#age out

Cold was the first thing I noticed, already there when I woke up, settled deep into my hands and my lower back like it had been waiting for me to move my ass. I was curled on the metal bench inside a bus shelter that smelled like old rain and disinfectant strong enough to sting the back of my throat. My coat was pulled tight around me, shoulders hunched forward, folded in on myself. The glass panels were fogged at the edges, smeared where someone had dragged a sleeve or a hand across them, and the street beyond was quiet. The sky was that dull slate color that means morning is coming whether you’re ready for it or not.

I opened my eyes and decided not to stand up yet. I’d learned early that moving costs heat, and heat was something you didn’t spend unless you had to. I checked myself in pieces. Fingers first. They moved, slowly, thick and clumsy, joints aching when I bent them. My back felt locked up, muscles pulled tight from a night spent half-sitting, half-slumped, never really asleep. I shifted my feet and felt the weight of my shoes, solid, real, still laced, still on me. That mattered. That counted as a win. I brushed my hand against the strap of my bag. It was still looped around my wrist, pressed against my hip where I’d tucked it before closing my eyes. That mattered too.

My mouth was so dry my tongue stuck when I swallowed. Hunger was there, constant but distant, something I could push aside for now. Thirst was sharper. Thirst made itself known with every breath I took through my mouth. I licked my lips and tasted nothing.

The first bus of the morning hissed to a stop across the street, and its lights washed briefly over the shelter. I kept my eyes half-closed as people passed, watching them and their coats zipped, bags slung, heads tipped down toward phones or places they still had to go back to. No one looked at me long enough to figure out why I was there. A few glanced my way and then looked off again, already done with me. I wasn’t invisible, not exactly. I just wasn’t worth stopping for.

I watched their feet for a while. Sensible shoes. Work boots. Sneakers still clean at the edges. I listened to the street waking up, the traffic picking up, the way sound started carrying farther now that the night had thinned out. This was the point where places stopped being neutral. Benches got watched. Shelters turned back into waiting rooms. I felt the pressure of time start to build in my chest like a quiet countdown I didn’t need a clock for. Not that I had one, anyway.

When I decided it was time to get up, I straightened a little and rolled my shoulders, working the stiffness down to something I could move with. I knew how this part went. Someone would notice me sooner or later. A transit worker, a security guard, anyone whose job was to keep things moving along. They’d ask if I was waiting for a bus. They already knew the answer. I’d rather leave before it got to that, if leaving on my own terms was even a thing anymore.

I scanned the sidewalk without lifting my head, watching the faces that lingered and the ones whose eyes slid back toward me more than once. Curiosity wasn’t the same as help. Most of the time, it wasn’t harmless either. I adjusted the strap of my bag and leaned forward, testing my legs. They complained, slow and stubborn, but I pushed through it.

I stood up before anyone decided to make me their problem.

The cold hit different once I was upright. It cut straight through the layers I’d thought were doing more than they were. I stepped out of the shelter and onto the edge of the street, keeping my pace steady, not rushing but not dragging either.

I’d learned two things in my first days out there.

1. Moving too fast got you noticed.

2. Moving too slow did the same.

So I aimed for the intersection and let myself blend into the flow of people heading places I didn’t need and wasn’t needed in.

As I walked, I kept track of exits and obstacles I’d already started memorizing. The café a block down wouldn’t unlock for another hour, but the bathroom might be reachable if the barista got distracted by their phone. The park was out. Too close to the daycare, which meant parents and kids showing up soon. The library that sometimes handed out lukewarm tea didn’t open until ten. I adjusted my route, following the street in a way that let me pause without actually pausing, stand without looking like I had nowhere to be.

Because that was the truth.

By the time the sun started lifting behind the buildings, I’d already put distance between myself and the shelter. The bench was done with me. I didn’t look back. There was no point. I folded myself into the rhythm of the morning, keeping shoulders squared, eyes up, already thinking about the next place I wouldn’t stay any longer than I had to.

⸻

By late morning, my hands had warmed enough that they didn’t sting when I flexed my fingers, though the skin across my knuckles stayed tight and dry, pulling when I moved. I followed the flow of foot traffic until it thinned, then doubled back toward a public restroom tucked beside a municipal building. A local drunk had mentioned it once, said it was usually ignored as long as no one caused a problem.

Inside, the lights buzzed overhead, cold and constant. The place reeked of bleach and damp paper. I used the sink, pushed up my sleeves, and looped my bag through my ankle while I splashed water over my face. It was cold enough to make my teeth chatter, but I scrubbed my hands with the dispenser soap until it ran thin and gray, then dried them with paper towels so flimsy they tore against my skin. It helped enough to feel functional. Not clean.

