#I WAS LITERALLY GONNA GO INTO MY HIGH SCHOOL TO SEE MY OLD PRECALC AND MUSICAL THEATER TEACHERS AND THEY HAVE SUPER LONG MEETINGS AUGHHHHH

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Me when I haven’t seen my emotional support middle aged man with questionable ethics in 3 whole months 🥲

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Church Boy - Chapter 4

Other than the bizarre bell schedule, the new school didn’t seem anywhere near as bad as he’d expected. In fact, as he waved goodbye to Phil and started the trek to where he remembered he’d shown him his fourth period to be, he began to think it might even be a hell of a lot better as his old school. In fact, it might even be the place he’d finally find happiness.

Description: Phil’s lived in the same town and gone to the same church his entire life. But when his pastor leaves, a new one comes in, with his teenage son Dan in tow. He’s broken; real broken. And he thinks Phil’s just another church boy that’s going to hate him just as much as everyone else he’s ever met, but maybe he’s just going to be the one that can fix all his broken parts.

Genre: AU, High School, Strangers to Lovers

Chapter Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of Homophobia/Transphobia

Fic Warnings (Not Final!): Heavy Speak of Religion, Heavy Homophobia, Swearing, Discussion of Sex, Fighting with Family

Chapter Word Count: 2.5k Total Word Count: 8.8k

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Dan stepped into the room and took it in. There were cheesy math posters all around the room, hung a consistent few inches from the ceiling. A few were peeling, but they still looked as pristine as cheesy math posters could. The room appeared to be intensely cleaned and organized, yet it gave off a calming vibe due to the darkness, as the only light in the room was the sunlight from the windows. There was a bellwork problem projected on the board, and a few kids were sitting sparsely in desks working on it. A few gave glances to Dan, but nobody could bother to address him; they were too busy frantically trying to finish their bellwork before the bell rang. 

“I sit here,” Phil said. “Right under the fan.” He looked as if snatching a chair under the ceiling fan at the beginning of the year was the one event in his life he took the most pride in. Dan cocked his neck up to look at the violently rotating fan, and he couldn’t quite blame him. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there was no air conditioning in that room, and it must have gotten hot as hell at the beginning of the school year. “Nobody sits there,” he added, pointing to the chair to his left. “You can just sit there for now.” 

Dan slipped into the chair and pulled his notebook out of his binder to start copying the bellwork, and he was suddenly overwhelmed. He had started Precalc at his old school, but they hadn’t yet done the problem on the board or even anything like it. And that’s when it struck him that he hadn’t even started Chemistry. Both of those were honors classes, and they both built on what they had already learned, and Dan hadn’t a clue what he had missed. 

Dan’s breathing had begun to get heavy when he found a tall, dark-haired woman towering over him. “You must be the new student. Is everything going alright here?” 

“No, actually,” he let out, trying to calm himself. “I took Precalc in my old school, but we hadn’t gotten here yet.” 

In the split second before she answered, he could hear her telling him to go change his schedule because she couldn’t have him behind. He could already feel himself losing the one class he had with Phil. 

“That’s okay!” she said, and Dan’s eyes popped out of his head. 

“It is?” 

“Of course. You couldn’t be too far behind, so I can give you some worksheets and lessons to catch you up. You should be totally fine by next week. We’re currently about to start a totally new unit, so you should be able to follow along just fine.” 

“Thank you!” Dan said, a smile crossing his face as all his anxiety, about that particular class, at least, dissipated. He decided to give up on the bellwork and looked towards Phil, who was sitting and staring off into the distance, having already finished the problem. 

“You’re right; this school really isn’t half bad,” he whispered over to him. 

“I told you!” Phil said back in a bit more than a whisper, which earned them a less menacing than Dan would have expected glance from the teacher. “It’s gonna be fine,” he said with a smile as the bell rang. 

“Have a great day, and be thinking about who you want your partner to be!” 

The words were no use, as the entire class was already out the door the second the bell rang. “How the hell are we doing a project in math?” Dan asked, throwing his backpack over his shoulder. 

“Don’t ask me!” Phil said, glancing over at Dan. It was obvious what he was thinking. “By the way, you can be my partner.” 

Phil immediately saw Dan’s face brighten. “Who says I wanna be your partner?” 

Phil grinned, biting his lip a bit. “Well, I can find someone else, if that’s what you’d prefer.” 

“You know, it’s your lucky day; I think I’ll take the partnership.” 

