Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Please don’t go home tonight.”

He feels her words against his shoulder – they sink in even more than her tears – and then the tangle of her fingers in the material of his shirt. Her hair smells like oranges as it falls in his face; he spots Pope through the tangle of her curls – Mama Heyward has him wrapped in a hug as he weeps – and lets himself steal one breath of her sweet-smelling hair.

Okay… two.

Then, he pulls back and settles his hands on her shoulders instead. It isn’t a smile that curves the corners of his lips; he isn’t sure he’ll ever remember how to smile again without John B by his side. But it’s the closest thing he can muster, “I’ll be fine, Kie. Don’t worry about me.”

“I do worry,” she whispers through trembling lips. She peeks over her shoulder where her parents are talking to Shoupe and Heyward and then drags JJ toward the opening of the tent.

Eyes track JJ over Kie’s shoulder; he feels them, but he doesn’t bother to look. At Mike Carrera. At Deputy Shoupe. At Heyward.

He knows what they think of them – the Pogues. Knows, too, what they think of him. Even now, with the Phantom lost at sea, along with a third of JJ’s heart. Especially now.

The urge to run bubbles beneath his skin. It spreads like blisters in the sun. An ache that starts in the center of his chest where John B lives… lived. Where he’d burrowed deep in the third grade until he was so much a part of JJ that the blonde can’t even remember where his memories end and John B’s begin.

Kie’s hand on his wrist is a reminder to breathe. Her thumb slipping beneath his bracelet to press into his pulse is a reminder he has one. A pulse. A beat.

A heart.

Splintered and missing pieces. But it beats. Speeding when Kie’s thumb doesn’t stop its gentle back and forth. Slowing when her other hand reaches back to tuck in his shirt’s tag. She lingers there, then grips the back of his neck, her fingers brushing absently at the whisps of hair that tickle his neck.

She chews her lip the way she always does when she’s fighting with herself over something. The way she had at the conclusion of her Kook year, when she’d first come back to them. She’d forced herself back into the group with a challenging stare and raised brow, then settled into something agreeable and afraid when they didn’t put up the fight she expected.

She’d been only half-herself then, too scared of losing them again to fight back. Even when Pope shut her out on purpose. Even when John B – with all his good intentions and soft heart – went all awkward and quiet when he remembered mid-story that Kie wasn’t part of last year’s adventures. But when JJ, with one brow raised in a challenge, picked at her again and again and again just to get a rise, just to see a single glimpse of Kie – the real Kie – she had come back to them in the form of narrowed eyes, scrunched brows, a sharp mouth, and a shove right to JJ’s chest.

He’d grinned up at her from the sand, a twinkle in his eye as he breathed, “Welcome home, Kie.”

Now, though, there’s no twinkle, no grin. No teasing mouth, no shoving hands.

There’s just her teary eyes meeting his as she blurts, “Come home with me.”

And when he moves to step back, she grips his wrist tighter and her fingers tremble against the back of his neck, “Or Pope. But please...”

JJ’s eyes flick rapidly away, but Kiara follows them until he has no choice but to look right back at her, “Please don’t go home, Jayj.”

Carefully removing the hand from the back of his neck, JJ hopes she doesn’t notice the way his hand trembles too.

She does notice, of course. Her lips press into a thin line as she look between his fingers – still wrapped lightly around her own – and those wandering eyes of his. Lips parting to say something else, she steps forward, her foot bumping into his, “JJ, pl-”

“Kiara!”

Like the cold, sharp shock of ‘We, uh… we lost them. I’m sorry,’ Mike Carrera’s voice slices right through JJ and Kie. They jump apart quickly, her finger catching in the string of his friendship bracelet and pulling it taut against his wrist before that last connection between them breaks.

It nearly knocks the wind out of JJ, who stumbles back a step and just manages not to get trampled by her dad’s quick steps. Mike puts himself right between them so that all JJ can see of Kie is the flyaway curls above her dad’s shoulder. Practically backed into the storm, heavy droplets of rain darken his navy shirt from the tent’s entrance.

“It’s time to go,” Mike says as his hands cup his daughter’s cheeks.

“But Dad,” she leans over so that her eyes can meet JJ’s over her dad’s shoulder. He chews his cheek, shakes his head, and then inches around her dad to get out of the rain. “I need to be with my friends tonight. Can’t JJ and-”

“No.”

“Absolutely not,” Anna Carrera adds as she pulls her daughter into her arms. She presses her lips into Kie’s dark curls and breathes, “You need to be with your family tonight. And so do the boys.”

Miss Anna is right, but as JJ looks between Kiara and Pope – both wrapped in the arms of their parents – he realizes just how different their definitions of family really are.

For Pope, family means homemade cookies, weekday chores, dinners around the kitchen table, and help with homework – not that he’s ever really needed that. It means a freshly pressed suit hanging from his closet door, disappointment when he breaks his promises, and parents who shows up even after he stole from them.

For Kiara, family means dances around the kitchen as they cook dinner together, holiday trips to the mainland to visit family who gives presents instead of throwing blows, and expectations that she can be more – deserves to be more. It means free food for the friends her parents disapprove of, bail money for a boy they don’t even particularly like, and open arms when her entire world falls apart.

Family for JJ looks like a sunshine smile, arms thrown haphazardly across clumsy shoulders, and the ugliest shirts in the world. It looks like braided curls smacking him in the face, faded cloth wrapped around his wrist, and exasperated smiles meant just for him. It looks like late night tutoring sessions, snacks tucked into his backpack, and sharing hats in the summer.

Family looks like P4L jotted in the margins of last year’s math notes. Like a rundown fishing shack in the Cut with an open door, an always-free pullout couch, and a leaky roof.

Like stealing boat keys from around his dad’s neck and sending his best friend to his death.

JJ stumbles. Presses his fingers to his chest. Tries to suck in a breath only for it to get caught in his throat. The world tunnels, goes black, then comes back in sharp focus as a heavy hand lands on his back.

Deputy Shoupe comes into view slowly. Appearing first as a beige blur with a muffled voice. Then clearer, his hands on JJ’s shoulder and the side of his head as his garbled words put themselves back in order, “Kid? JJ, you with me?”

Across the tent from JJ, Mama Heyward brushes her hand over Pope’s cheek before tugging him down to kiss his forehead, while behind him, Kiara argues with her parents as they usher her closer to the entrance.

“Get off me, man,” JJ snaps as he smacks Shoupe’s hands away.

The deputy steps forward, lips set in a thin line. But Heyward beats him to whatever he was about to say, his voice deep but gentle as he settles a hand on JJ’s shoulder, “We’re heading home, son.”

A lump lodges itself right into the center of JJ’s throat. He tries to swallow it, to push it all down, but he must not be fast enough because Heyward’s dark eyes soften, “You comin’ with us?”

Eyes sliding right over to Kie – with her face full of defiance as she lifts her chin higher at her dad – JJ wishes more than anything he could say yes. That he could just go home with Pope or crash at the Chateau or sneak into Kie’s window.

He could pretend, then, that what was waiting for him at home wasn’t worse than a death sentence.

Because Luke had loved JJ once. Had loved JJ’s mama even more before she took off. But his truest love, the only one that had survived the cold winters, job dismissals, and bloody noses after a night partying too hard… was the Phantom. And now she rested in a watery grave along with whatever lingering love Luke had ever felt for his son.

If he was here – John B – with that smile that could get JJ to do anything, it wouldn’t even be a question where he was sleeping tonight. The pullout was already made up with his name written all over it. But John B wasn’t here. Wouldn’t ever be here again.

Because JJ had stolen the keys. Because JJ hadn’t gone with him. Because John B was… is dead.

And it’s all JJ’s fault.

So…

“Nah,” JJ tells Heyward now as he avoids Pope’s approaching eyes. He scratches the back of his head but doesn’t bother to reach for that smile he usually wears to deflect; he doesn’t have it in him to put up a mask. And for once, no one would dare call him on it.

He shifts his eyes, just once, and lifts his shoulder weakly as he mumbles, “M’ dad’s on his way.”

Pope’s face falls, some sort of devastation forming in those dark eyes. And JJ can feel it coming – the argument, the insistence, the ‘come home with me, man’ – because Pope is looking at him the way he had just a few days ago as JJ talked Pope’s way out of – and his own way into – handcuffs and a cold cell. Only this is worse. Because Pope hadn’t known then that JJ’s exaggerated stories about his dad were just covers for underexaggerated stories about himself.

He sidesteps the emotional plea he can see building on Pope’s lips, ducks the kiss Mama Heyward tries to give him, and avoids Deputy Shoupe’s eyes.

But he can’t avoid Kie.

She’s already there at the tent’s entrance, shrugging on an ugly yellow raincoat as she blinks away newly forming tears. Shoulder to shoulder, they stare out into the rain together as her parents thank Deputy Shoupe for getting the kids to safety.

“Kie,” JJ’s tongue feels dry as it brushes across his bottom lip. He pushes a breath through his nose, “I might not be aro-”

“Come over tonight,” she cuts him off.

His head snaps over to find her already waiting for him. Eyes wide and haunted, lips trembling with her effort not to cry, and chin held a little too high, a little too proud. Like the day she showed up at the Chateau – she and JJ had run into each other at a Boneyard party just the week before, each silently daring the other to come over and say something – and announced she was back. She’d been waiting for them to argue with her that day, to tell her to go; she’d practically dared them to.

JJ’s pretty sure she’s daring him now.

He would smile if he was capable. Instead, he just shakes his head, hand reaching to tug at his hair. Kiara catches it, squeezes, and then whispers, “JJ, please?”

JJ’s throat bobs. He shifts his eyes away, but her hand is still wrapped around his, warm despite the chill in the stormy air.

“I can’t lose you too…”

Kiara pulls him into a hug before he can respond. His arms hang loose for a beat too long before he wraps them around her. And he feels her lips ghost across his cheek as her parents announce it’s time to go.

“I’ll leave my window unlocked,” she whispers before she pushes up her hood and steps into the rain.

JJ’s gaze follows Kiara out into the storm. In the distance, thunder roars as lightning bursts across the sky, but he doesn’t look at anything but her. And for a moment – just one singular moment – he can pretend they’re back at the first week of summer.

Sand in their hair and mud caked onto their bare feet as they raced each other through the rain to reach the Chateau. John B’s laugh echoing across the yard as JJ tackled him into the hammock. Pope complaining about his shirt getting wet. And Kie, curls matted down to her head from the rain, holding up the lighter she’d snatched from JJ’s pocket with a raised brow.

Before the Grady White. Before treasure and gunshots and murdered sheriffs and dead best friends and-

His chest goes all wonky again. Heartbeat uneven and loud in his ears.

He can see Kie in that ugly yellow raincoat, can hear her dad telling her to get into the truck over the sounds of rain pelting the tent above him, can still smell her orange shampoo even through the heavy salt scent of the storm.

JJ digs his nails into his palms. Clenches his jaw. Knuckles hard against the bruises scattered at his ribs. Digs harder when Kie goes blurry, when the sound of Pope’s parents approaching feels more like a memory.

They tell him goodbye, to let them know when he makes it home safe, and Pope hugs him so hard they both go off balance. He hugs back – or he thinks he does – but numbness has soaked deeper into his skin than the cold. And when he looks down, Pope and his parents are already out in the rain and his arms are still hovering in the air like he’s hugging a ghost.

Kie reaches the truck and turns back. Her eyes linger on JJ as her mom opens the door. She nudges her toward it before disappearing on the other side. But Kie pushes the hood back on her borrowed rain slicker and lets the rain demolish her curls and the backseat of the truck through the cracked door.

She meets his eye, something small and broken cracking across her face at whatever she sees in him. She calls out across the rain, but he can’t hear her over the sound of thunder, rain, and his own heartbeat. Even from here, he can see the way her brows curve down, the way tears gather in her pretty, chocolate eyes, the way she crumbles just before making the decision to come back for him.

