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You’re five years old when you first meet John Egbert.
The two of you aren’t really friends. To put it simply, you’re cool and he’s a dork, so the only time you’ve ever socialized is when he wanted to borrow your blue crayon because it was his favorite color and he didn’t have any left in his box. You let him. Red was your favorite, so losing a blue wouldn’t short you any, plus Karkat wouldn’t mind if you borrowed (stole) his blue crayon. You finally meet John one day on the playground, when a kid pushes him over and takes his lunch.
He doesn’t react really. He squeaks and then starts crying, curls himself into a ball and completely forgets about his lunch. There are bandages all over him; his knees, his elbows, even his forehead. You wonder how someone can get hurt that often. Your friends are telling you to leave it, leave him, it’s only John and he really doesn’t matter, not that much -- you’re barely even acquaintances. Usually you would drop it because you shouldn’t care as much as you do, but hell if you don’t, so you tell your friends they can go to lunch without you and you’ll meet them there.
A few of them laugh and tease you. Ha-ha, you’re going to help a poor innocent kid who got pushed over and then got his lunch stolen. Really funny. He doesn’t notice you at first, but when he feels that the sun is no longer shining on him because your shadow is blocking it he looks up. Then he scrambles to get up from the ground, one hand holding the spot where his head had collided with the concrete, eyes wide. “I ain’t gonna hurt you. Don’t gotta look so scared of me.” You mumble.
He shakes. “But you--you’re Dave Strider! You’re up there with every other bully, and I wanna tell you that I don’t have anything left! Everyone else took all my stuff, even my favorite lunch bag, so you can just leave because I can’t give you anything!” He stutters out, trying to contain his lisp but to no avail. You go for a gentler approach and hope he might calm down a little bit.
“Yeah, so? Just ‘cause I’m cool don’t mean I’m a bully. You hurt your head?”
You’re relieved to see him relax a little. His shoulders are less tense, eyes no longer glimmering with terror. “Yeah, I hit it on the blacktop. Hurts a lot.” He mutters, casting his gaze toward the ground. You take a step forward and thank god that he doesn’t instantly run off, gripping his head like a precious baby. And when you make it to him he still hasn’t made any moves to run.
“Mind if I look?” He stares at you, wide, disbelieving. It mustn’t be too often that anyone shows a genuine concern for him -- it makes you feel bad. He moves his hand from his head and you look, biting your bottom lip when you see that it’s bleeding quite a lot and might even need stitches. You have some of those, on your arm, from the time you accidentally ran into the fridge and a sword managed to slice your forearm open. “Can I take you to the nurse, or do ya’ want someone else to?”
He looks like he does have someone else in mind, but shrugs and doesn’t protest. “Ah, o-okay. That’s fine.” You lead him to the nurse’s office and flip your friends off when they laugh as you pass by, then the nurse takes him from you and says it’s fine if you go back to class, but you don’t. You wait outside the office with your legs drawn up to your chest, head resting on them. And you aren’t expecting it when someone punches you, sends you flying to the ground with shock written on your face.
It’s a girl. She looks a little older, maybe a year, and has messy black hair that’s pulled into two pigtails and shiny green eyes. She looks like John with a few tweaks, even has the buckteeth. “Did you hurt my little cousin? ‘Cause I’ll beat you up!” She squeals, and you can only assume she’s talking about John.
“Jesus woman,” You grit, pulling yourself up. When you touch your face, pain shoots through your cheek. She’d really gotten you. “I didn’t do nothin’. Some kid hurt him and he hit his head on the ground, so I helped him to the nurse. Don’t have to go around punchin’ people until you get the story.”
She stares at you.
Then rushes out an apology, and now you’re the one being helped to the nurse. The woman only stares for a beat, before she pulls out the peroxide and bandages and cleans your cheek. John is lying on one of those cots, and Jade completely forgets about you and runs to him, tripping over her long skirt. “John. John, are you okay? Do I have to beat someone up?”
He laughs weakly. “No. ‘M alright, little tired.”
