Chapter Text
If it wasn’t so sad, it’d almost be funny how much of an effect one off-handed, passing comment could have on Josh’s life.
In a way that seems far too cynical and nihilisitc for his usual demeanour, Josh might have even considered it the beginning of the end, a death, of some kind. (However, he buries that thought in the back of his skull; finds that it causes this heavy, sinking feeling in his gut, like a rock in a lake. A feeling that he dislikes immensely).
Realistically, Josh knows that Simon didn’t mean anything by it, and he knows this in the same way that he knows the sky is blue, or the names of his parents, or the thing that terrifies him more than anything.
It didn’t stop the way it cut at him bluntly, though, like a dull knife yanking its way through all the softest parts of him, leaving him red-raw and bloody, just this jumbled up mess that has no place existing in all the places that it exists.
He remembers it vividly.
And he remembers the inflection of Simon’s voice as he said it, breathy with a laugh, his tone unserious and lighthearted, bringing his glass of lemonade to his lips as he mumbled, “Josh, I swear you can’t have fun without alcohol, y’know.”
He remembers staring down at his drink, rum and coke, before looking around at all the others and seeing them with their water and pepsi and apple juice and-
He doesn’t remember what he replied with, though, only that it made everyone laugh. It made everyone laugh, and that’s fine: good, even; better than good, really, it’s fucking great. He can deal with that. It was always easier to hide the beginnings of doubt, like a seed planted behind his ribcage, when he can frame it as a joke, as something palatable and easy to swallow.
What was noticeably harder to swallow, however, was his drink, tasting far too bitter and thick in his throat, suddenly, like a viscous sludge of poison settling in the pit of his stomach and burning away at his liver like acid.
As if proving a point, he had refrained from ordering anything else, nursing his drink slowly and surely, staring down at the bottom of his glass and trying to figure out the meaning behind all the looks the others were giving him. (The looks meant nothing. They were kind, affectionate looks, involving him in conversations and stories and jokes, and yet he couldn’t get rid of that small, digging voice behind his temple that transformed the softness of their eyes into something pitying and malicious). Maybe it was just the alcohol talking.
Josh was sure that by the end of the night, Simon had forgotten the comment entirely. After all, he should have. It was a light, teasing remark, something small and insignificant and daunting and harrowing and sitting tight in the back of his throat and behind his eyes as he stared up at the ceiling in his bed, alone, and-
And…
Fuck.
The comment may have affected him more than he thought. And he thinks this because it stays with him, like a weight on his shoulders, or a corpse on a leash with the collar wrapped around his throat. He thinks of it when he’s invited out for drinks the next day, when he stands by the bar in the club and he’s saying the words: bacardi and coke, please, and, a few seconds later, adding: make it a double.
He thinks of it when he can’t think of anything, really. When the remnants of the night turn into a film reel with certain segments burnt away, split seconds of a scene filling his skull with colour before turning into nothing again. He thinks of it when he wakes up the next morning with no memory of how he got home, skull throbbing, alarm blaring, mouth dry and the heavy, impeding deadline of a video idea that needs to be planned.
Josh drinks some water, takes some painkillers, has a shower, and sits in his office chair. He works because he doesn’t know what to do otherwise. He works and he works and he works and this whole time that he’s working, he’s thinking to himself: I can be fun whilst sober. I can be fun whilst sober. I can be fun whilst sober… right?
He doesn’t know anymore, and when suddenly he blinks and it’s been over half an hour since he’s moved, he decides to push the thought into the back of his skull where it can’t hurt him anymore, where the flames of the fire are far enough away that the only thing he can smell is the smoke.
Somewhere along the line, his days and weeks slowly dissolve into drinking a little too much and trying a little too hard. Of going home to a cold bed and thinking: that was fine, that was okay, I was normal, I was good. And of his life steadily becoming one long line of fine and okay and normal and good.
They do another pub golf at some point, and he’s on a team with Tobi and Vik. He really only feels the pressure when one of the guys jokes, “come on, Josh. You’re drunk half the time anyways, this should be as easy as piss to you.”
The others laugh and he laughs with them, but that little seed of doubt behind his ribcage starts to grow and grow, the stem entwining with bone, wrapping around each rib until he starts to feel a tightness in his chest. The smile on his face is the first one to die.
