Sorry I'm a bit behind with updates still, school is keeping me very busy. I know this chapter may not be exactly what you all want but I hope that you enjoy it regardless. Let me know!

Wick's POV

The moment that Wick feels his phone buzz he immediately pulls over, his heart beating fast that it was someone, anyone, promising him that Raven was somewhere safe. His heart rate somehow manages to climb even further when he sees that it is in fact Raven texting him. And then in one fell swoop all of his frantic worry transitions to frustration. An undercurrent of anger hovers somewhere in the back of his mind as well though he does his best to suppress it. He wasn't mad at her for being at Clarke's except that maybe he was a bit. After all, Raven barely even liked Clarke half the time, in fact Clarke thought she hated her. So how exactly had Raven managed to end up there of all places?

He sends his bitchy little text and then regrets it because Wick knows Raven. He knows she's too consumed by her fear and her ridiculous need to constantly show off her strength. He knows that she's too worried about her mom and her emotional stability to be worried about him. And fair enough, maybe, but it still really sucked to have the girl you've been dreaming about for the last three months give you a hell of a kiss and then decide the snowy streets of Newark Delaware were better than your apartment.

She doesn't exactly warm up after his next texts but Wick decides to just be grateful she'd had the decency to contact him at all.

He goes home and gets in bed and tries really fucking hard not to think about her all night.

He fails.

The following night Wick suffocates in the lab. Monty is there and he keeps giggling every five damn minutes while his phone goes off every ten damn seconds and tonight might just be the night that Kyle Wick snaps.

If February 15th didn't have enough reason to suck already, this weirdness between him and Raven sure as hell added to it. So far 1 hour of this awful day had rolled away. He wasn't looking forward to the next 23.

It may not be true, but that doesn't prevent Wick from feeling as though he can't move. Like Raven has a monopoly over the rest of the hospital and he doesn't have a right to intrude on her space, just in case she's actually not at her desk or on the sixth floor. She needs space, and he has no choice but to offer it to her in the form of an entire damn hospital.

So he drums his fingers on the desk and he scrolls through a million articles on his phone and he even calls around, asking if anyone cared for an engineer to do some engineering. He must get on Monty's nerves just as bad because he finally says, "Don't you have an admitting registrar to hit on?"

Wick shoots him a look that feels furious but probably just looks sad. "Don't you have a boyfriend to sext?"

"Our conversation is entirely PG, for your information," Monty defends, pocketing his phone and turning to the samples he'd been cooling for the past few minutes. "But at least my pining got me somewhere."

It's a little too late and he's a lot too irritated to deal with this right now. "Fuck off."

"Whoa, dude, chill," he puts his empty hand up, test tube still clutched in the other. "Raven already holds the torch for cranky pain in the ass. You can't join in." That makes Wick pout like a two year old because Monty's right. Raven has already staked her claim as that member of the group. He was supposed to be the happy-go-lucky guy without a care in the world and a flawless smile. "Did you two have a fight?" Monty asks and Wick can't tell if he's trying to be mocking or is genuinely sympathetic. "We can hug it out if you need. No shame."

Wick doesn't bother with anything more than a glare in his direction before he gets up and leaves. He was not in the mood for mocking or sympathy it turns out.

Barely ten fucking steps later and who else would turn the corner than Raven Reyes herself. For the last two hours and twelve minutes he had been containing himself to a room in order to avoid stepping on her toes and it would just so happen the second he leaves is the same one when she arrives. "Hey there, Wrench Monkey," he says because nothing was quite the same but one thing that was a damn near constant was her hatred of that name.

But her usual snarl and glare are missing after he says it. "Hey," she says instead and it's weaker than he's used to and a little sadder than he'd like. (Unless of course she's just sad that they haven't kissed again since last night in which case he was very happy that she was sad and would soon rectify it.)

"Your mom good?" he asks, because at the end of the day he spends more time worrying about Raven than he does himself.

She nods and then she looks down at her twisting hands and back up at him. The silence is heavy in a way that makes him shift from one foot to the other, trying to alleviate some of the burden. "Are we good?" She finally asks, her eyes a little more nervous, her stance a little less sure.

The answer is easy. The truth is harder. "Of course." He thinks about her lips on his and her hands in his hair and his hands on her back and her waist and… "Always."

She smiles, just for one second and then she looks like she's prepared for battle. She looks like he remembers from when they first met.

With a nod she turns back to where she came.

He doesn't go after her.

It's 6:58 in the morning and he's standing at the top of the stairs, unsure if he's rushing down them to come strolling out to the front desk with an easy smile and his keys in hand. Or he could walk to the other side of the hospital, go down to the ED and leave out the ambulance entrance. It was closer to the employee parking lot anyway.

To help him decide he pulls out his phone and checks the temperature. Ever since the snow storm Saturday night it had warmed a few degrees, staying above freezing most of the time. This morning it was already inching towards forty degrees despite the early hour. The phone goes back to sleep as he presses the button and Wick takes the steps down two at a time. Why the hell would he let his friend walk home after working all night? He practically jogs his way to the admitting desk, nodding towards the labor and delivery nurses he passes by on his way.

At 7:01 he busts through the door. Jasper is sitting at the desk already and Wick worries that he's missed her. She stands from the chair across the desk and gives him a tired, easy smile. "You're late."

"Oh please," he says, already throwing his hands in the air as he points towards Jasper. "He's late every damn day which means you are always making me late." It occurs to him only now that there was a chance he could have driven home without her and she would have been sitting here, waiting. Not for the first time Wick is reminded that their friendship was not just about closeness and companionship and enjoying each other's company. She relied on him and it was his job not to let her down.

