don't be my crutch, beck/chanel [soulmates au]

Ms. Franny has this gadget that locks doors from the outside in.

"I wish it didn't have to be this way, sweetie, but you must learn your actions have consequences." She says through the heavy motel door. The carpet between my toes feels slightly damp, seeping into my socks. It smells better than the last place, but that's not saying much. "The audition is in a few hours, we'll come get you then."

I scream at her long past the point her footsteps disappear. I don't stop until I can't feel the places my fists pound against the wall.

I pad over to the twin bed at the far end of the room. There's no windows here, just a lamp on the bedside table that doesn't even light a quarter of the room.

The agency had placed me with Ms. Franny because she had a way with nothing boys. Made of anger and angel wings, who sneak out to sleep beneath underpasses instead of bunk beds. Until now, all the families I've met are trying to trick me into being happy there.

Not Ms. Franny.

She took one look at me and got this gleam in her eye. Not warm like pity. Cold like hunger. I don't mind it much 'cause I understand it better. We'd spent the last week on a road trip to California as 'it'd be a shame to waste a pretty face' like mine.

The mattress' springs groan beneath my body, digging into my skin. I sling my backpack onto the foot of the bed, full of everything I've ever owned. Nothing but a change of clothes, a couple toothbrushes, and a journal I've never touched.

I lay there for a long while watching the light flicker.

And then my skin goes warm.

My eyes make a lazy path away from the lightbulb to the ceiling to blink away the strain. I reach up to rub away the lingering fairy lights when it catches my eye.

It's strange to laugh after all the screaming I've done. Almost like my throat isn't made for that kind of sound.

fever. and a funny face.

Not my words, but a stranger's, blooming like a bruise.

I have a fuzzy memory of playground chatter that I'd thought too warm and gooey to pay much mind to. They'd said things like this could happen on special occasions. Honestly, I'm too tired to worry about it.

The stranger in my skin has a fever.

I remember my sick days spent trapped in another new bedroom. All dreary and dull and gray with heavy lids and limbs. Those were especially lonely.

So we're both lonely.

I can help.

I tear through my backpack until I find the pen that came with the journal, pulling the cap off with my teeth as I get to work. There are light bruises on my knuckles, so I start there. Making them the center of the daisies I pen across the back of my hand. My lines are a little shaky, but they're legible.

Beneath the four flowers, I draw a smile.

With x's for eyes and its tongue stuck out.

My flowers sit for a long time.

Until their roots tangle the veins under my skin, and the ink is lost to bluish blood settling in the valleys between them. I stay perched at the edge of my bed and watch them whither for so long I lose count of the minutes.

Eventually the frown fades away. The word accompanying it disappearing in little patches, like someone had scrubbed at each individual line.

That's good, right?

I'm still staring at my skin, waiting for a garden to bloom when Ms. Franny pulls me off the bed. "Don't touch me!" If I scream loud enough someone will come. I hope because I don't know what else to do. I try to rip my wrist out of her hold but her hands are so much bigger than mine.

She tries to pull me toward the door and I kick out at her shins. She stumbles and I move to shove past her. For a minute I think I've made it, then my feet drag on the carpet and her free hand catches my jaw in a vice-like grip. Her nails dig into the hollows of my cheeks as she pulls my face to hers.

Quickly, I tuck the part of me that fights into the back of my mind. I lock him away from the outside in. It'll only hurt more if I don't.

She smiles when I go limp. "Behave, boy." Not my name, I wonder if she knows it, "Do what I ask and everything will be okay." She drops her hands cautiously, waiting to see if I'll bolt. When I don't she smiles sweetly and pats the top of my head, "This is for you too, my dear. They'll love you on set. Won't that be nice?"

My feet fall in the shadow of her footsteps. I'd lost the pen's cap in our struggle, but I shove it in my back pocket anyway. Just in case.

We're outside now, sunlight bears down on either side of me. It wouldn't be hard to run, I don't need to make it far. I can hear the hum of the highway from here.

My muscles are tensed, poised to run when something burns on my arm, I bite my lips to keep from smiling. I shove my sleeve up to my elbow, clumsy and eager.

I don't want a soulmate.

It clicks then. The stories they tell about pen-marked souls. When loving is more like belonging. It's a rare gift to have a heart that is already broken.

Isn't it supposed to be a good thing when you find the other half?

My cheeks sting, then my eyes. The heat collecting there is all shame. I let my sleeve fall back down, scrubbing at the tender skin of my knuckles frantically. Until I can't tell bruise from smudge, until it hurts so much it hardly hurts at all.

I know nothing of this person other than the fact that they don't want to know me.

It hardly hurts at all.

"You promise?"

Ms. Franny holds the car door open, annoyed that I hesitate outside it.

"What?"

"You said they'd love me, do you promise?"

Her grin stretches from ear to ear, and she makes a show of pulling me into a half-hearted embrace.

"Of course."

Halfway through the car ride, I lay the pen to my skin just below the words still etched there.

I think I did.

I erase it fifteen minutes after the ink dries.

Sometimes my thumb bleeds.

A blackened, bitter reminder that I tuck into my palm and make a fist instead. Turns out my hands are better suited to violence than violets.

The auditions go well, like Ms. Franny said they would. I learn that love only exists under stage lights. They tell me to speak when spoken to, to feel whatever's written on paper - I'm really good at that. Except I cry when they cut my hair and that gets me sent to my room without supper.

I hold a pen that night, kept awake by the gnawing in my stomach and the perpetual motion of city life outside. The new apartment has a window, but there's bars over the glass. The ballpoint rests lightly on the inside of my knee, forgotten as I search the horizon for a star. I'm not used to the way they hide between towering buildings and light pollution.

I press my forehead to the sill, wincing when I catch the spot I've left on my skin. Our skin. The soulmate that is not mine. I bet they have the stars, wherever they are.

Sleep comes eventually, more like giving up than drifting off. My limbs are pressed together at odd angles, full of pins and needles if I can feel anything in them at all. I don't fear midnight. Dreams haven't come since I forgot what Momma's face looks like.

Until a nightmare takes up residence in my skin. The sensation startles me out of my stupor and I topple out of the chair I'd been perched in. I remain pinned to the floor as the monsters come to life. Heavy and jagged, dark lines that stop and start at sharp angles. It hurts, I don't feel a thing but I know it must.

Gore drips down the top of my thighs, slaughtered pigs and sharp blades. They show me the reaper, its butchered bodies and all that that entails. It's the first time I've seen anything like it.

First and foremost, there's disgust. My skin crawls feeling rotten where the pictures lay, I try to rub it away. To forget the pain like I had the daisies - turn them into something unrecognizable so they can be tucked away as another unpleasant memory. I could claw my way up to my bed, pull the covers over my head and try to go back to sleep. Maybe the images would be gone in the morning and I could convince myself it was an unpleasant dream.

Let my body be nothing more than a place to hold their pain. If they don't want a soulmate, then they must want another victim. It's scary to drown alone.

But I could let them.

My left hand shakes where it grips my pen, still transfixed on the images. I want to look away but morbid curiosity will not let me. The lines appear in angry, panicked strokes. I don't think they're trying to hurt me. Until today, they've been perfectly indifferent.

I think, maybe, they're lonely again.

I wait until a new image begins to form, cutting through it with a rushed scrawl that is barely legible between their scribbling.

Can you see the stars?

I draw a few, through the fangs of a shadowed beast until its rage is unrecognizable. I hide them in other places along my thigh, but also on the tops of my knee and down by my ankle. Slowly but surely trailing away from the horrors on our skin.

Try to find them.