𝟎𝟓𝟐.      𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩

too young to burn ──── sonny & the sunsets

☀︎ 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐥𝐲𝐧'𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐯

𝖪𝖨𝖠𝖱𝖠 𝖯𝖨𝖢𝖪𝖤𝖣 𝖴𝖲 𝖴𝖯，𝖠𝖭𝖣 𝖶𝖤 𝖥𝖮𝖴𝖭𝖣 𝖳𝖧𝖤 𝖡𝖮𝖸𝖲 𝖠𝖳 𝖳𝖧𝖤 𝖣𝖮𝖢𝖪𝖲．We tracked them down on our phone, and now they're here, in a place I didn't expect. Just by where they're hiding, I spot a giant ship called the Coastal Venture which is what the boys seem to be watching.

Once I see John B and JJ without Sarah, I suspect they're here because they're hoping to save her. Is she on that giant ship?

I step up behind JJ, jabbing my finger into his shoulder. "Hey!"

He spins around quickly with his hand raised, surprising me. "Whoa!" I jerk back, laughing. "I was about to stab your eyes out."

I roll my eyes. "You look scared as shit," I deadpan. "Hi."

"Hi." We both gaze at one another, smiling like children. We hear a throat clear behind us, bringing us out of the bubble I'm trying to secure around us. JJ clears his throat. "How did you guys even find us?"

"Geo-located your phone," Kiara answers.

"Smart," he comments.

"You guys okay? What happened?" John B asks, stepping over to me, and placing a hand on my shoulder.

"Rafe, round three," Pope replies, peering over at me.

"You freaking kidding me? Again?"

"It was a tie," I defend despite Rafe being the one to nearly beat him... again. I'd never say that out loud though because Pope did his best. He always does his best, and I... tried to help out, I guess.

Pope nods. "Yeah."

We look towards the ship, finding a large wooden box to be lifted and dropped onto the ship. "That the cross?" Pope asks, coming to stand beside John B.

"Yep."

"They're holding Sarah hostage," John B tells us, but I already suspected that otherwise they wouldn't be here.

"We have to get on that boat."

"First we gotta get past the goon squad."

"Okay, let's move. Come on." Once again, we're on the move, planning to find a way onto the ship but it's being guarded by a lot of guards. We each follow my brother but one── Pope. John B turns to him. "Pope, what are you doing?"

"I have an idea." He's taking a step back and away from us. "Just trust me."

"No, hey, stop running!" Pope shakes his head, ignoring JJ as he starts to move away with a plan. "We gotta go, dude."

"Trust me, man. Go. I'll meet up with you guys." He rushes off in the opposite direction to us, moving to go and fulfil his idea, but we trust him. Whatever he has planned, I'm sure it'll work out because this is Pope we're talking about.

My boy genius.

Instead of running── thank God── we walk away, still hiding as we don't want to get caught. "What do you think he's doing?" I ask, peering over my shoulder to check if he's going to catch up with us now or not.

"I don't know," John B answers, also looking over his shoulder.

"Well, he──" I'm silenced, stunned as an explosion erupts behind us in the direction Pope ran off in. I don't know what he did, and I don't know how he did it, but Pope has created an explosion. Two explosions in the span of one week. Oh, aren't we lucky?

"Oh, my God." Pope is sprinting towards us, running away from the orange and red flames like a damn hero. "It's working," Kiara says, looking away from Pope to see workers and guards charging over to the explosion.

"Pope, what was that?"

"Look. That container's going on the ship. We can get in that way," Pope says, pointing to a very large metal container that he expects us to get in. "Are you with me?"

"You're a genius." John B slaps his hand on Pope's shoulder as they moves. "Let's go." We take a left, heading past the area where the guards were. "Hey, this way. Come on."

We rush towards the container, finding it to be open and available for five humans to get in. Pope is the first to climb into the metal container as he is the one who desperately wants that cross. Although, I realise that when we get into that container, we won't be able to get out.

"Did you think this through?"

"Yes. This is the plan."

"That's a trap right there. We can't get out once we get in," JJ tells us.

"You guys don't have to come." My eyes widen, surprised that he'd say that. We're a group, we have to do this together or not at all.

"Right. This is our fight," Pope argues.

"No, I'm coming," I say quickly, stepping forward. Sure, I'm anxious, but we've come this far, we can't just back down now. "I'm not letting you get killed on your own."

"Well, I'm not letting you get killed at all," John B fights, hand shoving at my shoulder gently.

"Well──"

"Guys, stop." John B and I could go back and forth for hours, arguing and arguing about ridiculous, unimportant things, but the fact is I am not abandoning my brother. I'm on his side forever and always.

