Dream asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over
DREAM BROTHER            Jeff BuckleyJeff Buckley

Description of drug usage.

Isaías is a rat.

Like any rat they're considered dirty carriers of diseases and filth. They're stupid, antisocial pests and clear symbols of uncleanliness. Isaías, like a rat, is born from filth. It has moulded him, his life, his actions, his consequences. Filth is all Sai knows, it is on the walls of his house, it is all the pill bottles, the used needles, the mold growing from the ceiling, the untouched and used bottles and dishes, the stains on the carpet from pungant ethanol - stains that have been there for weeks, months. No one is there long enough to clean the grime anyways, and it'd be too strenuous to do so. Trust me, Sai has tried.

The first time he tried to clean the weekly old remenants of alcohol and vomit from the living room carpet he fell into an old collection of his fathers fentanyl works. He stepped on one of the needles, suffered needle puncture and accidentally injected the remaining drug into his foot. He didn't know how long he had passed out for until he woke up in a hospital bed, a ring of nurses huddling over his bed, eyes beady and curious as to why a six year old child was found with illegal drugs in his foot.

His father was thrust with an expensive medical bill and an investigation on their house to crack down on the potential drug trafficking network in the area, as the police suspected it was a hub for dealers operating in the neighborhood. Which it was, but his fathers buddies had already been transferring the drugs to another location when they had found Sai passed out. They'd gotten rid of the used needles and any evidence before alerting the hospital.

Sai received a beating for it afterwards and a long lasting cut underneath his eyebrow from his father, but he hadn't been caught yet. That was when he was six. He'd been terrified of needles ever since. Unlike Kody, who was just as hooked, if not more, loved the feeling of injecting himself with shit from a needle. Sai fucking hated him. Hated when he was around and hated the obsession of needles he brought. But perhaps it was his fault, he did introduce him to the drugs first and had disliked him for an addiction he could not control. However, after associating himself with King of the Kooks, Sai had really come to despise him, with reason enough. Kody had gotten Rafe hooked, had fucked him beyong repair, which Rafe already was, but the drugs made him worse. For both of them.

But who had gotten Kody hooked first?

Rats, without meaning to, infect. Sai had introduced him to the world of drugs long ago and Kody had gone on to infect Rafe. Like a plague, it altered each others brain chemistry and increased both their dependence and addiction. But Rafe had always been a cunt, so maybe he deserved it. That much Sai knew...

The Maybank boy, however, did not. He was filthy too, as one does being born and raised in the Cut. Yet he was proud of it. Sai was not. How can you be proud of such filth like this? It was nauseating filth, and he was drenched in it. No matter how much Sai scrubbed himself clean of it, it'd stuck like mold. Sai supposed their filth was different though. In the Cut, people assume everyone is born of the same substandard. There are some pogues so poverty stricken the ones up North act like Kooks to them. There are some Pogues who are so full of rot the lower and middle class ones look down on their own like grime on the bottom of their shoe.

Rats, driven by an instinctual need to survive, who are often sneaky and territorial and aggressive when provoked, relentlessly scavenge for whatever they can find to thrive. Sai is a rat. A parasite. A pogue. Pogues infect.

Sai has found JJ, and scavengers often find what they can access in their immediate environment. JJ is filth, nonetheless. A rat.

Pogues are rats, are they not?

If JJ is not filth enough, Sai will drench him in it.

Isaías (SAI) Del Mar

Jackson Jesse (JJ) Maybank

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

evan mock ╱ KODY HAVELOCK

as described ╱ JAGGER COSBY

talia ryder ╱ RIVER LEWELLEN

as described ╱ EM HUNTINGTON

eli brown ╱ JOHN B ROUTLEDGE

AUTHORS NOTE

⚓️  hello guess who's back and with a jj maybank fic!!! Kkkkk so i know my writing is rusty, the summary is kinda meh but ive been working on it for ages and i haven't written in over a year so bear with me pls :(( Anyways exams kicked my ass but i've got all this free time now & i'm partially on this app every now and then so i am now channeling it into writing .... + you can say thank you to the writers for bringing my energy back to write this fic due to that poor ending bc What Was That. 😃 (i refuse to watch it but I KNOW..... i dont think i can bring myself to watch s4😔😔)

⚓️  OK so getting into it.... Sai is a self proclaimed rat ... idk why but the analogy of the pogues being rats just fit? it sounds funny but i feel like it ties into the whole gold thing and how they're scavengers or whatever. i also wanted to dive into the class system in the Cut and portray that not everyone is dirt poor but there are so many subsections of money. i feel like the show portrayed the pogues on the Cut as one singular thing, which i'm assuming as its through the lens of a Kook(?) to highlight: not everyone in the cut is poor, the kooks are just rich ASF.

the term filth is thrown a lot in this fic & i wanna highlight that kildare is a rotted island and Everyone on that island is filthy, albeit not physically but mentally (like the Kooks and their mentality & the pogues label of being dirty due to being poorer than the kooks) however with Sai, his "filth" is described as worse because of his association with drugs and where he lives (which is the poorer more dangerous side of the Cut compared to JJ, Pope & John b). think of Barry, ur local weed and drug dealer who sells hard drugs occasionally, and then toward the end of the island you get to the really Fucked part of the Cut to Sai's dad who's gang affiliated and part of the more hardcore drug dealers on Kildare who you don't go to personally. its like they hand their drugs out to people like Barry who sell it as a third party... idk much ab how it all works but for my sake and the story it's going to that way

so obviously Sai hadn't grown up in a great environment. drugs are all he's known which obviously isn't a good thing at such a young age, so he's got this mentality that he's the worst thing in the world. he genuinely cannot be a good person but he doesn't see himself that way, as he is an unreliable narrator. think of Rue from euphoria, who's sort of a basis for his character. BUT ONTO JJ!!!!! sooooo Sai thinks he's such a good person compared to him (which he lowkey is) but he's so obsessed with the fact that because he doesn't do hardcore drugs religiously or grown up in an environment like Sai's, he's an angel and his need to protect him lowkey ruins him. i want to mention that i'm not portraying JJ as some sort of innocent boy, when he in fact is like Sai in a lot of ways which is why they get along so well, but Sai's portrayal of him (at first) is quite literally the opposite of JJ's character and Sai comes to realise that until later on. in fact they're not very fond of each other at first .... 😏 but they're sooooo boyfriends become bsfs

⚓️  lastly !Kody & Rafe! are characters i had drafted a story for before i came up with the idea for this whole fic and it was basically just a toxic love affair of them fucking each other over + how Rafes origins of getting into drugs began, so lmk if u want that story idk😞 But anyways this fic will probably focus more on the social and economic status of the Kooks and Pogues, along with relationships and drug usage more than the gold tbh

⚓️  but anywaysssss! here's the link to the pinterest board for more info & visuals 😙🤟 https://pin.it/5liurmAPW

⚓️  Trigger Warnings include: heavy description of drugs, drug usage and abuse, description of death, grief, mentions of child abuse, domestic abuse, graphic description of blood/gore, trauma, depiction of mental illness, implication of hallucination, violence, gun usage, gang affiliation, underage drinking, panic attacks, ptsd, sexual innuendos/content, dark humour