Work Text:
“This class is gonna kill me,” Roxy groans from beside you. You fight the urge to shoot back ‘Oh, really?’
You’ve been in the library for three hours, and Roxy is currently in the process of picking up her shit, and you do not follow her. You’ve made it halfway through your notes on your biology textbook over the last few days, and to put it bluntly, it isn’t going well. You’ve studied with the religious conviction of a Medieval monk for the whole semester, and yet the gaps in your knowledge are glaring. You spent the last few days going over the semester’s notes, but in your correct opinion, they aren’t enough.
Roxy is struggling too, but isn’t stressing as hard as you are. You can’t fathom why, but it’s her business.
“You coming?” she asks as she shoves the last of her supplies into her bag. Her quirked eyebrow speaks to just how incredulous she is, and again, you can’t fathom why. She knows you’re struggling. It’s condescending to pretend that she doesn’t.
“Nah,” you respond, glancing at the carnage on the table in front of you. There are stray papers with additional notes spread out so you can see them, and you’ve emptied your entire bag of pens and highlighters onto the table along with them. You have a system; different colors for definitions, concepts, and vocabulary, and writing it out is helping you. Generally speaking, you tend to take notes on your computer more often than on paper, but you fucking need this. You have no clue how you managed to get so behind in this class, but you barely got a 100 on the midterm, and this final test is fucking huge. You need this.
“Mm, okay,” Roxy frowns, hoisting her bag over his shoulder. “Get back home before you drop, though. It’s dinner time. You need food.”
“Don’t worry,” you promise, already focused back on your work. She’s gone soon after that.
You stay there for another hour before your phone starts almost vibrating itself off the table with the force of the number of messages you’re getting. You straighten, annoyed, and wince as your back pops in several places.
Christ. You’re so hungry. Your stomach is rumbling loudly, and kind of cramping, but mostly you’re just kind of pissed off. You only made it halfway through the next chapter with your current method since you’re trying to be thorough. Whoever this is had better have a good reason for fucking up and getting you out of the zone; now that you’re out of that zone, everything wrong with your body is surging at you with force. Everything hurts.
--ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 14:45!--
EB: diiiiiiiirk!
EB: i’m bored!
EB: hey answer me!
EB: dude. Seriously, i think i might die of boredom, it’s really bad.
EB: i know you’re busy with your studying but you can take a break and do something with me i think, and then go back to it. it will be good for you, probably!
EB: dirk.
EB: diirkkkkrkrkrkkkrkrk!!!!
EB: hey, dirk!
TT: Fuck. Be quiet.
TT: My phone buzzing is hurting my head.
EB: hehe, sorry!
TT: I can’t do something right now. Like you pointed out, I’m studying.
EB: you’ve BEEN studying!
EB: if you take a break we can go get smoothies or something!
TT: It’s freezing out.
EB: coffee! :B
EB: come on. i’m dying and you’re also probably dying and we need to go out and do something.
EB: i get it if you seriously have to keep working but still…
TT: … That sounds fine, but I have to keep working. I can’t afford to get even more behind than I am by going out and hanging out with you.
TT: Rain check, yeah?
EB: bluh.
EB: yeah, okay.
EB: i’ll talk to you later then? and we’ll plan later!
TT: Sounds good to me.
TT: Alright. Bye.
EB: bye. :B
--timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 14:53!--
You sigh to yourself, eyebrows pinched against the headache blooming in the middle of your forehead. You’ve been fighting it off with ibuprofen over the last few days, but it’s long since worn off.
You’re tempted; you’re incredibly tempted. But you just… have so much to do.
You’ve had your eye on John for months—possibly longer ever since you started talking more recently in college, but you sincerely don’t have the time to indulge the prospect of getting some, or even going on a date right now. You highly doubt that John was asking with the intentions of anything other than hanging out with someone so he’s less bored, or can procrastinate on his exams, but it’s a nice thought.
Whatever. You just have to desperately hope that you haven’t missed your chance by the time the semester is over and you’ve failed this fucking test.
You sit your phone back down, taking a second to rub at your temples. Your shades feel too heavy on the bridge of your nose, like they’re pinching you, and it’s just making the pain radiate around your whole head. Tension headache galore.
