Booty and loot (Cai, Zoe)
Sep. 19th, 2014 12:16 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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darker_londonCai had to admit he was a little bit scared of going shopping with Zoe today. He pulled on his best non-church jeans and tried to avoid the mirror because that would make things worse (whatever he tried to do with his hair it just flopped back, but, he hoped, endearingly) and kept remind himself hey, she kissed you, remember?
But then she’d also told him not to touch her, which stuck in his mind just as firmly.
Despite having told Danny that he was going to talk to Zoe about it all, he hadn’t. He had plenty of great excuses though, like how he had to be at school every day, and there wasn’t an after school window since most of her lectures at university seemed to be in the afternoon. Then when they were together it was pretty much always at the hospital. It wasn’t like he couldn’t find an opportunity at the hospital, it was just that he hadn’t.
He didn’t even know what he wanted to say. He kind of just wanted to kiss her again and not really say anything. Was that valid? Cai wasn’t sure but he doubted it. It made him feel kind of guilty and totally shallow but on the other hand, he figured, if he got to kiss Zoe then he could probably live with feeling kind of guilty and totally shallow.
Help.
He’d even gone to Dom for advice, but that was useless. “Faint heart never won fair lady,” said Dom.
“She’s not a fair lady,” Cai complained. “She’s – she’s –”
He couldn’t even explain it to himself let alone Dom.
It was really annoying.
He decided in the end he was just going to throw himself into Danny’s shopping quest and try not to think about anything too deeply. Everything felt less daunting once he’d decided to focus on something easier, something he knew he could win.
He met Zoe at the mouth of a mall and handed her Danny’s instructions.
Zoe looked up from the paper with two raised eyebrows. “He was serious when he said it was a scavenger hunt…” she said, as if saying it aloud would change something.
She heard herself, too. She sounded like such a sad sack.
Don’t be pathetic, Zoe, Zoe told herself.
She continued reading.
- getting me a shirt to wear (10 pts, but bonus pts if it's fancy or funny)
Right, Zoe thought, narrowing her eyes at the paper. Her competitive streak was kicking in. If she could get to Ben’s cookies before Cai could, that would give her a really strong head start. If she found three Rachel style necklaces before Cai could, she would be golden.
- Need decorations, LED and battery operated (not vibrators, 5 pts each piece)
“What?” Zoe demanded, looking at Cai as if he was Danny. “What does he mean, you need to pick the place?”
“Uh, cos he wants to get her something nice,” Cai told her.
His competitive streak had kicked in as well.
“He doesn’t think I know what nice is?” Zoe demanded, as Cai grinned at her. “I know what she likes! I’ve been shopping with her much more than you have.”
“And yet,” Cai said with a wide shrug. “I’m still better.”
“He’s just trying to make it easier for you cos he knows I’m gonna whup your ass,” Zoe said.
“Nuh uh!” Cai pointed at the paper, looking irritatingly smug. “There’s no points attached to that one.”
“Fuck,” said Zoe.
“Hey,” Cai shrugged casually. “I don’t need points. It’s enough to know I’m better than you.”
“Yeah at shopping, for girls.”
“Hey now! Don’t be dragging in gender roles, you know what Danny would say about that.”
“I am gonna whup the both of you so hard,” Zoe muttered darkly.
- pick up crystal rose I ordered from Swarovski in Covent Garden (20 pts, don't judge me)
Hah, Zoe thought, spotting the last task on the list (the last one with points, which is the last one that counted). Have fun, 100 points. All she had to do was have more fun that Cai and this was in the bag.
She looked up at Cai, who was literally swinging around a lamp pole while waiting for her to finish reading, and thought, shit.
Cai started off strongly by finding two necklaces that were so sickeningly Rachel that Zoe had to admit he earned those points, but Zoe overtook him by twenty points by finding two different kinds of ‘girly smelly stuff’. It gave her an inordinate amount of satisfaction, buying those.
It wasn’t that she felt she needed to prove that she could be good at girly crap but dammit she was a girl she should be good at this stuff. Just because she constantly gave off the impression that she didn’t give a shit didn’t mean she didn’t give a shit.
But she had to admit she could see where Danny might get confused.
She was so going to wear a dress next time she visited him, just to show him.
They split up to tackle the next shop and Cai broke even with her because he’d been in here before with Faye and knew exactly where the jewellery stands were, so he won another twenty points for bracelets.
Zoe found him sitting on the edge of the fountain in the mall eating an ice cream and a donut. “I got two snacks!” he said cheerfully, finishing off the last of the donut. “Ten more points!”
“You can’t do that,” Zoe informed him. “It says a snack, five points. You don’t get another five points with every snack you eat.”
“Don’t see why not,” Cai beamed.
“This isn’t an eating competition,” Zoe pointed out. “Besides you’re a human disposal unit with a huge gob and no reasonable person with manners could keep up with you.”
“I don’t see any reasonable person with manners round here,” Cai said.
Zoe snatched his ice cream out of his hand.
