Summary: After Groff almost kills JJ in Morocco, and the pogues are back in Kildare with no crown, JJ feels like his life is a mess. Kiara finds him on the roof and faces JJ’s worst thoughts head on.
Warnings: su!c!dal ideations, su!c!de attempt, hospital, super angsty
“JJ?” Kiara shouts.
She’s looking up at him from the grass, the only thought going through her head had been to find him.
She was sleeping when she’d turned around to their shared bed being cold, where JJ’s body should’ve been. She rolled her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but when he hadn’t come back after a while, she got worried.
So she found herself walking throughout the house and eventually outside.
“JJ, what are you doing up there?”
“Just go back inside, Kie.” His voice hiccups as he talks.
“Jayj, talk to me. What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Of course I’m going to worry. I’m coming up there.
“No, don’t!” he shouts down at her.
“You saying that is exactly why I’m coming up.”
She walks around the house and halts herself up the ladder that John B had placed there when they first purchased Poguelandia. She climbs up and shuffles over to JJ. He’s sitting on the side of the roof now. His legs dangling over. She sits down next to him.
“Talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Oh, yeah? Then why are you standing on the roof at two in the morning?” she asks.
JJ doesn’t answer. Instead, he turns his head away from her and looks out at the water.
“Jayj, it’s me.”
“I know,” he answers. “That’s why.”
“Why you won’t talk to me?”
“I don’t deserve you. You deserve someone better. I can’t give you the life you should have.”
“What? Where is this coming from?” she asks, bewildered. “This is the life I want, Jayj. A life with you. With the pogues. P4L, remember?”
JJ sits there in silence for a moment. “Not only do I have two dads, but they’re both pieces of shit. One tried to kill me and the other hit me ‘til I bled then abandoned me. You deserve someone who’s not fucked up.”
“Okay, maybe you’re a little fucked up,” Kiara giggles, trying to lighten the mood. “But your dads don’t define you. You aren’t like them. Yeah, they were horrible to you and you don’t have to forget about that, but we can work through it. Together.”
Silence.
“Tell me the truth. Why are you up here?” she questions him again.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
She’s pretty sure she knows the answer to her next question, but she asks anyway. “Can’t do what anymore, Jayj?”
“Life,” he answers.
“Were you planning on…” she looks down at the ground.
“Something like that,” he says.
Her stomach turns. She looks over and sees a bottle of Tito’s next to where he was standing earlier.
“You’ve been drinking up here, too?”
“You know me,” he smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
A pit forms in her stomach. If she hadn’t woken up, would she have found his body in the morning? Or John B? Pope?
“We need to get you help,” she says. Tears sting her eyes. She wants to be strong, so she doesn’t let them fall. Yet.
“I don’t need help, Kie. I need it to be over.”
“So you want to leave me here? Alone?” She wants to guilt trip him. Wants to make him rethink his choices. She knows he has to fight for himself, for his own life, but right now her priority is to get him off this roof with her— alive.
“You wouldn’t be alone. You have the pogues. I’m just getting in your way.”
“Why do you think that? Because it’s not true. And maybe it’s my fault for making you feel like that,” she ponders.
“No, Kie. None of this is your fault.”
“And it’s not yours either.” She takes his hand in hers. “Come on, let’s get down. It’s getting chilly.”
“You go on, I’ll come down in a little bit.”
“You really think I’m going to let you stay up here by yourself? Come on.” She smiles at him, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Okay,” he says, in defeat.
She lets go of his hand and guides him to the ladder. When they reach the ground, Kie envelops JJ in a hug. She squeezes him tight and lets her head drop into the space between his neck and shoulder.
“Please, Jayj. You need help,” she whispers into his ear.
He lets go of her, but his hands are still sitting on her hips. “I don’t need that shrink junk, Kie. I’m fine.”
Kie steps back. “Fine? You were about to kill youself. You’re telling me it’s fine?” she says, anger creeping up in her voice.
“Kie…”
“No. We’re getting you help. I don’t care if I have to drag you there myself.”
“Okay,” JJ resigns.
“Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
She smiles and wraps her arms around him again. “Thank you.”
They walk inside and go back to their room. Laying down, Kie wraps her arm around him as they fall back asleep.
—
When Kie wakes up, she finds JJ’s side of the bed empty again. Her heart races a little, worried after last night’s events.
She gets up and walks into the hallway. She passes by the other pogues’ rooms and sees them all asleep. John B’s arm is thrown over Sarah’s torso. She walks by Pope’s room to see Cleo’s body entangled with his. She smiles and keeps on walking.
The bathroom door is closed, so she checks to see if JJ’s in there.
She knocks on the door once. No answer.
Her heart skips a beat. She knocks again. “JJ?”
She assumes he isn’t there, but something pulls her to try twisting the doorknob. Locked.
“JJ!” she yells, pounding on the door. “Open the door!” She keeps frantically knocking and pulling the doorknob.
When no noise comes from the other side, she pushes herself into the door, trying to break it down.
She hears footsteps running up behind her.
John B.
“Kie? What’s going on?”
“It’s JJ,” she manages to say as she continues pushing the door. “Help me!”
John B, in a haze of sleepiness, comes up next to Kiara and pushes the door with her. He pushes her aside and slams his body, with full force, against the door. Wood chips fall from the side and the door gives out. John B pushes it open the rest of the way.
“JJ!” he shouts.
Kiara pushes into the bathroom and gasps. On the floor is JJ, passed out cold. An orange bottle of pills sits on the counter, empty.
“No!” she yells. “No!”
Awakened from all the noise, Pope appears at the door. “What’s happening?” he asks. He sees JJ on the floor, the panic in his voice creeping out, “JJ, what happened?”
Kiara doesn’t answer. Instead, she yells at them. “Call 9-1-1. Call them now!”
Her heart is beating out of her chest. She feels like she’s going to pass out from her heart racing, but she takes a few deep breaths in to stay focused for him. For JJ. Her JJ.
She bends down to his chest and listens for breathing. “He’s breathing, but barely!” she yells at John B, who’s on the phone with 9-1-1.
He puts the phone on speaker. “You have to breathe for him,” the man on the line says. “I can walk you through it.”
Kiara doesn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. She takes her fingers and pinches JJ’s nose. Her mouth sits on his and she blows as much air as she can into his lungs. She does that a few times, oblivious to what the operator is saying. Her focus is on JJ and JJ only.
She feels for his pulse. It’s faint, but it’s there, too.
Within a few minutes, the paramedics crowd the bathroom and Kiara is pushed outside. She sees the world through tunnel vision and starts yelling at them. “You have to save him! What are you doing?” she shouts.
John B holds her back. She thrashes against his hold, but he doesn’t let her out of his grip. He stays strong for both of them. “Kie, you have to let them do their job.”
