Archive of Our Own ^beta

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. 

Chapter Text

Kie’s a blur in the corner of his eye, a screaming, hysterical blur. She throws herself down next to them. ‘What happened? WHAT HAPPENED?’

The terror in her eyes when they meet John B’s shifts something inside of him. His mouth hangs open like some sort of useless fish. ‘I…’

His brain whites out.

‘JJ!’ 

Thank God for Pope! 

Thank God for sensible, smart, life saving Pope because he gets down turns JJ over, has one ear to his mouth already. He’s scrambling around, fingers at the boy’s neck. ‘Ok, ok he’s got a pulse’, he stammers, ‘but he’s not breathing, we need to get him breathing, John B go!’

CPR contrary to what people think isn’t a gentle procedure. You have to use real force. It’s brutal and ugly. If you can keep it together enough, if you can ground yourself in it you can feel a person’s ribs shifting under the palms of your hands. 

Pope’s using all his weight now on JJ’s chest. 

If John B remembers anything from that awful moment later it’s that, it’s wanting to wrench Pope off of him, because he’s hurting him, he’s got to be hurting him. 

If he remembers any particular sense memory it’s how he tasted JJ’s vomit on his tongue as he breathed life back into him. It’s probably insane how little John B cares about that fact though in the moment, not with his best friend in the world unmoving and silent, lifeless below him.

His clamps his lips over JJ’s, blows a short sharp burst of air. 

JJ’s chest rises as they watch but stills, doesn’t go again.

Pope resumes compressions. He’s counting loudly, methodically but John B can see the way his hands shake when he lifts them. 

‘Again!’ He shouts, controlled eyes blinking through the pouring rain. How does he do that? How can he keep so focussed. It’s got be some sort of superpower. Because Jesus! John B’s own hands shake on JJ’s chin. He tilts his head back. Breathes again. 

Please JJ.

Kie has her hands clamped around JJs arm. ‘What happened?’ She sobs again. ‘What happened?’

It’s a valid question, less than an hour before her boyfriend had been tucked up in bed recovering, now he’s looking a whole lot like he did a month before, cold and dead and gone but this time out here in their grass. 

They can’t lose him. Not again. Not when they just got him back. Surely the universe wouldn’t be cruel enough to bring him back to them to what just take him away again? 

Fuck that. John B thinks. Fuck your take backs.

No take backs.

No taking back JJ.

The rain eases off a little. John B wipes JJ’s face gently, observes the way his eyelashes rest against his cheek, like one of those creepy porcelain lifeless dolls. ‘Come on man. Come on J.’

Breathes again.

‘JJ please, Jayj please’ Kie keeps up a litany whispering into his fingers, ‘Don’t do this again. Don’t. Please.’ 

The world narrows, as it so often does to just the four of them, like it always does really. 

They need one another. They don’t work without one another. 

It’s that simple. 

And John B’s back for a minute, back in his front yard, back when they were eleven. JJ on the ground, eyes closed, the shock of falling from the tree taking the wind out of him. He, Kie and Pope surrounding him. Scared. Wake up JJ. They’d said. Small and afraid and terrified he wasn’t coming back. Wake up. 

Because the very idea of losing each other was too much for them to take even then. And they needed him. 

He’d been smaller then, so much littler, but somehow less vulnerable than he is now at 19 murdered by his father, resurrected by a crown, drowning - not in sand this time, but mud instead. 

Wake up they’d shouted then, panicking, wake up.

‘Wake up’ that’s Pope now, he’s unravelling, all of that control, all of that measured maturity. ‘Wake up man!’

‘Wake up!’ John B shouts, all panic, wild abandon, breaking between breathes. ‘JJ. Wake up!’ 

Kie’s last, almost a whisper, but the loudest of all. ‘I need you to wake up JJ.’

JJ wakes up. 

The ragged gasp he draws is painful, hoarse, it sends John B back on his heels. He’s on his butt in the mud. 

Kie slumps, it’s like every bone in her body wilts and her head’s on his chest. Like she hadn’t breathed with him. ‘Jesus’, she sobs, ‘Jesus JJ.’

Pope barks out a laugh, sheer relief. ‘Thank God buddy. Oh my god.’

JJ’s gasp turns into a racking cough, then he opens his eyes and blinks lazily somewhat vacantly at the sky. 

‘Dude…’ John B manages trying to stop his heart from racing out of his chest. ‘Don’t DO that.’

They’re all huddled around him. Kie goes around John B, moves to his head, she puts a hand on his hair. ‘Jayj, hey look at me.’

John B leans closer, JJ’s eyelids flutter, no recognition. His gaze doesn’t track Kie, he just stares blankly. A pit starts to form in his stomach. ‘Kie…’

Before she can even respond his eyes slip closed again. Kie freezes up but Pope’s there in a second, hand at his nose. 

‘It’s ok’ he says, his own voice wobbly, ‘he’s breathing, he’s just out again.’

‘Pope lets get him inside,’ John B manages and together they ease an arm each around JJ, pulling him up between them and dragging him inside. 

For his part JJ makes no effort to support himself, back out again.

The lightning stretches out across the dock as the four of them stagger through the front door.

John B’s seen Kie angry before but this is on a whole other level. 

‘What were you thinking?’ She screams, shoving John B hard against the wooden panelling, ‘What were you THINKING bringing him outside in a storm? With a stab wound? Why would you be so stupid?’

John B spares a glance at JJ behind her wrapped up like some ridiculous burrito still unconscious on the couch. Cleo and Pope sit beside him, Pope has a thermometer in his ear, ever the first aider and Cleo’s ushering her own reassurances. John B sneaks a glance at Sarah across the room but any support he was hoping for is dashed. She throws her hands up at him.

‘What do you want from me John B? We told you guys to stay in the house. You’re on your own with this one.’

‘Kie can we save this for when we know he’s ok please.’

‘Hell no’ she shoots back, ‘we’re doing this now, because apparently I can’t trust my boyfriend and my best friend for one hour alone without him up and dying again!’ 

‘He was…’

‘No John B, you don’t get to take risks with him. Not anymore. Not right now. You force me to go out, I go, and I come back and…’ she breaks off, breathing heavily. Sarah walks over, puts a hand on her arm. ‘I can’t…I can’t lose him again John B not because you decided to be reckless ok?’

John B takes it. He’ll take anything to stop the tears in Kie’s eyes right now.

‘You’re right. You’re right Kie, I’m sorry.’

It still surprises him sometimes, the Kie and JJ of it all. His two best friends. He’d grown up with them, seen JJ’s endless attempts to flirt with her for years, never quite realised right under his nose that all of Kie’s sarcastic retorts was feelings of her own. It took him far too long to put that together. 

‘I’m sorry Kie’ he tries again, reaches out for her but she pushes his arm away. She’s still upset. She’s protective and he’s just risked the one thing he’d promised he’d keep safe for her. JJ. 

Sarah can sense the way it hurts John B to have Kie swerve him and she finally crumbles a little and reaches out for him, puts a reassuring hand on his arm.

‘What the hell happened again?’

John B sighs, takes a seat on the chair opposite JJ on the couch. ‘I don’t know, honestly he was fine, I swear Kie, we were talking, he was joking around and then it was like…’

‘Like what?’ Pope asks, hand still grasping the thermometer. 

‘I dunno man. Like he was in some sort of trance for a second. Like he checked out. Then I swear he started talking in like some sort of foreign language for a minute. Then he looks at me, says something’s wrong then he’s gone, he’s having some sort of fit, full on seizing, throwing up and then…’

Everyone’s watching him now.

‘Then he just straight up stopped breathing.’ 

Kie huffs out a breath. ‘Oh’. She kneels down on the carpet, reaches a hand out, cards it through his hair. 

John B runs a hand over his face. ‘What the hell are we looking at here Pope?’ 

Pope’s unnerved. He fidgets. ‘He’s running a slight temperature but nothing major, I don’t know man, I really don’t. It’s not like resurrections have symptoms.’ He glances at JJ. Still out. ‘He stopped breathing again, he had a seizure and I really don’t like not taking him to the hospital right now.’