“Hey!”
“Can’t take the points if you don’t finish the snack,” Zoe said, her dangerous smile simmering under her triumphant expression. Cai tried to grab it back but Zoe danced away, legging it around the other side of the fountain. “Don’t even try and catch me, Cai, I’m too fast!” she called. This didn’t stop him trying, but either way he ran Zoe would run the opposite.
“I’ll go through it!” Cai warned her. “See if I don’t.”
Zoe shrugged at him, and took a large bite out of his ice cream.
She was basically daring him to do it. Cai didn’t feel like he had a choice. So he jumped the wall and ploughed his way through the uncomfortably warm, knee deep water to the other side.
Shit! Zoe thought, her mouth too full of ice cream to swear out loud as Cai made a beeline straight for her. She swallowed the lump of it, turned tail and bolted.
They were asked to leave the store pretty soon after that.
“Welp,” Cai said, as they started the walk toward Covent Garden. “Now I need a change of jeans.” He’d forgotten how miserable wet denim felt and he wished he’d gone with some other choice this morning, but he couldn’t have foreseen chasing Zoe through a fountain.
“Hey, if you need to stop and do some personal shopping, I’m not going to stop you,” Zoe said, thinking that if he did she could get to Ben’s cookies first.
Cai stretched his arms above his head. The sun was peeking through the low clouds. “I’m not worried,” he said. “I’m winning the 100 points for having more fun, I can totally relax.”
Zoe snorted. “Who says?”
“Zoe, I ran through a fountain. Danny is so going to judge that as more fun than anything you’ve done. Did you run through a fountain? I didn’t think so.”
Zoe huffed. “I’m fucking running now!” she declared, and broke into a sprint. She heard Cai shout behind her but there was no way he could keep up. She didn’t need him to get distracted, she’d just beat him there by sheer virtue of being faster!
She grinned to herself as she ran. Despite her shopping bag banging awkwardly against her, this was the most fun she’d had in ages. She just needed to keep moving fast enough to outrun the crushing guilt and the constant feeling of impending doom, that’s all.
Zoe knew she couldn’t outrun it for long but something about competing with Cai made the rest of the world seem further away. She’d thought before that seeing the world through his eyes had been strangely soothing, but she didn’t feel soothed now.
Distracted, though. Definitely distracted.
And faced with a difficult choice: Swarovski’s was just around the corner so she could get the twenty points for the crystal rose but it would also give Cai the chance to get a head start on Ben’s cookies which was fifty five points. But if everything went smoothly, she might be able to get the rose and cookies, putting her ahead of Cai by seventy points. It might not even matter that he’d run through a fountain (where would Danny get the idea that that was fun, anyway? Zoe blamed movies. Cai was becoming a Manic Pixie pain in her arse.)
Zoe made a snap decision to get the closest points first and darted into Swarovski’s, where there was a queue (of course there was, the world hated her.) She was just getting to the counter, catching her breath, when she saw Cai skip past with a deliriously triumphant expression on his face.
Zoe accidentally swore at the Swarovski’s lady and had to spend extra time convincing her to look past her tiny haughty nose and let Zoe pick up Danny’s rose. This lady is judging me so hard she texted Danny as the lady gift wrapped it up. So you’re damn right I’m going to judge you. This is a ridiculous rose. What even are you?
By the time she caught up with Cai he was sitting outside eating a large cookie. “’Nother five points,” he said, grinning, and Zoe only didn’t start arguing that you didn’t get points for eating because he handed her one as well. She sat down and bit into it, solemnly.
It was really good. “Goddamn,” said Zoe, almost not upset that she’d lost the fifty five points.
“That’s why I got two boxes,” Cai said.
She wasn’t going to admit out loud that he was genius.
“The problem here,” Zoe said, pulling out the list again. “The problem is, he says we get bonus points if the shirt is funny or fancy, but he doesn’t say how many points.”
“I guess it depends on the shirt.”
“But how do you quantify funny? He really hadn’t thought this through,” Zoe said, critically. She looked over at Cai, whose chest was still heaving a little as he continued to catch his breath. It made a little bit of worry twinge in her stomach, as her mind leapt to the worst conclusions – his lungs were giving out, heart attack – instead of considering the more likely option that he was not as fit as she was.
“Yeah,” said Cai, who didn’t look like he was having a heart attack. “Yeah I don’t think Danny had any idea what he was starting when he sent me this.” Zoe snorted in amused agreement, and Cai laughed and nudged her shoulder with his. “You’re losing really badly,” Cai said, as if Zoe didn’t know. She glared at him.
“I can come back from this, Finch,” she said darkly. “I’m only thirty five points behind.”
“Hundred and thirty five,” Cai corrected, adding, daringly, “Kemp.”
They stared at each other. Zoe looked pissed, but somehow that made Cai feel totally charged. “Okay,” he said, standing up and offering Zoe his hand. “Okay I will give you a chance.”
Zoe looked at his hand. “What chance?”
