Chapter Text
Josh jogs along, ignoring the sound of his heavy breathing and loud footsteps in favor of focusing on the sound of Billie Joe Armstrong’s voice blasting through his headphones. Too loud, he thinks. Not loud enough.
He has never been to this park before, terrain unfamiliar, unsure of what would be around each bend in the path he followed. He checks his stopwatch. Twenty-two minutes. Not bad.
Coming to a clearing in the forest-lined path, he stops jogging. He notices an open area of pavement, directory placed in the middle, presumably for tourists making their way around. A smoking-permitted area off to the side. Josh glances at the people's coated by their own carcinogenic smoke with a sneer of disgust. Fucking idiots, he thinks. You’re already dead.
Directly across the clearing, across from where he is standing, from where he had entered the paved area, are two benches. Two benches next to each other, almost close enough to be touching, one of which being the seat to a man sitting alone, the other empty, looking like the perfect place for Josh to rest his aching limbs. He walks over, not looking up as he does so, busying himself with pulling the headphones out of his ears and pausing the music. He’s hungry, he notices, but too tired to care. He’ll stop by that little cafe over there in a little while.
Approaching the bench, he promptly sits directly in the middle of it and stretches his legs out in front of him. Post-jog stretching is critical. Static. Static, never dynamic stretches. Slow your heartbeat. He reaches down to touch his toes and holds there. The pull on his calf muscles is pressing, but welcome. Sitting back up, he twists his back to the left, grimacing at the unsavory Pop! that resounds. He turns to the right then, but stops when he notices he is facing the man on the bench next to him.
The man isn’t looking at Josh, but Josh is looking at the man. Not because Josh is rude, because he’s not, never has been. But because Josh is curious, confused.
He takes note of the man. Calloused, yet clean hands, rub together at a worrying rate. One of the hands, a hand Josh notices has rings around its base peaking out from the guy’s sweatshirt sleeve, reaches up, scratches aggressively at the man’s head. Josh’s brows furrow. Shit, the guy’s gonna make himself bleed. But he doesn’t. Josh notices himself staring, but doesn’t seem to care as he continues to watch as the man takes half a sub out of a white styrofoam container next to him. The man takes slow bites, truly savoring each one, seeming to be really think about it. Josh is confused. Why the fuck is a fucking pulled pork sandwich making this guy so pensive?
Josh continues to watch as the man finishes the half of the sub. He never puts it down, never takes a break from eating it. Josh watches as the man rubs his hands together to fling off crumbs, and closes the tab on the white styrofoam container, half of the sandwich still inside. The man leans forward then, elbows leaning on thighs, head hanging low between his shoulders.
Josh is so curious, and so concerned. He wishes he wasn’t.
“Hey, man. Are you okay?” Josh isn’t shy. He wishes he was.
The man’s head picks up, but doesn’t turn toward Josh. Josh watches, heart rate picking up as the man furrows his brows and draws in a sharp breath. He turns to face Josh, but doesn’t speak.
Josh gets his first look at the man’s face. It looks tired, like he had something he was dragging around all the time, and simply couldn’t find the place it was supposed to be dropped off. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, the guy’s eyes were bloodshot, and he was so, so pale. He still hasn’t spoken.
“You just, ah . . . Look like something’s bothering you.” Josh, again isn’t shy. He’s trying to learn to compensate.
More silence ensues, but the heated staredown between Josh and this stranger doesn’t stop. For the first time, the man opens his mouth.
“My brother killed himself today.” The guy’s face is thoughtful, confused almost. Certainly not sad or angry, and no tears. Certainly not anything you would expect from a man whose brother just committed suicide.
Oh shit, Josh thinks. Oh shit indeed, because Josh expected to hear “I got laid off from my job” or “my girlfriend broke up with me.” Things Josh had been through, things he could give advice for. So oh shit, Josh thinks, this guy’s got real problems. What the fuck am I supposed to say to that?
“I’m sorry," he settles on. The guy gives one last, long, curious look at Josh before he shakes his head, lowering it back down between his shoulders. He does The Thing again, where he scratches his head almost violently, as if there was something in there that didn't belong, something he wanted to scratch out.
When he picks his head back up again, he is facing forward, but Josh is still staring at him. He’s leaning back now, back pressed to the wooden bench he’s sitting on, hands falling between his legs, but not moving.
“I never understood why people say that. Why do they say sorry when someone dies?” He’s looking at Josh now.
“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.”
“How about ‘what was he like?’ or ‘do you miss him?’ or ‘why did he do it?’” The man, whom Josh has not yet learned the name of, he realizes, speaks with a sigh. Josh notices him twitching as he speaks. Not major bodily movements, just fingers grasping at nothing and head flicking sideways quickly. He doesn’t point it out as he speaks.
“I didn’t think it was my place.” False. He didn’t ask these questions, but it wasn’t because he didn’t think it was his place. Oh no, it doesn’t seem like this guy knows boundaries. It was simply because he didn’t think of it. But Josh figures that even if he had thought of it, he wouldn’t have asked anyway.
“Bullshit,” the guy calls him out. Josh’s face doesn’t change, doesn’t speak up to defend himself. The man is still staring Josh right in the face. “I’m Tyler.” Josh blinks, not expecting the man to tell him his name. Weird, though. That’s usually one of the first things you say to someone in a conversation. Josh shakes the thought away.
“Josh.” There’s no handshake, there’s no “nice to meet you.” There’s Tyler nodding his head slightly, turning back to stare out in front of him once again. This time, Josh copies. He only looks back when he notices Tyler stand up. He picks up the white styrofoam box where half of a pulled pork sandwich still sits, and walks over to the nearest garbage can and promptly throws away the whole box. Josh doesn’t react, doesn’t have time to react before Tyler is walking away. No “goodbye,” no wave, not even a last glance at Josh, Tyler leaves. He heads back down the same path Josh had entered from just a short while before.
Josh watches Tyler one last time as he ambles away, right hand in his front pocket, left hand scratching his head fervently.