could you write jj x reader where they have a beach day? :)
Golden Hour
jj maybank x reader
Summary: what’s supposed to be a simple beach day with the pogues turns into something a little softer, a little messier, and a lot harder to ignore.
Warning: none
Tags: fluff, jj maybank x reader, beach day, teasing, soft jj, pogues, summer romance, light angst
Word count: ~3.4k
a/n: requested by @mlcves ♡ thank you for sending this in!
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By the time I made it down to the beach, JJ was already being loud. Not talking loud though he was definitely doing that too. Existing loud. The kind of loudness that looked like him balancing on a half-buried cooler like it was a surfboard, arms spread wide, sunglasses crooked, shouting something at Pope while John B laughed hard enough to nearly drop the bag of chips he was carrying. “You’re gonna break your neck,” I called. JJ whipped around so fast he almost did exactly that.
He jumped down from the cooler with a grin so immediate and bright it did something embarrassing to my stomach. “There she is,” he said, like I was late to something important. “Was starting to think you bailed on us.” I dropped my bag onto the sand beside Kie’s towel. “Maybe I should’ve.” “Nope,” JJ said instantly. “Too late now.” He reached for the sunscreen sticking out of the side pocket of my beach bag before I’d even fully set it down.
“Hey,” I said, swatting at his wrist. “That’s mine.” “And now it’s mine.” “You don’t even use sunscreen.”He looked offended. “That is such a hurtful accusation.” Pope snorted from where he was unfolding a chair. “You got sunburned so bad last time you couldn’t wear a shirt for two days.” “That was one time.” JJ said. “That was every time,” Kie corrected without looking up from her book. JJ ignored both of them and kept twisting the sunscreen bottle around in his hand like he’d personally won it in battle.
“You can ask nicely,” I said. He squinted at me over the top of his sunglasses. “Can I use your sunscreen?” I held my hand out. He looked at it. Then at me. Then, with the most annoying grin imaginable, tucked the sunscreen behind his back. “Asked.” I lunged for it. He yelped and darted sideways, and kicked up around his feet. “Whoa, whoa violent.” “You’re literally stealing from me.” “Borrowing,” he corrected, already backing up. “There’s a difference.” JJ!” He laughed a sharp, easy sound the ocean almost swallowed, and took off across the sand before I could grab him.
I glared at him. Then, because this was apparently my life now, I chased him. “Children,” Kie muttered behind me. John B called, "Don't die!” “I’m rooting for her,” Pope added. JJ was faster than me, which was awful and unfair and expected. He ran backward for a few seconds just to make it worse, holding the sunscreen triumphantly in the air while I tried very hard not to smile. “You’re being dramatic,” he said. “You’re being annoying.” “That’s different.” “How?” “It’s charming when I do it.” I almost had him then, my fingers brushing the edge of his wrist, but he twisted away at the last second laughing again.
“C’mon,” he said. “You gotta work for it.” I stopped running. That made him pause. He blinked. “What are you doing?” “Giving up.” JJ narrowed his eyes like he knew I was lying. “You don’t give up.” “Today I do.” He took one cautious step closer. Then another. “Seriously?” I shrugged, trying to look bored. “Keep it.” He got close enough that I moved fast. I did. I grabbed the front of his open button up, yanked him forward just enough to throw him off balance, and snatched the sunscreen out from behind his back.
JJ stared at me. Then he started laughing so hard he bent in half. I took a victorious step back and lifted the bottle. “Work for it.” His grin came back slow this time, crooked and bright and directed entirely at me. “That was mean.” “You deserved it.” “Probably.” The ocean wind pushed his hair back from his forehead for a second. His sunglasses had slid down his nose. He looked ridiculous. And beautiful. And like the exact kind of person who would ruin my entire summer if I let him. I stepped around him before that thought could settle too deeply.
“Next time, steal from John B.” “John B has spray sunscreen,” JJ said, following me back toward the towels. “That’ not the same.” “Sounds like a personal problem.” “Everythings a personal problem when nobody supports me.” “No one supports you because you make bad choices,” Pope said. JJ dropped dramatically onto the sand beside me. “And yet you all keep me around.” “Agaisnt our will,” Kie said.
