-- NOTHING TO HOLD ONTO && [gale]

Though Joshua was a solitary person by nature and thus enjoyed being by himself, he also liked the company of his friends. He was loyal to a fault and he would do anything for the people he cared most about so why would he complain about their presence? Gale wasn't one of his best and closest friends, no, nothing like Lark or Ace, Teddy or Nell, Devin, but he was a pretty good friend. Joshua took a long time to elevate someone from the status of a mere acquaintance to a friend in his mind but it could move from new friend to good friend pretty quickly. He took so long to trust someone that it was pretty difficult to lose that trust when you reached the end of the road. So he considered Gale a pretty good buddy, good company, and the thought of having him around for a couple hours when they messed about the mall was not a negative one. "Always happy to drag you from the depths of ennui, y'know?" He chuckled and took a mocking bow. Really, though, he was glad he could help Gale out in the boredom department. Joshua went mental if he couldn't find something to occupy himself. Boredom was practically the bane of his existence. If he was not moving around then he had to be sitting still and doing something at least. He couldn't veg in front of the TV for hours, it didn't feel right to him. Reading was fine since he mostly read non-fiction and learned things as a result.

Noting Gale's thick jacket, he said, "What'd you do, walk here? It's cold as fuck outside." Fuck being sub-zero temperatures or something along those lines. Fuck was pretty cold. Deeper than being cold as hell or cold as balls, it was Arctic temperature and the ice age. It was also an exaggeration, of course. They shared a dislike for the cold and so he figured Gale would appreciate the dramatics. It sucked that Canadian winter had to be so long, though, because that meant putting up with the frigid hells of winter for months. Why couldn't spring be longer? His favourite season and it was arguably the shortest of the four. Pushing thoughts of the asshole weather aside, he turned his attention to the prospect of getting food. Food was awesome. Who didn't like food? Joshua might not have been as passionate about it as some but he didn't think there was many people in the world who didn't enjoy eating. It was like the human body was designed to love the sustenance that it needed. Convenient, really, since you needed to eat to live. You needed a lot of things to stay healthy and he watched his diet pretty carefully. Still, he loved to splurge on take out every once and a while. "You know your stomach better than I do, man. I'm getting some fries. Fucking love their fries." He gestured to New York Fries when he spoke, indicating. Potatoes were Josh's favourite vegetable so it made sense that he liked French fries more than most fast foods.

"Sucks this place doesn't have a Wendy's," he said conversationally and almost longingly as he glanced around as if expecting the Wendy's he knew not to exist would just pop into place somewhere in the centre of the tables. Only in his dreams. "Now their fries are awesome. I think it's the sea salt." He liked sea salt and so, in turn, fries with sea salt on them tasted the best. Nevertheless, he'd deal. He got himself a large fries and sat down at one of the tables to wait for Gale while his friend went and got whatever he wanted from one of the stores. Once they were both settled, Joshua happily gorging on his meal, he cast around for subjects of conversation. He thought of the girl Gale had affections for and wondered how that was going. He simultaneously decided to avoid the subject. Sometimes love was a rocky road. He wouldn't know, really, but he'd seen other people fight about it enough to play it safe. "Dude, you're going to need to restrain me once we get to the book store," he pointed out, laughing. He had made sure to swallow before speaking of course. Always with his manners. "I can't promise you I won't try and spend hours looking at things and walk out with half their stock in tow." Books were his weakness, especially since he was loaded. Speaking of which... "Did you bring any cash?" Josh didn't mind treating his friends or anything (being rich had advantages) but he wondered if Gale had brought his own funds.

Joshua made a face at the thought of a bike ride, cold wind biting your cheeks and snow hindering your progress. It didn't sound like a very fun time at all. "You need to learn how to drive, bro," he advised him, shaking his head and seeming more amused than sympathetic. His friends knew he didn't mean anything by the comments that he made and so he didn't bother to add a 'no offence' for good measure. If Gale got offended that was his problem but a boy who insulted himself seemed an unlikely candidate for being hurt by anything Josh said. "Could have asked for a lift. I took the car." Ah, his Aventador, his pride and joy. He loved driving around town in it, observing all the normal cars and knowing that he had something special. It had been a gift from Donovan as well and that made it unique in its own right. Anything the man gave him meant something. At first glance a flashy, expensive car seemed more like material compensation than a thoughtful gift but Josh had been more than a little obsessed with the idea of the Lamborghini Aventador when it'd first been released. He wasn't your typical car enthusiast with a knowledge of how they worked inside and out but he liked sports cars and this one's design had captured his attention. Now he owned it. "Will your parents hook you up once you get your license or are you gonna need a job for that?" Some parents were merciful, others forcefully ejected their children from the nest. He wondered what sort Gale's parents were.

