Things are crazy with school. I'm sorry, I'm gonna try and keep up with these updates a bit better. Hope you all are well!

Raven's POV

After Abby completely bombards Raven at work on Thursday morning, Raven is convinced she'll never hear the end of Wick's worrying. She expects to wake up in a dark room with a metal table and one chair and a light shining right in her eyes as he wears away her resilience until she agrees to dole out cash she didn't have for treatment she didn't need. Instead he orders pizza on Tuesday night and they move the coffee table and sit on the floor while he digs out the game Taboo. It's technically for teams, meaning you need at least four people to properly play it, but they make it work. He's terrible at giving clues but she manages to be excellent at guessing anyway. He keeps getting worse and so she starts being terrible at clue giving as well, because it was hardly fair that he gave the worst clues ever and she the best. Eventually it's devolved into the two of them giving the vaguest hints and seeing who guesses it first. "You can't just say, 'it's a thing' and leave it at that!" "You can't just say 'it exists' and not add anything else." "At least I ruled out all of the things that don't exist.")

The whole process entertains them longer than it probably should and after sometime Raven lies back on the rug and closes her eyes. It wasn't that she was tired necessarily, but the threat of her leg was hanging over her now in ways that it hadn't before and the weight of it was heavy.

Even though her eyes are closed and she can't feel a thing, she knows Wick's massaging her leg. She'd long gotten past the point of wanting him nowhere near it or yelling at him when he touched it without her knowing. This somehow became a thing between them and it helped so much that she didn't have it in her to fight him.

She lets a happy sigh slip past her lips and she can imagine his smile at the sound. It was weird, because she'd had someone love her before and had returned her love towards them. He too looked at her with warm eyes and gentle smiles and he knew just where to kiss her and how she liked her back rubbed and what to do when she was in a bad mood. He figured those things out largely through trial and error but occasionally with her own voluntary offering of information. There was something different about the way that Wick regarded her though. She never expected that someone could appear to love her so fully when she offered so little in return.

Of course he thought that he hid it. But she saw right through his dopey eyes and lovesick smile. It wasn't fair maybe, but she wasn't about to have the 'I'm not in love you with you let's just be friends' conversation with him. If her running out the door after a single kiss wasn't enough of a tip off then it might just be a lost cause altogether.

"Hey," she murmurs when his hand has moved on to her right leg. He squeezed and rolled and tightened all along the muscle and she could feel every movement and she didn't shy away like she once did. Wick doesn't answer but she knows he's listening. "Clarke and Bellamy invited us out this weekend, if you're interested."

There's a long pause and she wonders if maybe he hadn't actually been listening. "Like a double date?" he finally asks, voice thick and teasing and his fingers more so tickling beneath her knee than massaging.

"Well considering you and I aren't dating and Clarke and Bellamy aren't dating…then no." It had been Bellamy's idea and Octavia had already texted her an hour before saying she had to say yes because this might finally be her big brother's chance to get laid and, ever since the whole pregnancy announcement, did he seriously need to blow off some steam. So she said yes and Bellamy picks some sushi place just outside of town. Raven takes twenty dollars from her pay check after looking up the menu online and reminds herself not to feel guilty because just three days prior she had forked over three hundred dollars to some guy with a teardrop tattoo on his face and a freaking kid with him. Her mom did a lot of terrible things throughout her childhood but at least she never brought her along on drug deals.

He makes a sound of agreement and she kicks her foot in his general direction when he ventures too far past her knee. "My aunt is already talking about us coming up for Easter," he says and she can hear the smile in his voice.

Mainly the idea fills her with excitement. She thought of the crazy little kids and the dog who laid his head on her leg and his aunt with her warm, soft hugs and impressively good mashed potatoes. She also knows the implications though. Raven was no fool on how family's thought. "Do you normally go there for Easter?"

"No," he says, chuckling. "Apparently the kids keep pestering her about when Aunt Raven is coming again."

Even with the implications her whole body warms. She didn't even like kids, but if she had to deal with any of them she guesses she would pick that crazy crew. "They're all nuts," she murmurs but it's with a great deal of affection covering her tone. Pushing up on her elbows she looks down at Wick. He laid on his stomach, his hands reaching out as they dug into her skin. "But I'd like to see them again."

There's a brief thought floating through her head about how Easter was a month and a half away and the potential for holiday pay and what did people even do on Easter. But then Wick looks over at her and she decides that just this once she wasn't going to think.

