Chapter Text
Fall, 2027
Sunshine on the other side doesn't feel any better like everyone says it does. In fact, JJ thinks it feels quite hopeless and dispiriting, although that could just be because no one is waiting with a familiar face and a warm car to pick him up from the South Carolina State Penitentiary.
He was given back the clothes that he had been wearing years ago when he was first detained, and he's wearing them now, as he squints up at the midday sky that is littered with white, puffy clouds. The Pelican Marina tee shirt is tight around the arms (it's so small that his belly button peaks out if he lifts his arms up), worn and torn with holes spotting the back of it, and he was surprised to find that the cargo shorts were able to be pulled all the way up- that isn't to say it's comfortable.
The parking lot looks different from the last time JJ had seen it- a relatively fresh coat of asphalt has been laid and the parking spaces have been repainted. The tree line on the right side of the lot has been pushed further back, and he knows that Kie would have hated that.
He starts his walk towards the ferry, the sun not providing him much warmth against the cool, sharp winds of late autumn. He doesn't bother hitch-hiking.
On the ferry, it's crowded. He sits near the front of the boat with his hands stuffed into the tight pockets of his shorts while the little kids give him weird looks, and the older ones avoid his presence altogether. It makes him wonder if people always looked at him this way, or if it's simply because they can somehow sense that he's spent a few years in the cooler.
When he steps off the boat and into the Outer Banks, the nostalgia hits him in one big, blasting wave. It feels like not a day has passed, like he's walking through the city as he would have when he was still 18. It's like he's seen every face that he passes before. All the buildings look as if they haven't aged a day.
Walking past the junkyard where his father used to work (on and off, because Luke could never hold a job for shit) is like being superstitious and walking past a graveyard without holding your breath. JJ's palms start to sweat as he picks up his pace, determined to get where he needs to go (wherever that may be) and hunker down.
"Hey, Luke!"
Instinctively, JJ carefully looks around, tries to remember if his father would be at work at this hour if he's still running by his old junkyard work schedule. He comes up with nothing, and sees no hints of his father's lingering heavy footsteps or his broad shoulders. So he lifts his head, looks to the left, then to the right to see Bobby over by the fence, tools spread out all around him on the ground.
He hears Bobby chuckle, and then he's standing up- although it looks like he's having a bit of a hard time-, tossing the wrench in his hand over towards the opened tool box. As he begins to walk toward JJ, it dawns on him that Bobby was calling out to him.
"Well, hey, JJ," Bobby greets, grinning from ear to ear and shifting his weight once he's next to JJ. "Sorry about that; I thought you were Luke. You're really startin' to look like your daddy, man."
JJ stiffens at that, but chews the inside of his cheek so that maybe it isn't so obvious that it upset him. "Yeah," he says, although growing up to be his father has been his worst fear since he was a little kid, even though he's always been told he more resembled his mother. "How's it been, Bobby?"
"Good! Good. It's been good. Business as usual," he replies, glancing up and down the road and rolling down his sleeves. "Where've been you? I haven't seen you in ages."
"Prison," JJ answers bluntly, grinding his teeth. Of course his father dropped all relation to him while JJ was away. It doesn't surprise him- especially considering that he never called or wrote or came by on visiting days, not even once- but it does make his heart sting and burn. "I just got out."
Bobby's laughing again, so JJ goes along with it and tries to laugh too. "We've all gotta do our time. Oh, boy, I remember my time in prison. Longest three years of my damn life," he says, smiling off into the distance at some long-ago memory of staring at the rusting metal bars of his cell. "Hey, you got a job?" he asks suddenly, pointing with his index finger at JJ's chest. When JJ shakes his head no, he continues: "You oughta come work for me. There's plenty of room here for ya."
Immediately, JJ's shaking his head, trying to find a way out of this conversation and away from the junkyard. Damn it, he should have taken the back route. "No, man. Thanks though," JJ says, after Bobby tries to convince him with slick words and gesturing hands.
He hadn't realized it at first, but now he sees how age has withered Bobby. He has even less hair on his head, and there's wrinkles at his forehead that weren't as deep as the last time JJ saw him. There's some hazy fog in Bobby's eyes that makes JJ wonder if he's dabbled in hard drugs.
"Look, Bobby, I gotta get going," JJ says finally, laying a hand on Bobby's shoulder in a friendly way in hopes of letting him know that it isn't personal.
Bobby agrees, says something about how he has to fix up the gate anyway, and then JJ is on his way again.
His body seems to still have the muscle memory to take him back to his father's house because his mind is on autopilot.
His father's place looks exactly as JJ remembers it, although the outside walls have become more faded and one of the glass windows has been replaced by a piece of plywood. He wonders how that happened but doesn't care enough to find out. He could probably guess correctly anyway: strong winds from a hurricane or some dealer coming to collect a debt that ended in a fight.
JJ hesitates at the doorstep, but in the end he doesn't bother knocking on the door because there's the chance that he won't even be home. He twists the handle and pushes forward. It doesn't surprise in the slightest that it has been left unlocked.
"Dad?" JJ says, peeking his head inside before opening the door wider and stepping inside.
