Chapter Text
JJ spends an infuriatingly long time referring to himself as The Highlander. It’s not any funnier weeks later than it had been after he first opened his eyes in the Genrette Mausoleum, choking for air, convulsing, like he hadn’t just been dead a second before. His friends gathered around him, clinging to the god forsaken magic freaking crown, tear stained faces falling apart and shuddering over the coffin.
‘There can be only one right?’
Kiara hadn’t let him go for a while. Kissing him all over, tiny kisses across his cheeks, holding his freezing, waxen face in her hands and it was the most beautiful thing John B’d ever seen. But he still needed her to move. Because JJ was dead, dead for weeks. He had wrenched them apart, JJ had looked up at him, still sat in that concrete tomb, dumb blonde hair sticking out in every direction, lips blue. ‘Do I get to live forever now?’
John B would have cursed the day they ever watched Big John’s old tape of that ridiculous 80s movie if he wasn’t too busy crying so hard into JJ’s suddenly breathing chest at the time.
‘Shut up!’ He’d sobbed instead. ‘Shut up J, I love you. I love you. You fucking idiot. You idiot.’
JJ had patted his hair softly, voice husky with disuse. ‘I’m ok man.’
Like his hands weren’t shaking on John B’s scalp, like his skin wasn’t still grey, like his eyes weren’t fluttering like he was struggling to stay conscious.
Then Pope to the left had flung his arms around them, and Kie mirrored him at the right and the three of them were sobbing all over him. Together again, like when they were ten, and fifteen, and seventeen before any of them had died and come back to life again.
Huddled in the mausoleum surrounded by the dead, by JJ’s mother, his grandfather, his descendants before him, they came back to life.
‘No seriously, do you think the only way I’d be able to die now for real is if they beheaded me?’ JJ queries now dead serious.
John B puts a cushion on the couch, flinches at JJ talking about dying again. ‘J, nobody’s beheading you.’ He steps forward to help him. ‘You’re supposed to tell me if you’re going to attempt the stairs’.
JJ tries to wave him off but John B puts his arm around his shoulder and they gingerly make their way to the couch. JJ looks annoyed at the attention but he huffs out a pained breath as he sits down. Puts his hand to the scar that still stretches across his abdomen. While the crown might have managed the impossible and raised the dead it didn’t repair the stab wound damage and JJ still winces whenever he sits down, still goes pale and dizzy, blood pressure bottoming out at times so none of them can completely relax.
It’s been two weeks, and it’s been a slow healing process. It’s not like they can take him to the hospital and ask if there’s an estimated recovery time for resurrection. The rest of the Pogues are still trying to sell the truth to Shoupe. Shoupe who had flat out nearly keeled over seeing JJ all, ‘hey Shoupe’ lying on the couch a week back. Shoupe had ranted and raved on a tangent about how he’d ‘god damned exhumed him from the ass crack of Morocco’ a week earlier and had him brought back to rest at the family plot with his mama. But he’d ended it all hugging JJ tightly, eyes suspiciously bright, ‘god kid, I thought you’d really done it this time you little bastard.’
Shoupe didn’t want to believe the crown theory, Pope was struggling with it too but they were men of science and reality, how could they possibly buy into magic. But here it was. All six feet of it, breathing, broken, making annoying, ridiculous comments and getting pissed at everyone coddling him. John B would happily believe in magic, hell he’d believe in flying pigs if it meant his best friend got to live again.
‘You ok?’ He asks said best friend cautiously, ‘How are you feeling?’ He can’t stop staring is the thing, none of them can really, not since he came back to them and he knows it’s driving JJ a little insane. For all the boy likes attention this isn’t the kind he’d choose. But they can’t help it. They’re all feeling overprotective, terrified to let him out of their sight and John B’s not sure they’ll ever stop feeling that.
‘I’m fine,’ JJ attempts but John B knows his best friend, has known him at eight, and nine, and 14 and 19 and he just looks at him. JJ sighs, rumbled. ‘I’m getting there’, he volunteers instead.
They haven’t really talked about it much is the thing. The whole being dead for three weeks situation. JJ has been focussing on slowly healing and the rest are still dealing with the horrifying trauma of those weeks of grief and pain. Kie is still terrified to leave him for a second, in fact today is the first day Cleo and Sarah had convinced her to go out with them to grab some dinner. And that was only after JJ had told her if she didn’t give him some space ‘to freaking use the bathroom on my own’ he was going to attempt an escape himself.
JJ doesn’t get it though. He hadn’t lived through what they had. Hadn’t felt the aching gnawing loss that had eaten them all up from within. Hell John B still can’t fit into his jeans because he hardly ate for those weeks, he’s still struggling to eat if he’s being honest about it, it made him feel nauseous, guilty somehow. Kie still has this nervous energy, hands unable to keep still like she’s perpetually trying to keep him from bleeding out. Pope is reading every science and anatomy book under the sun to diagnose how a human being could be dead for three weeks and possibly healthily function ever again. Cleo is overcompensating, trying to fill every silence with noise because that’s what she had tried to do in JJ’s absence, and Sarah? Sarah has become terrified of every little flutter or twinge with their baby so afraid she’s going to lose it as suddenly as they lost him. See JJ doesn’t get it.
