Emma is keeping an eye on the dusty, rust-flecked mirrors a lot. She hasn’t been seeing anything alarming so far, but the hair on her neck and shoulders is prickling. There is no reason for it to do so.
The wind blasting through the open Jeep does not alleviate the creepy stillness of the surrounding heavy tree cover. She doesn’t like the dead breathless air when they stop, and she’s tired of her damp underclothes dragging red sore marks into her skin. The verge of the road is narrow, and there are no pullouts, only side roads that come up with very little warning. Then there’s the dead black water in the ditches, which could be four inches or three feet deep, and no way to guess which. It means she cannot relax her concentration as long as the vehicle is moving. She’s starting to feel like she’s nothing more than the veined eyeballs in a Grateful Dead poster.
She sees Dance’s gaze meeting hers, in the center mirror, quite often. She’s surprised he’s still awake. Barret enjoyed a nice long arcane discussion with Dance about alternative measurements of the octave, shouted back and forth into the back seat. But then the poor guy’s brain remembered he hadn’t slept much for two days, and Barret switched off like a light. He’s fallen back into the corner of his seat against the door, jolting every time they hit a pothole.
There’s some serious potholes, too.
That hasn’t kept Drin awake either. Once Barret drifted off to sleep, she could see that Dance went about making brisk, efficient use of that tail of his to unzip Drin’s wonderfully tacky polyester pants and slide a good length of invisible, sensitive tailtip into them, and relieve them both of a certain amount of pent-up need. Dance’s sexual heat hasn’t let up just because he’s been dosed by a little bit of Lacey’s venom inhibitor for the trip, and certainly not because they have to behave in front of company.
The wind noises covered any racket they might be making as they kissed. Having a tail with interesting optical properties that make it nearly impossible to see on its own is not adequate to excuse the very visible rumples and movements it causes when sliding around in Drin’s pants. Drin was clearly very happy to accommodate it, too.
However, Drin hasn’t been sleeping much lately either, and having a long-overdue orgasm in the back seat of the Jeep has finally laid him out too. He’s leaning over into Dance’s support, drooling a little on Dance’s shirt.
There’s a plastic wrapper blowing distractingly around in circles in the back seat near Drin’s hand. Something Emma can’t see in the mirror flicks around, crumples up the wrapper, lifts it forward between the front seats, and stuffs it into the trash bag Emma put by the stick shift.
Emma lifts one hand and makes the AmsLan sign for ‘thanks’. When she glances down briefly, she notices the wrapper in the trash bag is labeled, “Frozen Mice’.
She blinks and puts her eyes back on the road before her steering wobbles any further. There’s aspects of Dance’s new life that disconcert all of them, and times when Dance himself freaks out about it. He hates admitting it, but he can eat a whole pet-store bag of those poor things in the same way he used to eat potato chips, and still vaguely want more.
They haven’t said anything about it, about any of it, to Barret beyond calling it “family troubles”. In this part of the country, it’s a phrase that covers just about any contingency.
Emma makes the next turn on her directions, gritting her teeth against the potholes, and gets them moving again. The feeling of heavy, dull urgency has only been getting stronger as the staticky local radio stations have been getting more laconic, shifting over more and more into discussing the weather. Down here, the call-in shows all refer back to past events as, “The Storm.” Nobody has to name it.
She gets annoyed, as she can’t make out half what they’re saying anyway over the wind noise, and turns it off. There’s a tropical depression, fine. They should get where they’re going and batten down and make sure they have enough supplies, fine. She’s got all that. She’s a damn fool for getting herself out here in the first place–all just peachy fine. Fine!
She can feel something hot and smooth slide up against the side of her leg by the stick shift, brushing lightly at her thigh. She puts her hand down onto nothingness, and feels the smooth, hot texture of Dance’s tail curl slightly into her fingers, stroking the back of her hand. It stays loose enough to release her instantly if she needs to put the hand back on her driving.
She pets it distractedly, feeling how incredibly hot it is. He’s dumping extra heat load from it as much as he can, so he would probably show up clear and sharp as a photograph on infrared scopes. She’s been watching for somewhere to stop for gas and groceries, and hasn’t seen anything she felt inclined to risk. She’s thinking she may have to take the next thing she sees, regardless. They need to get some ice into their cooler for him to roll the tail into, and to hell with what Barret thinks of it.
She looks back at Dance in the mirror, smiles a little, and pats the tired snake-tail trying to help her stay awake and alert. He smiles back.
===
Challenge: bjd_30minfic, prompt 6, lazy or tired