Villains, Part 1
Rodney himself didn’t look all too impressed by the house, and never quite managed a smile at Seth’s jokes, but Seth knew he was out of sorts - Rodney had actually hugged him not even half an hour ago. He guessed death could be hard, and it would probably take more than a few jokes to get over that. He was tempted to offer to hug Rodney again, if that was what was going to help him feel better - and maybe he would have done if it were most anyone else, but Rodney would probably only scowl and tell him to fuck off, so he continued with the jokes.
“As for these rooms,” Seth continued as they came to the upstairs landing, “we can’t get into these two doors - I know the one on the left is apparently my aunt Kimmy’s, and-“
“What did she do?”
“Um, I believe she killed one of my uncles. I don’t really know; I’ve never met either of them.”
“Are there a lot of psychopaths in your family?”
Seth frowned. And briefly wondered if he was being labelled one too. “Well… We’re a pretty big family…”
Rodney just made a non-committal noise, so Seth continued on.
“This other door is for some guy called Simon.”
“Simon Rossi?” Rodney interjected quickly.
“Um, possibly?” Seth didn’t know the guy himself.
Rodney didn’t elaborate, just gazed at the door. Seth really hoped he was going to actually start saying things soon, because Seth suspected that there was a lot he didn’t know that he ought to, and he sure as hell wasn’t psychic.
“Anyway, the door at the end is to the bathroom, the one to the right is my bedroom, and the one to the left is yours.”
Rodney turned to look at his door, but made no move to open it, just staring warily. “What’s your room like?”
“Pretty good,” Seth conceded. It wasn’t huge, but it was much bigger than the one he’d had at home as a kid. “Double bed, decent size wardrobe, my kinda stuff. I don’t know about yours.” Open yours, he mentally urged him - Seth had been dying to know ever since he’d arrived.
Rodney moved to his door cautiously, but just stopped with his hand on the handle.
“What’s wrong? It’s not going to bite you.”
Rodney gave him an annoyed glance, but finally pushed the door open without moving forward.
There was a lot of red, in a deep rich shade, along with nice dark wood panelling. The bed looked expensive, and hung above it was a copy of a painting Rodney had had in his house when he was alive - one of Rodney’s favourites, stolen away from some museum with bad security.
Rodney slowly walked in to look around, and Seth went to follow him- before hitting an invisible barrier where the door would be if it were closed.
Rodney looked back at him. “You not coming in?”
“I can’t,” Seth forced a wry smile - Mzyra had explained this before. “You can only enter other people’s bedrooms if they trust you enough to do so.”
“Oh,” Rodney said hollowly and looked away. The barrier didn’t disappear.
Seth did his best not to feel hurt - after all, you didn’t necessarily choose whether or not you really trusted someone - and turned back to his own room. At least there was somewhere Seth could go.
And he did like his bedroom, he mused as he went in and reassessed it, it was just lacking in company. He heard Rodney approaching across the hallway, and he stopped outside the door. “Can’t you come in?” Seth asked curiously.
Rodney looked around the doorframe and tentatively put a hand forward - which met no resistance as it went through the entrance, and he cautiously followed it through, still eyeing the frame. Seth wasn’t surprised and smirked wryly to himself. Figures.
Rodney looked uncomfortable stood in the corner of the room with his arms crossed. “Your room’s nice.”
He was just saying that. It wasn’t a lie exactly, but Seth’s room wasn’t as plush as Rodney’s. Everything had just become a bit awkward. Seth would have to remedy that. “Thanks,” he said, as though there was no doubt Rodney had been sincere. “Nothing much to do up here though, come on, let’s go downstairs and watch TV or play something or whatever.”
Rodney didn’t object.
“Right, so we have like a thousand TV channels,” Seth explained as they re-entered the lounge and Rodney went ahead and sat on the sofa, “apparently based on what Mzyra calls ‘real life’, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to find anything decent. But, you know, have a flick through and we can watch anything you like the look of.”
Rodney picked up and just looked at the remote with disinterest, so Seth carried on.
“Or if you can’t find anything you want to watch, we have a bunch of games for the console, we could play one of those. Multi-player, or single-player if you want.” Seth was running out of options to try to make Rodney happy.