He doesn’t do well, because, of course, he doesn’t. Josh can handle his drinks, perhaps better than all of them, but he’s never been good at downing them, and he supposes that it’s a weird thing to feel guilty of, but it’s there nonetheless. A thought hammers into his skull at one point, when they’re halfway through the night and he’s on his third attempt to finish a drink that the others got in two, and the thought says: isn’t this supposed to be something you’re good at?
The venom laced in it makes him startle and he chokes on his drink.
“That’s a spillage! Plus one stroke to you guys.”
“For fuck’s sake, Josh!”
But it’s fine.
It’s fine, it’s okay, he’s normal, he’s good.
(There’s a time, a hazy, muddled time where those four statements start to blur into self-reassurances that he tells himself in the mirror before work and during work and after work; in the grimy, disgusting bathrooms of whatever seedy club he’s found himself in. There’s a time where they stop being truths, and start becoming lies.)
A comment catches his eye a week after the video gets posted.
anyone else think that josh is way more fun when he’s drunk?
He blinked after reading it, once, twice, three times, and let out a deep breath that felt hollow and unfulfilling. His stomach felt heavy, like he swallowed rocks and glass, and noticed that the horrible creature residing his chest wanted out, dissatisfied with these meagre scraps.
I’ve given you enough, he thinks that he wants to say, so why do you still want more?
He gets no answer and tries to pretend that it doesn’t bother him. His phone buzzes: hey, wanna go out tonight?
It should be telling, should be embarrassing, how quickly he responds: sure. what time?
Whatever.
What- fucking- ever.
It’s fine, it’s okay, and normal and good.
He’s starting to hate mornings, though.
He’s starting to hate waking up with his stomach eating itself up inside, and the faint taste of bile in the back of his throat. He starting to hate waking up at four am with his heart racing so fast in his chest that he thinks he’s dying (because, really, Josh. At this point it’s your fault for still drinking vodka redbulls). He’s starting to hate throwing up, and starting to hate throwing up whilst thinking to himself: I have to be at work in two, three, four hours, and fuck, I ran out of painkillers, and I’ll never drink again.
The last thought occurs the most, and he finds himself repeating it often, not only during hangovers, but everywhere, too.
I’ll never drink again. I’ll never drink again. I’ll never drink again.
But then he drinks again.
---
Josh thinks that the guys are starting to notice.
Notice what, exactly, he doesn’t particularly know. Whatever it is, it’s nothing good, and he tries desperately to hide it away out of the fear of being found out. But the thing is that when he doesn’t know what it is that he’s supposed to hide, he ends up hiding every part of himself, just to be safe.
And, yes, he knows that there’s a place where someone can love you before and after they find out what you are, but it’s a place that he hasn’t discovered, yet. His fear of being left behind for things he should be able to control strikes him deeply, to his very core, like a rot that has infected the marrow of his bones. He stays quiet when he knows that he should not.
“You look fucked, mate,” Harry says with a gentle laugh during a MoreSidemen recording, one time. It’s a gameshow, of some kind, but if he’s being honest, he’s so hungover he can barely keep up, “big bender, last night?”
He lets out a noncommittal hum of agreement, and gives JJ the most genuine thanks he can as he catches the bottle of water thrown his way.
“You should’ve let me drive you home, Josh. You was out way too late,” Tobi adds.
He feels unsettled, slightly, by the weight of everyone’s gazes, and the water he quickly drinks does little to disparage the stifling feel of nausea sitting high in his chest. His hangovers have never made him miss a shoot before, and it’s not going to start now.
Vik chimes in, “didn’t you go out the night before, too?”
He clenches his jaw tightly, so hard that it makes the headache pulsating in his skull increase tenfold. A part of him wishes that the ground would swallow him up whole, and that he could just have a second, a minute, an hour just to fucking exist without the crushing weight of reality pressing down on his chest.
“Not my fault I’m a popular guy,” he tries to joke, the tightness around his heart only lessening when he sees the small smiles and lighthearted eye-rolls of the others. Right. He remembers now: frame it as a joke, and that way no-one’ll see how bad it is.
“A people pleaser, more like,” Simon scoffs, and he doesn’t do it cruelly, just in this way that feels as if he’s seen too much, his tone laced with the first stirrings of worry and concern. Josh feels his heart jump up so high in his throat that he’s worried he’ll throw it all up on their studio floor, “you know you can say no when people ask you to go out drinking, right?”
