As Brendon entered the comic book store on the outskirts of town, his heart was pounding.

He frequented the establishment due to the significant lack of assholes in the place, well in comparison to the one on the high street next to that fucking shoe shop that Gabe Saporta had a part time job at, and for the cheap prices that went with it, Brendon almost found himself turning a blind eye to the fact that the shop owner very clearly couldn't spell 'rentals'.

Without this gem of an establishment, Brendon would never have been gifted with the knowledge that there are people with suck a lack of intelligence that they're utterly unaware of the presence of the letter 'a' in 'rentals'.

However, it wasn't the shockingly low standards of intelligence that the shop sign set that had his heart beating at something close to twice its normal rate, but the dark hair and the bright blue eyes behind the counter and the person they belonged to.

And still, despite the knowledge that the dark haired and blue eyed individual who worked at the store on weekdays was doing nothing but unintentionally ruining his life, he still found himself frequenting the place far more than necessary, but not without a mind destroying wreck of a guilty conscience as he left after far too long 'browsing' the place and not thinking about the individual who worked on weekdays with the stupidly pretty eyes and the dark hair.

He had a fucking boyfriend, for Christ's sake, he had Ryan fucking perfect Ross as a boyfriend, and even if their sexlife wasn't entirely up to par lately, he still fucking loved that fucking milky asshole of his, and like that, Brendon should never be spending far too much time in comic book stores and staring at cashiers with bright blue eyes, and fuck-

Brendon was screwed, and his head had been exploding for the last two weeks and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. It wasn't like he could just request that the cashier quit just so he could have his life back, and it certainly didn't look like Brendon had the mental capability to just stop going.

And that was exactly what had Brendon Boyd Urie's heart beating at double speed as he walked into the comic book shop with the badly spelt name and found himself immediately meeting the bright blue eyes of the cashier and practically dying on the spot as he realised the store was absolutely empty from the two of them: basically, he was done for.

Perhaps it would have been simple and even easy if Brendon wasn't such an absolute fucking asshole about this: stopping still as he entered and met those bright blue eyes, staring right back at him, and as he continued to show no signs of life, other than an embarrassingly vibrant blush making residence upon his cheeks, it was left nothing more than evident that he'd entered the shop with absolutely no intentions of buying anything at all.

"I swear to God that you come here every single day, without fail, and you've only actually bought about three comics." Brendon was caught entirely by surprise at the voice filling the silence, and really, the only way he could respond at all was with his cheeks turning a darker shade of red. "And I don't even know your name."

"Uhh..." Brendon choked out, finding himself making his way across the store to the till where the blue eyed idiot stood with nothing more than a badly hidden grin. "I'm.... B-Brendon..." He finally managed to remember his own name and he couldn't help but feel stupidly proud of himself.

"So, Brendon, don't mind me, but I'm beginning to suspect that you're not really here for the comics." And just like that, Brendon was screwed. "I'm Sarah, by the way." The cashier added, filling the silence with what was definitely a smirk.

And really, Brendon had to make a conscious decision not to respond with 'I know', because he totally didn't happen take not of just how close that name tag was placed to her cleavage, and he totally didn't, because Brendon was fucking gay enough to declare himself the arch nemesis of the Catholic church, and on top of that, he had a boyfriend, he had Ryan fucking Ross, and yet, the seventeen year old frequented the comic book store with the misspelt name just to see Sarah with bright blue eyes and dark hair, and... the boobs.

Brendon Urie did not look at boobs, Brendon Urie didn't stare at girls, and yet here he was, in the moment, unable to even remember his boyfriend's name, and still feeling like one guilty motherfucker.

"My eyes are up here, by the way." She added after twenty or so seconds of uncomfortably heterosexual eye to cleavage contact had occurred, and Brendon thought about mumbling something about him being gay as an excuse, but there was no way in hell that she was going to believe him now, even if it was the truth.

Hell, Brendon didn't even believe himself now.

