Archive of Our Own ^beta

Art by citrusmoonlight aka Sage

Tell me when it kicks in.

How'd I get so faded?

+ 4 DAYS

When Ryan opened his eyes the only thing he could process at first was a blindingly bright light. Before he could fool himself into thinking he’d been successful, his ears focused in on the insesent beeping of the heart monitor to his left, informing him that he was indeed alive.

His wrists were bandaged, with red seeping through the numb white. Even though he couldn’t feel any pain, they still hurt to look at. That was when he realized - with a stomach-churning hollowness, that as the red of his insides pooled inside the bathtub and he passed out from blood-loss - he never saw Josh. The boy with the sunshine smile hadn’t appeared in his dreams.

He was moments away from ripping out his IV and jumping out the nearest window, when a grim looking doctor came into the room. He gave Ryan a small, sad smile over his clipboard.

“Glad you’ve finally come to, Mr. Ross.”

- 83 DAYS

“Do you think it’s weird that I’m eighteen and haven’t dreamed yet?” Josh asked as he walked through the hallway with his best friend, Tyler.

Tyler shrugged from next to him and narrowly missed a girl with a high blonde ponytail power-walking to her next class. Josh didn’t understand how people still had any will to go to classes and try. They only had three months left before graduation for christ’s sake.

“You know the cut off is twenty-one. Stop worrying about it. Maybe all your stress is blocking it.”

Josh snorted. “I don’t think that’s how it works. But yeah, you’re right.”

Tyler gave him a knowing grin. “Well, I’m always right.”

- 62 DAYS

When Josh opened his eyes he was in his room - but he wasn’t. It was his room, but most of his furniture and posters were either blank or missing altogether. It was also a lot darker. It felt like a dream, but not like one he’d ever had before. When he looked down he saw that he was in the same boxers and t-shirt that he went to sleep in.

When he glanced around the room, that’s when he saw him.

It was a boy who was around the same age as Josh, but he was so waif-like that he could be mistaken as younger. He had brown curly hair wisping over the tops of his ears, and brushing over his jaw and neck. Through a sliver of light Josh could see his features. He was the prettiest person Josh had ever seen and that’s when he realized that this was his dream. The boy had to be his soulmate.

Before Josh got a chance to speak, or introduce himself, the boy went first. “Are you my soulmate?” he asked, not beating around the bush whatsoever.

Josh couldn’t help but smile, even though the curly-haired boy seemed scared out of his mind. “I hope so. My name’s Josh Dun.”

The boy managed his own smile, but it came across more like a grimace than anything else. “I’m Ryan Ross.”

Josh sat down on the floor, so that he was across from Ryan, who had his knees pulled up to his chest. “Where are we?” he whispered.

Josh scratched the back of his neck. “I think we’re in my room?” He paused, glancing around the room once again. “But it’s like, a weird, bare version of it. None of the posters have logos, and most of the colors are missing, but yeah, this is home sweet home.”

Josh was mesmerized by the light shining over Ryan’s face. “You’re beautiful.” he blurted out before feelings his cheeks heat up. God, he was so bad at this. When Ryan didn’t say anything he panicked. He wondered if he came across as stupid or creepy, or if he had just fucked everything completely up.

“I’m not.” Ryan said finally, meeting Josh’s eyes. But then his lip quirked up just the slightest, and if Josh wasn’t paying the utmost attention he would’ve missed it. “You’re pretty beautiful yourself.”

Josh grinned. He had never been called beautiful before. But if it was falling from Ryan’s lips, he’d take anything. “We should play twenty questions!” he announced.

Ryan raised his eyebrow. “That’s such a lame party game.”

“Well duh,” Josh conceded. “But we’d get to learn about each other. And I want to learn everything about you.”

Ryan sucked in a sharp breath that had Josh wondering if he said something wrong again, but then he pressed his lips together before ducking his head shyly. “Favorite color?”

“Umm...blue or red.” Josh told him. “What’s yours?”

“It’s probably red.”

“Did I say blue or red? Now that I think about it it’s definitely red.” Josh told him with a smile, which only made Ryan blush. “What do you like to do?”

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

“Like,” Josh started picking at a random fray on his pants. “When you have nothing to do, or if you’re home alone, what would you do? Do you read, watch tv, write something, play soccer, play piano - what do you like to do?”

“Oh.” Ryan said smalley. “I don’t...I’d probably read a book, or umm, I play guitar sometimes.” He finished, trailing off into a mumble. He cleared his throat before glancing up at Josh. “Could we stop? I just-” he curled up with his knees to his chest. “I don’t really wanna talk and stuff right now.”

Josh nodded solemnly, remembering times in the past when Tyler wanted to go nonverbal when things in his head got too bad. His chest tightened at the thought of Ryan, his soulmate having to feel half the pain that Tyler did. But he knew he was prepared for it if he did.

+ 7 DAYS

“You can’t just go running away!” Tyler yelled at Josh. When Josh didn’t pay any attention to him he lunged forward and tried to rip the duffel bag he was currently packing from his grasp.

“I’m not running away,” Josh snapped. “I’m going to find him.”

Tyler sighed, running a hand through his hair. “What if he’s dead?”

“He’s not.” Josh growled, turning away and resuming his packing even more furiously than before. “He’s not dead. I can feel it. Something just - something happened. He isn’t dead, Ty. He can’t be.”

“Josh, I love you.” Tyler told him before grabbing him by the shoulders. “But you have to be realistic. You said it yourself that he had bad depression. I mean, the last time you guys fucking dreamed together all he said was that he was sorry and that he loved you. If that isn’t fucking alarm bells I don’t know what is.”

“Fuck you!” Josh yelled, his chest heaving. “I’m going to find him. He’s out there and he needs me.”

“Josh, you don’t even know where he lives!” Tyler threw his hands in the air in exasperation. “It’s basically like a needle in a haystack. What are you going to do, huh? Ring to doorbell of every Ryan in the entire country until you find the right one?”

“If that’s what it takes.” Josh said zippering the bag with ferocity. He knew that he didn’t have everything. But he had the bare minimum, and most of his favorite clothes. He had money saved up so he could buy whatever he needed on the road.

“You would do it for Jenna, and we both know it.” Josh told him. It wasn’t a question. It was a fact.

Tyler deflated at his words. “You’re right,” he said eventually. “But Josh, what are you going to do if you find an obituary? Or a headstone?”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” was Josh’s reply as he pulled his bag down from the bed so it was upright on the floor. He grabbed a random hoodie that was by his bed and zipped it. “I can’t sit just here and wait, Ty. You have to understand that.”

Tyler bit his lip. “I understand,” he told him. “I just don’t want you to go.”

Both boys were silent until Josh tugged him into a violent hug. Tyler wrapped his arms around him almost immediately, nearly breaking his ribs with how tight he was holding on. “Promise me you’ll call, and you’ll write.”

“Of course.” Josh promised reverently. “I’ll be back.” He promised also. “When I find him I’ll come back. I just have to find him first.”

When they slowly fell away from each other’s grasps, Tyler gave him a final watery smile. “Be safe.”

- 53 DAYS

Ryan wasn’t talking. No matter what Josh had tried, he refused to respond. As soon as Josh woke up into the consciousness of their dream, Ryan was curled up in the corner of the room, his curly hair flopping in front of his face.

Even though he was a little frustrated, Josh couldn’t find it in his heart to be mad at him. He couldn’t even be irritated. He would wait all the time in the world if it’s what Ryan needed - hell, they hopefully had a lifetime ahead of them.

Instead, he decided to try out a new tactic. He inched a little bit closer to Ryan, so that they were only a few feet away from each other. He bit his lip, before whispering out his question. “Can I hold your hand?”

Ryan’s head shot up, and Josh could barely make out his eyes through his hair, but it didn’t matter - he had beautiful eyes, whether or not you could properly see them. Josh was going to smile, but then he noticed that Ryan looked terrified, and it made something in his stomach drop. He shouldn’t be scared of him; that was the last thing he ever wanted Ryan to feel around him.

Josh inched backwards until he was leaning against the opposite wall, the farthest they had ever been. He wouldn’t touch him - not if he didn’t want it. He would live his whole life never having touched his soulmate if it made Ryan feel safe. It would be hard, but he knew he would do it. He’d barely known him but he was already a goner.

“I just thought-” Josh hesitated over his words, talking to Ryan slowly. “Sometimes when like, Tyler or other people go nonverbal, or don’t want to be around anyone they still want physical affection. Like uh,” Josh licked his lips searching for the right words. “Like, they want to be left alone, but they don’t want to actually feel like they’re alone.” When Ryan continued to not speak, he just sighed. “It was stupid, nevermind.”

Ryan still didn’t say anything, but Josh’s chest tightened as he watched him start to move, and get closer and closer to him. Josh could feel his heart beating in his chest. He had no idea what Ryan was going to do, and he didn’t know what to expect.

But then, Ryan stood up on his knees, only inches away from Josh. His eyes were wide, but he shakily reached out a hand. When he did, his fingers interlaced with Josh’s hand that had only been laying limply by his side moments before.

Ryan looked down at their joint hands like it was mystery. As if he had never seen two people holding hands before. Or maybe, he’d never held hands with a person before. The thought dawned upon Josh, but he couldn’t process it. That couldn’t be. How could a person grow up to be seventeen and never hold hands with someone? Not even their mother?

After a few seconds of tense silence, with both boys holding their breaths waiting for the reaction of the other one, Ryan finally parted his lips. “It wasn’t stupid.” His voice was scratchy, probably from not using it all day. But Josh found it cute. It sounded the same way your voice does when you first wake up.

Josh rubbed his thumb against Ryan’s knuckle and cleared his throat. “I know you don’t really know me, not yet. And I don’t really know you, but I really want to. If you don’t want to talk some days, or just want to curl up in a corner that’s always going to be okay. But you gotta let me know what’s going on first, or at least communicate to me that you’re fine. Please?”

Josh hated to set any sort of “rules” or try to impose things that Ryan could and couldn’t do, but he didn’t want to sit on the opposite side of the room and worry every night if Ryan was okay. That definitely didn’t do anything good for his stress levels. And all that resulted was him worrying all about it the next day.

Ryan eventually nodded. He pulled away from Josh’s hands only a few moments after. Ryan opened his mouth to say more words, but Josh already had a pretty good idea what he was going to say. He could feel his body fading and floating back to reality. It had been a long enough night and they were about to go back to reality.

Instead of having Ryan speak, Josh cut him off. “I hope you have a good day, Ry.”

+ 10 DAYS

Josh had made it onto the road, that part wasn’t that hard: he had a duffel bag packed full of shit and a greyhound bus ticket, but the problem was that he didn’t really know where he was going. He had no idea where Ryan even was - not the slightest clue on the state, let alone the region.

If Josh thought too hard about it he wanted to slam his head against the bus window. He set off to Pennsylvania from Columbia, considering that it wasn’t too bad of place to start. When he got off the bus, the first task was finding an open coffee shop offering free wifi.

After Josh got in and ordered some coffee he loaded up his laptop. He immediately logged onto some of the blogs and forums he had been regularly looking at and posting on ever since the connection with Ryan had been severed. There hadn’t been much of a response. It seemed that losing your soulmate wasn’t a common thing that happened to people.

Josh wasn’t going to give up hope though. One girl had posted that the name sounded kind of familiar to someone that she went to school with. She lived all the way up in Massachusetts. Josh gnawed on the edge of his coffee cup. Ryan most definitely did not have a Boston accent. In fact, he didn’t seem to have any noticeable accent at all, which made the search even more difficult.

But Josh figured that Boston wasn’t all of Massachusetts and certainly not everyone who lived there had to have an accent. Plus, it was the only lead that he had, and he wasn’t really in the position where he could blow off anything. It was better than what he had in that moment, which was coffee that was going cold, and absolutely nothing in regards to Ryan, so investigating couldn’t hurt.

Josh started looking up Greyhound bus schedules right away. Though, he couldn’t find a direct bus route that took him from where he was in Pennsylvania to Massachusetts. He groaned in frustration, and then tried to figure out how long it would take if he took a cab. After tallying it up it looked like it would be around five hours.

Josh gnawed on his lip. Getting a taxi for that long would be expensive, and he had no idea how long he’d be on the road for, so he wasn’t in the position to be blowing money. He looked around the coffee shop and rubbed his eyes. It was getting late and he was exhausted. He needed a place to crash for the night. He opened a new tab on his laptop and then searched cheap motels that were nearby. He found one that wasn’t that far and packed all of the stuff he had gotten out into his duffel bag.

He put a handful of cash onto the table, hoping that it was enough to leave a slight tip to the waitress who had given him sad eyes when she saw the bags under his, and the duffel bag he was carrying around that carried everything he deemed important. When he got out of the coffee shop he adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder and began his walk to the motel.

When he went around the corner of the establishments he found himself in awe of the glowing blue bridge over the waterway flowing through the city. It was lit up and beautiful. He had never been to Philly before. Truth be told, he had never been outside of Ohio until that day. After a second, he hastily remembered a camera that he had thrown into his bag without really thinking about it. He had thought, maybe, a little optimistically that as soon as he found Ryan, he would take as many pictures of him as possible. So he would always have the pretty boy to look at, even if he wasn’t with him.

Once he had the camera, he took a picture of the bridge, and how the water gleamed an electric blue; a reflection from the glowing lights. When he stuffed the camera back into his bag and continued on his walk down the street, he envisioned showing Ryan all the pictures he took on his journey, and smiled.

The walk to the motel was long and tiring. Though when he was getting close he noticed a salon store that was still open. At first, Josh didn’t think anything of it, other than the fact it was a little late for one of those stores to be open. Most places back home normally weren’t open later than nine, or ten pm. But, Josh mused, cities were probably different.

He would have continued, and brushed it away as just another building that he walked by if it weren’t for the advertisement poster plastered to the wall of the salon store. It had a girl looking sultrily at the camera with thick black eye-makeup, but that wasn’t what had caught Josh’s eye; what did was the fact that she had bright red, traffic-stopping hair cut in a severe bob. The color mesmerized him, and he found himself rubbing through his own hair subconsciously.

