Chapter Text
Jake doesn’t have hanahaki.
The wrinkled flower petals spilling out the seams of his bloodied-up hand are probably from that undercooked whatever-it-was Henry had just made. He’s a shit chef, of apparently disastrous proportion.
Jake flushes the toilet, away with the little hurricane of diluted blood, of tainted marigold and this crooked, stabbing feeling of indignation , uninvited and ever persistent and always showing its face at just the worst possible times.
Zoey.
When Drew’s got his hand in hers, smiling so pretty, sitting way too close, all kisses and whispers and blowout arguments half-seconds later. When they’re talking about how many kids she wants, about marriage and their parents and how her auntie Jan just died and, well, she’s really upset, so ‘I'm gonna go buy her another designer bag. Just one more, it’s cool. I don't care, my dad probably won't even notice.’
It was fine before. Before, when Jake could live with the third wheeling and the gold-digging and inside jokes and the splitting custody of his best friend, because, well… it made Drew happy .
He kept it in, dormant; the violence bubbling in his gut from every soft touch, from the protectiveness and possessiveness and the perpetual urge to just sit Drew down, take him by the shoulders and shake; scream his lungs out and say ‘What the hell are you doing?’ ‘What’s the matter with you, getting yourself attached to a girl like that?’ ‘Can’t you see how much I care?’
Jake ignored the want, the whatever-it-was that ate him away like its last supper.
But all that was worth the trouble, Jake thought.
Worth it because, for once, Drew was happy. And Drew’s never happy.
Worth it because Jake knows the kind of candy that's his favorite, when his birthday is, which bands he listens to when no one else is around. And Zoey doesn’t. She doesn't care, doesn't ask, doesn't look before she leaps or leaves Drew for dead. At the end of the day, Jake was his emergency contact over anyone else; over Zoey, his parents, the guys. That’s all that mattered.
Everything was fine like that. And then Zoey said she was going out of town, or to church, or shopping with Lia.
And she wasn’t.
Jake knows, for a fact, that she wasn’t because he spotted her in a movie theater parking lot sucking face with some old dude, grinding hard up against his thigh. Like she meant it, like she didn’t care who saw, didn’t care how Drew would feel, nothing. Jake hadn't encountered them on purpose, but, well, let’s just say he stuck around for long enough to see some very unholy things go on in that pretty pink Porsche Drew just bought her.
That’s where the sickness started; when all the longing and the waiting and the biting his tongue finally caught up to him and just snowballed into… this . Into thrown-up blood clots and ugly marigolds, puking his miserable guts out on Henry’s parents’ dirty bathroom floor.
The flowers are an interesting new development, granted.
It's just from the guilt, for all Jake’s willing to unpack. Some kind of divine punishment for not telling Drew, for letting Zoey string him on so long, for never saying what he really felt. He deserves this, made his bed and all that.
But it’s not from hanahaki. Jake’s sure.
‘Cause it’s got nothing to do with Drew, like, romantically , with the codependency or the live wire that sets Jake’s veins aflame every time he breathes, touches, is so much as in orbit with Zoey. Nothing to do with how close she’s prolly sitting next to him in Henry’s kitchen, his pretty fucking hair or how he might just have his hand on her thigh right now.
How Jake can’t stop picturing Drew in his arms, not Zoey’s.
That’s irrelevant, miles away from the flowers and the illness and the blood– oh, god, the blood. Hot and gross and damp on his skin, droplets everywhere.
It’s just guilt, Jake consoles his sickly-looking reflection in the mirror.
“Just guilt,” he says.
***
The immediate ‘ What’s wrong with you? ’ Jake receives the very second he steps foot into homeroom would be rude out of anyone else’s mouth, but it’s Drew.
Because of course it is.
And Drew is Drew. And he’s annoyingly perceptive. Or maybe just with Jake; when he’s wearing that put-off, walking-dead look or someone else’s corpse-white skin, picking at his fingernails and forgetting which shirt button goes to which.
“More like what isn’t lately, no offense, bro,” Henry unhelpfully supplies. Jake ignores the almost audible once-over he gives his ‘I-don't-give-a-shit’ outfit. It's called that for a reason, fuck's sake.
Jake drops himself sourly into his seat. A dead body, by now. Just one big, soulless bag of bones.
“Really, dude, you look like shit,” Liam remarks very insightfully.
Jake kicks him from the desk behind. Liam cackles. Jake groans. It hurts to speak, to make noise. He just slips further into his seat, buries his head, imagines he’s a squid in the deep sea and not some sick-out-of-his-mind corpse-to-be having this stupid conversation.
