Work Text:
When you're eleven-years-old (almost twelve) your dad finally lets you use the computer without hovering over your shoulder and the very first thing you do is install PesterChum because you keep hearing kids at school talk about it and you want to talk about it too. The interface is strange and new and you realize a little too quickly that there's no real fun in a chat program when you don't have anyone to chat with. Not one to be deterred, you use your new found freedom to find forums and image boards and lots and lots of people who type strangely and make a lot of jokes you don't quite understand but laugh at anyway. But you're a fast learner and you realize after a few days that it's much, much easier to talk to people by typing even though your fingers are still a little clumsy on the keys.
Your ChumList does not stay empty for long.
Some time later, you meet someone with a funny chumhandle and a quick wit. Dad says not to trust strangers on the internet, and for the most part you don't, but when TG says he's a boy around your age you believe him. He makes you laugh more than the other people on your list and the next thing you know, you've been talking for hours about anything and everything and it's getting to the point where if you don't go to bed soon you run the risk of Dad waking up and grounding you (or worse, making you help him bake).
You go to bed smiling; excited to wake up so that you can sign on again.
–
It's been a week and you haven't run out of things to say.
You talk about games and movies and he laughs when you proclaim your love for Nicholas Cage to him but tells you that if you were being ironic about it, you'd be doing a really good job. You don't really know what he means by 'ironic' so you laugh, too. He tells you that he's learning to DJ and he writes a webcomic. He seems a little annoyed by the fact you don't recognize the name because he's kind of a big deal. You seize the opportunity to tease him about it and he doesn't type it out but you're pretty sure you make him laugh.
A few days later, he tells you that he lives with his brother who is just about the most awesome person on the planet. You feel a little jealous of him when you confess that it's just you and your dad who may or may not be one of the craziest people on the planet.
A few days after that, he tells you that his name is Dave and you return that yours is John. It feels like something very important and you're not really sure why. He's the first “internet person” you've told your name to and you're pretty positive Dad will be mad if he ever knew.
–
It's been a month and you still talk every day.
You've learned his name is Dave Strider and that he lives in Texas just like he knows your name is John Egbert and you live in Washington. You learn that he's scared of puppets and you tell him that you're disgusted by cake.
At some point, it dawns on you that he's your best friend. It's a strange realization, considering that you've never actually met him, but there's really no contest between him and the kids at school who still make fun of the way your teeth don't really fit your mouth and laugh at you for liking magic behind your back. At least when Dave makes fun of you, it's to your face, and it's actually funny. And not mean. There's a difference. He lets you tease him right back, too. You like that.
–
You make new friends. Girls, even, which sounds scary when you say it in your head but these girls are different from the ones in class that make you really nervous. Dave meets them, too. The four of you become almost like a little clique, sitting at your own metaphorical lunch table in the virtual cafeteria of the Internet. Which is nice, considering you usually end up sitting alone in the very non-metaphorical tables in the very non-virtual cafeteria at school. (It bothered you before, it doesn't anymore).
You talk about video games and real life and everything that friends should talk about. You even trade pictures, eventually. It's scary at first because you're certain that they're going to make fun of you but they don't.
Dave looks just as cool as you imagined he would and Rose and Jade look just as awesome. You blush when Jade calls you 'adorable' but you blush even harder when Dave laughs, agrees with her, and assigns you the nickname 'Egderp'.
–
When you turn twelve, Dad buys you a cellphone. You install the PesterChum app and suddenly your friends can come with you anywhere. You smile a lot more now. Even Dad notices. He says he's happy for you, but he wishes you'd leave your phone in your room at dinner. (You do, once he asks. You don't want to be rude, even if he is crazy.)
--
When Dave's birthday comes, you send him Ben Stiller's actual sunglasses because you know he'll appreciate the joke and you've picked up that he likes shades. He calls you a nerd when he gets them but you've learned to see the 'thank you' between the lines.
–
When you turn thirteen everything changes.
–
The Game is fun until it's not. As it turns out, aliens are real and they're all apparently very mad at you for things you don't think you ever did and, oh yeah, time travel is possible now too and you're fighting monsters that take Dad away. The entire world is on fire. Dimly, you realize that you're fucking terrified.
You keep fighting and you smile when you can and make jokes when they come to you because if you don't, you're not quite sure what you'd do.
