Written for tumblr user meridiantears. Because friendship makes you do stupid stuff like write idiotic fanfictions about dorks.

Warnings: (1.) The real genre is "Stupid" but they didn't have that one so I put "Romance" instead. (2.) Why would you be reading this if you were opposed to homosexuality. (3.) Why would you even think of reading this if this was your NOTP are you okay. (4.) Goddamn language. Sorry.

No the rating will not change I do not write inapro-pro all that you are safe from any terrible attempts on my part

Turn back now while you have the chance just go

It's not a big deal, moving. People always try to play it up like it's some big thing, but, really, it's not.
Karkat never had problems with change. Mostly because he didn't have very many relationships. It's not some big deal to go and NOT make friends in a new place because he had no friends in the old one. There's no room to go downhill in social standing.
He doesn't even understand why they're moving from one lame ass town to another equally lame ass town. Something to do with his dad's job.
His dad was a mattress store manager. Karkat couldn't figure out how that worked at all, considering his father spoke limited amounts of crappy English. How do you even run a store like that? His dad's job made okay money, but it couldn't really support the family completely.
Oh god. There's probably a FoodMaxx in this town too. Karkat's mom would not accept them living in a city with no FoodMaxx. Partially because of the pastries they sell there, and partially because she loves to send Karkat out to the FoodMaxx parking lot on Thursday nights to freeze his ass off and sell her "famous" tamales for a couple bucks per package.
Karkat stared forlornly out the window of the car. Life's been doing a lot of things to Karkat lately. His pretentious older brother, Kankri, just left for college. Good riddance, maybe, but Karkat would sort of miss being annoyed at Kankri barging into his room, unwelcome, to rant about injustice, hog up Karkat's bed, and sometimes even ask his little brother for advice. It was a better sibling relationship than Karkat would ever admit.
It would be weird, living without Kankri. Kankri was a high school senior when Karkat was a freshman, and the last year of Kankri was sort of the best year of Kankri.
Karkat would never admit it, but he didn't know how he would survive this sophomore year of high school. He had made it through most of his school career fine alone, but Kankri finally decided to live up to his role of older brother in the last year, and dragged Karkat on all sorts of adventures. Even though Karkat didn't participate much during these outings, he had actually had a lot of fun. Thanks to Kankri being not as much of a douche for a year, Karkat had sort of lived, a little. Karkat had been okay with having no friends in high school so far just because of Kankri. Karkat would be lonely without his ranting oversensitive big brother to talk with and to drag him around, and he wasn't sure what he was going to do with himself now.
Karkat knew all this, but firmly told himself that, no, Kankri didn't count as a friend, so he was, in fact, completely used to being alone, and he would be completely fine with that.

-.

He jinxed it. It's already done. Karkat decided that he would end up not making any friends. He fully expected it to happen that way and it did.
He was either psychic or had a curse of bad luck (and worse manners).
Karkat was starting his first day of a new school year in a new school in a new town as a new kid, and it was a with a new record speed that he ruined his first chance at a new friend.
He insulted the first and only person to introduce themselves to him so far. He will be alone another year. He might as well accept his fate. And It was only first period.
It happened like this:
They received their seatings first-thing in Chemistry. The teacher -a young, generally cool guy- placed Karkat at a table in the back left of the classroom. It was as far from the door or any means of escape as possible. The teacher would now be seen as the Bringer of Evil, in Karkat's eyes.
The weirdo assigned to be Karkat's lab partner (and sit with him for the whole year) ended up being an overly friendly kid with big, bright blue eyes surrounded by glasses, and an even bigger buck-toothed smile. "Hi! I'm John Egbert! Looks like we'll be lab partners in this class all year, huh?"
Karkat stared at the needlessly happy kid, "How much coffee do you even drink."
"Haha, I don't even drink coffee," John replied, making an effort to be friendly. Karkat didn't reply.
John looked around uncomfortably before trying, "So, uh, are you new in town? I don't think I've seen you before."
"What if you haven't seen me before because you're blind." Karkat replied, gesturing towards John's somewhat dorky glasses.
"Hey, I'm not blind! I see well enough! The glasses are just so my eyes don't get even worse." John defended. Karkat said, "Hmph," but John didn't reply, because he was distracted by a person who had just sat down in front of him.
And somehow that exchange convinced Karkat that he was a failure at making normal conversation. He would never have friends. He would live his whole high school career reading cheesy romance novels alone in the library like the weirdo he is. It would carry into his adulthood. He would either become a jobless loser who can't cope with society and have to live with his annoying mom and sell tamales every Thursday for the rest of eternity or he would be forced to become a romance movie critic. His only friend through his whole life would be his shitty laptop.
Unfortunately for the passengers, this train of thought was derailed as the bell rang. Karkat scooped up his backpack and carried it in his arms because he didn't have enough shit in it yet to make it worth putting on. He shuffled into the halls and moved on to the second class of the seven that would waste the whole next year of his life.

