From Sunshine to a Sunless Room [part one]
Pete is secretly a ninja. This is how he rationalises his existence to himself. His inner five-year-old prefers it to vampire - vampires talk weird, and are always doing stuff with girls.
Ninjas also operate under a strict code of honour, one which forbids them from killing their nearest and dearest in the small hours before dawn when the demon with its claws hooked round your soul wants to tear out their hearts and lick their veins dry. Pete would totally sleep better if he was governed by that code. Pete would possibly be willing to spend offstage time around his friends again if he had that kind of guaruntee.
When Patrick says, I know this guy, it’s the first time he’s spoken to Pete in a fortnight.
When he says, he can see the future. He’d know, it’s the first time Pete looks him in the eye since he stopped being Pete.
-
It’s a cold night, but Pete can’t really feel it. He’s running on adrenaline and something that feels quite a lot like blind terror, and while that sharpens the rest of the world up nicely, he doesn’t quite feel connected to his own body. He can see his breath clouding in front of him, but he’s not even shaking. He hears Gerard before he sees him - the scrape of a door against the shipped concrete, and then a figure shuffling out of the gloom, smiling and waving good-naturedly. Pete squints. “Are they…?” he begins, then stops. “Are you wearing cartoon pyjamas?”
“It’s cold.”
“You’re in a lavender robe.”
“It’s Jesse’s. How are you not freezing?”
“Jesse?” Pete hasn’t seen anyone else around but -
“My roomie. He’s standing guard for us. They tend to keep a fairly close eye on the roof access, for-”
“Obvious reasons, yeah. Why the hell are we up here?” He’d intended to be nicer than this. Polite, almost, but he’s too on edge to edit himself right now and way too fucking high up.
“It’s a camera black spot. Plus, they’d never let you in the front way this late, and I am not wandering the grounds. It’s fucking freezing.”
“Point.”
Pete rocks back on the balls of his feet and pushes his hands deeper into the pockets of his hoodie, picking at the lining as he tries to think of something to say and some way to say it. Gerard digs into the pocket of his robe and pulls out a battered pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”
“I don’t. Can’t. Whatever.”
“Mmm.” Gerard lights up, takes a drag with obvious relish. “I quit last week. It was the biggest mistake of my life. Mikey managed. I blame your boy for that.”
Pete laughs, but he doesn’t unwind at all, still balancing on his heels, arms taut. “Patrick can be persuasive when he wants to.”
“He sent me a ten-side letter. It was…”
“Persuasive?”
“Detailed.”
And that’s when Pete relaxes, a little.
“We should hurry up,” Gerard says, grinding out his cigarette and straightening up a little, trying to look like he’s ready for business.
“I’ve got a while.”
“We haven’t.”
Pete tenses again. “I,” he says, and stares out over the grounds, out at the quiet and limitless space. “I’m. How I am. And getting worse and I just - ” his mouth works silently, not quite managing to form the right words. “I’m going to fuck this up,” he settles on, and saying it aloud seems to soothe him a little. He stands easier, looks less like he’s trying not to be sick. “That’s kind of a given. I need to know when, and how badly, and who I’m going to hurt.”
“I killed a guy once," Gerard says, quietly, toeing the gravel. "Well, I tried. He was okay in the end, I just punctured a lung but anyway, the point is that I see these things, these really fucked up things that people will do or that will happen to them, they reel out in my head like movies. And this guy, he's gonna kill...He's gonna kill a lot of people who don't deserve it, people I've known, people who...it doesn't matter. The point is, I saw it and I tried to stop it and it went badly for me, but. I see the future, y'know? I knew this would happen, even then, but I couldn't not try. It wouldn't have been. You know."
"I know."
"I had to try."
"I can't believe that's actually true," Pete laughs. "I mean, I know I'm not in a position to be disbelieving, but you're wearing Spongebob pyjamas. You're wearing a purple robe. You don't have the look of a killer."
"I told you, the robe's Jesse's."
"That would explain it."
“My point is,” Gerard presses on, “that you can’t not just because you will.”
Pete looks at him for almost a whole minute, silent, panicked. Eventually, when he’s fairly sure he can make his voice sound even, he says: “You’re, um. You’re not going to tell me anything good, are you?”
Gerard takes out another cigarette. “That depends,” he mutters round it. “Would you rather die old or popular?” He sits on what Pete thinks is some kind of air intake. He stamps his feet against the cold, scrubs a hand across his face. "It's not your fault." It's a statement, matter-of-fact, no questions. "It's a hunt, there's a guy - Abbey, Jason Abbey - been doing it for years, way out of your demographic. Sees two vampires fighting, figures why not kill two birds with one stone while they're distracted."
