lost in the falling dark

by seimaisin, tuesdaysgone

Summary:

Patrick never believed in werewolves - until Pete transformed into one before his eyes. On Warped, he learns that the Way brothers are werewolves too, and Patrick's world is officially really damned strange. Patrick thought he'd figured out how to deal with his tangled feelings for Pete - by ignoring them. It seems like the best way to deal with his jealousy of Pete and Mikey, too. But Mikey seems to have other ideas.

Pete seems like the answer to Mikey's growing misery. Newly-sober Gerard is still learning how to control his wolf self without self-medicating, and he's been dancing around his relationship with Frank for far too long, in Mikey's opinion. But watching Pete and Patrick do the same dance just reminds Mikey of how lonely he feels, especially since he's feeling an instinctive need to be part of what Pete and Patrick share.

Notes:

Many thanks to ohnoscarlett for the beta, and to iamsupernova for awesome art! Warning for occasional abuse of canon timelines. Title and cut-tag are from Black Lab's "Sun and Moon."

There are many things that Patrick expects when he enters Pete's hotel room; Pete could be curled up in bed in a fetal position, he could be watching porn and eating french fries from room service, he could be posting ridiculously emo song lyrics on his 'secret' blog. Really, anything is possible. But 'anything' doesn't encompass the scruffy black dog ... no, wolf lying on the bed, staring at Patrick with wide eyes. Patrick freezes. "What the fuck ..." he says, his hand gripping the door frame. "Pete? Are you in here?"

The wolf stands up and jumps down off the bed. When it starts to walk towards Patrick, Patrick takes an instinctive step back. The wolf stops for a moment, then launches itself at Patrick, growling. Panicked, Patrick slams the door before it can reach him. He leans against the closed door and brings a hand up to his mouth. "Motherfucker ..." he breathes. He can still hear the growling on the other side of the door, and he feels soft thuds against the back of his legs where the wolf is obviously butting against the door. He should go get help, Patrick thinks. But Pete might still be in there, with an obviously angry wolf. What if he's hurt? He can't leave Pete in there alone.

After a few minutes, the noises on the other side of the door stop. Patrick swallows hard and turns around. He slides the key card into the slot slowly; when the door beeps, he pushes the handle and cracks it open an inch. He can't see anything through the crack, so with great care, he pushes the door the rest of the way open and looks around. The wolf is sitting at the foot of the bed, about five feet away from the door. Its teeth are bared, but it's not moving. Patrick risks taking his eyes off the animal and scans the rest of the room. There's no sign of Pete anywhere. Maybe he's not there. Maybe, Patrick thinks, he's gone out, and someone ... someone put a wolf in his room? None of it makes any sense.

"Where the hell is Pete?" Patrick asks. He immediately feels foolish. It's not like the wolf is going to tell him anything. But the silence is killing him; the only things he can hear are the soft grunts the wolf lets out on every breath and his own pounding heart. But, improbably, the wolf cocks its head, and its teeth disappear back behind its lips. It still watches Patrick warily, but it no longer looks poised to strike at any moment. Patrick takes a deep breath. "I guess talking is good?" The wolf doesn't move, so Patrick continues. "Okay, sure, nice wolf, don't hurt me, I'm just looking for Pete, I won't do anything to you ..."

The wolf stares up at Patrick with wide, dark eyes ... familiar eyes, Patrick thinks, but immediately shakes himself. It's been a really long month, he hasn't slept very well, his brain isn't working right. There's no other reason why the wolf's eyes would look like Pete's. Or, even why he's seeing a wolf in Pete's hotel room. He's probably hallucinating. But where did Pete go?

The wolf whines and paws at the air. When Patrick doesn't move, it stands back up and takes a small step in Patrick's direction. Patrick holds his breath, but doesn't back up and close the door like a logical part of his brain - the part screaming predator! - tells him to. He's in a hotel room with a woodland animal; logic doesn't cover these types of things. Another step, and the wolf is within arm's reach. It doesn't move any farther; it simply sits back down and looks at Patrick again. Slowly, Patrick crouches down and holds out a hand. He expects the wolf to sniff it, to inspect him like a dog would, but it instead butts its head enthusiastically against Patrick's palm. "Okay, you want me to pet you," Patrick says, slowly rubbing the wolf's head. "But where did you come from?"

Patrick gets another whine, and then the wolf is backing up. It jumps back onto the bed and turns around expectantly. "What do you want?" Patrick asks, feeling foolish. The wolf makes a low noise and jerks its head back towards the other end of the bed. It's an odd gesture, one that looks ... almost human? Impossible. It must be some kind of trained animal. It's tame enough, anyway. "Where did you come from?" he asks again. "And why are you in Pete's room?" The wolf makes the strange jerking gesture with its head again. Patrick looks past it and sees Pete's MacBook open on one of the pillows. From across the room, Patrick can make out a picture of a dark wolf on the screen. He steps fully inside the room and closes the door behind him. The wolf doesn't seem inclined to maul him to death or anything, and ... well, this is really weird. If anyone else sees a wolf in Pete's room, all hell is likely to break loose.

Patrick walks over to the head of the bed and bends over to peer at the computer screen. The wolf, meanwhile, curls up in the middle of the bed, its chin on a pillow, and watches Patrick closely. The image on the screen, Patrick finds, is part of the wikipedia entry on werewolves. He blinks, then looks over at the wolf. "Okay, Pete," he says loudly, standing up and clicking the laptop firmly shut. "Very funny, you can come out now and call the, the wolf trainer or whatever. Werewolves, really?"

There's no response, except for a small noise from the wolf. Patrick sighs and walks over to the bathroom. He expects to find Pete hiding behind the door ... or in the shower, or in the closet, or under the bed. He's none of these places, though, and his wallet, phone, and room keycard are lying carelessly on the desk in the corner. Next to the desk is a heap of clothing; when Patrick bends down to inspect it, he finds one of Pete's favorite t-shirts ripped to shreds, along with a dirty pair of jeans and the remnants of what appear to be Jockey boxer shorts. "Okay, seriously, what the hell?" The wolf whines again, and Patrick straightens back up. "You are not answering me," Patrick tells the wolf. "You can't be."

Patrick pockets the room key - unnecessarily, since he has the one their manager gave him, but he does it anyway - and leaves the room. He goes from door to door, checking everyone else's room for Pete. He even checks his own room, but it's quiet, as Andy is out somewhere exploring the city. At this point, Patrick starts to panic. Wherever Pete is, he has no money, no ID, no phone, no way of getting back into his hotel room. He likely doesn't even have shoes, as all of his sneakers seemed to be present and accounted for on the floor of his closet. It hasn't been that long since Patrick got a phone call about Pete and a Best Buy parking lot ... Patrick's heart is pounding in his chest. He looks out the window. The sky is starting to glow a slightly lighter gray; morning is approaching. He makes a deal with himself. He'll go back to Pete's room to wait, he thinks, and if Pete isn't back by the time their manager is likely to be awake, he'll sound the alarm.

In Pete's room, the wolf is still laying with its head on the pillow. It raises its head at Patrick's entrance, but lays it back down immediately. Patrick sighs and, after a moment's hesitation, sits on the other side of the bed. "I hope Pete comes back," he says to the wolf, "if only to tell me just where the hell you came from."

Patrick flips on the television and turns to a Twilight Zone marathon on WGN. The wolf turns around and lays itself down with its head facing the foot of the bed, where the television is. "You like old horror?" Patrick asks, reaching over to ruffle the fur on the wolf's back. The wolf stiffens, but when Patrick withdraws his hand, it turns and looks at him with imploring eyes. "Okay, okay, fine." So, Patrick spends the next hour or so watching television and idly stroking the wolf's rough fur.

Patrick has just noticed sunlight beginning to creep in through the window drapes when he feels something shift underneath his hand. He looks down; the wolf appears to be convulsing. Patrick scrambles off the bed. "Oh, shit." He watches helplessly as the wolf bucks and makes a horrible keening noise. After a moment, the noise turns into something that looks more familiar ... black fur shifts and slides until it reveals pale olive skin and tattoos. Patrick curses, but the sound is lost underneath Pete's scream.

When it's over, Pete collapses onto the bed, sweaty and limp. Patrick can only stare. The only evidence that there had ever been a wolf on the bed is the small tuft of black hair that had stuck to Patrick's hand. He stares at it, then at Pete. Pete looks over at him and gives him a wan smile. "Hi," he says, his voice an almost inaudible croak. "Welcome to my nightmare."

Patrick can't breathe, or move. When he can manage either of those things again, he's going to pinch himself, because clearly he's dreaming. It wouldn't be the first time he's had nightmares starring Pete Wentz in the past month or two. But it has to be a dream, because Pete can't be -

"Pete," he grits out, eyes glued to the bed, where a sweaty, shaken looking Pete is pushing himself up into a sitting position. He's pale under his tan, and still very, very naked; Patrick looks away, then pivots and marches towards the door. After a moment, he thinks better of it and pivots back. "I'm going to wake up now," he mumbles to himself. The words come out strangled. He takes a deep breath through his nose. It doesn't help.

"If you are, will you take me with you?" Pete replies wearily. The smile has faded away. That's enough to make Patrick's stomach sink like a stone. He's still watching Pete lever himself upright, and he crosses the room to grab the hotel bathrobe from the closet. Pete makes a grateful noise when the terry cloth wraps around his shoulders, quickly cut off when Patrick grabs the lapels of the robe and yanks him close.

"What the fuck is going on?" His voice spikes into a yell, and Pete flinches. Patrick pushes him away as abruptly as he'd pulled him in, worry mixing sickly with fury in his chest. "And whatever the hell it is, why didn't you tell me?"

"This is me telling you," Pete answers. "If I hadn't shown you first, what would you have done?"

"Punched you in the face," Patrick growls. "I still might."

"Just not tonight, okay? This sort of - hurts like a motherfucker."

Great. That's exactly what Patrick wants to hear. That Pete can add turning into a fucking wolf to his list of ailments. "Okay," he says, starting to pace between the tv and the corner of the bed. "You're a werewolf, fine, thanks for the show and tell, I guess I have to believe you. But Pete - how the hell did this happen?"

"Funny story," Pete starts, in that fake-careless tone of his, and that's when Patrick turns around and decks him.

*

Whatever form a werewolf comes in - hereditary or transformed from normal human - a few rules remain the same. The full moon is a dangerous time. Secrecy is a must, if you want to stay alive and out of some freaky government laboratory. And pack hierarchy exists; every wolf either fights for a place or accepts the one he's in. It's an instinct Mikey doesn't understand on a scientific level, but it's one he feels deep down in his bones every time he looks at his brother.

Tonight, Mikey watches the large black wolf pace up and down the bus hallway over and over with the hunched walk of a caged animal. They can't pull over and let him run; the band has to get to Maine tonight. It's not even full moon, but Gerard's been spending a lot of time in wolf form lately. It was one of the first things their dad had taught them, back when they were tiny and still learning what it meant to be an offshoot of the funny branches of the Way family tree. You changed at the full moon, sure as the tides, but without concentration, stress or a sudden emotional upheaval could snap you into a transformation before you could say Warren Zevon.

When they were kids, it had been a game. It hadn't hurt as much then, dulled by the elasticity and the forgetfulness of childhood. When they were moody teenagers, pain and strong emotions alike could usually be dulled under a convenient layer of intoxication. Now, it's a fucking concern. And what it means, what Mikey can't bring himself to tell anyone, is that Gerard's sobriety affects Mikey nearly as much as it affects Gerard. Being around Gerard has always quieted something inside Mikey, satisfied some primal need to be a part of something outside of himself. Mikey isn't and will never be an alpha. Only a handful of wolves are, at least in Mikey's limited experience; Gerard is one of the few natural alphas he's ever met. Following his older brother was a no-brainer. When Gerard was a drunk, he'd been easier to push around, easier to predict, but he'd still been the pack leader. Mikey got used to following along even when he wasn't sure where they were going.

Sober Gerard is as sharp as the snap of a bone, and much more quick to break, so these days Mikey's always exhausted, wearing it like an extra layer of padding around his human form.

Mikey isn't sure what brought on tonight's change. It could be anything, it could be nothing - Gerard has been sober nearly six months, but he's still learning how to control his emotions without chemical interference. If he's too tired, if he pushes himself too hard on stage, if he starts thinking about things from his recent past he regrets ... Mikey sighs when the wolf paces past him, and kicks out gently to tap him with his foot without thinking. It used to be a foolproof way to distract Gerard; provoke him, make him take his frustration out on the one person around who could take the violence that would ensue. Mikey could change into a wolf right now. He's got enough control to shift at will, and the result is usually worth the pain in these sorts of situations. But when Gerard whirls around and growls at him, Mikey can't bring himself to do it. The idea of fighting right now makes him want to cry. He stares at Gerard for a moment, then lowers his gaze and exposes his throat in a submissive gesture. Gerard growls one more time before padding back to the other end of the bus.

Correction: Mikey can't bring himself to tell anyone how much Gerard's moods are wearing on him, but he's pretty sure he's not fooling the people who matter most. Especially Frank. Frank's watching now, sprawled on the couch in the lounge at the one terminus of Gerard's route, eyes flicking back and forth between Gerard and Mikey. Mikey's always grateful for their bandmates, but never more so than when they're in wolf form. None of them had ever batted an eyelash at sharing close quarters with two werewolves. Of course, the wolfsbane potion Mikey and Gerard's family uses helps with that. It tames the worst of the physical pain and the feral urges. Some enterprising ancestor had even had the foresight to start producing it in pill form.

My Chemical Romance, indeed. As he watches, Gerard's pacing slows noticeably, until he's swaying on his paws outside his bunk. Then he jumps inside and Mikey hears the pained intake of breath that signals the start of the change, smells the alteration in Gerard's scent as he phases back into human form. Mikey stands in the lounge, debating whether or not to go check on him, but before he can make up his mind Frank gets to his feet, laying a hand on Mikey's shoulder as he sidles by. Frank climbs up into Gerard's bunk and there's a brief growl and a moment of silence before their voices start murmuring back and forth.

Mikey tries not be jealous. He likes to tell himself that he doesn't need to be the one who fixes Gerard, because that might mean that Gerard doesn't need to be the one who fixes him.

He's still jealous.

*

In the end, Pete's story is disappointingly lacking in details. One of the girls he'd been messing around with behind his ex-girlfriend's back got mad at him for not declaring his true love for her, or some such nonsense. Unfortunately, she turned out to be a werewolf, and after a night Pete couldn't remember ("I was really drunk, okay, and I think she slipped something into my beer"), he woke up in an alley, scratched and bruised and more sore than he'd been in years. He didn't think anything of it until a week later, when the full moon rolled around and he found himself transforming into a wolf in the middle of his bedroom. "I thought I was hallucinating," he tells Patrick that first night. "Acid isn't my thing, you know that, but I looked in a mirror that night and was absolutely sure that I'd managed to take a hit without knowing. What the hell else was I supposed to think?"

But it had happened the next month, too, and the next week, Pete parked in the Best Buy parking lot and swallowed a bunch of Ativan. This, he tells Patrick, is his fourth transformation. "I'm still me when I'm a wolf. I can think, I know who I am, all that shit. I just ... change. But I sorta feel more like a wolf every day, even when I'm human. I've started ordering my meat rare in restaurants, and I can smell Joe's weed from across a goddamned parking lot. I don't know. I just feel really different." His eyes gleam when he says it, and Patrick thinks this is probably a very un-Pete-like understatement.

He only transforms the one night every month, for which Patrick is grateful. The album has just dropped, and their professional life has gotten even more crazy than it used to be. MTV loves them, radio loves them; suddenly, they're not just stars of the scene, they're legitimate pop stars, and it's messing with all four of them in different ways. Pete's extra messed up, but everyone else is happy to chalk it up to his diagnosed mental illness. Only Patrick knows exactly what Pete's struggling with. It's hard, not having anyone else he can talk to about it, so Patrick does the only thing he can think of. He turns to the internet.

Unfortunately, the internet is more confusing than helpful. Not that Patrick expected to be able to Google "werewolf" and find a website called "What To Do When Your Friend Turns Into A Werewolf." He'd just hoped ... well, he doesn't know what he hoped, but what he finds is a whole lot of myth. Different cultures have vastly different werewolf legends, he finds, and he has no idea which stories to dismiss and which ones might show up in front of him one full moon. "Do you know what culture that girl's family came from?" he asks Pete one night. They're sitting in Patrick's hotel room; Patrick is lying on the bed with his laptop, while Pete is lying on the floor, holding his phone in the air and texting people. "Like, do you think she was European, or something else?"