Rodney dropped the control and pushed himself up off the sofa to browse the games, though he looked no more interested in them than the TV.
“And I can make us some food too - now if you’re hungry, or we can leave it a bit. I don’t know if we’ll have all the stuff you’d want, but we can get Mzyra to get some in quickly enough. Anything you fancy?”
Rodney didn’t say anything, knelt down in front of the video games and DVDs, but it looked more like he was gazing through them than actually looking at them.
“Rodney…?” Seth finally prompted after a few moments, not sure that he’d even heard him.
Rodney started slightly and looked up at him. “What?”
“Was there anything you wanted to eat?” This was worrying.
“I- No. I’ll just have… whatever. I don’t care,” he said, looking away again.
“Okay, I’ll sort something out…” Seth said slowly. “Do you, you know… want to talk about your death?”
“No,” Rodney said louder and quicker than he’d done anything since he’d arrived. Shame about the answer, because Seth couldn’t help but think that Rodney probably really needed it.
“Well, if ever you do want to talk about it, you know that-“
“’kay,” he cut him off shortly.
Poor Rodney, especially looking so small and vulnerable knelt down like he was. Seth lost his battle of will; “And if you want to hug again, I’m-”
Rodney shut him up with just the intense scowl, though he refrained from telling Seth to fuck off, at least.
Seth rolled his eyes and went to look at what food they had in the kitchen instead.
Rodney hadn’t said whether or not he was hungry and he hadn’t chosen what to do either, so Seth figured he’d busy himself with a salad for both of them until Rodney dictated otherwise. Eventually Rodney joined him, sitting at the kitchen table while Seth diced some fresh vegetables.
“Nothing you liked the look of?” Seth asked.
“Um, maybe later,” Rodney said, and there was a surprising lightness to his voice, and a calmness to his face when Seth turned to look at him.
“Okay, that’s cool.”
“So… What have you been up to?”
Seth laughed. “Not much. There’s not a lot to do here.” Depressingly little. “I’ve played all those games, flicked through all the channels… I won’t claim that I’ve been to every website on the internet, but if you hadn’t shown up…”
“Fun then.”
“Barrel of laughs,” Seth agreed. “But don’t worry, it’ll be better with company.”
Rodney hummed, and when Seth glanced back at him he saw Rodney fiddling with his fingers. He was acting so normal all of a sudden. But when Seth next glanced back through the almost-silence, he saw the strain on Rodney’s face - it was all an act. Still, that wasn’t necessarily bad; sometimes that could help, if what you were covering up wasn’t too much.
So Seth ignored the strain in Rodney’s smile when he served up the salad, and Rodney soldiered through the food politely, though Seth could tell as he did so that he wasn’t really interested in eating. Seth really wished Rodney would just talk to him about it, but Rodney was stubborn and Seth had never known him to be won over by pleading, so he continued to pretend that they were as happy and normal as Rodney apparently wanted to be.
“What we going to do after this then?” Seth asked, through a mouthful of lettuce and croutons.
“Um, I don’t know… Some film?”
Seth contemplated what they had that Rodney might like. “There’s this film, it’s called Ocean’s Eleven - I reckon you’d like that.” It had stealing, and even a little bit of art stuff if Seth remembered rightly, it was probably the best bet.
“Let’s watch that then.”
“Beer?” Seth offered as Rodney settled onto the sofa.
“No. Water,” Rodney said, before thinking to add “please.”
Two more things odd for Rodney. He had to tell Seth eventually at this rate. Still, Seth fetched him a glass before setting the film to play. Though he couldn’t help but study Rodney a little instead. He sat with his legs drawn up, kept his glass of water in one hand, sipping only occasionally, while his other arm was over his stomach. Seth was pretty sure that was called a defensive position. Seth wondered how you could die to feel like that. Or how Rodney would die at all. Murdered, probably; Rodney wouldn’t give up on living easily, and not if he’d come through this traumatised by it. Seth had been kind of murdered; maybe it was the same person, but then why couldn’t Rodney just say that? Seth couldn’t remember his death, but he could empathise a bit.
