Chapter Text
Late at night, thoughts were difficult to pin down.
John lay still in the moonlight beaming through the window, his eyes fluttering between sight and peaceful darkness. Every twitch of the eyelid brought pain to the tension headache gripping his temples, but if he kept his eyes shut too long, images cropped up, but if he kept them open, he would never sleep, and the long process of insomnia would repeat itself endlessly and he couldn't take it.
He let his arm fall off the edge of the bed, shoulder twisting painfully as he wriggled onto his back. A pillow whispered as it fell to the floor, kicked aside in John's distress. He briefly contemplated getting up to replace it, but he was so tired, the mere thought just caused more unrest. He wasn't using the pillows anyway. They made his headache worse.
Headache. Sleeplessness. Distress.
John closed his eyes against the moon peeking through the window, a frown biting at his chapped lips. If he thought too long about how he couldn't sleep, the reason why would inevitably pop into the forefront of his mind.
Distress. Despair. Guilt.
Two weeks ago, just before the end of the school year, John had sat on the bleachers with his three best friends and observed the school's annual Field Day. It had been fine, up until the point where Rose and Jade had left him alone with Dave.
Left him alone with Dave? That made it sound like he was some sort of predator. But who was the predator, him, or John?
John flopped onto his side, pushing his forehead against the wall next to his bed and trying to keep back the whine that was caught in his throat. He couldn't think about it. If he thought about it, then that meant admitting that something was wrong, and he couldn't stand it if it turned out the wrong thing was him.
Instead, he let his eyes flutter, trying to capture sleep, and concentrated on the way his bedsheets had managed to get tangled in his legs. He had pulled out the top sheet in his restless movements. Only one pillow remained, squashed between the headboard, his foot, and the wall. The moon was so damn bright, and he should really get up to close the blinds, but that would take more effort than his tired body had, and Dave had a really comfortable bed, he hoped he was sleeping well --
Guilt. Headache. Sleeplessness.
John bolted upright in bed, kicking off the sheets and practically jumping out, stumbling over the errant pillow in the process. He kicked it back onto the bed and set about straightening the blankets, tucking them securely under the mattress with trembling hands. Dave never made his bed, which was a useless fact that meant nothing at the moment. It meant nothing. It wasn't even something to be thinking about, because it was nothing!
John pulled back the sheets and lay back down, curling into a ball and tucking the sheets around his shoulders.
With his head at the headboard, the moon wasn't able to peer so stridently into his eyes, and John found himself drifting. His limbs relaxed. His heartbeat slowed. His thoughts became more fragments than garbled sentences. He tucked his cold hands between his knees, sighed against the pillow, and did not think about how this was the fifth night in a row that he could not sleep quite as easily as before. He could not think about the hard ball rolling in his gut, or the surge of heat that filled his groin whenever he drifted on a blonde head resting on his shoulder, a warm body against his side, a friend that he had known forever, but not quite like this. What was this? It didn't bother him, not really, but at the same time, it was awful. He was still a friend and he tried to make jokes, but then Dave would lean close to whisper in the middle of class or grab John's arm to catch his attention and everything just froze. Guilt coiled in his chest and squeezed his lungs, choking his words, because wanting to kiss a friend wasn't wrong, it wasn't, but it felt like it was.
It felt like it was.
Was it wrong?
He couldn't sleep.
It took John a minute to realize that he had been staring at his bedroom door as thoughts roiled in his mind. He unclenched his fists and brought his hands to his face, rubbing his eyes in exasperation as he rolled onto his back.
During the day, he could avoid that weird feeling, even if he had to see Dave and look vaguely at him while recognizing that the guilt had a source. It was bad enough, weeks ago, when Dave had fallen asleep on his shoulder while they waited for their friends to return, and John had wanted nothing more than to just -- he didn't know. He couldn't describe it. It was painful, in his heart and in his head, to even recognize that it had happened.
But there was no avoiding how he couldn't even touch himself anymore, because as soon as he tried, bad thoughts -- no, they weren't bad, but they felt like it, shit -- inappropriate thoughts popped into his head and they weren't inappropriate either.
What was it like? It felt wrong -- duh, dipshit -- but more than that.
Disrespectful.
John sat up in bed, crossing his legs and propping his head on his hands. From his computer desk, an alarm clocked blinked the early morning. He had been in bed for six hours and he hadn't slept at all. He couldn't see the moon anymore. His headache remained.
His computer was sleeping, at least. He stared at the dull monitor, fingers digging into his scalp. He couldn't pin anything down. His thoughts scattered, flying all over the place, but one managed to snag his attention long enough that maybe it was a good idea. Not completely dumb, at least.
John dragged himself out of bed, knocking both pillows to the floor, and shuffled over to his desk. He sat down with a small groan, tired limbs making more fuss than needed, and the computer monitor lit up as a careless elbow jogged the mouse.
Pesterchum was still up. No one was online, not even perpetually Internet-bound Strider -- uh, no, he didn't want to talk to him, anyway. At this point, John would end up saying something dumb and wrecking everything.
Wrecking what, exactly?
God, just shut up already.
John clicked on a different darkened name and typed out a message into the chat window before he could think about it too much. Nervous jitters made his fingers tremble on the keys; he smashed a few buttons before he hit Enter, and the message sent before he could correct it.
As he stared at his own words, bright blue against the blinding white of the chat window, nerves caught up with his mind and he fled the room, tip-toeing down the hall to the bathroom where he could piss and wash his hands and face and breath deep and think about nothing at all.
When he got back to his bedroom, the quiet house creaking under every step, the chat window blinked with a reply.