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Gamzee isn’t entirely sure what it is about John that first draws his eye. He thinks it’s the personality, but sometimes he isn’t so sure. Not on those mornings when the human’s hair is just a bit more mussed up than usual and his eyes are just a little bit bleary as he tries to blink sleep out of them and focus through the thick rims of his glasses. It just so happens that today is one of those days.
John is all but stumbling his way into the cramped food servicing room and for a brief moment the long tail of his God Tier hood coils around his legs. He nearly trips, and not for the first time Gamzee finds himself resisting the urge to reach out and steady the human.
He doesn’t though.
He is constantly reminding himself that he stands no chance at a flushed relationship with John. Humans weren’t like trolls. Apparently boys were only supposed to like girls, and girls were only supposed to like boys. And while Gamzee is all for getting his multicultural appreciation on, something in his chest aches when he thinks about the fact that John likes girls.
Sometimes Gamzee wonders if things would have been different if he’d hatched a girl. But he doesn’t entertain those thoughts for long because even if it would have been easier, he liked being a boy just fine.
So instead, every night when he is curled up in the comforting warmth of his recuperacoon and just on the edge of sleep but not quite there yet, he wishes for a miracle. And not the everyday kind like Faygo hissing when he opened the bottle or the colors from his Fetch Modus flashing and making the best patterns dance along the walls, but the once in a lifetime kind like John maybe deciding he could like a boy.
Just this once.
By the time Gamzee wakes up the next morning, the food servicing room is barren. The rest of his friends have already eaten their prime nutrition and they’re already somewhere else doing their own thing. He’s completely alone as he dumps the first box of cereal he grabs into a bowl and then proceeds to drown the crispy flakes with a not-so-carefully measured cup of Sopor.
It doesn’t look entirely appealing, but he scoops it up and eats it anyway. He’s had to get creative with how he eats his Sopor now – the other trolls are trying to get him to cut back a little. Entire pies are almost always out of the question now. His mind isn’t as hazy now that he’s cut back, but every so often there’s this annoying dull throb in the back of his head like someone’s decided to take a pair of clubs and have their way with his think pan.
Thankfully today isn’t one of those days.
Gamzee barely notices when John stumbles his way into the room, too caught up with observing the way his cereal is soaking up Sopor and turning a little bit green as he continues to eat slumped against one of the walls. What he does notice is their hands bumping together when his bowl is finally empty and he decides to go back for a second helping.
He can practically feel his cheeks burning beneath the cover of his face paint, and he pulls his hand back as quickly as he can.
“Sorry motherfucker, didn’t see you all up in going for that,” he mumbles absently, glancing away and grabbing the next box of cereal in sight.
John laughs a little and for a moment, Gamzee catches himself staring. He’s glad when the human starts talking and he finally snaps himself out of it.
“No, it’s okay dude! I didn’t know you liked frosted flakes! I kind of had you pegged as a lucky charms kind of guy.”
And when he says that his grin is so wide and genuine that Gamzee can’t help but return it. He doesn’t tell John that he’s right and that he really does love the lucky charms that the humans had alchemized. He doesn’t think the human really needs the confirmation, because now that he’s not in such a daze he’s grabbing them out of the cupboard and refilling his bowl with them instead.
He sends a silent thanks to the Mirthful Messiahs that particular morning, because with all the others off doing their own thing he has John all to himself. And even when their bowls are empty and their stomachs are full, they stay in the food servicing room just talking about nothing and everything. And neither of them can seem to wipe the silly grins off of their faces.
Gamzee doesn’t quite notice that they’ve fallen into a routine until it’s already established.
John still spends plenty of time with the rest of his friends – troll and human alike – but prime nutrition time he’s started spending with him. Sometimes he wonders if it’s more than the fact that they’re both late sleepers that causes the human to seek his company during the mid-morning hours. Most times he tries not to think about it and regards it as the miracle that it is.
He doesn’t quite notice that the human has been crossing into his personal space a bit more often than most would consider being entirely platonic. At least, not until Karkat grits it out under his breath in an angered hiss during a rant about how stupid humans and their one fucking quadrant were. And then the dust is being brushed out of his mind and he starts to think about the possibility that maybe John might like boys a little more than he thought.