"Sorry..." He dragged out, pulling his gaze to the floor and re-evaluating his existence as he tried not to think too hard at just how he was fucking his life over, and really, honestly, this had never been intentional, and this had entirely taken him by surprise, but now that it had, all hope was lost for Brendon's homosexuality, and sanity for that matter.

This was driving him crazy, she was driving him crazy, and really, he needed to go suck his boyfriend's dick or something just as a reminder as to who he was and what he couldn't be, but Ryan cared all too much about Patrick right now and not at all about fucking his boyfriend.

So maybe, it was expected that Brendon's teenage hormones would have lead him elsewhere in times of sexual neglect, but fucking Sarah from the comic book store - Sarah the girl; needless to say, no, this was not something Brendon signed up for at all.

"My shift ends early today." She threw the words into the silence like they were nothing and in that moment, Brendon found himself forgetting about Ryan Ross entirely. "There's a nice cafe down the road." She added as Brendon remained in a stunned kind of silence. "Brendon, you idiot, I'm asking you on a date here!" She resorted to 'slap-in-face' blatant words as Brendon's idiocy outgrew the one of whoever had designed the sign for this place.

And in a star struck, sanity vacant moment of bright blue eye corrupted madness, Brendon found himself with the intelligence of a vegetable and the ability to do nothing but nod his head like the world's biggest idiot.

Sarah locked up the cash register in response and unpinned her nametag, grabbing the keys from under the desk as she met Brendon's eyes. "You're not good with girls, are you?" And really, Brendon could not say that he was.

She giggled, leaving Brendon to follow her like some sort of dumbstruck puppy as she grabbed her bag and locked the place up. "Just a little tip then, Brendon, spending hours in a comic book store everyday for two weeks just to stare at the girl that works there is not exactly the way to go when it comes to making a move."

And Brendon found himself laughing along with her, the silent setting on his phone, had him oblivious to the call from Ryan, and perhaps right now, even his existence in general.

-

Although Joe and Patrick's conversations tended to be awfully one sided, their friendship was not, and even after only a few days of knowing one another.

Perhaps Patrick was just jumping at the first person who really seemed to understand and respect him regardless of everything else and maybe that was a little pathetic, but maybe Patrick just didn't care, because maybe Patrick reckoned that he deserved to have at least one shot at being happy, and it seemed that Joe Trohman was just that.

But despite that, Patrick could never help but be nervous, especially around new people, and especially when these new people were Joe's friends, and really, as he made his way to the address Joe had texted him, he felt like dying, but in a good way, probably.

"Patrick!" Joe exclaimed, jumping up from where he was sat on his front porch, and offered his friend a smile that Patrick found himself almost automatically returning. "You okay?" He asked, concern in his eyes, and Patrick nodded in response: it wasn't like he could at all even consider providing a detailed explanation as to why he wasn't, especially not via either a nod or a shake of his head.

"Andy's my best friend - he's kind of quiet too, I mean, he speaks, but not a lot, and then there's Spencer and Dallon who practically never shut up, but-" Joe was cut off by a rather questionable shriek from inside, which really left Patrick more than fucking confused.

"In the butt? You have it in the butt?"

"I really wish I could explain." Joe sighed out, shaking his head as he led Patrick inside, and Patrick tried not to think too hard about the scratches on his hallway and where the paint was chipped and too many pairs of shoes in the corner, and he didn't think at all and he didn't make assumptions that the world would be better without.

He didn't make assumptions because he knew, instantly, that they were true.

As Joe led Patrick into the living room, he was met with a bearded dude with glasses sat in the centre of the room, on the fucking carpet, cross legged, almost entirely zoned out as he stared at the random ass TV show running on mute in the background, and that wasn't even the weirdest thing: bearded dude without glasses was sat on the sofa with his phone in his hand and a rather concerned expression upon his face, with the final guy - brown hair and a stupid floppy fringe, laughing his head off.

"Guys, this is Patrick. I told you about him earlier." Joe cleared his throat, addressing the room and grabbing Andy's attention within seconds. "That's Andy," he gestured to the guy sat on the floor, "Spencer," the guy holding his phone, "and Dallon," the guy laughing like an absolute asshole.