You just want to lay down, but you don’t entertain the idea for more than a half second before you dismiss it immediately. You need to get through the rest of your old notes over the semester—and also start filling in the gaps in your knowledge before next Monday. It’s Thursday, you have enough time if you buckle down.
Food though… that would be good. Maybe not something too heavy since your body likes to shut down and curse you with Sleepy when you eat, but a sandwich would be really fucking great right now, because you’re ravenous. And then you’ll start back on your studying and see how it goes.
It doesn’t go well over the next day and a half.
You make your way through all of the rest of your notes, but all that does is highlight how many absolutely vital things you’re missing from your brain, holes even more obvious than they were before now that you’re here and seeing it all together. It’s not that complicated—but remembering it all is making you feel like your brain is leaking out of your ears and nose.
You spend your Friday in the library again, reading and rereading your notes until you realize, way too fucking late, that you swapped the colors used to highlight vocabulary versus definitions halfway through by accident, and now the entire point of the highlighter is fucking null and void, and you have to set your head down on the table for a few minutes to withstand the headache pounding behind your eyes.
You stay there for a while, staring off into the distance and not paying any attention to any other people who might be there to see you. You doubt they’d care since they’re probably in similar states right now. You feel foggy; you could fall asleep right now if you let yourself.
You sit up, and take two more ibuprofen since the last two wore off a few hours ago, and keep going.
You started off at ten in the morning, and by the time seven in the evening hits, you’ve been awake for too fucking long, because you only slept for three hours last night, and you’re going to need to pull an all-nighter at this rate. You’re so fucking behind, and you should have known better than to let Dave pull you into hanging out with him last weekend, but you didn’t.
You’ve made flashcards for yourself on the shit you think will be on the test (which is basically everything) and now you’re trying to test yourself, but your fucking eyes hurt, and there’s a buzzing between your ears and at the edge of your senses. You’re useless like this unless you can get someone else to test your knowledge verbally.
Roxy—? No, she’s busy, but she might be good backup. You won’t ask Dave either. He’d try, but you two distract each other too much.
You pull out your phone in a fugue state and scroll through your contacts.
--timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 20:02! --
TT: Hey, Jade.
TT: Sorry to bug you since I’m sure you’re also in the trenches of exam season but I was wondering if you could give me a hand.
GG: hi dirk!
GG: and sure! i dont see why not :)
GG: yeah these classes are pretty hard :(( but im making progress!
TT: That’s good.
GG: what do you need help with??
TT: I’ve been studying my notes for the bio class we’re taking for the last four days, and I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels at this point and not getting anywhere. I was wondering if you could test me on some of my flashcard material.
GG: oh totally!!!
GG: yeah that class is a pretty high workload…
GG: but um i think i can make some time tomorrow if you want
GG: if it works for you
TT: That’s fine.
TT: I’ll brush up on my material and see you tomorrow then.
GG: when?
TT: What?
GG: when do you want to meet???
TT: Oh.
TT: Uh.
TT: I’m not sure, when are you available?
TT: Sorry. I’m feeling a little scattered.
GG: its okay! umm i think that maybe noon would be good tomorrow so i still have time to do my own studying for other classes
GG: but this will help me too!
TT: That sounds fine.
TT: Library?
GG: sure!
TT: Alright. I’ll see you then.
GG: bye! ill see you! :D
Good. That's good. Jade is by far the best in that class out of all your classmates as far as you know, and you know she pulls all-nighters too, so hopefully she’ll be able to help you. Regardless of how much it grates like sandpaper against your pride.
You take a deep breath, wishing you could take more pills sooner. You start packing your things up to go back to your dorm so that the lights will be less harsh, and grab a Monster on your way there. You might as well start now, and you’re one of the lucky fuckers who doesn’t have a roommate this semester, so you won’t have to worry about keeping anyone up if you keep your light on all night.
You grab some snacks, a few energy drinks, and accidentally stare at the wall of your dorm room for forty-five minutes before you manage to pull yourself out of your funk. The unplanned break sends new pangs of stress through you, but maybe you needed it. It doesn’t really help, but whatever. You can crash once exams are over.
