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The Outer Banks was quieter than usual, the kind of stillness that made John B’s skin crawl. The familiar sounds of waves crashing felt distant, as though the world itself knew that something—someone—was missing.
JJ was gone.
They had barely made it back to the Outer Banks, JJ may be the one in the ground but none of them had really made it out of Morocco alive. John B’s body is aching from the long boat ride home from Lisbon. They hadn’t found Groff or the freaking crown. A dead end. All of this was just them losing over and over again. His mind couldn’t break away, it still reeled from the scene in the desert, the sand soaked crimson and JJ’s lifeless body crumpled beneath the unrelenting sun. Half of him was still in that nameless expanse of desert where they were forced to bury him. John B’s chest felt hollow, as if a piece of him had been ripped out and left behind in that unforgiving wasteland.
They’d get him home. That was the task of Kie. They’d got off the boat and she’d demanded they talk to Shoupe about exhuming him bringing his body (and John b feels sick even thinking of JJ as just a body) back. He needed to be home with them. Where he was ok, where he found a brief moment of happiness. Not that they even had Poguelandia 2.0 anymore but they’d get it back. They’d get it all back for JJ, for the future he’d never get to have.
John B strides forward. He has his own task. He docks the boat. Looks up. Freezes. Vomit rises in his throat. He pitches over and throws up. There it is in all its glory. JJ Maybanks Deep Sea Charters. It’s so fucking beautiful. JJ’s handwriting scrawled across the sign, so carefully done, so him against the white backdrop. John B had watched him paint it.
We did it baby woohoo!
He can still hear him screaming across the sky. Still see his silly little dance, the way his eyes had shone with joy on that dock. They had done it! He had done it. John B had laughed watching him with tears threatening, he watched him lean in to Kie, watched as she held him close and kissed him and something in his chest had healed, that part that had wanted this for JJ for so long, since they were eight years old. He was watching someone who deserved the world finally finally get it.
And now his chest feels raw and hollow. He watches his vomit trace its way through the waters he and JJ had gleefully ran the charters in.
How was this happening? How did they lose JJ? It’s all so wrong. So completely unimaginable.
He wishes he could go back. Wishes he could stand on this dock again and say fuck no man you’re not betting that gold on the enduro, no we’re not taking genrettes treasure hunt, no wreck diving for you and Kie! No Town Hall Meeting, no Morocco. No to all of it. He wishes he could stop it all.
He’d give anything to look up and see JJ’s ridiculous joyful dance again. The way his face had lit up.
Captain Maybank at your service.
He squeezes his eyes shut. He swears he can still hear him. He takes a breath. Another. Till he can cope again.
‘Not the first time I’ve found you puking on my property Routledge.’
And there he is.
John B looks up. He’s standing in the door to their bait shop drinking their beer and John B wants to drown him.
But now he has his own task to complete. The others had wanted to go with him but John B had to do this one. He knew it was what JJ would have wanted.
Luke Maybank. His face was as hard as ever, his eyes the usual mix of disinterest narrowing when they landed on John B.
John B hated Luke more than anyone else on earth except maybe Groff right now but that was a subject he couldn’t even think about without losing it completely. He pushed Groff down into the mental box in his head below JJ and his bloodied body.
“What the hell do you want, Routledge? Look I know you kids wanted this place but I was in a tough bind alright and if J had stuck around when me and him were having our history lesson I’d have told him. It didn’t need to go down like this.” Luke snapped, leaning against the doorframe.
John B hesitated, here he was exactly where Barracuda Mike had said he’d be. Hiding out at their place at Poguelandia, it wasn’t his anymore. JJ had spent months they all had rebuilding a place that haunted him and turning it into something special. Somewhere he didn’t flinch or wake up in cold sweats in. They’d fixed up more than just the house here. And here was Luke tainting it. Strutting around the dock like he had any right to it at all. His throat tightened.
Stay on mission soldier the JJ in his head spoke up.
He hated this man, hated what he’d done to JJ for years. And yet, somehow, deep deep down he felt a twisted pang of pity for what was to come. Luke really had no idea.
“I need to talk to you,” John B said, his voice hoarse.
Luke raised an eyebrow. “About what?” He looked around ‘gotta say I like what you’ve done with the place?’
John B clenched his fists at his sides. He wanted to yell, to punch Luke, to blame him for everything. But none of that would bring JJ back.