Seth stifled his sigh and tried to focus on the film. When it got to a bit he thought Rodney would appreciate, he spared him a glance, but Rodney was gazing out the glass doors, through which it had gone dark.
“Are you okay?”
Rodney started again, “Yeah. Yeah, I just…” he rubbed his face with one hand. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day, I think I might just go to bed.”
Rodney would probably be better for some sleep. “That’s okay. We can watch this another time if you want.”
“You don’t have to stop watching it.”
Seth smiled and shrugged, “I’ve seen it before. Go ahead: I’ll just stay and clean up, and then I think I’ll get an early night myself.” Not like he had a great deal else to do if Rodney was going to be asleep.
“Okay…” Rodney said, and trailed off upstairs.
Rodney’s apparent death-trauma aside, Seth felt a lot more contented as he cleaned and washed up with the vague sound of Rodney moving around upstairs. God, he’d been lonely. And Rodney would be back to his usual snarky self soon enough, Seth was sure.
He came upstairs himself just in time to see Rodney ready for bed and heading into his room. “’Night Rodney.”
Rodney nodded stiffly, “Night,” and disappeared.
Seth looked forward to tomorrow as he got ready and did the same, and was genuinely smiling as he turned off the light and settled down into his bed to sleep.
Seth was jerked out of his comfortable sleep by a loud noise, leaving him confused and disoriented. What was going on? Who-?
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCKKNOCK
Rodney. Rodney was here now. But it was still very dark outside and Seth had been asleep…
Seth forced himself out of bed with the urgency of the knocking and opened the door, squinting at Rodney stood wide-eyed in the hallway. “Wha’s going on?”
Rodney stared at him for a few moments, his mouth half-open but silent, before he finally said “I couldn’t sleep. I thought maybe we should do something.”
“I was asleep. It’s like 1:30 in the morning,” Seth didn’t want to be complaining, but seriously. Rodney was the one who’d wanted to go to bed early.
Rodney didn’t seem to have anything to say to that, but nor did he leave. Well, Seth was the one who had wanted company so badly, what did doing random stuff in the middle of the night matter?
He rubbed his eyes and sighed, turning the light on. “Okay, what were you thinking?”
“Um…” Rodney didn’t even have a plan before he’d woken Seth up! “There was, um, those games… A racing one I saw? That looked good.”
Seth yawned and stretched. “Yeah, alright then. But don’t think that, just because I am almost literally half-asleep, you’re going to get an easy win.”
By the time it was set up, Seth was significantly more awake. Random gaming in the middle of the night was a pretty cool idea really; Seth had always been partial to being nocturnal, there was something secret about it.
He sat down next to Rodney, controller in hand, and they spent a good few minutes picking and designing their cars - Rodney went for something sleek in dark red - before Seth picked the beginner track to start on and they got started.
Seth insisted on giving Rodney a 15 second head-start since he had so much more experience than him, and then the race truly began. Rodney eluded him for a little while, disappearing behind bends ahead when Seth approached, until Seth started to catch up- and passed Rodney completely just over a lap in. Seth kept an eye on the mini-map for Rodney following- Except Rodney’s car’s icon wasn’t moving at all. Seth glanced at him- and saw Rodney slumped sideways slightly, controller still in his hands, but completely asleep. Seth paused the game and looked at the clock; it was less than half an hour since Rodney had forced Seth out of bed.
What the actual fuck. Seth had been woken up for almost nothing. But… there was something nagging at him. A familiarity to this. And he realised; how many times had he been awoken by his kids and grandkids, scared and adamant that they couldn’t sleep, only to fall asleep almost immediately once they felt safe? Almost the same fearful wide-eyes… Rodney had had a nightmare. That had to be it. Except… Rodney would not go to that trouble and embarrassment for just a nightmare. It would have to be really bad for him to disturb Seth, and even more to ignore Seth’s complaints about being woken up! This wasn’t just being murdered, Seth felt sure. He needed to know what was going on here.
He slowly got up as silently as he could, and slipped out the glass doors onto the patio, sliding them shut behind him. “Mzyra? Mzyra!”
“Hi,” she said brightly, appearing to his side.
“You still awake at this hour?”
