The Difference Between You And Me {Petekey}

Chapter twenty three

Pete was absolutely, one hundred percent right.

Seeing the absolute glee on Gerard's face when he got the news was so undeniably worth the wait. His eyes glistened as he looked across the room to Pete, who was making coffee in the kitchen. A year ago, he would have assumed that Gerard wouldn't want coffee after waking up to the best call of his life, but now he knew Gerard like a brother. There was absolutely nothing in the world that would make Gerard somehow not want coffee. In his mind, the first sip of coffee for the day would be the perfect complement to the best morning of his life.

Gerard looked at Pete, his eyes glistening and the expression on his face unlike anything Pete had ever seen Gerard look like. "Is this real?" He asked. Pete flashed his grin and nodded. "You already knew? When did you find out? You weren't hiding this from me, were you?"

"Calm down, I only got the call last night when I was getting groceries," Pete said, though it was a bit redundant since he could barely contain his own glee. "I didn't want to wake you up so early in the night because we have to head down to Flasch as soon as we can to discuss shit. I swear, trying to sleep last night when I knew that we might have found him was, like, impossible."

"Jesus," Gerard said, running his hand through his hair. It was uncharacteristically soft, he had been showering way more often than he ever used to because it was the one thing that made him feel human again. "Mikey. My baby brother. He's out there."

Pete laughed, a light, earthy giggle. His eyes met Gerard's and Gerard started laughing, too. They stood there, laughing at each other, for what felt like forever.

Somehow, after all of that excitement, the two men managed to get themselves to the Flasch headquarters. The monorail ride was unbearably long. For Pete, the giddiness of the great news was starting to wear off and nervousness began to take its place. What if they didn't really know where he was, and they had just gotten their hopes up for nothing? What would he do then? What would Gerard do? Pete could maybe move on, but Gerard would be thrown into such deep sorrow and Pete didn't know if there was anything that could take him out of it.

He had to put any emotion aside when they sat down in the chairs of the conference room of the nearly empty building. Even if it was rarely used by anybody other than management, marketing and technology, there used to always be a few people Pete recognized and could chat with while he was waiting to be called for his meeting. Now, there was nobody familiar. This was likely one of the busier days they'd had recently, and still, there was maybe a maximum of thirty people in the entire building. Still, he didn't let the atmosphere get to him. This was business. And as much as he considered himself a laid-back person, not serious at all, he was surprised to find that he enjoyed being treated like his presence was necessary and important, that he was a valuable member of a team.

They were in the same room where they were discussing possibilities for where Mikey could be, just months ago. Brendon, the leader of the technology department, and Patrick, the leader of the Corrections department and Pete's ex-boss, were both at the table.

"Take a seat," Brendon told them when the secretary who led them to the room knocked on the doorframe. Gerard and Pete followed the instructions.

"It's been a while since we've seen each other, hasn't it?" Patrick greeted them, putting his hand out to shake theirs. "We hope you've been well. We're just going to get right into the case, if that's okay." He didn't wait for an answer before continuing, "Brendon and I have been working together for the past few months, trying to narrow down Michael's location, using the information you gave us. It occurred to us recently that maybe he didn't choose someplace by asking himself where he would want to go to. I mean, we believe he would have been pretty overwhelmed in this moment, so why wouldn't he have just chosen somehwere at random? We started guessing for where he could have easily just let his Communicator lead him. You know, like, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, a thousand years ago, even numbers like that."