Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the Breakfast Club or the characters
Andrew woke up to the loud rush of water. He pulled a pillow over his head to drown the noise out, but quickly gave up trying to get back to sleep. He was already awake, and had to get up for school soon anyways. Instead, he decided to investigate the burden. Any odd noise in that house could have been a number of unsettling things.
He followed it to the bathroom, where John Bender stood, in front of the running facet, a face full of shaving cream, hair damp, and shirtless. Andrew froze in embarrassment; it never crossed his mind that with sharing a house, came sharing a bathroom. He looked down towards the faucet, watching as water spewed out much harder than it rightfully should have.
Andrew looked back at John's body. He was so much smaller than he looked in all the baggy layers. He wasn't skinny to the point it was unsettling, or scrawny like brain, he had muscle tone, but not like Jake. Not in a healthy sort of way. His hip bones stuck out a little, and his pants seemed to barely hang around his waist. Even with a belt, they seemed loose.
John ran his razor under the water, washing all the shaving cream off before bringing it back to his face. He looked towards the door, looked back at the reflection in the mirror, before doing a double take and jumping backwards. What he had presumed to be Jake was a somewhat more annoying presence instead.
Andrew's eyes immediately shifted to John's torso. A gash going diagonally, all the way from top to bottom that made a scar which was elevated to a noticeable height against John's skin. Andrew felt awkward, yet he couldn't help but stare.
"Get the fuck out!" John shouted, throwing his razor at the door as Andrew quickly closed it behind him.
Andrew's heart beat fast. Okay, so he had more than one scar. That didn't validate his story to be true. He could have just as easily done something stupid to earn that scar as he could have with the other one. But it was so big; he had to have been hospitalized. What the fuck could he have done to himself to get that?
So it didn't validate his story, but it made it a possibility. If that was the case, then the man who was now Andrew's step father had done that to his own kid. So what would he do to a kid that wasn't his own flesh and blood?
Andrew shook those types of thoughts from his head. John was an idiot. Just because the scar was huge, didn't mean the injury wasn't the result of some accident caused by John doing something ridiculous, which was what he did best. It was his third day there, and he'd never seen any sign of abuse anything. John had done something stupid, gotten hurt, and now as embarrassed by his own stupidity. That was the end of it.
John felt blood trickle down his chin. He'd probably cut himself when that fucking jock strap surprised him. What the fuck was he thinking anyways, walking in on John after he'd just gotten out of the shower, starring at him, scarring the absolute shit out of him, seeing him? John swallowed hard. He'd seen the part of him that he was most ashamed of. He didn't just fucking see it, he'd fucking starred at it.
John felt sick. He could barely look at the scar in a mirror, always trying to avoid it by keeping his eyes elsewhere. He couldn't even look at it, how could he handle other people looking at it? It was like his father had branded him as "not normal". It was a constant reminder that John wasn't given the same opportunities as other kids, that he was different, and that he'd never escape that. Just like he'd never be able to wash the scar from his body, he'd never wash the reputation that followed him. The bittersweet rep that he tried so desperately to cling to, yet hated at the same time.
John closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He couldn't let it get to him. It was unsettling, but he had to get over it. Andrew was living there now. If he didn't calm down, get his mind straight, and execute a plan to get him out, then he was going to see much worse than a scar. John needed to focus on preventing that from happening, not worrying about what had already happened.
He opened his eyes and picked his razor up from the ground. He needed to blow it off like nothing had happened. He needed to get cleaned up, and get to school. He wasn't going to get to go to college, but he at least wanted to graduate high school. Not become some drop out, living at home at the age of twenty one like Jake.
John finished shaving, rinsed his face off, and pulled his thermal shirt over his head. He then took a deep breath, opened the door, and stormed into his bedroom in his usual manner, like nothing was bugging him. He was going to play it off like nothing had happened, and hopefully, Andrew wouldn't bring it up. Hopefully, getting screamed at and having a metal razor tossed at his head was enough to keep Andrew away from the subject.
"We're not friends at school just because we're living together you know." Andrew said, making John laugh. He knew it was probably bleedingly obvious, but he didn't really know what else to say, and felt that silence would have been too awkward. He couldn't think of anything else to comment on quickly enough, so he just stuck with school.
"Oh gee, what a shame. I was totally hoping to hang out with you and all your interesting friends." John said as he slipped into his flannel shirt. The fact that after a month of being ignored at school, Andrew thought that now, suddenly, just because they were living together, that John suddenly wanted anything new to do with him, was almost as unsettling as if he had brought up what had just gone down.
