if i follow you to the river, send my blues out to the sea

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/53396191.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Categories: F/M, Gen
Fandom: Outer Banks (TV)
Relationships: Sarah Cameron & JJ Maybank, Sarah Cameron/John B. Routledge, Sarah
Cameron & Kiara "Kie" Carrera, Sarah Cameron & Kiara "Kie" Carrera
& Cleo & Pope Heyward & JJ Maybank & John B. Routledge
Characters: Sarah Cameron, JJ Maybank, Kiara "Kie" Carrera, John B. Routledge,
Cleo (Outer Banks), Pope Heyward, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Past Rape/Non-
con, Sarah Cameron-centric, Sarah Cameron needs a Hug, she gets one,
Sarah Cameron & JJ Maybank Friendship, Sarah Cameron & Kiara
"Kie" Carrera Friendship, Protective John B. Routledge, Protective JJ
Maybank, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Basically Sarah was
assaulted pre-canon and repressed the shit out of it, And years later the
guy is back in town, Healing, Found Family, The guy is definitely dead
in a ditch courtesy of Cleo and her machete
Language: English
Series: Part 2 of the ocean does not forgive (and neither do we)
Stats: Published: 2024-01-30 Words: 5,353 Chapters: 1/1
 if i follow you to the river, send my blues out to the sea
by Sapphic_terror

Summary

Sarah is fine, perfectly fine, not a damn thing is wrong with her. She found a family, a boy
who loved her, and they got the gold. Everything was, for once, going their way.

So of course it doesn’t last.

Sarah is reminded of her past in the worst of ways, thankfully she has her family to protect
and love her

Notes

Should I be updating my other 55k fic? Probably. Am I avoiding it bc it makes me slightly

nervous? Yes, I am. But regardless enjoy me projecting my fear of men + my urge to be loved
conditionally and want for intimacy onto Sarah, and giving her a hug bc even in Canon my
girl needs one. This is about 20% angst, and then 80% hurt/comfort after. Enjoy me
shamelessly loving JJ and Sarah friendship, fighting the urge to make the pogues poly so
Sarah and Kie can kiss, while also making John B a great bf :)

TW the past rape is pretty relevant to the story so as well as there being a flashback, although
the actual rape is never described in great detail it is implied heavily so be careful

Title from The River by Daisy Jones and the Six

See the end of the work for more notes

Sarah is fine, perfectly fine, not a damn thing is wrong with her. She found a family, a boy
who loved her, and they got the gold. Everything was, for once, going their way.

So of course it doesn’t last.

Kiara had mentioned off-handedly that she needed to give her parents something, but didn’t
want to see them in person. So both JJ and Sarah had offered to give it to them, Sarah
because she knows the Carreras, and JJ because he never passes up the opportunity to be an
asshole to Kooks.

They were at one of the country clubs, everything fringed with gold, and it was going fine.
Everything was fine, in the beginning.

“You know I’m just saying they don’t need all this stuff.” She rolled her eyes, JJ smiling
behind her.

“We are not getting arrested for stealing, JJ we’re literally millionaires.” They were richer
than half the Kooks on the island, the gold having turned into so much money they could
drown in it.

He made a sound of disagreement, although it didn’t mean much. JJ could and would argue
with a wall if he was bored enough. Sarah brushed past another group of middle-aged moms
drinking their weight in wine. She could feel their stares on the back of her head, and it was
only the years of manners beat into her that stopped her from flipping them off.

JJ, however, held no such restraint. Sarah grabbed his wrist, pulling him forward and away
from the - now scandalized - wine moms. They made it about halfway to the end of the
country club, where the Carreras were doing something involving golf and whiskey, when a
voice made her stop dead in her tracks.
“Is that the little Cameron? Although I guess you’re not that little anymore.” JJ nearly ran
into her as she swung around. There, coming in from one of the outside courts, was
Alexander. He looked -

He looked exactly the same as he had three years ago, and somehow that made Sarah want to
lunge at him and tear apart that damn smirk with her fingernails. Instead, she smiled,
although it may have looked more like a snarl. “Alexander, and here I thought you would
have wrapped your car around a tree years ago.”