It hits a little too close to home for his liking, and if his smile falters a little, he hopes that no-one else sees it. Ethan laughs softly, the warmth of the noise filling up the room, and he says lightheartedly, “fucking hell, getting a therapy session from Minter. You must be more fucked than I thought, Josh.”
The others laugh at that, and when Josh joins in, he tries desperately to match the cadence of the others: not too loud, not too quiet, don’t force it too much otherwise they’ll see it. For a brief, fleeing second, he realises that fine and okay and normal and good people don’t think like that; they shouldn’t have to script and plan and improvise how they laugh.
But before the crushing realisation of this starts to drown him, filling his lungs like a black tar that he struggles to breathe through, Simon throws a cushion at Ethan, and reponds, “fuck off, you prick.”
If anyone notices that Josh didn’t answer Simon’s question, they say nothing. And for that, Josh is endlessly grateful.
But, as to be expected, when the dam starts to crack, it’s only a matter of time before the glue and tape stop working at keeping it together. Josh doesn’t know how long this pressure has been building, but he can feel the strain of it in his throat, as if he’s seconds away from throwing up blood.
He has one arm looped around Ethan’s shoulders, now, sagging into his side and gripping onto him tightly as his hand shakes disjointedly and uncoordinatedly with the act of opening his front door. The jangle of his keys is loud and grating, and neither of them say anything when Ethan frees one of his hands to wordlessly pry them from Josh’s grip and unlock the front door with an ease that almost puts him to shame.
Josh only unloops his arm from around Ethan’s shoulders once they’re both inside, standing up straight with a quiet noise as he tries to find his footing underneath him, like a newborn deer with long, spindly legs that are too bony to hold its weight.
“Fucking hell,” Josh groans quietly, bringing a hand up to paw roughly at his face, digging his palm into his eyes so harshly it makes his vision go funny, “whose idea was it to go out, tonight?”
Ethan huffs a laugh out through his nose, walking past Josh into the living room, and his voice is light as he says, “probably yours.”
Josh frowns, but Ethan doesn’t see it, and he tries to scrape together whatever remnants of memory he has, feeling slightly panicked when parts come up blank or hazy. I didn’t even drink that much, today, he thinks, and then feels sick for thinking.
His sofa is gentle and comforting against the ache of his body as he sits unceremoniously on it, his head falling back against the cushions as he stares at the ceiling, arms limp by his sides. He feels completely and utterly drained; as he always does after nights like this. (As he always does, in general).
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ethan stop by his coffee table, and his head moves sluggishly to look, mind scattered into a million pieces without any way for him to get them back together again. That’s something he doesn’t like about being drunk, sometimes: that his skull feels like it’s four foot wide and his brain simply can’t keep up with all the empty space.
Ethan picks a bottle up, one that Josh forgot to put away, and his voice carries this certain edge to it as he says, “nearly gone through the bottle of hennessy already, Zerkaa? I swear you only bought this a few days ago.”
Josh feels his stomach start to sink a little, and hopes that his face doesn’t give anything away when he shrugs his shoulders and looks down at his feet. His voice is subdued, slightly, “I had mates over. They like that kinda shit.”
It’s not a complete lie, but not a complete truth, either. It’s somewhere in the middle, something sour masquerading as something sweet, a venomous creature trying to play dead in hopes that you poke at its corpse and face its bite.
Ethan lets out a hum but gives him nothing more than that, and Josh hears the clink of the bottle being placed back down. He shuffles over to where Josh is sitting, and gently nudges him to the side so he can sit down too, kicking his shoes off gracelessly and resting his feet, crossed at the ankles, on top of the coffee table.
“You always have mates over,” Ethan says with a quiet sigh as he loops an arm around Josh’s shoulders and brings him closer. It’s a familiar motion, warm and comforting even with the thing in his voice that makes it sound as if its supposed to mean something else, “starting to think you’re replacing us, boss.”
He knows that Ethan’s joking, but it still makes his stomach twist up slightly, clenching down around nothing but booze and a few meagre scraps of whatever food he stole from the boys. His body feels entirely too strung out from the night, from every night, really, dark and suffocating and barely remembered.
Josh lets his head fall on Ethan’s shoulders, and he tries to make his voice sound light and airy, but it just sounds entirely too sincere, instead, “couldn’t replace you guys even if I wanted to.”
