Chapter Text
John had to have known that the events leading up to their current activity gave his intentions away. He had told Dave he felt tipsy, but he had only had two sips of beer when he crashed onto Dave's bed and pulled Dave on top of him. Making out with John Egbert was something Dave had wanted to do for years. He was following in his brother's foolish footsteps and had fallen hopelessly in love with a man he could never have. At twenty-five, he really should have known better. Of course, Dirk Strider was thirty-seven and didn't known better. Apparently this unfortunate tenancy ran just as steadily through Strider veins as their shared appreciation of irony.
Things had been going well with Dave's best friend/crush tonight. Dave had long ago resigned to the fact that John would never share his unironically romantic feelings even though John had often ended up cuddling with Dave in ways far more intimate than straight men were generally willing to allow. This evening, a wrestling match on Dave's mattress had turned into John laying on top of him, head buried in the crook of Dave's neck while he gently stroked Dave's arms. Having John's crotch pressed against his was a worrying position to be in, but Dave liked to think he was reasonably adept at all aspects of self-control. Still, when Dirk pounded on the door to ask them if they wanted any alcohol, Dave felt a ping of relief mixed in with his disappointment. Dirk knew John didn't drink, but recently he had been on a kick of trying to prove to his not-quite-boyfriend, Jake English, how wonderful of a family man he was. It was his latest ploy to become Jake's only significant other. Aside from sort of dating Dirk, Jake also had two or three girlfriends he drifted between. This apparently wasn't supposed to be permanent, Jake often talked about wanting to find the right person to settle down with exclusively. Dirk said Jake was just wishy-washy. Dave didn't really buy this, he thought Jake was probably just a douchey player. But Dirk was determined to convince Jake that he was the right man to be his one and only special someone.
At Dirk's question, John sat up immediately, straddling his best friend's lap, and announced that he wanted some beer. Dave was suspicious, but he couldn't say no to his favorite plucky little dork wanting to try new things. He heard Dirk's good-natured chuckle on the other end of the door before his brother told the duo to meet him and Jake down in the dining room. Dave had so far been successful in keeping his impressionable friend away from the socially awkward but oddly magnetic force that was Jake English. An interaction now seemed unavoidable.
When John and Dave made their way into the Strider dining room, Jake was hunched over the table, bottle of Jack Daniels in hand, retelling an adventure of his to Dirk as Dirk set two packs of beer bottles on the table. When Jake noticed John standing across the table from him, his expression changed from one of awkward smugness to one of awe.
“I don't believe we've met. Come closer, mate. I want to see those eyes,” Jake said. Dirk choked on the beer he was drinking. Dave wasn't surprised Jake had noticed John's eyes. Jake had a thing for blue eyes. Such a huge thing, in fact, that all his girlfriends had blue eyes. Dirk had once, in a bout of moronic insecurity, purchased blue contact lenses that Dave had 'accidentally' flushed down the toilet before Dirk could wear them.
John glanced at Dave before hesitantly making his way over to Jake. “Uh, hey. I'm John,” John told Jake as he approached. When John was in front of him, Jake placed his hands on John's arms and stared up into his eyes. “Why do you want to look at my eyes? That's kind of weird.”
“Oh, golly, I suppose it is, isn't it?” Jake replied, looking embarrassed. “I'm just a rather big fan of blue eyes, and yours are possibly the most vibrant I'm ever seen.”
John laughed. “Are you drunk already? That's such a creepy thing to say.”
“Jake doesn't need to be drunk, dude acts like a creep all the fucking time,” Dave told John, sliding him a beer. “You should probably back away from him, who knows what kind of a shit a jerk with a fake British accent will pull. That's why he tries to put on that suave foreign accent, so you'll be all 'ooh fuck me, Casanova' instead of getting the drift that he'll a trigger-happy psychopath. He sees a naïve guy like you and thinks, 'jackpot, I got this cutie so under my thumb he won't know what hit him.'” Dave tended to talk fast and attempt rapid-fire jokes when he was trying to draw John's attention back to him. He knew it was probably absurdly transparent, but he couldn't stop himself. It seemed he had a constant need to be the focal point of John's life. Once when John had been asking another friend for advice on asking out a girl, Dave had quickly cut in with a laundry list of tips. Because, despite wanting to date John himself, Dave simply could not stand not being the one John was paying attention to.
An adorable, dopey smile slipped onto John's face. “Cutie?”
Sometimes Dave let things like that slip. Fortunately he had irony to cover his ass. “Hey, it was hypothetically Jake who said it, not me,” Dave said, putting his hands up defensively. “I'm just the messenger.”
Jake chuckled. “I believe this hypothetical Jake has far more charm than I do. It's terrific to meet you, John.” Jake removed one of his hands from John's arm and held it out in offer of a handshake. As John shook it, he wiggled his other arm free so he could grab his beer off the table.
“If you want to be more charming, you might want to stop grabbing people and rambling about their vibrant eye color,” John said, voice rich with amusement. He removed his hand from Jake's and shoved it in his pocket. “Anyway, it was awesome meeting you, but I think Dave and I are going to go drink these up in his room, if that's okay.”
Dave and John hadn't talked about planning to drink in Dave's room. But that didn't mean Dave wasn't extremely okay with the idea. He should have known then what John was up to. John was easy to read if you paid even the slightest bit of attention. But sometimes John's lopsided smile and fantastic ass stole Dave's focus.
“Yeah,” Dave agreed. quickly “John and I were in the middle of something, so we should probably get back to that.”
Then Dave felt like an idiot because he and John both knew that what they had been in the middle of was just some pretty intimate cuddling. The kind of cuddling that led to sex if your best friend wasn't allegedly straight. He glanced at John in hopes that his friend had picked up that his statement was supposed to have simply been an excuse. John just beamed back.
And now, as his tongue brushed against John's while John slipped his hands under Dave's shirt's and rubbed his thighs against Dave's waist, Dave understood why he had been beaming. Because John had, in fact, been wanting to continue their activities. By introducing alcohol to the mix he had clearly been attempting to assure he had plausible undeniably later. If Dave asked him if he was into guys after all, John could now reply that he was just drunk.
Knowing that, Dave should have been trying to stop this. He was likely to get his heart broken. But how could he stop, when the man he had been in love with for years was running his hands over Dave's abs and grinding his hips against Dave? He couldn't. This might be the only chance he would ever have to be with John in this way. Whether this meant that John was in the closet or simply affection starved enough to be seeking action from his best friend, John was going to brush this off as nothing later. John wouldn't have hid an attraction to men this long only to come out with no preamble.
They made out for several hours, taking a few breaks to get water or just to cuddle. Dave was a mess of emotions the entire time, his feelings of wanting to revel in a dream come true overshadowed by the knowledge of how badly this would end. Dave wanted to ask John directly what this all meant, but he had never been good at being direct. Besides, he wasn't about to let a make-out session lead to him losing his best friend just because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. So instead of asking questions, Dave let a small smile reside on his face as he stared into John's eyes during one of their cuddle breaks.
“You having fun?” Dave asked, resisting the urge to reach out and stroke John's hair.
John giggled and put his hand on Dave's neck, running his thumb along the underside of Dave's jaw. “Yeah.”
Everything seemed so perfect, Dave knew it couldn't last. But he certainly didn't expect for things so go as badly as they did.