I Know It's Hard Sometimes

They’re setting up for Panic now.

Tyler knows this. He knows this because their set ended about five minutes ago, and Brendon and Co. are up next on the bill, and the narrow hallway that he’s standing in is filled with roadies and equipment, and Tyler can vaguely see a Urie-shaped shadow at the end of the hallway, arms a blur, talking animatedly with a small woman with a large camera on a strap around her neck.

Tyler likes to focus on the mundane sometimes. It helps. Especially when his mind starts to race and his thoughts trip over each other so that nothing seems to make sense, and when he can see Josh’s mouth forming words but can’t hear the sounds coming out and there are bursts of discordant music and fragments of words thrashing around inside his head and something deep inside his brain throbs then shatters and

“Is it just me or are the walls closing in again?”

His voice is wavering and quiet and sounds very, very far away.

Josh’s face, crestfallen, criss-crossed with worry, is the only thing that registers and the hand on Tyler’s shoulder is the only thing that feels steady and solid and real. Tyler looks down at his feet, one of his hands crossing his chest to cover Josh’s, tracing the grooves of his knuckles with his fingers, chest heaving with breaths he can’t control.

He blinks and there’s a water bottle in his hand and he’s being led through the maze of hallways and little rooms that make up the backstage, Josh’s arm protectively around his shoulder. He blinks again and he’s sitting on a black sofa in a green room somewhere, a fluorescent light buzzing above him, Josh cross-legged on the floor in front of him, one hand on each of Tyler’s knees.

(Tyler hates this. The attacks, yeah, of course. The fact that Josh seems like he’s come to expect a capital-E episode and knows exactly how to handle it? Even more.)

Josh is talking now, Tyler can see, lips moving, but Tyler can only hear blood pounding in his ears, rhythmic thump-thump-thump in time with his heart. By the time it clears, Josh has to have repeated himself four times. “Ty. Tyler. Look at me.”

He does.

“You know where we are?”

“Atlanta,” Tyler says, voice small. Technically they’re not in Atlanta— they’re in some suburb. He figures it’s close enough.

“Good. What’s the date?”

“The twenty-eighth. September twenty-eighth.”

“Good.” Josh squeezes Tyler’s knee. “Where are we going next?”

“Um. Florida. Tampa.”

“Good. Did something set you off?

Josh knows the answer to that. Tyler taught him a long time ago that a flare-up of his anxiety has a trigger. A panic attack, an Episode, doesn’t. Josh knows all of the things that trigger Tyler’s anxiety. Nothing happened all day. He’d been fine. But right now Tyler is focusing on Josh’s face because he swears he can see just a sliver of pity there, nested in the crinkles around his eyes and the cautious way that his hands are just barely resting against Tyler’s pants, like Tyler is about to lose control and lash out at him again.

The fear’s there. It’s masked in sympathy. But it’s there. Tyler can see it.

There’s anger bubbling in Tyler’s chest now, white-hot, his skin flushing. Josh can look as sympathetic as he wants. He will never understand. Josh is normal. Josh isn’t messed up in the head, at least not like Tyler. Josh has healthy coping mechanisms.

Josh (no matter how helpful he is or what a good friend he tries to be when Tyler gets like this, no matter how many times he’s sat awake at four in the morning with Tyler’s head in his lap, stroking the side of his face while trembles, his mind too busy to let him fall asleep) will only see a thrashing monster during an Episode, will only think about the time that Tyler screamed and hit him so hard his nose bled.

Deep down, Josh has to know he deserves better than Tyler.

Josh deserves better friends.

(There’s a sudden burst of static. Tyler flinches, then catches sight of a small speaker hanging on the wall over Josh’s shoulder. Then screaming, then the opening notes of "Time to Dance.”

Tyler bites back the words before they come out.)