“He needs me!”
“I know, but right now he needs professionals who can make sure he doesn’t die on us, okay?” he assures her.
She starts to hyperventilate, but stops fighting against John B. “It’s my fault,” she whispers to herself. “It’s my fault.”
“Hey, stop that. This is not your fault.”
Pope comes up to them. “They’re taking him to the hospital. I told them we’d drive right behind,” he informs them. “You guys go. I’ll get some of his stuff and meet you there with Cleo and Sarah. Go!”
Kiara didn’t need to be told twice. She ran to the kitchen and grabbed the Twinkie’s keys.
“Kie! Let me drive.”
“No!” She slams the front door open, watching the ambulance lights as it drives away. She gets in the driver’s seat as John B opens the passenger door.
She turns on the Twinkie and races right behind the ambulance.
—
The world feels dark as JJ opens his eyes. And if he’s opening his eyes, that means it didn’t work. A pang of shame hits his chest.
He feels something in his hand, he grumbles as he lifts his head up to see an IV stuck in his vein. He looks around and squints at the bright hospital lights.
He’s in the hospital.
He looks around, his head feeling like a dead weight, and sees Kiara curled up in a chair next to him. Her curls are falling on her face, and she’s got her legs pulled up.
He didn’t want this. He wanted to free her of him. Of his burden on her.
A tear falls down his face.
He wants out.
He yanks the IV out of his hand and slowly starts to get up. As he pushes the hospital blanket off of him, a nurse walks in.
“Hey, sweet-pea. Let’s get back to bed, okay?” she says warmly.
“I can’t be here,” he says.
Kiara stirs awake.
“You have to be,” she informs him. She walks over to put a new IV in his hand. When she does that, all hell breaks loose. JJ thrashes against her hold.
The nurse calls for assistance. A man and a woman run into the room, and help keep JJ down. Hands are all over him and he wants to do nothing but escape.
“Let me go,” he cries out. “Just let me go!”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t do that,” one of the nurses says.
Their hold on him is getting stronger the more he thrashes against them.
Kiara has been ushered against the wall by another nurse, trying to get her away from JJ’s outburst.
“JJ, let them help!” she shouts. Her hands are in her hair, tears running down her face as she watches the nurses try to hold him down. “Please, Jayj!”
He seems to register her voice, and his fighting starts to die down, but by the time he’s ready to stop, it’s too late. A new nurse has already stabbed him in the leg with a needle, and he’s out cold.
—
“Is that really necessary?” Kiara asks, watching a nurse tie down JJ with restraints.
“I’m sorry, but it is. He got violent with the nurses and is on suicide watch too. It’s just a precaution. It’s to keep him safe,” she explains.
Kiara doesn’t argue. She’s too mentally drained.
John B came back from the bathroom right after the whole fight with the nurses ordeal and tried to comfort her, but nothing worked. Now he’s out getting her food because even though she won’t admit she’s hungry, she is.
Pope came by with Cleo and Sarah, but they’re letting Kiara have the room to herself. Pope comes by every ten minutes, though, because he’s worried sick. Always asking the doctor questions in the hallway, and putting a hand on Kie’s shoulder.
Kiara watches JJ’s chest rise and fall, then looks down at the restraints on his wrist and ankles. As long as he’s alive and gets help, she doesn’t care how it’s done.
She wants him to know he’s loved. She wants him to remember what being happy feels like.
Her stomach drops thinking about JJ’s reaction to being tied down in the hospital. It’s going to be a nightmare.
—
JJ feels groggy when he wakes up. His eyes flutter open to the same hospital room. He turns to see an IV is back in his hand, but his wrist is tied down.
“JJ, it’s okay,” a voice says to him on his right. Kie.
He looks over at his other wrist and it’s restrained too. He pulls his arm towards him, but he can’t get free. He tries to sit up and finds his ankles are stuck too. He yanks against the restraints, but to no avail.
“JJ, I’m sorry. They said it was for your safety.”
“My safety?” he chokes out, his face scrunching in embarrassment.
“You were fighting the nurses. And you’re on suicide watch.” She whispers that last part.
“Suicide watch. Huh. Well, I’m fine, Kie.”
“No you’re not!” she yells. “Stop pretending you are! The doctors won’t see through your bullshit, okay? Stop fighting against them. And me.” Her voice goes soft. “You can tell me anything, Jayj. I’m the last person who would ever judge you. I love you. Please don’t shut me out.”
JJ stares at her. Not in a bad way. He stares at her soft skin, her sweet eyes, and wonders what he did to deserve her.
“How long am I going to be here for?” he asks, turning his head away from her.
“I’m not sure yet. But they were going to admit you into involuntary psych care.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, so just go by yourself, your own accord, you know? I know how you hate when people make decisions for you. So let this be yours.” She sits in the silence for a moment. “It’s going to happen either way,” she tells him.
JJ nods and stares ahead at the wall. “I’m gonna be okay?”
Kiara scoots closer, holding his hand that has the IV. “Yes, Jayj. You will. And I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”
A tear slips down his face. Kiara senses that he’s trying to be strong for her. And a part of her is upset. Upset that he’s always holding up a facade and never wants to admit when something’s wrong.
But another part of her is sad. He pulls at her heart strings in a way that makes her want to hold him and never let go.
He’s always the one with a plan. Now, he has to let others do that for him. Make a plan for him. He feels his autonomy slipping, but he knows the best thing to do is voluntarily admit himself into the psych hospital.
It won’t be forever, he reminds himself.
“Every step?” he asks, more tears falling down, like the dam has collapsed.
“Every single one. Even when you’ll say you won’t want me, deep down I know you will,” she chuckles, her own tears slipping out too.
“Yeah, you might be right.” He smiles at her.
“I’m always right.” She places a kiss on his temple and squeezes his hand tighter. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Kie.”
“This isn’t going to be easy,” she reminds him. “I need you to know that.”
“When have I ever run away from hard things?”
“Literally all the time,” she laughs.
“Not anymore,” he says.
The doorknob turns and Pope walks into the room. “You awake?” he asks, cautiously.
“Yeah, man,” JJ answers.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like shit,” JJ smiles.
“I thought so,” Pope chuckles. “Kiara tell you what happened?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re going? To the psych hospital, that is.”
“Yes, Pope, I’m going.”
“Thank God.” Pope walks over to him and hugs him. His arms wrap awkwardly around JJ’s body since JJ can’t move. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked Kie to cut you loose,” he says, gesturing to the restraints.
“I’m about to, I swear.” JJ tugs at them, but they don’t budge. “This is embarrassing,” he hangs his head in shame.
“You seriously think we’re going to judge you?” Kie chimes in.
JJ doesn’t answer.
“You have a lot of therapy to get through then,” Pope acknowledges, “Because we love you no matter what.”
