band one-shots

do you trust me? || joshler

happy pride month go kiss a girl/boy/whatever the fuck ur into and overthrow the government :)

ship: josh dun x tyler joseph

~

The forest is quiet.

Some might say it's too quiet, that the absence of chaos and noise hurts, that it would drive them crazy. But for a boy named Tyler Joseph it's absolutely perfect.

He comes here sometimes at night. It's so easy to slip out his bedroom window, restless on a journey for something to quiet his mind. He's tried so many techniques for it. Everything from meditation to simply putting in earplugs. None of them worked.

And truthfully, the forest doesn't really work either. But it's calm and the trees are nice. So Tyler will take that any day over the screaming colors of his bedroom sheets and the dull white walls that make him feel like he's trapped.

He's been coming out for a couple weeks now, when he notices the boy with a shock of dyed red hair leaning against a tree. His face is tilted down, allowing a baseball cap on his head to cover his features. Clothed in jeans and a sweatshirt with unintelligible writing on it, he intrigues Tyler.

But Tyler was never exactly the kind of person to walk straight up to someone and say politely, "Hi I'm Tyler, would you like to be friends?" The words hover on his tongue, but they taste strange and he swallows them down and walks back to his house.

Sometimes the white walls can be a solace.

~

The next time he sees the boy, it's completely unexpected.

He has a ukelele tucked under his arm, planning to maybe just serenade himself. As much as he craves quiet, he does love music quite a bit.

He sits down at the base of one of the taller trees and crosses his legs together. It helps him to feel like maybe he won't fall apart. He plucks a string.

"Hey, hey, wouldn't it be great, great
if we could just lay down,
and wake up in Slowtown?"

The grass rustles but he doesn't look up.

"Today, day, I want to go away, way,
'cause things are too fast now,
I want to be in Slowtown"

The rustling becomes louder and he looks up. It's the boy. Today he isn't wearing a baseball cap, so Tyler can see the full curls of his bright hair. His hands are stuffed in his pockets and he nods to Tyler.

"Neat song you got there."

"Th-thanks," Tyler stutters out, his fingers pulling away from the strings limply.

"Is this more of it?" The boy's eyes are calm and reassuring. "I wanna hear it."

Tyler inhales sharply. There is more, but he's kind of self-conscious about sharing his music. And the next lyric is something hard to explain. He looks at the boy's brown eyes though, and feels like he can't say no. He strums the ukelele again.

"I put my socks on my feet,
just so that my soul won't fall through my toes"

The boy's eyes flicker with intrigue.

"And I walk through my door,
just so I don't fall through the floor"

Tyler sighs and puts the ukelele down. He doesn't dare to look up until the boy coughs.

"I'm Josh, by the way."

"Tyler."

"You seem to come here a lot." Josh comments offhandedly. "I've noticed you."

Ignoring the tiny flicker in his heart, Tyler responds. "Yeah. I like the quiet."

"You don't like noise?" Josh loves playing drums. He lives in the beat, the rhythm of his sticks pounding. So not liking noise is a strange concept to him.

Tyler shakes his head. "No. It's just so loud, and it's already loud inside my head and it's this cacophony of messy screaming that leaks everywhere and hurts."

"Well you're listening to my voice, so that's noise." Josh points this out.

"Y-yeah." Tyler stares at the grass next to his feet. "Your voice isn't loud though. I like it. It's calming."

A smile flits across Josh's face. "That's nice to hear."

"Mmhmm," Tyler mumbles.

"What else don't you like?"

"Balloons. Talking. Being touched by people I don't trust."

Josh sits down next to him, careful not to sit on the ukelele. "Do you trust me?"

Tyler bites his lip. "I've known you for five minutes."

"But, do you?" Josh raises an eyebrow.

Tyler reaches over to touch the boy's hand. He takes it into his own, half-expecting his heartbeat to quicken in fear and his skin to crawl. It's what usually happens when he touches people. Usually he doesn't trust them at all.

But he only feels a tinge of anxiety, and he curls his fingers around Josh's.

"Yes. I trust you."

~

i wrote this in a span of 2 hours while bopping to regional at best 🤠✌