Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You and me, we’d never last if we was together, would we?”

It’s Josh’s twenty-seventh birthday, and he can’t quite remember how this conversation started.

Ethan’s leaning against the bar as he says it, feet crossed at the ankles, a dangerous sway to his body, like he’s seconds away from toppling over. There’s a beer in his hand, fingers clutched tightly around it, knuckled and strong.

Josh doesn’t know why that’s the image that he remembers the most from that evening: not all the fun he had with his mates, not all the drinking and the partying, not the jokes and laughter. No. What he remembers most is the way Ethan had looked at him as he added with a smirk, something bright glinting in the pretty hues of his irises, “I’m too fast, and you’re too slow.”

—

It’s a few months after Josh’s twenty-seventh birthday, and he’s starting to feel like something is missing from his life.

Ethan was right. Josh is a slow man who steps cautiously through life. His fear of being left behind is only beaten by his fear of getting his feet caught in mud he can’t escape from; he sidesteps the obvious path, dangerous and treacherous, peering down at the ground as he skirts along the edges. Wait for me, he pleads, over and over again.

Wait for me.

Wait for me.

Wait for me!

Sometimes, they do.

Mostly, they do not.

He is twenty-seven and wondering to himself: should I be married? Should I have a family? A wife? A kid? A house on the outskirts of London?

It’s easy to lose himself in his work, planning, looking over edits, travelling to so many different places. With each country they visit, Josh thinks that he leaves a little piece of himself behind in every one. His heart gets left in sunny places, Spain, Greece, Malta, Italy. The colder places take his fingers and nose and ears, just all the places that his countless jackets or hats or gloves cannot protect him from. He loves those places, all the same, for all the memories they have granted him.

But, after every trip, when he gets back to England and stands in front of the door to his empty, lifeless house, he searches for any semblance of himself, any semblance of that skinny kid who grew up too fast, more skin than bone and aspirations too large to fit behind his ribcage.

He finds nothing.

—

Josh is twenty-seven, nearly twenty-eight, when he sleeps with Ethan for the first time.

It was a messy, uncoordinated rush of limbs, teeth clacking against teeth, fingers digging into waists and hips, the taste of beer and rum.

It all started because Simon had leaned over to him from across the bar, eyes soft and warm along the edges, pointing to the other side of the room where Taila talked to some of her friends.

I’m gonna marry her, one day, Simon had told him.

(He hadn’t looked at Josh once. It was just Talia. All he was looking at was Talia.)

Josh had thought, yet again, about marriage, about a wife, a kid, a house on the outskirts of London. He had thought about his empty bed, his cold house, his desire to look at someone, and be looked at, in the same way that Simon was looking at Talia.

Yearning had flooded his lungs, encompassing him in an ache that no amount of alcohol could rid him of.

He had existed quietly for a few more hours, hunched over the bar, nursing drink after drink and trying not to drown in his self-pity. Catching Ethan’s eye was an accident, a brief glance around the room solidified into something more concrete.

Ethan had looked at him. Not in any particular way, not intensely or hotly or how Simon had looked at Talia.

He had simply just looked.

Josh had been so miserable with himself that it felt like enough, and he managed to convince himself that he was wanted. He never remembered being so easy, before.

He felt cruel and monstrous, like he couldn’t rein himself in, as he stood up from the barstool and stumbled, ungainly, unseemly, to where Ethan was leaning against a wall, one hand wrapped around a beer, and the other stuffed into his pocket.

“You wanna fuck me?”

The words felt sticky and leaden, as they left him, thick like molasses. His tongue was too big for his mouth, hazy and disjointed, sluggish to catch up. It was… slow. Everything about him is just fucking slow.

Ethan’s lashes had fluttered as he looked Josh up and down, and when he smirked, his canines poked out from underneath his lips.

“You think you could keep up?”

Josh had laughed, even though he hadn’t meant to. It was a bitter laugh. Self-deprecating. Ethan hadn’t noticed.

I’m too fast, and you’re too slow.

Typical, isn’t it?

But, it’s whatever.

They soon got their fill of each other.

Ethan let him stay the night, hooked an arm over Josh’s waist as they pressed against each other, chest to back. Josh had closed his eyes and tried to picture a wife lying with him. It didn’t work. Not with the memory of how Ethan had felt as he pushed inside, not with the memory of large, strong hands gripping his hips, not with the memory of Ethan staring down at him, the curls of his hair, dark and damp with sweat, clinging to his forehead as he grinned, “fucking hell, Zerkaa. You were made for this.”

Josh had left before Ethan woke up.

They didn’t talk about it.

—

Josh is still twenty-seven. He is three days away from turning twenty-eight when Ethan gives him an early birthday present.

He sinks to his knees in the studio toilets. The studio is privately hired, so the toilets are all clean, almost overly so, enriched with a deep chemical smell, biting at the back of his throat. It still feels a bit fucking grim.

“Maybe, now you'll stop looking so depressed all the time,” Ethan jokes after he's swallowed everything down, as if trying to convince them both that he had swallowed Josh’s misery with it.

Josh frowns as he washes his hands (they weren't dirty, but he felt stupid just standing there as Ethan cleaned himself up), staring into the mirror.

His pupils are blown out wide from the high of his orgasm, legs still trembling, but as he analyses himself intensely he is shaken to find a hollow man staring back at him.

“I'm not depressed,” he says, far too quickly for it to be genuine. 

He catches Ethan’s eye in the reflection of the mirror, leaning against the door of one of the stalls, nonchalantly, hands buried in his pockets, lips swollen.

“Sure, mate,” Ethan replies, voice strangely flat, rough with use, “if that's what you wanna believe.”

They leave.

They still don't talk about it.

—

Josh is twenty-eight when he realises that he might be depressed. Though, he’d never say it out loud.

He finally figures it out, one evening, when he walks into his bedroom after a long day, and finds himself rooted to the spot, unable to move, at the foot of his bed.

The bed is empty, as it always is, and he’s overcome by such a horrible, overwhelming wave of longing that, for a brief, split-second, he is scared that he’s dying. His chest hurts, and his eyes sting.

He doesn’t want to be alone, anymore.

Josh leaves his house, and goes to Ethan’s.

It’s past midnight by the time he gets there, and a part of him expects to be turned away.

He isn’t.

“If you’re not depressed, Josh, how come the only time you don’t look miserable is when I’ve got my dick inside you?” Ethan asks him, over an hour later, after they’ve fucked.

Josh is lying on his back, facing Ethan’s ceiling with his fingers interlocked behind his head. The only thing he said in the past ten minutes was a quiet no thanks, mate when Ethan offered him a beer.

The air is warm and humid, reeking of sex and sweat, something almost sleazy about it.

He turns his head, a little, to the side, and sees Ethan’s thighs encased in his boxers, how they wrap tight around the muscle. A low, hot feeling coils in the pit of him, and even though his body aches with their activities, a physical ache seems far kinder than the emotional, devastating ache he had been burdened with. 