“I love you guys too,” JJ says.
Kiara gives his hand a squeeze.
“I’ll go get a nurse,” Pope says. “And I’ll let the others know you’re awake and less violent.”
JJ chuckles at that. Pope leaves the room.
“Sorry about that. The whole fighting against the nurses thing.”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t want to be like Luke,” JJ admits. “I don’t want to scare you.”
“I’ll never be afraid of you, Jayj. I’ve never been.”
“Yeah?” he asks.
“Yes.” She kisses him. Her mouth moving in synchrony with his.
And for the first time in a long time, JJ feels like it’s going to be okay. Like it’s all going to work out. He feels regret for letting it get this far, but he feels eternally grateful for the pogues.
Especially his favorite pogue. Kiara. The love of his life, he thinks.
pairing: JJ Maybank x Kiara Carrera
summary: Kiara, through grief, has to deal with having JJ's baby.
w/c: 1.7k
a/n: this is basically just pure angst and written from tumblr spoilers (i haven't seen s4 p2) and i'm sorry. spot the angsty hozier references
masterlist
read on archive of our own
Kiara never got to tell him she was pregnant.
She found out late, when she was already out of the first trimester, and grief had been consuming her. Excuses flew by, one by one, as she made sense of her missing periods, of her weight gain, of the roundness of her stomach, until she no longer could.
Sarah was by her side when she broke into pieces, four months further along than Kiara was.
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t poetic. It wasn’t something she’d ever talk about.
Her friend held her as she crumbled to the floor, bawling her eyes out, screaming her dead lover’s name. She never wanted to have kids and if he did, he hadn’t told her so, and the reality of it was a blow after blow.
Sarah cleaned her up. Talked her through the heartbreak, through her own tears.
‘You don’t have to keep it,’ she whispered.
’I do,’ Kiara said.
Before he died, they’d never made it official like Sarah and John B had. There was never a ring, or vows, or a plan for a future that would make them feel like they were last. Their moments were too fleeting, too ephemeral, and Kiara had nothing to hold onto. Nothing to call his.
Until now.
She told the rest of the group a few days later. It was shock—how could that be? he’d been gone for months—but they held her so she wouldn’t break again, and she could see the fear in their eyes.
The fear for her.
Kiara went home at the end of that week. Her parents no longer had a reason to keep her away, with him gone, and they even accepted the situation after initial arguments against.
She was their daughter—they loved her, at the end of everything—and they’d be by her side.
Months passed. Kiara grew bigger.
Sarah gave birth to a boy. They wanted to call him after him, but held back, in case Kiara wanted to do it instead. She didn’t want to know the gender, picked out names, and she appreciated it. She wanted the freedom. She wanted to have every bit of him she could.
Often, she’d stand in front of the mirror, watching the bump. Her skin was full of stretchmarks and sore bits, but in there was something that was hers and his, and Kiara loved it more than she’d loved anything.
Almost.
On par with him.
She’d look into the mirror and see herself, big and bloated and exhausted, but she’d imagine him behind her shoulder, hugging her like he’d used to. She’d imagine his hand on her belly, taking the weight off of her for a few moments, and relaxing into him. She’d imagine what he would’ve been like if he’d gotten the chance to be a dad, and she knew there’d be no better one.
A lot of her time was spent between home and Sarah. She stayed at the house they’d bought, he’d bought, and watched her friends look after the baby boy. She cradled him and loved him as an aunt, wondering how it was possible that something so sweet, so innocent, could come from people like them.
She had nothing but hope for her own.
When the day came, Pope and Cleo drove her to the hospital. Sarah was the one by her side, holding her hand through it, guiding her through the process she’d gone through herself only months before. It was the most excruciating thing Kiara had gone through, but the moment the bundle ended up in her arms, she knew it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
It looked nothing like either of them, but babies take a while to grow into their faces.
She told herself she could see traces of him in her already.
Jodie Jones, she called her, and gave her his surname. She looked like a rascal, screaming and crying and looking, watching, absorbing everything. She was curious and adamant and beautiful, and Kiara began to cry.
He’d never see her. He’d never lay his eyes on her.
It was all she had of him and she begged the world, universe, god, anything, to let him be a part of her life.
Kiara brought her home, and raised her with the Pogues. Her parents came over nearly every day, checking in, but Sarah and John B’s boy, Dean, became like a brother to little Jodie. People joked about the kids growing up and getting together, someday, but nobody liked the idea – they thought of the kids as siblings. They raised them as siblings.
Kiara couldn’t raise her alone.
Pictures of him were all over the house. At first, she brought them down because the memory was too much to bear, but Jodie deserved to grow up knowing that despite everything, her dad was loved. Her dad was the backbone of the group and it was his memory that held them together – existing in a house he’d reclaimed from the man he called Dad, living because rather than in spite of.
When Jodie was three, and Dean held her hand in the park, she asked the question.
‘Where’s Daddy?’
John B and Sarah were in the distance, hugging, and Kiara felt her heart clench. ‘He’s away.’
‘He’s on the walls,’ Jodie said. ‘In the pictures.’
‘Your Daddy’s watching over you,’ Kiara said, stifling tears. ‘He’s looking after you.’
Dean nodded, even though she wasn’t speaking to him. ‘My mum says angels watch over us. Is he an angel?’
Yes, Kiara wanted to say, he’s an angel.
But kids wouldn’t understand that.
‘No,’ she said instead. ‘He’s just away.’
Jodie nodded. ‘He will come back?’
A tear escaped. Sarah and John B came over just in time, scooping the kids up, as and they were giggling, laughing, screaming, as if the conversation never happened.
Sarah came to her side and Kiara cried in the privacy of her shoulder.
It never got easier.
Not when Jodie was a blonde little thing, with dimples, and that wicked little smile Kiara used to love. Not when Jodie was a smartass, reckless, too curious for her own good, too hotheaded. She was nothing if not her father.
It was another two years before Jodie found out.
Kiara didn’t mean for her to – it was the unsaid thing, that she didn’t have a dad, but they never spoke much about it. There was no right way for Kiara to explain death to a kid, and even when she tried, the words would get stuck in her throat.
Pope’s dog brought them a dead crow.
Jodie was there, and Jodie learned about death, and she looked at her mother with those innocent eyes and asked, ‘Is Daddy dead?’
All Kiara could do was nod.
She began telling more stories about him, after that. Every night when Jodie was going to bed, Kiara would tell her stories abotu her father. About the brave boy who stood up to bullies; the boy who helped them find gold; the boy who found El Dorado.
‘My Daddy’s a hero!’ Jodie said.
‘He was.’
Pictures of him still lined the walls, but Kiara looked at them with fondness, now. She saw traces of Jodie in him rather than him in Jodie, and the world began shifting. Never away form him – just to a world where grief wasn’t an enemy, but an acquaintance.
