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athingthatwantsvirginia · 4 years

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holiday house sat quietly on that beach

chapter three of the peter losing wendy series

*inspired by Taylor Swift’s Folklore*

Pairing: JJ Maybank x Original Character (Liz Walker)

Warnings: mentions of suicide and death, PLEASE proceed with caution, smoking, does not follow the plot of the canon material

Word Count: 6.6K

Summary: Liz retreats to the Chateau after delivering a “light-hearted” eulogy.

October 26, 2019

The autumn wind bit at her cheeks as she pedalled down to John B’s house. Her black skirt flapped around her legs. Goosebumps rose on her skin in the chilly wind. She passed by house after empty house, the Touron area of the island desolate as the cold came. Not until she crossed over the bridge to the Pogue side of the island did she begin to wave at the pitying pedestrians. As they called out to her, she could hear the concern in their voices, feel their watchful eyes on her. In retrospect, biking home in her funeral dress probably wasn’t the best idea for keeping a low cover. But as soon as they’d cleaned up from the service, she was itching to get back to her friends. The knot of stress which had formed in her stomach the moment she had heard of her grandmother’s death was finally beginning to loosen, but was being replaced by sorrow instead.

Her lips were beginning to feel numb when she finally arrived at the Chateau. Twinkie was parked out front, and the sight of it made a warmth spread throughout her. For just a moment. Flashes of the last three days came to the forefront of her mind, and her chest felt tight once again. She locked her bike up on a tree in the front, the leaves of which were beginning to turn a rusty golden orange. Only a few more days until Halloween, her favorite holiday. Liz would have been far more excited were it not for the current circumstances.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she trudged up the steps and through the front door. Before her, she found the rest of the Pogues and Sarah Cameron spread across the living room. Sarah still wore her tasteful but expensive black dress. Pope and Kie had both changed. John B wore no shirt at all, while JJ had untucked his dress skirt from the one pair of pants he owned. They looked up practically in unison, and Liz felt awkward under their sudden gaze.

“The prodigal granddaughter returns,” she announced herself joylessly, throwing her backpack down beside the door and kicking off her cheap flats. At some point during the day, her old tights had sustained a few runs.

“Hey, Liz,” Kie said quietly, the first and only one to rise from her spot on the couch. She pulled Liz into a tight hug.

Liz reciprocated hesitantly, but ultimately relaxed in her friend’s touch. “Hey, yourself.”

“How are you doing?” Sarah piped up as Kie pulled away.

Liz only shrugged, barely tossing a glance Sarah’s way. “I’m fine. It’s not that big a deal. You guys seriously didn’t have to come.”

John B rolled his eyes. “I swear to god, Liz, if you say that one more time—”

“What?” Liz interrupted, padding across the room to the kitchen. “You’ll kill me?”

Flushing at the remark, John B shut his mouth.

Liz sighed. “That was supposed to be funny.”

“Hate to break it to you, hot stuff, but your jokes are missing the mark today,” JJ said, with a hint of a smirk.

Though she wasn’t sure quite how to handle herself around him still, Liz was glad he wasn’t being bogged down by everyone else’s mopey behavior. Had she not been at John B’s house at the moment she received the news of her grandmother’s stroke, she wasn’t even sure she would have told them about it. After the spectacle the last major death in her life had caused, she just wanted to get the funeral over with and move on. But the time spent consoling her mother over the past three days had proven exhausting both emotionally and physically, and not nearly as quick as Liz would have hoped. Ruth’s brothers had arrived for the funeral, though, and were spending the night at the Walker residence. Finally, Liz would receive a break from the tears and the drunken wailing. For a minute, at John B’s, she would be able to breathe.

With a soda in hand, she plopped down on the end of the couch, squeezing in beside Pope. She pointedly ignored her usual space on the floor beside JJ. Maybe on a day when she’d gotten more than one hour of sleep she would have ventured it, but she was in no mood to decipher any of her feelings. She tried to focus on the random rerun of Family Matters on the TV, but she couldn’t manage it. The sick feeling in her stomach was soothed only slightly by the soda she drank. Eyes on the back of JJ’s blonde mop of hair, she wished to run her hands through it. She wished to lean against him. She wished for him to hold her, if only for the warmth. The Chateau wasn’t particularly well-insulated, and she ran cold, but those weren’t the only reasons she was shivering. The same thing had happened after her father died. She wasn’t sure if it was the sleep deprivation or the shear stress, but her body just wouldn’t stop shaking.

Finally, she broke the tense silence. She knew the others were waiting for her to take the lead, as was almost never the case. After chugging down the rest of her soda, she went to chuck it in the recycling and as she turned, she raised her eyebrows. “So, I guess y’all didn’t like my stand-up?”

“It was a eulogy, Liz,” Pope corrected.

Liz shrugged, leaning against the dining table. “I was trying to keep the tone light. Last time, I think the stuff I wrote was too heavy.”

As the literary-minded one in her family, she’d been assigned the task of the eulogy immediately after her father died. Her mother said it was only right she do one this time as well. No questions asked. Liz had pretty much no say in the matter.

