AFTER the small moment at the tree, the three Pogues returned to Sarah and were once again lost to chatter and conversation. 

Slurred words and drunken laughter were expressed through the remaining teens, the four situated in front of the fire. The two boys were standing in front of the fire, beer cans dangling in their hands as they conversed, while Eden sat backwards in a chair, Sarah sitting behind her, the former getting her hair braided by the latter. 

Feeling Sarah's fingers easily gliding through her hair, crossing each strand with the gentlest touch was rather relaxing to the Bexley. She was finally at peace, though she knew that peace would only last for the night—tomorrow she'd have to face her parents, the judging of the OBX, the fact that John B. was still wanted man and if found, would be put in a jail cell or worse......

"Oh! Alright." JJ's exclaim takes the Bexley from her small train of thought. She looks out towards the marsh and her lips upturn in a smile as she notices the boat moving through the calm water—the HMS Pogue—with none other than Pope Heyward and Kiara Carrera inside of it. 

Sarah takes one hand away from the brunette locks in front of her and drunkenly waves, "Have a good time!"

The Maybank lightly slaps John B.'s chest, "There he goes. He jacked your boat, dude."

John B.'s eyes are locked on the boat, an incredulous expression on his face—things really had changed since he left. Pope and Kiara disappearing on a boat? The Heyward didn't have the confidence mere weeks ago.

"Pope's poking on the Pogue." the Routledge boy bluntly comments.

"Honestly? Good for him." Eden salutes towards the boat, staying still so the Cameron could continue braiding her hair. "I am not on clean up duty tomorrow, though." 

John B. slightly groans at the thought of having to clean up if they did anything on his boat.  Sarah let out a small yelp with a grin towards the vehicle, "Ow-ow!"

JJ spoke up, "You should probably—"

John B.'s expression falters at the sound of car doors being shut, and he quickly hushes his friend, "Wait, wait, wait, wait."

"What?"

"What was that?"

Eden's brows furrowed. She hadn't heard anything, nor was she now—other than the obvious clucking of the birds within the coop.

JJ also seems to have not heard what John B. did, and stares at the chicken coop, "Your chicken?"

The Routledge shakes his head, "I heard a car door."

The group all paused for a moment, the relaxed atmosphere growing tense as they tried to listen for any sort of sound revealing that someone other than the four Pogues was present. Eden's eyes trailed over her surroundings, trying to see if she could see any suspicious movement. 

Suddenly, JJ began clucking like a chicken, which earned him three pointed glares and a hand over his mouth from John B., clearly urging him to shut up. 

Sarah, Eden, and JJ stayed quiet as John B. peered into the distance, breath audibly hitching in his throat as he turned back towards his friends. Within minutes, his demeanor changed from relaxed to slightly panicked, the boy beginning to quickly toss dirt into the fire. The action raised fear in both the Cameron and Bexley.

"What?" Sarah was quickly on her feet, braid falling out of the Bexley's hair at the loss of grip—not like she cared, at the moment. She looked at the Routledge with wide eyes, "John B., what is happening?"

"John, answer your wife now and tell us what the hell is happening." Eden's voice was firm as ever, and she tried to scan over his features—if there was anything the Bexley was good at, it was reading faces.

Gravely, John B. states, "Someone's here."

Eden's lips draw into a thin line. Someone was here.

Someone was here and if they saw John B., the Pogues were royally fucked.

Realizing this, Sarah whispers. "We have to get out of here."

"We can't." Eden frowns. The HMS Pogue had been their getaway vehicle, but it had been claimed by Pope and Kiara, and it would take too long—and be far too loud—for them to come back to retrieve the remaining four. "Kie and Pope took the Pogue. Unless we're swimming the marsh, there's no where too go."

"Fuck." JJ seethed, hand running through his hair as his eyes darted around the Chateau's yard, trying to find a solution. Swimming the marsh would take too long, and if they made a run for the house it would take too long. The chicken coop would make them obvious with the clucking. His eyes circle in on the tree, and it dawns on him as he whispers, "John B, the tree—"

"The tree. Get in the tree, now." the Routledge boy quickly says, nodding fervently. Eden grabbed hold of Sarah's hand and started leading them towards the giant tree while John B. and JJ wavered behind for a minute, trying to get the fire out. 

Eden slightly frowns as the Cameron tries to climb the tree, knowing it would more than likely be painful due to her wound and newly induced stitches. Hands wavering on the girls waist, the Bexley encouraged her. "You got it. Try to go as fast as you can." 

