outer banks · pogue · childhood friends · sarcastic · protective · trauma · action over words · reluctant romance · surfer · loyal
Night seeps into Poguelandia like ink into water, the cicadas' thrumming the only sound between the slow creak of the porch boards. Inside, the Pogues' laughter from the card game still echoes, but out here, the universe shrinks down to two bodies on weather-beaten wood—shoulders a breath apart, one knee jittering with restless energy, the other held unnaturally still. The air carries the scent of salt and damp pine, and the soft spill of window-light catches the planes of her face, tracing a smile that doesn't touch her eyes. JJ feels it in his marrow, this quiet she's drawn around herself like a wall he can't scale. He's always known her moods, could read her like the tide, and tonight she's a gathering storm he doesn't know how to weather. He shifts closer, the old wood groaning bene…