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I shouldn’t exist, but I do. I live to hurt and wriggle my way into the seams to tear the scars wide open. When you think you’ve carefully constructed the walls around you, protected yourself from your own weak spots, I come to tear you apart.
I always succeed. No matter how you protect yourself, I always find a way to hit you. Only one moment when you let your guard down, that’s all I need to sneak into your mind and rip you to shreds. You know it. I know it. We both know it.
We know that once I’m inside, you can’t get me out. One moment of happiness, one moment you allow yourself to feel something else than that sickness. It’s what feeds me. I swallow it and leave you feeling lost. So lost that you accept MY help. MY guidance. I deceive you.
I tell you to do the wrong things. I tell you to hurt yourself, to hurt others, to push everyone away as if you could spill needles from your skin. Keep them at bay, keep them away because they can’t care for you. They don’t know you like I do. They’re not allowed to know you like I do because they’ll hurt you. Only I can hurt you. Your desire to be loved overrules my voice and you end up disobeying me but you always come back. You always regret trying to be loved by someone. You always apologize to me for thinking you were worth an ounce more than the shitty soul you are. You’re a waste of space. I know I shouldn’t exist, but why do you?
Danny turned the sheet in his hand around. The back was a bunch of black pen scratches from crossed out lyrics. The more he stared at the scratches the more it felt like they blurred into the face of a demon with crooked teeth, smirking back at him. He dropped the text as if it burned his fingers and took a moment to breathe. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath in the first place. Those lines. They were serious. Those lines weren’t a joke. They left a dull ache in his heart. Under the veil of fear, there was an undying curiosity to know whose lines they were. Whose desperation had he held in his hands? He picked the sheet back up, trying to read whose handwriting it could be, but the lines were roughly etched into the paper with an aggression barely under wraps. Or was it a shuddering pain that guided the pen?
Danny began to taste blood as he bit his lip hard, tapping the table he leaned on a little nervously. He’d been looking for his notebook. His own book of lyrics and he’d found this stray sheet near the dust bin. Someone must’ve wanted to throw it away, destroy the evidence of ever having felt this way but missed the bin. Though it wasn’t crumpled so that same person must’ve secretly hoped that someone would find the lines and offer a helping hand.
What could he do? He couldn’t just openly ask them all whose lines they were, could he? The singer remained there, debating his own mind on how to figure out whose lyrics they were and whether he was reading into them too much. Maybe they were just what they were; lines. Maybe they were a sign of fleeting sorrow. The harsh type of pain that passes by and gets better once the moment is over. Maybe this person realized how dramatic the lines were and wanted to throw them out, but if one was ashamed of the lines, wouldn’t they rip the sheet apart so no one would ever be able to read them in the first place?
“Danny? I thought you were coming to the back with your new song idea?” Charlie asked, startling the singer when he touched his shoulder. “Don’t do that!”
The bandana rapper chuckled. “Bad conscious, huh?”
“I guess”, the singer shrugged. As soon as he realized what he was holding in his hands, Charlie’s eyes flew to the sheet in his hands. “Are those the new lyrics to your new song?”
The rapper snatched them out of his hand. Danny stuttered out a quick; “N-no. I just found that sheet under the table.”
Charlie paled as he skimmed the lines, clearly taken aback by it as much as Danny was. “W-where’d you get this, you said?”
“Under the table. Near the dust bin. Someone must’ve wanted to throw it out. Whose do you think they are?” the blonde wondered.
Charlie pursed his lips into a thin line. “Doesn’t matter. They wanted to throw it out so you should throw it out.”
“Aren’t you worried who this person may be?”
“They’re lyrics, Danny”, the younger argued.
“But what if they’re not? What if this person feels that way and wanted us to find it! It’s not ripped to bits so it could be?” Danny replied. He didn’t understand why Charlie, out of all people, wasn’t taking this seriously.
Charlie clenched his jaw and tore the sheet apart. Once, twice, three times. “Let. It. Go. They’re just lyrics”, he hissed.
Danny dropped his jaw, watching the pieces of paper dwindle into the bin. He gazed up at Charlie’s burning glare. “I-it’s you. They’re yours.”
Charlie scoffed and shook his head. “You’re delusional, Danny.”