“Great.” 

They had made their way halfway down the hall when Phil stopped at his next class, Dan walking on ahead of him. “Dan, wait!” he shouted, and Dan’s head snapped back. “This is my next class.” 

“Oh,” he said, seeming a bit disappointed. 

“You remember where your second is, right?” 

“I got it. If worst comes to worst I’ll be late.”

“Alright. Good luck, and have fun!” he called out as he started to walk into the room. 

“If you say so,” Dan laughed out as he walked in the opposite direction. 

Phil was a bit concerned about Dan being alone on his first day; he wasn’t sure why, but he was. He was sixteen; he could handle himself. For some reason, though, Phil couldn’t help but worry about him. All through his second he was distracted, thinking about Dan downstairs and hoping his class was going well. 

He was finally jolted from his trance when the bell rang; he hadn’t managed to copy a word of the notes for the last half hour of class. Hopefully he’d think to pick them up from someone eventually. When he slipped out the door, he was far too anxious to try and find Dan; he checked his phone and saw no texts from him, so he tried to convince himself that meant he was alright and headed to his third. 

Somehow, Phil managed to pay even less attention in third than he did in second. He couldn’t even focus on his friends beside him being absolute dumbasses (as per usual). All he could ever focus on was the ticking clock, inching closer minute by minute to when he could finally meet Dan for lunch. 

After yet another class of missing the entire lecture, Phil was the first one out the door towards the lunchroom. He had already memorized the fact that Dan had chemistry third, so he made sure to head straight there first. 

The students were just beginning to pour out of the classroom when he got there; he’d plowed his way down the hall. He hadn’t realized it, but all the kids he nearly knocked over definitely did. Phil watched a bunch of kids in his class give him a confused glance as they walked past him; after all, it probably wasn’t the most normal thing on the planet to see someone panting outside their classroom. Finally, Dan filed out of the room, a weary smile on his face. “Hey, Phil!”

“Hey, Dan!” A smile crossed his face as he realized lunch was definitely going to be the best part of his day. 

Dan couldn’t help but smile as he saw Phil waiting in the doorway; he had been so overexcited to see him that he had obviously literally ran, and Dan found that fucking adorable. 

“How were your last two classes?” Phil asked him.

He frowned a bit. “Eh, they were alright. Spanish wasn’t too bad; apparently Spanish at my old school was a lot more intense. The teachers here don’t really know how to control their classes.” He flashed back to screaming freshmen that he didn’t even know how got in to Spanish 3. Those voices would haunt him for a long, long time. 

Phil chuckled. “You don’t have to tell me.” 

“Chemistry kinda sucked. I had it next semester in my old school, so I just walked in halfway through the class and I’m completely lost. I’m going to have to have the teacher catch me up, but I’ll get it eventually, I guess. It’s just...” he sighed, trailing off. “a lot of work.”

“I get that,” Phil said. “Playing catch up is the worst.” 

Dan smiled, but he was a bit angry that Dan didn’t really get it. He’d never had to pick up and move before. Well, maybe he had, but that didn’t seem like what he meant. Getting the flu was different from missing half of a semester, especially of Chemistry. 

“Lunch?” Phil asked. 

It was just then that Dan realized how hungry he was. He had been so stressed the entire morning that he hadn’t even thought about food, but he was starving. Third lunch was terrifyingly late, and Dan ate half his lunch in class at his old school where he had lunch an hour earlier. Now that he thought about it, he was starving. “Definitely.” 

They were about to start walking when a two boys and a girl walked up behind Phil. “There you are, dude! You literally took off running there,” said the boy on the right. Suddenly all their eyes seemed to fall on Dan at once, and he could almost feel them all staring into his soul. “Who’s this?” 

“Oh, guys, meet Dan! He’s new here.” 

“Hi,” Dan said inwardly. 

“Dan, this is James,” Phil said. James was the boy on the far left; he was tall, but not too lanky, with tan skin and brown hair. He looked a bit like a surfer, except it was evident that he’d never surfed before in his life. He did a bit of an awkward wave and let his hand fall at his side. “Eli,” the boy on the right had pure blonde hair, and he was a few inches shorter than James, as well as a bit more heavyset. The first word that came to Dan’s mind to describe him was ‘adorable’, but something told him the boy was anything but adorable and innocent. He said a quick “hey” and raised his hand to indicate his existence. “and Nora.” Nora was the only girl of the group, and she was standing in the middle of the other two. She had short, brown hair, about the same shade as his, and she was about the same height as Eli. She wore a dirty, black hoodie and jeans even though it was an uncharacteristically hot day for October. She simply gave him some finger guns. They seemed like nice kids, but that didn’t stop Dan from thinking they were staring into his soul. “They’re my closest friends. They may be hella weird sometimes,” he said, glaring at all three of them. “But I love them, and I think you’ll like them too.” 