Before he even realized what he was doing Josh opened the front doors of the building, and faintly heard the tinkling of the bell that alerted the staff of a customer’s entrance. The girl at the counter glanced up Josh wearily. He realized he probably looked sketchy as all hell with his gauges, rumpled slept in clothes, and the giant duffle bag he was carrying.

Now, Josh didn’t really know anything about dying hair, or the process in which you get your hair to be another color, nevermind a multitude of colors, but he was a little sheepish when he pointed to the picture in the window. “That.” He said. “I want that. How do I get that?”

The girl seemed a bit caught off guard, since all she did was blink for a few seconds. “Do you mean the color?” she finally asked, “I mean, unless you mean length because we have wigs and stuff if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“No uh,” Josh swallowed, “the color. I want red.” He took a breath, taking his eyes away from the poster for a second. “How do I get my hair to be that red?”

The girl, who Josh now saw that her name tag said “Danni” stepped closer, and got out from behind the counter. She approached Josh, and turned her attention to the aisles. “Well, basically, you get hair bleach, it take the color out of your hair so you can dye it the color you want. You buy a powder and a developing solution. You mix it together, you can either by 20, 30, or 40 developer, but the higher the number the stronger and more damaging it is to your hair. I honestly wouldn’t recommend using 40 unless you’re a licensed cosmetologist.”

She then lead Josh over to one of the aisles. She looked over a few packets before picking one. “This one isn’t very heavy duty as far as bleach goes, but since it’s the first time you’re dying your hair it should be fine. Natural hair is always super easy to strip out, it’s all the synthetic colors that are a nightmare.” She told Josh wisely from over her shoulder, then tossed him a small bottle that had a large 20 on it.

She gave him a small smile. “It doesn’t say what color red that the model is wearing in the picture, but you can color match with the swatches next to the color.” She knelt down to look through the assortment of dye they had, and it looked like they had a rainbow of color assortments of dye. There was so many colors to choose from that it made Josh’s head spin a little.

“How about this one?” Danni asked, pointing to a bottle of hair dye, with the swatch being nearly the same bright red as the girl in the picture. The bottle delightedly declared it Infra Red, and Josh reached for it instantly. “You’ll only need one bottle dye of because you don’t have much hair. Now, all you need is two containers to mix the two different products, because you absolutely cannot mix the hair dye and the bleach. Then, you’ll need a pair of gloves so you don’t stain your hands, and two brushes for mixing.”

Josh’s eyes widened and he tried to tally the cost of all of that in his head. It sounded expensive. He hadn’t realized that dying your hair in a shitty bathroom cost so much money. He was going to ask if there was anything he could cut out.

Danni let out a small laugh though, clearly seeing the look on his face. “Don’t worry, most of this stuff is only around 99¢, sometimes $2 at most. But if you don’t have that much money then you can only get one bowl and brush, just make sure you rinse it very thoroughly between treatments. She then picked out a smallish black bowl, and a clear handled brush. She handed them to Josh whose hands were getting full.

“That’s it, really.” She assured him and then lead him over to the counter. When she rung up all the items Josh was surprised that all of it was only around $30. He bit his lip as he watched her put all of it into a plastic bag and hand it to him.

“Do uh,” he hesitated. “Do all of these things come with instructions?”

Danni once again blinked at him. “Oh okay, so you have no idea what you’re doing.” Josh could feel himself blushing, but Danni simply waved him off. “I’ll write down some instructions, then you’re good to go.”

True to her word, she wrote down detailed instructions on a piece of paper she took out from under the counter of the register. After handing it to Josh and giving him her well wishes, she sent him back on his way so he was out of the street again.

Luckily, the hotel wasn’t too far away, and he found himself walking through the front doors sooner than later. The guy at the counter looked bored out of his mind, and didn’t blink an eye at the fact that Josh had a dingy duffel bag and a bag filled with hair dye. Hell, Josh figured he’d probably seen way worse.

Josh got a room without much trouble. The front desk guy never asked for an ID or anything other than the cash for the payment of the room since they didn’t have a credit card machine. Josh didn’t mind considering most of his money that he took before he left was cash.

When he got into his room, he sat down his bag and sat down on his bed. He looked over at the clock as he shrugged off his jacket. The first thing he needed to do was sleep, then he would get to his hair, and finding Ryan in the morning, when he didn’t feel like his head was swimming. He also tried his best not to think about how when he was sleeping, he would see nothing at all.

- 50 DAYS

This time when Josh was in his dreams, Ryan reached over and grabbed onto his hand to hold after only a few minutes. He had done it the night previous as well, and Josh felt his heart leaping over the fact that it hadn’t been a fluke. Even if they weren’t verbally communicating, Josh felt as if this sign of physical affection from Ryan was a huge success, and step forward in gaining his trust.

Ryan cleared his throat. “Could you uh, tell me about your day?” he asked timidly. He wasn’t meeting Josh’s eyes but that didn’t matter. Josh would’ve swooned over just hearing his voice anyway, and found himself grinning brightly.

“Sure I can!” he replied excitedly. “I can always talk if you don’t want to, if that’ll make you feel better.”

After a few seconds Ryan nodded. When he said his next words, it was clear that he was hiding behind his hair. “I like your voice,” he mumbled. Though when he looked up and saw the radiance of Josh’s smile, he managed a small one of his own.

“Well, now that I know that, I hope you know I’ll never shut up.”

Ryan’s smile seemed a little more comfortable after his words, and lot less strained. It was the happiest Josh had ever seen him, but his goal was always to make him happier. “I’m pretty sure I could shut you up if I wanted to.” Ryan said, and there was even hint of teasing in his voice.

Josh could feel his heart thumping loudly in his chest, and he wondered if Ryan could hear it. “And how would you go about doing that?”

Ryan held back a smile by biting his lip, but Josh could see it trying to come through. “I could always kiss you. That would probably shut you up.”

Were they flirting? Or better yet, was Ryan flirting with him? Josh could barely believe it. But he couldn’t get enough of it, and he never wanted it to stop. Especially if kissing Ryan was on the table. That was all he could think of then.

“Well now I one hundred percent will never shut up if it means you’ll kiss me.”

Ryan brushed a piece of hair behind his ear. “Yeah?” he asked, as if Josh wouldn’t want to kiss him.

“Yeah,” Josh assured him, then found himself inching a little bit closer. “Ryan?” He started hesitantly. “Can I kiss you?”

Ryan’s eyes widened a bit, and he seemed completely caught off guard for a second. “I-” he started, then paused, letting in a shaky breath. “Yeah, uh, you can if you want.”

Josh found himself deflating a little bit. “Ryan,” he said, his voice taking over a more concerned tone, rather than its previously excited one. “You can say no if you want to, I won’t be mad. Or upset. I only want to kiss you if you want me to kiss you.”

Ryan nodded, and inched closer to Josh, mirroring the drummer’s movements only a few minutes prior. “I want to kiss you I’ve just…” he trailed off, blushing a bit. He took a breath, and let his features fall carefully blank. Josh could see Ryan almost physically putting up an emotional wall and he didn’t like it, it made him want to frown. “I’ve never kissed anyone, okay?” Ryan said, his voice monotonous in a way that Josh had never heard before.

Josh furrowed his eyebrows. “So like...was that supposed to make me not want to kiss you, because I still do. Believe it or not, Ryan, I actually do like you.”

Now it was Ryan’s turn to frown. “But, why?”

Josh was a little startled by the question, but started to think of a reply. “I don’t really know why, I guess.” He said finally. “I just, know that I do. Like, you know that your Mom is your Mom, or the guy in the back of your class is going to be a douche. It’s an intuition. I know that I like you, I can already feel a connection, a tie to you. I don’t know much about you yet, but I really do want to know you.” Josh gave Ryan an unsure glance. “I hope you want to get to know me too.”

Ryan’s gaze was mostly on his shoes, but then he looked up so his stare was directed back in Josh’s direction. “What if we don’t like what we find?” he asked.

Josh shrugged. “I mean, I doubt that. We’re soulmates.”

“My dad never had a soulmate.” Ryan admitted, and he sounded so bitter than Josh was taken aback. “Doesn’t it scare you though?” Ryan asked getting closer, his eyes looked frightened. “We’re soulmates, but what if we don’t like each other after all? What if we fuck up? What if the whole soulmate thing is wrong? What then?”

“I don’t know.” Josh answered honestly. Sure, some of the concerns that Ryan was bringing up he had thought of before, but he had always dismissed them quickly, being comforted by the fact that soulmates worked out. They existed for a reason, and that every soulmate relationship he had ever seen seemed blissful, like they were truly sculpted specifically for each other.

“I thought I wasn’t going to have a soulmate, like my dad.” Ryan uttered quietly.

“Why would you think that?” Josh asked, baffled as to why someone would assume that. Especially because lacking a soulmate had nothing to do with genetics, or had any DNA links.

Ryan gave Josh a wry smile. “‘Cause I’m pretty fucked up.” He gave Josh a calculating glance. “I wonder what you did that was so bad it earned you a soulmate like me.”

Josh could feel his mouth slightly gaping open. He tried to process Ryan’s words, but before he could really put together a response the walls of the room that they were in started shaking. Ryan glanced up like he wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

Josh then felt the familiar feeling of getting faint, as if his body was starting to float, and then he was waking up.

+ 11 DAYS

Josh looked around the white room confused. He knew that he was supposed to be looking for something, but he couldn’t find it. The room was completely bare as well, so he had no idea how he could even begin to look for an object. There was also a ringing in his ears that was making everything hazy and hard to concentrate.

Then the room started slowly getting smaller and Josh panicked, hurriedly pressing against the walls, but it was useless. They continued to press against him until the room was barely the size of his body. He couldn’t breathe. The hard white walls were crushing his chest. He gasped for air as the ringing got louder and louder, until he scrabbled to squeeze his hands against his ears in an attempt to block it out.

Suddenly, the walls completely subsided, and Josh found himself collapsing onto the floor of another room. But this time, this one was all black and seemed to go on forever. Josh choked for air, taking deep breaths, as he could still feel the ghosts of the other walls suffocating his entire body.

When he looked up he saw Ryan. But it wasn’t like any version of Ryan he had ever been familiar with. This Ryan looked so pale that he was only sickly, with deep purple bags under his eyes. He stared at Josh completely expressionless, with his eyes open and unblinking. He was as still as a statue, and every hair on Josh’s body was standing on end. That wasn’t Ryan. He knew it, but it looked like him enough that he wanted to get closer, to at least touch.

When he opened his mouth to speak his hands immediately grabbed onto his throat as his eyes widened. He felt as if someone was wrapping their hands around his neck and choking him. “Why didn’t you find me?” He heard Ryan’s voice ask, but it was warped, and just wrong.

Josh tried to get the words out, that he had been looking for him, that he was never going to rest until he found him and made sure that he was okay. But the choking only got more intense until he started seeing spots around his vision.

Then, as soon as it appeared it was gone. Josh gagged, and his hands held onto the ground for dear life as he tried to get air back into his lungs. When he finally glanced up, he jumped backwards because Ryan was right in front of him. But this time his eyes were missing, and instead they were replaced by empty patches a skin. Though, he was grinning maniacally.
“Why didn’t you find me?” He asked again, but this time his voice wasn’t warped. It sounded so like Ryan that it made something in Josh’s chest dislodge.

“Ryan I-” Josh started, trying desperately to reach out to him. At that point he didn’t care that it wasn’t Ryan. He just needed to touch him, and make sure he was real. But then the hands came back quickly, wrapping around his throat, trying to cut off all his air supply. But this time Josh wasn’t going to be deterred. “Ryan,” he choked out, he could feel his eyes watering. “I love you.”

The hands left once again, and Josh looked around the black room desperately to see if there was an escape. But before he could find anything he was being choked once again. But this time when he looked up, Ryan was the one whose hands were wrapped around his throat. Along with his eyes missing, his mouth had been erased this time. But Josh could hear the voice repeat its haunting words. “Why didn’t you find me?”

Josh’s vision started fading to black as Ryan’s fingers squeezed tighter and tighter. Josh’s hands desperately clawed at his hands, trying to get them to relent, even if only an inch, but it was to no avail. Josh could feel his chest constricted, and he could feel himself dying. He could feel his organs shutting down from lack of air, if only he could breathe-

Josh woke up with a start, and took in a huge gulp of air, which only caused him to start coughing. He hunched over in bed and nearly hocked up a lung as he tried to remind his body that it had just been a dream, and that he could breathe. That nobody in real life was choking him.

His body was covered in a cold sweat, and it made him shiver, so he tugged the covers over his body, before looking at the clock. It was early in the morning and the sun hadn’t even started to rise, but Josh knew he wasn’t going to go to sleep again for at least a few hours. Not with a dream like that. When Josh shivered again, he didn’t know if it was because of the cold, or the memory of Ryan’s face with no eyes or mouth.

After a few seconds he threw the covers off of him and stumbled into the bathroom. He turned on the light, and then twisted the knob to get the water in the sink running. He immediately scooped some up and splashed it against his face. He scrubbed a little bit, and took a few deep breaths. It didn’t make him feel as refreshed as they always made it seem in the movies.

When he looked at his face in the mirror he cringed. The water dripped down his face, but it didn’t mask the pallor of his skin, and how sickly he appeared. If NBC needed a new teen to play a late stage cancer patient on their newest procedural medical drama, then Josh was their man.

On his way back over to his bed he tripped over the plastic bag of hair dye that he had bought on impulse the night before. He picked it up, briefly debated what he was going to do and tossed all of the stuff into the bathroom. He picked up the instructions that Danni had given him and got to work.

He bleached his hair successfully, after managing somehow to get a patch of it onto his boxers. When rinsing off his hair the first time he pretty much got himself soaked his entire shoulder and torso area. Then he rubbed the red hair dye all over his hair. While he was waiting for it to take to his hair he couldn’t help but stare down at his hands, that were stained a bright red.

