My third fic was pale Johnkat written for affectionatetea, and she posted it after getting it and drew a really cute picture to accompany it! I'm reposting now just to have one that links back to my blog for future reference.
A year had passed since John Egbert and his friends had won Sburb, the game that destroyed his planet and killed his father and his friends. Since the game had ended, John wasn’t the same. He was angrier, more cynical. His optimism had failed him, so he turned his back on it. Eventually, he had moved on from the deaths, but he never forgot.
It seemed there was no one who he could talk to, no one who felt the same way he did, no one who had lost so much. Rose had lost her mother, and Dave had lost his brother, yet neither of them reacted in the same way John had to the loss of his father. Rose and Dave hadn’t been close to their guardians, at least not in the way that John had been close to his father. On top of that, they didn’t have a replica of their guardian living and breathing. If Jane had been able to protect her father, why hadn’t John been able to? He was haunted by the loss. He was haunted by his failure.
To think it had all started on his birthday. He was so young when it began. In the game, he had fallen in love, he had fought, he had died. What did he have to show for it? Rose was with Kanaya, and Dave and Jade had gotten together after Dave and Terezi broke up. The two people John had loved the most, Rose and Vriska, were unreachable. Rose in love with Kanaya, Vriska dead. Another person he hadn’t been able to protect.
John was lying on his couch in the same house he had grown up in. It was still here in this new world, even though almost all other parts of the old earth were destroyed. Sometimes John expected to see his father appear around a corner, if only to give some good fatherly advice or tell a ridiculous joke, his eyes crinkling knowingly, a pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth.
After several minutes, John realized that staring at the ceiling and ignoring the exasperated telephone calls from his friends wasn’t going to do him any good. Only one other person took the game as hard as John did, and that person was Karkat Vantas. There was only one place John could go.
A knock on Karkat’s door signaled that something was wrong. At first, Karkat did his best to ignore it, hoping whoever it was would simply get the hint and go away. Whoever was outside though, they were persistent. Karkat sighed, getting up from his chair to open the door. Grumbling as he turned the knob, he said, “Didn’t I tell all of you fuckheads that I needed to be alone today? I mean, you know I’m here for you, but holy shit can’t I have some peace on one fucking day of the year?” The door fully opened, he looked up, only to see John, wearing an oversized sweatshirt with messy hair and bags under his eyes.
“You look like shit, John,” Karkat said, unable to hide his surprise. They hadn’t talked in a few weeks. Both had become more solitary after the game ended.
John nodded and mumbled a sarcastic thank you before he asked, “Can I come in?”
Karkat turned back to look at his house, a mess with empty food containers left on the table and crumpled blankets strewn on the floor and furniture. He hesitated before answering John, “Sure, maybe you can come in for a few minutes.”
John came into the house and immediately went to Karkat’s refrigerator, grabbing a soda and cracking it open before going to plop down on the couch.
“Oh just make yourself at home, please, Mr. No Fucking Manners.”
Grunting, John didn’t answer.
“You know, John, we haven’t talked in weeks,” Karkat said, shutting the door and walking over to the couch. “And you know, I get it, you became kind of reclusive after the game. But why did you show up here today?”
“I don’t know,” John answered, not meeting Karkat’s gaze. “There’s no one I can really talk to, and today… I thought that out of everyone, you were the most likely to understand.”
Relaxing his posture, the tense emotions rippling out of him, Karkat walked over to John and squished into the couch next to him.
Glancing sideways at Karkat, and shifting a tad to the left to give him, John continued, “You know what it’s like to lose people. You know what’s it’s like to bl—” The rest of the sentence caught in John’s throat, but he didn’t need to finish it for Karkat to know what he was talking about. Both of them knew what it was like to blame yourself for the deaths of others. It was the burden of leadership. You swear to protect your friends, and your family, but you can never save them all. You always let someone down, always lose someone. They both understood that pain, lived with it day to day, buried it deep inside their chests and never talked about it.
“None of it was your fault,” Karkat murmured, soft and quiet. “The game was fucked up, and you… both us, we made some bad decisions, but in the end, all the shitty twists and the unbeatable foes, that wasn’t us. That wasn’t our fault.”
“I miss them so much,” said John, his voice shaking. His heartache was plain in his voice, a shallow pang that echoed in his words. There was a hole in his chest that seemed to be growing constantly, ripping through his body and throbbing with its own beat. He couldn’t stand it. The emptiness was eating him alive. Against his will, his eyes became glassy, and a lone tear dripped down his face.
Wordlessly, Karkat leaned on John’s shoulder, his black hair brushing John’s chin. John rested his head on top of Karkat’s as a few more tears slid down his face. “I hate that after all this time, all I can do is be sad about it,” John confessed. “I used to be so angry, but now I just sit on my ass and cry.”
