his lighthouse

struck by lighting, pigs learning to fly, solar eclipse kind of rare

Pope is mad.

Mad, mad.

Like, pacing restlessly up and down the back porch of the Chateau in the weak early morning light while Kie shuffles outside balancing two mugs of coffee in her arms in the form of a shaky peace offering, kind of mad.

She sags down onto the weathered couch just outside the screen door and places the warm mugs down on the outdoor glass table, the clatter that they make on contact alerting him to her presence.

Waiting decidedly for him to make the first move, Kie remains silent, her gaze fixed firmly on the marsh just beyond the deck, where dawn's first few unnecessarily ostentatious rays of sunshine are pushing through a heavy covering of ash grey clouds on the horizon. Individual facets of light reflect off of the water, dancing, twisting and shimmying, smug as if they instinctively know she's internally marvelling at how breathtaking the whole thing looks.

Like the marsh always is at this hour of the morning, it's also impossibly peaceful.

Well.

It would be.

If you could discount the big fucking oxymoron stomping furiously back and forth in front of her, running his face through his hands and disrupting the hazy serenity of the sunrise she would otherwise likely be sleeping through, anger radiating off of him in dangerous waves. Pope's been a walking, talking, activated explosive ever since he had discovered her in their best friend's bed not fifteen minutes ago, the certain roguish, messy-haired, contagious blonde in question, pressed up against her alarmingly intimately, all feverish and warm and obscenely snuggly where he'd been nestled unashamed in her (concerningly willing) embrace overnight.

Screw activated explosive, he's a freaking time bomb, she decides vaguely, studying Pope carefully as she waits for him to implode.

After Kie has successfully downed half of her far too milky latte (sue her, it hadn't been an appropriate time to google the recipe she normally uses to make sure the measurements were accurate and her hands had been shaking when she'd poured a splash of milk into her mug from the carton she'd hastily pulled from the fridge), Pope seems to have finally given up on his infuriated pacing, perhaps realising he's not actually achieving anything apart from irritating Kie to the point of insanity. He flops down in the tattered, red armchair opposite the couch she's sat on.

He won't look at her.

'Did he fuck you?' he spits the words out like they taste bitter in his mouth, harsh and angry and so far removed from the gentle, sweet boy she has grown up with toasting marshmallows around a makeshift campfire, skimming stones into the ocean, taking it in turns to top and tail in the hammock and coaxing each other through their first tentative intoxicated high at the ripe old age of fourteen when JJ had raided his cousin Ricky's stash for the first time one Saturday evening.

John B had ended up passed out on the deck, his bare ass on show in lieu of some stupid dare he'd had to complete. JJ had been unsurprisingly unaffected, just mildly more relaxed and floppy than usual (some things never change) but Pope, however, had laughed uncontrollably for four hours, needing to be forcibly carried to bed, his weight shared equally between Kie and JJ as they dragged him inside and shifted him onto the pull out, continuously talking shit about how he reckoned marijuana was God's actual own creation (when did JJ think he could next stock up on their stash?) and how he thought Kie looked really pretty when she wore her curls pulled back from her face with that bandana.

She'd rolled her eyes when JJ had barked out a sharp laugh at that, clapping his best friend on the shoulder and egging him to shoot his shot while he still had temporary 'weed inflated balls of steel'. Kie had only sighed, declaring she was going to sit up with him to make sure he didn't choke on his own vomit.