Chapter Text
John Egbert and Dave Strider are polar opposites.
Wind and fire, blue and red, distant and close, cheery and nonchalant. The red pill, the blue pill, and the Matrix they lead (or don’t) into are completely different. They don’t even come from the same place-
Dave is the New Kid at Washington Academy for Boys, a 6-12 grade program complete with one gender, one uniform, and two vicious kids who could not stand to be in the same room with each other for more than ten minutes without trading insults for practical jokes that were on the mean spirited side.
Dave had arrived when he was in eighth grade, been shoved into the uniform, and met John Egbert in almost every class he had. John had tried to be friendly, had tried to shove his Class Presidency on him, but Dave had completely shut down and shied away.
John mistook Dave’s reclusiveness as rejection and apathy, and Dave mistook John’s friendliness for shallow, callous intentions, and that was how the Egbert/Strider rivalry started.
They were eleventh graders. They were young boys with hormones and energy and Dave was a very open bisexual kid and John was a very exclusively heterosexual one except for times like these.
When he was fist-fighting with Dave and the principal called them out and told them to go home, and the boys walked, and then they went into the bathrooms behind the school and Dave’s mouth crushed John’s and ties were yanked and pulled and buttons were popped.
It was so easy to hate Dave when he was pinned against the bathroom wall, all flushed pale skin and bright red eyes screaming murder for being the submissive today.
It was so easy to hate John when he was the dominant one but he was down on his knees proving how dominant he really was in the least dominant position ever, sucking his cock and that mouth that goddamn mouth all over him—-
And it was hard to tell who was scratching harder against who’s back, or where the blood between their mouths- coppery and angry and crimson- came from. It was hard to tell where hate stopped and passion started, who’s tired keens and moans were forming word’s and who barely remembered how to speak.
Dave hated how perfectly John could rile him up and make him feel, and John hated how easily Dave disguised it, and the problems were resolved with teeth, tongue, bruise, blood, skin, and fingernails; with bathroom tile and mirrors that let Dave see how John’s face twisted in delight when he was getting fucked.
It was wind and fire, distant and close, it was the red pill and the blue pill, but no matter who swallowed, they ended up further down the rabbit hole than they understood.