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Tyler finds himself reminiscing a lot now he has all this time on his hands, thinking about the old days. Right back to the day he first met Josh, that unassuming encounter at Guitar Center when he went to pick up Chris for his lunch break and the cute boy with hair all over the place and gauges in his ears told him that Chris had given him Tyler’s CD and he loved it. He hopped onto the counter to offer his hand to Tyler, introducing himself as Josh.
“I’m a drummer. I’m playing with House of Heroes right now, but I was in a band called station2 until earlier this year,” Josh explained when Tyler asked if he played anything.
“Shame that never went anywhere,” Chris teased as he came out from the back with his jacket. Josh mock-punched his shoulder and grinned when Tyler said, “Hey, we’re all working our way up from the bottom, dude.”
“Exactly, man. And we did go to Korea. So there.”
Chris put his hands up in surrender. “Well, we haven’t got that far yet, so I guess you win.”
Josh bowed from the waist graciously, and caught Tyler’s eye when he laughed.
“For now. This guy is a genius, you know,” Chris clapped Tyler on the shoulder, “so you’ll be seeing us on TV someday soon.”
Tyler ducked his head and tugged on the hem of his t-shirt, caught between smiling and blushing.
“I look forward to it,” Josh said sincerely, and Tyler could feel his eyes on him.
“Well I look forward to Chipotle,” Chris announced, rubbing his stomach for emphasis. “Let’s go, Tyler.”
“It was nice to meet you,” Josh called after them as they headed for the doors.
“See you around,” Tyler had replied, with a casual half-wave.
They hadn’t seen each other for a couple of months after that, until one night after a local show Tyler had been heading out through the bar and had been intercepted by a skinny boy in a Switchfoot hoodie who he almost didn’t recognize until he pulled the hood down and revealed a mess of dark curly hair.
“Josh, remember? Chris’s friend?” he prompted, but Tyler had already recalled that meeting. How could he forget that smile? And the kind of distracting lip ring.
“Yeah, of course,” Tyler had said. Josh proceeded to praise Tyler’s energy and performance style, and since neither of them drank and Tyler wanted to get back home to work on his latest demo, Tyler asked if Josh wanted to come to his place to hang out.
They ended up ordering pizza and hanging out in Tyler’s ‘studio’, discussing their favorite bands and where they’d gone to school, and around 3 in the morning they found themselves talking frankly about their ambitions.
“I’m too good of a drummer to stay working in Guitar Center,” Josh had said bluntly, sitting on the floor and picking at pizza crusts. “I want this, you know? It’s all I can do. It’s what I need to do.”
Tyler nodded thoughtfully, taking up the whole couch by himself but hanging his arm down at Josh’s side to let him know he cared what Josh had to say and knew the importance of such a confession. Some things were hard to talk about, especially without other people taking them the wrong way.
“Me too. I quit college for this.”
“I never even went to college.”
“Seriously? You never had a Plan B?”
Josh shook his head, running a hand through his hair. “Not really. Plan A is play drums. Plan A subsection 1 is doing whatever job I can to pay rent while I try to find a way to do that.”
Tyler whistled quietly. “You’re committed.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve seen you play. So are you.”
Tyler shifted on the couch, silent for a moment.
“This music, it’s everything. I put all of me into it, and I’ve never heard anything like it…”
“Neither have I.”
Tyler smiled and cuffed the side of Josh’s head gently with his idle hand, the other lying on his stomach. Josh ducked away and laughed.
“Seriously. There’s nobody making music like you. Chris was right, you know. You’re going to make it.”
Tyler didn’t shrug it off. He looked up at the shadowy ceiling as he said, “I know.”
Josh turned around to look at him. “Good.”
“I think you are, too,” Tyler said. “You need to find someone else you can play with, or that homeless passion is going to choke you.”
Josh knew that Tyler was talking from experience, and Tyler was thankful that Josh didn’t ask. He didn’t ask about the screaming, about the depression evident in his lyrics, about the twitching. Here was somebody who just got it, who understood him and what he was trying to do, without having to ask why.
Josh nodded, drumming his fingers absently against his leg. “Yeah.”
It wasn’t until nearly a year later, after Tyler’s dreams seemed to be crumbling as people lost faith in his vision and he was left without a band, that Josh’s presence in Tyler’s life became so significant.
“Listen, I know it’s late notice, but I need you.” Tyler could practically hear Josh’s eyebrow rising through the phone, so he continued, “Chris quit. Nick and I need a drummer, and we both thought of you.”
“Of course you did,” Josh had replied. “When do you need me?”
“Tonight, rehearsal at five, show at seven thirty. I’ll text you the place. You in?”
Please say you’re in.
“Duh. I’m working until six, though, so I’ll have to talk to my boss…”
Crap. He knew from Chris’s experience that their boss was a tough bastard, even over something as small as leaving a shift early.
“Don’t worry about it though. I’ll be there.”
And true to his word, Josh had showed up at five thirty-five, sending a relieved Tyler flying across the room to hug him.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Tyler had told him, and he’d squeezed Tyler back and laughed. Josh had listened to Tyler’s CDs enough to be able to play along by ear, and Nick had ribbed Josh so much for being a fanboy that the tips of Josh’s ears had gone pink.
It was all for nothing, though, when the show got stopped midway through the second song after the police were called to shut down a bar fight.
They packed their gear into the back of Tyler’s friend’s van at 8pm, laughing as the darkness fell around them and lamenting that this was Josh’s first performance as part of the band.
“Nah,” Josh grinned at Tyler, whose toes curled in his shoes every time Josh gave one of those warm smiles just for him. “It’s one I’ll always remember.”
“We’ll have to rearrange the next practice, Tyler,” Nick said as he carried his guitar to the van. “Josh is working tomorrow, right?”
“Not a problem,” Josh had shrugged. “I quit today.”
“You quit for this?” Tyler asked, stunned.
Then he burst out laughing, wild giggles echoing in the night air as Josh joined in.
*
Tyler hasn’t heard Josh laugh in a while. He spends even more time around Josh now than he has since those early days, but Josh doesn’t smile much anymore.
Tonight Mark is over at Josh’s new apartment to watch a movie, but they don’t really pay much attention to it, and Tyler feels like they’re steadily consuming the chips and other snacks just for distractions for their hands. Eventually Mark gets tired of the elephant in the room and says, “I’m sorry about Debby.”
Josh stiffens, but resumes crunching on chips. He makes a noncommittal noise, but Mark takes it as encouragement to keep talking.
“How’s she doing? Do you still talk?”
Josh shrugs. After a moment he sighs, and presses the mute button on the remote control.
“Yeah, she still texts from time to time. Haven’t spoken to her in a week or so, maybe.”
Tyler joins in with Mark’s sympathetic grimace. It’s too quiet in here with the sound off.
“She’s doing well, though. Bigger and brighter things,” Josh offers, and it’s only a little sharp.
Mark winces anyway. “You probably don’t want to hear this, but it’s for the best. It’s not surprising that it didn’t last, after... I mean, Tyler kind of made sure of that.”
Josh looks at Mark, but doesn’t say anything. Tyler doesn’t really expect Josh to try to defend him, but it still hurts a little.
“I wanted you to be happy,” Tyler whispers.
Josh sighs again, looking down at his feet in socks full of holes. “I know.”
*
When Nick quit the band too, Tyler didn’t know what he would have done without Josh. Mark always had faith in Tyler’s artistic capability and promised him things would work out, but that wasn’t quite what Tyler needed. Josh was there to beat the crap out of his drums and renew Tyler’s belief that they could do this on their own, just the two of them.
Josh didn’t do things by halves, and neither did Tyler, which was probably why a few months into touring (driving miles away from home on road trips to play shows for crowds almost too small to count) they ended up fucking in a truck stop bathroom.
Their first kiss was after a show in Illinois where the venue, tiny as it was, was packed full of kids who knew the words, who were there specifically to see them, miles from home. Tyler almost broke his knee jumping off his piano, but he was too hyped up from the crowd’s energy to feel any pain. He only felt it afterwards, when Josh crashed into Tyler and kissed him full on the lips in the alleyway by the back door. It had the full energy of the electrical charge that had been building for months between them.
As usual with Josh, there were no whys. There was only waiting until they reached a truck stop and Tyler taking Josh by the hand and leading him inside the bathroom. There was only the burn of Josh’s fingers in Tyler’s ass, the heat of his mouth against Tyler’s. Tyler’s laughter when Josh had to go out into the store with a fairly obvious hard-on to buy lube, holding the bathroom door shut until he raced back. Tyler complaining about his injured knee and Josh turning him around so he could lean against the sinks, so he could see his own flushed face as Josh sank to his knees to open Tyler up more with his tongue. Josh fucking him slow enough to make sure he made Tyler feel good, reaching one hand round to jerk him off, pressing as closely behind Tyler as he could so when they both came it almost felt like they were the same person.
