"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 26

The front porch light came on with the movement Josh created by stepping out of the car and walking up the five steps to get to the front door. Debating momentarily, he wondered if he should use the key his mother had let him keep for emergencies and risk scaring the shit out of his parents by walking in unannounced, or whether he should he knock, also risking scaring them to death. In the middle of weighing his options, the door pulled inward and the short blonde woman who had given him some of his best physical features stared out at him with wide blue eyes that matched his. 

"Joshua!" she gasped, her hand moving from the doorknob up to her mouth as she studied the injuries she hadn't quite been able to see in the hospital. 

He mustered a small smile and dipped his head in a slight nod. "Hi, Mom." 

Josh felt himself being dragged into the living room and shoved down onto the couch. His bag was been taken from him the minute he was yanked through the door and handed off to his father, who had walked into the room to see what all the commotion was about this late at night. After answering the expected "are you okay?" and "why are you here?" questions that he'd known would come, the singer had managed to convince his parents that he was fine. He "just happened to be awake and realized that he hadn't yet stopped in to visit them like he promised he would after he'd been hurt."  

Was it okay if he spent the night so his mom could cook breakfast for him in the morning? Of course the answer was "yes". Josh really hadn't thought the response would be any different, and yes, he could have his old bedroom back unless he preferred the guest room. His dark basement bedroom or a more brightly lit, more heavily trafficked area of the house? A no brainer, in his opinion. 

Had that choice been given to him a decade ago, Josh would've jumped at the chance to have his secluded privacy, but now all he wanted was the noise of other humans surrounding him. The room at the end of the hallway, it was. As tired as he was of being a 'guest' in someone else's home, even his own family's, he just couldn't face his own home by himself yet despite trying several times, and the last thing Josh wanted was for anyone to find that out, so his only choice was to hide himself away and fake the fuck out of everything until the whole shitstorm he was currently going through passed. And he hoped to hell that it passed soon as he crawled under the blankets of the bed in the room that used to belong to his oldest sister while they were growing up. 

The singer woke somewhere around seven in the morning feeling the pain radiating from his ribs and shoulder, but finding a bit of satisfaction when he noticed that someone, his mother most likely, had set out a bottle of water and his medications, alphabetically arranged, on the night stand. Once again, he swallowed the prescribed handful of whatever he was given and closed his eyes against the slowly rising sun that he wasn't ready to deal with just yet. "Just ten more minutes," he mumbled into the pillow. 

Ten minutes turned into another five hours and it was nearly noon by the time his eyelids flickered open again. Josh had absent-mindedly rolled over onto his right side, gasping loudly, yelping and throwing himself onto his back as quickly as he could to get his weight off the injuries. "Fuck me," he groaned, reaching for more medications once the throbbing subsided enough to allow him to move without his eyes involuntarily tearing. 

The blond lay still, breathing slowly and steadily with his hand pressed against his shoulder. One thing that was getting extremely old was the fact that he could feel the pain every time he took a breath. Every movement jarred him in a way that he wasn't used to, and that was enough to drive him completely crazy, though he felt like he didn't have far to go to get there. Sighing softly, Josh frowned a little as he silently counted the beats of his heart until the pulsing ache wasn't as noticeable. 

Slowly pushing himself to sit, the singer tested the pain scale, wincing in anticipation before he ever felt anything wrong. So far, he was okay. He just had to learn to be more careful unless he loved those little white explosions behind his eyes every time he moved. And he didn't. That was almost as unnerving as the pain itself was. 

Now that he knew he was doing as well as he could expect, Josh stood and made his way into the bathroom where he managed to empty his bladder and brush his teeth left-handed. He was getting relatively good at that. Better than he would have imagined he'd have been a week ago, to be honest. Though, if he'd had his way, he would have traded being semi-ambidextrous for not having his body horribly maimed in a New York minute.  

It wasn't until the blond moved to place his toothbrush back into the medicine cabinet that he caught a glimpse of himself again. The reflection in the mirror showed no real change from the day before. Not that Josh had expected it, but he still had a slight bit of hope. He was sunk without that. The singer stared at himself in the glass and reached up to place a feather-light touch of his pointer finger to the bridge of his nose. It was still a little swollen and looked awful. But after a few days, at least it didn't hurt as badly as it looked like it should, even though he could still feel it every time he sniffed.