Sorry for being a day late! Things have been crazy on my end. Anyway I hope you enjoy the chapter and let me know what you think. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Raven's POV

Raven shouldn't be surprised when she walks out of work from the grocery store Saturday evening and finds Wick's truck idling in the fire zone. He had asked for her schedule a few days ago and though he'd been insistent it was to arrange practise driving times, Raven had a feeling there was another hidden agenda that came with it. Maybe she should yell at him for this sort of behaviour but the wind was blowing and the forecast had been calling for snow which had just started falling moments earlier and she kind of just didn't care enough to get mad at him. Instead she just throws the passenger door open and moves to jump in.

"Not so fast," he says before she makes her usual one legged leap into the cabin.

Crossing her arms over her chest she stares at him in contempt. It was too cold out here to play games. Wick jumps out of his side and comes around to meet her. "It's driving time, Reyes."

She stares at him blankly, looking up to the small snowflakes against the dark sky. These were hardly ideal learning conditions. "Did you want to kill us both?" Normally she was cocky about the idea of driving. She was determined that, as an aspiring mechanic and someone who was mildly obsessed with anything involving an engine, she'd be a damn good driver. However now was the time to look at things a bit more objectively and accept the fact that she only just knew what she was doing.

With an obnoxious smile he moves around her and throws himself into the passenger side of the truck. He shuts the door and just looks down on her out in the cold expectantly. She heaves a sigh and makes her way over to the other side of the truck. It was like getting on a horse backwards, and it takes her a minute to figure out how to climb into the truck from this side. After a minute though she's in and shutting the door behind her. She doesn't touch anything.

"This is a terrible idea," she mumbles to herself as she finds a way to shift her seat into the right position and messes with the rear-view mirror. First she finds the headlights and switches them on and then she moves to the windshield wipers, doing the same. It wasn't snowing enough to impede a normal person's ability to drive, but she wasn't quite sure how she would do in bright, sunny conditions, let alone the beginning of a potential winter storm.

Wick points to the parking lot and she looks up, surprised to find it near abandoned aside from two cars which were spread very far apart. "Go crazy," he says, offering no other instructions.

She'd been behind the wheel a couple times before. Finn used to steal his mom's car every once in a while when it was very late and they were high off of the humidity of summer and the sugar which coated their lips. He never went very far, there wasn't anywhere to go in Newark anyway. But once or twice he would drive to their high school and abandon the seat to Raven. She would sit behind the steering wheel, giddy as she went five miles an hour in the utter darkness. Finn would insist he was still a better driver. (She constantly rubbed it in his face that she perfectly backed into a parking spot on her first try. If he was still alive he would probably continue to state it had been nothing but luck.)

Now that there was a pang in her chest from yet another reminder of fucking Finn, Raven presses her foot down on the brakes and puts the truck into gear, more than aware of the hum it gave as it switched to drive. She smiled.

As she eased her foot off the brake she also turned the wheel, driving through the lanes of the parking lot and testing out his brakes and acceleration. It moved with more ease than Finn's mom's old car. Then again, that thing just barely stayed alive. Wick plays with the radio and kicks his feet up on the dashboard. "This is more like it," he says, tossing her an easy smile. "I'm gonna start making you drive everywhere." The idea didn't sound terrible. "Alright, make a right on the road."

"What?" she demands, slamming the brake with too much force which sends them both jolting forward. "That's not even legal."

"Neither is building a rocket on an abandoned floor of the hospital," he reminds her. He liked to bring that up it seemed. "Just do the same thing you do with that." He leans towards her and his voice drops to a near whisper as he says, "Don't get caught."

Suddenly she's practically bubbling over from the excitement. Maybe it's from his whispered words or maybe it's from the car that goes whooshing past them as she waits to turn. All she knows is for the first time in a very long while she feels in control. And damn does she like it.

Once she's on the road, Wick sits up and turns the radio down. He watches with careful eyes as he offers her directions every couple of seconds. When they reach heavier traffic she can see his anxiety mounting and for whatever reason it just leaves her feeling more at ease. She likes the groan of the truck as she urges it faster on the main road and she feels a small thrill as she honks her horn at the guy who tries to cut her off with his left hand turn. Wick guided her wheel back to the middle of the road a time or two and was constantly saying, "slow down, maybe hit the brakes a little, you know I think the light might turn red soon," but she felt amazing.