"Hey. Nice to meet you." Andy got up, smiling at Patrick, and Patrick grinned back: Andy seemed nice enough, he reckoned, although he found himself just a little bit nervous regarding Spencer and Dallon - they were all loud and too much personality, and he almost felt awkward just being in the same room.

"That's the guy that doesn't speak, isn't it?" Spencer asked from the back and Patrick couldn't help but blush a little and nod. "I didn't mind anything by that - I'm sure you're cool." He added, the last part of his sentence aimed at Patrick in particular, who smiled in response to ensure that he knew that it was fine.

"What was that thing about butts? I heard you screaming from outside." Joe asked, addressing Dallon and Spencer, making his way over to the two of them, leaving Patrick awkwardly stood with Andy, and Patrick would have been a liar if he said that his head wasn't spinning- and, hey, maybe this was a bad idea and maybe he should have just politely declined and just not come in the first place-

"Hey, so, Patrick? Joe said you go to the Catholic school - I heard that it's really strict there, like they have nuns? Do they have nuns?" Andy seemed to just about swoop in like some sort of motherly eagle, and save Patrick from some form of social suicide, and from then on, Patrick just knew that Andy was a nice guy.

Patrick laughed a little, shaking his head, and Andy pulled a disappointed face as the two of them sat down on the floor, and trying their best to ignore Dallon screaming something about butts from across the room.

"Sorry about them - I think Dallon's a little drunk or something, almost possibly just a little gay. He talks about butts a lot." Andy sighed out, smiling and shaking his head, and blushing a little as he tried to make this conversation as easy for Patrick as possible, and really, he found himself at a loss for how Joe just seemed to pick this up so fucking easily. "They were screaming about gaysex earlier, by the way - Spencer didn't actually know how it worked, and Dallon looked really personally offended. I mean, he says that he's not gay, but... I mean, he's gay... well, not that he'd tell anyone, he'd get beaten up at public school for that or something, but then again, it's probably worse at Catholic school, isn't it?"

And Patrick couldn't help but think of Pete as he nodded his head.

Because no matter how many new people he surrounded himself with, and no matter how many thoughts he had distracting himself, he always found his thought process drifting back to Pete Wentz and that gun that he should have never pressed to his head.

-

Every brain cell Brendon Urie possessed, although he didn't possess a particularly large quantity, was screaming at him that this was nothing more than a spectacularly terrible idea, and yet the seventeen year old found himself forgetting about his boyfriend and being 'dragged' into a coffee shop with the one person he was never supposed to be attracted to.

"Please tell me that you're not one of those people who have like every kind of syrup and twelve kilograms of cream on their coffee, I mean, like otherwise, I think I might be sick or something." Sarah laughed it off, oblivious to Ryan Ross' existence and the fact that she was 'the other woman', well, the only woman, but, she was largely oblivious to Brendon's supposed extravagant homosexuality.

"I just get lattes, usually, I mean, maybe some cream, I like cream, you know, it's a fun squirty thing, I mean-" Let's just say that when it came to trying not to be blatantly homosexual, Brendon Urie was nothing but terrible, and Sarah was practically in tears.

"You like squirty white cream, huh?" She giggled, rolling her eyes and wondering how on earth that had at all sounded any better in his head. "I'm only joking, come on, it's fine."

And perhaps it would have been if Brendon didn't really like squirty cream, and not just on coffee, but in his boyfriend's butthole, metaphorically, of course. The only white liquid that belonged in Ryan Ross' ass, was well, natural yoghurt, obviously. What else?

The two ordered their drinks, and Brendon made a significant effort to steer clear of cream of any variety as Sarah tried not to laugh, before they sat down at a booth in the corner, and Brendon prayed that this was entirely the other end of town to where his friends usually hung out, because this looked awfully like a date with a girl, and really, Brendon could lie to himself as much as he wanted, but it would still remain as just that.

