#routledge!reader

[featherandferns]

guilty as sin?(fic - part 2/2)

jj maybank x fem!routledge!reader | read part 1 here!

content warning: mentions of sexual content; mentions of parental abuse (drug misuse, physical abuse, neglect, emotional abuse); physical violence (blood) | any questions for trigger warnings, feel free to inbox anonymously

word count: 10k.

blurb: you and JJ start a secret relationship under the radar of your half-brother, John B. But with your life in Colorado becoming more and more unavoidable, and stupid slip-ups as the two of you grow closer, it becomes harder to keep your affair secret.

Daylight brings you out of your sleep, disoriented. You grunt and try to bury yourself deeper into the sheets, hiding from the sunlight. They smell like JJ. It relaxes you like a baby soothed by its favourite blanket. But then you remember what happened, and where you are, and that it’s morning. Sitting up, you glance around the bedroom and yep, this is definitely not my room. You look down to find JJ still sleeping, his face smushed into pillow. He’s on his front, the bedsheets mostly hogged by yours truly, showing his back decorated with scratch marks. A weird sense of pride overcomes you, like you’ve marked your territory. Sighing, you relax back into the bed. There’s a dull ache between your legs and you’re slightly sticky with sweat, but neither is particularly unpleasant. After a few minutes, you decide you can’t take the quiet anymore.

You roll over and prod at JJ’s face.

“Mhm, leave me alone, it’s the weekend.”

“Wake up. I’m bored,” you say.

You keep poking until he bats your hand away. With a long exhale, he rolls onto his side and cracks open an eye.

“Hi,” you smile. It’s hard not. You feel like you’ve slept with a coat hanger in your mouth.

“Hi.”

He reaches out a hand and strokes the side of your face, tucking some hair behind your ears. There’s a sleepy smile growing on his face as he wakes up.

“Sleep okay?” he rasps, voice croaky from want of use.

“Mhm. You?”

“Like a Goddamn baby.”

With another grunt and sigh, he shifts onto his back and reaches blindly for his phone on the nightstand. He checks the time first, and then his notifications, and suddenly he jolts up in bed, wide awake.

“Your brother’s been blowing me up.”

You stomach drops. “What?”

“He’s asking if I know where you are,” JJ says, reading the texts.

“Do you think he knows I’m here?” you worry.

Suddenly the tryst of last night loses its incandescent glow. Reality is there in the morning the same way sun sheds light on all things that happen in the dark.

JJ shakes his head, eyes fixated on his screen. “No, no. He’d have come over.”

“Oh, right,” you mumble. You sit up and gnaw on one of your nails. JJ shuts off his phone and looks at you. “We gotta come up with an alibi.”

“Right. Course,” he nods.

“Um…We can just say that I slept over.”

JJ looks at you like you just suggested to commit a joint felony and skip state.

“Not that I slept over, slept over. You can say you saw shit go down with Tom, you offered to give me a ride back, I was upset and fell asleep.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I gave you the bed and I crashed on the couch, and we forgot to text him.”

“I think my phone’s dead anyway, so it’s not even a complete lie. And I did stay over here, so…”

JJ swallows. He nods and starts typing, sending the text. You both wait in pregnant silence for John B to respond. The minute it comes through, JJ reads it aloud.

“Cool. Just wanted to check she’s okay. Thanks for looking out for her.”

The sigh of relief the two of you share sounds rehearsed. As JJ types his reply, a question comes to mind. You’d spent all last night suppressing it, but now it spews out of you like word vomit.  

“Is this a bad idea?”

JJ sends the message and shuts off his phone, looking to you. “Is what a bad idea?”

“This,” you say, gesturing between the both of you. “Us.”

“No,” JJ replies, but his expression tells you otherwise. “No. ‘Sides, it’s only gonna happen the one time, right? No harm done. What John B doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“Right. Yeah, the one time,” you echo.

JJ nods. “One time.”

Thank God neither of you are on the witness stand: you don’t sound very convincing. What was supposed to be a ‘get it out of the system’ affair might have unlocked some feral part of you that can’t go unfed. You didn’t have an extensive sexual history, but JJ blew all of them and your own psyche out of the water. That isn’t the kind of thing you can just walk away from, especially when you’ll see him every day.

“Just as long as John B doesn’t find out,” you hear yourself remark.

“Yeah. He’s got enough shit going on right now; we just need to be there for him.”

You nod.

“Sides. I made him a promise.”

Frowning, you ask, “a promise?”

“When you first came back to Kildare, I sort of brought up to John B that night at the bonfire, when you went to bed early, that I thought you were kinda cute. But he got ticked off. Told me you were going through a tough time and stuff, and to stay away from you. ‘If you’re a real friend, you’ll stay away from her’, to quote.”

“Yikes,” you mumble.

JJ nods, looking down at his hands. “Yep. Pretty clear message there.”

“Yeah, you really drove it home.”

He thankfully laughs at that.

“I mean, that’s some real Romeo and Juliet shit,” you add, laughing yourself.

He shakes his head. “Shit, I hope not. Don’t really wanna stab myself.”

“No, I stab myself. You just drink poison,” you correct.

“Yeah, I’m still not thrilled about that.”

You snigger and sink back into the pillows propped against his headrest. “I mean, it could be kinda fun, sneaking around.”

JJ raises a brow, lolling his head to the side to meet your gaze. “Oh yeah?”

“Mhm. Little secret hook-ups and stuff…”

“You’re that horny, huh?”

You shove his shoulder, revelling in his laugh. He grabs your hand and presses a quick kiss to your wrist. Then he looks at you, smiles, and it’s almost like a silent agreement. This is not a one-time thing.

“Breakfast?”

“God, yes,” you sigh.

JJ’s kitchen isn’t just messy, it’s unclean. You can understand why: his dad doesn’t scream house-wife energy and JJ is hardly home. He’s also, as hard as it is to admit it, a teenage boy. In the fruit bowl there’s mouldy peaches and bananas which are black. Fruit flies are having a feast, so at least there’s some positives to the pandemonium. The fridge is barren apart from some bacon. He keeps bread in the freezer so at least that isn’t mouldy. You perch yourself on the counter, dressed in nothing but his t-shirt, and watch him cook. It’s domestic and dull and you love every moment. He serves up two bacon sandwiches and passes one to you. Stands between your legs as you eat, one of his hands taking purchase on your bare thigh.

“S’good,” you tell him through your chewing.

“Thanks. Bout as good as my cooking gets.”

“Mhm. I could live off bacon sandwiches,” you say.

JJ chuckles. “Think Kie might have something to say about that. About how pigs are killing the planet with deforestation and treated unhumanely and bla bla bla.”

“I love your passion for political issues,” you sarcastically remark. He pinches your thigh in retaliation. You laugh. It’s simple and stupid and blissful.

When the two of you are done eating, he adds your dirty dishes to the impressive stack in the sink and makes no move to clean them. You follow him back to his bedroom and the two of you get dressed. He recommends you shower back the Chateau and you take it as code for ‘our bathroom is disgusting’. Thankfully when you peed in the dark last night, you were too fucked-out to notice. Once dressed, you tame your hair with a comb in the mirror and let JJ press kisses into your neck. He’s like a koala bear: it’s impossible to keep his hands off you. How the fuck are we gonna sneak around?

“We should head back before John B gets suspicious,” you tell him, placing the comb back on his desk.

JJ nods. He looks mouth wateringly good in his muscle tee. “I’ll take you back on my bike.”

Every minute spent as a backpack on JJ’s bike, you tether yourself to him as closely as possible. Now that the barrier has been broken, everything has come flooding out. Those same feelings that you harboured back in your preteens have only grown with your age. And now he’s here, in your arms, and you don’t want to let go. As the Chateau comes into sight, you know you have to. John B is hanging in the hammock with Kie. JJ kicks out the stand and steps off, as do you, and you both walk over with a safe space between you.

“Hey! Here they are!”

“Hey!” you smile back, waving to Kiara.

“Jeez, you guys took your time this morning,” John B comments.

Before JJ can speak, you say, “yeah, I had one too many last night. Threw up and needed more sleep.”

“Welcome to Kildare,” Kie grins. You laugh and give a mock bow as if you’d passed some unspoken initiation.

“Right, well, I gotta head out. Helping Lou out with some jobs today,” JJ declares.

“Alright man. See you round,” Kiara says, her attention already back on her phone.

“And thanks for taking care of my little sister,” John B adds.

JJ looks down at you. There’s a playful glint in his eyes as he says. “Yeah, no problem. It was fun.”

Asshole.

Then he’s wandering off to his bike, leaving you stranded, having to act as if last night never happened. You head into the house and work on your watercolours. All you can seem to notice is that the colours of the marsh water are the same as JJ’s eyes. The same eyes you stared into as he came apart underneath you.

Shit. This is going to suck.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Sneaking around was…doable. If it weren’t for the Friday nights, you weren’t sure you’d be able to cope. Even then, the question grew more and more with each clandestine meeting. How long can this last?

Friday nights were spent at JJ’s house. You told John B that you were crashing at Lizzy’s, and JJ made up some bullshit excuse to get out of hanging out with the Pogues on Friday evenings: I gotta help my dad with this thing…The nights were spent tangled in bedsheets, pillow talk breaking up the unsated touching that made up for lost time. Your body is still recovering from the buzz of an orgasm when your phone starts to buzz on the nightstand.

JJ leans over and picks it up. His chest is damp with sweat from the nightly antics. He rolls back over to you and holds out your phone.

“Your mom’s calling.”

“Let it go to voicemail,” you tell him, not sparing it a glance.

JJ does as you say and when the ‘missed call’ notification appears, it’s accompanied by ‘(23)’.

“You ignoring her or something?” JJ asks, alluding to the pile-up of missed calls.

You look to him and shrug. “Or something.”

“What’s going on with all that, anyway?”

Your intestines twist uncomfortably. “What’d you mean?”

“I mean, why aren’t you in Colorado for the summer?”

“I told you. I wanted a change of scenery,” you say.

JJ laughs, unconvinced. “Bull-shit. You haven’t come back here in years, and you’re closer to L.A. than North Carolina. Why not go there? It’s warmer.”

“Hardly,” you say. “And it’s full of fake people. Influencers and tourists. And the traffic is—”

“Think we’re getting off topic?” JJ wonders, raising a brow.

You take your phone off him and clear the notifications, as if washing away your mom’s presence in your life entirely. Sitting up, you shove your hair off your face and dump your phone on the windowsill.

“What does it matter, JJ? So I wanted to come to Kildare again – who cares?”

“I care,” JJ replies. He sits up too.

You snort, irritation tickling at your throat. “What? Cause we’re fucking you think you deserve an explanation?”

He frowns. “Don’t say that.”

“Say what?”

“‘Fucking’. Like this thing between us isn’t deeper than that,” he argues.

Swallowing your anger, you sigh and close your eyes. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I’m just…It’s complicated.”

When you open your eyes, they land on your phone. The screen lights up as if on cue, and you know it’s your mom chasing you down for the millionth time. You’re not sure why keep avoiding her, like the problem might go away if you ignore it. It’s like a tumour: leaving it be will only cause it to fester and grow, and be all the more awful to deal with later. But facing the truth is so painfully hard. You lean over and turn your phone off completely.

“I thought John B already told you about it all, anyway,” you quietly say.

“Not really. Only that you were going through a tough time,” JJ replies.

Sighing, you lean back into the pillows.

Finding a small smile, you sardonically ask,  “alright. You wanna hear my sob story?”

JJ sniggers but it isn’t mean. He shuffles closer so you can rest against him. His body was always more comfortable than his bedding anyway. That is his silent answer: yes.

“My mom got in this accident at work two years ago. They put her on Tylenol but it didn’t help, so they switched her to OxyContin. She got hooked pretty quick and started dating this dirt-bag Rick. He was her dealer and kept her supplied, cause most of the pharmacies cut her off when it was pretty obvious she was abusing,” you say.

It feels easier to get it all out in one go, like you might lose nerve if you don’t just commit.

“Rick’s a piece of shit. He doesn’t like me for whatever reason so he chips away at me. Just dumb stuff that probably doesn’t even sound that bad out of context, but when you’re in it, and someone’s picking away at you…It gets to you.”

JJ starts to stroke at your hairline. It prompts you to continue.

“Anyway, he started stealing my shit to sell, to keep him and my mom going. She couldn’t keep a job held down much so I started working to help out with bills. But then Rick started stealing my paychecks and spending my money on useless crap or drugs. I got angry and confronted them and…And my mom took his side, over me.”

You sigh and meddle with your fingers. The tears start to sting but you’re so tired of wallowing over it. You’ve wasted too much energy on her.

“I don’t think it’s a newsflash that she’s not the best mom. I mean, she left me with Big John for four years, dragged me across the country and never contacted her only son again. But it just hurt, having the person that brought you into the world pick a stranger over you, y’know?”

You eventually feel JJ nod against you. It’s not a feeling you have to describe for him; he knows more than anyone to feel pain at the hand of someone who’s supposed to love you unconditionally.

“Rick got ticked off that I tried to go against him, so he got meaner. Left my room a mess, made me do the chores, dumb petty crap like that. The worst thing was when he found my paintings though. He tore them up and ruined them. Scribbled over them. And I know they’re just drawings, and I know this is going to sound dumb,” you warn, laughing self-deprecatingly. “But they were my escape. I hated it there, but I could draw these worlds and feel like they were just for me, and I could exist there instead. And even that was taken from me.”

Images that you repressed flash back into your mind. The enchanting gardens and psychedelic landscapes mottled with black ink, indistinguishable. The way it felt like your heart might fall out of your chest and shatter on your bedroom floor when you found scraps of your paintings tossed around your room.

You clear the memories with a shallow sigh.

“Anyway…” you continue. “I got lonely. Working and all the crap at home made me miss a lot of school. I didn’t have many friends anyway. The thought of spending a whole summer there was just…I couldn’t do it. So I hit up John B and boom. Here I am.”

JJ stares at you, digesting the story. It’s certainly not as chirpy and simple as ‘I wanted a change of scenery.’ It’s scary to strip yourself down to your most vulnerable core. Different to being naked and exposed during sex: almost worse.

“And you’re gonna go back there? When the summer ends?” JJ asks.

You look up at him. You can’t pick-out one emotion on his face, there’s so many. Anger, sadness, vengeance, concern…

“Yes. No. I don’t…” you cut yourself off with a sigh, shaking your head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I do,” JJ is quick to return. “You should stay here.”

“What? And burden John B forever?”

“Sure. Why not?”

You laugh. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Why isn’t it?”

“Cause you’re forgetting that I’m a minor, JJ. And that Big John is missing, and John B is living alone illegally. If I try to transfer here and get emancipated from my mom, it’ll just open that whole can of worms and could do more damage than good. Me and John B could both end up in foster care, and I might still get sent back to Colorado either way.”

JJ wasn’t expecting such a thorough response. It was laughable that he thought you hadn’t debated moving back to Kildare. That was your original plan, until you contacted John B and found out his dad was gone. A summer escape felt like the best option, like a breath of fresh air away from your stifling homelife, but it wasn’t a long-term fix. Life was too convoluted for that.

“Why does it have to be legal? Just run away,” JJ eventually says.

You quirk a brow tiredly. “Run away? What, like I’m ten years old and didn’t get my choice on the TV?”

“I’m serious,” JJ sighs. He shifts, kneeling before you, holding your gaze. “Fuck the government and whatever. Just stay here. Nobody’s gonna rat you out.”

“What about school?”

“Pope can tutor you,” he says.

“And a place to stay?”

“John B’s room and my place. Hell, maybe Kiara’s folks have a spare room too.”

Your heart melts a little. He’s so determined.

Smiling sadly, you stroke his face lovingly. You don’t want to snuff out his last slither of hope. So, you gently tell him, “Maybe.”

“Yeah? You’ll think about it?” he hopefully asks.

You nod, heart clenching with the lie. “Yeah. I’ll think about it.”

You’re glad he kisses you then, because you can’t bare looking at him a moment longer knowing that in a month, you’ll be gone.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Hurricane Agatha was a bitch. You’re amazed you managed to sleep through as much of the storm as you did.

You venture out your bedroom to find JJ leant against the doorframe of the porch. He’s already drinking a beer, early in the morning. You spot John B out in the backyard. He’s moving fallen branches out the way to recover the H.M.S. Pogue, back facing you. Breezing past JJ, you take advantage of John B’s distraction, slapping your unofficial boyfriend on the butt. He cusses, pinching your own as you head down the stairs. It’s the most you’ve been able to touch each other in over twenty-four hours without raising suspicion. You join your brother in ridding the boat of leaves and sticks. JJ wanders over.

“Whatcha thinking?” he asks.

“I’m thinkin’ that storm surge pushed all the crabs out on the marsh maze. All those drum are gonna chase the crab.” As he replies, John B clambers into the boat.

“What about the DCS? Wasn’t that today?” JJ asks.

John B had tried to keep as much of the DCS nightmare out of your line of sight, but you weren’t stupid. It certainly helped that you were sleeping with his best friend, a guy infamous for having loose lips. To say that John B getting found out would do some damage to yourself would be an understatement.

“Nah, they’re not getting on a ferry,” John B replies.

You look to JJ. He’s leant forward on the nose of the boat. His slender frame and well-kept body is frustratingly attractive when you can do nothing about it.

“Come on, think about it. It’s God telling us to fish!” John B says.

JJ shrugs. “I mean, I’m down. Just gotta take a leak first.”

John B says your name, drawing your attention back to him. “You coming?”

“Think I’m gonna stay in. Paint.”

JJ clears his throat, mumbling out ‘boring’ as he does. You mirthfully roll your eyes. Tapping the boat in farewell, you give a small wave.

“Have fun!”

There’s the crunch and snapping of twigs and leaves as JJ follows you back to the Chateau. You wander to the bathroom and retrieve your toothbrush. JJ joins you, shrugging his shorts down to pee. There’s no need to fill the domesticated sounds of living with chatter. Outside, John B continues to clear the boat. You spit into the sink and step aside so JJ can wash his hands. He brushes some of your hair off your shoulder when he’s done, leaning down to press a kiss on the spot where your neck becomes your shoulder. His hair tickles your skin and you laugh around your toothbrush.

“You sure you don’t wanna come today?” he asks, looping his arms around your waist.

You nod and spit into the sink again. His eyes meet yours through the reflection of the bathroom mirror. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve got some ideas I’ve wanted to get down for a while now, but I’ve been a little distracted.”

He grins at the insinuation.

“You looking forward to your birthday next week?” he asks.

“Mhm,” you hum, toothbrush back in mouth.

“You know what you want?”

“Mm-mm,” you say, shaking your head.

His grip tightens ever so slightly around you. “I’ve got a few ideas…”

One of his hands comes to hand on the middle of your upper back, coaxing you to lean forward over the bathroom sink. With that, he crudely pretends to take you from behind. Rolling your eyes, you wriggle out of his hold.

“You’re disgusting,” you say with a mouth full of toothpaste.

“You love it,” he quips. “Alright. I’ll see you later.”

“See ya.”

JJ plants another kiss to your bare shoulder, blows a raspberry, and laughs as you swat him away. There’s the open and shut of the front door, his energetic chatter with your brother, grunts and groans as they move the boat to the water, and then the sound of JJ’s whoops and hollers as they set off into the town. It’s quiet in the house without them there. You find JJ’s sweatshirt on the pull-out and shrug it on. The smell calms your soul. Taking purchase at the dining table, you retrieve your phone to find the service is out.

“Let’s see you try and call me now,” you mumble to your device, indirectly talking to your mother.

The watercolours you’ve accumulated over the past  few weeks of living in Kildare could be made into a tourist guide. Whilst the gang helped at Heyward’s, you painted the shop front during a lemonade break; days spent on the H.M.S Pogue gave you drawings of the Marsh; evenings on the waterfront let you capture the beauty of the ocean. The bonfire and the hammock; JJ’s surf shack; your claimed bedroom in the Chateau…The more you painted, the more you fell in love with Kildare, and the more you wanted to stay. You refill your mason jar with fresh water and begin to work on your latest picture. It’s of JJ’s bedroom. You’ve spent enough time in there to recall it from memory. It feels like your corner of the world, safe away from prying eyes.

As the day stretches on, the group returns to the Chateau. You hear their loud chatter as they approach the house, and it seems to merge into some kind of argument when they get to the porch. Itabruptly ends after your brother announces: just let me think. You ditch your paint, hiding the artwork under less incriminating pieces, and head out to join them. JJ sits in the red armchair you’re so fond of, flicking his lighter. Kiara is on the sofa and you take the spot beside her, frowning at your brother’s face; he’s deep in thought.

“What’s going on?” you ask. You hope it isn’t the DCS.

Before anyone can reply, Pope comes racing up the stairs.

“Okay, so um, we didn’t see anything. We don’t know anything.”

You frown deepens. “What?”

He drops down onto the spot beside you, ignoring your question. “We need to have total and complete amnesia,” he tells John B.

“Actually, Pope’s right for once,” JJ says from the armchair. You all look over to him. “See, I agree with you sometimes.”

He gets to his feet, wandering towards John B. “Deny, deny, deny.”

“Guys, we can’t keep that money,” Kiara declares.

“Okay, not all of us can afford unlimited data plans, Kiara,” JJ tells her.

Now you’re annoyed. “What money? What the hell is going on!?”

“We found a boat,” John B replies.

“There was a key in the boat,” Pope continues.

“The key unlocked a motel room door,” Kie says.

“And we found a shit ton of money. And a gun,” JJ finishes.

“A gun?” you gape. He nods.

“Which he stole,” Kie points out.

Your mouth hangs open even more, if that is somehow possible. “You kept the gun, JJ?”

“It was a good gun,” he defends, throwing his arms up.

Idiot. You drop your head into your hands. “I leave you guys alone for one day…”

“I was trying to be the voice of reason!” Pope tells you, defending himself.

You shake your head. “Wait? Whose money and gun was it? Whose boat was it?”

“Scooter Grubbs,” John B replies.

“We have to pass the money on to Lana Grubbs, otherwise it’s bad karma,” Kiara says.

“Bad karma to be implicated in a felony, too,” Pope chimes in.

Felony? Yeah, you’re already pushing it staying with your half-brother, unsupervised in a state different to your mom who doesn’t exactly know where you’ve gone…

“We gotta go dark,” he finishes.

JJ paces past the three of you, saying, “if that means we get to keep the money, then I agree.”

As he comes to a stop in front of the porch entryway, John B seems to return to the room, out of his thoughts. He pats JJ’s bare shoulder. “I don’t agree.”

“What? Why?”

“Just think about it,” John B says. “This is Scotter Grubbs we’re talking about. Alright? Same dude that’s buying individual cigarettes at the Porthole. Shit, one time I saw this dude begging for change in the Save-A-Lot parking lot because he needed gas.”

All of you watch John B’s spiel. “We’re talking about a dirtbag marina rat who’s never had more than forty bucks in his pocket, and all of a sudden he’s got a Grady-White? Just sayin’.”

“Wait? What’s a Grady-White?” you ask, looking to JJ. He fills you in. Short answer: a very expensive boat.

“Well, I vote we don’t keep the money,” Pope says.

“I vote we keep it,” JJ disputes, lifting his hand. He looks to John B but he doesn’t respond. Then he looks to you, and you crumble under the gaze, shrugging.

“I don’t know,” you mumble.

“Let’s take the day to think about it,” Kiara says.

And that you do. You all venture onto the jetty to fish. You stand beside JJ as he waits for something to bite, fighting the urge to lean against him. John B continues chattering away to Pope, painting the scene of a drug smuggling industry. Him and JJ agree that if he was ‘straight smuggling’, there’s probably more contraband in the boat wreck. Somehow you all wind up in your bedroom, and Pope finally relents. He agrees to rummage the wreck for contraband but ensures to underline how stupid he thinks it is.

“Right, well, stupid things have good outcomes all the time,” JJ philosophises. You watch him fan out the money.

You can’t help but feel the saying can relate to your own secret romance. Is it a stupid, remarkably bad idea to keep fooling around? Yes. Is the temporary outcome good? Hell yes.

“All we need to do is figure out a way to get into the cargo hold of that wreck. Until then, we just lay low. Act normal.”

“Right, and how exactly do we do that?” Pope asks from your bed.

“Keggar?” Kie offers.

Everyone shares a look. You sigh. “I can’t. I gotta go to work.”

“The restaurants probably a wreck. Just skip,” JJ responsibly says.

You shake your head. “Well, I gotta help out even if it is. Lizzy’s probably gonna be there anyway.”

“You gonna want a lift back later?” John B wonders.

You look to JJ. He’s already watching you. “Nah, I’ll just sleep at Lizzy’s.”

He knows the code. Gives the vaguest, barely-there nod in confirmation. The group gets up, everyone filtering out the bedroom door into the main of the house, chattering about what drinks to get and how to round everyone up with the cell towers down. JJ lingers in your room a moment longer, keeping you there with a gentle grab of your wrist.

“What time should I come get you?”

“Ten,” you reply. “Outside the restaurant.”

“You got it,” he nods.

A chaste kiss and then the two of you let go of one another, joining the others in the main room. Your heart is hammering so loud you’re surprised nobody can hear it. It felt like you were playing with fire, kissing so close to the others. And fire is known for one thing: it burns.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

There’s a pattern seen in serial killers. After the first five or so murders, they start to slack. Cover their tracks less, take larger risks. You and JJ weren’t out killing anyone – despite his reckless ordeal at the keggar which you later heard about through the grapevine – but you weren’t being as vigilant as when it first started out. The two of you had started to get sloppy.

Now two weeks into the illicit affair, you could hardly recall the last full truth you told John B. Your alibis were harder to keep track of. Your excuses started to weaken. And your ability to keep your hands off JJ became near to impossible. Even if it was a fleeting touch, a loving stroke of his tousled hair…It was almost reflexive. One time Kiara caught you wipe something off his cheek. The moment you saw her in your peripheral, you acted as though you were messing with him, sticking a finger in his ear to get a reaction. But she saw it, and it was a stupid thing to do.

