Too much time spent away, too many hours to himself and, for all intents and purposes, by himself. It seemed like a very long time of doing nothing, and yet he felt like he had been running a marathon for over a year. The worn-looking Sue let his well-packed duffel bag slide off of a wide shoulder to hit the ground with a heavy sounding thud, standing in front of a door like he used to nearly every day. It felt odd, having these homesick feelings for a motel that had definitely seen better days..and yet there he was, almost happy to be back.
A key was fished out of his pocket and slid into the lock, the familiar old click sounding like music to his ears. For a moment he paused in front of the door. This place...so many things could have happened while he was gone. There could be smoke damage in that room from a fire he was unaware of; worse yet, there could be a leaking pipe, his things could be full of mold. A strained, amused grin broke his usually grumpy looking features; Schrodinger's Cat, minus the cat. Well, mostly minus the cat. There would be a cat in the room, but said cat was not there for the release of the poison. Or fire. Or Water. Or Bugs.
Well, there was only one way to figure it out; hand on the doorknob, Sue gave it a twist and, fearing the worse, pushed the door open, attempting to walk through at the same time.
THUD.
The door decided to give him a greeting, announcing it's joy of his return right into his face.
"GOD ******** DAMNIT--" Sue hissed out, stumbling back and raising a hand to hold his face. ******** door! Stupid stuck...ugh! Practically hissing at the thing, the teen grabbed the door handle and gave the overly friendly piece of wood a hefty greeting of his own. With his shoulder. A couple of hits later and he was stumbling into his room. Finally.
Sadly, he was not out of the ballpark; the door had been happy to see him, and now there was a box a foot away from the door that wanted to say hi. Well, the box nearly met his foot, and it did cross his mind at least once to give it a swift kick for good measure, but something got the better of him and he decided he would wait until he at least knew what was in said box.
Now, for the damage report; so far, so good. Moving the box aside he wandered around the tiny place he generally called home. His things were still there, nothing obvious missing and, thankfully, nothing covered in mold. At least from what he could tell. Sure the place was musty and smelled like an old lady's attic, but that was an easy fix once he got around to it. This was the part about being away for so long that he absolutely hated; there was no relaxing right away, but there was an awful lot of catching up and fixing up to do. At least, thankfully, there was no obvious mold.
Bag retrieved from the hallway and flung onto his bed, the next order of business was the box; his mail had been redirected to him up until now, so why was this box sitting there? There was no postage marks, and whoever put it in there must have had his key, or at least a copy of it. A careful ear was pressed against the side; no ticking, so at least it wasn't an obvious bomb. Setting it on his small desk, he carefully opened it...
Only to find another box.
"You have got to be ******** kidding me." Sue growled, lifting the second box out of the other, shoving the first one aside and off his desk, where he finally caved with the need to kick it; it went flying against the nearby wall, and he put his efforts toward investigating this new box. It was another brown box, regular and normal in every way up to and including the brand name of some food item he didn't care to commit to memory. He was not surprised to find a third box in this one, and already he was considering giving up out of pure irritation. The only thing that stopped him, was that this box was a dark green and had a ribbon tied around it; upon further inspection, it also had a card on it, too.
...He was not opening this one without knowing who it was from. There was no way. The small envelope was ripped open and an equally small card with a very familiar handwritten note came into view;
Happy Birthday, Sue!
...His Birthday? Oh. It was the Seventeenth today, wasn't it? He had almost forgotten. Setting the note down, he finally opened the box, a very fresh looking and delicious piece of chocolate cake coming in to view. There, taped on the inside of the cake's box, was a pair of matches in their compact box and a single candle, with 'JUST IN CASE' written above them. With a small chuckle, Sue worked the candle and matches free, pressing the former into the cake and striking the latter against the strip to ignite it. He didn't hum or sing, nor did the old birthday jingle play in his head. He merely lit the candle, blew out the match, and stood there for a moment by himself in all the silence the motel room offered.
There was only one other birthday tradition he practiced today; Sue made a wish, and blew out the candle.