“You’re not doing bad at all!” Jade tells you once she’s spent the last two hours drilling you on the flashcards you made. It isn’t nearly enough; there’s too much you’re missing, and Jade is too easy on you. You’re certain that she isn’t nearly as lenient on herself if she’s at the top of the class.
Or maybe you just really, really fucking suck at this. You push the thought aside before it can eat you alive.
“You just need to brush up a little on exam day, and then you should probably pass,” she tells you with a grin.
“And if I want to get an actually good grade?” you challenge, your tone more bitter than you intended.
Jade’s smile falls. “Then only a little more studying than that,” she tells you. “Seriously, I think you’re doing good! You have a good memory.”
You nod, attempting to let her words soothe you. It isn’t helping as much as you hoped it would, but you don’t think there’s anything that can be done about that. This is just how you are.
You sigh against the pain in your chest and start gathering up the cards and notes. “Thanks for this,” you tell her.
“No problem!” Jade assures, smile returning. “This class is way harder than it should be. And you’re doing good!” There’s a beat of silence while she watches you slowly gather your things, already thinking ahead for your next steps. You’re hungry again. “You look kind of tired,” she adds belatedly.
You glance up. “Kind of,” you agree. “I’ll be okay once I get this done.”
Jade nods in agreement. “I’m sure you’ll do great!”
“I’ll study for my other classes first,” you sigh, resigned. “Then come back to this later.” If you don’t fucking die first.
The knock on the door barely registers through your haze. You just need to review your cards a few more times, and then you can stop. Maybe. You think you finally, finally have most of it, but you can’t be sure. The words are confusing, and the marker you used to write on the index cards is bleeding in some places, and the pattern keeps distracting you. It feathers out through the paper, and the curves of the letters in your handwriting create odd shapes. You find yourself staring down at the words and seeing the shapes rather than the actual words more than once, and barely manage to pull yourself out of it through brute force. You feel a lot like you’re moving through thick soup. Or perhaps jello.
The knock comes again, pushing slowly through the fog around your head, and this time it’s accompanied by John’s voice.
“Hey!” he calls. His voice is loud, and grating, and piercing. “Hey, Dirk! I know you’re in there, the light is on!”
What the f… what the fuck is going on.
You stand, intent on answering the door and telling him to go away, but the room tilts. The floor sways, and bends, and you close your eyes, wobbling on your feet.
“Diiiiiiiiirk, come on! I’m bored out here. I hear you in there, let me in.”
You ride out the dizziness as best you can, shuffling forward and getting the door open to find John standing there in the hallway with his bag over his shoulder and a grin on his face. The grin quickly falls off his face so fast you think you’re having an exhaustion-induced stroke, since everything looks weird.
“Um, woah?” he says, glancing you up and down in a way that you find entirely too judgy and completely unnecessary. “Dude. Dude, you look like total crap! I thought you were studying!”
You stand there for a second, resisting the urge to sink into the floor and live there forever. “I am studying,” you reply finally, once his words have processed and no longer sound like a wall of John-tinged noise.
“You look like you’ve been fighting shadow monsters or something!” John says, starting forward to get into the room. “Seriously. You look actually awful, are you, like… Are you okay?”
“I’m great,” you say dimly. “I just need to study a lot—a lot more. I’m fine, what are you doing here?”
John looks at you like you’re being funny. Or maybe like you’re a really sad but amusing animal, something pitiful but nonetheless endearing. If you weren’t boiling alive in your own brain, you’d kick his ass.
“Uh, Jade told me to check on you because she thought you looked tired yesterday.”
That fucking bitch.
“And she was right, because you don’t just look tired, you look like maybe you died a few minutes ago? I don’t think I've ever seen someone look as bad as you do right now.”
“Thanks,” you say, hoping he’ll feel like shit and leave you alone. “That’s great to hear.”
“You’re welcome!” John says easily, pushing past you, and you do nothing to intervene. He stops when he sees your desk, which… alright, that’s fair. It looks like a bomb went off. “Dude…”
“I have to be ready for this exam,” you explain, not shutting the door. You hope that he’s going to leave soon, because you’re losing your mind. Visibly, apparently. “It’s really fucking hard, and I don’t know shit, and I just need to do a little bit more and then I can brush up on some material for my other classes—”
“Uh, no!” John exclaims, looking at you like you’re insane. “This place is super shitty, I think I’d die if I was in here for more than two minutes. Also, you probably need to sleep.”
