drew starkey x costar!secretgf!reader
warnings: emotional whiplash, betrayal, heartbreak, mental health themes, self-harm mention, panic attack, regret, heavy emotions
a/n: tumblr isn’t letting me answer the request like usual but here is this one requested by @kieeslove . this is one is probably one of the most heartbreaking one-shots i’ve written to be honest but i love how it ended up coming out. please please please read the warnings before reading it.
The apartment is quiet. Too quiet.
You’ve had the whole day to yourself—no call time, no script changes, no wardrobe fittings. Just a long, open stretch of silence that you’d usually welcome.
But today, it’s been anything but peaceful.
You’ve barely moved from the couch since noon, wrapped in the hoodie Drew left on the kitchen chair last night, half-watching a show you’ve seen before just to fill the space. Your phone rests in your lap, screen dim, but your mind hasn’t stopped racing for hours.
It popped up right after breakfast, when you were still groggy, sipping coffee on the balcony. You tapped through mindlessly until you froze on a video—shaky, close-up, her voice giggling behind the camera.
He was leaning against a trailer, smiling—no, laughing. That wide, rare kind of laugh that crinkles the corners of his eyes. She flipped the camera back to herself, grinning like it was an inside joke between just the two of them.
The next slide was a photo. A candid. He had his head thrown back, laughing at something you couldn’t hear, while she stood beside him with only half her face in the frame.
Enough to make your stomach twist.
Enough to make you stare too long at the caption.
“Set life with this goof 🤍”
The cast knows about you and Drew. Everyone on set does. You’ve stopped pretending around them—stopped hiding the way you slip into his trailer during breaks, how he kisses your temple when he thinks no one’s looking.
But outside of that circle, no one knows. No Instagram posts. No red carpets. Not even soft launches in the comments section.
And you understood why at first.
Keeping it private felt safer. Cleaner. Something just for you two.
Moments where he looks like someone else’s.
You scroll back through the texts—between you and Drew, between you and Odessa.
There’s nothing wrong, not really. But there’s a shift. A subtle unraveling.
He doesn’t say “I love you” before bed anymore. Doesn’t kiss your forehead when he leaves for work.
And Odessa—your best friend, the person who once felt like your other half—she’s been on set more and more. Not because she has to be. Just because.
You used to think she came to see you. To hang out between scenes, raid craft services, sit on your trailer floor and gossip about everything and nothing.
But lately, it feels like she’s there for him.
You told yourself not to overthink it. Not to read too much into the way her hand lingers on his arm when she laughs, or the way he seems more awake when she’s around.
But today, alone with your thoughts and too much time, the pit in your stomach hasn’t let up.
You pick up your phone again and scroll to your thread with Odessa.
She didn’t text you today.
Not after she posted those stories. Not after she spent half the afternoon on the same set your boyfriend was working on.
You’d texted her earlier—just a casual “You on set today?”—but it’s still sitting there, unanswered.
You switch to Drew’s messages.
You (9:42am): Miss you today. Hope the scene went okay.
You (12:16pm): Odessa still there?
You (3:03pm): Are you home late tonight?
All read. None replied to.
The front door opens at 1:14 a.m.
You don’t even flinch anymore. You just pull the hoodie tighter around you and pretend the tightness in your chest isn’t there.
Drew walks in with slow, tired steps, jacket slung over his arm, hair tousled from a long shoot.
You look up at him, soft but cautious. “Hey.”
He pauses at the doorway to the kitchen. “Hey. You’re up?”
“Didn’t have any scenes today,” you say, voice quieter than you mean. “Just stayed home.”
He nods, distracted. Opens the fridge. Grabs a bottle of water. Doesn’t ask about your day.
He scrolls his phone, thumbs moving quickly.
“Long shoot?” you ask after a moment.
“Yeah,” he says, cracking open the bottle. “Ran over like an hour. Just wrapped a little while ago.”
You hesitate. “Was Odessa still there?”
He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “For a bit. She left before we wrapped.”
You want to say more. You want to ask why she’s always there lately, or why he hasn’t said I love you in four nights straight.
