#i gotta name him. my guy whos secretly a school of fish pretending to be human

[bmpmp3]

fish......

[obxlife]

Complicated (JJ x Reader)

A/N: I’m back! After like four months of not writing ANYTHING I have finally decided to write something. This idea just popped into my head, honestly, but I think I’ll be taking requests again soon (maybe not, I’m still not sure). Anyways, enjoy!

Pairing: JJ x Reader

Word count: 4385

Request: -

Summary: The ups and downs of your relationship with JJ.

Warnings: Underage drinking, mentions of hooking up and maybe some other sexual acts (NO SMUT). Swearing probably. Oh, also, I tried wirting in third person so let me know if it’s as good as second person!

COMPLICATED

Feelings sucked. Just ask Y/N Y/L/N about it.

The empty cup in her hand weighed her arm down as she rested it upon her knee, her chest and body leaning forward closer to the bonfire that burned before her. Her free hand was tracing random figures onto her thigh, trying but failing to distract her mind from what she was witnessing across the beach.

The kegger was in full swing, and normally by now she would have been at least three drinks in, but her mood had turned sour the instant the rim of her first cup touched her lips.

She didn’t want to talk about it - hell, she didn’t even want to think about it - but JJ was right there in front of her line of sight flirting with another girl from the Cut. And to make matters worse, it was the one girl from the Cut which she couldn’t stand. Her childhood best friend, Matilda Garner. 

Y/N let out a big sigh, which caught Pope’s attention. He turned away from the girl he had been speaking to and looked at Y/N, noticing her frown and the furrow between her eyebrows. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, although he already had figured out the answer. All he did was follow Y/N’s unwavering eyes towards their blond friend.

“Nothing,” she tried to lie knowing she would fail. Pope had always had a way of figuring everything out, which explained why he was the only Pogue that knew exactly what was going on between her and JJ. 

“Y/N...,” Pope began. He didn’t continue speaking until the girl before him removed her eyes from Matilda’s obvious flirting attempts towards JJ. “You should just tell him.”

“Why the hell would I do that, Pope? It would completely ruin our relationship,” she explained. Y/N felt panic rise within her just at the thought of confessing what she truly felt to JJ.

“Look, even if JJ does not feel the same way you feel about him, it would probably make you feel better.”

“That doesn’t make sense at all, Pope,” Y/N replied moving her eyes to the floor. She pretended to count the grains of sand that were seeping through her toes as Pope continued to explain his thoughts on the topic.

“It does too! I just think it’s unfair for you to be carrying this around. He’s totally using you and like, fine, you were using him at first too, but now you feel stuff and you’re hurting.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but I prefer hurting than being without him.”

“Without who?” Kiara’s voice rang behind them. The two teenagers turned around towards the voice, surprised that she wasn’t flirting some Touron up like she normally would. “JJ?”

Y/N groaned. “How does everybody know about me and JJ?”

“That you guys are secretly-not-secretly hooking up?”

The girl groaned again. 

“It is kind of obvious though,” Pope explained. “You guys would randomly leave when we were hanging out and then we could hear you guys through the Chateau.”

“What?” Y/N practically screamed. “I thought we were being quiet though.”

“Think again, Y/N,” Kie said while taking a seat right next to her. “So are you finally going to tell him that you like him?”

The girl in question just rolled her eyes before stepping away from the log where she was perched. She looked towards her blond friend-with-benefits one last time before heading towards the keg, where John B was surely too drunk to ask her about JJ and sober enough to distract her.

**********************************************************************

JJ was nowhere to be seen. It was the third time that week that he skipped the Pogue hang out and the person everyone had expected to know where he was at the moment was just as lost as the rest of them.

“But JJ always tells you where he goes in hopes that you’ll call him to hook up later.”

“Well, I don’t know where he is,” Y/N replied. She hadn’t heard from the blond in about two weeks, ever since the kegger where he had been flirting with Matilda Garner. “He stopped texting me a while back.”

“Really?” John B inquired while looking up from his phone. It chimed once again with a message (probably from Sarah), but he ignored it. “That’s weird.”

Y/N’s furrowed eyebrows showed her slight confusion towards the teenage boy, but this only lasted a few seconds before Kiara declared that they should just leave without JJ.

They didn’t arrive back at the Chateau until the very late afternoon, and both Pope and Kiara rushed off (not without saying goodbye, of course) because they had to help their parents with their respective businesses. John B and Y/N trudged towards the front door as they waved to the other two teens.

“I’m so tired,” Y/N exclaimed as she placed her bag onto the table and the cooler she held in her other hand onto the floor. She opened it up and began to take out the empty beer cans and plastic bottles so that she could throw them out in the recycling bin that Kie had bought a couple of months ago. John B leaned down to help her, leaving his phone on the table next to her bag. 

“Same,” the boy replied. “I did not think that we were going to be out that long.”

The girl was about to speak out her agreement when the back door suddenly burst open and in came JJ with a dazed smile. He didn’t seem to be in any rush to apologize for having skipped out on the afternoon activity he had promised he would attend.

“Hey, man,” John B greeted while Y/N focused her eyes on the can in her hand. She pretended to read the label while she secretly began to listen in on the two boys’ soon-to-be conversation. 

“Hey,” JJ replied almost in a sigh. The toothy grin on his face had not faltered one bit, and Y/N had a feeling she knew exactly what that meant.

Suddenly feeling as if the walls of the fishing shack were closing in on her, the girl grabbed onto her bag and placed it over her shoulder.

“Well, I’m out,” she exclaimed. “Gotta go help my mom out.”

She began to head towards the same door JJ had just entered through a while ago when she was stopped by a hand that wrapped around her arm, just below her elbow.

“Wait, Y/N, I actually wanted to talk to you,” the blond surfer said as if only just realizing she was there. The girl nodded her head and turned to face him, but his eyes darted towards the outside. She knew what that meant, so she turned and exited the small house after saluting John B one last time.

JJ headed straight for the hammocks while Y/N followed suit, wondering what exactly JJ was about to tell her.

“So...,” the boy began. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

The girl rolled her eyes. She wanted to say that it was JJ’s fault that he hadn’t seen her. but instead, she went straight to the point. “What do you want, JJ?”

“Um, so I don’t want you to feel bad or anything because you’re my best friend and you’re really cool,” he rushed, almost as if he had memorized the exact words he was going to say and he was going through them before he would completely forget them.

Y/N ignored the slight pang in her chest she felt at the words ‘best friend’.

“And, trust me, I loved sleeping around with you but we have to stop.”

The girl’s face fell. The blond noticed this.

“It’s not that you’re bad in bed or anything like that. It’s just I really like this girl, I think you know her. Her name’s Matilda and -”

Y/N wasn’t listening anymore. Each word JJ spoke made her feel worse and worse and worse. What was the worst she had ever felt? Now, with JJ confessing his love for her ex best friend. And the worst part about it? She wasn’t even mad at him. He had no clue she was completely in love with him and he had no clue she absolutely loathed Matilda. She was just disappointed in herself. How could she have been so stupid to fall for her best friend?

However, she tried to not let it show on her face. If she were with anybody else, she would not have pulled her act off, but JJ was oblivious and believed everything that was said to him when it came from Y/N.

“That’s fine. I’m really happy for you.”

“Really? That’s great because -”

Once again the girl pretended to listen to his words instead of the sound of her heart breaking. Soon enough, she realized she couldn’t take it anymore, and she interrupted JJ.

“Hey, I’m really tired and I need to go help my mom.”

“Oh, okay. I thought you were staying the night,” he said with a bit of sadness in his eyes. He was almost bursting at the seams with excitement to tell her all about Matilda.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. Tomorrow?”

The boy nodded as the girl finally hugged him and turned around. She wiped the tear that slid down her cheek and promised herself that she would be able to build up her armor again for tomorrow.

*********************************************************************************

It wasn’t long before Matilda began to hang around the Pogues and Y/N began to do so less and less. They all knew what was wrong with Y/N except for JJ, who would ask about her every once in a while. He never seemed to get a straight answer.