She shrugged with an enigmatic smile.
He ignored that. “What happened to Rodney? I think I need to know.”
“Why?” her eyes studied him.
“He’s obviously not okay, but he won’t tell me anything.”
“It’s better that you get it from him really. He’ll prefer his own version.”
“But he won’t give me his own version! Was he murdered? Was it really bad? Was it the guy who killed me?”
Mzyra gave a suppressed sigh. “You really need to get it from him. It was more than murder. And it’s not going away overnight.”
“So what, I’m supposed to force him to tell me?!”
“No. Bad idea.”
“Then how am I supposed to help if I have no idea what I’m helping?!”
“You’ll figure it out. I have faith in you.”
Seth raised his eyebrows. “Do you?”
“Rodney needs a friend.”
“I am his friend. If he’ll accept me, anyway.”
“Look, I’ll help if I can, but… I don’t want to mess with this. Rodney will not like me and if I interfere too much, it’ll only make it worse.”
Seth could tell she basically meant that she was going to be no help at all. He huffed in frustration and looked at Rodney through the glass, still fast asleep, but an anxious crease starting to form between his eyebrows already.
What should he do with him? He wasn’t in a good position to sleep there. He could carry Rodney upstairs, but that would probably wake him up and make him angry and embarrassed, and Seth probably still couldn’t get into Rodney’s room anyway… And even if he could, how long would it be before he woke up from another nightmare and had to wake Seth up again?
“Do we have blankets?” Seth asked Mzyra.
“No, would you like some?”
“Yeah. And a couple of spare pillows.”
They appeared on the other sofa, one blanket red and the other black; Seth had a sneaking suspicion that Mzyra knew where he was going with this. He supposed it was heartening that she knew and had no complaints, since god knew he had bugger all idea of what to do otherwise. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she said with a smile. “Good luck,” she added, before disappearing into thin air.
Seth slipped back in quietly and picked up the blankets - they were decent, and soft. He carried the red one over to Rodney, draping it over him, and slipping the game controller out of his slack grasp. He also pushed a pillow near Rodney’s head, but not daring to try to move him more in case he woke up.
Then he turned the television and console off, set up his own makeshift bed on the spare and smaller sofa, and settled down to sleep once again, smiling just a little as he noticed that Rodney’s head had now dropped onto the pillow.
“As for these rooms,” Seth continued as they came to the upstairs landing, “we can’t get into these two doors - I know the one on the left is apparently my aunt Kimmy’s, and-“
“What did she do?”
“Um, I believe she killed one of my uncles. I don’t really know; I’ve never met either of them.”
“Are there a lot of psychopaths in your family?”
Seth frowned. And briefly wondered if he was being labelled one too. “Well… We’re a pretty big family…”
Rodney just made a non-committal noise, so Seth continued on.
“This other door is for some guy called Simon.”
“Simon Rossi?” Rodney interjected quickly.
“Um, possibly?” Seth didn’t know the guy himself.
Rodney didn’t elaborate, just gazed at the door. Seth really hoped he was going to actually start saying things soon, because Seth suspected that there was a lot he didn’t know that he ought to, and he sure as hell wasn’t psychic.
“Anyway, the door at the end is to the bathroom, the one to the right is my bedroom, and the one to the left is yours.”
Rodney turned to look at his door, but made no move to open it, just staring warily. “What’s your room like?”
“Pretty good,” Seth conceded. It wasn’t huge, but it was much bigger than the one he’d had at home as a kid. “Double bed, decent size wardrobe, my kinda stuff. I don’t know about yours.” Open yours, he mentally urged him - Seth had been dying to know ever since he’d arrived.
Rodney moved to his door cautiously, but just stopped with his hand on the handle.
“What’s wrong? It’s not going to bite you.”
Rodney gave him an annoyed glance, but finally pushed the door open without moving forward.
There was a lot of red, in a deep rich shade, along with nice dark wood panelling. The bed looked expensive, and hung above it was a copy of a painting Rodney had had in his house when he was alive - one of Rodney’s favourites, stolen away from some museum with bad security.
Rodney slowly walked in to look around, and Seth went to follow him- before hitting an invisible barrier where the door would be if it were closed.
