MONEY, MONEY, MONEY! jj maybank

007. jj, be quiet

"OKAY, SO I'M sensing this weird thing going on between the two of you, and I wanted to start asking questions ever since JJ opened your door looking all pissed but I figured that it'd drop in a few minutes." After a lot of minutes of not talking, Pope stood up and dusted his hands after tying the rope up. Nicola always admired this about her friend— he was so observant, but she wasn't a huge fan when Pope was onto her. "What the hell happened?"

"Nothing is—"

"Let me guess, nothing is wrong?" Pope finished the sentence for him, knowing damn well that the two of them were too stubborn to acknowledge anything negative. To them, they always had to get along, so whenever they would get into disagreements, the whole group would suffer since they blatantly choose to just flat out ignore each other until they talked again and pretended that nothing happened.

"Seriously, Pope. Nothing is wrong. I'm just really tired." Her voice was soft, unlike the usual snarky tone.

Her dark brown eyes glance over to JJ's blue ones, a glint in them that only he could understand. "Right, JJ?"

JJ gulped, taking a hit out of his joint to ease the weird tingly feeling he felt in his chest. "Yeah. Right."

The minutes passed by in complete silence, Pope fixing up a generator, Nicola swinging her legs on the dock while JJ continued to smoke until the familiar loud machinery of the Twinkie come their way.

When she turned around, the car was already there, accompanied by a honk.

"Let's ride," JJ mumbled, immediately getting the memo. Cola grabbed Pope's extended hand, thanking him when he grabs her waist to stop her and her wobbly legs from slipping into the water.

She misses the look of the blonde boy who sits in the front seat.

....

The sun was down, and the whole group was engulfed in darkness. During the ride where Pope and Nicola sat together at the middle row whilst JJ continued to smoke his Juul at the third, they were informed by John B that the clue about the lighthouse was wrong and he had it all figured out.

Nicola was still reluctant about it, but she was too loopy to tell John B off. The beer she drank with JJ was still in her system, so her head was still all over the place.

Eventually, they arrived.

"It's so dark," Cola whispered as they walked through the cemetery. The girl held her phone in one hand, shining the flashlight to guide her path.

"John B, what are we doing?" Kiara, who was beside her and equally terrified and confused questioned.

"You know how you're trying to remember a song, but you don't remember who sings it?"

"Can you just tell us instead of making these weird— fuck!"

Nicola tripped over a tree branch, almost falling to the ground if it wasn't for her amazing sense of balance. The group let out sniggers at this, which prompted her to roll her eyes and give them the good old middle finger.

"So, Redfield," John B continued, still chuckling at the fact that Nicola tripped on a branch. "I thought this whole time it was a place. But it's not. It's a person."