Berrybog Boys (BxB)

Chapter XV: The Phone

The drive back to Ciaran's apartment was calm. Since it was getting late, the road leading to Edenderry was dark and empty. After the chaos of his ride with Nils, it felt almost too calm. The silence bothered Ciaran more than usual. He turned on the radio, but any station he tuned to was annoying him. Every song was too loud, every radio speaker too cheerful. He felt like he was going to crawl out of his skin, energy bubbling in his veins without anywhere to go.

After fifteen minutes of one of the worst car rides of Ciaran's life, he was glad to be almost home. The lights of the house, where he was renting the upper floor, were deceptively close.

Maybe he wasn't as careful as he should have been. Maybe he was driving a little too fast. Maybe he did focus too much on the stupid radio and not enough on the road.

Maybe he should have noticed the deer before they were right in front of him. Illuminated by his headlights on the old, country road, their dark eyes staring through him.

With a string of curses that would put a sailor to shame, Ciaran hit the breaks. The car slid on the wet asphalt. He swerved, trying to neither hit the animals nor drive headfirst into the stone wall of his house. With a crash and a squeal of tires, the car fell off the road, hitting the low, wooden fence and driving into the front yard, rolling over the manicured lawn and Ms. Thompson beloved roses, before finally coming to a stop on the low shrubbery.

Ciaran sat there for a few seconds, gathering his bearings. He opened the door, breaking the bushes even more in the process, before sliding out of the car. Feeling that he did enough damage for it to not matter, he laid down, flattening the unlucky tulips that used to grow there.

Looking around from his horizontal position, he couldn't spot the deer anymore. They were gone as suddenly as they appeared, not even a trace of them left. He, however, left quite a lot of traces. All over the garden and the fence of the house he was renting.

Ciaran was convinced that somehow it was all Nils' fault.

***

By the time Nils woke up, it was pitch black outside. He reached to the floor by the side of the mattress for his phone, but all his hand had encountered was cold wood. Shit. He must have thrown it somewhere with his pants. For a minute he stumbled around in the dark, until he felt the material of jeans underneath his feet. He picked them up and checked the pockets. No luck.

Turning on the lights hurt his eyes and didn't bring him any closer to finding the phone. The floor of his room was... definitely not empty, but that particular object was not there.

Shit again. Did he lose it in the car? Was he going to have to call Ciaran? Actually, would Alexander have to call Ciaran?

Quietly, trying not to wake up his housemate, Nils made his way downstairs, hoping he might have lost the phone somewhere on the way. He tried to avoid the creaking floorboards, but there were a few he always forgot about. It would have been easier, if there were more of them that didn't make the sound than the ones that did.

In the end, his effort was't worth anything. When Nils got to the ground floor, he could see the faint glow of light coming from the kitchen.

Alexander was sitting at the dining table with a mug of tea and a sketchbook, putting a lot of faith into one of the rickety chairs that Nils made. He only raised his eyes when he heard his friend entering the room. He must have heard Nils walking down the stairs, but it was nice of him to pretend that he didn't.

"Hey. How are you feeling?" Alexander asked in a smooth voice. Nils glanced at the wall clock behind him. Shit, it was over 2 in the morning, why was Alexander still awake?