Somewhere around midnight, halfway through the third movie Josh had coerced Matt into starting to watch a little too late for the brunet's liking, the yawning started. At first, Matt covered his mouth each time the urge hit him, and then settled back into the leather, leaning his head to the side. After the first few times, he stopped being so polite about it and outwardly yawned loudly. That lasted for about fifteen minutes until he suddenly jerked himself awake for the second time.
"Sorry, man, I hafta get to bed. I can't stay awake any longer," Matt said, blinking sleepily.
Josh felt his heart tighten a little in his chest at the thought of another night like the one before, but the brunet's eyes were horribly red and bloodshot for the second night in a row, and they were starting to slip closed again even as he was speaking. Finally, Josh raised the television remote and paused the movie with the full intent of watching the rest on his own. "Yeah, you look like you'll be lucky if you make it up the goddamn stairs," he joked, nodding and forcing a soft laugh.
"At least," Matt mumbled, shoving himself to his feet and shuffling across the floor. "G'night." Then, in one last unintentional plunge-the-knife-twist-it-tight turn of ironic phrasing, Matt uttered the words, "Sleep well, man."
"Yeah," Josh said quietly, watching the younger man climb the first few steps until he was out of sight, "'night." Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep fucking well.
The same goddamn clock on the wall that had wormed its way into Josh's terrified thoughts twice before ticked steadily away on the wall, counting out minute after minute, hour after hour while the blond continued to watch actors he couldn't name flicker across the television screen, the volume muted so that nothing but the mind-numbingly obnoxious sound of the timepiece could be heard, and he could swear it was getting louder with every pass of the second hand. At three twenty-seven in the morning, finally unable to take the rhythmic noise anymore, the singer stood and climbed up onto the chair, reaching well overhead to yank the goddamn thing off the wall and tear out its batteries. As he roughly placed it back in its spot, it screeched along the paint creating another noise that Josh didn't care if he ever heard again.
Stepping back down to the floor, the blond deposited the batteries in a drawer and dropped back down onto the couch, pulling both legs up onto the cushion and shifting them off to the side. He tugged the woven blanket from the back and wrapped it around himself, up over his head and shoulders, pulling it together in the center of his chest. Once again, a fleeting thought of his missed childhood stuffed animal flashed through his thoughts as the credits of yet another movie scrolled across the screen, ending the sixth film in a row.
By now, he was getting drowsy, and if he was asked, there was no possible way he could have told you what the plot line of the last film was. There was a girl, or maybe it was a guy. And something about...a parrot? An island? Fuck, he had no idea, and it was entirely possible that he was mixing that up with the liner notes of a Beach Boys CD he'd recently run across for the first time in ages. But what did it matter anyway? At the very least, it had been holding his attention long enough to keep him awake.
Despite desperately wishing he could sink into some version of sleep where his dreams were pleasant with a "happily ever after" ending, everything in him told him not to even bother trying. But, fuck, Josh would be willing to accept anything, absolutely anything that wouldn't leave him clawing at his hair and hiding under the blankets while his eyes darted across the room, searching for things that might be slightly out of the norm. Josh was sick of the nightmares, sick of waking up in a cold sweat, sick of waiting until his pounding heart slowed enough that he could make sense of where he was, sick of having to throw himself out of bed in a groggy, pointless attempt to get away from characters that wielded any number of weapons in his direction. Sighing quietly, the singer moved onto his side and slid down on the couch to get a little more comfortable, keeping his legs tucked up against his body as he rested his head on a pillow propped up against the arm of the couch.
He held the remote up to the television and hit the 'start' button when the next movie in his queue came up. Josh had no idea what the title was, and he didn't care. Its only purpose now was to keep him from falling asleep, but it didn't seem to work from the start. He let his eyes slip closed, "just to rest them for a minute," he told himself. But, before long, the blond was once again running for his life, weaving in and out through familiar places that flashed by so quickly that he had no time to figure out why he knew them.
Josh raced on foot through an area that he could actually put a name to this time. It was Grouse Mountain - a tangible local landmark that he remembered leisurely hiking to the top of on more than one occasion over the last few years. He looked back, only to see the number of people chasing after him double in size, as if someone had simply snapped their fingers in order to shift the chances of coming out on top in their favour, for certain.