JJ didn’t exactly tense beside her, but something about him shifted. Whereas before he was
relaxed and almost happy, now he was looking, readying himself for a fight if he saw one.
This was one of the times she cursed the fact that he was the best out of all of them at reading
body language.

Alexander laughed, and Sarah did not flinch back when he took a few steps forward. Her
fingernails dug into her palm and she took a breath in, and out, in and out. “Still got that fire I
see.”

Before she could do something stupid like lunging at him, or start screaming, JJ stepped in
between them with such ease that Sarah would have thought he was having fun. Would have
if she didn’t know him, because she knew him in about every way.

And she knew the look on his face because he had worn it when he had stepped in between
Pope and his dad one of the few times he was spitting mad although they all know that Mr.
Hayword would never lay a hand on any of them. He had worn it when his father had made
his way to the Chateau, drunk and raving, and took a step towards Kiara.

It was the look he wore when he was protecting them, when he was ready to go down
swinging so they could walk away. It was the only way JJ knew how to love, taking hits,
blood for blood, and all of that bullshit his father and survival taught him.

“Now I don’t think I know you, and I know every douchebag on this Island.” Alexander
looked at JJ like he was either crazy or stupid, the typical reaction. Despite everything, Sarah
almost smiled.
“Alexander,” He held out his hand for a moment, and then took it back quickly like JJ might
bite. However, Sarah knew, his fears were not that unfounded. He had won many fights
through dirty moves, laughing like a maniac every time. “Alexander James Mitchell.”

JJ nodded and then looked back at her, mock whispering, “Of course the Rich people give
their kids three first names, pretentious assholes.” He turned back to Alexander, smile so
wide it could be genuine if it wasn’t for the look in his eyes. “I’d say it’s nice to meet you but
-”

Alexander’s eye twitched, and she knew that look, the one that he always got before he did
something crazy. When she was thirteen he and Rafe got high on something more than pot,
and he threw a vase at her so hard that a clay shard had gotten embedded in her shoulder.

And when she was fourteen he -

He -

Suddenly Alexander was gone, someone had blocked her view. JJ had shifted from being
partially in front of her to completely hiding her behind him. Sarah wanted to hug him, or
hold his hand and drag them out of this regardless of Kiara’s parents. She would, if only she
could get her hands to stop trembling.

Voices rolled over her like water, for a moment Sarah could taste salt, could feel the sun on
her hair, and for a moment she could almost hear Kiara’s laughter in the background over
Cleo’s voice. For a moment she was safe until Alexander started raising his voice, when it
started taking that sickly sweet, mocking tone.

Sarah knew that voice, like she knew him, and how angry he got after his eye started
twitching. Sarah knew Alexander, and God how she wished she didn’t. Some things you want
to forget, some things you want to kill with a hatchet and bury in the yard outside.

She grabbed JJ’s hand and stepped out from behind him, Alexander’s jaw was tense and they
only had a few minutes before he started swinging. “Not that this pissing contest isn’t fun and
all that, but we have places to go, people to see.” She smiled, and she hoped it wasn’t as
jagged as she felt.

JJ followed her without a word, but pressed shoulder to shoulder with her she could feel the
strain, feel how badly he was holding himself back from throwing the first punch. They
walked quickly, and Sarah almost thought they would be okay, and then Alexander couldn’t
keep his mouth shut.

“I should have known you would be a bitch. You’re much prettier when you can’t talk back.”
JJ’s hand was ripped out of her own, and if Sarah was there she’d hear the yelling, hear the
fist-hitting skin and the shock rippling around them.

But Sarah wasn’t there, she was fourteen and at her first real party, she was fourteen.

She tucked her hair behind her ears, the music so loud she fought the urge to run outside and
escape it. The red solo cup crinkled beneath her fingers, and after one of Rafe’s many exes
stumbled over to her and spilled beer all over her shirt Sarah finally ran.

