A/N: second chapter here we go,,, idk how long this is gonna be. Also yes i changed his name, dw about it. also, I know very little about zelda so pls dont clown me

We're all pretending

We are someone

And feeling so numb

Well just join the club

-All Messed Up, The Orphan The Poet

Highschool was going to be rough. Josh knew that even before he was fully awake, as one glance at his alarm clock told him he was going to be late unless he got going. He took the quickest shower in history, then threw on his clothes. He was doing pretty well time wise, and he even debated packing lunch before deciding fuck it, he'd just get something form the vending machine at school.

He did make the mistake of looking in the mirror, though. He thought he looked too much like a baby, with his stupid braces and scruffy hair and wide eyes. He looked, well, not like him.

When he played in Rex Gang Kill, he was the the cool guitarist who wore hawaiian shirts and tank tops and wore eyeliner. Now he just looked like a dorky kid who wore nothing but band merch or dumb star wars shirts.

Josh wasn't sure that he'd ever step foot inside a Target again, but if he did, he was seriously going to have to buy new clothes.

After a moment of consideration, he decided to raid his mom's bathroom drawer. She didn't seem to mind that her son was barrelling his way into her room at a good 6:30 in the morning. She just very tiredly lifted her head from her pillow and gently asked what he was looking for.

"Eyeliner," He said.

"New look?" Lisa Melliar smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

"Yeah," Josh mumbled back, fishing her eyeliner out of the top drawer. He took a few minutes to draw it on, and when he was done, he stepped back from the mirror to look at his mother. "How's it look?"

Lisa could cry. Her son was growing up, finding himself, starting to come into his own. He looked beautiful, smudged eyeliner and all. She told him exactly that.

Josh ran his hand over the back of his neck. "You think so?"

His mother looked at him adoringly. "I know so, Joshua." She lowered her voice conspiratorial. "You better not be late to school. Don't be too loud leaving either. You'll wake your father."

"Not a chance," Josh snorted softly. "He sleeps like the dead." He just laughed at the look his mother gave him, turning off the bathroom light as she patted her husband's sleeping form. He waved goodbye to his mom, and when he left he was sure to be gentle with closing the door.

***

The drive to school was relatively uneventful. He blasted the Ramones and pulled up to Lydia's house. Lydia and Emily weren't waiting on the porch today and Josh frowned, doing a mental check of the date. It was the 11th, which by all accounts should be a regular day. He honked on the horn twice.

Two minutes later, a tired looking Lydia came out of the house, pulling on her flats and doing some sort of weird hop down the front steps. She perked up when she saw him, and she all but crashed into the side of his car.

"Hey," He winced. "Careful with the paint job--"

"You're wearing eyeliner!" She gushed. She managed to shift her jacket to her other arm to pull her waffle out of her mouth so she could speak, which Josh thought was a miracle considering how many things she was holding. "You look so cool, Josh."

He sighed fondly. He really did forget how many of his friends were weird with having conversations, but he didn't think he minded it so much any more. "Get in, loser. We're going to hell." As an afterthought, he added on a "Where's Emily?"

Lydia made a face. "She didn't come home last night. I think she spent the night at her new boyfriend's."

"Ew," he muttered, making a face.

Lydia emphatically agreed. "I know! I don't know if she's even coming to school today!"

Josh grinned. "She better, I've got a a lot of shocking to do today."

Lydia stared at him wistfully, her mood changing almost instantly. "You seem so grown up right now." She continued to stare at him thoughtfully, and Josh tried not to preen at the attention, because he'd become something of an attention whore recently.

"It's the eyeliner," He said quickly, but then thought that sounded suspicious somehow, so he followed up with "I'm gonna be 18 soon anyway."

Apparently that was funny to Lydia, because she just laughed. "And yet you haven't changed at all, loser," she snorted.

"Shut up," he mumbled, but he couldn't bite down the massive smile on his face.