Even after that first time, nobody found out for a while about Tyler and Josh. Mark was used to finding Josh in Tyler’s bed some mornings when he came down to Tyler’s part of the house, because there was no sense in Josh messing his back up on the couch when he stayed over if Tyler had a perfectly good bed. It wasn’t weird that Tyler and Josh were physical around each other – always finding a way to be touching the other in some tiny way – because they’d been like that since they met. None of their friends in the road crew they’d gathered together suspected there was anything more between them than their shared passion for their craft.
This was probably because, as understood without discussion between Josh and Tyler, the band always came first. They practised and played so often and so rigorously that most nights they did nothing more than fall asleep together. And when they spent nights on the road, nobody paid much attention to whether they were huddled too close in the back of the van. Tyler slept better when his limbs were folded with Josh’s under a blanket, or when he could use Josh for a pillow.
It was only after their sold out home show, when important people were finally the ones emailing Tyler and mere weeks later they found themselves on a plane to New York, that whatever it was they had bloomed into something even deeper.
They signed the contracts, bookmarked with so many little yellow flags where they had to sign their names over and over, and that was it. They were the real thing, with a record deal.
In the elevator on the way down to the label’s lobby, Josh leaned his forehead against Tyler’s and said, simply, “I love you so fucking much.”
Michael, standing beside them, only looked slightly surprised. Tyler found he didn’t care anyway. He laced his fingers together around the back of Josh’s neck and kissed him fiercely.
They were the real thing.
*
Tyler tries to remember where that went wrong. He doesn’t know if there was an exact moment he could pinpoint, where he can recognize that that was the one thing he should have done differently. He knows that Josh still thinks about it, too. The other day he found Josh looking through folders of old iPhone photos of them on his Mac, staring hard at their frozen naïve smiles as if he can figure it out if he doesn’t blink for long enough.
*
The shows got bigger, and so did their crew. They had to do interviews in almost every city, or play at radio stations, but the trade-off was getting to fly across the sea and play shows to people who maybe didn’t even speak the same language. When Tyler and Josh exchanged looks of wonder onstage and threw themselves into their performances in sweaty, crazed attempts to outdo each other, Tyler knew that this was it. There was no other team like him and Josh.
They wandered with loosely clasped hands through markets in the streets of strange cities, trying on random items of clothing to make each other laugh. They made love quietly in hotel beds, fingers entwined and breathing in soft gasps. They tried their best to explain themselves to interviewers and the world on the other side of their cameras even when it sometimes got too heavy to talk about; Josh was there, a constant reassurance to Tyler when he was reluctant to let other people into his mind. They tried new cuisine, yet always ended up finding a McDonald’s no matter where they were, if there was no Taco Bell. When they got home, they fucked in Tyler’s kitchen, free to be as loud as they wanted when no one else was around. Josh pretty much moved in with them, and nobody commented on it. “I love you”s were dropped and caught between them as easily as Josh scrambled eggs in the mornings for them both, as lightly as Tyler pressed kisses to Josh’s bare shoulders when he wanted to pull him away from his drums.
Then they had to uproot everything and move to LA. Being on tours overseas was exciting, and they knew they would be back home by a certain date. But they had an album to record, a professional album so much better than what Tyler had been able to produce in his basement, and that meant relocating for an undetermined temporary period. It would have been terrifying if they weren’t going together.
Before entering the airport, Tyler dropped to the ground and pressed his face into a strip of grass. “Goodbye, Ohio!” he called dramatically as Josh pulled him up by the back of his shirt. Tyler smacked a kiss to Josh’s mouth instead of struggling against him, and Josh let him go to rub the taste of dirt from his lips.
“That’s disgusting, Tyler,” he complained, pulling Tyler’s case along with his own while Tyler looked back over his shoulder instead of watching where he was going.
“That’s the taste of your home,” Tyler protested. Josh rolled his eyes and let go of their cases to reel Tyler in for a kiss. “That is the taste of my home,” he whispered against Tyler’s lips. His eyes had shone with suppressed laughter as Tyler blushed, reclaiming his own bags and allowing Josh to lead him to check in.
In LA they clung to each other as much as they ever had, exploring beaches and star-spangled city life with the fascination of children unwrapping Christmas presents. They worked hard in the studio, and the songs came together almost perfectly the way Tyler had heard them in his head. Towards the end of their recording sessions they were allowed time off to have fun too, and while Tyler wasn’t much of a party person, Josh was the friendly one who allowed himself to be pulled to various social events by new friends and colleagues. Tyler still doesn’t know when Josh first met Debby, but he’s pretty sure it was one of those nights in LA when Josh went out to a party and Tyler stayed in to keep writing. The stress had started getting to him, he supposed, and maybe he’d missed those dark voices that used to keep him awake in college, because he’d found that he’d rather spend time with them than the city lights.
Tyler sometimes thinks about how he’ll never know the way things might have unfolded if he’d gone out with Josh to keep a hold on his attention, or been enough of an attraction to keep Josh in their hotel with him instead of finding new ways to be without him.
As it was, when the record was finished and they returned to Ohio, Josh went back to his old place instead of Tyler’s. Tyler tried not to act like it was a big deal, because Josh wasn’t, and it just meant that Tyler had to get used to where things were in Josh’s kitchen and sometimes sleeping in another strange bed until it became familiar. They were never there enough for that to become possible, though, because there was always another tour they had to leave for.
*
On a grey Sunday morning, Tyler catches Josh singing to the radio in the kitchen while he cooks himself breakfast. Tyler stands in the doorway, feeling the grin spreading across his face like an ache as he watches Josh shimmy his hips to The Killers. Days when Josh can be like this have been rare.
“It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this?” Josh questions the spatula as he flips bacon in the frying pan. Tyler loves Josh’s voice, even though Josh had never been comfortable singing for anything to do with the band just because he didn’t have the range that Tyler had. It’s not that he was a bad singer, just a little flat. Right now though his singing voice is the sweetest in the world to Tyler.
Josh starts humming instead as he cracks eggs, and Tyler wants nothing more than to go over and put his arms around Josh from behind and sing in his ear. It would be so wonderfully domestic, beautifully boring life at its most content. Instead he leaves the room with a last glance at Josh’s back and sits in the dining area, looking at one of Josh’s out of date drummer magazines and telling himself that his heart isn’t breaking as he hears Josh try to hold the longer notes.
Then the song changes to a new one, and Tyler feels his stomach plummet as he recognizes the first few notes. A plate clatters noisily in the sink and the radio cuts off into abrupt silence before Tyler’s voice can come out of the speakers.
*
The pre-record release touring was on and off for the six months after their summer in LA. They drove miles around the country again, one interstate blurring into another. Tyler had roped Chris into building a bed in the back of their van so they had somewhere to sleep, and it was claimed by Tyler and Josh most of the time. They couldn’t use it for anything but sleeping when the van was full of other guys, but Tyler still found a way to sneak the occasional handjob, pressing his face into Josh’s chest to muffle his laughter as Josh tried not to make a sound.
One of the last good things Tyler can remember about those days was when he taught himself to play an Elvis song on his ukulele and took every opportunity to serenade Josh with it until the entire crew were sick of it, humming it under their breath and cursing Tyler as he laughed at them. It was worth it to feel Josh’s eyes on his back and know what he was thinking as Tyler stood at the mic and sang the words meant for him to the crowd.
The longer they toured, most nights began to involve Josh sleeping with his arms around Tyler while he lay awake and studied the glow of the passing lights on the inside of his eyelids, focusing on the quiet sound of the Top 40 radio in an effort not to let his brain loose on itself that left him exhausted, yet still unable to sleep. Sometimes Tyler didn’t even realize that he hadn’t spoken a single word all day until somebody else pointed out how quiet he’d been.
The crowds were ever-growing, and the more responsive they were the harder Josh played and the wilder Tyler was onstage, flinging himself into the outstretched arms of the audience against the yells of the security staff manning the barriers. When he began to climb up on things around the bigger stages and jump off, a few members of the crew tried to get him to be more careful. It didn’t stop him from nearly breaking a lighting rig when it almost didn’t take his weight.
