a/n: THIS ONE IS LONGER THAN USUAL YOU'RE WELCOME
James is standing on a ledge, a jutting peak that cusps the mauve horizon and sends sunlight refracting in all directions. The luminescence burns his retinas. He looks down and sees a void, brumous darkness filled with snapping fangs and red-rimmed gazes. It's a pool of memories, a sea of every single fear he's had since his plane crashed on the island. High-pitched snarls echoe in the shells of his ears.
His appetence is to back away, to run as fast as he can towards the light. He knows it's all illusion, that he can break away in a millisecond and phase out to the white light of the hospital room.
But he's fixed, he's stuck, he can't move- not with those eyes staring into him.
/
"Uh.." James begins awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. He's not one for stories, especially not the kind that involve recounting the most traumatizing experience of his life, and he's a little nervous(if 'a little' is a lot). "I- I don't know where to start." He says slowly, eyeballing his friends from the corners of his vision. They all held the same expression on their faces: curiosity and fear. Fear of what, James wasn't sure, but he takes a deep breath and feels his heart flip fearfully along with them.
"Start with the plane." Kendall says, slowly, looking like he's trying to hold himself together desperately.
"Okay." James looks into Kendalls eyes, surprised at how his charoal pupils were now burning cinders, ringed bright golden with curiosity and desperation. He reaches forward and gently strokes a hand down Kendall's leg once, twice, then retracts it. The flames blur.
"Well.. I mean.."
/
He's a failure. A fucking horrible, useless failure and he can't stand it, can't stand himself right now. His defenses are down, he's hiding in the bathroom, quiet sobbing piercing silence, and his arms are a red mess. It's the last time, he says again, firmly. The last time. But it's not, it never is, never will be, not as long as these scars keep littering his pottery skin. He can't keep cracking like this, feeling the binds inside his mind breaking apart and falling downdowndown into the brink of insanity.
James was supposed to be okay when they found him, not to have a cursive 'D' on his chest or scarred disturbance wet on his eyes. He was supposed to be walking, talking, living without fear, without brands that were going to last him a lifetime.
But he wasn't, not okay, not even close. This wasn't the first time Carlos had felt helpless, and for once, he was sure it wasn't going to be the last.
He grits his teeth and presses the blade harder.
(This is the last time, he thinks. The last time he'll ever lie to himself.)
/
"Fuck!"
James sits up as the profanity reaches his ears from where he sits in the only seat in his small, non-commercial airplane. He peers out the window cautiously, only enough to see the heart-stopping sight of the horizon sloped at a nearly vertical angle. The view out the window was split almost in perfect halves, the left side displaying the crop of messy, green-tinted trees and the other one the open sunset-purple sky. James immediately jerks back, gripping the armrest with white knuckles.
He immediately unbuckles his seatbelt and, ever curious, stalks forward on shaky flooring towards the cockpit of the small plane. He opens the door and is surprised to see that all he can see through the main winshield of the plane is an expanse of dark, saturated colours- purples, reds, blues- but no greens. He walks forward more, ignoring the frantic screaming of the pilots as they try to sort out whatever is going on, and peeks over the edge. The horizon is just barely visible far lower than it should be, and it's only then that James realises that the plane is crashing.
"We have to get some of the cargo into the cockpit, now!" He hears, and he immediately follows the frantic pilot to the back of the plane to help in the last-ditch, probably-futile effort they are making.
(Futile, indeed, he remembers thinking bitterly.)
Despite their best efforts, they manage to cause the plane to go from doing a tail-flip into the tropical jungle to doing a nosedive into a the base of a mountain in about five minutes. As he presses himself to the very back of the aircaft best he can James blinks back tears and tries to ignore the memories dancing like white devils behind his eyelids, to ignore the words unsaid drilling holes in his ears, to try not to feel Kendall's taste on his lips. He squeezes his eyes shit and grits his teeth so hard he bleeds.
His eyes stay closed until the very moment before the plane hits marbel-esque rock. They open just in time to see his life flash before his eyes in a shower of light green ashes and bright, fiery cloud.
So this is what dying feels like.
/
"Whoa, what?! So it was the fucking pilots faults you almost crashed?!" Kendall snarls, rolling up his sleeves and balling his fists angrily. Logan hates the way he gets protective over James, the way he treats him like a child and yet manages to put him up on a pedestal in the very same fucking instant. Logan can't stand it. He's jealous, he knows, but admitting to it doesn't make the feelings go away. He casts his gaze onto the ground where he won't see Kendall's affection burning plain and bright for the whole room to oggle at.
"No, no," Says James, as he waves his hand towards Kendall dismissively. "It was just an accident. I think.." Logan looks up in time to see James' expression change from a blank nothingness to a dark confusion, almost a wondering one.
"Anyway," Carlos pipes up. "So did you survive the crash?"
Logan, Kendall and James shoot the latino a hard look, the latter of the three adding in amusement, "No, Carlitos. I actually died. But I'm okay." Carlos pouts at James' sarcasm. At this, Logan and Kendall share a laugh, but stop when their arms brush. Logan jerks back at the embers that shock his spine, Kendall looks guiltily at the ground and that only makes Logan feel worse.