A friend to walk with.
Jodie started school. She was a Maybank, but she was a Carrera, too, and she was wicked smart and did everything but what she had to. She was causing ruckus, but kids loved her, and teachers did, against their will.
She was ten when she got her nickname, from someone at school.
‘You don’t have to let them call you that if you don’t like it,’ Kiara told her.
Kiara’s hands were on the wheel as she drove them back from school. Dean was away for football practice, and Jodie would have lacrosse tomorrow.
‘I don’t mind it,’ Jodie said. ‘It’s what they called Dad.’
‘It is.’
‘I like it. I think it suits me.’
The mother smiled, and knew he’d be proud. Even thought she’d had to raise her without him, the Pogues did a great job with her and Dean. She was grateful she had them, and Jodie turned out ever the Pogue they knew she would, with Dean watching her back. They were inseparable, like John B and her father were, and she knew it was the best she could’ve done for the kid.
For him, too.
At fifteen, nobody called her Jodie anymore. She was the star lacrosse player, slumming it with Dean Routledge, ever the troublemaker, and they had their own little friend group. Pope and Cleo’s kid, ten years younger than them, was the baby of the group and they looked after him like no other.
Dean even took her to prom, when she punched her planned date in the nose after she caught him kissing another girl. It was a whole night of dealing with it, telling her violence wasn’t the answer, but she had enough of her father’s blood to believe otherwise.
Still, Kiara was proud. She loved her as she was, and everything that she’d inherited from her father, the good and the bad alike.
That summer was the best summer of her life. The kids were seventeen, about to leave for college, and little Terrence latched onto them every moment he could, and they adored him. They were drinking beers and going to parties, but Kaira never judged them for it.
‘We did a good job,’ Sarah told her as they watched the bonfire.
Cleo kissed her teeth. ‘Crazy to think something so good came from us.’
The kids gathered around it, in the backyard, and the adults sat on the porch. It was a beautiful summer day, lazy after they’d spent the most of it surfing. They were a lot of things, but nothing more than a family.
John B chuckled. ‘It feels like yesterday we were their age.’
‘I’m just glad they’re not as stupid as we were,’ Pope said.
Kiara scoffed. ‘Don’t speak too soon. That one’s every bit her father. I’m just waiting for the call.’
The mention of him still weighed down conversations, but they’d gotten used to it. There was a lighter tone when he was brought up, but his absence never went away. There was always one spot that felt too empty, the one nobody sat in. There was the lack of rashness, of impulsivity, of things that would get them into trouble.
Kiara’s heart never stopped aching.
But she looked at the kids now, at the next generations of Pogues, and felt pride swell in her chest in place of grief.
She couldn’t have give their child a better life if she tried.
Somewhere, if there was heaven, he was watching them from above. She hoped he was happy, too. She hoped he’d still be waiting for her when her time came.
For now, she watched Dean Routledge and Terrence Heyward and JJ Maybank and thought, it wasn’t all worth it, but they made it.
Luke its the perfect chaos agent for Jiara angst on Season 4.
Luke coming back after hearing JJ has money. Pretending to be a good father to take advantage of him. JJ wanting to believe his dad can be good because he wants that parental figure so bad and Kiara probably seeing right through his bullsht and that causing tension with JJ. Then, let’s insert the barracuda Mike issue with JJ owing him money and Luke claiming he is just like him and if he really thinks Kiara will be with him forever so making him build those walls again and therefore pushing Kie away and pinning a little because he loves her so much (and she knows why he is pushing her away). Luke ending up showing his true colors as always and we see him truly falling until he is back up again and seeks Kiara out because he really needs to hit rock bottom to truly overcome this trauma for himself.
Listen, I love fluff but I am angsty person at heart because the reunion kiss is always iconic
you and I are the same, nonnie. I don't want All Angst All The Time because at some point that's just like... exhausting, but the DEPTH that we get when there's angst just... perfection. These are all SUPERB ideas, and I really hope Luke comes back, too!! Idk if JJ would necessarily fall in league with him again, at least not voluntarily/happy about it, but I could def see Luke as an antagonist in jiara's relationship, and a centerpoint for JJ's development into someone that is like... capable of being in a healthy relationship.
Cause like, listen. I love my babyboy, don't get me wrong, but also at current he is... not someone that would know how to do that.
HIIIII it’s your favorite fic writer back from the dead with TWO whole fics real close together maybe I’ll finally become a consistent publisher?!? we can dream. Anyway. JJ and Kiara are my new Bellamy and Clarke I guess so enjoy this VERY angsty smutty hurt/comforty poetic nonsense the idea for which would not leave my brain til I wrote it. Please for the love of god read this bc I actually kind of love it and need validation or concrit or literally any feedback at all bc my none of my irl friends like this show so pls interact/comment
---------------------
ao3
----------------------
He pulls away from her, and his eyes are wide but dry as his chest heaves. He looks wild, uncaged and raw, the moonlight turning his blond hair white and his blue eyes into pools of silver. Tragedy and shock have destroyed him, the chains he’d wrapped around his brash, heedless, unending want twisted into shards by an explosion of hurt and grief. He has always been the victim, the boy left behind in empty rooms with nothing but loss and bloody fragments, told to piece himself back together. Finally, they’ve taken the last thing. When he told John B they had nothing to lose, they still had each other. And now, he doesn’t even have that.
But she’s still here.
--------------------
Touch me someone
I’m too young to feel so
numb, numb, numb, numb
You could be the one to
Make me feel somethin, somethin.
The Phantom went down around 8:30 PM. Or maybe 10:30. Kiara doesn’t remember. She only knows that the hours between then and now have felt like a lifetime and also no time at all. Like she’ll turn and John B will be there, behind her shoulder, laughing at something JJ said, Sarah hanging off his arm; but also like the world is dark and will be dark and has been dark forever. Like the sun will never rise after this. Like the storm took the light and heat from the world just like it took her best friend.
Later, she’ll learn that John B’s official time of death is listed as 8:34 PM, when they stopped trying to establish radio contact with him and Sarah. Later, she’ll watch news stories about the manhunt for Rafe Cameron and the scandal of Ward Cameron’s property being left to his second wife, rather than his remaining daughter. Later, she’ll get an email from an internet cafe in Bermuda and her whole world will flip upside down one more time.
But now, she is laying in her four-poster bed, watching the ceiling fan lazily trawl the same, tired circle, listening to the pull-chain tap not-quite-silently against the glass fixture. Now, her hair still damp from the shower that her mother made her take, eyes stinging from sharp wind and tears not yet shed, the inside of her mouth shredded and sore from the hours she spent chewing on her lips, the world is too quiet, too peaceful. The crickets outside sing soft and gentle, just like they have every night her whole life, and the texture of her comforter, the quiet harmony of the night, the soft click and whoosh of the fan -- it all feels so chokingly familiar, like spiralling back down to earth after spending weeks dipping in and out of orbit.
