we're catching bullets with our teeth;

[wingborne]

Tuesdays, soaked in caramel, belonged to the boy in blue.

(They used to belong to clattered yellow dishes and scattered sugar, brewed beans and lazy curls of steam, but one Tuesday, Dave Strider stays an extra shift. There’s a moment—where the tinkle of the entrance bell scrapes inside his mind, and he grits his teeth against another red-faced customer, but something inside him drops when a boy in blue stands silhouetted in the doorway and it all goes downhill from there.)



It is a truth universally acknowledged to a small coffee cafe that Dave Strider only worked afternoon shifts. His second job, at a club slick with oil puddles and jungle juice, needed him at nights. Like Excalibur in the stone, the clipboard of haphazard schedules attached to the back of a peeling green door only moved for earthquakes and kings.

So Rose Lalonde arches her eyebrow when he asks to switch shifts for Tuesday nights.

“If you need the hours, then Thursdays would work better for me.”

“I can only do Tuesdays.”

“Really?” She smiles tartly, classic yellow pencil pressed against her lips, and he clamps down his jaw before his secret leaks out. Her violet eyes drill into his brain, but another customer spills his drink down the polite marble table and Rose steps away with a look, which speaks about insistent whispers over boiling coffee. He’d tell Lalonde about his dreams of promiscuous puppets, plush rumps shining in the air, phallic noses wobbling in front of his eyes, but the boy in blue was his secret.



The first night, he breathes through his nose as he takes the boy’s order.

His heart rams hard in his chest, strangling him kindly, as he watches the boy gnaw on his lower lip over the crumpled plastic menu. Behind his shades, he can watch every movement without shame, follow the lines of the thick wrists to tapered slender fingers, the sleep-disheveled dark hair, the way the boy’s lip is ragged and sweltered in red from years of buckteeth chewing, and he stuffs his hands into the pocket of his apron to stop trembling.

“I don’t really know what’s good,” the boy says, running his finger down the list.

“Nothing’s really good,” he mumbles without thinking, because he’s an idiot who wants desperately to say anything to the boy sitting on those cherry red seats. The boy blinks with his long dark lashes, and Dave tries to recover with his nails digging crests into his palm, tries to summon up a dry laugh or an explanation, but then the boy breaks out into a million dollar smile with his shining teeth.

“Wow, you make this store sound super attractive,” he says, laughing, “But I guess I will have a cappuccino. That’s the cool thing to drink, right?”

“Yeah.” He swallows dryly with relief. “Sure.”

He rocks back on his heels as he takes away the menu, mentally pirouetting off the theoretical handle for such a dumbshit answer. He sees the boy already pulling out a book. Their eyes meet, for a moment. (Though when Dave Strider runs through this scene for the tenth time through his mind, lying safely at his apartment with his face buried in a pillow, he thinks it isn’t possible, nobody could see through his shades, but he thinks, somehow, the boy in blue could see right through him.)

But the boy only grins at him, like seeing Dave was the best thing in the world, and he turns back to his thick book.

Dave ends up accidentally making him a mocha frappe instead, but the boy doesn’t notice, sitting quietly in the corner booth. The sound of percolating coffee hums from the marble counter, and Dave sits behind the register with his legs drawn up like a child. The streetlights quietly enflame like stars as the night wanders on, reflecting light from the boy’s hair.

Dave plays a game. He stares down at the register for several loud heart beats, before he darts his eyes, like small fish in a pond, towards the boy in blue, drinking up the sight thirstily before he punishes himself by staring back down at the counter.

The boy eventually peers up with blurry eyes, like a rabbit catching onto a smell, when he’s finished with his drink. A visceral stab of disappointment rams through Dave’s ribs as he delivers the bill and watches the boy obediently pay. He tries desperately of a smooth way to ask him to stay, but the blood rushes to his ears, and he sloppily begins collecting the bright yellow plastic mug, his own stoic expression disappointed with him on the sunshine surface.

“It was nice,” the boy says, “I’ll come again.”

Just like that, all the lights in the shop twinkled brighter. After the boy leaves, Dave clamps on his thick cushioned headphones as he mops up the café, and whistles quietly within the yellow walls.



The next Tuesday morning, he wipes clean all the glitter from last night’s club and runs his fingers through his hair, preening in front of a cracked mirror. He tries on three outfits before settling on a faded shirt screaming semi-casual and tight jeans screaming douchebag, and he slumps around the coffee shop nervously. He mutters to himself by the coffee machine, and gives half-hearted shrugs to his co-workers dressed in green aprons, which apparently stirs fluttery eyes and heart-felt smiles towards him.

“Careful, Strider,” Rose says, “People might actually consider you somewhat cool if you keep this up.”

They called him the coolkid behind his back. Rose Lalonde, the girl with the violet eyes, smirks when she hears it, because her hands have touched his face and brushed along his sharp jaw without cutting her fingers. But she leaves with the rest of them when her shift ends, leaving him alone to a nearly-empty café with the heavy scent of beans.

Like clockwork, business tampers off to pathetic drivels and the boy arrives in the doorway, hesitating briefly at the threshold. Dave pretends not to notice, head low as he brushes away imaginary crumbs. He sneaks glances at the boy, who wears a different blue today, slightly too dark for his frame. But he was unmistakable, with half-gnawed lips and bright shining eyes.

“Ready to order?” Dave finally asks, turning around with heart hammering thick against his ears.

“Yeah, thanks. Can I have a cappuccino and a sandwich?”

“Sure,” he says, making a note for another mocha frappe, “What kind of sandwich?”

“Oh.” The boy’s lashes flutter, and he turns his baby blue eyes towards him. “A triangular one?”

He can’t help it. A short laugh shoots out of his mouth, but he bites down on his tongue, raw and hard. He expects the boy to stir with anger, but the boy only gazes up at him with a wrinkled nose of quiet amusement, like he didn’t understand the joke, but he was happy to see someone laugh.

“I meant what you wanted in the sandwich,” he mumbles, hoarse and drawn.

“Oh. Just whatever you think is best?” The boy grins at him with all his teeth flashing, and passes back the menu. There’s a moment where his fingers touch, without lingering, brushing against Dave’s open palm, and the warmth still pulsates beneath his skin when he shuffles behind the counter.

