It happened sometimes with Josh; whether they were on tour or he was cooped up at home, he always ended up isolating himself in some unreachable portion of the area everyone was staying out of quite often nowhere at all. The only thing that actually seemed to be a pattern was why he isolated himself. The way his brain worked told him that he was too much. Too loud, too attention-seeking. Too inadequate compared to everyone else. None of these things had been true - no matter the color of the lanky yet muscular drummer’s hair - but the only person that was ever able to reassure him of that was Nathaniel.
They had been friends longer than he could recall; visions of them sitting on graffiti’d walls talking about starting a band seemed to rush through his mind as he peered behind the curtain of their latest venue, crowd riled up and ready to go. It made his heart beat a thousand times a minute to hear them that night, and not in the way it usually did. This time it was fear. Genuine fear. The look on his face was expressionless and unchanging until his shorter, humorous counterpart had shaken him from behind, unaware of the anxiety Josh had been suffering from all day until he’d turned him around. He didn’t have to say anything. Nate never had to say anything once he knew. They had an unspoken way of communicating that was altogether both strange and endearing.
Giving Josh a nod and pulling them to the side away from the brightly lit stage, the pair stood in darkness and just soaked up the silence for a moment. It was only then that Josh spoke, ashamed of his lack of individual strength in the moment. "I know this shit gets to be stupid after awhile, man," Josh had begun, head facing the concrete floor as they continued to stand. "I'm sorry. It just happens.
“Fuck it and that,” Nate countered, a man nearly always joking stated quite seriously, complementing the furrowed brows on his face as he spoke to Josh.
“We’re brothers. I give you a lot of shit but I’m not gonna leave you behind. Now put that fuckin balaclava on and let’s go fuck shit up out there. Let everything else fade away for awhile.”
