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beverlyonvinyl · 3 years

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wasteland, baby! - JJ Maybank

summary; after a jealousy-fueled fight with your Kook ex-boyfriend, Rafe Cameron, the hot-tempered JJ has a long awaited meeting with you on the dock.

warnings; swearing, underage alcohol/drug consumption, plenty of angst, fluff.

word count; 1.5k

song; wasteland, baby! by hoizer

[ gif via pinterest ]

wasteland, baby / i’m in love / i’m in love with you.

The Boneyard was crowded with all walks of life tonight. Slimy Tourons looking for a girl to hook up with before they left town, rich Kooks getting drunk off of just a few beers, and the almighty rulers of the Outer Banks, the Pogues. Party animals by nature and fighters by chance, whether a nosy Kook got in their business or a Touron took something too far, a Pogue was always up to throw punches.

One of the Pogues stuck out, a particular blond-haired boy that was consistently sporting some kind of gnarly bruise or cut. The infamous JJ Maybank was always getting into of trouble, typically for a good cause. He's a ticking time bomb, and he can't keep his hands to himself.

The sandy-haired troublemaker was currently surrounded by a small arena of people, unbeknown to his circle of close friends that were sipping on bitter alcohol on the opposite side of the moonlit beach.

"JJ has been gone for like, twenty minutes," a girl with caramel skin and the most annoyed expression on her face pointed out to her other friends. "He probably found a girl."

The boy across from her looked behind him, he was a bit more sober than his reckless buddies.

"Kie... are they screaming his name?" He asked, still gawking at the large swarm of people behind him.

Another girl chimed into the conversation. "I bet someone is—"

"Is he in a fight?" Kie set her solo cup down on the ground and stood up. "What is his deal?"

The ringleader of the Pogues, and the boy who had thrown this party in the first place, came striding over to his other three friends with a freshly filled cup in his hand.

"John B.," the other boy stuttered. "JJ is beating the shit out of someone..."

His drunk and tired features expressed enough that he was done dealing with JJ's outbursts. Honest to god, everyone was tired of it. Picking him up from police stations, icing his bruises, making sure he didn't break something, he was acting out more than he ever had previously.

"Go deal with it," John B. gestured to the girl that wasn't Kie. "He'll listen to you."

Y/N raised her eyebrows at her best friend, contemplating if what he was saying was the truth, or just bullshit to get out of meddling with JJ's antics.

"I'm not getting between him and whoever he's kicking in the ass," she took down a gulp of her beer. "He's dangerous when he's angry."

"You make him less angry," John B. countered. "Now go fix it and I'll get the rest of these assholes off our beach."

Y/N headed for the crowd of onlookers, kicking up the sand with her worn, green Vans. She could hear another voice barking back at JJ, and unfortunately she recognized it.

She pushed her way through some brainless Tourons in cheap shark tooth necklaces, shoving them to the side and ordering them to scram. This was between her, JJ, and the guy that had got beaten to a pulp.

"Fucking Rafe," she sneered, watching JJ throw another punch to her ex-boyfriend's bloody face. "What did you do this time?"

JJ turned his head, his cerulean eyes piercing into hers. Rafe took this precious moment to breathe, for JJ's very violent assault had offered him little time for that.

"Everyone out!" Y/N yelled at the last few nosy people that surrounded them. She watched Rafe catch his last breath before he took another blow to his jaw. "Stop it, J."

"What?" He pushed Rafe's limp body to the side and looked at the frustrated girl standing above him.

She disregarded JJ's questioning look and crouched down next to her quivering, former lover. He was still very much alive, lord be damned if Rafe Cameron ever lose his life to a weed-smoking, beer-slugging, couch-surfing Pogue like JJ, but he had stil been pummeled horribly.

"Tell me what you did to make him hurt you," she muttered in Rafe's ear.

Rafe chuckled at her. Once his beaming girlfriend that thrived in country clubs and sundresses, she traded her perfect Kook life for a life full of treasure hunting and disappointing her parents.

If only he hadn't started with the cocaine.

"Just told Kelce some stories of how good you were in bed," he smirked at her with dark eyes.

JJ came stomping back towards them, open lighter in his tight grip. "You're fucking disgusting..."

Y/N narrowed her eyes at him. "Wait for me on the dock."

