Pairing: JJ Maybank x Reader
Summary: JJ goes to pick up a friend in need and gets more than he bargained for.
Warnings: Depression, anxiety, self harm, abusive families (verbal abuse), very vague mentions of SA. Please read with caution and take care of yourself <3
A/N: This is very angsty but ends on a positive note, I promise! It was inspired by the song Summer in July by Yukon Blonde because apparently I can’t listen to anything without wanting to write about it.
“FUCK,” you scream as soon as your bedroom door slams shut behind you. You lean your head against it and let go of the tears that had been building up behind your eyes all day. The force of your sobs shakes your body until your legs give out from under you and you fall to the ground, slamming your head against the door on the way down. That only makes the tears flow harder and the shaking grows more violent until you’re practically vibrating. You cry so hard that your sobs are silent, like your body knows that the anger and sadness within you are so powerful that if you ever felt the full extent, it would destroy you.
You scratch at your arms, trying to claw your way out of your skin, out of your life, but it’s not enough to calm the pounding in your head or your racing heart. Your hands seek out the dips made by your hip bones and pick at the scabbed-over scars there. The feeling of the familiar raised lines helps ground you, and as a dark red spot starts to pool on the front of your dress, relief floods your body, and your sobs fade into hiccupy cries as you try and take in a full breath of air.
Then the door behind you rattles as someone pounds on it three times in quick succession.
“Shut the fuck up, you fucking psychopath,” your brother yells through it.
“Fuck you, Topper!” You shout back and his cruel cackles fade away along with his heavy footsteps. Now that your brother is home, your need to escape overrules everything else and you wipe at your face
JJ’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and at first, he ignores it. Everyone that he could possibly want to talk to is already here around the bonfire on the beach behind the Chateau, well, not everyone, but she’s supposed to be at some charity thing with her parents until late. When it buzzes a second, and then a third time, he pulls it out and sees three unread messages.
Y/N: can you come pick me up
Y/N: i can’t be alone right now
JJ sets his beer on the ground and types out a quick reply, already on his feet by the time he hits ‘send.’
JJ: sure, are you still at the club?
JJ: be there in 10, just hang in there ok?
He shoves his phone back into his pocket and turns to John B, ignoring the rest of the group’s questioning stares.
“Can I borrow the Twinkie?” he asks, desperation in his voice.
“Why?” John B questions him, and JJ bounces on his heels, already prepared to make a run for the car.
“Please, JB.” He tries to convey the gravity of the situation with his eyes to avoid saying her name in front of Sarah, and thankfully John B gets the message.
“Yeah, sure, dude.” John B pulls the keys from his pocket and tosses them to JJ, who takes off as soon as he catches them.
“Thanks, man!” he calls over his shoulder as he jogs back up to the Chateau.
“What’s that about?” He hears Sarah ask before he’s out of earshot, and he hopes John B has the sense to make something up because the last thing they need right now is Sarah Cameron getting involved.
He speeds over to Figure 8 and pulls up in front of your house, already typing out a text to you before he’s even put the car in park.
You smile a little as your phone lights up with the notification, and you slip your feet into the pair of old, worn Birkenstocks next to your bedroom door. In the hallway, the glint of a picture frame catches the corner of your eye, and you spin around so you’re facing it. It’s a photo of you and Topper at the Fourth of July parade in town, back when you were four. His shirt matches your blue-and-white-striped dress and you’re both mid-giggle as you try to pop the bubbles that surround you. Seeing the two of you looking like the perfect Kook twins you were supposed to be makes your anger bubble back up to the surface. Your heart clenches with nostalgia as you remember how close you used to be before Rafe poisoned Topper’s mind and your parents drove a wedge so deep between the two of you that it would take an honest-to-God miracle to make things right again.
Before you realize what’s happening, you reach out and tear the photo off of the wall and hurl it down the hallway towards Topper’s bedroom. It hits the wall and shatters into thousands of tiny shards, and just for a moment, you feel at peace, like you’re floating outside of your body, but then you hear a familiar creak as Topper opens his door and you’re slammed back into reality. Not wanting to deal with him, you race down the stairs and out the door. You don’t stop until you’re in the safety of the Twinkie. JJ’s blue eyes glow in the dark, full of questions that you’d rather not answer. You wave your hand to brush him off.
“Just go,” you instruct, buckling your seatbelt and glancing back, searching for any sign of your brother. “My brother’s home.” You don’t need to say anything else. JJ turns to face forward again and pulls the car out of the driveway, speeding off back towards the Cut.
Things were moving so fast, and it was so dark, that JJ didn’t get a good look at you until he was confident that Topper wasn’t following and slowed the car down. He turns onto a side road and sneaks a glance over at you. He slams on the brakes at the sight of your mascara-stained cheeks and puffy, bloodshot eyes, slowing the Twinkie down to barely more than a crawl.