“We go head to head. There is a gaming arcade right round the corner. One game, and if you beat me, you can have my fun points.”
“Oh Cai,” Zoe deadpanned. “You’re so generous.”
Cai smiled. “No I’m not. I mean, you’ll really have to decimate me, Zoe. Your score will have to beat my ego into the ground.”
Zoe took his hand and pulled herself firmly up, standing at her full height which was, when she stretched, just a little taller than Cai. “Is that supposed to challenge me?” Zoe fixed him with a hard look, but there was a smile behind it. “Is beating you at some arcade game supposed to be hard?”
“Well pick your battlefield, Kemp,” he said, extending his arm toward the arcade. Zoe shot him with another dark look, rolled her shoulders back and strode into the building.
She knew he was trying to play her. But – so? Zoe wanted to play. There was something just… different about being able to be silly all afternoon.
And she was going to beat him so hard he would never get over it.
One game (she chose air hockey, pretty sure that her reflexes were faster than his) turned into best of five and by the end Zoe’s fingers were so sore from the three (three!) times the puck had smashed into them instead of her mallet. She won but by two points (only two!) but the tension had grown so tight and frantic in her chest that when she scored at the last she cheered and punched Cai in the arm with her sore hand, making them both yelp in pain.
~
Zoe blew on her hurt fingers as they walked out of the arcade. “Are they very sore?” Cai asked, feeling bad since he had been the one propelling the puck into them.
“They’re fine,” Zoe said, though they felt uncomfortably hot. Cai caught her hand in his and before he could talk himself out of it he’d pressed his lips to her fingers. Zoe’s stomach jumped into her throat.
“How are they now?” Cai asked.
“They’re fine,” Zoe said, in a voice that almost shook. Her whole body suddenly felt uncomfortably hot.
~
The shop was dark and pulsing with music. “This place is very hip,” Zoe said to Cai, uncertainly. There was a disco ball hanging above the counter.
“That’s the whole point,” Cai said. “There’s got to be a great shirt here, fancy and funny. Points!”
“But at what cost?” Zoe muttered, casting her eyes around the shop. It wasn’t that dark, she supposed, but only dark in comparison to the spotlights on the fake red carpet outside the dressing rooms. The rest of the shop was lit with hundreds of fairy lights twisted around racks of clothes.
Zoe didn’t know what to do about the hundred points. On the one hand she’d beaten Cai, but on the other hand it was only by two points. She thought maybe they might have to leave it up to Danny…
The competition felt like it had changed, though. Cai kissed her fingers in broad daylight and her heart hadn’t quiet calmed down about it. She wanted to go back to the frantic battle for points superiority but she couldn’t make her brain slot back into that frame of mind. She felt stupid and distracted and flustered and fixated, and though she tried to focus on finding a shirt she couldn’t make herself be annoyed at Cai when he found the perfect stupid tuxedo shirt because it would probably make Danny laugh so hard he hurt himself.
Plus – she’d surprised herself by actually finding a dress she liked. This pleased her, since that tied into her mission of proving to Danny that she was totally a girl. It was a dark, dark shade of angry-girl pink, and there was nothing floaty about it. And since she’d lost Cai she grabbed it off the rack and disappeared into the changing rooms.
Maybe she wanted to make Cai gape, a little bit, too. Maybe?
When you met, you were in a swimming suit, Zoe she told herself. But that was different, because… it was. She wanted him to kiss her fingers again, now. She wanted to slowly pull off his gloves and lace her bare fingers through his.
Zoe groaned and banged her forehead on the mirror, and remained pressed to it while her breath fogged up the glass. Whyyy? she thought, her stomach knotted tight.
“Zoee!” Cai called from the other side of the curtain, making her stand bolt upright. She swallowed to settle herself and pulled back the curtain a little. Cai spotted her and grinned.
“Whaddya think?” he asked, starting to do a ridiculous dance in the tiny denim shorts he’d pulled on, frayed at the bottom and patterned with a faded Union Jack. “Booty booty booty booty!”
His legs were all thigh, Zoe stared, hiding her face half behind the curtain. He started to dance toward her, arse first. “You are obscene!” she yelled at him. “I’m not looking! Obscene!”
He smacked himself on the butt and Zoe covered her face in her hands.
“You don’t like?” Cai asked, standing in the door of her changing room and looking at himself in her mirror. “To patriotic for you? I – whoa,” he stopped, finally taking his eyes off his own arse and looking at Zoe in her dress. “You look – whoa.”
“See,” said Zoe, without the defiant emphasis she wished she was able to muster. “I can be good at shopping.”
“Yeah,” Cai said, feeling like a bit of a creep because he couldn’t stop staring at her. “Yeah that’s… really good. At shopping. You are.”
“Talking, good at, you are,” she teased. Cai grinned at her, and stepped forward.
“Would you hate it if I kissed you right now?” he asked, watching her face, feeling like he should be ready to get out of the way if she punched him and maybe he deserved to be punched but he hoped she wouldn’t. Eyes on his, she shook her head a fraction of a shake and he stepped forward again and almost kissed her when she said “Why?”