His stomach clenched as his brain helpfully supplied that it looked like his hands were covered in blood. He swallowed the bile the collected in the back of his throat, and decided that he needed to get more sleep, and try his best to forget his dream, and all the other Ryan related nightmares he had been having since the connection was severed, if he had any chance at staying sane. He started scrubbing harshly at his hands under warm water. After a while of vigorous washing the color had faded to a dull hot pinkish tone. It was still noticeable, but as long as it wasn’t red Josh was pleased.

He rinsed out his hair, and then washed it using the tiny shitty bottles that the motel thankfully provided in the shower. Once all the red stained the water in the tub was properly out, Josh dried it off with a towel that was really more of a rag than anything else. He then brushed it, and blow dried it, using the one connected to the wall. It had barely any air pressure to it, but Josh didn’t have much hair so it didn’t take too long.

He put off looking in the mirror for a few minutes, before shaking himself. He then stepped over in front of the mirror. When he finally made eye contact with himself he was taken aback.

The red was bright, eye-catching, but it looked good. Josh was surprised. He never had viewed himself as someone who would look good with really bright and drastically colored hair. But he liked it.

“Favorite color?”

“Umm...blue or red.” Josh told him. “What’s yours?”

“It’s probably red.”

Josh gave his appearance one more once over, then he went over to his duffel bag and pulled on a pair of pants and t-shirt. He grabbed his duffel bag, and got all of his stuff together, though he didn’t really unpack anything over the night. Then he checked out of the hotel. There was a small diner down the road a little ways from the motel. Josh figured he would get food there before he got on a bus to Massachusetts.

When he sat down at one of the booths and hungrily looked over the menu, he tried to ignore the waitresses eyeing him up, and their whispers. When one of the younger ones finally came over to him, with her pad perched in his hand he thought it best if he defended himself a bit. “I’m not homeless,” he tried to reassure. “I have a home, and I have money to pay for my food I’m just-” he paused, not really wanting pity, but decided that he needed to give his full story if they were going to actually believe him. “I’m looking for my soulmate.”

The girl gave him a small sad smile. “Well, my name is Lynn. Can I get you a drink first?” She asked kindly.

Josh nodded, and sheepishly ordered a coke.

After Josh had drank a decent amount of coke and had a meal of appropriately greasy french fries and a burger, Lynn slid into the other side of his booth. He was a bit startled, but gave her a smile anyway. “Can I help you?”

She gave him a sideways grin. That's when Josh noticed that she had two distinct bare spots on her right eyebrow. He found it interesting, but wasn't going to pry and ask whether it was natural from a scar, or if she chose to shave it like that. Lynn leaned back and didn’t say anything for a little bit, before speaking. “I get off in like, five minutes, but I wanted to know your story, I guess. I want to hear why you're looking for your soulmate.”

Josh glanced down at his empty plate, and traced a stray glob of ketchup around it. He let out a long breath. “Hey,” Lynn assured him gently. “If you don't want to talk about it you can tell me to fuck off, I was just curious.”

“It's fine.” Josh told her, and he meant it. He was just trying to figure out what he wanted to say. The only person who really knew the whole story between him and Ryan was Tyler. But Tyler didn't really count as a person in Josh’s book, he was more of an extension of himself if he was to be honest. “Right now I'm just trying to get to Massachusetts, ‘cause that's the only lead I really have so far.”

Lynn’s eyes widened. “Do you know where in Massachusetts?” Her voice sounded excited.

“Well, I’d have to check the post on the forum again, but Massachusetts isn't that big of a state so once I get there, it shouldn't be too hard to get a bus or something to get to where I need to get to where I need to be.” Josh rationalized.

Lynn whistled. “This is your lucky day kid.” She gave him a big grin. “My brother is up in college at Northeastern University, which is right out of Boston, where we grew up. I was actually planning on heading up there tonight to visit him, since I'm off the next couple of days. Would you like a ride?”

Josh’s jaw dropped. “That would be so amazing!” He then started ruffling through his duffel bag. “I could give you gas money if you want,” he offered.

Lynn though, just waved her hand. “Nah, don't worry about it. You need to save your money. Being on the road is expensive. Plus, I was going to go up there anyway, and you're not going anywhere out of my way. If anything, you'll just be someone to keep me entertained and awake during the drive.”

Josh could only smile at her, so grateful that this stranger happened to be going in the same direction he was, and was offering an act of kindness to someone she didn't know from Adam. “Thank you,” Josh told her earnestly.

She checked her watch. “Okay, I'm gonna go home for a few hours because I need to shower, change, and pack, you know, the whole shebang. So, I'll probably meet up with you in a few hours. How does 6 o'clock sound? We can just meet up here.”

Josh nodded vigorously. “That’s perfect. Seriously, I can't thank you enough.”

When Lynn climbed out of the booth Josh couldn't help with stand up and give her a hug. At first she was a little surprised, but she quickly hugged him back. “Thank you so much.” He reiterated again, realizing that during his journey of finding Ryan he was probably going to have to rely on a lot of kindness from strangers.

Lynn only let out a little laugh. “You better have great taste in music,” she joked, before pulling away from his embrace. She then pointed the finger at him. “Six o’clock, don't be late.”

Josh mock saluted. “Got it.”

- 42 DAYS

When Josh woke up in the dream that night, he couldn’t help but let out a small sigh of relief. All day he found himself thinking about Ryan; trying to figure him out. He was an enigma wrapped inside a mystery, but Josh couldn’t help but already start to feel as if he was falling for him. Every new thing he learned about him only lead him to more questions that he wanted to ask. Though, Ryan would hardly ever give him a straight answer to anything that wasn’t trivial.

Josh wanted to know why more than anything, but he also feared that there was a reason why Ryan was hiding things from him. He knew that if he was, there wasn’t a malicious intent. That didn’t stop him from wondering.

Whenever Josh was in the dreams though, it settled all the racing thoughts in his mind, and was the highlight of his day. When he was in the dreams none of his problems that day mattered. He never thought about all the awful things that come with senior year or graduation, or his parents nagging him about college, his grades, or anything he no longer deemed important. Because, all that mattered when he was dreaming was Ryan.

Ryan was in his usual corner, with his knees pulled up to his chest. His overgrown curls flopped over, effectively hiding his face. Josh waited a few moments to try and gauge what kind of night it was going to be. Whether Ryan was going to be completely shut off, and Josh was going to have to do all of the talking, while alarm bells went off in the back of his head the whole time. Or Ryan would soon shake off the remnants of wherever he came from, and become more personable within a few moments.

Those times were Josh’s favorite, because they always made him fall even more hopelessly in love with him.

Though after a small passage of time that was filled with Josh gnawing on his lip anxiously and thinking of something to say, Josh noticed that Ryan was shaking. When he noticed, he immediately scooted forward so that there wasn’t that much space between them. The tremors going through Ryan’s body were not the ones of shivers from when you’re cold, they were thick, and terrified.

“Ryan?” Josh asked, his voice tentative. His heart was stuttering in his chest as his brain filtered through all of the things that could be wrong, and none of them made him feel any better. His stomach dropped as he wondered if the reason why Ryan refused to look at him, and the placement of his long floppy curls were connected.

Ryan flinched as soon as he heard his name spoken. Josh’s voice sounded loud in the empty room. Josh, despite wanting to scoot back and give Ryan his space, knew that in doing so, no problems would be solved. So instead, he took a deep breath and asked with the softest, kindest voice he could muster. “Ryan, look at me. Please?” When he didn’t move, Josh could feel all of his worries rocketing up so fast that he could barely breath. “Baby, please look at me?” Josh begged, his voice cracking at the end.

Finally, Ryan slowly moved his head up so he was looking at Josh. His hair fell away from his eyes and Josh watched, and muted his gasp as soon as the blooming bruise along the beautiful boy’s upper cheekbone and outer edge of his eye was revealed; paired with one getting darker across his jaw. He was staring at Josh with shiny eyes, and the bruises, with the expression cascading over Ryan’s face made Josh want to cry.

“He said you weren’t real.” Ryan muttered desperately as he grabbed onto the collar of Josh’s shirt. “You have to be real. I’ll do it if you’re not. I will.”

Ryan seemed close to hysteria. He found himself asking “do what?” confusedly, but as soon as he spoke Ryan was letting go and pushing him away. Though the movement felt weak and indecisive. So, Josh took one of Ryan’s hands and pressed it against his chest, hoping that he could feel his heartbeat.

“I’m real.” Josh promised. He looked Ryan dead in the eye, not breaking contact. “My name is Joshua William Dun. My best friend is Tyler Robert Joseph. I’m about to graduate from Worthington Christian High School. I have two sisters, Abby and Ashley, and a brother, Jordan. My birthday is June 18th, and I am real.” Josh told Ryan, nearly breathless from saying all he could think of in one go, but with conviction nonetheless.

Ryan only shook his head a shrunk away. “You’re not. You’re not real. I know you’re not.”

“Ryan-” Josh started but stopped as Ryan only continued to shake his head rapidly. He curled his body inwards, pressed his face into his knees.

“You’re not real, you’re not real, you’re not real,” he chanted over and over again, and Josh couldn’t think of any way to get him to stop.

Every instinct he had wanted him to reach out and pull Ryan into a hug. He didn’t know how to convince him that he was real. Everything he could think of seemed stupid and meaningless. He could try and give out all the details about him, but he knew that wasn’t going to convince Ryan of anything.

So he sat helplessly as Ryan convinced himself repeatedly that Josh wasn’t real.

He had a million questions. Why would someone be saying all these things to Ryan? Who was the one leaving bruises all over his face? Why was he always in the corner, so afraid? Josh didn’t want to believe that maybe all of those things were connected to each other, but he had an inkling that they were.

Josh tried to reach forward. He didn’t even really know what he was going to do, or what he was going to achieve, but as soon as he was close Ryan shoved him away. “Don’t touch me!” Ryan yowled, with the most conviction and volume that Josh had ever heard from him.

Josh landed awkwardly on his side and stared at Ryan, eyes wide. He had never seen Ryan like that. He had never seen Ryan as someone to fear. He winced, as he felt pain blossoming up his side. He knew it wouldn’t last outside of the dream. But if it had happened in the real world, Josh was certain that he’d be left with a nasty bruise to show for it.

Ryan pressed himself as far back to the wall as he could. Like he was trying to get out. Josh knew that if he wanted to bad enough he could probably wake himself up. But at the moment, Ryan was gaping at Josh, while his eyes moved back and forth, sweeping across the room wildly like a caged animal.

“I know you’re not real,” he told Josh, like he had figured out his long-kept secret. “You’re not real.” Then a bright light flashed its way into the room, in straight blinding beams. Josh glanced back at Ryan one more time, but when he blinked, he was opening his eyes to his own bedroom, with a cold sweat running down his forehead and back.

+ 11 DAYS

Josh woke with a start, and at first he felt panicked because he didn’t recognize where he was. But then, it all slowly faded back to him as his mind groggily pieced together that he was in a car, that was traveling down a highway.

Lynn glanced over at him. “Hey dude, you were out for a while. Welcome back to the land of the living.”

Josh adjusted himself so he was sitting up in the seat, and not leaning against the hard window like he had been before. His neck ached from the awkward position. He rubbed his eyes, and ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to wake up a little more. “Sorry,” he told Lynn, as he remembered that one of the reasons she had listed off to bringing him was so he could keep her “entertained” during the drive.

Lnn only waved a hand, before placing it back on the steering wheel. “Don’t worry about it. Plus,” she said, giving him a meaningful glance. “You definitely needed it. You were starting to look like a walking corpse.”

“How far out are we?” Josh asked, then cleared his throat. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard and saw that he had been asleep for a little over two hours. It had felt like he had passed out for a while though. As he groggily thought back to his dream, he was grateful that he hadn’t had a nightmare, which seemed to be a rare occurrence after the connection had been severed.

He swallowed heavily, and tried to push down the memory of that particular dream. He instead turned his attention back to Lynn.

“I’d say probably a little less than two hours. Maybe around an hour and a half.”

Josh nodded, and then a silence filtered over the car. He noticed that Lynn had turned down the radio very low, probably as to not disturb him in his nap. He was about to open his mouth, and do some form of another apology, but Lynn cut him off.

She cleared her own throat, awkwardly. “So, I know it’s probably personal, and you don’t have to tell me. But, I will admit that I’m kind of curious about your soulmate situation. You said you were looking for him?”

Josh sighed. He had no problem talking about Ryan. In fact, he would gush about him to any stranger he could find. What he didn’t like was telling the story. He knew how it sounded. He knew what everyone thought. But, he also knew that there was no way Ryan was dead. He could feel it in his bones, his blood, and every inch of his body that Ryan was still out there, all he needed to do was find him.

Josh bit his lip. He didn’t feel like going into details, because that involved way too many painful dreams, and questions that he didn’t want to answer. “Long story short is that we dreamed together for a little over two months, he’s got a pretty bad home life, and issues with depression. One night we got into a fight, the next night he won’t do anything but tell me he’s sorry. Then-” Josh paused, and took a steadying breath. “Then suddenly we’re not dreaming together anymore, and the connection was gone.” Lynn didn’t say anything. “So now I’m looking for him.”

Lynn nodded, and seemed to be taking her time with a response. After a little bit she finally spoke. “I can’t imagine. Sometimes my soulmate Maya is the only reason I can make it through the day. Okay, now don’t hate for saying this. But you know I have to ask. Have you considered the fact that he might be, you know…” she trailed, clearly not wanting to finish what she was saying, though Josh knew exactly what she was implying.

“I know he’s not dead.” He had hoped that he voice would come out absolute, or at least, as absolute as he felt about Ryan not being dead, but instead, it only came out tired, and worn. He sighed. “Everyone back home kept trying to tell me that he was dead. That it made sense. And I mean fuck, even I can admit if you’re just looking purely at the facts is does look like that.” He picked at a loose piece that was coming off his jeans, making the hole over the knee even bigger and noticeable.