‘How would we explain it?’ John B echoes JJ’s previous words. Right after he first came back. 

‘No hospitals guys’, he’d croaked, ‘we’d never explain it. They’d have me in some science lab like a rat, hooked up to god knows what, I’m not going, end of discussion.’ 

‘I’d rather we couldn’t explain any of it to doctors and he lived, than he died at home because of pure stubbornness again’. Kie says tiredly.

‘Lets give him a little time, see if he wakes up’, John B tells her quietly, ‘if he doesn’t we’ll take him in, no arguments, if he does lets see what he wants ok. It’s still his call Kie.’

‘Like going wandering in a lightning storm with a knife wound was his call?’ Kie hurls back. 

John B swallows down the flash of hurt. Ok. He deserved that one. 

‘What language was he speaking?’ Pope, breaks up the awkwardness. 

‘How the hell am I supposed to know Pope, I literally know one language.’

Pope’s big brain is working. ‘I’ve heard that people who’ve been in coma’s wake up sometimes with this weird ability to speak different languages you know?’ He looks down at JJ . ‘I mean JJ has been in a coma or…well worse for weeks, maybe his brain is doing something. Or maybe it’s some magic side effect. I don’t know. To say I’m concerned is an understatement.’ 

Understatement is right. They’re all rattled. It’s been this way for five weeks now, living in this constant state of fight or flight, hell maybe it’s even longer if you count before they even headed to Morocco after JJ trashed the town. It’s like they can’t quite catch their collective breath, like none of them can let their guard down even for a second. Hell Kie was right, John B had taken JJ out, had given in to his need for fresh air and some normalcy and look what had happened? Guard down and bam. They nearly lost him all over again.

He’s not sure what’s going on here but he’s sure it’s not just JJ being exposed to the elements, there’s something far bigger at play, and that unknown is gnawing fiercely at John B’s stomach. It was too much to hope for that JJ would heal, that he’d come back just fine. Of course there was more to this. They rarely get a lucky break and having JJ back was clearly the only one they were going to get. 

John B takes a breath, shifts in his chair till he can see his best friend more clearly. JJ’s pale, still out for the count, but he doesn’t look in pain, not anymore, none of the fear he’d seen outside in the mud, none of the terror.

Something’s wrong…I don’t feel right. 

John B’s breath catches a little too loudly and Sarah rubs his arm gently. It takes him longer than it should to pull himself together. He wonders for the hundredth time since they got him back, if JJ will ever feel right again? Will any of them ever? 

He eyes them now, Kie and JJ, watches her stroke his hair gently, her other hand resting on his chest, no doubt checking he was still breathing after that show outside. He’s suddenly tired, bone tired. He wishes they were 16 again, lying in the chateau, working summer jobs, getting high, he misses the innocence of it. Misses how everything felt so much less frightening, back when none of them knew what it was like to bury another. He wants it so bad he can taste it for a minute. But then Sarah leans in to him, she brings his hand gently to her stomach and he comes back to himself. 

You can’t go backward Bird, he hears his father say, only forwards.

So forward they’ll go. 

JJ doesn’t wake up dramatically this time. He softly huffs out a breath and tilts his head towards Kie’s voice. 

‘What time is it?’ 

They’re all on their feet in a second. Clamouring round him.

‘JJ?’

‘Hey buddy!’

‘Thank God!’

‘Jayj?’

He opens his eyes then, wrinkles his forehead at the line up hovering over him. 

‘Ok…’ he drawls, ‘Based on the studio audience here, I take it I missed something?’ 

When they all shift awkwardly he pierces John B with a look. 

‘I didn’t highlander again did I?’

Kie swats him gently on the head. ‘Stop it!’

Pope’s serious then, ‘you basically did dude.’

John B nods. Not sure how far he wants to let him in just yet. ‘Yeah it wasn’t pretty J.’

JJ sighs, ‘I guess that’s why my mouth tastes like ass right now and I feel like I got hit by a truck!’

Sarah heads off to grab him some water and JJ shifts himself up on his elbows, lets Kie help him sit himself up. 

‘Uh so what happened?’

‘We were hoping you could tell us.’ Pope says quietly, watching as Sarah hands JJ a glass of water and he drinks it steadily. 

Once he finishes he frowns at them all, runs a hand through his messy hair. ‘Ok so JB and I were outside…’

‘Which you shouldn’t have been in the first place!’ Kie interrupts immediately. ‘No seriously what were you thinking letting John B take you outside when you…’

‘Wasn’t his fault,’ JJ comes back, ‘Don’t get mad at him ok Kie, I wanted some space, I was nagging him, I was going crazy cooped up in here, you know I was.’

Kie sighs, ‘I know that Jayj but you can’t take risks right now, not with your health ok we are trying to keep you alive here.’ 

‘Kie,’ JJ levels her with a look, ‘it was the dock and back I wasn’t taking part in the Kildare fun run ok.’ 

‘That’s beside the point…’

‘Stop.’ Maybe it’s the way he says it, the finality of it. Maybe it’s the way he puts his hands on her shoulders but Kie pauses, meets his eyes then. ‘Stop it Kie. I know. I know you’re afraid. I know you all are ok, you’ve been watching me like some injured bird you have to nurse back to health for weeks now alright but I can’t deal. I can’t deal with things like this.’ He gestures around at them all.

‘I don’t want to be the one scaring everyone ok. And I sure as hell don’t want to be trapped in this house, not anymore, not again.’ 

The room stills then, they’re all listening now, watching as he allows them in a little. 

‘Ever since I woke up in that tomb it’s been hard to breathe and I don’t mean that in just a physical way. I love you guys, god I love you, you’re my family’, he pauses like he’s not sure he should go there, ‘but I can’t breathe when you’re all holding me this tightly ok. I can’t. You know I don’t do well if you pen me in, so can you just let me…I dunno, can you just let me breathe please?’

He moves a strand of hair away from Kie’s face then, to show her he’s not mad, this isn’t rage, it’s desperation.  ‘John B wasn’t risking me Kie alright, he was just letting me breathe for a minute baby. He just knew I needed to breathe.’

Kie nods. He brings his forehead to hers and John B feels a little awkward. It’s the most intimate he’s ever seen them, like they’re the only people in the room for a minute. John B thanks whatever’s out there that they found one another, that his two best friends became that for each other. 

He clears his throat. ‘Ok check, you’d like to be able to keep breathing, glad we’re all on the same page with that J, but what the hell happened out there? One minute you were talking man and then you were just gone.’

JJ jigs his knee nervously beneath the pile of blankets. ‘I don’t know how to explain it, it was like one minute I’m good and next minute there’s this…’ he searches for the right word, ‘this tunnel, and it was like I was being pulled into it and out of my body or something, like something wanted me, like I was being pulled somewhere else.’

‘Somewhere else where?’ Pope asks nervously. 

‘I don’t know.’ JJ tells him. ‘It sort of felt like…’ He pauses, swallows it down like he can’t say it.

‘JJ?’ Kie urges him gently, hands on his. 

‘Like being back in that tomb, like how I felt when I first woke up.’

‘Shit man.’ Cleo curses quietly. 

And if that doesn’t sum up the mood of the room. Everyone’s unsettled.

John B meets Pope’s worried gaze. Pope slowly shakes his head. This can’t be good. Nobody needs JJ to feel like he’s dying on them again. 

Pope sits down, hands on his knees, he fixes JJ with a look. ‘John B said you were speaking another language. Do you know what you were saying?’

JJ’s head shoots up at that. ‘What?’ His eyes dart to John B’s. ‘What like Spanish?’

‘No man…this was I don’t even know what it was but it wasn’t Spanish.’

JJ looks more rattled than he needs to be by that. ‘What the…so now I’m not just a zombie, I’m a bilingual zombie, freaking great!’

‘JJ!’ Kie snaps. 

‘What Kie? This is such bullshit.’

‘I can’t deal when you talk like that’, she says quietly. 

That shuts him up. He bites on his lip. ‘Sorry’ he huffs out. ‘Sorry. This is just really messed up y’all.’

Understatement of the century. 