Josh rolls onto his stomach, looks at Ethan with sweat still clinging to him, back pressed against the headboard, the bottle of beer pressed to his lips, mid-swig, pupils blown out so wide that the pretty hues of his irises are nothing more than slim rings of colour.

“Maybe you’re just good at fucking it out of me,” he grins in lieu of responding properly. He has no desire to talk openly about his feelings, much less when he doesn’t even understand them, himself. Sex is easier. Sex, at least, can give him the means to pretend that he is wanted, that there is something desirable about him.

Something in Ethan’s eyes darken, arousal starting to blossom, once more. He swallows his mouthful of beer, and Josh doesn’t bother to hide how intensely he’s staring at the bob of his adam’s apple, at the wetness of his lips.

“My legs are tired,” Ethan says, voice low and nonchalant, as if their conversation is mundane. He places his half-empty beer on his bedside table, “if you want it, you’re gonna have to ride me.”

Josh is embarrassed by how quickly he scrambles to his knees.

When he sinks down, Ethan’s large, strong hands fly to his waist, the pads of his fingertips digging in. A brief thought of bruises and marks making their home on his skin reddens his cheeks, and his face feels so hot with whatever latently devastating thing is still festering inside of him that he can barely look Ethan in the eye.

He settles down fully, chest feeling tight, as if the sheer thickness of him has punched all the air from his lungs; his head tilts back, mouth falling open as he readjusts to the fullness.

“See?” Ethan smirks, and when Josh snaps his attention back over, he’s met with Ethan looking at him with half-lidded eyes and fluttery lashes. There’s something cocky about his tone of voice, as if this was the only natural place for them to belong, but there’s something off about it, too, like it’s not fully there, “now you don’t look like you’re ten seconds away from jumping off a cliff.”

Josh frowns, his stomach starting to coil with a feeling he can’t put a name to, “fuck off.”

Looking down at the slight gap between their chests feels safer, but he can’t shake the notion that this position feels almost frighteningly intimate. If he was braver, he could stare into Ethan’s eyes, and they could breathe each other’s air as they fucked.

Josh is many things, but brave is not one of them.

Ethan must be feeling particularly vulnerable, too, because he cranes his head forward, tilted, slightly, trying to force his way into Josh’s peripheral vision, granting him no escape. The hands on his waist squeeze gently, as if trying to reassure them, both.

“I’m worried about you, Josh,” Ethan tells him, voice sickeningly soft. All the humour previously there is gone. It’s bordering on frighteningly sober, now, “you know that, right?”

Josh clenches his jaw as something bright-hot and scalding burns its way through his tightening veins. He has never met concern with anger before, it’s just not what he does, and yet his hands are suddenly moving of their own accord, cold and callous. When he blinks, he sees one hand fisted in Ethan’s hair, yanking backwards, the other gripping his chin, almost cruelly.

It surprises him. But not enough to let go. Not enough to stop himself from saying:

“I’m not having a fucking therapy session whilst you’ve got your dick in me, alright?”

Ethan scowls, a hash expression that makes his stomach hurt. Anything warm or gentle in his gaze has vanished, instantly, as he looks down at Josh past his nose. His nostrils are flaring with sudden rage, blue eyes piercing with this sharpness that he doesn’t know what to do with.

“Fuckin’ fine, then,” Ethan spits, digging his fingers into Josh’s waist as harshly as he can, like some form of punishment for the grip Josh has on his chin and in his hair, “get me off and then get the fuck out. I don’t have time for this.”

His words sting with this unexpected intensity, and he lets go of his grip, out of shock. Josh’s chest feels tight, breath hitching and stuttering with every inhale. He swallows thickly around the lump in his throat, and places his hands on Ethan’s shoulders, staring at the protrusion of his collarbone, how his body shifts with the deep, grounding exhale he lets out, as if forcing himself to calm.

They are both full of regret.

“Josh, mate, I-”

Josh moves, pushing upwards and sinking back down in a movement that cuts off the rest of his sentence. Whatever it was, he doesn’t want to hear it. Not now. There’s a low curse in his ears, instead, thick and rumbling, and he forces himself to carry on, forces himself to breathe through the pain behind his ribcage.

He doesn’t know how long he continues for. It could be hours, or minutes, or seconds, but Ethan’s voice eventually starts ringing in his ears, chanting Josh’s name over and over and over again.

Josh doesn’t realise how serious it is until Ethan’s fingers are digging in more harshly than they had all evening, and his motion pushing downwards is halted, almost impressively. He can feel the strain of exertion in Ethan’s arms as he forces Josh to still, tremors wracking down his biceps, through his forearms, his palms, his fingers.

“Stop, Josh,” is the only thing he hears.

He blinks himself back into awareness, and finds that his vision is blurred and that he can’t breathe right.

There’s a tightness to Ethan’s expression, full of worry and concern, that makes Josh feel sick. His jaw starts to quiver.

“You’re shaking.”

“Fuck,” he gasps out, wetly, a lump in his throat that he just can’t swallow past, the pressure of it causing his throat to ache. Holding everything back hurts. 

In general, everything hurts. 

His vision is constantly shimmering, the tears in his eyes transforming everything into faint swirls of colour. If he blinks rapidly enough, he can see the juncture where Ethan’s neck and shoulder meet, strained with tension. Josh wants to bury his face there, in the crook of Ethan’s neck, where he can hide away from everything that’s wrong with him.

His head starts to dip with the motion, leaning downwards, but, for some reason, he can’t bring himself to complete it fully. Maybe he doesn’t think he deserves the comfort.

“S- sorry,” he rasps out, voice wobbly and stuttery. It’s all he can bring himself to say, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t want this,” Ethan tells him, and his voice sounds just as wrecked.

It’s a statement that leaves him reeling.

—

Josh is twenty-eight, and it’s seven hours after, though it feels like years.

Ethan looks just as miserable as he feels, talking to Harry and JJ, when Josh walks into the studio, twenty minutes late.

He gets a yellow card, but the others seem half-hearted, at best, as they give it to him, like they can sense that something is wrong. When Tobi asks, Josh shrugs him off. When Vik asks, he changes the subject. When Simon asks, he ignores him completely. 

When Ethan asks, Josh excuses himself, as politely as he can, and hurries to the toilet.

He feels all crooked and bent out of shape, as if, when he was a child, he had grown in all the wrong places, heart too large, brain too small, his skin too tight to keep him inside.

I’m so fucking sorry, Josh, Ethan had said after twenty-five minutes of calming Josh down. He had looked almost wild with pain, hands trembling as they smoothed through Josh’s hair, and down his arms, I shouldn’t have forced you.

You didn’t force me, Behz, Josh remembers how vehemently he had replied, bile and salt and despair on his tongue, you stopped me.

Josh doesn’t throw up.

He gags once, or twice, or three times, but nothing more than that. It’s not enough, but it’s something. Josh thinks that he’ll take what he can get.

He’s hunched over the sink, the rim digging into his stomach, splashing water on his face and hoping that the shock of the cold would snap him back into himself, when he hears a voice trying to laugh with the words, “I did the same thing when I got here.”