Pete. Pete feels himself go very, very still and very, very distant. He hears himself ask, "Where?" and is surprised that that's the first question.
“Denver."
"Fuck that," Pete's body says, laughing. "I am not dying in Denver."
"You died in Chicago. This is just-" Gerard waves a hand vaguely, lights up again, inhales. "Epilogues are always anticlimactic. Everything's happened already. They're just repeat to fades."
"Not to harsh your prophetic buzz, but you might wanna work in some tact when you talk to the next guy." Pete's brain is thrumming with questionsquestions, but his mouth's moving without his permission and none of them are coming out.
"It's during your farewell tour. Everyone else is fine, you don't... They're coping better than you think, okay? They know how to deal. You're not going to go kill-crazy and start tearing their throats out, so stop thinking you will. It's pissing Patrick off that you're avoiding him."
"I'm not, I'm just -"
"Yeah, you can't lie to me. It's best not to try, it'll only knock your confidence when it comes to bullshitting others."
So that's it. Everyone's fine, everyone's fucking peachy and he dies by fucking accident because some asshole in Denver missed the emo hunter memo. Pete's never been so pissed off. Pete's never been so relieved.
"There's a cemetary, 'bout ten miles east. There's a new batch coming up, plus the welcoming committee."
Pete nods, grateful, and then he's gone.
--
Patrick finds him a little before dawn. He's sitting on the couch in the bus, face blank, knuckles cut down to the bone on too many teeth to count. The adrenaline's gone now and he feels strangely...lax. Watery. Shapeless.
"You okay?" Patrick asks.
Nothing.
"Hey. Pete? Anyone? The lights are on, dude. No-one home?" He waves his hand in front of Pete's face, snaps his fingers.
Pete drifts back so slowly that Patrick can almost pinpoint the moment when everything clicks into place. "I, yeah," Pete says, too quickly, too vaguely. "I just. Rough night." It's not like Patrick doesn't know about Gerard - Patrick planned the whole thing, after all - but that doesn't mean Pete's going to tell him about it. He holds up his hands as evidence, goes to start describing the fight but -
- but then Patrick takes his hands, slowly turning them to inspect the damage, eyes wide and worried, and Pete find himself leaning forward and wrapping his arms around Patrick's middle, leaning up into him. "You're okay," he says finally. "You're okay."
Patrick hesitates for a moment, then relaxes, carding his fingers through Pete's hair. "Yeah," he says, soft, reassuring. "I'm fine."
-
The thing about Pete Wentz, Tragic Vampire Hunter, is that his life as Pete Wentz Of Fall Out Boy didn't exactly stop when he grew the fangs. And Fall Out Boy are famous now. Famous famous. This is bad for a number of reasons:
a) Famous people are often called upon to be famous during both the light and dark portions of the day.
b) Fame leaves precious little time left to, y'know, hunt the undead. Especially when you're on tour, spending every night in a different city and never really getting to know the popular haunts. You have to hunt down individuals, hoping to stumble across a feeding frenzy in the back alley of a club - or, in some disturbing cases, in the VIP room. Pete kind of bailed on that one because, dude. Tom Cruise eats people. Tom Cruise invited him to dinner. The fuck.
c) Being famous means that there's plenty of opportunity for those in the know to know about you. He's had hunters meet him at the barriers after shows before, thinking he was the eating-people-in-the-VIP-lounge kind of vampire. There aren't words in the English language to convey how relieved he is footage of those fights didn't hit MySpace.
d) When you put out a self-glorifying music video in which you explain very simply, with montages, that you are a Good Vampire and that you harbour what could politely be termed a strong dislike for Bad Vampires, some people in the Hunter community still won't get it.
e) Some will, and hate you all the more for it.
f) Some refuse to see the difference between Good Vampires and Bad Vampires, and will still kill you on principle if you cross their path.
g) Like that thing with the holy water and the Best Buy employee. Last time Pete takes his eye off his coffee for two seconds while browsing their store. Assholes.
"That was low," Gerard says. His cigarette has become one long, cylindrical ash while Pete's been speaking, and he flicks it over the edge of the roof, watching it crumble and blow away as it falls. "You fancy telling me about going solo? I'd start talking about it straight off, but that's been know to bug people. Besides, it's good to talk and you're good at talking."
