"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 25

By a little after midnight, Josh was standing in front the door to his condo, keys in hand. "Just go in. Go on. Just fuckin' do it. You were in there before and nothing bad happened. It was fuckin' fine. Do it," he rambled softly to himself, trying to avoid another scene that his neighbours might overhear. 

Somewhere between trying to talk himself into opening the door and thinking about his neighbours, he managed to jam the key into the lock and walk into the house. It was fine. It was all okay. The first step was done. And at least he'd thought to turn on all the lights when he had gotten home the first time hours ago, so he was met with a soft yellow glow from the hallway the second he opened the door. That was...somewhat comforting. 

Josh closed the door and immediately settled himself in the kitchen, popping the tops on the myriad of medication bottles. Just as he thought, he was overdue by an hour on every one of them. No wonder he was seeing stars every time he moved. The pain, however, was both a blessing and a curse. It helped to keep his mind off being in the house alone at night. But on the other hand, it hurt like a motherfucker and the singer couldn't quite decide which was the lesser of the two evils. 

He dumped the handful of pills he needed to function into his mouth and downed half a glass of lukewarm water to get the bitterness off his tongue. The tablets tasted horrible, but the water made it worse. The blond didn't want to take the short amount of time to let the water get cold. He wanted the medications in his body and working as fast as possible, so he took what he could get, and the awful combination made him shudder. 

While he waited for the relief the little white round pain pills would eventually bring, Josh wandered around the kitchen to keep himself busy. The rest of the house seemed way too daunting to tackle. He wasn't ready yet. There was too much uncertainty out there and every time he thought about it, his heart would race a little too fast for his liking. Instead, he occupied his time by making dinner.  

Cooking was just one more thing he couldn't do with one-handed, but he could at least manage to make a sandwich. Or so he thought. Several ruined attempts and one dropped sandwich later, Josh was reduced to eating peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon. After several spoonfuls of the stuff, he'd had enough. His teeth were sticking together and it was more annoying than it was worth, so he recapped the jar and tossed the spoon into the sink, ignoring the resounding clattering noise it made as it bounced off the edge and landed over the drain. At least for those few seconds, the stillness in the house was broken. 

It took about twenty minutes, but once the pills kicked in, he had no more excuses to avoid the rest of the house. Since he'd already eaten, he had nothing left to do in the kitchen, unless he wanted to pace back and forth in the small room forever, which sounded only slightly more appealing than chopping his own foot off with a pair of hedge clippers. 

Not that Josh ever went to bed this early, but he thought that maybe just this once, he could sleep away the time until the sun came up in almost six hours. That would work, wouldn't it? At the very least, he could do what he did before and simply lock himself away in his bedroom until daylight while he tried to find something that would occupy his time in there. 

The idea sounded as good as it possibly could to Josh at first...until he planted his feet in the hallway near the stairs where he'd lain unconscious and bleeding earlier in the week. His anxiety was already high, but this made things so much worse. There was no other way to get to the second floor unless he wanted to scale the side of the building.  

The singer's shoes touched the wooden flooring and his heart started to pound, making him feel light-headed, almost dizzy. Here we go again... Bracing his hand against the wall, Josh took a deep breath, but it did little to help. One step. Just take one fucking step up the staircase, he coaxed himself. After a couple of quick, gasping breaths, he finally felt his body move. Slowly, he eased up the first several steps until he got halfway up. Memories of the night before, trapped, huddled on the staircase flooded through him and he refused to be in that position again. Gripping the bannister, Josh took the stairs two at a time until he reached the top.  

"Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck," he yelled, darting across the hallway and into his bedroom in two long strides, slamming the door behind him and double checking to make sure he'd locked it. 

The singer swallowed hard, resting his hand against his stomach as his breaths continued to hitch, catching in his throat until he managed to calm down enough to speak. "I can do this, I can do this, I can do this," he chanted, hearing the words out loud, but believing them less and less each time he repeated the phrase. Josh stood with his back to the door, his eyes fixated on the digital lines of his alarm clock as they slowly changed over to the next number. Time was already dragging, making the last sixty seconds seem like much longer than a single minute. He leaned his head back and took a deep breath, suddenly feeling angrier than hell at everything. 

Rage replaced the fear that had settled around Josh as easily as the flip of a switch, and the singer despised the man who did this to him. No one could possibly fault him for that. But what Josh didn't understand was why he was also irrationally angry at everyone in his life. Even though he'd willingly told every person who had asked that he was fine and hadn't been returning their "just checking to see how you're doing, man..." phone calls or text messages, he'd somehow expected...more. He wanted them to break down his door, to refuse to let him be alone for even a minute. But he'd spent too much time telling everyone that he didn't need help to retract that now. The singer had wasted the opportunity and had very little right to expect anyone to assume more than what he was telling them. 

He loathed Matt for giving him a safe place to be, then for taking it away. The brunet hadn't hidden his car keys, hadn't refused to let Josh go back to his own home, hadn't essentially kidnapped him, forcing him to stay at the apartment until he was more stable. Matt hadn't fought against him, not that Josh should have expected the younger man to do it rather than taking him at his word. 

Most of all, though, he hated himself. Josh fucking hated himself for letting things get this way. He hated that he let the problems he was facing get to him as much as they did, and he hated that he couldn't stop it. There had been times in his life where he'd been able to change his thoughts, to turn them around toward the positive, even just a little. But now, he was at a loss. 

The whole situation made him feel so damn vulnerable, depressed, scared and downright petrified of the world around him. Those weren't demons he knew how to fight. Josh wasn't equipped to know how to battle those things. He would rather have relapsed back into parts of his old life than deal with the shit he was currently trying to find a way to get through. He hated himself for lying to everyone and insisting that he was okay when all he wanted was for someone to look him in the eyes and tell him that they knew better. Worst of all, he also hated himself for knowing that Matt had done exactly that, several times, in fact, and Josh had done nothing but brush him off with yet another falsehood that he didn't want to tell. He wanted to be okay, but he wasn't. So, fuck. He deserved the way he was feeling. 

By twelve forty-five a.m., the blond was shaking so badly again that he could barely walk from one end of the room to the other without feeling like was about to drop. Unfortunately, he'd gotten used to that over the last few days, but that didn't make it any easier to live with. Sinking down onto the foot of the bed, Josh slowly let himself lie back until he was staring up at the ceiling. He couldn't keep doing this. He couldn't keep up the pace. It felt like he had aged decades over the last few days and if things kept going at that rate, he didn't know what would happen to him, and he didn't want to think about it. 

"No!" he screamed to the ceiling of the cavernous room. "I don't want this! I don't need this!! I've had it!" Josh let out a shaky sigh, sitting up again and kicking the small travel bag away from his feet. "Fuck it all." The bag flew across the room, coming to land up against the closet, catching the door and swinging it wide open.  

The blond couldn't keep himself locked away again. Everything was folding in around him, making it hard to think and even harder to breathe. The air was thick with anxious energy and that was driving him out of his already fractured mind. But, while his pride prevented him from crawling back to Matt's house on his hands and knees for a second night of quiet safety, nothing said that he couldn't make the drive to his parents' house. He'd be just as safe there.  

If it was before two a.m., his folks would still be awake, if he knew them at all. 

He had said that he would drop in to visit as soon as he could. That could be the perfect excuse, and if he played it up right, it would work out the way he was hoping. Josh was a good enough actor to fool them. At least, he had been when he was younger and he was sure he was lucky enough to still have the skills.