SATe [✔]

[15] solivagant

I wish he hadn't overheard. If only he could have lingered inside of that room for just a couple more minutes; the length of a short phone call, that's all it would have taken. However, I did not have the luxury of calling Lady Luck my friend. Of all people to hear that conversation, it just had to be Perry. He had strolled out of a lounge room that was just off of the lab, clutching onto a glass of brown liquid with a bemused expression on his face. With the context clues that could be garnered from what I had said, and the vague whispers on the other end of the phone, he quickly deduced I was a step ahead of everyone else; and that wasn't allowed to be a possibility.

I had to give in to his stares. I already felt restless around him, every moment in his presence feeling compressive; the air more humid and my lungs tight. I couldn't call him outrightly intimidating, but there was something about the way he held himself in the past few hours that evoked a feeling, this restless irritation. I was no match for him in my current state, and that much I knew for sure.

The information had left my mouth as soon as his eyes narrowed and a hand went to his hip, about Georgia, the syringe, and our interaction at the hospital that I had only explained to Smith at this point.

He made me text her.

Straight away.

A short, snappy text that his eyes glued to as I typed it; the location of a teashop of my choosing, one I had visited on rare occasions without plans, and its earliest opening time; there was not a minute he was going to let by if he could help it.

This is why we were currently cramped together in the smallest vehicle SATe owned in a vexing state of quiet that I had been forced to befriend; the team were people of few words, and I had to adapt to that quickly or suffer instead. Perry's hands were dancing on the wheel, tapping to the beat of the music; upon entering the car he'd change the radio station from the R&B hits station in a heartbeat, replacing it with a nostalgia station I'd never heard of.

I forced myself to look straight forward, avoiding his direct eye line and focusing on pressing each of my left fingertips with the right one at a time, over and over again. His eyeline kept darting to this action; almost enough to stop me from doing it, but not quite. He didn't want to take his eyes off the road, but he could tell there was something off about me. That much I could tell at least. He just didn't know how to bring it up yet.

I gripped a bottle of water that had been placed in a straight, organised row inside the door, and I was careful to avoid knocking any over as I took one, appreciating the effort a member of the team had taken. I focus on crackling its plastic material, scratching off the label and crunching it inwards and outwards. I failed to take the opportunity to open it or drink from it, which I'm sure would have lowered my temperature for a minute or two.

"You know I don't blame you, right?" He spoke bluntly with no room for misgivings. There was a smile stretched on his lips as he let his confession sit within this small vehicle forcing me to acknowledge and decide on it. I wanted to laugh, going through all of my options in my head; ignore him, attest thinking he blames me, or play it off. A brief turn of a street was long enough for him to get frustrated by the silence, placing his right hand on my shoulder as the other stayed on the wheel, "Kid? I'm being serious here."