Walking quickly back through the lobby to his office, Josh grabbed his wallet and opened it, pulling out everything he had with the tips of his fingers, trying not to stain the bills. Skimming over it, he counted out roughly two hundred and twenty dollars. Was a four minute walk with a sixteen year old to keep away the monsters under the bed and the boogeyman in the closet worth that much? As he handed the money over, he decided that it was.
After wearily thanking his rescuer and sending the boy on his way to wherever he was originally headed, Josh was alone again and more than a little traumatized after that ordeal. Maybe...maybe it would be best to just try to get some sleep. Leaving the building by himself had turned out to be a disaster, something that he wasn't ready for. If he could sleep, he might be able to forget it and move on. But first, he had to clean up.
The dirty bathroom mirror revealed bloody stripes up his cheek, down his chin and neck and across the front of his tshirt. The only good news about that was that it detracted from the faded blotchy yellow and purple bruising around his eyes from the initial backhand to the face. "Ugh...," Josh moaned, dipping his head down to the sink and using his left hand to awkwardly cup some of the running water, gently washing away the gore. He watched as the water, thickened by drying blood, circled the drain and disappeared, all physical evidence of what he'd just been through now gone.
A couple of minutes later, his skin was clean again, though there was little he could do about his shirt and pants unless he ran them through a washing machine, which he'd eventually have to do anyway unless he wanted to continue to throw away his clothing, buying new to replace the ruined. It was a possibility anyway. But for the moment, he was strapped. Josh had given away his ready cash, and besides, he really, really didn't feel like stepping into a store looking like "Freddy" or "Jason" or any of those ax or chainsaw wielding fucks. Maybe in the morning he'd just get to his place a little early and throw a few more clean clothes in a bag to bring back with him. He anticipated this problem happening again in the future, and he had to be ready next time.
It was just a little after eleven p.m. by the time Josh settled himself down onto the couch with a couple of blankets and a pillow, the alarm on his phone set to ring at eight o'clock. If he was a more steady sleeper, he was sure he wouldn't wake up until the obnoxious beeping pried his eyes open nine hours later. But, as it was, chronic insomnia often ruined that idea and he was only able to sleep for a few hours at a time. That would certainly prove to be the case tonight.
The singer spent two fitful hours trying to get to sleep, finally feeling his eyelids slip shut for the final time somewhere around one a.m.. He'd given up hoping for sleep after the first twenty minutes, frustration winning out. He grabbed his phone to browse around on the internet, keeping himself busy rather than lying there with nothing to do. Halfway through watching the thirtieth cat-playing-piano video, the yawning started and Josh was sure that he'd wind up dropping the fucking phone on his face eventually if he didn't shut it off. He'd done that more than once in the past and his nose was already broken. The blond didn't want to risk breaking it worse (was that even possible?), so he set the phone down and pulled the blankets up to his chin, nearly completely asleep before he knew what was happening.
His dreams were unnerving, but not nothing he hadn't already been through in the past. Though, this time, he continued to bring himself back to that same street corner he'd stood on earlier in the night, cowering only against what his imagination was able to conjure up. But in this fevered nocturnal vision, the teenager who had helped him was gone, replaced by Matt who had appeared out of thin air. Josh woke up gasping and tearing at the blankets just as the dream version of his bandmate pulled a small black revolver from the waistband of his pants, all while telling Josh that he was glad he could be there for him.
"No! Fuck! No!" The blond sucked in a sharp breath, sitting as quickly as his body would allow, leaning over his knees and rubbing his face with his hand. "God..." The determined look on Matt's face as he raised the gun in Josh's dream was worse than the dream itself. He couldn't imagine the brunet ever doing anything like that. And why was that the second time his fucked up mind pulled that stupid shit on him? If there was one person in the world Josh could trust, it was Matt.
Dropping his hand, the singer reached over to the table, grasping for his phone. Six a.m.. There were still two hours before he had to be awake, but he was completely over the idea of trying to sleep again. There was just no way he wanted to risk sinking back into the same dream for a second time.
Rather than dwelling on something that he was positive would never happen in real life, something that his psyche had taken and twisted into something so ridiculous that he should have been able to laugh at it instead of being scared of it, Josh swallowed the last handful of pills left in his bottles, then took the next half an hour to change his shirt, grab his travel bag and drive to the nearest and cheapest hotel. He urgently needed to shower after sweating through his clothing during that nightmare.
"I just need a room for an hour," the blond stated to the bored looking Asian man in his fifties who stood behind the front desk of the Holiday Inn, idly flipping through a magazine.
