Ink Flowers

They said your name

A/N: aaand this one is form Casps POV FINALLY
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He was smoking again. He seemed to do that a lot more since the alleged beat up he had gotten from Tyler.

Truth be told, he had beat up Tyler a whole of a lot more. And that's what scared them all.

Caspar always thought Joe was a bit freaky, a bit too far off, too lost in thought and too thin. He was too much, too much rudeness and piercings; and he wasn't enough. Not brave enough to stand up for himself, not brave enough to say something, anything, when it was 4 am, after a party, and, as always, they ended up alone in a badly living room that smelled of weed, alcohol, and sex.

But now, he was something else. He had changed, not physically and definitely not personality-wise (although he didn't laugh as often). But something had flipped, changed. Like the sky before a storm.

And it scared Caspar.

Caspar watched closely as Joe light up another cigarette, nestled between his reddened lips, that made his bruised face all the more attractive.

Joe looked up, and his eyes met Caspar, who saw Joe stoping dead in his tracks, the lighter still aflame in front of his lips, the cigarette smoking. He froze, in a pose that Caspar felt should've been photographed, as a favor to humanity.

Joe's physique was, in itself, a favor to humanity. But that wasn't what Caspar had in mind at the moment.

Joe froze, but not out of fear or taken aback, Caspar soon noticed. He looked dead. Something behind his eyes had died down, whatever flame that burned bright inside of him was dead. Joe was a walking corpse.

And an sad one, Caspar noted, once Joe stood up straighter, and puffed out a cloud of dark smoke in Caspar's direction, although Caspar was so far away it would never reach him.

Before the events of the last fortnight, Caspar would've never assumed Joe could be like this. If you were to say 'Hey! Joe is going to kick Tyler's head against the wall until he bleeds so much he passes out!', he wouldn't have believed it.

That didn't seem like Joe.

Admittedly, Caspar didn't really know what Joe was like, having never truly talked to him. But he watched closely, he payed attention and he stared. He knew what Joe was like: a dangerous man with too many dreams and a soul somewhere between life and death. He was determination and wit, he was loyalty to himself and his friends.

And he was dark, he was loud laughs and the rumbling of a six cylinder motor. He was black coffee (with two sugars, please) and stains of ink on his hands. Joe Sugg was a hair he envied and a pair of lips that haunted him, he was ripped jeans and broken hearts. He was  cigarettes on cold days and bruises everywhere.

And maybe Caspar was wrong, he could've made up a fake Joe in his head, having never actually talked to him. But even if Joe wasn't what he thought he was, no one could deny something had changed in him.

It was that fight, that bloody fight, what changed everything.

Jos Sugg didn't fight back. Yet, he gave the first punch.

Since the fight, Tyler had been oddly quiet, less cheerful and perky. Like something was haunting him. As if Joe haunted him.

He actively avoided places that Joe was known to frequent, and if their eyes were to meet, both would look away with pained expressions and a flash of fear in their eyes.

Caspar worried for Tyler. Like Joe, he had lost that flame in his bright blue eyes, and his smiles were less frequent, which worried Caspar terribly. No one should live like that, so hollow and sad. And still, that's what not only Tyler, but also Joe looked like. Caspar worried for these boys who weren't alive, but merely existing in a world much too complicated for anyone to comprehend.