frickboy -joshler-

-t e n-

Whilst eating rubbery noodles with almost frozen sauce under the fluorescent light of the noisy cafeteria, Tyler's fingers flew rapidly across his phone screen trying to summarize everything that had happened last night and this morning as quick as possible to Hayley. Ignoring his multitude of typos, he was so focused on getting his keyboard smash the exact way that he wanted that he didn't notice how bad the school food tasted in his mouth. He also didn't notice the giant shadow looming over him and his lunch until Josh Dun, of all people, dropped his tray and backpack down on the table across from him.

His head snapped up as fast as lightning, and his eyes widened just as quick. "You shouldn't leave your mouth hanging open like that, you'll catch flies," Josh teased, picking up his fork and taking a bite of his spaghetti, if you could even call it that. Tyler sobered up immediately and closed his mouth and shaking his head in an attempt to force himself to focus.

"Why are you sitting here?!" is the first thing from Tyler's mouth, at least 45 seconds after Josh told him to close it.

Not even phased in the slightest, Josh says, "So that I can eat my lunch." Another 20 seconds pass that only consist of Tyler making strange faces and noises to go along with them, trying to calm himself down.

"Okay, but there are at least 30 other seats in this lunch room that you could be sitting at," Tyler points out as he dramatically gestures to the other tables filled with students talking and laughing. "And I've worked hard over my entire high school career to have this table all by myself! It's not all that easy to be generally unlikeable and disliked by a majority of your peers," he exclaims.

Josh gives him a look somewhere in between disbelief and amusement and rolls his eyes, "I'm sure it's been so difficult for you, I'm so sorry." His voice is playful and Tyler picks up on the sarcasm before he even finishes his sentence. Ignoring Tyler squinting his eyes and gearing up to shoot out a quick insult, Josh says, "Besides, this table is closest to the exit, it's the perfect seat."

"That's why I choose it every single day."

Again, Tyler's deadpan voice and worked-up expression, Josh causally leans back and stretches, putting all his muscles in clear view for Tyler to momentarily ogle over. Quickly covering the shocked face that seems to be on his face 90% of the time he's around Josh, Tyler's face goes hot. "What are you gonna do if I don't get up, anyway," Josh lifts his eyebrow, "pour bleach on my spaghetti?"

Tyler's face goes red yet again, but this time not due to the frustratingly attractive boy showing off his body in front of him. His face glows from pure embarrassment. "How many times are you gonna mention that?!" he complains in an exasperated voice. "It was last year, it's in the past! And it was an accident!" he slumps back against the wall and scowls.

"Was it really an accident?" Josh questions jokingly as he leans towards Tyler.

"Yes, it was."

Surprised looks grace both their faces when they hear the bell signaling the end of lunch ring, and they look as if they've been pulled away from a shared daydream. They blink a few times and try to make sense of their thoughts, making brief eye contact and looking away at the same time.

Tyler is the first to move, standing from his seat and picking up his empty tray. He rolls his eyes and slings his bag over his shoulder, "I don't even know how you found out about that anyway! The only other people that know about it are me and the janitor." He furrows his eyebrows as he collects his things to go to class, genuinely wondering how Josh knows about the incident that he thought no one else had witnessed.

"We all have our ways of knowing things, Joseph," Josh says from only a foot or two away from Tyler, making the younger boy take a few steps back, as he didn't even notice Josh move from his seat.

Tyler only opens and closes his mouth a few times, not knowing how to respond. "Yeah, well-" he starts, only to see that Josh had walked away and only his brightly-colored hair was visible from the other side of the room, surrounded by his friends. A heavy sigh falls from his lips as he attempts to cover up his disappointment.

His mind is quickly taken away from the older boy, though, as he finally notices his phone constantly vibrating and being blown up with messages from Hayley wondering why he abandoned their conversation right in the middle, and he smiles down at his phone.

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(A/N: hello !! after almost a year and a half i've finally decided to continue this story ! this ends abruptly bc i didn't know how to finish the chapter off, sorry :/ i also apologize if the writing style is different than it was before, i was 14 when i last added to this book and i'm turning 17 in like 2 weeks so,, ,

anyway i'm hoping to add more and maybe finish this soon, idk if i'm going to start anything new yet, i don't rlly have that kind of confidence anymore lol thank u to anyone that actually reads this uwu)