Payt on Oaks ➳ Joey Birlem X Payton Moormeier

3

'Joey?! Joey!'

Payton hammered his fists against the closed door. It has been awfully long since Joey had abandoned him in the cellar and the longer the door stayed closed the more he began to panic.

Maybe he'd been wrong not to judge the situation right away. Maybe he should've made a run for it as soon as Joey had turned up and when the door was open.

His heart thrummed against his chest. Horrible scenarios came in and out of his head, where he imagined Joey returning with a group of buff guys ready to do harm on him. But if it wasn't something painful like this maybe Joey had decided to let him wither away for a long duration of time. Neither of which seemed better than the other.

He definitely needed to get out of here as soon as possible.

'Joey!' Payton yelled, his voice nearly edging onto a  screech.

After many attempts of calling Joey back Payton's throat grew sore, and with a last defeated bang against the door, he let his fist slide down the door, his head slumping forward.

His bronze curls were already showing their first signs of neglect, lying flat at the back and frizzy at the top. Usually when he got out of bed he would grab a brush and tame his bedhead back into something you'd want to look at but it wasn't exactly like he could repurpose the table for the same purpose. Not that he even thought of that.

When Payton lifted his gaze again the door seemed to fall towards him. And then pain. First exploding from between his eyes and spreading over onto his nose where it left a tingling sensation and then it hit his butt.

Payton panicked as both his nose and butt went numb and then jumped as he heard a voice by the door. Within seconds Joey was hovering over him, eyeing him with worry.

'Oh my, did I hurt you?!' He gasped, putting his hands on Payton's shoulders and inching closer with his face to get in a better view.

Payton groaned, brought a hand to the bridge of his nose but since he didn't feel any blood running down he exhaled. 'No, I'm fine.'

His eyes found up to Joey's, and the tingling spread over to his belly. He could've sat there for hours on end, feeling cared after, but Joey must've had different plans because he quickly steered the topic to another direction.

He asked, 'What where you doing in front of that door, anyway?'

'You left longer than expected and...I kinda panicked. What if you would've forgotten I was in here?'

Joey gave him a long look. 'The door wasn't locked, you know.'

'Oh it wasn't?' Payton felt the great impulse to hit his own forehead with his palm to hear a smack loud enough to forget about his own stupidity. Thankfully Joey's voice did something like that.

'So, you were probably wondered where I went. Well, I got my phone. I thought we could shoot some tiktoks.'

'Tik...toks?'

Joey looked up, meeting Payton's eyes with yet another surprised expression. 'You don't know what that is?'

Payton shook his head.

'Alright, no worries. You'll just need some practise before we can upload them, but it's really fun. Any song suggestions?'

'How about Taylor Swift,'

'Alright so, let's do The weekend.' Joey went on as though he didn't hear Payton's request. This left Payton puzzled for exactly seven seconds before he allowed Joey to pull him on his feet and situate him in front of him.