“Why?” he repeated, confused.
“Why do you want to?” Zoe asked, vibrantly aware of how close he was standing. Her hand was on his chest, she wasn’t sure how it got there but there it was.
“Uh,” Cai said, feeling a bit deer-in-headlights-y. “Can my answer be, just because?” He was going to kick himself for sounding so stupid later. He was kicking himself a bit now. Just because? What a stupid fucking thing to say! Yet his hand was resting gently on her hip, and he reached behind him and tugged the curtain properly closed. “Just because I want to? Is that okay?”
Zoe felt like she was starting to panic but it was a different kind of panic than the one she knew so well. The kind of panic she was coming to associate with Cai. “You promised you wouldn’t use that word at me,” she said, trying to claw back some of her Zoe-ness because she felt like she was losing it completely and didn’t know what to do without it.
He swallowed, and smiled, all nerves. “Sorry,” he said, his voice low, and sweet, and Zoe edged toward him and he kissed her before she could ask any more difficult questions or before he could say anything more that would make him sound like a moron. The heat that had been simmering in her since he’d kissed her fingers came back with a vengeance and her body felt like it was definitely panicking, now, but simultaneously she felt she did not want to stop panicking. She wanted to keep kissing him, until – until –
Her hand was still pressed against his chest and she broke them apart by putting a little gentle pressure on him. Only a little, though; his stomach was still pressed against hers. But she didn’t move, and she’d dropped her face down a little and her eyes were closed.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered, his breathing heavier than normal. (And he was so, so aware he was wearing tiny shorts right now…)
“I’m just,” said Zoe, her voice breathy as well. “Waiting… for something terrible to happen.”
“Oh,” he didn’t know what to say to that because statistics were kind of on the side of paranoia.
Her phone was in her bag and even over the music in the shop she would have heard it if anyone was trying to call with bad news, but it was still and silent and message-less. But any number of other things could be happening, right now. Any number of disasters and tragedies and…
Cai rested his forehead against hers, waiting with her. She curled her hand on his chest into a ball, his shirt caught in her fingers.
There was a sudden banging outside the changing room and a sharp voice right outside. “Are there two of you in there?” the voice demanded.
Cai’s face was a mask of panic and she stared back at him for a second before pushing him back. Zoe turned and stuck her head out of the curtain. “Excuse me?” she said, in her best haughty voice. “Of course not!”
“We all saw your boyfriend in the tiny shorts dance in there,” the shop lady stared her down. Beyond her, two other shop assistants were watching while pretending not to watch. “You’re not the first kids to try and have sex in there, you know.”
Zoe looked horrified, and then Cai betrayed her by failing to hold back his laugh and the shop assistant pulled back the curtain. He smiled at her, and said “Hullo…” Later, he would kick himself for not having a cleverer thought in his head.
“Hullo,” said the shop assistant. “I think you should probably leave.”
Cai put his hands on his hips and sauntered out of the changing rooms. “Not before I buy these booty shorts!” he announced loudly, and Zoe pulled back the curtain and wished she could just disappear.
~
“Zoe…” he said, as they pulled up in the hospital carpark, ready to deliver everything to Danny. “So…”
She looked at him, waiting. He really wished that she could just read his mind but no, she was going to be no help. “I really like you,” he said.
She continued to look at him, but with perhaps a small lift of the corner of her mouth. Yep, no help whatsoever.
“Uhm, this is where you might say something like, I like you too, Cai?”
Zoe lifted her eyebrows. “Were you thinking I might not like you?”
“Uh, no?”
“Good,” Zoe said.
Cai exhaled quite a lot. “So, I don’t know, do you want to be… Partners?” Oh god, could he have chosen a stupider word? Cai winced visibly at himself. But he wasn’t going to ask do you want to be my girlfriend because that seemed like a dumb thing to say to Zoe.
Zoe bit her bottom lip, and after a too-long moment, shook her head. “I… don’t really even know how to just be Zoe, right now,” she said, taking care with each one of her words.
“Oh,” said Cai. “Okay. I mean, not okay – because I’m not using that word – but, sure, I –” Cai was not taking care with his words, they were just tumbling out, whichever one got to his mouth first. Zoe reached over and put her fingers over his mouth and he stopped.
“Just be Cai?” she said. “I can’t handle anything more than just Cai.”
He didn’t move for a moment, because her fingers were over his lips and he didn’t want them to move. But he nodded, eventually, because he had to show he was listening, and she smiled a smile that was, for Zoe, very soft.
“Come on then,” she said. “Let’s bring Danny his loot.”
And eventually, she pulled her fingers away from his mouth.
But then she’d also told him not to touch her, which stuck in his mind just as firmly.
Despite having told Danny that he was going to talk to Zoe about it all, he hadn’t. He had plenty of great excuses though, like how he had to be at school every day, and there wasn’t an after school window since most of her lectures at university seemed to be in the afternoon. Then when they were together it was pretty much always at the hospital. It wasn’t like he couldn’t find an opportunity at the hospital, it was just that he hadn’t.
