Work Text:
From: Josh, 3:32 PM
coming over be there in 10
Tyler glances at his phone from where he’s laid across his bed at the sound of a vibration, a small smile breaking across his face when he reads Josh’s name. He taps back a quick ‘ok’ and buries his head back within the confines of his pillow, trying to will himself back into a tiny catnap before Josh arrives. He’s rudely startled awake what feels like seconds later by the loud sound of his doorbell. He ignores it, trying to convince himself that someone else will answer and let Josh inside, when he realizes that he’s the only one at home.
He lets out an exasperated groan when the doorbell rings out again and again, followed by another text from Josh (‘answer ur door asshole’). He pulls himself to his feet, stumbles out of his room and down the stairs – he pauses for a second when he remembers that he’s only wearing his boxers, but shrugs his shoulders because it’s Josh and he’s currently got his finger pressed up against the doorbell, a continual ringing shrieking through his hallway.
He throws the door open and beams as brightly as possible, “Hey, Josh,” leaning against the doorframe, eyes flicking over Josh’s face until they land on a large, purpling bruise on the underside of his jaw. He gapes, for a moment, before sputtering, indignantly, “What happened to your face?”
“What do you mean?” Josh scoffs, pushing past Tyler. He grabs Josh by the wrist, twirling him around, gaining nothing but an unsettled noise and a pissed-off glare. “Tyler, let me go.”
“Josh,” Tyler’s voice has dropped, low, hand still tightly wrapped around his wrist, blunt nails digging into his skin. He reaches up with his free hand and cautiously runs a finger along the bruise, earning an unpleasant hiss on Josh’s part. “What happened?”
“What does it look like, Tyler?” Josh mumbles, jerking out of his grasp with a fair amount of effort. He stumbles backwards, eyes narrowed, before turning around and stomping up the stairs.
The other boy watches him leave, annoyance and exasperation settling in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t move until he hears one of the doors upstairs slam, loudly – he sighs, rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes before closing the front door and flicking the lock, heading upstairs after him. He takes the stairs two at a time, nearly falling flat on his face at one of the last steps, and knocks on the now closed door to his bedroom. For a second, he waits, but he doesn’t really know why because this is his house and his room and Josh is kind of intruding on his privacy, before turning the knob.
Josh has the window opened, curtains pulled aside, and has both legs propped up in the sill. He has his lighter gripped in his fist and is absently dragging his thumb over the track, not forcefully enough to procure any flame.
“You gonna tell me what happened, or do I have to go down there and find out for myself?” he asks from where he’s still standing like a dumbass in the doorway, abruptly, and Josh looks up at him inquisitively before rolling his eyes.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I would,” Tyler quips, crossing his arms and jutting his hip out, stubbornly. Josh lets out a snicker at his pose and turns his attention back to Tyler’s window, pushing his thumb down and over the track on the green lighter in his hand. A small flame jumps to life and disappears, Josh repeating the action two, three more times; Tyler moves across the room and shoves Josh’s feet out of the window, taking up the now unoccupied space, sitting cross-legged opposite to him. He fixes the side of Josh’s head with a stare, waiting until he cracks.
It only takes a minute or two before Josh gives a heavy sigh, fishing a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jeans. “He got too drunk. I stepped in between him and my mom.”
“I hope you got a good punch in, too,” Tyler grumbles in return, watching as Josh chuckles and taps out one of the cigarettes, sticking it in the corner of his mouth.
He raises the lighter and ignites the end of the cigarette, drawing deeply with his eyes closed. He breathes out the smoke around the tip before mumbling, “I did. Would’ve made you proud.”
“You always make me proud,” Tyler mutters with both of his eyebrows raised, oddly serious, and Josh laughs, the sound light and airy and beautiful, pure music to Tyler’s ears. He smiles, even though he really doesn’t mean to, but he swears that Josh’s smile itself contains pure sunshine, and the sound of his laughter is addictive. “You do,” he insists, reaching over to slap Josh’s knee, but he continues to smile.
Josh gazes over at Tyler when he thinks he isn’t looking. A range of emotions, starting with happiness and ending somewhere with guilt, flicker through Josh’s brain, a familiar warmth spreading through his chest. He’d become accustomed to the feeling rising whenever he was around Tyler, but refused to put a name to the sensation. Truly, he knew what it was, but he wasn’t comfortable with coming to terms with the ugly demon threatening to rear its head just yet. He stares for a bit too long, perhaps, because Tyler looks over at him and catches his eyes; acting upon instinct, Josh winks with a sly grin. Tyler laughs, slow and steady, and maybe Josh imagines the faint pinkness suddenly appearing on Tyler’s cheeks, because when he takes a second glance, it’s gone.
Josh puffs on his cigarette thoughtfully, taking careful, curious glimpses at Tyler’s profile; his eyes are fixated on something outside, his pretty, long, thick eyelashes fluttering slightly when his gaze moves even slightly. He watches the twitch of his nose as he breathes in the air not tainted by Josh’s smoke, before letting his eyes wander down to the shape of his lips. A curious thought rises in his mind – wonder what those lips would taste like – that he immediately ignores, changing his point of focus to the trees moving in the wind outside.
The same thought persists, obscene imagery playing in his mind, questions and answers to what exactly Tyler’s lips could do to him, and Josh thinks his brain might explode from tension.
