Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As you walk down these halls for the first time, you can’t help but feel like you’ve finally moved up in the world. No longer will you be seen as a child by those you once viewed as superior. For today, you join them on the next rung of the proverbial echeladder. Today you are a man. Or, at the very least, a slightly more awkward than average teenager.

Your name is John Egbert, it is your first day of high school, and you are being slightly more melodramatic than the occasion calls for.

You are interrupted from your epic internal fantasy by an overly excited girl all but jumping on top of you.

“Ohmygosh John our lockers are practically next to each other!” she exclaims, bouncing lightly on the pads of her feet and clapping her hands.

“Jeez Jade, calm down, you’re acting like this is the greatest thing ever when really it just means we get to pass vaguely by each other between classes.”

 “Yeah, well, I tried calling out to you a few times but you were so lost in thought that I pretty much had to jump at you to get your attention. And besides, I was so worried that I’d be off in some secluded corner of the building surrounded by creepy goth kids or something that seeing you here has pretty much made my day, and it hasn’t even started yet!”

“Goth kids? Jade, if you can stand to hang out with Rose you can totally handle a few goth kids,” you snicker.

“What was that about me?” a cold voice inquires from behind you.

“Rose!” you stammer, turning to face her as she approaches “I was just in the middle of saying how nice and fun and totally not creepy and goth you are.”

“Of course you were,” she states bluntly, but before she can go on to make another snarky comment, Jade interrupts.

“Rose! You’re here too!”

“Apparently I am, but I won’t be for long, because our first class starts in about two minutes. You should get moving too, unless you want to be known as ‘that kid who was late on the first day’ for the rest of the term.”

You check the time on your phone and sure enough you’ve got about a minute and a half to get to class before the bell rings, and you’re not really sure where your class even is, so you grab your timetable and school map and book it down the hall looking for room 134.

---

You manage to find the class and slip in triumphantly with seconds to spare. You look around the room for free seats and you see that there are a few down at the back, one of which happens to be situated next to a certain blond coolkid whom you haven’t seen in two months. You all but skip to the back as the bell rings and plop down next to him. Despite your earlier comment to Jade, you were rather worried that high school would separate you from your friends. Things are turning out better than expected.

“Dave!” you whisper, “I haven’t seen you in forever! How was Texas?”

“Oh, you know, boring family stuff all summer long, nothing to get excited over.”

“Dave, your idea of ‘boring family stuff’ consists mostly of epic rap battles and swordfights, that is pretty much the opposite of nothing to get excited over.”

“Maybe to you, Egbert, but to a Strider, it’s all in a day’s work. So it was boring. Your summer was probably just as exciting – no wait who am I kidding you probably just sat in your room and watched shitty movies for two months while being force fed cake. How close am I?”

“…They are so not shitty.”

“Tell that to literally every person who’s had to sit through Con Air.”

You go to protest further, ready to defend the masterpiece that is Con Air to your death, but then your teacher walks up to the front of the room and starts the class. He starts with a roll call, which goes as smoothly as any roll call can be expected to go, until the second last name on the list, a grumpy looking black haired kid who was sitting in the opposite corner of the room from you.

“Karson Vantas?”

“Kar.”

“Pardon me?”

“Call me Kar, Karson’s a fucking stupid name, it’s not even supposed to be spelled that way anyway, I have no idea what the fuck my parents were on when they named me that-“

“Watch your language… Mr. Vantas. Next time it’s the principal’s office, and that’s not a very good way to start off the school year.”

Kar looks like he wants to protest further, but instead he just looks down at his desk and mumbles something that you can’t make out from across the room, though from his expression it probably isn’t very nice. Next to you, Dave snorts.

“Someone’s got their panties in a twist.”

“Maybe he’s just having a bad day?”

“Pretty sure you don’t bitch out your teacher like that just because you woke up on the wrong side of the bed. That kid is wound up tight. Bet he’s a riot to pick on.”

“Dave! You shouldn’t just pick on some kid because he’s angry. That’s kind of a douche thing to do.”

“Jeez, why you gotta take some pissy kid’s side over your best bro’s, Egbert? You got a man crush on him or something?”

“Wha - no! Ew! What’s wrong with you! Of course I don’t have a man crush on him!”