"So, Brendon, tell me about yourself. Do you actually have any interest in comics whatsoever?" She asked, giggling a little as she stirred her cappuccino, and really, Brendon's blush made the answer evident enough to ensure that the conversation would easily progress even with the absence of a stuttered out, nervous response. "Thought so." She added, pushing her hair behind her ears and meeting Brendon's gaze.

"Sorry... I, I just... I'm kind of bad at dates, and girls, I, this is not what I'm used to, I... I..." Brendon sighed out, shaking his head and attempting to pull himself together. "My friends say that I'm an asshole because I make too many sarcastic comments, yeah, I'm 'supposed' to be this over-confidence egotistical asshole, but that doesn't quite look like it's up to par today. I smoke, sorry if that's a problem, I guess, but my life's kind of messed up right now, also I really like music, that's cool, I guess..."

"I like music too." She added with a smile, and Brendon swore that he was going to bang his head against the table if their definitions of 'music' turned out to be two entirely different things; Brendon was talking about music and not top forty shit, and that would most definitely be a problem. "Real music. I'm in this all girl punk band with a few of my friends and okay, we're not the best yet, but it's fun. I sing, by the way, in the band."

"Wow, that's actually really cool." Brendon's eyes widened, almost shocked to hear it, as although he meant no offense by it, he wouldn't exactly expect Sarah to be the kind of person to be in all girl punk band.

"You thought by 'music' I meant, 'look at me I can play like four one direction songs on the piano and sing slightly off key and totally not in time', didn't you?" She raised her eyebrows, almost accusingly at Brendon as she sipped her coffee and Brendon broke into laughter as his cheeks tinged red.

"Kind of." He admitted, grinning far more than he would have liked to, because not only was Sarah only both unfortunately and unexpectedly attractive, but she was fucking amazing too. Surely, they could just be friends, and surely, this could work, and Brendon was most definitely gay, but goddamn, he was also most definitely attracted to Sarah.

"You should come see us play some time. I mean, we haven't got any actual gigs or anything, yet, but we're practicing at my house on Saturday, I have Saturdays off, as you probably know." She gave Brendon a look at that point: light hearted, but uncomfortably accusing, nonetheless. "I'll text you the address - you should come."

"That sounds really fucking cool, you know." Brendon exclaimed, grinning like a maniac and almost choking on his coffee in excitement, just like an absolute idiot: Sarah found it cute, though, so perhaps it didn't quite matter, at least not as much as the fact that he was technically cheating on Ryan should have.

"So you'll come?" She exclaimed, almost as if she hadn't been expecting that Brendon would actually take her up on such an offer, and really, Sarah wasn't expecting all that much from this 'date', but once he stopped acting like a nervous wreck, Brendon was actually a pretty cool guy, and she could only hope that his taste in music was just as good.

"Sure." He grinned, pulling out his phone to set a reminder, and swiping away the text notification from Ryan, because as he'd said earlier, Brendon's asshole behaviour was certainly not up to standard today, and he needed to change that.

-

"Are you sure it's okay that I come over- I, I... I mean, like isn't this a family thing?" And really, it wasn't helping Frank with the fact that Gee was nervous, then again, Mrs Iero's choice in boyfriends wasn't exactly quite as great as Frank's.

"Come on, you big idiot, I love you - you're practically family, and my mum fucking adores you for some reason, okay?" And with that stupid fucking grin, the seventeen year old dragged his boyfriend in through the front door of his house, and Gee just couldn't help but chuckle as he came to remember just how he'd met Linda Iero, and just a few hours before, how Frank had lost his virginity to him.

"Mum! We're back." Frank called out, and sure enough, within seconds, Mrs Iero had peered her head around into the hallway, her face bursting into a grin at the very sight of Gee.

"Gee! I haven't seen you in far too long - you and Frankie doing alright? You looking after my son?" And Frank was just about ready to throw his head through the cement of the nearest wall.

"Yeah, he's being a good boy for me. I don't like naughty boys." Gee smirked, and both Frank's boyfriend and his mother burst into giggles at that and Frank began to seriously consider head-butting that wall, because this was really not the kind of conversation anyone ever wanted to experience, especially when it involved their boyfriend and their fucking mother.

