Glowing Eyes || Adopted by Josh Dun

happy tears

(Please read at least the first paragraph of this chapter's author's note. Thank you!)

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A week or so after flying back to Ohio, Josh and I decided to visit the Joseph's for a day. Though I didn't want to ever leave the Dun household, it seemed like a fair trade-off. I sat in the passenger seat of Josh's car, staring out of the window at the frost-covered town.

My arm rested at the bottom of the window, my chin on top of it. I could feel the cold radiating off of the glass. I liked it. It was snowing softly outside, and the sky was covered with lazy snow clouds that stretched as far as the eye could see. Winters weren't like this in Los Angeles. They were a harsh cold, and the snow was always too dirty to do anything with except shovel out of the way. Los Angeles will always be my home, but it can't beat Ohio's winters. I still visit Columbus every year. I never get bored of it.

The car slowed to a stop, pulling into the drive-way of a modest home. I smiled - it was exactly what I thought it would look like.

"Alright, you all set?" Josh looked over at me and smiled. I noticed that as time went on, he looked over me in more of a fatherly way. Which was weird, because I didn't even know what that felt like, to be cared for that way. Let alone to be able to distinguish it from a glance.

I nodded, smiling uncontrollably, "Yep."

With that we stepped out of the car, momentarily exposing ourselves to the elements. I hugged my jacket to me -the new one that we bought a month or two ago on tour. I hadn't ever had an actual winter jacket, just hoodies handed down from my brother. I never thought that a winter jacket would be much better until I finally had one.

Josh rang the doorbell, and almost immediately I could hear talking on the other side. Finally there was a muffled, "I've got it, I've got it."

A tall, brown-haired man who looked about Tyler's age, maybe a little older, answered the door. He smiled, "Hey, Josh!"

"Hey, Jay," Josh smiled, hugging him momentarily, before he rushed us inside out of the cold.

Josh and I took off our coats, hanging them by the door on a hook that was overflowing, and headed into the living room where the rest of the Joseph's were (other than who I assumed to be Tyler's Mom and Jenna, who were both in the kitchen area only a couple yards away).

"Hey!" Tyler smiled happily, walking over to us. "Mom," he called out, "I have someone I want you to meet!"

Mrs. Joseph finished her thought with Jenna, making the blonde laugh, and wiped her hands off on her apron before walking over.

"What is it?" she asked, before her chocolate brown eyes fell on me. She smiled sweetly, motherly, "Oh, you must be Lynn."

I nervously scratched my upper left arm with my right hand, moving forwards and backwards from my toes to my heels ever so slightly. (I wasn't as bad as I was with meeting my grandmother, but it was still pretty pitiful). I smiled, "Yes ma'am. It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Joseph."

I held out my hand for her to shake, which she gladly took in both of hers. "I've heard so much about you," she beamed. "Mostly from that one-" she pointed at Josh, who laughed in response "-but it's all great. You're a wonderful young lady."

"Thank you," I smiled uncomfortably, unused to the praise from adults.

I met the rest of the Josephs, who were equally as welcoming. Josh and Tyler's families were very similar, both warm in their own ways.

Most of my time spent there consisted of sitting on the couch, listening to the siblings and parents talk over the television. It was playing the very end of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It made me smile, even though there was only fifteen minutes remaining. Rudolph was the only Christmas movie I had ever seen (I didn't tell Josh this because he didn't ask, probably thinking that not watching classic Christmas movies was physically impossible, and because I didn't want him to suddenly break his back trying to find every popular Christmas movie imaginable and getting me to watch them all in a night).