Rodney looked back at him. “You not coming in?”
“I can’t,” Seth forced a wry smile - Mzyra had explained this before. “You can only enter other people’s bedrooms if they trust you enough to do so.”
“Oh,” Rodney said hollowly and looked away. The barrier didn’t disappear.
Seth did his best not to feel hurt - after all, you didn’t necessarily choose whether or not you really trusted someone - and turned back to his own room. At least there was somewhere Seth could go.
And he did like his bedroom, he mused as he went in and reassessed it, it was just lacking in company. He heard Rodney approaching across the hallway, and he stopped outside the door. “Can’t you come in?” Seth asked curiously.
Rodney looked around the doorframe and tentatively put a hand forward - which met no resistance as it went through the entrance, and he cautiously followed it through, still eyeing the frame. Seth wasn’t surprised and smirked wryly to himself. Figures.
Rodney looked uncomfortable stood in the corner of the room with his arms crossed. “Your room’s nice.”
He was just saying that. It wasn’t a lie exactly, but Seth’s room wasn’t as plush as Rodney’s. Everything had just become a bit awkward. Seth would have to remedy that. “Thanks,” he said, as though there was no doubt Rodney had been sincere. “Nothing much to do up here though, come on, let’s go downstairs and watch TV or play something or whatever.”
Rodney didn’t object.
“Right, so we have like a thousand TV channels,” Seth explained as they re-entered the lounge and Rodney went ahead and sat on the sofa, “apparently based on what Mzyra calls ‘real life’, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to find anything decent. But, you know, have a flick through and we can watch anything you like the look of.”
Rodney picked up and just looked at the remote with disinterest, so Seth carried on.
“Or if you can’t find anything you want to watch, we have a bunch of games for the console, we could play one of those. Multi-player, or single-player if you want.” Seth was running out of options to try to make Rodney happy.
Rodney dropped the control and pushed himself up off the sofa to browse the games, though he looked no more interested in them than the TV.
“And I can make us some food too - now if you’re hungry, or we can leave it a bit. I don’t know if we’ll have all the stuff you’d want, but we can get Mzyra to get some in quickly enough. Anything you fancy?”
Rodney didn’t say anything, knelt down in front of the video games and DVDs, but it looked more like he was gazing through them than actually looking at them.
“Rodney…?” Seth finally prompted after a few moments, not sure that he’d even heard him.
Rodney started slightly and looked up at him. “What?”
“Was there anything you wanted to eat?” This was worrying.
“I- No. I’ll just have… whatever. I don’t care,” he said, looking away again.
“Okay, I’ll sort something out…” Seth said slowly. “Do you, you know… want to talk about your death?”
“No,” Rodney said louder and quicker than he’d done anything since he’d arrived. Shame about the answer, because Seth couldn’t help but think that Rodney probably really needed it.
“Well, if ever you do want to talk about it, you know that-“
“’kay,” he cut him off shortly.
Poor Rodney, especially looking so small and vulnerable knelt down like he was. Seth lost his battle of will; “And if you want to hug again, I’m-”
Rodney shut him up with just the intense scowl, though he refrained from telling Seth to fuck off, at least.
Seth rolled his eyes and went to look at what food they had in the kitchen instead.
Rodney hadn’t said whether or not he was hungry and he hadn’t chosen what to do either, so Seth figured he’d busy himself with a salad for both of them until Rodney dictated otherwise. Eventually Rodney joined him, sitting at the kitchen table while Seth diced some fresh vegetables.
“Nothing you liked the look of?” Seth asked.
“Um, maybe later,” Rodney said, and there was a surprising lightness to his voice, and a calmness to his face when Seth turned to look at him.
“Okay, that’s cool.”
“So… What have you been up to?”
Seth laughed. “Not much. There’s not a lot to do here.” Depressingly little. “I’ve played all those games, flicked through all the channels… I won’t claim that I’ve been to every website on the internet, but if you hadn’t shown up…”
“Fun then.”
“Barrel of laughs,” Seth agreed. “But don’t worry, it’ll be better with company.”