Ethan hums softly, the noise reverberating through his body and encompassing it like a blanket; his eyes fall closed without him meaning to. Josh could hear the smile in the noise, and presses his body further into Ethan’s side before he could talk himself out of it. It’s a far too revealing motion, some kind of intrinsic and instinctive reaction to the thought: Ethan is safe, he has always been safe, he has always been home, that makes him want to curl up into a ball and rest whilst nestled against his side until everything is okay again.
It’s an unsophisticated and childlike motion that will perhaps make him feel embarrassed if remembered in the morning, but comfort is not something he lets himself indulge in often, and he supposes that he’s content for it to happen just this once.
The moment dies almost as quickly as it arose, however, and he lets out a quiet groan, pressing his face into Ethan’s shoulder for just a second, as if it could help him escape from everything that’s wrong with him, before pulling away and grumbling, “fuck, I’ve still got work to do.”
The movement dislodges Ethan’s arm from around his shoulders, and it falls to the space between his back and the sofa cushions. He hunches over himself slightly, resting his forearms on his knees and bowing his head as a wave of dread washes over him too quickly for him to avoid: he can’t believe he fucking forgot about it. About work. He’s never let this… this thing fuck up his work before.
Josh shifts forward and goes to stand, but Ethan’s hand snaps out to grab his wrist, halting the movement entirely. His palm is large and warm and grounding, and he hopes that Ethan can’t feel the thrumming of his heart, like a rabbit caught in a cage.
“You need sleep, Josh,” Ethan tells him, and there’s this sterness to his voice that’s dulled from the worry and concern bleeding through his tone. It’s less a statement and more a demand, “just send whatever it is to Kon, or some shit, he’ll be happy to do it.”
Josh gives him a look, but remains seated, and Ethan smiles lopsidedly at him as he amends, “okay, fine, he won’t be happy but he’ll understand,” his expression softens, impossibly so, and he tugs gently on Josh’s wrist, urging him to sit back again, “c’mon, the world’s not gonna end if we miss one deadline, Josh.”
Josh acquiesces with a quiet noise, a despondent, aching sigh, perhaps, carrying the weight of so many things he’s scared to show, and goes to settle back before Ethan stops him with a barely audible wait a second and shifts around so that he’s lying on the sofa, grabbing a cushion and placing it behind his head.
Josh watches this silently, shifting a little bit to avoid being kicked by Ethan’s leg, and raises his brows when Ethan opens his arms and motions him over, “the fuck are you waiting for? You’re looking at me like I just got my cock out.”
He stays quiet, and doesn’t move. Ethan’s hands fall to his thighs, and he rolls his eyes good-naturedly, a soft look on his face, “we’re just gonna cuddle, Zerkaa. ‘M not tryna stick my dick in you.”
The corner of his mouth tilts up in a small smile and there’s this surprising fondness to his voice as he says, “not yet, you’re not,” and shuffles over.
Ethan’s body is warm, he’s always fucking warm, and he’s both soft with age and hard with muscle as Josh rests his body in the gap between Ethan and the back of the sofa, lying half on him with his head resting on Ethan’s chest. Almost instantly, Ethan’s hand comes up to entangle itself in Josh’s hair, those strong, slender fingers with blunt nails, carding rhythmically against his scalp with a tenderness that makes him want to cry.
Ethan’s chest vibrated with the words, “hm, yeah. Well, you’d have to be sober for me to fuck you first.”
There’s this careful neutrality to his tone, this purposeful ambiguity, maybe, that makes it hard for Josh to decipher if he’s being serious or not. Then again, perhaps the statement in and of itself says everything: guess we can’t fuck because I can’t remember the last time you’ve been sober for more than three days in a row.
That seems slightly cruel, though, and Ethan has been so kind to him tonight that Josh brushes the thought away as if it were something small and insignificant (it will remain, however, buried in his skull under everything else that he loves and holds dearly, hidden away from the rot and disease that has infested him and ruined him).
He makes his voice as light as possible, though his tone is starting to become drowsy with sleep, “what a gentleman,” Ethan’s chest rumbled with a laugh, quiet and calm and comforting, washing over him like waves at midnight, “we gonna fuck with our socks on, or off?”
Josh was smiling as he said it, lazy and content, body feeling heavy and his senses dulled as if he were drifting away. He can’t remember the last time he slept anywhere that wasn’t his cold, frozen bed, aching and alone, like a coffin of his own making.
“Well, it’s not gay if we fuck with our socks on, so it’s definitely gotta be socks off.”