***

He'd been right, school was weird. At least three girls had tried to flirt with him, as well as one dude, and that had all been before lunch. Even his friends had something to say about it, and when he walked up to their usual table he was greeted with a "Someone's feeling confident today," and a wolf whistle.

He rolled his eyes and tried not to turn red. "It's just eyeliner. It's not like it's never been done before."

Emily stared blankly at him, sipping on the straw of her milk box. Jack started cracking jokes about Josh being his gay awakening, Raj jabbed his elbow into Jack's ribs, and Ray was resolutely not looking in Josh's eyes.

His heart sank. He'd started wearing eyeliner senior year, and maybe it had been closer to halloween, but he hadn't thought the time difference would, well, make a difference. Ray didn't have a problem with it in November, but that was after he'd stopped giving a shit, probably. Josh had only even started making bolder statements after he saw New Machina's show, which was literally in a few weeks. He'd just assumed that something that was going to happen might as well happen sooner but... maybe he'd just mess things up like that.

His gut clenched, and he really hoped that Ray wasn't like, actively homophobic or anything. Not that wearing makeup inherently made a dude gay, but that was usually the implication. Also, Josh was bi, so his feelings were kinda on the line.

He decided he'd deal with whatever Ray's problem was later, and shifted his attention to Emily. "Your sister was worried about you," he said.

Emily sighed. "You should at least text her so she knows you're okay and at school," he insisted. She frowned, but complied anyway, tugging out her phone and firing off a quick text to Lydia. Satisfied, Josh cracked open a can of diet coke.

"You guys should probably just go out next week and save us all the misery." Emily was back to not paying attention to them, scrolling at something on her phone. "It's awful watching the two of you just pine from a distance."

Josh almost choked on his soda. "I'm sorry, pine? Date?"

"Holy shit," Raj said, now apparently more invested in harassing Josh than harassing Jack. "You mean you don't like Lydia?"

"Wait," Josh set his coke down, no longer choking and beginning to look alarmed. "Lydia has a crush on me?" He didn't remember this part.

Emily began to look anxious as well. "Fuck. Shit, don't tell her I spilled. She'd be mortified." Josh gave her a quick nod of affirmation, he wouldn't tell.

"I totally thought you two were head over heels," Jack squawked from his position next to Raj. "You give each other these looks, y'know?"

Josh eyed him warily. "...Looks?"

"Yeah, like 'Please bone me' or something as equally gross and het."

"Ignore him," Raj advised, and smacked Jack on the shoulder. "He's the verbal version of illiterate. Doesn't know how to read a room."

"So, stupid?" Emily muttered under her breath, lips curled up into a tiny smile.

Josh wrinkled his nose. "Please never assume there's anything heterosexual about me, ever again."

"Hell yeah!" Jack crowed and reached over the picnic table to slam a high five with Josh, ignoring Raj's protests of "Stop enabling him!"

Other than lunch being a complete disaster, the rest of the day wasn't too bad. He did feel guilty, though. He didn't think he was supposed to know about Lydia's crush. He hadn't known anything about that in his timeline, and considering he'd only been here for a day, he didn't think he'd changed anything that could affect Lydia so much that she'd develop an overnight crush on him, which meant that she'd liked him the whole time.

It made him wonder how much he didn't know. The more he thought about it, he didn't know Ray that well, or Emily, or any of his other friends. Of course, he'd thought they were tight back then, but it wasn't until the band that he really had close friends. He knew Ray and Emily better than Raj or Jack, or Lydia, seeing as Ray and Emily became his bandmates. But he had always been closer with Collin anyway.

Maybe this time he could cheat a little and be a better friend.

***

The second day was a little better. It was still weird, and he really did oversleep this time. He hadn't needed to wake up on a school schedule in a long time. If you asked him, he'd describe the feeling as some form of jet lag. Of course, that wouldn't make sense to anyone but himself, since no one but him knew he was a time traveler.

