Drabbles of the High School AU Variety
Fandom: Spring Awakening
Rating: PG
Characters: Thea, Hanschen/Ernst, Melchior, Wendla, Anna, Martha, Ilse
Summary: Thea thinks Hanschen should get a FaceBook, Anna and Ernst go to the movies, Thea has a sleep over, Melchior sees something he's not supposed to, and Martha plays basketball.

purpureal and I were discussing a modern Spring Awakening. She is basically Thea throughout this.

Notes (on a High School AU fic):
- Ilse is a ukulele.
- They have a rock band: Anna is the manager, Melchior plays guitar, Georg plays keyboard, Otto plays the drums, Moritz is the lead singer, Hanschen plays bass. Ernst offered his flute-playing services, but they decline. He still comes to the practices, though.
- Thea is addicted to texting. She keeps everyone updated 24/7. (The only way she communicates with Hanschen is via text message. She hates talking to him because he creeps her out. She sends overlong, rambling text messages to him and he sends overlong, grammatically-correct text messages back. Once, they went for a whole week without texting each other because Thea got a BlackBerry.)
- Similarly, everyone has a FaceBook besides Hanschen.
- Every time Ernst does something girly, Brian Charles Johnson punches him in the face. (High School AU!Brian Charles Johnson is just like that.)
- Justin Spring is Hanschen. (Sasha is Ernst.)
- Melchior holds doors.
- Thea has sleepovers. They paint nails and do girlish things and talk about boys.
- Melchior also has sleepovers, and they watch thought-provoking movies for like eight seconds before Otto breaks out the Guitar Hero. Hanschen has silk pajamas (red ones, that he got for his sixteenth birthday from Victoria's Secret LOLOLOLOLOL). Ernst is just a bundle of awkward. When Georg, Otto, and Melchior strike up a conversation about girls, Ernst and Moritz go off and play CandyLand.
- Ernst plays the flute in both the band and the marching band. Wendla does as well. Hanschen is mad-talented at the violin, but he thinks he's above the school orchestra.
- Thea plays soccer, Melchior plays lacrosse, Martha plays basketball. All the girls go to her games to cheer her on.
- Ernst has a Pillsbury Doughboy sleeping bag that comes up to his waist.




Via text message, Thea berates Hanschen for his lack of FaceBook. He really thinks there is no need; he tells her. He sees his "friends" every day. If he wants them, he knocks on their door or calls them, as is practical.

Thea is not practical. She has been trying, ceaselessly, to get him in on their Flair-sending, poking, Wall-writing shenanigans. It has gotten so bad that she actually talks to him.

"Look!" she orders in class one day, pointing to her laptop. "This is my FaceBook."

"So I see," Hanschen says, looking over for a moment and then looking away. "You've showed me before. There is no need, Thea, to send messages to people who live next door to you."

"But you can send little things! And poke people! And you can put pictures up from your camera! And see pictures that you don't have!"

"I don't need any pictures, Thea."

"Puh-lease, Hanschen," she scoffs. "You have like the lamest pictures ever on your phone. Just the ones that came with the phone and some of Ernst...well, those are cute, but still."

Hanschen considers her for a moment before turning his gaze back on to his copy of the Iliad, voice musing and light. "Ernst is quite photogenic, isn't he?"



Amidst the pairs of tank-topped girls and their football-playing boyfriends in the movie theater, Ernst and Anna sit next to each other, holding their hands together tightly. Ernst is attempting to bury his face in Anna's hair, but she's too short and he's just craning his neck the wrong way.

When the plot briefly flickers across the screen, Hanschen taps his knee to communicate that he can stop being such a girl now; it's okay to look. He relaxes his death grip on Anna's hand and takes a moment to breathe. Scary movies with blood and gore and things jumping out and making loud noises aren't his or Anna's thing. They were content to watch a different movie, but Georg dragged them in.

For a small moment, there's relative peace on the screen, and then a poor, lonely woman erupts into screams and so do Ernst and Anna, jumping in their seats. Hanschen's laugh can hardly be heard over the sound of their shrieks, and he's so amused despite the bloodshed they're watching that he lets Ernst take his hand and nearly break his fingers.



He gives her his best "what's wrong with you?" look and squares his shoulders, trying to be casual about leaning into the lockers.

"Are you kidding, Thea?" His voice comes out an octave lower than normal.