Just then, you hear some girls in front of you snickering, and you realize that you’ve been protesting a few decibels louder than you had intended, and half the class was listening in on your conversation. You can feel the flush starting to come into your cheeks, so you mumble something incoherent about how you’re missing out on all the math and stare intently at the board while silently praying that your voice hadn’t travelled the entire room.

Chapter Text

High school was going worse than you’d imagined, and that was saying something, since your mind was constantly flowing with worst-case scenarios and less-than pleasant imagery. You’d already verbally exploded at no fewer than five people, one of whom had been your first period teacher, and the odds of anyone ever looking your way with anything other than disdain were already approaching the single digits. You’d secretly hoped that in going to a school where two thirds of the people hadn’t had a chance to hate you yet that maybe you could find a group of people to fit in with, or at least who would tolerate you, but from what you’d seen so far everyone was just more of the same.

Your name is Karson Vantas and you do not have a very positive outlook on high school, the future, or much of anything, really.

As the bell rings to let you out of your last class before lunch, you quickly gather your things and slip out the door before the rest of the school has time to crowd the halls. You’d planned on grabbing the lunch that you’d packed for yourself and sneaking it into the library, where you could find a back corner and read a newspaper away from the hordes of annoyingly loud and obnoxious people you were forced to call your peers. Fate, however, had different plans.

Turning the corner to the fine arts hallway, you behold an unpleasant sight. Instead of the empty hall you’d been anticipating, there was a small crowd of upperclassmen situated directly in front of your locker. Normally you’d just go up to them and bitch and swear at them until they moved, but you recognized the leader of the group. It was a cousin of a kid you’d been friends with in elementary school until he got so into drugs that he’d had to go to a remedial school across town, and you’re pretty sure just from looking at him that this guy was one of the reasons. The fact that he was at least six foot two and had terrifying face tattoos wasn’t helping either. You weren’t sure if his locker was there too or if he just happened to like it there, but it didn’t look like he or his little gang would be moving anytime soon, and you decided that your hastily packed bag lunch wasn’t worth having to interact with Clownzilla in any way, shape, or form, so you decide to double back around the corner to the library and hope you hadn’t been noticed.

The library, it turns out, is not much better. While quieter than the halls, it seems to be a prime lunch break location, and all of the tables have been taken up by various couples or groups of geeky-looking kids playing cards or doing crosswords. All of the good newspapers are gone too, but you resolve to spite fate, grab one of the shitty free hipster papers, and try to make yourself as comfortable as possible on the floor between the stacks in the reference section. At the very least there will be movie reviews to read. Movies are pretty much the only solace you have from the shithole that seems to be your life, so you flip right to the reviews and are disgusted by what you see. The reviewer was clearly biased toward trash, even going so far as listing ‘Explosions’ under ‘Plot’ in his score tallies.

The one rom-com that he did review had scored painfully low, and you knew it didn’t deserve it. After all, you’d gone to the midnight premier, and the strength of the main characters’ relationship had nearly brought you to tears, which when complimented with the subtle humor of the film, had given you a wonderfully cathartic experience, if you did say so yourself. The review, on the other hand, consisted pretty much of the word “boring” repeated several times and how “she should have shown more boob.” Personally, you think that the less ‘boob’ that gets into your movies the better, but you quickly dismiss that thought and turn the page. Unfortunately, after the movie reviews there are recipes, and that only serves to remind you how hungry you are and how much you wish you’d had the foresight to take your wallet with you to class so you could have at least bought something from a vending machine.

When the bell finally rings to signal the end of lunch break you’re feeling crankier than ever, and that’s saying something, since the only settings you seem to have these days other than ‘cranky’ are ‘angry’ and ‘shouty.’ You check your schedule and head toward your first class of the afternoon – biology.

When you get there, you instinctively head for a corner, but before you can sit down your teacher instructs everyone to stand at the front of the class in a line so that he can assign seating by student number. Apparently, since it’s a class that needs lab partners and he doesn’t want anyone to get feel ‘left out,’ he was instead going to stick random people together and hope everything worked out.

As the teacher begins to call out names, you glance up and down the row, trying to pick out which kid looks the least painful to be partnered up with. Knowing how your day has been going, though, you figured you were most likely to end up with the jock on the end who looked like he had an IQ somewhere around that of toast, and you were pretty sure that you would have rather been ‘left out’ than stuck with half of these people. It’s not like you weren’t used to it by now, anyway.