"And it would be appreciated if you didn't tell anyone about where I was staying." Andrew added, ignoring John's response. This time, he wasn't just filling a silence. If anyone found out that Andrew Clark was residing in the Bender residence, living surrounded by pure trash, his reputation would be a thing of the past.
"You being here isn't exactly something I'm proud of either, Sporto." John said, rolling his eyes. Like he was about to tell the whole fucking world that the biggest jock in school was sharing a house with him. He didn't want people to know any more than Andrew did, and he definitely didn't want to risk people being okay with it, and Andrew having guests over, or at the very least, sharing with them everything that went down in the house. His reputation was just as much at stake, no; more so.
"Whatever." Andrew said, leaving the room to see what his mom had prepared for breakfast. He half expected to find nothing. They were living in the Bender household, living with trash, calling themselves a "family" with that trash. So why the hell not act like trash? Who were they kidding, having normal daily breakfast, family dinners (missing half the family), his poor, stupid mother trying to arrange bonding days? They weren't a family, they couldn't become one. The trash would replace any traditional family rituals that Andrew held sacred to him, long before normalcy replaced the trash.
John was starting to hate Andrew on a whole new level. A hatred he'd never felt for anyone before. He didn't hate Andrew like he hated everyone else, because they had normal families or normal lives and cars and scholarships. He didn't hate Andrew like he hated Chelsea, or the rest of the ghetto skanks, because they were proud, even flaunted, what he was ashamed to be: fucking trash. He didn't hate Andrew like he hated Mrs. Clark-Bender, for coming in and trying to mend their broken family, as if it were some quick and easy task. He didn't hate Andrew like he hated his dad, with every fiber of his body, a hate that was half fear, or like he hated Vernon, for being too much like his dad, or the way he hated his mom, for not being there when she should have been. Those were all hatreds that John had gotten years of practice with; that were familiar to him.
Andrew got a new category of hatred, one that belonged to him and only him. Andrew belonged to the category where he was hated for the insight he'd already gotten, and the insight he was still to gain. Andrew was hated as the wrecking ball that had already broken through the top portion of secure walls that John had surrounded his secrets in, the walls that let him live a somewhat normal life outside of his house..
Out of every student at Shermer High School, John had been the only one to know the state of his house, the state of his family, and what happened inside. Until then. Now two people knew, and John couldn't control what Andrew did with his share of the information. Andrew was hated, because Andrew was a threat. Andrew had moved himself from the base of the pyramid, where the majority of people that John hated fell, to nearly being at the tippy top. John hated Andrew, because Andrew was trespassing in his home and life, and with that, he was going to learn all of John's once secured secrets.
John grabbed Andrew's baseball cap from his bed and spit in it, before placing it back exactly how he had found it. That would show the asshole to go snooping around the house, to stare at other people's scars, to gain insight.
He threw on his first jacket, and trudged into the kitchen, grabbing his trench from the chair. As he pulled it over his shoulders, his father walked by, brushing against his arm. John froze, not failing to notice the immediate stare this earned from Andrew. He tried to pull it off cooly, while simultaneously, his mind went into overdrive. Why would his dad be up? He was never awake that early.
"Go on and get in the car Johnny. I'm giving you and Andrew a ride to school today." Joseph Bender said casually, taking a beer out of the freezer. Six AM in the morning, and he already drinking. Classy old Joe Bender.
John couldn't help but stare. His old man never offered to take him to school.
It wasn't like Joe never did any of the things real fathers did. Candy coating aside, he was far from a decent father, failing to meet expectations by a long shot, but he wasn't like some animal that just walked around the house, getting drunk, beating his kids, no matter how many times John pictured him as just that. There were times when, on good days, Joe seemed to have some level of affection for his kids. Not the unconditional love that other parents showed, but to the extent that he would talk to them as he would talk to his coworkers, or maybe the friends of his friends. Sometimes he'd start a conversation when he'd see either of the boys taking interest in something similar to his own interests, like when John started getting handy with a hammer and some nails (though, this common interest hadn't seemed to stop Joe from branding his son with a cigar after the accidental descent of an open paint bucket). He got the boys gifts on their birthdays, when he remembered, and on the holidays. They were just cheap things he'd pick up from the drug store, but there had to have been some affection present for the thought to even cross his mind.
