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One of my early headcanons about Johnny, which is half serious and half crack, is that he can't read.
(I know, he's supposed to be leaving his name tagged all over the walls of Monopolis, but also kids who can't read at all, or well, can still definitely learn how to write their names, and be wonderful artists who can reproduce shapes. Johnny was just never taught, back in his shitty banlieue nord school! Or maybe he skipped too much for it to stick, or maybe he has severe undiagnosed dyslexia, or needs glasses, which doesn't fit the rest of my story but I love the image of Johnny in glasses so here, take it as a gift from me.)
Anyway, that's why he's "never read a newspaper." And also why he loves comic books, because he can look at the pictures.
So anyway, it goes like this:
Cristal joins the Etoiles Noires in the hangar and figures out that several of them have huge gaps in their literacy education. She has nothing much to do while she's supposed to be hiding out in the hangar, so she takes it upon herself to make Cristal School happen and raise the reading level around here.
Meanwhile, Johnny is always ~~around somewhere while that's happening, tinkering with his motorbike, cleaning his gun, puttering around the car or "taking a nap" (with his eyes open).
At first Cristal thinks it's because he wants to keep an eye on her -- is it because he doesn't trust her around the Etoiles Noires? Or because he doesn't trust them around her? Neither is a great option, and it's pretty nerve-racking but he doesn't say anything, so she perseveres.
And then, one day, she catches Johnny peering intently at the bit of wall she's using as an improvised chalkboard. He's frowning in concentration and his lips are moving. So that means that actually, he's hanging around because he wants to follow the lessons! But clearly he doesn't want anyone to know, and especially not her.
So anyway, Cristal being who she is, she can't let him get away with it. She confronts him one night when they're in private, and he admits to it, and also lets slip that Sadia knows -- she's been helping him cover for it with Cristal -- but that she also makes fun of him for it and never let him forget how dumb he was and how much he needed her to make up for it :(
And Cristal feels terrible that she never noticed, but how could she have? He keeps a hoard of comic books piled up next to his pallet, and she's found him "reading" them a bunch of times. But he explains that he looks at the pictures and makes up his own stories, which are probably cooler anyway.
Obviously, sexy alphabet learning ensues! Cristal helps him practice using his comic books, and she's kind and patient and never treats him like he's an idiot (contrary to all his teachers) and never gets angry at him (unlike his father, who never missed an opportunity to tell him how disappointing he was) or treats him with pity (unlike his mother, who used to tell him that it was okay, he was probably very smart in other ways!)
Also, following up on the "can't write but can draw his name" idea, maybe Johnny is good at sketching! And he has little notebooks that he pilfers from around town that are full of portraits of the Etoiles Noires and random stray cats (Johnny loves cats, but that's a headcanon for another day) and also Cristal -- Cristal asleep, Cristal smiling at him from the passenger seat of the Jaguar, and mortifyingly for him, many many sketches of half- or fully-naked "Starmania"-era Cristal that definitely predate their meeting and that she wasn't supposed to ever find out about, oops.
But he leaves her little sketches of herself with her name carefully written in block letters underneath, like: CЯISTAL, and it fully melts her heart.
And then massmedia, she of the brilliant ideas, said: "What if Sadia knew he/the Etoiles Noires couldn't read and so she was careless with incriminating evidence of her being a double-agent around, and now that Cristal is here, they find out!"
Which is an excellent idea for a way to introduce a fix-it where they get to live out the rest of their days happily on their goat farm :) :) :) And Johnny draws his own comics about their adventures to show their future children, and when Cristal is pregnant and uncomfortable, he reads her stories to help her go to sleep.
The End :)