Chapter Text
“How did you find this?”
This is a darkened basketball court just down the street from the venue, floodlit and surrounded by high fences. They're the only ones out here, dusk turning the sky orange all around them. Just two anonymous guys and a basketball, just the way Josh knows Tyler likes it.
“Some guy asked me if I played,” Josh says, catching the ball when Tyler throws it.
He throws it straight back again and Tyler catches it with ease. Of course he does, even taking a couple steps back. Josh does too, bracing himself for the next catch.
“Are you sure you played, dude?” Tyler says. It’s the croaky voice of some guy they met months ago. He couldn’t handle the thought of Tyler playing basketball, and kept telling them about how shocked he was. He’s kind of become a supporting character on tour by now, Tyler bringing out this increasingly exaggerated impression of him every time there’s a quiet moment. “Like, are you sure?”
“Like, with your height, man, are you sure you’re sure?” Josh says, grinning when Tyler pauses before passing the ball to laugh. “His face when you nailed that throw.”
“I know, right?” He finally throws, and Josh manages to catch but only because he lunges forwards. As if in response, Tyler takes another step backwards.
“Oh fuck you, dude, you know I can’t catch from that far.”
Tyler doesn’t exactly say but I can, but he thinks it. Josh can tell.
“Whatever,” Josh says, rolling his eyes and taking another step backwards himself. The glint of amusement in Tyler’s eyes makes him feel weird, and he swallows and ends up fumbling the pass. Tyler catches it anyway – of course he does, side-stepping like he instinctively knew Josh was gonna fuck it up.
“Ha,” Tyler says, grinning at him. “Reigning champion.” And he takes another step backwards.
“Asshole,” Josh says, but prepares for the throw all the same.
-
When someone climbs into Josh's bunk later that night, all he does is shuffle closer to the wall to give whoever it is some space.
What's up, he wants to say, but he's too tired.
“Mm,” He says instead. His eyes feel too heavy to open.
“Sorry,” Tyler says, patting his hip. He sounds wide awake, and that alone has Josh forcing his gluey eyes open and rolling over onto his back. Tyler's hand stays where it is, fingers picking agitatedly at a loose thread at the hem of Josh's t-shirt.
“'S'up,” Josh manages to say through a yawn, rubbing his eyes and trying to make them focus on Tyler, whose face is indistinct in the dark. “Everything okay? Do you -” He yawns again, his eyes watering. “D'you want me to get up?”
“No,” Tyler whispers. “It's okay, I'm fine. You should sleep.”
“'kay,” Josh says, softly, turning over completely so they're facing each other. “D'you -? Are we, like,” He puts a hand on Tyler's side and then takes it away again. “Is touching okay?”
If Tyler says no then he'll wake up properly, he thinks. Not wanting to be touched generally means bad stuff, so Josh'll have to get up and sort that shit out.
“Touching's good,” Tyler says, and Josh relaxes a little. “You sure you don't mind?”
“Nah,” Josh says, yawning. Tyler shifts around so he's facing away, the smell of his hair close to Josh's nose. When Josh throws an arm over his side Tyler's hand finds his, a warm weight there in the dark. “S'good.”
He falls asleep within minutes.
When he wakes up, Tyler's sitting up next to him, making weird slurping noises and tapping around on his phone.
“I got signal,” He says, when Josh makes a noise.
Josh's skin feels unpleasantly clammy, and his feet are tangled up with the blankets, and fuck, being awake sucks in the morning.
“Ugh,” He says.
“I found your Red Bull stash too,” Tyler says, and makes that slurping noise again.
“Ugh,” Josh repeats, throwing his arm over his eyes for a moment, adjusting to the morning and the warmth of Tyler next to him. “You gotta drink it like that?”
Tyler slurps again in response, louder this time.
“You want some?”
“In a minute,” Josh says, not moving.
“You should text your mom.”
“You should text my mom.”
Tyler laughs, making Josh laugh too, automatic and easy.