This thought is especially distracting the next morning, when John has one arm slung around Gamzee’s shoulder and is pointing at pictures in the photo album spread out on the table between their empty bowls of cereal. He can hear the emotion in the human’s voice when he points to a picture of himself poised over an ivory keyed musical device – he’s pretty sure the other called it a piano.
“Hey motherfucker, I don’t mean to be interrupting or anything, but are you alright?”
The next thing Gamzee knows there are perfectly clear tears swimming in John’s eyes and he’s clinging to the front of his shirt and burying his face into it. Between the choked sobs and the gasps, he manages to make out something about missing his dad, and he remembers that for humans a dad is like a lusus. His chest tightens and his arms automatically wind around the human crying against him because he remembers all too well how much it hurt when he lost his lusus, even as distant as they were from one another.
He can’t even imagine what John is feeling. So he just holds him, tucking the human’s head beneath his chin and letting him cry until the front of his shirt is uncomfortably damp from tears. Because that’s what a motherfucking friend does.
And after John’s sobs have quieted down and his eyes are red and puffy from the crying, Gamzee just watches him pull back and mumble out an apology. He wants to tell him it’s alright, but he can still see the pain in the human’s eyes and all he wants is to make it go away.
Before he realizes what he’s doing, he leans down and kisses him.
Things are awkward for a while after that.
Gamzee feels horrible for taking advantage of John like that when he was hurting, and he can’t get the human to look him straight in the eye anymore. They aren’t talking during prime nutrition time anymore, and the loneliness is tearing him apart. Eventually he locks himself in his respite block, because the dull throb is back and the guilt is only making it worse.
No one notices when one day locked away turns into two, nor do they notice when two bleeds into three or four. And by then the throb has turned into an irritating buzz weighing down his think pan, making him irritable and cranky.
All he wants is to scream and let out the frustration that’s been building up ever since John’s stopped talking to him. Anything is better than this.
There’s a knock at the solid metal of his door, and he briefly glances towards it from his spot curled against the edge of his recuperacoon, as if somehow he could see through it to who is on the other side. His mind tells him it’s probably Karkat or Tavros – they’re the ones most likely to notice his absence and come to find him. But he really doesn’t want to see them right now. He doesn’t want to see anybody.
“Go away.”
When did his voice get so hoarse?
“Gamzee? Are you alright? I haven’t seen you in a few days and I was kind of worried…”
His breath caught somewhere in his chitinous windhole at the sound of the voice on the other side of the door. The buzzing wasn’t such a big deal as he scrambled to his feet and stumbled towards it, ignoring the fact that his face paint was probably smeared from not being properly removed or reapplied in days and his hair was probably even messier than normal. All that mattered was John was on the other side of that door and he could not get it open fast enough.
The door flew open with a swoosh as he disengaged the locking mechanism, and for a moment he just stared at John – whose hand was half-poised to knock on the door once again. He didn’t even realize he’d been holding his breath until the human’s face split into that familiar grin and suddenly it was like nothing had ever happened. Only something had and Gamzee wasn’t sure whether he wanted to bring it up.
“You still haven’t answered my question, Gamzee. Are you alright?”
This time it was his turn to offer a grin.
“Yeah, motherfucker. I’m feeling a lot better now that you’re all up and here.”
John’s cheeks turned a brilliant shade of red at that moment, and he looked off to the side with his lower lip caught between his teeth. It looked like he was struggling with something, but Gamzee couldn’t find it in him to give it too much thought. What mattered was that it looked like they were going to start talking again. And he’d missed talking to the human.
Before he had any clue what was happening, the human had turned towards him again. John’s hands wrapped around his horns and tugged his head downwards, and soft lips met his own in a shy and hesitant kiss. And just as quickly as it had started it was over, and those cheeks were just as red as ever.
“I missed you… And don’t you ever scare me like that again!”
Gamzee just grinned while John pouted up at him, and wrapped his arms around the smaller boy to pull him closer.
“You got it, John. Consider it a promise.”