Chainsaws and chickens (Rachel, Zoe, Cai)

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

“Your armchair’s gone,” Zoe said, frowning at the space in Rachel’s room that used to be inhabited by an arm chair covered in laundry.

“Mm, sold it,” Rachel replied. “There’s a lady down the hall with loads of kids and nowhere to put them. What do I need a chair in my room for anyway?”

Zoe shrugged. “What’s Cai going to sit on upside-down now?” Cai loved being upside down. He’d sling his legs over the backs of chairs and put his head on the floor like he liked the feeling of his head being full of blood.

“He’ll find something,” Rachel was sitting on her stripped down bed next to a pile of clean laundry, balling socks and tossing them into her open sock drawer. Zoe had come over to help her tidy, since the background of Rachel’s snapchats had been getting increasingly messy. It was not impossible to carry a full basket of laundry down to the basement with one arm, but it was difficult, so she hadn’t. Her room was getting kind of rank.

But they’d spent the morning washing almost everything. Rachel buried her face in a pile of towels and tea towels. “Uuugh, I can’t wait to shower with both arms.”

“You need to come over and use our bath,” Zoe said.

“Ugh,” Rachel shuddered. “Baths.”

“Really?” Zoe looked surprised. “I kinda had you pegged as a bubblebath fiend.”

“Baths are just,” Rachel pulled a face, since the words to express herself were too hard. “Besides what else is there to do in a bath other than wank?”

Zoe pulled a face right back at her.

“Oh Zoe, don’t tell me you don’t,” Rachel said disbelievingly. Zoe just shook her head; she was not talking about this. “Pruuuude,” Rachel said, her face a picture of innocence as if she couldn’t hear what her mouth was saying.

Zoe threw a bare pillow at her.

“Seriously,” Rachel continued, biting the lip of the pillowcase so she could stuff the pillow in one-handed. “Rr uu n ai ooing aa-y-ing?”

“No,” said Zoe.

“I’m not dumb,” Rachel wrapped her arms around her pillow. “ ‘Oh, Zoe’s been helping me with touching people,’” she crooned, imbuing it with all the meaning that Zoe had been so annoyed at Cai for hinting at in the first place.

“How do you even remember that?” she muttered. “You were out of your mind of morphine.”

“So haaave you?” Rachel grinned. “Been helping him with touching?”

“Not like that, Jesus, Rachel.”

Rachel sighed because sometimes Zoe was the most frustrating and boring friend in the world. “Well, I was helping Danny with touching on my birthday,” she said lightly, and Zoe’s attention snapped to her.

“What?”

Rachel smiled coyly; if Zoe could keep secrets then so could she.

“Was he okay? Rachel, you know you’ve got to be really careful with him.”

“Hey! I know how to treat my own boyfriend. Bloody hell,” Rachel huffed, kind of offended, and annoyed that instead of joking around, Zoe was being so... ok, so Zoe. “Of course he was alright.”

Zoe didn’t say anything, just continued to tidy up in a judgmental way. Rachel spent longer than she needed pummeling her pillow back into its case. Everything was annoying.

“So yesterday the landlord come over and said I had to tell Dad our rent didn’t go through,” Rachel changed the subject, saying it lightly. Maybe she should have known it would upset Zoe – maybe she did know, and said it anyway. Maybe some spiteful little part of her just wanted to make Zoe feel bad, or maybe she just needed Zoe to know that she couldn’t control everything, just like she couldn’t tell Rachel how to be with Danny.

“Seriously?”

Rachel shrugged like Zoe stopped needing to make such a big deal out of everything, Rachel could handle it. “It’s just the same old shit.” No one had bothered her dad about rent before- they’d lived in her grandmother’s house after she’d died, but there’d always been people after her mum.

“Rach you gotta move in with me,” Zoe said, picking up a shirt from the floor with her foot.

“Zoe, I can’t abandon dad,” Rachel reminded her.

“Fuck him,” Zoe said blatantly.

“Shut up,” Rachel was suddenly too tired of this argument she thought she'd wanted to have. Zoe sighed loudly and pointedly.

“If he’s spending all your rent money on piss at the pub then he’s abandoning you, Rachel.”

“You don’t even know,” Rachel said. “Just stop it, Zoe.”

“What? What am I doing wrong?”

“You’re just pissing me off!”

“But he’s not?”

“No!”

“Fine,” Zoe said, picking up the laundry basket with a huff. “I’m getting the sheets from the dryer.”

Rachel pressed a naked pillow against her face, arm slung over top of it. She should have been frustrated but she was too tired. The boy she loved was locked up in mental hospital and she couldn't stop picking fights like she was picking at scabs.

It wouldn’t be long before she got her cast off and could look for a job. Rachel half dreaded this idea, but was half looking forward to it. Money. She needed real money. She craved the relief it would bring as she added a little more each week to the bag taped under her bed. Getaway funds.

She’d been adding to it, little by little, every bit of money that came into her hands. Almost all the money Danny gave her as tube money had wound up here.

The first time she really had been intending to catch the tube with the money he’d given her. She’d been walking toward the station with it clutched in her hand, and the compulsion to keep it crept slowly but surely into her, till the idea of spending it seemed far too dangerous.

She knew she could walk home, and it would take less than an hour if she moved fast, and she wouldn’t have to part with the money.

Some days walking home from the hospital made her want to die, she was so bone-tired, or so deeply miserable, or it was raining, or her feet hurt almost as much as her arm, or she totally lacked motivation, and then she’d catch the tube instead. But the guilt she felt at not being able to add money to her stash was almost so bad that walking home would have been better, and Rachel bet herself up for it, and those were the nights she needed to drink.

