Toxic Valentine. (Fransykes)

Jack and Alex knew things that others didn’t. Originally, Alex knew and couldn’t keep it too himself because he’d been halfway through a rollercoaster of emotions that knocked him too far out of water to keep his mouth shut about anything; so now, Jack knows and they discuss it between them. This is probably for the best because together they could keep mouths sealed like fastened locks, with only each other to hold the keys. But somewhere up in their hairspray-based head they kept brains with the capacity to realise when things are best not to be spoken of, in general things concerning a certain pair of British boys.

The Baltimore boys had been by themselves on their tour bus, mid-week of their joint tour with You Me At Six, discussing things at violent levels of volume with expressions on their faces that they promised never to venture to again. In fairness, they were going through a rough patch in reasons best left unspoken (and remained unspoken to this day), so at first they hadn’t heard the sound of whimpering or the silent mutters of a broken voice pleading for sanity. At first, it had taken a while to register the new found silence, but once the eldest had scampered to the door of the tour bus, he could see a clearly disorientated Josh Franceschi and a phone lying on the gravel beside his trembling body.

Alex, still in a fit of fury at his American best friend, told Jack to get out and find the rest of their band, and to stay out with them for as long as he possibly could. There were tears involved, and an exchange of less than kind words before the sandy haired man was left with his British counterpart. But the Weybridge born couldn’t speak; he was just allowing the rivers to slip from his piercing cerulean eyes. In the end, Alex had to slip through the Josh’s texts to get his answer, and he half wished he hadn’t.

[23:20]: It was one night, and a mistake, I’m engaged, I can’t and we shouldn’t have, you’ll just have to find someone else.
[23:26]: You know I can’t.
[23:40] I’m sure you can manage, anyone can tie you to a bed and call you a slut, and at this rate, it won’t be a lie. now leave me alone, or this’ll get ugly.

It was a childish message, dripping with threats that would never be fulfilled and secrets that Oli simply didn’t want to admit; Alex knew that, but Josh of course wouldn’t. In retrospect he had known something ugly had happened between the pair as he had been following the bread trail of broken hearts back to a starving Josh when this had happened, but the extra detail helped sense sew itself into place.

There was a miserable whimper that dragged the Essex born from his trance, a little tremble in his fingertips as he slid the phone back into the other’s pocket. Alex held him, but he knew somehow that it wasn’t him that should be doing this, though he combed his hands through Josh’s mussed hair until he could breathe at a rate in which his heart would work. A quiet thrumming filled their silence, both of their racing hearts entangled in a beat that would’ve been romantic, or erotic, had it been anyone else. Each of them had a partner in mind, and neither was the girl it should’ve been.

“I…” Josh spoke just one letter, but that letter crumbled in his throat and dissolved into a cracked, shuddering breath, intermingled with internal agony that caused him to fall silent. It was a strange sight, given he was a full grown man sniffling like a toy-less baby into the 3-year-older equivalent of a parent. He looked younger too, with eyes like diamonds; pure and unbroken, shimmering with a dirty innocence that only some would recognise. Alex was different; his muddy brown eyes were heavy and exhausted, he had seen the best and worst he could’ve seen at this point, lost a brother, lost a lover, everything he’d ever achieved had been undermined as luck and everything he wanted was in the form of someone who was too far out of his reach.

“I love him,” The words were ground breaking, a reality change that Josh had never had the guts to say out loud until this point. A silence that could pierce skin and shatter glass with its volume filled the room, an irresistible urge to fold the other into his arms shot through the elder like venom. Alex knew that he wasn’t innocent; he had heard many stories of the British boy’s escapades, and the entanglements he often found himself in. “It…it’s more than that,”

But Alex didn’t want to know, it was brutal, he knew, but it was ripping up pieces into the Surrey man, in a perfect outline of Oli Sykes. The two fell asleep, entangled and wrapped all up in each other on the All Time Low tour bus, to be found by the rest of a speculating group.

It took a week off of the tour for Alex to break and tell his best friend what had happened, and the romantic (sort of) endeavours, that the two British boys had found themselves tied up in. Jack had been tempted to remind him of another two boys tangled in a similar way (As Alex had made it his personal business to get engaged straight off of that tour), but daren’t.

Notes