lemon lover [cth]

15

TW: I would just like to point out the trigger warnings in the description once more since they've been edited!!

Lemon Lover
15| Are you always up this late?

Calum never expected to have as much fun as he did, spraying blink lyrics all over the bricks surrounding them and seeing her face light up with pride when the tension in his wrists had started to decrease, allowing him to draw in way smoother motions, creating flowing outcomes.

They had only written letters on the bridge though since neither of them was skilled enough to spray some sort of artwork on the rough burgundy stone.

But they had fun. They had laughed a lot, talking about bands they liked and ones they didn't, songs they had listened to one too many times and their favourite guitar solos.

Calum even told her about his own skills. He had an acoustic guitar and a bass and he had been playing for years. Ava admired him for that. She had given up on guitar lessons when she was 12 years old and now she didn't remember a thing.

But their laughters had died down and their smiles had faded as time had ticked further, resulting in the two of them sitting on the ground, backs against the brick wall of the bridge on opposite sides, tired eyes sharing tired glances as they found themselves analysing song lyrics and questioning their everythings and nothings from a philosophical perspective.

Over time the breaks between each word had gotten longer, silences no longer filled with 'um's but yawns as they even found it difficult to contain eye contact.

"Ava", Calum interrupted a silence that was once again dragging on since they were slowly getting too tired to utter a word.

"Mmh?", Ava sounded, eyes still wide open though her head was falling to the side. Her body was tired, worn out from sleepless nights and physical efforts, yet her mind was still awake. Tired, but not yet asleep. Tired, but awake.

She was looking down at the spray bottle in her lap, tapping an unspecific beat on the lid as she heard him shuffle. Slowly tilting her her head up, Ava found Calum getting up, before stepping closer.

The back of her head was resting against the brick wall, drained eyes resting on the boy standing over her. The shadows of the night smoothed out his already soft features and lent the scene melancholy as his dark and sleepy eyes were drenched in concern.

Ava's head fell back down, not because she had fallen asleep, but because her body wished she had.

"Are you always up this late?"

She didn't answer. She was too weak to do so. But she didn't need to. He already knew.

With a drowsy sigh, Calum sat down beside the overtired girl, resting his head against the wall of the bridge just as she had seconds before, looking up at the night sky of bricks as he contemplated what to say next.

His legs were stretched out, back pressing flat against the wall while she dragged her legs closer until her knees met her chest, the spray bottle sliding off the side of her lap as she curled up in a ball.

Against all odds, Ava was the one to break the silence first. "I am tired. So fucking tired. But I just can't fall asleep.", she confessed.

Calum didn't respond. He was listening.

"And when I do it's never for long.", That was all she said, all the words exchanged between the two of them for a good few minutes.

She didn't know why she trusted him with that, but she guessed it didn't matter. It wasn't really a secret, it was just a small problem she had. No big deal.

But she didn't know how much those words had gotten to Calum. How well his feelings mirrored hers and how he found himself slowly drifting into the same problems.

He was an over thinker. He always had been. And lately, his thoughts had been keeping him awake for a little too long, a little longer than what was considered healthy.

Minutes passed while both of them just sat there, eyes trained either on the roof of the bridge or in Ava's case on her knees, counting the stripes the rips had left in her jeans as she thought about nothing and he thought about everything.

Fingers picking on the rips, Ava gathered the energy to lift her head, resting her chin on her knees at first before mirroring Calum's position.

"Cal?", she asked out of nowhere. She didn't know why she had called him by the nickname she had heard his friends use for him on multiple occasions, maybe she was simply too tired to pronounce his entire name.

"Yes, Av?"

"Can we just stay up and watch the sunrise?"

She didn't care that the bridge shielded their view on the sky, she just needed an excuse to spend time with him.

She didn't want to lay awake all alone again that night.

"Yes", Calum spoke, his voice surprisingly stable as his energy was fading. "Yes, we can."

Those words were the last ones Ava heard before her eyes finally fell shut, her body falling into the side of the boy who found himself on the verge of sleep as well.

Ava never slept for more than five hours without interruption. Five hours were actually more than she could dream of most nights, but that one specific night, the night that she had fallen asleep on Calum's shoulder under the bridge, Ava was glad as she woke up barely two hours later.

It had been stupid to fall asleep there in the first place; two dumb teenagers who were supposedly asleep in their beds at home, sleeping under a vandalised bridge with spray cans next to them. They were practically begging to get in trouble.

"Cal, wake up!", Ava whisper shouted at the sleeping boy, shoving his arm. It didn't take her long to wake him, but when he did, he was not even remotely as awake as she was, grunting in discomfort as he shifted his position. His back as well as bum were hurting, however he wished he could just fall asleep right there again.

His tiredness reasoned parts of that night to blur in his memory. For instance, he remembered saying goodnight to her damn well, however the walk to her place and the walk back to his own until he slipped under his dark grey covers were almost like erased from his memory.

All he remembered was her window.

It was a slide open one at the back of the house, opening to their backyard disguised in shadows. Their house only consisted of the ground floor, therefore the window was only about a meter and a half above the ground, yet there were a few bricks piled in the grass.

She had explained to him that she had stolen them from a construction site and that the only one actually using their small backyard was their dog, so her parents never noticed.

He remembered the pens between the window pane and the frame she had put there to keep it from shutting and he remembered having watched her ass as she had gotten in.

He could still recall the smile on her face as she had leaned out the window to tell him to keep his spray bottle and to wish him a goodnight.

It was the thought he had fallen asleep to again that night.