“You just feel like he’s not.” Lynn finished for him, seeming to understand.

Josh nodded. “Like, I’d know if he was dead. I’d feel that something was missing, or a sense of loss, you know? But I don’t. Even though I’m not having the dreams, I still feel that hum, like the connection is still there?” Josh deflated. “It doesn’t make any sense. But I know he’s still out there. All I need to do is find him.”

“Wow,” Lynn breathed. “That’s some pretty heavy stuff.” Then she gave him a sideways look. “How old even are you, kid?”

“What’s today’s date?” Josh asked.

“Uh, June 11th.” Lynn told him, confused.

“I’ll be eighteen in seven days then.”

Lynn gaped. “Holy fuck, you’re only 17?”

Josh shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yeah, I uh, skipped graduation. Parents weren’t too happy about that.”

“Jesus,” Lynn muttered under her breath. “Happy early birthday!” she yelled with enthusiasm, and the sudden change in atmosphere almost made him jump out of his seat. “Grab my phone and look up the nearest Denny’s.”

Josh wrinkled his nose. “What, why?”

“Because we need to get the birthday boy a birthday cake milkshake and a grand slam.” She told him. Josh was about to object, but she cut him off. “I am buying you a birthday cake milkshake and grand slam and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Josh then obediently looked up the nearest Denny’s on her phone. He couldn’t help but grin the whole time, then realized as they pulled into the parking lot a short while later, that it was the first time he had genuinely smiled in what felt like forever.

- 36 DAYS

The next few days were spent by Josh sitting in his corner - the one he had claimed as his home in the dreams for what seemed like the foreseeable future. Ryan refused to look at him, or even speak to him. The only words that he would utter were ones about Josh not being real. He didn’t understand what was going on, but there was clearly an outside force in Ryan’s life feeding him the delusions.

Josh ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. He was exhausted. The past couple days he had woken up feeling as if he hadn’t slept at all. He had started to get bags under his eyes, and he sluggishly went through his day. He messed up a bunch of orders at work because he couldn’t focus on anything other than Ryan.

He had tried talking about it Tyler, but found that it was impossible to put everything into words. What he managed to get out had Tyler concerned, and worried whether his soulmate was toxic. Josh didn’t know how to explain that Ryan wasn’t the one who was toxic, it was just everyone else who was, so he kept his mouth shut. He knew that he had a hero complex, he knew that. But he didn’t think it was fair to blame Ryan for that.

But Josh was starting to get close to a breaking point. He wasn’t eating. Sleeping was near impossible. He spent all day worrying about the night that was to come. With Ryan shutting him out he felt like he was slowly being ripped apart.

So he sat in his corner, his throat tight and clogged, his fingers digging into the seams of his jeans. A hangnail snagged on a stitch, causing it to tear and draw blood. Which was it for Josh. It was it.

“Would you just talk to me?” Josh ended up yelling, and it came out sharp, echoing across the small room. Josh wasn’t above begging. “Please?”

When Ryan still didn’t look at him, he was ready to cry. The last time he had cried was when he stopped Tyler from attempting suicide back in Sophomore year. But this felt just as bad.

Josh curled in on himself, he couldn’t quite do it as well as Ryan could. He probably didn’t have half the practice, and wasn’t half as small as he was. He rested his cheek against his knee and tried to breathe the best he could.

When he glanced up, he saw that Ryan was finally looking back at him. But the way his eyes traced over his face and skin made Josh’s skin crawl. He didn’t look at him like a lover, a friend, or even an acquaintance. He looked at Josh like a kid getting a first look at their friend’s science project. Or better yet, like a mad scientist in awe of what he’d created.

Josh closed his eyes. He squeezed them shut as he tried to ignore the ache in his chest. “You’re killing me,” he said finally, his voice coming out choked, and strangled in a way that he had never heard before.

“I can’t kill you.” Ryan told him matter-of-factly, his voice completely monotone. “Because you’re not real.”

+ 12 days

Josh woke up from his dream on a cold, hard park bench. After Lynn had dropped him off, he promised to stay safe and out of trouble. But after he had taken a look at all the money he had brought with him, and thought about the price of the motel that he stayed in, his stomach sunk. He didn’t have enough money to be staying at places, even if they were the cheapest America had to offer, every night.

It was summer in Boston, so he didn’t have to worry about being cold, or getting sick. He immediately shot down the idea of staying at a shelter. He wasn’t going to take a spot from someone in need, just because he had chose to go after his soulmate. He had chosen to leave his home. He wasn’t going to feed off the system.

He found a bench in a park that was near a housing development he didn’t have to walk too far to find. He hoped that nobody would kick him out, or call the cops. All he wanted was to sleep there, and then he would move on somewhere else in the morning. He would find a place that sold phone books, and look through all of the most recent class rosters until he found Ryan’s name. If he didn’t, then he would move on.

When he woke up, his heart was pounding, and he cringed at the spots of sweat all over his t-shirt. He knew a good amount of it was probably from sleeping all night in the summer heat. Though, it had gotten a little chilly the longer the night progressed, so he knew that he couldn’t blame it on that, as much as he wished.

As he got up and retrieved all of his belongings that he had tucked under the bench, he gritted his teeth and tried to block out his most recent dream.

”I can’t kill you.” Ryan told him. Well, it was Ryan’s voice, but as Josh turned around frantically in the room, he couldn’t find him. He could feel his heart racing as he tried to figure out where Ryan was.

Then, as if he had always been there, Ryan was on the other side of the room, and was walking towards him. “I can’t kill you.” Ryan repeated as he got closer to Josh. Then he began to grin, but it was unnatural and twisted. His smile morphed more into a manic cheshire cat than the Ryan that Josh knew. Josh tried to step back, to get away. But he couldn’t, he was trapped. He had to stand completely frozen as Ryan’s smile got wider and wider, until it was splitting his face grotesquely, appearing truly crazy.

“I can’t kill you Joshy,” Ryan cooed, his voice sugary sweet, “because you’re already dead.”

Then he was falling. Josh was falling to his death. He opened his mouth to scream, but found that all of the air had been taken out of his lungs. His arms flailed, as he seemed to fall forever. He tried to find something to grab onto, to stop him, but he couldn’t find anything but empty air.

Josh zipped up his hoodie with determination, then strapped his duffel bag over his shoulder. He gave the bench that he had spent the night on more glance before he started walking. The goal was to walk until he got to the more populated part of the town- which might take an hour or so, but hopefully less- before finding another coffee shop that provided internet. There, he could organise himself, work out a plan.

When he finally reached the downtown area, a coffee shop wasn’t too hard to find. This one had a Starbucks, so he tucked himself into a corner booth and booted up his laptop. His phone had been cut off within a few days of him leaving home, so it no longer made calls or had any service. Josh figured he could probably still call 911 on it though, if it came to that.

He sent a quick email to Tyler telling him that he was alive, and in Massachusetts, but that was basically it. He knew that Tyler deserved more, or at least, a little more of a detailed update. But he didn’t have the energy, and plus, he hadn’t really achieved anything or had any solid leads yet, so it felt more like admitting defeat than anything.

He spent the next couple hours going through every high school in the Massachusetts, and going through their rosters of students. He searched and searched and searched for the name Ryan Ross until his eyes felt like they were going to fall out of his sockets, and bought a coffee after the waitresses started giving him dubious glances - all to no avail.

Josh was starting to think that he lead was bogus. While he had wifi, he went over to some of the blogs and forums that he had been posting on, and saw that he had a notification on one of the threads he started. The person said they knew someone who fitted Ryan’s description, and went by “RJ”, who lived in a crackhouse in eastern New Jersey, outside of Jersey City near Belleville.

Josh sipped his coffee, and grimaced as it had gone cold. He lulled around the post in his head. It checked out with several things. He didn’t know Ryan’s middle name, so he could very well go by RJ. As much as Josh didn’t like the idea of Ryan living in a crackhouse, it would explain why he frequently was covered in bruises and some of his behavior. Maybe his firm belief that Josh wasn’t real was somehow a hallucination created by his lonely brain.

Josh decided to dismiss buying a phone book, because he doubted that he would find Ryan where he was, so instead, he looked up bus schedules to New Jersey. After checking the schedules Josh hurriedly packed up all of his stuff and tucked away his computer. There was a bus going to New Jersey, but it was leaving in only 45 minutes, so Josh was going to have to haul ass, or wait a week and a half for another one.

After Josh had made it to the station and bought his ticket, his eyes were caught by a work of graffiti on one of the back walls of the station. It was faded, as if part of it had begun to wash away from rain, and other weather ages.

Josh’s eyes traced over the black silhouette of a man carrying his backpack, hiking up a mountain. On the other side of the wall was a girl, who had her own backpack, and was climbing up her own mountain. Though, there was a wall separating both of them from their mountains, and prohibiting them from ever actually climbing over them.

Then, in messy scrawl underneath it read, hope you get to wherever you’re going. Josh stared at it for a few more seconds, before he realized that the bus was going to leave. But before that, he hastily grabbed the camera that he brought with him and snapped a picture of it. Then he tossed his camera back into his bag, and ran to climb up the stairs of the bus.

When the bus was on the road, he rested his head against the window and wondered what New Jersey would be like, for, he had never been.

-38 DAYS

Josh didn’t know what to expect that night in their dream. The night before he had begged Ryan to wake them up from it because he couldn’t stand being in the suffocating room with him anymore. Ryan had looked surprised, but soon enough they were both waking up.

“Tell me more about you?” Ryan spoke up, after only a few short moments.

Josh was so startled by the sound of his voice, he nearly smacked his head on the back of the wall. “What?” He asked incredulously.

“You told me to say something.” Ryan said calmly, “So, I’m saying, tell me about yourself.”

Josh was cautious. Ryan talking to him, let alone talking to him amicably, almost seemed too good to be true. He didn’t want to push his luck. “What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know, just tell me stuff. Little stuff I guess. Like about your childhood, maybe? You said Tyler was your best friend - tell me about him.”

Josh ran his fingers through his hair, getting it caught on a few tangles from his curls. “My childhood was pretty normal? There wasn’t super special, or bad or anything like that about it. I have my mom and dad, then I have two sisters and a brother. My parents are kind of strict, but just in that they’re religious and have high expectations, you know?” Josh swallowed as Ryan nodded. “I was raised like every suburban kid. Church every Sunday, I go to this dumb private school, where everyone thinks they’re better than everyone else just because we have to wear uniforms and the other guys don’t.”

“But I love my parents. Even if they don’t always get me all the time, I still love them. They uh, found my Dookie CD though last week, so I’ve basically been under lock down, and only allowed to listen to Relient K, or the Gospel station on my Mom’s radio.”

“Tell me about Tyler?” Ryan asked softly, when Josh paused, running out of things to say.

Josh couldn’t help but smiling a little bit. “Tyler’s my best friend. We used to make jokes about being soulmates before he dreamed with Jenna. He’s the greatest person alive. He’s, smart, and kind, and he writes these songs on the piano. They’re amazing. He said that he’s going to start putting words to them soon and making them “real songs”. Which, just from picking his brain for a few minutes has me convinced that they’re going to be the best songs ever.”

Josh trained his gaze onto his shoes. “He has a lot of bad stuff in his head though. He’s struggled with depression pretty much the whole time I’ve known him. There’s times that it’s gotten really bad. Jenna has helped a lot. But it’s really scary knowing that he could go back to the way it was before at any time with no warning. It’s always inconsistent and unpredictable.”

Ryan was quiet for a little while. “I know what that’s like.” He said finally. “I’ve never imagined myself living past 21,” he admitted.

Josh closed his eyes, realizing that it was a lot to take in. “Tyler used to be the same way. Until he met Jenna, she saved him.”

Ryan frowned at Josh’s words. “You can’t save me, Josh,” he told him.

Josh’s stomach sunk. “Are you going to tell me that I’m not real again?”

Ryan paused, seemingly thinking it over. “I won’t.” But he didn’t seem entirely convinced.

+ 13 DAYS

Josh wasn’t expecting it when he turned around the corner. Sure, he knew he was in the shady part of town, and it was Jersey for god’s sake, but he still was naive enough to take a shortcut to the diner he was going to to get dinner at that night. But before he could really process what was going on he was being pushed up against the brick wall of the alley, and sharp object, which Josh’s brain helpfully supplied was a knife was being pressed against his throat.

Josh could feel his heart starting to pound as the knife dug into his skin. He couldn’t breathe, or even think.

You always wonder at some point or another what you’re going to be like in a near death experience. Are you a screamer? Someone who loses their mind, writhes around, becomes completely hysterical, begging to be let free, for god to let you live? Or, are you a silent accepting type? You accept your fate, and let whatever supposed to happen, happen?

Josh had always heard that your life flashes before your eyes. But for him, when his lungs seized in his chest as the knife dug hard enough against his throat to garner a streak of blood to drizzle down his neck, the tape of his life came to a screeching halt. No matter how many times he hit the rewind, or eject button, it stayed in its frozen position.

“Give me the bag.” A gravely voice commanded close to his ear. Josh wanted to recoil as the man’s breath smelled heavily of cigarettes and beer.

Josh didn’t have much choice, but he found himself thrusting the bag towards the man. Josh tried to keep quiet as the man starting digging through the bag with one hand, while keeping the knife against Josh’s skin at the same time. The man found his stash of money pretty quickly. He hastily shoved it into his pocket.

He tossed Josh’s bag a few feet away down the alley, and turned his attention back to him. “I should slit your throat,” he told him.

The only thing that Josh could do was close his eyes. He could feel his hands, and most of his other limbs shaking. He didn’t want to die here. Of all the places he had thought of dying before he had never imagined he would be in a dirty alley in Jersey. He couldn’t imagine dying without ever seeing Ryan in person, without ever finding him. God, what would Ryan do if he died?

