Chapter Text
It was nothing new that Tyler was lying on his best friend’s bed half naked on a Sunday afternoon, the fancy clothing his mum made him put up with for church was not made for hanging around and playing Mario Cart in. His feet were dangling off the side of the bed, and he was mindlessly starring at the wall in front of him. Not like him, who had to spend the afternoon in some old sweats Josh had lend him quite a while ago, his friend actually had the chance to get dressed in some normal clothing so that he wouldn’t have to spend his day in a way too tight dress shirt.
Tyler’s fingers trailed along the imaginary lines he was drawing around the shadows that the tree branches threw through the window, they flew around the dark splotches that were drawn on the light blue walls. He remembered when they had painted them all those years ago. Going from a sunshine yellow to a baby blue was something that Josh had wanted to do so desperately in middle school, but now it just looked so out of place for this room that was decorated so messily.
There was a certain beauty in the way that Josh had managed to throw pictures and posters on the walls almost at random and it still looking like there was a kind of system behind it. Just by the dresser, that was littered with CDs and empty cans, polaroid pictures were taped to the wall that showed the two boys a couple years back when Tyler had gotten a camera for his birthday.
He hadn’t even been that pleased with it, only walking around their house a little to take pictures of mostly random things the day he had gotten it, to show that he was grateful for his gift, but Josh had been utterly obsessed with the thing. He had spent almost the whole winter running out and about through the streets to photograph almost everything that came into his vision.
It was the only real reason why Tyler had kept the camera in the first place and why it hadn’t been cramped into some boxes and pushed into a corner of his room.
Every time that their parents made them go somewhere and not stay at home when they met up, Josh had taken it with them, taking pictures of each other was a part of their tradition almost. When they went on trips with their respective families, they would often take turns with taking it with them, showing each other pictures of their activities.
Josh’s favourite had been one of Tyler lying face first in the snow for a while, just recently it had been replaced by the one that Tyler was looking at right now, it was of both of them smiling into the camera just after having dyed Josh’s hair a bright red colour in the middle of the night.
He had told Tyler that he had grown tired of the faded blue that was in his own words “washing him out” and that he needed a fresh start into this new year. So, Josh had started the year with red hair and a glass of champagne in his hand that he drowned as soon as the bell had hit midnight.
Despite both of them not being too fond of dinking until they couldn’t remember anything, they had promised each other that this year they would finally start to rebel against these tight boundaries that they had caged themselves into.
It had started with Josh finally looking to finding his own place, immediately after they finished school this summer, he wanted to move out and finally become more independent, not having to worry about coming home late or playing drums in the middle of the night were the two things he was looking forward to the most.
He was most certainly also keen on no one barging in in the middle of a conversation he and Tyler were having, sometimes he didn’t want his mother to know all the gossip they needed to discuss when they came home from school.
Tyler wasn’t really planning to move out as soon as Josh, he had already planned to stay over at Josh’s most of the time anyways, that way even though they would both be studying they would still have time to go through their notes and ideas together. Tyler could by no chance ever lose their nightly sessions that consisted more of shushing each other so that they wouldn’t wake the other’s up than actually being productive.
Two things had come with those nightly music sessions, songs that he was actually proud of and a raging red bull addiction.
Even though his mother had wanted him to come home with them after church for a late breakfast, he had been able to convince her that if he was able to finish some of their projects today, he wouldn’t have to work so late into the evening again and they could have proper family dinners again.
This pleased her a little, but she still made him promise that one day he would show her those secrets that he was working on. She had always been a little too nosy for his liking. Tylers’s gaze wandered over to the half open laptop that was perched on the bedside table, they had just been working on a song that Tyler had written half on a little notebook in the middle of class and half on his notes app on the bus.
If he could choose to finally move out and find a dorm that he could afford, he would make the change right away, but his parents had insisted that he stayed at home for at least the first year so that they would be able to support him on this big change that he was going through.
He hated his mother’s wording, it wasn’t like he was suddenly following his dreams of becoming a musician and traveling around the world, he was simply just finishing school to please her so that she would finally shut up about him spending way too much time with his irrealisable plan to some time live from his songs.
For a while now he had actually been apartment hunting, moving into the university housing and being assigned a dorm with a random person was not something that he wanted to do desperately and he would do almost anything to avoid it.