Pete thinks about trying to explain how he goes out alone, even when they're nowhere, even when it's hopeless (or worse, reckless) and there's no chance he could achieve anything, because he...can't not, to be honest. Or is scared not to, because if he isn't actively going against his new nature, if he slobs around the bus in sweatpants, drinking smoothies and watching horror movies instead of constantly reminding his body and his mind that hey, we're not like this, he's terrified he'll just turn. Or turn back. Something. Either way, fighting prick-teases his animal instincts just enough to keep them quiet the rest of the time, and seeing the vampires and their doe-eyed victims is enough to strengthen his resolve against feeding, and every vampire he kills makes it less likely that those who remain will try and convert him. Besides, when you're life's monumentally fucked, kicking someone in the head repeatedly can be really fucking satisfying. "I figure you already know the important parts," he says.
“You remember Jesse?”
Pete frowns. “They guy with the robe?”
“Him, yeah. I ever explain him to you?” Pete shakes his head no. “He’s sort of, I dunno. Schizophrenic, technically, I think. And he gets these ideas in his head about being a messenger, about being an Agent of the Divine Will -”
“He’s a religious nut?”
“He’s a schizophrenic. And he’s never going get better enough to get released, but he will decide that if he’s going to spend his life trapped here instead of doing God’s Will, then his life should probably be as short as possible.” Gerard says it quickly, all one breath, like that’s the only way he can keep his voice even. “He just. You’re very supernatural, alright? You’d prove something. And you owe me.”
* * *
"We have to get down," Jesse hisses. "There are checks at six; if I'm not in, we're all screwed. Move."
Pete casts a longing glance toward the top of the staircase, where the door to the roof is already letting in sunlight. He can take forty minutes in the shade of a stage if he's wrapped up, sure, but getting back to the tour? Forget it. He can't move as quick in the daylight, and there's no point sticking out his thumb if it's just going to get burned off. He sighs through gritted teeth. "I am not going in there."
"I'm not offering you a choice."
"I..." am not going that close to that many people, Pete doesn't finish. Not at once. Not if they may or may not be crazy. Not if they're not used to me. He grips the handrail tighter. "I'll stay here."
"The light comes all the way down."
Pete blinks at Jesse's upturned, tear-streaked face. "Gerard is an asshole," he says, "and I am going to eat him." Jesse nearly laughs.
Pete spends part of the morning in a storage closet, getting poked in the ribs by a mop and with one foot in a not-quite-empty bucket. After the first round of meds, a slightly more docile Jesse smuggles him out -- well, okay, Jesse tugs on his arm and meanders vaguely along the corridor in a medicated haze, and Pete ducks undead-fast when anyone approaches -- and into the showers, which have tiny, tiny wondows high in the walls and nice, dark curtains round the cubicles. At least this way, Pete's feet are equally wet.
Jesse goes to disappear, in his slow way, and Pete reaches out and tugs on the cuff of his trousers. "You leaving me?" Jesse looks down, confused.
"Come on," Pete says, beckoning. "If someone walks in here, I need an inmate to hide behind. Sit."
Jesse's not firing on all circuits right now, and any logic looks like good logic. He sits next to Pete, carefully, legs crossed.
"I'm going to pass out now," Pete says, happily. "If you could *not* let a sequence of events that ends in my firey death begin, that would be awesome."
Which is how Jesse gets to spend a whole eight hours with an Agent - an actual, genuine, irrefutable proof Agent - asleep on his shoulder, and doesn't get to show anyone. Which...sucks, in a way, because a) if they could see him they'd have to let Jesse out and b) Agents of the Divine Will drool, and Jesse doesn't have all that many shirts.
But, y'know. It's not so bad. Except for the part where Pete's speaking in tongues and Jesse can feel the muscles skip under his skin, twitching and humming with tension, spasms like the tiniest electric shocks. That's...that's not great. Because there are Agents, okay, and they carry out the Divine Will, and so maybe they shouldn't cling to you in their sleep.
Not that that's a bad thing, entirely. It's just. Unexpected. Pete isn't how Jesse imagined he would be. He's sort of...smaller. Agents of the Divine Will, Jesse thinks, should not look like you could carry them. Mind you, when Pete was jumping three storeys like it was nothing, when he was moving too fast to see, Jesse didn't think he could be carried then. When he was working. So maybe this is just the come down, maybe doing whatever it is Pete has to do, it takes everything out of you, demands everything, and once you're done, you shrink down. Like this. And Jesse thinks maybe, if he's not being asked to do much, he should probably do what he's asked to really fucking well, and he makes a mental note not to bring up the drool later, or the fact that he can't feel his legs.