He'd rushed to pick up the Hollin sisters, and thankfully both were waiting on the front porch this time. He hollered his usual greeting at them, and they'd tumbled into his backseat. They probably ran a few red lights on their way to school, but Josh wasn't protesting. It truly felt like old times for him, when he did dumb shit with his friends and didn't have to worry about taxes. Yet.

He kept his word to Emily and didn't say anything. She'd cornered him after lunch and made him swear not to say anything to Lydia, and he was momentarily confused, because his nod earlier hadn't reassured her. Then he remembered how different Emily and Collin were, and promised not to say anything.

He wouldn't know what to say to Lydia about it even-- she hadn't been the one to come to him and he didn't have romantic feelings for her, so it was probably best to just not touch that one.

When he got out of first period, Ray was waiting for him in the hallway, looking down at his notebook and absolutely shredding one of the pages. They had second period together-- English, if Josh recalled correctly-- but he was honestly relying on muscle memory to get him from class to class, and yesterday had been a blur. He wondered if this was how Collin felt all of the time, disoriented and out of his element.

Ray looked up, and his eyes zeroed in on Josh's face, which made him slightly uncomfortable. They'd had a bit of a rough go during the first half of their band years, but he'd like to think they left off okay, even if the band had broken up. None of that would matter if he fucked things up here and now, so he did his best to not look like a deer caught in headlights.

Ray surprised him by opening his mouth first. "You're not wearing eyeliner," he said softly, and wow, uh, that wasn't what Josh expected.

"No," he said, and almost reached up to touch his face, before he realized that was stupid and stopped. "I didn't have time this morning."

Ray nodded and didn't say anything as they walked down the hallway. "You seem tired, and I dunno..." he trailed off, and then scowled when Josh asked him what he meant. There really was no winning with this guy.

Josh could tell he looked tired too, and it wasn't long before Ray cracked and finished his thought. "You seem older. More mature."

He paused. It was probably a bad idea to tell Ray 'yeah I'm 29,' so he settled for getting as close as he could to the truth. "I woke up recently," he said, as the English classroom came into view at the end of the hallway. "And I had a bit of an existential crisis."

Ray snorted, but Josh just shook his head. "I'm serious, dude. You just get this moment where, everything changes, and it feels like things click into place. Maybe you don't notice it at the time, or maybe it's painfully obvious."

They were getting closer to Mrs. Bea's classroom. "You're about as observant as a brick wall," Ray said, but it sounded like deflecting to Josh.

"I figured out what I want," Josh said, before Ray fell silent and they entered English class.

***

He managed to survive the American Public School System for a whole week, which was an impressive feat if you asked him. He had a bit of a stress-induced jam session on Thursday night, where he wrote a whole ass song about the band. To anyone not from his timeline, it probably just sounded like hopeful dreams about making music, but if he released that song in 2032 the fans would sob. Honestly, he was kinda getting close to crying over it himself.

Ugh. Whatever. He'd do things differently this time, and the band wouldn't break up because he'd have solved all the problems. This time, he'd talk to Ben more and make him feel more included, he'd be there more for Collin after shows, he'd talk Ray out of his alcoholic tendencies, and for Emily, well, she probably just needed to go to therapy or have a good long talk with Collin about her issues.

It was probably this mindset that leaded him to ask Ray to hang out on Friday. He didn't do it in person, because he was a dumbass coward and nothing else should ever be expected of him. And well, he was curious. He genuinely wanted to know Ray better this time.

He didn't expect Ray to hit him back with a text.

Ray Bans: pls for the love of god ill take any excuse to get outta my house

Me: after school we can go hang out at my house or at the park or smthn

Ray Bans: aight old man, youve got urself a deal

He strongly disliked the old man part.

He scrolled through his phone contacts for a second, confused, before it hit him that he couldn't text Collin about this because he didn't know Collin yet. He needed to stop accidentally hurting his own feelings.

