Holy promos Batman! This chapter would have come sooner of it weren't for that pesky 3-minute promo sending the DTC in speculation overdrive! Sorry about that!

This chapter contains dialogue from the season 10 episode "My Body is a Cage (1)"

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Chapter 29 - You Mess With the Bull

Drew ran into the hallway, scanning around for any sign of a fight, or an argument, or any sign of commotion, knowing that if there was any sort of disturbance, that's where Adam was going to be.

He ran down the hallway and into the lobby - totally abandoned save for one person, alone on a bench under the staircase.

He was just sitting there.

He looked okay, he wasn't hurt; Drew must have found him before Owen and Fitz did.

That mean Drew was allowed to me mad at him.

"Bianca?" he said, storming up to Adam, "you hit on Bianca?"

Adam just sat there, expression unchanged. Drew sat beside him, forcing his face to Adam; trying to get Adam to care enough to look at him.

"Are you trying to get yourself killed?" Drew yelled, but he didn't sound particularly imposing, he wasn't as good at hiding his fear as Mom was.

Adam looked indifferent, which just made Drew even more livid; did he not realize how serious this was?

"It's not my fault her friends are ignoramuses," Adam said flatly. Drew wanted to shake him until he cared, until it sunk in how stupid he had been.

"What did Mom say about staying under the radar?" he said, shoving Adam.

That's when Adam grabbed his shoulder, flinching violently in pain. Drew didn't find him before Owen and Fitz.

He wasn't okay.

"What did they do to you?" Drew asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. Owen wrapped Drew to a flag pole for being arrogant, Fitz humiliated Dave in front of everyone in the Dot for dancing with his friends; what they do to someone who was transgender?

"It's nothing-" Adam insisted, despite still gingerly holding into his shoulder.

But Drew didn't care. They knew; Owen and Fitz knew that Adam was physically a girl and they hurt him anyway. As far as they knew they beat up a girl; Drew's sister.

Nobody beat up Drew's sister.

He stood up, but Adam stopped him.

"This isn't your battle," Adam said firmly. "I'll go to the LGBT club."

It was absolutely Drew's battle. People knew about Adam, and they were hurting him because of it. It wasn't as if Adam could defend himself – that was Drew's job.

"Why do you think I transferred to Degrassi?"

Adam looked away from him, reclining back into the bench. His message was clear; he didn't want Drew there – he didn't need Drew there.

Well he was wrong. And Drew was going to prove it.

"If anyone hurts my sister I'll-"

Adam sat back up again, glaring at Drew so intently he was sure that the force of it could somehow send Drew flying across to the other side of the room. Even Mom couldn't glare as aggressively as that.

"Sorry, you know what I mean," he said quickly before it could become an issue; Drew had bigger issues to deal with.

"I'm gonna make sure that they don't touch you again."

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Drew found Owen and Fitz just where he had expected them to be; being idiots in the parking lot throwing a dumb football back and fourth like nothing terrible had just happened. He could hear Adam following behind him, yelling at him to let it go, but Drew wasn't particularly interested in what he had to say.

He was going to make them hurt.

"Hey!" he yelled, "I heard you were messing with my brother."

Neither of them even bothered to turn around until he said "brother." Fitz seemed more amused than anything else.

"Last time we checked you had a sister," he leered, walking straight up to Drew's face.

Drew shoved him, but Fitz didn't seem too bothered. He may even have been laughing.

He wasn't going to be laughing for much longer.

"Shut up!" Drew growled. "You don't know anything."

Fitz shoved back Drew lazily, as if Drew wasn't even worth his time.

"Defensive," Fitz said mockingly. "You hiding a secret too?"

Drew charged at him, but Adam grabbed him and held him back; he didn't want Drew's help.

"Come on," he pleaded. "Let's just go."

Adam started to walk away even before Drew could decide what to do. He begrudgingly followed; he's rather that Adam wasn't alone, even if he desperately wanted to smash Fitz's teeth in.

Bit Fitz wasn't done.

"Run along now ladies," he sang. "Freak show's waiting."

Before Drew even knew what he was doing, Fitz was on the ground. He was about to kick him in the stomach (cheap move, but he didn't care – he hated the "f" word) when he heard Adam's voice.