“What happened?” He asks, flicking his eyes to the road and then back over to you every few seconds.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” you mutter, breaking away from the intensity of his gaze to stare out the window. You don’t know how to tell him that your brain feels like it’s too big for your head, like it’s pressing against your skull, looking for a weak spot to burst through. You don’t know how to tell him about all the men your parents introduced you to, how their hands slid just a little bit too low on your back as they leaned in to kiss you on both cheeks, how their beady eyes swallowed you whole even from across a crowded room, how your mother told you to suck it up and let them do whatever they wanted because the only way anyone is ever going to want you is if you’re easy. So you stay quiet and watch the ocean roll past as JJ circles the outer edge of the island.
“Okay, no talking, got it. I can take you back to the Chateau and we can just, like, watch a movie or something.” Your throat shrinks. Sarah Cameron hadn’t been at the party, so you assumed she was there with John B, taking your place within the Pogues as the token Kook, living through all of the things you had experienced with them last summer. The things that were yours. The things that were supposed to be separate from Figure 8 and your family.
“Well, yeah, but everyone’s out on the beach. I can sneak you into my room, no one has to know you’re there.” Your head starts to shake back and forth, and then your whole body joins in and you’re rocking in your seat. You had just barely managed to stop crying before, so the tears are in free-fall again and you’ve lost all control; you’re in survival mode. The memories hit you out of nowhere, like a train barreling through your head.
The late-summer sun illuminated JJ’s hair, creating a halo of light behind his head. You giggled as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, keeping himself balanced on the railing at the front of the boat while he shotguns a beer. The Pogues cheered him on, surrounding you with their excited shouts and laughter. Even with the wind blowing past as John B speeds across the water, you feel warm. When JJ finished the last of the beer, he crushed the can and threw it to the ground before hopping down off the railing. His smile was a shining star directed straight at you. You laughed as he pretended to trip and fall into your lap, accepting his familiar weight with open arms.
“Did you see that, baby?” He asked, sounding like a kid who had just landed a flip on the trampoline for the first time.
“Yeah, it was awesome,” you said. When he leaned in to press his beer-soaked lips against yours, you giggled into them and let yourself bask in the perfect moment.
Then the scene morphs from summer into winter, shoving you back into the New Year’s kegger the Pogues had thrown. Where it had really started to sink in that whatever you had during the summer had slowly started to pull apart at the seams. There were inside jokes you didn’t understand, teachers and kids in their classes that you didn’t know, parties you had missed because your parents had been parading you around to their friends, doing whatever they could to keep you from the only real friends you had ever known. And they were winning.
“No, no, no,” you repeat to yourself over and over as you rock back and forth in your seat. You’re trying to manifest it. Maybe if you say it enough, it will be true.
JJ slows the car again and reaches out to rest his right hand on your thigh to comfort you. He feels something damp and looks down at where he can just barely make out the dark red splotches littering the front of your otherwise light blue dress.
“Y/N…” he says, trailing off because he doesn’t have the right words for this moment. His voice is heavy, loaded with the confusing combination of love and frustration that has defined the past year for him.
“Don’t look at me like that!” You snap, pulling yourself away from his grasp and tucking yourself against the car door to get as far away from his pity as possible. “You can’t… I can’t… I want to fucking die, JJ.” A sob catches in your throat, forcing you to pause for a moment to let it pass. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be their perfect little Barbie doll, the collector’s edition, ready to be sold off to the highest bidder and kept on a shelf for the rest of my life. No matter what I do, it’s not enough, and I’m tired of trying. I just want to die.” The longer you speak, the louder and more frantic your voice gets, and JJ’s taking deep breaths to try and keep himself calm because it’s not very helpful if he starts panicking, too. But you’re scaring him. He knew things at home were bad and getting worse, he had been there through so many panic attacks and always dropped everything to come and get you when the walls of your house started to close in on you. But he didn’t know things had gotten this bad, and he wanted to beat himself up for not noticing, for taking you at your word when you said you weren’t hurting yourself.
Your heart is pounding in your chest, it feels like it’s beating way too fast and you’re pretty sure it’s about to grow wings and fly out from underneath your skin, and there’s a snake crawling up your throat and a chorus of voices in your head screaming at you that you’re not enough, you’re too fat, too ugly, too stupid, too fucked up to be loved and you can’t take it anymore. You unbuckle your seatbelt and grab the door handle, pushing it against the wind resistance to try and open it enough for you to throw your body through.
“Hey, hey, hey, whoa,” JJ yells, and he slams on the breaks, throwing his right arm out over your chest to prevent you from flying through the windshield. You crash into his arm and then you’re flung back against the seat. The car door slams shut and you deflate into the worn leather beneath you. Tears continue to stream down your cheek, but they’re no longer sad tears or even angry tears. They’re tears of defeat.
JJ pulls over and reaches across the center console once the car is fully stopped. He takes both of your hands in his. Your eyes are dark and empty when you look up at him, and his heart shatters; it’s the same look he sees in the mirror after a fight with his dad.
“Y/N… fuck, I’m so sorry,” his voice is thick and it cracks a little at the end of his sentence, forcing him to stop talking and take a deep breath.
