copies of one Christmas to bands from his label, and it’s teamed with a pair of ludicrous pants you’d only ever see Brendon Urie wearing. The owner of this outfit sways to the rhythm of what clearly is the alcohol in his system, head twisting round in an attempt to locate anyone who might know him, before sneaking a firm hand on Pete’s shoulder. My eyes narrow automatically as Pete appears to laugh, leaning back into Brendon, who wraps his arm firmly over the former’s shoulders and chest. With a furtive glance and an almost devious smirk almost as well-known as my band-mate’s, he steers Pete over to the bathrooms and shoves him inside.

The music’s congealing into a beatless drone and the lights are struggling to distract me now, monochrome against each other. Nothing else matters to me anymore except that door and the people behind it. The air in this godforsaken club is coagulating in my throat, and it’s only a matter of time before I choke on my own curiosity. Surely it’s nothing; Pete’s the type to leave you without loving you, I’ve already recognised that. It’s likely he’ll be chatting to Brendon in shelter from the dastardly lights and sounds of this room – but I can almost hear the slam of his spine against a cubicle door above the hum of the music. Could I be over-reacting? It’s probable, but my heart still doesn’t feel the need to slow down.

Why do I care so much? I’m not sure. He dances with many and unwittingly seduces even more; it’s not out of the ordinary for someone to attempt something further than this. But Pete has always, always told me when it’s been taken to that level – and there hasn’t been any of those incidents for over a year and a half now. I’m just being protective, I know it – it’s what’s driven us to be separated tonight in the first place. I can sit here and let them be…

Oh, who am I kidding?

Leaving a warm imprint in the stained fake velvet of the seat, my shoes stumble clumsily on the floor painted in spilled beer. I push past people who have no time for someone like me; to them I’m just some chubby guy with sideburns, underdressed and out of place in this perspiring coffin. There’s barely space to move, but I make room. Somehow I start to slip through this labyrinth, walled by stick-thin bodies that could crack and splinter if I push them too hard, and I’m reluctant to accumulate the scent of sweat, vodka and cigarettes as I pass people I’ll never recognise in my current state of mind. Someone taps me on the shoulder as I pass, but for me it’s head down and eyes focused to follow the path of the man I’ve lost to this crowd. Claustrophobia’s never been an issue for me – that was always Pete’s problem – but I can feel my lungs start to compress and my heart start to thump irregularly, and it’s not a nice feeling. A far away voice mentions his Christian name, and my ears catch it over the quilt of music, gabble and laughter all stitched together. Whoever spoke might not have meant him – but let’s face it: this club’s fairly small, and he’s infamous with a lot of these people. It’s going to be Pete Wentz.

I just want to grasp him by the arm and tell him that I’m sorry. Like so many ethanol-fuelled nights before this one, it’s going to get to the point where I have to apologise just so that we don’t have to pretend like the words spat in each other’s faces have been wiped clean, even though the imprints still linger. The thing about Pete is that he never apologises – he doesn’t have to. Like I said – you’ll come crawling back through mud on bloodied knees to make sure you’re still appreciated by those eyes. Even if you knew that you weren’t even liked that much in the first place, you’ll beg to be part of his social circle because you’re intoxicated by the mere thought of it. I’ve always taken my immediate rank for granted.

I pause at the bar, now too reluctant to push through that door. What exactly am I going to do – walk in and pretend I needed to use the bathroom, or straight up admit I’ve followed them? What if they are getting up to fuck knows what, and I just burst in and interrupt? What do I say? It’s not like Pete’s my boyfriend, exactly; I can’t just claim ownership of him… can I?

I’m starting to lose my senses now. Everywhere I turn it’s another faceless ghost, and I want one of them to bear the composed, sophisticated expression or even the drunken grin I could pick out from a million other faces just so I don’t have to go in there. I just wish I’d kept on his side tonight. It gets harder with each fight to muddle my way through and discover what I’m really trying to achieve by arguing with him, because even though I have a target in my head it always deviates from the path I’ve tried to steer our conversations in. I don’t even know if he’s aware of my attempts to mean well, but his slick tongue always gets the better of my misplaced words.