The sound of crickets and water lapping against the shore was much better than the music
and incoherent shouting. Sarah took a sigh of relief, even as her hands tried to strain the beer
from her favorite purple shirt.

It was definitely going in the trash after this because there was no way in hell she was going
to risk Rose, or God forbid her Dad, ask why her shirt smelled like beer. She groaned out
loud and suddenly she heard laughter.

Sarah turned on her heels, her face bright red as she saw Alexander watching her with a small
smile on his face. “You okay there Sarah?”

He was Rafe’s friend, one of the cool ones that she definitely did not stare at. She uselessly
tried to rub the stain out of her shirt, “I’m fine, just got really loud and someone - tripped.”
Alexander walked closer, the moonlight catching on his hair, and her cheeks were definitely
still red. “Parties do tend to get a little wild, especially around here. I think being stuck on
this Island makes y’all go a little crazy.”

She nodded quickly, “Yeah, it gets pretty boring, mundane. You do the same things every day,
so when you have a chance to do something new, you jump on it.”

His lips pulled up, and Sarah realized she had started bouncing a little on her feet, something
she thought she had left in her childhood. She pushed back her hair, trying to think
desperately for something, anything to talk about - anything to fill this silence.

Alexander took the decision out of her hands, he grabbed her drink, and nodded toward the
house. “Why don’t you sneak upstairs and get a new shirt? I can watch your drink so no
heathen drains it.”

Sarah smiled, and she was sure it was too damn big but this meant they were going to talk
more, and without a horrible-smelling shirt. “Thanks.” Alexander nodded, and without a look
back she ran towards the house.

By the time she got back outside, with a new light blue shirt that she would never wear again,
around five minutes had passed. Alexander smiled at her, and handed her her cup. When he
took a sip of his she didn’t hesitate to match it.

They talked for a few minutes, the conversation somehow spiraling toward turtles and the
dangers of plastic. Sarah was so excited that someone was listening that she didn’t notice
when her words started to slur, or when the stars began to blur, or when the music from the
house faded bit by bit.

She didn’t notice much of anything after that.

Sarah couldn’t feel her fingers, and she could make of the red fringing on the curtains in a
surprising amount of detail. She couldn’t, she couldn’t feel her fingers. Her stomach turned.

The plastic glow-in-the-dark stars on her bedroom ceiling. Invisible lines that connected
them, that formed Perseus and Andromeda, that slipped into Ursa Major and Minor. She had
begged her Dad to put them up for weeks until he finally gave in.

She had loved them. But she didn’t - she was at a party, she didn’t remember coming to her
bedroom? She wasn’t, the covers shifted below her, she wasn’t supposed to be here, was she?

The stars were blurry.

Someone was yelling, someone was screaming and there were footsteps. There were so many
voices flowing over each other, and the curtains in front of her had tiny red flowers in the
corners.

Her jean shorts slipped down her legs, and that was good because they were uncomfortable.
How nice of someone to help her out of them, right? Her head hurt, it was throbbing and the
stars were blurry above her. They were shifting, they were dancing above her on the ceiling.
And wasn’t that funny?

“He was right, these are the good type.” A voice, she knew that voice but she couldn’t stop
laughing because the stars were dancing on the ceiling.

A hand traced a scar on her hip, the one she got when Rafe left her alone with the scissors.
Oh, that’s right, the voice was Rafe? No, that’s wrong. The voice was with Rafe, he knew
Rafe.

She sighed, her head sinking back into her pillow. It was fine, Rafe’s friend was just helping
her out. Everything was fine.

No, that’s not right.

Footsteps behind her and this time it’s a voice she knows, except she knew the voice last time
and -

His hands on her waist and lower and her head is so fuzzy. The ground-bed is swaying
beneath her, the sky is a wrong shade of blue except it’s not a sky it’s her bedroom ceiling and
something is terribly wrong.

“Sarah?”