“It’s about JJ,” John B said, his voice cracking.
Luke’s expression shifts, just for a moment, before the usual mask of indifference settled back over his features. “What about him? I know the cops are still looking for him after he done fucked up the town.” For a moment a flicker of regret runs over Luke’s face. “That shit wasn’t right. I did want to tell J before alright about the cops plea deal…’
Then he seems to be aware he’s given too much away. He steels himself back. Something John B’s seen JJ do a thousand times over. The old nature nurture argument then.
‘But that kids dumb princess routine broke out and he hightailed it out wouldn’t even listen to me…’
John B doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But he’s so done with Luke talking about JJ like trash, like he’s done his entire life when he’s not beating him within an inch of it.
‘What do you expect?’ He hisses. ‘You fucked him over his entire life, made him feel worthless like he’s just the latest in a line of fuck ups genetically headed to the gutter. Then he finds out you aren’t even his fucking dad!’
Luke inhales sharply at that, the usual anger flashes in his eyes, familiar, tale as old as time. ‘He told you then?’
‘Yes he told me!’
‘Not surprised. Never got what he saw in you you and your nosy old man but he didn’t half stick to you like glue.’
Someone to love him?
Safety.
A home.
‘Look tell J when he gets his head out of his pussy ass to come talk to his father, because I am Routledge, I’m the one who took that baby in alright. Hard for your judge judy little brain to understand I know but I saved him. If it weren’t for me he’d have drowned with his mama!’
John B moves closer walking up the entrance of the shop. Luke is clutching that beer a little too hard now. John B’s mind goes back to earlier times when they’d done a version of this dance before, when he could no longer sit back and watch as JJ bled at the chateau, when he’d took matters into his own hands. When he’d felt the hands in front of him now around his own neck. When Big John spent the night in jail for assault.
He’s not afraid anymore.
‘Fuck you!’ He says slowly and clearly.
Luke meets his gaze. ‘You want to go big guy? Think you can take me now that it? Think you and my boy are going to come around here for a little wrestling match? Remember who you’re god damned talking to.’
John B’s hands are around Luke’s throat in a second. The beer bottle falls to the floor.
‘You broke him!’ He yells and Luke's eyes are bugging now. Pupils dialating as he claws at John B’s hands. ‘You broke him every day of his life. You beat him and tortured him in every single way you could torture a person. You made him feel worthless’.
Luke is gasping now.
Stay on mission soldier mind JJ says.
Fuck this mission.
‘Get off…’ Luke splutters face reddening.
‘Do you know how many times I had to put him back together? How many times I had to stitch him up and mop up the blood and set his bones because you kept on breaking them? I doubt it because you were always so off your nut.’ He shoves Luke again backward hands still gripping into his throat. ‘ and you know what’s funny? That wasn’t even the worst part.’
Luke’s panicking now. It’s an emotion John B has rarely seen in this man’s eyes. Good let him be scared for a change. Let him feel the life being slowly choked from his body.
‘The worst part was the shit you’d say! Because I couldn’t fix that. I couldn’t ever make him believe he was worth something. I could stitch up every stab, I could set every bone, I could remove every shard of glass from his poor fucked up body but I couldn’t get inside his head. I couldn’t get in there and do anything about what you put there!’
Luke’s eyes start to roll John B feels a satisfaction in that. Is this what JJ felt every time he choked him out? Every time he’d stumble through the chateau door with hand shaped bruises black against his pale neck. Good! Who treats a child that way? Who hurts their child?
He pictures Groff and they’re both in front of him now. Both of them who hurt JJ in every single way possible. The ones who took everything from him. His childhood, his sanity, his stability, and finally his life. Fuck them both. They deserve to be in the ground not JJ never JJ.
He was their child!
Their child.
And then Sarah’s there in his head.
Groff and Luke disappear and she says ‘I’m pregnant’.
And John B let’s go.
Their child.
His child.
He claws himself back. Luke falls to the floor gasping.
He can’t raise a child if he’s inside for murder. And he wants to. He wants to do everything his father and all of JJ‘s didn’t. He wants to be the absolute opposite of the hand they were dealt.
If this child didn’t exist he thinks he’d have just crossed that line and he wouldn’t have even cared.
He wants to kill him.
His hands shake, vibrate with the energy of finishing the job.
Stay on mission soldier.
Fuck off JJ.