He shouldn't have gone to school today.
It’s a curse really, always finding yourself somewhere you never wanted to be. A victim of circumstance. Or maybe Jake just barked up the wrong tree somewhere along the lines, dug his own grave or whatever. This still sucks.
Getting picked apart like frog brains, put under the microscope of public attention; that’s exactly what he needs right now, after all he’s been through this past week. I mean, the flowers, the blood, the nightmares, the inflamed throat, the longing lodged firmly into his ribcage, attached like a parasite to the side of his heart. It’s more than he bargained for, definitely.
And yet he still can’t find it within himself to tell Drew. To come clean, be honest about what Zoey did, about the throwing up and the blood and the guilt, even if it means watching Drew crumple, dull, cry. Especially because it means that.
This whole throwing-up-flowers thing; it started off bearable, moderate.
Like a not-so-slow ritardando that just kept scaling up, up, up and finally into disaster. Into throwing up every single meal, running his throat ragged until it’s on fire and burning, words like a match that strike his red-phosphorus throat.
It’s not just in his body, keeping him up at all hours of the night; it’s beneath his skin, writhing, knotted into the fabric of his being, braiding and burning every little fiber and molecule. It’s this bone-crushing restless energy that always makes Jake want to do something, anything, to stop it, to leave this all alone. I mean, nowadays he can’t even keep down the five tylenols he takes at a time (even though the box tells him not to.)
So, yeah, Jake looks like shit. He feels like shit.
“I know what to get you guys for Christmas.” Jake winces at the flint-and-steel spark in his throat, the throbbing pain that pretty much just lives there now.
“What?” Henry entertains.
“A book on how not to be rude little shits. Do we not say ‘hello’ anymore? ‘How’s it going Jake?’ ‘What’s the weather like today?’ Nothing?” Jake snaps, head on his desk like a ham on its platter. There’s a couple seconds spent taking a drink out of Drew’s nasty rockstar before Jake realizes that that sounded way harsher than he intended it to.
He snaps up like a heartbeat, stiff as a board, glancing around apologetically while the guys just laugh. Glad they think this is funny. Everyone’s always looking at him weird nowadays, thinks he’s being a clown when he’s not particularly trying to be, that sort of thing. It’s fine, kind of.
But to top it all off, now Drew’s in on it. He stares at Jake from the seat adjacent, eyebrows lifted, just wearing this strange, strangled expression on his face, wide-eyed and full of pride. For what? Jake feels entitled to know. He can’t help but to think he’s being made fun of here, even though he’s well aware he’s not.
And then Drew just laughs.
I mean, he honest-to-god laughs , which never happens, not like this– earnest and honest and stupid and hot, melting on Jake’s skin in the best possible way. His heart swells, shudders, flutters, the whole nine yards. “Sorry.” Jake feels the need to say anyway. He doesn’t mean it. He never means it anymore.
He knows he sounds grumpy, but Jake’s willing to sound grumpy forever if that’s what gets Drew to keep looking at him like this, fond and intimate, smiling brighter than a supernova, forehead pressed to Jake’s shoulder while he laughs. Acting like he’s rubbed off on Jake and from the sound of his soda-bread-soft breaths, he’s real proud of it, too. The bitterness must be some form of endearment in Drew’s language.
‘Cause he’s a miserable fuck and all. Jake doesn’t mind, it’s grown on him. Or inside, if you count the throwing-up-flowers thing.
Henry catches his breath. “Seriously, though, Jake. Are you okay, bro?”
“No, I’m good.” If good means a withering skinsuit of a person, hanging on by threads and straws and eggshells and every other idiom that implies there’s only a little bit left to give to this insatiable, neverending pull, this… guilt. Because it’s not jealousy. It can’t be. “Your cooking’s just so bad I had to spend all of yesterday and today puking my guts out,” Jake jokes. It still hurts to.
Henry looks like he just got shot. “Hey! That was a family recipe!”
“It was shit, Henry, honestly. Your ancestors would be rolling in their graves,” Liam concurs.
“I tasted it! It was fine, I swear!”
“Bro, I swear it had maggots crawling in it.”
Henry’s jaw drops. “What?! No, it did not ! Liam, you are so full of it!”
“Sorry, dude. You’re never making it on masterchef.” Liam likes to get Henry all worked up, press his buttons and all that. Jake doesn’t really mind because Liam and Henry have been friends for so long and they’re probably never going to unpack that weird teasing thing they’ve got going on. Jake’s already checked out of this conversation anyways, wired and staring at the ceiling open-mouthed like a dead fish.
