“It was probably a good thing I didn’t run you over, either.” Sera gestures to the car, “You’re welcome. Just don’t expect me to be patrolling this road to catch you sleepwalking again.”
They both get in, her phone ringing again in the backseat. She ignores it, though her jaw tightens as it briefly stops and restarts. After a few minutes it goes quiet. Sera drives just under the speed limit, a bit more cautious of anything on the road. It seemed sluggish compared to her driving of twenty over the limit.
“You’ve got dogs, don’t you?” She glances to him, “You’ve got some of the fur on your clothes, and you have those little scratches from when they get excited about being fed.” Sera turns away, shifting her jaw as she decides her attention to detail is getting ridiculous. Oh well. “You must have a lot of them. I’m surprised none of them followed you out here.”
Everything is silent again, and she turns up the heating system. She doesn’t say anything about it, but she figures that he must be cold from walking outside for so long.
“I know it’s not really my business, but what’s bothering you so much that you’re sleepwalking?” She raised a hand up in defense, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, I’m just your temporary chauffeur, not a therapist.”
He nods and follows her into the car, climbing into the passenger seat. A shril ringing from the backseat breaks the loud silence that had hung over them like a weight, but she made no move to answer the phone. Someone she is ignoring, then, he assumes as he notices the stiffness in her jaw. The ringing is almost piercing in the silence and it annoys him, but he holds his tongue, knowing that she wouldn’t want to answer the call, and that the caller will eventually stop calling. And they did.
He turns look at her when she asks about his dogs and nods once. The small scratches that litter his arms were hard not to miss – which is why he usually wears long-sleeved shirts to hide them from view. “Yeah, I’ve got 8 of them,” He turns back and continues to look ahead as he does so, considering what she might pull from that. Him usually being the one to make jumps and assumptions it felt strange to have someone else do it to him. Not in a particularly good way, either.
I won’t be c o m f o r t a b l e with anyone in my HEAD
The sudden rush of warm air from the vents soften his expression and his posture. His muscles slowly start to relax as they warm up, but tense up once again at the mention of the sleepwalking. He doesn’t want to tell her, but felt that he should – she had helped him, after all.
“Work.” It is not a complete lie – in fact, it isn’t a lie at all. Work is the reason he had started to sleepwalk, but exactly what kind of work he does he’d much rather keep to himself.
“What are you doing out at this time of night, anyways?” He turns a question back to her, eager to change the subject. It had been a question he asked himself since she pulled up on the side of the road.