She wants to scream until her throat is raw, sob and fight and unleash herself on every single adult that hurt John B, that brushed him off or refused to help or wouldn’t listen to him. She wants to gut Ward Cameron for ripping everything away from John B, first his father, and then the gold that was his by right. The gold that was theirs. She wants to rip off Rafe’s skin piece by piece until he’s in shreds at her feet. She wants to eviscerate his father with the same gaff hook he used to rip apart those two mainlanders and ruin John B’s life. She’s so full of hurt and grief and anger that her fists keep clenching white-knuckled in her blankets and she wants to bring down the sky itself. But at the same time, she’s haunted by that same emptiness that followed her after Sarah’s childish betrayal, like she’s watching it all from the outside.
She can’t sleep. She won’t. Sleep is just an escape, a place to forget, and she’ll have to wake up and remember what happened all over again, remember the rush of hope and the hours of adrenaline and apprehension that ended in a tragedy none of them could have ever predicted. What child foretells death?
Rolling over, she presses her face into her pillow, smothering herself until her lungs force her to turn her head for air. She opens her eyes, no less heavier than they were hours ago. Her throat tightens like tears are about to well up, to spill over and stain her sheets, but they don’t come. Itchy and claustrophobic, she throws back the sheets and paces over the smooth boards of her room, bare feet making soft noises over the lacquered wood. She has to get out, to make sure that she didn’t dream up the whole goddamn thing.
She dresses quickly, throwing on denim cutoffs and an old drug rug that cycled its way through at least two of the boys’ wardrobes before landing in hers. She doesn’t know where she’s going, doesn’t know what she needs, but she throws her wallet, her charger, a flashlight, and her water bottle in her beat up backpack, and, on second thought, a toothbrush and some deodorant. She picks up her keds and tiptoes down the stairs, avoiding the creaky eighth stair.
The key rack is empty, and, chastising herself for believing her parents would leave the car keys out after everything she’d pulled in the last few days, she rocks on her heels, assessing her options. The most prudent one is probably just to go back to bed, given the usual risks of going out at night as a teenage girl, the massive punishment that looms in her future, and, now, the lack of a vehicle. But the thought of returning to her stale room, skin crawling and mind racing at a standstill, makes the decision for her. She slips out the back door, making sure to catch the screen door before it slams, and digs out her bike from next to the garage. The tires could use air and the gears are misaligned, but it still rides, and it’ll get her… somewhere else.
Her original intention is to go to Pope’s house, mostly because it’s closest, but then she thinks about how she kissed him earlier that afternoon -- and God, was that just this afternoon? There’d be implications, now. Showing up in the middle of the night, throwing pebbles at his window -- it would mean something. So she stands up on the pedals and pushes past his street, floating like jetsam through the night.
She ends up heading for the chateau, which is where she was going all along. After her family moved to the outskirts of figure eight just before high school, it was the only place that felt like home anymore. She cruises deep into the cut, where even the smell of the air changes, from freshly mowed grass and chlorinated in-ground pools to gasoline and oil, rotting seaweed and the salt marsh.
The little house sits in the reeds, ramshackle and welcoming as ever, tired and reaching under the moon. It’s empty and forlorn, alone on the edge of the edge, out past the main cluster of the cut, pushed past the tideline, separated from the rest of the flotsam by a freak wave. The Routledge boys never fit in, even with the outcasts, and they made their home like they knew it. Skidding to a stop in the gravel driveway, the sting of tiny rocks against her bare ankles is the only thing she’s really felt in hours. Her heart picks up, skipping over itself as her memory stumbles over all the years seeping out of the wind-weathered boards and the sinking foundation.
Again, it feels like this would be a moment for tears, like the sight of John B’s house, the memory of Big John’s booming laugh and all the bonfire-scented nights on that sagging porch should mean enough to make something in her crack, to finally shatter the glass walls of shock and let the grief come pouring in. But it doesn’t. She just stares up at the chateau, one part of her aching for the ease of a found family she’ll never get back, the other dreading the fate of the little house.
The breeze changes directions as she stares up at the rickety shutters and holey screens, bringing with it the tinny sound of music played out of a cell phone in a solo cup, a noise she knows well. Her stomach drops to the hard-packed dirt, crashing there with her bicycle and sending up a cloud of dust. Maybe John B survived. Maybe he made it back to shore, and he’s laying low, doing that stupid, chivalrous thing he does, trying to protect them by not letting them know. Maybe he’s out by the shed in that old metal lawn chair, Sarah in his lap, exhausted and defeated and alive. But as she gets closer, the moonlight glints off tawny waves crusted with sweat and salt, and the momentary, wild hope crashes and ebbs away from the shore.
JJ hears her, of course, sitting up in the hammock and turning toward the sound of her flat-soled sneakers slapping the dirt. “Hey,” he says, his expressive face, for once, inscrutable.
“Hey,” she says, slightly out of breath from the sprint. “I thought you were…” she trails off, because he knows. Because he’s the only one in the whole world who can look at her and understand the cathedral dreams and vaulted memories crashing down in her chest.
“I’m not,” he says, an answer that belies more than either of them knows. JJ gets this look, when he’s seconds away from doing something particularly concerning (and usually criminal). Manic energy lights up in his blue eyes, burning anywhere from mischief to stubborn determination to full-tilt rage. The well-developed muscles in his shoulders and arms refuse to relax, and his hands get so fidgety they lose the coordination it takes to flip the zippo lighter between long, practiced fingers. His face fights with itself, half already spitting with well-steeped anger, the other tired, and broken, and grieving.
“I noticed,” she responds. She drops her bag on one of the metal folding chairs, dooming it to a coating of flaky, faded paint. Crossing the grass, hoping her broad strides will disguise the rattling breath in her chest, the shake in her hands, she moves to sit next to him in the hammock, and he shifts his weight to allow her.
There’s no verbal communication, no squabble about personal space or indignant demands she find her own seat. There never is, not with her boys. The Pogues. It seems so silly now, hiding behind that name for themselves, a name she’d never really belonged to, anyway. He’s holding a lit joint in one hand, a bottle dangling from the other, and he offers her one while swigging from the other. The old favorites of a Maybank in crisis. She takes it.
He falls back next to her, sending the hammock swinging as he gazes up at the stars. Sarah had known the most about constellations, of the five of them, but JJ knows a fair amount, too, some of the only memories of his mother the nights when she would hold him under the stars, tracing the designs across the sky, her hand wrapped around his tiny one. His eyes keep drifting off the sky and landing on Kiara, eyes distant, bathed in moonlight.