The stars blur, time blurs, she becomes undone.

“Hey Sarah, he’s gone now, got that asshole kicked out because he hit first. Sarah?”

She can’t breathe, she can’t move and it hurts. It all hurts. The silk sheets beneath her, the bed
rocking and there’s blood sticky on her legs.

She can't breathe? She can’t breathe and her voice is gone. She can only groan, and the
ceiling is covered in stars that were WRONG and no one is there. “Sarah!”

She snaps back, flinching away from the voice and into the wall with a crack. The first thing
she sees is JJ’s worried eyes, his hands held in front of them like he’s half-afraid she’ll take it
- him as a threat.

In the distance, Sarah can faintly hear Alexander cursing, oh, oh.

She doesn’t look at JJ before she starts running, her stomach turning, wrenching as the world
spins. Sarah makes it out the front doors and immediately crashes into the grass beside a row
of bushes, her stomach turning and upending itself.
She gags as acid burns her throat, there are no hands on her and she is not fourteen. Her
fingers dig into the dirt as her body shakes, he wasn’t supposed to be here. Rafe had nearly
killed him when he had found out what happened, the one good thing he ever did for her.

He wasn’t supposed to be here.

Sarah picks up on soft, hesitant footsteps beside her. And rather than touch her, JJ crouches
beside her within her peripheral vision and far enough away that she could run if she needed
to. He always did see too damn much.

“You got anything left in you?” It’s so sudden, and crude, and utterly JJ that Sarah actually
laughs.

Of course, the laugh turns into a sob halfway through, but it’s the thought that counts. Grief
wells in her chest so strongly that it almost breaks her. Sarah doesn’t fall as much as she
collapses onto the stupidly green lawn.

She practically bends in half, her lungs constricting, turning in on themselves. JJ’s hand is an
iron pressed to her back, fingers flat against her spine and the only thing grounding her. It
seems like even his hesitance has a breaking point.

One of her hands ends up curled on his chest and for a moment she’s so confused that she
forgets to panic. Then she feels the exaggerated rise and fall of his chest, and because humans
crave connection and touch, because they’d bond with a chair if given the time, her breathing
subconsciously matches his own.

In and out, Sarah breathes in and out. She focuses on JJ’s warmth, and the faint flickers of red
on his knuckles, the rocks digging into her knees, and the too-strong smell of fertilizers. She
forces herself to stay awake, to stay in her body, and not be lost in her fear and panic.

Eventually, her breathing slows into something almost normal, and Sarah suddenly feels so
tired, so hollow, that she almost falls to the ground. She sways, and JJ catches her, like
always. “How about we go home?”
He doesn’t ask questions, and she knows exactly what he means by home. Sarah loves him
then so fiercely it startles her. She has no idea what she did to get this lucky, but she isn’t
going to take it for granted.

She nods, and JJ helps her to her feet. He goes to pull away but she grabs his hand,
interlocking their fingers like they’re still kids on the playground. For once he doesn’t pull
away. Instead, they walk away from the country club, from Alexander, from the past she
cannot seem to escape.

As they walk towards the Chateau Sarah can hear laughter bubbling over itself. Cleo and
Pope arguing about something in a way that she’s certain means they’re just staring into each
other's eyes and smiling, those idiots. But as soon as she starts to think about them - she stops
in her tracks.

JJ pauses beside her, watching her carefully. It’s not that she’s scared of them, God she could
never be. They were her family, they were the few people in the world that would kill and die
for her, the few people she would kill and die for, and yet -

Sarah was raped when she was fourteen, and this is the first time in four years that she’s even
let herself think about it. The only person she had ever told was Rafe, and they never talked
about after he had come home with two broken knuckles, the rest bloody and Alexander
gone. They never talked about it and she, she was on the verge of breaking so she pushed it
down.

She shoved it down so hard that she could almost forget it had ever happened. And with
everything that had happened in the past few years, meeting John B, the gold, her father and
Rafe, the drownings and the gunshot, it had been easy to forget about it. She had worse things
to worry about than something that happened years ago.