“‘S not your fault,” you mutter, squeezing his hands to try and comfort him. The action makes the lump in his throat double in size, because here you are comforting him even when your own pain is so strong.
“I should have known something was wrong.” When you shake your head at him, he clarifies. “Like really wrong. I shouldn’t have let your psychotic brother scare me off. I should’ve kept fighting for you, for us.”
“I don’t blame you, JJ, not for any of this. When my family wants something, they’ll do anything to get it. I never expected you to save me from that. You’ve got your own shit to deal with and I’ve got mine.”
There’s a long pause as JJ tries to swallow his sadness and you take deep breaths to steady yourself.
“Fuck, Y/N, you probably know this already but I love you, and I know I should’ve said something sooner, but then all the sudden summer was over and it felt like you were drifting further away from me, from everyone, and I thought that maybe I got it wrong, maybe it was just a summer fling, but Y/N Thornton, I’m fucking in love with you. You make me feel like it’s summer in July and, fuck, I miss it.” He drops one of your hands in order to push his bangs back off of his forehead, and you rest your palm against his cheek, absorbing the warmth that had collected just under his skin.
You don’t say anything, just slide forward until your knees are squished against the center console and press your lips to his. It’s wet and salty, and you’re both crying but also laughing which makes your teeth knock together and your lips slip away from each other. It’s the least romantic kiss you’ve ever shared, but also the most romantic, because it's full of such raw emotion. When you pull back to catch your breath, you rest your forehead against his and keep your eyes squeezed shut to savor every last second of this momentary bliss.
“I love you too,” you whisper into the open space between you. JJ squeezes your hand and then brings it up to press his lips to your knuckles. Your eyes flutter open and you give him a small, shy smile to reassure him that you’re okay.
“Summer in July, JJ? What the fuck does that mean?” You tease when your breathing finally returns to normal, and JJ’s cheeks flush with a hint of pink.
“You’re just, like, warm and bright like the height of summer, when everything’s sticky and sweet and time slows down so every day feels endless and full of infinite possibilities. Last summer was the best summer of my life, and when I’m with you, it feels like I traveled back into every happy memory I’ve ever had.”
You smile at him and brush your thumb across his cheekbone, trying to convey what you’re feeling with touch instead of words because you’re scared that if you try to say them, you’ll start crying again. He watches you like he’s waiting for you to tell him what to do next.
“Can we just, like, drive around for a little bit?” You ask, voice quiet. “I don’t wanna… I can’t go home.” JJ nods and leans in to press a quick peck to your lips before he pulls the car back into the street. He turns on the radio and lets it play softly in the background, and the events of the day finally catch up to you. Exhaustion settles deep within your bones, and the gentle movements of the car paired with the soft circles JJ’s pressing into the back of your hand with his thumb lull to sleep.
When JJ’s made a full loop of the island, he turns to look at your sleeping form as he slows to a stop at a traffic light. He can’t take you to the Chateau, not like this, and it’s not safe to bring you back to your own house, so he makes a quick decision and shifts over to the right-turn lane, pressing down on the lever to activate the turn signal. He shoves his doubts to the back of his mind and tightens his grip on the steering wheel to keep himself steady as he drives across the bridge to the mainland.
A steady beeping pulls you out of your dream and back to the real world, and when you blink your eyes open, you’re nearly blinded by a bright light.
“‘S it morning already?” You mumble, blindly flailing your left arm in search of JJ. Your hand makes contact with something soft and smooth. Before you can identify the source, a familiar blonde head pops up and blocks the light from your eyes.
“Please don’t hate me,” JJ pleads. You turn your head to look past his shoulder and notice the tell-tale signs of a hospital room: a sleek white counter with a built-in metal sink, an outdated TV mounted to the wall, the various monitors and pieces of scary-looking medical equipment… you take it all in as JJ babbles. “I just didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t take you back to the Chateau and it’s not safe at your house and you tried to jump out of a moving car and I got scared that if I left you alone you’d try to hurt yourself again so I drove here instead. The nurse had to call your parents but since I told her that they were the cause of all of this they won’t be allowed to visit you until your 72 hour hold is up and they can get you into some sort of treatment program, and even then I don’t think they’re allowed to visit unless you say it’s okay… I can get the doctor to come and explain things to you, but then they’ll make me leave. They only let me stay so that you’d have a friendly face to wake up to, and…”
“Shhh, JJ, it’s okay,” you assure him, interrupting his rambling and reaching up to take his head in both of your hands. He closes his eyes and lets out a shaky breath. “Thank you.”
His eyes are shining when he finally opens them and you lean up to press your lips to his, trying to pour every ounce of love from your body into the beautiful boy in front of you. Even with the itchy fabric of the hospital gown rubbing against your skin and the incessant beeping echoing throughout the small room, it felt like coming home.
If the nurse on the night shift happened to notice that the girl on a 5585 in room 408 was awake, well, nobody could prove it because she conveniently ‘forgot’ to note it on the chart clipped to the door. That girl was in for a rough couple of weeks, and she deserved to spend one last night in the arms of the cute boy that had brought her in.