“He’s not dead,” JJ says, surprising himself as much as her. He sits up, and she follows. He stares at his feet for a while, and she thinks about putting her arms around him. “I --” he picks his head up to look at her and stops, voice stolen by the hope in her eyes. “I’d feel it,” he finishes lamely, and watches the spark die.
“The first stage of grief is denial,” she says, and it’s supposed to be at least slightly lighthearted, but it falls cruelly to the crabgrass.
“You sound like Pope,” he counters, and there’s too much weight to that name to throw it around for long. They’re both thinking of Kiara kissing him, and the memory is pleasant to neither.
She doesn’t really know why she did that. Maybe it’s because he’s everything she’s supposed to want, intelligence and ambition and ingenuity, everything she tells herself is important in a guy. Maybe because he’s in love with her. Maybe because she’s definitely in love with one of her best friends, and he’s the one who makes sense. She takes another hit and hands the blunt back to JJ.
“I’d know,” he repeats, and she knows it’s not her he’s trying to convince. He lays back in the hammock, putting the blunt between his lips and dragging deep before tilting his head back and blowing the smoke into the tumultuous night. She looks back over her shoulder, watching his jaw and the movement of his throat as he exhales. Laying back next to him, she tries not to think about the warmth of his skin against hers, the strength of the body pressed to her side. It’s only JJ, the same reckless, stupid asshole who carried that damn pistol everywhere all summer and has a talent for getting into trouble. He’s not giving her butterflies with his proximity, and she’s not thinking about reaching down and lacing her fingers through his.
Eventually, JJ flicks the roach into the darkness and stands as quickly as he can without tipping Kiara out of the hammock. She starts, not realizing she was dozing on his shoulder until it’s gone. “It’s late,” he says.
She stands as well, tucking her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt as he kicks at the dirt. “I don’t --” she starts, and the hesitation makes him stop his nervous movement, meeting her eyes. “I don’t want to go home.” He opens his mouth to say something, but she interrupts him. “I can’t go home.”
“Okay,” he says, after a second. He doesn’t want to be alone, either. She nods, and walks past him, picking up her bag. He follows her up to the house, and they stop at the foot of the stairs to the porch, staring at the buzzing light. JJ takes a stuttering inhale Kiara pretends not to hear, and he goes up the stairs first, wrapping a shaking hand the handle to the screen door. He pauses before going in, frozen, and it isn’t until she lays her hand on his shoulder that he summons the courage to push the door open.
They knew the place was going to be tossed, but it still hurts Kiara and kills JJ, to see the overturned table and scattered papers, the couch cushions scattered on the floor and the coffee table flipped. He tries to shuffle backwards, to run from the sharp, fresh grief and the deep, familiar ache of loss and violation, but Kie is in the way, and when he turns to escape she catches him, her arms around his shoulders, his clutched around her waist. “I can’t --” he chokes, his face pressed to her neck, “It’s not --” his breath speeds up, his shoulders shaking. “They --”
“I know,” she says, swallowing down tears, herself, in that same small voice from the night in the hot tub. She knew JJ was broken, on that deep, fundamental level that, intellectually, she could conceptualize, but she could never feel. But that night, seeing the bruises on his ribs, damning as fingerprints, the ghost of his pain, the whisper of breath knocked out and the brush of betrayal, turned her chest inside out. This feels the same way, watching him lose the last shred of some semblance of home to the same kind of mindless anger and selfish authority that claimed the first one. “I know.”
He pulls away from her, and his eyes are wide but dry as his chest heaves. He looks wild, uncaged and raw, the moonlight turning his blond hair white and his blue eyes into pools of silver. Tragedy and shock have destroyed him, the chains he’d wrapped around his brash, heedless, unending want twisted into shards by an explosion of hurt and grief. He has always been the victim, the boy left behind in empty rooms with nothing but loss and bloody fragments, told to piece himself back together. Finally, they’ve taken the last thing. When he told John B they had nothing to lose, they still had each other. And now, he doesn’t even have that.
But she’s still here. “Kie…” he breathes. She opens her mouth to reassure him again, but then his hands are on her face and he’s kissing her, deep and rough and desperate. She bursts into flame underneath him, paralysis broken, stupefaction overcome, as the glass walls she’s been watching through crack and shatter at her feet. JJ’s hands wrap around the back of her neck and spread across the small of her back, pushing her up against the door, and she twists her hands into his shaggy, sun-streaked hair. Every desperate question is met with his touch, and she chases it, even as he pulls away in horrified shock.
“Fuck,” he gasps. “Fuck, Kie, I’m so sorry --” He tries to shove himself away from her at the instant she curls her fists in his shirt, and it almost rips as she pulls and he slams back into her. Teeth clash and noses bump and it’s not perfect or soft or loving, but passion born from desperation and terror of what it would mean to stop. Putting his hands on the door on either side of her face, he pushes himself off of her, even as she tries to yank him back. “What are we doing?” he asks, in a voice that won’t like the answer.
“JJ,” she gasps, pushing her fingers back up to tangle in blond, salt-sticky waves. “Shut up.” Pulling his mouth back down on top of hers, she gasps into him as his hands come down and frame her ribs, one of his arms sliding around her waist and the other pushing back up into her hair.
“Don’t you think --” he tries, even as he leans over her, their breathing ragged, his knuckles white in her impossibly soft curls. His forehead is pushed to hers and he can’t pull away any farther, sucked into her gravitational field, helpless to it.
“I don’t want to think,” she insists. “I want this, I need this,” This momentary pause is already too long, and if he stops kissing her, stops touching her, the tears she’s been holding back will crash over her and they won’t stop. The dark room is loud with heavy breathing as she catches the scent of him, salt and sweat and smoke. “I need you.”
His grip falters and the momentary relaxation has her pressing herself against him. “Are you sure?” he asks, and this is a choice, now. This isn’t something that either of them can pawn off as a mistake made in the heat of a desperate moment. He wants this, has wanted it, ever since he met her, but he won’t be a decision half-made, won’t take advantage of vulnerability only to become a regret. He’s giving her a way out, knows her pragmatic nature and her anxious need for well-thought plans. He wants her to think, even if she’s desperate not to.
He’s right, when he almost never is, but she knows that if she waits too long or lets in the doubt that expects her, she will break. “JJ,” she gasps, “Please.” His name, she knows, he can’t resist, not when paired with urgent pleading, and in this way, she makes her choice. He surrenders to her.