Surrounded by white bread and crisp lettuce, tomatoes spilling merrily off the sides, he teaches himself how to breathe again. He hears, behind him, the soft flipping of pages of the familiar book, and he smells the warmth of coffee surrounding him like a soft coat. He silently thanks the deities when he wipes down the counters, water chilling his bitten-down nails. (He wonders if his shirt is too pretentious, if his jeans too slim—but it’s too late to change and he feels self-conscious in his skin.)

The deities favorably grant him unspoken wishes, because the boy pays by credit card at the end of his meal.

“Thanks for the coffee, Dave,” the boy says, standing up and adjusting the heavy straps of his backpack. A beat of confusion, and another beat, before Dave belatedly remembers the name tag hanging obnoxiously from the front of his green apron.

“You’re welcome…” Dave pauses, head bent over to the scrawled out signature. His slightly sarcastic tone dribbles off, but he barely has time to resent himself for his smart mouth before a strong hand, slightly calloused, brushes against his.

“John,” the boy in blue says, and his fingers are elegantly long as he curls them up beneath his palm. The side of his hand touches Dave’s pale hand as he raps a knuckle on each letter of the signature.

“J-o-h-n E-g-b-e-r-t. John Egbert,” he explains.

“You’re welcome, Egbert,” Dave says, and the boy breaks out into a grin. He slips out the café quietly, a soft jingling of bells singing his absence, but Dave’s heart beats too fast and his blood flushes hot against his face, and he’s grateful nobody is there to see him.

(And he strokes his thumb awkwardly against the signature on the flimsy receipt before adamantly shoving it away, proving an empty point to a silent shop.)



Rose suspiciously takes too long in re-discovering her purse at the end of her Tuesday shift.

“You were correct, Strider,” she says, playful, “Perhaps I am, indeed, as flighty as you purpose. Where could I have possibly left my purse?”

“Lalonde—”

“Truly, we are in dire straits. This is the winter of my discontent.”

“Lalonde, shut the hell up, Jesus Christ, you’re splooging more than a gushing wiener in a soaking wet bun, just dripping that shit off your meaty ends, it’s fourth of July and you’re the sour hot dog, it’s you.”

“Tossing me an easy cigar,” she says, elbows askew dangerously close to the row of chipper-colored coffee mugs, bright and plastic. The girl with violet eyes was lovely and beautiful, a skinny frame built with fine muscle, who always had a gentle quip in the oversized purple purse of hers. If it was anyone else, he might have firmly turned away, but Rose Lalonde was the girl with violet eyes and nobody turned her away.

He jerks abruptly when the boy enters, and he can hear Rose’s slight hitch in her voice, the moment of realization. Even in the reflection of the glass coffee pot, filled halfway with a dark mix, he can see the blotchy red spread on his face, his heart rising unsteadily. He busies his hands over clearing the granules of sugar, finely dusting his fingerprints, and Rose gently bumps her shoulder against his bony one.

“I think I’ve found my purse,” she says, and he hears her briskly stepping away to hang her apron upon the sacrifice of green.

“Hold up,” he mumbles, and usually nobody can hear him by the coffee machine. But Rose turns on her black heels and watches him pensively, hands drowning in her violet scarf.

“Talk to him, Strider,” she says, and she walks away with her scarf in a flurry. He waits on another customer before he arrives at John’s table (because it’s John’s, now; it may have been a stone finely chiseled or a designer’s hard work, but when John sits at the table with his ankles crossed and his elbows leaning forward, it belongs to John.)

“Sup,” he mutters, pencil ready over his small notepad.

“Hi, Dave,” John says, and his book is already spread open. “I will have the same thing, thanks!”

“Sure.” He hesitates, and scribbles down the order with his scratching pencil, because he doesn’t want to leave. But he has nothing else to say, so he swallows his desert throat and turns back to his castle built from thick foam and mint tea.

“Oh, wait, maybe I should get some ice cream, too,” John says, teeth at work again on his defenseless lips. “It’s like a celebration, right?”

“Your birthday or something?” Dave turns back to him, hands resting in his pocket, and ignoring the entering customer with the rattling jingle of the bells.

“Nah, nuttin’ like that. I just hit… Shoot, you’ll think it’s totally stupid.” John fiddles with his phone, fingers dancing over the sides. “Don’t laugh!”

“Can’t make that promise.”

“Jeez Louise, you are a pain in the butt. Okay, I got almost a million hits on my video site and it’s so awesome. It is so, so awesome.” John rocks back and forth, briefly showing him the familiar logo on the screen. Dave bends his head to take a look, memorizing the screen name into his heart with a noncommittal sound of amusement.

“Looks pretty nerdy,” he says, muscles wired to fire off half-scuffled apologies for his words. But John laughs with his elbows leaning onto his table and his book decorated with tiny scraps of notes, and he tells Dave to get outta town and Dave gets out of the way and his hands are cold from scooping out the melting ice cream, sticking to the metal of the scooper, but John laughs again and it’s a ridiculously attractive sound and Dave sits behind the counter and watches him from behind his shades.



Dave Strider is a lost man.

The night draws late as he climbs the steps to his broken apartment, where crows perch on his window and stare inside with their dark, curious eyes. He throws his keys across his bare desk, and collapses onto his bed with headphones still clamped tightly around his ears. In a few hours, he will need to strip off the tight shirt and jeans and glitter and smell of drink, and do his make-up as a member of society.

A smart man would sleep. But he is a lost man.

He draws open his laptop on his bed, held up by cement blocks and plush rumps (presents from his brother that he stuffs under the bed, enough to make a slight bulge on the left side of the mattress), finding ghostyTrickster in a few sweeps. A few videos pop up, and he clicks one at random because it’s late and he’s tired, and his shift starts in a few hours, even though the morning sun creeps up through the window.

The video buffers, and suddenly there’s John, and Dave’s breath catches in his throat, because he soaks in the movie posters of Nick Cage’s face and John beams up at him, through a webcam miles away, with a comfortable long shirt with sleeves brushing over his fingers as he talks.

“Okay, so this is going to be my movie review about Face/Off, which is like the best movie ever. Oh, shit, I wasn’t supposed to say that so early… Well, you have to watch more to find out why it’s the best!” John leans forward on his elbows, and Dave scrambles to pause the video. His fingers scrape against his laptop and he throws himself off the bed, digging through his shitty crap to find his good headphones, because his face is flushed and there’s no way he won’t be listening to John Egbert’s nerdy-ass rendition of Face/Off with high quality audio orgasms.

