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THAT EVENING, HURRICANE Agatha came in, and she came in with a vengeance. Which meant JJ didn't sleep alone in John B's guest room, he slept on the pullout couch with Piper because it was a well known fact that, despite living on an island, Piper didn't do bad storms. They just freaked her out. And, just as predicted, Piper woke up with JJ sprawled horizontally on top of her, his head and shoulders thrown so far across the couch, they were hanging off the edge. Piper didn't care so much about not waking JJ up, but he was a good six inches taller than her and had a good deal more muscle mass than she did, so there was no budging to be done.
Piper wasn't annoyed at JJ, it was just a thing he did, and she was happy enough that she was at least some family he was comfortable around, but she was annoyed that all she could think about was the previous morning when she woke up in a similar-enough position but with Edith Abernathy clinging to Piper in her sleep. She couldn't articulate how odd it was. So, she occupied herself with trying to shove JJ off her, or at least roll him over onto his back so he would be sprawled across Piper's legs instead of her entire stomach, so she had a better chance of getting out from under him. In the midst of her struggle, John B walked into the kitchen across from Piper, rearranged the photograph of his mom and dad that had gotten knocked loose the previous night in the storm, and clinked the rim of an empty beer bottle on the glass of a photograph of his Uncle T. He did that everyday, and considering he had a meeting with this weasel-y looking lady from DCS yesterday, he needed all the cheers from his absent family members he could get.
"No service and no power, Pipe," John B said walking toward the door of The Château which was to the left of the couch. Upon hearing the news, Piper dropped her mission to roll JJ over and literally dropped her head back onto a pillow. John B slapped JJ's back as he walked past, "Either of you been outside, yet?"
"I have polio, bro. I can't walk," JJ groaned at the floor. John B shot Piper a look that said, fairly simply, 'good luck with that,' and went outside. Piper gave up. She grabbed a pillow from the other end of the couch and slid it on the floor underneath JJ's head, and shoved him off her and onto the floor. At least he had a pillow to break his fall. After a series of thuds, during which Piper hopped off the end of the pullout couch to pour lukewarm day-old coffee into a suspicious-looking mug, JJ groaned, this time at the ceiling. "Aren't you just piss and vinegar this morning, Piper. Hey, are you okay?"
Piper turned around, swirling the coffee in the mug in her hand so that the dregs might dissolve a bit more in the liquid before she gulped it down, good or not. JJ had moved so he looked more alive than he did before, and he looked at Piper the way he did when he knew she was hiding something from him—it was the look before that stupid puppy-dog pout he pulled to get her to spill. She kissed her teeth. "Yep, I'm fabulous."
