golden wings melt like blue slushies // JJ Maybank

-Just keep it gold, mm, Darling we don't ever have to grow old-

it's my birthday!!!!

<3

Icarus felt her body freeze, and she took a deep breath of panic and kept pulling John B up, she couldn't freak out now. A yelp echoed from somewhere in the basement, and JJ shoved Pope away towards the crooked chandelier in the corner. Sarah and Kiara crawled along the edges of her eyeline.

The welts on her hands had begun to bleed, and she kicked JJ in the back of the leg to get him going, he had to hide, only that was a bad idea once she began to overbalance. "Shit."

BANG

"She can't aim for shit," Kiara called, "she can't see!"

"I don't care if she's blind, that's buckshot!" Someone screeched from behind Icarus, who kept yanking on the pulley, her arms burning with pain and exhaustion. Then a hand appeared on the edge of the well, fingers digging into the dusty wooden boards on the ground.

BANG

Icarus ducked instinctively, but she really didn't know where the bullets were coming from. A figure ran out of the hole in the house, and she spotted Kiara following. Icarus tied the end of the rope around a pole, hoping it was a stable one, and called out to JJ. "Help him up! I'll keep it steady!"

"Fuck!" John B muttered, and JJ grabbed his arms, heaving him to ground level. He was covered in mud. Not, oh look, Peppa pig, he looked like a cannibalistic humanoid underground dweller.

BANG

"Let's move," Icarus yelled at them, and John B started to stomp after them, leaving parts of sewers all over the place. The air was so much nicer once they'd gotten outside, and Icarus coughed, pushing branches out of her way, but they left stinging scratches along her arms and face despite.

JJ grabbed her arm and tugged her along, his fingernails digging into a cut, but she followed anyway, sparing a glance behind them at the frail old lady tottering behind them, a fully loaded smoking gun in her hands.

BANG

Icarus' eyebrows shot up and she yelled at JJ as they ducked around a statue that lost its head seconds later, "hey Jay, guess what?"

"What?" He called back, and then Icarus fell into the back of him and looked up at the brick wall in front. She pulled her hoodie sleeves over her palms dripping with something hot and sticky, and began to pull herself up, arms like jelly with freddo frogs in a cup.

BANG

She reached the top, but she couldn't pause because whoever was driving the van was beeping at them, John B yanking at the sliding door like some sort of mud monster. "I have the same slippers as the old lady!"

"You mean the one trying to kill us?" JJ shot back, and jumped down to the ground below, somehow not breaking his ankles. He held his arms out, "maybe you can talk about your slippers with her husband after she kills us!"

"Okay, you don't have to yell," Icarus muttered, rolling her eyes, and slid down off the stone wall.

BANG

She was winded again, but there wasn't really time to catch her breath once a bullet chipped the ground next to her feet. Icarus ran to the van, which had already started pulling away jerkily, headlights showing the grandma now standing in the middle of the road. "Creepy much?"

"Let's go! Move it!"

"Okay, okay, I'm coming," she called out, running up to where Pope grabbed her wrist and pretty much flung her into the van.

BANG

Icarus crawled into the passenger seat, leaving red handprints over the van, her chest heaving. JJ managed to kick Sarah out of the driver's seat and the driving was a lot smoother, even as a wingmirror was shot off the van completely. "Oh shit."

"Everyone in?"

"Right here!" Kiara panted, and her eyes widened when JJ hit the gas and they were all yanked forwards. "Okay, let's go! Drive, you fuckwit!"

Icarus reached for her seatbelt, but then the metal became slick with blood, and she put it back quickly, bunching her hands up in JJ's hoodie. Oops. She'd have to wash it before she gave it back. She eyed the road ahead, where the lady showed no sign of jumping out of the way.

BANG

JJ held the wheel with white knuckles, "what do I do?"

"Roadkill," Icarus said fiercely.

Kiara spun around in the backseat with an alarmed look, hair plastered to her shiny forehead as John B squelched about next to her, "we are not killing the old lady! What is wrong with you!"

Icarus blinked. "Roadkill."

JJ swerved the lady with a disappointed sigh and they sped off down the road. There was a stunned silence while everyone recovered for a second, and then the manic laughter began. Pope leant back; his eyes closed as he just muttered repeatedly. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!"

"Is everyone okay? Did anyone get shot?" Sarah asked, pulling dust bunnies off her sweat stained muddy clothes. Icarus wondered if she'd ever worn anything so dirty before now. Probably not.

"I think I'd know if I was shot," John asked, but he didn't look certain. He certainly looked pale under the brown though. "Right?"

Kiara wrinkled her nose at him, winding down one of the windows to let the cold night air in as she waved her hand about, "God, you smell like ass. And you look disgusting. What the hell just happened?"

"All-time Pogue Hall of Fame, baby," JJ cheered, taking a right at a stop sign and Icarus could finally see her friends terrified and simultaneously relieved faces beneath the streetlights. JJ glanced over at her, and she raised an exhausted thumbs up then realised it was a very bloody thumbs up. JJ's face fell. "What the fuck?"

Icarus shook her head, keeping pressure on her hands by bunching them up at her stomach, trying to ignore the stinging pain like glass in her nervous system. "It's not as bad as it looks."

JJ swerved on the road, "Iggy you got shot, that isn't an it's not as bad as it looks thing-"

"No no no, I'm okay, it's my hands. From the rope, and the blackberry plants, it's just rope burn. I'm not gonna bleed out," she amended quickly, seeing the horror on his face. She pulled her hands away from her middle to show there wasn't a bullet hole. "I'm okay."

Someone started screeching away behind them and Kiara did that freaky ass laugh again she always did when something good happened she didn't believe as JJ nearly drove them into a mailbox as he ducked his head, "Jesus Christ, you can't scare me like that!"

"I'm sorry," she chuckled, patting his arm with a less bloodstained part of her hand, but it still left a horror movie like print on his wrist. He didn't seem to care. "I'll wash your jumper."

JJ huffed, "that's not what I'm worried about."

"Full Kook!"

Icarus turned slowly too him as the yelling in the back seats got louder, and his blue eyes were just as wide as her own. "No way."

"Full Kook! Full Kook! Full Kook!"

She whipped around in her seat to see John B crouched in the corner like a goblin, a shiny rectangular piece of gold in his disgusting hands. He nearly fell over when JJ took a corner too sharp, and it clattered to the ground heavily.

"Full Kook! Full Kook!"

Icarus brought her hand to her mouth, and then turned to JJ with a grin as wide as the treasure by Pope's feet, her chest hurting with the excitement of the fact they'd really just done that.

"Full Kook?"

"Full Kook."