daron oneshots :)

crash

A/N: this one cuts out in a weird spot at the end so apologies for that! but this is just somethin I wrote just cuz :)

The smoke was thick in the air as it rose up, and Daron knew it was only a matter of time before the plane exploded. He leaped out of the mangled mess that was now the fuselage of the plane and scrambled to multiple feet away. The plane subsequently started to go up in flames, and Daron rolled in the dirt to make sure he didn't also catch on fire by accident. He wasn't sure whether or not there were any survivors; he'd just woken up in the smoking remains of a plane crash that must've knocked him unconscious for several minutes. He'd had approximately six seconds to process where he was before something in the back of the plane exploded and started burning, and he hadn't had time to look for survivors or collect his things (which were gone anyway). He hacked on smoke and dust and particles that were flying around in the air. He wasn't even entirely sure where the plane had landed, or, hell-- where had the flight been bound for again? Shaking himself off, he rose to his feet on shaky legs, trying to ease his anxiety.

Daron felt like he was sitting at the crash site for hours; he didn't know where to go, what to do, except watch the empty shell of the airplane burn. Night fell, and fear began to paralyze him. No matter which way he walked, he always ended up back at the same place, watching the flames engulf the metal. His breath began to quicken, and his heart rate increased. Where am I? He continued to run, trying to find a way out, until suddenly he tripped and fell, hurting toward the ground--

His eyes flew open and he lurched forward, falling out of his bunk and hitting the floor of the bus with a loud thunk, still tangled in the blankets. Serj, who was up late drinking tea in the front of the bus, jumped at the sudden movement and spilled tea all over himself and the book he was reading. A long line of curses left his mouth as Daron began groaning, trying to regain his bearings. As he tried to disentangle himself from the sheets Serj hissed into the darkness, "What the hell?"

Daron flipped his long hair out of his face and finally succeeded in freeing his legs from the twisted sheets. "Jesus Christ," he muttered to himself.

"Daron?" Serj prompted again.

"Don't mind me," Daron said in a whisper, as to not wake John or Shavo. "I just got startled out of a dream. I'm fine."

Serj set down the now-emptier mug and tea-saturated book and walked over to help Daron off the ground. "That was a hard fall."

"At least I didn't fall from the top bunk." Daron glanced up at said bunks, which was the level at which Serj had decided to sleep.

Serj chuckled quietly. "I don't fall out of my bunk when I wake up, nightmare or not."

"Okay, fuck off, this is the first time it's happened." Daron brushed off the large T-shirt that he slept in.

"Can you guys shut the hell up? What are you doing?" came John's voice from one of the middle bunks. "Did one of you fall?"

"Daron did," Serj answered. "He was dreaming so profoundly he got thrown out of sleep."

Daron shoved him. "Dude, shut the fuck up," he said as Serj grinned at him like a hellion.

"Is he okay?" John pulled the curtain back enough so that he could look up at Daron and Serj.

"I think I hit my head on the way out, but I'm fine otherwise," Daron answered, rubbing his forehead.

"Then can you take this conversation elsewhere? Shavo and I are trying to sleep," John continued, scowling a little.

Suddenly Daron screamed and jumped a foot in the air, succeeding in scaring the shit out of John and Serj, who were all confused for a second until Daron indignantly exclaimed, "Shavo!"

Shavo, who had reached out and grabbed Daron's ankle, pulled the curtains back on his bunk at the very bottom, grinning hellishly. "Who said I was trying to sleep?"

"I almost kicked you in the face," Daron hissed at him as Serj began laughing maniacally. "You're crazy."

"Aren't we all?" Shavo still wore that smirk that Daron wanted more and more with each passing second to wipe off his face. "But you especially. You're the one who fell out of his bunk, for crying out loud."

"For your own good, shut the hell up," Daron told him, closing his eyes for a second.

"Why don't all of you shut up so we can sleep?" John chimed in, matching Daron's cadence of voice and glaring at Serj in particular, who was still laughing. "Or for those of us that want to sleep."

Serj walked back into the front of the bus, focusing on cleaning the tea that he had spilled when Daron fell out of his bunk. He tried to keep his laughter silent, but even after John, Shavo, and Daron had all retreated back into bed, they could still hear his faint snickering from behind the closed door. Eventually it became clear that Daron wasn't falling back asleep anytime soon, so after about a half-hour of staring at the moonlight piercing through the curtain drawn in front of his face, he rather aggressively pushed it out of his way and slipped out, this time gracefully hitting the ground feet first. John didn't say anything and Shavo didn't make another attempt to grab his ankle, so Daron assumed they were asleep and quietly slipped into the back of the bus, shutting that door behind him so he wouldn't let light into the bunks.

Once the door had slid shut completely, Daron opened the windows and let the full rays of moonlight stream through the windows. He sat by the window that received the majority of it, staring out at the pavement outside. It looked uninviting and cold outside, but he figured he wouldn't dislike the feeling any more than he disliked being stuck in a bus for several weeks at a time. He loved being on tour and lived out every moment onstage, but he always missed being able to return to his own space to relax at the end of a long day of exerting both physical and social energy.

But the nights when he couldn't sleep often led to some of the most relaxing moments of tour. He had all of the morning to sleep through, since their shows were at night, so he never worried about a certain time that he had to be in bed. Plus, sometimes, when he would sleep late into the morning, his three other bandmates would go out and have breakfast with other bands or go out as a trio just to get out a little bit, and when Daron awoke, he had the entire bus to himself. He had long since been enamored by the idea of each band member getting separate buses, but he had a suspicion that too many shenanigans would occur if someone--especially Shavo, who was the master prankster of the group--got access to his bus and decided to tamper with it in some way or another, so he hadn't even brought the idea up to the group. Nevertheless, he was somewhat content with his strange moonlit nights in the back of a shared tour bus when everyone else was asleep (or reading tea-saturated books at the front of the bus). So he sat by the illuminated window, watching the trees sway in the slight breeze pushing them back and forth. Soon he found himself drifting off, his head getting heavier the longer he sat there.

He was awakened by the sound of something falling, and he lifted his head up, snapping into consciousness. The bus was silent, and the thing that had fallen happened to be a box of guitar strings that Daron had brought on tour. The container had opened and the strings were spilled all over the floor, and he externally groaned--that was going to be fun to clean up. He sat up from where he'd fallen asleep with his head in his arms from the night before, shaking the pins and needles out of his arm. After sweeping the packs of strings back into the container they'd fallen out of, he arose from the cushions and made his way into the front of the bus. There wasn't much food there, but he wasn't hungry anyway; he went over to the bunk where he kept his guitars and grabbed his acoustic, returning to the back of the bus again. He figured that his bandmates had likely gone out to breakfast together and either didn't bother waking him up or hadn't been able to find him (it had happened before). The sound of the guitar filling the space around him was all the energy he needed for that morning as the sun pierced through the windows and the world started to become active around him.