He didn’t even know what he wanted to say. He kind of just wanted to kiss her again and not really say anything. Was that valid? Cai wasn’t sure but he doubted it. It made him feel kind of guilty and totally shallow but on the other hand, he figured, if he got to kiss Zoe then he could probably live with feeling kind of guilty and totally shallow.
Help.
He’d even gone to Dom for advice, but that was useless. “Faint heart never won fair lady,” said Dom.
“She’s not a fair lady,” Cai complained. “She’s – she’s –”
He couldn’t even explain it to himself let alone Dom.
It was really annoying.
He decided in the end he was just going to throw himself into Danny’s shopping quest and try not to think about anything too deeply. Everything felt less daunting once he’d decided to focus on something easier, something he knew he could win.
He met Zoe at the mouth of a mall and handed her Danny’s instructions.
BIRTHDAY SCAVENGER HUNT THIS IS SERIOUS GUYS, SERIOUSLY:
Zoe looked up from the paper with two raised eyebrows. “He was serious when he said it was a scavenger hunt…” she said, as if saying it aloud would change something.
She heard herself, too. She sounded like such a sad sack.
Don’t be pathetic, Zoe, Zoe told herself.
She continued reading.
- getting me a shirt to wear (10 pts, but bonus pts if it's fancy or funny)
- necklaces (20 pts each, max 3)
- bracelets (10 pts each, max 3)
- get yourself a damn snack (5 pts, you slackers)
- Ben's cookies from Covent Garden (55 pts because YUM)
Right, Zoe thought, narrowing her eyes at the paper. Her competitive streak was kicking in. If she could get to Ben’s cookies before Cai could, that would give her a really strong head start. If she found three Rachel style necklaces before Cai could, she would be golden.
- Need decorations, LED and battery operated (not vibrators, 5 pts each piece)
- I dunno, girly smelly stuff whatever (30 pts, max 2)
- gift certificate for clothing (CAI YOU NEED TO PICK THE PLACE, NOT ZOE, DON'T KILL ME)
“What?” Zoe demanded, looking at Cai as if he was Danny. “What does he mean, you need to pick the place?”
“Uh, cos he wants to get her something nice,” Cai told her.
His competitive streak had kicked in as well.
“He doesn’t think I know what nice is?” Zoe demanded, as Cai grinned at her. “I know what she likes! I’ve been shopping with her much more than you have.”
“And yet,” Cai said with a wide shrug. “I’m still better.”
“He’s just trying to make it easier for you cos he knows I’m gonna whup your ass,” Zoe said.
“Nuh uh!” Cai pointed at the paper, looking irritatingly smug. “There’s no points attached to that one.”
“Fuck,” said Zoe.
“Hey,” Cai shrugged casually. “I don’t need points. It’s enough to know I’m better than you.”
“Yeah at shopping, for girls.”
“Hey now! Don’t be dragging in gender roles, you know what Danny would say about that.”
“I am gonna whup the both of you so hard,” Zoe muttered darkly.
- pick up crystal rose I ordered from Swarovski in Covent Garden (20 pts, don't judge me)
- pick up the awesomest cake that ever awesomed which I ordered today (30 pts)
- have fun (100 pts)
- love me (no points because you just should)
Hah, Zoe thought, spotting the last task on the list (the last one with points, which is the last one that counted). Have fun, 100 points. All she had to do was have more fun that Cai and this was in the bag.
She looked up at Cai, who was literally swinging around a lamp pole while waiting for her to finish reading, and thought, shit.
Cai started off strongly by finding two necklaces that were so sickeningly Rachel that Zoe had to admit he earned those points, but Zoe overtook him by twenty points by finding two different kinds of ‘girly smelly stuff’. It gave her an inordinate amount of satisfaction, buying those.
It wasn’t that she felt she needed to prove that she could be good at girly crap but dammit she was a girl she should be good at this stuff. Just because she constantly gave off the impression that she didn’t give a shit didn’t mean she didn’t give a shit.
But she had to admit she could see where Danny might get confused.
She was so going to wear a dress next time she visited him, just to show him.
They split up to tackle the next shop and Cai broke even with her because he’d been in here before with Faye and knew exactly where the jewellery stands were, so he won another twenty points for bracelets.
Zoe found him sitting on the edge of the fountain in the mall eating an ice cream and a donut. “I got two snacks!” he said cheerfully, finishing off the last of the donut. “Ten more points!”
“You can’t do that,” Zoe informed him. “It says a snack, five points. You don’t get another five points with every snack you eat.”
“Don’t see why not,” Cai beamed.
“This isn’t an eating competition,” Zoe pointed out. “Besides you’re a human disposal unit with a huge gob and no reasonable person with manners could keep up with you.”
“I don’t see any reasonable person with manners round here,” Cai said.
Zoe snatched his ice cream out of his hand.
“Hey!”
