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“So, Egbert,” you begin, facing your flatmate from your position on couch. “Someone makes the mistake of forgetting to tell you the punch is spiked, and over the course of one night you manage to stir up enough shit to earn yourself social repercussions for a good few years. You proud?”
John giggles a little dizzily, says something incomprehensible about his prankster’s gambit, and sways on his feet. You worry for a second you’ll have to dart over and save him from cracking his skull open, but miraculously he manages to regain his balance all by himself. He throws you a little half-shrug, and just resumes talking where he left off.
“But yeah… other than that — the, uh, gambit, I mean — you make a pretty good case against letting me, ummm, drink,” he informs you, before having another giggling fit for seemingly no reason at all.
You raise your eyebrows high, though the rest of your face remains carefully neutral. It’s one of those useful, hard-to-decipher expressions for stoic guys who are just too cool to emote properly. But John has apparently become too enthralled by the kitchen sink to notice and, accordingly, does not seem to give a fuck. Eventually, you decide that leaving him unsupervised in his current state is a disaster waiting to happen, and try beckoning him over to the couch you’re on, throwing in a bit of verbal coaxing to sweeten the deal.
“Alright, Egbert. Get your ass over here, pronto, or you’re gonna trip over nothing and eat shit all over my beautiful hardwood floor,” you drone.
The floor is not, in fact, hardwood, and it’s technically both of yours, but he laughs again and nods, so you guess that was convincing enough.
“M’kay, cool guy, whuddever you say,” he mumbles, plodding over to the couch before suddenly and bonelessly throwing his full weight down on the cushion next to you, jolting you in the process. You curse, and it definitely does not come out as a squeak.
“Jesus man, are you a sack of bricks? Could you sit down like a person next time?”
“Mmmmmh, nah…” comes the response a few beats late, and now that he’s slumped back, his voice is thick with drowsiness. He’s shut his eyes, and you’re about to chide him for trying to pass out on the couch when — on some inexplicable Egbertian whim — he decides to scoot right up next to you, totally invading the sanctity of the holy land known as Your Side Of The Couch, and then — just to rub salt in the wound — he leans on you, head of messy black hair falling right onto your chest.
You stiffen immediately and freeze for a good five minutes, but he doesn’t seem to notice. In fact, the little fucker busies himself by nuzzling even closer.
When your brain finally decides to work again, the first thing you do is clear your throat and grit out:
“Egbert. What.”
Your voice is flat, a single deadpan note, its only discernible quality a hint of strain. If John were more lucid, you know he’d probably trip over himself, getting all guilty and apologetic the way he tends to when he does something that puts you in Cool Kid mode, as he’s dubbed it. You wish he wouldn’t beat himself up so much — more often than not, it’s you and your shitty fucking upbringing’s fault, not his. But either way, that John seems to be in another castle, because this asshole just cuddles up to you even more.
“You’re waaaarmmm,” he mumbles, right into your stomach, and it’s objectively a dumb, childish action, but you shudder when you feel those ticklish little vibrations from his voice flicker across your skin. You knit your eyebrows together and grimace.
Okay, Strider, deep breath. Stop being a pussy and actually fucking think for a second.
Taking stock of the situation, you’re sure you could peel John’s uncoordinated ragdoll-body off of you with relatively little hassle. That’s what people do when they’re uncomfortable with this kind of thing, right? And you are definitely uncomfortable. The way each of your muscles is wound like a spring is proof enough.
Yet, that answer sits heavy and wrong in your stomach. So you dig a little more. You don’t feel… necessarily unhappy, you guess. And as you stay put, you’re beginning to feel the tension in your joints slowly, slowly melt away. The instant, animalistic instinct of “oh-god-let-go-of-me” ingrained in you by countless strifes is dulling to an ache as your body gets the memo that John isn’t fighting you. He’s sort of just lying there. Not to mention, he’s too wasted to do much of anything in the way of kicking your ass. And, double not to mention, he is John fucking Egbert and would probably rather swallow a chainsaw than hurt his friends. You blink dumbly as these thoughts settle into your mind.
It still feels wrong. Letting your guard down feels wrong. You can hear a part of your brain — the part that’s scared all the time, hurt all the time, the part that will never really stop believing what Bro taught you — screaming at you, telling you how dangerous this is, how this is a mistake and in the future you’ll need to react fast and you’ll have forgotten how and someone will get hurt because of you and-
You force yourself to envision a particularly funny stock photo to stop that spiral in its tracks. You’ve been trying to spiral less, these days. Then, you just sit down with that scared little part of you, reaching out your metaphorical hand for it to sniff like a scruffy old rescue dog. It takes a while. But with some effort, the terror wanes. I’m not there anymore. I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe. You have to repeat it more times than you’d like to admit.
Finally dragging yourself back into your body, you belatedly realize that: oh, fuck, John is practically curled up on your lap now like a fucking kitten, and he’s just gently smiling and softly breathing and he might have fallen asleep on you and it’s so fucking cute you might die. You might actually die. They’ll write it on your tombstone — Dave Strider, cause of death: stupid, wasted, cuddly dorks.
You belatedly realize that, as childish as it feels, John was right. This is warm, now that you’re not flipping the fuck out. He’s warm, and it’s nice, and the fact that your loopy bestfriendleader saw your dumb ass as a good napping spot is giving you way more butterflies than the situation really warrants.
He trusts you. And, fuck, you trust him. You don’t know when, but somewhere along the line your jaw unclenched, your shoulders loosened, your heart stopped racing.
You know what?
You’re Dave Strider, and you aren’t 13 anymore.
You don’t have to be scared to survive.
So today, you’re deciding that cuddling with your best bro is pretty much the best.
-
(You wrap your arms around him. When sleep whisks you away, you dream of love, for the first time.)