But JJ has his own trauma here. Something that goes far beyond the physical healing, another parent letting him down, but this time in the worst possible way, leaving him to bleed out and die, and they’ve barely even discussed it.
John B doesn’t think any of them have been ready. They’ve been so focussed on pulling JJ back physically from the brink, none of them have even begun to scratch the surface of the mental scars they’re all struggling with now. John B would give anything for the magic crown to fix that.
‘Your colour’s not looking as bad today,’ he offers.
JJ leans his head back on the couch ‘Just let me go surf man, I’m telling you I’ll be better and tanned and greek god like in no time.’
John B pulls the blanket over JJ’s knees. Remembers how he laid those same knees gently in that sandy desert grave, swallows the bile that rises in his throat. ’No.’
JJ ’s not ok, as much as he keeps pretending he is and practically itching out of his own skin, he’s shaky, weak in a way John B’s never seen him. He’s still in pain and while they are slowly trying to wean him off the heavier drugs they’d had to force him to take that Pope had got, he’s not ok. Besides none of them have ever come back from the dead before.
They’re silent, each lost in their own thoughts. The house is quiet like it hasn’t been lately. JJ’s eyes track across the lounge, fix on a point. He sighs. Shuffles. ’See that candleholder up there on the left?’
John B clocks it, on the mantelpiece, nods, JJ’s staring hard. ‘That was the worst time. That’s where my Dad…’ he pauses, ‘where Luke choked me out, right against that wall, I think I was maybe 12 or 11 I don’t know’.
John B holds his breath, JJ almost never does this. So rarely volunteers traumatic information. He trawls through each dark memory in his head, the Filofax of JJ repairs he’s been part of but doesn’t remember that. How does he not remember it?
‘You and Big John were away on that fishing trip, up at Masons Point remember?’
John B does remember, remembers what a fun weekend it had been, him and his dad taking the HMS Pogue out, he feels sick.
‘I really thought he was going to kill me that time, think it may be the closest he came to it.’
John B’s fingers twitch next to JJ’s knee, he wants to reach out but he knows JJ, knows to give him space, to not crowd with touch when he’s vulnerable, it’s always been their carefully constructed way. God he hates Luke.
‘Sort of ironic now you know,’ JJ offers weirdly detached. ‘All these years JB, I was worrying about the wrong Dad.’
And there it is. The elephant in the room. The big gaping wound they haven’t talked about. Chandler Groff. The truth was that knife ripped through more than just JJ’s organs that day, it was still tearing them apart little by little in a thousand different ways since.
He stills, waits to see if JJ is going to give him anything more but he just sighs, lets his head rest slowly against John B’s shoulder. It’s a little too still for JJ to be for John B to feel comfortable, but it’s familiar this, JJ next to him on the couch, them, it’s home.
They need to address it though. They all do. John B sits for a moment allows them a beat. Then he moves, gently, so as not to jostle JJ too much, he carefully climbs to his feet, reaches out a hand.
‘Come on’ he looks at his best friend now, takes in the exhaustion, the pain lines around the edge of his mouth, ’you and me Bub, lets get some fresh air’.
It’s slow going, JJ hasn’t been further than the front step since they brought him home two weeks ago. Fresh air will do them both a little good though and JJ’s not wrong, he’s not going to get any colour back stuck in the house. John B has JJ’s arm secured around his shoulder and his other arm’s wrapped around his waist, he pretends he’s not supporting 90% of his 19 year old best friend’s weight. He remembers the last time he took his full weight and he has to purposefully stare at the horizon till he can remove the image of staggering up that Moroccan hill, JJ tucked to his chest, lifeless, dead, the coppery scent of blood in the air.
Yeah JJ isn’t the only one repressing things.
John B has never been a particularly religious guy but for 14 days, since JJ first took in a lungful of air again he’s thanked god or whatever higher power that they brought him back home.
Thanked god that their boy had Lazarus’d himself out of the Genrette tomb, because if he was still in Morocco…if he’d been there when that crown had worked its magic, well the image of JJ choking on mounds of sand, smothered again, dying a second time, that’s what weirdly haunts his dreams now. It’s what wakes him covered in sweat, chest heaving, it’s all of that sand and JJ buried too deep to reach.
In his dreams John B is desperately clawing at the sand and he knows JJ’s alive down there but he can’t get to him, he can’t move the sand fast enough and JJ chokes again, chokes as the grains slip through John B’s fingers and the sand fills his airway and John B screams and screams and screams himself awake.
Fuck he’s messed up.
They all are.
