Writer's Club

Oscar was a writer. He knew it, and his friends knew it, but the problem was the content of his writing. Not smut or anything. He just didn't like the things he wrote and he didn't want anyone to have to see the things that he wrote. Even the things he was proud of.

Joining the writers club was the biggest thing he'd ever done regarding his writing, save the competition he'd entered when he was five.

Writers Club was notorious for being full of weirdos. Anime addicts and smutty fanfiction writers and that one kid who wrote a full novel. Warrior cats fanfiction. The gay kids.

The teacher that supervised the club was notorious for the time she'd yelled 'fuck' during assembly. She'd never gotten in trouble for it and she'd never explained why she'd done it, but it was rumoured that she was yelling it at the principal and his assistant, a clean-shaven man who seemed to have no real job.

Either that or she was watching women's soccer under the bench.

Oscar pushed the door open.

Writers Club was empty. Five or six kids huddled in the back of the classroom, and Ms Jones sitting at the front drinking coffee. She had three empty cups beside her.

"Danny?" Oscar focused on one of the kids. His brother glanced up and shrugged.

"Ah fuck, I've been discovered." He said. "Hey, Ozzie."

"Don't call me Ozzie."

Oscar took a table near the front of the classroom and took out his laptop. His story, his masterpiece, his novel, was open already on a google doc. He sat down and rapped his knuckles across the space bar.

It was, of course, a gay love story prominently featuring a trans guy with two dads, an annoying brother, and a lizard. Aspirational self insert? Never. (A/N oh wow oh fuck that's meta)

"Hey, kid." Ms Jones looked up and swung her feet onto the table. She was wearing biker boots and suit pants. "What's your name?"

"Oscar," Oscar said. "Uh, Oscar Ramírez-Mitchell." Ms Jones raised an eyebrow. "Um. Danny's my little brother."

"Three months!" Danny yelled from the back of the class. One of his friends laughed.

"I was talking about height!" Oscar called back.

"I like this guy." The kid to Danny's right said. "Hey, come sit with us. It's no fun to sit alone and pretend to write."

"Trust me, Alex," Danny said. "Oscar actually does write in writing class."

"I don't know what else you'd do." Ms Jones said.

"Porn." The kid across from Danny deadpanned.

"Yeah, ima pretend that I didn't hear that." Ms Jones said. "Scar-face, go and sit with Danny and co."

"Scarface? What?" Oscar closed his laptop and moved to the back of the class. There was a spare seat at the head of the table, next to Drake.

Everyone knew who Drake was, even if they didn't know his name and even if they'd never spoken to him before. 5,1, had emo bands shirts and ripped jeans and probably listened to vinyl, and had those belts with little cut out circles lined with metal and hair and eye makeup like Gerard Way during his most emo of phases. Oscar had never seen Drake without his headphones on, tinny second-hand MCR and Panic! buzzing at the edge of his ears. He was cool, he was popular in that terrifying way where he'd never even looked at a hydroflask, he was pulling out the chair and patting it for Oscar to sit down beside him.

"For the record," Danny said. "This man speaks for neither of us. Never has and never will, and anything he says or does, doesn't reflect on me or our parents parenting skills."

"Chill, he'll be fine," Alex said. They were the same age as Danny, almost to the day, and probably hadn't slept in a month. Oscar had known them for the better part of their life because they spent half their time at his house. Danny was his best friend. "He hasn't done anything really bad since he spilt orange juice on your grandad's coffin."

The table roared with laughter.

"Hey, Oscar," Danny said. "Those assholes are Cady and Connor, and the one trying to break the glowstick is Percy." He indicated a girl in the year above them, one of the art kids, and a tiny boy on the end of the row trying to rip open a glowstick with his teeth. "Cady, can you-"

"I'm on it." Cady reached around Percy and pulled the glowstick out of his hand. She tucked it into her long pencil case, tilting it open just long enough for Oscar to see that it was filled with chewed on glow sticks.

"Go fuck yourself," Percy said.

"Fuck me yourself, coward."

"I don't like girls."

"I don't like boys. Fuck Danny."

"I'm ace, you actual truck," Danny said. Drake howled with laughter.

"So no one's getting fucked, you horny little virgins," Alex said.

Drake frowned. "I, uh, you're asexual. You're like a virgin squared."

"Right, there's that."

Oscar stifled a laugh. He'd never known that Alex was asexual. He glanced around the table, checking all the writers. Cady had joined the school the year before, moving from an all-boys school. She'd always been nice to Oscar - he'd gone to an all-girls school for a hellish year of high school - but they'd never had a serious friendship. 

Connor was cool, always doodling in the margins. He caught Oscar's eye and held up his paper, a drawing of a group of people fighting a monster. He'd been famously working on his graphic novel for more than a year, scrapping drafts and leaving sheets of it all over the school. He pushed his glasses up his nose. "We're getting there. The team are fighting the corpse render, and then they need to overthrow the quasifascistic absolute monarchy."

The kid who ate glowsticks, Percy, looked like he was about to kill someone and fuck their grandmother. He was much shorter than Oscar and had an undercut on one side of his fluffy, chin-length hair. He was wearing something that Drake would wear, but he'd added hot pink high heels and he'd crocheted a tiny trans flag to hang off his earplugs. He flashed Oscar a peace sign and winked. Oscar's stomach did a perfect flip.

Drake bumped Oscar's shoulder with his own. "Hey, that's a cool shirt. Where'd you get it?"

It had it that picture of Gene Simmons of KISS knitting in a leather harness and staring into the distance. Oscar had screenprinted it in black and white himself. "Um, I made it." He said.

"Really? That's awesome. Band shirts are so expensive, and I spend all my money on concert tickets. Can you make me one?" Drake said. He clapped his hands over his head. "Darlings, we're adopting this one."

Danny shot him a smile. "Welcome to Writers Club, my dear brother."