‘I’ll take you for a ride, I’ll be your vixen’ - Sabrina Carpenter, A Nonsense Christmas | smut/suggestive (MDNI) | jj maybank x fem!reader
“Girl. If JJ don’t wanna fuck you, then I will,” Kiara plainly says, combing her fingers through your hair.
“Yeah, I’m with Kie. If this boy doesn’t appreciate the effort then we’re beating his ass,” Sarah agrees.
“I don’t look stupid?” you worry, meeting their gaze in the mirror.
“You look hot,” Kiara insists. You dab on more red lipstick and blend it out with your finger, scared it looks silly. You rarely wear such masses of make-up; there’s little point, living out in Kildare. Nine times out of ten, you end the day in the sea. Kiara finishes toying with your hair and fluffs it so it sits around your face, framing your features enticingly. Sarah is nodding enthusiastically. Your eyes scan your reflection.
Adorning your figure is a crimson red babydoll. Faux fur outlines the top lining of the cups, brushing against your cleavage. Two pull-strings hang from the centre, with white pom-poms on the end that mimic those on Santa’s hat. It’s lace and hangs just past your ass, trimmed on the hem with white fur. A dainty thong ties everything together. It’s unfamiliar seeing yourself so dolled up but not unwelcome; you think you look pretty sexy, to be honest. JJ doesn't need all the fuss and feathers to get him going but you wanted to give him a special Christmas treat. A rush of confidence blows over you as you let your eyes take in your completed look.
Kiara’s buzzing phone has everyone’s attention turning to her. After reading the message, she tells you, “Cleo said her and JJ are nearly done hanging up the lights. They’ll be back in the house soon.”
Sarah squeals excitedly and you chuckle at the ludicrousy of the situation. Your closest girl friends helping you get dressed up for your guy to fuck you; that’s girl hood in a unique, wonderful nutshell.
“You guys better go,” you tell them as they’re already heading for the door.
“You look hot. You are hot,” Kiara reminds you pointedly as they leave the room. Sarah giggles a ‘good luck’ before they slip out the room, leaving you to sit in amusement, shaking your head. The door now closed, you go about setting the mood in the bedroom. Low, jazz music with a festive flare; scented candles and tea-lights lining the dressers and desk; swiping crinkles out of the bedsheets and pulling the blinds closed on the already darkening day. Then, you perch yourself delicately on the edge of the bed and wait in anxious anticipation for JJ to come back from the tackle-and-bait shop, where Cleo had been distracting him with Christmas decorating.
You hear the door to the adjoining bathroom open five or so minutes later.
“JJ?” you call. Your heartbeat picks up just at the thought.
“Yo. I’m back,” he calls back. You hear the bathroom tap running as he presumably washes his hands. From where you sit, you can just make out a glimpse of his body; dressed in a flannel hooded overlayer and shorts. “Dude, that wind out there is gettin’ crazy. It’s cold as hell.”
“You’re cold?” you wonder, rising to your feet. Antsy, you find yourself moving about until you’re leaning against the bedpost at the foot of the bed.
“Hell yeah,” JJ replies.
“I think I can help warm you up,” you tell him, biting back your smile. The tap finally shuts off and JJ wanders into the doorway. His head is hung, focused on drying his hands on the towel, and you wait in bated breath for him to look up.
“Oh really? I mean, I could definitely do with–”
JJ’s words die on his tongue. You can’t help but smile at the stunned look on his face. His eyes shamelessly consume your body, running over every inch of skin, lingering on your tits. His lips part in a daze until they finally find words.
“Holy fuck.”
Your body flushes with white hot heat. Fiddling with the edge of the babydoll, you cock your head and smile enticingly.
“Merry Christmas.”
As if those were the magic words he was waiting for, JJ drops the towel to the bedroom floor and crosses the room to you in three easy steps. You giggle as he grabs possessively at your hips, his eyes unable to stay still on one part of you, especially your eyes, no matter how hard he tries. His lips press to yours in a fiery kiss, his bulge already pressing against your leg.
“What’s this?” he murmurs, grinning.
You shrug cooly. “An early Christmas gift.”
“Oh really?” he hums, his brows raising in approval. A shiver runs through you as his fingers trace your upper thigh, just under where the babydoll ends. JJ dips his head, his forehead brushing against yours, and he lets out a dark chuckle. His voice is low as he asks, “A Christmas gift for me, huh?”
“All for you,” you whisper.
“I get to unwrap it?” JJ wonders, a sly smile on his face as his fingers toy with the elastic of your panties.
Your eyes are innocent and doe-like as you guilelessly tell him, “you get to do anything you want to it.”
Something flashes across his face; twinkles in his eyes. His smirk is there and gone in a blink before his hands are picking you up, grabbing you at the ass and hoisting you into the air and into his arms. You gasp and giggle as JJ playfully tosses you on your back onto the bed, quick to climb atop of you, crowding you with his presence. His lips are on your neck, your collarbones, ghosting over your bulging breasts in the bralette.
“You like it?” you ask breathlessly, knowing full well the answer.
In between kisses, as JJ’s fingers fiddle with the button fastening the babydoll at the front, his reply is plain and simple. “Best Christmas present ever.”
It’s safe to say, everybody knew you weren’t sleeping that night - not just santa.
jj maybank x fem!kook!shy!reader | the music the band plays in this are songs by beach bunny (that's the music style i envisioned for the reader) - check them out!
content warning: drinking & drug use; anxiety & anxiety attacks
word count: 18k. (the definition of a slow-burn, so just hang in there, okay?)
blurb: after your band plays a show at kiara's parents' restaurant, you find yourself face to face with jj maybank. shy and socially awkward, you fumble through, knowing that a guy like jj would never want a thing to do with you, right?
“I don’t understand you,” Kiara says. She’s perched atop one of the speakers.
“What’d you mean?” you ask from where you kneel on the floor. You’re detangling wires.
“When you met my parents, I could barely get your name out of you. But now I find out you enjoy singing to a crowd of strangers in your spare time?”
You laugh, shrugging.
“I mean, if I was shy, I think my worst fear would be singing to a group of anybody – let alone strangers,” Kie tells you with a chuckle.
“I guess it’s cause I’m in my element when I’m singing and stuff. I feel calm,” you think aloud.
You’d never really thought of it that much. Performing music always came easy to you. Talking to people, not so much.
The wires finally unknot and you go about plugging them into the correct amps. Kiara had offered to help you and your band set up before your gig. It was at The Wreck – her parents gracious enough to let you guys play – and Kie, being your friend for just over a year, was all for it.
You’d met at school when she transferred to (what she proclaimed as) Kook Academy. Kie felt as if she didn’t fit in, away from the Pogues and amongst the snobs. You felt like an outsider too. Making friends never came easy to you. Your shyness got in the way and made you clam up. The good first half of your years at school were spent having panic attacks during breaktime and hiding behind the sheds to eat lunch alone. One day you made your usual journey there to find Kiara, sat crying. You’d struck up your best attempt at conversation, sympathising immediately. She confided in you about missing her old school, and how this ‘bitch’ Sarah Cameron had started a rumour and ditched her. You nodded through it and offered up eating lunch together, which soon turned into hanging out after school, and overtime Kie pulled you out of your shell. That was when you told her about your band.
The only reason you’d managed to find your band was from the school counsellor’s insistence that you join an extra-circular. When you meekly confessed that you liked playing music and writing songs, she’d thrust you into band practice. Seriously: she literally escorted you there. Benny, who played drums, and Pansy, who played guitar, were your first friends. Pansy had an effervescent charm to her; naturally outgoing but not intimidating. Strangely, she was easy to talk to. Non-judgemental and non-pushy. Never asked you the age-old question ‘how come you’re so quiet?’ Benny was a little like you and it was as if the two of you clocked each other and decided to stick it out. Over time, you both opened up, with Pansy’s assistance of course. The bassist was someone Pansy met (and probably cornered) at a kegger, named Mike. Aloof and mysterious, you spent a great deal of your time wondering if he liked you and a greater deal wondering who he was. Finally, with you on vocals, the band was formed. Pansy lovingly named it The Wallflowers, in your honour.
As soon as Kie found out, she insisted on having you play at The Wreck. All of that led up to today, with the show due to start in two hours.
“I’m so excited to hear you guys play,” she grins. “I can’t believe it took you so long to tell me you were in a band.”
“Just never came up,” you chuckle, standing up. “How many people do you think’ll come?”
“Maybe fifty or so? Dad posted about it on the Facebook page and I put up some posters.”
Your stomach drops. “Posters?”
Kie jumps off the speaker. “Only around the cut! None at Kook Academy, don’t worry.”
The panic eases somewhat with her clarification. You weren’t exactly enthused to have some of your classmates, who seemed to find pleasure in teasing your quietness, coming to see you play. Your band was like your safe spot: where you could express yourself. Pansy practically had to prise the songs you’d written out of your hands at the first practice.
As if summoning her by thought, the afro haired girl waltzes into the restaurant, guitar case slung over her shoulders. “I can’t believe I haven’t been here before! This place is hella cute, Kie!”
“Thanks,” Kiara smiles.
Pansy hops onto the small make-shift stage you’d borrowed from the school’s music department, looking around the room as if she’d conquered the land.
“Yeah, yeah. This’ll do nicely.”
“This your lots’ first gig?” Kiara wonders as she gets up to get you all drinks.
“Nah. We’ve done a couple at my uncle’s bar,” Pansy replies. “Benny managed to get us this thing at a fundraiser too, last month.”
“It’s nice trying somewhere new though,” you say. Pansy nods enthusiastically.
“Especially somewhere this cute!”
Kiara laughs, walking back over with three cups balanced in her hands. You and Pansy take one each and have a sip. Fresh lemonade; perfect for the April weather warmth.
“When’s Benny and Mike getting here?”
“Mike’s hitching a lift with Benny. Said they’ll be about ten minutes or so,” Pansy replies.
She puts down her cup and shrugs off her guitar case. Unzipping it, she retrieves her ‘baby’. You’re surprised she doesn’t start gushing over how beautiful she is. You and Kie keep chatting about how schools nearly finished for the year as Pansy sorts out the cables and amps for her electric guitar. She then props it on the stand.
Just as she said they would, Benny and Mike walk into The Wreck just under ten minutes later. They’re both wheeling in drum pieces. Mike dashes out to grab his bass from the van. You move to help Benny set up his drums.
“You borrow your dad’s van again?” you ask him.
He nods. “Surprised he isn’t making me pay for gas.”
As you sit back on your haunches, screwing in one of the bolts for the kick drum, Benny looks at you. “You look nice, by the way.”
“Thanks,” you smile, not looking away from your handy work.
“New shorts?”
“Nah. Had them a while.”
“Oh. Well, they look nice.”
Benny lingers a moment longer, as if he might say something else, but then must think better of it and goes back to fixing the hi-hat.
“You nervous for tonight?”
“Not more than usual. I know I’ll be fine once we start playing,” you reply.
As the two of you finish setting up the drumkit, you glance off to see that Pansy has trapped Kie in some intense discussion about crystals. You knew it was risky introducing the two of them: two astrology girlies are a deadly combination. Mike sits off to the side, tuning his bass. The speaker’s on and it echoes around the room.
“Sounding groovy,” Kiara’s dad calls from the doorway of the kitchen.
Kie groans. “Dad, nobody says groovy.”
“Well, I do,” he says, winking at her. She rolls her eyes lovingly. “Think it should be a good crowd tonight, guys. Excited to hear you play.”
Pansy beams at him. “Thanks! We’ve been practising like mad for it!”
“Yeah. Pansy didn’t give us much of a choice,” Mike sardonically grins, making everyone laugh.
“Oh! I forgot to tell you!” Kiara says your name to catch your attention. “You remember me telling you about my friends, John B and all that? They’re coming too.”
“They are?” you ask, nervousness spiking.
She nods. “They’re super excited to meet you.”
There must be clear panic on your face because her enthusiasm evens out into a calming smile. “Hey! Don’t worry. They’re super chill.”
“Kie, no offense, but from some of the stories you’ve told me, they don’t sound super chill,” you mumble, going back to fixing another part of the drum into place.
“I mean they’re non-judgemental. Especially Pope. He’s a little weird too. Uh, no offence.”
“Offence,” you reply, though you smile when you do.
Kie calling you weird doesn’t bother you. Any other Kook at school doing it though, and you’d probably burst into tears.
“It’s alright. I’ll just sneak you out after the gig in a suitcase like they do with Taylor Swift,” Benny whispers to you. You laugh, rolling your eyes.
“Great plan. Not obvious at all.”
The rest of the set-up goes to plan. After an hour, the instruments are plugged in and tuned up. Mike and Pansy have practised the bridge to one of the songs about twenty times, making your head begin to pound. Kiara’s dad has elicited Kie’s help in the kitchen with making the buffet-style meal. Their working was to do a pay-for-it-all sort of method: a set price of ten dollars per plate, loaded up as full as you want. Seconds and thirds were another five dollars. It seemed the best way to take orders without interrupting the gig. Kie’s mum comes to prepare the drinks. Bowls of punch for the kids and teens, and beers and cans for the adults.
By the time it comes close for you guys to play, the room is beginning to pack. You sit on the side of the stage, mostly hidden by one of the amps, with Pansy acting as an unofficial barrier for anybody who tries to talk to you. She’s glad to answer any questions, quickly diving into stories about the band name and the songs and whatever else comes to mind. Mike chimes in too, also rather extraverted, and you and Benny cower in the back like lost children in a shopping mall searching for their parents.
There’re the nerves before you play – like always – but the calmness of knowing that as soon as the first chord is strummed, it’ll fade out. You seem to slip into a corner of your brain when you guys play your songs. Like nobody can touch you or judge you. You’re almost able to fully let go.
“You guys ready?” Kiara’s dad asks, walking over to your foursome.
Nope. Nerves are back and in full force. Maybe you’ll throw up right here right now, and they’ll have to call the whole thing off.
“Hell yeah!” Pansy exclaims. She probably thinks she’s talking for all of you.
Kiara’s dad steps onto the stage and goes to the microphone, flicking it on. It buzzes to life, the noise catching people’s attention, and when he taps on it to make sure it’s working, the conversations naturally die down.
“Alright, folks! You guys are in for a treat tonight! The grooviest band from Kildare County is here to perform!”
You see Kie groan and shake her head from the back of the room, making you laugh. It helps ease your nerves. You don’t have time to check if her friends have arrived because you’re being ushered up by Pansy.
“Let’s here it for The Wallflowers!”
The applause from the small crowd that’s gathered feels like a stadium cheering you on. Pansy jumps on stage first, grabbing her guitar, waving happily to the crowd as if she knew each of them personally and had been banking on them to come. Mike gives a casual nod as he steps up and pulls on his bass. Benny slinks behind the drum kit, flashing the briefest of smiles to the crowd.
You focus on the floor and take a quick breath in. Here we go. Then you’re stepping onto the stage, forcing your head up, plastering on a smile, and waving.
Pansy always introduces the band. You can’t bring yourself to form words at the start of the show.
“How we all doing tonight?” She loudly asks, her voice echoing through the speakers.
The crowd give another whoop and cheer. It’s mostly teenagers and young adults, with some older couples and families intermixed. You catch Kiara’s eye and feel your shoulder’s relax a little when she gives a grin and thumbs-up. There’s not enough confidence in you to look at her friends.
Pansy introduces herself then names each one of you, pointing as she goes. Finally, she declares, “We’re The Wallflowers and we’ve got some songs to play for you tonight. You guys ready?”
You don’t take in the response from the crowd. Just close your eyes and wrap your hands around the microphone, searching for the tap of Benny’s drumsticks to count you in. Wait for it. Wait for it…
Two, three, four—
The moment Pansy strums her first chord, and Mike hits his first note, your mouth opens and the words fly out, second nature, without a thought.
“Sometimes I think I see your ghost…”
The anxiety gets shoved down, suppressed by something akin to confidence, and you manage to open your eyes. Your body naturally sways to the music, hands not leaving the microphone until you reach the first chorus.
“If you’re gonna love me, make sure that you do it right. I’ll be under your window in the moonlight.”
Fingers pushing through your hair, sweeping it off your shoulders, you dance a little to the beat. Benny’s hitting, keeping you all in rhythm, and Mike’s bass thrums lowly to keep you in tune. Pansy’s grinning – you see it from the corner of your eye – as she plays her guitar. It makes you smile. Your band; a mismatched group of teens from the sweeter side of Kook Academy. You have no idea how you managed to find them, but there’s no complaints to be heard. As if sinking into the cosiest of beds after a tiresome day, you relax into the music, relax in yourself.
After the first song, it becomes easy. You feel in your element, like a bird returning from migration, and start to engage with the crowd some more. Start having them clap along to the beat when the bridge starts up for the third song. Have them jumping a little to the chorus of the fifth.
“Ain’t she great?” Pansy encourages from them after the sixth song.
The strangers who’ve accumulated to see you, now a little buzzed, applaud and whistle. You feel your face flush hot. At the back, Kiara cheers the loudest, accompanied by several guys’ voices who holler. You look over and it’s then that you meet his eyes. JJ Maybank.
The nerves hit you full force.
Oh God.
Oh God.
How the hell are you supposed to sing another song knowing that he’s watching you? That someone who looks like that is listening to you sing your stupid little love-sick, fantasy-formed songs? You knew he was friends with Kie, but you didn’t think he’d actually show up.
You consider pretending to faint, but that’ll probably be more humiliating than just powering through. To distract yourself, you duck down to take a sip of water from your bottle.
“Come on,” you whisper, closing your eyes. Just one song left, and then you’re home free and can hide under your sheets for a week. Maybe two.
“This next one is mostly me and my girl,” Pansy announces, nodding to you as you rise back to stand. “We’re gonna bring it down a minute, alright? I wanna see lots of loved up couples slow dancing, you hear?”
There’re some chuckles. You’re always in awe of how easily she interacts with the crowd. Pansy begins to pick out the melody on her strings, turning to face you. She smiles reassuringly, nodding to count you in. The anxiety melts away as the words line up ready in your head. Taking a breath, you turn back to the microphone.
“I wither within when I’m without. Baptised in sin and blessed with doubt.”
From the corner of your eyes, you see a phone torch lift into the air. Then you see more and more people do the same, until there’s a powerful white glow shining on yourself and Pansy. You let out a small, bashful giggle. Through the phones, you spot Kiara again, nodding along to the beat and swaying. She’s got an easy smile on her face. You can’t help but glance your eyes to JJ, who’s at her side. His arms are crossed over his chest, face nearly stoic, but he’s swaying too. Looks almost deep in thought. Before he can clock that you’re looking at him, you flit your eyes back to the wall.
