Zach’s hair is longer, long enough that he has to shake it out of his eyes when he straightens after taking his shoes off, and Josh is too startled to say anything, seeing him here out of the blue like this, but Daryl pauses the game they’re playing and jumps in, fills up the space with chatter. He even goes over to hug him quick, one-armed, less vicious about it than he was in high school, and in the interim Josh puts his controller down and gets a little uneasily up from the couch but then finds that doesn’t really know what to do with himself. What he wants to do is go put his arms around him, but how? After last time? After everything? It’s not fair, he thinks, that Daryl and even Meghan can treat Zach like a friend and he just doesn’t know how. Doesn’t even know if he should.
Zach put his hands on your face and told you it was going to be fine. And you knew that you could trust him, because haven’t you always trusted him before? But this is the first thing that’s ever happened to you that’s too big to solve. This is the first time that Zach can’t clarify the situation for you, when you look over at him for help.
Zach put his hands on your face and held you together and told you it was going to be fine. And then he disappeared.
(or, Josh and Zach meet up again, by mistake, several years later.)
Friends in fanfic always give the main characters such wise, sage advice. “You’re just scared” “Tell him how you feel” “You should talk to him”. Where are the friends giving shitty advice? I want to read about dumb friends who are as clueless as the protagonist — “keep your feelings to yourself, mate,” shit like that