Chapter Text
The drama club, by all means, was never supposed to exist. Like many things in the school it was the product of one Wilbur Soot-Minecraf's first year, after he had bothered Miss Puffy so intensely that she had allowed it creation just because it got him to leave her office. Of course, there were terms to this agreement; every play had to be approved by the school, they had to promise that the disputes between members would be solved 'without fights breaking out, Wilbur, and no name calling'. The club was formed as an compromise, and would live like one too.
At the beginning, it was just Wilbur, his brother, Eret the traitor and her younger brother Fundy. A club that lived in harmony, free from pissbaby green men and Americans (though Techno was on thin fucking ice). So harmonious, in fact, that Wilbur hadn't even protested when new people started arriving to the club's weekly practices, which had been cemented to Thursday evening in the auditorium too avoid as little conflict with other clubs as possible. New people joined the club, Niki, one of Wilbur's only friends, George, who they assumed had just gotten lost and decided to go with it, as well as a whole lieu of Americans who really shouldn't be there but could be accepted. The perfect club.
The tragedy that befell Macbeth had ruined this in one swift performance. A single play, one that would split half the club apart and that was totally, completely and utterly Wilbur's fault because if he hadn't- if he hadn't been himself, obsessed with the club and everything inside it. Maybe then Eret wouldn't be avoiding them like the plague, Dream wouldn't get to be co-president, Techno would still help him in the club and he wouldn't end up almost losing everything. He seemed to ruin everything he touched.
Though, that was an entirely different tale. One that would never be as important as the present, the now.
“Can you fucking believe this?” Wilbur bursts into the auditorium where the drama club were supposed to be rehearsing (key word being ‘supposed’. The drama club didn’t have the greatest track record for productivity.) He was wildly swinging his arms about in outrage, at one point ‘accidentally’ backhanding an oblivious Dream. On and off stage, Wilbur had a tendency of being the most needlessly dramatic person to grace Essempi high.
The auditorium went silent, all previous chatter dying out in apprehension of what would only be assumed to be an awful meeting of arguments and Wilbur acting as if the world was ending over some mild inconvenience. They, as a group, had grown used to the average routine of their club- Quackity, Karl and Spanap would keep trying to sneak away to make out behind the bike sheds, Fundy would start fights and then run behind his ‘father’ (long story, involving a badly-done performance of ‘Annie’ and Wilbur getting too involved in his role), before Dream would attempt another coup to regain control of the club. Miss Puffy's original demands for their 'ceasefire' flew out of the window as soon as her back was turned, more often than most.
”Bad meeting with Miss Puffy?” Karl asks. He was the most sympathetic to Wilbur’s dramatic outbursts- more so than his boyfriends, who had not recovered from laughing at Dream.
Karl was regularly the least brash of the group; maybe a combination of insecurity of his role in his friend's life, or just genuinely being a nice person. At least he still turned up, even if he did get horrible stage fright as soon as the spotlights shone on him. Some of his most highlighted roles included: 'rock', 'grass' and the rather unfortunate time he had ruined a primary school production of the Nativity by sobbing loudly through Jesus's birth.
”Terrible. Awful. The whole- everything is ruined!” Wilbur yells, climbing up onto the stage where everyone had gathered. The group, though desperate to prove otherwise, had some means of respect towards him- or rather towards his surprising ability to capture their full attention with his newest monologue on the trauma of living life as a theatre kid. “How are we meant to rehearse now?”
”Don’t be so hard on yourself big guy. It’s not like we can call whatever the fuck you losers do as rehearsing anyway. You’re not good at it.” Schlatt says nonchalantly, from his front seat in the audience where he would always watch the drama meetings from. The others shared uneasy looks- it was no secret how Schlatt and Wilbur had an intense rivalry, as captain of the football team and president of the drama club, butting heads over practice times and overlapping performances on a bi-weekly frequency.
Though to be completely honest, it seemed like the rivalry was nothing but Schlatt being his big dumb self and Wilbur being eternally offended by it. And probably the whole 'Macbeth Schlatt' thing rearing an ugly head again. There was only ever one occasion when a physical fight broke out- and even though Wilbur had thrown all 6'3 of wiry muscle and bone at the quarterback, he had lost so dramatically the principal could not bring herself to punish him further.
