Chapter Text
Christine walked into her apartment and flopped onto her couch. "Urgh I'm so tired." She had worked more grueling hours than this before but she didn't get much sleep last night.
She thought of just leaving herself flopped on her couch like a corpse but she needed to remove her contacts, make up, make food, and do her whole routine. Plus she didn't want to sleep in old clothes from throughout the day
She lazily got up from her couch and started towards her restroom. She turned on the shower and the steam slowly started to rise and the water got hotter and hotter. She took her hair out of her ponytail while she yawned and washed her hands to get her contacts off.
She took one out and put it in the case and then the other. As she opened her bottle of contact solution she had accidentally bumped her phone with her elbow and it fell to the floor. “Urghhh” she groaned and bent down using her arm to steady herself with the counter. As she rose and her elbow bent back she bumped into her contact solution, spilling it all in the sink. “Oh crap!’’ she said to herself. “Urghh of course this happens to me. I guess I can get some more at the store tomorrow morning since I already have to do some last minute shopping for thanksgiving”
Tomorrow was thanksgiving and she was going to be at her parents house with her family so she needed some things to make pumpkin pie to bring over. She continued on with her routine and once she was finished showering she headed to her kitchen.
She grabbed her round glasses from the table and a cup of spicy beef Maruchan, poured the water to the line, and typed in 3 minutes on her microwave. As she waited for it to finish she made a list of things she needed on her phone. Sure, she could’ve placed an online order, but she liked to roam around the isles. She liked the feeling of shopping on her own. It was silly but it made her feel like more of a grown up and more independent.
When the microwave beeped she walked over to it and for a split second saw herself in the microwave door. She really wished she didn’t need glasses. Her glasses made her eyes look big and she herself never minded that, but other people did because since she was small people would make comments about her.
She had some people call her an alien because of how her eyes were magnified so she told her parents to get her contacts instead and to this day she still uses them. However, her eyes now reminded her about her jester avatar as well. She shook her head and stopped thinking about it and opened the microwave door to grab the cup and walked to a drawer to grab a plastic fork.
Although she ate Maruchan for dinner most of the time, she didn’t mind. It was mostly her choice to eat this way because she was a picky eater and Maruchan was the only thing her grandma knew how to make whenever she stayed with her so she grew to love it. She's not a picky eater anymore but Maruchan or any type of ramen would always be her favorite.
She sat down on her couch and wrapped a fluffy blanket around herself and turned on the TV. She switched to Netflix and put on a true crime documentary. While she was eating her mind wandered off as she thought about how much space there was. Her apartment was new and very spacious for one person. When she was buying it she didn’t think about having a roommate or anything, just the very low price. Of course it wasn’t till after renting the place that the landlord would tell her that the other parts of the space would still be open for rent to the public.
She wouldn't mind a roommate, but if it was some random stranger who knows what could happen to her. She realized that it was a little messed up to be watching a true crime documentary while some serial killer could end up renting the other part of the apartment.
She finished her soup, turned off her TV, and went to her bathroom to brush her teeth. Once she finished she got into bed and took two melatonin gummies from the jar on her nightstand. She hadn’t been able to sleep for a while and while it still took her forever, she found that the gummies helped. She set her alarm for 7 am and went to bed.
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Felix stared up at his ceiling then at the clock, then the ceiling then the clock. Ceiling, clock, ceiling, clock, ceiling, clock and it went on and on like this for what felt like hours but it wasn’t. He should know, the clock only barely passed one minute as he kept looking back and forth. ‘Maybe if I close my eyes for a while I’ll finally fall asleep.’
It felt like hours before he woke up and checked the clock again. Not even a minute passed on the clock, it had only been 30 seconds. ‘Urghhh’ Felix groaned and he sat up and curled his knees into his chest. It’s not like he didn’t want to sleep, he just couldn’t. He felt like a child again, couldn’t sleep without someone there by his side.
He told himself it was temporary, even though he knew he had been popping melatonin gummies like they were candy. Yeah, he could’ve gone to the doctor for an actual, bigger dosage, but he didn’t want them to start worrying about him all over again.
When he had finally left the circus and collected himself in the abandoned building, he made up a plausible story for why he was missing. He simply didn't know. Coincidentally. Of course, when you're missing for years and have no visible signs of aging, police and doctors are going to assume the worst of you. He recalled all the drug tests they made him take, all the tests to check if he was mentally insane, and he was lucky they let him off the hook.
