Chapter Text
Your name is John Egbert and you are probably gay, but you can’t afford to think about it right now.
You are a college student, and you very quickly realized that this was going to be hard for you. You weren’t really expecting it, you always had good grades in high school without having to try. Paying attention was just enough for you to get some As and that was about it. It was only after the first week of university tests, when you got your results, that you realized that this just wasn’t going to cut it. You needed to study. And hard too.
So you did. You studied night and day, through work and free-time, and it was just enough for you to get your grades out of the red. It was hard. When you started, you didn’t really get how to do it. People usually learned to study in high school, but you didn’t have to worry about it back then, so you didn’t.
Your friends helped, at least to some extent. They gave you recommendations on how to do it, what worked for them and what didn’t. You were really grateful for them, but you could also note how some of them grew more and more frustrated with you. You couldn’t study with Karkat anymore. The two of you almost had an ugly fight because you couldn’t understand the principles of genetics. After that you had moved to study alone.
It was terribly frustrating, sure, but it was fine too. Your dad didn’t raise a quitter. You wanted to study biology, so you would. Even if it made you pluck your eyebrows out of frustration. Even if it made you be fired from your job. Even if it made you miss every get together with your friends, or the coolest parties, or the most awesome happenings on campus. You wanted do study biology, didn’t you? So you would.
Even if it left you out of time to properly question your sexuality.
It wasn’t really a big deal. When you were sixteen, your soulmark appeared, written in a beautiful cursive on your wrist. Beautiful, sure, terribly embarrassing, too. Your father had asked if you wanted a party, as was the norm, or if you wished for something less grand. You chose the second option. Thank god you did.
When it appeared, you were bundled up in the sofa, Moonstruck passing in the TV. Your father had dozed off in his chair, and you looked down to see it, heart almost jumping out of your chest. You still remember the feeling of your stomach dropping when you saw what was, undoubtedly, a masculine name. You jumped to your feet, startling awake your dad, and ran up the stairs, closing your bedroom door with way more force than you meant to.
The next day – your wrist covered by the watch your father had just gifted you –, you descended the stairs in silence, and ate your breakfast without looking at him. He started talking all the same about how the soulmark didn’t have to shape your personality, about how it didn’t have to mean anything you didn’t want, about how sometimes it was about friends, and not romance. About how he would love you either way.
It was the only time you hated him. Well, this wasn’t the truth. You didn’t hate him, you hated yourself. You hated how supportive he was being, how he was able to guess in the period of only one night, how easy you were to read. You wished he had stayed quiet. It made all the more difficult to not burst into tears right there.
When you got to college, however, you started to accept the idea a little more. You left behind the nights were you would stare at it, hoping it would change. Instead, you made new friends, and got comfortable with the thought of finding your own gender attractive. You could count on your fingers the straight people you’ve met since your first day. College was the place to experiment, and you are a biology major. Experimentation it is!
You couldn’t do it, however. You didn’t have the time.
Until now at least.
You just finished your last assignment. You almost can’t believe it. You are tired as hell, having pulled an all-nighter to be able to finish it in time. Your friends are gonna meet at the local coffee shop to celebrate the end of classes and the start of summer break. You haven’t seen them in a while, and you actually kind of miss them, so this should be really fun!
The coffee shop is busy, but not as much as you’ve grew accustomed to. It’s fairly obvious that some of the students have already returned home for the break, and only the ones without plans got left behind. You don’t mind much, though. It will be cool to be able to have fun in the city, instead of going home and watch the entirety of Nic Cage’s filmography with your dad. You could watch it with all your friends now.
Jade is the one to welcome you, almost tumbling you down with her hug.
“John!”
You can’t resist the urge to smile and return the hug, squeezing her just as tight and lifting her a little. She lets out a yelp of happiness before you can put her back down.
“Oh my god, it’s been so long!” She says, bouncing up and down. “I almost can’t believe you are here!”
You smile a little guiltily at her. “Yeah, sorry. Been having a hard time with school still.”
She dismisses you with her hand, pulling yours in return. “Don’t worry about it! C’mon, everyone’s waiting you!”
She leads to where the rest of your friends are sitting. You expected Rose, maybe Karkat too, but the table is full of people you don’t recognize. Your friends welcome you and you get presented to the ones you don’t know before sliding in the booth, Jade still by your side. A plate of warm waffles is already waiting for you. Rose smiles from across the booth before being swept in conversation.
While you eat, you realize that no one is bothered by your silence. Karkat and Jade are bickering, and Rose is in deep conversation with her lady friend – which just presented herself as Kanaya –, while all the others you don’t know talk and sneak curious glances your way. You realize that you feel a little left out. You realize that you probably are, and have really no one else to blame but yourself. You realize that you missed a lot, and you realize that you’re kinda sad about it.
You are drowning in your own self-pity thoughts when a boiler-room flyer rests in the middle of the table. Rose is the one who is holding it. You look up with a frown. You can’t possibly have missed this much.
