I'm glad you liked the story even if some aspects didn't work for you. Thank you so much for commenting! :)

As for the harshness, the way I see him at least, John has got some aspects of it, like everyone else. And anger (or despair or rage or pain) sometimes might get the better of him (which would explain why he had fallen out with a lot of his friends). In my head John (and he spends plenty of time there since I'm a John girl :) ) has tremendous capacity for caring, love, self sacrifice, but there can be moments of grittiness and utter fuckedup-ness.