You chew on the inside of your cheek, mentally going through every option you have for getting him out of here so you can get back to work. You’re so close to being done. You’re so, so close. You need only a few more hours and then you can be done with this for a while and work on other shit. Your head is pounding, and you feel like you’re moving through thick, cheesy soup, and you’re coming up short. You should just fucking push him. Push him out of here with your hands so you don’t have to talk, it would probably work, you just have to be fast enough that you can get the door closed and lock it—
“Dirk, when was the last time you slept?” John demands through your spinning thoughts. He’s looking around the room like it’s a radioactive sess pool. He’s dramatic.
“Last night,” you respond without trouble. Your voice might not sell it, but whatever. If he doesn’t take you at your word, that’s his issue. “I seriously need to get more work done.”
John turns and gives you a look like you’re crazy. Maybe you are, but you don’t care. “Jade said you were studying all day yesterday, and the day before though,” he points out, sounding genuinely confused.
You feel caught, even though you objectively shouldn’t. You press down on the feeling as it bubbles inside you, and force out, “I was. And again today. I need it. If you wanted to be helpful—” John starts nodding enthusiastically, God, “—you can get the hell out of here so I can finish this. The faster I get the rest of these questions down, the faster I can be done.”
You can tell by the look on John’s face that he doesn’t find this acceptable. It’s ridiculous, seeing as he’s objectively making your life harder at the moment, but even through your exhausted haze you’re getting the bone-deep feeling that this is going to be far more difficult than you want it to be.
“No,” John begins as you run your hand through your hair, one of your nervous ticks that you don’t have the strength to suppress right now. “No, you need to go to bed! I know that you don’t sleep that much but I’m actually being really serious now! You look like death, and it’s not fun. You look sick. And also you stink, when did you last shower?”
“I’m done with this,” you grind out, because it’s true, you’re so fucking done. Your eyes are searing in your skull like you have a fever, and John looks blurred and hazy before you. You push past him to get to your desk, bump into it, and office supplies avalanches off it onto the floor. You bend down to start gathering it up and have to steady yourself against the dizziness. “I need—I need more time. If I just get more time to get this done, then—“
You feel a hand tugging at the back of your shirt, pulling you to make you stand up, which only partially works, with you ending up halfway slumped over. The ground is calling you. The hardwood floor in your dorm room looks oddly appealing in a way it never has before, you want to lay flat on your stomach and rest your head and hopefully it will make everything feel more steady…
”What are you doing?” you demand through disorientation. He’s starting to seriously piss you off.
“You’re going to sleep now!” John exclaims, like it’s a fucking given. “Your bed is right there, come on, it’s just a few steps. Just lay down and sleep for a while and then maybe you’ll feel less like shit!”
”Get off me,” you tell him, trying to shrug away, “I feel—“
”Awful!” John interrupts, and your jaw snaps shut. Fuck, this guy is persistent. You like that about him, usually, but right now it’s just wrecking your shit. “You feel awful, I can tell because of literally everything about you.”
His hands are still on you. They’re warm, and comforting, and you try to move away, but he just grabs onto your shirt from the front this time and starts trying to pull you toward the bed. The rabid part of your hindbrain that possesses just enough residual energy to be horny sends a jolt through you at the thought, but it’s quickly overwritten by offense that he’s trying to put you to bed.
“Get off me,” you hiss again, trying to wriggle away from him despite the fact that fatigue is pulling at your limbs.
“Just lay down for a while!”
”No!”
John makes an aggravated noise in the back of his throat as the two of you squabble. It only takes about two more seconds before he’s got you in something like a bear hug from the back. Your arms are pinned to your sides, and he’s lifting you off the fucking floor, and you can feel the back of your neck heating up.
“Put me down.”
John does not put you down. You kick, but it doesn’t seem to bother him that much since your angle isn’t that good, and he just stands there for a second while you struggle against him. You’re weaker than you should be today; it’s humiliating to the point of physical pain. You hate this.
“… Okay, well, I guess I can’t just lay on you until you go to sleep,” John says finally after a pause, thoughtful.
“Put me down.”
”Oh—I know!” he exclaims.
