September. (A Josh Ramsay Fic)

Eighteen - There's Something Beautiful and Tragic in The Fallout

It was about a week after the fire. Josh had been crashing at my house for the entire time, but the rest of his family couldn't bear to see their empty, shelled-out house every day, and so they had booked themselves into a hotel about a mile away. It would be a while until their house was rebuilt.

Josh woke me up that morning by shaking my shoulder lightly. I turned around slowly, ready to kick him out of my bed if that would be the only way I could get some sleep.

"I wanna go in the house" he whispered, looking me dead in the eyes as if to prove to me how serious he was about this.

"But Josh, it could be dangerous. What if the floor collapses or something?" I asked, subtly trying to convince him out of going. No doubt he'd take me with him, and I wasn't too enthusiastic about seeing the gutted, burnt-up remains of his childhood home.

I remember the moment they found us there. We had stood in the garden for what could have been hours, shivering from the cold but transfixed on the glow of the burning house. Neither of us called the fire department, and I'm not all too sure who did. When they arrived, they told us both that we had suffered several 1st degree burns, with one or two 2nd degree burns. We were thankful that they didn't ask why we hadn't left the house sooner, or why we had stayed close enough long enough to suffer the burns, but later I realised that the most likely reason for that was that we were still high. It was only around an hour after we had smoked, and we both must have been pretty out of it.

His mother climbed out of her car slowly when she returned home, and fell to her knees slowly when she saw the smoke rising from her family home. She sobbed quietly into the grass, and we just stared at her, hands entwined and unable to move.

Because we had done this.

Before anyone else had turned up, they had told us that the fire had started in the basement. This only confirmed our fears. This was all our fault, and there was no taking back how badly we had fucked up this time.

We asked them not to tell anyone else.

Nobody had set foot in the house since the fire, until now. We approached the house tentatively, clutching each other's palms as if our lives depended on it, our hearts thumping in our chests. Josh held an empty messenger bag beside him, almost dragging it across the ground with the lack of effort he was putting into carrying it. Neither of us had any idea of what we were going to find inside. Holding my breath, I watched as Josh slowly pushed open the burnt up door, which had still been left ajar from our narrow escape.

Black. That was all we could see. Every surface, every piece of furniture, had been blackened by the flames which had licked at every corner of the house without mercy. The black dust seemed to hang in the air, filling our lungs as we stared point blank into his old home. Nothing had escaped the fire, glass littered the floor where the windows had broken, and what used to be plastic cups lay on their sides, melted to the metal table beneath them.

Josh dropped my hand, and walked forward slowly into the remains of his living room. I could not imagine how he felt. I was ready to break down there and then, and I had only visited. Josh, on the other hand, had lived in that home for every second of his fifteen years. His parents brought him home here from the hospital through this very threshold, taught him to walk and talk in these halls, got him ready for his first day of school in the exact living room we were stood in now.

Every memory he had of home, he had made here.

And we burnt that fucking place to the ground.

He picked up a picture frame, the wooden frame itself charred and crumbling. The picture inside was still intact, although visibly burnt around the edges. He stared at it for what seemed like hours, entranced by the people in the photo. I approached him, and I could make out the figures stood, beaming up at us from the photo. There, in the middle, stood Josh. Younger than I had ever known him, yet definitely him all the same. Beside him was his sister, Sara, and behind them stood their parents, Miles and Corlynn. They all looked so happy, so perfect. A stark contrast to the destruction surrounding them.

A tear bounced onto the glass of the frame. Josh was crying. Attempting to comfort him, I put my hand on his upper arm, and asked,

"Are you okay?"

He looked up at me slightly, a small smirk on his lips. He attempted to play off just how devastated he was by this, and it almost worked, until his facade cracked.

"No" he squeaked, throwing the frame into the bag and wrapping his arms around me, sobbing into my shoulder. "I'm not okay, we destroyed everything. This is our fault." Quickly, he tore away from me, looking me dead in the eye as if he had just stumbled upon a major revelation. "No..." he said, walking backwards slightly, "This is your fault. You did this. If it wasn't for you, everything would be the same. I wouldn't be so dependent on you, or anybody, and my parents wouldn't know about my drug problem, and- and- and, and I'd still have my house. This is your fault. You ruined everything. It's all you, September." By this point, we were both sobbing. Tears streamed down both of our faces as he yelled his accusations. Because he wasn't wrong.

This was my fault.

If I had never moved here, I would never have met Josh. If I'd never met Josh, he wouldn't have my phone number. If he didn't have my phone number, he wouldn't be able to call me. And then I would never have known about his habit. Never would have insisted I be there when he take it. Never would have taken it myself. I wouldn't have distracted him while his house burnt around him.

I'd ruined his life.

But wasn't he also beginning to ruin mine?

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OH MY GOSH TWO UPDATES IN THREE DAYS??? WHO AM I AND WHAT HAVE I DONE WITH BECK

lmao jk it's still me

anyway i've been away like a month and seeing as seventeen had such a cliffhanger ending I couldn't just stick an authors note on the end

is everyone enjoying Astoria, or are we all drained of tears? what's your fav song? Mine is either This Means War or Dearly Departed, I can't choose

also i'm definitely gonna have part of September being inspired by Shut Up And Kiss Me it fits in so well with what I have planned you don't even know

anyway if I don't stop now this'll get longer than the chapter itself lmao, see you whenever I update next, be that tomorrow, or next month! (hopefully not next month oml i only just got back into writing this i don't wanna lose my motivation just yet)

-beck