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She doesn’t really plan on ending up at the Chateau.
No, when Kiara leaves Heyward’s that night, she fully plans on going home. Maybe take another shower when she’s there, or six. Perhaps google how to clean your hair after you’ve almost drowned in a sewer you went into to find a murder weapon that may or may not clear your best friend’s name and prove he didn’t commit the murder he’s accused of.
Except that when she reaches the fork in the road that leads her home, she drives the opposite way before she can think about it. It’s a reflex, she thinks, because she goes there so much. Or maybe not. Maybe when she thinks of home, this is where her mind drifts to.
She still feels weird, going there when John B’s not here. But JJ refuses to go anywhere else – not that he has anywhere else to go, if they want him to stay out of Luke’s way – so she still swings by the chateau every day. Checks in on him. Makes sure he hasn’t forgotten to eat. That he hasn’t drank himself to death.
He likes to joke about that last one a lot. She hates it.
It’s dark when she gets there. The lone porch bulb that has been threatening to die for the past six months is on, flickering in and out, but the lights inside the chateau are off. Kiara frowns as she jumps out of her car, walking over to peek through the window. It’s pitch black and JJ’s nowhere in sight.
Her eyes travel to the tree where they built their best friend a memorial not too long ago. She shivers despite the heat. They need to fix that, once John B gets back. She’s still staring at the trunk when she notices something moving a little further away, and her eyes lock on the lone figure sitting down at the end of the dock, feet swinging over the water, joint dangling from his lips.
He must’ve heard her car coming, because when she sets off towards him, he doesn’t even turn to look at her. Just asks, “what are you doing here?”
“I don’t know.” She sighs as she drops on the ground next to him, floor boards creaking as she pulls her legs up and folds her arms over her knees. She rests her head on top, looks at him. “I was going home.”
JJ offers her the joint, but she shakes her head.
He takes a drag and blows smoke out of his nose, watching as it evaporates in front of their eyes. “This is not home.” He scrunches his nose up, turns to look at her. “Well. Not technically.”
She smiles. “Eh. We’re not really big on technicalities.”
“That we’re not.” He looks her up and down, which isn’t saying much considering she’s pretty much folded on herself next to him. “Nice clothes.”
She leans back, tugs at the sleeves of Pope’s colorful hoodie. “Right? I think I’m gonna keep this.”
JJ nods. “It’s one of his better shirts. I would keep it too, if he’d ever let me wear it.”
“I’ll loan it to you.”
JJ flashes her a smile. “Thanks.” He puts the joint out on the dock next to him, tucks it behind his ear when he’s sure it won’t singe his hair off. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I ate a bucket of shit.”
JJ snorts as he pulls his legs up and crosses them in front of him, fiddling with the laces of his boots. “I mean…”
Kiara rolls her eyes. “Shut up.”
He grins sheepishly. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
JJ’s smile doesn’t falter, but he looks away now. Keeps his eyes peeled on the water when he speaks. “That was really fucking brave, what you did.”
The sincerity in his voice throws her a little off. They don’t do that, the two of them.
They bicker and banter and argue. Make jokes and share joints. Bullshit their way around The Cut and volunteer to go on beer runs. Relentlessly pick on each other, but defend one another fiercely if anyone else comes at them.
But they don’t do whatever this is. So, her first instinct is to deflect.
“Yeah, well. Someone had to do it, and I was the only one who didn’t have to worry about my genitals getting colonized by worms.”
JJ laughs, then shudders. It makes Kiara laugh too.
“Still,” he says after a moment. “It was. You could’ve…”
His tone grows uncharacteristically serious, and when he turns to look at her, his face is sober. Worried, even. The way he looks when he thinks John B’s in danger, or someone’s about to come for Pope.
Kiara pulls her knees closer to her chest. Keeps her arms tight around them as she tries not to think about how trapped she felt, inside that sewer. When that water swallowed her whole, and the only thing she could think about was that she wanted to see JJ and Pope and John B one last time.
She got two out of three.
“I didn’t. You guys saved me.”
JJ pulls his legs up too. Mimics her position and rests his chin on top of his knees as he looks back at the water. “Yeah.”
He takes his snapback off, cards a hand through his hair. It’s longer now. Darker in this light. He flips the hat and pushes it back on his head. It’s got a little dirt on the visor.
Kiara twirls one of her rings around her finger. “Hey, I’m sorry about last night.” His eyes flicker to her face, brows dipping together. “I stepped on your hand, and that’s why you fell and the camera broke, so it was my fault, really. I shouldn’t have said it was yours.”
