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"Do you believe in God, JJ?"
They're both lying on the floor in Kie's room, feet at opposite ends of the room with their heads meeting in the middle. Kie doesn't raise her voice, but their proximity makes her question hurt his ears a little.
He thinks about it. Kie probably knows what she's going to say in response- she does this a lot, saying things that sound spontaneous or inquisitive when she's really just steering the conversation. You can always tell, because the words come out of her mouth too deliberate and controlled and it sounds like something someone in a movie would say. Do you believe in God, JJ? He wonders, a little cruelly, if Kie stays up at night cringing at being so cliché sometimes, at being so predictable in her attempts to seem different. Sometimes he feels like she asks this stuff just to make him feel stupid. It didn’t matter what he thought about God, because he could never say it in the right way, anyway. Kie never gave him the script. He settles on trying to avoid the question.
"Do you?"
She fiddles with the blunt in her hand, rolling the lit thing between her fingers. Not thinking. Performing. Kie feels like a movie star sometimes, or an actor, maybe, a nepotism baby who walks the streets with coffee in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. You’d think that’d be a compliment.
"I think organised religion is a scam that exploits the vulnerable and gives bigots and assholes a rationale for their bigotry and assholery," she says, worldly as always. A fancier, more elaborate way of avoiding the question, too. Maybe she really was thinking spontaneously.
"That's not about God, though," he tells her, staring at the slight pattern on her ceiling and wondering if it’s actually supposed to look like anything, “people who believe in the guy can suck but he can still exist.”
She puts the blunt to her mouth and inhales, and there's definitely a joke here: something crude and a bit shit and one he's almost definitely already made before, but he's too tired for the whole jester routine. He never said that he doesn't perform, too. But when it's 6am and the light is just barely coming in and they're both blazed he lets himself just exist for a while. He wonders if Kie ever stops performing.
"... Yeah. Yeah, I think God exists."
He grins lazily, "And she's a woman, right?"
"Shut up," she says, but there's no bite to it. Her head tilts against his, contemplative, and she semi-successfully tries to shrug her shoulders whilst lying down, "I mean… it's God, right?! They're probably fucking… non-binary, or agender or something."
"Hm." To be honest, JJ didn't think it really mattered what God's gender was. When people say God is a woman or whatever it just made him think of like… gay republicans. It feels like people are kind of focussing on the least important part.
“So."
"So?"
"You haven't answered yet.” Kie pauses for dramatic effect. “Do you believe in God?"
Jesus, Kie, maybe every conversation doesn't have to be so fucking profound all the time. "I don't know, man. I'm sixteen. I don't think I know anything."
"You know people."
He snorts, "Yeah. Sure."
She shifts her head slightly, and he feels her hair try and escape from under his head. He's not really sure how they ended up like this, cheek to cheek, talking about nothing, but he likes it, oddly. He's not sure why Kie feels the constant need to squirm about when he’s pretty sure could stay like this all day. Well, he’s always been low-maintenance. And sort of addicted to human contact. He remembers when Pope ran up and hugged him at Midsummers, almost knocking him down with the force of it. His body buzzed the whole rest of the night. He hasn’t been kissed in a very long time; if it happened nowadays, he thinks he’d pass out.
"...You know Pope," Kie mutters, like a secret, like she’s read his mind when she shouldn’t have (which, to be clear, she definitely shouldn’t have, that’s like, mind reader code 101, Kiara, you don’t read minds without permission). It feels weirdly violating, even though he knows that she didn’t actually intuit anything (mind readers don’t exist, he’s like 99% sure, because when he was eight he’d yell BOO in his head whenever he was bored, which was pretty much all the time, and no one flinched even once. He told Kiara this one time, and she told him he’d get a lot done if he spent less of his limited time on earth doing stupid shit. Well, you know what, that’s exactly the kind of thing a mind-reader would say to throw you off, so checkmate. He’s avoiding the subject. Sorry, Pope is a fun topic of conversation to have with literally anyone on the planet except Kie.) Honestly, there’s a fairly high chance that this has nothing to do with JJ at all, that this is just Kie looking for an opening to bitch about Pope or lament on their tragic failed romance.
