It takes three attempts from your alarm clock to finally convince you to get your ass out of bed. John is still sleeping soundly, and you figure there's no reason to wake him up, so you make sure not to step on him as you go about your morning routine.

After getting dressed in a graphic tee and jeans, brushing your teeth, and having a stare down with your hair without ever actually touching it, you grab a Pop Tart and start your walk to school. You would drive, but you don't have a designated parking spot, and it's a pain to circle around looking for a free space.

School goes by much as usual, and everything seems to sort of blur together. It isn't until your last class, gym, that something snaps you out of your daze. You're sitting down, leaning against the wall, not playing basket ball like the rest of your classmates. You'd purposely "forgotten" your uniform for what must have been the six billionth time that year. Suddenly, a low, aggressive voice calls your name.

"Hey, Strider!"

Dammit. You don't respond.

"Strider," he repeats, closer now.

Suppressing a sigh, you turn your head almost lazily to look at the speaker, Tyler-something, flanked by two of his friends. You try to appear as uninterested as possible. Keep calm, keep your head.

"Yeah?"

"You're not playing, Strider," he almost spits. You hate the way your name sounds coming from his mouth.

"Not today," you agree, hoping they'll be discouraged and leave.

No such luck.

"How many times does this make?" Tyler-something asks. "Got something against the locker room?"

"Um." You didn't mean to say anything, and you mentally curse yourself.

"Sounds a bit suspicious, if you ask me."

"I didn't ask you."

Tyler-something takes a step forward, and you resist the instinct to shrink back and become as small as possible.

"Or maybe you're not allowed. Maybe they don't want you to be looking at our junk?"

You stare at him. "..What the hell?"

"You a faggot, Strider?"

The teacher blows his whistle before you can even open your mouth. You're left sitting there in shock as the rest of the class files out of the gym.

What the fuck?

"Strider!" the teacher barks, and you stand up, blood rushing back into your numb legs.

You wait outside of the locker room as usual. You're amazed Tyler-Something had come to the conclusion that you were gay.

Okay, so maybe you were.

But that has nothing to do with your disliking of gym and everything to do with your huge homogay crush on your best friend who is currently chilling in your apartment, waiting for you to come home. Which is pretty cool.

When the bell signifying the end of the school day rings, and you waste no time in hoisting a strap of your backpack to your shoulder and practically dashing through the hall and to the exit.

You groan when you see your bus hasn't come yet, so you end up having to wait around as the rest of the school pours out from the doors you just came through yourself.

Your bus still isn't there, but you're not very surprised. Your busdriver is notorious for not speaking English and she's been on time probably a whopping three times this year. You could just walk home, but it's so hot outside, you're really not in the mood.

Suddenly, you hear your name being called. Your first instinct is to sigh, but you realize whoever is calling for you is using your firstname. That can't be anybody in school.

"Dave! Hey, hey, Dave!"

You look around until you spot John waving furiously, bounding over towards you, glasses almost sliding off his face.

What the hell is he doing here? Not that you mind.

"There you are! I was looking all over for you, and I was beginning to worry I'd missed you! I got tired of just waiting around at your house, and your bro lent me your car keys so I could come and pick you up. It's really hot outside; is it always like this?" John kept talking until he finally reached you, beaming.

You actually spare him a smile. It's good to see him after a shitty day.

"Woah, was that an actual smile?" he gasps, feigning shock. "Did Mister Strider actually smile at me? All of the girls must be swooning."

Your stomach does several nervous backflips. "Strider smiles, specially reserved for a Mister Egbert," you mutter.

He laughs, and the two of you begin to head to where John has parked your car; he was smart enough to to attempt the packed school parking lot.

Just as you're almost off school grounds, you hear a shout from behind you.

"FAGGOTS."

Jaw clenching, you grab John's arm and drag him away as fast as possible.

"Who was that?" John asks once the two of you are seated in the car, him in the driver's seat after he insisted. Neither of you had spoken until now.

"Nobody. Just some asshole."

John tilts his head, brows knitting together. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He casts you a concerned look, obviously put off by your sudden gloomy attitude, but seems to make an effort to lighten the mood. "Probably just jealous!"

You snort in disbelief. "Jealous?"

"Yep! Wishing he could spend time with a kid as cool as you. Or maybe he's jealous that you're so cool in general-or both! Any number of things!" he starts off, and keeps rambling. You don't stop him. "I mean, I've never met anybody who can pull off the whole shades thing as well as you, and you can, um, slam rhymes or whatever, and you're like, the master of ironic humour and stuff, which is totally not as awesome as good old fashioned pranking, but still, it's like, your thing!" He nods to emphasize his point.

You stare at him, speechless for a second. You don't even try to pull it off cool; you just gawk at him.

"Uhh, Dave?" John asks, mildly concerned. "Earth to Dave?"
"Huh? Oh sorry, I just-um, that was pretty cool. What you said."
John waved his hand dismissively. "No problem! Just telling my best bro the truth!"
Your nod and push your backpack to the car floor between your feet. "Yep. Best bros," you mutter. You know you're being unfair. You know it's selfish to want to be something more than a "best bro".
But hell, you've never denied that you're selfish.
"Huh?"
"Nothing. Let's go."
You end up stopping at the grocery store first. John clambers into the shopping cart before you can stop him, and holy shit, can he get any dorkier?
It's fucking adorable.
You push him through the aisles, getting both amused and disapproving looks from the customers, but neither of you care.
You sprint down an empty aisle as fast as you can without the cart toppling over, John holding onto the sides and grinning wildly, and almost collide with a huge display of stacked cake mix boxes.
"Dude, get away from that!" he protests as you reach to grab a box, just to mess with him. It seems to be working.
You wave the box in his face.
"Noooo!" he manages to whine and laugh at the same time.
Your shopping trip ends up consisting less of actual shopping and more of trouble making. Several hours later, you finally leave with numerous bags of chips, candy, soda, more chips, noodles, frozen pizza, and a warning from the store that if you ever behave the same way again, you won't be coming back.
Also cheese puffs.
When you arrive home, the time is already creeping on six. You open a bag of chips, heat up a pizza, and tear through Bro's and your collection of video games.
John crushes you at all of them.
You beat him five dollars he won't beat you in Mario Kart.
You become five dollars poorer.
By nine, you've eaten two bags of chips, one pizza, and two and a half bottles of soda.
After you've exhausted all of your video games, you agree to watch Con Air with John, if only because his ridiculously unironic love for that movie and all things Nicolas Cage have become somewhat of a legend.
"No, but seriously, it's the best movie!" John says as he carefully puts the disc in the DVD player. Of course he brought the movie with him. "Best. Move."
You roll your eyes behind your shades. "Yeah, yeah, whatever you say"
"You'll see!" He settles back on the couch next to you, pulling the blanket over himself.
"Hey, I'm cold too," you complain. Really you couldn't care less, but you just want to be difficult.
John scoots a bit closer so that he manages to throw the blanket over both of you.
Suddenly you care a whole lot.

Maybe this whole movie thing won't be that bad at all.

After Con Air, you watch whatever you can find for free on Netflix. Half-way into some weird foreign film you can't remember the name of, John is asleep, leaning heavily on your shoulder.

The whole left side of your body is numb, and you really want to move to get the blood flowing again, but there is no way in hell you're waking Egbert to tell him to move.