You and JJ had always been best friends.

It didn’t matter that you were a Kook and he was a Pogue — those labels never stuck between you. He was your partner in crime, your late-night phone call, your first real laugh after a bad day. You knew the stories about his dad. Everyone did. But JJ never let you see the full weight of it. Not really. He’d shrug it off with a crooked smile or a sarcastic joke, like it didn’t crush him every day.

Until that night.

You’d just gotten out of the shower, hair still damp, when you heard the knock at your bedroom window. Not the front door — he knew better. You pulled the curtains back and there he was. JJ. His lip was split, eye already bruising, and there was a tremble in his shoulders that he couldn’t hide.

You opened the window without a second thought and helped him inside, careful of his injuries. His breathing was ragged, but it was the look in his eyes that made your heart twist — like something inside him had finally shattered. You guided him to your bed, sitting close, letting him talk when he was ready.

“He just… lost it,” JJ muttered. “Again. I tried to get out but he grabbed me. Said I was nothing. Said I’d always be nothing.”

And then he cried.

JJ Maybank — the boy who would rather take a punch than show weakness — broke right in front of you. Silent tears at first, then the kind that came with hiccuped breaths and shaking hands. You reached for him without thinking, pulling him into you. He didn’t resist. Just let himself fall apart in your arms.

“Stay here,” you whispered. “Move in with me.”

He blinked, confused. “What?”

“I don’t care what my parents think. You can’t go back there, JJ. You’re not safe. And I— I don’t want to lose you.”

He stared at you for a moment, like he couldn’t believe what you were saying. Then he nodded slowly, like maybe this time, someone really meant it when they said they’d be there.

That night, you made up the guest room with extra blankets and your old hoodie, the one he always stole anyway. He fell asleep before you even left the room, breathing calm and even for the first time in what felt like forever.

JJ was safe now.

With you.

And you weren’t going to let him break again.