Chapter Text
It’s the summer they’re all ten years old, and JJ Maybank doesn’t talk about home.
Well, he talks about the pogues, and maybe that’s the same thing for him.
More specifically, JJ doesn’t talk about his dad.
Pope knows why, somewhere in the back of his mind, but he sees, sees for himself that summer.
John B must have seen it a long time ago, but he’s more perceptive than Pope, and JJ is shy about this stuff. But John B must have known, Pope realizes, when JJ comes tearing down the dirt road towards the chateau on his bike, black eye blooming on his face, split lip still bleeding, and John B looks up, alert and sad.
JJ leaps off his bike, almost while it’s still in motion, rolling in the dirt in a tangle of too-skinny limbs and blond hair. He pops up, grinning brightly, and John B’s face changes, too, eyes darkening.
And then both of them put grins on their faces like they’re used to this sort of thing, pretending they’re okay when they aren’t.
Pope doesn’t understand why people do so much pretending.
“What’s up, bro?” JJ yells cheerfully. “I stole a pack of cigarettes from my dad! Wanna see if we can figure out how to smoke ‘em?” He stops short when Pope sits up from the hammock.
It makes the bottom of Pope’s stomach feel funny, the way JJ’s bright blue eyes change when he looks uncertainly at Pope.
“Oh, hey man.” JJ says it casually, like he isn’t still bleeding.
“What happened”—Pope starts, but John B elbows him in the stomach with one bony little elbow.
“Let’s try it,” John B agrees.
Pope wonders if John B would have agreed so quickly if JJ hadn’t looked like this—desperate and hurt and trying so hard to pretend he isn’t sad.
‘My dad’s in his office working but we can steal his lighter,” John B adds, his own eyes lighting up the way they always do when he gets the kind of ideas that will inevitably get them in trouble.
Pope is about to say no, absolutely not, to both the cigarettes and the lighter theft.
But despite JJ’s sunshine-bright grin, his eyes just look so sad.
Pope notices, because he’s almost always looking at JJ’s eyes.
It’s for scientific reasons, because Pope loves science, and JJ is the world’s first great mystery. His eyes are just so blue. Impossibly blue.
Pope wants to understand the science behind JJ’s eyes, how one person can have eyes the shade of the bluest sky, or the ocean when the sun is at its brightest.
“Okay,” Pope says. “I’ll get the lighter.”
John B’s head swivels and he stares at Pope in astonishment.
JJ’s bright blue eyes turn into stars. “My boy,” he yells triumphantly, pumping one fist towards the sky, which can’t actually compare to his eyes, Pope decides. Can’t even come close.
“But,” Pope says. “Then I get to fix up your face.”
JJ’s expression falls just as dramatically, like happy is a switch that only Pope and John B can turn on for him, like he’s forgotten how somehow. “I’m okay,” he says grumpily. “Nothing that hasn’t happened before. And I mostly deserved it.” He cracks a grin, like this is a joke, like it’s all for the bit and he had so much fun causing trouble that it doesn’t matter to him how much it hurts afterwards.
Pope just shrugs. “I’m gonna go get that lighter,” he says. He doesn’t make up his mind often, but when he does, there’s no changing it. JJ came to them, and he was hurt, and he was sad, and Pope is gonna fix both.
“I’m gonna get my dad’s first aid kit,” John B says hesitantly.
JJ glares at him like he’s a traitor, and John B walks away fast so he doesn’t have to see.
Pope looks at JJ. JJ looks at Pope.
JJ’s eyes are sad again. A little confused, too, like he doesn’t know how to act if they won’t all just pretend things are okay.
Pope will get better at pretending, in time. (JJ will too, but he’ll never get good enough to fool Pope).
Impulsively, Pope grabs JJ’s hand in his. “Wanna steal the lighter together?” he asks JJ.
It’s a science experiment of sorts, just to see if Pope can get JJ’s blue eyes to turn into stars again.
He’ll have to make a note in his lab notebook if it works, which is not a diary even if John B says it is.
JJ stares at him. “We’re gonna do our crime together?” he asks slowly.
Pope nods.
And all the stars come back out.
#
Pope isn’t an expert (yet), but he thinks it’s probably a bad sign that there’s blood matted in JJ’s sun-blond hair. John B shifts around nervously, looking as if he’s trying very hard to be brave for both JJ and Pope, and then finally disappears into the kitchen to make JJ some food.
(That’s how pogues say I love you.)
JJ cracks some joke that Pope doesn’t really listen to, and then Pope puts the hose on a trickle and runs his fingers through JJ’s hair to scrub the blood out. He cleans his lip carefully, dabbing a bit of Vaseline on the places that are cracked.
“You should see the other guy,” JJ says when John B comes back and presses an ice pack onto JJ’s black eye.
“You fought a whole pack of kooks again?” John B grins down at them, but his hands are so gentle with JJ that he doesn’t fool either of them.
There’s a science to that, too, Pope thinks, to being tender with each other while they pretend not to be.
JJ’s eyes have that look in them again, like there’s something that hurts deeper than all the bruises, but he grins at Pope from beneath the blond hair, now wet and matted to his forehead. “Thanks, Dr. Spock.”
(Pope will realize later, maybe years later, that JJ Maybank is the first person to ever call him a doctor. The first person who makes Pope think oh. maybe I could be. JJ is the first person to ever believe in Pope, maybe, when it comes down to it.)
Pope sprays JJ with the hose, straight in the face, and then laugh bubbles up straight from JJ’s bruised chest, and he tackles Pope into the dust.
They roll around, soaking up all the dust in John Bs front yard.
Pope is taller than JJ, always has been, but he lets JJ win for a while, because that makes JJ happy (Pope knows, because he’s already done this science experiment before).
And just when JJ will think that he’s got Pope pinned, Pope rolls him over, and that’s when John B will jump on, which just makes JJ laugh harder, and then they’re all rolling and laughing and getting way dirtier than they’d been a moment ago.
Pope will write about this in his lab notebook later, too.
He’ll use his blue markers, all of them, even though they never quite capture the blue of JJ’s eyes. He’ll call this experiment see all the stars. He’ll call it science and not art, and he’ll be wrong, because something Pope Heyward won’t learn until later is that the way he feels about JJ will always, always be both.
(He doesn’t bother to write down the results of the cigarette experiment—he hates them, and he suspects that so do John B and JJ, though they just cough, pretend they’re not coughing, and try another one until Big John comes down to the front porch to yell at them).
Pope does a lot of experiments that summer they’re all ten. Writes them down carefully in his lab notebook. He uses up so many blue markers that summer, too. But there’s science to do. Experiments to try.
Just for a chance to see all those stars.