JJ snorted. “Too heavy for a funeral?”

She only shrugged again, not letting anything but a soft smile touch her lips. JJ regarded her, as she leaned against the back of one of the rickety dining room chairs, arms crossed over her funeral dress. He remembered it from her father’s funeral. It still fit her, as she was already one of the tallest girls in their grade by freshman year of high school. All three of the pogue boys still had at least a couple inches on her, though. Her skin was pale and ghostly, and there were purplish crescents beneath her glassy grey eyes. Waves of trembling rolled over her, and she couldn’t seem to get them to stop. Even when she’d been standing up at the small funeral home’s podium, her hands shook as she gripped her eulogy. Even as she read off funny stories about her grandmother, and rubbed her crying mother’s back. All of Liz’s sisters had been noticeably missing from the service.

“I liked the part about the dog, though. Did she really throw a key lime pie at it?” Sarah asked, with her soft voice and sunny smile.

Liz nodded, eyes guarded. “Yeah, she did. It bit her. Our neighbors hated her, even after she moved to the nursing home. Makes senses, though. She was...opinionated.”

“Hey, but without her, we wouldn’t have Holiday House,” John B said.

“It’s true,” Liz replied dejectedly, looking down at her feet.

Before her father’s death, Liz’s house had served as a haven for the Pogues, similar to the Chateau. It was filled with loud parties and music, adults drinking cheap champagne while small children ran wild in the overgrown backyard. It was small, in one of the shittiest areas of the Cut, but Liz’s grandmother, Rebekah, had been determined to make it a home when she’d bought it with her husband all those years ago, after the Great Depression hit and her family’s money was gone. Liz’s grandfather, Bill, had died of a heart attack long before she or her sisters were born, but people around the island still spoke about him. The son of an oil man, who had escaped the NorthEast with his new bride without a penny to his name to go work on the boats in North Carolina. Bill and Rebekah had been the hope of the Cut when they were young. After he died though, Liz’s grandmother was never the same. She spent what little savings they had, and slowly descended into mild madness for the rest of her days. She had great stories, though, and Liz had loved living with her as a child. By the time Liz was in middle school though, the dementia had proved too unmanageable for both Liz’s parents, and they had to move Rebekah to a nursing home. Liz still biked down to the smelly home on the weekends to say hello, though Rebekah hadn’t been able to remember the face of her granddaughter for a significant while prior to her passing.

Sometimes, after visiting the home, Liz thought about her own mother. She thought about how Ruth would probably end up living the same life as Rebekah, unable to cope with the loss of her husband. Adding more useless, kitschy clutter to the tiny house, which would end up falling apart. Holiday House, as Rebekah had named it after moving in, had seen better days. The paint was peeling, the floor was creaking, the decorations on the walls were dusty and fragile. Ruth circled the listings from the Figure Eight in every paper, dreaming of a different reality. But she knew she would live in Holiday House until the day she died, or until it fell down around her. No matter how angry Liz got at her mother, she could never quite shake the small jewel of pity in her heart. Her mother was trapped. And Liz knew she never wanted to end up like her.

But still, at John B’s mention of it, she remembered the old days in her house. When her father was alive, and his raucous laughter filled the space which now felt so empty. When her mother didn’t hate her job, didn’t open a new bottle of liquor every night, didn’t piss all the money away on yard sales to fill the void in her which was starting to feel more like a black hole. Liz missed her sisters, too. When they had all lived in one room, whispering bedtime stories and sharing clothes and fighting over tiny things. Sisters who claimed not to be able to make it to the funeral. It almost felt like a different life. Before her father died. And the after. With her grandmother gone too, Liz was beginning to feel like she couldn’t hold onto anything. It was weighing on her more than she cared to admit, though she hadn’t cried much at the funeral. She couldn’t stand the careful eyes of the funeral attendees. Instead, she swallowed it down and focused on taking care of her mother. But the sadness was beginning to twist in her heart. The funeral was over, and her grandmother’s life was over. Forever.

Liz bit down hard on her lip, lost in thought, until she could taste blood. She snapped herself out of it when she started tasting a hint of copper on her tongue, and looked back up at her friends. Luckily, Pope had gone into a story about the time he, JJ, John B, and Liz had all stolen a small bottle of Bourbon and spent the night in Liz’s room getting drunk, followed by projectile vomiting out the window the next morning. It had been in eighth grade, the last big party at Holiday House before Liz’s father died. Before her mother had shut the doors for good. Liz was glad all the attention was no longer on her.

But JJ and John B were still looking at her, not even adding commentary as Pope told the story to Sarah and Kiara. She glared at both of them, hoping they would get the message and lay off. They didn’t. After a moment, she gave a huffing sigh and stomped over to the kitchen cabinet by the sink. She grabbed the small stash of weed and rolling papers from the top shelf, along with a lighter. She didn’t bother looking back behind her as she went out onto the screened porch, and then sat down on the small steps leading to the back yard. The rusty door slammed shut as she went. The evening was beginning to set in, pink over the water beyond the small dock. She struggled to roll the joint and light it against her shaking hands and the wind, but was eventually successful.