Josh can’t help the small grin on his face, “duly noted,” he holds onto Ethan a little tighter, and if that’s the wrong thing to do, Ethan doesn’t push him away. Josh thinks that he’ll take what he can get.
The steady thump, thump, thump of Ethan’s heart is calming and relaxing, and Josh knows that he’s supposed to fall asleep, but he can’t. He is tired, and his eyes and limbs feel heavy, but his brain just won’t shut off; it never shuts off. Sometimes he thinks that it’s his curse, his fatal flaw, his undoing.
He thinks about his computer in his office, all the work that needs to be done, and he stares at the corner of his wall, where it meets the skirting board, and finds that there’s a small section he forgot to paint. It’s funny how you only notice the small things when you’re desperately trying to cram yourself into a space where you’re not sure you belong.
An hour goes past, or maybe it’s two. It could even be a minute, Josh doesn’t really know, but Ethan’s breathing has slowed and deepened, and his head rises and falls with every inhale and exhale of Ethan’s chest.
“I’m so tired, Behz.”
He doesn’t mean to say it. It’s meant to be a thought that rots and festers in his liver, being broken down and disintergrated alongside the alcohol, but it’s spoken nonetheless, and now it rots and festers in the air around them, instead, making it thick and stifling, like smoke.
His voice sounds haunted. Haunted and quiet and alone.
Ethan’s hand squeezes his shoulder, a wordless reassurance. It seems that they were both pretending. He had heard the way Ethan’s heart had started to beat faster upon hearing his words, as if it had been jolted in his chest, like an electric shock. Despair has the ability to do that, sometimes, Josh realises.
“Then get some sleep, Josh,” Ethan mumbles, very softly and quietly, rubbing his palm up and down the vast expanse of Josh’s back in a way that was meant to soothe Ethan as much as it was to soothe Josh, “I’m not gonna go, yeah? I’ll stay the whole night, if you want.”
Josh stays quiet, and deathly still. His chest feels very tight, suddenly, and he craves another drink as much as he craves to cry and sob and wail until everything that’s wrong with him is writhing on the floor.
Ethan sighs, and it’s a sad sigh, knowing and heartbroken, “that’s not what you meant, was it?”
“No,” Josh responds, voice tight and strained, this lump in his throat that is impossible to swallow past, “it wasn’t.”
A part of him feels like he should be startled by the ease in which Ethan realised this, but then again, he supposes that when you know someone well enough, even the most complex things about them become very simple to understand.
“What are you tired of, then?”
Josh huffs out a laugh that’s devoid of any humour, and buries his face in Ethan’s shirt. He wants to hide from everything and everyone, and only turns his head to reply, “you think I’d still be feeling this way if I knew?”
“Knowing you? Probably, yeah.”
Josh’s laugh is slightly genuine, then, and he squeezes Ethan’s waist, a thanks or an apology or maybe even just an I’m glad you’re here. Ethan squeezes his shoulder in response.
“Fair point.”
He’s overcome with the inexplicable urge to be truthful, now, and the enormity of his desire for it sits high in the confines of his chest. The thing is, though, that he doesn’t know what to say that’ll sound palatable, and easy to digest because all the things resting on the tip of his tongue sound so haunting and devastating that he’s almost scared to voice them, as if it’ll somehow make it feel all too real.
Instead, he offers an olive branch, “are you still doing sober september?”
Ethan seems to startle, slightly, at the sudden change of topic, but he pushes through quickly, and there’s a small smile in his voice as he says, “oh, yeah. I fucked that right up. Lasted about four days before I gave up.”
Josh tries to laugh, but it sounds wrong in all the places where it should sound right, overly forced and hollow, like an empty husk. He didn’t need to ask the question because he knew the answer already, but he can’t help but feel like this is his way out, his way of seeking salvation. He doesn’t know how, doesn’t even know what he’s trying to find, but he can tell that it’s near, like a shark smelling blood in the water.
“Did you…” Ethan starts, voice cautious, and reserved, like he’s defusing a bomb and his hands are trembling so bad that he has to pray and hope that he cuts the right wire, “is that, like… something you wanna try?”
Josh feels his stomach sink a little, his chest tightening and breath getting caught in his throat. It feels like an ugly question awaiting an ugly response. This is the horrible truth of it all, the part where all the gross and sickly things are put on display and in order to make it past you have to kill them where they stand, pushing away all the claws and teeth and poison to make it through to the other side.
