"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 58

Matt was no longer the one in need; Josh was the center of attention again and Matt knew how to handle that much better. He'd always been more adept at dealing with Josh's shifting emotions than his own, and now he had the chance to prove it all over again as he leaned forward, laying his right hand between Josh's shoulder blades and the other against the back of the older man's head. He could feel the pounding of the blond's heart straight through his chest, the frantic crescendo beneath his palm and against his thighs. Quiet gasping was the only indication that anything was wrong. In the recent past, Matt would have used his previous experience with the singer, remembering the soft words he used to tell Josh, explaining that he was okay, that he was fine, steadily reminding him to breathe, to relax, to calm down - but this time, it felt different. He'd known that his own little bubble of composure had burst right over his head several minutes ago, and it had felt good - well, not exactly good, but necessary. So, maybe this new meltdown in full view was vital for Josh to finally let go, to stop hiding everything he'd been damping down, to stop trying to convince himself that nothing was wrong, to finally extinguish that flame he'd kept burning to keep away the dark.  

The brunet lightly raked his fingers through the singer's hair once, replacing his hand again almost immediately when Josh sucked in a sharp breath. Matt had an arsenal of phrases that he could use to try to calm the singer down, but instead, he refused to speak, afraid that it would derail the blond from something that seemed so important. Josh had demonstrated several times to Matt that he was falling apart one minute, then trying to sweep those unenviable moments under the carpet and move on in the same breath that it felt essential to allow him to take his time, to splinter into hundreds of thousands of tiny transparent pieces that would inevitably be difficult, but not impossible to put back together.  

Josh's nearly silent, heart wrenching sobs barely disturbed the stillness of the house, but Matt could both feel and hear the way it was affecting the singer. The blond took a quick deep breath and the brunet's knees were suddenly pressing up into Josh's sternum, probably horribly uncomfortably, but Josh made no motion to move away, giving no indication that he even felt it at all. Instead, he tucked himself in even tighter to the guitarist, shuffling his knees up against Matt's ankle. 

Until that moment, Matt's eyes had been on Josh the entire time, watching for any sort of sign that he needed more help than the guitarist was giving him. So far, the older man seemed...not quite content, but satisfied with his kneeling position on the floor. Matt let his gaze drift upward from the singer's back to the window, where the sky was now dappled with picture perfect hues of oranges, pinks and purples, effectively chasing away the deep black-blue that opened the door for Josh's demons to come out to play. Thank God, they'd made it through the night. Barely, but they'd done it. 

Clouds slid easily through the colour palette, breaking up the image with wispy streaks of white that prefaced the soon-to-be rising sun. Matt watched all of this play out over the rooftops of the buildings that he could see from where he sat. He absent-mindedly rubbed the side of his thumb over Josh's scapula as he continued to contemplate the skyline - the brilliant shades quickly fading from tones that he could never give justice to with any kind of verbal description and giving way to a bright blue that rivaled the colour of Josh's eyes on most days. The clouds had disappeared with the presence of the sun, the blinding white-out brightness, like the headlights of an oncoming car now too much to look directly at. Matt turned his attention to the thin yellow stripes across the rug of the blond's living room that the sun left with every inch it climbed, making the lamp on the table to his left completely unnecessary. 

Matt could feel Josh's ribs against his knees and shifted his position just enough to take the pressure off them both. The singer grabbed for the looser denim at the guitarist's side, tethering himself and making all the more it obvious that he wasn't ready to move yet. The brunet lifted his hand from Josh's hair again, only long enough to turn the lamp off by the base instead of the switch on the wall, then leaned forward again directly over the blond's body. He needed to get a glimpse of Josh's face.