John B peers at me. "You don't get in the way."

"Really feeling the love, John B."

"I don't want anything happening to you." Sarah has been kidnapped, he obviously doesn't want anything happening to me either, and that's sweet, so I don't argue with him.

I nod slowly, smiling. "I don't want anything happening to you," I say softly. "Nothings going to happen to me either, John B."

"Guys, this is really sweet but we need to go."

John B steps onto the container, reaches out his hand and pulls me up. We then look to the final two── JJ and Kiara who are looking at one another, obviously deciding what the best thing to do is.

"Nothing to lose?" JJ says to Kiara.

"Nothing to lose," she choruses, stepping forward and taking my hand as I tug her up and into the container. "Guess this is better than boarding school." Definitely better than boarding school, that much I know.

JJ lifts himself into the container, stepping up beside me. "Nothing to lose, huh?" He grins down at me, knuckles brushing against my hip as he steps by me, moving to hide at the furthest end of this container so it can be locked without anybody spotting us.

There's a lot of cargo inside this container which shields us from being caught, but I find myself squished in between my brother and JJ── something I didn't plan for, and something I am so not happy about.

It doesn't take long for the workers to close our container without noticing us, and when we find the container to be closed, John B and JJ share a fist bump, their elbows jabbing into me.

I hit their arms. "Hey!" I whisper-yell, squirming away from them.

I come to a stand now that the container is shut, but before any of us have the chance to speak, we hear the clang of metal. The entire container shakes, nearly knocking me off my feet as I grab onto some of the cargo before me. We're being lifted, I know that much as I feel like I'm in an elevator.

The container rocks side to side as we're moved, likely to sit on the ship. It's not until the container hits the deck that we finally release a breath, relieved that we're safe... for the most part.

"We made it," JJ whispers.

Now the five of us are locked in a metal container.

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𝖨 𝖥𝖤𝖤𝖫 𝖧𝖮𝖳 𝖠𝖭𝖣 𝖲𝖳𝖨𝖢𝖪𝖸 𝖠𝖭𝖣 𝖦𝖱𝖮𝖲𝖲．My clothes cling to my body, but I can't take them off even though I really, really want to peel the material off my body because nobody tells you that the inside of a container is sweaty.

Oh, to be outside of this container would be great, but we're freaking locked in here.

"Nice work, John B." JJ claps a hand on John B's shoulder, scolding him. "You know these things lock from the outside, right?"

"Okay, I was just trying to get us on the boat, JJ. I wasn't thinking that far ahead."

"Now we're stuck in here like rats. In this death cage!" Once again, dying in this death cage is not one of the ways in which I'd like to die, but as I've said before, I really don't have a list.

"It's hot," I whine, dragging the back of my hand across my forehead.

"Okay, JJ, you're not helping."

"You don't have a lot of room to talk right now. You said you had a plan, but what happened to thinking ahead?" Turns out when JJ is hot and bothered, and not in that kind of way, he's moody and grouchy and freaking irritating.

"I find your lack of self-knowledge disturbing."

"Last I checked, you literally shot an oil container with a gat," he exclaims.

Right, yeah, what I didn't know is that before Kiara came to pick us up, Pope snuck away to "grab something", and that something was the gun that JJ hid under a pile of leaves before I was arrested and fined for defending John B.

That's how we escaped── Pope shot a gun at a freaking oil container. Ain't he cool?

"Oh my God! Shut up." Kiara steps up to John B and JJ. "Shut up!" She sighs, looking from JJ to John B. "Pull it together."

"Let's just try and find a way out of here," I say, not wanting any arguments to break out as the heat in this container is becoming more and more unbearable.

I pull the hairband from my hair, needing to fix my ponytail, but as I go to pull my hair back up, the hairband snaps, falling to the ground. "Shit." Of course this is my luck right now. I'm sweating and now I can't even tie my hair up.

JJ steps over to me, noticing my distress as I pick up my broken hairband. "Hey."

"My hairband broke," I whisper, looking past JJ's arm to see my friends distracted, instead looking for a way out. "It broke, JJ."

"Not to worry, Sunshine."

I watch him tug on a familiar band on his wrist, and my eyes widen as he holds the simple black hairband up. "Oh, my God." My mouth gapes as I reach out for the hairband, fluttering and tightening in my stomach as blush creeps up my neck. "You stole my hairband."

"You let me take your hair out. I just forgot to give you it back."

"You thief," I utter, dragging my hands through my hair to pull it up and into a ponytail. "I can't believe you, Maybank."

"I like your hair down, Sunny."