He plugs it in, and lying against the hard concrete block and between his towers of video games and CDs, underneath the fluttering pictures of himself, he presses play again. John’s voice is low and pitches abruptly, but all his words dance on his face and his fingers. He watches the video two more times, breath hitching in his throat, because he’s losing control of something hard and tight and cold inside him, and the boy in blue laughs on his screen and he ends his videos with good night and you better have a nice day and he sounds like he cares.

He drags himself to work on a half hour of sleep, caught on the bus when he’s trapped between a lady with an oversized fur coat and a man with a yipping dog. Rose studies him, but says nothing, when he falls asleep in the broom closet with his forehead against the wall.

In fragmented half-portions, like falling crumbs of lemon cake, he dreams about John sitting in front of the camera and wishing him a good-night.



Sometimes, instead of writing down the orders of chocolate scones hold the sugar blueberry muffins hold the taste, Dave scribbles down what he knows about John Egbert.

Loves shitty movies. College student. Major in biology. Obsessed with Nick Cage. Pet salamander named Casey. Dork. Nerd. Loser. Buck teeth. Kissable lips.

He crosses out the last item furiously, enough to break the tip of his pencil, and he crumples the paper into the trashcan.



Dave Strider works afternoons and Tuesday nights. Every Tuesday afternoon, he wipes down the plastic yellow cookie jars and finds deep-seated insecurities between the chocolate chip crumbs. Rose deconstructs his existence and he calls her a dick, and his heart flutters when he hears the bell gently ring, sees John peer inside the store.

They settle into a comfortable bickering, where Dave sometimes sits down on the opposite seat if the dishes gleam brightly and the counters sparkle from damp water. At first, he perches on the edge. But John pulls him down, down, down, and he sits awkwardly with his long legs poking out from beneath the table, and John’s hard knees brushes his own, but he doesn’t complain. They sit, surrounded by streetlamps and spilled sugar and a dust of pepper scattering across the table, and Dave twists the towel between his hands until they leave raw tracks on his palms.

“I put up another video last night,” John says, munching on his sandwich with tangy mustard on the side of his lip (because John Egbert doesn’t eat baked goods, no cakes or muffins or cupcakes, and he’s allergic to peanut butter, and Dave chants this to himself every time he cuts another sandwich).

“Yeah?”

“It’s a short film sort of thing. You should watch it,” John says, and Dave moves his shoulders imperceptibly.

“Maybe.” He’s already watched it, until the background of John’s room faded into a kaleidoscope of colors on the back of his eyelids.

“You have to watch it. It has a lot of action and stuff, so you’ll like it,” John says firmly, and his hand brushes against Dave’s arm, and Dave curls his fingers underneath the table.

“Sure. That’s all I want from my shitty TV screen, a bunch of explosions start to finish.”

“Not like that! It has—characters, and stuff.”

“Goddamn, Egbert, if I have to see Nick Cage’s shitty face plastered like a wet dog on my screen one more time—”

“He’s sweet! He’s so, so sweet.”

“Must be hard to keep your briefs nice and tidy every time you cream over him.” And his heart skips a beat, and he bites down the urge to keep going down the creaming metaphor, which would have ended up rambling about little kids in playgrounds when the real important message, the real one, was John Egbert and Nick Cage sitting in a tree, and his hands are raw and red against the towel, his bony knuckles playing across it.

He doesn’t know how he feels about John Egbert, who scrunches up his nose and laughs at all his jokes. But John Egbert is a man born to live in a suburban house, white picket fence three dogs one goldfish two point five kids and a wife who loves him, and Dave doesn’t know what he’s doing in a small café tucked away on a broken cobbled street, he just likes to watch John’s sun-kissed hands rub against the rim of the coffee mug, and he wants to know if John Egbert kisses boys or girls.

“Gross, Dave.” John wrinkles his nose (and Dave’s heart quickens a beat) to straighten his glasses on his face, and he sips his coffee.

“Would you do him?” Dave tries to keep his voice down low, but his fingers drum against his sharp knee, and he can’t stop, “If Nick Cage was standing in front of you, all chastity rings off, it’s prom night, time to start baby making, he bought you a corsage and kissed you all nice in front of your house—”

“Dave!” John’s face ripens nicely, and Dave memorizes the way he blushes with a dry mouth (it starts from the tips of John’s ears and spreads to his cheeks, and his fingers fly up nervously, and to all the deities up there, Dave Strider is a lost man).

“He’s wearing his nicest panties for you, Egbert,” he rambles, fingers flying over his knees, “Hello Kitty. Do or don’t time. Her cold little eyes are staring right up at you, right above his bulge—”

“I don’t think about Nick Cage in that way!” John says, rubbing his face. “Jeez.”

“What about Matt McCornahey.”

“Matt McConaughey!” John pulls down the hem of his sweatshirt and bites down hard on his lip, and rolls his eyes behind his glasses.

“He’s slipping off his strapless white dress—”

“Okay, God! Maybe! I don’t know, jeez.” John exhales sharply. “I don’t—sleep around like that, okay? If I knew—the person, first, then—God, Dave. Jeez.”

Something warm settles in Dave’s stomach and he hides his mouth with his fingers, skimming against his lips, and he shrugs noncommittally and turns away, watching John turn colors in the reflection of their quiet window, next to the heavyset penguin salt and pepper shakers.

“Sure,” he says, barely above a whisper, and John abruptly changes the topic to Rose with a voice hitched too fast and tight, eyes darting from salt to pepper, asking a little too insistently about the girl with the violet eyes, but Dave will let him. He’ll play along the game, tell him Rose is an old friend, watch John’s shoulders relax and watch his chest descend into slighter rises and falls, as adrenaline ebbs away. Because John Egbert might do Nick Cage in Hello Kitty underwear, and that means John Egbert might do him in whatever the hell he was wearing, and Dave Strider breathes a little bit looser and better.

(And that night, he doesn’t think about kissing John Egbert on his raw and broken lips, doesn’t think about brushing his fingers over his hot skin, doesn’t—)



He tears off the orders from his notepad, because the couple from table five has ordered: two mayonnaise sandwiches, one small decaf, one lemonade, one slight wheeze when he laughs, three bad imitations of action heroes, five nerdy lovefests about Nick Cage and his maverick hair, two times he blinks at Dave’s jokes and then wheezes with laughter and he touches Dave’s wrist and says Dave and Dave tears off the sheets and shoves them deep underneath the coffee grinds and pretends they don’t exist.



The low bass of the club still rattles his teeth when he climbs into bed, jeans off and socks on, to slide the laptop onto his bed and curl around it, like a cat. He balances his lukewarm beer haphazardly.

