𝕄𝕠𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕆𝕟 (𝕂𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖)

::chapter 3:: fireflies

         

Keith sat there, sprawled on the ground, in his cookie monster themed pajama shorts with neither a shirt nor socks to provide any type of warmth from the icicle-like wood flooring beneath him; looking ridiculous. His features from forehead to nose to cheek to ears to chin were painted in magenta.

This was always a side effect of talking to Lance. The boy was just too much for Keith to keep his rugged, no-emotion exterior. He didn't know how but Lance was always able to break through that concrete cocoon, encasing all of those emotions that Keith considered too volatile to be let loose.

The night was breezy, and he could feel the wind gush from his glassless window, which was pretty much just a hole in the wall covered by an unsteady sheet. Each gust blew against every bar in the ladder of his spine and cooled him down enough for him to regain a bit of focus which made him remember Rowan, the boy sitting in his room waiting for Keith to come to Lance's.

"What the hell am I doing? I've gotta get over to Lance's and help him out with those kids and I need to change. I look ridiculous," he said with false exasperation. Truthfully, he would always be happy to get a chance to see his best friend, his other half.

Keith sat up, letting the moonlight that glided from his uncovered "window" paint his face in silver specks; the starlight, accompanying the shine and making his dark eyes gleam against the lit screen of his phone.

He looked at the address, and of course, Lance was right about the drive from his house to the other boy's taking 1 hour. The boy was a math wiz, and Keith had no doubt that Lance had figured that all out in his head within seconds.

His rose off the ground, finally, and stretched his lower back in hopes of getting out a kink in his shoulder blade area. It turns out that a bumpy corner of a house that's about the size of a dwarf's hut isn't exactly ideal for sitting in for hours and crying; and of course, Keith would never admit to crying in the corner for hours, but the tear stains on his cheeks said otherwise. But Keith stopped for a split second and thought 'Note to self: The corner is not ideal for sulking. Try the couch next time.'

He rubbed his hands together while quickly walking over to the closet in the far left corner of the one-roomed building, trying to keep at least something on his body warm. 'Well getting some clothes on would be a good start, just sayin' he thought. He grabbed a pair of ripped, leather pants and his favorite red, cropped sweatshirt, to show off his abs, of course, from off of the middle hanger where it always hung and a pair of white combat boots, that sat on the lowest shelf of the oak wood closet, which had a rose on the side of each shoe.

After quickly throwing all of that on, he looked at himself in the mirror and thought, 'decent'. That seemed to be the highest of all compliments he could genuinely give himself because his thoughts about how great he actually looked were overpowered by the cloud of anxiety in his brain and turned him to thinking about the wispy hairs out of place on his head and how the stud in his right ear wasn't put in tight enough or even the unevenness of his poorly-attended-to fingernails or the watery tear stains on his cheeks that had to be wiped off and his cut-up lips from biting them too often.

But despite this, he looked himself in the eye and went on about, but not without the voices in his head nitpicking every flaw in his appearance.

He walked toward the front door and placed his hand on the knob, and it was ice cold. He turned back quickly, and second seconds later his cropped, red sweatshirt was switched to a cropped, red graphic tee with the word Pepsi stamped on in white, and his uncovered stomach was protected from the cold by Lance's green jacket that Keith had borrowed from him and never returned.

Finally, after taking an eternity to get ready as always, he walked over to his space-like motorcycle blanketed in red that appeared gloomy in the dim light of the night sky. He started it up, rose from ground level and he was off to Lance's home.