The sweet taste of the pot filled her lungs. It was some of JJ’s best. Only for emergencies. She exhaled through her nose in two long streams and hugged her arms around herself. The smoke made her feel warmer, her chest familiar with the feeling. Her head was pounding, her eyes hot in her skull. She hoped tonight she would finally get some sleep. She wasn’t the biggest fan of her uncles, but she could have cried from relief when they said they would be staying with her mother at Holiday House the night after the funeral. Liz could only take so much more of sitting up, holding Ruth’s hand as she rambled drunkenly, spewing stories about her dead mother and her dead husband. Absolutely devastated about the state of her life. Liz felt for her mother, and couldn’t begin to comprehend what she was dealing with. But her shoulders were aching under all the pressure.

The moment of peace was interrupted by footsteps approaching behind her. Liz assumed Kie would be coming out to offer a shoulder to cry on eventually, as she often did. Liz was grateful, but she didn’t feel like baring her soul, or listening to Kie rant about the importance of meditation to deal with grief. Maybe in a couple more days, but not right after the funeral. She felt guilty for not immediately accepting how much Kiara wanted to help, but sometimes Liz felt suffocated with all the concern.

To Liz’s surprise, though, it was John B who sat down beside her on the steps. She didn’t look over. She recognized his shoes, his smell. Their mothers had been friends, and they had known each other since they were born. Today, John B felt more like a sibling than Liz’s sisters died. At least he’d come to the service, despite her telling him over and over that he wasn’t obligated to.

“Hey,” he said, holding his hand out for her to pass him the joint.

She did. “Hi.”

“How are you?” he asked, then taking a long drag on the perfect joint. He couldn’t roll anything for shit. Liz and JJ were always rolling for him.

She scoffed sardonically. “I’m great. Best day of my life.”

“Sorry. Stupid question,” he said, passing the joint back to her.

“It was,” she agreed shortly, taking another puff. Finally looking over, she saw he had donned his shirt again. He had that sympathetic, sickening look in his eyes. Liz could barely stomach it.

John B cleared his throat, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck. “JJ wanted to come out here when he saw you went for the emergency stash. But he asked me to instead.”

Liz nodded, face stoic. Everyone could see the shift between Liz and JJ the past couple of months, but John B was the one who had the best idea of what had happened. No one had told him anything, and he was often pretty oblivious, but he had known them forever. Back when they were children, they’d been the three musketeers. JJ joined Liz and John B in the third grade, and the three of them were inseparable for quite awhile. Until recently, the bond had never really changed.

“He’s worried about you,” John B continued.

“Noted,” Liz said. “I don’t wanna talk about JJ.”

“I know.” John B stared at her for another moment, hesitant. Comforting people was not on his list of skills. When Liz’s father had died, JJ had been the one to immediately spring to action. Pope, too, had been better at it. John B had mostly been there for moral support, if needed. But he knew it was different now, and he was trying his best to figure out what to do. “Pope and Kie, too. Pope said you should be glad she got cremated. The decomposition process is pretty fucked up. You should feel better knowing she’s not going through that. In the ground and everything.”

Liz chuckled humorlessly, both at Pope’s oddity and John B’s tactlessness.

“And Kie told me to tell you to get some crystals. It’ll help you sleep,” John B went on.

“Did Sarah chime in, too?” Liz asked, the tip of the joint glowing orange in the dim light as she took in another drag. She handed it back to John B.

John B sighed out a cloud of smoke. “She said she’s here if you need anything.”

“Right,” Liz said, giving a curt nod.

Though he tried to swallow down his feelings for the moment, John B couldn’t help but feel a little defensive. “She’s trying to help.”

“How nice of her,” Liz said.

“She knows you don’t like her, and she still wants to help you,” John B said.

Rolling her eyes, Liz took another puff of the joint. “I don’t not like her. I just don’t know her.”

“Well, it’s not like you’ve made much of an effort,” John B said.

Sighing again, Liz finally softened her expression. She averted her gaze down from the water and into her lap. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want her to hurt you.”

“She won’t.”

“You don’t know that,” Liz countered immediately, her voice hollow and almost strained. But she sounded more firm when she spoke again. “But, whatever. That was nice of her to say. Maybe I’ll hang out with her and Kie on fall break or something. Y’know, when my grandma hasn’t just died and everything.”

John B ran a hand anxiously through his hair. “Shit. I know. I’m sorry, Liz. I just love her. I wish you could be friends.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, Romeo,” she mocked him. “Not sure she’s gonna want to be friends with me, though. I’m a bit of a bitch.”

“She’ll get used to it,” John B said, shrugging. “The rest of us have.”

“Fuck you,” she said with a giggle, John B laughing along with her.

For a long while, they smoked in silence, watching the light in the sky fade out. Liz’s fingers and toes were tingling with cold again, as they had been on the ride over. But her being felt more relaxed with the drugs in her system, and she hoped her hands would finally stop shaking when she warmed up. Somewhere, a bird cried out.

“John?” she asked, the word coming out in a puff of smoke.