‘You’re going to regret that boy’ Luke gasps struggling to breathe. ‘You think my boy's going to be happy to hear you damned near strangled his old man?’
He staggers to his feet. John B shoves him back again hard, into the wooden pillar on the dock they built in their shop.
Something flutters down from above. It’s their first ever bill from their first ever sale.
They’d all been so happy. So full of promise. Of life.
He meets Luke’s eyes. Gets down real nice and close. He wants to look at him now.
‘He won’t care’ he says evenly, ‘because JJ’s dead.’
The words hang in the air, heavy and suffocating.
Luke stares at him, his brow furrowing, mouth flopping open almost comically as though he hadn’t heard correctly. “You what?”
“He’s dead,” John B repeated, louder this time. His voice shook, anger and grief bubbling to the surface. “Your boy is gone Luke. He’s not coming back.”
Luke steps forward, his hand gripping the edge of the counter. 'No...' he stutters, 'You're lying.' For a moment, he looked almost... vulnerable. He scans John B's face. He can see the moment he realises it's true. Then his face twisted into something darker. “What happened?”
John B doesn’t owe Luke a thing. He starts to turn and it’s Luke’s turn this time hands at his throat flinging him back. ‘WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BOY?’
John B takes a shaky breath feels the splinters of the beams in his back. ‘It’s a little late to start caring now isn’t it?’
But it’s weird Luke is lost in his own head. John B can literally see the wheels turning. The shock setting in. Good he hopes it hurts him he hopes it cuts him to the bone, he hopes he feels a fraction of what John B does right now. He ain’t sugarcoating this for him. He has his own responsibility in all of this. If he hadn’t stopped the property being theirs JJ wouldn’t have started a riot or ended up at goat island or murdered in Morocco!
“Groff killed him,” he said, his words sharp, biting, he wants him to hear the worst. “Stabbed him to death, twisted the knife. Left him bleeding out in the middle of the desert.”
Luke goes white. His face literally drains of all colour. 'Groff?'
‘He was choking on his own blood’ John B throws in just to make him really hurt. ‘He bled out in seconds.’
Luke’s jaw tightens, his knuckles white still gripped in John B’s shirt.
‘Wh…what?’
‘Groff’s a psycho but hey I guess you already probably knew that when you took his kid.’
‘My kid,’ Luke says but there’s no fire behind it. He looks…well he looks broken for a minute. John B wasn’t sure if he was capable of that. ‘J was my kid.’
John B shakes his head. Peels Luke’s hands easily off his neck. He can’t do this. Suddenly he’s exhausted. All the fight goes out of him and he can see it go out of Luke.
He slides down to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. John B follows him. He’s not sure he could stand even if he wanted to. The adrenaline crash knocking him on his ass.
‘Where is he?” Luke asks quietly. ‘Where is he now? I want to see him.’
John B stared at him, his chest heaving, oddly territorial at the idea of Luke being anywhere near JJ even after death. “What does it matter? You didn’t care about him when he was alive.”
Luke’s eyes flicker to the floor, he’s swallowing like he doesn’t know where to go with that. “He’s still my son,” he mutters, his voice barely audible.
John B wants to yell, to tell him he didn’t deserve to call JJ his son. But instead, he turns away, his heart too heavy to carry the weight of another
‘We buried him in the desert in Morocco.’
Luke bristles at that ‘Morocco? Fucking Morocco? What did you do that for?’
John B allows himself a second. ‘We had no choice, we had to go after Groff.’
‘So you’re telling me my boy is out in some sandy pit somewhere in some foreign country alone?’
John B loses it at that. It’s something that has been gnawing at him too. The endless vision in his head of JJ under a mountain of sand all by himself.
‘Fuck you like he hasn’t been alone since you left him and went wherever you freaking went when he was 16. Don’t pretend to give a damn now’.
Luke’s shoulders go down he suddenly looks 100 years old. Like he’s aged in seconds. ‘I ain’t leaving him there’.
‘We’re bringing him back. We’re talking to shoupe about it.’
‘Yeah? What are the pigs going to do? They’ve done nothing for us our whole lives.’
John B ignores that. Truth is he doesn’t trust cops easily either. Them trying him for a murder he didn’t commit and throwing him in jail wasn’t even the half of it. He knows what Luke means.
There’s a deep silence stretching out between the two of them now. John B is sat on the floor of their shop opposite the man who broke his friend in every way possible.