Pope breaks up the heavy mood, he gets a tiny torch and starts getting JJ to track it with his eyes checking for any physical side effects from yet another brush with death.

John B follows Sarah to the window.

‘This feels wrong’, she says hushed under her breath, ‘don’t you think?’

‘Yeah’ John B kicks at the rug with his big toe, ‘yeah I know. We have no idea what the hell just happened out there, if it’ll happen again, we can’t take him to the hospital because he’d be a walking talking freak show science experiment. I don’t know what to do here Sarah.’ 

He’s helpless and he’s had just about as much of that feeling as he can stomach lately. 

She pulls him towards her and he dips his head, smells the coconut shampoo she uses, lets himself breathe her in. ‘Lets start small ok, he’s alright. For now he’s alright ok? You got him back baby. You got him back.’

‘Yeah we did.’

And that’s enough for right now. 

JJ is up and annoying them in no time. He’s not back to his old self, not quite, but he’s back to griping and John B classes that as a win. They all watch him closely but his random bilingual zombie phase as he lovingly refers to it seems to be a thing of the past by the next afternoon. 

Kie’s refusing to leave the house now though so John B’s not quite out of her doghouse yet much to JJ’s irritating amusement. He revels in it, once he knows she’s just making John B suffer a little and it’s not genuine bullying he’s all for it. Practically eggs her on. He sticks a middle finger up at John B behind Kie’s head as he hugs her, grins when she gives him John B’s toast and is genuinely a petulant irritating child loving his best friend’s misery. John B loves it. It feels like normal, he can almost pretend the past months hadn’t happened. 

Pope scours the internet for anything and everything on seizures and coma patients and newly learned languages and he keeps reading off random lines at JJ and John B in different languages all ‘does this sound familiar?’ 

‘Wait I know that!’ JJ finally says after he flings the latest one out. 

‘Wait you do?’

‘Yeah’ JJ says putting his hands on Pope’s shoulders, ‘I think it’s…’ he closes his eyes, like he’s thinking, ‘oh yeah bullshit, yeah that’s what it sounds like.’

Pope shoves him lightly. John B snorts out a laugh. ‘Be serious man I’m trying to help here.’

‘Dr Spock,’ JJ says seriously, ‘you know I love you, but you have got to stop. I had a weird freak out. My zombie bilingual little brain short-circuited but today I’m all good ok? Comprende?’

Pope sighs, nods.

‘Muy bueno’, JJ says with a shit eating grin and he spins off to the lounge. 

John B claps a hand on Pope’s shoulder. ‘Now that’s our JJ.’

‘That’s our JJ,’ Pope smiles fondly. ‘Asshole.’ 

They spend the afternoon playing poker and JJ is overly excited when Kie allows him his first post death blunt. ‘Kie I swear, if I wasn’t legally dead I’d marry you right now!’ He crows and gets a smack around the head for his mouth. But they’re all laughing. 

‘Who says I’d say yes,’ Kie says taking a drag and handing it back. 

‘Oh baby, you wound me,’ JJ says exaggeratedly grasping his chest. 

‘I’m looking at my prospects right now dude,’ she laughs, ‘no job, on the run from the law, lives with his friends…’

‘Oh but you’re forgetting one thing Queen Kie,’ he says, looking down at his hand playfully, ‘My shiny new kook birth certificate.’ The vibe shifts a little. Nobody’s really thought about the implications of that. Least of all JJ. He picks up his chips on the table, ‘Once we get over the death thing, you can have my Goat Island.’

He shifts in his chair opposite her, pushes the chips to the middle. ‘What do you say Carrera? You all in?’

‘And what’s on offer at this island Mr Maybank?’ She leans back, teasing softly. Holds her own chips. 

‘I’m thinking you could make a nice little turtle sanctuary right there on the land.’

Kie’s eyes light up. ‘Keep talking.’

‘And I can offer charters, visit the turtles then take the tour back across the water to Poguelandia’.

‘I like it…and?’

He’s thinking fast. They’re all watching the back and forth amused. John B sits completely drawn in hearing JJ talk like this. John B’s oldest friend the one who had less than nothing always. Whenever anyone asked him about the future he’d brush it off, like there wasn’t the possibility of anything good for him. This is different. This is new. 

‘And we knock down Blackstone’ JJ says serious now, he pauses, the light tone dwindling, becoming softer, more wistful, ’I don’t know for sure but I think…I think that’s where he killed her, where Groff killed Larissa’. 

Kie lowers her cards. ‘JJ…’

‘So we knock that down.’ He stumbles on. Eyes still on Kie’s. ‘But we keep all those places that meant so much to your family Pope, we keep the Freemans Church, we rebuild it to what it was, for Denmark.’ 

Pope swallows. ‘Yeah…I mean…I think that’s perfect man.’

‘Then we make the rest like hell I don’t know a nature reserve, protected, we can even have a plaque for you JB on a tree like ‘here lies the area where John B Routledge had his calf chewed by a gator’.

John B laughs. God he loves him. 

‘Better have one for Pat Womack too,’ he offers back. 

JJ smiles. His eyes are wild with possibility in a way John B hasn’t seen for so long. Maybe forever. ‘And then we turn everything bad about that island into something better.’ 

He’s looking at them each of them now. John B feels Sarah squeeze his hand under the table. 

JJ uncovers his chips, right in the centre of the table. 

‘Baby JJ will grow up thinking Goat Island is the coolest place ever, we can do that guys. Now surely that? That’s worth going all in for.’

John B swallows down the lump in his throat, puts his chips in, ‘all in!’ he says.

‘All in’ Sarah adds.

Pope smiles, ‘hell you know I’m in’

‘Rude boy I say we need a boat workshop, but then I’m all in,’ Cleo throws out with a laugh.

Kie’s last. She smiles at him, beams across the table, shoves her chips forward, ‘I was never anything but in’.

JJ nods, eyes gleaming shifting away between them all, he’s never been less of a zombie to John B than right now, alive and smiling across that table.

‘All in then.’ 

It all goes to shit at dinner. 

Because off course it does. 

They are eating at the table for the first time in months. JJ’s been eating more often than not in his room since he had been recuperating and they’d all sat with him not willing to leave him alone. But tonight the table laid and all of them sat there feels a hundred different kinds of right. 

JJ fidgets a bit, tugging at the new bandage he and Kie had just rewrapped around his stomach. ‘You alright man?’ John B attempts, tries to keep from studying JJ too hard. 

‘Yeah man, feels good to be sat here.’ He plays off his discomfort. John B can still see the pain lines though, today has probably taken it out of him, he’s been trying hard to prove all day how alright he is after yesterday’s trauma but he’s still got a stab wound, he was still not breathing yesterday. They’ve got to take it slowly. 

They eat John B’s pasta and JJ even manages half. His appetite has been off since he came back, he’s still getting it back but John B will take it because he’s smiling and laughing at Cleo telling some story about Pope trying to get medication off Ricky.

Ricky had been the logical choice when they needed large doses of meds to manage JJ’s pain but the poor guy, like most of Kildare still thinks his cousin is dead. JJ is going to have to address that soon. 

‘I don’t really know how I’m going to start with that whole saga,’ he fingers his bracelet, tugs it around his wrist. ‘It doesn’t sit right knowing he thinks I’m dead you know.’

‘We’ll get to that,’ Kie says from her chair next to his, she puts a hand on his wrist, grounds him. ‘One step at a time right?’ 

He nods. ‘Right’.

John B doesn’t bring up the other glaring fact that Ricky’s not even his biological cousin anymore. JJ clearly doesn’t want to open that can of worms yet. The Maybank and Groff and Genrette of it all. 

‘One step at a time bubba’, he reiterates instead. 

It’s as they are clearing the table that Pope disappears outside. 

Kie tries to send JJ to sit down but he’s adamant he’s helping and shrugs her off. He gingerly hands John B the plates as Sarah heads to wash them up. 

Kie grabs a towel and they work their little system as Cleo wipes the table down. 

‘You know I’ve been thinking’ John B says as he leans his back against the counter.

‘Careful B you don’t wanna strain something.’ 

He swats at JJ with the tea towel. ‘Shut it!’