Josh jolts, shutting off the tap quickly and wiping his face with the back of his sleeve. He forces himself to stare into the mirror, but side-eyes Ethan, briefly, scanning him up and down.

“Doesn’t look like it worked.”

Ethan lets out a huff of a breath. Maybe it was supposed to be another laugh, Josh doesn’t really know, “for you, or for me?”

A self-deprecating smile worms its way out of him, even despite himself, “both, probably.”

Ethan lets out a low hum, but doesn’t say anything else. There’s only so long that Josh can pretend to want to stare at himself before he grows frustrated with his appearance. He bites the bullet, and turns to face him, “you need something?”

There’s nothing unkind about his tone, but it’s not completely pleasant, either. Ethan doesn’t frown, or bristle, or scowl like Josh thought he would, and it’s something he feels almost impossibly grateful for.

He looks nervous, instead, hackles raised, slightly, nails digging into his forearms which are crossed over his chest. It makes him appear impossibly small, and his presence, which had always been bigger than anything physical about him, has shrunken to match.

Ethan spares him a brief glance, eyes darting up and down before focusing on a random tile of the floor. He unwinds himself slowly, as if worried that anything faster will shatter the delicate tension they’re suffocating in, and reaches into his pocket.

Josh isn’t expecting to see a small piece of paper, folded with the edges crumpled.

He holds it out, but the gap between them is too large for Josh to reach, so he takes a step forward, and then another, and then another, and then another. Each one feels more daunting than the last, like he’s somehow marching to his death.

Their fingers graze as Josh takes it from him; they both pretend that the touch doesn’t burn.

When he unfolds it, he can’t help the way his face scrunches up in confusion, “phone numbers?”

Ethan swallows thickly, still unable to look him in the eye. He seems gaunt, haggard, like he’s barely a person. Josh knows that it’s his fault, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“It’s some therapists JJ got recommended.”

All the air in his lungs leaves him swiftly, like a punch to the stomach, the room shifting, a spatial warp, of some kind. His knees feel weak.

Ethan continues, the words erupting out of him as if suddenly unable to stop, “I asked him about it a few months ago, and he got his therapist to write down the numbers of a few she thought might help. But, uh, I never… never worked up the courage to book an appointment,” his lips tilt upwards, a ghost of a smile that wants to be reassuring, but can’t do so, completely, “maybe you’ll have better luck.”

Josh swallows hard, and nods his head. His expression morphs into a mirror of Ethan’s, two men trying to comfort the other, but steadily realising they don’t have the strength to do so.

Should they still try? Even though it’s pointless?

Would giving up make it seem too real?

Is it stupid to fight when they know they can’t win?

“Thanks, Behz.”

—

Josh is twenty-eight when he starts to realise it’s more serious than he thought.

He rereads the numbers until they’re memorised, types the first one into his phone, and stares at it for thirty minutes before he manages to dial it.

It rings, once.

He hangs up.

It gets too exhausting, after that, nails bitten to the quick, an antsy, nauseous feeling swirling in his stomach.

Josh rewrites them on a sticky note, and pins it to the corner of his monitor, where he’ll see it every time he works. 

Book a therapist, it says.

He stares at it, a little while longer. Snaps it away quickly, and adds: please, before returning it to its original place.

Then, he forgets about it.

Well, he doesn’t forget, he just… ignores it.

A few weeks go by, and his stress rises every time he sits down at his desk, that yellow square in the corner of his peripherals almost mocking. 

I’ll do it later, he always reasons.

Later never happens.

One day, he gets so frustrated with himself that he slaps it on the centre of his screen, obscuring just enough so that do to anything would be mildly annoying, at best, and fucking infuriating, at worst.

Try putting it off now, motherfucker, he thinks to himself, smug.

The next day, Josh buys a new monitor.

He throws the old one away with the sticky note still attached.

—

Josh is twenty-eight when he and Ethan talk about it.

He’s curled up in Ethan’s bed, knees drawn loosely to his chest, an arm draped over Ethan’s lap as his face is buried against his hip. Ethan is sat up, back against the headboard, watching the darts on mute.

His eyes are closed, and he’s been drifting in and out of sleep for what feels like the majority of his life. There’s a heaviness cemented in his chest, a bone-deep ache for something he’s chasing. What it is, exactly, Josh doesn’t even know, anymore.

“It’s coming up to a year, next month, isn’t it?”

Ethan doesn’t have to clarify further, and a low hum of agreement is all he’s able to make. He feels a hand start carding through his hair, slender fingers, strong and powerful, with nails scraping against his scalp. It’s a level of tenderness that makes his chest feel tight.

“Big milestone,” Ethan adds, conversationally. Though, there’s something weird in his voice, like he’s waiting for something important.

His eyes peel open blearily, sluggish and slow to respond. His brain feels like it’s infested with cobwebs, and has been for as long as he can remember. Josh can’t escape the notion that something is slipping through his grasp.

“Most relationships don’t last that long.”

Josh blinks, and a wave of cold settles inside of him, stomach twisting and churning, rolling with the heavy dread of the inevitable.

“Relationship,” he parrots, lamely, almost dumbfounded.

The hand carding through his hair just stops.

“I’m the only person you sleep with,” Ethan says, and he says it like it explains everything, but it doesn’t. It explains nothing. 

“I barely sleep with you,” he counters, an unsubstantial line of argument, weak as it leaves the hollow of his throat.

Their bodies feel too close, all of a sudden, and he pulls away before he even thinks to, just enough so that he can get a clearer look at Ethan’s face. He doesn’t expect to see him so fucking heartbroken.

“Well, yeah,” Ethan scoffs, waving his hand around in a nonsensical gesture, “that’s just ‘cause you’re depressed. Your sex drive is low.”

A scowl pulls at his features, an expression far too cruel for what is, essentially, the truth, “we’ve been over this, Ethan, I’m not-”

“Whatever,” Ethan cuts in, sharply. His jaw is clenched, eyes narrowed as he focuses on the screen. The night is ruined, completely, “forget I said anything.”

Josh turns away, and stares at the same patch of Ethan’s wall until he falls asleep.

(They sleep on opposite sides of the bed.)

—

Josh is twenty-eight, nearly twenty-nine, when he starts to think that he and Ethan are ruining each other’s lives.

Ethan wants to fix him, but he’s too broken to do so in any way that is substantial, or healthy. And Josh, well… he wants to be fixed so badly he shakes with it, but he’s so ashamed of his desire for it, that he’d rather rot away than accept any help.

They’re destined for disaster, as if there is no plausible outcome for them that isn’t misery.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but, at this point, Josh thinks he could overdose on it, foam piling in his mouth, eyes rolling into the back of his head, heart slowing to a stop.

Ethan is kissing and nipping at the side of his throat, kneeling between his parted thighs, held upright by one hand, as the other squeezes Josh’s waist, reflexively. The touch feels nice, though that ever-present ache in his stomach is still there. Yearning and longing, hand in unlovable hand.

I should be kissing my wife like this, he thinks to himself, bitterly.