They fall onto the creaky pullout, still set up from JJ’s most recent stay, not minding the sheets and blankets wrought asunder by the angry police search. He can’t let go of her, his hands pushing up her sweatshirt, dragging over her sides and up her thighs, tangling in her hair like he’s drinking her in with his touch, intoxicated with the smell of peach in her hair and the taste of sweat on her skin. Kiara lets herself get lost in him, ride the wave of desire pushing through her, moans and gasps when he hits the right spots and closes her eyes as he lifts her shirt over her head and attaches his lips to her neck, his hands finally coming up to cover her tits, and the long careful fingers she’d spent so many afternoons watching prove adept at twisting and pinching her nipples and leaving her begging for him.
She almost rips his t-shirt off, pulling his bare chest against her own and letting the feeling of skin on skin light her up, setting fireworks off behind her eyelids. Wrapping one hand around the arm holding him up, she can feel his teeth on her neck, and she knows he’s leaving marks, and, for once, it doesn’t feel like she’s being claimed. She knows what it is -- proof this is happening, that they’re alive and feeling and crashing together again and again. She sinks her nails into his bicep as his fingers skim below the waistband of her shorts, and feels him smirk against her lips.
“Yeah?” he asks, and the teasing in his voice is tortuous and reminiscent of his old, humorous self, just enough to make her sad for a moment, and when she nods quickly in return, it’s a bid to forget that sadness. His fingers flick open the button of her shorts and as his fingers dip lower, the only thing she can think about, the only thing she can feel, is his touch, his all-consuming presence, radiating heat. The bastard takes his time, her only gratification the press of him against her hip, hot and hard. He teases her through her underwear, and she can’t say she doesn’t enjoy it, arcing into his touch, shocks of pleasure building in incredible anticipation, but he’s going too slow, and he’s wearing too many clothes, still, and the intense want gnawing at her has too much potential to turn into grief.
“Would you just --” she grunts against his mouth, cut off on a moan as he presses his fingers against her clit. “Fucking -- ah,” he works slow, hard, circles, enjoying himself as she tries to form sentences with his hands on her. “Fuck me already!” Because even this can’t be easy, not between the two of them. Because she’ll always be fighting with him, even with her bare chest pressed against his and his hand down her pants.
JJ grins, scraping his teeth over her ear. “What,” he says, still teasing, still bittersweet, as he finally pushes his hand into her underwear, “aren’t you enjoying this?” Slowly, much too slowly, his fingers part the lips of her cunt, pressing down over her clit before finding the wetness further down. JJ practically growls as his middle finger dips between her folds and he finds her soaked, dropping his forehead against the forearm braced above her head. “Fuck, Kie,” he moans, and he can’t disguise the wasted crack in his voice. “God, you’re so fucking wet.” He’s already drunk on her, every new sensation dragging him deeper.
“Your fault,” she stutters as he puts his hands, lean and strong and practiced, to good use, dragging slick fingertips back up to her clit and teasing small circles, rough, calloused skin creating delicious friction. And this -- this is what she was so desperate for, to feel only his touch and the way he pushes her higher, closer to an edge far away from the bleak grief of their every day world. He moans, too, as he dips his middle finger into her and she keens into his mouth, and she’s not thinking anymore, only chasing heat and skin and pleasure, the rest of the night foggy and distant, moonlit and blurred.
She doesn’t even know how much time passes before he’s kissing his way down her body, only that he’s fucked her so well with his hands he has three fingers inside her and she’s asking for more. He pulls his hand away and she lets out an embarrassingly high-pitched noise at the loss of contact, only to end on a gasp when she opens her eyes to see that he has his fingers curled around the waistband of her shorts and his face is hovering near her hips, pupils blown wide as he looks up at her. He asks her something, but blood rushes in her ears as her heart pounds and her chest heaves and it isn’t until his tongue darts out to wet his lips that she realizes what he’s saying.
“Fuck, yes, please,” she whines, and it feels like less than instant before her shorts are on the floor and his head is between her legs, his tongue on her clit, and she screams, pushing her hands into his hair as his mouth launches her higher and keeps her there, wave upon wave crashing over her until her legs are shaking, and when she feels the pull deep in her stomach and he takes half a second to breathe, she has enough presence of mind to yank him back up, slamming his lips down onto hers, tasting herself there.
“Inside me,” she gasps, ragged and raw and scraping. “Now.”
“But you haven’t --” he breathes, and she reaches down, shoving past the waistband of the shorts he’s still wearing, her hand on his cock stopping him dead.
“Now,” she repeats. And then, leans up to kiss him, slightly softer than before, as if in apology for being so rough, but more as a distraction as her hands unbutton his shorts and shove them down his thighs, her hands finding him again and stroking his cock until he’s gasping into her mouth. “Unless,” she says between short kisses, trying to keep her tone light, even as her cunt aches for him. “You changed your mind?”
He scrambles out of his shorts and boxers so fast it’s almost funny, but the laugh falls out of her chest as he braces his forearms on either side of her face, pushing her hair back from her forehead and looking at her so carefully it almost hurts. “I don’t have a condom,” he says, uncharacteristic worry trembling in his voice.
“I’m clean,” she says, her hands reaching up to tangle in his hair once more, to ground her, and disguise their shaking. “You?”
He nods. “What about --”
“I have an IUD,” she says, more grateful than ever for her liberal mother and her own presence of mind.
He licks his lips again, eyes dropping to her mouth before flicking back up to her eyes. “Last chance,” he says, like she’s going to change her mind and push him off of her, run off into the night and leave him here, disgraced and embarrassed. “Still sure?” he asks, like he’s expecting her to say no. She nods without hesitation, caught in his blue eyes, turned cobalt in the half-light. He kisses her one more time, and it’s laden with years of things he hasn’t said, and she surges up with urgency, not ready for the tenderness in his touch. JJ tries to slow her down again, to revel in the moment of bare skin and vulnerability, no matter how guarded it may be, but she reaches down, wrapping her hand around his dick, guiding him closer to her, and he’s falling into her touch, into her orbit, helpless.
She draws him inside her, his forehead dropping to her shoulder with a forsaken, heavy breath. It’s too soft, this moment before he moves, too easy to break, every sense on fire. The air is too close to her skin, too tight around her arms, like she could rip the fabric of it with the barest movement. She wants to be lost in him again, to feel separate, far away and floating above herself, not so torturously in her body, JJ trembling and present above her. “JJ,” she says, opening her eyes to find his, a split-second mistake, the next word hitching on its way out of her chest. “Move.”
He does, mercifully lowering his face to press against her neck, the eye contact too substantial, too burdensome to hold. The bubble surrounding them expands as he works her up to that blissful edge with ease, his mouth letting out a stream of filthy words about how good she feels surrounding him. Closing her eyes, she tilts her head back, letting her hands have free reign over his back, his shoulders, his arms and up into his hair, every place she wants to touch him when she watches his ridiculous muscles ripple under his young, tan skin. He shifts his weight, hooking her knee over his hip so his cock hits exactly the right spot with every thrust, and she cries out, racing higher.