Mike catches her elbow – JJ hadn’t even seen him open the door – and then she’s gone with just one last flash of her dark curls before the door shuts.

The trucks disappear one by one. The Carreras. The Heywards. Then deputies and SBI agents alike.

JJ watches them all from the entrance of the tent. They bump him as they file out, but he barely feels it as he digs his fingers into his ribs and chews his cheek.

Warmth settles over his shoulders. He looks up then, eyelids suddenly feeling so heavy as his eyes drift lazily from the jacket dangling off his shoulders to the face of Deputy Shoupe.

JJ doesn’t know what he expects, but it’s not the concern that twists the deputy’s brows or curves his lips into a frown. And it’s not the too-gentle hand that squeezes his shoulder, “C’mon, kid. I’ll give you a ride home.”

There’s not enough fight left in him to argue or try to lie or make an excuse for why Luke hasn’t shown up.

He just climbs wordlessly into the police SUV and presses his cheek to the cool glass as Shoupe tells him to buckle up. His hands shake as the belt clicks into place, so he tucks them beneath his legs as heat suddenly pours from the vents.

“JJ?”

The fingers of JJ’s right hand curve into the handle of the door as gravel rolls beneath the SUV’s tires. He tongues the bite on the inside of his cheek and keeps his eyes on the windshield wipers as they squeak back and forth through the rough wind.

Shoupe blows out a hard breath and leans over to open the vent in front of JJ to let more heat in. The boy jerks back hard, the side of his head smacking against the window before the door flies open and the storm careens inside.

A hand catches JJ’s elbow while the seatbelt catches the rest of him. The SUV skids to a sudden stop on the side of the road as two pairs of wide, blue eyes stare at each other. Rain rushes in at JJ’s side, but he can’t even feel the cold as the breath catches in his chest.

It sticks there, heavy and tight and wheezing, until two hands cup the sides of his head. And for a second – just one tiny moment – he lets himself believe it’s John B. That when he lifts his head, it’ll be hazel eyes and a puppy dog smile looking back at him.

“Breathe. Come on, JJ,” it’s not John B’s voice coaching him; there’s no surfer-boy lilt, no sweet nickname, no curls tickling JJ’s forehead as the voice comes closer. “Just breathe. You’re okay, you’re alright.”

The breath is more of a sob. It crashes into JJ before expelling as his entire body collapses with it. Because when he opens his eyes, the hands holding him are Deputy Shoupe’s, not John B’s.

He tries to push it back down, to swallow the tears, the pain, the grief, but it pours out anyway. It shakes his shoulders, bows his head, chokes him until there’s a hand in his hair and a gentle, “I know, kid… I know.”

They don’t talk about it after. Even as JJ dips his fingers into the pool of water that floods Shoupe’s cupholders. Even as he tries – futile as it might – to wipe water from the inside of the door with his dripping sleeve. Even as they pull up to the rundown shack on the edge of the Cut.

They both stare at the silent yellow house. With its damaged siding, sloping porch, and dirty windows. The lights are all off except for one, its dim glow pouring through out the living room window.

Tapping his fingers in a quick pattern against his thigh, JJ stares at that light for a full minute before he reaches for the handle.

“It’s not too late to swing by Heyward’s place,” Deputy Shoupe’s voice comes out steady, like he’s just making conversation. Like this is any other day. Like this is just a ride home from school.

JJ’s laugh is a little mean as he lifts his head and stares Shoupe straight up, “And why the hell would I do that?”

He smiles. Shoupe frowns.

Lifting one shoulder, JJ’s fingers squeeze the door handle as he adds, “I’m home.”

His whole body goes stiff when Shoupe’s hand catches his wrist. The hold isn’t rough; it isn’t even tight. But still, JJ stiffens as he looks back.

“You can-” he rubs a hand over his mouth and leans toward JJ, “If you need someone to talk to, you can call me, kid. Any time.”

“Yeah?” JJ’s voice cracks a little.

“Yeah,” Deputy Shoupe agrees gently.

JJ’s lips curve up into something mean, something Luke when he says, “Thought I was really livin’ up to the family name,” and he doesn’t wait to see Shoupe’s face fall before he tears off his seatbelt and slams the car door shut behind him.

The air feels like static as JJ makes his way across the yard, up the porch steps, and to the front door. He looks at the borrowed raincoat, back at Shoupe’s still-idling SUV, and then tears it off, tossing it onto the porch.

The doorknob is cool beneath JJ’s palm. He twists, just a little, just enough, and presses his lips into a tight line when he finds it unlocked. He lingers there, presses his forehead against the door, and fingers the friendship bracelet at his wrist.

“I can’t lose you too…”

Behind him, the silent blue and red lights of Shoupe’s vehicle flash again and again in the rain. He glances back. Thinks about climbing back in. About lying – ‘Oh, Dad must have locked it!’

About telling the truth – ‘If I walk in that door, he’ll kill me.’

John B’s eyes flash in JJ’s mind the last time he saw him. Smiling and crying and planning for a future he’d never get to live.

JJ turns the knob and goes inside.

It’s not the hit itself that takes JJ by surprise.

It’s not the crash of glass against the wall. Or the pain that slices across his cheek, white hot and sudden. It’s not the words hurled at his back or the fist that catches his jaw when he turns.

No, what takes JJ by surprise is the clarity in those blue-gray eyes right before that fist connects and sends him sprawling.

Once, they’d been his safe haven. The way they crinkled when his dad was happy. The way they lit up when he danced around the living room with Mama or with JJ on his feet. The way one look from his daddy could scare away any monster that dared to peek out from beneath his too-small bed.

And now, they mark his own special piece of hell. The way they narrow just before a hit. The way JJ can feel them from across a room and know that he’ll wake the next day with bruises. The way they seem to hate him even when he swears he was so, so good this time.

So yeah, the clarity – the sobriety – takes him by surprise just before his back hits the corner of the door frame. Clarity, when just hours before, he’d gotten that Daddy smile again, the sweet one. The one that came with nose kisses and trips out on The Phantom and teaching JJ to tie knots and braid hair and how to tell when a girl like-likes you. The smile that comes with words like, “You’re a good boy. And I love you, son. Come here. I love you.”

JJ reacts too late. Throws his hand in front of his face just to miss the swing aimed at his side instead. It knocks the air right out of him, doubles him over, opens him right up for the knee that crashes into his cheek.

The whole world tilts, goes hazy and wild and weird, and JJ’s head bounces off the hardwood floor. His limbs feel loose and heavy and like they belong to someone else when he’s pulled up by the front of his shirt.

He sort of dangles there, eyelids twitching as his dad blinks in and out of view. Doubles. Then disappears as his back hits the floor again.

His fingers twitch on the floor, catch on the loose string of his friendship bracelet. He inches his fingers along the floor, loses the feel of the cloth, and tries to tilt his head down to see it.

His neck doesn’t move quite right; there’s pain. Dull and aching and deep in the back of his head.

He sees his dad on the couch. Hand loose around a new bottle. Cigarette dangling from his mouth. Sprinkling white powder on a dusty mirror.

Watching him.

Kie went first. Turning at once from JJ’s no-nonsense, firecracker, take-no-shit, save-the-planet, hippie, badass of a best friend into a heartbroken sixteen-year-old child as she collapsed into her parents’ arms.

It didn’t matter that just days before she’d broken every rule they’d ever laid out for her. Or that Miss Anna had chased Kie’s car as JJ rode shotgun just hours earlier.  

It didn’t matter that they’d warned her about hanging out with lowlifes from the Cut. Or that their name would be smeared through the mud once the story of Sarah Cameron’s corruption from good girl Kook to a watery grave became public knowledge.

What mattered now – the only thing that had ever mattered – was Kiara.

Heyward’s hand squeezed JJ’s shoulder as he followed the footsteps of his weeping wife. Pope sank right into them, burying his face in his mother’s neck as his fingers clung to his dad’s arms the way a child might. He wept, open and loud, not caring who saw as tears heaved their way down his cheeks; one was a little swollen from the fight with Rafe and Barry, and drops of blood coated his shirt. But his parents just tugged him closer when they saw it.

They’d been doing that as long as JJ had known Pope – kissing his bruises, putting Spiderman band aids on his skinned knees, holding his hands and cheeks as he cried.

JJ had flinched the first time Mama Heyward bent to kiss a bump on his forehead. She’d just smiled, brushed his hair back, and leaned in slower the second time. It wasn’t JJ’s fault when he got clumsier over the next week, bruises popping up on his elbow, his chin, his knee. Mama Heyward kissed each one, then patted him on the head to go play.

He watched her now, the way she pressed kisses into Pope’s hair and whispered that everything would be okay. These wounds, though, couldn’t be healed by a kiss on the forehead. And even if they could – JJ glanced toward the tent entrance – there was no one to kiss his.

A lump formed and bobbed in JJ’s throat as he looked from Kie’s devastated ‘They didn’t make it, mom!’ to Pope squished in the comfort of his parents’ bodies. He blinked quickly and tried to stop the tremble in his jaw, but the tears burned his eyes anyway as he pinched the thin skin of his fingers between his blunt nails.

He didn’t even feel the hand on his shoulder – Deputy Shoupe, he realized too late – until it fell away. But as cold seeped deep into his skin, he saw it form in front of him. A perfect gap in the center of the Heyward family just big enough for him. And two open arms welcoming him home.

JJ’s mouth quivered with the tears he’d been holding back as he stepped forward, ready to let them hold a piece of his grief alongside Pope’s.

When he heard it – soft, pleading – from the tent’s entrance, “J?”

JJ’s breath caught in the center of his chest as the sound of the rain pelting the tent melted away. As Kie’s cries and Pope’s whimpering breaths disappeared. As the world tilted on its axis as he turned slowly to meet the blue-gray eyes of his dad.

Luke’s clothes dripped loudly on the ground, heavy rivulets running from his hair down the side of his face. The bruises on his jaw and around his eye are lighter than the ones he’d given JJ after bailing him out, but they still draw JJ’s eye in the unnatural light of the tent. Arms hanging loose at his sides, his knuckles were still bruised red and purple; so were JJ’s ribs.

They stared at each other. Assessing damage. Weighing wounds. A bruise here, a scratch there. A rash on Luke’s neck from the Phantom key. A barely visible slash through JJ’s lip where he kept gnawing on the healing flesh.

“Thank God,” Luke muttered, voice taking on a dangerous edge as he crossed the tent quickly.

JJ flinched back a step as his dad’s bruised hands reached for him, but they grabbed him anyway. Luke pulled him hard against his chest, arms locking around him as he breathed into his hair, “Fuck, J, I thought-”

Behind them, JJ heard Kie’s disapproval in the way she detangled herself from her parents and came closer. Heard his name in her soft voice as he lifted his arms and squeezed them around his dad.

“Joh-John B didn’t- Dad,” JJ’s voice cracked against Luke’s shoulder as he gasped, “Dad, he’s gone.”

Luke just squeezed him harder. Pressed his lips rough into JJ’s hair like he did when he was little. And for the first time in years, he didn’t smell like beer or old sweat as JJ buried his nose in his shirt. He smelled like motor oil and Mama’s perfume and summer days on the marsh.

And when he pulled back, hands clutching JJ’s cheeks, his eyes weren’t brimming with their usual hunger. Hunger for pills, for booze, for the white powder that clung to his upper lip sometimes when he yelled and pointed in JJ’s face. They were – for the first time in as long as JJ could remember – sober. And alert.

And they looked at JJ like they loved him. Really, really loved him.

JJ frowned. Blinked. Took a slow step back to really assess his dad. And then, in this tiny voice, he whispered, “Dad?”

“Dad?” JJ rasps through the metallic taste that coats his tongue.

He blinks slowly, but only one eye cooperates. The other feels… stuck. Wrong. Heavy. And when he reaches up blindly to touch it, he doesn’t make it past the swell of his brow to know it’s bad. His fingers come away tacky and moist before he lets his hand fall back on the hardwood floor.

