Blood.

That was all it was blood: and all too much of it - corrupted blood, the blood of another and the blood that was foreign in his veins: stolen blood, but necessary. He was the starving poor who had to steal survive, or at least such a pretty metaphor made the whole situation look just a little bit better, in Pete's eyes at the very least.

Pete had treated Mikey's bedside in very much the same manner that Mikey had treated Ray's record store, and it was getting to the point where it was really starting to unnerve Bob: just because it was kind of creepy, and it wasn't like he actually missed the asshole roaming about his house and fucking up his very particular arrangement of coffee mugs.

There was of course the rather obvious and ever-looming possibility that Mikey would never wake up, and right Bob was just stuck with 'sleeping beauty' in his spare room, and his 'prince charming' never leaving Mikey's bedside. Bob even considered suggesting that kissing bullshit, but he wasn't quite that stupid.

This wasn't some weirdass fucking fairytale, this, unfortunately, was reality, and Mikey Way had been cursed in that record store (by who was of course unknown, because things could never really be that easy) and they were just lucky that the asshole hadn't died on the spot.

Bob never quite understood what the point was in being an immortal creature if you were just going to throw away your immortality over some guy was going to inevitably die at some point, because, come on, in a town like this, in a world like this - everyone fucking dies.

And it seemed that death was a fate that Mikey Way had barely avoided the grasps of, and still, Bob couldn't help but feel as if that would never matter to the vampire as long as Bob had the news to inform him of the fact that the record store had been destroyed with this fucking elusive curse.

At least then Mikey might actually have a chance of being able to get over Ray, but it seemed that there was no way in hell that Mikey was even going to consider looking at it that way: perhaps this was like Ray dying for the second time, or maybe just the first, as it became rather apparent that Mikey had never quite accepted his death in the first place.

But at the very least, with Pete 'looking after' Mikey, Bob had the time and privacy to sort out the other shitstorm this fucking curse had just so fucking wonderfully presented him with. And, of course, this was the kind of shitstorm that Mikey was either going to absolutely love or absolutely loathe, and Bob just reckoned that perhaps it would be better if he just didn't chance telling him, but of course that would never be anywhere near practical.

Because it wasn't as if Bob was exactly an expert when it came to burying bodies.

Ray's first funeral had determined that.

Of course, as to when Ray had suddenly needed a second funeral, no one had a clue, but Ray's body: faded, almost ghosting, flickering, not really there, had been found amongst the rubble, and like Mikey hadn't woken up, but the problem with ghosts was of course the ever so helpful fact that they just didn't have a pulse or the need to breathe.

Mikey was breathing at the very least.

Whereas, Bob was just stuck with a fucking ghost 'corpse' under the rug in his spare room as he just continued to pray that no one would find it and that the problem would somehow just sort itself out as well.

Needless to say, Bob wasn't exactly in his comfort zone here, but then again in a job like Bob's, the phrase 'comfort zone' was left as nothing but meaningless: everything was a fucking nightmare, this whole town was a fucking nightmare and half of the time Bob found himself strongly considering just packing up and moving onto somewhere down south and becoming an estate agent or something.

It'd be ridiculous and awfully dull, but he doubted he'd ever have to deal with any ghost corpses in fucking Texas.

-

Pete was probably going just a little insane after so long by Mikey's bedside like a concerned mother, or in place of the not quite so concerned brother that had failed to show his face throughout the entire duration of the ordeal. Frank had even taken just a few hours out of his busy 'Gerard fucking' schedule to go and show his concern, even if it was a little half-hearted and his compassion and caring towards Mikey was nowhere near as good as Pete's.

But then again, Pete was desperately and downright hopelessly in love with Mikey Way, and Frank, well you could say that Frank swung the other way, not in terms of sexuality of course - everyone was a fucking homosexual, like it was almost as if the only female in this whole fucking town was Frank's grandmother, and she wasn't exactly Angelina Jolie, but then again, Angelina Jolie kind of looked like a fish so maybe that was for the better.

And maybe, just maybe, Pete's efforts in favour of Mikey Way weren't at all hopeless, because maybe, curses did reverse, and maybe, just maybe, even though highly unlikely, there was hope for a happy ending - an ending happy in that Mikey hadn't died (yet) at the very least.

But Pete did practically have a heart attack as the vampire's eyes shot open, and it was pretty convenient that Pete soon recovered, because Mikey was hardly in a state to give Pete Wentz a heart transplant right now.