He pressed a hand to his chest. “I am so unloved.” “Tragic,” I muttered. JJ turned his head toward me. “You don’t mean that.” I made the mistake of looking at him. Really looking. He was half smiling, sunlight all over him, and stuck to one of his knees, like summer had just decided to take human form, and be unfairly pretty. My pulse skipped for absolutely no reason I cared to admit. “I definitely mean it,” I said, looking away first. JJ’s laugh followed me all the way down to my towel.
It started the way beach days with the Pogues usually did: chaos, noise, and JJ refusing to sit still for more than thirty seconds at a time. John B and Pope tried throwing a football until JJ tackled Pope into the sand. Kie yelled at all three of them. I spent twenty minutes pretending to help set up snacks while really just trying not to stare too much at the ocean or at JJ or at the way those were somehow equally dangerous to me lately. By the time the sun had climbed higher, everyone was in the water except me. Not because I didn’t like the water. I did. I just hadn’t brought myself to move yet.
I was sitting cross legged on my towel digging my nails into the label of a water bottle, when I felt a shadow fall over me. “Why are you up here like a Victorian child?” JJ asked. I looked up. He was dripping seawater all over the sand, hair pushed back, shirt hanging low on his hips like he had no idea what kind of effect that should have on a person. I swallowed once. “I’m relaxing.” He leaned down, hands on his knees. “That doesn’t look like relaxing. That looks like plotting.” “Maybe I am plotting.” “Against who?” “You, mostly.” He smiled. “That’s fair.”
He dropped onto my towel without asking, close enough that his wet arm brushed mine. “You’re getting everything soaked." “That’s the beach,” he said. “Things get wet.” I stared at him. He stared back for half a second, then grinned, like he knew exactly how that sounded. “You walked right into that one.” “I hate you.” “No, you don’t.” I rolled my eyes and took a sip of water. He watched me do it, chin resting on his shoulder. “What?” I asked. “You haven’t been in once.” “I know.” “Why?” I shrugged. "Didn't feel like it.”
“That’s suspicious.” “So is your face.” JJ laughed under his breath and leaned back on his hands. For a second, neither of us said anything. The others were still in the water, yelling over each other in the distance. Kie was trying to dunk John B. Pope was failing to stay uninvolved. The gulls overhead sounded rude. The waves kept coming and going in the same patient rhythm. JJ bumped his shoulder lightly against mine.
“Cmon.” “No.” “Cmon.” “I said no.” He turned toward me more fully. “You know I could just carry you.” I looked him up and down. “You’d throw your back out.” His mouth fell open in fake offense. “That was low.” “It was accurate.” “Try me.” “Try you?” JJ sat up straighter. “Yeah.” I squinted at him. “You’re so weird.” “And you like me anyway.” The word came out easy. Thoughtless. That almost made them worse.
I looked at him too fast. JJ blinked once, like maybe he heard what he’d said the same way I had. Then he smiled again. Smaller this time. “C’mon,” he repeated quietly. “Just for a minute.” I should’ve said no. Instead, I heard myself say, “Fine.” The grin he gave me then was immediate and blinding.
“Thought so.” “I hate when you’re right.” “You and everybody else.” He stood and held out a hand. I looked at it. Then at him. “You are not dragging me.” “I was gonna be nice, actually.” “That’s how I know something’s wrong.”JJ wiggled his fingers impatiently. “Don’t make this weird.” “It’s already weird.” “Only because you keep making it weird.” I put my hand in his anyway.
The second his fingers closed around mine, something in my chest tightened. Not dramatically. Not enough to stop me. Just enough to make me wish I was less aware of him all the time. He tugged me to my feet and didn’t let go. “JJ.” “What?” “You can let go now.” “Could,” he said. “Might not.”
I tried to tug my hand back. He only tightened his grip and started walking toward the water. The cold hit first at my ankles, then my knees, then a wave crashed into us hard enough that I let out a startled sound and instinctively grabbed at his arm with my free hand.
JJ laughed. I glared at him. “You planned that.” “Yeah,” he said. “I personally scheduled the ocean.” Another wave rolled in, stronger this time. I stumbled, and JJ caught me around the waist before I could slip, his hand settling there so naturally it made my entire body go still.
The water kept moving around us.The others kept shouting somewhere to our left.But for one weird, suspended second, it felt like the whole beach had gone quiet.“You okay?” he asked.His voice was different.Softer.