That doesn’t sound good at all; you try to wriggle out of his grasp again, but you’re running on no sleep and too much caffeine; your stomach and head hurt, and John is just as strong as ever. It doesn’t work, and before you know it he’s set you down, flipped you around, and flung you over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“The fuck, man?” you shout, trying to kick again, this time making a connection with the lower part of his gut, rewarded with a punched-out sound, and then immediate, indignant anger.
“Hey!” John snaps back as he carries you—toward the door? “I’m trying to help you! If you won’t go to sleep, then you should take a shower at least, because you smell like a swamp creature! Like you’ve been living in a swamp. Doing swamp-creature things!”
You—well, that sounds nice. You haven’t showered in almost five days, and yeah, you’re pretty fucking greasy at the moment, but that’s besides the point. It’s the principle of it all, and additionally, if you shower right now you will crash, and you’ll crash hard. Maybe if you took a cold shower it would wake you up more, but you doubt it.
“Whether or not I want to smell like shit is none of your business,” you remind him angrily.
“I beg to disagree!” he huffs, and even without seeing his face you can hear in his voice that he’s wrinkling his nose in a very John-ish way that you’re familiar with.
“I’m being so fucking serious right now, John,” you say, blinking through the dizziness from your change in position. Your mouth is moving on its own, “I don’t have fucking time for this! I just—just because you don’t care about your classes this much doesn’t mean that I can afford to slip up even slightly! This class is fucking difficult for me, and that’s not usually how this goes, which just means I have to work three times as hard to make sure that I’m able to ace this final—“
”Dirk, dude, I don’t even care right now!” John informs you, which just figures. “You need rest, because duh, and you also need to shower. Which you’re going to do right now while I’m here!”
You fight him the whole way to the showers, drawing a lot of attention from some people walking down the hall, but no one opens their doors to see what’s going on, and everyone leaves you alone other than a few strange looks. You kick, and wriggle as John tightens his grip on you, and by the time he makes it to the showers, all you’ve actually succeeded in doing was further exhausting yourself.
Your head is pounding, and every muscle in your body hurts. You feel trembly, and the fluorescent lights in the room make you feel woozy, and your depth perception is way off; you can’t really tell where you are in space.
John must feel you physically wilting, because he sets you down on the floor without any fuss, and you don’t try to immediately rush past him to get back to your dorm. You’re pissed off, and stressed, and you can feel frustration bubbling in your throat—you hate everything that’s happening, and you can’t do anything about it. The sinking feeling of resignation taking root in your chest isn’t mixing well with your fatigue and delirium.
“There’s no one in here,” John says in a satisfied manner, glancing around. “So you can totally just get this done and then go back to your dorm. And also take a real break, because I think I can hear the carnival music coming from your head from how insane you are right now. You’re literally slurring your words!”
”I’m not,” you growl, glaring up at John from your slumped position. “I’m not going insane.”
“Yuh-huh!”
”Now who’s—“
”Dude!” John cuts you off, throwing his hands above his head. His voice is raising, and you get the tiniest bit of satisfaction from that. Not much of that satisfaction gets through to your cloudy brain, but it’s enough. “Just give it up! You’re here already, you’re exhausted, you look like shit, and you’re being stubborn for literally no reason!”
“I f—I have a fucking reason!” you shoot back, voice weaker than you would like. “I need to—“
”You need to calm down and go the fuck to sleep!” John interrupts. He sighs, loudly, like you’re being difficult on purpose, and to be fair, you are. He continues, sounding like he’s trying to be calmer, but it just comes out condescending. John’s always had trouble with tone. “Just do this, and then I’ll leave you alone. And you have to use hot water! No trying to freeze yourself and then work some more!”
You clench your jaw, swallow, and don’t argue. For as argumentative as you’re feeling, the words won’t come to you, so here you are just… giving up. Like the quitter you are.
“Fine,” you grit out eventually, to John’s triumphant grin. “Fine, I will. And then you’re going to leave me the fuck alone.”
You go to turn on the water, come back, and freeze like a deer in headlights when you see John taking his shirt off. More specifically, like a deer that’s completely incapable of identifying the situation at hand and is now just accepting its fate as pavement decor. You don’t understand; you can’t understand; you just know that John doesn’t have a shirt on and you can see a lot of skin—soft, warm-looking skin.