JJ smirks at him, the tired shit eating grin still in place. ‘Shoot’.

‘About how we’re going to clear your name.’ 

'Ah but which name John B?’ He drawls, ‘JJ Maybank? Jackson Genrette? I mean hell might as well throw the Groff in there if we’re going for the full…’

‘Look what I have’ Pope interrupts. ‘With all the drama yesterday I totally forgot what I brought back from my parents.’ He’s clutching a box, making his way to the kitchen counter, John B peeks at the top.

‘Wait’ he says, stills, ‘is that…’

‘The Blue Crown?’ Kie whispers. 

And JJ goes down. 

It’s almost worse than last time.

This time he collapses and his head makes the most horrendous bang against the cabinet cupboard corner. 

‘JJ!’ Kie screams.

They’re all down on the ground with him in a second. 

‘Kasi keh salib nadard sezavar taj nist’ he says, eyes staring into nothing, ‘kasi keh salib nadard sezavar taj nist.’

‘Shit!’ John B shouts, he’s losing it.

‘What do we do? What do we do?’ Sarah’s screaming. 

Cleo grabs a towel shoves it under his head. 

‘Kasi keh salib nadard sezavar taj nist.’

‘Fuck!’ Pope hisses. ‘Is this what he was saying yesterday?’

John B nods, frozen. Because if this is like yesterday then this is about to get really bad, really fast. 

‘Pope! Pope, he’s going to…’

It’s all he manages before JJ starts seizing again. ‘Shit SHIT!’

There’s no vomit this time but there’s blood, he bites his tongue, starts foaming at the mouth. John B’s hands hover, helplessly. Kie is shaking almost as violently as JJ is. ‘It’s ok Jayj’ she says ‘please, please, you’re going to be ok’.

Sarah starts pulling anything away that he could violently hit his head on. Pope turns and runs out. 

John B doesn’t have the bandwidth to wonder where he’s going, not when he knows what came next in this horrific cycle yesterday. 

‘J…we’re all here.’ He stutters. Steels himself in case he needs to be back to CPR duty. Tries to find it in him to do this again, right here on their kitchen floor. God he’s so tired of dragging his best friend back from the brink. 

He keeps a hand on JJ’s shaking ankle, tethering him.

Don’t go anywhere J.

Stay here.

Stay with us. 

Sarah and Kie have a hand each on his arms. It’s like they’re all trying to stop him from drifting. Trying to keep him tied to them to this world. Like they can will him not to stop breathing on them. 

Cleo is the only one that seems to be considering anything else. She snaps her head up. Eyes the box. ‘The damned crown?’ She says, ‘Is it the crown?’

John B doesn’t answer her because just as he meets her gaze, JJ goes still. Dead still.

Again. 

Not again.

‘No, no, no, no!’ Kie says, hands on his head. ‘No!’

His lips are going blue. They’re going blue. In the harsh light of the kitchen it looks glaringly more obvious than it did out near the dock in the twilight. 

‘No JJ’ John B shouts, he moves up, links his hands. ‘Not again!’

‘Move back!’ But then Pope’s there. 

‘What?’

‘Move back JB, now!’ He shouts. He’s holding something in his hand. But his tone is the most serious John B's ever heard it. He moves without question. 

Pope leans down over JJ, and shoves a needle right into his thigh. 

They all wait a second. John B watches in shock. Watches Pope press the plunger into JJ’s leg. 

‘What are you…’ Kie gasps, eyes wide with horror. ‘What’s that?’

‘Epi pen’ Pope says. ‘Got it off Ricky with the other medication.’ 

‘What does that even do Pope?’ Sarah gestures at JJ wildly.

‘During CPR, epinephrine can be used to increase blood pressure and coronary perfusion, which can increase the likelihood of restoring a normal heart rhythm.’ Pope rambles on. 

John B doesn’t care, he just watches JJ, and waits. They all do. 

He remembers another time, in Ricky’s kitchen watching, hoping for Pope to come back to them after the bee stings, god that feels like a lifetime ago. 

‘Come on JJ’ Pope urges. ‘Come on buddy.’

Cleo gets up suddenly, she moves wordlessly to the box on the counter and walks out with it. 

Kie is stroking JJ’s hair, ‘how long are we supposed to wait Pope?’ She is shaking. John B can see her hands shaking through his hair. If they lose JJ again, here on their kitchen floor, they’ll never ever get over it. 

He feels it as deeply as he felt it in that Moroccan desert. 

JJ’s lips are blue with a speck of blood in the corner, JJ’s eyes are closed, his hands are still, and he’s fucking 19 years old.

Nobody is ready to lose him yet.

He isn’t supposed to go yet.

Please Dad. John B prays as the seconds tick by. Please. Please send him back. 

‘JJ…’ he lets out a strangled sob now because it’s been too long, yet again it’s too long, how long can a brain go without oxygen again?

‘Pope…’

‘Give him a minute.’

‘Pope,’ Kie sobs.

Pope slams a hand down, ‘I said give him a minute!’

Sarah moves forward then ‘it’s been too long.’

Pope’s voice is shaky, ‘he just needs a minute’

John B puts hands on his chest.

Pope starts crying.

JJ breathes.  

This time they are all broken in the aftermath. They stay on the kitchen floor longer than necessary. This time JJ wakes up with his head in Pope’s lap, he wakes up with John B holding his hand. Kie’s tears on his forehead. He’s warm, he’s safe. Someone has covered him in a blanket and his mouth feels fuzzy and sore. 

His vision is blurry all coloured spots and pixels but when it comes together Cleo is stood over them all.

‘It’s the crown,’ she says ‘it’s that damned crown man.’

‘It’s the crown,’ JJ mumbles back and then he passes the fuck out.

Next time - The gang start to uncover the crown's link to JJ and try and work out how to keep him safe. Could the very magic that saved him be what takes him away from them again? 

Chapter Text

‘We need to test it,’ is JJ’s genius idea.

John B can’t control his exasperation, ‘You know what, sure, let’s put the dangerous heart-stopping crown on your head hey bubba? See if it’s third time lucky?’

‘John B.’

‘We’re not doing that.’

They sit huddled together on the step at poguelandia. JJ's got another new bandage reaching down from his temple now courtesy of the kitchen cabinet collision. He has his chin tucked into his palm, elbow resting on his knee. John B's arm firmly wrapped around his shoulders.

In the distance John B can see the silhouettes of Kie and Cleo at the end of the pier looking down at the box. 

‘Well what are we going to do then man?’ JJ sighs, ducking his head. ‘We can’t just leave it at the end of the dock and make sure I don’t go within ten feet of it. We’ve got to work something out.’

John B pulls him closer. ‘Look I know alright J, but we’re not risking your life again.’

JJ shifts and John B takes a good look at him, eyeing the bandage and the few days worth of stubble sitting on his best friend's face. He looks tired. 

When JJ first came back he’d been weak, too weak to manage too much and John B had gotten sick of watching his shaking hands and him struggling with the most basic of tasks. On the third day he’d brought the shaving kit to his bed. 

JJ had grumbled but he’d let John B do it. Had eyed him grateful as John B had put the foam on to his face with the brush, tipped his head back as he had carefully shaved JJ’s face, keeping a gentle hand on his cheek.  

‘There all better sasquatch!’ He’d proclaimed after, running the towel over JJ’s chin and avoiding the slightly vulnerable gaze being shot back at him. 

‘Thanks man.’ JJ had whispered, spent, even from just the effort of letting John B shave him. 

It wasn’t just for the shave. John B knew it. JJ knew it. And the moment was a little too deep. So he had leaned forward and smacked a dramatic kiss on JJ’s cheek. ‘I draw the line at bed baths!’

He wouldn’t though. Wouldn’t draw the line anywhere with JJ. Not with bringing him back to them.

He’d draw the line now though, would draw the line at this freaking crown being anywhere near his best friend again.

