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JJ Maybank has been obsessed with Spiderman since he was reading tattered comic books at the age of six. He was never that good at reading books with lots of words, but comics were the one thing that didn’t make him feel as colossally stupid.
Pictures made things easier, and words like BAM! and POW! were way easier to decode when the letters squiggled around and switched places on the page.
There wasn’t much for trick-or-treating on the cut, at least not where JJ lived, but the October of his second grade year, his teacher, Ms. Jeanna, called him up after class. He had thought he was in trouble, because even though she was nice, this was school, and he was a Maybank.
But she had just matter-of-factly handed him a only lightly-used, neatly folded spiderman costume, and said I think you need this.
She had sent him on with a wave of her hand, and he had stood outside her door in the hallway staring down at it for a whole fifteen minutes trying not to cry.
So anyway.
Yea.
He’s been a little obsessed with Spiderman for years, and Pope knows that, which is why it is categorically unfair, maybe even a hate crime, when in junior year of high school Pope shows up to a costume party at the boneyard in a Spiderman outfit.
It’s not one of those shitty cheap ones, either, it looks well-made, almost like it’s crafted to fit the planes of Pope’s abs, the curve of muscle in his biceps. When Pope walks into the circle in front of the bonfire, JJ, who prides himself on generally being in control of his own body, nearly trips directly into the fire.
JJ himself considered a variety of different costumes, including a frog (for ribbiting at john b), a jailbird (though he decided the orange jumpsuit would feel a little too familiar in a way that was way too heavy for halloween, even if he was just doing it for the bit), and a pirate, just because.
He settled on slutty nurse, mostly so that he could chase John B around the boneyard all night, waving a thermometer and yelling at him to bend over, as all good friends do.
He has just the right amount of confidence and humor and wildness that people laugh but accept it when he swaggers into the party in a pair of too-short shorts (which are actually his cousin Ricky’s old scrubs, cut off at mid-thigh), a too-tight red-cross plastered tank top he bought on discount that is definitely supposed to be a woman’s costume, a jaunty little nursing cap, and, of course, a joint between his lips.
Pope stops dead still when he sees JJ, opens his mouth and then shuts it again, shaking his head just a little. The look in his eyes is so fondly exasperated that JJ suddenly thinks the few feet of space between them are an entire hate crime.
He doesn’t have the chance to jump Pope, even though he could probably do it and then laugh and pretend it was for the bit and cover up the stupidly persistent feelings that have been harassing him all summer, and all the summers and autumns and winters and springs before that for years now, if he’s honest with himself.
“A nurse,” Pope says, a grin tugging at his stupid, perfect mouth.
JJ waggles his eyebrows suggestively at Pope, raises the small thermometer in a gesture that makes Pope roll his eyes. “Need your temperature taken?”
How many jokes can he make about actual anal penetration before someone figures out that it’s not all just for the bit?
At least one more, JJ thinks, and turns his attention to John B, who is shot gunning a beer.
“Bend over, John B,” JJ tells him pleasantly, and John B lurches away, beer spraying both of them as he does.
JJ really doesn’t have the energy to focus his attention on John B, or honestly, literally anyone else there, not when Pope leans back against one of the wooden posts and folds his arms. The costume is so tight to his body that JJ can’t construct one coherent thought, actually.
Not when Pope’s thighs look like that. Not when the fabric accentuates the bulge more than covers it.
“JJ?” Kie is at his shoulder, a beer in her hand, and a look on her face like she’s been calling his name more than once.
“Hmm?” He grins at her, jostles her gently with his shoulder.
She’s not dressed up, as a protest against consumerism, or fast fashion, or something else with longer words that JJ doesn’t understand. “Damn,” she says. “I mean, I agree, for the record. Pope’s ass in that costume?”
“I”—JJ’s grin is stuck on his face, but his throat is suddenly very dry. “I mean, yea,” he recovers, tips his head back and lifts the joint back to his lips. “Pope’s tight ass has always done the Pogues proud.”
Kie smirks at him. “Okay, Nurse Maybank,” she says. “But one of these days, one of you has to make a move.”
That is patently unfair, because first of all, Kie is calling him out? On top of Pope wearing the literal worst thing he could have possibly worn? And JJ has been making moves on Pope since before he knew how to make moves.
“No,” Kie says.
Doubly, triply unfair.
She can win an argument he didn’t even verbalize.
