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

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

Hey guys:) So guessed who dediced to start another thing?;) Updates for this will be as and when I feel like it, and judging by this 12,000 word mammoth, quite a bit longer than usual. Now, I've said that, the next chapter will be like 12 words long:') So it'll be hella rad if you read this, y'know;)

"You have to go out sometimes, Mikey." My brother, Gerard's, voice penetrated my eardrums, in an ear splittingly whiny tone, for what felt like the seven hundredth time in the past few minutes, and was now getting more irritating than painful. Gerard seemed to be good at 'irritating'; I'd noticed that a lot lately.

Gerard was a twenty five year old who still lived in his mother’s basement, surviving solely off of coffee, ramen and excessive amounts of nicotine. His room (the basement) was awfully dark, and I think he certainly exploited the fact that the basement didn’t have windows, but the absence of any light wasn’t the first thing that struck you once you set foot down there, it was the horribly pungent smell of hair dye. Gerard dyed his hair more than an aging woman that wanted to prolong her greys a few years; he’d just changed his mop of black hair into a short, bleached blonde. It made him look a little less like a vampire, and therefore prevented little children being just a little scared of him when mum forced him to go out, which probably was just about worth the extensive costs of excessive amounts of hair dye.

"I know, I’m just far too content inside right now." I tried to block out his horribly persistent begs for me to go pick up yet another bloody comic for him. If the guy had such strong feelings towards leaving the house, then I don't see why he shouldn't be more than motivated to go and fetch it for himself. A general lack of motivation towards everything and anything was one of Gerard's irreplaceable traits that I'd learned to cope and put up with over the last two decades.

He'd ordered this limited edition signed copy of a comic with a name far too ambiguous for me to even contemplate remembering, a few days ago now, and after receiving an email from the local comic book store about its arrival, he'd pinned the responsibility of collecting the goddamn thing upon me. I was not happy about this.

Gerard was unnecessarily obsessed with comics for a man who’d be alive for a quarter of a century. In fact, he was more like a twelve year old boy, and I think the only thing that’s changed in the last thirteen years of his life is his voice breaking and growing a few inches. On the inside, he’s practically the same old Gerard, which seven year old me spent most of his time being generally pissed off with.

"You literally haven't left this room for two weeks now. That's fourteen days, three hundred and thirty six hours, twenty thousand-" I had to stop him soon, because knowing Gerard; he would most certainly go on until he ran out of measurements of time to use. This was one of his most annoying qualities, and believe me, there was rather a lot of competition.

"Yeah, I get the idea." I turned the page of the book I was supposed to be reading, and not doing very well at doing so, for my English course. I was going to fail without the grade that the comprehension on this book constituted the majority of, or I knew that I was going to get kicked out of college; my professor had been very insistent on intimidating us all with the far too frequent and horribly violent reminders of that fact.

Also there was the fact that she didn't particularly get along with me; let's say, I maybe have accidentally set fire to the lecture hall once... Yeah, I'm not leaving matches in my pocket ever again, or going to lectures when I'm about as awake as a corpse. Neither of those are particularly good ideas, neither was taking a subject I have very little interest in, but at least it makes mum happy to know that at least one of her sons won’t be living in her basement forever.

I’m not exactly too sure as to why I decided upon taking English in the first place, but it was probably the only subject I was vaguely competent at and there was probably a lot of persuasion on my mother’s part. An English degree was a little eccentric, but overall rather respectful, more respectful than an apparent degree in laziness. Gerard never bothered to go to college; in fact, he’d spent the majority of his college fund on comic books. This was another thing mum wasn’t awfully pleased about, yet she didn’t quite have the heart to kick him out of the basement. It was exactly as if he was disturbing anyone; you could rather easily forget he was even there, in fact, and when mum nagged him about whatever he was going to do with his life, and that it still wasn’t too late to fill in an application form for whatever place would possibly contemplate taking him, he simply brushed everything off with the answer that he was going to be a comic book artist.