Somewhere along the way Wick figures out her work schedule. She never spells it out for him, but look for a person often enough and you'll soon figure out their patterns. She worked twelve hour shifts five days a week, which was insane and only loosely legal, but odds were if he was there then she was too.
He takes another good long look at what they're working with two days later. He asks the occasional question and receives the same criticism as the last time on every idea he can manage to conjure. Somehow he still goes back to the lab with the formations of a plan. The spark is enough to make him ignite with inspiration.
Over the next eighteen hours he works tirelessly on it. He sleeps maybe two hours before showing back up to work at seven the next night. There may be heavy bags under his eyes but the feeling of accomplishment that settles deep in his bones is entirely worth it.
This is the night that he's at his busiest, of course, so he doesn't make it downstairs to Raven until past midnight. She's staring off into space at her computer screen, looking more asleep than awake even with her eyes open. "Hey," he announces his presence since she doesn't bother looking up as he walks through the doors. "Long day?"
"Something like that," she mutters, stretching out her muscles and rubbing her eyes. "Got anything good for me?" she asks with a tone of expectation. She sits a little taller as he comes to stand by her desk, unable to stop from grinning.
"This is just a rough idea," he opens with, pulling the sketch from his back pocket. "But I think with these adjustments and an alteration in the gas flow we stand a good chance at getting this thing working."
The paper remains in his outstretched hand for a few beats longer than is comfortable before she reaches out and takes it from him. She unfolds his work and pushes the keyboard of the computer away so she can lay it flat out across her desk. Wick leans against it, lowering himself so they could look at it together. He was close enough that he could probably smell her hair if he was trying to. Which he wasn't.
She contemplates it quietly for all of two seconds before picking it up and shoving it against his chest. "This is crap," she says harshly, shaking her head. "Seriously, what do you expect me to do with this?"
Wick opens his mouth to respond but then thinks better of it. That seemed like a rhetorical question if he's ever heard one. "You're welcome," he answers in a sarcastic tone.
"Well it's not my fault you aren't giving me anything to work with." She eyes him up and down before pushing herself up from her seat and walking past him.
"Where are you going?" he shouts as she makes her way towards the doors for outside. It was freezing out there.
"Outside," she drawls. "I think some of your plans are still buried in the dirt out here."
What a bitch he thinks as she walks away, holding up both of his middle fingers to her retreating back. He takes his crumpled work that had fallen to the floor and stalks off, his rage depleting with each step he took. Damn girl.
"Something got you worked up?" Monty asks that night.
Kyle liked having someone to work with, he really did, and Monty was a pretty smart kid so he didn't require much coaching, but damn did he miss his solitude sometimes. Company was good when you were about to pass out at four in the morning. The rest of the time he could go without. "No," he grumbles as he flops on to his desk chair and pulls the ruined plans out of his pocket again. She had barely even looked at them for crying out loud!
"Real convincing, bro," Monty muses, eyes fixed on whatever game he was playing on his phone tonight. "It's about that Raven girl, isn't it?"
"You and Jasper gossip like a couple of teenage girls," he complains as he starts to work on a fresh sheet of paper. Maybe she'd been right; the pressure regulator would never work there…
"You know," he muses, putting his phone down for the first time. "Raven is kind of friends with Jasper. I bet he could dig some dirt up on her."
Wick sighs, setting his own work aside to meet Monty's stare. "Yeah and I work with Miller once in a while. Want me to dig up some 'dirt' on him?" Monty presses his lips together in response, picking his phone up and returning to his game. "That's what I thought."
Three days later and he's slapping another plan down on her desk. Far more intricate and detailed than the first. He was sure she would at least note his improvements. "This would never fucking work," she says instead, almost sounding bored.
"How do you know if you don't try?" he challenges her, leaning in so that he's close enough to see the faint freckles along the bridge of her nose.
"With common damn sense," Raven answers, narrowing her eyes before leaning back in her chair and fixing her stare back on the computer. Sometimes he doubted there was any work to be done on there.
"You're so negative," he sighs, taking her rejection better this time than the last. "Anyone ever tell you that?"
