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

3: You Are The Dreamer And We Are The Dream

Gerard hadn't left me with much choice other than to leave a desperate Pete Wentz in his awfully noisy living room. I sorted of minded, but in a way that I wouldn't dare admit; Gerard was more important than Pete any day, because Gerard was my flesh and blood, I had him forever and without a doubt, and Pete, well Pete was... well Pete. I just couldn't describe it; it was hella complicated. He was just Pete- no, he was my Pete, and he always would be, or at least I hoped so, because despite the irritancy and phone calls at ungodly hours, Pete was kind of my backbone, and as sad as it was, my only and best friend.

As I opened the door, I was met with an unusually full kitchen - had someone died?

"Hey Mikey, this is Ryan." I hurried through the door, leaving a frustrated and overall just generally disappointed Pete Wentz, in favour of my distressed brother, only to be met by Frank standing in my kitchen, alongside the guy I recognised with the eyeliner from my lectures. Gerard was curled up on the countertop in the corner, seeming to be distancing himself from Frank and Ryan as much as possible.

This was confusing, and I only managed to gather one thing from the whole situation - it wasn't looking good, it wasn't looking good at all. And I have should know; I practically have a master’s degree in the art of things not looking good.

"Hey." I waved awkwardly at the boy who had now been introduced to me as Ryan, before glancing around to find Gerard sat rather unadroitly on the kitchen countertop, a cup of coffee releasing steam at a rapid pace whilst being trapped between his firm grasp. I was struggling to find what was so urgent for me to return home - not that I was at all that upset to leave Pete, there was just the matter of Pride and Prejudice laying on my desk, with several tonnes of guilt pressing down on me with every unread page. Guilt was an awfully puzzling emotion, because as much guilt as there was, there was twice as much of me that didn't want to read it.

Ryan grinned at me - he looked friendly enough and didn't see what Gerard’s problem was. Maybe he was just being selfish and he wanted Frank all to himself, but the expression on that sullen face of his told a different story entirely.

"Hey Mikey, don't I see you in my-" I didn't want his life story, so it'd be rather necessary to cut him short - he was a competent English student, he was going to have an ego the size of the sun. It was possibly even competing with Gerard's, and maybe that was simply the problem here.

"You see me in my lectures, yeah." I finished for him, looking between Ryan and Gerard warily, wondering as to why there could possibly be any cause for dislike or possibly even jealous between the two of them.

Perhaps it was something to do with the eyeliner- Fuck, I don't know. The two of them looked pretty similar, even down to the eyeliner, except Ryan looked like he'd actually showered within this past week. Hygiene was quite obviously, not one of Gerard's strong points, as you could tell by the stench, but I honestly think he liked it - how Frank puts up with it though, I really don't know.

"Oh yeah, cool." He stood awkwardly beside Frank, looking between Gerard and I, possibly wondering which one of us was just the more opposed to him.

I mean, he was okay, he just reminded me a little too much of Gerard, but he'd taken away all the uncanny 'Gerard' traits that made him feel like an imposter almost, like an alien within my own home.

"I'll be seeing more of you now, so that's cool." He used the word 'cool' too much, and quite frankly, it was rather beginning to irritate me. He was an English student with far too much eyeliner and far too many scarves, whose languages choices seemed to masquerade him as some kind of Californian surfer dude - this was something he most certainly was not.

I raised my eyebrows at him, "how so? Are you planning on kidnapping me or something?" I let out a maladroit laugh, the situation reminding me just a little of Pete, and his questionable mannerisms.