The night before after they’d peeled themselves off the floor, shaken, wrecked,  they had got JJ back nestled into bed, and they’d sat around him discussing options. Kie wanted to straight up melt the crown down, but the idea of it’s tie to JJ meant it was too risky. Pope thought finding a place for it far enough away that it wouldn’t affect him might work, like locking it in some safe forever. But the risk of them needing it in some JJ related way meant they couldn’t do that either. They were stuck.

So for now it was at the end of the dock, and JJ wasn’t allowed anywhere in the house without someone with him in case it started to affect him again. 

That little fact was already suffocating him and John B knew it. He was itching out of his skin and he wasn’t able to get away. 

‘We’ll think of something’, he reassures now. 

JJ picks at a thread on his hoodie aimlessly. ‘Yeah?’

John B smiles fondly, remembers another time, on this very same porch, ‘Yeah man, we’re pogues, we always do right?’

JJ meets his gaze, huffs out a laugh at his own words fired back at him. 

‘Why did getting to South America then seem so much simpler than this death crown situation right now?’

John B shrugs, ‘Well I’m not going to suggest a drugs run as an option.’

‘Could do with a drugs run right now man i’m telling you’, JJ shoots back, brings a hand up to his bandage.

‘Your head still hurting?’

‘Just aches really.’

‘Ok cos you’ve got to tell me if…’

‘If it feels like the crown, yeah yeah man I know.’

John B can sense his frustration. ‘Look bud I know you hate this but you’ve come too close, too many times. You’re going to have to deal with us being overprotective right now ok?’

JJ nods, ‘I know.’

John B moves his arm from around his shoulder. ‘You trust me right?’

JJ shoots him a ‘duh’ look and John B feels warm inside. He won’t ever take that for granted. 

‘Then you gotta let me decide what’s best for you now ok.’

‘I’m not eight years old,’ he gets back. But he’s saved a response as Pope pulls up in the twinkie. He and JJ look out as he exits the car.

‘Got them!’ He says, shaking the bag in front of him. ‘Although Ricky clearly thinks i’m some sort of addict or I’m selling these on the black market.’

John B and JJ peer into the bag as he drops it before them, eye up what must be 25 epi pens. 

‘Jesus Pope,’ JJ snorts, ‘how many times are you expecting me to die?’

Pope shoots him a look, ‘not funny man, excuse me if watching your friend stop breathing twice in the past few days makes me a little more cautious’. 

JJ rolls his eyes. ‘Ricky will have definite questions.’

Pope sits down on the other side of JJ, John B picks up one of the epi pens, starts fiddling with it and he slaps it out of his hand, ‘Stop! Don’t mess with those.’

John B makes a mock exaggerated face at JJ and he laughs. 

‘I’m telling you JJ, Ricky’s really depressed about you being dead. I felt bad pretending man.’ 

‘Well technically you’re not lying.’ JJ drawls and Pope shakes his head. 

‘Don’t joke! So no more drama here?’ He asks John B over JJ’s head. 

‘Nah…no more magic crown shit for now.’ 

Pope nods, satisfied but he keeps eyeing JJ. ‘And you feel ok?’

‘Yes!’ JJ says exasperatedly throwing up his hands. ‘Apart from the cabinet trying to take me out, I swear it rivalled that stupid crown.’ 

Pope looks out to the dock where Kie and Cleo are standing, he can make out Cleo holding the crown in her hands now and he shudders involuntarily. While it only seems to be affecting JJ, he doesn’t want it near any of them right now, not after the display it had shown them last night. 

He feels guilty enough connecting the dots over JJ’s first collapse the other night, he had gotten the crown out of the car and that’s when his friend had gone down. They need to be really careful. As a man of science, magic isn’t something he knows enough about and it’s scaring him on a whole new level. 

‘We need to test it!’ JJ says again.

John B groans, ‘not again, enough with this man.’

‘Test it how?’ Pope asks.

‘I dunno,’ JJ says his mind working, ‘like one of you bring it closer to me or something and we work out how far I have to be away from it before it…’ he raises his hands, wiggles his fingers, ‘zombifies me.’

‘That’s a terrible idea!’ John B spits out at the same time as Pope offers ‘that might work actually.’ 

JJ is on Pope instantly, picturing a possible in. ‘That’s what I’m saying.’

‘What are you talking about?’ John B shouts, instantly angry, he can’t shut down the protective instincts, can’t get out of the not breathing, not breathing, not breathing, headspace,  ‘we’re not risking this again Pope.’

‘Look, we just need to know a bit more about what we’re dealing with here, we’ve got the epi pens ok, we’re not going to let him get too close but we need to know what the hell effect this has on him.’

‘You saw the effect!’ John B snaps back quickly, ‘shit man, we all saw it, seizures, random foreign language, it literally stopped him breathing.’

JJ sits between them head moving like he’s watching a ping pong match instead of listening to his two best friends discussing his life or death dramas. 

‘I know John B! Believe me I haven’t forgotten that. I just think JJ might be onto something.’ 

‘Yeah well last time we took JJ’s advice he sent us away and he died so maybe we don’t do that again.’

That shuts them all up. 

John B instantly regrets it. 

JJ stiffens, Pope actually winces. 

John B squeezes his eyes shut. ‘JJ i…’

‘Tell us how you really feel JB.’ JJ shoves himself up from the step, and John B’s already moving to grab him.

‘Wait!’ 

‘No man! I get it ok?’ JJ whirls on him now, the oversized hoodie dwarfing him, rage in his eyes, ‘I get that you’re scared and you don’t like this situation but guess what neither do I and you cutting me out of what I want in all this ain’t it man.’

John B sighs, ‘that’s not -’

But JJ isn’t done yet.

‘And for the record, I don’t regret it, I don’t regret any of it. I don’t regret sending you away and I don’t regret giving Groff the damned crown and I don’t regret dying if it meant you guys were safe ok so if you could stop throwing that at me I’d really appreciate it!’

He spins on his heel, John B reaches out to grab for him but Pope’s on his feet then too, he puts an arm on his shoulder. ‘Let him go man.’ 

The front door slams behind JJ and he disappears from view. 

‘Actually, someone should probably...’ Pope says nervously.

‘Sarah’s in there’ John B offers back. He nudges his head in the direction of the house. 

Pope’s eyes dart back and forth from the door to John B. ‘You went too far.’

‘I know man’. Because while John B means every word he said about JJ sending them away to sacrifice his life for them, he certainly didn’t intend to throw it at him like that, to make him feel guilty, to take away his desperate need to claw back some control again. ‘I lost it a little.’ 

‘We’ll be careful’, Pope says, eyes back to the dock, to the crown. ‘We’ll be careful John B but we need to work out just what’s going on here, and if this is affecting him like we think it is.’

John B shoves down another refusal, bites the inside of his cheek, ‘And how are we supposed to fight magic Pope?’ Because that’s the question isn’t it? They can search for treasure, they can fight Limbrey and Ward and Rafe and Mercenaries and Groff but how do they fight magic? How do they protect JJ if the one thing that brought him back to life is the same thing that’s killing him all over again?’

He can still smell the blood on his hands is the truth of it all, he still wakes up choking with JJ buried in all that sand in his dreams. He can’t risk losing him again.

‘I don’t know,’ Pope answers honestly, but he straightens and when he looks at John B it’s with a steadfast confidence the other boy isn’t feeling, ‘but magic’s got nothing on a Pogue.’

John B smiles despite himself. ‘P4L?’

‘P4L!’ Pope slaps his hand. 

P4L John B keeps reminding himself, P4L.

It’s how they find themselves arms linked in some sort of weird line up later that afternoon. JJ is tucked firmly in the centre. Kie and John B on either side of him and Sarah and Pope at the end of the row. 

‘I don’t like this.’ Kie reiterates for the fifth time since they started walking, slow steps at a time. ‘I really don’t like it’. 

JJ grips her bicep firmer. ‘Kie, come on, it’s ok.’ But he looks tense too, eyes on Cleo who’s stood with the crown. They have made it halfway down the grass but not to the dock yet. And so far so good. He feels nothing weird, same old regular resurrection pain only. 

Sarah’s hand tightens on John B’s arm as she looks down the row. ‘Still nothing Jayj?’

He shakes his head. ‘Nothing!’

