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“So, we’re coming out as some sort of gay,” Dave says with a coy smile.
You don’t know how to react. You’re not shocked or anything, you kind of knew. You think everyone kind of knew, regardless of their reactions. But you don’t congratulate him or anything. You don’t gush over him with pride, though you usually would. Public displays of affection kind of cut the line for you, but Roxy bursts into cries of joy and tightly hugs the both of them. Rose and her tall wife whose name you have been told but immediately forgot smile brightly with the two of them. The tall one seems to tear up a bit; as far as you’re concerned, she’s known Karkat for a long time, so to see him happy like this must be a lot for her. If you knew anyone here as long as you’ve known Roxy, you’d probably be a bit more wobbly around the edges. But you kind of just force a smile and join in with the ‘so prouds’ and ‘congratulationses’. It all feels much more like you should be saying ‘good for you’ with a hint of cynicism.
Why are you even forcing a smile? It’s not like you’re angry or anything. You’re not in any way interested in Karkat and the guy isn’t exactly stealing your brother from you; the two of you get plenty of your own time together. So, where’s this weird energy coming from?
You look to your left where John is sitting and wow, he’s not even trying to hide it. He’s scowling all over, like every inch of his body decided to spell ‘colon, opening parentheses’. While everyone is chit chattering, the only thing you catch that slips out of his mouth is “Wow, great. Good for you.” No one notices, as they’re all getting up and coddling the newly-announced lovers, but you guiltily find some sort of comfort in John’s words. Like you’re glad you’re not the only one feeling like that.
Why is it you feel like that?
You’re tempted to talk to him. Even more so now that he seems to be feeling what you’re feeling. Disrupted, uncomfortable annoyance in the surroundings of celebration. It makes you feel left out.
When John gets up and leaves, you only notice the breeze that passes by. Jane told you it’s a nasty habit of his and he only does it when he’s uncomfortable and would rather not be noticed. Annoying him further by following him is going to kill your chances of ever being his one and only, but you also want to get away from the commotion.
You’re not feeling too celebratory, right now.
“Are you mad at Dave, or something?” you pester him, catching up to him when he starts walking, “You seem to be pretty pissed off that he’s taken. Or maybe it’s Karkat you like?”
“Huh?” he snaps his head back to face you. “Gross, no.”
He must be straight, comes the thought which hits like a painful pang in the throat.
“It’s just…” he turns and you both stop at a comfortable distance from the event, “like… ‘god I wish that were me’, y’know?”
Expresses himself through memes. God, you are smitten with him. You still don’t get it, though. He probably gets the gesture from your raised eyebrow. Shades or not, you can be pretty expressive when you so choose.
“I mean, yeah, I’m happy for them but I’m also…” he bites his lip in thought, “obscenely jealous? I don’t like either of them, I never really did, but seeing all my friends growing up and getting married and having successful relationships makes me really fucking angry.”
Oh.
He folds his arms over his chest and avoids your glassy gaze, tapping his foot impatiently like he’s waiting for you to fax something and bring it back to his office.
“Why, have you never dated?”
You immediately feel bad for asking that because he looks like he could cry. He doesn’t need to say anything for you to know that the answer is
“No, I didn’t,” he folds outwards and takes the bench on the side, back to the sunset, “too… preoccupied with other things.”
“I get that,” you’re trying your best to be at least sympathetic, showing your gesture by taking a seat next to him, “a lot happens when you’re a teenager. Especially for us.”
“Oh don’t try to comfort me,” he snarls, “I know you dated Jake.”
He makes it sound like you’re at fault for some bizarre crime. You’re Sheila Birling and without thinking, you’ve got yourself with Inspector Egbert at your doorstep, Jake dead in the infirmary.
But that’s not what you’re talking about right now; no inspector is calling. It’s just two guys, on a bench, a good walk away from where you should be celebrating your best friends’ get-together. The sun is going down, and with it, the conversation.
You strike a match.
“Are you… still preoccupied?”
You gulp in preparation for his answer. That question sounded rather obvious and desperate and you’re scared he’ll pick up on it. You don’t know why you don’t want him to know you like him.