His fingers stick to the floor when he presses his palm against it. It takes a moment for him to feel his other hand – twisted beneath his back the way it is – but he inches it out from beneath him with a grunt. Clenches his teeth as feeling comes rushing back, sharp and then staticky all the way down to his fingertips.

But what’s worse, what eats at him as he presses his second palm to the floor and tries to lift himself, is the stark nothingness when he tries to remember how he got here.

“Dad?” His voice cracks on his second attempt, barely even leaves his lips as he pushes himself half an inch off the ground.

His arms tremble as he presses his teeth together and manages to get an elbow braced against the ground. Pennies and acid swirl on his tongue before he sucks his next breath in through his nose instead. Then realizes he smells it too, the scent of vomit clinging in his nose as he tries to turn away from it.

Everything around him moves slow as he turns his head.

The crooked coffee table comes into focus first. Beer bottles line one side – just enough to make up a small football team – and open pill bottles with different colored labels are scattered across its surface. But it’s the mirror – cracked down the center with remnants of white powder – that JJ’s eye lingers on.

Luke stared right down at him as he sucked it up. He wobbled where he sat, took a long drag of his cigarette, and then pushed up onto his feet. He practically bounced on the balls of his feet, eyes moving rapidly as the color in them disappeared behind rings of black.

JJ licked his lips, pressed his fingertips into the floor, and tried to sit up. The world spun, his stomach roiling painfully, before he dropped right back down onto the hardwood. He whimpered before he could stop himself, lips forming and sticking on the word ‘Dad.’

“What?” Luke snarled as he took another long drag. His boot caught the hanging edge of the mirror as he stepped over the end of the coffee table. It landed with a crack.

JJ presses one hand to his ribs as he uses the other to lift him an inch higher. The pain is sharp, and he can’t help the sob that escapes as each inch gained makes breathing more difficult. His palm lands on a piece of glass – it’s just a tiny thing – but it bleeds immediately.

He doesn’t stop. Instead, he drags himself closer to the doorframe, smears of blood marking his path. And once he makes it, spine pressing right into the doorframe, he eyes the couch, stained and pockmarked.

JJ flinched at the sound. Flinched harder when his dad’s stomping steps drew closer.

He squeezed his eyes shut, nails digging into his palms when Luke drew up short. Ash drifted down from his cigarette, stinging the back of JJ’s hand as little bits of it landed there.

And he didn’t know why he said it then, why the words burst through his mouth in that moment, but as he peered up at his dad, at those cold, nearly-black eyes, he breathed, “John B’s gone.”

But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the truth. Because –

“Dad…” He sobbed, sudden and loud, as the words spilled out of his gasping mouth. “John B is dead.”

JJ chokes on the memory. Presses his hot cheek against the cool wall as his good eye flutters open. And there, near his shaking hand.

A small pool of blood with foamy bile. Broken glass. Ashes and cigarette butts scattered next to the ‘Best Daddy Ever!’ ashtray he and Mama made when he was three; it’s cracked in the middle, right through JJ’s tiny handprint and messy initials – JJM. The words ‘Best Daddy Ever!’ are legible only through a thick blob of red paint.

JJ’s fingers inch across the floor. He presses them into the groove of his three-year-old handprint, sticky red fingers lingering on the center of the cracked palm.

His dad had cried when JJ handed it over, all baby-teeth smile and the brightest blue eyes in the world. He’d tugged him close, tears in his hair and big hands on his skinny little shoulders. Had whispered how much he loved him. How happy he was to be JJ’s daddy. How proud.

He didn’t look proud now. Not as he watched his boy break apart in front of him. Crying and sniveling and whining like a – “little bitch,” he muttered to himself as he turned from the sight of it. He rubbed his hand down his face, hissed when he burned himself with his cigarette, and let it drop into the ‘Best Daddy Ever!’ ashtray sitting amongst the pill bottles and trash.

JJ lifted his head, eyes wide as another wave of unwanted tears rolled down his cheeks. He thought of John B – all wild curls and infectious laughter – as the two of them chased each other around the front yard. Luke had been sober – mostly sober – that year. He’d laughed from the porch, offered both eleven-year-olds a sip of beer – ‘You’re practically grown!’ – and then taught them both how to cheat at poker. And now –

John B was dead.

Luke didn’t feel a damn thing.

And JJ felt everything.

His bottom lip trembled, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Luke’s glare was quick, sharp, eyes boring right into his son. He took a single step, and JJ scuttled back quickly until the bump on the back of his head hit the doorframe. Then, everything around him wobbled as Luke spat, “Tha’s what I thought. Not so tough now, are ya, big guy?”

Those blue-gray eyes of his flashed dangerously as he grabbed one of the bottles off the coffee table, shook it, then dropped it to clink against the rest. Liquid sloshed in bottle number three before Luke tipped it back. His throat bobbed with the effort before he tipped the bottle toward JJ, “You got a lotta fuckin’ nerve comin’ back here after what you did. Takin’ my boat like I ain’t gonna find out.”

Something hitched in JJ’s chest. Tight and painful and wrong. Something that felt like the thump of his heart the first time John B asked if he could come over for a sleepover this time. The way it had skipped a beat with JJ’s quick, ‘Nah, my old man don’t like havin’ people over. Light sleeper,' he’d added, as if just that morning he hadn’t stuck his hand beneath his daddy’s nose to make sure he was breathing.

“The boat…”

JJ laughed as that thing, whatever it was, stole the breath in his chest. He pushed himself up onto his elbows and ignored the way the world wobbled as his dad gained a twin, “All you care about is that fucking boat? John B is dead! M-my bes-best friend! Is dead!”

“And whose fuckin’ fault is that?” Luke snapped.

Teeth grinding together, JJ digs the shard of glass from his palm and lets it fall to the floor with the rest. There’s a weight in his pocket – his phone – but the battery is long dead when he pulls it out.

He hurls it – tries to hurl it – across the room, but it drops two feet away right onto the screen.

“Fuck,” he grunts as he reaches behind himself for the doorframe. He grips the wood with his fingernails and tries to pull himself up. But the world goes unsteady as his stomach twists.

He doesn’t know what he ate last. Doesn’t even know when he ate last. But it dribbles down his chin and onto his navy shirt. He swallows the next wave of it, has to press his lips together hard to keep it down, then wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.

As he lets himself sink back onto the floor, his eye lingers on that ashtray.

He bites his cheek and reaches. His depth perception is all askew, so it takes three tries before he gets a grip on it. It’s heavier than he expects. Heavier, too, than he can currently handle with one hand.

He drops it into his lap and lets his head rest back against the wall. The pressure there hurts, and he’s pretty sure his hair is sticking to the pale blue of the old paint. But his eyes feel heavy, so he rests them. Just for a second.

“Shoulda given the damn thing back,” Luke muttered to himself as his feet carried him back and forth across the hardwood. The floor squeaked each time he turned to take another lap, and JJ’s eyes trailed him from one end of the room to the other.

Luke was more of a blur than anything as JJ’s neck flopped left, then right, before dipping down until his chin rested on his chest.

Scrubbing hard at his hair as he lit up another cigarette, Luke’s eyes danced right over JJ like he wasn’t even there, “Not worth the Goddamn money.”

“I was trying to- I just wanted to do the right thing,” JJ’s voice cracked.

His eyelids felt heavier then. His hands did too, the effort of holding himself up suddenly too hard.

“The right thing?” Luke crossed the room in three quick steps. He fisted his hand in JJ’s shirt and pulled him up hard. The boy went easily, his body lolling back against the wall as Luke gripped his chin instead and barked, “And what the fuck do you know about ‘the right thing?’ You ain’t never done nothin’ right your whole life.”

JJ couldn’t deny it.

Because it was true. He’d stolen the gun. He’d stolen the money from Barry. He’d stolen the Phantom.

And now John B was dead.

Dead.

“No wonder your mama couldn’t do it,” he slurred as he let JJ slump back against the wall. “Couldn’t take care o’ you. Couldn’t ever getcha to sleep. Not like me.”

The kick to JJ’s ribs was more of a shove than anything, but the boy gasped anyway, clutching his side as he doubled over.

Swaying on his feet, Luke knocked an inch of ash from his forgotten cigarette onto the floor and then sucked the smoke deep in his lungs. He rubbed his callused hand across his face, but it did little to stem the flow of sweat beading his forehead. And no matter how much he moved, he couldn’t seem to burn off that extra energy.

JJ watched this – nervous – as he kept his fingers pressed hard to his ribs. Because this wasn’t Luke on beer – mean but sloppy. Or Luke on pills – docile and sleepy. No, this was Luke on coke – the worst kind of mean because he could swing and swing without his arm ever getting tired.

Luke nodded to himself and took another drag. He picked up that ‘Best Daddy Ever!’ ashtray as he paced the room and muttered, “Woulda been better off. You ‘n her together. Yeah, yeah,” he added, like he was convincing himself.

He huffed a breathless laugh around his cigarette as he eyed JJ. His fingers twitched, like he was just itching for something – another hit, another thing to hit, “Look just fuckin’ like her. Hauntin’ me. Ruinin’ my fuckin’ life.”

JJ’s eyelashes – wet and sticking to his cheeks from the tears – blinked rapidly as he tried to focus on his dad’s movements.

Luke pointed two fingers at him and scoffed, “Like that. Just cryin’ and moanin’.”

He rubbed his eyes hard, peeking back at JJ like he was trying to erase more than the sight of him sprawled against the wall. When he spoke again, his voice got rougher with each word until he was practically slurring them all, “Passin’ me her damn kid like I’m gonna know what to do with him. Yer just like her. Lookin’ at me like that. All pleadin’ and soft.”

Luke’s voice cracked as he looked down at the ashtray in his hand. Ash and cigarettes scattered on the ground and on his worn jeans as he tipped it on its side to see the writing. He stroked his fingers over the words – ‘Best Daddy Ever!’ – and his blue-gray found JJ again, slumped on the floor.

JJ didn’t even have the energy to jump when Luke stomped over to him. Just lifted his head, eyes unsteady and –

Tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap.

Taptaptaptaptaptap.

Sliiiiiiiiide. Bang!

JJ’s neck jerks up, his eye blinking hard against the blur of the room. He sees the items still scattered on the coffee table, sees the still-empty couch, the broken bottle, the pool of blood.

The ashtray.

He fingers the letters slowly, head drooping again toward his chest when he hears it. Another bang. Bed springs. A quiet ‘shit!’ followed by sneakers creaking on his bedroom floor.

The floorboards creaked beneath Luke’s feet as he knelt in front of JJ. Normally, it would get a reaction. A flinch. A sharp intake of breath. Wide eyes and a racing heart.

Now though, JJ’s eyes fluttered as he looked up into the face of his father.

Really looked into it.

Past the rage. Past the alcohol breath and constant nosebleeds. Past the words spat and hits thrown.

He settled on the lines there. Frown lines etched deep into the corners of his mouth. Creases along his forehead. Skin roughened by long days in the sun and nights spent passed out on hardwood or in the tall grass outside.

Lifting his hand slowly, JJ traced one of the wrinkles along his dad’s forehead the way he had when he was little. Luke’s face softened before one hand – cigarette still dangling from his fingers – carefully cupped the back of JJ’s head. Something shifted – regret? – on his face as he lifted his hand away, but JJ couldn’t see why.

“I didn’t ruin your life,” JJ didn’t mean to say it. Hadn’t even realized he’d been thinking it. But then Luke’s lips were tightening out into a thin line, his teeth clenching behind them. And for once, JJ didn’t feel that overwhelming fear that had him memorizing the sounds of the floorboard creaks, sneaking in and out of his bedroom window, and avoiding eye contact.

Because right now, staring into the eyes of the son he’d beaten down, Luke didn’t look so tough anymore. Sucker-punching a kid. Losing his job. Sniffing powder just to feel something.

