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“Seriously, dude?”
John stares at Dirk like the petulant child he is, nose scrunched up and arms crossed over his bare chest. He’s not really a child, of course, none of them are anymore. Haven’t been since the game ended—and, to be fair, even though the mechanics involved had granted them all a tedious immortal existence, dealing with the apocalypse makes a person grow up quick. Mentally, if not physically.
Which is why it’s absolutely blowing Dirk’s mind that John Egbert, Heir of Breath, can’t fucking swim.
“Yeah, well. I didn’t have a lot of free time in between saving timelines, crossing paradox space, creating—”
Dirk holds up a hand and stops him right there. If he doesn’t, he’ll go on forever and to be frank, all he wants to do is enjoy a relaxing swim and, for once, not think about any of that nonsense.
He bends his knees, sinking into the water, letting his chin skate just above the surface. Pond water isn’t ideal, but the little chess guys keep their environment exceptionally clean, so it still beats the ones over in the Human and Troll Kingdom. Quieter too. Just him and silence and nature and John, who decided to tag along without the proper know-how.
“I got it, man. Not a big deal. It’s just, most people learn to swim when they’re kids. Dad Egbert was basically Dad Crocker, right? That guy was like poster father-of-the-year. I can’t believe he didn’t take you to swim lessons, that seems like the most suburban thing you can do.”
John’s glower sharpens into a dangerous, pointed glare. “Can we not bring up my dead dad, please?”
“Oh,” Dirk says. “Right. Sorry.”
He’s really got to work on that. It’s not that he doesn’t understand the importance of family, it’s just that it’s all kinda new to him. He only technically got his after they beat the game, and even that is a trial-and-error of dramatic proportions. Dave has Karkat and sometimes Jade—honestly, he’s not sure what the details of that arrangement are and he’s not sure he wants to—and Rose has her own marriage and life. Roxy might as well be family too, at this point. Fuck if he knows how ectobiology and crosshatched timelines work. But they’ve got their own deal too. Everyone does, and it doesn’t leave much to practice with, socially speaking.
John sighs. “It’s okay. I don’t think you meant anything by it.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yeah,” he says with the tiniest uptick of his lips. “So, if I drown—”
“You’re not going to drown.” Dirk stands up to full height. He’s in the middle of the small pond and the water level only barely laps at his nipples. Yeah, that’s a weird measuring point. Fine. But it should show John, who is only a couple of inches shorter than he is, that he won’t flail to a watery death. “See? Not that deep.”
“I heard you can drown in a teaspoon of water,” John says skeptically. He takes the first step off the bank anyway, until he’s ankle-deep, and makes a face. “It’s slimy.”
“It’s a pond,” Dirk explains. “Do I really need to give you a lesson on the importance of algae in the ecosystem before you get in? Plus, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Statistically speaking? Yes, you could drown in a teaspoon of water but that would take some serious deliberation on your part—or mine, depending on whether or not we’re talking suicidal or homicidal tendencies. Now, do you trust me?”
“Gee. After the word homicidal just came out of your mouth? Let me think about it.”
Dirk rolls his eyes and smacks the water, sending a generous splash of it in John’s direction. “Get over here.”
“Okay, okay,” John grumbles. He’s smiling though, his buck-toothed overbite doing things to Dirk’s chest that it shouldn’t. “I’m coming.”
John looks uncomfortable and that might be a gross understatement. His face is scrunched like he’s smelled something foul, his mouth pursed in a thin line, his glasses dotted with water where Dirk had splashed him. There’s no way Dirk’s going to mention the bit of algae hanging from the frame, lest he freak the fuck out. John comes to stand directly in front of him, pouting with his arms spread comically wide, using them like oars to balance himself. The water barely hits his clavicle. He’s being really overdramatic.
“There. Not so bad, is it?”
“This sucks, dude.”
“Put your arms down.”
“No! They’re helping me float.”
“John. You’re literally standing up.” Dirk reaches out and grabs each wrist, trying to push them down. John’s surprisingly strong for his size. Not that he’s scrawny. He’s well-built if a little lean. Toned. Dirk’s hand slips up his wrist and forearm to squeeze his bicep. Wow, okay, really toned.
“Uh.”
Shit.
“Keep your arms—” John’s arms pop back up like a buoy. “Goddamnit, Egbert.”
The shit-eating grin that spreads across his face tells Dirk that he’s being purposely contrary. He could have figured that because John Egbert fancies himself a regular prankster. A master of practical jokes. Fine. Dirk happens to be a master of strife and he doesn’t need a sword to kick John’s feet out from under him, sending him stumbling back into the water with an undignified yelp.
