Red didn’t like being above ground without armor. Without her rifle, the air felt thinner, like something important had been taken out of it. Her jacket was zipped to the throat and her hands stayed deep in the pockets as she followed Zoey down the cracked sidewalk toward the canteen.
The place wasn’t busy, two tables occupied, one guy alone at the counter, but the lights felt too bright, and the clatter from the kitchen came too sudden, too loud. Her eyes flicked from the register to the door to the wall clock, cataloguing distances and sight lines without meaning to. Her pulse was already higher than it should have been.
Zoey held the door for her. Didn’t make a big show of it, just stepped aside and let her through. No comment. That helped.
The queue was short. Red kept her gaze on the menu board, pretending to read it while counting exits again. A part of her brain spun through useless contingencies,how fast she could cross the floor, how to use the tables for cover, which customer looked like they might have a concealed weapon. It wasn’t paranoia so much as background noise she couldn’t shut off.
But the strange thing was, the volume was lower than usual. With Zoey next to her, there wasn’t the same sharp edge to it. It was still there, but muted, like a generator idling two rooms away. She noticed the difference and immediately tried to work out why. Couldn’t pin it.
When they reached the register, Zoey just ordered for herself and then, without hesitation, paid for both of them. No glance to ask if Red was okay with it, no awkward “I’ll get this one.” Just done. Red had the reflex to object, money always came with hooks, but the words didn’t make it out.
They took a booth against the wall, Red sliding in first so she’d face the room. Her jacket stayed on. Zoey sat opposite, her frame making the table seem smaller. The stock truck was parked where Red could see it through the window. That, too, helped.
The food came in shallow ceramic bowls. Red tasted the broth, too hot at first, then bearable. She ate in small, deliberate bites, scanning the room between mouthfuls.
Zoey started talking about the truck, how it wasn’t as smooth as her old one, how she’d swapped the front shocks last week, how she was thinking of fabricating her own mounts for the auxiliary lights. She spoke plainly, without trying to oversell the story or make herself sound clever. Red found herself focusing on her voice, how it filled the space without pressing in on her.
It took her a few minutes to realize she wasn’t doing her usual constant check of the other tables. The low thrum of panic was still there, but it was background, easy to ignore if she wanted to. She leaned back a little without thinking.
Why? That question looped once, twice. Zoey wasn’t shielding her from anything. Wasn’t physically closer than a normal conversation would call for. Wasn’t even watching her constantly. And yet...something about her presence made the room less dangerous. Like a single variable had been pulled out of an equation, and now the math worked in Red’s favor.
She tried to figure it out while Zoey kept talking. Nothing fit. It wasn’t that Zoey was stronger, though she obviously was. It wasn’t that she was armed, Red had met plenty of armed people who made her more tense, not less. Maybe it was that Zoey never seemed to push. Never angled for more than Red gave. That might’ve been it. Or maybe not.
When Zoey reached for her glass, Red caught herself watching the way the prosthetic fingers curled around it. Precise, deliberate, no sound when they met the surface. She looked down into her noodles before her mind could follow that observation anywhere.
The conversation stayed light. No probing questions about Red’s work or her past. No pointed silences. Just mechanical talk, small comments about the food, one short story about a vendor trying to sell Zoey a part she didn’t need. Red even laughed once. It surprised her enough that she stopped mid-bite, like she had to check whether it had really happened.
By the time they finished eating, she’d almost forgotten she was sitting in public without armor.
The chairs scraped quietly as they stood. Zoey picked up both their bowls without a word and dropped them at the return slot. Red stepped outside first, the cold hitting like a reset. The air smelled faintly of snow even though none was in the forecast.
The truck sat at the curb, a bit rough around the edges, unpainted spots where Zoey had clearly swapped panels, the faintest oil stain underneath from a gasket that probably wasn’t worth replacing yet. Red climbed into the passenger seat, the upholstery stiff in the cold.
Zoey started the engine, the low idle filling the cab. They pulled away from the curb, the streetlamps catching in the windshield as they merged into traffic.
“Food okay?” Zoey asked, eyes on the road.
“Yeah,” Red said.
“Not too busy in there today.”
Red hummed in agreement. Her hand stayed in her jacket pocket, thumb rubbing over the edge of her phone. The conversation didn’t strain. Zoey didn’t fill the silence with anything forced, just left it there like it was fine to have.
About halfway to her place, Red thought about saying, We could do that again sometime. The words hovered in the back of her throat. It would have been easy...just a quick line, nothing that committed her to anything. But easy wasn’t the same as safe.
She pictured herself hearing the wrong tone in Zoey’s answer and spiraling, or worse, hearing enthusiasm and not knowing how to handle it. She stayed quiet.
The truck rolled to a stop near the stairwell that led down into her section of the undercity. Zoey didn’t idle long. She just shifted into park, looked over, and gave a short nod.
“See you around,” Zoey said.
“Yeah,” Red answered.
She opened the door and climbed out. The cold bit through her jeans as she crossed to the stairwell. She glanced back once, and Zoey had already eased the truck into gear, brake lights flaring before she turned the corner and was gone.