“Can’t take the points if you don’t finish the snack,” Zoe said, her dangerous smile simmering under her triumphant expression. Cai tried to grab it back but Zoe danced away, legging it around the other side of the fountain. “Don’t even try and catch me, Cai, I’m too fast!” she called. This didn’t stop him trying, but either way he ran Zoe would run the opposite.
“I’ll go through it!” Cai warned her. “See if I don’t.”
Zoe shrugged at him, and took a large bite out of his ice cream.
She was basically daring him to do it. Cai didn’t feel like he had a choice. So he jumped the wall and ploughed his way through the uncomfortably warm, knee deep water to the other side.
Shit! Zoe thought, her mouth too full of ice cream to swear out loud as Cai made a beeline straight for her. She swallowed the lump of it, turned tail and bolted.
They were asked to leave the store pretty soon after that.
“Welp,” Cai said, as they started the walk toward Covent Garden. “Now I need a change of jeans.” He’d forgotten how miserable wet denim felt and he wished he’d gone with some other choice this morning, but he couldn’t have foreseen chasing Zoe through a fountain.
“Hey, if you need to stop and do some personal shopping, I’m not going to stop you,” Zoe said, thinking that if he did she could get to Ben’s cookies first.
Cai stretched his arms above his head. The sun was peeking through the low clouds. “I’m not worried,” he said. “I’m winning the 100 points for having more fun, I can totally relax.”
Zoe snorted. “Who says?”
“Zoe, I ran through a fountain. Danny is so going to judge that as more fun than anything you’ve done. Did you run through a fountain? I didn’t think so.”
Zoe huffed. “I’m fucking running now!” she declared, and broke into a sprint. She heard Cai shout behind her but there was no way he could keep up. She didn’t need him to get distracted, she’d just beat him there by sheer virtue of being faster!
She grinned to herself as she ran. Despite her shopping bag banging awkwardly against her, this was the most fun she’d had in ages. She just needed to keep moving fast enough to outrun the crushing guilt and the constant feeling of impending doom, that’s all.
Zoe knew she couldn’t outrun it for long but something about competing with Cai made the rest of the world seem further away. She’d thought before that seeing the world through his eyes had been strangely soothing, but she didn’t feel soothed now.
Distracted, though. Definitely distracted.
And faced with a difficult choice: Swarovski’s was just around the corner so she could get the twenty points for the crystal rose but it would also give Cai the chance to get a head start on Ben’s cookies which was fifty five points. But if everything went smoothly, she might be able to get the rose and cookies, putting her ahead of Cai by seventy points. It might not even matter that he’d run through a fountain (where would Danny get the idea that that was fun, anyway? Zoe blamed movies. Cai was becoming a Manic Pixie pain in her arse.)
Zoe made a snap decision to get the closest points first and darted into Swarovski’s, where there was a queue (of course there was, the world hated her.) She was just getting to the counter, catching her breath, when she saw Cai skip past with a deliriously triumphant expression on his face.
Zoe accidentally swore at the Swarovski’s lady and had to spend extra time convincing her to look past her tiny haughty nose and let Zoe pick up Danny’s rose. This lady is judging me so hard she texted Danny as the lady gift wrapped it up. So you’re damn right I’m going to judge you. This is a ridiculous rose. What even are you?
By the time she caught up with Cai he was sitting outside eating a large cookie. “’Nother five points,” he said, grinning, and Zoe only didn’t start arguing that you didn’t get points for eating because he handed her one as well. She sat down and bit into it, solemnly.
It was really good. “Goddamn,” said Zoe, almost not upset that she’d lost the fifty five points.
“That’s why I got two boxes,” Cai said.
She wasn’t going to admit out loud that he was genius.
“The problem here,” Zoe said, pulling out the list again. “The problem is, he says we get bonus points if the shirt is funny or fancy, but he doesn’t say how many points.”
“I guess it depends on the shirt.”
“But how do you quantify funny? He really hadn’t thought this through,” Zoe said, critically. She looked over at Cai, whose chest was still heaving a little as he continued to catch his breath. It made a little bit of worry twinge in her stomach, as her mind leapt to the worst conclusions – his lungs were giving out, heart attack – instead of considering the more likely option that he was not as fit as she was.
“Yeah,” said Cai, who didn’t look like he was having a heart attack. “Yeah I don’t think Danny had any idea what he was starting when he sent me this.” Zoe snorted in amused agreement, and Cai laughed and nudged her shoulder with his. “You’re losing really badly,” Cai said, as if Zoe didn’t know. She glared at him.
“I can come back from this, Finch,” she said darkly. “I’m only thirty five points behind.”
“Hundred and thirty five,” Cai corrected, adding, daringly, “Kemp.”
They stared at each other. Zoe looked pissed, but somehow that made Cai feel totally charged. “Okay,” he said, standing up and offering Zoe his hand. “Okay I will give you a chance.”
Zoe looked at his hand. “What chance?”