Ethan pulls away, hovering over him as he stares down, intensely. A quick kiss is pressed to the tip of his nose, then his cheek, then the corner of his mouth.

“You ever think about killing yourself? Be honest.”

Josh blinks, unprepared for the question, and swallows thickly. There’s a dangerous glint swirling in the pretty hues of Ethan’s irises, a glint that Josh couldn’t unravel, no matter how hard he tried.

“No,” he answers, truthfully.

Ethan’s eyelashes flutter as his gaze darts around, scanning for any hint of a lie. He hums lowly from the back of his throat, deep and rumbling; Josh fights the urge to shiver.

Another kiss, this time directly to his lips. It’s a kiss that lasts longer than the others.

“If you got in a car with me, and I drove a hundred miles per hour down the M25, would you stop me if I said I was gonna crash on purpose?”

Josh feels his heart jump up into his throat as his answer to the question sinks into the forefront of his mind. Having it laid out so succinctly in front of him is devastating.

His breath stutters, a little, and his voice comes out weak, all thick and lumpy, “probably not, no.”

Ethan exhales quietly through his nose, something indecipherable in his expression. Josh doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it.

He can’t help but feel like he’s constantly a step behind, lungs burning, calves aching, struggling to keep up. Sometimes, he feels as if it was the only position he had been created to be: always in last place. The losing dog that no one places their bets on.

Josh tries to grin, but it comes out too tight around the eyes, too forced, and fake, “is that the date you’ve got planned for our one year anniversary next week?”

Ethan’s expression hardens, slightly, and he sounds almost bitter, “thought we wasn’t together.”

The comment stings with an unexpected intensity, and the grin, no matter how fake or forced, disappears, instantly, transforming into a scowl that doesn’t suit him, “fuck’s sake. I’m trying here, Behz.”

“Trying to what?”

“I- I’m just fucking trying. In general,” an ugly laugh worms its way out of him, self-deprecating and sour, “I didn’t… I didn’t plan for this, okay? I’m making everything up as I go along, and- and I- fuck. What’s the fucking point?”

He feels stupid talking about this whilst still being pinned underneath him, and pushes, gently, at Ethan’s chest, urging him to move away so that he can sit upwards. The headboard of Ethan’s bed feels bitingly cold as it presses against his back.

Josh thinks of bringing up what Ethan said to him on his twenty-seventh birthday.

You and me, we’d never last if we was together, would we?

Josh doesn’t say it. He swallows the memory of it down, where the only person it can hurt, is himself. 

Ethan looks stricken, anyway, so Josh supposes that it doesn’t even fucking matter.

I’m too fast, and you’re too slow.

God, why does it all make sense?

Ethan is here, talking about driving a hundred miles per hour down the M25, and Josh, well… Josh is trying his best not to rot away in Ethan’s bed, every night.

“I think we’re bad for each other, Ethan,” Josh mumbles, feeling hollow, like there’s a gaping maw in his chest where his heart should be, a ravenous void that yearns for affection, but spits at it whenever it is presented, “how’re we meant to fix each other when we can’t even fix ourselves? It’s impossible.”

They’re opposite sides of the same, fucked-up coin.

Josh is self-denying. He takes away anything good for him because he doesn’t think he deserves it, because he feels guilty and greedy for taking even the most meagre of scraps for himself. He had never counted on being happy.

Ethan is self-hating. He hurts himself directly, either physically or emotionally, ruining anything pleasant for himself. It’s less that he doesn’t think he deserves niceness or kindness, and more just that he knows how badly he wants it, and because he dislikes himself so immensely, he purposefully won’t allow himself to have it.

“It’s not like we’re gonna do anything about it, though,” Ethan mumbles, sounding bitter, sounding resigned, as if he had accepted his fate, long ago, too weak to fight against the waves. He looks at Josh very intensely, then, and adds, “you and me, we… we always pretend like we’re trying to get better. But we’re not. We don’t try to get better. We just try to stay alive.”

Something cold and hollow and heavy settles into his chest. He feels bereft, like he’s empty, haunted by the weight of everything that’s wrong with him, “and we ain’t even good at trying to stay alive, either.”

—

Josh is twenty-eight, and his one-year anniversary with Ethan solidifies something horrible.

Ethan knocks at his front door at two in the afternoon. Josh has spent the entire day rotting in his bed, empty of a wife, empty of the life he should have had. He hadn’t even realised how much of the day had passed him by.

He’s assaulted, instantly, by a bouquet of flowers, roses and various others of pink and red hues that Josh supposes are meant to represent something profound. For all Josh knew, the flowers could have signified a deep level of hatred, and he wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference. 

The thought seems extreme, though, and highly improbable as he takes the flowers, and plucks the card sticking out from the top.

“The prettiest flowers for the prettiest girl?” he reads, confused.

Ethan flushes, a little, in this way that strikes Josh very deeply with an emotion that seems almost out of place in his usual numbness. A brief flicker of life before it’s extinguished, again.

“That was pre-written when I got them. My message is on the back.”

Josh flips it over.

There’s no one else I’d rather be miserable with than you.

It makes his chest feel tight, and a lump form in his throat. He forces himself to breathe through it, and manages a weak smile, warmer than it should have been, “is it fucked up that I think this is romantic?”

Ethan shrugs, trying to act nonchalant, but Josh can see the pleased glint in his eye, it’s a look that suits him well, “probably,” a grin breaks out on his face, “but I’m the one who wrote it, so I guess I’m just as fucked up as you.”

They have sex in Josh’s bed.

Ethan hovers over him in that overwhelming way he has, where he manages to absorb every ounce of Josh’s focus, turning every sluggish thought away from its monotonous hollowness and turns it into Ethan, Ethan, Ethan.

He wasn’t lying when he said that maybe Ethan was just good at fucking it out of him.

“You’re so skinny now, Zerkaa,” Ethan mumbles as he pins Josh’s wrists to the mattress with this ease that he never had, before. His large, strong palms feel frighteningly powerful wrapped around the delicateness of his wrists. Josh, in general, feels delicate underneath him, like he’s made of glass, just this fragile thing, too meek to survive in the world. Ethan’s voice turns lower, and it rumbles through his ribcage, “I could snap you in half if I wanted to.”

The comment steals a sharp breath from his lungs, chest heaving as he tries to gather all the wandering pieces of his mind. He’s so used to feeling nothing, that the bright-hot burning of arousal borders on being too much for him to handle.

“Please,” he whines, sounding far too vulnerable for him to be comfortable with.

Ethan grins something lecherous, all teeth and canines, fangs ready to sink in and never let go. Josh wonders, briefly, if they’d still be embedded in each other when they’re buried six feet under.

“There he is,” Ethan smirks as he pushes himself to the hilt, hips pressed flush against each other’s. He says it with this unexpected sort of pride that makes Josh feel warbled and shaky, “you’re finally a human, again.”

His lungs feel tight, as if the pressure of Ethan inside him has forced all the air out of him to compensate, condensing all his misery into something sharper, and more overpowering.

“I’m not very good at it,” he tries to grin, voice coming out weak and breathless as he struggles to adjust to the fullness.