The Fire graduate shrugged. "I'm not too big on fast food but it's alright every once and a while." He was used to fancy dinners and well-prepared meals, which really tasted a lot better than the grease-filled wonders of a fast food joint. In his opinion, anyway. However, Josh wasn't so closed-off to the idea of fast food that he never ate it. He wouldn't be here if that was the case. The sea salted fries really were brilliant and French fries in general tended to be a safe bet. He liked potatoes, okay? "Might be the whole veggie thing, I dunno." The fact that he was vegetarian tended to affect things. He couldn't relate to people that said a place had brilliant seafood or steak or hamburgers because Joshua didn't eat any of that. Finding poutine with a nice neutral gravy could sometimes be a pain if it was served in restaurants and they used beef or chicken based gravy. Mushroom gravy was alright because there was nothing meat to interrupt his vegetarian vibe. It was always amusing when he went out to eat with Nell and she ordered half the restaurant while he stuck with a couple of meatless courses. Wasn't it usually the other way around? Joshua didn't mind at all. He did eat a lot, though, because being six foot three and active tended to contribute to a need for sustenance.

He snickered when Gale said he'd drag him from the book store, trying to imagine what that might look like. The more he thought about it the funnier it got and the sniggering progressed into a brief laugh before he shook his head and regained composure. "That was hilarious. Just the thought..." He sighed in his throat and cut himself off there, popping a couple fries into his mouth now that he felt confident he could eat without laughing and choking himself up. He shrugged at the question. "Some people, I dunno." Groups of friends that went to the mall occasionally had a single member or sometimes two that didn't bring cash and just went along for the ride. He didn't understand the point of coming to a mall just to watch your friends buy stuff when you weren't able to but that was fine by him. He always had the money and so he didn't let it concern him. "Where to first? Anything you need to get?" Josh had invited Gale along but maybe the Water had something specific in mind.

Josh was neither lazy nor particularly concerned about the cost of gas and so he scoffed in amusement at Gale's words. "All the way? It's not that far, you don't live in fucking Antarctica or anything." He'd chosen Antarctica at random. He could have went with any other place but hell, it had popped into his head and so he'd used it for his purposes. He didn't understand why Gale would opt to ride a bike in the freezing cold weather as opposed to asking for a lift. Not that he tried very hard to. Joshua was selfish in the tamer sense. He had compassion but he often didn't realise that not everyone viewed things the same way that he did. It still wasn't the best trait in the world but he wasn't extremely self-absorbed or narcissistic, at least. "Yeah because you of all people need to work out, clearly." He raised an eyebrow but let it drop there. No use going back and forth for ages. Gale was here now and that was all that mattered, right? Now the two of them would be able to wreak havoc in the mall and get their shopping done. Or at least the latter. Josh wasn't too big on malls but he had to admit that they were extremely convenient. You got your shopping done in one area and then you could wander around for the rest of the day and see what else they had. Good for entertainment, bad for your bank account. Joshua's poor bank account didn't stand a chance. He wasn't wasteful but he had a taste for expensive things.