“Seriously, Tyler, if you break your neck what are we supposed to do?” Michael asked, arms crossed firmly over his chest as he tried to stare Tyler down. They’d been friends too long for him to be intimidated, and Tyler just laughed and gulped from his bottle of water.
“It’s just fun, I’m always fine,” he waved Michael’s concern away, grabbing onto Mark as he passed them with his camera.
“It’s harmless, right Mark?”
“I’m not your manager, but as a friend, I’d like it a lot if you didn’t fall from the stage rigging,” Mark said as he veered out of Tyler’s reach.
“It makes for great video content though!” Tyler called after him.
“Great video content isn’t worth risking your health and your ability to perform,” Michael insisted.
Josh came out of the dressing room door with a towel around his neck, looking from Tyler’s overly-bright eyes to Michael’s furrowed brow as they both opened their mouths.
“I’m not getting in the middle of this,” he said quickly, and backed up again.
“Josh backflips off the piano every night and you aren’t yelling at him about it,” Tyler said, taking the opportunity to follow Josh through the door and close it on Michael, still shaking his head.
“We need to be out and in the van in twenty minutes!” he called through the door meaningfully before his footsteps moved away.
“Plenty of time,” Tyler breathed, before pushing Josh up against the wall.
“Ty-“
Josh let Tyler cut off his protest with a heated kiss. Josh had had the chance to clean up a little but Tyler was still sweaty from the show, not caring as he reached for Josh’s belt.
“Tyler, wait,” Josh insisted, and Tyler dropped his hands with barely restrained impatience.
“Not tonight,” he said quietly, and Tyler took a small involuntary step back.
“What is it?” Tyler asked, recovering quickly and trying to put his arms around Josh. “Are you okay?”
“Are you okay, Tyler?” Josh asked pointedly. He shrugged out of Tyler’s loose embrace and crossed the room to get his clean shirt. He kept his back to Tyler as he pulled it over his head, and Tyler stared at the set of his shoulders and wondered what he’d done wrong.
“Is this about the climbing thing?” he asked, feeling a little desperate.
“What is the climbing thing about?” Josh deflected. Tyler shrugged wordlessly, his hands facing palms outwards at his sides.
“I don’t – why are you all –“
Josh stopped him with a look. “If you feel like you can’t talk to me about whatever’s been going on with you lately, that’s fine. I’m not blind, Tyler.”
He stared at the obvious shadows under Tyler’s eyes before continuing. “Look, Tyler, I’m always here for you. Just don’t expect me to be okay with watching you hurt yourself and waiting for you to only come back to me when you feel like it.”
“That’s not –“
Tyler’s throat seemed to have dried up. Josh watched Tyler swallow, choking on his own lack of words that he’d never had to try to explain to Josh before, and his shoulders sagged. He held his arms out silently and Tyler stumbled into them, knocking into Josh harder than necessary.
“It’s alright, Tyler,” Josh sighed. “It’s alright. Let’s just go out to the van, yeah?”
“I’m sorry,” Tyler whispered into the side of Josh’s neck, and Josh twisted his head to press a soft kiss to Tyler’s temple.
“Come on.” Josh took Tyler by the hand. “We can probably convince Ben to take us through the Drive-Thru.”
“Why do I feel like a kid you’re trying to bribe with a Happy Meal?”
Josh laughed and kissed Tyler on his cheekbone. “You are sometimes, you know.”
“I’m fine, Josh,” Tyler said, a little too sharply. “You don’t have to feel like you need to look after me.”
Josh let go of his hand to open the door.
“Yeah, I do.”
*
One day when Josh’s siblings are in town, they try to drag him out to dinner. Ashley instructs Josh to put on a nice shirt, and while he’s gone she confers with Jordan in a worried whisper. Tyler stands in the hall and listens.
“Look at the state of this place. Did you know he was this bad?”
He hears the crinkling of food wrappers as Ashley tries to clear off the coffee table. Jordan says nothing – maybe he shrugged – and Ashley continues, “We need to try to talk to him about this without making it seem like an intervention. Can you mention that new job opening at your friend’s place?”
“Sure, but he’s gonna see right through us anyway, Ash.”
“We have to do something. We can’t just let him… fester.”
There’s a clicking of shoes and a loud rustling as Ashley shoves the gathered trash into the already overflowing garbage can in the kitchen. Tyler moves away down the hall as Josh comes back out of his room.
“This shirt is gonna to have to do, since you kinda sprung this on – oh. Sorry about that.”
“Just cleaning up a little, it’s no big deal,” Ashley says, falsely bright.
Tyler ducks around into the kitchen as they move to leave, staring at the sink until the front door closes. He goes to the window to watch them get into Ashley’s car and stares at the spot where it was parked until long after they’ve driven away. Eventually he decides that he might as well go out, too.
He doesn’t meet anyone on his way down the stairs, and out on the street he suddenly feels exhausted. He keeps walking anyway, letting his feet dictate the direction while his mind wanders. Maybe he should go and see his own family. He hasn’t checked in on them in a while, actually not since –
Anyway, he doesn’t think he can face seeing them again yet. So he just walks.
There are people all around now, walking past on the sidewalk, laughing at blaring TVs inside lit windows, cheering over sports inside a bar he passes. The lights slowly come on everywhere as the sunlight fades, and Tyler finds himself sitting on the front steps of a random residential building as dusk falls.
He’s startled by a loud meow from his left, and turns to see a skinny tabby cat on the step above. The cat looks at him and meows again, and his face cracks into a smile. He reaches out for the metal circle hanging from the cat’s collar.
“Hello, Lucky,” Tyler laughs as the cat tries to rub up against him. He swallows against the lump in his throat when the cat gives up and leaps gracefully down the steps, looking back at him once before darting away.
“You really are lucky, you know,” Tyler says, in the general direction the cat was heading. “If cats do have nine lives.”
The closeness of the low clouds seems to threaten rain, but Tyler gets to his feet and allows them to lead him wherever they choose. It’s fully dark by the time he reaches Josh’s street, and he stops to look up at the building and see the light on in Josh’s window. He knows that he could go anywhere if only he could cut this imaginary tie, but that yellow square of light is the only home he has to come back to, so he sighs and heads inside.
*
They got to be home over Christmas, and they spent it with their families. On Christmas Eve Tyler hid in his and Zack’s old room plucking chords out of his uke until his mother sent Maddy to pull him downstairs to help keep Jay away from the cookies. Tyler used to love how busy Christmas was with all the planning and the people, but as empty as he was he barely managed to put a convincing face on throughout church and dinner. He didn’t want his mom to worry. He was just tired, that’s all.
Everyone else in Tyler’s building was still away with their own families when he went home after Christmas, and the emptiness of the house made him turn his speakers up while he was working, until a neighbor complained about the constant sound continuing into the early hours of the morning. Tyler was glad to be able to go out for New Year’s Eve, even though technically it was staying in. All their friends and some of their friends Tyler no longer remembered turned up at Josh’s place for a party. There was a lot of joking about them being “big stars” when they mentioned their upcoming album release, and Tyler almost enjoyed himself. When the ball began to drop in Time’s Square on the TV, Tyler sought out Josh, who spotted him from across the room and began to wind through the crowd of people to reach him. A cheer rose as the clocks chimed midnight, and Josh pulled Tyler to him and kissed him a beat too late.
Josh leaned his forehead against Tyler’s and smiled ruefully, weaving their fingers together. “Happy New Year, Ty.”
Later, when everybody had finally gone home and left a mess of glasses, paper plates, and streamers for them to clean up, Tyler walked Josh backwards into his bedroom, blindly undoing the buttons of his shirt. Their bottle of lube was still down the side of Josh’s mattress.
Tyler had gotten impatient when Josh took too long stretching him, pulling Josh’s fingers out himself even as Josh protested. Tyler just rolled over and pulled Josh towards him. It was a relief to shut down his mind and concentrate only on the feeling, and the sounds of their uneven breathing and skin on skin. Tyler ran his fingernails down Josh’s back until he got rougher and thrust harder, and Tyler came with Josh’s name on his lips. Josh followed soon after, and when he pulled out and got up to throw out the condom Tyler beckoned him back into the bed with waiting arms.
“I’ve missed this,” Tyler whispered, curling into Josh’s side. “I missed you.”
Josh looked at him, and for a second it worried Tyler that he couldn’t read the expression on his face. But then it was gone, and he murmured, “I missed you, too.”
The start of the new year was a blur of the release party, special shows, his family members sending him pictures whenever they saw his band’s album or advertisements for it in stores. Tyler thought it was worth the strange overwhelming feeling of pride and exhaustion and confusion to see Josh’s smile through it all, and to know that people were finally hearing what they’d made.
