Chapter ten - Building Blocks For Grown Ups

my hands hurt so much they go so stiff when i try to write but im trying really hard. you mght get regular updates from now on-- on magnetic stars at least

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'I miss you.'

"Well," Dewees said slowly, staring at the message on Gerard's phone. "That's not creepy at all."

"Shut up," Gerard mumbled sullenly. "We're not fucking or anything."

"Christ, Gerard." Dewees choked on a laugh. "That's not what I was thinking at all. Well, it wasn't what I was thinking up until you said it and put the idea in my head."

Gerard squirmed and punched Dewees in the shoulder. "We're just sort of friends."

"Like–" Dewees paused. "Email pen pals or something?"

"No," Gerard scoffed. "We've never even emailed before now. I totally forgot about the school email system. I guess he was just bored."

"Or horny."

"Shut the fuck up, you ass."

"You shut up." Dewees smiled sweetly, because he was a total ass and hated Gerard. "I'm lovely." He scratched the back of his neck. "So, do you have a crush on him or something?"

"No," Gerard said. He'd never had a crush on anyone. It was probably going to stay that way. People were stupid. Maybe except Mr Iero, but it just wouldn't be logical to have a crush on him. He was a teacher. "He's just cool. He likes Black Flag, you know."

Dewees raised his eyebrows. "Really? Maybe I should get talking to the guy. Does he give you 'A's for free?"

Gerard rolled his eyes. "No, he gives me 'A's because I'm good at English."

Dewees frowned. "Alright then, if you're so good at English, how do you spell antidisestablishmentarianism?"

Gerard stared at Dewees.

Dewees stared at Gerard. "Go on, spell it," he said.

"I-T," Gerard said smartly.

"Oh man, that was clever," Dewees laughed. "An asshole move, but clever, I will admit. Maybe you really are good at English."

"Of course I am."

"Why're you in the special class then?"

"I have," Gerard said carefully, "a lot of disorders, and stuff."

"Huh. Hey, d'you know Pete Wentz? He's in your class, isn't he?"

"Yeah," Gerard said. "Why?

"I've seen him with your sister a lot."

Gerard choked on his own saliva, then recovered himself, and grabbed Dewees' collar. He gritted his teeth. "What?"

Dewees' eyes bulged. "They were just talking. Jesus. And I only saw them a few times."

"Where?" Gerard hissed.

"At one of those stoners' parties. Y'know? Not that I go to those often. I think he invited her or some shit."

"But Wentz is a fucking dickhead."

"No, dude, he was really nice to her. Like a proper gentleman. He defended her and everything when these jocks called her a tranny."

Gerard loosened his grip on Dewees' collar, and after a few moments, let go. "Really?"

"Yeah, he fuckin' totalled the one dude's car. It was great."

"Huh. Are they dating or something? I thought she'd have told me."

"If I were her, I wouldn't have told you. Jeez. You didn't need to practically strangle me."

Gerard stiffened, realising how he'd lost himself. "I'm really sorry about that, fuck. I kinda snapped. But Pete Wentz? Seriously? He's a fucking bitch, why would she want to hang out with him?"

"He was really, really nice," Dewees insisted. "He bought her flowers and everything."

"Really?" Gerard scrunched up his face. He was having serious trouble understanding what was going on. "Are you sure we're talking about the same person?"

Dewees nodded. "I mean, I used to think he was a bit of a prick too, but then I thought about it and he's never really done anything wrong, y'know? He's just sort of annoying."

"Seriously fucking annoying," Gerard said emphatically.

"Seriously fucking annoying," Dewees agreed, "But he can also be seriously fucking nice when he wants to be."

"Oh." Gerard scratched the back of his neck contemplatively. "My sister is dating Pete Wentz. Oh god, that's a thought."

"I didn't say she was dating him." Dewees rolled his eyes. "Just looks like they like each other."

"They're dating, I'm sure of it," Gerard sighed melodramatically, trying to sound theatrically weary. Quietly, he was quite glad that the topic of conversation had been diverted from his relationship with Mr Iero, and he was hoping he could stay clear of that particular theme for the rest of the art trip. Unfortunately, he wasn't quite that lucky.

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Gerard did not reply to Mr Iero's first email. He did spend a great amount of time considering replying to the second email, however—'I miss having you in my class, I mean. Your work is of a very high standard :)'— but in the end decided that he was dwelling on it too much and that he would just speak to Mr Iero in person when he returned home.

After the third email, Gerard started to feel just a little bad for ignoring Mr Iero. He was clearly lonely, especially if he was stooping so low as to purposely contact Gerard, of all people.

Gerard 'reluctantly' replied to the email (he put on quite a show of his reluctance to Dewees to make it extra clear that he and Mr Iero weren't fucking) with a detailed recount of everything that had happened on the trip so far, excluding all the time he had spent thinking about the way Mr Iero's hair curled to frame his face, and also excluding that recurring dream where Mr Iero was a not-particularly-brave knight and Gerard was a princess and Gerard had to rescue him from this really metal dragon with eight rows of fangs and fire coming out of its eyes (fuck, Gerard should really draw that sometime). Gerard sort of liked the way Mr Iero looked in the dream. He sort of liked when Mr Iero called him his princess. Maybe these were all hints that Gerard was getting a little too emotionally invested in the man, but he chose to pay them no heed, and continued to tell himself that Mr Iero was just a cool teacher. He wasn't in love with him or anything.

He wouldn't ever dare voice his thoughts. He didn't need to. Technically. It wasn't until Mr Iero confessed that he'd had a shitty week by himself (and honestly a shitty month overall) that Gerard started to really consider admitting how much he'd missed the man's company himself. Especially as Dewees wouldn't shut up about the lack of wifi in every café the class ate in. He fucking missed civil company.

Wifi had not held nearly as much importance in Gerard's mind as it had in Mikey's. She retreated to the internet to escape from people to talk to more people, and to Gerard, the entire process seemed rather an exercise in futility. Mikey never liked being directly sociable though; she could never pick up on all those subtle signs and silent languages that neurotypical people seemed to speak in like a second tongue. Gerard didn't see social signals either, but he had learned to document and take advantage of other passages into people's heads. For most, reading people was automatic, and responding in a socially appropriate way was ingrained habit. Gerard put focus into coming off as just the right ratio of charming and strange in the right situations—although it was neurotypicals that were the strange ones, really.

The social system was hideously useless and biased against totally arbitrary elements, but everyone seemed so desperate to keep it the way it was. Gerard despised the way people scorned him for attempting to drip feed them thoughts of destruction, and his hate drained him, and the modern world's brittle and contradictory system made him sick, but it allowed him to crawl inside people's heads through social barriers no one had ever seemed to think to cross, leaving him to toy with others' minds as he wished; rearrange thoughts to build them and ruin them.

Gerard wished he could rearrange Mr Iero's mind so he wouldn't be lonely anymore. So he wouldn't hurt anymore.

But Mr Iero was special. And in order to be special, you have to be different, and in order to be different, you have to be wrong. At least the two of them were together in their wrongness.

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i lvoe bucky and kylux and ewan also i might publish the kylux in chapters on here if ur lucky