Just Off The Key Of Reason (Pete Wentz/Mikey Way)

1: You're Someone Who Knows Someone Who Knows Someone I Once Knew

Truthfully, neither me or mum knew if there was any hope in this aspiration or whether Gerard was just convincing her to let him live off her wages and caffeine supply for as long as he could manage to, as Gerard was rather secretive about his art pieces, and was reluctant to let anyone see them.

"See, I'm clever, because I leave the house, and learn things. Learning is important, Mikey!" He had that weird preachy voice going on again, and the words sounded quite frankly rather ridiculous coming from the mouth of someone, who until very recently wouldn't leave the basement for months on end.

What he spent days down in that dark basement doing, I didn't particularly want to know, but I'd once found his sketchbook and it reminded me more so of a visual interpretation of Fifty Shades of Grey, than a sophisticated art journal, and I simply daren’t to wonder what his comic books were like, or even about for that matter.

 Not that sophistication was ever one of Gerard's strong points, or subtly for that matter; I remember once when he was twelve and he did an English project on how serial killers and their pent up emotions and generally incapability to live peacefully among society just after his teacher's husband had been murdered. That really didn't go down well, as you could pretty easily guess, and this was presumably why Gerard currently wasn’t the one studying relentlessly for an English degree.

"And in what way are you aiding my education by interrupting me and preventing me from reading this book that literally is my entire grade for this semester?" I narrowed my eyes at him from behind my white framed glasses, he, of course, really didn't seem fazed at all, and more so was intrigued with peering at the book title and of course pulling a disgusted face when he recognised it to be Pride and Prejudice.

He had brewed a certain hatred for classics over the years and came to utterly despise them in the recent past. I think this was mainly the aforementioned English teacher’s fault; she’d taken a liking to classics and Gerard had pretty much taken a major dislike to everything she condoned after she put him in an after school detention for the aforementioned, and rather questionable in morals, essay.

"Ah! Study is greatly improved by breaks of fresh air, see, I'm doing you a favour, really." I rolled my eyes at him and closed the book, putting it down on the desk and glaring up at him, attempting to convey my frustration onto someone like Gerard, who quite frankly, couldn't care less. Gerard was really not about carefully planned study, and more about cramming everything he could onto the palm of his hand the morning of the exam and barely passing via the means of barely legal methods. Conventional was really not one of Gerard's strengths.

"No. You want me to do you a favour, by getting that comic book that you're far too lazy to pick up yourself." Gerard was a ridiculously lazy excuse for a brother, but at least he wasn't the preachy sports type, urging me into actually doing something physically productive in him, because Gerard would rather leave the house without eyeliner on than go to the gym, and for a boy that lives his life as some kind of cosmetic raccoon, that's a rather disturbing matter.

I was sort of glad that Gerard was lazy, because I was lazy too - I just don't think he's quite figured that out yet, well maybe it's just the fact that my laziness was nothing in comparison to his sloth like lifestyle. This lifestyle was certainly going to kill him before he hit thirty, but despise mum's constant reminders of this, he didn't seem all that fussed, but then again, that was Gerard. Maybe mum was just a little bit glad with the fact that she may only have to put up with her adult son residing in her basement for the next five years, or was that just a little bit too morbid?

"Mikes..." He groaned like a small and argumentative child, batting his eyelashes in a horribly feminine manner. "It's limited edition." I knew how Gerard felt about his comics, but I was not getting up and sacrificing my grade for his inability to gather up the motivation to do a menial task like this. "It’s limited edition!" He stressed for the final time, trying to get those two little and generally meaningless words into my head.