But your throat closes around the words, like saying them out loud would make it worse.
Drew glances at you again. “I’m gonna crash. Early call.”
He disappears down the hall. No kiss. No touch.
You stare at your phone until the screen fades.
Open Odessa’s story one more time.
Watch the way he laughs like he’s weightless. The way she looks at him like she knows something you don’t.
They don’t look like they’re hiding anything.
But you feel like you’re the only one being kept in the dark.
You wake up to an empty apartment again. Drew left early for set, just like he said, but something’s different today. You didn’t have to film any scenes today either, so you stayed home, hoping maybe things would feel normal again. Maybe Drew would come back and the silence wouldn’t stretch so thin between you two.
But that’s not how it goes anymore.
You scroll through your phone, trying to shake the heaviness. You glance at your messages—nothing new from Drew, just the usual short replies.
Your eyes flick to Odessa’s name, the friend you’ve known for years—the one who always seemed like your sister, the person who knew you better than anyone. But lately, even she’s become distant.
You tap her name and open your texts.
“Can’t wait to hang out tomorrow! Dinner and drinks like old times?” you typed a few days ago. No reply. Just like the other texts since then.
The next morning, you woke to a curt text from Odessa: “Had to fly back to LA today. Sorry, last minute. Hope you understand.”
Your stomach dropped. You’d been looking forward to that night all week, but now it was gone—just like her.
You tried not to overthink it, telling yourself she was busy.
She returned, just a few days later but didn’t tell you. You found out the worst way possible.
You were walking past the trailers on set when you saw them.
The easy way they leaned into each other—like you used to, all three of you—felt like a punch to the gut.
You stopped, heart hammering in your chest.
They looked up and caught your eyes. Drew smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Odessa’s grin faltered for a moment before she turned back to him.
You blinked, trying to tell yourself you were imagining things. Maybe they were just friends. Maybe you were just overthinking.
But deep down, the pit in your stomach grew.
The distance between you and Drew had been growing too. More than growing—it had widened into a chasm you didn’t know how to cross.
Your conversations were clipped, like you were just two roommates trying to coexist rather than the couple you once were.
You found yourself wondering if maybe you were the problem.
You replayed every conversation, every look, every silence between you two.
The way Drew would zone out when you talked about your day.
The way he spent more and more time texting someone you couldn’t see.
The way Odessa—your best friend—pulled away too, her responses short and distracted whenever you tried to ask if she was okay.
One afternoon, you caught her alone near the trailers.
“Hey, you’ve seemed… different lately. Is everything okay?” you asked, voice gentle.
She glanced up at you, eyes guarded.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” she said, but you knew better.
She was closing off, just like Drew.
You wanted to reach through the walls that were building around her, but you didn’t know how.
The days blur together, each one heavier than the last.
You watch the calendar pages turn—slow and unforgiving—but the distance between you and Drew feels like it’s growing faster by the day.
He’s quieter. More distracted. Even when he’s in the room with you, it’s like you’re separate islands sharing the same space.
It’s been over a week since he kissed you.
Not a single brush of lips, not even a quick peck in passing.
You catch yourself waiting, holding your breath for the moment it will happen. But it never does.
You try to convince yourself it’s just stress. Long shoots. Exhaustion.
But when the lights go out and the apartment is still, the silence screams louder than any excuse.
One night, you find yourself standing in the bathroom, warm water streaming over your face, blurring your vision.
You don’t want him to hear the quietness of your tears—so you let them fall only in the shower, behind the locked door.
The water carries the ache away for a little while.
Later, when Drew leaves for set—his phone forgotten on the kitchen counter, screen unlocked—you hesitate.
You pick it up, fingers trembling.
His messages open to a thread with Odessa.
You scroll through, the words soft but sharp:
“Can’t wait for tomorrow.”
There’s nothing explicit. No promises or declarations.
Just the kind of words that linger in the spaces between.
You close the phone carefully and set it back down.
Staring at the ceiling, you wonder how long this has been going on.
How long you’ve been standing on the outside looking in.
You want to confront him. To demand the truth.
But the words catch in your throat.
