Oh My God, They Were Roommates

16 | I Just Died In Your Arms

a/n: Long chapter for you gremlins to enjoy :D 

Due to Sora's inability to face Charlie, he stayed late into the night—or rather, early in the morning—until he was certain Charlie vacated the locker room. He had David sneak in to check, and when David emerged unharmed to give Sora the clear, he booked it home at three in the goddamn morning.

It wasn't often that Sora spent his nights like that. If he could avoid it, he tried to escape by one, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

He nearly fell asleep on the bus home, and when he arrived at the door to the apartment, his fingers felt numb and useless. He fumbled with his keys, yawning against the back of his hand. When he pushed through, the apartment was dark all except for the streetlights streaming in through the living room window.

Sora wandered in, shoes abandoned at the door. He couldn't be bothered with the remaining scraps of his makeup, so the wipes he used on the bus would have to do. After staggering into his room, he set the alarm on his phone, the inevitable snooze, along with an old digital clock on his nightstand to ensure that he did, in fact, wake up in time for class.

He did not, in fact, wake up in time for class.

When the first of Sora's alarms went off, Ray heard it from his cozy spot in his own room, huddled deep beneath his covers. He laid there with his eyes closed, soaking in the morning energy like a solar panel beneath the sun.

Sora's ringtone trailed on, muffled through the wall. Ray yawned, peeking his head out from the covers. Slowly but surely, he opened his eyes, and wondered if Sora was going to wake up anytime soon to turn the alarm off.

He checked the time on his watch. He had another twenty minutes left until his own alarm went off, so he decided to turn over, pull the blankets up, and ignore Sora's alarm blaring Africa by Toto through the walls.

A few minutes went by and the song started over, increasing in volume with every minute of the song. Soon, Ray was tapping his foot to the beat, only to curse himself for getting distracted—he was supposed to be getting fourteen-and-a-half more minutes of sleep!

But then, he was singing the lyrics under his breath and god-fucking-dammit, he was jamming too hard to sleep. Ray threw his blankets down with a huff, only to yelp when the single most, soul-wrenching alarm started blaring from Sora's room.

Ray's heart came damn near close to rupturing all over his organs, rendering him useless for the day, but instead, he lunged to his feet, gasping, and threw his fists down with a groan of contempt. Who used alarms at that volume when there wasn't a fire happening?

He stomped to the door and, once out in the common space, stilled at the top of the stairs on his way to the bathroom. The alarm was still going off, and Ray wondered if Sora was even alive.

It was pretty late when I went to bed... and he wasn't here... Ray thought, tapping a finger to his chin. He gasped again, thinking aloud, "What if he drank too much last night? What he choked on his vomit—what if he's dead? Oh, God, I don't know how to carry a dead body—Wait, no, I'd just call the police—Oh, God, I've never seen a dead body..."

Ray pranced around the living space through the terror-inducing alarm emitting through Sora's closed bedroom door. He put his fingers to his lips and chewed on the hem of his sweatshirt sleeve, watching Sora's door stand ominously and threateningly across the room from him, tempting him with the horror that might greet him on the other side.

"If he's dead... I gotta at least check," he reasoned, only to backtrack. "Right? Or I could wait until it starts smelling bad—Okay, no, we're going in."