Chapter Text

THERE JUST FREAKS - Resent: PART 1

Drew sat on the edge of his expansive bed, its plush, grey comforter creating a sense of tranquility but Drew's mind was anything but calm.

The spacious room, painted in muted shades of charcoal, felt like a cozy sanctuary away from the outside world but it wasn't enough.

 The confrontation with Jake earlier that day still weighed heavily on him. He couldn't help but recall yesterday's events, Drew resented Jake's growing involvement with the music club - a band of misfits he despised but it's not only him that despised them but Jake too then why? Why was Jake now ditching Drew for those freaks?

Drew's dark eyes narrowed as he recalled the argument, his grip tightening on his phone. The expansive, airy room suddenly felt suffocating, a physical manifestation of the turmoil churning within him. He knew he needed to regain control, to put Jake back in his place if Jake wants to stick with those freaks then he may as well be one of them

With a frustrated sigh he picked up his phone, Drew scrolled through Gacha Gram, his fingers gliding across the screen of his phone as he lay back against the soft mattress. The large television across the room remained dark and unattended, as Drew's focus remained solely on the device in his hands. The airy, bright space provided a calming atmosphere, allowing him to lose himself in the digital realm for a moment of respite.

Drew’s thumb hovered over the screen as he continued scrolling, the digital world offering a brief escape from his turbulent thoughts. Suddenly, a series of headlines caught his eye, each flashing brightly against the muted background of his room.

"Band Competition Tonight! Who Will Win?"

The bold letters made Drew sit up slightly, his eyes narrowing. He tapped on the post, and a short video autoplayed—Jake front and center, singing with a confident smile, the crowd cheering in the background. Drew’s jaw clenched as he watched Jake’s performance, the sound of his voice echoing in his ears.

Next, a new headline appeared

"Hailey and Jake Singing Duet! Heartthrobs or Just Friends?"

Drew scrolled further, finding a flood of comments beneath the videos.

“Jake’s got real talent! I bet somewhere else too~ hehehe”

“I didn’t know Hailey could sing like that 😍”“They make a cute duo, but I still miss the old Jake...”

“ AHHH Jake is so HOTTT!!!!”

“hailey sounds like an angel!”

Drew’s grip tightened around his phone. The words stung, each comment feeling a mixture of jealousy and frustration. His eyes flicked from the comments to the screen, watching Jake’s carefree smile in the videos– it was different different to how drew normally saw jake drew couldn't deny that jake always looked like he was holding something back like he wanted to say something but couldn't but thats not drews fault its jakes, jake manipulated drew just because he couldn't spit out the truth it doesn't make drew the bad guy afterall he had so many opportunities so many times to say something but he didn't he continued to hide his thoughts then paint drew as the villain after 

it annoyed him

Jake annoyed him

It wasn’t just about the music, or the stupid band competition. It was about everything Jake didn’t say, everything he refused to tell Drew. Like Zoey—how she’d been cheating on him behind his back. Jake never told him, never warned him.

 Drew only found out when Jake had something against him. And now, watching Jake flaunt his new fame, his new friends, Drew couldn’t help but think—how stupid Jake was to pretend it was just friendship. After all the music freaks aren't even Jake's friends there just using him for the competition they know how popular Jake is and how many fans he has after this they're going to discard him like he's trash and after that happens he will run back to them.

He’s not a friend. Not anymore. Drew’s mind spun with bitterness. He blabbered about loyalty and friendship, but he’s just as fake as the rest of them. If Jake wants to ditch me for those freaks, then fine. He’ll pay for it and he'll regret even crossing my path.

With a frustrated sigh, Drew tossed his phone aside. The large television across the room remained dark and unattended, like a silent witness to his brewing storm. His mind churned—he needed to figure out his next move. Jake had to learn that betraying him came with consequences. If Jake thought he could just walk away, flaunt his new friends, and ignore everything Drew had done for him, then he was dead wrong.

Drew’s jaw clenched He’ll see what it feels like to be despised, just like those freaks

Just then, the sharp ringtone cut through the silence

RING!

RING!

Drew looked at his phone

Zoey..

Drew didn't want to talk to zoey at all after what happened shes out of his life

RING!

RING!

But why doesn't she get that? 

RING!

RINGGG!

