#joshley

i made an edit of josh to peekaboo by kendrick lamar, since you listed him as one of your favorite characters! <33

“Big talk coming from—oh. Nice.” Josh glanced her way and, lo and behold, found she was also brandishing her middle finger. “Mature, Ash. Real mature. Don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re anything but a consummate professional.” He grabbed a nearby pen, squinched one of his eyes shut to calibrate the shot, aaand still somehow managed to miss her by about a foot.

She snorted but forever endeared herself to his heart by pretending to duck out of its path. “Leave it to the guy throwing stuff and unironically using the phrase ‘bone zone’ to question my maturity…” Heaving a sigh, she flipped the comic onto the foot of his bed, dropping to her elbows to read (and, ostensibly, insult him) more comfortably. “I don’t get it, Josh, I really don’t! You’re such a good writer—how does all that skill just, like, leave your body the second two characters have to talk to each other? It’s almost eerie, actually.”

“All right,” he said, standing abruptly from his desk. Why he’d thought he’d be able to get anything done while she was editing was anyone’s guess. He couldn’t even claim ignorance; it had always been this way, ever since the first time they’d traded stories in study hall, her handwriting cramped but legible in her notebook and the heels of his hands smeared grey with graphite. “If you’re going to keep negging me, you could at least call me pretty while you do it. You gotta slip a hook in there, Ash, gotta keep me coming back for more. It’s like you’ve learned nothing from me.”

“I’m not negging you, you dip, I’m giving you constructive criticism. Ever hear of it? It’s how you hone your craft.” Sudden as a thunderclap, there came a papery thump as she smacked her hand down onto his sketchbook, stopping him from snatching it away.

Hmm. So she had learned something from him. Good to know.

“Would you prefer a compliment sandwich?” she offered in a tone made sugary sweet by meanspirited glee. Adding insult to injury, she kicked her legs up behind her, letting them dangle in the air like she was paging through a gossip magazine at a sleepover. “I’m good at those. And you’re providing me a lot of sandwich filling, here. ‘He’s right behind me, isn’t he?’ You can’t be serious. Please tell me you weren’t being serious.”

Ah. An impasse.

How quaint.

This muddied the waters a bit. On the one hand, there were few things in life Josh hated more than being corrected. Then again, there were fewer things he loved more than having his ego stroked. A compliment sandwich was a risky, risky proposition on the best of days, especially if it was being served up by the queen of cliches, herself. Still, though…

Still.

Maybe he just needed to be proactive about this whole ‘constructive criticism’ thing. After all, wasn’t editing a two-way street?

Yeah. Yeah, he thought it was.

“Softening your punches now that I’m within pinching distance?” he teased as he flopped onto the empty stretch of bed beside her. “Predictable.”

“Pfft. I’m not softening any—”

He kept his face impassive, propping his chin up with his fists. “Almost as predictable as the ending of your new whodunnit.”

Bingo. The mattress bounced under Ashley’s weight as she went ramrod straight, the smile wiped from her face and her eyes gone wide as hubcaps. “Predic—it’s not—it’s not predictable! It isn’t! You take that back!”

Tamping down the laughter threatening to give him away, Josh shrugged. Maintained his composure. “Nah, you’re right, it’s probably not. To a normal person, anyway. You know me, I’m a special case…steeped in the genre since birth. I can’t help seeing patterns that the average Joe would need to cross his eyes to pick out. Comes with the territory of being brought up at Big Bob’s knee, know what I mean? It’s a gift and a curse.” From the corner of his eye, he watched her speedrun the five stages of grief, then begin the plunge into the dreaded sixth—rewrites.

It was getting hard not to laugh.

He reached over to his sketchbook and turned the page, pretending to examine the panels there. “Hey, forget it. For real, forget I said anything. I’m sure no one else would ever think the scorned ex-wife would get stabby. Too unexpected. Defies all expectations. Talk about genre-bending, you’re really gonna knock their socks off with that one, Ash, you just mark my words.”

