They had been driving for the better half of an eternity. Lero could feel his brain slowly starting to deteriorate, the unfortunate outcome of hours pressed too-tightly against various other members of their small crew in a cramped van. Brian had turned the radio off entirely an hour ago, citing a headache (Which was total bullshit, and they all knew it was because Jay wouldn't quit flipping channels in the passenger seat.) and Lero was going to murder someone if they did not get out of this wretched vehicle. The situation had devolved at an astounding rate, the overly loud whirring of the engine spurning a sort of madness within him that had lain complacent only on the terms that the radio remained on. The fifteenth time that he asked if they were there yet, Brian had slammed on the brakes and pulled the van into a rest stop just off the side of the road.
Lero could only find a minimal amount of guilt stowed away inside of him when the other man turned around to stare him dead in the eyes. "Get out." He would have laughed, were it not for the deadly serious tone that Brian employed.
"You can't be serious. You're going to leave me here, in the middle of nowhere?" What little guilt he had salvaged evaporated, replaced instead by sheer incredulity. He deferred automatically to Bob, propped lazily in the seat beside him, to talk some sense into Brian since he was obviously completely mad. Bob, in his ever helpful way, was asleep. Snoring from the backseat indicated that Oliver would be equally useless.
Brian sighed, pinching his thumb and forefinger over the bridge of his nose. "Just... I think we need to get out and walk around a bit. I'm not going to leave you here." Despite the misunderstanding, he couldn't find it in himself to feel bad over the assumption. If it were anyone else, he would have ditched them ages ago and felt no remorse. But Lero was so small, and generally sickly, and he just couldn't bring himself to abandon him in the mists of the forest that they found themselves passing through.
The next big city they hit, though, it was no holds barred.
Lero huffed, but carefully extracted himself from the window seat and around Bob, somehow managing to do so without waking him up and incurring his wrath. Jay appeared beside him as he quietly slid the door closed behind him, pointing him towards a lone picnic table stationed in the middle of the rest stop. It was the only sign of any human colonization in the area.
"Doesn't this look inviting." Brian threw his arms out, trying to encompass both the pathetic excuse for a rest area and the vastness of the forest in one demeaning gesture.
"More like the setting for a horror movie." No one could hear him, having run ahead, but Lero was at least comforted by the fact that he could always say 'I told you so' when an axe murderer inevitably decided to make themselves known.