JJ’s tongue brushed his dry lips as he rasped, “You ruined your own life, Dad. You ruined my mom’s life,” something flickered on Luke’s face – the clench of his jaw, maybe, or the way his eyes squeezed shut for a beat too long – something that made JJ’s voice crack a little, “And you ruined my life.”

The floorboards creak and creak and creak. Each step careful. Each step slow. Each step closer.

JJ turns his head toward the sound, but he can’t see much past the slope of his own nose. His left cheek rests against the wall, that eye completely useless now as the other blinks slowly.

It’s not Luke, he knows. The sound is all wrong. The feet too small. Walking too soft.

Not John B either, he reminds himself, teeth clamping hard around the pain that threatens to choke him once again. He presses his lips together and swallows a sob. But he can’t stop the tremble of his lips or the way a whimper escapes, unbidden and soft.

“Jayj? JJ?” The whispering voice at the end of the hall is quiet, but JJ would know it anywhere.

He’s heard it almost every day since the fourth grade, when John B walked her over during recess and announced, ‘This is Kiara! She’s in my class and she’s gonna play Tag with us!’

He’d hated her then. That tiny girl with the pretty curls, pretty smile, and pretty eyes.

He’d hated her for the shine of her hair, the clean, new clothes she always wore, and that backpack with the sea turtles on it and not even one little rip. He’d hated her baby blue pencil case with the Lisa Frank stickers all over it. Her shoes that lit up every time she took a step.

He’d hated that she was faster than him when they played Tag. That she knew which trees to check when they played Hide-and-Seek. That she always offered him a hand when he fell down but could snap back just as quickly when he gave her attitude. And he always gave her attitude.

He’d hated her, too, for the way John B and Pope lit up when she was around. For the way she came in one day and just never left.

He’d hated her until he’d loved her… and realized they’d always meant the same thing.

Her hand grazes the wall as she walks down the hall; he hears it. Smiles despite the ache of his lip, his brow, his ribs. Then, from only a few feet – and the thickness of a wall – away, she calls out again, “JJ? JJ?”

She comes through the doorframe faster than he expects, her knee knocking into the back of his shoulder as she gives a little shriek of surprise. She catches his shoulder before he can fall forward, and then she’s there in front of him, her knees on the hardwood as she lifts her hand to touch his face.

She goes still just before he can feel her fingertips. His eye flutters a little before she comes into focus. The raincoat and pink shirt from earlier are gone. Instead she wears one of the ratty tees she stole from the Chateau; it’s his.

He smiles – just a little – and the sound that escapes her throat is broken as she gently brushes the hair away from his swollen eye, “O-oh…”

JJ waited for the explosion. For the swing. The pain. He expected it. Deserved it probably. Maybe even wanted it a little.

But instead, Luke stared him straight on. He worked his jaw back and forth, rubbed his knuckles into the bruise JJ left on his eye, and then looked down like eye contact was too hard. Like even with the coke pumping through his veins, his shame was heavier.

“But you’re right about me,” JJ whispered then. His head lolled to the side, forehead bumping against Luke’s wrist before resting there as he mumbled, “I am worthless. And a piece of shit. But-” he licked his lips and peered at Luke from the corner of his eyes, “my friends love me anyway. John B-” his voice cracked on his best friend’s name, “he loved me anyway.”

His head drooped again until Luke lifted it. And JJ didn’t have a damn clue how to read that look on his dad’s face.

“Dad, John B is dead. Do you even kn-know what that means? Wha’s gonna happen?” He forced his neck steady, forced his eyes to stay on his dad’s even as the slow trickle of blood in his hair finally made it way down the back of his neck. “People are gonna mourn hi-him. They’ll cry. They’ll, they’ll rem’mber,” he smiles weakly, “how good he was. How funny and kind an-and, and loved. He was the best person I knew.”

A tear fell and was wiped from Luke’s cheek before JJ could even really clock if it was real. Words slurring now, he whispered, “He was the best of us all. But you?” His brows lifted a little as Luke turned blurry, “When you die? When you finally fuck up and take a line too many?”

Luke blinked hard, breath seeming to catch as his son leaned in. But then JJ tilted sideways, stomach roiling and pulsing with something heavy and hot. It came up his throat, splattered his shirt and the hardwood.

As he emptied his belly, he stared at the broken glass of the bottle Luke had thrown when he tried to run. He stared at it as he whispered, “When you die, people won’t cry; they’ll be relieved.”

Vomit still clinging to his mouth, JJ turned his head to look at Luke again, and his voice didn’t even tremble as he breathed, “I’ll be relieved.”

Luke’s hands shook, his lips twisted.

“It should have been me. Out on the Phantom,” JJ weakly wiped at his mouth and lifted one shoulder, “Because I would have been better off dead than living as your son.”

He looked down at the ‘Best Daddy Ever!’ ashtray quaking in Luke’s closed fist. Stared at it. Remembered sitting up on Luke’s shoulders as they walked the dock to the Phantom. Remembered swinging between his parents’ hands as they walked to Heyward’s. Remembered being tucked into bed with stories of sea creatures and pretty mermaids.

Remembered the first time he lied to his teachers about a bruise too.

“No one’s gonna mourn you when you die, Luke,” JJ spat his name between lips that barely even opened when he talked. He looked from the ashtray to his dad’s face, “Because there’s not a person on this planet who could love a monster like you.”

“Oh, oh… JJ, Jayj, look at me,” Kiara’s shaking voice brings JJ back before he even realizes he’s wandered somewhere else.

Her hand cups his right cheek, and he leans into it as he tries to focus his good eye. She keeps doubling in front of him – which is honestly not that bad because she’s basically his favorite thing in the world to look at – but still, he focuses on the version of her that looks more solid. She tries to smile, but he can see the fear beneath it even as she breathes, “There you are.”

Her voice cracks a little and her lips tremble as her eyes struggle not to stray from his own, “Hi…”

“Kie…” His sleepy lips draw out her name as they curve up into a smile. He’s pretty sure he manages a better smile than she did until his vision clears a little and he sees the way her chin wobbles, “S’up?”

Kiara tries to keep it together. He sees it – the way she straightens her spine, the way she lifts her chin, the way she tries to blink the tears away – but then her eyes latch onto something behind him. The wall, he realizes too late, when her hand slips behind his head. He hisses at the touch, then sighs – her hand feels a hell of a lot better than the wall – and that’s as far as Kiara’s forced composure can get her.

Because one moment, she’s holding it all up on her shoulders, and the next, she’s crashing beneath all that pressure.

It feels a little like slow motion the way her face contorts and breaks apart one feature at a time. Her brows first, curving down until her forehead wrinkles in the middle. Then her nose scrunches; JJ’d find it cute if it didn’t come paired with eyes two seconds from overflowing. And then her lips – he only has one good eye right now, but it lingers on them as they slide down into a pout before a full sob chokes up her throat.

The hand on the back of his head slips down gently to hold his neck instead. The other stays on his cheek, though he feels the way her fingers shake against his skin. She tries to suck it back in, to choke off the sobs before they can escape, but they bubble back up when her eyes land on his swollen eye and the mess of his eyebrow again.

“Hey, hey, hey,” JJ whispers rapidly. His hands feel heavy as he drops the ashtray in his lap and reaches for her instead. He grabs her elbow, the ring on his thumb twisting as he slides it back and forth over her skin. His other hand reaches for her chin, tipping her gaze slightly in the direction of his right cheek. When her eyes linger, he whispers, “Kie. Kie, hey, hey. Look at me.”

She does, her gaze shifting between his eyes quickly before lingering on the one that can return her look. Her lips tremble, but she presses them together and whispers, “JJ, your head, your e-eye-”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he rasps.

He smiles weakly and lets his hand drop from her chin into his lap. His rings clang against the ashtray, but Kiara doesn’t seem to notice. She just strokes the back of his neck gently and wipes her cheek on her shoulder, “There’s a lot of blood, and I think-”

“Head wounds always bleed,” he interrupts with far too much sincerity – with far too much knowledge – and two quick, heavy tears roll down Kiara’s cheek before she can stop them.

Kiara blows out a breath to calm herself, her eyes falling down to the floor for the first time. She looks at the glass, the vomit, the blood. Something passes over her face – a look he doesn’t quite understand – until she rolls her shoulders back and meets his good eye, “I’m getting you out of here.”

She glances behind herself to the front door and hesitates for only a second, “I didn’t see your dad’s truck, but…”

He stares at her profile, watches her gnaw on her bottom lip as she gauges the distance. And when she turns back to him, she looks slightly less sure, “I know you said you’re okay, but- but, JJ, are you sure? I mean… can you even walk?”

“Kie,” the fingers in his lap grip the edge of her t-shirt. He tugs until she looks at him again, “Kie, I’m okay. It looks worse than it is. I can do this,” he says with far more confidence than he feels. “Sc-scout’s honor.”

“Bullshit,” she whispers even as the corners of her mouth lift. It’s just for his benefit – this smile – but he lets himself enjoy it anyway when she brushes the hair from his forehead and mutters, “You were never a scout. They would’ve kicked your loud ass right out of the forest.”

“Tha’s not true,” he grumbles as she moves to his side.

“I know all kinds’a survival skills,” he mutters when she slips beneath his arm and pats his leg. “Woulda been the best d’mn scout.” JJ argues as he follows her silent direction – well, tries to – but the second he gets his legs under him, the world tilts.

Kiara moves fast, one hand fisting into his shirt, but he’s too heavy and takes them both down. The side of his head hits her hand instead of the floor, but still, the world disappears behind a heavy haze undercut with her voice, far away and worried.

It comes back in quick bursts.

The ceiling. The scent of oranges. Kiara’s hair in his face. Her hands on his cheeks, his head, his chest. Poking and prodding around his ribs.

Kiara speaks, and he thinks he answers. Tries to, at least. But when her face comes back into view, her brows are drawn together again.

She pats JJ’s cheek gently with her fingertips. He leans into it, eyelid fluttering for a moment before he sees it again. The ‘Best Daddy Ever!’ ashtray.

He reaches across the floor until his fingertips touch the splotch of red paint along the words. It sticks to his fingers, leaving his prints behind when he raises his hand in confusion.

His lips move slowly, mouthing the words as they come back to him again, “Because there’s not a person on this planet who could love a monster like you.”

It wasn’t the pain that registered first. It was the sound. The crack of thick ceramic. The squelch of flesh breaking open. Then the heat pouring from his brow.

It was the second blow, the one to his eye, that reminded JJ’s body how to feel.

The sound – something new, something that tore JJ’s throat on the way out – was enough to stop the third blow right before it could land.

Luke froze as JJ slumped back against the wall.

His fingers twitched at his sides as his dad stared at the broken ceramic, at JJ’s initials, at the blood dripping from the words ‘Best Daddy Ever!’ before JJ heard the ceramic crash to the floor.

“O-oh, shit. Shit, shit, fuck!”

Luke’s face appeared – sweat dripping from his brow – above JJ. His rough hands jostled the boy, but JJ didn’t have the energy to push them away. He blinked, one eyelid twitching as the skin swelled fast, and mouthed silent words as only little puffs of breath escaped.

“J? JJ! Oh fuck,” Luke gritted his teeth and shook JJ hard, but the boy’s head just bounced uselessly against the hardwood floor until he stopped.

“Shhhhit,” JJ saw the blurry figure run his hands through his hair. Felt the rough hands try to straighten out his position on the floor. Then, he heard his dad’s boots start up that same back and forth rhythm.

“I’m gonna- gonna help, J, or… or Ricky! Ricky,” Luke muttered to himself as he stomped toward the kitchen. “…fuck’s my phone?”

His words were still slurred, and JJ caught them in bits and pieces as his dad moved from one room to the other in search of his phone. He found it beneath a couch cushion, cursed when he realized it was dead after a week of no power to charge it, and then threw it at the wall with a sharp, “Fuck!”