"You're alive!” Pete exclaimed, his eyes widening as he rushed to grab Mikey's hand, grinning down at the vampire, who could only roll his eyes at the over-excited asshole, but he really just couldn't help but deny that maybe he had missed Pete Wentz.

Not that Mikey had much noticed the passage of time throughout his state of unconsciousness: not quite a coma, more of a really extended, maybe permanent nap, but with far more problems caused. Vampires didn't really tend to have naps anyway.

"Technically, no. Technically, I'm still a fucking walking corpse, but metaphorically, if it makes you feel better, then, yes, Pete, I'm alive." Mikey sighed out, sitting up in the spare bed, soon noticing this to be Bob Bryar's house by the casual stake mounted upon the wall in a totally non-threatening manner.

"Bob! He's alive!" Pete chose to ignore Mikey's far more factual correction in favour of screaming throughout the house in an attempt to grab Bob's attention.

"Good. Fucking punch him in the face for me for being such a stressful pain in the ass!" Bob shouted back from the spare room, before continuing to freak the fuck out about just what lay underneath that fucking rug, like seriously, Ray was the person he called to help him out when he had these kind of problems, but he highly doubted that Ray could resurrect himself just to help Bob out a little here.

But who knows? Maybe Bob was wrong.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't punch me in the face." Mikey added, smiling at Pete, who took the liberty of sitting opposite Mikey on the bed, forcing Mikey to sit cross legged with his back to the headboard. "But whatever, I'm sure you're pretty pissed off that I nearly died on you."

"What was that phone call even about, Mikey?" Pete sighed out, biting down on his bottom lip as he made a mental note not to stare at Mikey too obviously, or at least make some attempt to disguise just how fucking lovestruck he was. "I was so fucking scared, you know? Like vampires can't die, can they? But Bob said something-"

"It's some fucking lore bullshit about the heart that vampires don't have: stolen cold and rotten inside, hateful creatures and all that shit. Basically, I told Ray that I loved him, and that ruined my immortality, but that's okay - I don't want to live forever without him - I love him." Mikey confessed, leaving Pete to bottle his feelings inside and just pray that Bob would be the one to tell Mikey about just what had happened to the record store, and just what Pete presumed had happened to Bob.

"Why did you do that? You could have died!" Pete exclaimed, suddenly feeling far too fucking protective over Mikey for his own good, but he reckoned that he was far beyond the point of stopping himself now.

Mikey only shrugged it off, avoiding Pete's gaze. "It's my fault that Ray's dead. Do you know how he died?"

"No." Pete shook his head, opening his mouth once more to argue Mikey's blaming of himself, but the vampire continued before Pete even had a chance.

"Well, it's my fault - he was poisoned, and I was the one that placed the poison. Of course, I didn't mean to poison him... I mean to poison... someone else... but without my stupid fucking ideas about trying to fix things, then maybe he'd still be here, or maybe he wouldn't: fuck, I don't know. I just know that it's my fault, and that it hurts like hell. And that I feel guilty every single fucking day and you're the first person I've told and I didn't even mean to tell you, fuck, Pete it just happened, and I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry-"

Mikey's words were cut off as Pete moved to press Mikey's head into his chest, letting the vampire hold him as he sobbed: Pete cared far too much and it was fucking going to end up killing him in the end as well, but somehow, that just didn't seem to matter at all when Mikey Way was involved.

"It's not your fault, Mikey. That was just a mistake, look, I don't hate you and you shouldn't hate yourself, and I'm so sorry that he died, but you can't blame yourself forever." Pete pulled Mikey closer to his chest, savouring the moment in which Mikey was far too torn up to stop the contact between him and Pete, and really, Pete felt like a fucking asshole for it, but in that moment, everything was just about Mikey, and he couldn't quite bring himself to care at all.

"You're too fucking nice to me." Mikey sighed out, well aware of the eyeliner that he'd caused to run onto Pete's shirt - thankfully, due to Pete's emo lifestyle, it was a black shirt, but still, eyeliner stains weren't fun. "But thank you, I guess."

"It's okay." Pete smiled, meeting Mikey's eyes, and gazing into them for just a little too long. "I care about you, Mikey." And really, this was getting suspiciously homosexual at this point, and still, there was no sign of any 'no homo alarm bells' in either boy's head.