“John,” you say belatedly, voice faint.
John’s hands move to his belt.
“JOHN!”
“What?” John demands, sounding genuinely surprised like he’s not stripping down right in front of you.
“What are you doing?” Your normally controlled voice is marred by how shitty you feel.
“Well. I can’t just trust you, can I?” John asks, shrugging. His hands are still frozen on his belt, which you make a valiant attempt not to fixate on. “I have to make sure you’re actually using hot water because you’re so stubborn—plus also you look like you’re about to fall over and crack your head open on the floor. Which I don’t want.”
He isn’t wrong about that, you are unsteady. Still…
“What’s the big deal?” John huffs as you stand there trying to pretend that your heart isn’t beating out of your chest. “We’re both guys here.”
He’s being purposefully obtuse, and you know it. John is well aware that you’re gay. And that wouldn’t mean much, except that he fucking loves to bring it up, and now that there’s real potential nudity involved, suddenly it’s no big thing. You don’t buy it, or at least feel like you shouldn’t buy it. You can’t even begin to parse what’s going on right now, and after a few seconds, you stop trying to. Fuck it—fucking whatever. You’ve lost all control of this situation, if you had anything to begin with.
You don’t know what John wants, and it makes you insane.
John takes your silence as assent and resumes undressing, and you instantly avert your eyes, both for the sake of politeness and your own sanity. You follow his example as the water warms up, filling the room with steam, and when you’ve undressed you step into the shower without looking back at him, leaving your shades just outside. You wish you could take them in with you.
The water sears your skin, just a little too hot, but you don’t adjust the temperature. You like to be boiled alive, and you like to stand under the spray for an hour or more, but now you also just don’t have the strength of will to deal with John right now. Fuck John—not literally, but in every other way. And also maybe literally, but not now.
“Move over so I can get to the soap,” John complains from out of view behind you. “If I’m going to babysit you then I’m showering too.”
“You could leave,” you say out of obligation, moving aside and fully under the shower head. You have to close your eyes against the water, and let yourself turn around because of it, eyes still closed. This way you can at least steel yourself; you aren’t ready for the full force of naked John right in front of you, but this is a better excuse. At least like this he won’t accuse you of being a prude.
When you open your eyes to move away from the water so he can take his turn, you can’t help yourself—you flick your eyes quickly over him, and feel like your brain is just… completely replaced with packing peanuts. Space-filling and useless. You drink in the sight of him, and can’t find it in yourself to be surprised that he looks so good. You’ve wondered for a long time, and all this does is confirm it. And will potentially fuel your lonely fantasizing, once you regain the energy for that.
You tear your eyes forcefully away, pretending that the heat all over you is just from the hot water.
You move slowly through the motions of washing yourself, sluggish. You (and you guess John) were right—the warmth, the steam, the feeling of the water rushing down your back, it’s soothing you in a big way. Right now, that means you want to sink to the floor and lay here under the water forever to stay warm. You want to close your eyes against everything swimming around you, and you can even feel your knees locking the longer you stand up.
“Are you okay?” John asks eventually. “You’ve been just, like… standing there.”
You glance at him, still trying to ignore how he’s completely naked, and flushed from the heat, and so incredibly gorgeous. You can’t begin to list all your issues to him without wasting more energy that you don’t have to spare—or have at all, really.
“... My arms hurt,” you tell him finally.
“Oh,” John responds, blinking. Then he glances you over. You don’t dwell on that, because if you did you'd do something stupid, and impulsive, like trying to kiss him or—something else. You can’t be expected to form a real thought when your brain is melting.
It’s amazing that even through all of this you can manage to be tooth-clenchingly horny for your friend. It’s almost admirable of you.
“Uh—here, let me help you, then,” John decides, reaching for the shampoo. He squirts too much into his hand and starts towards you.
You take a step back and almost hit the wall. “What’re you doing?” you ask, panicked.
“Just turn around and let me help you!” John repeats, frustrated. “I’m gonna wash your hair for you, so you don’t have to do anything but stand there.”
At a complete loss for words, you stand still for too long, and again John takes this as a confirmation. When you don’t turn around for him, he moves around you and threads his fingers through your hair.