When he made it back to JJ’s side, the boy’s lips were still moving, still desperately trying to say something, but no sounds escaped no matter how hard he tried. And fuck, he tried. But the words were trapped, locked behind some invisible door as his dad’s face contorted into something desperate. Something almost soft as he bit at his lips and reached for his boy.

His fingers twitched against JJ’s neck, his cheek, his lips – all to very little reaction – but the second his fingers ghosted over JJ’s brow, the boy shot up with a scream. Tears poured from his right eye but nothing from the left. It was swollen already; almost his entire left side was now.

Luke jerked his hands back, panting hard, “It’s okay! Yer okay!” But the floodgates were open now, JJ’s cries pouring from his mouth as he was settled back onto the floor.

Luke sat back on his knees, wide-eyed as the cries settled into whimpers instead. JJ’s eye followed, but it was hard when there were two Luke’s to contend with.

“Yer gonna be ‘kay, J,” both versions of his father – one more solid than the other – slurred as they wiped the mixture of sweat and tears from their faces. They eyed the door, then JJ, their teeth working hard at their bottom lip before they slowly climbed to their feet and morphed back into one solid form.  

Nodding to himself as he blinked down at JJ those wide-pupiled eyes, Luke muttered, “Gonna get hafta get it myself. Yeah… yeah, th’s what I’ll do.”

JJ’s lips moved as Luke stomped toward the door. His fingers twitched against the hardwood. But by the time he got his hand off the floor and managed a soft, “Dad?” Luke was already gone.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Kiara repeats again and again as she bows her head to rest against JJ’s shoulder. Quick, panicked pants escape her lips; he feels every single one on his shoulder, his neck, and finally his cheek as she slides her fingers through his hair to check for new bumps.

He winces when her fingers get a little too close to his brow, and she bites her lip as she moves her hand to his cheek instead, “I’m sorry.”

He blows out a sleepy breath, “I’s ‘kay, Kie. Y’should go.”

Her face comes back into full focus. Brows drawn. Lips curved down. And he feels the cool metal of her ring and the loose thread of her bracelet against his cheeks. Leans into it.

“JJ, look at me,” he does, though his gaze lands – and lingers – on her lips for a beat too long before finding her eyes. She shakes her head slowly and smiles just for him, “I am getting you out of here.”

He opens his mouth, but the words feel too twisty, too hard. She flutters back out of view. But he feels her as she presses her lips to the top of his head and then hooks her hands beneath his armpits. She grunts as she half-drags him across the floor, “I am not leaving you here, JJ. I swear.”

JJ drifts in and out of consciousness, lulled into a dull sort of sleep by Kie’s panting breaths and the sound of his own boots rubbing across the floor. It’s not until he feels her fingers against his cheek again – the gentle tap, tap, tap – that he really comes to. She has him propped against the thin screen of the porch, one of her hands carding gently through the hair on the top of his head while the other taps his cheek.

“I know you’re sleepy, Jayj,” she tries for a smile, but it’s too much like the one she’d given him when he went inside to grab the Phantom keys. He doesn’t even think about it, just reaches his hand up to tap against it; he misses completely, his finger poking her chin instead. Then, the smile gets a little softer, a little more real.

She sighs and bows her head to meet his eye better, “I need your help.”

“Anything,” he mumbles immediately.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” she laughs as she grabs his hand. She squeezes and then nods over his shoulder toward her recently beat-up – thank you, Pope – SUV, “Turns out you’re heavier than you look.”

“But’m still pretty though, right?”

It hurts when he smiles, but it’s impossible not to when Kie leans forward to huff a laugh into his hair. She rolls her eyes when she pulls back before reluctantly muttering, “Of course you’re still pretty. Now get your pretty ass up and help me.”

She reaches for his arms, but JJ beats her to it; he’s all too happy to try and help. He grunts as she slowly pulls him up, stumbling a little, but Kie’s right there, already sliding herself beneath his arm and propping him against the screen.

They stand there for several long seconds while JJ catches his breath. He feels every breath Kie sucks in and focuses on that. She smiles up at him when she realizes he’s trying to match her, but the smile dims when she catches sight of the left side of his face.

“How bad is’t?” He rasps before he can stop himself.

Her hair dances on her shoulders as she shakes her head and looks through the screen. Outside, the sky is lightening with steaks of pink and orange mixing with dark navy. Then she looks down, tugging at her bracelet absently as she mutters, “Oh, it’s not-”

But she trails off, and when he looks down at her, her quickly fluttering eyelashes aren’t doing enough to hide the tears in her dark eyes.

“Kie?”

“JJ,” her fingers hover above his brow before she lets her hand fall with a worried sigh, “we should probably get moving. I have a feeling these stairs aren’t going to be fun, but we’ll make it as painless as we can, okay?”

Her body is warm against his side as she shoves back under his arm. She does peek up at him though as she knocks the screen door open with the edge of her foot, “You ready?”

JJ doesn’t know how to tell her that he’s been ready for pain his entire life. That he collects injuries the way she collects threads for her friendship bracelets. That even after his skin heals, the remnants never stop thrumming in his veins.

So, he doesn’t. He just smiles through the ache of his lips and nods.

Kie’s right to be worried though. He’s not ready for the stairs.

But she is.

JJ hisses through his teeth as Kie helps him down the first step. The world hazes over halfway through the second step though, and his fingers grip the material of her t-shirt. He stumbles fully on the third, but Kie’s ready, pressing her chest to his as she catches him.

He slumps against her, head falling into the juncture between her neck and shoulder. She grunts beneath his weight and takes half a step back to brace herself better, “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

JJ feels her panting breath against his cheek as his eye struggles to stay open, “…sh’t.”

“I’ve got you,” Kie whispers.

She nearly topples beneath his weight, but when he tries to shift away, she gently guides his head back onto her shoulder instead. She’s careful not to touch the bump on his head as she gently runs her nails along the back of his neck. A sound escapes from somewhere deep in his chest – almost a purr – and Kie huffs a laugh that warms his chest.

Blowing a breath against her collarbone, JJ mumbles, “Sorry, Kie… Head’s a l’ttle woozy.”

“JJ, please don’t…” Her words go all tight as she grips the back of his neck. And then, even softer than before, “It’s okay.”

He swears he feels a kiss ghost across his temple, but when he peeks at her, she’s got her bottom lip between her teeth. She gnaws at it as JJ finally straightens up and nods to the SUV.

She scans his face, and JJ wonders if she can see just how unsteady he feels. Her mouth presses into a thin line, but JJ’s eye lingers on her bitten-raw bottom lip. His throat bobs as he swallows.

JJ doesn’t know if he takes the next first step or Kie does, but he sees the relief on her face when they reach the passenger door. It’s a struggle to get him up and in the backseat, but Kie just climbs in with him, her hands holding him steady when he starts to sway.

“Okay, okay, just gonna get something for your head,” she mutters as she leans over him to grab a hoodie from the driver’s seat. This time when JJ tilts, Kie sits up on her knee and helps him down. She slides her hoodie – one of John B’s, JJ nearly chokes at the thought – beneath his head and gently brushes hair from his forehead.

She gives him a watery smile as he wraps one of her curls around his finger and mumbles, “Pretty.”

“Jayj? JJ, hey. Hey, look at me,” he draws his eye away from her hair to find her hovering above him with wide, terrified eyes.

He blinks slowly as the world – as Kie – comes back into focus. And he doesn’t understand at first, doesn’t realize he’s been gone until he feels the tremble of a hand on his cheek that hadn’t been there just a second ago.

“How long w’s I-”

“We’re going to the hospital,” she cuts him off. There’s no room for protest in her voice.

JJ protests anyway.

He sits up – tries to – but Kie presses her hand to his chest to keep him down, “Kie, no. I’m f’ne.”

“JJ, yes,” she lifts her chin, but she can’t hide the quiver in her voice, the tears in her eyes, or the shake of her fingers still on his cheek. “You’re not fine. You keep-”

She shifts her face away and quickly rubs her cheek against her shoulder. Still, she can’t disguise the way her voice cracks, “JJ, you’re scaring me. And I don’t know what else to do. You’ve never- I’ve never-”

Scratching at her hairline as she gnaws her lip, she practically hisses her next words through her teeth, “John B was the one who knew how to take care of you. And I-”

She covers her face just as the sob bubbles out. Her shoulders hunch, shake, practically cave in as she cries into her hands, “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to do this without him.”

“Kie, Kie. Kiara,” his eye flutters, but he pushes his exhaustion down deep to slide his fingers around her skinny wrist. He tugs gently until she lets him pull her hand down to his chest.

He doesn’t let go.

She doesn’t pull away.

Even when the tears slip down her chin to dampen his shirt, she stays right where she is.

Giving her his best smile, JJ’s thumb brushes slowly over the thread of Kiara’s bracelets, “Y’r doin’ a good job.”

Her brows wrinkle, and he gets the temptation to smooth them with his thumb. Instead, his thumb does another sweep over her bracelets.

“Of what?” She sniffs hard, but it does little to clear the tears from her voice, “Crying all over you?”

“Of takin’ care o’ me,” he clarifies.

He sees every protest building on her tongue and cuts each one off with a soft, “The Chateau. There’s stuff under the s’nk.”

“Can’t,” she argues immediately, though there’s no bite in her voice. “That’s where I went first. Place is being treated like a crime scene.”

JJ frowns at that. At the idea of the only home he’d ever known being pawed at and picked through by strangers with badges. He can picture it – John B’s things being scattered like they don’t matter. Like the collection of bandanas he keeps in his bottom drawer, even though he only ever wears the ratty one his dad left behind. Or his ridiculous patterned shirts with buttons that haven’t been fastened once since JJ has known him.

Or – worst of all to imagine – the faded pictures of John B and JJ from third grade. All messy hair sticking up in a million different directions, fraying hand-me-down shirts mixed and matched between them, JJ’s mischievous grin and John B’s soft eyes. Skinny limbs clinging to each other like they just discovered how good it felt to be held.

“Pope, then,” JJ finally says when he manages to separate his mind from the Chateau and what might be happening there. He doesn’t have the energy to nod – isn’t sure he has the stomach for it either – but he sounds sure when he adds, “Take me to Pope. He knows body stuff.”

“Dead body stuff,” Kie cuts in, exasperated.

JJ ignores her, pauses his thumb over her pulse, and gently presses down, “He’ll know wh’t to do, Kie.”

She opens her mouth to argue – because of course she does; Kie has never known how to give up a fight – but she closes it slowly when he pleads, “Please, Kie. It’ll be worse for me later-”

His tongue slides across his bottom lip as he finishes softly, “…if there’s a hosp’t’l bill.”

He sees it land. Sees the protests that she swallows back, the fight that she forces down. Sees her gnaw her lip, crease her brows, pout her lips.

“JJ…” Her voice is shaky when she finally answers, “Promise me you’ll be okay. Because if I don’t take you and then you- and then something-”

She sucks in a breath and lifts her chin, “Promise me.”

She doubles before him, and when her eyes slowly skim his face, he sees four of them. Still, he smiles as he gives her bracelet a light tug, “Promise.”

He can still feel the ghost of her fingers on his cheek as the rough roads of the cut rumble beneath the tires of her SUV. She talks the whole drive. JJ barely follows the conversation, but he hums along as the sky goes a brighter pink, a deeper orange, a mix of purples and blues.

The morning bursts before him with the stark realization that Luke, that his dad, hadn’t come back like he promised. Not with help. Not with supplies. Not at all.

“Is it m’rn’ng?” He mumbles, his words cutting Kiara off mid-sentence despite how quiet they are.

From here, he can’t see her, but he hears the rustle from her seat and knows she’s glancing back him, “Yeah. I wanted to come sooner, but my mom-” He hears the guilt as she rasps, “She climbed into bed with me last night like I was a little kid again. But, Jayj, I- I wanted to come,” she insists.

“I’s okay, Kie.”

JJ squeezes his eye shut and hates the way he can see a weird blur of color through the swollen one. Because, fuck, Kie’s mom climbed into bed with her last night… and JJ’s dad beat him with one of his favorite memories.