I looked up at him.Too close.Again.“Yeah,” I said.But it came out breathier than I meant it to.JJ didn’t move right away.Neither did I.John B yelled something incomprehensible from farther out in the water.The moment broke.JJ stepped back first.“Cool,” he said, too casually. “Good.”I hated how much I noticed that.I hated even more that I missed his hand the second it left my waist.
─── ♡ ───
By the time we got back to shore, my hair was sticking to my neck and JJ had somehow acquired one of my bracelets around his wrist.“That’s mine,” I said.He glanced down. “Oh.”“JJ.”“It looks better on me.”“Give it back.”
He lifted his wet arm out of reach. “No.”“I hate you.”“Still no.”Kie, who had apparently witnessed enough of this nonsense for one day, looked up from where she was digging through the cooler.“You know, at some point, one of you is gonna have to admit this is getting ridiculous.”
“Nothing is happening,” I said at the same time JJ said, “She’s obsessed with me.”I whipped around. “You are unbelievable.”JJ grinned. “You looked at me first.”“You were talking.”“Still counts.”Pope let out a long sigh. “I can’t do this today.”
John B, lying back on his elbows in the sand, pointed between us. “I’m just saying—if y’all are gonna act like this, I deserve at least ten bucks when one of you finally admits it.”My face burned so fast it almost hurt.JJ looked weirdly pleased.Kie groaned. “Can we not?”
“Oh, we absolutely can,” John B said. “This has gone on way too long.”I opened my mouth, mostly to defend myself, but JJ beat me to it.“Nothing’s gone on,” he said, still smiling, still too easy about all of it. “She just likes yelling at me.”“That’s because you deserve it,” I snapped.
“See?”John B laughed. Pope covered his face. Kie threw a chip at all of us.It should’ve stayed light.It should’ve just been another stupid conversation with the Pogues.But something about the way JJ said it—like it was all a joke, like I was just entertainment, like whatever had happened in the water didn’t mean anything at all—landed wrong.
It landed hard.I looked away before anyone could see it on my face.“Think I’m gonna walk for a bit,” I said, standing up.Kie immediately sat up straighter. “You want me to come with you?”“No.” Too quick. I softened my voice. “I’m good. Just wanna get away from him for five minutes.”
“Rude,” JJ said.I forced a smile that didn’t feel like one. “You’ll survive.”Then I started walking before anybody could say anything else.The farther I got from the group, the quieter everything became.The sounds of them blurred into the waves and wind and gulls until it all felt distant enough to breathe around.
I wrapped my arms around myself and kept walking.I knew I was being dramatic.I did.JJ teased. That was what he did.He made jokes. He turned everything into something lighter, something easier, something he never had to hold too closely.That was just him.So why did it sting?Why did that one stupid comment make my chest feel tight?
Maybe because I was tired of pretending I didn’t care.Maybe because I was starting to realize that whatever this thing was between us, I wasn’t the only one who noticed it.Maybe because being laughed at for it—even accidentally—made me feel about twelve years old.Or maybe because I liked him enough now that everything he did felt bigger than it should have.I kicked at the edge of the surf.
A wave rushed up over my feet, then disappeared again.“Hey.”I didn’t turn around right away.I knew that voice.JJ slowed when he got beside me, matching my pace instead of stepping in front of me like he normally would.For once, he wasn’t grinning.“Are you mad?” he asked.
I kept my eyes on the water. “No.”He was quiet for a second.“Okay. So that’s a yes.”“I said no.”“You also look like you want to throw me into the ocean.”I glanced at him. “Maybe I do.”That earned the faintest smile, but it vanished almost as quickly as it came.“Did I do something?”I should’ve said no.I should’ve let it go.Instead I stopped walking.JJ stopped too.
The wind pushed his hair across his forehead. He shoved it back impatiently, waiting for me to say something.“You make everything into a joke,” I said finally.His expression changed.Not a lot.Just enough.“What?”“You heard me.”“That doesn’t answer the question.”
I looked at him fully then, irritated enough to forget I was trying not to be.“You act like none of this means anything.”JJ stared at me.The waves rolled in behind us.“What is ‘this,’ exactly?” he asked.I let out a disbelieving laugh. “Seriously?” “I’m asking.”
“And I’m not doing this if you’re gonna pretend you don’t know what I mean.”JJ looked away for a second, jaw tightening.Then back at me.“I’m not pretending.”“Yes, you are.”“No, I’m—”He stopped.His shoulders dropped just slightly.And suddenly he looked less like the JJ who made everything feel easy and more like the one underneath all of that—the one who got quiet when things got too close, too real, too hard to joke his way out of.