“There’s always someone, I’m tryna live up to. I can never get to you. You always seem closer, in the rear view…”
As the song goes on and your voice sings out, your eyes slip shut again. You sink into the words and let your mind drift into thoughts of romance and love. It had never been all that present in your life. Talking to strangers in the chance that they might be your friend was terrifying enough; if you find them attractive, then it’s game over. You practically become mute from nerves. That left you pretty lonely, romantically and otherwise. Besides, guys didn’t tend to go for girls who could barely spit out a sentence in a group project and are as often seen at a kegger or house party as a dodo bird. At least, not the type of guys you liked.
The ending of the song starts to build; Mike picks out a steady beat on his bass. You slowly begin to clap on every other beat. Gradually, the crowd joins in as the melody from Mike continues. Once enough people have joined, you decide to pick up the lyrics.
“You love me. I love you. You don’t love me anymore, I still do. I’m sorry. I’m trying. I hate it when you catch me crying.”
One the final lyric, Benny’s joining in, Pansy in tow. The big finish arrives, the crowd stopping their clapping to whoop and bash their heads to the heavy beat. You repeat the lyrics again, finding your grin once more at the sight of everyone having fun (save for some dwellers and shoe-watchers on the outskirts).
“I hate it when you catch me crying.”
The song comes to an abrupt end. Pansy lets her last note ring out. When the crowd cheers and applauds, you laugh bashfully into the microphone, your face so hot that you worry it might explode.
“Thank you,” you manage out with a smile.
“We’ve been The Wallflowers! Follow us on Spotify and Instagram! Good night!” Pansy shamelessly promotes, waving with both hands in farewell.
You take an awkward bow, Benny waving nervously from behind the drum kit, and then Kiara’s dad is flicking on the main lights. The chatter of the crowd soon kicks up now that you guys are done playing, and Kie’s dad switches back on the usual playlist that buzzes through the restaurant to fill the background’s quiet. You turn to Pansy to find her beaming, practically vibrating on the spot with excitement. She ambushes you and Mike in a group hug.
“You guys did amazing! We fucking rocked! Holy shit! We’re playing here all the time!”
You laugh at her ways, hugging her back tentatively. You’d never been the best with physical affection, which was a perfect match for Pansy, who didn’t seem capable of doing anything without a bear hug.
“It was pretty rad,” Mike agrees, nodding. Cool and calm as ever.
Benny emerges from behind the drums, shaking his head of ginger hair out of his eyes. “I think we sounded alright, yeah,” he says, smiling at you.
“Alright? We sounded fucking amazing!” Pansy screeches.
You flush with embarrassment. “I could’ve hit the note a bit better on—”
“Oh, would you guys stop it and just enjoy the moment!” Pansy berates, pulling back to mirthfully roll her eyes. “The truth is we sounded great, and you know it.”
“She’s right!” Kiara calls from below.
You turn your head and smile at her. Pansy nods in approval, pulling Mike and Benny into a conversation, as you climb down to talk to Kiara.
“You liked it?” you ask.
“Are you kidding? You guys are awesome!”
“Thanks,” you laugh, reluctant to accept the compliment.
The place is starting to fill out now that the gig and serving is done. A few people linger to chat and discuss the show, but most filter out the front and back doors. Gradually, it gets easier to hear the reggae music through the speakers.
“You’ve gotta meet the gang before we leave! Come on,” Kiara says as your chatter about music dies down.
Before you can register her words, she’s grabbing at your wrist and guiding you outside to where the boys are loitering. Your meek protests fall on deaf ears and soon you’re face to face with the trio. Kiara announces your name proudly, as if presenting an award, and you awkwardly wave, barely making eye contact with any of them. Least of all JJ.
“Hey,” John B smiles. He has a nice smile. Friendly and warm. “I’m John B. This is Pope-”
“-You guys sounded great, by the way,” Pope says to you. You feel overwhelmed by the praise and vaguely nod in thanks, hopefully smiling as you do.
“-And JJ.”
At his name, you find yourself looking up at him. He’s taking a hit of his vape and offers you a smile, then he holds out his fist to bump yours. It takes you too long to clock what he means. By the time your fist hits his, he’s halfway retracted his own. It’s already a mess. Oh God. Maybe that spilt-beer puddle on the table is deep enough to drown yourself in.
“I liked that last song.”
You blink out of your panic-filled haze and into his eyes. “The last one?”
“Yeah. The slower one that goes all loud at the end? What’s it called?”
“Rear view.”
He bobs his head, the silence stretching out. Say something else. When you wrote it, maybe. Before your brain can catch up to formulate anything else outside of your blunt response, JJ’s taking another hit of his vape.
“Well…It’s a good song.”
“Thanks,” you cloddishly say.
Oh God. It’s terrible. It’s painful. It’s…
“You wanna come back to the chateau and hang out?” John B wonders.
“The chateau?”
“It’s just this dumb nickname for John B’s house,” Kiara says.
“Hey!”
“You wanna?” she asks, ignoring him.
“Oh, um…”
You glance back inside The Wreck, through the window, seeing you friends chatting animatedly. Benny’s smiling, which is always a good sign. Then you look back to Kiara and her friends. The Pogues, as she often called them. Your eyes fall on JJ last. He isn’t looking at you, instead out to the distance, as if waiting to leave. Yep – you blew it. Good job.
“I’ll pass,” you say, tone apologetic. “Need to talk with my band.”
“Oh. Well, let us know if you change your mind,” Kie smiles, recovering easily.
You nod and accept her offer of a hug. Then you’re walking back into the restaurant, ungainly waving goodbye to her friends. John B and Pope wave back, and JJ nods his head at you in farewell.
As soon as you’re out of ear shot, you look down at the floor and sigh.
Whispering to yourself, you can’t help but say, “good job, me.”
~*~*~*~*~*
The fishing supply shop you’d stumbled upon was more like a shack. There was a mom-and-pops feel to it; a hand painted sign that creaked when it swung in the breeze (the lingering presence of spring, fighting to stay before summer would cast it out). You push through the door, hearing the chime of the bell, and look down at the list your dad had given you. Looking back up to the rows of goods, you feel as if everything is spelt in Spanish. Sighing, you go to start searching for the things on his list. It doesn’t help that he’s been wonderfully vague: lures, hooks, bait. You look at some of the boxes and take one down to inspect the label better. You’re pretty sure these are hooks…
“Hey, you’re Kie’s friend, right? That chick in the band?”
Assuming somebody’s talking to you, you look up, to the right, and come eye to eye with JJ. Your mouth instantly goes dry like the Sahara.
“Yeah,” you say. You’re trying to smile but it’s like the muscles in your face have gone lax. Why are you so Goddamn inept sometimes?
“I’m JJ,” he says, fixing his cap. “We met at The Wreck?”
“No, I know,” you tell him. You don’t mean for it to sound rude – merely stating a fact that of course you know who he is – but through your nerves, it sounds clipped. Like he’s bothering you.
JJ nods, a little awkward himself now. “No, yeah, of course.”
Just as you’re willing up the guts to apologise for your hopeless social skills, JJ’s filling the silence once more.
“You fish?”
“What?”
“Do you like fishing?”
What a weird question. “No.”
“Oh,” he says. He glances around. “Then…Why are you in a fishing shop?”
Oh. Yeah, duh.
“Oh, my dad does,” you say, lifting the list to show him. JJ’s eyes skim it briefly and he nods, quietly letting out an ‘ah’. “Asked me to pick some stuff up for him.”
Oh God, shut up.
“Well, this place is a pretty good spot to go for your gear,” he tells you.
“Do you fish?”
And, good job, you’ve managed to ask a normal question.
JJ smiles and it seems as if he’s relaxing into himself again. It makes you feel easier too; it’s always painful when your awkwardness rubs off on others, like the spreading of a disease.
“Yeah, I do. My whole family were fishermen and stuff. Can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fishing,” JJ says.
Whilst you prepare yourself to ask more about his family, and what sort of fishing he does, JJ’s flashing you a friendly grin and nodding down to your list.
“Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Hope you find everything.”
“Oh. Yeah, thanks. Um, you too,” you reply.
You final have enough control of yourself to smile at him. It might be your delusions contorting your perception, but you’re sure JJ’s smile grows a bit brighter when you do.
Turning away, you go back to staring hopelessly at the box in your hand. The front is raving about the benefits of this style of hook, reeling of jargon as if trying to impress a university professor. It’s useless. Not only are your thoughts now hijacked by overthinking everything you said in that conversation, and the fact that JJ Maybank spoke to you on his own agenda; you still haven’t learnt anything about fishing in the last five minutes. You’ll just get a receipt and your dad can come back and fix whatever mess you make of this seemingly easy errand.
“You gonna buy those?”
JJ’s still there, stood at your side. He’s looking at the box from over your shoulder. You look up to him.
“Yeah?”
“Those ones are pure crap. No, no, you want the good stuff,” JJ tells you, shaking his head.
He takes the box from your hand and replaces it with another, from a higher shelf. Tapping on the cover, he begins to read off some of the hooks’ perks (who knew there could be so many?).
“I mean, they’re a little more expensive but you get more bang for your buck, you know? Those other ones’ll snap after like four days on the water.”
When he looks back into your eyes, he must see the blank look behind them. He laughs. “Just trust me on this.”
“Okay,” you say, finding a laugh.
“Here, what else’s on your list?” JJ asks, taking the scrap of paper from you.
You don’t complain. Being in his orbit feels like you’re seeing the earth from space; even if it’s just him helping you buy fishing gear, there’s no way you’re going to pass up this opportunity.
JJ keeps talking, jovial in tone, casually dropping reams of information and tips about fishing. As he starts moving around the store in search of items, you blindly follow, nodding along, though only half understanding what he’s saying. It just feels nice to hear him talk. He has a nice voice; one that easily brings a smile. There’s the strong, Carolina accent that shines through, intermixed with slang that’s robust on the cut.
“So, what band are you guys a tribute for?” JJ wonders as he inspects different wires.
“What’d you mean?”
“You know, like who’s music are you playing? I haven’t heard it before.”
“They’re originals,” you say. His head whips around, eyes wide.
“No way.”
“Yeah. I, uh, wrote the songs myself,” you admit, modest.
“You wrote them? That’s insane!”
“Well, they’re not Fleetwood Mac or anything—”
“—Well, nobody’s Fleetwood Mac, for starters,” JJ interrupts, turning back to the wires. “And not anybody can write songs. I sure as hell can’t. Fucking hopeless with words.”
“I find that hard to believe,” you laugh. You feel as if you’re inching out of your shell, the longer you talk to him.
His shoulders, strong and built, shrug under the cotton of his tee shirt. On the back, there’s an emblem: Kildare County Boating Supplies. “Born with my foot in my mouth. Never know when to shut the hell up, half the time.”
“Oh, same here.”
JJ laughs. He glances over his shoulder at you. The crinkles on his cheeks from his smile give him a boyish look of innocence. “Oh, you’re funny, huh?”
“Not usually,” you reply.
“Nah, I doubt Kie could be friends with someone who didn’t have a sense of humour,” JJ lightly argues.
He seems to have decided on a wire and picks up a box, handing it to your building pile stacked up in your arms.
“I think we got it all,” he says, checking over the list. It’s fickle how the term ‘we’ makes your heart stutter.
The two of you head to the counter, gently dumping all the items. You request two bags, knowing you’ll need as much help as you can get to lug it all home. JJ’s still lingering by you. The cashier begins to scan through the items.
“Oh, shit,” JJ mumbles, grinning. He’s looking at a pocketknife on the counter; picks it up to inspect it.
Confused, you ask, “what is it?”
“It’s the latest model,” JJ says.
“There’s different models of pocketknife?” you hear yourself ask.
JJ chuckles, still inspecting it. You notice how the cashier is eyeing him up, like he might just slip it into his pocket, then and there. He probably doesn’t catch the glare you shoot at him.
“These guys make the best ones. My dad gave me his old one and it lasted for like ten years. Damn.”
Your eyes glance down to the box he took it from, checking the price. It’s more than what you’d pay for a pocketknife, but apparently it seems to be worth the money. JJ eventually puts it back.
“That everything for you, dear?” the cashier checks.
JJ seems to take it as his cue to leave. Shoving his hands in his short pockets, he flashes you a smile and a nod.
“Well, I’ll see you around, Kie’s friend.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“Course,” JJ shrugs. He nods to the cashier in farewell, too, then heads out the door.
Looking to the cashier, who’s still waiting for a reply, then down to the box of pocketknives, you smile, overcome with an idea. After you’ve paid up and packed your bags as quickly as you can, you thank the cashier before darting out the store, glancing around for JJ. He hasn’t gone very far, walking towards the docks. You remember Kie telling you about Pope’s dad Hayward, and how he lived on the waterside, and you put two-and-two together. Before the small bout of adrenaline can leave, along with your confidence, you jog over to him, calling his name.
JJ turns around and smiles, a little confused. “You good?”
“Here,” you say, digging about in your short pocket to retrieve the knife. You hold out the pocketknife to him, hands shaking a bit. “As a thank you.”
He looks down at it. Then, he begins to frown. “Why’d you do that?”
“As a thanks,” you repeat. You’re still holding it out. Heart pounding in your ears. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all. You overstepped. He was just being helpful and you made it weird, like always.
JJ scoffs, shifting his weight. He glances off to the water. Looking down at you, jaw somewhat tense, he says, “I don’t need your charity, you know?”
Frowning, you reply, “it’s not charity. It’s…A sign of gratitude, I guess?”
He eyes the knife like it might be laced with Anthrax. Okay, this is getting slightly ridiculous.
“Look, will you just take it? I’ve got no use for it, so it’ll just go to waste if you don’t,” you say impatiently.
JJ’s eyes flash up to yours. There’s a twitch in his cheek, threatening a smirk. Chuckling quietly, he reluctantly accepts the gift.
“Okay, I will. Uh, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” you say, nodding. Good. That was good. The only problem is that now that you’ve done that, the interaction has come to a natural end, and you have nothing else to say to fill the gaps. “Well…Have a good day.”
Chuckling, he nods, waving you off. “You too.”
The moment your back’s turned to him; you exhale out the lingering nerves. Your smile doesn’t fade, turning almost giddy from the fleeting conversations you’d shared. It’s brought you too much joy that JJ just accepted a pocketknife off you; it’s practically pathetic. Nonetheless, you don’t berate yourself too much. Instead, you walk home, replaying the way JJ chuckled and smiled down at you when you let your patience slip.
~*~*~*~*~*
As an introvert, you’ve managed to find your way out of plenty of social gatherings. Award ceremonies? Stomach bug. Presentations? Stomach bug. House parties? You guessed it – stomach bug. Keggers? Any ideas…?
One gathering that you’ve never been able to get out of - nor have ever been able to say no to, out of guilt - are birthdays. Any sort of birthday celebration, no matter how big or how small, and you feel have to go. You almost feel like it’s your duty to. Friends were a rarity in your life, like finding emeralds and gold, and you didn’t want to risk it by making it seem like you didn’t care about someone’s special day. Even if parties made your stomach feel like it was filled with led and you barely opened your mouth in fear that you might puke with anxiety, you force yourself to any that you’re invited to.
For Pansy, it was always a house party. Some big, ridiculous do that her rich parents would throw. Streamers and themes and a hired DJ. A huge, ridiculous cake that barely got eaten and party favours that were practically insulting in price. She didn’t care all that much about it, but she was an only child and boy do rich parents like to spoil their only off-spring. It was sort of sweet though. Her parents weren’t trying to buy her affection: they genuinely did care for her, and just wanted her to have a good time. So, when Pansy’s birthday rolled around, at the beginning of June – just after school finished up for summer – you get the dreaded text:
Birthday bash on Friday night: be there or else.
A knife emoji, and then…
Love ya!
You groan and toss your head back, flopping onto the pile of pillows on Kiara’s bed. Her phone chimes a moment later and, after reading the text, she flashes you a pitiful smile.
“Pansy’s birthday party?”
“Mhm,” you hum.
“It’ll be fun!”
Unconvinced. “Mhm.”
“Come on. We can get ready together and pre-drink together and get drunk together. It’ll be great.”
Easing yourself up reluctantly, you cock a brow at her. “Really?”
“Yes! It’ll be great,” she repeats, firmer as if in promise. The ding of her phone prompts her to read the second message. You watch as her eyebrows shoot up. “Oh! She invited the Pogues, too.”
“Like the band?” you ask tiredly, rubbing your forehead.
You wouldn’t be all that surprised. One year her parents managed to bag ‘The 1975’ for a birthday-shoutout-video-call. Don’t ask.
Kiara rolls her eyes. “Like JJ, John B and Pope: The Pogues. Dumbass.”
Your eyes shoot open.
JJ.
Hoping to sound nonchalant, you watch Kie type away on her phone as you ask, “well, you don’t think they’ll wanna go though, right? I mean, didn’t you say they hate Kooks?”
There’s the telling whoosh noise that a text has been sent. She looks up at you and shrugs. “They probably will. They might hate Kooks but they love open bars.”
Great. No, yeah, that’s great. You’ll run into JJ again and the conversation will be doubly as awkward and you’ll make a fool of yourself, like you always do, and you’ll go drown in the pool that’s overflowing with your tears of embarrassment. No, great. That’s just—
“Great.”
The theme for Pansy’s seventeenth turns out to be 2000s. She’s dressed up as Regina George from Mean girls – the scene where she has circles cut out of her white vest top, showing through her pink bra. She sends you a picture of her costume on the night, whilst you’re at Kiara’s getting ready.
“Woah. She looks amazing,” you grin, showing the phone to Kie.
She’s sat on the bed, working on her eye make-up. Momentarily glancing away from the mirror to check your phone, she smiles and gives her mark of approval. You text Pansy back, gushing over her costume, and then follow it up with a blatant lie: so excited for tonight! Tossing your phone to the side, you look in the mirror and get back to working on your hair, portioning it in two to style it into pigtails. You’ve dressed up as one of the Powerpuff Girls. Namely, Bubbles: the sweet, quiet, innocent one. In many ways, you feel as though you are Bubbles. The costume’s fun and reminds you of childhood.
“John B just text me,” she tells you, glancing down at her phone that’s pinging away. “Says they’re still at the chateau and will probably show up later. I reckon we’ll be ready to leave for Pansy’s in ten.”