Once she was sure Sarah was secure, Eden herself scaled the tree—she'd hid in the tree on more than one accounts when her and the Pogues played hide and seek when they were younger—taking refuge around one of it's limbs.

Seconds later, JJ and John B. climbed as fast as they could, hauling themselves into separate branches than the girls.

The four teens remained curled in the tree's limbs, breaths caught in their throats when Rafe Cameron stalked into the Chateau's backyard, standing right below the tree with a gun in his grasp.

Suddenly, there's an echo of glass shattering and Eden flinches from her spot in the tree at the harsh sound. Her eyes dart towards the Chateau where Barry—the ever so familiar drug dealer, who couldn't seem to leave the Pogues alone—comes storming out of the house, clearly angry as he thrusts the door open. He too holds a gun.

Eden feels even more fear pulsate through her body; they were sitting ducks, waiting to be caught or waiting to be left unscathed.

"Yo!" Rafe calls out. "Anything?"

Barry shakes his head, "No, ain't shit in there, bro."

"No? Nothing?"

"No, nothing, Rafe."

The fact that the Pogues seemed to be nowhere in sight clearly agitated the Cameron boy, as he began to protest. "They were obviously just here based off the smoke, man."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Barry rolls his eyes mockingly,  "Great observation, Boy Scout."

Rafe continued to justify his claim, "Th—they're not far, you know?"

Eden bit her lip and looked around at her friends, who looked just as anxious. Clearly, Rafe had showed up in search of his sister and John B.—if not both, certainly the Routledge. He'd already shot Sarah, and Eden's sure he'd feel even less remorse shooting the boy who was threatening his reputation. 

"Smokey the Bear!" Barry scoffed humorlessly, "Look at you, bro!"

"They gotta be around here somewhere." Rafe muttered lowly, jaw locked.

Suddenly, his eyes catch hold of the base of the tree. His gaze locked on the memorial the Pogues had made for John B.

"P4L." Barry reads. 

Rafe lets out a deranged chuckle, pointing the gun towards the tree with a smile. Eden could see that he was loosing it. "Well, shit."

"So your sister's a Pogue for life, huh, Rafe?" Barry amusedly comments, "Now who would've thought?"

The Cameron boy chewed at his bottom lip, muscles in his jaw ticking as he slowly nodded his head. The boy was like a ticking time bomb, his patience and sanity wearing down inconvenience after inconvenience until he finally exploded.

"Shit!" Rafe finally snapped, voice echoing throughout the yard. 

Sarah jumps against the tree and Eden flinches at the loud exclaim. 

Barry seems to realize he struck some sort of nerve, and tries to calm the boy down, "Alright, chill—"

However, the drug dealer's words go deaf to Rafe's ears as the boy raises his firearm and directs it at the center of the memorial, shooting without any hesitance—he was set off. The sound of gunshots causes all Pogues to duck down, and Eden's reminded of watching Ward shoot Gavin as she watches Rafe loose himself below.

The Cameron doesn't stop there, and starts to fire the gun in a tantrum of rage. His arm waves in the air and he shoots aimlessly, unaware that four teens hid right in the fire line.

 Eden's eyes widened as a bullet heads straight for JJ's, the boy quickly ducking behind his branch to allow the bullet to pierce a hole within the bark rather than his skull. 

"Hey! Whoa! Hey, chill, bro! Rafe!" Barry tries to calm the boy down, rushing to take the gun out of his grasp. 

Another gunshot echoes out, and Eden lets out a pierced gasp as she feels a sharp pain spread up her arm. 

In an attempt to keep from giving her position away, the Bexley bites her lips to keep from making sounds at the stinging pain and slinks her other arm over her shoulder to apply pressure.

"Chill your shit! Chill out!" Barry's voice raises, and the gunshots fall quiet. He got in Rafe's face, voice loud and firm as he tried to get Rafe to calm down. "You're gonna get out asses busted, dawg. Let's bounce." He slaps the Cameron on the chest, "Let's bounce. Let's go! Let's go!"

The two boys run across the lawn and all is silent for a few moments until the sound of an engine starting is heard. The moment the sound of tires pulling out on gravel is heard, the Pogues begin to unravel and speak once more.

"Goddammit." Eden groans, eyes squeezing shut as the stinging proceeds within her skin. She puts her forehead against the bark and tightly grasps whatever marking the bullet left on her skin. "That asshole shot me."

The casual comment causes the other three Pogues to look at Eden with wide eyes.

The Maybank looked at his friend with a sense of disbelief in his features, "You're joking."

"Does it look like I'm joking, bro?" the Bexley snaps, before taking in a sharp inhale. She doesn't think she got shot, more so grazed given that she wasn't in immense pain, but she wasn't sure. For all she knew, a bullet was within her shoulder. "He shot my fucking shoulder."