“Yeah?” he said. She was the only one who ever called him by only his first name. Just like his mother had. His mother had called his father ‘Routledge’ playfully, even after she took the last name for herself. And her little boy was always just ‘John.’ Liz was the only one of the Pogues who had ever met his mother, before she left.

Liz took a deep breath in, smelling the crisp autumn air mixing strangely with the homey, salty scent of the sea and the pot. “Do you ever feel like...eventually…you’ll be the only one left alive in the whole world?”

“What?” he asked, furrowing his brows. He didn’t know if he was too high to comprehend what she was saying, or if she was too high to form a comprehensible sentence. Or if it was something else entirely that was making her hard for him to understand.

Fiddling with her earring, Liz sighed heavily. Tears stung in her eyes, but she blinked them back, regaining her composure. “Sometimes, I think I’ll be the only one left at the end of the world. I’ve even had dreams where I’m the only person left. But not because I want to be. Because I have to be. And everyone else will be gone, and it’ll be just me. All alone.”

“I don’t know. After my dad disappeared…” he began, but then couldn’t quite decide where he was going. He’d felt lonely after his father was lost at sea, but what she was describing sounded like something different. Completely different. “All I know is, I’m not alone right now.”

Smiling a tiny smile which didn’t reach her eyes, Liz nodded and hummed. She stubbed out the last of the joint they’d shared before turning to head back inside, saying nothing more.

. . .

It was an early night for the Chateau, but it had been getting darker sooner anyway, as autumn rolled in. Kiara and John B were still on the couch watching reruns, while Pope and Sarah tagteamed the dishes. Twisting his rings nervously on his fingers, JJ stood outside the door of his room. Technically, it was the Chateau’s guest room. But he could count on one hand the number of nights he hadn’t slept there over the past few months. His clothes were piled up in a mound in one corner. Meager stacks of school papers cluttered the desk. Not like he sat down to do any math homework much, though. Over the summer, he had begun to think of it as his and Liz’s bedroom, to himself. He hadn’t even told Liz that. But after what had happened, she was back to her usual spot on the pullout couch or on one of the hammocks, when it was warm enough.

Liz had been exhausted by around seven-thirty, though, when the Pogues were usually just starting the night’s debauchery, especially on a Saturday. She’d been nodding off on the arm on the couch, unable to keep her red-rimmed eyes open, despite her best efforts. Eventually, Pope had declared it ridiculous and offered to leave, to give her the quiet to rest on the pullout couch. Liz would hear none of it, saying she didn’t want to ruin the evening like she’d ruined the afternoon with the funeral. It had taken a fair amount of arguing before they all finally convinced her to go take JJ’s bed for the night. She’d given JJ a few hesitant, secretive, embarrassed glances, but he’d insisted. Along with the rest of their clueless friends.

JJ’s phone charger was in his backpack, which sat near the desk chair. Normally, he wouldn’t have cared about a low battery on his cell, but it was his only vehicle for an alarm. And if he was late for the Sunday brunch service at the country club one more time, he suspected his days as a busboy might come to an end. He needed that job, and his phone was so shitty, no one else’s chargers were compatible with it. He had to get in, grab the charger, and get out. But he knew what a light sleeper she was. And he didn’t exactly have a reputation for stealth.

Nonetheless, he got up the courage to tiptoe into the room. He cringed as the door squealed on its hinges. Looking over at the bed, he found she was on her side, facing away from the door. She was curled up on top of the mess of blankets, still in her funeral outfit. The rest of them had all changed out of the stuffy attire before eating, not wanting to get any inevitable spills on their good clothes. In JJ’s case, he would be pretty fucked for work without them. Liz didn’t stir, and he breathed a silent sigh of relief before padding over to his bag. Before he turned to leave with his charger in hand, though, he let his gaze linger on her. She was bathed in the moonlight streaming through the window. Even in sleep, she was still shivering slightly. As carefully as he could, he picked up a ragged quilt which had fallen off the bed and draped it over her. He thought he was safe. She kept completely still. But, just as he was about to head out the door, he heard her voice. Smaller and sleepier than he had ever heard it before.

“JJ?” she asked groggily, turning over and propping herself up on her elbow. She squinted as she looked at him, confused.

Fuck, he thought. So close. “Yeah, I just had to grab my phone charger,” JJ whispered hastily. “Go back to sleep.”

He turned to leave again, but she stopped him once more.

“Wait,” she said. She rubbed at one eye with the heel of her hand as she spoke, no doubt smearing her mascara. But she couldn’t bring herself to care. “I um...I didn’t mean to steal your bed.”

“No worries, Lizzie. I’m-”

“Could you...stay? For a second?” she asked, not meeting his eyes. She felt totally pathetic. But she was a little high and a lot sleep deprived. And she’d been falling in and out of sleep restlessly since she’d laid down an hour ago. JJ was the only thing she could think of, even if she didn’t like it much. The only proven solution. “Only if you want to.”

“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Yeah, sure. Not like I’m dying to go fifth-wheel out there some more.”

She nodded, but said nothing else, lying back down and staring straight up at the ceiling.