So why was he having trouble sleeping again?
Even when they upsized to a tour bus to travel in for their headlining shows, Tyler isolated himself to his bunk or the mini-studio he constructed in the back room. Opportunities for bunk sex were slim, and hotel nights gradually became a matter of going through the motions that always ended in Tyler and Josh falling asleep in silence on their respective sides of the bed.
Weeks went by of cities and interviews and shows, and even Josh’s enthusiasm seemed to wane. He barely spoke to Tyler anymore outside of conversations started by other people, and Tyler only ever seemed to catch him smiling when he was with others. He spent more time on his phone than interacting with Tyler, and for the first time Tyler realized how it felt to be on this side of the closed door. It occurred to Tyler that maybe he’d taken Josh for granted. Maybe he’d been doing it for a while.
On the next hotel night, Josh went to take a shower as soon as they entered their room, and everything unsaid weighed on Tyler’s chest as he climbed into bed and waited. He scrambled forward to pull Josh in for a desperate kiss as soon as he came out of the bathroom in his underwear, not caring about Josh’s damp hair.
“Whoa, whoa, Tyler,” Josh protested as he pulled away, taking Tyler’s face between his hands and searching his eyes with a concerned expression. “Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry, Josh,” Tyler blurted out. “I’m so sorry for everything.”
“Hey,” Josh said gently, sitting on the bed and allowing Tyler’s clinging arms to pull him down into the pillows beside him. Josh swiped the tears from Tyler’s cheeks with his thumbs and he blinked in surprise. He hadn’t even realized he was crying.
Josh sighed and held out his arms, and Tyler burrowed into him, shocked at the sudden sobs that forced their way from his heaving chest out of his throat. He mumbled barely coherent pleas into Josh’s shoulder.
“I’m s-sorry, I love you, I’m sorry, I love you so much, I’m s-“
“Stop it, Tyler,” Josh interrupted, holding him more tightly. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t say it’s okay, or you don’t need to keep apologizing, even though if he did Tyler would have known they were lies anyway.
He rested his head on top of Tyler’s, pressing his lips to Tyler’s hair. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“W-what?” Tyler struggled out of Josh’s arms to look him in the eyes, but Josh wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“I’m sorry,” Josh said, and there was more pain in his own apology than the softness of the words he’d spoken before it. “I shouldn’t have said – not now. We can talk about it in the morning. Just… just come here.”
“What do you mean, you can’t-?”
“Please, Tyler. Not right now.” Josh sighed when Tyler continued to lean away, stiff against his embrace. “You know you need to sleep. You need me here.”
“Of course I need you. Are you saying that you don’t…?” Tyler couldn’t choke out the last two words.
“In the morning,” Josh murmured. He kissed the stains of tear trails on Tyler’s face until he lay back down and pressed his face into Josh’s chest as if trying to breathe him in, and Josh ran his fingers through his hair soothingly until Tyler fell asleep.
The next morning Tyler woke up alone, and he couldn’t place the reason for the disquiet he felt until the door opened and Josh came back in, fully dressed and carrying an unopened can of Red Bull.
“I thought I should let you sleep in, but we have to leave in fifteen minutes,” he said, setting the can down on the table next to Tyler’s side of the bed. His fingers twitched against the fabric of his shorts. “I, uh, I just spoke to Michael about maybe getting separate rooms for us for the last few nights…”
He trailed off, waiting for any response from Tyler.
“When you said you can’t do this,” Tyler said slowly, staring down at his fingers and the traces of dirt underneath the nails. “Did you mean the band, or just… with me?”
Josh was silent. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and Tyler shifted his legs away like an involuntary twitch.
“I’m sorry, Tyler. You know things just haven’t been working between us for a long time now, and I know you’re sorry too, but that’s just… it’s not enough.” He pauses. “I know you’ve never really been able to talk to me properly about this, but I think you should see a doctor, too. Seriously, Tyler. Please do that, for yourself, not for me.”
“I can do that, sure. I can do that,” Tyler said, nodding quickly. “But I can’t do it on my own –“
“Tyler,” Josh interjected. “I love you. Of course I do, you have to know that I do. I’m always going to be here for you, as your friend and your bandmate. I’d never give this up. Not for the world. It’s just that…” Tyler watched distantly as Josh struggled to find the right words. “I’m not enough for you. I can’t help you anymore, Tyler, and I can’t be just waiting around for you to feel like being there for me.”
“Who is it?” Tyler asked, feeling a vindictive spark of pleasure at Josh’s reaction, as if Tyler had slapped him.
“That’s not – I’d never cheat on you, Tyler,” Josh insisted. “Do you really think that little of me?”
“There is someone else, though, isn’t there?” Tyler asked, quietly resigned. Josh looked down, rubbing at the back of his neck. Tyler nodded to himself.
“Not like that, we’ve never-“
“No, it’s okay, Josh. It’s fine.”
“It’s not,” Josh groaned, his head in his hands with his elbows propped on his knees. “It’s not fine at all.”
There was an abrupt knocking at the door, and their manager yelled at them to hurry up and get downstairs. Josh quickly stood up to allow Tyler to get out of bed, and apologized again to Tyler’s back as he grabbed his bag and walked into the bathroom.
Tyler barely spoke the rest of the day, but he’d been so quiet recently anyway that nobody really paid attention to it. By the time he and Josh got to be completely alone again in the dressing room before that night’s show, the ache in his chest had dulled enough for him to be able to mean it when he told Josh, “It’s all going to be alright.”
Josh reached for Tyler’s hand. “This is the best thing for us.”
“I know, now,” Tyler said. “And I still love you, and I’m sorry, but I know this is what you need to do.”
Josh nodded and hugged Tyler tightly, fingers in his hair.
“Thank you. I want things to be okay between us. I want you to be okay.”
“I will be,” Tyler murmured, finally reaching up to hug Josh back. His hands rubbed feather-light circles into Josh’s back. “We will be.”
“Two minutes!” Mark yelled from the hallway, and Josh stepped back and grinned, holding out his hand. Tyler returned his smile and joined in the handshake.
If his screams were a little too intense or his playing was off, nobody mentioned it. In fact, according to Michael, the reviews for those last few shows of the tour were the best he’d ever read.
*
On his birthday Tyler goes to the beach. Slightly grey dawn on the first day of December finds it almost deserted, which suits him anyway. He walks along the sand trying not to think about anything much until his foot kicks something and startles him out of his distraction. He kicks the dented soft drink can along for a short distance until he picks it up and sits down on the sand, twirling the can in his hands. It’s dirty and who even knows what’s on it, but he doesn’t care. He studies it like it’s a sculpture, remembering a time that seems far too distant now when Josh and Tyler had gone to a carnival on one of their days off in a midwest town.
There hadn’t been much on offer in the way of attractions but Josh had tried his hand at several games stalls and allowed Tyler to reassure him that the games were usually rigged and he totally would have won otherwise. It was evening when Josh convinced Tyler to visit Madame Catarina’s fortune-telling tent, “just for fun”.
The woman had greeted them with a smile when Josh pulled Tyler in by the hand. She looked from the tattoo on Josh’s neck to the matching X on Tyler’s arm and said, “Matching rings soon, too, yes?”
They had looked at each other in surprise, the fortune teller laughing at their awkwardness. It was closer to a coughing sound that suggested a smoking habit. The future she predicted for them based on the cards they picked from her tarot deck was something Tyler could have cobbled together himself: they’d faced struggles in the past, and there was strife ahead too, but in the end they’d live long happy lives. They thanked her anyway and Tyler didn’t even tease Josh about wasting ten dollars, because Josh surprised him by kissing the tattoo on his arm, smiling when Tyler complained that it tickled.
When they were walking back through the darkness away from the fairground lights, Josh stopped and let go of Tyler’s hand to kneel down. Tyler was about to tell him to hurry up and tie his shoelace already when Josh looked up at him and said, “Tyler.”
“What? What are you-” Tyler’s eyes widened as Josh straightened up on one knee, pulling something out of the pocket of his jacket. “Are you serious?”
The light caught the metallic thing Josh was holding up to him, and it took Tyler a moment to recognize that it was the ring pull from a can of Coke.
“You absolute jerk,” Tyler said as Josh began to laugh at the expression on Tyler’s face. Tyler turned away, shaking his head, as Josh stood up and held the ring pull out to him.
“Hey, no, Tyler, come on. I’m sorry.”