The nurse yells at Jade that she needs to keep John awake if she’s going to miss class for this, because he could have a concussion and if he falls asleep he might go into a coma. A gasp comes from the girl but she promises to the nurse she will keep John awake, by any means necessary, and you decide right now that you want to be friends with both of them even if they aren’t as cool as you.
You’re fourteen years old when you ask Jade Harley out.
She’s in tenth grade and you’re only in ninth, so you don’t think she’ll accept, but John promises you that everything will be okay and hugs you and for a minute, you think you’re asking the wrong family member out. That flies out the window quickly when you see Jade in all her glory, black hair curled and green lipstick slathered perfectly on her lips, making her eyes pop. You stutter over your words and she laughs, then tells you she’s had a crush on you since first grade. A weight is lifted from your chest, but there’s still a twisting in your guts and you don’t know why.
You and John go out for celebratory pizza. He congratulates you on finally getting a girlfriend, on finally asking out his cousin, because it’s obvious you’ve been fawning over her since kindergarten but you aren’t entirely sure if that’s true, if she’d been the one you had wanted for so long. The butterflies in your stomach go wild when John flashes you one of his signature grins, and you don’t think that’s right. That should happen for Jade, not her cousin. You brush it off as bad pizza. “Don’t break her heart, though. I’ll have to beat you up!” He teases, but you both know he’d never hurt a fly. And if he hurt a fly, you both know he would feel guilty about it. He’s such a dweeb.
On your first date, you decide to take Jade to the movies. “Well, okay, Dave. But I’ve told you before, I’m not really a big fan of movies. They kind of suck.” And you don’t know why, but that makes you mad at her, makes you mad at everything. But you hold your stoic expression and shrug lazily, pretending you aren’t burning with rage inside. You miss most of the movie because you’re making out instead of watching, and something about it all feels very wrong. She should be--nevermind, you won’t dwell on it.
You kiss again on her doorstep, this time slower, more meaningful. “That rom-com sucked, I know from the parts I saw, but I had a good time. How about we go out to eat next time, huh?” She grins, wide and mostly teeth. It reminds you of John. Oh, god, what? Gross, you’re on a date and you’re thinking of your best bro. That’s kind of super disgusting, especially because it’s his cousin. The implication of a second date should set the butterflies in your stomach off, but there is nothing. You could care less.
"Yeah, cool. See ya’ around, Harley.”
She waves goodbye and closes the door to her house. You wish you missed her, because that’s how couples are, right? Mushy-gushy, “I miss you already!” but all you really want is to go home and talk to John on the phone. So you do just that, and when Jade messages you while the two of you are talking and John teases you about being in love with her, you feel as though something in the universe has been thrown off.
Your second date is to Olive Garden, even though you kind of wish to go to the movies again. You kind of wish a lot of things. That when Jade smiled or twined your hands together, that your stomach would do backflips. But the butterflies only seem to wake from their haze when John hugs you, or smiles at you, or cuddles up to you during a horror movie because he hates horror and prefers cheesy comedy or romance.
“Are you even listening?” Jade asks in the middle of the date, hands frozen in mid-air, probably telling you some story. You hadn’t been paying much attention to her, more to the thoughts in your head that you couldn’t shut up, to the paintings on the wall that probably held a lot of value. You’re pretty blunt when you tell Jade no, you had not been listening to whatever she’d been telling you, and she huffs. You move the conversation somewhere else.
“I think your hair would look cooler if you tied it back every once and a while,” You blurt out, and she blushes and smiles. Wrong. “And blue eyes might suit ya’ a little better, ever thought about lookin’ into a pair of contacts?” You wonder if you hurt her feelings at all, but she seems to be pretty okay, and shrugs her shoulders.
“No, I haven’t -- Dave, it sounds like you’re trying to turn me into John. I’m not an idiot, you know!” Alright, so she hadn’t been okay. You weren’t trying to turn her into your best friend, were you? No, you’re going out with Jade Harley, not John Egbert. You were simply pointing out some things you thought would look nicer on her. Yeah, that’s it, that’s all. You aren’t trying to turn her into your best bro.