“I wasn’t making fun of you,” he said.His voice was lower now.Less defensive.I swallowed. “It felt like it.”JJ’s whole face tightened at that.For a second he just looked at me.Then he glanced down at the sand.“I’m sorry.”The words were so immediate and genuine that they stole the next thing I’d been ready to say.
“You don’t have to—” “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do.”He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared out at the water.“I wasn’t trying to make you feel stupid.”I looked at him, really looked.He wasn’t joking now.Wasn’t smirking.Wasn’t hiding behind anything.“I just…” He blew out a breath. “I don’t know. I do that.”
“What?” “Make everything into a joke before it can be something else.”There was something so unguarded in the way he said it that my anger slipped a little.“What if I didn’t want it to be a joke?” I asked before I could stop myself.JJ looked back at me.That got his full attention.The silence after that felt enormous.
I should’ve taken it back.I should’ve laughed, made it lighter, told him I didn’t mean it like that.But I couldn’t.Because I did mean it like that.And I was suddenly very tired of pretending I didn’t.JJ took one step closer.Not enough to touch me.Enough to matter.“You don’t?” he asked. His voice had gone quiet in a way that made my heart pound.I shook my head once.“No.”
Something shifted in his face.Not surprise.Not exactly.More like relief mixed with something almost disbelieving.He let out a laugh under his breath, but it wasn’t mean or mocking. It sounded nervous.“Okay,” he said softly. “Good.”I blinked. “Good?” “Yeah.”His hand came up to rub the back of his neck. “Because I’ve been trying really hard not to lose my mind over this for like… weeks.”
That pulled a startled laugh out of me.JJ smiled then—small and embarrassed and somehow more dangerous than any grin he’d given me all day.“You think this is funny?” “A little.” “Awesome,” he muttered. “Great. Love that for me.”I smiled despite myself. He looked at me for another second, then stepped closer again.This time, I didn’t step back.
The ocean wind tugged at my hair. Somewhere far down the beach, I could hear John B yelling about something. The sky had started shifting gold softening toward orange, afternoon giving itself up to evening.JJ looked different in that light.Softer.Less wild around the edges.
Still him.Just quieter.“I meant it,” he said.“About what?” “Not wanting this to be a joke.”My chest tightened again, but differently now.Warmer.I opened my mouth, then closed it.JJ smiled a little. “You got real quiet.” “Shut up.” “There she is.”I rolled my eyes, but it didn’t have much energy behind it.He reached out then, slower than I expected, giving me time to move if I wanted to.
I didn’t. His fingers brushed mine first.Then laced through them.The same easy way he’d held my hand earlier. Except this time there was no pretending attached to it. No audience.No reason except that he wanted to. And maybe I did too.
“You know what’s really annoying?” I said softly.JJ’s mouth twitched. “Me?”“That too.”He looked offended.I squeezed his hand once.“You could’ve just told me.”JJ laughed quietly. “Yeah, well. You could’ve too.”He had a point, which was irritating.
I glanced down at our hands. Then back up at him. The teasing had gone out of his face now. He looked nervous again. Not scared.Just… careful. Like he wanted this enough to treat it gently.That did something dangerous to my heart. “Can I kiss you?” he asked.
No joke in it. No grin.Just JJ, standing in the fading light with salt on his skin and sincerity all over his face, asking like it actually mattered what I said. It did. “Yes,” I said. He kissed me like the ocean behind us warm, then sudden, then everywhere all at once.
Not rough. Not rushed. Just certain. One of his hands came up to cup the side of my face and I swear my brain stopped working for a second. Maybe longer. When he pulled back, I could still feel the shape of his smile before I saw it. “Well,” he said softly. I laughed, breathless. “Don’t ruin it.”
“I wasn’t going to.” “You sounded like you were going to. ”He grinned a little then. “Okay, maybe a little. ”I shook my head, smiling despite myself. JJ leaned his forehead lightly against mine. “Guess beach days aren’t so bad,” he murmured. “They were never bad.”
“No?” “No.” He looked at me for one long second, sunset catching in the edges of his hair. Then he kissed me again. And somewhere behind us, far enough away to feel like another world, I thought I heard John B screaming. Neither of us moved.
