[ i like this idea a lot bc it's dorky and cute // song is by fall out boy

warnings: language and mentioned drug abuse

concept: this is the au where lewis' brother was the one who took a nosedive when their father died.  so like,,, lewis is a really really soft dude who never had to even act tough??

stay safe,
lew. ]

———————

"All right, kids, grab your stuff and follow me!" Mrs. Olsen, one of the music teachers, seemed to be in an extraordinarily shitty mood as she stood in front of her 'advanced' class.

Of course, Lewis had to get nervous, slowly raising his hand as he clutched his notebooks close. "Excuse me, ma'am, but... what's going on? We're not in trouble, are we?"

His classmates groaned loudly, and it was clear that Mrs. Olsen was trying to hold back a similar reaction. "You're not in trouble. We're meeting up with the other class to get a new assignment."

—

The other class intimidated Lewis. Popular kids, jocks, cheerleaders, the intimidatingly admirable art kids- they all terrified the poor guy.

He picked a seat close to the door, notebook open on his lap and green pen in hand. As soon as the teachers began detailing the assignment, he quickly began to write the specifics down.

"We've already paired you off, so that means you've all got partners and you're all going to be stepping out of your comfort zones a bit," Mr. Roberts, the other teacher, explained, scanning over the clipboard in his hands. "If you're the first person we call, get up and find your partner so we can at least get acquainted."

A loud groan rang through the room again. Assigned partners sucked.

Mrs. Olsen read out the list of students, asking them to raise their hands so they could find each other easier. Some students rolled their eyes at that.

Lewis kept his head down until he heard, "Logan El-Amin and Lewis Williams". At the sound of his name, he lifted his hand and waited for the other guy to find him. And it felt like his heart stopped when he sat down and smiled at him.

No way around it, this other guy was gorgeous. Lewis' dumbass brain almost short-circuited, his face flushing a deep pink as he focused back on his notebook. Softly, he said, "Sorry that you got stuck with me."

"Hm? Don't worry 'bout it. You can't be that bad," he replied, running his friends through his hair. "Like your teacher said, I'm Logan. Nice to meet you."

"Lewis." He held out his hand, and Logan misinterpreted the gesture, giving the other teen a high five instead of a handshake. "I, uh, don't really talk to anyone other than my brother, so this is probably gonna be really awkward."

"It'll be fine. Let's talk about this project, though. What can you do, music-wise?"

"Well, um, I play guitar and bass, and sometimes I write shi- stuff. Lyrics."

——

After a week of working in class on the project, Lewis finally felt comfortable enough around Logan to invite him over. They still had a couple weeks to finish the project, but Lewis wanted to get things in order. The two seemed well on their way to becoming good friends, though.

"This one is kinda about my brother. Um, he's the reason we moved out here- he made some bad decisions and got in with the wrong people so Mom was like 'yep, let's get him outta this situation', so... we moved," Lewis explained, passing a sheet of notebook paper to Logan.

From his spot on Lewis' bed, he reached out to take the page, both sides filled with neatly written green words. The room fell silent, other than the soft sound of Lewis' fingernails scraping against his sweater sleeve.

"This is good. Really good. I've already got ideas for it."

"Holy sh- You're not joking, are you?"

——————

[ anyway the whole idea thing behind this was me going: what if,,, instead of being a little punk,,, lewis listened to exclusively bubblegum pop music and dressed in pastels,,,

and that thought contributed to the backstory shift for this

idk man, if you'd wanna see this continued, let me know! ]