The song changed, and Pete looked down at the wood of the table. How did he manage to do this? Every single time something began to look like it was going to be good Pete would taint his idea with it by thinking of the worst case scenario. He couldn't even begin to explain the thoughts running through his head right now. He'd been ignoring a few calls from people, because he knew he would end up rambling on the end of the phone to them, as they sat there patiently playing the unfortunate therapist to Pete's moment of madness. He pulled the headphones from his ears and wondered if he would ever allow himself to be totally happy within a situation. Would his conscious ever allow himself to be totally free of any guilt or worry? It was just something Pete did, a trait he'd had for years. He blamed himself totally for everything, blamed himself for the pessimism... but at the same time he failed to make it go away, no matter what.

He was glad he'd come here with someone else, he was there with Patrick. He could sit up all night listening to Patrick and his acoustic. So many people would kill for the opportunity to be sitting up at four in the morning listen to Patrick Stump singing. It was incredible, because his friend had such an impeccable voice, such an ability to sing absolutely anything. Hell, Pete had once stated Patrick could sing the phone book and people would still swoon. He didn't doubt it at all. They had been in the studio before their little jaunt out to Marchal Fest, equipped with laptops to make recordings and demos, Pete kept on writing and Patrick kept on playing and singing. Slowly but surely things were beginning to come together, even though everything still felt like it was all over the place right now. The songs kept getting sent between people, forwarded from Patrick to Pete and then to Joe and Andy. Ideas kept being thrown around, and that was how Pete liked it, rather than sitting down with the intent of writing an album they were going back to basics, like they didn't have anything to live up to, just writing and making music.

Pete glanced up, and then did a double take. He wondered how long Brendon had been there, probably long enough to see Pete staring wildly into space. He smirked, slightly embarrassed by his lack of realization that he was there.
"Hey," he said, looking up and smiling. He didn't really want to act like anything was wrong... nothing was wrong, it was just Pete over analyzing things. He was used to this... anyone who vaguely knew Pete knew this. He pulled his phone from his pocket as a new text came through, but ignored it so he could address the younger boy standing by the buses. "What's up?" Pete asked. He hadn't seen Brendon for a long time, nor any of the other guys from Panic, and he missed them quite a bit. Pete's kept thinking about when they'd been in L.A, when no one had known who they were, and somehow they'd ended up dressed in bras... and Pete had taken a picture to capture the memory, and now they were some insanely large band... but Pete still thought of them as exactly the same kids he'd known all those years ago.

"Definitely not drunk," Pete said with a smirk. The whole drinking thing had gone out of the window almost as quickly as he'd started it. He hadn't been straight edge for a while, everyone knew that... but now he was pretty much required to be sober twenty four seven. Undoubtedly that would change as the festival progressed, it wouldn't be a festival unless you were totally hammered at least once. Pete looked down at his phone, but didn't recognize the number, whoever had just text him was either someone he already knew and had just gotten a new phone, or someone who he didn't know at all. Right now, Pete wanted to say screw the outside world, and the text didn't strike him as in anyway important, so he put his phone back into his pocket and turned his attention back to Brendon.

It might seem, to other people, that the band themselves had changed a lot over the past year or so. Pete, however, could safely say he couldn't see it. Maybe that was because he was on the inside looking out, but it could also partially be because they hadn't changed significantly anyway. Pete knew what a change in a personality was, he could see through it. Hell, he would dare anyone to step forward and say touring or the lifestyle that they now led hadn't changed them in anyway. He was still the same Pete, deep down, but you had to change yourself to adapt to the situation around you, so to speak. Of course they were all going to end up different people at the end of the day, but it was all about the progression there.

"Yeah," Pete said after a while, imagining the looks on people's faces at seeing both himself and Brendon together by the tour buses. He wasn't too majorly concerned with it, although Brendon, he supposed, was a different story. Brendon would literally be lost within a sea of screaming girls, undoubtedly. Pete was always being chided by the media for different things. Screaming girls who were actually fans were absolutely nothing compared to the nosy paparazzi. "Yeah, I'm just... being stupid," Pete said, in answer to Brendon's earlier statement about him overthinking things. "I just got... like... a lot to overthink about," he explained. He noticed Brendon's subconscious gesture, his hand going toward his forehead. Pete had arrived a little after the bottling incident had happened, totally shocked to find out what had gone down in his absence. Probably for the best that he wasn't there, he supposed. Pete had a short temper for heckling and those kind of things.

Pete overanalysis of everything was something the majority of his friends lacked. It didn't make it a bad thing, it was a good thing. That meant they were good people to talk to, they were good people to cheer you up. Pete didn't really know where everyone was right now, he'd just waded through the crap that was in The Academy Is...'s bus and avoided Butcher and Sisky, who were playing a game. Pete wasn't entirely sure what the game was, because he hadn't taken the time to check it out... but he was certain it didn't involve half the stuff they'd be shoving in. Especially not the excessive swearing. Never the less, William hadn't been there, and William was who Pete had gone to talk to. William would understand how Pete felt, because above all William was the person who Pete now found he could relate to. It wasn't necessarily a good thing, Pete thought. He'd taken many calls from a rather worried William last year, and it had worried Pete too. He knew how it all felt to feel like you were totally lost, but it was such a scary thing to be on the other end of the phone for once, because above everything else, Pete also knew what kind of things it could lead to.

"Fifty cameras in my face? Sounds like what I go through every time I go down the shops to get some toothpaste," Pete smirked. Things had definitely changed... it felt weird to have the profile he did. To be followed everywhere when you were driving through L.A felt so strange. It wasn't like he was going to do anything interesting, he was going to do shopping, and go home and that was it. He wasn't going to stumble out of any bars, he wasn't going to start any fights... he had been a magnet for the media, and it was almost as unbelievable for him as it was for the people who disliked him. He was utterly and totally boring, and he failed to understand why people would follow him around to begin with. "No, overthinking things and being stupid is just how I waste my time," Pete smirked.

"It feels fucking weird to be here and not playing," he said. "Like, last year at Marchal we were playing... and now it's just me and Patrick coming to check out the bands and see everyone," Pete said. He thought of the party Gabe had thrown on Fall Out Boy's tour bus last year, he remember grabbing anything of any value, and locking the door to the back room just to make sure no one stole it. He didn't even want to imagine what would happen if Patrick's laptop had been stolen that night. Or what would have happened to him. The party had trashed their tour bus, and Bob had been angry at them all. Pete had calmly sat through his rant even though all he wanted to do was so shout back and make a big fuss over how it was Gabe's fault. It was an expensive tour bus, a very expensive one, and it was just one more thing in a long line of items that Fall Out Boy had managed to somehow trash. That and a wall on the Honda Civic Tour, which Pete still refused to admit he had any part in... "Yeah, Pete said, looking at Brendon. He was right - he was now legal to drink, and given the fact that the kid came from Las Vegas that was pretty much a big thing now. "Fuck it, we're gonna find booze," Pete said. It almost felt like someone else was talking for him now, but he didn't care. Very loud, live music and lots of alcohol... that would definitely prove a distraction for Pete.