Now that he’s here, the task seems terribly daunting, like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff, the wind rushing through his hair, and is being told to jump.
If I jump I will surely die, he thinks, I don’t want to die. I want so many things, but death is none of them. I want to live. I want to be gentle. I want to live gently.
At the very heart of him, he is nothing more than a scared boy who grew up too fast. He panics, and takes a step back: another day, I will jump. Another day.
“You say that like I’ve got a problem.”
His cowardice is a crutch that will warm him now but leave him cold when he needs it the most. He will be frozen in his grave. His grave at the top of the cliff with the epitaph reading: if only he had jumped. He would have been free and gentle and alive.
The slow, soothing motions of Ethan’s hand on his back stop, suddenly, as if jolted by the turn in his demeanour. Josh feels sour, every inch of him is sour and wrong and horrid. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to get better; maybe he deserves to rot from the inside out.
Ethan’s voice is a little harder than it has been all night, “and you say that like you don’t.”
Josh pushes himself away, and sits up. He feels cold almost immediately without the warmth of Ethan’s body next to him, but the motion is done now, and he can’t go back. The olive branch has been snapped in half and the hand holding it out has been bitten and ripped to shreds. He feels like he’s sinking in quicksand, and it’s all his own fault.
“I’m in control,” he says (he lies), “if I want to stop, I can stop.”
Ethan frowns, and the movement doesn’t suit the pleasantness of his features. Josh can’t help but feel like he’s letting everyone down immesuably, “sure, mate. That’s what every alcoholic says.”
And there it is.
The straw that broke the camel's back. The drop of water that broke the dam. The final nail in that fucking coffin he’s been building from the start.
His mouth feels very dry, heart racing in his chest, stomach churning nauseatingly, and his palms have begun to sweat. The sorrow and the heartache that he feels is filling up the place, sitting thick and lumpy in the back of his throat, difficult to breathe through, difficult to swallow.
His voice is a bit breathy with his panic as he says, “I’m not an alcoholic.”
Ethan’s eyes widen a bit, and he looks hauntingly earnest and vulnerable. It’s clear that he realises his mistake, that he was too heavy-footed and now all the eggshells he was walking on are crushed to pieces, beyond all hope.
He says Josh’s name then, and he says it in the way that people sometimes say please or need. Josh turns his attention away, to that section on the wall that he forgot to paint, he can barely bring himself to look at Ethan and that sad, broken expression on his face.
Ethan sits up too, and shuffles back, slightly, so that there’s some space between them. The gap feels almost insurmountable and Josh can’t help but feel like it’s poignant somehow, perhaps the unspoken notion of: look how badly you’re pushing everyone away.
He thinks that’s he’s shaking, trembling so badly that his muscles are threatening to tear themselves off the bone. Ethan reaches for him, then, and the tips of his fingers barely graze his bicep before he’s flinching away. It’s a horrible, childlike motion, flinching away from a raised hand, and he’s not proud of it, but then again, Josh isn’t proud of a lot of things these days.
Ethan removes his hand so quickly that you could assume he was burnt.
You’re scaring him, Josh thinks to himself, over and over again, he just wants to help and you’re scaring him.
He wants to apologise, then.
He wants to say: I’m sorry, and please can you hold me again, and don’t tell the others.
Instead, all he does is repeat himself, “I’m not an alcoholic.”
“Okay,” Ethan says, and his voice is controlled and slow, as if he’s talking to an unsettled animal getting ready to kick, “okay.”
Josh swallows thickly and looks down at his lap. He feels like he’s about to cry, eaten up by nothing and everything at the exact same time, just this rotten thing that is all crooked and bent and wrong.
Ethan pulls Josh against his chest in the same way that he spoke to him, carefully and gently. He goes willingly this time, numb and shell-shocked by the explosiveness of his own denial. A part of him is scared that it’s too late for him, that he’s past the point of no return. He doesn’t want to be a lost cause, doesn't want to be something sad and hopeless.
His back presses against Ethan’s chest, strong arms bracketing him and holding him steady, keeping all those broken, wandering pieces of himself together again. Ethan’s mouth presses against his hair, and Josh feels his eyes sting and his chest tighten when all Ethan mumbles is, “I’ve got you, Josh. I’ve got you. We'll figure it out tomorrow, yeah?”