”What are you even doing here, Schlatt, you’re not even on-” Wilbur hisses, looking more and more like a cat ready to pounce on his prey. Within seconds they could easily have another suspension for fighting- something absolutely no one needed right now. Senior year spent confined to their houses was something the really needed to avoid. Wilbur was already on his 4th suspension- seemingly immune to the 'one more suspension and you're expelled, Soot.' rule.
”SO!” Fundy interrupts, a little too loudly as he caused a few members to jump out of their own skin. Quackity glares at him scathingly, but he ignores it easily; they all knew that Quackity had just forgotten another script and was hoping just to keep everyone distracted for long enough that Wilbur wouldn’t find out. “What is this awful, terrible, week-ruining news?”
Fundy, by all means was a valued ad respected member of the club. However, his unfortunate skill of getting himself connected to cringe situations often landed him at the butt of the joke: he was smart as a whip, sly as a fox, but had around as many social skills as your average dead fish. Most days you would be lucky to find him anywhere in the school, if not in the computer room or following his elder sister Eret around like a shadow, there was every possibility that the flash of ginger you saw in the corner of your eye was him up to his most recent nefarious plans.
”We’ve been assigned some kid to tutor. As punishment for the whole…November.” Wilbur breaks the staring match he had going with the other man, turning once again to face the whole group with a swivel of the (very greasy) trench coat that had been created for a show of 'Heathers' that was never properly performed due to 'general dislike'.
There's an audible groan from the other members of the club. November had been- complicated, to say the least, enough for the drama club to be given several thousand detentions and a new counsellor to be sent to the school. Not a good look for a team already struggling with their reputation.
”Look- man that was all your fault, why are we stuck with this?” Sapnap makes a series of strange gestures. He wasn’t even sure why he was in the drama club still, he’d just joined to impress Karl and Wilbur wouldn’t let him leave. He totally didn't enjoy drama. Not even a little bit. Totally. ”You were the one who started a fire with your English textbook and pretended to be a ghost for a month!”
Sapnap was no actor. He had been blessed with the purest ability to act as woodenly as a wardrobe, absolutely no emotion in his voice when it came to reciting lines. The only real reason he kept showing up was because it avoided being part in another family argument.
“That’s was for BANQUO- and- well- DREAM was the one who tried to create his own group because he was mad we didn’t get to do Hamilton!” Wilbur splutters. He considered Banquo one of his best characters, that could have been marginally improved if Phil hadn't banned him from properly getting into character and wearing his costume constantly- he had to create his own ghost, which was incredibly time consuming.
Maybe that was the great flaw of the drama club. None of the members were really sure how to prevent themselves from escalating situations more- once described by his own brother as 'the worlds biggest instigator', Wilbur was by no means better than the majority of his club, especially when it meant he wouldn't have to admit to mistakes. His hamartia, some may say. His 'biggest dick in the whole world' ability, others would quote.
”Oh. Oh fuck you, Quackity tried to set up a fuckin…underground casino when we told him we wouldn’t do cabaret!” A true event, one that was quite remarkable if you looked at it from a slightly different angle. Quackity, a mere high school senior had built his own empire on a simple whim, one that may or may not still exist to this day. Incredible, however this was getting out of hand quickly. So much for ‘we’re turning a new leaf Miss Puffy, we’re not going to fight anymore.’
Still, Quackity's ambition and dedication had to be given credit. A fully working underground casino, built like it was nothing, with only a slight bit of manipulation. Said manipulation did lead to the vice-captain of the football team, Punz, swearing them his enemies because of a minor scuffle involving his younger brother's chemistry club and Quackity's need for space for his casino's expansion.
“So who are we even tutoring?” Fundy asks as he climbs out of the fortress of bags that Quackity had been assembling for the past twenty minutes, a simple ritual he would occasionally do when the events of the club were getting too boring. There was a small possibility he had forgotten Fundy was there when he started throwing bags on top of him. He grabs the paper from Wilbur’s hands, wrinkling his nose as some quite questionable notes drawn on the margins.
”Some kid called ‘Theseus’.” Sapnap has to jump up to peer over his shoulder. “Weird name. Techno would looooove it.”