She needed her legs to walk and to ride a bike and to do everything else in her life. But right now all she needed was the one leg she had; the other could be as useless as it wanted beside her. "Why didn't we do this sooner?" she asks, her fingers tensing around their ten and two position as she turned the car into a shopping centre, per Wick's instructions.

"Just park the car somewhere that there aren't a lot of people." She brakes a little too much and has to back out of the spot and pull back in to actually be in the lines, but she makes it. "Have you done this before?" he asks incredulously.

With a shake of her head, Raven opens the door and compares the lines to her tires, trying to determine how crooked she might be. "Not really." It looked perfect.

"So are you just good at everything?" he grumbles as he unbuckles his seatbelt and moves to get out of the truck.

"Wait!" she yells after him, turning the car off in a hurry to follow him. "Where the hell are you going?" she asks as she slides to the ground, quick to correct her landing on the side of the truck as she starts to fall. With frustrations she half trots her way up to where he's walking. "I thought these were driving lessons.

"They were," he says, grabbing her hand and pulling her across the street with him. "Now I'm hungry so it's dinner." He opens the door and gestures for her to walk through and Raven can't help but feel like she's been duped into some form of a date.

Instead of being upset she just gives him a playful glare as she walks through. It's a small Chinese place, red crinkled lanterns hang from the ceiling and music filled with harps and zithers fill the space. It's nothing fancy, in fact she would daresay the dim lighting was intentional, but the cracked vinyl seats were more than enough in her eyes.

Wick walks to the counter, the worker greeting him and offering a menu. He offers it to her without so much as a glance. Up until then she was fine with the whole thing. As a rule of thumb though she didn't eat out. It was a waste of money that could be spent on far more useful things. She holds the menu back out to him. "I'm good." Raven ignores the gnawing in her stomach that reminds her she isn't. There was something in the fridge at home. She could easily wait until then.

"Don't be stupid, Reyes," he says, doing that thing where he tugs her toward him. She wonders when that turned into something she just let him do. She sways on her feet but he reaches out and steadies her with an arm around her shoulders without so much as looking, as if he knew. For a moment she thinks about flinching away, the weight of him heavy and warm in ways she wasn't used to. But she decided that the warmth was nice, thawing out her very bones, and the weight comforting, anchoring her to the moment. She stays put, but just this time. "I know you like Chinese. Bellamy told me."

Ugh, her damn friends and their big mouths. "Fine," she says, growing irritated for no real reason. The weight stopped being reassuring and she felt scoured from the inside out. Where did everyone get off thinking they knew her so well? Where did he get off trying to feed her and pretend like he knew her inside and out. "If you know so well then just order." She twists out of his arm and makes her way over to a table, they were mostly empty anyway. She sits heavily in the seat and tries to leave her sour mood behind.

It was the sort of crankiness that rose out of her without warning and was left sitting between her eyebrows in a scowl. She didn't like the way the feeling intruded, ruining the lightness she had felt from driving and the closeness she had felt from Wick. Her fingers loosened some of the hair on one side of her ponytail, tucking their way beneath the strands and twisting. When he comes back he's not the least bit put out, his posture easy and his face relaxed. She wonders if he's going to ask if she's okay but he doesn't. At least he had that going for him.

With her arms crossed over her chest Raven sits a little taller, as much as her leg would allow. She sees his eyes scan over her body, taking in her tense shoulders and even breathing. He still doesn't ask so she helps him out. "I don't think I like it when you just assume things." She hates the way she adds in the word think, like she isn't really sure. She just knows right now that for some reason he's getting on her nerves and no matter how hard she tries she can't talk herself down from it.

"Did you want Italian?" he asks, face totally innocent and eyes slightly mischievous. "Maybe Mediterranean? Mexican? Middle Eastern? Or perhaps some Vietnamese?"

She glowers but something about him breaks through for just a second. "Shut up." She falls back in her seat, nothing left to say.

The answering smile riles her up again. "I daresay," he starts, leaning toward her with a leering smile. "That Raven Reyes is hangry."

She goes to argue, her mouth already open and ready to explain that she wasn't hangry, just irritated by his general existence. But then there's a heaping plate of food being placed in front of her and all of her anger towards him dissipates. She had never been very good at staying mad at the people who helped keep her fed. (She hated that there was a list.)

