As I have been writing this Davekat Teacher AU, I have been toying with some DirkJohn High School AU ideas. This particular scene has been eating away at me and I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else until I wrote it. I’ve got a full fic planned out for Dirk and John but this scene just needed to be written NOW.
..and I wanted to share. Again, this will eventually be embedded in the larger fic.
Fandom: Homestuck,
Pairing: DirkJohn
Tags: Humanstuck, High School AU, little brother Dirk, first kiss,
Dirk, Rose, and Kanaya ride with John, who looks kind of uneasy. Dirk would comment on it but Rose has been monopolizing the speaking time by updating everyone about all of the people who are going to be at this party. Kanaya is hanging on her every word and it would be cute if weren’t sad. He’s known Rose to have a crush on Kanaya for many years and Dirk knows that Kanaya is falling, but he has it on good authority that she doesn’t plan on letting anything go beyond whatever weird friendship they’ve got going on.
John pulls up to his street and curses under his breath. Cars line up the street and the driveway and he ends up having to park two blocks away from his own house.
“Is your dad really okay with this?” Dirk asks. The night air is getting colder and he can see Rose inching closer to Kanaya as they walk ahead of them.
“He doesn’t know. I mean--” John instinctively tries to put his hands through where his sweater pocket usually is. His hands awkwardly cross and fall back to his sides. “I mean, Dad knows Jane is having some friends over but he doesn’t know it’s like, a party, party. You gonna stay afterward and help me clean up?” He gives Dirk a playful bump with his shoulder.
Dirk still can’t believe that John Egbert, the pipsqueak that used to play pranks on him and Jane as children was suddenly a solid half a foot taller. Maybe a little more. It had been a while since they took the time to measure the difference.
“I’ll think about it. I had all of these plans to pie Dave in his sleep tonight--”
“Oh really?” Dirk’s chest twists with yearning at the way John’s face lights up.
Dirk huffs a quiet single chuckle, that turns into a warm cloud against the cold air. “Nah, but you’re welcome to come over and pie him. Bring your own pie though, we don’t have any at home.”
As they get closer to the house, music is booming and bright lights are flashing out through the curtain drawn windows. Rose and Kanaya look back at John and echo the anxiety that he wears on his face.
Once they make it inside, Jane immediately pulls them into the living room. There are teenagers scattered around the house but there is a core group of them sitting on the living room floor. Dirk recognizes a few from school but the one he knows is Pete. He looks up annoyed at first and when he sees John behind him he turns away.
“Let’s play spin the bottle D.Strider!” Jane pats the spot next to her. “John you sit there, Dirk here, Rose, Kanaya, over on that side please,” She directs them, and the people around the circle shift and move.
John puts up a rehearsed smile, the one he uses for student government stuff, “Why don’t we play something else? We’ve got a bunch of board games. Or a movie? I own the Nic Cage --”
“John,” Jane stares him down.
He sighs, “Y’all start without me. I’m going to change first.”
Dirk watches John walk away and frowns when Jane rolls her eyes.
“I’m going to get something to drink,” He looks back at Rose and Kanaya and they each give him a thumbs up.
Dirk bypasses the kitchen and makes his way up the stairs of the house.
“Hey, man, the second floor is off-limits,” a girl that Dirk recognizes from the choir calls up after him.
“I live here,” he responds and she scoffs.
The music is much duller upstairs and in the dark everything looks foreign, even though Dirk has spent a lot of his younger years in this house. He takes a left and walks down the hall past Jake’s old room until he gets to John’s door. It’s not closed all the way and Dirk can see the dim yellow light of a bedside lap hitting some tacky movie posters.
Dirk knocks lightly before pushing the door open.
Johns sits up on the bed and puts his glasses back on. He hasn’t changed and it doesn’t look like he was making any effort to do so.
“Hiding out at your own party?” Dirk leans against the door frame.
John motions him closer and makes space for him on the bed. Dirk follows and pretends his heart rate hasn’t picked up.
“I’m just not feeling all that up to playing spin the bottle.”
“Why? You don’t want to contract any mono by swapping spit with our classmates?” Dirk himself isn’t interested in playing any games. He would have stayed if John had, though.
“No, that’s not-- ew, gross. Just don’t want to play.”
“Is it because of all of the guys? Is that it Egbert? Afraid of losing your gay lip-ginity in a shitty game of spin the bottle?”
John’s mouth hangs open, stunned.
Dirk’s eyes go wide behind his shades. “Holy shit, is that really it? You just don’t want to risk kissing a guy?”
John furrows his brows, “No, ugh, Rose says that the concept of virginity is--”
“Spare me the lecture, Egbert. I’ve sat through that lecture like ten times. Have you ever kissed a guy?”
Dirk knows the answer to that. And he knows that asking the question, knowing how straight-laced John is, will only hurt Dirk.
John twiddles his thumbs, a light pink blush has scattered across his face. Unlike Dirk, he doesn’t have any freckles, his skin is smooth and Dirk imagines would feel really soft under his fingertips.
