stumbling into line (sidemen ff)

Chapter 19: 'I want you to cure my hysteria'

"You should take no notice of Freya.  She's not been herself lately." Tobi reassures a shook up Adriana.  After Freya's outburst, everyone but Tobi (because it's his house), Josh, Harry and Adriana had left. 

"Yeah, she's fucking mental." Harry bites, defending his new girlfriend over his long time friend.  Josh wants to tell him to shut up and tell him he has no idea what he is talking about but he chokes it back knowing that Harry doesn't really mean it.

"I don't even know what I did.  I was just talking about my cousin," Josh winces, "and she exploded.  Did I say something?" Adriana asks, Harry shaking his head and mumbling something about a therapist.  Adriana is genuinely confused and doesn't know what she could have said to possibly trigger this 'meltdown' of sorts.  Even if she never found out, she was sorry and she didn't mean to do anything wrong.

"You didn't say anything." Josh lies, pacing back and forth through the living room, "She's just sensitive."

"Ha, sensitive.  She needs to be in a home."  Harry scoffs.  Not realising Josh's growing anger towards him.

"Dude," Josh growls, "Do you want me to punch you?"

Harry's eyes widen.  Josh never gets angry, you know a situation is bad when Josh is angry but he can't let go of his pride.  He just wanted to protect Adriana, he had really started to like her in the past couple of weeks.

"You shouldn't even be defending her!  She isn't your girlfriend anymore, remember, you screwed that up, didn't you?" He spits back, leaning forward on the sofa. 

Josh is seething now.  His hands balled in tight, white-knuckled fists and veins on his arms popping at the tension.

"You have no fucking idea, you little fag, you have no idea what happened so shut up." Josh whispers through clenched teeth as he points an accusing finger in Harry's stone cold face.

"Josh, calm down." A voice comes from the hall and Freya steps in, her eyes red and puffy.  Adriana stands up immediately and begins saying sorry before Freya raises her hand to stop her.

"Don't.  I should be apologising to you.  What I did was unacceptable.  And, Harry, it was like that of a crazy women, but, who didn't know I was crazy?  Hysterical even.  Did you know that Hysteria comes from the Greek word 'hystera', which means womb?" Freya rambles on.  Not really knowing what she is trying to say and wondering whether the three shots she had at the local was effecting her, "They used to believe that only women could be hysterical and in some cases it was called 'wandering womb'.  It was the thought that the womb would move to a different place in the body because it was too dry and would cause illness.  The cure was sex, or pregnancy.  I don't know what I'm doing." She continues, trying to get to the specific reason she returned but failing miserably.  She turns to Josh, a smirk on her face, "I love you, Josh, and I want you to cure my hysteria."

She tries to keep a straight face but fails and is in laughing fits in mere seconds, along with Tobi, Harry and Adriana.  Josh just stares at them all confused and red-faced.

"What?  Please tell me you mean sex and not pregnancy because I'm not getting you pregnant, again." Josh stands, a joking smile on his face until he notices everyone staring at him, eyes wide and mouths sending formal invites to flies, like he said something wro- "Fuck." He mumbles angrily to himself and puts his head down.

As he lifts his hands to massage his temple, he tries to figure out what the fuck he is going to do to get out of this and how he's going to apologise to Freya but he is interrupted from his self-scolding by laughter.  Not just any laughter, his favourite laughter.  He looks up to see Freya, her head tipped back and giggles spilling from her wide, smiling mouth.