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Josh isn’t the most open person. It’s not a flaw, exactly, but it’s not a strength, either. When he gets back to school from his week long ‘illness’ everyone asks him if he’s okay, what happened, whatever - he gives them all the same answer.
“It’s over now. No big deal.”
It feels like a big deal. It feels like a big deal when he wakes up in a cold sweat from dreams where his family is surrounding him, telling him they’re putting him away again. Forever this time.
You’re dangerous, Josh. We can’t deal with this anymore, Josh. It’s all too much, Josh.
In the dreams he tries to open his mouth to speak but nothing comes out. It’s like he’s got glass in his throat - every time he tries to talk, the shards dig a little bit deeper, until he’s coughing up blood and his parents are looking down on him with disappointment in their eyes and Beth and Hannah are shrinking away from him in fear and the nurses are dragging him to the quiet room -
He reminds himself of the coping skills Dr. Hill talked to him about in the hospital. Or, more accurately, interrogated him on. You have been working on coping skills with the group, that’s right? Tell me yours. Video games aren’t an acceptable option today, Josh. I talked with you yesterday about how they can make you even more frustrated than before. We don’t want that, do we?
Fuckin’ old man bastard.
Okay, so coping skills were off the table. Coping skills = hospital memories. Hospital memories = freakouts. Freakouts = more hospital, probably.
Wow. Talk about a catch-22.
He decides to text Chris. They’ve been hanging out a lot since he got back a few days prior, but Josh feels a distance between them that wasn’t there before - Chris feels snubbed because Josh won’t talk to him about what exactly he was sick with, probably, or because him and Josh couldn’t hang out over the week he’d been gone. Josh doesn’t want to explain himself, so he resolves to try and bridge the gap in other ways; namely, video games and pizza.
From: Joshington
bro i have a pizza and a playstation practically calling your name
humming a sweet seductive serenade to you
can’t you hear it, mournful in the night
it neeeeeds you, chris
From: Cochise
gimme five seconds to reply would you
when should i be over
From: Joshington
a.s.a.p
and forget about your homework it’s a friday and that shit isn’t important until 10pm on a sunday night
From: Cochise
:^P
alright man ill be there in 10
Josh orders the pizza in the meantime (he knows it won’t get there in ten minutes, but he also knows Chris is always notoriously late - probably from applying all those layers) and sets up Generic FPS Set In A War Where You Shoot Random Terrorists III. Then he waits.
Chris, as it turns out, arrives after the pizza, but only by five minutes. He mutters something about traffic when Josh jokingly grills him for it, and Josh feels like he’s finally gotten back some measure of normalcy.
“This game sucks,” Chris says upon seeing the TV.
“How much?”
“Like, major dick.”
“Still not as much as you, bro.”
“Wow. Rude. I’ll have you know I’ve finally gotten to talk to Ash without stuttering once, so, uh, I’m definitely gonna get some soon.”
Josh forces a laugh, just like he does every time Ashley comes up. She’s a good person. He knows that. It doesn’t make him envy her position any less. Even worse is how Chris doesn’t notice her looking at Sam and Hannah with that kind of coveting, desperate look that he figures he must have when he looks at Chris.
He pushes the thoughts away and sits on the couch instead, grabbing the player one controller and patting the seat beside him. Chris attempts to vault over the back of the couch and onto it, but ends up slamming onto the ground due to slipping on the velvet cushions.
“You alright?” Josh asks.
“Mmmrghhhh,” Chris replies, ever the wordsmith.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Chris peels himself off the floor laboriously, an exaggerated motion that makes Josh snicker. He hops back onto the couch, making it shift, and Josh hands him his controller, ever the dutiful friend.
It was comfortable. It was easy. When they were like this, Josh could pretend it wasn’t only three days since he got out of inpatient, he could pretend Chris isn’t crushing on someone else, he can act like he’s fine and have it almost, almost be true. They just play video games and eat pizza. Until Josh’s phone alarm for his meds goes off, and then Josh is, in the roughly twenty seconds it takes for him to reach into his pocket and pull out his phone and then shut off the alarm, desperately searching for some explanation for it that isn’t they put me on the crazy pills because I’m crazy (maybe not in those words, Josh decides) but coming up blank.
Chris is giving him a curious look, head tilted slightly to the side like a confused puppy, and Josh chuckles awkwardly.
“It’s nothing.”
“Why set an alarm for nothing?”
“Nothing important, at least,” Josh concedes, deflating. “I swear, it’s no big deal.”