“‘Course I’m not, Harley. Just trying to start a conversation.”
She throws her napkin down and tells you you’re hopeless. You wonder what that means, and don’t even notice when she stomps out of the place and leaves you to pay the bill. You barely have enough to cover it, so you don’t have enough to leave a tip. The waitress glares at you, when you’re leaving, and you only shrug in return. You call Jade and ask her why she’d told you you were hopeless, and she laughs breezily, without a care in the world. “I was saying it out of anger, Dave. You aren’t hopeless! Want to go see a movie next week?”
You tell her yes. The universe screams at you that something is wrong, but you plug your ears and block it out. The universe doesn’t know what it’s talking about. It can shove it’s accusations up its ass, nothing is wrong. This time you see a horror movie together, but you don’t really see much of it because the two of you are making out again. You wish she would just stop kissing you and watch the movie, and hold your hand at parts that scared her. But that isn’t who she is, you guess, so you shrug it off. It really shouldn’t matter this much to you. The universe continues to scream the word wrong in your ear, and you block it out with the sound of the movie.
You date Jade even when she goes to college and you’re still in high school, and when you move onto college you room with her. She doesn’t make you pay half of the rent until you get a steady job, and one day John is begging the two of you to let him live with you, just for a while, just until he finds a job. Jade accepts easily, and asks you what you think, and you say “yeah, whatever” because it doesn’t matter to you.
John seems comfortable living with you. Aside from when the three of you watch movies together, because Jade makes out with you like she always did, always interested in kissing rather than watching the screen. Sometimes you stare at John while she mashes face with you, watch him watch the movie with those wide, blue eyes, fidgeting, pretending his cousin and best friend aren’t making out next to him. You wish Jade would just watch the movie.
One night she picks a horror flick. John seems like he’s ready to protest, but he doesn’t say a word, only sits at his usual spot on the end of the sofa (as far away from the two of you as he can possibly get) and watches the movie intently. At some point you aren’t really watching him, more focused on the feeling of Jade’s lips moving against yours, but then he whimpers, quiet and small -- and your eyes shoot open. When the light from the screen shines on him, you notice the small tear tracks on his cheeks.
And you make the worst decision of your life.
Well, to you. The universe is cheering loudly in your ear.
You push Jade off of you. “Dave, what--” She begins to protest, but you stand up from your spot on the opposing corner of the couch and plop right by John, wrapping your arms around him and pulling him into your chest. He squeaks, not in terror but surprise, by your sudden actions. And Jade glares daggers at you, at him. She stops the movie anyway, puts it back in its case and shoves it under a pile of disks. John twists his hands in your shirt and you wipe his tears away, kissing the top of his head, right where you know the scar is from the day he’d gotten pushed down in kindergarten.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were scared, John?” Jade asks, in the voice she gets when she’s scary mad, completely calm and level. It’s like the light gusts of wind before the raging storm. John looks between you and her and he pushes you away, wiping at tears that are no longer on his face.
“I’m--sorry, I just, didn’t want to interrupt or anything. Um, I’m going for a walk now, you two work out whatever’s wrong.” John stutters out, then grabs his shoes and jacket and runs from the house, slamming the door behind him. Jade is glaring now, arms crossed over her chest. The universe is yelling again, louder than before, telling you to go after John because you’d read about an oncoming storm and if he gets caught in it he’s going to get sick. But you argue with the universe and tell you John chose to leave, and if he gets sick it isn’t your problem.
And the universe whispers that it will always be your problem. It always has been.
Jade is still talking in a calm, level voice. “Care to tell me why you broke away from a kiss with me, your girlfriend, to comfort John, your best friend and my cousin?” You can’t reply. You don’t have a reply, a defense, you realize. You don’t know why you’d done it, you just had. The universe is screaming again, telling you why, telling you you did it because you love him, you always have. He made the butterflies awaken. There was a spark when you’d kissed him once, during a game of spin the bottle, and you’d wanted to do it again.