But as JJ loses his footing a little he grips his best friend tighter and steers them further towards the dock.
‘You’ve got it man’, he gently encourages, not sure if he’s speaking to JJ or both of them. ‘Nearly there’.
For his part in all of this JJ says nothing just concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other, puffing out little huffs of air. His head dips and John B is struck yet again of how JJ is moving like a pensioner instead of a 19 year old. And a just turned 19 year old too. His birthday had only been eight weeks ago. He’s the youngest of the Pogues after all. Although John B wonders if the fact he has been dead for three of those eight weeks means his age is all different now too. He stops himself going there, it’s too much of a mind fuck.
They reach the end of the dock and JJ looks up between his too long bangs and he looks so grateful for a minute to be outside that John B knows it was worth the effort. He gently lowers him down and sets about removing the other boy’s socks, lets JJ dip his feet in the water, sits alongside him and does the same. The water is cool and still. The Snapper laps against the water beside them it’s green paint reflecting in the gently setting sun.
Somewhere in this wide expanse of a country Luke Maybank is running, but he had done the one good thing in his life before he ran and signed the house back over to John B and the others. Back when JJ was still dead after they’d had a confrontation right here on this dock, after the ‘fuck you’ of it all. Shoupe had come to them and told them Luke had signed it all back over to them again. Maybe it was some final act of repentance, maybe he had finally done something right for his son after death. Whatever. They were back here, Poguelandia 2.0 and Luke was out there thinking his son was dead. JJ seemed in no real hurry to correct that. After all he had been.
John B watches JJ now. He has both hands resting on the dock and his head thrown back, eyes closed, face titled up at the setting sun. He swallows down the familiar rush of emotion. He’s here. Alive. Thank you god. Alive.
‘Can you stop that?’ JJ shuffles, eyes still closed, but there’s humour in his tone.
‘Stop what?’
‘I can feel you staring, are you about to start painting me like one of your French girls?’
John B snorts at the reference. ‘Trust me. You’re no Kate Winslet right now buddy.’
JJ cracks his eyes open at that. ‘I dunno didn’t she die at the end too?’
John B stills, ‘That was DiCaprio J, and stop it’.
He blinks, the smile disappears, suddenly serious. ‘Sorry’.
They’re still trying to figure it all out you see. JJ keeps trying to mask it all, this insanity, this back from the dead business with jokes, with cracks and humour and the others, they’re not ready, it’s still a raw and gaping wound, as real as the one in JJ’s abdomen.
John B has no idea how any of them are supposed to do this but he figures they need to start here. It should start with them. After all John B and JJ formed the Pogues. Kie and Pope had met at 4 but John B and JJ had become instant best friends at 8, it was the pair of them that heard Big John spouting off about how the Pogies were the lowest member of the fish food chain.
JJ, ever a champion for the underdog had felt sorry for them , ‘That’s us JB, bottom of the chain’, he’d declared kicking at the sand. And immediately he had labelled the kooks the sharks.
John B could still remember the way his eyes had glittered in the light of the bonfire when John B’d pulled out the shark’s tooth necklace he’d stolen for him on his 10th birthday, swiped from some Kook store down on Main Street. ‘See dude now you’ve got a piece of them forever, we’ve got their tooth, lets see them bite us with one less tooth!’
Between 10 and 11, between JJ’s bruises, and Big John’s absences, and Luke’s fists and the hot summer of 2014 they had really felt unstoppable for a moment there. At 11 Pope and Kie joined their Pogue duo and they became a foursome. And that was it.
John B looks across at the same scruffy blonde Pogue he met at 8 now. Despite surviving prison sentences, gunfights, oceanic storms and resurrections he’s not feeling so unstoppable right now. Neither of them are.
The shark tooth necklace stands out against JJ’s neck, back where it belongs. It had sat wrong on Kie, in those three weeks, too low and jagged. A reminder of the shark’s winning again. The kooks taking a final ironic bite out of ‘one of their own’. But back on JJ it seems right. Like they’ve reclaimed it. Like they’ve reclaimed him.
‘Feels good to be out here,’ JJ offers, keeping his eyes closed, ‘I was going crazy inside you know man?’
John B knows. That house, for all they’ve transformed it, for all they’ve helped JJ to reclaim it, it still haunts him, it’s still a place that being stuck in brings out the fight or flight response in the younger man. Years of being locked in a room and beaten doesn’t go away because it’s been repainted, or remodelled or demolished and built over. Same way coming back from the dead doesn’t erase the fact your father sent you there in the first place.
‘All these years JB, I was worrying about the wrong Dad.’
John B decides it's now or never, he bites the bullet, ’What you said inside, about what happened. I think maybe it’s time we talked about it J.’
‘Two can play that game man’, comes the not unexpected response.
John B sighs deeply, makes traces in the water with his foot, he knows what he’s saying. They’ve all been bottling things up, pushing things down, ploughing forward.
‘I will if you will?’