JJ looks at John B., who wears a face of shock and nerves—when Sarah got shot, she died. And while Eden's wound was in her arm, a less valuable place than the abdomen, he didn't want to risk her getting anywhere near the Cameron's past position.

"Well, don't just gape at her. We clearly need to do something." Sarah speaks up. 

"Okay, yeah. Sorry." John B. mutters before climbing out of the tree as quickly as he can. Despite having been in this position before, he wasn't sure what to do. "Uh, JJ, get down here and help me get her out of the tree." 

The Maybank does as he's told and starts to maneuver around the tree, climbing down to the grass. He makes his way over to where John B. is, extending his hand upwards so they could grab her once she made her way down.

"Okay, Eden, try to come down as far as you can. Me and JJ will get you from there." John B. instructed, working off of what he knew. 

Eden takes a sharp breath. "Okay."

Biting her lip as pain courses through her arm, Eden tries her best to slide down to the branch below her so her friends could grab her feet. She's capable of movement—she's glad she was grazed on her shoulder instead of her leg or abdomen—and manages to move rather quickly.

Once far enough down, JJ and John B. are able to grab her ankles, and the Bexley continues to slide down—the boys moving their hands to support her as she came further to the ground—until feet make contact with the grass.

In that time, Sarah manages to have gotten down by herself and is already heading towards the Chateau to search for some supplies to bandage Eden's wound—she's slower due to her stitches, but she's trying.

"Okay, Eden, hold this—" John B. takes his bandanna off of his neck and hands it to the Bexley, "—against the wound." 

Eden takes her hand off of where she assumes her wound to be, blood staining her palm as she removes it from her skin. John B.'s button down is also stained with blood. The Bexley hands the bandanna to the blonde beside her, "Can you unfold that?" 

He does as she asks without a word and hands it back to her, unfolded to reveal the entire pattern.

As he did so, Eden rolls up her sleeve and once done, takes the bandanna and presses it down without even looking at her wound—she'd do so once inside the Chateau.  However, it seemed bigger than just a small hole, due to the amount of blood being soaked into the bandanna, leaving her to believe it was a graze rather than an actual shot wound. 

Eden tenses as her skin stings at the bandanna's contact. 

"Are you okay? Do you need me to hold the bandanna down for you or anything?" JJ's words come out in a rush because he doesn't really know what to do. He knows she's walking okay, and she doesn't seem to be suffering from too much blood loss, but she was hit by a bullet—he wasn't about to ignore that.

"I'm okay, J." Eden nods, walking herself into the Chateau with the bandanna pressed firmly against part of the wound. She sends him a reassuring smile—she was okay. She didn't need him worrying over a graze. "Promise."

"Just making sure...."

The two teens get into the Chateau where John B. and Sarah are waiting on the couch,  The Cameron girl wears an unsure look on her face as Eden once again hissing as she sits down, and is quick to speak up.

"Maybe we should go to the hospital?" Sarah stated, trying to get a good look at the Bexley's skin. "I mean, you might not have gotten seriously shot, but you still got grazed. You'll need stitches for sure, and you're loosing some blood—"

"Hospital? No." Eden bluntly states, taking the bandanna off of her wound. She was oddly calm—she was surprising herself. "I took care of Pope after he cracked his head open, I can stop the bleeding on my arm." 

John B.'s brows furrow and he tries to argue, "Those are two different things, Eden—"

"Do you want to get your ass busted? Because I sure don't." the Bexley snaps. If they went to the hospital, it would lead to more questioning and problems than Eden truly wanted to deal with. "We're not going to the hospital—" the girl looks at JJ firmly, "—and we're not calling Ricky."

The Maybank raises a brow, "What did Ricky do to you?"

"Nothing. I love Ricky, but we're fine. I'm fine." Eden repeats the words to herself because she was indeed fine. No need to have a panic attack or to start crying; it was just a graze. "There's a first aid kit in the bathroom, we have alcohol, we have stitches, and we have a joint. I—"

"Okay, Eden, you're clearly not okay, because you're rambling—"

"I'm pretty sure the bullet just grazed me." Eden confirms. She doesn't want her friends to be all over her when she could clearly fix this herself. She was fine. "It's not bleeding that bad, it's not swelling, and there's no veins, bone, or muscle out in the open. Flesh wound, not that bad—ya'll forget I've helped you with every injury ever."