Snatching the note back, Wilbur truly looks at the instructions for the first time. Miss Puffy had written suggestions already- Techno to tutor English, Dream to tutor Chemistry, Fundy for Biology, the list goes on. At the top, scrawled in what he presumed was a child’s handwriting, was the name ‘TOMMY’ in all caps. The kid must be passionate of his name- which would be dangerous if it would cause an argument with the Greek-mythology-obsessed Techno.
Techno didn't join the club. He said it was a saturated pool of losers and he was just trying to avoid contamination.
Names are important, at least to Wilbur. Something poetic about being labelled something of your own choice- in his instance, the removal of the heavy name of Orestes, the Greek tragic, for something more fitting. Maybe Tommy was one and the same.
”Hey! That’s the asshole who kept calling me names last week!” Fundy shouts indignantly, jabbing a finger to the name at the top.
”That asshole?” Schlatt cackles loudly- Schlatt does most things loudly, an eternal headache of a man. “He’s my little brother- don't look fuckin' shocked I showed you Tubbo like five times-’s weird best friend. The guy’s got all kinds of issues.”
”You’ve got all kinds of issues Schlatt. And you can't just 'show' us Tubbo, he's a real life boy and we've told you this before.” Karl sighs. Times like these are really reminiscent of all the times he was told to stay away from the weird kids fighting on the lunch tables. “Does anyone here actually know how to tutor anything?”
Silence casts over the stage. The most they’d ever tutored was training Sapnap and Dream’s cat, Patches, to walk from one side of the stage to the other, and even that ended pretty disastrously. The demand for them to become tutors suddenly became even more absurd- why in gods name would Miss Puffy want a bunch of losers barely scraping by to have control of a whole child?
”Fuck this.” Fundy sighs. “We should at least decide what we’re teaching the child.”
”Well, me and Minx-” Schlatt starts. Minx of course, being his friend, famous for her wildly out of hand parties and bad decisions. Most of Schlatts friends were banned from most of society and should definitely, definitely not be in charge of teaching anyone anything.
”You and Minx are not going anywhere near that child.” Wilbur, bulldozing all over Schlatt’s plans, as usual. “And you can’t bring Ted Nivison either, he’s banned. Jack Manifold shouldn't even be considered.”
”For what? Teddy is a GREAT-”
”Didnt he dare a bunch of kids to snort cheeto dust and gave them all nosebleeds?” Dream interjected. “Also, TECHNICALLY, you’re not in the drama club Schlatt.”
There was never much to say about Dream. They didn't know that much about him, other than that he went through some shit when he was younger- he'd been kicked around the foster system, actually meeting Sapnap at one of the homes he'd been dumped at- and was a huge asshole about it for years, that his last name was Taken and that it definitely wasn't Dutch no matter how many times he claimed it was. Also that he really fucking loved George.
Schlatt had been banned from the Drama club for a while. He was originally cast for the role of The President in Hamilton- but he allowed power to get to his head and kept trying to ‘exile’ people by pushing them off the stage. Other people who were banned were Eret, who was accused of treason for joining the Art club instead, and Niki, who quit because she got a job at the bakery in town.
”For what? Pushing one kid by accident? At least I showed up!” Schlatt yells.
“You’re not invited Schlatt.” Sapnap says simply. “Oh and I call dibs on tutoring Maths.”
”You don’t have to call dibs on tutoring maths! No one in their right mind wants to do maths!” A voice shouts from the side of the stage, making Sapnap nearly pass out in surprise.
George Not-Found, their stage manager was often forgotten about behind the scene- he was most memorable for falling asleep while in the lighting box and being forgotten about until the next day. George had at one point been an actor- he'd quit not long after being diagnosed with narcolepsy and a whole range of chronic illnesses, spending months withdrawing from his life.
Even though they'd dragged him back a few months later, it was never the same George.
“Yeah well I do, dipshit, you want to fight me about it?” Sapnap snarls, ignoring the small pleas of ‘oh god please don’t’ and ‘i swear to prime if we get another detention-’.
“Do it then.” George emerges from the curtains. “Pussy.”
The club erupted from there- Quackity starts chanting for them to start the fight while Karl struggles to hold them back, with Wilbur desperately still trying to get someone to decide who they would be teaching. Suddenly, the door to the auditorium swung open and the room went as quiet as night.
”Miss Puffy sent me here- are you the guys tutoring me?”