Gone at Last (Josh)

The psychiatrist now had visual confirmation that his friend was physically in one piece; that was an important first step. The other man’s measured response was less than encouraging, since Josh was behaving as though he was a client who had stopped by with a legal question. Still, not everyone coped with stress the way that he did, and this was within the realm of typical stress responses, albeit an undesired one. After all, with 33 years of friendship, he’d hoped that the other man was comfortable leaning on him in times of need.

As surely as the reverse was true.

The telepath held up the caddy with the beer bottles, showing his friend that he’d come bearing a gift. “I brought you this. I thought we could have a chat. Maybe get some lunch if you’re not too busy.” If Josh was too busy to actually go out, Sean would order from the Chinese restaurant he favored and have the food brought here. He wouldn’t mind if his friend needed to go over a motion while they talked.

After all, it was enough that he could see his friend. Even if he’d had to track him down himself to do it.

His friend was behaving strangely, which he could still chalk up to the personal and professional stress. It wasn’t encouraging, particularly not when Josh took such a long pause to respond to what was a basic invitation, and when his response was wholly the opposite of what it should have been.

While it was true that the telepath had called fairly often recently, he hadn’t left explicit messages. He didn’t like having emotional conversations over answering machines, and after his last attempt to leave a voice mail that had somehow managed to convince his friend that he was going to commit suicide, he’d not made the attempt.

There had been a few “call me if you have time” messages, intended not to put greater pressure on Josh, but that was it. Most of the calls left no residue but for the “missed call” alert and his phone number.

Thus he frowned at the other man’s vague remark. “If you know why I’ve been calling, then you can at least talk for a bit. If not for yourself, then for me.” Josh might not want to be pampered in a time of need, but he should know that Sean worried. Josh was his closest friend, after all. “I promise not to make a nuisance of myself.”

“I beg your pardon?” It was the telepath’s typical, cultivated, polite response to a situation that made little to no sense; an effort to remain non-confrontational while affording the other person the opportunity to elaborate.

There was a brief pause, however, because Sean was somewhat shellshocked by the accusation that he had intended to end their friendship. That he would at all, that he had done it by proxy with Griff, that he would come here to rub it in the other man’s face.

A pause as he remembered his conversation with the Welshman, who had vaguely questioned whether Josh had a hormone imbalance or emotional disorder. Who had embarrassingly inquired about some other facts in their relationship, mentioning a party – through context he’d realized the poker party but it could have easily been the New Year’s one –that he’d heard about. Rumors flew around a small town, and thus Sean hadn’t thought too much of it at the time, aside from being surprised and giving reassurances; he wasn’t embarrassed of his behavior when he was single, which he’d tried to make plain at that botched intervention.

All of that, he realized, was about the time that Josh had stopped taking his calls completely and had ceased all conversation.

It was his turn to narrow his eyes, and his usually affable expression morphed into the one he used during sessions with petulant teenagers and discipline. His tone was devoid of emotion as he half-asked, half-narrated, “You had a single conversation with Griff and decided based on that alone that I wanted to end our friendship, and so you were deliberately rude to him and stopped answering my telephone calls for weeks. Without even checking with me.”

“You did this on purpose,” he said quietly, still in a state of disbelief. Realization struck Sean twice. First with the events as they had transpired, and again with the fact that Josh still didn’t understand what the problem was, and that enraged him. It enraged him because there was a knife that permanently lived two inches from his chest, and every so often, someone he cared about gave it a shove, piercing his heart. It enraged him because this was Joshua Bernstein, someone who should know better. Someone who had already hurt him once so badly that he was in his fifties and still carried the scars. Usually, he took credit for that and for Josh’s scars as well, but the fact that he had to drag this much conversation out of the other man, like pulling teeth, while true understanding still dangled out of Josh’s grasp was too much; it broke something inside him.

Perhaps that something was his calm. Perhaps it was his patience.

“That is one of the vilest thoughts anyone has ever had of me,” he informed the other man, his jaw working unconsciously to keep his voice even. The caddy was suddenly heavy in his hand and he set it down, stifling a different urge in the process. “That you could think me capable of that, wanting that, actually doing it and in such a heartless and cruel fashion.” His friend believed that he would throw away over three decades of friendship because he was dating someone new, someone who, at the time, he’d only had a couple of dates with? His friend reached that decision so easily and with such finality that he wasn’t willing to even call him to ask about it? His friend still believed that this was possible because he was defending those thought processes?

