Chapter Text
if you were friends with both griffin stagg and william showalter, you would see that they were obviously two polar opposites.
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the younger boy, griffins, was 15 years old. he was shyer than most. with that shyness came griffin being both soft spoken and practically invisible to others. this caused him to get bullied by most people who came across his path. but that wasn’t the only thing. he was also bullied being smaller than most. however the bullying never stopped his happiness. he would continue to do his best in theatre and he would still hang out with his friends in their hidden hiding spots.
griffin also had many talents compared to william. he could sing, draw, and write. he was then good at baseball and “rich” people sports too, such as tennis. these things made him unique but never enough to make him “popular”.
the 15 year old had 1 sibling. that 1 person happened to be vance hopper. he was griffin’s 18 year old step brother. griffin’s mom, camille stagg, and vance’s dad, marc hopper, had gotten married when 8 and 11 but they were together ever since the boys were 5 and 8. when griffin first met vance, the older boy was kind, yet distant and he had minor anger issues. as they grew older, the issues had only got worse. due to their parent’s lack of awareness and then not getting vance treatment due to them not believing in it, the elder would take his anger out on kids both younger and older. the more he did it, the more of a problem vance became. soon, vance was known as the #1 fighter in their school.
even with vance’s issues, griffin loved his brother and vance did too. vance knew how to calm his brother down when we was upset about his bullies and the other knew the same just with vance wanting to fight. once was the protector while the other was the protected.
as much as the brother loved each other, they did not apply the same amount of affection and respect with their parents. the mother was a drunk and practical deadbeat. the father was the one who gambled most, if not all, of their money away. neither were home in most days, leaving the two kids to fend for themselves. 10 years ago, the boys would have been struggling to find any sort of food in the house and figuring out how to cook it. now they could get their own food with their own money and they knew how to cook it. the negligence of their parents made vance grow hatred towards them and soon griffin did to.
eventually their parents stopped coming around and they continued to care for themselves. no one seemed to notice that the mother and father were gone. the boys weren’t gonna tell anyone anyways.
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william showalter’s life was different in many ways.
he never really went by his birth name. he went by “billy”. william and billy didn’t go together in his mind but that was the nickname his grandfather gave him. so it stuck.
billy was a 16 years old young boy who was popular. he played basketball and was friendly with most people, including students and teachers. almost everyone knew him. the tall boy was outgoing and smarty. kind and helpful when needed. he was active in school by doing multiple clubs and activities. this lead to billy getting many awards for his commitments and performances.
he was a little bit of a bully to say the least. sometimes, even needed, he would say some rude words or get into small fights. however, in billy’s defense, he would say that it was his day of protecting kids who were getting bullied. sure it wasn’t really “bullying” but who cares?
billy was never bullied and it wasn’t being he was friendly. it was because of his family.
billy was the only child to coden and allison shoe alter codan was a great nurse at a hospital and allison was a cook at her own restaurant. the two parents held high repetition and where respected for their help since they would come together to help people who ever unable to afford food or health care. their jobs wasn’t in Denver but they were still looked up to since most of their help was held in the town they lived in.
their workplaces being far away had a negative effect. the family was unable to spend anytime together. still they tried they were loving people and kind ones too in addition, life at home was good. although the three family members were unable to see each other a lot, they sure did their best.
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even with the differences of the boys, the we’re close. too close to some people and that was because they were together. they were boyfriends.
they did share some things in common like their grades and hobbies. then again, they had their differences. and those differences caused some problems.
many of those problems were centered around their popularity levels.
since griffin was more then a little less popular than billy, he didn’t have much friends. his friend ship circle consisted of his boyfriend, his brother, his brother’s boyfriend, the boyfriend’s teammate, his best friend, his best friend’s brother, a new kid, a boy he met at camp last summer, and another boy who was friends with his older brother.
of course billy’s circle was different. yes his friendship circle had the ones that were in griffin’s but he had more. he had a friend group in almost every one of his classes, clubs, and activities. it was hard for griffin when he wanted to talk to billy at school. the older boy was always surrounded by people. it didn’t matter where he was.
sure griffin loved the fact that billy had friends but it was tiring. not only that but billy would constantly try to force his friends on griffin. it was annoying. even with the multiple times griffin told his boyfriend about it, it always seemed like the words he would say would go into one ear and then immediately come out the other.
there were times when griffin did try to befriend some of billy’s friends, the ones he thought that maybe he would get along with them. but it never worked. the person was either never fully interested in griffin, or vice versa, they thought griffin was too much of loner for them, they thought griffin was weird, or griffin thought they were weird. other times the reasoning for them not getting along were a little more complicated.