He didn’t need the doctors on his back about not being able to sleep at all after finally coming back. He was a man, and he would eventually sleep, without some doctor's help. He turned over to his nightstand to take more gummies but the bottle was empty. This was his second bottle of the month- mind you it was only barely Thursday and he bought the jar the week before. ,“OH MY GOD URGH” He slapped his bed in frustration then slammed his whole body back on the bed and got comfortable.
He thought to himself ‘This time for sure, I’ll fall asleep. Without those damn gummies!’ 20 minutes went by of him closing his eyes and he didn’t go to sleep the whole 20 minutes. He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling and then his clock. He did the same thing yet again. Ceiling, clock, ceiling, clock and he repeated this sequence over and over until he finally realized what time was on his clock.
He had tried to go to bed at 10 pm and hadn’t fallen asleep. When he would stare at the clock and ceiling he was only paying attention to the minute on the clock, never the hour and to his surprise it was now 6 am. He usually takes two hours to sleep, which is already bad, but every once in a while he can’t sleep at all.
Sometimes it would only happen one day out of a week or it would last the whole week. ‘Great, that's just great isn’t it.’ It’s not like he wasn’t tired or anything, I mean heck he had just finished a week of all nighter's to finish all his school work so that he could be free for Thanksgiving break.
All he wanted for the past week was to finally go to sleep and now that he has the chance, he can’t sleep. Not to mention that today he would work from 7am all the way to 12pm, closing time, at his job in H-E-B. Felix works there and goes to school too. He only takes 4 classes in college and all are in the morning usually and then he works from 3 to 5 pm but he’s taking a different shift because today is not a regular day it's Thanksgiving so most of his co-workers called out.
He lives with one of his friends from college and he promised that he’d be out of his hair soon but he was having trouble finding a place that was cheap enough. While his parents had offered to help him find and pay for his own apartment, he was trying his hardest to stay away from them. He knew that they would use it against him later and try to guilt trip him.
Before the circus, he hadn’t had the courage to tell them anything about their behavior throughout his life, but after Ragatha's story about her mom, combined with the way he’d learned to push people away, it was a piece of cake for him now. Some of his old self still lingered because he gave them the courtesy of speaking with him over the phone until he decided to speak to them in person. He owed them that much at least considering that they literally raised him and that they weren’t always this way.
About 10 minutes passed from 6 am and he finally got up to get ready. He groggily got up to brush his teeth while he scrolled through his phone. He stopped brushing for a moment to type into his google search bar “What do energy drinks do to you?” He remembered the last time he went to work running on no sleep and according to his co-workers the reason no customers came up to him on those days were because his “threatening energy” was worse on those days especially paired with his tired eyes so he decided that for the first time ever he’d buy an energy drink and see what happened.
Once he brushed his teeth he changed into his uniform and walked out the door with his jacket. The breeze that came from the door made him shiver as he locked the door and headed to his car. It was 6:50 when he arrived at his job and before he left he took three dollars out of his wallet to buy the energy drink before his shift officially started. The sliding doors to the front of the store opened for him as he walked to clock in. Today he was blessed with getting online orders ready so unless somebody needed help finding something he’d get to be all by his lonesome grabbing groceries.
Although he didn't really like interacting with people, he loves grocery shopping. He liked to put on his headphones and go through the isles on his own getting the groceries he needed, which is why he chose to have classes in the morning so that he could end his day stocking up the shelves and getting online orders ready. He didn’t like it that well when they’d put him on the register but luckily everybody liked his speed for getting the online orders ready so it rarely happened. He knew that since it was Thanksgiving people wanted to just get their groceries and leave so he would get to pack a lot of orders.
Sometimes he finishes too fast and ends up getting stuck with busy work but luckily he would be able to be occupied which is what he most needed today. As much as he does want the extra cash to save up he also needed an excuse to be distracted since today was a holiday most people spend with family and friends but all of Felix’s college friends would need to spend their time with their families and Felix wanted to do anything other than spend time with his family. Felix bought his energy drink, finished it and plugged in his wired headphones to his phone and only put one headphone in just in case a customer came to him so he could hear them. He then started navigating the isles once the energy drink kicked in starting his 4 hour shift.