Magnetic stars. (Frerard, Petekey)

Chapter nine - Really Mediocre at Loneliness

Chapter nine - Really Mediocre at Loneliness

sorry im not answering messages rn I cant rlly do much. this chapter was prewritten im not rlly writing either I just thought I ought to update. I hope ur all having a beautiful day and listening to cool music and feeling nice and healthy.

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Dewees was becoming a fairly good friend of Gerard's. This was quite a spectacular achievement, considering the fact that Gerard had never before had so much as a really mediocre friend.

Gerard was noticing a lot of things on this trip. He was beginning to take note of the fact that the most prominent thoughts in his head through the four days he had been in England unfailingly featured Mr Iero, and he was beginning to miss the man more than his mother. (Not more than Mikey though. Mikey was too cool to be beaten.) Not only this, but he was in a constant state of comparing Dewees to Mr Iero, which was not only strange, considering the fact that the former was a sixteen year old kid and the latter was an adult by about a decade, but was also a useless source of worry for Gerard.

In every aspect, Mr Iero was better than Dewees. But Gerard didn't want to be friends with Mr Iero. The mere word 'friend' felt insubstantial. The thing was, Gerard wasn't sure what he wanted with Mr Iero at all. He wanted the two of them to be closer, of course, so he could see the stars, so he could feel the stars, so he could breathe the stardust in like a fucking drug, but he didn't want anything with a name, it just felt wrong, like it didn't fit with the relationship they had already, let alone the imaginary one they had in Gerard's head.

Anyway, of course Mr Iero wouldn't want to make anything more than a casual acquaintance of Gerard. He was just a kid. A weird chubby goth kid who paid too much attention to his English teacher.

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Gerard was starting to wonder if this trip was really an art trip at all. Dewees was starting to wonder with him.

The class had done so much hiking through so many repetitive countryside scenes that Gerard was beginning to think that it might be a sports trip in disguise, with the purpose of luring innocent, unfit artsy kids into a torturous week of high intensity exercise—while also getting a tiny portion of their art coursework done on the side, of course.

Gerard fucking hated walking. In fact, he hated walking to such a great extent that he was starting to think that this week might be the worst week of his life. Damn art teachers with their ulterior motives and evil connections to the gym coaches.

Gerard kind of wished Mikey was there with him. She made everything better. Not exactly good, but better. But hell, she and Gerard were polar opposites sometimes. Mikey loved walks. She said they helped her connect with nature, and rediscover the beautiful things in the world. Gerard would have loved to be able to rediscover things simply through walking—how Mikey managed it he couldn't possibly understand—but he only found things at times when he wasn't looking for them, so all a walk would lead to would be observations, which would only lead to questions, and Gerard had enough on his mind already without tedious new niggling thoughts. He couldn't afford to waste space on the silly wonderings that came to mind when he was walking aimlessly.

A while ago—Gerard hadn't a clue exactly how long ago, and he hated that about his memories; it seemed the only characteristic of autism he didn't possess was the skill and fascination with dates and numbers—Mikey had dragged Gerard with her on a walk, and Gerard's only memory of the experience was of his ears hurting, and of seeing a large circular sign that read 'green lane' and wondering absently if it was because the road had been painted green. He wondered if it would be a grassy pathway rather than a sheet of tarmac. He wondered if the lane had been named for the trees lining either side of it. But it didn't look like any other road name sign he'd seen in his life; it was circular and up on a single tall post and in a rather ambiguous place.

They were a child's wonderings, Gerard knew, and it bothered him, but in many ways he appreciated his childlike thoughts more than anything else, more than others would. Naïve and unknowing thoughts led to inspiration, and Gerard was always looking for sparks to coax his mind into opening. But there was a difference between questions and inspiration. Often it was a thin line, and often he crossed it without meaning to, but his mind insisted rather rigidly that the questions that came to mind on walks would always be questions, and nothing else. He hated his brain a lot at times.

He hated everything in existence at some point, though. It was just the way things were.

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Gerard hated to admit it—god, he fucking hated to admit it—but he was actually learning on this trip. Learning, and making friends and everything, like the perfect Normal Child his father despised him for not being and his mother desperately encouraged him to pretend to be. He wondered if when he got home to Jersey he would want to go out to bars, or slag people off on facebook, or be rude to girls like the other boys he knew (with the exception of Dewees), and be a normal kid. He sure fucking hoped not. The first thing he wanted to do when he got home was play Zelda with Mikey then lock himself in the basement for a week so he could get some proper art done—his art now was writing, and although it didn't prompt him to be as rude to people who interrupted him as painting, it still required a certain level of isolation in order to get the job done well.

Gerard quietly hoped that Mr Iero would be proud of the English work he had done while on the trip. The art teachers had said that there would be no need to do other schoolwork for the week they were in England, but Gerard had wanted to. For once he was following an assignment, and he was proud of himself.

It wasn't anything particularly interesting or significant, and Gerard was already pretty close to completely forgetting what he was supposed to do, but he was trying, and that was important. Trying to fit in with the school's expectations of their pupils, and trying to show Mr Iero that he could be normal. He could do normal things, most definitely.

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Gerard's class would not shut up. They wouldn't shut up talking about wifi, of all things—the connection at the hotel was 'literally terrible', apparently. Gerard didn't care for wifi. It just equalled a connection to other people, and that was the last thing in the world he wanted. His phone automatically connected to the hotel's free wifi, to his dismay, and he started in surprise when a notification popped up on the screen. He stared at his phone. He'd made sure that all of his notifications were turned off in case his mom or dad tried to call him. What. What the fuck.

"I took the liberty of turning your notifications back on!" Dewees said brightly, appearing beside Gerard. Oh. "You know, in case Mikey wanted to contact you."

Gerard clicked the email popup. It wasn't from Mikey. The sender's name appeared as F Iero.

Dewees craned his neck to look at Gerard's phone. "Mr Iero?" he read aloud. "You behind on English? I'm real good at English, I could help you if you want. I got a B."

"I don't think I'm behind," Gerard said absently, tapping 'open' and pretending to stretch so he could subtly tilt his phone away from Dewees. It wasn't like he didn't want Dewees to see that he was sort of friends with his teacher, there was nothing really wrong with that, per se, it was just that Dewees was the first actual non-relative non-teacher friend he'd had in about a decade, and he didn't want the guy to think he was weirder than he actually was. Knowing Dewees (two days was enough time to get to know someone substantially, wasn't it?) he'd probably think that Gerard was sleeping with Mr Iero. That wasn't really the message he wanted to give out.

Fuck, but what if Dewees thought that he was hiding the message because he was sleeping with Mr Iero? No, no. He'd hidden his phone screen far too subtly for that. Dewees wouldn't ever  know that he was trying to hide something.

Dewees prodded Gerard in the shoulder. "What're you hiding, man?"

"Nothing," Gerard said. He shifted in his seat and casually tilted the screen so Dewees could just about see. He tapped 'open' again, because his phone was a stupid fuck and didn't register any sort of contact other than a very hard stab with a finger, and skimmed over the email. Dewees leaned over and read it too before he could cover the screen again. "Oh, fuck," he mumbled. Now he might as well have been sleeping with Mr Iero.

'I miss you.'