So it wasn't the fact that Joe Bender had offered something other than his fist to John, because he had done so before, but never had he offered to drive him anywhere. Joe had even given reason for this. In Joseph Bender's words, "Gas is expensive boy. I ain't got the money to be driving you all over God's creation when you've got a perfect set of legs to get you where you need'a be". Not to mention, on the off chance Joe would ever change his mind and give his son a lift somewhere, he never expected it to be at six in the morning. Joe Bender was the common lowlife. He never rolled out of bed until noon, at the very earliest.
"You deaf? Get in the car. I don't have time to wait around." Joe said, bringing the bottle to his lips and sucking down the liquid. So he had other errands. That was why he was up that early, but it didn't take away from the absurdity of him driving John anywhere when he had a set of fully functioning legs to carry him.
John did as told. Pride aside, the morning walk to school wasn't exactly a pleasurable. A free ride probably wasn't going to happen again, so he wasn't about to turn down the opportunity. Even if it meant being in a metal cage with two people who had made it to the very top of his hate pyramid.
Andrew had already gotten in the back seat of the shitty 1975 bronco ranger. John kind of figured he wouldn't take the front seat, sit next to a man he didn't even know in an already awkward car ride, but he wished he would have. It would have been so much easier for John if he had gotten to sit alone in the backseat, while Andrew and his dad both sat a seat up. He half considered climbing in the other side of the back, which was at least better than the passenger seat when his dad was the driver. Of course, this would come off as strange, and a little faggy. It wasn't right for one dude to sit right next to another dude, when there was another available seat. He had no other option but the front seat. Fucking perfect.
The ride was just as awkward as John had imagined, yet significantly cut the time that was required to travel the distance. What he somehow thought would be a half hour ride, ignorantly forgetting the obvious, that traveling by car was faster than traveling by foot, ended up lasting only seven minutes. As a bonus, this meant they had arrived early. The school was almost vacant, which meant nobody would see Andrew and John getting out of the same car, walking into school together, a potential problem that neither one had thought of when accepting a ride to school, but had luckily and unintentionally avoided by waking up early in anticipation of a long walk.
"Well…have a good day." Joe Bender said, the words that were common to every other father, seeming out of place when they came out of his bearded lips. John scoffed at this awkwardness. His old man was actually trying to pretend to be a good dad, driving them to school, wishing them a good day. He wondered how long it would last, and made a mental note to take advantage of it when he figured out to what extent it would go to.
Andrew took significantly longer strides to the building than John did. He was actually excited to walk into the high school. It was familiar. It hadn't changed since he walked through the same door, a month earlier, when he was living alone with his dad. It had brought comfort the past month when he was living secretly in his mother's tiny apartment. It brought comfort now that he had downgraded yet again, to the absolute bottom of the pit.
He opened the door, closed his eyes, and stood still, breathing in the smell of hot papers from the printers, of moldy sandwiches forgotten in lockers, and of sweaty ballsacks from the gym. The smells that remained unchanged, in the building that remained unchanged, no matter what happened in the individual student's lives. It was the only thing in their existence that, no matter how much time passed, they could walk through the doors of, and feel like they were surrounded by old times. Like not a single thing in their lives was different, no matter how many months or years had slipped right past them.
John shoulder bumped Andrew on his way in, jolting him forward and catapulting his book, bringing him back to reality. He heard John mutter the word "faggot" under his breath. He imagined he had to have seemed pretty bizarre, standing there, with his eyes closed, taking in a deep breath, but why John had to be so fucking nasty about it was beyond him. It didn't matter though. Until that bell rang at two-thirty PM, his life was Bender free.
School suddenly posed as a threat of being Andrew Clark's favorite place to be.
A/N: Every chapter has finally been revamped. Now for the part that involves true motivation: finishing it.
~My Embarrassment Confession~ when I was writing the bit where John is trying to find an alternative to sitting next to his father in the car, I did get the "song" friday stuck in my head.
which seat should Bender take?
-Totally-T3ii3: Yeah, he was pretty out of character. Like...really. He wasn't sarcastic, witty, or aggressive. He was like...a fluffy fluffball of angst. Like an emo kitten or something. I'm not really sure what I was going for with his character. Apparently, according to my original review response, I was trying to show that he lived a double life. So apparently, according to my youth, at school, he is sarcastic, funny, and threatening, and at home, well...he's a fluffy emo kitten lol. Thanks for your critique and review of the original chapters one and two!