“We go head to head. There is a gaming arcade right round the corner. One game, and if you beat me, you can have my fun points.”
“Oh Cai,” Zoe deadpanned. “You’re so generous.”
Cai smiled. “No I’m not. I mean, you’ll really have to decimate me, Zoe. Your score will have to beat my ego into the ground.”
Zoe took his hand and pulled herself firmly up, standing at her full height which was, when she stretched, just a little taller than Cai. “Is that supposed to challenge me?” Zoe fixed him with a hard look, but there was a smile behind it. “Is beating you at some arcade game supposed to be hard?”
“Well pick your battlefield, Kemp,” he said, extending his arm toward the arcade. Zoe shot him with another dark look, rolled her shoulders back and strode into the building.
She knew he was trying to play her. But – so? Zoe wanted to play. There was something just… different about being able to be silly all afternoon.
And she was going to beat him so hard he would never get over it.
One game (she chose air hockey, pretty sure that her reflexes were faster than his) turned into best of five and by the end Zoe’s fingers were so sore from the three (three!) times the puck had smashed into them instead of her mallet. She won but by two points (only two!) but the tension had grown so tight and frantic in her chest that when she scored at the last she cheered and punched Cai in the arm with her sore hand, making them both yelp in pain.
~
Zoe blew on her hurt fingers as they walked out of the arcade. “Are they very sore?” Cai asked, feeling bad since he had been the one propelling the puck into them.
“They’re fine,” Zoe said, though they felt uncomfortably hot. Cai caught her hand in his and before he could talk himself out of it he’d pressed his lips to her fingers. Zoe’s stomach jumped into her throat.
“How are they now?” Cai asked.
“They’re fine,” Zoe said, in a voice that almost shook. Her whole body suddenly felt uncomfortably hot.
~
The shop was dark and pulsing with music. “This place is very hip,” Zoe said to Cai, uncertainly. There was a disco ball hanging above the counter.
“That’s the whole point,” Cai said. “There’s got to be a great shirt here, fancy and funny. Points!”
“But at what cost?” Zoe muttered, casting her eyes around the shop. It wasn’t that dark, she supposed, but only dark in comparison to the spotlights on the fake red carpet outside the dressing rooms. The rest of the shop was lit with hundreds of fairy lights twisted around racks of clothes.
Zoe didn’t know what to do about the hundred points. On the one hand she’d beaten Cai, but on the other hand it was only by two points. She thought maybe they might have to leave it up to Danny…
The competition felt like it had changed, though. Cai kissed her fingers in broad daylight and her heart hadn’t quiet calmed down about it. She wanted to go back to the frantic battle for points superiority but she couldn’t make her brain slot back into that frame of mind. She felt stupid and distracted and flustered and fixated, and though she tried to focus on finding a shirt she couldn’t make herself be annoyed at Cai when he found the perfect stupid tuxedo shirt because it would probably make Danny laugh so hard he hurt himself.
Plus – she’d surprised herself by actually finding a dress she liked. This pleased her, since that tied into her mission of proving to Danny that she was totally a girl. It was a dark, dark shade of angry-girl pink, and there was nothing floaty about it. And since she’d lost Cai she grabbed it off the rack and disappeared into the changing rooms.
Maybe she wanted to make Cai gape, a little bit, too. Maybe?
When you met, you were in a swimming suit, Zoe she told herself. But that was different, because… it was. She wanted him to kiss her fingers again, now. She wanted to slowly pull off his gloves and lace her bare fingers through his.
Zoe groaned and banged her forehead on the mirror, and remained pressed to it while her breath fogged up the glass. Whyyy? she thought, her stomach knotted tight.
“Zoee!” Cai called from the other side of the curtain, making her stand bolt upright. She swallowed to settle herself and pulled back the curtain a little. Cai spotted her and grinned.
“Whaddya think?” he asked, starting to do a ridiculous dance in the tiny denim shorts he’d pulled on, frayed at the bottom and patterned with a faded Union Jack. “Booty booty booty booty!”
His legs were all thigh, Zoe stared, hiding her face half behind the curtain. He started to dance toward her, arse first. “You are obscene!” she yelled at him. “I’m not looking! Obscene!”
He smacked himself on the butt and Zoe covered her face in her hands.
“You don’t like?” Cai asked, standing in the door of her changing room and looking at himself in her mirror. “To patriotic for you? I – whoa,” he stopped, finally taking his eyes off his own arse and looking at Zoe in her dress. “You look – whoa.”
“See,” said Zoe, without the defiant emphasis she wished she was able to muster. “I can be good at shopping.”
“Yeah,” Cai said, feeling like a bit of a creep because he couldn’t stop staring at her. “Yeah that’s… really good. At shopping. You are.”
“Talking, good at, you are,” she teased. Cai grinned at her, and stepped forward.
“Would you hate it if I kissed you right now?” he asked, watching her face, feeling like he should be ready to get out of the way if she punched him and maybe he deserved to be punched but he hoped she wouldn’t. Eyes on his, she shook her head a fraction of a shake and he stepped forward again and almost kissed her when she said “Why?”
