Chapter Text
John meets Jim in biology class when they're assigned as lab partners to disect a frog. It's early in the year, only a month in but John's pretty sure he's never seen this kid before. He looks way too young to be here, and when he says he's thirteen to John's fifteen and that he's a fresh transfer student, it explains a lot.
"I don't know why they stuck me here," Jim complains. "I should be in the higher levels, not here doing...this."
As the class progresses, John agrees, lets Jim take the lead. Jim knows exactly what he's doing, gives John orders more than anything else--"Put the pin here-yes. There, hold that. Right there-no, there. Exactly like that. Good."
They finish long before anyone else does, swinging their legs in the awkward silence that descends now that they're not working. Jim sighs, mutters and hums, drums his fingers on the table, pokes the frog with his pencil, twitches. He seems entirely unable to sit still or abide the silence.
"You're not as useless as the rest of these nitwits," Jim offers.
It should be offensive, the backhanded compliment, but instead John just laughs. "Thanks, I think. I've never heard that before."
Jim's eyes flick over him, scanning. "That's true. You shouldn't listen to your dad though. He's an even bigger idiot than your sister. Just because they're older doesn't mean they know anything."
John is to taken aback to form any denials. "You--my--how did you even know I have a sister? Or about my dad?"
And it feels--not wrong, but just plain weird to acknowledge, in even a slight way, what his sister, what his father--what his family is like at home. No one knows. John goes to school, eats lunch with his friends, sits with them in class and plays with them in P.E. and all the while never quite connects properly. There's always a barrier, most literally formed by the way none of them can ever come over to his house and how he never talks about what goes on there. It's a forbidden place and his friends don't get it, think the way he isolates himself is a form of snobbery.
Jim looks surprised at John's lack of anger. "You want to know?"
"Well...yeah." John shrugs. "That's why I asked, isn't it?"
Jim blinks then draws himself up straight in his chair and turns to fully face John, his small thirteen year old body suddenly seeming more solid somehow, like he's older and wiser. Definitely belonging to a level above John.
"Your backpack is a hand-me down. There are discolored patches where you removed stickers, most of them in the shape of flowers. There's even a few stars left on the side, though you've colored them over with black marker to try and make them more suited to you. You could have put them there yourself during a phase at a younger age but given your personality type that's unlikely. You're not a flowers and shiny stars bloke. So, given the age of the backpack and it's general appearance, it was given to you by an older sibling who was that type of person, most likely a girl. So you have an older sister. Yes?"
John stares. "Well, yes..."
Jim smirks at him. "Plus I saw you in the hall with an older girl who looked related to you." He giggles. "I guess you could say that was a little bit of a cheat.
"But I saw her." Jim puts up a finger. "She walked upright, head up and straight ahead, almost aggressively. You on the other hand, slouch when you walk, have a tendancy to look at the ground and not at people. When the teacher talked to you earleir and told you to sit with me, it seemed like you thought you were going to get a scolding of some kind. You're far too agreeable and ready to accept other people as better than you. You know what else I saw?"
"What?"
"You had to pull up your sleeves to keep them out of the way of the gloves and when you were holding back frogs skin flap I saw a bruise."
Now John starts to bristle but it's more with embarrassment than anything else. His shoulders go up, his chest tightens. "That's--that's just--"
"Shut up," the thirteen year old orders. John clamps his mouth shut and thinks too agreeable indeed.
"It's true, you're very healthy, very active with the whole," Jim's hands twirl in the air, "that whole sports thing. Most people would assume you got it that way. But that's impossible: The size is of a large man's hand that was holding you down. I got beaten up often enough at my old school, I know what that looks like."
"Why'd they beat you up?" John interupts, perturbed.
"Because I'm smarter than them of course. People don't like it when you're younger and beat their grades, or when you know things about them, even when those things are horrrrrribly obvious. Like what I'm saying about you, and how your father held you down to hit you. Probably in the chest, from how you're holding yourself. And the way I know your sister didn't try to stop it and that she's horrible. She's older, she should be trying to protect you. Instead she just stood back and let it happen." Jim leans closer and whispers, "Maybe even agreed with it."
John can't breath. He jerks away from the boy's steady stare and instead his gaze falls on the frog. He feels just as dissected as it looks. John can feel those big dark eyes drilling into him, feels like they're reading his soul. It's practically a religous experience; John is torn between being more impressed than he's ever been in his entire life and utter horror that someone knows. And something else, something far, far from horror that's so fucking happy that someone finally knows--
"I also know you're better than them. The bruise means you tried to fight even though you had no hope of ever winning. You fight every time, you never stop. And the way how right now I know you're not going to do like those other boys and beat me up for what I'm saying. Which is, I have to admit, the one surprising thing about you, I expected you to lash out and shut me up. I thought because I'm younger you'd try to scare me into cowering when I first said that your father was an idiot. Because of the whole ooooooh sports thing. But clearly that was..." John can hear Jim frowning at his own mistake. "Oh well."
There's a new silence, with John still trying to absorb it all and Jim still staring at him. There's someone who knows and thinks John is better? (And hell, that's not even considering that the way he knows is the most astounding thing John's ever encountered, how John didn't have to say a single word--because he can't, he just can't say anything about it outloud it was like he'd gone mute the few times he tried--and someone finally noticed.) There's someone who knows and thinks John is better! Who thinks his stupid fucking wreck of a father---
"Hey. Hey." Jim pokes him repeatedly in the shoulder with a pencil. "Hey. Heeeeeeeeeeeey. What, did I break you or something?"
John snaps back to look at him and the first thing that comes blurting out of his mouth is "If anyone here ever tries to beat you up, you just let me know."
Now it's Jim who leans back, those big dark eyes blinking in confusion before he breaks into a brilliant smile. It's radiant, beautiful; Jim lights up from the inside out and John leans closer, drawn to it.
"No one's ever--" Jim puts a hand on John's arm, right where he was poking and strokes over and over, "Thank you. That's--thank you."
The spot where they're touching feels hot, like Jim's inner fire is burning straight through John's sleeve and he says "Any time," and means it.