5 / inch
She can keep up the act for about two days before his constant asking where she's taking them thins her patience to something subatomic. She nearly runs a semi off the road as she pulls over in anger and snaps that she hadn't planned this, or rather, she'd planned on driving aimlessly. She just wanted to get out, she says. She thinks they're in Vermont but can't be sure.
He's all for free spiriting, he says, but he buys a map at a gas station.
"You know you can use your phone for that now, right?" she says.
"Maybe I like having a paper map," he says. "Something physical."
"You're geriatric."
"You just haven't had the pleasure of my backseat navigational skills. Trust me. After all the time I've spent driving these roads alone, I can get us anywhere."
When he's finished looking over the map, he struggles to fold it back up correctly and she can't stifle her cruel laughter. Surprisingly, he has nothing to say about it.
He seems worried about her. He has moments, here and there, when he seems to take stock of things. Who he's with, how they got here. And he quiets down. She thinks he is thankful to have been given this inch, and in those moments, she can't tell which of them is the psychologically sounder witch.
They fight, to be sure. For as much as she detests him, they can't be paying for two motel rooms every night. They can't afford it. He has learned to respect her personal space and comes no nearer than the walkway at the foot of their beds. But fuck, how he talks. And his fuse is almost as short as hers.
Evenings when they've settled and she has the energy, they work on honing his craft. When he gets frustrated, she gets nervous, which makes her just as frustrated. Sometimes she escalates the tension and yells at him. His response is to yell louder at her to calm down. She has tried to spell him through the windows and over the second-floor balcony. For his own protection (and their anonymity) he siphons. He isn't always gentle. She smacks him. She is never gentle. Fists and jaws clenched, he has to go for walks sometimes and she thinks it's to avoid hurting her, but his restraint impresses if it doesn't disappoint her. He is defying expectation.
"This isn't normal," she says over and over.
"Yeah, well, we're not normal people," he tells her every time.
Their better nights are the TV on, Chinese takeout spread out on his bed. She's getting more comfortable lengthening the radius she considers Kai-friendly space. Nineties sitcoms are generally neutral ground, but she has her least favorites and he has his. When nothing good is on, he gives her his phone and she reads Google Docs scans of Gemini grimoires. She doesn't ask who scanned them, or how hard it was for him to request them. As leader, it's his responsibility to know all he can about his coven, but she gets the sense that his transition into power has not been made easy for him.