𝘗𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘳 ~ [𝘋𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘥 𝘹 𝘖𝘊]

⇒ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɴɪɴᴇ

Things got a little rough. It had been a few days since the incident with Preston's play, and I was being very mature about the whole affair... By avoiding David as much as I could. I knew the redhead pretty well and figured he'd forgiven me almost instantly, but I also had a hunch he'd keep searching for the reason, something I couldn't deal with at the moment.

Fortunately, I had my hands filled with the campers.

"I told you not to do fire safety camp and political history camp in the same day unless you wanted it to turn into riot control camp." Gwen sighed exasperated as David entered the cabin, a placard of some great leader's manifesto emblazoned stuck round his shoulders, someone having thrown it on, and covered head to toe in soot, bandana smoking slightly. "Avery, get me some scissors so we can get whatever Marxist slogan this is off him." I nodded silently, moving some paperwork from the desk to find what I was looking for. I wandered back over, holding them up.

"Here." I gestured for her to take them, but she didn't.

"Can't you do it, I'm looking for burn cream." I glanced at David for a second, swallowing. I decided to continue to stand awkwardly, giving Gwen a knowing look. "Are you serious?" She scowled at me. "This is getting ridiculous, you two need to sort out whatever is going on right now, because I'm sick of it. Get out of here. Go, take a break, and don't come back until you've made up."

"What?!" The redhead and I queried incredulously, almost in sync.

"Take the camp-mobile." She chucked the keys at David, turning back to her book.

"W-what should we do?" He asked, a little confused.

"How the hell am I supposed to know? Just do whatever it is you two do to blow off steam before I get hypothermia from how frosty it is between you both!" I didn't feel like arguing with that tone of voice. Gwen was one of my closest friends, but I knew when to stop pushing her. She had a danger zone when it came to 'tolerating bullshit', as she put it. I could tell the counsellor was getting close to it.

"Alright." I didn't say anything else, electing to wait outside for the redhead while he changed into some less-charred clothes. I only ended up standing against the cabin for a few minutes before he exited. I noticed a speck of dust left on his shoulder, that I flicked off without thinking.

"Oh, thank you." I nodded, not really replying given how awkward the situation already was. How were we going to survive a car journey to god knows where like this?

"So... What's the plan?" I avoided his eyes, focusing on what was turning out to be a really interesting cedar tree.

"We could... I don't know, go camping?" I turned to actually look at him, regarding David with no small amount of skepticism.

"Are you serious? Your way of getting a break from camp is to go camping?" I raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

"Well, it's all I really know, everything's been about my job, so... Besides, I promised we'd go during our fall break, but we never got the chance, so I guess, making up for lost time?" He was pleading real hard, I could tell. Ah what the hell, Gwen isn't going to let us back till this is sorted, might as well.

"Okay then." I nodded. His face lit up, the redhead heading over to the car. "We'll need to go into town to get equipment." I added.

"I'll drive!"

* . °•★|•°∵ ∵°•|☆•° . *

Unable to deal with the silence of the first half hour any longer, I pulled out my phone and plugged in the aux, letting music fill the voiceless impass between us. It still felt a little out of place, usually when the two of us ended up in a car together listening to music there was joy and singing along. Evidently not happening.