Author's note: This is just for people that have not read the message on my profile - Updates will become rather irregular now, I can't promise when the next update will be. I am now back at college and we are already getting a lot of coursework, this year is much more demanding than last year, so of course coursework is a bigger priority than writing fanfiction. I will write whenever I get a chance to but please do bear in mind that I have two other fanfics as well as this one so I have a lot to balance right now.
That doesn't mean I am not still writing! I am still writing, I'm just going to be updating pretty irregularly.
Please read and let me know what you think! Negative or positive, I appreciate all reviews xo
21st September 2013
"Xav, get the hell out of my room!" Zed exclaimed, throwing a cushion in his older brother's direction.
Xav, who was rooting through Zed's wardrobe, looked over his shoulder and used telekinesis to drop the cushion to the floor before it hit him. He turned back to the wardrobe and went back to looking through the clothes. "In a minute," he replied to Zed. "I have a date with this Russian tourist chick tonight, you won't believe how hot she is. And dude," he turned back around. "She has a sister the same age as you. I said you'd come with us, a double date; she refused to go unless her sister went too, some crap about not wanting her to be alone."
This wasn't an unusual occurrence between the two brothers. Out of all seven Benedict boys, Zed and Xav were known as the biggest 'ladies men' of the family; Victor had been enough of a charmer to rival the two but that had all changed since he started dating Hazel. Numerous times the two brothers had gone on double dates with two sisters or friends and considering neither had had a date for a good few weeks now, Zed wasn't surprised that Xav had arranged for a double date. It would get them out the house and let them have a little fun. Normally Zed would jump at the chance of having that, but not anymore.
Zed said, "you can borrow a shirt but you'll have to find somebody else to go with you."
Xav spun around, looking shocked. "Did I just hear you right?" He raised his eyebrows. "Since when did you turn down a date? What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Nothing," Zed put down his history textbook and shrugged. "I just can't do tonight. Too much homework and you know that I can't let myself fall behind this year. Ask Yves, he could do with a date. He doesn't get out enough."
Xav scoffed. "Yeah, you're right. I'm taking this one," he held up a red shirt of Zed's and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Ok, so maybe Zed hadn't told his brother the whole truth. Yes, he really did have homework to do but it wasn't due back until next week so it wasn't necessary that he did it tonight. The truth was, he simply didn't feel right going on a date with some tourist that he'd never met before. Not when his soulfinder was right in the house next door. Why would he go on a date with some other girl when he now had Blue in his life?
They had grown closer this last week, no longer ignoring each other at school. When he didn't have cross country training, he had even walked home with Blue and Daisy. He couldn't lie, he was enjoying being close to her and having her be sarcastic yet nice to him instead of snapping and being stroppy. He was growing accustomed to all her little habits and he found himself constantly trying to make her laugh and smile because seeing her laugh and smile was one of the most amazing things in the world to him.
Zed was suddenly overcome with the desperate need to see his soulfinder, like every beat of his heart was his heart straining to leave him and go find it's other half.
He got off his bed and wandered over to the window, peering out and across at Blue's room. Her white curtains were closed, preventing him from seeing inside the room. Without even barely thinking, just determined to spend his Saturday evening with her, he opened his window as wide as it would go and lifted himself up, swinging his legs outside. He had climbed out of his window and down the tree whilst sneaking out of the house more times than he could remember so this was easy for him. He reached forward and grabbed hold of a branch of the tree, pulling himself forward so that he was sat on the strongest branch that reached from one side to the other, a perfect way to get from his house to next door. He scooted along the branch, making sure to keep a grip on other branches as a support as he went along.
Finally, he got to the end of the branch and was close enough to the other house that he steadily managed to lean forward and knock on the window in succession three times. After just a few short moments the curtains were pulled open and Blue was stood there, looking at him through the window with wide eyes and a look of confusion on her face.
Zed grinned and mouthed, "open the window," to her.
Shaking her head at him in disbelief, she pushed the window open. "What are you doing?" She asked in almost a whispered hiss. "You know, there's a thing called a door. You could have knocked on it so I could let you in that way. It's actually what most people do, believe it or not. I know that a door is a very strange concept that you may not understand but it is actually very simple to use. I can teach you how much better a door is than a window if you'd like."
He rolled his eyes, a grin on his face. "Ha-ha. You never stop with the sarcasm, do you? I used the window because... Well I don't really know why, it seemed like a good idea at the time but now this branch is very uncomfortable so are you going to let me in or not?"