"Come on, Frank, stop looking like you're ready to commit mass genocide, and get your shoes off and come into the dining room when you're ready, okay?" And with such a casual comment, Mrs Iero disappeared back into the kitchen, and Frank seriously felt like slapping himself, and they hadn't actually met this elusive boyfriend of his mother's yet.

"Frankie, come on, you know I like naughty boys too." Gee grinned at his boyfriend, and Frank simply turned, tossing the twenty five year old an 'I fucking hate you' glare, before taking his shoes off and making his way into the dining room - Gee at his heels.

"Boys, this is my boyfriend-" And Linda didn't quite manage to finish that sentence as the man in the corner turned around, and almost cinematically so, to reveal long dark hair and all too familiar face.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Gee was the first to speak, addressing the supposed 'boyfriend' rather Linda herself, who was just a little taken a back to say the least.

"Well that was unexpected." Aforementioned 'boyfriend' exhaled looking between Gee and Frank as he began to reassess his life, just a little. "Can I just say that this wasn't intentional?"

"Oh for god's sake, Bert." Frank rolled his eyes, shaking his head at what was now kind of almost his 'step-dad'.

"Wait... what?" Linda exclaimed, finally butting into the conversation, which consisted of nothing but a series of concerned stares. "How exactly do you know each other?"

"Bert's my housemate, basically." Gee explained and really Linda rather did look like she was considering throwing her face through a wall.

"Can we like eat now, because I'm really just quite interested in the story of how on earth you two actually met?" Frank snapped, out maintaining eye contact with Bert as they sat down: Bert and Frank's mother at one side of the table, and Gee and Frank on the other.

"We met in a supermarket, you know, romantic..." Linda trailed off, laughing a little and Bert really did look as if he was re-evaluating the purpose of his life right now. "We went on a date and stuff, you know, couple things - he's kind of cute in an asshole kind of way."

"Yeah, I really don't see it." Frank confessed, looking between his mother and Bert McCracken with nothing but the desire to stab himself in the eye.

"Well, you shouldn't - he's my boyfriend." And never did Mrs Iero think that was a sentence she'd have to say to her son.

"Yeah, that really could have helped when he was flirting with Gee." Frank rolled his eyes, reeling off a response and his mother just shook her head as she came to the realisation that this was most likely the most awkward situation ever invented.

"That was months ago, Frank, I've moved on." Bert sighed out, awkwardly dragging his fork around his place like he looked as if he was going to be sick.

"Clearly." Frank added, raising his eyebrows, and Gee gave him a gentle shove, which Frank really saw no need for whatsoever. "What?" He asked, eyebrows raised in his boyfriend's direction.

"Just leave them alone - if they're happy then whatever. Okay, I guess it's kind of weird, but-" Gee attempted to just settle this calmly and freak the fuck out at Bert in the privacy of their own home, but it soon became very apparent that Frank was just having none of that.

"Bert McCracken is practically my fucking step-dad, do you not get how messed up that is?" Frank now raised his voice to a yell, and Gee found himself flashing Mrs Iero an apologetic glance.

"Frank, just calm down, come on-"

"They've fuck- my mum- what the fuck, Gee? That's fucking messed up. My mother has touched Bert McCracken's coc-" And by now there was simply no doubt about the fact that Frank was approximately two seconds away from a mental breakdown.

"Frank, you're the only person in this room who hasn't touched my cock, and I'm really sorry you're feeling left out, but I honestly think Gee might mind." 

-

Dallon Weekes was an 'interesting' guy to say the least, or well, that's the word his teachers seemed to use when they wanted to sugar coat the fact that he only seemed to gain any interest in class at all whenever the topic took a sharp turn in the morbid direction. But no one ever saw deeper than that.

He was just a teenage boy that never really grew out of the gore phase and that was just that, and no one, not even Spencer asked any questions beyond that. It wasn't that Dallon was at all intimidating - he just wasn't worth it, he was just average, just another guy at a shitty public school and his claim to fame was that his best friend, Spencer, once ate one hundred grapes in five minutes for a dare in like sixth grade.

