All That Glitters

Mad Dog

Tw: violence

"JJ!" Pope yelled in between gunshots. "JJ!"

JJ scrambled to take off his headphones as soon as he saw the look on Pope's face. "What? Your dad yell at you again?"

"They know!"

"What?"

"They. Know."

"Alright, chill, bro. They don't know shit." He set the gun and his headphones down.

"Topper knows I sunk his boat." His voice cracked.

"How do you know they know?" JJ absentmindedly fixed his hat and put the gun back in his backpack. Before sitting down to watch Pope pace back and forth.

"Because—because I just saw Rafe and Topper..." Pope stopped, his eyes went wide and he covered his mouth. "They mad dogged me outside of Heyward's."

"Will you just calm down, and get a grip, man? They don't know shit."

Pope continued pacing.

"They have cameras. They could've seen me."

"There was no power, Pope. How could they have seen you?"

"It's Figure Eight! They got generators." Pope paced too far from JJ. He was heading into the woods. JJ got up to walk after him. "They don't give scholarships to kids that vengefully sink boats."

"Pope, that's the swamp. You're gonna get lost in there. Come back."

"It's not gonna look good on my transcript. I can't deal with this." He stopped and looked JJ right in the eye.

"Hey! No, stop! Pope, it's fine. They haven't told you outright that they have proof or anything. So it's all good." JJ took his shoulders and squeezed a little bit. "If some Kooks come up to you and ask if you had anything to do with it, what do you do?" He asked in a low voice.

"Deny the living shit out of it." JJ grasped his neck with both his hands in a comforting manner.

"Exactly. Deny, deny, deny. "

Pope nodded and breathed hard in through his nose. Closing his eyes.

"And I know you said to only use it for emergencies but just in case, you should carry it for protection. Since Rafe and Topper fucked up your back, that shows us they're willing to draw blood for this war. If we wanna have any chance, we gotta be willing to as well."

"JJ, I'm not carrying a gun with me twenty-four-seven. I'm not." He opened his eyes slowly. JJ was still staring at him.

"So don't. I'll be your protection." He smiled and released Pope.

"JJ, only for emergencies. Okay? Seriously. I don't want to kill anyone. I don't want you to kill anyone."

"Don't worry, Pope. The gun's mostly for show. I'm the weapon."

"JJ, stop. We talked about this. I did not go through six months of research and hunting down my grandfather's wedding ring-" Pope stopped himself too late.

"Your what?" JJ pulled back.

"Forget it." He tried to gloss over it. But it was too late.

"No. No, you said it was made from your grandma's earrings that she couldn't wear anymore."

"Yeah. There wasn't enough material to match your ring size so she offered the wedding ring as well. You don't have to feel bad. You were suffering, JJ. And I wanted to help. It only took so long because he was buried with it. So we had to wait for permission to—"