He let out a huff of aggression, not feeling free of the anger he had towards Rafe. His heavy boots hit the frail wooden planks of the Chateau's dock, and he couldn't help but let his thoughts drift to maybe, just maybe, Y/N wanted her dickhead of an ex-boyfriend back. Maybe they were out in the Boneyard reminiscing of old times when they would go to the country club and sneak kisses when their parents weren't watching. Maybe she wanted to help Rafe get clean so they could be together again.

JJ looked out at the calm water, such a contrast to the storm he was feeling in his chest. When he felt that strike of hurt, that pain and fury within him, he took it out on the nearest thing that crossed him.

"I'm sorry about that," a small voice hummed from behind him.

He turned around to see Y/N's figure framed by the blue moonlight.

"I should be the one that's sorry," he mumbled.

She sat beside him on the splintering dock. "J, I would've cut his face up with a beer bottle if I heard what he said."

He laughed at her a little. "So what'd you say to him?"

"That I'd cut off his dick if he talked about me like that again."

JJ looked at her in pure admiration. He knew when he first met her that she was locked up in the gates of the Kook lifestyle. Rafe always made him jealous, whether he spotted them holding hands while he was busing tables or sharing a drink while he was at a party with his friends. It dampened his mood and he wasn't afraid to show it... until she became a Pogue herself.

It would be an instant crime to make a move now. Pogues don't mess with other Pogues.

"I've always liked you, Y/N," he observed the way her eyes sparkled, even though it was dark.

She backed away from him every so slightly.

"No! Wait— not like that," he put his paw-like hand on her shoulder, cold rings creating a vibrant contrast against her hot skin. "As friends."

"Oh," she glanced down at the water. Endless nothingness.

There was a string of tension between the two rebellious teens that just couldn't be cut. Every time he saw her it made him dizzy, and getting drunk or high in her presence seemed to be a risk. If he let out even a whisper of how he felt, she'd hear him.

Y/N took his chin in her delicate hand, bringing his face towards hers in a moment they had both long awaited. His golden strands of hair fell in his entranced face. The ice had melted from his doe-eyes and the curve was back in his lips, formulating the smile that she chased after.

"I've always liked you too, JJ," she ghosted her lips over his. "Not as a friend."

He tried to stutter something out, tripping over his own tongue, but he was cut off by her plush lips on his own. The pungent liquor that she had been downing in the wake of her boredom met the smokiness that laced his breath. His warm hands found her waist, wrapping her in an embrace that he didn't want her to get out of. Maybe he would wake up in a cold sweat on John B.'s couch, this whole ordeal just a result of attempted manifestation, but he just wanted to indulge in her soft skin and sweet nothings. Even if they were a figment of his imagination.

"You're so beautiful," he murmured against her mouth. "Closer."

She whined at JJ's words, propping herself in his lap and kissing him harder. He had been waiting so long for this to happen, and now that he was getting it, he couldn't believe it was real. It was better than he had imagined it late at night when his heart and body ached for her. This was a new kind of euphoria.

If the world was ending, he would have no idea.

“Why didn’t we do this ages ago?” Y/N breathed against him as she left little pecks along his jaw.

JJ melted like a burning candle into her touch, praying that the flame in her that had ignited for him would forever stay lit.

“The Pogue rules,” he answered.

She cupped the side of his flushed face with her hand. She had never seen him so malleable for as long as she’d known him.

“I’d break all the rules for you,” she hummed. “I’m in love with you, that’s it.”

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rent-day-blues · 5 years

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I don't know if you're still doing prompts, but if are... Injured John? Maybe he gets clipped by a car or something on his way to a shift and has to call it in and his brother(s) arrive to help him? Thanks!

now! I know you haven’t asked for a rewrite of S1E08 in the RDB verse, but i’m afraid that’s precisely what you’re getting.

“

“My brother knows how to jump out a window. From at least a couple storeys up, or so he says, anyway. I remember telling you that story. I’ve never seen him do it, I’ve only heard about it afterward. Apparently he didn’t do it right; sprained his ankle. Gordon gave him hell.”

John informs the cat at the far end of the branch of this fact, nonchalant, as though the pair of them aren’t about fourteen feet in the air, which is further than John would like to jump, even if he had the first idea of how to stick the landing. Falling is the easy part.