The apartment is quiet again.
That terrible, airless quiet that makes you feel like even the walls are watching.
You almost don’t check. You’ve been trying to be good—trying to stop torturing yourself by scrolling through Instagram, through posts with her name tagged beside his, through photos where his eyes don’t even look like his anymore.
But the name on your screen is one you can’t ignore.
Your pulse jumps. You hesitate. Then you open it.
“I told Drew I’m in love with him. He feels the same. I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to hurt you.”
The air leaves your lungs in one slow, numb exhale.
You reread it once. Twice. A third time, as if the words might change if you look hard enough.
No emoji. No nervous laughter. No gray area.
Just a quiet confession and a knife between your ribs.
You just sit there on the couch, arms wrapped around your knees, the message open on your screen, the cursor blinking like it’s daring you to respond.
The front door opens not long after.
You hear it before you see him—his key sliding into the lock, the door creaking open, boots hitting hardwood.
He walks in humming, like he’s had a good day.
Like the world didn’t just drop out from under you.
“Hey,” Drew says slowly, careful. His voice is soft, uncertain now. “You got her text.”
Your head turns slowly toward him. Your eyes are glassy, unreadable.
“She told you she was going to send it?” you ask, voice flat.
He nods once. “She said she felt guilty. She didn’t want to lie anymore.”
“I didn’t let her,” he says, stepping closer. “I tried to stop her, but—”
You laugh, but there’s no humor in it. It sounds like something breaking.
“She said you feel the same.”
Drew hesitates. “That’s not what I—look, it’s not black and white, okay? It’s complicated—”
You stare at him. “Complicated,” you repeat, the word like acid in your mouth.
He moves toward you, crouching beside the couch, reaching for your hand.
You flinch before he can touch you.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he says quietly.
Your hands shake as you stand, your voice rising without warning. “Don’t you dare say that to me.”
“No.” You cut him off, stepping back. “You don’t get to say you didn’t mean to. You chose this.”
“You think I wanted to hurt you?”
The fury rises in you like a tide—faster than you can stop it.
“I’ve been here,” you whisper. “Every single day. Loving you. Waiting for you to love me back the way you used to.”
You grab the photo from the coffee table—the one from Paris, the one where you look happiest, safest, most certain of him.
You throw it across the room with every ounce of strength you have.
It hits the wall and shatters, glass and memories scattering across the floor.
“You were supposed to love me,” you say, voice cracking now. “Not her. Me.”
Drew steps forward like he’s trying to fix something already broken. “I do love you—”
“No, you don’t,” you snap. “Not really. Because if you did, this wouldn’t have happened.”
He tries to hug you, arms reaching for you like he still has a right to them.
His chest presses to yours, and for one brief second you remember the comfort that used to live in that space.
He murmurs, “We can fix this. Please. I’ll cut things off with her. We can go to therapy or—”
You press your hands to his chest and push him back gently.
“No,” you say. “This isn’t something you fix.”
“I didn’t want to lose you.”
You walk to the door. Open it.
His breath catches. “You’re really kicking me out?”
“I need space. I need you gone.”
Drew just stands there, stunned.
You look him straight in the eye.
“Come back for your things when I’m not here.”
“Please,” he says again, voice cracking. “Just let me explain—”
And then you close the door.
Just enough to say this is final.
The click of the lock is the only sound in the apartment now.
The kind of silence that feels like grief.
The days don’t feel like days anymore.
Just hours strung together like dim beads on a thread you didn’t ask to hold.
Back in makeup chairs and wardrobe trailers. Back in long shooting days and artificial sunsets. Back in scenes where you’re supposed to smile, touch, kiss. Where you’re supposed to cry in the rain, shout until your throat is raw, crumble in someone else’s arms like your heart is breaking.
You move through it all like a ghost.
Quiet. Efficient. Detached.
You say your lines. You hit your marks. You laugh when the script says you’re supposed to. You kiss him when the camera rolls. You sob against his chest on cue, let your voice crack in that way the director loves. You even slap him in one scene—your eyes glassy, your voice trembling as you yell through clenched teeth.