Meanwhile, Y/N hung out with the Pogues individually in places where she knew JJ wouldn’t be. The library, the ice cream shop right on the edge of the Cut, the church’s parking lot, anywhere. No matter how many months had passed since he got together with Matilda, she just wasn’t over him. She began to believe that she never would be over him.

When school began it became obvious to JJ that she was avoiding the Pogues. She was hanging out with a completely different group of kids, and although JJ didn’t know them, he already sort of hated them for stealing his best friend.

Matilda was a good distraction from this problem though, and JJ never actually had enough time to confront Y/N about it, so he didn’t.

However, when he noticed Marcus Lakes hanging around Y/N more and more often, he began to worry.

Y/N didn’t really think of Marcus as more than a friend though. She was still hung up on JJ, and she really hadn’t spent enough time with Marcus to actually begin to feel anything. In fact, her relationship with Marcus was just a series of coincidences that only amounted to them being partners in many school projects together. Y/N truly believed that once they were over, he would leave her alone. 

But he didn’t. No, instead he spent even more time with her, and although the girl wasn’t used to this type of attention, she enjoyed it. She found herself entranced within the brunett’s conversations and thrilled when he invited her out for dinner.

Soon enough, they were dating, and Y/N had never been happier. For once in her life, she felt like someone’s first choice. She felt great not being a simple replacement or a filler. She loved being important - even if it wasn’t to the boy she still secretly loved.

In all honesty, she knew she would never fully be over JJ. Like ever. But she did truly like Marcus. Maybe even love. And she spent many nights wondering if that made her a bad person. 

She soon concluded that it didn’t. She related her situation to those of adults whose spouses died and they carried on loving both their deceased love and their new living one. The only difference in her case was that JJ wasn’t dead.

After a few months of dating Marcus, Y/N finally built up the courage to hang out with the Pogues again. She felt strong enough to encounter them even if JJ was with them, and besides, Marcus would be there with her.

And so on a cold, winter day, she headed down her dock with her hand entwined with her boyfriend’s before stepping onto John B’s boat. The Pogues all greeted her with hugs as if she had never left, and Y/N understood the underlying message behind them. We get it, they said. You don’t have to say you’re sorry.

The best part of that afternoon was that JJ was there but Y/N soon realized that she wasn’t truly nervous about that. In fact, he had also hugged her as the old friends they had once bee - or maybe still were? Y/N was kind of confused about that. However, she realized that maybe Marcus was actually helping her get over her past love, and she didn’t really mind spending time with the Pogues as she did before.

JJ wasn’t happy though. At all.

For some reason, he was absolutely pissed when he saw Y/N at her dock with Marcus by her side. Why did he have to be there? Marcus wasn’t their friend, Y/N was. And she had no right bringing him. He thought the afternoon was supposed to be a Pogues-only hang out. They had even left Sarah out!

JJ soon realized that the way he was feeling must have been the way the Pogues felt when he brought Matilda along at the start of his relationship. And he realized that they had all sucked the bad feelings up for him and put a smile on their faces. So that was exactly what he did as he greeted Y/N and Marcus.

“Hey, I missed you,” JJ whispered into Y/N’s ear when he hugged her. She giggled and tapped his chest lightly when she pulled back. His heart skipped a beat at that feeling, but he pretended he didn’t feel it.

As she turned away JJ realized that Y/N never said he missed him.

**********************************************************************************

In the middle of May, JJ called Y/N near one o’clock in the morning. 

“Hello?” she had asked groggily into the phone.

“Y/N,” he sniffled a bit. The girl piqued up once she realized that he had been crying.

“JJ, what’s wrong?”

“Matilda and I had a fight. I think we’re done.”

Y/N’s heart stuttered, but she forced it to settle down. She instead invited the broken-hearted boy to her house and promised he could stay with her that night.

Y/N, and the rest of the Pogues as well, had seen this break up coming. JJ and Matilda had been fighting for weeks on end, sometimes even inside of the Chateau when they (the Pogues) were on the other side of the walls. Y/N tried to stay awake as she waited for JJ to arrive, knocking on her window as he would do when they used to hook up.

God, that seems like so long ago, the girl thought.

