Darkshines

Chapter Four

Dan's POV

After cleaning up after the dinner, Dan tried to call his brother again for the seventh time. It was odd for him to be this late so Dan had started to worry.

He's 14 for f*cks sake, he can take care of himself, he'll be fine without me.
But Alex being the person he cared about the most in the world, he couldn't stop worrying.  What if something really bad had happened to him? He called again, for the 8th time.

"Hello?"

"Alex! Where the heck are you!?" Dan shouted into his phone when his brother finally picked up.
"At a friends? I didn't tell you?" Alex replied, "sorry."
"No you freaking didn't tell me" Dan muttered. "What friend then?"
"Just a friend from school. Don't worry Dan, I'm alive and kickin'."
"Okay, that's specific..? " Dan pryed suspiciously.

"Yeah.. But I'm sleeping over at my friends' place so don't wait up." Alex spoke fast, as if he was anxious to just hang up already. "Goodnight Dan!" he said and then the line went dead.

"Goodnight little brother.." Dan mumbled back into the dead phone, puzzled about the strange behaviour his brother appeared to have.

He stood outside his mom's closed door, deciding whether he should bring some leftovers from dinner to her, but his mom gets so irritated by everything he does when she's drunk, he quickly dropped that idea and went back to his room.
He shot a short-lasted glance on the homework that was placed on the table, but ignored it with a sigh. He brought the laptop to his bed and lied down with it, rested it on his lap with an angle so he still were able to see the screen.

He put on some relaxing music and went to browse tumblr again. He noticed a few more likes on his posts, and a new ask-comment, so he clicked on it.
He frowned, as he read it.

Anonymous asked: "u are a mean person, so full of urself, can't u just think of other people for 1 sec?!"

Dan just stared at the comment for a moment, not knowing what to think. Who was this person? What were they basing that opinion from exactly, it wasn't like he interacted with other people on tumblr, or even posted his opinions anywhere? What - he mostly just posted photos? How was that bothering others?

The questions overflowed his mind, and he shook his head at last. Maybe he could just ignore it? Yeah, he'd just ignore this. Probably just some random troll out there not having anything better to do than to throw shit at others.
He stayed on the computer for a while longer but felt sleep slowly take over him so he got himself ready to go to bed, he went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. He stared at himself into the mirror, the comment from tumblr still lingered in the back of his mind. Am I not good enough? Probably not, or else my dad would still be here. Or that's what mom says anyways.

He swallowed, his eyes faltered at the thought and looked anywhere but at himself.
Maybe Alex finally realised that too? He doesn't need me anymore. No one wants me.

That night he went to bed with his head full of dark thoughts and a little too many worries. Truth was, he didn't get much sleep at all.