You feel like someone’s removed your insides and left only the outline of you behind. Something hollowed out and left on autopilot.
Between takes, you sit by yourself.
No music in your headphones. No books cracked open. Just silence, staring at nothing, like you’re afraid to fill the space with anything real.
You used to light up on set. You used to steal the crew’s snacks, laugh between takes, tease Drew when he flubbed his lines. There was always an energy around you—light, warm, full of spark.
They don’t say anything, not directly. But you can feel the stares. The too-gentle hellos. The quiet way people check on you like they’re afraid you might shatter if they speak too loud.
You don’t look at him unless the scene requires it.
You don’t answer when he says your name off camera.
You don’t sit near him at lunch, don’t meet his eyes when the director gives you blocking notes, don’t flinch when you’re told you’ll be filming another kiss today.
Like it doesn’t kill you every time his hands touch your waist, every time he looks at you like he remembers what it used to feel like to be loved by you.
The worst part is—he still looks at you like he’s in love.
But sorry doesn’t undo the wreckage.
You’ve already learned how to carry the debris.
Today, there’s a scene. You’re arguing. The kind that gets rewritten the night before for “heightened emotional stakes.” You scream at him, tears in your eyes, spit flying as you shove him in the chest. Your voice breaks in all the right places. The crew holds their breath.
You step back. Wipe your face. The tears vanish as fast as they came.
You turn away from him without a glance, your expression flat. Cold.
Drew just stands there, stunned. Still catching his breath from a fight that wasn’t real—at least not on paper. Still staring at you like he’s waiting for something soft to return to your face.
But your face is steel now.
Sharp angles. No trace of the vulnerability from a moment ago. Just rage simmering under the surface, quiet and controlled and utterly unreachable.
And that’s what terrifies him.
The way you can drop the emotion like it never existed. Like he doesn’t exist.
Between takes, you walk off set. You need air. Space. Anything that doesn’t feel like recycled heartbreak.
You step out behind the trailers, where no one’s watching.
Your hands tremble as you pull a cigarette from your jacket pocket. You haven’t smoked since college, since a messy breakup you thought nothing would ever top.
You light it with shaking fingers, inhale, exhale, trying to find some kind of calm in the burn.
You don’t hear Rudy approach.
He walks up slowly, hands in his pockets, eyes kind.
Without a word, he reaches out and gently takes the cigarette from your fingers.
You glance at him, just barely. “Hey.”
It’s the kind of question that should come with a dozen follow-ups. But he doesn’t push. Just asks it like he’ll believe whatever answer you give him.
But he lets you have it anyway.
Rudy looks at you for a long moment before dropping the cigarette to the ground and stomping it out.
Then he slings an arm loosely around your shoulders.
You don’t lean into it. But you don’t pull away, either.
Because some silences don’t beg to be filled.
Some are just there to be witnessed.
The moon is a sliver above the water—ghostly and thin, like it’s watching but too tired to shine.
Drew finds you sitting at the edge of the dock, legs drawn up, arms locked around your knees like if you let go, you’d come apart completely.
You haven’t moved in what feels like hours.
He stands behind you for a while, saying nothing. Just… watching.
So he steps forward, wood groaning beneath his weight, careful not to scare you. Not that you react. Not even a glance. Your eyes are locked on the black water, the surface rippling quietly like it’s holding your secrets.
He settles beside you, close but not touching. The wind brushes through your hair.
For a moment, all he hears is the hush of the waves and the far-off echo of laughter from the house.
He thinks maybe you’re calm.
That faint, stuttering breath. The wet sound of someone trying not to fall apart.
He turns to look at you—and sees it.
Your shoulders trembling.
Your jaw clenched so tight it’s trembling.
The soft, broken sound clawing from your throat as your lungs fail you.
But it’s not just crying.
It’s a full-body unraveling.
He shifts closer, alarm rising in his chest. “Hey. Hey, breathe. Look at me.”
Your body hunches in tighter, shoulders shaking harder as your breath gets faster, shallower—like you’re trapped under something heavy.