“We weren’t talking much before because you said you were busy, and I have this bizarre quirk where I assume my friends are telling me the truth about their plans. I have this pathological fear of smothering you so I let you dictate the terms of our relationship.” And then, his voice was no longer even, because the throb began in his temples. “You’re the one who stops speaking to me for weeks at a time. You don’t want to have discussions so I keep my mouth shut tight, like I do with everyone else.”

The telepath was beyond trying to explain how this misunderstanding could have happened; he knew. Griff wasn’t a native English speaker, and his discussions about how complicated his friendship and past with Josh had been reduced to a single word, and that word had been the incorrect one. It wasn’t Griff’s fault; he had no blame in this.

“I think so highly of you,” Sean said, his jaw working but it didn’t matter because the volume of his voice had gone up. Thankfully, thankfully, they were alone. “I speak only well of you. And you’re right, there is a big difference between exes and best friends. Exes don’t bail you out of jail after you set a goddamned statue on fire in the middle of town and then protect your law license by erasing memories. Exes don’t leave each other as the near sole beneficiaries of one another’s wills!” He was sure that was news to Josh, but at this stage, he wanted to make his point and it shouldn’t be that surprising in retrospect, once Josh thought about it.

Unfortunately, critical thinking skills – those required by his friend’s profession – had apparently gone missing.

He shook his head to himself, and the throb in his temples grew. He didn’t need this. “I don’t know what darkness you see inside of me, or that you imagine in yourself, to let you think this, but this,” He gestured between the two of them, “this isn’t working.” Obviously.

When the floodgates finally closed, Sean inhaled sharply, and then exhaled in a rush. With that, he was calm.

Not calm, but calmer.

He could listen now, through the pounding in his head, waiting for any words the other man might find for him. He did listen, to the apologies, to the meek tone and submissive posturing. But it was an unvoiced thought, the ones he tried not to respond to since they were never given voice that nearly broke him. And because he had already broken so many rules – he’d managed to lose his temper, with Josh and make mention of everything he'd held back all these decades – what was one more?

“I don’t put up with you,” he said, and his voice was even again, had returned to an acceptable volume. It did little for the growing headache, but he felt better about himself, because he was calmer. He felt miserable because he had let his control lapse in the first place.

Frustrated because his inner dam had broken and it was going to destroy the house of cards he and Josh had spent so long building. Hurt because of what Josh had thought and how he had behaved. Frustrated more because Josh kept hurting him, even though he knew he knew that wasn’t his intention.

“I don’t put up with you,” he repeated, firmer now because it was positively ghastly that Josh viewed himself this way. That Josh thought the telepath kept him around like some toy to play with until he grew bored, and that perhaps he had done so now.

“And I know you’re sorry.” He saw that in every movement, heard it in every word, felt it in his thoughts. The fact that Josh was sorry wasn’t the problem; it was that his friend didn’t seem to understand what bothered the telepath, and thus that he wasn’t apologizing for the right reasons.

Moreover, apologies couldn’t fix this. In this moment, with a headache pounding like a jackhammer, and Josh refusing to meet his eyes, and his own voice echoing in his ears, he saw everything clear for what had to be done, to repair the foundation that had eroded due to a complete and utter lack of proper communication.

And he didn’t think they would be able to do it.

Because Josh shied away from conversations about emotions and intimacy and all of the best and worst parts of their relationship as young men; because his friend insisted on pretending that they didn’t wake up in bed together sometimes and put up these emotional barriers. And as a result, Sean went against every natural instinct he had to respect those barriers, at great pains to himself sometimes. Because what he had told the other man mere moments ago was true; he did everything he could to keep himself from smothering Josh.

The fact that Josh apparently took offense to that sometimes was baffling. Because everything Sean did with their pattern was for him, and he didn’t know how much plainer he could make it, not when he defended him to their friends and to his sister an cleared his schedule to be with him and never pressured him, and had told him multiple times that he still loved him. And his friend still thought, somehow, that he would just cut him loose for no reason.

The telepath closed his eyes and took another deep breath. “Apologies aren’t going to do it.”

He took another breath and then opened his eyes again. He spoke softly. “It’s toxic right now. I’m absorbing all of it, and that will only make both of us feel worse. Do you understand?”