Ethan tilts his head, staring down at him with an unreadable expression, a mix of so many emotions fluttering by that Josh couldn’t hold on to any of them.

“At being being a human?”

The question was unneeded, and they both knew it. Josh thinks that Ethan just wants to hear him admit it. He swallows thickly, and nods his head.

Ethan gives him a small smile in response, a gentleness that makes his chest ache, and he leans down to kiss him softly.

“That’s okay, baby. Me neither.”

—

Josh is twenty-eight, and it’s two minutes before his twenty-ninth birthday. 

He doesn’t know it yet, but this one is a particularly bleak affair.

(The bouquet of flowers that Ethan had bought him is already dead.)

Ethan has an arm looped around his shoulder, feet resting on his coffee table, crossed at the ankles. The warmth of his body is continuously fighting to breathe life into Josh’s lungs, succeeding momentarily before the hollowness takes over again. It goes like that on loop, a cycle of sadness. 

Josh doesn’t know how much longer he can put up with it.

The TV drones on uselessly, dull noises that don’t cement themselves in his skull. He can’t even remember the name of the show that they’re watching. It was probably something Simon recommended.

“Do you remember that time, a few weeks ago, when I didn’t show up for a shoot?”

A slight rustle of fabric as Ethan turns his head to look at him, body straightening, a little, tensing up.

There’s something careful and cautious in Ethan’s tone, something searching, “yeah. Why?”

He swallows hard, throat thick and lumpy. He didn’t even mean to bring it up, but, now, he’s almost overcome with the urge to say it out loud, like he couldn’t possibly keep it inside, any longer, “I did it on purpose. Just to see if anybody would notice.”

Ethan’s arm slips down from his shoulders, and curls around his waist, instead. The movement was probably meant to be comforting, and Josh supposes that it is, but he can’t help but be reminded of the times Ethan had held him tightly there as he fucked all the air from his lungs.

“Of course, they noticed,” Ethan sounds like he’s frowning, and when Josh turns his head to look, he sees just that. A sad expression on his face that barely goes away. People who are dating (are they dating?) aren’t meant to make each other feel this way. They’re meant to make each other happy, not fucking miserable. God, could they ever escape from themselves? Is it even fucking possible?

“I know,” he replies, suddenly unable to look anywhere else, “but… a part of me kinda wished that they didn’t.”

Ethan looks at him very intensely, “why?”

“I don’t know.”

He stares down at his lap, at Ethan’s shorts that are too big for his thighs, at his fingers, nervously fiddling with one of his rings.

“I think I just wanted an excuse. To feel this way, I mean.”

Ethan stays silent, and Josh can almost feel the cogs twisting and churning in his brain, fighting against everything that’s wrong inside of him to help in any way that he can. There’s no point to it, it’d only make everything worse.

He does it anyway.

“You feel like you’re not allowed to be depressed when you’ve got so many people who love you.”

The statement shocks him to his core. Worded so succinctly and correctly that Josh, very briefly, feels as if he had been thrown into the middle of the ocean, no sign of land and a lead ball wrapped around his ankle. Josh can’t shake the notion that Ethan had only worded it this way because he feels something similar.

“Yeah,” he responds, lamely. His voice is hollow, “I’m not allowed. I- I shouldn’t be this way.”

Ethan hums lowly, but says nothing else. Half of Josh is glad of this, the other half desperately wants him to fix everything, to give him respite, no matter how fleeting it is. The thought feels cruel, and he wants to rein himself in so badly it stings behind his retinas.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ethan’s phone light up. His phone background is a picture of them both.

“Oh,” Ethan mumbles, before he turns his head and presses a quick, chaste kiss to Josh’s cheek, “happy birthday.”

—

Josh is twenty-nine, and he’s at their Christmas party.

They hired a nice venue for it, large and expensive with endless food and drinks. There are some people here that he doesn’t know, and, Josh thinks with increasing resignedness, that if he were younger, if he were happier, he would have taken time to introduce himself to each and every one of them.

It’s suffocating.

This place, his life, the way he feels, it’s all just suffocating.

He slips out into the garden, fighting against the urge to shiver from the cold as it stiffens his joints. I should have brought a jacket, he muses. It would only take a few minutes to go and retrieve it. He is unsure why he doesn’t.

There are a few others out here, chatting quietly amongst themselves with vapes wrapped up in their palms, and cigarettes dangling between their fingers. Smoke billows out into the air, drifting upwards before it dissipates, forever.

He doesn’t know why he asks for one, but he does.

Josh sits on a half-wall, alone, the edges of it digging into the backs of his thighs as he figures out whether he’s supposed to balance the filter between his teeth, or his lips.

The taste is awful, stinging his nose and eyes and the back of his throat. He inhales the first drag too deeply, coughing and clearing his throat as it burns something fierce.

The guy who gave it to him laughs, gently, a few feet away as he calls, “you’ll get used to it eventually, mate.”

He laughs back, though it sounds slightly hollow.

The air is cold, and his fingers feel stiff and disjointed. Josh had thought that the cigarette would’ve warmed him more than this. He is more disappointed by the fact that it didn’t than he thought he would be.

“Didn't know you smoked,” comes from a voice to his right.

It makes him jump, and he almost drops the cigarette. 

The remnants of his exhale drift from his nose and mouth as he looks at Ethan and says, “I don't.”

Ethan's standing far too close to him, and he feels guilty, suddenly, placing the half-smoked cigarette in his other hand and holding it next to his thigh, as far away from Ethan as he can.

“You shouldn't-” he waves his newly-freed hand in a nonsensical gesture, watching as goosebumps start to form on Ethan’s arms from the cold, “-be near this. Your- your asthma, Behz.”

Ethan shrugs, and sits on the wall next to him, “don't really care, mate.”

Josh frowns, and doesn’t know how to respond. He takes another drag, leaning away, and blows it out to the side.

“Besides,” Ethan adds, the weight of his stare almost burning, “those things’ll kill you, y'know.”

A heavy beat of silence.

“But, I guess you don't care either, Josh.”

It steals a bittersweet smile from him, self-deprecating and born of shared misery.

Another inhale, watching as the tobacco burns and turns into ash, as the smoke wafts into the air, as it starts to seep out from his mouth and nose even despite his best efforts to keep it all inside.

He smokes it down to the filter. He stubs it out. He pushes himself off the wall, and walks over to the man who had given him his first.

“Sorry, mate. Is it alright if I have another?”

Ethan glares at him when he walks back over. Josh ignores him, and places a little more space between them as he leans against the wall, instead of sitting on it, feet crossed at the ankles, and an arm crossed over his chest.

His head falls back as he stares at the night sky, exhaling quietly. The smell of it lingers, even after the smoke has disappeared.

A hand slaps at his arm, and when his attention snaps over, he sees Ethan, leaning towards him, palm outstretched, “at least fucking give me a puff.”

Josh scowls, “fuck off. You left your inhaler at home. I know what you’re doing.”

You’re the rat that chews off its own fucking tail, he thinks.

Ethan’s lip curls in repulsion, canines on display.

