Just Off The Key Of Reason (Pete Wentz/Mikey Way)

10: Till Tonight Do Us Part

"I just don't want to risk it, Mikes. I want as much time as I could possibly have with you - Mikey, you matter, okay? Because just one month with you would mean more than a two in three chance of having any longer-"

"It's not just having 'any longer', it's having forever - growing old with me and all that shit, you know - that matters to me, Pete." I met his eyes, hoping that despite the fact that Pete was really very far off the traditional type, he could at least understand as to where I was coming from with this.

"And who's saying this goddamn cancer won't just come back in another decade or so?" I couldn't answer that one, because despite how much I'd like to, and in this situation just how much I seemed to need to, I couldn't promise him anything. "And then we'd have to go through this all again."

"Pete you're justifying your own death - that's just not healthy." None of this was healthy; it was just making my head spin like crazy and I felt as if I needed to throw up everywhere simply to clear my head of the mess that we'd become.

"Cancer's not healthy either - have a go at that rather than me, because at the very least I am trying." His eyes told the truth, but his actions really didn't. I reckoned upon the fact that he was lying to himself too, which could both be justified as being better and worse, and sometimes even the both at the same time.

"No, you're not." I probably shouldn’t have said that, but there was this sudden rush of adrenaline that left me with the rather toxic feeling that I could quite possibly just do anything. "If you were trying - you at least try to survive and get this fucking operation-"

"An operation on my brain, Mikes." He met my gaze, as if I didn't get the fact that some doctor was going to slice his fucking cranium open- fuck... "Do you know how many different ways that can go wrong?"

"Not enough for it to not be worth risking." I threw my words out there haphazardly, because I did not know, and Pete was right.

"No, no you don't."

"And you do?" I raised my eyebrows, wondering which answer I wanted to hear from him, and finding the conclusion to be neither, leaving me in quite possibly the most uncomfortable of predicaments, because what ever happened - I wouldn't like it.

"Yes, Mikes, yes I do, actually."

"Oh."

"I researched it." He paused, playing with a leaf that had tumbled from the leafy canopy above where it once resided and now lay on the floor, with Pete’s index finger taking an absent minded prod at it every so often. "Bleeding, risk of infection, injury to the brain, loss of coordination, lack of speech-"

"Pete, you'll be fine." I assured him, despite the fact I literally had absolutely no way to be anyway sure of that at all - it just kind of felt like the right thing to say. It felt like the Good Samaritan approach to the problem, even if I was really far from a Good Samaritan myself.

"Even if I do survive - it won't just be bam! Pete again." He shook his head in correspondence to his words. "I'll be like a little baby as all my body slowly switches back on and I'll just sleep, I'll be stuck in a hospital bed and-"

"You'll be alive, Pete." None of that mattered to me at all - all that mattered was the rhythm of Pete's heart and the little breathing sounds he made as he respired peacefully; alive and okay.

"Being alive is overrated." He shrugged it off like some sort of emo kid turned hipster in some god ugly combination that sounded like the inspiration for an entire new Blood On The Dance Floor album.

"Now you just sound fucking suicidal." I snapped out of nowhere, regretting my words as soon as they left my lips - as soon as it was all but too late.