east of eden 𑁋 salvis.

XXXVII

♥̩̥̩♥̩̩̥͙♥̩͙ˊˎ

The night went by slowly. Travis slept, but just barely. It wasn't much fault of Larry- surprisingly Larry didn't move around much in his sleep. Travis had thought he would be a kicker, or at the very least that he would snore. Larry was the opposite, though. He slept like he was dead, hardly moving or making a noise besides breathing. A few times when Travis woke up through the night, he found himself sticking his fingers under Larry's nose to make sure Larry truly was still breathing. He didn't want to lose someone else so soon.

He hadn't slept badly due to Larry, or the presence of someone else in bed with him. While staying with Sal, Travis had grown quite accustomed to the warmth of another body beside him in the night. He slept badly from anxiety, worried at any moment he or Larry would stop breathing, and that would be one more casualty in this situation. He worried that when he woke he would be alone, or that he would wake to find Larry telling him he needed to leave.

Travis was plagued with the worries of every possibility. He knew rationally, everything was going to be okay. But grief and anxiety were destroying him slowly. It would only be so long before he had a mental breakdown, he was sure of it. Travis had never felt this kind of loss before. When his mother left, he knew she was still alive, which made it easier. His grandparents had died years before, but he was never close to them. This is the only kind of real loss Travis had ever felt before, and he didn't know how to deal properly with it.

Morning finally came, and Travis was grateful when it did. He stepped out of bed as soon as the clock on Larry's wall read 6, knowing by then the sun must at the very least be coming up. Suddenly, he itched for a cigarette. Travis hadn't smoked since that day in the basement, the day that resulted in cigarette burns and more time locked down there. He hardly could even consider himself a smoker- He'd only smoked a handful of times. But Travis figured from here on out, the habit was going to become much more frequent.

Luckily for him, he was in smoker's heaven right now. Larry had packs of cigarettes scattered in places around his room, all the same brand that Sal smoked. Travis wondered, as he walked over to the TV stand and grabbed a pack of cigarettes lying there, if Larry had started the habit for Sal. Or maybe it was just a coincidence they both smoked the same kind.

He grabbed one from the pack before dropping the pack back on the TV stand. There was a lighter nowhere nearby, but he knew there had to be one somewhere. Travis searched various surfaces through the room, but came up empty handed. He sighed, staring at the piles of clothes on the floor.. He knew there would be a lighter in a pocket in one of the piles, but he really didn't want to search through Larry's nasty clothes.