"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 41

"Hey, whoa. Are you okay?" The individual who spoke was moving around the room. Soft taps of shoes against the floor sounded until a figure towered over him, blocking the overhead lighting and casting a shadow over the singer. Josh could feel the other body in the room much, much too close to him. "Man, Josh, sorry. I didn't mean to scare you like that. Shit..." 

The blond raised his head slowly toward the familiar voice, muscles in his shoulders aching and contracting against his will. Flickering his eyes open, he lifted them to see Matt bent down on one knee only inches from the singer's own. The younger man's hand was on the edge of the sofa, steadying him, and Josh could feel Matt looking him over, brown eyes locked in a worried expression. 

"You okay?" Matt asked again quietly, lowering his right knee to the floor beside the left. 

Josh shifted his body slightly, dipping his head as he braced both hands on the floor, forearms pressed tightly against his legs. Slowly, he took a deeper breath, waiting impatiently for his heartbeat to regain a more normal rhythm. He fixed his eyes on the bare spot on the floor between their bodies, his vision still pinholing with every stuttering beat of his heart. 

"Are you okay?" Matt asked for the third time, his voice calm but firm. The younger was obviously concerned that he'd done some serious damage, and he was waiting for some kind of acknowledgement that Josh was going to make it through this unintentional scare. 

Okay... Okay. 'Okay' was all relative, but, all things considered, he could have been much worse. "Yeah," Josh exhaled, both relieved and annoyed that he had become this afraid of someone walking up behind him, and that this time, the person who had nearly done him in was his own band member. He sniffed hard, hoping to drag a bit more air into his lungs, but with ribs that were slowly, painfully healing, breathing that deeply still hurt. Lifting a hand up off the floor, he wrapped his arm across his chest and placed it gently against the opposite side of his body, fingers resting lightly over fractured bones. The singer gradually pulled himself upright, sitting back on his heels. "Yeah, I'm fine. How the fuck did you get in here, anyway?" he asked a little breathlessly. 

Matt reached into his jacket pocket and held up an object. The silver chain dangled from his pointer finger as a set of keys swayed back and forth. A look somewhere between a sheepish smile and a smirk crossed his face. "Left your keys in the door, dipshit." 

Josh winced, closing his eyes against as a new random current surge of pain across his upper body faded to near numbness again. The entire time, he could feel Matt watching him, and he wished the guitar player would go somewhere, anywhere else, or at least stop staring. After a minute, he was able to slide his hand away from his body and move it to the couch, where he opened his eyes and eased himself to his feet, opting to sit on the sofa instead of the hard floor. "Okay. Fair enough. Next question. Why the fuck are you here?" 

The younger man tossed the keys up to Josh, both of them watching as the metal landed with a clink beside the blond, bouncing once and sliding to a stop in the crack between the cushions. The singer let them lay and crossed his legs, leaning back as he waited for the answer. Matt shouldn't be there. There was no reason for it, and he already knew he had to be prepared to answer any number of questions the guitarist may have about why he, himself, was there. 

Digging a hand into the opposite jacket pocket, Matt pulled out a small plastic amber tube and shook it, a dense rattling coming from the inside. "Left your pills in my car, you double dipshit." Matt's smirk turned into a wider grin as he made even better use of the repeated teasing insult. He dropped the medication into the blond's waiting hand, then pushed himself to his feet, slipping his thumbs through his belt loops and rocking back on his heels.