In JJ’s bedroom, there’s a collection of your things. They’ve accumulated over time the way rocks build up on a shoreline: slow and steady, until they’re everywhere. Hair ties scattered along the desk, skincare on his bedside table, spare clothes and underwear in his closet, a toothbrush in the bathroom (that he reluctantly cleaned up). The biggest tell was your art supplies. If John B were to walk in, there’d be questions. JJ wasn’t exactly known as a monogamous guy or an artist. Your brother wasn’t stupid: you reckon he could put the pieces together pretty damn quickly. But it was hard to find it in you to care, when staying with JJ on Friday nights felt like you were playing house.

You’d asked to help him shave the other day after he gave you beard burn on the inside of your thighs. That’s how you find yourself sat on the countertop, precariously balanced on the edge of the bathroom sink, with a razor in hand. He’s stood between your legs, running a finger up and down your thigh, and watching you as you work. Every now and then you clean the razor of hairs in the sink, filled with water. One of your hands cradles his jawline, the other delicately tracing the razor down his cheek, along the apex of his neck.

“Two more days and you’ve caught up with us,” JJ says, referring to your upcoming birthday.

You smile, looking up to meet his gaze. God, you could drawn in his eyes, drift away in them. “About damn time.”

“I think Kie’s made you a cake.”

“That’s sweet,” you hum.

“Your mom gonna call?”

“Probably,” you sigh.

They’d fixed the cell towers now. An influx of texts came through, namely asking if you were safe after the hurricane. You felt the need to say that you were and did so with a simple ‘thumbs up’ reaction. That was the most you’d said to her in a month and a half.

JJ distracts you from thoughts of your mom by tracing the scar lining your elbow. The same scar that helped JJ place a name to your face after so long apart. “Remember when you broke this,” he says.

“Same. Think it’s the most pain I’ve ever been in,” you snort.

“You wouldn’t stop crying. I had to kiss you on the forehead just to get you to shut up,” he sniggers.

JJ and John B had been climbing a tree and you didn’t want to be left behind. You also wanted to impress a certain blonde-haired boy. But you lost your footing and fell, landing at a wonky angle. It was embarrassing, and painful, and embarrassing a couple more times.

“Yeah, I remember that too,” you say, smiling. “I had the biggest crush on you. I thought I was going to faint when you did it.”

“You had a crush on me?” JJ asks.

You pull away enough for him to see your face. It perfectly says really, man? He laughs. You resume your previous position.

“You were always cute.”

“Yeah right. You always saw me as John B’s little sister.”

“Well, yeah. But you were sweet. You used to bring me Hershey kisses.”

Your face feels burning hot. God, you were so subtle back then. “Stop talking or I’m gonna nick you by accident.”

He obliges, his shit-eating grin slowly fading as you work. The satisfying scrape of the razor ridding JJ of facial hair comes to an end with one final swipe. You clean the razor, wipe him clean with a wet flannel, and plant a kiss to his lips.

“Done.”

He steps around you and leans forward, inspecting himself in the mirror. He strokes at his skin, sucking his teeth with an impressed expression.

“Pretty good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You finally gonna quit complaining about my beard making you itchy?”

“Look! It’s left a mark!” you defend, opening your legs and gesturing to the inside of your thighs.

JJ grins. He slides his large palms along the inside of your quads, fingers spanning out across the skin.

“Wanna give the new shave a test run?” he asks.

He sinks to his knees. Your smile grows, heart trilling with erotic excitement. Your fingers loop through his golden hair, nails scratching at his scalp. He places two kisses to your thigh, working towards your core. Fingers hooking onto the waistband of your shorts, you hoist yourself up so he can begin to wiggle them down your legs.

The sound of the front door slamming shut has you both freezing.

Luke Maybank clears his throat, walking into the house. You pull your shorts back up, heart loud in your throat. JJ gets to his feet and pulls the plug from the sink, draining it of water. Then you both stare wide eyed into the living room of the house. Luke collapses on the couch with a sigh, beer bottle in hand. JJ helps you down from the counter, quietly placing you on the floor. You’re not sure what to do. What the best approach is. What kind of mood Luke is in. Following JJ’s lead seems the best way to go. He looks away from the room to you. His gaze is steely and determined.

“Go into my room and go out the window,” JJ instructs in a whisper.  

You nod and don’t argue. Slowly, you slink down the corridor and slide into JJ’s bedroom. You push the door closed gently, hoping for it click into the frame without drawing attention.

“JJ? That you?” Luke calls.

Cringing, you shut your eyes, hang your head, and press it against the door. You hear JJ pass the bedroom.

“Y-yeah, I’m here.”

“Thought you were at Routledge’s house,” Luke says. His voice is gruff and reminds you of sandpaper.

“Nah. Not tonight,” JJ replies. He doesn’t sound like his usual self: carefree and jovial. No, he sounds guarded. On edge, like he’s working with a wild animal, unsure of how it may react. “Thought you were out tonight too.”

“What? I can’t come back to my own home whenever I want?”

“No, course. Course you can,” JJ says.

You don’t want to leave him alone with his dad, but you know staying is risky. If Luke finds you whilst he’s in a rage, it might make things worse. He might lash out at JJ, or worse, he might turn on you. So, you slink across the room and step onto JJ’s desk, using his chair as a boost. The window slides open with little effort and you hook a leg over. The other joins it and you dangle a moment, looking down at where to land. It’s a drop about the same height as you. Bracing yourself, you bend your knees as you hit the grass. Another glance is spared to the house. It’s quiet: no shouting or fighting. Sighing, feeling as if you’re betraying JJ somehow, you begin to walk home.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

As you round the corridor into the living room, your heart sinks in disappointment when you don’t find JJ asleep out on the pull-out. Instead, the bed is half-made and abandoned. You haven’t seen JJ since you snuck out of his house last Friday. Sighing, you turn into the kitchen and open the fridge. A few gulps of orange juice out of the carton count as your breakfast. Looking to the calendar stuck to the fridge with a magnet, you point on today’s date.

“Happy birthday, me,” you mumble.

A pair of arms grab you from behind, picking you up off the floor. You yelp out in surprise.

“Happy birthday!” John B cheers.

Laughing, you let him shake you before returning you safely to the floor. Turning around, you find John B digging about in his short pockets. He retrieves a small, wrapped package and hands it to you.

“Happy sweet seventeenth.”

“The big one-seven,” you reply, thanking him.

You uncover a small pendant necklace made of sterling silver. It’s shaped like the North Carolina state. Lips moving, you give a small breath of admiration, stunned at its simple beauty.

“You like it?” he checks. You get the sense that he doesn’t buy a lot of jewellery. Looking up, you feel tears sting at your eyes. Throwing your arms around your older brother’s shoulders, you hug him.

“I love it. Thank you.”

“Course. I figured that way you always have a piece of Kildare with you,” John B says.

It’s a bittersweet sentiment. There’s only a month left of your stay in Kildare. Colorado and your life there looms like a storm cloud in the future, warning of an unavoidable downpour.

You pass the necklace to him. “Will you?”

As you turn, pulling your hair up and out the way, John B loops the necklace around your neck. When its secured, you drop your hair and turn back to him.

“How do I look?”

“Like a Pogue,” he grins.

You squeeze him in another hug before letting him grab some breakfast.

JJ doesn’t answer his phone. He doesn’t reply to texts or pick up calls. It’s frustrating as hell. You keep checking your phone as you shower, as you dress and as you do your make-up. As you finish putting on mascara, it starts to buzz. You don’t even check the caller ID: you just answer.

“Hello?”

“Oh, so you are alive.”

Mom.

You can’t speak. Can’t find enough air in your lungs to formulate words. Even if you could, nothing comes to mind. Nothing.

“Hello? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” you manage out.

“Well I guess I should say happy birthday.”

It’s incredible how such a sweet statement sounds bitter on her tongue.

“Thanks,” you reply.

“So, I’m guessing you must have been pretty busy this summer. That’s the only way to explain the radio silence since you left,” she says.

“Mom, I—”

“I’m talking now. Not you.”

You swallow. Thank God you skipped breakfast: you feel sick to your stomach.

“When are you coming back home?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” She laughs. “Well, you have to come back sometime.”

“Says who?” you snap.

There’s a tense silence. “Says me.”

You don’t speak. Suddenly, JJ’s stupid idea of running away seems incredible smart.

“I’m staying in Kildare for at least another month,” you tell her.

“At least?”

“Yes. At least.”

“And then what? You’re going to become a nomad? Hitchhike around the country?”

“And then…Then it’s none of your concern. It won’t be your problem; it’ll be mine.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” your mom says, tone sharp like broken glass. “You’re coming home the minute the summer ends.”

Your patience twists into something dark and unfamiliar. Rage clouds your vision and your mind.

“Home? Is that what you call that place? Because Colorado hasn’t felt like home to me ever, mom. Ever.”

“You’re making a big thing—”

“No, I’m not,” you snap. Getting to your feet, you begin to pace the room. “You don’t even want me there! You just want my money. You don’t want me. You don’t even pay attention to me!”

“I’m busy trying to keep us alive,” you mom argues.

“Alive? Is that what you call it?” You can’t help but laugh. “If that’s ‘alive’, mom, then I don’t want it.”

“Just…Look, we’re just saying things, alright? You can come home, and we can talk, and we can work things out,” she says, sounding more human.

But you can’t believe it. Can’t trust it. It’s like a glass that’s been broken over and over again. You can glue it together, keeping most of the pieces in place, but it’ll never be as beautiful as it was before. Your mom is forever tainted in your mind. The damage is already done.

Pressing your eyes shut, you take a deep breath. “I’m staying here, mom.”

She begins to say your name, but you cut her off.

“I’m staying in Kildare. I’m staying here with John B, and JJ, and Kiara. They’re taking care of me. I’m okay. I’m eating, and I’m earning money, and I’m safe. But I can’t come back to Colorado. Not until Rick leaves…”

You feel your lower lip tremble.

“And not until you get clean.”

She’s silent for a minute. A long, long minute.

“And what if I don’t want you to stay in Kildare?” she asks. Her voice is quiet when she says it, like she’s powerless. And maybe she is.

It doesn’t feel good when you reply, “then I’ll report you and Rick to the cops, for child neglect and drug dealing.”

When people play chess, there’s a certain moment that the game is won. Check and mate. It’s a strategy game. You feel the moment your mom realises she’s lost. Your final piece takes position, and she’s rendered useless. She can either surrender - and let you stay in Kildare without complaint or contest - or force your hand to knock her off the board with a quick phone call to the police.

“And you’re safe?” she whispers.

Your heart splinters. It wasn’t her fault she got addicted, but it was her fault that she wasn’t there for you when you needed her most. They say time heals all wounds and you pray that to be true.

“I’m safe,” you assure her, voice wavering.

She doesn’t speak for a few seconds.

Then, quietly, she says, “well, happy birthday. Just…don’t ignore me like that again. I need to know that you’re okay.”

You nod. The tears start to fall and you press your lips together. “Okay, mom. I’ll text you. I promise.”

Through a shaky breath, you feel the three words form on your tongue. Three words that you haven’t said to her since you left North Carolina. But before they can pass through your lips, she clicks off the line without another word. You let out a pained sob. It’s so strange to get everything you ever wanted, and nothing that you wanted at all.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Your birthday passes by in a blink.

After the phone call with your mom, you sobbed for an hour. John B came knocking and held you through it, and when you asked if it was okay for you stay for the foreseeable future, he seemed more than ecstatic. All we have is each other, now. There’s something strangely tethering about trauma.

Pope and Kiara came around in the early afternoon. She’d made the most incredible birthday cake. Sage green buttercream frosting with edible flowers arranged around the rim. In the centre it had 17 written in white icing. They sang happy birthday and lit the candles, and as you blew them out, you wished for JJ to show up. Apparently, nobody had heard from him lately. It filled your stomach with led.

After asking what you wanted to do, the four of you relaxed in the backyard. It was an excuse to drink and listen to music. Pope discussed the latest book he read with you as you rocked in the hammock. John B began to talk about the Royal Merchant. He’d seemingly become more and more enthralled in the shipwreck. Whilst you’d been at work, covering shifts for people affected by the hurricane, they’d been pursuing the whole Grady-white shipwreck. Turns out, it was all connected to the royal merchant and Big John. You weren’t sure how you felt about that revelation. The group also seemed to be dubious. So, when Kie fell into a discussion about the treasure hunt with your older brother, you happily tuned it out.

Around seven, Kie and Pope left. John B seemed pretty exhausted so he said he was going to get an early night. You agreed and trudged into your room, but sleep wouldn’t come no matter how drained you felt. As per routine, at ten, you slip into your crocs and head into the living room, sights set on the porch. You stop short. The porch light filters into the main bulk of the room.

“JJ,” you whisper to yourself.

Walking out, opening the door, you find him on the couch. For once, he’s facing the doorway. He looks up from his lighter that he’s been messing with and meets your gaze. At the sight of his lips twitching up at the corners, you break into a smile and rush over. Practically wrestle him into a hug. He laughs, wrapping his arms around you. The way he holds you feel holy. Two days apart and you felt like you were having withdrawal.

“Happy to see me?”

“Where the hell have you been?” you ask into his t-shirt.

He pulls away. You sit on his lap, looking down at him, surveying his face for injuries.

“I got roped into some shit with my dad,” he says.

“He didn’t…”

You can’t bring yourself to ask, but your hand outstretching, tracing his features for some sign of pain, finishes the question.

He shakes his head, taking your hand from his face to intertwine it with his own.

“No, no. Just had to keep him busy, really. Helped out at the harbour and shit. Dropped my phone in the water like a dumbass.”

Ah. That explains the radio silence.

JJ smiles up at you. “Anyway. I’ve back now.”

“Good,” you say. “I missed you.”

“Missed you too,” he mumbles.

One of his hands reaches up to play with a strand of your hair. He lets it go, it falls into the mess atop of your head, and he traces his fingers down your body before resting at your hip. All the while, JJ stares at you, taking you in like he’s taking in an eclipse. Like you’re something that deserves to be admired.

“Happy birthday,” he says.

You smile, bright like a supernova. “Thanks.”

“Good day?”

You’re not sure how to tell him about the greatest gift of all: your mom letting you stay in Kildare. So, you just nod dumbly. JJ picks the pendent of your necklace off your skin, inspecting it.

“Who got you this? It’s pretty.”

“My mistress,” you joke.

He rolls his eyes.

“John B.”

“It’s pretty,” he repeats, letting it sit against your skin once more. He lets his touch linger against your sternum. God, you missed him. “Kie’s cake good?”

“Mhm. There’s some left in the kitchen. I’ll get us some,” you say.

You move to climb off him to retrieve a couple of slices but JJ grabs at your hips, keeping you in place and capturing your attention once more.

“Gotta give you your gift first.”

JJ leans down to retrieve your present from under the sofa where he’s stashed it. He hands it to you, a brown paper parcel finished with garden string, with a foreign nervous smile on his face.

“I hope they’re the right ones.”

Confused by what he might mean, you begin to open it. The brown paper crinkles in your hands as you unwrap your present. A small, elated gasp falls out your mouth as you lay your eyes on a set of Winsor and Newton watercolour paints. You trace a finger over the silver tin as if to prove you aren’t hallucinating.

“You like ‘em?”

“Yes,” you whisper.

Winsor and Newton paints. The worlds that you can illustrate flash through your mind, igniting your imagination in ways that you haven’t experienced for years. You feel a quivering smile, overwhelmed with emotion for the paints and for the boy who bestowed them upon you, and look up. He’s smiling, watching you, and you lean forward to wrap your arms around his neck.

“I love them. Thank you, JJ.”

His arms wrap safely around your middle, pulling you against him in the embrace. You move your lips to his, sighing as you finally reconnect through the kiss. When you break apart, only a hair’s width between your mouth and his, you feel those same words from earlier today fly up and through you.

“I love you.”

You say it quiet and private, like a prayer.

His eyes falter to meet your own. There’s a nervous breath as he takes in your declaration.

“I love you too,” he breathes.

As you kiss, you feel your heart melt into liquid gold. For once in your life, things feel as though they’re falling into place. The rough brush of JJ’s tongue prying into your mouth has you tilting your head. You let him imbibe you. You treasure the way his rough hands, worn from work on the harbour, slip under your t-shirt. His touch is cold against your burning skin.

“What the fuck.”

Fool’s gold.

You startle at the interruption, head spinning to find John B stood on the porch. He’s gaping at you and JJ like he may have just seen a ghost. Disbelief and horror shadow his face.

“John…” you choke.

His eyes flit from you, from your lips, to JJ. To his hand still under your shirt. To his hand planted securely on your hip. To how you’re sat in his lap. To your own tethered into his hair. To your own wrapped lovingly around his neck. It’s as incriminating as finding a murderer holding the knife above a dead body. No excuse, no justification. Nothing. No alibi can save you now. It’s a clean and shut case.

“What the fuck is going on?” John B mutters. His thoughts seem to be catching up with him second by second. His chest begins to rise, anger flaring his veins, and his expression hardens. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Look, man, just—”

But your brother strides over and practically rips JJ out from under you. You hear yourself scream out as he shoves JJ onto the porch floor, landing a hard punch into his jaw. JJ takes the hits, doesn’t even try to fight back, only fumbles to try and push John B off him. You start to scream like a hysteric. Shriek for him to stop. Beg for him to. You grapple at John B’s shirt, trying to pull him off your boyfriend, as he lands hit after hit. The sound is sickening, of flesh hitting flesh. You feel tears fall down your cheeks in panic as he refuses to let up.

“Get off him, John!” you screech.

Finally, you pull him off. The two of you tumble to the floor.

JJ turns onto his side, coughing and spitting out blood, groaning in pain. He lifts a finger to dap at his lip, wincing as he draws it back to find it red. You go to help him, to check that there’s no lasting damage, but John B holds you back. He moves towards his best friend once more but you grab at his shirt.

“John, please don’t,” you blubber, trying to keep him away.

He swallows thickly and closes his eyes, taking a slow, measured breath to try and calm his rage. Then, he turns his head to you. The betrayal in his eyes makes you sob.

The sound of JJ’s groans has the attention back on him. He’s struggling to his knees, a hand coming to cradle his jaw.

“Shit, JB. You can throw a hell of a punch,” JJ mutters. He spits out more blood. It makes you cringe.

JJ gets to his feet. John B follows. You can’t find strength to get off the floor. Your eyes are transfixed for a while on the pool of blood where JJ laid.

“You promised me,” John B seethes.

You look up and finally muster the courage to stand. You watch as JJ looks to you. Can see how he wants to grab you and console you just like he used to when you were a child. Just like he did when you fell out of the tree. But his better judgement makes him decide against it.

“It’s not what it looks like, alright?” JJ tries, voice steady.

“Not what it looks like? What? You groping my little sister isn’t what it looks like?” John B barks.

JJ scowls. “I wasn’t groping her. And she’s hardly your little sister. You’re less than a year older than her!”

That pisses your brother off more. He takes a step towards JJ but you reach an arm out, stopping him.

“She’s vulnerable, JJ.”

You frown. Offense stings in your heart. Does he really think you so defenceless? So incapable of judging others for yourself?

“She’s seventeen, John B. She can make her own choices without you making them for her,” JJ argues. “She knows what’s in her best interest.”

“Oh? And you’re her best interest?” John B scoffs.

JJ’s gaze darkens. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

No. No, this is not helping. It’s only making matters worse.

“You know what I mean! You fuck a new girl every other week! You can’t keep your fingers off other people’s shit, you lie like you’ve been doing it since day one—”

“John-”

Your quiet plea goes ignored. John B takes another challenging step towards JJ. You can’t hold him back. He’s stronger than you. They both are.

“You’re gonna end up in a cell just like your dad and leave my sister as collateral when you get bored of sleeping with a girl whose been in love with you since she was a kid.”

JJ’s fist hits John B square on the cheek. John B hurls his own punch and they end up in some messy wrestle. They fall onto the coffee table and fumble out weak throws. Fear for what may happen to either of them makes you act with stupidity. You dart forward and try to pry them off one another. Somewhere in the chaos, a stray punch hits you in the nose. Pain blinds you. You yelp and fall backwards against the couch, hands flying up to your face. They stop. JJ utters your name.

When you pull your shaking hand away, you find it soaked with blood. Your chest heaves with panic as the pain sets in. JJ shoves John B off and comes to your side.

“S’alright, s’alright,” he soothes.

You’re not like JJ. You don’t take hits like it’s your day job. You’ve never been punched in your life. The last major injury you sustained was your broken arm, back when you were thirteen. Sobbing in pain, you feel yourself panic at the sight of flowing blood.

“S’okay. Lean forward, alright? You gotta lean forward,” JJ instructs.

He shifts you so you’re sitting on the floor, back against the sofa. You let him guide your fingers to the bridge of your nose and pinch at the soft skin. There’s the distant sound of John B rushing into the house. You don’t see it, though. Your eyes are pressed shut to not look at the blood.

“You feel okay?”

“I feel sick,” you mumble. And not just from the nosebleed.

“S’alright. It’ll stop soon,” JJ reassures.

He strokes your back lovingly, dragging your hair off your face as your head bows forward. You choke on the metallic taste that trickles into your other senses. God, everything is a mess.

“Here, here,” John B mutters.

You crack open your eyes to see him drop to his knees beside you. He hands JJ a towel. JJ lifts it to your nose, wiping some of the blood off your skin before holding it steady below your nostrils. It soaks with blood.

“Shit, should she be bleeding that much?” John B asks JJ.

“She’ll be fine,” JJ snaps. He probably doesn’t want to freak you out more. “It’s normal.”

And, eventually, after two towels are soaked, the blood flow slows to a stop.

“I think it’s stopped,” JJ mumbles.

You let him remove the towel. It feels risky to sniff. The smell and taste of blood is consuming and makes you feel nauseous. Tentatively, you try lifting your head. JJ and John B are staring at you. They’re nothing less than concerned.

“How do I look?” you croak.

JJ tries to fight it but fails. He sniggers, then John B does, and you find your own smile. Then the three of you are laughing like you’re drunk.

“That bad, huh?”

“Never looked hotter,” JJ lies through his laughter.

“Yeah…this isn’t your best look,” John B comments.

When the humour passes, you shake your head and look to John B. Like a storm at sea, his anger seems to have passed, not a sign that it was ever there on his face. JJ’s calmed down too. You know they’ll have to talk it out, the things John B said to him, but words said in fury are usually far from true. Cheap shots to try and hit JJ where it hurts. Brothers fight.

“I’m sorry we kept it a secret from you,” you say to John B.  

His eyes slip shut like your apology pains him. Like you’re applying balm to his fresh wounds. Sighing, he opens them to ask, “how long has it been happening?”

You and JJ share a look. He clears his throat before answering. “About a month. Maybe a bit longer.”

“It started the third week after I came to Kildare,” you clarify.

John B exhales with disbelief. “No. No, that can’t be true.” Before you try and explain further, he’s looking to JJ. “You can’t keep your mouth shut for a whole fucking month.”

JJ cracks up. A smile creeps onto your face too. “I think it’s a new record, man, honestly.”

“Yeah, congrats,” John B grunts, rolling his eyes.

“We just didn’t want to tell you cause we know things have been weird since your dad went missing, and you’ve sort of been hooked on this Royal Merchant thing,” you say to your brother.

“And cause you sort of told me to specifically not date your sister,” JJ meekly tags on.

John B sends him a damning look. JJ cringes. “I mean, I’ve never been good at doing as I’m told so this is kinda on you. Just partly.”

“Careful,” John B warns.

You grab for your brother’s hand. A stray stream of blood slips from your nose and JJ lifts the towel to wipe it away. John B meets your gaze.

“We’re not just fooling around,” you say. As his brows knit together, you spare a glance to JJ as if trying to muster up courage. “I love him.”

John’s mouth falls open. You might as well have just told him you’re pregnant. He looks to JJ as if needing some clarification, and he just nods and shrugs, his expression something close to yep, it’s true.

“I just wish you guys told me,” John B eventually tells you. Then, laughing, he adds, “and how long were you even planning on keeping this up?”

“Well...We hadn’t really got that far,” JJ fumbles, scratching the back of his neck.

You all share a laugh. John B nods and looks between the two of you. Like a pill he must swallow, he accepts his fate. You’re not proud, but you wouldn’t change a thing. Taking the risk with JJ was the best choice you ever made.

“I don’t love it,” John B says. Then, with a pained sigh, he adds, “but I’ll get used to it.”

You and JJ immediately lock eyes; smiles of relief and elation sparking to life.

“But you hurt her, and I’ll lay you out,” John B warns JJ, in a stereotypical brotherly fashion.

JJ nods. He seems to know now that John B will uphold that promise to the highest degree. “Scout’s honour,” he swears, crossing his heart and holding up three fingers.

John B looks to your once more and offers you a hand. He helps you off the floor.

“Jeez. What a birthday. You found out you get to stay in Kildare and have a nosebleed all in one day.”

“Wait, what?” JJ barks.

Your head darts around to the blonde-haired boy.

“You’re staying in Kildare?”

Realisation dawns upon you. In the pandemonium, you’d forgotten to tell him. A sheepish smile settles on your face. “Oh yeah, um…I have some news.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Your bedroom door swings open as Kiara sings out, “morning lovebirds!”

JJ groans from beside you at the wake-up call. You crack open your eyes through the streaming sunlight and look to the doorway. John B’s head pops into view.

“Get up! We’re recovering a shipwreck!” he adds.

Kie grabs a sock from the floor and tosses it at your boyfriend.

“Get up,” she repeats.

The door slams shut and you chuckle, rolling onto your back and staring at the ceiling. JJ stirs from beside you. You feel his finger reach out to prod your cheek.

“Mornin’,” he rasps.

You look over to him, smiling sleepily. “Morning.”

“Sleep okay?”