"I don't know," Pete says, snapping his phone shut. "She's white. I really wasn't interested enough in her as a person to ask about her family."

"That's probably why you ended up all furry," Patrick mutters.

"Well, excuse me. I'll never fuck someone again without asking for their family tree in advance."

"Don't you want to know what the hell is happening to you?"

"I want to not turn into a fucking wolf ever again. But that's probably not very likely, so ..." Pete sits up and shrugs. "The internet isn't going to give you anything more than bad horror movies. I've checked."

"There has to be something. You're not the first person this has happened to. You can't be."

Pete just shrugs and lays down again. He's frustrating Patrick something awful these days. Now that he's shared his secret with Patrick, Pete seems much calmer; it's as if he's given all his panic and fear to Patrick to carry. Some days - like this one - Patrick feels like decking him again. If he wasn't such an asshole about the people he dated, if he had better judgment, if he thought about his actions more ... well, he wouldn't be Pete, Patrick admits to himself. But there's a big difference between Pete's usual bad results and some magical thing that turns him into a fucking fairy tale. And now he doesn't even seemed concerned about it. Patrick does all the worrying. What happens when they have a show the night of the full moon? If they're on stage when the sun goes down, will Pete just suddenly sprout fur in front of thousands of people? What if someone else sees Pete when he's a wolf - will they call the cops or animal control? Will Pete end up in an animal shelter or a zoo or something? And every time Patrick sits across from Pete in a restaurant and sees a giant pink hamburger appear on a plate in front of him, Patrick's stomach turns. He's about to ask Andy about the everyday practicality of being a vegetarian, because the closer Pete gets to eating raw meat, the less appetizing any sort of animal flesh becomes.

Patrick goes back to browsing the internet, scowling at his laptop screen. A few minutes later, he feels the bed dip next to him. The next thing he knows, Pete is curled up at his side. He lays his head on the pillow and scoots close enough that Patrick can feel his breath on the skin of his arm. He doesn't shiver. He's been training himself to not react to Pete's physical presence for several years now. When he was a teenager in a van, with Pete practically lying on top of him every night, he'd spent hours and hours every day telling his hormones that Pete was his friend, that Pete didn't think of him the same way Patrick thought of Pete, that embarrassed flushes only gained him more mocking and that unwanted erections were the worst thing that could possibly happen to him. He's an adult now - really, he can drink and everything - and he's gotten over his post-adolescent crush. He has.

... okay, he hasn't. For some reason, he's felt like a fucking hormonal fifteen year old ever since he saw that wolf turn back into Pete. He doesn't want to think about what that says about him.

Pete flings his arm over Patrick's lap, weighing down Patrick's arms until he's forced to close the laptop and push it to the side. He glares down at Pete, but Pete isn't looking at him. Instead, Pete is pressing his nose to the soft flesh of Patrick's forearm. Patrick feels his body begin to react to the contact, and he slides down to a prone position to move Pete's arm away from his most sensitive areas. Pete buries his face in Patrick's shoulder. Patrick's not sure what to do; after a moment, he reaches over and pats Pete's shoulder. Finally, Pete raises his head and looks at him. "I don't know if I want to know what's happening to me," he admits softly. "Sometimes ignorance is bliss."

Patrick can't really argue with that. He props himself up on the pillow and turns on the TV to some late-night talk show. Pete remains at his side until he falls asleep.

*

Warped, again. Last year, this tour had been nothing more than a giant crash and burn - for Gerard, and nearly for the whole band. The other guys would probably argue, but Mikey likes to think he'd felt it more than the others. People have always liked to comment - jokingly, snidely, enviously - on how close Gerard and Mikey are. Most of them don't know the truth, of course. It's impossible to understand from the outside what it means to be brothers and to be pack, to have an alpha. Mikey had, offstage at least, always been the one who'd known how to work a crowd. Known everyone. This Warped feels like that, but Mikey's waiting, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And then he meets Pete Wentz.

If Mikey is remembering how to work a crowd, Pete can already make it sit up and beg. And that's particularly fucking apt, because the first time he's downwind and within arm's length of Pete - unfortunately for him, because Pete's plastered in mud and carrying a Super Soaker filled with something unidentifiable - all his senses convulse at once. Werewolf. Pete's a werewolf. But how does he not know this already?

Mikey feels his hackles raise a little, and he freezes, taking in a deep breath. Taking in the scent. Wolf, yes, but not pack; the scent has a kick like burnt sugar and bitter herbs, both strange and tantalizing. Pete makes eye contact for just that one moment too long, and Mikey stiffens automatically. Then Pete blinks and flashes him a toothy white grin. "Mikey Way," he cries, and launches himself at Mikey. Mikey flinches, too surprised to even let out the growl that builds in his chest. Amazingly, Pete catches himself in mid-lunge. "It's just mud. Mostly," he says, like that's why Mikey flinched. He wiggles his eyebrows, and says "Maybe later," then runs off.

Mikey stays where he is - exactly where he is - for a long time. Pete Wentz. He's never heard a word about this, not through any of the usual channels. And Pete's scent - it makes Mikey uneasy, and so does Pete. He hadn't just ignored the rules. He'd acted like he didn't know the rules. Not good, and especially not good with Gerard being so - well, Gerard has a bit of a short fuse these days, still slightly fragile underneath. Shit. He takes a moment to bare his teeth at nothing, and stalks off. He's going to have to keep an eye on Pete Wentz.

There's another part of him, too long ignored, that is entirely okay with that.

It's about two days before anyone in his own band notices Mikey's tendency to disappear and appear wherever Pete is. Gerard would have noticed a lot sooner, but Gerard has barely emerged from the bus in two days. Pete hasn't noticed yet either, which is strange despite Mikey's years of practice at lurking. Pete's scent is also plenty distracting, but Mikey still smells Frank sneaking up on him before Frank can grab him. He lets him do it anyway.

"Don't tell me Emo Bangs over there is really that fascinating," Frank says into Mikey's ear. Mikey pulls back far enough to look pointedly at Frank's smudged makeup and bleached fauxhawk. "Fuck you, it's a thematic aesthetic," Frank says. It's sort of scary how he even sounds like Gerard when he says it.

"He's a werewolf," Mikey says shortly, watching Pete, amid much gesturing, start to climb up the side of Fall Out Boy's tour bus. As he watches, Patrick stomps over to Pete's little semicircle of spectators, grabs Pete by the scruff of the neck, and shakes, hard. Pete subsides immediately, and that is fascinating and also not helping resolve Mikey's confusion.

He tunes back in and catches the tail end of whatever Frank's been saying about Pete. Gerard's name was in there somewhere, and Mikey grabs Frank's wrist, squeezing hard. "Frank, you gotta do something for me."

"Ow," Frank whines. "Fragile human bones." Mikey glares but lets go. "What?" Frank continues irritably.

"Gerard...he...Pete's not pack," Mikey says.

Frank lets out a rude snort. "He's something. Crazy little fucker."

"Pot, kettle. Whatever. Mostly, he's someone Gerard doesn't need to go all territorial over. Not right now." Frank bites his lip, and Mikey knows he gets what Mikey's implying. "There's - just something weird there, and I want to try to figure out what it is, and so I need you to distract him till I can."

"Distract him." It's not exactly a question. Mikey narrows his eyes. He's not entirely certain setting Frank on Gerard is a good idea. Things between them have had a strange tension - and getting stranger - ever since Gerard got clean. Still, Frank and Ray understand him nearly as well as Mikey does. It'll have to suffice.

Mikey has to look away, after a moment. He knows that Frank thinks he's hiding the need in his eyes, and it's not exactly the same as Mikey feels, he thinks, but not entirely different. It's something that Mikey just doesn't want to think about, that his human bandmate - friend - brother misses his alpha too.

*

Patrick is used to stopping Pete from doing stupid things, or cleaning up the mess after Pete's done stupid things, or, occasionally, taking part in the stupid things Pete's doing. Lately, though, Pete's proportion of stupid things to marginally not stupid things has gone way up. Patrick wants to blame summer, or the presence of dozens of inebriated and highly suggestible band dudes, but it's clear there's something bothering him. Not Pete's normal crazy - Pete's very specific new level of furry crazy. Pete's taken to provoking him at every turn. Now, Pete - the old Pete - sometimes didn't know when to stop, but he never did it with that kind of half-mad gleam in his eye. Patrick knows it's serious when Andy and Joe start automatically fixing him with a look both wary and pleading whenever it gets to be too much. Patrick just grabs Pete by the neck and shoves him off in a different direction, holding back the punch he's still dying to throw.

The really crazy thing is, it works. It works every time. It maybe works too well, because more times than not it ends with Pete curled up next to him on the couch, or in Patrick's bunk. If this is some sort of toll for a Pete who doesn't end up in jail or traction, it's worth it. Maybe.

This time, it's playing King of the Mountain on top of the tour bus. It's second nature by now to grab onto Pete and shake, just like it's second nature to ignore the way Pete steps into it instead of away, like any normal person.

"Patrick," Pete starts, a little breathless. It's enough to make Patrick's mouth go dry, and that makes him frown harder.

"I swear to god, Pete. Do you want to be in traction? We need a bass player, you know." It's a common enough refrain, and Pete laughs like he always does, moving obediently away when Patrick shoves him.

"You could steal Mikey Way. He's a million times better than me, anyway." He's not looking at Patrick anymore. Patrick follows his glance and sees Mikey talking to Frank Iero a few buses away. Mikey's been around a lot lately, sort of in the background but still there, and Patrick wants to like him - he's a genuinely cool guy (in a dorky way that reminds him of - well, Pete). But dammit, after four years he knows Pete's tells, and Pete's been single for much longer than Patrick thought he could manage. He may not have a right to say this, but Pete is his.

Except he's not. And Mikey's just his type.

It's later in the day, after Fall Out Boy's late afternoon set, that Patrick sees Mikey again. He's with Pete. Of course. They're sitting on a hill above the backstage area and passing an unlabeled bottle between them. Pete sees Patrick at the bottom of the hill and waves him up. Caught, Patrick trudges up the hill and stands below them. "What's up, guys?"

"We're getting together a bunch of people to go see Batman Begins tomorrow, before we leave town. You in?"

Patrick smiles. "Hell yeah. I've been dying to see it. My cousin works around one of the places they filmed in Chicago, and he said everything he saw looked amazing."

"It's brilliant," Mikey says. He holds to bottle up to Patrick, but Patrick waves him off. Mikey shrugs and takes another drink. "Christopher Nolan is a motherfucking genius. He filmed a Batman movie like it was Blade Runner, and it's so cool."

"I read Year One when I was thirteen, and it's still one of my favorite comic stories ever. I heard this one sorta follows it?"

"Kind of." Mikey shrugs. "It sorta follows the origin story, but twists it in a way that works much better for a movie. You'll have to see it. But don't mention Ra's Al Ghul to Gerard unless you want to hear a half hour long monologue about how much better the character is in the comic."

Patrick laughs. Pete rolls his eyes and grabs the bottle back from Mikey. "Geeks. Both of you."

"Like you can talk." Patrick cuffs Pete on the side of the head. Pete shoves at Patrick's legs hard enough that Patrick falls to his knees; he retaliates by pulling Pete's legs toward him and twisting a fist into the collar of his t-shirt. Pete tries to twist away, but Patrick just gives him a good shake and pushes him back towards the ground. Pete hits the ground with a loud "oof," but he's grinning. When Patrick sits back and brushes grass off his jeans, he sees Mikey staring at him oddly. For a brief moment, Patrick has the urge to grab Mikey by the shirt, as well, and shake the strange expression off his face. They stare at each other for a long moment, too long to be comfortable, before Mikey looks away and starts picking at the grass next to him.

Meanwhile, Pete has righted himself and, when Patrick looks back at him, is chugging a long drink from the bottle. "What're you up to?" he asks Patrick as he hands the bottle back to Mikey.

"Off to watch the Murphys play. You?"

"I think we're gonna hang out for a while. Right?" he asks Mikey.

When Mikey looks back at Pete, he's got a small smile on his face. He's got a look in his eyes that Patrick recognizes; it's a look Patrick himself learned how to suppress a long time ago. It's a look that says that Pete's magnetic personality - now with 100% more animal magnetism, Patrick thinks wryly - has claimed another victim. Patrick feels a knot tightening in his chest. Part of him wants to plop down and stay right there, to stare at Mikey until the other man gets up and walks away. But that wouldn't do any good, not for any one of them. So, Patrick stands up and stretches his arms. "Have fun, kids. Don't do anything stupid." The words sound a lot more pleasant than he feels at this moment.

"Who do you think you're talking to?" Pete asks, mock offended.

"Right. Okay, then, don't get caught at whatever stupid shit you do."

"Better."

Patrick's half-turned to walk away when he hears Mikey's voice. "See you tomorrow, Patrick."

He turns briefly to glance at Mikey. He's already turned his head to say something to Pete, his neck stretched long, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. A smile spreads across his face when Pete makes a stupid joke, and something warm flares in Patrick's stomach. Silently, he acknowledges that he doesn't blame Pete for heading in Mikey's direction. That doesn't mean he has to like it.

*

Mikey doesn't know what to do, because he knows Pete and Patrick aren't together, but he knows how close they are. The entire tour knows how close they are. And he knows he wants to get to know Pete better, for reasons that have everything and nothing to do with his werewolf nature, all at once. But his reaction to Patrick is instinctual. He keeps a wary distance. Normally, this is where Gerard would come in, smoothing things over, taking charge. Taking center stage. But Gerard has other things on his mind this summer. So, Mikey's on his own.

Finally, he sucks it up and slides in next to Pete in catering. It's the day before the full moon, so it's probably the last chance he has to bring this up before all hell breaks loose. "Hey," he says.

"Mikeyway!" The grin Pete turns on him is blinding. "How the hell are you?"

He and Pete have hung out a few times now; none of their interactions would warrant the kind of enthusiasm Pete appears to be showing. That might just be Pete, though, Mikey thinks. He finds himself smiling. "Good. Hey, uh ..." Mikey looks down at Pete's plate. His half-eaten hamburger looks like it was barely waved in the direction of a frying pan before being served. "Hungry?" he asks lamely. How the hell is he supposed to bring up the wolf thing, anyway?

Pete makes a face. "Catering sucks this year. Nobody understands how to cook a fucking rare burger. This is closer to medium, jackasses."

Actually, Pete's burger is pink enough that some people might mistake it for raw meat. But Mikey knows what he means. He and Gerard learned how to hunt live animals before they entered kindergarten; a couple of freshly killed, decently-sized rabbits or raccoons can give a werewolf enough raw meat to quell the cravings for a whole month. Pete obviously doesn't know that, though, which means he can't be from a family tradition. Cursed, then ... someone deliberately made him this way. Mikey is suddenly irrationally angry. There are rules - unwritten, unenforceable, but every wolf he's ever met knows that turning humans is bad news. It calls attention to them, which they don't need, but what's more, it's unfair to the human. Being a wolf sucks. Mikey can't imagine anyone choosing this life. Maybe Pete did - he's more than a little crazy, that much Mikey knows for sure - but the way he's stabbing listlessly at the burger makes Mikey think not. "There's ..." Mikey pauses, then gamely forges on. "There's a better way to get what you need, you know."

"Huh?"

"I ..." He looks sideways at Pete. Pete's looking back at him, vaguely confused, but not really on guard. Yet. "I know what you need. What you ..."

He trails off. Pete's fully confused now. He's leaning back, away from the table, and his dark eyes are boring holes into Mikey's skull. Mikey sighs. "Come with me," he says impulsively.

"Where?"

"Trust me. I need to show you something."

Pete has no reason to trust him. He barely knows Mikey, and Mikey knows he sounds sketchy. But for some reason, Pete doesn't hesitate to stand up and follow Mikey away. They leave the catering tent and wind their way through the maze of buses, until finally coming to the corner that houses the crew buses. Everyone's out setting up for the show right now, so Mikey feels somewhat confident that no one's back here to see what he's about to do. Pete leans against a bus, his hands in his pockets. "Okay, you've got me alone, now what?"

Mikey fights a blush. If he's being honest with himself, he can think of much more fun things to possibly do with Pete Wentz in a secluded location than what he's about to do. But, this is necessary. Probably. And hopefully safe; if he's misjudged Pete's situation, if Pete's got some other pack or some other ideas about the whole wolf thing, this could get violent really quick. But Mikey's in this now, no turning back. So, after a deep breath, Mikey closes his eyes and starts to shift.