They were grapes with seeds though, so you know, that was probably quite impressive to eleven year olds.

But Dallon was just that guy: he wasn't popular, he wasn't special, but if you said his name, most people could put a face to it, which was probably down to the fact that no one else in the school was actually called Dallon, but whatever, he'd take that as an originality bonus - positive thinking and all that.

Although that was really more of Joe's forte, where as Dallon found himself always looming over a great pit of despair, which really sounded far more poetic and special than it really was, because teachers were liars at best and Dallon Weekes was nothing more than a head case.

He was good at counting, though - he'd give himself that.

In fact, he was in fact the one who had counted out the hundred grapes that Spencer had eaten in sixth grade.

He counted everything: footsteps, people in a room, how long he could hold his breath, the minutes before he lost track and something else caught his attention, how many times Spencer looked at that girl with the wavy hair in Maths, and then divided the number by two because Dallon didn't like big numbers, they scared him, and it was a developed fear, because he couldn't deal with perhaps more than a few at a time or he began to shake and his head began to spin as the sickness crept up his stomach and he made a swift exit.

Because Dallon counted until he felt sick and after he threw up, he started all over again: he had no goal, no end achievement with this, it was just what he had to do and it was just who he was, because his head only seemed to work with a monotonous ticking of a clock in the back of his mind as the seconds ticked away and he called another day a waste of time.

And as he finally got out of school as the bell rang and Spencer went on to him for at least ten minutes about the girl with wavy hair in Maths class and he counted how many times he smiled as he did so, and then just how many times he lied in denial of any interest of her - it was ridiculous, but Dallon just left it, otherwise he'd probably only be spurred on to continue describing the exact shade of her hair.

But soon, Spencer had Joe and Andy to talk about girls with and Dallon had the comfort of knowing that they walked the other way home to the shittier part of town and Dallon went home to a house so big, and yet so empty: no one was home until eight, usually, and that gave him far too much time alone with his own thoughts.

And perhaps that was nothing but bad, but due to his rather skewed perception of reality, to the seventeen year old, it was nothing but good.

He counted the stairs and how long it took him to ascend all three flights to the attic and buried himself in his duvet for a good ten minutes as he stared at the ceiling and tried to occupy his mind with something other than the ticking time bomb that never went away.

He counted wrappers on the floor, posters on his walls, how many times he blinked, how many times his friends texted him, how many invites out he refused, and eventually atoms in the room, but it never quite worked out, and he always found himself getting up from the duvet and just staring out through the roof window at the sky.

He counted shades of blue and counted just how many ways in which they were both meaningless and meaningful: meaningless always won, meaningless won when it came to everything, and yet Dallon counted, because that was all he fucking did.

He had his own bathroom: upstairs in the attic, and it was rather private due to the fact that his parents never came up here and that he was quite alone in his own little part of the house.

He didn't mind for the most part: he could count aloud and no one would hear him, and no one would call him crazy and no one would point out the obvious fuck ups in his daily routine.

And everyday Dallon counted the steps to his own private bathroom; he counted the footsteps from the window where he stopped and stared at the shades of blue and then he counted the amount of times he considered turning back and the amount of times he stopped himself.

Everyday, he locked the bathroom door and just fell down to the floor, meeting his reflection in the mirror, and scowling, and he counted as he blink and as his chest rose and fell as a consequence of increased breathing.

It was then that he finally did something with the numbers he'd counted in that day, because although meaningless always won, there was always just one thing that mattered, and that was what Dallon preferred to count - calories.

He hated big numbers, and as his head filled itself with the total, the seventeen year old felt the all too familiar sickening feeling in his stomach, and within seconds that he found himself counting, he was puking and flushing and falling back to floor again as he reset the total and started counting again.

-

Hey guys:) Dear god, I feel like a million things are happening in this chapter but oh well, I get really over excited about this story okay there's so much plot like I haven't even mentioned like half the characters in this chapter oh dear:') Anyways, votes and comments are appreciated and I love you all<3