It’s wrong. This isn’t what this space should be. It should be JJ excitedly hurling himself in from a charter all wild hair and excitement and life.
But it’s just two broken people sat on the floor, half living half dead.
‘Was he in pain?’ Luke says finally. ‘J? Was he in pain?’
And John B is completely frozen to see a tear on the man’s cheek.
His breath catches. He feels like he’s been stabbed too. I wasn’t there. He thinks. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there.
It’s the biggest failure of his life.
He had just stood there in that sandstorm, Sarah on his mind and he had let JJ send him away. He had taken his eyes off JJ.
He had failed him at the end in the worst possible way.
They’d spent all their lives since they were eight years old being there for one another and when it mattered the most John B had forgotten their rule.
How had be forgotten? He knew JJ , knew how self sacrificial he was. Knew he’d throw himself in front of anything or anyone for them. But they’d all just got complacent about that hadn't they? They had just assumed he’d be ok because he got back up. That was who JJ was. Every single time he got back up.
Except this one.
He knows JJ was in pain. Could see it from the frown on his face as he lay cold and dead in front of him.
‘No he wasn’t in pain,’ he lies.
Deny deny deny head JJ sings.
Luke seems to accept that and he puts his face in his hands and then he’s sobbing. He’s sobbing loud gasping sobs and he’s not even trying to hide it and John B doesn’t know what to do.
It’s like an alternate universe. Luke Maybank finally showing any emotion other than anger and JJ has to be dead for anyone to see it. It tracks.
‘I fucking hate you, I really really hate you.’ John B says.
He means it with everything.
‘I know, kid’ Luke sobs. ‘I know’.
Then John B’s crying too.
Luke kicks a beer across the floor to him at some point. It rolls across the wood and John B stifles the part of him that’s angry he’s being offered beer they paid for by a prick or an alcoholic abuser and puts it to his lips.
‘To J.’ Luke says tilts his bottle.
‘JJ’ John B manages with a broken heart.
He thinks what a kick JJ would have got out of this insanity, John B and Luke sharing a drink like war buddies or something.
‘Where’s Groff?’ Lukes voice is low now. Back to the rage mode. John B welcomes it anyone against Groff can help take him down.
‘We don’t know. We heard he may come back to Goat Island he wasn’t in Lisbon so it was a wasted trip.’
‘Let him come back’ Luke says eyes dark and deadly.
For once John B is glad to see it. This time they can be aimed at the right person.
‘We’re going to get him’.
Luke fixes him with a look. His face is still wet with tears the marks where John B strangled him red against his neck. ‘I want in. That’s my kid. I want to be the one that ends him’.
John B puts his beer down. ‘Yeah well you spent your life hurting your kid so how about you park your ass here, you don’t get to be the one to avenge him now.’
‘I ain’t asking your permission boy.’ Luke growls. They’re back on familiar territory now. The earlier ceasefire crying session beginning to ebb away. ‘I’m going to rip that man apart. I’m going to make him bleed like he made my boy’.
‘Get in line.’
John B feels wrung out. His mouth tastes of beer and the vomit from earlier. He's bone tired in a way he's never been before and he doesn't have time for Luke's BS. But there's something he needs to know.
‘Why’d you do it?’
Luke’s bleary eyes meet his. ‘Do what?’
‘Take him in? JJ?’
Luke considers him for a moment clearly wondering how much if anything he wants to share. ‘Part was for the money’, he offers ‘but part was for Larissa. She was a good person. Groff weren’t. I felt sorry for the little guy.’
‘Why didn’t you just tell JJ? Later.’
‘That kid is like me. He hates the damned kooks he didn’t need to know he was birthed by one. Just seemed better for him to not know. One of his parents was dead anyway, the other had ran out on him, after a while I never wanted him to know.’
Luke pauses for a minute.
‘I wanted him with me.’
‘Then why?’ John B asks his heart sinking listening to Luke basically admit all JJ had wanted to hear while he was alive. ‘Why did you hurt him so many times? Why did you take everything out on him if you claim to want him?’
‘It’s all I knew alright. My father dealt with me the same and his father before him. And JJ had a smart mouth alright you know that?’
‘Don’t…’ John B spits, ‘don’t!’ Because JJ never deserved the endless abuse the sick fear whenever he had to go home, the years being hungry and in pain and afraid. ‘You don’t get to make it his fault’.