Ever since she was a little girl, she'd been the one to help with John B. and JJ's—as well as Kie and Pope's, when they joined—wounds. She was the one who carried band aids in her bag, learned how to stitch, and knew what percent alcohol had to be to take the place of rubbing alcohol. 

Eden knew what she was doing.

"Fine." John B. sighed wearily. "Now what do you need?"

"JJ, go look for some rubbing alcohol or any booze above forty percent. Sarah, go get the first aid kit. It's in the cabinet under the sink." Eden checked off the list of things she'd need to clean herself up. The two blondes were quick to rush off and finish their task. "John, go get me some pain reliever and a glass of water, please."

John B. was quick to do as she asked and moved over to the kitchen, retrieving the pills stored in is cabinet and a glass of water for her to down them with. He returns a few minutes later, handing her the two pills, before handing her the glass once she placed the medicine in her mouth. 

As Eden downed the pills with water, JJ and Sarah both returned with their respective items. 

"Okay, now what do you need?" Sarah asks.

"Stop the bleeding and disinfect." Eden instructs, JJ holding up the disinfectant he'd managed to find within the Chateau. "And then, since Pope is having the time of his life with Kiara, one of you three gets to stitch me up." She pauses before saying, "John B., you can do that."

"What? Why me?" John B. argues, before getting a nudge to the rib from Sarah and changing his tone, "I mean....yeah. Okay." He takes a seat next to Eden, sitting on the side in which her wounded arm was.

"Sarah you can help John B. stop the bleeding and disinfect the wound." Eden continues, pulling the blood soaked bandanna away from the cloth of John B.'s button down. Her wound yet again stings at the contact with air, and Eden bites her lip as she looks down at her arm to see what she was working with. 

Her skin was torn from her shoulder down to her elbow. The bullet took a decent chunk out from her arm, leaving a noticeable patch of raw flesh underneath—a bloody mess. 

However, she's thankful it's a graze rather than a shot wound. The last thing she needed was a bullet stuck in her shoulder. 

"Okay, you know, that's not.....horrible." Eden confirms, looking down at her arm. It wasn't pretty by any terms, but it was fixable. 

John B. deadpans, "You literally have a chunk of flesh taken out of your arm."

"Yeah, but it's fixable." Eden replies, "Now I'd like to not have an infected wound so can we please work on cleaning it instead of arguing over whether it's bad?" 

"Okay."

Using gauze pads to try and soak up the blood, John B. and Sarah began to clean up the graze wound. Through gritted teeth from the sting, Eden guides her friends and helps them using her words, making sure they applied enough pressure.

Disinfecting came next, which was rougher on Eden's wound. Given the rawness of the skin and freshness of the wound, the alcohol stung as it made contact causing the Bexley's jaw to tick, small grunts of pain and discomfort passing her lips amidst John B.'s countless apologies. 

Stitching was the worst. Not only did John B. have little experience in ever stitching up a wound, let alone something this big, the Chateau held no numbing medicine whatsoever. So, Eden was bound to feel every pinch and poke of the needle and thread.

Despite trying her best to stay strong, tears prickled in Eden's eyes after the first structure. It fucking hurt.

Painful whimpers left her lips as John B. tried his best to work carefully, though he was far from a professional.

Her hands tensely flexed with every stitch and JJ caught on to her small movements, quickly sliding his hand into her so she had something to squeeze, and to just hold on to for comfort. 

Eden did just that, squeezing his hand whenever she was urged to do so. JJ didn't say anything.

At some point, the past few days of little sleep and exhaust and the pain medication started to take effect on Eden Bexley. Her breathing became level and her eyelids started to flutter shut.

Eventually, her head fell against JJ's shoulder, body falling into a small rest as John B. finished the stitches.

JJ stayed relatively still to make sure his friend got as best as a rest she could. He didn't mind her head on his shoulder.

Sarah was currently taking his place, wiping her arm of any remaining blood and wrapping the wound with gentle fingers, as to not wake the Bexley.

"Should we leave her here? Or does she need someone to watch her?" The Maybank asks, looking at the Routledge who was watching his sleeping friend.

"Just let her sleep." John B. nods, eyes soft as he looks at the girl. The least she deserved was some sleep. "She deserves it."

maras misc!

i got the urge to have eden get grazed by the bullet randomly but like i am a sucker for unessacary drama so it had to happen. kensie would know.

she's fine. just a little more hatred for rafe.

this chapter was pretty fun to write. gave me some time to write some bonding moments and then rafe literally going psycho.

let's give drew starkey a round of applause for his acting.

i don't have much to say about this chapter other than it was pretty chill....

hope you enjoyed! see you back with chapter 41 (shits gonna go down)