“...I guess not,” he eventually speaks up, “I think if I really wanted, dating would be fun. I just have to get lucky enough to find someone who wants to date me.”
“That Vriska girl?”
“Lesbian.”
“Terezi?”
“That’s her girlfriend.”
“Roxy?”
“Do you even keep up with your sister’s love life?” he rolls his eyes, shoulders circling in exasperation, “She’s dating your two best friends. Hello?”
“Fuck,” you spit, rubbing your eyes under your shades, “that’s right, she fucking lives with Calliope.”
“Dirk, every girl who ever liked me as a kid is gay,” he chuckles awkwardly, trying to break his tension to no avail, “I’m so grotesque that any girl who looks at me decides they don’t even like men as a whole.”
“Right.” you decide. You’re not really quite sure what to say to that, considering the only girl who ever ‘liked’ you was your sister. You don’t think she was ever really into men in the first place, though it’s not a topic you bring up with her that much. No point in doing so, really. But this isn’t Roxy you’re talking to. If it was, everything would be flowing much more easily. This is John, and you’re on the topic of missing your chances. Provided they ever existed. Which, in your particular case, they probably didn’t.
“...Well… do you want to date a girl?”
He’s silent for a painfully long while, mouth pulled into an uncomfortable line. It makes you wonder.
“I never used the time I had to explore an answer to that,” the line breaks, “but what about you? Did you ever question your sexuality?”
So he’s been thinking.
“Growing up in an abandoned timeline with no one around and therefore no society with expectations to meet, there was never a question,” you blurt out a bit too smoothly for the conversation, “it just kind of was.”
It feels a little rude and unfeeling to say it like that and you immediately wish you’d rephrased your words. John has no way to relate to that or even take example from it. What were you thinking?
“...Have you been battling with something?”
“Maybe,” he ponders, wringing his hands in lost thought, “but now that I’ve heard that, I feel stupid for even fighting.”
Yep, you fucked it.
“What is there to fight?”
God, shut up.
“My preconceived self-image,” his head lifts, “like, compared to my friends, I’m… the normal kid, or whatever. I’m the only kid who grew up in a normal household with normal influences and just an all-around normal childhood. But considering my teenage years, there’s literally nothing normal about me. Or any of us. It would make more sense if I’m not straight.”
You pause to think. Whatever you’re going to say next, you don’t want to come off as condescending, because you know you already did that. John is fragile and you don’t want to scare him away with your shitty, pretentious I’m-Better-Than-You-ness.
“Maybe you are gay,” you at least leave on the table, “but growing up being ‘normal’ and therefore ‘straight’, you’ve never had to battle with the idea of not being that. In your immediate friend group, you’ve always had this place and this identity but you also feel left out because no one else shares that identity. So you’ve explored what ‘normal’ is for you and maybe, you’re not too happy with the answer you found.”
“I think I could be,” he drops to a curious whisper, staring at you and deep into your soul, “if… if it like, wasn’t for naught, yknow?”
“Hm?”
“Like, I don’t care if I’m gay,” he looks away and the magic is gone, “or, I guess I do… I guess I only care if I’m gay if I end up alone. Because, when I thought I was straight, and having never dated, having never had a girl like me, I wasn’t bothered by it ‘cause I still fit the norm. The expectation. I still slot into a welcomed place and wouldn’t be considered a disappointment in society.”
“But that society you grew up with on the first Earth is gone.”
“Exactly!” the magic resparks but fiery and fed-up, “So being straight is whatever, isn’t it? And being gay wouldn’t bother me if I was dating someone. For the pain of discovering something, questioning myself then arriving at an answer that fits me comfortably, I want to gain something from it. I don’t want to go through the hardship of redefining myself only to not be rewarded at the end!”
Discovering… something?
You stare at him with your mouth gently opened, like you’re waiting for him to put words in it. You want to ask him what ‘something’ is and how… why he discovered it. If you helped him get there. If it already happened or if it was just in this moment and you witnessed it. If there’s any factor that could include you because, though you love them, you feel left out from your family. You’re the only one unmarried and unwanted and unhappy about it. Across the table, John is the only person who mirrors what you feel.
Before you ask the question to end the journey, “I like you,” falls out of his lips and you realise it fell out of yours too.