Since their disaster of a relationship, JJ’s learned to be weary of when Pope or Kie brought up one another, because it meant a freakout or a rant and an awful lot of what do I do, JJ, the guy who hasn’t dated anyone since sixth grade and would lose consciousness if someone tried to kiss him, who I’ve made my personal relationship guru for no reason? He tries to be a good friend, but he thinks there's only so many times he could watch them make each other miserable and pretend to be chill about it before he'd burst a blood vessel. Since they broke up they’ve stopped talking about each other much. Or at all. Pope won’t even tell them why they broke things off. He’s been relieved from the relationship guru position, apparently. Still, he presumes this is it, Kie asked him to come over because she was ready to spill everything, treat him like a priest at confession (see, that’s pretty funny, JJ as a priest, because he’s- you know, the way that he is. All of a sudden the punchline seems to evaporate like a puff of smoke, probably a side effect of the weed. He's operating at an even lower brain capacity than usual.) Kie was gonna tell him everything, including that they seemed- from JJ’s perspective, at least- to patch things up and stay friends but have also become incapable of actually talking to each other. If he’s lucky, she’ll even reinstate him as marriage counselor (guru, whatever) and ask him what to do, how to fix things, probably cringe when he tells her that he broke Pope’s heart and it’s not that easy. Pope doesn’t hide things, he’s not Kie. Or JJ. When Pope feels something you really see it. That’s what makes him such an endearingly terrible liar. He was waiting for it, for the start of a lengthy speech he’d retain about a fifth of, when a great, looming silence settled over them both. Man, he was really terrible at predicting Kiara Carrera today, huh? Two strikes.
When the two were still together, JJ asked about what base Pope reached with Kie (not because he really wanted to know, but because he couldn’t think of another way to be involved except by making it about sex; he didn’t think teenage boys tended to earnestly care about their friends’ romantic lives unless they were named John B Routeledge) and Pope told him, “We're not even playing the same game." She reminds him of that now, so out of reach and unfathomable and enigmatic. She would so love that, if he told her. Kie gets off on her own inscrutability, he's sure of it. But here's the truth: JJ and Kie were playing the same game, probably. They both just think it's a different one, that they're on opposite teams despite the same colour uniforms. JJ and Kie would make good teammates, actually. Aggressive and bitchy and obsessed with seeming superior except for a few choice moments of perfect clarity, moments where they work in tandem in grin at each other and think all the stupid fights were a collective dream. He's not sure any of that was what Pope meant, though. He tends to take metaphors too far, the way he tends to take most things too far. JJ likes to push, generally speaking. He especially likes to push Kie, so in the face of her unreadable silence he pulls a face and tells her what the hell is that supposed to mean because JJ thinks if he stopped playing dumb around Kiara Carrera they'd have maybe seven separate serious conversations he didn't want to have. Pope always said romance movies were idiotic (when they watched romance movies, which they did, since John B eats them up and he's a master at the whole puppy dog eyes thing) because the main couple never communicated, and it was ridiculous to believe anyone would be so difficult in real life. It’s just not logical! Well, Pope can speak for himself. Some people are just fine knowing things they never say and saying things they don't mean and hoping their best friends don't look them in the eye for too long. Some people are normal, thank you very much. Kie huffs out a sigh, like he said something tragically wrong. She ponders for a moment.
"You know, you guys are like…" She vaguely waves her hands in the air, oddly inarticulate, then enmeshes her fingers together. "You know him."
JJ wonders if people actually thought of him and Pope like that. As a duo. As… enmeshed. One flesh. 'Til death do us part. Okay, he's getting stupid now. It's probably just Kiara, who likes to watch from the sidelines when they have fun, who called them boyfriends once just because they went to the movies together (which, okay, was a gay movie, but he didn’t know that until after they bought the tickets), who thinks of getting too close to someone is like, a federal offence. She's got it all wrong, anyway. JJ and Pope weren’t that close, or as close as they used to be. He really didn't know shit about Pope, nowadays.
"I didn't even know he liked you, you know that?” He blurts out, more indignant than he meant to be. “If we were really…" he mirrors her hand gesture, which she's still got positioned up in the air despite the blood probably having left her fingers, and that moment hangs in the air a second, two exact opposites facing away from each other yet mimicking one another anyway. Two blazed idiots stuck together with their hands in the air.
