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Sneaking out was easy when there was nobody home. It was as easy as grabbing the keys and walking out of the front door. Still, he could remember how difficult it seemed the first time he did it, like some kind of invisible barrier was blocking him from leaving, and how many hours he stared restlessly at the door without ever being able to cross the threshold. Technically, he wasn't supposed to be left alone like this. Though there was no concrete age written into the law, general guidance warned against children under the age of sixteen being on their own overnight. But what could you do, when the cost of child care was almost as much as the money you earned? When a friend’s sleepover couldn’t be summoned up at the last minute, they didn’t have a lot of other options. How he felt about it.. wasn’t something he examined all that closely. It was what it was.

That aside, he definitely wasn't supposed to go wandering around the streets of North London alone after midnight. But he couldn’t help it. It was just one of those nights. The house was empty, silent, hollow. It felt like the air was heavy, and he couldn’t breathe. He never suffered from claustrophobia during the day, but it came on sometimes in bouts, late at night when he couldn’t sleep. It felt like the walls were closing in on him, so quiet it caused his ears to ring, until he had to flee from it..

Despite the dense smog and stagnant summer haze, emerging into the busy streets of London was a breath of fresh air. The sounds of slick tires passing over puddled roads, taxi cabs blaring their horns, and dogs barking in the distance brought a comforting familiarity to the night. These streets were never completely empty, and that was one of the things he liked most about London. He knew that whatever hour saw him up, his city would be awake as well.

Yellow lampposts lit the path as he took a side road away from his street corner. He’d put a thin hoodie on over his T-shirt and jeans but was quickly coming to regret it. Like a child screaming before it went to sleep, the last gasps of summer wrought their heat upon the city. So that even after midnight, an uncomfortable warmth still clung to the air. It was a short walk to where he was heading; a secret place he knew, where you could usually be alone this time of night. But before long, as paved roads turned to cobblestones, a tall spiked wall rose up beside the pavement he was walking. Standing atop a four-foot stone wall, long steel bars that rose to elaborate spikes were slapped with a rough shot of black paint that was clearly designed to keep them from rusting and more functional than appealing. Inside, the bars cast long shadows over lamp-lit tombstones, painting eerie stripes across them.

Around the corner, where the wall met the back of a stone shed, the bars stopped for a short span. It was there that the gnarled roots of a willow tree had bulged out of the ground, pushing the metal bars back just enough from the wall to allow a small person to squeeze through. They sometimes locked the gates at night, but they often forgot. Still, he preferred to come in this way. This was the unkempt and forgotten part of the graveyard, where tall grass strangled and cracked the broken headstones, and shattered statues of angels slept on the ground.

Surrounding a small chapel, this graveyard had been here for hundreds of years, according to the dates on some of the oldest tombstones, but it was still in use to this day. At the front were neatly kept plaques decorated with flowers. He never liked those graves. They were the souls of the city, people you might’ve passed on the street, a sea of faces on a crowded bus, the glimpse of which you caught accounted for the sum total of your interaction with that person in their lifetime. It unnerved him a little, to think about how close someone could be living to you, whose life and yours never once intersect. It made him think about how many millions of people there were whose faces he would never see, whose entire lives, from birth to death, existed in a reality entirely separate and distinct from his own. And on a baser, simpler, level, they made him wonder if the people he loved would one day be reduced to that- a meager square of marble set modestly into the grass. In short, it made him think about things you shouldn’t think about so late at night and on so little sleep.

Strangely though, he found this older part of the graveyard soothing.

RPing as Thomas Nicholas

Ami had been acting weird lately, and he didn't like it. Not at all.

She was different than the bubbly, witty best friend who had grown up by his side in America; there was a hardness in her face and a premature crease in her forehead that could only have been caused by stress. He had already talked to Abella about this... this fancy, schmancy boarding school that was clearly driving his best friend insane, but she refused to pull her out. Said that it was "vital for her to continue her pursuit for higher knowledge".

That line was so Abella, it kind of hurt. When Lucas had approached him and asked if he had wanted to come to England to visit Ami, Thomas had happily agreed. But now, he kind of wished that he hadn't. He didn't come to England to see Ami, stressed and holed up in her bedroom for hours at a time; he had come to go sightseeing, to explore the city, to play dress-up in the fitting rooms of shopping malls like they did as kids.

His favorite redhead was currently fast asleep in her room, her hair short and messily cut. When he had asked as to why she had cut it, she had turn big, sad eyes upon him and pleaded, "Please don't ask me." And so he hadn't, because he was polite, and he was a good best friend.

Ami was sleeping, which was understandable- after all, it was past midnight, and she had lived in Europe for two years now; there was no reason for jet lag. On the other hand, Thomas had arrived in London three days ago- thus, the horrendous effects of jet lag ensued. He had grabbed some loose change from the hidden pocket in his suitcase, left a note on the dining room table should Abella or Lucas happen to wake during the night. Grabbing his phone, he approached the front door with silent footsteps, careful not to wake the sleeping Procoppios.

Before you could even say escaparse, he was home free.

He knew that there was a church nearby, and immediately searched for it on his phone. He needed a breath of fresh air, a quick one-on-one with his feelings, and he'd be good to go. As the Procoppios were firm agnostics, Thomas found himself at the church more often than he normally would in America, where he tried to come to terms with himself quite often with the help of the priests and nuns. He was getting there, but it would still take time.

Nearing his destination, he began to look for an entrance. He wasn't sure if the church was still open this late at night- or, this early in the morning, but it couldn't hurt to try. If the doors wouldn't welcome him, he was sure he could find solace within the graveyard that would almost certainly guard the chapel. Life and belief, it seemed, were always followed close behind by death.

Walking down the street, he tried to look for a gate- and he saw one, but of course, it was locked. With a sigh, he shoved his hand into his skinny jeans, fishing around for the paperclips he always carried with him. Straightening them out, he checked the walls and surrounding area for any sign of security cameras.

It seemed that the British didn't worry about people breaking into decrepit old churches.

Crouching down to face the lock, his slim fingers made quick work of the joke of a lock. It was a useful skill that he had begun to teach himself after being locked into far too many cupboards at school, and it became one of the more useful skills in his arsenal. He didn't know why he ever thought that knowing how to break a window would be useful, and yet, here he was.

Shimmying the small gold lock off of the chains, he tried to remove them from the gates as quietly as humanly possible. Slipping inside, he quickly replaced the lock, and surveyed the area around him. The church itself, of course, lay directly ahead, but the tombstones themselves were fairly fascinating to look at, as well.

He was a boy on a mission, however, and he would not let himself get distracted. Trekking up to the church, he tugged on the door, finding it locked, to his disappointment. With a sigh, he walked around to the back to try and find a back entrance- but no, only a fire exit, which would set off alarms should he try to get in.

Turning to lean against the wall of the chapel, he peered out over the tombstones laid out before him, like a messily-organized war map. These ones seemed to be older, holding more history and more character than the ones up front. As he loped down towards them, he mumbled the words his mothers would constantly remind him.

"Está bien ser gay," he whispered, fingertips trailing along the dirty headstones. "Está bien ser gay." His footsteps would echo through the graveyard, clear and no longer hesitant. "Estoy bien como soy."

A silhouette in his peripheral would bring his gaze up from the ground. Squinting at the figure, he frowned. "¿Quién está ahí?" he called out, approaching the figure warily. You're in England, not Nicaragua, he reminded himself, before adding, "Who's there?"

Translations:
Escaparse- Escape
Está bien ser gay- It's okay to be gay
Estoy bien como soy- I am fine as I am
¿Quién está ahí?- Who's there?