I checked the mirror just long enough to make sure nothing was obviously wrong. My coat still looked like a coat and not bedding, which felt like a small miracle. My hair was a mess but still there. I straightened my collar and left before anyone else came in. There was a window for places like this, and I didn’t stay past it.

Outside, the day stretched ahead without any real shape. What I had were small tasks. Things that filled time and kept me moving. Hunger nudged again, sharper now, so I cut behind a row of shops and checked the dumpster behind a café I remembered as generous. Or careless. The lid was padlocked. I tried the side bins anyway, lifting one just enough to look.

Fuck it.

There was nothing but coffee grounds and napkins. Nothing worth eating. Nothing worth getting caught over. It was too early, I realized, and filed that away without letting myself feel much about it.

Too late for that now.

I moved on to the park and took a bench near the edge, away from the playground. I sat with my bag between my feet, hands wrapped around it, watching joggers pass and older people walk their dogs. A man I’d seen earlier slept near the trees with his coat pulled over his head, his shoes lined up neatly beside him. No one bothered him. A woman sat across the path, upright and alert, staring past the pond. People stepped around her. I noted both of them the way you note exits when you enter a room.

The park filled fast. Parents showed up with strollers and coffee cups. A groundskeeper drifted closer, pretending to check trash cans while keeping an eye on the benches. I didn’t wait for him to say anything. I stood, adjusted my bag, and walked off at a pace that suggested I had somewhere else to be.

The afternoon broke apart into pieces. I ate a bruised apple someone left on a ledge near a bus stop and drank from a fountain that tasted like rust. I watched a man start shouting at no one and learned to cross the street before voices got loud. I started to see who protected their space with noise and who survived by taking up as little room as possible. I noticed who claimed corners and who drifted, never staying long enough to be remembered.

By midafternoon, I knew more than I had that morning. Shoes stayed on. Always. Even when sleeping. Even when your feet bled from walking all day. Bags stayed close, but not close enough for someone to grab you with them. Offers were weighed and stalled, because help usually came with a price you didn’t hear until it was too late. I watched a boy take a sandwich too fast and regret it before the wrapper was all the way open.

Every so often, I caught my reflection in glass and saw how I held myself. Shoulders back. Spine straight. That counted as a win. My coat was still clean enough to mark me as new, and I felt the looks linger because of it. When someone moved too fast toward me, my body jumped before my brain caught up. I had to smooth it down again and again. I learned to keep my gaze moving. Never fixed. Never challenging. Never inviting. I rationed eye contact now, day and night.

When I felt the evening chill starting to bite at my wrists, I kept walking. I adjusted my route and let the street teach me what it could, without spelling it out. It didn’t feel like learning so much as avoiding. I couldn’t afford to make the same mistake twice.

I was cutting through a side street near a row of apartments when raised voices caught my attention, like they always did. I spotted the couple near the curb right away, angled toward each other, both of them tight with the effort of holding it together. The man’s hands were clenched at his sides. The woman’s face was flushed, her mouth set in a way that told me she’d already said too much, whatever it had been.

It never takes much with certain people.

I slowed just enough to look casual. I kept my eyes forward and listened anyway.

“I’m not stupid,” the man said, careful with his voice. “You don’t just come home like that. You don’t just stop answering your phone.”

“I told you where I was,” the woman said, and there was a crack in her voice she didn’t quite manage to hide.

“That’s not what I asked,” he said. “I asked who you were with.”

That was the moment the street noise dropped away for me, and the memory came up sharp and brutal.

My husband was standing inside the apartment, blocking the doorway with his body, bracing one hand against the frame. His jaw was tight, his face too calm, and he fixed his eyes on mine like he was waiting for something to give.

“Just tell me the truth,” he said. “I know you slept with him.”

It took me a second to understand he meant it. He wasn’t yelling. There was no buildup. The accusation landed flat, and there was nothing to brace against.

“I didn’t,” I said. The words came out thin.

He let out a breath through his nose and shook his head. “Don’t try that shit with me,” he said. “We both know better.”

The hallway light spilled past his shoulder, catching the edge of the coat rack and the scuff mark on the wall near the thermostat. Familiar things. My body went rigid, every muscle locking up as the options narrowed down to nothing. I could feel the explanation pushing up, but it was tangled and useless. There was no clean way to say it. No version that fit inside what he’d already decided.

