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“It updated! It updated!” Mark shouted.
“Seriously?” Josh poked his head out from his bunk, “Two chapters in two days?”
The show was done and the bus had the sleepy atmosphere of late night. It was quiet and most inhabitants were on their phones or starting to go to bed. But with Mark’s announcement, everyone started to pile onto the couches in the front.
“What’s wrong with us? Cuz it kinda feels like Christmas,” Michael chimed in.
“It’s Tyler’s turn to read,” John pointed out, and a chorus of ‘Tyler! Tyler!’ began until he stopped brushing his teeth and joined the assembly.
It all started purely from curiosity, and that’s just a recipe for disaster. When someone writes a story about you, naturally you’ll look into it. And at first it’s weird, but then you just…get used to it.
And that’s how fanfic nights began on the tour bus. Tyler had been sent an email with a link to a really off-the-wall fic involving Pokémon that lead to them clicking on more links and taking turns reading aloud what they found. It went on for the whole night and into the early morning hours, Tyler leaving the lounge shrieking about his “virgin ears” once they discovered the plethora of daddy kink. He returned about twenty minutes later with a superhero story that was “awesome so far, I don’t care if it’s over a hundred thousand words, let’s read this.”
This continued on for months, not every night, but at least once or twice a week during long drives. Everyone was sworn to secrecy—what happened on the bus, stayed on the bus, and only band and crew were allowed to participate. Sometimes they’d sit on their phones and laptops reading silently, or else read aloud, to assorted laughter and blushing depending on the level of smut, or silent awe at the talent. Everyone agreed this was, in fact, very weird, but they were having way too much fun.
They each had their preferences (Tyler unsurprisingly loved angst and major character death, while Josh liked the slow builds with happy endings. Everyone else just wanted to be mentioned, and it was common practice to punch Mark when he’d brag how cool he was portrayed to be), but the best ones to read were the epic fics that had multiple chapters, appearances by other bands, and lots of angst. It was a rule that no one would read new chapters without the others, and it would be a major foul to read ahead. They got to the point of quoting lines to each other, and Josh was suspicious that Tyler was compiling a rec list.
A very popular challenge was to find the filthiest smut possible and see who could last the longest without “nope”-ing out of the page. Josh never won.
Dan was actually the one to find In Darkness, You’ll Be My Rock when they were on tour in England. Several chapters had been posted already, and they were hooked. Mark set up email notifications for updates, that’s how intensely they enjoyed the story.
“Josh do you need me to grab you some pillows to sit on?”
Josh rolled his eyes and sat at the kitchen table. Since the previous chapter had been posted, he’d been the subject of many comments about his presumably sore ass, while Tyler had gotten several high fives for ‘tapping that sweet booty, finally’. From very obvious hints in previous chapters, Josh figured he’d bottom, but that never stopped the good-natured teasing once it did happen.
Tyler had come up behind him in his dressing room earlier and started rubbing his shoulders.
“Dude, it’s just a story,” Josh said, shoving him playfully away.
“I just want to make sure you feel cared for, okay?” Tyler pouted.
Ben pointed out something even more distressing after that; “If they didn’t use condoms, and if Josh isn’t human, what if Tyler impregnated him?”
“Alien butt baby?”
“Hell no,” Josh covered his ears, “I have worked too hard for this body. Also that's really messed up and I’m leaving if you continue with that theory.”
They did have many theories, the most popular one being that Josh was an alien, and there was definitely something that Tyler was hiding.
“He’s so…shifty.”
“Um, I’m standing right here,” Tyler crossed his arms, “I think I’m also Mr. Misty Eyes...like there's two of us. Remember that whole thing early on about the white sunglasses? Those are totally mine. I’m definitely a secret tough guy—who can shoot and fight.”
“Sure, city boy.”
“What if Josh is, like, dying the closer he gets to Cleveland?”
“That’s what I normally do when I get near Cleveland,” Josh smirked.