“Like a Goddamn baby,” you grin.

He smiles at that. Sighing and groaning and making all kinds of fuss, JJ stretches in bed.

The two of you gradually emerge from your room. It’s hard to get dressed when your boyfriend keeps grabbing at your hips, sucking hickeys into your neck, stealing your bikini bottoms. There’s a persistent knocking at the door every five minutes from each of the Pogues, telling you to quit macking and get ready.

You wolf down breakfast at the dinner table, mulling over your latest painting. It’s of JJ’s back, arguably your favourite feature of him, when he used to sleep on the pull-out sofa. The room is bathed in moonbeams, bed made up of messy plaid blankets and mismatching pillows. The new paints make everything feel so lifelike and vivid. You’re debating adding faint pink lines to represent scratch marks on his back….

“Come on! We gotta go!” John B declares, drumming on your head as he passes you to the front door.

JJ finishes your Poptart as you text your mom a quick update for the day, and then the two of you join the Pogues in the Twinkie. He hooks an arm over your shoulder, holding you against him as you sit in the back with Pope. They fall into a debate about the scientific benefits of weed (JJ is, no surprise, in favour) whilst Kie and John B discuss tactics for finding the Royal Merchant. As you rest against your boyfriend, you smile and close your eyes. You finally found your home. You found it in Kildare.

[cal-flakes]

╰┈➤ loverboy

warnings: cursing, slight nsfw teasing.

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓

“baby, you are killing me..” he groaned, running a swift hand through his hair and leaning back against the door frame, his eyes devouring every inch of her skin as she lay effortless across the outside lounge chair. “don’t be so forward cameron, people might think you’re in love” she muttered, her lips turning slightly as her words prodded him.

the low chuckle she pulled from him vibrated through her, turning her head — she looked up innocently as he smirked down at her, mischief in his eyes. “you wish, routeledge..” he bit back, ushering her to shuffle along, which she obliged.

y/n curled her body into the side of the chair, allowing him space to sprawl across her, earning a whine from her. “you— are killing me, loverboy, literally..” she whispered, gesturing to his long, slender legs which had found a comfortable space across her abdomen.

“mhm..get used to it, lovergirl..” he mumbled as his eyes fluttered shut, his head lulling into the arm of the chair whilst his hands instinctively directed her head into the crook of his neck.

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

[strawberryforks]

drunk fools to lovers // jj maybank x reader

summary: a drunken hookup has a bettering ending than anyone expected (terrible summary but i’m exhausted)

warnings: swearing, allusions to sex (nothing too crazy i still have no clue how to write smut), underaged drinking

word count: 1098

the first thing that registered in your mind was that the light was too bright and someone needed to shut it off. the hand you draped over your eyes was reflex just like what you shouted, when hands started pounding against your door, trying to knock it down or at the very least get your attention—which they had. “shut the fuck up!” you screamed in response. your head was throbbing, mind lagging behind, and thoughts still suspended in whatever liquid you’d drank way too much of the night before. fuck, you felt like you were the door. “jesus! alright, alright, i’m coming,” you groaned and shoved at the comforter. it wouldn’t budge. you kicked a bit, winding your legs up, because they were trapped. trapped under a blanket, trapped—someone groaned.

awareness returned, your hand stopped covering your eyes. fingers kneaded into the mattress as you pushed yourself up, bending at the stomach. you looked down at yourself first—missing your bra and no doubt panties, and with a boy in your bed, quite literally on top of you. it wasn’t the forst time this had happened and probably wouldn’t be the last, but the embarrassment slammed into you like a wave anyways. the kind that would knock you from your board and bully you underwater for awhile… fuck, you weren’t proud, but this was… it was manageable. the knocking never ceased but you were getting used to the pounding. if the door didn’t break becore you figured out what mistake you’d taken home with you, you’d be fine. john b was a protective bastard but he wouldn’t have to know. push the nameless one-night-stand out your window and be done with it. yeah, that would work.

looking down at the mess of blonde hair, you prod the boy. your eyes are still blurry, your head still hurts but unfortunately, the light you need turned off is the fucking sun, and you’ll have to deal with it for another 12 hours. “hey,” you whisper. “hey. wake up. you gotta go.”

the figure who’s figure you take the time to admire groans again. ringed fingers swipe through their hair, messing it further, as you shove harder. “my brother’s going to kill you if you don’t get out of here. kill, as in… murder.” there’s not many other ways you can explain this but the boy seems to finally understand. he startled, and when he lifted his head up, your eyes met and fuck. woah, okay. it was jj. jj maybank.

your jj. your brother’s bestfriend jj. that jj.

your brother really was going to kill him.

now you’re panicking.

“y/n i swear! let me in or i will kick down this door!” your brother threatens.

“i’m fine john, shit! give me a minute to get dressed!” you’re staring at your brother’s bestfriend with wide eyes but at least you’re not lying. you get up, scramble to put on an oversized t-shirt, and make crazy gestures with your hands.

jj, like you, is freaking out. he’s slipping on his shirt, putting on his boxers and then jumping into a pair of sweats. he looks good, really good, and your tongue darts out to wet your lip. you can see how this happened—what you can’t see is where to go from here. “oh my god oh my god.”

you’re nodding, agreeing, because this is crazy and unexpected and you’re not sure that either of you remember what went down last night. goddamn keggers.

“the window!” you’re whisper-hissing, helping him hoist it open and holding it that way as he crawls out. “we’ll talk about this,” he tells you while you all but chant “go, go, go.”

then you’ve got to open the door. to face the music. “hey john… couldn’t have been a bit quieter?”

“its lunch time, y/n/n.” he peers around you, into your room, as if not truly believing your alone and okay. “and you were wasted last night. i had to make sure you weren’t lying dead in a puddle of vomit”

“yeah, yeah. you’re not one to shirk your brotherly duties. did you happen to make breakfast?”

“eggs and bacon, plus, i made you some of that vitamin c drink you swear by.”

“you’re the best,”

“i know.”

john b leaves, he and jj hangout, as always, and then, a few hours later all of the pogues are meeting up to go surfing. john b, kie, and pope are in the water while you’re hanging back on the beach. jj jogs over to you—he’s been trying to find an opening to talk to you and now is as good as any. unfortunately for him, you’ve had hours to overthink. hours and hours to myll over the fact that you finally slept with your crush and didn’t even remember it aside from some day-after-aching. you’ve had hours to agonize over the fact that he doesn’t want you, doesn’t remember you, and probably can’t stand to be around you anymore. after all, you had to have embarrassed yourself. drunkenly professed your love or something crazy.

“jay i’m so so sorry.” you rush out, “that was a mistake, a drunk mistake, and we can pretend that nothing happened—no one has to know and i swear i won’t tell my brother.” your words spill everywhere, fast and full of panic. you can’t lose a friend and you can’t make things awkward withing the group. no-pogue-on-pogue-macking was like, the one rule, and you went and broke it.

jj isn’t wearing a shirt and that isn’t good because having this conversation, you need to focus on his face, how he’s reacting, and responding. his arms are crossed over his chest and he doesn’t look mad—he looks confused, maybe? worried? “is that what you want?”

“is that what i want?” you echo

“because it’s not what i want, but i can respect it, if you’re sure. i’ll have made an ass out of myself because i spent the afternoon begging john b to let me take you out on a date—“

“we’re going on a date? you asked john? for permission?”

jj smiles, almost shyly, and palms the back of his neck. “it felt like the right thing to do.”

you laugh, smile lightning up the sky, and brightening his entire day. “jesus jj, we’re going on a date, not getting married.”

he wraps you in his arms, hugs you tight. his hands are on your lower back, yours are wrapped around his neck, one threaded through his hair, “but we will someday.”

“yeah?”

“yeah. the most sure about anything i’ve ever been.”

[obxsummer]

HEARTFIRST // JJ Maybank

pairing: JJ Maybank x Routledge!Reader

warnings: mentions of abuse, sibling drama, nothing too drastic

request: heyy i have a fic idea! so i thought you could do a secret relationship jj x reader (john bs sis) and jj shows up at her window beaten up and she cleans him up and they go to bed; then he has a nightmare and wakes up screaming and JB sees how good they are for each other? idk if that makes sense hahaha!

navigation 

more from the SUBJECT TO CHANGE series

--

John B was pissed. Fuming. Ready to strangle his best friend of too many years for something so stupid. There had always been one rule since JJ Maybank and John Booker Routledge became best friends: you were off limits. Y/N Routledge was not to be flirted with, dated, looked at, or spoken to unless John B approved it. 

At first, it didn’t matter. Growing up as kids, John B had his friends and you had yours but once your dad dove headfirst into a treasure hunt, everything went to shit. Kiara’s Kook year had really screwed up your relationship, leaving JJ and Pope to fill in the gaps which pulled you closer and closer with your brother and his friends. You were teenagers then and everything felt so important and critical, even if it wasn’t. 

So when John B realized his best friend and his sister were together, there was nothing that could stop him from losing his shit on the two of you.

Met him at a party, accidentally brushed his body On the way to get a drink at the bar I couldn't wait 'til later, talking in the elevator Then we're kissing in the back of the car

The kegger idea had really sounded good at first; it was something to get your minds off your missing father, not to mention the sudden dead bodies popping up from the hurricane. None of it seemed too out of place for you, minus the newfound treasure hunting, but you were always up for a good party. 

“Where the hell did you find a keg on such short notice?” You asked JJ as the two of you hauled the large object down towards the Boneyard. You never really thought about how quickly JJ managed to find alcohol when it was for a party. It was common knowledge that he just knew where to go and how to do it. 

“Don’t you worry about that, Birdie. You know I’ve got my ways.”

The party was in full swing a few hours later. You’d spent most of your time with John B and Sarah before dipping to find the boy that seemed to be taking up most of your mind. JJ had been occupied with beer pong for a good portion of the last hour and you were determined to break him away.

That voice in my head says to slow down But it can't see the way you're looking at me right now It may not be next week, what I need Then again, maybe it might be

The drink in your hand sloshed over the rim of the cup as someone ran into your side in their drunken stumbling. JJ’s attention moved to you instantly. He’d always been so in tune with you and your presence but it only got stronger ever since your dad left. 

The previously occupied beat-up table full of red solo cups was left behind in trade for your company, JJ instantly taking your hand in his as he twirled you. He would give up so much to watch you smile like that every day. You deserved every bit of happiness that came to you because it certainly didn’t come often. 

Your laughter was infectious and JJ was drunk on it. He didn’t know who made the move or who threw the back door of the Twinkie open but shit, your skin was so soft and JJ just couldn’t stop kissing you. 

The line between friends and more slowly disappeared between you and JJ. At some point, your bed became his, and his clothes blended with yours. The thrill of hiding from the Pogues was exciting, sneaking moments when the two of you could to enjoy the one thing you had to yourselves.

JJ was everything to you and yet, it terrified you. You’ve never had a person to connect with in the way you did with him. The thought of your friends, of your brother, being pissed about what was going on was suffocating. What if this fucked up the group? What if JJ left you for someone else when he got bored? JJ was always quick to shut that idea down. 

“We’ve grown up together, Birdie. Kinda stupid of them to think something wasn’t gonna happen within the group at some point, right?” Which was always followed by: “You’re it for me. Now get outta that pretty little head and let me love on you.”

He had a point, but then again when JJ was pressing kisses down your neck, you never could think clearly.

Could be forever or we might break That's just the kind of risk that we take My head is yelling that I could get hurt But I'm gonna jump right in Baby, with my heart first

“You wanna tell them?” JJ’s voice was muffled as he spoke into the skin of your shoulder. The two of you were sitting on the porch of the Chateau, watching bemused as Kiara and Pope challenged Sarah and John B to an intense game of cards out on the dock. 

You sat beside the blond boy. To any observing eyes, it would just look like two friends having a civil conversation. To you, JJ’s hand was behind your back, fingers gently moving across the skin of your hip that wasn’t covered by the t-shirt over your swimsuit. 

“No.” Your answer didn’t have any anger or harshness behind it. You simply just loved having JJ all to yourself, with no judgment or prying eyes. No pressure to make it something neither of you wanted. It felt selfish to a point to keep something from your friends, from your brother. 

“Get out of your head.”

A smile made its way onto your face as you took the risk of leaning your head against JJ’s shoulder, tucking further into his side. JJ was so warm, his tan skin from constant surfing smooth against your cheek. It scared you sometimes, how comfortable everything was when it involved him. 

JJ’s heart skipped watching you be so relaxed, so vulnerable around him. He’d been so used to living on the edge and being tense for so long that it was so… vulnerable, so healing to have someone feel protected and safe enough to be by his side. 

Who knows what'll happen, ain't that always kinda magic When you don't know who's holding the cards Could be a wish I never knew ya or permanently tattoo ya Only the moon knows what's in the stars (what's in the stars)

You were pissed. You don’t know at what point John B thought he could parent you when the two of you were so close in age. Who was he after all this time to think he could boss you around?

“How long? How long has this been going on?” John B’s voice almost rattled the windows, echoing around the space surrounding you and JJ. The two of you stood there awkwardly like kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar. 

“Three months,” Your whisper was almost incoherent. Your eyes were trained on the ground, heart thumping in your chest so loud you figured JJ could probably hear it. This was the risk that came with not telling them, with keeping secrets amongst Pogues. God, there were so many stupid rules. 

John B’s hand slammed against the counter. “Three-Three months? God. I just…There was one rule. One fucking rule JJ. You promised!”

JJ visibly flinched at the anger in John B’s statement. That was true; JJ did promise John B he’d never get with you, never hurt you. All of that flew out the door the moment JJ saw you at that kegger. He had to risk it.

“I’m..I’m sorry, man! It just happened, okay? And-and we didn’t want to tell you guys because we didn’t want something like this to happen!”

“Well it’s happening,” John B scoffed with a shake of his head. The disappointment on his face was suffocating and you felt like you would burst into tears at any second. It wasn’t fair. Being forced apart when you knew you loved JJ? How is that fair?

John B shifted further into your line of vision. “Get the fuck out. Now. And don’t let me see you two near each other until I figure this out, got it?”

You looked up in a panic. “John B-”

“Do not argue with me right now. I don’t want to talk to you.” The look in your brother’s eyes left no room for argument. You’d never seen him this mad, especially toward you. 

JJ’s fingers squeezed your wrist lightly before he shuffled out the door behind you. The creaky hinges filled the room as you and John B stared at each other, waiting for the other to break. 

The fridge door popped open when your brother finally decided to move to grab a beer. Part of you wanted to run after JJ, to prove to John B that you didn’t have to listen to him. The problem was, you knew JJ respected your brother too much to let you do that for him. 

“You didn’t have to be so harsh on him,” You mumbled when you mustered up enough courage. John B tended to be… touch and go when he was angry. There was a risk of setting off another fuse if you didn’t watch what you said. 

As kids, JJ always picked on your brother for inheriting your dad’s temper. John B hated that it was true. To your relief, your brother let out a sigh and placed both of his hands on the counter. He felt instant regret watching JJ flinch at the noise level, knowing exactly what happened in the Maybank house when nobody else was around. “I know.” 

“I can’t tell you that I’m gonna stop being with him,” You admitted, holding your ground while you had the chance. You crossed your arms over your chest. “I respect your opinion a lot, Booker, but if it means staying away from JJ, I’ll learn to live without it.”

 It was a little more aggressive than you intended for it to be but it needed to be said. You moved through the kitchen to your room without another word. 

Mm, that voice in my head says to slow down But it can't feel your hands on my hips right now It may not be next year, what I need Then again, maybe it might be

JJ felt horrible for doing this. He knew he was playing with fire but as he pushed up your bedroom window, he couldn’t really bring himself to care. He could deal with John B later. Right now, he really needed you. 

He was a little less than graceful stumbling through your window in the darkness, but he found his way eventually. You shifted awake from his rustled movements and caught a quick glance at his silhouette before turning to flick the light on. “JJ? What’s wrong? Do you need-”

“Nothin’. Sorry to wake you, Birdie. Just wanted to see you.” You could tell he was avoiding meeting your eyes as he kicked off his shoes. The coloration of bruising was beginning to show through his abdomen and you shook your head slightly. JJ didn’t like to explain when his dad treated him like this. He kept quiet and you didn’t push him because he would always talk when he wanted to about what happened. 

So, you turned the lights off and cuddled up next to him, hoping you would wake up before John B saw anything.

JJ didn’t always have nightmares when it came to his dad, but whatever happened was terrible enough that he did. Half the time they weren’t even about his dad hitting him; it always involved his dad hurting you. 

The blond’s sharp movements woke you up before the screaming did. You didn’t hesitate to pull him closer, his hands grasping your hips to hold as you settled across his lap. His shirt puddled on your thighs as he let his fingers drift across your bare skin above your pajama shorts. JJ tucked his face in your neck and just listened to your heartbeat, reassuring him that you were right here and you were safe.

John B couldn’t say he was pleased to be woken up at 5:00 in the morning. Even less so when the alarm clock involved screaming. It wasn’t your voice though, and he didn’t know if that was a relief or something to be worried about. 

You didn’t flinch when your brother threw your door open to reveal the sight within. You knew he could see the fact that the two of you were fully clothed and clearly, everything was okay… well, as okay as it could be. 

Eyes moving to look at John B, you prayed he wouldn’t say anything while JJ was so upset. To your surprise and gratitude, he didn’t. He stared at both of you for a moment as the realization settled in. The realization that you were old enough to make these decisions for yourself and as much as John B wanted to protect you, to protect you and JJ, he couldn’t keep you apart. 

John B gave you a small nod and mouthed to let him know if you or JJ needed anything. You gave him a forced smile back, a barely there ‘thank you’ leaving your lips as you hugged your boyfriend tighter to your chest. 

As your bedroom door closed, you had this overwhelming sense of relief that maybe…maybe it would all work out after all. 

I gotta have ya, gotta see if this works I gotta have ya, wake up in your t-shirt I gotta have ya, diving in heart first

[imaginesandbandfiction]

Attention

An Outer Banks Imagine

Pairing: JJ Maybank x Reader

Masterlist

A/N: Based on this ask. It's short but I'm working on a smutty part 2 if anyone is interested ;)

“C’mon, Y/N, please?” Your best friend Sarah begs, pouting at you from across your bedroom.

“A Pogue party, though? Really?” You wrinkle your nose. Neutral territory boneyard parties were one thing, but the thought of crossing over to the other side of the island to drink shitty beer gave you the ick. Sarah widens her brown, puppy-dog eyes and gets up from your vanity to flop down on your bed next to you.

“Pretty please? Just this once, and if you hate it I’ll never bother you again.” You knew that was a lie, but you also didn’t have anything better to do, so you shrugged and sighed.

“Fine. But we’re bringing our own booze.” Sarah drowns you in squeals and flailing limbs, and you shove her off, giggling.

An hour later, you’re dressed and ready; properly fizzed up thanks to the bottle of Moet and Chandon you grabbed from the wine cellar in the basement.

When Sarah’s boyfriend pulls into the driveway, you put a stopper in the bottle and tuck it into your tote bag.

John B’s nice; you’ve met him a few times through Sarah, and you have to admit that he’s one charming motherfucker. He keeps you entertained with stories of his friends’ antics on the drive back to his house. You’ve heard about them from Sarah, but you don’t know much about them save for Kiara, who you used to go to school with, so it helps to give you an idea of what to expect from the night.

“Aaaaand this is JJ,” Sarah says, gesturing to the tall blonde boy on the right with a red solo cup in one hand and a lit joint in the other.

“Wassup, baby?” He says, slurring his words together a little bit. Sarah winces and turns to you. Her frown contains a thousand apologies.

“No, sorry, apparently, this is drunk, horny JJ.”

You feel your cheeks heat up—from embarrassment, yes. But also? He’s so fucking hot with that lazy, half-up-half-down grin. His lips are plush and pink except for the purple-black bruising tucked into the corner of his mouth, like he’d dodged a punch and almost got away with it.

“Drunk, horny JJ at your service.” JJ sticks the joint into his smirk and holds his now free hand out to you for a shake. You roll your eyes but take it anyway. He tightens his hand around yours, blue eyes glinting in the flickering firelight for one, two, three seconds before he ducks his head and brings your knuckles to his lips. “If there’s anything I can help you with, please let me know.”

“Ohhhkay, and Drunk, Horny JJ needs water. John B, will you take JJ inside and get him a glass?” Sarah turns her boyfriend and JJ lets your arm drop to your side, winking at you before he turns around to follow his friend.

Sarah’s apologies are wasted on you because the heat from your cheeks has migrated south and you’re too busy thinking about swallowing that smug smile to process what she’s saying.

[lerclec]

18+ thinking about bookworm!reader playing with sub!jj’s cock while reading smut and using the book as guide to their movements 🙇‍♀️

mph!- baby please, please s-slow down

he stutters, gripping the sheets as he buckles his hips as your hand goes faster, your eyes following the words on paper, copying the action

calm down baby, i haven’t even got to the exciting part

you scoff, sitting on his knees, leaning down on his cock, swirling your tongue around the swollen tip before he lets out a scream, pulling on your hair.

[izzymaybank]

brothers best friend

jj maybank x routledge!reader

word count: 2,205

summary: after a hurricane, john b, (y/n), jj, pope, and kiara plunge headlong into danger and adventure when they find a mysterious sunken wreck

pairings: jj x girlfriend!reader john b x twin sister!reader pope and kiara x bestfriend!reader

warnings: underage drinking

a/n: reader uses she/her pronouns. lowercase's are intentional.

brothers best friend masterlist

"we're the pogues, and our mission this summer is to have a good time, all the time."

john b routledge stands on the roof of an unfinished house, staring at the view of the ocean. he drinks beer from the can in his hand as he balances close to the edge. he sticks one foot out into the air and spreads his arms like wings.

"that's what, a three story fall to the deck?" asks the voice of pope heyward. the dark-skinned boy peers up at one of his best friends, squinting from the sunlight in his eyes. "i give you about a one-in-three chance of survival."

john b hums in thought, sticking his finger in his mouth before raising it into the air, feeling the wind blow against the digit. "should i do it?"

"yeah, you should jump!" (y/n) routledge yells, the summer breeze blowing her bronze curls away from her face. she leans into jj maybank's side, one arm around his waist. the blonde boy holds a beer in one hand as he holds the metal railing above him with the other.

"i'll shoot you on the way down." pope raises the nail gun he'd grabbed earlier. john b raises his eyebrows, making a finger gun with his hands.

"you gonna shoot me?"

"they're gonna have japanese toilets with towel warmers," kiara carrera says in disbelief as she walks out of the home. her dark brown hair falls down her back in waves, and her dark skin seems to glow from the setting sun. "this used to be a turtle habitat, but who cares about the turtles, i guess?"

"i care about the turtles, kie." (y/n) reaches a hand out over the railing, faking a pout to her best friend as she interlocks their fingers.

"i can't have cold towels," jj teases and (y/n) smacks his arm softly.

kiara turns her attention to the other routledge twin, "can you please not kill yourself?"

"don't spill that beer," jj warns, "'cause i'm not giving you another one." jj sips from his own can, wrapping an arm around (y/n) shoulder. As if on cue, john b loses his balance and drops the piece of aluminum. he lets out a small curse as the can hits ground, it's contents spilling everywhere.

"of course you did!" jj exclaims.

"smooth," kiara mumbles to (y/n), who laughs at her brother. john b groans dramatically, staring at his lost drink in despair.

"a-plus," pope teases. he looks around the corner when he hears someone call out a loud "hey!". pope slams his hand down onto the wooden railing, nervously looking towards his friends. "hey, uh, security's here. let's wrap it up."

"boys are early today," john b notes, sliding down the roof and onto the wooden platform, landing next to his sister. (y/n) stands up, following her brother with a small laugh. jj calls out something inaudible as climbs down to the balcony floor. the five teens run into the house, dodging past paint cans and used equipment.

they run down a flight of stairs, four of them going one way while jj goes in the other. he skids to a stop, sharply turning around to miss the hands of a police officer.

"not much of a hugger, man!" jj laughs when another guard tries to grab at him. "go pope! go! go, go, go, go, go, go!" jj follows his friend towards the large fence at the end of the yard.

pope groans as he lands face first into the ground and jj smacks his back. "get up, pope! fatso's coming."

the two boys run over to the honking van, ignoring the "come here you little pricks!" from one of the guards. they jump inside, laughing as one of the officers chase after the racing car.

"check out gary, gunnin' for a raise!" pope chuckles. jj reaches an arm out of the open door, beer in hand, holding it out towards the running man.

"enough," (y/n) says, giggles spilling from her lips.

"you're gonna give him a heart attack." kiara's comment only makes (y/n) laugh harder.

"you're so close! you can do it! there you go!" jj throws the can towards the older man, groaning when it hits him in the head. "they don't pay you enough, bro."

(y/n) grabs the blonde's arm, pulling his body back into the car. "jj, stop," she scolds, but amusement still lingers on his voice.

"oh come one. that sort of initiative is just begging to be punished."

"the outer banks, paradise on earth. it's the sorta place where you either have two jobs or two houses. two tribes, one island."

"all right. this is figure eight, the rich side of the island. home of the kooks. so guess where we don't live."

"and then this is the south side or 'the cut'. home of the working class, who make a living busing tables, washing yachts, running charters. the natural habitat of, drumroll please.... the pogues. that's us. pogues, pogies, the throwaway fish. lowest member of the food chain. okay, so the downside of pogue life is that we're ignored and neglected. but the upside of pogue life? we're ignored and neglected, which means we do whatever we want, whenever we want."

shielding the sun from her eyes with her hand, (y/n) walks to the front of the hms pogue, placing herself next to her boyfriend. jj watches her through the lenses of his sunglasses, sliding his arm around her waist with a small smile.

"that's (y/n), or little canary, as our dad used to call her. she's my twin sister, and the biggest pain in my ass. she's the mom of our group, keeping us in check, making sure we don't get killed or arrested. you know, the usual. but don't let her soft exterior fool you, she can be terrifying when she wants to be.

adjusting his hat, jj leans back against his seat. one hand on the steering wheel, he looks out the window as he drives the boat.

