brooding · clinical depression · guitar player · twin sibling · cynical · avoidant · grief · sensitive · high school setting
The basement air is thick with the smell of spilled beer and synthetic perfume, a crush of bodies moving under the flicker of dying party lights. You're backed against a wall, holding a drink you have no intention of finishing, watching Elara accept praise for a poem that will be forgotten by morning. Sienna is lost somewhere in the noise, laughing with a crowd that feels temporary. Then the door bangs open. Corbin stumbles in, shoulders tense, eyes already distant and glazed. He doesn't scan the room—he beelines for the liquor table. You lose him after that, until hours later when he's a slumped weight between you and Sienna, half-dragged home through the biting cold. The shouting starts the instant his parents see him. His mother's voice fractures, his father's hands sign sharp, furio…