Pope tightens his palm around the epi pens in his pocket. ‘The second you do…’

‘I know, I know!’ JJ says. ‘Yell to the rest of the scooby gang, I got it.’ 

‘So what’s the plan again?’ John B questions, ‘just haul his ass back towards the house if he feels anything weird?’

Pope nods, ‘And we have the pen just in case’. 

‘Ok. Again?’ Kie says and they all take another step forward. Heads all swivelling back to JJ. 

‘Do we have to be so dramatic every step…’ he grumbles, but he rears up suddenly and they all grind to a half. ‘Wait!’

‘JJ!’ Kie shrieks. 

‘What is it?’ John B puts a hand on his shoulder.

‘You feeling something?’

Pope’s already reaching for the epi pen. 

JJ frowns, his face scrunches up,. ‘Did nobody mow this entire grass while I was dead?’ 

‘Jesus Christ’ John B smacks him on the chest. 

‘JJ!’ Sarah hisses. 

‘What? I’m the one who died, how was it y’all that lost your ability to operate a mowing device?’

Pope shoves the pen back in his pocket. ‘I’m the brains not the brawn.’ He takes out his phone instead. 

Kie has a hand over her own chest, ‘I don’t know about my idiot boyfriend but I might need the pen after that Pope.’ She shoots JJ a glare, ‘don’t DO shit like that Jayj.’

‘Well this grass is up to my knees, excuse me for liking to keep our house as it should be kept.’ 

John B stifles a grin now his heart rate has returned to normal. ‘Tell you what man as soon as you’re back to full strength that job’s yours.’ 

‘Obviously,’ JJ huffs, ‘the rest of you cannot be trusted with this clearly.’ 

‘100 feet,’ Pope says and they all step forward again. 

They get to 80 and JJ’s started to give up on the idea the crown’s causing this. ‘Do you think we might be wrong?’ He asks. ‘I mean maybe it’s just some sort of resurrection side effect weirdness and it’s just my body being allergic to being alive again or something?’ 

Pope shakes his head, ‘it doesn't make sense though, the correlation both those times was being near the crown.’ 

‘And near John B,’ JJ offers, throwing him a smirk,  ‘maybe i’m allergic to him.’

‘Thanks man!’ John B shoots back. 

‘78,’ Pope tells them.

Kie squints at Cleo who’s holding the crown in her hands, she can make out her facial expression now, she’s staring at them intently. ‘Maybe Jayj is right Pope, maybe it’s not the crown.’

Pope has his arm linked with Kie’s, but he’s frowning now too, ‘well we need to make sure.’

‘Maybe I should just put it on my head?’ JJ offers, ‘I wanted to do that in Morroco had it ready and everything, I was Julius Ceasering it but the damned mercenaries ruined my moment.’

‘76’

‘JJ you’re not putting it on your head,’ Sarah admonishes. 

‘Look guys…This is stupid,’ he stops, unlinks his arms. 

‘What are you doing?’ Kie growls.

‘I’m walking on my own’

‘JJ!’

‘What?’ He gestures with his arms, spins around, ‘I feel fine’

He dangles a foot, teasingly. 

‘See?’

Puts it down in the grass.

 ‘I’m not doing this weird line dance anymore.’

‘75,’ Pope says.

‘You know,’ John B starts as JJ stares ahead at Cleo. ‘Maybe we need to think about whether…’

JJ’s knees give out. 

Oh shit!

‘Pope!’ He shouts, he and Kie are already moving, each of them have an arm under JJ’s. JJ stares straight ahead but it’s clear he’s checked out. ‘Now Kie, move! ’

They start dragging him back as Pope messes with his phone. ‘Back to the house now!’ he shouts. 

‘JJ!’ Kie urges. 

He stares ahead. Pliant and absent as John B and Kie drag him through the grass. 

‘Is he seizing?’ Sarah asks somewhere to John B’s left. 

‘No!’ Kie says, ‘not yet’.

‘Kasi keh salib nadard sezavar taj nist’ JJ starts up.

Not this again.

‘Go John B, now!’ Pope shouts holding up his phone near them. 

 ‘Kasi keh salib nadard sezavar taj nist’

‘JJ!’ Cleo shouts in the distance. 

They haul him as far back as they can before lowering him down. Kie and John B keep him sat up. 

Pope comes closer, eyeing him with worry and curiosity. ‘JJ?’

JJ is shaking slightly but it’s not the full tremors they’ve been horribly used to. More gentle vibrations beneath Kie and John B’s palm. 

‘Kasi keh salib…’ He says but he tails off. 

They all watch him, scared. He goes quiet. Eyes staring off into nothing. He’s not seizing though, he hasn’t quit breathing. 

‘Ok, come back to us Jayj’, Kie says now, puts gentle hands on either side of his face. ‘Come back to us baby’. 

They’re all on their knees now crouched down watching him. 

He comes to slowly. Like he’s clawing back from some distant part of his mind. 

Pope has a hand on his wrist, keeping an eye on his pulse. Kie’s running a hand through his hair. John B and Sarah hover on either side. 

His eye’s slowly flicker back into consciousness and John B can see the exact moment he registers them. 

‘Ohhhh shit!’ He says with a shudder. Eyes darting around, hand automatically going to his chest. ‘Did you…’

‘We didn’t need to use it’, Kie says softly, ‘it’s ok, you didn’t stop breathing this time.’

‘Ok…ok…’ he manages, runs a shaky hand to his hair. ‘Well that’s good I guess?’

Good’s relative here and his heart rate is still pounding in his chest but John B is grateful he didn’t have to perform CPR this time, more grateful than he can admit. ‘How do you feel?’ He asks instead.

‘Spacey?’ JJ replies, ‘uh like waking up from a really long sleep.’ 

They’re all crouched in the grass and John B wants them indoors, back in the safe space to discuss all of this, he check’s JJ as Pope waves Cleo over. He stretches out a hand, pulls his best friend up gently. ‘Come on.’

JJ stills, his face ashen, he swallows as he presses his lips together. Kie rests a hand on his back. ‘Ok?’

‘Ok’ he confirms. 

Pope is making notes like he’s in english class and if JJ didn’t feel like he was in some sort of weird fog he’d laugh at him for it. Nerd! Pope thrives on figuring things out, comes alive on the ideas and whys and hows of it all. JJ’s never needed it more though so he swallows down the sarcastic comment and pretends he isn’t seeing two of everyone as they gather in the lounge. 

‘So that was 75 feet,’ Pope says, addressing the room, ‘75 feet before the crown affected you.’ 

‘Makes sense I guess’, John B pipes up from the other end of the sofa, where JJ’s legs sprawl across his lap, ‘that’s about how far from the car we were the other day.’

Pope nods, jots something else down. Full professor mode activated. JJ stares really hard at the light fixture on the ceiling trying to bring the multiple versions back together to form one. The dizziness sucks. It’s like he’s smoked 5 blunts in a row and he’s just about sick of these side effects. With the stab wound in his gut, the cabinet head injury and now the dizziness he’s starting to feel like a damned pin cushion, attacked at every corner. 

‘I didn’t…’ he puts his arms out in front of him and vibrates his body dramatically, extra zombie like ‘did I?’

Kie pulls his arm down from somewhere to his side. ‘Stop it. And no, no seizures this time.’

She’s confirming what JJ already suspected because his mouth doesn’t taste fuzzy or of vomit and he hasn’t bit his tongue, that’s something he supposes. ‘Cool, so we remain 3 for 3 on resurrections, someone pound me.’ He flings out his fist to John B who glares back instead.

‘I’m not pounding that.’

JJ rolls his eyes which does nothing for his double vision and he flinches swallowing the nausea back down, ‘Buzzkill!’ 

It's off-putting, seeing his best friends continuously trying to figure out ways to keep him alive. 

JJ is a master of distraction, he’s built that front his entire life but he can’t distract anyone from this and it’s starting to eat away at him.

‘Kasi keh salib nadard sezavar taj nist’.

His head snaps over, and they all stare at Pope who’s holding the phone up.

‘What the hell was that?’ JJ manages, sitting up.

‘That was you Jayj.’ Kie says seriously.