“Josh isn’t going to die! Don’t say that!” Tyler said, “We’re going to live happily ever after.”
“Somehow I doubt that…”
Tyler started the new chapter, ignoring the snickers as Josh’s sore ass was mentioned again. That’s how it usually went; breaks for giggles and sometimes a running stream of commentary from whoever was feeling like a smart ass. Tyler was obviously one of the best to read aloud, though he liked to skip over curse words, as much as the others groaned that it was part of the story. But really it was just funny to hear him swear.
“Aw, they’re so in love,” was the general consensus, until the mood started to change at the arrival in Cleveland.
“Tyler’s acting weird.”
“Um, I’m right here.” (Yes that was Tyler’s favorite punchline).
Someone was definitely whispering “oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no…” as they walked down the ramp, and an almost unanimous shout of “No!” as the Walkman was broken.
“Why the hell is Tyler not doing anything?”
“What the f, Tyler?”
Tyler’s voice was getting jumpy as the twist unfolded, Josh bleeding and hurt, but in real life, sitting with his jaw dropped as charges were read against his fictional counterpart. Everyone was sitting in numb disbelief as everything fell apart.
Tyler dramatically whispered “Tyler Joseph was a lie,” and they all exploded.
“YOU BASTARD!” and Tyler found the laptop whipped out of his hands and then a hailstorm of pillows began hitting him repeatedly. He dropped to the floor and attempted to crawl away, but Ben grabbed his legs and Tyler was vulnerable. Everyone was in shock, and Josh was laughing in a dazed way.
“I’m sorry!” Tyler yelled into the mass chaos, he was laughing hysterically. As bad as it felt to betray his best friend and lover this was all too funny to him.
He reached out to take the laptop back, but Mark held it out of reach.
“No, you don’t get to read anymore. You sit there and think about what you did.”
Mark finished reading, and then scrolled to the comments to find that the readers were in the same amount of distress as them. This was rough, unexpected—A Red Wedding for their light-hearted fanfiction night.
“This isn’t fair! I thought we’d get a happy ending.”
“Why is this happening to us?”
“Us?” Josh exclaimed, “What about me? Jesus, Tyler I didn’t think you’d be the screw ‘em and backstab ‘em type.”
“Jishwa you know I’d never—” Tyler said from the floor.
“Don’t make excuses! You go back to your bunk and think about what you did,” Michael said.
“I didn’t do anything! Blame the author!”
“How could you do that to Josh especially when he’s carrying your baby?!”
“What the hell is it with you guys and my non-existent uterus?”
The next day found the crew either glaring at Tyler (in a totally joking way), or saluting him as the General. Josh put on a huge act as if he was avoiding Tyler, pretending to be asleep whenever the singer walked into the room, regardless if Josh was standing up or in the middle of chewing.
Tyler ignored all this.
“Hey Josh, can you hand me my charger?”
“I trusted you!” Josh said back, and Tyler rolled his eyes and reached across him. “I could still kill your sorry ass in seconds.”
Tyler tickled him in response, and that distracted Josh for a while. But not for long, since it was just too much fun to torture Tyler.
“Can you please stop throwing potato chips at me?”
“We slept together Tyler, I effing LOVED YOU!”
“You killed my brother, Josh!”
“Whose turn is it to be kicked out of the band?” Josh threw a marshmallow this time and Tyler caught it in his mouth.
“Probably my turn, but I just want you to know that I’d never sell you out to the government… Well, actually if you killed Zach, I may. But any other reason, definitely not.”
“Aw, thanks,” Josh sarcastically tossed another marshmallow but Tyler missed the catch and it bounced off his eyelid.
“I think they’ve fought in this story more than we have in real life.”
“Do you think there’s any chance it’s going to end happily?” Josh asked.
“No,” Tyler prayed it would, since a little part of him didn’t think the band would survive the turmoil. “PastelMess better update soon.”