"I care about you too, even though you're a fucking idiot, Pete Wentz." Mikey added, and really, that was just about the nicest thing that Mikey Way had ever said to anyone that wasn't Ray Toro. "You're a cute fucking idiot though- hey, did you stay here the whole time? At my bedside- Pete, please tell me that you didn't, because fuck-"

"I did." Pete sighed out, pulling his gaze away out of shame. "I did, Mikey."

And then, just like that, silence: a silence far too prolonged and far too awkward.

And Pete was most definitely fucked, but he couldn't for the life of him figure as to why, whereas Mikey knew it like hell, and really, it was killing him on the inside.

"You shouldn't have." Mikey finally broke the silence with a somewhat half-hearted response.

"But I did." Pete added, biting down on his bottom lip, and daring to meet Mikey's gaze, and finding that within seconds they'd found themselves in an almost uncomfortable lock of eye contact: the same stupid fucking stare that Pete had tried to avoid.

"Why?" Mikey couldn't help ask, because curiosity was exactly what killed the cat, well, vampire, well nearly.

"Because I care about you." And there it came again: a lack of guts and just as good as they were going to get, but not as fucked up as it could be.

Mikey fixed that though; Mikey fixed that with a kiss within seconds - it was nothing, but everything at the same time, and Pete was pretty sure he was the one that had died and this was heaven for the first few moments, but then there was something going on downstairs that God certainly wouldn't approve of in heaven.

"I care about you too. I'm sorry." Mikey added, pulling away, and before silence had another chance to strangle that two of them in its deadly grip, Pete's lips were back on Mikey's - returning the gesture, and for the first time, they really felt okay.

-

Within the next day or so, Mikey was just about fine and functioning as a not quite lively undead being should, well, at least medically: emotionally was an entirely different story. Bob was still utterly insistent that he didn't leave his house though, at least for the time being, just so he could keep an eye on him, just in case everything suddenly went to shit, and it did a fucking amazing job of keeping Pete occupied.

Bob was still pretty much fucked though, because although the situation with Mikey may have been getting better, the situation with Ray most certainly was not.

The 'ghost corpse' or whatever the fuck it was (even Bob didn't know, and if Bob didn't know then this seriously had to be some fucked up crazy shit) seemed to be 'decaying', dying, almost, but it- Ray, was already dead, and really Bob just hadn't the slightest fucking clue as to what he was supposed to do in this situation.

For one, he certainly couldn't just present it to everyone and let someone else deal with it, because Mikey would go absolutely apeshit, and probably end up getting himself killed for real this time just to try and save his dead boyfriend from his second death, and Bob was not emotionally prepared for dealing with Pete panicking over Mikey's possible death again.

The love triangle here was just fucking ridiculous - fucking triangles, fuck the illuminati.

There was also the matter that Bob couldn't just simply leave Ray's ghost corpse underneath the rug in his spare room for eternity, because although the rest of this fucking town may not be the brightest, someone was going to find it eventually, and with Bob's luck, it would most definitely be Mikey, especially with him in Bob's house for the next couple of days or so.

And really, Bob was getting dangerously close to just giving in and asking Bert for help, but Bob really wouldn't be surprised if Bert had already had a vision depicting exactly what was going on here, and maybe, just maybe, Bob was a little scared to discover just how this ended.

Status quo was good for him right now, even if it ensured that far too much of his time was taken up by 'guarding' the rug in the spare room whilst pretending to be concentrating very hard on some really fucking important shit, or really just anything that Pete would believe without question.

Pete Wentz wasn't exactly the hardest person to lie to, however, with Mikey, that just simply wasn't the case.

Pete was taking up all of Mikey's time and attention to the very extent that he wasn't even sure that Mikey even knew that there was a spare room, so maybe, just maybe, if he was quick, Bob could afford a quick visit to see Bert, and chance whatever advice he could pick out from the reel of sarcastic responses.

He decided it better not to announce to either Mikey or Pete that he was even going out in the first place, intending so that he'd be back before they'd even noticed his absence, and with just how caught up they were with one another, such a possibility wouldn't exactly be all that far fetched. 

Bob knew there was something going on there; he wasn't entirely sure as to what, but he knew that it most certainly wasn't nothing, and he reckoned that if he didn't bother to ask, then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't bother to ask about the awfully suspicious lump in the rug in the spare room.

Because it really wouldn't make Bob look good if he had to admit that the lump was actually the second corpse of Mikey's dead boyfriend.

And then, Mikey'd want some sort of explanation as to how on earth his boyfriend had managed to die twice, and really, Bob was still working on that one.