You’re pleasantly surprised when, instead of the Neanderthal on the end, you end up with a geeky looking buck toothed kid instead. You don’t pay him much attention as you sit down next to him and hope he doesn’t talk much, unless he wants to give you answers or something.

As is expected, your hopes are instantaneously shattered.

“Hi!” he whispers, though ‘whisper’ might not be the right word, you’re pretty sure he has no idea how loud his voice actually is. You’re thankful you’d been assigned seats near the back of the room, since you’d prefer to make it through at least one of your classes without being called out by the teacher.

“You’re Kar, right? I’m John! We have math together too, though you probably didn’t know that since I sit way on the other side of class. Not that I was creeping on you or anything, I just happened to recognize you and I hope that I can be a good lab partner and it’s nice to meet you!”

“Fuck,” is your only response, realizing that this ‘John’ kid had been there for your first rant of the day. He probably thought you were an idiot. Though you were prone to random outbursts of swearing, that one had been particularly embarrassing, and you silently scold your past self for being such a dumbass. You avert your eyes from John’s direction and swear to yourself a few more times.

“Uhh…” stammers John, slightly off-put by your response. “Well I um… I guess I should get my books out and take some notes or something.”

Just then, something soft falls from his bag and lands on your foot. You instinctively reach down to grab it and find that it’s a slice of cake, wrapped in cling film and slightly squished.

“Oops! Sorry ‘bout that Kar! My dad went a little overboard baking ‘congratulations on entering high school’ cakes even though he knows I hate cake and then he cut one up and snuck it into my backpack before I left and it’s kinda hard to keep all the slices packed up.” John chuckled to himself. “I don’t suppose you want some?”

You turn to face him, but your stomach answers before you get the chance, growling loudly. You blush slightly, but quickly regain your composure and tell him “Well fuck, normally I wouldn’t take food off the fucking ground, and it’s pretty much the most fucking ugly piece of shit cake I’ve ever seen, but if you’re not going to eat it only an idiot would waste food so I might as well force myself to eat it if it’ll get you off my ass.”

John’s eyes light up and a broad smile lights up his face. “Oh man, I was so worried that you weren’t going to talk to me and this was going to be the most awkward class ever but this can be like a peace offering or something and now we’re going to get along fine and this year’s going to be awesome! I love biology; I’ve been looking forward to it all summer, which might sound kind of weird, but-”

You tune out his ecstatic rambling for a few minutes to actually get a good look at him. He seems to be a bit taller than you, though you can’t tell by how much since you’re sitting down. He’s slightly chubby, but nowhere near being fat, and his arms have surprisingly more definition to them than you would expect someone of his stature, though he was nowhere near actually being muscular. You decide that awkwardly staring at your lab partner’s midsection is probably not the best thing to be caught doing so you move up to meet his eyes, though he’s so into raving about the wonders of biology and friendship that he probably wouldn’t notice.

This proves to be a bad idea. The second you meet his eyes, you’re drawn in to just how perfectly blue they are. You had no idea that eyes could even be that blue, it seemed like a colour reserved for precious stones and crayons. And while staring at his torso probably wouldn’t have gotten John’s attention, staring intently into his eyes was not something he could ignore.

“Hey! Kar! Earth to Kar! You alright?” You snap back to reality when he waves his hand in front of your face, breaking the contact between your eyes.

“Huh? Of course I’m alright fuckass, didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s polite to look someone in the eyes when they’re talking to you? Is it really that unbelievable that I can be polite too, or am I just that far gone already?”

“Sorry Kar, it’s just that you were kinda just staring off into space and you haven’t even eaten your cake yet so I was worried that maybe you weren’t feeling well…”

You look down at the squishy lump in your hands. It resembles cake even less now than ever, but you all of a sudden realize just how hungry you really are, so you peel off the plastic wrap, make sure the teacher isn’t looking, and shove the whole thing in your mouth.

“Fuck, this is good,” you mutter, turning back to look at John before catching yourself and looking away.

Now that you have some food in you, your brain is starting to work, and you’re not liking what it’s saying. You have known this kid for less than twenty minutes and already you’re falling for him. You try and explain to yourself that no matter how great it seemed in your rom-coms, love at first sight was total bullshit, and try to rationalize what’s going on in our head before it can take over. Maybe it’s because the way to a man’s heart really is through his stomach. Maybe it’s because he’s the first person you can remember since elementary school who smiled when he was talking to you instead of trying to end the conversation as soon as possible. Or maybe it’s just because you got fucking lost in his eyes whenever you looked at them. Whatever it was, it had to stop.

