Dancing Bruises.

He's here and he's trying not to care. It's harder than it looks but he's holding up as he spots little Frankie twirling out of bodies, out of wrangling hearts and onto his sight.

"You showed up." Frankie's smiling and it's out of this world. Just kept getting brighter and brighter as he stood there.

"You didn't think I'd ditch you, did you?" Pete's smiling too, smiling so wide; he wants his smile to shine just as bright as Frankie's. He's only trying to shineshineshine just as Frankie was doing.

"Kinda thought you would actually." And he just stood there and Pete just smiled as he smiled.
Not like the first, second and third nights here. No swinging arms clinging to necks, no elusive dialogue, just smiles.

"What made you think that?" he asks, eyes looking back at Frankie, peering beneath every motion and twitch tightening its grip over his slightly trembling body.

"A hunch." His expression dims into a lopsided smile and he looks around. He's never seen Frankie so stable before. He's never been so calm and so frail since he first laid eyes on him.
He was always dancing. Dancing and dancing and pushing everything and everyone away like he's the oil and the world's the water; separating himself from all of the shit, sweat and beating malicious veins. Even when he spoke; he had this serpentine way of moving his tongue to form words, you couldn't help to watch those lips create those words. Like watching an artist mix colors and pick canvases to splash bits of his soul across; fishing inside himself and catching the writhing spine that never budged.

"Well, it was only a hunch."

"Actually... no. It wasn't only a hunch." Frankie looks around again. Today's the rebirth; special day or not? Special boy or not? "People always... call, you know? The second night, they always do."

"Always?"

"Always." Frankie nodded, wearing that lopsided smile again. A child talking to a stranger not so strange. "When you didn't... I kinda figured out you weren't gonna."

"What's so special about me? I'm just a phone call to you, really."

"And I'm still just a question to you, right?" And that just shut him up. "And this is a real question. Am I? Am I just a question to you?"

Pete's mouth just kept contorting against itself, fighting to find a decent answer to a far than decent question, "Yeah. You are."

"Thought so. And don't feel bad; nothing better than an honest answer if you ask me. It's like a fresh breath of air." He kept looking around, shuffling his feet and avoiding contact with all the bodies staggering next to him, all radiating energy enough to power this whole building. Enough energy to blow up the whole city combined. "I don't think it's a bad thing. Mainly 'cause I stopped caring a while ago along with everyone I've met. You're kinda... different. You ask different questions, you want different answers and you don't really give until you're given. But that's just me assuming things about you. Wrong things, right things, even peculiar things but they're still guesses. Wanna confirm any of my rambles?"

"You don't think that's a bit too much to dump on a guy in a first date?" Pete's sticking to the wall now, dodging people and stares as he gazed at Frankie from head to toe. "and... thanks for the semi-compliment, I guess."

"... this is a date?"

"Well... what did you think it was?" He's shining and radiating nerves all over the place.

"A date..." Frankie looks at his feet, beyond his feet and at the ground and thinks. Special enough yet?

"A little too fast?" He never meant to care this way. A date? How the hell did he manage to slip out that word? Stupidstupidstupid. Remember the cat?

"I just assumed you wanted to... you know, see me." Santa Clause is in the headlights tonight; thawing into candycane strips of red and cotton wax.

"Just... see you? Without a reason?"

"It happens. More than I'd like to admit but it does." Santa's scared to death right now. What if he didn't have the right gift this time? What if he didn't want joy and happiness and everything he could give?

Pete's staring at Frankie's greens as they spilled over the floor, as if hiding from the glare of the lights. It's funny how he didn't notice how Frankie expanded with the lights, he grew bigger with the heat; in the dark he just shrinks and shrinks until he fits in your palms. Without the glamour of the fluorescent glow, he was just Frankie. Not Frankie Iero whose dancing was all over the place; just Frankie without the facade.

Frankie just shone under the lights. Every inch of him glowing a delicious baby-pink rather than the nonchalant fluorescent blue than hugged his locks; Frankie's heart and body were always doused blue when he's dancing, but when he's playing his guitars and writhing onstage -a sex addict shot in the dick- they're soaked in a most barbaric scalding yellow that keeps exploding in his eyes; almost like a bull in the middle of an arena. Doesn't give a fuck about the crowds, just the wild cheers and moves that piss off his colorblind fingers; ready to squeeze, squeeze and choke every stupid Kamikaze matador in his way; it didn't matter flesh or wood he got his hands over some necks and played with every tendon in his body.

Maybe that's why he craves the blues and pumping reds of the dancefloor? Pete thinks, desperately searching for the reason he came for before he ends up like any other boy for Frankie; entangled in him and his liquid-apple eyes and drained out.
"You still there?" Frankie's smiling at him, lips stretched out so wide they might as well be chiseled into his flesh. Not a skeleton smile, more like a halloween smile.

"Yeah... yeah. Just spaced out there..." Should've never done this.

"Stop thinking for a while, okay? At least when you're with me. This place doesn't need thinkers, it needs doers, Wentz." There's that larger-than-life smile again, but with a little hint of seduction.

"Doers, Frankie?" Well, if that's not suggestive...

"Dancing doesn't need brains, Wentz."

"I never did come for the dancing scene." Just for the dancers.

"So about our date... do you even know if I like boys? Maybe I don't, maybe I just like the attention?" he whispered, trailing a fingertip across his own inked arm.

I want to know everyfuckingthing about you.

"Who says that's a bad thing?"
I can give you all the attention you need if you tell me what I want.

They're walking from the lights now and all that's left from Frankie is his shadow with the gleaming eyes. "It's not a good thing exactly, especially if you're used to giving it." Santa Clause on drugs; so high and jolly.

"Attention's a cheap thing; it's everywhere, flooding our newspapers, magazines and TVs. All our gossiping words are attention, Frankie."

"Not my kind of attention." Sex-crazed Santa Clause.

And Pete flashes a smile with a little hint of seduction.