"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 48

Two and a half days. It had officially been two and a half fucking days since he'd last truly slept and the world was starting to look more than a little fuzzy around the edges. Sounds were too loud and they reverberated loudly in his head, rivaled only by the pounding of the headache that had set in sometime the night before. His eyes felt gritty, burning each time he blinked, and the whites had turned a light shade of pink after the first twenty four hours without rest. He was more than a little unsteady on his feet, staggering nearly any time he had to take more than several steps in a row. He had been better earlier, but the last couple of hours had turned him into the equivalent of a drunk, but without all the fun that booze held. His words were a little slurred, or sometimes didn't come at all, causing him to stutter and stammer as he tried to force them to the surface, which only served to frustrate him until he shook his head and waved off Matt with a flick of his hand as if to tell the brunet that it wasn't important enough for him to keep trying. 

It wasn't that Josh didn't want to sleep, per se. Far from it. When he could sleep, it was one of his favourite things in the world to do. He was so trapped in his reality of being the lead singer of a band and all the responsibilities that came with it, that even a short nap made for a great escape. It was just that with his slumber so filled with nightmares which left him sitting up in bed and gasping for air until he was able to fall back on the mattress, gripping at his sweat-soaked tshirt to pull it away from his body lately, it was easier to avoid shutting his eyes completely. It wasn't his fault. 

As a rule, even on a good day, Josh was a pretty hardcore insomniac and everyone knew it, but everything had fallen to shit, getting so much worse since the intruder in his home had taken a nearly lethal shot at him, and it was starting to take a pretty big toll. 

"Hey, what's with you?" Matt looked up from the ivory piano keys in front of him and glanced at Josh with a worried expression. 

Josh yawned with perfect timing, not bothering to cover his mouth. "Just tired." 

"Are you getting any sleep?" He thought Josh was just going through one of his usual cycles of insomnia and the blond wanted to keep it that way. He didn't want to worry the younger man about the nightmares that he was sure would subside on their own, in time. Eventually. He hoped. 

The singer squinted at him and reached up to pull his hair down in front of his eyes, trying to block out some of the soft overhead lighting in the recording studio. On any given day, depending on the amount of rest he'd gotten and how long it had been since he'd woken, the exact way he responded to that kind of question could be light-hearted and funny, blowing it off as no big deal, as he was apt to do if he'd only been awake for a single day. Only...ha. Or sometimes, when lack of sleep - by choice or against his will - had its infernal fingers wrapped tightly around Josh, holding him hostage, it was all he could do to just scarcely keep his composure.  

"Fuck, dude, you know me. Are you seriously asking me that goddamn fucking question?" Apparently, today he was cranky. When he was this far gone, he never really knew what his mood would be like until he spoke, and seemingly it had taken a drastic downswing in the hours since mid-morning at breakfast. Josh took a step closer to Matt, stumbling a bit in the process, and reached out to put a palm against the top of the piano to steady himself. 

"Take it easy. I'm just asking." The brunet lowered his gaze again and plucked at a couple of the black keys with his index finger. "You are, you know, trying, right?"  

"Matt...," cautioned the older man in a menacing tone. With the guitarist staying at his house, it shouldn't have been a question at all. He should have known that Josh was holing up somewhere for the night, whether it was his bedroom or on the couch, but with Matt sound asleep in the guest room all night, he truly couldn't be sure of what Josh was doing during those midnight hours.