“Absolute jerk,” Tyler grumbled, grabbing fistfuls of the front of Josh’s shirt as Josh leaned in to kiss him. Josh wrapped his arms around him to stop him from pushing him away, slipping the ring pull into the back pocket of Tyler’s jeans for him to find weeks later when sorting through dirty laundry.
“I’m sorry. I wish it was a real one.”
Tyler relaxed into Josh’s arms, hugging him back just as tightly. He pressed his face into Josh’s shoulder, mumbling into the thick fabric of his hoodie. “Someday?”
“Someday,” Josh had agreed.
Tyler feels too tired to do the right thing and find somewhere to dispose of the can, so he just throws it away again, not looking to see where it lands. He wanders along the shore just shy of the breaking waves, watching the play of light on the surface and imagining how easy it would be to walk out into the water and just keep going. But it’s far too late for that, it’s far too late for anything, so he kicks at the sand and tries not to think about what his parents are doing today, miles away in Ohio.
*
It was harder than Tyler had thought it would be. Playing shows was the same, more or less. It was being around Josh the rest of the time and having to readjust his automatic behaviours that was so difficult and strange. He couldn’t wriggle into Josh’s bunk in the middle of the night, or wrap his arms around him from behind and kiss him on the cheek to embarrass him when he was talking to someone. Josh was still Josh, they could still talk about music and play Mario Kart and enthuse about Taco Bell. But Tyler couldn’t touch him at all, was too afraid that hugs would last too long and Josh would be able to feel the speed of his heart’s beating and he’d know. Tyler hadn’t realized how much he relied on Josh as a physical anchor until that comfort wasn’t available to him anymore.
The whole thing was made even more difficult because pretty much everybody in the crew had known about Tyler and Josh, and though they never really told anyone it was over it soon became obvious. The awkwardness took a while to dissipate, and Tyler didn’t even feel up to telling his parents until they asked about the pictures of Josh with a girl they’d seen on TV.
He had to put his old mask back on because he’d promised Josh he’d get better, though when Josh introduced him to Debby at a promotional show they played in LA he’d thought it might crack. She was beautiful, and happy, and Tyler hated the look of pity in her eyes when she spoke to him with a bright smile.
“Does she know?” Tyler had asked Josh, when Debby had left the dressing room to go and watch the support band from side stage.
“About you and me?” Josh asked. “I didn’t tell her, but I’m pretty sure she knows, or at least she’s guessed most of it.”
Tyler raised his eyebrows at Josh’s anxious look. “What? Are you expecting me to cry?”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Like what? Look, she’s perfect. Perfect for you. Everything you could possibly want. I’m glad you found each other.”
“Tyler.”
“Does she have a slightly screwed up friend you can give my number to?”
Josh’s mouth was a thin line and his face was white. “That’s not wh–“
“I know.” Tyler slumped back in his chair, the bitterness and fight gone. “I meant it. I’m glad you have someone who makes you happier than I can.”
Josh opened his mouth, but couldn’t find anything to say. Eventually he just said, “We should probably get ready to go on.”
There was a period of downtime before the next scheduled run of shows at festivals over the summer, and when Josh decided to move to LA to be closer to Debby, Tyler was so determined to play the part of supportive friend that he took charge of Josh’s leaving party.
This was a choice he regretted immensely when he had to play host. He began to feel like his face was going to set forever in his forced smile after only an hour of sharing fond memories of things that had happened with Josh in Columbus, and passing around snacks. He sneaked into Josh’s bathroom to take a break, splashing cold water on his face before sitting on the edge of the bath tub and just trying to breathe.
The door burst open, and Josh had already begun to unzip his jeans before he spotted Tyler, clinging to the edge of the bath to keep from falling backwards and staring back at him wide-eyed.
“Crap, I’m sorry – “
He reached for the door, which had swung closed behind him, but Tyler just laughed – possibly his first genuine laugh of the evening – and shook his head.
“No, it’s my fault for hiding in your bathroom and not locking the door.”
“Why are you hiding in here? It’s kind of your party.”
Josh perched on the edge of the bath next to Tyler. Tyler tried his best not to shift away from the heat of his arm.
“It’s your party, remember? We’re celebrating your future in the City of Angels.”
“Yeah,” Josh said thoughtfully, looking up at the ceiling fan. “This is a big deal, huh?”
Tyler shrugged. “Only if you want it to be.”
“I’m going to miss you,” Josh said, sincerely, turning his head to look at Tyler, who swallowed past the lump in his throat and said, “I’m going to have to rely on Mark for late night food runs now.”
Josh laughed, and the sound echoed in the small space. The door opened again and in his surprise Josh fell back into the bath, pulling Tyler with him and knocking into the shower controls. They lay there with their legs sticking out, Tyler half on top of Josh, with cold water soaking them as Mark stood in the doorway and stared.
“Right, then,” he said, and walked back out, closing the door behind him.
“Mark, wait! A little help?”
Tyler began to laugh uncontrollably as he struggled to pull himself up, spitting water out of his mouth. He managed to get his feet on the ground and pulled Josh after him by the forearms.
“Well,” Josh spluttered, turning the shower off and shaking his sopping wet hair everywhere. “This is going to be fun to explain.”
Tyler pulled his shirt over his head and began to wring it out over the bath. “’Josh is an idiot.’ There. Summarized it for you.”
Josh bumped him with his shoulder as he peeled off his own shirt. “We’d better change. I’m sure there’s still some of your stuff…”
He trailed off awkwardly and walked out into his bedroom. Tyler knew that there were still a bunch of his clothes on the top left shelf of Josh’s closet.
“I was going to give them back to you, later, you know,” Josh said quietly as he pulled them out.
“Looks like you’ll have to wear one of these anyway,” Tyler replied. He put on an old plain white shirt and pulled his Grouplove hoodie on over it. “Most of your stuff is packed, right?”
“Yeah. Saved by your terrible yellow t-shirt. Who would’ve thought?”
“I seem to remember you wearing that shirt a few times on tour, actually.”
Josh just grinned and pulled on Tyler’s shirt. They stood there for a minute just looking at each other, realizing how small the distance between them was.
Josh reached out to tug his fingers through Tyler’s damp hair. “I really am going to miss you.”
“They have baths for you to fall into in LA.”
Josh laughed. “Where would the fun be without you?”
Tyler let Josh pull him into a hug, but Josh’s lips against his ear were almost too much, and he shrugged Josh’s arms off.
“We should get back to the party.”
“…yeah.”
Tyler was almost angry at the look of disappointment on Josh’s face. It didn’t stop him from agreeing to stay the night when Josh asked, after they’d cleaned up most of the limited party mess with the help of Josh’s family.
Tyler intended to sleep on the couch, but Josh was borderline offended when he asked for blankets.
“Just get in here,” he said, as if Tyler was being childish, and Tyler climbed into Josh’s bed and tried not to remember the last time he was here.
“My mom and Ashley and her boyfriend are going to come round tomorrow before they see me off to pack the rest of this stuff up,” Josh yawned, turning on his side to face Tyler, who was staring at the ceiling.
“Are you roping me in to stay and help them?”
“Not if you don’t want to,” Josh said sleepily, reaching out his arm to pull Tyler towards him.
“Josh, we can’t,” Tyler whispered, allowing himself to be held anyway, because he missed this.
“Can’t what? I can’t hug my best friend the night before I move away and won’t see him for a while?”
“You can’t… play with me like this.”
“Tyler,” Josh sighed, and pressed his lips to Tyler’s forehead. “I don’t want to hurt you. You can always leave, whenever you want. You know that I would never make you stay.”
“You know that I’ll always want to stay,” Tyler mumbled with his eyes closed, and felt Josh’s smile against his neck. He wished he could hate him for it.
In the morning, Tyler woke Josh up untangling himself to leave. Josh rolled onto his back and squinted in the light.
“What, you were going to go without saying goodbye?”
Tyler rolled his eyes as he pulled his shoes on. “I already said goodbye like a million times yesterday.”
Josh followed him to the door. “Before you go…”
Tyler turned, and Josh kissed him on the lips, quick and soft. He stepped back out of Tyler’s reach, half behind the front door.
“I’m not the one going,” Tyler said, resisting the urge to touch his fingers to his lips.
“Come to LA,” Josh said suddenly. Tyler stopped a few feet from the door, his car keys out in one hand.
“What?”
“You should move to LA. We’re going to have to be back there again sometime soon anyway to work on our next album…”
Tyler looked at him for a moment. “I’ll see you in a month when tour starts. Have a safe flight.”