It’s a five minute movie, badly made; shoddily shot, with a tripod, and in an apartment with heavy shadows and a punching bag for a couch, but John dresses up in a suit and Dave’s fingers itch to reach across the screen to fix his bow tie, to smooth down his shirt, but he nurses his drinks, warm down the throat, and watches.

As he predicts, it’s a terrible movie. The camera has lighting in a chokehold, and the writing sounds lifted from a blockbuster film without the blockbuster. John plays most of the roles, threatening, kidnapping, then saving a ragged bunny from the arms of his sofa. But there are saving graces, like John’s ridiculous smile as he rolls around his ugly gray carpet with his bunny and—there’s piano music placed over the background, sometimes too soft to hear over the bad dialogue, but he can still feel it through the pads of his fingers. The music, soft and wispy, soothes his mind, and he watches as the credits roll.

music by
john egbert
directed by
john egbert
lead role
john egbert
stand-ins
nick cage's bunny

(He laughs into his cup so hard it spills over his shirt, but then he catches his breath because he feels—fear, for one moment, that he might actually—

No, he can’t say it.)



Dave Strider, notorious coolkid of the café west, could make a ferocious café au lait, liquer coffee, and pumpkin spice latte.

He could also accidentally spill them all down John’s shirt (and it wasn’t his fault, John had bit down on his lip and winced when he drew blood and he was thinking about—his lips, and how chewed up they were, and his hip slips and for the first time working at the café, he breaks the cups on the ground because something is unwinding within him faster than he can see.)

“Hopy shit—” John winces as the coffee spreads over his thin T-shirt, staining from his collar to his stomach.

“Fuck,” and Dave clatters down his tray to grab fistful of thin napkins, pressing them to soak against the stains. He’s thankful the drinks had been cool, but the chilliness of John’s skin to his touch feels uncomfortable.

“It’s okay, I just…” John checks his watch, and grimaces with his entire body. “Shit, I have class in like an hour and it’s really far from here so I don’t have time to go home and change and shit.”

John’s eyes already flicker back to his books, and he’s more concerned with mopping up the splatters on his book than the coffee running down his chest. Dave recognizes, too late, his hand has stayed too long on John’s bony sternum, and he reaches down to collect the colorful shards in his apron with shaking hands. Guilt stains his mouth brown and black, because he’s never made this mistake before. He’s mixed up pepper and salt, and forgets orders faster than he remembers them, but he’s never cared.

Now John peels away at his shirt, and Dave somehow can’t pick up the shard of bright blue between his twitching fingers.

“Where’s your class?” he asks, keeping his head beneath the table.

“Um, up north?”

“I live—close to there.” He hovers above another shard, inches away from dried up gum stuck hard to the bottom of the table, disgusting but safe away from John’s prying eyes. “I can lend you something to wear.”

“Wow, really? That would be super great, thanks!”

“Yeah. Whatever.” He pitches a breath. “Sorry.”

“It’s easier to call you a dick if you don’t feel bad.” John peers down below the table, and Dave busies himself with collecting the rest of the fragments of his pulsating heart from the deep puddle of coffee, but he nearly slices his finger open when John’s hand brushes through his hair. John ruffles it, like a friendly pat, but his fingers weave over the strands and Dave chokes back a sound.

“Shit, no. It was your own fault,” he shoots off, and he makes a garbled metaphor about microwaving popcorn in a pot like the olden days. He scampers back to the back of the counter to deposit the glass into the trash, face red behind the shades. The little shop, folded neatly away on the small street, bears the half-swaying CLOSED sign before Dave can catch his breath to think about what he’s done. In the small employee bathroom, he presses his palms hard against the white porcelain sink and rakes his hair with his hands.

When he exits the store, John is standing beneath a streetlamp with his head tilted up. Dave waves at him to come down the street (but he wants to watch him forever, because the light glows like a cheesy halo from an afterschool special, but it spreads over John’s face warmly and standing underneath the light on the dark street, he looks like—but Dave chokes his own thoughts.)

“Your class is fucking far,” he mumbles into his thick scarf.

“Did you say something?”

“Your class.” He pulls down the woolen abomination, set to choke him. “It’s far.”

“Oh!” John’s face turns particularly red, and he rubs his bare hands together uneasily. “Yeah. I guess. Um, hey, I’ve never been to your place before!”

“I don’t give out my address to everyone I spill coffee on.” But he’s self-conscious, aware too much of the thickness of his coat surrounding his arms, the way his fingers are numb against his small key, the shoddiness of his apartment with the broken swing in the front and the spongy trail of half-grown flowers in front. Even as he nods to the drug dealer sitting on the steps, his apologies run inside his head like a ticking tape. He finally swings his door open on the second try, hitting the switch to flood his apartment with shallow light.

“Oh, wow, it’s super nice.” John steps into the room with half-shuffles, reverential of the shitty apartment with leaky plumbing. Dave hesitates, surveying the room to find the niceness in the peeling walls, the rumpled bed on cement blocks, the simplistic table and chair devoted to the sound system of his room. A few pictures of himself, like Christmas lights, hang around the room, and he suddenly wishes they weren’t there.

“Pick something,” Dave mumbles, throwing open his closet door. He kicked most of his dirty laundry under his bed in a bout of self-hatred house cleaning the day before, but there’s a small nest lying beside his speakers. As John picks out the hanging clothes, Dave scrambles to shove the rest underneath the bed. A puppet with a particularly plush rump flies out, and he barely has time to chuck it out the window before John turns around again.

“Hey, you have a shirt from this club! D’you know it’s super hard to get into here?”

“I work there.”

“You work there? Oh, fuck, really? I thought you just worked at that café place—”

“Double timing the work front, can’t feed the kids without dishing out.” He scans the room nervously for phallic noses, but the coast seems clear. For now.

“That’s actually kinda cool.”

“What,” Dave says, laughter in his mouth as he finally follows the thin spiral of conversation, “You don’t think I’m c…” He’s not cool. He’s definitely not cool, because he’s turned around from his smuppet search to see John Egbert shedding his shirt and for a moment, he catches sight of defined back muscles flexing underneath the dingy lights (and he thinks, tonight, he will lie on his bed and bask in the glow of those excruciating few seconds with his hands gripped tight) and John pulls on the shirt and Dave looks away.

“You’re kinda cool.” John holds out his arms, and something smashes against Dave’s stomach because his shirt is slightly too long, the ends barely dangling over John’s fingers, and Dave sits down.