John turns to nothing but a blur of flailing arms spastically breaking the surface, not unlike a submerged inflatable tube man, only the used car lot is the middle of a pond.
“Oh, shit,” Dirk hisses. Right. Can’t swim. That was the whole deal, wasn’t it? He reaches out and grabs one of the arms and yanks him upright so that his head is above water. John comes up with a terrified gasp, sputtering and coughing up water with every heave of his chest. “Sorry. Hey, John. Calm down. You’re fine.”
John half-groans, half-whines—which is a really interesting sound to hear while not in the throes of passion—and pushes at the center of his chest. Dirk, being only marginally less dramatic, barely moves an inch. Which is just as well, because John anchors himself to Dirk’s torso, arms wrapped around to cling to his back, legs tangled with his beneath the water. He lets go long enough to push his glasses up into his hair—they’re covered into droplets and fogged up, rendered practically useless—and rubs at his eyes.
Dirk’s heart does a double-take. Shit. When did John’s eyes get so blue?
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah,” Dirk hums in agreement. “I thought you liked pranks?”
“That wasn’t a prank,” John screeches. Oh. He looks positively scandalized. It’s pretty cute. “Pranks are funny and clever and enjoyed by everyone.”
“Well, I enjoyed that.”
“We established that you’re an asshole.”
“Oh yeah. I guess we did,” Dirk says thoughtfully. “Now are you going to let this asshole teach you how to swim?”
John’s legs untangle from his and he stands steadier, hands slipping from Dirk’s back to rest on his shoulders. His glasses are still pushed up into his hair, acting as a makeshift headband, and Dirk figures it’s only fair that he evens the playing field. To teach someone is to have trust and as cool as his shades look, eye contact is an important part of that. So, he does the same to his glasses, swiping his damp hair back off his forehead, squinting so that his sensitive eyes can adjust to the sun.
When they refocus, John is staring, his mouth parted in a way that puts his overbite on display.
Dirk raises an eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothing,” John says quickly. “I just don’t know if I’ve ever seen you without your stupid shades.”
“First of all, they aren’t stupid,” Dirk corrects. He shifts on his feet, toes sinking into the mushy sediment. Gross. “Second, I’m sure you have.”
“Not this close up.” John reaches up and flicks a piece of something off his cheek and smiles brightly. “You have nice eyes. I don’t know why you hide them all the time.”
Dirk blinks, feeling his wet lashes flutter rapidly against his slowly warming cheeks. Shit. This is why. Eyes are the windows to the soul or some shit, and John is staring. His soul is rotten and confusing, and, like the sun, no one should stare directly into it. He debates slamming the curtains shut and locking John right the fuck out—the curtains being his shades in the metaphor, of course.
He doesn’t though because sometimes the satisfaction of being seen outweighs the horrifying concept of being seen.
“Imagine the state of your fragile heterosexuality if you had to stare into these intense but alluring eyes all the time,” Dirk says. That’s right. Deflect, coward. “I do it for you.”
John rolls his eyes and snorts. “Yeah, okay. Thanks for that!”
“I bet Callie describes them as glowing orbs of flames when she writes her friend fiction.”
“Hah,” John says flatly. Strangely, his eyes keep flirting away, unable to hold contact. He laughs nervously. “Yeah, or something really lame like the sun shining through a shard of amber.”
Dirk pauses and swallows hard. “Dude.”
“What?” John panics. He seems to realize what the fuck he just said out loud, to human ears. “Okay, maybe that was mean. Callie is super nice! You know, for a green skull monster. Oh, jeez. That was pretty mean too, wasn’t it?”
He’s flustered and Dirk’s about ninety percent sure it’s not because he inadvertently teased Calliope, who happens to be two kingdoms over. It definitely has everything to do with the fact he just waxed some mad poetics about his bro’s eyes in a way that can hardly be remedied with calling no homo.
“Nah,” Dirk says with a shrug. “She’d probably ask to borrow the line. Leanin’ a little too close to purple prose for my taste, but not bad. You’re good.”
“Right, so,” he says, dragging out the vowels of each word. “Teach me to swim.”
Change of subject and activity. Great idea.
“Get ready to be learned, Egbert.”
John trains his face into something serious and nods. “Yes, sensei.”
Oh god.
Dirk takes in a deep and shuddering breath and claps a hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear those words.”
Turns out, John is a pretty quick learner. He picks stuff up easily, and Rome wasn’t built in a day, but after a few hours of flopping around and learning form and technique, he’s graduated from an inflatable-tube-man flail, to a doggy paddle, to a mediocre breaststroke. Dirk is impressed.
He’s also sweating.
