Headfirst for Halos

When I wake, Pete's gone. I can feel each cell in my body yearn for him. For the comfort of his presence. For the sound of his voice penetrating the dark clouds that I am so lost in. For the quiet urgency (for what, I still don't know) that holds us together.

It has always been this way.

When I first met Pete, he was on the street popping pills into his mouth like sweets. A bottle of vodka in one hand and a pack of aspirin in the other. There was another, empty, pack a few feet away. He was slumped under a flickering lamppost, silent tears pouring down his face.

I was the one who spoke to him, talked him out of taking any more pills. I was the one who called an ambulance. I was the one who held his hand as we were driven to the hospital.

I still remember how he looked at me as we sped down pitch black streets, partially illuminated by sputtering lights. He stared at me through the drug-fuelled haze that clouded his brain over. He stared at me as I cried over his twitching body. I didn't know him then, but he knew me. He had seen me, really seen me, one day and felt gravity fall away from him. Instead he was attached to this unforgiving world by a million steel cables, all of them bolted to me. He said, in that moment, he was infinite. He was immortal. Gravity didn't mean too much to him; I meant everything to him now.

I waited for him whilst they operated. They nearly lost him.

I never would've forgiven them if they did. I never would've forgiven myself.

I don't know how long I waited on a hard, orange plastic hospital chair for him. I would've waited months, years if it meant that this stranger was going to live. I had only just met him, but I already needed him like I needed air to breathe. He was (and still is) the centre of my entire universe. He hung up the stars in the infinite sky. He made the planets blossom from his bare hands.

The doctor looked a little shocked when she saw I was still there, waiting. She said I could go in and see him.

I sat next to his hospital bed on a severe looking grey chair. He told me his name. Pete Wentz. It suited him. I told him mine. Mikey Way. Something in his otherwise dead eyes lit up at the sound of my name. He gripped my hand. I felt something like electricity course through my veins at his touch, making me hyper-aware of everything around us. I held onto him, quietly desperation lying dormant under our connected hands and words.

He fell back down into sleep. But this time, he would wake up, so it was okay. He still held onto my hand. I didn't let go until the doctors called Gerard to take me away. I fought against Gee's iron grip the whole time, struggling to run back to Pete.

Every day after that, I visited the hospital. I'd sneak out, through doors or windows, just to see him. More than once I was dragged out by the nurses because I refused to leave.

When he was let out, he broke into my bedroom at four in the morning. I moved over in my bed to make room for him, still half asleep. He climbed in beside me. Instinctively, I curled into him. Equally instinctively, he wrapped his arms around me. Legs interlocked, sleep gently took us by the hands and led us into the soft-blue-and-silver night.

Gerard walked in to wake me up for Hell-prison-school (he was usually unsuccessful). Processed what he saw in front of him. "What the actual fuck." He said, shock injected into every syllable.

Gee had looked at Pete, then back to me. Pete, and back. Pete, and back. "What the ever-loving fuck are you doing in my brother's bed, Wentz?" He knew Pete from rumours that slurred his name. Rumours that muttered that he was a slut. Rumours that whispered that he was a pill-popping whore who was selling his body to creepy old guys for any drugs that were little and brightly coloured. Rumours that spread like wildfire. None of that was true (Pete denies it all a little too quickly, though), but Gee didn't know that.

"I will give you thirty fucking seconds to get out of this house before I call the motherfucking cops." Gerard threatened, true danger coiled behind every word.

"Run... Pete... Please, he's not kidding." I said to Pete, dazed.

Pete looked at Gerard counting down. He looked back to me. In defiance (I think), he took hold of me like I was the whole world and kissed me on the lips, hard and fast. Then he was gone, out the window. I smiled after him.

The smile soon disappeared. "Michael Way what the fuck is wrong with you?" I winced when he said my name. "What the fuck was that?"

I wanted to be lost in the last night. The delicate glow that surrounded me and Pete was fading because Gerard, and he could go fuck himself, was tearing down the paper walls that kept me safe from harm that day.

"Do you know what he's done?" Gerard was seriously angry. "He's a drug-addicted, slutty little whore who'll fuck anyone as long as they'll give him pills."

That made my blood boil over. "How dare you, Gerard?! You know jack shit about him! Are you seriously going to believe stupid little rumours that bitchy little girls and dumbass jocks make up?"

"It's the truth, Mikey. I saw him."

No. It wasn't true. It couldn't be. "Go fuck yourself, Gerard. Oh, no. Wait. You do enough of that already." The words wouldn't stop. I never meant any of it. "Pull your dick out of your own ass and get the fuck out."

Gerard was stood there with his mouth hanging open, totally shocked. I don't think I'd ever spoken to him like that before. "Fine." He said, his voice wobbling a little. He stormed out of my room.

"CLOSE THE GOD FUCKING DAMN DOOR!" I yelled after him. "HAVEN'T YOU EVER HEARD OF DOING THAT, YOU PRICK!"

"Language, Michael!" My mum shouted from downstairs.

|-/

The ghost of a smile dances on my lips when I think about the day Gerard found us together. He still thinks it was a one-off. Far from it.

I love Pete so much. A strange, rosy-pink feeling consumes the both of us when we are together, in the best way possible. True affection pours between the two of us. Enormity, the feeling of us being two separate people, one person, and one with everything, is always present. We are pulled into the sky when we are together. We dance among the stars; spinning in the blushing, delicate light of the sun in all her burning glory. Pete is my sun. I am his stars. We burn together. We burn as one.

When he leaves (through the window, usually), Atlas breaks and the sky falls onto me. I am crushed underneath the weight of sadness, of agony. Everything burns. When your oxygen is cut off, you have to drag razor blades into your lungs in order to breathe. You curl on the floor, being pulled in every direction. Screaming silently, tears pouring down your face, you reach out for pills, hands shaking uncontrollably, for razors, for anything. Anything, as long it focuses your scattered thoughts. Each scar needs attention as they weep the scarlet tears you can't afford to show, you need help, but you won't take it because you need all of this to stop the voices and the thoughts.

You need your oxygen back. Right now. You need it or you'll die.

When he comes back, comes back to find me utterly broken, he holds me. He holds me until every last shard of my broken body fuses back together.

Life pours back into your lungs, and you don't need the razors or the pills anymore.

Just him.

Sleep pulls me after her, carefully holding my hand the whole time, into the darkness. She has to make sure I don't get lost in the all-consuming void.

If I am lost, I will never find light again.

I will stay silently sleeping. I will burn where I belong.

I hope she loses me. Just this fucking once, won't she lose me? Won't she forget me? Won't she just let me die?

She never does.

SHE NEVER FUCKING DOES.

She never will.