“Thanks for that. The Egbertian signature of cool really matters.” He swallows, and swallows again. “Fuck, you look like a dork.”

“I’m gonna borrow this, too, okay?” John doesn’t even wait for the answer before he’s pulling a sweatshirt over his head, and Dave closes his eyes behind his sunglasses with ankle hooked over his knee because he doesn’t want the memory to ever fade away.

“If you wanted,” he tells his ceiling, with the bulbous water stains splashed across the surface, “you could come to the club.”

“Really? That would be pretty cool.” John sits down next to him, hems of his sleeve brushing over the bed, and a bit of his collar showing, a magic act of disappearing and reappearing skin.

“It’s not that great.”

“That’s because you work there. Hey,” John says, mind jumping tracks, “Did you ever watch my video?”

“Yeah, sure, get home from work at six in the morning, Mr. Sunshine raising up in the right hand corner in all those shitty Crayola drawings, and my first priority is watching you talk about shitty movies.”

“Okay, shut up, because I have a little bit of time before class, so I am going to make you watch it, because it’s hells of cool.”

He’s glad he watched the video before John came, because he can barely breathe when John pressed along his side, warm and moving, light reflecting ambiguously off his glasses. John says the lines in sync with the screen, and he pauses the video several times for his crappy idea of behind-the-scene footage, pointing out his salamander in the background, remarking on spilling Chinese food down his faded tweed sofa, and Dave uncurls his taut fist to try and casually spread wide near John’s hip, and his heart whirls around wildly because the song cannot stop.



John is his friend.

Dave has friends. He has friends who admire him in the café, and friends in the club who kiss him with their slack lips. He’s kissed friends, woven his fingers into their hair, slammed hard against a brick alley wall with only his two dollar sneaker prints holding him up against the rough back, dated friends, treated them like lovers, an entire spectrum of friendship from start to finish, a shitty rainbow filled with lies.

He doesn’t have friends who actually laugh at his jokes, or spend Saturday afternoons over at his apartment with their legs tangled together underneath the sheets because they’re playing video games and a friend doesn’t shove him on the hip to win the race and doesn’t read their books on his floor with their shirt edged up to show a line of thin boxer and skin and doesn’t bring him twenty pictures of their pet salamander in the same position and doesn’t lean so close as they eat dinner together so their fingers almost touch and the not-quite kills him more than the quite.



But John is only his friend.



Tuesday afternoon comes, and Dave only had one name behind his lips. As the trio of girls reel on their wish list of sandwiches, Dave scribbles down that John Egbert is a nerd, dork, fucking nerd, dorkiest dork, loser, too excited about shittiest things, touchy-feely, nerd, nerd, and he shoves the leaflet into his pocket because something floods his mouth every time he writes nerd and it tastes like bittersweet want.

A Pavlovian eagerness trains him to crane his head upward as the bell rings that night, but he almost burns his fingers on the coffee. John is holding open the glass door, book bag close to his hip, as a girl steps into the café. The girl with the dark hair. She laughs, a beautiful laugh, and he shows her to the seat and he pretends to hold out the thick rubbery red chair and she laughs and pushes him on the shoulder with wide palms and he sits first and she murmurs something into his ear and they laugh together.

Dave feigns busyness, unreflective of the actual state of the well-minced cheese, to tease away this problem mathematically. He calculates the length of time the girl touches John on the hand, the angle of John’s eyes softly coveting her face, the rate of their quick and muted talk fly over the table, and he remembers he was never good at math.

When the cutting board has borne most of his weight, he wipes his hands on his loose apron and takes out his notepad. He ignores the heavy shadow on his heart, an ugly sensation chilling his blood like crackling ice.

“Hi!” John pipes up, like an idiot, but he too eagerly appears to look between Dave and the girl, as if trying to gauge their reactions. Dave keeps his stoic face, but the girl breaks into a wide smile and tilts her head.

“John has told me a lot about you,” she says, and they exchange a secret glance. Dave feels the light wood of the pencil crack quietly under his weight, but he scrawls nothing down on the blank sheet of paper.

“Cool,” he says. “What will you have?”

They order, and Dave slams their food together with haste. The girl orders a sweet slice of chocolate cake, and the frosting smears over his fingers when he fumbles to cut out a right amount. His movements jerk, and he miscounts the money from the register twice before he finally finishes. John is staying longer than usual, talking with the girl in low whispers. He leans in close, and they hold hands underneath the table, a bridge formed with slender fingers and the breaking of hearts.

Dave sits, jaw gripped tight and hands clenched on his broom, when the girl steps out of the bathroom. He starts unexpectedly. She grows more beautiful the more he sees her, with dark hair and bright eyes, and a cashmere sweater and quick fingers, and he pushes away a deep chokehold in his throat as he glances up at her with a cursory nod.

But to his surprise, she doesn’t pass him on the way back to her seat, but leans against the peeling wall with her hands smoothing out the plaits of her skirt. She smiles, a little hesitantly, and pushes back a clump of dark hair to behind her ear, despite the lingering tendrils curling around her thick eyelashes.

“John tells me that you’re really nice to him.” Her smile quickens, a little self-consciously. “Sorry, I keep saying that. I’m a little overprotective of him because we grew up together, and he used to get picked on a little bit. He never seemed to mind, but I minded!”

“Yeah.” He’s aware of his lackluster response, too obvious of his jealousy, but he doesn’t dare say more. He can feel her curious eyes on him, but he bites down on his tongue and flicks his fingers over the broom handle.

“Do you like him?”

The question stabs him in the gut, twisting into the soft fold of his stomach, and he can only shrug his shoulders because he doesn’t want to answer this to the girl with the dark hair, the girl John might love, the girl who they might spend their final days together with their wrinkled hands and liver spots clutching close as they watch sunsets on broken porches and he feels sick, because he’s disgusted by his own jealousy and disgusted by his own inaction.

“He’s a friendly guy,” he finally says, unhappy with himself over the guttural responses.

“I think he’s way too trusting.”

“That’s why he has you, right? Bodyguard over his shoulder, ready to give the two-four to anybody who spits on his shined shoes?”

“That’s right.” She smiles a little gentler. “I see why John says they call you the coolkid.”

He snorts before he can remember to stop, but she only laughs with delight. They talk a little bit more in the tiny hallway, surrounded by piled up chairs and fraying paintings of acrylic fruit. She asks about his music and he learns she’s excitable and happy, interested in astronomy, and talks about John with a softness in her tone. He doesn’t dislike her; he never disliked her in the first place, but he feels like a part of himself has been hollowed out onto the ground, scooped neatly away in the middle of his breastbone, and he tries not to show his feelings from the flutter of his eyes.