"No, let's just go!"

Owen had grabbed Adam, laughing as Adam tried helplessly to pull away.

No. Nobody touched Adam. Ever.

Drew ran over to Owen and tried to pull Adam off him. He couldn't even think straight he was that angry. They were laughing; they thought it was funny.

"Shouldn't have done that."

Fitz had gotten up whilst Drew was distracted by Owen. Drew wasn't sure if he was supposed to take out Fitz or get Adam away from Owen. He stood there stupidly as Owen grabbed a protesting Adam again. Fitz sauntered up to Drew, fist clenched.

Drew felt the punch before he saw it, he pain radiating through his whole face. He could feel himself stumble and could faintly hear Adam's voice.

"Let go!"

Drew tried to shake himself out of his daze and threw the hardest punch he could towards Fitz, who seemed to dodge it with lightning speed. Drew tried again and again to hit him, but Fitz was just too fast, or maybe Drew was just too dazed and slow, he couldn't be sure. Fitz managed to get Drew against the parking lot fence and struck him in the ribs, knocking all the wind out of him. Fitz didn't stop. He kept throwing punches at Drew until he whole body ached. The blur of Fitz's arms swinging was the only thing letting Drew know that he was still hitting him; he had already maxed-out his pain limit. Fitz threw a final blow at Drew's eye and the whole world became dark and fuzzy.

Drew felt himself fall to the ground, his body going completely limp as the pain truly set in. He could sense the faint metallic taste of blood in his mouth and the vague outlines of Fitz and Owen as the walked away. He tried not to breathe; it hurt too much to breathe.

Adam came into his focus, kneeling down beside him. He felt Adam's hand resting on his leg, which didn't seem to hurt too much anymore.

"Are you ok?"

Drew lifted his aching head enough so that he could look at Adam; he was looking around helplessly. Drew could see people moving out of his focus, but nobody seemed to be doing anything.

"Should I get a teacher?" a girl's voice cried out.

Adam stared at Drew, who tried to feebly shake his head, but just didn't have the strength to commit to it. Nobody else in the world would have been able to read such a tiny sign. But Adam could.

"No, it's fine," Adam said, turning back to the blur that was apparently a crowd of students. Drew could see the blur start to move away, leaving him alone with Adam. He wasn't sure what Adam would be able to do to help, not unless he happened to have a stretcher and a large quantity of vicodin hidden away somewhere. But he absolutely did not expect Adam to do what he did next.

"Your eye…"

Adam reached his hand out and gently touched the area around Drew's eye where Fitz had thrown his final punch. Drew didn't even flinch at it, it was so unexpected. It should have hurt, it did hurt, but at the same time it didn't. It felt oddly comforting. Drew realized that it was the first time that Adam had initiated any real sort of contact in months. He could feel his eyes watering – from the pain of course.

Adam shook his head sharply, staring at his hand as if he had only just realized what he was doing, he snatched at away as if he had touch something burning hot and looked around nervously as he tried to compose his thoughts.

"Uh," he started to say gruffly. "Do you need a hand getting up?"

"No," Drew grunted as he tried to push himself off the ground, but his ribs hurt too much. "Yes."

Adam got onto his feet and pulled Drew up to his own. The blurriness he felt was slowly becoming replaced with sharp, acute pain; mostly by his eye. He could start seeing people previously outside of his field of vision were standing and staring at them, some even had their phones out, presumably to take pictures with. It took Drew back to that horrible day on the flagpole, only this was so much worse.

They had to find somewhere quieter, somewhere away from everyone's preying eyes. Somewhere Drew could check that how badly Adam was actually hurt and where he could fix his own injuries.

"Come with me," he ordered, dragging himself back towards the school as Adam followed.

The lobby was still abandoned, the quiet before the storm as it would happen. As soon as Drew walked into the main hallway the gawking started.

"-Bianca DeSousa ripped his shirt open in the hall-"

"-She's been trying to spy on the boys in the locker room-"

"-Why would they even let someone like that come to our school?"

