semi-automatic | joshler

16. too many faces

Play the song: "Half" by PVRIS.

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It's Monday afternoon and all the energy left in Tyler's body has already died out, so he has to fight with his own self to stay awake and keep listening to whatever a teacher has to say.

He fell asleep at four in the morning, but it feels like he didn't get any sleep at all. Two hours is like nothing. But he's got used to it. The fact that he got any sleep at all is surprising enough.

There's probably no use even going to school as teachers don't have time to teach and they only tell you to work by yourself. Tyler barely has his eyes opened in every class.

He saw Josh in the morning in music class, chatting with their teacher again and not participating in class at all. Tyler thought Josh might have been mad at him for some reason, for not telling him he would be away for the weekend and disappearing without a word, but Josh was just looking at him here or there in class, without the angry look on his face Tyler remembered from the times he first saw him, and Tyler would respond to him by sending sleepy glances.

During a long break less and less people go out to the courtyard. It's getting cold and they prefer crowding hallways instead. Tyler doesn't know, where to head to; He would always choose the bathroom in the end of courtyard, walking all the way through all the benches and the now familiar faces. He decides to find it from the inside now. He doesn't want to stand somewhere in a hall looking awkward and being observed by other people.

Living in this school is like a survival. Even though it's big, there are still too many people here, blocking doors and the way through stairs, so Tyler has to use his elbows to push them away and walk freely.

Tyler runs downstairs to the lowest level where is, unfortunately, the biggest chaos, but to his luck, the bathroom is right next to the stairs, so it won't be that much trouble.

"Tyler, wait!" he hears suddenly, almost jumping from hearing his name. He has no idea, who would like to talk to him during a break; nobody ever did, probably all people in this school have actually got their own opinion about Tyler, not necessarily a good one.

He is surprised when he sees Troye chasing him from afar, his messy hair making their way into his eyes all the time. Troye always stops to say hi, but has never stopped to make any conversation.

He leads Tyler to the bathroom, tapping Tyler's back lightly with his black sketchbook, probably the new one again. The last one Tyler saw was orange. Maybe he fills his sketchbooks up as fast as Tyler does with his notebooks. Tyler would love to see what's inside of them. One day he overheard, that Troye is such a huge artist.

Probably each page of his sketchbooks has a different drawing, none of them the same, that he can look back and know exactly what place he was at in his mind when he was drawing the picture; something like a photo album of memories.

"Hey, Tyler," he greets, smiling and panting after they head into the bathroom and see each other in a mirror. "I want to ask you a favor, and I figured you would say yes, since you owe me one."

Tyler has no idea, what kind of favor he owes him, and what for, so he's trying to figure it out. Troye is smiling at him.

„What? How many times have you gotten into this exact bathroom during lunch break without having to enter through the most crowded hallway in the whole school, only because there was a certain book propping the door open?" He smirks at Tyler, knowing he will have to agree to whatever he's planning. "Besides, that book is already damaged in all possible spots, so you kind of owe me double."