Tell Me How It Feels

Chapter Seventeen: Joel

A/N: If you haven't already realised, the next chapter is from Joel's point of view. Just for a change from Finlay :) Erm, it's just a transition chapter really, it would have been too long to do all the plot I had intended to write originally. Sorry, I'll update very very soon though. I do apoligize if it seems rushed, Wattpad's deleted my drafts twice so I've had to write it all at once.

Stuff actually happens next chapter! Can you believe it? The day is finally upon us.

Caysie. x

----------

Chapter Seventeen: Joel

  "Cigarette?" Joel's arm extended in Finlay's direction, his hand up-turned with a shiny box in his grasp. He hadn't smoked all day and, although he had smoked for years, he wasn't gasping for one. He never was really.

"Thanks," Finlay took the box from his hands, pulled out the thin white cylinder and placed it between his lips. With a grunt, he creased his forehead and looked around to Joel who immediatly started patting his pockets for his lighter. 

He found it deep within his back pocket and, with great effort, elevated his whole body from his chair to reach behind himself and pull it out. Upon retriving it, he handed it to Finlay who took it, lit his cigarette swiftly and took to lighting his own once it was given back.

"I can't wait to get away again," mumbled Joel, who couldn't speak properly for the cylinder hanging out of the corner of his lips. He was struggling to get a decent flame with the lighter, and mentally cursed Finlay for making it look so easy.

"Mmm, I know," Finlay had finished his first drag and held the burning cigarette at the end of his fingers, "me too. I don't think I've ever wanted to this much."

Joel nodded and sat back in his chair, "yes, exactly. Over bloody Christmas too." He sometimes felt that all he did was sit around when they weren't recording or touring. He needed to get out some more.

"Don't like Christmas much," Finlay muttered, his eyes focused completely on Joel's exhales of twirling smoke.

"I know you don't. I love it, but this year I couldn't give a shit whether we're away or not," he was aware of the audience his smoke-blowing was attracting, and took to trying to shape whatever he blew out, with little success.

"At least you're home for your birthday."

"I think I'm looking forward to going away better. Fucking twenty-eight, Finlay, twenty-eight," Joel shook his head and sighed. He was scared of aging, he didn't like to admit it but he couldn't deny it. He knew that, of all of them, he was most apprehensive of getting old. 

   Finlay never answered him, probably because there was nothing he could do to change the fact that he was getting older. He wondered why he was so anxious about it, it's not like he was the only one aging. Ryan was a year older than him, and he still looked pretty young. Certainly not nearly thirty.

   His chest sank. Ryan. One of his best friends, who was so caught up in seemingly everything at the moment that Joel actually felt guilty.

   "What's bothering you?" Finlay asked, settling back into the couch and staring out of the large windows to the left of him.

"I'm just sorry I couldn't help you," he admitted quietly before studying his cigarette carefully. He hated how quickly they burned down, yet thought that a slower disintegration would be too...painful, he guess.

"Help me how?"

"With Ryan."

"Ohh," Finlay looked around to Joel, back to the window and sighed, "every bloody conversation I have now is about Ryan."