The keeper of the keys looked at Josh as though the singer had just requested the strangest thing he'd ever heard. "An hour?" he asked suspiciously, reaching a hand out to take the credit card Josh hated to use unless it was absolutely necessary.
"Yeah, that's all. Please," he added, remembering the manners his mother would smack him for originally forgetting.
The clerk swiped the card and rang up the eighty dollar charge, handing it back. He pointed to the stairs behind him without bothering to look while he explained where Josh could find his temporary room. "Up to the second floor, third door on the left."
Nodding, the singer headed for his destination, making it to the room quicker than he thought. He had sixty minutes to shower and get himself dressed. He only hoped he could do it at all, let alone in under an hour. Josh stripped as quickly as he could, getting hung up once in his tshirt. It was no lie that he nearly cried for the first time because of the pain. He'd momentarily forgotten about his ribs, and when he twisted his body to pull the shirt up and over his head, the blond was able to feel the grinding in his side as his ribs pinched and pulled, the burning spreading down to his hip and up to his shoulder. Josh choked on tears he refused to let spill as he stood stock still, waiting for the pain to pass. From then on, he was much more careful about what he was doing, flat-out refusing to let that happen a second time.
As quickly as he could, Josh moved into the bathroom, the last clean outfit he had with him draped over his shoulder. Dropping the clothing onto the counter near the sink, the blond stood in the center of the room wondering what to do about the bandage. There was nothing he could use to keep it dry and his mother wasn't just over in the next room to help him. "Dammit," he mumbled, picking at the edge of the tape around the gauze. Ripping it as quickly as he could from his shoulder, he huffed quietly as it tore easily from his skin. Fuck it. It was coming off today anyway, so he might as well just get it over with now.
The blond positioned himself in front of the mirror, folding the bandage and dropping it into his travel bag, feeling a little guilty about the idea of making the hotel maid take care of something like that when it would have skeeved him out to throw away someone else's blood-stained things. Hell, the idea of touching a stranger's bodily fluids in any way nearly made him gag, so he decided he'd just throw it away once he got home, forgetting about it for the time being.
He shook his head to rid himself of those thoughts and forced his eyes back to the mirror, trailing them slowly down his torso. It wasn't the first time Josh had glanced over his body since the whole incident had happened, but it was the first time he'd taken the time to really look at, to actually study anything other than his face. "I look like I was hit by a fuckin' truck," he observed. The bruises were still fading, but taking a much longer time to do so than he would have liked. By now, the yellow-ish colour was much more prevalent than the blues and purples, creating an ugly work of art across his body that seemed to melt together like watercolour paints on a canvas. Josh sighed softly, the bruising across his ribs expanding and retracting with each breath.
Abruptly turning on his heel, he moved over to the shower, setting the water temperature and stepping in. He'd wasted fifteen minutes stuck in his head and he needed all the time he could get for a task that shouldn't be as difficult as it was. Fuck the idea of getting his sutures wet. Not only was the bandage coming off, but the stitches were also coming out in a few hours, and besides, they looked, well, fucking disgusting. Josh lightly ran the tiny bar of hotel soap over them, cleaning himself up to the best of his ability before washing his hair and stepping back under the stream of water. The whole thing took a little more time than he had hoped, but fuck anyone who judged him for anything. When he was satisfied that he'd done as well as he could, the singer tore himself away from the shower and struggled into his clothing.
Josh had gotten pretty good at being able to get a pair of jeans up his body and fastened. He had been so bored over the weekend at the studio that he'd practiced for over an hour, working on both the button and zipper until he could do it without looking. That was a skill that came in handy today, thank the universe.
The singer religiously checked the time on his phone after putting on each article of clothing. He did it one more time as he stepped into his shoes. He still couldn't put socks on single-handedly, and tying laces with one hand was completely out of the question, so he'd resorted to wearing an old pair of slip-on red and white Converse sneakers that he'd found tucked in the back of his closet. They were boring, but comfortable, and these days he much preferred something with more style and flair, so he'd put them away, mostly forgetting all about them until he needed them. When he found them under a pile of clothing in a corner, Josh realized that they would work for now since it was either that or slippers, and he was not old enough to be walking around in public dressed like his grandfather.
Seven more minutes until it was time to check out and the only thing left to put on was his shirt. Josh couldn't get his right shoulder to move the way he needed it to in order to slip the new tshirt on, even though it didn't exactly hurt. It was kind of a low-grade dull ache, and comparatively, he barely felt it, but it was just a huge pain in the ass that complicated his life more than it had to by this point. Still, the blond tugged, wiggled and pulled until the hem of the shirt touched his belt. He was clean and he was dressed. That was one hell of a feat without help. No one could ask any more of him, and he hoped they wouldn't.