He refuses to look at Tyler until he can feel a set of eyes on the side of his head.
Josh turns his head, faux-innocent, giving a smile that Tyler eagerly returns. He drags on his cigarette once more, blowing smoke before leaning forward slightly. Tyler’s breath catches in his throat, and Josh grins before he asks, pointedly aligning his vision to those pretty, perfect lips of his, “Can I kiss you?”
Smoke billows out of Josh’s mouth in thick white tendrils when he speaks. Tyler stops breathing, instead staring at his lips, wordlessly and breathlessly; Josh takes another drag on the cigarette, examining the up-and-down flicker of Tyler’s eyes over his face, and blows a cloud of smoke toward him when he never receives an answer. “That a yes?”
“Uh,” he looks up, a blush riding high on his cheeks when he realizes he’d been staring. His eyes move away, and Josh grins, amused – he breathes in the last bit of smoke, and lets it fill his lungs as he stubs out the cigarette on the window sill before leaning forward to grasp Tyler’s jaw with one hand. Tyler doesn’t flinch as Josh parts his lips and exhales a long trail smoke into his face, his eyes watering slightly at the intensity. “Can I kiss you?” he repeats, and Tyler stills slightly before nodding, utterly frantic with wide, doe-like eyes.
Josh runs his thumb across Tyler’s bottom lip before closing the rest of the distance with a faint smirk, gently pressing their lips together. He raises his other hand to cradle Tyler’s face before deepening the kiss, parting Tyler’s lips with quick flickers of his tongue; Tyler’s lips are unfamiliar territory, slightly chapped and soft and heavenly, and Josh tastes like smoke and faint traces of mint gum. Tyler chases the taste, enjoying the surprised yet pleased sound that comes from Josh, licking into his mouth to run his tongue behind his front teeth before he has to pull away, aware of an uncomfortable weight suddenly present in his jeans.
Josh considers Tyler, mouth red and slightly agape, hands still wrapped around his jaw with his thumbs pressed to his cheekbones. Without thinking, he presses their noses together and breathes, “You’re hot.”
Tyler snorts, before bursting into all-out giggles, and Josh drops his hands to his lap with a grin. Tyler grabs him by the collar, softly, and drags him back toward him until there’s no such thing as personal space between them. He presses a kiss to Josh’s nose, and the gesture is so sweet it makes his heart jump a little bit, the warmth in his chest and stomach flaring something red-hot within him; Tyler mumbles incoherently, sounding suspiciously like the word beautiful, but there isn’t much time to ponder over Tyler’s strange word choices when his face is inching closer, if that was ever possible, and his lips are on his.
A stuttering breath he didn’t know he’d been holding falls against Tyler’s mouth, and a smile he can’t contain breaks across his face when he presses a sweet, chaste kiss to his lips. Slow and steady, they exchange similar grins and gentle kisses, soft laughter between thin air until Josh gets a little impatient and begins running his tongue against Tyler’s bottom lip. Tyler allows the new intrusion, the same noises dripping from his mouth that make Josh’s head spin. He pulls Tyler’s lower lip into his mouth, biting as gently as possible even though he really wants to dive in and envelop himself in everything that is Tyler Joseph, reminding himself to be patient.
The sounds that fall from Tyler’s mouth as he kisses him, all teeth and tongue, fast and deep, are something honey sweet and vaguely pornographic. There’s a fine line between the two, Josh is sure, but everything feels a little blurry around the edges when Tyler’s hands are pressing up into hair underneath his snapback and pulling slightly; their teeth clack together as their kissing gets more frantic, and Josh is overwhelmed until he’s having trouble pulling in enough breath, gasping against Tyler’s spit-slick, cherry red lips. He kisses him again and again and again, pushing his hands up under the hem of Tyler’s shirt, exploring the unfamiliar warmth of bare skin against his fingertips; he kisses the corner of Tyler’s mouth, enjoying the soft sigh that brushes across his face, and moves down to lick at the line of his jaw, peppering kisses softly as he moves.
Josh grips Tyler’s hips with unabashed urgency as he kisses down his throat, biting experimentally at the spot underneath his ear. He takes the hitch in Tyler’s breath as a good sign and he bites down harder, sucking on the skin, and Tyler pants, gripping so harshly at Josh’s hair that his hat comes off – and falls outside the window into a muddy puddle.
“Uh,” comes Tyler’s voice, and Josh’s teeth halt, moving backwards to look curiously at his face.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asks, retracting his hands from Tyler’s hips to sit back against the window, face flushed. His mouth is a swollen red, bitten mess, and Tyler swallows, his head swimming from the sight alone and the pressure in his pants.
“Uh, no, nope,” he says hurriedly, and curses himself for his gaze flickering down, outside the window. Josh sticks his head outside, eyes widening, before straightening up and fixing Tyler with a pout.
“That’s my favorite hat,” Josh groans, hopping down out of the window to go and retrieve it. “It’s probably ruined. What a boner killer.”
“You have a boner?” Tyler asks from behind him as he leaves, ignoring the fact that he definitely has one as well, voice higher in pitch than Josh expected. He turns around, one eyebrow raised, before shaking his head and chuckling, turning back around.
“Dude, I just made out with the hottest guy I know, and he’s asking if I have a boner,” Josh calls over his shoulder, and Tyler flushes red, mentally cursing his entire existence for throwing Josh’s hat out the window.