“Breathe with me, okay?” Drew tries again, voice soft. “Just… follow me.”
He reaches out carefully, fingers brushing your wrist to anchor you, like he used to do back when things were simpler—back when that touch meant safety.
But this time, the contact makes you flinch.
And still, his hand closes gently around your wrist—and that’s when he feels it.
Then tighten—just slightly.
Because he knows what he’s touching.
Fainter than they used to be, maybe. But new. Raw.
His entire body goes cold.
“Please…” His voice breaks, a whisper edged in panic. “Please tell me those are old.”
Your head snaps toward him.
Your eyes—red, wide, furious—are like a slap.
You rip your arm from his grip and clutch it against your chest like a secret.
“I told you I wasn’t doing that anymore,” you snap, voice cracking. “I told you I was okay.”
“I thought you were,” he says, stunned. “You promised—”
“You think I wanted to start again?” you explode. “You think I wanted to go back to that?”
Your voice is all rage and ache and grief. “Do you know what it’s like? To sit in a bathroom with a towel under you and a razor in your hand, and you’re shaking so bad you can’t tell if you want to die or just want it to stop?”
“I stopped for you,” you say, trembling. “I stopped because you made me feel like I was enough.”
Your voice drops to a whisper. “But then you weren’t mine anymore. You were hers. And I couldn’t breathe, Drew. I couldn’t fucking breathe.”
You stand up so fast he can barely react.
You stumble backward a few steps, chest heaving, arms wrapped around yourself like a shield.
“If you were just gonna fall in love with my best friend…” Your voice cracks. “Then you shouldn’t have asked me to be your fucking girlfriend.”
He rises slowly, hands out like he’s approaching a wounded animal.
“I never meant to hurt you like this.”
“But you did!” you scream, backing away. “You knew how fragile I was. You knew. I told you everything. I told you what it felt like to want to hurt myself. I told you what it cost to survive it.”
Tears streak your face, wild and fast.
“And you still chose her.”
He tries to reach for you. “Please—just talk to me.”
You shove his chest with both hands. Hard. Then again. And again.
“You were supposed to love me.”
He doesn’t stop you. He just stands there and takes it.
“You were supposed to be different,” you cry. “I trusted you with everything. I gave you every broken piece and you just—God—Drew, you left me there.”
More footsteps. Fast ones. The house has gone silent behind you, but now someone’s running.
Rudy reaches you just as you collapse forward.
He catches you in his arms, sinking with you to the dock.
Your body shakes with silent sobs, all strength gone, all resistance dissolved.
Madelyn grabs Drew, her expression unreadable—fear and fury clashing behind her eyes.
She pulls him back, away from you, away from the collapse.
“What happened?” she hisses, voice low and sharp.
Watching the way Rudy holds you like something sacred and shattered.
Your voice, small and hoarse, cuts through the stillness.
“I really loved you,” you whisper, like you’re trying to remind yourself it mattered. “I really did.”
Rudy closes his eyes, jaw tight, hugging you closer.
“And I tried,” you say, your breath hitching again. “I really tried not to hurt myself. I really did.”
The only sound left is your broken breathing and the water moving beneath the dock.
No one knows what to say.
No one knows if anything would help.
He kneels in the shadows, hands shaking, the words I’m sorry caught somewhere between his heart and throat, knowing they’ll never be enough.
The room is cold. Fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting pale shadows across the long table that stretches between you and the others.
You sit at one end, fingers curled tightly around the edge of the wood, knuckles blanching with pressure.
Across from you, the cast shifts uncomfortably in their seats—Jonas standing at the head of the table, his hands resting on its surface like an anchor, eyes serious and tired.
Drew sits near the middle, hands folded in his lap, eyes fixed on the scuffs in the floor.
The silence hangs like a storm about to break, thick and unyielding.
“We can’t keep filming like this,” he says, voice low but steady.
“This tension, this… distance. It’s hurting the work. And it’s hurting all of you.”
He looks around the room, then back at you.
“We all want to move forward. But that means you and Drew need to talk. You need to clear this, or at least try.”
Your throat tightens, words lodged in your chest like shards.
