Sleepless (HIATUS)

01. a chance to breathe

Title: Sleepless, sequel to tired yet? ||cashby||
Author: catisafaker
a/n: thanks for reading :) please vote and leave comments. I love you all.

All chapters are in ALAN'S POV, unless otherwise stated ♡♡

Thin, grey tendrils curled upwards, making art against the skyline. I exhaled slowly, adding to the mess. Rimmed bright orange for a moment, the tip of my cigarette faded as I released it from my mouth, and let the smoke come leaking from my nostrils. It used to burn my lungs when I'd breathe in too deep, but now I felt nothing besides the calm. The slow, gentle calm.

I sat behind the high school, my back to a red brick wall. No one ever came back here, besides me and a few of my friends, and sometimes desperate couples in need of alone time. Often I fantasized of someone else wandering behind the wall, a cigarette in hand and in need of a light. Someone who would leave a few passing words on my mind, ask how my day was going, or even why I was sitting back here, smoking during class hours. No such thing had ever happened, though. I didn't expect it to. That sort of thing only happens in books. All my friends were juniors and seniors, and we had different class periods anyways, leaving me to smoke on my own. It's not half as fun when you're by yourself. Such is the way of most activities.

The sky was kinda grey, and flat, like an iron lid on the world. Brilliant orange leaves slowly withered, drifting from tree to dirt ground in a moment. Already lain were the dead, brown ones, crunching underfoot. Birds seldom whistled their tune, which bothered me. They sang their little hearts out for the summer, every beat lifting up the rest of us. But now that our sun was gone and we needed their joy the most, they'd abandoned us. I loved the birds.

Despite my bitterness of loss, I also loved autumn. There was something about the way it outdid itself again and again each year. How the trees would sway and shake and dance. How it set itself apart from the other seasons. Clear skies, cool grass and wind, the smell of rain that you knew would never come, the warm analogous color scheme that wouldn't quit. The gentle rest, the feeling of watching things turn in, only to be reborn once again in the spring time.

Autumn was... a chance to breathe.

Beady eyes stared me down from across the school courtyard, black and iridescent. A red, bushy tail stood straight up, tiny ears perked and body frozen. My heart softened slightly.

"Come here, boy," I coaxed, clicking my tongue to lure the little squirrel in. "Or girl," I whispered. Couldn't quite call too loudly; there were classes going on in there. "Or unaligned," I adding, the first smile of the day pulling at my lips. It stared me down, dropping a few acorns to the ground and chittering quietly. I flicked some ash off the tip of my cigarette, and brought it back to my lips, inhaling deeply. The squirrel watched me, it's eyes taking me in completely. For some reason, my pulse sped up in anxiety, the feeling of being looked at having a ridiculous affect. It's just an animal, I reminded myself. There was only about two inches left of my cigarette; I sighed. The bell would ring any minute after that, so it wasn't really worth it. Stabbing its burning hair out on the black top, I tossed the butt into an old trash can that might not have been tended to in months. It quite seemed that the janitors and everyone else had completely forgotten about this stupid little place.

It wasn't stupid. In a way it was, though. How stupid, to leave somewhere so unattended. But it was my place, so I couldn't quite complain. Dawdling the day away outside would only get me in deep trouble though, so I hightailed it back in through the side door, heading straight to the bathroom and spritzing cologne on myself, in some sort of pathetic attempt to cover the smell of smoke. After one piece of polar ice mint gum, and staring in the mirror for 10 minutes, the bell snapped me out of my trance.