Not a bomb (Zoe, Cai, Danny, Rachel, Val)
To pick her up, Cai would have to drive the ridiculous distance to Zoe’s house and then all of the way back toward Danny’s, which was only a mere twenty minutes (on a good day) from Cai’s church. It would have been faster for Zoe to get a ride to Danny’s house with Liz, and though Zoe was worried about Rachel… speed didn’t feel like the most important thing.
She waited outside, across the vast lawn from the house, shivering in her coat near the gate. Cai gave her a very unimpressed ‘why aren’t you waiting in the warm?’ look as she piled into his car, pulled off her gloves with her teeth and pushed them up against the heater. “Turn off your face,” Zoe said, not looking at him.
“No,” said Cai. “I can’t. It’s judging you too hard. It would be like holding back the tides.”
“Eyes on the road, Finch.” Zoe reached across the car and pushed his face away. Her fingers were burningly cold against his cheek and he wanted to snatch them out of the air and warm them up. It took a moment before he realised that there wasn’t anything stopping him.
Just… the constant threat of visions and how hard it was to drive after visions and how he had to get them both to Danny’s because Rachel was very upset.
Just that stuff.
Cai grabbed Zoe’s hand from the air and kissed her stupidly cold fingers. Zoe didn’t pull her hands away, she didn’t even glare at him as much as she might have, a few months ago. The (slightly frightening) unspoken words between them warned one day we’ll be out of time completely and Cai smiled and said but not yet. Zoe gently pulled her hand away only to curl it gently behind his neck and kiss him softly on the mouth.
His concern about her warmth was very touching, she wanted to say, but that face was totally uncalled for.
His goddamn face that was just too much, sometimes. Half the time Zoe wanted to pull his hoodie down so she didn’t have to look at him. He made her feel ridiculous. Like holding down the exclamation mark on her phone and just
!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s what his stupid face did.
And maybe one day a bomb was going to go off and taken them both out or maybe one day a demon was going to kidnap them and kill them under a roaring waterfall but it had been nearly three months since her ear-splittingly loud static vision and life still plodded on, one day after another. Another few months and Zoe would be facing her first heavy duty university exams and another few months Cai would be out of high school and maybe the world would end or maybe it would continue.
And? In the meantime, they had this thing.
This… not-dating but not-nothing thing that Zoe didn’t want anyone else looking at because they’d only look at it wrong. And she was sure their families knew something was going on and obviously Danny and Rachel knew but so long as no one tried to talk to her about it then everything could stay like it was, kind of untouchable, unruinable.
Things were going to get ruined, Zoe knew that. Obviously, things were going to be ruined somehow. She might never have a proper vision again and that failing in her might get him killed. The world was going to fucking burn. Like, logically? She knew that. Her brain knew that. It totally did.
Zoe wasn’t entirely sure how she managed to keep ignoring this fact, but somehow, when he was around with his… with his unbearable face, she did. It was like the future didn’t matter, like the past didn’t even matter, all because he leaned in close enough she could feel his breath on her neck.
It was stupid.
Zoe didn’t want it to stop.
He made all the evil in the world harder to believe in.
It was early Sunday afternoon and the traffic was abysmal. Rachel was safe at Danny’s though, and there wasn’t anything they could do until they got there and Cai had some very important music to introduce to Zoe and music wasn’t going to slow the traffic down so Zoe let him, and found excuses to poke him or tease him or lean into him when the lights stayed red too long.
Course, once they rounded Regent’s Park Zoe started to stiffen and straighten up, tucking her hands round her sides instead. “Worried about Rach?” Cai asked, turning the music down.
“Trying not to till we’re actually there,” Zoe replied.
Cai smiled to himself, aware of how unbearable Zoe could have been. He'd seen her stressed almost to breaking before, when something like Rachel getting in trouble at two in the morning would have flipped her right out.
"Well, you held out worrying this long," he said, smiling proudly at her. "Good for you."
Zoe hit him in the arm. "What do you think she did?" I think I did something really really bad Rachel had said on her post.
"Trying not to guess till we're actually there," Cai said, with an irritating smile. "Look," he told Zoe. "She has a habit of thinking the worst of herself. Whatever's happened, we'll deal with it. You know that."
"Hm," said Zoe, stiff-backed in the passenger seat. But she did know it. Whatever Rachel had done, Zoe didn't think it was going to be anything as bad as a bomb (or a demon with a lair under a waterfall) and as such, they could deal with it.
There was something weirdly comforting about having a huge and vague threat hanging over her head. It made everything else easier to cope with.
That and Cai's dumb optimistic face.
Still, worry nagged at it, it just didn't drown her as it once would have. Zoe pulled herself out of the car as soon as Cai parked and hauled it toward Danny's front door. It was locked, which was equal parts frustrating and comforting, and Zoe leaned heavily on the doorbell instead.