“If I’m keeping you from something -”
“No! No, dude it’s not - that, you didn’t do anything, I just -” and he notices his body pushing him off the couch before his brain has sent the command, and Chris is mimicking the motion so they’re both in a strange state of half-sitting half-standing and Josh doesn’t know what to say so he just -
“They put me on crazy pills,” Josh says, and when Chris looks even more confused, he adds, “because I’m crazy.”
Chris makes a ‘huh?’ noise and Josh mentally snaps his own neck.
“N-not - okay, fuck, this is all coming out so wrong,” He flops back onto the couch, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m not - I mean, I guess, technically, I’d be counted as crazy - wait, shit, no, just - antidepressants - and a mood stabiliser - though I guess those are kind of synonyms -”
He cuts himself off when Chris’ confusion melts into that Concerned Father Look™ that Josh hates so much, because he can never lie to it.
“What happened?” Chris asks, sitting down next to Josh, closer this time, so their knees touch just a little and Josh is kind of embarrassed by it, despite now definitely not being the time to be gay.
Josh wants to say it’s no big deal, he just gets defensive about stuff, he guesses, don’t worry, but instead ends up spilling his entire hospital experience to an increasingly sympathetic looking Chris. He might cry a few times. Maybe. At the end of it, Chris pulls him into a hug.
Josh might cry into his shoulder and cling to him for much longer than can be considered polite.
Maybe.
***
Josh isn’t an open person. Everyone knew that. He deflects every question with humour. He characterises even his breakdowns with snark. Josh’s defenses were barbed wire words and walls steeper than his parent’s mountain. No one could get past that.
No one, except, maybe, Chris.
He notices what’s happening too late. The boy who already had his heart was actually starting to see parts of him he didn’t want anyone to see, and he wasn’t running for the hills. Josh knows he can’t close up anymore - it’s not an option. It would toy with Chris’ emotions. It would make him think he’d done something wrong, and he’d make that teary-eyed frown face.
It just wasn’t going to happen. Josh wasn’t going to let it happen.
Josh reasons all of this through while hyperventilating in a gas station bathroom. His body is on high alert, screaming simultaneously oh God where am I how far out did I drive they’re gonna lock me away and thank God I’m not at home I’m never going back I’m going to smash those pill bottles I’m going to dance on their tiny little graves, but his mind is mostly just working shit out. There’s an unbridgeable disconnect. He almost prefers it, since his body was currently trying to steady its breaths and stop shaking so damn much.
His hand takes out his phone before he can think and dials Chris, his throat aches as he swallows hard (raw from crying? He doesn’t remember) and his mind remains an overwhelmed clash of body signals and depressive state.
“Hello?” says Chris, after three rings.
Josh suddenly feels himself snap together. Now everything in him was screaming, not just his shitty body, and he didn’t know why he had done anything he’d done in the past few hours.
“Hi,” he says.
“Are you okay? There was kind of a pause there,” Chris replies, and Josh can hear the concern creeping into his voice. He wishes it would burn.
“I’m - I don’t know?” Josh takes in a shaky breath, lets it out slowly. “I don’t know. I don’t know where I am. A bathroom? I’m not sure -” he pauses, whether for dramatic effect or because he genuinely froze for a second indeterminable, “- I’m not sure how I got here. Or. Where I am, actually. Wait, I said that already. Uhm.” He leans against the stall, eyes scanning the vulgar graffiti while he hears Chris sigh on the other end of the line.
“Okay, dude. Do you need me to come pick you up?”
“No, I - I definitely drove here. Wallet,” he interrupts himself, patting his pockets. “Shit. No wallet. No license.”
“You sound really - weird, dude.”
“Scattered,” is Josh’s only reply. “Uhm. Fuck. I’ll drive. Home, that is. Or maybe. I took a bus? I don’t know, I can’t - remember, exactly.”
“You should go check,” Chris says, gentle. “Go make sure your car is there. If it’s not, I’ll - work out where you are, and I’ll be there soon. Okay?”
“Okay,” Josh says, before hanging up.
It turns out Josh must’ve taken the bus and then walked to here. He finds some change in his jacket pocket while he’s outside looking for his car, and a receipt for the fare. Maybe it was a taxi. The details seem unimportant right now.
“Okay,” Josh repeats, rubbing his arms to guard against the autumn chill. “Okay, okay, okay - I just - Chris.”
That’s right, he has to call Chris. He does it almost without realising, zoning out until Chris’ voice jerks him back to reality. He works out the name of the dingy gas station he ended up at, and Chris promises to be there soon, Josh should just stay put. So Josh stays put.