A tear rolls down his cheek as he clenches his teeth.

Because Luke said he’d come back… and JJ had believed him.

Because John B is dead… and JJ is still right here.

His lips quiver until he presses them into a tight line.

And outside the window, the sun continues to rise.

JJ doses to the sound of the engine, Kie’s quiet humming, and the rumble of gravel-filled potholes. He wakes with a start, breath catching in his chest and hand rising protectively in front of his face.

“It’s just me,” she soothes as she wraps her fingers around his hand and gently places it against his chest.

He groans as the morning light hits his face. Sharp pain races through his skull like the worst sort of hangover. Hell, even his mouth tastes a bit like a good night at the Boneyard – like pennies and bile and regret.

“’t hurts,” he mutters as he covers his face with his arm.

The world bursts into blinding colors when he bumps his eyebrow with his wrist. He cries out, then bites his tongue to try and stop the sound. But Kie’s already there, her fingers gently brushing his hair away as she breathes cool air against his brow.

“You’re okay. I know, I know,” she whispers against and again as his chest rises and falls with the pain.

She waits, her hand steady on his chest, until his breathing evens out, and then says, “I’m gonna run inside and grab Pope. Don’t move, okay?”

“’kay,” he agrees as his head falls back against her hoodie.

He hears her sneakers on the pavement as he slowly pulls himself up into a sitting position. Then the clomp of them up the stairs to Pope’s room as he drags himself to the edge of the seat. The squeal of Pope’s bedroom door – desperately in need of WD-40 – as he wraps his fingers around the top of the door and places his feet on the ground.

JJ stumbles out of the SUV to the sound of quiet murmuring above. He shields his eyes – careful this time not to hit his brow – but everything blurs worse than before in the sunlight.

Using the hood of the SUV to keep himself upright, JJ wanders half-blind in the direction of the Heyward house. The steps aren’t hard to find once he shuffles his feet enough, but climbing them? – that’s a whole other story.

Gripping the railing, he wills his left foot onto the bottom step. Then his right. Up and up he goes, feet barely lifting high enough, then dragging along the steps as he sways on his feet.

His body goes light, floaty and drifting –

“Oh, shit!”

“JJ! Jayj!”

Hands catch his wrists and tug hard. His stomach protests as he’s jerked forward, and he gags against someone’s shoulder. His belly is empty though, and within a few seconds, so is the last of his energy.

The last thing he hears is Kie’s soft, “You’re okay, you’re okay…” as his knees give out and his head slumps against Pope’s shoulder.

The first sense that comes back is smell. It’s orange-scented shampoo, hand-me-down books, and rubbing alcohol. The second sense? Pain. White hot and quick.

He thrashes, mouth falling open in a silent cry that doesn’t quite make it past his throat. But the burning in his eyebrow doesn’t ease up. If anything, it gets worse as pressure holds his shoulders down, as quiet voices plead for him to ‘hold still’ and promise him ‘it’s almost over, Jayj.’

Bright lights shine straight through his injured eye; the eyelid twitches but does nothing to protect the stinging iris.

He swipes toward the light, but a hand catches his and presses it over his chest. There’s shuffling – above him, below him, all around him – and then he feels arms curling around his body. Gentle hands cradling him even as they hold him still. A soft chest against his uninjured cheek. A heartbeat against his ear as words are whispered into his hair.

He doesn’t understand most of them. Can barely hear them over his own gasping breaths and sharp grunts. But he feels her there – Kie – and grits his teeth against the pain as the pressure on his brow increases.

Pope’s there when JJ finally manages to open his good eye. He’s blinded by tears no matter how quickly Kiara tries to brush them away, but he’d know the blurry shape of his mathlete best friend anywhere.

He recognizes his voice too, though his brain hasn’t quite caught up yet to the words being said to him. Where Kiara’s was soothing, Pope’s was matter-of-fact, serious, as he dips his head to meet JJ’s gaze, “You understand?”

No.

JJ nods and lets his cheek fall back against Kiara’s chest as he lets his eye drift shut. Her arms tighten around him, the fingers of their left hands curling together as she presses a kiss into his hair and whispers, “I’m right here. Don’t let go of my hand, okay?”

He opens his mouth – to assure her he’s okay, to promise he won’t let go, to flirt just so she’ll roll her eyes at him – but what comes out instead is a howl as something sharp pierces right through the swell of his brow.

Kiara grips his fingers tighter as her other hand holds his opposite cheek still. Her voice comes out panicked with a quick, “I know, I know! I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

The world retreats again with Kiara’s lips in his hair as she begs him to stay still.

“How much trouble are you in?” Pope sounds tired, weary, like this summer alone has aged him by years instead of weeks.

JJ’s head feels heavy as he comes out of the fog. It’s slow, the way the world around him re-forms itself. This time, there’s no sharp pain, no scream threatening to cut his throat to shreds. This time, the pain is dull, aching, deep.

“I think last night they would have let me off the hook for all of it.”

Where Pope sounds exhausted, Kie sounds even worse. Her voice croaks with lack of sleep, with worry she can’t hide, with the memories of the last 24 hours.

“And now?”

“Now?” She blows out a breath – it might be a laugh, but it doesn’t quite land – and breathes, “Now, I don’t know. And I don’t even know if I care.”

Her knuckles brush gently over JJ’s cheek. Humming low in his throat, he leans into the touch. She must lean over him – though he can’t be sure because he doesn’t have any luck opening his eye – but he feels her curls on his cheek, his chin, his lips.

“Kie…”

Kiara sighs and leans back against the wall, her hair tickling across his neck, his mouth, and his nose before he loses the sensation. His fingers twitch at his sides, but neither of his friends seem to notice, “What, Pope?”

She scoffs at whatever look Pope shoots her, shifting her legs a little, and JJ realizes that his head is cradled in her lap. There’s something soft beneath his head – a loosely-fitted bandage, he thinks. Gauze loops around his forehead beneath his bangs like an awkwardly angled headband. His brow remains uncovered, but the pain isn’t sharp anymore despite the pressure he can still feel beneath his skin.

“Don’t tell me you’re on their side,” this time when JJ’s fingers twitch, Kie’s hand wraps around it. She squeezes and lowers her voice into a whisper despite the heat JJ can still hear in it, “What was I supposed to do, Pope? JJ was hurt!”

JJ’s eye moves quickly, eyelid trying desperately to open, as Pope leans forward with an insistent whisper of his own, “You could have called them!”

Kiara laughs, but the sound is mean, harsh, “You can’t be serious.”

“But after what happened last night? I mean, Kie…” He huffs a breath through his nose, and JJ knows exactly what expression he’s making – that wounded puppy dog look he gets when he knows he’s fighting a losing battle – and most fights with Kiara are losing battles. “John B and Sarah-”

“-are dead,” Kiara spits.

Pope inhales sharply, an argument on his tongue, but Kiara cuts it off with a softer voice, “And my parents still didn’t want to let me check in on you guys. So, no, Pope, I couldn’t just call them.”

Her hair brushes JJ’s cheek again as the bed beneath the three of them creaks, “JJ needed me.”

There’s a pause and then Pope says slowly, “I know that. But our parents had to pick us up from a crime scene last night, Kie. And our friends are-” unlike Kiara, he can’t bring himself to say it. The hand around JJ’s tightens, and it takes him a second to realize that Pope’s hand is around both of theirs now. “I saw how they reacted last night when they realized you were okay. I just- I just think maybe you should hear them out. Give them a chance to be there for you!”

“I’ve given them plenty of chances,” she hisses.

“But, Kie, I just think-”

“Well, don’t,” she snaps.

JJ hears Pope’s teeth click together before an awkward silence falls over the room. The mattress springs creak and shift, and then he hears bare feet sticking to the hardwood as Pope paces around the rug by his bed.

This time when JJ tries to open his eye, he manages a little sliver. All he can really see is the underside of Kiara’s chin as she eyes Pope. But he feels her fingers on his wrist and then the tightening of his loosely-tied friendship bracelet.

“Hey, Kie. Can we-” Pope’s feet go still near his bookshelf. He shifts some of the books like he might rearrange them, and then quickly slides them back into place before spitting out the words, “Can we talk about it? About,” he sighs, “about what happened with us?”

Whatever progress JJ was making with his eye, he closes it now quickly. It’s for the sake of his head – he tells himself – to shield from the light, not to be nosy. But when he hears Kiara sigh, he peaks again to find her gnawing on her lip as she scratches at her hairline, “Pope, I don’t- I don’t know if this is a good time. I mean… JJ-”

“-is sleeping,” Pope says quickly. And he sounds so hopeful that JJ wishes he really was asleep for this.

“Pope,” she groans, the bed creaking when she throws her hands up, “I don’t… I don’t know what you want me to say right now. We don’t have time for this.”

“You kissed me,” he reminds her quietly.

“Yeah… yeah, I know,” even from her lap, JJ sees the shift on her face, the frustration, the hesitation. “But that was before.”

“…right,” Pope shuffles the books again, and JJ feels a shift beneath his neck as Kiara adjusts him in her lap.

“I’m not saying- I’m just-“ she sighs a little too loud and then softens her tone, “Pope, it’s not the right time for this, okay? JJ’s hurt, and Sarah and John B are-” her voice cracks and then trembles, “-and Rafe and Ward are still out there! I can’t do this right now, okay? Do you… do you understand?”

Before he can answer, all three of them hear the groan of the steps beneath Heyward’s slow gait.

If JJ wasn’t laid up in bed pretending not to hear his two best friends discuss their burgeoning romance, this would have been his moment to come up with some master plan to distract Heyward – probably involving the window, a small fire, and maybe an explosion of some kind – but as it is now, he doesn’t move. Neither does Kie.

Pope does, though. He mutters something low enough that JJ doesn’t hear and then darts out the door. His quick steps meet Heyward’s somewhere in the middle, their muffled voices reaching the room before the sound of their steps retreating together.

“D’mn, Kie,” JJ mumbles as he finally blinks his eye open, “that musta been some kiss.”

He grins sleepily at her scowl and tries to get his elbows up under him. She catches his shoulder and slides her other hand beneath his neck though, her voice soft but exasperated, “JJ! Careful, your head-”

“-feels so much b’tt’r,” he mumbles as he pushes himself up another inch.

She glares even as she helps him sit up against the wall, but it’s half-hearted at best. Because the second he sways, she’s there, sliding a pillow behind him and pressing herself against his side. He lets himself slump against her as she reaches up to adjust the bandage around his forehead.

She frets over him for a few more seconds, her eyes focusing on the pillow behind him as she mumbles, “JJ?”

He shifts his eye down at her and lifts the corner of his mouth, “Yeah, Kie?”

Biting her lip, Kiara finally looks at him, her eyes skimming his face slowly. She doesn’t look as freaked as she did at his place, but he does see the way she lingers on his brow, her fingers hovering there before dropping to her side, “How do you feel?”

“Like I got my ass beat,” he jokes.

Her lips press together as her eyes go wide and wet, but it’s her brows – the way they curve down like she’s about to cry – that make JJ backtrack. He shakes his head a little too fast, and her hands catch his cheeks just as the world tilts.

“Sorry,” he mumbles as he leans his good cheek into her hand, “bad joke. I’m ‘kay, Kie, I promise.”

“You tell me that one more time while you look ready to pass out, and I’m bailing,” she huffs, but there’s no bite to it with her fingers gently slipping into his hair and massaging his temples.

“We could go back to talkin’ ‘bout you ‘n Pope,” he grins when her fingers go still and peeks his eye half-open to see her glaring again. Smiling kind of hurts, but it feels good too, so he teases her more, “He a good kisser?”

Rolling her eyes, she resumes the gentle motion against his scalp, “How much did you hear?”

“Pretty much all o’ it,” he admits.

Her shoulders fall as she glares again, but he holds up both his hands – he’s steadier than before – and pleads his case, “To be fair, I was kinda out of it at first. Then… well,” he lifts a shoulder, “it was gettin’ juicy.”