-

Mikey Way sat on the counter top of Bob Bryar's kitchen, watching as Pete Wentz searched the cupboards for some form of painkillers - apparently, vampires could get headaches, or at least slightly more moral vampires could: either that or Mikey was just slowly dying unbeknownst to everyone, which really would be quite a plot twist.

"There are no fucking painkillers, Mikey." Pete sighed, groaning as he got up from where he was crotched down in order to thoroughly search the kitchen cupboards for Mikey, who just totally couldn't fucking move at all because he had a headache - or at least Mikey had somehow managed to convince Pete as such.

"Don't move." Mikey exclaimed, deadly serious.

"Why?"

"I've got a really good view of your ass like this." The vampire's face broke into a grin as Pete got up, raising his eyebrows at his boyfriend, pretending that he was offended and totally not just really fucking flattered.

"That sounds like something I'd say." Pete added, frowning as he considered just how much effort it would be to sue Mikey for copyright infringement, before coming to the conclusion that if he did, Mikey would probably be pretty pissed off, and this sort of 'magical trance' would be broken.

The magical trance Pete was referring to was the one that kept Mikey in the state of acting like he and Pete were boyfriends, and although it may just have something to do with the headache or whatever, Pete knew that he was in absolutely no position to question its magic whatsoever.

"I'm going to go ask Bob where the painkillers are - stay here, okay, he's just in the spare room, I think." Pete met Mikey's gaze all too sternly, acting very much like an overly protective boyfriend, and really, Mikey was perfectly happy not questioning Pete's behaviour at all.

But as Pete made his way into the spare room and found the place to be empty, things really went to shit.

And shit meaning that Pete's gaze fell directly to the Ray Toro sized lump under the carpet.

But since this was Pete, and he was absolutely clueless to even the fact that Ray hadn't just died completely the first time, he assumed that Bob had simply gone to sleep... under the rug.

The eighteen year old's head worked in questionable ways, to say the least.

And so, as Pete carefully lifted the rug in order to reveal what he thought would be Bob and gently wake him up, it wasn't entirely surprising that he was screaming his fucking head of at the sight of Ray's ghostly, decaying, barely there and generally just fucking fucked up corpse.

At the sound of his boyfriend's screams, despite his 'life-threatening' headache, Mikey came running to see just what the hell was wrong.

And of course, Needless to say, Bob wasn't exactly expecting to come home to the sound of Pete Wentz screaming.

-

"What the fuck is wrong with him?" Mikey found himself practically yelling at Bob Bryar as he sat in the chair in the spare room, his eyes never leaving Ray's body, which had now been removed from under the rug and placed on the table.

"I don't have the slightest fucking clue." Bob sighed out for what felt like the millionth time, and still, Mikey just didn't ever seem to quite get it. "He's dead, but he's not, but he is."

"He's sort of drifting in between life states right now." Bert added out of nowhere: sat in the corner of room and generally just observing the situation between the other three. "Eventually his body's just going to decay away into nothing if we don't manage to keep him 'alive' somehow."

"How the fuck do you know this?" Mikey added, in utter distrust of Bert, despite his visions and the fact that he did generally seem to have a pretty good idea as to what was going on, but whatever, give Mikey a break, he just found the sort of body of his sort of dead boyfriend under a rug.

"So you're saying that I actually could have just left this and the problem would have gone away by itself?" Bob asked, eyebrows raised and just minutes away from being Mikey taking the liberty of punching him in the face.

"But the thing is, we can't just fucking resurrect him, the only way to stabilise him properly is to 'kill' him and just hope for the best-"

"Mikey could turn him." Pete sighed out, causing all eyes in the room to land upon him (besides Ray, of course, that would have been both utterly illogical and just kind of creepy). "That would technically 'kill' him, but he'd still be alive, sort of, I guess... I mean, it might not work but-"

"I'm going to do it." Mikey got up before Pete could even finish his sentence: absolutely certain in his decision.

"That's going to break the treaty!" Bob exclaimed, getting up and attempting to stop Mikey, but from the look of determination in the vampire's eyes, he knew it was already too late.

Mikey Way would do anything for Ray Toro, and one stupid fucking treaty was never going to change that. 

-

Hey guys:) lmao i'm not sorry, not at all, but look there's actually some plot for like once, I actually planned this chapter like I planned this to end now (like chapter 27 or something) lmao you're going to hate me but whatever appreciate the plot ok i tried. votes and comments would be nice, and I love you all<3