Night Owl Early Bird

This Beginning

Jon woke up late that day -- a mere fifteen minutes past the hour. The alarm on his phone had fallen out of sync with the time, somehow. He felt he could relate, but had no moment to spare in pondering this as the tone chimed and his eye caught sight of the clock. His heart beat once, loudly, and with more gusto than he ever thought possible. A fiery heat spread from his chest outward, toward the ends of his limbs. On a typical workday, he would arrive ten to fifteen minutes early for the bus anyway. But add in his normal ten for a shower, five to brush his teeth, change into his work clothes and head out the door...

Despite the scramble, he missed his daily bus by thirty seconds. Now he stands, still able to see the bus as it barrels down the road in the distance.

When does the next one come? he asks himself, pulling out his phone from his jacket pocket. He opens the saved schedule from his files. Fifteen minutes.

Of course. That's how this works.

Fifteen minutes isn't a bad deal to be late. His boss will forgive him, if she even notices. It's just that the thought of his normal routine shifting the slightest makes his skin itch. He slips the phone back into his pocket. The fingers of his other hand touch the back of his neck, absentmindedly.

A different bus. More specifically, a different driver, an unfamiliar crowd of passengers. He mostly keeps to himself anyway, but he likes seeing the same faces every day. It reminds him that other people are real and have real lives outside of his own. He thinks about the people who get on at the same stop each morning, who get off at the same stop, who always take the bus to the end of its route like he does.

Well, today all he sees is a bunch of randos with a marginally divergent schedule from his. He plops down in one of the only currently open seats -- apparently this life of traveling fifteen minutes later is far more popular than his routine -- and finds himself in the company of a rambunctious curly-haired man with an iPhone and a set of ten working fingers drumming an unknown beat. That is, the man obviously knows what he is listening to. Jon does not.

At first, Jon internally rolls his eyes. Great. Knowing his luck, this guy would be tapping all the way to the terminal. Jon doesn't expect to last more than a couple of minutes before desperately seeking out a new seat.

What he finds instead is that as the minutes tick by, the man and his own tick become... endearing?

What on Earth? But maybe, Jon thinks, well, maybe we aren't on Earth any more and that explains a lot.

Maybe he's still dreaming. After all, it's rare that he oversleeps, rare that he runs late, and he has been known to have these kinds of stress dreams in the past. Never one with a glorified drummer on a bus, but...

Jon continues to ponder this until he turns his head to the left and suddenly realizes the man has gone. But when...?!

Of course, Jon would love to over think this oversight of his, but one key thing stops him: The man no longer graces the seat, but a wallet has taken his place as passenger. And sure enough, when Jon glances out toward the sidewalk, he sees the man. Jon has only a split second to decide what to do and that opportunity passes as Jon watches the man reach into his pocket, feel nothing, and turn around to face the bus again at the same moment the bus pulls away. He's not sure the man sees him, but he keeps his eyes on the man, on that heartbreaking expression on his face, until he's no longer in sight.

Now he has another decision to make. He glances at the wallet again, then to his watch. For some reason, it never crosses his mind to simply hand over the wallet to the driver. He thinks about the look on that man's face, the pure devastation. Something about that Jon finds appealing.