Maybe if you can just avoid him as much as possible, you’ll get over it and be able to move on. This whole thing obviously can’t work, and for reasons other than how idiotic your own feelings are. There’s no way he’ll ever reciprocate, you knew better than anyone that there wasn’t anything to like about yourself; not to mention your gaydar is telling you that he falls very much in the ‘not a homosexual’ zone. No, it was best to try and stifle these feelings before things got out of hand. Once again fate has gotten the upper hand to screw you over as much as possible.

No matter how hard you try, however, you can’t help but steal glances out of the corner of your eye all class. This is going to be a long semester.

Chapter Text

Your eyes open wide and you just stand there agape for a minute before you can properly react.

“Jade. Come here.”

“Just a minute John, I’m checking something out.”

“No seriously. Come here.”

“Jeez, fine. What is it?”

“There’s a movie club.”

It’s the end of your second day of high school and you’ve crowded into the small gymnasium for the school’s extracurricular fair. It was mostly just recruitment for the various sports teams, which you had little interest in, however nestled within the half-dozen or so hobby groups you have found the one thing you could have only dreamed of.

Jade laughs. “Of course that’s what it was. I was worried that something important had happened or something.”

“Jade, there is literally nothing on Earth that could be more important than a movie club. Not even, like, a swarm of meteors destroying the world.”

“If they destroyed the world, wouldn’t that destroy movie club too?”

“You know what Jade? Shut up. Shut up is what.”

“Anyway, you gonna sign up for this magical movie club, or are you just going to stare across the room at it all day? I think Jake’s getting kinda creeped out.”

“You know the leader of the movie club?”

“Yeah, sure, he’s my cousin. C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”

She grabs you by the sleeve and drags you toward the booth before you can get a comment in otherwise. Not that you’d want to, though. Despite your excitement you were slightly nervous about starting up a conversation with some random upperclassman.

“Hey Jake, how’s it going?”

“Jade! Golly, it’s been a while. Things are going pretty swell if I do say so myself, since I finally managed to convince the teachers to let us start up a movie club. We haven’t had many interested students, though, I think they think it’s too geeky and is going to wreck their new-school-coolkid images.”

“Well, luckily for you, I’ve got a new recruit right here! Jake, this is my friend John; I think I’ve mentioned him to you before.”

“If by ‘mentioned’ you mean ‘compared me to while groaning every time we watch a movie together’ then yes, I do think you might have mentioned him before.” They both laugh. “Hello there John, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

You look up at the boy across the desk. He’s about your height and has dark hair similar to yours: neater, but not by much. He has tanned skin and piercing green eyes offset by a broad smile. You still feel slightly intimidated, but his overly-friendly demeanour puts you at ease.

“Hi!” you manage to quip, “I’m John, oh, but you already knew that, and well, I really want to join your club because I’m super into movies, especially action movies and especially especially ones staring Nick Cage, he’s pretty much my hero and I was hoping we could maybe watch some of his movies some time. Oh! Except you probably want people to watch new movies since it’s a good idea for people to see new things and well, I’m always up for new movies and- oh shoot. I think I’m rambling again, sorry. People say I have a bad habit of doing that.”

“No worries, Dirk likes to point out that I’m rather guilty of that myself.”

“Dirk? Like, Dirk Strider?”

“The very one.”

“He’s my best friend’s bro, are you two friends or something?”

“Yeah, he’s my, uh, well he’s my best mate and he also happens to be vice president of the movie club, so you’ll be seeing a lot of him. He’d be over here now, but he’s the president of the robotics club too, so he had to be over there.”

Jake gestures across the room to a thin, blond-haired kid wearing pointy sunglasses and a black wifebeater with a bright orange hat displayed prominently on its front.

“Y’know, despite hanging out at the Strider’s pretty much every week since I was seven; I haven’t really seen much of him before. I don’t think we’ve ever had an actual conversation. He’s like a ninja or something, always out of sight.”