"Fine, fine. Come on," she stepped back so that Zed had enough room to swing himself through the window and into the bedroom. Once steady on his feet, he looked around the bedroom. It was the first time he had actually seen it up close, only having seen glimpses through the window beforehand. The walls were a light blue colour, the entire wall to his right hidden by shelves and shelves of books crammed onto them; some books were even on the floor because there weren't enough room left on the shelves. She had a double bed covered in a purple duvet and an array of fluffy cushions, a desk and stool, a wardrobe painted white, and a rocking chair. The whole room was spotless with not a thing out of place, everything arranged neatly. Even her books seemed to be in alphabetical order.
"I don't think my room has ever been this clean," he joked.
Blue shrugged and wrapped her arms around herself. "I don't like things being messy and out of order. It feels like I'm not in control of it and I don't like not being in control of something."
Zed didn't say anything in reply. It struck him that maybe this was the vulnerable side of her that Victor had mentioned countless times that Zed hadn't yet seen. Was this OCD-ness why she had been at Rosewood? He wanted to ask but was afraid of offending or upsetting her. He looked at her. She was wearing black leggings and a red vest top; the top showed off her jutting collarbone and her shoulder bones sticking out. It gave him a pang in his chest. She was so thin that he worried about her, he really did.
"So what did you want? Why are you here?" Blue asked, lurching him from his thoughts about her weight.
"Oh right, yeah. Well I just wanted something to do for the evening. Xav invited me on a double date with him and some tourists but I turned him down so I thought I'd come over here so you and I could like, hang out or something."
"Why didn't you go on the date?" She asked, not meeting his eyes.
"Didn't feel like it. Why are you bothered?" He asked, smirking.
"I'm not! I was just wondering," she said in a defensive tone. "I don't care if you go on a date or not."
"Yeah you do," his smirk turned into a full-on grin. "Remember, you admitted that you like me so you can't hide anything from me now. But don't worry, I like that you'd be jealous if I went on the date. Plus if it makes you feel any better, I didn't go on the date because I wanted to hang out with you instead."
Blue's cheeks blushed and she smiled. "Oh. Well I wasn't entirely jealous, just a bit... So what do you want to do? We have to stay in my bedroom and be quiet otherwise my dad will wonder how you got in here."
"That's fine by me," he replied. He walked over and settled onto her bed, stretching his legs out in front of him and making himself at home as he patted the space beside him. Blue walked over and sat next to him, crossing her legs and making sure they weren't close enough to be touching. "So, have you thought anymore about asking Elliott if what Jon said was true?" He asked, approaching the subject straight-on but in a cautious tone. Blue had confided in him about Jon's visit a few days ago and although he was happy she was opening up to him, he was sad that she was having to go through all this.
Blue shook her head. "I don't know. I'm not sure what to do. I don't believe what Jon said but it's still there at the back of my mind and old memories keep resurfacing. I remember when Jon would come by on my birthday or at Christmas and my parents wouldn't let Daisy and Poppy meet him, just me. I thought that was weird but didn't think too much about it. Jon always seemed so happy to see me, more than just an uncle would which is what my parents told me he was to me, and he'd stay for as long as he could. He was always so reluctant to leave and I remember him arguing with my parents more than once or twice. One memory just won't leave me alone: it was my ninth birthday and he didn't want to leave and I remember him saying to my parents, 'I should be allowed to have access to see her, you can't keep doing this to me, it isn't fair.' I don't want to believe what he said, I really don't think my parents could lie to me my whole life like that, but..."
"The doubts are still there," Zed finished her sentence for her, nodding his head in understanding. "I know it's hard Blue, but you're not going to start feeling any better about this until you have answers. It's going to keep nagging at your mind. I think you should talk to Elliott and trust him enough that he would tell the truth." To be honest, Zed believed what Jon told Blue about Elliott and Judith keeping him away from her. Not only did he remember overhearing Victor on the phone earlier in the year during Elliott's case, hearing him mention something along the lines of 'he's Blue's real father but she's never looked at him in that way, no matter how hard he tried', but he just had a gut intuition that was telling him that for some reason, what Jon had said was the truth. He hadn't told Blue any of this however as he didn't want to be the one to sway her judgement. He wanted it to be her decision to talk to her father about this. "But if you still don't want to, that's okay," he added, contradicting his first opinion.