“Making a move doesn’t count if you play it off as a joke,” she says, like the insufferable brat that she is, and then she all but prances away, tossing a grin at him over her shoulder.
Perhaps JJ will talk about his feelings, then. Just out of spite for Kiara fucking Carrera, who looks hot despite her lack of costume, who remains cool despite the fact that she doesn’t do Halloween, who he will remain obsessed with forever even when she tells him brutal truths with a smirk on her face and then waltzes away like she has won.
JJ drops the stupid thermometer in the sand. He can tell John B to bend over any night. Tonight? Tonight JJ is going to go tell Spiderman about his fucking feelings.
Pope has meandered further down the beach, and now he’s posing for some pictures with a few junior girls dressed up in the shortest of skirts that are supposed to be a superhero costume of some sort, maybe.
JJ, in his cut-off scrubs that expose most of his thighs, has absolutely no right to judge anyone else’s short shorts, but he judges away, because those girls are standing awfully close to Pope, their hands pressed against the planes of muscle that the spidey suit clings to.
“Pope,” JJ calls out, his voice sharp and wild as the sea.
Pope jumps, just a little, and the girls flit away, giggling.
Pope smiles when he sees JJ, and something in JJ’s chest feels strange, too light and too heavy at the same time, because Pope wasn’t smiling like that for the camera. Pope doesn’t smile like that for anyone else.
Just JJ.
JJ opens his mouth, and finds, suddenly, that he is quite stuck. He should have kept the thermometer, joked his way straight back out of this.
Instead, he holds up his only other weapon, the joint in his fingers. “How does spidey feel about a smoke?”
Pope grins, steps a little closer. “As your friendly neighborhood spiderman,” he says. “I think I will have to stop this blatant violation of the law.”
JJ’s breath catches, just a little, but his grin is unflagging. He holds out his hands, wrists pressed together. “I give up,” he says. “You’ve caught me.”
Pope laughs, swats gently at JJ’s hand.
JJ tries again, lifts the joint until his finger grazes Pope’s lip.
Pope’s grin slips. He has been a bolder version of himself since they all returned from that island in the Carribean, their Poguelandia. And the costume, the idea of a different identity, something you can slip into and back out of without it costing you anything, that makes Pope bolder, too.
So now he stares at JJ, his eyes dark, waiting.
The hesitation, the anxiety that usually holds Pope back—that’s missing, gone, swept out to sea, gone with the tide. It’s just Pope left behind.
Pope and his dark eyes and his stupid costume and the hunger in his eyes. “JJ,” he says.
JJ swears Pope’s voice has dropped an octave.
“Pope,” JJ says hoarsely.
“Did you make this costume yourself?” Pope is standing just inches from him. He looks down, his gaze slow and sure as it trails down JJ’s body. He reaches out, trails one finger up JJ’s bare thigh towards the ragged cutoff where the scrubs end. Closes two fingers over the material, his knuckle brushing the bare skin of JJ’s thigh.
JJ sucks in his breath.
He remembers, vaguely, that he had concocted a plan only moments ago to make a move on Pope, and that plan was fueled by spite, weed, and general bad judgment.
But he finds, now that Pope’s hand is lingering on his thigh, that he does not mind that Pope made the first move, after all.
Does not mind at all.
“Yes,” JJ answers, because Pope asked him a question, asked something about—his costume, maybe. But yes means a thousand different things now, in this dark piece of beach away from the fire, though not so far that they won’t be caught.
“Yes,” JJ says again, and now his hand closes over the hand Pope trailed over his thigh. He lifts the joint again with his other hand, and Pope parts his lips just slightly, accepting it.
“Bro,” JJ says weakly when Pope exhales the smoke softly, never moving away.
“If you call me bro one more time,” Pope says, his tone almost peevish, and then JJ is laughing, and they are both laughing, and then Pope is kissing him with a confidence JJ has never quite seen before.
They don’t stay long at the party after that. Not long enough for John B to find them. Definitely not long enough for Kie to notice and start gloating.
Nope.
JJ out.
They’re back at the chateau in no time, though it still feels like an eternity to JJ, who has never met patience, and then finally Pope has JJ pressed up against the wall outside the house, one hand pinning JJ’s hip, the other threaded through JJ’s fingers.
“Yea?” Pope asks softly.
“Yea,” JJ says. “Fucking finally, Pope.”
“Huh,” Pope says, and then he is tugging at JJ’s short shorts and JJ doesn’t do any more thinking at all.