Josh stood in the doorway with his boxers low on his hips and his hair a mess until Tyler’s car was out of his sight, but Tyler could still see him in the mirror when he closed the door.
*
Josh abandoned his public social media accounts a couple of months ago, but recently he’s started to post on a new blog. No one else knows about it except the therapist Josh started seeing a few weeks ago, so there are no multitudes of fans sharing his posts and trying to decode them, nobody reading them at all.
Just Tyler.
[rentalskinandbones.blogspot.com]
Entry: one two one two
The thing about music for me was that words weren’t always necessary. I’ve never been the best at finding what I mean to say. But I made this blog, so I might as well try to use it.
J
Entry: who doesn’t love free pizza?
It helps a lot more than I realized just to get out and do something every day, even if it’s just waiting tables in my brother’s friend’s restaurant. I guess Jordan didn’t tell him anything, because he doesn’t look at me in that way everybody who knows does. He didn’t even know I used to be in a band.
The free food is pretty good, too.
J
Entry: old calluses
I’ve started giving paid drum lessons to kids on the weekends. It’s been too long since I had another reason to pick up these sticks.
J
Entry: by the edges
I know I’m still avoiding talking about things that I need to talk about, but writing them down is too hard right now. I don’t know how long it will be before it’s not, if that time ever does come. For now it’s just easier to think about all the things I need to do, like a checklist to keep me on track. Shower. Eat. Clean up. Make sure the car has gas. Work. That kind of thing.
Last night somebody recognized me in the restaurant and I had to pretend I wasn’t me. The kid just wanted a picture but I couldn’t do it. Everybody could be somebody famous in LA, right? Easy mistake.
J
Entry: out there
Maybe I should move somewhere else. The only places I have deep enough long term roots are Ohio and LA. I can’t go back and I can’t stay here. There’s an entire world out there, I’ve seen a lot of it for myself already, but I think I’m too scared to start over.
J
Entry: dear my closest friend
Remember that time when you couldn’t sleep and you told me that you wished you could crawl inside my skin? And you looked at me like you were waiting for me to push you away in some kind of disgust, but I didn’t move my arms and so you said you only meant that you wished you could live inside me and everything that was good in me would be enough. So I just held you as close as I could and kissed your eyelids and we fell asleep like that?
I did my best and I know now you shouldn’t have expected that from me, that you can’t expect to make a home out of somebody else. You can’t just do that because when you leave what have you done except carve a hole in them that leaves them looking for somebody else to live inside?
And even after all that, I’m still sorry I couldn’t be that for you.
J
*
Tyler was doing great, he told Josh when they met at the airport. Or rather when they collided, since Josh had walked right into Tyler while they were both looking for the rest of the crew members who hadn’t checked in yet, even though they were meant to be on the same flight. After he’d wrapped Tyler in a hug, Josh held him at arm’s length and looked him up and down.
“You look great, Ty,” he smiled, eyes crinkling up, and Tyler smiled back and tried not to feel like he was baring his teeth.
“So do you. LA’s been treating you well, huh?”
Tyler was relieved when Mark came over with the other guys in tow before Josh could tell him about the weather and the food and all the cool places and people Debby knew. He was in a window seat with Michael on his other side for the flight to Germany, and he took the opportunity to sleep, though they went straight to their hotel after they landed. Despite his tiredness he couldn’t do anything but lie with his eyes closed in his room and tell himself he wasn’t going to go and knock on Josh’s door.
They talked over breakfast the next morning before hitting the road in a small tour bus for the first festival of their summer. Their texts over the last month hadn’t said much of any substance, and Tyler didn’t feel like telling Josh about the trouble he had with eating and that he’d stopped taking the pills that made his bones feel like lead, so instead he talked about some demos he’d been working on that he wanted to show Josh later and playing basketball in his parents’ back yard against his younger brothers.
Everything went away onstage. When Tyler looked out over the seas of people, even if most of them didn’t know who they were and weren’t here to listen to him, when they responded to the music and his words and he could get them to do anything he asked of them, nothing else mattered. Everything was structured, the crew made sure everything was in place and ready for each part of the performances, and Tyler could be anybody he wanted to be up there in front of thousands of people, even after he’d taken off the ski mask or unzipped the skeleton hood to show his face. When he climbed to the top of the scaffolding around the stage, dangerously high, and looked down at the upturned faces with mouths wide open waiting to swallow whatever he fed them, he found himself wondering why there wasn’t a pill that encapsulated this. It was close to feeling invincible, but on the right side of numb for once.
The feeling never lasted, as much as Tyler wished it would, but it lasted long enough that when Josh kissed him after their set at a festival in the Netherlands he didn’t question it. Anybody could have seen them for all he knew, but in the moment at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the stage, pushed against a temporarily constructed wall with Josh’s fingers pressing into his hip under his shirt, Tyler didn’t even care. Josh’s mouth was warm and familiar and he missed it more than he’d thought. He opened his eyes when it disappeared, blinking slowly as if he’d been asleep.
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
Tyler adjusted his shirt and watched Josh as he walked away, rubbing at his forehead as if he had a headache. He caught the eye of a stage hand standing nearby and looked away, walking in the opposite direction.
Tyler found Josh in his bunk when he made it back to their bus an hour or so later. He climbed in carefully, and Josh rolled over to give Tyler more room though he was only half awake.
“It’s okay,” Tyler whispered. “I know you didn’t mean it before. You don’t have to be sorry.”
Josh shook his head, his hair sticking up in a fluffy mess and tickling Tyler’s forehead. “I did. ‘M only sorry for hurting you.”
Tyler pushed his feet in between Josh’s, wriggling his toes against Josh’s ankle. “You didn’t.”
“Tickles,” Josh yawned in a feeble protest, draping his arm over Tyler and pulling him more securely into the bunk.
“Why’d you kiss me?” Tyler said it softly enough that Josh, whose eyes were closed again, could have pretended not to have heard. There was a moment of quiet.
“Don’t climb that high,” Josh said, simply. He pressed a blind and sleepy kiss to the part of Tyler nearest to his lips, which happened to be Tyler’s nose. “I can’t lose you.”
The sarcastic “okay, mom” died on Tyler’s lips, and he ducked his head against Josh’s neck instead. He stayed that way until Josh’s breathing became slow and regular and gently unwound Josh’s arm so he could slide out of the bunk.
When he woke up the next day they’d reached the grounds of the next festival, and the sound of a female voice and group laughter unsettled him until he remembered that Debby was supposed to have flown over to see Josh for the three days they were going to be in France. He walked out into the main area of the bus and smiled awkwardly when everybody quieted and turned to look at him.
“Tyler!” Josh called, patting the bench seat next to him, Debby waving at Tyler from his other side with the hand that wasn’t holding Josh’s in her lap. Tyler sat down as the conversation resumed from before he’d interrupted.
“So wouldn’t it make more sense?” Debby said, leaning around Josh a little to talk to Tyler, and he blinked.
“Huh?”
“For you to stay with us,” Josh said with a patient smile. “Mark was just saying that he’s going to be looking for a place you two can live while you’re in LA before we start the studio sessions he’s going to be filming. But he’s got commitments in Ohio for another couple weeks when we get home, and it just makes sense for you to stay with us in LA.”
“…right,” Tyler agreed uncertainly. “Yeah, okay.”
“Great!” Debby’s face lit up when she smiled, and Josh looked at her like she was made of sunlight.
Tyler was glad that Josh was happy. He really was. He was not jealous.
Not jealous, he told himself when he was curled up in his bunk, ignoring the gnawing ache in his belly and trying to sleep.
Tyler felt a lot more at ease at their place when Debby left to shoot a movie in New York. He hated feeling like an intruder in their bubble of domestic bliss, and he couldn’t lie to himself – he was relieved that he wouldn’t have to see Josh’s hands in long hair and painted fingernails against Josh’s chest for the foreseeable future.
Debby was going to be gone for six weeks, and she and Josh invited a bunch of their friends round the night before she flew out to the set. Tyler stood against a wall with a can of Mountain Dew and tried not to resent the person in charge of the music for playing the same crap they’d all heard on endless repeat on mainstream radio over the summer.
He guessed it didn’t work, because a guy with his curly hair flattened under a beanie hat who looked a few years younger than Tyler leaned against the wall next to him and raised his eyebrows.
“Not impressed by Johnny’s beats, huh?” he said, taking a swig from his own can.
Tyler tried not to wince. “Was it that obvious?”
“Nah, I agree. It’d be rad if they played some of your stuff.”
Tyler turned to look at him properly, and the boy wore a satisfied grin.