Drew kissed his teeth hesitating for a moment before reluctantly reaching out and answering.

“Hello?” Drew’s voice was cautious, almost cold.

He answered, almost dreading what he’d hear.

Drew’s stomach clenched. “Zoey, what’s going on? Just get to it.”

“Drewy… please,” Zoey’s voice was trembling, desperate, full of tears. “Don’t do this. I’m so sorry. I know I messed up f-fuck i just talked to him f-for the gifts it was– like one time you shoudent have even– hicc listened to jake hes a m-manipulative egotistica–”

Drew cut her off, voice cold but exhausted. “Don't come crying now Zoey your only sorry because you got outed Don’t pretend you care”

Zoey’s voice cracked as she struggled to speak through her tears “ I do care drew..! Please I'm sorry for everything- it was barely cheating! And I wont do it again..!.. Im s-sorry..”

Drew’s jaw tightened. His mind flashed back to the countless nights he’d spent defending her, trusting her, believing in them. Now, it all felt like a lie. The betrayal wasn’t just Jake’s—it was Zoey’s too. She’d cheated on him, used him and now she was pleading for forgiveness? After everything?

He took a deep breath, voice low and bitter. “It’s too late, Zoey. I told you—it's over.”

Drew reluctantly hit the decline button staring at the phone at his hand–then he tossed it sideways across the bed. It landed somewhere in the folds of the comforter with a dull, soft sound and stayed there, half-swallowed by grey fabric.

He sank back against the pillows and looked up at the ceiling. The room held its usual quiet, that deep, still kind of silence that his four charcoal walls always seemed to keep, but tonight it felt less like sanctuary and more like something pressing down. His chest was heavy in a way he didn't have words for and didn't bother searching for.

Almost without thinking, he dragged a hand through his hair. His fingers caught and snagged — the purple strands, usually sitting flat and neat, had gone to pieces sometime during the day, falling every which way, sticking up at odd angles like even his reflection had stopped trying. He didn't fix it. His hand just dropped back to his side.

It was a small thing. A stupid thing. But something about it — about catching himself dishevelled in his own silence — made it all feel suddenly, irritatingly real.

Drew stared at the ceiling for a long time after that. The silence had fully settled now, thick and unmoving, and his thoughts had slowed from a boil to something duller — a low, grey hum he couldn't quite shake and couldn't quite focus on either.

He should eat. He hadn't since lunch and even then he'd barely touched it. He should shower, change, do something with the wreckage of a day he'd just lived through. Instead of being glued to the bed like some pitiful looser, he knew all of this. The knowing sat right there in his chest alongside everything else.

He didn't move.

His eyes traced the familiar lines of the ceiling — the faint seam where two panels met, the small, dark fixture of the light he hadn't bothered to switch on. The room had gone a deep, quiet grey in the early evening dark. Somewhere outside a car passed. Then nothing.

His legs felt like they belonged to someone else.

Get up.

He thought it clearly, almost like a command. His body received it and did absolutely nothing. He shifted slightly against the pillows, the comforter rustling softly beneath him, and that was the most he managed. His phone was still somewhere in the folds of the fabric beside him. He didn't reach for it.

His eyes grew heavy before he even fully registered it was happening. The thoughts were still there — Jake, Zoey, the comments, the video, Jake's face looking more alive than Drew had ever seen it — but they'd gone waterlogged somehow, slow and blurring at the edges. His chest was still heavy but even that was starting to feel distant, like something happening to someone else in a room slightly removed from his own.

His eyes closed.

He didn't mean to let them stay shut.

He did anyway.

The alarm came like a slap.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP—!!!

Drew's eyes snapped open, unfocused, his brain arriving several seconds behind his body. The room was bright — too bright, the kind of flat, white morning light that had no business being that aggressive. He was still in his clothes from yesterday. The comforter was half-wrapped around him at an odd angle.

He grabbed his phone with a groggy, clumsy hand, silencing the alarm on the second attempt.

“Fuck..” he groaned sleepily 

9:04 AM.

For exactly two seconds he just stared at it. Then it registered.

Nine.

He sat up fast, heart lurching, the remnants of sleep evaporating in an instant. School started at seven. He had missed two hours of the first period already — two hours that would be marked, logged, reported. 2 hours of time that he could be studying in 2 hours wasted

His parents' words came back to him with the sharp, crisp clarity of something rehearsed too many times to ever fully forget.

