Chapter Text
Tyler threw a glance over his shoulder as he walked briskly down the cracked tan sidewalk, pulling his hoodie around him as the crisp October wind blew.
It was Halloween, wasn’t it?
He was only outside because his mother had told him he absolutely could not spend any more time locked up in his room, and it was either go outside and get some fresh air or sit in the living room with his family.
He figured it had been too long since he’d taken a walk.
It was because he didn’t like walking alone.
He had to do everything alone now.
His chest tightened.
He ignored it, shifting the tight fabric under his shirt, pulling his shirt to better hide what was under it, before continuing on his walk. He specifically forced himself to notice how some of the trees were exactly four different shades of orange, just so his mind wouldn’t wander.
It was impossible to keep his mind from wandering.
He nearly walked in to the poor, dangling inchworm, hanging just above eye level. A vivid green that stood stark against grey and orange and red. He stopped, circling it, grinning.
“Hey, Josh-”
He stopped dead.
Josh wasn’t there.
This made his chest tighten again, ten times more than that tight fabric ever possibly could. A feeling of drowning in a confusing purple, of falling off the crack in the sidewalk into an abyss. Lost. But the Josh he wanted there wasn’t Josh.
And that was what felt worst. Even when Josh had been there, it wasn’t Josh. His Josh wasn’t Josh.
He didn’t know who Josh was.
The person he knew never existed.
A void standing where someone was supposed to be.
A chip in his world, in his sanity.
He kept walking.
Tyler didn’t go to school anymore.
It wasn’t because he was stupid. School was too hard. Not the work, that was all easy. The teachers and students and moving and yelling and interaction and buzzing buzzing buzzing. He’d dropped out.
Josh used to come over after school.
Tyler turned his head away from imagined shapes on the ceiling, his eyes focusing on the red numbers of the alarm clock. It was after school. Josh wasn’t coming.
Wouldn’t be his Josh, anyway.
He stood up, stretching his compacted rib cage, yawning and looking around. His room was getting messy. His mom would snap at him if his room got messy. He didn’t do anything else, was in his room all the time. At the very least he could keep it clean, right?
It wasn’t even twenty minutes before Tyler was curled against the wall under the window. His eyes were hot but somehow he wasn’t crying. His chest was breaking, though. He’d found a pair of Josh’s drumsticks.
Back when color would fill the room and Tyler would laugh for the first time in weeks and his chest wouldn’t feel tight and he’d feel alive and okay.
He felt alive and okay with Josh, even though he also always felt his anxiety skyrocket and an urge to apologize after half of his sentences.
“I’m sorry…” he whispered as he stared at the drumsticks. Half of him wanted to break them in two, throw them out the window. The other half begged to keep them as his only memory of a black void of a person.
The other half won
.
Tyler stared blankly at the roaring fire, tossing in another stick, the ones he and Josh had collected only weeks before.
Bones.
He felt like his bones were in the sticks. Maybe his bones were sticks, and what he was tossing into the fire was actually his bones.
All of the sticks were rotten and dead, hollowed out.
Tyler hadn’t felt anything but the confusing purple for days. He wanted to tell someone about that color. But the only person who would have listened was it’s very cause.
Tyler sighed as he threw another stick in the fire, before telling Zach he’d see him later and walking out the gate. He wasn’t sure if he was being questioned or not. He couldn’t hear anything.
He was questioning himself.
New lines of scarring on compressed ribs - Josh would be upset over this. Or would he? Which Josh?
Tyler didn’t like not knowing how much of the actual Josh could fill the void, how much he actually knew. He didn’t like the feeling of the months he’d spent with that void being suspended in a nonexistent time.
He didn’t like not knowing if he had hollow bones or dead sticks.
What was the difference?
His feet had lead him to Josh’s house. He was holding sticks in his hand - drumsticks. He stared, stood at Josh’s house for a moment, silent. What would he do when he saw the Josh he didn’t know?
Tyler couldn’t face that.
He couldn’t even say hello.
The sidewalk opened up behind him to swallow him whole as he walked up to Josh’s front porch, the C sharp wind suddenly dead and the purple sound of a void person overwhelming.
Tyler burst into dirty blue-green tears.
He thought he heard the door open, thought he heard a voice like blueberries, maybe, but his hollow bones were carrying him away from the house, leaving all evidence of the void-boy he still loved.
Love felt void.
His chest fell open, fell empty.
He wished there was no evidence of himself.
Wished this suddenly different Josh would meld with the void, would wrap him up in his arms again and make him feel something that wasn’t empty and faked and the smell of overwhelming fake flowers.
He wished his bones weren’t hollow, weren’t in the fire, wished the void hadn’t taken the love in his soul.
He wished the cracks in the sidewalk could consume him as he forgot and walked straight into the inchworm instead of into the void, into the fire.
Wished he knew what existed.
Wished he was the void instead.
No evidence he existed.
There was void in his chest and his bones and his soul and the only one who could fill it was the void-boy himself.
Tyler couldn’t get him back.