Moving To Silence

Thirteen. After The Risk

I am hyperaware of the fact he is still in my bed when I wake up to my alarm the next morning, relief and disappointment coarse through my body at the first moment I realise he is not lying next to me. My heart does a little skip knowing he tucked me in and then went to lay down on the other end.

It's the moments when he does something so selfless, caring about the way I might feel about his actions before the thought even pops into my head; that make me believe telling him might not be the worst idea I have ever had.

We know what takes the cake for that and I am sick of living with that as my deciding factor, I want to make decisions and live life without that being a reason in my choices.

I want it to be the past. I want the good to be my future.

Although eight in the morning seems much too early to make decisions as serious as those ones, which means I can happily leave them to the many nights I spend alone. Maybe this time, my conclusion won't be that silence is better than even the tiniest chance of repeating the past.

The irritating sound of my alarm is still echoing though the apartment but does little in awakening Storm. I have half an hour to get ready and another half hour to get to class, there's a music history exam at the end of the week and despite the lack of kindness my professor has displayed I have to go.

This is the only class where I find the recordings to have been misleading towards the tone of the room. The conversations make me want to bang my head on the desk, while shoving pens into my eyes, not to be rude but how some of the students are passing their classes is beyond me.

I shake Storm's shoulder's after getting ready, suppressing the itch to push his dark hair off his forehead. I realised that I need to touch up the auburn in my hair sometime soon before my dark roots cause someone to ask about the colour change.

"Why you wake me up?" Storm grumbles, his eyes still closed, and my blanket tucked up under his chin, I continue tapping his shoulder until he opens his eyes a crack to see the time. "How about I don't go to my exam and just stay in this nice cocoon?"

I pinch his shoulder in disagreement. If there is one thing, I have learnt from today it's that Storm is not a morning person, which I think is a common theme. After years of waking up early, I find it hard to sleep in, even when I have the chance too.

I snatch the pillow out from under his head and smack it over the back of his bed, maybe more times than necessary. Eventually it does the trick and I hear his laughter smothered into the mattress, ripping the pillow from my grip and sitting up.

Again, am I relieved or disappointed that he has a shirt on? I thought the no shirt, it's uncomfortable thing was normal.

"Hitting me with a pillow that many times was not necessary" He mumbles, causing me to shrug and pinch my lips together to stop a giggle. "You have class?" I nod at him, while sitting back on my bed as he finally rolls out of it.

The next ten minutes are spent in comfortable silence as I brush out my hair and Storm tidies up his things and changes into a spare shirt he keeps for training. Everything he does is done with such precision, that I find it hard to tear my eyes away, even when he catches me staring.

He used to make me freeze up, when he would nudge me with an elbow or throw an arm over my shoulder but now, I can't remember the last time it's made me tense. If anything, I am the one invading his space now. Instead of filing the silence with music or random facts, he taps against the steering wheel, muttering pieces of information to himself and I find it endearing and so I don't bother him with a text.