You have the far away realization that this is the sort of thing that happens in comics and movies; the sort of thing that kids dream about doing. Saving the world, being the hero. If this is the dream, you really want to wake up.
--
Years pass without really passing at all and the next thing you know you've died (and died and died and died) and you're some kind of god now at the price of everything.
You think about the life you could be living in the space of three years and your stomach begins to knot up and you feel like you could possibly be sick if it weren't for the fact that you haven't eaten since you honestly can't remember.
You try not to think about loss. You try.
You miss Dad. You miss awkward days at school and metaphorical lunch tables. You miss watching movies and late nights that would get you grounded. You'd bake a thousand cakes right now if it would bring him back.
–
The Trolls are as strange and as familiar as you thought they'd be. You're more disconcerted by the fact that you're not disconcerted by them than anything else. Normal lost it's definition a long time ago. You remember when you didn't believe in aliens. That was a time when you didn't believe in sprites and goblins and universe manipulating super villains, too. It's hard to remember life outside of The Game and it's starting to look like maybe there wasn't actually a life there at all, just a series of very carefully planned events masked to look like choice.
The time Before earns a capital letter, just like The Game, and you realize that it feels like an entire lifetime away.
--
Your plans to make fun of Dave's snug little hood die on your tongue the second you set your eyes on him in person; dry up like a fish that jumped out of it's bowl kamikaze style. Maybe it's because you're more exhausted and overwhelmed than you've ever been (and probably ever will be) or maybe it's something else. He's wearing the sunglasses you bought him, still, after all this time and when he laughs at you it might be the brightest sound you've ever heard. He cracks a joke about your god-pajamas and you try to muster up the one you'd been planning for so long but the delivery's all wrong and he laughs again (maybe it wasn't all wrong after all).
You like the way his words come in meandering sentences; thrown together with a lazy care that he calls irony but you call...well, something else, something you don't have a name for yet. It's somehow completely different from what you expected and completely perfect at the same time. You can't figure out a way to tell him that without feeling incredibly awkward so you decide to keep it to yourself.
Maybe The Game has changed even more about you than you realized.
–
You learn that it's much easier to be brave when you're all together, but you also learn that it's much easier to break when you know you have someone there to pick up your pieces.
You cry for the first time since this entire mess while you're drowning in the sickly light of the Green Sun and it's Dave's arms that scoop you up and Dave's hands that stroke your hair and Dave's voice that whispers soft words with sweetness you honestly didn't know he was capable of.
'I know, I know, I know'.
When you wake up your glasses are skewed on your nose and your face is blotchy and Dave's still got an arm around your waist. You expect a lot of funny looks from your comrades. You don't get any but Jade is smiling like she knows a secret she's just dying to tell and Rose whispers something to Kanaya whose face breaks into a smile when you walk by.
–
Days pass, or maybe they don't. Tick, tock, tick, tock. You stop thinking about time in durations like that after Dave tries to teach you about paradoxes and loops. He makes everything look easy but you know it's not because his voice gets very hollow when he talks about it.
You try to make him laugh as much as you can.
You've stopped crying but you haven't stopped waking up curled against him. He doesn't seem to mind.
--
Later, but not much later, as you stand and stretch you say something like 'welp, I must go, my planet needs me' and he says something like 'even as a god you're still a fucking nerd' and then you're kissing him and you can't tell which one of you started it, only that his hand has woven into your hair and you've got a fist full of his shirt. Your glasses both get in the way and there's nothing especially sexy or even romantic about it but right in this moment you can't imagine a better first kiss (well maybe you can, because you were only ever half kidding about Liv Tyler but you're pretty sure, god or no, she's out of your league. You file that joke away for later.)
You'll have a crisis about your sexuality and the fact that you might have accidentally fallen for your best friend after you're done having a crisis about saving the entire god damn universe.
--
It goes like this:
“So...Guess what?”
“What?”
“I think I might be in love with you.”
“No shit? Well that's good, because I think I might be in love with you, too.”
The happiness you feel is strange, like a distant static buzz behind layers and layers of thunder. You haven't been really happy in such a long time and you think that maybe you're body just doesn't know how to handle it anymore. You're confident that you'll re-learn it, though. You start small with smiles that reach your eyes and laughs you don't have to force.
The Game is the hardest thing you've ever done but you'll fight and you'll win because you have to. Because it means everything. Because the weight on your shoulders is shared.
For the first time in a very long time, you know that everything is going to be fine.