“No that was…” He shakes his head, waves a hand vaguely in the air. “It’s fine, Kie. We were in a hurry.” He pauses, exhales a laugh that sounds everything but amused. “We saw someone get killed, none of us were thinking clearly.”
“Yeah, but I made it worse. I shouldn’t have yelled at Ward like that,” she mutters, shaking her head. That was so stupid. “I’m just…” She trails off, tries to find the words to explain it to him. She doesn’t know that she can, but something about the way he’s looking at her, eyes less guarded than usual, makes her want to try. “I’m so angry, JJ. All the fucking time. And it should be better now, because John B’s alive, but it’s not. And I don’t know if Pope gets it. I’m so angry and it makes me want to crawl out of my skin, and smash some shit, and do stupid things like yell at a dangerous man who literally just murdered another person in front of us.”
JJ brushes some dirt off his boot. “I get it, Kie.” And he does. “I’m shit at coping too,” he adds, eyes flickering past Kiara to something on the floor next to her. She follows his gaze, finds his silver flask, uncapped and empty, moonlight reflecting off the carved letters of his name. She hates that thing. He sighs. “It’s fine. I’ve done worse.”
She turns back to him. “Really? Because I think pulling a gun on Topper in the middle of the boneyard was one of your brighter ideas.”
He chews on his bottom lip for a moment, tries to hide his amusement. Flicks his gaze back to the water and cups his hands around his mouth. “Murderer!”
Kiara’s snort turns into a full-blown laugh when he shifts his eyes to her, eyebrows disappearing in his hairline. She leans against him, bumps their shoulders together. “Shut up.” He makes a zipping motion with his hand, throws the metaphorical key into the water. She fiddles with the hem of her – Pope’s – shorts, stuck on something he said the night before. It had taken her by surprise, when he’d said it, so much so that she didn’t know what to say back. Yelled at him to shut up instead. “Is that really what you think?” He looks at her with a small frown, hums in question. “That I’m never on your side?”
His eyes widen ever-so-slightly, taken aback. He tugs on the laces of his boots, keeps his eyes trained on them. “No, that was…”
“Because it’s not true.”
His hands halt their ministrations as he looks at her. His eyes are soft, unsure. “It’s not?”
“No,” she says immediately, shakes her head. Because it’s absolutely not true, and the idea alone that he could ever think that feels like a slap in the face. “I mean, sometimes you don’t make the best decisions, and it scares me,” she admits. “I worry about…” she trails off, because there’s only so much she can bring herself to say to him. “Pope’s better at keeping a level head,” she says instead. “I know his plans don’t involve risking your life, or anyone’s, and—“
“It’s fine, Kie,” he cuts her off, shrugs his shoulders. “You don’t have to explain. I know you guys are a unit now, or whatever…”
She frowns. “What? No, it’s not like that, JJ.” Is that what he really thinks? That just because she and Pope may or may not be a thing, that she’d ever leave him behind? It unsettles her, that he may ever think like this. It felt like her entire world fell apart, the day she thought she lost John B. She never wants to feel that ever again, doesn’t ever want to lose any of them. “We’re a unit, JJ. The three of us. The five of us, even.”
She wants to say more, but her phone screeches in her pocket, loud enough that she and JJ jump apart.
She groans as she pulls the device out of her pocket, sees her mom’s face on the screen.
She wants to ignore it, but knows she can’t if she wants to see JJ and Pope tomorrow. Her relationship with her parents is already strained enough at is it, without her ignoring their calls when it’s almost past her curfew. Because yes, she has a curfew now.
So she sighs as she answers her mother’s call, listens to her as she tells her to come home now, that she and her dad expect her back in the next 15 mins.
She doesn’t argue with her, doesn’t try to explain that her friend needs her right now. That she needs her friend because she almost drowned in a sewer today.
When she hangs up, JJ’s already pushing himself off the floor, shoving his flask in his pocket.
He points in the general direction of the chateau. “We should…”
“Yeah,” she mutters, standing up too. “I need to go home before they flip.”
“Yeah, it’s fine, Kie,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets and kicking his boot as he walks side by side with her. “Go to your actual home.”
Her lips curl up on one side, and she steals a look at him.
“Technical home,” she corrects. “My actual home is less than 30 feet away.” He doesn’t look up from the ground but she can see the small smile playing on his lips. They part, when they’re off the dock, JJ walking towards the porch as she heads to her car. She stops, turns around. “Oh, and JJ?”
He slows down, looks at her with eyes that are impossibly blue under the porch light. “Yeah?”
“It’s never just me and Pope. It you, me and Pope. You know that, right?”
JJ runs a hand through his hair as he smiles. Nods his head lightly. “Night, Kie.”
“Night, JJ.”