And? You’re the snake that swallows itself, Josh assumes that the look is meant to imply.

“You smell fuckin’ disgusting. I ain’t fucking you when we get home.”

Pests. The both of us.

He didn’t know where all the anger had come from.

—

Josh is twenty-nine, and in ten seconds it will be the new year.

He and Ethan are pressed shoulder to shoulder in a crowd of people. Faintly, he can make out the voices of some of the others, JJ, mostly, but Simon and Tobi, too. He wonders where they are, not just those three, but the others too, wonders why he feels so separated from them, wonders if they’re thinking about him in the same way that he’s thinking about them.

Ten!

Josh and Ethan are the only ones not counting.

Nine!

He feels a hand grasp at his own, locking their fingers together. He squeezes gently, and is met with another in response. It says everything; it says nothing.

Eight!

“Another year, huh?” Ethan says, leaning close to his ear. There’s something hopeful to his tone, but also something bereft. A mix of both in a way that only Ethan could truly master.

-ven!

Six!

“You think we can survive this one?”

Four!

Josh looks at him, very intensely, and his stomach aches with something he can’t quite name. 

Three!

“Guess we’re gonna have to wait and find out,” he replies.

One!

Happy new year!

Fireworks explode, bathing Ethan’s face in various hues of pink and blue and green and yellow and orange and red. 

He’s the most beautiful man Josh has ever seen in his life. 

Unable to stop the enormity of his desire, he leans down and kisses him as the sky lights up.

—

Josh is twenty-nine, when he’s woken up by a series of panicked, hurried knocks at his front door.

It’s Ethan, as it always is; he’s the only person that bothers trying to find him, anymore, and he looks…

He looks…

He’s crying.

Ethan is crying.

At first, the sight of him registers in his skull with some kind of numb detachment, unable to be upset by it, but then he blinks, and everything starts to click into place.

His stomach sinks, and his heart starts racing. Such a visceral, palpable, reaction that it leaves him struggling to catch up, floundering as he stands still at his front door.

“I’m sorry,” Ethan repeats, over and over and over again, “I- I tried to… I shouldn’t have tr- I’m sorry.”

Josh almost throws up when Ethan tells him what happened.

He’s trembling in Josh’s arms, shaking and quivering with the weight of everything he had done, and the fading remnants of adrenaline.

Ethan was always too fast for his own good.

“Why?” Josh asks, half an hour later as they lie in bed, facing each other, “why did you try it?”

Ethan seems so fucking sad, a haunted miserableness to his features that makes his stomach feel heavy with dread and anxiety.

I could have lost you, he thinks.

Ethan sniffs and paws roughly at his face. His eyes are bloodshot, and his face is pale. He looks like a ghost, “I don’t know.”

A beat of silence, almost suffocating in its intensity.

The heartache that they’re feeling has been filling up the place.

“I was driving. Couldn’t… couldn’t fucking sleep and I wanted to clear my head, and I just- I just saw an out, I guess, and I… I wanted to take it.”

“What stopped you?”

Josh doesn’t know why he asks this, but he does, and now that it’s out in the open, the nausea coiling inside of him increases tenfold by the complicated expression on Ethan’s face. The expression reveals so many things that Josh feels safer pretending he hadn’t seen any of them.

When Ethan replies, he does so very slowly and carefully, as if it were a truth he had only just stumbled upon, and is almost dumbfounded by the weight of its revelation, “I didn’t do it ‘cause I knew you’d join me. Eventually.”

He can’t bite back his frown, “I wouldn’t have killed myself, Behz.”

(Is he trying to convince Ethan, or himself?)

Ethan looks at him very intensely, his gaze still so piercing even with the misery swimming in the pretty hues of his irises, “no, you would’ve just let yourself die.”

Josh swallows hard, and excuses himself as politely as he can.

Ethan joins him in the bathroom, a few minutes later. At first, he hovers in the doorway as Josh hunches over the toilet, gasping and heaving and retching. Josh can feel his presence as if it were this real, palpable thing. It comforts him just as much as it wounds him.

He’s busy spitting the last remnants of bile from his throat, when Ethan steps over his legs, and leans over the sink, peering into the mirror. If Ethan hadn’t tried to… if he hadn’t…

If he hadn’t done what he had done, then everything now might have felt a little more normal. Perhaps, it would have been the morning after a night out, and Josh is vomiting because of a hangover and not the devastating dread of realising that their despair is a little more real than either of them originally thought.

It’s almost as if their melancholy is too much to handle, and so, instead, they just feel numb. Maybe it’s just how their brains are trying to cope.

His knees ache, and his skull is pounding. He winces against the light as he tilts his head to look at Ethan, still analysing his reflection in the mirror.

“We ain’t normal, Josh,” Ethan mumbles, sounding hollow. He glances at Josh, very briefly, and his expression tightens. He can’t tell whether it’s from pity, or shame, “we- we ain’t fucking right. We’re all fucked up.”

Josh’s throat stings, and his voice is all warbled and broken as he agrees, “we need help.”

Ethan’s jaw starts to quiver, before he clenches down on it, the bone protruding out. It looks painful. His head snaps over to Josh so quickly that he can tell it was forced, that he’s making himself stare into Josh’s eyes as he delivers one of the ruinous pieces of news he has ever heard. If Josh was more bitter, he would have regarded it as cruel.

But he knows Ethan. He knows that the movement was done out of mercy, out of respect. Several years down the line, he will be grateful for this.

“I can’t help you, Josh,” Ethan whispers, looking distraught. It’s the truth. No matter how much it hurts, “and you can’t help me. We… we’re gonna die if we keep this up. Surely, you see that.”

Something… something needs to change.

—

Josh is twenty-nine, when he and Ethan go their separate ways.

They talked about it, a lot, before it actually happened, planning everything out, what they had to do, what they had to say. It felt very… adult. Very mature. Very fucking difficult. 

It hurt quite a bit, coming to terms with everything, but they forced themselves to push through it. The promise of a better life for themselves had fuelled them in ways they didn’t think it could. Josh pictured it as hope spilling from their mouths and eyes like smoke.

Ethan was going to stay with his mother, for a while. They weren’t sure how long, but it was obvious that he needed the change, needed the break from his life, from Josh, from the monotony of their work.

Josh, however, needed the routine of everything. It would be tough, forcing himself to keep on going with Ethan’s absence like a gaping chasm in his chest, but, if left to his own devices, with nothing to do, he would fall apart, even further.

It was the easiest thing for them to agree on.

“I’ll wait for you, y’know,” Ethan had told him just before he left. Standing on the step below him at Josh’s front door, he couldn’t shake the notion that Ethan looked very small, lost and trying to find his way. Though, he supposes that that was what their break was all about, trying to find themselves, again, “I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll always be waiting for you.”

Josh had grinned as best he could, “what makes you think you’ll get better before I do?”

Ethan laughed at that, a soft, warm sound. Genuine. It felt like years since he had last heard it, “don’t you remember? I’m the fast one here, baby. You always gotta catch up to me.”