“Rad,” was all Dan said. 

The five of them made their way down the stairs to the lunchroom, where Phil’s friends headed to what Dan assumed was their group’s table. There were already a couple kids sitting there, who they each greeted with a “hey” and sat down. Dan stood awkwardly for a moment at the head of the table before Phil patted the seat beside him and he scurried off to sit down. Most of the other kids didn’t notice him. 

“So, today in history, I was working with James, Eli, and Ben, and we made an entire page of Vines on our project,” Phil said. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Phil, this is the fifth one this semester!” Nora exclaimed, overwhelmed but obviously a bit intrigued. 

“Oh?” Dan asked, he himself also quite intrigued. He didn’t know that much about Phil or his group, but as much as he felt like the outsider he was definitely interested in their antics. “

“Well, at the beginning of the year we wrote about Waluigi...” 

To Dan, something about the ten-minute story that appeared to be Phil’s favorite felt like an induction to the group, because by the time he finished they were on their way to hang out in the library, Dan in tow laughing. He didn’t even feel like an outsider anymore; sure, he didn’t get their inside jokes, but he felt included in the conversations and even in the group. He had only managed to eat half his lunch, but he figured he’d finish it in his fourth. He knew to eat before lunch the next day, so he’d be fine. 

Dan entered the library with Phil, Nora, Eli, James, and who he assumed to be Ben. He deduced that the library was where they usually went when they finished up in the cafeteria, even though none of them appeared to be avid readers. Instead they made their way into a corner and began laughing at something Dan couldn’t even comprehend. Within thirty seconds, Dan, Phil, and Nora were leaning up against a bookcase watching Ben, Eli, and James in a standing pileup. Ben was in James’s arms, and Eli was simply laughing so hard he was about to fall into the other two. Phil and Nora were roaring with laughter as well, and Dan couldn’t help but to join in.

“Is this normal?” he asked his two companions. 

“Oh, definitely,” said Nora. “They literally do this every day. Before school, during lunch, sometimes even after school. Literally everyone here is gay.”

Dan cackled. “Really?” 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Phil piped in. “They might not actually be gay, but they sure act like it. We’re all just waiting for it to actually happen. It’s a pretty good life, to be honest.” 

“Damn right,” Dan responded. They stood in silence for a moment, the three boys still poking at each other, before Dan’s curiosity finally got the best of him. “Are there really that many gays in this school?” 

“Eh, there aren’t too many,” Phil said, shrugging. “All three of us are, any number of them might be, and there’s a good few more circulating. It’s really not as bad as you’d think.” 

“Yeah, I would have expected at least one redneck to mock me for some gay mannerism by now,” Dan said, half joking. 

“I had a trans friend they called ‘it’ for a while, but that’s about as bad as it got. They can sometimes get ugly with the slurs, but we don’t really notice it much. It’s actually pretty chill here, for the most part,” Nora added, as if she’d discussed the topic many a time. Both Nora and Phil seemed completely accustomed to the environment they’d found themselves in, from its best to its worst. 

“Oh, yeah. They’re not the worst. They might just be oblivious though,” Phil said, throwing one strap off his backpack and slinging it over his chest so it faced Dan. “You see this?” he asked, pointing to a Hot Topic pin with a rainbow flag on it. “I’ve had this since freshman year, and not a single one of them has noticed. In fact, most of them still think I’m straight, despite my constant closet jokes. In reality, they just don’t give a shit about anything or anyone around it, and I’m not mad about taking advantage of it.” 

Dan shrugged. “Fair.” 

The bell rang, and Phil slung his backpack back over his shoulder. Dan glanced at the clock, reading 1:24. That school had the weirdest bell schedule Dan had ever seen, and he wasn’t excited to get used to it, but he’d live. Other than the bizarre bell schedule, the new school didn’t seem anywhere near as bad as he’d expected. In fact, as he waved goodbye to Phil and started the trek to where he remembered he’d shown him his fourth period to be, he began to think it might even be a hell of a lot better as his old school. In fact, it might even be the place he’d finally find happiness.