“Why?” he repeated, confused.
“Why do you want to?” Zoe asked, vibrantly aware of how close he was standing. Her hand was on his chest, she wasn’t sure how it got there but there it was.
“Uh,” Cai said, feeling a bit deer-in-headlights-y. “Can my answer be, just because?” He was going to kick himself for sounding so stupid later. He was kicking himself a bit now. Just because? What a stupid fucking thing to say! Yet his hand was resting gently on her hip, and he reached behind him and tugged the curtain properly closed. “Just because I want to? Is that okay?”
Zoe felt like she was starting to panic but it was a different kind of panic than the one she knew so well. The kind of panic she was coming to associate with Cai. “You promised you wouldn’t use that word at me,” she said, trying to claw back some of her Zoe-ness because she felt like she was losing it completely and didn’t know what to do without it.
He swallowed, and smiled, all nerves. “Sorry,” he said, his voice low, and sweet, and Zoe edged toward him and he kissed her before she could ask any more difficult questions or before he could say anything more that would make him sound like a moron. The heat that had been simmering in her since he’d kissed her fingers came back with a vengeance and her body felt like it was definitely panicking, now, but simultaneously she felt she did not want to stop panicking. She wanted to keep kissing him, until – until –
Her hand was still pressed against his chest and she broke them apart by putting a little gentle pressure on him. Only a little, though; his stomach was still pressed against hers. But she didn’t move, and she’d dropped her face down a little and her eyes were closed.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered, his breathing heavier than normal. (And he was so, so aware he was wearing tiny shorts right now…)
“I’m just,” said Zoe, her voice breathy as well. “Waiting… for something terrible to happen.”
“Oh,” he didn’t know what to say to that because statistics were kind of on the side of paranoia.
Her phone was in her bag and even over the music in the shop she would have heard it if anyone was trying to call with bad news, but it was still and silent and message-less. But any number of other things could be happening, right now. Any number of disasters and tragedies and…
Cai rested his forehead against hers, waiting with her. She curled her hand on his chest into a ball, his shirt caught in her fingers.
There was a sudden banging outside the changing room and a sharp voice right outside. “Are there two of you in there?” the voice demanded.
Cai’s face was a mask of panic and she stared back at him for a second before pushing him back. Zoe turned and stuck her head out of the curtain. “Excuse me?” she said, in her best haughty voice. “Of course not!”
“We all saw your boyfriend in the tiny shorts dance in there,” the shop lady stared her down. Beyond her, two other shop assistants were watching while pretending not to watch. “You’re not the first kids to try and have sex in there, you know.”
Zoe looked horrified, and then Cai betrayed her by failing to hold back his laugh and the shop assistant pulled back the curtain. He smiled at her, and said “Hullo…” Later, he would kick himself for not having a cleverer thought in his head.
“Hullo,” said the shop assistant. “I think you should probably leave.”
Cai put his hands on his hips and sauntered out of the changing rooms. “Not before I buy these booty shorts!” he announced loudly, and Zoe pulled back the curtain and wished she could just disappear.
~
“Zoe…” he said, as they pulled up in the hospital carpark, ready to deliver everything to Danny. “So…”
She looked at him, waiting. He really wished that she could just read his mind but no, she was going to be no help. “I really like you,” he said.
She continued to look at him, but with perhaps a small lift of the corner of her mouth. Yep, no help whatsoever.
“Uhm, this is where you might say something like, I like you too, Cai?”
Zoe lifted her eyebrows. “Were you thinking I might not like you?”
“Uh, no?”
“Good,” Zoe said.
Cai exhaled quite a lot. “So, I don’t know, do you want to be… Partners?” Oh god, could he have chosen a stupider word? Cai winced visibly at himself. But he wasn’t going to ask do you want to be my girlfriend because that seemed like a dumb thing to say to Zoe.
Zoe bit her bottom lip, and after a too-long moment, shook her head. “I… don’t really even know how to just be Zoe, right now,” she said, taking care with each one of her words.
“Oh,” said Cai. “Okay. I mean, not okay – because I’m not using that word – but, sure, I –” Cai was not taking care with his words, they were just tumbling out, whichever one got to his mouth first. Zoe reached over and put her fingers over his mouth and he stopped.
“Just be Cai?” she said. “I can’t handle anything more than just Cai.”
He didn’t move for a moment, because her fingers were over his lips and he didn’t want them to move. But he nodded, eventually, because he had to show he was listening, and she smiled a smile that was, for Zoe, very soft.
“Come on then,” she said. “Let’s bring Danny his loot.”
And eventually, she pulled her fingers away from his mouth.
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Date: 2014-09-28 12:21 pm (UTC)From:Cai was becoming a Manic Pixie pain in her arse.
She looked up at Cai, who was literally swinging around a lamp pole while waiting for her to finish reading, and thought, shit.
I laughed so hard. Did you hear me? HAHHAHAHA brilliant :D