Three Seventeen || Completed

call six

"Bloody hell, why the fuck do you call me every day? And didn't I tell you not at 3:17 in the morning?"
"There's a reason, you know. It's not just to spite you."

That statement catches her off guard a bit, his calm and collected voice coming through the speakers of her phone hadn't been heard in a while. And there was a reason...?

"Well? What is it? Because I swear, if it's a stupid-"

"You know, I actually don't have insomnia. Usually I just have trouble falling asleep and then end up oversleeping, but I still sleep. Usually by two."

She falters even more, where was he going with this? He didn't have insomnia? Then how was he able to stay up so late every single night without being affected?

"I call you at this time because I know that you're different. You stay lie awake with your thoughts tumbling over each other, never ceasing to race in your mind. Your laying there, analyzing every confrontation you had that day, and berating yourself for every little mistake you think you've made."
"Wha-"

Cutting her off once again, he continues smoothly, as if he wasn't causing her world to crash down around her.

"It's a wonder, really, how people cut flowers and kill them by plucking them from their lives in the soil because they think they're beautiful, yet they cut and kill themselves for the exact opposite reasoning. Have you ever realized that?"

Her eyes widening, she tries to cut him off instead. But as she opens her mouth, she feels her voice catching in her throat, an uncanny resemblance to the feeling she often had while choking down sobs.

"S-Stop... Please..."

But he ignores her.

"It's a shame, really. As humans, we are sentient and under pressure at all times. At times, it is almost unbearable to live in such a body. Perhaps that's why some of us tear it open."

"I know you've been trying to block me out. I hear it in your voice, how cold it is now. You almost broke down and told me things you've never even hinted at to anyone else, and it scared you. I get it."

Her phone drops out of her hand and onto the bed she is laying on as she curls up into a ball. Why was he doing this to her?

"But you see, Celia, I call you at exactly this time because I get that it's hard to make it through the night, most, if not all, nights. I call you because I want to serve as a buffer, a break, from your struggles to simply even live. The middle is the hardest, because you've been alone for so long and morning seems so far away."

"Three seventeen am is for the insomniacs, the depressed, the alcoholics, the addicts, the people who struggle with their biggest demons when all the others are sleeping, wrapped away in the blissful ignorance."

"It is for the reckless, the hopeless, the ones who love, yet aren't loved in return."

Biting her lip hard, she lets a single tear fall trace her face as she peers down at her phone. She starts to speak, but before she can, something else cuts her off.

*beep beep beep*

Dial tone.

He had hung up first.