Home bound {adopted by twenty one pilots au} ✓

4.03

                

They say that when a child- or anyone for that matter- is diagnosed with depression you're not supposed to tell them. So when Bella was diagnosed with cancer, her parents made no effort to tell her. Or actually they made every effort not to let her in on it.

It was obviously not exactly recommended by her doctors, but Tyler Joseph and Joshua Dun knew this girl better than anyone else and recommend or not, they knew it was the right thing to do. They knew about her lethal Oreo problem, her pizza addiction and her love for a boy named Brendon Urie. They also knew that if she found out, she'd be more self destructive than she already was at the time.

"Bella," Tyler called as he put his car keys into his pocket. "Your shoes better be on and tied. We can't be late for this appointment."

"Yea, dad ok." She rolled her and finished tying her right all-white low top Nike sneaker. You see, doctor's appointments weren't really this girl's thing. Needles were no fun and who likes a stranger's cold (but sanitized) hand traveling god know's where? Not Bella.

"I'm really sorry kiddo. This just took a lot of time to book and it's really important to me and your father." He smiled down at her as she stood up from the floor.

"I just don't see why I have to go again. We've been to 3 different doctors this week and you're not even telling me why." Bella pouted. She shoved her hands into her pockets awkwardly and slumped over.

"Sweetie, it's because you're growing up now. That's all." Tyler lead her out the door, locking it behind them. He pressed the button on his key and unlocked the car.

Bella hoped towards it while skillfully keeping her eyes planted in her phone screen.

"Well I appreciate the effort that lie took but Brendon says he hasn't been to the doctor in a year." She faked a smile and slammed the door to the passenger side shut with a mumble somewhere along the lines of stupid, stupid, stupid.

Tyler felt his heart sink way down. He turned away from the window and hid his face in his hands- not that Bella was paying any attention to him at the moment anyway. No, she was too upset with him to even look in his direction.

But he was just as upset with himself. He cried into the palm of his hand, counting to 10 as he did so.

The words his mother had told him in the 10th grade (when his life was starting to get rough) were screaming over and over in his head. They were the same words he told his daughter. "If you have to cry, you do it. You run into the bathroom stall and count to 10. You get 10 seconds of raw, deep emotion. But then you fake a smile and stand up straight because nobody gets to know you're broken except you and me. Because you're stronger than that Tyler. You really are, babe."

He wiped his face and climbed into the car.

Bella looked over when she heard him sniffling beside her. "Hey," She began, her breath and hands shaking. "I-I didn't mean to- I just don't like being lied to, dad." She squished her eyebrows together rather sympathetically. "I love you, Daddy."

He smiled and wrapped his arms around her neck, pulling his weight over the center console and resting his face in the crook of her neck for just a second.

"I know. I love you too, sprout. We just wanna make sure you're healthy, ok." He pulled himself back and pushed the key into the ignition, starting the car up with a rumble. "We'd never lie to you." He smiled greatly, doing his best to hide the lies behind his smile. He couldn't help it, his lies were just like sinkholes, pulling him down and suffocating him, but he had to protect his daughter.

"Alright, dad," Bella answered with a shake of her head and a raised an eyebrow, a big smile nonetheless. Because she was in love with her life. She loved Tyler with her whole entire being.

However, if she had known that they weren't on their way to a regular appointment but a hospital to get tested to see if she did, in fact, have the dreaded illness, she probably wouldn't have loved him as much. In the moment at least.

"Baby, tell me wh-" Just then they heard the sound of Mark, Tyler's best friend screaming like an absolute idiot at the top of his lungs.

It was Tyler's ringtone for every single fucking contact he had logged in his phone. Beautiful, huh? Josh sure didn't think so.

"Ty-TYLER! Answer the phone already!" Josh yelled, only slightly pissed off by the inconvenient timing. I'm literally not even being sarcastic here when I say that he wasn't truly upset. He was worried about what the phone call was going to be about. He was. So was Tyler.

"Well, I'm kinda busy at the moment." All three weary-eyed people heard Tyler say into the phone, his voice cracking a little towards the end.

"Okay, but like..." His voice trailed off leaving everyone around him wondering what was going to happen. "Ugh. Hang on."

Tyler pulled phone down from his ear and held his hand over the sound receiver, hoping that the man on the other end couldn't hear.

"He wants us at the studio." He was telling Josh but looking straight into his baby girl's eyes.

I know you're on the other side of your whatever, reading this with a huge wave of deja vu overtaking your senses. Haven't I read this is before? is all you can think right about now, and the answer is simply yes. Yes, you have.

Because you see, Tyler and Josh left their baby (on the morning after the big party Brendon brought her to), to rush to the half-hour-away hospital and have the terrible, terrifying news delivered to them; that their daughter did, in fact, have cancer.

You didn't really believe that they would leave her just to go to band practice, did you?

_____
a/n:
hi loves. sorry for the late
update. my flight home got
delayed so i had to wait to
edit this.