Before It's Voiced

Gothic

Brendon's eyes widen but the request only serves to increase his amount of speech— backtracking, apologizing, beginning to stutter. "Oh, I didn't mean to— I just, sorry, I thought— Um, my dad, he—"

"Brendon," Pete sighs, running his hands down his face. It's evening but it feels too early for this, far too early for this. "It's fine, sorry. I'm just tired."

"Oh, okay," Brendon says, smile easing back into place as if it had never left. "Long day?"

Nightmares and ink-stained fingertips, pencil lead tripping into dreamscapes and prose. Sleeping for an hour and writing for two, never truly awake as cruel monsters stretch out beneath the threat of the sun in the sky—

Pete smiles, wry and sharp. "Something like that."

Brendon's blessedly silent but for his humming as Pete searches the aisles. He finds what he's looking for easily enough— this is a shop aimed at tourists and families, after all— but it takes him more than a few minutes to work up the strength to actually buy it.

So, Mr. Urie finds him staring exasperatedly at a shelf of childish bath toys.

"You have children?" Mr. Urie asks, skipping the niceties and heading straight for suspicion. Pete shrugs, fighting around his pride and reaching for a pink rubber duck. He squeezes it softly, the comically high-pitched squeak helping to ease his nerves.

"I can't buy some toys without being questioned?" Pete asks as he drops the duck into his basket. "Careful, you'll lose customers if you try to interrogate them." He reaches for the last pack of bath markers but Mr. Urie grabs them before Pete can. The dark hair on his knuckles and the thick wedding band contrast against the kid's toy, wrapping it up in accusations and tearing away its innocence.

Pete sighs, pulling a go-to excuse free from the corner of his mind he's kept it in. "I'm a writer, man. I just need it for research."

"What are you writing about?" Mr. Urie's eyes remain locked on the markers, suspicion making way for confusion. A better emotion to deal with but no less frustrating for Pete.

"Can't say yet," he says, thoughtlessly turning to toss a handful of toy boats into the basket. "I've been advised not to spread my plots around before they're published."

"Right." Mr. Urie passes the markers back to Pete, though his eyes remain narrowed. "You know, no one's seen you around recently."

"You see me now, don't you?" Water gears, toy submarines, and a floating turtle join the cluster of toys in the basket, along with the markers. Pete's tempted to keep searching but Patrick is sure to wake soon and Pete doesn't want him to do so alone. "Besides, I have a right to hang out at my house if I want to."

"That may be so." Mr. Urie walks alongside Pete up to the counter, Brendon sighing and rolling his eyes when he sees his father.

"You've got to be kidding me," Brendon says, ringing up Pete's orders without batting an eye. "Dad, we're gonna lose all our customers if you keep bothering them and—"

"Aren't you the one who said you saw him speaking to the water that first week we met him?" Mr. Urie asks, eyes never leaving Pete's. Pete goes cold, looking to Brendon in betrayal.

"You were spying on me?" The incredulous shout wakes the monsters in his mind, sends them turning and cackling with intrigue seeping from their lips. "Dude, what the fuck?"

"I wasn't spying!" Brendon says, dropping a toy boat and raising his hands in surrender. "My friends and I were gonna mess with you. Sneak into the beach and, I don't know, toss some rocks into the water to make it seem like something was in there? We do that to all the people my dad tries to scare off but you were already outside and, okay, it looked like you were talking to the water."