Chapter Text
For a second, or maybe ten, he thought it was morning. Time to get up and enjoy the weekend, which were two things Tyler thought were mutually exclusive. The birds were no longer singing from that nasty row of half-dead trees outside his window, so he must have slept in. Then why am I so tired? I didn't stay up that late.
The leaves outside rustled as if to purposely aggravate his sore head, and Tyler rubbed at his crusty eyes with a frown. He could leave his warm duvet cocoon and open the blackout blinds of his little apartment, but the paper-thin walls were picking up every movement of those damned trees and Tyler just couldn't be bothered. It was Saturday, he could go back to sleep.
Wait...wait a minute. Perhaps the walls between rooms were about as durable as his New Year's resolutions, but Tyler was pretty sure the outside of the building was made of solid brick. Which meant that it wasn't the leaves rustling at all, he realised as he leaned back to paw at his alarm clock in the darkness. Why hadn't it awakened him? The clock gave off a bright-green glow when he finally found and slapped the buttons inlaid in the shoddy plastic casing, and the angular numbers quite clearly read...12:03am?! Fuck, no. Fuuuuuuuuck this.
But if the leaves weren't the source of that infernal rustling and movement, what was? And that was when Tyler heard it, just for a moment - the unmistakable, muffled sound of a person trying not to cry and failing. Like a gasp, but wetter. Wrinkling his nose, Tyler rose grudgingly to see which wall it was coming from; it still sounded like the rustling of leaves outside his apartment. But after pressing his ear to each wall, Tyler was sure it was coming from the wall next to his bed. No wonder he was awake! That explained the moving van, too. Ella, wasn't it? Or Ethan. Something like that.
He went to knock on the wall and ask for a little quiet from the mysterious restless sleeper, when whoever it was on the other side hit something. Over and over again, a sharp crack of skin against something that made Tyler wince. It only took a few rounds of that to realise that his new neighbour was slapping themselves, and Tyler's heart broke a little. He flopped back onto his bed, staring at the ceiling he couldn't see and chewing on his lip. What would drive him to trying to shut himself up with literal slaps?
"Hey, are you okay?" The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. There was a gasp, and then a moment of silence.
"Y-yes! Uh, thank you! Sorry if I woke you up, I tend to be a little jumpy - ADHD, you see? Or not, it's night, aha - and it's worse when I can't sleep, or in new places, and this is kind of both, in a way? So, um, like I said, thank you for...caring, I suppose? Um, I'm good. How are you? I mean, probably tired. You probably want to go to sleep, yeah. Forget I, forget I said anything. Yeah?" Like a waterfall of words, the voice came back scratchy and male and youthful. The last word sounded like a plea, or maybe a ewe bleating.
Despite himself, Tyler grinned. Then his face fell, even though nobdy could see him, and he furrowed his eyebrows before replying. "I do want to go to sleep, but now I'm a little worried for the kid slapping himself on the other side of my wall," he pointed out quietly, rolling over to face the wall. Not that he could see it, or through it, but it was important to look at people when they were talking to to you.
"Our wall," corrected his neighbour quickly, and Tyler could almost hear the sad smile in his tone. "And...and I'm not a kid. And as for the sla...you know what, I'm going to stop bothering you now. Goodnight, um...sorry, what's your name?"
"Tyler. My name's Tyler. Goodnight, Ethan."
"How did yo-"
"Moving van man kept shouting about you - he was way louder than your crying," he explained colloquially, surprised when Ethan-from-next-door drew in a sharp breath. He'd only meant it as a joke, but Tyler didn't hear another sound that night. Fuck. What did I do?