remember that you're mine {joshler}

xv. i stayed up waiting, anticipating, and pacing

"Your father wants to see you." Tyler looked up from his breakfast, he'd been slowly pushing the scrambled eggs around his plate deep in thought. His mother looked at him sternly, sipping at her coffee.

"Why?" Tyler mumbled and she glared at him.

"Don't mumble, you're not a child Tyler." Tyler rolled his eyes but sat up straighter. His mother was a strict woman, Tyler remembers when he was little, up until not long after his youngest sibling Jay had been born that she had been soft, she had sung them to sleep –somewhat badly- and she had sheltered them from their father. But then his father had told her that she couldn't nurse them forever, they'd been made weak, he needed his sons to be strong. His father hit him later that day because Tyler had asked his mom for a hug. She didn't hug him anymore, she stopped hugging all of his siblings not much after. She was cold and withdrawn now, a stranger who he sometimes shared a dinner table with, she'd never even defended Tyler when he'd wanted to marry Jenna, even though he saw the way her eyes lit up with hope when she found out.

Tyler let his fork clatter onto his plate, ignore the look of disgust his mother gave him for his 'poor manners'. He pushed his chair back scraping loudly just to annoy her, before he deliberately abandoned his plate in favour of leaving the dining room. He ignored the huff of anger his mother gave, or the sad look Maddy gave him.

Once outside his father's study he collected himself, knocking on the door with shaking hands. He flexed his knuckles that were bruised from where he'd punched the wall last night in a state of despair.

His father's commanding tone seeped through the door and caused Tyler's whole body to stiffen before he pushed the door open. He forced his body to stand up straight, a façade.

His brother Zack was sat on one of the ugly green couches, picking at a small split in the leather surface. He visibly relaxed as Tyler joined him on the chair.

"Perfect, my two sons, together." Their father smiled but it felt unsettling. Tyler bit his tongue from reminding his father that Jay was also his son, just much younger and still in high school.

Mr. Joseph leant back on the edge of his desk, eyes flicking between his two eldest children. "I have a meeting in California this week, I'm taking your mother." Tyler and Zack glanced at one another before looking back to their father with wide eyes.

"Sir?" Zack began, shrinking when his father looked directly at him, before nodding for him to continue. "I-If you're going to California then who is supervising the Dun's?" Tyler gulped as a sick grin made its way across his father's face.

"You two are." A feeling of dread slithered down Tyler's spine, his whole body heating up as he shook with anxiety.

"I'm putting you both in charge, time to prove to me that this is your birth right." He said firmly, before moving off his desk and wandering to the book shelf just behind it. He pulled something Tyler couldn't see from his seat and fiddled with it. "Your mother and I will be flying out in less than eight hours, while I'm packing you have your first test."

Tyler couldn't breathe as his father turned around to reveal the gun in his hands, the very one Tyler had held to Josh's face less than a week ago. He was going to be sick.

His father saw the way his sons looked at the gun in his hands, it was wrapped in a cloth to avoid fingerprints, but Tyler's own ones would be on it. His father noticed the way he furrowed his brow and gestured to the gun in his hands. "It's been cleaned, you'll need to get the eldest, John..." His father hesitated seeming to know it wasn't his name but not really caring.

"Joshua?" Tyler supplied with a thick swallow.

"Yes that one," His father seemed slightly irritated by the correction but he continued regardless moving to place the gun in front of the two boys on the low coffee table. "Get him to hold it, force it into his hands I have no preference for how you go about it, but his fingerprints should be the only ones left on it."