So Pete clings, and Jesse holds him in the dark. Because that's what he's here for.
--
It was Gerard's idea, run by Mikey and filtered through Patrick, so it's not like Pete had a cat in hell's chance of saying no. Those three, they were like some evil, charitable trifecta taking over his life and it's not that he doesn't love them all dearly, it's just that sometimes he lets his mind linger on the fact that he could crush their skulls like eggs for longer than he'd like to admit.
Anyway, the evil triumvate made their decree, and Pete went forth and broke into Jesse's parents' house. Because he's stealthy like that, and can move too fast for motion detectors if he really, really goes for it (and it's funny, because he'll breathe after, chest heaving as he pants, before realising that he's only doing it out of habit or muscle memory and isn't out of breath at all [or, well, has been for way too long to make a big show of it now]).
Jesse's window is conveniently located at the back of the house, so he doesn't have to worry about prying neighbours watching him through their net curtains and calling the cops on him again (because really, how do you explain that you don't want to be let out of your cell until sundown?). The window's old, the wood of the frame starting to come apart, and it's the work of a second for Pete to force the lock open and slip inside. The room is eerily neat - dust-free, bed still made, everything in its place - and it's a toss up between which is the more disturbing idea: that his family are keeping it this way for him, like the room of a dead child, or that Jesse kept it like that in the first place.
Pete pads over to his shelves and - stops in his tracks, because Jesse owns actual books and music and things that a person would have, and it's not that Pete doesn't think of him as a person, more that he's always thought of him as a person outside time and space, in his own unique socio-cultural bubble, and the idea of him being familiar with pop culture is... Jesse has the Lost Boys on tape. Pete boggles.
He runs his fingers over the spines of the books, pulling out notebooks by feel before doubling back and squinting down at the spines, reading titles. Lots of titles.
No, seriously, talk about fixated.
Eventually, he spreads out his jacket on the floor, heaps anything that might be remotely relevant onto it and ties it into a bundle with the sleeves. He slips back out of the window, hoping that he has enough preternatural stealth to somehow not shed books as he dashes over the rooftops, which -- he's dashing. Over rooftops. His whole life is a wushu movie gone wrong.
--
"I don't fucking know," says Patrick, when Pete shows up at his house two days after dropping Jesse's books off there.
"What do you mean, you don't fucking know? You're the one who...who...you read lore, Patrick. You're supposed to have learned these things."
"In English! In neat print! In books where pictures of fish didn't count as letters!"
"There are no fucking fish, give it here -" Pete tugs the notebook out of Patrick's grasp and - oh, okay. That does look kind of like a fish. "It looks nothing like a fish."
"I don't even know if it's the right way up." Patrick slumps in his chair, shoving jesse's collection of dictionaries for seemingly unconnected languages across the table with more force than was strictly necessary. "Look, I know this is your new, whatever, I was going to say pet project but I want to keep my front teeth. I know it means a lot, but. Maybe we made a mistake. I'll call Mikey, get him to tell Gerard it's a no-flier."
Pete glares at the books, but tugs the pile towards himself. He gulps down the last of his morning dose and opens the first book to the first page. "No. No, I said I was going to fucking write him, and if this is the only way Gerard can come up with to get past the mail checks then fucking fine. I'll just...learn." He says the word reluctantly, as he's scared it might bite him.
Three hours and six pages later, Pete asks, "Seriously, why the fish alphabet?"
Andy looks up from his crossword for long enough to roll his eyes. "That's not a technical term, dude. And if he's using it as code it might not even be an alphabet."
"No, no, it is. He's told Gerard about it a bunch of times. It's supposed to be the language of angels, but I wikied that and it looked nothing like this."
Andy puts his newspaper aside and walks over to the desk which would usually contain Patrick's journals and mock-ups of prototypes of weapons that they'd been promised by the priests at some distant point in the past, but which has now been converted into some kind of linguistic test bunker. He takes the notebook out of Pete's hands, flips through a few pages, peers.
"It's Glagolitic," he says. "And that looks nothing like a fish, by the way. If it's meant to be about angels it's probably Church Slavonic, maybe the old version."
Pete blinks. "Who are you, and what have you done with Andy?"
"What? I learn too, sometimes. Now, what's a four letter word for 'short falcon'?"
Pete blinks again. "Hawk?"
Andy nods thoughtfully, and goes back to his paper. Pete continues to wonder when the fuck everyone was replaced by selectively retarded pod people, and how he'd gone so long without noticing. Where the hell was Slavonia, anyway?
--
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