Not Waving but Drowning All This Time

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/53063413.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/M
Fandom: Outer Banks (TV)
Relationship: Kiara "Kie" Carrera/JJ Maybank
Characters: JJ Maybank, Kiara "Kie" Carrera
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2024-01-15 Words: 1,032 Chapters: 1/1
 Not Waving but Drowning All This Time
by fayedartmouth

Summary

As if being bruised and broken is just the way it’s meant to be.

Notes

A/N: Title taken from a song called Love Alone, way back when, by a band called
Caedmon’s Call, but the line is obviously inspired by the poem by Stevie Smith.

A/N 2: Set roughly during/after the S2 finale with references to the first two seasons and mild
preseries assumptions. No beta, so mistakes are my own.

Pairing: JJ/Kiara (but it’s kind of one-sided at this point, like it is in canon)
What’s different this time – the only thing that’s really different – is that Kiara sees him take
the hit. There, on the deck, she ducks the swing from the machete. She looks up, craning her
head just in time to see JJ behind her. She’d seen it coming; he hadn’t. He takes it to the head
and goes down – hard – the backward momentum sending him limply over the edge of the
ship. She hears him hit the water, and when she looks, he’s face-down and unmoving in the
sea.

Usually, he just turns up with a black eye and a split lip and a crazy story about picking fights
or falling out of trees. And then Kiara rolls her eyes while Pope laughs at him and John B
takes it in stride.

Typical JJ.

As if being bruised and broken is just the way it’s meant to be.

-o-

She can’t remember the first time she noticed. She can’t remember the first bruise, the first
cut, the first hurt. It’s just always been that way, since he was a dirty-faced kid getting kicked
out of the fourth grade for being a shit.

All the trouble he gets into, it seems right. Reckless, stupid, and always grinning. He lives
with gusto, putting himself into every bad idea, all consequences be damned. He never has
doubts. He never has reservations.

Like it’s all been his idea from the start.

-o-

At 16, not much has changed. He’s still a dirty-faced kid more often than not, and he’s still
getting kicked out of school. And he’s still a shit, interminably so.

He stands on the bow of a ship drinking into the wind. He steals a gun and fires in the air at
the break. He picks every fight even if he can’t win them.

He can never win them, for the record. That’s what it is to be a Pogue.

“Stupid things have good outcomes all the time,” he says.

Shit-ass grin, cocky as hell.

Like he can will it to be true.

(Like he needs to will it to be true.)

-o-

Unbreakable, she thinks every time she looks at him.

He’s got to be unbreakable.

(She doesn’t put it together, yet. Broken things can’t be broken again.)

-o-

But she sees him break just once, standing in a hot tub, having made a series of the worst
decisions one person could possibly make in a short period of time. It’s disaster upon disaster,
and she’s pissed as hell that he’s being so selfish and reckless with all their lives until she
sees the bruises.

And she realizes, he’s drowning.

Head above water, standing right in front of her.

He’s drowning.

-o-

(The unbreakable broken boy.)

-o-

When he goes over the edge of the ship, there’s no second-guessing it. She’d do anything for
her friends, and that’s why she’s here in the first place. There’s no way in hell she’s watching
JJ drown.

She goes up and over after him.

-o-

In the hot tub, lit up with a generator in John B’s yard, he keeps himself together until she
reaches out for him, wraps him up in her arms. She feels it, the way he breaks, the way he
collapses into her. The confession isn’t surprising, really. It’s just surprising that he has to say
it, that she hasn’t known it all along.

“I just want to do the right thing,” he sobs.

She strokes his head, his tears on her shoulder. “I know,” she says. “I know.”

-o-

Back on the ocean, buoyed by the restless waves, turning him over takes some work, and she
treads water while she pulls him back on herself. His body has no life this time, limp against
her as she props him up. The weight is heavy, and her heart is pounding so loud that she can’t
tell if his is beating at all.
She begs him to wake him. She begs him to come back to her. She begs him to hold on, hold
on, hold on.

But treading water is exhausting.

And JJ’s been doing it a hell of a lot longer than she has.

-o-

Kiara’s legs start to go numb, and the swells are growing in intensity. She takes another
mouthful of water and splutters, looking at JJ to make sure he’s still there. He hasn’t moved,
though, and they’re starting to sink. She doesn’t know if she can keep them up much longer.

She thinks about drowning, about going under.

She thinks it might be fast, when it happens. It might not even hurt.

That’s not how it works, though. Drowning is slow; drowning is painful. Drowning is torture
that robs you of your breath and trades air for water. Ten minutes, and she can’t do it
anymore, but JJ’s been drowning all this time, all these years.

Every reckless idea, every time he said he had nothing left to lose.

All this time he’s been going under with no one but himself to keep his head above the
surface. She’s been here, too, watching it happen. Laughing with him (at him) as his head
goes under a little longer each time.

“I’m sorry,” she says, hoping it’s not too late for him to understand. “I’m sorry.”

-o-

She’ll go down with him, she realizes. If that’s what it takes. She’ll go down with him.

She’ll never let him drown alone.

Not ever again.

-o-

John B rescues them, pulls them up into the dinghy. It’s a near thing, and JJ almost doesn’t
come back to them this time.

But she doesn’t stop asking.

She doesn’t stop pushing.

And he opens his eyes and takes a breath.

It’s not just for her.

(It kind of feels like it’s just for her.)

-o-

She holds him close after that, fingers in his hair. She feels him breathing, and it’s relief when
she sees his feet on solid ground. It scared her, almost losing him, and it scares her more to
think that he’s been going under the entire time she’s known him.

All this time.

Not waving, but drowning.

She’s not sure how to change that.

She’s determined to find out.

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