When he slots his fingers together, his first thought is that there's definitely an innuendo in there somewhere, his brain just won't let him get to it. His second thought is that his hands are weirdly, uncomfortably warm, like he's holding two nuclear reactors in his palms. Huh. That tracks. He's starting to think he could say any nonsense about himself then find meaning afterwards. Cursed and blessed to find meaning in everything, in a promise, in a secret, in a kiss on the cheek. In two hands fused together. Maybe God is the meaning we make. Maybe God is the ability to speak nonsense, a monkey sat a typewriter, and think about it for long enough that you begin to weep. Humans are so simple, JJ thinks. We just want to think and touch- and feel, more than anything else. He’s never held himself like this before, for this long. Maybe God is in his own hands. He is so very, very high.
When the moment ends, and Kiara brings her hands down to her stomach, JJ feels oddly betrayed. His private earnestness exposes itself in the warmth of his cheeks. Why did being human always have to be so fucking embarrassing? It's obvious, really, why Kie was always pretending. Sincerity was a real bitch.
He blinks, only just remembers what they were talking about. "If we were like this-" he repeats, even though his hands are back down to earth, fingers pulled apart- "then I would have noticed something as huge as that. You can't say you know someone then be surprised when they tell you they're in love, that's… that shit should be the most obvious thing in the world."
"Did he tell you he was in love?"
"No," and here he does shift, feeling the friction of his hair against hers (thinking, man, this would be a real nightmare if one of us had lice right now huh) because he started this conversation feeling unreal and secluded in the dim light of the morning, but now the sun's becoming brighter and his skin feels too tight and he feels, despite knowing that Kie's eyes are on the ceiling just like his, that he's being watched. "No," he says again, like a foreign word he's trying to pronounce correctly, "but I mean, I got the memo."
Kie hums. Breathes in, out. In, out. He should ask her to teach him to meditate, he thinks, as if that wouldn't end in Kie trying not to backhand him after five minutes of his fragmented and hyperactive attention span. He would like it, though, if in times like these he could just breathe with purpose, like it meant more than a reflex. If he could breathe instead of talk or yell or throw a punch. He's jealous of Kie, he realises with all the force of a punch to the jaw. It's kind of obvious, really. Of course a poor boy with a shitty homelife would envy the rich girl with parents so loving they border on overbearing- but it's more than that, he's pretty sure. JJ doesn't think Kie is capable of everything- she's actually kind of a mess- but she excels at acting like she is, of perfectly curating an air of composure, or… superiority. He wishes he could think before he speaks, seem like more than he is, the way Kie does. He envies her lies. JJ was a liar, and a damn good one, too, but he was no Kiara Carrera. He had been dethroned from his title as the pogues' best liar a long time ago, maybe since Kie first kissed Pope on that dock. Before, probably. Maybe Kie’s been lying her whole life.
"I don't think that Pope loved me, JJ."
"I mean, he obviously liked you-"
"Liking isn't loving."
"I know, Kie, jesus, I'm not an idiot." His protestation hangs lamely in the early morning air, made worse by the fact that he doesn't have anything else to add. He really isn't in the mood to fervently defend Pope's love for someone he already (miserably, it's worth pointing out) dated and broke up with. Maybe Kie was right, maybe Pope never loved her. Why should he care? He never claimed to know Pope Heyward; he had made that crystal clear.
"I think he liked the idea of me. Because we're already friends and it's, you know, logical, and he's all about that."
"Sure. I guess."
She pauses. Not thinking, or performing, just… preparing. The silence is thick and tense and she's biting her cheek (yes, they're faces really are pushed that close together, it's really a wonder neither of them have pulled each other apart again).
"I think Pope loves you."
…
……
……….
What the fuck?
It feels worse than a punch to the jaw, or a blow to the stomach, he's used to all that. This is an entirely new kind of shock to his system- what being struck by lightning feels like, maybe. Or drowning. He thinks he might fall down, then remembers he's already on the floor. The possibility that he may just sink through it and insert himself under Kie's house with the dirt and the worms presents itself like a prophetic vision. Frankly, it seems more likely than any kind of regular conversation coming after this. Fuck, fuck him, fuck Kie, fuck this whole morning. Why can't anything be easy? Why can't he just get high? Why does Kiara Carrera need the upper hand in every fucking conversation? He says the only thing he can think of.
