Next Semester

5. ghosts

1700 words

Seeing Braxton at night was a lot creepier than seeing it during the day. The building was old, like, old old. The engraved stone on the front of the building had the year 1872 etched into it, so Tyler was not surprised when he had the feeling that the building was haunted.
Josh led the way down the dark hallway towards the elevator. The ding of the elevator arriving on the first floor made Tyler jump, earning a small chuckle from Josh, "Scared?"

"It's creepy in here." Tyler grumbled as he followed the man into the elevator. When it stopped on the 4th floor, Tyler waited for Josh to get out first. He was not walking down that hallway without someone in front of him to protect him. Josh was shaking his head and smiling as he lead them down the hall towards his office, "You were just here today. This isn't some haunted house- it's the English department." Josh pushed his office door open and Tyler quickly scurried inside and turned the light on, "Ghosts don't come out during the day." Josh raised an eyebrow at him, "So they're all out right now?" Tyler nodded, acting as if Josh was the one that was being ridiculous.

Josh laughed as he sat down at his desk, logging on to his computer, "I would not peg you as someone who believes in ghosts."

"You don't?" Tyler practically scoffed. He went over to Josh's desk and plopped down in the chair in front of him where he had spent most of his day. Josh's eyes flicked from his computer screen to Tyler's face, "No, Tyler, because I'm not 5 years old."

Tyler pouted a little, "Mean." He looked beside Josh's desk and noticed a large stack of manila folders piled so high they nearly reached the top of the desk, "What're those?"

Josh leaned over to look at what the younger was referring to and groaned, "Department files that need to be categorized and labeled and put into the giant empty filing cabinet behind me."

"I can do it." Tyler offered. Josh looked at him uneasily, "Tyler, you don't have to do that... it's a lot of tedious work and it'll take forever." Tyler shrugged, leaning over and taking a small stack of the folders in his hands, "I have the time."

So, the two sat and worked in Josh's office. Josh put some quiet music on and Tyler was trying not to giggle at the man's music taste. All the guy listened to was alternative rock/punk. Not that Tyler didn't know every word to every song, but still. Tyler moved over to the couch and splayed the folders out on the small coffee table in front of it and just got to work. He had his phone out, creating a numerical sorting system and marking each folder with different colored sticky notes. He honestly didn't think the work was that bad. Some of the folders were a mess, having papers from different years, departments, topics all together as one, but most were relatively simple to categorize.
Josh was humming quietly to the music as he typed on his computer, catching up on his calendar for the next few weeks. He was really trying to keep a rigid class schedule for all of his classes so that he didn't have to move exam dates on his syllabi, so he was trying to organize his lectures so that he could get everything taught before each exam. He had a few assignment outlines completed already, so he typed the due dates for those into his calendar as well.

As the song switched, he frowned slightly. He realized that the slower Death Cab For Cutie song that began to play was accidentally added to his Alt Rock playlist, so he clicked his Spotify tab to skip the song, but stopped himself when he heard soft singing coming from the other side of the room. He almost missed it. Almost.
He glanced over at Tyler and watched him as he pulled a few papers from a folder, swaying slightly as he sang. A smile pulled at the corners of Josh's mouth as he watched the brunet. He had been able to tell that Tyler knew almost every song that he had played so far, but hadn't heard him sing until now. Tyler actually had a very nice voice from what he could hear.
Tyler must've felt the man's eyes on him because he looked over at Josh and instantly blushed, "S-Sorry, was I being too loud?"