The plate is half gone before she even registers what she's eating. The Mu Shu Pork and orange chicken separated in their own little sections on the plate with a heaping pile of chow mein noodles in the biggest portion. She registers as she swallows another mouthful that he did know what she wanted. "You're not allowed to talk to my friends anymore," she mumbles around another bit of chicken. She played that game with herself where she ignored the pang she felt in her chest and the quiver in her lip.

He raises an eyebrow and when she gives a pointed look at her plate he shakes his head. "You told me your favourite, stupid," he says and she's reminded of that night in his apartment not that long ago. She'd blurted out her favourite foods without a second thought and he'd apparently memorised it. She fixes him with a stare and he looks at her like he's totally innocent and not some guy who sat around learning her food orders. "Eat your damn chicken."

Even when he's long since stopped, Raven plows right through, not bothering to be embarrassed about her eating habits much longer. Half of his food is left behind and when she finally sits back there's only a handful of noodles and two pieces of orange chicken left behind. He nudges his plate towards her and she shakes her head. "Better?" he asks, which translates to 'less hangry?'

She hates him for it but it might be the truth. Her irritation subsides quickly. Though that might have to do with the fact that Wick was who he was more so than the food itself. She reaches across and plucks one of his walnut shrimps off his plate, popping it in her mouth. "Mine was better," she says after she swallows and takes a long drink of water.

Someone brings the check by, dropping off two fortune cookies on their way. Raven reaches for the bill, curious how much this would cost her and hopeful the crumpled ten she'd shoved in her pocket that morning for some new socks (she was down to nothing but pairs filled with holes) would be enough to cover her portion. He bats her hand away and shoves a fortune cookie in her direction. "This is obviously the most important part of the whole meal." He says it very solemnly, like it was law.

She takes it and rips the plastic open, cracking the cookie without fanfare and going to read the tiny slip of paper inside. "Whoa, whoa whoa," he reaches a hand out and cover hers. "You have to eat the cookie first or the fortune won't come true."

With furrowing brows she offers him her most skeptical look. "I've never heard that before in my life."

"Because you're obviously uncultured swine," he says with a shake of his. With a roll of her eyes she pops the first half of the cookie in her mouth, savouring the slightly sweet flavour as she broke the cookie up, the shards of it sharp against the inside of her cheek.

"Are there any more traditions I should be aware of before partaking in the sacred fortune cookie any further or am I good to go?" she asks, holding up her second half towards him, the slip of paper still poking out.

Wick thinks for a minute before he says, "You have to swear your loyalty to the fortune cookie via interpretive dance and then kiss everyone in the restaurant, then you may proceed." She plucks the paper out as she pops the other half of the cookie in her mouth with a shake of her head. "Fine, don't come crying to me when you land yourself in fortune cookie hell."

She looks around the restaurant to see who else is seated. (There's no one.) Sly bastard. After she swallows she holds the stare he fixes on her, not looking away even as she takes a sip of her water. "Are we safe to proceed?" she whispers and his face lights up with how she plays along. "Should one of us say the official ceremonial prayer?"

"Nah, I think we're good." Raven glances down, staring at the Chinese letters on the one side first, and glancing over her lucky numbers. "I'll go first. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step," he reads it loud and important. "Hm, pretty lame. Your turn."

She flips the paper over and starts to read her own in the same announcing voice. "Stop searching forever," she reads out first, the next line causing her words to falter and her tone to fall. "Happiness is next to you." She finishes, swallowing hard and staring down at the words. "It's not even a fortune," she mumbles, trying not to think about what the words feel like. They feel like the sand in the ocean shifting beneath your feet and when you miss the last step of stairs in the darkness. They feel like falling in a dream or twisting in the snow only to find a warm body meeting you on the way down. They're a truth she didn't know existed and one she's afraid to accept.

When she meets Wick's eyes he's got this look in his eye that just screams, "I told you so," and she realises exactly what that feels like. Because even when the sands shift and you miss the stair or your jolted from sleep- there was still something solid and there and safe once you've regained your balance and have oriented to what's around you once more. She realises that the truth feels a little bit like falling and that Wick is undoubtedly going to catch her.

She shoves the fortune in her pocket with the ten dollar bill and doesn't say a word as he shoves his credit card in the check book. Until they get up that is. Then she takes the hand he offers and very simply says, "Thank you."