The touch tingles down your spine, and you swallow back the intake of breath that would give you away immediately. "This is unnecessary," you tell John desperately while he starts to massage the soap into your hair, going maddeningly slow, in your opinion.
John just makes a noise at you in acknowledgement, dipping both his hands to slide his fingers up around the back of your skull. The shiver it sends down your back reaches all the way down to your feet.
"John," you say again. This is getting ridiculous, but you also aren't stopping him. You're going to blame that on the fact that your very bones ache rather than how nice it is.
"It's fine," John assures you quietly. "You're really tired. So this will help you."
He's silent for a few seconds, the sound of the water lulling you into a deep, apathetic reverie, like a white noise machine. When he talks again, his voice is lower than normal. "Is this helping?" He sounds truly like he wants to know.
You just nod. Your eyelids are starting to get heavier, and your head is drooping, and John's hands are melting you. There's an increasingly insistent part of you that wants to lean back against him and sleep for all of eternity, the only thing stopping you being that it would put you in a way too compromising position. That doesn’t make it appeal less to you, but… well, John.
You lose time. When John says, "Alright, I think you're good to rinse," you get the impression from the tingling all over your scalp that the two of you stayed like that for longer than you needed to.
You dunk your head under the shower head and attempt to drown your own thoughts. Water runs off the end of your nose, and when you resurface, you're ten thousand percent done with trying to sort through your own feelings along with the biology facts still floating unbidden through your head.
John already has a towel around his waist, and he hands you one when he sees you squeezing the water from your hair. You take it.
"Thanks," you mumble. Your words have fled you, and your tongue is heavy.
"No problem!" John responds, starting to grab up your clothes.
Once you’re standing back in your dorm room, you can admit (privately) that you know what John means—the place does indeed look sad as fuck. And the chaos of it all isn’t the organized kind in the slightest. You stand by the doorway with your hair still dripping and consider, yet again, just laying down on the floor. You aren’t overly thrilled about admitting that John was right, but you know now that you genuinely can’t continue like this.
“Do you have pajamas?” John asks you, and you give him a look. You may have given in, but you aren’t going to let him dress you, or tuck you into bed. He holds up his hands, placating, but it only infuriates you further. “Okay, I’m just asking! I thought you might sleep in your underwear… I do that sometimes. Because it’s comfortable. But it’s kind of cold out right now so I thought it might be better if you wore more than that…”
You don’t want to think about John in his underwear after you just spent thirty minutes in the shower with him pretending there was nothing going on. You’re done.
“Hand me the shirt on the bed,” you sigh.
You don’t have to try very hard this time to avert your eyes as John gets dressed back in his old clothes, simply because you get dressed faster than him and instantly collapse into bed, face-down. If you focus hard enough, you can feel your eyes throbbing as you press your face against the mattress. Your shades are somewhere with the rest of your old clothes, and the idea of continuing to have your whole face visible to John is making your skin crawl.
“Goodnight!” John says a few seconds later, accompanied by the feeling of the blankets under you being pulled, to no avail since you are planted firmly on them. “Aren’t you going to get under the blankets? I’m gonna sit right here with you for a bit, just so you don’t try to keep being stupid!” He laughs to himself, as if he had said something funny.
You want him so, so bad.
Rolling over so you can get under the covers—because John is right, it is pretty cold right now—you slur, “There’s no reason for you to stay.” You’re still staring at the inside of your eyelids at present, feeling loose and too-warm. It’s nice. Upsettingly so.
“Um, duh? I just said there was? You have to actually rest. Which you won’t. So I’m staying put here.”
The urge to argue and tell him that there’s no way you’re going to work any more today is strong, but not strong enough to survive en route from brain to mouth. You grunt and roll over, taking the blankets with you and hoping to forget all about John Egbert standing over you like the Boogyman.
It does not work, especially when you feel the side of your tiny dorm bed dip under his weight. With some difficulty, you peel your eyes open just a crack.
John is sitting there on the end of the bed with his phone in his hand. You can’t tell what he’s doing, but from the look of it you’d say that he’s just fucking around.