A voluntary shift is an instinctual thing; by paying attention to the way things feel when you shift with the moon, a wolf can recognize the internal changes and how to initiate them. There's probably some scientific explanation, but Mikey doesn't know any werewolf scientists, so he doesn't have any real words to describe it. He just imagines what the full moon feels like on his skin; almost like sunlight, cold sunlight, like a bright winter's day. It starts in his shoulders, and he leans over to touch the ground before his hands turn into paws. His back is next, and he feels fur punching through his skin in a ripple from his shoulders to his pelvis. At that point, the internal shift really gets going, and that's when the pain hits. It never gets easier. He learned to quell his screams as a child, with gags stuffed into his mouth so that he wouldn't disturb the neighbors. Sometimes, he imagines the taste of the bandannas at the back of his throat - it reminds him to keep the noises down in his chest, just rumbles and hiccups of pain. That takes enough concentration that, by the time he no longer wants to scream, his whole body has changed.

In his wolf form, he turns around to look at Pete. He kind of wants to laugh at the expression on Pete's face, but a laugh would come out as a bark, and the last thing he needs is someone coming to find out where the dog is.

Wolf instincts are not human instincts; Mikey never forgets he's human, but he's still something altogether different when he changes. In a way, the world is clearer when he's a wolf. Simpler, anyway - if he looks at Gerard while he's a wolf, all he sees is alpha-pack-family-power. His human self still knows everything Gerard is and isn't, how fucked up he is and how much he's working on becoming better. The wolf doesn't care about any of that. All the wolf wants to know is that Gerard is more powerful than he is. If that's still true, then Mikey's world is still in balance. Problem is, Mikey's world hasn't been in balance for a while.

But Pete - Pete doesn't look like anything Mikey's ever seen. There's power there, but not alpha-level power. That part doesn't surprise Mikey; cursed wolves are very rarely alpha, and if Pete's not a cursed wolf, then Mikey's a fucking chihuahua. Someone born to the wolf-world wouldn't be as confused as Pete is right now. But, Pete has something about him that Mikey can't identify. He radiates something ... a presence, almost as tangible as a flavor in the back of Mikey's throat, something that makes Mikey want to walk over to Pete and nuzzle his head into his stomach. It's partly a sexual reaction, but mostly an emotional one that makes Mikey uncomfortable enough that he changes back to human without thinking. A moment later, he's sitting on the dusty pavement, staring at the remnants of his clothing. "Fuck. Why do I always forget that part?"

Pete laughs, a loud honk that makes Mikey turn back around to look at him. He doesn't really care that he's naked - the dude just saw him turn into a wolf, he can deal with a little skin - but something in Pete's gaze is warm and heavy, and Mikey shifts to sit more comfortably. "You want me to go get you something to wear?" Pete asks. His voice cracks a little, but he sounds mostly calm.

"Yeah, that'd be good."

Mikey sits there for a couple of minutes, but Pete comes back quickly with a pair of shorts and a hoodie. "The shorts are Joe's, I figured those might fit."

They do, and suddenly Mikey is clothed and standing in front of Pete. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Pete suddenly pokes him in the chest. "You're a wolf, too."

"Yep."

"And you knew I was a wolf."

"Yep."

Pete narrows his eyes. "That's why I felt so ... strange when I saw you the other day, right?"

"Yep. Instinct. You'll always know when another wolf is around." Mikey kicks an abandoned beer can underneath the nearest bus, then looks back at Pete. "How did it happen to you?"

"I fucked the wrong girl, apparently. Some kind of Fatal Attraction bullshit." Pete shrugs, but Mikey watches his Adam's apple bob nervously. "What about you? You can change between full moons? I can't do that."

"I was born this way. Most of my family, too. Most wolves are born, at least these days. Maybe things work a little differently for us? I've never personally known anyone who wasn't. Most of us aren't dumb enough to call attention to ourselves by changing random humans."

"Huh." Pete looks at Mikey's face. "Really. You're a fucking werewolf." Suddenly, a grin splits Pete's face in two and he throws his arms around Mikey's neck. Mikey only keeps his balance by throwing a hand out to steady himself against the bus. When he's sure he won't fall, he lets his arms slip around Pete's waist. "Shit," Pete says, muffled by the hoodie Mikey's wearing, "I feel so much less like a freak." He pulls away from Mikey, leaving Mikey feeling curiously bereft. "Not that I don't still feel like a freak, but at least I'm not the only one."

"Thanks," Mikey says, deadpan, but his lips quirk up into a small smile.

Mikey expects to be peppered with questions, but instead, Pete tugs on the sleeve of his borrowed hoodie. "Come on. We need to go find Patrick."

"Patrick?" Mikey swallows. There's that feeling again, like he wants to head quickly in the opposite direction of wherever Patrick is. "Why, he's not ..."

"No, but he knows about me. He's the only one. He's been helping me figure things out. He should ..." Pete trails off, then spreads his hands out. "Unless you don't want him to know about you. I won't make you."

"No, no, it's - okay," Mikey tells him. Which is how he finds himself on Fall Out Boy's bus, giving some sort of werewolf welcome wagon speech to Pete while Patrick frowns from under the brim of his hat. If Mikey was a wolf right now, he'd be tucking tail and slinking away, just from Patrick's physical stance. Then Patrick starts asking questions, and Mikey's a little impressed at the amount of information they've managed to scrounge up without any help. But when Patrick's done, and Mikey explains the arrangements he and Gerard had made for the full moon tomorrow night, Patrick looks at Pete instead.

"Pete," he says firmly. And if Pete was a wolf right now, he'd be rolling over and showing his belly. As it is, he slides closer to Patrick on the couch and tugs at the brim of his hat.

"Patrick," Pete implores.

Mikey can't look at the expression on Pete's face; he clenches his jaw and paces back towards the door. Pete and Patrick are having some sort of conversation that doesn't involve actual sentences. It reminds him of nothing so much as - "Gerard," he blurts out. He looks over his shoulder. Patrick and Pete are both looking at him now. "I - Pete, I need to explain to him - "

Pete looks between him and Patrick. Patrick reaches for his laptop and opens it up. It's clear that they've been dismissed. Mikey suppresses a growl; Patrick looks up and straight into his eyes for a moment. Mikey looks away first.

Gerard's drawing in the front lounge when they get to the My Chem bus. He also looks like someone's shoved him into marginally less disgusting clothes; probably Frank's doing, as Frank is sprawled on the other side of the dinette, watching the Simpsons on the tv. Gerard doesn't look up at Mikey's greeting, but his head snaps up as soon as Pete steps onto the bus, and Pete freezes. Mikey sets a hand at the small of Pete's back and shoots Gerard a warning look. "He's - " Gerard starts.

"He got turned," Mikey interrupts, before Pete can supply Gerard with the too much information explanation. The truth Hollywood doesn't tell you is that it takes more than a casual bite to change someone into a werewolf, and Gerard has Opinions, especially after the Bert fiasco. Mikey can count at least two rants it might provoke, and if he doesn't have the energy for that, he's sure no one else does either. "I've been telling him some things. Thought you'd want to know."

Gerard looks slightly chastened. "Wow. Fuck, dude, I'm sorry to - well - yeah, me and Mikey, we can try to explain some things to you. How long has it been?"

"It first happened in December," Pete says, slightly defensive. Everybody in the business knows about the Best Buy incident, it seems; Mikey'd put two and two together as soon as Pete told him, and he can see Gerard doing the math, too. His eyes soften a little, but he's still looking back and forth from Pete to where Mikey's left a hand curved around Pete's back. It makes Mikey want to snatch his hand away, which is exactly why he puts his chin up and doesn't do it.

"I want him to run with me tomorrow night," Mikey says. Just because he's not asking doesn't mean it's not actually a question; his own wolf instincts are on high alert already thanks to the waxing moon, and they all clamor for his alpha's approval. This is the same feeling he'd gotten back in the Fall Out Boy bus with Pete and Patrick; he'd be more curious about the parallel if he wasn't busy fighting to keep eye contact with Gerard.

Gerard looks away first, tugging at his messy half-bleached hair. "Fine," he says. "Just stick to the plan; I'll stay here to - "

"Gee." It's Frank, interrupting softly like he hasn't been ostensibly ignoring this entire conversation. This has been happening more often this summer; Mikey is still training himself not to be annoyed at Frank involving himself in their pack issues, reminding himself that he'd asked Frank to step in. "Gee, you finally have the chance to go out and run, take it. You can't stay cooped up in the bus." He reaches across the tabletop, nudging at Gerard's hand with his fingertips till Gerard lifts it enough to pin Frank's palm to the table.

"We'll bring him," Gerard says to Mikey. "Have fun." It's not the most convincing Gerard's ever been, but Mikey's going to take what he can get.

Pete comes over the next night before moonrise and he's practically vibrating in place. Mikey doesn't know how anyone who sees him this close to changing, eyes and teeth gleaming, full of nervous violence, could ever forget it; he's not surprised Patrick's the only person Pete's told. They've borrowed a van from one of the techs - Frank's agreed to drive, and Gerard is in the front seat, jaw clenched and eyes averted from Pete and Mikey in the back. Mikey had maybe underestimated how hard Gerard would take this. He's desperately sorry, and it hits him right in the gut, all his own overexerted senses responding to different stimuli.

Frank stops the van when they reach the deserted stretch they'd scoped out on Google Maps and they all climb out. Mikey watches him grab Gerard by the hand, pull him close enough to whisper something Mikey can't hear; whatever it is, it makes Gerard lay a hand on Frank's cheek for a moment, tellingly tender. He flashes a look at Mikey and Pete, too, then turns and walks down the road a ways by himself. He'll change and run alone tonight.

Frank meets Mikey's eye for a second, and he looks like all he wants to do is to follow Gerard. Mikey totally understands. He doesn't though, just climbs back in the van, rolls the window partway down, and lights a cigarette. Mikey turns back to Pete.

"Let's go," he says.

Pete's still looking after Gerard, a mixture of wariness and longing, and oh, Mikey understands that too. "You sure he has to leave?"

"Do you really want to fight tonight? Or do you just want to run?"

"Look, I know I'm not your pack, but you're sure he would - " Pete interrupts himself so Mikey doesn't have to. Of course Gerard would fight. It had been obvious in that carefully averted gaze that he would, and that he didn't want to. "Okay, I trust you." He's beginning to break out into a sweat; it's almost time. Mikey can feel the ache in his own bones, and he grabs Pete's hand, pulls him off into the underbrush.

"We need to get ready," he says, and they undress in a fraught silence. Mikey doesn't think he's particularly fascinating to look at - too skinny and gangly by half. But he watches, unashamed, as Pete's skin is bared piece by piece, feeling like a voyeur. Then Pete looks up and sees him, and slows his movements, unable to resist performing a little. In the dusky gloom, his tattoos look like they're moving; his teeth are very white. Mikey is thrown from his perusal by a sudden wave of needlelike pains; it's time.

He comes shuddering and stretching through the change at the same time as Pete. The small black wolf hops into the air with all four feet, yips and then rushes Mikey, who instinctively drops a shoulder to roll Pete over. Pete goes sprawling in the dust; when he comes to a stop he struggles to his feet, shakes himself, and darts forward again. Mikey spins on his haunches and dashes off across the field, with Pete leaping behind him.

It's almost like being a pup again; hours of dashing through the fields, wrestling, following the scent trails of small animals. Mikey feels good - he feels right, for the first time in a long time, like this is something he can handle, can enjoy. Pete keeps up with him effortlessly, despite his shorter legs, but eventually they both get tired, and Mikey leads them back to the copse of trees where they left their clothing. They curl up together in a tangled pile of fur and limbs. Mikey yawns, jaws gaping wide, and heaves a satisfied sigh.

In the distance, he can hear a lone wolf howling. He lets out a sleepy, cut-off return greeting, then curls closer to Pete and falls asleep.

It's one difference, between wolf state and human state. The wolf can exhaust himself and then have no trouble falling asleep, every time. This time, he sleeps until the last possible moment before the moon sets, waking just before the change kicks in. Pete was asleep too; he jerks away from Mikey, ducking his head and whining as the first ripples of the change start back up.

It never gets better. Mikey's changed a dozen times a year for his entire 25 years of life. Pete's changed less than a dozen times, ever. They both have the same shell-shocked look in their eyes once they're back in their human forms, and Mikey crawls closer to Pete, nestles up against his side. Pete makes a welcoming noise and lays his cheek against Mikey's forehead. They breathe together for a while, till Mikey's skin stops crawling and he remembers that he is naked - that they both are - and skates a hand up Pete's side. Pete's warm, and he makes a pleased noise at the touch of Mikey's hand, his breath huffing out over Mikey's temple. "Mikeyway," he murmurs, wriggling down so they're eye to eye.

Mikey tilts his head so their mouths line up, groaning deep in his chest as he's rolled over, Pete's wiry frame sliding effortlessly on top of him. Pete's got his fingers wrapped in strands of Mikey's hair in no time, rolling his hips down against Mikey's as his mouth wanders down Mikey's neck. He knows just the right amount of teeth, somehow, to make Mikey squirm and buck up - the kind of ticklish that ends in moans instead of laughter. Mikey finds Pete's mouth again, biting down on his lower lip as he slides a hand between them and wraps it around Pete's cock. He hisses and his fingers tighten in Mikey's hair. Mikey rolls them over, kissing Pete again and again, back bowed as he jerks Pete off between them. It doesn't take long before Pete is coming in hot splashes between them, and Mikey rears back, sitting astride Pete's legs and fucking into his own hand until he's painting Pete's tattoos with stripes of white.

When he comes back to himself, Pete's laughing. "Couldn't resist marking me, hm?" It's accompanied by a crude eyebrow wiggle, but then Pete swipes his fingers through the mess and touches his tongue to the tips. Mikey makes a helpless noise halfway between a moan and a laugh, and Pete sits up underneath him and crushes their mouths together again. They kiss for a while longer, until Mikey's starting to shiver; then they roll apart, cleaning themselves up half-heartedly and tugging on discarded clothes from the little piles they'd left tucked under a tree.

When they finally trudge back out to the road, exhausted, fucked-out and hand in hand, the van's waiting where they left it. Frank's sitting on the hood, smoking; he raises an eyebrow at Pete and Mikey but doesn't say anything. Mikey looks around and sees Gerard already in the van, slumped sideways in the passenger seat, fast asleep.

"The gang's all here," Frank says from behind him. "Let's go." He flicks his cigarette butt to the ground, stomps on it, and lets himself in the driver's side door. He pulls it shut slowly so it won't slam, but Gerard opens his eyes anyway.

"Hey, Mikes," he croaks. He cuts his eyes to the side. "Pete." Despite sounding wrecked, he manages a small smile. Mikey drops his hand on Gerard's shoulder as he crawls into the first bench. Gerard covers Mikey's fingers with his own for a moment before curling back up against the window. Another waning moon. Another drive, first vans then buses. Back to their bands and their human lives.

*

Patrick's always, always been with Pete for the full moon, ever since Pete first told him. After the initial panicking - Pete's, and then Patrick's - they'd spent weeks researching their options, making contingency plans. Patrick knows he should be relieved that Pete got to run all night, that he exhausted himself doing something natural instead of pacing around another hotel room. He's angry for days though, and Pete's onstage nuzzles double in frequency; he can't stand when Patrick is upset even though he clearly doesn't understand why he is. Patrick's gotten seriously good at hiding his lovesickness from Pete in the last, oh, five years. He knows what else Pete did on the night of the full moon; Mikey and Pete are inseparable now, sharing drinks and clothes and private jokes, always near even if not always touching. It's enough to drive him mad.

The second full moon comes when they're in Cleveland. Luckily, it's a hotel night. Unluckily, it's Cleveland, and they have no way of either finding a secluded outdoor spot or snagging transportation to get to one. Patrick's got a lot of experience dog-proofing - that is, wolf-proofing - hotel rooms by now, but Mikey offers Pete something he and Gerard use - a pill made from wolfsbane that they take when they can't get out and run, which staves off the worst of the effects of the change. Patrick is vocally unhappy about Pete trying it - because Pete isn't a hereditary werewolf like Gerard and Mikey, and who knows what it will do to him - and insists on staying in the room with them both, over Mikey's protests.

He locks himself in the bathroom with his laptop, headphones dulling whatever stray noises might filter in. He only stays long enough to make sure the wolfsbane, which you have to take pre-change, isn't having any visible ill-effects on Pete.

