Where Is Your Rider (OFFICIAL WATTPAD UPLOAD)

Chapter 16

"You talk in your sleep."

Ranboo jolted awake with a yelp, sitting up so fast he hit his head on the wind chime dangling from the eaves. Swearing, he gingerly massaged his forehead, and turned to face the speaker.

To his surprise, it wasn't Tubbo, or even Tommy.

No, it was none other than Velvet, the guy who seemed to spend all of his time in either the garage—usually waist-deep in the innards of an old, rust-bucket car or plane with his headphones turned up so loud that Ranboo could hear the music through them—or in the kitchen.

Currently he was standing on the porch next to Ranboo's seat and fixing him with his signature uncomfortably intense stare.

Velvet's left eye twitched. Ranboo wondered if it had just been his imagination.

Now that Ranboo thought about it, he hadn't learned a lot about Velvet in the past three days they'd been staying in the Badlands Commune, waiting for the slow, clunky old computer in the basement to download the data off the stolen drive, even though the sunglasses the man had given him lay heavy in his pocket. Unlike the others—Boomer, Gumi, Corpse, Billzo, Hannah, and Skeppy seemed more than happy to tell Ranboo about themselves, but Bad was usually busy with Tommy and Antfrost was apparently notoriously secretive—the man was still an enigma.

A really bizarre and kind of unnerving enigma with a rather perverted sense of humor, but one that definitely piqued Ranboo's curiosity.

"Don't make a habit of falling asleep in chairs like that, kid," Velvet remarked. "It kills your back,"

Ranboo blinked, awkwardly avoiding eye contact. "Uh. Okay?"

There was an awkward beat of silence.

Velvet suddenly winced, rubbing the back of his head, and his careless demeanor slipped for a split second. "Ow. Damn. Haven't had a headache this bad in a while."

Then he turned and headed back towards the Old Ones' power plant, muttering to himself.

Ranboo frowned.

He still wasn't sure how he felt about that guy.

With a sigh, he got up, stretching and wincing as his back creaked and opened the cabin door. He'd fallen back into his old habit of drifting off to sleep in a chair on the porch, listening to the rain. There was no rain here in the Otherside, though; the upper jungle soaked it all up. Last night he'd listened to the jungle, letting his mind go blank and quiet as the distant churring and chattering of insects and rustling of the fungi and the undergrowth lulled him to sleep.

He liked it here. It was... peaceful.

Ranboo slipped into the kitchen, checking the clock on the wall. It read 07:53.

Well, almost time for breakfast.

He winced as he headed down the hall to the bedroom, slipping off his mask—he decided not to think about the strange, stomach-turning ache the action brought—as he went and gingerly setting it down on the table. His head hurt, but it couldn't be from bumping it on the wind chime. It was a strange dull ache in the lower back of his skull, like something was scraping on the inside of his brain.

What struck him as odd, though, was the fact that Velvet had seemed to also have a headache, in the exact same place and at a similar level of intensity: not very painful, but just enough so that it was irritating and most definitely noticeable.