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He's at home now. They're taking a break. He should be happy.
He's drifting again. His hands feel featherlight as he moves them, not nearly Enough to take up the space he thinks they do. He feels like, or rather he knows, he's watching from the outside, not recognizing the lines and calluses of his hands as they move at a snails pace across the pages. The ink smudge never leaves the edge of his hand because he has so much to say but at the same time so little. It was all there, all there in the lyrics that found him up at 2am shaking and breathless. Everything feels loose and unsteady, a curtain hanging by a thread desperately covering the windows. He doesn't care for the dark room it leaves him in.
Another person's face takes over his when frequent family gatherings hit. Tyler from stage, Tyler with confidence, Tyler from interviews, Tyler that smiles. He takes over more often than not.
Smile. You've missed them.
It's cold at home at night.
It is four days and two hours back in Ohio that Jenna lets on she knows. Arms pressed around him, barely a sliver of pale blue light present, her sleepy voice lifts across the centimetres separating them and grazes the back of his neck.
"Are you getting bad again?"
her voice is soft.
He doesn't know how to answer, and his silence burns bitter against his tongue like black coffee.
•
Josh comes back.
It isn't because Tyler reached out, no. Radio silence wasn't just a phrase.
And that's exactly why he wasn't in L.A.
The soft roar of the taxi's motor fades away as his scuffed suitcase wheels catch on the curb of the sidewalk and he sighs in exasperation. He turns around and pulls as hard as he can, eventually freeing it from the chipped cement and lifting it upwards.
His eyes eventually look up and land on the small redbrick Columbus home that somehow belongs to him. Lifting up his baseball cap to smooth his fuchsia hair underneath against the heat of summer, he hopes that the last tenants hadn't left a mess. He was far too tired to deal with that.
The small wheels clack over the familiar cement as he drags his bags over the driveway and struggles up the steps with them. Fishing his keys from his pocket, he nearly drops them as he hears a familiar voice behind him.
"Josh??"
•
They ended up at Starbucks after Tyler explains he was going on a walk to get some air.
Tyler took his coffee black for some reason, he lightly shrugged when Josh inquired why. The metaphor of it fit too much like a glove.
Tyler asks him about the girls in L.A. as an indie singer's voice croons with caramel notes around them and the two workers. Josh tells him how there aren't any for him with a wistful smile, his triplet dimples making an appearance.
On their way out Tyler scribbles down Josh's phone number (that he knows by heart) onto a ripped paper napkin and slides it across the counter to the adorable barista who's eyes had barely left the back of Josh's head their entire stay. Her pale cheeks are flushed and he's incredibly proud of himself as he saunters out to where the unaware drummer is waiting for him on the sidewalk.
He tells Josh what he did a safe distance away and Josh's indignant shove to his shoulder makes him chuckle and step sideways. As he rights himself, he notices how close to the busy roadway he is and almost wishes he stumbled a bit further.
•
his bathroom cabinets are full of orange.
High school Tyler liked to keep the empty bottles, and he figures he never really grew out of the habit. His eyes traverse across all the empties until they reach the two full prescriptions that he hasn't touched, hasn't even considered taking. Jenna trusts him to take them, and he smiles and nods when she asks, probably pulls her in for a rose coloured forehead kiss maybe.
"Tyler I'm already beating your ass because you're not in here!" Josh calls from the living room, all warmth and mischief. The sounds of super smash bros rise up as he sluggishly pushes the glass cabinets shut, turning off the light with the slightest feeling of regret.
He masks it.
For Josh.
•
It's getting hard to breathe again and harder to sleep again.
•
Josh is worried.
He always knew that Columbus was too dark of a place to keep Tyler since he met him, like a trophy suddenly shoved to the back of your closet for no rhyme or reason, kept in a corner. He had always been the first to push for them to move upwards.
Josh notices how the smiles are a second late, the laughing isn't hearty enough to warrant a hand pressed to the chest, the jokes and dimples becoming an endangered species. He's far from oblivious to Tyler.
He finds more excuses to stay around him, drags him out of the house, even agrees to an awkward date with the girl from Starbucks to try and make his boy smile.
He's a galaxy of star filled insecurities and worries, swirling endlessly, and it's getting harder and harder to keep his sun burning.
•
Hard. Breathe.
Too Much.
He's given up on sleep. The sheets are a noose.
•
Josh is over again, filling his living room with bright colours and heat but Tyler is blue. He replaces the two empty orange, orange bottles with the rest of the empty orange bottles with a detached sense of self, and slowly closes the cupboard doors. The wood grain seems to melt and hover before his eyes and he squeezes them shut with a vengeance, placing his weight onto his hand that grip the porcelain counter in front of him.
It takes him a bit longer to find the light switch now, given that the doorknob is fuzzy. His hands feel like he's been sitting on them for far too long, the popping numbness at his fingertips. Finally managing to get out the bathroom, he slowly moves down the hallway that seems to stretch for miles, swallowing him up.
The smell of popcorn hits him before he rounds the corner and sees the ceramic red bowl perched in between two beers. Josh looks over at him with a small grin before popping the cap off his own and tapping the leather sofa beside him to get Tyler to sit down. He does so gratefully, his knees feel screwed on backwards and he's grateful for relief. He doesn't touch the popcorn or the beer with condensation running along its edges but he rests his head against Josh's shoulder within the first few minutes of whatever movie he had brought over.
Josh, ever conscious of Tyler, notices half an hour into the movie that the other boy's eyes are fluttering shut. Hefting the remote into his hand he turns down the volume on the tv while reaching his other arm around Tyler.
Josh is warm and somehow keeps the crackling colours at bay. Unable to keep himself up as the drummer's shoulder shifts, his head falls gracelessly into Josh's lap, and he curls up on the sofa in response. His head feels like an anvil, he doesn't know how he's ever moved it. Left fingers are twitching but he doesn't think Josh notices as he feels a callused loving hand ruffle through his hair. The tremors are vivid now, broken? Did he break something?
A low humming comes from above him, and swimming through the murky waters behind his eyelids that envelope him he realizes that it's Josh. He almost smiles, despite it all, Josh always had a soothing voice but wouldn't go anywhere without the safety of his drums. He strains his hearing as Josh ruffles his hair affectionately, unaware that his boy is going cold.
truce?
they hadn't played it since Josh couldn't get through it without the companionship of tears. He would laugh at the lyrics if he could but he can't feel his jaw, and has no desire to remedy that problem.
He preaches stay alive, he tells all those kids, those kids with tired eyes just like him to shoot at his heart, and he wonders as he lies there taking shallow breaths if he wishes that someone had told him to stay alive.
He's falling further and further, those waters slowly filling up his airways and he can feel the black waves lapping at the top of his head. The colours are gone as the tremors spread upwards to his elbow and he sluggishly turns his head to bury his face in his beautiful friend's lap. Beautiful. He's beautiful. An image of him plays across the backs of his eyelids like ending credits to a long ago movie.
Josh's beautiful and unaware and soft singing fades away to the buzzing in his ears and he finally,
finally,
sleeps.