“I—”

And there it was. He saw understanding dawn in real-time, the gears in her head whirring almost loud enough to hear. The jut of her pout relaxed, the panicked crease between her eyebrows smoothed out, her eyes narrowed to slits as she realized how easily he’d been able to squirm his way under her skin, but the angry flush on her face? Oh. Oh, that one got worse. That one got way, way worse.

Which was—to be fair!—also predictable.

Where she’d been so quick to protect it before, Ashley had no qualms giving him the sketchbook now. Over and over again, in fact. On top of his head. Or against it, maybe. It was hard to say, considering he was being swatted like a fly.

“Ugh! You’re—”

“Ah, ah!” He laughed, hunching away from her with his hands blocking his face. “Four-letter words only! If you’re gonna insult me, you better make it sting!”

“—insufferable!”

“Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that was indisputably not a four-letter pejorative, and thus I will be forced to dock you points. Wasn’t even four syllables.”

She didn’t seem to appreciate the joke. As he reached for the sketchbook, Ashley only redoubled her efforts, using it to thwap his hand away. Thankfully, though, stamina had never been her strongest suit. She gave up with a groan, letting it drop so she could cover her face with her hands. Not that it helped. That blush? Raging. There was no use in trying to hide it.

But it made sense, he guessed, in the grand scheme of things, anyway. In all the time they’d been friends, duality had sort of been the name of the game: Ashley preferred to blend in while he had a pathological need to stick out; she won all her teachers over without even trying while his reputation had darkened the Washington name for generations to come; and, mamma mia, she lit up like a Christmas tree at the slightest provocation while his poker face had no equal. They kept each other balanced, was the thing. Level. Humble.

…when they weren’t riling each other up, at least.

“You didn’t read it,” she said incredulously. After another second, she raised her head, squinting disapprovingly at him. “You didn’t read it, you liar!”

“I didn’t read it yet.”

Groaning louder that time, Ashley face-planted into his comforter. He had to hand it to her, too—that groan was so loud and so exasperated he actually felt it vibrating through the bed like a shockwave.

“Crazy set of lungs you got on you, holy shit. Don’t get your panties in a twist, it’s next on my list. I just figured it was a safe bet…you like making your killers women full of righteous fury! I always assume the lady with the saddest backstory’s the one who did the damn thing when you’re holding the pen. Now, the stabbing part, I’ll admit, I could’ve put a little more thought into. Not my best bluff. You’re too sophisticated for straight-up physical violence, that’s a rookie’s game. I should’ve gone with something more esoteric. Poisoned ice cubes, maybe, or a hacked Roomba.”

Again, she popped up, perking at the attention. “Do you really—” Ashley began, then caught herself, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling. “A compliment sandwich,” she said, her voice falling flat as she grappled with getting got not once but twice. “You just fed me a compliment sandwich.”

“How’s it feel?”

She rolled her eyes again, that time in such a way that they landed on his. “Like you should at least be calling me pretty while you neg me, smartmouth.” It was clearly meant to be a jab, but she should’ve known better, especially since she’d been his editor for the past however-long.

He loved a good callback.

So, smirking, he shut the sketchbook altogether, smoothing its cover down before leaning over to whisper against her ear, “You’re pretty.” Immediately, a new wave of color flooded across her cheeks, her nose, the tips of her ears. By then, his mouth was close enough to her skin to feel the heat blazing there, and…well, duality, right? If she wanted to dance around it, that was her prerogative. He’d never been one to shy away from a spark, even if it meant getting burnt every now and again. “Don’t act surprised. I don’t let just anyone insult me in bed, you know.”

Ashley turned to meet his gaze, her eyes bright with something he couldn’t place. She looked at him, looked long and hard, then shook her head and yanked the brim of her beanie over her eyes.

“Your dialogue is so bad, Josh,” she said, bringing them right back to where they’d started, “it’s so, so bad!”

Which was, of course, predictable.