Joshuax Reader - Tumblr Posts
joshua hong breaks your heart three and a half times before you can even reach nineteen, and yet you can’t stop loving him with the pieces that remain.
i. the first time ; when you meet
the story of you and joshua starts at the beginning, which sounds pretty redundant, but it’s the beginning in more may than one. the beginning of friendship — the beginning of freshman year — the beginning of something bigger than two fourteen year olds can imagine.
it starts, as you say, at the onset of freshman year. you’re nervous — extra nervous because these kids went to the same middle school, and you’re the stranger, the outsider, the transfer student who nobody knows yet. it’s obvious in the way they talk to each other; gossipping about unfamiliar names, inside jokes only they understand.
and so homeroom begins with ice breakers, and it turns out that you and someone named joshua hong have the same favourite colour and you both like horror movies, and that’s enough for you to think to yourself, that one. i want to be friends with that one.
for a moment, it seems like that sentiment is mirrored. when lunch is called, and you’re stuck in the corner of the canteen, eating lunch alone, joshua hong appears to your side, holding his tray. he smiles at you first, and when he speaks, he speaks softly; you like him instantly, especially when he gets your name right first try, and talks to you about the horror movies you like.
unfortunately, your conversation lasts about five minutes; it’s interrupted by joshua’s actual friends, waving from another table, yelling for him to come join their arm wrestling competition, and someone wants his chocolate milk, and, and, and — because of course, joshua is popular.
he’s also incredibly polite, for a fourteen year old boy, looking between you and his table, eyes torn, mouth twisting. but you make the decision for him; you stuff the last of your food in your mouth — it tastes like cardboard — and you gesture for him to leave, saying, through a dry mouthful, “i’m done anyway, go ahead!”
he leaves then, sending an apologetic smile you pretend not to see. you won’t be pitied, not even by popular guys with nice smiles. but when you walk out the cafeteria, as alone as you were when you walked into it, your silly, young little heart does break a little.
and then it’s glued back together by clumsy fingers the next day. joshua’s in the cafeteria before you, and this time, he waves you over to his table, patting the seat next to him. he introduces you to his friends, who are nice and sweet and funny, and you do like them, you just like joshua that extra little bit more.
ii. the second time ; when you fall, suddenly, completely, absolutely.
by the time junior year rolls around, you and joshua are joined at the hip.
you do everything together. you’re at his house more than your own; his mom calls you the second child she never had; your mom calls him by his nickname; you know his deepest darkest secret, and he knows yours; he’s your favourite person in the world, and as teenagers are apt to do, you’d never willingly tell him such a thing.
“you’re disgusting,” you tell him, whenever he belches, unashamed, on your couch after a horror movie marathon. “you’re the worst!” when he tickles you within an inch of your life, rolling onto the floor with you in a mad tangle of limbs and giggling. “i hate you,” with a smile on your face, when he teases you about a crush or pinches your nose a little too hard.
“you love me,” is always his response — easy, carefree, and the l-word rolls off his tongue so confidently, sometimes you wonder how he does it. but you do love him. as a friend, of course, and nothing more, despite what other people say. at school, people think you’re together — people pull you aside in the locker room, giggling like they’re in on your secret (“so, you like like him, right?”) and nobody believes you guys when you deny it.
“it’s not like that,” you find yourself saying over and over, until it feels like the words are tattooed on your tongue. “he’s just josh, you know?” and he is. he’s just your joshua. nothing more, nothing less, he’s just your person — your best friend.
you manage to convince yourself as well, with those repetitive words, until one day, you find out you can’t.
it’s a sunday, and so of course, he’s singing sunday morning as the two of you stroll down to the park, hands stuffed in your respective pockets. it’s late september, but the dregs of summer are lingering longer this year, and the two of you are drinking them up before autumn rolls around, and strips the greenery bare.
“your obsession with that song needs to be studied,” you say, and it comes easily because you haven’t realised yet.
“your brain needs to be studied,” is his quick retort, as you guys make it to your usual spot.
it’s nothing special, this spot — to an outsider, at least. it’s a crumbling wall to the side of the park, that overlooks a pond (an ugly, swampy looking pond, but a pond nonetheless).
to you and joshua, the deteriorating wall is your Place, with a capital p, because that’s how important it’s become to the two of you. it’s simply. a little bit ugly, but who cares, when you have your whole life stretching in front of you, a wall to sit on, and a best friend to argue over the red gummies with?
“there are five red gummies,” he pronounces, peering inside the pack. “i call dibs on the third!”
“what?” your voice raises automatically. “absolutely not. you had the third one last time.”
“last time there were six!”
“that’s so not fair!” you poke his rib, scowling. “we’ll split it. for justice.”
joshua sighs, long and reluctant, but nods, setting the packet between you — but moments later, when you’ve spiralled down a tangent of cursing out your physics teacher, he swipes down on the third, stuffing it in his mouth with a triumphant, guiltless grin before you can even say stop.
“you’re evil,” you say, slow and shocked, narrowing your eyes at him. “you’re actually fucking evil!”
“sorry,” he says, without the slightest hint of remorse.
“i hate you.” and again, you’re smiling — and so is he, throwing his head back to laugh (because the thought of you hating him is so ridiculous that he has to laugh), and his darn eyes catch the afternoon sunlight at just the right angle, twin pools of honey brown, and you’re drowning in them; and his laughter sounds like music, and his hair’s blowing back in the breeze, and the lines of his face are lighting up golden; and oh, fuck, you’ve forgotten how to breathe.
