i'm at the chateau and i feel alright

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/53464519.

Rating: Not Rated

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Fandom: Outer Banks (TV)
Characters: JJ Maybank, Luke Maybank, the pogues mentioned
Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, JJ Maybank Needs a Hug, take
whatever love you can get, none of us are undeserving
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2024-02-02 Words: 1,468 Chapters: 1/1
 i'm at the chateau and i feel alright
by allenn

Summary

JJ loves his dad.

If allowed, he would like to be hugged forever and ever in his dad's arms, tight enough to let
him know that it is indeed a hug, intentional and with earnestness, but unsuffocating, please,
if possible.
JJ loves his dad.

If allowed, he would like to be hugged forever and ever in his dad's arms, tight enough to let
him know that it is indeed a hug, intentional and with earnestness, but unsuffocating, please,
if possible.

It hurts, sometimes, to breathe when his dad is around, even though he's on the sofa watching
TV and JJ safe in his locked room. Dad has a presence so enormous it physically pains his
ribcage, makes him all nauseous and weak, like his limbs aren't limbs no more, like it's only
there for his dad to tear apart, or himself. Rivulets of sound pervading through the wall and
wood and too-loud music, and JJ forgets how to inhale.

It's insane because his dad has better things to mind, but JJ has long convinced himself that
every time his dad sits on the sofa, drinking, he’s actually thinking about him, berating his
worthless piece of a son, even if he's kind enough to keep it to himself this time. He strains to
listen to so little noise, and when he catches something: remote TV thrown on the table,
clunks of bottles and cans against shoes, floor, and it's a proof, somehow, that Dad is
dissatisfied, of something he can never really pinpoint, but probably and most likely caused
by him.

It isn't at all weird, is it? Nor is it a product of trauma like Kie said, once. JJ loves his dad
because he's JJ's dad. That doesn't necessarily mean he isn't unbearably frightened of him,
doesn't mean JJ can stand the sight of him. But, like, no children could exist between their
parents, old and big and all-knowing, living in their parents’ house, eating food and wearing
clothes they bought with their money, and not feel even a bit cowed, afraid, conscious of their
limited agency, could they?

(Some children are lucky, JJ guesses. John B., Kie, and Pope are so lucky and they don't even
know it. Maybe it's wretched, to see them talk about how much their parents suck and loathe
them for it (just for a minute, five, tops), but he does. Loathe them, so much and so
overwhelming and so brisk, that when it happens, he just has to sort of rationalize it in
whatever way he can still be touching his friends and not burst, cry, or throw up.

JJ will suffer all and any to be allowed to be with them.)

It's a different kind of love, something nothing can ever fully excise – obligatory, duty-bound.
Father and son, you know. They are of the same essence, forced to endure each other's
bleakness, both missing, hoping, and longing, for the same woman to finally come home;
wife, mother.

If there's anything interlinking JJ and Luke Maybank, and if it isn't the unbreakable bond of
parent-child-hood relationship (that his dad neglects, anyway), it's Mama.

JJ wants himself and Dad to be together when Mama comes back, to be a good child so she
won't leave again, to be so good she or his dad or himself can never use it against him when –
if, anyone chooses to go. They agree on this one thing, at least.

And he is not a good child. And Dad knows it, even long before JJ ever did anything wrong.
Dad knows because it's a dad power. JJ needs that power if he wants his mama to ever come
back, and be Mama. JJ will take an hour visit, a brush of shoulders as they accidentally pass
each other in some busy street, a picture long hidden in his dad's pocket, a drunken story of
vague memories of youth, foolery, love. JJ is forgetful by nature and it's a terrible thing to not
remember your own mother's face.

Dad brags about it, every once in a while, periodically, because it’s a day that's supposed to
be special for him and Mama but will never tell JJ, never let him in. In these rare times where
Dad is home and JJ, too, and his dad isn't too resentful and JJ isn't too slow to recognize the
pattern, Dad will talk about her and JJ will be forced to stomach the nearness.

The stories are almost always perplexing, wantonly cloudy and esoteric. Always of
something private, some adventure you could never understand. Always closed with cutting
remarks and a sneer, “until you, of course.” And other mutterings about how he should've
killed him, shouldn't let her keep him at all, but JJ will be long gone already, will recount the
bits of stories to himself over and over, will it into memory.

Mama is pretty, the prettiest. Blonde and fair and tall. Smart, fun, and full of joy. JJ wants
terribly to sneer back at his dad, and say the same thing, because he was four the first time
Mama went away. What could a four year old child possibly do that's so very bad she has to
leave? Perhaps Dad knows Mama better, definitely longer, but JJ is family, too, isn't he?
He wants to shake his dad and asks with abandon, “how could you not love what was born
out of your own love? Did you not love her? Did you not say so many times how dreadfully
alike I am with her? Are you fucking stupid?” and punch him, twice, at minimum.

JJ loves his dad, because the act of loving, at least for him, is ineffable; a transcendental thing
that can only be achieved either out of immoderate sacrifice, or by duty arosed as soon as one
blooded another. Love and inescapableness are synonymous, and if this bond he and his dad
have isn't a little bit like love (the way people in general conceived it), it's axiomatically
inescapable.

His friends, as lovely and amazing as they are, don't know, know JJ. He and John B. met
when they were eight years old and by that time, JJ was no longer JJ, was he? It was a
version of JJ that his dad had already polished to some extent – to be less JJ that his mama
hated, and more likable and just good enough to be acceptable for friendship. It doesn’t
matter, of course, that they don't know the person he was before (when he was maybe still a
little soft around the edges and trusting to a fault and not very quick to anger). This is the
person they acknowledge.

Another thing he can't deny besides the love between them (him and his dad), however
indecorous, is that the only reason why JJ has his friends is Dad with his dad power, keeping
him in check. If JJ so chooses to sever the ties that bind and leave, he will lose his friends.
He's sure of that. Anyway, what's the truest form of love if not the absolute torment you
derived from it and yet refuse to rid yourself of?

JJ loves his dad, only precisely because he loves his friends. It's a higher and sublimer kind of
love.

It's something that if taken from him, he will not persist. JJ is very much dependent on them
allowing him to be a friend to keep on breathing and surviving – not dissimilar to a drug with
which he will die without. It's a sad life because they don't have any idea just how much JJ
loves them, so in over abundance that it's nothing but embarrassing, really.

So, thanks, Dad. You give me nothing but a miserable life, but leastways you also give me the
quick fix.
They are so kind, so generous to give love easily and freely to someone as rotten as him. I
love you, J, they'd say, mindlessly. And JJ will swoon, alright. He will forget himself and
grins a real smile and coos at them, throwing his arms, his head, his cheek, to touch. At night,
though, alone in his room with a perpetual threat of a presence somewhere in the house and
an ever-evasive sleep, he won’t be very nice, couldn't. If only he isn't too bitter, too ill-
natured to say (to himself because JJ is scared of losing them), “you don't love me like I love
you, though. None of you will cease to exist in case of separation—” he'd whisper, closing in
on himself, and he might cry a little bit, but hidden (face in the pillow, or under a blanket that
reek), because this, too, is a part of JJ his mama hated, his dad beaten out of. His friends
won't like this JJ very much, he bet.

And it's cruel. It's a malicious demand. If the cost of them loving JJ the same exact amount as
his is to suffer all and any, he doesn't want it. JJ can do immoderate sacrifice for his friends,
easy.
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