“No,” he whispers, “But that doesn’t matter. That’s not the point.”
“Why not?” Dirk pauses for an answer and is met with a long silence. “Wait, John, have you ever kissed a girl?”
John swallows hard and his blush spreads, “I mean, yeah. Duh--”
“That wasn’t related to you?”
John chews on his lip.
Something in Dirk’s chest starts buzzing. It’s warm and makes his insides feel itchy.
“I’m talking lips-on-lips. Some tongue action, the heat of the moment, hitting second and maybe running to third--I don’t know baseball actually, but you know what I mean.”
John squeezes his eyes shut, “Dude, no, stop. Stop, okay? Yeah! I’ve never kissed anyone, so what? And I know it doesn’t matter or mean anything but that’s literally why I don’t want my first time to be shitty or for people to know I’m shitty at it.”
The gears inside of Dirk’s mind start spinning.
“Oh, is that it? You just don’t want people to think you’re bad at make-outs?”
John groans, “I know it’s stupid. But literally everyone tells me about how my siblings exude sex, and I quote, ‘fantastic kissers’,” he throws his hands up, defeated and embarrassed.
“Heh, yeah. Dave has mentioned that before,”
John looks at Dirk, betrayed.
“Well, fuck. Then imagine following that up with, ‘John Egbert: Worst Kisser’!”
Dirk has gotten better at reeling in his impulsiveness in the last couple of months, but this impulse isn’t the same. It’s not an impulse if he’s been fantasizing about it for the better part of a year.
“Uh, hey, what are you--?”
Dirk moves his face closer to John’s and invades his usually guarded personal space.
“You’re saying it’s a matter of practice, right?” Dirk’s voice is steady and low. It hides his nerves.
John swallows again and Dirk can’t help but be drawn to the bounce of his Adam’s apple. “Yeah.”
“So it doesn’t matter if it’s your first. You just want to be good.”
“I guess you could put it that way,” John’s voice shakes a little.
Dirk licks his lips and his ego sings when John’s eyes follow the motion. “Okay, then I can help a bro out.”
John’s eyes go wide and for a moment, Dirk thinks he may have pushed too far.
“Dirk, what, no, I’m not going to put you out like that. Not for my sake,” John’s mouth is slightly parted and Dirk has moved him close enough that they can feel each other’s breath on their faces.
“Nah, bro, I don’t mind. Here, we can just--” Dirk brings up his hand and gently holds the back of John’s head and pulls him in, closing the distance between them. The nape of John’s neck is sticky with sweat but Dirk hardly notices.
Their glasses hit with a sharp clink.
John lets out a nervous laugh and begins to pull back.
Just as quickly, Dirk pushes his shades out of the way and before John is out of his reach, pulls him back in.
John doesn’t fight him. Instead, he lets Dirk guide him back to their previous position. His eyes flutter shut when he feels Dirk’s lips press against his.
It’s a gentle kiss.
Dirk, despite what Jane and her friends believe, has not kissed very many people before. He has only ever kissed Jane at a 7th-grade Halloween dance but kissing John is so much better.
He knows, that what he’s doing is wrong. For so many reasons. And that what he’s doing is royally going to fuck him and his friends up. But Dirk knows, deep down, that this will probably be the only chance he gets at having this, and he doesn’t want to spend eternity in want and wondering what it would have felt like to kiss John Egbert.
Dirk savors the firm feeling of John pressed up against him that it catches him by surprise when John presses them deeper and Dirk feels John’s wet tongue pressed at his sealed lips.
He commands his brain not to speak because if he does, whatever is about to happen is going to stop and Dirk wants this moment to never, ever, stop. He wants this moment to play out for the rest of his life or until the warm giddiness building up inside of him makes him burst into a million pieces and John is forced to recognize that he’s so good at kissing he killed a man.
“Hey Egbert, can we talk about-- Oh shit--”
John pulls back with such ferocity it gives him whiplash. His face is bright red and his glasses are crooked.
Dirk would think it’s an attractive look but he immediately feels sick. He can hear the rushing steps of who he assumes was Pete, based on his voice.
John looks mortified. All of the warm feelings that Dirk had run ice cold.
“I’ll go get him, I’ll tell him not to say anything about--”
John shakes away and reaches out for Dirk. He grabs his wrist and holds him back.
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he groans and tugs on Dirk until he sits back down on the bed.
“I literally just rejected him earlier today. I told him I wasn’t a homosexual,” John rubs his tired eyes.
Dirk blinks at him, “Oh. Oh shit. Damn.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
Dirk scratches his head, “I got into an argument with him in the boy’s bathroom at school. Like an hour ago. I told him he was shit and would always come second to me.”
John lets out a garbled cry and throws himself back on the bed. He’s too busy blubbering curses that he doesn’t see the way Dirk smiles to himself as he runs a finger softly over his lips.