"that's jj, my best friend since the third grade. he's about as local as they come. latest in a long line of fishing, drinking, smuggling, vendetta-holding salt-lifers who made their off the water. best surfer i know. just, don't tell him i said that. mild kleptomaniac and a future tax cheat."

staring at the open flames of the fire pit, kiara is quick to shove john b away when traps her in a hug, which looks more like a headlock. "get off me. don't even get me started on microplastic. have you even heard about that island? that little island of just-"

"and that's kiara, or kie, as we call her. and when she's not saving turtles, or listening to marley, or getting a dolphin tattoo with my sister, she hands out with the rest of us. i'm not really sure why though. so, she's a rich kid, actually. foot in both worlds. her family owns the wreck, this outer banks institution. total cash cow with the tourists. you know, i'm not really sure how her parents feel about us. i guess we all sorta have a thing for her. except jj, him and (y/n) have been together for years."

(y/n) yelps as she's crashed into, squealing as she's lifted into the air and spun around. jj sets her back down onto her feet, immediately pulling her into a deep kiss. (y/n) wraps her arms around jj's neck as his go around her waist.

although, the loud and over dramatic gagging from john b causes the two to pull apart.

"they're the outer banks' otp, as kie likes to call them. been going out since the eighth grade and still going strong. and even though jj's my best friend, i'm always keeping a look out to make sure (y/n) doesn't get hurt. but i also have to keep my eyes closed to make sure i don't walk in on them... again."

watching his friends dance on the boat, pope leans back with his hands behind his head. he laughs as kie twirls (y/n) around, pushing jj away when he attempts to pull his girlfriend towards him.

"and that's pope, the brains of the operation. finalist for the lucas t. vanderhorst merit scholarship. and the smartest person i know. a little bit of a weirdo. alright, so his father's this legendary character, heyward. anything you wanted on the island, hey ward could get it for you. now, i'm not sure heyward knew what to make of his oddball son, but it didn't matter. he was a pogue, just like the rest of us."

"so, that's my crew. and that's me, john booker routledge. and this is where i live."

flushing the toilet, john b exits the bathroom. he peeks inside the room beside him when he hears quiet whispering. although he immediately regrets it when he finds jj on top of (y/n), lips lips hovering over her own. at the creak of the floor, jj's head shoots up. he throws an empty beer towards the door, "dude, come on man, get outta here!"

slamming the door, john b violently shuddered. he walked down the hallway, raising a hand towards his friend in a wave. "mornin' kie."

"morning," she replied, her voice groggy from sleep as she scrolled through her phone. john b grabbed a photo of two people off the table and hung it on the wall.

"an old fish shack on the marsh. the château, as my dad used to call it. that's dad. he disappeared at sea nine months ago, looking for a shipwreck. who disappears at sea these days? i miss him. and then there's mom. she split when (y/n) and i were three. last i heard she was in colorado. i think it was colorado."

john b grabbed a green-glass bottle and tapped the top onto the picture frame. "uncle t!"

"that's uncle t. since dad vanished, he's supposedly our legal guardian. at the moment, he's in mississippi, building houses... which means it's just me right now, hangin' with my sister and my friends. three months after my dad was missing, he was officially presumed dead. i refused to sign the papers. until i see a body, i'm not giving up.

~~~~

"john, (y/n), it's come to our attention that you are two unemancipated minors living on your own." sitting down at her desk, the social worker stares at the two teens sitting in front of her,

"no," the twins scoff before looking at each other and grimacing. "no."

the older woman raised an eyebrow. "i need honesty to help you. that's what we want, right?"

"we're being honest," (y/n) states, crossing her arms over her chest. sighing, the social worker looks down at the paper laying on her desk, pen in hand.

"okay, when was the last time either of you spoke to your uncle?" she asked.

john b looked down at his watch-less wrist. "uh... 34 minutes ago."

"when was the last time either of you saw him?"

"two hours and... 43 minutes ago," (y/n) says, but the rising intonation in her voice caused her answer to sound more like a question. the two siblings send the social worker their most innocent smiles, but it doesn't seem to convince her.

"john, (y/n), we're going to come out there tomorrow to talk to your uncle." the twins' smiles drop. "if he's not there, we're gonna move forward with foster car."

john b casts his eyes downward and (y/n) shifts in her seat.

"i want to assure you, we're gonna find you a safe and loving home."

john b nearly rolls his eyes while his sister lets out a sharp exhale and runs a hand down her face.

“they actually thought we were going to be happy to hear that.”

john b sits in the sand, staring out into the ocean while his friends talk and laugh behind him.

“and that’s where this story starts. my dad missing, my uncle mia, and the bride of frankenstein threatening foster care. but then i caught a break.”

~~~~

feeling water drip onto his face, john b groans as he peels his eyes open. body heavy with sleep, he sits up and grabs his phone. "no service?" he asks no one but himself. he then stands up and walks towards the light switch next to the doorway. he flicks it on and off, but nothing happens. "no power. great."

he makes his way down the hallway, towards the living room. on the pull out couch lies his best friend and his sister. (y/n) laid on her back, one hand behind her head as the other buries itself into her boyfriends hair. jj laid on his stomach, his arm draped around (y/n)'s waist.

"yo, jj, you been outside?" john b asks, smacking his hand onto jj's back.

"i have polio, bro. i can't walk," jj moans, lips pressing into (y/n)'s shoulder. in response to his words, (y/n) shifts her head, curling further into the blonde's presence. with a soft sigh, she tighten's her hold on jj's hair before letting go.

(y/n) stood up, a tired smile gracing her lips as she grabbed her boyfriends hand, pulling him up with her. john b opened the door and walked outside. seeing the state of his front yard, he groaned.

"oh man," he yawned, nearly tripping over the front steps. he walks towards a fallen tree, "that's no good. that is not good."

"agatha did some work, huh?" jj calls from the door way. he drinks from a found beer, and considering how sleepy she was, (y/n) decided not to scold him for his choice of drink.

john b pulls a tree branch off of the boat. "yes she did."

continuing to dig through the boat, john b doesn't look up when jj asks, "what you thinkin'?"

"i'm thinkin' that storm surge pushed all the crabs out on the marsh maze," john b says. "all those drum are gonna chase the crab."

"what about the dcs? wasn't that today?"

"nah, they're not gettin' on a ferry after all this," (y/n) cuts in, gesturing to the wreckage around them. she wraps her arms around one of jj's, grabbing his attention immediately. "think about it-"

"-it's god telling us to fish."

~~~~

the three teens end up on the hms pogue, waving to people as they drive through the marina. the two boys make conversation as (y/n) sits at the front, feet swinging in the air.

"well look who we have here!" (y/n) suddenly says, adjusting her sunglasses. she smiles at pope as he looks up from the items he had been hosing down.

"we have a safety meeting. attendance mandatory," john b calls, hand at his shoulder in a fake walkie-talkie.

"i can't," pope frowns. "my pop's got me on lockdown."

jj scoffs, imitating the same walkie-talkie. "you're dads a pussy. over."

"oh, i heard that, you little bastard," heyward snaps.

(y/n) raises her chin and her smile grows bigger. she stands up and looks at the older man. "we need your son."

"yeah, and island rules. day after a hurricane's a free day," jj reminds.

"who the hell made that up?" heyward asks and jj furrows his brows in pretend thought.

"uh, pentagon, i think."

"we have security clearance," (y/n) says as she digs around in her pocket. "i have a card.

"you think i'm stupid?" heyward challenges, turning his attention when pope starts to bargain with him.

"i'll do it tomorrow. i promise. tomorrow."

heyward raises his hands in protest. "no, no. hell no. you doin' it right now."

pope looks towards his friends and john b whispers, "get in the boat."

"make a run for it," (y/n) adds. pope drops the hose and jumps into the boat, stumbling slightly. he quickly tells john b to hurry up, his father yelling at him from the edge of the doc.

"when you get back, you gonna clean shrimp! you gonna clean fish! you'll clean your dirty ass room!" he yells while the routledge twins wave at him goodbye. "and i don't like your friends!"

~~~~

"hello there, princess," (y/n) says, beaming at kiara as she walks down the deck.

"oh, top o' the mornin' to ya." (y/n) furrows her brows slightly when her boyfriend attempts an irish accent.

"whatcha got?" pope asks, referring to the cooler kiara holds in one of her hands. "you got some juice boxes?"

"you know, just some yogurts and carrot sticks." kiara grabs (y/n)'s outstretched hand, stepping down into the boat.

"what about my kind of juice boxes?" jj asks, scooting over when (y/n) sits back down. his lips stretch into a small smile at kiara's small "yeah". (y/n) leans her head on jj's shoulder as he wraps an arm around her waist, kissing her hair.

"gonna make me bark," john b mutters and (y/n) flips him off.

~~~~

soon, the five of them have all popped open a beer, laughing when jj suddenly says, "lemme show you a party trick. pope, can you go a little faster?"

"oh god, here we go, i'm movin'." john b walks backwards, standing behind pope as he watches jj stand at the edge.

"i've got this! it's gonna work!" jj says confidently.

"jj, you've tried this 6000 times and it fails every time," (y/n) sighs. the brunette girl moves to the side to avoid the beer that spills out of jj's mouth. kiara laughs, but soon complains about it getting in her hair. (y/n) tugs at jj's shorts, attempting to pull him down when all of a sudden the boat jerks to a harsh stop, causing jj to flip forward and fall into the water. (y/n) slams forward and john b falls to the ground.

"jesus, pope!" kiara scolds.

"you okay, j?" (y/n) asks, seeing the blonde resurface from the water.

"i think my heels touched the back of my head," he states, breathing heavy as his eyes closed.

"(y/n), you alright?" john b questions.

"i'm alright," his sister replies, looking down at her best friend. she touches kiara's back softly. "you okay, kie?"

"pope what did you do?" jj demands.

"sandbar. the channel changed."

"no shit." jj starts swimming back to the boat, looking up when pope walked to the front. the dark-skinned boy looking into the water, his brows furrowing.

"guys... i think there's a boat down there."

"shut up," the twins say at the same time.

"no way," kiara adds.

pope points to the water. "no, no, guys. i'm serious. there's a boat down there."

after confirming that there is, indeed, a boat, john b takes off his shirt while the two girls strip down to their bathing suits. sure as shit, there's a boat sitting on the oceans floor. rising for air, the five teens swim to the surface, all breaking into hysterics as they gain access to air.

"you guys saw that?" jj gasps.

"yeah, i did." kiara laughs in disbelief.

"that's a grady white." jj starts swimming towards the hms pogue. "a new one of those is like 500 g's, easy." he hauls himself up, twisting around to offer a hand to (y/n), who takes it.

"that's the boat i saw when i surfed the surge," john b states and his sister stops twisting the water out of her hair, glaring at him.

"you surfed the surge?" she asks roughly. jj laughs, reciting a handshake with his best friend.

"that's my boy. pogue style."

"do we know whose boat that is?" pope asks, breaths heavy from how long he had held his breath.

"no, but we're about to find out." john b grabs the anchor, saluting his friends before jj pushes him into the water. john b holds his breath, allowing the weight of the metal to pull him down.

the rest wait in anticipation, and just as (y/n) wants to jump in and drag her brother back to the boat, john b rises for air.

"oh my god, that took forever!" kiara exclaims.

"any dead bodies?" pope asks.

"looting potential?" jj questions.

"no." john b raises his hand to show his discovery. "i found this motel key."

(y/n)'s excited smile dropped. "a key?"

"yes, a key, (y/n)."

"great! we salvaged a motel key." jj pulled the anchor from the water and put it back to it's rightful place.

"guys maybe we should report the wreck to the coastguard," kiara suggests. "maybe we'll get a finders fee."

"yeah and not work all summer," (y/n) hums.

“thanks, agatha, ya batch,” jj says.

~~~~

[maybanksbabe]

JJ and twin!Routledge having spooky sex in their Halloween costumes🫣

-🦋

it's a given at this point honestly like... Why not? I just know it goes on for a While yk? Like they don't take a break for a good few rounds first -

[obxologies]

cleo x routledge!reader !! love uu

love u <3

routledge!reader was a little intimidated at first while cleo was smitten from the first time she saw her. a lot of staring from cleo. cleo liked to stay with routledge!reader in hopes of protecting her. the first time routledge!reader hugged cleo her heart flipped, she never smiled so hard. the cutest, most badass couple. they're both could kill you, but you honestly wouldn't be able to tell until the knife was at your throat because of how bubbly they are together. cleo helped teach routledge!reader more self defense, but she was partly reluctant because she likes to be the only to defend her. john b loves and hates them together. he loves how happy they are together especially his sister, but good lord sometimes he just wants some peace and quiet ;)

[addela11de]

OBX LINKS

ᝰ.ᐟ꩜ nsfw links for obx characters ᝰ.ᐟ꩜

credits: rafesmuse

༄ John B

creampie in the chateau

cumming down your throat

bick dig?

sucking him off during midsummers

in the air

༄ JJ Maybank

hard doggystyle w/ kook!reader

half creampie w/ bestfriend!JJ

accidentally slipped in

overstimming sub!JJ

deepthroating

threesome with JJ and Sarah

༄ Rafe Cameron

worshipping his body

blowing him in his car

first time with virgin!reader

early morning ridings

pounding that pussy hard

needing him everywhere

olderbf!rafe teasing

༄Pope Hayward

going cross eyed when you rub him too well

face fucking girlfriendpogue!reader

slow doggy with gymrat!pope?

blondebimbo!reader reverse cowgirl in the bath

rough pounding

[featherandferns]

guilty as sin? (fic - part 1/2)

jj maybank x fem!routledge!reader | largely inspired by the bible

content warning: sexual content; mentions of parental abuse (physical abuse) | any questions for trigger warnings, feel free to inbox anonymously

word count: 14k.

blurb: when you, John B's half sister, return to Kildare after over two years of living in Colorado, your adolescent crush that you harboured for his best friend comes screaming back. Because you and JJ can't be together in real life, what's the harm in a fantasy?

“And this is your room.”

The syrup-coloured wood is the first thing your eyes meet when John B pushes open the bedroom door. There’s the vague lingering smell of teenage boy which he’s tried to air out, the window open ajar, and the clutter of his belongings has been moved to make space for your own. As you drop your duffel bag and step into the room, you take in the walls. There’s posters and prints stuck above his bed, dotted around on slats of wood separating windows: someone surfing; a rockstar smashing his guitar. An old skateboard deck is nailed into the wall alongside a license plate. The sheets are bright blue, the bed freshly made, and a clean towel is folded up at the foot. It’s well-lit with plenty of daylight flowing through the many windows. Homely and inviting.

“Is it, uh, alright?”

You turn to find John B leaning against the doorframe, hands in his short pockets. Smiling, you nod.

“It’s perfect,” you tell him. “I’m honestly chill with crashing on the couch, though.”

It’s pretty obvious this was his room: you feel guilty kicking him out.

He shakes his head and gestures with his thumb over his shoulder. “I moved into my dad’s room anyway. This has been the spare for a while.”

“Well, thanks,” you smile.

He nods, mirroring your content. “I’ll let you settle in and stuff. I moved all my crap out the closet so you can put your stuff in there, and the top bedside drawer is empty.”

“That’s perfect,” you say. You lift your bag with a grunt and dump it on the bed.

“I gotta go to work but call if you need anything. Shouldn’t be back too late.”

Unzipping your bag, you look to him. “Where’d you work?”

“Got this gig helping out at Ward Cameron’s. Don’t know if you remember him?”

“Course I do,” you snort. “The kingpin of Kildare, and your dad’s treasure hunting buddy.”

There’s a tense silence as your words catch up with you. You press your eyes shut, embarrassed.

“Shit, sorry. That didn’t come out how I meant it to.”

“It’s cool,” John B says, graciously gliding past it. “Anyway, he pays pretty good so can’t complain. Mostly just handy-man odd jobs.”

“Very noble work,” you joke.

With a quiet laugh, John B nods and backs out the door. He lingers another moment, contemplating saying something else. “Look, uh, I know it isn’t ideal circumstances, you coming back to Kildare and stuff, but I’m glad you’re here. Really. It’s nice having you back, sis.”

Your mood sobers, smile turning solemn.

“Thanks,” you quietly reply.

He nods once more and pats the doorframe in farewell. “Right, I’ll let you get unpacked. See you later.”

“See ya.”

When John B leaves – the front door shuddering against the house as it slams shut – you’re overcome with quiet. In Colorado, where you lived with your mom in the city, there was little nature. You forgot how peaceful Kildare is. Through the crack in the window, birdsong and cricket chimes accompany the sound of your unpacking. You turf out your clothes and take to putting them in the closet. Shoes and bags and bikinis. A jacket and a few sweatshirts. It was easy enough to plan for your outfits considering you’re only staying the summer. You remember the weather in Kildare well enough from when you used to live here.

Once you’ve unpacked your clothes, you find your paints. A box of watercolours which have seen much use and love, the hinges rusted and the inside of the palette smeared with dried mixed paint. Turning to the bedside table, you pull open the bottom drawer on accident. You come face to face with corny porno magazines, a box of tissues, two wrapped condoms and a half empty bottle of painkillers.

“Gross,” you mutter, slamming it shut. Yep, this was definitely a dude’s bedroom.

The top drawer is empty, like John B promised. You fill it with your paints and sketchbooks and pencils.

As the day ploughs on, the room becomes increasingly saturated with your personality. Postcards from Colorado, of the towns and cities you visited, photographs from school of your friends and classmates: you scatter them along them wall, amongst John B’s. Some of your favourite paintings, alongside artists which inspire you, join the mix. On the desk you add a few of your own books to the haphazard stack of abandoned homework and school reports.

At the bottom of your duffle bag is your penny board. You look around the room, searching for empty space to slot it without adding to already cluttered surroundings, and opt to slot it under the bed. Ducking down, you come face to face with a collection of empty beer cans. Clearly the spring cleaning only went so far. It’s noisy as you drag them out, but you’re certain you hear someone shouting. Pausing, sitting back on your haunches, you turn to peer out the open bedroom door. It’s silent for a moment, and then you hear footsteps.

“Yo! JB, you home?”

It’s a guy shouting. His voice sounds vaguely familiar. When he comes into the corridor, he glances into Big John’s bedroom (now claimed by your older half-brother) first. Blonde messy hair and well-worn combat boots instantly name him. JJ.  He turns to the spare bedroom and stops short the moment his eyes land on you, sat amongst a pile of trash.

“You’re not John B,” he says.

“What gave me away?” you reply with a lift of your brows.

There’s a long awkward moment where he stares at you. You can practically hear the cogs turning as he takes you in. When you lift your arm up to scratch the back of your neck, realisation dawns upon him. You imagine your scar on the outside of your elbow gave you away.

“Holy crap! Little Routledge?” he gapes.

You laugh. “Haven’t been called that in a minute.”

JJ steps into the room and you get to your feet. He tackles you into a hug. It’s too short, too sudden, and then he’s stepping away from you again, leaving you dizzy on your feet.

“The fuck? You’re, like, grown now,” he says.

Rolling your eyes, you reply, “well, I am sixteen.”

“The fuck!” he repeats. He then takes in where you’re standing, and the state of the room, and frowns. “Wait, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Colorado with your mom?”

“I was,” you say. You kick one of the cans out the way and fold your arms over your chest, shrugging. “I came back for the summer.”

“Oh, that’s sick!”

You laugh. It’s a nice reaction to have from someone who you haven’t seen for over two years.

“John B gave you his old room then?”

He walks into it as if it’s his own. You watch as he studies the new additions to the wall that you’ve added. Lingers on one of your paintings.

"Yeah, he’s moved into his dad’s, apparently.”

“Yeah, he moved in there a while ago,” JJ tells you. “I’ve been sleeping in here most of the time.”

Your mind flashes back to the bedside drawer stocked with teenage boy necessities. Ah, makes sense. You remember how JJ was when you were a dorky thirteen-year-old. At the ripe age of fourteen, he had girls fawning after him. He was shameless in his reputation. The conversations you overheard between himself and John B as he’d brag about his escapades are seared into your memory, as you felt your wasted preteen heart splinter with every tale. It’s no surprise now that he’s probably just as unruly. Especially considering how he looks. There isn’t much time to ogle though because he’s looking away from the décor, meeting your gaze again.

“That explains all the empty beer cans, then,” you say.

He cringes. “Yeah, uh, sorry ‘bout that.”

You shrug. “It’s cool. I need to toss ‘em out but I don’t know where the trash bags are…”

“Oh, right,” he says, breezing past you. His cologne lingers in the air when he leaves. There’s the smallest moment for you to catch your breath as JJ bangs around in the kitchen, and then he reappears with a roll of black bags. Tosses them to you and you catch. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

You begin to shove the cans into the bag and JJ starts to help. His black button-up gapes open as he leans over and it takes everything not to glance down his shirt like some pervert.

“How come you didn’t want to stay in Colorado for the summer, then?”

“Change of scenery,” you vaguely reply. It isn’t a complete lie, but it isn’t the whole truth either.

“Well, you chose the best summer to come back. Our mission this year is to have the best summer of all time.”

“Pretty lofty goal to set,” you chuckle.

JJ glances up at you, flashing you a grin. “Nah, we got it in the bag.”

You find yourself smiling back, held captive under his stare. When he takes the now full trash bag off you, tying it off, you snap out of it.

“So, where’s your brother at then?” he asks, heading out the room. You follow.

“At work. Said he does jobs for Cameron now.”

“Oh, yeah. Cameron sorta took him under his wing after his dad…went missing,” JJ replies.

You have a feeling that the way people talk about John B’s father is rather doctored.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” you tell him, referring to Big John.

As you step on the porch, the sunlight warms your face. The floorboards creak as you make your way down them, to the garbage can outside.

“It was insane,” JJ says to you. He tosses the trash away. “I mean, we all knew Big John was a bit too into the whole royal-merchant thing but…we never thought it’d go that far, you know?”

“Yeah,” you nod. “Scary.”

JJ looks at you a moment longer. Then, he laughs to himself and shakes his head. “Can’t believe you’re sixteen now.”

“Can’t believe you’re seventeen.”

“What? I look good or something?”

He does a small spin on the spot, arms held out by his sides. You roll your eyes, acting as if you’re unaffected. It’s hard to swallow the reflex reaction of yes.

“Or something,” you say.

JJ takes it in stride. “Well, you look pretty cute yourself considering you’ve been in the mountains for the last three years.”

“I don’t live in the mountains,” you snort. The word ‘cute’ rattles around your head like a pinball.

“You’re taller now too. Practically come up to my shoulders. I remember when me and John B could pick you up by your ankle like a marlin.”

“Yeah, I remember that too,” you not-so-fondly recall.

JJ grins and steps over to you. Despite both of your growth spurts, you still have to look up at him, and him down at you. His eyes are just as dreamy as you remember them. When you first left for Colorado, you hardly had time to pack. In the midst of chaos, taking a picture of your brother’s best friend didn’t seem all that important. Cut to you spending endless nights trying to remember his eyes, the exact colour and the exact shape. Trying to remember the dimples that popped out when he smiled. The pure joy in his laugh. The way your heart felt like it might explode whenever he looked at you, even if it were for a second.

But when JJ pats your head, your chest deflates.

“Well, see you around, little Routledge,” he says, stepping away. “Tell your brother I was looking for him.”

Because even after all these years, you’re still just John B’s little sister in JJ’s eyes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

You stare into your can of cider. In the night, the only light being that from the bonfire John B started up in the backyard, you can’t make out the colour of it. Just the swirling of liquid. You’d spent the last three days working on a watercolour of the marsh side to John B’s house, but you couldn’t capture the movement of the water quite right.

“Wait, I’m confused,” Pope frowns.

“What’s there to be confused about, Pope?” JJ sighs, seemingly exhausted from the questions. There had been an influx of them the minute John B brought you out of the Chateau. “His mom shagged her dad and boom, here she is.”

“Charming mental images there, JJ, thanks,” John B cringes.

You laugh into your drink.

“No, I get that. But…You used to live here, right?” Pope asks you.

You nod.

“But then you moved to Colorado?”

“Yeah?”

“But now you’re back here?”

“Apparently,” you say.

Pope’s frown deepens: apparently that cleared nothing up for him. You’ve never known someone so analytical. “This is complicated,” he observes.

“No shit,” Kiara quips.

It was complicated. Families usually are. Your mom had split from John B’s dad when he was three years old. She ran off to Raleigh, in North Carolina, and met a guy pretty quick. That’s when you came into the picture, born almost a year behind John B. Their relationship was rocky, to say the least, and at some point your mom decided that it may be best for you to get to know your half-brother whilst her and your dad “figured things out”. What was meant to be a short stay at Big John’s house became a four-year affair. Then, at thirteen, your mom decided to flee the state, away from your dad, and she was taking you with her. It all came out of the blue. You weren’t exactly thrilled to go to Colorado. You liked Kildare, and North Carolina, and John B and his friends. Kiara was always nice to you. She never talked down to you, despite you being seen as John B’s little sister. You bonded over turtles and Bob Marley. JJ was different. He’d prank you with John B and tease you about your dolls, but he’d also patch you up if you fell and calm you down after a nightmare. Your crush on him evolved naturally over time. What started as childhood infatuation with the supposed delinquent of Kildare became real. You liked JJ. He was funny and rambunctious, but he had a kindness and tenderness that he kept hidden below. He was often at the house as his own family situation was far from perfect, so having him around became as familiar as John B’s presence. When you left, JJ gave you a hug that you wished would last a lifetime.

But you drifted away in Colorado. You didn’t have anybody’s phone number, save for Big John’s (which your mom refused to let you use), and you were too young to remember addresses to write to them. Social media was never something you latched onto and eventually it all faded away into a strange, dreamlike memory. Being back here is almost proof that you didn’t imagine the whole thing.