You stare down at the table, tracing a scratch in the grain with your finger.
Drew finally speaks, voice hesitant, raw.
“I never meant for things to get this messed up. For me to fall for Odessa.”
He looks up, meeting your eyes briefly.
“I wasn’t trying to use you, YN. I swear. You have to believe me.”
Bitter words claw at your throat, but they spill out before you can stop them.
“You promised me everything.”
Your voice breaks, trembling like a frayed wire.
“Paris. A house with a garden.”
“Kids. Marley from the pound.”
You close your eyes and press your palms to the table to stop them from shaking.
A cold certainty wraps around your words, unshakable.
Drew’s shoulders slump, a bitter twist in his chest.
“Do you really think I fell for her just to hurt you?”
His voice breaks like glass, fragile and jagged.
“You think you’re the only one hurting?”
He shakes his head, voice rising with desperate frustration.
“You think this is easy for me?”
The words are raw, ragged.
You lean forward, voice cutting through the thick silence.
“Easy?” you scoff. “You and Odessa? The perfect little couple who ruined me?”
Jonas steps between you with a steadying hand raised.
You lift your head slowly, voice low and final.
“I can do the scenes. But Drew stays away from me.”
“Odessa stays away, too. If she ever visits, I don’t want to see her.”
The words fall like a decree, clear and unyielding.
You stand abruptly, the chair scraping hard against the floor.
Your breath catches—sharp and uneven.
The door slams behind you.
Leaving behind only silence and the lingering weight of what’s broken.
Time passes in strange ways after everything breaks.
The apartment is quieter now. Not silent—just… softer. Like everyone’s learned to move around the wound without touching it.
You’ve stopped crying in the bathroom.
You still avoid him on set.
But you’re functioning again.
You wake up with the sun instead of dragging yourself out of bed at noon. You drink water. You make your bed. You sit on the balcony in the mornings with a journal in your lap and your knees curled to your chest, scribbling down thoughts you won’t say out loud.
You don’t live in the old apartment anymore.
You couldn’t. Not after everything.
The quiet was too loud there. The walls still held the shape of him—his coffee mug on the counter, his laugh echoing in the hallway, the soft imprint of a life you built and lost all at once.
So you packed it all up and left. New place. New routine. Smaller, lonelier, but yours.
Sometimes, you paint again. You drag an old easel out to the balcony and lose yourself in blues and golds and soft, wide brushstrokes. Your fingers end up stained for days.
Mostly with Rudy. He’s your shadow now. Always close. Always watching.
He knows when to joke, when to distract you, when to sit in silence and just breathe beside you.
JD brings you coffee every morning from town, no matter what. It started as a quiet gesture. Now it’s a ritual. He doesn’t say much—but you know it’s his way of reminding you you’re seen. Still wanted. Still here.
The cast has adjusted. They don’t talk about what happened. Not in front of you. Not in front of him.
You and Drew still share scenes. Still work together like professionals.
But off-camera? You orbit each other like broken planets.
Drew keeps his distance, like you asked. He doesn’t push. Doesn’t try.
But he watches you when he thinks you won’t notice.
From the far side of the room, across the lawn, just past the camera setup.
Always just out of reach.
You caught him once, lingering in the doorway as you laughed too hard at something Rudy said, your head thrown back, hair messy, eyes brighter than they’d been in weeks.
He just stood there, quiet and still, his expression unreadable.
Like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to feel anything.
Like he wasn’t sure he deserved to.
Some days, you think you might hate him.
Other days, you ache just thinking his name.
But mostly—you’re just tired.
Tired of missing someone who’s still right there.
Tired of feeling haunted by a version of him that doesn’t exist anymore.
He wonders how it got like this.
How a joke at a table, a few lingering glances, a shared hoodie and some stupid, unspoken boundaries turned into something he’d ruin with a single mistake.
How he lost the girl who loved him enough to break for him.
He watches you from afar, regret curling in his chest like smoke.
You’re still beautiful. Still brilliant. Still trying.
But now, when you smile—it’s never at him.
And he doesn’t know if it ever will be again.
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