"If your attendance drops even once, Andrew, the school contacts us directly."

"You represent this family whether you're in that building or not."

"Our family does not slip."

He was on his feet before he'd consciously decided to stand, running a hand roughly through the disaster of his hair, eyes scanning the room. Uniform. Bag. His blazer was folded over the back of the chair by his desk, untouched from yesterday — at least there was that. His reflection caught in the mirror across the room and he barely looked at it. He already knew.

The momentary spiral of panic was real — his pulse was going, but underneath it, dragging at his ankles like dead weight, was the exhaustion he hadn't slept off. If anything he felt heavier than he had last night, hollowed out in a way that had nothing to do with the missed hours and everything to do with everything else.

But that wasn't a thought he had time for.

He grabbed his blazer.

“Our family does not slip.”

He repeated it to himself without meaning to. A habit. An instinct. The kind of thing that had been said so many times it had stopped being words and just become the shape of who he was supposed to be — pressed, perfect, unreadable, without cracks.

He straightened his collar in the mirror and looked at himself for just a moment too long.

Then he looked away and picked up his bag.

The clock above the biology room door read 9:21 when Drew pushed it open.

Twenty minutes. He'd only missed twenty minutes — he could work with that. He could catch up in twenty minutes. The first period wasn't a write-off, not entirely. He straightened slightly as he crossed the threshold, letting the door swing shut behind him with a soft click, already assembling the expression he needed — composed, unbothered, like the time on that clock was a minor inconvenience rather than the source of a minor cardiac event forty minutes ago.

Miss Calloway looked up from the front of the room.

"Drew." Her tone wasn't unkind but it wasn't soft either, the particular brand of neutral that teachers reserved for students they expected better from. "Care to explain?"

"I wasn't feeling well this morning, Miss." 

That should be enough..

 He held her gaze just long enough to be respectful without being challenging. Normally he wouldn't care how he was perceived by teachers it didn't matter they weren't there for him to please, but it seemed in this moment it called for it 

She studied him for a moment, then made a small note on her register. "Sit down. We've already started partner work so find your place quickly."

He scanned the room as he moved toward an empty spot, taking stock the way he always did

The blue haired freak was near the window, her notes already open in front of her, head slightly tilted as she listened to her partner . Lia sat two rows over, separated by a full table from Zoey which wasn't how they usually arranged themselves — there was something clipped in the space between them, the kind of distance that was less about seating charts and more about something unspoken. On top of that he could feel Zoey staring daggers onto him but Drew filed it away without reacting to it.

Liam caught his eye from across the room and grinned like he'd just won something 

"Bro, twenty minutes late — what happened man.I had a whole eulogy ready."

A few people nearby snickered. Liam leaned back in his chair with the specific ease of someone who had made an art form out of occupying too much space, his pen spinning loosely between two fingers.

Henry didn't even look up from his worksheet but the smile crept across his face anyway. "Nah nah, he was doing a dramatic entrance. You clock how he walked in? Very leading man."

Drew sighed wondering why he even associated himself with these weirdos anyway

“Shut up will you..”

"Both of you, enough." Miss Calloway said it without heat, the way teachers said things they'd already said a hundred times before.

Liam pressed his lips together, the grin still sitting stubbornly at the corners of his mouth. Henry finally looked up, caught Drew's eye, and gave him the most innocent shrug in human history before returning to his work.

Idiots

Drew didn't bite. He let it roll off and kept scanning—

Then he stopped.

Jake's seat.

Usually his partner was jake he didnt want to be his partner especially after what had happened he didn't even want to look at that freak maybe miss would allow him to work with someone else 

but

Jake was already partnered. Already settled in beside someone else, already bent slightly over a shared worksheet, pen in hand, whatever easy expression he'd been wearing before Drew walked in, probably still sitting on his face. He hadn't even glanced up when the door opened.

Something shifted in Drew's chest. A tightening. He couldn't immediately name it or didn't want to — it sat somewhere between annoyance and something considerably less comfortable that he had even less interest in examining. His jaw set slightly.

Fine.

It didn't matter. It was biology. It was a worksheet. Jake could partner with whoever he liked — in fact, it was better this way. Drew didn't want to sit across from him and pretend that yesterday hadn't happened. He didn't want to have to look at him at all. He hated this he hated jake

He told himself this with complete conviction.