Simply how alive Ethan had sounded as he said it, how his eyes had crinkled in the corners, how his lips had pulled into a smirk, had ignited a fire in the pit of Josh’s stomach.

He became entranced with the memory of it, transfixed, and he wanted to see it for as long as he possibly could.

Everything this is, he had thought after watching Ethan drive away, it’s all for you. All of it.

If I have to, I’ll run and I’ll never stop running.

Anything to keep up.

—

Josh is twenty-nine, and he’s trying not to bristle under the intensity of JJ’s stare.

“We’ve been here for fifteen minutes, Josh. Call her, already. Book the appointment.”

His skin feels itchy, and he’s trying his hardest not to bite at his nails, again. JJ had already slapped his hand away, twice, and he’s worried that a third time will snap whatever remnants of patience JJ has left.

“Wh- what do I say?” he asks without meaning to. There must have been something utterly pathetic in the wobble of his voice for JJ’s expression to soften in the way that it does, “I’ve never done this before.”

It should annoy him, being looked at in that way. It doesn’t.

“Just tell her your name, and that you want to know if she’s open to seeing new clients. It’s piss easy, bro.”

Josh looks down at his phone, the number for one of those therapists Ethan had handed him already typed out. His leg is bouncing erratically, jostling his hand and phone with it. The numbers jump around, blurring together. It makes him feel faintly nauseous.

He chews on the inside of his cheek. JJ lets out a quiet, latently-annoyed breath at that, but doesn’t seem to have the heart to make him stop. Josh thinks that he’ll take what he can get.

His thumb hovers over the dial button, shaking intensely. He forces it downwards until the panic kicks in and stops just before it makes contact with the screen, heart lurching to his throat.

“JJ, I- I can’t-”

“You will.”

The sheer hardness to his voice makes him pause, stomach coiling, anxiety blossoming like rotten flowers in the very pit of him.

“You wanted me to help you ‘cause you know I’m not gonna let you pussy out of this, bro. Remember what you told me?”

Josh swallows hard, and nods his head.

“Say it.”

“I- I told you to do whatever… whatever you could to make me book this appointment.”

JJ hums lowly, not quite sounding pleased, but something similar. It’s enough to distract him temporarily, and when Josh looks at him, once more, he sees a gentle, searching expression that seems almost out of place on the usual persona he puts on for the cameras.

It’s like he’s trying to figure out how hard Josh needs to be pushed.

“Five red cards if you don’t make this call.”

Oh, so this is how he’s playing it, huh?

He shrugs, trying to act nonchalant, “that’s fine. I’ll probably still have less than you by summer.”

JJ’s eyes narrow, “you’ll be on the bad team every time until the end of the year.”

A smirk, all the tension and anxiety slowly seeping from him, “I like the bad team. You get fun experiences.”

The comment makes JJ smile, a little, this lightheartedness that warms him greatly. There’s a moment of silence, and Josh can sense how quickly all the cogs are churning in JJ’s brain, a hamster in a wheel, spinning too fast to control itself. The image makes him fight against a laugh.

JJ connects their gazes solidly, “you have to tweet saying that I’m the greatest rapper of our generation.”

The smile falls from his face.

“I’ll make the call.”

JJ laughs loudly, and kicks him in the shin.

“Fucking prick.”

—

Josh is twenty-nine, and he’s calling Ethan for the first time since their break.

They had texted occasionally, only for the urgent work-related things, or the spontaneous: I’m still alive message that Josh kept trying to pretend wasn’t as reassuring as it was.

He can’t lie, he’s fucking nervous.

It had only been a few weeks, just under a month, but a part of him is terrified that, no matter how much progress he’s made, Ethan has left him behind, already. That he’s found something new, something better, something that Josh could never be. 

It’s almost debilitating.

He supposes, though, that all his anxious-ridden thoughts were just that: just manifestations of his anxiety and fear that were completely irrational, and had no reason to exist in all the places that they had existed.

He supposes that, because Ethan picks up on the second ring, and his voice sounds, for lack of a better word, almost breathless with elation, “hey.”

This revelation startles him, how that simple, singular word could carry so much reverence behind it. His voice comes out as equally breathless, a blush worming its way to his cheeks, “hi.”

Fucking hell, he feels like a kid with his first crush.

It’s becoming apparent that Ethan gets sappy and sentimental through long periods of absences, because not a second passes before Ethan adds, just as soft, just as fond, “I missed your voice so fucking much.”

The admission makes his heart do this weird flipping thing in his chest, something light and easy, full to the brim of adoration. He can’t remember the last time he’s felt this way, “I said one word, Behz.”

The smile in Ethan’s voice is audible, “well, it’s, like, ten now, so… fuck you, I win.”

“Six,” he corrects.

“Seven, actually.”

“God,” he sighs, unable to hide his grin, not that he even wanted to. He feels like the sun is nestling behind his ribcage, flowers entwining themselves with the bone, “you’re so fucking annoying, you know that, right?”

The line goes quiet, after that, and the only sound that gets picked up is a few faint numbers, as if mumbled under his breath.

“Stop counting!”

“Whatever,” Ethan laughs in that breathy way he gets whenever he’s being mischievous and is doing so on purpose. Josh used to hear it all the time during videos, back before their lives hadn’t fallen apart in the way that they had, “I was fucked when we got to double digits, anyway.”

Josh hums lowly, feeling soft and hazy from the warmth in Ethan’s voice. He’s glad that he’s at home, because if anyone else saw the expression on his face, he’d be embarrassed about it for weeks, “you sound happy.”

Ethan exhales quietly, and whilst his voice has sobered, considerably, it still sounds just as fond, “I am. It’s been nice seeing my mum, again. Think I needed her to sort me out.”

“Bet she gave you good advice.”

“The best. Don’t know what I would’ve done without her. Even though she’s got me doing all sorts of shit around the house.”

Josh smiles, and even though Ethan can’t see him, he knows that this is the type of smile that’s reserved for them, and them only, “turning into a little handyman, are we?”

He’s met with a laugh, at that, something gentle and free. It’s one of the few sounds in the world that makes Josh feel invincible, like he could swallow the sun raw, “fucking typical, ain’t it? Came down here for advice and she’s got me doing manual labor. For free, too.”

The joke he had been about to reply with, something flirty and along the lines of: at least you’d look sexy doing it, is cut off by a sudden wistfulness in Ethan’s tone, as if he’s overcome by longing, “it’s got me thinking, though.”

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous, “that’s never a good sign.”

“Fuck off,” Ethan chuckles, “I’m tryna be serious, here, babe.”

Josh goes to bite at his nails, before pulling them away. He bounces his leg, instead. Progress, he supposes, “go on, then, I’m listening.”

A beat of silence, and Josh imagines Ethan on the other side of the call, pacing around his mother’s house as he works up the courage to say whatever he has on his mind. It’s a picture that makes his heart swell with warmth.

“You ever thought about us getting a house, together? Y’know, li- like a place just for us?”

His throat is working before he means it to, “all the time.”

A quiet inhale, like he’s shocked by the admission. Josh had startled himself with it.