She looks up in time to see his cheeky smile. "Aside from you?" she questions. "Yes."
Wick laughs. Raven looks at him like he's crazy. For a brief second, she smiles back. "See?" he says, reaching across the desk to snatch his paper back and tap her on the nose in the same motion. "It's more fun to smile."
Somehow, in all of the days of working the same schedule, Wick had never seen Raven walking out before. He always thought she must beat him to her car, but he sees her just before he pulls out of the hospital parking lot. His truck groans as he pulls up next to her, the window rolling down reluctantly. "Need a ride?" he offers. She was far off from any of the parking lots. Where the hell was her car?
"I'm fine," she dismisses with a wave of her hand, her slow, limping pace continuing out towards the busy intersection.
Wick let his truck inch forward along with her. "Do you have a way home?" he asks, concern dripping from the question. It was like ten degrees outside. Not to mention the singular working leg she had.
"I'm not going home," she grumbles in reply.
"Well how are you getting where you're going then?" he asks and she turns to him with what might be actual death in her eyes. He presses a fraction of an inch further down on the brake and leans across the seat, opening the door for her. "Oh look, I answered my own question." Kyle was really glad he was no longer terrified of her death stare.
Raven seems to contemplate him for a moment. He realises a second too late that she's concerned about heaving herself off the ground with her one good leg and into the cabin of his truck. She manages though. It's not exactly graceful but he's hardly judging.
He offers a closed lip smile as she shuts the door and her whole body shivers. His truck wasn't much warmer than the outside air but at least his vents had begun to attempt to offer some heat. "Where to?" he asks, pointing to her seatbelt when she didn't automatically move to put it on.
"The grocery store on Hamond Street," she answers with a yawn. She sinks low in her seat, her bad leg stretched out in front of her as she laid her head back and shut her eyes.
"Are you-are you going to work your other job right now?" he asks, dumbfounded. She'd just come off of a twelve hour shift! An all-night one at that.
A hand reaches out blindly to smack his arm. "Don't make me regret getting in the truck, Wick," she grumbles, throwing an arm across her eyes to block out the light.
She's asleep before he even makes it onto the main road.
If he didn't think she'd kill him for it he would just let her sleep. Even so he doesn't immediately move to wake her up after pulling into the grocery store parking lot. He sits in silence, putting his hands up close to the vents to absorb the heat leaking out of them.
It would have taken her at least five times as long to walk here, he figures, so he can at least leave her to sleep for another twenty minutes. The real struggle was keeping himself awake. No matter how backwards his schedule might be, he was always ready for bed by the time he got off of an graveyard shift.
To occupy his mind he takes out his sketch. This damn engine was seemingly impossible to get right. At this point he wonders if Raven is going to accept anything he makes. Every time he comes to her with a new plan he's convinced that it's as good as it can get. Raven was in the business of making sure he knew that it could always get better. Or that it was absolute shit in the first place so there was no where to go but up.
She wakes up with a start, jolting upright and wincing as a hand comes up to rub her sore neck. "How long have we just been sitting here?" she demands, looking to the clock and then to his attempts of drawing on a steering wheel.
"Not even fifteen minutes," he says with a shrug, scrunching his eyebrows at the lines he was attempting to draw. They were a disaster.
Raven rubs a hand across her face and glances at the clock again. "Might as well get in there early," she mumbles.
"Hey," Wick says, causing her to pause as she moves to open the door. She looks back at him but doesn't say anything. "Just…you'll get some rest before you come in tonight, right?"
At first she looks almost angry, like she's ready to lash out as she opens her mouth to say something. But then she stops, glancing to her hand on the door and then back to him. "I will," is all she says as she swings the door open. The icy blast of air isn't something Wick is prepared for. He folds his arms across his chest to guard himself from it as Raven works to get out of the car.
Neither of them say another word as she shuts the door and begins to walk inside, turning around and waving in his direction before disappearing into the building.
He's halfway home before wondering to himself who was going to pick her up. Then he remembered it didn't matter. She'd probably just beat up anyone who tried to do it.