Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/7599925. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Rape/Non-Con, Underage Category: M/M Fandom: Twenty_One_Pilots Relationship: Josh_Dun/Tyler_Joseph Character: Josh_Dun, Tyler_Joseph Additional Tags: Past_Rape/Non-con Stats: Published: 2016-07-27 Words: 2120 ****** blood and sweat and tears (we learn each other's fears) - ****** by dovbt_(orphan_account) Notes woke up in the dead of night with idea & jus had to put it down into words wrote in one sitting from like 2 am to 3 am? idk something like that it's unedited and un-beta'd bc i have one friend and she's asleep lmao See the end of the work for more notes when tyler is eighteen, he finds out that sex isn’t at all like what porn or the movies make it out to be. call him a hopeless romantic. he expects his first time to be perfect, tangled limbs under pristine white sheets, greedy mouths meeting, breaths mingling as hips gently jut together. his first time is not perfect. his first time is crude and scary and horrible and it scars him for a long time to come. his first time is in the back of a club he’s too young to be in by a long shot pressed against the filthy stall door of an even filthier bathroom. his first time, he’s drunk because of a careless bartender who didn’t ask for an id even though he barely looks seventeen and hardly twenty-one. his first time, a man he doesn’t know, doesn’t ask a name from, drags him by the hand into the bathrooms at the back of the club and fucks him into the wall. his first time, he’s left crying and bleeding on a bathroom floor that reeks of piss and sex and sweat. his first time, he doesn’t use lube because he doesn’t know anal sex requires lube. his first time, he bleeds. his first time, he screams. his first time, he begs him to stop. his first time, he doesn’t stop. his first time, he fucks him into the stall door. his first time, no one stops by the bathroom to see if the boy who’s screaming is okay. his first time, a man he doesn’t know, doesn’t ask a name from, comes in his ass and calls him a dirty faggot. his first time, that same man leaves him on the bathroom floor bleeding and helpless and terrified and crying. his first time, a piece of him leaves with the man who unknowingly took his virginity as he flees the scene. he doesn’t expect there to be a second time. he is too scarred, too mangled, too broken; he expects no one to want him after what’s happened to him, because when he tells his mother, fire glows in her eyes as she spits that men cannot be raped (he wasn’t raped – he wanted it). he doesn’t expect there to be a second time, but that doesn’t stop him from wishing, from dreaming, from hoping that maybe, just maybe, someone will look past his fragmented pieces and be kind enough to put him back together. call him a hopeless romantic. he expects his second time to be perfect, a girl’s legs wrapped around his waist, mouths smashed together, intertwined fingers held above her head, breathing mixing into one. his second time is not perfect. his second time is years after his first time. his second time is everything but perfect. he’s drunk again, at a party he’s not sure who invited him to; everything mixes together in a haze of smoke and liquor, visions of dancing bodies swaying and blurring, becoming one. he stumbles upstairs with a girl he’s never met, lips locked, her perfectly- manicured fingernails digging into his biceps like perfectly-sculpted claws, his hands on her waist. his second time is not perfect. everything hurts and everything aches and they don’t use a condom because he’s too off his face to worry about sexually transmitted diseases or the repercussions of ending up with a child to a mother who’s name he doesn’t know. he throws up on her chest before either of them can finish, their hips still locked together, and she smacks him and cries and calls him names before leaving the room; he falls asleep in the puddle of his own vomit, vomits all over himself the next morning when he wakes up with a hangover that will put him off drinking for the next few months to come. he doesn’t expect there to be a third time, but it never stopped him before, and it certainly doesn’t stop him now from wishing, from dreaming, from hoping that maybe, just maybe, he’ll have sex like people in porn and movies make it out to be. he’ll have sex that’s perfect like the sex in porn and movies; he’ll have sex where no one will call him a dirty faggot or make him bleed or break him for years to pass, he’ll have sex where he’ll know their name and the way their body is crafted like it’s sculpted from marble. call him a hopeless romantic. he expects his third time to be perfect, red rose petals scattered over red silk sheets and vanilla-scented candles on every viable surface of the room, a boy between his legs as he presses kisses to the skin of his chest and makes him feel like he’s wanted for the first time. his third time is not perfect. his third time comes months after the second. his third time is not perfect. he’s completely, totally, utterly sober this time, aware of his actions and the consequences they carry; he’s with a boy he’s been dating for a few months, and there’s light in his eyes and fire in his veins and a spark behind his kisses. he has never been gentle; his attitude has always been very push-and-shove. gentle is not a word he knows. gentle is not a word he will ever know. he is rough with tyler when he touches him, he is rough with tyler when he looks at him – he is rough but tyler has never known anything but rough and his simple mind confuses rough with love. he pressures tyler into things he’s uncomfortable with, has since they day they’d first met. he forces his head down until he’s choking on his cock after he forces tyler to give him head, forces his hand down tyler’s pants when he says he’s not in the mood (he’s never in the mood), forces him into bed when he’s been crying and begging him to stop. he fucks him with too little lube