Patrick falls asleep in the bathtub and wakes up cold, sore, and disoriented. The outer room is silent, so he thinks it's over. But when he opens the door to see two furry forms curled up in the middle of one of the beds, he realizes he's misjudged the time. Then one of the wolves uncurls itself and gets to its feet. It's a mottled brown, larger and lankier than Pete's small black form, and Patrick knows this is Mikey. He thinks vaguely that he should be scared. Mikey's watching him intently, eyes glinting faintly in the light spilling from the bathroom. Some devil prompts Patrick to step closer, hold out his hand.

Mikey sidles away at the last minute, but Patrick's fingers graze the brown ruff. It's ridiculously soft, and Patrick resists the urge to let his hands sink in, pictures himself with handfuls of human-Mikey's stupid hair instead. His stomach lurches crazily, and he makes a noise. The black wolf wakes up and, seeing Patrick, wiggles over on his stomach to bump his head against the center of Patrick's chest. Patrick stumbles back a step, sliding down the wall to land in a sitting position with a lapful of wolf - of Pete, who whines low in his throat till Patrick relents and strokes his hands along the furry black back. It's soothing, and Patrick's eyelids droop almost immediately. He hears the muted thumps of four more feet hitting the floor and feels a weight settle against his knee.

Patrick doesn't realize he's fallen asleep again until he wakes up to the irritating tinkle of his cell phone alarm; this time, he knows they're about to phase and he doesn't want to see it, doesn't know if he wants to be around for what might happen afterwards. No, that's a lie - he knows he wants to be, he's just pretty sure his presence won't be wanted. Shit, he mouths to himself, not daring to make a sound. He eases himself out from under Pete with the finesse of practice and grabs his phone and key, letting himself out the door with the minimum possible noise. There's a tiny sitting area by the elevators. Frank's slumped in one of the chairs, spinning an unlit cigarette in his fingers, and he looks up when Patrick approaches. He looks drawn and gray, and Patrick wonders if he spent the night watching over Gerard. Figures it's likely; Frank confirms it when he says, "It's easier to not worry, once they're used to the wolfsbane. Their body wants to fight it at first - it's a poison, you know."

"I know," Patrick blurts involuntarily. "I mean - they're fine. He's fine - but - " Frank's looking sympathetic, which is enough to make Patrick bite his tongue. He's not stupid enough to underestimate Frank Iero. Better to distract him. "How's Gerard?"

Frank tries to smile, but it looks more like a grimace to Patrick. Right now, Frank's not making it look easier. He must see Patrick's expression; he rolls up the sleeve of the hoodie he's wearing - which Patrick thought was odd to begin with, the A/C in the hotel isn't that cold - and holds up his forearm. It's wrapped haphazardly in gauze and white tape, and Patrick can see a spot of blood in the middle. "What the hell happened?"

Frank shrugs and rolls his sleeve back down. "Alphas are a little different from the emo twins in there." He gestures expressively towards the room Patrick just exited, which makes Patrick snort. Frank pauses for a long moment, but when he looks up at Patrick's face, he seems to decide something. "He's different now that he's sober," Frank admits. "He used to get stinking drunk right before the full moon. None of us realized how much it affected his wolf instincts until his bloodstream was free and clear. He doesn't ..." Frank trails off, then shrugs again. "He's usually looking for a fight. Someone has to give him one."

"That's dangerous, man."

"Yeah, well, who else is gonna do it?" Frank sticks the cigarette in his mouth and lights it, heedless of the no smoking sign next to the elevator. "Mikey's got other things on his mind."

Patrick flushes. He has no reason to feel guilty - Mikey and Pete are their own business - but still. "Sorry. I'm used to taking care of Pete, you should have just taken him with you."

Frank laughs. "No way. If we'd separated Mikey from Pete, he would have been almost as irritable as Gee, and that might have destroyed a perfectly good hotel room."

"You make it sound like ..." Patrick frowns. "Aside from the first couple of times, Pete hasn't really been that violent. Is that strange?"

"I have no fucking idea." Frank blows a cloud of smoke straight up into the air. "The Ways are my only experience with the whole thing, and I will never call them 'normal.'"

"Point."

"But, if I had to guess ..." Frank gestures with his cigarette, creating white swirling patterns in the air around him. "Pete's probably not alpha. Which is weird, since he's the center of the fucking universe out here, but he hasn't shown any signs of it. Mikey isn't nearly as prone to chaos and destruction as Gerard most of the time. Usually, if Mikey's wound up, it's because Gee's wound up or did something to piss him off. If Pete's not alpha, and he doesn't have packmates to wind him up, then he probably won't get too violent on you. But I'm just pulling stuff out of my ass here, I really have no idea."

"So, what will Gerard do without a ... beta?" Patrick isn't sure that's the right word, but Frank makes a face that seems to mean "sure", so he continues. "Without a beta? I mean, next time. If there is a - " Patrick bites his tongue. Warped is over soon, and Patrick knows MCR is headed to Europe right after; talking to Pete about Mikey is so far at the bottom of his to-do list it's practically not there.

Frank holds up his arm again. "This, probably."

Patrick winces. "Not good for you."

"I'll survive. Even in wolf form, Gee knows me well enough to stop before he does any real damage."

"Are you sure?"

"As sure as I'll ever be." Frank stubs his cigarette out on the metal strip on the arm of the chair and stands up abruptly. "I need some fucking coffee. I'll see you around."

He disappears into the stairwell next to the elevators, leaving Patrick standing alone in the hallway.

*

Mikey's drunk. Not that he hasn't been drunk for a good portion of the tour, but this is a particularly bad day. They played early in the afternoon, and someone handed him a water bottle spiked with Everclear before he went on stage. That was nearly twelve hours ago. Mikey's memory of what he's had to drink ends somewhere around sunset. But, he had nothing better to do. He hasn't seen his band since they got off stage, and Fall Out Boy was on media duty all day, so Pete's been MIA. Mikey stopped by the main stage to see their set this evening; he stayed long enough to see Pete drape himself over Patrick's shoulder, eyes closed, mouthing the lyrics for most of a song. Mikey's heart had felt like it was beating right out of his chest, so he'd opted to go find another beer.

He really wants to see Pete, though. Pete's the only damned thing on this tour that makes sense, Mikey thinks. Which is funny, since Pete's not supposed to be a wolf in the first place, but maybe that's the point. Pete's an outsider, just like him. He's unanchored.

He wanders around the buses until he comes to FOB's bus. He knocks loudly. When Patrick answers, Mikey thinks, oh, right, Pete does have an anchor. And there's that pounding in his chest again – he recognizes it as jealousy somewhere underneath the alcoholic haze.

"Is Pete here?" he asks.

Patrick raises an eyebrow. "I thought he was with you, actually."

"Oh." Mikey pauses, confused. "So he's not here?"

"No." When Mikey sways on his feet, Patrick reaches out and grabs his arm. "Are you okay?"

"Fine. Drunk." Patrick's hand is hot on his skin. Mikey can't decide if he wants to pull away or lean in to sniff at the curve of Patrick's pale neck. Patrick's standing on the bottom step of the bus, so he's at just about the right height for Mikey to press his face into Patrick's skin. You know, if he wanted to. And he kind of really wants to right now.

Patrick is looking at him with an unreadable expression. Finally, he releases Mikey's arm; Mikey isn't ready for it, and his ass hits the concrete below him before he registers what's going on. He blinks, and Patrick is suddenly crouching beside him. "For god's sake, get in here," Patrick mutters. "Otherwise you might kill yourself."

"I'm fine."

"Right." Patrick is surprisingly strong for such a little guy, or maybe it's that Mikey's not that heavy to begin with. Whatever the case, Mikey finds himself on his feet after a not-so-gentle tug on his arms. Patrick pushes him towards the open bus door, and he only stumbles once on the way up the stairs.

The bus is quiet – obviously, everyone else is out at one of the parties Mikey had blown through before stumbling over here. He wonders which one he missed Pete at. There aren't many lights on; the front of the bus is illuminated only by one bulb over the sink and the glow of Patrick's MacBook, open on the table. Mikey feels his head begin to swim, and decides to sit down on the bench before he embarrasses himself again. Patrick stands in front of him, looking concerned. Both his feet and his head are bare, and his green eyes seem magnified behind his glasses. "You don't have a hat," Mikey says slowly.

Patrick's mouth twists – it's almost a smile, but not quite. "No, I don't."

"I like it. Your hair looks … soft."

"Wow, you really are drunk." Patrick closes his eyes for a moment, then turns toward the refrigerator. When he turns around again, he hands Mikey a glass of water. Mikey enjoys the cool condensation on his hands for a moment before drinking the whole glass in one swallow. It tastes like the best water Mikey's ever had … perhaps, he thinks, alcohol and summer sunlight aren't the best combination, because he suddenly feels like he has an entire desert inside his throat. He tips his head back to get the last drops out of the water and groans. When he looks back down, Patrick's staring at him, his cheeks red. "Jesus Christ," Patrick swears under his breath. He grabs the glass out of Mikey's hand and goes to refill it.

Mikey drinks the next glass more slowly. Patrick sits down on the bench next to him. "Where's everybody else?" Patrick asks.

Mikey shrugs. "Dunno. Bob's probably hanging with the tech guys. Ray's probably asleep by now, and Gee and Frank disappeared after our set. Haven't seen them. Where are-" Mikey gestures around the bus.

"Out somewhere. I didn't feel like hanging tonight."

"Sorry."

"It's okay." Suddenly, Patrick reaches up and ruffles Mikey's hair. Mikey closes his eyes and, without thinking, leans into the touch.

This is what he's missing. His family was all about touch - young wolves tussled, piled on top of each other in either physical form. Even as adults, when all he and Gerard had were each other, there used to always be touch. Gerard would fling an arm around Mikey's shoulders, Mikey would manhandle Gerard into bed after a bender, they'd shove at each other when they argued. But, since Gerard got sober ... he's felt too breakable. Too different. Mikey doesn't feel right initiating that kind of contact with his brother any more. On his better days, Mikey figures that's a natural part of growing up. But, he hasn't had many good days recently.

It's one of the reasons he's drawn to Pete - Pete's a tactile being, human or wolf, he constantly touches and hugs and pokes and prods. One of the few things that can quiet the voices in Mikey's head these days is having Pete wrapped around him. "My voices are louder than your voices," Pete joked once, when Mikey tried to explain this to him. "They drown yours out." Pete understands, in a way no one else does, that sometimes your own brain is your worst enemy.

Patrick's touch, however, feels different. If Pete's touch soothes the voices, Patrick's somehow scares them into silence. Or, Mikey thinks, maybe that's just the alcohol numbing him to the point of exhaustion. Whatever it is, he wants nothing more at this moment then to lean over and lay his head in Patrick's lap. So he does.

He feels Patrick start. For a moment, he braces himself to be pushed to the floor. But then, Patrick's hand lands in his hair again, and Mikey nearly groans with relief. "Thanks," he mutters, too tired to even be embarrassed.

Mikey doesn't know how long they sit like that. Patrick's hand continues to push through his hair, and he closes his eyes and lets the gentle motion lull him into a kind of peace. After a while, he hears movement at the door. "Whoa," he hears Pete say. "Hi, guys."

"He followed me home," he hears Patrick say, a surprisingly warm note in his voice. Drowsily, Mikey thinks that he'd like to hear that tone more often.

"Oh, good, can we keep him?" Pete asks. Mikey feels hands around his legs, and then Pete is lifting them up and sliding underneath them.

"Sure, we need a bassist who can actually keep the beat."

"Fuck off, everyone makes mistakes." Pete still sounds amused.

"Think my band still needs me," Mikey mumbles.

"Probably," Patrick says. "And while I think I could take your brother in human form, if he goes wolf, I'm toast."

"I'd help," Pete offers.

"We'd still be toast."

"Oh, come on, you don't think I could fight Gerard?" Pete sounds offended.

The image is too much for Mikey, and he starts to laugh uncontrollably. He has to hold on to Patrick's legs in order to stay on the bench. "That'd be a no," Patrick says, grabbing Mikey's arm to keep him from falling.

When he's steady again, Mikey somewhat reluctantly pushes himself up and off Patrick's lap. The movement brings him face-to-face with Patrick. Patrick is smiling, his face much more relaxed than it was when Mikey first came in. His scent fills Mikey's nose, and it takes what little bit of sobriety he's managed to recover to not bury his face in Patrick's neck and taste his skin. The impulse is overwhelming. Patrick catches his eye, and whatever he sees there causes his face to go serious again. Patrick's eyes darken; it makes Mikey want to bare his neck in submission. Only the weight of Pete's hands on his legs gives Mikey the motivation to sit up the rest of the way and look away.

When Mikey turns to Pete, he's met with a sympathetic gaze. Of course Pete understands. This is Pete's entire life.

Mikey swings his legs down off the bench. By the time he's reoriented, Patrick is gone, escaped to the back of the bus. Pete puts a hand on Mikey's back. "Come on," Pete says, "let's go to sleep."

He spends the night in Pete's bunk, curled around him, Pete's nose pressed into Mikey's chest. When Patrick eventually climbs into the bunk above theirs, Mikey feels something settle in his chest, and only then does he drift off to sleep.

Mikey is glad he can take refuge in his gang of two, because as much as Pete is distracted by shiny things, or attached at the hip to Patrick, he is several large steps away from the Gerard and Frank show. They're constantly finding new ways to invade each other's personal space, while denying - not just to themselves, as far as Mikey knows, but to everyone who's given them shit about it - that they're together. Mikey hasn't asked, before now.

"What are you doing with Frank, Gerard?"

Gerard is doing his makeup, and his hand is rock steady as he finishes the thick black line he's drawing, then sets the liner down with a soft click. Mikey meets his eyes in the mirror. Gerard just looks for a minute. "Nothing, Mikey," he starts, "you know why I can't - "

"It doesn't look like nothing, Gee. And I have no idea why you can't," Mikey interrupts. "Is it because of me? Because I honestly don't care if you're.... Shit, don't make me say it. I just don't want details, okay?"

Gerard smiles a tiny little smile. They don't really have any secrets; they grew up too close for that. It doesn't mean he doesn't like to torment Mikey with too much information. "It's not because of you, Mikes."

"Is it because of you?" Mikey presses. He's not an alpha, he won't pretend to understand how these things work. "Because, Gee, I don't - why can't Frank be part of the pack too?"

"I'm not changing him," Gerard answers, horrified. Mikey's eyes go wide. That wasn't at all what he'd meant.

"Gee, what - No, of course you wouldn't, I know that!" They both go quiet. Gerard's eyes, freshly lined, look particularly luminous.

"...He might not want to take on a recovering alcoholic with a lycanthropy problem," he says finally.

If the wall was closer, Mikey would be banging his head on it. "I think that's exactly what he's dying to do, Gerard," he points out. Gerard looks like he doesn't quite believe it, but then, Gerard tends to overthink things. It would be easier, if Frank was a werewolf - instinct takes care of a lot. But then, that's sort of the entire problem.

"What about you?" Gerard asks. "You found yourself another packmate." Mikey's been looking in the mirror, fiddling with bits of his hair, but he looks up at Gerard at that. This is the first time Gerard's actually brought it up. He looks regretful; Mikey should have known Gerard wasn't unaware of the way things have been changing.

He wants to say yes. There are maybe dozens of ways Mikey could try to explain what he feels for Pete, what they give each other, what's still missing. Finally, he just gives up on embellishment. "Pete needs an alpha," he admits.

Gerard nods in acknowledgment. "Tour's almost over," he comments.

"I know. I'm going to have to - " Mikey doesn't finish the sentence. You'd think by now he'd be used to things that hurt.

After My Chem's run on Warped, they have to fly to the UK for a mini tour and the summer festival circuit, and then fly back immediately for the MTV awards. Mikey knows Fall Out Boy will be there that night. There's a full moon in between, and they won't be together; it feels strangely like a sign, a tangible marker of the end of their summer together. The end of - Mikey knows he should probably bring it up with Pete, but he's tempted to just let things lie, see what happens when he sees Pete again. But he knows that's just dragging it out.

He and Ray have agreed to play with Fall Out Boy one night. Patrick and Joe had played with My Chem a few weeks before, and it had been - strange, knowing that it wasn't Bob at the drum set, that Patrick was the other half of the rhythm section for that one song. Mikey wonders what it will be like to hear Patrick's voice in his in-ears instead of Gerard's. A shudder crawls its way down his spine. It's clear, really, what he has to do. He has to go talk to Patrick.