-.

English second period was okay, and so was Spanish II after that. Just your usual first day of school syllabus and done thing. But history right before lunch. Dear LORD.
The teacher quickly handed out the syllabus, collected summer homework, and proceeded to rant about the importance of history for the next ten minutes. Then she got into a philosophical argument over whether or not progress can ever really be made and what progress even is with some girl named Rose. This argument lasted the whole rest of the period. It was terrible. Karkat was almost upset that he wasn't tired enough to try and sleep through it. Karkat hoped this wasn't a sign of how the whole year of history would be. It was a feeble, hopeless hope that slowly turned into acceptance of the fact that, yes, Karkat would be forced to sit through these discussions all year.
Then there was lunch, which was also sort of okay.
Karkat just took his backpack and brown bag of lazily made lunch and sat in a corner blocked off from the rest of the hallway by a pillar and a perpetually open door. He made a mental note that it could possibly be a safe place to nap, if ever he needed to.
After that, though, was PE.
Why the hell did anyone even invent PE. Who's bright idea was that one.
Everyone got their syllabuses and met the teacher, a man whose two loves were making kids run and play basketball. After a short intro to the class, he told them to go run two laps, as a preparation for things to come.
Why.
Karkat actually kept up pretty well. Apparently there were a lot of lazy and/or unhealthy fucks in his class. Thank the powers that be. Well, it could be that everyone was wearing regular clothes, as opposed to PE clothes, and didn't want to sweat it up, but it didn't matter to Karkat.
But then they hit the second lap, and John Egbert From Chemistry somehow ended up running with Karkat.
"Hey!" John panted out, smiling, "Looks like we have two classes together!"
"How can you tell what it looks like if you need glasses," Karkat responded.
At that, John laughed and said, "I'm not blind!"
Karkat said, "Hmph."
For a while, they jogged on silently, and Karkat was actually sort of okay with that. He would be more okay, though, if he didn't have to run.
After they finished running, John followed Karkat to the water fountain. "You never told me your name. That's usually what people do when making friends, you know!"
"You heard it on two attendance sheets," Karkat responded grumpily.
"Come on, no one pays attention to the names in attendance!" John complained Just then, the bell rang, and Karkat began walking away with no parting words. John quickly followed behind him.
"Wait, what class do you have next?" John pulled out his own schedule.
"Math in portable 27."
"Hey, me too! Let's walk together!"
Karkat suddenly stopped in his tracks, causing John to bump into him.
"Sorry!" John apologized.
Karkat took a deep breath and turned around.
"Listen here, you little shit-" he began.
"I'm taller than you, silly!"
"LISTEN. HERE. You gargantuan shit," Karkat emphasized, "I don't know why the universe stuck me in two classes with you, but the fact that we have classes together does not make us friends. I do not want friends. I may be new here, but I don't need some tall blind kid to lead me around the school like I'm some helpless fuck who can't survive school alone. My goals for school are to pass with as little drama and work as possible, and having friends involves drama and work. The universe might have made me meet you, but you know what? Fuck the universe! I don't the universe just like I don't need all of the stupid dumbshits in it. This is me, submitting my resignation to the universe! I will be taking my stuff and leaving immediately!"
Karkat stormed off. When he happened to glance behind him, he noticed that John was just standing there, frowning.

-.

When Karkat arrived at his math class, he joined the herd of students around the posted seating chart. He quickly saw that, yes! He had the seat just to the right of the door. He went and sat down, and when everyone had settled in and the tardy bell rang, Karkat noticed that the seat to his right was empty.
The teacher was a middle-aged woman, and her voice was as droning and monotonous as a robot's. Maybe she was a robot. No one could know for sure.
As she ranted her syllabus speech for what was probably her sixth time that day, the door to Karkat's left inched open, and a certain black-haired blue-eyes kid shuffled in.
The teacher paused the speech and looked at her attendance list, "Mr. John Egbert?"
"Yes, ma'am." John replied politely.
"You sit in the empty desk next to Karkat Vantas. Do you see it?"
John looked at Karkat, then at the desk on the other side, "Yep." He walked around the first row of desks and took his seat.
Karkat adopted an expression of faux awe and reverence and whispered up to the ceiling lights, "Mother of All Shits." Karkat's life was so full of bull that he was on the verge of adhering to a religion so he could have some god's terrible sense of humor to blame for all of this.
"I understand you guys coming in late the first day of school, but after today, I expect no tardies." The teacher sighed out.
John leaned over to whisper to Karkat as the teacher continued her speech.
"So I guess you're still with the universe?"
Karkat glared at him. "No."