Even though Josh had stopped a while ago, he found himself start to pray. First begging that Ryan would be watched over, and then that he would be forgiven for all the sins he had committed, and apologized for neglecting God for the past few years.

He was so caught up in praying, saying all the words with most conviction and hope that he could muster, that he didn’t even notice when the man stepped away from him, and lowered the knife from his throat.

The sound died in Josh’s mouth as he opened and watched the man, who was now about two feet away from him. The man’s faced twisted into something sinister as he launched forward.

“God won’t save you, boy.” The man growled as he thrusted the knife into Josh’s side.

Josh cried out as the white hot pain shot up his side, and spread over his abdomen. It hurt so bad that it felt like it was rattling his skull. After the knife was lodged into Josh’s side, the man hurried out of the alley, and Josh fell, landing on his other side. His hands went to where the knife was, and felt something warm, wet, and sticky, that he immediately identified as blood.

The blood covered his hands, and started running down his leg. The pain was intense, and all encompassing, but Josh knew that he needed to get the knife out if he was going to survive, and he had to get out of the alley. Because nobody would help him there.

He choked on a muffled scream as tried to stand up, quickly finding that he couldn’t. So he pushed up on his arms and started to crawl. The pain got even worse as he tried to move, and he could feel the gravel digging into his hands as he tried to desperately make his way to the opening of the alley that lead to the street.

“Help!” He screamed, hoping that somebody was around that would hear him, and not turn a blind eye. “Please” he begged, as a sob made its way out of him, like it had been ripped from his vocal chords.He tried again: “somebody help me!”

His leg was bleeding so badly that it was leaving a trail of blood where he had crawled. Suddenly he heard a voice that wasn’t too far away, saying, “Did you hear that?”

Figuring this was Josh’s only chance he started screaming at the top of his lungs. He called and called as he felt the tears streaming down his face. He didn’t have enough energy to move anymore, and collapsed on the floor. His breaths were ragged and he didn’t know how much blood he had already lost. He knew vaguely that he should be applying pressure, and bandaging it.

When he was starting to think that he was going to die, he heard a voice - no, the same voice as before say, “Oh my god.” This time it wasn’t as far, in fact, it sounded like he was right next to him.

“Oh my god, Frank, help!” The guy yelled.

Within seconds Josh heard another voice, different than the other guy say intelligently. “What the fuck, Gerard.”

Josh opened his eyes. When did he close them? His vision was slightly blurry, but he managed to make out what the two guys looked like. One of them, the one was kneeling by him had shaggy bright red hair, nearly the same color that Josh had dyed his only a few days ago. The other guy, was stronger looking, less delicate, and was covered in tattoos.

“Fuck, there’s so much blood.” The redhead said, looking at Josh’s stomach. He turned to the guy standing at the end of the alley with his arms crossed. “We have to do something!”

“He’s probably a junkie, Gee.” Frank said with a sigh, but he was crouching down next to Josh too.

“Who the fuck cares if he’s a junkie!” Gerard exclaimed shrilly. “A few years ago I was a junkie and could’ve bled out in an alley. Would you say then that I deserved to die?”

“You hold him down.” The other guy, Josh presumed was Frank, said after a few tense seconds. “I’ll take the knife out.”

“Is that even a good thing to do?”

There was a long moment as the second guy, Frank, hesitated, and the small, rational-thinking part of Josh’s brain realised that these people had no idea what they were doing. That they were improvising.

The feeling of Gerard raising his arms above his head, a tight grip on his wrists, snapped him from his thoughts, and even though Josh could convince himself they were probably trying to help him, his first reaction was to fight against it in panic. But Gerard didn’t have a stab wound, or any blood lost, so even though Josh was bigger and stronger than him in actuality, he couldn’t put up any real semblance of a fight.

Then the knife was being taken out, and Josh heard rather than felt himself screaming. He screamed like the sounds were being torn right out of his chest. He had never been in that much pain before, and it hurt so much that he wondered if maybe he did want to die. If it meant that he wouldn’t be in pain anymore.

“Fucking, fuck.” He heard Frank say as something pressed hard against Josh’s side, right under his ribs, hopefully stopping some of the blood. Even though it made it harder for him to breathe. “We have to call an ambulance.”

“It’s Jersey,” Gerard replied dubiously. “You think this poor fucker has health insurance? We can take him back to the bus, we have a bunch of first aid stuff, it’s not that far.”

“Jesus Christ, what if he bleeds out? He’s lost a ton of blood. If he dies we could be charged with manslaughter,” Frank informed him incredulously. “I’m not going to jail over someone I’ve never even had a proper conversation with.”

“We’ll take him to the bus, do the best we can, but if it starts to look bad, then we’ll call an ambulance,” Gerard compromised.

He then felt a joint pair of arms start to lift him up. Sweat was sticking to his forehead, and drenching his head and all the way down his back. As soon as they got Josh standing up with the support of both Gerard and Frank, Josh tried to use all of his energy on getting his eyes to focus, and ignore the waves of pain he was continuously dunked in.

They got a few steps, when Josh managed to say, “I’m not a junkie.” His words were tight, if not a little slurred. Despite the circumstances, he could hear Frank laugh next to him. They made it a couple more steps before Josh remembered Ryan.

He didn’t even realize that he was saying his name out loud until Gerard asked urgently. “Ryan? Who’s Ryan? Is he the one who did this to you?”

“No.” Josh choked out, as he tried to breath, even though it was hard with how much pain he was in. “He’s my, he’s-” Josh was cut off by his own ragged gasp. With each step, the more everything hurt, and the more hazy he got.

“He’s your what?” Gerard prodded. “Is he your soulmate?”

Before he could answer the question Frank cut him off. “Can you hold him for a second? I’m gonna get the rest of the guys.”

He didn’t know what Gerard said, or did as a response, but the next second all of his weight was resting on his other side, as Frank left him. He vaguely heard Frank yell out some names, but it was getting harder to stay alert and comprehend what was going on.

“Shit!” he heard someone yell, then he was being carried up through a doorway, that maybe had some stairs? That action was followed by being laid on a floor. It felt like tile, and he was reminded of the floor that belonged to his kitchen back home. That was when he started to cry for real. Sobs rocked his chest. He didn’t want to die. He couldn’t die, not here, not like this.

Ryan was alone out there. Ryan was going to go to sleep and watch him die. Or maybe he wouldn’t know, he didn’t know how it worked once the connection was severed. Maybe Ryan would just wake up and feel empty. Then he’d know. Josh couldn’t die without seeing him. Without touching him in person, or without telling him how much he loved him.

He never would get to tell him about the house he found one time by accident. It was in a suburban neighborhood in Pennsylvania, not too far from his grandparents house. He found it when he was on a walk during a trip to visit his grandparents one summer when he was fifteen, after getting into a fight with parents. He immediately couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, and swore that once he found his soulmate and got a job, he would buy it.

He never told Ryan about the fantasy that would keep him sane whenever Ryan wasn’t there, or pushed him away. The one where they were married, and lived in the house, and they had dogs, and were happy. They were normal for once, and Josh didn’t have nightmares, and Ryan wasn’t hurting so much on the inside that he’d insist that Josh wasn’t real because he was sure that nobody could ever love him. The one where he loved him with every ounce of his being.

“I don’t want to die,” he found himself begging, his voice coming out strangled due to him nearly choking on his tears, and the snot that was coming out of his nose. Hands and things were all over his leg, and he felt something cold being poured on his stomach which burned and stung enough for him to cry even harder.

“Please,” he sobbed. “I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not going to die.” Gerard said next to him, and he felt a gentle cool hand over his forehead, wiping away his sweat drenched hair. “It’s okay.” He hushed. “You’re not going to die, I promise.”

When Josh opened his eyes he saw Ryan above him. He was the one who was holding his hand. He was dressed in all white, and his curly hair, that Josh loved more than anything in the universe, was flopping into his face. But he was looking at Josh with a smile. He was holding his hand and he looked so beautiful. He was so beautiful.

Josh knew then that he was dying. “I’m so sorry, Ryan,” he whimpered. He reached up and touched Ryan’s face. “I’m sorry I never found you.”

He let his his hand drop. He could feel the energy leaving his bones. He knew it was the end. He was terrified of it being the end. He closed his eyes, and let the blackness take him in. Maybe everyone else was right, and he would get to be with Ryan. Part of him hoped so, and the other hoped not.

- 22 DAYS

The first time that Josh heard Ryan’s laugh he knew he was in love. Even if Ryan tortured him in and out of the dreams, he couldn’t help but fall in love with his smile and his laugh. Josh couldn’t even remember what he said to make him laugh, but he wished with all his might he did. Just so he could say those words over and over again to get the same reaction.

“I love you.” Josh found himself saying. He hadn’t exactly meant to, but the words tumbled out of his mouth without abandon.

Ryan’s laughter quickly died in his throat. He stared at Josh with his lips parted. “Why’d you say that?” His eyes were wide.

Josh shrugged, his stomach was starting to feel a little sick, but he figured that he couldn’t answer Ryan with anything but honesty. “Because I felt it.”

“Yeah, but like-” Ryan seemed baffled. “What made you feel it now, and say it?”

Josh swallowed. “You laughed.”

Ryan shook his head disbelievingly. “You fall in love with a person, not a laugh. This isn’t some terrible teen movie.” Ryan then licked his lips. “Plus, you don’t love me.”

Josh couldn’t help but smile. “You can’t tell me what I can and can’t feel.” Josh couldn’t help but also add, “And it wasn’t just your laugh. I’d been feeling it since the first day we dreamed together, your laugh just...cemented it I guess?”

Ryan picked at hangnail on his thumb. His response was giving Josh a sad smile. “You must be crazier than I am.”

+ 14 DAYS

Josh was starting to get used to waking up in strange places. Though, he wasn’t planning on waking up in a hospital bed, with a hospital gown just barely covering his modesty. Not to mention an IV pricking a vein in his hand. He made a move to get up, but groaned as a slice of pain went through his side, and then he remembered.

Right, stabbed in a dirty Jersey alley, while being rescued by a couple of dudes. Josh took the hand that didn’t have a needle in it and rubbed over his abdomen. It was wrapped in gauze, and he felt like he had gone up against a cheese grater and lost. His skin felt like it was hanging together by a thread.

When he opened his eyes, which felt like they were weighted down with lead he might add, he noticed that the guy with bright red hair who’d helped him in the alley was sitting in the chair next to his bed, a comic book in one hand. Josh noticed the three empty coffee cups next to him and wondered how long he had been there.

Josh carefully started maneuvering himself so he was in a sitting position. The rustling of the sheets and his body movements alerted him - Gerard, and suddenly he was at his side. “Hey, hey, take it easy. Don’t want you to open your stitches,” he soothed.

“I gotta get out of here.” Josh managed through gritted teeth. He then took a deep breath, and ripped the IV out of his hand.

Gerard stared at him with wide eyes. “Woah, woah, Jesus. It’s okay, we’re paying for your hospital bill, so don’t worry about it,” he informed Josh, completely misreading his panic.

Josh shook his head. “Thank you, but I’m only 17. They’ll call my parents and send me back. I can’t go back.” He pleaded, trying to get up again.

Gerard halted his movements as best as he can, and forced his body back onto the bed every time he tried to get out. Then Frank’s voice was in the mix.

“Jesus fucking Christ. I’m gone for one goddamn minute.”

Josh sunk down, realizing quickly that if he could barely fight off Gerard, there was no way he could take two on one. “You have to help me get out of here.” Josh told them, probably looking a little crazed.

Gerard only sent Frank an alarmed glance, as Josh finally settled back into his bed.

“How about,” Frank reasoned, sitting down. Everything about his expression towards Josh was suspicious and weary. Josh then remembered that Frank thought that he was a junkie. “You tell us what you were doing in that alley, and why we should help you pull off a jailbreak from this hospital, and we’ll consider helping you, instead of getting you a nice appointment with the psych ward.”

“First off, I’m not a junkie.” Josh grumbled.

“He’s 17.” Gerard said softly.

His words seemed to make Frank relax, but only slightly. “Okay, but that doesn’t answer any of my questions.”

Josh sighed. “My name is Josh. I’m 17, I just graduated from Worthington Christian High School, but I skipped out on graduation, which basically means that my parents are never going to forgive me ever. My soulmate is a guy named Ryan but he…” Josh hesitated, then decided that if Gerard and Frank were going to help him he was going to have to be completely honest and forthcoming. “He’s ill and managed to convince himself that I don’t exist, but all I know about him is his name. I don’t know where he lives or who’s been hurting him. Four days before graduation our connection was severed. So I packed up all my shit and I’ve been looking for him ever since.”

Frank let out a long drawn out sigh, while rubbing his hands down his face. “Where are you from, kid?”

“Worthington, Ohio.” Josh told him.

Gerard then nodded like he was deciding something. “Okay, I’ll go back to the bus and get you some clothes, then we’ll help you sneak out. You weren’t awake when we brought you in so they don’t know your name, age, or anything like that. Do you know anything about sound equipment or instruments?”

Josh blinked, not quite sure why that was of any relevance. “I was in a band about a year ago. I can play guitar and drums. I mean, I know the equipment, because you can’t really play without knowing how that stuff works. I had a job at Guitar Center before I left.” Josh supplied.

Gerard beamed. “Great, you can be a guitar tech for us. We’re doing a US tour right now, so you’ll probably cover more ground that way, and I assume you’ll need it because that mugger probably took all of your money.”

Josh couldn’t help but gape at him. “You barely know me but you’re offering me a job?”

“The kid has a point.” Frank said incredulously. “You can’t just pick up every stray you find, Gee.”

Gerard only glared at me. “You heard him. We’re going to help him. Either you help me, or I’ll do it by myself,” he told Frank with an air of finality.

“Uhh?” Josh spoke up from his place on the bed, having to refrain from literally sticking his hand up in the air, like a kindergartener asking a question in class.