They're at the Merriweather Post; he finds Patrick perched on a grassy hill to the side of the pavilion, watching The Starting Line. Patrick looks over when Mikey folds himself onto the grass, but he doesn't say anything. For a moment, Mikey doesn't either. "Tour's almost over," he says finally. He doesn't know how to say what he has to say. Patrick nods.

"You're off to Europe, right?"

"Among other places. Hey - I'm going to make sure Pete has plenty of the wolfsbane, okay? I don't want - I mean, I know what it's like to be forever stuck in hotel rooms, and it seemed to help him in Cleveland, and - I'm not gonna be able to be with him anymore."

Patrick's eyebrows disappear up under the brim of his hat. "At all?" he asks, strangely toneless.

Mikey pulls his glasses off, buffs them on his shirt. He leaves them folded in his hand for a moment. Everything is comfortably fuzzy. He should have started drinking earlier today. "I'll see him," he replies lamely. "Just not - "

"What the fuck - are you breaking up with him?" Patrick huffs. "By proxy, Mikey?"

"Fuck you," Mikey responds. "I'm going to talk to - We knew this wouldn't last forever, okay? I need to talk to you, though, Patrick, you're the - you're the one who takes care of him."

"Goddamn right I am." Patrick's practically vibrating with aggression next to him, his voice progressively rising. Soon the people around them are going to hear him. "I'm the one who always picks up the fucking pieces, and I - " he stops, suddenly, eyes locked with Mikey's. Mikey's frozen, a sick feeling rising in his stomach. He wants to lean in, bow his neck to Patrick. He wants to run away. A part of him wants to punch him, and the rest is staring into Patrick's face and wondering why he thought this was a good idea.

"I can't keep this up," he says hesitantly. "I can't, Patrick, and I can't explain how much I want to, and I - "

"I can't explain how much this is none of my business," Patrick snaps. Mikey freezes, and he's not sure what expression he has on his face, but Patrick's eyes go wide and he covers his face with his hand. "I'm sorry," he says. "I - Mikey. This year, it's been a nightmare, and it finally started to get better, and this is going to - " He stops talking, looks back up at Mikey. His eyes have gone dark with emotion, and Mikey wants, he wants just once to have that directed at him. He looks away.

"I wish things were different," Mikey says quietly. Patrick doesn't respond, and the band starts up again. Mikey wraps his arms around his shins and rests his chin on his bent knees, and he thinks he feels warmth along the length of his upper arm as Patrick leans into him, but Patrick's just standing and brushing off his pants.

"I gotta go," he mutters. He hurries away. Mikey pretends he's not watching him go.

He and Ray play with Fall Out Boy a couple days later. Mikey was right; Patrick's voice in his in-ears makes goosebumps race across his skin, and the grin Pete gives him as he hands his bass off to one of the techs is blinding. "Stay?" Pete mouths at him. He finds an amp case sidestage and sits. Pete onstage is a wild thing, practically radiating joy. Mikey's been waiting for Pete to say something to him, sure as he is that Patrick will have told him about their conversation. But Pete hasn't said a word. Mikey watches him play, and wants. It hurts - Pete makes him feel everything at times when he really wants to feel nothing - but he couldn't look away if he tried. When the set is over, Pete's on him in an instant, climbing into his lap and wrapping his arms around Mikey's shoulders. "Hey, Mikeyway," he shouts into Mikey's ear.

Mikey wraps his arm around Pete's waist to keep him from sliding off. "That was great," he shouts back. "I - can't we go somewhere quieter?" Pete pulls back and wiggles his eyebrows at Mikey, but slides obediently off his lap and tugs him down the maze of backstage corridors till they reach a quiet stairwell. He presses Mikey up against the cinderblocks, nipping playfully at the side of his neck until Mikey cups his jaw and kisses him properly.

God, it's good. Pete's learned how to take him from zero to sixty in no time. He's got clever, calloused fingers curling around Mikey's waist, slipping under the hem of Mikey's t-shirt and just tracing up and down the same few inches of spine, and it would be impossible for Mikey to even consider doing what he's about to do if he didn't know, somewhere under the gloss of sensation, that it wasn't enough. Maybe for the human, but not for the wolf waiting inside. "Pete," he says, miserably, muffled against Pete's lips, and Pete pulls back far enough to look him in the eye.

He's not smiling anymore. He knows. "Don't say it, Mikey," he warns. "Please, please don't." He's running his free hand down the front of Mikey's jeans now, following the line of Mikey's cock, which is decidedly not on board with the plan to stop. He groans, and Pete reaches for his zipper.

"Pete, no. Come on, don't you think we'll be better off as - "

"Friends? No. Sort of the other way around, really." Pete drops his hands, wraps his arms around himself. "What is it, Mikeyway? What'd I do?"

"Nothing," Mikey stammers. "I...Pete. I love you," he whispers. Pete's eyes go big. "But...you won't be happy with me, you'd see sooner or later. I can't - I can't wait around for that."

"You love me," Pete says flatly. "You tell me you love me, and that's how you break up with me? Do I get a say in this?"

Mikey can't breathe. A chill races across his skin, thousands of tiny hairs standing up on end. He turns away, panting, and presses his forehead against the cool cinder block wall. He cannot, just cannot change now. He hasn't felt this out of control in days; why did he do this now, in the venue, without a drink or two in him? Why did he think he could do this at all? He feels hands on his shoulders, the warm press of Pete's body along his back. "Mikey, Mikey, don't, it's okay," he croons softly, turning Mikey around and pulling his head down onto his shoulder. "Stay with me." Mikey's shuddering now, but the arms around him, the sweet, repeated press of lips to his temple keeps him in check. "I love you," Pete whispers, when all the tension finally leaves him. "Maybe you don't believe me, but - "

"I know you do," Mikey whispers back, breathing in the scent of sweat and aftershave clinging to his skin, the scent of Pete underneath it all. That's one thing he's sure of without a doubt.

"Love isn't enough, is it?" It's not really a question. That's another thing he knows - Pete has always understood what he's not saying. He lets Pete cup his cheek, kiss him till neither of them can breathe. "I'll see you around, Mikeyway," he says when they break apart. His smile isn't much to look at, but Mikey appreciates the effort. He can't quite muster one of his own. Pete leaves his hand on Mikey's face a moment longer, just looking, then he turns and walks away.

*

Fall Out Boy wins the MTV2 award at the VMAs, and My Chemical Romance is there in the crowd to congratulate them. Patrick's too high on the shock and the exhilaration of winning for anything other than enjoyment of the brief reunion. But after the show, Pete disappears, and Patrick wonders if he's gone to find Mikey and ... well, do whatever it is that he and Mikey do. Patrick tries not to think about it too much. He usually doesn't succeed, and tonight's no different. So, after a brief appearance at an afterparty, Patrick decides to retire to his hotel room and order room service. He's just gotten himself undressed and settled in with a hamburger and a late-night showing of Scream on some cable station or another when there's a knock on his door.

He doesn't expect to find Mikey standing outside. "Can I come in?" Mikey asks.

"Um, sure?" Patrick feels a little underdressed now – Mikey's still in his rock star duds from the show, while Patrick's in his boxers and a faded David Bowie t-shirt. "Where's Pete?"

Mikey shrugs. "Haven't seen him since the show."

Patrick wonders where Pete has disappeared to. He feels a flutter of concern in his chest, and then Mikey sits on the side of his bed and Patrick's pretty sure *that* flutter has nothing to do with Pete. Patrick covers up the feeling with a scowl, trying to force himself to relax. He looks at Mikey. "What do you want?"

Mikey fidgets, drawing loops on the bedspread with his finger. When he looks back up at Patrick, his expression is ... vulnerable? Okay, maybe Patrick wasn't the nicest to him just now - it's hard, Mikey seems to bring out the worst in him - but that's another thing Patrick wasn't expecting. "I'm not trying to ..." Mikey trails off.

"Not trying to what?"

"I'm not ..." Mikey trails off again, running a hand through his hair and looking up at the ceiling. "I envy the fuck out of Pete," he says abruptly.

Now Patrick's totally confused. "Why?"

"Because he has ..." Mikey looks at Patrick, then looks away again. "Fuck. I don't know why I came up here."

There's a long silence. Finally, some knot in Patrick's chest loosens, just a little. He walks over to the other side of the bed, where his abandoned dinner sits. "You want something to eat? This burger is big enough for a family of five, and they gave me enough fries to fill the bathtub."

When Mikey turns around to look at him, Patrick sees a tiny smile. "Nah, I'm good, thanks. What are you watching?"

Drew Barrymore's already bitten it onscreen and Patrick starts working his way through his food. They're both quiet for a while, but eventually Patrick can't resist bringing up the elephant - or wolf, to be more specific - in the room. "Pete's been doing better with the changes, since you gave him those pills."

"Has he?" Mikey sounds a little distracted. Patrick can't imagine it's the movie - it seems like the kind of thing they Way brothers, or at least Frank, would own - so he presses the subject.

"He hasn't been good," Patrick stresses carefully. "Not since Warped. But he's better than he was before."

It hurts a little to admit it, but Patrick figures Mikey knows what he's trying to say, by the way his eyes have gone a little soft; the burger is suddenly leaden in Patrick's stomach. "I'm glad," he says quietly. "That I could help. He didn't - I'd never actually met a werewolf who wasn't coached by his sire."

"Pete's always got to do things the hard way," Patrick replies acidly. "And he didn't exactly have a choice."

Mikey straightens, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. "I was born this way - is that a choice?" His eyes flash briefly. Patrick bites the inside of his lip.

"Pete says you can transform between moons."

"Since when does can mean want to? Since when does it mean it's easy, or fun?" Mikey's on his feet now, and Patrick's face is flaming.

"Just...I..." Patrick's suddenly a little nervous about the agitated gleam in Mikey's eye.

"There's only one reason to want to transform between moons, and - " Mikey cuts himself off. Patrick finds himself reaching out and jerks his hand back - square into a pile of ketchup.

"Shit," he says, feeling himself blush. "I have to - Shit," he repeats, jumping to his feet and hurrying into the en suite bathroom, where he washes his hands, splashes his face, and takes a couple of deep breaths for good measure.

When he comes back out, there's a wolf lying on his bed, chin on his paws. Mikey's clothes are piled in a heap on the pillow. Patrick is confused, and kind of pissed. "Yes, yes, I get it, you can do neat parlor tricks." The wolf – Mikey, Patrick corrects himself, if he can think of Pete as Pete no matter what form he's in, he can do the same for Mikey – whines. Patrick sits down on the bed next to Mikey and, without thinking, grabs the scruff of his neck. It works to make Pete-the-wolf stop doing stupid things, and Patrick's just not in the mood for translating wolf-to-English tonight. Immediately, he feels Mikey go limp underneath his hand. "Change back. You haven't explained why you're here."

He lets go, and Mikey stands up on the bed. The changing process still looks – and sounds – brutally painful, but Patrick's seen it enough times to see a certain kind of raw beauty in the way fur slides into human skin. By the time he's done, Mikey's slick with sweat, which gives Patrick a small, petty feeling of triumph. Mikey might be able to change at will, but that doesn't mean it's any easier on him physically.

Mikey sits on his knees and wipes a lock of sweaty hair off of his temple. "I just thought ..." He runs out of breath, and pauses until his breathing is regular again. "I thought I'd be able to show you some things, you know, as a wolf. They're hard to explain, I just do things, it's an instinct."

"You could have asked me first."

Patrick means to say more, but he suddenly realizes something. Mikey's naked – naked and sweaty, sitting inches from Patrick with a look in his eyes that still isn't quite human. He's used to this with Pete; used to the time it takes for his human brain to catch up with his body, and used to suppressing any physical reactions he has to Pete's nearly feral presence after he's changed. But Mikey's different – his way of moving is totally different from Pete, in the way he stretches his neck from one side to the other, swaying closer to Patrick unconsciously as he closes his eyes, as if he's finding his balance again. Patrick looks away and concentrates on slowing his breath. He should get up, tell Mikey to get dressed and get out ... but he kind of doesn't want to. That's more than a little frightening.

Behind him, he hears the quiet sounds of Mikey dressing. He sucks in a breath, turns around. Mikey's back in his skinny black pants, black shirt hanging unbuttoned from his thin shoulders. "What was it?" he asks, letting his eyes trace the strip of pale, bare skin between the plackets.

"What was...what?" It comes out rougher than Mikey's normal tone.

"What was it that you wanted to show me? That you needed to...do that?" He knows he sounds impatient. He's curious, though; Mikey's watching him like he's the dangerous one.

"You really don't get it, do you?" Mikey's voice is soft, now, expressionless as usual. "God, Patrick, don't you pay attention to anything?"

"...No?" Patrick's found that this is usually the wisest course of action, especially when Pete Wentz is involved.

"Figures. If you could see yourself, Patrick..." Patrick's usually glad he can't. He's sure it's not a pretty picture. But Mikey's leaning in. Patrick squeezes his eyes shut, so he only feels rather than sees Mikey nose along the curve of his jaw. "Everything looks different when I change," he whispers into Patrick's ear. Patrick pulls away, and his restraining hand lands on Mikey's chest, on the plane of exposed skin. Mikey makes a noise deep in his throat, turning his head, and their mouths slide together. It's almost an accident, except neither of them move. Mikey's mouth tastes sharp like alcohol, and his skin is soft under Patrick's fingers, his bass callouses rough against Patrick's neck. One of them groans; Mikey's fingers tighten on his skin, and Patrick jerks away. Far away - right off the bed, stumbling backwards till he fetches up against the bathroom door.

"Get out," he snaps. Get out now, before I do something stupid, is what he means, but he's too panicked to say it. Mikey's face is unreadable, but his fingers are clamped tight around his discarded jacket.

"Well, that's clear enough," he says quietly.

"Mikey - " Patrick can't even finish the sentence. Words are Pete's department, and he's fairly sure he wouldn't want to hear Pete's words for this.

"Take care of him, Patrick," Mikey says. And walks out.

*

Wolf things are better on the next tour; Pete's picked up enough tips from the Way brothers - who Patrick is trying very hard not to think about these days - that he no longer has to destroy anything in hotel rooms. Their tour manager is very grateful. (He has no idea about Pete's problem, but he's given Pete more than one lecture about not pissing on hotel beds.) Between the two of them, Patrick and Pete have managed to convince the powers that be to schedule off days on full moons. Pete spends this one running around a sad little park next to a suburban hotel. Patrick spends the night sitting on a park bench looking furtively around for any watchers. When sunrise hits, he hands Pete his clothing and they head back to the hotel. Patrick is surprised at how routine this sort of thing has become.

Every month, though, Pete is more ... well, more acutely Pete in the days after the full moon. On Warped, there had been a million different distractions, but when it's just three bands traveling from town to town, Pete has fewer people to vent his energy to. Thus, Patrick bears the brunt of it. On stage, Pete writhes and jumps and pushes himself so far into Patrick's personal space that Patrick can't quite tell where he ends and Pete begins. Off stage, Pete never seems to be more than five steps away from Patrick, always laughing too loud and talking too fast. His body continues to move like a wolf for at least three days; Patrick doesn't know how everyone else doesn't see the feral glow on his skin.

Patrick feels like he's going to explode, honestly.

It's two days after the full moon. Thankfully, it's a hotel night, because Pete hasn't yet come down from his change, and being cooped up on a bus with him in this state is close to Patrick's idea of hell. The bad news is that he's drawn the figurative short straw and has to share a hotel room with Pete. Patrick goes to dinner by himself and lingers as long as he possibly can. The room is blissfully quiet when he returns, and he settles down at the desk to work on some music.

He has his headphones on, so he doesn't hear Pete return until a pair of hands grab his shoulders. "Patrick!" Pete shouts, his mouth right next to the right ear of the headphones. "Whatcha doing?"

Patrick pulls the headphones off reluctantly. "Working." He pushes back from the desk, hard, and the rolling chair pushes Pete into the wall behind him.

Pete bounces back rapidly. "Boring!" he announces. Before Patrick can stop him, he reaches over and clicks the computer shut.

Suddenly, Patrick has had enough. Enough of Pete's deliberate provocation, enough of Pete in his personal space, enough of holding himself back from all the thing he instinctively wants to do when Pete is this near. So, he snaps.

