Chapter Text
John B’s stood at the edge of the cliff, the waves crashing below. He’s not suicidal. He’s not. It’s just that, up here, on the edge, the brink of it all, it’s peaceful. The calm before the storm. The notion that one bad gust of wind and it could all just be…over.
So simple. Because the thing is, John B doesn’t want to die. He just thinks he wouldn’t mind if it happened anyway. What did it matter anyhow? His dad was gone, lost, not dead, his mum had left him long ago. He had no money, no real future. And everything just felt like so much effort these days.
Putting one foot in front of the other felt harder and harder with each passing day. An endless cycle of things to do, bills to care about, food to put on the table. John B was sixteen, damnit, he shouldn’t be thinking of these things. But the truth was, John B had been worried about this stuff for far too long, and it was only a matter of time before it all came crashing down. A nine-year-old shouldn’t have to worry about the electricity bill, a seven-year-old shouldn’t be left alone in a house for two weeks, but maybe none of that mattered.
It mattered when Big John was here, alive, when John B could fight with his dad about the Twinkie and the quests and everything in between. But it’s been months and Big John is gone, and it’s the longest John B has gone without seeing his dad, because he never let it be more than a month. Never.
John B teetered a little as the wind came howling by, as the waves crashed a misty spray against those jagged rocks. Maybe they were right. Big John Routledge was dead, lost to the hunt. He made his last play. And he didn’t come home. It was almost easier to believe.
Because if his dad wasn’t dead, if he was hunting treasure still, if he was hiding somewhere, it meant he had forgotten John B. He had been blinded by the gold, like John B always worried might happen. Like his mum knew had happened, when she left him. Can’t you care about anything but that damn treasure? She yelled it so often, but John B had forgotten every fight. He only remembered the day she left, the same damn words spoken with anything but anger now. It was sullen, it was despondent, it was the final disappointment. John B’s mother had been overlooked for the last time, and she was done.
And she left John B behind.
Abandonment issues, JJ liked to call it. But it was just life. People left John B behind, his mum, his dad, his uncle. And John B knew why, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Because no one wanted him. His dad never wanted kids, too stuck in his history books, and his mum only saw his mistaken birth as a way to fix her marriage. It didn’t work, John B didn’t work, because he wasn’t enough, he was never enough, and John B let the tear fall.
But death was a hard pill to swallow, and John B was too young to be an orphan. So he believed in his dad, believed his determined father could weather any storm, no matter how strong, and he tried to push down the anger that threatened to strangle him. Those first few weeks, John B had been so angry. About the argument, the Twinkie, his dad always skipping town, all of it. But as the weeks stretched on, John B shut down. Because there was an anger building in him, deep and wild in a way he didn’t think he could contain, because how could his dad abandon him?
But if he couldn’t be angry, John B had nothing left to be. He lost his purpose. His drive. There was just this nothingness, all around him, within him. He felt like he was sludging his way through quicksand, struggling to stay afloat. It was easier to just give in, let the ground swallow him whole. So, he stood on the edge of a cliff, and let nature decide for him.
“John B?”
John B let his eyes fall shut. He knew that voice, would know it anywhere, even with the howling wind drowning it out, even with the crashing waves ricocheting in his ears.
JJ. It was always JJ. The only one who never abandoned John B. The only one who stayed. But John B’s gaze was locked on the jagged rocks below.
“Bree? Hey, Bree, you’re kinda scaring me here. Bree?” And JJ’s breath quickened, and his breath hitched but his voice was steady. Calm.
The calm before the storm. That’s what it was, up here. Peaceful. Simple. Not nothing.
“Bree, come—come down from there,” and there was a waiver in JJ’s voice now, a hesitation that threatened to cut through John B’s nothingness.
“You’re too close to the edge, John B, just—come here,” JJ said, calm and simple, like he was just stating a fact. You’re too close to the edge. John B supposed he was.
He supposed that was the point.
But there was a hint of fear in JJ’s voice, and John B wasn’t suicidal, not really, so he stepped down, backing away from the cliff. The waves disappeared from view, and that apathetic wall around him was back.
But JJ was here, and John B could see that fear written in his eyes, beneath that façade of calm. And really, John B wasn’t suicidal. So he cracked a smile that felt a little forced, and slapped a hand against JJ’s back like nothing had happened. Because nothing had happened. Nothing ever happened.
“The view was just too good, I couldn’t resist,” John B joked, because what else was there to say? It’s not like he was going to jump.
And everything was normal again, JJ filling in the silences John B had started to let linger, because talking was getting just as hard as walking these days. And if JJ held onto John B’s wrist with a bruising grip like he was ready to catch John B if he took the leap, then neither boy mentioned it. If JJ had his finger over John B’s pulse like he was scared John B’s heart would just stop, give in to the nothingness that John B had come to favor, well, that wasn’t anyone’s business but theirs.