“No, they’re yours. You’d never carelessly cast them aside if it were anyone else’s”, the singer called out. Charlie covered Danny’s mouth with his hand and looked to the back cautiously. “Cut it out! Do you want the others to hear us?!”
Charlie retracted his hand quickly when Danny licked it, shuddering. “Gross, dude, and childish too. What do you want from me?”
“Why’d you write that?” the blonde asked, trying to keep Charlie gaze but the younger was prone to looking away at that moment and avoiding eye contact. He shrugged in response and leaned against the wall. “I just-…”
“Jesus, we send Charlie to retrieve Danny and you both stay away?!” Johnny called out from the bunks. “Hurry the fuck up with your lyrics, Danny, Dylan’s resorting to fart jokes right now and Jay can’t take any more of them. I don’t wanna break that fight up again.”
Charlie gave Danny a look before turning his back on him, walking to the back. The singer quickly fetched his book and joined them. Johnny wasn’t joking when he said Dylan and Jay were rubbing each other the wrong way. Whether it was Jay’s dismay to fart jokes or their obvious sexual tension, no one really knew.
The whole ordeal with Charlie knocked Danny out of the zone to present his new song to the guys so his explanation was a bit messy and he couldn’t always remember the notes to the melody he had in his head, but they got the idea of what the song was supposed to be and mentioned wanting to figure out some lines for it too. It had potential but it was still a rough sketch of a new song. Danny couldn’t help but glance at Charlie, try to see a hint of the desperate lines he had read only moments before. The bandana rapper was happily chatting away with the others, cracking jokes and laughing along. He seemed like a happy guy. Maybe the lyrics were just what they were. Maybe they were just rough lyrics to a song.
It was getting late so the five of them decided to catch some sleep aboard the bus as they’d be on the road all night to their next destination. After the huge fight for the bathroom to get ready for bed, they climbed into their respective bunks. Danny watched Charlie disappear into the one directly above him. He was overthinking it. Charlie was fine.
Charlie was a happy guy.
Why wouldn’t he be?
The singer fell asleep, breaking his head over that question. The dark void of sleep pulled him in, let him float into nothingness and kept him there. A deep slumber with an occasional sound protruding the darkness. He frowned at the sound, eventually blinking back into the real world. The sound was coming from the kitchen. Danny rolled out of the bitch bunk he’d been given and got up. In the dim light of the moon through the bus windows, he could see a silhouette in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboard and closets. They were looking for something.
Danny neared the middle, squinting his eyes. “Jordon?”
Charlie gasped, dropping whatever he had in his hands to the floor and yelping in pain as it hit him in the foot. “Jesus, Danny!” he whisper-shouted.
The singer closed the door to the bunks to keep the others from waking and flipped the light switch. Charlie sat on the kitchen floor, clutching his bleeding foot. The thing he’d been holding, was a knife and it stabbed him in the foot when he dropped it. “Oh God, I’ll get the first aid kit.”
Charlie seemed to freeze at the comment. “It’s on the counter.”
Danny turned to look and sure enough, the first aid kit was on the counter, opened. The singer took a bandage out of the box and wrapped it around the wounded foot. Charlie didn’t look at him, didn’t speak much either. Danny felt like he was missing something but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. He finished fixing the foot and picked the knife up from the ground to toss it into the sink. “What were you doing out here?”
He offered Charlie a hand to help him up. The bandana rapper hesitantly grasped the hand and pulled himself up. He didn’t answer the question, only gazed at Danny cautiously. The singer was missing something. He helped the bandana rapper hop to the couch. “What did you need the first aid kit for? Did you hurt yourself?”
“Yeah”, Charlie grumbled.
“What happened?” Danny asked, completely oblivious.
Charlie huffed. “I hurt myself.”
“Yeah, but what happened? Did you fall from your bunk or something?”
“No. I hurt myself”, the bandana rapper hissed, lifting his bandaged arm. “On purpose.”
That’s the thing Danny had been missing. The blood-soaked bandage on his arm. Charlie clenched his jaw. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” the singer asked, eyebrows furrowed. He took the bandaged arm into his hands. There was a pattern in the blood stains but he couldn’t quite see the pattern itself.
“Like you feel sorry for me. I’m good”, the younger shrugged. “I can take this.”