Most of the lesson requires him to keep a steady hand on John’s abdomen while he practices his strokes and kicks his feet. That means his bare hand on John’s bare abs—and if thought those arms were toned? Boy fuckin’ howdy.
“That’s it,” Dirk says when John moves with particularly good form. “You’re doing great.”
“Thanks,” John pants back. He stops moving, rolling over on his back to float—a new trick. “Can we take a break?”
“Sure.” Dirk lets his hand slowly trace along hard muscle as he pulls away. Stop. Enough of that. He clears his throat. “I think it’s safe to say you’d be able to hold your own in the extremely off chance that you find yourself stranded in a body of water. By the way, you realize that you literally can’t drown, right? For multiple reasons. The most important being that you’re immortal. The second being that you’re the Heir of Breath—can’t you just hold your breath forever?”
John looks over at him and laughs with a knowing smile and mischievous twinkle in his eye.
That little fucking—
“That’s how you prank someone, Strider!”
Dirk groans and presses on the center of his chest, submerging him completely until there are bubbles and a fist in his gut. John breaks the surface laughing, snatching his glasses before they sink to the bottom of the pond. The lens are still foggy, but he wipes off the access drops of water with his thumb and slides them back on. He doesn’t seem like least bit freaked out about being dunked, nothing like the spectacle earlier, and Dirk’s left wondering how much of that was just for show or how much credit is due to his rad teaching skills.
“I don’t think you actually know what a prank is.”
“That’s fine,” John says, “I don’t think you actually know what irony is.”
It’ll never stop amazing Dirk just how hard an insult hits when it’s delivered with John’s cheery optimism. He’s got that shit figured out. Luckily, Dirk is an impenetrable steel fortress and his psyche only takes offense from an insult when forged by his own hands.
“That’s fine,” Dirk parrots.
“Thanks for the lesson though.”
“Pointless as it was.”
John stops pushing ripples of water with the palm of his hand and looks up, blinking. “I didn’t know how to swim. So, not really.”
“You wanted me to teach you so that you wouldn’t drown,” Dirk reminds him. “Something that you can’t do. A detail that I somehow forgot, despite the fact that I can’t either. So, henceforth, pointless.”
“Okay, okay! Sheesh,” he groans, rolling his eyes. “Maybe that wasn’t the reason.”
Dirk pauses. “Oh?”
“Yeah. What? Why are you looking at me like that? I can have ulterior motives!”
“Pray tell what ulterior motives John Egbert could possibly have.”
“Firstly, rude,” John says, jabbing a finger at him. He groans again, throwing his head back. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“More embarrassing than your damsel in distress routine?”
“Kind of,” he mumbles. “Hey, can we get out? I’m starting to prune.”
A quick check of his hands shows Dirk that his fingertips look more like raisins than anything else. He sighs and nods, guiding them back to the bank. If he keeps his hand on the small of John’s back, it’s only to ensure he doesn’t slip on a rock and drown. Never mind that they’ve thoroughly established the implausibility of that being an issue. That’s his MO, damnit.
They dry off with their respective towels and then lay them out, side-by-side, on the grass. Perhaps a bit closer than typically advisable for two platonic bros.
“What’s up?” Dirk asks. John tilts his head up toward the cloudless expanse of blue above them. No, absolutely not. “John, I swear, if you say the sky—”
“Okay! I won’t say it.” He grins and then looks down, bashful, at his hands in his lap. “This is going to sound pretty cheesy, just a warning.”
“Luckily for you, I’m not lactose intolerant. Bring on the cheese, man. I’m ready and waiting with an open mouth and open heart.”
John makes a face. “Gross.”
“Yeah, anyway. Go on.”
“I like hanging out with you,” he blurts out, slamming his head into his kneecaps that are pulled to his chest and burying his reddening face there.
“Oh,” Dirk says, well, he wouldn’t say dumbly, but he might say puzzled. “Is that all? Dude, we don’t have to swim to hang out. We can just watch movies like we usually do. They’re shit movies, not going to lie. Holy fuck. They’re really bad. I don’t even know if I can say I enjoy them ironically—” John lifts his head and glares. Dirk shrugs it off, attempting to pull off something resembling nonchalant in preparation for the emotional truth bomb he’s about to drop:
“Point is, I like hanging out with you too.”
“That’s just it!” He sighs dramatically and flops back to lay on the towel, staring up at the sky with a pinched brow. “We always do what I want to do.”
Dirk squints, making a valiant attempt to work out the loop-de-loop circus that John calls a train of thought. “I have plenty of hobbies outside of swimming.”
“Yeah, but,” John chews at his lip. “Geez. How do I say this without looking like an ass?”
