Plattenbau - 6. Chapter 6- Stairs

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Already being late for school, Alex stuffed his keys into his pocket after locking the door and rushed towards the elevators.

To his horror he saw that both were out of order.

"FUCKING GREAT! Just what I fucking needed!" He yelled and kicked the metal door, immediately regretting it because of the pain that shot up his leg.

With a sigh he then limped towards the staircase. The thought of walking down the same nine floors he had to climb back up again after school already made him feel exhausted. When he reached the platform between the fifth and fourth floor, he was already slightly out of breath. But what he saw there stole the last bit of air from his lungs and made his heart drop. Breathless and with shaking knees, he slowly approached the seemingly lifeless body that was slumped over in the corner. At first, he wasn't sure who it was. But when he stepped closer, he finally recognized him.

"Ed?" Alex asked his voice barely more than a whisper. He sank to his knees in front of the big guy and slowly reached out his shaking hand. The absolute worst scenarios populated his head. Was the man even breathing?

"Please Ed don't..." He whimpered, tears brimming in his eyes. The very thought of the man being dead was too much for the teen. Alex had so much more he wanted to know about him. And who would be there to care for Lilly if he was dead?

When Ed finally gave a grunt and slowly opened his eyes, Alex was overwhelmed by a sudden rush of euphoria and relief. "You fucking faking bastard!"

Before Ed had the time to comprehend what was going on or where he was, someone flung themselves at him and wrapped their arms tightly around his neck. His initial instinct was to push the person off. But then he noticed that it was Alex and that the boy was crying like a waterfall for some reason, so he decided to just let him be for the moment.

Only until he has calmed down a bit, Ed justified to himself as he patted Alex’s back. When the frantic sobbing finally stopped, Ed, who still had no idea how he even had ended up on the staircase, asked him what was going on.

Alex lifted his head from Ed's shoulder and gave him a stern look. "I thought you were fucking dead!" The boy yelled and punched Ed's upper arm.

Ed chuckled. The punch hadn’t been very effective despite the younger man having placed all his strength behind it. "No, not quite yet I'm afraid. I mean unless hell looks like the staircase of a concrete slab housing block, then maybe..." He trailed off, thinking that in that case it would make Alex his personal demon, whose job it was to torment him for the rest of eternity. Sounds about right, the blond thought, unable to hold back another chuckle, which earned him yet another punch on the arm.

"This isn't funny!" Alex yelled and wiped his tears away with his sleeve. Ed nodded even though he still couldn't get rid of the stupid grin on his face. He was about to ask what was even going on when he heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

A few seconds later, a young woman came into view. She stopped at the platform above them and gave them a disgusted look. She seemed to be unsure of what to do.This made Ed realize how their situation must have looked like to anybody else, specially without context. A middle-aged drunkard with a weeping teenage boy on his lap draped along a dimly lit stairwell. Yeah, that'd raise more than one red flag. He reached around Alex's waist and moved him off of him.

She slowly moved down the stairs, without taking her eyes off of them for even a second.

"Good morning." Alex greeted her, still unaware of the awkward situation.

"Uhm... good morning." She politely replied. She eyed him for a moment but when he didn't say anything else she rushed past them.

When her footsteps were no longer audible, Alex turned his attention back to Ed. "Why are you here? Are you hurt?" The boy asked, seemingly sincerely worried.

Ed, not used to people worrying about him, looked away in embarrassment. He was about to tell the teen to 'fuck off' like he usually did when people got under his skin but then decided against it. His reasoning was that knew the little rat wouldn't leave him alone anyways but also because he just didn't have the energy at that moment to fill the small cracks the kid was already scratching into his shell.

"No I'm not." He mumbled and gave the boy a half-hearted smile.

"I probably just got a little bit too drunk yesterday but I don't know why exactly I'm here. Usually when I'm shit faced I can at least manage to use the elevator to-"

"The elevators aren't working." Alex interrupted, making Ed think about it for a moment.

The blond man grunted. It definitely made sense. "So...uhm" Ed tried to change the subject, not wanting to dive deeper into the topic of his drinking habits and the mishaps that it sometimes caused. He wanted to ask something banal but a different question just wouldn’t leave his mind. When his curiosity finally got the better of him he asked, "You were really worried about me?"

Alex gave him an 'are you stupid?!' look and shook his head in disbelief. "Yes, of course!" The boy almost yelled.

"Why?" Ed inquired, still unable to wrap his head around the idea that someone would worry about him.

"Because we are friends!"

Ed raised his eyebrows and was about to say that they weren't but then decided to just let it slide and instead replied "Yeah, but why?"

The boy looked at him confused, not understanding why Ed was questioning their friendship or why he was worried about him. "What do you mean?"

Ed leaned his head against the wall and glanced down at the confused boy. Even his two best friends he knew for a very long time never worried about him to the point of weeping or at all, for that matter. Wilhelm would have probably used the opportunity of him being black out drunk to steal his cigarettes and Karl… he would have most likely just said 'If you get drunk like that it's your own fault for what happens to you' and left Ed on the floor to sober up. Ed shook his head.
Yeah, some great friends I got there.

He looked Alex up and down. There was nothing particularly special about him, just the average scrawny kid that was annoying the hell out of him and yet, somehow, it didn't bother him as much as he liked to admit. "Why do you want to be friends with me?"

"Uhm well... I... I just want to, okay?!" Alex stuttered, his cheeks turning red and his eyes avoiding Ed's.

Ed took a deep breath and prayed that this wasn't what he thought it was because, if it were, it would mean a shit ton of trouble for him. Sure, if Ed himself had been much younger, he would have taken the boy's behavior as a compliment and maybe wouldn't even hold himself back. But due to how things were now or rather, who he was now, this was completely out of the question. He took another deep breath and then asked the question whose answer he had dreaded ever since Alex had given him those kinds of looks for the first time.

"Is it really just friendship that you want?"

The younger man looked at him in shock, his face turning a deeper shade of red and his mouth opening and closing multiple times, clearly not able to get out the words that he wanted to say. After numerous attempts, he just looked away and got to his feet while mumbling "I have to go to school."

The teenager grabbed his backpack and rushed down the stairs.

"Fucking great." Ed mumbled to himself and pulled out his cigarettes and lighter. He already had a cancer stick between his lips when he remembered the lyrics of a song. "Maybe in another lifetime. Maybe at another time. Whatever it is, between you and me."