“I did, actually,” Tyler says, the words heavy with laughter. Josh thinks his voice sounds the best when it's like that. “She told me to get you to text. And, like, thanked me for last night-”
“Ugh, get out,” Josh says, grinding his knuckles into the side of Tyler's thigh and hiding his grin in the pillow at the sound of Tyler's helpless giggles.
-
They’re still too close to their van days to be sick of the bus. Josh knows that. And yet sometimes being stuck in there for months on end, sleeping on a thin bunk mattress and trying to pick the exact moment to pour milk on your cereal without giving your socks a shower can get a little tiring.
Tyler’s developed a term for the point when tour starts to get old and you miss home and a stationary bed with a good mattress, mainly based on the whole cereal thing.
“You got your milk face on,” He says, when he traipses into the lounge one morning. Josh thinks it’s morning, he doesn’t know. He woke up before everyone else for the first time all tour, and ended up wasting his precious alone time leaning on the crappy little lounge table, chin in hand, trying to figure out why he'd bothered getting out of bed in the first place.
“Huh?” He says, feeling slow and stupid. His brain switches on long enough to hug Tyler's arms close when he throws them around him from behind and squeezes, holding on tight.
“Milk face,” Tyler says, breath tickling Josh's ear. “You okay? Wanna watch a movie?”
Josh laughs. He can feel Tyler laughing too, right before he lets go.
“Shut up,” Josh says.
There's been some kind of terrible mistake and they only have one DVD on the bus, have done for weeks. It's a French movie or something, which wouldn't be a problem except none of them could work the subtitles on the first night of tour and a lot of it was random scenery and insipid background music with no, like, actual plot or interesting points to speak of. They've been talking about buying some DVDs for weeks but nobody's actually done it yet.
“I meant, like, after the next stop,” Tyler says. “Rest stops have DVDs, right?”
“I guess,” Josh says, stretching.
“So we’ll buy DVDs,” Tyler says, throwing himself into the seat opposite.
-
They don't buy DVDs.
Which wouldn't matter so much if they had a show to distract them, but they have a couple of days free, just driving between places. Tour bus limbo, Tyler calls it (and no, the other guys really didn't appreciate that one time they actually tried to play tour bus limbo. They'd ended up nearly breaking the lounge door, and Josh got this huge black bruise on his thigh that wouldn't fade for weeks).
They'd spent the evening messing around in the back lounge, playing cards, and then one by one everyone had sloped off to other places – to call parents or girlfriends, or read in their bunks, or do other stuff in their bunks that Josh'd rather not think about.
Which means 3am finds Tyler and Josh alone together, taking another shot at the boring French movie.
“I mean, like, there must be subtitles,” Josh says, scrolling through the DVD menu. “Like, there have to be, right?”
“What's subtitle in French, anyway?” Tyler asks.
When Josh looks over at him he's sprawled out on the couch, neck arched in this way that makes it hard not to stare for too long at his throat. Which is dumb, because a throat's a throat – Josh has one, and they're not a big deal.
Tyler's is peppered with stubble today. Josh swallows and doesn't think about the scratchiness he'd feel if he had the guts to reach his hand out, while Tyler says shit like le subtitle to the ceiling and laughs at himself.
“Le subtitle,” Josh repeats, laughing himself.
They end up losing their shit and laughing for like ten minutes, until Josh's stomach hurts and Tyler's wiping tears from his eyes.
“Stop, stop, it hurts,” Tyler says when he catches Josh's eye and the pair of them crack up again. He makes this dumb noise like a steam train, this just got done with laughing noise, and Josh just grins at him like an asshole because that's his best friend, right there.
As if on cue, Tyler props himself up on his elbows and says, “After all of that did you actually find the subtitles?”