“Are you guys like a band or something? Or work for a band? I mean, I’ll take the job, because it sounds a lot better than where I’m at right now, but…” he trailed off, confused.

Gerard only smiled brightly at him. “We’re My Chemical Romance, welcome to the team.” His face then turned into something a little more serious. “Okay so, I’m gonna go get you some clothes so we can help you out. But if a doctor or nurse comes in you have to pretend to be asleep.”

Josh nodded.

To Gerard’s credit, he was pretty speedy, and returned back to the hospital within the hour. Nobody had come into the room, which Josh was relieved. He had been worried that someone would come in and he would flinch, or somehow give himself away. If it came to that he supposed that he could just refrain from speaking.

Thankfully, Gerard, Frank in tow, bustled back into his room. Gerard was carrying a backpack. He looked so suspicious Josh thought that it was any wonder nobody stopped him on his way in. He had the backpack tucked at an awkward angle so it appeared as if he was trying to hide it, without actually doing a good job of it. Not to mention, his eyes were wide and doe-like, obviously trying his best to look as innocent as possible.

Josh found himself holding back a laugh. He made brief eye contact with Frank, who must have felt the same because he said, “I know,” going for exasperated, but came out as more fond than anything else. It made something in Josh’s chest twinge.

Gerard leaned over, and started supporting Josh as he helped him get out of bed. It hurt like hell, and Josh wasn’t sure if he could do much without the stitches popping open. Once he got his feet on the ground and Gerard helped him stand up, he was relieved that he could stand and probably walk. As long as he kept the movement of his torso to a minimum.

Gerard looked at him with big earnest eyes. “If we take you to the bathroom can you get dressed by yourself, or do you need help?”

Josh felt his cheeks heat up as he realized there was no way that he would be able to get dressed without some help. Not without ripping open his stitches at least. “I don’t think I can do it by myself.” He said, feeling the embarrassment run down his spine.

“It’s okay.” Gerard told him. He glanced over at Frank. “I’m gonna help him get dressed. You keep watch. Oh! And find him a wheelchair. He can walk, but it’ll take him forever to get out of here and it’ll raise more suspicion.”

Frank let out a long suffering noise and threw up his hands, but didn’t object. Gerard then helped the limping Josh into the bathroom. Josh used his hands to support himself on the small sink. Josh bit his lip at how small and cramped the bathroom was, and flushed at how thin his hospital gown was - not really hiding his modesty at all.

Gerard gave him a small reassuring smile as he pulled a pair of boxers and jeans out of the backpack. “There’s no need to be embarrassed. I’m in a rock band and trust me, I’ve had to dress and undress a ton of drunk dudes in my lifetime. I’ve also had it done to me before.”

Josh nodded, and kept his gown on as he stepped into the leg holes of the boxers. He couldn’t look down or bend down any without a splitting pain going through him. Gerard slid the boxers up his thigh until he could reach them without bending down. It was a task pulling them up without bending any.

Thankfully, after a few minutes they had managed to get on a pair of baggy jeans and t-shirt with a random logo on it. When they got out of bathroom, Frank had already somehow acquired a wheelchair. Josh sat down in it, and winced the whole time. Then they started pushing it out.

Luckily, they made it out without anyone catching them, or even looking at them suspiciously. Frank was the smart one though who ran down and bought a hat from the giftshop so that it would conceal Josh’s red hair - which would be a dead giveaway.

When they got back to the bus, Gerard let Josh go to sleep in one of the bunks. Josh tried to thank him again, but he realized that he was really tired, and went to sleep instead.

When he woke up, he saw that the duffel bag that he left in the alley was sitting right next to the bunk bed. After glancing up, he made eye contact with Gerard who was sitting in the lounge area of the bus. He came over to him with a shy smile. “I went back and got it. I figured you would want to salvage what you could.”

Despite himself, Josh felt tears welling up in his eyes. He didn’t know what he had deserved to earn so much kindness from a stranger, but he would never stop thanking Gerard, and Frank for all they had done for him. “Thank you, so much.” Josh told him, but felt like those words weren’t enough. Thanks was something you said to the barista after they made you their coffee, it was something you said after someone held open the door for you - it wasn’t something you said to someone who literally saved your life and continued to do nothing but help you out consistently since.

Gerard cracked an even brighter smile. “Name your firstborn child after me and we’ll call it even.”

- 19 DAYS

Josh should’ve know better not to say it again. Especially after the response he got from Ryan the first time. But he couldn’t help it. If he felt something he said it. Whenever Ryan wasn’t trembling, or convincing himself that Josh wasn’t real, Josh felt like he was tumbling head first into the deep end.

He thought that he should probably be worried that he was in love within only a month. But he guessed that was the point of getting a soulmate. You didn’t have to wonder or worry, all you had to do was feel.

As soon as Josh said it again all semblance of smile washed right off Ryan’s face. “Stop saying that.”

“Why?”

“Because you shouldn’t say things that you don’t mean.” Ryan snapped.

Josh couldn’t resist scooting a little closer to him. “But what if I do mean it?”

Ryan sighed, as if he was dealing with a toddler. “You don’t. You think you do because I’m your soulmate or whatever, but you don’t.”

Josh gnawed on his lip, then decided to lean back against the wall, with his head resting on his arms. He was going to play his game. “Okay, then tell me why I shouldn’t love you.”

Ryan snorted. “I could write you a whole fucking book.”

Josh gestured loosely. “Alright, be my guest then.”

“Fine.” Ryan grumbled, but Josh could tell there was bit of challenge in his eyes. “I want to kill myself all the time. I’ve tried before, but I know I’m going to try again, I’m just waiting for the right time.”

Josh had to do his very best not to let any expression show. “Okay, I still love you.”

Ryan scoffed. “My mom left when I was just a baby. She got her soulmate and didn’t need me anymore. The only reason I’m here is because her parents decided that getting an abortion would be too easy, and she had to keep me as a punishment. I’ve been a burden since birth. If my own parents don’t love me, then how can you?”

“Because love isn’t something you can force, Ryan.” Josh told him. “Parents and family are forced into loving you. I’ve known more fucked up family relationships than I can count. But someone who chooses to love you? When they don’t have to? That’s the real deal. I know you don’t believe me, and I get that with all the things in your life you don’t think that I’ll stay, but I will. I am. If I have to convince you everyday for the rest of my life that I love you, then I will. Love isn’t supposed to be easy.”

“You’re going to leave.” Ryan insisted. “You can promise that you won’t but that doesn’t mean anything. People promise that they’re never going to leave all the time, then at some point they get tired of it all and do. You’ll get sick of me.”

“I don’t get why it’s so hard for you to accept that I love you.”

“And I don’t get how it’s so easy for you to throw that word around.”

Josh frowned. “I don’t throw the word around. I only say it when I mean it and I mean it now.”

Ryan shook his head. “One day you’re going to get really hurt, then you’ll understand.”

Josh let out a disbelieving laugh. “Newsflash, I’ve hurt before. I’ve lost people that I’ve loved. My grandfather died a couple years ago. One of my cousins committed suicide last year. People have hurt me. I just don’t let it hold me back from being happy. Why don’t you just let yourself be happy?”

“Because happy doesn’t work like that.” Ryan looked away from Josh. “Happy never lasts long, and I don’t think that you’re an exception.”

“Then let me prove it!” Josh couldn’t help but yell, getting frustrated. “Let me make you happy. Just let me in for christ’s sake.”

“We can have sex if that’s what you want.” Ryan offered, like it was a reluctant compromise.

Josh dragged his hands down his face. “I don’t care about sex! I just want you to open up to me emotionally. I want you to talk to me, and stop thinking that I’m the enemy and contradicting everything I say.”

Ryan got quiet. He got real quiet, and Josh wondered if he was going to start up the silent treatment act all over again. But then, Ryan pursed his lips before nodding. “I’ll try.” He said softly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah I-” Ryan sucked in a breath. “I’ll try to let you in a believe you.” He then sunk down. “I’m not trying to hurt you,” he told him earnestly. “I just don’t...I don’t know how to do this.”

Josh reached forward and grabbed onto his hand. “We’ll figure it out together.”

+ 30 DAYS

Josh was surprised how quickly he adjusted to being on tour, and found that he loved it. He had never thought about being a techie as a career option, but he was good at it. He was organized and precise, and he got along with all of the guys. He learned all the equipment, and how things worked within only a few days.

He found that he liked hanging out with the guys in the band as well. He met Mikey and Ray the same day that he got back from the hospital. Mikey didn’t say much, but whenever Gerard wasn’t attached to Frank, Mikey was attached to him. Ray was probably the nicest dude that he had ever met. He’d talk about his brothers a lot, which made Josh feel right at home, getting to swap stories about his siblings and brother as well.

Frank, despite his earlier attitude, took Josh under his wing. Even if he wouldn’t admit it. He had nearly had an aneurysm when he found out that Josh didn’t have a bank account, and dragged him to a bank pretty much as soon as the bus had parked at the venue for that night.

He hadn’t stopped looking for Ryan though. He tried to look up everything about the area of each venue. He searched student rosters to every school nearby hoping that he would find Ryan’s name. Unfortunately, he never found anything concrete. He still posted on blogs and forums, but all of the help he received towards the beginning had run dry as people seemed to get bored.

He ended up venting to Gerard one afternoon before soundcheck. Gerard had made appropriate sad eyes at him, but wasn’t very helpful. He admitted that when he and Frank dreamed together they already knew each other, and Frank only lived about two streets over. He also didn’t have any advice other than telling Josh to do what he was already doing, and that if it went on long enough, he should find him eventually.

Josh left the conversation not feeling much better, but at least he had all the guitars tuned and ready for the soundcheck to start.

The next day, Frank decided that it was his duty to take Josh to get his first tattoo. They had thrown him a small party when they found out his birthday was only a few days after they took him back to the bus. He was still sore and couldn’t move that much, but he appreciated the sentiment greatly.

He emailed Tyler updates frequently. Tyler seemed to be happy for him, and promised that he would come to one of the shows so that they could see each other again and catch up. Josh was excited, if only to be able to see his best friend again for a night.

Josh did admit that he had an idea for a sleeve that he wanted to get. But he knew he didn’t have the time or money to get it done in full, and would have to do a couple sessions. He described it to Frank vaguely as they walked to the tattoo shop that wasn’t too far from the venue they were at.

They were playing an outdoor pier that was right outside the downtown area of the city. Once they got to the tattoo shop Josh was a little nervous. He had never gotten a tattoo before, and the normal worries were voiced in his head. What if it hurt too bad? What if he got it and then regretted it soon after? What if the artist messed up?

Frank pushed Josh up to the counter, like he was a kid ordering his own food for the first time. He was about to tell the artist all about his idea, when an example font on the wall made him pause, and the words die in his throat.

There were a bunch of font examples posted on the wall overtop pictures of designs that they had put on people, or were generic drawings to base an idea on, or start out with. The font wasn’t anything special. It was cursive, but not as neat, it was a little messy, like someone had handwritten it.

A phrase then appeared in his mind that he knew wasn’t a coincidence.

I can feel you in my bloodstream

Josh hesitated, then told the tattoo artist exactly what he wanted.

When the artist started sketching it out, Frank turned to Josh looking confused. “I thought you were going to start on the sleeve?”

Josh could only shrug, because he couldn’t explain it either. “I don’t know. I saw that font and those words got stuck in my head. Like, I had to get it. It was like someone was telling me that it was important I get that. Plus, it’s only fitting that my first tattoo reminds me of him.”

Frank nodded. “Where are you getting it?”

Josh patted over the left side of his chest. “I’m getting it above my heart.”

“How romantic.” Frank teased. “That’s gonna hurt like a bitch for your first one, but oh well. Make sure that they center it. I got my friend to tattoo Gee’s name on my chest after we dreamed together when I was 17. Let’s just say that within two years I had to get it covered.”

The tattoo artist then called Josh over. He pulled off his shirt, and got ready to lay down on the chair. He turned to look back at Frank. “You’re going to hold my hand, right?” he asked, then laughed at Frank’s expression.

“We both know Gerard’s the Mom. I’m gonna get some coffee, want anything?”

“Just redbull.” Josh told him distractedly, as the tattoo artist started wiping down his chest with alcohol.

“See you in a bit, champ.”

- 10 DAYS

The past couple days previous, Ryan had started to become more affectionate. He laughed openly, and had no problem teasing Josh about little things. Josh, to put it lightly was completely enamored. Ryan had a sort of dry humor that he hadn’t experienced with anyone before, but it never failed to crack him up.

Ryan would hold his hand during the entire duration of the dreams. Sometimes Josh would initiate it, other times Ryan did. But nothing felt forced. He was starting to think that he had finally gotten through to Ryan, that Ryan was starting to see that he was someone to be trusted, and that he could begin to fall for him.

If only Josh hadn’t been so naive.

What Josh certainly did not expect was for Ryan to kiss him.

Josh couldn’t even remember what he had been talking about. It wasn’t something special, or anything to warrant a kiss, but his words stopped abruptly when he realized how close Ryan was to him. Josh’s eyes flickered over Ryan’s face, trying to memorized every single detail of it. Then, Ryan leaned just the tiniest bit closer and kissed him.

Josh froze for a second, which caused Ryan to pull back and look at him with wide panicked eyes. “I’m sorry, I-”

As soon as Ryan started scooting backwards, Josh grabbed him and pulled him forward. Ryan made a somewhat ridiculous sound as his ramblings were cut off by Josh’s lips. Josh didn’t have much experience with kissing, so he really didn’t know what he was doing. He only moved his mouth against Ryan’s for a few seconds.

When he moved back and disconnected their lips, Ryan gazed at Josh almost like he was in wonder. Josh smiled at him as Ryan whispered a faint, “Oh.” Then, “Can we do that again?”

Josh couldn’t help but let out a loud laugh, before looking back at Josh with his eyes crinkling. He gently pressed curled his hand around the back of Ryan’s neck, urging him closer once again. “We can do that as much as you want,” he promised, before kissing him again.