Plopping down onto the bed next to her, JJ struggled not to squirm out of his skin. He’d never been good at sitting still, and he was worried his jumpiness was only going to keep her awake longer. His nerves didn’t help. It was the first time he could recall being alone with her since the last night of August, when everything had fallen apart. They managed to keep a polite facade going around the others, but nothing was like it had been before. When they had been perhaps the two closest people in the world, attached at the hip, as Liz’s mother used to say when they were children. JJ knew getting together with her had ruined everything about their best friendship, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. Everything except the way it had ended, of course. Not if he was being honest with himself.

A thick blanket of awkward silence fell on the both of them. JJ bit anxiously at his nails. Shutting her eyes, Liz took a few deep breaths. Her stomach did a flip or two. Before, they had been so comfortable around each other. The thought made her bit hard on her bottom lip again, sore from how many times she had already done it during the day. Sighing out harshly, she turned back on her side, facing away from him. She knew she couldn’t help the hot tears from leaking down her cheeks, and she didn’t want JJ to see them in the low light. Even in the darkness, she could still make out his profile, a rough, ghostly sketch of his features. She knew the wetness would shine on her face. She was beginning to feel stupid for asking him to stay, sensing how uncomfortable he was and feeling not quite at ease herself. But still, it was better than lying in the darkness alone, tired from the high but wired from the long day. Something about JJ still always made her feel safer, even if she hated to admit it. Even if she would never say it out loud. Maybe it was just the fact that they had known each other for so long, or maybe it was something else.

She cleared her throat quietly. “JJ?”

He was glad she had broken the ice. If things were normal between them, his mouth would have been going a hundred miles a minute as soon as he sat down. But considering the way they had left things at the end of the summer, he was in no position to speak first, even if he was dying to.

He frowned at the wateriness in her voice, looking over at her, lying on her side. She tended to curl up when she fell asleep, and it always made her seem so much smaller. Though she was shy, she still had a presence in any space she entered. Striking, statuesque, redheaded. And so fucking smart JJ sometimes felt like he couldn’t think straight when he was talking to her. The novels she read were thick and heady, and he often couldn’t understand them when he looked inside. But he admired her nonetheless. She would never get a scholarship, since she wasn’t particularly good in school: Bs and Cs and low class participation. Sometimes, though, she could talk circles around even Pope. It made JJ wonder why she ever hung out with him. Why she ever wanted him. She’d told him he was smart over and over, but just saying it didn’t make it true.

It was in moments like these, though, as he watched her lying on her side, folded in on herself, that she seemed the most real to him. The most human human he had ever met. Despite her sharp intellect, and the biting wit she could fire off on the rare occasion she opened her mouth to someone other than the Pogues, she never talked down to anyone. She was in the moment with people, for exactly who they were and exactly who she was. And nothing more. It made his heart ache for her, even though they were so close they were almost touching. It occurred to him, not for the first time since they’d broken up, that he might never get to touch her heart ever again.

“Hm?” he said, raising his eyebrows as he answered, his thoughts racing through his head faster than he could grasp onto them.

Liz sighed heavily. “Do you...do you think I deserve it?”

JJ licked his lips, letting out a breath through his nose. He was going to ask what she was talking about, but he knew exactly what she was asking. He skipped the cursory show of misunderstanding. He shook his head. “No.”

She sniffled, wiping at her eyes as she began to cry silently. “A-are you s-sure?”

He swallowed thickly. As a child, she’d had a very mild stutter. A few visits with the free speech therapist at the public school had more or less solved the issue before middle school. But occasionally it still slipped out when she was upset. He wasn’t sure if the wavering in her voice was because of that or simply because of the tears.

“I’m absolutely positive, Lizzie,” he said confidently, regaining his composure. “All this...this stuff with your family is such ass. I mean, you know that. You don’t deserve any of this shit. If I had any say in any of this, I’d tell God to get his act together and give you the life you should have.”

She snorted a laugh in spite of herself, ignoring the way her heart fluttered at the sincerity in his tone. “You think God’s gonna listen to you after all the stuff you’ve stolen, Maybank?”

“I think I could convince him,” JJ said flippantly, playing along as he heard her cheering up just a touch.

She rolled over slightly to cast a glance at him. “You’re that persuasive?”

“Oh yeah,” JJ continued. “All I’d have to do is flash him my killer smile. That’s the moneymaker. You see?”

He grinned, goofy and toothy. She could see his dimples in the bluish light. She giggled again, tiredly. But it was enough for the moment. JJ felt successful, and winked theatrically at her to complete the look. She rolled her eyes and turned on her side once more.

“You think you’re so slick, blondie.”

“Pretty much,” he agreed.

Before he could say anything else, she gave another heaving sigh. The minute glee was short-lived. She glanced down at herself, wiping her face with her sleeve again. Her funeral dress had lived in the back of her underwear drawer for three years, stored away where she didn’t have to look at it. She didn’t know if she’d kept it for the purpose of wearing it again, or just because it was too difficult to get rid of. But at the moment, it was her least favorite thing she had ever worn. And she was a bit pissed to find it still fit after all this time. She would have liked to have more than her small boobs and waifish frame, but the most that had happened since she’d bought the dress for her father’s funeral was the widening of her hips. It was definitely a bit tighter than it had been, a bit shorter, but not enough to necessitate buying something different, especially given how hectic the days preceding her grandmother’s service had been.

