Why not? - English

11-07 Pondypandy Slickers

I had coaxed Sam out of his shell. Finally. And it was a lot of fun. Even when Elvis had scared us both at the end, we were still laughing when Sam realized that that had been enough scare for one day.

But the horror didn't end. Not that night - although in a different way.

We had barely arrived at the station when the emergency call went off again because Norman had set a tent on fire.

Two hours later, James got lost in the woods because he had to pee.

By midday we had three small missions in the city and in the afternoon we had to free Steele from the tent in which he had become hopelessly entangled while dismantling it.

Arnold and Sam had both gotten a few hours of sleep in between. Only for me the alarm went off both times as soon as I had closed my eyes. It had been magical and I was longing for the end of the day and my bed like never before. 24 hours without sleep was nothing unusual in our job, but 48 hours was horror.

I was sitting with a cup of tea and looking at the clock, praying that there wouldn't be any more missions for the day. Steele told us all about his amazing performances on that Wild West weekend when I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. I decided to just close them briefly so they could rest, after all I noticed that the light was slowly starting to burn in my eyes too.

Just a moment later I felt myself tipping over and jumped as Sam grabbed me. I looked at him confused. What happened? Was I fallen asleep? Steele was still talking with euphoria and I breathed an internal sigh of relief that he didn't seem to have noticed anything.

"Pack your change of clothes and come with me. You're completely tired. You shouldn't have to walk all the way home," Sam whispered to me and I jumped because I wasn't expecting that at all. But even less so with his offer, which threw me off a bit.

"Sam, I... That's not possible... I can't..." I stammered, a little embarrassed.

"What is it? Do you have a pet at home that you need to feed?" Sam asked me confused and I shook my head. A pet doesn't get along with our working hours any more than a partner does. He knew that as well as I did. That was part of the reason why we were all solo. "Come on then! I have a guest room. So you don't have to worry about having to sleep on the couch or in bed with me," he then said with a smile and pushed me gently with his shoulder. When had he even gotten so close to me?

"You know how people are here. If someone finds out that I'm going with you tonight, then..." I replied to him, trying to explain my concerns, but he didn't let me finish.

"We're going through the door in the wall. Nobody will notice anything and if they do, just let them talk. I'm just making sure that my completely exhausted colleague gets enough rest," he replied with a cheeky grin that made me smile and almost made me forget the meaning of his words. But only almost. He cared about me as a colleague. Nothing more, nothing less. "Come on, Penny. I won't scare you either again, I promise."

I had to admit that the thought of being able to lie in a bed a little quicker and rest my tired bones and eyes was very tempting. So I nodded and Sam smiled so beautifully, like he was really happy about it. Why should he do that? I was just a colleague.

As soon as the clock had struck the hour for closing time, Steele was the first to leave the hall, yawning and wishing us good night. Tomorrow the holidays would be over and school would start again, which is why we were all free tonight and could only be alerted via the detectors. Nobody assumed that anyone would want to do anything on a night like this. We hoped for the best.

Sam and I stayed until Arnold and Elvis had left, while I spent time packing a change of clothes from the locker into my backpack before we went over to Sam's.