And then, “I guess there was never a right time for it. We probably woulda rotted in there.”

His heart feels like it’s in his throat, pulsating steadily behind his adam’s apple, “a- and now?”

“Now,” Ethan replies, slowly and cautiously, as if he’s truly coming to terms with how easily they coud have it for themselves. Josh wonders how badly he yearns for it, though, if he’s being honest, it’s obvious his desire for a gentle, kind life can border on overwhelming, at times, “now it’s sounding a lot more plausible.”

“Soon, then,” Josh breathes. He can feel the excitement starting to coil inside of him, bright-hot and giddy. He forces himself to calm, unwanting to jump in head-first to something out of their depth. He was always the one who had to rein Ethan in when it counted, when he couldn’t do it himself, “when we’re… better.”

“Yeah,” Ethan replies, “better.”

(He says it like it’s a beautiful word symbolising a beautiful thing. Hope epitomised. Josh finds himself feeling something similar.)

Now that they’re on this line of thinking, he finds himself eager to share news, to share proof of all his efforts. Don’t give up on me, it is, perhaps, meant to imply, don’t leave me behind. I’m trying my best to try my best.

“I had my first therapy session a few days ago. Next one’s tomorrow.”

“How was it?”

“Fucking terrifying.”

Another laugh, just as rich and bright and vibrant. He finds himself never wanting to end the call, believing that if he did, he would feel as if he had just sliced off his own fucking limb. 

“JJ texted me that he was there when you made the appointment.”

Josh can’t help his groan, no matter how lighthearted it is, “fuck’s sake, he can never keep a secret. What’d he say?”

Ethan sounds like he’s grinning, “God, I can barely remember. You know I don’t pay attention to whatever that fucker says. It was something along the lines of: I kept your missus in check, no need to thank me, bro, with a shit ton of those, like, flexing arm emojis.”

His heart swells with fondness, “what a dick.”

“I know right. Fucking loser, ain’t he? God, I love him so much.”

“Don’t tell him you said that. He’ll never let you forget it.”

He’s met with silence. And then more silence. And then more silence.

In fact, he’s met with so much of it that he’s, briefly, worried the call had somehow been disconnected. Pulling his phone away to check, he finds that it’s not the case, and something similar to worry starts to coil inside of his stomach, nervous that he’s said the wrong thing.

“Behz?”

Ethan’s voice sounds slightly thicker, slightly rougher, “still here, baby.”

He doesn’t mean for it, but he’s certain his frown bleeds through into his tone, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s just… we haven’t said that to each other, yet, have we?”

Josh blinks, confused, “said what?”

“That we love each other.”

“Oh,” he mumbles, dumbly, as his brain wracks through every encounter they’ve had since Josh and Ethan started becoming a singular entity, instead of two broken individuals. His chest aches, the pleasant tone of their conversation steadily growing heavier, “I guess we haven’t.”

Ethan sucks in a sharp breath from the other side of the call, “no time like the present, right?”

He feels his heart flutter, thrumming behind his ribcage like it’s trying to escape.

“Josh, I-”

“I love you.”

Ethan stutters, a bit, clearly caught off guard by the sheer conviction in Josh’s tone. He doesn’t know why, but he rather likes surprising Ethan in this way. Perhaps, if he had the time to delve deeper, it would be because it’s just further proof that what they have is worth fighting for.

The corner of his mouth pulls upwards, and he can’t help the way he’s smirking, “I said it first. Who’s the fast one, now?”

Ethan’s voice is breathless, like he’s in awe, and couldn’t possibly contain it all, “holy fucking shit, marry me.”

“Wait until we buy the house, first.”

—

Josh is thirty, and Simon has just proposed to Talia.

If he were still twenty-seven, Josh is sure that this news would have felt bittersweet.

He would have been happy, elated, for his best friend, whilst simultaneously longing and yearning for a life similar to theirs. A wife, a kid, a house on the outskirts of London.

But, as it stands, Josh has already ticked one of those off his list.

That is, of course, because he and Ethan found out the news whilst drenched in paint.

Ethan wanted white walls for their living room, whilst Josh wanted beige. Ethan insisted there was no difference between the two, whilst Josh insisted that there was. Ethan offered a round of rock, paper, scissors to decide, whist Josh wanted a coin flip.

They did both.

Josh lost repeatedly.

And, so, there they were, white paint staining their faces and hands and clothes, joking back and forth. Josh was busy painting the slightly higher parts that Ethan was too short to reach, brain racing a thousand miles per second as he tried to come back with a witty retort to Ethan pointing out the white paint on Josh’s chin and grinning: that’s what you looked like last night.

His brain clicks into place, and he whirls around, the words already on his tongue, only to see Ethan peering at his phone, eyes wide, looking shocked.

“Oh, shit.”

His teeth snap shut with an audible clack, “what? What is it?”

Ethan looks up at him through his lashes, head still tilted down, mouth agape, slightly.

That’s what you looked like last night, he gets the urge to blurt. Ugh, fuck's sake, why is it always the worst fucking timing?

“Minter and Talia are getting married.”

Josh almost drops his paintbrush, “no fucking way.”

Ethan looks at him fully, then, a wide grin making his eyes crinkle in the corners. God, he’s so beautiful that Josh thinks he might die, “bagsy being Simon’s best man.”

“Fuck off. You can be Talia’s maid of honour.”

“She ain’t that lucky.”

—

Josh is thirty-two, when he ticks off another thing from his list of yearning.

Simon has his arm hooked around Vik’s shoulder as he grins, “look at you two. Finally joined the club, huh?”

Ethan’s clutching at Josh’s waist, practically has been ever since they said I do, like he’s still in shock by everything, clinging on desperately just to reassure himself that it’s still real.

“Took you long enough,” Vik adds, eyes soft and warm, so full of love and affection in a way that’s just him. 

Josh had accidentally caught his gaze as he stood at the altar, heart thumping wildly out of his chest, eyes darting around for anything to distract him from his nervousness. Vik had given him this smile, comforting and grounding, like he was endlessly proud of him. It almost made him burst into tears. He didn’t, of course, because he’s fucking cool like that and definitely not like Ethan, who had red-rimmed eyes from the very second he saw Josh standing there, waiting for them to claim each other.

“Didn’t want to steal your thunder,” Ethan smirks, easily, “now fuck off back to your own wives while I dance with mine.”

Their laughter fills the room.

Josh pretends to scowl, but he’s so happy that it shines through everything, “you’re the wife.”

“You’re the wife.”

“Fuck off. You are.”

“No, you a-”

“Fucking hell, lads, do we need to get ready for the first Sidemen divorce?”

Ethan grins at him, his joy so infectious that their misery seems like a lifetime ago. It’s a place that he never wants to go back too.

“You wanna tell him to fuck off, or do you want me to do it?” he whispers.

Josh kisses him, just because he can, “why not both?”

Ethan kisses him back, “deal.”

Their heads snap over in unison, where their best friends sit, gleeful and full of mirth.

“Fuck off, Harry!”

Now, do we paint the spare bedroom blue or pink?