The restaurant doesn't smell like fish when they first walk in and Raven is relieved. They meet Clarke and Bellamy there and find them at a small table in a corner of the restaurant with not enough lighting and one place setting short of their four person party. Wick doesn't pull out her chair and Raven appreciates him all the more for it.

"How's school?" Wick makes the mistake of asking after they've sat down and Bellamy looks at him with mild fury as Clarke sighs the heaviest sigh Raven has ever heard in her life.

"Never mind him," she says, waving his question away and putting a hand over his mouth as he starts to protest. "Did you guys hear about the roof that collapsed on the Starbucks? Crazy stuff, right?"

Clarke rolls her eyes and Bellamy asks, "Which Starbucks?" with genuine concern.

"You can't tell me the Bronco's didn't totally earn that win!" Raven demands of Bellamy after their drinks delivered. Somehow the topic of football had been brought up and though it wasn't like she sat around watching it regularly, she just so happened to get stuck working day shift the day of the Super bowl and there was a TV in the waiting so she figured, why not.

"It was almost as much as a rip off as the Ravens win a few years ago!" he practically shouts, the soda sloshing in his cup as he gestured a little too wildly with his hands. Clarke reaches forward and plucks the cup from his hand, setting it back on the table far enough away that he wouldn't accidentally smack it over.

"You're a child," she explains when he looks over at her with a furrowed brow at his lost drink. "I'm saving us from having to explain that to the waiter in a few minutes."

One more wild gesture and Wick decides to break it up for good. "Mostly because I don't really know what you guys are talking about," he explains.

When they order Raven is a little astounded at the sheer amount of food Bellamy and Clarke get. They ramble off roll after roll and she's pretty sure some of them weren't even on the menu. She must look as flabbergasted as she feels because Bellamy tells her, "Clarke can never make a decision when we come. You're more than welcome to eat the absurd amount of leftovers that she's about to leave in her wake." She doesn't mind that he's offering her charity, in the form of someone else's food, because at least he disguises it well.

"Well if you guys aren't planning to eat it all…" she shrugs and just asks for a refill on her water.

"How's Octavia?" Wick asks once the server's gone and Raven kicks him under the table. "Ow?" he only half commits to it, looking to Raven in question as to why he's being abused.

She shakes her head and looks at Bellamy who just grins. "You sure have a thing for bringing up sore subjects," she tells him.

"She's fine," Bellamy answers in a gruff voice. "Threw up for the first time yesterday," and Raven swears she hears the 'too bad, so sad,' hidden in his voice. "And she was pissed she couldn't come tonight." No sushi when you're pregnant, apparently. Raven still wasn't sure if that was a real thing or if Bellamy was just trying to find some sort of cruel and unusual punishment.

"What'd your mom say?" Raven asks.

When he laughs for a second across the table she knows why. Clarke clears her throat and starts on a story of her insane calculus teacher who continuously rambles about the beauty of math. "Like no kidding, he solved an equation and then stood there in silence for a full minute before asking us if we felt that 'special tingling' too." For the first time in a long time, Raven is not jealous of Clarke's college education.

"Clearly math did a number on him," Wick jokes, face splitting into a wide grin at his terrible joke. Raven shakes her head, embarrassed that this idiot was the person she chose to keep company with. "Seriously though, sounds just like Raven whenever she gets under the hood of my truck," Wick adds and she reaches out and smacks him again. "I'm gonna start hitting you back in a minute," he jokes and she smiles because she can see the teasing in his eyes and she knows there's nothing to be afraid of.

"That damn thing would have blown up when you took it over sixty if it weren't for me," she reminds him.

When their food comes it doesn't take Raven long to pick up on how gross Clarke and Bellamy were. They ate off each other's plates and shared the same soy sauce cup. For a couple of people who weren't a couple, they sure acted like one. Bellamy gets soy sauce on his chin and Clarke is looking at him like she's ready to lick it off. It's a little uncomfortable.

"Have you ever done this whole raw fish thing before?" Wick leans over and asks her in a whisper.

With a shake of her head Raven stares at the shrimp tail sticking out of the sushi roll closest to her. "If I'm paying for fish I usually expect it to be cooked." It looked bit…slimy for her taste.

"Oh stop being wusses," Clarke, who apparently had been paying attention, says as she pushes a plate towards the two of them. "This one is deep fried for crying out loud. I think you'll both make it."

Raven picks up her chopsticks and easily manoeuvres them as she picks up the piece of sushi, her and Octavia had become perfectionists at the art of chopstick wielding back in the sixth grade when they were convinced boys would find it sexy. (Finn thought she was crazy when she showed him her new skill and promptly pulled a fork out of the drawer to eat his sweet and sour chicken with.)