And suddenly there’s pressure on my upper arm hard enough to leave bruises, and miraculously I’m bursting out from the mass of soulless flesh and being yanked towards an exit. Taking one look at the back of a leather jacket that’s bound to be shinier than anybody else’s in this room, I take a deep breath in a wave of relief, anxiety – I don’t know which one to feel. Through a back door we push and the freezing night air amplifies my intoxication; I stumble and my head spins like a carousel uprooted from the ground. Without a word I’m being pushed into a car – his car, if I’m not mistaken – and as soon as I fall into the clinging darkness of the back seat, the door slams and I’ve finally been re-acquainted with his heat.

Silence. There’s always silence.

When your head’s being crunched against the door of a car and your neck’s bent at the most awkward angle to suit the carrier of the weight on your hips, you tend not to care that you’ve been ditched in a club for however long it was beforehand. When shivering hands that so many long to feel are running underneath your jacket and scratching desperately at your skin, making your breath shudder from your lips with surprise and arousal, you tend not to think about trivial things such as where those hands may have been a few moments ago. But when the lips that seal themselves around yours are unnaturally damp and cold and you can feel heaving breaths press your ribcage deeper into the seat, the whole world stops for that one person.

“Pete?”

I whisper his name into the cloudy silence – one syllable that makes him shake even harder. His head buries into my collarbone, salty streaks blurring over my skin as indistinct kisses come between whimpers. I raise a hand to his hair in shock, finding it scruffy and scraggy, and run my hand through the mixture of keratin and sweat. The car seat’s cold beneath me but I’m melting from the heat, and all I can take in is his touch and his scent. He smells like Brendon.

He doesn’t speak; the old days used to be like this, and that’s a scary thought. I try to sit up out of concern but he pushes me down, clinging to my hair and choking on words that won’t come into my shirt. One hand on his head and the other on his back, I massage and try to control his tears - but when Pete needs to cry, Pete will damn well cry. He shifts his body upwards to find my lips, and all I can taste is a mixture of tears and Brendon’s cancer sticks. My theory about the bathroom may have been at least partly correct, and although I’m repulsed by the taste of his tongue, I can’t help but to pull him closer. This isn’t a flavour I should be jealous of, and this is obvious by the desperate sobs that occasionally break from his throat as he pulls and scrabbles at my clothes.

And the ritual carries on. The force on my thighs doesn’t need to push any more for me to comply and soon two leather jackets lie crumpled together underneath the car seat in front. My chest is almost saturated from his jerky outbursts and each time I try to stop him from going further, he still retains the strength to overpower me. The windows are snowed up with our vodka-laced condensation, and I hook a leg round the both of his to stop him falling off the seat as he forces his hips deeper against my own.

“Pete, stop,” I command as calmly as I can, even though my body is wholeheartedly disagreeing. “Now.”

His hands wind to the back of my neck as his movements slow, his skin humid and tight beneath his damp clothing as tattooed arms quake against me. For the first time since we were reacquainted he looks up into my eyes, and through the gloom I can see those pupils reflect much more than just light. His eyelids squeeze away another tear and suddenly we’re transported back a few years to a time when I was a person who knew what their purpose was in life – and that was to keep Pete sane. You’d think it would be alien for the seemingly most arrogant man in rock to be reduced to this shivering mess, but that’s where the difference between you and me lies.

I never assumed the yellow and black of his personality could be separated.

A cough, a low whine, a deep breath that could shake the whole car, and he still hasn’t moved since my last instruction. His hair shines gold in the light from the streetlamps but the stripes are squirming and the sting is gone. My hands clutch at the side of his head and keep it where it is, apologising without the words that so many use indifferently and without meaning - but I mean every fucking letter as I stare into crafted oaken irises and feel as though I’m the only person in the world ever to do so. It almost feels intrusive, like peeping though keyholes – but for one person, Pete’s door is wide open tonight.

Eyelashes flutter closed and even though I know something’s happened to him, I daren’t ask, not yet – he’ll tell me if he needs to. A million different images of that one other frontman flash in front of my eyes, automatically hating him for thinking he could screw my beautiful boy up like this, but it’s a wheel that spins too fast for me to focus on as his face brushes my neck again. He’s rocking back and forth in such a childlike manner that it makes my heart burn for him, and even though I may never get a word out of him tonight, this is his therapy.

