Side Characters in a Nutshell

an unlucky neighbour

It was the morning.

The birds sang playfully outside the open window, playing by the branches of a tree that had just gotten it's first leaves this year. The sunlight peered gently inside, caressing the white sheets and making them seem like the softest cloud.

Ashley squinted his eyes and pulled the curtains roughly.

After sleeping for - he took a glance at the clock - approximately two hours, he was all too ready to fall back asleep.

Of course, he wasn't lucky like that.

I shouldn't have played a second round, he thought bitterly, thinking of the discord server with too enthusiastic foreigners that were in a different time zone, and therefore, not at all interested that it was three in the morning for him last night. Just as he had finished the homework he started doing around eleven last night, he was pulled into one of those shenanigans without any purpose.

Of course he couldn't resist playing another, and another, and another round after that, even if his body started mildly protesting (read: dying) and his eyes watered with the need to sleep.

The only purpose of this day was that at the end of it, he's going to lie down at 6 PM and sleep until noon the next day. A reminder of the essay he still didn't write flashed through his mind, but he stealthily ignored it.

            
                     ____________________

For all that people were excited about spreading their wings, partying all night and finding friends for life, college sucked, and his bloodshot eyes had everyone step away from him that day. Good, he thought
viciously.

As the lectures passed, his thoughts revolved around bed and bed only. Maybe pillows, too.

After long, excruciating hours, it was finally over, and he almost started happily skipping. While he walked towards his home, he passed through his closest neighbour's house and stopped for a moment.

The bad boy, as everyone called him in contempt and secret jealousy, was regularly seen with a cold expression on his admittingly handsome face, his body stiff and his fists always ready to punch.

Personally, Ashley thought it just made him look like a constipated crow, but apparently people got turned on by that.

However, what made him stop was the utterly melancholic look on the guy's face as he gazed through the window, not even noticing Ashley who gaped at him like he had grown two horns.

There are tears in his eyes, Ashley gasped, seeing the saddened look the bad boy sent above his head.

He frowned, carefully thinking over the situation. Behind him was the Parkers' house, a modest family with a timid, pretty girl. At the request of her parents, she once tried to explain the DNA replication to him in high school, and he annoyed her with his stupidity so much that she actually started clenching her jaw.

Safe to say, they didn't have study sessions anymore.

Back to the present, right. So, his guess was that he was obviously pining for her. If not that, maybe her little turtle. It was a cute turtle.

But he highly doubted that.

Anyways, as it was not his business, he simply erased the last five minutes from his memory and entered his house, promptly throwing himself onto his bed. The sheets perfectly embraced his body as he tightly hugged the stuffed turtle on his bed.

No one needed to know that, though.

He was asleep in seconds, and only woke up when an echo of a slap made it through the gap on his window. Ashley carefully opened his eyes and saw that it was eleven at night.

He grumbled at the stupid commotion outside and ripped the curtains open.

In front of his house were that bad boy in the house to his right and the timid-scary girl from across the street. Her hand was stopped mid-air, probably about to land another slap, and the constipated crow looked so miserable that Ashley actually felt a little sorry for him.

"Was this all a game to you, Alex? Was I so easy?"

His eyebrows shot high up to his hairline as he grabbed a must-have bag of chips by his bed, crunching them in interest.

Alex shook his head, a pleading look on his face. "No. Of course not. You don't know how much you mean to me, Maddy. Please. You have to know that."

They were both crying now, and the scene was so absurd and intimate that he almost closed the curtains for the sake of privacy. But alas, if they were ruining his sleep night, they could at least make it entertaining.

"I've never felt like this before, poopface,"  the bad boy said fondly, and the girl almost melted into a puddle right there and then.

... What?

"You're such a constipated loser," she said adoringly, embracing his face as he softly leaned in to her touch, not averting his eyes.

I mean, he is, but...?

"You... you're so beautiful, I only want to see you happy and for us to always fill each other's crosswords and run with the flour on our clothes and hair. I just want to-"

"Oh, shut up," she whispered, or well, tried to since Ashley heard every damn word.

And then they kissed.

Like a fucking idiot, he stopped eating his chips and stared in utter astonishment, until the girl started moaning and the kiss turned into a very heated one and they laid behind his bush, on his property, and he suddenly couldn't stand that straight shit anymore. He took an innocent bottle of water from his table and aimed it straight at their faces, yelling indignantly.

"Do it in your own garden, you exhibitionists!" And finally pulled the curtains close.