By the time JJ climbs through your window, he’s already talking.

“Okay, first of all,” he says breathlessly, nearly tripping over the edge of your desk before catching himself on the wall with a loud thud, “that was not my fault. Like at all.”

You don’t even look up from your bed yet. “You literally just crashed into my furniture.”

“That’s different. Your room’s laid out aggressively.”

JJ kicks the window shut behind him with his heel before immediately forgetting what he was doing halfway through the motion, getting distracted by the half-empty bag of chips sitting beside you instead. He points at them dramatically like he’s discovered buried treasure.

“Oh, you angel.”

“You broke into my room.”

“I used the window politely.”

“You almost fell off the roof.”

“Almost,” he repeats, dropping onto the edge of your bed. “Which means technically I succeeded.”

He grins at you like he hasn’t got dirt smeared across his jaw and a fresh scrape bleeding through one knee of his jeans. Windblown blond hair falling into his face, hoodie half-zipped wrong, breathing still uneven like he ran the entire way here. Which honestly wouldn’t surprise you.

JJ tears open the chips before you can stop him, immediately talking around a mouthful. “Anyway, hypothetical question. If somebody borrowed a dirt bike from a guy who was, like… spiritually asking for it to be stolen.”

“Oh my god.”

“…and then that same somebody accidentally drove it through the Kook bonfire setup..”

“You’re unbelievable.”

"..and now the cops are maybe looking for said somebody,” he finishes proudly, “how good would you say you are at lying under pressure?”

You stare at him.

JJ stares back for exactly two seconds before snorting laughter into the chips because he physically cannot take himself seriously for longer than a minute at a time.

“I’m kidding,” he says, still laughing. Then he pauses. “Mostly.”

You groan and throw a pillow at him.

He catches it badly.

Like genuinely badly.

The pillow smacks directly into his face hard enough to knock him sideways off the bed completely, and for a second there’s just silence before JJ starts laughing from the floor so hard he can barely breathe.

“Okay,” he wheezes, one arm thrown dramatically over his ribs, “in my defense, I thought it was gonna curve less.”

“It’s a pillow.”

“Yeah, well, we all got strengths and weaknesses.”

You try not to laugh. You fail.

The second JJ hears it, something softer flickers across his expression before he hides it behind another crooked grin. That’s the thing about him he notices when you laugh less lately. Notices when you go too quiet after yelling. Notices the little things nobody thinks he pays attention to because he acts like such an idiot half the time.

And maybe that’s why he keeps showing up here.

Because for a few hours inside your room, with stolen chips and terrible jokes and moonlight spilling through the window, he can pretend neither of you are carrying everything you never talk about.

JJ finally drags himself back onto the bed with absolutely no grace whatsoever, ending up sprawled half across your blankets wearing that stupid boyish grin again.

“So,” he says casually, reaching over to steal your hoodie off the chair like it already belongs to him, “you helping me hide the dirt bike or am I facing the judicial system alone?”