“Yeah, I’m a fan. Debby introduced me. We don’t hear a lot of music like yours here.”
“Yeah, well,” Tyler said, waving a hand in a sweeping gesture at the room in general. “I mean, no offense.”
“None taken,” the guy laughed. “I kinda think that’s why Debby likes Josh so much. There’s not really anybody like either of you out here.”
Tyler made a vague noise and surveyed the party, looking for an excuse to stop talking to the kid.
“You guys make a great team.”
“Yeah,” Tyler agreed without really paying attention to what he was agreeing to, as he spotted Josh through the kitchen doorway and pushed away from the wall to head over there instead.
“Hey Jo-“
“Tyler!” Josh grinned, turning to grab him by the shoulder. He had his other arm around Debby’s waist, and she giggled as he pulled them into a group hug. Josh leaned down and kissed Debby on the top of her head and then Tyler on the forehead, since they were closer in height.
“I’m glad you’re here, Tyler,” Debby laughed as she ducked away. “This boy is like a sad little kitten if you leave him alone too long.”
Tyler smiled. “Yeah. Don’t worry, I’ll look after him for you and make sure he gets fed.”
“Something other than Taco Bell, Chipotle, and In-N-Out Burger,” she said sternly. “And promise me you’ll go out and do things. No staying in and sitting on the couch playing endless Mario Kart tournaments.”
“No promises,” Tyler replied, and Josh laughed and clapped him on the back.
“I’ll be alright as long as I have one of you here,” Josh said, reaching around Tyler for a can of Red Bull on the counter.
Debby didn’t seem to have heard him, distracted by a short brunette girl to her left who tapped her on the shoulder, but she laughed in his direction anyway before turning properly to talk to her friend. Tyler smiled too, because Josh was grinning at him as he took a swig of his drink.
*
Some nights Josh leaves the TV on when he goes to bed, just loud enough to be background noise. Those are the nights Tyler spends on Josh’s couch, flipping through channels and not really seeing whatever happens to be on the screen. His mind is always somewhere else, and he wishes he could be too. Inevitably he ends up wandering the apartment, avoiding Josh’s room as long as he can, until eventually he gives up with no other distraction and looks around Josh’s door. Josh is asleep, so he lies down gently on the empty side of Josh’s bed and listens to his quiet breathing in the dark while the room lightens around them. He’ll be back on the couch by the time Josh wakes up in the morning.
*
“Sorry, Debby,” Josh said as Tyler brought the pizza boxes over to the couch, shoving his wallet back into the back pocket of his jeans. He tossed his head back and threw a handful of broken Doritos in the air, catching most of them in his mouth and crunching triumphantly. Tyler flopped down and pushed Josh with his foot to move over more, raising his eyebrows at the scattering of Dorito bits on Josh’s shirt.
“I think this is pretty much how the next few weeks are going to go,” Josh said, throwing Tyler a controller. He balanced the open pizza box on the arm of the couch and picked up his own controller, raising it towards Tyler like a champagne glass. Tyler tapped it with his and curled his legs up underneath him as Josh hit start.
Tyler didn’t remember falling asleep on the couch with Josh spooning him, but he woke up with his back pressed against Josh’s chest and Josh’s arm across his stomach. There was a cramp in his shoulder and he wriggled a little to get more comfortable, accidentally elbowing Josh in his side.
Josh made a grunting noise and shifted as he woke up. He chuckled as he realized he was half-wrapped around Tyler, untangling their legs to stretch his out. “Man, the last thing I remember was winning my ninth consecutive game.”
“Yeah, well I remember beating you eleven times in a row before that,” Tyler yawned as he stretched. He accidentally pushed back against Josh, who stiffened, and Tyler froze when he felt that Josh was hard. He laughed awkwardly and attempted to sit up, but Josh didn’t move his arm and Tyler slumped back onto the couch, edging over onto his side so there was a little space between them and he was half-facing Josh.
“Hey,” Josh said, eyes heavy-lidded.
“Hey.”
Josh leaned his head forward a little, focusing on Tyler’s mouth, and Tyler looked back at him with his sleepy smile and his hand on Tyler’s waist, and leaned forward just enough for their lips to meet.
It was a soft, sweet kiss for a moment, then Josh’s hand tightened and his tongue pushed into Tyler’s mouth. Tyler hitched his leg over Josh’s to pull himself closer and slid his hand up Josh’s back.
They broke apart when Josh’s other hand between them fumbled under Tyler’s shirt and rested with his fingers in the waistband of Tyler’s boxers. Their breathing was too loud as they looked at each other, and Josh pulled away from Tyler, tugging his shirt over his head as he sat up. Tyler stood up and almost stumbled over his own shoes lying on the floor.
Josh laughed as he followed Tyler, gathering the hem of Tyler’s shirt in his hands and pulling it up. Tyler obediently raised his arms to let Josh pull it off completely. Josh’s hands were suddenly everywhere, fingers fluttering against Tyler’s jaw as he leaned in to kiss him again, their light pressure against Tyler’s bare lower back. Tyler couldn’t hide the fact that he was already hard when Josh tugged his shorts down, guiding him backwards towards the doorway.
Josh pulled Tyler after him onto the bed, kicking off his jeans. Tyler knew he should ask Josh if he was sure he wanted to do this, and that even if he said yes Tyler should tell him that this was wrong, and they should stop. But Josh was reaching for him with that old familiar look, and Tyler couldn’t pretend he didn’t want this either.
So he kissed Josh back, trailing kisses from his mouth to his throat and down his chest and stomach. Josh squirmed under him with his eyes closed, pulling down his own boxers as he reached for Tyler’s hand. Tyler stilled as Josh guided his fingers to his ass.
“Do you have-?”
“In the drawer.”
Tyler reached over and found the small bottle. He clicked the cap open but hesitated, and Josh’s eyes opened.
“Here.” Josh took the bottle from him and squeezed it into his own hand instead. Tyler just stared as he watched Josh push down on his own fingers. He’d never seen Josh do this, even when they were together, but it seemed to be something he was familiar with. He couldn’t help reaching to touch himself, struggling to get his underwear down his hips one-handed, and Josh smiled.
Tyler looked in the drawer again for condoms, but Josh shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, doesn’t… ah.”
Tyler bit his lip but didn’t say anything as Josh slid a pillow under his hips and settled on his stomach with his legs slightly spread, resting his forehead on his arms. He couldn’t see Josh’s face, but Josh willingly spread his legs further when Tyler pushed them apart to settle between them, rising up on his knees a little. He held Josh down as gently as he could with a hand to the back of his neck as he adjusted himself and pushed into Josh, holding himself up with the other hand pressed to the bed. He paused, but Josh rolled his hips up and back down again and so Tyler began to move, slowly at first and then faster until his breathing was heavy. The noises Josh made were muffled, but he ground his hips into the pillow beneath him desperately.
“I want to see you,” Tyler gasped, slowing his movements again. “Need to see your face, Josh.”
“Don’t,” Josh mumbled as Tyler pulled out, but allowed himself to be turned over, eyes still closed. His face was flushed and his hair was tousled, and when Tyler pushed Josh’s legs up and thrust back into him the sound that escaped his mouth made Tyler lean down and kiss him fiercely. He found an angle that made Josh’s breath hitch, making sure to keep hitting his prostate as he continued to move. Josh reached up to hold Tyler closer and Tyler turned his head to trace a fresh mark on Josh’s forearm with his tongue, the imprint of Josh’s own teeth.
“Tyler,” Josh murmured, opening his eyes to look right into Tyler’s. He held Josh’s gaze steadily as he thrust harder, biting back the three words he almost let spill from his lips and focusing on the building heat coiled somewhere below his navel. He leaned down to press his forehead to Josh’s as he reached between them to where Josh was jerking himself off, moving Josh’s hand with his own to a faster rhythm until Josh was shuddering and coming over both of their fists. The sight was enough to push Tyler over the edge too, but Josh wrapped his legs around Tyler as he tried to pull out.
“Don’t,” he whispered again, pressing his face up into Tyler’s shoulder as he came inside him.
Tyler collapsed on top of Josh, sweaty and sated. As they caught their breath the rise and fall of their chests fit into the spaces left by the other. Josh wrapped his arms around Tyler’s back to hold him there even as he muttered, “I shouldn’t have done this.”
Tyler closed his eyes and turned his face sideways to rest his head on Josh’s shoulder, trying to sound light as he said, “You couldn’t have waited to say that until I wasn’t still inside you?”
