The Fire Escape - A Oneshot

The Fire Escape

Just a little oneshot for you.

Be warned this story contains references to suicidal ideation and self-harm, so if that is in any way triggering it might be best you give this one a skip.

I also write fanfiction, you should check that out too. If you want.

Anyway, onwards and upwards.

...

        

The thing about London is that it's cold. From September to April, it's cold. Especially when you've grown up Australia, it's cold. And when your good for nothing flat mate has forgotten to pay his share of the rent for the past 2 months, which in turn made the landlord decide to shut of the central heating in late November, it's really cold.

He could kill Max, he really could.

Instead he picks up Max's half empty packet of Marlboro Reds, pulls his jacket tighter around his body, wraps the scarf that had been thrown haphazardly over the back of the couch around his neck, and lets himself out onto the fire escape.

Breathing in the frigid air is comforting in an odd way. It's so cold that his lungs burn with it and his bones ache, but after six years he's gotten used to it. It's always worse right before it snows, the wind biting and uncomfortable, normally he hates it, but its familiar now, unchanging, the pain feels good, it's calming his frazzled nerves and diluting his borderline homicidal anger towards the guy he previously knew as his best friend.

He and Max had shared a dorm in university, and it was great, because there was no rent involved, they were just a couple of lads having a laugh, staying up too late and skipping lectures, living off red bull and penguin biscuits during exam time. Now there are monthly payments that need to be made and Max's fickle nature and inability to hold down a job is no longer endearing, it's just fucking annoying.

He pulls a cigarette out of the packet and places it between his lips. He's not really a smoker, but living with one for three years has meant that he partakes in the occasional one or two (or three or four) when he's stressed.

He's just taken the much-needed first drag, relishing the burn of the smoke as it warms him from the inside out, when a voice comes from the balcony directly above his.

"You shouldn't smoke."

"I know", he replies shortly, before taking another drag and blowing the smoke upwards to where he can barely make out the girl is sitting.

"I'm just saying", she says lightly, coughing slightly as she does so, and he can't help but smirk a little because of it.

He assumes he's talking to "the student". That's what Max calls her; even though he doesn't know anything about her other than she eats a lot of Cadbury's, and lives in the apartment directly above theirs.

(She might not even be a student, Max insists that she is, but Max has a habit of making assumptions about people with no real evidence to back them up.)

"You're the student, aren't you?"

"I am, yeah." She says, surprised. She clearly thought that their conversation had ended. He did too, but he's frustrated, and he needs something to take his mind off what's happening or else he might start writing a list of all the best places around town he could dump Max's body. Student girl is as good as any. 

"Where are you from?"

He's gets asked this question quite a lot. His accent has become, due to the fact he's lived in London for half a decade, decidedly less Australian. It's a weird hybrid of Australian and East London, and that coupled with his Indonesian heritage, makes for some confusion in locating his origin point for a lot of people.