“And since when are you one for this kind of party?” the question comes from your left. Aradia, if you remember well. And you do, really. You are not the type of person to forget a name.
“Someone I know is playing. And I suppose it would be fun if we all went together before going our separate ways.”
This gets enough of your attention.
“Separate ways? What do you mean?”
“We are not staying for summer break, shithead.” Karkat is the one who answers. “We were just waiting for you to say goodbye.”
You realize that you feel a whole lot more sad now.
“What?! Why?”
Jade looks at you with her best pity look, resting her hand on your shoulder. “Sorry, John. Grandpa’s been going on and on about how he misses our time together, I didn’t have the heart not to go.”
“Yes, I have also to go back to New York. My mom has been– Well…” Rose points to the flyer. “Thus the last hurrah. I thought that maybe you would want to commemorate the fact that you are study-free, at least for the next two weeks?”
You do. But you’re also poor as hell. This type of event requires money to even enter, and your very-below-average salary from your new job is going to bills and bills alone.
Almost as if she is reading your mind, Rose raises a handful of tickets with a sly smile. “I already have the tickets. And it’s open bar, too.”
Well, you be damned.
It’s loud. It’s really really loud, and it smells of cigarette smoke and weed. You know for a fact that you are not going to have fun unless you drink, so that’s what you gonna do. Rose beats you to the punch, already holding a dry martini at the bar. She smirks at you when you order a beer.
“I think you are going to need something a little bit stronger, John.”
After you drink one beer and two shots of tequila, you realize that this is the first Friday since ever that you aren’t studying and are, instead, at a very loud party with your friends. You start to really have fun after that. You drink two more shots of tequila to celebrate.
You are dancing, and having fun, and you don’t really care about the music, but you do boo every time it stops when they change the DJs. After a while, Karkat approaches your sweaty mess of a body and whispers something in your ear. He is offering you a sip of his drink, and you couldn’t hear the name, not with this fucking loud music, but you take a big swig of it anyway. It’s sweet and very alcoholic. It annoys him to no end. He goes back in the direction of the bar, calling you names. Jade laughs with you.
You only start listening to the music you’re dancing to after a while. At some point in the last few seconds, the beat slowed down just a little, and started being blended with another one, one much better, one much more danceable to. It’s like, for these few seconds, the whole room has stopped breathing. No, it’s like time itself has stopped, waiting for the other beat to drop. And after it does, everything becomes absurdly amazing.
You never really dealt with drugs, but while you jump and dance and time itself seems to bend around you, you assume that this is what it feels like. Finally, some good music! While you move around you look up at the DJ booth and realize that they changed DJs again, without the music stopping. The man who is behind it, the man who seems to be controlling time, looks like an fucking angel.
There goes then. Your answer, that you’ve been looking for since you were a nervous teenager looking at your wrist alone in your bed. You can find men pretty. You can find man attractive. You can wish you could stick your tongue in his mouth, and push his blond hair out of his face, and lift those glasses so you could look at his eyes while you—
Jesus Christ. You shake your head and dance the tequila thoughts away. You don’t stop dancing until the end of the set, and only when you see the fallen angel stepping down and hear his beautiful fun music being replaced by something that, really, should never reach anyone’s ears, ever again, is that you look around and realize that you are completely alone. You have no idea where your friends went.
It pisses you off a little. They could have warned you, or at least touched you so that you could see them go. You decide that it’s probably the alcohol talking and go in the direction of the bar, to calm down a little and recollect your thoughts. You see, while winding through people, Jade and Karkat making out near the exit. You make a face and keep walking. Jesus, you guess you did miss a lot after all.
When you arrive at the bar, you sit and ask for water. The barman offers you a bottle with a smile and continues on to serve the next client. In the back, you see glued the same flyer Rose showed you earlier, over and over again, and discover the fallen angel’s name. Or his DJ name, at least. Turntech. You wonder if he has a Spotify account. For his music, you could actually go as far as Soundcloud, if needed. You realize that you are sobering up. And that someone’s been staring at you for the past two minutes.
You look at him. He’s hot. Pale, freckled skin; ginger hair; big arms. Really beautiful bright brown eyes. A jawline that could cut. He is not the angel, but you suppose that maybe you really like dudes with bright hair color. You want to find out.
He smirks and waves at you with his beer. You smile and reciprocate his gesture with your water. He laughs, gets up, and comes in your direction. You start talking and his voice is nice and low and husky, and you get so flustered that you actually think you might disappear. He calls you cute. He flirts with you. You flirt back. You tell him your name and he tells you his. It’s different enough that you don’t risk falling in love with this random man from this random party, you think. He keeps his wrist uncovered so you take a peek, but you can’t really make out what it says. He notices you peeking and smirks. He gets really close and whispers in you ear that he’s been staying at a nearby hotel for these past few days, and would you like to join him?
You are but a man of science. So you experiment.