‘No freaking way!’ JJ can’t stop the nervous energy building inside him. ‘That’s the bilingual zombie shit? I sound like one of those duolingo instructors, Pope seriously send it to me, voicenote me that shit right now.’  

Pope puts a finger to his lips, ‘JJ shhhh! I’m putting it into google translate.’

JJ shoots John B a smirk, ‘dude and Mrs Jeffries said languages wasn’t going to be my thing.’ 

‘She just said that to shut up your yapping!’ John B throws back.

‘Guys!’ Pope admonishes. He’s fiddling with the phone. 

‘‘Kasi keh salib nadard sezavar taj nist,’ the phone says, then clearly, an electronic voice says, ‘He that hath no cross deserves no crown.’

The room whites out around him. 

The smile drops from JJ’s face. He wants to hide it. Wants to stop anyone noticing but he throws up all over his lap before he can manage much of anything. 

‘Remind me how you got this job again?’ JJ asks John B as he holds a towel to the back of his neck. He’s staring into a toilet bowl of vomit miserably spitting out bile. 

‘Kie’s getting you gatorade and crackers.’

‘Awesome.’

‘Easy bubba.’ Comes the calm response. 

Stupid John B and his stupid calmness and steady hand. 

JJ suddenly, stupidly, absurdly wants to cry. He angles his face down so nobody sees it. He’s so grateful for John B’s steadiness, for Kie’s gentle nature, for Pope’s giant brain, Sarah’s grounded presence, Cleo’s smarts. He’s lucky. He knows it more than ever, hunched over the toilet bowl his friends trying to save him.

His stomach aches, the wound throbs beneath the bandage and the waves of nausea roll over him but he’s lucky. 

Kie comes back, sure enough she’s holding a bottle of gatorade, she kneels down on the floor and joins them, the three of them crammed into the tiny bathroom. He used to hide in this bathroom, knew every inch of the tiles, would count them as his dad hammered on the door, would wait him out until he finally gave up or passed out. 

‘Here, try this, small sips’, Kie says gently.

He sips it gratefully. 

She and John B exchange a worried glance and he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, sits back for a minute. ‘I don’t think that was the crown. I think that was just what I was saying.’

‘What do you mean?’ John B asks as Kie takes the bottle from him.

‘I mean it was the words.’ He’s almost scared to say them out loud, his fingers tighten on the toilet bowl just in case. ‘He that hath no cross deserves no crown’. 

They all still a little waiting to see if anything happens, but there’s no more nausea. No more white out. 

‘I don’t know it’s like I remembered hearing it before and it just triggered something in me you know? I don’t know how to explain it.’

‘Like PTSD or something,’ John B mulls this over. 

JJ shudders, ‘More like they’d been said to me before, the words, like they took over my head.’

Kie rubs a hand down his arm. ‘Well whatever it is, it’s gotta mean something right? I mean the cross? The crown? That can’t be a coincidence, it’s got to be connected.’

JJ rests his forehead down onto his forearms with a groan, ‘I thought we moved on from the cross. No offense to Pope’s family but they melted it down, I thought that was it. Why does it have to be connected to the crown?’

‘I don’t know’, Kie says seriously, ‘but we’ve got to work all this out Jayj, we just got you back, but this thing is still tied to you, maybe even the crown AND the cross now, it’s scaring me.’ 

JJ pushes himself up, leans his back against the tub, John B and Kie wedged in at either side. ‘I’m sorry i’m scaring you Kie.’ When she turns to look at him he sighs deeply, ‘seems to be all i’m doing lately.’

‘Hey!’ Kie says, and John B’s hand comes to rest on his thigh. ‘No. This isn’t your fault. If anything it’s ours, we were the ones who got a magic crown involved.’

JJ’s heart aches a little at that. He feels sick and sweaty and off kilter, and he wishes more than anything for things to go back to normal. He doesn’t really want to do this now but in this bathroom with his two closest people beside him he’s suddenly unable to stop himself. 

‘What if bringing me back did more harm than good?’ 

And that’s it. That's his biggest fear right here, right now. 

‘What if it did something really wrong, and now the universe is paying us back or some shit.’

‘JJ!’ John B meets his gaze, all floppy hair and earnest, hand steady, firm on his calf, ‘Bringing you back was not a mistake.’

See JJ understands that, he really does, on one level at least. He gets that they love him and he wants to be alive and all, but ever since he came back it’s felt off. And he is starting to wonder if it will ever be ok again. 

‘You’re not supposed to bring people back from the dead John B.’ He manages. 

Kie freezes next to him and he automatically reaches for her hand, tries to get her to understand. 

‘Maybe it was my time, maybe that was supposed to be it for me.’

Kie looks at him now and a tear makes its way down her cheek. 

‘Kie.’

‘That wasn’t supposed to be your time Jayj,’ she says quietly, ‘that wasn’t your time at 19, bleeding out in some desert, stabbed by your own father.’

‘Kie -’ John B attempts.

‘No John B.’ She hisses. She’s looking at JJ now, so close he can feel her breath on his face. She’s still holding his hand but she has a fire in her eyes, the Carerra fire he’s seen since he was ten years old. ‘I need you to listen good Jayj. We never got to go on our surf trip, we never got to get our dream. I listened to you, I listened to you tell me while you were fricking dying that you got your wish, that you got every last one of them, but I didn’t get mine ok?’ 

He tracks a tear down her cheek. She’s so fucking beautiful. He loves her so much.

‘You were mine ok?’ She tells him. ‘You were my wish. Getting you back, that crown that was mine.’

He’s still holding her hand. He’d do anything in the world for this girl. Anything. 

‘Don’t take my wish away from me.’ She says. ‘Don’t try and take that back because I need it JJ. I need you.’ 

He lifts her hand then, still clasped in his own, kisses her knuckles. ‘Ok then.’ He tells her, ‘Ok.’

A loud noise next to him reminds him that John B’s even in the room, the big softie is blowing his nose into a tissue, tears streaming. ‘Guys…stop.’

‘Oh for god’s sake JB. You’ve added ‘emotional wreck’ to your resume since you became a teenage father I swear.’ 

‘Stop doing things to make me cry then!’ He fires back. But JJ claps him on the back all the same. 

‘Lets go figure this out then. Kiara lead your zombie man to the lounge, and lets fix this shit.’ He leans toward her for a kiss but she swerves him.

‘Dude not until you scrub that vomit mouth.’

‘Ah there she is, there’s that beautiful turn of phrase I fell in love with.’

‘Go fuck yourself’. She snipes back but she hands him a toothbrush. 

Pope’s got a plan. He wants to find every melted down piece of the cross and get it back with the crown. There seems to be no real basis on whether that will work, whether it’ll do anything but he wants it all together so it’s one collective issue, rather than pieces floating around the OBX. 

Sarah is already on the phone in the lounge contacting Rafe. And JJ’s not sure they’ll ever be able to trust that guy but Sarah had a breakthrough a few weeks back with him and he wants Groff as much as they all do, maybe they can use that as a bargaining tool, promise him a crack at him when they find him, if they find him. JJ tries to shove that thought back down. 

He’s still struggling with the Groff of it all, the idea that another father figure could hurt him even worse. It burns. Burns as white and as hot and as painful as his stomach. But mostly he’s just angry at himself, angry that he was so stupid, so pathetic to fall for that scrap of hope, that mere possibility there was something worth saving with his parents, every single time.

It had gotten him killed this time. 

And he would never make that mistake again.

Never.

‘Rafe’s going to email over a list of all the places he pawned the cross to Pope.’ Sarah says hanging up the phone.

Pope’s nods, but JJ can see the stiffness of his jaw, the rigid way he swallows down the rage. Rafe melting down his family’s history would never sit calmly with the boy before him. 

‘I’m sorry man’. JJ offers quietly, ‘I’m sorry we’re bringing all this up again because of me.’

They really don’t have a choice. 

‘Hey!’ Pope says, all soft, and serious and so very Pope, ‘this isn’t because of you. It’s because of the crown.’ 

‘Which is a problem because you used it to help me .’

Pope meets his eyes, ‘which we’d do again in a heartbeat.’