“I hate this fucking dress,” she blurted out, an anger in her voice she hadn’t meant to express. “I should burn it.”

“You should,” JJ agreed. “You wanna have a bonfire tomorrow night?”

A small, surprised smile appeared on her lips. “Really?”

“Yeah, we’ll have a dress burning,” JJ said. “Like a bra burning, y’know? Why not?”

“Okay. Yeah,” she said.

An independent variable. That’s what Pope had always called JJ. At times it could be frustrating, or exhausting. But at the end of the day, it was one of Liz’s favorite things about JJ. He didn’t care what anyone thought, or what he was supposed to do. He was marched to the beat of his own drum and walked down the path of uncharted spontaneity. Any day with JJ could turn into an adventure, and any idea sounded like a good one to him. She yawned, content with the thought that she could finally be rid of the dress, ignoring the question of whether or not she was actually ready to let it go, rip the bandaid off.

“You wanna borrow some clothes? Or if you brought some, I could get your backpack,” JJ offered, finally relaxing into his position as he sat on top of the disheveled covers and leaned against the wall behind the bed. The room felt more complete with her in it, even if everything between them had changed.

“No thanks. Might as well get as much use out of this thing as I can before I murder it tomorrow,” she said, looking down at her dress again. Then, after a beat, she continued: “I’m too fucking high to move, anyway.”

JJ laughed. “Yeah, you smoked some of the good shit. John B’s pretty much tripping.”

She scoffed. “Lightweight.”

“I know, right?”

Silence fell on them again for a few moments, tension still hanging in the air, but far less than when JJ had first come in. Liz took a moment to feel herself in her body, something Kiara always told her to do when they were high together. She felt the soft fabric of the quilt on her lower half, which she had just realized she hadn’t initially fallen asleep under. She ran a hand over it, and the feeling of it made her relax for no particular reason. The air was slightly musty, as it always was at John B’s. The room smelled of JJ’s deodorant. On her tongue, she could still taste the Kool Aid she’d had a glass of before going to bed. John B, for some reason, always had a pitcher of it in the fridge. Taking stock of her senses, she could almost feel herself drifting off again. But then her eyes suddenly popped open, some vague thought of her grandmother crossing her mind. The same pattern she’d been playing out for an hour.

“I’ve been trying to sleep, but I just can’t do it. I think maybe I’ll stop fucking shaking if I go to sleep for longer than, like, ten seconds,” she said sheepishly, though there was an undercurrent of exhausted frustration in her words. “I thought...could you do that thing you used to do? When I couldn’t sleep?”

JJ’s eyes widened in surprise at the request. But it made him realize just how tired she must be. She was still pissed at him, he knew. And she would never have asked in a million years had she not been grieving and running on fumes.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she replied instantly, hardly caring if she sounded too eager. “Is that okay? I mean, you don’t have to. I’m just so fucking tired, JJ.”

Suddenly, tears sprung up in her eyes again. She didn’t even know she had started crying again, but apparently her fatigue was upsetting her more than she thought. She wanted a dream, just one good dream. She wanted to get out of her own head for just a couple of hours.

“No, no, I will,” JJ said, immediately shifting so he was lying next to her on his side. Had he been closer, they would have been pressed against each other. But he kept a careful distance.

“Do you want some of the blanket?” she asked, twisting around slightly and offering a side of the quilt to him.

“Sure,” he said, getting underneath it.

“You can...get closer, if...if you want,” she said quietly, cheeks burning scarlet in the darkness.

Again, he felt anxious energy threatening to have him burst out of his body. But he tried to quiet his nerves as he scooted closer, so he was flush against her.

“Thank you,” she whispered through another sniffle.

“Anytime, red,” he muttered softly.

Then, he brought his arm to drape over her waist. The movement was familiar, but he was hesitant. She was rigid under his touch for a moment, but then slowly began to relax. The way he used to, when they shared the room nightly and she would struggle to close her eyes for long enough, he began to draw haphazard patterns at the center of her ribcage, just below her bra. Before, he had usually done it with a hand under her shirt, skin on skin. But his touch was still featherlight on the fabric of her dress. And now, he drew stars instead of hearts, as he once had.

“So, we had this one old dude come into the club the other day. He was like...whacked out of his mind. I’m serious. I’ve never seen a guy with white hair so stoned before, especially not one of those rich guys with names like Todd Buckingham and stuff…” JJ began, speaking in hushed, slightly hoarse tones, close to her ear.

The sound of his voice eased her somehow. He had noticed at some point, and used the fact often when she had bouts of insomnia. He’d tell her stories, jokes, what he’d eaten that day, who he’d seen, where he’d been. The words didn’t matter so much as the sound, just that he was talking to her and touching her and being there with her. At first, it gave her goosebumps, the familiar feeling of his breath, hot on her neck. But then, when a few minutes had passed, she felt relief wash over her. Her body got heavy, along with her eyes. Finally, sleep was coming. She could feel herself actually dipping her toes into the waters of dreams for the first time in days, as she listened and reminded herself that she was home.