JJ squints one eye open at that, shoots him a look. ‘Really? You’re going to tell me what went down while I was…you know Highlandering.’
That’s the thing. They’ve been sheltering JJ from a lot of it, from the Lisbon of it all, from being forced home after losing Groff, defeated and broken, until they got a lead on him right back at Goat Island, the rainstorm pelting down on them as they caught up to him on the steps of Blackstone holding the crown.
JJ hadn’t been there when Kie had thrown herself at him like she had a death wish, wrestling the crown from his hands, hadn’t watched as John B held the cold metal of a gun against Groff’s skull until he’d aimed the knife Sarah’s way and they’d had to let him go. John B doesn’t think he can admit the shame, that JJ’s murderer, that it had been him who let him go, terrified to lose another person he loved.
And he doesn’t know if he can watch the pain in JJ’s eyes as he tells him how little remorse, how little feeling Groff had shown as he’d taunted them about knifing his own son to death. ‘Jackson was just like his mother, weak, letting emotion get in the way of business’.
‘JJ' Pope had spat, ‘his name was JJ’ .
‘I’m sorry,’ he says instead. ‘I’m so sorry J’.
JJ props himself up at that, eyes both open, staring at him like he has two heads, but he shuffles slightly closer. ‘For what man?’
So many things. A thousand different things.
‘John B get her out of here! Go!’
‘I left you’, and there it is.
That’s the biggest one. Apology number one. The one that’s been running on loop in his head for five weeks since this whole mess began, since JJ died. ‘We were going up against mercenaries, and a sandstorm and all of that horror and you told me to go, and I let you send me away J. I just…I left you.’
John B can’t look at him. He looks anywhere but him. Eyes out across the water. His throat feels tight, as tight as it felt in that desert storm, gritty and thick.
JJ’s quiet for a moment. ‘Well duh.’
John B sniffs then, surprised. ‘Duh?’
‘John B, man, you’re such a dumbass,’ JJ is smiling, he can hear it in his voice, is as sure of it as he is his own name, as the P4L tattoo on his friends foot, gently lapping in the water before him. ‘You’re going to be an actual dad now dude, you think I was going to let you risk that? You think you were going to live with yourself if you risked that? And you had better not have been hating yourself these weeks for actually listening to me for once because if I had stayed dead you’d better believe I’d have haunted your ass for that man.’
It’s such a JJ thing to say, and it’s both familiar and frustrating the way he forgives so easily. Hands it out like halloween candy. Broke my ribs dad, no worries, dragged me after some Eldorado gangsters John B, happy to help, let me go to jail for you Pope, sure man it’s nothing at all. He lets things that hurt him slide, over and over, like it doesn’t matter, like he doesn’t matter.
He does fucking matter.
John B loves him you see more than anything, it’s different him and JJ. They raised each other. Two lost little boys against the world for so long. Their history, it’s burned into the veins of each of them, it’s in the nights sleeping in the woods when JJ’s bruises don’t heal, weekends huddled at the chateau telling each other ghost stories to distract from a storm when Big John was gone too long, afternoons surfing in silence at the break, fights against the kooks, schooling them on their bikes in the front yard, parties at the Boneyard, smoking their first dime bag, it’s in every first John B’s ever had that JJ’s been a part of.
And to not be there at JJ’s last, or what he thought was the last, when he died. Well that one’s unforgivable.
Resurrected or not. It’s unforgivable.
JJ puts a hand on his knee. It’s shaking. John B runs a hand over his face. ‘I can literally hear you overthinking JB, stop it.’
John B pushes his face into his hands, tries to stop the tears he can feel threatening.
‘You did the right thing.’
‘How can you say that?’
His tone is irritatingly gentle, John B stares at his ankle at the P4L tattoo, scrawled in JJ’s flared hand. ‘Because Sarah’s alive, the baby’s all good.’
‘But you weren’t, you weren’t alive JJ.’
‘Yeah but that wasn’t on you.’
And there it is. There’s JJ absolving him again. These awful, dark weeks all John B had wanted was the chance to apologise, to talk to his best friend one more time, to tell him how sorry he was, that he should never have walked away, because he knew JJ, knew every part of JJ and he knew what kind of self preservation skills the boy had when he wanted to protect his friends. He knew and he still walked away and let him risk his life alone.
He let him lose his life alone.
He swallows, frustratingly brushes away a tear.
‘It was on me, don’t you get that?’
And when he looks at JJ now, when he meets his eyes John B still sees the boy he held when Luke had slammed his hand down on the hob when JJ was 12. The kid who had worn the same damned t-shirt for ten days before the teachers washed it for him when they were eight because Luke never took care of his child.
That kid is looking at him now, like he still trusts John B, like John B is worth so damned much to him, and he doesn’t deserve it.
‘I wasn’t there JJ, I ran, and he stabbed you, he stabbed you and you died man, and I wasn’t even there.’
‘I literally asked you to go John B’.