After math class, Karkat bolted and headed straight home.

-.

The whole first week of school, and most of the second week, Karkat got by with minimal conversation with John. John still said hi every day, but Karkat would either not reply or state, "Hmph," and that would be the end of it. John seemed a bit sad that they had not made friends, but it's not Karkat's job to make some weird clingy kid happy.

On Thursday of the second week of school, Karkat found himself in the FoodMaxx parking lot with a bag of tamales. Usually he would sell at least five packs, but they had left their regular customers behind when they moved.
Karkat sat on the metal railing of the place where people park the shopping carts and tried to pass time by silently judging everyone walking in and out of the store.
Eventually, though, Karkat spotted a familiar face. John was riding through the parking lot on a bike, along with some blond kid with sunglasses that Karkat recognized from his English class.
Karkat looked down at his hands, feeling inexplicably embarrassed and hoping that John wouldn't see him sitting in a parking lot alone.
Of course, John noticed him and the two kids rode up to Karkat on their bikes and stopped next to him.
John spoke first, "Karkat, what are you doing out here?"
Karkat rolled his eyes. "Good afternoon to you too, fuckass."
John frowned, "Why are you just sitting here?"
"What does it look like?" Karkat held up the bag of food.
The blond kid spoke up, "Shit, man, are those tamales?"
"No shit."
"Hell yeah. Tamales are boss." The kid pulled out a red duct tape wallet, "How much do they cost?"
Karkat was suddenly very much in business mode, "Three dollars per pack of five, one dollar for each if you want to buy them individually."
"How many do you have with you?"
"Twenty packs."
The blond kid put a hand on John's shoulder, "John."
"Yes, Dave."
Dave's expression remained one hundred percent serious, "Your friend here is offering A HUNDRED TAMALES."
"Okay?"
The Dave kid looked back at Karkat, "I'll take all of them."
"That's sixty dollars," Karkat informed as politely as his generally grumpy voice allowed.
Dave handed over the money and Karkat handed over the bulging bag of food.
"Hell. Yes."
John appeared confused over the whole exchange, "What..."
"Nice doing business with you," Karkat said plainly, and he started walking back home.
Dave started riding away, but when Karkat glanced back, he saw that John was still staring at Karkat walking away. After a minute, though, John rode away to go catch up to Dave.
Karkat wasn't sure why, but he felt kind of happy about the whole transaction. Probably because it cut his Thursday nightmare short.

-.

"Hi," John said, as usual, when he sat down at their table in Chemistry the next day.
"Hey," Karkat replied grumpily. John grinned.
The bell rang and their chemistry teacher walked out of the supply closet with a jovial, "Happy Friday!" The class gave mixed replies.
"Today we will be doing our lab on chemical change!"
All they had to do was mix the white stuff with the blue stuff and watch it get warm and bubbly and turn orange, then write down what they saw and any explanations they could give for anything that happened. John and Karkat were done quickly, since the lab was pretty easy.
"Hey, Karkat," John started.
Karkat sighed heavily in response. Jesus dicks, this kid doesn't give up. Karkat looked at him expectantly as a signal to go on.
"What were you doing yesterday?"
"Selling tamales in a parking lot, dipshit," Karkat replied.
"No, I know that, but, like, why."
"My mom likes making tamales. So I sell them for cash on Thursdays, sometimes."
"Oh," John said.
"Yeah."

When the bell rang at the end of the period, instead of bolting like usual, Karkat stood for a second, feeling like he forgot something.
John was still packing up his crap, like the slow shit he was.
"Uh," Karkat said, "See you."
"Yeah! See you in PE." John smiled.
Karkat left, the feeling of forgetting something gone, but he was kind of mad at himself. He had told himself that he wasn't going to make friends.

And that's all for this chapter. Hope you like it, and I really would like to hear your opinion on it.

Also, formatting will be less stupid later on. I wrote this one in notepad but all other chapters so far in Word, so, yeah.

But chapters will always be short and weirdly episodic sorry.

EDIT: I FORGOT TO MENTION-

this story is based on the stupid headcanon that human Karkat would be this short little second-generation Mexican immigrant kid living in America, which came from a discussion with tumblr user meridiantears, and some of the headcanons from our conversation won't even be involved in this, but that exchange is what fuels this fanfiction

so maybe more mexicanisms will show I sure hope so