"Can you continue?" He says, trying not to look at Kendall out of the corner of his eye(but he does anyway).
"Sure.." James nods uncertainly.
/
Hazel eyes flutter open, round pupils blown with confusion. They dart about wildly, uncomprehending, not sunderstanding their surroundings. James sits up slowly, rubbing the back of his neck disorientedly. He forces his eyes to open fully, feeling the inner corners throb painfully. He pinches the bridge of his nose and inhales deeply, trying to ignore the sticky feeling on his face and the voice in his head screaming you're bleeding, stop crying, give up now, just die here but he can't, because it's right, it has no reason to lie to him.
Out here, he's probably good as dead, anyway.
/
Logan vomits into the toilet bowl again.
(The burning in his throat almost hurts more than their apathy.)
/
Slowly, James looks around. Examines the damage. It's not as bad as he thought, but it's not exactly pleasant to see. The plane apparently cracked open like an egg upon impact against the mountain, dumping him and various other cabin items down onto the side of it. He supposed that gravity had worked it's magic, though, because the plane(what was left of it) was currently half-submersed in what looked like a marsh at the very base of the mountain. James looks beyond the damage, as far as the horizon.
It seems like an endless pool of green, tree after tree after bush after vine, and the foliage is so dense that James can barely see farther than five feet into the jungle in front of him. How was he gonna find food? Where was he gonna sleep? What was he going to- ohgodtheplane.
James, who's head immediately clears thanks to the helpful surge of adreanaline pulsating through him, immediately launches to his feet and stumbles down to the marsh as quickly as he can. It's difficult because his boots keep getting stuck in the mud, but eventually he makes it to the plane's remains and begins to rummage for anything he can. After ransacking the area from head to toe for a few minutes, James manages to find a survivor's kit that's [mostly] not fallen apart and the small suitcase he'd carried onto the plane(the other ones had been in the storage unit of the plane, but he didn't know how to open it, nor did he really want to try).
He drags the torn-up, burnt suitcase away from the marsh to the harder, denser soil of the jungle floor and rips it open with his hands. The fabric gives easily and exposes a painfully useless selection of clothes(damn, he wishes he'd brought his combat boots). James pulls out the best he can find: a leather jacket, a pair of cargo pants and a quick dry sports T-shirt. James isn't pleased with his past self's inability to think ahead, but figures he really doesn't have a choice, and slips off his filth-covered clothing to replace it with the more protective outfit.
He then folds the dirty clothes up and sticks them into the top pocket of the small suitcase, then opens the survivor's kit(which is surprisingly heavy). The red-and-yellow bag is jam-packed with useful stuff: whistles, small flashlights, two small bottles of water, fishing line, a compass, a first-aid kit- hell, a fucking miniature chainsaw is hidden in the bottom of the bag. James practically screams in joy, throwing his useless suitcase aside and pulling the backpack on. He grins and hops to his feet, deciding to head up the mountain to see if he can spot anything from the peak. But before he even takes the first step, he hears it: at first it's slow, quiet, unharmonious, but it slowly escalates in both speed and pitch(despite this, the tempo only seems to increase in jitteryness). It takes him a few seconds to decipher what he's hearing, but when he does, he's very pleased.
Carnival music.
He stands straighter tenaciously, staggering a little bit as he does so, and walks, with purpose, to the edge of the jungle. He can't even see ten feet deep into it, it's so thick, but he'll be damned if he doesn't get to the source of that music. And he's not gonna be damned anytime soon. So he takes that first step, then a second, then another, slowly but surely hearing the discordant music escalate in volume as he gets closer to the heart of the jungle.
(Maybe there's hope for him yet.)
/
Carlos hasn't cut for three days now. After hearing James' story, he's tried to stay as far away from blades as possible, but he hadn't come to that decision until after he'd carved an extremely haunting symbol into his wrist, one he's sure isn't going to be going away anytime soon. The image is carved amateurly at best, but even then, Carlos can't even stand to look at his arm without cringing, forgetting to breathe, choking, even.
He hates seeing those eyes. The sight of them makes him want to cut. But each time they pulsate pain through his whole arm, he can't help but look. Then it's the cycle all over again. But he's got it under control, he knows what to do, it's simple: don't look, be able to sleep. It's why he's taken to wearing a sweatband on his wrist.
Because nothing is easier than running from your problems, weather they're adopted from other people or your own demons completely.
a/n: i'm thinking about writing a one-shot series about big time rush as bunnies. is that weird? i wanna. BUNNY TIME RUSH FTW
ALSO GUYS
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OH MY FUCKING GOSH GUYS. ONE OF MY EPIC FANFICTION FRIENDS, VALENTINEZOMBIE, IS LIKE.. FUCKING FANTASTIC. SHE MADE A REAAALLLYYY SWAG BANNER FOR SPOE(she also coined the amazing acronym omg) AND IT'S HERE AND LOOK HOW COOOOL .tumblr 12282de3f498ef5fa18d0c25a6262a9c/tumblr_msd0ihzJAc 1r0kxgoo1_500. png ISNT IT FANTASTIC
she's great just great great great
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