Regardless, he was probably more nervous about Ray coming over to his house. He didn't want to think about it, but he was probably going to meddle in the timeline again. There was one potential problem with Ray hanging out, and that was if he asked about Victoria.

Josh had no issue with his sister, in fact, she was probably one of the coolest people he knew. However, in his old timeline... Ray and Victoria got married. Maybe he was being selfish, but he kind of wanted to keep Ray to himself for a while.

Ray and Vic hadn't even met until their first show as Rex Gang Kill, and they had a lengthy friendship for about six years before they entered a relationship. They got married on the 10th of April, and Rex Gang Kill broke up four months later.

He and Ray never hated one another, but at some point things had gotten tense, and he wasn't really sure what had gone wrong.

None of this even mattered though. Vic wasn't supposed to visit until tomorrow, since she still had college lectures to attend or whatever. As long as he didn't mention his sister and kept Ray away from the family photos, he could ignore that his heart pounded every time he thought about April 10th.

School was, as always, a blur. Math sucked, History sucked, life sucked. English was only bearable because Ray kept drumming on the edge of the table with his pencil, which Josh thought was funny since Ray didn't even play drums. He was pretty good at it though, which made sense because it was Ray Storey. Josh thought he was good at everything.

Lunch was also fine. Nothing special, unless you counted Jack almost choking on goldfish as special (It really wasn't). Josh did remember that he'd never asked about the specifics of the afternoon, so he tapped Ray on the arm to ask if he needed a ride after school.

Emily gave him an unnervingly perceptive look after that, so he shot a look back at her before remembering that she didn't know Collin yet, and therefore he had nothing on her. Looked like she won this round, but he was pretty sure he'd be able to get back at her in a month or so.

Josh felt like he was buzzing the whole afternoon. Raj asked him twice during Art if he was okay, which was probably fair since he usually got into the Art Zone as soon as he entered the room. Today he was struggling to even fill out a basic zentangle.

He was a little more hyped than he wanted to be, but he couldn't deny he almost jumped out of his skin when the bell rang.

Ray was waiting for him outside the parking lot, next to the school exit.

"Where's your car?" He asked.

"Oh, Hi, Josh," Josh replied, not without a bit of snark. "How was your day? Mine was pretty good."

"Fuck you." Ray rolled his eyes.

"You wish," He said without thinking, and then immediately regretted it. That was probably not the thing to say to your heterosexual future brother-in-law. Josh very discreetly did not look at Ray for the next couple of minutes, instead waving his hand in the direction of his car and mumbling vaguely.

Once Ray had been secured in the passenger seat, Josh reached for the aux cable, but hesitated. "Music?" he asked.

"Just don't play trash."

"Dude," he huffed. "You're gonna have to be more specific than that."

Ray hesitated. "Just put on something."

Josh thought that Ray was one of those people that liked it when you paid attention to their preferences, but would never outright say what they liked. So he put on The Smashing Pumpkins and some Mother Mother, and made a quiet note of what songs Ray nodded along to.

He was going to do things right this time.

***

They ended up going to the park. There was a pathway that led through some trees, and off to the side there was a small playground. Josh and Ray ended up taking the path near the woods, the one that was emptier than the rest.

Ray was the one that made a beeline for it. It was much more hidden, and Josh doubted he would've even noticed it if Ray hadn't pointed it out.

"You come here often?" Josh asked, and internally winced because technically that phrase was a pick up line.

Ray shrugged, and mimed kicked a tree with his beat up converse. "It's quiet," He said in lieu of anything else, which said a surprising amount about Ray. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Josh couldn't remember seeing Ray's parents at his wedding. Just his brother and some of his cousins. Sometime during the Lay Line tour, he'd mentioned his parents divorcing.

So there were issues going on at home, because in this timeline his parents hadn't divorced yet.

Josh tried to remember what the big catalyst for the divorce was, because he knew that something big had happened. Unfortunately, Ray really didn't like talking about it, and Josh never pushed further because he assumed Ray just needed time to open up about it to someone.