Drew kept his head down and tried to get Adam away from all the people as quickly as possible. He headed for the washroom, hoping it would be quiet and that he could run some cold water on his eye. But when he got there, he knew that his plan wasn't going to work.

One of the janitors was blocking the door directly across from the boy's washroom. The glass from the door panel had been shattered and the shards were being swept away. Drew looked over to Adam, who had tensed up at the sight of it. Drew wasn't that stupid; it didn't take a genius to work out what had happened.

"Is that what they did?" he asked in a small voice.

Adam didn't respond; he didn't have to, his face said it all.

The pain Drew had been feeling had turned into anger; they threw him through a door. He wanted to kill them, to humiliate them, to make them see how it felt to be terrorized.

He started charging back towards the direction of the lobby, hoping he could hunt down Fitz and Owen before lunch was over, but Adam stood infront of him.

"Move Adam," he ordered. "I'm going to find them-"

"Why?" Adam asked hotly. "So they can beat you up again?"

Drew clenched his jaw, sending further jolts of pain to his eye. He knew it would be pointless to try and fight them again, but it didn't take away from the fact that he really, really wanted to.

But he mostly wanted Adam to be safe from everyone's judgmental stares.

Drew relented and walked away from the smashed-up door and headed further down the hallway with his smashed-up brother. More people were pointing and whispering, Drew wondered if there was a way to get all their names so that he could make them pay one-by-one.

"Hey freak!" a junior boy yelled. "Catch this!"

He threw a wet ball of toilet paper at Adam, but it missed, landing on the wall behind him.

Drew's first instinct was to run over and shove the guys head into a locker, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to successfully fight anyone for a while. Instead, he tried to put his arm around his little brother; tried to shield him from all the people looking at him; to protect him from the world. But Adam pushed him away.

"Don't," he hissed at Drew, sinking his head down.

Drew felt winded again, almost as bad as when Fitz had punched him, but couldn't afford to dwell on it; he had to figure out where else they could go.

Drew could only think of one other place.

"C'mon," Drew muttered, grabbing Adam's good arm and pulling him towards Coach Armstrong's office.

"I can walk by myself you know," Adam hissed, shaking himself free from Drew's grip, but staying close behind as Drew forced himself through the gawking audience.

The P.E. department was all but abandoned and provided a welcome relief from the pointing crowds that seemed to occupy the rest of the school.

"Stay here," Drew ordered Adam, pointing to the floor at the corner of Armstrong's office.

Adam silently complied and Drew walked over to the office door to find Armstrong getting ready to leave. Drew knocked on the already open door.

"Uh, coach?" he asked as Armstrong scooped up a stack of papers in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

"Sorry Drew, I'm just on my way out," Armstrong said. "I've got a double AP math class to prepare for this afternoon-"

"I just need to grab something from the team's locker room," Drew insisted. "I'll be quick."

Armstrong nodded his head over to the direction of the row of keys hanging on the wall to his right.

"It's the second one in from the left," he said. "Just be quick and put it back when you're done."

Drew nodded and watched as Armstrong rushed down the hall.

"Remember to lock up behind you," he added before disappearing through the double doors into the main school building.

"Let's go," he said, turning back to Adam and taking him into the team locker room.

"This is… surprisingly tidy," Adam said looking around at the carefully folded uniforms at everyone's stations.

"Yeah, Armstrong's pretty strict about keeping the change room clean," Drew said as the rummaged around for a first aid kit; he was sure he had seen one in there before.

"You're sure that nobody's gonna come in here?" Adam asked nervously. As Drew turned around to face him he could see why; Adam was starting at the station labeled "O. Milligan."

"Only the football team come in here, and I have the only key," Drew assured him. "Besides, you heard Armstrong, he has class all afternoon – no one else knows we're here. We can probably lay low in here until school ends."

"But we'll miss class-"

"You really want to go to class today?" Drew asked dully. "Really?"

"No, not really," Adam muttered before sitting himself down on the defense bench.

"Are you deliberatelyacting stupid today?" Drew asked, giving up his search for the first aid kit. "First you hit on Bianca DeSousa-"

"-I was just talking to her-"

"-Then you stroll into the guy's bathroom like nothing's happened-"

"-Well what do you expect me to do? Adam asked irately.