+ 32 DAYS

When Josh got up and checked his email that morning, he grinned as he saw that he had a reply from Tyler. Though, it quickly turned into a frown as Tyler informed him in a quick two sentence reply that he bought tickets to the Pittsburgh show, along with an inquiry if Josh could get him two backstage passes, (one he assumed, for Jenna), so that he could see him and catch up.

Josh felt a little grumpy that the last thing he had sent Tyler was a long email, that could count as an essay easily, and Tyler could only respond with something so brief and impersonal. Josh shrugged it off though, and figured that Tyler probably would just save all of his reactions and updates for when he saw him in person the next night. Putting Tyler and Jenna on the list for backstage passes wasn’t that hard of a feat.

He slugged out of his bunk, and tried to sneakily itch at his new tattoo that was still a little sore. He barely got to paw over it before he heard Frank yelling from the lounge area, not even looking up from the book he was reading. “Now I know that you’re not scratching your new ink before it’s completely healed.”

Josh slouched, giving him guilty eyes. “No,” he said reluctantly. He then looked around the bus, Matt, one of the other guitar techs was asleep in his bunk, as was Sean. “Where are the rest of the guys?”

Frank shrugged. “I’m pretty sure Gee and Mikey are on the other bus. They swear that the coffee over there is better even though it’s the same goddamn machine we have in here.”

“How long til soundcheck?”

“I’m a rockstar, I don’t have to care about these things.” Frank replied with, still refusing to look up from his book.

Josh rolled his eyes. “Right, well, I’m gonna head out and start checking out the venue.”

Josh was about to leave the bus, when the door opened and a very tired, very disheveled Gerard came in. He tucked his sunglasses into the bird’s nest that he called hair, and gave Josh a bright crooked grin, showing off all his tiny pointy teeth. He then sat his mug dramatically down onto the counter, before making his way over to Josh.

“So I took a nap in the other bus, and I had a wonderful dream. We were playing a show, and after the show, we went out to dinner and you found your soulmate! It was in, it was, uh…” gerard then scrunched up his nose as he tried to remember. “It was in Philly! Wait, no, uh fuck. It started with a P-” He then gave Josh his signature puppy dog eyes. “I can’t remember it now.”

“Phoenix?” Frank piped up from the couch.

Gerard shook his head.

“Palo Alto?” Josh suggested, and when Josh shook his head him and Frank started throwing out all the cities they were playing that started with a P that they could think of.

“Pasadena?”

“Pittsburgh?”

“Portland!”

“Paradise, Nevada?”

Gerard furrowed his eyebrows, “Are we even playing there?”

“It was worth a shot,” Frank pointed out. “It could be Puerto Rico.”

“Paris, Texas!” Josh threw in with a laugh.

Gerard slumped, crossing his arms. “You don’t believe me.”

Josh patted him on the shoulder. “I mean, sure. But, why would you have a dream about that? What did he look like? If the dream guy looks like Ryan then I’ll believe you, because you’ve never met him.”

“Oh that’s easy!” Gerard told him excitedly, waving his hand. “He had short brown hair, really short. He was about average build. He wasn’t that tall I think? I don’t know, he was skinny but he seemed short when he was sitting down. It’s kind of fuzzy. Not everything was super clear, but it was a dream, they’re always wrapped in a film, you know?”

Josh twisted his mouth up to the side wryly. “Was his hair curly, or straight?”

“Oh, it was straight.” Gerard told him decisively. “Super straight.”

Josh bit his lip. “Thanks, Gee.” He told him, and meant it. “But it was just a dream.”

Frank and Gerard didn’t say anything else, and let Josh walk off the bus.

- 1 DAY

Josh couldn’t figure out what was wrong. He spent every day that past week pouring over their recent interactions, and still had no idea what was bothering Ryan. He had asked repeatedly if Ryan was upset about the kiss, and if that was why he was being distant. Ryan insisted that it wasn’t, but then wouldn’t say anything else. He wouldn’t let Josh in, and it hurt.

“Can you please just tell me?” Josh begged, he wasn’t above begging.

Ryan would hold his hand, he was actually pretty adamant about that, but would never elaborate further, or give Josh anything.

“If I did something wrong, just tell me and I’ll fix it.”

Ryan only shook his head gravely. “It’s not you,” he assured him, his voice no louder than a whisper.

Ryan just shook his head again, and didn’t give any answers. Josh wanted to get through to him, but he guessed that it was something that Ryan thought that he had to work through on his own. Josh could deal with that, and he could also deal with the prolonged silent treatments.

He rubbed his thumb over Ryan’s hand. “I wish you would tell me. You don’t have to deal with this stuff on your own.”

Ryan closed his eyes, then opened them. “We’re going to wake up soon.”

Josh sighed, starting to feel defeated. He would still carry on and pursue. He would pursue and endure Ryan for as long as he lived, but he was allowed to feel disappointed sometimes. He was always more disappointed that he couldn’t get Ryan to relent all of his walls despite his tries, more than he was ever disappointed in Ryan himself.

Then Ryan was surging forward. Josh gasped a little, startled by the sudden action. He thought for a second that Ryan was going to kiss him. But instead, Ryan just grabbed him by the collar and pulled him really close. His eyes tracked and flickered all over Josh’s face like he was committing it to memory.

Like it was the last time he was ever going to see him.

“I think,” he started, his voice shaking. “I think I might love you too.”

Josh wanted to smile, he wanted to smile and kiss Ryan senseless, but something about the words seemed off. They didn’t seem romantic, or passion-filled, they felt ominous and doomed. Like you were two inches from a cliff and had to get the words out, but they all came out wrong and twisted.

“Ryan, you-” Josh started, but his voice was already starting to feel hazy, and he knew that within a few seconds the dream would be over. His body was starting to float, and his disconnection from the soulmate cocoon him and Ryan had made for themselves was starting to occur, as his physical form tied him back to reality.

But before he woke up he heard Ryan’s voice say. “I’m so sorry.”

0 DAYS

That night, Josh didn’t dream.

+ 1 DAYS

Josh didn’t dream again. After waking up from a heavy blank sleep, he curled himself into a ball, and used his pillow to muffle the sounds as he cried, facing the wall of his bedroom.

In the morning, he refused to go to school, claiming to his mom that he was sick. He looked bad enough that she didn’t even question it.

+ 2 DAYS

Even though Josh knew the connection was severed, he couldn’t help but hope all throughout the day that it was just a glitch in the system. That they would dream again.

Then he would wake up in the morning heartbroken all over again.

+ 30 DAYS

When Ryan stepped out the doors of the facility, and into the sunlight, he wanted to cry with relief. He readjusted the backpack on his shoulder, even though it was so light he felt as if he wasn’t carrying much. There wasn’t much in it to begin with. He had his wallet, with a little bit of money, a change of clothes, and about nothing else.

He had promptly ignored all of the nurses pitiful gazes as they checked him out once his mandatory state was over. They knew he wasn’t crazy. They also knew that his father had been contacted, but had told them to go fuck themselves, as he refused to pick Ryan up. And he referred to his son as nothing but an “attention-seeking faggot son.”

Ryan had just rolled his shoulders back and kept his face completely blank. He had learned to get really good at doing that.

He had enough change in his wallet to pay for the bus to take him home. There was a stop not too far away so he started his walk. Instead of going home, he immediately went to the public library. He had no time to waste, and he had to know.

Once the dreams had stopped, Ryan wondered if maybe he really truly was crazy. After being locked up with all of the other crazies, he couldn’t concretely say that he wasn’t. But he had to know. Every night before he fell asleep he would try to map out Josh’s face, not wanting to forget it. Though, a part of his mind always told him that Josh was probably relieved that the dreams were over. He wouldn’t have to deal with his burden of a soulmate anymore that way.

He had gotten one of the nurses to get him a map of the United States. It was just paper, so technically it wasn’t contraband, and he defended that it was just something to keep him from getting bored. When he had unfolded it with shaky fingers, he started scanning all throughout Ohio. When he finally found Worthington, he felt his heart stop.

Ryan opened up the google tab, and took a deep breath as he googled “Worthington Christian High School.” The screen seemed to take forever to load, and taunted Ryan with its blank whiteness, until words finally filled the screen.

The first link that came up was one that belonged to the school’s official website. Ryan clicked on it hurriedly, feeling his head start to spin. After a few minutes of tense searching he found the tab that had the most recent class roster, and clicked on the most recent graduating class.

The class wasn’t that huge so it didn’t take long for his eyes to fall on the name, “Joshua William Dun.” Just as he had told him. He couldn’t help but scroll down a little further, to see if everything he had told him was true. When he came across the name “Tyler Robert Joseph” he thought that he was going to be sick.

All that time he had thought - but Josh was. Josh had been real the whole time. Josh, the boy with the sunshine smile of whom he had been in love with since practically the first dream - there was no point in denying it - was real, and had suffered Ryan pushing him away, insisting that he was nothing but a hallucination. Another trick for his mind to torture itself with.

He had always thought that Josh had been a way for his brain to cause him more pain, but the only person that was getting hurt was Josh.

Ryan barely made it outside the library before he was puking all over the bushes outside of the building. His stomach clenched and rolled as he retched. When he had nothing left, he stood up on shaky limbs and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He had to find him. He had to tell him that he was sorry. He had to-

Ryan went back inside and grabbed his backpack. He checked his wallet. He had about $50, and knew that he had at least a little more than that in the bank from when he had done garden work in his neighbor’s lawn over spring break. Once he had his backpack, he went back on the bus to go to the nearest greyhound bus station. He was going to Ohio if it killed him.

On his way, the bus drove slowly through the crowded downtown city on the outskirts of Nevada. Ryan saw a tattoo shop, and suddenly his entire chest was freezing, and he was tugging on the rope that alerted the driver that you wanted to get off. When he walked into the tattoo shop he had a brief moment of complete and utter disbelief with himself.

He barely had any money, he barely had more than the clothes on his back, but something was telling him that he had to get a tattoo right then. Ryan wouldn’t even consider himself an impulsive person in the slightest, so he couldn’t understand what had come over him.

When he walked up to the counter and the guy asked him what he was thinking about getting, a string of words came to his mind, and his skin suddenly itched with the discomfort of not already having them on his body. So, he pointed to one of the cursive fonts that were posted as an example on the board and told him exactly what words he wanted forever on his forearm.

After he got inked, he got back on the city bus, and made his way to the greyhound bus station. He bought his ticket, and then started his wait.

- -

The ride wasn’t that bad, and the seats were a lot more comfortable than he was expecting. When he got off the bus, he went into the first public bathroom he could find, took a breath, and then pulled off the wrapping of his tattoo. He was supposed to have let it air out earlier, but it didn’t seem to have made much difference. He rinsed it off, and washed it delicately with the hand soap. He admired it for a second after drying it off by lightly tapping it was a paper towel. He then pulled the aquaphor the artist recommended out of his backpack and rubbed over it.

Once he was satisfied, he went back out into the lobby. They sold an assortment of things that Ryan didn’t even think were still in existence. They had phone books, coupon books for places in the general area, newspapers, and various local magazines and guidebooks.

He picked up a phone book and bought it right away. Then he sat down and started to look for Josh. Once he got to the latter part of the D section he realized that there were a lot of “Dun”s in the area, and that they were all under his parent’s names, not his, and he had no idea what Josh’s parents names were.

He felt a little defeated, but then, there’d been the friend that Josh had mentioned… Tyler... Joseph? When he flipped over into the appropriate section he almost couldn’t believe his luck. There was only one family in the area with the last name “Joseph.”

Ryan immediately started memorizing the address, then tucked the book away into his backpack. Not without marking the page though, first. He then got up and started searching for the closest city bus. He checked his watch. It was late, but late enough that the bus should be starting its morning route soon enough.

He asked the guy at the desk if he could look up the nearest city bus pickup. The guy was really nice, and even gave him a granola bar. It wasn’t until Ryan was halfway to the station and was scarfing it down that he even realized how hungry he was.

Once he got on the bus, he asked the driver what stop was the closest to the public library. The tired driver gruffly told him it was one of the last stop, and Ryan nodded and thanked him, settling in a seat in the back. It was only once he got off that he realized the library wasn’t going to open for a few hours.

He sat down on the bench that was out front of the doors, a little defeated. He decided to lay down, use his backpack as a pillow, and tucked his arms inside his t-shirt so he wouldn’t get cold.

He didn’t even mean to fall asleep, but the next thing he knew he was being woken up by an elderly lady who had her gray hair tucked into a bun. She had gaudy, large earrings on that dangled so far that they touched her neck, and was also wearing a skirt with about forty-seven different patterns on it. She was looking at Ryan warily. “There’s a homeless shelter not too far from here,” she told him. “I could give you directions if that’s where you need to go.”

Ryan shook his head, his tongue dry. “No I- you weren’t open.” He blushed a little. “I just need to use your computer.”

The woman studied him for a few more seconds, before nodding and unlocking the doors of the library. Ryan stumbled after her as he walked inside, watching her turn on all the lights and boot up the computers at the front desk.

She put a pair of glasses on. “I’m guessing you’re going to need a guest number,” she deadpanned, already clacking away at a few keys.

Ryan nodded soundlessly. Within a few minutes she handed him a piece of paper that had a stream of numbers scrawled onto it. Ryan gave her his best smile and went over to the collection of computers that they had, logging on without much trouble and quickly going to google maps. He had memorized the address, so typing it in wasn’t much of a problem.

He went to the details tab, and pulled out the step by step instruction. He printed out the directions, and even a picture of the route, with the streets highlighted in a bright blue in all the places he was supposed to go.

He grabbed the papers and thanked the librarian with the most sincerity he could muster. She just gave him a small smile. “I hope you get to wherever you’re running to.”

Ryan didn’t know how to respond, so he just gave her a jerky nod, before exiting through the large double doors.