The tightening in his chest did not particularly care.

"Drew, you'll be with Amy." Miss Calloway gestured toward a seat near the middle of the room where a girl sat waiting, hands folded lightly on the desk in front of her.

He settled into the seat beside her and took stock — briefly, without staring. She was slight, the kind of quiet that felt deliberate rather than accidental, her hair falling in soft waves of faded pink bleeding down into purple at the ends. Pale purple eyes that flicked up to acknowledge him and then dropped back to the worksheet with the speed of someone who hadn't entirely decided how they felt about the situation.

She didn't say anything. Neither did he, not immediately.

The classroom hummed around them — the scratch of pens, the low murmur of a dozen conversations being had at desk-width distances, someone near the back asking Miss Calloway to repeat the question, Liam already trying to get Henry's attention again with what appeared to be a folded piece of paper.

Drew pulled the worksheet toward him and read the first question.

Ordinary. All of it is completely ordinary.

He was fine.

His eyes did not drift across the room to where Jake was sitting.

Except once.

Just to check where he was. That was all.

A sudden noise cut through the low hum of the classroom — the sharp scrape of a stool, something sliding across a desk.

"Jake! Give it back, c'mon—"

"You'll have to come get it, princess."

Drew's pen stilled on the paper.

Hailey was on her feet, one hand braced on the desk, cheeks already going that particular shade of pink. Jake had leaned back in his chair with the easy, unbothered confidence of someone who had done this a hundred times and enjoyed every single one of them, holding whatever he'd taken just slightly out of reach, the corner of his mouth pulled up.

"Sterling—"

"Ooo." Jake's grin didn't waver. "Am I in trouble?"

"Give it back—"

Miss Calloway's voice cut across the room. "Enough. Both of you — sit down." She crossed her arms, looking thoroughly unsurprised in the way only teachers who had seen everything could manage. "You'd think I was running a circus. Back to your partners, please, before I start assigning detentions."

Hailey dropped back into her seat immediately, pulling her notebook toward her and staring at it with the focused intensity of someone trying to disappear into the pages.

“You two lovebirds can talk outside my lesson in YOUR free time”

"H-huh. It's nothing like that!!.." she said very quietly at that as if that settled something.

Jake set whatever he'd taken back on the desk and leaned slightly closer.

"Is it not~?"

slap 

"OW— what the hell, Hailey!!"

"Serves you right," she hissed, still not looking at him, her face now a magnificent, furious red.

A beat of silence. Then from somewhere two rows back—

Liam had both hands over his mouth, shoulders shaking. Henry had stopped writing entirely and was watching with the calm, satisfied expression of someone witnessing a nature documentary.

"Bro," Liam managed. "She cooked you."

"Shut up, Liam."

“HAH i think it left a mark” Henry spouted “get owned~”

Drew said nothing. His eyes dropped back to his worksheet.

Across the room Jake was rubbing the side of his arm with a wounded expression that kept threatening to break back into a grin, and Hailey had gone rigid with the very deliberate stillness of someone doing their absolute best to look like nothing had happened.

Drew read the first question again. The words didn't go in.

Jake is going to regret everything he's done if i dont have dirt on him i sure as hell will get dirt on his “friends” even i–

“Psst! Hey!!”

The voice was low enough not to carry. Drew blinked, pulled back from wherever he'd just been, and turned his head slightly.

Lia had shifted in her seat, angled just enough toward him that it was clearly intentional without being obvious about it. She had that look on her face pity. Her eyes moved over him briefly, the way someone checks the sky before deciding whether to bring an umbrella.

"You seem off," she muttered. Not unkindly. Just matter of fact.

"I'm fine."

Lia didn't move. He could feel her still looking at him in that quiet, unhurried way of hers, like she had decided she wasn't entirely satisfied with that answer and was content to simply wait him out. It was mildly irritating. 

Drew kept his eyes on the paper. Then, mostly because the silence was starting to cost more energy than filling it would —

"Why aren't you with Zoey?"

The shift was subtle but immediate. Something in Lia's posture changed, a small, tightening, like a door closing behind someone's eyes. She looked back down at her own worksheet.

