Chapter Text
As the school day progresses, Flynn grows more and more sick of this school, this city, this country, this everything. He's sitting in maths class when he hears the kids behind him snickering.
"Oh my fucking god, look at the emo," One boy half-whispers, but clearly not actually trying to hide the fact he's talking about Flynn. "I bet he slits his wrists."
"He's a fuckin' fag, look at the nail varnish on 'im." Another one of the boys laugh.
Flynn looks down at his chipping black nail varnish. Although Flynn, being a leftist, doesn't agree with the use of slurs, he can't help but reflect on the fact his certainty on being straight has been shaky lately. He finds himself having butterflies in his stomach when he sees music videos of particularly attractive male rockstars or the fact he could never picture himself with a woman, but he quickly banishes the thought. If his mother ever found out he's gay, she'd beat him senseless at best, and at worst she'd do both that and kick him out as well.
Before he knows it, school's out and he has to get home in the pouring rain. He decides to just bunk onto the train. He gets to the station soaked to the bone, and stands under the shelter to get out of the rain. A group of kids walk up to the station, probably first years by the looks of them, and the smallest of the group raises a fist to Flynn to get him to move. Flynn is amused by this because the kid is so small that even with his scrawny stature he could probably knock him out, but he moves anyway to stay out of trouble. His phone buzzes, and he sees it's Dex. The message read:
"Yo dude u left ur board at mine also soz i wasn't in i woke up late"
"its fine" Flynn responds dryly, before getting on the train, without paying. He sits there listening to his music and reading fanfic on his phone until it was his stop.
Thankfully, no ticket inspectors got on. He walks the rest of the way to his house, the rain stopped while he was on the train, thankfully. He usually doesn't mind rain, but it’s a different story when his only remaining cigarettes are in his pocket and being soaked alongside him.
He finally gets home, and although he does his best to get past his mother unnoticed, he has no such luck. He's halfway up the stairs when he hears her voice, raspy from over 20 years of smoking. (He tries not to think about how he'll sound the same way if he keeps this habit up.)
"Where the hell have you been the past few days?! You think you get to just wander off whenever, huh? Just who the fuck did you expect to look after Oliver? You know he still needs help with his homework." She screams, attempting to pin every last drop of blame onto her son "You selfish prick...
You're lucky I don't kick you out right here, right now."
"Oh, I don't know, maybe his mother?
Oliver's not my fucking responsibility, he's your son. I wouldn't be constantly out if I didn't have to tiptoe around my own fucking mother!" Flynn retaliates. When he was younger, he would just take her crap. As he got older however, he realised nothing he could do would make her lay off, and started yelling back.
"Oh, I guess I'm just the worst mother ever!
You ungrateful brat, where did I go wrong?
A delinquent for a son.. I guess since l'm just so awful, I should just kill myself... It'd be better for you and Oliver.." She uses this tactic as an attempt to guilt-trip Flynn into apologising and bending to her every whim.
Flynn gets sick of entertaining her bullshit and storms up the stairs, heading to his room. A few minutes later, he hears weak knocking.
"What?" He snaps, expecting it to be his mother with some half-assed apology followed up by a request for whatever money he has so she can afford booze.
However, when the door opens, he realises his mistake. It wasn't his mother, but rather his ten year old brother, Oliver.
"Flynn, why are you never home? Did I do something wrong?" The child asks timidly.
Flynn is immediately filled with guilt for what his brother has had to witness.
"No, buddy, you've done nothing wrong. I've just been stressed so l've been with my friends, okay? It's not your fault, I swear kiddo," At this point, Flynn can't help but blame himself for upsetting his brother, he suspects Oliver is too young to truly understand why he avoids home like the plague. "Why don't you head back to your room, okay? I'm really tired after all the school work l've done." The story is obviously fabricated, but Flynn is still trying to preserve his brothers feelings.
Once Oliver leaves the room, Flynn remembers how he had invited Rowan to the band. He is instantly flooded with guilt at the idea of leaving his brother alone again, especially after what had just gone down, but Flynn had already planned practice with Dex and Rowan, and he wasn't about to back out on their first proper band practice, complete with a drummer and all.
He checks the time and upon seeing it's four PM, he decides to go head to the train station to wait for Dex and Rowan, and if Rowan brings them, Mira and Natasha too.
He gets to the train station around four thirty PM, and lucky Flynn, Rowan and Dex' train has just gotten here. Dex has his bass and Rowan has his drums. A purple haired girl with a guitar also steps off with them.
"Flynn! This is Mira! She's the rhythm guitarist I told you about! I also tried to get Ash to come, but she screamed at me about how she 'has no interest in joining some stupid band', like I said, she's terrifying." Mira waves at Flynn.
Flynn notes that Rowan's energy has not seemed to dial down one bit since he met him this morning. He looks Mira up and down. She has lots of anime pins and keychains on her guitar bag, wears glasses, and has an X-Ray Spex shirt on. He notes that some of her keychains are of his favourite anime, Attack on Titan. He makes a mental note about asking her about them later.
"Hi, I'm Flynn. Nice to meet'cha." He says, seeming to warm up to the newbie as soon as he saw her keychains.
"Hi!" She says with a certain warmth to her voice, "It's nice to finally meet you, Rowan wouldn't shut up about the band all day. He was getting annoying." She remarks, earning a mock offended look from Rowan.
"Heya, Flynn. Missed ya." Dex comes up beside Flynn as they start walking back to his house for band practice.
"Hey!" Flynn exclaimed, definitely more enthusiastic to see Dex than the others. It's not that he doesn't like them! But Dex is different... In some way he can't seem to put his finger on.
"So, Mira... You like Attack on Titan?" Flynn pipes up, and Mira seems to light up at the question.
"Oh my god, yes!" After getting that greenlight, he and Mira talk about the anime until they get to Flynn's house.
They arrive in Flynn's garage and set up their instruments. Flynn shows them his playlist of songs to pick which one they want to play. They decide on some Metallica songs, although they barely stick to it because Rowan keeps getting stupid ideas on other songs to play.
After about an hour, Dex is half asleep in his chair and Flynn and Rowan get the bright idea of turning Flynn's guitar amp all the way up to wake him up. Flynn giggles slightly as he turns up the master knob on the amp, then gets right up to Dex and strums, startling the bassist.
"Huh!? What happened?" The black haired boy exclaimed. The other three musicians burst out laughing, and Dex doesn't get why, but seeing Flynn happy made him feel some kind of way.
It was getting late, and Rowan and Mira decide to leave.
"Bye!" They say, and as the door closes, Flynn and Dex are left by themselves in the garage.
"Y'know, some kids in maths said that I look like I slit my wrists today." Flynn says with a giggle, clearly not taking their comment seriously. "Bunch of normies. Bet they're just some boot-lickers who can't stand seeing someone follow their own path instead of following the crowd." He adds.
"Hah! Cunts. Don't listen to them, bro, they're just jealous." Dex remarks with a scoff, before glancing to the side. "But, uh, it didn't bother you, did it? If it did, give me their names, I swear, if i get my hands on them..." He trails off.
"Nah, course not! Ohh, you're just so worried about me, huh?" Flynn muses in a mocking tone.
"No, shut up!"
"Hah! Oh Dexie, sooo worried about little old Flynn."
"Shut up, Flynn, I swear!"