Raven narrows her eyes at him and says, "As if you have anywhere better to be."

Jasper looks at Wick with a curious expression and he has a pretty good idea that Monty had already texted him and told him to be gentle with Raven because she and Wick were fighting. Jokes on them. They were fine… At least in this exact moment they were.

Normally he would toe the boundaries and shrug and say, 'you're right, I don't.' But today he knows that he needs to add an extra inch or two to their usual wall, just to make Raven feel a little bit safer. "My bed actually sounds pretty damn good."

With an eyebrow raise and a smirk she completely blows him away as she says, "You know as well as I do it's better with me in it." She turns and walks towards the front door before he's even reacted.

The one thing he does take in is Jasper's unhinged jaw. "Get yourself together," Wick says in a huff as he goes after her. The words were more fitted for his racing heart than his slack jawed friend. Of all the behaviours he'd been expecting of her this was rather low on the list.

Her mixed signals are giving him whiplash and he isn't sure how he feels about it. Kyle Wick wasn't one for playing games. After all, he had played them in the past and they never worked out well. There was something about heartbreak that wasn't appealing to him, and games always inevitably lead to heartbreak.

"Can I drive?" she asks, hopeful brown eyes and the beginning of a smile when he catches up to her.

"Not too tired?" he asks because he has a hard enough time staying awake some days and Raven had a knack for falling asleep in the car.

She shakes her head. "I'm good." He hands over the keys and watches her saunter off, ponytail swinging as she heads for the parking garage.

She gets in and turns the engine over, the truck thrumming to life beneath him. "Have you backed out of a spot before?" With half a shrug Raven puts the car in reverse and looks behind her. She bites her lip as she slowly lets the car start rolling back. She goes to turn the wheel but he reaches out, holding it straight. "Not yet," he says though it's barely more than a whisper. She eases off of the brake and lets it continue back straight. His hands tug the wheel in his direction when she's safe to start turning and she takes his cue. "All the way…there you go."

The rest of the process is a little bit slower as she moves inch by inch back, watching the car out of the window and in both mirrors before allowing it to move anymore. After another minute she throws the car into drive and turns the wheel all the way opposite and gives it some gas so it rolls forward.

When they get to the main road she takes the route to the grocery store instead of her house and he sighs. "What time do you get off?"

"Four," she answers, fingers drumming on the steering wheel and her foot is heavier on the brake and gas today than it had been her first night. She's less sure, the adrenaline replaced by anxiety. "You don't need to pick me up."

"Can we skip this?" he asks, reaching forward and shutting off the barely there radio. Even the background noise was too much. This deafening silence was enough.

"Skip what?" she bites out and he knows she's well aware what he's talking about.

"This awkward, oh we kissed and now we fail to be two functioning humans together because what does this mean and can we even move past it, bullshit."

She swallows heavily as she turns into the empty grocery store parking lot. Her parking job is less than ideal, but it doesn't really matter at this time in the morning. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Fine," he agrees, giving up because dealing with this was hard enough without putting up a fight. "We don't have to talk about it, but we do have to get over it."

There's a beat of silence before she asks, "Why?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why do we have to get over it?" Wick doesn't know if she's asking because she wants to hear the right answer or if she's asking because she truly doesn't see the point.

"Do you like stilted silence and not being able to make fucking eye contact?" he asks with the same irritation and anger from Saturday night rising to the surface all over again. She was so frustrating sometimes. And he was so tired of feeling like he was being shit on. Because sure, she relied on him, but he needed something in return. He couldn't just give like this forever, not without at least some participation on her end. Everything he had done for her, all of the damn times he'd proven himself, and she still treated him like this. Not for the first time he doubts that she trusts him and it stings because he has done every fucking thing he can to prove himself and she's constantly rubbing it in his face that it just isn't enough.

Raven clears her throat and it reminds him that she might be a pain in the ass, but losing his temper wouldn't solve anything. "Do you care about being friends or have I just been deluding myself for four months now?" He asks the question and he hates the way it stings on the way out and he hates the life he's breathing to these damn insecurities. "Does our relationship mean anything or am I just your taxi service?" These words are not the ones he meant to say but the others one are too real and too hurtful and this is so obviously not the truth that it just falls from his lips without effort.

She turns towards him violently, her eyes are broken for a fraction of a second before they are a mirror of the anger in his own. "That's not fair."

"I'm sorry," he says, sounding anything but. "I meant am I nothing more than the person you shit on for trying to fix your useless fucking rocket? Which, by the way, is illegal. Or maybe I'm just your driving instructor."

"You know that's not…"

"Not what, Raven?" he asks, trying to find an appropriate level to his voice. He tries to find the patience that she just loves to whittle away at.

Waiting for her answer is almost as agonizing as watching her walk out his front door last night had been. "I'm not using you."

Her voice is a little bit broken and he's reminded of the girl who stood sobbing in his living room because she wasn't loved enough and how he had promised that he would fix that.

"Then stop acting like it."

She throws the keys in his direction and gets out of his truck. He doesn't stop her.

When she disappears into the store he doesn't wait for her to come back and he doesn't follow in after her.

He's boiling over with anger the whole way home. Her ponytail holder still sits on his coffee table, and he hates the reminder it brings along with the flash of guilt that runs through him.

He throws it in the trash and for the first time in months he takes a minute to consider what he deserves above what it is that Raven needs.