“I honestly,” Josh starts, but Tyler smiles at him, evidently holding back a laugh. Josh ends up laughing a little too, looking away and pressing his lips together, thinking of all the sad stuff he possibly can to try and stop himself. He can see Tyler shaking with silent giggles out of the corner of his eye, which isn't helping at all. “I honestly do not know if there are any subtitles, dude.”
“'Cause it's all in French,” Tyler says, in this overwhelmed kind of voice that usually means he's seconds away from losing it again.
“Yeah, 'cause – 'cause that's not a language I speak, you know?” Josh says, already laughing before he's halfway done. “Shh, shh, we're gonna wake the guys up.”
“They're not asleep,” Tyler says, still laughing a little, hands resting on his stomach. Josh ends up watching his face as his smile fades and he yawns, forehead creased, looking younger somehow. “What d'you wanna do tomorrow?”
“Sleep,” Josh says, resisting the urge to point out that it's tomorrow already. “And, like, get ice cream.”
“And DVDs.”
“And DVDs,” Josh says, in danger of laughing again, gesturing at the DVD menu on screen, with its weird soft string music playing on a loop in the background. “Man, I might, like, crash.”
Tyler stretches, making a soft noise that makes Josh feel awkward about looking at him. When he looks back, Tyler's looking back at him, sleepily.
It's these moments that make staying up 'til past 3 worth it, every time. The moments when they could be back in Tyler's apartment, just the two of them, waiting for the sun to come up with energy drinks and endless blankets.
“Like, crash crash, or like, crash?” Tyler says, making air quotes for the second one.
“Like, crash crash,” Josh says. “Need to be awake for ice cream.” He pauses. “D'you wanna, like...?” He gestures in the direction of the bunks. It's always more comforting, somehow, having Tyler in his bunk with him, even though those things are way too small to have two people crammed into them.
“Mm, maybe later,” Tyler says. “I can't move.”
“Okay,” Josh says. “Well, like, text me if you need me, okay?”
Tyler nods and Josh shuffles along the couch to him to say goodnight properly. When he gets close enough, he braces a hand on the back cushion of the couch and just looks at Tyler for a moment, breathing in the smell of him this close.
The kiss is a mistake.
Not that Josh regrets it afterwards or anything, but he genuinely didn't mean to do it. He's messing around, aiming for Tyler's nose or his eyebrow or something, somewhere dumb and platonic so Tyler can wipe the imaginary saliva off and complain at him and they can both slope off to their bunks still soft with earlier laughter.
Except Tyler moves at the same time. It's so unacceptably cliché that Josh could almost get mad about it. It sounds so fake, like something right out of a terrible movie. And he knows that if he ever admitted to anyone that their first kiss was a genuine, honest to God accident it'd sound like he was trying to erase it somehow – trying to absolve himself of blame.
Which is bullshit, because it's only the first kiss that happens accidentally. The second one, the third one, the – the everything that happens afterwards, none of that shit is remotely accidental, and Josh doesn't want to erase any of it.
But that first time? Total honest to God mistake. He moves to plant this stupid joke kiss and Tyler moves to – do something, Josh doesn't even know, and then Tyler's lips are dry and unfamiliar against his own.
There's a moment when he freezes there, his mouth against Tyler's, and then he pulls back, heat rushing to his face.
They look at each other for a moment, and Josh experiences one of those dizzying moments when he realises – truly, honestly realises – that Tyler's separate to him. There's a different body and brain and heart keeping them apart, and Josh is never gonna know exactly what happens behind his eyes, no matter how many songs he hears or 5am confessions he listens to or hugs he gets.
Tyler's face is unreadable in that moment, but that alone says a lot. Josh thinks if the kiss had been something they were both gonna ignore Tyler would've laughed and shoved him off, but they just stay there, frozen still for the longest moment, staring each other down.
Then Tyler's tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip, and Josh's apology dies in his throat. The second time he leans in, it's completely, totally on purpose, and Tyler moves to meet him in this eager way that makes Josh feel like he missed a step going downstairs.