The stairwell smelled faintly of damp concrete. Metal treads rang under her boots as she went down one flight, then another, then the last, where the air got warmer and denser. The hum of ventilation units replaced the street noise. She keyed into her section and stepped inside.
Her unit was exactly as she’d left it. Lights low, tools in their places, no sign of intrusion. She sat on the edge of the bed without taking her jacket off.
The weight in her chest returned. Heat, tightness, a slow pulse that traveled downward and settled there. She let it stay for a moment before pulling her phone from her pocket.
Red: Thanks for lunch. And the ride.
She stared at the message for a long moment before hitting send.
The reply came within a minute.
Zoey: Anytime. You looked more relaxed than usual. That’s rare.
Red read it twice, then typed:
Red: Guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.
Three dots blinked.
Zoey: That’s the point. Doesn’t have to be bad.
Red felt the corners of her mouth try to pull upward. She swallowed it down. Typed:
Red: Still, public spaces aren’t my thing.
Zoey: I know. That’s why I picked somewhere quiet.
She didn’t remember telling Zoey that, but it didn’t surprise her that Zoey knew anyway. The warmth spread in her chest, something low and steady like the afterglow of a drink.
Red: You scope places out for everyone, or just me?
Zoey: Just you. Everyone else can fend for themselves.
Red stared at that one longer than she should have. Her thumbs hovered over the screen, not sure what to do with the sudden rush of heat behind her ribs. She typed and deleted three different responses before settling on:
Red: Huh.
Zoey: “Huh” noted. Eat something salty before bed.
That almost made her laugh. She shifted on the mattress, pulling one boot heel up onto the edge.
Red: Bossy.
Zoey: Practical. See you soon.
The “see you soon” left her holding the phone a while longer. It wasn’t a promise. Wasn’t even an exact plan. But it landed like one anyway. The warmth was still there when she set the phone down, and it lingered as she pulled off her boots and sat in the quiet, letting herself feel it without chasing it away.
She left the phone face down on the crate beside the bed. The soft glow of the screen had burned into her vision, and the absence of it made the room feel darker.
Her boots stayed on the floor where they landed. She stretched out on top of the blanket, jacket still zipped, staring at the faint seam where the wall panel met the ceiling. The hum of the ventilation system filled the space the way city noise did above ground. Steady, impersonal, almost comforting if you let it become background.
The warmth in her chest was still there. Not the jittery burn of adrenaline, not the tight coil of panic. This was heavier, slower, something that seemed to radiate outward and sink deeper at the same time.
She thought about the way Zoey had looked across the table, shoulders slightly hunched so she didn’t block Red’s view of the room, hands moving quietly when she ate. She thought about the moment in the truck when she’d almost said they should do it again, the way the words had hovered in her throat like they were waiting for her to stop being afraid.
The fear wasn’t the same as it used to be. It wasn’t the jagged, electric thing that locked her muscles and squeezed her lungs. This was softer, but in a way, more dangerous. It was the fear of wanting something you might actually be able to have.
Her breathing slowed. That other feeling, the lower one, was still there. She let herself name it: arousal. She didn’t flinch away from the word this time. The heat in her chest slid lower, pooled in her hips, in the muscles she’d trained herself not to think about.
And yet, even as her body urged the possibility, the rest of her mind braced. Too many hands in her history that hadn’t asked. Too many nights she’d turned into someone else just to make it end. Those files never stayed closed for long.
But Zoey… Zoey didn’t crowd her. Didn’t push. Didn’t reach unless there was a reason. That mattered in a way Red couldn’t untangle. It made the idea of if; not now, not soon, but someday - feel like something that could exist without breaking her.
She turned onto her side, curling slightly, and pulled one knee up toward her chest. The fabric of her jeans felt rougher than usual against her skin. She thought about the text Zoey had sent:
"Just you. Everyone else can fend for themselves."
It replayed in her mind in Zoey’s voice, low and even, and each time it did, the warmth expanded until it was hard to tell where it ended.
Her eyes closed, not in sleep, but in something close. She pictured the small curve at the corner of Zoey’s mouth when she’d said “Anytime,” like it wasn’t a throwaway line but an operating principle. She let herself imagine what it would be like to hear that in person again, at the start of a day, maybe, not the end.
Her body answered that thought with a slow throb in her crotch that she ignored as best she could. Not tonight. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to let that part of her wake up fully. But she didn’t bury it, either.
Instead, she reached over, picked up her phone again, and scrolled back through the whole exchange. Reading each line made the feeling return in waves, soft, insistent, like someone had set a heat source in her chest and left it there. She caught herself smiling once, a small, unfamiliar twitch of muscle she didn’t try to stop.
She set the phone down for the second time, this time with the screen dark. Closed her eyes again and breathed, slow and deep, letting the warmth stay. It was hers. It could wait.
Tomorrow, she’d be fine. She’d see Zoey again, but she’d carry this with her in the meantime. And for now, that was enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment