Chapter Text
JJ Maybank should have known he’d end up in a place like this eventually.
The walls are blank and painted in a color that isn't quite white, just that weird beige-ish institutional shade that doesn't really even look like a color at all. Pale like a hospital room, but somehow even colder than that. The overhead fluorescent lights hum in a way that won’t stop and is really starting to drive him fucking insane. He squints up at them once, then looks back down at the paper in front of him.
It already has a smudge on it. He picks up the pencil and stares at it for a second. The name of the facility “Changing Tides Treatment Program” engraved into the wood. He rubs the eraser against the mark but it just makes the smudge darker and more cloudy.
The more he tries the worse it gets.
Yep.
That feels just about right.
There are other people in the room, sitting at the same folding tables, everyone in the same uniform of gray sweatpants and white t-shirts, eyes that don’t look all the way open even when they are. Some stare at the ground. Some pick at their skin. One guy across from JJ keeps tapping his own pencil against the table. Someone behind him is crying, not loud but noticeable enough.
All of them are older than him by at least ten years.
He just turned nineteen a few weeks ago.
He feels awful.
His head aches. His muscles feel like cement. Every bone hollowed out and replaced with static…like everything inside him is short-circuiting. His skin is cold and damp under the cheap t-shirt but he keeps sweating despite it. Even his fingers are shaking…just enough to piss him off.
It’s been seventy-two hours since he had a drink.
Seventy-two.
And he’s counted every damn second of it.
Ever second since John B and Pope dragged him off the dock and shoved him into the Twinkie like a kidnapping.
Every second since Kiara stood outside the intake door with her arms crossed and her jaw clenched so tight it looked like it hurt as they admitted him.
He was drunk out of his mind…of course he was. When was he not?
That night was bad, though, he’ll admit it.
Slurring, swaying, bleeding from somewhere near his eyebrow from something he couldn’t quite remember. It wasn’t the worst he’d ever been, not by a long shot, but it was bad enough.
Bad enough for all of them to finally say enough.
It’s a blur that night, but he remembers the yelling. A lot of yelling, actually. Stuff he wishes he didn’t remember. Stuff he knows came out mean and cruel. Things about them. Worse things about himself. About how none of this would help and how maybe he didn’t even want the help anyways.
How they should stop trying and leave him to die.
He knows he said shitty things.
Things he can’t take back.
But now, sitting here with a dull pencil and a lot of regret, he still kind of wondered:
Do I really need this?
The counselor leading the group session, a man in his forties with broad shoulders and a tired kind of kindness in his voice, clears his throat.
“Write about your first drink,” he says.
JJ stares at him for a beat. Then he laughs, low and rough without a lic of actual humor in it.
“You sure?” He can't help but ask with his typical smirk.
The man just looks at him with far more patience than JJ thinks he deserves…like he’s heard the same questions a hundred times this week alone and knows the answer is never going to change.
JJ shakes his head. Looks down again at the blank paper waiting for him to spill.
He taps the pencil once, twice. The laugh is gone. He doesn’t know if he’s ready for any of this.
But thats the thing about rehab, he guesses. It doesn’t need for him to be ready, does it?
…
JJ remembers being seven in a quiet house.
It was way too quiet.
It was the kind of quiet that made his ears ring and made every shadow look tall and mean and scary. The only light in the house came from the tiny tv they had in the living room. A UNC basketball game was on, but JJ didn’t know who they were playing. He didn’t really even care. He couldn’t focus on the screen anyway because he could barely see it.
His left eye was swollen almost completely shut, the skin above his cheek swelling with a bruise that didn’t quite reach its full potential purple quite yet. It was still fresh and red and raw and sore when he touched it with his fingertips. His wrist throbbed too, deep in the muscle or maybe even the bone, he wasn’t sure, where his dad had grabbed it.
It hurt to move. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think.
So JJ just sat beside his dad on the couch like a statue. Small and tense and pulled up into himself with his knees tight to his chest, even though it made his ribs hurt even worse. Anything to make himself feel smaller…take up less space. His breath came out shallow and quiet too cause he didn’t want to risk making another sound that might set his dad off. His pajamas, the Spider-Man ones he loved but were finally about to outgrow, were wrinkled and stained with blood. The sleeve on the one side was torn and the fabric was stretched from where Luke had yanked him.
JJ wasn’t crying.
He’d already cried earlier, sitting up on the bathroom floor after it first happened, whispering apologies to no one. Apologies that he didn’t even know what for. Maybe spilling his milk at breakfast last week. For laughing too loud. For talking at the wrong time, for talking too much, for saying all the wrong things.
For just existing wrong.
He didn’t know what exactly set Luke off this time.
But JJ never did.
It was just the routine now…the cycle.
And now here they were just sitting side by side on the couch like nothing happened.
JJ wanted to go to the Chateau. To John B’s.
He wanted that more than anything. Just to lie on that old couch, hear the marsh through the busted window JJ had offered to fix last week, let John B give him an ice pack and a soda like nothing was wrong.
But Big John might be home. And JJ looked like this.
He didn’t want to explain.
Couldn’t. Not to a grown up.
His dad said they would take him away again if that happened.
So yeah…that would only make things worse for him.
So he stayed.
Sitting in the hum of the tv on low, pretending his bones didn’t hurt, pretending he wasn’t scared. Pretending he hadn’t started keeping a mental list in his heads of all the things he must’ve done wrong. Pretending he didn't already know this wasn’t the last time, even though his dad said it would be.
He looked over at him and JJ watched with one good eye as he leaned back, a hand resting on the couch, the other holding a half-empty can of beer. He hadn’t said a word in the last twenty minutes. He didn’t look at JJ. Barely looked at the game either. Just stared with glassy eyes. His boots were still on and that made JJ nervous. He smelled like sweat and smoke and motor oil and that made JJ remember what it was like before his mom died and his dad actually liked him.
JJ looked away before Luke could catch him staring. He was shaking, but trying not to. He was hiding it. His fingers holding onto his knees so hard his knuckles turned white. Desperate to stop anything that would maybe tip things back over.
Then came the hiss.
The sharp, unmistakable sound of a beer can cracking open.
JJ flinched, hard, before he could stop himself and sucked in a breath as pain shot through his side. But Luke didn’t seem to notice, or care. Or maybe he did because he lifted the can, took a slow swig and then, without even looking at him, he held it out towards JJ.
“One sip,” he said, tone rough but neutral. “It’ll make you feel better.
JJ stared at the can.
It was silver and blue and the metal was so shiny it glinted off the glow of the tv. There was sweat beading down the aluminum, cold and wet and the sharp metallic tang hit his nose even from where he sat.
He didn’t move.
“Go on,” Luke said. “Don’t gotta be a little bitch about it.”
JJ hesitated for a second longer. He really didn’t want to. But then Luke turned his head towards him, just enough for JJ to see the flicker of annoyance in his eyes.
“I said take a sip.”
JJ moved then. He reached out with his good hand, the one he didn’t want to rip off his arm and his fingers wrapped around the can.
It felt weird. But he brought it to his mouth anyway and tipped it back just enough. The beer hit his tongue, bitter and sharp and he gagged. The taste was sour and the burn of the bubbles was enough to make his belly twist. He tried to swallow but choked and coughed instead. Some of it came back up his throat and he winced, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve.
Then he braced himself.
For the slap, the yelling, the sudden sting of Luke’s hand.
But it didn't come.
Instead, Luke laughed.
Not big and not loud, just this low, rough, little chuckle. Like JJ had surprised him. Like it was funny.
Then he reached out and clapped JJ on the back, too hard, like everything he did, but not in a way that hurt.
“There you go,” he said, grinning at the TV. “Tough guy.”
JJ blinked.
That grin from his dad. It wasn’t warm. Wasn’t comforting. But it was something.
JJ hadn’t seen his dad smile in weeks. Months even, maybe. He really couldn’t remember the last time his dad had looked at him without disgust or annoyance or exhaustion on his face.
It lit something small in his chest. Something warm. Pride maybe? Relief? Hope? Maybe just something stupid and breakable.
He couched again, trying to mirror the chuckle. Laughed like it hadn’t made his throat hurt. Like the tears in his eyes were from the bubbles and not everything else.
Luke reached for the can again. Drank, and then handed it back.
“Go on,” he said. “You’ll get used to it.”
JJ hesitated. He hates that he did. But after a beat he drank again.
And from then on…it just kept happening.
JJ came home from second grade two weeks later to find the house filled with music, scratchy old country playing from the kitchen radio that made his stomach sink almost immediately. The music only meant one thing: Luke had been drinking all day.
He stepped inside slow and easy, letting the screen door shut behind him with a barely audible click.
There was a cooler on the table. The white one, the one Luke used for fishing trips. His dad was sitting at the table, thumbing through a handful of ones, a beer in his hand, shirt off, boots muddy and a cigarette burning in the ashtray beside him.
JJ tried to walk past quiet, hoping he could disappear to his room.
But Luke looked up.
“Hey,” he said, slurring slightly. “Come here a sec. Come celebrate with your daddy.”
JJ froze.
Luke gestured at the cooler with his chin. “Grab a beer. C’mon now.”
JJ didn’t move. Luke’s eyes narrowed down at him.
“You too good for me now?” he asked, mockingly. “You think you’re better than your old man?”
JJ didn’t hesitate then. Just swallowed, turned, grabbed a can and brought it to his lips.
The taste hadn’t gotten any better. But he drank it. Two big gulps. Enough to earn a nod and a laugh. Enough to keep Luke from getting up. From yelling. From dragging him back with a fist in his hair. Enough to keep Luke laughing the rest of the night.
And afterwards, while JJ laid in bed with a headache and a stomach that rolled, his cheek wasn’t swollen, his eyes weren’t black and bruised and his ribs weren’t broken.
So in his seven-year-old brain he did the math. Not that JJ was good at math…but this one seemed to work out pretty damn easy.
Beer = Peace
Drinking = Safety
A sip = A smile and maybe even a laugh just like old times.
And what else was love supposed to look like?
It became a ritual JJ willingly participated in. A sip here, a shared can there. Luke would grunt and toss him one from across the room and JJ would catch it like a dog and a bone. Like a reward. Like it meant he was in Luke’s inner circle now. Like he was earning something...approval, protection.
Maybe even love?
He learned how to drink without flinching at the taste and at the bubbles. Learned to laugh with Luke even when the beer made his stomach turn into knots. Learned to tilt his head, match his dad’s posture, echo his slurred words.
Learned that pretending was easier.
It was never about the taste, really. Or even the way it made him feel. It was all about keeping the peace if he pretended hard enough.