He stands up and grabs Pete by the collar of his t-shirt. A moment later, Pete crashes into the wall again, his head bouncing off with a loud thud. Patrick ignores his wince and pins him to the wall, reaching up with one hand to grab Pete's chin. His thumb digs into the soft flesh beneath Pete's jaw, and he can feel Pete swallowing rapidly. "Fucking stop," Patrick hisses. "Or are you looking for me to punch you in the face?"

Pete doesn't answer. His hands fist in Patrick's shirt, and his breathing is shallow. He just stares at Patrick with wide, dark eyes. Patrick is still frustrated enough that he considers shaking Pete - maybe another blow to his head will knock some sense into him. Patrick hears a low, animalistic growl ... it takes a long second before he realizes it's coming from him, not Pete. He feels Pete squirm against his body. When their hips line up again, Patrick feels Pete's cock straining hard against him. He's shocked enough that he lets go of Pete's face and grabs him by the arm. "Pete?" He doesn't recognize his own voice, barely more than a croak.

Pete pulls on Patrick's shirt. "Fuck, Patrick." He leans over just enough that Patrick can feel his quick, panting breath blowing across his face. "Please. Please."

"What?"

"Fuck you." It sounds less like a curse and more like a plea. "God, please - I need -"

Patrick doesn't know which one of them closes the already tiny gap, but suddenly their mouths are open and hot and pressing against each other in a brutal tangle. Patrick pulls Pete away from the wall and shoves him towards the bed. They break apart, and Pete stumbles backward until he's sitting on the edge of the bed. His mouth is open and slick with moisture. Patrick makes another noise he doesn't recognize as his own. Pete seems like he's lost all his words, because he can only mutter, "Patrick, please ... please," over and over. He stares up at Patrick with a look in his eyes that reminds Patrick more of the wolf than the man.

Patrick ... well, Patrick is hard-pressed remember that he, in fact, is fully human right now, because the logical, rational part of his brain is only a dim whisper at the back of his head. The rest of his awareness is flooded with years worth of need and want and more than a little bit of shame, all focused with laser accuracy on his best friend, who now sits on the bed in front of him, begging. "Pete," he says, his voice a broken croak.

"Please, fuck, please," Pete says again, and the last thread of Patrick's resolve breaks.

The next few minutes are a flurry of hands and mouths, of bunched-up clothing and skin, of pushing and pulling and tangled limbs. Patrick finally finds himself straddling Pete in the middle of the bed. They're both naked, and for a brief moment, Patrick's self-consciousness returns. Pete is ... well, Pete is beautiful, stretched out like this underneath him, all dark skin and taut muscles. He's everything Patrick has ever wanted - and he's looking up at Patrick like Patrick is the wonder. "Don't you fucking dare stop now," Pete says, meeting his gaze. His voice breaks, but he sounds more human than he has in this whole exchange.

Something settles in Patrick's chest. "What do you want?" he asks quietly.

"Everything."

"As usual." Patrick feels himself start to smile.

Pete's answering smile is radiant. "You know me. Never satisfied."

Patrick reaches down to wrap his hand around Pete's cock, and is rewarded by a low, fully human noise that originates deep in Pete's throat. That seems to be what Patrick's recalcitrant brain was waiting for, because now all he can think of is Pete, without any fears. He leans over and presses himself against Pete again, and spends the better part of the next hour doing his best to prove that Pete's 'never satisfied' descriptor is, in fact, a lie.

Later, Patrick lays on his back, staring at the ceiling and waiting for his breath to return to his body. Pete curls up against his side, one hand stroking Patrick's chest absently. Patrick brings a hand up to thread through Pete's hair. "Was waiting for you," Pete murmurs into Patrick's skin.

"Huh?"

Pete lifts his head a bit and grins. "You don't take hints very well."

"Hints?"

Pete laughs. "You're kind of a moron sometimes, you know that?"

Patrick tightens his hand in Pete's hair, tugging slightly; Pete drops his head back onto Patrick's chest in response and hums happily. Patrick snorts. "I should have known you like pain."

"Not pain so much," Pete says, snuggling closer. "You."

"That makes no sense."

"Sure it does." Pete's voice is getting sleepy. Patrick is glad to hear it. Pete doesn't sleep very much - well, at all, but especially when he's hyped up in the days post-shift. He's not sure Pete has slept more than two hours at a time in the last week.

Patrick lays awake for a long time, even after Pete has drifted off. Pete has managed to curl himself so tightly around Patrick's body that Patrick couldn't move to the other bed, even if he wanted to. He really doesn't want to - he wants to stay like this, with Pete murmuring contentedly against his skin, maybe forever. He can't remember the last time he felt this right. He can't remember the last time Pete looked this relaxed ... or, yes, he can. An image springs to mind, unbidden: Pete and Mikey, curled together in a tiny bus bunk, their faces more open in sleep than they ever were awake. Patrick feels something flip in his stomach at the memory. He doesn't want to think about Mikey right now. No, that's not true either, he admits - he can still feel Mikey's mouth sliding against his, the feel of Mikey's skin, warm under his hand. He wonders what would have happened if he hadn't stepped away that night. He wonders even more what would have happened the night Pete found them on the bus couch, if he hadn't run off. Pete shifts against him, and Patrick sighs.

He has Pete, Patrick thinks. This is what he's always wanted, curled right by his side. So, he wonders as he slips into sleep, why does it feel incomplete?

*

The sun is down, and the moon is a crescent in the sky. There's no reason for Mikey to be running around the Paramour grounds in wolf form.

A rabbit runs between the trees in front of him, and he pounces. The raw meat tastes good when he's a wolf, but it doesn't do anything to alleviate the gnawing hunger that constantly sits in his stomach now, no matter what form he's in. And he's been in wolf form more and more recently. He holds it together when they're in the studio - barely - but the minute he's no longer needed, he comes outside and lets the shift take him over. He almost doesn't mind the constant pain. In wolf form, it's easier not to think about anything at all.

He hears rustling behind the trees to his side; he bristles and sinks his front paws down, ready to pounce. It's not Gerard - the scent is human. Somewhat to Mikey's surprise, it's Ray, who tenses up when he sees Mikey's stance. "Stand down, dude," Ray says, standing still. "It's just me."

Mikey lets out a growl that's less warning and more a vocal acknowledgment. He lays down in the grass and lets Ray come up and sit next to him. Ray doesn't try to touch; he's been around the Ways long enough to know when it's time to keep his hands to himself. "You've been out here for two hours," Ray says. "Everyone's broken up for the night. There's ... nothing to worry about in there."

Nothing to worry about. If Mikey were in human form, he'd cover his face with his hands. He actually does a pretty good job of burying his face in his paws. Ray could be referring to any one of a number of things. A temperamental Gerard bitching about every note of music someone played ... Bob threatening to insert drumsticks into Gerard's body if he raised his voice one more time ... Frank making vaguely nasty comments under his breath every time someone else suggested something. Or, maybe he's talking about the uncanny sounds that keep making them jump at all hours of the day and night. Possibly, he could even be talking about Mikey's reactions to Gerard and Frank's relatively new-found physical relationship. Ray's a pretty perceptive guy; he just usually keeps out of things that don't concern him directly.

Mikey's surprised at his own reactions, quite frankly. He's been waiting for Gerard and Frank to stop dancing around each other for so long; he should be happy they're together now, right? And he is - he loves both of them, wants them to be happy, all those brotherly sorts of things. He really, honestly is happy, somewhere inside him. He's just having a hard time finding that place right now, because every time he looks at the two of them, he feels empty.

He sighs - it comes out of the wolf as a low moan on a huffed breath - and stands up. He feels Ray get up and follow him as he pads along the edge of the grounds until he finds the corner he stashed his clothing in. He shifts back to human, dresses, then grabs the bottle he'd also stashed and takes a long drink. Ray puts a hand on his shoulder. "Mikey ..."

"Shut up." He takes another drink, and slowly the wolf-fuzziness in his brain is replaced by the familiar haze of alcohol.

"Seriously." Ray's hand tightens on his shoulder. "If you want to talk ..."

"I don't."

He really, really doesn't. What could he say? He doesn't want to be around his brother right now, and he doesn't want to feel that way. He doesn't want to be jealous of Gerard and Frank. He doesn't want to feel so fucking alone, and there's really nothing Ray can do about that.

The last time he tried to talk about it, it went all wrong. Going to the Fall Out Boy secret show had felt painfully like coming home; Pete had tackled him the minute he walked in the door, muttering, "Mikey, Mikey, Mikey," into his hair as they hugged. Mikey hadn't wanted to let go, not ever. And when Patrick actually grinned and hugged him hello, he'd felt better than he had in months.

Backstage, he watched as Pete draped himself over Patrick. Then, surprisingly - Mikey doesn't know why he was surprised, really - Patrick turned around in Pete's grasp, grabbed his chin, and kissed him soundly before shoving him away like he always did. Something dropped out of Mikey's stomach at the sight; something still rolls around inside him when he thinks about it. Maybe it's jealousy. Maybe it's desire. Probably, it's a mix, combined with the ache of loneliness that seems to be his permanent resident.

Later that evening, he and Pete had gotten drunk at the afterparty before wandering out to the back parking lot of the bar. Mikey remembers how cold it was, how he had his hands jammed into his coat pockets while Pete ran around in his t-shirt. "So," Mikey blurted at one point, "Patrick."

Pete had turned to him with a blinding smile. A moment later, he dimmed it, looking guilty. "Yeah, Patrick. Long time coming, huh?"

"You could say that, yeah." Mikey made himself smile. "I'm happy. I know how you feel about him."

Pete sat down on a curb and picked up a dead leaf, twirling it between his fingers. "It's like the wolf thing made everything clearer," Pete said slowly, looking at the ground. "Like, instincts are much simpler. I know what I need, who I need. That's just it."

Mikey felt a little like he was going to puke. He turned away and kicked at a rock. "I'm happy for you," he repeated. "I hope it's always that simple."

"It's not for you?"

Mikey laughed. He was unable to keep the bitter note out of his voice. "Not hardly. Nothing is fucking simple right now."

Behind him, he heard Pete stand up; a moment later, Pete's arms were around his waist. Mikey couldn't keep from leaning back into the embrace. "The imaginary assholes in your head fucking you up again?"

"Sorta." Mikey sighed. "It's a lot of things."

"Come on, talk to your good old uncle Pete, he'll make things better."

This time, Mikey's laugh sounded more genuine to him. "That sounds really fucking creepy."

"I'm a big fucking creep, what do you expect?"

Mikey opened his mouth - to this day, he doesn't know what he would have said, only that it felt like he could tell Pete anything in that moment - but closed it again when he saw the bar's back door open. Out of the light and noise, Patrick emerged, wrapped in a jacket and looking around the parking lot. When he spotted Pete and Mikey, he froze. So did Mikey. Pete stepped backwards and let go; Mikey felt colder than ever when he was gone. "There you guys are," Patrick said, after staring at them for a long moment. "I wondered where you'd disappeared to."

"It was too loud in there," Pete said.

Mikey looked down at the concrete. When he looked back up again, Patrick was regarding him curiously. "Sorry," Mikey felt compelled to say.

"No, no, it's fine," Patrick said hastily. "I was just ... I don't know, worried, I guess."

"Because we can't take care of ourselves when we're drunk," Pete filled in, walking over to Patrick and shoving him. "We need a babysitter."

Patrick shoved back. "Well, you do, I know that after five fucking years. Mikey is usually a little less idiotic than you."

"Don't bet on it," Mikey muttered under his breath.

That got him another curious stare from Patrick. However, Patrick backed away, towards the door. "I don't want to interrupt, you know, whatever. Just wanted to make sure no one was bleeding or anything."

Mikey looked at the two of them, standing there in the shadows. The lights from the bar's service entrance made flickering yellow patterns dance across their skin. When Pete looked at Patrick, something shone in his eyes that made Mikey's heart clench. Patrick's gaze was unreadable, because it flitted from Pete to Mikey and back again too quickly for Mikey to catch. "Forget it," Mikey said suddenly. "I have to go, anyway. Fucking label meeting first thing in the morning," he lied.

"Mikey," Pete began.

"Are you sure?" Patrick said over him.

Mikey nodded at Patrick, backing away when Pete took a step forward. "Thanks. You know, for tonight. It was a lot of fun."

He'd run away. Now, Mikey can't figure out if he'd made the right call or fucked himself up even more. But he can't change it now. He's here, Pete and Patrick are off being together somewhere, they don't need him. Gerard and Frank don't need him. He's got a million human friends, but all the wolf-type people he knows are wrapped up in someone else. Someone who isn't him. Wolves aren't meant to be solitary animals, he nearly says aloud to Ray, who is still hovering at his elbow. But, he doesn't. He stalks away and walks up to the house without looking back.

He wonders, he thinks later as he lays in his bed, if mental illness goes hand-in-hand with being a wolf. He and Gerard both have their own problems. Pete does, too, but he had his problems before he was a wolf, so maybe that doesn't count. Mikey's brain is more than a little fuzzy at this point, so his train of thought is hard to hold on to. He wonders if he could ever ask his dad, or someone in his dad's family, about it. Probably not. He loves his family a lot, but other than Gerard, they're not really big on talking about feelings and things. Maybe he and Gerard are just freaks. It's always felt that way, anyway. But Gerard's getting better, and Mikey's not.

The next day, the mood in the studio is much better for everyone except Mikey. Bob and Ray try to talk to Mikey every once in a while, but he finds himself answering in monosyllables. He knows he should talk, interact, do something to shake himself out of this mood. He plays it over and over in his head, what he would do if he wanted to act like a normal human being. He'd let Bob talk to him about the crazy syncopated rhythm on the song Gerard just mapped out for them, or he'd ask Ray about the latest issue of Infinite Crisis. He'd tell some kind of stupid joke, just to hear everyone's laugh echo through the room. He'd get up and move, drink a bottle of water to combat the alcohol dehydration that plagued him constantly these days, stretch his arms and feel his muscles loosen up. It all sounds wonderful, in Mikey's head. It just feels like something a completely different person would do. Someone who doesn't have Mikey's heavy, leaden brain.

On the other side of the room, Gerard and Frank have their heads bent together. As Mikey watches, Gerard breaks into a smile, and Frank presses his nose into Gerard's neck for a brief moment. The gesture seems so wolf-like that Mikey wonders if Gerard turned Frank after all.

There's a piece of Mikey's brain that knows the thought is absolutely crazy - even if Gerard was that kind of person, Mikey would have noticed, would have heard or seen the commotion, would at the very least smell the presence of another wolf in the room - but suddenly Mikey is angry. Utterly, irrationally angry. "Are we going to work again this afternoon?" he asks loudly. His own voice sounds foreign. "Or are we just going to fuck around all day?"

The rest of the room stops. Everyone stares at Mikey. After a long pause, Ray clears his throat. "You have something you want to work on, Mikes?"

"I don't know, everything?" Mikey's lip curls up in a sneer. "Everything we've done so far is complete shit."

"Define 'everything'," Gerard said slowly. "Or maybe 'shit'."

"It's not that hard," Mikey mutters, but he can't look Gerard in the eye.

Frank scowls. "Then tell us, oh master musician, what the hell should we be doing?"

Mikey doesn't have an answer. He doesn't even know what he's saying. He wants a drink. He wants a nap. He wants to call Pete, but he'd forced himself to delete Pete's number from his phone in a fit of anger several weeks ago. Inexplicably, he still has Patrick's number - he doesn't even remember how he got Patrick's number in the first place, probably through Pete - but he knows he'll never use it, not in a million years.

When he finally meets Gerard's eyes, he sees the warning signs of an alpha fit brewing. Once upon a time, that hazy anger would have had Mikey bowing his head and apologizing. Or, in a particularly defiant mood, it would have had him launching himself at Gerard for a physical fight, one that would wear both of them out and defuse whatever feelings had blown up in their faces. Now, it just makes Mikey feel tired. It makes him want to cede the space and leave the room.

So, he does. He doesn't return to the studio for the rest of the day. No one comes after him. He wishes that surprised him.

Mikey drinks. He drinks enough that the itching underneath his skin - the stress-related instinct that usually has him shedding his clothing and shifting to wolf form - is dulled to practically nothing. He drinks until he can't feel anything at all.

Eventually, he passes out - thankfully, in his own bed. He wakes up sometime in the middle of the night with a headache the size of California and a bladder that feels like it's about to burst open and flood the whole house. Standing upright is a problem, but there are enough things to hang onto between the bed and the bathroom that he manages to make it to the toilet and back without toppling over. When he collapses back on the bed, he lays on his back and stares at the ceiling - at the blue light bulb that hovers over him. He never turns the bulb on himself, because the glow freaks him the fuck out. But, somehow, no matter how many times he flips the switch off, it's always on again when he comes back into the room. He usually manages to ignore it, but as he watches, the bulb starts to sway as if blown by some invisible wind. Mikey screws his eyes shut, counts to five, and opens them again. The bulb is still swaying.