#jj maybank #jj maybank fanfiction #jj maybank fic #jj maybank au #jj maybank x oc #oc fanfiction #original character fanfiction #outer banks fanfiction #outer banks au #outer banks oc fanfiction #john b routledge #kiara carrera #pope heyward #sarah cameron #tw: death #folkore

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ohvalleyofplentyyy · 4 years

Text

Frozen in Time

one-shot | master list

A/N: Hope y’all like it :) my requests are open btw if yall want me to write anything for you.

She stood at the edge of the stone balcony, overlooking the vast forest below here.

Small streams of smoke rose in the distance from the neighboring town, close enough to see but too far to reach. It was ironic really, all those capable bodies to come free her yet not one dare challenge the witch who kept her captive.

She’s there for a reason, they said.

It must be her destiny, they whispered.

She propped her head up on hands, both elbows balancing on the cold stone that crumbled beneath the very touch. “Maybe it will one day cave in and I’ll fall.” She mumbled to herself.

It was lonely in the castle, the girl hadn’t spoken to anyone since she was seven years old. She often wandered the hallways, speaking to the portraits that weren’t torn in half or eaten away by moths.

She gazed out into the horizon from the only place she could watch freedom pass her by. The witch had cast a spell onto the windows of the castle, blacking them out and making them unbreakable. Sure, there were small windows in various parts to light the rooms and hallways, but this balcony in the tower was the only spot she could feel the wind on her face or see the trees sway below her. Their tallest branches just out of her reach.

Too far to climb down and escape from either…

The girl sighed and got up, her dress protesting as it was too small for her now. The sleeves that used to cover her wrists came to her elbows now and the once floor-length dress now mid-length. It was a faded pink, and the bodice had little bows and embroidered roses along the collar.

Sometimes she would run her fingers across them and try to remember the people that must have loved her so much to add these details into a little girl’s dress.

As she walked through the hallway, light streaming in from above through tiny planes of glass, each a different symbol, she traced her fingertips on the wall, dipping into each grove and cut in the rock. The first day she was here, the girl had run through the whole castle looking for a secret passageway out, and she never found one.

The girl never ate or drank which was surprising, but she never felt hungry or the need to quench her thirst. Her lips were never chapped and she was always as clean as a person could have been in a magical prison.

She often wondered if the witch that had enchanted the castle, then maybe she had enchanted her as well.

To be a porcelain doll in a glass cabinet, forever, in the house of eternity.

The young captive didn’t know how long she had been here, time seemed to mess with her. Some mornings she would look out the balcony and the trees were a lovely orange, a day would go by and they were baren of leaves and had a small coat of snow covering them.

It couldn’t be the seasons, she thought. Those happen so slowly and this seems to happen in a mere week. Also as peculiar as that, the young maiden swore she sometimes saw for a moment people standing beneath the castle looking up at her.

It must be my imagination…

On one particular night, a strange noise woke her. The girl immediately sat up in bed, and low and behold, an arrow with a note attached to it was embedded into the post of the bed frame.

She snatched the note, full of adrenaline and hope.

It read,

I cannot free you from outside, you must do it on the inside of the castle. Mark these symbols in the place the outside world can come into the castle. Trace in blood.

The girl ripped the sheets off her and raced to the wooden desk across the room, she opened the bottom drawer and pulled the fake base of it up, revealing a small dagger. She took it out and held it in her hand with the note in the other.

Where does the outside come in?

As she wondered, a gentle breeze passed into the room and she quipped her head to the balcony.

Of course!

In the shine of the moonlight, she put the note in the center of the ground before her and with the dagger, cut a small line across her lower calf. When the blood pooled enough, she dipped her finger into it and drew the symbols in a half-circle like the balcony was shaped.

Then, the symbols started to glow a hazy green.

The girl darted up and grabbed the old cloak she had found in her first year from exploring the old rooms. She pulled out from underneath the bed a pair of old worn riding boots that once upon a time a girl must have used to ride horses here. They fit pretty well, and given that these were the only pair, they would have to do.

In one quick dash, she rounded up all the nick-necks she had collected over the years from the castle. A marble, a sparrows feather, her favorite book from the half-destroyed library the castle housed, the dagger, and a pendant.

She paused for a moment with the pendant.

It had been the only thing in her possession when she had been taken. It wasn’t much to go on, but there was a beautiful family crest that must mean something and could lead her home.

Home…

Her details of home were fuzzy, she didn’t know if it was the magic that effected her loss of memory or just time, but she didn’t have a solid notion of where she came from. Bits and pieces, like the warmth of fire against her skin, the laughter in a large room with music playing in the background, the sound of water being poured to a bathtub.

Shaking her head of the thoughts, she put the necklace around her neck, grabbed the note, and made her way to the front wooden doors which she hoped her opening at this very moment. She practice jumped down the spiraling staircase and bolted to the entryway.

But when she got there, nothing had changed.

The second she realized this, the girl dropped to the ground on her knees, shaking with a sob stuck in her throat. It was as if fate was playing a cruel joke on her. She took a breath and started walking back to her room, through the hallway of moonlight.