“We’re half siblings,” you say, whittling down your family history into a simple statement. “That’s all you really need to know.”

“Damn straight,” JJ whoops, downing the last of his drink. He crunches the can in his fist and heads to the cooler for another.

“You’re staying for the whole summer then?” Kiara asks.

You nod. “I’m tryna get a job at this restaurant in town to keep me busy.”

“Screw that. Just come smoke and surf with us all day, that’ll keep you occupied,” JJ grins.

He’s comfortable in himself, relaxing in a lawn chair, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. His t-shirt represents one of Kildare’s small-town establishments and his shorts are stained with dust and dirt from riding his bike.

“She’s the good one out of us lot,” John B announces, gesturing to you. “Out of all the Routledge offspring, she’s gonna go places. You’re not gonna taint that, JJ.”

“And by ‘all the Routledge offspring’ you mean yourself and her?” Pope checks.

John B nods fervently. “I’m telling you! She’s madly talented.”

“You’re drunk; it’s giving you beer goggles,” you dismiss, finishing your drink.

“You were always the creative one,” JJ remarks. Everyone looks over to him. “Me and John B would be out on the water and she’d be drawing it.”

“Maybe you can show us some of your stuff,” Kiara says.

You laugh and shake your head. “Maybe not.”

The alcohol wizzes up your body as you get to your feet and you take it as a good time to call it quits.

“I think I’m gonna head in.”

“What?”

“No!”

“Come on!”

You laugh, shaking off the group’s disputes. “I’m tired!”

“Lightweight,” JJ teases. You flip him off as you pass, ditching your empty can in the garbage as you go.

“Night guys!” you holler as you head back into the house.

“Night!”

The bedroom John B offered you is starting to feel less like a guest house. You shrug off your cardigan – it stinks of smoke from the fire – and close the door. Through the window, you can hear the group chattering.

Pope seems nice. He hadn’t been around when you lived in Kildare, but you recognised his name. Heyward was a legend on the Cut; you could see his dad in his eyes. Kiara was just as you remembered her, if not more consumed by her environmental activism than before. JJ was the most staggering change of all. He’d grown into his looks, matured around the face. Any puppy fat that you remembered from childhood had vanished. Lithe and lively, he was an American heartthrob, through and through.

As you do your skincare, you glance out the window. You can make out JJ, sat with his back to you. His arms are flailing around as he tells a story. You can’t make out the details through the window but the looks on everyone’s faces tells you it’s pretty damn entertaining. He was always the joker, humour hiding whatever was happening underneath like he was arming himself with a grin. The unexplained bruises on his face and the painful batterings on his body were never explained whenever he’d stay at Big John’s, when you were younger.

The moment he shifts in his seat, you dart away from the window, scared to get caught, and finish getting ready for bed.

A bad dream rouses you awake. It was about Colorado. The warped memories keep you from falling back asleep, no matter how hard you try. Sighing, you stare at the ceiling. The room is bathed in moonlight, cosy in the wooden interior, and you contemplate sitting outside for a bit. The same cardigan from earlier gets pulled on over your vest top and you slip into some crocs.

You head for the front door, creeping past John B’s room, and step onto the porch. There’s a warm, humid air in the night. The crickets and owls harmonise with the faint buzz of mosquitos who surround the porch light. That’s when you realise that it’s already on, and you’re not alone. JJ’s on the porch, laid out on the sofa. He’s smoking a joint. The smell of weed merges into that of the dying embers from the abandoned, extinguished bonfire. You rap gently on the wall as you approach, hoping not to startle him.

“Hey,” he says, looking up at the sound.

“Hey.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“No,” you say. “I thought everyone went home.”

“They did. I’m crashing here tonight. My dad’s…”

He falters, glances up at you, and shakes his head.

“Don’t need to bore you with it.”

“You’re not boring,” you hear yourself tell him.

Smiling, JJ offers the joint to you. You take it, sitting down in the red armchair at the foot of the sofa. The weed consumes your senses when you take a drag, hitting the back of your throat and dulling your thoughts.

“Haven’t smoked in ages,” you say.

“Big smoking community out in Colorado?” JJ asks.

You laugh. “Not where I live, no.”

He takes the joint back when you lean over to him. Tilts his head back as he takes another hit. He’s in the same clothes as earlier, hasn’t even taken off his boots; his hair is tousled like he tried to sleep but couldn’t. You’re caught in the act of staring at him. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even make a joke. Instead, he holds your gaze. It’s almost like a silent challenge: who’ll break first?

“Can I say something kinda inappropriate?” he asks.

“I feel like you have to, now.”

JJ grins at that, amused. “You’re way cuter than I remember you.”

“Oh? You mean sweaty thirteen-year-old, chalk-highlight-pink-hair wasn’t cute?” you joke.

Shaking his head, he adds, “No. Well, yeah, but not in the way you are now.”

Your stomach tightens and heart constricts, and you wish you had the joint to have something to distract yourself with. You hope you sound calm and collected when you say, “thanks. You don’t look too bad yourself.”

“Oh, you’re too kind,” JJ jokes. He takes another long, deep drag. “Is it nice? Being back in Kildare?”

You glance off to the marsh. You forgot to check the time when you got up but judging from the endless navy blue of the sky, it’s still late.

“Sure.”

“Sure?”

You look back to him. “It’s better than Colorado.”

“So, you’re not missing home then?”

The blunt is passed back to you. Taking a drag, you ponder his question. “I don’t think I know where home is right now. I don’t think it’s Colorado, but I don’t know if it’s here either. Maybe I don’t have one.”

JJ doesn’t say anything and you remember yourself. Laughing self-deprecatingly, you shake your head.

“Sorry, think this joint’s going to my head. That was dramatic.”

“No, no, I get ya,” JJ assures. “I know what you mean.”

“You don’t like Kildare?” you ask him.

His expression darkens like a shadow has cast over him. “It depends.”

“Hm,” you say. Nothing more is said on the matter. You get the sense that JJ was vague on purpose.

Pulling your legs into your seat, you glance around at the clutter on the porch. A surfboard is lent against the nett lining of the porch; a rusting duck ornament balances on one of the beams. What looks to be a broken radio sits beside a half-full bottle of rum on a small table by the couch.

“I think it’s good for John B, having you back.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” JJ smiles. “He sorta spun out when his dad disappeared. You’re kinda the only family he has left.”

“You’re his family too. Been around longer than I have,” you tell him.

JJ’s smile softens. He glances away from you, fiddling with the paper of the joint, almost as if he’s flustered. “Thanks.”

“So,” you say, “you got some poor girl on this island falling after you?”

“Rude of you to assume there’s only one,” JJ grins wickedly.

You roll your eyes.

“What about you? Some West Coast jock waiting for you back in the home state?”

The sarcastic ‘har har’ that he gets has JJ frowning, bemused.

“Definitely no guy, and definitely no jock.”

“Now that I find hard to believe,” JJ says.

Before you can ask what he means by that, or spiral out by thinking too much about it, JJ’s getting to his feet. He puts the blunt out on the window ledge, ditching the empty butt in a filthy dish. Stretching his arms over his head, sighing, you watch as his t-shirt rides up. The tensing of his abdominal muscles is like torture. God, to run your hands up his chest, over his shoulders, tangle them in the salt-soaked strands of his hair…

“Right, night Little Routledge,” JJ says.

You blink away from his chest and meet his gaze. There’s a strange expression on his face, one you don’t recognise, and you want to scrutinise it and find out what it means. But it’s gone in a flash, as is he as he heads back into the house. You watch through the window as his silhouette drops onto the pull-out sofa.

It takes a minute to regain your composure.

You can’t think of JJ like that. He certainly doesn’t think of you like that, and that childhood crush has long been put to bed. Shaking it awake is the last thing you need right now. Besides, he’s John B’s best friend. Your brother’s best friend. The same brother who’s taken you back into his house, offered you a room, free of charge, without complaint or question. And it seems like John B needs as many people around him as possible right now. But it’s hard to maintain that line of thought, when as you lie back down in your bed, desperate to get some sleep, you can vividly picture the slit of JJ’s chest that you were privy to just moments ago when you close your eyes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

You follow Tom through the restaurant. He’s the supervisor, eighteen and a fresh high school graduate. It’s hard to keep up with him as he points things out: waiter’s station; kitchen; storeroom…You’d forgotten how overwhelming job orientations can be.

“And this,” he pushes a door open, “is the staff room.”

You glance in and take in the messy pile of shoes, the overflowing trash can, and the three coat pegs overwhelmed with bags and hoodies.

“Love what you’ve done with the space.”

Tom laughs. He closes the door and leans against the doorframe. Broad shouldered, he stands taller than you by a couple inches.

“So, what made you want to work here?”

“I’m really interested in not being broke,” you reply, making him laugh.

“You new to the island? Feel like I haven’t seen you around?”

“This island that small?”

“Or you’re just that unforgettable,” he smoothly returns.

Your face fires up. Laughing nervously, you shift your stance. “I just moved in with my half-brother for the summer. Need something to keep me busy for a few months.”

“Ah, sweet. Anyone I’d know?”

“Dunno,” you say. He starts back into the main restaurant building. They haven’t opened yet. It’s void of life. “John B Routledge?”

“Oh shit, yeah. JB,” he says, flashing you a grin.

He’s charming in a disarming way. The kind of face that a modelling agency would swipe up because of his easy marketability.

When the two of you approach the bar, there’s a girl stood polishing wine glasses. She looks to be about your age, maybe a couple of years older. Her smile is sweet and welcoming like warm hot chocolate on a winter’s night.

“Hey, Lizzy. This is the new starter,” Tom introduces.

“I’m guessing I got the job then?” you ask him. He nods. With that, you offer a hand to Lizzy.

“Nice to meet ya,” she says, shaking it. “Could do with more girls around here.”

“Happy to help,” you reply.

“So, you think you can cover a shift tomorrow night? I figured cause you’ve waitressed before it shouldn’t take too long for you to learn the ropes here,” Tom says.

You nod. “Sure. Sounds good.”

“We’ll see you tomorrow then,” he says.

You bid farewell to himself and Lizzy, seeing yourself out the front door. The restaurant is in the heart of the cut, surrounded by other small businesses and hipster start-ups. You begin the journey home, plugging in your headphones and submerging yourself in Reggae music. Children play in the local park and preteens chatter as they speed past you on their bikes. There’s a warm breeze that brushes past you; it smells of sea water and fried fish. You’re passing the harbour. Eyes land on Heyward’s store, the logo just as you remember it from all those years ago. It’s surreal being back.

When your phone buzzes, you pause your sightseeing to check it. It might be John B asking after the interview. Your throat closes up when you see your mom’s contact pop up. A text. ‘Call me back.’

Just like that, you’re dragged out of Kildare and are back in Colorado.

It’s impossible to ignore the text, but you do your best either way. You don’t even remember half the journey to the Chateau as you walk through the door. JJ is home. He’s sat at the messy dining table, eating a bowl of cereal and scrolling through his phone. Tugging out your earbuds, you give a small wave hello.

“How’d the interview go? That was today, right?”

“Smashed it. Got the job,” you say.

“Oh, sweet. Congrats.”

“Thanks.”

You ditch your bag by the door along with your phone. Taking the seat opposite him, you sit cross-legged on the wooden chair. The sketchbook you’d abandoned earlier lays dormant. Opening it up, you flick to your latest piece of the marsh. It’s coming together rather well. You’d decided to add the H.M.S Pogue, sat harboured on the grass. JJ peers over his bowl to the painting.

“Holy shit. That’s sick,” he says through his mouthful of Captain Crunch.

“Thanks,” you smile. “I’m pretty happy with how it’s come out, considering how old these paints are.”

JJ watches as you crack open the aforementioned watercolours. The smell of artificial paint teases the air. Dampening a thin brush in the mason jar of water, you dip into the blue.

“They bad quality or something?”

“A little. They best ones are Winsor and Newton, but I can’t justify spending over twenty bucks on paints.”

“Why not? You’ve clearly got a gift,” JJ says.

You hate how casual he is when he says things like that to you. Like it doesn’t knock the breath out of you like a sucker punch to the chest.

“S’just practice,” you mumble.

You can feel his gaze as you paint. Resting your chin in your hand, you work at the water under the jetty, trying to perfect the shading. You want to feel as though you can walk into the painting; like you could drown in the crystal clean waves.

Painting had become an escape when you were in Colorado. Whatever you could remember of Kildare, you’d paint. When that well ran dry, you began to paint places you wished you could go. Anywhere but the dilapidating family home you’d found yourself in. Secret gardens made of twisting ivy and crumbling, ornate statues hidden amongst orchids and rose bushes. Cosmic planes with make-believe ice cream stations snuck onto Mars and Venus; whales which bathed in the stars and caught a tan in moonbeams. Underwater societies full of sea kelp and multicoloured coral reefs, with octopi hiding amongst crabs and shellfish.

You glance up to find JJ transfixed on the painting. There’s a crease between his brows as if he’s the one concentrating. It makes you laugh, quiet and under breath, and he looks up. Holds your stare.

“That’s amazing, that you can just do that,” JJ says, remarking to your work.

You swallow the sickly rush that his words give you. His tongue dampens his lower lip, tantalisingly slow. You feel it hit somewhere deep inside of you. Something in the air shifts.

Then, so quiet neither of you can be sure he really said it, he utters, “you’re amazing.”

“Yo!”

The door swings open with your brother’s arrival. Your head spins over your shoulder to the front door. John B stands holding a bag of takeout burgers in the air beside his head.

“Y’all hungry?”

“Hell yeah,” JJ says.

When you look to him, it feels as if you could have imagined the whole interaction had just moments ago. JJ’s sat in his seat as he was before, unfazed.

He abandons his cereal and follows John B into the kitchen like a starving dog, begging for food. You place your paintbrush back into the water and join them. John B unpacks the burgers and fries onto half-clean plates. You watch JJ toss a fry into the air and catch it, whooping in celebration. A plate is handed back to you, over John B’s shoulder.

“Beef burger with cheese, no pickles.”

“Thank you,” you sing-song, taking the plate off him.

JJ turns around and looks at you with faux disgust. “No pickles?”

You shake your head, heading back to the table. JJ and John B join you with their own quick dinners, and the three of you eat. You tell John B about the summer job you secured, and he tells you and JJ about Sarah Cameron and her new boy-toy Topper. JJ says he’s “biceps without a brain” when you ask which one Topper is.

“That can’t be his real name,” you snort.

“Oh, it is,” John B replies.

“His name is almost as dumb as he is,” JJ sniggers.

There’s the sound of chewing and swallowing.

“Two official weeks into summer,” John B randomly announces.

You quirk a brow. “Two weeks since I came back to Kildare.”

JJ holds his cup of soda up in a toast. John B wipes his mouth and raises his own, as do you. The three of you clink cups, smiling at the stupidity. As you bring your cup to your lips to drink, you find your eyes meeting JJ’s across the table. He holds your gaze as he sips, swallows and licks his lips of the sugar. You feel it hit somewhere deep, deep inside of you. JJ looks back to John B and starts recounting his tales of the day fishing, leaving you stumped.

What the hell was that?

~*~*~*~*~*~*

As your days in Kildare stretch on, your imagination becomes your most loved and loathed place all at once.

The Pogues had taken you under their wing without a second thought. It felt as if it wasn’t just because you were John B’s younger sister. Kiara would spend hours talking to you about music and star signs. Pope would discuss books and artists that he’d read about, falling into a huge debate about whether Andy Warhol is as legendary as everyone makes him out to be (the answer is, of course, yes). You and John B connected as brother and sister, filling that hole of ‘family’ that had been taken from both of you within the past year. Movie nights sharing popcorn and critiquing corny horror films, and mornings spent tending to the yard and fishing at the jetty: you felt yourself coming back bit by bit, in the company of the brunette.

But spending time with the Pogues came with spending more time with JJ. That little childhood crush that you’d claimed had succumb a long, undisturbed slumber…Oh, she had been awoken. Him staying over more and more on the pull-out when him and his dad ‘got into a thing’ meant the throw pillows smelt like his cologne and soap. He’d offer you his sweatshirt when sat around the bonfire on evenings drinking, and the warm distinct smell of him would consume you, drown you in the pheromones, affecting you like some pathetic animal in heat. Days spent surfing and sunbathing at the break gave you space to shamelessly ogle his bare chest, splattered in sea water, scorched and tanned with sunlight. The ripple of his lats when wearing his useless muscle tees as he waxed his board in the surf shack. His jawline strong and steely when annoyed or focused, with faint blonde stubble a week after shaving. But you swear he knew how it affected you. Swear he knew it drove you crazy whenever he’d fleetingly touch your back, brushing past you in the kitchen to grab a drink, or adjust your grip when helping him fix up his bike. When sharing a blunt on the porch (as you often did when sleep couldn’t come), he’d take his time passing it to you, fingers brushing. Innocent, incidental touches that felt calculated and planned. The way his eyes would gaze into yours, like he could read your thoughts and decipher your wants. A vague, barely-there smirk to his lips, constantly tortured by his tongue and teeth…

God, your whole body feels as if it has been on fire for the past week.

You blame your overactive thoughts of JJ on your boredom. Working at the restaurant hadn’t been sufficient distraction from the mess that is your life right now. Even now, as you stand before the till, typing through an order for the kitchen and bar, you feel your mind wandering. To thoughts of the Chateau, and to a certain blonde-haired guy sprawled on the pull-out sofa, shirtless, back on proud display…

“You gonna be much longer?”

“No, I shouldn’t be,” you say to Tom.

You hope your embarrassment doesn’t read on your face. It’s not as if he could hear your thoughts, so you’re not sure why you feel caught in the act. You finish selecting the sides for table 16 and press ‘store table’. Stepping to the side to grab some side plates, Tom takes over the till.

He’s nice. Makes you laugh a lot at work, as you slander rude tables and gush over those that tip an extra twenty.

After depositing the side plates at the table, you head to the bar to run the drinks you put through. Lizzy is mixing the cocktail you ordered. She pours rum into a shaker and then passionfruit puree.

“Can I ask you something?” you say to her.

She glances over. The two of you had gotten closer at work. You were hoping to hang out with her one time down at the beach, or maybe grab lunch after a morning shift. She runs a hand over her buzzcut hair style and nods.

“Do you think there’s such a thing as bad thoughts?”

“Bit deep to be asking that at eight o’clock at night, don’t you think?” she smirks.

You roll your eyes. As she goes on making the cocktail, you elaborate. “I have this dumbass crush on this guy which I know I shouldn’t have…I just feel bad for thinking about him so much.”

“Well, that’s dumb,” she snorts.

There’s the loud rattle of ice against stainless steel as Lizzy shakes the cocktail. Then, as she strains it into a martini glass, she looks up at you once more.    

“Who’s this guy? Do I know him?”

“Maybe.”

Her eyebrows shoot up into her hairline. “Is it Tom?”

And, no, it isn’t Tom, but maybe saying it is means she won’t keep digging. You’d rather keep your embarrassing years-long infatuation with your brother’s best friend close to the chest. So, you do your best to look meek as you nod.

“Holy shit! Well, if it makes you feel better, he’s totally into you,” Lizzy tells you.

“He is?”

“Hell yeah. Guy practically ogles you across the room,” she says.

You glance over to Tom. He’s stood before a table, talking away, scribbling down their order on a notepad. At the feeling of being watched, he looks up and meets your gaze. You flash him a small smile and he mirrors it quickly before returning his focus to the task at hand.

“So, do you?”

“Think there’s such a thing as bad thoughts?” Lizzy checks. You nod. She ponders the question whilst garnishing the cocktail. “No. No, I think only actions talk. I mean, I think bad things all the time about customers who are dicks. I could put glass in their drinks: that’d show them sort of thing. But I don’t actually put glass in their drinks, so I’m off the hook. Nobody’s the wiser.”

It’s a somewhat extreme example but it gets the point across. You take the tray and nod.

“I mean, maybe fantasising about it might be cathartic. Get it out your system, you know?” Her sly wink speaks volumes as to what these ‘fantasies’ are about. You roll your eyes.

“Thank you for your advice, Lizz. I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Anytime sunshine.”

With that, you walk over table 16 and deliver their drinks. The rest of the shift passes by rather quickly. You end up making a bet with Tom that you can sell more pints of larger than him and come up victorious, leaving work with an extra ten dollars in your pockets.

The streets are painted sunset purple, orange and pink. You spot John B’s campervan, known as The Twinkie, in the parking lot; he’d promised to pick you up after work tonight. But as you walk up to the passenger side, you realise it’s JJ behind the wheel. You’re not sure if the feeling of your organs shrinking is a good thing or a bad thing.

“Where’s John B?” you ask, climbing in beside him.

“Nice way to say, ‘hi JJ, it’s so good to see you!’”

“Okay, hi JJ,” you say, rolling your eyes. He starts the engine. “Now, where’s my brother?”

“He had to go do something for Cameron.”

“At ten at night?”

“Dude, I just work here, a’right? I do as he says so he lets me stay on his sofa,” JJ says. You laugh.

The radio kicks on and ‘Downtown Lights’ starts to play. You look out the window as he drives, watching the houses fade into overgrow and trees.

“Hey, you hungry?”

“Starved.”

“We can swing by a Wendy’s on the way home, if you wanna,” JJ says.

You smile as you look over to him, nodding. With that, he takes the next left and the two of you make your way in comfortable silence to the drive through. At the worker’s request, JJ recounts his order: two hamburgers, both with cheese, one without pickles. Oh and a large Pepsi.

As he pulls forward to pay, you say, “you remembered I don’t like pickles?”

He glances over to you like you’re stupid for even asking. “Course.”

Food secured, Pepsi in the cupholder for you both to share, you start the journey to the Chateau.

“Feed me a fry?”

You laugh and oblige. It’s the least you can do, considering he bought you takeout, after all. You turf one out the brown paper bag and hold up to his lips. His breath fans against your fingers as he takes it. Chews and swallows. You managed to tear your eyes away. That man could yawn and you’d be mesmerised, you swear. It’s pathetic.

“Thanks.”

“Course.”

The ride back is over way too soon. You take what’s left of your food and your bag, opening the door. “You staying over tonight?”

JJ contemplates a moment before shaking his head. He studies his hands as they run up and over the steering wheel when he says, “no. No, I gotta go home sometime.”

“Right,” you quietly say. The last fight him and his dad got in was ugly. He came over, shaking with anger, a purple bruise forming under his eye. It scared the shit out of you to let him go back there alone. “Well, thanks for the food.”

JJ looks up from the steering wheel and takes you in. His lips move, like he wants to say something, but he seems to abandon the thought. You take it as your cue to leave.

“See you soon.”

“Yeah. See you soon, Little Routledge.”

You hate that nickname. The resentment is thick to swallow as you say goodnight, stepping out the van.

John B isn’t home when you walk into the Chateau. The lights are off, dirty dishes piled up in the sink. The sofa bed is unmade from the last time JJ slept on it. You contemplate crashing on it for the night, just so you can feel as if you’re near to him, but you know that’s insane. If John B were to find you there, he’d only be concerned that something was wrong with your own room, either way. So you trundle back to your bedroom and strip out of your uniform. Makeup rinsed off and teeth brushed, you crawl into bed and drift off easily.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

His lips are hot and wet on your skin, kissing down your stomach. Your breathing’s laboured like you’re fighting an adrenaline rush. He seems to notice, laughing darkly against your tummy.

“So wound up already and I’ve barely touched you,” JJ croons in his southern drawl.

Your eyes slip shut, fighting back a whimper as his fingers dip teasingly into the waistband of your panties. A moan finally lets slip at the sensation of his lips pressing against your crotch, over the cotton.

“You want it?”

“Please,” you whisper.

“Yeah? You want my mouth?”

“Yes, JJ, please.”

It’s embarrassing to beg but you don’t have much left in your mind other than thoughts of him to even care.

Fingers knotting into his hair, you try and coax him lower still. And he obliges. Drags your panties down your legs like time is a luxury. You wonder if he likes teasing you; if it brings him pleasure like the feeling of his hands on your body does for you. He leans back on his haunches and runs his palms up and down your thighs, staring at you exposed pussy. His shark tooth necklace sits against his toned chest and you’re jealous of how close it gets to be to him.

“Fuck,” JJ groans as you open your legs.

He leans back down and nuzzles your inner thigh, pressing a sharp kiss with his teeth, sucking in the skin and relishing your pleasured yelp. It feels as if he’s marking you as he leaves the hickey: mine.

“Been dreaming ‘bout this.”

Before you can let out another pathetic plea, JJ situates himself between your legs and goes down on you. Eats you out like a man who’s been lost at sea, like a man starved. Sighs at the taste of you on his tongue, kissing at your thighs as if to catch his breath, dragging you closer and closer to the edge. The damp of his tongue laps at your clit and your legs lock around him in a vice. He’s indefatigable, insatiable and…it’s too much.

“I can’t,” you whine hopelessly. Your fingers grasp at the sheets, eyes clenched shut.

“Come on,” JJ preens. “Wanna see you come.”

He leans close to your ear, taking your lobe between his teeth, and slips a finger into your seeping hole. Your orgasm comes like waves crashing over splintered rocks; breathing jagged and vision blurring behind eyelids. Somewhere in the euphoric haze you cry out his name. Flashes of colour blending into a mercurial high as he works you through your ecstasy, unrelenting.

You gasp awake.

Had you been sleeping?

Your forehead is damp with sweat, throat parched and chest heaving. Anyone would have thought you’d have just sprinted three miles. When you sit up in bed, you register the pulsing between your legs and the telltale stickiness of your thighs.

Shit. Good thing there’s no such thing as bad thoughts.

Wiping at your face, your skin feels red hot. You venture to the bathroom and drink water from the faucet. Making eye contact with yourself is too hard right now, considering you just had the most incredible wet dream about your brother’s best friend. Now that the high is passing, you’re overcome with shame and guilt. You’re delusional. Maybe you should submit yourself to be sectioned. Would be a good way to kill some of these summer weeks…

Heading back to bed feels like returning to the scene of a crime. Instead, you head out onto the porch, dressed in nothing but a t-shirt and panties. John B’s a deep sleeper, you’ve come to learn. You’ve never heard him get up in the night, in all your moments of insomnia. There’s no risk of crossing paths with him out here.

