Dance Me To The Moon [Sebastian Vettel]

19. What Am I To You (II)

The house was immersed in silence, the fireplace long extinguished when morning arrived. Outside, birds were chirping and twittering. Alone, curled under the plaid blanket, Stella slowly whirred into consciousness as flashes of the night before played in her mind. For a moment, she questioned whether any of it had really happened or if she'd just dreamt it. The good and the bad. New day, new beginnings, though. Reset and restart. Half awake, she got up and threw the blanket over her shoulders, wrapping herself in it, and padded outside the living room barefoot.

Sebastian was standing in front of the kitchen sink with a mug between his hands, gazing out of the window.

The rebellious strands of hair at the front were golden with the rays of morning sunlight and Stella could see his lashes. The wooden floorboards creaked as she walked nearer and she half expected him to turn around. But there was no sign of movement.

Wherever Sebastian was in that moment, it was not in the present time in his kitchen.

It was only when she was already leaning against the cabinets next to him that he started and looked at her with honest surprise across his face.

"Morning," she tilted her head to the side with a soft smile.

He pressed his lips together, reatributting the smile coyly. "Morning."

Putting his mug of tea down on the granite surface, he turned his back to the window and propped his bum against the counter, gripping the edge with both hands.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah," he said airily. Too quickly.

There were visible dark circles under his eyes now without direct sunlight on his face. He looked worn, in fact. A stark contrast to the day before and to his usual morning chirpiness. It took Stella a bit to fall back asleep the second time, after she went to the toilet in the middle of the night, but she hadn't noticed if he was awake. It would be easy to blame tiredness on a night spent on the living room's floor; however, it was clear that was not the reason. There was something on his mind.

Watching him carefully as he pushed himself off the edge of the counter and then awkwardly hesitated in the middle of the kitchen, she could all but see the wheels of his brain turning.

"I... do you want coffee?" He scratched at the back of his head. "I was going to prepare breakfast but didn't think you'd be up so early."

"Coffee would be lovely but it can wait." She bit her lip. "Are you sure everything is okay?" It wasn't ideal to press on but if this was brought on by the previous night... "Was it something I did...?"

He turned to her suddenly with big eyes. "No! Of course not, butterfly. Come here," and he went to her, embracing her warmly. She rested her head against the crook of his neck, her arms folded between their chests. "Of course you didn't say anything wrong." He sighed again.

It was always like that, wasn't it? He always touched her like he cared deeply, no action ever meaningless but always heartfelt. It was one of the things she most loved about him, Stella would readily admit, the physical language of touch and how he was so affectionate. So often she witnessed people who displayed no harmony between their body language and the words they spoke or the thoughts in their mind. But Sebastian embodied his soul. He was physically expressive and communicative; capable of conveying more emotion and feeling with the simplest of touches than others would with grandiose gestures or words. And it didn't happen only with her - she'd seen it in the way he interacted with people ever since they met. It was who he was and it was effortless.

So it was all the more frustrating when, in moments like this, she couldn't find a satisfying correlation between the way he touched and at the same time what he communicated. There was something off.