But now Alexander was back, and every scarred over wound had been torn open. Sarah never
learned how to breathe with it, how to accept the pain and somehow heal. But now, she has a
family at her side who will help, who won’t let her drown so there really isn’t any other
option but going through hell and coming out on the other side.
Sarah took a deep breath, in and out, she had survived worse. She would learn how to survive
this too. Then she walked forward, and she does not flinch.

The water curled around her ankles, gently rocking back and forth. Sarah didn’t look up when
she heard the wooden boards creak, or when someone sat beside her. Kiara didn’t stare at her,
she looked out at the water and Sarah was thankful for the brief reprieve.

JJ wouldn’t have told her anything, but Kiara wasn’t stupid and the two of them did not come
back after talking to her parents. They came back too damn quiet, with a new wary look in
their eyes, although thankfully devoid of injuries.

She knew something happened, she just didn’t know what.

Sarah took a breath, salt and freshly grown flowers, it soothed her panic just a little bit. It
made it easier to speak, “Did you ever meet Alexander, Rafe’s old friend?” She turns, a small
part of her terrified that Kiara will flinch back. That her eyes will have the same haunted look
that Sarah would see if she looked in the mirror.

But Kiara just looks confused, her face puzzled as she tries to remember him, and figure out
why he’s important. The small, child-like, and broken part of her sighs in relief. Sarah looks
down, the words scraping at her throat. “He was really nice in the beginning, God I had such
a crush on him. The older, cooler boy who would occasionally give me the time of day?”

She scoffed, Sarah didn’t think she would ever be able to shake the resentment she had at her
younger self’s naivety. “He was nice and cute and I was a fourteen-year-old girl, of course, I
liked him.” Beside her, Kiara tenses slightly, like JJ had as he watched her freeze at
Alexander’s voice. “Rafe held this big party right before school started, and I just wanted to
be included. I wanted to be grown, I drank a little, not enough to get me drunk but enough
that I was more stupid than I usually was.”
Her head had been throbbing, and the party was suddenly suffocating. Sarah had to get out,
she had to run and breathe and let the panic slip over her like a wave. “Someone spilled
something on my shirt, and I ran outside. He followed me out, and he was so nice. I really - I
just, I just wanted someone to like me.”

She shrugs, as if it was easy to shake off the childish longing of love me, love me, love me. “I
had to go get changed, and I gave him my drink. He slipped something in it and then -” Sarah
had been shot and drowned and abandoned, she had watched her father die twice. She could
say the truth, “He raped me. I was fourteen, and he raped me.”

Light glints off the water in front of them, and she can hear Kiara’s sharp inhale. She can feel
the tense way she’s holding herself, like she’s amount away from snapping and hunting down
Ale-him.

There’s a moment of silence, of the water lapping at the shore behind them, wrapping around
the wooden supports. Then, her voice the same soft steel that Sarah had grown to love years
ago, “Can I hug you?”

She barely finishes nodding before arms carefully wrap around her. Kiara holds her closely,
and when Sarah tucks her head in the crook of Kiara’s neck she smells cinnamon and salt, the
ocean, and the warm cookies in the flour-covered kitchen. Kiara holds her and it feels like
home.

Her hands are trembling, Sarah can feel them against her back. Kiara pulls her as close as she
can, and she can hear the blur of her heartbeats. After a moment she whispers, the two of
them still curled together, “I love you so damn much, and what happened to you, what he did
was not your fault.”

Kiara pulls back until they can look each other in the eyes, her hands coming up to frame
Sarah’s face. “It was not your fault, you have to know that.” And logically she does.

Logically Sarah knows that never in a million years would she blame Kiara if she was in the
same position, or God forbid Wheezie. She would never even think about it, and yet -
The person she hates most these days is the dumb fourteen-year-old who knew better and still
left her drink with a random guy. It’s hard to unlearn self-hatred, and it’s even harder to
unlearn years of blame.