The feeling of him sitting there is intensely distracting; it pulls at your attention and keeps you conscious for longer than you would be otherwise. To your surprise, however, it isn’t… a deal-breaker. However much it should be. The position you find yourselves in would normally render you completely incapable of relaxing, but apparently your level of exhaustion has completely overwritten that, leaving you with the feeling of sinking into the mattress until you’ve just become a blob of blankets and warmth.
You drift for a while, and at some unidentifiable point that transitions into true, uninterrupted sleep. The next thing you know, you’re slowly, painfully drifting back to consciousness, squinting your eyes in the light from the window.
It takes you a long time to wake up fully, disoriented from too much sleep, but you manage to make it out of your funk just enough to get out of bed and stumble to your desk. John is no longer in the room.
You don’t get to work immediately. Yes, you promised yourself that you would, but you’re a fucking liar, and after yesterday, you don’t even have anything that you’re able to point to and say ‘see? I didn’t even need to rest.’ You definitely fucking needed to sleep, judging from how you can barely remember half of the shit that you said and did during that last day, with only the shower sticking out through your grogginess.
Your face is starting to heat up—you might feel murky and slow right now, but you’re more rested than you were, with more presence of mind to truly digest what happened.
There’s something seriously wrong with John, the privilege of hindsight slamming that over your head repeatedly before you sigh and check the time, chewing on the memories in the back of your mind.
It’s noon. You’ve never slept for more than twelve hours before; this is astounding.
You grab your shades off your desk, where John evidently left them last night. You wonder, maddeningly, how long he stayed with you. You’ve always had trouble wondering why John does the things he does, and now it’s starting to drive you actually insane.
”Well?” John asks a few days later. The two of you finally managed to go and have that coffee ‘date’, though you don’t call it a date yet. Yet. “I bet you passed, right?”
You glance at him. He’s got that tone in his voice like he’s proud of himself, and the words make you almost bashful, which just kills you a bit on the inside, so you swallow it down. “Yeah,” you confirm. “I managed to get a 4.0.”
“Woah!” John exclaims, grinning. “See? You were stressing for no reason. You really just do this to yourself all the time. If you just relaxed, maybe you wouldn’t look so mad all the time.”
“I do not—“ you cut yourself off. “I do not look mad all the time,” you repeat, steadier. You’re wonderful at keeping your expression neutral, and if John misreads that as anger, that’s his own fault, not yours.
John laughs. He’s laughing at you, but it doesn’t feel that way. You duck into your coffee to not seem so much like you’re staring, sipping it. You mostly get a mouthful of whipped cream and no actual drink.
You’ll have to ask him about what he did for you, on account of it feeling super not straight, but you aren’t going to get your hopes up that easily. John misses things that are blatantly obvious, and it’s possible that’s what that was. You hope not, but who can say?
Later.
“What about you? How did you do on your exams last week?”
John hums into his drink like he remembered something, mouth full. He swallows hand, wincing when his drink is still too hot. “I passed!” he announces triumphantly. “I almost didn’t show up on the exam day for one of my classes though, that would’ve sucked. But I made it! And I passed all of them!”
“That’s great,” you tell him. You mean it.
“Yeah, I think my lowest grade was a 2.0? Which is really good! I totally thought I was gonna get a D- in one of them and have to retake the class… which I really, really didn’t want to do. So it all worked out!”
You sit down your mug, horrified.
John, noticing, looks confused. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I’m going to help you study next time,” you tell him seriously. “That way we can get your grades up from that.”
”Oh, no, that’s fine!” John denies, shaking his head and smiling again. “I passed, and that’s all I actually want! Thanks though!”
You honestly don’t know what to say to that. You just take another sip of your drink, getting a mouthful of sugar and too much creamer. Perfect.
”Yeah,” John continues after a few seconds, shifting where he’s sitting, and looking out the window. “You know, I didn’t hate taking care of you, though. And I really like you, so I guess you can help me, if it means you have to get in the shower and wash my hair this time!”
You inhale coffee; it sears in your throat and in the back of your nose, and ow, fuck, that shit is scalding. You double over, coughing with tears in your eyes and trying to get ahold of yourself before John thinks that’s a no. It is not a no, and is in fact the furthest thing from no you think you can manage. John pats you on the back, asking if you’re okay, and you give him a thumbs up.
This guy is probably going to kill you one day if he keeps this up, and you can’t really seem to hate the idea as much as you want to.