Stepping out onto the paint-peeled floorboards, you notice he forgot to turn off the porch light when he came home. Great, I guess I know where my wage is going. But as you head to your favourite red armchair, ready to gaze out at the marsh and watch the waterside plants dance in the breeze, you freeze.

JJ’s on the sofa. And he’s awake. You can tell just from where you’re stood.

Before you can flee back to your room, the floorboard creaks. JJ jolts up and looks around, eyes landing on you. You swallow. The moment you lay eyes on him, part of your dream comes screaming back to you. The way your voice cracked as you cried out his name, tumbling over the edge. You quickly shun away the thoughts, slamming them closed in a box, before your body can lose itself to the fantasy once more. Please God tell me that I didn’t actually scream his name.

“Hi,” you dumbly say.

“Hey.”

“I thought you were staying at your place tonight,” you say.

JJ shrugs. “Change of plans, I guess.”

“Oh.”

He looks back ahead at the armchair, back to you, and you can’t help but pull a face akin to holy shit what the fuck do I do? When he holds up a joint, you decide to stay. Panties are just the same as a bikini anyway, and he’s seen you in those. You make sure to wear your cutest ones when he’s surfing with you. The ones that are tight in all the right places and hug your figure in a way that you wished he would. Oh my God, shut up. You wordlessly take the joint as you quickly step past him, planting yourself in the armchair. You pull your legs up and sit atop of them, taking a long drag to try and calm your racing mind and heart. Inspecting the floor seems a good thing to do, suddenly. The divots in the wood from worms and the strips of paint. Looking up, you find JJ’s eyes trained on your legs. His gaze diverts when you lean forward, offering him the blunt again. As he lifts himself to take it, you see him wince, and now in the light of the porch, fully taking him in you, you can make out the bloody cut beside his eye.

“Jesus Christ, JayJ.”

“It’s fine,” he reflexively says. He takes another hit. “Just need some self-medication.”

“Bullshit. You need to clean that thing ‘fore it gets infected.”

“Be my guest,” JJ scoffs.

With that, you get to your feet and head back into the house. The first aid kit is under the bathroom sink. It’s probably the least dusty thing in the whole room. Returning to him, you forget all about the reason that you got up in the first place and shove it to the back of your mind. This was more important than worrying about some dumb dream. Shoving his legs off the couch, you force him to make space for you. You place the first aid kit on your lap and open it. JJ keeps smoking. The smell of weed clouds your senses. Picking out a disinfectant wipe, you turn to him.

“This’ll sting,” you say, opening the packet.

“That’s what she said.”

You frown. “What kind of kinky ass sex are you having?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he grins.

For a moment dread drops down your body, chilling your spine. Did he hear you? No, no he couldn’t have. You probably didn’t make a noise. He’s just being his usual, salacious self.

You take his jawline in hold gently between your fingers. The bone is hard beneath the soft of his skin; fine stubble scratches your fingertips. Leaning up, you try not to get distracted in his eyes as you dab at the cut. You apologise as he hisses. It doesn’t look as intimidating when clean of blood, which is more than a relief. You dip back into the first aid kit and offer up two band aids. One is plain nude and the other Hello Kitty.

“Take your pick.”

He rolls his eyes with a small smile and grabs the Hello Kitty one, holding it out to you. You shift onto your knees, bending over him to plant it over his cut. You notice a bruise forming on his cheek bone on the other side, and a cut lip. You should have insisted he stayed over when he dropped you off. He looks up, as if he can hear your thoughts, and meets your gaze. You can’t seem to find it in yourself to move away.

“It’s not your fault,” he quietly says.

You swallow. It’s scary how easy he can read you. Makes you worry what other thoughts he can tell from your face. “Wished you just stayed here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Hate the thought of you going back to that house.”

“That’s sweet,” he smiles. “But if I didn’t go, I wouldn’t have you here taking care of me.”

“Oh, was it all part of your masterplan?” you joke, finding your smile again. His seems to grow at the sight.

“Something like that.”

When his lips press to yours, you’re taken aback. It feels like fire, searing hot, and you flinch like you’ve been burnt. You gape at him, wide eyed, and it seems to register what he’s just done. You both move to put as much space between you as possible, as if trying to keep the blaze from spreading.

“Shit, I—”

“I should go back to bed,” you hurry out.

JJ nods. “Yeah, yeah. Course.”

In your scramble to get back to your feet and back in your room, the first aid kit falls to the floor, the contents spilling out. You cuss and drop to your knees, rushing to retrieve all the clutter. JJ joins you, passing you gloves and bandages. You find some nerve to meet his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he says. The sincerity in his voice…It’s painful.

“It’s okay. I don’t…It isn’t…”

You sigh. Your speech is just as messed as your mind. Closing your eyes, gathering your words, you take a deep breath. Looking back to JJ, you shake your head.

“We can’t.”

“I know,” he replies, almost sadly. Nods once more. “Yeah, I know. I’m just…high. And tired.”

“Right. Course.”

And whilst his excuses should sting, they don’t, because you don’t believe them. JJ smokes enough weed to not be affected all that much by half a joint. But you don’t argue. Instead, you close the box and go to head inside. You stop in the doorway.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” you say.

You spare him one last glance. He’s on the floor, head hung and back to you, and you consider staying. But you don’t. You go straight to bed, acting as if a fresh start tomorrow will reset the entire thing.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

In the morning, JJ’s gone. John B doesn’t seem to have even realised he’d stayed over. You find your older brother in the kitchen, washing up the dirty dishes. Swiping up a towel, you come to help.

“Hey. Sleep okay?”

“Yeah,” you lie. “You?”

“Like a rock,” he grins. “You still up for that keggar tonight, at the boneyard?”

“Oh shit, that’s tonight?”

“Yeah. All the others are going,” John B says.

“Yeah, I’ll go. I think I’m catching a ride with Lizzy from work.”

“Alright. Just stay safe.”

“I will,” you drawl. He smiles at you before turning back to the washing up. “Hey, John B?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For letting me stay here.”

“Yeah, course,” he says. He pauses his handy work, turning his attention to you. “You’ve always got a bed to crash on here, even if child services are up my ass.”

“I appreciate it. I really needed to get out of Colorado.”

The seven missed calls from your mom slip into your mind. Her texts go unanswered, but she knows you read them. You don’t want her to think you’re in danger. Talking to her is just too much right now.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I needed you back too,” he says. “Things have been kinda messy since my dad…disappeared. I don’t know what I’d do if I was on my own.”

“You’re never gonna be on your own, though,” you smile. “The Pogues would do anything for you. It’s actually kinda scary.”

John B laughs at that. “Yeah, yeah, they’re, uh, not the smartest.”

“Apart from Pope,” you point out. He nods, smiling as he looks back to the soapy water.

“Yeah, apart from Pope.”

“JJ cares about you a lot,” you feel the need to add. His voice last night, apology ready, after your kiss, echoes in your mind.

“I know. I feel like you two are the best things in my life right now,” John B admits. The guilt multiples by tenfold with that. You fix your face when he looks to you. “So, thanks.”

“No worries, big bro,” you reply, nudging his shoulder with yours.

He laughs. “Thanks, little sis.”

With that, you both continue cleaning the pots. The shame from last night gets shoved down into the deepest, darkest pit of your stomach, and you try to go about your day without sparing another thought to JJ.

On the way to the keggar, Lizzy grills you about your ‘crush’ on Tom. “He’s gonna be there tonight, I think.”

“Oh, really?” you say. You know you don’t sound enthused. It’s too much effort to pretend.

“Everything good?” she frowns, glancing away from the road.

You nod and plaster on a smile. “Yeah, yeah. Just tired, I think.”

“Couple drinks in you and you’ll be wide awake, I promise,” she assures.

Nodding, you shift in your seat and look out the window. Your skirt rides up in the processes. It’s a little short but it’s so ridiculously hot tonight, you can’t seem to care. A crotchet style crop-top dresses down the outfit. You don’t want to seem like you’re trying too hard for a beachside keggar. As you pull up closer to the boneyard, cars line the roads. Lizzy finds a spot and parks. You grab the crate of Budlight and her the box of White Claw, and you hop out the car towards the beach. Her stories about work and school have brightened your mood.

She’s tall and remarkably cool in a way that you never will be. She has stick and poke tattoos on her knees and elbows, and nine piercings on one ear. Her nose ring and snake bite piercings are far from intimidating on her cherub like features. The buzzcut has been dyed neon blue, standing bright against her dark skin. As you pass groups of teens, she shouts hello to those she recognises and shares the odd bro-hug.

You add your drinks to the pile of booze before grabbing a can, cracking it open. A quick scan of the scene tells you that the Pogues are still pre-drinking at the Chateau. You’d managed to dodge JJ so far.

“This is a pretty decent turn out,” Lizzy tells you, swigging from her can.

“Know a lot of people here?”

“Sure,” she says. She points to a gaggle of polo-shirt wearing pretty boys who look like they could snap you with one finger. “Those are the gym rat kooks. That tall blonde Topper is with the princess of Figure Eight, Sarah Cameron.”

JJ was right: biceps without a brain. You watch as he shotguns a drink and cracks the can on his forehead. Sarah Cameron, blonde hair straight flowing down her back, does not look impressed.

“And her brother Rafe. That guy’s all kinds of whacked out,” Lizzy mutters. You follow her finger to spot a tall, short haired guy. He looks unapproachable, even from far away.

“Yo Lizzy!”

You both turn to find a crowd of girls and guys. One of them is waving at Lizzy and she waves back.

“Come on, I know these guys. They’re cool,” she tells you, taking your hand and guiding you over.

You’re introduced to everyone and soon enough are roped into beer pong and shots. It’s fun though. Everyone’s having a laugh, cheering each other on. You hear about some good spots to grab food and learn Michael, Lizzy’s closest friend, can drink you under the table. A few hours in and there’s a comfortable buzz to your bones. You haven’t thought about the Pogues, or JJ, or the fleeting kiss all night. As you laugh along to one of Michael’s soccer stories, someone taps you on the shoulder. You turn around to come face to face with Tom.

“Hey,” you smile, squiffy.

“Hey! I didn’t know you were coming tonight.”

“Yeah, I came with Lizzy.”

“Hey, Tom,” she smiles before sending you a more than suggestive look. Oh, shit. The lie. “Hey, why don’t you go get my girl a top up?”

Before you can contest, she’s taking your half full can out of your hand and coaxing you away with an assuring smile. Tom takes it in stride and walks with you to the coolers. He grabs two cans of beer, passing one to you, and you cheers him.

“How you finding Kildare?”

“Good.”

“Yeah? You been hanging with John B’s crowd, right?”

“Most of the time, yeah,” you smile, nodding. He makes a face before taking a drink. You frown. “What?”

“Nah, nothing. They’re just kinda…well, I mean, some people think they’re bad news.”

“Some people, huh?” you say cautiously.

“Just reputations and all that. Like that JJ guy. He’s got slippery fingers, if you know what I mean,” Tom says, wiggling his own in demonstration.

Suddenly this conversation is very unappealing. You glance off to Lizzy and the others. “I should probably get back to them. Thanks for the drink, though.”

“No, hey, no,” Tom says. He grabs you by the wrist. “Come on, I was being a dick. I’ve had one too many. Let’s just hang, alright? I really wanna get to know you.”

You look between him and Lizzy and sigh. Taking a swig, you shrug. “Alright.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tick you off.”

“I like the Pogues. They’re a good group,” you feel the need to defend.

“No, yeah, they are!” Tom agrees. You can smell the stench of liquor on his breath. “I just don’t want you to get corrupted by them.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just, you’re new here—”

“And so I’m clueless on how to judge people?” you finish sardonically.

Tom rolls his eyes and it makes your anger tick. “Come on, you don’t gotta be a bitch about this.”

“What did you just call me? You know what? Forget it,” you scoff, snatching your arm away from his hold. “Have fun drinking on your own.”

But you don’t get very far before he’s grabbing at you again. “Calm down, would you? Just gimme—”

“Let go!” you demand.

His grip only tightens. The strong front you’re putting on begins to crumble under the panic of this guy is way bigger than me.

“Just quit bitching and we can talk,” he says harshly.

“I don’t want to talk. Now please let go of me,” you firmly return.

He doesn’t let go. Keeps chattering away, insisting that you have to hear him out.

“Let go, Tom!”

“Everything good here?”

Your wide eyes look away from Tom and land on JJ, and your whole body relaxes. He’s looking at you and the panic must read clear on your face because his demeanour changes in a split second. Jaw tight, he turns to Tom.

“I think you should let go, man.”

“You think I’m gonna listen to you?” Tom scoffs.

JJ takes another step towards him. He towers over Tom by enough to be intimidating. “Think you should listen to her.”

“Oh, I get it,” Tom snarls. He lets go of you and you can feel your skin breathing. You rub at the pink marks, easing the sting. Tom gets into JJ’s face, undeterred from a fight. “You wanna keep John B’s sloppy sister for yourself, huh?”

JJ’s fist flies at Tom’s face, making an ugly, visceral sound as it lands on his left cheek. You gasp. Nearly knocked off balance, Tom stumbles on the sand. The commotion has drawn in somewhat of a crowd. Before you can intervene, Tom’s throwing hands. He aims an upper cut to JJ’s jaw but he’s quick to dodge, landing his own punch instead by Tom’s eyebrow. That one seems to deter him. He trips backwards. The chanting of the crowds egging it on makes you feel sick. You’d just finished patching JJ up last night, and you’ve seen his anger before. It takes control quickly and blinds him to reason. The last thing he needs is to wind up in a cell. So, before he can land another hit, you’re stepping forward and grabbing at his arm, stopping him.

“Come on, let’s just go,” you say pleadingly.

His chest is heaving with anger, breathing short and jaw heavy set and tense. He hesitates, looking between yourself and Tom. He’s still cradling his last hit, trying to regain his composure. Sighing, JJ lets you lead him away. Tom’s heckling is laced with slurs directed at you, and you have to keep a steady grip on JJ to keep him from going back.

“He’s not worth it, JayJ,” you mutter.

“You’re so wrong,” JJ darkly returns, but he doesn’t go back.

Away from the beach, back on the road, you let go. He paces for a moment, trying to calm himself. Tugs off his cap and rakes his fingers through his hair, breathing deep and slow. You don’t speak: just let him go through the motions. Babying him through this isn’t going to help anyone.

Whilst violence isn’t the answer to anything, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t grateful for JJ’s help.

Letting him cool off, you take a seat on one of the fallen tree trunks.

“Hey.”

Looking up, JJ walks over. He’s mostly back to himself.

“You okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No. Just freaked me out a bit. He’s not usually like that. He’s just drunk.”

“Like that’s an excuse,” JJ scoffs. He takes the spot next to you, sitting worryingly close.

The culmination of last night and tonight makes your head spin. The effects of the alcohol vanished the moment Tom took a hold of you. Now you just want to forget the whole thing.

“Wanna get out of here?” JJ asks.

You turn your head to face him and smile smally, nodding.

“Come on. I brought my bike.”

His red bike is parked beside the Twinkie. He climbs on first and offers a hand to help you onto the back. Your arms slot around his middle, circling around his taught chest, pressing yourself against him. Face resting on the middle of his back, you try not to inhale the smell of him. It might be too much for tonight. His calloused hands on yours have you shifting your hold, ensuring your tight against him like a backpack.

“Good?”

“Good,” you quietly reply.

He kicks off the stand and starts up the engine. You pull away from the keggar and up the road, zipping down the isolated streets. There’s nobody around at this time. Not a soul in sight. It feels so right, wrapped up against him like this, safe in his presence. Tom was wrong: JJ wasn’t bad news. Sure, he was a klepto, but he was the same guy who learnt how to sew to fix your favourite pair of shorts when you were little. The same guy who stepped up when some dirtbag was harassing you. The same guy who remembered you don’t like pickles on your burgers. Who looked at your paintings as if they were Picasso.

Somewhere along the ride, one of JJ’s hands comes to rest on your own. You don’t ask why and don’t pull away. Just let the reassuring weight of his hand on yours stay there and ground you to him like an anchor. Here, flying through the night, you can pretend like all the other shit doesn’t matter. It’s just you and him.

He starts onto a dirt track, slowing down, and a house emerges. Pastel yellow painted exterior hidden behind porch netting. There’s clutter of engines and fishing gear amongst surfing supplies. He pulls to a stop and kicks on the stand, turning off the engine. It’s quiet now, without its rumble. “Your dad home?” you can’t help but ask, staring at the front door.

JJ shakes his head. “No. He’s out on Friday nights. Kinda the only routine he has.”

You don’t ask where and he doesn’t expand. You step off the bike and watch as he clambers off too. Fixing your skirt, you wait for him to talk. He doesn’t. “I should probably head back,” you say. You’re not entirely sure why you came to his place instead. You’d assumed when you got on the bike that he’d take you back the Chateau.

“I mean, we can share a joint first if you want. Help you calm down and stuff, after that shitshow,” JJ half-chuckles.

There’s something heavy in the humid air. It’s hard to describe, hard to place, but you can feel it like static electricity. You find yourself nodding. He nods too and starts up to the house, hands in his black short pockets. You watch his feet sink into the grass and guide your eyes up his figure. His shoulders are tense, dressed under a thin t-shirt. He ditches his cap on the kitchen counter when you walk through the door. Through the house, past the neglection, and to his bedroom. He flicks on the light and clears his throat as he goes to his desk drawer.

You stand, leaning against his door until it clicks closed, and look around his room. There’s a world map pinned to the wall but no markings on it asides from one: Kildare, North Carolina. Print outs of palm trees and pressed, framed butterflies and leaves seem less innocent when placed between posters of models on the beach. The floor is a mess of dirty clothes and empty beer cans. Several dead vapes litter near the overflowing bin, and cigarette and joint buds scatter the windowsill and beside table. But the smell of JJ hangs strong in the air; it makes you smile to yourself.

“Alright,” JJ sighs. The desk drawer slams closed and he turns around, holding up a fresh joint and lighter. His initials are scratched into the metal: JJ. He sits on the bed and places the blunt between his lips, flicking at his lighter. You watch him take a drag and take it off him when he offers it over.

No words are shared as you pass the bud for several minutes. You both glance around the room, at the floor, at the ceiling, anywhere but each other.

“How’s your face?”

“Huh?” he asks, finally meeting your eyes.

You nod to his cheek. “Your cut from the other night?”

“Oh, right,” he mumbles. He lifts a finger and strokes it absentmindedly. “It’s alright.”

“Good.”

JJ hands you the joint again, you take a drag, you pass it back to him. That same feeling from earlier, when you first climbed off the bike, has only amplified.

“So…”

You brave clearing the distance between you. You take the spot next to him on the bed.

“We gonna talk about it.”

“What’s there to talk about?” JJ deflects, studying the floor.

“Well, you kissed me,” you eventually reply, taking the joint back. “So, there’s that.”

“I already told you,” he sighs. “I was tired and doped up.”

When you say nothing, he looks up at you. "What? You think I'm lying?"

You take a drag. Shrugging, you honestly reply, “yeah, a little.”

He holds your gaze as if challenging you to back down. You don’t. Beating around the bush won’t help anything here, and its obvious you can’t go back to acting like it didn’t happen. You can’t move past it until you know why he did.

“S’just weird,” JJ mutters, looking away. “What happened last night, with me and you. S’just weird.”

“Yeah, it was weird for me too,” you agree. Swallowing, you take another hit. “But not bad weird, right?”

JJ’s head lifts once more. His eyes flash across your face like he’s searching for some kind of trap. He sucks his teeth in contemplation. “No. Not bad weird.”

Your heart stutters, breathing shaky and unsure. You feel your eyes dart down to his strawberry pink lips, and his to yours. But then he’s shaking his head. “What are we doing?”

“I don’t know…” you breathe. You’re transfixed on his lips. Can’t move away, can’t bring yourself too. The blunt in your fingers is burning away, ash dropping to the floor, but you don’t care. All of it, everything but JJ, is white noise.

The moment you flit your eyes up to his, something shifts in him. His jaw ticks as he clenches it. Your brows pull in thought but there’s no time for you to ask.

“Fuck it.”

His lips are on yours within a breadth. He consumes your senses like a drug, dulling down anything else until all your thoughts are on him. He grabs for the blunt in your fingers, haphazardly putting it on the bedside table, and then his hands are sliding up along your sides, up your back, into your hair. One finds purchase on your cheek, and you rest your jaw in his hold like a bird settled in its favourite branch. The way he holds you like you’re something holy is different to how sinful his kiss is. It’s pure passion: raw, animalistic heat from weeks of build-up. And, God, it feels so right. The way his tongue brushes against yours, warm in your mouth, heavy in your head. The nip of his teeth on your lips and the fanning of his breath when he has to break for air. You’ve never been kissed like this before, not by anyone. It’s dizzying.

Until it isn’t, and he’s pulling away. His forehead rests against your own. You’re both panting. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says.

You slide a hand up his neck, tracing his jawline with your fingers. He practically melts under your touch, eyes slipping shut. “I know,” you whisper distractedly. Your thumb traces his lower lip. It’s swollen from your kisses.

He blinks his eyes open. “I’m serious. He can’t know.”

“He won’t,” you say, going to reconnect your lips.

But JJ stops you. “No, he can’t. He’d…God, he just can’t.”

You want to cry, seeing the moral dilemma weigh on JJ, feeling you share the burden. But the thought of walking away from this, of not feeling every inch of him, of never hearing him fall apart, makes you want to sob.

“Maybe just one time,” you murmur. Your finger traces down his chin, along the centre of his neck. “And we can just get it out of our system.”

“Yeah,” JJ mumbles. “Yeah, one time.”

“Yeah?”

You meet his gaze. His pupils are dilated, heavy with lust, and you feel your body ignite. “Touch me, please.”

With that simple mark of consent, JJ’s unchained. He doesn’t hold back when your lips reconnect. Somehow it becomes deeper, rougher, better. It’s such a strange oxymoron, the way he touches you and kisses you. You pull away to remove your crop top, and he takes the moment to strip off his shirt. The two of you are shameless as you take in the other. Reaching out a hand, you run your fingers up his chest in the way that you’ve imagined so many times before. It’s funny how in your head, you’ve already done it. His eyes dip down, watching your hands explore. You lean forward, pressing a kiss to his left pectoral, then his right. Sighing, his chest drops up and down with uneven breathes.

“So pretty,” you say through your kisses.

His fingers tether into your hair. There’s a slight tug that sends ripples of pleasure through your body in ways that it shouldn’t as he pulls you away, guiding your lips back to him. As he crawls atop of you, you inch up the bed, skirt riding up. You settle on our back. JJ’s greedy in his touch. Strokes your skin, explores your body, like it’s his own. And in a way it is because you’d give him anything if he asked. When his fingers slip behind your back, searching for the clasp of your bra, you lift yourself onto your elbows. He holds your gaze as he unfastens it, guiding it off your shoulders, helping it off your arms.

“Fuck,” he sighs.

A smile teases at your lips. It takes a certain type of guy to make you blush at the sound of his curses. Your head rocks back, eyes sinking closed, as his lips latch around your nipple. A hand palms at the skin, teasing your breast, exploring your reactions. You sigh out your pleasure, bringing a hand up to mess with his hair. It’s better than you imagined. Tops every fantasy, every wet dream, every sinful thought. And it’s only just begun.

“So fucking sexy,” JJ groans, kissing up your body until he finds your lips.

You don’t want him away from you. He looms over you, encasing you in the safe, consuming feeling of his presence, trapping you in the smell of his cologne and soap that you’ve tried so desperately to avoid. Through the kisses and love bites marked into necks and collarbones, you feel one of his hands ghost the outline of your figure. Traces down so slowly like you might not even notice. Down, down, to your panties. It’s there that he sweeps over your cotton covered mound. You sigh against his lips in anticipation.

“I know you’ve been thinking ‘bout this,” JJ says.

His voice is just as you pictured it: deep and crooning, his Southern accent at forefront. You want to bottle it like brandy and drink it until you black out. His lips work down your neck as he lightly circles your clit over your panties and you can’t stop your moan.

“I heard you, the other night.” Your eyes shoot open. JJ meets your gaze. He’s dying, the desperation clear as day on his face. His eyes themselves could send him straight to hell. There’s the shadow of a smirk.

“Were you thinking of me, whilst you were getting off?”

You go to push him away. The last thing you need is for him to tease you about it and make fun. But he doesn’t let you. Instead, he kisses just below your ear.

“Cause I think about you. Every night since you’ve been back. Can’t jack off to anything else,” he confesses into the crux of your ear. Your only reply is a small, surprised gasp. Your body’s ablaze with his words.

His fingers finally dip below your panties, sliding between your soaking folds. He groans at the sensation and you feel your legs give way. He works at you for a while, toying with you like it’s a side hobby. You’re only half aware of the sounds you make. One of your hands has situated itself on his upper back, nails scratching at the skin. JJ can’t seem to keep his mouth shut. It’s one blasphemy after another, and it drives you deeper and deeper into the abyss. He seems to become impatient. He removes fingers to push your underwear down. You kick them off at the ankles with a small giggle.

The moment his finger sinks into you, you swear you’ve seen heaven. JJ worships you, taking his time to inch you closer and closer to the edge. Another finger, then another. The stretch is heaven. Your back arches off the bed, mouth agape, brain dumb with pleasure. He won’t be quiet. He whispers praises into your ear. Narrates his own fantasies he’s harboured about you. Know you’ve been teasing me with those tiny bikinis. I wish I fucked you on the porch the other night. The moment his thumb swipes over your clit, you know you’re close. And then he’s bending his fingers just slightly, hitting that spot. You abandon all religion: this is the only type of prayer you need.