It feels so odd calling out for him like that after years of his absence. JJ can't even remember the last time he referred to his father as such because it's been strictly 'the old man' for so long in hopes of nipping that emotional connection in the bud. It never took, JJ realizes as his belly swoops and his eyes start to itch.
He hears shuffling in one of the back rooms and stiffens, straightens his back on instinct. A pair of heavy boots thud slowly down the hall, and then Luke is standing not even ten feet from him. After all those restless nights spent staring at the ceiling, thinking of his father, never being able to remember exactly what his face looked like, how distant and unattainable he was to JJ at the time. And now here he is right in front of him, flesh and blood, tooth and nail, like it isn't so striking for JJ.
"Hey, Dad," JJ greets awkwardly, taking his hat off of his head and holding it nervously in both his hands. He watches Luke smile, decaying teeth and blackened gaps protruding from chapped lips, and if it weren't for the same kind of hazy fog in his eyes that Bobby had, JJ would have assumed he were clean.
"Hey, son," Luke says, shockingly clear. He takes a few steps forward and slings his arm out (JJ flinching back in the process, although Luke takes no notice), motions for JJ to come sit at the table, and it's like not a day has passed because as soon as Luke moves, all the quirks and habits about him come crashing back to JJ.
JJ, almost afraid to say anything else, shakes his head and sticks a thumb over his shoulder. "Nah, I can't. I've- uhm- I can't stay long," he explains, preparing for the worst.
Luke shrugs, doesn't seem to take it too hard. "Sure," he replies, starting to turn back towards the hall to return to his room, "No worries."
Weird, JJ thinks, but still Dad. Definitely still Dad.
He goes back down the hall, boots thumping and echoing throughout the house. When he hears a door click shut, JJ steps away from the front door and out into the room to look around.
The kitchen is filthy- dishes piled high in the sink and on the counter, beer cans crushed and discarded on the floor, old food lying out on the dining table, open boxes of cereal spilled and laying on their sides on top of the refrigerator. JJ doesn't bother going in there.
He moves down the hallway slowly, careful not to step where he knows the floorboards are creaky, and walks into the first door on his left- his old bedroom.
He doesn't recognize it at all. Nothing in the room is his own- all of his posters have been taken down, dresser has been removed, and his bed has been replaced with a pool table. There's no telling how much coke his father sold to buy that thing. Walking to the other side of the room, he trips over a thick faded rug, one that he doesn't remember being in the house when he was in high school.
He peeks through the window, hand holding back the blinds, to look out at the backyard, which is as dirty as it ever was. That much hasn't changed. When he pulls his fingers away, there's a thick coat of dust covering his fingertips.
JJ wipes it off on his too-tight cargo shorts and maneuvers his way around the pool table to the closet. He opens it, and the closet door still squeaks. He turns half his body into it and reaches up into the secret cupboard he had carved into the wall of the closet when he was 15.
He pulls out an old shoebox and lifts the lid.
Inside, there's a half-full carton of cigarettes, a broken shark tooth necklace, a small bag of weed, yellow pencils with bite marks all around the tops, a single earring- the ugly, half-hoop, bead type of earring- that Kie and Pope had begged him not to put in his ear, and a stuffed, off-white envelope.
He smiles for a second, a nostalgic twist of the lips at the memories he is reminded of. When he takes out the envelope, something slips from his fingers and flutters to the floor below him.
"Shit," he mutters, stooping down to pick it up.
It's a picture, a quite old one that JJ vividly remembers being taken. He had still been in high school at the time, had turned 17 not even a full month prior. Things had just begun to return to normal- or as normal as it could get with the gaping loss of John B and Sarah.
"JJ, stop staring at me," Pope murmured into the fabric of his pillow, not even bothering to open his eyes, "I can't sleep when you do that."
"I'm not staring at you," JJ said, although he had very obviously been staring at Pope for the last five minutes or so as he sat on the floor of Pope's bedroom where three makeshift beds had been laid.
Pope made a sighing sound, peeled open an eye. "Yeah, right," Pope replied with no real malice in his voice. He knew that JJ was only good at lying when he wanted to be. Pope stuck his hand out from beneath his pillow to reach where JJ was sitting, crisscross applesauce and spoons in the bowl. He grabbed JJ's hand, held it in his own, and closed his eyes again, a slight smile plastered on his tired face.
JJ, still staring, looked down at Pope fondly, mouth grinning and eyes full of something that Kiara might have described as love.
There was suddenly a bright flash of light, and both JJ and Pope had turned to look. Kiara sat a few feet from them, legs tucked under a blanket, with a camera held in her hands and pointed at the boys.
"Did y'all, like, forget I was here or something?" she asked jokingly, putting the camera into her backpack.
JJ smiles bitterly before setting the photograph back into the box. He's almost positive that the rest of the envelope is chock full of pictures just like this one. Kiara had been obsessed with disposable cameras their junior year of high school, always snapping pictures, whether the subjects of said pictures were prepared or not.
He decides he'll sift through the rest of them later because it feels too suffocating with his father just in the other room.
He replaces the lid on the shoebox, tightens his jaw, and leaves his father's house without a second thought.