"I thought you liked it up?" I tease, arching my eyebrow.

He grins, watching as I tighten the hairband around my ponytail. "I like it up or down."

"Hey." We look to John B who is staring at us, obviously waiting for us to finish our conversation. Shit, did he hear that? I hope he didn't. I still haven't explained what's going on with JJ and I because, technically, we aren't anything but friends who kiss.

I want that to change though.

"Are you two done?"

JJ glances at me. "How do you kill a snake?"

My eyebrows furrow, confused. "What?"

"You go for the head," Pope answers for me. Good, because I have no idea how you deal with a snake.

"Exactly." JJ snaps his fingers over at Pope, now looking away from me and distracting my brother from asking more questions. "But the head, in this instance, is the bridge. To take the bridge, we need maximum firepower. And I happen to know that there's an armoury on this ship in case of pirate attacks."

"Pirates aren't real──"

"If we take that── I'm not just talking about pistols."

"You lost me." Kiara steps by him. "Killing everybody here is not a plan."

"Kie, come on." He sighs, looking to me, but I'm not too keen on hearing out his plan as it sounds a little barbaric. "I'm serious. If we get to the armoury, I'm talking AKs, pistols, knives, double-barrels──"

JJ talks and talks, but I zone him out, knowing I can't listen to this. Instead, I look for a real way out of here── a way that doesn't involve us shooting and killing everybody on the ship.

I step forward, pushing one of the cargo boxes to one side as I spot an opening. "Guys!" I cut through JJ's rambling about guns and violence.

John B and Pope step up next to me. "Can we fit through that?" I ask, pointing to the grate that will bring us out and onto the ship.

"Hell yeah. Nice one, guys."

"What was that about a Swiss Army knife not coming in handy?" JJ steps over to the grate, holding up his knife which I am actually very grateful for.

He lifts the knife, beginning to jiggle at the screws holding the grate up. At first, the knife didn't appear to be doing anything, but JJ eventually found a rhythm and the knife began to crack open the grate to reveal our opening.

Once we pull the grate off, JJ turns to us. "Okay, we raid the armoury, get weapons, roll back here, and plot the next move." JJ nods firmly, and even though I don't like his idea, I'm dying to get out of here. "The armoury is on the third deck, near the laundry room. Let's roll."

"Hold up." Pope grabs his arm. "I don't think we should all go out there. It's too risky."

"Why?"

"I think you should stay here," John B instructs, looking directly at JJ who visibly does not like that idea.

"What?"

"I have Sarah that I'm gonna go after. And Pope has..."

"The cross," he adds on.

"Whoa," Kiara interjects, placing her hand on my arm. "You aren't leaving me in here with these two."

I jerk my head back. "Uh, rude." Kiara shrugs in response, looking to Pope with desperation in her eyes.

"Fine," Pope sighs. "Kie, you can come with me,"

"Can I not come?" I ask, raising my hand like I'm in class.

"If either of you go out there, there's a one hundred percent probability that you're gonna do something stupid," John B retorts, looking from me to JJ.

"Okay, first of all, I think the correct terminology is ballsy."

"I am so offended," I bite back.

"I'm a field player," JJ argues, holding his hands up.

"If we get out there, and we get in a bind, we need somebody to look out for us," John B says, placing one hand on my shoulder and another on JJ's. "That's what we need." He's trying to make being stuck in a boiling container fun.

"I get it." JJ scoffs. "I'll be on the B team."

"Excuse me?" I smack his arm gently, snapping my head back to John B. "Did B team not just find the way out or am I totally tripping?"

"Just hang back. Hold down the fort."

"Great. Looking forward to it," I deadpan. "I love babysitting."

"You guys have fun. It's your funeral, your game. I'll be in here, on the bench..." He moves to sit down, obviously wishing to join our friends as they rush around on a ship, but we are stuck in this container, sweating.

We're on B team.

"Hey." I snatch my brother's hand. "Don't get shot," I say, smiling politely. "That's all I got."

John B nods. "Don't get shot," he repeats. "Thanks, B. Positive affirmations."

I squeeze his shoulder. "Love you. Have fun."

I watch each of my friends climb out, and once I say my goodbyes and tell them to stay safe, I place the grate back in its place until they next show up.

I then turn, finding JJ to be staring right at me. "Just you and me, J."

Hm. Being on B team ain't so bad.

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❀ soph speaks

thankyou for reading :)

jj & brooke are trapped in a container . . . do i hear super cute moment occurring in the next chapter? yes. yes, i do!!

only a few more chapters till the end of act two, and you may see a few chapters in jj's pov . . .