‘Yeah well I shouldn’t have listened.’
JJ moves his hand slowly from his knee, lifts his arm until it’s around John B’s shoulders now. The sun’s going down and there’s a slight chill in the air. JJ’s hoodie rides up his arm and John B subconsciously tugs it down, covers his too skinny wrist. He can’t afford to get sicker right now.
‘I’m glad you weren’t there’ he says.
And damn that cuts deep. John B’s breath freezes for a minute.
‘I didn’t want any of you to have to live with that, with seeing me die, not like Kie had to, even for a second. Kind of wish I was alone to be honest.’
‘You don’t mean that’. Because he can’t, nobody should prefer to die alone just to protect others.
JJ sniffs, ‘I don’t.’ He admits. Because John B knows him too well, always has done. ‘Is it selfish if I say I’m glad I had Kie with me? It was…I was…’ he stops then, John B shifts, jostles him slightly. ‘I was scared man.’
It’s ok to be scared JJ he thinks, it’s ok to be scared when your father stabs you and kills you out in the middle of nowhere in Africa. But he just looks at him instead, at that side profile he knows so well. Alive and breathing next to him. There’s sweat on his top lip and the pain lines still sit around his mouth. But he’s alive, he’s here.
‘There was this moment,’ JJ says quietly and his eyes have taken on that faraway look like he’s not gone but he’s not quite here either, it’s a look he’s been wearing more than a few times since he started breathing again and it’s scary to say the least. ‘There was this moment where I thought he was actually going to apologise you know? Jesus John B, Luke’s right just how stupid am I? I’ve had a lifetime of learning not to turn my back on a father and then I meet Groff and it all just goes out the window?’
‘That’s not…’
‘Don’t.’ JJ says and he pulls his arm back, John B feels cold again. JJ runs a shaky hand through his hair, the too long strands. He’s angry. ‘Don’t say it’s not my fault because I know ok, I know I don’t deserve to be stabbed to death alright? I do know at least that much. But it is my fault for being stupid. I stood there, I stood there man and I knew he had that knife and I just what? Trusted him?’
John B’s chest aches. JJ lets out a humourless laugh.
‘And then he said it was a shame me and him, and for a minute I gave him a chance. I gave him yet another chance. I just didn’t believe he’d actually hurt me.’
John B stares hard into the water, an unbidden tear trailing down his cheek, because he doesn’t know the ins and outs of this. All Kie had volunteered was that Groff had shown up threatened her then stabbed JJ. He tries to picture it. Feels it in his bones, pictures their JJ trusting yet another unworthy parent, trying to find the good even as he killed him.
‘Then what?’
‘He said I should have given him the rope’ JJ says totally monotone, disconnected now, like he’s reading some phonebook, ‘then he knifed me.’
John B shudders, it’s not something he can even begin to comprehend. He looks at JJ, his cheeks are wet but JJ’s are bone dry, eyes far away, distant again.
‘J…’
‘Then the bastard twisted it just to make sure there was no hope I guess.’
His hands go to his stomach then, hover there, like he can still feel it, like the knife is still there.
‘And I just knew. I knew right then man. I knew I was dead.’
Jesus. Jesus Christ. No 19 year old should know what it feels like to know their father had just killed them. John B is so angry. He’s so, furious he doesn’t know what to do with it. Because he has never heard anything so unfair. The tears fall hot now. What can he say to that?
What possible comfort can he offer his best friend? How does a person come back from that? He wasn’t supposed to survive to deal with this fallout. Groff certainly hadn’t intended him to. He wants to find him, wants to stab a knife into his gut, wants to watch the light fade from his eyes like it did JJ’s.
Instead he uncurls his fists, twists his body and grabs his best friend tightly. Pulls JJ’s head against his shoulder, fists the back of his hoodie. Inhales the hair that smells of salt and weed and JJ. It’s reassuring. When he’d first come back he’d smelled different, sat in that tomb, he’d smelled all wrong, of the desert and decay and death. Now he smells like JJ again. Of life.
‘I’m so sorry J,’ he manages, ‘I’m so sorry.’
For not being there, for taking Sarah and running, for your sorry pathetic excuse for a father. Hell for both of them.
JJ sighs deeply against his neck.
They stay like that for a moment. John B tries to pull himself together because JJ isn’t crying and he’s the one who got murdered so what right does John B have to fall apart on him now? Come to think of it he can’t even remember the last time he saw JJ cry. Maybe after one of Luke’s particularly brutal attacks when he was 15? Since he came back he hasn’t so much as shed a tear and John B knows that’s not particularly healthy after what he’s been through here.
He gently breaks them apart. Sure enough JJ isn’t crying. He looks pale, shaky and numb again. He looks John B in the eye now though, doesn’t keep darting his gaze away. Like it means something letting himself share what happened. Maybe on some level it’s helping.