There’s a pause and then, “So? Is he?”

Kie huffs a laugh, and he can see the way she’s fighting her smile and the urge to shove him. She tugs his hair gently and mutters, “You wanna know so bad, you should go for it.”

He grins and resists the urge to try and wiggle his brows, “Soon as the world stops spinnin’, I j’st might. I mean, John B-”

The easy laughter between them dies in an instant.

“Shit…” JJ lifts his gaze to Kiara’s face, eye moving rapidly like he’ll see some sign on her face that it was all a dream, a nightmare that he might still wake from. But all he gets is a watery nod and arms that sink around his middle.

His ribs ache the second Kiara touches them, but JJ squeezes her back anyway. He presses half his face into her hair and tries to bite back the tears, but Kie doesn’t bother to hide hers. And after a few seconds, JJ gives up all pretenses too. Fists his fingers in the material of her tee as she grips the back of his neck and her nails bite into his shirt too.

It’s impossible to know who cries hardest, who holds on longest. It’s all gripping fingers, angry tears, and mumbled pleas for something they both know they’ll never get.

They hold on long after the tears dry up, bodies sinking together against the wall as exhaustion hits again. He ends up half-tucked into her side, his good cheek resting on her shoulder. Her fingers tangle in his friendship bracelet as she peeks up at him, “Jayj?”

“Mmm?” She tugs at the bracelet when that’s all he gives her, and he forces words through his tired mouth, “Yeah, Kie?”

Her fingers are cool as they trace the left side of his face. She doesn’t touch the bruises around his swollen eye and avoids his brow altogether, but her hand does linger there, her thumb brushing his jaw gently.

JJ swallows hard and begs his heart to slow the fuck down, but it’s hard when she’s this close, when she’s looking at him like that. Like he matters. Like she cares.

“Kie?”

Her eyes flick down – just once, so quick he’s not even sure it was real – before they meet his own. Her voice is gentle though weary when she breathes, “I can’t lose you.”

“What? You’re not-”

She presses her thumb against his jaw; it doesn’t hurt, but it does quiet him, does make it harder to breathe.

“I mean it, JJ,” her entire chin quivers. “Finding you there like that, I- I was really scared.”

She reaches up and, though JJ can’t feel it through the bandage, he knows she brushes the bangs from his forehead, “You’re not allowed to die, okay? Because I can’t- I can’t lose you too.”

And it’s absurd – her request. Impossible really. But still, JJ nods slowly and whispers, “You won’t.”

And when her eyes linger on his, he adds, “Never happ’n, Kie. I promise.”

He gives her a sleepy smile, one that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and she gives one back as he adds, “’s long as you promise not to die either.”

“I promise,” she whispers as she lays her cheek against his shoulder.

“Why did you come?” JJ asks. The question takes them both by surprise, but it’s been nagging at him since he heard her down the hall back at his place.

Kiara furrows her brows and frowns, “To your house? I told you, the Chateau was still a crime scene, so I knew-”

“Yeah,” he cuts her off and leans away to get a better look at her. His vision blurs again, but it clears a lot quicker this time. “But, Kie,” he licks his lips and repeats the real question, “why were you looking for me at all?”

She sits back too, giving him a look like he’s supremely stupid – and like, yeah, plus, you know, probably concussed, but the look is still rude as hell – and then scoffs, “I’m not one of your Boneyard dates, Jayj. You can’t just ghost me and expect me not to come looking.”

She bumps his knee with hers and adds softly, “I watched the window all night. When you never showed, I got worried.”

She softens further to add, “I know you, JJ. And sure, you’ll never be on time to anything-”

There’s an ache in his chest at the realization that while his dad had abandoned him, she’d been waiting for him. He lets it settle, lets himself feel it, and then promptly pushes all his feelings aside to snort and mutter, “You’re one to talk about being on time.”

She keeps going, raising her voice over his interruption, “-but I also know you’d never just not show unless there was a reason.”

JJ chews the inside of his cheek and leans his head back against the wall as Kiara does the same. He hisses when he hits a little too hard, but she just silently reaches over and tugs the pillow up higher for him.

He smiles and reaches over to tug on a curl, “I’d never ghost you, Kie.”

She smiles back and reaches over to slide the clasp of his shark tooth behind his neck as she mutters, “Yeah well, you could try, but I’d never let you.”

Pope’s been gone for about an hour when JJ bumps his knuckles against Kie’s leg. She startles awake, bleary eyes blinking rapidly at him as he mumbles, “You gotta let me outta this bed, Kie.”

Rubbing the heel of her hand into her eye with a yawn, she side-eyes JJ, “I don’t know about that, Jayj. You almost fell down the stairs last time you stood up.”

His cheeks warm as he scratches his forehead beneath the bandage, “So, okay, yeah… stairs might have been a b’t ambitious.”

Kiara groans as she stretches and slides her legs off the bed. She glances back at him over her shoulder, her brow rising slowly, “I told you to wait in the car.”

“I was helping!” He protests, but his argument has no leg to stand on considering he doesn’t even know how Pope and Kie got him up here.

She gets to her feet and – despite her protests – offers JJ her hand. He smiles and wiggles his way to the edge of the bed, grateful when her small, warm hand curls around his own. She doesn’t rush him, just gives him something solid to hold onto as he pushes himself up to his feet.

The world spins when JJ’s bare feet hit the floor.

Kiara guides one of his hands to her shoulder and tucks herself beneath his arm. She’s the first thing that comes back into full focus, but his clothes are the second.

He frowns down at himself, confused and a little horrified. “The hell am I wearin’?”

Kie snorts, but he hears the lump in her throat when she says, “We found one of John B’s awful shirts in Pope’s drawers. We couldn’t decide if you’d… I thought it might-”

She guides him a few steps and then lifts her eyes back to his face, huffing loudly as she finds the words, “I thought it might comfort you. You were always giving him shit about them.”

JJ doesn’t know how to answer, but Kie doesn’t expect him to. They do slow laps around Pope’s room, pausing every few steps so JJ can catch his breath. And when the world threatens to tip JJ right over onto his ass, she just tightens her arm around his waist and whispers, “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

“What’re we s‘pposed to do now?” JJ rasps as he brushes his fingers over a photo of the four of them on Pope’s wall.

Pope stands on the left, chest puffed out and hat sitting tipped back on his head. JJ’s next to him – ‘too cool to pose,’ Kie had mocked – with his hands in his pockets as he peeks over sunglasses at the camera. Then Kie with a beer in her hand and her back to JB. And fuck, John B is alllll posed up from head to toe. Butt practically shoving Kie toward JJ, one foot up higher, his classic finger-guns on display.

They’d propped Kie’s phone up on a timer to take the photo just weeks after she came back to them from the academy. It had been a damn mess getting everyone posed at the same time. It had been an even bigger mess getting everyone in frame before the waves rocked the boat hard enough to knock her phone over.

And less than five seconds after this photo, JJ had tackled John B right off the edge of the boat.

“Who the hell am I if I’m not John B’s best friend?”

Kie’s head snapping up is what makes JJ realize he asked it out loud. He presses his lips together and wills the tears back out of his eyes. But she just squeezes him harder and whispers, “We’re still us, JJ. You and me. And Pope. We’re still Pogues.”

He doesn’t know how to tell her he’s pretty sure half of who he is sank to the bottom of the ocean with John B.

He doesn’t have to.

Because Pope’s bedroom door opens to reveal Cara Heyward with a laundry basket on her hip. She takes one look at JJ – at the bruises that have settled all along the left side of his face, at the surprisingly even-stitched brow and swollen eye, at the bandage wrapped carefully and loosely around his head – and lets the basket fall at her feet.

JJ shakes his head despite the way it makes him feel unsteady and nauseous, but Cara doesn’t listen. She crosses the room in four quick steps and pulls him right into her arms.

“What happened?” She breathes as her hands cradle him carefully against her.

“Mrs. Heyward,” Kiara meets his eye over Cara’s shoulder and looks at a loss as she tries to come up with something. “Um, JJ just-”

“I cr’shed my bike last night,” he mumbles easily. He sees Kiara’s face fall, her mouth opening like she wants to argue. But all it takes is one pleading look from JJ for her to clamp her mouth shut.

“What the hell were you doin’ ridin’ out in the storm?” Cara breathes immediately. She pulls back and cups his good cheek, her fingers hovering over the stiches as she breathes, “How did you…”

Her eyes fall to her sewing kit, still open on the edge of Pope’s desk – and well, that answers JJ’s question about where they came from too. She looks from the kit to JJ, then to Kiara. Something shifts on her face, “A bike accident, you said?”

JJ nods and scratches his jaw, “Yes, ma’am.”

Cara reaches over and cups Kiara’s cheek too, her voice gentle, “Your parents know where you are, sweetheart?”

“Yeah,” Kie says immediately. And then, when Cara’s gentle stare doesn’t break, she shakes her head, “No, m’am.”

Lifting her eyes heavenward, Cara sighs. She drops a kiss against JJ’s cheek, then tiptoes up to Kiara’s forehead too, “Come on, let’s get some breakfast in you two while you tell me and Bobby what you kids got up to this morning.”

With some help from Kie and Pope – who keeps shooting guilty looks JJ’s way for not getting there before his mom did – JJ does eventually make it downstairs to the kitchen table. No one speaks much – especially Heyward, whose eyes keep lingering when he thinks JJ isn’t looking – until JJ’s been through two full plates.

The lie is the same though. It slips off JJ’s tongue as easily as the truth – he crashed his bike on his way to the Chateau, hobbled home, and Kie found him the next morning.

“Where was Luke?” Heyward asks when JJ’s story somehow manages to avoid any mention of his dad. “He came to get you last night, right?”

“Yeah,” JJ says immediately with some approximation of a smile, “yeah, he showed up a few minutes after y’all left.”

He lifts his shoulder and picks at the last piece of bacon on his plate. He dunks it in syrup before popping it between his lips, “We had a fight and he took off.”

Kie’s eyes burn a hole in the side of JJ’s face as he avoids looking at her, “Then I crashed my bike. He wasn’t home when I got there.”

He forces a smile and tilts his head toward the door. The food helps, but it doesn’t stop him from going all shaky at the quick movement, “I’m sure he’s home now though, sir. Which, uh,” he pushes up from the counter and ignores the way his entire body shudders, “I should probably be gettin’ back to.”

“You can’t!” Kiara snaps at the same time Pope’s stool squeaks across the floor with a, “You don’t have to go home!”

Then, with pleading eyes to his parents, “Right, Pop? Mama?”

JJ stumbles back a step, but Kiara presses her small hand to the center of his back. He glances down, but she’s already looking at him, her voice meant only for him, “Jayj, please.”

Heyward and Cara exchange a look – one of those secret parent conversations Kie and Pope were always trying to convince JJ and John B were real – but whatever they’re saying to each other gets interrupted by a sharp knock at the front door.

Heyward frowns, but Cara nods toward the dishes on the counter, “Why don’t you kids clean up in here while Bobby and I go get that.”

“Dude, there’s no way you’re going home after last night!” Pope hisses the second his parents are out of earshot.

Kiara nods her agreement and pushes her shoulders back. When JJ looks ready to argue, she crosses her arms over her chest and lifts her chin at him in defiance, “Pope’s right. And if his parents won’t let you stay here, then you’re coming home with me.”

JJ snorts, “Yeah because that’s a thing that would ever h’ppen.”

Pope makes a face at her, then states the obvious, “If my parents won’t do it, there’s no way yours will.”

Rolling her eyes like the boys might actually be the biggest idiots she knows, she raises her brow, “Did I say I was going to ask for permission? You guys new or something?”

JJ’s lips twitch into a smile despite himself – Kie’s inclination to break every rule handed to her might just be his favorite thing in the world – and Kie smiles back. Her brow tilts playfully now as she offers her hand.

“Now, tha’s my girl,” JJ doesn’t even hesitate before he meets her in the middle with the Pogue handshake.