He closes his eyes. The room feels like it's spinning around him; he's still drunk, he thinks. The usual strange night sounds of the mansion surround him - he hears scratches behind the walls, irregular, soft thuds in the distance, whooshing sounds that occasionally seem to resolve into whispers. Tonight, though, the whispers seem louder. Clearer. Alone, Mikey thinks he hears, from somewhere above him. Alone, alone, alone. It sounds like a chant. He puts his hands over his ears, but the sounds aren't muffled. If anything, he hears the scratchy voice even louder. Nothing, it changes to, nothing, no one, nothing, nothing, nobody.

The whisper gets louder and louder. Slowly, it's joined by a low moan. Mikey doesn't realize the new sound is coming from his own throat until he starts coughing hard enough that he has to turn onto his side and curl up into a fetal position. "Go away," he chokes out. "Whoever's there, go the fuck away." His voice sounds loud and harsh against the unearthly silence that now envelops the room.

Suddenly, Mikey feels eyes watching him. He knows someone is there. More, he knows a wolf is watching him. "Gerard?" he says, sitting up in the bed. No, not Gerard. He's being watched by a stranger. He knows it, down in his bones. He's being watched. Stalked. He feels phantom fur on the back of his neck rise. There's a strange wolf in the house, waiting to attack. He can't see it, can't smell it, but he knows it's there. Without thinking, he starts to shift, shredding his clothing and jumping down off the bed. He circles the room, nosing at every piece of furniture, under the bed, in the closet. He finds nothing, but that doesn't mean the danger isn't there. He lets out a howl. Wherever he is, he thinks wildly, the intruder needs to know he's being hunted.

He'd left the bedroom door open, thank god, so he noses the door open and tears down the hall, towards the common areas of the house. Somewhere on the edge of his awareness, he hears crashes and shouts, but he ignores them. He searches every corner he finds, looking wildly for something. He seems to have forgotten what he's looking for, but he knows it's important. Knows he's in trouble. The skin underneath his fur prickles with warnings every time he turns and looks into a shadow.

He's in the corner of the studio, behind the drum kit, when he hears a growl behind him. He turns to find a black wolf standing on the other side of the drums. Mikey doesn't think - can't think, can't hear anything in his head over the danger signals pulsing like a bass line behind his eyes. With a howl, he launches himself over the drums and onto the back of the other wolf. He gets shaken off and goes tumbling across the floor, knocking over a guitar stand and sliding headfirst into an amp. He barely feels it, though; he pops back up and attacks again, sinking his teeth into the other wolf's back before it can react. Mikey tastes blood and fur; he scored first, his wolf-brain thinks in triumph.

With a roaring howl, the black wolf pulls away. When it lunges for him, Mikey meets the attack with a sort of breathless glee. They tumble over the floor, objects falling and clattering to the ground as they wreck the room. Mikey can only think in bursts, in key words that have imprinted on his brain like a tattoo. Danger. Wrong. Don't belong. Fight. Help. Trouble. He's losing the battle, though. The black wolf is larger, has more strength. Mikey realizes he cannot win, that he has two choices. He can give up, or he can keep fighting - he can get himself hurt, maybe even killed. Worth dying? his wolf-brain asks. His response is instinctive. He goes limp and pulls away from the fight.

It isn't until the darker wolf has him pinned that its scent penetrates his fog. Gerard. It's Gerard.

This shift hurts worse than any shift has in a long fucking time. Mikey feels like his bones are splintering into tiny pieces as the wolf disappears inside the man. When he's done, he curls up into a ball, away from Gerard. He's vaguely aware that he's crying.

The next thing he knows, he's sitting propped up against the wall, wrapped in a giant robe he recognizes as Bob's. Gerard is human and dressed again, sitting on his knees next to Mikey. Through the back of his shirt, Mikey can see dark splotches - blood, from Mikey's bite. He's fought with Gerard before, but never has he drawn blood. The sight makes Mikey want to start crying again. "Gee," he starts, but his voice cracks on the syllable. Gerard breathes in an audibly shaky breath. He sinks down to the floor and wraps his arms around Mikey's shoulders. Mikey lets his head fall against his brother's shoulder. The contact grounds him, but he still feels mostly numb. He starts talking into the fabric of Gerard's shirt. "I don't know where I belong," he says. "Not here. Not with you. No ... I know we're family. I know. Nothing's ever going to change the fact that you're my brother. But I don't ... you were so messed up for so long, Gee, but you were all I had. And now you have your own packmate and I don't, and I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do."

Gerard doesn't answer. He just tightens his arms around Mikey and rests his cheek against his hair. Something small unknots inside Mikey's chest; it feels like something necessary has broken. "I can't stay here," he says.

It takes Gerard a long time to answer. Finally, Mikey feels Gerard squeeze him tighter. "I know," Gerard whispers. "We'll find you someplace to go, okay?"

"Yeah."

The next morning, Stacy appears at the door. Mikey doesn't know who called her, but the fact that she goes directly to Frank to ask questions gives him an idea. Mikey lets her usher him into her SUV; it smells like lemon and cigarette smoke, and Mikey breathes the mundane combination of scents like it's the first fresh air he's had in months.

Mikey knows that Gerard and Frank stand outside and watch them drive away. He doesn't look back at them.

*

They've barely come off tour when they get the news about Mikey. Patrick hasn't even slept in his own bed yet; he's been crashing at Pete's place among the mountains of their unwashed laundry and accumulated tour shit. Which they swore they'd get to. Eventually. When they stopped sleeping.

Right now, Pete is as far from sleep as it's possible to be. He's staring at his phone like it's a poisonous snake. His side of the conversation had been merely a tentative hello after telling Patrick it was Gerard calling. Then he'd said, "Hey, Patrick's here, do you want me to - " He'd frozen, and groped for the couch behind him, and clicked the phone onto speaker, and set it down on the coffee table.

" - ker, he should probably hear this too." Patrick freezes too, when he hears Gerard's voice, sinking onto the couch beside Pete as Gerard talks. Gerard sounds more wrecked than Patrick's ever heard him. It's light years away from what Patrick expected; it's no secret in their circle of acquaintances that Frank and Gerard are together now, and he'd expected a Gerard who sounded more like - well, how Patrick feels. But Gerard keeps talking, and it all comes tumbling out. The weird shit at the Paramour, Mikey's drinking, Mikey's breakdown.

"Can - will he - is he taking visitors?" Pete stammers. He's poised on the edge of the couch, looking like he'll bolt as soon as he gets a yes. Patrick hooks a finger through his belt at the small of his back, and Pete glances back over his shoulder at him like he'd forgotten Patrick was there.

"He asked for you," Gerard says, and Pete's looking at Patrick with big haunted eyes, and Patrick picks up the phone.

"Where do we need to go?"

My Chem's lawyer, Stacy, is a nice woman, and her house is lovely, sunny and warm in that stereotypical California fashion. The gaggle of musicians perched here and there like large, unwashed birds look completely out of place. Patrick tries to hang back when Pete goes rushing into the sunroom where Mikey is ensconced, but Pete has a firm grip on his hand and drags him along in his wake. Mikey looks - well, he looks bad. Pale and sweaty and holding himself a little like something hurts. But his smile when he sees Pete is both fragile and brilliant. Pete's on the couch next to him in an instant, gathering him up in a much gentler than expected hug and muttering something into his hair. Mikey's eyelids flutter shut. Patrick has pulled free from Pete and is standing a few feet away when they open again. Mikey's expression is much more tentative as he looks at Patrick, and Patrick can practically feel something inside him crack. Ignoring it, he goes to wrap both of them up in a hug of his own.

Mikey talks a lot, which Patrick isn't expecting. He tells them about therapy, about the meds he's taking; Patrick is used to this kind of conversation, thanks to Pete, and while he listens he's also watching Mikey's face, the way his eyes flit back and forth between Pete and the corner where Gerard is failing miserably at looking like he's reading a book. Every time they land on Patrick, he jumps a little. After a bit, Gerard gets up, mumbling something about smoking, and leaves the room. Mikey watches him go and then says quietly, "He's upset. I can't stay here forever, and I'm not going back to that house - "

"You don't want to be with him?" Pete asks.

"I can't. It's - Gerard's my brother, and I love him, but - it's not just about the house. For the longest time it was just the two of us, but Gerard has Frank now, and I just...I want. Something that's mine." The last is quiet, and he cuts his eyes to Patrick again. Patrick looks away, because Pete's already insisting - of course he is - that Mikey should come stay with him. It's unquestionably the right thing to do, but Patrick can only think of what it'll mean for him, and he feels like shit for even having that thought at this time, in this room. He escapes soon afterwards, skirting through Stacy's kitchen and out into the tiny fenced backyard.

He can't see the sunroom from where he is - too much vegetation - but he hears the click of the back door and knows without turning that it will be Pete. "Patrick," he says. Patrick turns. Ghosts of five years' worth of expressions are crossing Pete's face. He'd put on a brave face for Mikey, but it shows now. Patrick holds out a hand, silently, and Pete hides his face against Patrick's neck, lets Patrick wrap a hand around the nape and breathe into his hair. "He said he'd come home with me." His voice is muffled by Patrick's shirt.

"Good for you," Patrick replies. He feels like his heart has jumped into his throat, is vaguely surprised it's still beating. Pete turns his head for a kiss. Patrick pulls away at the last minute so he gets the edge of Patrick's jaw instead.

"What the fuck, Trick?" he says, pulling back to frown.

"You and Mikey, Pete. I'm not like you, in case you fucking missed that. And I don't want to be in the way of your...pack," Patrick grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest.

"In the way, Patrick? In the way?" Pete's voice rises, and amazingly, he's laughing. Patrick's vision blurs with fury, clears. He pulls Pete's car keys out of his pocket and slaps them into his outstretched hand.

"I'll call a cab," Patrick snaps, stalking down the garden path until he can get to the street. "Do not follow me," he calls back over his shoulder. He smells the smoke before he sees Gerard, sitting on the front porch with a cigarette half-burned between his fingers. He's obviously heard at least part of that exchange, and his expression dares Patrick to stop. Patrick keeps walking.

He has the cab take him by Pete's house, gathering up all his tour things from where they're still stacked in the foyer. Patrick half expects Pete to burst in, having chased his cab across town or some shit, but of course, this is not a movie, and the house stays quiet. His own apartment is even quieter, musty from disuse but blissfully devoid of anything belonging to Pete.

He stays away from Pete's house for nearly two weeks, writing music and shunting every email Pete sends him unread into a folder on his desktop. He gets a two-minute phone call on the day My Chem leaves the Paramour for good, and within hours Bob Bryar is on his doorstep with a couple of duffel bags and a case of Red Bull under his arm. He takes over Patrick's spare room, and they spend the majority of the time they're both there and awake killing each other's digital avatars and complaining that you can't get decent pizza in L.A. They don't talk about their bands. It works out just fine.

When Gerard and Frank show up at the apartment, Patrick and Bob are deep into a particularly complicated level on Halo 2. Bob looks up at the two of them. "Is this furry shit?"

"Arf arf," Frank replies, plopping down on the floor and grabbing Bob's bottle of beer.

"I'm outta here. Have fun." He casts a slightly apologetic look at Patrick before hustling out the front door.

Patrick doesn't want to talk about this. He really, really doesn't, especially not with Gerard. And Gerard looks a little wary himself; he paces across the tiny living room three times before finally perching on the arm of the couch, on the opposite end from Patrick. Patrick sees Frank roll his eyes and scoot closer to Patrick, so that he's halfway between the two of them. "So," Frank says brightly, "Pete and Mikey."

"Fuck off," Patrick mutters, looking away.

"Mikey's doing better," Gerard says. His voice is soft, and when Patrick looks over at him, he's looking at the carpet. "Pete's good for him."

"Yeah." The word nearly sticks in Patrick's throat, but he manages it. "It seems that way. Vice versa, too."

"Better isn't perfect, though," Frank says. "It's just better."

"Thanks for the vocabulary lesson," Patrick says. "What do you guys want?"

Neither Frank nor Gerard responds right away. Patrick finds himself staring at Gerard. He doesn't quite know why, but he doesn't look away until Gerard glances up at him and moves off the couch. "Stop it," Gerard mutters, walking to the opposite side of the room and leaning against the wall. "I'm not here to fuck with your territory, I swear to god."

"What?"

Frank is looking between the two of them with interest. "So this is what it's like to put two alphas in a room together, huh?"

Gerard snorts a laugh. Patrick's just confused. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Gerard crosses his arms across his chest, but the rest of his body relaxes against the wall. "You don't get it. I guess it makes sense that you don't get it, because you're human. And, well, it took me kind of a long time to figure out that human instincts and wolf instincts aren't as different as I thought." He looks down at Frank, who grins and blows him a kiss.

Frank looks back at Patrick, then decides to push himself up onto the couch. When he scoots a couple of inches closer to Patrick, Gerard makes a low, quiet sound in the back of his throat, but when Patrick glances at him, he's blowing out a breath and smirking at some apparently unvoiced joke. "Come on, dude," Frank says, and Patrick turns his attention back to him. "You're not stupid, I know you're not. You can work some of this out."

"Some of what out?" Abruptly, Patrick stands up and paces across the room - to the opposite corner from the one Gerard is standing in, and that strikes him as both odd and important. "If you guys came here to say something, then fucking say it. I'm tired of being in the middle of all this cryptic wolf bullshit. I get it, I'm human, I wasn't born into any of this mess, I don't know jack shit. You can either tell me what I'm missing, or you can get the fuck out. Take your pick."

"You know plenty," Gerard replies. "I know you do. We've tried to help you and Pete as much as we could. We trusted you, we let you in. What more do you want?" It's a sneer, practically a snarl. Patrick's fists clench before he can stop himself. He's never seen Gerard in this mood before, and he's automatically calculating moon phases in his head. Frank gets up, strolls closer to Patrick. Gerard, in the other corner, crosses his arms tightly over his chest.

"Most people would be backing down right now," Frank murmurs. "Gerard always wins arguments, and it's not just because he never stops talking."

"I'm not scared of him," Patrick insists. "What's your point?"

"That you're not scared of him. And you know what he is." At Patrick's shrug, Frank rolls his eyes. "Patrick, you're a control freak, you always get your way, you've practically singlehandedly kept Wentz from getting dragged off to a padded room all these years, and I know you care about Mikey, too. You were born to have a pack, you just weren't born a werewolf."

Patrick reaches up, runs his hands over the brim of his hat. "So you actually are saying I'm an alpha? That makes no sense." Patrick's entire body is screaming at him that it makes perfect sense, but his head refuses to listen. He refuses to listen.

"You want sense?" Gerard's stalking across the floor to meet them. "I'm fresh out. Because when I got clean I couldn't deal; I thought being a drunk was hurting my family, but being sober didn't make it any better. I hurt him anyway, and finding Pete made it better. But Pete's not the same without you. So Mikey's not the same without you."

"Are you missing the part where I'm human? And where I want to stay that way?"

"Are you forgetting who you're talking to?" Frank asks. He leans back into Gerard; Gerard whispers something into the skin of his temple. Frank looks over his shoulder and beams a smile before turning back to Patrick. "Gerard's the eloquent one, but I think you'll understand me just fine. Get the hell over there and take care of our boy. Of your boys. No one else can - not the way you can."

Patrick thinks of Pete and Mikey. He can practically see them, talking and laughing, their heads bent together while they share some weird secret joke. And there's that knot in his stomach again, the one he's been calling jealousy for so long. But maybe, just maybe, it's a different instinct entirely. "This is so fucking crazy," he mutters.

"No shit." Gerard rolls his eyes. "Listen, I've been learning wolf shit since the first time I changed, in fucking kindergarten, and I've never heard of humans being a legitimate part of a pack. What I did learn, though, is that your instincts are pretty much always right, if you pay enough attention to them. My instincts tell me that you two assholes are some kind of weird exception to everything I've ever learned." He leans over to dodge the elbow that Frank jabs backward. When he stands straight and looks at Patrick again, he's smiling. "So, what the hell are you going to do?"

Patrick closes his eyes and sighs. "I'm gonna try to make some sense of all this." He opens his eyes and holds out his hands. "Don't start, you've given me way too much to think about already. I need some time here."