“Are all of them going?” you ask. You’re not sure what you want her answer to be.
“Yep. Even Pope,” she says.
You look back into the mirror and swallow your nerves. It’ll be fine. It’ll be great, just as Kiara promised. Reaching for your bottle of cider, you down the rest and finish getting ready.
It takes about fifteen minutes to walk to Pansy’s house from Kiara’s. The two of you start up the path towards the house. It’s impressive. Modern and ageless, with contemporary finishes and floor-to-ceiling windows on nearly every wall. Painted exuberant white, the place stands as a monument to money. There’s a fountain in the front garden and an electronically powered front gate that’s been left open for the night. The two of you head up the stairs to the front door. Music is pulsing, sneaking out the house and into the night, and you take a breath in preparation. Kie seems to notice and takes your hand, smiling and giving it a squeeze of reassurance. With that, you remind yourself why you’re putting yourself through this hell. Pansy’s birthday.
It's rammed and loud and overstimulating in every way. There’re couples making out on the coach and friends dancing near a speaker and two guys arguing loudly by the window. Empty cups and bottles, an abandoned bong on the coffee table (another perk of having rich parents: they let you do whatever you want). Somebody’s already passed out on the stairs, with other party goers narrowly dodging them as they rush off to the bathroom or in search of a quiet room. Kiara guides you through the house, through the kitchen, in search for Pansy. Your hand never leaves hers. The pounding of the bass is so loud that it’s hard to tell what’s your heartbeat and what isn’t.
You spot Mike first. He’s lent on the counter of the island, chatting to a girl you don’t recognise.
“Hey, Mike,” you say, finding your smile from the familiar face. He looks to you and grins.
“Hey!” his low voice booms. He wraps you in a quick hug. “Wasn’t sure if you were gonna come?”
“You know me,” you smile, queasy. “Anything for Pansy.”
“Amen,” he nods, tipping his beer in approval. He greets Kie, having met her at The Wreck the other week.
“You know where Pansy is?”
“Out back, last time I checked,” he replies, nodding to the backdoor.
You thank him and drag yourself and Kie out the patio doors and into the garden. Scanning the area, you try and spot your friend. There’s people swimming in the pool, cannonballing in, and others dancing to the music. Someone throwing up. A bong being passed around. Beer pong and drinking Jenga and…It’s chaos. Keep it together.
Then, you spot Pansy. She’s lent against the shed, chatting away to a half-arsed Juno. Walking over, the moment she clocks you and Kiara, the other conversation is ditched. Throwing her arms out – already drunk and probably high – she gives a cheer of your names.
“You made it!”
“Better late than never,” Kiara grins.
You let her hug you; almost have the life squeezed out of you in the process. “Happy birthday, Pansy.”
“Damn right, it’s a happy birthday,” she grins. “Look at this rager!”
Kiara nods in approval, taking it all in. “Having fun?”
“I am now!” Pansy exclaims. “Maybe now that you’re here, Benny’ll finally show up.”
“Benny’s here?” you ask.
“Mhm. I lost him about five minutes in, though. He’s probably hiding under the stairs, poor thing,” she says, shaking her head. Looking to Kie, she asks, “did the Pogues come along?”
“They should show up at some point,” Kie nods, smiling.
“Oh, yes! Finally, my plan can come into action!” Pansy says. She then gives a laugh that borders on psychotic.
You frown, befuddled. “Your plan?”
“My set-you-up-with-JJ plan? Only been waiting since the fifth grade,” she buzzes.
Your face drops. Your stomach plummets. All your internal organs flop out of your body and land on the floor, with your heart last.
One too many drinks in Pansy, and she casually lets slip of your biggest, most pathetic secret on earth, to none other than one of JJ’s best friends.
“What?” Kiara practically shouts. She gapes at you.
Pansy’s face quickly switches from excitement to dread, as her brain seems to catch up. “Wait…Shit, I wasn’t supposed to say that, was I?”
“Nope,” you say, through gritted teeth.
Hold it together. Hold it together.
“JJ?” Kiara checks. She’s staring at you as if you’ve just done an Irish jig.
You don’t reply. Not sure you can. You swallow thickly and stare down at the floor.
Then, scarily calm, you say, “I think I’m gonna go get another drink.”
Neither of them stops you – Pansy already distracted and Kiara practically in shell-shock – and you slink back into the house. You grab the first thing you find (another bottle of beer) and frantically search for a bottle opener, cracking it open. Downing half of it, you look around for Mike. He’s not where he was stood before. You have no idea where the hell to even start looking for Benny. You finish the bottle and then look for another. In the process, you decide that having a shot of vodka might be alright and take a swig or two right from the bottle. Okay, maybe a little more than a shot.
There’s a hand on your arm, tugging, and it catches your attention.
“There you are!” Kiara sighs in relief. “Look, it’s okay that you have a crush on JJ. If anything, it’s better than okay! It’s kinda sweet! I just wish you’d told me—”
“Kie, please, stop,” you say, shaking your head. “I really don’t want to talk about this right now, alright? Pansy didn’t mean to say that. I don’t…It’s not even true!”
She pulls a face as if to say ‘yeah, right’ but doesn’t argue. “Well…If you ever wanna talk about it—”
“--I really don’t—”
“--But if you ever do! You can, alright?”
She means it. You can hear it in her voice and see it on her face. Sighing, you nod. She smiles at that.
“Look, I’m not gonna tell him, okay? I would never do that,” she assures you. You smile, nodding once more. Your stomach feels like a mosh-pit.
“Good. Now, come on! I promised you a great night and I meant it.”
Kiara ropes you into a game of drinking Jenga. At some point, Pansy joins, then Mike. After three rounds – and two shots to get out of doing dares – you begin to feel weird. It’s then that you realise, as the world becomes fuzzy and your thoughts start to mush, that all the alcohol you’ve been necking is hitting at once.
Oh no.
You excuse yourself to go find the bathroom, hoping to have a moment to pull yourself together, and despite Kiara’s instance you tell her not to follow. You just need a moment alone to calm down your heartrate. Why does it suddenly feel like it’s going to beat out of your chest now? You’ve been to Pansy’s house plenty of times before, but you suddenly feel lost. People are crammed into every room like sardines, all of them strangers, and you can’t grasp your bearings. The alcohol isn’t helping, nor the panic, and the longer your search for a bathroom or an empty space, the more you feel like the walls are closing in. At some point, you end up in a corridor of the house. It’s a little quieter than in the main rooms, a few bodies lining the walls, some girls sat on the floor chatting. The only light is a single bulb hanging above. At the sight of you stumbling down the hall, one of the girls must think you look as bad as you feel.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asks.
You nod, trying to smile, but you’re honestly not sure what expression is on your face anymore. The bathroom door is locked. No. The girl is coming up to you, maybe thinking she’s being helpful, but you hate strangers and you hate conversations and you hate parties and
Why did you come?
You’ve spoken about five words to Pansy all night! She’d understand if you didn’t; probably wouldn’t even miss you. Great. Something about that thought has tears stinging your eyes, and the random girl who’s made it her new mission in life to help you is only spurred on. She’s shushing you and it makes it all worse: you’re so embarrassed. If there’s anything you dread more than talking to strangers, it’s crying in front of them. Is this a nightmare?
The sound of your name reflexively has you turning your head. It’s JJ.
“Jesus, you don’t look too good,” he says.
Great.
His eyes flit to the girl uselessly trying to calm you down from your panic attack. He ushers her off you, half-arsedly thanking her, and then he’s guiding you from the hallway and through a door. It’s a bathroom. Maybe the door you’d been trying earlier wasn’t a bathroom? It’s all so confusing. You didn’t even know JJ was here; just assumed the Pogues hadn’t bothered showing up. You suddenly realise that you’re still hyperventilating, in front of your crush of all people, and then you remember that Pansy let slip to Kiara that you have a crush on JJ and…
You’re shaking your head, waving him off. “I’m fine. It’s fine. Sorry. I’m sorry! You can go back to the party!”
That would all be believable if you weren’t gasping out the words. JJ doesn’t listen. He doesn’t even acknowledge that you’ve spoken. You don’t bother to try again. The ground seems a good place to go. Solid and unmoving. You slide down the bathroom wall and gasp in air. It won’t seem to stay in your lungs, as if fighting to escape, and you start to cry.
JJ’s saying your name in a soothing voice. He’s squatting in front of you, watching as you pull your knees up to your chest. God, this is humiliating.
“We’re gonna play a game, okay?”
A game?
“Yeah, yeah. It’s called the ‘five things’ game, alright?”
“I don’t…I don’t understand…” you cry, shutting your eyes.
Playing a game is the last thing you need right now. You just need to breathe. Why can’t you breathe?
“I’ll go first, alright? I have to name five things beginning with…Gimme a letter,” he says.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You write songs, for Christ’s sake,” he laughs, tone gentle. “Come on. One letter. That’s all I’m asking.”
You sort of want him to shut up, so you scramble through your thoughts. “T.”
“Okay, alright. I have to name five things beginning with ‘T’,” JJ says.
All you can hear is your panting for a while. You feel lightheaded.
“Um…Toothbrush. That’s one. How about…”
You crack open your eyes. He’s looking around the room. You notice his cap’s abandoned on the floor. Move your eyes to his legs, mostly bare save for his shorts, and to his chest.
“Tee shirt,” you offer, breathless. JJ’s head whips around to look at you. He smiles encouragingly.
“Yeah, tee shirt. Okay, three more.”
You begin to glance around the room. Stomach still rising and falling, you try and search for something beginning with ‘T’. It’s suddenly become the most important thing in the world.
“Toilet,” you say as your eyes drift over to it. “And toilet brush.”
“Damn, you’re on a roll,” JJ chuckles. You barely manage a laugh. Your head doesn’t feel as fuzzy anymore. “Just one more.”
It’s then that you realise he’s had a hand on your knee the whole time. Rubbing slow, concentric circles on the skin. You start to focus on the feeling of it, looking down as he does it. He’s gone back to searching the room, as if he’s forgotten he’s doing it.
“Touch.”
JJ frowns, looking back to you, then following your gaze to his hand. His smile is almost shy. “Yeah, that counts. Touch.”
The panic attack has eased off. Your lungs are finally doing their job, filling with air and holding it for longer than a millisecond. Exhaling slowly, closing your eyes, you tilt your head back against the wall.
“Better?” JJ wonders.
“A little. Thank you, for helping I mean,” you say.
“Don’t mention it. I know how shit it feels. I’ve had my fair share of panic attacks,” JJ tells you.
There’s a shuffle as he moves to sit on the floor. He retracts his hand from your knee and you immediately miss the feel. Opening your eyes, you look at him with a frown.
“You have?”
“Mhm,” he nods. “John B had to calm me down almost everyday at one point. It sucked.”
“Is that where you learnt that trick?”
“Yeah,” JJ says, offering a small smile. “It’s a good distraction.”
You nod. You’ve never tried it before. Always found that you could ground yourself with your breathing, but everything out there was too much, too crazy, for you to focus. Correcting how you sit, crossing your legs (the skater skirt smoothing out over your thighs), you sigh and hang your head.
“I hate parties.”
JJ chuckles. “No kidding.”
You snort, shaking your head.
“But hey, least you look pretty though.”
You look up. There’s very little energy left in you to overthink what he’s just said. No room left to panic.
“I do?”
“Yeah,” he smiles. “I like your costume.”
“Thanks,” you mumble. Your fingers move down to mess with the hem of your skirt.
“Who’re you meant to be?”
You can’t help but bark out a laugh. “How can you like my costume when you don’t even know who I am?”
JJ laughs, after seemingly being taken aback by your outburst. “I dunno. I like that skirt on you.”
“I’m Bubbles. From the Powerpuff Girls,” you tell him as your laughter dies down.
Realisation flashes across his face as quick as a comet darting through the sky. “Oh! Oh shit, of course!”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Hell yeah!” JJ grins. “Mojo Jojo was my favourite character as a kid!”
“Ugh, he’s iconic,” you groan happily, tossing your head back.
“That one episode, when he gets told off by the professor,” JJ reminisces excitedly.
“I loved that one!”
The two of you laugh.
“Who’re you meant to be?”
“Um…Well, I didn’t get the memo it’s a costume party,” he admits with a wince, smiling.
“You could say you’re from…The Hangover?” you offer after a moment’s thought.
JJ cringes. “That might be worse than just saying I forgot to wear a costume.”
You laugh, nodding. “True.”
There’s a brief moment where the two of you just look at one another, smiling contently. You always knew JJ was pretty (as Pansy so graciously revealed to Kie earlier), but up close, under the white light of the bathroom, he’s gorgeous. A cute smile, shining eyes. The most perfect jawline that you could write reams of songs about just on its own.
“Think this is the most you’ve ever spoken to me,” JJ points out.
Your smile turns solemn, nodding. When you reply, you talk quietly, as if revealing a secret.
“I’m not very good at talking to people.”
“Can I ask you a question, then?”
“Mhm.”
“Why’d you come to this house party? Doesn’t really seem to be your scene,” JJ asks.
Nodding, affirming his theory, you shrug and look down at his feet. He’s wearing black boots, shiny and heavy.
“It’s Pansy’s birthday, and she’s always been a big birthday fan. She’s one of my closest friends and she’s always there for me; always has my back. So, I figure, I can hack one night of the year at a stupid, over-the-top party for her. And usually I can…But I guess, I just couldn’t tonight.”
As you finish talking, you lift your head to take in JJ’s reaction. He’s nodding, a small smile still on his face.
“You’re a good friend.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You are,” he affirms. Your face goes warm and you shrug. Laughing, he adds, “you’re also shit at accepting compliments. I noticed that when we first met after your gig.”
You chuckle. Looking up to the ceiling, you feel your confession bubbling out of you, likely driven by the alcohol. “Yeah, well, all what I remember after the gig is thinking that you didn’t like me.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” you say, chuckling in self-deprecation. You meet JJ’s eyes, see the confusion shining in them. “You sorta seemed uninterested to talk to me. Which is fine, I figured you would be. But after the fishing shop - and now tonight - I’m starting to think I was wrong?”
“Yeah, you’re wrong,” JJ laughs. He’s not laughing at you, though. It’s almost as if he’s laughing at himself.
He rocks his head back and nods at the ceiling, pursing his lips in thought.
“I’m sorry if I made you feel like that, at The Wreck. It’s just…Kiara told me you were kinda quiet, before we met, and I’m kind of…not. I didn’t wanna freak you out or anything, so I tried to be more chill. Guess it had the opposite effect though.”
There’s a selcouth feeling in your body when JJ speaks. It’s like something in your chest lurches. In your stomach, there’s a feeling like the butterflies you get before a show, but they’re sweeter and gentler, as if calming down in preparation to cocoon. As if the nerves are fading and you’re desensitised.
He looks back down at you, right into your eyes, and you wonder if he can see into your thoughts. If he can see how much you like him.
“Well, I think we’re friends now, so, no hard feelings,” you tentatively say. JJ cracks a smile, nodding.
“Yeah. We’re friends,” he assures you.
Strange, how something that you thought would bring you so much joy only makes you feel a little bit worse than before.
~*~*~*~*~*
It’s dark in the chateau, the kitchen counter only illuminated by a single orange-hued lamp. You’re halfway measuring out some sugar when you think you hear a noise. The creak of a floorboard. Frowning, you hesitantly start towards the corridor, where the sound’s coming from. Maybe something got in the house? A raccoon?
JJ rounds the corner the same time you do, almost bumping into you. He lets out a yelp and grabs at his heart, the same time you jump back about ten feet.
“Jesus Christ,” he gasps, laughing. “You scared the shit outta me.”
“Sorry,” you smile in apology (as if he hadn’t made you almost crap yourself too).
“Thought you were Big John’s ghost or something,” JJ mumbles, rubbing at his face tiredly.
You frown, walking back to the counter where you’d previously been. “Are you saying I look like John B’s dad?”
“No you- That’s not – You look very womanly-”
He cuts off his rambles with a sigh, shaking his head as he laughs at himself. Running his fingers through his bedhead, he seems to come to a realisation that you’re not usually at the chateau.
“Wait? What are you even doing here? It’s late.”
“Went surfing with Kie. Got tired, took a nap on the pull-out, woke up about ten minutes ago,” you explain, keeping your voice soft as to not wake-up John B.
“Can’t fall back asleep?” JJ asks.
“Wide awake.”
“Damn. Hate when that happens. How come you’re in the kitchen?”
“Thought I’d make brownies,” you shrug. You pick up the box of cocoa powder and the bag of flour, showing them to JJ. “You guys have all the ingredients.”
“God, brownies sound so good right now,” JJ moans, tossing his head back.
Laughing, you go back to measuring out flour with a cup. JJ goes to the fridge. The white light shines bright on his face. There’s the indent of the pillow on his cheek. His eyes are squinting against the light, a little bleary from sleep.
“Come to think, the last time I had brownies, they were these amazing edibles,” he says as he searches for something to take.
“Oh? Were they good?”
“So good,” he says. JJ grabs a carton of juice and hops onto the far counter to sit, taking swigs.
“I probably have enough stuff to bake a batch of edibles too, to be honest,” you offer after a moment’s thought. Looking to him, hands dusted with flour, you ask, “you got enough to spare?”
“Hell yeah!” JJ grins.
Ever since you and JJ bonded at the party, you feel as though there’s been a barrier removed. He isn’t as scary as you thought he would be. Easier to talk to than you imagined.
“I’ve always kinda wanted to try them,” you admit.
“Wait, have you ever smoked before?”
You chuckle down at the bowl, then sarcastically ask, “What do you think?”
“Really?” JJ gapes. “I thought you’d be all for it. It’d probably help you relax and stuff…”
He almost cuts himself off, as if trying to reel in his words. “I…I mean…”
You can’t help but glance to him, face serious as you deadpan, “what do you mean? I’m like the most laid-back person ever.”
JJ’s crystal-clear panic that he’s genuinely offended you has you breaking your façade with a quiet laugh.
“I’m joking. I’m probably the most high-strung person ever. Feel like weed was kinda made for me.”
JJ laughs too, giving a small sigh of relief.
“I’m kinda curious to see what you’re like high,” he tells you.
“Me too. Hopefully it doesn’t have me bouncing off the walls,” you say.
“Nah. That’s coke that’ll do that to you. Hard to imagine you on coke.”
“You tried it?” You wonder, non-judgemental as you ask.