Rodney hummed, and when Seth glanced back at him he saw Rodney fiddling with his fingers. He was acting so normal all of a sudden. But when Seth next glanced back through the almost-silence, he saw the strain on Rodney’s face - it was all an act. Still, that wasn’t necessarily bad; sometimes that could help, if what you were covering up wasn’t too much.
So Seth ignored the strain in Rodney’s smile when he served up the salad, and Rodney soldiered through the food politely, though Seth could tell as he did so that he wasn’t really interested in eating. Seth really wished Rodney would just talk to him about it, but Rodney was stubborn and Seth had never known him to be won over by pleading, so he continued to pretend that they were as happy and normal as Rodney apparently wanted to be.
“What we going to do after this then?” Seth asked, through a mouthful of lettuce and croutons.
“Um, I don’t know… Some film?”
Seth contemplated what they had that Rodney might like. “There’s this film, it’s called Ocean’s Eleven - I reckon you’d like that.” It had stealing, and even a little bit of art stuff if Seth remembered rightly, it was probably the best bet.
“Let’s watch that then.”
“Beer?” Seth offered as Rodney settled onto the sofa.
“No. Water,” Rodney said, before thinking to add “please.”
Two more things odd for Rodney. He had to tell Seth eventually at this rate. Still, Seth fetched him a glass before setting the film to play. Though he couldn’t help but study Rodney a little instead. He sat with his legs drawn up, kept his glass of water in one hand, sipping only occasionally, while his other arm was over his stomach. Seth was pretty sure that was called a defensive position. Seth wondered how you could die to feel like that. Or how Rodney would die at all. Murdered, probably; Rodney wouldn’t give up on living easily, and not if he’d come through this traumatised by it. Seth had been kind of murdered; maybe it was the same person, but then why couldn’t Rodney just say that? Seth couldn’t remember his death, but he could empathise a bit.
Seth stifled his sigh and tried to focus on the film. When it got to a bit he thought Rodney would appreciate, he spared him a glance, but Rodney was gazing out the glass doors, through which it had gone dark.
“Are you okay?”
Rodney started again, “Yeah. Yeah, I just…” he rubbed his face with one hand. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day, I think I might just go to bed.”
Rodney would probably be better for some sleep. “That’s okay. We can watch this another time if you want.”
“You don’t have to stop watching it.”
Seth smiled and shrugged, “I’ve seen it before. Go ahead: I’ll just stay and clean up, and then I think I’ll get an early night myself.” Not like he had a great deal else to do if Rodney was going to be asleep.
“Okay…” Rodney said, and trailed off upstairs.
Rodney’s apparent death-trauma aside, Seth felt a lot more contented as he cleaned and washed up with the vague sound of Rodney moving around upstairs. God, he’d been lonely. And Rodney would be back to his usual snarky self soon enough, Seth was sure.
He came upstairs himself just in time to see Rodney ready for bed and heading into his room. “’Night Rodney.”
Rodney nodded stiffly, “Night,” and disappeared.
Seth looked forward to tomorrow as he got ready and did the same, and was genuinely smiling as he turned off the light and settled down into his bed to sleep.
Seth was jerked out of his comfortable sleep by a loud noise, leaving him confused and disoriented. What was going on? Who-?
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCKKNOCK
Rodney. Rodney was here now. But it was still very dark outside and Seth had been asleep…
Seth forced himself out of bed with the urgency of the knocking and opened the door, squinting at Rodney stood wide-eyed in the hallway. “Wha’s going on?”
Rodney stared at him for a few moments, his mouth half-open but silent, before he finally said “I couldn’t sleep. I thought maybe we should do something.”
“I was asleep. It’s like 1:30 in the morning,” Seth didn’t want to be complaining, but seriously. Rodney was the one who’d wanted to go to bed early.
Rodney didn’t seem to have anything to say to that, but nor did he leave. Well, Seth was the one who had wanted company so badly, what did doing random stuff in the middle of the night matter?
He rubbed his eyes and sighed, turning the light on. “Okay, what were you thinking?”
“Um…” Rodney didn’t even have a plan before he’d woken Seth up! “There was, um, those games… A racing one I saw? That looked good.”