Before she can shake her head, or do something stupid like try and argue with Kiara, Sarah
takes a breath. In and out, in and out. She had survived hell, she had come too damn far to let
a man like Ale-like hi-like Alexander kill her.

Sarah nods slowly, and whispers, “It’s not my fault.” It sounds more like a question than a
statement but Kiara nods anyway. Then she leans closer, pressing their heads together and the
two of them have fought for each other, have nearly died for each other, how could she not
love this beautiful, devastating girl with all that she has?

The house is blissfully empty by the time she and Kiara manage to untangle themselves and
walk back. When the walk-in JJ’s perched on the counter, for a moment Sarah is almost
surprised that he isn’t off beating Alexander black and blue. But then she realizes that Cleo
and her machete are gone, and Pope is missing too.

Sarah almost smiles at the thought of Cleo, murderous and deadly in her own right, and Pope
being there to make sure she doesn’t get caught. Violence was another thing they had learned
over the years, and it fits well with their fierce protectiveness.

He walks past her with a brush of his hand against her shoulder, and almost immediately
Kiara falls into his arms. Looking at the two of them, at the way JJ stares at Kie like she’s the
world and how Kie stares right at back him, makes her ache so suddenly she almost flinches.

Sarah wants then, almost desperately, for John B. For the boy she married, for the boy she
loved with all that she had, for her - everything. But he’s at work, and she thinks she might
fall apart if she tries to text him to come home.

Instead, she walks towards their bedroom, and the added bathroom with the tub that could fit
two that was one of the first things they spent their newly found millions on. She lights a
candle, a sweet rose scent filling the air and drawing her back from the past whenever she
slips. Sarah runs a bath, distantly listening to the quiet murmur of JJ and Kie in the
background and how soon after music plays softly.

They had all learned to hate silence a while ago.

Sarah slips into the warm water, fighting the urge to scrub at her skin to get clean. It was how
Rafe had found out last time, when he came across her in her underwear scrubbing her skin
raw in the shower. Instead, she digs her fingers into the porcelain rim and leans back until the
water closes around her shoulders, soothing the tense muscles.

The world stills for a few minutes or hours, and her mind drifts until there’s a soft knock at
the door. She knows down to her bones who it is, because she’d know him anywhere,
because she’ll always know him. “Come in.”

John B walks in, his cheeks still red and lightly sunburned, his hair windswept, and he looks
at her like she’s the sort of thing you pray to. He shuts the door behind him, and without a
word, he walks to the tub and sinks to his knees beside it.

When she reaches out he grabs her hand, drawing it to his face and letting her hold it. Sarah
smiles, because there will never be a day where she doesn’t smile because of him, “Hey
Vlad.”

He leaned into her hand, and there was a gentle sort of devastation in his eyes, “Hi Val.”

For a moment she let the silence lay between them, and then she took a breath, “How much
did they tell you?”

“Well JJ sent me a text that I needed to come home now because you needed me, which
considering he never texts is like the world was ending. And then Kie dragged me to another
room and told me in no uncertain terms that I had to be careful, that I had to listen, and if I
fucked this up she would throw me off the pier.” At her look, John B managed a smile,
“You’re right, it was a lot more graphic but I was trying to be nice.”
Sarah found then, once again, that she liked John B smiling, liked how the corners of his eyes
wrinkled, liked how it looked happy. Yet another reason she found to not let Alexander win,
because she wanted to live with this boy so desperately it almost hurt -

But it didn’t, because John B never hurt.

Sarah drops her hand and he lets her, she draws ripples on the surface and like with Kiara,
figures out how to breathe to life something she never let herself think of. “Me and JJ went to
the country club to find Kie’s parents and talk to them about, God I forget about what. And
when we were there, I saw someone from my past again.”

He doesn’t tense like JJ and Kiara had, John B just watches her with steady, patient eyes. And
Sarah knows they could stay here for the rest of their lives and he would be content,
“Alexander, he was Rafe’s old friend from a while ago. He -” She takes breath, and she can’t
handle a long drawn-out story, she needs it to be done with.