JJ shrugs. He has another swig of juice. The muscle tee he’s wearing hangs lose on his built frame.
“Once or twice. My dad’s sorta a junkie though. Put me off, you know?”
“Shit. I’m sorry,” you softly reply.
JJ hadn’t mentioned his family a lot, but neither had you and neither does anybody. You’d heard the passing news of JJ’s dad being involved in some sort of pharmacy robbery in the county for Oxytocin, but never dug about. It wasn’t any of your business, and the malicious world of medicine and addiction wasn’t some black and white picture like the Kooks at school liked to paint it out to be.
Shrugging it off, clearly not in the mood to get into it, JJ asks, “was that fishing stuff you got for your dad useful?”
“Yeah,” you say. You’ve started on the wet ingredients now: cracking eggs into a measuring jug. “His exact words were, ‘I never knew you had such a gift for fishing’. I think I’m gonna become his fish-fetching-bitch now.”
JJ barks out a laugh. “You know, I never expected you to be funny.”
You roll your eyes as you begin to fold the wet ingredients into the dry. “I’m not.”
“You are. You’re also cute when you bake.”
“Can you not compliment me?” you nervously chuckle. “It makes me uncomfortable. Not cause of you, it’s just…I’m not good with the complimenting thing.”
“Too late. It’s my life’s mission to get you to actually accept a compliment without going all-”
You catch him do an overemphasised impression of you becoming flustered. You scrunch your nose in light-hearted disapproval. He grins at you as he snaps out of the character.
“-You know?”
“Well, I hope you’ve got a long life,” is all you say. “Wanna grab the goods?”
JJ hops off the counter with newfound fever, making you laugh. When he returns, he stands beside you, juice carton ditched to the side. He smells like soap and weed and smoke from the bonfire. You go to grab the plastic bag from him but he pulls it out of reach, looking down at you in disapproval.
“What?”
“This is Kildare’s finest bud,” JJ scorns. He gently places it in your hand. Cupping your fingers around it, he envelopes your hand with his. His touch is warm. “You gotta treat it with care. It’s the meaning of life itself.”
“I thought the meaning of life was enlightenment,” you mumble, distracted. You’re pretty sure your heart might beat out of your chest.
“Meh. Depends who you ask.”
He takes his hand off yours and let’s you open the bag. The smell of marijuana hits, full force. Before you go to mix it in, you need to check the brownie base is up to scratch. You’ve been perfecting your recipe for years. Dipping in a finger, you suck it clean, debating the flavour. Unsure, you grab for the spatula and scoop some batter up, holding it out to JJ without thinking. You’re a little surprised to catch him staring at you.
“Wanna try?”
For once, JJ doesn’t say anything. Just takes the spatula and has a lick. His eyes widen. “Oh my god. That’s so good.”
“It’s alright.”
“It’s amazing.”
“I’ve made better,” you find yourself saying, and maybe he has a point about the whole compliments’ thing…
You tip in some of the bud as JJ finishes licking the spatula clean.
“You’re like a triple thread, aren’t you?” JJ says.
As you mix, moving to prop the bowl against your waist, cradled in your arm, you frown.
“A triple thread?”
Listing with the spatula, he says, “She can bake, she can sing—”
“—she’s socially inept,” you sarcastically finish.
“You’re not socially inept,” JJ says. When he dips the spatula back in for a second taste, you don’t bother fighting back. “Just a little quiet, is all.”
“No, no, I’m like a lost cause,” you chuckle. “I’m fine with it, for the most part. I just don’t like not knowing what people are gonna ask me. I get all nervous, thinking I’m gonna make a fool of myself or something. It all just snowballs until it’s easier to just…not try.”
JJ nods, listening, licking the plastic utensil clean.
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s good that you’re a quiet person. Helps balance out the world,” he offers.
“How’d you mean?”
“Like, I’m one end of the spectrum, yeah?” He gestures wildly to one side of the kitchen. “And then you’re the other.”
His theatrics create an imaginary continuum. He lists his friends, labelling them on this make-believe spectrum, doing it in such a way that has you laughing at his antics.
“Think people sometimes forget being quiet isn’t the same as being boring,” JJ thinks aloud.
You smile. It’s a nice way to summarise it. You’re not a rock: you enjoy spending time with friends and you have hobbies and interests. When you feel in control of the situation, you can even tolerate crowds. But when you don’t speak a lot, loiter around at parties or keggers, and get nervous to read in front of a class, people make an assumption that you’re dull. There’s not much coming out of your mouth so there can’t be much going on in your head. It’s almost a relief to hear from JJ, of all people, that not everybody thinks that way. Makes your heart do funny things, as if he didn’t already have enough power over your emotions.
JJ leans in to take one more scoop from the bowl. As he does, his shirt slips forward enough for you to catch a glimpse of a hickey on his collarbone. Fresh purple, not yet bruising. It hurts more than you expect it to. A clear-cut reminder of who he is, and who you’re not, and who you never will be. That JJ sees you nothing more than a friend – Kie’s friend – and that he’d never look your way because…Well, because why would he?
You distract yourself by looking back down into the bowl, continuing to mix.
The two of you finish preparing the brownies and set them to cook in the oven. As you wait, you sit on the opposite counter to him, falling into a conversation about surfing and snacks. He’s fighting for justice for peanut-butter jelly sandwiches whilst you’re battling for the recognition of Nutella sandwiches. It’s easy and comfortable, and as the sun slips into view through the window – its rays chasing up the floorboards – the brownies cook and cool, and you do your best to enjoy the moment and not think about the hickey on his chest.
~*~*~*~*~*
Now that summer had begun and school had ended, it felt the days stretched on for miles. Light mornings and lighter nights. Good weather near daily. The odd hurricane warning and occasional storm to give the water a drink, and then back to beauty. You decided not to waste a minute of it. Most days were spent with you band, writing songs and practising for gigs. Pansy was constantly on the search for new shows and venues that would let you play. Kiara’s parents were already talking about letting you guys do another gig at The Wreck. Benny had taken it on to try and teach you how to play the drums, even though it was halfway hopeless. It meant that you’d been hanging out at his house a lot more. You didn’t mind; liked his company.
Kiara had you hanging out with the Pogues near daily too. You’d become a regular at the chateau, with Pansy sometimes tagging along, and had felt more and more comfortable around all the guys. Especially JJ. Whatever awkwardness that used to linger between the two of you had mostly vanished. He didn’t seem to hold back anymore; being his usual, effervescent self. ‘Young, dumb and broke’, Kie dubbed him.
“Hey, are you listening?” Benny asks you from behind the drum kit.
You look up from your phone, having read a text from Kie. We’ll be at Benny’s in five minutes.
“Just replying to Kie,” you tell him. “I’m going surfing with the Pogues.”
“Surfing? Since when did you like surfing?”
“Since this summer,” you shrug, pocketing your phone. You get up from your spot on the floor and walk around the drum kit, standing by his side.
Benny practised in his garage. His dad had soundproofed the place. Today was a hot one, leaving you no choice but to open the front shutter. The picture-book street he lived on was mostly empty, asides from the odd couples walking their dog or a kid flashing by on their bicycle.
You glance down at him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Play it again?”
He smiles up at you and begins to play a beat, lips flattening in concentration. You smile as you watch him play. Some people are born musicians. They have a gift to find rhythm, can escape within it. Benny was one of those people. For someone so quiet, you found it funny how he settled on choosing the loudest instrument.
You nod your head to the beat. Shouting over the kick-drum, you say, “it sounds good! Think Pansy’ll find a good riff for it?”
“I’m more excited to hear your lyrics,” he loudly returns.
Coming up with lyrics hadn’t been any problem as of late. Your inspiration had never been more fruitful, for good and for bad, all thanks to a certain blonde haired boy.
He finished the repetitive rhythm, ending with the hi-hat. As he looks up at you, shaking his ginger hair off his damp forehead, he smiles.
“Your hair looks pretty today,” he tells you.
You take your hand from off his shoulder to touch at it, as if on reflex. “It does?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Thanks,” you say, smiling. “You don’t look to bad yourself, for it being like one-hundred degrees outside.”
Benny’s cheeks shine pink. He looks down at the drum kit in thought. “You wanna give it a try?”
“The drums?”
“Mhm.”
“I thought we’d learnt by now that me and drums don’t mix,” you laugh, shaking your head.
Benny won’t seem to take no for an answer, shoving the sticks into your hands. “Just, give it a try. You’re good at everything.”
“Not true,” you sing-song, but oblige in taking his seat.
Joking around, you tap a beat above your head on the sticks, counting yourself in like a rockstar. Then, you’re stumbling through a simple beat, laughing at your frequent mistakes. Benny’s smiling at you – you can see it in your peripheral – and nodding along as if you’re playing like a pro.
“Yo! Didn’t know Travis Barker lives here?”
At the sound of JJ’s shout, you stop and look up, laughing.
“Yeah. The Kardashian’s are just across the street,” you joke along. Benny comes to stand behind you as the rest of the Pogues walk into the garage.
“I’d believe it. Anything’s possible in Kook land,” John B shrugs.
Pope’s sauntering behind. “You ready to go surfing?”
“Yeah. Just need to grab my bag from the kitchen,” you say.
There’s the sudden feel of Benny’s hands on your shoulders, squeezing gently. He brushes some of your hair off one of them as he replies. “I’ll go grab it for you.”
Blinking away the surprise, you turn to catch a glimpse of the boy’s back as he darts into the house. That was weird.
Kiara starts talking about the waves they’ve already spotted. You move to stand, looking back to the Pogues to see that JJ’s staring at the door that Benny just went through. His hands are in his short pockets, jaw locked tight, as if he’s annoyed. That makes two weird things.
Walking over to your friends, laughing under breath at a joke John B makes, you nudge your shoulder against JJ’s bicep, hoping to lighten his mood. He looks down at you and smiles, tension somewhat fading. Benny returns with your bag, handing it to you, and you give him a wave farewell. Then, yourself and the Pogues are heading out the garage and into the banged-up Twinkie.
By the time you get to the beach, it’s late afternoon. Sunset is beginning to creep, teasing at the earth by patterning the sky with pink and orange. That doesn’t put the five of you off surfing. Instead, it’s like it spurs you on. Paddling out deeper into the waves, you hear Kiara give a small ‘whoop’ as you all turn to watch John B ride on the water. The rest of you are quick to join. You know how to surf; learnt when you were a kid. Having never had many friends, you didn’t surf all that often. But after meeting Kie – an avid surfer – and now hanging out with the Pogues, you found yourself out on the water more and more.
After an hour or so of surfing, the sky nearing dusk, you and JJ take a moment. JJ sits on his board, floating near you. You look down at your legs, kicking back and forth leisurely in the water.
“You have fun at Benny’s?” JJ asks.
You glance over to him. He’s watching the Pogues surf.
“I guess,” you shrug. “We’re working on some new stuff.”
JJ nods. His wet hair makes the highlights of blonde darker, curling slightly at the ends from the sea salt. It hangs shaggy over his face. Bare back, muscles taught, freckle-kissed from being out all day.
“Why are you acting all weird?” you can’t help but ask.
He looks to you. “I’m not acting weird.”
“Yes, you kinda are.”
“I’m not.”
“JJ, things haven’t been weird with us since the party. I don’t want them to go back to how they were before.”
“It’s not weird!”
“Look, if I did something—”
“You didn’t do anything, alright? It’s all good,” JJ insists. He nods at you, affirmingly, but you can’t shake the feeling that he’s lying.
You sigh and lay on your back on the board. Closing your eyes, you bask in the remnants of sunlight. If he doesn’t want to talk, you won’t force it. You know more than anyone how awful it feels to have words forced out of you.
The moment of bliss is interrupted by the feeling of cold, seawater splashing over you. You gasp, sitting up in shock. JJ’s laughing his ass off, hands on his chest. You glare through a smile and shake your head.
“Oh, you’re in for it, Maybank.”
His laughter doesn’t cease. He’s looking to you again, quirking a brow. “Oh, am I?”
“Uh huh,” you grin. You kick a splash at him, barely making enough to cover his legs.
“That was pitiful.”
“Shut up,” you chide.
“You Kooks can’t do anything right.”
With that, you’re jumping off your board and swimming over to his. He doesn’t have time to paddle away. You come to a stop by the side of his board and splash at him from up close, getting him perfectly in the face. He winces, laughing, spluttering out some water that seeps into his mouth.
“That’s cheating!”
You roll your eyes and grin, hoisting yourself onto his board. He starts to protest through his laughs, moving to wrestle you off, and in the process, you end up pulling him into the water with you. The two of you emerge, laughing, drenched like drowned rats. You brush your hair out of your face and wipe the water out of your eyes. When you open them, blinking past the sting of the salt, JJ’s watching you. There’s a strange look on his face, one that you think you might’ve seen before. The longer you look at him, the shadow of a smile resting comfortably on your sun-kissed cheeks, the easier you find to place it. From the gig, during the last song, when he seemed almost absent in thought.
Before you can dwell much longer, JJ seems to snap himself out of his haze. He shakes his hair of the water and pulls himself back onto his board.
“We should probably start heading back to shore,” he says.
That was weird.
You frown but don’t argue. Returning to your board, you listen as JJ hollers that the two of you are heading back to land, and then you both start to paddle. The gang soon follows. Wading out the water, carrying your board, the five of you head to where you’d dumped your stuff. JJ makes quick work of building a fire. Pope and Kiara dip into the snacks and drinks you’d brought, passing them around. You dig about in one of the bags for some water, instead coming out with a Uke. The stickers on it hint at it being Kie’s. Hanging onto it, you look around and decide to take the empty spot on the sand next to JJ. The water from your wet hair dribbles down your back. In the embers, you feel yourself beginning to dry.
JJ hands you a cider, taking the cap off using the pocketknife you bought him. You have a sip.
“That was a pretty good surf,” Kie says, leaning back on her forearms.
Pope’s taken out his book, using his hoodie as a makeshift pillow to sit against as he reads.
“Just think tomorrow, we get to do it all again,” John B grins.
Kie clinks the neck of her bottle with his. “Here’s to that.”
Sand working as a makeshift bottle holder, you’ve taken to picking out random notes on the uke, absentmindedly tuning it.
“What you up to tomorrow?” JJ asks.
You look up at him. He’s put his cap back on; a green one, worn around the edges of the beak.
“Chilling out at home and practising, I think. Pansy managed to get us a gig at the June-Jam.”
“Wait, isn’t that kinda a big deal?” Kiara says. She must’ve been eavesdropping.
You shrug. “It’s only a fifteen-minute slot.”
“But the June-Jam Fair?”
“Yeah, folks from all over the county come out for that,” John B agrees, smiling.
“My dad’s setting up a shop there,” Pope tells you, looking up from his book. “If you guys need a snack, he’ll hook you up for free.”
“Thanks,” you smile, grateful.
“When is it?”
“Couple weeks’ time.”
“We’re coming,” Kiara declares. You chuckle, flustered and flattered at once.
“You don’t have to.”
“Well, we are, so…”
“You gonna play any of the new stuff you’ve been working on?” JJ wonders.
“Maybe,” you say. Fingers still chipping away at the strings, you shrug. “Got a few ideas that’re coming together.”
“Gonna play my favourite?”
“Of course,” you say. Rear view. He’d mentioned several times since hanging out with you how much he liked that song.
JJ sighs and moves to rest his head on your thighs. You don’t complain. Feel your heart stammer at having him so near, so comfortable in your presence. He takes his pocketknife out and begins to mess with it. The campfire light reflects off the blade as it zips in and out of sight.
John B and Kie have fallen into a conversation of their own and Pope is lost to the world of fiction.
“Why’d you like that song so much? I’ve written better ones,” you ask JJ.
He shrugs. Tips his cap over his face, as if taking a nap. “Just makes me think of things. I like the lyrics.”
You stare at the crackling fire. Small sheds of burnt up wood spit off into the air, fading away like dust, hiding into the smoke. There’s the cosy smell it churns up, tinted with the sea water that’s coated your skin. The rustle of movement has you looking back down to JJ, watching him retrieve a blunt and his lighter. He sighs. Balancing the joint between his lips, he flicks the lighter to life. On the metal of it is his carved initials. JJ. As you watch him take a drag, overcome with the smell of weed, you wonder how your life lined up in a way to end up here. Fifth grade you would have a fit if she knew you were hanging out with JJ Maybank. Hell, current you isn’t far off doing the same.
He's so effortlessly pretty. Maybe it’s because he has an aura about him that he doesn’t care what people think. Self-assured and light – all that you envy. There’s the faded colouring of a bruise on the apple of his cheek from a scruff he got into at a kegger the other night. The thought of the kegger that you didn’t attend makes your head stammer.
It seems whenever you let yourself fade into the fantasies of wondering what it might be like to have JJ as more than a friend (if he were to ever lean that way towards you), reality always finds a way to sink in. The reality that JJ is the loudest example of an extrovert, and you the spitting image of an introvert. He can pull chicks any time he wants, practically just has to look at them to have them swoon. Lies as if it’s second nature and strikes up conversations with strangers as though they’re lifelong friends. Crowds don’t make him uneasy and he can glide through a house party without needing to hide in the bathroom during a meltdown. He’s funny and charming and likeable.
But you? You spend your evenings sat in your room or on the porch, song writing, living in the safety of a daydream. Baking into the early hours of the morning and socialising with a select few individuals who had the patience to get to know you. Quiet and simple and boring. What the hell would JJ want with that?
Sighing, you hear yourself strumming out a melody. It seems to have naturally emerged from trial and error of messing with notes. You look down to watch your fingers work. There’s a melancholic undertone to the tune you’ve found, different to the one Pansy had shown you on the guitar, when the song had started to form.
Kiara and John B’s conversation momentarily dwindles at the sound of your playing. You try not to be discouraged, knowing they don’t mind the disturbance. JJ takes another hit of the bud, blowing it out and up into the air. After the chorus, you let the music fade away; the song’s only half-finished.
“That new?”
“Mhm,” you say, nodding. You’re looking at the stickers: Animal Rights in a pink, cartoon love heart…
“You’ve got the prettiest voice,” JJ quietly tells you. So quiet, you’re not entirely sure he did say it, or if you’ve contorted the murmurs of John B and Kie’s conversation, and the crackles of the fire, and the slosh of the waves, into something of a fantasy.
But, when you look down to him, he’s got this vacant smile on his face. “I’m real glad Kie introduced us.”
“Me too,” you smile.