The bickering goes from cooking shows to Gordon Ramsey to E. Coli by the time Jake stops trying to follow the back-and-forth. It’s pretty hard to, when there’s something. Something burning into the side of his skull, something hot-wiring his senses into complete panic mode, pressing and demanding and so incredibly hard to ignore.
Drew. He’s staring. Staring like he wants something, like he knows something, like he can tell Jake just spent two hours throwing up bloody marigolds in the school bathroom. Those ‘absents’ are going to be hard to explain to his mom. God, he really should’ve just stayed home.
“What?” Jake finally says. What can he do? Drew’s doll-like, burning stare is just complete mentos to Jake’s coca-cola brain. He can’t not react, especially not when he’s sitting so close, breathing so hot on Jake’s skin, eyelashes so long. He smells like vanilla extract.
“You look like shit.”
Drew’s really got to read a book on manners one of these days. Jake just plays it off, like he always does. “Aw, Drew, come on.”
“Not like that. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.” Jake always wanted to be closer to Drew, wanted to be the one he turned to, the one who knew him better than anyone. Now it’s come to bite him in the ass. ‘Cause Drew knows he’s sick before Jake does, knows he’s got a crush on a girl before Jake realizes it himself. There’s no way Drew hasn’t noticed something was off. It’s kind of stupid to try and pretend, Jake realizes. Whatever. He’s still going to put up a fight. “If you’re sick, you shouldn’t come to school.”
Jake doesn't know what to say. “I-- I wanted to see Daisy.”
Drew scoffs. “You’re a shit liar, you know,” he says. Jake’s heart sinks. It hurts; everywhere. “Guessing that means you aren’t coming to hang out later?”
Jake feels guilty. You’d think it’d get easier, like built-up tolerance or whatever, after all the times he’s ditched Drew to hang out with the freaks. But it only gets harder to swallow, harder to leave, harder to look Drew in his pretty darkwood eyes and say no. “I’ve got club, sorry.”
Drew’s not upset. Just disappointed. Bitter, too. Which is way worse. “If you were so sorry, you’d just quit already.” Drew kicks at the empty desk in front of his absently, childishly. He pretends he's not hurt, doesn't do a very good job.
Jake’s exasperated. He can’t find the energy to hold up his own end of an argument right now, especially not against Drew. He turns to Henry and Liam to make sure they’re not paying attention before he pleads quietly, “ Drew .”
“When are you gonna quit lying to my face?” Drew snaps, more sad than pissed off, looking down defeatedly at his desk.
Jake softens. It’s worse because he can’t give him an answer, can’t have his cake and eat it too or stay with Drew and still be honest to him.
He doesn’t look into Drew’s eyes because he can’t. He knows they’re too brown and too pretty and too disappointed-looking and Jake just can’t . Not here, not now. “You wouldn’t like the truth, Drew. You’d hate me for it. I couldn’t…” Jake rasps, holding a hand to his throat. It stings. Or maybe that’s just the thought of Drew gone from his life, the entire Sun missing from Jake’s solar system. “I couldn’t do that to you, man. I promise I'm… Drew, I’m just trying to protect you. ”
“Okay,” Drew says, slowly. He sits back in his seat, calm. Too calm. “Okay.”
But Jake can’t leave well enough alone, especially not when it’s putting his throat through a paper shredder, cooking his internal organs and messing with his head day in and day out. “It’s just… Zoey, ” he hedges.
“What about her?”
Jake tries not to choke on his words. “You’re… you’re really serious about her, right?” he asks. It’s as good a question as any.
“Yeah,” Drew says, thoughtfully. “I am.” Jake doesn’t think it sounds true, but maybe he’s biased. He never liked Zoey a ton, always said she put a bad taste in his mouth. But Jake tolerated her, I mean, until she stomped on every good thing she had between her and Drew. It just wasn’t right. Not when… when, hypothetically, if Jake liked Drew, they couldn’t ever be together. Cheating on him is just pretty ungrateful, you know. That’s enough to be angry at, he thinks.
“...Okay,” Jake finally decides. It’s not worth telling him. Jake's burden is his own to carry, he wouldn't put that on Drew's plate in a million years.
“Why? She do something?”
“No,” Jake lies, pretends he doesn’t know that Drew can tell, can read him like those books Drew acts like he’s too nonchalant to read, pretends he can get away with it. “Just curious. Don’t worry. Got to go soon. See you.”
“Bye,” Drew says, slowly, conspiratorially. He can smell the panic. Jake tries to play it off. And the “Don’t avoid me,” he adds sounds more serious than it should.
“I’d never,” Jake says.