"-I expect you to use at least a little common sense," Drew shouted. "You're supposed to be the smart one! Well now you have goons like Fitz on your back-"

"It's not like I haven't had to deal with Fitz before!" Adam retorted.

Drew didn't say anything for a moment. He didn't know anything about Fitz and Adam; it seemed like the kind of thing that Adam would as least tell him about. He was starting to wonder what other things Adam was keeping from him.

"What do you mean?"

"He's kind of enemies with Eli," Adam explained. "Which I guess means he's kind of enemies with me. He pushed me against the lockers once and tried to punch me in the face."

"Tried?" Drew echoed.

"Well Eli stopped him," Adam said. "He threw himself infront of me and grabbed Fitz's fist before it could break my face."

Drew could feel his own face throbbing in pain, reminding him that he had completely failed to save Adam from the very same thing that Eli had apparently managed to.

No wonder Adam liked Ghoulsworthy better.

"I told them by the way," Adam said, smiling feebly. "Eli and Clare. They were cool."

"Great," Drew grumbled. "So that brings the list of people in this school who don't want to kill you to what - three? That's quite some army you've got there."

"Shouldn't you be pacing," Adam glowered. "Isn't that what do you when you're annoyed at everyone?"

"I'm not annoyed at you, I'm just-" Drew started, but stopped so that he could, in fact, pace. He was annoyed, he was very annoyed, but he figured that Adam was probably already having a bad enough day as it was without Drew fighting him too.

He sat beside Adam on the defense bench. He never sat on the defense bench before. It made a nice change from the offense.

"How's your shoulder?" he asked.

"It's fine," Adam murmured. "How's your… everything?"

"I think we're both gonna live," Drew laughed.

"Really?" Adam said quietly, and far too genuinely for Drew's liking. He shuffled close to Adam and moved to put his arm around him.

Adam pushed away. Again.

"My shoulder's not that fine," he said, anxiously moving further away from Drew.

"Oh," Drew whispered, trying not to sound as dejected as he felt. "Sorry."

They both stared at the spotless for a while, neither making a sound. The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch, but neither of them made an effort to move. Drew listened as people walked past the door to the team's locker room on their way to the general ones down the hall. They were all talking and laughing, not having a single care in the world. Drew never wanted to get up and start screaming at people so much in his entire life, but the unrelenting throbbing of his eye told him that this would be an unwise thing to do.

Adam was still starting at the floor, his head bowed so low he almost looked as if he were praying. Maybe he was, though Drew doubted it; Adam didn't have much belief in a creator, claiming that if there was one, he had a pretty sick sense of humor. He must have sensed Drew watching him as he lifted his head up and looked over to him.

"Do you remember Al Capone?" Adam asked. "The game I mean, not the person."

"Uh, yeah," Drew replied, confused at what Adam was getting at.

"I think you must have heard about him school and picked up the story wrong," Adam continued softly. "Why else would we need to save the world from the Eliot Ness Monster?"

Drew laughed. It hurt his ribs quite a bit, but he stayed smiling anyway.

"I was Al, and you were Capone," Drew remembered. "You're right, I think I did pick it up just a little bit wrong."

"And we stole the cup holder tree things from the kitchen to use as tommy guns," Adam added. "And Dad let us wear some of his suit jackets and they were waytoo big."

"Yeah," Drew sighed, still laughing. "What's Al Capone got to do with anything though?"

Adam tried to shrug, cringed at the pain and instead shook his head.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "I just wanted to talk about something nice. That's all."

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- I have an Adam POV story on the backburner called "Hypothesis", which details exactly what kind of things Adam has been keeping from Drew (it might be a while before it's published here though – I've been slowly chipping away at it for ages!)

- Story time: When I was three there was a giraffe slide I used to frequent when I visited my aunt's house. It was surrounded by sand, and that always interested me more than the slide did. One day an older boy threw the sand in my eyes and made me cry, so my big sister made him eat a handful of the stuff. Looking back there was probably dog poop in it. Regardless, my sister was, and still is, awesome!

In the next chapter: Mrs. Torres makes a new enemy.