BloodLust // yungblud fanfic

Chapter 20

⚠️TRIGGER WARNING: Depression, Suicide⚠️ Please read with caution

Gavin loaded Michael onto the bus minutes before they were scheduled to leave, and hustled him directly to his bunk and drew the curtain. Holly caught only a glimpse of him as he stumbled through the front lounge, tripping over his own feet: his greasy hair, his pale face. He looked like death. He looked half alive.

Gavin returned to the front, where they were all pretending to be very fascinated by the home renovation show Tom was watching, and took a beer from the mini fridge. There was no room left on the couches, so he leaned against the counter. He didn't open his beer. His shoulders slumped, and he closed his eyes.

Tom stood up, crossed the room, and wrapped his hands around Gavins upper arms and gently guided him to the couch. He sat there, mute and staring, while Tom opened his beer. Then he took a sip and seemed to come back to life, looking around at all of them and blinking.

"Is everything okay?" Kiera asked, and then rolled her eyes at her own question, because it was pretty obvious that things weren't okay.

"He's sleeping now," Gavin said. "We'll see how things look in the morning."

"Bleak," Dominic said, and Holly shot him a look. He wasn't helping.

"No doubt," Gavin said. "But what can we do? Short of canceling the tour—"

"That isn't an option," Tom said.

"No, i agree," Gavin said. "So we'll just have to keep him going somehow."

That killed the mood. Nobody had anything to say after that. Gillian and Kiera drifted off to their bunks, and Holly went to the back to call Dylan. They didn't talk long - he was at an after party for one of his bands - but it was good to hear his voice, and to be reminded that there was more to life than the tours weird little bubble, by turns thrilling and dismal.

After they hung up, she turned on the television and started blankly at the screen, not even bothering to change the channel from whatever the last person in the back lounge had been watching. A man with strange facial hair talked about how to read your cats energy fields. Good enough.

After a few minutes of that, someone tapped on the door, and then Dominic came in, holding two beer bottles. He wordlessly offered one to Holly, and then sat beside her on the couch and joined her in staring at the television. He was close enough to touch, and Holly gave into temptation and rested her head against his shoulder.

He wrapped his arm around her and toyed with the loose ends of her hair. "Long day, huh?"

"Yeah," she said. It was good to be held. She felt safe and protected, which of course was an illusion - she was a grown woman, and it wasn't Dominics job to shield her from the hard parts of life. But they could hold each other up, and offer comfort, and that was even better. "I'm really worried about Michael."

He sighed. "Me too. But you shouldn't worry. We aren't paying you enough for that."

"I can't help it," she said. "The whole situation is so—" she broke off, and swallowed. She didn't want to talk about this, but she felt like she needed to. "It's just that he really reminds me of Daniel, before he, uh."

"Daniel was your lead singer," Dominic said, not quite a question. He just have done some reading.

"Yeah," she said, and swallowed again. There was a lump in her throat that was making it difficult to speak. "He was — he killed himself."

"Oh, Holly," Dominic breathed. He pulled her closer and pressed his lips to the top of her head.

She wasn't going to start crying, she wasn't, but then of course she started crying anyway, and Dominic held her in his arms and rocked her and made soothing noises until she calmed down. She was embarrassed; she drew away and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her T-shirt.

"Hey," Dominic said. "Come back here."

"I'm sorry," she said, sniffling. "I shouldn't have — i didn't mean to do that."

"Seems like you needed to," he said, and drew her close again, his arm around her waist, her head resting against his shoulder. They were quiet for a few minutes. Holly drank her beer. Then Dominic said, "Tell me about it."

So she did: the whole story of that awful year, with the fighting and the drinking, the drugs, Daniels increasing irritability, the way he would stay awake for days on end and then sleep so deeply they could barely wake him up for shows, the tense days and nights in the van, the lies, the misdirections, the bitter end. The way Sean had finally dragged Daniel to a doctor, who prescribed pills that Daniel refused to take, until the last day, when he took them all, all of them at once. And Holly had been the one to find him, sleeping in the back seat of the van, except it turned out he wasn't sleeping at all.

"He was bipolar," she said. "We didn't know. We should have — but we didn't know anything. He was my best friend, and i couldn't — i couldn't help him."

Dominic kissed the top of her head again. "When did all of this happen?"

"About six months ago," she said. She wiped her eyes on her T-shirt again. "A little more than six months."

"That's a hard thing," he said. "A hard thing for anyone to go through."

She let out a shaky breath. "Yeah. Anyway, so you see why i'm concerned about Michael. I thought he was just acting out, probably a little depressed, and the rest of you were overreacting, but when i saw him today..."

"Right," Dominic said. "I get it. I probably wouldn't be too concerned, either, if i hadn't watched his personality completely change over the last few months."

"What was he like before?" Holly asked. She thought maybe she had seen a glimpse of it, that morning at breakfast when he let her read his notebook.

Dominic shrugged. "Pretty much the opposite of how he is now, in every way. I mean, you've seen how he is with fans - he used to be like that with everyone. Kind, empathetic, generous. A really great guy."

"He needs help," Holly said. It wasn't her place — wasn't her band, wasn't any of her business — but she had to say it.

"I know," Dominic said. "But what can we do? He won't see anyone willingly, and i don't know how we could force him. As long as he's going on stage every night, the label doesn't care. The show must go on."