Wick struggles an unbelievable amount and she laughs tremendously when one of his attempts leave his sushi roll face down , soaking in the soy sauce dish. "Oh my god how are you so incompetent at this?" she asks, taking his hand in hers and moving his fingers as she needed them.

"As an engineer," he opens with which usually meant he was about to say something that would make her roll her eyes so far back they were looking at yesterday. "I would never have stuck with eating with something so impractical. I'm not evolutionarily set up to use chopsticks because even if I had been born in China three centuries ago I would have still created a better tool to eat food with than two skinny pieces of wood."

"Are you done?" she asks, steadying the first stick in between his fingers.

"Also tongue splinters," he adds but then, thankfully, stops.

The dinner as a whole is a little awkward with Raven, and probably everyone else, silently trying to convince themselves that it wasn't awkward. Raven wasn't familiar with the whole, even amount of people paired off together. Also she fell into conversation easiest with Bellamy, which left Clarke out a lot. It was a fine line to walk and she didn't have very good balance.

But then they all eat way too much, Bellamy hadn't been lying about their leftovers, and then he's cracking jokes over vanilla ice cream that only half tasted like ice cream, and Raven is laughing so hard she has to hold her stomach while Wick has a tear rolling down his cheek. Clarke shakes her head at first but then she's falling into Bellamy as her shoulders shake and they turn into the loudest table in the restaurant. Everyone else probably hates them for it. Too bad none of them care in the slightest.

Wick's arm falls around her chair and Raven doesn't even mind because it's just kind of what they do. If he doesn't take her home tonight right after this little event she doesn't doubt for a second that he'll work away at her tense muscle and they'll sit a little too close on his couch. It wasn't fair to Wick and she knew it, but that didn't make her change her ways. When it came to kissing and a proper relationship she shut him down so fast, but when it came to everything else, all of the other boyfriend-y things that there are, she couldn't deny him. Which was terrible and she was probably going to hell for it but whatever, he gave good massages.

Bellamy and Clarke both stick their credit cards in the bill when Wick is gone in the bathroom and Raven shoves her twenty at them in an attempt to help cover some of what must be a very expensive meal. "You're kidding me, right?" Bellamy asks, not touching the money.

"I ate as much as you guys," she argues and feels bad she hadn't brought more. Even if they didn't have it to spend, it would be nice not feel so ashamed and poor all the goddamn time. "Just take it."

"Our order, our treat," Clarke says with a shrug so Raven snatches her money back off the table and shoves it in her pocket. After all, money clearly wasn't an issue for Clarke or her family.

By the time Wick makes it back the whole ordeal has been sorted and the bill brought back. There's no fortune cookies to end this meal and Raven figures that might be for the best. "I should go," Clarke grumbles as she glances at her cell phone for the time. "Organic chemistry isn't going to study itself."

She sounds distraught but Wick looks down right gleeful at the mention. For a minute Raven's worried that this weird pseudo role they've all slipped into where they're adults who go on double dates that aren't double dates is going to keep playing out. But thank god Clarke doesn't kiss her cheek and Bellamy and Wick don't hug and pat each other on the back. They walk outside and Bellamy bumps his fist against hers and Clarke waves goodbye as she half runs to Bellamy's car to get away from the cold. "See you guys later!" she shouts just before she disappears into the car.

It's cold and the roads had been wet earlier, leaving icy spots all through the parking lot. It takes Raven almost slipping once before Wick has his arm wrapped around her waist and is half holding her up while pretending not to. When they get to the truck Raven knows she doesn't stand a chance getting in her usual way with the thin sheet of ice that sits on the blacktop beside her door. She bites her lip, waiting for Wick to walk away so that she can try something else, maybe. He must have the same thought though as he swings open her door and holds her steady as she tries to boost off with her good foot. She doesn't get very far due to a complete lack of traction, but his hands push her up the rest of the way. He shuts the door to the truck before she can say anything.

In a few minutes the heat warms and the truck moves slowly but steadily, and it all makes her limbs feel heavy and useless and her mind shuts down a little bit. This damn truck was always putting her to sleep. "Tonight was fun," she says through a yawn, stretching out her arms and her hand somehow finds itself settled against Wick's arm for a second. She lets it stay there for a tense moment before pulling it away.

"It was," he agrees quietly and Raven just knows that his eyes are between watching her and the road. "Clarke is pretty chill."