JJ has the audacity to laugh as you climax. You grasp uselessly at his body, the bedsheets, anything. You use a shaky hand to push his fingers away, overstimulated, and he finally relents. Starts kissing at your neck like a Goddamn vampire.

“That good, huh?”

You can’t really formulate words. You just drag his face to yours, kissing him senseless. When you inevitably part for breath, JJ leans back. He pinches your chin between two fingers, gnawing at his lower lip, and parts your lips for him. Your body pulses at the submissiveness he’s placed you under. Then his used fingers are slipped into your mouth. You close your lips around them, holding his gaze as you suck them clean. The salty distinct taste is unfamiliar but not necessarily unpleasant. He gives a small laugh, like he’s in disbelief.

“Fuck. Why did we wait so long to do this?”

You pull his hand free, taking grip on his shoulders. Pushing him against his bedroom wall, you move to straddle him. His hands fall onto your hips. Somewhere in your heady make-out, you rock yourself back on him. JJ groans; his head knocks back against the wall. He’s rock hard. It must be torture. You shuffle off him to make room to pull his shorts off. They join the mess of clothes on the floor. The tip leaks precum, straining painfully. You go to jack him off but JJ stops you.

“I won’t last,” he admits, half-embarrassed.

You nod, biting back your smile. “You got protection?”

“Top drawer,” he says, nodding to the bedside table.

You lean over and dig about before finding a condom. You come back, tear it open, and gently slide it over him. He lets out a shuddering breath at your touch, eyes clenched shut in concentration. It makes you feel slightly guilty for letting him indulge you for so long, but this will pay it back.

Straddling him once more, you steady yourself with one hand on either shoulder. His find home on your hips once more, and he helps you line up. Then you slowly sink down onto him. The stretch stings despite the earlier efforts. Head hanging forward, mouth falling open in silent moans, eyes clenching shut, you take him in. JJ’s mumbling praises, eyes transfixed on where you connect, spurring you on. Taking me so good. Jus’little more. You rock against him, using whatever energy you have to ride him. He helps guide you, head resting against the wall. You love that he isn’t quiet. Love that you’re on top and can see every ripple of pleasure course through him, reflect on his face. But when his eyes slip shut, you take a hand and guide his face to yours. Pressing your forehead against him, you lean forward and steady yourself with a hand on his chest. The new angle is euphoric. You moan and whine against his lips, eyes staring into his own. It’s the most hideously lewd symphony as the two of you chase your highs. There’s only one thought in your mind. And when JJ comes unannounced, shuddering as he finishes, never looking away from your eyes, only one thought is in your mind.

If it can only happen this once, it has to be perfect...

to be continued (part 2 will be released later this week)

[cal-flakes]

╰┈➤ soft spot

warnings: light swearing, mean!rafe (not really just teasing)

summary: rafe cameron has a soft spot for routledge!reader, who turns out to be nothing like her brother.

“what’cha reading?” rafe hummed, startling her as he appeared from behind her, crouching down to sit beside her on the sand. y/n stared at him for a moment, puzzled as to why rafe cameron had just vacated his get together at the island club to bother her. “like you care..” she scoffed, rolling her eyes as she turned back to her book, flicking the page delicately.

“woah- what’s that all about, huh?” he teased, a slight tone of arrogance laced in his voice as he pulled the book away from her, causing her to jump up in attempt to snatch it back. she watched in frustration as he peered at the words on the cover, his brows furrowing. “american psycho?” he muttered to himself before chuckling as he turned to face her again. “you read some weird shit y/n..” he laughed, handing her the book back as he leant against the side of same tree trunk she’d been resting on.

“go away rafe..” she sighed, waving him off. “awh don’t be like that, i just want to talk to you y/n..” he pouted, placing his head on her shoulder. shooing him away, y/n huffed as she placed the book back into her bag, accepting her fate.

“don’t you have someone else to bother cameron? I’m sure my brother and his friends are close by..” she spat, staring up at him in annoyance. “meh, they bore me, you’re much more fun” he taunted, his eyes flitting to the waves crashing infront of them. “whatever, what do you want?”

“why do i have to want something? i can’t just have a conversation?” he gasped, feigning offence as he pulled away slightly, his mouth hanging open. “you always want something rafe. money, drugs, heyward’s beer..” she snapped, taking a jab at him for what he did to pope a while back.

“low blow man, i apologised for that!” he argued, folding his arms across his chest, causing her eyes to fix on his exposed biceps for a split second.

snap out of it, she thought. quickly turning her attention back to the tall, annoying boy, she stared at him in an attempt to prompt an uncomfortable silence.

“okay, maybe what i did to your friend was shitty, but i’m a better person now! and if you’d just let me prove it…” he suggested sheepishly as he fidgeted with the signet ring on his finger. “prove it? what do you mean?” she queried, once again oblivious to his constant advances.

“jesus, are you always this slow?” he chuckled, yet he was quick to furrow his brows when she turned away dramatically. “wait- no, i didn’t mean that! shit i- i’m sorry y/n! i just mean i want to take you out, show you that i’m nothing like what your brothers told you!” he plead, shuffling around the large tree to cage her in, forcing her to listen.

“if i say yes will you go away and let me read in peace?” she hummed, not bothering to look up from the book in her hand once again. “of course” he nodded, holding back the grin threatening to spread across his lips.

“okay then, yes, you can take me out sometime..” she stated, meeting his eyes as she glanced up at him. “okay, um- great! i’ll pick you up tomorrow?” he suggested, staring at her expectantly.

“sure, you know where i live..” she sighed, turning back to the book as a small smile appeared on her face.

“perfect, i’ll see you tomorrow, be ready at eight!” he spoke excitedly, returning to his feet as he pointed at her, causing her to flip him off as her smile grew.

[princessmaybank]

Outer Banks P!Links

~Only JJ, Rafe, John B, and Pope but willing to look for others!~

*I'm aware some of them look nothing like them, but that's okay, it's all for fun*

WARNINGS: MDNI, THIS IS 18+, PORN LINKS

JJ

3way with Sarah

Best friends fucking

JJ finger blasting you

Bouncing on his cock

Sucking off Tatted!JJ

Rafe

playing with yourself while satisfying Rafe

Dom!Rafe playing with your little pussy

Stepbro!Rafe helps you out

Rafe taking you from behind

Taking you to pound town

John B

John B and JJ giving you a helping hand

Bouncing on JB's dick

JB eating you out

Shower sex w/ JB

Bouncing on his dick in the car

Pope

Pope puts his hands in your panties

Riding him in public

Destroying each other

Stretching you out

Pope dicking you down

[obxsummer]

Reunion // Ghost of You

summary below cut to avoid spoilers for s3 ep1-3

let's jump right on in.

part of #obx3celebration

navigation -- series masterlist

--

summary: after being rescued from your island paradise, you're unexpectedly ripped from the pogues and pushed straight into another fight for your life.

warnings: kidnapping, violence, cursing, minor character death

--

The noise of an airplane propeller shook you from your sleep. Ever since you touched this island, you were sensitive to every little sound or movement. Sitting up sharply, you looked to see Pope doing the same. The two of you were quick to catch sight of the plane dancing in the clouds and started shaking friends awake.

“Guys, plane. Plane!” Shaking JJ’s shoulder aggressively, you collected your ratty shoes from the sand and ran towards the shoreline. 

Taking a look back, you could see the uncertain expression on JJ’s face. In the time you all had spent on the island, he had made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want to leave. This was JJ’s element, his safe space. He was with you, his family, and they were making things work with scraps. This was the Full Pogue experience he had always dreamed of.

“Hey! We’re down here!” John B was suddenly next to you and waving his arms aggressively to draw any ounce of attention to your group. Pope and Cleo took off up the field to light a fire in hopes that the pilot would see.

A defeated sigh left your lips as the plane looked like it would continue on before making a last-minute change and turning.

“Guys, guys. He sees us!” Kie shook your arm in excitement.

“He’s gonna go to the pond. Come on, come on!” Your brother slung his shoestrings over his shoulders and grabbed Sarah’s hand to tug her along up the hill.

JJ caught up to your side as you guys jogged behind your friends. You could tell he was displeased. You tried to understand why he would feel this way, but part of you just wanted to go home. Watching the aircraft make a successful landing, your boyfriend let out a sigh. 

“Come on.” His fingers were rough as they intertwined with your own. You squeezed, trying to give him some sort of comfort about the idea as you caught up with everyone.

The stairs of the cockpit lowered just above the water as a middle-aged man climbed out. He was quick to join in on the noises of celebration coming from Cleo, Pope, and John B. “Well, what do we got here?”

John B glanced back at your group before responding. “You know, just some castaways.”

“Well, I’ll cross that off my grocery list. Uh, hang on! I got just the thing for y’all.” He disappeared back into the plane for a moment. “Two things you need on a deserted island: first aid and rum!”

The bottle splashed in front of Sarah’s feet. She seemed distraught at the sight in front of her, no doubt fearing that her father may be involved in some way. You didn’t blame her. The constant feeling that you need to look over your shoulder was exhausting, but you were hoping it would change.

“So, what’s the story? You guys sank a boat?”

“Jumped off one,” You replied, watching as Sarah bent down to grab the alcohol out of the water. For some reason, you weren’t as hesitant to get out of here as you probably should’ve been. After a month or so of living like this, you would take the Chateau back in a heartbeat. 

The pilot chuckled. “Well, have no fear. Jimmy’s here. I got you.”

Cleo cheered and threw her hands in the air. “Well, all hail Jimmy, guys! Let’s go.”

The pilot, Jimmy, welcomed you all as John B led the way into the plane. Kie gave you and JJ a look before following wordlessly. It seemed a little too good, but who were you to say anything?

You turned to JJ, taking the chance to check-in. “You okay?” Your hand rested on his collarbone, thumb tracing his jawline as you observed him. His whole body was tense; the fun demeanor you’d witnessed after cliff jumping yesterday disappeared without a trace. JJ’s expression was sharp when he made eye contact with you. Thrown off guard, you frowned and dropped your hands to your side. 

“We said we’d never go back, remember? You said you wouldn’t. And here you are, running after a plane that would take us right back into hell?” He shrugged his shoulders before looking away. You were a bit surprised by his hostility, feeling like he was blaming you for everyone else climbing onboard. 

“Who said we’re going back to the OBX?” You countered as you gestured towards the plane. “There’s no way that thing would fly that far anyway. We’re all gonna be together no matter what.”

JJ let out a heavy breath and refused to look at you. “You don’t get it.” He hauled his boots up before brushing past you to head after your friends into the aircraft. You turned on your heels, the fight leaving your body at the idea of him being so upset over leaving this place. There was no point in arguing right now. 

With a huff, you climbed on board, thanking Jimmy for letting you all come before settling down between Sarah and Kie. The idea of being able to take a shower and put fresh clothes on was amazing right now, so you tried not to hold onto JJ’s poor attitude personally. 

“So, what are you doing all the way out here?” JJ asked as the engine started up. 

“I got a little guide outfit in Saint Vincent. I was spotting fish. You know, the usual. Wahoo,” Jimmy replied as he began flipping switches and steering. “I’d hang on to something. Gets a little spicy on takeoff.”

You shared a look with Pope, the two of you not big airplane people to begin with. Grabbing onto nearby straps, you clenched the fabric tightly. The plane jerked once before things steadied out and you could eventually see the water and island far beneath you from the sky. 

Taking a deep breath, you leaned your head against the metal behind you in hopes that it would calm your racing heart. You were grateful for the opportunity to hopefully go somewhere a little better, but the lack of safety equipment in this plane made you nauseous. 

“Wahoo don’t run in September. Ever, alright?” JJ’s voice broke you out of your self-induced trance. You opened your eyes to see him leaning toward your group as far away from Jimmy as he could get. “So, whoever this man is, he’s not a fisherman.”

“No, I know what this is,” Sarah said as if the answer was obvious, “He’s working for my dad, and he’s probably been looking for us this entire time.”

Pope considered the idea. “Alright, we gotta find out. Start looking for some sort of… clues.”

JJ and John B were quick to create a plan to distract Jimmy. While your brother busied himself with asking pointless questions, JJ dug straight into the satchel hanging on the seat. A few books tumbled into his hands. A photo slid out of the first one, Sarah being quick to grab it. You peeked over her shoulder to see a crisp clear photo of the Coastal Venture.

“This is the boat we were on, with Eberhimi and the cross,” She whispered.

“So he was looking for us?” Cleo asked as she got a look at the picture for herself. A nervous feeling built in your stomach at the thought of this man searching for you on purpose, maybe even for Ward’s bidding. 

A sharp movement of the airplane had you all bracing for some stability as Jimmy called out about turbulence. Kiara looked over your shoulder out the window. You followed her gaze to the window where land was creeping into the blue of the ocean. “Whatever it is, it’s happening fast. Look.” 

“That looks like Barbados. I’ve been there with Terrance,” Cleo piped up as the rest of your group observed what would most likely be the landing place. 

“Okay. There’s six of us, one of him. You know my vote, we storm the cockpit.”

You gave JJ an incredulous look at his suggestion. “No, who’s gonna fly the plane, dumbass?”

“I’ve seen Pope fly simulators.”

“I crop dusted for my uncle last summer, that is not the same thing!”

The group continued to bicker back and forth before ultimately deciding the best option would be to land safely and book it as soon as you got the opportunity. John B was quick to start a conversation with Jimmy again so JJ could sneak the books back into the satchel. It seemed like all was well until the pilot happened to glance over his right shoulder, exactly where JJ was scrambling in his stuff.

The plane jerked aggressively as the boys broke into a fight. Screaming echoed around you with shouts to fly the plane overwhelming as you grabbed on for some sort of hold. The water was approaching rapidly when Jimmy finally turned back around in an attempt to save everyone. Admitting defeat, you closed your eyes tightly and braced against the wall when the first hit came. 

The plane bounced across the ocean, sending the six of you into a mess of tangled limbs against the floor. Someone’s elbow jammed into the weak spot of your back as you cried out. The water started flooding the ground as you all scrambled for an escape. 

“Everybody good?”

The cool liquid sent a chill up your spine once you finally found some footing. John B shoved the door open and crawled out first. You could barely see the people crowding the beach at the sight of the accident.

“They do not look friendly.”

You looked closer, noticing the weapons and vests they were wearing to separate them from casual observers. Slipping on the wet metal, you shifted through the water as everyone began scrambling from the singing airplane. 

“Y/N, let’s go!”

You spared a glance back at where Jimmy was passed out in his seat. A tug pulled in your chest, the idea of leaving someone to drown not sitting well with you. Cursing to yourself, you pushed through the water to grab onto the pilot and tug him out.

“No, no, no. Y/N, let’s go!”

“Hurry!”

You ignored the shouts of concern and worked on tugging Jimmy into the open water. Your feet kicked as hard as possible to keep you both afloat as he slowly started coming to. You waited until the sand was under your feet and bystanders came to help to let go. 

Coughing up water, you turned to glare at the man you’d rescued. “You lied to us.” Adrenaline was pumping through your system, the fear of what had happened taking over. 

The sound of ATVs flooded your senses as you turned to look over your shoulder. The beach was crowded with a series of men, all in tan tactical gear, and all of them heading towards you. 

“You should get out of here.”

Ignoring Jimmy’s useless advice, you took off up the shore in hopes that you could lose them in the mass of people. A rotting boat was taking up part of the shore but you quickly navigated through an opening to hide in the darkness of it. 

You held your breath at the sound of footsteps, a pair of boots coming into view. As soon as the person’s eyes came a little too close, you lashed out and kicked him away from your hideout.

“She’s over here!”

“Shit!” Crawling as fast as possible, you moved through the sand in hopes to avoid the oncoming hands but fell short when a foot tripped your own. Sand clouded your vision as two sets of hands latched on to you and pulled you back up. “Let me go!” You yanked and struggled against them in a desperate attempt to free yourself.

 Eventually, the back and forth became too much for the two men who resorted to picking you up out of the sand to move you into a waiting pickup truck. One of your attackers was quick to slide a thick black zip tie around your wrists, effectively ending any sort of backlash as they pushed you into the tailgate corner. 

“We lost the others. We’ll keep searching.”

The words coming from the man’s radio brought you a slight bit of comfort knowing that the rest of the Pogues got away. You sagged against the side of the truck in exhaustion as the adrenaline began to seep away. 

Jimmy suddenly popped into view, your anger quickly resurfacing at the sight of him. “I save your life,” You sneered.

“I know. I know. I’m sorry. I’m gonna try to help you, okay?” He sighed, “I swear. I didn’t know it was gonna be like this. Look, if you don’t fight, if you just do what they say, these guys prob… probably won’t hurt you.”

You shook your head and glared. “Because that’s so reassuring. What did Ward promise you?”

“Who?” He didn’t wait for you to answer the question and continued, “Hey, just take my advice and do what they say. Good luck.”

The truck engine started a second later, one of the guards climbing in the back with you before the vehicle took off. You groaned, tears fighting your eyes at the idea of being taken from your brother and your boyfriend once again. You were sick of this violence around every corner, sick of always being taken from your loved ones.

The sun was warm on your bare skin but did nothing to ease the anxiety building in your chest. You were not equipped enough to keep handling this shit by yourself. The drive continued until you took a right turn down a private road lined with palm trees, blocked with more guards. A watchdog circled the truck as the other guards surveyed who was in the vehicle before it was allowed through. 

Surveying your surroundings, more guards, ATVs, and weapons were at every glance. Your heart sank, knowing there was no way you would be able to outrun everything on your own. One of the guards came to pull you out of the back once the truck came to a stop. You were led up to a large white-colored mansion, the sight of even more guards making you sick. 

The front door opened to reveal a woman dressed in a maid-styled uniform. She took a brief glance at you before letting the both of you through. The foyer area was decorated with expensive artifacts and paintings as you walked. “Take her upstairs. The Orinoco Room.”

A different guard took place and pulled your elbow up the stairs and practically tossed you inside the room, only sparing a second to cut the ties around your wrists.

“Why am I here? Who are you working for?” You took a step back away, the idea of being locked in a room with no escape again haunting your mind. 

“Dinner at eight. I’d clean up.” The door slammed and locked a second later without another word. Your feet stumbled backward until you collided with the bed frame. A sob choked through your throat as the memories became heavy, this feeling all too familiar to you. You didn’t even know if you could be rescued by the Pogues at this point. You were royally fucked.

An hour or two passed before you were able to get yourself out of bed to explore the room. A handful of identical dresses hung in the closet with a note to pick your size attached. Alarms went off in your head at the creepy aura surrounding the gesture before you dropped the paper to the carpet. Moving into the bathroom, a shower was 100% necessary first and foremost. If you were going to go headfirst into this by yourself, might as well clean up when you can.

The products in the shower had to have cost a fortune based on their looks and efficiency. As terrified as you were, this was much nicer than being trapped in the Cameron household endlessly. You took your time to get decent and explore the rest of the room. Dogs barked occasionally from outside, a reminder of the ever-present guards at every corner. 

A sharp knock startled you back to reality as the housekeeper from earlier entered. “He’s ready.”

You didn’t question it, standing up and smoothing out the fabric of the dress as you followed her down the winding staircase. She guided you into one of the rooms connecting to the entranceway before leaving. 

There was one other person in the room, dressed in a tux with their back to you as they poured liquor into a glass. You cleared your throat slightly. “Excuse me?”

Your heart dropped as the person turned around to reveal Rafe Cameron. A fresh buzz cut to his hair made him almost unrecognizable, but he still invoked the same horrible fear in you. This was slowly becoming your worst nightmare all over again. Chest tight with an approaching anxiety attack, you wondered what the hell you were going to do without John B and JJ.

“Y/N?” He looked shocked for some reason and quickly closed the distance between you as his expression shifted to one of anger. You immediately took a step back in return. “Are you trying to weasel in on my deal right now? Is that what’s going on?”

You stared at him for a moment while trying to process what the hell was actually happening. A voice from the other half of the room seemed to hear your thoughts. “I wondered if your little reunion would cause sparks, you know.”

The two of you turned simultaneously to the man who had spoken. He too was dressed in a suit, holding a glass of whiskey as he walked towards you. 

“Who are you?” Rafe didn’t hesitate to ask the obvious.

The man pointed to himself like he was surprised the question was even asked. “Me? My name is Carlos Singh. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cameron. And Miss Routledge, I do apologize for the rough tactics in bringing you here. But please, come, sit down. Come now, I don’t bite.”

There was a period of hesitation before you finally took the initiative to step forward into the sitting room, leaving Rafe to follow behind. “Rough tactics?” The Kook repeated. “What about me?”

“Yes, Mr. Cameron, false pretenses, but the ends justify the means, I’m afraid.” Carlos poured himself another hefty drink before asking Rafe to sit again. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“Why are we here?” The question you’d been wanting to know the answer to since the moment they came after you on the beach. Why? Why you and why here?

Carlos stood in front of the two of you and took a sip. “Well, Ms. Routledge, Mr. Cameron. We share certain interests, you know? Objectives.”

“Is this not about the cross?” Rafe’s already limited patience was wearing thin and you feared he would snap any second when he didn’t receive answers. 

“It is. Tangentially, it is about the cross, but it’s also about something much, much bigger.” Carlos turned around to face a framed painting on the wall that depicted a deep grassland with pyramids of gold. “By orders of magnitude… the completion of a grand quest. You see, the story goes that 450 years ago, a Spanish soldier came out of the Orinoco Basin with a few gold beads. When they asked the Spanish soldier where the beads came from, he replied that he got them from a peaceful Indigenous tribe who lived in a city of gold. El Dorado. For the next 450 years, people tried to find that gold, you know. They tried. Conquistadors, knights, captains of ships, tribes, entire nations. All fighting each other in a race for the end of the rainbow. Thousands of lives. And it falls to me, you know. It falls to me to complete the task, to bring full circle to a quest that has gone on for almost 500 years. Perhaps…perhaps the greatest quest in the history of the western hemisphere. And you two are going to play a part in that.”

“What about you, Ms. Routledge? Are you interested in history?”

The question made you want to roll your eyes. “I’m more of a future person.”

Rafe spoke up, “You know, I almost didn’t listen to a word you said, okay? How much you gonna keep philosophizing?” You honestly wanted to thank him for his straightforward attitude when it came to this.

“You are direct, aren’t you, Mr. Cameron?” Silence followed.

“What do you need from me?” At this point, you were willing to give him whatever he asked for, so long as it was within reason. You wanted out.

Carlos spared you a glance. “I’ve come to believe that you and your friends are in possession of something that can help me get what I want. An old manuscript, a diary actually.”

For a moment, you blanked on what exactly he meant. Then it hit you, Mr. Sunn had given Pope the diary of Denmark Tanny during your hunt for the cross. And if the cross, the gold, and this… El Dorado were all related… you had the key to where you needed to go. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rafe replied as you shook your head lightly.

“I don’t know anything about a diary,” You added, “My brother and dad are the treasure people, not me.”

Carlos looked you dead in the eye. “How else could you have learned that the cross was on the Royal Merchant?”

Shrugging instantly, you stared him right back. “Look, I want to help you, but I can’t. I don’t have what you’re looking for.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that you know, because unfortunately… I don’t believe you. You and your friends couldn’t have found that cross without it.”

“He’s not my friend.” The statement was short and sharp in nature as you spat it back at him. Fuck this dude for pulling you away from your friends, and fuck Rafe for all he did to you.

The Cameron next to you clapped his hands and got to his feet without warning. “Well, this is ridiculous. Okay? I’m out. I don’t know anything about a diary, okay? So-” He moved towards the open door but was forced back the second an armed guard appeared. 

“Do I look like a fool to you, Mr. Cameron?” Carlos repeated his question when Rafe didn’t answer. “You have the cross. She and her friends had the cross at one point. So one of you has the diary. And if you really don’t know, I suggest you convince your friend here to give it to me.” 

A finger was directed towards you, pulling Rafe’s gaze with it as the two of you held each other’s attention for a moment.

“Once I have the diary, you’ll be free to leave.” When nobody made a comment in return, Carlos moved towards the door to leave. “Enjoy the grounds during your stay. I must warn you though. I’m not a man of infinite patience. You have one day. Go to the window for a little demonstration. I think you’ll enjoy it, you know?” He placed two solid pats on Rafe’s bicep before exiting the room. 

The door was forced closed a moment after, Rafe calling out in shock as the lock clicked. If you weren’t freaking the hell out before, you sure as shit were now. While Rafe attempted to wiggle the door loose, you moved over to one of the sheer curtains covering a window and moved it aside. The guards and dogs were still circling, but this time a new figure joined. Jimmy was being pulled along onto the patio.

“Who the hell is that guy?” Rafe was suddenly so close to you, your whole body going rigid in response. 

“It’s Jimmy Portis,” You kept your reply simple. No need to converse with him beyond the bare minimum. He didn’t deserve it.

Carlos showed up through the glass a moment later, sparing the time to turn and find the two of you in the window before he pulled a gun from his waistband. A sharp gasp left your mouth as you figured out where this was going next.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

Every inch of your being was telling you to look away, not that you could see them underneath the rooftop of the patio. The loud bang came fast, an involuntary flinch wracking your body as the gunshot echoed. 

“This diary. Hey, no bullshit. Okay? Do you have it?” Rafe was inches from your face, the warmth of his breath on your cheek as you continued to stare forward. “Y/N?”

You turned to him sharply. “No.”

--

You hardly slept that night. The silky tank top and pants that were laid out made you so uncomfortable, not to mention the threat on your horizon if you didn’t figure out what the hell to do. Not to mention, Rafe was sleeping not even a foot away on the floor. With so much “gracious hospitality”, Carlos Singh couldn’t even be bothered to spare another bedroom.

You hoped JJ, John B, and the Pogues were at least doing better than you. Maybe they’d found a way home by now and we’re just waiting for you to escape. Even if you guys didn’t make it out of Barbados, you just wanted to be back with them.

