Work Text:
It was the end of a school day.
As Mr. Stewart packed up his stuff and left, he checked his phone to see a lot of messages from Sam.
"Huh.. that's different from usual."
After school ended for the students and Mr. Stewart himself, he would usually get messages from Sam from at least an hour or two ago; asking him about how his day went and/or talking about his own day.. But as he glanced up at the messages he had sent, he saw messages sent early in the morning.
hey
I'm sick
I just wanted to let you know
Ah. At least he knew why he was up that early. He went to the most recent texts he got from him, about 30 minutes ago.
Could you call me at some point
?
I want to hear your voice
at some point
also I keep falling asleep
and waking up to my messages to you open on my phone screen
Sam wanting to hear his voice over the phone made him want to call just for that, and now he was planning on asking about his sickness. While walking to his car, he texted him back:
I'll call you once I'm driving in my car.
And that's what he did. After getting situated in the car, he connected his phone to the speaker and called Sam; propping up the phone to the side and beginning to drive out onto the road.
Calling: Sam Speed
...
"Hey!" Sam said over the phone.
"Hey Sam, how have you been feeling?"
"Mm, I've been better," He paused to cough. "I woke up early and felt dizzy when I got up from my bed. And the more I did things, the worse I felt, so I called in sick." When Sam mentioned that, his voice became a bit sadder; Mr. Stewart noticed that.
"I see.. have you taken medicine?"
"Yeah, I have.. but I've just been sleeping all day mostly. I'm not really that much of a sleeper, but it happens a lot when I'm sick."
"Huh. I guess when you're sick, all that fast paced action you do finally has the perfect time to catch up with you."
Sam chuckled at his remark. "Yeah, maybe you're right." He cleared his throat, which honestly didn't have much of an effect on his hoarse voice. "I should go and eat, I haven't eaten anything all day."
"You should go do that. Being starving all day makes you feel pretty awful, and while you're sick; it's a bad combination."
"Yeah, that's true."
He heard Sam get up and walk into another room, hearing footsteps from carpet to wooden floor and noises of cabinets and drawers opening and other things. Hearing Sam become occupied with that gave Mr. Stewart a moment to focus on the environment outside, and noticed rain falling on his windshield.
"It's raining now, that's fun.." He said unenthusiastically.
"You don't like the rain?" He heard Sam's voice ask.
"It's not that I don't like the rain, I just want to get home before I have to walk into my house drenched in the cold-ish weather."
The rain wasn't all that bad in reality. It wasn't coming down too hard; it was at a comfortable pace.
"Aw, you don't wanna end up sick with me?"
"No Sam, I have a job and I would like to go to it any chance I can." He said it with exaggerated dryness; Sam laughed.
"Ah, of course, what was I thinking?" he responded, piling onto the joke. That made Mr. Stewart laugh back in response.
As he stopped at a red light with cars in front of him, he looked back at his phone and saw that Sam requested to change to face time.
"Really? You know I'm driving right?"
"Yeah I do, I just want to see you."
"..Well," Mr. Stewart said, clicking the accept button, "I am at a red light right now."
He could see Sam properly now. He was standing in his living room in front of the couch, holding a bowl of cereal and staring at the screen, wrapped in a blanket. The way he looked made Mr. Stewart smile humorously.
"There's the guy I was talking to." Sam gave him a warm smile seeing his face, and sat down on the couch.
"Hi there." Mr. Stewart gave him a wave before seeing that the traffic light turned green, and scrambled to focus on driving again. He could hear Sam eating as he drove, probably just staring at him with a silent smile on his face. With the rain giving nice atmosphere and the person he felt so much for practically next to him, he felt at ease.
The two of them then chatted about their days (Mr. Stewart explaining his time with the students he taught and Sam talking about how the odd dreams he had while he was asleep) and how things had been going with other people they knew as the drive all the way to the house flew by. Soon enough, he was at his destination; parking his car out on the driveway.
"Hey, do you mind if I get off the call? I'm at my house. You can call me later, but I need a break from my phone."
"By going to go work on your laptop, right?" Sam remarked.
"I can't control where I do my work!" He said it with exaggerated umbrage, but he ended up laughing through it.
Sam stifled a laugh, trying not to spit out his food, and Mr. Stewart just smiled and relaxed. A part of him didn't want to get off this call and just sit with him all day in the car, but he had things to do and he couldn't sit in his car all day just to talk with him.
"Thanks for keeping me company while I drove."
"I should be thanking you, really. I love you, and I'll text you if anything happens.. thanks for cheering me up."
"Of course, anytime. I love you too, bye."
"Bye."
Sam ended the call before Mr. Stewart got to, but it didn't matter that much to him.
When he looked up from his phone to the sky, he noticed the rain became softer, just barely making noise against his car.
He should get out of his car now, shouldn't he?