‘It’s not like the movies you know,’ he says, ‘dying. It’s weird. There’s not this bright white light or someone stood over you telling you to come into the light that kind of shit. I think that’s what’s fucked me up the most John B’.
‘What? No white light?’
He shrugs then. Looks down. Twirls his ring around his finger.
‘No her.’
John B raises an eyebrow.
He looks at JJ, and the raw pain nearly knocks John B back on his ass again.
‘No Larissa.’
Oh.
Oh!
‘Like I know she never really knew me or anything like that but as I was going, the pain man, the pain was like nothing I’ve ever felt before and I could hardly breathe and I could feel myself drowning in my own blood you know? It kept rising up in my throat and I kept swallowing it down because I didn’t want Kie to see me choke on my own blood. And I didn’t want to leave Kie, I really didn’t want to leave any of you guys man but I kept thinking well maybe I’ll get to meet her, maybe I’ll finally get to see my mother.’
John B puts a hand on JJ’s wrist, grounds him, takes in the fast pulse, his heart beating.
‘But she wasn’t there. Everything just went black JB. All of this black. And then when I did wake up it was you guys and the mausoleum.’
John B nods. There’s a distant sound of a boat, a motor, far across the water stealing into the night.
‘I know it sounds stupid…’ JJ offers, almost a whisper now, ‘but I wanted my mom John B, she was all I wanted and I didn’t even get that you know. So this whole time since I woke up I can’t help thinking well it’s me then. It must be me right? Why none of my parents could ever love me. If they aren’t outright hurting me man they’re leaving me, even after death. So it must be me then right?’
John B doesn't even entertain that for a half a second. ‘It’s not you.’
‘How can it not be man? How can every one of them write me off if I’m not the problem?’
Oh JJ John B thinks. And fuck the tears because they’re back now full force.
Sad, brave, loving, protective, broken, JJ. John B sits next to him on the dock and he doesn’t know what to say. This is unchartered territory. They never get quite this far below the JJ surface. Looks like death changes a person. But how does he even do this? Because how do you even begin to try and get a person to understand that they are the best human being you know and have them believe it. How can he undo a lifetime and a death filled with rejection and trauma and pain?
But he has to try.
He has to.
‘Hey do you remember when I was eleven and my dad went looking for that dumb Egyptian manuscript for like three weeks?’
JJ looks at him then, confused.
‘I got so scared after the second week when I ran out of money. I was real hungry and I told you and you looked at me all serious, and then later that day you’re at my door with groceries stuffed in your backpack. You told me you’d taken them from your house?’
John B can still see him, ten years old, stood there beaming, holding the stuffed bag out to him, the way he’d hopped all nervous energy, bike dumped behind him at the chateau.
‘Yeah. So?’
’You never had food at your house JJ. Not once in the five times you ever let me in man. I know you stole them. I know the cops found out and told Luke, and that’s why I didn’t see you for three whole days. I know that’s why you had to change the way you surfed because he fucked your knee up so badly whaling on you for it.’
‘Ok, where the hell is this going…’
‘I’m telling you this because that’s you JJ. Because that’s who you are. Because that’s what we get. Your friends. The people you love. We get the level of loyalty nobody could ever know. We get someone who is willing to get beaten to feed their friend. Someone who has less than nothing and gives literally all they have ok.’
‘John B…’
‘You risked suicide by cop for me JJ. You tried to bust me out of prison.’
‘They were going to give you the death penalty JB…’
‘You went to jail for Pope.’
‘That kid was always meant for more than…’
‘You busted Kie out of that dumb camp!’
‘Kitty Hawk…’
‘Hell you jumped off a boat in a storm to save Sarah and my baby JJ.’ John B pauses then.
‘Look man, I told you, I was the closest one…’
John B puts a hand over his mouth, it’s familiar, it’s their thing.
’I am going to need you to shut up and listen to me man and I really need you to try and believe this.’ The tears are still going and he’s not sure he can stop them if he tries. But JJ shuts up. He lets him speak. ‘You, JJ, Jackson, Jesse, Groff, Genrette, Maybank whatever the hell you choose to be these or any other days are the best person I know, the best person that I will ever know. Period.’
JJ is looking at him. And John B can tell, can see the way he’s trying to let himself hear it, really hear it.
‘You will do anything for any one of us, hell you died for us. You have been dealt the shittiest parental hand I’ve ever known man, but you were never the problem.’
He draws himself up then, hammers it home, ‘You’re not the reason Claudia left, you’re not responsible for Luke’s abuse, or for Larissa’s death, or for Chandler shoving a knife in your gut. You were never and will never be the problem. If I have to tell you that every day for the rest of our lives until you believe it I will man, I swear I will.’
And there they are. There are tears then. He can see JJ listening, see those words registering like a tiny crack is getting through that locked up wall, like maybe, just maybe he’s hearing him. The setting sun is disappearing, it casts long shadows now, across the pair of them, across the water. JJ’s eyes fill up in a way John B’s missed, there they are, four years later, John B’s got here in the end.