“He raped me, when I was fourteen. He drugged my drink and raped me.” There, it’s done,
it’s over with. No taking it back now.

It’s dead silent, only broken by the occasional pop of the candle. Sarah presses her legs
against the porcelain tub, and then she looks up to meet John B’s eyes. That’s what breaks
her, the tears welling in them, the quiet devastation. The way he has yet to look at her like
she’s been ruined.

For the first time since she saw him, Sarah cries. It starts slow, and then she’s falling apart,
sobbing so hard her chest rattles. She leans forward almost violently, drawing her knees to
her chest and curling her arms around them.

Without a word, without a thought for his clothes, John B crawls into the tub. He’s behind
her, his back pressed against the edge, and so carefully, slow enough that she could move
away, he pulls her into his arms. He tucks her head under his chin, wrapping his arms around
her until she’s damn near cradled against his chest.
John B holds her while she sobs, while a thousand unsaid words and screams tear at her
throat. He holds her while she shivers and curls into herself, he holds her when the sobs
eventually slow. He holds her when she finally leans into his chest, soaking and utterly
exhausted.

Sarah hears it then, his voice a whisper and so damn loving she almost starts sobbing again,
“I’m here, I got you. I’m here, I’m not leaving. I’m here.” She curls her fingers into the fabric
of his shirt, pressing her face against his chest, and so utterly in love with this boy, it burns.

Almost instinctively she apologizes for being upset, for being dirty, for being a problem, “I’m
sorry - I didn’t - I didn’t mean to get so upset. I’m sorry.” They tumble off her lips like
they’re her saving grace, like Sarah is begging for forgiveness even as she falls apart.

But the words that finally yank John B out of his surprise hurt, “I’m sorry you got me, I’m
sorry I’m broken.”

“No.” His voice cuts her off so suddenly that Sarah falls quiet. He shifts them a little so he
can gently cup her face, forcing her to look at him like Kie had, to look in his eyes and see
the truth. “You’re wrong.”

John B, her boy, her beautiful, golden boy holds her face gently. “You are not broken, you are
not dirty. You are Sarah fucking Routledge, and no one has ruined you in any way.”

And like Kie, like all of the damaged people she loves desperately, Sarah wants to believe
him. She wants to believe that it wasn’t her fault, that she isn’t broken, that she was and still
is a fucking child who deserved better.

Sarah wants to believe him, so she does. She nods and tucks her head into the crook of his
neck. She memorizes the rise and fall of his chest, and how badly she loves this boy. The
world did not end when she was fourteen, and it does not end now.
Later, after they’ve stumbled out of the bath soaking and close to shaking, they fall into their
bed. John B, ever the gentlemen, offers to sleep on the couch or literally anywhere else. Sarah
tells him, as bluntly as she can, that if he does that she’s going to kill him.

So they end up together in the middle of their gigantic bed with too many pillows and
blankets because God knows they deserve something soft, something comfortable. John B
stares at her in the darkness, and Sarah knows now that it isn’t a look of disgust.

She knows that he’s looking at her like he always has, like she’s something to worship, like
she’s something holy, like he loves her enough to fight the world.

Sarah lets him, and when he moves with a hint of uncertainty, she stays still too. She lets him
shift closer, because she has never flinched from his touch and she won’t start now. She lets
him move until they’re like they usually are, pressed together, a mess of limbs and love.
Home in other words.

John B’s hand slips across her torso, and Sarah can feel his breath on her neck. There is no
fear, there never has been, not with him. Never with him. She closes her eyes, and when she
falls asleep there are no nightmares, only warm, golden-tinted dreams about the family she
chose, about the people she loves.
End Notes

have yall figured out how much i crave non-sexual intimacy, like just give me a fucking hug.
Also the newest percy jackson episode, watched it the second it came out, it killed me. I'm
dead, I am going to write more angsty percy jackson fics about Luke cause that mf can't seem
to make me hate him

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