"Come on, Ernst," Thea says, rolling her eyes. "Really."

"'Really' what?"

"'Really', we'll sit around and watch happy movies and talk about boys and play truth or dare."

"But, I like scary movies. And girls. And Guitar Hero." He puffs his chest out and coughs.

Thea giggles for a full three minutes before responding. "Are you serious, Ernst? Come by at six thirty; my mom's getting pizza."

As she walks away, satisfied smirk across her face, Ernst wonders what just happened.

Ernst didn't think that it was possible to feel more awkward than he felt at Melchior's sleepovers, with everyone half-dressed and too close. He's really excellent at DDR, but his Guitar Hero skills are lacking, and that's all Georg wants to do. Pillow fights turn into wrestling matches and his mind in bad, bad places. The movies are too vulgar to be funny or too frightening to be riveting. Melchior's sleepovers are a pile of pillows and sleeping bags, crushed chips, and spilled drinks.

Thea's sleepovers are art.

Her pajamas match. Her pajamas match the ribbon holding her hair in place. Her pajamas and her ribbon match her sleeping bag. The chips are actually in bowls (flower-patterned bowls). There are thirty-two different colors of nail polish in a line on the table. Six different movie choices are spread out like a fan, and Ernst is certain it will be a democratic vote as to what movie they'll watch, as opposed to Otto shoving whatever movie looks "best" into the DVD player.

Ernst feels more awkward than he's ever felt in his life, standing in Thea's room in his flannel pajamas, Winnie the Pooh pillow tucked under his arm.



"Hey, Hanschen, I've got the stuff you missed at school tod—"

Melchior's words die on his lips. Mrs. Rilow had said, when he knocked on their door, that Hanschen was just upstairs watching TV and eating soup.

The television is on. The soup has been eaten. Hanschen is in bed, Ernst pinned under him, half the buttons on his shirt undone.

Melchior contemplates them for a moment, processing this new development, then sets Hanschen's books down on the floor, making sure everything Hanschen needs is in the folder Mrs. K gave him to give to Hanschen.

"That's really rude, Hanschen. You're going to get him sick."



Martha gets a feel for the basketball, holding it gingerly before bouncing it. The smack of the ball hitting the floor echoes in the empty gym. The net gives a satisfying swish when she sends the ball flying into it, over and over again without end until she takes a break to dribble down the court, running back and forth. She could do this for hours or days, sneakers squeaking and net swishing. She imagines the crowd going wild in her head.

She wishes she could stay here forever, in the school gym, feeling comfortable with the ball in her hands. But she's got to be home by five.

Anna has been trying to get her to try out for basketball since the fifth grade, but Martha never has. She's always too busy; too much schoolwork; she needs to take care of her little brother. Her brother is eleven now and doesn’t need to be taken care of, but the excuse still stays the same. Basketball means coming home at irregular times and needing to be driven to games.

She only stays after school when Anna does, hanging around in the gym by herself while Anna talks to her teachers or goes to choir. When she comes out of the gym, Anna always asks softly why she doesn't just try out for the team, and Martha always shakes her head.

But today, Anna strides into the gym with a purpose, watching as Martha throws the ball into the hoop effortlessly, not missing a single one.

"You are trying out for basketball this year," she says with finality.

And maybe she's been shaking her head so long she's jumbled up her brains, but she says "okay".

As Anna had known, Martha makes the team. It's really no surprise, and Coach Davis can't fathom why she never tried out before. But Martha is so, so nervous the day of her first game that Wendla finds her sobbing in the bathroom after fourth period.

So Thea comes up with a plan. Martha feels sick to her stomach on the night of her first game, awkward in her uniform, adjusting the sleeves so that the purple splotches (she obviously got from basketball practice, of course) can't be seen. Anna, Wendla, Thea and Ilse are nowhere to be found as she stands on the side of the court, her team crowded around her.

She hears the crowd cheering her name. It's a small crowd, of four girls, but it's a crowd enough for Martha, who smiles and looks up. Her friends, who make her try out for basketball and rub circles on her back when she's crying in the bathroom, who don't leave her alone even when she wants to be because they know she needs to be with someone, are waving at her, bright smiles on their faces, their hair pulled into two braids.





LOL, AMANDA, I WONDER WHYEVER ERNST HAS A WINNIE THE POOH PILLOW. >:D