Soon enough, the blond surfer was outside her window, tears still running down his face. He let himself be embraced by his best friend as he cried and cried and kept crying until the very early hours of the morning.

“Thanks,” he whispered when he had finally settled down. He wouldn’t confess this to her, but most of his recent fights with Matilda had been about Y/N. About how she was his best friend and how she always seemed to be around. How Matilda would always bad mouth her relentlessly and about how JJ couldn’t stand or understand that (“Y/N’s so nice, what do you mean I can’t hang out with her?”). Secretly, he was glad his relationship was finally over.

“You’re welcome, J,” she whispered back, eyes barely open. JJ felt his heart bounce in his chest at the nickname he hadn’t heard her call him in so long. A smile stretched across his lips as he buried his face into the girl’s pillows in an attempt to keep his grin hidden from her view.

Before Y/N could fall asleep, she reminded herself that she shouldn’t sleep with JJ in the same bed. After all, she had a boyfriend. So, as slowly as she could, she stood up and grabbed a pillow, placing it on the ground. As she lay across her carpet and grabbed the blanket that was on top of her bed, she heard JJ ask, “What are you doing?”

“Sleeping” she sighed as the quilt fell atop of her body and enveloped her in heat.

“On the floor? Why?”

She hummed softly before speaking in a soft grumble. “I have a boyfriend, J.”

The boy felt really lonely all of a sudden. He wanted to be able to cuddle Y/N like they used to do before he was with Matilda, like when he was sad about his father or some other shit. He didn’t know why he felt almost angry at the fact that he couldn’t hold onto his best friend like he used to.

“So no cuddles like old times?” he asked in an attempt to make Y/N feel guilty enough to join him. But she just shook her head. “I have a boyfriend, JJ.”

JJ tried to come up with something else to get her back in the bed. He didn’t even want to have sex with her, he just wanted to be able to hold her.

“So you’re going to sleep on the floor?”

“Would you rather sleep here?”

“No, but it’s your house,” the blonde tried to be as gentleman-ish as possible.

“Then I’m staying here. Besides, you need the bed more than I do. Your night was pretty rough.”

With that, she turned around and fell asleep. JJ tried to do the same but failed.

The following morning, Y/N was up and out of the house before the blond teenager even woke up. When he finally opened his eyes he read the note she left for him on the bedside table. He groaned when he realized she was going to be out with Marcus for the whole day.

Just great. Fucking great.

************************************************************

If there even was a God and he could see JJ now, he’d probably be laughing.

The boy was seated on a log, a red solo cup in his hands, as he stared at Y/N across the beach. His other hand was tracing figures on his thigh as his mind was occupied with what he was seeing. Marcus’s hand was wrapped around her waist as they both dancing. He let out a sigh before Pope turned to look at him, an exact mirror of Y/N’s situation from a year ago. 

“What’s wrong?” Pope asked although he already knew. He had noticed JJ staring at Y/N more often these past few months after he had broken things off with Matilda.

“Nothing,” the blond surfer lied as he brought the cup in his hand up to his lips.

“JJ...”

“I know, I know,” the boy in questions answered before his friend could even speak what his thoughts were on the matter. “She’s with someone else, I get it.”

Pope hummed as he stared at Y/N as well. He noticed how her smile was the biggest he had ever seen it, and he pondered over telling JJ how she had felt just last year about him. 

“You know,” he began to say, still not knowing if it was a good idea to confess what he was going to mention. “She had a thing for you last year. When you guys were hooking up.”

JJ’s eyes widened. “She what? Wait, you know we used to hook up?”

Pope scoffed. “We all knew, JJ. And yeah, she did. That’s why she distanced herself when you got together with Matilda. Well, that and the fact that Matilda used to be her best friend when they were little.”

JJ couldn’t believe it. Everything was making so much sense.

“That makes so much sense.”

Pope just nodded. “Yeah, she was pretty heartbroken about it.”

“Who was heartbroken?” a voice asked from behind them.

The boys turned to find Kiara standing there, with a cup in her hands. She moved to take the spot on JJ’s side that wasn’t occupied by Pope as the dark-skinned boy answered, “Y/N.”

“Last year? Yeah, she was. It’s good she found Marcus though. He makes her happy.”