“Pack a bag,” he said after a moment. “I’m not letting a slut stay here with me.”

I stayed where I was long enough for him to reach past me and pull the door all the way open. The chain swung loose and knocked softly against the wood.

I still remember that fucking rattle.

“Now,” he added, still calm. “I’m not doing this twice.”

I turned because there wasn’t anything else to do. Because my body knew how to leave a room even when my head stopped working. I’d done it before.

The memory loosened as I passed the couple and their voices faded behind me. My steps faltered once. Just once. I realized I hadn’t taken a full breath in several seconds.

The street looked the same as it had a moment earlier, but my shoulders were tight and my jaw clenched hard enough to ache. I kept my breathing steady and kept walking.

By the time the sky fully darkened, I’d gone farther than I meant to. I wasn’t heading anywhere in particular, just chasing the idea of warmth. Afternoon slipped into evening, and the temperature dropped faster than I expected. The cold came in quick once the sun was gone. I felt it first in my ears, then along my forearms, where the exposed skin pulled tight under my sleeves. I adjusted my coat and kept moving, telling myself I’d find something better before it got dark.

I ended up under an overpass where the road curved, far enough from the main street that the traffic noise dulled into a constant rush. From a distance it looked protected, the concrete ceiling low and heavy overhead. The pillars broke up the wind, which felt like a win at the time. Up close, it was actually worse than being out in the open. The air moved through the space wrong, funneled and sharpened, cutting along the ground and curling back on itself. The concrete bled cold. As soon as I sat down, I felt it come up through the soles of my shoes and into my legs.

I lowered myself against the wall anyway. It was better than nothing, and I told myself I could move if it got too bad. I wrapped my arms around my middle and tucked my chin down, wedging my bag between my side and the wall so I could feel it there. The wind pushed at my coat, finding gaps I couldn’t close. I shifted, then shifted again. I never quite got comfortable enough to let go.

I drifted off in short stretches, jerking awake whenever my head dipped too far or a car thundered overhead. Every time I opened my eyes, I checked the same things. My bag. My shoes. The empty space around me. It mattered that it stayed empty.

The cold kept pressing in as the hours passed, working its way deeper into my marrow. My teeth chattered for a while, then stopped. I noticed when they did and didn’t like it. I still didn’t do anything about it.

My thoughts started to lose their shape. Counting my breaths took more effort than it should have. When I tried to flex my fingers, they moved slow and awkward, like the signal had too far to travel. I pressed my hands together and barely felt it. That irritated me more than it scared me. I knew better than this. I should’ve moved earlier.

The idea of standing up came and went a few times before I acted on it. My legs felt heavy, rooted, like they might decide to stay where they were. I leaned my head back against the concrete and closed my eyes for what I told myself would be a moment. Just a few more minutes. The traffic noise flattened into a single sound that was easier to tune out than the work of staying awake.

It crossed my mind, in a distant way, that I could stay right there. That getting up was optional. Just another choice on the list. I weighed it briefly, annoyed at myself for even doing the math, then opened my eyes again and stared into the dark as the cold kept doing what it does.

I was still sitting against the wall when a shadow broke the dark under the overpass and turned into a person only after it spoke.

“Jesus Christ,” a woman said. “You trying to die down here or just stupid tired?”

I blinked and tried to focus. It took a second for her face to line up properly, hovering above me in my field of vision.

She was older than me. Five years, maybe more. Her hair was pulled back under a knit cap that had lost its stretch, greasy black strands slipping loose around her temples. Her coat was layered and practical, elbows patched. Her eyes were sharp. Already measuring.

“Hey,” she said, crouching despite the cold coming up off the ground. “Look at me.”

I tried to answer and only managed a shallow breath. Her mouth tightened.

“Yeah. That tracks.” She reached out, pressed two fingers against my wrist, then tapped my cheek harder than she needed to. “You awake or just pretending?”

“Awake,” I said. Or thought I did. The word felt heavy in my mouth.

She snorted. “You picked a real genius spot. Wind cuts through here like a blade. You don’t sit down in places like this unless you want the ground to finish the job for you.”

She stood and grabbed me under one arm, hauling me up with a grunt. My legs buckled, my weight sagged, but she adjusted without slowing, braced herself, and forced me upright until my feet were on the ground. Mostly.

“Come on,” she said. “Don’t lean. You lean, you stop. You stop, I’m not picking you up again.”