She eventually goes to sit down with John, and Dave abandons his broom-sweeping activities to keep an eye on them again. He watches her discover she forgot her purse in the bathroom, and watches her leave, watches John shift eagerly around in his seat, watches John finally approach him at the counter.

“What did you think?”

“About what?”

“Did you like her? I think she likes you.” John peers into the corridor, trying to make out her shadows from the scuffling sounds around the bathroom.

“Yeah. She’s cool.”

“Okay. Yeah.” John grins, and rubs his dry hands together. “That’s good.”

Dave could almost grab the moment. He can see the hot tendrils fade away, and it would be easy, to sit back and let the coffee burn the palette of his tongue, to run back to his apartment and lick his wounds and try to convince himself that John was a mistake in the first place, they were just friends, and they were better off—but he is only Dave Strider and he mumbles something nice into the shiny raw of jars filled with cookies.

“I’m sorry, I really have to catch band practice now,” the girl with the dark hair says anxiously, suddenly flying from the doorway. Her purse swings to her thigh, and she clutches a piece of paper in her hand. Her eyes dart to Dave for a second, and he suddenly feels like she wants to talk to him privately, but the clock ticks and chimes throughout the room, breaking apart the soft song filtered badly through the loudspeakers, and she is running out the door with John hastily in tow.

The way she nervously bites her lip, though, tells him that he hasn’t heard the last from her. But he curls his fists in his empty pockets, and breathes happier because a small inch of hope lingers in his chest.



It’s not a date.

It’s not a date, he tells himself, as he watches John button up his vest in front of the cracked mirror of his apartment. John only wants to visit the shitty club because he thinks it’s remotely cool, when in reality, people spewed chunks in the back alleyway and soggy peanuts sat in concave glass on the table.

But his heart picks up as John allows him to dress him up, to touch his hair, to push him into the bathroom and reluctantly cover his scent with a dash of cologne, because John looks nice and he’s eager and waiting to go to a club and when Dave stands up to adjust the bottom of his vest, his fingers brush against John’s hips and their hands almost touch.

(John fills the spaces in Dave’s life, like a series of badly-timed photographs—a snapshot of John making strange faces into candid cameras and Dave wants to litter his apartment with pictures of John.)

“I’ve never been here before,” John says nervously as they approach the long line. The neon green and pink flashing lights how John rocking back and forth, glancing at the people within the velvet rope with almost guilt.

“No shit, Watson. Hey.” He directs the last part at the bouncer at the door, who barely glances at their ID cards to let them in. Dave is—selfish, because he could have used the employee side door, even though it’s not his shift. But he wants John to see the sights like a newcomer, and somewhere inside him, he’s bustling with pride to make such a savvy entrance. It’s a savvy entrance, because John sticks close to him, eyes wide open at the shitty club like it was the best goddamn thing since vanilla ice cream.

The club, as always, carries smog of ambivalent smoke, smell of alcohol and fruity perfume, dark except where lit with glowing pink lights. The party already picks up, people jostling their elbows against each other in tight sequin dresses, but Dave pulls on John’s wrist to sit at a reserved table.

He’s aware of the eyes on him, he could almost smirk behind his hands at them. He knows why they’re looking, and he knows the entire club must be dying to know how to score such a handsome young man like John. Because John doesn’t clean up nicely—John is always nice, and he looks fly as hell with his vest and subdued shirt. He’s relieved, though, to secret John away at the plush purple chairs, and John doesn’t seem unaware of the eyes, either. The excited look on his face has faded to a worried one, and he teases his teeth along his bottom lip as he anxiously avoids the glances from the club, like he doesn’t know he’s the star of the show.

“It’s nice,” John says, voice barely heard of the beat of the music. Dave winces, briefly, as the song skips a beat.

“Yeah. Sorry for the crappy music,” he says, pressing himself closer to John so his voice could carry over the resonation of his bones. “It’s my night off, so—”

“It’s not bad,” John yells, “but I kinda wanted to see you DJ, too, because that might have been cool or something?”

Dave glances at the booth, and back to John, who anxiously seems to hide himself into the folds of the couch. But he already knows the answer—if John had asked him to jump up and run laps around the club, he’d already be tightening up his sneakers. He makes a vague motion that he would return soon, and tips someone to bring John something to drink. On his way up the booth, he already grabs something off the counter, sloshing warm and dizzying to his head.

“Hey,” he says, rapping on the turntable, “My turn.”

He rolls up his sleeves, and hesitates, for a brief second, between the hot sweat on his brow and the heaviness of his arms, because he needs to see John looking at him. The keening need surprises him, and when he finally makes eye contact, he can’t help but smirk. He barely gives half his energy anymore to the soggy dancefloor, but tonight, he can feel the beat already surging through his head, shaking his bones, amplified by his jaw and mouth, and he shreds it.

He shreds the music between his fingers and pulls them back together again, and the music grows louder in his ears until he can only hear the rhythm over his heartbeat. He can feel the blue eyes staring at him and he performs, because he’s not just a servant to a domesticated café, he wants to show him, he can be this, too—he wants to look good because he wants John to stare at him, and he hits every beat, falls into step with the songs, lets the hum waft in the air before finding the right pulse on the wrist and smashing into the bloodstream again, a warp of body and music and mind, skimming his fingers across cold and hot metal, feeling the sweat drip off his chin, an orchestra awaiting his every movement, the perfect tapping the perfect time, and when he finishes, he looks up eagerly.

John is watching.

He must be drunk, on those few sips alone, because John stares up at him across the crowded room with eyes so blue, they hurt, and he thinks he can hear John’s heartbeat in his own, thinks he knows what John is thinking—

Faintly, he can hear someone talking to him with amazement in their voice, but he grabs his jacket and pushes back into the crowd, because he doesn’t care. He’s breathless by the time he’s arrived back at the table, where John sips at his drink through a fun bendy straw, and John looks up at him and grins, and mouths something about being good, and Dave collapses into the seat and he’s happy.

Dave grows a little more confident with every drink, and he leans forward, and soon he’s touching John on the hand, which curls underneath his grasp. In the darkness, he can believe they’re holding hands, and he presses close to him until he can hear every soft laugh and every slight wheeze, and maybe if he sometimes strokes his thumb across John’s hand when he moves, he can blame it on sitting in a better skeletal position, but John never asks.