It was nice having parents that did things for you. Convenient. His father had gotten him his precious Lamborghini as a birthday gift. A gift with a price tag of over three hundred thousand dollars but it was by far his favourite of all the presents he'd ever gotten. Again, Josh had a taste for what was flashy and expensive. The mansion he lived in was as fancy as the car but it hadn't been a gift for anything in particular. His parents had just decided that, hey, they'd give it to him now that they were done raising their kids and didn't need quite so much space. Worked for Josh. "That's something at least. And you don't drive bikes, Gale," he laughed. "I think the technical term is riding." Considering his friend had told him that he'd rode his bike to the mall he knew that the Water was well aware of this. Josh simply enjoyed teasing his friends. He'd relaxed a lot over the past couple years and it was easier for him to jest with his buddies now that he knew he didn't have to keep an extremely large distance from everyone. "Dude, I'm off the market. I don't keep up with who's hiring. I doubt you've got the credentials to work where I do unless you were the janitor or something." The retirement home had gone over his history of volunteering and contacted his supervisors at the hospital to consider him extensively before they'd actually hired him. The job wasn't even that hard, they just wanted to make sure they hired people who wouldn't make stupid mistakes.

Living off fast food did not sound like a good plan to Joshua. A lot of it was incredibly greasy and unhealthy and since he was so conscious of his health he just couldn't bring himself to consider it. Shaking his head, he said, "Forget your metabolism, your poor arteries are probably crying." He was mostly joking since people their age didn't usually have to worry quite so much about certain health risks but it was true that large amounts of fast food had eventual effects on the human body. If it was that concerning to Josh, though, he wouldn't touch fast food. In moderation he knew he'd be fine. Joshua flexed his arm when Gale did, his own muscle evident. He wasn't thickset and beefy, wasn't a bodybuilder, but he played a lot of tennis and worked out to keep himself toned and his strength up. "Gale, I will go into the lingerie store if I want to," he said, huffing. "I look super sexy in lace and you are not going to take that from me." He sounded so serious that it might have been believable if this weren't Josh, one of the least feminine guys on the planet. He might have been a guy but he was also a jokester, hence the... well, joking around. He led the way into the bookstore that he needed to visit but there was a line and so he wandered over to one of the shelves and picked up a book, reading the back cover. "You read a whole lot? Bookworm and all?" He didn't look at Gale, still focused on the book, but he was curious.

Joshua scoffed in amusement. 'I do what I want' was a pretty valid excuse for everything as far as he was concerned and that was good enough for him. He used it quite a bit. "Yeah, man, dare to be different." He held out his hand so that Gale could high five him or something for shits and giggles. "You can dance around like in those Swiffer commercials." He might not have watched a lot of television but whenever you watched one program you got several different commercials during its run and so he saw his fair share of them when he was watching the news. Joshua watched the local news to keep up with what was going on in Maple Hollow and then he watched the larger news stations so that he knew the happenings of the world. Josh didn't want to be the last one to know when Canada was going to get annihilated or anything like that. It was always weird watching the local programs during MP election times because his mother was on television and it made him laugh. He'd grown up with the woman, after all. "Or are those brooms? Mops, maybe?" Whatever, Gale could still dance with them. Because he was worth it, or so the L'Oreal commercials probably let him know. Okay, he needed to stop thinking about commercials before he started making a bunch of cheesy references to them. He was in a good mood and good moods plus friends were dangerous for his sense of humour. At least he hadn't made a slew of sex jokes quite yet. Only a matter of time. Josh was often the king of inappropriate humour.

The idea of having sensitive arteries was pretty hilarious. Josh liked being around Gale because the other boy was funny and it was rather easy to relax around him. A lot of people took Joshua far too seriously and refused to relax around him but Gale just acted like himself and that was refreshing. And hysterical. "I'm sure you'll still look fabulous," he shot back, then cracked up. He could usually keep a perfectly straight face when he was kidding around but he lost his composure when looking at Gale standing with his hand on his hip. "I think you could pull off being a flamboyant gay man with ease, Gale. Except you'd need to start shaving." He patted his friends shoulder in mock sympathy as if this was a serious ambition of his friend's and he was trying to play the role of the support buddy. He wondered if Gale felt uncomfortable with making jokes about his sexuality. Josh was so confident in his own that it didn't phase him in the least but not all people were similar. Oh well, the deed had been done. If Gale was chill with discussing lingerie with a straight face he probably didn't have anything to worry about. "You too, huh? I'm not into fiction much." He had read some of the classic series like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings for the sake of keeping up with common knowledge topics but for the most part he enjoyed a more serious read. "I've got a pretty big collection at home in my library." Dork level to the extreme. He liked his personal library, his collection of great books. He was very well-read.