“Little late for that.” Dirk smiles his cool-guy smile, which is entirely composed of the tiniest quirk of his mouth at the corner.
“Swimming is special to you, right? I noticed you usually go when you’re overwhelmed, or upset, or—Man, I don’t know! I don’t want to make assumptions. But I guess you spent a lot of time in the water growing up, seeing that you were surrounded by an ocean and all. So,” John trails off, offering him a weak smile, “I thought maybe it was a coping thing. I know that when I’m feeling stressed out about all the crazy stuff that’s happened to us, I like to watch Con Air. It’s comforting!”
Dirk closes his mouth with a snap because he’s not sure when it started hanging open and the last thing that he needs is to swallow a fucking fly while John unzips him emotionally.
John continues seamlessly, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that when I watch Con Air with you, all those good feelings are amplified and it’s ten times better because I’m not alone.”
Remember that impenetrable iron fortress? Yeah. Consider that shit penetrated. His psyche is the Wall of Jericho and the bricks are tumbling down. Eviscerated by a guy in pond-soaked Ghostbusters boxers. Where the hell did he even get those?
“What if I wanted to be alone?” Dirks asks as his only defense.
“Do you?”
He shrugs because it’s easier than saying no.
“I think we’ve both spent a lot of time alone,” John says carefully. “I’m kinda sick of it.”
Dirk stares down at him, laid out on his towel in the green grass with his hands folded beneath his head as a pillow. His hair is pretty much dry now, wind-blown and messy like usual. He’s good looking in his own way. Similar to Jake, sometimes too similar, but entirely his own person. Goofy and kind of a dick, if Dirk’s being completely honest. But that’s what he likes about him. He holds his own, tit for tat. Not afraid to call him out on his excessive bullshit.
But there are things like this too; clumsy gestures of genuine affection. Dirk knows that he’s so fucking touch-starved that it spans past the realm of physical touch into emotional touch. And John touches him in the spots that others can’t or aren’t bothered enough to try. He’s aware of that.
He’s so painfully fucking aware.
John’s eyes cut over when he realizes he’s being watched, mouth twisting into a smile and then a frown. Oh, right. His shades are still off. He’s still exposed. That means John is privy to every fleeting, unrequited passing thought written on his face.
“Hey, are you okay?” John asks, shifting to prop himself up on his elbows.
No, he’s not. He could lie.
Or—and here’s a wild fucking idea straight from the desperate and batshit subsection of his consciousness—he could ruin the last good, tangible thing he has left and just fucking go for it.
Dirk leans in and kisses him.
It’s quick, chaste, and from the moment Dirk feels John’s lips on his, it’s hesitant. Shit. He pulls back and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, attempting to scrub off his hair-trigger decision.
John stares at him, mouth hanging open. It glistens where Dirk’s had been.
“I’m sorry,” Dirk says. “I don’t—”
John grabs him by the back of the neck and drags him back into a crushing kiss. Dirk melts into it, sighs right into John’s mouth, the opening just enough to let him slip inside. John kisses him hard and with purpose, and with all the fervor that comes with finally realized, pent-up desire.
Oh.
Dirk tangles a hand in his hair and guides them both back until they’re lying on their sides, tangled together. John wastes no time rolling him flat on his back, hovering to kiss him straight into the soft ground at the back of his head. One hand wanders down Dirk’s side, stopping at his hip to squeeze an embarrassing whine out. He fucking lied, okay? He absolutely needs some physical touch because holy shit, that feels so good.
John pulls back and gazes down at Dirk with glassy eyes and a puffy, red lip, marked teeth-shaped indentions. “Wow,” he breathes out, sounding awestruck.
“Yeah.” Dirk licks the taste of him off his lips. “That wasn’t a prank kiss, right?”
“I don’t think those are a thing,” John says, squinting his eyes. “That wasn’t an ironic kiss, right?”
“I would say that those aren’t a thing, but plenty of people kiss ironically. For the record, no. That wasn’t ironic. That was—”
What does he say? Cool? Perfect?
Everything I ever wanted, bro.
“Nice,” John finishes for him. “That was pretty nice.”
John kisses him again and it’s more than pretty nice. It feels like someone suturing up all his split ends. Bandaging him up so that the wounds will heal, but while remaining fully aware that there will always be silvery scars to show for it. Dirk hopes that John feels like that too. They’re both battle-worn and broken; lonely and scared; out of place in the new world that they helped to create. It’s pretty fucking intense.
But when John moves against him, holding onto him like he’s the only thing that’ll keep him anchored from the wind, Dirk doesn’t feel like he’s drowning anymore.