& DON'T FORGET TO TAKE DEEP BREATHS

[braxton i. mclaggen]

STRANGE MAZE, WHAT IS THIS PLACE?

i hear voices over my shoulder

there was no denying that life was made quite difficult sometimes when you were quiet. braxton mclaggen suffered from that every day. and he couldn’t help it, either; it was just the person he was. he had been a quiet boy from day one. he was quiet back when he’d lived with his mother, and he was quiet now when he lived with cormac and his brothers and sister. well, that was a little bit of a misconception: braxton wasn’t quiet at home. hell, he was as talkative as any of them when he was with his family. he felt comfortable around his dad and all his siblings. it had taken quite a while for him to reach that point, however. when braxton was first brought to his father’s place, he was terrified. he hid in his room for the longest time and only came out when he absolutely had to. his new brothers had been nice to him, though. maverick in particular, the only one his age, had really helped him break out of his shell. even though they were total opposites, two utterly and completely different people, mav had helped him so much. at school now they weren’t quite so close, being in two different houses and all. besides, maverick was popular. and he was in gryffindor. he had plenty of other things to keep him busy.

but braxton? his life wasn’t too exciting. a typical day for the seventh year ravenclaw consisted of getting up in the morning, eating breakfast, going to morning classes, eating lunch, going to afternoon classes, eating supper, and retreating to ravenclaw tower, where he’d occasionally linger in the common room while he did his homework, or otherwise head upstairs to his dorm and work on it there. he was a lot more comfortable up there. his roommates usually weren’t up there that early in the evening, after all. it was perfect for him. but tonight... braxton didn’t know what was getting into him. it was a thursday night, of all days, and brax had no idea what compelled him to leave his dorm, but he really felt the need to. as a second thought, he grabbed his bass before he quietly crept out of the room. it was easy for braxton to creep out of a room. not too many people paid him a lot of attention in the first place, and he was already quiet. no one noticed him. besides, half the guys were already sleeping. it was getting late. and it was probably that which confused brax the most. even he would occasionally leave his dorm on a week night, but this late? that was what got him. something had gotten into him, though. it was kind of like the story he’d heard ages ago about ron weasley, how he’d had dumbledore’s deluminator and a ball of light told him where to go. the thing was, though, brax had no ball of light to follow.

and yet here he was, his bass guitar over his shoulder as he left not only his dorm, but the common room as well. still no deluminator telling him what to do. braxton figured he just must have needed a break. he’d been doing a lot of homework and studying lately, even more than usual, which was already a lot. yeah, that was it, he just needed to get away from all of this, get some fresh air. a trip wasn’t sounding bad. besides, no one else would be around this late at night, and if they were... well, brax would probably just hide from them and then hightail it back to his dorm. his wandering was rather short. braxton ended up on the fifth floor by the time he saw someone at the end of the hall. the seventeen-year-old slowed, almost stopping in his tracks. his eyes widened. shit. people. braxton didn’t get along so well with people. he looked around him frantically and booked it into a classroom not far away from where he’d been standing. empty. unused. perfect. he closed the door quickly behind him and stood at the wall for a while, waiting for the people to walk past. it was sort of sad, really, how much braxton went to to avoid people, but he did it and he couldn’t help it. he was the way he was and he couldn’t exactly change it. well, he could, but... he had no one to help him change. no one ever tried, and he sure as hell didn’t try to change himself. slowly but surely, braxton relaxed, and he leisurely made his way across to the center of the room. he sat down on an old desk, pulling his legs up on the chair and sighing, his bass in his lap. this trip wasn’t exactly as helpful as he’d thought it had been. slowly, he picked up his bass and strummed a few chords. he kind of missed the guys right now. a band practice would be nice; he wouldn’t have so much free time on his hands. he’d been thinking a lot lately; there was a lot on his mind, a lot of memories coming back. and that never ended well.



TAGGED ariella!
STATUS finito
WORDS 869.. they’ll get better xP
MUSE the kids from yesterday by my chemical romance
CREDIT meh (: and lyrics from painting flowers, all time low
NOTES sorry it took longer than planned D: