to love me is to suffer me

── ✦ pope who was sometimes very strange and didn’t know he was. he’d bring you rocks because you once said – while walking past an enormous house in oceanside – that the quartz gravel in somebody’s driveway was pretty. so naturally he picked up a random little rock from the gutter two streets over, wiped it on his shirt, and gave it to you.

he did it again and again and again because you found that you were more endeared than anything and had started keeping these rocks first in your pocket, then in a shoebox, and finally on your windowsill. you could’ve told anyone which came from where. so even if you didn’t particularly have a fondness for random rocks when you noticed the quartz gravel, you definitely grew one!

(pope who also later replaced said rocks with the real thing when he came into money he had no idea what to use for, only ever remembering how your older tastes had sometimes made you look through the window at the jewelers and your eyes had lingered too long on a little diamond necklace. he never saw the necklace, really, only noticed you wanting it. he knew how to take care of that)

pope who wasn’t really sure how a simple hangout worked, so when you’d asked him to come over later on saturday without specifying when, he sat on your porch step for two and a half hours. when your mother asked him if he wanted to come inside and eat something, he’d say no, because he was supposed to be hanging out with you, not your mother.

when you finally came, you just sat next to him on the step and stayed there, finding it all so natural.

── ✦ and when he’d begrudgingly agree to hang out with your other friends, it’d accidentally lead into him drawing them away from the both of you. he hadn’t even meant to do that (not at first, at least).

he’d watched your friend hand you some shitty snack and said something like “don’t give her those,” without any explanation, smacking the snack away from your hand gently (though the explanation was that you’d ate one of those and promptly threw up on the ferris wheel, and it’d put you off of them for life).

if someone asked if you wanted beer, he’d say “she’s driving.” you were?

if someone asked you if you were cold, he was already handing you his jacket, mentally beating himself up for not having noticed sooner.

he’d move his chair to face the door wherever he was sitting, because ever since he’d watched people break into their little trailer as a kid – smurf, always tangled up in some shit – he’d learned to stay alert. so people always thought he was rude when he randomly turned his chair away from the group while someone was speaking and they were forced to stare at his back.

── ✦ pope who during your surprise birthday party (that he was only invited to because everyone knew how mad you’d be if they didn’t invite your best friend since you were a kid) would just stand in the corner and watch everyone with a frown, and when it got too late he’d tell everyone that the party was meant to end at ten even though that was never decided. and everyone would leave because you’d just stand there beside pope being like “yup!”

and then you and pope would spend the next three hours bagging cans, wiping down corners, finding a nickel or two between the couch cushions because of how thorough the two of you were. that was the good part. he’d wait for that.

after, he’d say, “that was fun.” and you’d think he was talking about the party.

── ✦ pope who kept saying “i can take care of it,” whenever one of your friends mentioned someone bothering them. at first, they thought it was a turn of phrase – ugh, i’ll beat him up for you, but in pope’s language – until pope started asking where he worked, where he lived, and what his car looked like.

pope who had punched a guy for you, a boyfriend-of-a-friend, when he’d said something about you while you were in the bathroom. he’d asked the guy to go outside to smoke a cigarette, decked him, and come back with his hands in his pockets.

you were a little confused when your friends told you pope had gone out for a smoke, because pope doesn’t smoke, and because the six of them had squeaked it out at once.

he knew your friends knew, so when he came back, he’d just looked at all of them as he stood behind your chair as you and your friends sat in silence, tilting his head to the side to confirm whatever social contract he’d expected from them. then he’d simply shrugged and said, “he had to go home.”

── ✦ and when pope started noticing that you were being invited to hang out less with your other friends, consequently meaning he was being invited by you less with your other friends, he’d ask, “is it ‘cause of me?”

you’d immediately say “no!”

because even you hardly believed that it was because of him; pope was so good. he read the manuals for everything you got, peeled oranges for you – handed over in an unbroken coil, because a torn piece would've bothered him – fixed your bike chain, and made you the perfect sandwiches.

sure, he had a tendency to sometimes growl when a stranger got too close to you or a little puppy barked at you. sureee, he always had bruises on his knuckles without ever having a story for them (or rather, without giving one). and he sometimes glared when your girlfriends asked you to go on a double date. or appointed himself as the designated driver when they specifically asked you to have girls night.

on the occasion you actually did go, he’d sit outside in the car watching you through the window of some restaurant or bar.

he’d come in just once – after he saw a guy linger at your table for nineteen minutes and thought it was fucking girls night, waiting until the guy went to the bathroom – and when you gave him a questioning look he just pointed toward the bathroom, forcing an embarrassed shrug like he just wanted to take a leak.

maybe it was just a coincidence that you nor your friends saw the guy come out of the bathroom! pope stopped at your table on the way back, hands in his pockets, knuckles freshly pink, and said, “want anything?” and when you said no, he went back to his car.

“isn’t he so sweet?” you’d say to your friends, misty-eyed and dreamily, watching him sit in the parked car like he was a pretty sunset.

“the sweetest,” they’d say, three of them in unison like they’d been trained. you were completely unaware that they were in the midst of realizing you were a lost cause.

so obviously you could not, for the life of you, imagine that people wanted to not hang out with you because of pope. it was their loss, anyway, you thought.

pope was so relieved once he realized he wouldn’t have to spend time with other people, just so he could hang out with you.

── ✦ pope who took over their vacancy so quickly that you didn’t even consider it as a loss even for a day.

if you wanted to get drunk at a bar, he’d go with you and get a beer while you slammed three cocktails within an hour. he’d try to gossip with you when you asked him to “tell me something fun.”

“craig and renn had a fight.”

you’d light up because that was interesting. “good. he’s bad for her anyway.”

“yes,” he’d simply say.

and when you’d press for the details (what did they fight about? who started it? did anyone cry? on a scale of one-to-ten, how bad?), and he’d have none, he’d noticed how you’d slumped slightly, ever the nosy little thing he’d been hauling around for years, he’d frown. he genuinely had no more details to give you because he hadn’t cared enough to listen to craig’s tangent. but clearly you cared, so he’d say, “i’ll ask him.”

after he managed to get the hang of it – and found he liked it, talking shit, the whole nine yards of "but you didn't hear it from me – you’d both end up laughing.

and when you’d ask him for another story (because he had so many; the cody house was so weird), he’d say, “smurf woke up so late this morning,” thinking it held the same value as baz breaking up with his girlfriend at the time.

when you opened your mouth without saying a single word, stumped, he'd double down, "like ten," like you just didn't get it yet.

pope who somehow started filling every single shoe of the people in your life. pope, your girl best friend. pope, your mother (“did you eat?” “yes.”). pope, your dad, apparently, at some point (making it his mission to check your car).

pope, your dog (waits by the door and knows the sound of your car pulling in). pope, your bodyguard (constantly scaring away everyone, threat or not). pope, your financial advisor (“you don’t need to spend that kinda money on that.”) pope, your sugar daddy, immediately after (“fine. give it to me.” “what?” “i’m getting it.”)

pope, when you’d run him through the list, just looked at you confused and said, “someone’s gotta.”

once again, he was right. you’d gotten so lucky with pope, what were the odds of that? astronomical, you’d think, cheerfully. and then you’d wonder if he’d like one more shoe to fill.