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It was supposed to be a double date. At least, that's how the evening had started.
Zip leaned across the table to stage whisper loudly at Mal. “Is it just me, boss, or are our dates more interested in each other than they are in us?”
Mal snorted and quirked his mouth, which Zip had come to recognize as the Mal Underwood equivalent of falling out of his chair laughing. At the other end of the table, Ellie and Cindy were leaning towards each other, hands moving expressively as they talked.
“So you can actually fly?” Ellie asked, her wings quivering in excitement. “Lucky! I've wanted to fly ever since I was little.”
Cindy smiled. “Yeah, it's why I'm a gold band. I’m sort of a one-trick pony.”
Zip scooted down the booth so that she was hip-to-hip with her date and stretched her arm around Cindy’s shoulder. “Are you kidding me? You control the actual air. I’m the one-trick pony here.”
“Have you ever flown with anyone else?” Ellie asked.
With a slightly puzzled frown, Cindy shook her head. “I've never tried before.”
Zip backed out of Cindy’s personal space again and looked over at Mal. “It's like I don't even exist.”
Mal still had a slight smile in his lips, and Zip was pretty sure that between her and Ellie they could pull a decent laugh out of him before the night was over. That was assuming, of course, that Ellie would actually pay any attention to him over Cindy and her posterpowers.
Cindy elbowed Zip in the side playfully. “Shut up, I'm not ignoring you,” she said. “I'm just talking with Ellie.”
“Yeah, come on, Zip, Cindy and I have never really met.” Ellie crossed her arms and sent a fake-pout Zip’s direction. “You get to hang out with her all the time.”
“Now that you mention that about flying,” Cindy said, “that actually sounds possible. I’m pretty sure I could do it.”
Zip watched Ellie gaze wistfully into the middle distance. “That would be really cool.”
For a moment, Zip glanced between the two women, then looked back at Mal. Widening her eyes and waggling her eyebrows, she inclined her head slightly towards the door. Mal rolled his eyes at what she was sure he would call her “feeble attempt at nonverbal communication,” but slid elegantly from his seat.
“We’ve spent quite some time here,” Mal said. “Perhaps it is time to let the wait staff do their jobs.” He held out his hand to Ellie.
She laughed as she took it. Zip slipped out of her own side of the booth, letting Cindy escape. The four of them left the diner and wandered out to the parking lot, then down the sidewalk. Mal was leading the way, and it didn’t take Zip long to recognize where he was going.
He’d picked up on what she’d been trying to say. Good.
Ellie and Cindy were still talking, chatting about flight and gold bands. Something Ellie said drew a burble of laughter from Cindy, and Zip felt her heart skip a beat, like it always did when Cindy laughed. There was nothing quite as nice as hearing that sound.
They reached the old baseball field. The gate was still open, despite the hour of night, and so they slipped inside. Zip was pretty sure Ellie and Cindy hadn’t even noticed the transition.
Zip poked Cindy gently in the side. “Hey,” she said.
Cindy glanced down and smiled, the smile that still made Zip’s stomach flip-flop inside of her. “Hey,” she said.
“Did you want to try flying with another person?” Zip said. “You could do it here.” She looked over meaningfully at Ellie, whose eyes had widened in the dark night.
Cindy glanced at Ellie and then back to Zip, looking a little guilty. “I feel like if I’m going to try taking someone flying for the first time, it should be my girlfriend.”
“Nah,” said Zip, waving her hand dismissively. “I’m perfectly fine with both feet planted firmly on the ground. But she’d love to take a try.”
Ellie clutched at Mal’s arm. “But tonight was supposed to be about us,” she said, talking to him. “I don’t want to just --”
Mal shook his head. “Ellie. You want this. So do it.”
Cindy and Ellie met each other’s eyes, and then Cindy held out her hand. Zip grinned when Ellie took it, watching as the two of them walked a little ways away out into the field.
Zip rested her elbow on Mal’s shoulder and leaned into him, watching Cindy explain to Ellie how to hold herself. “This was a good idea, boss,” she said. He made a self-satisfied humming noise that was the Mal Underwood equivalent of saying, “Hell yeah, it was.”
The next instant, Ellie and Cindy were airborne.
They stayed close to the ground at first, Ellie’s golden wings being buffeted by the gusts of air Cindy was using. Then something seemed to click, and her wings smoothed out into a perfect glide. Hands still connected, they began to rise higher, and Zip could hear the sounds of twinned laughter falling from the sky.
They were like a pair of angels, Zip decided as she watched them spiral higher and higher. One neon green and the other lemon yellow, both shining in the night as bright as halos. Flying together for the first time, trying something new. It might not have been Zip up there, but that didn’t matter. She still felt like she was part of the moment.
Mal sighed, soft and awed, and Zip felt the same way.
When the two finally touched back down again, Ellie’s hair was windtossed, her cheeks flushed with delight. She spread her arms out to Mal and babbled, half-spoken, half-signed. Zip almost wished she could speak ASL just to fill in the gaps.
“Wow! That was just so -- amazing! And the way we - and we flew! And I could feel the air. It was like - really flying!”
And then Mal chuckled, low and amused, and pulled her into a hug. As Cindy wrapped her own arms around Zip, the speedster smiled.
She knew they’d manage to pull a laugh from Mal tonight.