Let it out man. He thinks. Please just let it out. Please just let me in.
‘I love you.’ He says instead. ‘I love you brother. You are so easy to love JJ Maybank, you’ve just had the worst people around you to show you that, and god…Larissa would have god damned adored her son man, because we all do.’
JJ’s tears aren’t like John B’s, they’re not messy nor dramatic, he cries silently, like that child so often trying not to show emotion in front of his father, like the kid that hid his face, hid his heart from so many, for fear of it all, of rejection, of reprisals. One tear. John B watches as one tear falls.
‘You really think so?’ It’s almost a whisper. 'You think she would?’
‘Dude…I know she would.’
Darkness is creeping up the dock now and John B knows he should get JJ back. The others (especially Kie) will go insane if they get back and notice they’re both out of the house, that he took JJ out. He can hear Pope now spouting of facts about wounds and infection and bringing him into the elements too soon but lying on the boards now, his best friend at his side he’s willing to risk a little longer.
JJ lies next to him, an arm sprawled above his head staring up at the sky.
‘Did one of you kill him?’ He asks, like he’s not sure he wants to know. ‘Groff? Is that why you guys haven’t mentioned him?’
John B gazes at the North Star above him, I guess they’re doing this now then too. ‘No. We almost did. But he got away…’
JJ turns his head then, so close John B can feel his breath on his cheek. He looks like he’s not sure what he wanted that answer to be. Something like relief flickers. ‘Ok, ok good.’
‘Not good’ John B says back. ‘Not good. That bastard deserves to be dead or rotting in a jail cell, tortured for the rest of his life.’
‘I wouldn’t want any of you going down with him.’
‘Yeah well you didn’t get a say on that one bud’, John B shoots back because JJ doesn’t get to tell them how to avenge him even now he’s alive again. He swallows down the guilt. Just tell him. Tell him the truth.
‘It was me, I let him go. We had him and I…I let him go J.’
He braves a look then. Turns onto his side so they’re face to face.
JJ doesn’t look angry. His eyebrows come together though. Confused. ‘Why?’
‘He pulled a knife to Sarah. I had him, I swear I did, but he put the knife to her stomach and I…’
‘Hey.’ JJ’s hand finds John B’s shoulder. ‘He’s a bastard. He would have done it too, I’m the resurrected proof of it. You had no choice.’
‘Would you stop it’ John B rolls back onto his back again.
‘Stop what?’
‘Stop being so god damned forgiving about everything, just drop the Dalai Lama understanding shit.’
‘You want me to be pissed?’
‘Yes JJ, yes I’d rather you screamed at me ok.’ And the thing is John B knows he’s being ridiculous but he has spent days hating himself and JJ doesn’t get to just come back from the dead and make it all disappear.
‘Give me a few weeks till I’m back to peak and I’ll punch you if you want bro.’ He offers instead. Eyes lighting up a bit with a familiar wildness, ’Because you should never have risked yourselves and all gone anywhere near him again.’
‘Oh excuse us for wanting to avenge you.’
‘What part of he murdered my entire family line aren’t you getting here JB?’
‘Clearly the part where you expect us to just let that go?’
The fire in JJ’s eyes go out quickly. He looks tired, stretched too thin. ‘Can we go back now?’
It shifts something in John B. Throws a bucket of water over his own inner fire too. They’ve pulled a little too hard on the scabs over the scars here. JJ’s still working on about 5% steam and John B doesn’t want to be the one to push him too hard.
‘Sure man’, he says, he sits up, puts a hand out to pull JJ up so he’s sitting too now. ‘Hey, you know we’re here for you right? And we are so glad you’re back man. I never, ever want to go through what we have the past five weeks again.’
He can’t even begin to tell JJ what it had felt like how he had been walking around in a fog, how he couldn’t even sleep in the house since it got returned to them because everything reminded him of JJ. How he’d had to leave his pregnant girlfriend alone in their room because he simply couldn’t cope with even being across the hall from JJ and Kiara’s room.
‘I’d rather not repeat dying on you all either.’ JJ says wryly. ‘We’d better hope I have no more surprise parents out there looking to finish the job.’
‘Don’t,’ John B stops him, not funny, not while Groff is still out there.
‘Seriously’, JJ says, eyes dark now, ‘we really need to make sure this place is protected, we never know he might come back for the crown.’
John B had had the same thought. The crown has been hidden at Pope’s parents for precisely that reason while they figure out what to do with it.
‘Agreed,’ he says. In the distance he hears the unmistakable throttle of the Twinkie returning.
‘Oh god’ he groans. ‘Come on you, up, Kie’s about to murder me for busting you out of there in t-minus one minute’.
JJ laughs, glad of the change of subject, he grabs John B’s outstretched hand, ’my girl’s got a mean right hook too. She’d take you right down John B, you’re useless in a fight.’