...What?
Is this real? Is this a real conversation you two are having right now? Has the universe given you someone else’s heart, out of pity for your pathetic past in love and failure? Has something gone wrong in the timeline?
You find yourself laughing.
And then grumbling.
“Uh,” you peer off to nowhere, “thanks, I think.”
He looks crestfallen.
“It’s!” you turn back to him and hold up your hands defensively, incase he decides to throw hands, “It’s not an insult that you like me! I mean hell, I like you too.”
“Yeah, but like,” his hands rest in his lap quietly, “I’m not going out with you.”
Ouch. Even though you were about to say the same thing, ouch.
“Yeah, I don’t think dating is good for me.”
“Mm.”
The sun goes down. The lamplights shine. The air grows cold on your forearms and you pull down the sleeves you rolled up. In the distance, you can still hear the music and the shouting and the jokes and laughter of something you’ll never be part of.
Love, isn’t it.
It’s not like you don’t love Dave. It’s not like you don’t love Roxy and Rose and their wives. It’s not like you’re not happy for them. Because you are, really. And you know, deep down, no matter how many times the debilitating loneliness hits, that they love you too. That they would give the world for you. All you have to do is ask.
So why is it you came out here? Why is it you chased after the quiet cold breeze and sat with him for hours and hours? What have you got to prove? Who is there to blame? The only love you have to prove is romance to yourself. How self-important of you.
“We should go back,” John speaks up, looking at his phone instead of you, “Jane noticed we’re gone and I don’t want to have to explain to Dave that I’m mad him.”
He gets up and heads off without you. You should go with him but he basically said goodbye to you and you don’t want it to be that situation where you part ways but physically, you have to go in the same direction. So you sit there, thoughtless, empty, on the verge of tears and hungry. So, so hungry.
Through the darkness of your shades, you glance off at him and he’s a while away, so you get up and follow him. Walking is painfully slow with purposefully shortened steps, as to not end up right behind him. Your usual quick pace from a stance of 6’3” is cut awkwardly short, like holding back more than emotions. Like the universe has owed you one this entire time and by the time it dares to pay you back, it only gives you half.
When you reach the party again, lights shiny and music blaring, Rose takes your hand and leads you away. You smile for her and dance with her, jazz quickening your pace to comfortable again. The weight in your chest disappears into your hands where you hold hers and eventually, pass her to her wife. Calliope takes you and you sit for a good while, a light-hearted conversation of inside jokes from older times. Jake ambushes you from behind, almost crushing your ribs and absolutely ruining your hair, which makes you swear at him and he runs off laughing. Dave tries to help restyle the soft spikes and light tousle but you’re pretty sure he makes it worse. You appreciate the gesture, though.
At some point, Jane brings out a box. It’s one of her own, marked with the red spoon and everything. Once she puts it down and starts talking to someone, Dave grabs a knife and slams it through the box. Everyone jumps and Jane looks back with sullen disappointment, Karkat staring at him with confusion, but also rage. Underneath, the cake, which did have some beautiful writing of ‘congratulations’ on it, now says ‘congration’. Either way, Dave laughs and passes everyone a piece.
You notice John, beside Dave, scowling at him and timidly poking his fork into the first layer of the cake. It’s tiramisu, which feels oddly fitting. You watch the two of them pass back the conversation, eyes fixated solemnly on John. Is he thinking about you? Is he wanting you the way you’re wanting him? Is he ever going to look back at you?
When he does, with bored resentment, you avert your gaze with your whole body. Roxy talks to you but you barely talk back. When she notices you haven’t made a single dent with the fork, she steals a piece from your own. You snarl playfully at her, because she hasn’t even finished her own cake. Though, right now, you don’t know if you can stomach this. Some part of you still wishes the past few hours never happened. If Dave and Karkat had never gotten together, or just never told anyone, you wouldn’t have to feel like this.
But you don’t have to feel like this either way. You just decided to because you got jealous with how unfulfilled you are. Even if years passed and John’s feelings for you never faded, if years passed and your feelings for him never died, he wouldn’t call to you. He would never think of you as anything more. Nothing that once was. Nothing to be.
You bite down on the fork and eat.