- -

When Ryan finally reached Tyler’s doorstep, his feet ached, and he was so thirsty he felt like he could barely talk, even if he wanted to. He hoped with all of his might that Tyler lived there, and would know where Josh was. Even if Josh hated him, and never wanted to see him again, he still selfishly wanted to see him in person, and at the very least apologize, for everything.

After lurking on his front driveway for a short amount of time, he shook himself, and walked up to the door. Before he could stop himself he pressed his finger against the doorbell to the right of the door. He heard the bell chime throughout the foyer of the house as he also heard the blood rushing in his ears. It felt like several eternities until somebody was opening the door.

Of all the people Ryan was expecting. He wasn’t expecting a really pretty blonde girl to answer the door. She was in a pair of sweatpant, and a t-shirt, but Ryan had to admit she was gorgeous- a natural kind of pretty, even without makeup. But as soon as Ryan saw her, he felt his stomach drop.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

Before Ryan could decide between choking on his own breath or running away as fast as he can, there was a pair of footsteps, and another person appeared in the doorway. This one was a man - no, more of a teenager, with short hair that looked like a slightly grown out buzzcut.

“Who are you?” The guy asked, sounding a little hostile.

Ryan opened his mouth, and could feel his hands shaking. He really hoped that he wasn’t about to be punched in the face. “Are you Tyler?”

Tyler’s expression became even more guarded. “Yeah, again, who are you?”

“I’m Ryan?” He said, but it came out as more of a question. “I’m Josh’s soulmate.”

Tyler and Jenna’s jaws both dropped at the same time. “Holy fucking shit.” Tyler said, before he was rushing out of the doorway and into Ryan’s space. Then he was practically dragging him into his house.

- -

Ryan answered most of his questions the best that he could. Even though they made him nervous, and every second he was waiting for them to get mad at him and lash out. Though they were nothing but kind. Tyler gave him clean clothes to wear, and put the ones that he was wearing into the washing machine. He also gave him food and water.

Tyler didn’t ask much about the connection being severed, or where Ryan had been. Ryan knew that he had seen the large, still fresh and gruesome scars covering both of his wrists. Tyler hadn’t said much after seeing them.

“We have to tell Josh,” Jenna had said. She got up to go get the laptop that was sitting on the counter, but then Tyler stopped her.

He gave both Jenna and Ryan and giant grin. “Actually, I have an idea.”

- -

To say that Ryan had been primped would be an understatement. Jenna and Tyler’s mission before the concert seemed to be to make Ryan look as good as possible. Ryan was borrowing a pair of Tyler’s jeans that were nearly skin tight on him. He was also wearing a baggy t-shirt, where the neck seam had been hacked away so it nearly completely slung over one of his shoulders.

Ryan had glanced at them both skeptically, but Jenna and Tyler had both given him thumbs up, so he figured it didn’t look too bad. Jenna insisted that he wear eyeliner, Ryan tried to make a deal with her that he would wear eyeliner, only if she let him use her straightener. She then only gave Ryan a small secret smile. “Keep the curls, I have it in good authority that Josh really likes them.”

Her words then made Ryan blush for what felt like an hour. She carefully applied the eyeliner, and Ryan couldn’t help but feel bad that she was missing out on going to a concert of a band that she liked, just so Ryan could find his soulmate - of whom the connection was messed up because of a dumb mistake he had made. When he voiced his thoughts, Jenna completely dismissed them. Her defense was that this was a once in a lifetime thing for Ryan, there would always be other shows for her.

Ryan wasn’t really nervous until he was alone in the car with Tyler, knowing that they had a three hour drive to the venue that he couldn’t escape. He chewed on his nails nervously as the first bit was mostly quiet. Tyler had music playing, and couldn’t make out who the band was because the volume was down too low.

“Okay.” Tyler spoke up for the first time, and Ryan sucked in a breath. This was it. This was the conversation that he had been dreading since he showed up on Tyler’s doorstep. “Look, I don’t want to be this guy. I don’t, because I get it. I get it more than anyone but-” he cut himself off, chewing on his lip. “I need you to promise that you’re never going to try and kill yourself again.”

Ryan trained his gaze onto his hands that were sitting in his lap. He couldn’t face Tyler, he couldn’t look at him. “I thought it would be better,” he admitted finally. “I thought that Josh would be better off, and that it would be better if everything just stopped. I was wrong. I know that now. I can’t promise you that, because I don’t make promises that I can’t keep. But I can tell you that I’ll try.”

He was silent for a long time before giving Tyler a self-deprecating smile. “I normally think therapists are full of shit, but when I was away she said something to me that kind of stuck.” He then looked over at Tyler. “You can’t die for people, you have to live for them.”

“How poetic of her.” Tyler replied, but Ryan could see that he was giving him a small smile. “Those are good words to live by.”

Ryan nodded. “I just hope that I can withhold them.”

When they finally got to the venue, Ryan was impressed by the line of fans already waiting in swarms. Most of them were in merch for the band, or were holding posters up. Ryan felt a little wave of pride that Josh, his soulmate was working for a band that was so successful.

Him and Tyler made their way over to the Will Call to get their tickets and passes. Tyler showed his ID, and then had to explain to the lady running the booth that even though Jenna was originally put down, she couldn’t make it, so he brought Ryan instead. The lady seemed suspicious of the fact, and told Tyler that she would have to radio in some people from the band to make sure Ryan was approved.

Ryan looked over at Tyler, and could feel himself start to sweat. What if Josh found out he was coming and decided that he didn’t want to see him? Sure, Tyler and Jenna had told him all about his grand gesture of skipping graduation and going on the road to find Ryan. Ryan’s heart broke a little bit, but he also was so stupidly in love with him he felt like an idiotic teenage girl. Despite what he might say, he wasn’t really above writing sappy poetry about him.

They both could hear the Will Call woman talking into a walkie talkie. “Tyler Joseph, who’s on the list, is here, and he’s saying he was supposed to bring Jenna Black, who’s also on the list, but she couldn’t make it. Now he’s brought a guy named Ryan and is asking if he can take her backstage pass.”

Then a crinkly voice asked over the other end. “What’s Ryan’s last name?”

The girl opened the window and looked at Ryan expectantly. “Ross.” Ryan said nervously, feeling as if he was under interrogation all of the sudden. “My name’s Ryan Ross.”

The girl closed the window then said. “He says his name is Ryan Ross.”

That was followed by the person on the other end saying, “Fucking dick balls on a cracker. Give him a pass,” which was promptly chased by a loud “Gerard!” before the other end clicked off.

The girl still looked at Ryan suspiciously, but reluctantly handed them their tickets and their passes.

Ryan put his around his neck right away, and ran his fingers over the thick lamination that covered the actual pass. The back of it had a barcode, and it felt light as it slung across his body. Ryan started then letting himself get a little excited. He had never been to a concert before. Though, he was still nervous at the prospect of meeting Josh.

“That was like pulling teeth.” Tyler mumbled, as he then lead Ryan over to the line for people who had early access.

- -

Ryan really wished that he remembered more of the actual concert. The band was awesome. They were electric, and he found it a constant battle of which member of the band was drawing his eyes the most. The lead singer absolutely prowled across the stage, as he spit into the mic with a passion Ryan had never seen. The rest of the band jumped around, and were energetic, even though one of the guitarists jumped and threw himself around so much that Ryan was worried he was going to kill himself.

At one point he fell down, and then spit blood out into the crowd, some of it staining his teeth. Ryan looked over at Tyler in disbelief. Tyler only wrapped his arms around his shoulder and laughed loudly. Then all too soon it was over. The band played two encores before they left the stage. All the lights went up, and the stage was empty, as smoke still filtered through the air after the last round of pyrotechnics, along with a few stray pieces of confetti.

Ryan’s ears were still ringing, but he could hear clear as day when Tyler said, “It’s go time, buddy.” And started pushing him towards the backstage area of the stage.

As Tyler and Ryan made their way down the hallway that lead to the green room and true backstage area Ryan could feel all of his limbs shaking. He could barely feel the legs that he was walking on. Tyler was basically holding him up, and had both his hands resting on his shoulders.

Ryan thought for a second that all the primping Jenna and them had gone through had basically been for nothing. He was sweaty, no doubt with his eyeliner probably smeared halfway down his face, and he looked green and completely terrified.

He had been hoping that he would see Josh right away. Like, the skies would part, and suddenly a beam of light would shine down onto Josh. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Instead, a short tatted guy pounced in front of them. Ryan remembered him belatedly as the guitarist from the show. He still had some dried blood on his face.

He stared at Tyler and Ryan until Tyler spoke up. “Hi, I’m Tyler, I’m looking for Josh?”

Frank then turned his gaze onto Ryan. He narrowed his eyes. “Are you Ryan?”

Ryan nodded, there’s no way that he could talk without vomiting all over the place.

Frank narrowed his eyes even farther. “Are you the Ryan?”

Thank God Tyler still had english speaking functions. “The soulmate Ryan? He is.” Tyler said cooly, obviously not liking this guy’s attitude. They had a short staring contest, before Frank then stepped away. Ryan didn’t really know what he saw when he looked at him, but he probably didn’t want to know.

Frank turned on his heel, and started going down an adjacent hallway. Ryan was a little bewildered by the amount of people who were milling around. Some were chatting idly, while others were carrying back and forth equipment, and clearly breaking down the stage.

Tyler glanced around, and seemed to be figuring out the best route to take to find where Josh would be. Ryan could only look down at his shoes. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. Then he heard a familiar voice, in disbelief. “Ryan?”

Ryan jerked his head up to see Josh standing next to Frank. His hair wasn’t brown anymore, instead it was bright red. But it seemed to suit him well. It suited him really well. “Josh?” Ryan croaked, even though he knew it was him. How could it be anyone else?

It felt like the world had stopped. As if it had been tilted on its axis and Ryan couldn't breathe. He could see Josh’s face. He had stayed up every night in bed mapping out his face, trying to memorize every detail but - even his brain couldn't do it justice. He felt as if everything froze when he looked at Josh, and in that time everything had been righted.

One second Josh was several feet in front of him, then suddenly he was only mere inches away. Both of his hands reached up to cup Ryan’s face. He looked at Ryan like he couldn’t believe that he was there. Then his world was moving again. It was moving at a lighting speed. Ryan moved his hands so that they gripped over Josh’s. “I’m so sorry.” Ryan said, and then he was crying. He was crying in front of probably a hundred people, but he didn’t care because Josh was holding him. Josh was there. He was solid. He was real.

Josh wrapped Ryan up into his arms and held onto him so tight that Ryan couldn’t breathe. But he would gladly suffocate if it was in Josh’s arms. Josh then started peppering kisses all over his face. “You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive.” He mumbled over and over again.

Ryan couldn’t help then but to kiss him. He kissed him with all he could. It was messy, and they were barely hitting the target of each other’s mouth, but it was enough. God, it was more than enough. When they broke away, Ryan rested his forehead against Josh. “I love you,” he told him earnestly. “I love you so much, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Josh kissed him again. “You’re here now, so it’s okay. I love you too.”

Josh then wrapped him up again, and Ryan nuzzled his face into Josh’s shoulder. “I’m never letting you go, ever again.” Josh told him.

Ryan responded by pulling him even closer. Josh was so warm and solid, and the way he could completely encompass Ryan’s frame in his arms made him shiver. He wished that he hadn’t pushed him away, or denied himself all of his touches. But it was okay. They had a lifetime. Then Josh said, “Can I show you a camera?”

Ryan could only look at him in amazement. “You can show me anything you want.”

Josh’s eyes then fell onto Ryan’s forearm, as he moved his hand up to brush through his hair, that was now red. Ryan, at first thinking that he was staring at the healing wounds on his wrist, was going to curl them in, hide them, but then Josh grabbed onto his wrist. But instead of looking at the scars for more than a second, he turned and seemed to be mesmerized by the new ink along the outer part of his forearm.

Josh’s lips were parted as he stared at it, and Ryan worried for a second that maybe Josh didn't like it. “When did you get this?” He murmured, before gazing back up to look into Ryan’s eyes.

“Two days ago.” Ryan replied softly, then was completely caught off guard and baffled when Josh started tugging off his shirt. He sent alarmed glance back at Tyler, who only gave him a grin.

Once Josh’s shirt was off, his eyes immediately were drawn to the section of ink on the left side of his chest. His hands went up to trace it without much thought. For, Josh had gotten the same tattoo, in the same sprawling script, as Ryan had gotten. The only difference was that they were in two different places.

“I got mine two days ago.” Josh told him in awe.

Ryan tugged him forward, and folded his arms around his neck as he kissed him again. This time was a lot better, and it wasn't as desperate. It was slow, and soft.

“Now would probably be a good time to announce that it’s a hotel night!” Frank declared loudly, to the cheers of the rest of the crowd.

Josh laughed loudly, and Ryan could feel it vibrate through his chest. He suddenly understood how Josh had fallen in love with a laugh.

Epilogue

“I like the birds,” Josh whispered from behind him slinging his arms around his waist. Ryan laughed, but didn’t do anything else to acknowledge him as he finished painting them along his face.

Ryan sighed as Josh started kissing up his neck. “You know,” he pretended to grumble. “You’re really distracting.”

Josh grinned. “Hmm, that wasn’t what you were saying last night.”

Ryan rolled his eyes, but reluctantly pushed him off. “Tyler made the ‘no sex in the green room’ rule and we’ve already broken it. Let’s try and save him some trauma for one day.”

Josh put on the face of a petulant child, but then kissed Ryan on the forehead. “I’m gonna go make sure everything is set up, I’ll see you in a few, baby.”

“Love you,” Ryan said as Josh walked out the door.

“Love you too.” Josh replied instantly.

When the lights went up, Ryan threw a glance back at Josh on the drums. He gave him an over-exaggerated wink, which just made him smile. He turned back to the crowd, and mapped the beginning chords of the first song over the frets of his guitar as Tyler introduced them.

“We are Twenty One Veins, and this song is called I Need Reality (Like a Punch in the Face)!”