Double-Edged Sword - $UICIDEBOY$

Late Night Walks are Lethal, Apparently.

I stg this chapter isn't boring for long :,)

    You woke up late into the afternoon, swearing to get your sleep schedule on track eventually. You stayed in a long shirt and baggy pants instead of getting dressed. Scrim was in the kitchen tapping away at a laptop with his glasses on when you walked in.
    "Aye- how ya doing?", he pulled his glasses off.
    "Fucking beat.", you replied with a yawn.
    The screen was full of images edited down and photoshopped together into possible ideas for EP covers. Max must have been working for hours after you went to sleep in order to do it all.
    Ruby was doing something you didn't think you would ever see- drinking coffee. His hands cupped a mug tightly, and the steam rising from it hit his dull face. He had wickedly dark circles under his eyes, and his whole body was slumped when he walked into the kitchen. He saw you and forced a gentle smile.
    "Aye Y/N, how was last night?", he sipped timidly.
    You stretched and looked away from the laptop, "Really fun."
    His gaze settled on Scrim, "How 'bout ya? Anythin' good?"
    Scrim tilted his head back, "Yea- some stuff. We gonna record again today though?"
    Ruby nodded, "Definitely."
    You wondered how someone so worn down could produce heavy vocals or deliver something raw. He looked absolutely drained and void of himself. His skin had turned ashen, his hair was tied back, and his eyelids were perpetually at half mast.
    "Yo, Y/N, if we're back early then let's hang.", he remarked before exiting the room.

    The shower that afternoon felt incredible. A few specks of lake mud were hidden across your body still which you quickly scrubbed off. After showering until steam clouded the entire bathroom, you wrapped a towel around yourself and walked through the hallway. Max, who was bunked in Ruby's room, glanced up through the doorway at you. His eyes burned into your skin.
    "You need something Max?", you grabbed the doorframe and stared at him.
    He was seated on the floor, legs crossed, with his back against the side of Ruby's bed. A laptop you hadn't seen before was placed in his lap.
    "Oh- no, nothing.", he quickly looked back at the screen.

    Mhm.

    You hadn't hung out by yourself in your room in awhile. Time alone felt good. You curled up under the blankets, staying in your towel, and stared at the ceiling. You hadn't been on your phone in awhile; it was left in the charger for days, forgotten.
    It was still the shitty pre-paid phone with a generic touch screen. Traveling meant no time for data plans and bills. But, you'd would probably have to pay for more data soon anyways.

    You needed a purpose.

    The screen lit up dimly and reflected your face in the screen.

    Who were you?

    You flicked through Twitter and Instagram casually as you had before when you still ran across the country. Nights of solitude had given you time to feel that you had found meaning... when in reality, you were still purposeless. Sure, you were in the house of $uicideboy$, but you were by no means making yourself feel great. The dull toxicity in the air may have been depression trying to manifest itself. Depression, like the mud of Lake Pontchartrain, started out as just a weak grip on toes. Then, it swallowed people to their knees, and soon, the mud entombed people to their necks.
    The dazzling images on your phone did nothing to excite you. You were so dissociated with it all that nothing made coherent sense. Perhaps that is why you had loved the night with Max so much. For once, you had been doing whatever you wanted and not worrying about the next day. Even the kiss was something that seemed... new. You had a purpose in that instant, but you forced it away. If you didn't find something that brought excitement, the bleakness of free-loading would swallow you.
    You threw the phone down on the floor hard enough to hear a satisfying clatter, and then pulled the blankets over yourself. Your body heat saturated the void under the blankets, and soon even sound itself dulled out. You couldn't hear the street, noise outside, the TV in the living room, Max typing a little too aggressively down the hall- anything. All of your senses melted down into a single sense of existence itself without any external confirmation. Your own breathing was a dull and warm cloud. You stayed like this for unknown minutes, fleeting in and out of sleep without the awareness of it.
    Somewhere in your personal twilight, the top of the blanket peeled back and let a bolt of light slice your vision. You rolled over, grunting, and looked up at the light. Ruby's eyes peered back at you.