Coming Home // Sidemen AU (Minizerk)

2013

3 years missing...

In the future, when looking back on the time during Josh's disappearance, Simon would say that that year was the one where everything changed. With still no proper job or any plans for getting one, the young man was still living at home, earning his keep by doing all the chores around the house and generally helping his parents out in any way he could. They were understanding about the whole situation, even if his older brothers were off at university or being real adults with real jobs and lives.

His existence was kind of one in a bubble, he still interacted socially with others, if the situation called for it, but it never felt quite real or in the moment. It's like his whole life had been muted and blurred. His parents worried about him, he knew they did, but they needn't have. He was fine, or at least that's what he kept telling himself.

It was late in April when he received the phone call. Actually it was a phone call for his dad, in the middle of the night, but Simon had still been awake and had crept to his parents room so he could listen in. If his dad ever got a call that late, it was always something serious.

As it turned out it was more than serious, it was an urgent call to a scene, an old, long abandoned house out in the country - or just outside of London, that counted as the countryside to him - but it was not the location that was most concerning, rather the anonymous phone call that had brought it to the police's attention.

Apparently someone had called in, in the middle of the night, giving the police a tip off of the location of a teen who had gone missing three years ago, a teen going by the name of Josh Bradley.

Simon's heart had sped up so rapidly he felt as if it might burst out of his chest. Was this finally it? Was he finally going to have Josh back in his life? It seemed absolutely too good to be true but it was the first bit of news they'd had on the case in nearly three years, and Simon's father had to practically fend him off to stop him from coming with him. He'd be more hinderance than help and Simon knew that was most likely true, but that wasn't the point...if Josh was there then he needed to be there too.

However his dad absolutely refused and had set off after hurriedly getting dressed himself. Simon sat, not doing anything but wait for his dad to call him and give him an update. He did get the call, about an hour later...but it was not the one he wanted. Empty, the place had been empty. But it hadn't always been...

It was clear to the experts that the place had been frequented, often and recently, and that there was a certain "room" which showed signs of having been lived in. Whoever had been there had scarpered pretty quickly, but not carefully enough to rid the room of DNA.

It didn't take long for the lab results to confirm that it was Josh's blood, not fresh but sunk into the cracks of the concrete. There was no way of telling if the blood was two months or two years old. But Josh had been there at some point. And he'd been hurt.

His father had returned that night, ashen faced and shaky hands. Apparently the house had not been a welcoming one. Hearing his dad describe the prison his friend had been kept locked up in was one of the most horrific things he'd ever heard in his life. His dad told him the cell was a hollow cube of concrete, one way in, no windows. No sound, no light, no furniture or cloth of any kind. There had been thick metal hoops with old, rusted chains attached to them, and an old bucket in the corner. That had been it except for a few scratch markings on the wall, human ones, made by someone clawing at the concrete.

Other than that there had been no solid evidence apart from the tyre tracks leading away, ones that matched the ones of the car seen trailing the teen on CCTV, but they had no leads on who owned the fucking car, so a fat lot of help that was.