Coming Home // Sidemen AU (Minizerk)

The Wait

After he'd woken up from the drug induced slumber, it had been non-stop action.

He'd bitten one of the doctors. He hadn't meant to but when the man had started poking at him he'd lashed out, and without him properly realising it, his jaw had clamped down on the man's hand, nothing too bad but deep enough to draw blood.

He'd had a different doctor after that. One that explained to him very calmly and slowly about what he wanted to do. He'd examined him carefully, had him sent off so they could see which bones were broken. To tell the truth he was kind of interested in that one. He'd lost count himself after a while.

Their main concern however seemed to be the malnutrition and dehydration. There had been a bit of a commotion after they'd checked his weight. Underweight. By a lot. No shit. He might not have looked in a mirror for six years but it didn't take a genius to know you weren't supposed to be able to count every rib clearly.

It was all very confusing. Everybody was telling him he was safe now and that they'd take care of him, but he didn't feel safe. It was all so strange and frightening as stuff was stuck in his veins and limbs were wrapped an bandaged.

And everything was so white and clean and bright and so, so different to what he'd grown to accept as normal for the past six years. And there were so many people and noises and smells and in the end he had panicked. It wasn't right, he wasn't supposed to be here. He was going to get in trouble. Trouble meant he would get hurt and he would do anything not to be hurt even more.

Apparently doctors and nurses didn't approve of their patients ripping out their IV's and screaming ineligibly at them. Soon after anyway, someone had returned to send him back into the familiar drug filled darkness.

...

Simon sat leaning his head back against the wall, staring up at the white ceiling, following the chips and cracks in the paint with his blue eyes. He'd been sitting there for half an hour, on his own after his dad had gone to speak to the necessary people to get him in to see his newly found friend. He had no idea what was taking so long, but he couldn't exactly go and find out himself. He'd only get lost in the massive labyrinth of hospital wards.

And so he sat on the line of chairs set out for other people waiting around like he was, absentmindedly scuffing his feet on the shiny floor, while his actual mind was all over the place, trying to work out beforehand how he was supposed to react when he came face to face with a boy...or a man now, who he had not seen in such a long time.

A buzzing in his jean pocket alerted him to the text from the only other one of their group who was currently in the know. Simon quickly replied to the message with a few taps and then a couple of minutes later he was waving the other boy other to his location. "Tobi, over here!"

The younger boy walked as quickly as he could without getting in anyone's way in the busy corridor and Simon stood up to greet him.

Holding his arms open, he stumbled back slightly as Tobi hugged him with his full force. "Bro, is it true?" he asked as Simon let him go. "They've really found Josh?" His dark brown eyes were wide with apprehension, just how Simon imagined his had been when he'd been on the phone to his dad. He too had found it hard to accept it as truth to start with, not when they'd been let down so many times in the past.

"Yeah...yeah I know fucking hell right, who would've thought?" Simon shakily said, sitting down with Tobi next to him.

"You always did," Tobi pointed out, looking at Simon with a sort of admiration perhaps mixed in with guilt. Guilt that he had given up on their friend like the others had. He had no reason to feel guilty, Simon thought. He knew he had been the crazy one to believe Josh would be found alive after so long, but there was a connection they had, one that he couldn't ever explain with mere words, that had given him the reason to hope.