Slap, slap, snap.

Because – while JJ’s not one to take a handout – he’s always been the kid to go right for the one item he’s been expressly forbidden from having.

Kie’s hand lingers against his own. He holds her gaze for a moment longer until Pope’s hand slaps onto his back, “Does this mean you’re seeing reason?”

JJ breaks his eye contact with Kie and slips his arm over Pope’s shoulders instead, “Nah, Bro, let’s not get crazy now.”

He feels Kiara’s eyes long after he’s looked away. He lifts a shoulder and then concedes, “But stayin’ outta my old man’s way for a few days isn’t the worst idea.”

“JJ?” All three kids straighten immediately at the new voice. Kie turns first, but it takes Pope a second to get JJ hobbling in the correct direction. By the time they get there, Kie’s half a step in front of them with her arms crossed her chest – a human barrier between JJ and Deputy Shoupe.

“Kids,” Mrs. Heyward says from behind him. She stretches her hand toward Kiara and Pope, “Let’s give Deputy Shoupe and JJ a moment.”

“But he’s a minor,” Pope says quickly.

JJ drops his arm from Pope’s shoulders, but Pope presses himself right against JJ’s side, “You can’t talk to him without an adult present.”

“Pope!” Heyward says sharply, but Pope doesn’t even flinch.

Shoupe runs a tired hand down his face. He spends a few extra seconds rubbing his mouth, and that’s all Kie needs before she’s blocking JJ’s view of the deputy completely, “He didn’t do it!”

“He didn’t-” Deputy Shoupe’s sigh is so loud and so long that JJ’s pretty sure the neighbors can hear it, “Didn’t do what, Miss Carrera?”

Kie looks back at JJ, her brows furrowing, and then lifts her chin higher before turning away again, “Whatever bullshit you’re here to accuse him of.”

“Guys-” JJ tries, but Pope shakes his head sharply and mimes locking his mouth.

Cara looks embarrassed. Heyward just rubs a hand over his head gestures past the deputy, “I know you kids think you’re helpin’, but let Deputy Shoupe do his job.”

“But Pop-” Pope tries.

“I’ll be with him the whole time,” Heyward assures Pope as he gently – but firmly – detangles his son’s arm from around JJ.

“No one’s even in trouble here,” Shoupe cuts in when Kiara looks ready to throw in another barb. Then he hesitates, eyes shifting past Kiara’s shoulder to land on JJ’s face. He blinks hard, taking in the colors staining his skin, and breathes, “…yet.”

He visibly gulps, sucking a sharp breath in as he forces himself not to look away, “JJ, we need to talk about your old man.”

This time when Kiara looks back at him, JJ’s too scared to meet her eyes. He’s too scared to meet anyone’s eyes.

“Is he-” his pulse skyrockets as he stumbles back a step until the back of his foot hits one of the stools. Pope catches his arm before he can fall, but JJ still can’t meet his eye, “Is he okay?”

He looks right at Shoupe but doesn’t see him as the world threatens to tunnel. Everything around him is a blur, and the sounds stutter out into nothing. Because John B is a body lost in the abyss of the ocean. Because JJ had handed him the keys to the Phantom and sealed his fate. Because JJ had stolen the last piece of his dad’s heart and lost it.

“He’s okay,” Shoupe says as he steps forward. He edges past Kiara and settles his hand on JJ’s shoulder. The grip isn’t hard, but it does drag him back.

He blinks hard, vaguely aware of Mrs. Heyward pulling Pope and Kie from the room now. He hears their protests, but they mostly sound like background noise to him now as he’s guided fully onto the stool.

“You with me, kid?” Deputy Shoupe asks softly.

“He’s not hurt?” JJ asks again instead of answering.

Pulling out a stool and sitting across from JJ, Shoupe glances toward Heyward. The older man’s hand settles itself on the teen’s left shoulder before the deputy looks at him again, “No, kid. Your old man’s alright. But…” Shoupe hesitates for a few seconds, “Luke was pulled over last night around midnight.”

JJ’s throat bobbed on a gulp as he nodded.

“Heyward mentioned you two mighta had a fight,” his eyes linger on JJ’s eye, but the boy just looks down and lifts a shoulder. “Did you notice your dad drinking last night before he left? Or maybe you saw him takin’ something’?”

JJ chews his cheek. Remembers the clink of bottles. White powder. The broken mirror.

The ashtray.

“No,” he keeps his eyes on the floor and shakes his head slow enough not to make himself dizzy. “No, I didn’t see anythin’.”

Heyward’s hand squeezes, but JJ doesn’t look back at him.

“Did you notice him actin’ strange? Erratic, maybe? Coulda been bouncin’ off the walls a bit? Talkin’ too fast?” Shoupe asks carefully.

JJ lifts a shoulder, “Nah, nothin’ like that.”

Shoupe nods, but he doesn’t look convinced, “Well, he was picked up last night for driving under the influence. He had enough coke on ‘im to share with the whole town if he wanted.”

When JJ doesn’t react, Shoupe continues softly, “JJ, he’s in jail. And, to be honest with ya, kid, I have a feelin’ he’ll be away for a while this time.”

Flinching a little at that, JJ reaches up to scratch the back of his head. He’s stopped by the bandage, his hand shaking a little as he presses his fingers to it.

Voice softening, Shoupe asks, “You wanna tell me how you got hurt between me droppin’ you off and this mornin’?”

JJ turns his head to glance at Heyward. The older man is blurry at this angle though, so he turns back to Shoupe with a raised shoulder, “Crashed my bike.”

Shoupe nods and taps his fingertips along his leg. His eyes flick toward Heyward and then land back on JJ, “He was picked up headin’ back toward the Cut. Had a couple bags with him in the cab of the truck. Bandages. Antiseptic.” He stares right at JJ’s brow, “Those little butterfly Band-Aids that act a bit like stitches.”

Gulping, JJ meets his eye.

“You know why he woulda had all that with him?”

Tears burn JJ’s eyes as he looks down. He can still see the blur where Shoupe sits through his swollen eye though; somehow that feels worse than staring him straight on.

“No,” he finally answers as he wrings the material of his shirt between his fingers. “No, I don’t know anything ‘bout that.”

“Well,” Shoupe says quietly, “you think of anything, you let me know, okay?”

Like hell, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Luke says into his ear.

“Yeah,” he mutters instead.

“There is one other thing,” Shoupe says as he stands up. He pushes the stool back against the counter and leans onto his elbow, “As interim sheriff, it’s my job to call DCS and get them up to date on your case.”

“What? No!” JJ shoots up so fast that it takes both Heyward and Shoupe to stop him from tripping over his own feet. He grips the front of Shoupe’s shirt, but Heyward catches his hand and drags it off with a quiet, “JJ, stop.”

“You can’t! I-I can’t go to the mainland! Shoupe, please,” his lips tremble, his heart speeds, his breathing goes all quick and pained.

“I can’t lose them too.” He presses his knuckles to his chest. Dig them in. Begs himself to breathe as he pants, “P-please.”

Heyward eases him back onto the stool and half-steps in front of him, “What if we looked after him for a bit?”

“Heyward, it don’t work like that,” Shoupe says quietly. He glances at JJ over Heyward’s shoulder and sighs, “There are protocols and- and y’all don’t ever have a license.”

“And since when do y’all care about shit like that on the Cut?” Heyward asks bluntly.

He leads Shoupe away a few feet, but JJ leans toward them, fingers still pressing hard into his chest.

“The kid just lost everything. My kid just lost everything too. Come on. Don’t make ‘em lose each other too,” JJ can’t see Heyward’s face, but he hears the tone, the quiet edge in his voice. “We’ll look out for ‘em, keep him outta trouble.”

Shoupe’s blue eyes linger on JJ, “And what, the kid just lives here ‘til his old man’s out?”

Heyward lifts a shoulder diplomatically, “He’ll have a place here. And you know where else he’ll be.”

“Yeah,” Shoupe huffs a breath and rubs his fingers between his brows, “I suspect I do.”

JJ waits right there on the stool as Heyward walks Shoupe out the side door, “You don’t gotta follow through, you know.”

He bites his lip peeks at Pope’s dad, “I mean, I got a place I can stay, so…”

“You do,” Heyward says simply. He reaches up and gently settles his hand on the top of JJ’s head until the boy looks up at him with his good eye, “And if that’s where you wanna go, I won’t stop ya. But you got a place here too, kid. Besides,” Heyward shifts his hand onto JJ’s shoulder instead and squeezes, “Pope’s about to be grounded for the rest of his natural born life.”

He nods toward the living room, “Guessing Kiara’s next. You should probably see her off before her parents get here.”

JJ hesitates in the doorway and turns back. He has to turn a little further to see Heyward with his good eye, “Hey uh…thanks. Or… whatever.”

Heyward’s lips curve into the approximation of a smile before he waves JJ off, “Get on outta here kid.”

Pope takes an axe to the base of the old tree at the Chateau while JJ uses a blowtorch on one of his dad’s old prybars. Behind them, Kiara carefully constructs her memory box with pictures from the Chateau, old drawings from JJ’s bedroom, one of John B’s old bandanas, one of Sarah’s bracelets, and other little trinkets she’s kept over the years.

It’s the first time all three of them have been together since the morning after the Phantom went down. The first time JJ’s seen Kie without having to climb through her window first. The first time he’s seen Pope outside of the house or Heyward’s Seafood.

It’s the first time the Pogues have been back together without John B – without their missing piece – and his absence settles over them like a weight.

Three weeks, JJ realizes as he takes his place at Kiara’s side. Pope settles at her other side.

Three weeks he’d been half-cooped up as he healed. The stitches had come out after a week – just two, luckily – and the skin still feels raw despite the healing of the bruises and swelling. The ribs had healed easily. The split lip too.

The headaches come and go as they please, cropping up when JJ’s serving tables at the Island Club or ringing people up at Heyward’s. But the worst, the one that frustrates him, is his eye. The swelling went down after a few days of icing, but that blurry edge of his vision remains even weeks later. It eases, usually, by mid-afternoon, but his morning are spent blinking hard against the sun like that might bring the world back into its usual focus.

2003     2020

John B Routledge

P4L

JJ looks at his handiwork, at his best friend’s name memorialized right there on his favorite tree, and then raises his flask, “To John B.”

“And to Sarah,” Kie rasps as she turns her face toward him. He feels her eyes skim his brow where just a few weeks ago, he knew he’d been a mess, and he tries not to clench his jaw. It’s hard, though, being seen… being known.

His throat bobs hard as she looks at him with those wet Bambi eyes of hers. And he can’t even look at her. Can’t see the devastation there. The heartbreak. Can’t let himself feel or he’ll never be able to breathe right again.

She finally turns to Pope, and JJ sucks in the breath he’d been holding. Because that’s safer. That’s easier.

He tips his flask toward the tree and drinks deeply.

To John B.

To Sarah.

To P4L.

Together, they bury the box at the base of the tree with flowers Kie picked from her mom’s garden. It’s not enough. It’s not what they deserve.

It’s not even close to what John B deserves.

The three of them stand there until the sky goes all orange with the setting sun. Pope leaves first to help his mom with dinner. And JJ expects Kie to go too.

She surprises him, though, her fingers gripping his sleeve as her soft voice whispers, “Please don’t go home tonight?”

Home means a lot of things to JJ these days. It means here – the Chateau, John B’s bedroom, the hammock. It means Pope’s house. Sometimes, when he needs the reminder, it means the empty shack with the broken glass and dried blood and the ashtray with his initials.

And sometimes… sometimes it means a window left open, blankets pulled back, secrets spilled in the dark.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she admits as her fingers find his bracelets. She curls her fingers through them and rests her cheek on his shoulder.

JJ breathes in the scent of her orange shampoo, listens to the windchimes John B hung up last summer, and then rests his head against hers, “Leave your window open for me?”

She smiles, just a little, just enough.

“Always.”