"Because Zoey," she said, her voice dropping to something dry and very deliberate, "is a self-serving, money hungry little opportunist who only remembers you exist when she needs something from you." A pause. She tapped her pen once against the desk. "And I'm tired."

“Tired of her”

She said the last part simply the way you'd say something you've already made your peace with.

Drew said nothing for a moment. He looked at the space between their desks — the gap where Lia's usual easy proximity to Zoey had been replaced with deliberate, uncrossable distance — and something in him recalibrated slightly. 

He looked back at his paper.

"It was only a matter of time before you left her," he said quietly.

Lia seemed to want to say something but hesitated before blurting it out

“Look.. I'm sorry, okay I know we're not close or anything but I still should have told you about Zoey.. It was wrong of me”

Drew let out a frustrated sigh

“I dont care lia your more obligated to her then you are to me”

“...”

Lia glanced at him once more from the corner of her eye, something unreadable sitting just below the surface of her expression. Then she too looked away, and the conversation folded itself closed without ceremony, swallowed up by the general noise of the classroom doing what classrooms do — shuffling, murmuring, carrying on.

Drew stared at the first question.

The words still didn't go in.

Even without liam and henry annoying him even without that noise he still couldn't focus, they knew not to disturb him during lesson yet even without their disruption drew was worthless he couldn't focus

The words just sat there on the page, flat and foreign, like something written in a language he almost spoke. He read it again. And again. His eyes moved across the letters in the right order and his brain received them and did absolutely nothing useful with them. The lines and words even seemed to blur together till he couldn't distinguish them at all

Focus. 

“You don't get to fall apart in public, Drew. You don't get to fall apart at all. That's not what we do.”

Beneath the desk, Drew pressed his thumbnail into the center of his palm hard enough to make wince but not hard enough

He was already twenty minutes behind. Twenty minutes that were logged, marked, sitting in some database somewhere with his name attached to them, a small black mark on an otherwise spotless record — and it needed to stay spotless, that was the whole point, that had always been the whole point. His parents hadn't said it once or twice. They'd said it the way people say things they need you to absorb into your bones — at dinner tables, in car rides, in the particular disappointed quiet that followed anything less than perfect. Attendance, grades, reputation. All of it reflects on this family. All of it. His family had averaged  4.0. His cousin had been school captain. The bar wasn't something Drew had been asked to clear — it was something he'd been handed and told to carry without letting anyone see the weight of it.

The cell membrane controls the movemen of —

Jake's face in that video. That easy, unguarded smile. The crowd noise underneath it.

Drew's pen didn't move.

He thought about his mother's voice on the phone the last time he'd slipped even slightly despite her rarely being home she seems to be so involved in his life  

You'll get dirt on all of them. The thought surfaced again, quiet and certain underneath everything else. Jake thinks he can just rewrite the whole thing — act like Drew was the problem, walk away clean, stand in front of crowds and smile like that — and there are no consequences. Like none of it matters. Like Drew doesn't matter. His grip tightened on the pen. But everyone has something. Everyone has a crack somewhere if you know where to look and Drew has always, always known where to look. Jake's precious new friends — that band of absolute misfits he'd sold himself to — they weren't clean either. Nobody was. And when the time came, when Drew had what he needed—

The cell membrane controls—

Zoey's voice on the phone last night. “It was barely cheating.”

The way Jake had looked at him in the hallway yesterday before it all went sideways, that moment just before, like he was deciding something.

The way his own hair had felt wrong under his hand in the dark of his room.

Focus—

You represent this family—

He'll regret crossing—

The cell membrane—

BRIIIIING.!!!

The bell split through everything like a clean cut, sudden and indifferent, and the classroom erupted immediately into the familiar chaos of chairs scraping and bags zipping and twenty separate conversations starting at once. Drew sat completely still for one full second, pen still pressed to the paper, the question still unanswered, the page still almost entirely blank.

He looked down at it.

Then he closed the worksheet without expression, tucked it into his folder, and pushed back his chair.

The classroom emptied around him in the usual flood — chairs, noise, bodies funnelling toward the door in that shapeless rush that followed every bell. Drew was still sliding his folder into his bag when the presence arrived, one on each side, with the specific energy of people who had decided something without consulting him.

Liam dropped an arm over his shoulder with the subtlety of a falling tree.

