Stress Relief

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Ever since he's gone to the park that first day of school, Elijah's made it a bit of a habit to park in the athletics parking lot so he didn't have to walk so far to the field.

It's been a little over a week now, and surprisingly enough he found that he actually enjoyed getting to wake up at an earlier time.

Not only did it mean he got to eat breakfast with his dad, before driving to the same place to meet up with his friends, but it also meant he got to see people he could be himself around first thing in the morning.

Recently he's found the bleachers a surprisingly nice place to do school work. He had thought that he'd get distracted by the football players, but their own effort to focus infected him and he was a lot more concentrated than he would be at home.

So he'd be stupid to neglect the opportunity of continuing to finish his school work in less than three hours.

Also being outside when the sun rose did wonders for his mental health, so he found himself feeling not too shabby that next Monday morning.

Did that mean he knocked out at a reasonable time? Absolutely not, but it's fine, he'll work on it eventually.

Getting out and grabbing his backpack from the back seat, he started on his usual walk towards the side entrance of what he's nicknamed the "sports wing" of the school, for lack of a proper term.

His bag hit the metal seats with a thunk and he sat down in the same spot he did that first day. The end of the first row, closest to where the doors of the athletics hall were, on the right set of bleachers. Getting comfortable in the seats, he pulled out his to-go cup of coffee and his school-assigned laptop. Briefly checking his grades, making sure they were fine, he then began working on the things he didn't get done yesterday.

Taking a couple sips of caffeine when he started nodding off, the football team came out as he finished his third assignment. Why in God's name did he get up to see some people he had met a week ago? Simple: because he wanted to. They were the first people he's ever gotten along with and they got along surprisingly fast with him. They treated him like they were friends from day one and, may he remind: they weren't homophobic. So, yeah, he'd sacrifice a few hours of sleep to see them in the mornings.

A few of them waved at him as they walked out and he waved back. Looking back at his laptop, he thumbed the open zipper of his jacket trying to figure out what exactly accretion disks were, barely noticing someone come up to him.

"Hey, Eli." He jumped a little when Chase spoke. Flushing at the overreaction. "Jumpy?"

"Duh you came out of nowhere." He exasperated, holding back a smile. Chase was wearing a simple light colored shirt and black adidas sweatpants. It looked comfortable, and he didn't blame him for wanting to be considering today was a break day for him.

Since the day Chase came up and said hi to him, he's come over to greet him every chance he saw him in the halls. They even talked from nine all the way to twelve last night, which was a first for him since he never could hold a conversation with someone for very long in the past.

It hasn't been long since that first day of school, but he felt more and more connected with them every time they greeted him and spoke to him outside of practices. "So, how are you?"

"Good, good." He nodded, craning his neck to the side to look at his screen. "What are you working on?"

Elijah looked at his laptop and paused the video he had to watch. "Just something for Earth and Space science." Chase hummed, and looking back up he caught him trying to read what was in the captions. "So, did you want to chat before we had to go to class or?" He hoped that didn't sound rude-he was pretty sure it didn't but still.