The Redemption of Peter Wentz

Pete ignored his cravings, with just having Brendon in the same room with him, it was a fucking miracle. He could focus on other things, like the sound of Patrick's laugh at the expense of Joe's biting jokes. Everything was easier to slip back into. Life was calmer, less chaotic and inebriated. He’d loosened up a bit knowing Brendon was near, in his right mind, and ready at a moments notice if one needed the other.

Pete was even beginning to come to terms with his vampirism. Sure, it’ll kill him when the day comes that he outlives his friends, but that is what Brendon is there for. He knows what it’s like. It isn’t that monotony of hating yourself every night when you rise up from the hole in the floor. It isn’t knowing you’re damned to walk the earth for eternity alone. It isn’t slipping into dark lapses and later finding blood all over your yourself. It isn’t sobbing silently at the longing of sunlight. It’s waking up every night to your best friend at the same moment, yawning like wild cats. It’s coaching through cravings of blood and throats until you forget you even do that to survive. It’s remembering to laugh when you can outsmart human beings at their own games of hide and seek. It’s having someone there who knows the burn and lust clawing at your mind, to know what it’s like to have your life and morals taken from you, the want to let go and be yourself, and having the ability to be yourself without having to be by yourself.

There are times, though. Times when Pete blacks out after starving himself or dwelling on the bloodlust for too long later to find Brendon pinning him down, when he’ll lose his temper over something as little as Patrick getting a paper cut, or Andy and Joe going out hunting and coming back at an early hour. That’s the hole that Brendon knows he must fill. Pete doesn’t know what to do with himself now. Brendon reminds Pete that they should keep to themselves, keep living their lives and keep each other in check, not go off and take out all of the pent up anger on slaughtering the Punks two streets over (despite Pete having a personal vendetta against them for forcing him to feed from that girl that one time he doesn’t exactly remember when).

They’ve also done research. It’s more of a condition, Patrick says, like epilepsy (Brendon thinks that’s a mediocre comparison). Pete barely gets the gist of the stuff he calls "scientific shit." That isn’t what nags at his brain before he goes to sleep. It’s not the ability to regenerate bones and limbs (accelerated cell mitosis, Patrick says), not the fact that they’re cold and pale (climate adaptability, Patrick says), disregard for the little detail that they crave and drink human blood (extreme nutritional value to compensate lack of hemoglobin and plasma, Patrick says), how Brendon can compel others to his will (enlarged frontal lobe, Patrick says), how he and Brendon can climb a fucking wall and sit on the ceiling (genetic mutation to skin patterns on fingertips and toes, Patrick says), and the reaction to sunlight (lack of vitamin D and melanin in skin cells, Patrick says). No, it’s that fucking bond he has with Brendon that he can’t seem to shake from his mind.

He swears it’s the creepiest and coolest thing ever. Joe and Andy have also noticed, and it seems that when they’re separated, their personalities fall apart. Brendon will withdraw and lapse into his demonic habits of devising plans to rip everyone’s throats out in a calculated fashion, and Pete will just go for it, losing his temper. When they’re together, it’s the perfect balance of Brendon’s calm and secure water to Pete’s passionate and unpredictable fire. Brendon doesn’t stutter, Pete uses polysyllabic phrases in conversation. They’re so tuned to each other’s wavelength that Brendon knows the precise moment when Pete will make a swipe for Andy’s throat, when Brendon will push himself too far to stave off from feeding, and when one of them is having a nightmare, knowing exactly what and who it is about.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise this late afternoon when Pete can’t sleep and Brendon has been downstairs all day in front of the television watching four entire seasons of M*A*S*H without moving so much as to blink. Pete is curled against Joe’s side, sitting upright against the wall in the space between Pete’s makeshift and Brendon’s bed (Pete felt incomplete without it, “Just used to it, I guess. Feels funky and vulnerable with just blankets around you.”) He hasn’t fed for two days, not a problem in the slightest. This has been a good week for him. He loves the way Joe feels. It’s like the radiating warmth coming from him gets him high, and Pete will never get tired of it. He clings to Joe’s arm and stares at the steel door, not wanting to remember that time he nearly killed Joe without thinking twice about it. He tries to fall asleep again. He knows he can, but something is keeping him awake, and it’s not Brendon…it’s…something else.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Joe asks quietly, tracing the faint veins in Pete’s wrists with his eyes. Pete gets this question every week from Joe, as if he’s hoping the more he presses the matter, he’ll get more than trying to decipher Pete and Brendon’s mental conversations.

Pete shifts, tucking his toes into the folds of his sweatpants. “I don’t know what to talk about. Do you want the feeding part or the blacking out part?” He runs his tongue over his teeth out of habit.

“From what you remember.”

“I don’t remember a thing, Joe. You’ve already heard the story of where I found Brendon. That’s all I can give you besides the details of feeding, and I know you don’t like to hear that.” Pete sighs.

“Yeah, I know…I know. Pete, I just…I can’t get over it. It’s been a couple months, sure, but…god, I’ve never seen you like that.” Pete’s hand curls around Joe’s forearm as comfort (Pete? Comfort? What?), giving a gentle squeeze. “He just wiped everything?”

“Joe, I didn’t even know who you were, let alone cared. Of course he did. Don’t know how the fuck he managed to pull that off…but yeah, everything.”

Silence draped over them, and Pete could hear the dull murmur of voices floating from the television downstairs.

“Look, I’m sorry for keeping you guys in the dark like that. I thought I could get Brendon out by going in and finding a way. I just…I had no idea how bad it really was. He had Brendon wrapped so tight around his finger that Brendon had dual voices. Dual voices, Joe. He was this empty shell for Beckett to use.

I couldn’t sit there and let it go on any longer. I…I needed him. You see that now, right? I never expected for him to bring me back.”

“Yeah,” Joe laughed. “I’ll admit that your plan was fucked from the start, but that’s pretty damn noble of you to do that.”

There was that ache again, pulsing just to the right of Pete’s eyebrow, spreading and then disappearing. He didn’t respond to Joe when he went still, looking about in confusion. He listened downstairs, to the ghostly silence. He knows how much Brendon likes to make noise to make the others feel protected knowing who’s around. Something was wrong.

Without even thinking, he shoved Joe away, bolting through the doorway and down the stairs. The distance from the hallway to the front sitting room was nothing with Pete’s momentum to carry him. “Brendon?” he called. Pete’s eyes darted around the room, trying to find the whimpering. Just around the couch, he found it. Brendon was on all fours on the rug, convulsing, stretching, and wrestling with himself with hands braced at his temples. At something like this, Pete drew a blank. He could feel where it hurt, but that was as far as it went. Brendon cried out now, escalating to a growl.

“Pete, shit, it hurts! So much!” he cried.

No, this was not happening again. Nonononononono

Joe came barreling down the stairs moments later (about 6 seconds after Pete and his reflexes) to join Pete in the disorder. Of course Joe wouldn’t know what to do at a time like this when not even Pete knew what the fuck was going on with another vampire.

To Pete’s horror, the cries turned to sick laughter. Joe took a wary step back, glancing to Pete as if to say Shit, man, you weren’t kidding about those voices.

Brendon stood up in a heartbeat, standing upright to face Pete and getting nose to nose with him. Brendon breathed hot and heavy against Pete’s face, grinning by design with abnormally dilated pupils, opaque and soulless as that one time everyone tries to forget about.

Brendon spoke with a richer, smoother voice, saturated with malice at every word. “So, Peter, you have taken what is rightfully mine. I suppose if I can’t have him, neither can you.”

The snarl in Pete’s throat was pure instinct.