Now Jade’s crying, sinking to the ground, and you don’t know what to do so you get up and wrap your arms around her, pull her to your chest. She laughs brokenly, and it sounds more like a sob then anything. “Oh, Dave. Dave, oh my god, you never really loved me, you never even liked me. I was your substitute. I looked so much like John that you had a grand old time convincing yourself that I was him, that one day maybe I would be like him, but Dave,” She pauses, taking your shades off so she can look into your eyes. “I’m not John. I can’t be John, and I still love you, but you love him--”
She hiccups and pauses. You think she’s done, but she isn’t. “Don’t do this to yourself anymore, Dave. You’re hurting me, you’re hurting yourself…” She pauses again, turning away from you, mulling over something in her mind. “Y-You’re hurting John. I--he’s liked you, he’s wanted to date you, since ninth grade. Since you and I started dating. Sometimes he’d call me crying, telling me that he wished you would love him and not me, but you--you always loved him.”
And you don’t know what to say.
You, Dave Strider, for once in your life, are at a loss for words. Jade smiles weakly and puts your glasses back on, then pats the side of your face, a motherly gesture. Not something a girlfriend comforting her boyfriend would do, something a mother comforting her son would do. She tells you to stay with her for a while, let her bask in a few last minutes with you, that John will be fine on his own. You don’t believe her, but you know you owe this to Jade -- a last moment of solitude with you, the man she loves, the one who doesn’t love her. Who never did.
She gives you a chaste kiss when the front door opens and slams. “I love you, Dave Strider. Always have, always will. But you need to go get your man before he starts dating the boy from the record shop, Karkat Vantas, because I swear to god that’s what is going to happen soon if you don’t tell him how you feel.”
The universe is cheering you on. But it’s also telling you you’re stupid, that you shouldn’t have waited this long. John is soaking wet, sitting by the window and watching the storm that he’d just escaped from. You smile gently, in the dark, where no one will see it. Either the power is out, or none of you’d been bothered to turn the lights on. “You’re gonna get a fuckin’ cold if you stay in those wet clothes, Egbert.”
He jumps, almost falling off of the counter he sits on. Then he frowns. “So? You shouldn’t care, Dave. Don’t you have a girlfriend to have makeup sex with, or whatever? Leave me alone to get sick.” You suddenly feel really bad about everything. About leading Jade on when the only person you’d ever wanted was John, for letting him to wallow in hurt and pretend he was happy for you and his cousin even though he always wished he was her.
“She ain’t my girlfriend anymore. Shouldn’t have ever been,” You mumble, wrapping your arms around John and pulling him to your chest. He doesn’t push you away. “You know, I’ve always loved you. The universe fuckin’ called it, but I ignored the voices in my head and pretended for a long time that I was in love with Jade Harley,” You pause for a minute. John is staring at you now, absolutely dumbstruck.
“But I’ve always loved you.”
And then you’re sent flying onto the ground, because John leaps on top of you with this cat-like agility. He’s crying. His tears are hitting your shirt. “Don’t lie to me, you’re such an asshole. Did Jade set you up to this? I’m going to kill her with a waffle iron--”
“Woah, woah. A waffle iron? Damn, Egbert, lil’ harsh. She’s your cousin. Why would sweet ol’ Jade set me up to do somethin’ this shitty? No, man, I’m in love with you. I was in love with you the first time I found you, curled into a ball and crying about god knows what, either losing your lunch or hitting your head.”
He stares at you for a minute.
And then he kisses you, and the butterflies in your stomach are finally alive, and they’re thanking you for manning up finally. The universe is smiling and talking to you nicely now, not yelling, telling you that it only took you six years to tell him, and now the universe sounds pretty damn sarcastic. “I love you too.”
You laugh. John looks both pleased and surprised by this. “Yeah, I could tell by the way ya’ ambushed my lips.”
(A week later, John comes down with a cold.
Jade smiles when she passes by his room, by the sight of you feeding him chicken noodle soup and singing to him until he falls asleep.
You notice she looks genuinely happy. She’d never looked like that before.
It surprises you.)