His funds were a little too low for that though, working part time at Taco Bell was almost the only thing that brought him any money, and knowing himself, he would spend his next paycheck on something else than putting it aside for the future.
For a while now he had been thinking about getting a second uke, not like the one he had bought for himself almost ten years ago from his pocket money wasn’t good enough anymore, it had followed him though so many songs, he just wanted one that didn’t have that many indents and cracks that wound along the body.
It had gone though too much with him, been taken halfway around the us when he and Josh had travelled down to Vegas on a hunch last year, been dragged around his old school when his music teacher had dared him to play something for the class.
Maybe it wasn’t its time yet, it would have be of use to him for at least a couple of years.
On some of the pictures that were hung on the walls he was even holding the instrument in his hands, one was of them just minutes before the talent show of their school last year, josh had almost had to drag him on the stage so that they were able to perform their song properly. Tyler with his uke in his hands, shaking fingers moving around the strings until he finally relaxed a little when he had met Josh’s gaze over on the drums.
His smile alone and the affirming looks he had kept shooting towards him over the stage had almost been the only thing that had made him get through those agonising three minutes.
Tyler’s eyes focused on the little quote that Josh seemed to have written down on the reflecting paper, “If I’m gonna be famous for something, I wanna be famous for loving you”, it was one of the first things that he had said to Tyler when he had been asked if he would mind making music together even if they would never become more than just a tiny two piece band that makes music in their bedrooms.
He thought he heard a loud thump from the bathroom next door, and soon his suspicion was confirmed when Josh emerged though the door holding the side of his head and sporting a pained expression.
His eyes scanned the room and for a second Tyler pondered asking his friend what he was searching for, it was nothing new that he would hit his head on the shower curtain rod, Tyler had gotten quite used to fishing out a shirt from one of the drawers while Josh often went to the kitchen in search for an ice pack.
Soon though Josh’s eyes zeroed on a hoodie that Tyler had thrown to the side, in this tiny apartment it was way too hot and he much preferred to just be shirtless, for a second he thought about snatching it out of his friends hands just for the sake of it, but Josh was just a tad too quick and pulled it over his head. Although it technically belonged to Josh, over the past year that Tyler had been over to his place so often, he had taken ownership of the worn-out green hoodie.
He reached out to fumble at the strings of the hoodie when Josh sat down on the bed next to him, his hair was still a little damp from his shower but he had dried it with a towel, Tyler knew that because otherwise it would be dripping down on his shoulders now that Josh laid his head down his left one.
The shampoo left a sour smell in his nose when he inhaled the citrusy fragrance and combed his fingers through the unruly curls, now that they were properly dyed again, Josh looked more like himself than he ever had.
A drop of water ran down his cheek and he visibly shuddered when it dripped down on his neck and below the collar of his hoodie, it trailed down and soaked into the soft fabric.
Josh tried to nuzzle into Tyler’s neck, but the other man quickly pushed him away,
“Dude, you’re all wet, you’re like dripping on me, go dry off properly then we can continue working on the thing from yesterday, my mum wants me home for dinner so we’ve got”, he glanced over at the digital clock that stood on the bedside table and flashed its bright numbers at him, “About seven hours to finish one song, and I do hope that that’s enough, but only if you stop distracting me, I promise we can play Mario later but I want to get stuff done today”
Pouting, Josh turned away and pushed himself off the bed, he extended his arms towards Tyler and offered to pull him up, but the man refused and rolled over so that he was facing the wall.
“Ty, what do you want? Come on, you said you wanted to work, so let’s work, go get us some food.”
Josh snatched his laptop from where it was next to him and quickly typed in his password, as soon as it unlocked, he was met with a smiling Tyler staring right at him, he chuckled at the sight and began searching for the right document that he had hopefully left open the night before.
Begrudgingly Tyler rolled off the bed and almost onto Josh who quickly shrieked away to save himself and the laptop, Tyler just tumbled onto the carped and Josh caught a glance of his teeth flashing a smile at him.
Slowly dragging himself across the room he started to rummage around the cabinets in search for something to eat, one way or another, they would have to eat a proper meal within the next few hours, but for now the packet of paprika crisps that he found had to be good enough.