“I guess,” JJ whispered bitterly.

Kie’s eyes widened when she noticed the blond’s tone of voice. “Don’t tell me you like her now. You do know she was heartbroken about you, right?”

JJ simply rolled his eyes and let out an annoyed scoff. “Yeah, I do now. And karma finally got to me by cursing me with the exact same fate as her.”

His tone of voice was burlesque, and he quickly stood up from the log and headed away from the beach, hoping that he would be able to find John B to distract himself.

Life seemed to have a funny way of working and JJ hated it. What he hated was that everything was just so complicated, and not even his feelings could line up at the same time with the one girl that he finally realized was perfect for him.

He glanced at her once again. Each dance move Y/N executed made him feel worse and worse and worse. What was the worst he had ever felt? Now, with Marcus wrapped around her and him standing far away. And the worst part about it? He wasn’t - he couldn’t - even be mad at her. She had no clue he was completely in love with her. He was just mad at himself. How could he have been so stupid to fall for a girl that was taken?

He did what he did best to forget. He downed the cup of alcohol in his hand.

******************************************************************************************

JJ felt like he was in a personal torture chamber except the chamber was the whole island and the torture was Y/N talking about her boyfriend. 

By now, the Pogues had started pitying JJ the same way they had pitied Y/N before she got with Marcus, but this time, they didn’t want to say anything because she was apparently extremely happy with her current boyfriend. 

So JJ just spent most of his days looking at Y/N from afar and trying to ignore Marcus while pretending everything was fine.

And then, finally, after months of being tortured, it all ended.

Marcus had cheated on Y/N. And with no one else but Matilda.

To say she was utterly pissed was an understatement. And honestly, this had surprised her. She originally thought she was going to be completely devasted, but after the first round of tears that came with the shock of finding them in her own bed, Y/N was fine. Just pissed, but other than that, fine.

And JJ? Oh, he was over the moon. He couldn’t believe that everything had lined up so perfectly in his favor that he was finally going to be able to be with Y/N, the girl f his dreams. But just as fast as his happy feeling came, it disappeared when he realized that Y/N’s strategy for moving on was hooking up with Tourons and then telling him about it.

In between all of the madness that followed the weeks after her break up, Y/N never once stopped to think about what she was doing. She spent three weeks absolutely getting wasted at every single party she attended and leaving them with a new boy in her hand. And later, when she washed up once again, she would head straight over to her blond best friend and tell him everything about it, not noticing the sad eyes with which he would listen.

When school started once again, JJ was trying to ignore her in hopes that he would stop listening to her awful hookup stories. And it was around this time that Y/N realized he was avoiding her and how much she truly missed him.

And so once again she began to pin after JJ without him even realizing it. 

As their feelings began to grow once again (because they finally just started hanging around each other without talking about their past sex lives), Pope was the first to notice their heart-shaped eyes and saccharine words. 

And thank God he did, because the two Pogues whose hearts belonged to each other were way too naive to notice.

It had been a random Tuesday night when Pope had spilled the beans and sent JJ into a frenzied rush towards Y/N’s house. His frantic pounding on her window pulled her out of her studying as her wide eyes locked with him. She opened the window and let the boy she loved inside, smiling at him in greeting and putting a finger up to her lips.

Before she could actually talk, however, the boy kissed her, taking her by such surprise that she almost bit down on his lip. Luckily, she caught herself before she did so.

And as their lips touched each other and her eyes closed, she swore she could see the entire universe. Every star and every light shined before her while her thin arms wrapped around the back of his neck and cherished the moment she had been craving for since she had fallen in love with JJ once again. Her stomach was doing jumping jacks and burpees just as JJ’s tongue began to dance across her own. When they finally surfaced for air, JJ bit her lip as softly as he could before opening his eyes and staring right back into hers.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for like, seven months now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you do it again?”

And so he did. Again and again and again.

That night, after they had undressed and shown each other just how in love they truly were, Y/N sighed in happiness and relief that their relationship would never have to be complicated again.

*********************************************************

A/N: I was loving this fic but then it just became sort of meh, but I feel like I have to post it because I still like it, you know?