She should have expected that JJ likes to run his mouth -- she only catches parts of what he’s saying, things like ‘so fucking hot’ and ‘sound so fucking good’ and ‘so fucking wet for me’ and as her moans increase in pitch and volume, he growls “c’mon, Kie, cum for me,” and she falls apart. He fucks her through the aftermath and she barely knows what noises are coming out of her mouth, her nails digging angry welts in his back. Just when she thinks she can’t take anymore, he tenses and spills inside her on a half-broken sigh.
Her vision sharpens as he rolls off of her, collapsing on the squeaky bedsprings, and the house is too quiet all of a sudden, the air once again too close. Her breath slows, the sweat cooling on her skin in the soft breeze pushing through the wooden walls, the still-open front door. Neither of them says anything, and Kiara can feel him looking at her, his blown out smile too loud in the fallout. She sits up, almost flinching at the light touch of his fingers on his spine when he picks up a strand of her hair. “I’m gonna pee,” she says, finding her underwear and pulling them on, and then, after half a moment, pulling his discarded t-shirt over her head.
Her head echoes as she steps over the scattered mess to get to the bathroom, like she’s walking through a tunnel. Her legs ache and tremble, and she wraps her arms around herself, numb and falling. She fights tears as she washes her hands. The bathroom is, as always, a deplorable mess, products everywhere and hair all over the sink. Her green bikini top is still on the floor from when she’d forgotten it just the other day, and that girl feels impossibly far from the one staring at herself in the mirror, wearing her best friend’s shirt while he’s naked in the next room. There’d be shame, and guilt, too, if the smell of John B’s deodorant didn’t choke her with overwhelming loss. Bracing her hands on either side of the sink, she can’t hold it back anymore, and sobs spill out of her, harsh and echoing in the small space.
JJ is behind her an instant, half-dressed in basketball shorts and drawing her into his arms, tucking her close to him, her tears hot on his skin. “He’s gone,” she whimpers. “He’s really gone.” He doesn’t say anything, just guides her back to the pullout and straightens the blankets enough for her to fall in. She curls up on her side, crying so hard she can’t breathe, and he climbs in across from her, pushing one arm under her neck and using the other to pull her against him, his lips pressed to her forehead.
Tears leak out of his own eyes, silent and soft to her earth-shattering grief. “It’s gonna be okay,” he reassures her, fighting the quiver in his own voice, his chin shaking with the effort of it. He stares into the empty darkness above her head, every jerk of her prone body another crack in his breaking heart. “He’s coming back,” he says, more to himself than her. “He’s coming back to us.”
When she finally quiets down, the betrayal of dawn is beginning to lighten the sky, the moon fading, and the idea of this night being over feels impossible. For a short while, they breathe each other in, her forehead pressed to his collarbones, his hand trailing up and down her spine. Her head aches and her eyelids fall heavy over gritty, exhausted eyes, but she still fights sleep, stubbornly resisting another day, the beginning of a life without John B and Sarah. “I can’t stay here,” she says, finally, pushing back from him. “I should go home.”
He reaches up to catch her chin as she watches her hands curled close to his chest, reluctant to go. “Kie,” he murmurs, lifting her gaze to meet his. He moves forward to kiss her, and she flattens her palms against his skin, stopping him even as her eyes fall to his lips.
“JJ,” she says, an exhale more than his name. “We -- I mean, I --”
“Shit,” he sighs, and it almost sounds like a laugh, formed from expectations he wished hadn’t come true. “Okay.” His eyes flutter close, and she watches him draw back into himself, close all the doors, like he wants to turn off the lights and pretend he’s not even here. But then, he looks at her again, gently smoothing a curl behind her ear. “It’s just --” he starts, and inhales again, wetting his lips as he struggles to keep his eyes on her deep brown ones. “Can we go back to normal tomorrow?” Her eyebrows push together a fraction of an inch, and he focuses on the wrinkle there, a thousand times easier than holding her gaze. “Please,” he says when she inhales to say something. “I don’t want to be alone.”
It’s the first time either of them have been completely honest all night, and the most he’s said in hours. “Yeah,” she says, agreeing without thinking. Making it about him instead of admitting to herself that she wants to stay, that she doesn’t want to be alone either. “Yeah, okay.” She allows herself to be kissed, to be held and kept softly. JJ twists his fingers in her curls, skims his lips over her hairline before pressing his forehead against hers.
He tucks his hand against the side of her neck, his fingers spanning from her ear to the juncture of her neck and shoulder. “It’s gonna be alright,” he promises, and they both pretend he’s saying it to her. She’s seen JJ cheerful and stubborn, breaking and angry, seen him a thousand different ways. But never like this, kind and soft, quiet in the grey, grieving dawn. Eventually, she falls asleep under his touch and reassuring whispers.
The morning is just as sticky and unforgiving as every other that summer, and she wakes up damp and sticky with sweat. JJ is stretched out on his stomach, arms tucked under his head, mouth slack and hair falling over his eyes. Her head still hurts, and now so do her back and thighs, and she stretches her hand out across the rumpled sheets, tracing the red lines she’d left down his back. He blinks awake, closing his mouth and freezing when he feels her touch on his skin.
“Hey,” she murmurs.
“Hey,” he replies.
She waits for him to say something, but he just watches her, his clear blue eyes unflinching. She bites her lip. “I should get home,” she says, keeping her eyes on the knuckle tracing over his back, his gaze too heavy to hold.
“Yeah,” he says, “okay.” Neither of them move. The world waits on a hair trigger, and JJ’s more familiar with this kind of silence than she is. She wants him to break it first, to be the impulsive hothead he always is, to make the choice for both of them. But he doesn’t, and the moment crumbles, and she sits up and goes in search of her clothes.
He doesn’t say anything until she stoops to pick up her bag, sweatshirt in hand, ready to shove it into the biggest pocket. “Kie,” he says, and she stops dead, looking up at him. She doesn’t know what she wants him to say, but she deflates anyway when he just asks “my shirt?”
She’d forgotten she was wearing it. Pulling it off, she feels his hungry eyes trace up her bare chest as she untangles the drug rug before pulling it down and arranging it around her hips. She tosses him the shirt, and he holds her gaze as he flips it right side out and tugs it on. They stand on either side of the disheveled living room, daring the other person to say something, move, do anything first. He knows what he wants, what he can’t have, what he’s convinced himself he never will. She remembers the line she drew, the boundary she’d very clearly set. He chooses to respect it while she waits for him to break the rules.
Birds sing in the unflinching morning, and a breeze stirs the hair around her face. She slings her backpack over her shoulder. The sun blazes as gulls call and waves lap against the dock. He tilts his chin back, like he always does just before a fight. She turns to go.