It's surreal at first, kissing his best friend. Mainly because it's Tyler, and they were laughing about the French for subtitle literally two seconds ago, and Josh can smell the fading sweetness of his deodorant all around him. When they move so they're awkwardly entangled on the couch he can feel the press of Tyler's body under him in a way that's completely different to all the times they've slept close together. This is different – Tyler's shifting restlessly below him, and when he grabs hold of Josh's shoulder and squeezes Josh thinks maybe he's crushing him, maybe Tyler doesn't want this, so he pulls away, gasping, his mouth feeling weirdly tender.
“No, no,” Tyler mumbles almost instantly, his hand curling around the back of Josh's neck like it belongs there. “I just-”
He leans up to kiss Josh before he even explains himself, and Josh could easily get lost in this – in the stroking of Tyler's fingers at the nape of his neck, in the stale sweat and aftershave smell of him, in the press of the two of them together, Tyler's mouth warm and tasting sweet, somehow.
There's just something about the strength of him. There's always been something like that – Josh's eyes have always been treacherously drawn to the line of his arms or legs or the cut of his jaw, and he's gotten so good at forcing the thoughts down, suppressing his desire to touch, and now he feels like he can touch he doesn't know what to do with himself. It's not like he went in with a plan, this was a total mistake and now he's rubbing up against his best friend and Tyler's making this indistinct noise into his mouth -
There's a thud from the direction of the bunks and they spring apart so fast Josh feels dizzy. He ends up standing up somehow with no clue as to how he got there, just as one of the guys bursts into the lounge muttering something about Pepsi.
“I, uh,” Josh is trying to calm his breathing down, pointedly not looking at Tyler. He feels like the moment's broken and if he looks at him he's scared of what he'll see. “I'm gonna, uh, I'll see you guys tomorrow.”
Pulling the curtain of his bunk shut after he's scrambled inside doesn't feel like enough. He wants a door to hide behind, somewhere he can take refuge.
He gulps down a breath, staring at the ceiling of his bunk and pressing his lips together. They feel fine, they feel ordinary – he feels like they should be tingling.
Feeling like a coward, he scrambles to untangle the wires of his earphones so he can lose himself in music before he has to hear Tyler coming through to bed.
Despite that, he catches himself listening out for a long while, and doesn't hear anything at all except for the other guys snoring.
-
He stays in his bunk for as long as possible the next morning.
It's not like they have anywhere to be today. Their next show isn't until Saturday, and two days off in a row like this are rare, so nobody really expects Josh to be up and out of bed before, like, 2pm.
Of course, it's not like anyone else knows what happened last night. Nobody except Tyler, and Josh hasn't heard any noise from his bunk at all. Normally there's always something, always a scratch against the flimsy back wall or a sigh or a knock, the two of them talking in low voices so they don't wake everyone else up.
There's nothing today. For the first time, Josh actually lies there and thinks about how dumb it is that he can be so close to Tyler and yet so separate at the time time, a stupid layer of flimsy wood or whatever the fuck bunks are made out of between them.
If this was a regular day, he thinks, a regular day off, he'd kick the base of Tyler's bunk to wake him up, or send him some stupid meme.
This is why people don't make out with their friends, he thinks, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. Like, people don't do that, ever. And on the occasions they do, it's not like Josh has any of the usual excuses to fall back on. He wasn't wasted, he wasn't out of it, it was an accident.
It was an accident 'til it happened. It's like in that one moment he realised that maybe he'd wanted something like that for a while. Maybe for a long time he's been looking too long at Tyler when he's been not paying attention, when he's been poring over his notebook or looking out of van windows or eating curly fries. Maybe he's been pushing it down all this time, forcing it to the back of his mind, trying not to worry about it.
It's too late for that now.
But – it's not like Tyler had pushed him away, or anything. Like, whatever the opposite of pushing someone away is, he'd done that instead. And Josh doesn't know what to think about it. He doesn't know what to do or to say, because it was him who'd ran off to his bunk after it all. And Tyler hadn't tried to get in with him, or even texted him, which is the weirdest thing because they're always texting each other one way or another, even if they're just sitting next to each other on the couch.