The dispatch office backs up onto the river that cuts through town, though not one of the nicer parts of the river. There’s still a little scrubby bit of embankment behind the complex, a few haphazard picnic tables on the top of the bank, and a handful of trees trailing down the slope, doing their best and failing, as evidenced by their scraggling grey limbs—which hadn’t looked that hard to climb. And hadn’t been, to be fair. As he and Eos have mutually discovered, it’s not the climbing that’s the tricky part. It’s all getting rather philosophical up here.

“When people call me about cats up trees, I send the fire department to prevent them from going up any trees after any cats. That’s a secret about my job. It’s easier to get cats out of trees than people. You know, if you have a fire truck. Or even just a ladder. Or have climbed a tree more recently than like fifteen years ago and can still remember how to get down.” John pauses, rueful, and then adds, “I always wondered what sort of moron goes up a tree after a cat. That’s the other secret—about 90% of the time, you get your own damn selves back down.”

Of course, the most sensible thing to do, even if one has already blown the chance to do what was formerly the most sensible thing to do, and climbed a tree in pursuit of a cat, would be to call the appropriate authorities in order to safely get back down. And even if he’ll never hear the end of it from whatever coworker he calls or whichever branch of the emergency service is summoned to his rescue, John still absolutely would call 911—if his phone hadn’t fallen out of his pocket in the process of climbing the stupid tree, in pursuit of the stupid cat.

The screen’s cracked (that’s not new) and turned off, and staring forlornly up at him from where it’s nestled amidst the gnarly roots of the stubborn old tree. Even if he can’t tell the time for sure, he knows it’s past the beginning of his shift. He hopes they start to wonder where he is, and sooner rather than later, though they’ll probably call before they come looking. And even if they came looking, no one’s likely to look around the back of the building. He’s been up here for nearly fifteen minutes by this point. His had been the earliest shift, and so it’s right around dawn. By the lightness creeping into the sky, he can tell that morning’s nearer than he’d prefer, and sighs to himself.

“I’m late for work now. When I don’t check in, they’ll know something’s wrong,” he informs Eos, because of course it’s Eos. There are plenty of alley cats around the office, but the stupid black shorthair with the white smudges on her face and paws is the only one he’d climb a stupid tree for. She’s the only one around to hear it when he laments, “I only stopped to feed you. I only meant to look for a couple minutes when I couldn’t find you. I didn’t think you’d have gone up a tree of all places. What’s with that? You’re an alley cat. This is not your area. I’m very disappointed.”

Usually he sees her on his way into the communications center. Today he hadn’t, and that wouldn’t normally have been that far out of the normal. Normally John would’ve let her be and looked for her on his lunchbreak, but he’d had a can of tuna in his bag that he’d wanted to put on offer, especially since he’d had a few days off, and thus it had been a few days since he’d seen her last. He’s watched her grow from tiny kitten to smallish cat, and despite his equal measure of certainty that she can take care of herself, since he’s at least partly responsible for her continued existence, he feels it’s his duty to look out for her. As much as he can, at least.

“I’m never gonna hear the end of this,” he tells her aloud, conversationally. She hasn’t even done him the credit of coming any closer from where she perches towards the skinnier end of the branch he’s perched upon, trying to coax her closer. He’d been about to climb back down, about to head inside and call someone better suited to de-treeing a cat—when he’d discovered that, no, actually, that wasn’t quite possible. Actually it’s quite a lot further down than it had looked from the ground, and with the way the embankment falls away and drops steeply towards the river, failing to keep his feet after even a good(unlikely) landing, would probably send him tumbling down the riverbank.

But he can’t just stay up a tree all day. He’s running out of options and is uncomfortably aware of the fact.

“You wouldn’t get spooked and fall if I started yelling, right?” he asks, though it’s been lurking in his mind as possibility, and it’s the reason he hasn’t, yet. “You’re tough. You’re a mean old—well, okay, young—and I mean, not even that mean actually—but you’re an alley cat, anyway. You’re tough. You wouldn’t get startled and fall out of the tree if I yelled for help. And even if you did, probably you’d land on your feet anyway. With better odds than me. I’ve read the statistics for accidental high falls. I’ll be honest, I don’t like my chances.”

As though seeking her permission, John reaches slowly, cautiously towards her, and is rewarded with a flattening of her ears and a bristling of her tail, and the sort of warning, moaning growl that immediately precedes a hiss of pure loathing. When he pauses for a moment, and then doesn’t give up on reaching for her, she goes so far as to take a swipe at him, though the movement destabilizes her already precarious perch, such that she clings with every available claw to the bark of the tree, and his reflexive retreat makes the branch tremor slightly, enough that he freezes and tightens his grip around the trunk. He feels the spike of his heartrate as his pulse pounds in his ears, and the scare is enough to change his mind about the risk of shouting.

