Smoke in the Sky // Linkin Park

Prisoner Bourdon?

### Updating clearly isn't my strength. Apart from that, I'd like to apologize for any mistakes in this chapter and hope you enjoy reading.

"I hope Chester's okay", Dave frowned, looking in the direction of the door Brad had just left through to go look for their friend.

"Probably not." The little shrug earned Rob a cold look from Mike who subsequently turned his back on them, taking a moment to regain his composure. And when he was facing them again, he acted as if nothing had happened a few minutes earlier. As if he hadn't just deeply hurt his best friend. Only the two lines between his eyebrows that had grown a little deeper were an indicator of his sorrow.

"Reports on the shuttle?"

"I made dinner!" In an attempt to lighten the mood a bit and make the frown on Mike's face fade away, Rob raised his hand like a preschooler and excitedly pointed in the direction of their little kitchen-corner. "If you guys could do me a favor, please tell me if the carrots taste any differently. I tried this new technique to ma-"

"Did you pee on them?" Pretending to gag, Joe looked at his friends assembled around the table and was glad to see them shaking their heads at his bad joke but laughing, nonetheless.

"Speaking of it", for once even serious Rob cracked a little smile as Dave started speaking, while Shinoda just sighed with a wave of his hand.

"Here we go again."

"The water recycling system wasn't bugging the other day, someone probably just crashed against it and a cable got a little loose." With their flight path not being a straight line, accidents like this were prone to happen and nothing out of the ordinary. That, of course, hadn't stopped them from being a little concerned over the red warning light that had refused to stop glowing even after being smacked multiple times. "But I could fix that in like five minutes. So, don't you worry, we won't run out of water anytime soon and can produce enough fertilizer for Rob's plants to grow."

"You're gross!" The biologist shook his head, having given up on explaining his friend the difference between using Nitrogen, a byproduct of their water recycling system, to aid the growth of his plants and peeing on them. Besides, Dave's constant jokes were keeping him entertained while he tried to figure out ways to make their food grow faster or at least stay alive until it was big enough to be turned into dinner. Something he'd already done when they'd all lived together, earning him the honorary title of Plant Dad.

"That's why you're responsible for the plants and I just maintain your little suns." Dave returned with a couple plates, forks and the pan filled with food he'd found in the oven. "Remember the time our neighbors got a glimpse into your room?"

"Man! I've never been more confused than when the cops showed up the next morning!" As a plate was placed in front of him, Mike finally sat back down and seemed to relax a bit, reminiscing about the weird things that happened during their college time.

"Don't remind me!" With a sigh, Rob rested his head on the table, hoping his friends wouldn't notice that the memories of what he considered a low point in his life, still made him blush unlike anything else.

"Dude, I honestly didn't think they would take you to the police station and throw you into jail for it!" It wasn't necessary for him to look at Mike to see his smile grow wider with every word before he eventually burst out into laughter, leaving it to Dave to continue the embarrassing story.

"To be fair, your room really looked like you were growing plants", he raised his hands to put the word in quotation marks by drawing them into the air, "to sell them as drugs."