Josh considers the whole situation. He puts himself in Tyler's position (which is impossible because he has no idea what Tyler was thinking at all, because they haven't talked about it because Josh bailed). Someone makes out with you then literally walks out without even saying, like, oh, hey, that was great, we should really do that again sometime.
Josh thinks he'd probably feel like he'd messed up, somehow. He'd feel like shit. Especially if the roles were reversed and it'd been Tyler doing all the, like, accidental kissing and the walking right out afterwards.
He'd probably have felt something like how it must feel to get a gift you always wanted and then have the giver snatch it out of your hands and kick you in the face.
Feeling uncomfortably hot with worry and embarrassment, Josh slips his phone out from under his pillow and sends Tyler a text.
Dude we should talk
He holds his breath, heart hammering, and squeezes his phone too tight in his hand when he hears Tyler's phone beep in his bunk.
And then – nothing. The message has been delivered, but Tyler doesn't open it.
Josh lasts about five minutes, just lying there painfully still, quietly freaking out. His brain's a mess of maybe he's asleep, it's not like you can hear him moving around so he might just not know, he could be listening to music, he could think it's someone else's phone--
A painfully long moment later, he decides to just roll out of his bunk and confront Tyler, face to face. He's gonna do it, he's gonna get up and he's gonna just say look, dude, we really need to talk about this-
He's awkwardly knocking on the frame of Tyler's bunk and saying, “Tyler, you awake?” when the lounge door slides open and Tyler's standing there, wearing the same shirt he had on yesterday, his hair sticking up in the back like it always does in the morning.
“Oh, hey,” Josh says, his voice coming out weirdly quiet.
“Hey, what's up?” Tyler says, just walking over to his bunk and pushing the curtain open, reaching in to grab his hoodie. Josh is just stuck, helplessly watching him, feeling like he might die when Tyler reaches under his pillow for his phone and shoves it into his pocket without even looking at it. “You ready for ice cream, dude? Bathroom's free.”
“I, yeah,” Josh says, faintly, but Tyler's already walking off back into the lounge, the door sliding shut behind him.
-
Josh gets ready in a daze. The voices of the other guys are a muted buzz, like they're all miles and miles away. He pulls his shoes on and absently stares at his reflection in the bathroom, at the purple shadows under his eyes from too many late nights and the stubble bristling on his chin. He bares his teeth at himself in the mirror, trying to pull the weirdest face he can.
“Bet the ladies go nuts for that one,” Mark says, ducking into the bathroom. He reaches around Josh for the can of deodorant on the sink and ducks back out again.
Josh just looks back at himself in the mirror. Some sad guy who didn't get nearly enough sleep last night – or this week, or ever - looks back at him.
“Hey,” Mark says, ducking back into the bathroom. “You okay?”
“Sorry?” Josh says. “I – yeah, I'm great.” He forces out a smile. “Ice cream.”
“Ice cream,” Mark says, grinning and squeezing his shoulder. “You sure you're good?”
“I'm sure,” Josh says.
-
Most of all, he thinks, shrugging deeper into his hoodie, he feels humiliated.
He decided he was gonna wait outside while the other guys went into the ice cream place, because as much as he loves ice cream he doesn't think he can sit across from Tyler and watch him pull faces between each mouthful and not feel like a total asshole.
He just has to get over it, he thinks, pressing his fingers down hard on the shaved sides of his hair, staring down at the asphalt. He messed up, and – and that's on him, and it's totally up to Tyler if he doesn't ever want to talk about it -
- but the way he'd kissed Josh back, though. Josh's thoughts keep treacherously straying back to that part of this whole mess, on the touch of Tyler's hands and the way his mouth felt. He knows that it was stupid of him to kiss and run the way he did, but if Tyler was gonna be all weird about it the least he could do was just, like, not.