Gerard opens his mouth, but this time, Frank's elbow catches him squarely in the side. "We understand," Frank says. "And now we're going to leave, before the two of you actually start fighting or some shit like that."

"We're not fighting!" Gerard protests.

"Yeah, but you're two seconds away from a bunch of alpha bullshit, and I know enough to know that's a really bad plan right now."

After they're gone, Patrick briefly wonders exactly which one of them was supposed to be the alpha just then. But, he thinks, maybe that's the trick of a good pack - a good family, a good partnership. Everyone has their roles, but everyone has to balance each other out.

He spends the rest of the day cleaning out his folder of unread emails from Pete. To his surprise, none of them are actual notes to Patrick - they're all lyrics. Or, maybe that's not so surprising ... how else has Pete always shown Patrick the inside of his head? Gerard and Frank were talking about instinct; this is one of Patrick's strongest ones. He takes Pete's words and makes sense of them. He takes all the petty, nasty, self-destructive thoughts in Pete's head and edits them, cuts them up and molds them into new shapes that won't weigh so heavily on Pete's soul. It's automatic; before he realizes it, he's spent the rest of the afternoon combining the new lyrics with his music. Bob brings him a bag of Taco Bell at some point - Patrick barely notices, but he's grateful when he looks up and realizes the sun is disappearing on the horizon outside his window.

The final email in the folder contains something Patrick isn't expecting - a note from Mikey, sent from Pete's address. My therapist says I have to start telling people when I need something, because nobody's psychic. Please come over? Or at least call? Pete needs you, and so do I. That might sound really weird to you, but it's true. I don't know if I can explain. I'm not the one with the words. Just call, okay?

Patrick reads Mikey's note several times before he closes his laptop and turns off the lights in his bedroom. He stares at the blackness above him for a long time.

Pete's place is a mess. Patrick's not a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination, but the piles of hoodies and magazines and dirty dishes are even more than he usually can stand. And there's no life stirring in the living room - it's mid-morning, too early for either Pete or Mikey to be conscious. Too early for Patrick to be conscious, really, but he barely slept the night before, thinking about Gerard and Frank's visit. Eventually, he just got out of bed and headed over here, grateful that he'd never turned Pete's spare key back over to him.

He picks his way across the floor and into the hallway. He hears soft snoring coming from the master bedroom, so he walks to the door and pushes it open. Pete and Mikey are curled up in the bed, naked, limbs tangled with each other. Patrick's mouth goes dry at the sight of pale skin overlaying olive skin and tattoos, the shadow of Mikey's hair falling over Pete's face, the nearly synchronous movement of their chests as they breathe in and out, as if they were powered by the same body. Patrick moves closer, and he sees dark circles under Mikey's eyes. His face is relaxed in sleep, but his struggle is still evident on his skin. Pete has an arm around Mikey's middle, holding him close with what Patrick knows to be surprising strength. Pete always wants to make sure he's not alone when he wakes up.

The bed is huge, and they've left a large gap on the right side, large enough to accommodate another person. Now that Frank and Gerard have forced him to look at things in a different way, he wonders if that isn't intentional. Suddenly, Patrick is very, very tired, and the bed looks warm and inviting, and contains everything he really wants. He takes off his shoes and his hat and sits gingerly on the side of the bed. He's still not sure about this - not sure at all - but he's tired of ignoring his instincts. Right now, his instincts are telling him to lay down and let the rhythms of the two bodies next to him sing him to sleep.

He lays down. The bed creaks under the added weight; Patrick winces, but he knows that Pete sleeps like the dead once he actually does manage to fall asleep. Mikey, however, stirs. Patrick lays on his side, facing the other two, and Mikey half opens his eyes. "Go back to sleep," Patrick whispers.

"You're here," Mikey murmurs.

"Yeah, I'm here. Finally."

Mikey reaches over and touches Patrick's cheek. Patrick mirrors the gesture. Mikey gives him a sleepy smile. "Good."

Mikey lays his hand back down on the bed and closes his eyes. Patrick rests his own hand on top of Mikey's. He's asleep before he can think anything more.

Patrick wakes up some hours later to the feeling of someone climbing on top of him. "Fuck, Pete, that hurt," he hears Mikey grumble next to him.

When he opens his eyes, Pete is straddling his legs, unashamedly naked and furious. "Where the fuck have you been?"

"Good morning to you, too." Patrick yawns.

"Fuck off." Pete hits him in the stomach, and Patrick loses his breath for a moment. "You can't pick up the phone? Answer a goddamned email?"

"I'm sorry ..." Patrick begins, but Pete's not finished.

"You're so fucking stupid, you know that? After everything that's happened, you just walk away? I was beginning to think you weren't coming back at all." Pete hits him again. Patrick allows it; the panicked look in Pete's eyes shuts up any protest he might have had. Pete leans down and grasps Patrick's wrists, pressing them both down into the mattress. "I need you, jackass."

"I told you," Mikey says softly, still laying quietly a foot or so away from Patrick. His hand rests inches from Patrick's shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, Patrick can see his fingers curling and uncurling, as if itching to reach out and touch. Patrick would turn and grasp his hand again, if Pete wasn't holding him firmly to the bed.

"I had no idea what I was doing," Patrick says, pulling one arm out of Pete's grip and placing it on his chest. "With you two, the way you are. I'm not like you."

"Bullshit." Pete pushes Patrick's hand away. "You were just a fucking coward, that's it."

Patrick recognizes the heat that flares up through his chest - it's a familiar feeling, where Pete's concerned, this combination of anger and guilt and an unnameable emotion. He reacts to it like he always does, with a burst of violence that usually surprises him; he bucks upward and pushes at Pete until Pete tumbles off. It only takes a few movements to push Pete onto the bed and reverse their positions. His hands rest on Pete's chest, fingers curling against the dark swirls of writing on his skin. Pete's face is flushed, his pupils blown. Patrick swallows a sudden lump in his throat. "Give me a break," he says, his voice rough. "I'm the only one here without wolf instincts, okay?"

With that, he remembers Mikey, who had managed to scoot out of the way of the brief scuffle. He now sits up next to them, close enough that Patrick feels the the warmth of his skin on his arm. Patrick looks at him. His tawny eyes are steady on Patrick's face, steadier than Patrick's ever seen them. "Hi," Patrick says.

Mikey's smile is small, but genuine. "Hey." He meets Patrick's gaze for another moment. Mikey nods, almost imperceptibly, and his smile widens a tiny bit. When he looks away, he stretches his neck in a gesture that Patrick somehow recognizes as submission. Patrick lets instinct guide him. He leans over and trails his nose from the base of Mikey's neck up to his jawline. When he presses his lips underneath Mikey's jaw, he feels Mikey's ragged heartbeat against his mouth. Pete starts to writhe underneath him. Patrick ignores Pete for the moment; he brings a hand up to push at Mikey's chin until he can kiss him lightly. When he pulls back, the joyous light in Mikey's eyes makes Patrick's breath stutter. Then, Mikey is kissing him - really kissing him, with teeth and tangling tongues and a hand tugging in the back of Patrick's hair.

"Jesus fuck, you guys," Pete breathes. Patrick pulls back from Mikey and turns his head to see Pete propped up on his elbows, watching them with wide eyes. Suddenly, Patrick is acutely aware that he's the only person in the bed wearing clothes, as Pete's cock bobs hard between them. Without thinking, Patrick reaches down and wraps a hand around him. Pete falls back to the bed and lets out a strangled sound. Mikey presses closer to Patrick, hooking his chin on Patrick's shoulder to watch Pete arch off the bed with each stroke of Patrick's hand. Patrick can feel Mikey's erection against his hip, and for a moment, he's dizzy from all the sensation. He lets go of Pete and closes his eyes, breathing deeply. Instantly, Pete is sitting up and pulling at Patrick's t-shirt, hard enough that Patrick hears a rip. "Why the hell are you dressed?" Pete's voice is savage, and the way he grips Patrick's skin underneath the shirt is sure to leave bruises.

Patrick lets his shirt be lifted over his head, and suddenly there are four hands skimming everywhere over exposed skin. Pete pulls him close and kisses him roughly, while Mikey simply presses his face into Patrick's neck. He's missed Pete's mouth, Pete's skin, his touch so much that Patrick almost feels like crying. To have Mikey there, as well, to have both of their bodies surrounding him ... well, at this moment, Patrick can't remember why it took him so long to get here.

Eventually, Patrick pulls away from Pete. "Still dressed," Pete growls, tugging at the button on Patrick's jeans.

"Well, then, let me get up for a minute, dumbass." He pushes back lightly to get Mikey to move, then slides off the bed to undo his jeans with shaking hands.

He pushes his jeans to the floor. When he looks up, Mikey is leaning over and kissing Pete in teasing bursts. Patrick sees flashes of tongue and lips, Mikey's pale, slender hand tracing patterns on Pete's olive skin. They're both making noises in the backs of their throats that shoot straight down Patrick's spine into his already painfully hard cock. He's imagined this - imagined them - so many times, but nothing prepared him for the reality of it all. It's ... well, it's everything Patrick never dared to hope for, not for himself. When they pull apart and turn their attention to him, Patrick's mouth goes dry. "Well?" Pete says, tapping an impatient hand against his thigh.

They're both sweaty and unshowered. They each have bags underneath their eyes and tiny lines on their faces that tell stories of hard times and their own punishing brains. They're gorgeous. And ... they're Patrick's.

Patrick climbs onto the bed and lets himself get lost in them.

*

Patrick and Bob throw a party on the 4th of July, to celebrate the fact that both of their bands are back in the studio and doing well, but mostly - as Bob tells Mikey - "because we all need some fucking fun around here." Mikey can't really argue that point.

The pool courtyard of the apartment building is currently host to mass chaos. It seems like every single person they know in LA has shown up, and they're all talking at once. Mikey is taking a break from the madness, nursing a bottle of Coke in his hands as he sits on the lawn, close to the pool's shallow end. He's watching the cannonball contest at the other end of the pool with amusement (Pete appears to be winning, by whatever strange rules they've all made up), so he misses Gerard's approach until his brother sits down next to him. "How's it going?" Gerard asks, gesturing at the soda in his hands.

Mikey shrugs. "Not bad." There's a lot of alcohol around - the first time he's really been around a large amount in the two months he's been sober. "I can't say I don't want a beer, though."

"Yeah, I know. I do too."

Mikey leans over and bumps Gerard's shoulder with his. "You know, I've always wanted to be like you, but I probably should've skipped this part."

Gerard laughs. "I'm a shitty role model, Mikes."

"No, you're not." There's a lot Mikey could say - about Gerard's ability to climb back up from rock bottom, to make a new life for himself. His brother is still his best role model. But a sunny California holiday afternoon isn't really the place to have that conversation. So, Mikey just smiles to himself and goes back to watching the pool.

Patrick approaches a few minutes later. He's fully dressed, but his t-shirt is wet enough that it clings to his skin. "Pete," he says by way of explanation as he sits down. Mikey grins. Pete's usually a good enough explanation for any stupid thing that happens to either one of them.

He settles down on Mikey's other side. Mikey instinctively slides closer to him and picks at the wet shirt. "You could go inside and change."

"Yeah, but then I'd eventually end up with two wet shirts. Besides, it's hot, I'll dry out eventually."

Mikey looks over to see Gerard watching them, smiling. "You can tell him to stop mother-henning you, you know," he says to Patrick.

"I've tried, he doesn't listen," Patrick replies, eyes crinkling as he smiles sideways at Mikey. "Besides, I kinda like it." His fingers link with Mikey's, joined hands tucked between them on the grass. Mikey glances back at Gerard; he looks amused. Mikey and Patrick could have a competition for who's the most oblivious on any particular day, but they're usually neck and neck on nagging. Pete says it's hilarious, in a tone Mikey knows really means he thinks it's sweet.

"I know the feeling," Gerard says wryly, eyes scanning the crowd. Across the courtyard, Frank's head turns; his radar for Gerard, Mikey thinks fondly, is only rivaled by his radar for trouble. He makes a face in their direction before going back to his animated conversation with Andy and Ray. Gerard turns back to Mikey. "Full moon's next week. Frank found us a good place to run, out in Laurel Canyon. You guys in?"

Mikey nods. He's looking forward to it, actually. The last two months, he and Pete have been on their own - well, with Patrick watching them this past month - and Mikey's discovered he misses his brother when he changes. The longer he stays in therapy, the more he's begun to realize how much of the isolated feeling came from the illness, not any sort of wolf instinct. Gerard is still family, always will be. They might have different packs now.... "Maybe not so different," he says aloud.

Both Gerard and Patrick look at him. "Was the first part of that conversation silent?" Gerard asks.

"Yeah." Mikey grins. "Sorry. I was just thinking...we've kind of supremely messed with all the wolf rules we learned when we were kids, haven't we?"

Patrick snorts. Gerard waves a hand in the air and says, "Fuck the rules."

"Exactly. So, if humans can be pack-" Mikey squeezes Patrick's hand- "then who says a pack can only have one alpha?"

Gerard is silent for a minute. "Huh. Good question."

"Seems to me," Patrick says slowly, "that the whole pack thing is just a kind of family."

"That's really simplified, but it works." Gerard shrugs. "I've only ever run into another alpha at big family gatherings, and I always felt super defensive. But, that could have been because most of those people didn't understand me or Mikey at all. They always wanted us to be more traditional, more like them, and I always wanted to tear out their throats the minute they looked at us." He laughs. "The only time I've ever wanted to tear out your throat is when you were being a jackass. When you're normal, we're fine."

When Patrick laughs at that, Mikey figures he's right about the nature of his crazy little pack. "Normal is a really stupid word to use around here," Patrick observes.

Pete chooses that moment to launch himself at them, wearing only his underwear - because, Mikey thinks fondly, god forbid he actually bring swim trunks over here. He slides through the grass and lands at Patrick and Mikey's feet, rolling to his back and grinning up at them. Gerard smirks. "Very true," he says to Patrick, who rolls his eyes and pokes Pete with his foot.

"Dignity, Wentz," Patrick says.

"...is for other people. It's on the Wentz family crest," Pete finishes, scrambling into Patrick's lap and spraying him and Mikey with tiny water droplets. "You love me."

"Well, yeah," Patrick drawls, and shoves Pete off. He does it gently, though, and Mikey catches him neatly before he goes sprawling. Mikey can feel Gerard laughing next to him.

"I gotta go save Ray," Gerard says. "He looks like the Tattoo Mafia is after him. Guys, dinner at our place in a couple days?" His hand curls around Mikey's shoulder as he stands.

"Sounds good," Mikey answers. He watches Gerard walk across the pool deck and lean in to rest his chin on Frank's shoulder, and tucks his own over Pete's. Pete must be watching too; his cheek rubs briefly across Mikey's hair as he turns to Patrick.

"Are you ever going to move in?" Pete asks quietly. Un-Pete-like, or very Pete-like, depending on how well you know him. Mikey and Patrick both know him very, very well; Mikey catches Patrick's eye and raises an eyebrow. This has been a topic of non-conversation for several weeks now. "You practically are now," he adds. It's nearly a moot point; both bands are going out on the festival circuit in August. But...it means something, to Pete. To Mikey, too. There's a sense of peace on the nights Patrick stays with them. It's rare that he stays at his own apartment any more, but on those nights both he and Pete feel a little bit restless. He watches Patrick watch them, then smile a little.

"Well, all our free labor is probably crashing on the floor here tonight," Patrick says thoughtfully. "But no one gets to complain about my musical instruments," he adds. "I've seen your shoes - " to Pete, " - and your DVDs," to Mikey.

"That's a yes," Pete says, delighted. He leans over and throws his arms around Patrick's neck.

"It's always a yes," Patrick answers, a little muffled. He rests a hand between Pete's shoulder blades. Mikey lifts his own and adds another layer.

He can feel so much more these days. Pete's skin is soft and warm. Patrick's got callouses all over his hands from the instruments he plays. Then there are the smells. Mikey's wolf-senses are overloaded with scents today - chlorine, barbecue sauce, more than a dozen unwashed guys in the same thousand square feet. He can smell the beer and harder alcohol in cups and cans throughout the courtyard; mostly, though, there is Pete's vaguely spicy scent, overlaid with Patrick's more earthy scent. Gerard's scent - sharp in a way totally different than Pete's - still lingers in the air, with the traces of Frank that always accompany him nowadays. It smells like home.

Mikey leans in closer to Pete and smiles to himself. It's a good day.

-fin-