Under his gaze, you feel how you imagine flowers do when the sun allows them to bloom. It’s a blissful rarity, to be affected by someone in such a way. Overwhelming, even. You force yourself to look away, towards the fire.
It hurts too much to stare at something you can’t have.
~*~*~*~*~*~*
The June-Jam Fair comes around faster than you expect. It’s like being caught off guard like a lorry switching lanes without indicating. You only feel half prepared when you and the band are loading up Benny’s dad’s van.
“Who packed the back-up wires?” Pansy worries.
“I did,” Mike grunts, lifting one of the amps into the hold.
“Microphone stand?”
“Got it,” you say, sliding in a box of electronics.
“Okay, then, I think that’s everything,” she mumbles.
She’s spent the last ten minutes running through a mental list of every piece of musical equipment to ever exist. You wouldn’t be surprised if on the way to the fair, she starts listing off all the ways the show could go wrong (though that does seem more Benny’s style): guitar string breaking; microphone stops working; nuclear strike…
It’s hard to believe that the gig at The Wreck was three months ago, now. You’d spent the majority of the previous months hanging out with the Pogues, finding it hard to fathom how you killed the hours before knowing them.
As the four of you load into the van, with you and Benny in the front, Mike takes control of the aux. As him and Pansy sing along, venting out their pre-show nerves, you strike up conversation with the ginger haired boy. He’s been quiet – quieter than usual – with his fingers tapping on the steering wheel, a drummer’s habit.
“I feel like I haven’t spoken to you in ages,” you half-laugh, somewhat awkward. “Summer’s going so fast.”
“Well, you dip at the end of nearly every band practise to hang out with your new friends, so,” Benny grumbles.
He seems mad about it, more than you expected him to be.
“I don’t ‘dip’, I just head-out,” you say.
“Yeah. All the time,” Benny mumbles.
Frowning, you say sincerely, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it was bothering you guys so much. I just like hanging out with the Pogues. They’re fun.”
Benny sighs, shaking his head. “No, it’s cool. It’s just…I just missing having you around, is all.”
“But, I am around. I still come to band practise. Hell, we all got breakfast the other day.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he says, shaking his head once more. “It doesn’t matter.”
“If it’s messing with our friendship then it does matter, Benny,” you say.
You see him debate whether to expand or not. In the end, he does. As he speaks, he looks at you.
“I miss me and you hanging out, is what I mean.”
Your lips part. Oh. “Well, we can still do that.”
“We can?”
“Yeah, of course,” you smile. “How about tomorrow we go for food or something?”
“Yeah?”
“Sure.”
“Why not tonight?” he wonders, looking back to the road.
“I’m hanging out with the Pogues tonight,” you say, apologetically. “JJ and Kie and everyone.”
“JJ,” Benny repeats. He says it under breath, in a scoff, like he didn’t mean to let it slip.
You frown. “What? Don’t you like him?”
“No, yeah, he’s…He’s a character,” Benny settles on, giving you the briefest of looks as he replies. “I just don’t see why he’d wanna hang around with you so much.”
You try and ignore the sting of his words, digging into your chest like the horn of a thistle. “What’d you mean?”
“You two barely have anything in common. I just find it kinda weird how you get along so well,” Benny explains. His voice is always gentle, soft and non-demanding, but somehow it doesn’t lessen the blow. “You talk about him all the time. All the dumb shit you get up to. Not to mention how much weed you’ve been smoking with him. Just find it weird how you’re suddenly the type of person who gets along with JJ Maybank.”
“Well, I just…am,” you say, shrugging. Off put from the conversation, you look out the passenger window.
“I know you like him.”
Crap. Your stomach flips. “No, I don’t.”
“Of course you do,” Benny says, laughing. “Who doesn’t? He’s an attractive guy, I’m not stupid. He’s an adrenaline junky and a bad-boy, and everybody loves a bad-boy, don’t they?”
“He’s not a ‘bad-boy’, Benny. Sides, who actually says that, outside of the movies?” you add, hoping to recover the exchange into something light.
“He’s trouble, is what he is,” Benny tells you. His voice is firm and definitive. The way he says it makes you think back to the fishing shop, and how the cashier was watching JJ like a hawk.
“He’s not trouble,” you reply, trying not to keep your tone softer. “He’s nice.”
“Nice,” Benny scoffs. Licking his teeth, he nods, staring ahead at the road. “Sure. Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
The foul taste from the conversation with Benny doesn’t ease up for the rest of the journey. It lingers in your throat as you set-up on stage and comes back, full force, when the Pogues come over to greet you. Wish you luck for the show. The rough feeling of JJ’s knuckles, and the cold press of his rings, when you fist bump him. How he knows that you don’t like to hug before shows, with your anxiety sky-high. As you sing through the songs, talk to the crowd, work through the nerves that never fully fade, you find yourself looking to JJ more and more. Whenever you do, there’s Benny’s voice in the back of your head, almost judgemental as he repeats the mantra: ‘I just don’t see why he’d wanna hang around with you so much.’
Was he right? Does JJ just like seeing how he can make you nervous? Enjoys watching you squirm and fumble through social interactions, wade through his compliments as gracefully as a paralysed ballet dancer?
No, he’s not mean. He’s kind and he’s soft with you, but not in a way that makes you feel like you’re made of glass. He knows how to joke with you, how to get a laugh from you. Knows how far to push and when to pull back. JJ knows you. He’s your friend. He wants to be your friend. Doesn’t he?
Or did Kie talk to him, after all? He’d said how she’d told him you were quiet before the gig at The Wreck, as if warning him off. After the party, how do you know that she didn’t hunt him down before he bumped into you in the bathroom? That she told him about your pathetic school-girl crush, and it bolstered his ego, and he found himself trapped in this awkward thing of having to be friends with the weird, quiet girl who has an unattainable crush on him…
As your overthinking goes to hell quicker than a penny falling from the Empire State Building, you manage to keep up with the songs and belt out the lyrics. You can’t bring yourself to look at JJ when you conclude on Rear View. Have to close your eyes. The lyrics sting a bit too much. More than they usually do.
The Pogues are waiting at the end of the show.
“That was dope, you guys! Everyone loved it!” Kiara buzzes, high-fiving Pansy.
“Might be our best show yet,” Mike agrees, nodding. He’s packing away his bass.
“We’re gonna head off in about ten minutes or so,” Kie says.
“Pope’s meeting us at the Chateau later. His dad roped him into helping out,” John B tells you.
“You guys are coming right?” Kie asks the four of you.
Mike looks up from his spot near the amp, unplugging wires. “I’m gonna pass. Got a date.”
“You’ve got a date?” Pansy gapes.
“Yeah?”
“With who?”
“This chick I met at your birthday party,” he shrugs. You have a vague memory of seeing him talking to a girl, before you went up to him that night.
“Why are you so secretive, Mike? What other second-lives are you leading?” Pansy teases.
Mike rolls his eyes, giving a covert smiling. “They die with me. I’ll see y’all later.”
As he waves farewell and walks away, Pansy shakes her head, almost impressed. “God bless that weird, strange man.”
“So that leaves three?” John B checks, pointing to you three.
You still haven’t looked at JJ. Pansy answers on your behalf. “Well, us two definitely are. Benny?”
“I’ll pass. I’ve got a curfew,” Benny says.
“Most Kook thing I’ve ever heard,” JJ sniggers.
“Yeah? Well, I’m sure it’s nice having parents who don’t give a shit,” Benny replies sharply.
You frown. Looking to Benny, your eyes are narrowed in confusion.
JJ frowns too, only for different reasons. Staring him down, he stands a head higher.
“What’d you say, princess?”
“Look, man, I’m sorry your dad’s a criminal but I don’t see what that’s gotta do with me.”
JJ’s jaw goes rigid. His body tenses. Anger comes over him suddenly like a hurricane. He takes a step forward, gladly getting in Benny’s face. JJ’s taller, broader, stronger. Benny’s hours spent playing the drums don’t stand a chance in a round with him.
“You wanna say that again, Kook?”
“Guys, come on,” Kie says, trying to step between them.
“You like messing with her, huh? You having fun with it? Like having her gawking after you?” Benny bites back.
His eyes flit to you as he talks. Your heart fractures.
JJ shoves him on the chest. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, man.”
“I know who you are, JJ. Everybody does. You don’t fool me, with this whole good-guy act you’ve got going on with her. You’re messing her up. Getting her to do drugs with you and shit? You’re gonna end up hurting her, like you hurt everybody else. Just what you Pogues do.”
“Benny, what the hell?” you whisper.
JJ isn’t as silent in his anger. He swings a punch, knocking Benny straight in the cheek, sending him backwards against the stage. Some stranger from the fair exclaims when they catch sight. John B immediately steps in between. JJ is reluctant to backdown, standing over Benny, urging him to fight back. When Benny goes to do retaliate, you come to your senses and step up. You grab for his wrist before he can throw his punch.
“Don’t be an idiot, Benny,” you snap.
His eyes flash to you. Something behind them seems to break. He hides it with anger. “You’re taking his side?”
“I’m not taking anybody’s side,” you say, annoyed. “This is pathetic. Both of you.”
As you talk, you let your eyes glance to JJ. He’s breathing heavy, still pissed, but takes a step back at your disapproval.
“We’re at a Goddamn family fair. Both of you need to get your shit together,” you tell them sharply.
You let go of Benny’s wrist and walk off, heart beating out your chest. You hate confrontation. Hate when people fight.
Kiara and Pansy come after you, both of them bitching about how useless boys are. You fold your arms across your chest and blink back tears. No matter what emotion you experience, it always seems to resolve with waterworks. It’s then, as you think back to the altercation, that you hardly recognise the memory of Benny in that moment. It’s so disappointing when you see who people for who they truly are, beneath all the personas, only for them to end up being fickle and fake.
Your feet carry you to the back-ends of the fair, lit up by the remnants of daylight. It’s nothing but storage containers, vans and trucks, the odd horse and animal box from the farm-show. You take perch on the step of one of the empty caravans. Pansy and Kiara sit beside you, the former coiling her arms around you in a hug. You place your head in your hands and let out a few tears. There’s no point fighting them off.
“JJ is so stupid sometimes,” Kie mutters.
“No kidding. And Benny? Pushing at him like that?”
“Asking for a fight.”
“Guys are so dumb,” Pansy concludes with a sigh, shaking her head.
You sit up and wipe your cheeks.
“Where’s your head at, hun?” she asks you, softly.
Shaking your head, you scoff. “I have no idea. I don’t understand why Benny would say things like that. Why he’d lash out at JJ like that, about me.”
“Well, it’s cause he likes you,” Pansy says plainly.
You shoot her a look of pure bewilderment. “What?”
“Girl, it’s so obvious,” she chuckles, sympathy in her gaze. “The guy practically follows after you like a love-sick puppy.”
“She’s right, you know? Even I can see it,” Kie confirms.
You look between the two of them. Benny? Seriously?
You’ve spent so much of your life alone, out of the minds of boys and girls, void of compliments, that you find it hard to believe anybody might have a thing for you. Least of all, Benny. Sweet, quiet, unassuming Benny. Well, until tonight, that is.
But come to think…The last few months, he’s been weird. The random compliments he’s been dropping, when he never used to before. That time in the garage, when he messed with your hair and put his hands on your shoulders. The car ride today, disapproving of JJ.
“I know you like him.”
The penny drops.
“He’s…jealous?” you whisper.
“No duh, dumbass,” Kiara mutters.
“But- Wait, of what?”
Your life feels as though it has suddenly become a teenage rom-com after being nothing but years of a podcast of white-noise a person could fall asleep.
“Of JJ,” Kie answers, as if it’s obvious.
“Why in the hell would he be jealous of JJ?”
A look gets shared between Pansy and Kiara.
“Because JJ has a thing for you too…”
“JJ does not have a thing for me,” you snort. “He doesn’t have a thing for me, alright? You guys are way off.”
“Hun—”
“No, he doesn’t, alright?” you can’t help but snap at Kie. The emotions of the last few months are bubbling inside of you. More tears well up. “Why would he? I’m awkward, and I’m useless, and I’m desperate, and I’ve been in love with him since I was a kid and have never done anything about it! I’m pathetic! And he’s…Well, he’s him. He’s funny and charming and fucking gorgeous and…And I’m just me.”
Pansy and Kiara are staring at you with eyes full of pity. They don’t speak, but Kiara grabs at your hand and squeezes it tight.
"Don’t ever talk about yourself like that,” she tells you in a voice that’s firm but sweet, like cookie dough.
“I’ll slap you if you say anything like that again,” Pansy not-so-delicately doubles.
You laugh through your tears at that. Wiping your face, sighing, you look down at the ground.
“I…I think you should really talk to JJ,” Kiara offers. “You can say whatever you want, but I see how he is around you. He’s never like that, with anyone. You bring out a different side of him, and I mean that in the best way.”
“She’s right,” Pansy nods, nudging your shoulder. “I was looking at him through the set, and he had his eyes glued on you.”
“I’m the singer,” you sigh in disagreement.
“Yeah, but I’m the most talented one up there,” Pansy replies, as if it’s obvious. You laugh at her antics. “Everyone should be looking at me.”
Looking to your two friends, you can’t help but feel a swell of gratefulness for having them stick by you. Nodding, you sniff away the last few tears.
“I wanna talk to JJ,” you tell them.
“Perfect,” Kiara says. “He’ll probably be at the chateau. I’ll give you a lift.”
Doing as she says she will, Kie drops you off at the Chateau on her drive home. As you climb out the car, Pansy sticks her head out the back window.
“You sure you wanna go on your own?” she double-checks.
You smile at her. She’s a good friend.
“Yeah, I’m good,” you nod.
She smiles back. “Alright. Now, remember: you’re hot, you’re talented, and you’re a catch-twenty-two.”
“Got it,” you say with a laugh, rolling your eyes.
“Good,” Pansy nods. Mission accomplished. “Go get ‘em.”
You wave farewell to Kie as she pulls back out the driveway and onto the road. The moment the car’s gone, you’re abandoned in darkness. A few birds are giving their final caws of the day, settling down for the night. Crickets and night critters merge with the distant lapping of the water of the marsh. Sighing, you wrap your jumper tighter around yourself in a hug and walk towards the back garden. You’re hoping JJ’s here. Kiara said he should be.
As you round the side of the house, you make out the hammock. It’s swaying lightly. There’s a foot extended out of it, heel of a boot dug into the ground, causing it to rock. The faint puff of smoke that blows up makes you certain it’s him.
“JJ?”
The rocking stops.
You walk a bit closer until you’re in his line of sight. He’s looking down at his hands, one of which is messing with his pocketknife as the other cradles a joint.
“Hey,” you quietly say.
“Hey,” he mumbles. His cap is tilted down, concealing his face slightly.
“How’s your hand?” you ask.
He glances to it. Nods. “It’s fine.”
Nodding, you shift your weight from one foot to the other. “Can I join you?”
He stops fiddling with the knife. There’s an awkward pause before he nods, shifting so you can climb onto the hammock. You take a spot by his feet. He uses his foot as an anchor to steady the sway.
“Did you like the set?”
“Mhm.”
“I played one of the new ones,” you say. He nods, feigning disinterest.
“It was nice,” he says. “Benny help you write it?”
You sigh. “Seriously, JJ?”
He looks up at that. Eyes dazzling in the moonlight. “What?”
“Did you have to hit him?”
“The guy was asking for it, alright? You heard what he said to me, didn’t you?” JJ defends, sitting up.
“Of course, I did. But you can’t just hit anybody who pisses you off.”
“You don’t get it, alright?”
“Sure I don’t,” you reply, sarcastic.
“No, you don’t,” he repeats, firmer. He pushes his cap back as he goes on, blunt momentarily abandoned. “You live in your little Kook world, ignorantly bliss to the shitshow that goes on around you.”
His words set off something inside of you.
“I’m not some stuck-up snob, JJ. Don’t treat me like I am. That’s not fair. Being a Kook and a Pogue has nothing to do with you picking a fight with Benny at the fair.”
JJ laughs, tossing his head back. He wipes a hand down his face. “Oh, you’re so stupid sometimes, you know that? It has everything to do with it!”
“How!? How does that make any sense?” you gape, sitting upright. You wave your arms around. “In what Pogue-Kook universe do you have to pick a fight with Benny? We’re just friends!”
“For someone so quiet, you sure don’t pay attention,” JJ insults, staring you in the eyes.
Your resolve slackens. “Don’t be mean, JJ.”
“According to your little boyfriend, that’s all I can be,” he mutters, looking back down to his pocketknife.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” you sigh, exhausted. You rub at your forehead. “I don’t know where all that stuff came from, okay? He’s never acted like that before. I’m so embarrassed, and I’m so sorry he said all that to you, and he was way out of line. I don’t know why he did it.”
“I do! Everyone does! It’s obvious! The guy’s in love with you. He thought he was defending your honour or some shit,” JJ spits.
“He’s not in love with me,” you deny. Maybe he might have a crush on you, but in love? Come on now.
“Seriously? You seriously don’t see it?” JJ says, voice rising again.
You shrug, making a face as if to say ‘no, I really don’t’.
It seems to make him angry again.
“He follows you around all the time! He’s always watching you, alright? Always. He’s looking at you all the time. Complimenting you. Making little jokes, hoping that you’ll laugh. Finding any excuse to spend time with you. Like with that teaching-you-the-drums bullshit? What the hell was that? And don’t get me started on that little display he did in the garage that day! With the hands on the shoulders and stuff and grabbing your bag for you like a little pussy-whipped simp. Helping you out without you even asking for him too--”
“That’s your definition of love?” you practically shout, cutting him off with a scoff. “You do all of that!”
“Exactly!” JJ yells.
Silence.
JJ’s breathing heavy. You see the moment the words catch up. See his face drop into panic, then glaze over as if uninterested. Your mind’s racing, scrambling for purchase and muddling through interpretations…
But…there’s only one though. Right?
JJ looks out to the water. He takes a hit from his joint, almost desperate.
“JJ,” you whisper.
He shakes his head. Looks down at his joint as if it’s something to inspect. As if it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “Doesn’t matter, alright?”
“Yes, it does.”
“No-” his clipped tone is cut off with a sigh. You see him close his eyes. Collects himself. There’s a lingering quiet. A mosquito nips at your ankle but you can’t bring yourself to waft it away.
“You don’t know the effect you have on people, do you?” He asks you quietly. He opens his eyes to look out to the water. You’re not sure if you’re meant to answer. Before you can, he’s talking once more.