"Yeah," she breathed out. "You're probably right. It's just hard. Anyway," she said in an attempt to change the subject. "You know, we don't know that much about each other. We know more than we used to, but still not enough."
Zed grinned, filled with a euphoric feeling that she herself had chosen the topic of them getting to know each other. "I'm an open book, ask me anything."
"Okay. What's your savant power? We never really talk about the fact we're both savants, do we? We've been focusing more on school and normal life things."
Zed nodded his head in agreement. "That's true. Well seeing as I'm the seventh child in my family, I have more than one power like most seventh children do. Firstly, I can read minds- don't worry, I can't really get into your mind that much, you must keep shields up a lot of the time, right?" She nodded with a smile. He continued, "and my second power is the same as my mom's power. I have visions of the future, possible outcomes and events. Sometimes I manage to change the future and prevent that from happening but only if I fully understand what the whole vision entails."
"That's cool! I always wanted to be able to see the future. Daisy has visions of the past by touching a certain object which I always envied her for, but seeing the future would be much better."
Zed laughed. "Trust me, it's not as great as it sounds. It can actually be a huge pain in the ass. Daisy has the same power as my brother Trace by the sounds of it. What's your power?"
"Well I'm one of those rare anomalies; a child that's not the seventh in the family yet still has more than one power, although neither one of my powers are all that impressive."
"I'll be the judge of that. Go on, tell me."
"Fine, fine. Okay, so I can take people's pain away if they have an injury. It's actually not that useful, it's not like I can heal people. If somebody was dying in front of me I wouldn't be able to help them, just take the pain away."
"I think that's really useful," he disagreed with her in awe. "You'd make the last few moments of their life peaceful. Loads of people would want that. I think you're totally underestimating yourself here, that's a really great power to have."
"I guess it's just a matter of opinion," Blue shrugged. "It'd be better if I could take my own pain away too but I can't, I still have to suffer... Anyway, my other power is astral projection."
"Are you being serious?" He raised his eyebrows, staring at her. "Astral projection? As in the power where you can literally have an out-of-body experience and go somewhere else without anyone seeing or hearing you whilst your body stays put in one place?" Blue nodded. "Man, that is awesome!"
"It's boring," she disagreed. "It takes me a while to be able to do it because I have to be in a deep, calm meditation state of mind. And then there's nothing to use it for. I can move objects around but I can't talk to anybody or anything like that."
"You're always so negative about everything," he teased, rolling his eyes. "I think astral projection is pretty cool, you'd be able to spy on people and everything. But whatever, I guess you're entitled to your own opinion. Okay, get ready. Here come even more questions."
That made Blue laugh and they quickly launched into a game of seeing who could ask the silliest questions to get to know the other. They bantered back and forth, enjoying each other. Zed learnt that despite her name and the colour of her bedroom walls, Blue actually hated the colour blue; he learnt that Disney movies were always her favourite ones; she had a weird love for eating marshmallows that were dipped into melted white chocolate before sprinkling it with shredded cheese of all things (Zed was disgusted at this but she insisted it was actually delicious); she once spent an entire week with hardly any sleep and food just so she could finish a Rubik's cube, which Poppy ended up messing up the very next day; she once sat near Dave Grohl on a plane and creeped him out by staring at him in awe practically the entire six hours.
As they talked, she seemed to get more comfortable in his presence. Without either of them noticing it, they had closed the distance between them on the bed until their bodies were leaning against each other and Zed had wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"- So there we were, covered in baking powder, Xav with his foot stuck in the toilet and me holding a goldfish in a plastic bag in one hand and a bloody knife in another, and Will walks in and says, 'Jesus, you actually did it. You know we were only joking, right? That wasn't mom's, that was a fake'. He totally started laughing at us both and we would have gone after him if it weren't for the fact we were so shocked that we'd just gone through all of that for nothing."
Blue burst out laughing and the end of Zed's little tale, the sound of her laugh making him grin. "I can't believe that," she said, shaking her head in disbelief. "If I were you and Will and Uriel pulled that prank on me, I would have killed them." She looked up and saw him staring down at her. She frowned a little at him, looking confused. "What? Why are you staring at me like that? Do I have something on my face or something?"
Zed felt like he had stepped out of his body and he wasn't in control of himself anymore, the soulfinder bond and his feelings for her were controlling him. Instead of answering her, he reached his free hand up to cup her cheek in his palm, registering her light gasp before he leaned down and kissed her.
A hint about the next chapter: Blue has a few decisions to make and Zed gets himself in trouble at school.