Danny’s worried expression faded into annoyance. “You’re joking.”
He dropped the arm and got up. “You write those disturbing lines, leave them out in the open, rip them apart when I see them and that same night you go ahead and… and…”
“Say it”, Charlie growled.
Danny shut his mouth with a sigh.
“You can’t say it”, the bandana rapper bit. He got up from the couch, a little shaky with his wounded foot but he managed. He neared Danny until they were standing a little too close to each other. “I go ahead and cut myself. I did. I did it because you saw something you weren’t supposed to see. I left a trail of evidence to this sickness inside, maybe I secretly wanted someone to find it but I was mortified when you did. I was… I am so fucking pissed at myself for allowing that to happen. I should’ve ripped the words apart or never even have written them at all because you keep looking at me like I’m broken!”
A silence washed over them. Charlie had held Danny’s eyes, spoken with confidence but now that he’d said it, it seemed to flow out of him until he only looked smaller and smaller like a deflating balloon. The blonde nodded to himself, more like something to do rather than a response but he lifted his arms to wrap them around Charlie’s neck, pulling him close against him. He rested his chin on the other’s shoulder. The bandana rapper was taken aback by the reaction but brought his hands up to rest at his waist.
“I…”
“Shut up”, Danny said. “I don’t know what to say.”
The singer’s skin was warm and seeping through Charlie’s shirt. He rested the side of his head against the other’s. “Say you won’t pity me. I’m not broken. I just need to break and let it all out to keep going sometimes.”
“Hurting yourself isn’t ‘letting it all out’. I don’t want you to do that shit again or I will kick your fucking ass back to your mom.”
“Noted”, Charlie muttered. He sighed.
“I’m sorry I had to find that sheet before knowing something was up with you”, the blonde pouted, nearly strangling the other in his hug but it brought a smile to Charlie’s lips. “I’m fine. I promise. I just crack sometimes.”
“Well then come to me so I can duct tape that motherfucker”, Danny pleaded and the younger hummed in response. “Fine. I will.”
“Just say some code word and I’ll know. Like… gnocchi.”
“I’m not sure I can pronounce that”, Charlie chuckled. “But I’m fine. I’ll let you see the cracks sometimes.”
“Good”, Danny huffed, stepping back to leave but Charlie tightened his grip. “No, wait.”
The singer looked down in faded blue eyes and nodded his head. He’d stay with him as long as Charlie wanted.
***
Johnny woke up when the bus halted. Mainly because he hit his head against the bunk wall and groaned. Jay and Dylan were still snoring the time away while Danny and Charlie’s bunks were empty and seemed like they’d been empty for a while already. He got up, thinking he’d finally beat the guys to the bathroom and get to use it first. Him! First! He never got to use it first.
Scurrying to the bathroom, he paused to look sideways and found Danny and Charlie on the couch. The two were more or less entangled, sound asleep. It held something peaceful. Johnny couldn’t help but continue to stare at them and wonder what went down while they were asleep. Jay joined his side. “What’s that about?”
“Keep it down”, Johnny hushed him. “I don’t wanna wake them.”
Though Charlie stirred and sat upright. “Too late, dude. I’m awake.”
At that Danny seemed to wake up as well, rubbing his eyes and yawning so bad he could’ve sucked everyone in. Johnny let his eyes fall to Jordon and noticed the bandages on his body. “Charlie, what the hell happened last night?”
Danny seemed to freeze but Charlie shrugged. “You know me, dude. I got hungry, tried to make me some food but Danny startled the shit out of me so I dropped the knife, tried to catch it but cut my arm and then dropped it into my fucking foot. What the hell.”
“I bandaged him up”, Danny added. “And we kinda fell asleep here, heh.”
The four were silent for a moment before Jay snorted. “They’re so touching dicks.”
“Definitely”, Johnny agreed. He turned to Jay, finding him gone and hearing the bathroom door close. “NO! I was gonna be the first one for once!”
Evil laughter erupted from the bathroom, together with a groan from the bunks part. “I was sleeping, asshole!”
“Well time to wake the fuck up. You’re missing out! Danny and Charlie are touching dicks!” Johnny called back.
Charlie shook his head with a smile, turning to look at Danny. “Thanks. For bandaging me up and stuff.”
“No problem.”