“Benny’s got almost everything in common with you, okay? He’s rich, he’s got a nice house, nice family. Goes to a good school. I bet he gets good grades, too. Talented. And he’s not the worst looking asshole, alright? So, yeah. It is a Kook-Pogue thing, alright?”
His eyes flit to you for a moment but he doesn’t let them linger. He looks back down to the pocketknife. His thumb dances over the wood of it.
“It was always gonna be a Kook-Pogue thing. The moment that I realised I liked you; I knew there was no chance. I mean, what the hell would you want with a guy like me?”
Oh.
There’s a strange, euphoric feeling that comes after JJ talks. You suddenly feel like you understand why you’ve always gotten along with JJ. It’s like you’ve been staring in a mirror this whole time. It’s then that that you realise that you’re not nervous anymore. That you haven’t been nervous in a while, whenever JJ’s around. That if you ever do feel anxious or unsure, finding his face, meeting his eyes, searching for his smile; it always brings you back. Suddenly, you don’t care about the differences; the small, insignificant things that really don’t matter, when you think about it, because as long as you’ve got JJ, you don’t care what happens.
He says Benny’s got more in common with you, but Benny doesn’t know about the panic attacks or how to ease you back from them. He doesn’t know how to make you laugh; not to the point where you feel your stomach might collapse and your ribs might break. His compliments don’t make you feel like there’s a shot of electricity running through you, quick and painless. With Benny, they’re just nice words, like when a cashier tells you to have a good day. Maybe he’s book smart and plays the drums well, but JJ could tell you anything you want to know about fishing: how, where, when. Mechanics and boats and handy-man tricks. Intelligence wasn’t one thing; it wasn’t just about being able to dissect a Shakespeare quote. And you could sit and listen to him talk all day. The cadence of his voice rising and falling like the tide of the water.
You’ve liked JJ since you were a kid. Since that stupid day on the marsh, when you were frog hunting, and you saw him on the rope swing. He was so funny. So bubbly and lively. Everything you wished you could be. And when he looked at you, through the bushes of the marsh, and smiled…that smile became every inspiration for every song you wrote. The thought in the back of your mind when you conjured up the lyrics. As he got older, he became more beautiful, twisting into the definition of an American heartthrob. Your lives stretched differently and you came to accept that liking him would be a pipedream. Something you could live in your fictional songs. But then came Kiara, and The Wreck, and everything else, and it all lined up so nicely. It was as if an invisible string was tied around your wrist the first day you saw him, guiding you to now.
Right now.
You shift onto your knees and move up the hammock until you’re face to face with JJ. Before either of you has time to think, you’re cupping his jaw and guiding his lips to yours. Under the unsteady purchase of the hammock, you move your free hand to his chest for balance. It’s hard and sturdy. Once the shock slips away, JJ’s kissing you back. One of his hands comes to your face, swiping across your cheek and pushing back some of your hair that’s fallen into your face. His other comes to sit on your waist. Squeezes your skin softly, as if checking that you’re real: joint and pocketknife abandoned. A feeling zips through your body, right down to your toes. It’s indescribable. It’s sweet and mercurial and…it’s JJ. It’s all JJ.
When you pull back, you’re smiling.
JJ’s eyes open slowly. A smile is blooming on his face too, cheeks pink, lips still parted, damp from your touch.
“Okay,” he whispers.
You giggle, biting your lower lip. “Okay?”
“Not what I was expecting,” he admits with a small laugh.
You can’t help but kiss him again, wanting to taste his laughs. He gladly pulls you closer, shifting you so you’re straddling his waist. The more you kiss, the more he eases into touching you, the more you relax into kissing him. Finding a rhythm and a pattern that has the two of you short of breath.
Breaking apart once more, JJ stares at you as if in a trance. The same look from The Wreck and from the ocean. You recognise what it is now.
He strokes a finger across your cheek and you lean into the touch of his palm. Makes him smile brighter.
“You gonna write a song about me now?” he quietly jokes. His eyes flick down to your lips.
You smile, laugh almost silently as you shake your head. Before leaning down to kiss him again, you confess your only remaining secret to him in a whisper.
“They’re already about you. Every single one of them.”
jj maybank x fem!reader | part of the F.W.B universe, but can be read as a stand-alone too | a little sappy but hopefully not too much!
content warning: drink & drug use; sex (f and m receiving; semi-public); technically drink-driving
word count: 5k
blurb: Your latest 'date night' involves breaking into a Kook's back garden to swim around in their pool. After fooling around, JJ comes to a realisation.
Kook houses could be mistaken for castles when compared to most places on the Cut. Neatly kept shrubberies and bushes trimmed into ridiculous shapes. Fountains and water features, lit up in sparkly white and exciting red and blue. Obnoxious house names when numbers would easily do the same trick. But numbering was too common for the Kooks. They weren’t just another thing in the bunch; they’re the stand-out special. JJ takes them in as he walks down the dimly lit street, searching for you. You'd said to meet him on Basker Street (buried deep in one of the most prestigious Kook holiday neighbourhoods), and to bring some wine. He'd assumed there wasn't much a standard for the wine, grabbing the cheapest bottle he could find.
The sparsely spread streetlamps glare white on the concrete. When a silhouette of a girl, in a dress, comes into view, JJ smiles. He's pretty certain it's you - even more so when the figure waves - and picks up his pace.
“Hey,” JJ says.
“Hey,” you smile, sharing a brief kiss. The touch of your hand on his cheek is too fleeting – not that he’d ever say. “You found me.”
“What is this?”
“Date night,” you say. You spot the wine and grin, taking it to study the label. “You remembered.”
“Well, you only sent me ten texts to get some,” JJ sarcastically replies with a smile. You roll your eyes and go to dig about in his shorts for his pocketknife.
As you work the bottle open, you ask, “was it the most expensive one on the shelf?”
“Of course,” JJ says, as if insulted you would expect anything less. You glance up at him, bemused. At your struggling to open the wine, JJ takes it from you and does it himself. He fills the quiet (and blocks out your protests) by asking, “what’re we doing here, anyway? Property hunting?”
“It’s date night,” you repeat. Yeah, doesn’t help.
The cork pops out the bottle. JJ goes to toss it but you stop him, taking it and silently putting it in his pocket, a little embarrassed. It makes JJ smile though. The soft parts that you let him see, like your sentimentality, are like catching glimpses of shooting stars. He noticed about two weeks into officially dating you that you had an affinity for keepsakes. Pressed flowers from your walks; seashells from surf dates; the cut-out front of a condom packet, which you eventually confessed was from the first night you two spent, officially together. Whilst JJ had ragged you endlessly, he couldn’t deny that it was unexpectedly adorable.
You take his hand and intertwine your fingers, guiding him down the street. He swigs from the wine and passes it to you, taking a moment to take in the sight of you. Your dress fits snug around your waist, turning tight against your chest. Thin straps over each shoulder. It hangs loose and pretty, ending just before your knees. As you walk, the barely-there breeze from midnight makes it sway. Then he’s taking in the tiny beads threaded into your hair. Pink and blue and green. As you wiggle your fingers more comfortably into his hold, he feels the rings adorning your fingers against his skin, some rubbing against his own. One of them is his. A small token that he’d disguised as a ‘congratulations’ gift after a fight. When JJ had given it to you, he didn’t feel up to confessing that it was so you would have a piece of him. A silent marker that you were taken - taken by him. A symbol of his affection which he couldn’t quite put into words. Couldn’t bring himself to. But when you took it, you didn’t ask why extensively. You accepted his bullshit excuse and smiled, kissing him in thanks before slipping it on. It was too large for your fingers but fit well enough on your thumb. He often saw you play with it, as if perpetually checking it hadn’t fallen off.
“You look pretty, by the way,” he tells you. Smooth, Maybank. You’re a real Romeo.
You look up at him and smile, almost bashful like he just recited prose in your honour. “Thanks. You don’t look too bad yourself, pretty boy.”
You reach up to press a kiss to his lips, then pull away and keep walking down the moonlit street.
JJ appreciates you. He appreciates the way you don’t push him when he’s not so good at the romance part of things. JJ can talk dirty; he could say the most disgusting things that would have a nun wanting to pull a Vincent Van Gogh. He knows how to touch you to have you trembling and begging, but when things get sentimental, he doesn’t always know how to act. He often brushes off compliments with a joke and disguise his own in some stupid tease. But you seemed to notice and understand. You let JJ do things for you – like open the bottle of wine – because at some point you clocked that acts of service were the best way for JJ to show his affection. He hadn’t figured that one out: Kie had, one day when she came to the chateau to find him working on your pushbike, unbeknownst to you. When JJ explained what he was doing and why (that you'd been complaining about the chain always coming off), Kiara took the mick out of him before casually telling him that his ‘love-language’ was acts of service. Whilst JJ had shrugged it off and told her to do one, he did think about it later that day, after he gave you back your bike (which you had, in all honesty, thought was stolen) and saw how your face lit up. Felt how you kissed him in gratitude. Felt how it made his heart lurch in a way that still felt unnatural.
You take the wine from JJ, pulling his thoughts back to reality. He watches as you take a long drink.
“Alright, what’s the plan for this date-night, then?” he asks.
“So, I’m at work the other day, right? And this waitress I work with has a bunch of friends who come here during the summers.”
“Is this gonna be a long story?”
“Shut up.”
JJ chuckles. He takes the wine and drinks, letting you continue.
“So she starts telling me that this girl’s family always leaves the same day, every year, a week before school starts up.”
JJ wants to groan at the reminder that school is just around the corner. Joy, oh, joy.
“So, there’s this big empty Kook house, right? I think, hm, that’s sort of interesting, but don’t deep it all that much. But then she starts telling me how they’ve been having problems with their security and that they were kinda reluctant to leave. They did anyway, after finding out they can get the stuff fixed on the twenty-seventh.”
JJ’s furrows his brows as he processes all the parts of your story. He looks down at you, passing the wine. You take a drink and then grin up at him, becoming giddy.
“So now I’m like: there’s a kook house with no security, no working cameras, and nobody home. Then, the pièce de résistance happens.”
JJ can’t help but mirror your grin, still a little sceptical. The two of you turn down a dark alley as your story begins to come to its climax.
“She starts telling me about this party this girl had there the other night and me (being the polite person that I am) asks to see some pictures. She starts showing me these garden party pics and I notice the biggest fuck-off pool you have ever seen.”
Another swig each of the wine. Your pace is beginning to slow.
“So, now I’m like: kook house; no security; no cameras; nobody home; huge pool; hot boyfriend.”
“Oh?” JJ prompts, smirking.
“And so I present to you…”
You come to a stop and detach your hold from his. Moving to stand in front of him, you gesture to a tall, black-painted fence grandly, as unveiling the latest Amazonian discovery.
“Date night!”
JJ nods, impressed, and holds the wine out to you in approval.
“So, our date night is basically breaking and entering into a Kook’s back garden to swim around in their pool?”
You shrug, as if innocent, and nod up at him. “Yeah, pretty much. Thoughts?”
The kiss he presses to your lips makes you laugh, but there’s no complaints as you melt against him, tugging him a smidge closer by his hands. “I think you’re like something out of my Goddamn dreams.”
“Cute,” you whisper against his lips. He tries to fight off his blush. Pulling away, you stand near the fence. “Give us a boost?”
“Yes, ma’am,” JJ mumbles.
Dumping the wine for a moment, JJ interlocks his fingers to form a makeshift step and boosts you up the fence on the count of three (shamelessly glancing up your skirt as you go). You grunt as you pull your body weight up and over. He hears the thump of your feet landing on the other side. The sight of your fingertips wiggling over the other side of the fence makes him laugh.
“Pass me the wine?”
JJ does as you ask and then he’s hoisting himself over the fence with a grunt. When he jumps down, you’re already wandering across the lawn. His eyes widen as he takes it all in.
There’s a bandstand – a bandstand – off to the side, alongside a lawn swing. On the patio (that looks power-jetted clean) sits a pristine table for eight, with the most high-end barbeque station set up behind. The windows of the downstairs are floor to ceiling; not one smudge or fleck of dirt in sight. He doesn’t bother to inspect the flower arrangements, but he’s sure that if he were to, there wouldn’t be one weed in sight, and not one leaf out of place.
The lights don’t seem to be motion censored because as you move towards the pool - likely searching for the button to get rid of the cover - nothing lights up. It’s only the leftover glow from the streetlights and the moonlight above that illuminate the yard and yourself.
As he watches you a moment and smiles. Calling you pretty was an understatement. Radiant might be a better match, as you smile to yourself whilst working back the cover. The dress and the hair and the detail of the wine is adorable, hinting at all the thought you’ve put into something that you seem to be trying to pass off as ‘incidental.’ Your affinity for petty crime, high sex drive and textbook rebellion nearly brings him to his knees. He wasn’t kidding when he said you were out of his dreams.
“You gonna come over or what?” you call.
“Keep your voice down, huh?” JJ says back, but does as he's told.
He takes the wine from the floor where you’ve ditched it and takes a few more swigs. The whir of mechanics is droning in the background as the pool cover peels back.
“Most of the houses round here are holiday spots,” you remind him. “I bet half of them are empty.”
“Imagine having two houses, huh?” JJ says, turning around to take in the house once more. White walls which look freshly painted...It’s definitely not the chateau or his piece-of-shit home, that’s for sure. “I’d get myself a boat house, I think. Just living on the water forever, you know?”
When he turns around to continue chewing your ear off, his words get stuck in his throat. You’re stripping out of your dress, stepping out of your shoes, until soon you’re standing in just your bralette and panties. As you toss the dress to the side of the grass, you look up at JJ and give a small laugh. Taking the wine, you ask, “you just gonna stand there or you gonna jump in?”
JJ grins, finding his thoughts, and he tugs off his t-shirt. He digs the phone and cork out of his pockets, adding them to the pile, then toes off his boots. He takes the bottle from your outstretched hand and, as soon as it’s in his hold, JJ’s smile twists into mischievous and he shoves you into the water by your shoulder. The small shriek you give out gets drowned out by the pool, making him laugh. When your head emerges, you’re raking your hair off your face.
“JJ! I didn’t wanna get my hair wet!” you cuss at him.
He rolls his eyes, takes another swig, ditches the bottle on the side, then cannonballs into the water. He hears the crash as he breaks through the surface mellow out by the weirdly soothing lull from being underwater. Swimming to the surface, he shakes his head like a dog trying to get dry. As water droplets spray at you, you keep complaining. The only way you get him to stop is by splashing him. That turns into a thing of its own, and by the end the two of you are thoroughly drenched and laughing your heads off.
When the commotion dies down – adrenaline still high in the veins – JJ treads water and looks at you. You’re watching him too, smiling in content, and then you make an adorable face as if to say, ‘not a bad idea, huh?’
JJ swims over, placing one hand on your waist to pull you nearer, and captures you in a soggy kiss. When you break apart, you begin swimming backwards with a small giggle. You move to float on your back and sigh at the sky of stars.
“Imagine living here and doing this anytime you like.”
“I can see how much I’ve got in the bank. Offer to buy it off them,” JJ suggests, swimming to the poolside to retrieve the wine and take another swig.
“Considering your ‘bank’ is a piggy bank, I don’t know if we’ve got much of a shot,” you tell him.
JJ pushes himself up and out of the water. The stones aren’t cold on his feet; it’s a pleasantly warm night. He whistles for your attention and you move to tread water again. Your bralette is stuck tight to your skin from the wet, making it nearly see-through. Nipples hardening under the cool water, they push against the cotton. JJ tries to shove the dirty thoughts that come to the back of his head for later. He then puts on a show of standing to attention at the pool side, making you grin.
“And here we have JJ Maybank, diving for the Pogues of Kildare County. He’s been training for this day his whole life. Let’s see what he’s got,” you commentate in a deep, Kentucky-type voice.
JJ snorts at your antics before gathering himself. He limbers up, shamelessly and subtly flexes his muscles for your benefit, and then dives off the side, air whooshing past his ears. Before he hits the water, he hears a whistle and whoop from you, making him smile as he sinks under. Swimming over to your kicking legs, he comes to the surface about an arm’s length away. You cringe with a smile as he shakes his wet hair out of his face. Taking you by the waist, he pulls you closer. You’re at the shallow end now; JJ settles on his feet.
“What’s the mark, then?”
“Hm,” you pretend to think. Your arms loop around his shoulders and neck, and you float nearer so you can wrap yourself around him, nearly straddling him. “An eight?”
“Tough critic,” JJ complains weakly, grinning down at you.
You pretended to debate over his words, rocking your head from side to side, pursing your lips. “It might be possible to sway me.”
“Oh really?” he says. He leans down so his forehead bumps against yours.
You let out a low giggle. He watches your eyes look down to his lips, lashes coming close to kissing your cheeks. He lets his own gaze sink down. Your tongue darts out to wet your lips. “Yeah.”
JJ presses his lips to yours.
Kissing you feels like coming up for air after diving for hours, or seeing sunlight after a restless winter night. JJ never thought he could become the type of guy who would enjoy the same person forever; thought he would tire of their way of kissing and of their company, and they, in turn, would tire of him. But kissing you never got tiresome. It was like it was always new, and yet it was never changing. The small noises you made, so quiet that if he weren’t waiting to catch them, he never would. The habits you had formed: fingers tethering into his hair, nails scratching at his scalp, and the way JJ loved to tease his teeth against your lower lip.
As the two of you make out, JJ somehow pulls you closer. One of your hands gently brushes down his chest, over his muscles, and he feels as his body responds happily to your touch. The caress of your fingers, one by one, chasing down him. The slip of your leg, tugging you closer, grinding against him. His tongue sensually brushes against yours - one of his hands coming to cup your jaw and angle your head just-so – as the kiss turns licentious. You sigh against his lips, as if breathing new life into him, and JJ feels himself begin to harden. When his hand on your jaw slides down your neck, a brief thought makes him harder still: that his whole palm could wrap around your throat in the most delicious, delicate of ways. He brings it to cup at your breast, palming over the thin, soaked fabric of your bralette. JJ briefly pulls his mouth from yours.
There’s a split second where you let out a breathless moan, head tipping forward, and JJ smiles down at you through barely open eyes.
“Ever done it in a pool?”
You open your eyes, looking up at him. He feels as you grind against him, becoming needy for friction, and he lets his thumb tease at your hardening nipple. Small pants of pleasure slip past your lips as you reply, “can’t say that I have.”
“Wanna cross it off the bucket list, pretty girl?” he wonders, resting his forehead against yours once more.
