This chapter is a little bit of a filler and a little bit of a teaser, but I hope you all like it enough to let me know! School is going to be letting out soon, though, so hopefully, I'll have some time to better get this out for all of my amazing readers.

But get this: my Word program's trail period ran out today. So we had to install some new program called OpenOffice. I'm still getting used to it, and my English paper will have to suffer, but now, I present, the fourteenth installment!

It wasn't so much that Matt minded sleeping alone, it was more an issue of actually falling into the sleep that bothered him. In the hollowed out darkness of his apartment, the shadows seemed to echo and creep along the walls, and in the late hours of the night, his eyes began playing tricks on his mind. Some nights, he would see Audrey's silhouette in his doorway. He would envision her stepping soundlessly toward him, and he would wrap himself up in the memories of the soft curves of her body and the utopia of sweet smells and light that radiated from her. He would doze euphorically with images of her bright eyes and smile behind his lids, cloaking him in a comfortable peace until he woke up utterly alone in the morning.

But on nights like the one he struggled against now, there were faces like Mello's that emerged from the shadows. Glinting jade eyes and scars and sneering, smeared reflections of the Mello that hated the world around him, the Mello whose voice echoed darkly in Matt's head on the emptiest of nights when sleep was just over a ledge that he couldn't breech.

Hal didn't sleep much anyway, and this stretching night was no different. She ran tapes and took notes of times and places in her notebook marked "Audrey". Hal wanted to ask the girl why she had barreled out of the building so early on the Sunday before the one that had just passed, but she had not come out of her room for more than a bite to eat in the time since then, and Hal was not one to knock on doors and ask questions. It simply wasn't in her tastes.

During her days down in the lobby, manning the desk, Hal had seen Matt walk back and forth on the street that the building faced through the large glass double doors. He would look up at the structure, wringing his hands, and continue trekking back and forth for, sometimes, hours. And he wouldn't relent, even in the pouring rain. Hal would straighten her papers and jot notes of Matt's occurrences, and the more she studied the expressions on his face as he looked upward at the building, the more it began to appear to her that Matt no longer visited in hopes of avenging Mello, but in hopes of seeing Audrey. To this realization, she cocked her head, and the questions of where Audrey had went that morning pressed harder against her head.

Audrey wasn't even sure how many sleepless nights had elapsed. She just kept dropping cube after cube of sugar into her cup of tea with musings of what sleep could hold for her if she ever succumbed to it. With her eyes closed, she saw his face. With them open, she saw only empty darkness. She did not know which struck deeper.

Sunrise seemed to extend the hollow feeling, dragging it deeper to the heavy core of Audrey's chest, with softly colored clouds stretching out a longing as bright and fiery as the sun coming up behind the skyline of the city. Her only comfort was that night would come, and the aching would subside, and she could lose herself to the delirious darkness of everlasting nightfall, passing time in quiet sighs and half-hearted attempts at something more occupying.

But her hands always came up with nothing to do, the same way Matt's would if he even tried to configure the controls of a videogame.

Frustrated from lack of sleep and pent up emotion, he tossed the controller lackadaisically to the side and dropped his head to his hands. The sun was just beginning to break through his blinds when Matt pushed himself up off the edge of the bed, pulled a t-shirt off the floor and over his head, and shoved open the door of his apartment. The cigarette hanging between his lips was lit with automatic, unnoticed motions before he had even exited the building, and it was half-smoked before he had turned the first corner.

Matt wasn't one to catch a case of the nerves that couldn't be fixed with a few drawls on a cigarette, but for some reason, in this early morning glow, his heart was going faster than his own feet. He covered the pavement in a quick blur, but when he stopped moving to look up at his destination, his heart hit the floor the same way his jaw did. Audrey was pushing open the heavy glass door of the building she stayed at, her eyes trained to the ground. She hadn't noticed him yet, but Matt knew that in mere seconds, it would be inevitable that she would.

She'd look up to cross the street only to see him standing there, and it was out of Matt's realm of understanding to even stab in the dark at what might unfold then.

