Frustration -SERIES- [Part 1] [boyxboy]

Chapter Sixteen

Of course I eventually ended up back to the hotel. Where else would I have gone? I didn't have any other bases to navigate towards so even though I was dreading going back to our room, that's exactly where I ended up.

I swiped the keycard through the lock and pushed open the door numbly, standing in the dark room for a few moments before I remembered to reach out and turn on the light. I went and sat on the bed for a few minutes, then got up and stood in the entrance to the bathroom for a while, not looking at or thinking about anything in particular.

I must have stayed in that room for an hour, spending brief periods of time in various parts of it, staring into the middle distance and wondering vaguely what I was going to do.

Should I stay here? Wait for him to come back and explain to me what that was all about? Wait and hopefully wake up to find that it hadn't actually been real after all? 

Or should I go? Leave my phone and all my things and wander around Bristol for the night, scare him? Would he even care?

I dropped back onto the bed and sighed, rubbing my face with my hands. I felt completely numb inside, still frozen by the shock and unlikelihood of what had happened. After a couple of minutes I resigned myself to what I knew I had to do, got up, threw the few things I'd unpacked back into my suitcase, and dragged it out of the room, down the hall, and to a stop outside Josh and Rachel's door. Reaching into my pocket I extracted the keycard he'd given me and let myself in, dropping the suitcase as soon as I was inside and crawling into the bed without even bothering to turn on the light.

And I lay there, numbly, in the dark, until the door opened again.

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'Tyler? Are you in here?' Rachel whispered, thoughtfully not turning on the light.

'Mm,' I mumbled.

Rachel closed the door and crawled into the other side of the bed, tentatively putting a hand on my arm underneath the covers.

'How are you feeling?' she asked.

'Like somebody has excavated all of my insides. Where's Josh?'

'Trying to negotiate a deal with Sarah. Ten minutes alone in a room with Conor in exchange for letting him live.'

A crackly sound came from my throat which, at that point, was the closest anybody was getting out of me to a laugh.

'Do you want me to go get him to come hug you?' she asked quietly, as if the fact that Josh's hugs invariably turn me into a waterfall is any sort of secret.

'In a minute,' I murmured tiredly. 'I'm not sure I'm ready to...' I trailed off, but I knew she got it.

We were silent for a few seconds, then Rachel said, 'He finally told me, you know. Josh, I mean. After you left. That he loves me.'

I chuckled a bit. 'How'd it go?'

'He ranted and raved for a bit about how he was gonna "rip Conor's testicles off and shove them so hard up his ass he'd be tasting pube for three weeks" so I figured I'd better get him out of there before Name Withheld came offstage. We were walking back here and he stopped and turned all red and eventually managed to stutter,' Rach put on an unconvincing imitation of Josh's voice, ' "You, uh, you know, that I, like, I love you, yeah?"'

'Smooth.'

'Right? So I just said I love him too and then let him forget all about it.'

'I guess Conor making out with Arthur was good for something then,' I said softly. 'Shocking others into passionate declarations of love.'