JJ likes having the control. Of seeing you at his mercy, preening into his touch, whining and desperate and lax, and all for him. Makes him feel like a young God.
Cocky, he rubs you against him with a guiding hand on your ass. “Hm?”
But JJ forgets why he’s so drawn to you, sometimes. Forgets how you’re a little too much like him. It all comes racing back when he feels your hand slipping into his shorts, into his boxers, and you palm at him, hard under your touch. He gasps against your lips, confidence killed short. His eyes slip shut in pleasure, groaning as you start to give him a hand-job.
He can hear the smirk in your words as you ask, “do you?”
Maybe it’s the thrill of it all: of being with you, of sneaking into someone’s pool, of fucking in someone else’s back garden, where if anybody took a moment to glance out their back window, they could see the two of you…JJ’s sure he’s never felt this way. Never felt so raptured; so merciless.
JJ guides a hand to your panties, slipping his fingers under the cotton that’s pasted to your skin. You’re wet against his touch (a different sort of slick to the pool water) and he twitches in your hand at the feel of it. The battle for control fades away as the two of you simultaneously work at getting the other off, desperately chasing your own highs. JJ’s fingers work between your legs, pushing into you slowly, coaxing your thighs to part under his touch. He uses one hand to try and hold you up, but as you keep jacking him off, he feels his resolve breaking. At some point, he works to have you pressed against the pool wall. The water barely reaches the top of your shoulders and JJ’s chest is halfway exposed.
He's groaning, resting his chin on your shoulder, lost in feel of your smaller hand wrapped around him. Your head is slumped against his collarbones, breath hot and fanning on his chest. It’s as if it has been filled with lead and you can’t hold it up, collapsing against him as you pant and gently moan as JJ pumps his fingers in and out of you. In and out. Sometimes your pace falters on him, your hold stumbling when his thumb brushes against your clit, but you soon recover.
The two you know the other’s body well now. There’re no scars to hide and no insecurities to shun. No cellulite or stretch mark for you to be ashamed of, and no faded bruise and semi-healed cigarette burn for JJ to overthink. There’s only you and him, and the promise of pleasure and safety.
JJ feels himself getting close. You seem to know, somehow. Your fingers loop into the threads of his hair, coiling around like a snake, tugging him so his head is nearer to your lips. He’s almost whining, eyes clenched shut, rutting against your hold as he desperately chases his release. There’s a hot, wet breath on the edge of JJ’s ear as you sinfully whisper, “doing so good for me, baby. So good.”
He can’t help but come with a shudder, gasping out a moan, trembling against you. Your name falls into the mix and your hold on him doesn't cease. JJ takes a moment to catch his breath, ensuring he doesn’t stop fingering you. As the euphoric haze begins to fade, and he manages his eyes open, he feels your head once again on his chest. You’re whining too, pitch high and eager, the sounds short as you’re gasping his name as if in plea. He can feel you despairingly driving his fingers deeper, practically riding his hand, and he smirks against the skin of your shoulder. Kisses of fake nicety as he then goes to bite at your skin, never hard enough to break the surface. You moan, louder, sensitive like every nerve ending is on fire. Anybody could hear you. Anybody could see you fucking his fingers. JJ puts more focus to your clit, applying pressure as he rubs, and you seem newly driven. Your hands grab at his shoulders, forcing your body on his fingers harder. Deeper. JJ pulls back enough to look down at you, eyes hooded, and feels his spent dick twitch at the sight of you using him to find release. Mouth hung open, gasping and panting, eyes clenched shut as if it’s all incomprehensible. Something from his Goddamn dreams.
JJ uses his spare hand to gently push back your hair from your face, swiping a finger over the apple of your cheek.
“That’s it, baby,” he coaxes. He scissors his fingers, pushing against your walls. You’re close. He can feel it. He can hear it. The sloppily disturbance of the water from your movement is so obscenely filthy in the context of what’s happening. Anybody could see you. JJ presses more wet kisses to your neck, to your collarbone. Anywhere his lips can reach until they find home on yours. “Come on, baby. You can let go. Come on.”
Finally, the tether snaps. Your moan is shameless and loud, as if you’ve forgotten where you are. As if there’s nothing else that you need to know expect that JJ’s there, easing you through it all. He feels as your walls convulse around his fingers, pushing him out and pulling him in, and he pants through his arousal as he watches you come. Watches as your teeth sink into your lower lip. As your face shines hot. The pool water droplets shining on your skin. How you’re shaking under him. Watches as you ease your eyes open, meeting his gaze. Sees the unshed tears in your lash line from the pleasure. The bashful, thankful smile you barely manage to show. There’s the feeling of one of your hands on his wrist, gently but firmly easing his touch away, overstimulated. When you gasp as his fingers slip out of you, all too easy, you’re still staring into his eyes. JJ’s thoughts are mostly vacant except for a few, and all of them are about you.
Your hand cups at his jaw so you can pull him into a kiss. It’s fleeting and sweet.
“If we ever win the lottery, we’re getting a pool,” you tell him.
JJ laughs, breathless. “Agreed.”
“Jesus. Pretty good date, huh?” you chuckle. JJ can’t help but kiss you again.
“Hell yeah.”
You both pull back enough to take the other in fully. JJ tucks himself back into his boxers, and you correct your underwear so the both of you are decent. You look around at the garden, as if remembering where you are.
“We should probably get out of here before we get caught,” you say. You don’t sound overly concerned though. JJ smiles.
“Think we might’ve blown our cover, somehow,” he agrees.
You roll your eyes, diffident. JJ swims backwards, extending a hand to bring you with him. Neither of you look down into the water. Instead, you both swim towards the deep end again, where your belongings had been ditched. The two of you climb out into the balmy one-in-the-morning air. JJ goes to your clothes – shoving his phone and the cork back into his shorts – and picks up your dress. The two of you swap the wine and dress, you having just taken a drink, and JJ takes a swig too.
“You ride your bike here?” you wonder as you pull on the dress. It seems to be a bit of a struggle against your wet skin.
“John B gave me a lift,” JJ replies. He pulls on his shirt. At your struggle to work up the straps, JJ walks over to help. “You walk?”
“Drove. I can give us a lift to the chateau. Told my parents I'd crash there tonight,” you say. JJ nods.
Once you’re dressed, you look up at him and smile. He's heart thuds painfully in his chest. He leans down to kiss you, chaste and tender. The two of you start back to the fence. JJ boosts you over, hands the wine, climbs over himself. You hold hands as you walk to your car. Sliding into the passenger side, JJ sighs against the seat. The wine’s now empty and he shoves the bottle under the back seat. You get behind the wheel and start up the engine. As the car blinks to life, coughing up a new lung in the process, the radio kicks in. It’s tuned into some crackly channel which is only just in service, playing mostly oldies and classics. The volume is low, just loud enough to tune out the concerning noise of the engine, and you reverse out of your spot and begin down the road.
JJ relaxes into the seat, crossing his ankles. There's one of his caps on the dashboard that he left the other day; taking it, he puts it on his head. JJ watches as you dig about in the centre console for your cigarettes. Holding one between your lips, you light it up with a flick of your lighter. You know JJ doesn’t mind you smoking in the car so you don’t bother cracking a window. He watches you take a drag, leaning one elbow on the window frame, finger cradling the cig, as you use the other to leisurely steer. The roads are dead. It’s dark and your headlights are on low. JJ glances out the side window to take in the starry night, looking past his reflection in the dark. Your fingers drum on the steering wheel as Rich Girl starts up. He hears as you hum along quietly, lazy as if unaware you are, and he smiles. His own fingers tap along to the beat on his thigh. Glancing over to you, he watches you change hands on the wheel (cigarette precariously propped between two fingers). He takes the chance to grab at the hand nearest him, pulling it to his lips to press kisses against your knuckles. Your eyes flit to him as he does, smiling sweetly, and you move to interlock your fingers with his.
“I don’t want summer to end,” JJ tells you, his voice low in confession.
“Me neither,” you reply.
The radio host starts lamely interrupting the end of the song, hyping up what’s to come next for the truck drivers and road trippers, driving in the dead of the night.
“What’s gonna happen with us, at school?” you wonder. There’s an anxiety to your voice.
JJ shrugs. He answers honestly. “I don’t know. But I’m not going anywhere.”
“You mean that, right? Like, you’re not just gonna dip?” you worry.
JJ frowns. “No. I’m not gonna dip.”
“Okay,” you say, finding a smile again. You nod, looking back to the road. “Okay.”
As the song comes to a close, a thought seems to flash in your mind and your head whips to look at him. “You know I’m not gonna dip either, right?”
JJ laughs, “Yeah, baby, I know.”
“Okay,” you say, chuckling. “Just wanted to check.”
Everything about the night is infinite. The pool and the wine and the sneaking. The fooling around and the tender moments after. And now, in the car, with the pair of you easily slipping between sentimental and sincere, carefree and young. He loves that he can do this with you. Loves how he can trust you to understand him; how you’re a little bossy and a little controlling, but how you also allow him to see the nostalgic, tender-hearted teenage girl beneath it all. The girl who keeps corks from five-dollar wine and collects napkins from breakfast diners. Loves how you feel safe enough with him to mess around in someone else’s back garden; to let him have you, all of you, nearly every night.
The words come to JJ, easy now. Obvious. The many layers of feelings that he had whenever he thought of you or whenever he was around you seem so easily condensed and summarised in that one word. He always thought it would be terrifying to feel it, and even more terrifying to say it. But with you, it isn’t. If anything, it’s easier. Simpler. It encapsulates all the things JJ likes about you, and even the things that aggravate him too.
“I love you.”
Your humming stops. You glance over to him, eyes a little wide. The brief wash of anxiety that drenches JJ passes quickly when he sees the corner of your lips twitch into a smile.
"Really?" you ask gently. Somewhat disbelieving. As if there could be any doubt in his mind. As if you weren't easy for JJ to fall in love with.
JJ smiles back. It might be the softest, sweetest smile he's ever had the pleasure to show someone. Only you. "Really."
When you giggle, it's quiet; teeth sinking into your lower lip. The moonlight washes over you. Looking back to the road, you continue smiling, giddy like a school girl after her first kiss. JJ can't help but watch you. Now that he's said it once, he wants to say it again and again. He won't though. Doesn't want to be too much, too fast. But then the silence stretches too long, making him antsy.
"Any chance you might feel the same way?" he tentatively asks, hating how desperate it sounds.
Your face shocks with realisation. Laughing, you look to him. "Oh shit! Yeah, I love you too."
JJ laughs along, shaking his head.
"Sorry. Just caught me off guard. Kinda forgot I had to reply," you confess, chuckling. Rolling his eyes, JJ squeezes your hand, still intertwined with his. He's pinned each and every hope on you; every wish for the future and every regret of the past. No matter what happens now, the two of you are forever tethered to this moment and to those words. To each other.
Your demeanour softens. Bringing his hand to your lips, you press a kiss to the skin. His knuckles are permanently scarred; having broken and healed over so many times. But so are yours. Same coin: different sides. When you repeat the phrase, it's as if you're passing a secret and whispering a prayer straight to God's ear.
jj maybank x fem!reader | part of the F.W.B universe, but can be read as a stand-alone
content warning: abuse; mentions of drug use/abuse; mentions of sex
word count: 2k
blurb: you find out about JJ's tumultuous relationship with his dad one night.
Within a split second, your body registers the feeling of the bed dipping, the covers shifting, and the brief brush of something cold on your shin. All of this jolts you awake, eyes shooting open to face the wall. Heart pumping adrenaline. The pressure of a hand on your shoulder does little to ease your anxiety until you hear his voice.
“Just me,” JJ sighs. You exhale with relief and relax back into the covers, eyes closing once more.
“You scared the crap outta me,” you mumble back.
“Sorry,” he grunts. He’s wriggling around, trying to get comfortable, and you turn over in the darkness. Your eyes are still shut. Naturally, you begin to worm yourself into his presence, tangling your legs amongst his and burying your head against his chest. JJ laughs and you feel his body shake with it. “You’re like a Goddamn koala.”
“Shut up,” you mutter.
The two of you had an affinity to become soft and simp-like when tired. Secretly, you loved it.
One of his hands comes to your back, slipping underneath the cotton of your top and stroking your skin. You smile and sigh against him.
“I missed you today,” you tell him against his bare skin.
“Missed you too,” JJ replies in a gravelly voice.
“Are we becoming that gross couple that’s always attached at the hip?” you worry, only half-joking.
JJ laughs. “Can’t be any grosser than John B and Sarah. You know they have little pet names for each other? Vlad and something.”
“Gag.”
The two of you laugh quietly. Sleepily. JJ’s chest smells of saltwater, suncream and the remnants of sweat. His skin’s turning warm from the cocoon of sheets that he’s made his way into. You rub your foot against his inner calve and nuzzle against him. JJ silently chuckles, another hand coming up to pet your hair.
“Where were you today?”
“Had to do something,” JJ ominously tells you.
“Is that code for murder?”
“Sometimes. Not right now, though,” he replies. “How was training?”
“Hard,” you reply through a yawn. “There’s a match in a couple of weeks though. You gonna come?”
“Course,” he says. With that, he plants a kiss to your forehead. “How come you’re at the chateau tonight? I didn’t know if you were gonna be here.”
“Went surfing with Kie and John B after training, and we sorta just ended up here. It got late and I just decided to crash. Wasn’t sure if you were gonna be here either.”
“We need to text each other more,” JJ points out, making you laugh.
You shift so there’s a bit more space between you and then half-open your eyes. The room’s pitch black and you can barely make out the silhouette of JJ’s face. You know his presence well enough to be able to pin where his lips are though. You press a kiss against them. JJ doesn’t let you pull back. He moves the hand that was playing with your hair to cradle your jaw, keeping you against him. Both of you are too tired to have sex, but you have just enough left in the tank for a half-asleep make-out. Lazy and lavish. As you go to kiss at his jaw, one of your hand slips around his side, letting your fingers and blunt nails lightly dig into his flesh, just like usual. What's unusual is the way JJ flinches, suddenly hisses (as if uncontrollable), and pulls back on reflex. The moment he does, you get this feeling that he didn’t mean to. This only spurs you on more to pull away and sit up, face contorted in concerned confusion. You try fumbling around for the lamp’s light switch. JJ starts protesting immediately.
“Baby, wait—” JJ’s saying, a little panicked, but you don’t let his hold on your arm stop you.
The light flashes on and you wince against it with a groan, blinking a couple of times to adjust. Turning around, you take in JJ’s face, and the sight makes you gasp.
“JJ, what the hell,” you gape.
You’ve seen your fair share of face wounds from boxing, on yourself and others - split lips and some discolouring around the cheek and eyes - but nothing like this. This is malicious and spiteful, done with something more than intent.
JJ’s looking away from you, his expression somewhere between annoyed and embarrassed.
You go to reach out a hand and take his face, as if needing to check the bruises are real, but he’s pulling away from your reach.
“What the hell happened?”
“It’s nothing. Doesn’t matter,” he mumbles, looking around the other bedside table for something. Probably his vape or papers.
“JJ.”
“It’s just from some dumb fight with some Kooks or something,” he barely says, still not meeting your gaze. Mhm.
“Or something?”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll put some cream or something on it in the morning.”
Sarcastically, you agree, “yeah, that’s what you need. Cream.”
He finds his vape but decides against it, going to look for his bud and papers to roll. You know why: it’s not gonna hold his attention long enough to have an excuse not to look at you. You sit back atop of your folded legs and cross your arms. Your eyes have fully adjusted now and you’re wide awake. Whatever softness the two of you had been in before has long gone, and you’re not going back to sleep until you know why JJ looks like a rip-off Picasso painting of a starry night.
“Why won’t you tell me?” you ask him.
JJ pauses in his search.
“It doesn’t matter, okay?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Why does it matter so much to you that I tell you?” JJ huffs, becoming annoyed. You watch as his shoulders begin to tense, the muscles flexing.
“Because I haven’t seen you all day, only for you to show up black and blue,” you tell him, irritated. Then, softer, you add, “and I’m worried about you.”
“Why’s it always about you?”
“What?”
JJ sits back, abandoning his search, and goes on, glaring at you. “It’s always about how everything’s effecting you. What? Cause you get your way a lot, you think you deserve the answers to everything? You’re a spoilt brat sometimes, you know that right?”
Maybe in another situation, his words would hurt. You’d worry if there was some truth – that maybe that was why your exes had left you and had done what they did. But as he talks, all you can look at is the cut on his lip and how it’s threatening to break open again into a bleed, and how the bruising around his eye is making it swollen. The strange beauty of the colours: blotchy purple and orange and brown.
Keeping your temper level, you calmly shake your head. “You can’t try and stir up the pot between us to get out of talking about this.”
JJ briefly meets your gaze before looking away and down at his hands. He messes with one of his rings. It’s now that you have enough strength to pull your focus from his face and to his chest. To the reason that he flinched away, giving up his secret. The sight of the marks – red and pink, some tinges of blue – scattered across his body, probably from someone kicking or punching him, makes your eyes water. You bite on your lower lip to keep it from trembling. That means he was on the ground at some point. Somebody had enough strength and power over him to get him on the ground. Funny how half your life is spent in purposeful violence, but the sight of wounds like this, on someone you care about, catches you off guard in the worst of ways. It doesn’t put you off fighting, though. If anything, it spurs you on.
“Who did this, JJ?” you ask, firmer.
He looks you in the eye at your change of tone. Maybe he can read your face, see your intentions, because he starts shaking his head.
“It’s not like you can do anything about it, alright?”
“Who says?” you shrug.
“Baby, I’m asking you to let it go. Please,” JJ implores. His voice cracks. Jaw tenses, like he's holding back.
His gaze is all over the shop: your eyes then his hands, then the window and the door. You follow it. When he looks at his hands, fiddles with his rings, you notice how they're shaking. He’s shaking.
The moment of vigilante is gone. It feels as if you’re seeing a different part of JJ. Vulnerable and raw; his silly, cocky, energetic facets of personality stripped away. You’ve only ever seen him like this once. Well, heard him, to be more accurate. In the bathroom, at the party, where you both agreed to give this relationship a shot.
Shuffling nearer, you move to straddle his lap (careful of his bruises), hoping it might help ground him. He doesn’t push you off. Instead, JJ places his hands on your hips, a thumb stroking over the bone. Your hands find place on your thighs. You lean forward and press your forehead against his, making a point to close your eyes. JJ shakily exhales.
“It’s okay,” you whisper.
