josh, the house is haunted

the turret

Half awake, Tyler rolled over to his side. His leg was outstretched and when he didn't feel Josh, he searched with his hand. Tyler cracked open his eyes, lifted his head, and squinted around the blurry, bright room. There were no curtains on the windows yet so the sun was shining in like it was nobody's business.

"Josh?" His voice was low and raspy from sleep. He thought his boyfriend could have been in the bathroom but the light was off.

He laid his head back down and moaned tiredly. It was the third time sleeping in their new house and waking up alone was kind of unnerving.

Yesterday the moving truck came and loaded their furniture into their house. The couple thought that the workers would have helped by putting everything in the correct rooms but they were left alone to rearrange everything. In fact, they had to reassemble their bed alone. Tyler wasn't sure how, but they had managed to put together the item.

When Josh wasn't found from the lack of effort, Tyler grabbed an armful of blankets to hug instead of his boyfriend. The absence obviously was not enough to make him get up and search around, because Tyler fell back asleep. Although, just a few minutes later he was pealing his eyes open again. He was surprised to find him still missing.

Tyler groaned and blindly felt the ground next to the mattress. He picked up a pair of glasses and set them on his face with a sigh. The young adult slowly sat up and checked the time on his phone. It was almost noon.

High on sleep, Tyler forced himself to his feet and stumbled to the bathroom. He used the toilet and then began lazily brushing his teeth. He watched himself in the mirror. Messy hair in desperate need of a trim, eye bags, indentations in his skin from sleep-

A creak disrupted his evaluation of his groggy self and he immediately snapped his head towards the door. Tyler stood there in a paused position with the toothbrush.

"Huh?" He audibly asked. He could have sworn he saw the door move an inch or two.

He bit the toothbrush to let it hang out in his mouth as his hand fell away and rested on the counter. He blinked at the dark wooden door and didn't look away until a drop of foamy toothpaste fell on his shirt.

"Awe..." Tyler looked down, grabbed the handle of the brush with one hand, and scooped the paste off with his finger.

He shuffled back into the room with clean teeth and grabbed his phone. He was officially on a mission to find the missing boyfriend.

The brunet slowly descended the wooden staircase when he didn't find him in any of the extra bedrooms. "Josh?" He croaked out.

"Yeah?" A voice answered on the other side of the wall.

Tyler sleepily went through the doorway next to the stairs and found Josh standing next to the stove, stirring something in a pan. He could the a quiet sizzle.

"There's the sleeping prince. You slept in."

"I try to always sleep in when I can." He stood to his left, looking at the food in the pan. "You're making eggs?" Tyler unknowingly had a hand grabbing Josh's waist.

"Scrambled eggs in fact." The older stuck his hand in a bag of shredded cheese and sprinkled it on top. "I wanted us to have an actual meal for once."

Tyler hummed and leaned his head against his boyfriend. He realized how hungry he was. "When are they done?"

"Um," Josh sturred the eggs in the pan. "In a couple minutes or so."

Tyler slowly sank to the floor and leaned his head against the cabinets behind him. With his eyes closed, he said, "Tell me when they are done."