The Trick to Falling in Style

Steady

An alarm clock started blaring, interrupting the quiet of the early morning. The obnoxious beeping kept going until another person started banging on their ceiling to wake up the person that the clock should have woken up, demanding that they turn the 'damned thing off'. A figure in their bed turned around to slam their hand onto the button on top of the clock to cease the noise. With the alarm clock off, the silence that permeated before returned to trap the entire building like it was a bug stuck in amber. The figure in the bed tiredly rubbed his eyes as he shoved his blanket onto the ground. The young blonde swung his feet to hit the ground, quietly groaning as the cold hardwood sapped the warmth that his blanket had provided. He reaches his hands into the air to pop his back, his face scrunching up before he pushes off his bed to stand up. He tosses his blanket back on the bed, but he doesn't make any attempts to make the bed presentable. He leaves it as chaotic as it currently is.

The blonde walks around his bed, shivering in the cold air. He reaches for a jacket he had thrown on the floor. He slides it over his head while continuing out of his bedroom. He walks across the hallway, pushing open the opposing door. He flips the lights on the bathroom, kicking the door shut with his foot. He leans down to splash some water on his face, nearly shrieking at the cold temperature. He wipes his face off with a towel that was hanging on the back of his door to dry. He wets his toothbrush, and opens the mirror up to grab onto his toothpaste. He pushes the toothpaste on the brush, and works on brushing his teeth as he looks in the mirror.

He looks as tired as he feels, he notes. He leaves his toothbrush in his mouth as he pulls at the skin around his eyes as if he could physically make the bags go away. When that doesn't do anything, he spits out the toothpaste and rinses off his brush. He wipes his face off with the towel. He grabs onto a comb he had left on the bathroom counter. He attempts to straighten out his curly hair, but it springs up awkwardly in some places while lying flat in others. He wonders if it would kill his hair to be consistent for once in its short life. Perhaps the next batch of hair cells will be more obedient.

He opens the bathroom door, flicking off the light as he leaves. He returns to his bedroom to change his clothes. He ditches the jacket for a white button-up and reddish maroon vest tucked into black pants. He tugs on his job approved socks and pulls on his black, buckled shoes that shine in the gray light that pours through his window. He checks his outfit to make sure that all his buttons are, in fact, buttoned and in the correct places. It wouldn't be the first time that his buttons were mismatched.

With hygiene and work clothes out of the way, the boy leaves the small hallway that held the doors to his bedroom, bathroom, and a closet he shoved a lot of rarely necessary things in. The main room wasn't anything special. It was a near empty living room and kitchenette with a foldable table inelegantly shoved in the corner by the only windows. He walks past the one reclining chair in his living room that is decorated in far too many patches for it to be safe. He enters his kitchenette to grab a granola bar. He sniffs it to make sure that it hadn't expired. When nothing foul enters his nose, he peels the wrapping off the granola bar, throwing it away before he leaves his apartment.

He walks down the hall to the big door at the end. He pushes the door open while munching on his granola bar, entering the stairwell. He walks down the stairs to the ground level. He pushes the door open to enter into the lobby. The landlord at the receptionist desk gives him an unamused stare. He waves at the man. The landlord's glare sharpens. "I don't know why you keep that damned thing. It doesn't even wake you up in the morning; it wakes up everyone else!"

He chuckled at his landlord's words. He had gotten the alarm clock when he first moved into this apartment, and he only set it recently when he got a job that required him to get there early in the morning. The alarm clock had not yet woken him up, but he had heard several complaints from the other tenants when they happened to see each other in the hallways. He had gotten several threats that they would break into his apartment to smash the alarm clock, but he would laugh it off every time even when they swore they were being serious. "But if I didn't have the damned thing, how would I wake up to you pounding on my floor?"