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It's a weird thing to want, Pete is very much aware of this.
You don't often hear guys wishing that they were gay. Never in a way other than some stale joke about the mysteries of getting a woman to hook up with them. How much easier it would be to just fall for men, to already know what they like and how they liked to be touched. All pre set and neat.
Yeah right, like Pete could get that lucky.
Everything had happened in a flash, hitting him over the head while Mikey Way walked passed, smelling like hair spray and cigarettes. Sweat and dust. Boy and sun.
Pete would easily buy a perfume of that smell, drowning in it until his eyes swam with black.
It strangled him with a rope of velvet when Mikey brushed past him for sound check, lean muscle pressed against his arms with the scrape of a cheap Star Wars tee shirt.
And when Mikey shook Pete's hand? It felt like his stomach had popped into confetti strands, tickling up against his skin and ridding Pete of his earlier lunch.
Pete jerks off to glossy magazine girls that night, hand far too tight and left frighteningly unsatisfied.
Pete had thought, a long time ago, that he had some kind of self control. And of course that false notion crumbled before he reached the end of his teen years covered in half assed tattoos and filled to the brim with a million broken hearts. (Which wouldn't have been that bad if more than half of them weren't his.) But he still thought that he'd learned how to pace himself over those few years, how to keep calm and indulge in moderation.
So how did he go from watching the sunset and shooting the shit with Mikey to swallowing him down in a few minutes, fingers scraping the dirt and rocks in a way that bruised as Mikey's finger nails left indents against his shoulders. Smelling the sweat, the hairspray, the sun, the boy. The boy boy boy boy boy. The boy named Mikey who made Pete feel like he'd swallowed a dying star. The boy who's glasses were knocked into the dirt, the boy who's pants would take far too long to shimmy all the way off, the boy who sounded like Pete was somehow giving him the best subpar blow job of his life.
The boy, Mikey, who was stroking his hair a half hour later, face unreadable before he walked back to the busier grounds.
Pete can't sleep that night, he never can, but he suddenly wishes he could.
Why Pete keeps coming back is obvious. He's become an addict. An addict for Mikey's voice, his skin, his smile, his smell, his laugh, his habits. The fact that Mikey answers texts at any time of the night. The fact that he's always cool with stopping, knows when Pete begins to overwhelm himself and can't stop. The fact that he holds his hand, cool against the pulse rushing up against his skin, ready to burst at any moment. The fact that Pete himself is in love.
But Pete isn't gay, because that isn't who he is. This isn't easy. He doesn't know just how Mikey wants to be touched. All of what he likes. But Pete wants to learn, he needs to.
Sometimes, when it's too crowded and dark, when everyone is drunk and happy, he'll hold Pete's hand. Place a hand on his thigh. Lean against him in the public, a pillar of warmth on his side. That will stick with him until early morning, hands twitching.
Pete wonders what it would be like to do that all the time. Not on top of hot buses, but at home. His home. Their home.
Then he stops himself, steps out on his foot, and forgets about it. Because that's never going to happen.
If Pete was gay, he could take Mikey on a date. They'd be boyfriends, if Mikey said yes. (But why would he do that?) They'd probably eat lunch together and share a bathroom together. He'd have all the Mikey he could ever need.
But he's not.
He worries, seeing Mikey lean against other people. As if contact will bond him to someone else. Someone who would take him out for dinner and kiss him in public. Someone who didn't need a concoction of chemicals pressed into pills to keep themselves balanced. Someone who could get out of bed every day.
Pete wants to be gay, because if he was, this would all be settled. It'd be easy to face Mikey, and say the three words, right? The clichéd, overused, three words that Pete hated and wanted so desperately.
Two weeks later, Mikey is the one to say them, lips buried against the ink of Pete's neck, right above his pulse. So Pete gets up, gets dressed, and leaves. He pretends that he doesn't hear anything and didn't see the look on Mikey's face. He pretends that he isn't frightened to his core.
Pete pretends that he's gay, and pretends that he'd said those words back. He pretends that he's gay and hates how easy it is to do so, because what kind of joke is that?
Mikey doesn't talk to Pete the next day. Or the day after that. Or the week after that.
Mikey withdrawal lands Pete like a true addict across his best friends chest, eyes dry and voice weak. Patrick smells like sweat and boy, but it's different and in that moment he hates it.
"I want to be gay," His voice weak, so weak that all truth shines through the gossamer shield. "I want to be gay."
Mikey talked to Pete, a week before the tour ended. A talk that lead to both of them cramped up in a bunk, naked and bare. It should have made everything worse, but it doesn't. It's a conclusion.
Pete wasn't gay, because that's not what Pete was. At least, that's what he'd tell himself, because it made leaving all the easier.