Taking a glance at Rafe’s sleeping form, you pushed yourself off the bed to go by the window where guards had been stationed on the connecting balcony. Body moving before your consciousness, you tapped on the window to get the person’s attention. 

“I need to talk to Mr. Singh,” You tried to keep your voice somewhat quiet. The guard looked at you confused, so you repeated the statement slower.

“What are you doing?” Rafe had woken up at the noise and rushed over to you. “Shut up, shut up, shut up. What the hell are you doing?”

You turned around to glare at him. “Like I owe you an explanation for absolutely anything.” You brushed past him to the other door in the room.

“Think for a second, Y/N! What are you doing?”

Ignoring his question, you began to knock on the wooden door separating you from the rest of the house. “Hello?” When Rafe wouldn’t stop pushing, you snapped. “Don’t fucking talk to me.”

“You’re lying, about this diary. You know where it is?”

You shook your head. “No, I don’t.”

Rafe let out a groan as you moved away from him again. “Okay, listen, I wouldn’t tell me either, but he’s never gonna believe we don’t know something, alright? Listen to me! Singh killed that-”

The second his hand touched your shoulder, you whipped around and smacked him. Hard. “Don’t fucking touch me!” The two of you stood there for a moment, tensions high with the looming death threat. 

Rafe raised his hands in surrender. “Look around you. I’m the only friend you got.”

You were prepared to shut him down a second later, but the click of the door lock interrupted the opportunity. The guard from the balcony appeared in the doorway and you were quick to move toward him without a thought. Ignoring Rafe’s annoying voice from behind you, the guard escorted you out of the room and relocked the door. 

Carlos Singh didn’t look surprised at your presence when you entered the study. You stopped short of the table he was seated at. 

“I lied. I know about the diary,” You admitted, fingers clenching the fabric of your clothes. “I don’t have the original, but I can get you a copy.”

He looked you over for a moment before nodding slightly. “I’m relieved to hear you say that, you know. May I offer you something to eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

He almost laughed at how quick your response was. “Relax, nothing’s gonna happen to you now. You’re cooperating, and I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“I just want to get you what you want, and then I want to leave,” Your voice was stern right back to him, refusing to show a hint of weakness. “I know where it is. But I have to go by myself. Alone.”

In the back of your head, you’re praying that the Twinkie is still alive somewhere on the OBX. Somewhere you can get a copy of the diary and maybe make a run for it.

“How would I know that you’d come back? I need some collateral.”

“Rafe’s here.” There was zero hesitation to offer him up for your sure-to-be disappearance. You didn’t give a shit what happened to him. “Keep him.

Signh laughed at your offer. “Rafe. No, I’ve heard tellings about what happened between the two of you. How did someone so young, get into so much trouble?” He rose from his chair to walk past you. You were quick to follow him.

“Look, I know where the diary is, and if you let me go, I promise you I can get it to you.”

Carlos shut down after that, his responses snippy and harsh until his phone broke the tension. He paused and rubbed his face before going to look at it. You were shocked when he looked at you and laughed. “Amazing. A text from our friend Jimmy Portis. From beyond the grave apparently. It seems Mr. Portis has captured your friends.”

The phone turned towards you to show a picture of John B and Sarah sitting next to each other with the message I got these two underneath. It was obvious they were trying to stage it out to look realistic. They had no idea what had happened. Singh called out for one of his guards.

“Get the big trucks and meet me outback.” His orders were quickly obeyed before he called on another guard. “Fenton. Get Miss Routledge.”

“Mr. Singh, Mr. Singh, please!” Panic was bubbling in your throat as the guard almost slammed into you before removing you from the study area. “You can’t hurt them, please! They’re all I have left, just leave them alone!” Your voice cracked with the strength of your yelling. The guard didn’t falter amongst your struggles and continued to push you up the stairs and back in the room without another word.

Rafe watched silently as you crawled into a ball at the foot of the bed. “What happened?” When you didn’t answer, he let out a sharp breath. “You’re gonna have to talk to me at some point. Okay?”

“Do I have to remind you of everything you’ve done?” You shot back as you looked at him. “You killed Peterkin. Do you remember that? And everything you’ve put Sarah through. Everything you put me through?”

“Peterkin, I was protecting my father, okay? I did what I had to, so don’t.” He walked away from you to sit in one of the armchairs. “I’m as much a victim as she is.”

You turned to give him the nastiest look you could muster. “Kook King Rafe Cameron, a victim of what? Consequences of your own fucking actions? Daddy issues?”

You hardly listened to the so-called explanation he tried to give. It was hard to find any empathy in your body towards the person in front of you. You couldn’t care less about what Rafe thought he was owed. All you cared about was getting the hell out of here, with or without him.

“Look, I have a boat that can get us off the island, okay? But first, we gotta get out of here, and it is better if we work together.”

The sound of yelling outside had the two of you on your feet and heading to the window. Two trucks were lining up for guards to climb into, an assortment of weapons on them.

“They’re leaving?” Rafe asked. 

You took a deep breath, dread flooding your chest as you watched them drive away. “They’re going to find John B and Sarah.”

“Sucks for them,” Rafe said as if he wasn’t talking about both of your siblings being at risk. “That’s good for us though. This may be our only shot of getting out of here.”

--

Rafe was quick to create a plan, something that would pull the guard from your door so you could slip out. Did you like it? Not in the slightest because it was a little to close for comfort. 

“I’m gonna kill you, Y/N!”

You screamed in response, running into the wall to make it seem like Rafe had actually shoved you while he threw a glass vase to the floor. He held a finger to his lips as the guard outside called for the two of you. You continued to lay still, one leg hanging out of the bathtub, knowing your feet would be the first thing in eyesight.

“Hey, you two! What’d you do?” Silence followed the voice on the other side of the door before you could hear the lock click.

Everything moved fast from there; Rafe slammed the guard with the bathroom door and exchanged punches with him while you managed to grab the fallen gun. Rafe was quick to grab the man’s phone while you tore a curtain off the bedframe and handed it to him so he could restrain the guard.

The two of you took off, moving through the house as quietly and quickly as possible. You managed to talk him into exchanging the gun in your hands for the phone, knowing exactly what clues the Pogues would need. You snuck around to get a quick photo of the painting that Carlos had been so intent on explaining to the two of you before following Rafe out the side door.

A grain delivery was occurring just outside, a large truck pulling away just as you stepped out. Your eyes followed the road along the grass line before you were moving, calling for Rafe to follow. The two of you managed to find a gap in the bushes just as the truck hit the corner going slow enough that you could climb on. 

You weren’t prepared, however, for there to be a worker in the back. Rafe moved before you even blinked to attack the man in front of you, eventually gaining the upper hand to throw him off the vehicle into the trees. 

Your eyes were wide as you faced the eldest Cameron but you didn’t have time to question his anger when you heard a familiar noise. The sound of bells was always a comfort in your life. When you and John B were kids, it was the way your dad would tell you it was time to come inside. The pattern coming from the local church was identical to the one your dad would do. Chills raced down your spine at the noise, wondering if maybe it was John B trying to draw you in after all.

--

You weren’t sure how much time passed under the tarp, out of prying eyes with Rafe Cameron. You were beyond done with his presence and just wanted to jump off the truck, but thankfully you guys were able to make it to the marina where his boat was docked. 

Climbing on the large pristine boat, you swore you could hear the bells ringing again, even this far away. You stopped short of untying the bowline, suddenly against the idea of getting on a boat with just Rafe Cameron. 

“I can’t get it.” You lied easily, faking a pull on the rope. “I need some help.”

Rafe let out a loud groan, barking for you to move since he ‘had to do everything’. The second he untied the line, you shoved his chest harshly, watching as he splashed into the water below. You took off, hopping up to the cabin area to move the boat out from the dock. Rafe yelled hysterically below you yet you couldn’t help but smile once you got moving. Pulling the phone from your pocket, you typed a quick message, your heart racing in anticipation.

After docking at a different marina, you waited, foot tapping excessively, for some response that they were coming. The church bells kept continuously ringing, freaking you out even further that maybe they didn’t know where you were.

Eyes on the sidewalk, you watched anxiously for some kind of sign. It came straight towards you in a light blue button-down. You moved quickly the second you made eye contact. “JJ?”

JJ’s whole figure drooped in relief at the sight of you, unharmed. He had felt so much guilt, so much anxiety over the way you two weren’t on the best of terms before you were taken. His feet moved rapidly, body colliding with yours as he lifted you off the ground. Your legs wrapped around his waist out of habit, holding him as tightly as you could.

“Holy shit, you’re safe. I’m right here, I got you.”

You let out a sob, tears streaming down your cheeks before you kissed him heavily. Nothing was as calming as being wrapped in his embrace, feeling his hands on your arms, his lips on yours. You took a moment before separating, your feet returning to the ground before you were attacked by another set of arms.

John B was fucking terrified. The moment you got yanked out of the sand, Sarah was holding him back from going after you. Everything felt too real now, too heavy. Knowing that the second one of you disappeared could be the last time they saw you was scary. He was sick of losing, and he wasn’t about to stand by and watch it happen to you all over again.

More shaky hands piled onto you and your brother, your friends wiggling their way into a huge group hug of relief. Kiara’s hands grabbed your cheeks once everyone stepped away. “You’re not hurt, right?” You could see her eyes scanning for any sort of injury.

You shook your head, brushing tears off your face. “No, no. I’m okay. I’m okay.”

“Are you kidding me, babe?” 

You followed JJ’s gaze to the large boat you had climbed off a few moments ago. You laughed, “Oh, yeah. Rafe let me take it for a spin.”

“Rafe?!”

You ignored the rapid onset of questions as your group piled onto the boat. You froze, however, at the sound of the bells tolling. Now you knew it wasn’t John B, and based on the way he was looking back at you, he was questioning them too.

“You don’t think-”

“There’s no way.”

Both of you spoke at the same time, glancing towards the hillside the church was located on. What would be the chances that your father happened to be in Barbados of all places, coincidentally when you crash-landed there?

“Yeah, so I have just a couple of questions,” JJ interrupted your sibling moment as everyone gathered around the two of you. “A Lagoon 620 with twin 150 Volvos. You understand we can go anywhere with this thing, right? Way to be discreet, by the way.”

You rolled your eyes, giving him the middle finger. 

“What did they want from you?” Sarah asked the question that the group had been pondering over for two days now. “You swear Rafe didn’t hurt you?”

You sat down on one of the couch cushions. “No, no. I’m fine, promise. I um… Singh wanted Denmark’s diary, of all things.”

Pope frowned at the revelation. “Why?”

You shrugged. “I don’t know. Said it leads to a treasure that’s bigger than the Merchant.”

“A bigger treasure?” JJ repeated as he sat next to you, arm naturally wrapping around you to pull in close. “Sign me up.”

A moment of processing followed before your friends decided it was time to split and started prepping to leave. JJ moved with them, going to untie the lines. You decided to follow John B and Sarah up to the top deck.

“She’s right, we really need to go,” Sarah reiterated as she tossed a line down below. 

The bells chimed again a few seconds after she finished, both you and John B looking towards the church before glancing at each other. 

“Okay, you definitely heard that, right?” Your brother turned towards his girlfriend for an answer.

“Yeah, I do now.”

You crossed your arms over your chest. “That’s exactly what Dad would do to call us home. That pattern those bells.”

Sarah stopped her movements to look at the two of you. She could see the lingering sadness, the defeat that maybe he really was dead and this was a coincidental joke tugging at you. She also knew John B, and she knew where he went, you were usually close behind. 

“Okay. I get it.” The two of you snapped up to look at her. “You wanna go to the tower to go look? Go look.”

John B seemed shocked at her willingness. “You sure?”

She took another glance at you and nodded. “I’m serious. Hurry, and take this.”

“Sarah…” You walked up next to them, hesitant about leaving them again so soon.

She smiled at you. “Yes, yes. You don’t think I know the two of you? He’s gonna drive us all insane if he doesn’t look, and you’re not gonna let him go alone. So go look.”

You shared a glance with John B before darting down the stairs. JJ was on the dock, untying another line when you collided into him. 

“Whoa, hey. You okay?”

“I gotta go.” You didn’t give him a chance to react, John B already climbing off the boat behind you. “I’m going with John B. We’ll be back, okay?”

JJ looked panicked at the idea of you leaving when he just got you back. He knew better than to question you though, and if John B was going, it was enough for him. He gave you a nod, hands coming to rest on your cheeks before he kissed you softly. “I love you, okay?”

“Love you more,” You whispered back, giving him one more kiss before taking off after your brother. Not only were you two navigating a foreign area, but you needed to keep low from Singh’s men too. John B kept glancing back at you, slowing to stay with you when he could.

You slowed your light jog at the top of a hill, the church almost within reach? “Do you really think it’s him?”

John B paused, the two of you taking in the sound of the bells again. “I just… I have this feeling. And I need to know.”

He understood why you were hesitant. Your relationship with your dad wasn’t the greatest, especially as you got older. John B was always the favorite, which would’ve been fine if your dad hadn’t just started neglecting you in return. That’s where you clung to John B, why the two of you grew to be so protective of each other. 

The climb up the side of the mountain was rough, but you managed to do it without any slipping. You honestly didn’t know if this was something you were ready for, but you’d do it for John B. Even if your dad didn’t speak to you, it would be fine. You both deserved answers. 

The church itself was gorgeous with stained glass windows and coiled staircases. You followed your brother silently up the steps, unsure of what to expect. Every creak and groan of the building had the two of you hesitant to keep moving. 

You came through an archway before John B followed a shadow across into the other stairwell. From the glimpse you got, your heart started racing in your chest. You moved down the stairs slowly, the two of you stopping short halfway. 

There, at the bottom of the stairs, stood Big John Routledge. Alive.

“Dad?”

Your father turned to face the two of you, taking in the sight of his two children in the glow of the sunset. “What took you so long, kids? I’ve been ringing for hours.”

John B practically ran down the rest of the stairs and straight into your father’s arms. You stood, frozen in place at the sight before you. Emotions weren’t easy to process. You were a lovely combination of anger, sadness, and joy right now, your mind turning Inside Out at the idea of your father standing here after so long. 

“My baby bird.”

The nickname sucked all the air out of your lungs as you realized your father’s eyes were on you. Your feet moved slowly, hesitant about what exactly you were signing yourself up for, but the moment your dad had you within grasp, he hugged you as tight as he could. You felt like an innocent little kid all over again, with her big brother and Dad always there to protect her. 

“Oh, kids. We have a lot to talk about, huh?”

--

navigation -- series masterlist

[imaginesandbandfiction]

Switzerland

An Outer Banks Imagine

Pairing: JJ Maybank x Routledge!Reader

Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: The slightest allusion to self-harm, implied sexual content

Summary: Big John has been missing for months, and tensions are high between John B and his older sister, so she finds comfort in the arms of her brother's best friend.

A/N: I have been so inspired to write for OBX, JJ mainly but a few of the others, too, which is good for you but bad for my grad school applications. I have a little prequel to this already written, I just need to edit it, so stay tuned for that, and lmk if you want me to tag you when it's up!

Masterlist

You plop down on the front steps of the Chateau and dig a lighter and the worn pack of Marb Reds out of your pocket. The first hit unlocks something in your chest and you feel your whole body relax as the nicotine pulses through your veins. A second hit releases any remaining tension and you slump forwards, resting your elbows on your knees. You tuck your head into your free hand so you barely have to move to take another drag off of the cigarette. When it’s just barely more than a stub, you notice a shadowy figure at the end of the street that’s slowly getting bigger. Eventually, you’re able to make out a familiar mess of blond hair and you sit up straight again, hoping he didn’t notice your swift position change. 

“Hey, Routledge,” JJ calls to you from the end of the driveway as he makes his way towards you. “You know smoking is, like, really bad for you, right?” He’s close enough now that the porch light illuminates his face. You don’t say anything about the blood drying in the corners of his bruised lips and, thankfully, he doesn’t mention your swollen, tear-stained cheeks. You take in as much smoke as you can and hold it in for a few seconds before blowing it at him in one long, steady stream. 

“You’re one to talk,” you counter, letting your bottom lip drop into a slight pout.

“Weed is different; it’s natural.” 

“Nicotine is natural, too, I think.”

“You think? See, that proves my point. You don’t even know what you’re putting into your body, which is definitely not healthy.” You roll your eyes and chuckle a bit as you press the butt into the concrete to put it out. Now that your hands are free, you lean back until your forearms hit the ground so you can look up at JJ. 

“John B’s inside,” you say, breaking the silence. “But I gotta warn you, he’s in a mood.” He hums his acknowledgment and starts up the steps. You lean to the side so he can sneak past you but instead, he sits down next to you and nudges your shoulder with his to get you to scoot over to make more room on the top step. 

“What’d you fight about?”

“How did you know we --” The look on JJ’s face, furrowed brows and a knowing smile, stops you in your tracks. “Yeah, we fought.” A huff of air escapes your lips as you deflate. The words from the fight are replaying on a loop in your head. 

“It’ll be fine, Y/N, we just need to wait it out. Dad’ll be home soon, I know it,” your brother insists.

“He’s not coming home, John Booker!” You yell, letting all of your frustration bubble to the surface. “It’s just us now. The sooner you accept that the sooner we can move on.”

“Well, you’re not dancing at the club on the mainland. That’s non-negotiable.”

“I’m the oldest, I need to step up and make sure we don’t lose the house.”

“Well, I’m the man of the house now! I can ask Mr. Cameron if he has any friends that need help with their boats, and you can pick up some extra shifts at the Country Club. We’ll make it work, Y/N, we always do.”

“Don’t come at me with that sexist bullshit. I could make more in one night on the mainland than you could in a month cleaning boats for Kooks and you know it.”

“I’m not fucking talking about this anymore, Y/N! I said no!” John B’s voice booms loud enough to rattle the broken screen door that leads to the backyard. 

“You can’t tell me what to do; you’re not dad,” you spit and get off the couch to stomp out the front door without a glance back at your brother. 

“John B won’t accept that dad’s probably dead, and in the meantime, he wants to be dad,” you say, punctuating your sentence with a frustrated sigh. 

“He’ll come around,” JJ assures you. “He, like, worshiped your dad, you probably know that better than I do. He probably just needs more time for it to sink in.”

“I know, I’m being too hard on him, but to be fair he’s hard on me, too.” JJ holds his hands up in surrender.

“Sorry, Y/N, I’m Switzerland in this fight. I love you both too much to pick sides.” Your lips twitch up into a smirk at his words and the fight with your brother doesn’t seem so serious anymore. JJ lowers his gaze to the ground in front of him as just a hint of pink creeps up his neck and onto his cheeks.

“So you love me, then, huh?” You ask, your voice innocent but laced with something deeper. 

“Shut up, you know I do,” he mumbles, turning his head to the side so you can’t see his blush, which is getting darker by the second. Your smile widens and you scoot in closer, stopping when your shoulder is pressed into his bicep. His body stiffens against yours for a split second but then he relaxes, letting out a slow hiss of air. When he turns back towards you, his cheeks are back to a just subtle shade of pink and his eyes are soft and full of questions. 

“I’ve got a meeting tomorrow, at Beaches, on the mainland,” you blurt out before he can ask any of them. His mouth falls open and his eyes widen. “That’s why he’s so mad.”

“Y/N, no, you can’t work at Beaches,” he whines through a frown. His nose crinkles as he says the name of the club, like just the word itself is repulsive to him. 

“Didn’t your cousin’s ex make, like, $1000 in one night there? We need the money, JJ, and it’s not like I’ve got a lot of options.” 

“Yeah because she worked the private room on New Year’s Eve!” JJ’s voice is getting louder with every word he speaks. “They won’t hire you, at least not while you’re still underage.”

“My fake says I’m twenty-five.” He groans and runs a hand through his hair and when his palm hits his forehead, he leans into it. After a few deep breaths, he sits back up and drops his hand to the strip of concrete between his left thigh and your right. He can feel the warmth radiating from your body against his pinky and it takes every ounce of his self-control to keep his hands from following the heat to its source. He presses his palm against the ground hard enough that he can feel bits of gravel burrowing into his skin, which gives him something to focus on other than your bare shoulder against his skin and the slight whoosh of the shallow breaths escaping your lips. He knows it’s fucked up, but the physical pain keeps him grounded; he prefers that over the confusing mess of emotions swirling around in his brain, emotions he’s not sure he could name even if he tried. 

“You don’t have to do it all alone, you know. You have John B, and the rest of us.”

“He’s my baby brother, I can’t help but want to protect him as much as I can.” 

“You’re literally only a year older than us!” JJ’s faux-outrage has you giggling. You’re brought back to childhood with the way you’re able to move seamlessly between serious topics and joking around with JJ.

“Fourteen months!” You huff and cross your arms in front of your chest, flashing an indignant frown his way. 

“Whatever. The point is, we’re all in this together and we’ll make it work. We’re Pogues, we always do.” He shifts his hand a bit so it’s resting on top of your thigh and squeezes his support into your skin. Goosebumps explode from the spot and your spine tingles with a familiar shiver. The atmosphere thickens around you and it draws all of the breath out of your lungs. Silence settles in like a thick blanket and you find yourself turning towards JJ. He slides over so that instead of just your shoulders touching, you can feel his arm pressed against yours. When he turns his head to look at you, he’s so close that you can only see the upper half of his face. His pupils widen as his eyes meet yours, expanding until only a sliver of blue is left.   

“I still think Beaches is worth looking into,” you whisper into the small space between your lips and his.

“You’re not working at Beaches,” he growls, leaning in even closer. 

“Why not?” You’re teasing him on purpose, intoxicated by the feeling of his hot breath on your sensitive skin.

“Because I don’t want anyone else to look at you that way.” You feel his lips move against your own, just the smallest hint of pressure yet it makes your toes curl. His callouses tickle your cheek as he moves his hand to rest against it, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear as he does so. Your gaze drops to his lips and then you’re leaning into his touch and then you’re kissing, like really kissing, your brother’s best friend. His lips are salty with a hint of the metallic blood from his split lip. You wrap your arms around his neck as he slides his free arm around your waist to pull you as close as possible. A soft sigh escapes you when his top teeth graze your bottom lip, and he takes advantage of the extra space that your slightly open mouth provides to pull it between his teeth. He swallows your gasp and you feel the rest of the world start to melt away, all thoughts of your dad and John B replaced with JJ. Wait, no, then they circle back to John B, your brother who is currently inside the house and very pissed at you. 

“Wait,” you mumble, pulling back. JJ’s heart skips a beat and he’s preparing himself for rejection, but then you press a quick peck to his lips before continuing. “We should move, John B could see us out here, and now is really not the time for that conversation.” You stand and let your hand trail down JJ’s shoulder and then the length of his arm, lacing your fingers with his when you reach the end. He clears his throat and scrambles off of the steps. 

“Right, right, yeah,” he says, taking a quick glance around before turning back to you with wide, panicked eyes. You giggle at his dazed look and tug on his hand, pulling him around the side of the house. In the short time it takes you to find a spot away from any windows, JJ manages to pull himself together and his familiar overconfidence is back in full force as he pulls you into his chest and twirls you around so fast that your head spins. He presses you against the siding gently enough that it doesn’t make a sound but hard enough that you can feel exactly where the old, broken panels split against your back, and then his lips are on yours again and you swear he is sucking the literal life out of you because you’re breathless and shaky and if he lets go of your hips for even a second you’re pretty sure you’ll drop dead on the spot. But then, suddenly, he pulls away from you and takes a deep breath before exploding into a fast-paced monologue. 

“Wait, you’re not just doing this to get back at John B, are you?” he asks in a voice an octave higher than normal. “Because I feel like there have been many times we could have been doing this but you’ve never taken advantage of those opportunities before now, and I’ve wanted this forever so…” Your amused laughter stops him in his tracks, and his lower lip juts out in a pout. You press a soft kiss to it and he bites his lip to hide the smile that’s trying to break free. 

“I know you’ve wanted it forever, J, that’s why I had to wait until I was sure. I didn’t want to take advantage of you, even if it was by accident. And then I waited until you turned 16 because, you know, I didn’t want to be arrested,” you explain, flashing a sheepish grin at him. 

“You’ve wanted to do this since before my birthday and we’re just now getting around to it?” 

“Don’t worry, I promise I’ll make it up to you.” You lean in until your lips are ghosting over his and let your eyes flutter shut. “Consider this your belated birthday present.” He pushes his head forwards, searching for your lips, but you sink to your knees in front of him instead. The strangled noise he emits is somewhere between a yelp and a groan. His head hits the side of the house with a loud thump and you freeze with your hands on the zipper of his shorts.

“Shit,” he whisper-yells, jerking his head off of the wall. Both of you stay still for a few minutes, as if not moving could make you invisible, but thankfully John B must not have heard the noise because you don’t hear the tell-tale creak of the front door opening. You pull the zipper all the way down and push JJ’s shorts off of his hips, and, with your hands on the waistband of his boxers, you give him a stern look. 

“If that happens again, I stop, got it?” you tell him. The bulge in his boxers grows larger.  

“Got it,” he breathes, and he leans his head forward, resting gently against the side of the house this time. 

[lerclec]

18+ huh? oh nothing! just thinking about gamer!reader where she’s all stressed with a game and jj helps her by eating her out ‼️

the sound of the keyboard clacking can be heard throughout the room, so does your soft moans. your teammates were screaming on their mics, wondering why you were becoming weaker.

you close yours eyes, feeling your orgasm as jj wraps his hands on your things, sucking on your clit under your desktop as you grip the armchair.

Mhm! fuck-fuck-fuck-

he takes one of his hand off on your thing, bringing it up to your pussy and teasing the entrance.

he sucks hard on your clit, before letting your pussy wrap his two fingers with your pre-cum.

he stops sucking on your swollen clit, looking at you with his eyes, as he sees you whining, with your eyes closed and moaning. he scoffs before saying

you like that don’t you?

he teases, making his finger go in and out of you at full speed.

you moan more loudly, the only thing in your mind being him.