Monsters in the night

3

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He took a step back, trying to call for his dog. His voice got stuck in his throat. The other person walked closer. The dog-paws had disappeared. It was dark. A tight feeling squeezed his chest, made it difficult to breathe. He took another step back. The latter took a step towards him. "What do you want?" The whispered question got no answer. A cold hand on his wrist. He tried to get out of the grip. The grip tightened. A sharp pain in his foot as he twisted it whilst stumbling backwards.

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Ant was already waiting in front of his house when Joe's car pulled up the following morning. As usual, their driver had picked up Dec first and was now waiting for Ant to get in to get them both to work.

"Morning!", Ant greeted cheerfully as he opened the door and got into the car. He met Joe's eyes in the mirror. "Morning", Joe greeted back, smiling fondly. "You look tired", he stated and Ant chuckled sheepishly. "Yeah, went to bed a bit late", he admitted whilst buckling his seat belt.

Then, he turned around to Dec. "Good morning you", he said, a slightly amused smile playing around his lips. Dec didn't look at him. "Hey." Ant had almost not heard his greeting. Immediately, he started to frown. With a quick glance in Joe's direction, he asked with lowered voice: "Okay, what's wrong? Did something happen?"

A hundred worst-case-scenarios flew through Ant's head; he watched Dec closely. The latter was slumped in his seat, shoulders pulled up to his ears in a defensive way, glance fixed to an undefinable point somewhere nowhere. His fingers fiddled almost unnoticable with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. "I'm good", Dec mumbled quietly, still not looking at Ant.

Ant opened his mouth to dig further but Dec held one hand up. "Please, Ant. I did not have the best of nights, that's all." He had raised his voice only the slightliest bit but he got his point across; Ant closed his mouth again and fell quiet.

When they eventually arrived at ITV studios, not a word had been spoken between the three of them. More than once, Joe had been on the verge of starting to ask the boys questions because the silence worried him, but a quick glance into the mirror had always held him back. Ant and Dec had looked out of their window each, watching the landscape fly by, both not really in the mood for explaining themselves.

The driver had also noticed the shy, worried looks that Ant had directed towards Dec; so he assumed that Ant had no idea either why Dec wasn't talking. But both of them were clever enough and knew Dec so well to not try and make him talk.

Summed up, the atmosphere wasn't the best as Ant and Dec got out of the car to finally get inside the building. Both of them thanked Joe as usual, making eye contact even, but as they started walking over to the building, Joe noticed an awkward distance between the two of them. A few inches only, not exceptionally large, but only too obvious due to the fact they were literally glued to each other's sides usually.

Shaking his head lightly, Joe got back into his car, watching Ant and Dec until they had disappeared from his sight.

Meanwhile, Ant and Dec were on their way to room seven, where they would have the first meeting of the day.

"Do you already have ideas for the scripts?", Ant asked into the way too quiet corridor. It was a stupid question; he knew exactly that Dec always had ideas for scripts, but he needed to ask something that wasn't related to Dec's well-being.

The silence between them was uncomfortable and despite the slight annoyance that Ant felt inside him, the worry started to drown everything else out. When Dec and him had said goodbye a few days ago everything had been perfectly normal. They had talked during the car ride and had hugged before they had parted for a few days off. Something must have happened during those days to explain Dec's weird behaviour and Ant decided to himself that he would give Ali a ring later.