Together

131. I don't know how to tell you

When I wake up
I can't even stay up
I slept through the day, fuck
I'm not getting younger
But when I'm older
I'll be so much stronger
I'll stay up for longer
Meet me at our spot
-ANXIETY, WILLOW, and Tyler Cole

JJ approaches the Wreck. He was here to pick up Kie from her shift. She texted him and asked him to, like he would ever say no.

He pulls on the doors and they swing wide, but when he enters it's completely dark and silent. He's taken aback. He could have sworn from the outside he saw people sitting in the booths and eating. Mind is playing tricks, obviously.

He hears a scream and turns, spotting Kie near the register. She's looking at him, begging him to help her. He blinks and that's when he sees that Travis is choking her. Not again. His heart rate raises as he runs to grab her, only to have her slip through his fingers, nowhere in sight.

"Kiara!" he shouts. No answer.

This can't be happening.

He starts to panic, eyes scanning the area. Oh, now the lights are on, he thinks to himself. He doesn't see her though. No matter how he weaves his way through the tables and around the corners of the bar, through the kitchen and out the back, she's just...gone.

He's about to throw up when he's suddenly jolted awake.

"Whoa," Shoupe placates, hands raised in a position to signal he wasn't a threat to the barely conscious boy. "Hey, you alright?" His tone is full of concern, and it's just now that JJ is registering that he's not in bed, but at the kitchen table.

"Yeah," he says, still mildly disoriented as he looks around like he was trying to figure out where he was. "What's going on?"

Shoupe's lifts his eyebrows. "Well," he begins. "You fell asleep at the table and were shaking." It's clear from how he's being spoken to that there is probably more to the story.

"Hmmph," JJ says in an attempt to breeze over it, adding a shrug like he has no clue what could have caused that. "Interesting." He gets up from the table. "There any coffee left?"

Unfortunately, Shoupe doesn't do him the favor of pretending that something wasn't there to talk about, like he hoped. "You were sayin' Kiara's name, Jay," he states. "And since when do you drink coffee?"

Fair enough point, he hated the stuff. But he hadn't gotten much sleep the last couple weeks. Coming to check in on Kie in the middle of the night, cause she wasn't going to school yet and didn't need to worry about staying awake during the day, had him up most nights and then when he did manage to get to sleep he never felt truly rested. Always had a nightmare. Always woke up feeling like his heart was going to explode. Was extremely unsettling.

So, yes. Coffee was a new addition to the arsenal of anti sleep aides? No. staying awake tools? Whatever. Point was he wasn't sleeping like he should be. He knew that. Just didn't want to admit it to Shoupe.

"Since, whenever," he lamely deflects, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the pot. "Why so curious?"

"Because you fell asleep at the kitchen table, and you got school in an hour," Shoupe reasons, turning in his chair to look back at his kid. "Be straight with me, you sleeping? I know you're leaving the house to check in on her, so don't give me some line."