Though Josh could hear the rapidly pounding footsteps of his attackers not far behind him, he stopped to get some sort of grip on his surroundings. His lungs burned with an intensity he'd never felt before and threatened to give out on him with every shallow breath he took. He could barely see straight, his vision fading in and out, matching the metronomical thrashing of his heart. He couldn't keep going for much longer. There was just no way he could keep up this pace. The blond had managed to get about halfway up the mountain without being caught, but he'd used every ounce of stamina he had, and now he was just waiting to die. It had turned into a "when", not an "if" cat-and-mouse-chase-the-prey-pray-you'd-better-get-away kind of situation. Somewhere along the line, it was made known to him that his survival was important solely to him alone, and that every effort he was putting into that still wouldn't change the inevitable outcome.
Josh sucked in heavy, rough breaths that continued to sear through him like acid in his chest. As appealing as dropping to his knees, surrendering and admitting defeat may have been in that moment - if for no other reason than to simply stop the pain, the chase and the fear - he wasn't willing to give up that easily. Instead of focusing on that, he chose to continue to run, to be the human target for a bunch of hunters who wanted him as their prize.
Centering himself just long enough to look around, he was able to see that off to his right was a narrow, but deep valley between pointed, rocky peaks. To his left lay nothing but more dense forest and a steep climb that veered off the dirt trail he'd been following so far. Though Josh had often been faced with it, he'd never liked when the odds were stacked against him, but he especially hated it now that they were slated so high and his own life was at stake.
As the future assassins moved in closer, their voices getting louder as they yelled obscene threats at him through the trees and underbrush, Josh made a decision. In a last ditch effort, the blond stepped closer to the valley, the toes of his sneakers even with the edge of the cliff. He took one look back over his shoulder, backed up several paces and got a running start, throwing himself straight into the deep chasm. He could feel the dirt slide under his feet as he kicked off, sending himself airborne. As he was falling, his clothing billowed and his limbs flailed around him, fingers urgently scraping against the sides of smooth rock, which allowed him nothing to hold on to in order to stop the fall he regretted taking the second he jumped.
"No!!" Josh hit the carpet hard, his arms tucked up under him, palms flat on the floor as if that would have kept him from breaking every bone in his body during a true free-fall miles down to solid ground. "Ow! No...," he huffed in defeat, leaning his forehead down as a small ripple of pain grazed across his ribs.
"You're dead...," he heard a voice echo lightly in his head, as though someone was still calling to him from the top of the mountain. He'd expected to taste familiar metallic traces of blood in his mouth, dirt, sweat, and salty tears, to be unable to feel his extremities, to automatically know, without opening his eyes, that his body had been smashed into thousands of pieces beneath the surface and left to decompose - first skin, then bones.
"Are you sure I'm dead?" Josh asked the voice who had given him the news, mumbling down into the carpet, feeling the fabric brush against his lips as he spoke. Frowning at the odd sensation, the singer dug his hands tentatively into the floor, the tips of his fingers sinking easily into the rug halfway up to the first knuckle. "Don't wanna be dead."
Sixty seconds with no response led the singer to slowly raise his head, opening his eyes as he looked down at what he'd expected to be rocks, gravel, grass, and hard packed earth beneath him. Blinking to pull his eyes into focus, Josh stared at the carpet, the glow from the movie menu screen casting a muted blue tint over the cream colour. "Not dead," he sighed as the realization came to him. His breathing was slightly irregular as he rolled himself over onto his back, the front of his shirt riding up to mid-chest. He tugged it back down to his belt to hide the continually fading bruising along his torso once he was settled. Not dead.
The small green numbers on the television set read five twelve a.m.. Less than two hours of sleep, but that was more than enough for him that night. The dreams were getting out of hand now. Reaching back up onto the couch, the blond pulled at the blanket, balling it up and tucking it under his head. Then he bent his knees, setting his feet flat on the floor. It was a comfortable enough position to watch television, but not so comfortable that he'd drift off again. He could lie there until morning for all he cared. The singer reached back up to the couch and groped around for the television remote, eventually wrapping his fingers around it. He flipped through the list of movies until he found one that would actually hold his interest this time, and right there is where Josh would be perfectly happy with Matt finding him several hours later, once the younger man woke.