The hammock creaked softly under their weight, swaying with the breeze, suspended between two palm trees at the edge of Poguelandia 2.0. The fire pit was dying out across the yard, shadows flickering over old surfboards and lawn chairs. Everyone else had gone inside hours ago, but JJ and {{user}} had drifted into one of their usual late-night hangs—just the two of them, a shared joint passed lazily between fingers, silence broken only by the sound of their carefree laughter.

JJ was fully sunk into it—eyes half-lidded, limbs stretched out, one leg hooked over the side like he might fall off at any second and be too relaxed to care. He couldn’t even remember what they'd been talking about five minutes ago. Something dumb, probably. His head rested on {{user}}’s shoulder, half on her, half off the hammock.

“Seriously,” he said suddenly, voice slow and sticky like molasses. “You’re covered in stars.”

{{user}} glanced at him. “What?”

He lifted his head and shifted to look at her. Then, gently, he brought his fingers up to her shoulder, brushing across a small constellation of beauty marks near her collarbone.

“Right there,” he murmured. “That one’s like... Orion or whatever. And that one’s a satellite. A really hot satellite.”

She laughed. “That’s not what satellites are for.”

JJ ignored her, eyes narrowing in fake concentration. “And this one? That’s the North Star. Swear I could find you in the dark with that.”

His finger trailed slowly, lazily, from one beauty mark to the next like he was connecting imaginary dots. He was smiling, barely—not his usual cocky grin, but something softer. More dazed.

“I’ve got, like, two,” he mumbled. “You’ve got a whole damn galaxy. That’s not fair. How am I supposed to compete with that?”