John’s rambles grow more disjointed, more difficult to hear in the throb of the bad music, but Dave clutches to every word. Sometimes John rests his forehead on Dave’s shoulder and sometimes Dave runs his hand down John’s lower back, and the conversation never breaks between the fragments of music mingled with microcellular biology. When John finally begins getting shifty, Dave pulls him up to leave and calls him a lightweight, a loser, a nerd, and he laughs breathily.

Even as they break into the colder air of the outside city, where cars hum by on their rattling wheels, Dave holds John’s hand tightly. He pretends not to notice, pretends he thinks John is too smashed to walk upright, but John falls in step with him and talks about the club with rave reviews, five stars on all the websites, and so Dave tells him to only find websites with hundred stars available and John laughs and tells him it doesn’t make sense and Dave tells him that John is sweating more than a Sea World sponge just gushing out their sexual fluids and John talks about the sexuality of sponges.

And they hold hands.

“I think they knew, though,” John says, and he bites his lip.

“Knew what?”

“I didn’t really—fit in.” John pulls a little at his shirt.

“No sweat,” Dave says, a little drifty from the drink, “They wanted you, more than the virgin wants to buy that last sweet cherry flavored condom for his blushing date out in the car and he’s all out of fives—”

“Dave!”

“Yeah,” Dave laughs, but then he stops outside a convenience store because John’s hair is plastered against his forehead and his clothes are disheveled, and he’s gnawing away at his lip like it’s the most delicious meatstick in the world, until it was broken up and torn away and Dave has an idea.

He motions John to wait outside as he disappears into the store, where the cashier raises his eyes warily and the stacks of cheap magazines tower over him in their slick covers, and he can’t even count the change when he buys it. When he exits the cool air conditioned store, John is still standing underneath a streetlight, skin flushed golden from sweat and artificial bad lighting. The rest of the parking lot lingers in darkness, but he’s lit up more than a Christmas tree and Dave forgets what to say.

“What’d you get?”

“For your mouth,” he mumbles, recovering barely, “Sick and tired of seeing you gnaw on that like a drool-infested bunny. Come on.” He rips open the plastic to the Hello Kitty cherry flavored lip balm, and he uncaps it for John.

But John doesn’t reach out and take it, but stares at him, breath drunk and small wisps of cold air loosening from his lips. There’s something different in the way he looks, the way he looked at Dave when he watched him in the booth, and his lips are broken and red and Dave feels something unspoken in the air, but the words elude his grasp.

He doesn’t know what takes over him, but he presses his hand deep to John’s shoulder and raises the uncapped lip balm and John opens his lips, slightly, and Dave gently presses it on his lips. His hands move steadily, but his heart jumps into his throat until he can only hear his blood pulsating in his ears, and John stares at him. John stares at him, his blue eyes boring through the thick shield of the shades, and Dave rolls the balm over the wrecked lips, the thickness of old scars, the softness of new skin underneath the fragments of old, knuckles brushing against John’s chin.

When he’s finished, he drops the balm into his pocket, but he still holds John by the shoulder. He doesn’t move and John doesn’t move, staring at him with his slightly wide lips, now covered in obnoxious glitter and barely covering up the flushed lips and he moves, like the ticking hand of a clock, and he kisses him.

John tastes like cherry, and something deeper.

Time spirals away from him, and he doesn’t want to stop. He wants to kiss him forever, under the dim light, to feel John reverentially brush his fingers along his wrists with worship, wants to taste him in his tongue and his mouth, and he thinks—

(But he can’t think.)

When he finally stops his chaste kiss, he lets his fingers linger on John’s jaw. John opens his eyes with a soft flutter, and looks at him, really looks at him, and it all comes crashing down outside a convenience store in a dim parking lot and Dave feels like he got hit by a truck in the middle of the highway because John has blue eyes and Dave steps back with his fingers jammed into his pockets because he forgot, he forgot John is dating the girl with the dark hair, and he runs his hands through his hot glitter hair and tries to breathe again, even when the weight rests heavily over his chest.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, “A little drunk.”

“Dave?” John’s voice sounds small, and the tendrils of whispered air hangs around them before disappearing into the open sky.

“Let’s get your nerdy ass home,” he tells the sidewalk, “before it gets too late.”

John’s breath hitches, and falls into a silence. Dave sweats underneath his thin jacket, hands trembling in his pocket, and waits for John to say something, anything, but he doesn’t, and neither of them moves, and Dave wants to leave. He’s thankful for the darkness to cover the shameful blush of his face, the way his shades cover his eyes, because his life is crumbling around him, the carefully tended Tuesdays torn apart with shears, and he’s falling apart quicker than he can pick himself back up, because he kissed John and John was his friend and he almost groans deep in his throat. A dark feeling grips coldly along the bottom of his stomach, but he forces himself to move down the street, and John follows with heavy footsteps.

They arrive at John’s apartment, and John doesn’t turn around when he enters the door. He doesn’t invite Dave up—Dave doesn’t ask—and Dave is left trembling in the corridor of an apartment not his own, and he wishes he had the courage to look, if only briefly, at John’s face, to try and captchalogue the expressions, to beg for forgiveness, to pretend he kissed him because he was drunk and smashed and gone, and not because somewhere, inside him, he likes—

(But he can’t say it.

When he goes to sleep that night, he dreams about the moment he looks up across the dance floor and he sees John’s eyes holding a message for him, but this time, he can’t decode it, and when he wakes up, the secret meaning has already fluttered away.)



John is not there on the next Tuesday.



John does not post up any videos, and John does not come around the café anymore. On his breaks, Dave finds a mysterious stranger has left him chocolate chip scones wrapped up neatly in lavender ribbons, a sympathetic chocolatey reminder of his fate. He eats them, anyway, sitting in the back of the store; because he can’t bear to change his schedule on the faint hope of John’s whims may carry him back to the café.

The guilty weight of shame clutches onto his limbs, and he sits in his bedroom with his songs played up loud to drown out his thoughts. He regrets—he wishes to take the day back, that had been going so well, to take back that kiss. The absence of John fills the space within his bones, the stark reminder of the missing wheeze, the sudden jab in the gut when he sees movie posters plastered on the slick walls of the club. He misses the boy in blue, and he lies down on his bed without moving for hours, without sleeping, without waking.

