THE BLIND GLASS RAGE

16

a/n: be prepared ;) josh and tylers relationship is going to be hella confusing

also, trigger warning for this okok

also the thing that happens with tyler happens often to college students so

***

When I woke up, it was to the sight of Josh's eyes.

And people always say that they wish to wake up to someone they love, and maybe I did, too, but not like this. Not when his face was red with tears he shed beforehand, and when he was sitting as far away from me as possible, without falling off the edge of the small bed. Not when he was looking at me with everything in the world clawing through his eyes. Not when I wanted to touch him, and I couldn't. Because he was laying there and peering at me like he wasn't falling apart under me in the dark of this same bedroom in this same bed, just hours before, and like he wasn't getting off with my hand in his pants.

"We have to go this weekend," he spoke, and I tried not to let the tears that threatened to surface in my eyes, surface. I was scared, though. The sound of his shaky, heavy voice rattled me completely. "Okay? We have to go."

There was no point in me answering him, seeing as he wasn't asking me anymore. He may have asked me before, but he wasn't now. I could tell. "Tyler?" He spoke, and I didn't respond. Just moved so that I was on my back, and pushed my hands to my face. I didn't even care about how hopeless and confused and desperate for something that I looked, because he caused this, didn't he? This can't be my fault, this turmoil. This is a product of him not knowing what he fucking wants. "Tyler, come o-" he started, and, very suddenly, something very crucial inside of me, completely erupted. He punctured it, with his fucking words and his touches and his taste, and he could not pretend that he cared about me, and go back to Noah in the same breath.

"Don't." I spat, sitting up abruptly, and narrowing my eyes at his, and cursing the confused look on his face. "Don't play this shit with me, Josh. I thought. I thought you were better than this."

"W-"

"And don't act like you don't know what's going on," I continued. "Just don't."

"You know what, Tyler?" He asked, mirroring my tense position. "I don't know anything much right now, okay? I don't know what I want or who I want or anything. I just know that you're my best friend."

Crying is very very very rare for me. I don't appreciate the way it feels, so I don't usually allow it to happen. But, at ten fourty-seven in the morning, with my chest aching, like barbed wire was strung through it, I started to cry on that goddamn bed. The tears were soft and heavy, carving a path from my eyes, down to my chin, and I wiped at them indignantly, knowing that I didn't cry and I shouldn't be crying right now. And it didn't help that Josh assumed he'd done something, even though he definitely had.

"Tyler, I love you."

"People say shit like that all the time," I sniffed. "What does that even-what does that mean?"

He pressed his lips together, flushing the color out of the bottom half of his face, and locked his eyes on his hands that sat shakily in his lap, pale and cold and Josh. "Uh." He started out, and I wanted to laugh at him, and punch him, and kiss him, because he didn't have anything to say that, because I felt he didn't know. "It means that we take care of each other."