He ripped them open and reached into the bag to grab some of them in his hands, he offered them to Josh who gratefully accepted them, they left behind an orange trace on his fingers, and he licked them clean before setting the packet of to the side to search for his notebook.
The backbag he had brought with him only held his necessities, headphones, his laptop, which was all out of power, but he had forgotten his charger, and his notebook which he now fished out of the mess that was in there.
Mindlessly flipping through the pages in search for something that they would be able to work with today, he stumbled upon a drawing he seemed to have made just before the turning of the years.
A soft pencil sketch of Josh sporting a smile, it was in no way his best work, his art teacher would have scolded him for drawing so messily, but Tyler’s gaze lingered on it just for a second too much so that his behaviour caught Josh’s attention.
“Man, whatca looking at?” he threw a comic at him so that he would finally start doing something useful, but for once Tyler’s eyes didn’t drift of to the smug grin and perfect hair of Captain America but stayed glued to his notebook.
“Earth to Tyler, you good? Did some poetry just resurface that you haven’t seen in weeks and you’re so proud of it that you stare at it like it’s your long-lost dog?”
Tyler shook his head to get out of this haze and turned towards his friend.
“Sorry, what did you say? I don’t want to get a dog, you know I can’t.”
Josh fell back on the bed laughing, his voice filled the room, and his eyes were screwed shut from grinning so widely, between huffed breaths he giggled,
“Dude, just forget it, come here, this stuff not gonna write itself” he grabbed Tyler under his shoulders and hauled him up on the bed again, he fell back and his gaze returned to staring at the ceiling for a moment until Josh’s face appeared in front of him and a finger came dangerously close to his nose.
Tyler quickly shrieked away and defensively held his notebook in front of his face so that Josh wouldn’t be able to get too close, instead of tickling Tyler like he normally would, Josh snatched the book out of his friend’s hands and flipped it open.
His fingers traced along some lines that were written in almost illegible handwriting that Tyler only wrote in when he was walking or in a hurry.
“Man, did you write this fleeing from zombies or why is it so messy? Dude, I can’t read a single thing, does this really say, ‘metaphorically I’m a whore’? Tyler as much as I normally like what you write, what’s that even supposed to mean?”
His eyes were squinted as he ran his fingers along the lines in an attempt to decipher what was written there, before he could turn the page, Tyler grabbed the book out of his hands again and flipped to the page they were supposed to be working on.
“Here, you can read this can’t you? And don’t you dare complain, I heard Barnes complaining that he couldn’t read your assignment just today, Joshie, don’t you dare alright?”
By now it had almost turned into a fight for who had the book in their hands, Tyler loudly exclaimed at one point,
“Look, it’s got Tyler Joseph written there! It’s mine give it back”
“Ty, that was my pen, it’s pink, you don’t have a pink pen, do you?”
“I don’t care, you’ve been using by biology book for the whole semester now ‘cause you lost yours like two weeks in”
“That’s not the same, you never even use it! All you do in biology is stare out the window and get lost in your little”, he waved his arms around, “imaginary scenarios again.”
“They are not imaginative, I think about our hangouts and those are very real, at least I hope, please tell me now if you are only a product of my imagination”
“Dude, not even your genius mind can conjure up something as good as me.”
“Done with the self-obsession? Can we work now?”
“We could have been working the past ten minutes”
Josh smirked sarcastically and prepared for impact and Tyler went and hit him softly on the head with the notebook that he now finally had in his hands again. It was only a soft tap to his curls but, being the overly dramatic man he was, Josh fell back on the pillow behind him, closely missing the laptop that Tyler had put there almost tethering over the edge of the bed.
“Watch it, I still need that thing you dumbass”
Tyler reached behind Josh to pull the laptop away, quickly, before another playfight could break out between the two of them, he opened their shared document and scrolled through the changes Josh seemed to have made to one of their songs.
“Josh, why is ‘I’m a kitchen sink’ red and crossed out?”
“’Cause it doesn’t make sense” Josh whined and dragged his hands over his face to push his hair out of his eyes.
“You just don’t know what it means, because a kitchen sink to you is not a kitchen sink to me”
“Tyler, oh God, what am I gonna do with you?”
Josh smiled and ruffled through his friend’s hair.
Their shadows played along the walls as Tyler scribbled something down in this notebook, Josh of course had too peak inside to see what he was doing, and so, another fight ensured.