It’s when Pope gets all serious and focussed that JJ loves him best. He sees the same kid that he and John B fought bullies for in 5th grade, the serious solemn look on his face afterwards as he promised they were his friends for life, the loyalty. That’s Pope. That’s who he is, bone deep. 

‘I don’t know if I ever really thanked y’all for that.’ JJ says awkwardly, aware they’re tuning in to them now. ‘For you know, bringing me back? Making me your own personal Highlander and everything.’

‘You don’t have to thank us Rude Boy’, Cleo tsks, ‘we’re just glad it worked.’

‘Here, Here!’ John B salutes, raising his glass.

‘Hell yeah,’ Sarah echoes.

And Kie wraps an arm around his shoulder, kisses his neck. 

‘Still, I know it hasn’t been easy lately, hell it hasn’t been easy for months now.’ He rubs at his head, fiddles with the bandage, uncomfortable. ‘Dealing with my shit, my family, my…’ he pauses, can’t look anyone in the eye for a minute, ‘my death…my bilingual zombie episodes’. He looks up then. ‘But I want you all to know i’m really grateful you stuck with me. You’re my family, you always have been…’ he swallows the emotion that clogs his throat, unnatural, painful,  ‘I don’t think I ever learned to trust that people aren’t going to leave me, or hurt me, but you guys never hurt me, and you’ve never left me. That means more than I can say.’

There’s a moment of stunned silence in the room, JJ feels immediately regretful like he went too far, shared too much, got too vulnerable. He doesn’t DO this. He’s never been the one to do this. But they mean too much, and they’re going through too much trying to protect him and it’s healing more inside him than that knife damaged. 

He looks up to see Pope, Kie and John B exchanging a look. ‘What…’

Before he gets a word out the room is erupting in applause.

‘Oh fuck off!’ He manages.

‘No seriously, that was better than Braveheart’s battlecry!’ Pope laughs.

‘He’s a regular public speaking phenomenon.’ John B chimes in.

JJ sniffs theatrically, flips them off. ‘Last time I try and get real with you sons of bitch’s’. 

‘It was missing the charm of a bon voyage ending!’ Sarah grins, wrapped around John B.

‘Screw you, I’m teaching your kid the good swear words.’ JJ throws back. But he’s smiling with them. 

This moment - this moment right here, it’s oddly the happiest he’s been in months, sat here, murdered by his father, probably still magically dying, resurrected by his friends, but he feels safe and loved and cared for. They’re trying to save him. Maybe they will. But he knows they’re here for him. And he will always believe in that. 

That night he and Kie lie in bed, she’s curled against him, brow furrowed in the most adorable way as she sleeps. JJ can’t sleep, his mind spins, his eyes wander. He’s struggled since he came back with getting much sleep but he’s been trying. He's really been trying. 

Kie shifts next to him. ‘What are you thinking?’ She says softly and JJ jumps slightly in the darkness.

‘Sorry’, he whispers, ‘I’m good. Go back to sleep.’

‘Nope’, she replies opening her eyes now. ‘Not till you tell me what you’re thinking.’

He sighs, rolls over, meets her gaze. ‘Samantha Thornton’.

‘I’m sorry?' She looks incredulous now, eyes flashing in the darkness, 'the Samantha Thornton who pushed me down and told me turtles were the dumbest reptiles?’

‘Yeah her,’ he says, ‘remember seventh grade? She got hit by that truck out on Claybold Street?’

Kie’s confused then, looks somewhat chastened for her initial insult. ‘I mean yeah I remember that, why?’

JJ remembers it clearly, remembers the horror, how absolutely and totally she disintegrated in front of him. 

‘I saw that.’ He offers. ‘Luke and I, we were there, he was on one of his drunk drives to the off license, had me waiting in the car, and I -’ he breaks off swallowing. ‘She and her mom were crossing the street right in front of the car park, I saw her get hit!’

Kie puts a hand on his shoulder then, gently, tenderly, ‘What? Jayj…you never said. Why didn’t you say?’

JJ can still picture it, the blood, the horror before him, her mother’s wails and it takes the breath from him for a minute. ‘I think - I think I lock things down Kie. I think i’ve been doing it my entire life till now.’

‘JJ…’

‘Even Luke was rattled. I remember him actually trying to talk to me about it after, cos you know I guess even he knew there were some things you didn’t want to see at 12 and she -’ he squeezes his eyes shut, exploded, dissolved, obliterated, ‘she died in front of me.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ Kie asks now, she puts a hand on his face, it feels nice, it feels safe. ‘We were friends then Jayj, we all talked about that I remember, hell they had an entire assembly.’

‘I spoke to Shoupe.’ He meets her eyes. Shoves it down. ‘I spoke to Shoupe and then I just locked it up.’ He remembers vividly giving the statement, swinging his prepubescent legs on the police chair, hands tight, distrust clogging his throat, Shoupe suggesting counsellors, Luke whispering in his ear that pigs can't be trusted. He remembers thinking he'd never sleep again.

It’s dark, her fingers gently stroke his cheek and he forces himself to say it. ‘What I’m saying is I do this Kie, and I think you know it. You know that’s how I cope, how I survive. I have to lock shit in a box or I can’t see a way through anything. And i’ve got a lot of boxes Kiara. And I don’t want to open one because if i do, i’m really scared it’s all going to spill out and I can’t put any of it back in again.’

Kie nods, her eyes trying to read him in the dark, he sees love there, it grounds him, centres him. ‘Thank you for telling me.’ She says. ‘Thank you for being honest with me.’

‘You’re the only one I’ve told’, he offers, wanting to give her something.

‘You didn’t even tell John B?’ She asks.

‘I did not.’ He confirms.

He doesn’t tell her how he had ran to John B’s immediately after he and Luke got back from the station, rattled and scared and wanting to feel safe. But John B and Big John had been out in the distance on the HMS Pogue fishing. Even their silhouettes on the water looked relaxed and happy and he found himself stood on the bank staring at them. John B didn’t need his darkness, he saw enough of it, and JJ would be damned if he brought all the hard and cruel things that crept into his world into John B’s light. 

So he had shoved it down, locked that box tight, kicked the floor through the assembly announcing her tragic death the next day, pretended to laugh when someone made some horrific joke about her being minced meat, and when he got sick later that next day and John B and Pope had asked what was going on he'd lied, told them he and his dad had stayed up late drinking beers. It was a great lie. But JJ had always been the master of them. They looked at him like he was sort of cool for a minute and sort of bullshitting but they brought it. 

Now in the darkness next to Kie he can’t stop picturing Samantha Thornton’s mother’s face at that roadside, the sheer horror, the same horror he’d seen on Kie’s face, and John B’s and Popes when he’d woken up from his first weird crown episode. That terror. That utter terror there isn’t really a name for. 

‘I don’t want to leave you.’ He tells her. ‘I don’t want to put you through that. Not again.’

He knows what Kiara’s going to say before she even says it. She rests her hand on his hair, gently covering the bandage, leans forward and kisses him softly, gently.

‘You won’t leave me.’

And she sounds so sure that maybe, maybe this time JJ can believe her. There’s no box big enough, or deep enough to lock down what he feels for Kiara. He wouldn’t even try. And as for the rest of them? She unlocks a few of those boxes each and every day, and John B takes the others and Pope all of the rest. 

Doesn’t mean there isn’t still a lot to open though, some dark shit tucked into the very corners that they probably won’t ever uncover. Some of his boxes are a little closer to the surface, some he’ll unlock himself and let slip on some rainy afternoon when he’s being careless, when they least expect it . But maybe that’s life, letting your friends in on the trauma, letting your mind unlock those parts of yourself that you bury, that you lock away. 

Lying next to Kiara, he brings his own palm up, his thumb circling her cheek. ‘Thanks for being patient with me. I want to let you in, I will let you in. I promise just give me time. ’

‘Baby -’ Kie breathes, and he breathes with her, ‘I’ll wait forever.’ 

He pulls her closer. She tucks her head into his chest.

They fall asleep.

Next time - The Pogues deal with the cross, and there's news of Groff.