to all the glowing eyes ✎ joshler

december 14

josh gets woken up by a female voice talking on the phone. his fight or flight response is too slow to make him react in any way other than jolting awake in a cold sweat. after all, who gets home at 7 am? he looks to his right side and notices that brendon is still asleep, shifting between positions to be more comfortable.

"hello?" he yawns, his sleepy mind not really interested in knowing who it is.

"uh, hi? who are you? what are you doing in my living room?" the voice replies.

he opens his eyes and sees a woman in her early twenties staring back at him. she's holding what josh can only assume are the keys to the main door and a small backpack. her piercing blue eyes scan him to look out for danger. he gets out of the pullout bed and fixes his hair to look presentable. "you must be tyler's roommate. i-i'm josh, that's my friend brendon over there," he points to the snoring teenage boy on the bed, "he told us we could stay with you guys while we're in town."

the girl looks at him, a weird look on her face. she doesn't seem to buy anything he's saying. "so, you're friends with tyler?"

"kind of. it's a long story."

she takes a glance at brendon and then back at josh. "he's never mentioned any friends from out of town. he said he didn't have any."

ouch.

josh fiddles with the hem of his sleep shirt and eyes the bedroom door decorated with yellow flower stickers and aqua letters spelling out 'tyler'. he wishes tyler would wake up at this moment and explain everything to his roommate. no matter how josh explains things, he doubts that the girl will accept it as the truth.

"well, alright. he used to go to our high school. we hung out a few times," we even almost kissed once, "i'm sure he should've mentioned us before."

"nope."

with that, josh gives up and exhales in defeat. "i swear we're not strangers. we met because i read his diary and then–"

it seems like that half sentence alone rings a bell to her. her expression changes from unconvinced to shocked and angry, "wait. you're that josh?! why are you here?! why the hell did tyler let you in, oh my god!"

"it's okay! i came here to apologize about it! we're cool now."

she rolls her eyes, her grip tightening around her keys. "you can't just 'apologize' for something like that. you're an asshole. i can't believe he–"

the bedroom opens, a very sleepy tyler emerging from the darkly lit room. he has a grey hoodie on; it's two sizes too big for him, making it fit almost like a dress. "jenna? why are you yelling?" he asks in a soft tone. his presence is making josh's heart melt.

"what is he doing here?" she motions towards josh, "i thought we'd talked about this issue, babe."

tyler shakes his head, closing the door behind him. "i know. he came here to apologize and check up on me. letting him stay with us is the least i could do for them. besides, why are you coming back until now?"

somehow, now that tyler has said it, jenna calms down a little. she gives josh a quick death glare and turns to talk directly to her roommate. "i was at debby's. we stayed up late talking and fell asleep by accident. i only came back to get my stuff for work." the way she talks to tyler is completely different to how she talked to josh. for obvious reasons of course, but it's like she has a soft spot for the 16 year old. a kind of big sister and little brother dynamic. if she hadn't been scolding josh a minute ago, he would think this is adorable.

"can you be quieter then? some of us are trying to sleep," brendon says, scaring the living hell out of josh for a moment. he goes right back to sleep after that, getting closer to josh's side.