“You’re crazy. You’re crazy and also high off your ass.”
All she says back is, "Yeah, maybe."
The silence between them thickens and curdles, while JJ relives every moment he's ever thought he really hated Kie, not in the stupid petty way but in a way that was maybe more real and true than anything else he's ever felt. He thinks about when she pushed him off the swingset in fourth grade and the time she told him he's going to live and die on the Cut (she thought it funny, because it was true, and he thought it tragic, for the same reason). He thinks of when they played spin the bottle and it landed on Jade, some random girl from the Kook academy, with long hair and paper thin lips and a thing for guys that her parents wouldn't approve of, and Kiara stared at him like he was being held hostage, like he needed saving. He thinks of every time she looked at him with scorn and every time she looked at him with pity.
It's only once Kie murmurs, "You need to get the fuck off my hair, man," that he snaps back to the present moment. Every previous thought and feeling just kind of deflates in him then. Kiara is sitting up, absently brushing through her messed up hair with her fingers. She looks sad. A better word for it right escapes him, this simple stupid emotion. There's a weariness that sits on her face uncomfortably, like it knows it shouldn't belong there, on someone so young, so rich. In another universe, Kiara grew up a picture perfect Kook, with a shitty little group of smarmy assholes hanging off of her, money falling out of their pockets, her only knowing the name JJ vaguely, like a D-list celebrity known more for scandal than for his filmography. This different Kie would be spending her Saturday on a fancy boat, in the lap of some guy who doesn't love her, and who she doesn't love back, instead of beside a boy who can't decide if he hates her or loves her or is her. Maybe Kiara was destined to be miserable in every universe, actually. There was something in her bones, deeper than DNA, realer than atoms. An immovable isolation.
When she fully pulls away from him, wordless, he feels it- he really feels it. A gaping void where a second half of him used to lie. Maybe him and Kie were the real one flesh, he considers, ugly and visceral and real. Maybe Kie is his true other half, in sickness and in health, til death do him part, because when they touch each other their fingers sink into flesh and they interweave like lazy fingers hanging in the air. Maybe he and Kie were made of the same stars, the same loneliness. Instead Pope was… something entirely different. JJ tries to think of something religious, something that fits the great story he's crafted in his mind (push and push, push and push). He remembers that one painting, of Adam reaching out to God, or God reaching to Adam. Reaching. Yeah, that sounds right. It's easier to filter Pope through metaphor; it's too much sometimes, to witness him literally and fully, like looking right at the sun. Shit, see? He can't help himself. He'll cultivate Pope Heyward into his own kind of God, and answer "yes" the next time Kie asks him if he believes. Then, like every other believer, he'll sit content in his own dissatisfaction, believing that he could never truly witness God with his own eyes; his divine visage dismantles those who see him. He and Kie will swim in perpetual shared self, will fight with mirrors and confess to themselves the same things in a million different ways, whilst Pope sits above it all. That's unfair, really, to deny Pope the experience of being human. Of being ugly. The thing about gods, he figures, is that whether or not they truly existed, most people were probably wrong about the specifics. He's sixteen; he doesn't know anything. He's probably wrong about Pope Heyward, the way he always seems to be, thinking he knows him more than anyone then being caught blindsided. He files that for later- Pope, god, reverence, regret- figures he's had about seventeen too many thoughts for today, not to mention he's still kind of grieving the half of him that's disconnected themselves and is now scrolling through her phone on her bed. Tomorrow they'll fight, most likely, if not today, because Kie is Kie and JJ is JJ. They kind of hate each other, sometimes.
Other times, it's 8am, and he's able to reach through all the flickering and fading personas, and pull out Kie's heart, feel the steady beat match to his own pulsing in Kie's palm. They're killing each other, or keeping each other alive, depending on who you ask. That doesn't matter to him, though. All he sees is her heart, warm and red and visceral, and beautiful, in a certain kind of light. As he stands up to leave- without the basic courtesy of a "goodbye" or a "see you later" that he would have afforded any of his other friends- she laughs loudly at something obscured to him, the sun's glare washing out her screen. Before he shuts the door behind him he glances at her one more time and searches for some kind of proof that the past few hours weren't a complete illusion. She doesn't look up.