Shattered

Chapter 11

Lloyd wasn't a morning person.

Okay, sure, maybe he's used to waking up at seven in the morning and maybe he's used to watching the sunset when he wakes up in the morning, watching the sky turn from navy with spots of white painted across it to soft oranges, yellows, pinks, and blues. Having the colors dance across his skin and reflect against the wood and glass and the ground beneath his feet. He used to do that every morning, before those same colors starting clawing and chipping away at his mind and soul and sanity, before the sun burned against his skin and made it hot and itchy to the touch, before seeing the sky in general through his own eyes was a small miracle every passing day.

Before, before, before.

He might've did all of that, but that doesn't mean that he liked doing any of it.

Waking up that early was a routine that was implanted in his mind as long as he could remember, since Darkley days, but back then it was getting your chores done before the teachers woke up to scream at you until your ear rings for doing something, nothing, wrong. Now, it was because he needed to train and workout and prepare for the day ahead. The working out part sounded nice to him, but it was actually waking up that made him hate mornings all together.

Which led him to covering his head with a pillow to try and block out Wu slammed pots together in the hall, walking back and forth and yelling for our 'lazy butts to get out of bed'.

The groans of his teammates echoed down the hall and he could hear Cole cursing from across the way, he glanced around the room with narrowed eyes, seeing how early it was and if he needed to call in sick because of that.

He heard pounding on his door and someone, he couldn't tell who from underneath his pillow, opened the door telling him to get up, which he preceded to flip them off and bury himself in the abnormally comfortable and warm pillows and blankets.

Lloyd could just go back to sleep and possibly, hopefully, suffocate himself in his pillows for another three to four hours. That was his plan at least, until he felt a grip, a strong grip, wrap around his ankle and lift in up, out of the blankets, and off the bed so he was dangling upside down above his floor.

"Cole, I swear-"

"How did you know it was me?"

"You're the only one who can lift me like this, now let me go."

"Nah, I think I'll keep you like this for-"

Lloyd groaned and grabbed Cole's leg with his hand while using his free foot to hook itself around his neck, flexing his foot he threw his body to the side, rolling so he landed on his side with Cole being pulled with him and landing hard on his back, coughing and groaning with his eyes screwed shut.

"Jesus, how do you keep doing stuff like that? Where the hell did you even learn that?"

"I didn't learn it, I just did it. Now you know to not grab me like that again, yeah?" Lloyd jumped up, grabbing his clothes that were already laid out on the dresser, and stepped over Cole's still groaning body. "I'll be out in five minutes."

"Okay-" he snickered at Cole's wheezed reply before he shut himself in his bathroom, leaning against the door and trying not to sink to the floor and fall back asleep again.

Which he has done and the lopsidedness that is his door shows what happened when the guys found out he wasn't at training yet. He bit back a sigh, since Cole can still hear him through the door, and stripped down, pulling on his basketball shorts and a tighter than necessary tank-top. Lloyd stretched splashed water on his face, he probably looked like the walking dead, so anything would probably help, even if the feel of water against his face, his nose, his eyes, his mouth, sent a suffocating feeling down his chest and squeezed his lungs.