"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 53

The younger guitar player didn't know how long he'd been asleep before the screaming started, but it scared him shitless before he was even able to open his eyes. The sound jerked him straight from a dreamless sleep and he launched himself upright, eyes wide, searching for the reason behind the hysteria. In the dark, he heard Josh's crazed yelling and saw the man thrashing around wildly on the couch, tangled up in the blanket that Matt had thrown over him when he'd tried to settle the blond earlier. 

"I'm dead!! I'm fucking dead! HELP ME!" Josh wheezed, fighting against the blanket for all he was worth, unable to rid himself of the cloth that was holding him down. "It's fucking killing me!" he continued to yell, grabbing and tugging at the blanket to get it away from his body. 

Matt flung himself out of the chair and onto his knees, clumsily scrambling across the floor until he reached the couch. Dodging extremities that landed the occasional lucky blow against his body, the brunet managed to pull the singer to the floor and free him from the quilt, tossing it somewhere into the room behind him. "Josh," he started to say before the blond's outstretched hands made contact with the brunet's chest, sending him sideways where he hit the floor, landing roughly on his hip. 

The guitar player braced a hand against the rug and shoved himself to his knees again, the singer continuing to get more and more out of control. "Shit. Josh! Man, you're okay. Stop! I'm here." Matt tried to catch the older man's hands before he wound up getting his teeth knocked out, but Josh kept pulling away from his grasp, completely panicked and seemingly unable to comprehend what Matt was saying. 

"It's killing me! I'm fucking dead!" he repeated over and over, fighting as hard as he could against whoever or whatever he imagined Matt to be, blindly swinging at what had been invading his dreams. 

"No, man, no. You're alive, Josh! You're alive! Listen to me. Do you hear me? You're alive!" Matt yelled over Josh's terrified words. 

Finally, Matt struggled to get to his feet, throwing his body over the blond's and tackling him straight to the ground, wrapping his arms around the older man's torso and capturing Josh's arms in a strait jacket vice-like grip. "Calm down. Just stop. You're fine. Breathe." The brunet ducked his head down behind Josh's shoulder, still doing all he could to avoid getting injured in case the singer somehow managed to get himself out of Matt's hands. "Breathe!" 

After what was realistically only about fifteen minutes, Josh's yelling turned to quiet whining and moaning as he curled in on himself, pulling his legs up into the fetal position as he lay on his side on the rug, panting heavily with Matt's arms still locked tightly around his body. "Fuck, don't kill me. P-please... Don't kill me more," he babbled just as incoherently as he had when Matt had first arrived. 

"Josh," the guitar player said softly, shifting his body slightly so he could speak directly into the singer's ear. "You're not dead. You're alive. And I'm not gonna kill you. It's me. It's Matt. You know me. You've known me for the last fifteen years and I'm telling you that you're okay. You're alive," he continued to ramble until the whimpering subsided and all that was left of Josh's mania was shallow, shaky breathing. 

Josh had ripped furiously at Matt's forearms in his attempt to get away from his dreams, his subconscious unable to allow him to think clearly. There was already bruising forming on the younger man's skin, but he was sure that was nothing compared to how sore he would feel later in the day. One thing he had to give Josh credit for was that when the man was stressed to that degree, he gave Matt a run for his own money where physical strength was concerned.  

"You're okay now, man. Let's get you up, alright?" the guitar player suggested, slowly releasing his grip on Josh. He shifted himself to his knees, tucking his hands under Josh's arms and gradually helping him into a sitting position against the front of the couch.