“Well, don’t tell him I said this or anything, since he’ll never admit to it, but I think he’s just shy. ‘Aloof,’ as he likes to put it. But that’s neither here nor there. You’re here to join a rip-roaring club, are you not? Just sign here and keep Wednesday after school open. Thursday and Friday lunch, too. That’s when our meetings are. Room 216, Ms. Leijon’s history room.”

You make note of the meeting time, thank Jake, and head off to find Jade, who’d wandered away some time ago. You can’t help but smile to yourself. With the way things are going, high school is looking pretty sweet. You wonder if it can get any better.

---

“You’re doing this whole high school thing all wrong, Egbert. Everyone knows it’s supposed to be the bane of your existence, but you’re prancing around like there’s chicks giving out free blowjobs around every corner.”

“Bluh, Dave! Gross! I am not. I’m just making the best of it, that’s all. You could learn a thing or two from me, instead of just moping around all day.”

After school you had met up with Dave and, since his summer vacation had taken him half the country away for the past two months, you both decided that you should hang out in person. As a result, you now found yourself sitting atop Dave’s bed back at his apartment, while he sat across the room from you on the swivel chair at his computer desk.

“How many times do I have to tell you Egbert, it’s not moping, it’s called being aloof.”

“Jake said that just means you’re shy.”

“Oh fuck, not you too. Please, for once can I have a conversation that isn’t dominated by that name?”

“What do you mean? Jake mentioned being friends with Dirk, does he mention him to you often?”

“Look, let’s just say that if I had a nickel for every time the name ‘Jake English’ came out of my bro’s mouth, I sure as hell wouldn’t be living in this shitty apartment anymore. And he doesn’t even talk to me that much. I don’t even think he realizes he does it anymore. It’s kind of sad.”

“Wow, They must be really good friends.”

“Yes, they are certainly good pals, that is exactly what I’m implying.”

“Anyway, did you know that Dirk’s vice-president of the movie club? I see so little of him that I didn’t really know he was into that sort of thing.”

“He’s not. He’s just in it for you-know-who. He’ll probably try and deny it and make you watch some obscure anime flick or Muppets Take Manhattan or some shit like that if you bring it up, though.”

“Muppets Take Manhattan? Seriously?”

“It depends on how horny he is.”

“Ugh, I do not want to think about that.” You mime gagging. “At least he takes an interest in his friend’s interests, unlike a certain other Strider I know.”

“Yeah, well when was the last time you had a rap battle with me? Huh? Never, that’s when.”

“Actually, back in sixth grade you finally convinced me to rap with you. You then quickly swore that if I ever tried to rap again you would stab me in my sleep with one of your shitty swords.”

“And I then proceeded to remove the memory from my brain with a coat hanger and thus the event never happened.”

You laugh. “Alright, alright. You win this round, Strider. So. How are your classes treating you?”

“Meh, they’re classes. It’s not like I’m going to do much more than chill in the back and ignore them anyway. Why, you in some kind of magical doofus class where they talk about shitty nineties movies all day?”

“Man, I wish. I’ve got bio this term though, that’s looking pretty sweet. I’m thinking of going into biology when I get out of school, it’s always interested me. Oh! And get this. Remember that loud kid from our math class?”

“Your homo-crush?”

“No! Well, yes. But no! Not like that! You have the right guy, but I definitely don’t-“

“Cool your tits Egbert, you don’t have to get so worked up just thinking about him.”

“Shut it. Anyway, like I was saying before you started insinuating things, he’s my lab partner in bio. He actually seems pretty cool. Not like ‘Patented Strider Cool’ cool, but still, a decent kind of guy. Well, I think so anyway. Except I’m pretty sure he spent most of class trying not to look at me. But when we did talk he seemed nice enough. Minus the swearing.”

“Whenever he turns around you should draw dicks on his notes. That’ll teach him to ignore you.”

“I don’t think he needs any more people being jerks to him, Dave. He seems like he doesn’t have a lot of friends in the first place.”

“So you’re gonna be all ‘John Egbert, friendship superhero to the rescue’ and save him from being a lonely asshole or something?”

“Jeez, I just think that maybe he might appreciate having a friend or two, that’s all. And you’re supposed to make new friends in a new school, right? So, what’s wrong with that?”

“You’re sure you don’t have a big old man-crush on this guy?”

“Just drop it already, would you?”

“Fine, fine, just don’t forget to invite me to the wedding.”

Your name is john Egbert and you wish that your best bro would learn to shut up sometimes.