Dave is stuck in time, to the moment he made his worst mistake, and he misses the dweeb with the buckteeth, the loser with the ripped lips, the nerd who loved too much and too hard, and he wants the laughter in his life again. He has friends, but he only had one John, and he pulls the blankets over his head and promises himself, tomorrow, something will change.

And for a week, nothing changes.



“Someone left a letter for you,” Rose says at the counter. “Read it.”

“A love letter? You really have it bad for me, don’t you?” He snags a cookie before settling down on the short stool, ripping open the white envelope. His voice rumbles hoarsely from last night’s exchange with warm drinks, but Rose only smirks with half her mouth as she blows a kiss towards him.

hi dave!

He nearly drops the letter. The paper slides out of his hand, but he frantically pins it against his arm and the cabinet. Rose spills her tea at the sound, but he’s frantically devouring the letter again with knuckles pale against the counter.

god, it must be weird to hear from me again. i know we left off on a really weird foot, but i didn't want to leave it like that! um, i guess i should start at the beginning or something? i've been acting kinda like a jerk. i dunno. i think i've been getting the really wrong message from you and i didn't want you to hate me for that because even if you don't like me the same way, you're my friend! you're my really good friend, dave.

but i thought you wanted something different. that was probably just me, being kinda hopeful. i only really came into the cafe to ask for directions to my class but you were there so i just wanted to talk to you because you looked really friendly, and so i stayed and then it turns out that you only worked tuesday nights or something? i dunno, but i just liked seeing you, so even though my class was super far away, i thought it'd be ok if we just hung out together. and i think i really really got the wrong message because i thought... i dunno.

i was just hopeful. because you said rose was just your friend and i was like score! it wasn't really that much of a score in the long run, though...

this is really awkward, but i guess jade told you that people sometimes thought i was a loser or stuff back in school. but i thought it was different with you! because you always said it like you really understood. jade says i have a really bad sense of trust, like i'm some sorta gullible stooge, but she is really wrong. she wanted to meet you, though, and i wanted her to meet you anyway, because she's like a sister to me. or she technically is my half sister? it's really complicated and i am running out of room on this paper so maybe, if you forgive me and crap, i will explain it with better diagrams.

she said she thought you were a good person but she also found this paper where you wrote stuff about me like nerd and i was like it's ok because we're friends! but she also said that you didn't seem that interested in me. jade seems to know everything, but i think she sometimes doesn't know some stuff, too. so i said it was ok because i know you're cool, dude, but i know you're sometimes not that cool and i thought you didn't think you were too cool for me. except at the club, everybody was just looking at me like whoa dog you don't belong here! and i don't think i did. i was really uncool or something? and then all that stuff happened and you said you were drunk and i dunno, i'm sorry i kissed you. you were sending out fireworks and i was getting back all the wrong messages, so i don't mean to make you uncomfortable or anything. haha, i guess you were really too cool for me after all?

anyway, i was really embarrassed about all that hootin tootin' shenanigans, so i didn't come to visit you, but i think i really want to stay friends. i get if it makes you uncomfortable to be around me, because i like you! i can keep it on the down-lo, though.

i just really wanted to say sorry.

On the bottom of the letter was the familiar scrawled out signature (for that moment in time, when John Egbert spelled out his name with his knuckles and fingers) and Dave can hardly catch his breath. He stuffs the letter into his apron and he takes off. Rose says something, but he isn’t listening, because his entire chest had been smoldering ruins of ash, collapsing on itself, a civilization lost. But something sprouted back up from the burns, a fiery bird that cawed deeply into his throat, and he’s scrambling out the door with the apron still whipping along his legs. The bell rings as he erupts out of the store, and he has a faint destination in mind, but the letter burning his pocket spurs him onward.

He passes by people on the streets, barely skipping over the cracks on the sidewalk, down the streetlights still sleeping during the bright sky, the buildings hulking over him. He passes the crows weaving their song on the ledges above, the cars rumbling hesitantly at the street signs, the turned-over newspaper bins with headlines slipping into puddles. He runs and runs and runs, and he nearly collides into the students trickling out of the door because there’s something wrong with his heart and he can hardly breathe.

There’s a second—a fragile, frigid second—where everything freezes as he stands in front of the ancient building, where he doesn’t know where to go next. His breath comes out labored, but there’s no directions, no signs, until—

“Dave?”

He turns around to see John standing on the steps of the building, his eyes wide with his messenger bag gripped tightly. Dave is suddenly aware of the people around him, staring at him, his green apron bright and his hands still half-caked in flour, but he takes the steps two at a time until he’s nearly panting in front of John.

“Is something wrong?” John asks, and he reaches out to him, holding him by the shoulders. “Dave? Are you okay?”

“I’m not that cool,” he says, a harsh whisper. But he swallows and speaks louder to John’s bright yellow obnoxious shoes, because he can’t stop now, he can’t, because the letter thrums against his skin.

“Dave, I—”

“I talk weird,” he says loudly, “and shit, you're fucking deluding yourself it working at a piss poor club is cool, it smells like a diarrhea everyday, you could make enough fertilizer to feed your weirdass big appetite for a year, I've seen people whizz on the dance floor, fuck, it's like a pool of pee in there, drown in urine, yellower than the moon, people lining up to take pictures and buy postcards and send them home to their parents because there's nothing else you can do with that fucking montrosity of pee and shit and whiz right up in there, it's just trash, that's it.”

“Dave, is this…” And John is about to say it, he can see it forming on his lips, but Dave grabs him and says it first, because the words had been burning in his throat since the first time he saw the boy in blue, because the foggy meaning suddenly clears in a burst of hot blue fire rimmed with red.

He doesn't want to say it, because it goes against everything in him, every time he sat behind the counter to watch him, every time he invited him over and pretended not to care, every time he stayed up late watching videos and acted like he didn't have time to watch, because he isn't that sort of person, he isn't, but John Egbert has blue eyes and that changes everything in him, twists him around, straightens him up, and he's almost pleading.

“I like you,” he says, and his voice almost chokes at the end. But he stares at him, trying to gauge his reaction, even when his limbs feel rubbery and loose, trembling at the hidden words dropping away from his heart.

John blinks, and then blinks again, before suddenly grinning with all his teeth and all his smiles and he leans forwards and kisses him.

(In the end, John skips class and they sit around in Dave's apartment and Dave takes pictures of John's stupid face when John begins to start retelling a soppy story, and in the end, John double dog dares him to kiss him again and so he does and it feels strange and good and Dave thinks he likes John because Tuesdays belong to the boy in blue

and the boy in love.)