"Yeah." Since their impromptu sleepover Raven had found herself weakened in every aspect when it came to Clarke Griffin and her perfect family that wasn't perfect and her college education that she didn't want. She had a bright smile and an easy posture but sometimes her eyes were too sad or her shoulders tense and Raven knows what it's like to pretend to be okay when it didn't really feel that way. "I like Clarke."

"Did you want me to take you home or…" he fades off, waiting for her to fill in the 'or' so he didn't have to.

Raven throws a spare thought to her mother; she'd left a few days ago with her new boyfriend and hadn't been back since. Raven worried but not excessively. It wasn't like there was a way to find her. She always came back in the end. Sometimes a little more broken and a lot more angry, but she came back. The silence at home is nice, but the loneliness still finds its way to her when the only sounds are the heat kicking on in the middle of the night and sirens speeding by on the road outside. "Your place is good," she says with an attempt to sound uninterested in the idea. "The roads suck anyway." They pass her place to get back to his but he doesn't argue.

Perhaps she should have known what would come eventually. He had gone far longer without bringing up the topic than she ever thought possible. His silence on the issue was soon to end. She's already thrown herself onto the couch and tossed her brace halfway across the room. She bends it a few different ways and the lets it hang limply off the couch.

When Wick falls next to her a few minutes later she waits for him to ask for her leg, ready for him to work the sort of magic she never could on her muscles. He doesn't. So with her hands and some repositioning she picks it up and lays it right in his lap, drawing his eyes away from the TV and down to her leg.

"I've been thinking," he says, still not touching her.

"That's worrisome," she grunts and uses what she has of her muscles to pick her leg up half an inch and set it back down on his lap, demanding.

"Yeah, well it's actually probably for the best if you just keep not taking care of your leg," he says and his voice is so obviously serious that she knows he's essentially throwing a tantrum right now. "I mean, for me at least."

"Oh yeah?" she plays along so he can make his point and then do that thing that makes her knee unlock.

She watches his hand fall to her leg and then not move at all. "Well think about it, if you get your leg chopped off that means I get all the benefits of a handicapped friend." She glares now. "Great parking, shorter lines at the amusement parks, ooh and those great seats in movie theatres. We'd have a ton of leg room. Which will at least come in handy for me."

"Alright, I get it," she finally says. Even though she had been so ready to write him off and ignore him, his words were getting to her.

"I'm not done. Because, okay think about this, Halloween costume opportunities. We can totally be pirates and fashion you a great peg leg."

"Wick, stop," she wishes her voice wasn't all broken. "Your point has been made."

The demeanour falls away and now he just looks angry as his hand grasps her leg, though she can't feel it and he turns to stare in a way that makes her feel naked. "Do you, Raven? 'Cause you have a doctor telling you you're gonna get your leg amputated and your response is…what? Take your brace off once in a while? Have me massage it more? What are you going to do when its six months down the road and there's nothing left to sustain you so you can't walk and then six months after that when it starts dying off. And how about after it's gone and it hurts ten times worse than it does now even though it's gone and a prosthetic pinches and chafes your skin every damn day?"

His words hit hard because she knows that he's been researching. Which of course he has. Wick probably came home that morning after Abby's outburst and Googled everything that was happening and that could happen and he faced the truth in a way she couldn't bring herself to. "What do you want me to do?" her voice comes out in a snarl because he doesn't get it. No one ever gets it.

"Go to the damn doctors! I've spent more time with you these past few weeks than without, and I haven't once seen you do any of those exercises you're supposed to. And I've seen you stretch like what, twice?"

"I can't do any fucking exercises, Wick." Her breath whooshes out in exasperation. "It hurts just to bend it and I have a pamphlet full of pushing and pulling and things that are impossible." When she'd first gotten home and there had still been fire in her veins from the operation and an emptiness in her chest from sending Finn away, she had been determined. She'd tried like no other to do each and every outlined exercise that had been explained to her. It not only killed her every time, but it was damn near impossible. She fell down and couldn't get it to move the way she needed and it just lead to frustrated tears and lying on the floor for longer than was necessarily normal. "And who's paying for therapy exactly? Because it's not an ER. They turn you away unless you have insurance."

"Then we find a solution," he tells her with urgency in his voice and determination in his eyes. "But you can't just give up, Raven." He sighs out her name and it makes her heart beat faster and tears sting her eyes and she doesn't think about how her mom has been gone for three days or the way the bills keep coming or how her leg isn't even the thing that hurts worst right now. "You're worth something too."

He says it like a reminder, but it's actually more of a revelation.

"I know." She didn't.