That's when she gasped.

The symbols in the glass panels all shine into a line on the stone floor, but they all looked incomplete in the moonlight somehow.

Every time she had come this way in the daytime, the sun had been at an angle that kept the shadows from falling into this position.

The only reason she hadn’t realized this sooner is that this hallway had always been too cold for her to want to come through at night and too painful to see the door that could have been her escape out.

The wooden doors had these beautiful bolts that always puzzled her the few times she had looked at them. They had no keyhole and seemed to be melted into the doors. After trying and failed to pry them off the doors, the girl had decided that trying something else may be more beneficial and with that, she never thought of them again.

She moved with quick haste to the first light marking and took the blood that was still condensing around the wound. The girl looked back and forth at the note and symbol, then connected the two where it seemed to need an extra piece.

They fit together perfectly.

The symbol started to glow green like before, but this time it changed and turned purple.

A lock popped on the door. Her eyes widened as she watched from the hallway as the top lock disintegrated.

She quickly got to work on all the others, sometimes having to rub away the blood and start again, but the end result always ended with a pop! and dust crumbling to the floor. On the last symbol she paused, this would be the moment she’d be free and to be quite honest, it scared her.

I haven’t been outside these walls for so long. How will I adapt to the world I only grew up watching from a window?

The girl looked down at the pendant and smiled.

Someone once loved me outside these walls, and if I can find that sort of love again, I’ll be fine.

With a shaky swallow, she traced the last symbol.

Instantly, the lock popped and then the doors started to glow a vibrant yellow from the seams and then dissipate. She walked over and pulled the handle.

It opened.

When she stepped out onto the soil, she couldn’t believe it.

Trees are so big.

The ground is so soft.

The young girl turned to look back at the castle and with one final glance, closed the door and stepped away from the entrance. The castle crumbled upon itself as she did that, and all that was left were ruins.

“Shh!”

Hm?

The girl turned to see where the noise came from and then remembered.

The note!

“Hello?” She called out, suddenly, the rustling came to an end and two men came out from behind a large tree. One, visibly shorter and with a bit more spunk in his step, had a vivacious blue tunic on and a lute strapped to his back. The other man was huge and remind her of the giants she read about in the fairytales she found in the library years ago. He had white hair that resembled moonlight and these extraordinary amber eyes that made her curious beyond measure. He was also holding a bow.

She walked toward them, “Are you the one that sent the message?” She asked, holding up the note. “Yes, took you quite a while to get it.” The gruff man said. She scrunched her eyebrows together, “What do you mean, this flew into my room only an hour ago.”

The what she presumed was a musician, came out from behind his rather beefy friend. “What do you mean an hour ago?! We sent that 2 and a half days ago into the castle.”

The young woman took a step back, “What…” The white-haired man’s eyes zeroed in on the pendant that had caught the moon’s rays with her movement.

Then his face drained of what little color was in it.

“Where did you get that?” He asked, pointed to her necklace.

“It’s my family crest I believe. Do you know the story of how I got here? A witch I believe kidnapped me and imprisoned me here, this was the only thing I had with me.”

The man then put his hand up to his forehead, “Fuck.” The bard, sensing his friend's concern, stepped forward. “What’s your name? I’m Jaskier, and he’s Geralt.”

The girl thought for a moment, “It’s um, Y/N I think.”

Geralt and Jaskier made eye contact with surprised looks on their faces. “What? What is it? Why does it matter?” “Because, Y/N, your kind— or family, died out over 667 years ago.”

“That’s not possible! I—, I—… I was going to find my family.”

Y/N crumbled to the ground, tears welling in her eyes. “What am I suppose to do now?” She looked down at the ground. The two boys looked at each other, unsure of what to do.

“You could come with us.”

Her head shot up, “Huh?” Jaskier watched forward hesitantly and crouched to her level. “Well, it’s not the most conventional plan but after we get you caught up with the few last hundred years and maybe some clothes that fit, you’d be a good travel companion.” He turned back to Geralt, “What do you think?” “Her family line was known for their immortality and special abilities, it could be useful in the future.”

She stood up at the mention of her family, “You know my history?” He nodded, “It’s folklore, but in a pinch, yes. We can probably find some books on it, though they’ll be very rare.”

Y/N smiled and took Jaskier’s hand, pulling him up. “This isn’t what I was looking for, but I’m thinking it’s a good alternative. Thank you.”

The three started walking away from the castle crumble that some of the townsfolk may have heard so it would be best to not be in the area at the moment. “So you know you’re a fairytale too right?” Jaskier said as you stepped over a large branch. “I’m what?”

“Yeah, you’re the Princess of the Time Capsule Castle, people throughout history have come to take a glance of the castle in hopes of seeing the girl frozen in time. They say that during some days, you could see a girl looking out from the balcony frozen in a specific position on the stone ledge.”

She laughed, “Are you serious?” “Yeah, I used to hear stories about you when I was little.”

The girl smiled.

This wasn’t the love I was hoping to find, but I’m glad it’s the one I found.

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