“Wow! You’re kind of a brat. And if I didn’t like you so much, I’d—”

In the aftermath, he’ll never be sure if the sharp crack that lingers in his memory belonged to the branch, breaking; or the back of his skull, hitting the ground. The whole incident is a muddle of disconnected sensations that he’ll only recall piecemeal, and won’t be able to connect together. The swoop of vertigo as he’d lost his balance and toppled backward, too startled even to shout about his shock at falling. The way his knee had caught for a moment where it had been hooked around the branch, arresting his fall for only a fragment of a second, before gravity won the way it was always going to. The blur of black and a pair of green eyes staring down at him, from even higher up the tree than he’d found himself. And trying to push himself up from the ground. And then then sudden sharp shock of agony from some badly broken something being enough to plunge the sky above him into inky blackness.

John’s luckier than Virgil was, when Virgil had jumped out of a window, because he gets Scott, not Gordon. Although all Gordon had offered was his usual blistering sarcasm, and coming groggily back to consciousness to find Scott looking grim and mildly terrified, kneeling at his side makes John wonder if maybe Virgil got off easy The fear lurking in his big brother’s expression might be worse than anything Gordon could’ve said.

“Don’t move,” Scott orders immediately, with the sort of authority that must make criminals quake in their ill-gotten boots, and the hand he’s got braced against John’s shoulder is enough to prevent any attempt, though John doesn’t even begin to make one. “Ambulance is on the way.”

John blinks up at him, confused and still in pursuit of context for what he’s doing, staring “…Am I under arrest?” he asks, dazed and dizzy and damned if he can remember what the hell’s just happened.

“If I could figure out how to arrest you for being a stupid fucking idiot, you absolutely fucking would be. What the hell were you doing up a goddamn tree?”

Scott’s mad, which is a good sign. John still doesn’t move, but he has to think for a minute to answer the question, which makes his head ache horribly. Almost worse than the rest of them. “Cat,” he supplies eventually, and hopes this is helpful, because it’s the only detail his brain offers. Scott’s a cop. Could probably make detective if he wanted. John’s pretty sure he can figure it out.

“Cat? What…why—you’re not a cat!” Scott’s outrage at this explanation, admittedly rather light on the details, seems to run contrary to John’s assumption that his brother could make detective, if he just put the effort in. John blinks at him, bemused that he’s gotten it so wrong.

“…does one of us have a concussion?”

Scott just glares. “One of us absolutely has a fucking concussion.”

“…me?” If he doesn’t try to think too hard, his head doesn’t actually seem so bad. John’s back hurts, and he winces slightly, not moving, but wondering aloud, “…I think I’m lying on my phone.”

If John were working this call, he would be reassured by the fact that the victim was conversant, and alert enough to notice details like that. Scott just seems exasperated. “If you’re lying on your phone, it’s because you landed on your phone, which you emphatically haven’t used to call anybody about this.”

“…did somebody call about me?”

Scott’s glare becomes a glower. “Well, we didn’t get a call about a stupid idiot lying unconcious at the foot of a tree, we got a call—from your office—about a cat screaming behind the building like it was being skinned alive. Non-emergency, even! Dispatch only threw it my way because I was in the area and I owe Animal Control a favour. I said we’d make sure it wasn’t a false alarm.”

“I hate false alarms,” John agrees, and closes his eyes. Just for a moment. The sky’s getting properly bright overhead, and the dawn for which he’d named a friend starts to spread properly across the sky. It makes his head hurt, even if it reminds him of her. And despite everything, somehow he isn’t mad. “I like cats, though.”

Scott’s only mad because he’s frightened. John probably hasn’t helped, but somehow his last statement seems to be enough to get his brother to crack a grin, weary and worried though it is. “Well. Hope this one was worth it.”

“Yeah.” John smiles to himself and closes his eyes again, as he hears the distant sound of an approaching siren. Usually he hears it from the other end of a phoneline. He wonders if it’s scared Eos. Then he wonders if she’s nearby, watching, and feels certain that probably she is, actually. After all—

“She’s my friend.”

#prompt #john tracy #preludeinz #eos #Anonymous #this will go up on ao3 once i finish my lil gordon/penny thing

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