“I – I’m sorry,” he finally splutters into my skin some time later; it’s a whisper barely decipherable over the squeak of our bodies against the shiny car seat, but it makes my whole body freeze. The thing about Pete is that he never apologises. He’s grown such a tough skin over the past couple of years that he doesn’t need gloves to protect him from burns – he’ll just scorch you with his red-hot hands instead.

“No, Pete. I shouldn’t have –”

“Nuh uh,” he interrupts, running his fingers up and down my arm as his hair becomes plastered to my chest. “I’m s-so fucking s-sorry, Patrick. You were right - you always are.”

“Right about what?” I murmur, catching strands of hair that has become totally dishevelled and soaking between my lips as I speak.

“Everything. I – I thought I could handle people, thought I could keep my head above the ground. I thought – I thought I’d always be in control now, even without you. And I was w-wrong…”

My hands settle on the small of his bare back, and I take a deep breath. “Pete… what happened with Brendon?”

He freezes, and the mist of his breath against my skin jolts slightly. He raises his head and sits up a little, thighs astride my waist as he leans over my face and takes my head between his slick hands. I never fail to marvel at the fulfilled glimmer in his pupils after a night such as this one, nor the way perspiration runs from his eyelids like tears or the evidence his tanned cheeks give of blood pooling behind them in exhaustion.

“Patrick, you – you know I’d never…” he begins, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against mine before trailing off.

“Never…?” I prompt, confused.

“I’ve always – I’ve always been in control of myself around other p-people,” he continues, his breath like slurred, broken kisses upon my cheekbone. “I would n-never dream of sleeping with Brendon… I’ve always kind of been, like, aware that people wanted me, but never where they’d do something without me wanting it too. Maybe – maybe that’s me being stupid, but tonight – hell, it just opened my eyes. It fucking scared me, Patrick – I just totally freaked out and overreacted when he wouldn’t let go, ‘cause I was losing control again. I don’t w-want him, and I was scared he’d tell. I was s-scared I’d hurt you and me both.”

Despite the relieving of pressure on my chest, I’m finding it harder to breathe than ever before tonight. “What – I don’t – what’re you saying? We – we aren’t, y’know – like that… are we?”

Pete’s eyes widen to an extent I’ve never seen before, and he sways above me. “Fuck, ‘Trick… I haven’t had sex with anyone in two years ‘cept you, whenever we got wasted or lonely. I know I’m bad at telling people exactly how I feel… but jeez. You think that was just for the hell of it?”

I don’t say anything, and Pete almost laughs in a breath of mild hysteria. There’s a familiar fuzz growing in the corner of my eye, and it takes him a while to continue speaking.

“I know we haven’t been… like that, in the past. I didn’t want to mess things up – Christ knows what would have happened if I’d have j-jumped in too quickly, and fucked the band up. But I just – I just assumed you knew we had – well, I don’t know what we have, but it’s something, right? It was the kind of unspoken rule… I’ve never let anyone, anyone into my head but you. You know that.

“And tonight,” he rambles on, stuttering and spluttering, “I’m sorry we argue… and I’m s-sorry I get too big for my boots. I know you try and keep me away from these people ‘cause you care, but I know – I know it’s more than that. I know you don’t want me to hop into bed with the first guy or girl I like the look of, and I always thought it was ‘cause – ‘cause you wanted me all for yourself. The way I want you. The way I need you, Patrick.”

Vodka and adrenaline both race back to my head to see which one can claim me first. His eyes swim in and out of focus, and the moisture on my tongue evaporates in a heartbeat. I stammer over unselected words, needing to say something, anything – but Pete doesn’t seem to care, because he’s gotten his point across. His fingertips run like feathers over my face and the corners of his lips upturn for the first time tonight at the sight of my no doubt bewildered expression, leaning gently forward and brushing my own in a touch no heavier than air but more meaningful than all the other lust-driven kisses we’ve had put together. It’s not a promise of any sort, but it feels hopeful, and I can’t help but to feel a little smug as I let my muscles truly relax into the leather beneath me and close my eyes to his touch.