Seth yawned and stretched. “Yeah, alright then. But don’t think that, just because I am almost literally half-asleep, you’re going to get an easy win.”
By the time it was set up, Seth was significantly more awake. Random gaming in the middle of the night was a pretty cool idea really; Seth had always been partial to being nocturnal, there was something secret about it.
He sat down next to Rodney, controller in hand, and they spent a good few minutes picking and designing their cars - Rodney went for something sleek in dark red - before Seth picked the beginner track to start on and they got started.
Seth insisted on giving Rodney a 15 second head-start since he had so much more experience than him, and then the race truly began. Rodney eluded him for a little while, disappearing behind bends ahead when Seth approached, until Seth started to catch up- and passed Rodney completely just over a lap in. Seth kept an eye on the mini-map for Rodney following- Except Rodney’s car’s icon wasn’t moving at all. Seth glanced at him- and saw Rodney slumped sideways slightly, controller still in his hands, but completely asleep. Seth paused the game and looked at the clock; it was less than half an hour since Rodney had forced Seth out of bed.
What the actual fuck. Seth had been woken up for almost nothing. But… there was something nagging at him. A familiarity to this. And he realised; how many times had he been awoken by his kids and grandkids, scared and adamant that they couldn’t sleep, only to fall asleep almost immediately once they felt safe? Almost the same fearful wide-eyes… Rodney had had a nightmare. That had to be it. Except… Rodney would not go to that trouble and embarrassment for just a nightmare. It would have to be really bad for him to disturb Seth, and even more to ignore Seth’s complaints about being woken up! This wasn’t just being murdered, Seth felt sure. He needed to know what was going on here.
He slowly got up as silently as he could, and slipped out the glass doors onto the patio, sliding them shut behind him. “Mzyra? Mzyra!”
“Hi,” she said brightly, appearing to his side.
“You still awake at this hour?”
She shrugged with an enigmatic smile.
He ignored that. “What happened to Rodney? I think I need to know.”
“Why?” her eyes studied him.
“He’s obviously not okay, but he won’t tell me anything.”
“It’s better that you get it from him really. He’ll prefer his own version.”
“But he won’t give me his own version! Was he murdered? Was it really bad? Was it the guy who killed me?”
Mzyra gave a suppressed sigh. “You really need to get it from him. It was more than murder. And it’s not going away overnight.”
“So what, I’m supposed to force him to tell me?!”
“No. Bad idea.”
“Then how am I supposed to help if I have no idea what I’m helping?!”
“You’ll figure it out. I have faith in you.”
Seth raised his eyebrows. “Do you?”
“Rodney needs a friend.”
“I am his friend. If he’ll accept me, anyway.”
“Look, I’ll help if I can, but… I don’t want to mess with this. Rodney will not like me and if I interfere too much, it’ll only make it worse.”
Seth could tell she basically meant that she was going to be no help at all. He huffed in frustration and looked at Rodney through the glass, still fast asleep, but an anxious crease starting to form between his eyebrows already.
What should he do with him? He wasn’t in a good position to sleep there. He could carry Rodney upstairs, but that would probably wake him up and make him angry and embarrassed, and Seth probably still couldn’t get into Rodney’s room anyway… And even if he could, how long would it be before he woke up from another nightmare and had to wake Seth up again?
“Do we have blankets?” Seth asked Mzyra.
“No, would you like some?”
“Yeah. And a couple of spare pillows.”
They appeared on the other sofa, one blanket red and the other black; Seth had a sneaking suspicion that Mzyra knew where he was going with this. He supposed it was heartening that she knew and had no complaints, since god knew he had bugger all idea of what to do otherwise. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she said with a smile. “Good luck,” she added, before disappearing into thin air.
Seth slipped back in quietly and picked up the blankets - they were decent, and soft. He carried the red one over to Rodney, draping it over him, and slipping the game controller out of his slack grasp. He also pushed a pillow near Rodney’s head, but not daring to try to move him more in case he woke up.
Then he turned the television and console off, set up his own makeshift bed on the spare and smaller sofa, and settled down to sleep once again, smiling just a little as he noticed that Rodney’s head had now dropped onto the pillow.