His head shakes from side to side, ever so slightly. “It’s not okay,” he barely makes out. Your stomach constricts like a boa.
You bring a hand up to his hair and gently rake your fingers through some of the strands, and something about your touch makes him break.
JJ starts crying.
He drops his head against your shoulder, body shaking from the sobs. You’ve never seen him cry before. Never been able to picture it. JJ didn’t get upset; he just got angry. But this was the hidden layer, buried behind humour and anger and aggression. The thing he seemed to try and keep six feet under. His arms come up to wrap around your body, pulling you nearer, and you bite at your lip to save yourself from crying too, folding your arms over his shoulders. You swaddle him in your presence, let him cry against you. You whisper things into his ear, somewhere between sweet-nothings and soothes. The lump in your throat never leaves.
“It’s not his fault,” JJ gasps against you.
You don’t know what he means but don’t force anything. You just keep holding him.
“I know,” you say softly, hugging him tighter.
“It’s not his fault. He…He has a problem and…If I was better than it wouldn’t happen…”
You shake your head but don’t speak. You’re not sure if you can. His voice doesn’t sound like his own. It’s as resistless as a sheet of ice.
“He loves me. I know he does. I know he does. I know…”
His chest is rising and falling too quickly now and you have to pull away. His eyes are clenched shut and he can’t breathe. The panic of this realisation only makes it worse. You take his face in your hands and shush him, coaxing him to listen to you.
JJ’s mumbling still. How he doesn’t understand. How he doesn’t get it. How he just has to do better. Why can’t he be better?
The whole time, you’re counting aloud. Giving instructions. Trying to block out the tears, the pain, from his words. In - one, two, three. Out - one, two, three. In…
Somewhere, somehow, he listens. At first, it’s useless. His panicked gasps interrupt his measured breathing, and he almost spirals again. But then he seems to find some new determination. His fingers press into your waist, a little tight but you’re not going to complain, and JJ tries again. Eventually, it mostly levels out, and the panic attack has subsided. You press your forehead against his again and move to take his hands into yours, interlocking your fingers together. You stay like that for a long while.
In that time, JJ stops crying and you let your own tears silently fall. You press a chaste kiss to his lips. His breathing mellows out into tired, steady inhales and exhales. It’s then that you feel it’s safe enough for you to ask.
“It’s your dad, isn’t it? The ‘ugly’ thing you were scared to tell me about; the thing you mentioned at the party,” you whisper.
JJ stills. His breathing temporarily halts. You feel the reluctant nod of his head.
Face warping into a deep, sad smile, you let some more tears fall. A smile, because whilst it kills you to know the truth – and one that painful – it’s also somewhat of a relief to know. Know why he does the things he does and why he never wants to go home. Why he’s never invited you to meet his parents or crash at his, and why – right from day one of knowing you – he’s been at the chateau. Why he’s currently black and blue.
You press another kiss to his lips.
“I’m staying, JJ,” you reassure him.
Before you can pull away, he places a hand on the flat of your back and pulls you back, kissing you firmly. I’m staying.
jj maybank x fem!reader | part of the F.W.B universe, but can be read as a stand-alone too!
content warning: drinking; sex (protected; p in v)
word count: 3k
blurb: JJ Maybank has some corny-ass pick-up lines, and can't seem to back down from a bet, but maybe you might just give him a try anyway. What's one night, after all?
Sunset had turned dusk on the beach. There was the vague smell of smoke from the bonfire, sticking to everyone’s clothes, and beer, liquor and marijuana. Cigarettes and cider. The Boneyard was a free for all: Kooks and Pogues and tourists alike. If you wanted to let lose, maybe have a dance and shotgun a few beers, then you could. If you want to catch-up with your friends, make the most of the summer, then you could. And if you wanted a quick hook-up, be it a fling or otherwise, you could. That was usually the way JJ leaned.
JJ took a swig of his beer and looked around. John B was chatting away with Sarah, Kiara was in what appeared to be a rather deep conversation with some astrology-type girlies, and Pope was doing his best to make a move on a chick who was (unfortunately) clearly not interested. As he took in the sights, he noticed that off to the side there was a crowd, getting louder by the second. Curious, he wandered over, recognising Ricky from gym standing on the outskirts.
“Yo, Ricky,” he called, approaching. The red head turned around and grinned.
“Maybank! Where you been?”
“Oh, you know. Odd jobs and all that. Got myself a gig as a bus boy at some kook country club,” JJ said. They slapped hands and bumped fists in a casual handshake. Nodding to the gathering of people in front of them, he asked, “what’s all this?”
“This girl told someone that she can hold a handstand for one minute,” Ricky said.
JJ laughed. “What? Like it’s hard or something?”
“You think you can do it?” Ricky chuckled, eyeing him up.
“Bro, I can probably hold one for like five minutes,” JJ smugly said, taking another drink.
Ricky raised his brows and laughed, shaking his head. Then, he called a name. You turned around and smiled at the red head. Gesturing with his head to JJ, who stood beside him, he said, “Maybank here thinks he can beat you at your little handstand trick.”
Your eyes passed to JJ, smile turning into something just shy of a smirk, semi-suspicious. JJ’s first thought as you looked at him was simple: hot. His second thought came from the more sober side of him, calling out from the back of his brain: you might’ve over played your hand.
“Oh really?”
“You guys wanna put it to the test?”
“What’s it worth to me?” JJ asked you.
“Twenty?”
“Twenty?” JJ whistled. You walked over.
“Scared or something, blondie?” you wondered, arms folded over your chest.
He finished his drink and tossed it to the side, half surprised that he didn’t hear Kiara from afar telling him off for littering.
“Not at all, princess,” he replied, smirking.
“Yo! Head-to-head!” Ricky called, pointing to the pair of you. A few people caught on and began to gather around you and JJ in a circle. Some gave a whistle and some a few whoops and hollers of encouragement.
You and JJ moved so you were standing side by side. He watched as you cracked your neck and stretched your arms. The sage green top you wore rode up as you went, teasing to show the waistband of your bra. When you finished limbering up, you looked up at JJ.
"You sure you wanna do this?" you checked, cocky and self-assured.
“Get ready to get out your check book,” was all he replied.
“Oh, I think I have the cash,” you sardonically returned. Calling to Ricky, you said, “give us a countdown, dickwad!”
He did as you asked. Across the small crowd that had gathered to watch the ordeal, a tense excitement laid over them like a blanket. You and JJ flashed each other one last competitive grin.
“Three, two, one: go!”
The moment JJ’s hands met the sand, he realised how largely he’d misjudged both his handstand-abilities and the length of a minute.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t strong enough to hold his own weight, but more the lack of balance to keep from falling on his face. JJ imagined he looked something like a tree in the wind. He wondered how you were doing, waiting for the roar of the crowd when you would crash onto the floor. Grunting, he shifted one of his hands and focused on keeping himself upright. The people watching were still giving little cheers and whistles, some shouting his name and some shouting yours. It was a nice name. Matched you well, even though you’d barely said five words to him. You seemed nice. Funny. A little arrogant and cocky, though not in a pompous way.
Before JJ could catch his run-away thoughts, he’d lost his focus and his balance, and went crashing to the sand with a grunt. Laughter and hollers surrounded the two of you, and a couple of cheers for participation. JJ rolled his eyes and sat up, looking to his left to see you unphased by the commotion. Your eyes were closed and he watched as you steadily and slowly breathed in and out of your mouth. Face turning red from being upside down so long. He couldn’t help but smile at your concentration. It was a pretty cool party trick.
“That’s a minute!” Ricky called.
You gracefully lowered yourself back to your feet, opening your eyes. More cheers, more jeering, more noise. You laughed, somewhat bashful, and then looked down at JJ.
When you first extended your hand, he thought you were offering to help him up. That was until you said:
“Pay up, blondie.”
He laughed, shaking his head, getting to his feet. He retrieved his cap that had fallen off when the ordeal started, placing it on his head.
“You know, we never actually shook on it,” he told you.
Laughing, you retracted your hand and placed it on your hip. “You owe me, Maybank.”
“How ‘bout a drink instead?”
“From the open bar? What a treat.”
JJ laughed. “Take it or leave it, sunshine.”
He began walking towards the pile of bottles, cans and mixers. You followed.
“What you been drinking?” he asked, dropping to a squat to dig about.
“Vodka orange.”
“Alright then,” JJ mumbled. He looked around for the vodka and found some left-over orange juice. Going to grab a cup, he began to pour in the liquor. “Where abouts you from?”
“Weaver Street?” you say. Then, a hand landing on his, you laugh out, “easy! Jesus, hope you don’t work as a bar tender.”
“Lightweight,” he kids. He stops adding vodka per your request and tops the cup off with orange. “Good?”
“Great,” you smile, taking it from him.
“So, Weaver street?”
“Mhm.”
“Ain’t that near Kildare High?” he checks, running through his mental map.
“Yeah. I go there, actually,” you say, taking a sip of your drink. JJ takes a beer and then stands.
“Same here,” he tells you, cracking open the can. “How old did you say you are?”
“Seventeen.”
“Same here,” he repeats, half-laughing. You do the same. “How come I’ve never seen you around before?”
“It’s a big school. Maybe we've had a class together and just didn’t notice,” you shrug.
JJ looks you in the eye and smirks. “Nah. I’d remember seeing you.”
Rolling your eyes, smiling, you looking away then back. He's sure he isn't imagining the fluster in your smile. “Oh. Smooth.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” you say, a little sarcastic. It makes him laugh. You’ve got a good personality. Pretty hair and pretty eyes. A nice body, too. He shamelessly takes a moment to take it in, looking you up and down.
“Your boyfriend gonna start looking for you soon?”
“Should I start making count of how many corny lines you throw at me?” you smirk.
“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” JJ shrugs, taking a swig of his drink.
“No boyfriend,” you eventually tell him. “Girlfriend?”
“That a question or an invitation?”
You laugh and shake your head. He smiles. You’ve got a nice laugh too. Jesus, it’s like you've come out of one of his fantasies. He's waiting for the catch: the reveal of some awful ex you're trying to make jealous, who dumped you yesterday, or the casual drop-in that you don't swing for boys. Until either of those scenarios, or something other, crops up, JJ decides to take a shot. You only live once, right?
“Wanna go for a walk?”
“With a total stranger?”
“Hardly,” he says. “I’m JJ. Maybank.”
“How do I know that’s your real name?” you wonder, feigning suspicion.
JJ laughs and rolls his eyes. “What, you need an ID or something? You know you’re kind of hard work, right?”
You don’t seem offended by this. If anything, you smile more. Shrugging, you innocently say, “I like to make guys work for it.”
Hot.
JJ takes another drink to help wash down your words. He asks your name and you tell him, and then you both drink again. His question from before still hangs in the air.
“Where’d this walk be to, anyway?” you ask casually.
He watches as you take a step closer, toes of your shoes almost touching his. He looks down at you and smirks. Good sign...
“Somewhere more private. How’s that sound?”
JJ wonders if he’s hallucinating for a moment because all of this is too perfectly lined up to be real. The way you sink your teeth into your lower lip, gnawing a second as you deliberate his offer before letting it go.
“Yeah. I’d say that sounds alright,” you smile sweetly.
JJ grins. Score.
The walk to the chateau isn’t awkward. JJ can feel the brush of your hand against his from time to time, but holding hands seems to intimate. Sort of ironic, considering where the night was inevitably going to lead. You make conversation easy. Unimportant things, like music and TV. He learns a few tit-bits of information about you. Your favourite show, where you've been working for some of the summer, favourite singer, dream gig...Trivial things but interesting, nonetheless. When you get to the chateau, he lets you in first.
“Welcome,” he says, moving to flick on the lamp.
You walk in and look around, then nod, smiling.
“Cosy,” you say politely. He watches as you go to look at some of the pictures on the wall.
JJ walks to the fridge and pulls it open, glancing in. Some leftovers from the other night and a couple of bottles at the back. He wonders about grabbing yourself and him one. “You want a beer or something?”
When JJ doesn’t get a reply, he stands upright, closes the fridge, and turns to check you’re alright. JJ’s surprised he doesn’t jump out of his skin when he finds you standing right in front of him. The surprise tumbles into pleasant shock when you press your lips to his. Then all of it vanishes altogether, as he comes to his sense. JJ kisses you back gladly, sliding a hand to your waist to pull you closer. One of your feet slides between his. He leans back against the fridge, grunting at the feel of the handle digging into his back.
“What’d you say we take this into the bedroom?” he asks against your lips.
“I'd say ‘that’s cheesy line number three’, but alright,” you reply, making him laugh.
Making out for a few minutes longer, the two of you eventually pull away long enough for JJ to guide you to the spare room. He flicks on the lamp beside the bed. The place is a mess, he knows, but that doesn’t matter right now. He tosses a couple things off the bed and onto the chaos accumulating on the floor, and then he’s pulling you to straddle him as he takes perch on the edge. Your arms loop around his neck, fingers sliding into his hair, and JJ rubs his hands up and down your thighs. Your skin smells like lavender and lemongrass, and some lingering smoke from the fire that had weaved into your hair and the cotton of your top.
JJ watches as you pull back with a breath, taking off your top and unclipping your bra.
“I like that top,” he mumbles as you do so.
“Thanks. I paid for it by betting against unassuming idiots in handstanding contests,” you hurriedly joke. Your lips are on JJ's again in a moment, cutting off his breathless laugh.
His hands inch up your skin until they’re at your chest, cupping and groping, his thumbs teasing at your nipples. You moan against him and JJ feels as you claw at his t-shirt. Pulling away, he tugs it off with your help, tossing it to the side. As if newly energised, your hands push at his shoulders, forcing him to lie down. He chuckles against your lips as you do, brows shooting up in surprise. Not shy, then, and maybe not a bottom.
When JJ's fingers find the button of your shorts, he pauses long enough to ask, “is this okay?”
“I’ll tell you if anything isn’t,” you reply in a breath. With that quick and simple mark of consent, JJ doesn't plan to waste any time.
It’s a strange and slightly awkward dance as your shorts and panties are taken off. By the end of it, you’re on your back and JJ’s on top. The make-out continues as his fingers trial down your skin, starting at your neck and ending below your waist. You’re wet; JJ groans at the feel of his fingers easily slipping between your folds, and you let out a quivering breath.
“Guess my pick-up lines were working, huh?”
“Don’t ruin it,” you mumble. JJ worries he has a moment until he looks up from his hand to catch your lazy smile.
JJ chuckles against your neck before becoming distracted by leaving a hickey. At the same time, he starts working you open. Every moan and whine you give makes him harder, and by the time you come, he’s desperate for some relief, shamelessly rubbing against your thigh. Easing his fingers out, he carelessly wipes the slick on your leg. You coax his lips back to yours and somehow find a way to be on top again. If JJ wasn’t so horny, he’d laugh.
The feeling of your hands on his zipper, beginning to pull down his shorts and boxers, has his mind going blank of anything but being inside of you. Once they’re on the floor with the rest, both of you free of any modesty, you straddle him again. There’s a momentary accidental brush that has you both moaning.
“Wait. You got a condom?” you pant, opening your eyes. JJ opens his too and almost comes at the sight of you on top of him. Get it together, Maybank.
“Yeah, yeah. Beside table. Top drawer.”
As JJ speaks, he attempts to grab at the handle, but you lean over and dig about for one instead – mumbling ‘I’ve got it’. It gives him a moment to kiss at one of your breasts, mouthing at your nipple. The nails of your spare hand dig into his shoulders. When you pull back, you’ve got a condom in hand. Placing it on him, wriggling down onto his thighs a moment, JJ tries not to come at the brief hand-job.
Then, you’re sinking down on him and he forces his eyes open long enough to watch as your head tilts back, neck on proud display, mouth open in silent pleasure. The rest is like a haze. The feel of you on top of him, his head pressed back into the pillows, zips of pleasure and adrenaline and dopamine in his fingers as they come to rest on your hips and waist, feeling like shoots of electricity. He keeps fighting and failing to keep his eyes open and watch as you get yourself off on him. When he feels your pace falter, he helps you ride him. Your hands are on his chest, fingers forming tiny scratch marks. The sounds of it all are obscene: skin slapping skin; moans; whines; groaning and panting. If there’s a hell, JJ’s sure there’s a seat reserved with his name on it. Thank God.
“You close?” JJ manages to ask, knowing that he definitely is. He watches as you nod, barely able to form words. You're looking down now, hair falling to hang over your face. He can make out your teeth biting down into your lower lip before you can't help but moan; how your eyes are squeezed shut in insurmountable pleasure.
Somehow, JJ finds enough energy to flip the two of you. It catches you a little by surprise; makes you gasp. As he drives into you, hands either side of your head, holding him up, you moan at the new angle.
JJ can’t help but come at the sight of one of your hands moving down to toy with your clit. It doesn’t seem to matter though, because he feels you clench around him a moment later: again and again. You let out an almost silent, shaky moan. Almost.
JJ drops his forehead to your shoulder, panting, and the two of you ride it out. When he finally slows to a stop, JJ takes a moment to rest inside of you, gently sinking to lie on your chest. It's rising up and down with uneven breaths. He presses a lazy kiss to your damp chest.
“You good?”
You nod. “Yeah.”
Pulling out – the two of you sighing, still sensitive – JJ reluctantly moves away to deal with the aftermath. When he turns back to you, you’re rubbing at your eyes and moving to sit up.
“Where’s your bathroom?” you wonder, a little tired.
Pointing vaguely at the door, JJ replies, “first door on your left.”
You nod and get up with a groan. JJ can’t help but grin, a little smug, as you take a moment to collect yourself. Then, you’re heading to the bathroom. You don’t get dressed but he figures that you must’ve clocked that you have the place to yourselves, considering there were no attempts to be quiet.
As you’re doing your business, JJ rakes his fingers through his hair and lets out a sigh. God, he’s sweaty. He’ll get a shower after you leave.
Looking about for some boxers, he grabs a pair off the floor and tugs them on. He settles to sit on the bed and closes his eyes, gathering himself. That was good. Really good. He’s starting to feel the itch to have a smoke, to help the come down. He hears the bathroom’s pull-cord light click off and the door open, followed by his. He watches as you don’t acknowledge him and begin to look for your clothes. It’s routine-like, as if on autopilot. He keeps watching as you get dressed, but you don’t seem to complain.
By the time you get to your shoes, wrestling with the laces that seem to have gotten themselves in a knot, JJ can’t hold the question in any longer. You’re so casual about the whole thing, it just makes him curious.