Unless, Josh thinks, dread rising in his throat like bile, it'd been, like, a completely one sided thing. Like, Tyler hadn't wanted it at all, and Josh had just – just not noticed, or – or -
Someone sits down on the ground beside him. Josh doesn't even have to look to know who – the sound of his breath and the smell of his deodorant are enough. Not to mention the fact that he knows that when he's feeling particularly unsociable the guys all team up to send Tyler out as their representative to make sure everything's okay.
He swallows hard, staring across the lot. The sky's pale with clouds, weak rays of sunlight trying to push through. Josh looks over at a scrubby patch of grass across from the two of them and tries to convince himself that he's not gonna run.
“So,” Tyler says. Josh helplessly watches him out of the corner of his eye, the way his hands are resting on the knees of his shorts. “Like, I don't regret it.”
Josh feels like he chokes on a breath of air, like there's suddenly this super loud buzzing sound in his ears. He looks over at Tyler, barely believing what he just heard.
Tyler's staring off into the distance, bright spots of pink high on his cheekbones.
“Like, um,” Tyler says, twisting his fingers in the hem of his shorts, restlessly. “If you do, and it's weird now...that's fine, and we don't have to talk about it. But just so you know, I – I'm not sorry about it.”
Halfway through talking he actually looks at Josh, who suddenly feels pinned in place by Tyler's eyes. After earlier he hadn't expected them to mention it, let alone have Tyler bring it up so casually like this.
“Anyway,” Tyler says, bringing both hands down onto his own knees in this weird gesture that Josh has seen his dad do on numerous occasions, the leg slap that means well I guess we're done here. “So, I'm gonna just – go get ice cream, you want some?”
“I liked it too,” Josh says, instead of the coward's way out, which would be asking for ice cream too and then giving Tyler this stupid manly slap on the shoulder like bros do. And they are bros, and Josh has manly backslapped him so many times, but he doesn't want to do that right now. “I mean – I don't regret it either. Like.” He shrugs awkwardly when Tyler looks back at him. “It was awesome, dude, I'm not gonna – not gonna lie. You're a good kisser.”
“Right,” Tyler says, sounding a little dazed. “Thank you.”
“I mean, like,” Josh continues, exasperated with himself. “It would've been, like...good anyway, like, even if you were a bad kisser. Like, kissing you would always be – pretty great.”
“Okay,” Tyler says. “So, like – you – if it happened again, that'd-”
“That'd be great,” Josh says, quickly. “I mean, if you – if you wanted it to happen again-”
“I just wanted to make sure you wanted-”
“Because, like I said, awesome-”
They end up stopping mid-sentence and grinning at each other, sheepishly.
“Dude,” Josh says. He's so relieved that he doesn't even think he can put it into words. “I – I thought you hated me.”
“Come on,” Tyler says, voice so soft it almost gets lost on the breeze. “How could that happen?”
“Like,” Josh says, trying to put it into words. “Like, if I kissed you and you, like, felt obligated to, like, you know...”
Tyler scoffs and pushes him in the shoulder, like they're having a disagreement on which Pokémon game's better.
“If it felt like I was doing it because I was obligated to, then, like, I was definitely doing something wrong.”
“No,” Josh says, the words heavy on his tongue. “It didn't feel like that.”
Tyler just looks at him. His eyes rest on Josh's mouth for a moment and Josh feels hot in that moment, like he's a firework, flaring bright and sudden at the first touch of a match.
“Good,” Tyler says, and gets up. He offers Josh his hand and he takes it even though he doesn't need it, pulling himself to his feet. “Come on, our ice cream's gonna get warm.”
He takes way too long to let Josh's hand go, the two of them walking across the parking lot joined together. Josh can't count the number of times they've done this – just held hands, just because – but it feels different now.
Tyler letting him go feels like an amputation, but he soothes the cut by smiling at him, so big that Josh feels like the world rights itself again.