Luke’s eyes narrow. ‘I felt guilty. I felt guilty about lying about it all. I started using the money to buy gear and to escape it. Things got a little out of hand ok?’
A little out of hand.
Like 19 years of child abuse was a little out of hand.
‘You gave him a shitty life,’ he says. Unable to help himself. ‘You gave him nothing Luke and he still turned into the best person I knew’.
‘Yeah well you didn’t help alright. Sticking your oar into everyone else’s business. Swinging at me like his guard dog or something. Before he met you he was a good boy and then suddenly he’s answering back and being a little shit!’
‘Oh right so it’s my fault now? JJ‘s dead so I’m the one that made you beat and abuse your child right? It’s my fault’
Luke stands up now, on the defensive, ‘Yeah maybe it is your fault. You and your treasure obsessed little gang. You and your treasure obsessed crazy daddy. If you hadn’t brought my kid into all of this maybe he wouldn’t be rotting in a desert in fucking Africa right now. How could you let this happen?”
John B’s grief ignites into fury. “Me? You’re seriously blaming me? After everything you did to him? You beat him for years, Luke. You made him think he didn’t matter, that he wasn’t worth saving. Don’t you dare put this on me.”
But deep down Luke touches the rawest of nerves because it’s all John B’s been able to think about since they buried him. The sick weight of guilt lying heavy and low in his stomach.
I can’t give up on the hunt man, I don’t care who’s out there who’s trying to kill us do you understand that?
That’s what he’d told JJ bruised and scared stood before him. He had wanted to go to Yucatan, he had wanted to be safe, and John B had dragged him right back into danger time and time again.
Sure JJ had bet the treasure this time but it was John B’s treasure hunt that had started it all.
He wasn’t willing to let Luke see just how right he was on that one.
“You’re his father,” John B spat, his voice rising. “You were supposed to protect him, and you failed. You’re just as much to blame as Groff.”
Luke’s shoulders slumped, and for the first time, John B saw something he didn’t expect: regret. The fight had gone out of him again.
‘Then why'd you even come here to tell me? Wanted to hurt me did you boy?’
For JJ.
JJ wouldn’t have wanted Luke finding this out from the cops. Despite all of it despite everything he had loved this lowlife stood before John B. John B owed him this.
‘Maybe I wanted to take one last look at our home.’ He says. Because Luke doesn’t deserve his honesty now.
‘I didn’t want to take it from him you know’, Luke finally admits. ‘I just needed to get the pigs off my back.’
John B sees JJ‘s face in that town hall when he’d turned around and seen his father. Betrayal wasn’t a big enough word for it.
‘Hope it was worth it.’ He throws out. ‘Hope it was worth the last time you saw your son.’
‘I loved him.’ Luke says. It hits John B like a punch.
It’s like all the air is sucked out of the room. ‘I did love him in my way.’
‘Like any of that matters now he’s gone.’ John B says quietly. Because it doesn’t. What good does love do when it comes with the amount of pain JJ had to endure. What good are Luke’s declarations and hollow thoughts now. The one person who needed to hear them will never be there again.
He turns, steps toward the dock.
‘Look John B...' he stills. In all the years he's had the misfortune of knowing Luke he's never called him John B. Boy, shithead, kid, Routledge, he never used his name. "I need you to forgive me.’
John B freezes at that.
What?
Luke's eyes are shining again, glassy, lost. ‘I need you to get that I didn’t mean for this to happen for this to be it for me and J. I didn’t mean for it to end this way’.
John B’s never forgiving him. It’s something he can’t offer. He knows JJ would but JJ had always been better than him. So inherently good.
'Why?'
Why do you need me to forgive you?
'Because he ain't here, because that kid, he loved you.'
Because I can't hear it from him, goes unsaid.
John B can forgive a lot of things from a lot of people, he can't forgive Luke. He can't ever forgive him.
‘You took everything he had. You gave him less than nothing you don’t get to make up for that with me now.’
‘Fine. Then get the fuck off my dock Routledge’ Luke says hot and angry again. Pain in there too. Regret all of it. All of it too goddamned late.
“Our dock,” John B says, his voice hollow. But he walks away.
He only looks back one more time as the boat sails away. JJ Maybank's Charters gleams in the moonlight. Luke’s silhouette alone inside.
John B leaves him behind, surrounded by ghosts.
‘Mission accomplished Captain’. He whispers.
The JJ in his head answers him. ‘Mission accomplished Colonel.’
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