He didn't know if Ray ever told anyone, but he knew Ray never told him. They really weren't as close as people thought they were.

"You ever been here before?" Ray asked. Josh was still trying to formulate a generic answer that Ray wouldn't question too much, when he followed up with "Since you knew the way to the park".

"Yeah," Josh said slowly, still estimating how much to give away. "I come out here to think sometimes." Just keep it simple.

Ray looked at him, like he was scrutinizing him. Like he could see into his mind, see all the secrets and white lies that lived under his skin, like he'd pick them all apart until the only thing left was Josh, without all his masks and layers. It unnerved Josh, and he shivered.

Then Ray looked away, scuffing the tip of his shoe in the dirt, his laces flying. He usually kept them unlaced, and Josh almost cringed as he thought about how many times Ray had almost faceplanted on stage, and the couple of times he actually did. The fans always seemed to catch those moments on camera. Josh was pretty sure Emily kept a compilation of Ray nearly falling on her phone. She'd make it her background if she could.

Whatever weird moment happened between them had passed, and they ended up goofing off in the middle of the pathway, telling the other weird facts and making fun of one another.

"Hey Josh, come look at this," Ray said when they stopped to lean against a tree. His face was flushed from laughing.

He nodded at a sign that had different directions to nearby attractions and stuff, but Josh's eyes followed Ray's arm to where he was tapping the words "Botanical Garden".

"You wanna see some flowers?" He laughed, and Ray scowled.

"Don't be an asshole," Ray said. "Yeah I wanna see some flowers."

It was only 5 pm or so when they stumbled back to Josh's car, jittery with energy and drunk on glee. Ray looked disappointed to be leaving so early, so Josh figured he could go out on a limb this once.

"We could go to my house next," Josh offered, and Ray seemed relieved that he didn't ask questions.

Josh's house was by no means big, and the Melliar's had four children total. It was a smallish house, but what it lacked in space it made up for in warmth. It definitely was not lacking in "Live Laugh Love" signs. Josh was reminded of the sign in his room that said "Alive Ahaha Fuck".

Things really only went downhill when Josh decided to enter the kitchen, for snacks y'know, with Ray awkwardly trailing behind him. Because who was standing in the kitchen you might ask?

"Vic?"

Victoria turned around, cupcake in hand, and her face lit up at the sight of Josh. "Joshua! My little baby brother!" She took a couple steps forward, cornering him and giving him no choice but to submit to her bone crushing hugs.

"What are you doing here?" Josh asked, kind of stunned. "Don't you have class or something?"

Vic snorted, returning to the cupcake she had been munching on earlier. "Prof cancelled classes," she said, wiping frosting off her mouth. "So I decided to drive down early."

She glanced behind Josh, towards Ray, who had been looking like he wanted to blend in the the walls for the past two minutes. "Oh? New friend?" She asked, because she had Sister Omnipotence, or something.

Josh sighed. "Hey Ray, this is my sister Victoria. Victoria, this is Ray."

Vic sent him a nod. "You picked a nice one," and both Josh and Ray flushed, because well, hmm. Josh didn't have a reason exactly, he just kept saying and interpreting things wrong.

"Thank you?" Ray said, only it sounded more like a question. "I like your tattoo," He tried instead, which came out much smoother.

Vic grinned, and held up the wrist with the Triforce on it. "You like Zelda?"

Ray smiled, but it was shy and so un-like the Ray Josh was used to that he almost forgot to breathe.

That interaction maybe made Josh sort of sad, and he would probably sulk about it later, because this wasn't a version of Ray that he'd seen much of in the twelve plus years he knew Ray. But Ray met his sister and immediately acted like a different, more open person... well, it hurt.

"Josh, you didn't tell me your sister was cooler than you," Ray said, grinning this time.

Oh yeah, the universe definitely had it out for him.