Fall Out Boy: Babies, Breakups, Bromances!

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Simpson wipes a smudge of Wentz’s makeup off her face. “I hope he comes out soon,” she says, lifting her shirt to expose her colossal belly. “He’s killing my bladder.”

America’s Funniest Home Videos is on, and Wentz plops down on the floor to watch. He scoots backward between Simpson’s legs, resting his chin on her thigh and his head gently against her stomach. She strokes his hair, brushing the bangs from his eyes. On the TV, a fat lady tumbles off a trampoline and into a fence. They both laugh.

Wentz allows that the pregnancy sped things up, but he always knew they’d be married someday. He courted Simpson publicly and relentlessly, babbling about his crush in magazines (both were dating other people) and e-mailing her often. “I hunted her down and shot the dart in her,” he says. “I just had to wait for her to collapse.” Now they live in a Beverly Hills mansion just up the road from Posh and Becks, with his-and-hers bulldogs and a son on the way. “Basically,” Wentz says, “I’m married to the person I’d be jerking off to.”

The band’s new album is called Folie à Deux, French for a madness of two—a psychological condition in which two people suffer from similar delusions, each feeding off the other’s psychosis. (Wentz read about it in Newsweek.) The textbook example is Romeo and Juliet, but Wentz swears the title isn’t about him and Simpson. Instead it’s about fame—the toxic symbiosis between stars and their public.

Wentz has always lived his life in the spotlight, mostly by design. But since he married pop’s most notorious little sis, he’s become a red-hot tabloid magnet, hounded by paparazzi outside Starbucks like any Hollywood celebutard. “Pete would never be on the cover of People if it weren’t for Ashlee,” Perez Hilton says. “Before her, he was just that guy in the band who wore eyeliner and spent a lot of time on his hair.” As Ashlee’s due date nears, the paps have staked out the couple’s home 24/7, hoping to score pics of the mommy-to-be en route to the hospital. The morning after the video shoot, I meet Wentz and Stump for breakfast at The Beverly Hills Hotel. Wentz arrives a half-hour late: The paps pounced before he’d pulled out of the driveway, and he spent the next 30 minutes zigzagging his black Range Rover through the Hollywood Hills trying to lose them. “It’s weird,” he says, sliding into the booth. “Spending your life being followed by people who want a picture of the person sitting next to you.”

Stump snorts: “Welcome to my world.”

Wentz likes eating here because the paparazzi can’t get in. Still, he sits with his back to the wall, his eyes darting nervously toward any peripheral movement. “I’m paranoid pretty much all the time,” he says. A few nights ago, he was in the kitchen when he saw someone on the security monitor: a man, scaling the fence. He ran outside; the intruder hopped in his car and sped off, smashing the Range Rover on the way.

Wentz sets his sunglasses on the table and picks up the menu. Truth be told, he doesn’t look great. Dark bags ring his eyes, and his skin has a waxy, jaundiced pallor. He says he sleeps three hours a night—sometimes less—and pops Ambien like Tropical Skittles. “I can take three Xanax bars and not feel a thing,” he says. “It’s kind of scary.”

We haven’t been seated long when who should walk in the restaurant but Wentz’s buddy John Mayer. “Oh, shit!” Wentz says, jumping up to give him a hug. “What’s up, dude?”

Mayer answers with a hearty clap on the back. “I just sent you an e-mail! How’s the 32-month pregnancy?” He turns to Stump. “I swear to God, they’re making a superhero over there.”

Close friends who—had things turned out differently with Jessica Simpson—might also have been brothers-in-law, Wentz and Mayer set online tongues wagging last spring when they engaged in a breathless bromance on their respective blogs. (Wentz praised Mayer in a post called YES, IT'S A CRUSH; two days later, Mayer responded with a gushing note titled CRUSH REQUEST ACCEPTED.) “Pete has this fabulous meta-awareness,” Mayer says. “Some people mistake it for narcissism, but it’s really just his way of playing with the idea of ‘Pete Wentz.’ His genius is he’s always one step ahead.” Mayer also admires the way Wentz has navigated the perils of tabloid romance: “To have this beautiful relationship with someone who gets attacked so often, and to handle it with such grace and respect—I just find that really impressive.”