Some days her dad picked her up from the hospital on his way home from work and on those days she was utterly grateful, sometimes as grateful as she had been when he rescued her from a lifetime of prison. Some days her dad was an angel. But Zoe had cast him as a villain early on and it was hard to make Zoe change her mind about anyone, Rachel knew.

Zoe came back into the room with a basket of clean laundry and dumped it on the bed and over Rachel’s legs. Her sheets were still warm from the dryer.

“It just freaks me out, you living here,” Zoe said, sitting near Rachel’s feet. She wasn’t going to say sorry for being pushy because she wasn’t sorry, but she could at least explain herself. “Anything could happen.”

Rachel pushed the pillow off her face. “If I was supposed to die I’d be dead already,” she said.

“That is so not how anything works.”

Rachel didn’t want to point out that she knew that’s not how the world worked. How the world worked wasn’t the point. “Can we not talk about this?” Rachel sat up, grabbing for a pillowcase to clothe her second pillow. “Can we just, make the bed then go over to Cai’s and play with chickens and chainsaws?”

Zoe made a frustrated noise that meant: I really don’t want to stop talking about this because I need to keep you safe and you are not letting me but I will stop because otherwise we’re both going to hate each other. “Well at least let me buy lunch on the way,” she said, and Rachel hauled herself off the bed and agreed.

~

At Cai’s, all three of them discovered that Rachel was terrified of chickens. “What’s wrong with its eyes?” she shrieked, clutching at Cai’s arm, hiding behind him. “It’s possessed?!”

Cai laughed at her, which Rachel thought was actually quite mean. She was very tired and the chicken had run right up to her and it had dinosaur feet!

“She’s not possessed, she’s just curious,” Cai said, trying to draw Rachel out from behind him. “They’re going to peck you unless you try to hurt them.”

Leonie, who lived over the fence from Cai, had half of her yard fenced off for the chickens she kept and Rachel wasn’t comfortable till she was back on the other side of the fence. She’d throw the chickens some food, but she didn’t want to get closer than that.

In the front yard, Leonie was showing Zoe how to use the chainsaw. This was much less frightening than chickens, Rachel thought, even after Cai had introduced her to them all. They had names like Gavin and Poachy, which seemed like stupid names, but what did Rachel know? She’d never named anything before, except herself.

And even then – Miss Elaine Eos. Sometimes Rachel thought about how stupid her name was and let it drag her into a real mood. Although, this afternoon, she was already in a bit of a mood.

She was just so tired.

Cai led her round the front after they were done feeding the chickens and gave her earmuffs so she could watch the chainsaw antics. The antics mostly consisted of Cai trying to tell Zoe (except they were all in earmuffs, so everyone was yelling) how she should be chopping up the tree stump without chopping her feet off and she was yelling back that she wasn’t stupid of course she wasn’t going to chop her feet off and Leonie yelling at them both about how her husband once chopped off both his feet and died, but Leonie had a penchant for the dramatic.

Rachel went back to Cai’s place, picked a DVD from the top of the pile and curled up on the couch and fell asleep to Fairly Odd Parents.

Zoe and Cai followed her about an hour later, Zoe looking pleased with herself, Cai looking impressed. “Nawww,” he said when he saw Rachel, whose face was knotted in a tense sleep.

Zoe didn’t want to wake her and didn’t want to leave yet so she sat down carefully near Rachel’s feet, slumping backwards into the soft couch. Chainsawing and yelling at Cai was hard work, her muscles ached in a pleasing way. And being around Cai… wasn’t weird. Not really. Not if she didn’t let herself make it weird.

Zoe was practised at not letting herself feel things. She could do this.

She sent Danny a snapchat of sleeping Rachel, and one of her feet to show him she hadn’t chopped anything off, and one of the back of Cai’s head, as he sat on the floor in front of them, legs crossed like a little kid. Zoe couldn't help but think that if Danny was here, everything would feel a whole lot easier, though she wasn't sure how. It just would.

They spent the rest of the afternoon watching the kids DVDs, getting oddly invested and drinking the tea Cai made, sweeter than Zoe usually liked it but weirdly perfect today. Things were not-weird right up until the point where she sort of accidentally started playing with the ends of Cai’s hair... He was still on his spot on the floor in front of her but his back was right against the couch and his head was really close to her hand anyway, and…

Cai’s stomach muscles had all tensed up when he felt her fingers in his hair and he held himself really, really still in case moving made her stop.

It didn’t mean anything, Zoe told herself. She didn’t have to dissect every little thing she did. His hair was really soft, and thick, that’s all, just something to fiddle with.

He didn’t move till he felt her fingers brush against the skin on the back of his neck, then he tiled his head back and looked at her upside down. She looked back, surprised at how heavy his head was against her leg, and smiled at him, just a little, uneven, unsure, and not entirely unguarded.

He smiled back with such an unguarded, open smile it made her ache. ‘Why’d’you look so sad?” he asked, quietly, his voice barely anything against the TV.

“M’not sad,” Zoe said, with a flicker of a frown. “Just thinking.”

He moved his head against her leg, which wasn’t quite a nuzzle but was certainly something. “Whatcha thinking?”

You’re pretty, she thought.

I like looking at you, she thought.

“You had so much sawdust in your hair,” Zoe said, and Cai laughed so suddenly he woke up Rachel.