It’s around three hours later when Chris finally shows, in his hand-me-down soccer mom car, and Josh gets in obediently, buckles his seatbelt when Chris asks him to (dangerous, bro, he says, sounding like he’s trying to force humour into the situation). The radio is tuned to the 70s station, and ABBA is playing softly in the background as Chris pulls away from the station. On the plus side, Josh reasons as he tries to warm himself up, the three hour drive gave him time to sort out his emotions a little bit.
“Wow,” is the first thing Chris says when they’re actually on the road.
“Sorry,” Josh replies.
“No, it’s - don’t worry.” He shoots Josh a glance, bites his lip thoughtfully. “Have you ever - I mean, does this happen a lot?”
“I don’t usually go and have breakdowns in gas stations four hours away from my house, no, Cochise.”
“You sound better,” he chuckles. “Like, if you’re joking around, you’re not all -” He makes a vague wiggly hand motion.
“Scattered,” Josh supplies.
“Scattered,” Chris agrees.
“I’m sorry you have to deal with this,” Josh says. “I’m so - God, this must be fucking annoying. Going to deal with your psychotic best friend who decided to flip out in a gas station.”
“It’s fine, just -” Chris gives him another quick glance. “I know you hate it when people ask if you’re on your meds, so I won’t. But do you think going to Blackwood is a good idea if you’re so…scattered?”
“I’m not usually like this,” Josh snaps back immediately, and Chris cringes.
“I know, I know. But, if we’re on the mountain, and someone ran off and got in trouble - I mean, I can’t drive to the bottom of any cliffs, dude. If someone got hurt up there - God, I can’t even imagine - that’d be the worst thing ever. It’d be all we could think about every time we visited. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Kinda gay, bro.”
Chris spares him another glance, but this time it’s tinged with annoyance. “I’m serious, dude. I think we should cancel the trip, or postpone it for now.”
“What?! Oh, come on, Cochise -”
“I’m serious!” Chris’ voice cracks on serious, like he’s been thinking about Josh dead on some hell mountain the entire drive there.
“I’m serious,” he says again when Josh doesn’t reply, voice softer.
“Okay,” Josh says. “I’ll think about it.”
“We can party at your house, dude. Just somewhere less easy to die, okay? Please.”
Josh feels himself crumbling, and he tries desperately to bring up some witty comeback, and comes up with a few, but they’re all lacklustre and even plain mean.
“Fuck,” is what he says instead. “Fuck. Okay. Fine. I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you,” Chris says, and he sounds genuine. Josh lets his hands hang by his sides again, and he jumps when Chris actually grabs his fucking hand.
He can’t believe it. The dude of his dream is holding his hand, just because he had a panic attack in a bathroom stall. Should he do that more often?
He squeezes, and Chris squeezes back before letting go, face slightly flushed. Josh smirks.
“If you’re embarrassed just from that, how are you gonna get it with Ashley?”
“Shut up! I don’t even know if I want to do that anyway!” Chris snaps, and the second it’s out of his mouth he tenses up.
Josh stares at him.
“What?”
“It’s not important -”
“No, dude, it is important! Do you not like Ash anymore?”
“Uhm,” Chris says, but his red face tells all. Josh’s jaw feels like it’s about to hit his chest.
“Why didn’t you tell me? What happened to bro code?”
“You were having fun trying to set us up,” Chris hesitates. “Or it seemed that way. I didn’t want to - I don’t know. Ruin it.”
“Jesus, dude.” Josh sighs, leaning back into the seat. “So the hand-holding. Was that not as strictly platonic as I was reading it?”
Chris chews his lip again.
“No way, dude. You actually -”
“I don’t know, okay! I don’t know!” Chris is so tense he looks more like a cornered animal than just a dude who’s being embarrassed by his crush (?). “I mean - you and I have been talking so much about like, our feelings and all that gay shit. I don’t know. I got to see the Josh who you never really showed me before. I don’t know.”
“Is ‘I don’t know’ your mantra now?”
“Don’t make fun of me!” Chris is redder than a tomato, and Josh is grinning. “Jesus, just - I get if you’re not interested, but don’t make fun of me -”
“I’m interested.”
There’s a short silence, heavy with tension, before Chris says “What.”
“Let’s go on a date. Instead of going to Blackwood. It’ll be just as fun for me, anyway.”
“You can’t just spring this on me!” Chris insists, making another, vaguer, angrier hand motion. “I gotta think about it!”
“You can think about it when you’re picking out your outfit. Wanna go somewhere fancy?”
“Josh, be serious!”
“I’m deadly serious.”
Chris makes a whining noise while he taps his fingers against the wheel anxiously. “Okay. Okay, if it’ll keep you off the mountain, then sure.”
“Deal,” Josh says.
He should definitely panic in more bathrooms.