"Okay so genuinely." He tilted his head, studying Drew's face from an uncomfortable distance. "You look terrible."

“Cheers."

"No like actually." Liam squinted. "Are you ill or is this just a whole vibe thing you're going for."

Henry appeared on his other side, hands in his pockets, and gave Drew the same brief once-over he'd been giving him since first period. Less theatrical than Liam's assessment. Somehow worse for it.

"You good?" he said simply.

"I'm fine."

Henry nodded once, in the way that meant he didn't entirely believe that but wasn't going to push it, which was the thing about Henry — he noticed more than he let on and had the sense not to make a production of it.

Liam, predictably, had no such restraint. "You've been looking like someone cancelled Christmas since you walked in, bro, I'm just saying—"

"Can we just go I said I'm fine" Drew shouldered his bag and moved toward the door without waiting for an answer.

They fell into step behind him and then alongside him, the three of them spilling out into the hallway with the rest of the crowd before peeling off in the direction they always went — the stretch of corridor near the east stairwell, wide enough to not feel cramped, quiet enough between periods to actually hear yourself think. Their spot. Or the closest thing to it.

Except.

Drew got there first and stopped.

The space felt wrong in a way that took him a second to put his finger on and then was immediately obvious once he had. It was just — empty. The right location, the right corner, the right wall. But no Lia perched on the windowsill with her phone. No Zoey appearing from somewhere looking perfectly put together and expecting everyone to notice. No Jake, leaning against the wall with that particular loose-limbed ease of his, saying something that Drew would tell himself he wasn't listening to.

Just the three of them.

And the hallway noise moving around them like water around stones, indifferent and continuous.

Liam looked around, clocked it, and said nothing for once. He leaned back against the wall and pulled out his phone with slightly less fanfare than usual.

Henry stood beside Drew and looked at the same empty space Drew was looking at.

Liam was the first to crack the silence, because Liam was always the first to crack the silence.

"Okay so." He tilted his head back against the wall, looking at the ceiling like it had done something to him. "Are you still hung up on the whole Jake thing."

Drew said nothing.

"Because like." Liam gestured vaguely. "I miss him too, bro. He's our friend. But him being in the music cl— club- doesn't just erase that. You don't have to look like someone died."

Henry was leaning against the wall beside him, arms folded, eyes doing that half-closed thing that meant he was paying more attention than he looked like he was. "He's got a point," he said. "Jake's annoying but he's still Jake. You've been walking around looking like a villain origin story since yesterday."

"I'm not hung up on anything."

"You've got the face," Henry said simply.

"What face."

"The face." Henry tapped his own jaw once, unhelpfully, by way of explanation.

Liam nodded like this was profound. "The face, bro."

Drew's jaw tightened. Which was, unfortunately, probably the face.

"Jake made his choice." His voice came out low and flat "He wanted to stand up in front of the whole school and make an idiot out of himself for a bunch of people who are going to drop him the second they're done using him.

 Fine. But he doesn't get to do all of that—" his hand moved slightly, a short restrained gesture that held more than it let out "—and just walk away like none of it matters. He thinks he can pull all of this and there's no consequence?" “ He can make an idiot out of me and manipulate me with no consequence?” Something cold settled in behind his eyes. "He'll find out there is."

"Drew." Henry's voice had shifted, dropped the dry edge out of it. He was looking at him properly now, which Henry didn't do often. "Come on."

"I'm serious."

"I know you are. That's the part I'm saying come on about."

Liam opened his mouth.

But closed it again

Drew looked at the wall across the corridor and breathed out slowly through his nose. He was about to say something — he didn't know what, something tight and final that would close the conversation — 

But then he saw it saw

them

"Well." Drew's gaze had shifted over Henry's shoulder, a smirk overtaking his features  "What a nice coincidence."

Liam and Henry turned around reluctantly 

Down the hall, moving through the thinning crowd between periods — Jake. Relaxed, unhurried, his bag slung over one shoulder. Zander was beside him, hands in his pockets, that permanent guarded look he wore everywhere like a second uniform. And just slightly behind them, Hailey, saying something to Zander with her arms folded, her hair catching the flat corridor light.

The Freak club.

fifteen feet away and completely unbothered.

Drew went very still.

“Drew cm’o–”

"Well if it isnt the freak club!" he shouted across the corridor