My head spun as blood rushed back into places it had abandoned. She kept a firm grip on my elbow, fingers digging in like she meant it to hurt.

“What’s your name?” she asked, already pulling me forward.

“Riley.”

“Alex,” she said, like that answered everything. “And you’re coming with me, Riley, because standing still isn’t an option.”

She started walking and set a pace that was brutal at first. My muscles screamed as feeling came back in uneven waves, but the pain had an edge to it that kept me here.

“You new,” she said. “I can tell by the coat and the way you thought concrete was your friend.”

“I didn’t think that,” I muttered.

She let out a short laugh. “You sat down. Same thing.”

We cleared the overpass and stepped onto a darker street where the air felt a little less hostile. Alex didn’t slow.

“You got anywhere to be?” she asked. “Don’t lie. I don’t care either way.”

I shook my head.

“Didn’t think so,” she said. “All right. You’ve got two options. You can keep wandering until you drop somewhere quieter, or you can walk with me for ten more minutes and not freeze tonight. That’s it. No promises.”

I weighed how much effort it would take to argue and came up empty. Walking took less thought than stopping. I nodded once and kept moving.

“Good,” Alex said. “Feet moving is heat. Talking helps too, even if it’s just me.”

She filled the space as promised. She talked about the city cutting outreach funding, about people stealing blankets from each other, about the cold coming earlier every year. Her voice stayed clipped, the words running together without much pause.

I listened and focused on the rhythm of my steps and the way feeling came back into my hands. It burned and tingled, uneven but real. Alex kept her grip on my elbow the whole time, firm enough that stopping would’ve taken effort.

“Next time,” she said as we turned down another street, “you don’t sit under overpasses. You don’t sit on bare concrete. And you don’t wait until your body fucks up before you decide to move.”

I let out a breath and saw it fog in the air.

“Next time,” she went on, “you pick a bad spot and leave before it picks you.”

She didn’t let go when we left the narrower street, just kept guiding me along at a pace that kept blood moving. The neighborhood thinned out as we went. Storefronts gave way to boarded windows and blank brick walls tagged so many times the paint underneath had disappeared. Streetlights were spaced farther apart here, their glow weaker, neglected. I tracked them without thinking, counting the growing distance between pools of light and how the dark settled heavier once we passed through.

“You listen,” Alex said, breaking the silence without slowing. “I’m taking you somewhere you can sit down and not die. That’s all this is. Don’t read more into it.”

I kept my eyes forward and didn’t answer. Talking took energy I didn’t have.

“There are rules,” she continued. “They’re not written down, and no one’s gonna explain them twice, so I’m doing it now so you don’t fuck it up on your first night.”

We crossed an intersection where the light blinked yellow both ways. The electrical box hummed loud in the quiet. My shoes scuffed over cracked pavement.

“First,” she said, “you don’t steal from inside. Ever. People will overlook a lot, but not that. You take from each other, you’re out.”

I nodded once and stayed in step.

“Second,” she said, “you don’t ask names unless someone offers. Names make people attached or angry. Neither helps. We’ll get you a new one soon enough.”

The buildings grew more skeletal as we went. Warehouses with sealed loading bays. Chain-link fences bent inward where they’d been cut and half-fixed. The air smelled different here. Metallic. Stale. Oil and old water.

“And don’t assume it’s safe,” Alex added. “It’s not. It’s just less dangerous than where you were sitting.”

I filed that away and watched the last of the residential lights fall behind us. The city didn’t end so much as give up, thinning into stretches of neglect that felt temporary, like no one expected anyone to stay. A factory loomed on our right, windows punched out and dark, its sign hanging crooked and unreadable. Tall, brittle weeds pushed through the asphalt along the curb.

We turned down a narrower road that looked unfinished, the pavement uneven and patched in places. Alex finally let go of my elbow but stayed close.

“Almost there,” she said.

The building ahead was low and blocky, set back from the road, its outline barely visible against the dark. There were no signs. No lights. Nothing calling attention to it at all. It sat right out in the open, the kind of place people passed without seeing because they had reasons to keep moving.

Unlike me.

I took in the dark windows, the sagging door, the lack of anything that marked it as official or condemned. It looked like a place that had been left alone long enough for outcasts to move in.

Alex angled toward it like the route was muscle memory. I followed, aware of the quiet pressing in around us and the feeling that we’d crossed into a space that existed just outside notice.

She pushed the door open with her shoulder. The hinges screamed loud enough to announce us before we stepped inside.