And when Audrey did lift her gaze, she too stopped dead in her tracks. Thinking that it must have been the foreign sunlight playing tricks on her eyes, she blinked, and tried to adjust to the brightness, but when Matt's face came into clear focus, Audrey didn't know what to think.

Early sunlight caught in the tangles of her hair and warmed her cheeks along with the sudden rush of blood that ensued from the way his eyes landed on hers. Matt ran his tongue over his dried lips, arid from disuse, watching occasional people blur between them in the streets in seeming slow motion.

"Would you just come over here?" he called over after an immeasurable, stretching silence.

Audrey look about herself with a slightly oblivious air. She suddenly needed to know what day it was, and how many had passed since she'd last seen his face. His eyes were calling to her from behind the goggles in an almost pleading manner. Audrey fixed her expression, hoping she didn't look as awful as she felt, and took a step off of the curb. She crossed the street quickly, but her feet slowed when she was only a few yards away from Matt.

God, how he wanted to touch her. The urge to pull her close and comfort her was so unbearable that Matt was forced to turn away slightly and light another stick of nicotine. It was all he could do to keep his hands busy while he waited for her to speak. But when words did leave her mouth, he realized how much he had missed her voice, even if it was hesitantly asking him "Why are you here?"

Matt shuffled his feet, and turned his eyes to look at her, his cigarette hanging from his mouth. "I honestly don't have an answer for that, Audrey," he mumbled quietly. She shook her head with slow dexterity from side to side and moved to walk past him. "Hal told me that you've been outside the complex," she said from over her shoulder, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans. She struggled to force the small smile off of her lips when she heard his boots hitting the pavement to catch up to her retreating form.

Audrey heard him scoff when he appeared at her side. Always the first to play it off, she shrugged with a minimal lift of her shoulder. "Well, why would I do that?" he dragged his cigarette. "It was raining all week."

So it had only been a week? "Hm... seemed much longer than that..." she said softly, taping a finger to her lower lip, unaware that the words were even out loud. But Matt noticed, his ears keen to anything that exited her mouth. "What did you say?" he asked, blowing remnants of smoke through his words. Audrey seemed to perk up for an instant, as if she had just reentered her own head. "Hm?"

Matt dismissed the subject. How foolish he would look, having been caught pacing the concrete in front of her home. As if he would admit to that. Of course, though, however spacey the girl beside him might be, she was anything but forgetful, especially if she wanted an answer. "So why were you out there, then?" she pressed.

His eye's rolled. "I don't wanna talk about this here," Matt gestured to the passing crowds they shared the sidewalks with. Audrey felt a brief moment of triumph; she let a light laugh escape.
"So you admit it?" she said, still through soft chuckles, earning a stifled groan from Matt.

"Because I care about-" He felt his throat tighten. The rest of the words, if there even was a sentence behind the ones he had spoken, evaporated, leaving his airways dried as dust. He groaned again, a little more frustrated this time, and balled his fists, not realizing that Audrey had stopped a few steps short. He turned slowly to look at her, hair slightly disheveled in a breeze, eyes wide and crystalline with an untraceable emotion.

How did one respond to a statement like that, she wondered. And what did he know about caring for anything, anyways? Audrey furrowed her brow and began to walk again, brushing past him quickly. It didn't even matter that she had forgotten her originally intended destination; all that mattered now was getting away from Matt. All that mattered right then was escaping the unbearable, tangible tension that had fallen densely in the air. The tenderness of his voice would break her heart if she heard him speak so distressingly again.

"Audrey!" he called after her, almost pleadingly. She found herself stopping in her place, her teeth gritted together and her eyes squeezing shut. The next time she heard his voice, it was drifting delicately into her ear. "C'mon, I told you I didn't want to talk about this here..." Audrey pushed a heavy breath from her lungs with a nod no more than a downward jerk of her chin.

With a hand on the small of her back, Matt lead her out of the streets, unknowing of what streamed through her head or what would be said later. He just knew that he needed her close and he needed to say what he had to say before it ate him alive. And as much as articulating his thoughts would turn him into something much unlike himself, Matt just knew: he needed her to understand. And even if she didn't, at least he would get it out of his system.