John B reels back, mock offended, ‘I’ll just tell her it was your idea’.
JJ lets him wrap an arm around his waist. ‘Judas!’
It’s starting to rain, just a little. They start to head up the dock again. John B can see Kie, Sarah and Cleo heading into the house. He grips JJ tighter.
Pope is rummaging around in the back of the Twinkie.
JJ is rambling on about John B helping him gang up on Kie to convince her to let him go surfing soon. ‘And we can just stay in the shallows even, I read somewhere that salt water actually isn’t the worst for…’
He stops abruptly. John B smiles fondly, ‘worst for what dude? Open wounds? Cos I’m pretty sure that…’
That’s all he gets out before JJ abruptly drops. His entire weight just goes down. John B, struggles to hold on to him, goes down with him. ‘Whoa, hey, did you slip?’
It’s when he’s on his knees he gets a good look at him and he freezes immediately.
JJ’s saying something under his breath. He’s gone grey, so grey that John B can even see it in the evening’s dusk. His lips are shaking.
John B leans forward, ‘Hey, hey, JJ? What’s going on, you ok?’
JJ’s hands are on the ground, he’s looking down. He’s saying something over and over. John B’s stomach drops. ‘What man?’
He leans closer, keeps his hands on the younger man’s shoulders. Tries to listen.
‘Kasi Ket salib nadard sezavar taj nist…’ JJ’s saying, over and over, ‘Kasi Ket salib nadard sezavar taj nist.’
‘JJ what…’ John B shakes him, he’s scared now, because it sounds like he’s speaking some sort of foreign language or something, what the hell… ‘…JJ I don’t know what you’re saying man.’
JJ just keeps repeating it over and over. John B’s heart is racing out of his chest. He grips JJ’s face now, shakes him again, hard. ‘JJ! Talk to me now!’
The rain is getting heavier now and John B can feel it starting to soak his hair, and JJ’s skin, but he barely notices. His hands grip JJ’s head hard. ‘JJ, JJ please.’
And then JJ goes still. The mumbling stops. The weird language stops and he gasps violently, gasps like when he woke up in the tomb and John B, well John B stops breathing with him.
‘J…’
JJ’s eyes shoot up and meet his, he grips John B’s shirt, his eyes full of terror and it chills John B’s blood. ’JB!’ He says. ‘JB…something’s wrong…I don’t feel right.’
Then before John B can utter a word his eyes roll back, he collapses back on the ground and he starts violently seizing.
Fuck!
Fuck!
What the hell is happening?
John B panics then.
His entire mind whites out for a beat.
No.
NO!
Then he reaches down desperate to do something, trying to remember everything he ever heard about seizures. Stay back, give them space, don’t let them swallow their own tongue, time it.
Fuck.
The rain is starting to pour now, drenching JJ’s shaking form. Why didn’t he bring a coat out here? He’ll freeze right now without a coat.
John B’s heart is threatening to pulse out of his chest. His mind screams.
Don’t do this JJ. Please. Please. Don’t do this. We just got you back.
‘I’m here J,’ he stammers out loud instead, gets down real low, puts his hand out to protect his friend as JJ’s head slams into the mud. ‘I’m here buddy. Just ride it out ok?’
JJ’s too far gone to hear him. His eyes are still rolled back in his head like some terrifying grotesque halloween mask, his fingers bend and contort and his head keeps slamming into the ground over and over as his whole body shakes.
‘JJ please. Please come back.’ John B says and he knows he’s crying now. He can’t tell if it’s rain or tears on his cheeks but he needs JJ to wake up god damn it. He needs him to wake up.
His mind flies unbidden to watching Rafe throw sand over JJ’s body, of him filling up that grave, of carrying JJ up that god forsaken Moroccan hill, dead, lifeless. No. He won’t lose him again. They won’t lose him again.
‘Don’t you dare do this.’ He shouts now, ‘don’t you do this to me again!’
In the distance he can hear shouting, a sudden jolt of lightning lights up the house before him.
‘Pope!’ He screams ‘Kie! HELP!’
He looks down again as JJ’s shaking comes to an abrupt end and his eyes close. He doesn’t get a second of relief before vomit comes out of his mouth. John B swears, and pitches him onto his side so he doesn’t choke.
There’s a lot of it and John B’s knees are covered but he doesn’t care. All he cares about is his half dead best friend, once again lying lifeless before him.
JJ stops vomiting and John B can hear footsteps now running towards them, he allows himself a quick glance and sees Pope and Kie sprinting across the yard.
Oh thank god.
‘Help’s coming J, Kie’s coming, Pope’s coming’, he says, barely able to form words over the pounding of his chest.
But every reassurance, every tiny second of hope is obliterated as he looks down at his best friend’s now still chest.
Because on the rainy mud soaked ground before him JJ isn’t breathing.
Next chapter: Pope and Kie enter the drama and JJ and the Pogues deal with the aftermath.