The room was bigger than it looked from the outside. Long and rectangular, maybe a warehouse or a workshop once, abandoned halfway through some kind of renovation. Exposed studs ran along one wall. Insulation hung loose where someone had started and never finished. Extension cords snaked across the floor and up the walls, feeding power to a few bare bulbs and a space heater that rattled as it ran, doing more for noise than warmth.

The smell hit all at once and settled into my clothes. Damp fabric. Stale smoke. Something sour that could’ve been old food or something worse. It wasn’t unbearable, just persistent. The smell of too many people packed together for too long.

Mattresses were scattered across the floor without any real order. Some sat on pallets. Others were laid straight on the concrete. None of them matched. Blankets and coats were piled on top in uneven heaps. A shopping cart sat near the back, half-full of supplies. Cardboard had been taped over a broken window.

Conversation dipped as we moved farther in. Heads turned partway. Not fully. Enough. I felt the weight of attention settle on me as people took me in with quick, practiced looks. My coat. My bag. My shoes. The way I stayed close to Alex without touching her. There was interest, but no welcome.

Great.

Alex didn’t address the room. She didn’t explain me. She tipped her chin toward an open stretch of floor where a thin mattress lay empty. The blanket was folded back like someone might come back for it.

“Sit there,” she said, loud enough for the people closest to hear. “Don’t take anything that isn’t yours.”

I lowered myself onto the mattress and felt the cold concrete through the thin padding. I kept my bag in my lap, one arm looped through the strap, my other hand resting on top. The mattress shifted under me. I adjusted until I could stay balanced and alert.

No one spoke to me.

A man near the heater went back to warming his hands. Someone else picked up a low conversation near the far wall. The quiet felt deliberate, a way of laying down boundaries without spelling them out.

From where I sat, I took in the room. The exits. The places where shadows pooled. The way people spaced themselves, leaving small gaps between bodies. It didn’t take long to understand what this place was. It would keep the weather off you. That was about it. It wasn’t built on trust. It ran on tolerance and rules no one bothered explaining twice.

Alex paused near the door and glanced back at me once. There was nothing on her face except a quick check to make sure I was still upright and breathing.

“Stay put tonight,” she said. “Figure the rest out in the morning.”

Then she turned and left.

A few minutes later, I was still sitting on the thin mattress with my back straight, watching the room settle now that the door had closed. The air felt crowded but held in check. Everyone was aware of everyone else without showing it.

I’d just started sorting the space into usable information when the volume jumped on the other side of the room.

“—I’m telling you, man, it wasn’t even like that,” a voice said, too loud for how close it was. “He just went down. That’s it. People see what they wanna see.”

The guy was pacing. Long strides back and forth between two pillars, boots hitting the floor out of rhythm. He was tall and built wrong for standing still, all sharp angles and restless movement. His copper-red hair was pulled into a messy knot that kept coming loose. Freckles covered his face and neck, so stark against pale skin. His jacket was black and worn thin at the seams, like it belonged to his old self that didn’t matter here anymore. Skinny jeans. Scuffed boots. Loud on purpose.

He laughed suddenly at nothing, then kept talking like he hadn’t checked whether anyone was listening. A man near the wall answered with a grunt that could’ve meant anything.

I felt his attention hit me before I looked up.

Shit.

I lifted my eyes and met his gaze just long enough to take him in. Blue eyes, bright and jumpy, tracking everything at once. His mouth pulled into a quick, crooked smile.

“She ain’t lasting,” he said, like it was a fact worth sharing.

I dropped my eyes back to the floor and adjusted my bag, turning my body slightly away from him. The read was fast and clean. Loud to be noticed. Dangerous more because he didn’t care than because he meant to be. I filed him and shut him out before my chest could start tightening.

Once it was clear I wasn’t going to react, he lost interest. His focus snapped back to whatever kept him moving. He started pacing again, talking about something that had happened somewhere else. His voice rose and fell without much pattern. At some point he laughed again, sharp and unprompted, then cut it off as he drifted toward the heater and stuck his hands out toward it, fingers spread.

I eased myself back on the mattress without taking my shoes off. Just enough to rest. Not enough to go soft. I fixed my eyes on a dark patch of ceiling where exposed wires disappeared into cracks. The room kept going around me the way it had before I showed up.

The guy’s voice faded in and out, mixing with other voices, growing less distinct as the day finally started to loosen its hold on my throat.

——

this fic is dedicated to my lovely freaky freak discord group girlies @solusipsum @laundry-basquiat @ianixela (wink wink) @velvettreize @userhannahgeist @springvamp