Searching for Purpose (Twenty One Pilots)

6. The Treehouse

Of course, that night, Tyler hadn't slept one bit. He had straightened out his room more and put away his remaining belongings, making sure everything was in a place he could find it, and he's pretty sure the bathroom had never been as clean as it was now. But even after doing all of that, he couldn't sleep. The voices wouldn't stop.

You have no reason to exist.

You will amount to nothing.

You have no friends.

No one loves you, Tyler Joseph.

You're all alone.

These thoughts swam around in his head, keeping him alert and awake. They screamed at him and brought him to the edge of tears. They were relentless. Not even his music could drown out the whispers of self-hatred. He felt so dark and alone in a fully lit room that was a few feet away from another human being.

His ears were ringing and it was all too much. Too much noise, too much silence. Too much light and too much darkness. Too much, too much, too much.

He felt everything, and yet he still felt nothing. The ability to feel was more than overwhelming, but the over powering sense of numbness was suffocating. He didn't know if he was still too much alive or on the brink of death, and he didn't necessarily want to know.

And he couldn't escape it. It wouldn't let him go. No matter how hard he tried or what he did, a voice was calling to him in the back of his head. It was telling him, no, screaming at him, to find something and destroy himself with it. To sit back and watch it all fade away. It was telling him that no one would miss him, no one would care, and no one would even bat an eyelash. And it was tempting. It was so tempting that his fingers itched with anticipation and his mind buzzed at the thought of a release.

Tyler raced throughout his room, throwing open drawers and pulling off things from shelves. He found everything sharp and anything glass that could potentially be used to hurt himself. Then he stopped and stared at his hands. They were shaking uncontrollably, much like the rest of his body. He took a deep breath.

Tyler opened the foot locker he had in his room and threw everything he had gathered into it. He locked it and took the key, flushing it down the toilet for good measure.

He had never harmed himself. He had come close, but he'd never done it, and he wasn't about to start.

For the rest of the night he sat on his bed, hands tucked under his thighs, battling the urge to bite his fingers. It was a nervous habit he had picked up as a kid. It was hard to stop.

He jumped when there was a knock on his door.

"Tyler, I'm bored," Josh's voice sounded muffled though the door. "Come play videogames with me."

Tyler thought about getting up and opening the door, but apparently his body didn't get the message. All he could do was sit on the edge of his bed, like he had been doing all night long, and stare at the still closed door.

"Tyler?"

Something inside him snapped and Tyler suddenly found himself standing in front of his door with his hand on the knob. He wasn't even aware that he had moved. Slowly he turned the knob and opened the door.

"Dude, you look awful," Josh said as soon as he got a good look at Tyler. He had bags under his eyes and they were bloodshot, almost as if he had been up all night crying. Tyler didn't know if he had cried or not. It was a possibility though. "Did I wake you up?"

Tyler shook his head. The sudden movement made the room spin and it took a few seconds for his eyes to focus back on Josh's face.

"Did you even sleep?" Josh asked when he noticed that Tyler was still in the clothes he had been wearing yesterday.

Again Tyler shook his head. The room only spun a little bit the time, but it was still enough for Tyler to be momentarily caught off balance and sway side to side. Josh sighed and grabbed onto Tyler's arm to first steady him and then pull him into his room. He made Tyler sit down on his bed, which was still perfectly made. Josh looked at Tyler in a way that demanded an explanation, but all Tyler did was stare at him with a vacant look in his eyes.

Beyond concerned and borderline worried to death, Josh went through Tyler's closet and pulled out a new pair of clothes. He shoved them into Tyler's arms and ushered him towards his bathroom.

"Take a shower, okay? Don't come out until you feel more like yourself," Josh said.

Tyler nodded and closed the bathroom door. He stripped and turned on the shower in a daze, only becoming aware of his surroundings when the hot water had turned cold. He suddenly felt terrible for Josh seeing him like this. Had it happened at home, he would've just waited until his family was out of the way and walked through the forest at the end of his street and sat in the treehouse some kids had built a long time ago. He would've stayed there until he felt a little more human, taken a few pictures of the trees, and then gone home and make up something about how pretty this one particular tree was when his mom asked him where he had been.

But this wasn't home, well, now it was, but there was no treehouse. There was no mother to lie to. There was no hiding how he felt because someone had seen him when he was off in whatever world his mind escaped to.

Oh god, he thought. Someone had seen him while he was like that. And it wasn't just anyone, it was that really cool guy Josh Dun that played the drums and was becoming his friend. He probably thought that Tyler was a freak now.

When Tyler finally left his bathroom after coming to terms that he might be back to square one and have absolutely zero friends, he was surprised to find Josh standing by his shelves holding the tiny penguin figurines he had bought on his road trip down here.

"These are pretty cool," Josh said, holding one of the penguins up. "Where did you get them?"

"Some roadside truck stop. It was kind of an impulse buy," Tyler explained while he put his dirty clothes into his hamper. He was waiting for the moment when Josh would either laugh in his face and walkout or call him a freak and walkout. Tyler always jumped to the worst possible conclusions.

So when Josh set the penguin down and looked at him with concern and worry prominent in his dark brown eyes, Tyler was surprised that neither of those things happened.

"You okay?"

Tyler was silent for a second. He was taken aback because one, Josh wasn't walking out on him, and two, he was worried for Tyler. Like a friend would, Tyler thought. Like an actual friend.

"Yeah," Tyler smiled.

Josh returned the smile and then walked towards the door, already going on and on about what games he had and how he was totally going to kick Tyler's but at all of them. Tyler only laughed and followed Josh to his room because yeah, he was okay. Well, at least now.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey! So, first off, I hope you guys are enjoying the story. If it feels a little slow to you, I'm sorry, but it's going to be like that for the rest of the story since it's basically about Tyler's day to day life.

Secondly, updates for this are going to be slower than they were for No Matter What since I'm in school now and don't have a lot of free time to write chapters ahead of time. Plus, I'm also trying to find a relatable song for each chapter and it takes me a while to find one that fits the chapter the way I want it to.

Anyways, I hope you're enjoying this. Also, would you guys like relationships in this story? And if so, what kinds (as in your ships or OTPs or any pairing you think I could write into this)?