HeartLESS (Fransykes)

3. Looking at you look through me

CW: Intrusive thoughts, alcoholism, feelings and angst.

A/N: Sorry if this is a bit boring, just wanted to get a bit of Josh's POV and see a bit of his personality come through.

Josh's POV

This evening's gig was so good! I haven't felt this energised in so long and my best mate and one of the guitarists in our band - Max - notices it when he drops me home this evening. Even I have to admit that he's right, no matter how much I hate to. I decide to let this good mood carry me for a while longer and mix myself a mojito. I take a long sip, a pleasant shudder running down my spine as the sweetness mixes with the sour and leaves a fresh taste in my mouth.

I place my glass on the coffee table and flop onto the sofa before switching on the TV and flicking aimlessly through the channels. It's mostly bollocks at this time of night so I end up leaving it on some old comedy reruns that I've seen a million times before. It's just background noise so I can relax and almost out of habit now, I pick up my phone and open the Pebblr dating app.

I've been perpetually single for about six months now, but it's not really been an issue. The band is starting to get noticed and though tonight's performance was just in the bar that Max and I usually work at, we've had some offers of some bigger gigs too - even some talk of getting signed to an actual label! I'm not sure we're ready to take that step just yet, but it's still nice to think that we could if we were.

But I started to feel lonely. My bandmates are great, don't get me wrong. I love the bones of every single one of those guys, but Max, Matt and Chris all have their own lives and partners, and Dan... Dan's just Dan. He's something else and returns my flirty banter in a way that makes me feel so good, but though he's super fucking hot - especially when he's flexing his drumming muscles - he's just Dan at the end of the day. We've discussed this many times and it would completely destroy the band if anything were to ever happen between us. Plus, Max would get sick of seeing us all over each other and we've got a rule that we won't ever let a relationship get in the way of the music.

So Max encouraged me to download Pebblr. It's not been all bad so far, really. There's been a few girls swiping on me, but nothing special to swipe back on. There are a few waiting when I open the app this evening, but they all get swiped left, so I go to the home page and start swiping myself.

Left, left, left... left, HARD left, left.

I roll my eyes at the amount of effort some people put into their pictures. They just make themselves look desperate! I convince myself to swipe just another five times and put my phone down for the night. It's about 11pm so I'm not likely to get any responses tonight anyway. The next profile is a dark haired girl. She's pretty, but doesn't strike anything in me. Left. A blonde girl with too much makeup. Left. A gym bro whose pictures are all muscle close-ups. Ew, left. An older guy holding a giant fish. RED FLAG! LEFT!

Profile number five catches my eye. Dark, fluffy looking hair curls around his eyebrows which sit atop the most unusual coloured eyes. In some pictures they look brown, and others, the most striking green. He looks really down-to-earth and has the cutest smile I've ever seen! I flick through the available photos on his profile. His hair is longer in some than others, soft and wavy, framing his face perfectly. His physique is muscly, but defined; toned. And apart from his face, every inch of skin I can see looks like it's covered in tattoos. I didn't think someone with that many tattoos could still be so attractive, but I shake the shallow thought from my head and realise I've been staring open mouthed at his pictures for so long, my mouth is almost completely dry.

I reach across to the coffee table for my drink and knock the rest of it back - partly to wet my dry mouth and partly for the Dutch courage I'm going to need to do what I'm about to do. I take a deep breath and swipe right on him, instantly locking my phone and putting it face down. I promised myself five more swipes and that's what I've done. Besides, there's no way some hot, muscly, tattooed guy is going to swipe right on me. I mean, I don't think I'm the worst looking guy out there, but guys like that tend not to even look twice at guys like me.