Josh huffed out air in a half-laugh that tickled the top of Tyler’s ear, and he pushed himself up and pulled out of Josh, ignoring the mess he was probably making of Josh’s sheets in favor of flopping down on his back with a sigh. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No.” Josh sat up and pulled his legs up, folding his arms on top of his knees. “No, you know I don’t.”
Tyler stretched out his legs and reached a hand up to pull on Josh’s shoulder until he lay back next to him. He grimaced and wriggled a little. “What?”
“Your come is leaking out of my ass, that’s what.”
“And whose fault is that?”
They smirked at each other, trying not to laugh. Josh wrinkled his nose to hide his smile and Tyler nudged him with his elbow to disguise the fact that he felt like crying, even more so when Josh sighed, “I miss you.”
“I’m right here, Josh.”
Josh looked at his face, and then up at the ceiling. “Yeah.”
There was a stretch of silence, not the same kind of silence there used to be between them, before Josh whispered, “What am I going to tell Debby?”
Tyler felt his stomach churn, tasting acid in the back of his throat. He sat up, swinging his legs off the bed and reaching for his clothes. “You don’t have to tell her anything if you don’t want to. This won’t happen again.”
“Tyler, don’t…”
“You already said it was a mistake. You were right.” Tyler didn’t even look at Josh as he headed for the door he assumed led to the bathroom. “Just let me take a shower and I’ll go and we can forget this ever-“
“I don’t want to forget it,” Josh interrupted. “I just – I want –“
“You already got what you want,” Tyler said. “You got Debby. Congratulations, Josh. You can’t have us both.”
“I…” Josh sat up with his knees pulled up again, tugging at his hair with one hand. “Where are you going to go? Just stay and we can talk-“
“I can’t do this anymore,” Tyler said. He hadn’t meant to throw Josh’s words back at him, had only been turning them over in his head, but he could see the faint glimmer of relief behind the concern in Josh’s eyes and right then he wished that he had screamed them. “I’ll find somewhere. It’s easier if we just don’t… just don’t.”
“Do you mean – everything?”
Tyler pulled on his boxers, avoiding looking at the expression on Josh’s face.
“What about writing?”
“I’ll still be writing,” Tyler said, and Josh stared at him, hurt by the implied without you. I don’t need you, Tyler could have said, but it would have been a lie. “We’ve got until the end of the year before we need to be back in the studio.”
Josh just looked at him, face impassive now.
“Maybe by then you’ll have decided what you want.” Maybe by then I won’t need you anymore.
Josh made a small sound, then coughed. “Okay,” he said, staring at his knees, and he didn’t look up while Tyler dressed as quickly as he could manage – forget the shower fuck you fuck you – and Tyler couldn’t even choke out a goodbye, sarcastic or otherwise, before he let the door swing shut behind him. The quiet click as it closed said everything anyway.
*
Sometimes Tyler watches Josh in the night. It’s kind of creepy, Tyler will admit, but when Josh looks untroubled while he dreams it brings Tyler a small amount of peace.
A lot of those nights, Josh has nightmares. Tyler doesn’t know what he sees behind his closed eyelids, doesn’t really want to know.
“It’s just a dream, Josh,” Tyler says softly as he twitches and groans, hair sticking to his forehead. Tyler sits carefully on the edge of the bed, resisting the urge to push the hair from Josh’s eyes.
“I’m here. I love you. It’s just a dream.”
He knows he shouldn’t, but he leans over and tries to kiss him, desperate to offer him comfort.
Josh’s legs kick in blind panic and he calls out one word as he gasps awake. “Tyler!”
“I’m here,” Tyler murmurs again, wearily.
Josh stares right through him.
He struggles out of the sweaty blankets and stumbles into the bathroom in the dark. The cold tap runs and Tyler sits there listening to Josh’s sobs.
*
Composing music alone had always come naturally to Tyler, and writing was as easy as letting his train of consciousness pour out through his fingers until his wrists ached. The problem was that it stagnated before he could finish any of it. There was a reason things hadn’t picked up until after the band had become just him and Josh, and Tyler knew it, as well as he knew that he’d fucked everything up.
Tyler had never meant to hurt anyone else. And never Josh. Never his mom, his brother... It was just that things had gotten so bad again, and he made one stupid decision when he was normally so proficient at keeping control. That Sunday it had been raining, and that usually calmed Tyler, but he couldn’t concentrate on what he was trying to write.
He kept checking his phone because he found it hard to focus, and when he saw the photo Josh had posted of him and Debby it made things worse. The way Josh looked at her, that light in his face that hadn’t been there for so long, that Tyler had thought was for him alone. Tyler had none of that left in him these days. He’d taken what he could from Josh and used it up and Josh deserved to find that again with somebody else, and Tyler didn’t. That’s why he was sitting there feeling as empty and useless as he was as a high school kid screaming for redemption in his parents’ basement.
He needed to not think for a while. He grabbed his car keys and went for a drive, too soothed by the sound of the rain hitting the windows to turn on the radio. But the quiet let the thoughts back in, and he was easy prey. It wasn’t long before he was crying, hunched over like his chest was caving in and he was trying to hold it together.
He was speeding down the highway with the empty grey sky pressing down on every side, and his hands gripped the steering wheel for an anchor. Then they wrenched it viciously to the right.
Tyler was there, somehow, when Josh showed up. He’d woken up in the hospital and thought – he thought that he’d survived the crash, that he was going to have to explain to everybody what he’d tried to do.
But he was just standing there as if he was uncompletely unscathed, ignored by the doctors and surgeons bustling and shouting. It was a few minutes before he realized that the body on the operating table was his own. When his car went off the road and slammed head-on into a tree, the force drove the steering wheel column into his chest. Crushed ribs? Punctured lungs? He watched himself drowning in his own blood.
There was something on the ground that had fallen out of his jacket when they cut it off him; a nurse’s foot knocked it and it skimmed across the floor, stopping just short of Tyler’s shoes. He stared down at the ring pull instead of watching them try to save his life.
It was 6:47pm when the monitor flatlined. Tyler observed with detached fascination as they charged the defibrillators and tried to shock his pulse back into existence. Clear. It was 6:52 when they pronounced him dead.
It was 7:08 when Josh arrived, still on the phone with Tyler’s dad in Ohio, trying to explain what had happened when he didn’t really know himself. The clock on his phone froze at 7:10 when a grave-faced doctor delivered the news and he dropped it, the screen cracking.
“Josh,” Tyler said, the first word he had tried to say, and nobody heard.
Josh had to positively ID his body a little while later since Tyler’s family wouldn’t be able to fly there until the morning. The nurse who escorted him to the morgue threatened to call security when he started screaming.
“What did you do, Tyler? What the fuck did you do?”
Josh turned away as the mortician folded the cover back over Tyler’s face. Except Tyler was standing there, watching as Josh fell apart.
“I know this is hard for you and I’m sorry, but if you can’t control yourself I’ll have to have you escorted from the premises,” the nurse warned, and Josh kicked the wall one last time before angrily swiping the tears from his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie.
“I’m so sorry Josh, I’m so -” Tyler reached out for him, and he couldn’t touch him. His fingers stopped millimeters short of Josh’s shoulder, as if there was a small force field keeping their skin apart.
Tyler stared at his hand. It looked solid, the light wasn’t shining through him, but nobody seemed to hear him, or see him, or feel him.
When he looked up, Josh was gone.
*
When Josh comes back out of the bathroom, rubbing at his eyes with the outsides of his thumbs, Tyler waits for him to fix the sheets and climb back into bed before lying down carefully on the empty side. Josh’s arms are limp at his sides as he stares at the ceiling, measuring out his breaths like he’d always done whenever he was trying to distract himself from something. His hand is right next to Tyler’s, and Tyler moves his close enough that he can almost pretend that they’re actually touching.
“Take my hand,” he sings softly, tracing the same cracks in the ceiling plaster as Josh is following with his eyes. “Take my whole life, too.”
Josh’s breathing becomes more even and quiet, and Tyler turns his head to watch him. Josh rolls onto his side and Tyler has to catch himself halfway through the next part of the song, because for a moment it’s like Josh is looking right into his eyes. Then Josh closes his eyes without reacting, and a small part of Tyler’s mind chastises itself for daring to hope for that split second, even after all this time.
“Darling, so it goes,” Tyler sighs, and Josh blinks, almost as if he can feel Tyler’s breath fluttering against his face. “Some things –“
Tyler breaks off to laugh at himself, a bitter sound that Josh can’t even hear anyway. Josh falls asleep as Tyler continues to sing in a murmur, the way he does almost every night.