and laughs when tyler tears and bleeds, laughs when tyler cries, laughs when tyler begs him to stop; he laughs, and he laughs, and he laughs, and he breaks up with tyler the second he finishes inside him, calling him a pussy, telling him to grow up. he doesn’t expect there to be a fourth time. he doesn’t want there to be a fourth time. sex has scarred him and broken him beyond repair; he has convinced himself that no one will want him, that he will never experience sex in a way that porn and movies make it out to be. sex like that doesn’t exist. there is no such thing as perfect sex. he doesn’t expect there to be a fourth time. he doesn’t want there to be a fourth time, but that doesn’t stop him from wishing, from dreaming, from hoping that maybe, one day, someone will come into his life and touch him in all the right ways to make his broken, fragmented pieces come together, and he will find love without the sex. perfect sex doesn’t exist, in his mind, even with someone he loves; sex like they show in porn and movies doesn’t exist. call him a hopeless romantic. he expects his fourth time to never exist. he expects a life-long, fulfilling relationship with someone who loves him and with someone who expects nothing from him; he expects someone who will kiss his scars and the tears from his cheeks and taste the salt and understand what he’s been through, see nothing but good from him, and help to put him back together. his fourth time is perfect. he’s twenty-one when he meets the person who will become the love of his life. they meet in a record shop where he works; he has fluffy brown hair and eyes the color of melted chocolate and a smile that could break hearts worldwide. he’s the sweetest, most down-to-earth person tyler’s ever had the pleasure of meeting, and he leaves the record shop with the biggest, brightest smile on his face, a happiness he hasn’t felt in years embedded into his chest, and a coffee date for the next morning with josh dun. his fourth time is perfect. he falls in love as quick as the sun rises and sets; date three and four go off without a hitch, and josh kisses him, soft and sweet, on the evening of their fifth date as he drops tyler off at his house. tyler kisses him back as if it’s everything his life depends on; his fingers clutch at josh’s jacket desperately, and josh pulls at his waist and asks him to come inside. there are no rose petals spread over the bedsheets, no vanilla- scented candles around the room like tyler’s hopes had led him to believe; there’s just josh standing in front of him, kissing him as he undresses him, whispering how beautiful he is in his ear, and tyler believes him. he kisses him back and allows his jeans to drop to the floor and he allows josh to stare in shock and awe before dropping to his knees and taking him in his mouth. tyler swears, tyler grabs josh’s hair and his fingers and toes curl, tyler swears so loud and tyler sees stars behind his closed eyelids as josh hums and swallows and sucks as if it’s his job; as if he’s playing an instrument, as if tyler’s producing all the right music, and when tyler comes down his throat, josh swallows it all down and stands to kiss him. the taste is bitter with tyler’s come and he tastes himself on josh’s tongue and he bares his soul for josh to see, and josh doesn’t think any less of him; he cries into their kiss and josh licks away his tears and holds him and whispers how it wasn’t his fault, how none of it was his fault. his fourth time is perfect. josh lays him across the mattress and explains how sex can be like porn and movies, and his grin is wicked when tyler says he’s never experienced it, his grin is so wicked as he whispers let me show you; he kisses all up and down his body, thumbs rubbing circles into scars and cuts and bumps and bruises, whispers against his skin about how perfect he is, how wonderful he is, how needed he is. tyler cries when josh opens him up, stifling his tears behind his hands, and josh props up to kiss him and ask if they need to stop. his grin is wicked when tyler shakes his head and says it’s a good kind of crying. his fourth time is perfect. he didn’t know that the type of sex that he and josh had existed; he’d always wanted it to exist, for it to be perfect like porn and movies, and josh had made it exist. he cries when josh enters him, cries as he wraps his legs around his waist, cries as his fingernails scrabble for purchase at the sweat-slick skin of josh’s back, cries and cries and cries, and josh stoops and kisses away his tears. his fourth time is so perfect; they move in unision, one unit, one body, together as one single thing. josh purrs into his ear, leaves his mark on his neck and growls about how tyler is his; tyler cries as he bites josh’s lips until they’re busted and bleeding, cries until he can’t do anything but moan drowsily and rock his hips just barely as josh makes love to him in the twisted bedsheets that smell like lavender and lilac. his fourth time is perfect. josh makes love to him and worships his body, cradles him like he’s porcelain, and tyler forgets everyone in the world who’d ever done him wrong when he has josh wrapped around his body; he jolts against him when he comes, hard and fast, biting tyler’s throat and groaning his name, and tyler comes not long after as josh’s spent cock twitches inside him. they lay together, buried in one another, for moments that stretch into minutes; it should be awkward and gross, and they both smell like sweat and sex, but it’s not. it’s wholesome and what tyler never knew existed even though he desperately needed it to. josh whispers in his ear as they lay together, connected, about how he’s not broken, about how much he loves him, about how he’s felt like he’s known him for years, and tyler cries. josh kisses away his tears like he had the entire night, and tyler trembles as he whimpers that he loves josh, too, and they make love again. his fifth time is perfect. 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