Up From A Deep End Dive

It’s twenty minutes before the show, and Josh walks into the empty dressing room to find his outfit. He hasn’t worn it since the Ever After tour, and he smiles at the shiny red fabric. He slips out of the sweatpants he’s wearing and slides into the leather pants. He frowns lightly when he finds it an awful lot easier to get them on now than it was all those months ago. He strides over to the mirror and stares at his reflection. All he sees are creases and wrinkles in the fabric, and he checks again at the back of the tag to make sure that nobody’s switched them for a bigger size. No, they’re his own pants and they’re his regular size. He raises an eyebrow, but instead of thinking it over too much, he simply shrugs it off and continues to get ready for the show.

But of course, if the singer himself notices something’s different, then so do the thousands of fans who’re obsessed with his every move. They see the creases and wrinkles in the fabric; they’re not hard to miss with the flashing lights of the cameras reflecting off of them like crazy. When Josh returns in the sweatpants and loose t-shirt after a shower, he finds he has even more Twitter notifications buzzing through his phone than usual. And they’re almost all about the same thing. One fan’s even got a picture of Josh in the pants all the way back on the Ever After tour, and a picture from tonight as a comparison. He winces at the tiny screen, depicting the difference in size. There’s no denying it. He’s gotten smaller, a lot smaller, very quickly. And to the band and some of the more educated fans, this means one thing and one thing only. It was just a matter of time before someone properly confronted him face to face about it.

Josh sits in the dressing room alone for a little while, musing things over, before Matt enters the room. Josh looks up, sees who it is, and smiles feebly. Matt jerks a thumb in the direction of the door.

“You know we need to go do some signings for fans.” Matt reminds Josh, and the singer sighs, gets up from the couch and roots around in his duffle bag for a sharpie. Matt stays silent for a moment, before speaking up. “You know, I can hear what the fans are saying about you. And I’m not blind, Josh.”

Josh looks indignantly up at Matt, but doesn’t say anything. He continues to search for a pen or a marker or something so he can sign things with.

“Is everything... alright?” Matt asks, a little quieter than before.

Josh nods vigorously, perhaps a little too much. “Everything’s fine.”

“Josh, please don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying.” Somehow the singer is quick to respond, seemingly having an answer to things rather than making up some stupid excuse that is easily see-through and makes little sense.

Matt merely heaves a sigh. “And I’m not stupid. But we have to go talk to fans now.” Josh draws closer to Matt with intentions of following him. “But I’m not done talking to you about this.”

After fifteen minutes or so of signing album covers, slips of paper and various other items that are shoved through the chain link fence, Josh starts to grow bored. After ten minutes of posing for pictures with teenage girls ecstatic out of their minds, Josh begins to get uncomfortable and agitated. He glances over to Matt, tugs on his sleeve a little to grab his attention, and then gives the shorter man a look. The brunette nods in understanding and Josh disappears back into the venue, takes his bag and costume and heads for the bus, with hopes of finding sleep quickly tonight.

It’s about an hour that Josh has been on the empty bus before he hears voices and footsteps and the slamming of the bus door. He groans inwardly, because he’s convinced he had just been beginning to drift off to sleep. So he pulls the curtain across his bunk and snuggles further into his duvet. He hears a quiet voice speaking in a hushed tone, and then the bunk section’s door is yanked open. Heavy footsteps pass through, and Josh can hear what sounds like Ian and Mike talking about a Halo battle. Josh’s eyes widen when he notices fingertips curl around the fabric curtain of his bunk. He says something incoherent and the person pulls the curtain away about a foot or two. The singer realises its Matt, and he moves over to let the younger man into his bunk with him. They’ve done this many times to chat, to go over some lyrics, or to just have company in a confined space, but never when Josh was just lying in an oversized hoodie and boxers, and when Matt’s face was set in cold stone.