John was a hero. Karkat knew that. There was no denying it. He fought so hard, and he believed in everyone. “I used to despise how fucking the-solar-body-will-rise-another-day optimistic you were. It drove me right out of my fucking skull.” Karkat paused, briefly wondering whether he should continue, but then sighed and went on. “Deep down, maybe you still are that stupid kid. The kid who believes he’s safe even as the shit has been rocketed into the fan and he’s nose-diving off a mountain, who waits for some hero in a shining metal suit to catch him. This time, you’re falling and there’s no multicolored sheet to break your fall like you’re some kind of clown in a circus. This time you’re going to have to make it on your own.”
Seemingly ignoring what Karkat said, John noticed a glittery bottle on the floor. He arched down to pick it up, squinting at the label through his thick glasses. “Oh my god Karkat, is this nail polish?”
Whipping it out of John’s hand and cocooning it in his palm, Karkat became defensive. “Kanaya gave it to me. It’s not a big deal. I’m trying to give you some real fucking advice here.”
It was then that John saw the chipped red remnants of gloss on Karkat’s yellow-ish fingernails. He yanked Karkat’s hands closer, inspecting them closely. “This is the same color as the stuff in the bottle. Jesus Christ, Karkat, you wear this stuff? Oh my god, what a fucking dork.”
“I wasn’t going to let a precious gift from a friend gather dust and rot in this tomb of a hive. Goddamn of course I used it. Besides, it’s not really your fucking business what I do, John Egbert. You drop out of nowhere at my house like I’m in some kind of situational comedy, ignore my advice, and— also it’s pretty and relaxing to put on, all right? You can stop looking at me with those goddamn googly eyes. I’m not some kind of hoofbeast pailing in an exhibit at a containment and observation facility.”
Eyeing John warily, Karkat said yes.
“We could paint our nails and watch movies or something, you know, whatever you like to do when you’re hear by yourself,” John suggested. The tears were gone from his eyes, and a slight smile twinkled in the corner of his mouth. Karkat dimmed the lights in the room and started playing How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Gently, he ran the small nail brush over John’s nails as if they were a canvas. John’s eyes remained fixed on the television screen except for the occasional moments when he would admire Karkat’s handiwork or catch Karkat’s gaze and smile, laughing about some joke or exchanging a knowing look about how good-looking Matthew McConaughey is. All the while, his hands were clasped within Karkat’s, delicate and soft. After John’s nails dried, Karkat and John curled together almost instinctively. John pulled a fluffy blanket over top of them, pressing the heat of their bodies down and warming both of them. Then they watched Failure to Launch and Moonstruck. Karkat saw John’s eyes fog up when Nicolas Cage appeared on the screen the first time, and he knew that John must have been thinking of Vriska.
When the credits were rolling on Moonstruck, Cher and Nic happily together at last, Karkat was nearly falling asleep on John’s shoulder. As his eyes were drooping, John tentatively squeezed his hand. “You’re right,” he said. “I can’t deal with my life by myself. It’s shitty, and it’s too much for me to handle. But I know that I have you to fall back on, and goddamn it, I don’t care that you’re an overly emotional troll with an overbite and possible anger issues, you make me feel safe. You remind me of my dad.”
“Shhhh,” Karkat whispered, patting John on his other shoulder. “I guess you’re not such a fucking nooksucker all the time, John. You’re kind of growing on me in your own douchey, awful way.”
“Thanks for being there for me.”
Here, gathered together under a blanket, cuddled beside and wrapped up in each other, what they felt was beyond love. It was a bond, a connection in suffering. They knew just what to do for each other, and they needed similar things. Although they were so different, they were also so alike, and they understood each other in a way that no one else their friends could. John would never fully grasp Karkat’s alien idea of moiraillegiance, yet Karkat could feel it, that need to be with John, to be a part of him and to protect him. As they both drifted off to sleep, John turning to lie horizontally on the couch and Karkat shifting to lie next to him, Karkat wrapped one of his arms around John. “You’ve got to stop blaming yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to wipe every single memory of them out of your thinkpan. You’re never going to forget. But you can move on. Remember the good moments.”
“Thank you, Karkat,” John softly answered. “Thank you for giving me so many good moments.”
They fell asleep, fingers with nails painted red entwined together. Both breathed gently, chests rising and falling in tune with each other’s. Dark shadows from sleepless nights still played under both of their sets of eyes, bleak smudges serving as badges of guilt, yet they had smiles on their faces. They dreamed of being able to move on and forge a new happy world, and they dreamed of doing it together.
