"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 57

Josh blinked slowly, eyelashes tangling together briefly before Matt saw him look up again. "Come sit down, Matt," the singer requested, tilting his head to the side and nodding toward the couch. 

"I don't wanna sit! I can't...-,"  

"Please." The blond cut off his nearly irate words, speaking so quietly that the guitarist had no other choice but to shut his mouth and listen. 

Matt growled lowly under his breath, balling his hands into fists at his sides before moving back to the couch and dropping down onto the cushion near Josh's shoulder. He wasn't happy. He'd tried his best to keep himself under control, but he'd snapped and now that the dam had broken, he couldn't stop the words and emotions from flooding the place, practically drowning them both in questions and sick curiosity.  

Josh leaned his head back on the couch and looked up at the guitarist upside down, a small smile on his lips. "Thanks," he mumbled, tilting his head up again and sliding his body a bit further down to rest more comfortably on the floor against the front of the sofa.  

"Talk, Josh. You owe me." The guitarist cringed inwardly as he heard himself speak those words. It wasn't fair of him to say that, but he was grasping at straws now. He was just tired of this push-and-pull, back-and-forth, sanity-into-lunacy, tell-me-don't-tell-me, just-the-tip, fuck-you-fuck-you-too game. Enough was enough and he aimed to put a stop to it. 

Josh bit at the inside of his lip and ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it down and off to the side, just out of his line of vision. "I owe you, do I? Okay. I owe you," he relented, pulling a leg up to his chest and wrapping his arm around it. Matt knew this was a go-to move. In fact, it was one of many of Josh's quirks that he'd seen and caught onto really early on in their friendship. Matt had the singer's personality nailed down within about six months of meeting him, and he'd barely changed in all the time. Everyone grows up, but there are some things you just don't grow out of. 

The singer ticked his tongue against his teeth. He spoke quietly, fluidly, with all the articulation of a book narrator and none of the sass he was so well known for.  "There are three sides to every story, Matt - yours, mine and the truth."  

The brunet nodded his head and spoke a quiet, "Okay...," before waiting for what followed. He had no idea what Josh was getting at. 

The blond slowly shifted his body closer until his shoulder was up against Matt's leg, his head was leaning on the younger man's knee. Matt resisted the urge to reach out and place a hand against the older man somewhere - anything that might be a comforting touch, which he seemed to need at the moment. More new territory. Usually Josh clammed up, kept to himself, folded inward and locked himself away until he could work through whatever was rifling through his thoughts, dragging out old memories or causing him to think too harshly of himself. Those were times when no one would see him for days, sometimes even weeks. But here he was molding himself to Matt's body, warmth against warmth, shaking against stable, both dancing around the same subject, both hoping for answers that only one could provide. 

"Well, you know your side, but I don't know mine. And the fuckin' truth, dude...? The only truth I know is that death is inevitable. Everything else? That was lost a long time ago," Josh rambled, making very little sense again. "I'm so tired of fighting," he said wearily with a heavy sigh that Matt could feel straight through his own body. "All I've ever done is fight. Against myself, mostly." 

Matt finally reached out to lightly clamp a hand onto the singer's shoulder. The older man been through more three syllable wars than he ever should have had to fight, and the more the guitarist thought about it, the more he realized that Josh was right, but he wasn't sure what that had to do with anything as of yet. Still, the fact was that Josh always had his secretive side of every story, everyone around him had theirs, but the exact truth was nothing that anyone could pinpoint. Between the drug cocktails, self-harming, depression, food issues, and the sleeplessness, there were times when no one knew what the hell Josh was talking about, and he couldn't explain because he wasn't nearly lucid enough.  

"I'm dead, dude. I'm dead. These voices in my head...they're fuckin' right. Maybe not literally like I thought at first, though. God," Josh laughed, self-deprecation evident as he pulled himself upright and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, "I'm so fucking stupid. I write this shit into songs, but I can't see it right in front of my own goddamn eyes. I keep dying and I keep coming back to life over...and over...and over again. If it's not one thing, it's another, you know? Teenage Ramsay, dead at seventeen because he was a fucking idiot." Josh paused to sniff hard before going on, his voice thickening a bit as he spoke. "Dead again at twenty-one. Big rockstar thought he could handle it all, but I burned out and faded away. Like a moth to a flame," he added philosophically. "Then, it all fell to shit again and it wasn't my fault. I swear to fucking God, Matt, it wasn't my fault this time. I know it wasn't. I know that," Josh finished, tucking his leg up under him and turning to face the guitarist, staring up at him with pleading eyes. "It wasn't my fault." 

Matt furrowed his brow at the singer, wanting to do everything in his power to ease the older man's worry. He wanted nothing more than to tell Josh that he damn sure knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that "it" wasn't Josh's fault, but he still had no idea what they were talking about. "Josh, man..." There was a sudden flash behind Matt's eyes, tripping landmine visions of the hospital, of conversations with Josh lying under the starched white blankets, weak, scared, unsure of what was wrong or what had put him there in the first place.  

"You didn't... This time it's not your fault...is it...?"Matt asked hesitantly, knowing that it was an unfair accusation, but a warranted concern. He hadn't wanted to ask and put it off until he couldn't bite the question back any longer. The guitarist didn't want that to continually be his go-to worry every time something was wrong with the singer, but knowing his past... 

"No," Josh answered, frowning down at his hospital bracelet. Not a single one of the three points of truth stood out to him and he didn't sound nearly as sure as he undoubtedly wanted to be. "It's not my fault this time. At least, I don't think it is. I just don't know..." 

Matt mentally ran through every answer he could possibly give the older man, finally settling on one only seconds later, when he could feel Josh's eyes desperately searching him for the answer he appeared to be hoping for. "I know... I know it's not your fault," he said simply, unsure of how else to elaborate on the statement. And he did know, to some degree, that what Josh had been going through wasn't his fault, though he had no idea what the singer was referencing, exactly. 

Josh immediately lowered his head to stare down at the floor and braced his hands on his knees, seeming to silently choke on his own breath as he lifted his chin just slightly in acknowledgment, the motion causing his hair to fall into his face to once again hide him from the exchange he was reluctant, but willing to take part in. He huffed, ragged air almost rattling in his throat. The singer raised the back of his hand up to his nose, and Matt watched as he sniffed once more. It seemed apparent that he was trying to keep from coming unglued, even though there was no need.  

Just as the brunet was half a second away from saying so, Josh leaned forward, draping his upper half over the guitarist's knees, fist held tight against his mouth, body trembling. Matt had gotten used to the feeling of the singer's shaking form a little too close to his own at least a decade earlier. It was something else he'd known back in the day for different reasons, but hadn't experienced again until recently - "Don't ever let anyone tell you that withdrawals are what fuckin' Hollywood makes them out to be," Josh had once said between uncontrollable tics and rushed exits to the bathroom where he'd sink to his knees, only to emerge minutes later - a little more fragile, muscles twitching, eyes involuntarily tearing as he cursed himself under his breath loudly enough for Matt to hear, but not loudly enough for it to warrant a response. Then he'd drop down next the guitar player, unable to hide the consistent head-to-toe jittering, teeth nearly chattering with the letdown of anxiety or the more complicated dissipation of whatever was slowly leaving his system.