someone to stay, ⁹¹¹

𝟎𝟐𝟓.

JJ hated Saturdays. Especially Saturdays when her father woke her up with his loud morning routine. She was grateful he was blessed with good music taste though.

Taylor Swift's 1989 album blasted through their home loudly, her voice making JJ feel warm inside. She always found comfort in the woman's music, mostly because she could relate to how Taylor would feel, but also because she was one of the first things she and Buck bonded over.

She forced herself out of bed with a groan, before slipping her slippers onto her cold feet and sitting on the ground beside her bed. She then lifted her mattress slightly with one hand before using the other to reach underneath.

The cold pill bottle always felt wrong in her hands whenever she held it, but this was to get better, she told herself every time.

JJ stared at the yellow bottle for a moment. A thought flashed through her mind, making her grip turn her knuckles white. What did she have to live for? It danced around her mind, even though it sounded stupid because she had many people to live for, but what did she have to live for?

She and her dad had been talking better since the tragic event that was the tsunami, but he was still distant. She knew it was because he still felt guilty for "losing" her and Chris, which she tried to deny, but she also knew there was no changing his mind.

She and Sophia still weren't talking, which of course she was fully still to blame, but she also didn't have the energy to try and apologise. Sophia deserved a true apology, not a half-assed one.

She hadn't been spending much time with the 118 and the extended family, but she knew things were still heavy since the lawsuit. Maddie and Athena had stopped by on multiple occasions though, and she owed a lot to them. She adored how Athena doted on Buck like a mother, which she was at this point, because fuck the Buckley parents.

Shaking away her thoughts, she opened the childproof cap and dropped a pill into her hand. She didn't hesitate before throwing the pill into her open mouth and swallowing it dry.

Ashton's voice pounded in her mind for a moment. "I know you stole the pills your dad had to take after the bombing."

So he wasn't exactly wrong.

Buck was in a rush for his first shift back after the lawsuit and had left them on the kitchen counter in a hurry, forgetting to throw them out. So he texted his daughter to rip the labels off and throw them out.

And she was going to, and technically she did. But she then took them out of the trash and slowly began relying on the small pills to get her through the day.

There were only about twelve pills left in the bottle, but JJ was fine, once they were gone they were gone. It's not like she's addicted to them.

It sounded repetitive, constantly saying and thinking that she was okay, and she knew it was kind of delusional, but who's to judge the way she was coping? Her family all had their own fucked up ways to cope, and this was hers.

After placing the pills back in their spot, she wiped her palms onto her pyjama bottoms as she stood. She rolled her shoulders back as she tried to shake the sleepiness away. She'd give anything to crawl back into the safety that was her warm bed, but she knew her father would be waking her up soon enough anyway, the music being loud was a dead giveaway.

JJ was a dead sleeper, when her eyes closed she was dead to the world, so over the years, Buck gave up on trying to shake her awake and tried different tactics instead. So far, cranking Taylor Swift on full volume every morning was working.

JJ rubbed her hands down her face before walking to her bathroom. For the past few months following the tsunami, she avoided her reflection like a plague. But since her breakdown a few weeks ago, Buck had replaced her smashed mirror with a brand new, larger one. One that was also harder to break.