“you love me,” he says, normally, casually, his ordinary response, but it feels like he’s plucked the sentence straight out your mind, where it had been nothing more than a half-formed sentiment you’d pushed into the corner.
cheeseballs, you think to yourself, breathless, stomach sinking, eyes wide. i think he’s right.
i think i love him, your fifteen year old self thinks, and then your fifteen year old self’s heart breaks.
it’s more painful than the first time. much more.
iii. the third time ; when he leaves (because you push him out the door)
the third time is not like the others. you can’t pinpoint a specific moment; it happens gradually. less of a shattering — more of a slow crushing, like joshua is pressing down on the centre of your chest, slow, heavy, and completely unaware of how blood is spurting from the cracks of your heart.
because he doesn’t know — of course he doesn’t know. and he can’t know now, now that the two of you, as a unit, have become past tense.
you can barely call himself your friend anymore, and it’s entirely your fault.
not even a month after that fateful day in junior year, joshua had gotten himself a girlfriend. and she wasn’t mean and you couldn’t hate her even if you wanted to, she was the sweetest person alive, and had no problem with you; but still, that step did mean other things, like backing off joshua a little. there was another priority in his life now.
they only lasted three months, but it felt significant. it felt like a sign — he’s not yours, he can never be yours, and so even after emily benson and joshua broke up, you kept your distance. then he joined the football team, with seungcheol and mingyu and those guys, and you joined the photography club with wonwoo and seokmin and those guys, and there was suddenly this divide. a line drawn; you were the artist.
because joshua did try, and he definitely tried more than you. he’d invite you over to his house for movie marathons, and you’d decline. he’d wave at you from across the football pitch, and you’d pretend not to see.
you only see his mom in the supermarket now. she still hugs you, calls you her other child. you don’t know what to say to her.
it is, technically, your own fault. self-preservation instincts; because being around joshua hurt like a bitch after that sunday. there was an ache in your heart you’d somehow not noticed for two years, but now that you’d noticed it once, it was there always, a permanent throbbing pain in your chest.
you think of it as losing your heart; you’d given it to joshua without even realising, and he hasn’t realised either. and so the hot, slippery organ is left in his hands, and you don’t know how to get it back.
senior year comes, and it’s clear to everyone that there is no longer a you and joshua. sometimes you get questions about it; “did you guys fight?”, “what even happened? was it emily?”, “did he cheat on you?”, and you answer them all wearily with a smiling front.
just drifted apart, i guess, you always say, paired with a nonchalant shrug, like it doesn’t kill you a little every time you see him.
you wonder what he says, when they ask him. if they even ask him at all.
iii.v half broken, half mended
joshua shows up at your house.
it’s the night before graduation, and if it were a movie, it would be raining when he knocks on your door — but it’s still warm, there’s still faint sunlight behind him, and he’s panting slightly on your doorstep, eyes wide with something you don’t have the time to read before he’s rushing out words, garbled with speed.
you’ve just woken from a nap, and you don’t understand a word he’s saying; you hear a whole lot of “we” and “friends” and before he can get any further, you raise a hand to stop him.
“what — what are you talking about, shua?” you question genuinely, rubbing your sleepy eyes as though this is some sort of twisted dream.
joshua lets out a breath on your doorstep; he looks harried, panicked, like if he doesn’t say everything he needs to, he’s going to explode. but he holds back, inhaling, exhaling, suddenly short of breath at the sight of you, up close after what feels like forever.
“where did you go?” he says finally, and you can hear fifteen year old shua in there, a crack in his voice, emotion leaking into it.
you know what he means, you know exactly what he means, and you don’t have an answer for him. “i didn’t go anywhere,” you reply, voice small. you don’t look at him, because both of you know it’s a lie.
“you did,” he repeats needlessly. “it felt like you left me.”
you don’t have anything to say, and so you stay silent. there are birds chirping, you realise absently, somewhere behind him.
“was there a reason?” his words are growing quicker now, spilling out of him like they’re overflowing; and maybe they are, maybe he’s kept them locked up just as long as you have. “there must have been a reason — you need to tell me, i deserve to know. don’t i?”
his voice is tinged with a sort of raw desperation that pulls at your heart, because no matter how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise, he’s still your shua, he’s still your person, and you can never hate him.
he deserves to know, and you’re too cowardly to tell him.
joshua waits. (he’s always been the more patient out of you two.) “you won’t tell me,” he realises finally, stepping back just once. “god. fuck. i don’t even know why i came.”
he turns, and you blurt three words that halt him in his tracks. you see the way he freezes on the spot, and so you repeat them again, just so he can be sure.
“i love you,” you say, softly, but he hears you. he hears you and turns around, and his pretty doe eyes are round with confusion.
you don’t realise you’re crying until he wipes away the few that have spilled oit the corners of your eyes; he does it delicately, with hands that tremble a little. they’re unfamiliar in their familiarity, those hands, and the feel of them makes you close your eyes.
both of you are breathing shakily. like you’re on the cusp of something new; something bigger.
“how long?” he asks quietly, hands trailing down to cup your cheeks.
you don’t open your eyes when you speak your next words, pouring from your mouth into the space between you. “since we were fifteen.”
joshua’s quiet for a moment, and when you open your eyes, there’s a ghost of a smile playing on his lips, and the ghost of tears filling his eyes. “haha,” he whispers, leaning closer, “i win.” his lips brush against yours, so light and feathery it could barely be called a kiss.
he pulls back, forehead against yours, and smiles, properly this time. “since fourteen,” he says, and it feels like your heart is mended and broken at the same time.
an / typed this out in an hour of feverish inspiration. idk. 💪
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