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It’s inevitable, really. What with all the bottled-up energy and emotions that comes from being on tour, that exhaustion that comes from nightly shows not enough to balance out shaky, cramped energy that reminds Josh of road trips to Disney World when he was a kid. And at first, it’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything; not to Josh, not to Tyler, not to the crew members who all know but choose not to say anything. It’s just hard and fast and when it’s over Tyler sneaks back into his own bunk (or hotel room, on the lucky nights) and the next morning they act like nothing happened.
Josh likes it that way; when he can pretend that, no, he’s not fucking Tyler on a near-nightly basis, can shove his feelings down and tell himself that Tyler is just his best friend and it’s nothing to either of them except blowing off a little steam. He likes that Tyler is so blatantly not into him, and maybe it’s some subconscious thing about not deserving real whatever-it-is, but that’s a conversation for a different day.
And he can keep telling himself that it’s all nothing, it’s just because they’re all jacked up on tight spaces and male hormones. Of course, the tour is over soon, within a couple months, and they’re going home and Tyler is still sneaking into his house late at night and it’s harder for Josh to come up with excuses, then.
He keeps lying to himself. Telling himself he doesn’t feel anything for Tyler, because they’re best friends and Tyler had already whispered “No strings attached, right?” under the cover of darkness in some dirty motel room when they’d first started. But now maybe he feels some weird fluttering in his stomach whenever Tyler looks at him and maybe Tyler has this weird shy way of glancing at Josh when he thinks he isn’t looking. He’s not sure how long he can keep pretending.
Josh isn’t sure when it changes, exactly. He doesn’t even notice for what feels like forever, doesn’t think anything of the fact that now, every night afterward, Tyler stays in Josh’s hotel bed (or bunk, on the unlucky nights) and the next morning they leave at different times so the crew can keep pretending that they don’t know.
It’s inevitable, really. One night they’re doing their thing like normal, and it’s Tyler who can’t keep his stupid mouth shut, who wails something along the lines of “I love you” as his muscles all tighten up and he loses his mind for something like half a minute and Josh freezes up, not sure if he should believe it.
Tyler doesn’t sneak into bed with Josh after that. Tyler doesn’t look at Josh in that weird shy way when he thinks Josh isn’t looking. Tyler barely even talks to Josh, any more.